440 COMPENDIUM OF GEOGKAPHY AND TKAVEL 



The western portion is a vast extent of flat, sour land 

 and marsh, quite unfit for European population, and 

 unsuitable for the growth of most things except the 

 sago-palm, while the eastern part is nearly everywhere 

 so broken and precipitous as to form an almost hopeless 

 barrier to general cultivation. 



The policy adopted by each of the three nations is 

 quite distinct. Holland, rich in the possession of an 

 enormous area of neighbouring land still undeveloped, has 

 Ijeen content to let her territory remain untouched. 

 Here and there, in this or that village or island, she has 

 erected her coat-of-arms ; and semi-Malay rajas, hardly 

 more advanced in civilisation than the Papuans, hold her 

 insignia. An occasional visit from the Eesident of 

 Ternate serves to keep up in the larger coast villages the 

 remembrance of their dependence, but httle else is done, 

 and there is not even a Postholder in the whole 150,000 

 square miles which are believed to constitute her 

 possessions. Germany, on the other hand, has set about 

 her administration with all the ardour characteristic of a 

 nation as yet unversed in the art of colonisation. Euhng 

 through a commercial company, the line adopted has been 

 more or less commercial, and the chief aim is the further- 

 ance of agriculture. Hitherto her efforts have not been as 

 successful as might be desired. England has sought first 

 of all to establish her authority and to introduce order 

 and civilisation. In course of time she will look to the 

 development of the abundant natural products of the 

 country, but cannot now, if ever, hold out hope of success 

 to the European planter. The discovery of gold, by no 

 means an improbable event, would do much to develop 

 the resources of the country, but New Guinea is as yet 

 too uncivilised for such a discovery to be dissociated from 

 a vast amount of suffering and disorder. Meanwhile the 



