NOTES ON A ZOOLOGICAL COLLECTING 

 TRIP TO DUTCH NEW GUINEA* 



By Thomas Barbour 



Illustrated with photographs by the author. 



NEW GUINEA, the last great area 

 remaining in the tropics which 

 is still almost completely un- 

 known, has a peculiar charm tor the nat- 

 uralist. To be sure, its coasts have been, 

 and are still, frequently visited and set- 

 tlements exist on parts of the island, but 

 great stretches of seaboard still remain 

 unmapped and all but a small part of the 

 interior is a blank on our charts. 



The un familiarity of the average 

 American with the whole East Indian 

 Island region, and especially hereabouts, 

 will perhaps be an excuse for giving a 

 few general facts regarding the island. 

 Lying as it does between the Equator and 

 Queensland, Australia, its length is about 

 1,490 miles and its maximum breadth is 

 430 miles. Its area is greater than that 

 of Borneo, being about 300,000 square 

 miles. Politically it is divided into three 

 parts. 



The lower coasts bordering Torres 

 Straits form British Papua, as it is now 

 called. The eastern coast as far as 

 140 47' east longitude, with a considera- 

 ble hinterland, goes to make up Kaiser 

 Wilhelms Land, or German New Guinea. 

 In both of these districts there are a con- 

 siderable number of white settlements 

 and mission stations ; and mining and 

 copra farming are carried on. The great 

 western region of Papua is Dutch and it 

 is of this region that we are dealing 

 especially. 



The Dutch- section attracts the student 

 of zoology, ethnography, or geology par- 

 ticularly. The presence of snow moun- 

 tains, whose slopes have never yet been 

 trodden by white man's foot, conjures up 

 in the imagination endless dreams as to 

 what new forms of life may there await 

 a discoverer. Several well-equipped ex- 

 peditions sent out by the Dutch scientific 

 societies or by the government have 



failed to even reach the bases of these 

 mountains. 



Owing to the extremely unhealthy cli- 

 mate and the character of the natives, the 

 Hollanders have not attempted to admin- 

 ister this territory as the English and 

 Germans do theirs. Other island pos- 

 sessions, nearer at hand and far more 

 valuable- from every point of view, have 

 done much to retard the Papuan trade, 

 and now only a couple of times a year do 

 subsidized trading vessels visit this coast. 

 Three Residents, one stationed at Dorey, 

 one at Fak Fak, and one at Merauke, 

 each with a small garrison of Javanese 

 troops, serve to represent the sovereignty 

 of Holland over this vast region. 



It is this very absence of white folk 

 which gives this land an added inter- 

 est, for here the native may be seen in 

 his primitive simplicity. With such a be- 

 wildering variety of human types among 

 the Papuan tribes, each speaking its own 

 language, the ethnologist has a great field, 

 one which is certainly unexcelled. The 

 writer has visited the northwest and west 

 coasts of the island with his wife and two 

 friends, who volunteered their aid in col- 

 lecting, and Chinese and Javanese 

 helpers. 



Leaving Soerabaia, in Java, a long and 

 beautiful sail, with stops at many is- 

 lands almost as interesting as our goal, 

 brought us to Ternate, one of the old set- 

 tlements of the Moluccas. Here the se- 

 ries of contract stops was about finished, 

 and, thanks to the kindness of officials 

 high in the Dutch Indian service and to 

 the officers of the Koninklijke Paketvaart 

 Maatschappij, we started on a number of 

 visits to many villages, lying in bays 

 abounding in glorious scenery and where 

 the natives had, in some cases, seen no 

 white men in several years. Mrs Barbour 

 was always the greatest source of inter- 



Copyright, by Thomas Barbour, 1908 



