102 PYGMIES AND PAPUANS 



for that, unfortunately, was not the case, and even 

 at the end of the fifteen months that we spent in their 

 country we were not able to converse with them. 

 Lieutenant Cramer and I compiled a vocabulary of 

 nearly three hundred words,* and we talked a good 

 deal with the people, but we never reached the position 

 of being able to exchange ideas on any single subject. 



In the Eastern and Northern parts of New Guinea 

 it has always been found possible to communicate with 

 the natives through the medium of some known 

 language ; even if there were many differences noticed 

 in the language of a new district, there were always 

 some common words which formed the foundation of 

 a more complete understanding. The Western end 

 of New Guinea has been for centuries visited by traders 

 speaking Malay dialects, some of whom have settled in 

 the country ; or Papuans from those parts have 

 travelled to Malay-speaking islands and have returned 

 with a sufficient knowledge of the language to act as 

 interpreters to people visiting those districts. 



But the long stretch of the South-west coast from 

 the MacCluer Gulf as far as the Fly River has been 

 quite neglected by Malay-speaking traders, partly on 

 account of the poverty of the country and partly by 

 reason of the shallow sea and the frequent storms which 

 make navigation difficult and dangerous, so that the 

 Malay language was of no use to us as a means of talking 

 with the natives. It is true that two men from the 

 Mimika district had been taken a few years previously 

 to Fak-fak, the Dutch Government post on the South 

 * Sec Appendix C. 



