These hillmen or "Arfaks" differed much in physical features.

They were generally black, but some were brown like Malays.
Their hair, though always more or less frizzly, was sometimes short and matted, instead of being long, loose, and woolly; and this seemed to be a constitutional difference, not the effect of care and cultivation.
Nearly half of them were afflicted with the scurfy skin-disease.

The old chief seemed much pleased with his present, and promised (through an interpreter I brought with me) to protect my men when they came there shooting, and also to procure me some birds and animals.

While conversing, they smoked tobacco of their own growing, in pipes cut from a single piece of wood with a long upright handle.
We had arrived at Dorey about the end of the wet season, when the whole country was soaked with moisture The native paths were so neglected as to be often mere tunnels closed over with vegetation, and in such places there was always a fearful accumulation of mud.

To the naked Papuan this is no obstruction.