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Contributed by American Museum of Natural History.
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Transcription
is, on the whole, pretty low, and I don't know how
much their opinions are worth. Already I have noticed
that the mission native is a higher type native than
the natives I have seen that are not. Of course there
are a great many natives I have not seen, and on some
of the islands yet unvisited there may be a number of
fine race types living on their own.
Judging by the natives I have out with me on the
trail, I have given the native credit for far less in-
telligence than he has. The chief difficulty is in
making them understand what is wanted. Once they have
it in their minds what is wanted they are quick to
comply. Especially valuable are they in picking up
shot birds. Their eyes are far better oriented to small
objects and subtle clues, which comes, undoubtedly,
from their training in following the native trails.
Monday, October 24th. In trying to find the trail
that Marco and I were on yesterday I again lost myself
in the bush, and took the whole hunting day in finding
my way out again. In addition I lost the aux. tube to
the .20 bore gun and divided my efficiency in two. To
make matters worse, the rain came and went most of the
day and obscured the trails and the trail leads. I
only fired one shot all day, and that was a bad miss.
But the bitter comes with the sweet. Where one faults
the other perfects, and the Doctor came home with a
prize bag of twenty-eight valuable specimens. Among
these were kingfishers, rusty-wing black birds, long-
tail doves, grey birds, honeysuckers, white-eyes, and