WILFRED STALKER 49 



We buried him under a tree about one hundred yards 

 behind the camp, and in the absence of the leader of 

 the expedition, who had gone away with Rawhng and 

 Cramer to reconnoitre the river above Wakatimi, I 

 read the short burial service. Besides Marshall and 

 Shortridgc and myself there were a Dutch soldier, two 

 convicts and about fifty Papuans, who stood quietly 

 in a wide circle about the grave. I think the ninetieth 

 psalm was never read to a more remarkable congre- 

 gation. The grave was the first of the graves of many 

 who left their bones in New Guinea. 



Wilfred Stalker was in his thirty-first year when 

 he died. Previously he had spent many years as a 

 naturalist in Australia and several months in New 

 Guinea. Early in 1909 he returned to the East where 

 he spent a part of his time in engaging coolies for the 

 New Guinea Expedition, and he had time to make 

 an interesting journey in the Island of Ceram, where 

 he made a remarkable zoological collection. He joined 

 us at Amboina on January ist so that we had not time 

 to know him well, but his unflagging energy in the 

 preparations at the base-camp, where he landed with 

 the first party, showed that he was a man whom the 

 expedition could ill afford to lose. 



