32 PYGMIES AND PAPUANS 



Cape York, which he named. Looking Westward he 

 decided that there was a channel leading from the 

 Pacific to the Indian Ocean, and after sailing through 

 it he came to the coast of New Guinea to the N.W. of 

 ^ Prince Frederick Henry Island, where he was attacked 

 by natives and thence he sailed to Batavia. Thus 

 Captain Cook by sailing through his Endeavour Strait, 

 now called Torres Strait after the original navigator, 

 repeated the discovery of Torres after an interval of 

 more than a century and a half, and the general position 

 and outline of New Guinea became known to the 

 world. 



After the voyage of Cook many important additions 

 were made to the charts of New Guinea and its neigh- 

 bouring islands, notably by the voyages of La Perouse 

 (1788), John MacCluer (1790-1793), D'Entrecasteaux 

 (1792-1793), Duperrey (1823-1824), D. H. Kolff (1826), 

 and Dumont d'Urville (1827-1828). 



But during all this time New Guinea was practically 

 no man's land, and except at Dorei and about the 

 MacCluer Gulf explorations were limited to views from 

 the deck of a ship. Flags were hoisted now and then 

 and the land taken possession of in the name of various 

 sovereigns and companies, amongst others by the East 

 India Company in 1793, but no effective occupation 

 was ever made. The Dutch regained their title to the 

 Western half of the island, but it was not until 1884 

 that a British Protectorate was proclaimed over the 

 S.E. portion of the island, and over the remainder by 

 Germany in the same year. 



Although numerous naturalists, notably Dr. A. R. 



