DUTCH EXPEDITION 213 



convicts, and twenty Dayaks of Dutch Borneo, who 

 came down the river in the long canoes they had built 

 themselves. There was also an Australian collector, 

 Mr. Meek and two assistants, who had been attached to ^ 

 the Dutch expedition to make collections of birds and 

 butterflies for a private museum in England. With Mr. 

 Meek were ten natives of Port Moresby in British New 

 Guinea, little brown, fuzzy-headed fellows full of life and 

 merriment ; they were in every way so different from the 

 sombre and unemotional Papuans that it was difficult to 

 realise that they were both natives of the same island. 



The Utakwa expedition had been in the country for 

 seven months and had traversed a considerable extent of 

 country, but those months coincided with the period of 

 the worst weather — one cannot talk of wet and dry 

 seasons in that region— and like us they had suffered 

 from the shortcomings of their coolies ; the Dayaks had 

 reached them too late to be of much service to the expe- 

 dition. From their base camp at the head of steam- 

 launch navigation they had gone two days further up 

 the river in canoes, and then had gone a distance of 

 seven marches towards Mount Carstensz. The furthest 

 point they reached was at an altitude of about 3000 feet, 

 and was less than twenty miles distant from the snow, 

 but the views of the country that they saw were not suf- 

 ficient to show whether that was the best route to the 

 highest mountains. One of the principal objects of the // 

 Government in despatching that expedition to the Uta- 

 kwa was to discover a convenient way of crossing New 

 Guinea, and when it was found that the Utakwa led 

 apparently to the highest mountain in the island, it was 



