RECENT EXPLORATION 33 



Wallace, Von Rosenberg, and Bernstein, and missionaries 

 had spent considerable periods of time in the conntr}-, 

 no very serious attempt was made to penetrate into the 

 interior until 1876, when the Italian naturalist, d'Albertis, 

 explored the Fly River for more than five hundred miles. 

 Since that time a very large number of expeditions 

 have been undertaken to various parts of the island, 

 and it will only be possible to mention a few of them 

 here. In 1885 Captain Everill ascended the Strickland 

 tributary of the Fly River. In the same year Dr. H. O. 

 Forbes explored the Owen Stanley range, and in 1889 

 Sir William Macgregor reached the highest point of that 

 range. 



In Dutch New Guinea very little exploration was 

 done until the beginning of the present century. Pro- 

 fessor Wichmann made scientific investigations in the 

 neighbourhood of Humboldt Bay in 1903. Captains 

 Posthumus Meyes and De Rochemont in 1904 discovered ^ 

 East Bay and the Noord River, which was explored 

 by Mr. H. A. Lorentz in 1907. 



During the period from 1909 to 191 1, whilst our party 

 was in New Guinea, there were six other expeditions 

 in different parts of the Dutch territory. On the N. 

 coast a Dutch-German boundary commission was pene- 

 trating inland from Humboldt Bay, and a large party 

 under Capt. Fransse Herderschee was exploring the 

 Amberno River. On the West and South coasts an 

 expedition was exploring inland from Fak-fak, another 

 was surveying the Digoel and Island rivers, and a third 

 made an attempt to reach the Snow Mountains by 

 way of the Utakwa River. But the most successful of 



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