146 NOTICES OF BOOKS. 
the territory claimed by the Government of the Netherlands, 
about Longitude 141° K., to East Cape including certain adja- 
cent islands. A High Commissioner (Major-General Sir 
PETER SCRATCHLEY, R.E.) has been appointed, and may per- 
haps soon be heard of off the coast of the Protectorate. In 
the meantime the work of Messrs. CHaLMers and Guixt, 
which has been lately published, comes opportunely to afford 
the most recent information, from those best qualified to 
give it, of the territory in which Great Britain has acquired 
new interests and responsibilities, and of the manners and 
customs of the tribes inhabiting it. 
The authors are missionaries of the London Missionary 
Society, but their book is no mere chronicle of mission work ; 
it contains valuable ethnographical notes about comparatively 
unknown tribes, and records of exploration in new regions. The 
mission, which dates only from 1871, seems now to be firmly 
established ; the head-quarters of the missionaries are at Port 
Moresby, while thirty-two native teachers, most of them South 
Sea Islanders, but some of them New Guinea converts, are sta- 
tioned at various villages along the south-eastern coast of the 
great island between Motu-Motu and Hast Cape. 
The only specimen of the language given consists of the 
names of the months (thirteen) and the numerals in the 
Motu dialect, which is used by the natives of Port Moresby. 
Other dialects are mentioned——Roro, Hula, Koiari, &c.—and the 
natives of different districts seem to be unintelligible to each 
other. At Teste Island several Polynesian words were recog- 
nised in the conversation of the natives with each other. 
The people of Port Moresby speak of themselves as being 
of the same origin as the natives of the gulf of Papua. “ Two 
men sprung out of the earth—Kerimaikuku and Kerimaikape— 
but no woman; their only companion was a female dog. 
Anxious for children, a daughter and a son were born to them. 
When these were grown up they married, and children being 
born the inhabitants soon numbered fourteen. ‘They then 
separated, two going right back to the mountains, and from 
them sprung the great Koiari tribe; two going not so far 
inland, and dwelling on the’ low lands and from them sprung 
the Koitapuans, a tribe of sorcerers; the remainder all going 
to Elema, where they remained many generations.” 
