The Drought affects our Work—Butterflies begin to Fail—Forest Fires—We descend to the St. Joseph River—A Temporary Camp—A Wonderful Native Suspension Bridge—River Scenery—Native Methods of Fishing—Dull Weather and Little Success in Collecting—A Comic Incident—A Native besieged by a Wild Pig—War—Native Hostility—A Chief threatens to Cook and Eat our Heads—Strict Guard kept on Camp—The Bird of Paradise—Papuan Game Laws— Natives’ Interest in Writing—Further Stay at the St. Joseph Impracticable—A Flood destroys our Bridge—A Visit to a Native Village— Curious Means of Ingress—Return to Dinawa—My Cingalese Headman’s Experiences—He evades Native Treachery—Sudden Growth of a New Township. CHAPTER VI VICISSITUDES AND A DIGRESSION As the days went on at Dinawa, there was no sign of any breaking up of the great drought, which began seriously to affect the success of our work. Butterflies grew scarce, and daily the catch fell off, for the vegetation was getting very dry. Lycopodiums were dropping off the trees, and often we could see, in the lower grounds, great forest fires, which consumed the undergrowth throughout large tracts of country, miles and miles being left blackened and burnt up. In these conflagrations, millions of low-feeding and high-feeding larvæ must have been destroyed, and there was a corresponding decrease in the insect life of the district. Seeing that, for a time, there was not much more to be done, we decided to quit our camp at Dinawa and descend to the St. Joseph River; so, on July 22, we set out with thirty carriers, and went down into a deep valley, whence we climbed a ridge which brought us to a native village so strongly stockaded that we knew that the tribes must be at war—village against village—and this unsettled state of affairs made it very difficult to persuade the natives to pass with us through the open country that lay between the hamlets. At this place we changed carriers, and, accompanied by the chief of the village, we descended by an extremely rough native path to the St. Joseph River, which we reached at 4 P.M., after a march of about six hours. We found the river very low but beautifully limpid and very rapid. For our camp we immediately chose a small patch of sand close to the stream, the only clear space we could find; for the river bed and the gorge itself were filled with enormous boulders piled one upon the other in the wildest confusion.