Fuyuge-speaking people, whose Papuan language, so far as ascertained,
appears, subject to local dialectal differences, to be the same, and
may, I was informed, be regarded as one common language throughout
the Fuyuge area.

The Fathers of the Mission have adopted the name Mafulu in a wider
sense, as including all the people with whom they have come in
contact of the Fuyuge-speaking area; and, though my investigations,
which form the subject-matter of this book, have been conducted only
in the neighbourhood of Mafulu itself, I was assured that, so far as
the Fathers have been able to ascertain, all these Fuyuge people not
only have similar languages, but also are substantially similar in
physique and in culture. My observations concerning the Mafulu people
may therefore, if this statement is correct, be regarded as applying,
not only to the inhabitants of the portion of the north-westerly corner
of the Fuyuge area in which the Mafulu group of villages is placed,
but to those of the whole of the north-westerly portion of the area,
and generally in a greater or less degree of accuracy to those of
the northerly and north-easterly parts of the area, and possibly the
southerly ones also.

The boundaries of this Fuyuge-speaking area can hardly be regarded
as definitely ascertained; and the discrepancies, even as regards
the courses of the rivers and the positions of the mountains, which
appear in the few available maps make it difficult to deal with the
question. The area, so far as actually ascertained by the Fathers
of the Mission, roughly speaking, covers, and seems to extend also
some distance to the south or south-west of a triangle, the western
apex of which is the junction of the river Kea with the river Aduala
(a tributary of the St. Joseph), [2] whose north-eastern apex is