New Guinea. 41 



with us on something like terms of equality, bartering with us, 

 teaching us their words, and learning some of ours, laughing, 

 jokiug, and engaging in sports like our Erroobian friends, these 

 Australians sat listlessly looking on, standing where we told 

 them, fetching anything, or doing anything we ordered them 

 with great docility indeed, but with complete want of interest 

 and curiosity. In our endeavours to get words from them, they 

 merely repeated our sounds or imitated our gestures. AVhen 

 they spoke, it was difficult to catch the sound, so different was 

 their speech from the clear, open enunciation of the Erroobians. 

 With the latter we often eat, as they were perfectly clean ; but 

 these Australians on our shooting a kite or two, instantly seized 

 them, plucked off some of the feathers, and then warming the 

 body a little at the fire, tore it open, and eat it up entrails and 

 all. These Australians at Cape York precisely resembled thosfe 

 of the rest of the continent as I have myself seen them, and as 

 they have been described by other voyagers. The Torres Straits 

 islanders on the contrary evidently belong to the great Papuan 

 race, which extends from Timor and the adjacent islands, through 

 !N"ew Guinea, New Ireland, and New Caledonia, to the Eiii 

 Islands. 



It is singular enough, that in Torres Strait, the line of 

 demarcation should be almost equally strong and precise between 

 two kinds of vegetation, and two groups of the lower order of 

 animals, as between two varieties of the human race. The dull 

 -and sombre vegetation of Australia spreads all over Cape York 

 and the immediately adjacent islands. Wide forests of Jarge but 

 ragged stemmed gum-trees, constitute the characteristic of this 

 vegetation. Here and there are gullies with jungles of more um- 

 brageous foliage, and some palms, but the mass of the Avoods are 

 arid, hot and dusty, the leaves not only small, but dry and 

 brittle, and the marks of frequent fires everywhere apparent in 

 calcined rocks, and blackened stems and fallen trunks. On the 

 islands of the northern side of Torres Strait, not a gum-tree is to 

 be seen, the woods are close, lofty, and afford the deepest and 

 most refreshing shade, often matted into impenetrable thickets by 

 creepers and undergrowth, but adorned with varied foliage, with 

 the cocoa-nut, the plantain, the bamboo, and other plants, not 

 only beautiful, but useful to man. On the New Guinea coast, 

 the vegetation is of the rankest and most luxuriant character, 

 even for the tropics. One vast dark jungle spreads over its 

 muddy shores, abounding in immense forest trees, whose trunks 

 are hidden by groves of sago-palms, and myriads of other heat 

 and moisture loving plants. 



In the vegetable kingdom, a reason for the difference might be 

 sought in the variation of the climate. Erom the abundance of 



