146 BIRDS OF NEW GUINEA. 



In a letter in the ' Spectator' (October 16th, 1875, p. 1293), by Robert 

 \ H. Armit, Lieut. R.N., the Owen-Stanley mountains are thus described : — 

 " Commencing at Sud-est Island, we find a chain of mountains which, gradually 

 rising from the sea, enter New Guinea, and in lat. 8^ 55' S. and in long. 

 147° 33' E. attains in Mount Owen Stanley a height of 13,205 feet, at a 

 distance of about forty miles from Redscar Bay on the west. This range 

 appears to traverse the whole island in a north-westerly direction, and to 

 terminate in the Charles- Louis mountains, on its north-w^estern extremity, 

 w^hich, rising perpendicularly out of the sea to an altitude of 5000 feet, soon 

 attains that of 17,000 feet. As yet the altitude of the range has not been 

 ascertained further inland, ow4ng to the fact that where visible from the coast 

 its summits are obscured by clouds, and in other parts it is hidden 

 from view, both on the southern and northern sides of the island, by the 

 great height to which its spurs, forming the other ranges, attain. These, 

 in some portion of the northern and southern shores, have been computed 

 by trigonometrical observations at from 5000 to 14,000 feet within fifty miles 

 of the coast." 



Mr. A. R. Wallace speaks (' Malay Archipelago,' vol. ii. p. 312) of " the 

 great mass of the Arfak mountains, said by French navigators to be about 

 10,000 feet high, and inhabited by savage tribes." At page 310 he gives a 

 description of the natives. 



Perhaps no country now existing has a better claim to the title of romantic 

 than the terra incognita called New Guinea, the true shape of the eastern 

 extremity having been only lately determined by Capt. Moresby, R.N., of 

 H.M.S. 'Basilisk,' in the cruise of that vessel in 1872 and 1873, when he 

 corrected the mistakes of D'Entrecasteaux and the old navigators. It is 

 more strange that so little is known of New Guinea, since it is described by 

 Mr. Wallace as " perhaps the largest island on the globe, being a little larger 

 than Borneo and nearly 1400 miles long by 400 miles broad in the widest 

 part ;" while Capt. Moresby says, in an interesting illustrated paper read 

 before the New-Zealand Institute on the 20th of September, 1873 (in its 



