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Then came the king on a specially caparisoned mule, surrounded by his guard of shield-bearers, and flanked by matchlock-men; then came forty damsels, royal cooks, painted with ochre, and muffled in crimson-striped robes of cotton a troop rigorously guarded by attendants with long white wands.
Veins of quartz shone under the metallic plating like cut crystal, like cloudy opals; here was a splash of vermilion, there a patch of amber; bands of pallid ochre stained it. My gaze was caught by a line of inky blackness in the exact center of the falling floor. So black was it that at first glance I took it for a vein of jetty lignite. It widened. It was a crack, a fissure.
Among other things which lay strewed about here was a spear shaft, eight feet long, recently made and stained with ochre parts of old canoes fragments, of their skin dresses, &c. Some of the cuts in the trees, made with an axe, were evidently of not more than a year's date. Besides these signs, the party were elated by other encouraging marks.
The village of Bempton has, however, contrived to maintain itself in its bleak situation, although it is less than two miles from the huge perpendicular cliffs where the Wolds drop into the sea. The cottages have a snug and eminently cheerful look, with their much-weathered tiles and white and ochre coloured walls.
"To find, then, poles answering to the earth," he says, "take in your hand the round stone, and lay on it a needle or a piece of iron wire: the ends of the wire move round their middle point, and suddenly come to a standstill. Now, with ochre or with chalk, mark where the wire lies still and sticks.
The little doors were put into the urns so that the man in charge of the flowers could reach up to them. But this item of expense was included among the sacrifices." The coloring of the columns had been a subject of some criticism. The ochre columns were generally admired; but the green columns were considered too atmospheric to give the sense of support.
When these canvases are analyzed we find in the range of color nothing stronger than yellow ochre in yellows, than light red in reds, and, with hardly an exception, blue-black for blues.
The ochre is pulverized and roasted until it becomes a light brown, when it is removed from the fire and mixed with an equal quantity of pinion gum. This mixture is then placed on the fire and as the roasting continues it first becomes mushy, then darker as it dries until nothing but a fine black powder remains. This powder is called "keyh-batch."
They were very small in person, well made, and the young were rather pretty in their features, but their ornaments were enough to disgust any one but a Hottentot; for they were smeared with grease and red ochre, and were adorned with the entrails of animals as necklaces.
As I sat on the upper deck I thought, with homesick mind, of the long leagues between me and Melbourne, and the longer ones between Melbourne and New York. It was one of Papua's yellow mornings when she shows herself in her sombrest, most baleful mood. The sky was smouldering ochre.
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