40 New Guinea. 



JSTow this very remarkable style of native building, indicative as 

 it is of the social system of New Gruinea, is precisely the same as 

 Captain Forrest had observed and described among the natives of 

 Dorg Harbour, on the north-west coast of the great island, a 

 century ago. Tbe on!}' difference is that the building Captain 

 Forrest described in Dorg Harbour was pai'tly built on piles in 

 the sea, into which one of its main entrances opened out into 

 pretty deep water. It was therefore a perfect specimen in actual 

 use of the Lake dwellings of Switzerland and elsewhere in Europe 

 in the pre-historic ages oi man. There was a still further differ- 

 ence in the two cases, for whereas the large building above 

 described was appropriated for the married families and the young 

 women and children, there was a separate and smaller building 

 in Dorg Harbour, as a sort of Bachelors' Hall for the unmarried 

 young men of the community. The whole case, so well described 

 by the two navigators, is one of interest in connection with the 

 science of Ethnology, and the enquiries that are now in progress 

 into the condition and habits of certain of the earlier races of men, 

 and it is earnestly to be desired that the subject should be 

 followed up by further investigation in New Guinea. 



In connection with this very interesting subject, I may observe, 

 that jMr. Jukes draws a comparison or rather contrast, between 

 the Aborigines of Australia and their congeners of the Papuan 

 race in New Guinea and the islands of the Western Pacific, in- 

 cluding the islands in Torres Straits, New Caledonia, the New 

 Hebrides, and the Fiji Islands. " AVe remained three days," he 

 tells us, '• at Evans' Bay [near Cape York] completing our water, 

 where we found a party of five Australians. These men wei'e 

 very quiet and friendly, but contrasted most unfavourably for 

 themselves, with our fi-iends, the Erroobians," the inhabitants of 

 one of the islands in Torres Straits. It was now, indeed, for the 

 first time that I became fully aware of the great difference be- 

 tween the two races, which is both a physical and a mental one. 

 These fine men had the spare thiu-legged, lanky build of all the 

 Australian people. Their colour was of a more sooty black than 

 the islanders, who are of a reddish or yellowish brown. The hair 

 of these Australians, however, was like that of the European race, 

 equally diffused, rather fine, and either straight, or commonly wav- 

 ing in broad open curls. Among the islanders the hair invariably 

 grows in tufts or pencils. In their intellectual qualities and dis- 

 positions, they were still further removed from the islanders, and 

 much below those of Murray and Darnley islands. Houseless and 

 homeless, without gardens or any kind of cultivation, destitute of 

 the cocoa-nut, the bamboo, the plantain, and the yam, as of 

 almost all useful vegetables, they pass their lives either in the 

 search for food, or in listless indolence. Instead of associating 



