My very writing materials and books are to them weird things; and were I to choose to mystify them by a few simple experiments with lens and magnet, miracles without end would in a few years cluster about me; and future travellers, penetrating to Wanumbai, world h hardly believe that a poor English naturalist, who had resided a few months among them, could have been the original of the supernatural being to whom so many marvels were attributed.
Far some days I had noticed a good deal of excitement, and many strangers came and went armed with spears and cutlasses, bows and shields.

I now found there was war near us--two neighbouring villages having a quarrel about some matter of local politics that I could not understand.

They told me it was quite a common thing, and that they are rarely without fighting somewhere near.

Individual quarrels are taken up by villages and tribes, and the nonpayment of the stipulated price for a wife is one of the most frequent causes of bitterness and bloodshed.

One of the war shields was brought me to look at.