504 New Guinea. 



seem to have been formed by recently raised coral reefs, and 

 are much strewn with masses of coral but little altered. The 

 ridge behind my house, which runs out to the point, is also en- 

 tirely coral rock, although there are signs of a stratified founda- 

 tion in the ravines, and the rock itself is more compact and 

 crystalline. It is therefore probably older, a more recent ele- 

 vation having exposed the low grounds and islands. On the 

 other side of the bay rises the great mass of the Arfak mount- 

 ains, said by the French navigators to be about ten thousand 

 feet high, and inhabited by savage tribes. These are held in 

 great dread by the Dorey people, who have often been attack- 

 ed and plundered by them, and have some of their skulls 

 hanging outside their houses. If I was seen going into the 

 forest anywhere in the direction of the mountains, the little 

 boys of the village Avould shout after me, "Arfaki ! Arfaki !" 

 just as they did after Lesson nearly forty years before. 



On the 15th of May the Dutch war-steamer Etna arrived ; 

 but, as the coals had gone, she Avas obliged to stay till they 

 came back. The captain knew when the coal-ship was to ai'- 

 rive, and how long she was chartered to stay at Dorey, and 

 could have been back in time, but supposed she would wait 

 for him, and so did not hurry himself. The steamer lay at 

 anchor jvist opposite my house, and I had the advantage of 

 hearing the half-hourly bells struck, Avhich was very pleasant 

 after the monotonous silence of the forest. The captain, doc- 

 tor, engineer, and some other of the officers paid me visits ; 

 the servants came to the brook to wash clothes,.and the son of 

 the Prince of Tidore, with one or two companions, to bathe ; 

 otherwise I saw little of them, and was not disturbed by visit- 

 ors so much as I had expected to be. About this time the 

 weather set in pretty fine, but neither birds nor insects became 

 much more abundant, and new birds were very scarce. None 

 of the birds of paradise except the common one were ever 

 met with, and we were still searching in vain for several of 

 the fine birds which Lesson had obtained here. Insects were 

 tolerably abundant, but were not on the average so fine as 

 those of Amboyna, and I reluctantly came to the conclusion 

 that Dorey was not a good collecting locality. Butterflies 

 were very scarce, and were mostly the same as those which I 

 had obtained at Aru, 



