Gebe Island is between New Guinea and Gilolo. It is occupied by the Negro race, with nose flat, the lips thick and projecting, the com plexion a dark olive, the eyes deep seated, and on an average the facial angle 77°, but as high as 81°. In Gebe, Waigiou, and in some parts also of the coast of New Guinea, the Malayan race may have become intermixed with the Negro, as the complexion is lighter and the peculiar texture of the Negro hair altered or obliterated. The language spoken at Waigiou is entirely Papuan, being that which is used on all the coasts of Mysol, Salwatty, the N.W. of Guinea, and the islands in the Great Geelvink Bay. Waigiou, Gebe, Poppa, Obi, Batchiatt between New Guinea, and the Moluccas, as well as the south and east peninsulas of Gilolo, possess no original tribes, but are inhabited by people who are evidently mongrels and wanderers.
Arroe or Are Islands extend from lat. 7° to lat. 5° 52' S., and in long. 133° 56' E., run for upwards of 100 miles N. and S., and between 40 and 50 miles in breadth. They lie between the Timor Laut group and the S.W. coast of New Guinea, distant about GO miles. They are a closely-packed group. Some of the southern islands are of considerable extent, but those to the north, lying close to the edge of the hank, are rarely more than 5 or 6 miles in circumference. The land is low, being only a few feet above the level of the sea, except in spots where patches of rock rise to the height of 20 feet, but the lofty trees which cover the face of the country give to it the appearance of being much more elevated. Coral reefs extend from the shores of all the islands, and in the eastern parts of the group these are often of great extent. The Aru islanders have had much intercourse with strangers. They purchased from the Bugis the Papuan slaves brought from New Guinea, who were employed in diving for pearlsand in the beche-de-merfishery. The Aru islanders are excessive in their use of intoxicating liquors, imported from Java and Macassar. In personal appearance the people are between the Malayan and Polynesian Negro. In stature they surpass the civilised natives of Celebes. The dress of the men is a piece of matting or cloth girded round the loins, and drawn tight between the thighs, and a salendan or shawl.. No fillet is worn round the head. The hair is woolly and frizzled out like that of the Papuan. The men are jealous, and easily roused to anger by abuse of their Women or ancestors ; otherwise they are of mild disposition. Christianity was introduced into the Aru Islands many years ago by the Dutch of Amboyna, and nearly all the principal people profess this creed, but some are Muhammadans.
The Aru islanders bear a strong personal resem blance to the aborigines of Port Essington; indeed, on several occasions in which natives from the neighbourhood of the late settlement visited the islands in European vessels, they were considered by the Aruans as belonging to some remote part of their own group. But the Aruans also possess many characteristics in common with the Outanata of the opposite coast of New Guinea. One of their most singular peculiarities, however, con sists in the value which they attach to elephants' tusks, brass gongs and trays (dulara, talam), and huge porcelain dishes. A man's goods on his death, all the chattels which he has collected during his life, including tusks, gongs, and precious china dishes, are broken in pieces and thrown away ; and in the villages may be seen heaps of these fragments of property which custom or sonic singular superstition has deterred the living from appropriating. The natives are Papuans, with black or sooty-brown skins, woolly or frizzly hair, thick-ridged pro minent noses, and rather slender limbs ; most of them wear nothing but a waist-cloth. The Papuan talks, laughs, shouts without intermission. Papuan boys sing cheerily as they walk along, or talk aloud to themselves, which' is quite a Negro peculiarity. They have as food, sago, vegetables, tish, and molluscs ; and tobacco, betel, and arrack are their luxuries. Their houses are rude sheds. There are some mixed races amongst them. The women have only a mat of plaited strips of palm leaves worn tight round the body, andr each mg from the hips to the knee, or suspend a mat in front and one behind. Their frizzly hair is tied in a bunch at the back of the head. delight in combing it or forking it, using a large wooden fork with four diverging prongs, to separate and arrange the long, tangled, frizzly mass. They and the men wear ear-rings, necklaces of silver, brass, shell. The Aru Papuans told Mr. Wallace that some of their tribes kill the old men and women when they can no longer work, but he saw many old folk. Their hair is usually black, and strongly curled. Like, the. African Somali, they wash it with wood-ashes or lime-water, which impart to it a lightish colour, and cause it to appear rough, both these peculiarities being considered very tasteful by the Alfoer as well as by the Papuans. The usual height of the men is from 5 feet 4 inches to 5 feet 8 inches, and there is a great inclination to slimness about the lower extremities among the taller men, some of whom attain the height of 6 feet.