CHAP. XXIX.] CONTRAST OF PAPUANS AND MALAYS 1 79 



The Papuan, on the other hand, has a face which we may 

 say is compressed and projecting. The brows are pro- 

 tuberant and overhanging, the month large and prominent, 

 while the nose is very large, the apex elongated down- 

 wards, the ridge thick, and the nostrils large. It is an 

 obtrusive and remarkable feature in the 'Countenance, the 

 very reverse of what obtains in the Malay face. The 

 twisted beard and frizzly hair complete this remarkable 

 contrast. Here then I had reached a new world, inhabited 

 by a strange people. Between the Malayan tribes, among 

 whom I had for some years been living, and the Papvian 

 races, whose country I had now entered, we may fairly say 

 that there is as much difference, both moral and physical, 

 as between the red Indians of South America and the 

 negi'oes of Guinea on the opposite side of the Atlantic. 



Jan. 1st, 1857. — This has been a day of thorough enjoy- 

 ment. I have wandered in the forests of an island rarely 

 seen by Europeans. Before daybreak we left our anchor- 

 age, and in an hour reached the village of Har, where we 

 were to stay three or four days. The range of hills here 

 receded so as to form a small bay, and they were broken 

 up into peaks and hummocks with intervening flats and 

 hollows. A broad beach of the whitest sand lined the 

 inner part of the bay, backed by a mass of cocoa-nut 

 palms, among which the huts were concealed, and sur- 

 mounted by a dense and varied growth of timber. Canoes 



n2 



