404 COMPENDIUM OF GEOGRAPHY AND TRAVEL 



ground is everywhere cultivated — sweet potatoes, yams, 

 bananas, and sugar-cane being grown, and the fields 

 fenced as a protection against wild pigs. The coco-nut 

 palm is here seen in abundance, but it is far less common 

 in Dutch territory, where agriculture is not so much pur- 

 sued, sago and fisli forming the principal diet. The 

 domestic animals are the pig, dog, and fowl, all of which 

 are eaten. They also eat the cuscus, kangaroos, lizards, 

 fish, and molluscs, as well as many kinds of large insects ; 

 and in places wliere they have no communication with 

 Malays or Europeans they use salt-water for cooking as 

 a substitute for salt. In some parts of German New 

 Guinea they make an intoxicating kava by chewing, as 

 in the Pacific ; but this is unusual, and in most places 

 they have no intoxicating drink, and are unacquainted 

 with the art of fermenting either palm -sap or cane- 

 juice. 



Among the Malays of the islands we have hitherto 

 considered, the spear and the kris — or some weapon of 

 the same nature as the latter — are the characteristic 

 arms. Here, in New Guinea, we find these more or less 

 supplanted by the bow and arrow and the club. Spears- 

 are used, tipped with hardened bamboo or bone ; and a 

 kind of whirl-bat of hard wood elegantly carved, knives 

 of obsidian, and axes of jade or greenstone ground to an 

 edge are also met with, the latter resembling those of the 

 stone age found in Europe. Altogether peculiar to the 

 Papuans are the bamboo blow-pipes, which were perhaps 

 used for signalling, perhaps with the object of intimida- 

 tion, by means of dust blown into the air. These do 

 not appear to have been noticed by travellers since the 

 voyage of Lieutenant Kolff in 1828. The practice was 

 first observed by Captain Cook on the south-west coast, 

 where also the Dutch found it, and the more probable 



