the Firelight

New Guinea Interlude: Forest Dancers in the Firelight

By S. Van Der Werff

THERE is a clearing in that dark forest of Netherlands New Guinea. . . Cicadas hum and myriads of mosquitoes are successful as never before.

Here the Papuans who have been travelling with us have built camp.

Having eaten their fill —a wild boar and two fat crown-pigeons—they are talking. The usual topics for such fireside talk are the origin of mankind and the earliest ancestors of the tribe.

Then an unbroken silence falls until a few of the older men begin to hum a tune. Others join in and gradually the humming becomes a forceful song. Fingers begin to tap the drums, and suddenly a strong, well-built man leaps into the middle of the ring formed by the singers.

His blood-curdling scream echoes in the hills.

One by one the men rise, their feet beating the ground. A stormy rhythm soars through the trees, wild and indomitable, and the clearing becomes a turmoil of glistening bodies. The dance becomes wilder, like a rising hurricane. Parrots and other birds fly screaming from the tumult.

It is impossible to remain un moved by this scene. The dance rhythm creeps into your blood.

Automatically your fingers drum in sympathy, and it is only by an effort that you stop yourself from leaping into the ring of dancers.

And then —silence. Like a rushing

river the rhythm flows away and the dance ends as suddenly as it began. The panting dancers huddle together on beds of leaves and twigs and almost immediately all are in deep sleep. . .

There is happiness in life among such companions, and the thought that soon they may be drawn into a society they cannot comprehend awakens a feeling of intense pity for them.

Many times I recall adventures shared in that vast land. I remember so well the satisfaction of conquer ing a mountain after toiling through burning sunlight or incessant rain, and how, at the end of an expedi tion, came the offers of Papuan hos pitality in homes and sleeping places.

Often I feel a boundless longing to see that land again and to meet its people, gay and laughing as in the past.

Papuan ot the Waroppen coast.

“Feet beat in stormy rhythm.”