320 NEJF GUINEA. [chap. 



the bird. Finding the tree is, however, not so easy, and the month 

 spent by our natives in the forest resulted in the capture of only 

 one bird. Four days after our arrival they returned again, but 

 this time empty-handed. They had discovered a second tree, but 

 one of the Alfuros of the interior had interfered and shot the bird 

 with his lilunt arrow. In the discussion that ensued our man 

 got the worst of it and retired from the field, having very nai'rowly 

 escaped being added to his enemy's bag. 



We spent our time at Samati in our usual work of collecting 

 and skinning. Lokman, the hunter we had sent over from Waigiou, 

 had of course done nothing, and came to us in his usual deprecatory 

 way, with a full powder-horn and half a dozen of the commonest 

 birds. The Eajah, too, rather disappointed us, and we came to the 

 conclusion that the noseless and unprepossessing side of his face was 

 a truer index to liis character than the other. The men he had 

 supplied to shoot for us with the guns we had sent over by 

 Lokman had, he told us, obtained nothing, and as Lokman himself 

 declared he knew nothing of the matter, we had to let it rest, and 

 permit recently-killed birds, which were no doubt our own, to be 

 brought to us for barter. There was but little new to us among 

 them, but we were able to complete a fair series of the Seleucides, 

 and also obtained a rare and interesting Lory with plumage of an 

 almost uniform black (Chalcojysittacus ater). 



The Salwatti Papuans, and indeed those of the Eajah Ampat 

 generally, do not seem to evmce any very great desire for the clothes 

 and ci\dlisation of the western w^orld, and are on the whole an 

 unprogressive lace, holding closely to the customs of their fore- 

 fathers. This apathy to improvement has no doubt been the 

 chief cause of the non-success of the missionaries in Dorei Bay. 

 Wonderful to relate, it does not even appear that all are open to 

 the seductions of traders' rum, which, as we all know, usually 

 appeals to the crudest and most undeveloped mind, and is a power- 

 ful factor in the advance of ci\llisation and geographical knowledge. 

 The Papuan strikes the traveller as an individual with no little 



