I soon discovered that European housekeeping in Papua is charmingly simple. Everything arrived in a tin, for the most part ready for use. Meat, milk, butter, vegetables--all stood in tins in neat rows in the storeroom. A diet of tinned stuffs grew rather monotonous at times, but we were able occasionally to vary it. Sometimes a man would arrive with a live turtle, which he would sell for two sticks of tobacco, costing threepence. The wretched turtle would be killed and cut up, but would still insist on quivering in a most realistic manner even when placed on the fire to cook. Then, too, if the season was a good one, the kitchen would be found lined with joints of wallabies, and it would be hard to know what to do with so much fresh meat. [Illustration: NATIVES FILLING WATER-BOTTLES AT A STREAM. _From a Photograph._] I remember once thinking that smoked wallaby would be a change, and I asked the little cook-boy if he could get some done for me. He assented willingly, and bore a leg off to where he said there was an "ovo" or platform for smoking meat. In a few days it was returned to me and looked most appetizing. We cut a dish full of delicate slices, and were just about to set it on the dining-table, when I thought of asking the cook-boy how it had been prepared. He told me quite cheerfully that he had given it to an old leper woman, who, being ill, could not leave the house, and so was sure to keep the fire alight. It was she we had to thank for so kindly smoking our meat. Needless to say, the dish did not appear on the table that night. 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!"