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Expeditions to New Guinea and the Solomon Islands 63
conspicuous. On 7 July camp was established at 1,400 m. It started to rain the
next day and never stopped while they stayed on the mountain. The Wondiwoi is
a long crest with a number of ups and downs around 2,000 m elevation. There were
several distinct subspecies of Crateroscelis, Sericornis and Eupetes which either
tend toward their relatives in the Arfak Mountains or toward those of the Central
Range of New Guinea. But otherwise bird collecting was poor. The firewood was
soaking wet, only the kerosene lamp provided some heat. Moreover, they had run
out of rice and no dry clothes were left. Everything was quite miserable. On 19
July the porters arrived and they returned to Wasior on the coast. Next day the
weather changed to sunshine and wind. The natives commented that whenever the
mountain hears gun shooting it covers itself in clouds. An interesting bird collected
near Wasior was Pitohui kirhocephalus which in this area is intermediate between
two strikingly different subspecies. Mayr was also pleased to get specimens of
Poecilodryas brachyura, Eupetes caerulescens and on the last day one Megapodius.
The group left Wasior on 27 July on board a steamer where a big pile of mail
was waiting for Mayr with good news: The German Research Council had granted
6,000 Marks for the exploration of the Huon Peninsula later this year.
(4) Cyclops Mountains (Fig. 2.8)
Itinerary:
31 July–15 August 1928 at Hollandia
16 August–14 September 1928 Cyclops Mountains, collecting
15–20 September 1928 Ifar, Sentani Lake, collecting
21 September–20 October 1928 at Hollandia
The ship was on its way to Hollandia (Jayapura today) on the northern coast of
Dutch New Guinea, close to the eastern border. On the morning of 30 July they
were traveling alongside the Cyclops Mountains, which drop steeply to the sea and
soon entered Humboldt Bay. Until the Resident Officer had returned to issue the
necessary permits for the mountains their excursions were limited to the vicinity
of Hollandia. One collecting station was the village of Hol on a small coastal strip
in Jautefa Bay where Megacrex and Seleucides were obtained. 8
In Hollandia lived several Dutch and German planters, the latter displaced from
former German New Guinea to the east after the end of World War I. Reflecting on
“colonization” of foreign territories Mayr wrote in his diary: “Should one really
interfere to such an extent with these natives, and deprive them of their old culture,
replacing it by European civilization? I admit this is a very fundamental question
which really amounts to the question: Should one do any colonizing at all? […]
A solution must be found to protect the rights of the natives, and, in spite of
a certain strictness of regulations, to do the best for them.”
8 In his article on Mayr’s bird collection Hartert (1930), thinking that Hol was an abbreviation
for “Hollandia,” added the rest of the word to Mayr’s Hol labels. One can usually
tell that it has been added but the Rothschild labels have “Hollandia” written out and
one has to look at Mayr’s labels. Mostly, this does not matter, but there are a few birds
that Mayr obtained only at Hol (M. LeCroy, pers. comm.).