440 
COMPENDIUM OF GEOGRAPHY AND TRAVEL 
The western portion is a vast extent of flat, sour land 
and marsh, quite unfit for European population, and 
unsuitable for the growth of most things except the 
sago-palm, while the eastern part is nearly everywhere 
so broken and precipitous as to form an almost hopeless 
barrier to general cultivation. 
The policy adopted by each of the three nations is 
quite distinct. Holland, rich in the possession of an 
enormous area of neighbouring land still undeveloped, has 
been content to let her territory remain untouched. 
Here and there, in this or that village or island, she has 
erected her coat-of-arms; and semi-Malay rajas, hardly 
more advanced in civilisation than the Papuans, hold her 
insignia. An occasional visit from the Resident of 
Ternate serves to keep up in the larger coast villages the 
remembrance of their dependence, but little else is done, 
and there is not even a Postholder in the whole 150,000 
square miles which are believed to constitute her 
possessions. Germany, on the other hand, has set about 
her administration with all the ardour characteristic of a 
nation as yet unversed in the art of colonisation. Ruling 
through a commercial company, the line adopted has been 
more or less commercial, and the chief aim is the further¬ 
ance of agriculture. Hitherto her efforts have not been as 
successful as might be desired. England has sought first 
of all to establish her authority and to introduce order 
and civilisation. In course of time she will look to the 
development of the abundant natural products of the 
country, but cannot now, if ever, hold out hope of success 
to the European planter. The discovery of gold, by no 
means an improbable event, would do much to develop 
the resources of the country, but New Guinea is as yet 
too uncivilised for such a discovery to be dissociated from 
a vast amount of suffering and disorder. Meanwhile the 
