DIVING FOR DUCKS.

Waikato Independent, Volume XXII, Issue 2576, 25 July 1922, Page 7

DIVING FOR DUCKS.

One of the most extraordinarytribes in the world are the Agaiambu of New Guinea. They are duck or weh-footed people, whose feet are so tender that they cannot walk on dry land. They live in huts built on ten-foot poles in the midst of marsh, and are so much at home in the water that they seem to stand upright in that element without any perceptible effort. They never leave the morass, the skin of their feet being so tender that they bleed freely when they try to walk on hard ground. They catch duck by diving under them and catching the birds’ legs, while their diet consists chiefly of fish, water-fowl, sago, and the roots of water-lilies. They keep pigs swung in cradles underneath their houses, lying on their bellies with their legs stuck through the bottom, and feed them upon fish and sago. The dead are “buried” bv being tied to a stake, “the body secured well above flood level.”