NEW GUINEA.*
Tins is a singularly interesting book, and conveys, perhaps, a more vivid impression of the new world of New Guinea than many more elaborate and pretentious works. The reason is that the narrative, or narratives—for the book, as it stands, is the product of several pens—which are clearly and succinctly told, are admirably illustrated by excellent photographs. These photographs were taken by Mr. Lindt on the first and ill-fated voyage of the first Governor of New Guinea, Sir Peter Scratchley. They will be of the highest value to the Euro- pean and untravelled ethnologist, archwologist, and botanist. For the student of the Stone Age, and the lake-dwellings especially, they will reproduce in a striking form the subject of their researches. The villages in the sea, consisting of houses built on stakes rather than piles, with their ladders and plat- forms, and children who can swim before they can walk, and the frequent destruction of them by fire, exactly correspond to the reconstructions by archawlogiste of the ancient lake-dwellings of Switzerland. Perhaps, however, even more singular than the sea-dwellings are the tree-dwellings, which to the Darwinian will almost supply a missing link between the rude platforms in trees of the orang-outang and the ordinary human habita- tions on the ground, while we can imagine Mr. Lang finding in them proof of the antiquity of the cradle-song, " Hush-a-bye, baby, on the tree-top," as a survival of the memory of the times when our own ancestors dwelt not merely among the trees, but on them. Another singular feature of Papuan architecture, which is wholly in wood, is a very remarkable spire of wood which adorns the front of the houses of some of the chiefs, formed by the elongation of the ordinary gable in a tapering form up to a height of fifty or sixty feet. The people of New Guinea and the vegetation seem to be, like its geographical situation, "betwixt and between" the Australian and Malay type, being more Australian on the Southern coast, and getting more Malayese inland towards the North. They are of a lightish colour, not black, and, to judge nom the photographs, of a not nnpleasing appearance. " Skin-disease " is, however, we are told, "rife here. We saw a young man walking about the village, with his arm round his sweet- heart's neck, both of them frightfully afflicted. He had a sore on his leg above the ankle, laying bare the bone, while she, not naturally ill-favoured, was covered with large patches which made her look positively mangy. Still, neither of them seemed to mind it in the least, and looked supremely happy." The Papuans appear to be by no means a savage race. Indeed, in some respects they are remarkably advanced. Not only is a regular trade carried on between the sea-dwellers, who supply inlanders with salt and fish in exchange for yams and pigs, but an extensive manufactory of pottery prevails at Port Moresby, the products being carried by long sea-voyages in large ships called lakatois, skilfully constructed of pencil-cedar- tree trunks, and with large sails, in which they even ven- ture out of sight of land, and steer by the sun and stars. They carry sometimes twenty thousand pieces of pottery to the Western tribes, where they are exchanged for sago ; and after weeks of voyage, return home with great pomp and rejoicing. Mr. Chalmers, in a very clear sketch of the industries of the people, tells what Herodotus would call a TEpoc xoyos regarding the ancient origin of this trade, which is fall of incidents that would not discredit a Homeric bard reciting the wanderings of Ulysses and the faithfulness of Penelope, or the voyage of Jason and the Argonauts. So advanced is the art of pottery at the present day, that each of the principal makers, who are women, has her particular " mark." Another note of relatively advanced civilisation, though not of the highest, is the intricate character of the New Guinea land laws. This appears best in the very clear and ably written report of Mr. G-. S. Fort, Sir Peter Scratchley's private secretary, which is appended to the volume :—"The actual ownership of land appears to be based
upon kinship. The land is divided among individuals who are all more or less connected by kin. The number of individuals in these groups is variable. It may have dwindled down to one,
• Picturesque Neu Guinea. By J. W. Lindt, London : Longmans, Green, and Co.
or it may have indefinitely increased. Each member of this family group regards himself as having a distinct interest in the land appropriated to his kinsmen : not only, however, can no one member alienate the land without the consent of the family group, but each member will claim to receive a share of the profits of the sale of such land If the land belong to the family group of which the district chief is also the patriarchal head, he would be the most prominent figure in any transactions ; but if the land belong to a different family group from that to which he himself belongs "—(for, as Mr. Fort had previously explained, there are even in a single village sometimes three rival chiefs,— one the hereditary monarch, or kin-chief ; one the commander- in-chief, or war-chief ; and another, the high priest, or sorcery- chief)—" then his authority and power as district chief will with reference to the land be almost nothing. It is exceptional to find a chief strong enough to negotiate independently for the disposal
of the land belonging even to his own group At South Cape, however, the independent right of one individual, and he was not a chief, to dispose of a large area of land was recognised by the whole tribe, no one, not even the chief of that tribe, putting forward any claim for payment ; while, again, for the land adjoining there were many owners out of the tribe, each of whom, including the chief, would have had to receive payment in settlement for any land sold."
The recommendation made in the report as a settlement of this difficulty, as of the difficulties of government, is the estab- lishment "of an official tribal chief, through whom theoretically the title would issue. No title would be valid without his consent." But the result of this recognition of one-man power both in regard to property and authority would be to do in New Guinea what is alleged to have caused most of the evils of the land system in Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland,—namely, the ousting of rights of the whole tribe for the benefit of a single individual in it, and that one, in some cases, a person who, as the above quotation shows, may, in the case of the land, have no property at all. It is all very well to try, as Sir Peter Scratchley himself wrote, to manage New Guinea by natives for natives, but the natives in question should be the whole mass, and not a few favoured individuals, especially as they would appear to be a people peaceable by Nature, and already commercial and agricultural in pur- suits, not a mere wandering horde of barbarians like the "black fellows" of Australia. The missionaries, almost wholly of the Congregationalist denomination, members of the London Mission Society, have hitherto established very friendly relations, and introduced the germs of higher material and mental civilisa- tion. In the latter respect there is room for progress, for the . Papuans seem to live, as Sir John Lubbock has noted as character- istic of uncivilised or semi-civilised man, under stress of the utmost spiritual terrors. Two stories by the Rev. James Chalmers, showing the power of the native sorcerers, and the terrors and cruelties they inspire, form not the least interesting portion of the volume; and it would seem that most murders of white men, when not caused by the rapes and rapine of the whites, are caused by supernatural terrors. In regard to murder, by-the- way, as in regard to land, New Guinea would also appear to be in the semi-civilised condition, as one man who gave himself up for the murder of a white with what he considered an adequate compensation, or wer-gild, as our old English ancestors would have said, was very much surprised to find himself arrested and in danger of death. Happily, he was eventually released, as Sir Peter Scratchley, who appears to have been eminently the right man in the right place, saw the injustice of hanging a man who had surrendered in good faith that he had made all the atonement that law and justice, as he understood them, demanded.
In conclusion, we will only note that it is not a fact very creditable to English education that Mr. Lindt, and all the other scientific men on the staff of Sir Peter Scratchley, and of Captain Everill's expedition on behalf of the Australasian Geographical Society, are Germans, though the Germans have themselves got a very large slice of New Guinea, and are actively exploring with purely German beads and hands and eyes. In Australia generally, the German man of science seems to have pushed the English altogether out of the field,—a fact discreditable to us, and capable of developments fatal to our commercial as well as scientific position.
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