But it was to the south that their eyes turned with the most inquiring interest. Here the ranges rose higher and higher, under heavy banks of clouds, until, on the extreme horizon, the sun glinted on a white, snowy sea of mountains, jagged with peaks and caps, with Carstensz (17,000 feet) just visible as a tiny jutting point of white. Two hundred years ago Jan Carstensz, navigating along these shores, caught a glimpse of the Snow Mountains from the decks of his vessel and reported them in the ship’s log. It was such a rare glimpse, behind the eternal veil of clouds that shrouds the interior of New Guinea, that no one believed him. From that day to this, a lifting of the jungle clouds hanging low over the mountains, and the white man present to see them, have never come at the same time, so that even the existence of the high fellows in the interior has been regarded as a wild tale of Jan Carstensz. It was not for more than two centuries later, in 1911, that Jan Lorentz, another intrepid Hollander, with a party of twenty Dyaks, made a dash through the pygmy country and ascended the first one of the Snow Mountains, naming it Mt. Wilhelmina in honor of the Dutch queen. From their own knob another wonderful feature of the country could also be seen, extending southward in a long flat perspective--the Great Precipice. For two hundred miles this precipice extends like a rampart, dividing the mountains from the flat jungle. It rises sometimes to a sheer height of ten thousand feet, undoubtedly the grandest precipice in the world. Sloping up to it, they could make out the jungle-clad talus, and beyond that the lowlands of the river country, widening out more and more as the coast land flowed southward. Dozens of rivers, they knew, cut through this jungle, out of sight in the green sea of foliage, and here was the scene of the English expedition, their party arriving full of hope and confidence, only to be baffled by the precipice and the swift floods of the rivers from getting farther than the foothills of the Snow Mountains. Here they had discovered the race of pygmies, and had visited one of their villages, collected implements of war and domestic usage, and, most valuable of all, a list of some fourteen words in their tongue, now carefully preserved for future use in the curator’s notebook. “Nicky,” said the curator, after a long and careful examination of a spot on the jungly hills to the south of them, “I wish you would take a look at that scar over yonder, where a sort of ravine seems to run down the second mountain to the south of us. My eyes may be deceiving me, but--” He handed over the glasses. Nicky looked eagerly, with his fresh young eyes glued to the binoculars. “Huts! Little huts, ’way up in the tree tops! I’m sure of it!” he cried, after a careful scrutiny.