Morespy.—Lecture on New Guinea. Ixxxiii 
None of their villages are visible from the sea, being placed in the bush in 
cleared spaces, which are very neat and cleanly kept. In the rear of the 
villages are generally extensive, well-fenced plantations of yams, bananas, etc. 
They gladly received their white visitors at the villages. No signs of 
cannibalism were visible, and they appeared to be a friendly, intelligent 
people. 
Being so distinct a race from the black, naked New Guinea men of 
Torres Strait, it will be very interesting to ascertain where the line of 
demarcation occurs. It is, however, probably not far to the west of Yule ` 
Island, for at Cape Possession (25 miles to the west), in 1846, Lieut. Yule 
remarks that the natives varied in shade from nearly black to a light copper 
colour. Perhaps it is at some spot where the betel-nut first grows to the east 
of Torres Strait, for the black race never use this, while the light race always 
do. Some fine specimens of steel sand were found on the mainland near 
the sea. | 
During the south-east monsoon Redscar Bay is a wild, exposed anchorage, 
the surrounding country low, swampy, and malarious, and intersected by many 
large streams flowing from the Owen Stanley range. Four or five days were 
spent in vain efforts to reach the mountains by means of these rivers, but in 
every case after ascending 12 or 14 miles, where the country began to be 
somewhat open, the current was so rapid, and snags and uprooted trees so 
numerous, that it was impossible to go further. The river banks are very 
similar to those at Robert Hall Sound, but are more frequently fringed with 
a kind of palm without any trunk, but with gigantic leaf-branches forty or 
fifty feet arching across the river. Some smaller species were armed with 
innumerable hooks on the edges of the leaves, which lacerated the explorers 
when, trying to avoid the current, they kept close to the bank. When clear 
of the swamp the rivers ran between dense tropical forests, the trees of no 
great girth, but towering to almost fabulous heights—200 to 250 feet—but even 
this height could not save them from the destructive climbing parasites, which, 
reaching to the loftiest branches, destroyed their life and hung round the dead 
limbs in most weird and fantastic shapes. 
The largest of the rivers was blocked by an accumulation of logs and 
snags, which, having become interlaced, formed a bridge over the river, and 
being continually added to from above had assumed the shape of large 
_ vegetated islands, under which the river rushed and foamed furiously. Just 
below these islands the river was about 80 yards broad, 20 feet deep, and very 
rapid. At night they suffered terribly from mosquitoes. Not a sign of 
natives was anywhere seen, but the natives at Redscar Bay said a powerful 
tribe lived inland, of whom they were much afraid. 
_Redscar Вау is the ill-chosen site of a Polynesian native mission, belonging 
