NEW RACE FOUND.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 303, 22 December 1926, Page 7

NEW RACE FOUND.

DUTCH NEW GUINEA PIGMIES. NEW YORK, December 21. Professor Stirling, cabling from Batavia, reports his return from a highly successful aeroplane tour of Dutch Guinea. He discovered a race of pigmies hitherto unknown. He secured numerous anthropological measurements and other important data. Dutch New Guinea comprises the western half of the island as far as 141 £. long., with an area of 158,000 square miles, and contains no towns or administrative centres. The territory is largely unexplored. Pigmies are not a new discovery in New Guinea. In 1910 a British expedition, under Captain Rawling, in attempting to reach Carstensz Peak, in the Snow Mountains of Dutch New Guinea, discovered a race of pigmies good-looking and well-proportioned. These were described in an article in the "Geographical Journal" in September, 1911. Following the discovery of gold in the Bulolo River district in New Guinea, a traveller reported the discovery of a tribe of pigmies living along the Eamu River, in the Madang district, in the British section of New Guinea. Hβ described them as varying in height from 3Jft to 4ift, living in small grass lints or caves in dense mountainous country. They were armed with small bows and arrows, and were timid but friendly. Father Kirchbaum, a "professor of ethnology, described their habits as superior to those of the other natives of Papua, and their marriage customs were monogamistic.