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Show ViyPK YGMYLAND, in the Ma- , 'Si W 1 .4Ns"-" aS M lay archipelago, has been i frV! $ (li found and explored-, de- S ATJsT A,t f S r-mi'i scribed and pictured. It & &CwS B fMM Ti W V' r NWl is as weird and wonder- lf P ? 1 ful as Gulliver's Lilliput, . l$L&, W ? tt V and is actual fact, not - HfifTM fl M VAf-vf, satirical fancy. It is ! Jtt 1 J. jflMl i f I ! Us hidden in the mountain- 1! " ' h itf CA ous heart of New lJL ! - "M $ $X$&t Guinea, or Papua, the largest island f 1 V in the world counting Australia as a ?" Bg- ' 2-f S h continent. Lying south of the equa- H " - r" - " -" Tv.v .. tor, and separated from 'Australia by pyiZHlgS CSf 2& 'AG!Jr the Arafura sea and Torres strait, . ' YGMYLAND, in the Ma- a so, lay archipelago, has been ;f 3 found and explored, de- -xl-JL scribed and pictured. It is as weird and wonder-' wonder-' ; ful as Gulliver's Lilliput, and is actual fact, not satirical fancy. It is 1 4w I hidden in the mountain-ous mountain-ous heart of New Guinea, or Papua, the largest island in the world counting Australia as a continent. Lying south of the equator, equa-tor, and separated from 'Australia by the Arafura sea and Torres strait, New Guinea has an area of 308,000 square miles. The possession of this vast territory is divided, politically speaking, between Holland, Great Britain and Germany. Only in the British territory has any serious attempt at-tempt been made at settling and administering ad-ministering the country. Owing to its remote "situation, its rugged mountain ranges and impenetrable impene-trable forests, its deadly climate and hostile, treacherous inhabitants, New Guinea today is practically terra incognita. in-cognita. It offers greater opportunities for the explorer, collector and anthropologist anthro-pologist than any other portion of the globe. The expedition recently sent to this virgin land by the British Ornithologists' Ornitholo-gists' union made pioneer explorations in the land of the Tapiro pygmies, described de-scribed in two narratives of sensational sensa-tional interest: Doctor Wollaston's "Pygmies and Papuans" (Sturgis & Walton Co., New York) and Captain Rawling's "Land of the New Guinea Pygmies" (J. B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia). Phila-delphia). Here Is a marvelous country, with snow-clad peaks as high as Mount Blanc, rising from impenetrable tropical tropi-cal forests inhabited by native races who live in so primitive a state that it is literally what Doctor Wollaston calls it the stone age today. The pygmies encountered by Wollaston Wol-laston in one of their villages among the spurs of Mount Tapiro were cleanly clean-ly built, active little fellows, whose average adult stature was somewhat less than four feet six Inches. Their skin is a dusky yellowish brown, hair short and woolly and black. Many of the men have short, bushy black beards. With the exception of a head dress of plaited fibers and feathers and a gourd strapped around the loins, they go about unclothed. They carry bows and arrows, flint knives and stone-headed clubs, and make fire by friction of bamboo sticks, blowing the smoldering tinder into flame. The raise and smoke tobacco, mostly in the form of cigarettes; set snares for birds, wild pigs and small animals; and extract a faint, pleasing sort of music from a split bamboo instrument, instru-ment, something like a jew's-harp. Doctor Wollaston found the Tapiro pygmies shy and timorous, but eager for barter, and extremely curious about the white men. Their women he never set eyes on. The village headman, head-man, a bald and white-bearded old creature horribly disfigured by disease, dis-ease, kept up a shrill shouting all the while the strangers were in sight; and it was probably due to his protests pro-tests that the Englishmen on this trip, at least were not permitted to view the female of the species. It may have been that the pygmies feared the big Papuan men who accompanied ac-companied the expedition from the plains would carry off their wives. It seems the supply of Papuan women is very scanty, and the men would be apt to seize any chance of abducting a Tapiro woman. Mr. Wollaston tells of an exciting chase after two small men, who were ultimately captured and kindly treated, but who "showed no inclination inclina-tion to conduct strangers to their home." This with the aid of native porters was finally reached, and ' friendly relations set up with the Tapiro, as these newly-discovered pygmies are called, the men submitting submit-ting willingly to measurements, which showed an average height of four feet nine inches. But no offers of metal knives and axes would induce them to let their women be seen, probably, Mr. Wollaston conjectures, because they feared abduction by the Papuans. He supplies interesting details about them, although vagueness attends these, "for they are so indescribably dirty that it is not easy to know which is their true color," but the type is distinctly Negrito. The language of the Tapiro pygmies seemed to be radically different from that of the Papuans, and the Wollaston Wollas-ton party were unable to make even the smallest vocabulary of it. Their voices are high-pitched and nasal, and full of animal-like throat sounds impossible im-possible to render phonetically in writing. Captain itawling and Doctor Marshall Mar-shall had somewhat better luck. Through a forest filled with birds of paradise and emerald green serpents, they penetrated to the pygmy village of Wambirimi, high up in the hills and spent a day and a night there, photographing photo-graphing and parleying with the Lilliputian Lilli-putian natives. In the line of feminist femi-nist study, however, they made no further advance than their predecessors predeces-sors had done. It was only among the pygmies' grownup cousins, the taller Papuans of the plains, that they secured those pictures of women and children which form so striking and convincing a complement to the published pub-lished narratives. "The more one see3 of these people," peo-ple," writes Rawllng, "the more one realizes that their lives are one long struggle for existence. Precipitous mountains with deep and gloomy gorges surround them on either hand, every foot of ground clothed with the densest forest, with perpetual rain, w-ith no wild fruit or edible roots, and flesh in any form scarce and hard to procure. One must see the ground to appreciate the amount of labor that has been expended in clearing away the great trees and vegetation in their efforts to cultivate the less precipitous land. When it is realized that this has been accomplished solely with the aid of fire (a difficult operation in this wet climate), stone axes and two implements im-plements fashioned out of a couple of small pieces of hoop-iron fastened to bamboo handles, the magnitude of the task will be understood." The visitors displayed large butcher knives, which elicited gasps of admiration admi-ration and envy from the pygmies, and explained that these prizes were for such men as would induce a woman wom-an to show herself. Yet all to no purpose. The old men formed the obstructionist party; the young ones by themselves might have yielded to the temptation. They said the women had surreptitiously peeped at the white men from the screen of the jungle, but had been scared off by the clothes they wore! The pygmies, It Is believed. Intermarry Inter-marry with the Parimau people of the plains, who are of larger stature, and not so Turkish or Mormon-like in their ideas about the segregation of the female sex. ' The Papuan women of Parimau have no great attractions, either natural nat-ural or artificial, to hide or conceal-With conceal-With the exception of a few beada they wear nothing but the loin cloth, made from the bark of a tree. "Poor wretches!" exclaims the explorer, ex-plorer, "their days are one long round of toil, and they have little leisure to think of trinkets or decoration. Woman, Wom-an, the weaker creature, is relegated to a very inferior position, and is in fact the slave, body and soul, of hei lord and master, becoming his property prop-erty to deal with as he pleases. Marriages, Mar-riages, except on special occasions, are not considered of much importance, impor-tance, and are not celebrated by feasts or jollification. Nor is any attention at-tention paid to the birth of a child. "If dress can be looked upon as a source of pleasure, widows in Paupua are to be envied, inasmuch as they are required lQ adopt outward, anjj visible signs of their bereavehiefil. A widow of standing will decorate herself her-self with a short aid scanty bodice of woven grass, which leaves the stomach bare, while from the hips will hang a still more ragged form of skirt. Surmounting all is a peculiarly shaped poke bonnet, made of the same material, which, unless the lady wishes to be seen, completely hides her face. Young widows are not so careful to conceal their charms, and are usually satisfied with the scantiest of skirts in the form of bunches ol grass hanging in front and behind, and if they fancy it, with more tufts hanging from the biceps." Probably nowhere else in the world are the birth and death rates so high as in New Guinea. The suggestion here occurs, that the gift of $100,000,000 for a world health campaign which benefaction Ambassador Page announced the other day in London as having been projected by a number of wealthy Americans may find Bcope in New Guinea. "The income of this fund," according accord-ing to published announcement, "which will amount to about $5,000,000 a year, will be applied to the study and cure of diseases among native races in all parts of the world." |