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

SANTO—PYGMIES I 6 3

attention drawn to them here, as elsewhere I might
easily have overlooked them.

The trail by which we were travelling was one of
the worst I ever saw in the islands, and the weather
did not improve. The higher up we went, the
thicker was the fog; we seemed to be moving in a
slimy mass, breathing the air from a boiler. At noon
we reached the lonely hut, where a dozen men and
women squatted, shivering with cold and wet, crowded
together under wretched palm-leaf mats, near a
smouldering fire. There were some children wedged
into the gaps between the grown-ups. Our arrival
seemed to rouse these poor people from their misery
a little ; one man after the other got up, yawning and
chattering, the women remained sitting near the fire.
We made them some hot tea, and then I began to
measure and take pictures, to which they submitted
quite good-humouredly.

I was much struck by the fact of these men and
women living together, a most unusual thing in a
Melanesian district, where the separation of the sexes
and the “ Suque ” rules are so rigorously observed.

We started off once more in the icy rain, keeping
along the crest of the hill, which was just wide enough
for the path. The mountain sloped steeply down on
either side, the thick mist made an early twilight, we
could only see the spot where we set our feet, while
all the surroundings were lost in grey fog, so that
We felt as though we were walking in a void, far
above all the world. At nightfall we arrived at a
solitary hut—the home of our companions. After