CHAP, xxxiv.] VOYAGE TO DOREY. 301 



and a very well made palm-leaf box, for which articles 

 I gave a cojDper ring and a yard of calico. The canoes 

 were very narrow and furnished with an outrigger, and 

 in some of them there was only one man, who seemed 

 to think nothing of coming out alone eight or ten miles 

 from shore. The people were Papuans, much resembling 

 the natives of Aru. 



When we had got out of the Straits, and were fairly in 

 the great Pacific Ocean, we had a steady wind for the first 

 time since leaving Ternate, but unfortunately it was dead 

 ahead, and we had to beat against it, tacking on and off 

 the coast of ISTew Guinea. I looked with intense interest 

 on those rugged mountains, retreating ridge behind ridge 

 into the interior, where the foot of civilized man had 

 never trod. There was the country of the cassowary and 

 the tree-kangaroo, and those dark forests produced the 

 most extraordinary and the most beautiful of the feathered 

 inhabitants of the earth — the varied species of Birds of 

 Paradise. A few days more and I hoped to be in pursuit 

 of these, and of the scarcely less beautiful insects which 

 accompany them. We had still, however, for several days 

 only calms and light head-winds, and it was not till the 

 10th of April that a fine westerly breeze set in, followed 

 by a squally night, which kept us off the entrance of 

 Dorey harbour. The next morning we entered, and came 

 to "anchor off the small island of Mansinam, on which 



