Girls as well as boys learned cooking when at the mission station. One girl was considered a very good cook, so much so that on one occasion she was trusted to prepare a meal by herself, as everyone had gone for a picnic. She was told to make rissoles of what she found in the safe. The pudding, a Christmas one, was to follow.
At evening the party returned and sat down, hungry and tired, to eat. Surely, they thought, the rissoles tasted rather peculiar. However, they were eaten, and demands made for the pudding.
"But you have had the pudding," was the model cook's answer; "it was in the rissoles!"
Laundry work was sometimes carried on under great difficulties. At one station the water supply was some distance away, and was brought weekly by bullocks which dragged a heavy "slide" on which our pails stood. The bullocks were occasionally obstreperous, on which occasions the supply of water was sadly diminished. Moreover, when it was safely placed in the laundry the ducks hastened thither and bathed luxuriously in each tub, leaving behind them cloudy water plentifully besprinkled with feathers. At night our girl boarders, feeling thirsty, would ask if they might drink from the tubs and would gratefully receive permission to do so, quite undeterred by the fact that many ducks had bathed in the water, which, I should have mentioned, was so "hard" that no soap ever formed a lather. It may be imagined, therefore, what the clothes looked like when returned from the wash.
A TYPICAL NATIVE HOUSE.
From a Photograph.
Papuan marriage customs are interesting and rather intricate. In Collingwood Bay, for instance, the bride is mourned over for some days beforehand by her girl friends, who are losing their playmate. Then she is dressed in her best, presented with many gifts, and a procession is formed to take her to her new home.
The bridegroom is never to be found on his wedding-day. It is etiquette for him to go hunting or on some expedition which will take him from the village. His relatives, however, look after his interests and hasten the lagging footsteps of the wedding procession by lavish bribes. On arriving at the house the bride and her maids of honour enter and remain for the night, while the elders return home.
In the morning the poor little bride is deserted by her girl friends and betakes herself to sweeping her new domain with a handful of coco-nut bristles for a broom, thus officially acknowledging her marriage. After cooking a great pot of food she waits for the elusive bridegroom, who tarries only till the sun sets, when he joyfully returns after his voluntary exile and, alone with his wife at last, partakes of the marriage meal.