A PAPUAN OF MIMIKA WITH CLOSELY PLAITED HAIR.
The little red King Bird of Paradise (Cicinnurus regius) is heard calling everywhere, and from the upper waters of the river you hear the harsh cry of the Greater Bird of Paradise (Paradisea novae guineae), but both of these are birds of the dense forest and I do not remember ever having seen one from the river.
Green and red Eclectus Parrots (Eclectus pectoralis) and white Lemon-crested Cockatoos are fairly numerous and their harsh screams, though sufficiently unpleasing are a welcome interruption of the prevailing silence.
Lories were not often seen on the river journeys, but they were extremely common near Wakatimi, where a certain clump of trees was used by them as a regular roosting-place. For an hour or more before sunset countless hundreds of Lories (Eos fuscata) flew in flocks from all directions towards the roosting-trees, chattering loudly as they flew and even louder after they had perched. Often a branch would give way under the living weight and then the whole throng would rise in the air again and circle round and round before they alighted once more and the shouting and chattering continued until it was dark.
Crocodiles were very seldom seen, but Iguanas of two or three feet in length were often seen sunning themselves on a log or a stump, from which they would splash hurriedly into the water as the canoes approached. Several times at night I heard a splash as loud as the plunge of a man into water, but I could never discover what was the animal that caused it; there may yet possibly be some large unknown reptile in the river. Snakes were sometimes seen curled up in the overhanging vegetation and very commonly they were found swimming in the water; one day I counted eleven small harmless snakes swimming within half a mile of the same place.
On many days during the months of May and June the river swarmed with large bright yellow flies very similar to, but about twice the size of, the Green Drake of the fly-fisher. They hatched out about mid-day and took longer or shorter flights over the water, rising from it and alighting again like miniature aeroplanes. Many of them fell a prey to swallows and bee-eaters and other insect-eating birds, while the rest were quickly drowned, and I have seen long stretches of the river completely covered by the dead insects.
At some of the camps on the river and elsewhere we were a good deal bothered by small bees, the Stingless Honey-bee (Melipona praeterita). These annoying little creatures—they are about half the size of the common house-fly—buzzed about you in swarms and strove most persistently to settle on any exposed part of your body in pursuit of the sweat, which is never absent from you in those places. No matter how you beat about and killed them they were back again immediately and once, while writing, I kept my hands quite still on the book and in a few moments I counted forty-six on my two hands before their crawling became unbearable. They have a disagreeably sticky feeling as they crawl over you and your hands, when you have squashed a number of them, become sticky too.
NIGHT ON THE RIVER
At night, when the rain was not drumming ceaselessly on the roof of the tent, the silence was broken now and then by the grating call of a Brush Turkey (Talegallus fuscirostris)[6]; or a flock of Pale Crows (Gymnocorax senex), which are curiously nocturnal in their habits, would fly over the camp cawing like muffled rooks. Lizards and frogs uttered all sorts of strange cries and whistles, and the mournful unbirdlike note of the Frogmouth (Podargus papuensis) was heard on every side.
Sometimes, even when there was no wind stirring, you would hear at night a noise like thunder as some great tree went crashing down. Most of the trees in the jungle do not attain a very great girth, but they grow up very rapidly to reach the light and in their upper branches there is soon accumulated a dense mass of climbers and parasitic plants, which in the course of time become too heavy for the tree and cause it to collapse. The floor of the jungle is strewn with the limbs and trunks of fallen trees and the smell of rotting wood is everywhere.