Antoni Judit: „Ablakok Pápua Új-Guineára" (Távoli világok emberközelben II. Gödöllői Városi Múzeum, 2008)
pierced and strung on chains, and played an important role in barter trade. Pig tusks and the immense variety of jewels prepared from them were both aesthetically impressive, and indicated the extent of their owners' wealth. Colourful bird feathers - or the desiccated entire bird - were highly valued in the making of personal adornments (especially pigeon and bird of paradise species), as were cassowary quills. The fur and leather of the marsupial mammals were also used, albeit to a lesser extent. The plant kingdom furnishes, without a doubt, the most frequently-occurring group of raw materials, and we can presume that they are the materials which have been used longest. This is particularly true of areas where a rich variety of vegetation is available - as is true of the territory of New Guinea. Just a few data will clearly illustrate this situation: on the whole territory of New Guinea and of the Bismarck islands, the local people can identify at least 250 edible plants, and either eat their roots, stems, leaves, and fruit raw, or process them in different ways. More than 330 plants are used for the preparation of medicine, or to repel various illnesses. More than 115 plants are used in witchcraft, magic, and during ceremonies, and instruments or weapons may be prepared from more than 80 plants. Boats, or parts of boats, can be made using about 40 plants; fences, houses and domestic decorations may be made using nearly 180 plants; tapa, string and thread is provided by 46 plants and the leaves, flowers, and fruit of some 90 plants are utilized in everyday and festive garments. Very many of these plants occur in nearly every function. Getting to know the colonizers After the Malay and Chinese, who came to hunt for bird of paradise feathers, the Europeans started to appear from the second part of the 19 t h century: traders, missionaries, colonizers, and finally those who were interested not only in the flora and fauna of the island, but also in its native population. The first among them was the Russian Nicholai Nicholaievich Mikluho-Maklaj, who, on and off, spent fifteen months between 1871 and 1876, mainly in Astrolabe Bay and nearby. The first visitor to that area was Otto Finsch, the German zoologist, who came here in 1884-85: be was the first to navigate the river Sepik (which he named Kaiserin Augusta) and he travelled a distance of 48 km upriver in 1855. Subsequent German expeditions bad explored more than 600 km along the river by 1888. Under the name of Kaiser Wilhelmsland, the territory was part of the German colonial empire between 1884 and 1920. The German New Guinea Company established a trading colony on the east side of the Huon Peninsula, in Finschhafen. This had to be abandoned because of the unhealthy conditions of the swamp region, at which point the colony moved to Bogadjim village (then called Stephansort) in Astrolabe Bay, not far from Madang (then called Friedrich Wilhelmsbafen). The first Hungarian scholar researching in New Guinea was Sámuel Fenichel, who worked here from 1891 until his death in 1893. He was buried in New Guinea. He was followed in 1893 by Lajos Bíró, who firmly decided to continue Fenichel's work. He spent six years in the island and his first major material was collected from the coastal region around Aitape village and the surrounding islands (Angiel Islands, Taraváj, Ali, Tamara), as well as from Sepik River delta. This is the area where Emese became fascinated by "the spirit of place" a hundred years later, and, like her predecessors, could not resist its charms. The appearance and propagation of Christianity resulted in a loosening of the grip of local religious traditions and, often, to their disappearance. At the beginning of the 20 t h century, white people knew nothing about the existence of the very large population, with a technical level of civilisation on the level of the neolithic age, living in the interior of New Guinea. The first to make contact with this population, in 1930, were the Australian Leahy brothers and Michael Dwyer, who were looking for gold, and the Australian government official James Taylor. 138
