The London Missionary Society have established a mission at Port Moresby, Boera, Samoa, and other places ; but the climate of New Guinea is such as to render European colonization hazardous. Experience scarcely warrants the hope that healthy districts will be found.
The rainfall in the wet season averages 34 inches, whilst the heat at Port Moresby ranges from the average minimum night tempprature, to 90.43° in the shade during February, which is the hottest month.
New Guinea has several varieties of the Negro race, the tall Papuan, the small Negrito, and the Maori form, and the people on the coast are iu some places mixed with the browner races of the Moluccas. The darker type of Papuans struck D'Albertis as identical with the true Negro of Africa, insomuch that on his return home he felt sure that were some of the Somali men, among whom he was shipwrecked in the Red Sea, transported to New Guinea, they might be mistaken for natives of that island, having the same receding forehead, aquiline nose, and moderately thick lips, with curly but not woolly hair. This is what he called the Arab type when speaking of Moatta and Tawan, distinct in many respects from the_Negroes of Central and Southern Africa. The skulls collected by him exhibit specimens both of the extreme prognath ous type, and of the round or brachycephalic, generally identified with the Polynesian race. The skin is black in the natives of the west, while from Redscar Bay eastward it is light brown.
In the interior, again, the people .in the moun tains are intermediate in colour, and are quite distinct in habits.
It is the great seat of the Papuan race. The names by which the island is known to Europeans and Asiatics, New Guinea and Tanna Papua, both distinctly refer to the leading peculiarity of the race by which the coasts are inhabited.
This island, and also the Ki and Aru Islands, with Mysol, Salwatty, and Waigiou, are occupied almost exclusively by varieties of the Papuan, and a Negro variety extends over. the islands east of New Guinea as far as the Fiji group, though they differ greatly in physical appearance in New Ire land, Malicollo, one of the great Cyclades, Tanna and New Caledonia in the New Hebrides.
The Papuan variety about the Fly river in New Guinea has an intensely dark brown skin, but not nearly black, are taller and more warlike, Captain Moresby says, than those of the E. Peninsula,
also less intelligent, but better wood-carvers. They are said to be cannibals. On the 7th of March 1879, the missionaries were attacked by the natives at Kato, in the district of Port Moresby, (lulu, and four of them, with two of their wives, four children, and two servants, were killed.
The tribes on its E. Peninsula vary in colour from light yellowish-brown to rich coffee-brown. They have many tribes, and seem to be of Papua Malay descent.
The Rev. W. G. Lawes described the villages round Hood Bay as inhabited by a fine industri ous race, but they have martial proclivities, and carry on hostilities against each other. Their women seem to be better treated than with most savages. They are excellent sailors, make capital pottery, are bold hunters, and skilful fishermen. The hoitapu and Koiari aborigines of the part of New Guinea about Port Moresby (lat. 9° 80' S., long. 147° 10' E.) differ in physique; language, ornaments, modes of cooking, weapons, and manu factures from the coast tribes or Motu. They have frizzy, not woolly hair, and are rather small in stature. The number of separate tribes and races on the S.E. coast of New Guinea is very great, 25 different dialects and languages having come under notice in 300 miles of coast. Its S.W. part is known to native traders as Papua-kowiyee and Papua-Onen; it is inhabited by the most treacher ous and bloodthirsty tribes, and up to the pre sent time traders continue to be murdered there. The l'apuans of Mysol, Salwatty, 1Vaigiou, and some parts of the adjacent coast, have become peaceable. On the S.W. coast of New Guinea, however, and in the large island of Jobi, the Papuan race, are in a very barbarous condition, and take every opportunity to rob and murder. The tribe in the interior of Dori are called Arfak. They are savages. Not a single Malay, or Bugis, or Ceramese settlement exists on New Guinea, though several are scattered over the outlying islands, the principal being at Salwatty, a largo island forming the apparent N.W. extremity of New Guinea, from which it is separated by a very narrow strait.