The outsides of the houses, wherever there is a plank, are covered with rude yet characteristic figures.

The high-peaked prows of their boats are ornamented with masses of open filagree work, cut out of solid blocks of wood, and often of very tasteful design, As a figurehead, or pinnacle, there is often a human figure, with a head of cassowary feathers to imitate the Papuan "mop." The floats of their fishing-lines, the wooden beaters used in tempering the clay for their pottery, their tobacco-boxes, and other household articles, are covered with carving of tasteful and often elegant design.

Did we not already know that such taste and skill are compatible with utter barbarism, we could hardly believe that the same people are, in other matters, utterly wanting in all sense of order, comfort, or decency.

Yet such is the case.

They live in the most miserable, crazy, and filthy hovels, which are utterly destitute of anything that can be called furniture; not a stool, or bench, or board is seen in them, no brush seems to be known, and the clothes they wear are often filthy bark, or rags, or sacking.
Along the paths where they daily pass to and from their provision grounds, not an overhanging bough or straggling briar ever seems to be cut, so that you have to brush through a rank vegetation, creep under fallen trees and spiny creepers, and wade through pools of mud and mire, which cannot dry up because the sun is not allowed to penetrate.