On the launch
were three white people--two men and a woman. They were the first who
had ever broken the silence of that stream.
They gazed out under the morning sun along the dead level of the
Purari[37] delta, for they had left behind them the rolling breakers
of the Gulf of Papua in order to explore this dark river. Away to the
south rolled the blue waters between this vast island of New Guinea
and Northern Australia.
They saw on either bank the wild tangle of twisted mangroves with
their roots higher than a man, twined together like writhing serpents.
They peered through the thick bush with its green leaves drooping down
to the very water's edge. But mostly they looked ahead over the bow of
the boat along the green-brown water that lay ahead of them, dappled
with sunlight under the trees. For they were facing an unknown
district where savage Papuans lived--as wild as hawks. They did not
know what adventure might meet them at the next bend of the river.
"Splendid! Splendid!" cried one of the white men, a bearded giant
whose flashing eyes and mass of brown hair gave him the look of a
lion. "We will make it the white woman's peace. Bravo!" And he turned
to Mrs. Abel, whose face lit up with pleasure at his happy excitement.
"No white man has even seen the people of Iala,"[38] said Tamate--for
that was the native name given to James Chalmers, the Scottish boy
who had now gone out to far-off Papua as a missionary.
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