NEW GUINEA AND ITS INHABITANTS. 



57 



NEW GUINEA AND ITS INHABITANTS. 



By ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE. 

 II. 



THE houses of the New Guinea people are somewhat different in 

 different localities, but the most general type is that found at 

 Dorey Harbor. There is here a considerable village of large houses 

 built on piles in the water in the usual Malay style, and houses similarly 

 raised on posts (but loftier) are found on the hills some miles inland. 

 Each of these houses is large and accommodates several families, and 

 they are connected by continuous platforms of poles and bamboos, often 

 so uneven and shaky that a European can with difficulty walk on them. 

 A considerable space separates this platform'from the shore, with which, 

 however, it is connected by narrow bridges formed of one or two bam- 

 boos, supported on posts, and capable of being easily removed. A larger 

 building has the posts carved into the rude forms of men and women, 

 and is supposed to be a temple or council-house. This village is prob- 

 ably very like the pile villages of the stone age, whose remains have 

 been found in the lakes of Switzerland and other countries. Similar 

 houses are found in the Aru and Ke" Islands, in Waigiou, and on the 

 southwest coast ; and they are also common on the southeast coast, 

 sometimes standing in the water, sometimes on the beach above high- 

 water mark. These houses are often a hundred feet long, and some- 

 times much more, and are occupied by ten or twenty families. On the 

 Fly River similar large houses occur, but only raised a foot or two above 

 the ground ; while at the mouth of the Utanata River, on the southwest 

 coast, a large low house was found a hundred feet long, and only six 

 feet wide, with nineteen low doors ; but this was evidently only a tem- 

 porary seaside habitation of a tribe who had their permanent dwellings 

 inland. 



Finding these large houses, raised on posts or piles and common to 

 many families, to prevail from one end of New Guinea to the other, 

 both on the coast and inland, we are led to conclude that those described 

 by Dr. Miklucho Maclay at Astrolabe Bay, on the northeast coast, are 

 exceptional, and indicate the presence of some foreign element. The 

 houses of the people among whom he lived were not raised on posts, 

 and had very low walls, so that the somewhat arched roofs appeared to 

 rise at once from the ground. They were of small dimensions, and 

 seem to correspond pretty closely to those of the Admiralty Islands, 

 New Britain, and New Ireland ; so that this part of the coast of New 

 Guinea has probably been colonized from some of the adjacent islands, 

 a view supported by the fact that these people do not use bows and 

 arrows, so general among all the true Papuans, and by other peculiari- 



