Growing commonly near Wakatimi is another species of palm, which, though it has not the value of the coconut palm, is yet more prized by the natives. This is the Sugar palm (Arenga saccharifera), and from it is made a very potent and intoxicating liquor. When the palm is in fruit—it bears a heavy bunch of dark green fruit—a cut is made in the stem below the stalk of the fruit, and the juice trickles out and is collected in the shell of a coconut. Apparently the juice ferments very rapidly without the addition of any other substance, for it is drunk almost as soon as it is collected and the native becomes horribly intoxicated.
During the first few weeks of our stay in the country the people were on their good behaviour, or else they found sufficient amusement in coming to see us and our works, but they soon tired of that and went back to their normal habits. Many of them went to the drinking places by day, and we often saw them lying or sitting at the foot of the tree, while one of their party stood at the top of a bamboo ladder collecting the palm wine. But the worst was a small gang of about a dozen men, the laziest in the village, whose custom it was to start off towards evening in canoes to their favourite drinking tree, where they spent the night drinking and making night hideous with their songs and shouts. In the morning they returned raving to the village and as often as not they started quarrelling and fighting and knocking the houses to pieces (a favourite occupation of the angry Papuan) before they settled down to sleep off the effects of their potations.
As a rule, the men were the worst offenders, and the women drank but seldom, but I well remember one day seeing a man and his wife both hopelessly drunk come over to our camp. It was pouring with rain and their canoe was several inches deep in water, but they danced up and down in it and sang a drunken ditty; it was a ludicrous and at the same time heart-rending exhibition. The man, when we first knew him, was a fine fellow who one day climbed up a palm tree to get us coconuts, a feat which no man out of condition can perform; a few months later he was hardly ever seen sober, and in January he died. A smiling round-faced youth called Ukuma, who was one of our particular friends at first and was privileged to wander where he liked about the camp, attached himself to the drinking party, and before we left the country he looked an old man, and I had difficulty in recognising him.
| A PAPUAN OF THE MIMIKA. | A PAPUAN OF THE MIMIKA. |
Though the drunken vagaries of the natives were usually food for tears, they sometimes provided us with amusement. One afternoon one of the principal men of Wakatimi came down to the river bank quite intoxicated and took a canoe, which he paddled out into mid-stream and there moored it. From there he proceeded to shoot arrows vaguely and promiscuously at the village, raving and shouting what sounded to be horrible curses. Some of the arrows fell into the village and some sailed over the palm trees, and now and again he turned round and shot harmlessly into our camp, but nobody took the slightest notice of him except his wife, who went down to the river bank and told him in plain language her opinion of him. This caused him to turn his attention to her, but his aim was wild and the arrows missed their mark, so he desisted and went back to the shore, where the woman broke across her knee the remainder of his bundle of arrows, while he cooled his fevered brow in the river. Then, while she delivered a further lecture, he followed her back to their hut looking like a whipped and ashamed dog. It can hardly be doubted that palm wine shortens the lives of many of the Papuans, but one must hesitate before condemning an absolutely untaught and savage race for excessive indulgence in one of the pleasures that vary their monotonous lives.
FRUITS
As well as coconuts the Mimika people have also bananas, papayas (Carica papaya), water-melons and pumpkins, all of them of a very inferior kind. It cannot be said that they cultivate these fruits; they occasionally get a banana shoot and plant it in the ground by the riverside, where it may or may not grow and produce fruit, but they make no clearings and take very little trouble to ensure the life of the plant. The papayas and the melons and pumpkins are sometimes seen growing about the native dwellings; but they, too, seem to be there more by accident than by any design on the part of the people. At Obota we found a few pineapples, which were probably the descendants of some that were brought to the Mimika by M. Dumas a few years earlier.
LANGUAGE DIFFICULTIES
It has been stated in the previous chapters that the natives told us this or that, and that we asked them for information about one thing or another. From this the reader must not conclude that we acquired a very complete knowledge of the native language, for that, unfortunately, was not the case, and even at the end of the fifteen months that we spent in their country we were not able to converse with them. Lieutenant Cramer and I compiled a vocabulary of nearly three hundred words,[8] and we talked a good deal with the people, but we never reached the position of being able to exchange ideas on any single subject.
In the Eastern and Northern parts of New Guinea it has always been found possible to communicate with the natives through the medium of some known language; even if there were many differences noticed in the language of a new district, there were always some common words which formed the foundation of a more complete understanding. The Western end of New Guinea has been for centuries visited by traders speaking Malay dialects, some of whom have settled in the country; or Papuans from those parts have travelled to Malay-speaking islands and have returned with a sufficient knowledge of the language to act as interpreters to people visiting those districts.