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Transcription
June-2
skulls and sing-sing artifacts made with cassowary feathers. We began to
realize how important the cassowary (Quela) was in the lives of these people
on the Rawlinson Range. Two useful tools are made from cassowary long
bones: sut from the femur, and dubat from the lower leg bone. We also
bought arrows that were pointed with = long sharp toe-nail. from the -----
-----. On June 3 a morning's carry brought us to a lovely rushing stream called GANG
on the east flank of Mt. Rawlinson. called Gang. The Zengaren people helped
us clear a camp-site about 100 feet above and east of the Gang which flowed
and tumbled north to the Bulum River. Even as camp was being set up we
found two Paranyctimene roosting in undergrowth six feet above the ground.
We also noticed the men bringing in huge banana leaves from the forest for
temporary shelters. Hoogland later traced these to their source and found
a "tree" measuring 47 feet in height, and more than seven feet in basal
circumference. Musaingens, described only two years before this expedition,
had small bananas with large black seeds. We obtained our drinking water
from a tiny stream called Mut on the perimeter of camp. We later trapped
a young Hydromys here.
The Gang Creek Camp was the center of mammal collecting until July 5.
On June 29 Hoogland and a young assistant visiting from Canberra, transferred
their botanical collecting from the Gang to a "Top Camp" on Mt. Rawlinson
at 6,000 feet. Dr. Richard G. Zweifel and his assistant Kip Sluder arrived
in camp on June 21 as guests of the Expedition; they collected herpetological
specimens and made recordings of frog calls until June 30 when they left for
Pindiu and eventually Lae. On June 18 MacGowan climbed to the summit area of
Mt. Rawlinson (not the true summit as we learned later); his altimeter read