416 
COMPENDIUM OF GEOGRAPHY AND TRAVEL 
number of inhabitants in the, bay is about 4000. 
Although fond of hunting, they are chiefly an agricul¬ 
tural people, growing yams, sweet potatoes, and bananas ; 
but a good deal of the cultivation is done by the women. 
Maklai introduced maize among them with much success. 
From the head of Astrolabe Bay to Hatzfeldthafen, 
the next station, is a distance of about 100 miles. The 
coast is bold and precipitous, and without reefs, and the 
land much elevated, though, as far as is known, without 
ranges of very great altitude. The development of the 
station has not been so much pressed as at Finschhafen 
and in the Bismarck Archipelago, and occasional diffi¬ 
culties have occurred with the natives. A certain 
amount of planting has nevertheless been undertaken 
with fair success. Inland from Hatzfeldthafen to the 
north-west the country is promising, with wide valleys 
and open tracts of lalang grass alternating with the 
forest. There is a good deal of native cultivation, and 
more or less trade among the villages. Sixty miles 
farther to the north-west, the mouth of the Kaiserin 
Augusta Biver is reached, its fresh water colouring the 
sea for some miles from shore. It is without a delta, 
and has no bar interfering with navigation, and may be 
thus considered almost as important a waterway as the 
Fly Biver. It has been ascended to a point distant 380 
miles from the mouth, at which spot it had still a depth 
of 10 feet. It is a river which thus affords access to a 
considerable extent of country, and its value is still 
further increased by its navigability for large ocean¬ 
going steamers for a distance of over 100 miles. The 
O o 
banks are high, but are periodically overflowed during 
the rainy season. From the Kaiserin Augusta north¬ 
westwards towards the Dutch boundary the land is much 
flatter, these low elevations apparently being continuous 
