FROM THE HEART OF NEW GUINEA

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 225, 19 June 1929, Page 13

FROM THE HEART OF NEW GUINEA

TRAVELLING AMONG HOSTILE SAVAGES

STUDY OF ZOOLOGY ADVENTURES IN THE CAUSE OF SCIENCE Dominion Special Service. Auckland, June 18. Mr. W. R. McGregor, lecturer in zoology at the Auckland University College, who has been away since October on a scientific expedition in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, returned py the Marama yesterday. He makes ngnt ot the risks he ran during these months, when he travelled among hostile savages and defied that most sinister of all tropical enemies, malaria. „ ~ “It was purely a scientific trip, Mr. McGregor said. "I don’t pretend to be an intrepid explorer. lam quite satisfied with the results I have obtained and I think I have unearthed some biological specimens entirely new to science. I neve not discovered any extinct monsters, he Mr. McGregor left Auckland last October to pursue his biological studies in the tropics, He has returned with a fine collection of specimens, including reptiles in which he specialised, birds, and insects. After spending a short time m Queensland making biological studies there Mr. McGregor left for New Guinea and conducted some investigations in lort Moresby district. Then he made ms way round the coast to Rabaul in New Sri’ tain, where he established his headquarter?. He made several coastal trips, and then plunged on a trip 70 miles into the heart of a wild and unexplored country. Leaving Rabaul with 19 native boys as porters, he followed the river beds, scrambling along rocky banks, up rough and rugged country. Frequent, detours had to be made round gorges which were really deep clefts in hard rock, and these entailed marches through forests where malaria was rampant. “As far as I know,” Mr. McGregor said, “I am only th? second person who has visited the interior to escape malaria-” . , Torrential rains fell practically every day, generally accompanied by most violent thunder storms all the time they were workiing inland where the principal mountain range, forest covered, rises 10,000 feet above sea level., “I had a certain amount of trouble with my boy?, Mr. McGregor said. “Before long their number shrunk to 11, the others having deserted when they reached territory in which lived other natives hostile to them. One night I caught the remaining 11 boys in the act of deserting ip a body. I was taking a walk down stream from the spot where we had pitched camp for the night, and there they were trying to get away quietly over the tributary to the main stream. I had to dissuade them, as a white man must have natives with him in that country. As a matter of fact, I fired a shottover their heads. It was no time for kid-glove methods.” “The native? are pot quiet, but fortunately I had no trouble with them,” Mr, McGregor said. “It is all a question as to who has been the previous visitor at the village. If the last cullers have been men recruiting native labour there is likely to be open opposition to the next white visitor. There had been no labour recruiters there before me, and once the suspicions of the natives were overcome they were quite friendly. I would not exactly call them cannibals, but I am positive that they practise cannibalism occasionally, Two or three years ago six white men went into the interior. AU were speared, and only one escaped, I had the pleasure of meeting him, and he is still limping from his wound."

Whenever he reached the village, Mr. McGregor said, there were generally only a few old men almost too old to move, and some decrepit old hag? as its sole inhabitants, Others would be hiding in the bush. Presents of cloth and salt, the most valued currency among the natives, would be made to the old people, and after a day or two some of the other old people would return to the village. They would be followed later by girls, and, last of all, by young men when they were certain they were not going to be taken to the coast to work. Travelling sometimes in a cutter apd at others in a precarious dug-out canoe, Mr. McGregor explored the coral islands round the coast of New Guinea. The heat was intense. He secured some specimens of remarkable carvings from New Ireland, and then returned to RabauJ. On his way back to Sydney he went right down through the Solomon Islands, visited the Santa Cruz group, and went rapidly through the New Hebrides and returned via Norfolk and Lord Howe Islands.