The Chiefs Of The Annual Expeditions To
Collect Tribute Have Had Orders To Get All The Rare Sorts Of
Paradise
Birds; and as they pay little or nothing for them (it
being sufficient to say they are for the Sultan)
, The head men of
the coast villages would for the future refuse to purchase them
from the mountaineers, and confine themselves instead to the
commoner species, which are less sought after by amateurs, but
are a more profitable merchandise. The same causes frequently
lead the inhabitants of uncivilized countries to conceal minerals
or other natural products with which they may become acquainted,
from the fear of being obliged to pay increased tribute, or of
bringing upon themselves a new and oppressive labour.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PAPUAN ISLANDS.
NEW GUINEA, with the islands joined to it by a shallow sea,
constitute the Papuan group, characterised by a very close
resemblance in their peculiar forms of life. Having already, in
my chapters on the Aru Islands and on the Birds of Paradise,
given some details of the natural history of this district, I
shall here confine myself to a general sketch of its animal
productions, and of their relations to those of the rest of the
world.
New Guinea is perhaps the largest island on the globe, being a
little larger than Borneo. It is nearly fourteen hundred miles
long, and in the widest part four hundred broad, and seems to be
everywhere covered with luxuriant forests. Almost everything that
is yet known of its natural productions comes from the north-
western peninsula, and a few islands grouped around it. These do
not constitute a tenth part of the area of the whole island, and
are so cut off from it, that their fauna may well he somewhat
different; yet they have produced us (with a very partial
exploration) no less than two hundred and fifty species of land
birds, almost all unknown elsewhere, and comprising some of the
most curious and most beautiful of the feathered tribes. It is
needless to say how much interest attaches to the far larger
unknown portion of this great island, the greatest terra
incognita that still remains for the naturalist to explore, and
the only region where altogether new and unimagined forms of life
may perhaps be found. There is now, I am happy to say, some
chance that this great country will no longer remain absolutely
unknown to us. The Dutch Government have granted well-equipped
steamer to carry a naturalist (Mr. Rosenberg, already mentioned
in this work) and assistants to New Guinea, where they are to
spend some years in circumnavigating the island, ascending its
large rivers a< far as possible into the interior, and making
extensive collections of its natural productions.
The Mammalia of New Guinea and the adjacent islands, yet
discovered, are only seventeen in number. Two of these are bats,
one is a pig of a peculiar species (Sus papuensis), and the rest
are all marsupials.
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