NEW GUINEA AND THE PAPUANS 381 



Fartlier, in lat. 4° S., the Kaiserin Augusta River debouches, 

 the only stream of vahie for navigation in this territory. 

 From Humboldt Bay — the German-Dutch limit — onwards 

 to the entrance of the Great Geelvink Bay, the same high 

 coast prevails, except at the most northern point, where 

 it is broken by the vast delta of the Amberno River. 

 This stream has not yet been explored, but it is known 

 to be of considerable size. Each of the three divisions 

 of New Guinea — Dutch, British, and German — is thus 

 provided with a single large river — the Amberno, Fly, 

 and Kaiserin Augusta respectively. 



3. History. 



The existence of Xew Guinea was probably known to 

 Albuquerque after his conquest of Malacca in 1511, and 

 when the Victoria, the only remaining ship of Magellan's 

 squadron, completed the first circumnavigation of the 

 globe and returned to Seville in 1522, she brought skins 

 of the bird -of- paradise, obtained from the natives of 

 Tidor in the Moluccas, which must have been procured 

 from the mainland or some of the islands of Papua. Yet 

 this region does not appear to have been visited, or even 

 sighted, by Europeans for some years later, although it is 

 frequently and erroneously mentioned as having been 

 seen by dAbreu in his Moluccan voyage in 1511. Don 

 Jorge de Meneses, the Portuguese commander, was the 

 first to discover it, accidentally overrunning his distance 

 in voyaging from Malacca to Ternate in 1526. He 

 appears, as far as can be gathered from scant details, to 

 have reached Waigiu Island, and to have stayed there some 

 time. In 1528, and again in 1529, Alvaro Saavedra 

 undoubtedly visited the north coast, and sailed along it 

 for a ffreat distance on the occasion of his second visit, 



