THE BIRD OF PARADISE
Shortly after the kangaroo hunt there come to the kampong two Chinese,
with a party of Moresby boys, who are making their way to the coast and
Merauke, where they can dispose of the skins of the birds of paradise
they have taken. The Chinese are of the typical trader class and appear
prosperous, for their watch-chains are very heavy and of pure gold,—not
the red gold we know, but the twenty-two-karat metal of the Orient.
Their advent causes a stir in the kampong, for the moment the dogs give
warning of the approach of strangers the natives all dive into the
shacks, to peer furtively through the crevices until assured the
visitors mean them no harm. The Chinese enter the kampong boldly and,
espying our camp, come to greet us immediately; and as the Chinaman is
always hail fellow well met, we invite the men in and give them a cup of
tea. Moh is most happy to serve them and beams upon them as he passes
the tea.
They seem much surprised to find two white men here and question us
regarding the purpose of our visit, thinking at first, doubtless, that
we are on the same errand as they. They cannot comprehend how we two
Americans can find recreation and amusement in coming to this
Godforsaken spot, putting up with untold hardship and inconvenience
merely to meet and study the lives of the Kia Kia savages. The Chinese
is first, last, and always a business man and bends all his energies
toward succeeding in his business. The Moresby boys immediately take up
their abode with Ula and the crew of the _Nautilus_, who are camped near
the kampong, and we make the Chinese comfortable in a spare tent, where
they spread their mats and prepare to stay a day or two to rest.
They have been successful in their hunting and have nearly sixty codies,
or twelve hundred of the skins, though they have been in the interior
only since last May. The skins, well preserved in arsenic, are done up
in parcels. There is a small fortune in the proceeds of their season’s
hunting and they are most happy at their success, though they of course
do not boast of it. It is not the Chinaman’s way to wax exuberant over
anything. Win or lose, his face never changes expression.
In the course of the evening our visitors tell us in perfect Malay—they
speak only a word or two of English—of the manner of hunting their
beautiful quarry. The habits of the birds are most interesting. They
also tell us something which is news to us. We had supposed that the
restrictions placed upon the importation of the skins into America were
due to the possibility of the species becoming extinct, but the hunters
tell us that this is not the case. They say that only the male birds in
full plumage are taken and that the bird never attains his fullest
plumage until after the second bird-mating season. This being the case,
it would seem that there is no danger of extinction, and the Chinese
seemed to think that the ruling was unjust.
The method of hunting the birds is odd and requires much patience. When
the locality they frequent is located, search is made for the
dancing-tree. This is usually an immense bare-limbed tree that towers
above the surrounding jungle. When such a tree is found it is watched
for several mornings to see if the birds come to it, and if this is the
case, a blind is constructed well up in its branches where the hunters
can hide from the sight of the birds but are within easy bow-shot of
them. Two bowmen will ascend to this masking shelter, two or three hours
before dawn, and lie in wait for the birds that they know will come with
the first rays of the rising sun.
The trees surrounding the large one fill with female birds, come to
witness the dancing of the males who strut and dance on the bare
branches of the large tree. The hunters lie in wait in their blind until
the tree is literally filled with the gorgeous male birds.
The birds become so engrossed in their strutting and vain showing-off to
the females that the hunters are able to shoot them down one by one with
the blunt arrows used for this purpose. The large round ends of the
arrows merely stun the birds, which fall to the ground and are picked up
by men below.
Frequently the hunters are able to kill two thirds of the birds before
the others take alarm and fly away. The skins, as they are gathered, are
washed in arsenic soap and packed away in bundles of twenty. The washing
shrinks a skin so that the true proportions of the bird are lost: the
head is large in relation to the rest of the body, but with the removal
of the skull it shrinks to such an extent that it seems to be
exceedingly small.
The skin is taken for the gorgeous plumes which spring from the side of
the bird and are seen on the live bird only when he is strutting or in
flight. It is a matter of interest that the nests of the birds, and
consequently their eggs, are never found, and large prices have been
offered for a specimen of each. Among the hunters there seems to be a
general belief that only one bird is reared at a time, though this is
only conjecture.
On the morrow the hunters gather some surf-fish as a welcome change in
their diet and, after smoking these a little and drying them after the
Chinese fashion, depart on the last long leg of their trip to Merauke.
We tell them in response to their invitation to accompany them that we
are quite content here and will await the coming of the next trading
Malay who happens along. The trip through the jungle with our
multitudinous effects offers no inducements to us.