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

by A. F. R. Wollaston

BRIDGE MADE BY THE EXPEDITION ACROSS THE IWAKA RIVER.

When once a man was on the other side, it was simple to throw over another rattan, and so to pull over many more which he tied to the trees on his bank. On our side of the river was a large boulder with a hole conveniently bored through it, into which stout posts were jammed Y-fashion, and over them the rattans were strained and fastened to the trees behind. When more men were able to cross the river, a similar structure was erected on the other bank.

The plan of the bridge was very simple, two hand-rails made of a number of twisted rattans, and a foot piece made of a long thin tree, which was secured to the hand-rails by loops of rattan. The span of the bridge was about one hundred feet, and there must have been several hundred yards of rattan used in its construction. The credit of the idea and of most of the work in making the bridge is due to the Gurkhas, without whose help we should never have crossed the Iwaka.

But all this work had occupied valuable time, and when the bridge was finished we found that we had provisions left for only eight days longer. On February 8th Rawling, Marshall and I, with three Gurkhas and nineteen coolies, and Cramer with a small party of convicts, crossed the Iwaka and made a way Eastwards. After crossing a moderately steep ridge we came down to a stream of marvellously clear water, which brought us in a short time to another large river flowing out of the mountains in a Southerly direction.

So many rivers are there in this region that this was in some places separated by less than two miles from the Iwaka; it was eventually found that this was a branch of the Wania, a large river which enters the sea in a common mouth with the Kamura, of which the Iwaka is a tributary. It was evident that this river came from the slopes of Mount Godman (9,500 ft.) a huge mass immediately to the North of us, and it was our intention to climb up on to the ridge of that mountain in the hopes of obtaining a view of the country to the North of it, and of the Snow Mountains.

Going up the valley we found ourselves in the midst of really beautiful scenery. The mountains soon closed in about us, and the river, though not running through an actual gorge, was walled by precipices of white limestone rock, now on one side and now on the other. This necessitated our frequently crossing the river, a task by no means easy even when the water is low, as it happened to be at that time. The best way of crossing those rapid rivers is not to fight your way upwards and across the stream, but to go rather with the stream in a sloping direction towards the other bank, and to go as quickly as may be. The bottom is made of very slippery stones, and a false step means disaster, as we all found at different times, but in that way you cross with far less exertion than by breasting the stream.

In this valley, for the first time since we came to New Guinea, we found several flowering plants; among the rocks by the river grew clumps of a large pink Balsam, and on the moss at the foot of the tree trunks was a beautiful scarlet Begonia with a remarkably hairy leaf.

There was a curious green-flowered aroid with a large blotched leaf, and growing everywhere over the cliffs and the tree trunks were Pitcher plants (Nepenthes) of two species.