The Exploration of New Guinea
Down came the rain again, and in August the country was all under water. The advance was not renewed till the beginning of 1911, when fresh supplies had arrived from England, and the old motor-boat had been put in repair. So far, a year's hard labour had not taken the explorers within measurable distance of their goal. With the help of a launch, food supplies for eight weeks were stored at the head of the Mimika. One story may be quoted as a piece of comic relief in a very grim campaign. On 4th January two men quarrelled in camp and killed each other.
"The sergeant who, by the way, was a foreigner, took charge of the burial ceremonials, and was evidently quite determined that, for his part, nothing should be lacking which the importance of the occasion demanded. Drawing his sword, and placing himself between the graves, he harangued the spectators. 'Men,' he said, 'this day two servants of the Government have lost their lives at the hands of each other. Were they not both good men? hein.' 'One man very bad man,' chipped in an officious convict, but a glance from the offended sergeant made him wish that he had never spoken. 'Whether they will both go to heaven I cannot say,' exclaimed he, 'but I think Allah'—pointing upwards with his sword—'will first purge them with a fire. Take this as a lesson.' Then, drawing himself up to his full height as befitted the occasion, he returned his sword with a clank to the scabbard, and, as far as the public was concerned, the ceremony was at an end. The sergeant, however, had not yet finished. Returning to his hut, he refreshed himself with a few glasses of gin, and played on the mouth-organ the national anthems of the three flags under which he had served. This terminated the funeral obsequies, and with the exception of the official report and the entry in the accounts 'To one bottle gin for disinfecting corpse,' nothing remained to mark the sanguinary affair."
The Iwaka was safely reached, and the last stage began. At first the advance was up its right bank, but this only brought the travellers back to the upper glen of the Wataikwa, which they had already found impossible. It was clear that the Iwaka must be crossed and the ridges to the east ascended. Getting over that stream was an ugly business, and it was achieved only by the heroism of one of the Gurkhas, who managed to haul himself hand over hand along a thin rope. Captain Rawling records that it was "one of the best actions carried out in cold blood that I have ever had the good fortune to witness." A rough bridge was constructed, and on the morning of February 8, 1911, thirteen months after their first landing on the coast, the party had at last a road to the upper ridges. It was thick, misty weather, and of the farther mountains they only had occasional glimpses. Camp was pitched at an altitude of 5,400 feet, but not on solid ground, for all the climbing had been done on the top of live or dead timber. The following morning they hacked their way to a clear space on the ridge at a height of 5,600 feet, and there they were at last favoured with the view for which they had longed, and were able to fix the position of the main peaks.
Looking southward they saw the sea, and between it and them the dark green of the forest through which they had struggled for so many months. The gloom was broken at rare intervals by a streak of light, which was a river. Nearly five miles away stood Mount Godman, and beyond it the huge southern face of the range, a gigantic black cliff, eighty miles from east to west, with a clear drop of nearly a mile and three-quarters—by far the greatest precipice in the world. Behind this scarp rose the snow mountains—Mount Leonard Darwin, to the north-west, 13,882 feet; and to the north-east Mount Idenburg, 15,379 feet, and the glittering top of Carstensz, which is almost 16,000 feet. The great peaks seemed, below, a mass of wild, black precipices, cleft with fissures; but, above, a long, easy snow-field, curving gently to the summits. It was such a view as the old Portuguese adventurers might have had when, after struggling for months through the coastal jungles, they suddenly came in sight of Kenya or Kilimanjaro. But for Captain Rawling and his party it would be no more than a Pisgah-sight. Advance was impossible. The fatal choice of the Mimika route meant that they had taken the worst road conceivable to the great snows. The attainment of the peaks must be left to their successors. He who would understand the full difficulties and miseries of that expedition must read Captain Rawling's own narrative.*
* The Land of the New Guinea Pygmies, by Captain C. G. Rawling (Seeley, Service, and Co., 1913).
Rarely has a more thoroughly comfortless expedition been undertaken. To begin with, the food was bad and unsuitable, for they had the surplus stores from Shackleton's Antarctic expedition, and the joys of bully-beef, pea-soup, and pickles under an equatorial sky may be imagined. It was impossible to get good local assistance, for the natives were a preposterous race, treacherous and unreliable when they were not actively malevolent. They were subject to sudden panics, when they fled to the jungle, and to wild outbursts of sorrow, when they would weep and sob for hours. The imported Javanese were, if possible, more hopeless. Then there was every kind of noxious insect—mosquitoes without end, gigantic leeches dangling from every leaf which made a speciality of attacking the eyeballs, ticks, stinking caterpillars, immense blue-bottles which swarmed in clouds over any food left uncovered, crickets which ate a man's clothes up in a night, and a plague of minute bees which settled in myriads on the heated face of the traveller. Above all, there was the rain. The whole country was water-logged by the flooding rivers and the incessant deluge. In the dry season the average rainfall was about two and a half inches a day! Mr. Wollaston took the trouble to keep a meteorological diary, and found that during the first year rain fell on 330 days, and that on 295 days it was accompanied by thunder and lightning. Of the 400 men of all races employed during the first year, 12 per cent. died in the country from hardships, and 83 per cent. of the total force was invalided from New Guinea. Of the Europeans and natives who landed during that year, only eleven lasted out the whole fifteen months of the expedition. Of these eleven, four were Europeans, four Gurkhas, two Javanese soldiers, and one a convict. When it is remembered that eight months is the maximum period allowed by the Dutch authorities for continued service in New Guinea, the marvel is that these eleven escaped with their lives. It was with no regret that Captain Rawling said farewell to what must be by far the most unpleasant land on earth. "Wild shrieks had greeted us on our first arrival in the country, and wild shrieks echoed down the still reach of the river as the boats crept towards the sea."
