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Tree Kangaroo by Alfred Russel Wallace
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Expedition in New Guinea
In 1858 a great British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace conducted an expedition to Dorey bay (now Manokwari town of West Papua) in New Guinea in search of paradise birds. The following stories were translated into Bahasa Indonesia from Chapter XXXIV of his book entitled The Malay Archipelago
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One afternoon I went on board the steamer to return
the captain's visit, and was shown some very nice sketches (by one of
the lieutenants), made on the south coast, and also at the Arfak
mountain, to which they had made an excursion. From these and the
captain's description, it appeared that the people of Arfak were similar
to those of Dorey, and I could hear nothing of the straight-haired race
which Lesson says inhabits the interior, but which no one has ever seen,
and the account of which I suspect has originated in some mistake. The
captain told me he had made a detailed survey of part of the south
coast, and if the coal arrived should go away at once to Humboldt Pay,
in longitude 141° east, which is the line up to which the Dutch claim
New Guinea. On board the tender I found a brother naturalist, a German
named Rosenberg, who was draughtsman to the surveying staff. He had
brought two men with him to shoot and skin birds, and had been able to
purchase a few rare skins from the natives. Among these was a pair of
the superb Paradise Pie (Astrapia nigra) in tolerable preservation. They
were brought from the island of Jobie, which may be its native country,
as it certainly is of the rarer species of crown pigeon (Goura steursii),
one of which was brought alive and sold on board. Jobie, however, is a
very dangerous place, and sailors are often murdered there when on
shore; sometimes the vessels themselves being attacked. Wandammen, on
the mainland opposite Jobie, inhere there are said to be plenty of
birds, is even worse, and at either of these places my life would not
have been worth a week's purchase had I ventured to live alone and
unprotected as at Dorey. On board the steamer they had a pair of tree
kangaroos alive. They differ chiefly from the ground-kangaroo in having
a more hairy tail, not thickened at the base, and not used as a prop;
and by the powerful claws on the fore-feet, by which they grasp the bark
and branches, and seize the leaves on which they feed. They move along
by short jumps on their hind-feet, which do not seem particularly well
adapted for climbing trees. It has been supposed that these
tree-kangaroos are a special adaptation to the swampy, half-drowned
forests of, New Guinea, in place of the usual form of the group, which
is adapted only to dry ground. Mr. Windsor Earl makes much of this
theory, but, unfortunately for it, the tree-kangaroos are chiefly found
in the northern peninsula of New Guinea, which is entirely composed of
hills and mountains with very little flat land, while the kangaroo of
the low flat Aru Islands (Dorcopsis asiaticus) is a ground species. A
more probable supposition seems to lie, that the tree-kangaroo has been
modified to enable it to feed on foliage in the vast forests of New
Guinea, as these form the great natural feature which distinguishes that
country from Australia.