NEW GUINEA AND ITS INHABITANTS. 65 



or round piece of shell on a cord, and keeping a bladder in the air 

 by patting it with the hands, are favorite games. They also amuse 

 themselves with miniature spears and bow and arrows, catching fish, 

 which they cook for themselves on the shore. They are left to do 

 what they like, and know nothing of the tasks of school, the troubles 

 of keeping their clothes clean, or the miseries of being washed trou- 

 bles that vex the lives of almost all civilized children. According to 

 Mr. Turner, the villages of the Motu are by no means clean, all man- 

 ner of filth being left about unheeded ; and, as this agrees with most 

 other descriptions, we must conclude that the model village already 

 referred to is quite exceptional in its cleanliness and order. 



Mr. Turner thinks the Motu are colonists from some other land, 

 while he considers the Koiari of the interior to be " evidently the abori- 

 gines of this part of New Guinea." Mr. Stone, on the other hand, classes 

 them together as slightly differing tribes of the same race, the one 

 being a little more advanced than the other ; and he considers the whole 

 eastern peninsula of New Guinea to be peopled by a race of Polyne- 

 sian blood, who, in some far-distant time, found their way to the coast, 

 intermingled with the native Papuan tribes, and gradully drove them 

 westward. There have thus resulted a number of separate tribes, show- 

 ing various degrees of intermixture, the Polynesian blood predominat- 

 ing on the coast, the Papuan in the interior ; one small tribe alone, the 

 Kirapuno, being more distinctly Polynesian. How complete is the 

 intermixture, and how difficult it is to determine the limits of the two 

 races, are shown by the opinion of Mr. S. McFarlane, who says that 

 though he at first thought the people of Katow River and those of Red- 

 scar Bay to be quite distinct, the former Papuan and the latter Ma- 

 layan (or more properly Polynesian), yet, after five years' acquaintance 

 with them, he believes them to of the same race ; while he considers 

 the tribes of the interior to be distinct, and to be true Papuans. The 

 coast people he thinks to be the result of an intermixture of Malays, 

 Polynesians, Arabs, Chinese, and Papuans. 



Dr. Comrie (of the surveying ship Basilisk) believes that all the 

 tribes on the northeast coast, from East Cape to Astrolabe Bay, are 

 Papuans ; but his description of them shows that they have a slight in- 

 fusion of Polynesian blood, and many Polynesian customs. One thing 

 is very clear, that neither in physical nor mental characteristics do these 

 people show any resemblance whatever to Malays, who are a very differ- 

 ent race from the Polynesian. The graceful figures, the woolly or curly 

 hair, the arched noses, the use of tattooing, the ignorance of. pottery- 

 making, the gay and laughter-loving disposition, the talkativeness of the 

 women, the lying, thievishness, and beggary, widely separate them from 

 the Malay ; while all these peculiarities support the view of their being 

 a race formed by a mixture of Polynesian men with Papuan or Melane- 

 sian women, the former having perhaps arrived in successive waves of 

 immigration, thus causing the coast tribes, and those nearest the east- 

 vol. xv. 5 



