The boys are particularly bright and quick at learning anything, some of them picking up English readily, although they prefer speaking their own language.
All the women wear a grass petticoat, sometimes two, made from the palm, having two shades, intermixed brown and a whitish-yellow. It looks most picturesque. They also wear a black band, about three inches deep, round the arm just below the shoulder, and it is so tightly put on that when they wish to remove it they are obliged to cut it, which leaves an ugly mark in the flesh. The men wear simply a leaf of the coco-nut palm round the loins, with leglets, armlets and streamers or "wings" from the shoulders, if they wish to look extra well. They cultivate a tremendous shock of hair on their heads, combing it out and dressing it with coco-nut oil several times a day. The combs are of their own manufacture, which, after using, they stick in their hair in much the same way as European ladies wear a comb. All the men have the lobe of the ear pierced, on the outer rim of which they string small shells like rings, also the cartilage of the nose is perforated, through which they thrust a long shell, well polished, and fined down to a sharp point, giving it at a distance the appearance of a moustache. Like the heathen Chinee, they are as beardless as boys. The women as a rule wear their hair straight and cut short, the part over the forehead a little frizzy. The married women tattoo themselves from head to foot in an ornamental and conventional design. The girls and men do not practise the art.
They live in villages, all the houses standing in a regular line, well built on blocks, 5 to 6 feet from the ground, the walls made of the sago palm, the leaves of which are put on separately and slightly overlapping one another. The floor is made of "matu" or cane, the face of the roof in the form of a triangle. They keep the ground in front of the houses very tidy, generally sweeping it once a day. The houses are surrounded by numbers of coco-nut trees, and by a curious and happy law of nature the nuts fall principally at night time; were it otherwise it would be very dangerous, as the coco-nut is anything but soft.
The women are employed in the yam and taro gardens, also in cooking and carrying firewood, besides looking after their babies.
The land is held by a family or tribe, and is divided and sub-divided, each household having a part portioned off, so that many natives are interested in one piece or parcel of land. Such land cannot be sold or parted with without the consent of all the principal owners. This system of land tenure works well until the family or tribe becomes so numerous that the different portions or lots are reduced to a very small area, causing some of the members to seek fresh districts.
Their national food consists of yams, taro, bananas, sago, coco-nuts, fish, birds, pigs, and occasionally human beings. Of course in some districts food is scarce, in others, there is a superabundance.
They commence digging up the yams about the end of April, and in May hold a great yam feast or festival, at which hundreds of natives are present, each of whom contributes pigs, yams, or something else. They think nothing of killing over 100 pigs on one day, and there are cart loads of yams and other food on the ground. They have a very curious method of dealing out the different parts of the pig. They cut up twine (which they make themselves) into various lengths, giving to each representative a length. Each length entitles the holder to a certain part of the pig, say, a holder of a short length receives the head, and so on.
All the girls are dressed in their best, which means a clean grass petticoat, with beautiful garlands of wild flowers round their heads and a necklace of beads encircling their throats. It looks lovely. The men paint their faces in the most gorgeous style, using different pigments, and vieing with each other as to who can look the ugliest. They are also decorated with bands and streamers, and in their own opinion are dressed in the height of fashion. After gorging themselves with food and coco-nut milk, the musicians strike up, using the "tom-tom" a kind of drum, and singing a New Guinea carol; the maidens dance round for hours in a ring, speeches are made by some of the leading men, and the amusement extends far into the night, only to begin again the next day. A feast of this description often lasts from a week to ten days, during which time business is at a stand-still, as they will not work at making "copra" or anything else until the feast is over. It is very similar in idea to our harvest feast in England. Should the yam season fail, which is not often, the natives suffer want, and have to live on sago and coco-nuts. As in most annual feasts the amount of food wasted is great. There is one very good quality about the yams, if stored in a house they will keep good for two years. They grow sometimes to a length of 4 to 5 feet and weigh very heavy.
The language is not unlike that of the Maories of New Zealand, and, like it, is made up of numerous dialects. When you reach the "Motu" district, say Port Moresby, the language decidedly changes and differs entirely from that of the south-east or east end.
It is not very difficult to acquire. If you mix with the natives, and take some interest in your task, you ought to be fairly proficient in twelve months, at least, this is true of the language spoken on the south-east coast, with which I am conversant. Like Italian, every word ends with a vowel. The vowels are pronounced, ah, eh, e, o, oo, ai as i, au as ow, and r at the beginning of a word, as L.