To a large number of people the name of Malay immediately suggests a savage person who runs amok, but you may live for years in a Malay country and never see a single amok. Fortunately our Malays never behaved in this dangerous fashion, though one day a man who was suffering from fever went suddenly mad and inflicted a serious knife-wound on the body of another coolie; the wounded man was successfully treated by Marshall, who was happily but seldom required in this way to exercise his vocation as surgeon. Malays are indeed rather too handy with their knives and a more serious encounter took place one day between two of Cramer’s convicts. These two men, a mandoer (head man) and another, quarrelled one morning about some trifle connected with their food, and before anybody knew what was amiss, knives were out and one was chasing the other through the camp. By a clever backward thrust the pursued man dealt the pursuer a deep wound under the heart, but he was unable to escape before the pursuer had given him too a mortal wound. One died in a few minutes and the other during the course of the day, fortunately perhaps for both of them.
But ordinarily our Malays were most quiet and peaceable fellows. Certainly they were liars and thieves when it suited their convenience to be so, but these two faults are almost universal in the East. They were enthusiastic fishermen (a sure sign of grace) and spent many hours of their leisure time in angling for small fish, which they very seldom caught. Another of their virtues, though it sometimes became a little wearisome, was their love of singing, in which they indulged on fine evenings. The Ambonese used to sing, accompanied by a soloist on a sort of penny whistle, some really pretty songs, possibly of Portuguese origin, to which one could listen with real pleasure. But the singing of the Javanese, usually in a high falsetto voice, was a burden hardly to be borne.
In dealing with people like the Malays it is essential to keep them constantly occupied in order to prevent them from brooding too much over their untoward circumstances and becoming, as they easily do, physically ill. Accordingly, during the times when for one reason or another they were not carrying out loads to the Wataikwa camp, we set them to clearing the jungle about the camp at Parimau, and in the course of time some ten or twelve acres were cleared. Apart from the object of drying and letting light into the camp, this clearing was made with the purpose of obtaining from Parimau a view of the Snow Mountains. This latter object was ultimately attained and proved of great service to the surveyors, who were enabled to fix more definitely the various points of the range seen from a place of which they had already determined the position by astronomical observations. To the non-surveyor too the view of the mountains was a boon, though rather a tantalising one, and I used to spend many hours in the mornings, before the mists had hidden them, in scanning the snows of Idenburg and Carstensz and planning routes by which they might be reached.
FELLING TREES
Cutting down trees in the New Guinea jungle differs from cutting down trees here in that the tree does not always fall, even when the trunk is cut completely through. Amongst the tops of the trees grows an extraordinary network of rattans and other creepers of sufficient strength to support a tree, even if it is inclined to fall. We spent some time one day in firing shots with a rifle at a single creeper, thicker than a man’s arm, which was holding up a tree without any other support; though I believe we sometimes pierced the creeper with bullets, it held on and only gave way some hours later. As a rule we did not take the trouble to cut the creepers, but if a tree did not fall we cut down those about it until they all fell together in one splendid crash. On sloping ground the best method of felling trees is to cut their trunks only half way through and leave them, and then to cut completely through a big tree above them in such a way that it will fall down hill and complete the felling of those below it.
Some of the trees that we cut down in our clearing fell in the most unexpected directions, but though there were some narrow escapes, there were no accidents. The most unpleasant was a tree which fell midway between two houses, one full of coolies and the other full of stores, and shaved off the projecting roof of both; it might easily have killed half-a-dozen sleeping men, but the only harm it did was to fill the camp with a swarm of large and furiously biting ants, which had had a nest in its topmost branches. The natives, who never tired of using our steel axes, helped a good deal in felling the trees and in this way some of them earned large quantities of coloured beads.
Another occupation for the coolies in their idle moments, and at the same time a very necessary work, was the business of keeping the camp in a state of repair. When the high river bank opposite the village of Parimau was chosen for a camping ground, it was thought that floods at all events could do no harm. The houses nearest to the river were built five or six yards back from the edge of the bank, which was there about fifteen feet above the usual level of the water, and it seemed quite out of the question that the river could ever invade the camp. It was necessary, in order to prevent it from becoming the dumping ground of camp-refuse, to clear away the rank vegetation that grew on the bank down to the water’s edge, and this was the beginning of what almost ended in our downfall. After the tangle of creepers had been removed, the first rains began to wash the bank away, and when the river rose three or four feet, as it speedily did after a few hours’ downpour, it undermined the lower part of the bank and large landslips took place from above.
THE CAMP AT PARIMAU. A PRECAUTION AGAINST FLOODS.
SECURING THE CAMP