LATE ARRIVAL OF DAYAKS 253 



scarcity of coolies some months earlier, had decided 

 that a further supply of coolies should be sent to us 

 without delay. Though cables work quickly enough 

 between London and Singapore, communications beyond 

 that are matters of days and weeks, and it was not until 

 the 1 8th of March that the party of Dayak coolies, 

 who had been engaged in Sarawak b}^ the kind permis- 

 sion of H.H. the Raja, arrived at the Mimika. They 

 were in the charge of Mr. C. B. Kloss, Curator of the 

 Government Museum at Kuala Lumpor, who had 

 brought with him six months' provision for himself and 

 the men. Almost at the same time that the Com- 

 mittee in England had taken this step, we in New Guinea 

 had decided that three months more was as long as 

 we were prepared to stay in the country, and a request 

 had been sent to the Dutch Government to take us 

 away at the end of that time. 



When the Zwaan arrived we were all ready to 

 depart, and Cramer's party, numbering more than a 

 hundred men, w^ere chafing with impatience to get 

 away ; it would have been impossible for the Govern- 

 ment to keep them there yet another six months. Even 

 if there had been a possibility of our staying on in the 

 country, the number of Dayaks, thirty-eight, was 

 quite insufficient for a long journey into the interior 

 and the prospect of reaching the moderately high 

 ground of Tapiro Mountain, the best that could be 

 hoped for, was not sufficient inducement to tempt any 

 one to paddle again up the Mimika river. Added to 

 this was the further consideration that in a w^eek or 

 two the more rainy season would begin and that for 



