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-60-

series of ten-cent postcards, except that this is real."

A well-traveled highway goes past our door, and the procession of natives is never lacking in interest.  Small children, sometimes naked, sometimes half-dressed, sometimes wearing a careless length of checked gingham slung over one shoulder.  An old man from the mountains, with curly hair and a curly beard, goes by wearing nothing but a bark loincloth, showing tattoo marks on his withered chest.  A woman carrying the indispensable petrol tins on a pole, has a large green leaf under her chin for no apparent reason.  Goats, dogs, cattle that are a peculiar mixture of banteng and zebu, join the human procession.  All the produce of the country-side is brought in on human shoulders and offered to the market - bunches of bananas and plantains, ears of dried maize, coconuts, rice, taro, tapioca root, and always and always sago - bundles of the leaves for thatch, bundles of poles for a thousand uses, palm-leaf baskets of the flour for bread.

To-day is roast pork day in camp.  Once a week a pig is slaughtered in Piroe, provided that the owner can get enough orders for the meat for that day.  Beef is unknown.  We get chicken and rice [[strikethrough]] twice [[/strikethrough]] a day in one form or another: nasi goreng for breakfast, reistafel [[insertion]] ^[[3 times]] [[/insertion]] for lunch and dinner, curried chicken, plain stewed chicken and rice(which the Mandoer calls ragout and Bill calls lousy), chicken soup, and other variations for which there is no name.  We supplement the Mandoer's cuisine with various tinned delicacies - chutney, pickles and jam; split pea soup, baked beans, sausage - and do very well, until the evening when Bill decides to have a maleo.  It was tough beyond description.

Every afternoon the rain begins - sometimes a steady downpour for hours, sometimes an occasional shower, lifting in time for a gorgeous sunset over the mountains that rise from both sides of the Bay.  Rainclouds march past the mountains then in an array of colors, and the sky turns even the water pink with reflections.

Children in the back yard make a gamelang of three empty tin cans, and solemnly plunk out an imitation of native music.

A man tries to sell us a basket of fresh prawns for breakfast, and another brings in a pyschid caterpillar in a six-inch case of grass.  Case and all walks along the road, looking like nothing on earth.

We try the maleos on chopped pig-'s liver and heart, but they still do not eat.

April 30 -

Princess Juliana's birthday.

About eight o'clock the Rajah of Lajoewen arrives; he blinks near sightedly, but is very spruce in an immaculate white suit and sun helmet.  Thirteen of his people have come down from the village to dance the Chakalele for us,- the national dance of Ceram.

Three women and six men were dancers, four men made up the orchestra.  The men were bare to the waist, and around the waist was wrapped a bark-cloth, painted loincloth, which hung