i2 3 2 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



neighbouring families may be seen a collection of rude dwellings built of bamboos or flexible 

 rods. All of these are low, but not of uniform shape. Some have reeded sides, the 

 ends of which rise into two small turrets ; in others the roof descends to the ground, 

 and has only one gable open which acts as door-way and chimney in one. Some of 

 these houses are large, especially on New Ireland and New Britain, where there are 

 large separate club-houses for the unmarried boys ; but on Duke of York Island, where 

 To Ling was born, the houses are small, and in many cases afford room only for the 

 husband to lie down on one side of a small fire, and^ the wife on the other, with the 

 child or children stowed away in odd corners, and often in most uncomfortable positions. 

 The other houses are a boat-house, which is often the best house in the village, the 

 Duk Dnk house, into which no woman, nor uninitiated man or boy, dare go, and a 

 Malira, or spell-house. Outside the houses are planted the croton, colens and dracecna 

 plants, which testify to the instinctive appreciation of the beautiful. If the houses are 

 small, the furniture is, of course, in proportion. Going through the narrow door-way a 

 visitor would probably strike his head against an alarm rattle, made by suspending 

 loosely a dog's tooth, or something of the kind, in a hollow shell or gourd. This is 

 often put up at night that the sleeping inmates may be aroused should anyone seek to 

 enter the hut. Inside the hut would be seen portions of some old canoe split up and 

 laid on the floor at the sides of the house to make a sleeping bunk, mattrass and 

 blanket all in one for the inmates. In the other gable-end of "the house there would be a 

 few yams, taro or bananas, some baskets of the Tamap nut, a few cocoa-nuts, some 

 diii'ara or native money, spears and tomahawks ; of course, some lime and betel-nuts 

 for chewing, and a fishing net or nets. From the roof would be suspended a wooden 

 hook with string attached, and passing through a wooden disc, or something of the 

 kind, to prevent the rats from going down the string to attack the food-basket suspended 

 on the hook. To Ling's parents are undoubtedly Papuans, though they know nothing 

 of the name. It is extremely likely that there was originally one great race occupying 

 these different groups, as far west at least as Borneo, and probably upon the main-land on 

 the side of Siam and on the Malacca Peninsula, and perhaps as far as Burmah. The 

 traces of these people are found in all the different groups, from the black races found 

 in New Zealand by the original Maori settlers, and derisively called by them " black 

 knniara" (sweet potato), to Western Malaysia, and also on the main-land. In Malaysia 

 this pre-Malayan race was modified by admixture with the Turanian races of the main- 

 land of Asia, and thus constituted the present Eastern Polynesian race, which still 

 retains so much of its old Papuan element. After this it is likely that the emigration 

 eastward set in, probably caused, as Fornander states, by the encroachments of Malay 

 and Hindu immigration. To Ling, is an undoubted Papuan of the black or sooty-brown 

 colour, with frizzly hair, growing generally in thick short matted curls and daubed with 

 coloured clay or with lime. He, with most of his people, has a fair amount of beard, 

 and is of a lanky form, and not so tall or so well formed as the Eastern Polynesians. 

 The language which he speaks is full and expressive, and, unlike that of his fellows in 

 the Eastern group, is full of closed syllables. The dialects are nearly as numerous as 

 the tribes themselves, almost every district, even on the same island, having one of its 

 own, which is often unintelligible to the people living only a very few miles away. 



