404 
COMPENDIUM OF GEOGRAPHY AND TRAVEL 
ground is everywhere cultivated—sweet potatoes, yams, 
bananas, and sugar-cane being ^grown, and the fields 
fenced as a protection against wild pigs. The coco-nut 
palm is here seen in abundance, but it is far less common 
in Dutch territory, where agriculture is not so much pur¬ 
sued, sago and fish forming the principal diet. " The 
domestic animals are the pig, dog, and fowl, all of which 
are eaten. They also eat the cuscus, kangaroos, lizards, 
fish, and molluscs, as well as many kinds of large insects; 
and in places where they have no communication with 
Malays or Europeans they use salt-water for cooking as 
a substitute for salt. In some parts of German New 
Guinea they make an intoxicating kava by chewing, as 
in the Pacific ;• but this is unusual, and in most places 
they have no intoxicating drink, and are unacquainted 
with the art of fermenting either palm-sap or cane- 
juice. 
Among the Malays of the islands we have hitherto 
considered, the spear and the kris—or some weapon of 
the same nature as the latter—are the characteristic 
arms. Here, in New Guinea, we find these more or less 
supplanted by the bow and arrow and the club. Spears 
are used, tipped with hardened bamboo or bone; and a 
kind of whirl-bat of hard wood elegantly carved, knives 
of obsidian, and axes of jade or greenstone ground to an 
edge are also met with, the latter resembling those of the 
stone age found in Europe. Altogether peculiar to the 
Papuans are the bamboo blow-pipes, which were perhaps 
used for signalling, perhaps with the object of intimida¬ 
tion, by means of dust blown into the air. These do 
not appear to have been noticed by travellers since the 
voyage of Lieutenant Kolff in 1828. The practice was 
first observed by Captain Cook on the south-west coast, 
where also the Dutch found it, and the more probable 
