We witnessed also a dance of the Mombare people, who are likewise members of the native police. With the dancers was one woman. Their method was to jump up and down, and thus they worked slowly round the oval enclosure formed by spectators. They held themselves erect all the time, and their demeanour was not serious, the dance being accompanied by loud shouting and great perspiration. During all these dances the Orgiasts fell into a terrible state of excitement, and often could not stop dancing until they fell quite exhausted. Mountain dances are sometimes accompanied by tragedies, for the confusion of the revel is made the occasion for wiping off old scores, and a dancer will suddenly fall dead, struck through by the spear of his enemy. CHAPTER XVI _BURIAL, WITCHCRAFT, AND OTHER THEMES_ A Short-lived Race—An Aged Man a Curiosity—Burial Customs—The Chief Mourner painted Black—Period of Mourning brief except for the Chief Mourner—No Belief in Natural Death—Poison always Suspected—Religion all but absent—Vague Belief in Magic—Fi-fi a Form of Divination—How practised—Its Utter Childishness—No Idea of Number—Forest Warnings— “Wada,” another Form of Sorcery—Mavai’s Hideous Magical Compounds—A People seemingly without History or Legends—Pictures understood—Fear of the Stereoscope—The “Bau-bau” or Social Pipe—How Made and Smoked— Incidents of Travel—The Stinging Trees—Ideas of Medicine—Sovereign Remedies—Bleeding—How practised—Hunting—The Corral—A Strange Delicacy— Story of Native Trust in Me—A Loan of Beads—Children and their Sports— Thirty Ways of Cat’s-Cradle. CHAPTER XVI BURIAL, WITCHCRAFT, AND OTHER THEMES The Papuans are not a long-lived race. The mountain people die off about forty: at Googooli, high up on the mountains, we saw one very old man, who may have been sixty years of age—the only example of longevity that we came across. He was a very pathetic spectacle: his features were almost gone, the skin was terribly shrivelled, and the eyes sunken. He was bent almost double, and had a long white beard. His fellow-tribesmen regarded him as a great curiosity, and brought him to see us. Despite the decrepitude of his body, however, there was no trace of senility: his senses were unimpaired; and the poor old creature showed great gratitude for a gift of tobacco.