66 
Sultan of Tidore, left Teinate in March, 1850, and pro- 
ceeded in the first instance to Port Dory, touching at 
Geby, or Gibby, an island well known to mariners using 
the eastern passages to China, on the route. The com- 
mand of the Expedition was intrusted to Mr. Van Den 
Dungen Gronovius, a gentleman of great colonial expe- 
rience, who had been for several years the government 
resident of the Dutch possessions in Timor; and a 
quantity of presents for the native chiefs, together with a 
number of iron plates, displaying the Netherlands' arms, 
which were intended to be set up on the parts of the 
coast visited by the Expedition, formed part of the 
schooner's lading. The Commissioner was also invested 
with some kind of authority by the Sultan of Tidore, a 
tributary, or rather pension ef, of the Dutch Government, 
who had long claimed a sort of " suzerainty'* over the 
northern and eastern coast of New Guinea, and which he 
had been in tlie habit of enforcing by the periodical dis- 
patch of a flotilla of kora-koras, similar to that which 
attended the war -schooner on the present occasion. A 
very interesting narrative of the voyage of the ' Circe/ 
by Lieutenant Bniija Kops, one of the officers, was 
published in the '* Natuurkundige Tijdschrift voor 
Nederlandsch Indie" for 1S51, a periodical conducted 
by the Baron Melville van Cambce, himself a valuable 
contributor to the ethnography of the Indian Archipelago. 
Lieutenant Bruijn Kops' narrative gives very copious 
details of the habits and characteristics of the tribes 
inhabiting the shores of the Great Bay which separates 
the western from the eastern peninsula of New Guinea ; 
