collected (and observed) on Gam Island and Waigeo, while his assistant Charles Allen reached Salawati, Misool, and the Sorong area of the northwestern Vogelkop Peninsula. Their collections are mainly in London (BMNH). Wallace was followed by other naturalists—some of them colorful—who also sought out the northwestern peninsular region and the Raja Ampat Islands to the west. The sword-carrying German Baron C. B. H. von Rosenberg collected birds in several visits over 1858–1870 (Leiden, BMNH), meeting Wallace at Doré Bay and overlapping with Allen in Misool; while in 1864 Heinrich Bernstein collected animals at Sorong, Waigeo, and Salawati.
But going into the last third of the nineteenth century—particularly with the opening of the Suez Canal and the publication of The Malay Archipelago by Wallace, both in 1869, as well as the spread of the world steamship network—outside contacts increased rapidly. In 1871 there came the first European resident in the east (after Montrouzier and the other Marists at Woodlark), the now almost legendary Russian ethnologist-naturalist N. N. de Miklucho-Maclay. He was landed near Bongu on Astrolabe Bay by his country’s Vitiaz—a name now given to the deep strait between New Guinea and New Britain, first traversed by Dampier—and remained there for over a year. He returned to what is now the Rai Coast in 1876–1877, 1878, and 1883, and at other times visited Triton Bay (the former Merkusoord), Gebé, and (in 1880) the Torres Strait Islands as well as Samarai (near China Strait—the latter by then becoming a trading post taking advantage of the growth of local commerce as well as a key new shipping route established following Moresby’s surveys; see below). The Russian collected some animals, a few plants, and much ethnographic data; in addition he introduced some fruits and other plants—among them papaw (papaya), Carica papaya ("banana bilong Maclay"). Many of his specimens and data were lost, though some insects were described by Sir William J. Macleay in Sydney. His New Guinea Diaries (1975, translated and edited by C. L. Sentinella) and Travels to New Guinea: diaries, letters, documents (1982, compiled by D. Tumarkin) along with two biographies (Who travels alone (1944) by F. S. Greenop and The Moon Man (1984) by E. M. Webster) cover his travels and in particular give an interesting picture of the untouched north coast more than a century and a quarter ago. Also in 1871, the London Missionary Society made its first landings in the region, Samuel Macfarlane (later senior missionary) and A. W. Murray reaching the Torres Strait Islands and other points along the south coast. Later, from bases at Cape York and (after 1877) at Maer (Murray) Island in the Strait, the mission under Macfarlane—with the aid of a small ship, the Ellengowan—would establish a number of stations over a wide area. These included, as already indicated, a station at Port Moresby, and, in 1877, one at South Cape (Suau). This gave him many opportunities for exploration, yielding some collections (plants, Melbourne); he also sailed with d’Albertis and Macleay (see below).
In the west, the appearance of outside powers in the waters of the Archipelago now spurred the Dutch Indian authorities into some action with respect to their lands, including New Guinea; the "tempo dulu" of the past was about to recede. In August 1871 the steamer Dassoon (under Capt. A. Smits) with the smaller Wilhelmina Frederika and with two Tidorean chiefs (brothers of the Sultan, who retained some residual rights), P. van der Crab on behalf of the Indies government, and, as botanist, J. E. Teysmann (from Bogor, now acting as an agent for the new director of the Botanic Garden, R. H. C. C. Scheffer), sailed from Ternate. Over some three months they called at several points in Papua, reaching east to Humboldt Bay (and also for a distance east of 141, the then-nominal border). Considerable plant collections were made (Bogor, Melbourne, Leiden). They were written up in 1876 by Scheffer—part of the Garden’s first steps towards an independent scientific existence. Of other biota there was obtained but little—a disappointment, if less deathly than for the Triton and Iris in 1828.
The fame of Wallace and his book—and even more the fabled birds of paradise, whose feathers were now becoming seriously fashionable—now brought a stream of other visitors, including many naturalists. A. A. Bruijn (from Ternate) collected in 1871–1879, partly for the plume trade (birds, Tring/AMNH and BMNH). In 1872–1873 the Italians Odoardo Beccari (an all-round botanist and later a famous palm specialist) and Luigi M. d’Albertis came to Doré Bay, from there climbing into the Arfak Mountains as far as the Hatam district—Beccari there obtaining the first botanical collections from anywhere in the mountains of New Guinea, as well as insects and other zoological materials (Florence, Genoa; d’Albertis had trained at Genoa’s Museo Civico di Storia Naturale under its head curator, Giacomo Doria). Ramoi (south of Sorong), Mt Epa, Andai, and some of the Raja Ampat Islands were also visited (as well as, in 1873, the Aru group). Almost at the same time, there came to the northwest A. B. Meyer from Dresden, specializing in zoology and ethnography; but his extensive itinerary and localities were at least partially falsified or fictitious. In 1874 the great Challenger oceanographic expedition (of 1872–1876) sailed for the first time into New Guinea waters, voyaging westwards via the Torres Strait Islands and visiting, in September, the Aru (and Kai) Islands with H. N. Moseley there making plant and animal collections (Kew, BMNH); the next year the ship would sail along the north coast and visit the Admiralty Islands (see below).
In 1875–1876 Beccari returned to the Vogelkop Peninsula, but this time on his own; during a long stay—which included another ascent into the Arfaks—he also visited Yapen and Biak as well as most of the main Raja Ampat Islands (Misool, Batanta, Salawati, Kofiau, and Waigeo, some for the second time). But even to this day his substantial plant collections have never fully been worked up, though he is commemorated in many binomials. His former companion d’Albertis now turned to the east. A Garibaldi veteran and in recent years viewed as one of the most notorious of adventurer-naturalists ever to visit New Guinea, he made in 1875–1877 three trips to present-day Papua New Guinea: the first with Macfarlane (see above) for some distance up the Fly River as well as staying on his own for some time on Yule Island (there meeting with the Chevert under Macleay; see also below); and his more famous second and third trips far up the Fly in the steam launch Neva, in 1876 as far as the foothills of the central ranges—the furthest stab into the dark interior hitherto made by an outsider. Substantial collections of ethnographic material as well as plants and many animals were taken back (Genoa, Florence, Melbourne); his travel book, Alla Nuova Guinea, appeared (1880, in the same year also released in English as New Guinea: what I did and what I saw). A string of species was named after him including a ring-tailed possum, Pseudochirops albertisi and the Buff-tailed Sicklebill, Epimachus albertisi.
The increasing level of activities in and around New Guinea (as well as the labor trade of Queensland) not unnaturally attracted renewed British naval attention. As a result, two final major surveying voyages were undertaken from Sydney by the steam/sail ship Basilisk under the command of Capt. John Moresby. His first voyage of six months in 1872–1873 made further detailed coastal surveys along the south and southeast coasts and the nearer Milne Bay Islands, including China Strait, which then received its name. With surer propulsion and maneuverability, he also was able to penetrate the long fringing southern reef in several places and so become the first outsider to see Fairfax Harbor (Port Moresby) on 21 February; the reef passage was (and is) named after his ship. A Congregational mission station was set up beside the bay the next year, paving the way for serious interior exploration and (from 1886) outside settlement. In early 1874 Moresby returned and continued his detailed surveying, now traversing the northeast coast and by mid-May reaching Huon Gulf (before sailing around to the north coast and on to Ambon and, finally, Britain).
On both voyages Moresby was accompanied by Peter Comrie as naturalist; he collected insects, mammals, and birds but very few plants, and published but little. As with the Sulphur in the Pacific and, to a lesser extent, the Rattlesnake, a good opportunity for significant scientific contributions in monographic form was not taken up or lost due to official opposition, parsimony, or narrowly-drawn instructions—or passed over in favor of the Challenger results. But, in any case, by 1875—the year the Challenger sailed through the northern parts of the New Guinea region—a single shipboard naturalist could not handle all the requirements demanded of the different departments of natural history, now quickly deepening and further diversifying.
"Guinea Gold": The Scramble for Specimens and Species (1875–1914)
SOUTHEASTERN NEW GUINEA
(BRITISH
