Departure from Parimau—Parting Gifts—Mock Lamentation—Rawling explores Kamura River—Start for the Wania—Lose the Propeller—A Perilous Anchorage—Unpleasant Night—Leave the Motor Boat—Village of NimÉ—Arrival of “Zwaan” with Dayaks—Their Departure—Waiting for the Ship—Taking Leave of the People of Wakatimi—Sail from New Guinea—KÉ Islands—Banda—Hospitality of the Netherlands Government—Lieutenant Cramer—Sumbawa—Bali—Return to Singapore and England—One or Two Reflexions.

After our return to Parimau in February, Rawling and Grant went down to Wakatimi, while Marshall and I spent a week in visiting the village of the Tapiro in a last but vain attempt to see the pygmy women. The first few days of March were occupied in packing up the accumulated odds and ends of our year’s occupation and on the 9th of March we were ready to depart. We had told the natives that we were going away and for days before we went they pestered us with questions as to whether we were coming back and what we would give them when we went, and they quickly decided which of our houses they intended to occupy.

On the morning of our departure from Parimau we allowed no natives to come into the camp until all the canoes were loaded up and ready for a start. Then we called out to them to come over and about forty men and boys splashed across the river and came swarming into the camp. We had kept for them a number of axe-heads, knives and other pieces of steel and iron, and when the people saw what they were going to be given they became a crowd of madmen. I distributed the things, while Marshall stood by with a big piece of wood and kept them from rushing into the place and seizing everything at once. They shouted and raved and screamed and grew almost pale with excitement, and the various expressions of greed and cunning and anger and delight in their faces were most interesting to watch.

After we had given them their presents we walked towards the canoes, and then they began to set up their horrible wail. A few of them picked up pieces of cloth and matting, through the middle of which they thrust their heads and then began to howl with their hands over their eyes. I took a last look round the houses to see that nothing of value had been left behind and on going to the store-house I met a man, one of our best friends, coming out of it with a tin of rice under his arm. He immediately put down the tin, tore off from a climbing bean that grew by the house a trail of leaves a yard or two long, and wound them about his head and body. Then he burst into tears and the most heartrending sobs, which changed in a moment, when he caught my eye, into a shout of laughter.

When we finally got into the canoes all the men came down to the water’s edge and wailed, while some of them sat down in the water and smeared themselves with mud. In the meantime we could see their women going off into the jungle carrying tins full of their possessions to hide there, and it is probable that after we left there was a good deal of quarrelling and fighting over the spoil. The wailing is a purely perfunctory politeness, but I think there were a few men who were genuinely sorry to lose us. On the following day a strong ebb-tide bore us quickly down to Wakatimi and our navigations of the upper Mimika river were at an end.

In the meantime Rawling had made an interesting exploration of the coast and of the river mouths to the East of the Mimika. The motor boat, which had been badly damaged some months earlier, had been repaired by two Dutch pioneer soldiers and was more or less sea-worthy. In a four days’ trip he had entered the Atuka river, or rather the Atuka mouth of the Kamura river, a few miles up which he came to Atuka, a large village of about six hundred huts surrounded by coconut palms and tobacco plantations. Proceeding up the river into the main Kamura river he went on almost to the junction with the Wataikwa river, thus filling in a large gap of unknown river. On his way back he chose the left (East) branch and after passing the village of Kamura, where the inhabitants showed an inclination to plunder the boat, he came to the lake-like estuary of the Kamura and Wania rivers and entered the sea by a deep channel. It is worth noting that the inhabitants of Atuka and Kamura villages, many of whom visited us two or three times at Wakatimi, are of a decidedly lower type (in appearance) than the people of the Mimika district, though the distance that separates them is only a few miles. They have a fiercer and more brutal aspect and many of them, both men and women go completely naked, a habit which is never practised by the people of Wakatimi. Scarcity of petrol and an irregularly sparking plug brought that excursion to an untimely end, before the lower waters of the Wania had been investigated.

From our hill-top (see p. 239) the Wania was evidently by far the most considerable of all the rivers of the district, and apart from our desire to see the people of the Wania, of whom the Mimika natives always spoke with great respect, we felt bound to explore that river as far as possible. Accordingly on March 14, Rawling, Marshall and I, with a Dutch pioneer, two Gurkhas and three coolies, set off in the motor boat towing the yawl, a ship’s boat about twenty feet long, laden with tents and provisions for a week. In a few hours we arrived at the mouth of the Wania river and found that owing to the low tide there was no way of crossing the sand-bar that lay across the entrance. This circumstance was the more remarkable, because only a few days earlier Rawling had come through this bar by a very deep channel. The frequent changes in the banks make the navigation of this coast and particularly of the river mouths exceedingly difficult.

On this occasion the sea was already rather rough, so that we could not anchor and wait until the tide rose, and as the wind was increasing in force there was nothing for it but to turn back and try to take shelter in one of the rivers between the Wania and the Mimika, if not in the Mimika itself. All went well for a few miles and then, as happened frequently, the leather band jumped off the driving wheel and the engine was stopped. When it was replaced and the engine was started again, there was no churning of water in the stern and we realized with some consternation that we had lost our propeller. We were about twelve miles from the mouth of the Mimika, in a shallow sea of less than three fathoms, with a strong wind blowing towards the shore where the waves began to break within a few hundred yards of us, and we were ten men with a heavy motor boat and a heavily-laden yawl to get along somehow. We put four men into the yawl to row and they tried to tow, but the current was so strong against them that they made no headway at all, so we had to anchor where we were and hoped for better things. We pitched and rolled and bumped about most horribly and soon most of the party were deadly sea-sick, perhaps luckily for them, because in that condition one cares nothing for the prospect of shipwreck.

Our anchor rope was short and none too strong, and the rope between us and the yawl was thoroughly rotten—it had snapped once earlier in the day—and we expected that every sudden jerk of the lumpy sea would break it again. Had that happened, there might have been a nasty accident, as the men were too sick to row, even if they had known the art, and their chances of swimming ashore through a sea swarming with sharks were not very bright. Our own predicament in the helpless motor boat would have been unpleasant too, if the yawl had gone adrift, but happily the ropes held. Another drawback was that the motor boat leaked like a sieve, so that a man was kept constantly at work baling her out, and we did not know that the strain might not open her old timbers even more. There was a glorious full moon which one would have enjoyed seeing from the smooth deck of a steamer, but there we could only think how uncomfortable it was lying (without having had dinner) on boxes and tins and gear of all sorts huddled in the bottom of the boat.

The wind continued all through the night and the sea did not moderate, so at daylight, after having been for sixteen hours at anchor, we decided to leave the motor boat hoping that it would not be swamped before we were able to come back and fetch it. We all got into the yawl, which we pulled through quite a nasty sea for about three miles to a sand-bank in the estuary of the Timura river, where we camped until the rising tide enabled us to reach the mainland about midnight. On the following day, the sea having become calmer, we rescued the motor boat, which was by that time half full of water, and towed it slowly to the Timura.

But it was a most arduous business and without the help of a party of natives, who fortunately came along the coast in canoes and were prevailed upon to assist us in paddling, we should never have been able to bring back both of the boats. The arrival of the motor boat at the Mimika on the fifth day, propelled by native paddles instead of by its own power, was not a very dignified affair—it resembled rather the formerly familiar sight of the motor-car in tow of a horse from the plough —but it was a piece of good fortune that it and we returned at all.

We stopped for a night on the way at NimÉ, a village at the mouth of the Keaukwa River. This is a very large village—I counted four hundred and thirty huts—but there were hardly a dozen people in the place, the whole population having gone off on one of their periodical migrations to a vegetable diet up the river. It was evident from the immense piles of fishbones and empty shells about the houses that the inhabitants must live largely by fishing, when they are there. The houses are better made than those at Wakatimi, and they are arranged in terraces and crescents along the water’s edge. It was there that we saw the elaborate dancing-houses described above (p. 143).

Just as we paddled laboriously into the Mimika estuary we saw far down on the horizon the smoke of a steamer, and in an hour or two a white painted vessel, which turned out to be the Dutch Government ship Zwaan, drew inshore and anchored outside the bar. We naturally supposed that this was a ship that had come to take away the expedition, as we had informed the Government some months earlier that we hoped to be ready to leave the country by the end of March. But that communication had taken a long time, as everything does in those regions, in reaching its destination, and the Zwaan had come, not to take away the expedition, but to bring the means of prolonging the expedition still further.

It appeared that in the previous December the Committee of the Expedition at home, hearing of our scarcity of coolies some months earlier, had decided that a further supply of coolies should be sent to us without delay. Though cables work quickly enough between London and Singapore, communications beyond that are matters of days and weeks, and it was not until the 18th of March that the party of Dayak coolies, who had been engaged in Sarawak by the kind permission of H.H. the Raja, arrived at the Mimika. They were in the charge of Mr. C. B. Kloss, Curator of the Government Museum at Kuala Lumpor, who had brought with him six months’ provision for himself and the men. Almost at the same time that the Committee in England had taken this step, we in New Guinea had decided that three months more was as long as we were prepared to stay in the country, and a request had been sent to the Dutch Government to take us away at the end of that time.

When the Zwaan arrived we were all ready to depart, and Cramer’s party, numbering more than a hundred men, were chafing with impatience to get away; it would have been impossible for the Government to keep them there yet another six months. Even if there had been a possibility of our staying on in the country, the number of Dayaks, thirty-eight, was quite insufficient for a long journey into the interior and the prospect of reaching the moderately high ground of Tapiro Mountain, the best that could be hoped for, was not sufficient inducement to tempt any one to paddle again up the Mimika river. Added to this was the further consideration that in a week or two the more rainy season would begin and that for five or six months very little progress would be possible even with an unlimited supply of the best coolies.

So there was nothing for it but for Mr. Kloss and the Dayaks to go back in the Zwaan, which sailed for Amboina on the following day, taking also Marshall, as many sick and useless coolies and soldiers as could be crammed on board, and an urgent request to the authorities to remove us as soon as might be. The Dayak episode was altogether an unfortunate one; had the men reached us six months earlier, we should have made a very good use of them, few though they were; but coming as they did when we were on the point of leaving the country they merely illustrated the uselessness of attempting to conduct an expedition from the other side of the world.

During the next three weeks we waited for the ship with what patience we could. By that time we were all somewhat stale and disinclined for any exertion, and those days of waiting at Wakatimi seemed interminably long. The only pleasant moments were when on fine evenings we could sit outside and watch the sun go down behind the palm trees across the river and hope each time that that would be the last. There were times when for two or three days a strong wind blew and we could hear the surf thundering on the beach, and we knew that even if the ship came it could not approach the shore. Then there were false alarms of whistles having been heard, or of boats seen coming up the river, but our suspense at last came to an end on April 5th, when a steam-launch towing a string of empty boats came puffing up to the camp, where they were received with immense enthusiasm. They came from the Dutch gunboat Mataram, which had been despatched to take away the native escort, and the next day came boats from the Zwaan, which had come to transport us and our men and the remaining stores of the expedition to Amboina. There followed two days of busy loading and coming and going of boats, during which our impatience to be off was a little allayed by the forethought of one of the officers of the Mataram, who stayed ashore with us and had brought with him that rare luxury, bread, and one or two other welcome delicacies.

Before sunset on April 7th the last boat was loaded and ready to go, and we had an amusing leave-taking with the people of Wakatimi. It was known that we were going to depart and for some days people from other villages had been crowding into Wakatimi. A large number of men were waiting outside the fence of the camp, but when we invited them to come inside they became unaccountably shy and would not venture. So I went outside and took one bolder fellow, a man whom we knew well, and led him by the arm to a hut, where there were a quantity of old mosquito nets; he seized one and bolted as fast as he could run, apparently thinking that there was something suspicious in this unwonted generosity. Then a few more came very warily after him and then fifty or sixty men dashed into the house and out again as soon as they had snatched up something, it mattered not what. Most of them were armed with spears or bows and arrows, and as there were men fighting to get into and out of the house at the same time it was wonderful that nobody was damaged.

When the people in Wakatimi saw what was going on in the camp they began to yell with excitement, and in a few seconds twenty or more canoes packed with men came paddling madly across the river; they were so excited that some of them upset the canoes, a thing they very seldom do, and they had to swim to the shore. For ten minutes or so the camp was a pandemonium. About two hundred raving lunatics were dashing madly from one house to another and carrying off boxes, sacks, mosquito nets, cases of empty bottles, bits of iron, tables, beds, mats and everything they could possibly move. They howled and raved and fought like wild beasts in a manner horrible to see.

Several women came over and danced and sang in a canoe just in front of the camp, while the crowd of people who had not been able to find a place in the canoes shrieked from the opposite bank. When they could carry no more, they loaded their canoes to the brim with miscellaneous cargoes and went back across the river to the village. There they at once began to squabble over the spoils, and the last we heard of Wakatimi, as darkness came down, were the shrill shrieks of quarrelsome women and the angry shouts of men.

New Guinea treated us kindly in farewell, and we steamed down the river in a glorious starlight, the kind of night which many people think is usual in the tropics, but is in fact most lamentably rare. We left Cramer on board the Mataram and went on to the Zwaan, where we soon were lulled to sleep by the pleasant music of the screw. Early the next morning a dull cloud on the northern horizon was our last view of New Guinea, and before night we had reached civilisation again in the anchorage of Dobo.

Two days later we came to the KÉ Islands and went ashore to visit the Catholic Mission at Toeal. There is nothing of great interest to see there except the magnificent “iron wood” timber, which is cut in the forests of the larger island, and is used for boat-building; it is obtained in larger pieces than teak, and it is said to be equally good. The fathers occupy themselves with carpentry and boat-building and with teaching a class of small children. The few people whom we saw appeared to be of a mixed Malay-Papuan race and were dressed in unspeakably dirty clothes.

From Toeal we went on to Banda, where we spent a day of pouring rain, a great pity, for a walk through the nutmeg woods of Banda is one of the pleasantest excursions in the islands, and a day later we dropped anchor in the harbour of Amboina.

It will be fitting to remark here that on the outward journey from Java to New Guinea and on our return from the Mimika to Amboina, the members of the expedition were the guests of the Netherlands Government. The thanks of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs have been conveyed to the captains of the ships and to the other officials, who helped the expedition in a hundred different ways.

At Amboina, where we waited a few days for the arrival of a steamer to Singapore, we parted with Cramer, who was prevented by a sharp attack of fever from coming with us. He was the one other man, beside Rawling, Marshall and myself, who remained with the expedition from the beginning to the end, and it is not paying him an empty compliment to say that few other people would have managed more successfully than he did to live with a party of foreigners in circumstances, which were often exceedingly difficult.

We sailed from Amboina on April 17th in the mail steamer Van Riebeeck, and amongst our fellow-passengers we found Captain Van der Bie and Lieut. Van der Wenn (Netherlands Navy), both of whom were returning to Java invalided from the expedition to the Island River in New Guinea. The expedition had penetrated a long way into the interior of the country, but all the Europeans fell ill and the expedition was withdrawn a few months later.

After calling at Macassar we went South past the Postilion Islands to the little known island of Sumbawa, where we went ashore for a few hours at Sumbawa Pesar. It looked a pretty country with well-wooded hills and level cultivated plains. We were much struck by the appearance of the natives, who have a longer type of face and a much fairer skin than any other of the Malay races I have seen. The men all go armed with a kris, and they smoke cigars of an incredible length.

From Sumbawa we steamed along the Northern shore of Lombok, from whose Peak (12,000 feet), the clouds rolled off magnificently at sunset, and early the next morning we came into the harbour of Buleling in the island of Bali. There we took a native carriage (sado), and drove a few miles out into the country to see a very interesting Hindu temple, where there are some remarkable good stone carvings, which shew signs of being carefully tended. The Hindu religion still survives, though it cannot be said to flourish, both in this island and in Lombok. The native villages that we saw have quite characteristic features of their own; they are surrounded by a high mud wall with a brick coping and are guarded by a swarm of fiercely barking dogs. Inside the wall, if you are bold enough to enter, you find a neatly swept compound, round the sides of which are well-made dwelling-houses, and in the middle are granaries of rice; both the houses and the granaries are raised on posts several feet above the ground and all are neatly thatched with rice straw. In the corner of the compound is a place set apart for a number of little stone shrines, some of them very elaborately carved, in which votive offerings of flowers and fruit are placed.

The Balinese seem to be a sturdy and industrious people; they have a free and independent appearance, very different from that of their somewhat grovelling neighbours, the Javanese. The roads are picturesquely lined with shady trees, and a very pleasant feature of them is the number of little mouse-coloured ponies, which carry panniers on a high-peaked saddle and are the coolies of Bali; most of them have an elaborate leather harness and many carry a large number of little bells, which make a pretty music along the roads. They appear to be hungry little animals, and they have the rare and valuable faculty of being able to eat out of a basket tied round their necks as they walk along. The country, what little we saw of it, looks extremely prosperous, and the beauty of the cultivated lands, interrupted here and there by groves of trees and backed by mountains, is beyond dispute.

From Bali to Java is only a few hours’ steaming, and from Batavia another ship brought us to Singapore, where we arrived on May 2nd. A month later we landed in England and the English Expedition to Dutch New Guinea, 1910-11, was a thing of the past.

It is not easy to put down in words what were our thoughts on our homeward journey from the Mimika River to Plymouth Sound. Naturally enough there were feelings of pleasant anticipation in returning to the comforts of civilised life, and there were feelings of profound thankfulness that we had left behind us neither our bones nor our health, as too many others less fortunate had done. There was also a sense of (I think pardonable) satisfaction at having accomplished something; the surveyors had made an accurate map of a large tract of quite unknown country; the naturalists had made valuable collections of birds and animals, and some most interesting races of men had been visited and studied.

But beneath these was another feeling of vague disappointment. We had set out full of hope, if not of confidence, of reaching the Snow Mountains, and the disappointment of not having set foot on them was aggravated by the fact that we had been so long in sight of them. It was exasperating beyond words to see the mountains month after month only forty miles away and not to be able to move a foot in their direction; to study them so that we came to know the changing patches of lower snow and almost the very crevasses in the glaciers, and still to be forced to be content with looking and longing for “the hills and the snow upon the hills.”

To look for fifteen months at that great rock precipice, and those long fields of snow untrodden yet by foot of man, to anticipate the delight of attaining to the summits and to wonder what would be seen beyond them on the other side, those were pleasures that kept one’s hopes alive through long periods of dull inaction. The aching disappointment of turning back and leaving the mountains as remote and as mysterious as they were before words of mine cannot express; but happily there is always comfort to be found in the reflexion that

“Some falls are means the happier to arise.”