V

Dobu

DoBuU ISLAND lies in the d'Entrecasteaux group off the
southern shore of eastern New Guinea. The Dobuans are
one of the most southerly of the peoples of northwestern
Melanesia, a region best known through the many publications
 of Dr. Bronislaw Malinowski on the Trobriand
Islands. The two groups of islands lie so near that the
people of Dobu sail to the Trobriands on trading expeditions.
 But they are people of another environment and
another temperament. The Trobriands are fertile lowlying
 islands which. provide an easy and bountiful living.
The soil is rich and the quiet lagoons full of fish. The
Dobuan islands, on the other hand, are rocky volcanic
upcroppings that harbour only scanty pockets of soil and
allow little fishing. Population presses hard upon the
possible resources, even though the tiny scattered villages
in their most prosperous days numbered only about
twenty-five people and now are cut to half, while the
Trobriands' dense population lives at ease in large closely
set communities. The Dobuans are known to all the white
recruiters as easy marks in the area. Risking hunger at
home, they sign up readily for indentured labour; being
used to coarse and scanty fare, the rations they receive
as work-boys do not cause mutiny among them.
The reputation of the Dobuans in the neighbouring
islands, however, does not turn on the fact of their poverty.
 They are noted rather for their dangerousness.
They are said to be magicians who have diabolic power
and warriors who halt at no treachery. À couple of generations
 ago, before white intervention, they were cannibals,
and that in an area where many peoples eat no human
120