The Last Secrets by John Buchan

Almost every part of the globe has suffered some change in the past century. It may have altered its appearance by settlement and cultivation and the growth of cities; or, if it still remains a wilderness, there are routes of commerce through it which bring it to the knowledge of the world. But the great island of New Guinea is almost as little changed to-day by the advent of white adventurers as when, in the year 1527, Jorge de Meneses, the Portuguese Governor of the Spice Islands, first landed on its swampy shores. In 1545, eighteen years later, it received the name by which it is known to-day. The Portuguese Empire decayed, and during the seventeenth century the Dutch appeared. In the eighteenth century many famous voyagers, like Dampier, Carteret, and Captain Cook, touched the island, and in the last century the rapid opening up of the world by travellers and missionaries bore fruit even in those remote seas. The Dutch held the western end; in 1884 Germany laid claim to the north-eastern part; and that same year the south-eastern section, which had been formally taken over in 1883 by Queensland, was annexed to the British Crown. In 1899 the Dutch boundary was delimited, and Holland, with the assent of the Powers, assumed direct control of her share. The one change to-day in these arrangements is that the former German section is now administered under mandate by the Commonwealth of Australia.

The first decade of this century saw great exploring activity on the part of all three European masters. The Dutch especially did excellent work, and Dr. Lorentz was the first man to reach the snows of the inland mountains. But few of the secrets of the island -- geographical, zoological, and botanical -- have yet been unriddled. The place is so remote from Europe, its climate is so deadly, its inhabitants so treacherous, and its forests and swamps so impenetrable, that exploration there is in many ways a more desperate undertaking than anywhere else on the globe.