If wo could shake off the incubus of cannibalism we should perhaps like these Papuans. There is much genuine joyousness in their nature; they love music and dancing,sand their customs are in many instances picturesque without being horrible. But one cannot escape the incubus, for it colors their recreations and comes sheer into the very midst of their domestic life. The villages are neat and pretty, the houses made of bamboo thatched with pandanus leaves; in some cases the houses are fixed on four posts, which are but slightly driven into the ground, and these are so portable that it is an easy matter to move an entire village in the course of a few hours. In a description of a conflict with the natives for the purpose of chastising an insolent and infamous chief, the party found themselves on an exposed plateau, with no proper means of camp ing for the night. But the friendly natives who were with them soon made an end of the difficulty by bringing a town to the top of the hill, each man carrying a hut, as our peripatetic show man carries his theatre for Punch and Judy. In some cases the villages are adorned with somewhat in the way of gardening. u The natives seem to have collected from the bush a quantity of the brightest-looking variegated shrubs to plant round their dwellings, though tins I found afterwards was done as much to save trouble as to look ornamental, as they use the bright leaves in their dances, and it is convenient to have them handy.” There can be no proper excuse to take them down a peg in this way. It is as creditable to their taste to require gay adornments for their dances as to have a taste for planting flowers' around their villages, and the fact gives us hope that they may come to even better things than that when their passions are in some degree brought into subjection. Another reason for hope is to be found in the kindly way the author was treated when prostrated by fever in Matupi Island. They brought him green cocoanuts, and a crowd assembled to behold the white man. After recovering some what, he was enabled to buy three fine pigs for a tomahawk apiece, the toma hawks having cost tenpence. 