I Bought A Number Of Very Large Palm-Leaf Mats
Of The Natives, Which Made Excellent Walls; While The Mats I Had
Brought Myself Were Used On The Roof, And Were Covered Over With
Attaps As Soon As We Could Get Them Made.
Outside, and rather
behind, was a little hut, used for cooking, and a bench, roofed
over, where my men could sit to skin birds and animals.
When all
was finished, I had my goods and stores brought up, arranged them
conveniently inside, and then paid my Papuans with knives and
choppers, and sent them away. The next day our schooner left for
the more eastern islands, and I found myself fairly established
as the only European inhabitant of the vast island of New Guinea.
As we had some doubt about the natives, we slept at first with
loaded guns beside us and a watch set; but after a few days,
finding the people friendly, and feeling sure that they would not
venture to attack five well-armed men, we took no further
precautions. We had still a day or two's work in finishing up the
house, stopping leaks, putting up our hanging shelves for drying
specimens inside and out, and making the path down to the water,
and a clear dry space in front of the horse.
On the 17th, the steamer not having arrived, the coal-ship left,
having lain here a month, according to her contract; and on the
same day my hunters went out to shoot for the first time, and
brought home a magnificent crown pigeon and a few common birds.
The next day they were more successful, and I was delighted to
see them return with a Bird of Paradise in full plumage, a pair
of the fine Papuan lories (Lorius domicella), four other lories
and parroquets, a grackle (Gracula dumonti), a king-hunter
(Dacelo gaudichaudi), a racquet-tailed kingfisher (Tanysiptera
galatea), and two or three other birds of less beauty.
I went myself to visit the native village on the hill behind
Dorey, and took with me a small present of cloth, knives, and
beads, to secure the good-will of the chief, and get him to send
some men to catch or shoot birds for me. The houses were
scattered about among rudely cultivated clearings. Two which I
visited consisted of a central passage, on each side of which
opened short passages, admitting to two rooms, each of which was
a house accommodating a separate family. They were elevated at
least fifteen feet above the ground, on a complete forest of
poles, and were so rude and dilapidated that some of the small
passages had openings in the floor of loose sticks, through which
a child might fall. The inhabitants seemed rather uglier than
those at Dorey village. They are, no doubt, the true indigenes of
this part of New Guinea, living in the interior, and subsisting
by cultivation and hunting. The Dorey men, on the other hand, are
shore-dwellers, fishers and traders in a small way, and have thus
the character of a colony who have migrated from another
district. These hillmen or "Arfaks "differed much in physical
features. They were generally black, but some were brown like
Malays. Their hair, though always more or less frizzly, was
sometimes short and matted, instead of being long, loose, and
woolly; and this seemed to be a constitutional difference, not
the effect of care and cultivation. Nearly half of them were
afflicted with the scurfy skin-disease. The old chief seemed much
pleased with his present, and promised (through an interpreter I
brought with me) to protect my men when they came there shooting,
and also to procure me some birds and animals. While conversing,
they smoked tobacco of their own growing, in pipes cut from a
single piece of wood with a long upright handle.
We had arrived at Dorey about the end of the wet season, when the
whole country was soaked with moisture The native paths were so
neglected as to be often mere tunnels closed over with
vegetation, and in such places there was always a fearful
accumulation of mud. To the naked Papuan this is no obstruction.
He wades through it, and the next watercourse makes him clean
again; but to myself, wearing boots and trousers, it was a most
disagreeable thing to have to go up to my knees in a mud-hole
every morning. The man I brought with me to cut wood fell ill
soon after we arrived, or I would have set him to clear fresh
paths in the worst places. For the first ten days it generally
rained every afternoon and all night r but by going out every
hour of fine weather, I managed to get on tolerably with my
collections of birds and insects, finding most of those collected
by Lesson during his visit in the Coquille, as well as many new
ones. It appears, however, that Dorey is not the place for Birds
of Paradise, none of the natives being accustomed to preserve
them. Those sold here are all brought from Amberbaki, about a
hundred miles west, where the Doreyans go to trade.
The islands in the bay, with the low lands near the coast, seem
to have been formed by recently raised coral reef's, and are much
strewn with masses of coral but little altered. The ridge behind
my house, which runs out to the point, is also entirely coral
rock, although there are signs of a stratified foundation in the
ravines, and the rock itself is more compact and crystalline. It
is therefore, probably older, a more recent elevation having
exposed the low grounds and islands. On the other side of the bay
rise the great mass of the Arfak mountains, said by the French
navigators to be about ten thousand feet high, and inhabited by
savage tribes. These are held in great dread by the Dorey people,
who have often been attacked and plundered by them, and have some
of their skulls hanging outside their houses.
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