Dalrymple Island.—Native name, Damood—"The huts were by far the neatest and best erections of the kind we had yet seen. Each one occupied a quadrangular space, six to eight feet wide, and from ten to fifteen feet long. They had gable-shaped roofs, eight feet high in the centre, and sloping on each side nearly to the ground. The frame of the house was made of bamboo, and thickly covered or thatched with grass and palm-leaves; the front and back walls were also made of small bamboo sticks, upright and fastened close together, the front wall having a small triangular opening for a door, over which hung loose strips of palm leaf. The door looked into a little court-yard, of about ten feet square, in front of the house, strongly fenced with stout posts and stakes, interlaced with palm leaves and young bamboos, and accessible only by a very narrow opening between two of the strongest posts. In this court-yard was the cooking fire. The different huts and fences were rather irregularly disposed, but placed closely together, so as to leave only narrow winding passages between them. They occupied a space fifty or sixty yards long by ten or fifteen broad. Behind them was the open place of meeting, on the other side of which, against an old tree was a semicircular pile or wall of dugongs' skulls about three feet high, many of which were quite fresh, but others rotting with age; in the middle of this was a conical heap of turtles' skulls in a similar state. There must, altogether have been some hundreds of skulls of each kind of animal.
"When they had conducted us into this open space, several of them seated themselves on small well-made mats, like those used by the Malay nations; and two or three went and brought a large roll of matting, at least twelve feet by six, which they spread for us to sit down on. These really well-made fabrics greatly surprised us after being accustomed to the non-manufacturing Australians. They then brought us young cocoa-nuts, tortoise-shell, and ornaments, and a great barter commenced. They gave us cocoa-nut water without waiting to receive anything for it, but for the other things they would only accept tobacco and iron implements, paying no regard to our beads and gaudy handkerchiefs. They brought us two small bananas or plaintains, but we could not see the trees on which they grew. They suffered Captain Blackwood and myself to stroll about the huts unattended, while they bartered with the boat's crew. We found in the court-yard of one hut, a ship's cabin-door, painted green, and not very old; in another a quaker gun, set upright in the ground, and the men said they saw pieces of 'Queen's line' among them. They had used pieces of iron hoops, and a long iron spike, to open the cocoa-nuts, but these they might have procured from passing vessels. The door and the wooden gun, however, must have come from a wreck.
"At the south end of the huts we came to a building much superior to, and differing from, any of the rest. It was like a Malay house unfinished, or one of their own smaller huts raised on posts to a height of six or seven feet. The point of the gable was at least fifteen feet from the ground, the roof being supported at each end by two stout posts about a yard apart, having their tops ornamented by carved grotesque faces, painted red, white, and black, with much carving and painting below. The lower part, or ground-floor, of this building was open all round except at one end, where a broad, rudely-constructed staircase led to a platform, from which went the entrance to the upper story; this was floored with stout sticks, and at this end covered with mats; this part was also partitioned off from the other by a bamboo screen. Under the roof hung old cocoa-nuts, green boughs, and other similar things, but nothing to give a decided clue to the object of the building. Whether this was their temple, their place for depositing the dead, or a chief's house, we could not make out. We, however, saw no appearance of any chief, or of one man exercising authority among them, neither could we discover any traces of religious belief or observance.[67]
"We now struck off for a walk across the island, one of the natives coming with us as a guide. Many narrow paths crossed in all directions, among shrubs and bushes, some of which resembled laurels and myrtles, in their leaves and modes of growth. Groves of lofty forest trees occurred here and there, with matted creepers and thick jungle. Several trailing briars, with thorns like the European bramble, were observed; and in short, the whole vegetation had a totally different aspect from that of Australia, and a much greater resemblance to that of Europe or Asia."
These minutiæ, in the way of description of particular localities, have a value for two reasons. In the first place they are the only (or nearly the only) notices of the parts in question. In the next, the parts themselves are important as belonging to the quarters where Australia and New Guinea are nearest each other.
In the north of New Guinea, the fact that has most struck inquirers has been the apparently peculiar style of the buildings. These are of vast size, capable of containing whole families, and often raised on piles. Hence, as long as the existence of similar erections in Borneo[68] was unknown, this form of domestic architecture passed for one of the characteristics of the Negritos in opposition to the Malays. At present, its diagnostic value is considerably lowered.
Another industrial art exercised by the Kelænonesians, and (according to most writers), not exercised by the unmixed Amphinesians, is the art of pottery. How far, however, it is general on the one side, or non-existent on the other, remains for further investigations to prove. The qualification denoted by the word unmixed, will be explained when we come to the ethnology of the Fiji Islands.