Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
regular, and so loose and far apart that I found it almost impossible to walk on them. The
walls consist of bits of boards, old boats, rotten mats, attaps, and palm-leaves, stuck in any-
how here and there, and having altogether the most wretched and dilapidated appearance it
is possible to conceive. Under the eaves of many of the houses hang human skulls, the
trophies of their battles with the savage Arfaks of the interior, who often come to attack
them. A large boat-shaped council-house is supported on larger posts, each of which is
grossly carved to represent a naked male or female human figure, and other carvings still
more revolting are placed upon the platform before the entrance. The view of an ancient
lake-dweller's village, given as the frontispiece of Sir Charles Lyell's 'Antiquity of Man,' is
chiefly founded on a sketch of this very village of Dorey; but the extreme regularity of the
structures there depicted has no place in the original, any more than it probably had in the
actual lake-villages.
The people who inhabit these miserable huts are very similar to the Ké and Aru islanders,
and many of them are very handsome, being tall and well-made, with well-cut features and
large aquiline noses. Their colour is a deep brown, often approaching closely to black, and
the fine mop-like heads of frizzly hair appear to be more common than elsewhere, and are
considered a great ornament, a long six-pronged bamboo fork being kept stuck in them to
serve the purpose of a comb; and this is assiduously used at idle moments to keep the
densely growing mass from becoming matted and tangled. The majority have short woolly
hair, which does not seem capable of an equally luxuriant development. A growth of hair
somewhat similar to this, and almost as abundant, is found among the half-breeds between
the Indian and Negro in South America. Can this be an indication that the Papuans are a
mixed race?
