when we arrived was a Dutch
brig, laden with coals for the use of a war-steamer, which was expected
daily, on an exploring expedition along the coasts of New Guinea, for
the purpose of fixing on a locality for a colony. In the evening we paid
it a visit, and landed at the village of Dorey, to look out for a place
where I could build my house. Mr. Otto also made arrangements for me
with some of the native chiefs, to send men to cut wood, rattans, and
bamboo the next day.

The villages of Mansinam and Dorey presented some features quite new
to me. The houses all stand completely in the water, and are reached by
long rude bridges. They are very low, with the roof shaped like a large
boat, bottom upwards. The posts which support the houses, bridges, and
platforms are small crooked sticks, placed without any regularity, and
looking as if they were tumbling down. The floors are also formed of
sticks, equally irregular, and so loose and far apart that I found it
almost impossible to walls on them. The walls consist of bits of boards,
old boats, rotten mats, attaps, and palm-leaves, stuck in anyhow here
and there, and having altogether the most wretched and dilapidated
appearance it is possible to conceive. Under the eaves of many of the
houses hang human skulls, the trophies of their battles with the
savage Arfaks of the interior, who often come to attack them. A large
boat-shaped council-house is supported on larger posts, each of which
is grossly carved to represent a naked male or female human figure, and
other carvings still more revolting are placed upon the platform before
the entrance. The view of an ancient lake-dweller's village, given as
the frontispiece of Sir Charles Lyell's "Antiquity of Man," is chiefly
founded on a sketch of this very village of Dorey; but the extreme
regularity of the structures there depicted has no place in the
original, any more than it probably had in the actual lake-villages.

The people who inhabit these miserable huts are very similar to the Ke
and Aru islanders, and many of them are very handsome, being tall and
well-made, with well-cut features and large aquiline noses. Their
colour is a deep brown, often approaching closely to black, and the fine
mop-like heads of frizzly hair appear to be more common than elsewhere,
and are considered a great ornament, a long six-pronged bamboo fork
being kept stuck in them to serve the purpose of a comb; and this is
assiduously used at idle moments