A WIDE VIEW
The greater part of the next day was spent in cutting a way along the ridge to a point (5800 ft.) from which it was hoped that a view of the country might be seen. Long before the track was cut the clouds were down upon us, and no view could be seen, so we decided to stay for another day, although we had only one day’s food remaining. But the view that we saw on the following day was more than compensation for our rather scanty fare.
Due North of us, and rising from the spur on which we stood, was the great mass of Mount Godman, and to the West of that the even more imposing peak of Wataikwa Mountain (9923 ft.). Between the two could be seen a part of the tremendous cliffs of Mount Leonard Darwin (13,882), the southern face of which appears to show an almost vertical precipice of upwards of ten thousand feet. To the West ridge beyond ridge of forest-covered heights stretched away to the ranges of the Charles Louis Mountains in the far distance. To the East rose the beautiful three-topped mountain called the Cock’s Comb (10,050 ft.), behind and to the North of which heavy banks of clouds showed where the snows of Mount Carstensz lay hidden. Five thousand feet below us the mountains ended almost abruptly, and the southern half of the circuit of our view was occupied by the hideous plain of dull green jungle to a hazy line of the sea forty miles away. Here and there the sunlight caught the waters of innumerable rivers, and we could distinctly see those that we had crossed, the Tuaba, Kamura, Wataikwa, and the Iwaka. Further to the East was a still bigger river, the Wania, which we could trace down to its lagoon-like estuary, and beyond it was the Aiika, and a very distant river, possibly the Newerip.
Nobody who has not spent a year and more in a dreary jungle country, where you are seldom more than a yard or two from the nearest tree, and where the limit of your view is the opposite bank of a stagnant river, can realise the rest, to the mind and to the eye alike, that a wide horizon gives. Although there were points of interest to be seen by the cartographical eye, there was nothing, excepting the outlines of some of the nearer mountains, of beauty in that view; there were no striking features of the land and no gorgeous effects of colour, but one will always treasure a recollection of the physical delight of seeing far and wide to the horizon, and of the feeling of satisfaction in looking down godlike on the world that we had so painfully traversed.
But views, like all other good things, have their ends, and ours was all too soon interrupted by the daily thick blanket of white cloud, which rolled up and enveloped us until nightfall. We groped our way back to the camp where we found our coolies very miserable and shivering with cold—poor wretches, they had never before endured, nor even imagined, a temperature so low as 50° F. To us the coolness was very pleasant, and it provoked a hunger to which we had long been strangers; very small quantities of boiled rice, and chupatties made by the Gurkhas of mildewed and weevilly flour, only served to stimulate our appetites for more.
RARE BIRDS
On the following day we retreated hastily downhill by the way we had come, and by forced marches, perhaps a little accelerated by our lack of food, in two days we arrived at the Iwaka camp. In the meantime Grant had been camped with the two Dayak collectors on a hill about three thousand feet high above the Iwaka, where they had made a very fine collection of birds. Among them was a new dwarf species of Cassowary (Casuarius claudi) and specimens of the rare Six-plumed Bird of Paradise (Parotia meeki). Another bird very characteristic of the Iwaka and neighbouring valleys is the Moustached Swift (Macropteryx mystacea), which measures more than two feet across the wings, and is remarkable for its long pointed tail and its tapering white moustache. This bird seldom appears until late in the afternoon, when it is seen sailing majestically with outstretched wings at a height over the river.
Near the Iwaka on a hillside laid bare by a landslip we found two seams of coal a few inches in thickness; it was poor stuff and only burnt with difficulty when put into a fire. Mr. Lorentz found combustible coal in the hills near Mount Wilhelmina, and it is probable that a careful search would reveal the existence of better coal in this region too. Near the same place, as well as in one or two other localities, we found indications of petroleum, but all our searches for gold and other precious metals resulted in nothing except occasional traces of copper.