[63] This photograph had to be taken from an awkward position above, from which I had to point the camera downwards to the bridge.
[64] See also description of suspension bridge over Vanapa river in lower hill districts given in _Annual Report_ for June, 1889, p. 38.
[65] Compare the Koita system under which the owner of the house owns the site of it also, and the latter passes on his death to his heirs (Seligmann's _Melanesians of British New Guinea_, p. 89.)
[67] Father Egedi describes in _Anthropos_ a Kuni method of preparing a fruit similar to the one described here, and which also gives rise to terrible smells. The tree is referred to by him as being a bread-fruit; and Dr. Stapf thinks that the _malage_ may possibly be one of the Artocarpus genus, of which some have smooth or almost smooth fruit, and some are said to have poisonous sap, and the seeds of many of which are eaten, or of some closely allied type.
[68] The information obtained by me at Mafulu did not go beyond the actual facts as stated by me. I cannot, however, help suspecting that there is, or has been, a close connection between the building of anemone and the holding of a big feast, and that the latter may be compared with the tabu ceremonial of the Koita described by Dr. Seligmann (_Melanesians of British New Guinea_, pp. 141 and 145 _et seq_.). Indeed there are some elements of similarity between the two feasts.
[69] Compare the Roro custom for the messengers carrying an invitation to important feasts to take with them bunches of areca nut, which are hung in the _marea_ of the local groups of the invited _itsubu_ (Seligmann's _Melanesians of British New Guinea_, p. 218).
[70] See note on p. 256 as to the use by me of the terms "grave," "bury" and "burial."
[72] It is the custom among the Kuni people when any woman (not merely the wife of a chief) has her first baby for the women of her own village, and probably of some neighbouring villages also, to assemble in the village and to attack her house and the village club-house with darts, which the women throw with their hands at the roofs. At Ido-ido I saw that the roofs of the club-house and of some of the ordinary houses had a number of these darts sticking into them. The darts were made out of twigs of trees, and were about five or six feet long; and each of them had a bunch of grass tied in a whorl at or near its head, and some of them had a similar bunch similarly tied at or near its middle. See also Dr. Seligmann's reference (_Melanesians of British New Guinea_, p. 298) to the Roro custom for warriors, when returning from a successful campaign, to throw their spears at the roof and sides of the marea. In Mekeo there is no corresponding ceremony on the birth of a first child; but men, women and children of the village collect by the house and sing all through the night; and in the morning the woman's husband will kill a pig or dog for them, which they cook and eat without ceremony.