It's not obvious if the opening of this story is set in the US or UK, but in the US there are many, many towns around the country named Auburn. There's at least one Auburn in England as well, in East Riding of Yorkshire. But probably it is set in the USA. We do love our circuses! Especially a hundred years ago, they were prime entertainment.
acromegaly: a disorder where your body makes too much growth hormone. In adults, too much of this hormone causes bones, cartilage, body organs, and other tissues to increase in size.
allopathy: the treatment of disease by conventional means (in contrast to homeopathy)
Banda Sea: east of Sulawesi (part of present-day Indonesia) and west of New Guinea
proa: a type of boat, although the way westerners used the word during the colonial era is highly inconsistent and it could be describing any of a variety of different types of boats built by Austronesian peoples. Regardless, it's some type of boat or another native to the peoples of the Banda Sea region, and that's good enough for our purposes here.
Salawatti: an island part of present-day Indonesia, but is located just off the coast of northwest New Guinea
Arfak Mountains: These are on the Bird's Head Peninsula in what is today the West Papua province of Indonesia. This would be on the island of New Guinea proper, in the northwest extreme of the island, directly across from Salawatti.
Andai: Today this word refers to a language spoken by a handful of people in eastern Papua-New Guinea. The way it is used here sounds like the name of a port town. Although one of the results returned by google is for a picture of a village named Andai taken in 1879, but it is possible the European explorer who took the picture conflated the name of the people with the name of the village, as there is exactly one, and only one, result suggesting it as a village name.
Arrak: Like Andai, this doesn't come back with anything relevant from google. The use makes it sound like possibly a province name? Or some other geographic indicator.
insuperable: impossible to overcome
dammar: this is a type of resin, which in the case of being on New Guinea, must be from trees of the dipterocarpoideae family, although typically they are found in the lowland areas. Dammar resin has many uses, from making turpentine and paints, paraffin wax and caulk, and various medicines. A useful product, making the cultivation of forests of these trees pretty reasonable.
sybaritic: voluptuary, sensual
sago: a starch extracted from the pith, or spongy core tissue, of various tropical palm stems, especially those of Metroxylon sagu. It is a major staple food for the lowland peoples of New Guinea and the Maluku Islands.
oklah: as best I can tell, this isn't a real animal? If you know your New Guinea fauna lore and can speak definitively to it, please leave a comment below!
Anakim: a race of giants mentioned in the Bible as the descendents of Anak.
thew: muscles and tendons perceived as generating physical strength
The picture used is the Arfak Mountain Range, located throughout the eastern part of West Papua, by David Worabay, used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en).
To follow along: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/185/the-root-of-ampoi
