* _The Land of the New Guinea Pygmies_, by Captain C. G. Rawling (Seeley, Service, and Co., 1913).
Rarely has a more thoroughly comfortless expedition been undertaken. To begin with, the food was bad and unsuitable, for they had the surplus stores from Shackleton's Antarctic expedition, and the joys of bully-beef, pea-soup, and pickles under an equatorial sky may be imagined. It was impossible to get good local assistance, for the natives were a preposterous race, treacherous and unreliable when they were not actively malevolent. They were subject to sudden panics, when they fled to the jungle, and to wild outbursts of sorrow, when they would weep and sob for hours. The imported Javanese were, if possible, more hopeless. Then there was every kind of noxious insect--mosquitoes without end, gigantic leeches dangling from every leaf which made a speciality of attacking the eyeballs, ticks, stinking caterpillars, immense blue-bottles which swarmed in clouds over any food left uncovered, crickets which ate a man's clothes up in a night, and a plague of minute bees which settled in myriads on the heated face of the traveller. Above all, there was the rain. The whole country was water-logged by the flooding rivers and the incessant deluge. In the dry season the average rainfall was about two and a half inches a day! Mr. Wollaston took the trouble to keep a meteorological diary, and found that during the first year rain fell on 330 days, and that on 295 days it was accompanied by thunder and lightning. Of the 400 men of all races employed during the first year, 12 per cent. died in the country from hardships, and 83 per cent. of the total force was invalided from New Guinea. Of the Europeans and natives who landed during that year, only eleven lasted out the whole fifteen months of the expedition. Of these eleven, four were Europeans, four Gurkhas, two Javanese soldiers, and one a convict. When it is remembered that eight months is the maximum period allowed by the Dutch authorities for continued service in New Guinea, the marvel is that these eleven escaped with their lives. It was with no regret that Captain Rawling said farewell to what must be by far the most unpleasant land on earth. "Wild shrieks had greeted us on our first arrival in the country, and wild shrieks echoed down the still reach of the river as the boats crept towards the sea."