NEW GUINEA:

 Its People and their Customs.

[TRANSLATED FOR THIS JOURNAL.]

No. II.

Tools, Weapons, Garments, &c.

TOOLS.

1. Axe The most important tool with which the Papuans hollow out their canoes and manufacture their weapons is unquestionably an exceedingly simple instrument viz., a stone axe. When one beholds their buildings, canoes, implements, and arms, and looks at their axes and at a few pebbles and fragments of shells, their only other tools, one can only wonder at the great patience and ingenuity of these savages. The head of the Papuan axe consists of a hard gray, green; or white stone, which has been flattened and sharpened by continual grinding. In the archipelago of " the contented people " I have also seen hatchets which, instead of stone, were made out of a stout tridacpa shell. For a handle the stem of a young tree having straight branches is chosen, and he cut off that a part of the stem with a branch will have the shape of a 7, of which the stem forms the upper part. This is flattened on the top, and slightly hollowed out, and the sharpened stone is placed horizontally on the scoop. Then another piece of wood (out that it fits over the stone is, with strong cords of hands or various sorts of bark, he tied on to the handle that the stone appears wedged in. Such an axe can only be used with effect by an expert. If wielded by one unaccustomed to its use, it is easily broken, or is an ineffective instrument. I know this from my own experience, and it was not patience that failed in the trial. The natives, with their light axes, of which the breadth of the blade is not more than 2 inches, can fell trees of 20 inches in diameter, and also carve minute figures on their spears. The Papuans generally use small axes, the blades of which are not broader than 2 inches, but every village possesses one or several large axes, with blades from three to four inches wide, which have to be wielded with both hands, while the others are managed with the right hand only. The stones for the axes (a sort of agate) are received from the mountaineers, but are not plentiful. An adult never possesses more than one good axe, and the large axes are prized as something exceedingly valuable and scarce.

2. Pebbles and fragments of shells. These apparently rough and small tools prove efficient for a great variety of work in skilful hands. What can only be cut out roughly with a stone axe, is polished or pointed with the sharp edge of a pebble; as, for instance, the spears and arrows. The various shells and fragments thereof are preferred to pebbles, as being less brittle. Various figures are scratched upon bamboo with the points of shell fragments. The large combs of the Papuans, with carved borders and also the bamboo boxes in which they keep the lime for betel chewing; and their arrows, can furnish samples of this skill.

3. Dongan is a pointed or flat ground bone having either a dagger or a chisel edge. To serve the former shape, the bones of the cassowaries, and but seldom those of a human being, are used; for the latter the bones of pigs and dogs are taken. With these dongans fruits are cut in both a raw and boiled state. The dongans are generally carried on the man, held by the arm-ring. Such a small though pointed bone cannot be counted a weapon.

4. Bamboo-knives—Are made by taking out the inner fibres on the edge of a piece of bamboo, and leaving there only the sharp hard rind.

With bamboo knives meat and various fruits and vegetables are cut; while with a dongan nothing is ever cut, but only split or pierced.

WEAPONS.

1. Chadga.—A spear about 6½ feet long, made out of a hard and heavy wood. It is as well the most common as the most dangerous weapon of the Papuan, and his companion wherever he goes.

2. Serwaru.—A spear of less weight, though equal length as the former made out of the same kind of wood (a sort of palm) but with a flat 10 inches long bamboo point. Where the point is fastened to the shaft it is usually ornamented with a piece of circus skin and feathers. The bamboo point usually breaks off and remains in the wound.

3. Aral (Bows). These are also made out of hard wood ; they are about 60 feet long. The cords are made out of bamboos.

4. Aral-Ge,—Arrows having points of hard wood, about 3 feet long ; the points are generally round, and form a third or a fourth part of the whole length of the arrow, and are set in a shaft of light reed or cane. Some of the arrows are very neatly carved, and have barbed points.

5. Palom. An arrow of the usual length, but having, like the serwaru, a broad bamboo point. It is regarded as more dangerous than the former.

6. Saran.—An arrow used in fishing, having four, five, or more points.

7. Jur.— Spear, having several points of hard wood. It in used in fishing at night time, and by the light of torches ; the shaft is of bamboo, in order not to let the spear sink.

The inhabitants of the neighboring islands (Bili-Bili, Jam-Bomba, Griger, Tiara, and others), have also large shields, nearly three feet in diameter, made from hard wood and ornamented with carvings. My neighbors on the coast do not possess anything of the kind. I have also seen in some villages long flat sticks about five feet long, which are wielded with both arms, similarly as the old long swords had to be in battle, stone-throwing is resorted to.

The principal weapon in war time is the spear, a dangerous weapon within the distance of 35 to 40 paces. The arrows can scarcely be considered dangerous beyond 50 paces, us they are too light. During war, and on hunting excursions against the wild pigs, the points of the spears and arrows are rubbed over with red earth. The Papuans on the coast do not poison them.

GARMENTS AND ORNAMENTS.

The only clothing of the man is the mal, a piece of cloth, 10 feet long, 6 to 8 inches broad, usually red-colored made out of the bark of trees. The manufacture of the mal is similar to that of the tapas of the Polynesians. After the upper layer of the bark has been separated, it is beaten on a flat stone with a piece of wood, until the bark has become soft and pliable; it is then colored with red earth and ready for use. The red earth does not last long. The mals have in time a grayish appearance. One end of the mal is held at about the region of the navel, the rest is drawn between the legs and then wound several times around the waist where the two ends are tied together. When this garment is drawn tight the front ends hang down. The women wear a frock, also called mal; it consists of fringes 20 inches long, which, fastened to a belt in thick bunches, reach down to the knees and shelter that part of the body without impeding the movements. The mals of the women are generally black, with red horizontal stripes, the girls wear shorter and less dense mals than the women, in some villages (Bili-Bili Island in the Archipelago of the contented people ") the mals of the girls till their marriage consist of a girdle with tassels of dyed bast in front and at the back. The girls exhibit a careful regard of decency in their attire, and also use ornaments of shells and colored fruit kernels about their girdles.

Besides the mal the Papuans have various long and broad pieces of cloth of similar preparation as the mals. These are worn on account of the cold, during the nights and mornings, and are slung over the shoulders.

The jambi and "gun" are inseparable from the Papuan. The former is a small bag, carried pendent from the neck ; the latter is larger, and is carried over the left shoulder. In the former, tobacco and small articles are kept; in the latter the fire-boxes for betel-chewing, the jarur, shiliupa, kai, shells, small bamboo boxes for the red and black paints, and many other necessaries. These bags are very neatly plaited from fine and variously colored cords, and particularly the jambi, adorned with shells.

On the upper arm, above the biceps, the men wear ear-rings, called sagin, very artistically plaited from bark or grass, and decorated with shells. Between them and the arm the dongan is usually carried. When the young Papuans intend to adorn themselves, they stick behind the sagin twigs of party-colored leaves. Over the calves of the legs similar rings are worn, called samba-sagin. The tusks of the wild pig are worn as particular ornaments on the chest, fastened to a collar. This highly-valued ornament is called bul'ra. Shells and dogs' teeth are worn around the neck instead of the Bul'ra, which are very scarce articles.

The men carry as ear pendants large pieces of tortoiseshell or wooden rings. When they have neither of these, small sticks of bamboo, longish stones, or flowers, are worn instead. The women have two kinds of ear pendants. One or more rings hang on the ear-laps; through the hole in the upper rim of one ear a cord is drawn, which also runs through a similar hole in the other ear; to both ends of the cord several pairs of white dogs' teeth are tied, which hang down on both sides of the neck while the cord rests on the head.

The women possess also two bags called nan-geli-gun, which are far larger than those of the men, and are carried differently, not over the shoulder, but hanging at the back by a cord drawn across the forehead. In one sack the fruits are daily carried from the plantations to the villages. The other, which is rather smaller, is used for carrying infants. If there be no children, the women burden themselves with young pigs or dogs, which are nursed very tenderly by them.

(To be Continued.)

Brisbane Courier (Qld.), Wednesday 30 June 1875

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/1400687

NEW GUINEA NATIVES.

 IMPORTANT SCIENTIFIC ACCOUNT.

By for the most important work which has yet appeared on the native races of Papua is "The Melanesians of New Guinea," by C. G. Seligman, M.D. (Cambridge: The University Press. Melbourne: Melville and Mullen). It is a volume of over 700 pages, plentifully illustrated from photographs and drawings. As the title indicates, the book deals with the Melanesian immigrants, who have occupied so much of the territory, and not with the original Papuans, who are now confined to the districts west of Cape Possession. Sixteen years have gone by since Dr. A. C. Haddon, F.R.S., first recognised that the eastern peoples had come into the country as the result of repeated immigrations. That is now felt to be the only theory that fits observed facts. There is a marked racial difference, in culture as well as in physical characteristics, between the relatively tall, dark-skinned, frizzly-haired inhabitants of the Torres Straits, Fly River, and neighbouring districts, and the smaller, lighter coloured tribes along the coast-line east wards and in the eastern archipelagos. The western race, to which exclusively Dr. Seligman assigns the name Papuan, was in Papua first. In the east of the territory it has been replaced by island immigrants, to whom he gives the name of Papuo-Melanesians, to mark their close affinity with the Melanesian peoples of Oceania. These Papuo-Melanesians form the subject of his book, and he endeavours to do for them what Howitt and Spencer and Gillen have done for the aboriginal tribes of Australia. They fall into two fairly well-defined divisions, eastern and western, which suggest two separate waves of immigration at two different periods.

The western division is of mixed blood. Its constituent tribes vary much in physique and culture, becoming more and more Papuan the further west they dwell. Evidently they are the product of an admixture of the dominant Melanesian invaders with Papuan aborigines. Many of them, though mainly Melanesian in build and character, speak Papuan languages. The eastern division is much more homogeneous in physical and cultural characteristics. It is almost purely Melanesian, and its tribes are doubtless descended from a more recent set of invaders, who came to Papua after the Papuans had been driven west or absorbed by earlier immigrants. The present distribution of the Papuan races suggests a close analogy between the course of the Melanesian invasion and that of Anglo-Saxon settlement in Britain. In the extreme west of Britain is a Celtic fringe, then comes a zone where Britons and Anglo-Saxons intermingled; while in the east of the island the stock is almost pure Anglo-Saxon. So in Papua, as we journey from east to west, we find first Melanesians, then Melanesians modified by inter-marriage with Papuans, and finally true Papuans. Dr. Seligman gives not only the distinguishing characters of the two main divisions, but detailed accounts of the variations from the normal division type, shown by groups of tribes, and even by single tribes. Most of his material was collected in 1904, on the Daniels ethnographical expedition, towards which, the Royal Society made a small grant. He has also used notes made during 1898, when he visited New Guinea an a member of the Cambridge anthropological expedition to Torres Straits. A great deal of information with a general interest can be dug out of his book, but the bulk of the detail, though invaluable to the anthropologist, makes but dry reading for the ordinary layman. It was not Dr. Seligman's purpose to write a popular description of the native races of Papua so much as an accurate scientific report of ethnographical facts about them. Some of the most striking and, to the anthropologist, interesting chapters in the volume are those devoted to initiation ceremonies, marriage customs, and the relations of the sexes, but such subjects cannot be discussed at length in an ordinary daily newspaper. They are suited only to technical books and journals which do not circulate so widely.

A typical Western Papuo-Melanesian tribe is the Koita. It still speaks a Papuan language acquired in early days by the invaders from the people of the land, but most of the males talk Motu as well, the Melanesian dialect of a neighbouring tribe to which the Koita is akin. The Koita country is about Port Moresby, and the tribe has been for a long time, in contact with Europeans. Consequently its manners and customs are less in doubt than those of tribes more remote from settlement. It has no king or paramount chiefs, but each clan-group of families has a headman, whose office is usually hereditary in the direct line, though a headman's sister's son would succeed him it he were childless, or if his eldest son were too young. Among the customs of the tribe are ear-piercing and nose boring, operations earned out during childhood. Tattooing, except as a mark of distinction, is limited to the female sex. By the time she marries the whole body of a Koita woman is covered with tattoo designs. Although there is a good deal of variation in the amount of skin surface covered in different girls of the same age, there is a fixed order in which the parts of the body are tattooed. Dr. Seligman speaks of "the really beautiful harmony which exists between the tattoo patterns and the copper coloured skin into which they are pricked." The Koita have no deity or superior power towards whom they may feel a sense of responsibility. Even the clan chiefs can decide nothing without the assent of the elders of the community. Such moral ideas as the people possess are communal, and not individual. For instance, homicide and theft are not reprehensible in themselves, but only become so when directed against members of the tribe or against outsiders strong enough to avenge themselves upon it. Both sexes make excellent parents. The men treat their wives well, and the wives are generally faithful, though unmarried boys and girls are allowed to act very much as they please in their relations. Formerly the Koita knew nothing of gambling. Nothing in the nature of wagering existed among them. Yet nowadays all the young men and many of the middle aged men are inveterate gamblers, willing to stake, not only the whole of their wages, but their personal properly. Their one method of gambling is to bet on the colour or suit of a card turned up from a pack. They will spend whole nights at this.

The most characteristic feature of social organisation among the Massim, or Eastern Papuo-Melanesians, is a peculiar form of totemism, with descent in the maternal line. No man marries a girl in his father's totem, nor would he eat or destroy his father's totem birds. These people also have an intense horror of a dead father, and of all that concerned him. A man would fight if the name of his dead father or paternal uncle were mentioned in his presence. Dr. Seligman mentions, in illustration of this honor, an incident which befell Mr. A. H. Dunning at a Massim hamlet. He wanted to photograph certain native baskets, but found the light in the hamlet unsatisfactory. So, taking baskets in one hand and camera in the other, he proceeded to look for a suitable place. As he went along he passed a heap of stones on which was some vegetation. At once an outcry was made by the natives who had lent the baskets. It appeared that Mr. Dunning had taken the baskets close to the grave of the father of the man who owned one of the best. This man absolutely refused to take the basket back, saying that if food were put into it, and if he afterwards ate of such food, he would certainly die in consequence. Until put down by the Government, cannibalism existed all over the southern Massim district. In the vast majority of cases the eating of human flesh was part of the solemn act of revenge on the enemies of the community, but sometimes the lust for human flesh would lead a clan or tribe to attack visitors. In 1805 the Court of Samarai sentenced a mother and two daughters for desecrating the grave of the elder daughter's infant. They had dug up the body and eaten it. Their excuse was that it was a custom. With regard to morals among the Massim Dr 'Seligman suggests that wives are less faithful now that the husband cannot kill an erring wife or her lover without coming into conflict with the Government.

An enormous amount of careful investigation must have gone to the making of this book, but we must own to some disappointment that its wealth of knowledge has not been more attractively presented. None but experts will toil through its pages and yet it contains much that might have been made pleasant reading for the ordinary intelligent person.

Argus (Melbourne, Vic. ), Saturday 14 May 1910,http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article10856137

NEW BRITAIN MASSACRES.

 THE NATIVES AND THEIR WAYS.

 INTERVIEW WITH FATHER MERG.

The news of the massacre of the German missionaries in New Britain came as an especial shock to the Rev. Father Merg, of the congregation of the Sacred Heart at Randwick. Twice within recent years, Father Merg visited the Island missionary stations, some of which have now been rendered desolate, and nothing, he says, has surprised him more than this sudden outbreak on the part of apparently friendly natives. He can only explain it by the old theory of racial antipathy. The blacks probably desire to rid themselves and their country of the whites.

 Though only four degrees south of the equator, Father Merg found life in New Britain extremely pleasant. The country is picturesque. A veil of mystery hangs over all but the northernmost corner of it. There, a handful of German planters and missionaries trade and teach. The volcanic soil is admirably adapted for agriculture. Plantations thrive on every hand. Bananas constitute the staple article of diet. Cocoanuts abound; and sweet potatoes and vegetables of various kinds add variety to the 

PAPUAN'S MENU.

 Father Merg foresees a great future for New Britain— but not as a white man's country. Even now, he says, it stands ahead of many better known islands in the Pacific.

 As for the natives, they are neither so ugly nor so stupid as our Australian aboriginals. This is not saying much for them. Outside the mission stations, they are innocent of clothes, and of the virtues of cleanliness. When their long, tangled hair becomes too troublesome to be longer endured, they shave it completely off with a piece of glass, or a strip of bamboo, fashioned like a razor. They daub their heads and bodies with paints of various colours, wear ornaments in nose and ears, and in their natural state have a cold-blooded way of cuting up a human being into portions, and selling them as we sell meat in the shambles.

 Long prior to the permanent settlement of whites in the country these chocolate-coloured Papuans acquired the art of smoking. A clergy man thus describes a smoking party at Baining, where the massacres occurred the other day: — "The natives sat in a circle, and

 PASSED THE CIGAR

 round. The cigar was almost as thick as a man's wrist, and fully a foot long. When smoking a man held it to his mouth with both hands, while another man sat before him, holding a fire stick at the other end. The smoker continued drawing in the smoke for at least a minute, and then, passing the cigar to his neighbour, he emitted the smoke through mouth and nostrils until he was enveloped in a cloud of it."

 These Papuans do not settle in regular villages. Their huts are scattered about, each standing within its own enclosure. A prudent father, when a son is born, plants a number of cocoanut trees, which in seven or eight years form a large portion of the boy's living. As soon as children can do anything they are given small plantations of their own. Men and women share the work of the plantations between them, unless they are fortunate enough to possess slaves.

 At the bottom of the late trouble, thinks Father Merg, lies the slave question. The missionaries did their best to put down the slave traffic. Some of the murderers were slaves, whom the missions had freed. Not only are slaves regularly sold, but the hardier mountaineers frequently raid the coastal districts, and help themselves to as many as they want gratuitously. This raises bad blood between the "highlanders" and the "lowlanders," but it seems that on occasion they can sink their differences, and make common cause against the white man. The murdered missionaries, so far as Father Merg knew them, or of them, were men of exceeding kindness. Beyond the racial question, he can conceive of no reason why their lives should have been so ruthlessly cut short.

Evening News (Sydney, NSW ), Tuesday 13 September 1904 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article113290445

Massacre of German R.C. Missionaries.

A shocking massacre of German Roman Catholic Missionaries by the natives is reported from New Britain, thirty miles west of Herbertshohe, in the Baininger Mountains of German New Guinea. Slavery among the natives is a common custom, and the Missionaries free the slaves and cattle which are settled on their Mission Stations. The practice is not appreciated by the natives, and on August 13th S Paul's, Nachamarmap, and Marienbur Mission Stations were attacked. All the Missionaries were killed, and goods valued at £3000 were stolen. The attack was made at nine o'clock in the morning, when the Evangelists were at their daily labours, and entirely unprepared. Father Mathias, the head of St. Paul's Station, who came to New Guinea eleven years ago was murdered by a freed slave named Tomari, who had been treated with the greatest kindness and implicitly trusted. Tomari borrowed a gun from Father Mathias, ostensibly to shoot pigeons. Climbing a tree he shot the missionary through a window. Brother Joseph Bley, was carpentering and heard the shot. Running out, he was shot down. Brother Edward Plarsheart was killed with a hatchet from behind, and Brother Schellekens was similarly killed. Sister Anna was shot by Tomari, who forced open the door of a room she took refuge in.

Sisters Sofia and Agatha were killed, after having just tended the sick natives. Sister Angela was clubbed the same day at Nacharmap Station. Father Heinrich Rutlar was murdered and decapitated. An attack was premeditated upon Marienbar, but fortunately the brethren were away on the beach. A troop of thirty police was despatched to the scene. Sixteen of the murderers were captured and shot. They composed freed slaves and tribesmen. Twenty others implicated in the murders were caught. The police are scouring the country. A plot to murder all the whites in the district was discovered in July, and frustrated.

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article129107733

HOW IT WAS CAUSED.

MORE MISSIONARIES WANTED.

There are conflicting statements in Brisbane as to the motive of Tomari for shooting Father Rascher, at New Britain. One gentleman has attributed the act to revenge aroused in consequence of the church declining to permit the 'boy' to put away his wife, of whom he was tired, and to secure another, who possessed stronger personal attractions. He took the case into his own hands, and put his wife away, according to the rites of his tribe. As a punishment for this act, he was flogged. Thereupon, he threatened to shoot the padre, and fulfilled his threat, thus giving the signal for the massacre which followed. Father H. Linekens, provincial of the Order of the Sacred Heart of Jesu, and who is returning from the island, was interviewed in Brisbane. He denied that Tomari had threatened vengeance because of having been flogged for putting away his wife and taking another. He attributed the trouble to a great extent to the fact that the natives resented interference with their slave owning system. The services of the slaves whom they captured, were utilised to cultivate their plantations, and the missionaries and Germans had secured their freedom. The liberated serfs were then given land, and were permitted to marry and establish homes for themselves. It was believed that the coast natives generally objected to their 'rights' being taken from them. They have also complained of the practice of flogging natives for various offences. Father Linekens believes that the main cause of hostile feeling is connected with the slave trade. Father Linekens states that a cable has been sent to Germany for more missionaries to replace those who were murdered, and as soon as the punitive measures have been completed the work of the mission stations will be resumed.

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article113290444

THE CIRCLED CONTINENT.

 ——<>——

BY RANDOLPH BEDFORD.

(All Rights Reserved.)

THE TOPARCHS OF MORESBY.

From Hall Sound to Port Moresby at irregular intervals along the coast, and especially in Redscar and Caution Bays, Idlers Bay, and at Palli Point, are many bamboo and nipa palm thatch villages sitting up to their knees in water within the reefs. The Papuan coast tribes are landless sailors, who were always at war with the terrible bloodthirsty, well-fed men of the mountains and the jungle, and for reasons of safety from aggression and facility of retreat when the battle went against them they have always lived on stilts and do so now that the necessity has departed. Being pirates, they are also the keenest of commercial men, and are the greatest native traders, and the only native traders of enterprise in the Island.

The entrance to Moresby on a sunny day is a thing of great beauty. On a stormy day, with a despairing little steamer panting up to the harbour at a two-knot gait in the face of a gale, I confess that the beauty is not so easy of identification. The quarantine station on Isle Dango, a palm-fringed atoll low in the sea, the surf breaking behind it in a line of milk, a streak of sage-green in the shallow water of the middle distance, and the blue of depth by the ship side; many breaks of coral domes and gables showing, and the sea eroding them into caves and then bursting flashes of daylight through them; the mirage of sun heat on sea plane magnifying cay and shoal, surf and island, which—like most famous men—become smaller the closer they are approached.

Two canoes in line—one in the deep blue one in the light green above the reef; two canoes with peculiar V-shaped sails, their crews of naked brown men—the one-time pirates squatting in the dugouts and fishing.

The barren hills of Port Moresby dotted infrequently with stunted gums and riven and flanked by little silent, sour, and barren flats of scrubs, are representable in a thousand places on the Australian coast. Certainly this is the end of the dry season, and February will see these baked hills like the now brown Islands of Torres-Straits, covered with an alluring carpet of green. But the soil is valueless. It is behind Moresby, in the ranges, the jungles, and the great plateau of the Astrolabe that floral and tree beauty and soil values begin. On the eastern flank of the harbour are Government offices, the one hotel, and the two stores of Moresby. North, in the belly of the bay, and on a high grassy hill belted with cocoanuts, is the Government Residency, sheltered behind the white staff and the crossed flag.

West of the Residency, its houses on stilts in the saline water, is the village of Anahanbada; further west again, the head station of the London Missionary Society, which has been established here for 25 years.

The cargo handling of Port Moresby is very properly done by native prisoners. They came aboard and attacked the cargo listlessly —a dozen not very "desperate willins" chained at the ankles by handcuffs, which they lifted from the ankle-bones by cane suspenders tied above the knee. But for an abbreviated clout at the waist, broad-arrow marked, they were naked; and as they mishandled the cargo there were accidents to toes, and much Papuan profanity. The great flat-bottomed, broad-beamed water-boats, with an enormous water-bag spread at the bottom of each, were lowered away, and in the first boat two fuzzyheaded, copper-coloured men of Moresby pulled up the bay. At the steps we found a police boat, manned by six native policemen in blue and red kimonos—civilised, although the artistic sense of one of them was alive in the spike of frangipanni thrust behind his ear. But I found that this was not the result of an artistic sense, but of mere vain-glory of carcase; when I saw a highly-polished yellow man in torn trousers and a battered straw hat wore a garland of hibiscus and a frangipanni around the hat.

The street of Moresby village is one-sided, the stilted houses rising only from the sea. Ladders go up to each platform. The scavengers are the tides, which often return half they take, the pigs which look like half-fed dogs, and the dogs which look like starved pigs. Villainous faced old men, dressed in earrings and string, lay about the platforms; a few small girls, too young yet to have succeeded to the woman's heritage of labour, playing with humourously wretched pigs and with skeleton dogs, lower in the animal scale than the dog retinue of an Australian blacks' camp; two ancient native ladies, suckling each a child on one breast and a piglet on the other. Dirt and squalor, insulting the divine air and sea and the divine palms; laziness incarnate in the men who basked on the platforms and drugged themselves with the smoke of their bau-baus— the great bamboo pipe of the Papuan, in which the tobacco is not smoked as with us. The smoker takes a great mouthful of smoke, and fills the bamboo with it through a small hole in the upper surface, afterwards reinhaling the smoke from the hole at the end of the bamboo, a hole which is the total inner circumference of the wood. When the native man or woman—for all use the bau-bau—opens his mouth, and puts the base of a full-grown bamboo therein, it is a sight to fill the simple with wonder.

The bulk of the men were in the water at the back of the village preparing the great lakatois for sea. The lakatoi is a collection of dugouts placed side by side, decked over, and propelled by two great mat sails shaped like a crab's claws. Every year the lakatoi is put to sea— if hugging the land and keeping on the landward side of a reef may be called putting to sea —with the last of the south-east monsoon. They take from 25,000 to 30,000 cooking pots of baked clay, and sail to the sago swamps in the Gulf of Tapu—200 miles or so to the westward, returning at the beginning of the nor'-west monsoon with sago cargoes aggregating 600 tons.

The men on the lakatois engaged in the light work of bending their great mat sails and fixing running gear, and this they did to the accompaniment of cries and broken singing, that their importance might not be overlooked.

The real workers are the women. They squatted by their heaps of blue clay and yellow sand at the western end of the village, shaping the pots without a wheel or implement other than the naked hand. The pots are beautiful in form, very shallow-necked, and in their regularly swelling sides all that simplicity and symmetry which is the highest art. That wondrous sentient tool, the human hand, had done it all.

They baked the pots in open fires of wood, withdrawing the finished product with a small stick and the bare band, occasionally burning themselves and shrieking for a moment, and a moment later putting the burned hand on another red-hot pot and burning it again and shrieking some more. The fires blazed every half-dozen feet over a vegetationless rise belted by cocoanuts; everything female, even to the very young, who tried to do the impossible, had found its task while the men smoked and sang and slept; the woman relieving Adam of Adam's curse. Ten lords of the earth, all aged under 12, walked about mother naked, throwing toy spears and arrows; leisured in the presence of all this effort—the fire-making, the pot-making and burning, and the cooling and colouring of the clay by blows of a brush of cocoanut husk dipped in dyed water. The young girls, the ancient gins, and a dozen supercilious yellow matrons, fat, tattooed, heavy-legged and armed, dressed in blue tattoo marks and a red sarong, or a wood bracelet, and a grass rami. They were all busy; while the weary brown man loafed.

As I turned to leave there happened a thing which proved to me that the uneducated father— black, white, brown, or yellow—is one the world over. A small boy of 7 walked unknowingly through a fire covered with white ashes, staggered out of the fire and yelled his agony. His father came to him and beat him on the head for the crime of hurting himself, took the wounded feet in his hand, and with his nails tore off the burned skin, struck the boy again and departed. The child immediately stopped crying, picked up his toy spears and hobbled to the fire, speared the ashes three or four times, while speaking words of rage, and departed in his turn satisfied.

Once the native of Moresby was manly enough within his limitations as a savage— to-day Government protection and missionary ministrations have degenerated him into an aristocracy. The women are the hope of the race—if the race have a hope at all. They still do the work that in warlike tribes properly belongs to the women—the home, cooking, weaving mats and sails, twisting cordage, making pots, nets, and lines; and sex tops off artificial conditions with the supreme labour of child-bearing. In the old days the men paid for these services by protecting the women and children; the Government does that now. The colossal task of burning and hacking out canoes with flint axes is no more; the herculean labour of making tomahawks out of the rock is forgotten now that civilisation brings its three and sixpenny tool to supplant it; the art of making the stone club, and the more scientific kind of arrow; and Government has brought nothing in their places.

There are the Toparches of the ban-ban, rotting away their days with pipe, betel-nut, and lime pot, while their women work. Governor MacGregor, with the intention of providing the various native with occupation, enacted the compulsory planting of cocoanuts. The ordinance has never been observed. Once Port Moresby had a fair export trade in sandal-wood and rubber of the Ficus rigo. A few sandalwood -getters were allowed to cut more than they could transport in a reasonable time, and the patches were almost cut out. Rubber trees were stabbed and allowed to bleed until the trees died of their unstopped wounds; and when the mischief had been done, the Government prohibited sandalwood and rubber getting.

To-day Moresby, the oldest settlement in the Possession, and dating back for twenty-five years, has no industries beyond three small coffee plantations on the beautiful Astrolabe plateau, 3000ft above Moresby, reachable in 20 miles— a perfect climate and with sufficient coffee lands for hundreds of planters. Yet it has but three, and one of them is a Toparch.

There are charges made specifically and openly of misappropriation of Government reserves; meantime the passage of a camel through the eye of the needle is expedition itself compared with the land laws and their administration. There are cases where the applications of "outsiders" for land have been hung up for 18 months and more; while one applied for 150 acres of coffee land on the Astrolabe plateau and was in possession within a fortnight. In 1901 a trader applied for a quarter of an acre at Lese, near the Biaro River, in the Western Division, as a trading station— he waited three years, and may not have it yet. An intending grazier applied for 6000 acres near Port Moresby two years ago, and, after waiting until he was weary, abandoned his project.

The whole business of dealing with native lands is fatal. First an application is necessary to the Lands Office at Port Moresby, which instructs the Executive, which notes it and returns the application to the Lands Department, which sends to the district resident magistrate for a report as to advisability and possibility of purchasing the land from the natives. The magistrate's report goes to the Government Secretary, who sends it to the Executive; it is acted on according to the report, and returned to the magistrate with instructions to buy or it is refused or shelved.

I came one afternoon down to the beach and took the boat for the steamer. The four rowers pulled away strongly, and for a moment a big black and cobalt butterfly settled on the glistening black shoulder-blade of a Kiwai boy, and fluttered back to land as it felt the sea airs ruffling the wing bloom.

Away in the dirty village and on the lakatois making ready to be a sago argosy the retired pirates were singing to the winds, partly for their own habit of superstitious fears, partly maybe their song of the romance of the Change of the Seasons.

Ahead two lakatois completed for sea, loaded and prepared to leave the haven next dawn, sailed there on a preliminary cruise around the harbour with certain weird ceremonies of consecration.

The great crabclaw sails of woven palm leaf were golden in the sun; decorations of saffron yellow palm fronds swung from every point and mast; there were bright orange wings bound to the arms and shoulders of the brown men at the broad beam and at the stern; two girls on each backstay, and half a dozen brown youths swimming before the lumbering craft that hogged the water on its seven keels.

I was looking at practically the only export of Moresby despite its twenty years of occupation some of the 25,000 cooking pots to be exchanged for the pith of a palm; the freight of baked clay barterable for on argosy of sago. So much for the ladies of Anahanbada. The great white man exports little except complaints.

Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954), Saturday 18 November 1905, page 6

NEW CALEDONIA.

 About 800 miles east from the coast of Australia, and 1000 miles north-west from the North Cape of New Zealand, lies the island of New Caledonia, now a French colony and penal settlement. It is almost 200 miles in length, with a mean breadth of 30 miles, and extends between the parallels 20 degrees and 23 degrees south latitude. The aboriginal inhabitants are said to bear a considerable resemblance to the now extinct natives of Tasmania. They are, however, better looking, and wear a less savage aspect, which may be accounted for by their being more abundantly supplied with the necessaries of life. Their hair is crisp, nearly woolly, and is frequently worn frizzed out, after the fashion of the Papuans. The color of the skin is very dark; and they have projecting lips, narrow, retreating ears, and noses artificially flattened. Many of them have the lobes of the ears distended to an enormous extent, pieces of wood gradually increasing in size being employed for that purpose. Although their hair is short as a rule, at a distance many of them might be taken for long-haired people, on account of a habit they have of adorning themselves with artificial tresses made out of fine grass, and the hair of the large fruit bat. Some of these appendages are so long as to descend to the middle of the back. Round the head a net with wide meshes is occasionally worn, and the chiefs adopt an odd sort of head-gear, resembling a chimneypot hat, without either brim or crown. These cylindrical hats have a circular ornament on either side, with a plume of feathers at the top. Having no Crown, it offers no protection to the head, but it is merely worn as an emblem of rank. Those who adopt the fashion of frizzing out the hair use a ' scratcher,' or rude sort of comb, which is composed of a number of sticks of hard wood, about the thickness of knitting needles, fastened together at one end. The men go about almost naked, having at the most only a small wrapper or a strip of soft bark round their loins ; whilst the women wear a narrow girdle of fringe five or six inches deep, their hair being invariably cropped short.

The New Caledonians in their moonlight dances (which somewhat resemble those of the Australian aborigines, known as 'corroboree') wear a large mask, called a ' momo,' which consists of a hideous face, carved out of wood, and painted black, to which are attached long masses of woolly human hair and feathers, whilst a sort of coarse net work descends below, enveloping the wearer as far down as the knees.

 Although naturally the New Caledonians possess thick and copious beards they take great pains to remove them, the hair being pulled out by the roots by means of a pair of bivalve shells employed after the manner of pincers. It is a singular fact that the same practice obtains amongst the New Zealanders, although the latter people belong to an entirely different race, being true Polynesians. The New Caledonians, however, do not tattoo themselves, but paint themselves with broad charcoal lines drawn diagonally across the breast. Necklaces of various kinds are worn, most of them consisting of shells or carved bones, or the seeds and berries of plants. Their houses resemble beehives, with painted roofs, and are generally ornamented on the top with a projecting post carved with grotesque images, and decorated with the white shells of the ovulum, In building a house the native architect commences by digging a hole in the earth, and firmly planting in it a stout pole some fifteen feet high. A number of smaller poles are set in the ground in a circle, their tops leaning against the central standard. The sides are then interlaced with reeds and branches, and the roof securely thatched with dry grass. The entrance is a hole only just large enough to admit of a man bent double. This is closed with a rude door made of palm branches, and sometimes in the better class of huts there are regular doorposts carved in imitation of the human figure.  Within the hut a fire is kept burning, not so much for the sake of warmth as for a defence against the mosquitoes. Within each hut depends a sort of hanging shelf suspended by cords; and outside a fence some four or five feet high surrounds the dwelling. The New Caledonians, like the Fijians and the people of Eastern New Guinea, manufacture pottery, which they color with red ochre, and glaze with the gum or resin of the dammara pine. In these they cook roots and fish. All the cooking is done by the women, who also collect vast quantities of shellfish along the seacoast which forms an extensive article of diet amongst them. Then are, however, two singular luxuries to which these people are partial which are worthy of notice. The one is a large species of spider, which spins large nests in the woods. They are not eaten raw, but stewed in a covered earthen jar over the fire. The other delicacy consists of a soft greenish steatite or clay, which crumbles very easily, and has the property of distending the stomach and allaying the cravings of hunger.

 They cultivate the ground, and have plantations of taro, plantains, cocoanuts, yams, and other esculents. They also build walls along the sides of the hills to confine the soil, forming the arable surface into a succession of terraces. There is reason to believe that formerly these people were in a more advanced state than at the present time, as remains of ancient aqueducts, several miles in length, have been discovered in some parts of the island, also vestiges of paved roads and fortified strongholds. It is possible that these remains of a superior civilisation may have been the work of another race who have passed into oblivion, but at any rate their presence in New Caledonia is, to say the least, remarkable. In the building of their canoes these islanders evince considerable skill and ingenuity. They carve them with axes and tools made of serpentine or green jade, which is of a lighter color than that of New Zealand. Their largest canoes are mostly double, two boats being place alongside one another and connected above by a platform. They have a single mast stepped towards one end of the vessel, and are provided with sails of matting ; whilst a fire placed on a thick layer of clay, is generally kept burning on the platform.

Southern Argus (Port Elliot, SA : 1866 - 1954), Thursday 1 February 1877, page 2

JAZZ FIEND AND WILD WOWSER

DANCING VISIONS NOBLE AND IGNOBLE
 Sex Purity and the Giddy Whirl
SOME COMIC AMERICAN CAMPAIGNS

(By RANDOLPH BEDFORD, for The Sunday Times.)

A restaurant in Forty-second-street, New York ; lights, mirrors, statues, revue turns, handicapped by performance on the same floor-level as the diners, the mad noises of the jazz band ; statues of Venus in concrete repeated to infinite weariness ; dancers revolving and back stepping solemnly, like the larrikin waltzers of Sydney Harbor picnics in the 90's—moving so slowly that they seem to suspend all action, bipeds closely holding each other, so that they seem to be single quadrupeds—the cheek-to-cheek dancing which makes Dr. Stratton and Canon Chase to roar in anguish.
 The "music," a broken symphony filled with surprises, and apparently written by Isidore Pappelbaum in collaboration with Rastus Crow ; the same as composed the Prohibition Sonata, the Meningitis Two-Step, and the Bright's Disease Gavotte.
 The Meke of Fiji and the Hula of Samoa, the sex and war dances of the Papuan and the graphic drama of the North Australian corroborree are dignified classics.

ANOTHER MEMORY.

 I remember landing on an island in the Coral Sea in the beginning of a bright moonlight night, the air saturated with rays pouring from the great lucent orange that was the moon. Above the white sickle of the beach nothing was quiet but the moonlight. Fires of drift blazed and crackled about the noisy dancers, and over all the unconcerted sounds came the song of deep voiced men singing an interminable chant that would have wearied but for the wonderful harmony of it :
 "Au Mara ! Au Mara ! Au Mara !
 La hala ! La hala ! Hoo Wau !"
 The backcloth of this great stage was a cocoanut grove and a belt of paw-paw ; many wongi trees held scores of polished brown-red children chattering like parrots, and eating the red, astringent, date-like fruit at the same time. The boomerang of beach and the sea silent, the land lipped by the quiet lagoon ; the drift sand above high water beaten and stirred by many feet. No finer service is possible than the street whose final preparation is constant pressure by the naked feet of humans until it is soft as dust and firm as a camel pad ; but the continuously sifted sand of the "stage" was one moment beaten hard by the stamping of the dancers, and in the next figure torn to atoms by the tireless side-movements of 200 feet.
The human color fell in splashes on the silver-blue night ; red men, copper men, black men, dressed in sulus and grass anklets, and with flowers and feathers in their glossy black hair: men with skins of burnished copper dressed in red sarongs, with bunches of red leaves ; Ki Wai boys—the black Jews of the Gulf of Papua—greatly energetic and wearing head dresses of palm leaf ; Binghis, black as swans ; and the earnest, Semitic faces of the Papuans as their feet beat the sand and spurned it. Dancing with wild abandon and tireless energy—every muscle working in these dances of menace and of battle ; dances of Dutch courage to screw the heart of the warrior to the sticking place ; dances of homecoming, hunting, and farewell.
 They were bone-dry with weariness ; the voices of the old men husky with singing and the breathing of sand-laden air ; they had been dancing almost continuously for four-and-twenty hours—yet they finished each figure of the dance with blood-curdling yells as they rushed to the palm grove which was their green-room—yells that in the old days often led to a frightened trader firing a gun and loosing a massacre. Yet after a minute at the green-room they returned as if the one swift touch of nature of the grove had renewed their youth.
 The small, naked, pot-bellied boys came from the wongi trees and imitated the dance at the edge of the sand. The new dance was of sea-fighting and of hunting the Dugong; the song of the sea, and of the strength of a man fighting it, the hiss of the snake, the barking of the village dogs at the return of the hunters and a howl for a death in the tribe.

 A BLACK HERCULES.

 The leader was a shining black marble Hercules, but not too strong for grace ; his tremendous voice led the chant of the warriors in the cry for war, drowning the old man's feebler cry for peace. And there was a girl of Samoa—her face, but for the high cheek bones, of that handsomeness which is the beauty of perfect health, her eyes fine, her teeth perfect, her body rippling grace. Her calico smock recalled the Roman toga ; her smiling dignity made of her a Roman matron of classic time. She seemed to forget everybody in the dance—Hercules and all men. The moonlight and the fire-glare shone of her handsomeness as she led in the dance of the life a woman—the household tasks, the bearing of burdens while the buck walks easily, carrying the spear ; courtship, the unwelcome lover and his repulse, marriage, maternity, the departure of the husband to hunting or to battle, his return and the dragging of the canoe up the bleached sands, the little feast of fish, sago, yam and cocoanut under the nipa thatch.
 Honest in expression, they illustrate what they mean ; but this jazz business is ugly and vainly hypocritical.

 THE PROFESSIONAL REFORMER.

 The main interest of jazz to me is that it provides new material for the wowsers—giving the paid and self-advertising reformer his second wind. The reformer not only desires to abandon the shimmy, the turkey trot, the bunny hug, and other forms of cheek-to-cheek dancing, but all dancing ; and in State Legislatures they promote and lobby for Bills to make dancing illegal by making real dancing impossible if the proposed laws are ever to be observed. Such dances as Toddles, Chicago, Krazy Kat, the Camel, and the Finale Hopper are especially loathed by reformers. A Bill specifically aimed at these is being introduced in New York State Legislature, with Canon Chase, of Brooklyn, as Chief Lobbyist. The Canon insists that dancers shall be at least four inches apart, which suggests that policemen shall haunt dance-rooms with tape measures if the Bill becomes law. The Canon also desires a fixed minimum of clothing during dancing; being moved thereto by the fact that in many dance halls and jazzoriums the cloakrooms bear the sign "Park your corsets here."
 If the Bill becomes law it will close dancing halls from Van Cortlandt Park
to Coney Island, and prohibit the extreme dances of the stage. The draft of the Bill was accompanied by sketches 'showing dancing positions which are to be made illegal. The prohibitions include "Vulgar jazz music" which influence dancers to use jerky steps and immoral variations.
 "Holding partner tightly."
 "Cheek to cheek dancing."
 " The neck hold."
 "Dancing which consists of shaking or jerking the upper part of the body while taking short steps."
 "Dancing which consists of exceptionally long or short steps."
 "Dancing which consists of movements above the waist rather than from the waist down."
 "Dancing which consists of suggestive movements."
 "Extreme dancing as seen on the modern stage."

 RECTOR'S IDEAS.

 Interviewed by the New York World on this Bill, Canon Chase showed that he knows his subject. Says the World :
 "The young man must not shimmy across the dance hall to the young woman whom he desires to dance with, declared the rector. "He must walk sedately over, bow, and present himself to her as a gentleman, not a beast from the woods.
 "Then the lady should place her left arm on the partner's arm or shoulder but not to extend to the neck or back This cheek-to-cheek and neck-hold dancing is criminal.  "The young man should encircle the lady with one arm only, and place his other hand on the opposite hand of his partner off to the side and free from his or her body. And partners at all time should keep their bodies and faces free from each other."
 Asked how distance of four inches between partners could be preserved in a crowded restaurant or jazzorium, the Canon said : "It would be easy with police supervision."
 So there they are again— the police engaged in everything but arresting criminals, and by and by a police force as big as a standing army.

 WHAT DANCING MASTERS SAY.

 The National American Association of Dancing Masters and the International Association Masters of Dancing—two rival organisations—agree that dancing is growing away from the jazz steps, and that the tango, fox-trot, and straight waltz, with variations of the "canter" and "hesitation" steps, will be the new vogue. Major Gaynor, an 80-year-old dancing master, agrees with Canon Chase as to the "girl of to-day being unable to dance unless she has a death-grip on the neck of the man partner." Major Gaynor says he is "a Methodist in old standing," and he regrets the passing of the Methodist resolution of 1872 against dancing, card-playing, and theatre-going.
 The Associations object to the camel the Chicago, and the shimmy, but think well of the walking dance known as "scandal."

 THE DIE-AWAY DRAG.

 The Chicago is also known as the "drag," and it has superseded all the older forms of shocking the dancing public. It boomed in Chicago last Winter, and now it is booming in New York, and it has spread throughout the country. The drag is a jazz of the ankles. The left foot twists in jazzy rhythms following the out-of-time bouncing, gliding, jumping beat of the clarionet, and the right foot drags behind with the slow, infectious slide of the trombone. Meanwhile the shoulders are inert. From the knees up there is no motion. If a couple in the throes of the "drag" succeeds in circling the outer edge of a medium-sized dance floor once on the course of a dance, it has more than exceeded the speed limit. The most snail-like of all dances and the one requiring the least effort is the "drag."
 In those places where the regulations require that dancers be separated by a distance of six inches or even of one inch, the "drag" has no place. Its popularity is due to the fact that the partner can be held to the limit of closeness without breaking the rhythm. There is no rhythm to break.
 In hot weather the "drag" has its advantages. It is the laziest, slowest, most indolent of all dance-hall steps. But it is not an easy to acquire as it looks. You must be able to jazz your feet—you must learn the knack of dancing out of time, for the "drag" is like the after-beat of a discordant horn. It never comes exactly on the beat.

 WHAT SHORT SKIRTS MEAN.

 The chairman of the committee on dance reform of the national Association of Dancing Masters says that short skirts brought the "drag" step into popularity. With girls wearing short skirts there was always a temptation to dance improperly. The jazz should be taken out of dance music—it is too excitable. The tempo of the fox-trot has been gradually slowed down to a dangerous, languid beat, with little jerky jazz counter-rhythms ; and this has a bad effect on dancers.
 The jazz seems to have found dancing out—not the vile amusement imagined by the Grave Ones, but also not as the skipping of lambs and children, as asserted by the dancing masters. In the adult it is sex expression, even though unrecognised, and it was never any more than that. So, therefore, law and prohibitions, and policemen with little tape measures to keep dancing partners at their proper distance, are ridiculous, and must fail.

 A NEW DISEASE.

 A new disease, styled "diarthrositis," has apparently come out of jazz, or has been invented to help a Chicago girl find a new excuse for litigation and damages; and Marie Erler's suing Ernie Young, theatrical prosecutor, for $100,000 damages for "diarthrositis," induced by giving jazzing exhibitions in Young's Cabaret. Her claim states that she has further contracted a disease which makes her limbs and body quiver when she hears jazz music, her work in Young's cabarets requiring her to "execute many contortions, convolutions, distortions, and gyrations associated with modern dancing aberrations, particularly twisting and writhing of the hips and shivering and convulsing of the shoulders, producing a jazz emotion particularly sensitive to sonniferous instruments, suggestive of an accentuated syncopation of a jazz orchestra, and inciting her involuntarily and unconsciously to wiggle and revolve."
 With juries full of "chivalrous respect for womanhood"—even wiggling and revolving women—the outlook is black for Mr. Young.

Sunday Times (Sydney, NSW : 1895 - 1930), Sunday 8 April 1923, page 13

ANTIQUITIES OF POLYNESIA.

  ———<>———

BY THE REV. D. MACDONALD.

A letter in The Argus of 22nd August calls attention to a very desirable service that may be rendered to an interesting and important branch of science by explorers and others in New Guinea and the Pacific Islands keeping watch during their wanderings for anything in the shape of inscriptions, whether alphabetical or hieroglyphic on rocks bamboo tablets, or other material, and either purchasing the tablets and bringing them to the Melbourne or some other museum, or making carefully and on the spot fac-simile drawings or photographs of them. Visitors to the islands will find that this idea, if they take it up, will give them a large amount of innocent recreation, and may lead to some very important results. In prosecuting any matter of this kind, it is well to have a theory. The endeavour to verify one's theory leads to tho collection of facts, and the facts may be permanently useful, even if the theory has to be discarded. Now, the most probable theory, in the writer's estimation, is that the Polynesian race came originally from the Persian Gulf, in very ancient times, when the head of that gulf was tho central point or heart of the world's civilisation, then in the hands of a Shemitic speaking people, who, for the purposes of this investigation, may be regarded as having planted the commercial civilisation of the Sabæans in South Arabia, and as having been one with the Sabæans. In the hands of these people, from prehistoric times to shortly before the Christian era, was the whole ship trade of the Indian Ocean; all the products of the East carried by sea to the West passed through the hands of these Chaldæo Sabæans. Moreover, and still for the purposes of this theory, they may be regarded as originally identical with the Phœnicians, as it is well known that the Phœnicians originally lived in tho Persian Gulf. It was there they became a seafaring people, it seems. It was from there they eventually (that is some of them) emigrated to that part of the shore of the Mediterranean to which they gave then name. According, then, to this theory the Polynesian family of speech is a branch of the Shemitic, and any engravings or representations alphabetic or symbolic, found in Polynesia or Oceania are likely to be Chaldæo-Phœnician.

"In the Philippines, at the arrival of the Spaniards, the art of writing was known, and Orientalists may see in the alphabets of that epoch that there is not in them the slightest trace of the Chinese writing, nor the Sanscrit, Tamul, Telengi, Arabic or, in fine, of any caligraphy of Asia or Africa. On passing through Singapore I saw an ancient stone, whose inscription no one had been able to decipher, but it was the same kind of writing as the ancient Philippine, though from its bad state of preservation it was impossible for me to read it. This proves nothing further as to tho communication which existed between the two countries, since the language affords of this fact an irrefragable testimony ; but it is one for believing that they did not obtain the art of writing from Asia. In the Bugin language of the Celebes also, there is an alphabet in which no Asiatic analogy is discoverable, that is in the estimation of the author of Estado de las Islas Filipinas en 1842, from whose work published in two volumes in 1843 at Madrid, the late Judge Kennedy quotes the above, and adds (Ethnological Society 1855) as to the Singapore inscription the following :— " Mr Crawford, in the valuable paper he read before this society on the various alphabets of the Indian Archipelago (vol ii., page 253) also refers to this stone at Singapore as hearing a very rude but long inscription in what he calls an unknown character, but which he supposed to be the ancient Malay of Sumatra. . . . In page 79 of his dissertation he says that there is an other stone inscription in Borneo of the same characters as that at Singapore." This latter occupies a space on the perpendicular side of a rock, called batu tulis, of 2ft deep and 4ft long, and is interesting as found in the interior of an island whose inhabitants no longer can read it or possess the art of writing. It was discovered in 1840 by two American missionaries. It would be well were fac-similes of these two inscriptions procured for the Melbourne museum; they would surely be more valuable than specimens of tho krises and mats of Malay rajahs. Mr Kennedy goes on to say :—

" From these statements of our (Spanish) author we find—First that the original inhabitants of the Philippines found there by the Spaniards, comprising the brown population and the black, or nigrito, all speak what, in effect, is one language, divided into four dialects, and what is more remarkable, that it is, in fact, the same as the Malayan or Singapore. This Malay language we learn further from other sources, extends in its various dialects not only over the Indian Archipelago, to which the Continental writers have given the name of Oceania, but also into the Pacific, and to the mainland of Asia, and in some degree to the inland of Madagascar. Mr Marsden and some other authorities have thought it confined to the brown-coloured people commonly known as Malays, but later information collected or give us by Mr Earl, Mr Crawford, and Dr Latham, shows us that the some language is also possessed in a greater or less degree by a number of the black coloured tribes, while some of the brown tribes have equal degrees of difference among themselves."

Far more is known now of these languages than in Mr Kennedy's day. We know now that the Malayo-Polynesian is as universal in Madagascar as in any island of the Indian Archipelago, and in Melanesia or Papuanesia as in Madagascar or the Eastern Pacific. The notion of an indigenous negro race in the islands having been conquered by Malay invaders, driven to the hills, and known as orang-utan is now thoroughly exploded. The negroes must have been mixed, exactly as they are now with the Polynesians, that is, absorbed into and forming part of the race or people before it emigrated from its original home into the island world, whose inhabitants it became. This renders an investigation of the Polynesian antiquities all the easier and more hopeful, as wherever found in Madagascar, Easter Island, the Philippines Borneo, New Guinea, or New Hebrides they may be expected to be homogeneous.

William von Humboldt who believed that the Polynesian languages were of the Indo European stock was not able to affiliate the Polynesian alphabets in accordance with that theory. On the contrary, he was obliged to say that they were of unknown origin, and that their prototype must be of remote antiquity and had probably served also as the base of the devanagari itself. This perfectly accords with our theory of the direct descent of these Polynesian alphabetic characters from the Phœncian. In the fourth volume of the Journal of the Anthropological Institute there is an interesting paper by Mr J P Harrison on "Phœnician Characters from Sumatra," with a plate in which the Sumatran and Phœnician characters are placed side by side thus :—






We give these here, that people going to the islands may take them with them ; and now let us hear some of Mr Harrison's remarks upon them :—

" These characters are said to be still in use in the districts of Rejang, Lemba, and Passumah in Sumatra. MSS. on 31 tablets, formed of split bamboos, were, it appears, acquired many years ago by the old East India Company, and are now in the library of the India office. Nearly the whole of the letters inscribed on the convex surfaces of the bamboos are identical in form with Phoenician characters mostly of a pure period, and afford a very remarkable instance of the survival of an early form of writing adopted by a non-literary race."

The theory that the Sumatrans are of the same race as the original inventors and users of the so called Phœnician alphabet has evidently not occurred to Mr Harrison.

" The twentieth letter of the Rejang alphabet is the only one that has not been identified. It should be mentioned that the order of the letters is not the same as in the Phœnician, and the letters themselves are generally reversed; their values also are different."

And now for Mr Harrisons theory of explanation :—

"Both in Java . . . and Sumatra . . .written traditions mixed with fable, refer to the arrival of ships in remote times, and at two different epochs, from the Red Sea and tho Persian Gulf—in the one case at a time when vessels still coasted round the Bay of Bengal ; in the other, in the age of Alexander, who is said to have built a bridge 'in the sea,' which may mean that ships commanded by some of his officers arrived direct from India. Three of his descendants are also said to have become kings of Palembang, &c. The ships would have been manned principally by Pœnician sailors. Stript of legendary matter, there seems nothing contrary to, or inconsistent with, history in these traditions, which consequently possess a certain value, apart from tho evidence afforded by the MSS. The importance attending the identification of these characters is principally ethnographical."

We do not believe for a moment in tho idea here hinted at—possible, of course, but improbable to the last degree—that either at or previous to the time of Alexander some Phoenician sailors taught their alphabet to the alien aborigines of Malaysian Polynesia. These aborigines brought their alphabet with them from the Persian Gulf, where it was invented by people of their own race, and whence it was carried all over the world, east and west and adopted sometimes by people of alien race. But the probability is that this alphabet, which seems to be the nearest of all living or in present use to the old Phœnician, was never used by people of alien race to its first inventors.

Not to discuss this point at greater length on the present occasion, let me conclude by observing that the vowels in these alphabets, as in most Shemitic alphabets, are denoted by points or marks joined, or placed near to the consonants, and by giving the following Sumatran characters with the corresponding ancient Phœnician :—






These Polynesian characters are from Crawford's Dissertation. Many other interesting comparisons could be made, but these seem pretty conclusive, and it is to be hoped that scholars will take up the matter and deal with it exhaustively. The eleven Polynesian alphabets are undoubtedly of the same origin. The comparison of these alphabets with the Phœnician, and of the languages written in these alphabets with that written in the Phœnician, give results altogether in favour of the theory of the original peopling of Oceania by the Chaldæo-Sabæans, or Phœnicians of the Persian Gulf. According to it, Sumatra would be the first part of Eastern Oceania touched at and colonised by them. And this, no doubt, sufficiently accounts for the tradition among the Malays, that Sumatra was the island from which their race migrated into all the neighbourng islands of the archipelago. Peculiar interest therefore, attaches to Sumatra; but how little do we know of it. Its people seem to have degenerated. Some of them are cannibals ; and the only cannibals in the world who have an alphabet. As Latham in his peculiar style says, they are " cannibals of a peculiar kind, under peculiar circumstances. They are cannibals and yet not pagans. They are cannibals and yet not without an alphabet. They are cannibals with either the germ or the fragments of a literature." According to the theory we advocate, not "the germ" but "the fragments of a literature;" and the fragments, also, of an ancient civilisation that once swayed the whole world, other fragments of which have been found on the shores or at the head of the Persian Gulf.


Very probably ancient inscriptions will yet be discovered in Madagascar. Sibree speaks of "carvings" on grave pillars or monuments. One—of an early king of tho Betsileo— has "each face elaborately carved with different patterns arranged in squares," and "bears some resemblance to the old Runic stones." He also notes among the inscriptions the circle and the leaf ornament as to the symbolical import of which in Polynesian archaeology we shall speak below. Let these Malagasy rune-like "carvings," or engravings, be investigated and deciphered.

Have we any facts connecting with the Persian Gulf, Madagascar on the one hand, and Eastern Oceania (Sumatra &c.) on the other, to the extent demanded by this theory? I think this question may be answered in the affirmative. One thing is certain—such connexion both on the one side and on the other, with the Persian Gulf must have been, if at all, by means of ships or vessels. Another thing seems also certain—that just as the Sumatran alphabet came from the Persian Gulf, so also did the Polynesian or Oceanic ship or vessel. The most essential distinguishing feature of this vessel is that its planks are not nailed, but sewn together with coir, sennit, or yarn made of cocoanut fibre. From time immemorial such has been the characteristic of the ships of the Shemites of the Persian Gulf or Arabia. And so peculiar is it that when a ship was found in the ninth century wrecked, near the Pillars of Hercules, at the entrance of the Mediterranean Sea, an Arab writer of that century mentions that it was owing to its construction, concluded to have circumnavigated Africa. According to Herodotus Phœnician ships had done that 600 years before the Christian era. Vessels of this construction are found all over Oceania, and those only if we exclude Ceylon and the neighbouring coast of India, and their presence here is not only accounted for but demanded by our theory of the Persian Gulf being their original starting point. Barbosa (1511) says of the vessels of Arabs and Persians on the coast of Malabar, of 200 tons, that they "have no nails. They sew their planks with mat cords," and trade between India and Arabia. In the account of the travels of two Mohammedans, ninth century, we read of people in the Persian Gulf "who cross over to the islands (there) that produce cocoanuts, taking with them their tools, and make ships out of it. With the bark they make the cordage and sew the planks together, and of the leaves they make sails, and having thus completed the vessel they load it with cocoanuts and set sail." Marco Polo, speaking of the ships of the Persian Gulf, says that they do not use nails, but woollen pins, and fasten them with threads made of the Indian nut," by which, no doubt, he means the cocoanut, the Polynesian nut. See an interesting paper by Colonel Lane-Fox on "Early Modes of Navigation." This, then is the most essential peculiar feature of Polynesian ship-building, and it has come from the Shemites of the Persian Gulf, and it has been carried by it inventors into the Isles of the Sea, where it it is continued to this day.

Can the Polynesian or Oceanic outrigger, peculiar to Oceania with the same inevitable exceptions of the Andamans, Ceylon, and neighbouring coast of India, be traced to the Persian Gulf? Outrigger canoes or vessels have their planks sewn together. Pliny speaks of them in the waters to the west of Ceylon, i.e., between Ceylon and the Persian Gulf. The common Polynesian name for outrigger—Samoan, ama, Ambrim, ham—is I think Shemitic, and from the Persian Gulf, being either the same as, or cognate with the Arabic 'aamah, "pieces of wood bound together, upon which one embarks on the sea," in fact a kind of raft ; and the outrigger canoe is a compromise between a raft and a boat or ship.

According to the oldest Malaysian tradition, the progenitors of the present inhabitants of the Malayan islands came in ships from "Laut Mira," or the Red Sea, by which not to be understood what we call the Red Sea, but what Herodotus and the ancients call by that name, including the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea, or the Indian Ocean surrounding Arabia. It was so called because it was the Sea of the Red Men (Himyarites, Phœnicians, or as we say, Shemites.) See Smith's Bible Dictionary. The Red Sea, or Sea of Himyer is what he Malays call "Luat Mira," for Mira is the Malay word signifying "red," as does Himyer, and it is the same as, or cognate to, the word Himyer. And laut, "sea" —a word found in a thousand isles of Oceania and in various forms as wolat, olat, elau, alau, &c.—is in Arabic 'aallat or 'aallah, the sea close to the shore. In Vate the word also means the sea close to the shore. Laut Mira, then, is the Himyaritic Sea.

Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957), Monday 29 October 1883, page 4