UNKNOWN NEW GUINEA

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 129, 3 June 1935, Page 11

UNKNOWN NEW GUINEA

IMPORTANT EXPEDITION

FINDING UPPER SEPIK'S

SOURCE

(F.rpnv "The Post's" Representative.)

SYDNEY, May' 29.

While gold prospectors and; Government patrol officers are pushing ever further afield into the interior of Nevr Guinea, news- conies of an important expedition being fitted out in London for the exploration of the unknown territory surrounding the Upper Sepik. River and its at', present unknown source. "The expedition .will be under the leadership of Mr. G. M. Dyott, the well-known explorer, famous for his search of traces of Colonel Fawcett, who was lost in the upper reaches of the Amazon. Mr.'Dyott and two other members of the expedition will be joined in Sydney by an; Australian anthropologist, Mr.:H. L. Williams. Although during the postwar years the exploration of the interior of New Guinea has proceeded apace, largely, owing to the efforts of the Administration's patrol officers, the i search for gold, and the coming of the aeroplane, which has made journeys into the interior possible, there still remains, particularly about the region of ttie.upper Sepik, a vast unknown territory on which no white man has ever looked. The Sepik is, with the Fly River, the largest river in the whole; island, but while, the Jly. rises iiv the lofty mountain ranges on the.border of New Guinea, Dutch New. Guinea,' and Papua, the'Sepik, having its. source in the same area, flows in a. general easterly direction, emerging at the sea on the north side of the isjand. Many attempts have been made by patrol officers to penetrate the upper reaches of the Sepik, but >vith only partial success. Most of the villages in this.area are unofficially described as "not under control," and recruiting officers have been murdered there. Each year sees the patrols- pushed further and further into the ' jungle, and friendly relations and Government influence are slowly .'percolating through the territory. .So far, the furthest limit, attained has been to the Yellow River, a .tributary pf, the Sepik, but beyond this no white man.has. .yet been. It remains, therefore, one of the few areas <?n the earth's surface about which little or nothing is known. The difficulties of exploration, of such a territory are increased by the hostility of the natives, who "shoot at sight X " by. the tortuous and torrential nature of the river itself, and by the rough and rugged-country which rises into magnificent mountain peak's.'snow covered though, within ; 250. miles- of the Equator and rising to 14,000 feet. This vast virgin country "is densely populated by men of the Sepik, a pure and hitherto untouched, native' people, which still.remains an enigma.to the ethnologist. Reputed to be cannibals and head-hunters, and living in a stone age/ignorant of the use of metals, they remain one of the few primitive peoples unknown to' the-' world. Yet if reports are true, they are advanced'agriculturists; whose intense cultivation of the'mountain'terraces has been seen from afar, though never reached. •■■-••:■••' Already one great major feat; <?f exploration has been accomplished, in New Guinea by its crossing from south to north, at the wildest part; a feat accomplished by two young Government patrol officers, Messrs.. C H. Karius and Ivan Champion, a fewyears ago. They ascended from the south by means of the Fly River, and thence across the watershed where they picked up the Middle.Sepik, and made their..way to the. sea. on the northern side. But to the westward of their course there remained; the unknown Upper Sepik, the territory which the Dyott expedition hopes to reach. . Among the objects of the search, is a hitherto.unknown animal, the "devil pig," of which knowledge rests only on native s report, "though Mr. ■ Monckton, formerly. '.a, -.resident Magistrate in New Gfuiriea, claims to have observed the animal's tracks