_Communication with Amboina and Merauke—Sail in the
“Valk” to the Utakwa River—Removal of the Dutch
Expedition—View of Mount Carstensz—Dugongs—Crowded
Ship—Dayaks and Live Stock—Sea-Snakes—Excitable
Convicts—The Island River—Its Great Size—Another Dutch
Expedition—Their Achievements—Houses in the Trees—Large
Village—Barn-like Houses—Naked People—Shooting Lime—Their
Skill in Paddling—Through the Marianne Straits—An
Extract from Carstensz—Merauke—Trade in Copra—Botanic
Station—The Mission—The Ké Island Boat-builders—The
Natives of Merauke described—Arrival of our Third Batch
of Coolies—The Feast of St. Nicholas—Return to Mimika._
It has been mentioned in the preceding chapters that after the
expedition landed in New Guinea, a more or less regular communication
was kept up between the Mimika and Amboina. The South-west coast of
New Guinea as far East as the Utanata River is in the administrative
district of Amboina, and beyond that, as far as the boundary of British
New Guinea, the country is nominally under the control of the station
of Merauke. Thus the Mimika is actually within the Merauke district,
but it was for many reasons found more convenient for the Government
to communicate with the expedition directly from Amboina rather than
by way of Merauke; accordingly the soldiers forming our escort were
attached as an outpost to the garrison of Amboina and communications
were established with that place.
For several months a steamer came from Amboina to the Mimika, bringing
men and stores and letters and taking away invalids; usually it came
every six or eight weeks, and the longest interval that occurred was
twelve weeks, during which for one reason or another it was found
impossible to send a ship to the Mimika. In October an alteration was
made, and it was decided that the Merauke steamer, which was in regular
communication with the Dutch expeditions on the Utakwa and Island
rivers, should visit the Mimika also. It was in consequence of this
new arrangement on the part of the Government that I was enabled to
make the journey described below, and although these places do not fall
strictly within the sphere of our expedition, yet they are so little
known that I shall make no apology for giving a short description of
them here.
Towards the end of November, the Government steamer _Valk_ called at
the Mimika on its way to the Utakwa and Island rivers to take away
our sick men, who had accumulated in some numbers during the last two
months. Our work was practically at a standstill, and nothing more
could be done until our next batch of coolies arrived, so it was agreed
that I should go down to Merauke in company with Shortridge, who was
going home an invalid, and bring back our new coolies who were due to
arrive there by the next boat early in December.
[Sidenote: THE UTAKWA RIVER]
A few hours’ steaming from the Mimika brought us to the mouth of the
Utakwa, where we lay outside the bar all night waiting for daylight to
find our way into the channel. When we had entered the river it was
evident that the Utakwa was something very different from the Mimika,
which is a mere ditch in comparison with it; it is indeed to the Mimika
as the Severn is to the Wye. It was tantalising to remember that this
was the river by which we had originally intended to enter the country,
and one could not help regretfully wondering what would have been the
result if we had followed out that plan; but it was at the best an
unprofitable speculation, and one had to rest content (or as content
as possible) with the course we had taken. In any case it was certain
that even if we had taken the Utakwa as our point of entering into the
country, we could not possibly have reached any considerable height in
the Snow Mountains with the means, i.e. the men, at our disposal.
Near its mouth and for some miles inland the Utakwa is about half a
mile wide and bounded by low banks of Mangrove and Nipa-palm. The
_Valk_ was a ship of about five hundred tons drawing twelve feet of
water. We steamed up the river for about seventeen miles and there
anchored, not from lack of water, but on account of the risk of turning
the ship round against a strong current in the somewhat narrowing
channel. From the anchorage a steam launch and boats were sent on to
the base camp of the Government expedition, which had been established
rather more than thirty miles further up the river.
We waited for three days while that expedition was being brought away,
and after the first day the _Valk_ went down to the mouth of the river
on account of the mosquitoes at the anchorage; they were a small black
species, and they came out of the swamps by day as well as by night in
swarms, and attacked everybody on board so furiously that life became
quite intolerable. Before we left the anchorage up the river we saw
a magnificent view of the snows of Mount Carstensz towering up over
the morning mists. From there the Snow Mountains, making as it were a
steep wall across the view to the North, appear far more imposing than
they do in the rather sidelong view from the Mimika; and the different
aspect of the precipices as seen from the Utakwa was most instructive.
Whilst we were waiting at the mouth of the river we were visited by
several parties of natives in canoes, who came, they informed us, from
a large village on the Kupera Pukwa, the next river to the west of the
Utakwa. They appeared to use the same, or almost the same, language as
the people of Mimika, and they were very anxious that we should go and
visit their village, but unfortunately we had no means of doing so.
An interesting sight at the mouth of the Utakwa were the Dugongs
(_Halicore australis_), which were seen feeding on the weeds in the
shallow water and occasionally rose up and stared at us in a curiously
human manner. They are about eight feet long and are perfectly
inoffensive creatures, but they have been “fished” for with nets and
almost exterminated in many places on account of their valuable oil.
[Illustration: TYPES OF TAPIRO PYGMIES.]
[Sidenote: DUTCH EXPEDITION]
The Dutch expedition came down to us in detachments during the three
days that we waited at the mouth of the river. There were Captain
Van der Bie, in command; Mr. J. M. Dumas, surveyor and naturalist;
three white sergeants, about fifty native soldiers and convicts,
and twenty Dayaks of Dutch Borneo, who came down the river in the
long canoes they had built themselves. There was also an Australian
collector, Mr. Meek and two assistants, who had been attached to the
Dutch expedition to make collections of birds and butterflies for a
private museum in England. With Mr. Meek were ten natives of Port
Moresby in British New Guinea, little brown, fuzzy-headed fellows full
of life and merriment; they were in every way so different from the
sombre and unemotional Papuans that it was difficult to realise that
they were both natives of the same island.
The Utakwa expedition had been in the country for seven months and
had traversed a considerable extent of country, but those months
coincided with the period of the worst weather—one cannot talk of wet
and dry seasons in that region—and like us they had suffered from the
shortcomings of their coolies; the Dayaks had reached them too late
to be of much service to the expedition. From their base camp at the
head of steam-launch navigation they had gone two days further up the
river in canoes, and then had gone a distance of seven marches towards
Mount Carstensz. The furthest point they reached was at an altitude of
about 3000 feet, and was less than twenty miles distant from the snow,
but the views of the country that they saw were not sufficient to show
whether that was the best route to the highest mountains. One of the
principal objects of the Government in despatching that expedition to
the Utakwa was to discover a convenient way of crossing New Guinea,
and when it was found that the Utakwa led apparently to the highest
mountain in the island, it was decided to withdraw the expedition, and
to concentrate all the exploring energies on the Island River, which
seemed to offer a better prospect of accomplishing that purpose.
When all these people had been taken on board the _Valk_, the decks
of the little ship were crowded to overflowing with gear and men and
wild animals. They had brought some young wild pigs, a number of
crowned and other kinds of pigeons, and several young cassowaries.
Mr. Dumas brought on board three eggs, from which were hatched pretty
little cassowary chicks during the next few days. We were particularly
struck by the appearance of the Dayaks, any one of whom looked more
than a match for three of our Malay coolies. Apart from their apparent
strength, they differed noticeably from the Malays, who like to spend
their days in sleeping between meals, in their unceasing industry; they
had brought on board quantities of bamboo, from which they at once
started making bird cages, and pieces of hard wood, out of which they
carved handles for their knives and other ornamental objects.
The ship was so heavily laden that it was impossible to take on
board all the boats that had been used by the Utakwa expedition, and
three or four were towed in a long string astern. Fortunately the
sea was exceptionally smooth, but even so one of these, an almost
new “long-boat,” broke adrift, and we lost a day in searching for it
unsuccessfully.
[Sidenote: CONVICT LUNATIC]
Whilst we were cruising about looking for the lost boat, one of our
passengers, a fever-stricken soldier from the Mimika, caused some
excitement by stabbing with his knife another man and then jumping
hastily into the sea. The sudden plunge cooled his fever and the
appearance of a sea-snake swimming not far from him made him as anxious
to return to the ship as he had been to leave it.
During the voyage down the coast we saw a number of sea-snakes,
sometimes as far as thirty or forty miles from land, but there was no
opportunity of catching one; they appeared to be yellowish with dark
markings and were about three or four feet in length. I was told that
they sometimes travel in large numbers together and will climb up the
sides of ships at anchor, but I cannot vouch for the correctness of
this statement.
Another episode, which enlivened the voyage down to Merauke, was caused
by the strange behaviour of one of the convicts, who was being taken
away from the Mimika. This man had suffered from the common form of
delusion that everybody was against him, and after he had run away
from the camp at Wakatimi and had spent thirty-six hours in the jungle
without food I certified that he was of unsound mind and recommended
that he should be sent back to Java. He was found prowling about the
ship with an exceedingly sharp knife, with which (so he said) he
intended to murder me, so he was promptly secured in chains. We made
friends in a day or two and he was set at liberty again before we
reached Merauke, but I confess I was not sorry when we were no longer
together in the same ship.
[Sidenote: THE ISLAND RIVER]
On the second day after leaving the Utakwa we entered the Island River
by one of its many mouths, and after we had gone up it a few miles we
realised that in the matter of size it is to the Utakwa as that river
is to the Mimika. The banks are low and swampy and mostly covered
with mangroves for several miles from the coast. Further on the banks
are a few feet above the level of high water and we saw many trees
that looked like good timber trees and others of considerable beauty,
notably a wide-spreading acacia-like tree (_Albizia moluccana_), and
a very graceful palm (_Oncosperma filamentosum_) like a Betel-nut
palm growing in clumps by the waterside. We noticed also a number
of Bread-fruit trees (_Artocarpus_ sp.) bigger than any I have seen
elsewhere, but none of them appeared to bear fruit.
We steamed up the river for one hundred and twelve nautical miles to
the _Swallow_, the depôt ship and base camp of the Dutch exploring
expedition. The river at that point is about three hundred yards wide,
but the current is swift and there are many shallow sand banks, which
make further navigation impossible for a ship as large as the _Valk_.
[Illustration: A PAPUAN WITH TWO TAPIRO PYGMIES.]
The Dutch expedition had been established for several months in the
country and had made very considerable progress towards the North.
From the _Swallow_ they had proceeded up the river two days’ journey
by steam launch and six days beyond that by canoes as far as the river
was navigable, a distance of more than one hundred miles. Thence they
had gone North, and in nine marches they had reached a height of ten
thousand feet at a point which appeared to be on the watershed of the
main mountain range of the island. One of the principal objects of
the expedition was to cross New Guinea from South to North, and it was
hoped that from the furthest point they had reached they would soon
arrive at one of the upper tributaries of the Kaiserin Augusta, the
large river which enters the sea in German territory. They were at that
time busily occupied in transporting supplies up to their furthest
camp with a view to continuing the journey, but shortly afterwards the
expedition was crippled by sickness and the project was abandoned.
We spent two days alongside of the _Swallow_ transferring to her the
stores and many of the men that we had brought from the Utakwa and
taking away the sick and time-expired members of the Island River
expedition, amongst them being Lieut. Van der Wenn of the Netherlands
Navy, who was attached to the expedition as surveyor.
On our way down the Island River we saw many things which we had missed
on the way up, because we had entered the river and steamed up through
several hours of darkness. First we came to isolated houses by the
river bank of the same type as the Mimika houses, but larger and better
built; near them we saw a few natives, who appeared to be very shy and
retreated hastily into the jungle when the steamer approached.
Lower down, when we were within about thirty miles of the sea, we came
to a large village of fifty or sixty houses, some of which were raised
on piles near the edge of the river and the others were built in the
trees, where they presented a most astonishing appearance. They are
square and apparently well-made houses with ridgepole roof and walls of
“atap,” the entrance is by a hole in the floor which is reached by a
vertical ladder of bamboo from the ground. One house was at a height of
certainly not less than sixty feet above the ground in a very slender
tree, and the position of the inhabitants, when the wind blew, must
have been far from enviable. Unfortunately the sun was low and directly
behind the village so that I was unable to obtain photographs of the
tree-dwellings. The people there showed no fear of us, but stood on the
bank and shouted and waved their spears.
A few miles further down the river we came to another large village of
yet a different character. The houses there were all built on piles,
but while a few of them were of the usual small size, the majority were
quite unlike anything else we had seen in that part of New Guinea. They
were huge barn-like structures raised on piles ten or more feet above
the ground, and the length of some of them must have been from one
hundred and fifty to two hundred feet. It was quite evident that these
were communal dwellings, indicating a social system entirely different
from that of the surrounding districts, and it was very tantalising
to pass them within a few yards and not to be able to visit them. The
village extended for about a mile along the East bank and the natives
that we saw must have numbered at least a thousand. The men were all
entirely naked and the women were only dressed in the scantiest strip
of bark-cloth. In other respects they appeared, as far as one could
tell from such a rapid survey of them, to be very similar to the Mimika
Papuans in their features and their short hair and their absence of
adornments.
[Sidenote: INTERESTING PEOPLE]
Crowds of people lined the river bank and some of them, holding short
bamboos in their hands, jerked them in our direction and from the end
came out a white cloud of powdered lime, which looked like smoke. This
custom was noticed by Rawling when he first visited the village of
Nimé, and it was recorded by some of the early voyagers,[20] but the
meaning of it has not yet been explained. The suggestion that it is a
means of imitating the appearance of fire-arms is ingenious, but it can
hardly be seriously considered.
While most of the people stood on the bank to see us pass, a number
of men jumped into their canoes and came racing after us. The current
of the river was about two, and the speed of the _Valk_ was seven
knots, so they had to move quickly, but they easily overtook us and
followed us for some distance down the river. Their canoes are simple
“dug-outs,” but they differ from those of the Mimika in coming to a
fine point at both ends. The bow is roughly notched on the upper side,
which gives it somewhat the appearance of a bird’s beak. They seem also
to be considerably lighter than the Mimika craft, and so narrow that a
man could hardly sit down in them. The usual number of a crew is nine
or ten men, who all stand up and all paddle on the same side of the
canoe. The regular swing of their bodies and the perfect precision of
the paddling was a sight prettier than any “eight” I have ever seen.
They called to us and waved bundles of arrows, evidently anxious to
trade with us, but the captain of the _Valk_ was unable to stop, so we
threw overboard for them empty tins and bottles, and it was marvellous
to see how they raced up to these things, and with a sudden backward
stroke of their paddles brought the canoes to a standstill, while they
recovered the prize, and then raced on again.
From the mouth of the Island River, as we went out to sea, we saw
through a break in the clouds to the far North the snow on Mount
Wilhelmina, which was reached by Mr. H. A. Lorentz in November, 1909.
Steaming in a south-easterly direction we kept some way out from the
land, which is so low as to be invisible at a distance of a few miles.
When we were opposite the Digoel, the greatest (excepting the Fly) of
all the South New Guinea rivers, we found the sea strewn with logs and
trees, in some places so many together as to form floating islands, on
which crowds of gulls and terns were seen to settle at nightfall.
The tide favouring us, we chose the Marianne Strait between the
mainland and Prince Frederick Henry Island. Sometimes, when the
south-east monsoon has been blowing regularly for a few days, it is
quite impossible for a ship of only moderate power to steam through
it against the current. The Strait is a winding channel about ninety
miles long and has an average width of about two miles, and it is not
surprising that early voyagers, even as late as Kolff, in the Dutch
brig-of-war, _Dourga_, in 1826, mistook it for a river. The banks are
low and forest-covered, and we only saw two small clusters of houses.
From one of these some men put off in a canoe to intercept us and
followed us for some distance, calling “_Kaya-Kaya_” (friend).[21]
They were tall and powerful-looking men, entirely naked except for a
small shell attached to a string about the middle, and their great mats
of hair extending down to the shoulders and beyond showed most clearly
that we had come to yet another tribe quite distinct from the people of
the Island River.
[Sidenote: JAN CARSTENSZ]
Jan Carstensz, who visited this coast in 1623, gives a good description
of the land and the people:[22] “It is impossible to land here with
boats or pinnaces owing to the clayey and muddy bottom into which a man
will sink up to the waist, the depth of the water being no more than
three or four fathoms at three or four miles distant from the land. The
land is low-lying and half submerged, being quite under water at high
tide; it is covered with wild trees, those on the beach resembling the
fir-trees of our country, and seemingly bear no fruit. The natives are
coal black like the Kaffirs and they go about stark naked. They have
two holes in the midst of the nose, with fangs of hogs or sword-fishes
through them, protruding at least three fingers’ breadth on either
side, so that in appearance they are more like monsters than human
beings, they seem to be evil-natured and malignant. The lands which we
have up to now skirted and touched at not only are barren and inhabited
by savages, but also the sea in these parts yields no other fish than
sharks, sword-fishes, and the like unnatural monsters, while the birds
too are as wild and shy as the men.” Further to the East he found the
people “cunning and suspicious, and no stratagem on our part availed
to draw them near enough to us to enable us to catch one or two with
nooses which we had prepared for the purpose.” Suspicion of the unknown
is in the nature of savage people, and when we read that “in order to
frighten them the corporal fired a musket, which hit them both, so that
they died on the spot,” we no longer wonder that they appeared to Jan
Carstensz to be “evil-natured and malignant.” But times have changed
and the Dutch navigator of to-day is not less humane than any other.
[Sidenote: MERAUKE]
After coming out of the Marianne Straits we noticed a change in the
appearance of the land; the smoke of villages appeared at frequent
intervals and the shore was seen to be fringed by a continuous belt of
coco-palms in place of the mangrove to which we had become accustomed.
In a few hours from the Marianne Straits we came to the mouth of the
Merau River and after steaming up it for about four miles we dropped
anchor opposite the Dutch station of Merauke, where we left the ship
and went ashore.
[Illustration:
1. ARM-BAND OF FIBRES, ORNAMENTED WITH COWRY SHELLS.
2. PART OF WAIST-BAND, ORNAMENTED WITH SHELLS AND SEEDS.
3. ARM-BAND OF FIBRE.
4. BASKET OF PLAITED STRIPS OF LEAVES.
5. BAMBOO ORNAMENT WORN ON THE NECK.
6. COLLAR MADE OF FIBRE AND CASSOWARY FEATHERS.
7. BAMBOO TOBACCO-PIPE, USED BY THE TAPIRO PYGMIES.
8. BASKET OF FIBRE.
9. PART OF THE BILL OF A HORNBILL, WORN IN THE NOSE.]
The Dutch people have an inborn preference for low-lying land on which
to place their stations, but not the most enthusiastic fenman would
have voluntarily chosen Merauke as a place for a settlement. The reason
of its existence is a political one. Formerly the natives of the
district, the Tugeri, a very fierce and warlike people, used to have
the habit of making raids to the Eastward into British territory,
whence they brought slaves and the heads of their fallen enemies.
This became such a nuisance that the Australian Government addressed
protests to the Dutch about the lawless behaviour of their subjects,
and in 1902 the Dutch made the station of Merauke, and established
there a small garrison of about one hundred men. The place was chosen
partly because it was in the centre of the district of the Tugeri, and
partly because on that shallow coast the Merau River alone offered a
safe harbour for ships. It is a dreary enough place on the muddy bank
of the river and surrounded on the other sides by swamps, but the Dutch
have made the best of a bad job, and by laborious ditching and dyking
they have made the place fairly secure from floods; in spite of all
their draining, however, there are more mosquitoes there than in any
other inhabited place I have ever visited.
Like other Dutch settlements Merauke is laid out on a regular and
spacious plan, plenty of room being left between the houses of the
officials and the quarter occupied by the shops of the Chinese, of
which there are about a dozen. There are (or were in 1910) sixteen
Europeans[23] in the place, all of them in the employment of the
Government except two, the representatives of an European trading firm.
The principal trade of the place is in copra obtained from the hundreds
of thousands of coco-palms, which line the neighbouring sea-shore.
These palms are the property of the natives, who are too lazy to take
advantage of the wealth that lies (or rather hangs) at their doors,
and they do not encourage other people to come and make use of it.
There is a small force of native police under a Dutch officer, and a
few convicts are employed in keeping the station in order. It may not
be out of place to remark here that the nearest Dutch settlement is at
Fak-fak on the S.W. corner of the MacCluer Gulf, seven hundred miles in
a straight line from Merauke. Besides these two places the only other
Dutch garrison is at Manokwari (Dorei Bay) on the north coast, where
there has been a mission station for more than fifty years. Apart from
civilian and military officials, missionaries and two or three agents
of a commercial firm there are no settlers in the huge territory of
Dutch New Guinea.
A former Resident of Merauke, who had somewhat inflated ideas of the
future of the country, established an experimental botanic garden on
the only patch of dry ground near Merauke. Attached to the garden is
a large building containing rooms for three Europeans, laboratories,
a dark room and so on, which (it was hoped) would attract scientific
agriculturists and botanists from other countries to come and study
the local _flora_. But no sane person wishes to study the _flora_ of
New Guinea in the middle of a swamp, and already the scanty soil was
showing signs of exhaustion at the roots of the experimental bananas,
and the practically-minded Resident was considering the removal of
the house to Dobo or elsewhere as a dwelling for himself, when the
contemplated abandonment of Merauke as a “Residency” should take place.
Another interesting building at Merauke is the house of the Mission
of the Sacred Heart, an offshoot from the mission at Toeal. It must,
I am afraid, be admitted that Merauke is not a favourable field for
missionary enterprise, and the most notable achievements of the good
fathers there are the admirable house they have built, and the herd
of cattle which they contrive to keep. They teach a very small class
of the native children, but nearly all of them relapse again very
soon into savagery, and the adults, who have remained faithful to the
mission, are very few, and they are not the best specimens of their
race.
[Sidenote: BOAT BUILDERS]
Recently the ubiquitous Chinese have discovered that the sea in the
neighbourhood of Merauke is a most profitable fishing ground, and the
results of their labours are spread abroad to dry in the sun, so that
there are times when the air is almost too strong to be breathed.
The fishery has attracted some men from the Ké Islands, who are the
best boat builders in the Eastern Archipelago, and I spent many hours
watching them at their work. Their tools consist only of an axe, an
adze and an auger, and no nails or metal are used in the construction
of a boat. The planks are about three inches thick and are made each
from a single tree hewn to the required shape. Holes are bored at
intervals along the edge of the plank, and into these are fixed pegs of
wood which fit into corresponding holes in the edge of the succeeding
plank. When the shell of the boat is completed, the ribs, each made
from a single piece of bent wood, are fitted to the inside. The
fitting of the planks is so accurate that the boats require little or
no caulking, and they are ready to take the water as soon as they are
built.
[Sidenote: NATIVES OF MERAUKE]
But by far the most interesting feature of Merauke are the natives of
the place, whose independent mien and conservative customs fill the
observer with admiration if not with approval. It is now nearly ten
years since the Dutch settled at Merauke, but in all that time, apart
from curbing somewhat their head-hunting propensities, they have made
very little impression on the natives, who still cling (if one may use
somewhat of an Irishism) to their scanty costume of nothing at all,
and refuse absolutely the beads and cloth and other “trade-goods” of
the invading white man. They stroll about the place in a most lordly
manner, and they like to visit the houses of the Europeans, where they
spend hours disdainfully watching other people at their work.
In appearance they differ from the Papuans of the Mimika in their
somewhat paler skin and in their features, which are markedly of the
(so-called) “Semitic” type with prominent eyes and long, curving,
fleshy nose. They are very fond of personal adornment and paint their
faces with white, red, and yellow colours; a fashionable but very
unsightly decoration is to paint the eyelids and eyelashes white.
Through the _septum_ of the nose is thrust a long piece of white bone
or shell, and in the _alae nasi_, which are also pierced, are often
worn the claws of a large eagle which project forwards, and give the
man a most ferocious aspect (see illustration opposite).
[Illustration: A NATIVE OF MERAUKE.
(_Wearing the claws of an eagle in the nose._)]
[Illustration: NATIVES OF MERAUKE.]
Some of the more dandyfied individuals are loaded with necklaces of
shells or teeth of dogs, sharks and crocodiles, and bands or belts of
the same things are crossed on the chest. Rings of boars’ tusks
and plaited fibres almost cover the upper arms, and in the ears are
worn bunches of large rings of tortoiseshell and bamboo. The hair is
long and is plaited with a mixture of mud and grass and feathers into
a solid bunch, which hangs down beyond the level of the shoulders. In
some of these head-dresses I saw plumes of the Greater, the Red and the
King birds of Paradise; it appears that when once they are made these
head-dresses may be added to, but they can never be undone, and they
are accordingly indescribably dirty. These people are characterised by
a pungent and most disagreeable odour, quite different from the sickly
sweet smell of the sago-eating Mimika people.
Another curious custom of the Merauke natives is their habit of wearing
round the waist a belt of pigskin, which cannot be removed, and is
so tight that it constricts the man to an (apparently) most painful
degree; the women of the tribe do not indulge in this practice.
Two days after our arrival the monthly mail-steamer came bringing
our forty-eight new coolies from Macassar, and on the following day
it sailed again, taking Shortridge on his way back to England. For a
week longer I received the most kind hospitality from the Resident,
Mr. E. Kalff, until we returned to the Mimika. During that week of
waiting our new coolies, who had heard terrible stories of the Mimika,
declared that they would never go there, and they attacked with knives
the guards who were placed to keep them in order. When I told them
that if they had no liking for the Mimika they were perfectly at
liberty to go and live near Merauke, the stories they heard of the
habits of the Tugeri put an immediate end to the strike, and they came
contentedly enough to the Mimika. They were more fortunate than some of
their predecessors, and all returned to their homes at the end of the
expedition.
The Dutch have a pleasant sentiment with regard to the customs of
their native land, and at Merauke, the most remote outpost of Holland,
the feast of S. Nicholas was celebrated with due ceremony. All the
Europeans in the place, as well as the Javanese sergeants and clerks
and their children, assembled to meet the Saint, a huge Dutchman
disguised out of all recognition, and all of us, brown and white alike,
received at his hands a present or a mock flogging according to our
deserts.
After spending ten very agreeable days at Merauke we sailed on December
18th and going by way of the Island River, where we landed fresh
men for that expedition, we arrived again at the Mimika on the 22nd
December.