NATIVES OF NORTH-WEST COAST.

Another variety among the inhabitants of Port Dorey, spoken of by M. d’Urville as the Harfours, is supposed by him to include, along with another race of which little is known—­named Arfaki—­the indigenous inhabitants of the north-west part of New Guinea.  The Harfours, Haraforas, or Alforas, for they have been thus variously named, have often been described as inhabiting the interior of many of the large islands of the Malayan Archipelago, but, as Prichard remarks, “nothing can be more puzzling than the contradictory accounts which are given of their physical characters and manners.  The only point of agreement between different writers respecting them is the circumstance that all represent them as very low in civilisation and of fierce and sanguinary habits."* Their distinctness as a race has been denied with much apparent reason by Mr. Earl, and they are considered by Prichard to be merely various tribes of the Malayo-Polynesian race retaining their uncivilised and primitive state.  Be this as it may, of these Harfours D’Urville states, that they reminded him of the ordinary type of the Australians, New Caledonians, and the black race of Oceania, from their sooty colour, coarse but not woolly hair, thick beards, and habit of scarifying the body.  I mention these Harfours for the purpose of stating that no people answering to the description of them given above were seen by us in New Guinea or the Louisiade Archipelago.

(Footnote.  Ibid page 255.)

VARIETIES OF THE PAPUAN RACE AND THEIR DISTRIBUTION.

It appears to me that there are two distinct varieties of the Papuan race inhabiting the south-east portion of New Guinea.  The first occupies the western shores of the Great Bight, and probably extends over the whole of the adjacent country, along the banks of Aird River, and the other great freshwater channels.  Judging from the little that was seen of them during the voyage of the Fly, these people appear to agree with the Torres Strait Islanders—­an offshoot, there is reason to believe, of the same stock—­in being a dark and savage race, the males of which go entirely naked.

The second variety occupies the remainder of the south-east coast of New Guinea and the Louisiade Archipelago.  Their characteristics have already been given in this work, as seen at intermediate points between Cape Possession and Coral Haven; they agree in being a lighter-coloured people than the preceding, and more advanced in civilisation:  mop-headed, practising betel-chewing, and wearing the breech-cloth.  Without entering into the question of their supposed origin, I may state that, in some of their physical, intellectual, and moral characters, and also partially in their language, they seem to me to show indications of a Malayo-Polynesian influence, probably acquired before their arrival in New Guinea, along the shores of which they seem to have extended, colonising the Louisiade during their progress, which at Cape Possession was finally arrested by their meeting with the other section of the race alluded to in the preceding paragraph.