Wallace and the Dutch East 49 



We pushed on to Humboldt Bay, now Fort Hollandia 

 and the base which Richard Archbold used for the great 

 aeroplane which in 1938 carried his expedition to the 

 mountain lakes. Sir John Murray, the oceanographer, told 

 me that when the ship Challenger visited Humboldt Bay 

 in February 1873, it was absolutely impossible to land. The 

 natives met them with such showers of arrows that they 

 sailed away. We landed on Metu Debi Island in the mouth 

 of the bay amid swarms of natives. We found them stark 

 naked but, on the whole, quite jolly and congenial. They 

 were a little short-tempered if they were crossed, as, for 

 instance, when they somewhat indiscreetly wanted to see 

 whether my wife was white all over. She was the first 

 white woman they had ever seen. In fact, we were so com- 

 pletely disassociated with their idea of human beings that 

 not only at Djamna, but here in the village of Tubadi, 

 she was allowed to enter the Karriwaris, where the sacred 

 paraphernaha are stored. Native women, under pain of 

 death, are forbidden to enter there. 



These people were most bizarre in appearance. The 

 women were buxom and not unpleasing in mien; they 

 wore a short skirt of beaten bark shrunk about their waists 

 while the bark was wet and allowed to dry there. In their 

 ears were several dozen rings made of tortoise shell, about 

 four inches in diameter. The whole ear margin was pierced 

 with a row of holes. Their heads were covered with little 

 braids of hair, each weighted, to hold it in place, with a 

 tiny ball of dried clay. 



The men wore bands of fiber tightly bound around their 

 arms. In these were stuck flowers or bunches of brightly 

 colored leaves, and often also a dagger, made of a casso- 



