CANNIBAL RELICS

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 12903, 2 July 1936, Page 3

CANNIBAL RELICS

PEER WHO VISITED NEW GUINEA. UNKNOWN RACE "OF PYGMIES. •LONDON, May 30. Blowpipes with poisoned darts, daggers made of crocodile jaws, bamboo arrows with expanding points, and a table covered with human skulls Avero exhibited to the public in a London drawing-room 'this week. 'They are among 300 remarkable trophies which Lord Moyne has brought back from his recent expedition in liis yacht -Rosalira to New Guinea and the Malay Archipelago. Lord Moyne’s chief object in bis four months’ journey was to discover a mysterious white- race which was rumored to live in New Guinea. 1 Instead, he found an unrecorded race r-f light-skinned pygmies. Timid and placid, the pygmies live in the foothills of the Aiome mountains, 170 miles up the Raimi River in the Alandated Territory of New Guinea.

“We measured 12 males, whose average height was Ift. -Jin. The women were about 3iu. shorter, Lord Moyne said. “They are the dirtiest people I have over seen, but are not particularly prone to disease. “Wo had great difficulty in getting information about them, as their «x----istenco was known to only a few prospectors. No one understands their language, and they cannot no made to realise that anyone wants tn learn it. They are timid compared with the head-hunters who live near by, but they were not afraid of us. •In exchange for bottles and tins they gave us bows, arrows with wide, bamboo blades for pig-killing, a 4-prongei arrow for birds and iisb, shields, bandoliers and bead-drosses. Many of the articles they gave us appear to ! regarded with great superstition but there is no means of discovering t'.’.e legends attaching to them.” Accompanying Lord Moyne were Lady Broughton, many of whose mmnrkablo photographs of the pygmies are in the exhibition ; her daughter, Miss Rosamond Broughton ; Viscount Klveden, and Mr and Mrs Anthonv Chaplin. Lord Elveden had a sharp attack of malaria during the jouv-

For most of the journey, tliey remained on board the Rossaura; widen was originally a Channel steamer, but to travel up the Ramu they used two motor launches. Both were damage 1 when they struck submerged tre > trunks and for several days the explorers lived in a house on the barns specially built for them with pane leaves and rushes. Lord Moyne found a collection of human bones hanging in a bouse in a- deserted village on the Eilaiiden Ri-

lle also showed enormous bamboo flutes the size of organ pipes. Tim natives consider them sacred and believe that if a woman sees them she will die immediately. The workmanship of the natives.

who havo tio metal instruments, is shown by delicately sharpened axeheads and carved spear lumdloes. worked with shell, bone and red-hot wooden implements.'