Being short of boys, I could not visit many of the villages inland, and I stayed on at the mission station, where there was generally something for me to do, as the natives frequently came loitering about the station. I made use of their presence as much as possible for anthropological measurements, but I could not always find willing subjects. Everything depends on the humour of the crowd; if they make fun of the first victim, the case is lost, as no second man is willing to be the butt of the innumerable gibes showered on the person under the instruments. Things are more favourable if it is only fear of some dangerous enchantment that holds them back, for then persuasion and liberal gifts of tobacco generally overcome their fears. The best subjects are those who pretend to understand the scientific meaning of the operation, or the utterly indifferent, who never think about it at all, are quite surprised to be suddenly presented with tobacco, and go home, shaking their heads over the many queer madnesses of white men. I took as many photographs as possible, and my pictures made quite a sensation. Once, when I showed his portrait to one of the dandies with the oiled and curled wig, he ran away with a cry of terror at his undreamt-of ugliness, and returned after a short while with his hair cut. His deformed nose, however, resisted all attempts at restoration.
The natives showed great reluctance in bringing me skulls and skeletons. As the bones decay very quickly in the tropics, only skulls of people recently deceased can be had. The demon, or soul, of the dead is supposed to be too lively as yet to be wantonly offended; in any case, one dislikes to disturb one's own relatives, while there is less delicacy about those of others. Still, in course of time, I gathered quite a good collection of skulls at the station. They were brought carefully wrapped up in leaves, fastened with lianas, and tied to long sticks, with which the bearer held the disgusting object as far from him as possible. The bundles were laid down, and the people watched with admiring disgust as I untied the ropes and handled the bones as one would any other object. Everything that had touched the bones became to the natives an object of the greatest awe; still they enjoyed pushing the leaves that had wrapped them up under the feet of an unsuspecting friend, who presently, warned of the danger, escaped with a terrified shriek and a wild jump. It would seem that physical disgust had as much to do with all this as religious fear, although the natives show none of this disgust at handling the remains of pigs. Naturally, the old men were the most superstitious; the young ones were more emancipated, some of them even going the length of picking up a bone with their toes.