Page:Picturesque New Guinea.djvu/35

Rh and took possession in the name of the Dutch Government of the territory extending from the 141st parallel of E. longitude westward to the sea. He built a fort at a place he called Triton Bay, on the N.W. coast, the scenery around which was very beautiful. But (as a Dutch gentleman at Macassar told Wallace) the officer left in charge of the settlement, finding the life there insufferably monotonous, killed the cattle and other live stock, and reported that they had perished through the unhealthiness of the place, and that, besides, the natives were very fierce and intractable. The settlement at Triton Bay was on this account abandoned. Seven years later another Dutch commander surveyed what was then called the Dourga River, and found it to be a strait, ninety miles long, dividing Frederic Henry Island from the mainland. The Dutch still hold nominal possession of the territory proclaimed by Captain Steenboom, but practically the acquisition is of no value to them.

English Surveys of the Coast.—The southern shores of New Guinea have been mostly surveyed by British ships, Captain Blackwood, in H.M.S. "Fly," discovered in 1843 the river which he named after his ship. The next English commander that surveyed part of New Guinea was Captain Owen Stanley, who, in 1847, in H.M.S. "Rattlesnake," sketched a large extent of the coast and marked off a number of mountains, one of which, called after him, is over 13,000 feet high. In 1873 Captain Moresby, in the "Basilisk" discovered and named Port Moresby, and determined the form of the south-eastern extremity of the island. Hoisting the Queen's flag he took possession in her Majesty's name, by right of discovery, of Moresby Island and the surrounding archipelago.

Attempts at Australian Settlement.—The Australian colonists have not been wholly indifferent to the probable advantages to be gained from effecting a settlement in New Guinea. During the past twenty years several expeditions have been either planned or partially executed with that object, and the Imperial Government has been again and again asked to take action for the establishment of a British occupation of the territory. To these requests unfavourable answers were given,