“Before they took to flight, however, they discharged several more arrows at our people, one of which struck Mr. Hagenholtz in the right knee, another hit a sailor in the leg, while a third pierced a sailor’s hat and remained sticking in it; and lastly, a Javanese had the handkerchief shot off his head, but without receiving any personal injury.”
Three of the natives were severely wounded, if not killed, in this unfortunate affair, which evidently arose, as Mr. Earle points out, from misunderstanding, and not from deliberate treachery. Seeing the boats being pulled toward the ships while four of their companions were on board, they probably thought that they were being carried off as captives, as has so often been done along their coast by the slavers. They could not be expected to understand the difference between one white man and another, and evidently mistook the Dutch sailors for slavers, who had come for the purpose of inveigling them into the ships, where they could not be rescued.
The tribes of this part of the coast are not agreeable specimens of the Papuan race. They are barely of the middle size, and lightly built. Their skin is decidedly black, and they ornament their bodies with red ochre, paying especial attention to their faces, which are made as scarlet as ochre can make them. The hair is deep black, and is worn in various ways. Most of the men plait it in a number of tresses, which fall nearly on the shoulders, while others confine it all into two tails, and several were seen with a curious headdress of rushes, the ends of which were firmly plaited among the hair. They are a dirty set of people, and are subject to diseases of the skin, which give them a very repulsive appearance.
Dress is not used by the men, who, however, wear plenty of ornaments. They mostly have a belt made of plaited leaves or rushes, about five inches wide, and so long that, when tied together behind, the ends hang down for a foot or so. Some of them adorn this belt with a large white shell, placed exactly in the middle. Earrings of plaited rattan, necklaces, and bracelets, were worn by nearly all. Some of them had a very ingenious armlet, several inches in width. It was made of plaited rattan, and fitted so tightly to the limb that, when a native wished to take it off for sale, he was obliged to smear his arm with mud, and have the ornament drawn off by another person.
Their principal weapons are bows, arrows, and spears, the latter being sometimes tipped with the long and sharp claw of the tree-kangaroo.
The agility of these Papuans is really astonishing. Along the water’s edge there run wide belts of mangroves, which extend for many miles in length with scarcely a break in them. The ground is a thick, deep, and soft mud, from which the mangrove-roots spring in such numbers that no one could pass through them even at low water without the constant use of an axe, while at high water all passage is utterly impossible.
As the natives, who are essentially maritime in their mode of life, have to cross this belt several times daily in passing from their canoes to their houses, and vice versa, they prefer doing so by means of the upper branches, among which they run and leap, by constant practice from childhood, as easily as monkeys. (See [p. 909].) There is really nothing extraordinary in this mode of progress, which can be learned by Europeans in a short time, although they never can hope to attain the graceful ease with which the naked savages pass among the boughs. In some places the mangroves grow so closely together that to traverse them is a matter of perfect ease, and Mr. Earle remarks that he once saw a file of marines, with shouldered arms, making their way thus over a mangrove swamp.
The familiarity of these people with the trees causes them to look upon a tree as a natural fortress, and as soon as explorers succeeded in reaching the villages, the natives invariably made off, and climbed into the trees that surrounded the villages.
Wild and savage as they are, the Papuans of Dourga Strait display some acquaintance with the luxuries of civilized life and are inordinately fond of tobacco, the one luxury that is common to the highest and lowest races of mankind.
Some travellers have stated that these Papuans are cannibals, and it is certain that their gestures often favor such an opinion.