Then, since I’m dwelling on comparisons, let’s look at Tepusilia, a few miles away. My whaleboat got stranded there on the way to Gaile, otherwise I should never have seen the row of dirty chicken coops that leaned crazily over the inlet. I hadn’t much time to look into their case, but I found the inhabitants covered with tropical ringworm that had turned their skins into a brownish crêpe. But there was no hookworm, because they evacuated into the sea, as the Gaile folk did. A few miles inland, where the people had no access to the water, ankylostomiasis was very prevalent.
I can’t pass Tepusilia by without mentioning the lone policeman there. Because his house was the only clean one, I was glad to sleep in it. He sat in a chair not quite wide enough for Shirley Temple, and kept me awake with a constant stream of questions. How had the World War come out? (That, mind you, was 1920.) Sleepily I informed him that Britannia still ruled the waves, and he seemed surprised. He told me that he had served his time in Port Moresby jail, and had come out well-educated. Then he looked wistfully at my chin and asked if I shaved with a razor. “Yes,” I said, “and don’t you?” “No,” he said, “I shave with a shark’s tooth.” He showed me the shark’s tooth and asked me if I wouldn’t give him a real razor, a nice sharp one. The subject was growing a bit morbid, so I sat up and asked him what he had gone to jail for. “Oh,” he sighed, “I was falsely accused of killing a man. Taubada, don’t you think you can give me a razor?” “No,” I said softly and turned my face to the wall.
******
From pleasant Gaile I followed the course of the lakatoi for 700 miles across the Gulf of Papua into the land of the Goaribari savages. The lakatoi was already growing extinct. From time immemorial the watermen in the Motu district had been building these giant vessels, from five to ten long canoes lashed side by side and covered with a platform that would support houseroom for maybe twenty men. Every spring, when the wind blew toward the northwest, Motuan traders would carry a load of pots and jars over to the wretched Purari Delta and exchange them for logs and sago. They would stay until Christmas, when the hot monsoon could blow them home again. During the trading season there was a truce between the peaceful Motuans and the man-eating Goaribaris. The annual voyages in these raft-ships were among the strangest things that charmed a Polynesian wanderer.
******
Unromantically in a chugging steamer I crossed the Gulf and came upon the terrible land of terrible people. The business of public health called me there; Kenny Fooks had been surveying the Delta region for months, and was so lost to me that he might have been sucked into the prevalent mud. The Delta region is ravaged by rivers that pour mud upon mud or throw up shifting sand banks that wallow and stink like dead sea monsters. As I came ashore with Ahuia, long-nosed faces stared hungrily. These were the type of Goaribaris I had seen on the plantations, but dirtier, skinnier. You think of cannibals as tiger men, fierce-faced and lusty. But these were brothers to the jackal.
I was interested in something curiously inhuman that wagged from the buttocks of the queer fellows. The old men around Port Moresby had told me that Goaribaris grew tails as long as monkeys’ tails, and let them hang down through holes bored in their floors; and the way to catch a Goaribari was to sneak under the house, tie a knot in his tail then run up top and grab him at your leisure. This story, unfortunately, is another nature fake. What this Delta savage wears at the stern of his breechclout probably gave rise to the yarn. It is a sort of dangler, not unlike a horse’s tail, and, with his long hair done in ringlets stuck together with mud, adds to his mildly demoniac look.
The customary nude policeman, distinguished by a cap and an entirely empty cartridge belt, told Ahuia that his house, where we would sleep, was in Dopima where the famous martyr missionary, James Chalmers, was murdered in 1901. But our policeman gallantly assured us that we needn’t be afraid now, because Government took care of everything. The house was stilted very high to keep devil-devils out. A sickly looking native stood at the foot of the ladder, wistfully waiting. In the background were a pack of the most repulsive women I have ever seen. Their breasts hung like empty bags, their greasy black faces were puckered to an animal look—a picture of lost femininity.
Kenny asked the policeman to go tell the fellow that it wasn’t the fashion to solicit white men. I looked at Kenny’s soiled legs and remarked that he was inviting hookworms. “Inviting them? They accepted the invitation weeks ago, and I’m all fed up with chenopodium and salts. My score was twenty-six good ones—Necators, of course. You’ve got to go barefoot in this bloody country or you’ll be sucked under, feet-first.”
The popular name for these Delta people is Goaribari, but there are really several related tribes, many of them of a somewhat higher type. They are named after their principal or central village—like the Kaimares, for instance. The Kaimares are much the better builders, but they get none of the benefits of over-water sanitation and live quite innocent of anything like a latrine. The hookworm infestation was probably much less general in the old days of unchecked cannibalism and warfare. Even when I inspected various sections and compared notes with Kenny Fooks I found that some places reeked with worms, others were comparatively free. It was spreading, I could venture. The Goaribaris no longer hunt each other openly, and they do a great deal of visiting around.