crooked sticks, placed without any regularity, and looking as if they were
tumbling down. The floors are also formed of sticks, equally irregular, and so
loose and far apart that I found it almost impossible to walls on them. The walls
consist of bits of boards, old boats, rotten mats, attaps, and palm-leaves, stuck in
anyhow here and there, and having altogether the most wretched and dilapidated
appearance it is possible to conceive. Under the eaves of many of the houses
hang human skulls, the trophies of their battles with the savage Arfaks of the
interior, who often come to attack them. A large boat-shaped council-house is
supported on larger posts, each of which is grossly carved to represent a naked
male or female human figure, and other carvings still more revolting are placed
upon the platform before the entrance. The view of an ancient lake-dweller's
village, given as the frontispiece of Sir Charles Lyell's "Antiquity of Man," is
chiefly founded on a sketch of this very village of Dorey; but the extreme
regularity of the structures there depicted has no place in the original, any more
than it probably had in the actual lake-villages.
The people who inhabit these miserable huts are very similar to the Ke and
Aru islanders, and many of them are very handsome, being tall and well-made,
with well-cut features and large aquiline noses. Their colour is a deep brown,
often approaching closely to black, and the fine mop-like heads of frizzly hair
appear to be more common than elsewhere, and are considered a great ornament,
a long six-pronged bamboo fork being kept stuck in them to serve the purpose of
a comb; and this is assiduously used at idle moments to keep the densely
growing mass from becoming matted and tangled. The majority have short
woolly hair, which does not seem capable of an equally luxuriant development.
A growth of hair somewhat similar to this, and almost as abundant, is found
among the half-breeds between the Indian and Negro in South America. Can this
be an indication that the Papuans are a mixed race?
For the first three days after our arrival I was fully occupied from morning to
night building a house, with the assistance of a dozen Papuans and my own men.
It was immense trouble to get our labourers to work, as scarcely one of them
could speak a word of Malay; and it was only by the most energetic
gesticulations, and going through a regular pantomime of what was wanted, that
we could get them to do anything. If we made them understand that a few more
poles were required, which two could have easily cut, six or eight would insist
upon going together, although we needed their assistance in other things. One
morning ten of them came to work, bringing only one chopper between them,
although they knew I had none ready for use.
I chose a place about two hundred yards from the beach, on an elevated