CHAPTER XV
THE HOOD PENINSULA
We started next day, and arrived at Hood Point at 4 p.m., but owing to the water being very shallow we anchored a long way from the shore. As we had no boat on board we were obliged to wait till someone took compassion on us, and it was not till after sunset that we were able to get away in a canoe with some of our gear. After a long paddle we passed between the land and the four hamlets of marine dwellings that constitute the village of Bulaa, or Hula, as it is generally called. These looked very picturesque. Dark stilted masses, upstanding from the silver-streaked calm sea, with its changing lights as the swell silently glided shorewards, the broken outlines of these strange homes were silhouetted by the bright moonlight, their blackness being occasionally relieved by the light of a fire.
On arriving at the beach near the London Missionary Society’s Station we were met and most heartily greeted by the teachers, who proved themselves most cordial and hospitable. As one always finds in these Mission Stations, everything was tidy, in readiness, and beautifully clean; the table was covered with a cloth, and was decorated with flowers in vases, the four bedrooms fitted with mosquito nets and every requisite. These good people had not received any notice of our intended visit, but it is the common experience of travellers that the native teachers, like the missionaries themselves, are always ready for a casual traveller, and as invariably give him a warm welcome. It was very refreshing to have food served in a civilised manner after the rough accommodation of the boat. We were here much more comfortable and better fed, and vastly more nicely served, than in Murray Island. Seligmann visited and treated the chief’s sick boy soon after we arrived, and the chief promised to send a canoe to fetch off Ontong, but his power was not strong enough to induce the men to go.
Sunday, June 5th.—We got up at 6.30, and found the teacher had made tea for us; the good man had also sent off a couple of boys in a canoe at 4 a.m. to bring Ontong and the rest of our goods. They arrived about seven o’clock. About 7.30, after a breakfast of hot soup and biscuits, we took a canoe to visit “German Harry,” who was in charge of Mr. R. E. Guise’s plantations while that gentleman made a trip to England. He took us in a two-horse buggy down the Hood peninsula, through the villages of Aruauna, Babaka, Kamali, to the very large and important village of Kalo.
The Hood peninsula has evidently been formed mainly by the Vanigela River. It is a low, level spit of sea sand and of alluvium brought down by the river, deposited in the salt water, and then heaped to leeward by the indirect action of the prevailing south-east wind. This combination makes a light, fertile soil. A considerable part of the peninsula consists of grass land, with scattered screw pines (Pandanus) and small trees, and here and there a few cycads. Occasionally there are patches of bush or jungle, and groves of coconut palms. There are also numerous gardens, which the natives keep in beautiful order.
The peninsula is divided into six lands, belonging to the Kalo, Kamali, Babaka, Makirupu, Oloko, and Diriga people. The last three villages were so decimated by sickness some three generations ago that there were few survivors, and the smaller numbers that still remain have been driven recently to Babaka by the Bulaa. The Bulaa people have planted many coconuts on the land, but the greater part belong to the three tribes mentioned. The Bulaa people now claim the land, and naturally this has been a cause of friction, as the Babaka and Kamali people resent the encroachment. The Government has taken the common-sense view, and recognised that it was necessary for Bulaa to have garden land; and as the Diriga land, which lies at the end of the peninsula, is practically unowned, the Government has had it surveyed and given Bulaa legal possession. The Kamali state they have been in occupation for ten generations, and that the land was unoccupied at the time of their first settlement on it.
The town of Kalo—for this is not too grand a term to employ in this instance—is situated at the base of the Hood peninsula close to the right bank of the Vanigela (Kemp Welch River) at its mouth. There are some magnificent houses here—all on piles, some of which are thirty feet in height and eighteen inches in diameter. It is very impressive to see great houses perched on such high and massive props. At the front of each house is a series of large platforms like gigantic steps. Some of the posts are partially carved, and occasionally the under surfaces of the house planks are also carved. I saw two representations of crocodiles and one of a man under a large steepled house. The planks employed for the flooring of the houses and platforms are often immense, and must represent a tremendous amount of labour, especially in the old days of stone implements; many of them are cut out of the slab-like buttresses of great forest trees that grow inland. The wood employed for the great flooring planks is so hard that the boards are handed down from father to son as heirlooms, and the house piles last for generations.
Sir William Macgregor regards Kalo as the wealthiest village in British New Guinea. The people own rich alluvial gardens, and have a superabundance of coconuts, bananas, yams, sweet potatoes, and taro. They also grow numerous areca palms; the nuts of these palms are usually called betel nuts, and are in great demand for chewing with quicklime, and so constitute a source of wealth. The Kalo people also absorb the trade of the interior, as they command the mouth of the Vanigela. Feathers and feather ornaments, grass armlets, boars’ tusks, bamboos, trees for canoes, wood for houses, and other jungle produce are retailed to the coast tribes, and fish, shell-fish, shell ornaments, and the like are traded in exchange.