WOMAN EXPLORER

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22627, 15 January 1937, Page 6

WOMAN EXPLORER

DUTCH NEW GUINEA SPECIMENS FOR MUSEUM WILD COUNTRY PENETRATED [FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT] SYDNEY, Jan. 8 An English entomologist with a world-wide reputation, Miss Evelvj Cheesman, left Sydney recently with the strangest luggage ever taken by a woman from one country to another—--44,000 specimens from the heart 0 f Dutch New Guinea. Miss Cheesman slight almost to the point of frailtv' spent ten months alone, except fo r natives, in extremely wild country. She fought her way through virgin jungle and established a base with the help of natives who were only partly civilised. Her specimens included reptiles, fish spiders, scorpions, millipeds, Crustacea and ferns, and are for the British Museum. Miss Cheesman has devoted herself to a study of the insect life of the Pacific Islands. Her expeditions, of which that to Dutch New Guinea was the fourth, have yielded collections of insect life which have shed light on insect forms of bygone ages, and the evolution of certain significant forms which exist now. The Cyclops Mountains, where much of her activity during her most recent expedition was concentrated, are believed to have existed when most of the islands now known were under the sea. Camp in Rain Forest " When I set out from Sydney after having made arrangements for food supplies," she said, in an interview before leaving for London, "it was not without a somewhat exhilarating sense, of being bound on an adventure. There were thrills, but they seem to have been'outweighed by obstacles in millions, and sources of annoyance which never seemed, to be exhausted, 1 camped in the rain forest for a month on one occasion. You cannot possibly imagine what that was like. It rained for several hours each day during the month, and one thunderstorm lasted for 15 hours. We were blessed with eight inches in half an hour another time. The forest was infested leeches—and snakes and scorpions. I was never dry,. The last straw, on the last dayr, fortunately, was the dig. covery.of a le<>ch in the teapot. I iras very glad to leave that forest!" Way Out Through Jungle

" Each trek into the interior," Jliss Cheesman continued, " was made fiom the base camp. The interior is entii-ely without roads or tracks. We invariably had to cut our way through the junjjle. I had no white companions, only native bearers. I usually left four natives in charge of the base camp, and engaged 30 carriers for a trip. Sometimai I had to penetrate country that belonged to a different tribe, and I usually changed my carriers, drawing the new ones from the tribe whose territory I had entered. I had no trouble with the natives, in spii:e of the fact that tliey had never worked under, or, for that matter, "seen a white woman before. ] always began by impressing upon them that I was a master, not a white woman. Mostly the natives were unaible to Bpeak English. I had a smattering of Malay and dozens of other dialects, and was generally able to make myiielf understood. Remarkably good fortune enabled me to convince the natives that I possessed strange magic. On Iwo occasions a peculiar spring in a-sacred mountain yielded just enough water for my party. The natives were indised impressed, whereas I was mystified, irat grateful."