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Updated: May 17, 2025
When I stood in the doorway and looked in, the room seemed to be glowing with color, glowing and melting, and yet there is nothing to go upon but the tapa on the walls, the coral, the pink and maroon window curtains of the coarsest cotton print, a ragged old ink-spotted table-cover, a few print-covered pillows, and the pandanus mats on the floor.
My Malays worked hard at their paddles, and late in the afternoon we left the main Sarekei River and paddled up a small and extremely narrow stream. There we found ourselves in the depth of a most luxuriant vegetation. We were in a regular tunnel formed by arching ferns and orchid-laden trees, giant pandanus, various palms and arborescent ferns and caladiums.
About eight miles from our camp, we crossed a small creek with good water-holes; and at four miles and a half further, came to a river with several channels, separated by high and irregular bergues, with a sandy bed containing large pools of water surrounded with water Pandanus and drooping tea-trees.
He smoked incessantly the cigarettes which she made him out of the native tobacco and pandanus leaf, and he watched her while with deft fingers she made grass mats. Often natives would come in and tell long stories of the old days when the island was disturbed by tribal wars. Sometimes he would go fishing on the reef, and bring home a basket full of coloured fish.
We were, according to my latitude, and to my course, at the South Alligator River, about sixty miles from its mouth, and about one hundred and forty miles from Port Essington. The river gradually increased in size, and its bed became densely fringed with Pandanus; the hollows and flats were covered with groves of drooping tea-trees.
Scattered Pandanus and drooping tea-trees grew on their banks as far as the fresh water extended; when they were succeeded by the salt-water tea-tree and the mangrove, covering and fringing their beds, which enlarged into stiff plains, without vegetation, or into mangrove swamps. The latter were composed of Aegiceras, Bruguiera, and Pemphis.
Here one of our two remaining bullocks refused to go any further; and as our meat bags were empty, I decided upon stopping in this favourable spot to kill the bullock. Careya arborea, the broad-leaved Terminalia, Coniogeton arborescens, an umbrageous white-gum tree, and Pandanus, together with the luxuriant young grass, gave to the country a most pleasing aspect.
The day was marked too, by a grant feast of "stodge," doughboys, and jam, stodge being a delicacy extemporised for the occasion, consisting of "flour boiled with water to the consistency of paste, with some small pieces of raw meat thrown into it"!! The Brothers spent part of the afternoon in the mutual good offices of picking the pandanus thorns out of each others feet and legs, the blackboys following their example.
It is as if a huge coral ring had been thrown down in the ocean. At one end there is an opening, through which a boat can enter the lagoon. The island is covered with groves of cocoa-nut, pandanus, and other trees; and, from the number of huts we see, and the people moving about, it seems to be thickly populated.
Except for a narrow girdle of curiously-stained pandanus leaves, each man was nude, and their stiff, scanty, and wiry-looking beards seemed to quiver with excitement as they looked with lightning-like rapidity from one object to another.
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