Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
there are signs of a stratified foundation in the ravines, and the rock itself is more compact
and crystalline. It is therefore, probably older, a more recent elevation having exposed the
low grounds and islands. On the other side of the bay rise the great mass of the Arfak moun-
tains, said by the French navigators to be about ten thousand feet high, and inhabited by sav-
age tribes. These are held in great dread by the Dorey people, who have often been attacked
and plundered by them, and have some of their skulls hanging outside their houses. If I was
seen going into the forest anywhere in the direction of the mountains, the little boys of the
village would shout after me, 'Arfaki! Arfaki!' just as they did after Lesson nearly forty
years before.
On the 15th of May the Dutch war-steamer
Etna
arrived; but, as the coals had gone, it
was obliged to stay till they came back. The captain knew when the coalship was to arrive,
and how long it was chartered to stay at Dorey, and could have been back in time, but sup-
posed it would wait for him, and so did not hurry himself. The steamer lay at anchor just op-
posite my house, and I had the advantage of hearing the half-hourly bells struck, which was
very pleasant after the monotonous silence of the forest. The captain, doctor, engineer, and
some other of the officers paid me visits; the servants came to the brook to wash clothes,
and the son of the Prince of Tidore, with one or two companions, to bathe; otherwise I saw
little of them, and was not disturbed by visitors so much as I had expected to be. About this
time the weather set in pretty fine, but neither birds nor insects became much more abund-
ant, and new birds were very scarce. None of the Birds of Paradise except the common one
were ever met with, and we were still searching in vain for several of the fine birds which
Lesson had obtained here. Insects were tolerably abundant, but were not on the average so
fine as those of Amboyna, and I reluctantly came to the conclusion that Dorey was not a
good collecting locality. Butterflies were very scarce, and were mostly the same as those
which I had obtained at Aru.
Among the insects of other orders, the most curious and novel were a group of horned
flies, of which I obtained four distinct species, settling on fallen trees and decaying trunks.
These remarkable insects, which have been described by Mr. W. W. Saunders
*
as a new
genus, under the name of Elaphomia or deer-flies, are about half an inch long, slender-bod-
ied, and with very long legs, which they draw together so as to elevate their bodies high
above the surface they are standing upon. The front pair of legs are much shorter, and these
are often stretched directly forwards, so as to resemble antennæ. The horns spring from be-
neath the eye, and seem to be a prolongation of the lower part of the orbit. In the largest and
most singular species, named Elaphomia cervicornis or the stag-horned deer-fly, these horns
are nearly as long as the body, having two branches, with two small snags near their bifurca-
