The Malay archipelago : the land of the orang-utan ... - Wallace Online

sxix.] THE Kf; ISLANDS. 319Mongolian type, broad and somewhat flat. The brows aredepressed, the mouth wide, but not projecting, and the nosesmall and well formed but for tlie great dilatation of the nostrils.The face is smooth, and rarely develops the trace of a beard ;thehair black, coarse, and perfectly straight. The Papuan, on theother hand, has a face wliich we may say is compressed andprojecting. The brows are protuberant and overhanging, themouth large and jDrominent, while the nose is very large, theapex elongated downwards, the ridge thick, and the nostrilslarge. It is an obtrusive and remarkable feature in thecountenance, the very reverse of what obtains in the Malayface. The twisted beai'd and frizzly hair complete this remarkablecontrast. Here then I had reached a new w^orld, inhabitedby a strange people. Between the Malayan tribes, among whomI had for some years been li^'ing, and the Papuan races, whosecountry I had now entered, we may farly say that there is asmuch difference, both moral and physical, as between the redIndians of South America and the negroes of Guinea on theopioosite side of the Atlantic.Jan. \st, 1857.—This has been a day of thorough enjoyment.I have wandered in the forests of an island rarely seen byEuropeans. Before daybreak we left our anchorage, and in anhour reached the village of Har, where we were to stay three orfour days. The range of hills here receded so as to form a smallbay, and they were broken up into peaks and hummocks withintervening flats and hollows. A broad beach of the whitestsand lined the inner part of the bay, backed by a mass of cocoanutpalms, among which the huts were concealed, and surmountedby a dense and varied growth of timber. Canoes and boats ofvarious sizes were drawn up on the beach, and one or two idlers,with a few children and a dog, gazed at our prau as we came toan anchor.When we went on shore the first thing that attracted us wasa large and well-constructed shed, under which a long boat wasbeing built, while others in various stages of completion wereplaced at intervals along the beach. Our captain, who wantedtwo of moderate size for the trade among the islands at Aru,immediately began bargaining for them, and in a short time hadarranged the number of brass guns, gongs, sarongs, handkerchiefs,axes, white plates, tobacco and arrack which he was togive for a pair which could be got ready in four days. We thenwent to the village, which consisted only of three or four huts,situated immediately above the beach on an irregular rockypiece of ground overshadowed with cocoa-nuts, palms, bananas,and other fruit trees. The houses wei'e very rude, black andhalf rotten, raised a few feet on posts with low sides of bambooor planks and high thatched roofs. They had small doors andno windows, an ojDening under the projecting gables letting thesmoke out and a little light in. The floors were of strips ofbamboo, thin, slippery, and elastic, and so weak, that my feet