[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]

PORT OLRY AND A “SING-SING” I31

find a most dismal and dejected crowd. Around
the square, in the damp forest, seedy natives stood
and squatted in small groups, shivering with cold
and wet. Some tried to warm themselves around
fires, but with poor success. Bored and unhappy,
they stared at us as we passed, and did not move.
Women and children had made umbrellas of large
flat leaves, which they carried on their heads; the
soot which had formed their festival dress was
washed off by the rain. The square itself was
deserted, save for a pack of dogs and a few little
boys, rolling about in the mud puddles. Once in
a while an old man would come out of the gamal,
‘yawn and disappear. In short, it was a [endemaz'n
a’e féie of the worst kind.

About once in a quarter of an hour a man
would come to bring a tusked pig to the chief,
who danced a few times round the animal, stamped
his heel on the ground, uttered certain words, and
retired with short, stiff steps, shaking his head, into
the gamal. The morning was over by the time
all the pigs were ready. I spent most of the time
out of doors, rather than in the gamal, for there
many of the dancers of the evening lay in all
directions and in most uncomfortable positions,
beside and across each other, snoring, shivering or
staring sulkily into dark corners. I was offered a
log to sit on, and it might have been quite acceptable
had not one old man, trembling with cold, pressed
closely against me to get warm, and then, half
asleep, attempted to lay his shaggy, oil-soaked head