TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 597 
though the resources of the country are great, the chances of immediate profit 
from their development are doubtful. 
The people of the northern coasts generally are superior to those of the south ; 
this the author suggests may be due to their having been recruited to a much 
greater extent from the emigrations which have passed eastwards from Asia to the 
Pacitic, while the foreign intercourse of the southern coast has been mainly with the 
inferior Australians. The mass of the people are of that negroid Melanesian race 
which, variously modified by Malay or Polynesian or other elements, extends from 
Flores eastward through New Guinea to Fiji and New Caledonia. Their religion 
is mainly ancestor worship, the Karwar or image of a (recently) dead progenitor 
being greatly venerated, for the spirit of the dead has passed into it; a man will 
therefore sooner sell the skull than the Karwar of his futher. They dread the 
spirits of the dead, and some other beings not of human origin. They show much 
artistic taste in the ornamentation of their houses, weapons, utensils, and ornaments. 
They are a rude, boisterous people, with doubtful capacities for culture, though the 
children in the Dutch mission schools do well. 
The Eastern Peninsula is partly occupied by a different race, fairer and milder, 
with Polynesian affinities, but their religion seems to have none of the distinguish- 
ing Polynesian characteristics, and indeed to be more rudimentary than the Papuan, 
Their relations with English explorers have been exceptionally good, and it is 
desirable (even from an economical point of view), that steps should be taken to 
regulate their intercourse with the whites before serious collisions occur. With our 
great experience much might be done in this respect, and the protection thus 
afforded to the people would more than compensate for interference with individual 
liberty. They have no political organisation, the tribes being isolated, and the 
power of the chiefs small; hereditary rank, though a Polynesian, is not a genuine 
Papuan conception, and is only found among the more advanced tribes. The 
level of civilisation varies: some tribes are accomplished cultivators. Their 
agriculture is probably a tradition from Asia; most of their plants of cultivation 
too are Asiatic. Other tribes are nomad, and very low in the social scale. Canni- 
balism is not common, and perhaps chiefly confined to war time, when the practice 
of head-taking also prevails. 
The Malay custom of building houses on piles is general, but sometimes they 
are built on the ground, or perched high up in trees, as among other Melanesians. 
Curious claims of sovereignty over New Guinea have been asserted, since the 
spread of Islam in the Archipelago in the fifteenth century, by the Malay rulers of 
the diminutive islands Bachian, Gébé, and Tidor. The Dutch found their own 
claims vaguely on the last, as being his suzerain, and have annexed the western 
part as far east as 140° 47’ E. But the Tidor claims never extended so far, nor 
indeed inland at all, being enforced only by periodical raids for tribute and slaves, 
which have checked civilisation and perhaps thrown it back, for there were 
formerly powerful fleets of Papuan pirates, and in the fifteenth century we hear of 
a league of ‘the Papuas’ with the Moluccans against the Portuguese. The Dutch 
rule has hitherto been little more than nominal. 
Disclaiming controversy, the author points out that with the present tendency 
of matters in the Pacific, and the certainty that the development of New Guinea 
must be the work of English hands and capital, its separation from the Australian 
system, to which it naturally belongs, would be a grave political inconvenience, 
crippling the future of that system, and leading to vastly increased armaments; to 
say nothing of the neighbourhood of foreign convict settlements, or (if the island 
remained unannexed), of an Alsatia of lawless adventurers. 
2. On North Formosa. By Wiiu1am Hancock. 
The author was resident in Tamsui for the greater part of the year 1881, and 
during that period had opportunities of examining the geology, flora, and fauna 
of the district. He described the steam geysers and extinct craters, the peculiar 
laya-field near Tamsui, and the various earthquake shocks which had taken place, 
