Pygmies & Papuans: The Stone Age To-day in Dutch New Guinea

by A. F. R. Wollaston

When it suits them to do so, the Mimika Papuans can carry very heavy loads and they manage to cover the ground at a very respectable pace. They wrap up the load in the mat made of pandanus leaves, which every man always carries with him to serve both as a sleeping mat and as a shelter from the rain. The mat is securely tied by ropes of rattan or any of the other innumerable creepers of the jungle, and two strong loops are made to pass over the shoulders so that the load may be carried on the back, ruck-sack fashion. The women carry loads as well as the men and sometimes also the children, when the whole family is making a journey.

From our upper camp on the Kapare River Rawling and I made two attempts to reach the forest clearing of the Tapiro, which could be easily seen from the camp at a distance of about three miles in a straight line; but though careful bearings of its direction were taken, it turned out to be a most puzzling place to reach. Not more than a mile above the camp the Kapare emerges from a deep and narrow gorge in the foot hills—or rather the spurs of the mountains, they are too steep to call foot hills—which descend very abruptly to the almost level country below. Just after it emerges from the gorge, the river is joined by a stream of the clearest water I have ever seen, which we afterwards came to call the White Water (see illustration opposite).

BIRDS OF PARADISE

In our first attempt to reach the clearing we wandered in the jungle for ten hours and came nowhere near to it. But the day was not altogether wasted, for we climbed up the hillside to about fifteen hundred feet and by cutting down some trees we obtained a wonderful view across the plain of the jungle to the distant sea. The air of the jungle was heavy with the scent of the wild Vanilla, and all around us were calling (but we could not see them) Greater Birds of Paradise; sometimes we were within sound of as many as six at one time. On that day too I first saw the Rifle Bird (Ptilorhis intercedens), one of the most beautiful though the least gaudy of the birds of Paradise, whose long-drawn whistle can never be mistaken or forgotten.

A TRIBUTARY STREAM OF THE KAPARE RIVER.

In our second attempt we profited by some of the mistakes made on the former, but even so the irregularity of the ground and the complexity of the watercourses nearly succeeded in baffling us. “Rawling and I left camp early with two Gurkhas. A mile and a half up the left bank of the river we struck off N.E. from the path we followed the other day. Cut a new path through the jungle for about a mile until we came to a faint native track, which we followed for another mile or so, chiefly along fallen tree trunks overhung by a network of rattan and other creepers, a fearful struggle to get through. Then for a mile or more up the bed of a stony stream encumbered with the same obstructions, dead trees and rattans, until we came to a deep gorge with a torrent about three hundred feet below us and on the opposite side the steep slope of another great spur of the mountain, on which the clearing presumably lay. We slithered and scrambled down to the river, which was full of water and only just fordable. Then up the other slope, not knowing at all accurately the direction of the clearing. Very steep and the jungle very dense with rattan and tree-ferns, so the leading Gurkha was kept busily occupied in cutting with his kukrí and progress was slow.

WE VISIT THE PYGMIES

“About one o’clock, when we had been going for nearly six hours, the clouds came down and it began to rain and we were ready to turn back. Luckily the Gurkhas were convinced that the clearing was not far ahead and when we found a pig-trap, a noose of rattan set in a faint track, it seemed that they might perhaps be right. So we went on and in a few minutes we came out of the forest into the clearing. About thirty yards from us was a hut with three men standing outside it. We called out to them and they waited until we came up. A minute or two later two more men came out from the forest behind us, no doubt they had been following us unseen. The hut was a most primitive structure of sticks roofed with leaves, leaning up against the hillside. There was a fire in the hut and beside it was sitting an old man covered with most horrible sores. We went on up the hill for a couple of hundred yards to a place (about 1900 feet above the sea) where we had a fine view. Rawling put up the plane-table and got angles on to several points for the map.

“During the hour or more that we stayed there, eight men came to see us. Excepting one rather masterful little man, who had no fear of us, they were too shy to approach us closely and remained about ten yards distant, but even so it was plainly evident from their small stature alone, that they were of a different race from the people of the low country.