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Toil, travel, and discovery in british new guinea
Toil travel and discovery in british new guinea Author:Unknown Author Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. A CRUISE FROM KALO TO MORESBY ISLAND. After saying good-bye to Kalo, we were still detained in Hood Bay by a calm; and Kiniope (chief of Kerapun... more »o) coming one morning alongside in charge of a dozen women, who were conveying fish, turtles, eggs, etc., to Kamali and Papaka, two unimportant bush villages some seven miles from Kerapuno, and situated on the mainland, between and a little behind Kalo and Hula, having nothing better to do I went with him. After buying chunks of kangaroo, shark, and devil-fish, also fish sandwiched between two sticks and roasted in embers, for the crew, I jumped down into their big canoe, and was quickly paddled ashore by the women, who hauled up their conveyance above tide- mark, and shouldering heavy loads, filed after us along a track near by the sea, over sand dunes almost hidden by flowering convolvulus, and skirted by grasses and pandanus- trees. Striking inland, about a mile up the beach, after crossing sand hillocks, we soon came to sylvan shades— moss, ferns, lichens, and bright green foliage around us; overhead, arches of sago fronds, or slender stems of palms,topped with feathery plumes, clearly defined against an azure sky. It was a perfect Paradise of orchids, ferns, bright-hued birds and butterflies, all glorified by golden light from the morning sun, filtering down cool and clear through a canopy green and lofty. Peeping out from nooks and crannies of forest trees, high-perched on decaying stems, overgrowing fallen trunks, or springing from velvety moss, strewn with red and orange dying leaves underfoot, were ferns in the greatest variety, rarity, and exuberance. About a mile from the beach we came to a clearing, in which stood the rude and straggling dwellings of Kamali. Kiniope and his companion proceeded to one of t...« less