The Papuan at Home—His Good Points—Physical Characteristics—Ceremonial Dress—Coast and Hill Tribes—Differences—Local Distribution of the Rami or Petticoat—Its Decrease in Length in the Mountains—Its Disappearance at Epa—Dandyism—The Priceless Chimani—The Shell Armlet—Household Constitution—Rudimentary Government—Courtship and Marriage—The Price of a Wife—Position of Women—Six Ways of Carrying an Infant—Meal Times— Weapons—Clubs—Their Manufacture the Monopoly of One Tribe—Weird Tribal Dances. CHAPTER XV PAPUAN MANNERS, CUSTOMS, AND SUPERSTITIONS My object in visiting New Guinea, as the reader already knows very well, was not to prosecute the proper study of mankind, according to Mr. Alexander Pope, but it was impossible to live daily with those unspoilt children of nature without observing a good deal that was curious and noteworthy. I cannot pretend to be a trained ethnologist, and accordingly the notes that I have set down in this chapter on manners and customs make no pretension to any scientific co-ordination. I shall not therefore venture to draw conclusions, nor advance any theories such as would fall within the province of the professed anthropologist. My notes, too, were fragmentary, and often, owing to the stress of our journeyings and the pressure of the work which it was incumbent on me to prosecute, I had perforce to leave unrecorded at the time many things that might be useful to the student of primitive peoples. Such observations, however, as I am able to make, however incomplete, may safely be regarded as at first hand, and it is probable that in the majority of cases they were taken under exceptionally favourable conditions for observing the people just as they are. During our journeyings in the interior we depended on native help alone, and the people whom we employed were not, one might say, scared out of their usual way of life by the presence of a large body of white men. I and my son went absolutely alone into the wilds with no white lieutenant. We cast ourselves, as it were, on the hospitality of the aboriginal Papuan (and cannibal at that), but as the reader has seen, we had no reason to regret our draft on the bank of savage fidelity.