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

AMBRYM 2 I 3

to Whip anybody they meet. This, however, is a
remnant of a very serious matter, as formerly the
secret societies used these masks to terrorize all the
country round, especially people who were hostile
to the society, or who were rich or friendless.

These societies are still of great importance on
,New Guinea, but here they have evidently de-
generated. It is not improbable that the Suque
has developed from one of these organizations.
Their decay is another symptom of the decline of
the entire culture of the natives; and other facts
seem to point to the probability that this decadence
may have set in even before the beginning of
colonization by the whites.

My visit to the men’s house ended, and seeing
no prospects of acquiring any more curiosities, I
went to the dancing-ground, where most of the men
were assembled at a death-feast, it being the hundredth
day after the funeral of one of their friends. In
the centre of the square, near the drums, stood the
chief, violently gesticulating. The crowd did not seem
pleased at my coming, and criticized me in under-
tones. A terrible smell of decomposed meat filled
the air; evidently they had all partaken of a half-
rotten pig, and the odour did not seem to trouble
them at all.

The chief was a tall man, bald—headed, wearing
the nambas, of larger size than those of the others,
and with both arms covered with pigs’ tusks to show
his rank. He looked at me angrily, came up to me,
and sat down, not without having first swept the