Ecology of Indonesian Papua Part One. Andrew J. Marshall
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New Hanover, New Ireland (west coast and Carteret Harbor), New Britain (Blanche Bay—then not long known—with an ascent of the volcanic Mt Kombiu or "The Mother"), and, in the Solomons, Bougainville (collections, Berlin). In the French "grand" tradition, both expeditions gathered their results into substantial sets of volumes, those of the Gazelle appearing in five volumes in 1889–1890 although preliminary papers had appeared elsewhere, while the Challenger series was about the most extensive ever published. Both works contain significant materials of primary record for the biota of the region.
About the same time as the Gazelle came the first missionaries, traders, and explorers. In mid-August of 1875 George Brown (see also above) arrived at Port Hunter in the Duke of York Islands, there opening the first Methodist mission; he remained for almost a decade. He himself collected some plants, chiefly ferns (Melbourne), but—significantly—was accompanied from Samoa and Fiji (on the mission ship John Wesley) by a German-Australian photographer and naturalist, Carl Walter (who also was collecting for Anatole von Hügel, a wealthy Austrian traveler and naturalist). He worked for about three weeks in the islands and around Blanche Bay (plants, Melbourne and Cambridge, England, albeit with a number of losses in the field); afterwards he returned to and remained in Australia where he continued to collect for von Mueller.
In 1877–1878 G. Turner, a collector and gardener from Sydney, traveled to the northeastern archipelago—partly on behalf of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney. From Port Hunter (sometimes with Brown) he visited New Ireland, Spacious (now Wide) Bay (New Britain), and elsewhere. At Spacious Bay he discovered the majestic tree, kamarere (Eucalyptus deglupta)—always a beautiful sight in New Britain’s forests, but a seeming oddity. But this was a time of punitive expeditions, and not a lot apart from more common herbaceous plants could be obtained (Melbourne). In 1881 E. Betche—initially trained as a horticulturalist—traveled from the central Pacific through the northeastern archipelago to Australia. There his base was on Mioko, another island in the Duke of Yorks, where a German trading company had become established in the 1870s. For a week or so in July he collected there and, like his predecessors, around Blanche Bay (plants, Melbourne). Later in the year he joined the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney, remaining there for the rest of his career as a collector (and co-author of two standard works on the flora of New South Wales). In 1882 R. Parkinson arrived as a settler, there joining his sister-in-law Emma Forsayth, and at the end of the year establishing the first plantation on Blanche Bay at Ralum (Malapau, near present-day Kokopo, the latter under German rule known as Herbertshöhe). Over the next quarter-century he traveled extensively and made considerable collections (plants, Melbourne, Sydney and elsewhere); unfortunately, their data are scanty. Parkinson is best known for his book, Dreissig Jahre in der Südsee (1907; English translation, 1999)—a mostly geographical and ethnographic work, but with some remarks on animals, plants, and vegetation (with those generally used by humans in Chapter 11) and a useful survey of exploration in the archipelago (Chapter 12).
As already noted, Finsch also visited the archipelago (and also much of Micronesia on his first voyage), but as on the mainland obtained only few natural history collections. (His Micronesian plants were, however, much more extensive; they are now in Córdoba, Argentina.)
German Rule: The Neu-Guinea-Compagnie (to 1899)
The increasing activities by traders, settlers, and recruiters in the northeastern mainland and the archipelago occasioned a fair number of "incidents" which often led to punitive actions. The islands in particular became a center of German activities and in time the German government felt it necessary, in spite of British objections, to proclaim their sphere of interest—whose limits were perhaps at least partly suggested by Finsch—as a territory. This was proclaimed in November 1884 by Capt. Schering, and in the following year von Schleinitz (see above) became administrator (Landeshauptmann), with headquarters at Finschhafen (transferred in 1891 for health reasons to Stephansort (now Bogajim, Astrolabe Bay, PNG), and in 1892 to Friedrich-Wilhelmshafen (now Madang) on the present Schering Peninsula, where there was—and is—a good port). The islands were first administered from Kerawara, then Herbertshöhe (from 1890, but after 1899 also the capital for all German New Guinea), and—after 1905—Rabaul (which until 1941 remained the German, and afterwards Australian, seat of administration).
Under Bismarck’s philosophy of devolved government—a form of rule by "public-private partnership" (PPP)—for the Second Reich’s new territories, German New Guinea (expanded in 1885 to include the Marshall Islands and in 1899 also taking in the Carolines, Palau, and the Marianas) was entrusted to a chartered company, the Neu-Guinea-Compagnie—who also were authorized to undertake commercial operations. Formed in 1884, its founding chairman was Adolph von Hansemann, a Berlin banker who never visited the territory. While until after 1899 not a financial success—the company managing in a relatively short time to use up all their initial capital, and then some—Hansemann at least was interested in exploration and the sciences, and indeed over the fifteen years of their administration much of lasting value was accomplished.
One of the first men into the field under the new regime was Carl Hunstein. In 1884 he left British New Guinea with Finsch and until 1888 worked in various parts of northeastern New Guinea, partly with R. Mentzel (and others) on geographical and forest reconnaissance work and partly on the Neu-Guinea-Compagnie exploring and scientific expedition of 1886–1887 (see below). Early in 1888, while with an official and writer, Stephan von Kotze, in the outliers of the Rawlinson Range behind Finschhafen, he discovered the beautiful (and endemic) southern pine, Araucaria hunsteinii; but not long afterwards—on 13 March—he was drowned by a tidal wave while in the Kilenge district at the western end of New Britain. As before, he specialized in birds, many now bought by Finsch.
With Mentzel, Hunstein in April 1886 visited the mouth of the Kaiserin-Augusta (now Sepik) River. They thus blazed the way for the major Neu-Guinea-Compagnie expedition of 1886–1887, the first of two significant, relatively successful forays into the interior under their auspices—although most collections were of lowland animals, insects, and plants. These apart, with a predisposition to caution—perhaps from experiences with local populations in the Bismarck Archipelago—interior penetration by individuals was limited. Until the mid-1890s the only inland mountain areas reached were Sattelberg in the Huon (Kai) Peninsula and the western Finisterres south of Astrolabe Bay, both by Neu-Guinea-Compagnie official F. C. Hellwig (see below).
The 1886–1887 expedition—lasting for nearly a year and half from 19 April 1886—was led by von Schleinitz, partly on the Neu-Guinea-Compagnie steamer Ottilie, and accompanied by C. Schrader (geography and bryophytes, as well as scientific coordinator), U. M. Hollrung (vascular plants), and Hunstein with F. Grabowsky (birds and insects). Over the course of the expedition they worked around and inland of Finschhafen and visited Samoahafen (Salamaua, in the Huon Gulf), Astrolabe Bay around Constantinhafen (Melamu), the coast north and northwest of Friederich-Wilhelmshafen (now Madang), including Hatzfeldthafen, and made two forays up the Sepik: a shorter one in 1886 followed the next year by a deep plunge—the first great voyage thereupon, with camps at I. Augusta-Station (Zenap near the mouth of the May (Iwa) River far in the interior) and II. Augusta-Station (Malu near present-day Ambunti). The large haul of collections went to Berlin (plants partly destroyed, but duplicates at Melbourne, Kew, and elsewhere); the botanical results appeared in 1889 in a special supplement to the Neu-Guinea-Compagnie Nachrichten, or series of official reports.
Hansemann’s interest in natural history ensured that a fair number of individuals—some employees of the Neu-Guinea-Compagnie—took up collecting. Among the first was the Pole J. S. Kubary, who in 1887–1891 from a Neu-Guinea-Compagnie base at Constantinhafen—the first official post in that area—collected for the Godefroy Museum in Hamburg (partly now in the Senckenberg Museum, Frankfurt; some plants went to Berlin). Kubary also made land acquisitions around Astrolabe Bay which later led to much local strife, with no "settlement" until 1932, and a bone of contention even long afterwards. In 1892–1895 Kubary returned to New Guinea for a second contract with the Neu-Guinea-Compagnie. In 1888 R. Rohde, another Neu-Guinea-Compagnie employee, collected animals and insects at Finschhafen and Stephansort (the latter a plantation first established in August 1888 on a portion of the Kubary lands particularly for raising fine "Deli" (Sumatran) tobacco; planting began in 1889). A change in Neu-Guinea-Compagnie external shipping routes from Cooktown to Surabaya (in Java)—then followed,