should cooperate in establishing trade schools wherein crafts,
providing life-vocations to the natives, may be taught.

There may be more than 275,000 natives in Papua, but, due to
lack of knowledge of the country, the actual number is unknown.

Among the mountain fastnesses, defending themselves in
tree-houses, one finds a frizzly-headed black negrito-like race
hardly more than five feet in height. These are probably
remnants of the "pigmy" pre-Dravidian or Negrito-Papuan
element, which constituted the most ancient inhabitants of the
island and who long ago were driven inland from the coveted
coast.

The burly negroid Papuans of the Great River deltas of western
Papua differ widely from the lithe, active, brown-skinned,
mop-headed natives of the eastern half of the southern coast;
and Professors Haddon and Seligmann have decided that in
eastern New Guinea many Proto-Polynesian, Melanesian and
Malayan immigrants have mingled their blood with that of the
more primitive Papuans. Thus there are many complexly
associated ethnic elements in New Guinea, and often people
living less than a hundred miles apart can not understand one
another; in fact, each village has its peculiar dialect. Social
customs and cultural standards in art and manufacture vary
greatly from the same cause, and each tribe has some remarkable
individual characteristics. In the Fly-River region, the
village consists of a few huge houses with mere stalls for the
families, which crowd for defence under the shelter of a single
roof. Along the southern side of the eastern end of the island,