Commerce and industry in Dutch New Guinea are almost un known. The people generally live in a very wild state, head-hunting and cannibalism are all too prevalent ; some are semi-nomadic, others entirely, and as they live largely on sago, and this is obtainable almost everywhere, in large quantities, with a minimum amount of labour, whilst the coconut abounds, and the sweet potato, sugar-cane, plaintain, papaya and tobacco are grown with little trouble, there is no incentive to work, apart from hunting the cassowary, pig and kangaroo, for their flesh, and fishing, the only lucrative employments followed being those of hunting the bird of paradise, collecting the wild nutmeg, the mace of which is much esteemed and marketed specially in Macassar, and the preparation of copra. Men and women go about almost entirely naked, the men armed with bow and arrow, axes of polished stone, and daggers of the jaw-bone of a crocodile or the thigh bone of a cassowary. There are head men of villages, but they have little power, the people of the coast are often at war with those of the scrub lands of the interior, and there is enmity between these and the mountain folk: language varies consider ably. There are no roads, save in the immediate neighbourhood of Dutch official settlements.
In the whole of South New Guinea there is only one settle ment, Merauke, a few miles inland up the Merauke river. A Dutch Gezaghebber resides here, there is a small garrison, a hospital, Catholic mission church, and settlement, and a few shops, mostly run by Chinese traders, a wireless station, and a small wharf, where vessels of the Dutch Royal Packet Company land passengers and collect copra and other cargo. Merauke was estab lished in 1902, as the result of a military expedition. The nearest Dutch settlement to Merauke is at Kaimana, on the McCluer gulf, 500 m. distant. Here, and at Kokas and Fak Fak (head quarters for West New Guinea, where there is a Gezaghebber), there are small trading stations with Malay, Chinese and Arab settlers; Fak Fak is the most important, where proximity to Ceram and generations of outside influence have resulted in set tled and semi-civilized conditions amongst some of the Papuans. All three places are ports of call for vessels of the Dutch Royal Packet Company, also Sorong, on the north-west coast, opposite Salwatti, and Manokwari (Doreh), on the north-east coast, which is the seat of an assistant resident and the headquarters of ad ministration for North New Guinea. Wasior, on Little Geelvink bay, is another port of call, also Sarmi, Demta and Humboldts bay, and here, too, are Chinese and Malay traders, dealing mostly in copra and bird of paradise plumes, and there is some exploitation of the hinterland. The development of Dutch New Guinea will probably be more rapid than that of North New Guinea, for there is good land available and more chance of being able to utilize imported labour, when this can be procured. Trade is being de
veloped with Jappen island, where Dutch Royal Packet vessels call at two ports, Seroei and Wooibaai ; and with Biak, of the Schouten islands, the port of which is Bosnik.
A treaty dated 166o between the Dutch East India Company and the three States of Ternate, Tidore and Bachian, acknowl edged the company to be "lord of the Papuans or all their islands which are subject to the king of Tidore." This gave the Dutch a nominal sovereignty over the Tidorese fiefs on the is lands of Waigiou, Salwatti and Misol, and as on the latter two islands there were kingdoms possessing a vague sovereignty over parts of the mainland of New Guinea, whilst the suzerainty of Tidore was acknowledged in the neighbourhood of McCluer gulf, eventually the Dutch succeeded to these somewhat shadowy rights. Their first establishment was in 1828, when Fort de Bus was erected, but before this, in 1814, Dutch sovereignty in North-West New Guinea had been admitted, practically, by Great Britain by the convention of 1814, which restored to the Dutch their colonies as they had existed prior to 1803. In 1828 the Dutch Government declared North-West New Guinea, as a de pendency of Tidore, a part of the Dutch East Indian colonies, which claim was confirmed in 1848, the frontier then being stated to run straight from Cape Bonpland to the north coast. In 1884, when South-East New Guinea was declared a British Protectorate, the meridian of 140 E. was acknowledged as the frontier be tween British and Dutch territory, and later, in 1885, the same meridian was accepted by the Dutch as defining the frontier of German New Guinea. A convention entered into by Holland and Great Britain in 1895 made a slight alteration in the boundary (the Fly river) and made the navigation of the Fly river free to subjects of both Powers, except for the carriage of munitions of war. In 1898 Tidorese territory was assigned to the Ternate Resi dency, in 1911 West New Guinea was attached to the Residency of Amboyna (the chiefs having subscribed to the "short declara tion" in 1909), and the present division of territory is North New Guinea, West New Guinea, and South-West New Guinea, the former province being under Ternate, the two latter under Am boyna. (E. E. L.) The island of New Guinea and its island-clusters, together with those adjacent island-groups, of which the principal are the Louisiades and the Torres Straits islands, is a region of consider able racial and cultural diversity. The territory of New Guinea, the north-eastern quarter of the island, is, however, still very in completely surveyed ethnologically, and of the inhabitants of Dutch New Guinea, our knowledge is comparatively slight.