Chapter 9

CHAPTER IIDISAPPOINTMENTS IN DUTCH NEW GUINEA

CHAPTER II

DISAPPOINTMENTS IN DUTCH NEW GUINEA

As we approached the shores of Dutch New Guinea, we first descried low-lying tracts of marshy land. To the water’s edge came tall trees loaded with orchids of the most brilliant hues and of many varieties, notably the Dendrobium. The mangrove swamps, elsewhere so common in New Guinea, were here entirely absent. Under the trees, close even to the water’s brink, could be seen a dense tangled undergrowth. There was no beach, only muddy shores. At low tide the water recedes, probably for a quarter of a mile, leaving hard mud flats capable of sustaining men bare-foot. During the winter monsoon a heavy surf would break on these flats, but we arrived in fine weather, and the water was perfectly calm.

Of course, theNeascould not go inshore, but had to stand off to a distance of at least ten miles, and we had to land by the boat. A prominent feature of the landscape was a great spreading tree, which the Dutch sailors had taken as their chief bearing for finding the mouth of the Merauke River. Had the hostile natives only known how the access to their jealously guarded territory depended upon that one landmark, it would certainly not have been allowed to stand long. These characteristic shores fringe the mouth of the Merauke River, which empties itself through asmall estuary about three times as wide as the Thames at Greenwich. It is navigable for about six miles, and at the furthest end it so narrows that the vessel could be put about only by a clever manœuvre, during which her bow and stern all but touched the banks. With a small survey boat, however, such as theNeas, drawing from 10 to 12 feet of water, the river may be navigated for about 160 miles. From larger vessels lying in the river off the new Dutch settlement of Merauke, which was our point of arrival, it was usual to land in a small dinghy.

A row of a few yards brought us to a primitive staging, built on piles, supporting a floating platform of logs, very slippery with the slime left by the river at high tide. These treacherous logs were far enough apart to permit of a man’s slipping easily between them into the unsavoury stream. Unsavoury indeed it was, for the waters of the Merauke are blue with a greasy alluvial deposit, closely resembling the “blue slipper” so well known to geologists in the Isle of Wight. The Dutch Settlement lay close to the landing-stage. It presented a rough collection of houses and barracks for the Netherlands troops. The largest building was the barracks, a fairly well-built structure of wood, capable of accommodating all the Dutch troops, a force of about 150. The house of Mr. Kroesen, who was at that time the Resident, was quite an attractive building, with a glass roof and thin bamboo walls hung with a few curtains. It contained ten apartments, all on the ground floor. Next in importance was the house of the Comptroller, Mr. Schadee, which had only one apartment, with a large projecting roof and a fine verandah, under which the Comptroller entertained his friends. A little distance away were the open sleeping sheds of the Javanese convicts who had been brought there to build the Settlement and to drain the marsh.

CURIOUS DRUMS OF THE TUGERI (DUTCH NEW GUINEA).The body of the drum is cut and hollowed from a solid trunk, and curiously carved. The drumheads are of lizard skin.

It is curious that the Dutch always choose low-lying spots for their settlements. Some instinct of home seems to draw them to the flat lands, and better sites at a loftier elevation are neglected. Merauke, however, was chosen for another reason. The Dutch had been good enough to make their Settlement here to prevent the Tugeri from making raids on to the British territory. The thoroughness of the Dutch character, however, appears in the equipment of their station. When I arrived at Merauke the Settlement was only two months old, but it was already furnished with every accessory of civilisation, even including iron lamp-posts from Europe. It offered, in this respect, a striking contrast to the old British Settlement of Port Moresby. Merauke was built in a forest clearing, and the Dutch had already laid out gardens after the Netherlands pattern, and were raising vegetables in the coffee-coloured soil—the result of centuries of alluvial deposit—a soil so rich and productive that beans may be gathered three weeks after being sown. The gardening is carried on entirely by the civilians, the officers and men confining themselves exclusively to their military duties. As the Settlement had been established in the centre of a dangerous and turbulent district, it was protected with barbed wire defences and with a ring of block-houses on the landward side. The state of unrest then prevailing preventedme from carrying on my scientific work. I had come to Merauke to explore and collect in new territory, but the long-standing difficulty with the warlike Tugeri tribe was still acute, and the very day after I landed we had abundant proof of how unwise it would be to penetrate into the interior. On that day three or four Javanese convicts who were working on the edge of the clearing were heard to shout as though in distress. In five minutes an armed guard was on the spot, but all the convicts were found decapitated by the head-hunting Tugeri. The heads had been taken off with the bamboo knife so cleverly, that the doctor on board our ship told me that no surgeon with the latest surgical instruments could have removed so many heads in so short a time.

This bamboo knife of the Tugeri is a very remarkable weapon. It is simply a piece of cane stripped off from the parent stem, leaving a natural edge as keen as the finest tempered steel.

Nor was this the only outrage. A Chinese woman had died, and had been buried in the graveyard near the Settlement. The next morning the grave was found to have been violated, the head taken, and all the clothing removed. The Tugeri never showed themselves all this time, but it was known that they were watching Merauke from the dense screen of undergrowth which came down to the edge of the clearing.

British settlers on the western boundary of British New Guinea have for a long time been harassed by Tugeri raiders from the Dutch side, and the Lieutenant-Governor’s report for 1899–1900 containsan exhaustive account of the negotiations between the British and Dutch authorities for the suppression of these outrages and the indemnification of sufferers. In 1896 Sir William Macgregor undertook a punitive expedition against the Tugeri, and at the time believed that he had finally driven them out of British territory; but during a murderous raid on the Sanana tribe, shortly before 1900, many persons were killed and carried away. The chief result of the negotiations, apart from the settlement of indemnity and the undertaking of search for missing persons, was the Dutch decision to appoint a resident official for that part of their territory which adjoins the British possessions. Hence the establishment of the Merauke Settlement, and the appointment of Mr. Kroesen to take charge of it. The Netherlands Government has guaranteed a special sum for the administration of Merauke, and the Dutch officers there have also been authorised to correspond directly with the British officers in the western division on matters requiring their mutual attention, instead of, as the Blue Book says, “by the circumlocutory channels of their respective Governments.”

My opportunities for observing the Tugeri were, therefore, necessarily limited, but I am, I believe, the first person who has made any study of this remarkable tribe, and, as far as I am aware, they have remained hitherto undescribed. They are a very numerous people, inhabiting a tract of country extending as far west as the Marianne Strait, and as far east as the Fly River at longitude 141°. Inland their boundaries are unknown, but it is probable that theyextend a considerable distance from the coast. They are known to have co-terminous boundaries with the Kewi people, from whom the British draw their police, and who are first found at the mouth of the Fly River.

The first to visit the Tugeri was a renegade missionary, who had absconded with some of the mission funds. He came upon the tribe by accident. They captured him, took away his boat, his clothes, and all that he possessed. Curiously enough they did not kill him, but gave him a house and food. He stayed with them on very friendly terms for about six months, and was at length taken off by a schooner which chanced to touch on the coast.

The second white man who observed them was Captain Pym, who is said to have been the discoverer of the Merauke River, and who was certainly one of the first traders there.

The Tugeri are a fine race, very fierce, and absolutely unspoiled by European vices. The men stand about 5 feet 8 inches on an average, and are clean-limbed, powerful fellows, capable of any amount of endurance. As a race, they are broad-shouldered, sinewy, and of enormous strength. No European can draw their bow. This weapon is made of a longitudinal section of the bamboo. Near the grip the diameter is about 3½ inches, and the wood tapers at each end to a diameter of ¾–inch. The string is of twisted fibre, and the arrow, which is made of a reed, carries to a distance of at least 300 yards. Like all savages, they are admirable marksmen.

THE NATIVE METHOD OF TREE CLIMBING.

In the typical Merauke Tugeri the head is rather conical, and the forehead high but receding. The hair is sparse, beginning well up on the cranium, and falling in long strands to the middle of the back beyond the shoulder blades. The hair is plaited with grass and string, and from the plait at the back rises a single osprey feather. The eyebrows are straight and meeting, the eyes black, large, and heavy. The nose is broad and flat, but with a prominent bridge, the mouth degraded and fatuous, but the lips neither so thick nor so protruding as the negro’s. The ears lie fairly flat to the head, and are not abnormally large. The men wear an enormous ear ornament of bamboo bent into an open ring. Round the periphery of this ring the flesh of the lobe of the ear, previously perforated, is stretched in infancy, and as the individual grows the natural spring of the bamboo stretches the flesh more and more, until in manhood a loop is formed big enough to hold a ring of at least 4 inches in diameter. It is extraordinary how the tribesmen contrive to move amidst the tangled forest without hindrance from this abnormal expansion of the lobe, the most unusual flesh decoration to be found amongst mankind. When the bamboo is out the loop hangs like a long pendant, a perfect skein of flesh, a peculiarly hideous accessory of savage adornment. Some of the Tugeri wear an apology for a beard, or rather two scraggy tufts of hair depending from each side of the chin. The use of pomatum in any form is unknown. The teeth are strong and fairly regular, but perfectly brown, owing to the habit of chewing the betel-nut.

For personal adornment the Tugeri wear two crossed straps of dogs’ teeth strung together withgrass. Each strap is about 3 inches wide, and is formed of nine parallel rows of teeth. The strap that rests on the left shoulder passes under the right armpit; that over the right shoulder passes outside the left arm above the elbow. The straps are lightly fastened at the point where they cross the breast. Round the right arm, just above the elbow, they wear a curious armlet. In the case of the richer tribesmen this is of shell, decorated with grass, or of grass decorated with shell. The breadth is from 5 to 6 inches. On the stomach to the right are two or three horizontal scars made by cutting or burning. These are self-inflicted for superstitious reasons. The lower part of the stomach is tightly drawn in (often extremely tight) with a coil of finely plaited fibre. This seems to be worn for elegance alone, and tight-lacing is a ruling fashion among the Tugeri dandies: the tighter the lacing the greater the dandy. From fifteen to sixteen years of age the young men are hopeless victims to fashion. The Tugeri go bare-foot, but wear grass anklets adorned with shells, which rattle like castanets as they walk. I observed, however, no dances, although these, I understand, are performed in their villages. For decency’s sake they wear a shell after the manner of the statuesque fig-leaf, and their costume is completed by a necklace of dogs’ teeth and small pieces of bone, such treasures as a savage prizes.

Despite the natural ferocity of the Tugeri, the tribe is not without some rudimentary notions of courtesy, and they paid the Dutch on their arrival a similar compliment to that paid to Captain Cook, that is tosay, they were good enough to offer to provide wives for the sailors from among their own women. Certain traders in British New Guinea are not above accepting this civility, for the possession of a native woman is often a valuable business asset. Some sandalwood cutters, for example, frequently make these left-handed marriages, for the mistress is influential in obtaining workers for her husband from among her own people. One sandalwood cutter, a Malay, who has made a large fortune at his trade, could always obtain double the number of labourers procurable by any other trader on account of hisliaisonwith a native woman, by whom he has a large family. His numerous Papuan blood-relations stand him in good stead in his business.

The houses of the Tugeri are built of grass and bamboo. The walls rise to a height of about ten feet and are covered with a span roof. I observed their villages only from a distance, however, and never accompanied the Dutch soldiers on any of their expeditions. Some of the villages are very large, consisting of two or three hundred houses. Near the townships immense cocoanut plantations invariably occur, and these seem to form the chief wealth of the Tugeri.

A strange part of the Tugeri’s paraphernalia was their extraordinary drums. The body of these, shaped like a dice-box, was hewn out of a solid log, hollowed, and curiously carved. Midway at the narrowest point was a clumsy handle, also hewn from the log. The drum heads are of lizard skin. The performer carries the instrument by the handle in the left hand, and beats with his right. The noise is prodigious.

The tribe domesticates the gaura. This bird hasfrequently been described by naturalists, but a short account of it may not be inopportune here, as I was fortunate in obtaining many good specimens of it. The gaura is half as large again as the guinea-fowl, and weighs from five to ten pounds. The beak is longer than that of the ordinary pigeon, but is not large in proportion to the bird. It has the ordinary characteristics of the pigeon beak. The head is small, the neck short, the body full and fleshy, and remarkably fine eating. The back is broad and rounded, the legs brightish red and characteristically those of the pigeon breed. The plumage of the head is a bluish silver grey with a fine crest of a lighter shade. The crest feathers are very open in their branching. When erected, the crest spreads out like a fan and makes a noble display. The breast feathers are a rich maroon, the wings and back a bluish slate colour. There are white patches on the wings, which are tipped with maroon. The tail feathers continue the shade of the back until within two inches of the extremity, when they are graduated into a lovely grey, almost matching that of the crest. For all its fine looks it is a silly bird, short and heavy of flight, and easily killed when once found. The sportsman locates the gaura by its booming sound.

My ten days’ stay at Merauke was a time of strange misfortune, and while there I had the unenviable opportunity of observing a very serious outbreak of a mysterious disease, which was said to be that deadly beri-beri, which has lately been occupying the minds of men of science. For some time there had been isolated cases among the Javanese convicts, but aboutthe second week in April the Dutch authorities became greatly alarmed by the spread of the disease. Cases were reported daily, and all proved fatal. At last the deaths reached the terrible figure of 160 in ten days. The victims were all Javanese, the officials and natives went unscathed. The doctors of the Dutch Colony were very able men, but no relief could be given to the patient beyond administering anæsthetics. I question whether it was rightly styled beri-beri, for in South America, at Manaos on the Rio Negro, I have seen cases of the disease among the Portuguese rubber gatherers, but these bore no resemblance to the sickness at Merauke. The sufferers in South America were generally men who led isolated lives in the vast forests of the Amazons, gathering the sap of thehevea braziliensis, and living for long periods on bad food. Victims of this type of beri-beri generally live for nine months, and those of strong constitution and in whom the swelling had not risen above the knees recovered. If the patient lives the old life and continues the old diet in the forest, the disease gradually ascends until it gets above the knees, and then its course becomes very rapid until it reaches the heart.

I myself caught beri-beri on the Rio Branco, and first noted its presence by the discovery of a numb spot about the size of a halfpenny on each ankle. The Brazilian medical men assured me that nowhere in South America could I hope to get better, and I was ordered to quit the country at once. Before I reached Havre the numbness was greatly reduced, the affected patch being then the size of a farthing, and two months after I reached home, it vanished. InColumbia I have observed exactly the same form of the disease as on the Amazons.

In Merauke, however, sufferers from the so-called beri-beri had no seizure of paralysis in the lower extremities. It was always in the abdomen, and was accompanied by the most excruciating agony. Death usually came in four hours. There was no relief from pain; the intestines seemed to be knotted, the patients face was pale and agonised. He continually moaned, strained forward and doubled his body. He held his stomach with both hands, and occasionally lay down and rolled, and as the end approached, the intestines seemed to be forced upwards towards the thorax, and there was great swelling. The doctors tried poultices and fomentations in vain. They also administered castor oil without affording any alleviation of the suffering. Perfect consciousness remained until the very end, and the last thing the patient always asked for was fruit. Five minutes after making this request, he was dead.

One evening we spent with Mr. Schadee on his verandah, there was with us his Javanese clerk (not a convict), who was enjoying his cigarette and apparently in the best of health. The next morning he was dead. Our carpenter on board theVan Doornwas carried off with equal suddenness, and he, curiously enough, had never been on shore all the time of the epidemic. The victims were always buried within five hours. As to the communication of infection, it is doubtful whether the disease was due in each case to external causes, or whether once having broken out it spread from man to man. The bad rice,[1]on which the Javanese live, may have been the cause. At the same time it may be noted, that the convicts were working in the abominable blue mud of the river. Another article of diet supplied to the Javanese was dried fish, very ill cured, or rather not cured at all, and most offensive to European nostrils.

1. Since these lines were written an eminent medical man, a specialist on beri-beri, has publicly advanced this view.—E. A. P.

A LAKATOI (SAILING RAFT OF CANOES) AT ANCHOR AND A DWELLING-HOUSE BUILT OVER THE WATER.

The epidemic was very costly to the Netherlands Government. TheVan Swoll, a Dutch merchantman, laden with the necessary plant for establishing a settlement, was at that time lying at Merauke. After the beri-beri broke out, there was no labour available to unload the vessel. Mr. Kroesen accordingly decided to ship the surviving convicts on board theVan Swoll, and send her back to Amboina. There she placed the convicts in a sanatorium, and went on to Timor to procure a fresh batch of convicts, who were to return with her to Merauke and unload her. The delay to theVan Swollalone cost the Dutch Government 800 guilders a day.

No doubt a settlement in a low miasmatic country is in itself unfavourable, but I am inclined to attribute the disease to bad diet. This so-called beri-beri occurs also in the native princes’ prisons in India, where the food is very bad. I am disposed to believe that the Javanese were rendered liable to attack, because their blood had been impoverished by several years of poor feeding before they came to Merauke, and that the climate and worse food than they had had in Java made them ready to receive the germs of the disease.

Such was my visit to Dutch New Guinea. Thehostility of the Tugeri and the prevalence of disease rendered scientific work out of the question, and accordingly after ten days I returned to Port Moresby, there to secure means of transport for an expedition into the interior of British New Guinea, where I proposed to continue my studies of the Lepidoptera peculiar to that region.

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