Two Years Among the Savages of New Guinea.: With Introductory Notes on North Queensland. — John Shaqi
Two Years Among the Savages of New Guinea.: With Introductory Notes on North Queensland.Pitcairn, W. D.
History
Two Years Among the Savages of New Guinea.: With Introductory Notes on North Queensland.
Pitcairn, W. D.
New Guinea -- Description and travel
Their musical instruments are very primitive, but their singing is
good, as they keep capital time, and have very fair voices. They are
very fond of singing, their songs generally being an account of a
canoe's journey, of how they got on, or about some fight that took
place years ago, and occasionally about the only girl they ever loved.
They make incantations to the wind, as it is believed the winds are
influenced thereby.
The natives living on the south coast manufacture different kinds of
pottery, such as cooking-pots, dishes, bowls, water-jugs, and the like.
They are also very clever at making fishing-nets, mats, baskets,
lime-bottles, and last, but not least, canoes. As we have our
shipwrights, so they have special men who understand canoe-building. It
is astonishing how well they make them, considering the rude tools they
have to work with. They manufacture large quantities of sago. They do
not, however, make it in a granulated form, but bake it into cakes,
covering them with a frame of woven leaves, this being the handiest
form for carrying it about with them in their canoes. When it is
required for the "table" it is made up into small dumplings, placed in
the pot and boiled. The process of manufacture is as follows:
They cut down the sago palm, and remove the crown with its huge fronds.
A tall tree with a smooth white bark is selected, the bark split in a
straight line from top to bottom, and stripped off in one piece. They
then spread out the piece of bark flat on the ground along-side the
sago trunk, covering it with the large green leaves of the wild
plantain. The bark of the sago-palm is split into three or four long
strips, reaching from end to end of the trunk, and the white pith is
exposed the whole length of the tree. A number of women sit in front of
the tree, each with an adze-shaped weapon made of bamboo, with which
they chip out the pith, which falls in white flakes on the clean
plantain leaves.
The pith is carried away in baskets made of plaited coco-nut leaves to
the river or sea, as the case may be, where it is to be washed. It is
then shot into a bin about six feet square, built of logs and lined
with plantain leaves. A staging of poles is erected in the water and
troughs made of the leaf stalks of the sago palm are fixed upon it.
They are placed in a sloping position upon the staging, the larger ends
uppermost. The sago pith is now put into the trough, into which is
fixed a strainer made of that delicate textile that envelopes the
unexpanded fronds of the coco-nut palm. It is washed with water and
kneaded with the hands, while the water runs away in a milky stream,
and the woody fibre and other solid particles are arrested by the
strainer. The water runs out of the bottom of the trough, and is caught
in a deep receptacle where the heavy sago sinks to the bottom in a form
resembling white clay. Sago, manufactured in this way, will keep good
for a considerable time.
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