The walls consist of bits of boards, old boats, rotten mats, attaps, and palm-leaves, stuck in anyhow here and there, and having altogether the most wretched and dilapidated appearance it is possible to conceive.

Under the eaves of many of the houses hang human skulls, the trophies of their battles with the savage Arfaks of the interior, who often come to attack them.

A large boat-shaped council-house is supported on larger posts, each of which is grossly carved to represent a naked male or female human figure, and other carvings still more revolting are placed upon the platform before the entrance.

The view of an ancient lake-dweller's village, given as the frontispiece of Sir Charles Lyell's "Antiquity of Man," is chiefly founded on a sketch of this very village of Dorey; but the extreme regularity of the structures there depicted has no place in the original, any more than it probably had in the actual lake-villages.
The people who inhabit these miserable huts are very similar to the Ke and Aru islanders, and many of them are very handsome, being tall and well-made, with well-cut features and large aquiline noses.

Their colour is a deep brown, often approaching closely to black, and the fine mop-like heads of frizzly hair appear to be more common than elsewhere, and are considered a great ornament, a long six-pronged bamboo fork being kept stuck in them to serve the purpose of a comb; and this is assiduously used at idle moments to keep the densely growing mass from becoming matted and tangled.