Produced by Jeroen Hellingman, Olaf Voss
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
We may safely affirm that the better specimens of savages are muchsuperior to the lower examples of civilized peoples.
Alfred Russel Wallace.
Ever since my camping life with the aborigines of Queensland, many yearsago, it has been my desire to explore New Guinea, the promised land of allwho are fond of nature and ambitious to discover fresh secrets. Infurtherance of this purpose their Majesties, the King and Queen of Norway,the Norwegian Geographical Society, the Royal Geographical Society ofLondon, and Koninklijk Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap,generously assisted me with grants, thus facilitating my efforts to raisethe necessary funds. Subscriptions were received in Norway, also fromAmerican and English friends, and after purchasing the principal part ofmy outfit in London, I departed for New York in the autumn of 1913, enroute for the Dutch Indies. In 1914, having first paid a visit to theBulungan, in northeast Borneo, in order to engage the necessary Dayaks, Iwas preparing to start for Dutch New Guinea when the war broke out.
Under these changed conditions his Excellency, the Governor-General,A.W.F. Idenburg, regretted his inability to give me a military escort andother assistance needed for carrying out my plan, and advised me to awaita more favorable opportunity. During this interval, having meanwhilevisited India, I decided to make an expedition through Central Borneo,large tracts of which are unexplored and unknown to the outside world. Myproject was later extended to include other regions of Dutch Borneo, andthe greater part of two years was spent in making researches among itsvery interesting natives. In these undertakings I received the valuableassistance of their Excellencies, the governor-general and the commandinggeneral, as well as the higher officials of the Dutch Government, to allof whom I wish to express my heartfelt thanks.
Through the courtesy of the well-known Topografische Inrichting, inBatavia, a competent surveyor, whose work will later be published, wasattached to my expeditions. He did not accompany me on my first visit tothe Bulungan, nor on the second occasion, when I went to the lake ofSembulo, where the country is well known. In the map included in this bookI have indicated the locations of the different tribes in Dutch Borneo,based on information gathered from official and private sources and on myown observations.
I usually had a taxidermist, first a trained Sarawak Dayak, later aJavanese, to collect mammals and birds. Fishes and reptiles were alsopreserved in alcohol.
Specimens of ethnological interest were collected from the differenttribes visited; the collection from the Penihings I believe is complete.Measurements of 227 individuals were taken and as soon as practicable willbe worked out by Doctor K.S. Schreiner, professor at the University ofChristiania. Vocabularies were collected from most of the tribes. In spiteof adverse conditions, due to climate and the limitations un