ADMIRALTY ISLANDS. 
135 
fish-spears, carved paddles, stone hatchets, bone daggers, ear-rings, nose ornaments, necklaces, 
breast-shields, bracelets, and wigs we had no doubt considerably reduced—I fear the 
next gathering of the warriors of the tribe must have fallen short of its usual splendour— 
we steamed, before sunset, out of Humboldt Bay. This wide and commodious harbour, 
easily defensible by a few forts at its entrance, which is about a mile and a-half in width, 
and situated in a fertile and apparently healthy district at the foot of the lofty ranges of 
Mount Cyclops and Mount Bougainville, is marked out by nature as an important starting- 
point in the future colonisation of Northern Papua. Its distance from Ternate is little 
more than 800 miles, divided into nearly two equal parts by the Dutch settlement in 
Geelvink Bay, while the navigation presents no unusual difficulties. 
The accounts of the earliest discoverers of the different portions of Papua tally 
exactly with the experience of those on board H.M.S. “ Challenger,” the natives showing 
themselves friendly and hospitable in the face of good treatment, shy and hostile where 
either experience or tradition had made them acquainted with the deadly effect of fire¬ 
arms. Europe has, during the last three centuries, undergone a series of the most astonishing 
transformations, yet no perceptible change seems to have taken place in the habits, 
customs, and outward appearance of the natives of Papua. One of the first European 
navigators in these regions, Grijalva (1537), naively describes them as follows:—“The natives 
are men with woolly hair; they eat human flesh, are great rascals, and given to such 
wickedness that the devils go with them by way of companions.” The Dutch navigator 
Schouten (1616) says of them:—“The inhabitants had short and woolly hair; they wore 
rings in their ears and nostrils, feathers on the head and on the arms, strings of boars’ teeth 
on their necks and on their noses, and a large ornament on their breast. They used betel, 
and were subject to several diseases and deformities.” 
Humboldt Bay was discovered and named by the French navigator Dumont d’Urville, 
commanding the “Astrolabe,” in the year 1827; but he was prevented by the loss of his 
anchors from making a proper survey. He named Mount Bougainville after his predecessor, 
who, in 1768, had visited this part of the coast. 
ADMIRALTY ISLANDS. 
On the 26th we sighted Matty Island about ten miles to the northward ; on the 28th 
Roissy or Rossy, the most northern of the Schouten Islands ; and towards sunset on the 
2nd of March the group of the Hermit Islands was just visible above the horizon about 
twenty miles to the north-west. The following day turned out rainy and misty, and we had 
some difficulty in making the nearest of the Admiralty Islands, our next destination. 
Concluding that we had crossed the meridian of the group of small islands which, according 
to the chart of D’Entrecasteaux, surround the north-western extremity of Admiralty Island, 
the largest of the group, we steered towards the south, and shortly after, the weather clearing 
up, we found ourselves close to the objects of our search. The islands which now lay before 
s 
