Our tent that night was so near the brink of a crevasse that in order to stay the tent one end of the ridge-rope was made fast to a large stone, which was lowered into the gulf to serve as a stake. Above us rose a precipice nearly a thousand feet high, from which stones were constantly falling; but a deep black gulf intervened between the position we had chosen and the base of the cliffs, and into this the stones were precipitated. Not one of the falling fragments reached the edge of the snow slope on which we were camped, but many times during the night we heard the whiz and hum of the rocks as they shot down from the cliffs. The noise made by each fragment in its passage through the air increased rapidly in pitch, thus indicating that they were approaching us ; but they always fell short of our camp. The bom-bardment from above was most active just after the shadows fell on the cliffs, showing that the stones were loosened by the freezing of the water in the interstices of the rock. The next day, August 20, Stamy and Lindsley went back to Camp 16 for more rations, while Kerr and I remained at Camp 18 nursing our eyes and resting. The day passed without anything worthy of note, except the almost constant thunder of avalanches on the mountains. About sunset a dense fog spread over the wintry landscape and threatened to delay the return of the men. When the sun went down, however, the temperature, fell several degrees, the mist vanished, and a few stars came out clear and bright. Just as we were about to despair of seeing the men that night we heard a distant shout announcing their return. We had a cup of hot coffee for them when they reached the tent, which they drank with eagerness ; but they were too tired to partake of food. Rolling themselves in their blankets, they were asleep in a few minutes.
Killer Hat a masked dancer from the Elemi people of Papua balances a shark-effigy headdress crafted from bark cloth and cane. Mask making was part of the region’s heehaw ritual, in which villagers invoked spirits of totem animals during the building of a new men’s meetinghouse. These houses were frequented not only by bachelors but also by married men, who retreated there “at intervals, for the sake of a little peace and quiet,” noted author E. W. Brands in his September 1929 article, “Into Primeval Papua by Seaplane:’ This photograph, acquired by the GEOGRAPHIC in 1938, has never before been published in the magazine.
