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Ar a time when the exploration of New Guinea is attracting so much attention all over the world, and when expeditions are fitting out in France, Holland, Spain, and Italy, with a view to obtain a footing for their respective countrymen in that great island, a few remarks as to its past, present, and probable future may not be uninteresting.

The island of New Guinea is, as far as we can ascertain, first mentioned in the history of the year 1526. It is said to have been discovered by the Portuguese Governor, Jorge de Meneses, when on a voyage from Malacca to the Moluccas, during which he was driven far to the eastward and out of his course by a north-west gale, and, being badly damaged, was right glad to winter in a harbour on the north coast of the island, supposed to be Port Humboldt. To this island the name of Papua was then given, the word, according to Galvano, meaning "black;" but, according to the interpretation of the people inhabiting the Moluccas, it means "frizzly black head," and is said to

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have been bestowed upon the island on account of its inhabitants wearing their hair "frizzed out in the shape and form of a huge mop.

While the Portuguese explorers were working their way round the world from the "westward," the Spaniards were pressing "westward," through the Pacific, after having taken possession of South America. The explorers of these two nations now met among the Spice Islands, and formed two hostile factions.

The Mahommedan native princes of these islands joined that side with which circumstances first brought them into contact, and a deadly feud sprang up between Spaniards and Portuguese. The chiefs of Ternate allied themselves to the latter, while those of Gilolo and Tidore ranged themselves on the side of the former; and many sanguinary conflicts, both on sea and land, took place between the fleets or Hongis of prahus of these Sultans, aided from time to time by their respective European allies.

In 1527 Herman Cortes fitted out an expedition which sailed from the west coast of Mexico under Alvaro de Saavedra, and reached the Spice Islands. Returning to Mexico in 1528, this expedition coasted along the north side of New Guinea for the space of a month. In 1542, Ruy Lopez de Villalobos led another expedition from Mexico, and reached Gilolo in 1544. Three years later Villalobos succumbed to Portuguese influence and died at Amboyna, when the command of the expedition fell into the hands of a Captain Yñigo Ortiz de Retes. He sailed along the north coast, anchoring in several ports, and in 1549 is said to have named the island"New Guinea," imagining that he detected a likeness between its inhabitants and the natives of the West Coast of Africa.

The next Spanish explorer was Luis Vaez de Torres, who, after his separation from Quiros at Espiritu Santo, one of the New Hebrides, came to New Guinea and sailed along the southern coast. Passing through the Torres Straits" this navigator cut off New Guinea from the Australasian continent, and by right of discovery, in 1606, took possession of the island in the name of the King of Spain.

The Dutch now entered the New Guinea waters, from which they expelled both Spaniards and Portuguese; and in 1606 we find William Jansz, in the Duyfke, visiting the west and south-west coasts of the island, the Gulf of Carpentaria, and thence entering the Torres Straits, where he discovered many islands unobserved by Torres.

We then hear of Cornelis Dedal visiting the island in 1616; Le Maire and Schouten in 1617, who discovered and named the Schouten Islands off Mount Toricelli; Jan Vos in 1622; and Jan Cartensz in 1623. In 1642 the enterprising Governor-General Van Diemen

sent Abel Jansz Tasman and Franchoys Jacobsz Visscher on their memorable voyages of discovery, which so well upheld the prestige of the Dutch flag.

The following twenty years saw six expeditions to New Guineanamely, in 1654, Gommersdorf and Braconier; in 1655 Jacob Borné made three voyages to the island, but was eventually murdered with most of his men; in 1662 Nicolaes Vinck discovered that deep bight which, after having been surveyed by Lieutenant MacCluer, was named after that officer; Johannes Keyts, in 1678, discovered many bays and rivers, and added considerably to our knowledge of the island. Dampier's expedition, despatched in 1699 by William III., had for its sole object geographical discovery. Dampier sighted New Guinea on New Year's Day of 1700. sailed along the north coast, and to him belongs the honour of having discovered the strait which to this day bears his name, dividing New Guinea from New Britain and the Admiralty Islands.

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Jacob Weyland, in 1705, discovered Geelvink Bay, which he named after his vessel, the Green Fish. He did much useful surveying work, and added a large store of matter to our information regarding the island. In 1722 Jacob Roggeveen coasted along the north shore of the island, but, on his arrival at Batavia, the Dutch East India Company seized his vessel, he being a private trader, and not connected with the Company, whose rights and monopolies were jealously guarded.

Lieutenant MacCluer, in 1791, first surveyed the bay which bears his name, but which was discovered by Vinck in 1662. Lieutenant Kolff. while in command of the brig Dourga, in 1826, surveyed the Dourga Strait," and in 1827 founded the Dutch settlement in

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Triton Bay at the northern extremity of this strait.

The locality was ill-chosen. Surrounded by low swamps on every side, at the bottom of a deep inlet into which no breeze could penetrate, the settlement seemed to be doomed from the outset; and in 1835, much to the chagrin and disappointment of the natives, the Dutch Government removed its garrison to Wahaai, a small port on the north coast of Ceram, which was much frequented at that time by English and American traders.

During the ten years that the Dutch remained in Triton Bay among the Outanata tribe of Papuans, the most friendly relations existed between the two peoples. Theft was never heard of, and no single act of hostility ever committed. The presence of the Dutch was a check on the Malay, Chinese, and Ceramese semi-piratical expeditions, which, under the guise of traders, periodically visited these parts, but who in reality were slavers and pirates of the lowest class. Since the European settlement on this coast was abandoned these expeditions have again made their appearance, but as they do not enter the Torres Straits very little is ever heard of them.

In 1850 the Dutch Government, having purchased the right of "suzerainty" over the northern and part of the north-eastern coast of New Guinea from the Sultan of Tidore, sent Lieutenant Bruijn Kops, in command of the Circe, and an expedition to found a settlement in Humboldt Bay.

This expedition was not successful, and all it did was to erect posts supporting metal shields embossed with the Netherlands coat of arms at various points along the coast. A gale from the south east and the strong lee-current which here prevails, drove it back from the island of Gilolo. In 1852, however, the

settlement was effected, and Port Humboldt was proclaimed a Dutch colony. The garrison of the new colony was ill-chosen. It consisted of a party of burghers, or native militia, of Ternate, a people by no means calculated to inspire respect in the stalwart and energetic Papuans of this coast.

In Triton Bay the Dutch had to contend against obstacles which no human force could overcome, but which human foresight might have avoided. In Port Humboldt the Dutch entered upon new ground. Here no obstacles barred their way to success, but the cruelty and rapacity of their boors so incensed the natives that a desultory war was the result. The natives of the coast were either butchered or were driven to take refuge among the hill tribes, to whom they became slaves, and the cruelty of the Dutch has thus become proverbial along the whole length of the north-east coast of New Guinea. These natives the English Government claims as its subjects, and yet they know it not, but live in daily fear of their sworn enemy descending upon them, unaware of the fact that an imaginary geographical line of demarcation protects them from the enemy they so much dread.

In the foregoing brief résumé of the history of New Guinea we have purposely avoided making any allusion to the discoveries of either Captains Cook or Owen Stanley on the west and south-west coast, or to the more recent "discoveries" of Captain Moresby in H.M.S. Basilisk, whereby the existence of the China Strait was made known to the world, and a shorter route between Australasia and China rendered available to our mercantile marine.

It will have been observed that the island of New Guinea has often been visited. Books narrating these several voyages have at times been published. The British Museum

has nearly all of them, and yet among the public a wonderful amount of ignorance prevails on the subject; we doubt not, therefore, but that some of the following information regarding the manners and customs of the Papuans, and the products of their island, together with an account of its physical geography and climate, will be acceptable to many of our readers.

Dr. Comrie, R.N., after rather numerous and exact observations, collected while serving on board H.M.S. Basilisk, has recently made public some most valuable anthropological notes on the aborigines of that portion of the island which he visited that is to say, its southeastern peninsula. Not the least remarkable among the facts thus brought to light is the "rite of circumcision" practised by its inhabitants. In Australia, and we believe also in New Zealand, this rite is not unknown; and the fact that this ancient Mosaic custom should be found to exist in New Guinea in the nineteenth century, seems to point to its inhabitants having held intercourse with the Old World, and with the Semite branch of the Caucasian race in particular, during pre-historic ages.

The Phoenicians were an offshoot of the Semites, as were also the Hebrews, and attained to a high state of civilization before any of its other offshoots had emerged from

the pre-historic into the historic age. They were the earliest commercial and colonizing people of the Old World. They long preceded the Greeks, and may be said to have circumnavigated Africa, visited the shores of England and the Baltic, founded Carthage, and traded with India, Ceylon, and China about the very time when we first read of them in the Bible as visiting the Israelites.

The physical formation of the man depends entirely upon the

physical formation of the country in which he is born and brought up. On the physical formation of the country depends the "climate " it supports, and on the climate of the country depends the nature of its flora and of its fauna.

The Americans, descendants of the Azyan branch of the Caucasian race, are now quite a distinct race of men, and yet only one century has elapsed since the founders of that race gained their independence of their mother country. The remarkable similarity which is to be found in all Americans is entirely due to the physical and climatic conditions of the country they inhabit; and, since we find the characteristics of the white race altering with climate and country, it is not astonishing to find that the Negroid race is broken up into different peoples, inhabiting different countries, and consequently differing from one another in physical formation.

Neither, in our opinion, is it difficult to account for the various shades of colour, or for the historic rites and ceremonies, found among the widely scattered branches of the Negroid or non-historic race.

The cruising about the globe of the Phoenicians must have been attended with just as much—indeed we may say with much more-danger to the early navigator of those prehistoric days than is now encountered, and yet, in modern times, ships do get lost, crews are either drowned or else they are murdered or kindly taken care of by the Negroids among whom they chance to fall, and then, in the latter case, the offspring of the two races differs in colour from either parent.

It therefore seems more than probable that the difference in colour now found to exist among the various tribes of the Negroid race inhabiting the island of the Pacific Ocean may be accounted for in a logical manner by admit

ting the possibility of their having held intercourse in pre-historic times with the white traders of the Semitic branch of the great Caucasian family; and this assumption seems all the more probable when the following evidence in its favour is carefully weighed and digested.

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The galleys of the Phoenicians would experience all those vicissitudes of wind and weather encountered by vessels on the ocean this day. The same heavy northwest and south-west gales would overtake them when attempting to round the Cape of Good Hope as overtake vessels attempting

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do so now. These gales, however, could not be faced in the pre-historic age as they are at the present time. Even now, vessels are often driven hundreds of miles out of their course, notwithstanding all their modern scientific appliances; and how must the galleys of the Phoenicians have fared when overtaken by a gale, accompanied by its monstrous seas, and only the brawny arms of the rowers to keep the galley "to the wind"? Would they not have had to "scud" before these gales as our modern ships do now? Occasionally most assuredly they would; and if at such times they found themselves scudding before a heavy north-west gale across the great Southern Ocean, this gale, on veering to the south-west, as it does to this day, would land their galley in New Zealand, and the Semite and Negroid blood, intermingling, would form the Maori race, whose very fortifications, or pahs, remind one most forcibly of the Roman Era, or of the earlier days of Alexander and of the Ptolemies.

The heavy "northers" or northwest monsoon of the equatorial region, would likewise drive the galleys of the Phoenicians out of the China seas into the South Pacific Ocean, or to the south

eastern peninsula of New Guinea, and the white blood of the Semites mingling with the black blood of the Negroids would account for the various nuances found there to exist at this day; while the fact that the compass has been known and used for centuries by the South Sea Islanders, and the Papuans, Australians, and Maories being acquainted with the rite of circumcision, seems to point to an earlier intercourse with the Caucasian race than is recorded in its history.

Thus, the intermingling of the two races in pre-historic times seems to account for the difference in colour to be found among Negroid tribes, as also for the Hebrew features of those of the Pacific; while the difference which exists in the physical formation of the countries they inhabit accounts for the difference found to exist in the physical formation of the various families of the human race.

The geographical knowledge in our possession regarding New Guinea goes to show that the southern shores of that island abound in mud flats and mangrove swamps, but that the south-eastern peninsula and northern coasts are bold and steep, their high cliffs plunging vertically into the waters of the Pacific Ocean to a depth at times measured by hundreds of fathoms. Stretching away from these cliffs into the interior are plains and plateaux from which rise mountain ranges with altitudes varying from 5,000 to 14,000 feet at some thirty to fifty miles from the coast. These mountains form the "Coast Range," and beyond lie plains of great extent. In the centre of the island an elevated mountain chain, running from south-east to north-west, raises its peaks beyond the limit of perpetual snow.

In the north-west extremity of the island, this range has been named the "Snewe or "Charles

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