20_th_.--Yesterday evening, about six, the carriers came in with great shouting, and glad was I to see my lad and companion Maka then. Great was the joy at the division of salt and tobacco. Before we came here the women and children slept in the bush at night, the men in the village. They are at enmity with the natives on the flat across the ravine, and it seems that sometimes they get a night visit, and may lose a man. For the last two nights the women have been in the village, but every sound heard causes a shout. Last night, when just getting off, they came rushing up to our house, and calling on us to get up with our guns, as their enemies were coming. "Only fire off one, and it will frighten them away." We told them to go and sleep, and not be afraid. The state of fear of one another in which the savage lives is truly pitiful; to him every stranger seeks his life, and so does every other savage. The falling of a dry leaf at night, the tread of a pig, or the passage of a bird all rouse him, and he trembles with fear. How they relish salt! The smallest grain is picked carefully up. Fortunately we have a good deal of that commodity. Never have I seen salt-eating like this; only children eating sugar corresponds to it. Here as in all other parts of New Guinea--it is not the most powerful man who fights and kills most, but little abominable sneaks, treacherous in the extreme. Since our arrival here we find the thermometer from 82 to 84 degrees during the day, and as low as 68 degrees, more frequently 70 degrees, during the night. By bearings we are only about twenty miles in straight course from Port Moresby. [Tree houses: 101.jpg] 21_st_.--The village is built on the ridge, the chief's house right on the high end and looking east, our small house close by on the side of the others, on each side, leaving a pathway in the centre. At the very end of the ridge is a house on a very high tree, used as a look-out house and a refuge for women and children in case of attack. There are quite a number of tree houses in the various villages on the ridges seen from here. The people are anxious to get Maka, a light-coloured and very fine- looking native lad, married to one of their girls and settled down amongst them. I said to our African, "They want Maka to marry one of their girls." Joe, I suppose, felt slighted that he too had not an offer, and he replied, "Well, sir, in Madagascar, a very big chief was real anxious I marry his daughter; fine-looking girl; he make me chief, and give me plenty land; far cleaner people than them be."