THE ISLAND OF THE UNKNOWN.

North Otago Times, 1 November 1906, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE ISLAND OF THE UNKNOWN.

* — A NATURALIST'S EXPEDITION INTO THE UNEXPLORED INTERIOR OF NEW GUINEA.

(Extracts from "Two years among New Guinea Cannibals," by Henry

Pratt.)

New Guinea, or Tapua, as it used to be called, is the second largest island in the world, and contains within its area more unexplored and unknown country than all the rest of the earth's surface put together, if we except the ice-clad lands around the South and North Poles. There are both geographical and ethnographical reasons for this isolation. The interior is largely made up 01 deej) valleys separated by razor-like ridges in endless succession. The tribes are many of them savage and warlike, and jealously resentful of the intrusion of strangers. Moreover, miasma lurks everywhere, and the traveller may be in robust health today and dead to-morrow. But in the vast forests are costly orchids and rare birds and butterflies, and these led-, into their fastnesses Mr. A. E. Pratt, of the Royal Geographical Society, lie was accompanied by his sixteen-year-old-son, and together they penetrated into the regions never before visited by white men. Their adventures are recorded in the handsomely illustrated Years Among New Guinea" Cannibals."

THE 1-lEAD-HUNTING TUGERI.

The first aboriginal tribe with which the author was brought into contact was the Tugeri. Mr. Pratt describes them as being "a fine race, very fierce, and absolutely unspoiled by European vices. The men stand about sft, Sin. on an average, and are clean-limbed, powerful fellows, capable of any amount of endurance.' Their strength is enormous. No European can draw one of their bows, and their long arrows carry 300 yards, and are deadly up to half that distance, But their chief and i most remarkable weapon is the ter-1 rible bamboo knife. This is simply a j piece of cane stripped off from the i parent stem,-leaving a natural edge , as keen as the finest-tempered steel, j On the very day the author arrived in their country, four, working on the edge of a clearing, were attacked by a roving band of these head-hunt-ing savages. "In five minutes," writes Mr. Pratt, "an armed' guard was on the spot." But all the men were found decapitated. "The heads had been taken oil with the bamboo knives so cleverly that the doctor on board our ship told me that no surgeon, with the latest surgical instruments, could have removed so many heads in so short a time."

A GRUESOME THREAT,

The march into the unknown interior was begun from the British Government post of Tort Moresby, and proved both toilsome and exciting. Lack of transport was the chief difficulty, lint once secured, tlic carriers performed wonders, the more energetic stimulating their laggard comrades by whipping them with nettles a method which both parlies to the process seemed to regard in the light of a luige joke, wliippers and whipped laughing and screaming, much as children do when tickling and being tickled, Rain fell almost incessantly during the first part of the journey and the pioneers were tortured by myriads of leeches and an abominable parasite known as the scrubitch. The principal characteristic of the gloom, notwithstanding the wealth of magnificent orchids, and glorious scarlet creepers, many-hucd butterflies, and birds of gorgeous plumage. The attitude of the natives, like tlicir dialect, varied every few miles. Some were effusively friendly, others bitterly hostile. One chief sent a message to say that if the expedition dared to enter his territory he proposed to cook and eat the heads of the leaders himself, and feed his young men on the bodies to the rest of the members.

SPIDERS' WEBS AS ' FISHING NETS.

Famine prevailed in many districts and cockatoo and bird-of-paradise soup was tried. The author (iocs not recommend either of them. Delicious fisli were, however, found in many of the streams met with, and these were caught by the natives with nets spun for them by a species of liugn spider that abounds everywhere in the Papuan forests. This sounds a rather Munclmusen-like sort of story, but Mr Pratt pledges himself as to its literal truth, and adduces several illustrations, taken from photographs, to back up his assertion. The nets (or webs) spun by the spiders were fully six feet in diameter, and the mesh varied from one inch square at the outside oi the web, to about one-eighth of an inch at the centre. .Selecting' some spot in the forest where .the webs were thickest, the natives set up long bamboos, bent over | with a loop at the end. In a very : short time the spider weaves a web on this most convenient frame, and the Papuan has his lishing-net ready to hand, "lie then goes down to the stream and uses it with great dexterity to catch fish oi about-one ! pound in weight, neither the water nor the fish sullicing to break the, mesh."

A CANNIBALISTIC FEUD, .Incidents such as the following abomiil, and throw a lurid light on the facial life of the aborigines: "One evening on approaching a village, we heard a woman wailing, and j knew that something was wrong. Shortly afterwards a messenger came to tell us that a man had been murdered, and later on, we beard that the murder .had been occasioned by a j proceeding which was to some extent romantic. It seems that the murdered man had some time before stolen the murderer's wife, and taken her away to his own village, and kept her there After a time it occurred to him, that having got her he might as well pay for her, after the native manner, and accordingly he visited the husband, in order to settle his account, lhe husband however, was not disposed to receive compensation of this sort, and accordingly killed and ate the ' other." The wailing for the dead

man lasted four or five hours, and then a number of the relatives set out for the murderer's village, "to demand a life for a life, that they might slay and oat." In the end, however, they agreed to accept, in lieu qI the human.provoker, n (at

brought in the compensation, slung on a pole; the pig was solemnly slain and eaten, and the incident was closed."

CATS'-CRAI)LE AMONGST SAVAGES.

Mr. l'ratt takes pains to tell us that lie is no ethnographer, but hail he not done so we should have known as much owing to the surprise expressed by him at the native children in the far interior being acquainted with the game of cat's-cradle. Of course, the veriest, tyro in that science is aware that this particular game is played by savages .everywhere all over the world, and always with infinite skill and cunning. ''We had thought," says Mr. Pratt, "to anuise the little ones by teaching them this game, but we found that lliey were already more than our masters therein ; for they no sooner saw what we were after, than they let us know tliat they were well acquainted with it, and whereas we had just the old, stereotyped process to 'give them, they showed us thirty different ways." This is somewhat refreshing, considering that volumes have been written considering the universality of this curious game,

BUSH TELEGRAPHY. In many other directions, however, < Mr. Pratt's ethnographical obscr- 1 vations arc most valuable; as, for instance, when writing upon the manners and customs of the hitherto 1111visited tribes of the Owen Stanley Range. One thing which particularly interested him was the marvellous perfection of their system of "bush telegraphy," worked by means of smoke signals from bill to hill, and by means of which long messages were dispatched across hundreds of miles of trackless country, and the answers received back again in an incredil.lv short space of time. On the whole, the impression conveyed by the author's interesting book is that the I'nupuan, although undoubtedly low down in the scale of civilisation, is by no means so degraded a being as we have hitherto teen led to believe. He recognises nnd understands pictures, for instance, which usually have no meaning whatever for the Australian "I laek-fi llow" on the other side of the Torres Straits, llis treatment of his women, too, is on the whole kindly and considerate, and the children are well looked after, this being the duty not of the parents alone, but of the whole tribe. So extremes meet !