The Committee who organised the late expedition to Dutch New Guinea, paid me the high
compliment of inviting me to write an account of our doings in that country. The fact that it is, in a
sense, the official account of the expedition has precluded me—greatly to the advantage of the
reader—from offering my own views on the things that we saw and on things in general. The
country that we visited was quite unknown to Europeans, and the native races with whom we came
in con ...