We three white men had many a long talk as to whether these
swamp-dwellers were worth going in search of, but I soon came round to
Monckton's way of thinking. Acland, alone, however, maintained to the
last that the whole thing was a myth, and jokingly said to Monckton:
"When you find these duck-footed people, you had better see that Walker
does not take them for birds, and shoot and skin a couple of specimens
of each sex and add them to his collection." (For my chief hobby in
this and many other countries all over the world consisted in adding
to my fine collections of birds and butterflies in the old country.)
As we three, with our twenty-five native police and four servant
boys, rowed up the Barigi River in our large government whaleboat,
on our way to search for these "duck-footed" people, I could not help
being struck with the very great beauty of the scene. Giant trees
laden with their burden of orchids, parasites and dangling lianas,
surrounded us on both sides, their wide-spreading branches forming
a leafy arcade far over our heads, while palms in infinite variety,
intermixed with all sorts of tropical forms of vegetation, and rare
ferns, grew thickly on the banks.
Some distance behind us came our large fleet of canoes, bearing our
bags of rice and over one hundred carriers, and as they paddled down
the dark green oily waters of this natural arcade, with much shouting
and the splashing of many paddles, it made a scene which is with me
yet and is never to be forgotten.
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