New Guinea Canoes.
[It was in such canoes that Mr. Staniforth Smith made part of his journey.]
(By permission of Messrs. Seeley, Service, & Co.)
Mount Carstensz still awaits its conqueror. Since the Rawling expedition much has been done in the exploration of the central mountains. In 1913 Mount Wilhelmina (15,580 feet), of which Dr. Lorentz had trodden the lower snows, was finally ascended by Captain Herderschee. In 1921 Captain Kremer reached the same summit from the north, and found a means of crossing the range at a height of 13,480 feet. A German expedition under Dr. Moszkowski, which was projected in 1913 to attempt Carstensz from the north, was stopped by the war. Meantime, in September, 1912, Mr. Wollaston, Captain Rawling's companion, had returned to New Guinea and ascended the Utakwa River. Its head waters led him direct to Carstensz, and by establishing a series of depots for food in the foothills, he was able to reach the main massif of the mountain. Above 8,000 feet he left the jungles behind; but the mountain proved very difficult, and the rain, as usual, fell without intermission. At 14,200 feet he reached the snow-line, and on February 1, 1913, from a camp above 12,000 feet, he climbed to 14,866 feet, a thousand feet or so below the summit. There he was stopped by an ice fall, and lack of provisions and the weakness of his party prevented him from finding a way to turn it. The top of the mountain is an ice cap which breaks down very sheer on the south side, and Mr. Wollaston is of opinion that the easiest ascent would be from the north. This closes for the present the history of the exploration of Carstensz.
For the second story we move east into British territory. There the general configuration is the same—swamps near the shore, then a tangled forest, then a range of inland mountains, though these are much less conspicuous than the ranges in Dutch territory, and scarcely rise above 6,000 feet. In 1911 the Hon. Miles Staniforth Smith, who had been Mayor of Kalgoorlie, and a senator representing West Australia in the Commonwealth Parliament, and was at the time Administrator of Papua, set out across the centre of the unexplored part of his province to investigate the sources of the rivers emptying into the Papuan Gulf. As the travelling was of the roughest, and the aim was exploration rather than scientific research, the party was kept very small—three white men, Mr. Staniforth Smith, Mr. Bell, the Chief Inspector of Native Affairs, and Mr. Pratt, a Staff Surveyor, together with eleven native police and seventeen carriers. They started from the head of the navigable waters of the Kikor or Aird River, meaning to push north to the top of Mount Murray, and then traverse to the west along the ridge. Mount Murray, which is some 6,000 feet high, was safely reached, and the explorers found themselves moving along a high limestone plateau, much fissured by streams and diversified by parallel ranges. They hoped ultimately to reach the Strickland River, which is a tributary of the great Fly River, and so complete the rest of their journey by rafts.
Presently they found such a river running in a deep gorge, and from certain rapids which had been noted by earlier explorers, they assumed it to be the Strickland. Now began their adventures. The stream seemed to be a series of wild rapids; but as the Strickland had already been descended in rafts, the risks appeared to be justifiable, and four rafts were built. Mr. Staniforth Smith started out first with three police and two carriers, and Mr. Bell and Mr. Pratt arranged to follow in quick succession with the rest. In two hundred yards the first raft was upset, but its occupants managed to hang on. Instead of the rapids disappearing they grew worse, and after four or five wild miles the party dashed into a timber block. One of the natives was so seriously injured that he died next morning. Mr. Staniforth Smith then started to go back along the river, in the hope of joining his companions, but found that he was on an island with swift streams on either side. Next morning the party tried to ford the river, and with some difficulty succeeded. As they were cutting a track up a bank they met two of the police, who had lost their rifles, and who informed them that Mr. Bell and Mr. Pratt were on the other bank of the river, and that several of the carriers had been drowned. The party had now been two days without food, so Mr. Staniforth Smith resolved to turn and travel down the stream in the hope of finding smoother water and a native village. They had no means of making a fire, and in any case there were no sago or bread-fruit trees in the neighbourhood.
New Guinea Pygmies contrasted with ordinary Natives.
(By permission of Messrs. Seeley, Service, & Co.)
For five and a half days the explorers hacked their way downstream. During all that time they had no food of any kind, and no shelter from torrential rains except a few palm leaves. On the sixth day, after travelling twenty miles, they saw natives on the opposite bank. They built a rough raft and managed to cross. It was just in time, for they were now utterly exhausted; but the food which the natives gave them revived them. Curiously enough, as they were at their meal the party of Mr. Bell and Mr. Pratt came out of the jungle. They had, if possible, suffered even worse disasters. Both the white men, though powerful swimmers, had been nearly drowned, and seven of the carriers had lost their lives. They would certainly have perished had they not had the luck the day before to shoot a wild pig.
By this time it was clear that whatever stream they were on it was not the Strickland, for the Strickland flowed south-west, and this river ran nearly due east. The natives, who had never seen a white man before, took them to their village and treated them kindly. The good repute of the British official throughout the wilds now stood them in good stead. They hoped that the river would soon be clear of rapids; but to their consternation there was nothing but gorges and whirlpools for another hundred miles. The stream was the Kikor in its middle reaches, the same stream as they had ascended from the coast. It took them twenty-nine days to pass the hundred miles of gorges, and during that time they rarely had a full meal. On one occasion the whole party worked for seven days without getting anything to eat except a few handfuls of soup-powder and a few tins of cocoa, saved from the capsized rafts. They had no matches, so they had to keep a fire burning day and night. They slept in caves and under palm leaves, which made no pretence of keeping out the rain.
By the twenty-ninth day the river seemed smooth enough for rafts, and the explorers again embarked, and managed to cover fifty miles without any serious misadventure. But next day the rapids began again, and their two canoes, made of hollow logs, were upset. They descended the rapids for ten miles, hanging on to the upturned logs, before they could land. That night they spent in the rain, without food; and starting again at daybreak, they suddenly saw, to their immense relief, European tents, and were welcomed by an officer of the constabulary, who had been sent out to look for them. They had reached the exact spot from which they had struck north to Mount Murray at the beginning of their journey! When, two days later, they arrived at the coast, they had travelled in fifteen weeks approximately 524 miles through utterly unknown country—374 miles on foot and 150 by river.