134 MAN: PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



any good qualities, at least amongst the S.E. coast peoples, and 

 Mr H. H. Romilly was inclined, after diligent inquiry, to conclude 

 that "they possess no virtues whatever 1 ." It should, however, be 

 stated that intelligent, peaceful, and friendly tribes were met both 

 by the British and German expeditions to the interior in 1896 8. 

 Dr Lauterbach speaks of an upland district in the Bismarck 

 Range thickly inhabited by a settled people " very friendly and 

 communicative," who lived in very long pile buildings in the 

 midst of coconut palm groves 2 ; and Sir W. Macgregor met on the 

 Mount Scratchley slopes an isolated community of true Papuans 

 with frizzled hair and of dark bronze colour, who " showed 

 themselves amiable and peaceful, and the state of their arms 

 indicated that they had not been engaged in any warlike under- 

 taking for years V Certainly the worst accounts hitherto received 

 have been of coast tribes, such as the piratical Tarungares and 

 Wandamens of Geelvink Bay, and especially the ferocious Tugara 

 cannibals of the south coast. Even Mr Romilly speaks favourably 

 of some of their physical qualities, keen sight which detects 

 footsteps over rocky ground or through dense scrub, when to the 

 European eye no trace whatever has been left, and an almost 

 equally acute sense of hearing. 



In some parts of New Guinea the local conditions and tribal 



usage have given rise to a considerable variety of 



Arboreal and house architecture, comprising aquatic stations like 



Communal those of prehistoric Switzerland, huge communal 



Dwellings. . . . 



structures of too primitive a type to be com- 

 pared with the cascts grandes of the Pueblo Indians, and 

 arboreal dwellings perched in the forks of trees a hundred feet 

 high, provisioned to stand a siege, like those of the Central 

 Sudanese aborigines. Mr J. P. Thompson describes some of the 

 south-east coast villages as "raised upon long piles in the sea 

 from 100 to 300 yards from the beach, encompassed by water of 

 varying depths. Some of these houses are surrounded by fences, 

 and accessible by primitive steps, while others are unprotected 



1 fro/n my Verandah in Neiv Guinea, 1 889, p. 5 t . 

 ' Gcogr. Jour. Jan. 1897, p. 94. 

 5 Ib. April, 1897, p. 449. 



