Arrival of our Ambonese—Coolie Considerations—Canoes of the Natives—Making Canoes—Preliminary Exploration of the Mimika—Variable Tides—Completing the Camp—A Plague of Flies—Also of Crickets—Making “Atap”—Trading with the Natives—Trade Goods.

After all the stores and equipment of the expedition had been landed at Wakatimi, an operation which took six days and some ten or more journeys of the steam launch towing many boats to accomplish, the Nias returned to Dobo, and brought back from there on the 14th January our Ambonese coolies, who had arrived there by mail steamer from Amboina. To those of us who had had experience of native carriers in other countries, the appearance of the ninety-six Ambonese came as something of a shock. When the boats crowded with them came within sight of the camp the natives cried out that our women were coming, and they might well be excused for their mistake. With their wide straw hats and coloured coats and shirts and gay sarongs they had not much the appearance of men, and we wondered what sort of people they would be to force a way through the trackless country. When they landed, our first impression of their unsuitableness was rather strengthened than otherwise. Every man (to give them a dignity which very few of them deserved) had a large wooden or tin box as well as a huge bundle of bedding and mats. Their average age appeared to be about sixteen years, and though they were said to be the best men obtainable in Amboina, the physique of most of them was wretched. It was evidently useless to keep so many feeble creatures, so it was decided to keep fifty of the more promising and send the rest back to Amboina by the Nias, which was waiting at the mouth of the Mimika until the following day. The whole gang was paraded and a more hopeless looking lot it would be hard to imagine. With great difficulty we picked out fifty who, though they had little appearance of strength, were not obviously crippled by disease, and the forty-six others were sent away without having done a single day’s work.

The question of coolies, as we were to find by bitter experience during the ensuing months, is the point that determines the success or failure of an expedition. Mr. Stalker had left England charged with the duty of engaging coolies for this expedition. It was hoped that he would be able to get a number of men in the KÉ Islands, but failing to engage them there he had seen in Amboina his only chance of recruiting a sufficient number of men. No blame can be attached to him, for he had had no experience of the kind before and his instructions were not very detailed, but it was a mistake which seriously delayed the progress of the expedition.

As well as the trouble involved in trying to make a silk purse of efficient coolies out of the sow’s ear of the Amboina rabble we were confronted by another difficulty of transport. It has been mentioned above (page 43) that before we arrived in the country it was expected that we should find rising ground close to the sea, and that in a few days’ journey at the most we should reach an altitude of three thousand feet or upwards, but the discovery that there was a tract of level country hardly above sea level extending from the coast to the foot of the mountains thirty miles inland entirely upset our calculations. Had we known this before we should necessarily have brought a launch and boats to tow our stores up the many miles of navigable river, and by so doing we should have saved ourselves many weeks of valuable time and an infinity of labour. It is worth while to record this fact, not for the object of drawing attention to any deficiencies in the organisation of the expedition, but to demonstrate the uselessness of entering an unknown country without having made a preliminary reconnaissance.

An urgent message was despatched to the Navy Department in Java begging them to supply us with a steam launch at the earliest opportunity, but communications are slow in that part of the world, and it was not until ten weeks afterwards that the launch arrived at the Mimika. Its career was brief and inglorious. It made two or three journeys at snail’s pace up the river before it finally broke down altogether and was sent back to Java.

In June we purchased from the pearlfishers at Dobo a petrol motor-boat, which made several successful trips up the river towing large quantities of stores, and then it was badly damaged by coming into violent contact with a sunken tree, and it was several months before it could be repaired sufficiently to float. Thus it happened that nearly all the river transport of the expedition was laboriously carried out in canoes.

The canoes used by the natives on the Mimika and neighbouring rivers are simple “dug-outs,” that is they are made from one tree trunk without any joinery at all. They vary considerably in size but the length of an average canoe is about thirty-five feet. The sides curve inward towards the gunwale so that in section the canoe forms a large segment of a circle. The breadth at the gunwale is about eighteen inches and the breadth at the widest part from eighteen to twenty-four inches. The gunwales are almost horizontal, though in some boats there is a considerable “sheer” towards the end of the canoe. They end in a square bow and at the stern they come together to a fine point. The bottom of a canoe—there is no keel—slopes finely up from the middle towards the ends so that when the canoe is afloat several feet of its length at bow and stern are out of water.

The square bow of the canoe is carved in a more or less symmetrical fashion and there is usually a narrow margin of ornamental carving at intervals along the sides. A common feature of this carving, as also of the other native ornaments, is an object which is intended to represent the human eye. Occasionally they attach to the bow of the canoe, one on either side and one in the middle, three long boards carved in a sort of fretwork manner and painted red and white. These project about four feet in front of the bow and give it somewhat the appearance of a bird’s beak. The inside of the canoe is sometimes whitened with lime or sago powder but is otherwise not ornamented. A few feet from the stern, where the bottom begins to slope upwards, a low partition of wood is left forming as it were a sort of bulkhead; the space behind this is filled with sand on which a fire is kept burning.

Before we came to the country the whole business of canoe-making from the first felling of the tree to the final hollowing out of the inside was done with stone axes and the carving was done with sharpened shells, a labour which it is difficult to realise, so it is not surprising that the natives take very great care of their boats. They never allow water to stand in them for long, and at the end of a storm of rain the first thing they do is to go to the river and bail the water out of their canoes, which they do by scooping it out with the blade of a paddle. They also take good care of the outside and frequently char them with fire to kill the worms, which otherwise quickly destroy wood in brackish water.

The tree most commonly used for making canoes is Octomeles moluccana, which has a smooth pale trunk devoid of branches for a long way above the ground. When they can do so they choose a tree growing close to the river bank, but this is not always possible and we found a place where a tree for a canoe had been felled fully three hundred yards from the water. The trunk is roughly shaped where it lies and is then hauled with immense toil over logs laid on a rough track to the river; thence it is towed to the village where the hollowing and shaping is done at leisure. We saw a large number of canoes made at Parimau, and in nearly every case the balance was perfect when they were first put into the water.

The canoes are usually propelled by paddles with long thin shafts and wide blades which are often beautifully carved, but in shallow places or rapid water the natives generally employ a long pole in the use of which they are very expert. It is easy enough to stand up and paddle or pole in large canoes, but the smaller craft are very top-heavy, and the natives perform wonderful feats of balancing in navigating them. Their education begins early for we saw in one of the villages small canoes three or four feet long, in which the children begin to learn the craft of the waterman almost before they have learned to walk.

Though the people value their canoes very highly they were anxious enough to part with them in exchange for our knives and pieces of metal, of which they had none at all, and we very soon had a small fleet of canoes. The first two were bought for a knife apiece, but the price soon rose to an axe for a canoe, and in the course of several months it had still further risen to two axes or even two axes and a knife.

Within a few days of the arrival of our coolies we had purchased half a dozen canoes and preparations were made to send an exploring party up the river. At that time we were none of us skilful canoe-men and it was considered safer to use the canoes as rafts by lashing two side by side and securing a platform of bamboos across the top. This was a most cumbrous arrangement which added enormously to the labour of paddling, and after the first journey it was never repeated.

On the 18th January, Goodfellow, Rawling, and Shortridge with twenty-four coolies, six Gurkhas, and a small party of Javanese soldiers in the charge of a Dutch sergeant started up the river. They took with them about a dozen natives, hoping that they would work hard at paddling and would be useful in other ways, but they were a perpetual nuisance calling out for their wives and wanting to stop to eat or sleep; they finished by stealing one of the canoes and deserting the night before they would have been sent back to their homes. With them went another of our cherished illusions that we should be able to get a great deal of assistance from the natives of the country. The party proceeded up the river at an incredibly slow rate on account of the clumsy rafts, and for four days saw no signs of inhabitants. On the fifth day they found one isolated hut, and two days later after passing a few scattered huts they arrived at the village of Parimau, above which place the river appeared to be hardly navigable.

The welcome accorded to the party by the natives of Parimau was as enthusiastic as that at Wakatimi described above, the people showing their delight by smearing themselves with mud and shedding copious tears. During the following days, when a camp was being made, hundreds of natives flocked into the place to see the strange white men, who were exhibited to the new-comers with a sort of proprietary air by the natives of Parimau.

In the meantime a great deal of work was necessary to put in order the base-camp at Wakatimi, and to render it secure against an attack, should the natives ever alter their friendly attitude towards us. The bush was completely cleared for some distance and a stout fence built about the camp. Then it was found that at high tide, and especially at spring tide, a large part of the camp was flooded and this necessitated a great amount of levelling and trenching and banking, a task which appealed to the fenland instinct of Cramer. The tide made itself felt in the river for several miles above Wakatimi, where there was a rise and fall of about ten feet, but the exact tidal movements were very difficult to recognise. On some days two tides were distinctly seen, while on many others there appeared to be only one. Their movements were further complicated by the very variable amount of water brought down by the river. Sometimes the river was almost stagnant, but at other times it swept down bank-high with a strong current for days at a time, and no flow of the tide could be noticed. The river Watuka, which joins the Mimika a few miles below Wakatimi, had a much greater volume of water than the latter river, and often when the tide was rising its waters were easily recognisable by their white colour floating up past the camp and holding back the waters of the Mimika in the same way that the Blue Nile, when it is in flood, forms a pond of the White Nile.

It was unfortunate that no suitable place for the base-camp could be found above the tidal water, because it increased the difficulty of supplying the camp with drinking water, and at times when there was not much fresh water coming down the river the ebb and flow of the tide washed the refuse backwards and forwards in front of the camp. Water was boiled and filtered every day in quantities large enough for every man in the camp to have as much as he wished, but the value of this precaution was to a large extent neutralised by the Malay habit of washing out the mouth with the water in which the man bathes.

A wooden landing stage for canoes was built out over the muddy bank, and a bathing place was cut off from the river by a wooden fence to protect bathers from crocodiles and sharks, both of which were occasionally seen, but as the natives bathed constantly without showing any fear of either animal the precaution was perhaps needless.

At that time when the ground was being cleared we began to be plagued by large blue-bottle flies, which swarmed about the camp and laid their eggs everywhere. One of their favourite laying grounds was in our bedding, which in a hot damp climate must always be hung out to air when the sun shines. You would find two folds of your blanket stuck together with horrible masses of eggs and if, as sometimes happened, you did not scrape them all away you would wake up at night and find yourself crawling with maggots. There are some people who are afraid of spiders, but the most timorous of mortals must find the homely spider preferable to the loathsome blow fly. The house where we mostly lived at Wakatimi and where we had our meals was immediately filled with blue-bottles the moment our food was brought in, so we encouraged the larger sort of spider to live there and one old fellow who lived under the corner of the table used to come out at meal times and take his toll of flies, and in the course of time he became so tame that he would take a living fly out of your fingers.

At the same time, and indeed during the whole of our stay in the country, we were greatly annoyed by the depredations of very large crickets. Not content with making a most distracting noise by night these horrible creatures did endless damage to our eatable possessions. They invaded the sacks in which we kept our scanty garments, socks, vests and the like, and riddled them into holes, and they appeared to have a special partiality for sponges and brushes, which they devoured completely. Even more serious were their attacks on folded tents or sacks of rice and flour, which had to be constantly taken out of the store houses and repaired. When these things were taken out of the house a large number of crickets were taken out too, and then was the chance for the Kingfishers (Halcyon sanctus) which darted down and snapped them up. A pair of these beautiful little birds haunted the camp and became so tame that they would fly down from the roof of a house and pick up a cricket within a foot or two of a man.

When the ground had been well cleared and levelled, we set about the business of building barracks for the men and store houses for the provisions and equipment. The Dutch contingent had brought with them regulation army barrack frames, pieces of seasoned wood of definite lengths which are fitted together by bolts and screws, and form the skeleton of excellent houses. We had nothing of the kind, but the jungle supplied plenty of wood and our houses, though less regular than those of the Dutch, were very soon built. It is easy enough to put up the framework of a house in a place where there is plenty of timber, but the walls and the roof are a more difficult matter. Fortunately the natives were adepts in the art of making “atap,” which they use for roofing their own huts, and they were soon eagerly making it for us in exchange for our trade goods.

The best “atap” is made from the leaves of the Nipa palm (Nipa fruticans) which grows abundantly in the swampy country. Almost equally good “atap” can be made from the Sago palm, but the leaves of the Coconut palm shrivel quickly and are of no use for the purpose. The method of the manufacture of “atap” is briefly as follows: Leaflets of the palm are stripped from the stem, which is then split into three or four sticks of about an inch and a half in diameter and five or six feet in length. The man begins by taking up a leaf and folding it in the middle, thus breaking the mid-rib of the leaf. He then frees the mid-rib from the surrounding leaf for a short distance and breaks off a piece about three inches long for use presently. Then holding the stick near the end he pushes the free end of the mid-rib, which is separated from the leaf, into the soft substance of the stick and folds the leaf once round the stick in such a way that its two free ends lie one upon the other. He then clips together the free ends with the short piece he had broken from the mid-rib. He then repeats the process with another leaf, making each one slightly overlap the last, until the stick is completely covered with folded leaves. It should be said that each leaf is about three inches wide and four feet long so that the free ends, when the leaf is folded, lie about two feet from the stick. “Atap” is always made by the men, never by the women, and a quick worker will make a complete piece in about ten minutes.

The method of roofing with “atap” is very simple. Pieces are fixed by strands of rattan to the timbers of the roofing beginning from below and overlapping each other like tiles. The stick end of the “atap” is uppermost and the free ends point downwards. When there is no lack of “atap” and the pieces can be laid on the roof very closely together it forms a most efficient thatch, which keeps the house tolerably cool in the hot weather and is impervious to the heaviest downfall of rain.

The demand for “atap” started our regular trade with the natives, it brought us into friendly relations with them and they soon discovered that they could put confidence in us. When they found that we really paid them, as we promised, in beads and cloth, there was keen competition in the “atap” trade and they brought us as much as we wanted. For a few pieces only they received beads, while for ten pieces and upwards we paid them in cloth and they adopted various tricks to obtain cloth, when they knew that the amount they brought was only worth beads. One of their dodges was to bring old pieces of “atap” from their own houses to increase the size of the pile, and sometimes a man would steal two or three pieces from the pile of another man who had already been paid, but they were always found out and were not in the least ashamed of themselves. It was important to keep the price low, because we very well knew that when the people had obtained as much cloth and as many beads as they wanted they would never do any more work, and that did occur after a few months. They greatly enjoyed a little foolery. For instance, when you were paying them in cloth it was much more appreciated if you wound it artistically about the recipient’s head than if you merely thrust it into his hands; and in paying a man in beads it was thought a great joke if you let them slowly trickle into his palm out of your closed fist. His smile would grow with the pile of beads in his hand, and he always hoped to find some more concealed between your fingers.

In addition to “atap” they also brought other things for trade, sometimes fish from the sea which were generally uneatable, and sometimes delicious prawns six or eight inches long from the river estuary. There was a constant trade in coconuts which grew in some numbers about Wakatimi, and occasionally we bought a bunch of bananas. Living birds of many kinds, cassowaries, pigeons, kingfishers, lories and parrots were often brought for sale, but the poor creatures were generally taken straight from the nest, and the soldiers and coolies who bought them quickly stuffed them to death with rice. Some of the lories throve and became tame enough to fly about at liberty, and the cassowaries became quite a pest in the camp.

So keen did the people become on trading that they would barter all their worldly possessions for European goods. Stone clubs and axes, bows and arrows, spears and drums, the skulls of their forebears, indeed all their moveable goods were brought to us for exchange. It may sound rather a mean transaction to buy from a Papuan a stone axe, which has probably been in his family for generations, for a small knife or coloured handkerchief, but he was always delighted with the exchange and when both parties to it are satisfied a bargain may be considered a just one.

Our trade goods consisted mostly of coloured beads, red cloth, knives of various sizes, and axes. Of these the red cloth was by far the most useful and the most sought after. The Dutch had cloth of various shades and patterns, but the natives, with a true eye for colour, knew that our red stuff suited their dark skins better than any shade of green or blue. The axes were given in exchange for canoes, and knives were mostly used to pay the men who carried for us in the interior. Fish hooks were greatly appreciated by the natives of the coast villages, but the Jews’ harps of which we had a large quantity, though they are greatly in demand among the Papuans of British New Guinea and in some of the Pacific Islands, were of no use to us for trade, and the few we gave away were used either as ornaments round the neck or as ear-rings. There was always a great demand for cast-off clothing, but a Papuan wearing a pair of tattered trousers or a fragment of a shirt was so unpleasant to look at and he generally became so demoralised in character, that we made it a rule not to give them any of our rags. Empty bottles were of course greatly sought after and the many thousands of tins which we emptied during the course of the expedition were wealth untold to a people, who up to that time had possessed no sort of vessel.

PAPUAN WOMAN CANOEING UP THE MIMIKA.
(Smoke is seen from the fire in the stern.)