CHAP. XXXIV.] VILLAGE OF DOREY. 305 



sticks, placed without any regularity, and looking as if 

 they were tumbling down. The floors are also formed of 

 sticks, equally irregular, and so loose and far apart that 

 I found it almost impossible to walk on them. The walls 

 consist of bits of boards, old boats, rotten mats, attaps, 

 and palm-leaves, stuck in anyhow here and there, and 

 having altogether the most wretched and dilapidated 

 appearance it is possible to conceive. Under the eaves 

 of many of the houses hang human skulls, the trophies of 

 their battles with the savage Arfaks of the interior, who 

 often come to attack them. A large boat-shaped council- 

 house is supported on larger posts, each of M'hich is grossly 

 carved to represent a naked male or female human figure, 

 and other carvings still more revolting are placed upon 

 the platform before the entrance. The view of an ancient 

 lake-dweller's village, given as the frontispiece of Sir 

 Charles Lyell's " Antiquity of Man," is chiefly founded on 

 a sketch of this very village of Dorey; but the extreme 

 regularity of the structures there depicted has no place 

 in the original, any more than it probably had in the 

 actual lake-villages. 



The people who inhabit these miserable huts are very 

 similar to the Ke and Aru islanders, and many of them 

 are very handsome, being tall and well-made, with well- 

 cut features and large aquiline noses. Their colour is a 

 deep brown, often approaching closely to black, and the 



VOL. II. X 



