Captain Detzner’S
p. 29 · Read in the full issue
Explorations
MISS SHEILA LANE, in her article (P.I.M., July), gives Captain Hermann Detzner credit for greater powers than are usually allotted to man.
To describe an unknown district in Central New Guinea vividly and accur ately, merely by hearsay, eighteen years before its discovery, must be an unparall eled performance, even for New Guinea.
But it is hard to see what bearing any translation of Captain Detzner’s four years’ wanderings in New Guinea, from 1914 to 1918, has on the merits of Jack Hides, as compared with Taylor and the Leahys; or of Papuan exploration as compared with that of New Guinea; or what support it gives to the so-called “jealousy that exists between the Man dated Territory and Papua,” which Miss Lane emphasises so strongly.
It seems ridiculous to urge that any real jealousy exists between the two Ter ritories, Certainly. Papua holds none for the other side; and there appears no ob vious reason why the opulent New Guinea should be at all envious of her poorer neighbour.