Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 161, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1915 — Island of Pygmies and Cannibals [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Island of Pygmies and Cannibals

WHEN the Australian troops took the German part of New Guinea early in the war, Great Britain became the possessor of fully half of the largest island in the world, for Australia and Greenland are properly small continents. The other half belongs to Holland. New Guinea surpasses Madagascar in size, its length being 200 miles greater than the distance from New York to Chicago, says Rene Bache in the Boston Herald. Its area is equal to that of France and the British Isles combined. But what renders it most interesting is that it is today the least known portion of the habitable world, fully nine-tenths of the Island being as yet unexplored. This may well seem surprising when it is considered that New Guinea is separated from the north coast of Australia only by a broad strait. A glance at a map of the world will show that it is in reality the largest member of the great archipelago in the eastern seas, which includes the Philippine islands on the north and Borneo and Sumatra on the west The line of the equator runs almost directly through it Ferbcious Black Cannibals. New Guinea is inhabited by tribes of ferocious black people, with great mops of woolly hair, who evince utmost hostility toward all intruders. When vessels have been wrecked upon their inhospitable shores they have in a number of known instances captured the unfortunate mariners and eaten them. But if the island is to so great an extent a terra incognita today it Is not mainly on this account, but because of its unhealthful climate.

From the foothills of the huge mountain range, running through its entire length from east to west, extend to north and south vast swampy plains covered with dense forests, intersected by innumerable streams, and haunted by the deadliest of fevers. Thus it comes about that german New Guinea is practically an unknown land, except for a narrow strip along the coast, while the portion hitherto held by Great Britain has been explored only in part, and what is known of the Dutch half of the island was ascertained mainly by an English expedition undertaken in 1910. This expedition, headed by Capt. Cecil G. Rawling, which penetrated some distance into the interior and made considerable surveys, came across tribes of hitherto unknown pygmies, the men barely reaching 4 feet 7 inches in height It is presumed that the women are proportionately smaller, but no bribes or other persuasions could induce these little folk to produce any of their females for inspection —lest, as seemed to be feared, they might be captured and carried off. Apparently the pygmies are of the same dwarf race, evidently very ancient, that is found in the Philippines, in the Andaman Islands and in equatorial Africa. The savages along the coast, on the other hand, are good-sized people, remarkably muscular and with a great development of chest. The men are sooty black, the women being slightly fairer. Among them are occasional albinos, with dirty reddish hair, their pink skins blotched unpleasantly with darker color. Both sexes go nearly naked, the women wearing either a short grass petticoat or a strip of bark cloth passed between the legs and held in place by a string tied around the waist. For the man a gourd similarly attached in front often serves the purpose of raiment. Native Village One Long Room. A native village is one long room, which may extend to any length, the newest member of such a community building his hut on the end of the row, without any partition. Thus there is no attempt at privacy, though each family has its own doorway and its own fireplace. The floor is of sand fresh from the seashore and covered with grass mats, and the only furniture consists of elaborately carved wooden pillows, most uncomfortable, as one would think, for sleeping purposes. Dangling from the root and. much blackened by smoke, are human skulls and bones, formerly belonging

to defunct relatives, the bones being sometimes contained in woven grass bags. / The price of a wife among these primitive people may be anything from a yard of calico to an ax head, according to the physical attractions and domestic accomplishments of the woman. The savage warriors of New Guinea, adorn themselves with crowns of paradise feathers, which are held in place by a band of plaited grass encircling the head. Sometimes they wear a sort of halo, the rays of which are many pieces of cane plaited into the hair and standing out at right angles to the scalp. Such a headdress, which is not disturbed or remade for mdhths, must be rather uncomfortable to sleep in. To lend a fierce expression to the face the beak of the. hornbill split in two is worn through a hole in the septum of the nose, in such a way that the two thin white blades, eadh five or six inches long, curve up at the ends like Kaiser Wilhelm’s mustache. In Perpetual Strife. Captain Rawling, in his book, “The Land of the New Guinea Pygmies," says that the natives are engaged in perpetual strife and drunken brawls — their favorite intoxicant being a fermented liquor obtained from the sugar palm. Just outside each family doorway stand the owner’s spears and stone clubs, which are used in domestic quarrels or to fight with enemies. Violent temper seems to be a characteristic of these savages, and with hardly a moment’s warning the peaceful village is converted into a scene of turmoil and strife. Spears whizz; clubs are wielded indiscriminately and

with murderous intent, and the place resounds with ferocious yells. At intervals raids are undertaken to procure heads as trophies and human flesh for food. There are no fiercer cannibals, judging from all accounts, than those of New Guinea. In 1858 a vessel was wrecked off the coast of British New Guinea, and 300 men on board of all of them Chinese, were marooned on a small island. There they were fed and systematically fattened by the natives, no escape being possible, and at intervals, as required, two or three of them at a time were taken to the mainland, boiled in a spring of hot water and eaten. Women have no rights among the natives of New Guinea. They are treated as slaves, worked almost to death and savagely beaten when their owners happen to be in a bad humor, which is often. It is their business to cultivate the fields of banana and rice, while their lords and masters attend to the fighting and hunting. If a man chooses to murder his wife, nobody interferes, and nothing much seems to be thought of it New Guinea is for naturalists -an unexplored wonderland. It has many species of birds that are as yet unknown to science. The forests are full of parrots and other feathered creatures of brilliant plumage, and among the marine curiosities along the coast are fishes that climb trees. The swamps swarm with the deadliest snakea- As for the mammals of the island,- nearly all of them are, like those of nearby Australia, marsupials.

PUSHING WITH BOW AND ARROW