Geographical Notes

Abstract

MR. CARL BOCK has lately returned to London after his journeys in Borneo, bringing with him a magnificent series of portraits of the native tribes of that island,—both Dyaks and forest people—taken in water colours. These, we understand, are to be reproduced, at the expense of the Dutch Government, by chromolithography, and will illustrate his report on the journey, which is to be read in the first instance before the Royal Geographical and Anthropological Society of Holland. Pending the publication of this report, Mr. Bock refrains, at the desire of the Dutch Government, from anticipating it in England even by a preliminary sketch. The varieties of type, the methods of adornment, the manner, and to some extent the religion of these distinct races, are all brought out in Mr. Bock's faithful drawings taken from the life on the spot, which form, over and above the objects for which the journey was taken, a splendid contribution to ethnography, the publication of which will be looked forward to with interest; the greater perhaps if Mr. Bock were permitted to give some further slight outline than has already appeared in the pages of NATURE. Mr. Bock has also made an extensive collection of the swords, lances, blowing tubes, and shields (some of the latter covered with human hair), which are used by the natives. He seems to have had the happy knack of making friends of the savages whom others have found murderers, and has brought himself back alive to receive the honour that is his due.