Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/224

210 Australia, the scenery of New Guinea appears especially grand and imposing. It differs greatly in character.

Tbe natives of the coast evidently belong to two distinct races. From a point rather to the westward of Port Moresby right on to Aroma, the people are light-colored, of tall and graceful figure, grave in manner, taciturn, and abhorring cannibalism. The men's dress is simply a strip of bark twisted into a string. The wearers of this express great contempt for neighboring tribes who go perfectly naked. The other race is black, of shorter and sturdier figure, nimble, cheerful, loquacious, and cannibal. The men wear a curious and decent costume of leaf. The women of both races wear the titi petticoat of grass, which is very like a ballet-dancer's skirt. At Port Moresby the houses are built half in the water. At Tupu-selei, Kailè, and Kappa-kappa, they stand out in the sea at a distance of a couple of hundred yards from the beach. Throughout the parts of New Guinea with which I am acquainted, the inhabitants are ingenious and industrious agriculturists, and carefully fence in their plantations. Their houses are large and well built. They make very fine fishing-nets. The canoes of Port Moresby are of enormous size, and the trees out of which they are dug are procured by barter from tribes living a long way off. The Port Moresby pottery is made in large quantities for export; as is a finer kind at Toulon Island by the dark race. This shows that both races engage in manufacturing industry for the express purpose of trading with the products, a thing of happy augury for their future progress.

My second trip to New Guinea included visits to the Louisiades, to Woodlark Island, to Rook and Long Islands, and to the mainland near Cape King William. The Louisiade people are in physique and knowledge of the arts inferior to both races of Southeastern New Guinea. Many of them are quite unfamiliar with white men. But I found, even among them, some who had heard of Queen Victoria, a name which is so frequently known and so greatly respected throughout the Southwestern Pacific that the stranger is fairly astonished. A native of Joannet Island intimated that he was aware that Queen Victoria was the chief of Cooktown, the little port in Northern Queensland. On Rossel Island I noticed, in the case of some of the men, the curious dentition which the eminent Russian traveler, Dr.Miklukho Maclay, has called "macrodontism." A continuous tooth extends over the space usually occupied by two or three teeth. The Woodlark-Islanders are very fierce, and at one time I thought a collision with them inevitable. They make the same curious gesture of salutation as the Basilaki (or Moresby) islanders, pinching first the nose with one hand and then the navel with the other, finishing up with a low bow.

The natives of the northeast coast of New Guinea whom I met were black, and not superior in physique to the Louisiade people.