XX NEW GUINEA AND ITS INHABITANTS 441 



Similar houses are found in the Aru and Ke Islands, in 

 Waigiou, and on the south-west coast ; and they are also 

 common on the south-east coast, sometimes standing in 

 the water, sometimes on the beach above high-water mark. 

 These houses are often a hundred feet long, and sometimes 

 much more, and are occupied by ten or twenty families. 

 On the Fly river similar large houses occur, but only raised 

 a foot or two above the ground ; while at the mouth of the 

 Utanata river, on the south-west coast, a large low house 

 was found a hundred feet long, and only six feet wide, with 

 nineteen low doors ; but this was evidently only a temporary 

 seaside habitation of a tribe which had its permanent 

 dwellings inland. 



Finding these large houses, raised on posts or piles and 

 common to many families, to prevail from one end of New 

 Guinea to the other, both on the coast and inland, we are 

 led to conclude that those described by Dr. Miklucho 

 Maclay at Astrolabe Bay, on the north-east coast, are 

 exceptional, and indicate the presence of some foreign 

 element. The houses of the people among whom he lived 

 were not raised on posts, and had very low walls, so that 

 the somewhat arched roofs appeared to rise at once from 

 the ground. They were of small dimensions, and seem 

 to correspond pretty closely to those of the Admiralty 

 Islands, New Britain, and New Ireland ; so that this part 

 of the coast of New Guinea has probably been colonized 

 from some of the adjacent islands, a view supported by the 

 fact that these people do not use bows and arrows, so 

 general among all the true Papuans, and by other 

 peculiarities. It is somwhat unfortunate that the only 

 scientific man who has resided alone among these people 

 for more than a year, for the express purpose of studying 

 them exhaustively, should have hit upon a place where the 

 natives are probably not true indigenes but an intruding 

 colony, although perhaps long settled in the country. Dr. 

 Miklucho Maclay will no doubt be quoted as the greatest 

 living authority on the Papuans of New Guinea ; and it 

 is therefore very important to call attention to the fact 

 that the people he so carefully studied are not typical of the 

 race, and may not even be Papuans at all in the restricted 



