This brief sketch of the configuration and conditions of the country through which we travelled may, I trust, serve as a key to the more detailed account of our journey, and with the directions and altitudes thus succinctly placed before him, the reader may possibly find it easier to follow us up hill and down dale. There is one more point I would venture to impress upon him, a point which will recur again and again—he may fancy _ad nauseam_—the difficulties of transport in Papua. But that was the main crux of our experience, and its importance can hardly be realised by one who has not undergone similar troubles. You are entirely in the hands of the natives, without whom you cannot stir a foot. All your impedimenta, your food, stores, scientific implements, and “trade” (material for barter, the equivalent of ready money) must go on the backs of your cannibal friends, a people without organisation, who are hard to collect and hard to persuade to follow you. It is necessary to rely on yourself to secure followers, though here and there a chief may aid you. One such, the greatest “character” we encountered in Papua, will be introduced to the reader at the proper place. On the march continual apprehension besets the traveller lest his carriers bolt, for if this happened in the interior he would be done for, and he would have a terrible business to get out of the country, if indeed he got out at all. Hence the reason why I have dwelt on our perpetually recurring difficulties with carriers, for the natives were veritably our staff and scrip; and had these failed us at a crucial moment, our expedition would have broken down utterly, to the great loss of those who had risked much on the undertaking. [Illustration: GUARDING THE WORKERS. Cultivated ground is generally some distance from the villages. It is tilled by young women, who are guarded by young natives armed with spears. ] On the commission of several friends, all scientific enthusiasts, whom I have named elsewhere, I and my son Harry, a lad of sixteen, left England in January 1901, and sailed eastward on board the _Duke of Sutherland_ to Thursday Island, whence we proceeded on board the Netherlands gunboat _Neas_ to Dutch New Guinea. My brief stay there, and the disappointments that led to my seeking a different field of operations, form the subject of the following chapter. CHAPTER II _DISAPPOINTMENTS IN DUTCH NEW GUINEA_ Dutch New Guinea—The Coast—Unsavoury Mud-banks—Merauke—The Dutch Settlement described—Its Wonderful Modernity—A Fierce Tribe, the Tugeri, now described for the First Time—Their Appearance and Habits—Their Continual Murderous Raids—The Fearful Bamboo Knife—Scientific Work here impossible owing to Danger of going beyond Settlement Boundaries— Outbreak of a Mysterious Disease at Merauke—Its Swift Deadliness—The Symptoms—Determine to leave Dutch New Guinea and prepare for a March into the Unexplored Interior.