Moresby. — Lecture, on New Guinea. Ixxxiii 



None of tlieir 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, pi^obably 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 vai'ied 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 

 lai'ge streams flowing from the Owen Stanley range. Four or five days were 

 spent in vain eflx)rts 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 uj^rooted 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, tiying 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 dee^D, 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 

 ti'ibe lived inland, of whom they were much afraid. 



Redscar Say is the ill-chosen site of a Polynesian native mission, belonging 



