The Island of Stone Money

A good method of learning a language, where there is neither dictionary, textbook, nor grammar, is to begin, in the primary class, with the children. Accordingly, to the children I devoted my earliest attention; in the guise of a playmate, I let them unwittingly instruct me. One game, with its marvellous amplifications, I found to be exceedingly popular: our nursery game of cat's-cradle. It is, indeed, a game and pastime not only of the children, but also of youths, maidens, matrons, and old men. All were familiar with figures which, at first made my head swim by their intricacy and the lightning rapidity of the wriggling brown fingers. I was already familiar with one or two figures which I had learned from a delightful paper in _The Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, by my friend, Dr. A. C. Haddon, and I was keen for more.

My first lesson came from the hands of Kakofel, the young daughter of Lian, Chief of Dulukan. Curly-headed, little Pooguroo was my earliest and most faithful friend; and Kakofel came next. Her father brought her with him, or rather she trudged after in his train, the first morning after Friedlander and I arrived at his village. We were busy getting our various "traps" ready for the day's work; Friedlander with his merchandise, and I with my photographic outfit, when Lian, a handsome man with a somewhat negroid face, but light in colour, solemnly ascended the ladder and silently squatted cross-legged on the floor a short distance from the door. Directly behind him a closely cropped little head arose; at first, just on a level with the threshold; next, there cautiously peered forth a pair of wide open, wondering, snappy black eyes, framed all round in long, jet-black lashes, making the whites look larger and whiter; then uprose a little brown body girdled with a straggly skirt of dried leaves hanging down to the knees; last of all two little brown legs, and lo, there stood Kakofel! She immediately seated herself cross-legged beside her father, conveniently near the doorway, however, in readiness for an instant retreat down the ladder at a second's notice. Not a word did the dignified, impassive Lian utter; Friedlander took no notice of him, and I, like "Br'er Rabbit," kept on saying nothing. Greetings are not "good form" in Uap, and nowhere is it diplomatic to blurt out at once the object of a visit.