2 
loose sand. Large blocks of coral, as if just broken off from the reef, lie at 
the water’s edge, where the surf beats ceaselessly and the dip of the beach 
is generally too steep for native praus to land without running the risk of 
being smashed to pieces. It is the presence of landing-places, with good 
water, which limits the stages in the tedious journey along the beach from 
Andai to Sjari. 
The rivers in flowing into the sea either break up into many shifting 
mouths or are barred by banks of sand or shingle into semi-lagoons, with 
only a small exit to the sea. 
Most of the trees fringing the beach are prostrate or semi-prostrate, as if 
torn up by the force of the waves. Stagnant lagoons, impenetrable bog, and 
shallow standing water occur in parts, while the undergrowth is covered 
and the ground strewn with seaweed, evidence of the retreating swirl of 
great waves. ‘The natives told me that when the north wind blows the 
sea washes all over this belt of country, fish being often found stranded 
on bushes far inland. | 
The few small native ‘‘campongs” are placed just above the beach, 
where sand-banks have accumulated, on which some Casuarinas mark the 
permanence, as at Wariap and Warén. 
I returned from Wariap by the beach in December 1913, the first time 
this journey had been made by a European, to be followed by Mr. Pratt in 
April 1914, at the height of the north monsun. He described the whole 
region as then more or less under water, the rivers, pouring down from the 
mountains in floods, being beaten back over the land by the huge surf raised 
by the north wind, which bars the exit of their waters to the sea. 
This interesting observation accounts for the shifting river mouths, and 
also explains why the native habitations are generally so far from water and 
so few in number. 
b. “* Korane” orn Cornat-Limestonr ZONE. 
Behind the beach the low-lying belt of “korang,” covered with forest, 
stretches uniformly from the coast to the foot-hills of the Arfak, a sterile 
porous formation showing so little depth of soil that it gives the impression 
of walking over a reef. 
Rosenberg (10, 80) in 1870 refers to the recent appearance of this coral- 
limestone area, which he concluded must be still rising, and he quotes the 
older inhabitants of Andai as saying that they remembered low scrub where 
the forest now stands. 
Van Gelder (20, 94) considers that a gradual rising of the whole of the 
north coast of New Guinea is taking place, or a lowering of the sea-level, 
which amounts to the same thing. He found evidence of this fact at 
