128 Mr. Marspen’s Notice respecting the Natives of New Guinea. 
There is no deficiency of provision in the country. Sago in particular, 
of which they make a kind of bread called éoyo, is abundant.* They also 
eat fish, worms picked from rotten wood,t and the vermin from their heads. 
They are uncleanly in their persons ; never washing the body, which, they 
say, is injurious to health. The running water of the place, and what the 
natives drink, is of a red colour, proceeding from the quality of the soil ; 
but their favourite beverage is toddy or palm-wine, drawn from the sago- 
tree, with which they intoxicate themselves, not only at their feasts, but 
habitually in the evening. 
The inhabitants are very numerous. Ten thousand men (according to 
the ideas of the Lascars) would not be sufficient to subdue them: yet they 
have no king! Each house or family seems to be independent, and is in 
the continual practice of making war on its neighbours; seizing each 
others’ wives and children and selling them for slaves, to the people of the 
adjacent islands. They go naked for the most part; the men sometimes 
wearing a covering made of the bark of a tree, and the women a sort of 
apron of a loose texture, reaching to the knees. Bows and arrows, as well 
as spears or lances, are commonly employed. 
The small knives before spoken of they procure from an island named 
Onin or Honin; of the inhabitants of which the Braou people stand much 
in awe.t These the Lascars described as a civilized race, reasonable in 
their conduct, and behaving to strangers accordingly as they themselves are 
treated; returning good for good and evil for evil. Their religion is that 
* For an account of their method of preparing this bread, see Forrest's Voyage to New 
Guinea. He brought to England and gave to Sir Joseph Banks, one of their earthen ovens for 
baking it. 
+ Such worms are also a common article of food with the natives of New Holland, who climb 
old trees to procure them. ’ 
+ Ido not find this island laid down in any chart, but in Valentyn, vol. iii., incidental mention 
is made of it. Captain Forrest’s Voyage also contains the following passages that seem to apply 
to it:—‘* North-east of Goram, one day’s sail, is Wonim. In Keytz’s Voyage mention is made 
of Onin, which I take to be Wonim, being 20 leagues north-east of Goram, ....ss000++ The people 
of Ef-be told me, that a day’s sail south of Wonim, a gulph stretched far into the land of 
New Guinea.” If this gulph, as is probable, be meant for M‘Cluer’s Inlet, Onin should lie 
between the first and second degree of south latitude, and we may suppose it to be the island 
described by Dampier, in lat. 1° 43’ S., the inhabitants of which, he says, “ are a sort of very 
tawney Indians, with long black hair, who in their manners differ but little from the Mindanayans 
