SOME EXPERIENCES OF A NEW
GUINEA RESIDENT MAGISTRATE

THE AUTHOR

SOME EXPERIENCES OF A NEW GUINEA RESIDENT MAGISTRATE BY CAPTAIN C. A. W. MONCKTON, F.R.G.S., F.Z.S., F.R.A.I., SOMETIME OFFICIAL MEMBER OF EXECUTIVE AND LEGISLATIVE COUNCILS, RESIDENT MAGISTRATE AND WARDEN FOR GOLDFIELDS, HIGH SHERIFF AND HIGH BAILIFF, AND SENIOR OFFICER OF ARMED CONSTABULARY FOR H.M.’s POSSESSION OF NEW GUINEA WITH 37 ILLUSTRATIONS AND A MAP

LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD, VIGO ST.
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY

MCMXXI

THIRD EDITION

WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES, ENGLAND

TO MY
WIFE

PREFACE

It appears to be the custom, for writers of books of this description, to begin with apologies as to their style, or excuses for their production. I pretend to no style; but have simply written at the request of my wife, for her information and that of my personal friends, an account of my life and work in New Guinea. To the few “men that know” who still survive, in one or two places gaps or omissions may appear to occur; these omissions are intentional, as I have no wish to cause pain to broken men who are still living, nor to distress the relations of those who are dead. Much history is better written fifty years after all concerned in the making are dead. Governor or ruffian, Bishop or cannibal, I have written of all as I found them; I freely confess that I think when the last muster comes, the Great Architect will find—as I trust my readers will—some good points in the ruffians and the cannibals, as well, possibly, as some vulnerable places in the armour of Governors and Bishops.

I do not pretend that this book possesses any scientific value; such geographical, zoological, and scientific work as I have done is dealt with in various journals; but it does picture correctly the life of a colonial officer in the one-time furthest outpost of the Empire—men of whose lives and work the average Briton knows nothing.

Conditions in New Guinea have altered; where one of Sir William MacGregor’s officers stood alone, there now rest a number of Australian officials and clerks. Much credit is now annually given to this host; some little, I think, might be fairly allotted to the dead Moreton, Armit, Green, Kowold, De Lange, and the rest of the gallant gentlemen who gave their lives to win one more country for the flag and to secure the Pax Britannica to yet another people.

I have abstained from putting into the mouths of natives the ridiculous jargon or “pidgin English” in which they are popularly supposed to converse. The old style of New Guinea officer spoke Motuan to his men, and I have, where required, merely given a free translation from that language into English. In recent books about New Guinea, written by men of whom I never heard whilst there, I have noticed sentences in pidgin English, supposed to have been spoken by natives, which I would defy any European or native in New Guinea, in my time, either to make sense of or interpret.

When the history of New Guinea comes to be written, I think it will be found that the names of several people stand out from the others in brilliant prominence; amongst its Governors, Sir William MacGregor; its Judges, that of Sir Francis Winter; its Missions, that of the Right Rev. John Montagu Stone-Wigg, first Anglican Bishop; and in the development of its natural resources, that of the pioneer commercial firm of Burns, Philp and Company.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

SOME EXPERIENCES OF A NEW
GUINEA RESIDENT MAGISTRATE

CHAPTER I

In the year 1895 I found myself at Cooktown in Queensland, aged 23, accompanied by a fellow adventurer, F. H. Sylvester, and armed with £100, an outfit particularly unsuited to the tropics, and a letter of introduction from the then Governor of New Zealand, the Earl of Glasgow, to the Lieutenant-Governor of British New Guinea, Sir William MacGregor.

After two or three weeks of waiting, we took passage by the mail schooner Myrtle, 150 tons, one of two schooners owned by Messrs. Burns, Philp and Co., of Sydney, and subsidized by the British New Guinea Government to carry monthly mails to that possession; in fact they were then the only means of communication between New Guinea and the rest of the world. These two vessels, after a chequered career in the South Seas, as slavers—then euphoniously termed in Australia “labour” vessels—had, by the lapse of time and purchase by a firm of high repute and keen commercial ambition, now been promoted to the dignity of carrying H.M. Mails, Government stores for the Administration of New Guinea, and supplies to the branches of the firm at Samarai and Port Moresby; and were, under the energetic superintendence of their respective masters, Steel and Inman, extending the commercial interests of their owners throughout both the British and German territories bordering on the Coral Sea.

Good old ships long since done with, the bones of one lie scattered on a reef, the other when last I saw her was a coal hulk in a Queensland port. And good old Scotch firm of trade grabbers that owned them, sending their ships, in spite of any risk, wherever a possible bawbee was to be made, and taking their hundred per cent. of profit with the same dour front they took their frequently trebled loss. Mopping up the German trade until the day came when the heavily subsidized ships of the Nord Deutscher Lloyd drove them out; as well they might, for in one scale hung the efforts of a small company of British merchants, unassisted as ever by its country or Government, the other, a practically Imperial Company backed by the resources of a vast Empire.

But to return to the Myrtle, then lying in the bay off the mouth of the Endeavour River, to which we were ferried in one of her own boats, perched on the top of hen coops filled with screeching poultry, several protesting pigs, and two goats; all mixed up with a belated mail bag, parcels sent by local residents to friends in New Guinea, and three hot and particularly cross seamen. The goats we learnt later were destined to serve as mutton for the Government House table; the pigs and hens were a little private venture of the ship’s cook, these being intended for barter with natives.

On our arrival at the ship’s side, we were promptly boosted up a most elusive rope ladder by the seamen who had ferried us across, the schooner meanwhile rolling in a nasty cross sea and raising the devil’s own din with her flapping sails. Tumbled over the bulwarks on to the deck, we were seized upon by a violent little man in a frantic state of excitement, perspiration, and bad language, and ten seconds later found ourselves helping him to haul on the tackles of the boat that brought us, which was then being hoisted in, pigs, goats, luggage, etc., holus bolus; this operation completed, our violent little man introduced himself as Mr. Wisdell, the ship’s cook, and volunteered to show us to our berths, after which, as soon as the bustle of getting under way was over, he stated his intention of formerly introducing us to the captain.

Just as we were somewhat dismally becoming quite assured that our imaginations were not deceiving us as to the number of beetles and cockroaches a berth of most attenuated size could contain; also beginning to find that the motions of a schooner of 150 tons were decidedly upsetting to our stomachs, after those of big vessels, Mr. Wisdell returned and, diving into a locker, produced a bottle of whisky, some sodawater, and four tumblers. Three of the latter he placed with the other materials in the fiddle of the cabin’s table, the remaining tumbler he held behind his back. Then politely bowing to us, Mr. Wisdell signed that we were to precede him up the companion way on to the poop, where a red-faced, cheery looking little man, clothed in immaculate white ducks, gazed fixedly at the sails or at the man at the wheel, a regard that the helmsman looked as if he would willingly have done without. To him Mr. Wisdell marched, and then “Mr. Sylvester—Captain Inman—Captain Inman—Mr. Monckton—etc.” Never did Clapham dancing master receive the bows of his class with greater dignity and grace, than did Captain Inman receive those which, modelling our deportment on that of Mr. Wisdell, we made him.

Then Mr. Wisdell, still carrying the tumbler behind his back, spake thus: “Perhaps, Captain Inman, you would like to offer the gentlemen a little something in the cabin?” Captain Inman unbent: “Billy, the mate has the blasted fever; send the bo’sun.” Upon the appearance of that potentate, and his having apparently taken over the command, by dint of fixing the man at the wheel with a basilisk glare, Captain Inman led the way to the cabin, where Mr. Wisdell, kindly placing a glass in each of our hands, drew attention to the bottle and, with deprecating little coughs directed towards his commander, modestly backed away. Captain Inman, however, was well versed in the etiquette the occasion demanded and rose to it. “What, Billy, only three glasses! We want another!” Out shot Mr. Wisdell’s glass from behind his back and the occasion was complete.

Two days of violent sea-sickness then intervened, the misery of which was broken only by the visits of Mr. Wisdell, or as better acquaintance now permitted us to call him, “Billy,” bearing “mutton” broth prepared from goat. These animals, by the way, appear to be indigenous to the streets of Cooktown and to frequent them in large herds; their sustenance seems to be gleaned from the rubbish heaps and back yards; for of grass, at the time I was there, there was none, and their camping places were for choice the doorsteps and verandahs of the hotels, from which vantage points, at frequent intervals, the slumbers of the lodgers were cheered by the sound of violent strife, and sweetened by the peculiar fragrance diffused by ancient goats.

Then came one fine and memorable morning when our cheerful little skipper called us to look at Samarai, at that time called by the hideous name of Dinner Island, towards the anchorage of which we were slowly moving, the while, from every direction, a swarm of canoes paddled furiously towards us, crowded with fuzzy-headed natives, all eager to earn a few sticks of tobacco, by assisting in the discharge of the cargo we carried. The canoes were warned off pending the arrival of a health officer to grant pratique, and that official soon appeared in the person of Mr. R. E. Armit, a well-set-up, soldierly looking man of about fifty years of age. Poor Armit, long since killed by the deadly malaria of the Northern Division.

Mr. Armit was Subcollector of Customs and goodness knows what else at Samarai, and was himself an extraordinary personality. An accomplished linguist, widely read and travelled, I never found a subject about which Armit did not know something and usually a very great deal. He, however, did not possess a faculty for making or retaining money, and did possess a particularly caustic tongue and pen, which, when the mood took him, he would exercise even upon his superior officers; hence he was frequently in hot water and never lacked enemies.

Samarai boasted neither wharf nor jetty; our cargo was therefore simply shot over the side into the multitude of canoes and thence ferried to the beach, with such assistance as the ship’s boats could afford.

Dinner Island, or as I shall from now on term it, Samarai, is an island of about fifty acres. The hill, which forms the centre of the island, rises from what was then a malodorous swamp, surrounded by a strip of coral beach. The whole island was a gazetted penal district, and the town consisted of the Residency, a fine roomy bungalow built by the Imperial Government for the then Commissioner, General Sir Peter Scratchley—the first of New Guinea officials to be claimed by malaria—and now the headquarters of the Resident Magistrate for the Eastern Division; a small three-roomed building of native grass and round poles dubbed the Subcollector’s house; a gaol of native material, the roof of which served as a bond store for dutiable goods, and a cemetery: the three latter appeared to be well filled. There was also a small single-roomed galvanized iron building which served as a Custom’s house; in it was employed a clerk, unpaid; he was an affable gentleman of mixed French and Greek parentage, and was at the time awaiting his trial for murder. Two small stores, the one owned by Burns, Philp and Co., of Sydney, and the other by Mr. William Whitten, now the Honble. William Whitten, M.L.C., completed the main buildings.

Mr. Whitten was the son of a Queen’s Messenger, since dead of malaria, and possessed an adventurous disposition which had taken him off to sea as a boy. His first appearance in New Guinea was as one of the personal guard of Sir Peter Scratchley, a body which Sir William MacGregor replaced with his fine native constabulary. Whitten had saved money enough to purchase a small cutter, with which he had begun trading for bêche-de-mer in the Trobriand Islands. While dealing with the natives for that commodity, he had discovered that pearls of a fair quality existed in a small oyster forming one of the staple foods of the natives. Whitten purchased large quantities of the pearls from the natives for almost nothing, and had he only been able to keep his discovery to himself, would have had fortune in his grasp. Unfortunately for him, the sale of his prize in Australia brought down upon him a host of other competitors, and the natives, having discovered that the white man was keenly desirous of obtaining what were to them worthless stones, raised their prices higher and higher until there was little to be gained in the trade.

Whitten, however, had made enough to bring a young brother from England, purchase a bigger and better vessel, also a large quantity of merchandise. At the date of writing, Whitten Brothers own numerous plantations, several steamers and sailing vessels, conduct a banking business, have branches in the gold-fields, and are the largest employers of labour in the country; in 1895, however, this greatness was as yet undreamt of by them.

Other than the Residency and the glorified sardine box doing duty as the Custom House, the only other building in Samarai formed of European materials—by which I mean sawn timber and fastened with nails—was the bungalow occupied by Burns, Philp’s manager, and situated on perhaps the best site there. Gangs of prisoners—native—were engaged quarrying in the hill of Samarai and filling up the swamp, a palpably necessary work. Curiously enough in a pleasantly written little book by Colonel Kenneth Mackay, C.B., entitled “Across Papua,” I noticed a reference to this work, which was ultimately the means of stamping malaria out of the place. The author attributed it, amongst others, to Doctor Jones, a health officer who came to New Guinea in recent years. This statement is quite incorrect; the credit of banishing malaria from Samarai belongs to Sir William MacGregor, and to him alone.

A few sheds, occupied by boat-builders and carpenters, scattered along the beach, complete the buildings of Samarai. Of hotels and accommodation houses there were none, but then there was no travelling public to accommodate; gold-diggers to and from the islands of Sudest and St. Aignan camped in their tents, which as a rule consisted of a single sheet of calico stretched over a pole; traders lived in their vessels. Alcoholic refreshment was dispensed at the stores; Burns, Philp’s manager, for instance, or one of the Whittens, ceasing from their book-keeping labours to serve thirsty customers with lager beer or more potent fluids over the store counter. Whitten Brothers had a large roofed balcony with no sides, situated at the back of the store, and here at night, as to a general club-house, foregathered all the Europeans of the island. Under a centre table was placed a supply of varied drinks, and as men came in and bottles were emptied, they were hurled over the edge on to the soft coral sand. In the morning one of the Whittens caused the bottles to be collected by a native boy, counted them, and avoided the trouble of book-keeping by the simple method of dividing the sum total of bottles by the number of men he knew, or that his boy told him, had visited the “house”; each man therefore, whether a thirsty person or not, was charged exactly the same as his neighbour.

All Samarai was planted with cocoanut palms, the dodging of falling nuts from which, in windy weather, served to keep the inhabitants spry. Pyjamas were the almost universal wear, varied in the case of some traders by a strip of turkey-red twill, worn petticoat fashion, and a cotton vest.

Among the traders were two picturesque ruffians, alike in nothing, save the ability with which they conducted their business and dodged hanging. Each had spent his life trading in the South Seas and had amassed a fair fortune. Of them and their exploits I have heard endless yarns. Of one of these men, who was known far and wide through the South Seas as “Nicholas the Greek”—Heaven knows why, for his real name sounded English, and his reckless courage was certainly not typical of the modern Greek—the following stories are told.

A vessel had been cut out in one of the New Guinea or Louisade Islands—which it was I have forgotten—and the crew massacred. When this became known, a man-of-war or Government ship was sent to punish the murderers, and in especial to secure a native chief, who was primarily responsible. The punitive ship came across Nicholas and engaged him as pilot and interpreter, he being offered one hundred pounds when the man wanted was secured. Nicholas safely piloted his charge to some remote island where the inhabitants, doubtless having guilty consciences, promptly fled for the hills, where it was impossible for ordinary Europeans to follow them. He then offered to go alone to try and locate them, and, armed with a ship’s cutlass and revolver, disappeared on his quest. Some days elapsed, then in the night a small canoe appeared alongside the ship, from which emerged Nicholas, bearing in his hand a bundle. Marching up to the officer commanding, he undid it, and rolled at the officer’s feet a gory human head, remarking, “Here is your man, I couldn’t bring the lot of him. I’ll thank you for that hundred.”

Another story was that Nicholas on one occasion was attacked and frightfully slashed about by his native crew and then thrown overboard, he shamming dead. Sinking in the water he managed to get under the keel, along which he crawled like a crawfish until he came to the rudder, upon which he roosted under the counter until night fell and his crew slept. Then he climbed on board, secured a tomahawk, and either killed or drove overboard the whole crew, they thinking he was an avenging ghost. This done, badly wounded and unassisted, he worked his vessel to a neighbouring island, where, being sickened and disgusted with men, he shipped and trained a crew of native women, with whom he sailed for many years, in fact, I think, until the day came when Sir W. MacGregor appeared upon the scene and passed the Native Labour Ordinance, which, amongst other things, prohibited the carrying of women on vessels.

COCOANUT GROVE NEAR SAMARAI

Of Nicholas also is told the story that once, in the bad old pre-protectorate days, so many charges were brought against him by missionaries and merchantmen that a man-of-war was sent to arrest him, wherever found, and bring him to trial. He, through a friendly trader, got wind of the fact that he was being sought for, and accordingly laid his plans for the bamboozlement of his would-be captors. Summoning his crew, he informed them that his father was dead, and that as he had his father’s name of Nicholas, his name must now be “Peter,” as the custom of his tribe was, even as that of some New Guinea peoples, viz. not to mention the name of the dead lest harm befall. Then he sailed in search of the pursuing warship and, eventually finding her, went on board and volunteered his services as pilot, which were gladly accepted. To all of his haunts he then guided that ship, but in all the reply of the native was the same, when questioned as to his whereabouts, “We know not Nicholas, he is gone. Peter your pilot comes in his place. Nicholas is dead, and ’tis wrong to mention the name of the dead.” It was said of him that on no part of his body could a man’s hand be placed without touching the scar of some old wound—a story I can fully believe.

The second of this interesting couple was known as “German Harry,” a man of insignificant appearance and little physical strength, but the most venomous little scorpion, when thoroughly roused, it has ever been my lot to meet; at the same time he was the most generous-hearted little man towards the hard up and unfortunate. He had also spent a considerable portion of his time in dodging arrest or explaining certain alleged manslaughters of his before various tribunals. I remember one little specimen I witnessed of Harry’s fighting methods, and from that understood why the biggest of bullies and “hard cases” treated him with respect.

A vessel, owned and commanded by a hulking brute of a Dane, had come over from Queensland bringing, amongst other things, some recent papers, one of which contained an account of a disgraceful wife-beating case, in which the Dane figured and in which he had escaped—as such brutes generally do in civilized countries—by the payment of a miserable fine.

As Harry, the Dane and I, were sitting in a gold-field store, Harry read the account, and then gazing at the Dane, said something in German, of which “Schweinhund” was the only word I understood. A glass of rum promptly smashed on Harry’s teeth, followed by a bellow of rage and the thrower’s rush. Harry in a single instant became a lunatic, and flying like a wild cat at the other’s face, kicking, biting, and clawing, bore the big man to the ground, from where, in a few seconds, agonized yells of, “He is eating me,” told us the Dane was in dire trouble. Harry was dragged away by main force, and we found half his victim’s nose bitten off, while a bloodshot and protruding eye showed how nearly his thumb had got its work in. The wife-beater went off a mass of funk and misery, while Harry proceeded calmly to attend to the glass cuts on his face. “You are a nice cheerful sort of little hyena,” I remarked to Harry afterwards. “What sort of fighting do you call that?” “That? Oh, that’s nothing. I only wanted to frighten him or I would have had his eye out as well. He won’t throw a glass at German Harry again in a hurry.”

Some years later I met German Harry in a Sydney street, and though I had long since thought I was beyond being surprised at anything he did, he yet gave me a further shock when he told me he had purchased a “Matrimonial Agency.”

CHAPTER II

The day following our arrival in Samarai, loud yells of “Sail Ho!” from every native in the island announced that the Merrie England was returning from the Mambare River, where the Lieut.-Governor had been occupied in punishing the native murderers of a man named Clarke, the leader of a prospecting party in search of gold; and in establishing at that point, for the protection of future prospectors, a police post under the gallant but ill-fated John Green. Clarke’s murder was destined, though no one realized it at the time, to be the beginning of a long period of bloodshed and anarchy in the Northern Division—then still a portion of the Eastern Division. These events, however, belong to a later date and chapter.

On her voyage south from the Mambare, the Merrie England had waited at the mouth of the Musa River, while Sir William MacGregor traversed and mapped that stream. Whilst so engaged, accompanied by but one officer and a single boat’s crew of native police, His Excellency discovered a war party of north-east coast natives returning from a cannibal feast, with their canoes loaded with dismembered human bodies. Descending the river, Sir William collected his native police and, attacking the raiders, dealt out condign and summary justice, which resulted in the tribes of the lower Musa dwelling for many a year in a security to which several generations had been strangers.

Some little time after the ship had cast anchor, my friend and myself received a message that Sir William was disengaged; whereupon we went on board to meet, for the first time, the strongest man it has ever been my fate to look upon. Short, square, slightly bald, speaking with a strong Scotch accent, showing signs of overwork and the ravages of malaria, there was nothing in the first appearance of the man to stamp him as being out of the ordinary, but I had not been three minutes in his cabin before I realized that I was in the presence of a master of men—a Cromwell, a Drake, a Cæsar or Napoleon—his keen grey eyes looking clean through me, and knew that I was being summed and weighed. Once, and only once in my life, have I felt that a man was my master in every way, a person to be blindly obeyed and one who must be right and infallible, and that was when I met Sir William MacGregor.

Years afterwards, in conversation with a man who had held high command, who had distinguished himself and been much decorated for services in Britain’s little wars, I described the impression that MacGregor had made upon me, the sort of overwhelming sense of inferiority he, unconsciously to himself, made one feel, and was told that my friend had experienced a like impression when meeting Cecil Rhodes.

The story of how Sir William MacGregor came to be appointed to New Guinea was to me rather an interesting one, as showing the result, in the history of a country, of a fortunate accident. It was related to me by Bishop Stone-Wigg, to whom it had been told by the man responsible for the appointment, either Sir Samuel Griffiths, Sir Hugh Nelson, or Sir Thomas McIlwraith, which of the three I have now forgotten. Sir William, at the time Doctor MacGregor, was attending, as the representative of Fiji, one of the earlier conferences regarding the proposed Federation of Australasia; he had already made his mark by work performed in connection with the suppression of the revolt among the hill tribes of that Crown Colony. At the conference, amongst other questions, New Guinea came up for discussion, whereupon MacGregor remarked: “There is the last country remaining, in which the Englishman can show what can be done by just native policy.” The remark struck the attention of one of the delegates, by whom the mental note was made, “If Queensland ever has a say in the affairs of New Guinea, and I have a say in the affairs of Queensland, you shall be the man for New Guinea.” When later, New Guinea was declared a British Possession, Queensland had a very large say in the matter, and the man who had made the mental note happening to be Premier, he caused the appointment of Administrator to be offered to MacGregor, by whom it was accepted.

Of Sir William, a story told me by himself will illustrate his determination of character, even at an early age, though not related with that intention.

MacGregor, when completing his training at a Scotch University, found his money becoming exhausted; no time could he spare from his studies in which to earn any, even were the opportunity there. Something had to be done, so MacGregor called his old Scotch landlady into consultation as to ways and means. “Well, Mr. MacGregor, how much a week can you find?” “Half a crown.” “Well, I can do it for that.” And this is how she did it. MacGregor had a bowl of porridge for breakfast, nothing else; two fresh herrings or one red one, the cost of the fresh ones being identical with the cured one, for dinner; and a bowl of porridge again for supper. Thus he completed his course and took the gold medal of his year.

Photo Boulton & Groves

THE RIGHT HONBLE. SIR WILLIAM MACGREGOR, P.C., G.C.M.G., C.B., ETC., ETC., ETC.

From the portrait by James Quinn, R. A., exhibited at the Royal Academy, 1915

This thoroughness and grim determination MacGregor still carried into his work; for instance, it was necessary for him, unless he was prepared to have a trained surveyor always with him on his expeditions, to have a knowledge of astronomy and surveying. This he took up with his usual vigour, and I once witnessed a little incident which showed, not only how perfect Sir William had made himself in the subject, but also his unbounded confidence in himself. We were lying off a small island about which a doubt existed as to whether it was within the waters of Queensland or New Guinea. The commander of the Merrie England, together with the navigating officer, took a set of stellar observations; the chief Government surveyor, together with an assistant surveyor, took a second set; and Sir William took a third. The ship’s party and the surveyors arrived at one result, Sir William at a slightly different one; an ordinary man would have decided that four highly competent professional men must be right and he wrong; not so, however, MacGregor. “Ye are both wrong,” was his remark, when their results were handed to him by the commander and surveyor. They demurred, pointing out that their observations tallied. “Do it again, ye don’t agree with mine;” and sure enough Sir William proved right and they wrong.

My part in this had been to hold a bull’s-eye lantern for Sir William to the arc of his theodolite, and to endeavour to attain the immobility of a bronze statue while being devoured by gnats and mosquitoes. Therefore later I sought Stuart Russell, the chief surveyor, with the intention of working off a little of the irritation of the bites by japing at him. “What sort of surveyors do you and Commander Curtis think yourselves? Got to have a bally amateur to help you, eh?” “Shut up, Monckton,” said Stuart Russell, “we are surveyors of ordinary ability, Sir William is of more than that.”

The same sort of thing occurred with Sir William in languages; he spoke Italian to Giulianetti, poor Giulianetti later murdered at Mekeo; German to Kowold, poor Kowold, too, later killed by a dynamite explosion on the Musa River; and French to the members of the Sacred Heart Mission. I believe if a Russian or a Japanese had turned up, Sir William would have addressed him in his own language. Ross-Johnston, at one time private secretary to Sir William, once wailed to me about the standard of erudition Sir William expected in a man’s knowledge of a foreign language. Ross-Johnston had been educated in Germany and knew German, as he thought, as well as his own mother tongue. Sir William while reading some abstruse German book, struck a passage the meaning of which was to him somewhat obscure; he referred to Ross-Johnston, who, far from being able to explain the passage, could not make sense of the chapter. Whereupon Sir William remarked that he thought Ross-Johnston professed to know German. Ross-Johnston, feeling somewhat injured, took the book to Kowold, who was a German. Kowold gave one look at it, then exclaimed, “Phew! I can’t understand that, it’s written by a scientist for scientists!”

One little story about MacGregor, a story I have always loved, was that on one occasion while sitting in Legislative Council some member, bolder than usual, asked, “What happens, your Excellency, should Council differ with your views?” “Man,” replied Sir William, “the result would be the same.” But I digress, as Bullen remarks, and shall return from stories about MacGregor to his cabin and my own affairs.

Sir William told my friend and myself, that for two reasons he could not offer either of us employment in his service. Firstly, that the amount of money at his disposal, £12,000 per annum, did not permit of fresh appointments until vacancies occurred; secondly, that his officers must be conversant with native customs and ways of thought, which experience we were entirely lacking. His Excellency, however, told us that he had just received word of the discovery of gold upon Woodlark Island, to which place the ship would at once proceed, and that we might go in her; an offer we gladly accepted.

Then for the first time I met Mr. F. P. Winter, afterwards Sir Francis Winter, Chief Magistrate of the Possession; the Hon. M. H. Moreton, Resident Magistrate of the Eastern Division; Cameron, Chief Government Surveyor; Mervyn Jones, Commander of the Merrie England; and Meredith, head gaoler.

Winter had been a law officer in the service of Fiji, and upon the appointment of Sir William MacGregor to New Guinea, had been chosen by him as his Chief Justice and general right-hand man; the wisdom of which choice later years amply showed. Widely read, a profound thinker, possessed of a singular charm of manner, simple and unaffected to a degree, Winter was a man that fascinated every one with whom he came in contact. I don’t think he ever said an unkind word or did a mean action in his life. Every officer in the Service, then and later, took his troubles to him, and every unfortunate out of the Service appealed to his purse.

Moreton, a younger brother of the present Earl of Ducie, had begun life in the Seaforth Highlanders; plucky, hard working, and the best of good fellows, he was fated to work on in New Guinea till, with his constitution shattered, an Australian Government chucked him out to make room for a younger man; shortly after which he died.

Cameron, the surveyor, was another good man, and wholly wrapped up in his work. Of Cameron it was said, that he imagined that surveyors were not for the purpose of surveying the earth, but that the earth was created solely for them to survey. He, good chap, was luckier than Moreton, for his fate was to die in harness; he being found sitting dead in his chair, pen in hand, with a half-written dispatch in front of him.

Mervyn Jones was a particularly smart seaman and navigator; educated at Eton for other things, the sea had, however, exercised an irresistible fascination for him; being too old for the Navy, he had worked up into the Naval Reserve through the Merchant Service, and thus had come out to command the Merrie England. The charts of the Coral Sea owe much to his labour, and to that also of his two officers, Rothwell and Taylor. All these officers were destined later to share a more or less common fate: Jones died of a combination of lungs and malaria, Taylor of malaria at sea, whilst Rothwell was invalided out of the service. Meredith was taking a gang of native convicts down to Sudest Island; they had been lent by the New Guinea Government to assist in making a road to a gold reef discovered there which was now being opened by an Australian company. It was here that he and many of his charges left their bones.

Not far from Sudest lies Rossel Island, a wooded hilly land, inhabited by a small dark-skinned people differing in language and customs from all other Papuans. Personally I do not believe they have any affinity with Papuans, either by descent or in other ways, whatever views ethnologists may hold. The Rossel Islanders have among their songs several Chinese chants, the origin of which is explained in this way. In September, 1858, the ship St. Paul, bound from China to the Australian gold-fields, and carrying some three hundred Chinese coolies, was wrecked on an outlying sand-bank of Rossel. The European officers and crew took to the boats and made their way to Queensland, the Chinamen being left to shift for themselves. Thus abandoned to their fate, the Chinamen were discovered by the islanders, and were by them liberally supplied with food and water; when well fattened they were removed in canoes to the main island, in lots of five and ten, and there killed and eaten. The Chinamen, when removed, were under the impression that they were merely taken in small numbers as the native canoes could only carry a few passengers at a time, being ignorant of the distance of the sea journey. As they left their awful sand-bank in the canoes, they sang pæans and chants of joy, which the quick-eared natives picked up and incorporated in their songs. In 1859 but one solitary Chinaman remained of the three hundred, and he, fortunate man, was taken off Rossel by a passing French steamer and landed in Australia, where history or scandal says he later pursued the occupation of sly grog seller at a Victorian gold rush, and being convicted thereof, was later pardoned in consideration of his sufferings and being the sole survivor of three hundred.

From Sudest the Merrie England went on to Woodlark Island, from whence the discovery of gold had been reported by a couple of traders, Lobb and Ede. These two men were a very good example of the old gold-field’s practice of “dividing mates.” Lobb was professional gold or other mineral prospector, who had sought for gold in any land where it was likely to occur; when successful, his gains, however great, soon slipped away; when unsuccessful, he depended on a “mate” to finance and feed him, in diggers’ language, “grub stake” him, until such time as his unerring instinct should again locate a fresh find. Ede was a New Guinea trader owning a cocoanut plantation on the Laughlan Isles, together with a small vessel. Ede landed Lobb on Woodlark with a number of reliable natives, and, keeping him going with tools, provisions, etc., at last had his reward by word from Lobb of the discovery of payable gold. Thereupon they had reported their discovery and applied for a reward claim to the Administration, together with the request that the island should be proclaimed a gold-field; and at the same time had informed their trader friends, some twenty in all, of what was to be gained at the island.

Lobb and Ede, with their twenty friends, formed the European population of the island when the Merrie England arrived there; with the exception of Lobb, there was not an experienced miner in the lot. The twenty were a curious collection of men: an ex-Captain in Les Chasseurs D’Afrique, whom later on I got to know very well, but who, poor chap, was always most unjustly suspected by the diggers of being an escapee from the French convict establishment at New Caledonia, merely because he was a Frenchman; an unfrocked priest, who by the way was a most plausible and finished scoundrel; and the son of the Premier of one of the Australian colonies; these now, with Ede and myself, constitute the sole survivors of the men who heard Sir William declare the island a gold-field. Here it was that an ex-British resident, and the son of a famous Irish Churchman, jostled shoulders with men whose real names were only known to the police in the various countries from which they hailed. “Jimmy from Heaven,” an angelic person, who was once sentenced to be hanged for murder and, the rope breaking, gained a reprieve and pardon, hence his sobriquet; “Greasy Bill”; “Bill the Boozer”; “French Pete”; and “The Dove,” a most truculent scoundrel; the names they answered to sufficiently explain the men.

All nationalities and all shades of character, from good to damned bad, they however all held two virtues in common: a dauntless courage and a large charity to the unfortunate; traits which will perhaps stand them in better stead in the bourne to which they have gone than they did in New Guinea.

CHAPTER III

Some six months I put in at Woodlark Island, acquiring during that time a fine strong brand of malaria, a crop of boils, which had spread like wildfire among the mining camps, catching Europeans and natives alike, a little gold, and a large amount of experience; all of which were most painfully acquired.

Sylvester, after having suffered some particularly malignant bouts of malaria and having developed some corroding and fast-spreading mangrove ulcers, parted company with me and went to New Zealand. The mangrove ulcer, commonly called New Guinea sore, is, I think, quite the most beastly thing one has to contend with on those islands; it is mainly caused, in the first instance, by leech or mosquito bites setting up an irritation which causes the victim to scratch; then the poisonous mud of either mangrove or pandanus swamps gets into the abrasion, and an indolent ulcer is set up, which slowly but perceptibly spreads, as well as eating inward to the bone, for which I know no remedy other than a change to a temperate climate. Painful when touched during the day, it is agony itself when the legs stiffen at night.

The method of obtaining gold, at the time I was at Woodlark Island, was primitive and simple in the extreme, and was performed in this way. Having located a stream, gully or ravine, in which a “prospect” could be found to the “dish,” the “prospect” consisting of one or more grains of gold, the “dish” holding approximately thirty pounds weight of wash dirt, i.e. gold-bearing gravel, the miner—or digger, as he is more generally called—pegged out a claim of some fifty feet square. When he had done this he put in a small dam, to the overflow of which he attached a wooden box some six feet long by twelve inches wide, having a fall of one inch to the foot, and paved with either flat stones or plaited vines. Into the head of this box was then thrown the wash dirt, from which the action of the water washed away the stones, sand, etc., leaving the gold precipitated at the bottom. The larger the flow of water, the more dirt could be put through, and the more dirt the more gold.

The title to a claim consisted of a document called a “Miner’s Right,” which permitted the holder to peg out and keep the above area, or as many more of similar dimensions as he chose to occupy or man. A miner’s right cost ten shillings per annum and ipso facto constituted the holder a miner—sex, infancy, or nationality notwithstanding, the only ineligibles being Chinese. “Manning ground” consisted of placing a person holding a miner’s right in occupation thereof, the wages that person received being immaterial. Thus a man employing ten or a dozen Papuans, at wages ranging from five to ten shillings a month, could, by merely paying ten shillings per annum per head for miner’s rights, monopolize ten or a dozen claims. The wages of the European miner ranged from twenty shillings a day and upwards, this, of course, being the man contemplated by the Queensland Mining Act, and adopted by New Guinea, as the person likely to man and work ground held by the miner holding ground in excess of that to which his own “right” entitled him.

In theory, it is of course manifestly unfair, that the native of a country should be classed as an alien, and debarred from any privilege conferred by law upon Europeans; but in practice, the granting of miner’s rights to them merely means that the European able to employ a number of natives can monopolize claims, to the exclusion of other Europeans. The native gets no more wages for his privilege of holding ground, and were the privilege withdrawn would still obtain exactly the employment he gets now, as his labour in working the claims is necessary and profitable to his employer, and the supply of native labour for the miner is never equal to the demand.

An interesting feature in connection with gold-mining on Woodlark Island was that frequently the gold-bearing gravel ran under old coral reefs, thus showing plainly that the whole gold-field had once been submerged under the sea. A warm spring running into one of the streams was, however, the only indication of past volcanic action. In the pearling ground off the island of Sudest, there occurs again under the sea, at a depth of fifteen fathoms, a big quartz reef running through the live coral and sand bottom—whether gold-bearing or not I cannot say—and dipping underground as it nears the shore.

Some time after my arrival at Woodlark the schooner Ivanhoe came in bringing provisions, tools, etc., for the gold-diggers, together with a number of fresh arrivals, among whom was a Russian Finn, the meanest and, in his personal habits, the dirtiest beast I have ever met. This fellow proved most successful in his mining; but eventually, while prospecting near his claim, lost himself in the forest. Upon his being missed, a search party was organized by the diggers to look for him, but after some weeks the quest was abandoned as hopeless and the man given up for lost; a considerable amount was, however, subscribed and offered by the diggers as a reward to any one finding or bringing him in. The Finn, in the long run, was discovered in a starving condition by some natives who, after feeding him and nursing him back to life, brought him to the mining camp, where he learnt of the reward offered for his recovery. He then had the ineffable impudence to object to its being paid over to the natives, on the ground that it was subscribed for his benefit, and that therefore he should receive it, magnanimously saying, however, that the natives should be given a few pounds of tobacco. Needless to remark, his views were disregarded, and the natives received the full amount; the man, however, as he was yet in a weak state of health and professed to have lost all his gold, was given sufficient to pay his passage to Samarai and maintain himself for a month from a fresh “hat” collection. At Samarai he resided for some time cadging, loafing, and pleading poverty, until one day the repose of the inhabitants was disturbed by wails of bitter grief proceeding from the interior of a small building, which was built over a bottomless hole descending through the coral rock, and was used by the islanders as a receptacle for refuse. Inquiry disclosed the fact that, during all the time he was lost and later, the Finn had worn a belt next his skin containing over two hundred ounces of gold, which he had kept carefully concealed. Having cadged a little more gold, he had gone to the small building, as being the most secluded place, to add it to his store when, being suddenly startled, he had inadvertently knocked the belt into the hole, where it lies to this day.

This was an instance of a man losing his gold, and well he deserved it; but I knew of another instance in which a large amount of gold was lost and recovered in a manner so miraculous, that but for the fact that many men are yet living in New Guinea, fully acquainted with all the circumstances, I should hesitate to tell the story.

A party of successful miners was returning to Samarai in a small cutter chartered for the occasion, the gold belonging to the individual men in their separate parcels or “shammys” as they are called—the name is derived from a corruption of chamois, the skin of which animal is fondly supposed by diggers to furnish the only material for bullion bags—being sown up together in a large hoop of canvas, and placed on the hatch in open view of all hands. The weather was fine and clear, no danger being anticipated, when as the vessel entered China Straits she was struck by a sudden squall, and heeling over shot the diggers’ shammys into the scuppers, through one of which they disappeared. So soon as the startled skipper could collect his wits and get his vessel in hand, he took soundings and bearings, and running hastily into Samarai, collected such pearlers as were there working, and offered half the gold to any of them recovering it. Several pearlers at once sailed for the spot, accompanied by the cutter of the bereaved diggers, which dropped her anchor at the scene of the accident and proceeded to watch operations. Diver after diver descended and toiled, diver after diver ascended and reported a soft mud bottom and a hopeless quest; pearler after pearler lifted his anchor and went back to Samarai, until at last the cutter hoisted her anchor also, preparatory to taking the diggers back to the gold-fields. A disconsolate lot of men watched that anchor coming up, but I leave to the imagination the change in their expressions when, clinging in the mud to the fluke of the anchor, they saw their canvas belt of gold.

After the departure of Sylvester I went into partnership with one Karl Wilsen, a Swede; he furnishing towards the assets of the partnership a poor claim and local mining experience, I, a well-filled chest of drugs and some knowledge of medicine. A couple of weeks after our partnership had been arranged, Lobb, the original prospector of the island, appeared at our claim with the news of a new gold find, at which he advised us to peg out a claim. At the same time he told me he was sailing for Samarai in a lugger owned by his partner Ede, in order to buy fresh stores, and asked me for company’s sake to go with him, holding out, as an inducement, that by doing so I could obtain some natives to assist in the heavy manual labour of the claim. Wilsen hastily left for the new find to peg out a joint claim for the pair of us, and I departed with Lobb for Samarai.

Lobb’s vessel, on which I now found myself, was an old P. and O. lifeboat, built up until of about seven tons burthen, lug-rigged on two masts, and carrying a crew of six Teste Island (“Wari”) boys. Lobb, I soon found to be absolutely ignorant of the most elementary knowledge of either seamanship or navigation; the seamanship necessary for our safe journey being furnished by the Wari boys, who had for generations been the makers and sailors of the large Wari sailing canoes trading between the islands. This kind of navigation consisted of sailing from island to island, being entirely dependent on the local knowledge of individual members of the crew to identify each island when sighted.

Shortly after leaving Woodlark we fell into a dead calm which lasted until nightfall—after which Lobb improved the occasion by getting drunk—then came on heavy variable rain squalls, during which the native crew appealed to me as to how they were to steer; being unable to see, they did not know where they were going, and Lobb was not by any means in a state to direct them. Fortunately I had noticed the compass bearing when we had left the passage from Woodlark and headed for Iwa, this being the line laid down by the crew in daylight; upon my asking them whether we should be safe if we followed that, and their replying “we should be,” I pasted a slip of white paper on the compass card and told them to keep it in a line with the jib-boom. When dawn broke, we had Iwa in front of us a few miles ahead, and running slowly up to it, hove-to in deep water, there being no anchorage off its shores.

Iwa is a somewhat remarkable island, and inhabited by a somewhat remarkable people. Rising sheer from the sea with precipitous faces, the only means of access to the summit is by the inhabitants’ ladders, made of vines and poles lashed together. The summit consists of shelving tablelands and terraces, all under a system of intense cultivation; yams, taro, the root of a sort of Arum, sweet potatoes, paw paws, pumpkins, etc., being grown in enormous quantities. The island of Iwa is quite impregnable so far as any attack by an enemy unarmed with cannon is concerned, and the natives have succeeded well as pirates in years gone by. From the top of Iwa, a clear view of many miles of surrounding sea could be had, and the husbandman, toiling in his garden, usually owned a share in a large paddle canoe, one of many hauled up in the crevices and rocks at the foot of the precipices of his island home. Sooner or later he would sight a sailing canoe, belonging to one of the other islands, becalmed or brought by the drift of currents to within sight of Iwa. At once, in response to his yell, a dozen paddle canoes, crowded with men, would take the water, and unless a breeze in the meantime sprang up, the traders usually fell easy victims. Reprisals there could be none, for no war party dispatched by one of the outraged tribes had a hope of scaling the cliffs of Iwa. The people there possessed an unusual skill in wood carving, their paddles, shaped like a water-lily leaf, being frequently marvels of workmanship.

Lobb remained hove-to for a couple of days at Iwa, purchasing copra (dried cocoanut kernel), used for making oilcake for cattle and the better quality of soap, together with the before-mentioned beautiful carved paddles of the people. Sometimes the lugger lay within a couple of hundred yards of the shore, sometimes she drifted out a couple of miles, whereupon half a dozen canoes, manned by a dozen sturdy natives, would drag us back to within the shorter distance. On the second day of our stay I witnessed a particularly callous and brutal murder. A woman swam out and sold a paddle to Lobb, for which she received payment in tobacco. Swimming ashore she met a man, apparently her husband, to whom she handed the tobacco. He, seeming not to be at all pleased with the price, struck the woman, and she fled into the sea, where he pursued and clubbed her, the body of the murdered woman drifting out and past our vessel. Lobb, to my amazement, took absolutely no notice of this little incident, and upon my drawing his attention to it and suggesting we should seize the murderer and take him to Samarai for trial, merely remarked, that I should do better to mind my own business.

Upon leaving the island, four days’ sail put us into Samarai, where, amongst other things in the course of casual conversation, I told Moreton of the murder I had seen at Iwa. Moreton questioned Lobb, who professed to know nothing about it. Lobb then tackled me, asking whether I was desirous of hanging about Samarai for three or four months, at my own expense, waiting for a sitting of the Central Court—the only court in New Guinea for capital offences—and upon my replying, that in that case I should starve as I had little money and there was no opportunity in Samarai of making any, Lobb said, “Exactly; well you had better forget all about that murder at Iwa, or you will be kept here.” I then went again to Moreton, who asked me whether I could swear to the man who did the murder, and I replied that I could not, as he was some hundred yards distant from me at the time and one native looked very like another. Moreton remarked, “I think Lobb’s advice to you is rather good, better follow it.”

Lobb remained about a week in Samarai recruiting a number of “boys” for work in his claim, and among them a couple, Sione and Gisavia, for me. We then sailed again for Woodlark. Upon our arrival back at the gold-field, I heard that the claim pegged out by Wilsen for the pair of us was a very rich one, but that he had taken Bill the Boozer into partnership instead of me. This story I found to be true; Wilsen had been tempted by a solid bribe when he found how good the ground was, and had drawn the pegs in my portion, which were at once replaced by Bill the Boozer, Wilsen declaring that I had gone for good. Wilsen and I then had a fight, in which I succeeded in giving him the father of a licking; this being followed by a law suit which I lost, mainly owing to the magnificent powers of lying displayed by Wilsen and the Boozer. I only met Wilsen twice after this, once, when he was witness in a court in which I was presiding as magistrate, and where he was so glib and fluent that I gave judgment for the opposing side, feeling quite convinced that any people Wilsen was connected with must be in the wrong; and again, when I held an inquest on his corpse, his death having been caused by his getting his life line and air pipe entangled while diving for pearl shell, and being paralysed by the long-sustained pressure. These events, however, were to occur at a later time.

In the meantime I had no claim, and it behoved me to find one; whereupon, accompanied by Sione and Gisavia, I wandered off into the jungle of Woodlark in search of a gold-bearing gully. Creek after creek and gully after gully we sunk holes in and tried, sometimes getting for our pains a few pennyweights of gold, but more often nothing. For food we depended on a small mat of rice of about fifty pounds weight carried by one boy, and as many sweet potatoes, yams or taro we could pick up from wandering natives. The other boy carried a pick and shovel, tin dish, crowbar, axe and knife, and three plain deal boards with a few nails, comprising our simple mining equipment, together with a sheet of calico, used as a “fly” or tent, to keep the rain from us at night. My pack consisted of a spare shirt, trousers and boots, rifle, revolver, ammunition, two billy cans for making tea and boiling rice, compass and matches, and last but not least a small roll case of the excellent tabloid drugs of Messrs. Burroughs and Wellcome.

In our wanderings we struck a valley—now known as Bushai—where at intervals of three hundred yards we put down pot holes without a “colour” to the dish. (A colour is a speck of gold, however minute.) This was an instance of bad luck sometimes dogging a prospector, for, some months later, a man named Mackenzie found the valley, and in the first hole he sunk found rich gold, while the claims pegged out on each side of his holding proved very payable “shows.” I came there again when it was a proved field and, recognizing the valley, asked Mackenzie whether on his first arrival he had noticed any pot holes. “Yes,” he said, “three of them. I don’t know who made them, but they were the only spots in the valley where I could not find a payable prospect.” There was then no ground left for me, so I went away, cursing the fates that had made me select the only barren parts of a rich valley in which to sink my holes.

This incident, however, belongs to a later day, and having “duffered” the valley as I thought, my boys and I prowled on through the forest over the place where the Kulamadau mine now stands, at which point we finished our “tucker” and obtained a few ounces of gold, enough to buy supplies for a few more weeks, when we should get to some place where such could be obtained. Living mainly on roots and a few birds, we fell into a mangrove swamp, where the three of us obtained such a crop of mangrove ulcers that we were hardly able to walk, and were obliged to strike straight for the sea. My boys of course wore no boots, and their swollen legs, painful as they might be, were not so inconvenient to them as mine were to me; for in my case I did not dare to take off my boots, for fear of not being able to get my enlarged feet into them again.

After a day with nothing to eat, we found the sea and an alligator. The alligator I shot, and we were eating him when we saw the sails of a schooner coming round a point close in shore. By dint of firing my revolver, and my boys howling vigorously, we attracted the attention of those on board; and a boat was lowered and sent to us, in which we went off to her, and then I discovered it was German Harry’s craft, the Galatea. German Harry had a cargo of stores for Woodlark, and was accompanied by a European wife—not his own, but some one else’s with whom he had bolted. He received me with sympathy and hospitality, and, telling his cook to boil quantities of hot water for the treatment of my own and my boys’ mangrove ulcers, set to work looking for bandages and soothing unguents, leaving me to be entertained by the other man’s wife.

A fortnight I put in with German Harry, acting for him as a sort of supercargo in tallying the sale of his cargo, listening to his tales of experiences in the islands, picking up the rudiments of navigation and the whole art of diving for pearls and mother of pearl by aid of the apparatus manufactured by either Siebe Gorman or Heinke, the only two firms of submarine engineers considered by the pearl fishers as at all worthy of patronage. Harry had on board the complete plants, from air pumps to dresses, of the rival manufacturers; and after exhaustive trials I came to the same conclusion as he, that both were equally excellent in still waters, and both beastly dangerous in currents or rough seas.

At the end of the two weeks the Galatea sailed for other parts, and I, refusing Harry’s invitation to accompany him again, plunged once more into the forest of Woodlark in search of gold and fortune. On this trip my sole discovery was some aged lime trees and old hard wood piles of European houses, which later inquiry among the natives showed me were the remains of an old French Jesuit Mission long since come and gone; these trees and piles and a few French words current among the natives, such as “couteaux,” being all that was left of their work.

Wandering back from the second and even more disastrous trip than the first (for in addition to an entire lack of gold and a second crop of ulcers, my boys and myself had now added intermittent and severe malaria to our stock-in-trade), I dropped into a gully in which a white miner was working by his lonesome self. Jim Brady was his name, and after feeding us and listening to our tales of adventure, or rather misadventure, he spake thus: “I have a damned poor show here, just about pays tucker, but if you like to chip in with your boys we will do a little better, and when we have fattened up a bit, one can keep the show going while t’other looks for something better.” Eagerly I accepted this offer, my boys and myself being only too thankful to find somewhere to rest out of the rain, with a fair prospect of three square meals a day. Brady and I then worked together for some months with varying fortune; the sole dissension arising between us being due to my stealing a piece of calico, in which he used to boil duff, with which to patch my only remaining pair of trousers.

Then one afternoon, whilst I and the two boys were digging out wash dirt and feeding the “sluice box,” he suddenly squealed, “What in the devil’s name are you sending me now? It’s a porphery leader and giving a weight to the dish,” i.e. a pennyweight of gold, worth about three shillings and fourpence. Brady then came and looked at the place where I was digging, and remarked, “Cover it up with mullock at once, it’s a good thing and we don’t want a crowd here.” I remonstrated, saying that we wanted all the gold we could get; but Brady said, “Yes, and we want all the ground we can get and enough money to clear from this blasted country; that leader wants capital, for which we shall have to arrange.” In obedience to Brady’s instructions I covered up the leader, and had hardly finished doing so, when an excited digger dropped into our claim exclaiming, “Have you heard the news? Mackenzie has struck a new gully with an ounce to the dish.” Brady and I at once bolted for a newly opened store to arrange a credit for tucker, to enable him to proceed to the new find. In the meanwhile, I was to remain and work our present claim to cover expenses. The store-keeper, one Thompson, was obdurate, refusing to give us any credit or even to sell us sufficient supplies for gold, to enable Brady to go to the new rush, he wishing to assist his own friends, or rather those men who could be depended on to spend all their earnings in grog at his store.

Brady and I were sitting most disconsolately outside the store when a cutter, the White Squall, came in loaded with diggers, but no supplies, when I suddenly overheard a remark of Thompson’s: “By God, I must buy or charter that cutter for Samarai for stores.” The cutter brought a mail, and amongst my letters I found a notice from Burns, Philp and Co., that £100 had been placed to my credit at Samarai; whereupon Thompson’s remark recurred to my memory. “Jim,” I said to Brady, “how much gold have we?” “Ten ounces,” he said. “Hand it over,” said I, “I have a ploy.” Brady handed it over, and I sought the owner of the cutter, saying I wanted to buy her. He said he was asking Thompson £100 for her, but Thompson was a ... Jew and only offered £60. I replied, “Well, here are ten ounces on deposit, and an order on Burns, Philp and Co., of Samarai, for the rest, and this letter of theirs will show it is all right.” In five minutes the deal was completed; and the White Squall papers being handed over to me, I returned to Brady. “Jim,” I said, “you need a sea trip and so do I; also we will set up as yacht owners and store-keepers. Let’s go up to Thompson and tell him the good news.” We found him and told him we had bought the White Squall, and intended to sail her to Samarai ourselves. I also pointed out that there was an absolute dearth of supplies at Woodlark, and we expected to make a good thing by store-keeping. Thompson’s language, as Bret Harte has it, was for a time “painful and free”; then he rushed off to the former owners of the cutter, to try and persuade them to cancel the deal as we were “dead broke,” and could not pay for the vessel. Unfortunately, however, for him the vendors chose to consider us as honest men, this apart from having completed the deal, and told Thompson to go to a warmer region. He then came again to me with an ad misericordiam appeal. “Look here, if I don’t get this boat I am a ruined man; how much do you want? I never thought that you two dead beats could buy a vessel, or I would have bid higher.” I gently pointed out that all Brady and I had wanted was fair treatment from him, which we had not got; also that we had no wish to become store-keepers or traders, but as he had forced us into the position, he could either buy us out or count on our opposition in his own business. I then remarked that I would leave the negotiations to Brady.

Brady’s terms were short and sweet: £100 for the vessel, £100 on top of that for ourselves, together with Thompson’s original offer of £60. Thompson squealed loudly, but as we were ready to go to sea, accepted the offer and took over the White Squall. In passing I might now remark that later knowledge showed me the White Squall was not worth £5; she was thoroughly rotten, the only good things about her being her pumps. She had sneaked out of a Queensland port without the cognizance of the authorities; but of these facts at the time I was ignorant; and Brady and I were much surprised to hear later that, after three or four highly profitable trips for Thompson, she had sunk. Her sinking was caused by an irate master leaping suddenly down into the forecastle to deal with a recalcitrant member of the crew, and in his energy sending his legs through her rotten planking.

After the completion of the White Squall deal, Brady went off to the new rush, where he pegged out a good claim, I remaining to shepherd our old one. A few days after his departure I received a note from him saying I had better abandon the claim I was holding, as our lode was safely buried, and come to the new rush. On my way thither I dropped into a gully and began prospecting it, just as another white man, accompanied as I was by two boys, started the same game. We both struck highly payable gold at about the same time, and each claimed the gully by right of discovery. For two or three minutes we—each with drawn revolvers, and each backed by our boys armed respectively with a rifle and fowling piece—argued the question; and in the end, as an alternative to murdering one another, decided to go into partnership and work it jointly, each to divide our share with our former mates.

My new partner was named John Graham; he had previously been an assistant Resident Magistrate in the service of the British New Guinea Government, and later the owner of some pearl-fishing vessels. We worked together very amicably for some months, when, receiving a good offer for our claim, we sold out and separated, he to buy the wreck of a vessel with the intention of refitting it and resuming trading. After about a week’s work again with Brady, some severe attacks of malaria gave me a distinct hint to go to sea for a short time, and at my suggestion we dissolved partnership, Brady remaining in the claim, and I, with my two boys, going to Suloga Bay with the intention of there finding a vessel bound for Samarai.

CHAPTER IV

At Suloga Bay I found Graham still waiting, in charge of a small cutter owned by a local resident, which he had undertaken to take to Samarai for repairs and a new crew, the original boys having deserted to the mines. Graham had a couple of natives as crew, but, as the cutter was leaking badly, had been afraid to put to sea weak-handed. My arrival with my two boys, however, relieved him of this difficulty, and away we went for Samarai.

Never since then have I known such a wholly beastly trip as that one was. We were all rotten with malaria, the cutter’s decks were warped and leaking everywhere from lying in the sun, consequently day and night we had to pump the wretched boat out, or she half filled. The North-West Monsoon was on; and the weather principally consisted of flat calms, during which we grilled under a burning sun, or fierce squalls accompanied by torrential rains, in which our rotten sails burst, and beneath decks was more like a combination of Turkish and shower baths than anything else. Pumping ship, patching sails, drying our clothes, and belting our sick boys into performing their necessary duties, formed our occupation; cursing freely, and betting on our temperatures taken with a clinical thermometer, our diversion; mouldy rice, stringy, oily, ever-warm tinned beef, pumpkin and stodgy taro, our diet. Vile tea and dirty-looking sugar we abandoned for a more healthful beverage, consisting of five grains of quinine and one drop of carbolic acid to a pannikin of water, always of course luke-warm. Dysentery beginning amongst the boys added to our woes; but fortunately for us, we crawled through the China Straits into Samarai on the day following their being taken ill, and gladly handed over our rotten tub to the boat-builders.

Here, Graham and I separated; he, after a week’s rest, going to see to his wreck, and I remaining to recuperate as the only guest in the “Golden Fleece Hotel,” which had recently been instituted by Tommy Rous upon a capital of ten pounds. The hotel consisted of one large room with a verandah all round it, a small room used as a cook-house detached from the other, and a bar-room next to Tommy’s bedroom. All the buildings were made of palms laced together and thatched with the leaf of the sago palm; with the exception of Tommy’s bedroom and the bar-room the whole place was innocent of doors and windows, other than square holes in the walls to admit light and air. The guests were expected to provide their own blankets, plates, knives, forks, and pannikins, and to sleep on the palm floor. A long wooden table ran down the verandah, at which meals were eaten. Meals never varied; Tommy’s cook, a New Guinea boy, had but two dishes: “situ,” which consisted of tinned meat, yams, sweet potatoes and pumpkins all stewed together; and “kari,” the same meat mixed with curry powder and served with rice. Anything else, fish or fresh game for instance, the guests were supposed to provide for themselves.

Tommy was the son of a New Zealand doctor and had gone to sea as a supercargo on one of Burns, Philp and Co.’s vessels. Falling down the hold at sea he had crushed in three ribs and otherwise hurt himself, and at his own request had been put ashore at Samarai, where Armit had patched him up as well as he could. Charles Arbouine, the manager for Burns, Philp and Co. at Samarai, suggested to Tommy that, as he was now incapacitated for any other work, he should start a hotel and relieve the firm of the retail liquor trade, he, Arbouine, being tired of traders and diggers clamouring to be served with drinks at all times. Tommy accordingly expended his capital in the building before mentioned, and with a staff of one native boy began business. Graham and I were his first regular guests. Nightly to the pub came Armit, Arbouine, one of the Whittens, or any wandering trader, to play whist or to gossip; if five or six were present we varied whist by loo or poker, in which quinine tabloids were used to represent counters of sixpence, and pistol cartridges shillings or half-crowns according to their calibre.

A fortnight or so after my return to Samarai, Moreton came back from a cruise in the Siai, and our monotony was further relieved by the arrival of a number of lucky diggers proceeding to that island. The result was that the “Golden Fleece” became most unpleasantly crowded, and I prepared to flit.

Tommy Rous, however, developed a nasty attack of malaria accompanied by hæmorrhage of the lungs due to his accident, and begged me to stay with him until his visitors had departed. He said, “It will be no trouble to you; just look after the pub until I am well again or this lot have cleared out. All you have to do, is to order the stores and collect the cash.” I protested that I knew nothing about running pubs and didn’t want to learn, also that I was certain that Tommy was going to be very ill and I should have to look after the show. Privately, Armit, Moreton and I were certain he was going to die. He cut short my protests by saying, “he knew nothing and I could not know less,” and followed it by becoming so ill that it would have been sheer cruelty to remove him from his room or trouble him with anything. The result was that I suddenly found myself in the position of unpaid hotel-keeper.

Tommy’s boy, the cook, began complications by striking cook’s duties to go and attend to him, and I had to turn on my own two boys as cooks. They were zealous and willing, but I feel convinced that their efforts in the culinary art seriously increased the flow of profanity in the hotel’s digger guests and impaired their faint hope of Heaven. I then made it a fixed rule that everything supplied was for cash, as I was not going to be bothered keeping accounts; this rule also caused a lot of profanity, as the supply of silver in the island was limited, and the diggers frequently had to wait for drinks until I had paid the takings into Burns, Philp and Co., and they again had bought it out for gold dust. At ten o’clock I closed the bar, in order that the row should not disturb Rous; whereupon some of our lodgers would go to bed on the floor of the big room, others would take bottles and visit various vessels or yarn on the beach, whilst another lot would adjourn to Whitten’s store. I then paid a visit to Tommy, fixed him up for the night, and told him the result of the day’s takings. After which my boys made me up a bed in the bar, and we turned in for the night.

About midnight, the first contingent of stray guests would return, more or less drunk, fall over those already occupying spaces on the floor and, after torrents of blasphemy and recriminations, turn in. After this, at intervals ranging until daylight, they returned in two’s and three’s, some singing, some arguing, some swearing, some quarrelling, but nearly all signalizing their arrival by also falling over the sleepers on the floor and again causing fresh floods of blasphemy and bad temper, which, in nine cases out of ten, ended in a free fight. Among our guests at the “Golden Fleece” were two who, when all else was peaceful, were almost certain to start a row, being just about as adaptable to one another as oil to water. The one was named Farquhar, a man as comfortable in the surroundings he was in, as a turtle would be on a tight rope; the other was O’Regan the Rager, a digger.

Farquhar had been a bank manager in Australia, and was a man particularly precise in his speech and neat in his personal appearance, however worn or darned his clothes might be, and the untidyness and lurid language of one type of digger were abhorrent to him. O’Regan was one of this type; he was never sober when he had an opportunity of being drunk, never washed, slept in his clothes, and at all times diffused an odour of stale drink and fermenting humanity. Farquhar’s expression during the day time when O’Regan was in the vicinity would assume that of a spinster aunt suspicious of a defect in the drainage, and with turned shoulders and averted face he would endeavour not to see O’Regan. The latter would glare at him and mutter things about “—— broken down, white-livered swells.” Night would come, Farquhar would go to bed, the rows and riots would subside into peaceful snores, when last of all O’Regan would return with about two bottles of the most potent rum inside him. Screams and yells would herald his arrival. “Phwere is that —— Farker? I’m the blankety blank best man in the blanky camp, wid me hands will I thare the blanky crimson guts from his insoide.” Then O’Regan, climbing upon the verandah, would make night hideous with his yells, the while he banged the table with his stick, and hurled defiance at mankind at large and threats at Farquhar’s viscera in particular. Sometimes a storm of oaths and missiles from the annoyed and sleepy inmates of the room would quench O’Regan’s thirst for blood, and he would peacefully drop down on the verandah to sleep; at other times he would stumble into the crowded room and trample with hob-nailed boots on the forms recumbent on the floor, as he searched for Farquhar and thrashed wildly with his stick. Then for a few minutes pandemonium reigned; until some one would seize O’Regan by the heels and jerk him to the floor, where a sharp tap on the head with a pistol butt or a boot heel would either render him unconscious or induce a more lamb-like frame of mind.

Graham now appeared in Samarai again, and I asked about the wreck he had intended buying and his trading venture. After making sundry highly slanderous and sulphuric remarks concerning missionaries in general, and one in particular, he unfolded his woes—which were that a missionary had forestalled him in the purchase of the wreck, which by the way was called the Eboa, and after stripping her of wheel, gear, etc., now wanted double the original purchase-money paid by him. I accompanied Graham to the Mission Station on the island, where we found that low commercial transactions were beneath the notice of the Mission; but that through an Italian naturalist staying with the missionary, the Eboa could be purchased at exactly double what she had cost the Mission. Graham bought her at the price; the while I made a mental note to the effect that, if the Mission put the same ability into their soul saving as they did into their business operations, there would soon be precious few heathen left in New Guinea.

It is not my intention or wish that the foregoing paragraph should appear to depreciate the value of missionaries, or Mission work, in the islands of New Guinea as a whole; for no one could admire the unselfish and self-sacrificing work performed by many of the members of the various Mission bodies than myself, and in especial the work of the Anglican Mission, the Mission of the Sacred Heart, and the Wesleyan Methodist Mission. It was my good fate during the period I spent in New Guinea to come into intimate personal relations with the Archbishop of Navarre and Bishop de Boismenu of the Sacred Heart Mission, the Right Rev. Dr. Stone-Wigg, the Anglican Bishop of New Guinea, and the Reverend William Bromilow of the Wesleyan Methodist Mission, and I never parted from these gentlemen without thinking what a particularly wise choice their respective churches had made when they were selected to control the work of their denominations in New Guinea.

The other Societies there made the mistake of having no direct control vested in the older and more experienced members over the younger recruits to their ranks. This system always appeared to me to be absolutely rotten. Time after time I have seen junior and inexperienced members of the Sacred Heart, the Anglican, and the Wesleyan Missions get at loggerheads with the native, the trader, or the Government officials in their districts; and time after time have I seen all friction smoothed away by the tactful action of the experienced heads of these Missions, in exercising a wise restraint over their subordinates. And time after time, as a magistrate, have I had to curse the troubles arising from the action of some member of the other Missionary Societies—as a rule due to the ignorance and conceit of youth—and to regret that there was no wise head exercising control to whom I could appeal.

CHAPTER V

At length Tommy Rous’ boarders all departed. His health seemed to be somewhat better, for a while at any rate, and I felt that I could leave him with a clear conscience. As I was thoroughly sick both of prospecting for gold and hotel-keeping, I purchased the cutter Mizpah, and manned her with a crew of six Papuans, getting also the Resident Magistrate’s permission to arm them. At the same time I chartered from Messrs. Burns, Philp and Co. the luggers Ada, Hornet, and Curlew, fully equipped with diving plants and crews of Malays and Manilla men; and also engaged Billy the Cook, late of the Myrtle, to take charge of the three, bound under the guidance of the Mizpah, on a general prospecting voyage for pearl or mother-of-pearl anywhere in the Coral Sea, the latter commodity then having a value of about £150 per ton, with the chance—a very remote chance it is true—of valuable pearls being found in the shells. The Mizpah was fitted with a deep-sea dredging apparatus, having, prior to my purchase, been owned by a scientist, a Dr. Wylie, who had come to New Guinea, I was told, in search of the deep-sea nautilus.

Leaving Samarai we rapidly ran down to East Cape, when, coming to anchor, Billy came on board my boat to discuss a plan of action for my venture. At the very beginning Billy and I differed, to my future loss I must own; for had I taken his advice as then tendered, I should have made a fair profit instead of ending in a heavy loss. Billy’s advice was that we should proceed to an old pearling ground well known by him, and worked for many years, off the island of Sudest, and commence operations there, where we were certain to make a few hundreds in a short time. My idea was to search for an entirely new ground, where we might make many thousands in a few weeks, off the shores of Goodenough Island. Billy, finding that I was fixed in my views as to our procedure, persuaded me to wait several days at East Cape, fishing, and to send a boat into Samarai for salt to cure the fish.

We fished in this manner. Firstly, we stationed men at the masthead to view the approach of shoals of trevalli passing through the narrow channels, and then sent out boats to throw amongst them dynamite cartridges with a twenty-second fuse attached. The explosion of the cartridges stunned the fish, and enabled them to be raked in by the boys forming our crews. Secondly, we sent the divers down armed with small spears, and they speared the cod which had been attracted by the dead fish or the diver. The ordinary rock cod, groper, or more properly gorupa, has no fear of a diver in dress, and will swim up and gaze into the face glass of the helmet, and hence falls an easy victim to the spear. It is, however—with the exception of the octopus—the diver’s greatest enemy, from the same lack of fear. No real diver is afraid of the shark, but all dread the greater codfish.

The shark at best is a most cowardly scavenger of the sea; much preferring, even when hungry, to gorge on carrion than to kill its own prey. And even when made bold by hunger, it is readily frightened away by the sudden emission of air bubbles from the valve in the diver’s helmet. A diver, when approached by a large shark, seldom troubles much, so long as the fish does not get too near to his air pipe. He fears that, because sharks have an unpleasant habit of suddenly rolling over and snapping at a fairly quiescent object. Should a shark’s attention, however, prove too persistent, the diver signals for the fullest possible pressure of air, and then either walks towards the fish or, if it is higher up and interfering with his air pipe, rises in the water and suddenly turns on his valves; result, immediate flight of Mr. Shark.

The codfish, however, is afraid of nothing, and will nose up to a diver, smell round him until it discovers his naked hands, and then bite them off. Owing to this unpleasant trait on the part of the codfish, the first and important duty of a diver’s tender is to wash the former’s hands thoroughly with soap, soda, and warm water before he descends, in order to remove any trace of perspiration or grease from them. A diver’s hands are the sole portion of his body outside the diving suit, the dress ending at the wrists, where thick india-rubber bands prevent the admission of water and expulsion of air. Should a diver meet a large groper, the only thing to be done is to either ascend twenty or thirty feet and drift out of the short-sighted fish’s range of vision or, if there is no tide or current, rise to the surface. Then he can lower a dynamite cartridge or two, which will either kill, wound, or frighten the beast away. A groper, I have been told by divers, and my own experience bears this out, will never pursue a diver or leave the bottom; it is sluggish in the extreme. These fish grow to an immense size. I have myself seen a fish so large that, when his mouth was open, the lower jaw was on the bottom and the upper jaw above the level of one’s helmet. My own opinion is that, as the cachalot preys upon the larger, so the gropers prey upon the smaller form of octopi; otherwise I fail to see how so slow and bulky a fish, a fish too that is not a carrion feeder, can possibly catch enough food on which to live.

I have mentioned a diver’s tender. This person and the diver are usually engaged together, and in most cases have been close friends and associates through many engagements. The tender’s duties are to keep the air pumps, dress, pipes, etc., in apple-pie order, to hold the diver’s life-line and air tubes while he is below, and to receive his signals and communicate them to the master of the vessel. On this man’s constant watchfulness the life of the diver depends. At the time of which I write, all signals from a diver at work were conveyed by numbered jerks on the life-line. I believe now, however, the diver’s helmets are fitted with a telephone, through which he speaks direct to his tender. The submarine telephone must add immensely to the safety of the diver, for by its means he can explain exactly what he wants or what difficulty he is in.

For instance, I have known the case of a diver landing his leg in a large clam shell, which of course immediately closed upon it, the shell weighing probably three or four hundred pounds and being fastened to the bottom. The man signalled “pull up.” The tender passed on the signal, and after the life-line had been tugged and strained at for some time, ordered it and the pipe to be slacked under the impression that it was fast round a coral mushroom. The result was, that before another boat could be summoned and a second diver sent down to ascertain the trouble, the first man had exceeded his time limit and was stricken fatally with divers’ paralysis. Had the diver then possessed a telephone, a second line could have been sent down to him by a heavy iron ring slid down his own life-line, and by him have been attached to the shell; whereupon man and shell together could have been hoisted by the ship’s winch.

Having collected and salted our fish, we sailed away for Dawson Straits, between Ferguson and Goodenough Islands. My intention was to prospect the narrow sea lying between the latter island and the Trobriand group for pearl shell; the north-eastern coast of Goodenough Island was at this time merely marked on the Admiralty charts by a dotted line, with the terse remark, “Little known of the northern shores of these islands.” In Dawson Straits we drilled our crews for some days in their routine work, whilst I accustomed myself to the use of a diver’s dress. Billy the Cook, I regret to say, flatly refused to have anything to do with work under the water.

Our method of procedure was this. Firstly, by sounding, we found a level sandy bottom of anything under twenty fathoms. Pearl shell is peculiar for growing only on a perfectly flat surface. Then the vessel was hove-to or allowed to drift with the current, while the anchor was lowered some ten feet beneath the vessel’s keel. The diver then descended by the anchor chain, and seated himself astride of the anchor. At his signal it was lowered until within about six feet of the bottom, the vessel then being allowed to drift while the diver scrutinized the bottom for signs of pearl shell. Upon his sighting shell, he gave two sharp tugs at his life-line, which meant, “Slack life-line and pipe, let go anchor.” Immediately upon giving his signal and finding his life-line and pipe released, the diver leapt from the anchor, the anchor dropped, and he began work. For sign of shell it was sufficient to see certain marine plants, which almost invariably occur under the same conditions as pearl shell. The diver when below water is in supreme command of the vessel through his tender, and there can be no possible excuse for disobeying either his first or second signals. The first, consisting of one tug on his life-line, meaning “More air, I am in great danger, pull me up.” The second, of two tugs, meaning “Slack all, I am on shell.” One peculiar thing about pearl shell is, that it only occurs in payable quantities where tidal currents are very strong. Where the current runs at less than three knots, though one may find shell, it is rotten and worm-eaten; where the currents are strong it is clean and thick. My own impression is that a strong force of water is necessary to tear and distribute the spawn from the parent oyster; when that force is lacking disease and degeneracy set in.

There are many theories as to the causation of pearls in the pearl shell; the most common is the particularly idiotic one of a grain of sand, or other foreign body, inserting itself within the shell and setting up an irritation which causes the oyster to build round the intruder a smooth coat of pearly matter. This theory is senseless on the face of it. From its natural habitat every pearl oyster must have thousands of grains of sand or other bodies lodged against its lips in each tide. The lips of a pearl oyster consist of a curious vascular membrane tapering to a slimy filmy substance at the outer edge; assuming a small speck of sand came it would adhere to the slimy edge, if a larger body the lips would close. Granted that a foreign article passed the lips, the outer skin of the fish is a very tough thing, and it would be almost impossible for the grain of sand, or other matter, to penetrate to where lie the glands which secrete the substance forming the pearly lining of the shell. A fact which shows the fallacy of the theory is this: that though one may remove the multitudinous skins of the pearl until whittled down to nothing, it is impossible ever to discover in the centre of the pearl as a core a grain of sand, or anything differing from the pure composition of the pearl. If, in one chance out of ten millions, a grain of sand passed the lips of the shell and lodged on the skin of the fish, the next tide would wash it away again. No! Plainly, from the small percentage of pearl-bearing oysters, the pearl is a disease, and, I hold, not due to extraneous causes. Just as uric acid produces stone or gravel in humans, so does some similar irritant produce the pearl in the oyster. I leave it to other and wiser heads to say what the origin of the pearl is; I only say emphatically what it is not.

In Dawson Straits we remained some days prospecting the bottom without luck, and meanwhile discovered a passage behind the island of Wagipa to a secure anchorage for small vessels. Here the Mizpah lay for some days while the luggers continued prospecting, and here I had my first experience of hostile natives. The natives of Goodenough Island at this time enjoyed a most unenviable reputation, being generally regarded by traders as hostile and treacherous in the extreme. Until the day of which I now write, we had not come into contact with them, save a few canoes manned by vegetable-vending natives.

On this day, being tired of sticky salt-water baths, I landed with three or four of my crew, and followed a small stream inland to where a waterfall occurred in a gully. Here the falling water had scooped out a hole about three or four feet deep. Sending my boys back to the mouth of the gully I stripped and, standing in the hole, indulged in a shower bath under the fall. Whilst I was so engaged, revolver and rifle lying on my clothes some few feet away, a native walked out from the bush, suddenly caught sight of me and, giving a loud screech, promptly hurled his spear at me and then fled. I jumped from the water hole as the spear flew, and instead of catching me in the chest it caught me just above the knee, fortunately just as my knee was jerking upwards in my jump, the spear therefore turning to one side, and merely tearing a slit in my flesh and skin, the scar of which, however, I carry to this day. My yells brought up my boys, who running straight into the flying native, caught and held him. As soon as my bleeding was staunched, we hauled him off on board the Mizpah, where we found that he had a slight knowledge of Dobuan, a language with which one of my crew was acquainted. After we had soothed down his funk a little (for he fully expected to be immediately killed and eaten, as the Goodenough Islanders were themselves cannibals), he was asked what he meant by hurling his spear at me. His explanation was that he was returning from an expedition inland, that he had never seen a white man before, and when he saw me disporting in the water he had taken me for a devil, and flung his spear with the laudable intention of killing a devil before turning to flee from the uncanny thing.

Satadeai was the name of my new acquaintance, a man whose friendship I was to enjoy for many years afterwards; in fact, when later I became Resident Magistrate of the Eastern Division, I appointed him village constable for his tribe, a dignity which I believe he still enjoys. After we had soothed the feelings of Saturday, as I now called him, I presented him with some beads and a tomahawk and landed him again; telling him at the same time what our quest in the vicinity was, and offering him safe conduct at any time he or his people liked to come with vegetables for our little fleet. From this time Saturday became a regular visitor to the Mizpah, bringing fresh yams, taro, curios, etc., for sale; and also bringing me men to assist in working the air pumps of the diving plant, a manual labour of the heaviest description when divers are in deep water.

On one occasion he brought me as a present a curious, almost circular, tusk, a tusk so old that the outer covering of enamel had worn off and antiquity had tinged it a pale yellow. The tusk was mounted in native money, small circular disks formed from the hinges of a rare shell, and hung on a sling to be worn round the neck. I thought the thing was an ordinary boar’s tusk of unusual shape and size; Saturday, however, told me the following amazing yarn. He said that at the summit of Goodenough Island, or Moratau, as the natives called it, there lived an enormous snake with curious long and curved teeth, a snake so large and powerful that it was beyond the power of man to capture or destroy it. Goodenough Island, I might remark in passing, is the highest island of its size in the world; Mount York, its highest peak, being over 8000 feet. Well, some generations before, there had lived on Goodenough a mighty hunter of Saturday’s tribe and family, and on one occasion the hunter had ascended the mountain with the intention of killing the snake. Finding, however, that it was beyond the powers of mortal man to slay, he had surrounded its lair with sharp-pointed stakes driven firmly into the ground. When the snake emerged again, it had entangled or caught one of its curved tusks on a stake, and in its struggles to escape tore away the tusk, which Saturday now presented to me.

Afterwards in New Zealand I showed the tooth to Sir James Hector, who pronounced it to be a tusk of the Sus Barbirusa, a hog deer; an inhabitant of the East India Islands and an animal not known to exist in New Guinea. This tusk I afterwards gave to a friend of mine, Richard Burton of Longner Hall, Shrewsbury, in whose possession it now is; a gift that later caused me to be severely dealt with by Professor Haddon of anthropological fame, the professor holding that I should have presented it either to the Royal Anthropological Institute or the British Museum. I am now of opinion that this tusk was wrongly assigned by Sir James Hector to the Barbirusa, but rightfully belongs to an animal not then known to science, though many years later reported by me as existing on the Owen Stanley Range, at a height of about 12,000 feet, on the mainland of New Guinea. The discovery of this animal and its description, however, occurs at a later stage of my life in New Guinea.

When we sailed from Wagipa, Saturday accompanied me on the Mizpah to the north-east coast of Goodenough Island, where he acted as interpreter for us. And being by this time fully acquainted with the object of our search, he induced the natives to guide us to a large patch of “saddle back” shell, which he and they assured us contained large quantities of the “stones” we valued. He was right in his statement, the shell was there in large quantities, and the shells held—a most unusual thing—large numbers of perfect-looking pearls. But, alas! the shell, for some unknown reason, was so soft as to be valueless, one could crush it between the hands; and the pearls, though beautiful to look upon when first obtained, lost their lustre in a single day and could be readily scratched with the finger nail. Saturday was the only New Guinea native that I ever knew who was anxious to go down in a diving dress, a wish on his part to which I sternly refused to accede.

The Goodenough Islanders are a somewhat remarkable race; of small physique, they speak a language peculiar to themselves; the men are liars, treacherous and subtle, but at the same time brave and capable of great attachment to any person for whom they have a regard. Some time after I first saw them, the small wiry men from Goodenough Island proved to be the best porters that New Guinea could furnish for the deadly work of carrying for the Northern Division. The common arms of the men were half a dozen light throwing spears, made from the black palm and having an effective throwing range of some thirty yards, a short triangular-bladed spear for use at close quarters, and a sling and stones. As a general rule ordinary pebbles of about the size of a billiard ball were hurled from the slings; but the slinger usually carried a couple of carefully hand-wrought stones resembling a pullet’s egg in shape but pointed at both ends, which he flung from his sling on special occasions; that is, at times when he had a good clear opportunity of hitting his enemy, and wished to make no mistake about it. The effective range of these slings was up to two hundred yards on the level. They had an extraordinary habit of attaching a tail or cracker to the pouch of the sling, which, upon the stone leaving the pouch, made a sharp noise not unlike the crack of a rifle.

In their hill villages, usually placed upon commanding points or spurs, they build round stone towers covering all approaches. The purpose of the towers was this. A man when using a sling on the level could only use it at such a length as to reach, when whirled, from the bent arm to the ground. If standing on a flat-sided tower, however, the limit of the length of sling he could use was only decided by his strength and the weight of the missile he meant to hurl; and the greater the length of the sling and weight of projectile, the greater the effective range. Therefore a village possessing stone towers was, to all intents and purposes, a fortified position, as its slingmen could outrange, and assail with heavier missiles, any attacking force armed with the sling. Stones from a pound to a pound and a half in weight were hurled from the giant slings plied by the slingers on the towers. Goodenough Islanders, therefore, provided with the towers, were really, at the time of which I write, impregnable against any force unarmed with rifles. They also had a most extraordinary system of yam cultivation. Instead of making their yam gardens on the flat in good alluvial soil, they built circular stone walls beneath their villages on the slopes; and then laboriously carried earth in baskets and filled up the walls behind, until they formed a succession of artificial terraces on which they grew their yams. Certainly the yams there grown were larger and better than any others I have seen, but the labour in the first instance must have been appalling. The gardens also had the advantage of being covered by sling fire from the village towers, and therefore, I suppose, were held to be safe from raiders. Lunacy, from what I could learn, was very common among these islanders; I believe due to in-breeding for many years. Totemism, the great preventive against in-breeding, apparently did not exist among them.

South from Wagipa, on the northern shores of Ferguson Island, lies Seymour Bay, a short distance inland from which there exists a country of great volcanic and thermal action. There, a hot stream flows to the sea; and there also exists a lake containing, according to an analysis I had made of its waters, a huge quantity of the gouty man’s friend, lithium; whilst, surrounding its waters, there are acres and acres, feet deep, of pure yellow sulphur.

My pearl fishing on the northern shores of Goodenough came to an abrupt end. Billy the Cook had foregathered with me one night on the Mizpah, when our divers and tenders had asked permission to collect on one boat, the Ada, for a Malay jollification; the crew of the Ada meanwhile visiting friends on the other vessels. When morning came there was no Ada, and no divers or tenders; and Billy gently suggested to me that they had taken a pleasure trip to the Trobriands. The first thing to be done before we could sail in search of our truants was to return Saturday to his home on Wagipa, as the law did not then permit any unindentured natives being taken more than twenty miles from where they lived, except for the purpose of being indentured, or as it is called “signed on.” Saturday made it very clear indeed that if we landed him at the point at which we were then, the chances were greatly in favour of his finding his way into a cooking pot instead of his home. It would not do to send the Hornet with him, because, firstly, the crew were only armed with knives, and secondly, they were quite likely to follow the evil example of their mates and sneak off on pleasure bent. I thought of sending Billy in the Curlew with a couple of armed boys, he having his own rifle and revolver; but my boys objected to leaving my own vessel, and Billy said he was a married man and had not shipped to be sent alone into a Goodenough harbour. Also he pointed out that I might require the full strength of my New Guinea boys, the only men I could depend on, to deal with our confounded divers and tenders when we found them. The result of our deliberations, therefore, was the loss of two valuable days in returning Saturday.

Upon landing that worthy native we struck straight away from the Straits to the Trobriands, and had a horrible nightmare of a passage, for coral mushrooms and reefs seemed to strew the sea like plums in a pudding. Safe enough to navigate amongst when the sky was clear, they were, however, a deadly peril during the passage of a rain squall. The danger of a coral mushroom lies in the fact that it is so small that the sea seldom makes any noise upon it, also it springs up so suddenly from the bottom that the lead line proves no safeguard against it. No bottom at fifty fathoms one minute, a nigger head or mushroom with its head a couple of feet below the surface the next, is the pleasing habit of the sea between Goodenough Island and the Trobriands.

We did not attempt to sail at night, but either anchored over a submerged reef or hung on to the lee side of a shallow one, with our anchor on top of the reef and a kedge out astern. It is a risky proceeding anchoring in small vessels among coral, where the depth of the water is more than six fathoms, if unprovided with diving gear, or more than twenty, if fitted with that apparatus. For in nine cases out of ten, the chain or anchor becomes entangled in the coral mushrooms, and it is necessary for a man to go down and clear it before the anchor can be raised. Sometimes even a diver is unable to clear the tangle, especially if there is much current or wind keeping the vessel straining at her anchor; and in that case the last resource is to heave the chain in until it is up and down—that is, descends in a vertical line from the ship’s bow to the bottom—and fasten big charges of dynamite fitted with burning fuses to a heavy iron ring, and slide them down the chain in the hope of smashing away the obstruction. Even this method sometimes fails, as some coral is of a dense cheesy consistency, and capable of resisting for a long time repeated explosions of dynamite. When this occurs, then one loses a valuable anchor and chain, a loss one cannot afford too often.

CHAPTER VI

At the Trobriands we sighted our missing Ada at anchor and, upon the Mizpah running alongside, discovered that she was full of native women. At first ugly looks and hands upon knives were the reception accorded by the deserters, but that was soon altered by my New Guinea boys. The divers and tenders expected bribes, argument, and persuasion to be used in order to induce them to return to their work, the sort of thing they had been accustomed to in the Torres Straits; instead of which, they got a curt order to get into the hold, and the next minute found their toes being smashed and their heads bumped by the brass-heeled butts of heavy Snider carbines. The New Guinea boys had always been rather despised by the Malays, and therefore were only too glad to get a little of their own back when opportunity offered. Spitting, cursing, and threatening, the Malays were all bumped below, and the hatches clapped on.

The next operation on the part of my crew was to throw all the women overboard, and let them swim ashore as best they were able. I may remark that all the Trobriand women could swim like fishes. A nice state we found the Ada in: stores, coats, spare gear, everything portable and of any value had been given to the women, not even the cooking utensils were left. If we had not arrived when we did, even her sails would have been cut up and disposed of. After viewing our damage and loss, Billy and I held a parley with our men under hatches, and found the Malay dignity was hurt by the treatment our boys had accorded them; the result was, they said they had no intention of resuming duty. I plainly saw that if I gave in to the brutes I should be utterly undone, and my quest would become quite hopeless; at the same time, without them I could do nothing. Billy now suggested that if I could depend on my New Guinea boys, the best thing we could do was to lie at anchor where we were, and trade for pearls and bêche-de-mer; in the meanwhile keeping our mutineers confined, until in a more reasonable frame of mind. This policy I adopted. Putting a couple of my boys on the Ada, we hauled her up and made her fast to the Mizpah, leaving her recalcitrant inhabitants still under hatches with neither food nor water.

For twenty-four hours I kept the Malays below; and then, outside the sand-bank forming the harbour, we sighted Moreton’s patrol schooner, the Siai, signalling to me to come out. Whereupon we moved the Ada from alongside the Mizpah to alongside the Curlew. The clatter and row made by this operation excited the curiosity of our prisoners, who, questioning the boys on deck, were told that the Siai was in sight, and that the Mizpah was going off to ask that they be taken and tried as pirates or ship-stealers. Awful howls and yells then came from the hold begging for an interview with me. Upon my going to the hatch and ordering the removal of one plank in order that the imprisoned men might talk to me, frenzied petitions for mercy were put up, accompanied by all sorts of strange oaths that, if forgiven, they would be good and faithful men in the future. Billy said, “Let ’em off, they will be all right in the future, and we can’t afford to have them jugged; also we can’t keep ’em below with a Government ship in sight or we shall get into trouble.” I therefore accepted their promises of good behaviour; at the same time I pointed out how magnanimous I was, and ordered them to disperse to their several vessels.

Then I went out in the Mizpah to the Siai, where I found Moreton, R.M., and Judge Winter. The latter had come down to try a white man for murder. Moreton explained to me that there was a lot of sickness in Samarai gaol, beri beri and dysentery, and he wished to fill the Siai with yams. As her draught would not permit her to approach closely to the anchorage, he wanted me to act as tender with the Mizpah, and load the Siai. I jumped at the offer; my whole expenses at this time amounted to £5 a day, and, as Moreton offered me that sum, I was glad for a few days to leave my Malays and the conversation of Billy, for the cabin of the Siai and the company of Moreton and Winter. While the Mizpah was running yams to the Siai, she was steered by one or other of the Malay tenders, and the Judge complimented me upon their polite manners and civility. I grinned an internal grin as I told him they were really not bad people if treated in the right way.

The Trobriands are a great yam-growing district, the yams grown there running up to 150 lbs. in weight. Throughout New Guinea, the group was famous for three things: the cowardice of the men, the immorality—or rather I should put it the total unmorality—of the women, and the quality of its yams. The islands are all perfectly flat and the soil consists of decomposing coral and humus, and is wonderfully rich. One of the staple foods of the islanders consisted of the oyster contained in a small pearl shell, found in great quantities on the mud banks lying in the vicinity of the group, the oyster being termed by the natives “Lapi.” Out of this pearl shell, which, by the way, they opened by throwing it upon the fire, they obtained a large quantity of pearls which they sold to wandering traders; the shell, which would have otherwise have had a very considerable market value, being utterly ruined by the action of the fire.

Here I made the acquaintance of the Rev. —— Fellows of the Wesleyan Methodist Mission; a fine type of man who, with his equally devoted wife, was endeavouring to stay, with, as I could see, little hope of success, the rapid deterioration of the islanders. Mr. Fellows and I gave one another a mutual surprise, I think. I had mentally pictured him as a measly, psalm-singing hypocrite, using religion as a cloak for money-getting; he, I think, had assumed that all traders were drunken, debauched, pyjama-clad ruffians, whose main object in life was to destroy Mission work. Instead of which I found a splendid man, struggling under enormous difficulties, and at great personal sacrifice preaching to the natives a gospel of work and clean living. And he, for his part, discovered that a trader might be a clean-shaved person, who could employ his spare time quite happily in gossiping with the missionary and his wife about people and things far removed from New Guinea.

By the way, some time later Mr. Fellows got me into trouble with Sir William MacGregor, though quite unintentionally. I had relieved Moreton as Resident Magistrate at Samarai, and amongst the correspondence to be dealt with, were a host of complaints from Fellows about robberies by the natives from the Mission House, assaults upon Mission servants and natives, and threats of violence against himself. Moreton said, “Get down and settle this business as soon as you can, Monckton; you may have to burn some powder, but make Fellows safe, for he is a real good chap, as you know.” I went to the Trobriands as soon as I conveniently could; and after seeing Mr. Fellows and questioning the village constable, I came to the conclusion that a certain old chief, living some miles inland, was at the bottom of the trouble. Marching inland I collared him with several of his satellites, and hauled him to the coast. On being brought before my court the old chief fully confessed, informed me of all the men engaged in the various outrages, sent for them, and begged for mercy; promising amendment and good behaviour in future if forgiven. He then begged Mr. Fellows to intercede with me for them, which Mr. Fellows did. At his request, after I had convicted the men, I discharged them to their homes. About a month later I met Sir William MacGregor and, in the course of conversation about the Trobriands, told him what I had done in the matter of the offences against Mr. Fellows. His Excellency said, “You are like all young magistrates, a fool. Can you not see that, by your action in this case, you have given the natives the impression that the Mission can summon the Government forces, have people sent to gaol, and then have them released? Never in future allow any one to interfere with a sentence once passed; the Crown alone can pardon, you cannot, neither can the Mission.” A remark which I never forgot, and which stood me in good stead in after years.

The greater number of the pearls found at the Trobriand Islands are of a very pale golden or straw colour; and for this reason, though of perfect lustre, are not considered equal to those obtained from the larger mother-of-pearl shell found in the China or Torres Straits, or from Ceylon and West Australia. A certain proportion of the Trobriand pearls are, however, of the purest white colour; and these, if perfect in shape and lustre, are the equals of any pearls in the world. Some few black pearls are found in these islands, but not in any great number. There is a common and erroneous impression amongst people, only acquainted with pearls in jewellers’ shops, that black pearls possess a greater value than others. This is not the case. The most valuable pearls are those of a pure white, and perfectly round in shape, suitable for stringing as a necklace; the next a pure white pear-shaped pearl, sufficiently large to be used as a pendant or ear-drop; then come the button-shaped pearls, that is, pearls perfectly round with the exception of a slight flattening on one side, which can be concealed by setting in a bracelet, pin or ring. Black pearls in all these shapes are worth less than the corresponding shapes in white.

Pearls of a freak or fanciful and irregular shape, or fastened together in clusters, possess no commercial value; though in odd cases I have known enormous prices paid for them for sentimental reasons. For instance, a pearl-fisher in Torres Straits found a cluster of small and medium sized pearls in the shape of an almost perfect cross. This cluster, after passing through the hands of several dealers, was eventually sold, I was told, to some wealthy Roman Catholics for presentation to the Pope, the sum paid being £10,000; and the actual value of the pearls composing it, if separate and perfect, would certainly not have been £10. Pearls are sometimes found attached to the pearl shell, or bubbles of the pearly lining of the shell are blown out in such a way as to resemble pearls; these pearls are known as blisters, and are sawn out by the trader and sold for the making of brooches and the cheaper forms of jewellery. When mounted they are frequently passed off to the uninitiated as the real thing.

Large quantities of what are called seed pearls are found in nearly all the different varieties of pearl shell. They are about the size of small shot, and of irregular shape but good colour and lustre; these are mainly sold by the ounce or pound at the rate of from £2 10s. to £3 per ounce. Some of this seed goes to Paris, where it is used, I am told, by milliners for ornamenting ladies’ dresses; but by far the greater proportion goes to China, for what purpose I know not. The largest, most valuable and perfect pearls go to either Russia or America, those people valuing pearls apparently more than other races, and being prepared to pay more for really perfect specimens. Pink pearls occur very rarely, in fact I have never seen one. They are so rare as to have no fixed commercial value, though pearl-fishers say that, when any are found, the Indian Rajahs are always willing to pay enormous prices for them.

The greater portion of black pearls come from the black-lipped variety of shell, a much smaller shell than gold-lipped or mother-of-pearl. The latter shell averages about the size of a large dinner plate, and varies in colour from a pure white at the hinges to a golden colour at the lips. Gold-lip is only obtained in deep water and by means of diving dress; black-lip in shallow water and by naked natives, skin-divers as they are called. Black-lip is of much less value than gold, but, for some reason unknown to me, always jumps tremendously in price during periods of Court Mourning. Gold-lip is subject to attack by a worm, which sometimes bores holes all through the outer covering of the pearly part of the shell.

I believe that the same worm also attacks the spear of the great swordfish. For once, when sailing from the island of St. Aignan to Sudest in a whaleboat in very calm weather, I noticed a swordfish behaving in a most extraordinary manner. It was travelling at great speed on the surface of the water, sometimes straight forward, sometimes in circles, whilst at intervals it was leaping from the water and whirling rapidly round. I could see no sign of an enemy, but I could plainly see that the fish was in great agony. At last it leapt half a dozen times from the water to a great height, falling each time with a resounding splash, until at last its antics became feebler and it turned on its side and slowly sank. I caused the whaleboat to follow it for some distance, and could see through the clear water the almost dead fish drifting with no sign of external injury about its body anywhere.

My boys then told me that the swordfish frequently behaved in this manner, went “Kava Kava” or mad, and then died. They gave the cause as being a “small snake,” that is, a worm, which bored up through its sword into the bone of the skull and thence into the brain. This explanation accounted to me for the numerous well-authenticated cases of swordfish charging and breaking off their swords in ships’ hulls. I myself have seen the broken sword fast in the solid keel of a big sailing canoe; and natives have told me instances of the sword being driven through a canoe’s planking, and the fish being secured by first lashing the sword fast with cords and then spearing the fish. They too believed that the fish did not attack from malice prepense, but as an accident when driven mad and blind by pain. I have never heard of the swordfish, or its big cousin the sawfish, attacking naked men or clothed diver; though I fail to see how they could withstand or escape from the charge of either. Natives of fishing tribes are not in the least afraid of the swordfish, but they are to a certain extent of the sawfish. The latter has a shorter, broader, and altogether stronger beak than the former, blunt at the point instead of sharp, and studded down each side by villainous sharp and bony teeth. Its pleasing custom is to charge amongst a shoal of fish and frantically thrash from side to side among them with its beak, gathering up the slain and wounded at its leisure afterwards. This charming habit on its part sometimes leads it to follow a shoal of fish into the fishermen’s nets, where, getting its beak entangled, it will tear everything to pieces unless soon speared. The spearing of it is a work of difficulty and danger, as one blow from the violently thrashing beak will disembowel a man, or inflict wounds of a most ghastly nature.

On the same boat trip when I made the acquaintance of the swordfish with worm in his head, I also fell in with a most extraordinary fishing rat. We had landed and camped for the night upon a small coral island surrounded by submerged coral boulders and, but for a few stunted trees, bare of all vegetation. Shortly after dark I was disturbed by rats crawling over me, and at last in disgust went and slept in the whaleboat. In the morning I landed again and, while my boys were preparing breakfast, walked to the other side of the island; then sitting down I began my ante-breakfast pipe, whilst I pondered what on earth the rats on the island could find to live upon, as food there was apparently none. While sitting quietly there, I noticed some rats going down to the edge of the reef—lank, hungry-looking brutes they were, with pink naked tails. I stopped on the point of throwing lumps of coral at them, out of curiosity to see what the vermin meant to do at the sea. Rat after rat picked a flattish lump of coral, squatted on the edge and dangled his tail in the water; suddenly one rat gave a violent leap of about a yard, and as he landed, I saw a crab clinging to his tail. Turning round, the rat grabbed the crab and devoured it, and then returned to his stone; the while the other rats were repeating the same performance. What on earth those rats did for fresh water, though, I don’t know, as there was none on the island that I could see.

CHAPTER VII

After about a week the Mizpah had filled the Siai with yams, plantains, and fresh vegetables for the disease-stricken prisoners at Samarai; and Moreton and Judge Winter, having completed their court work, sailed away for that port. The Judge’s parting words to me were: “Keep within touch of the mail schooner, Monckton; the Mambare is going to claim a pound of corpse for every ounce of gold, and there will be vacancies enough for you before long.” “Very good, sir,” I said; “pay me enough and feed me fairly, and I’ll willingly furnish 150 lbs. of prospective corpse, when you need it.” Then came Winter’s slow smile: “You will be neither adequately paid nor decently fed in the Service, but, like the rest, you will come when called. Good-bye.” Very sadly I watched the disappearing sails of the Siai; and then turned rather disgustedly to my work and the society of my New Guinea boys and Billy, for another long period.

We then tried sending the divers down in the deep channels surrounding the mud banks from which the natives collected their small pearl shell, in the hope of finding larger shell containing pearls. But we found the water was too muddy and disturbed for the ordinary diver to see the oysters; the native skin-divers in the shallower water were able to feel them with their feet, and then scoop them into baskets. The heavy leaden-cased boots of the divers in dress, however, prevented this being done, and the few shells they obtained, by groping on the bottom with their hands, would not pay expenses. I then tried a new plan. Sending the three luggers to trade for native curios at Kavitari, with the idea that I might again sell them in Samarai, I commenced operations with the dredging apparatus with which I have mentioned the Mizpah was fitted. This scheme would have worked well but for two reasons: the first, that the Mizpah was old and rotten; the second, that the mud or sandy bottom, on which the pearl oysters lay, was studded with coral mushrooms and boulders.

Our modus operandi was this. Working up to windward of the oyster-bearing bank, we used to cast the dredge overboard, and then, clapping on all sail, scud before the wind, dragging the dredge in the mud behind us. At intervals we would heave-to, haul up the dredge with its load of oysters, and repeat the process. Unfortunately, we would haul up about two or three dredge loads, and then, suddenly the dredge would land against a coral lump and bring the vessel to all standing. If the Mizpah had been new and strong she might have stood it, but as it was the straining opened her seams and made her leak like a sieve. The result of which was to convince me that unless I abandoned my dredging, I should have no Mizpah left under me. Some years afterwards my plan was attempted by a trader with several stoutly-built vessels; but an Ordinance was passed by the New Guinea Legislative Council forbidding the fishing for the Trobriand species of pearl shell by means of dredging, for fear of clearing out the breeding ground of the oyster and thus destroying one of the staple foods of the natives.

Upon this last failure, I summoned Billy and the luggers and we stood away for the Straits between Ferguson and Normanby Islands. Here, however, though we obtained a small quantity of shell of first-class quality, unusually large and clean, the water was so deep—twenty-three to twenty-five fathoms—that I did not care to continue working there. Here I made the acquaintance of a great friend of Moreton’s, the Rev. William Bromilow of the Wesleyan Methodist Mission; a splendid type of man and missionary, whose friendship I was to enjoy for many years. The Mission Station is built on the island of Dobu, an extinct volcano; the only evidence of volcanic action at this time being a hot spring bubbling up in the sea, over which small vessels used to anchor, to allow the hot water to boil the barnacles and weeds off their bottoms. The native yam gardens run right up and into the old crater of the volcano. Here the natives have a curious way of fishing, using kites which they fly from their canoes. The kites have long strings descending from them, ending in a bunch of tough cobweb. The cobweb dancing over the surface of the water attracts the fish, which, snapping at it, get their teeth entangled in its tough texture and are thereupon secured by a man or small boy swimming from the canoe.

I found at Dobu my old Chasseurs d’Afrique friend, Louis, settled down on a small island as a copra maker and trader. He told me that he was utterly tired of knocking about and had settled there to end his days; he was making about £5 per week at his business, and had got together a fine collection of pigs and poultry. Louis’ days were to end, poor devil, sooner than he expected; but that is later. He had a small fleet of canoes, which he sent out daily to buy cocoanuts, paying for them with trade tobacco; he then manufactured the kernels into copra. When the natives’ fishing failed, he dynamited fish and traded them instead of tobacco for cocoanuts; when their fishing was good, and he had no demand for the catch, he salted and dried it and then disposed of it at native feast times. Louis begged me to join him, and settle down to a lotus-eating and untroubled life with enough for our wants, and no danger and worry. He said, “We will order a good cutter for our trading, have plenty of papers, books, tobacco, and wine of the best, and when I die, you can take the business.” “That’s all very fine, Louis,” I said; “but how old are you?” “Fifty-seven,” replied Louis. “Well and good,” I remarked, “but you are over thirty years ahead of me; your life has been lived, while mine has just begun! What would you have said thirty odd years ago, when you were a young soldier, if a similar proposition had been made to you?” “I should have said, God damn! not I!” said Louis. “Well, Louis,” I replied, “I am afraid that must be my answer to you now.” The time came when I weighed anchor and left Dobu, taking, as a parting present from Louis, a large native pot full of eggs, a dozen clucking fowls, a squealing porker for my crew, and a most ornate French tie-pin, which some one in Samarai afterwards stole. Poor Louis! the next time I met him was in the hospital at Thursday Island, he having blown off his fore-arm in dynamiting fish. He had been taken to Samarai in the Mission vessel, and from there sent on to Thursday Island in the Merrie England.

From Dobu we sailed south and rounded Normanby Island finding everywhere, in likely pearl-shell localities, shell of a size and quality better than any other in the world, but water too deep for us to work it successfully. The shell always lay at a depth varying from twenty-eight to thirty fathoms; a depth that, however tempting the outlook, simply spelt suicide on the part of the diver volunteering to work it, and manslaughter on the part of the owner sending him below. From the south end of Normanby Island we stood north to Cape Vogel on the mainland, sounding and prospecting the bottom all the way, but with no payable results. At Cape Vogel, or Iasa Iasi as the natives call it, an epidemic of influenza attacked the Malays and Billy, leaving my New Guinea boys and myself the only effective members of our little fleet. Finding, therefore, that for a short time my working vessels—the three luggers—were useless, I left them at anchor at Iasa Iasi and stood north again with the Mizpah, intending to explore the little-known regions of the north-east coast for signs of pearl shell. This coast of New Guinea was then regarded by traders—and in fact by all Europeans—as a wild region inhabited by savage cannibals and unsafe to touch upon, much less trade with. The navigation of its waters was also regarded, and rightly so, as highly dangerous. Odd ships, heavily armed, such as men-of-war and the Merrie England, had touched at certain points but had really made no permanent impression; and the natives of the coast were therefore practically in the same state as they had been prior to the advent of the European.

Some twelve miles north of Cape Vogel we discovered a large island-studded harbour with a deep water entrance, called by the natives Pusa Pusa; this harbour is about twelve square miles in extent, it is marked on no chart, but is probably the best natural harbour on this coast of New Guinea. The Mizpah was the first European vessel to enter it, and in fact its existence had not been suspected before. Some years later, when I was Resident Magistrate of the North-Eastern Division, I piloted the Merrie England into it through the deep-water channel. The Commander and the ship’s officers spoke in high praise of it as an anchorage and harbour, but the then Governor, Sir George Le Hunte, summed it up in these words: “An admirable place for exploration by steam launch, slowly, however, filling up by deposit of mud from rivers.” With all due respect for vice-regal sapience, I beg now to remark that—Firstly, there are no rivers flowing into Pusa Pusa Harbour; secondly, the bottom consists of coral sand and is subject to great scour; and thirdly, the value of a harbour lies in its safety for shipping and not in its suitability for a scenic or picnic resort. Pusa Pusa is the only harbour existing between China Straits and Cape Nelson where ships of large tonnage can lie in safety. Its entrance is masked by islands, hence ships by the dozen may sail past without having any idea of what lies behind them; only a prowling pearl-hunting vessel such as mine was likely to nose her way into the entrance.

As we sailed in we came suddenly upon a few natives camped upon the beach of a small island, with whom—after a little difficulty—we established trading relations, and from whom I purchased several fine specimens of gold-lip shell, which they told me they had found washed up on the beach. In this place every indication pointed to shell: namely, strong tidal scours in narrow passages, sandy coral-studded bottom and quantities of the submarine plant, which divers maintain grows only where pearl shell is to be found.

From Pusa Pusa we fled back as fast as sail could drive us to Iasa Iasi to fetch the luggers, only to find that they were still incapable of moving—much less working. During the absence of the Mizpah, a wandering pearl-fishing lugger, owned by a man called Silva, had joined them, he having come to discover what we were doing. Finding my own boats hors de combat, I told Silva of my discovery of Pusa Pusa and asked him to come and prospect the harbour, suggesting that, if we found anything worth having, we should work it together and keep its discovery secret. Silva protested for some time, saying that he did not like the north-east coast at all, and had only come to the point at which we were then lying in the hope of discovering what my boats were doing; he finally, however, consented to venture into Pusa Pusa providing the Mizpah went with him. Accordingly the Mizpah and Silva’s lugger sailed for that harbour, while the Ada, Hornet, and Curlew remained at Iasa Iasi awaiting the convalescence of their crews or further orders from me.

On arrival at Pusa Pusa, Silva donned the diving dress and descended, only to ascend in about ten minutes, holding a large shell in his hand and gesticulating to have his helmet removed. He said that it was a good shell bottom, promising very well indeed, but that immediately on descending he had met a groper larger than any he had ever seen, and he would prefer to remain on deck until the fish had had time to remove itself. Half an hour elapsed, Silva descended again, and almost immediately signalled, “Pull me up.” Pulled up accordingly he was; he then complained that he had met a shark, and that—though as a general rule he did not mind sharks—this particular one was longer than the Mizpah, and he thought he preferred to be on deck! Again we waited perhaps an hour, and again Silva descended, and again came the urgent signal, “Pull me up.” Upon his helmet being removed, he at once demanded, with many oaths, that his whole dress should be taken off; and then, seizing a tomahawk, he declaimed: “The first time I went down in this blank place I met a groper, the next time I met a shark as big as a ship, the last time there was a —— alligator, and if any man likes to say there is shell here I’ll knock his —— brains out with this tomahawk!” A hero of romance would now have donned the dress and descended, but I freely confess that I—as an amateur—was not game to take on a work that a professional diver threw up as too dangerous.

Doubtless Silva’s rage was increased by the extraordinary effect air pressure has upon a man’s temper when diving. A diver may be in a perfectly amiable mood with all the world while the dress is being fitted on, but the moment the face glass is screwed home—the signal for starting the air pump—he begins to feel a little grievance or irritation; as he descends, this feeling increases until he is in a perfect fury of rage against every one in general and usually one individual in particular. After that, he spends his time in wondering how soon the dress can be taken off in order that he may half-kill that particular person, usually the tender, for some wholly imaginary offence. Another peculiar fact is, that the moment the face glass is removed and he breathes the ordinary air—even though he may have come up boiling with rage against some special individual—the bad temper evaporates like magic and he wonders what on earth caused his anger. This has invariably been my experience, and other divers have told me they have felt the same sensations. There is usually a perpetual feud between the diver on the bottom and the men on deck working the air pump. The diver always wants sufficient air to keep his dress distended and also to keep himself bobbing about on the bottom; if he gets too much he can let it pass away, by releasing the valve of his helmet; if he gets too little, he can signal for more, but there is no tug signal on the life-line for less air.

A diver’s helmet is really not a helmet in the ordinary acceptation of the term, but is a small air chamber firmly bolted to the corselet and incapable of movement from any volition on his part. He simply turns his head inside it and looks through either side or front glasses, exactly as a man looks through a window. A diver’s most real danger is probably the risk he runs of being drowned when on his way to the surface, and it occurs in this way. After a time the best of diving dresses becomes leaky to a more or less extent, and the water that finds its way through, settles about the feet and legs. Divers become quite accustomed to having their dresses filled with water up to the knees and even to the thigh; the water is no inconvenience to them whilst upright on the bottom, and they are very rarely conscious of it. Well, suppose a diver has his dress full of water to the knees or thighs; as he ascends, he may involuntarily or by accident allow his body to assume a horizontal position, in which case the water at once rushes into the helmet, overbalances him, i.e. really stands him on his head, and drowns him inside his dress.

In a diving dress every beat of the air pump is perfectly audible to the diver, and any irregularity or alteration of the pace, at which the air-pump wheels are turned, is to him irritating in the extreme—an irritation he invariably works off by signalling for more air and thus increasing the manual labour at the pumps. It takes four men, straining hard, to keep a diver properly supplied with air at any depth over twenty fathoms. One of the greatest discomforts a diver has in the tropics is the smell of warm oil, more or less rancid, with which the pumps charge his air; I have had to struggle hard to prevent being sick, and I leave to the imagination the beastly situation of a man, with his head confined in a small helmet, overcome by nausea! Another exasperating thing is the scroop made by a grain of sand or grit getting into the plunger of the air pump, which is only comparable to the feeling caused by a drop of water falling upon one’s head at regular intervals.

Apart from the noise of the pump beats, communicated through the air pipe—which, by the way, is rather comforting, as it shows one is not completely cut off from the upper world—the under seas seem absorbed in extreme silence and gloom, and unless one is in a current or tide, in a sort of unholy calm. One of the things which appear as most remarkable is the lessening of the weight of objects in the water; for instance, a fully accoutred diver can hardly waddle on the deck of his ship, but as he descends, his weight seems to become less and less until he can bob about in a fairy-like manner on the bottom. The same lessening of weight applies equally to inanimate objects; and it is a common trick, when competing vessels are working upon a small patch of shell, for the diver of one of them to pull his rival’s anchor out of the ground and tangle its anchor round the fluke, with the result, that the vessel drifts off with the tide or the wind, towing her diver after her. A lot of time is thus wasted in pulling him up and working back against tide or wind to her old station.

I have spoken of pulling up a diver; this is not literally true, as a diver really ascends of his own volition, by closing his helmet’s air valve and thus blowing out his dress with air. The “pulling in,” when the water is calm, merely consists of taking up the slack of the air pipe and line and, when there is a tide or current, of hauling him along the surface to his vessel. Great care has to be exercised by him in coming to the surface, as, should his ascent be too fast, he may smash his helmet on the bottom of his boat or lugger. The usual way is in a half-lying position on the back and with one hand on the air valve, watching carefully for the light near the surface, and for the shadow of the vessel’s hull. Occasionally, though it very rarely happens, a diver’s air valve sticks; in which case, he at first rises slowly from the bottom, but as the pressure of the water decreases, the pace of his ascent increases, until at last he is rising at such a pace that he shoots violently above the surface. The first thing that shows those on board the lugger what is happening is a splash, and the sight of the diver floundering about on the surface nearly suffocated by pressure of air.

From Pusa Pusa, the Mizpah and Silva’s boat returned to Iasa Iasi; and when I had rejoined my luggers, Silva sailed away for Sudest, being by this time quite convinced that nothing was to be gained by shadowing my boats. I found that my crews were at last recovering, and departed with them for the islands of Tubi Tubi and Basilaki. On the way we called in at Awaiama Bay on the coast of the mainland, in order to replenish our fresh-water supply, the water obtainable at Cape Vogel being brackish and disagreeable to the taste. Here I found Moreton with the Siai; he was engaged in buying land from the natives for a man named Oates. New Guinea law did not permit the sale of land by natives to any other than the Crown; the Crown could then transfer to the European applicant. Oates had come up from Sydney in a cutter of some twenty tons burthen, accompanied by his wife and family, which consisted of a son and daughter, aged respectively about fourteen and seventeen, their intention being to start a cocoanut plantation. He had formerly been the master of the Albert McLaren, the Anglican Mission vessel; but this latest speculation of his was not fated to turn out well. The first thing that happened was that his daughter became disgusted with the prospect, and, on the family visiting Samarai, she took the first opportunity of departing for Sydney, where I believe she married a draper and, I trust, found life happier than she had in New Guinea. Then his wife died and was buried by the son, as Oates himself was delirious at the time with malarial fever and all the native servants had fled. Finally Oates died also, and the unhappy boy had to bury him as well. This boy, Ernest Oates, afterwards entered the service of Whitten Brothers and eventually became manager of their branch at Buna Bay, and he was still in that position when I finally left New Guinea. After a most strenuous ten years, he was endeavouring to scrape together enough money to start a small business of his own in Sydney—something quiet and contemplative, like growing mushrooms.

I remember, some years after the death of his parents, an extraordinary performance on the part of this lad. He was then stationed by Whitten Brothers at the mouth of the Kumusi River as their agent, and had charge of a receiving store for goods landed at that port, which had to be sent up the river to Bogi, a mining camp. With the exception of a few Samarai boys, Ernest Oates was absolutely alone, living surrounded by some thousands of particularly dangerous natives. He possessed two fire-arms, one, a Winchester repeating rifle, for which he had a large store of cartridges; the other, an old Snider with only some half-dozen charges. By some means or other, he broke the lock of his Winchester, and therefore was left with the weapon for which he had practically no ammunition. At this time a large alligator collared several pigs from near the store and narrowly missed securing odd boys of his. Whilst Oates was sitting on his verandah one evening, he noticed the alligator crawl out on a mud bank and, with its mouth wide open, proceed to go to sleep. As he did not wish to use one of his sparse supply of cartridges, the idea occurred to him of creeping over the mud and throwing a dynamite cartridge down the reptile’s throat. No sooner did the thought come than it was acted upon; crawling over the mud he got, unperceived, to within a few feet of the saurian and, standing up, hurled his cartridge. Unfortunately, as he threw the explosive, his feet burst through the hard, sun-baked crust of mud, and he sank to the waist with a plop and a yell; his boys, who were keenly interested spectators, dashed to his assistance, but with little hope of reaching him before the alligator. Luckily, however, he had attached a very short fuse to his charge, and the dynamite exploded, wounding the reptile’s tail and causing it to turn round and snap at an imaginary new enemy. This allowed Oates’ boys to come up, drag him from his hole, and drive off the alligator with their spears.

Oates’ father, “Captain” Oates as he was usually called, once gave me the peculiar pleasure—as a magistrate—of receiving a complaint about myself. I was relieving Moreton at the time as Resident Magistrate at Samarai, and had been engaged, to the common knowledge of all traders and labour recruiters, in a punitive expedition to Goodenough Island. Having finished my work there, I took the Siai across to Cape Vogel with the intention of searching for unsigned or kidnapped boys, by running unseen down the coast in the night and boarding any labour vessels I might find bound for the Mambare gold-fields, either rounding or anchored off East Cape. Labour vessels had a trick of starting their little games when the cat in the shape of the Siai—or Black Maria as their owners called her—was safely out of the way.

It was a rough boisterous night, dark as the inside of a black cow, and blowing nearly a full gale; the Siai was showing no lights as I did not want her seen, nor did I want her movements reported by the natives; and as she was crowded with men, I could afford to carry on sail until the last minute, which I accordingly did. Passing Awaiama we sighted the lights of a vessel hove-to outside the harbour, and, as we ran close down to her, there came a brilliant flash of lightning from behind us, which for a moment illuminated her like day, and allowed us to identify her as Oates’ cutter, the Rock Lily; whereupon we sheered off and passed her at about sixty feet distance. At East Cape I found no vessels, and accordingly went on into Samarai.

Two days later Oates arrived and, coming into the Court House, told me he had a complaint to make about a strange ship. “Two nights ago,” said he, “I was hove-to off Awaiama: the night was dark and the weather so rough that I did not care to move either towards Samarai or back into the harbour. My lights were burning well, when suddenly there came a flash of lightning, and by it I saw a black schooner; I could see thirty feet of her keel out of water, your worship, and she was then setting a topsail! It’s the mercy of God I was not run down; she had no lights, and I want her found and her captain fined.” I sympathized greatly with Oates, and sent to the Subcollector of Customs for a list of vessels which had entered the harbour during the past two days; naturally the officer never dreamt of including the Government vessel in the list, for, in the first instance, her movements did not concern him, and, in the second, he knew that as she carried me, I must know as much or more about her than he did. Oates scanned the list of luggers, cutters, and Mission boats, but there was no black schooner of the description he gave. “Captain Oates,” I said, “are you certain it was not a nightmare you had?” Oates choked with indignation. “She was four times the size of any vessel on this coast; my whole crew saw her and got the fright of their lives. Devil, even a binnacle light she carried.” “Very good, Captain Oates,” I said; “you see we can get no information about her from the Customs, but I will undertake that we will bring your mysterious craft to book the first time the Siai finds her; it is a very serious offence for a merchant ship to sail without lights.”

From Awaiama we sailed for the Conflict Group, a circle of small islands surrounding a lagoon of a few miles in circumference. These islands were afterwards purchased from the Crown by a man named Wickham, who intended to use the lagoon for the propagation of sponges, and the island for cocoanut growing. I don’t know what sort of success he made of the cocoanut growing, but I doubt if the sponges could have proved profitable, as Arbouine told me that the sponge trade was entirely in the hands of a small corporation of Jews, by whom they were bought at their own price and sold again wholesale at whatever amount they liked to fix. The high prices paid by the users of large sponges of fine quality are not due to the cost of fishing for them, nor to the expense entailed in their preparation, but are created simply by the ring. I believe, however, that the curing of the finer quality of sponges is a trade secret possessed only by the corporation, but I can see no reason why an expert chemist should not discover a process equally good, as it really only consists of bleaching the fibrous tissue of the half-animal, half-vegetable sponge.

My boats did not linger long at the Conflict Group, as there was nothing in our line there, so accordingly we went on to Tubi Tubi, where again we found that, though the reefs abounded in an infinite variety of wondrously beautiful shells and bêche-de-mer, shells of the sort we were seeking were conspicuous by their absence, with the exception of a few of the black-lip variety.

Bêche-de-mer is a sort of sea slug, ranging in size from six inches to two feet in length, and from one to six inches in diameter. It is highly prized by the Chinese, who use it for soup making: considerable quantities, however, are now used in London, Paris, and Queensland for the same purpose. The fish lies like a Bologna sausage on the bottom, and is easily brought to the surface by naked divers; it varies in value from £200 per ton downwards according to the size, variety, and skill displayed in curing. The curing is really a very simple matter: should the operation be done on board, the fish or slugs are simply thrown into a four-hundred-gallon tank set in brickwork upon the deck and boiled vigorously in their own juice for a couple of hours; they are then smoked like a ham in a smoke-house for a night. They come on board flabby gelatinous objects, unsightly to the eye and loathly to the touch; they go away packed in sacks, hard little objects like lumps of perished india-rubber. The liquor exuded by boiling bêche-de-mer has peculiar properties: it will burnish copper until it becomes like gold, and should clothes be dipped in it before being washed, it will remove every particle of grease or dirt, leaving them, after washing, like the finished work of a good French laundress. The most valuable variety of bêche-de-mer, at the time I write of, was the “teat” fish, so called from having two peculiar rows of teat-like excrescences along the belly; it should not have been the most valuable, as the red fish had at one time been more appreciated by the Chinamen; but they were now regarded with suspicion, as several of their people had been poisoned from partaking of that particular delicacy. Slander said, that Nicholas the Greek had caused the deaths and spoilt the market for red fish by boiling a quantity of them in a copper boiler.

From Tubi Tubi we ran close by the islands of Basilaki and Sariba to Samarai, having little luck on the way. The Basilaki natives had a somewhat unpleasant experience prior to the Proclamation of a Protectorate by the British Government over the southern portion of New Guinea. They had cut out a trading vessel and murdered the crew, with the result that a man-of-war, the name of which I have now forgotten, was sent to punish them. Upon the appearance of the warship they fled into the bush, where the sailors were unable to follow them. In order to inflict some punishment, the ship shelled the principal village, doing, however, no real harm to the thatched huts; several of the shells also failed to explode as they pitched upon the soft coral sand. As time went on, a great feast was held in that village, and the old shells, picked up by the natives, were used instead of stones to support the extra cooking pots. Gaily the natives danced, well were the fires stoked, until suddenly the explosion of three or four twelve-pounder (or heavier) shells spread devastation amongst the packed natives. The manes of the murdered crew may have waited long for revenge, but when it did come, it certainly arrived in a wholesale way.

On arrival in Samarai I paid off my luggers and Billy, which left me with a bare fiver to pay off the Mizpah’s crew, each individual member of which was entitled to that amount; and the Mizpah, after my unsuccessful cruise, was so mortgaged that I could not hope to obtain any money on her. I called my New Guinea boys together and explained the difficulty. “All right,” said my coxswain, “you pay me off before the Government officer and I’ll give you the money back, then you can pay off the next man and he will do the same, and so on until we are clear of the Government and can sail in search of money somewhere.” This I did, and, at the end, still possessed the odd five pounds I had paid them off with; then they all signed on again with me for another voyage. There was at that time no fee to be paid for either signing a crew on or off.

About this time an awful hurricane struck the islands, wrecking and sinking many ships, amongst others the Nabua, a new vessel chartered by Burns, Philp and Co., laden with copra and bound for Samarai. This vessel was somewhere north of East Cape when struck by the hurricane; the crew, terrified by the fury of the storm, let go the anchors when off the coast, and finally abandoned her. They then came into Samarai, reporting that she had been swamped and had sunk at anchor—a story which was accepted by all. I, however, had my doubts about this; and when Burns, Philp and Co., as agents for Lloyds’ underwriters, put her up for sale at auction, I made the one and only bid of five pounds—my last five pounds—for the hull and cargo, and she was knocked down to me for that amount.

After buying the Nabua, I left in the Mizpah for the locality where she was supposed to have foundered, and then got into communication with the coastal natives. “You remember the big wind of a few days ago?” I asked. “Yes,” was the reply. “You saw a vessel at anchor off the shore, a vessel that sank during the gale?” “Yes,” again was the answer. “Is there any rock near where she anchored?” “Certainly,” came the reply; “we will show it you for payment.” For a pound of tobacco they piloted the Mizpah until we were over a rock shaped like a pinnacle or sugar loaf, which was submerged about two fathoms, but which would in rough weather and a heavy sea have only about two feet upon it. “I thought so,” I said to myself; “a strong new vessel such as the Nabua, with her hatches battened down and laden with a light bulky cargo like copra, never would have been swamped at anchor; she must have cracked a plank and have been sunk by a leak.” My boys dived near the rock and reported that there was an anchor with a chain attached, leading into water too deep for them to descend into.

Hastily I sailed back into Samarai, stirred up a drunken ship’s carpenter named Niccols—who was also a good diver—and induced two friends of his, who owned trading luggers, to accompany me back to raise the Nabua. As I had no money, I made the bargain that they should get fifty pounds apiece if we raised the vessel, and nothing if we failed. Back accordingly we went. Harry Niccols descended, and coming up announced he had found the Nabua lying on a shelf on the bottom leading into deep water, and held there by her anchor. The tide apparently, after the gale had subsided, had drifted her away from the rock, upon which she had struck, in a seaward direction. With the exception of one plank smashed under her counter, Harry reported she was uninjured, and he also said that she was palpably light from the nature of her cargo and consequently easy to lift. After getting the luggers over her, Harry descended again and made fast our anchor chains to her chain plates, and then with small difficulty we lifted her with our winches, until she was awash between the two luggers. Just then the Merrie England hove in sight round the point, and seeing us, she dropped her launch, which came puffing alongside with a letter from Judge Winter asking me to go on board at once. I guessed that the Judge wanted to take me off somewhere, and I accordingly impressed upon Harry Niccols and the lugger owners the immediate necessity of beaching our recovered vessel and mending her plank before taking her to Samarai; this they promised to do.

The work for which the Judge wanted me kept me away for six weeks; I was, however, congratulating myself meanwhile upon the fact that, when I went again to Samarai, I should have the proceeds of the sale of a valuable vessel and cargo to collect from Burns, Philp and Co. My hopes were doomed to be dashed to the ground, for, when I eventually reached Samarai, Mr. Arbouine knew nothing about my salvaged ship. On finding Harry Niccols, that worthy told me that they had got the Nabua up safely, and had nailed some canvas over the hole in her stern and pumped her out; then, as they were on the point of beaching her to repair her plank, a trading cutter came in sight, from which—in the joy of their hearts at having so easily made fifty pounds a man—they had bought a keg of rum, upon which all hands had got drunk. Whilst still under the influence of liquor they had decided to sail for Samarai with the unmended Nabua fastened between the two luggers. In China Straits they had got into a tide rip and had been compelled to release the Nabua in order to save the luggers from foundering, whereupon she had of course filled and sunk in deep water. I accordingly lost my ship, and they, their fifty pounds; the damned fools had never even landed her cargo, which was worth twelve pounds per ton, and would have paid us handsomely for our work and trouble.

At Samarai I found some money remitted to me from New Zealand, sufficient to pay off my New Guinea boys and allow me a holiday to that country; so to New Zealand I accordingly went viâ Port Moresby, Yule and Thursday Islands.

CHAPTER VIII

I made a portion of my return voyage to New Zealand in the Myrtle; and her first place of call was at Yule Island, where she stopped to load a cargo of sandalwood. Large quantities of this timber were at that time exported to China by a man named Hunter, who was then commonly known as “The Sandalwood King”; he was making thousands of pounds a year, counted his employees by hundreds, owned several small vessels and many mule and horse teams. The miles of roads he made through the forest—in order to bring out his timber—would have been regarded as a credit to any ordinary civil engineer; as a matter of fact, they were then the only roads worth calling such in New Guinea.

Hunter had as a rival in his timber business—if a man could be called a rival who got in a year about as much sandalwood as Hunter got in a day—a Frenchman known as “Brother John,” a jovial fat person looking like the typical old friar. Brother John had been a lay brother attached to the Sacred Heart Mission at Mekeo, and he had, I regret to say, been smiled upon by the Papuan girl who did his washing, and, sadder still, he returned the smile. Time went on, until one day the girl’s parents appeared at the Mission, hauling along their erring daughter; they presented her to a scandalized monastery, drew particular attention to her figure, and asked what the Mission was going to do about it. Brother John was immediately expelled from the lay brotherhood of the order and commanded to marry the girl, which he did at once. Over this little incident some little time afterwards he scored rather badly off the Governor or Chief Justice, one of whom met him and, shaking his head, said reprovingly, “I am sorry to hear of your fall, Brother John.” “Fall, Monseigneur,” said Brother John, “fall! Why, before I was only ze bruzzer, now I am ze fazzer!”

From Yule Island the Myrtle sailed with every available foot of space crammed full of the pleasant-smelling wood, as it seemed to me at first; even her deck had a great pile stacked on it. For a day or so one continued to like the scent, then it got into one’s hair, into the ship’s water, into one’s clothes and food, in fact into everywhere and in everything; until one fairly loathed it, and rushed to poke one’s head to windward for a few minutes’ sniff of the clean salt sea. A guano vessel stinks, a ship loaded with copra smells of rancid oil, but a boat laden with sandalwood cloys and sickens the senses more than either. I was told that the greater part of the sandalwood imported into China is used in the manufacture of joss sticks and incense, and for making sandalwood oil; whether this is true or not I do not know.

At Thursday Island I bade farewell to the schooner Myrtle; for she, having transhipped her cargo to a China steamer, returned to New Guinea, and I took up my quarters in one of the hotels, to wait with what patience I possessed for a south-bound steamer. Thursday Island is—or rather was—the centre of the pearling industry, and is one of the most God-forsaken holes I know of; there is absolutely nothing to do in the place to kill time. With the exception of a few soldiers, Government officials, professional and business men, and pearl vessel owners, the population consists of a miscellaneous collection of Japanese, Chinese, Malays, Kanakas, Queensland aborigines, and general crossbreds and mongrels from the Lord knows where.

There has been for some years past considerable discussion in the Australian Parliament and the Press as to whether Northern Australia can, or ever will, be fully occupied by Australian or European people. One has only to give a glance at the white women, or purely white children, dwelling in Thursday Island, Cairns, or northward from there, to see the question answered; women and children alike—pale, listless, and anæmic—show plainly the need for constant change to a cool and bracing climate. It is sheer inhumanity to expect a child-bearing woman in the tropics to perform any but the lightest of domestic duties, and if these duties cannot be done by the women, then they must be performed by native domestic servants. Australia, however, does not possess an indigenous native population sufficient for the supply of this want—or suitable, if sufficient—and as the Government has closed its doors to the admission of Papuans or Melanesians—both highly suitable races for the purpose—it naturally follows that a fitting class of white men will never settle or take their families there. No country has, as yet, been populated by men married to women of native races or half-breeds. I have frequently heard the argument used in Australia, that the white man is as good a worker as the native anywhere, and under any conditions. I do not agree with this; but even accepting it as true, the fact remains that, in the tropics, the white woman is not capable of hard work and should not be asked to do it. Shortly, therefore, my contention is this: if Northern Australia is to be populated by a white race, the men must take their white wives with them; and they can only do that if allowed to make especially favourable conditions for them by the aid of native servants. No law—not even one made by an Australian Labour Government—can alter the natural laws governing the distribution of the climates of the earth, or the disabilities of sex.

The Australasian Parliament suffers from a chronic state of nervous dread of the East; and it is likely to continue to do so, as long as it pursues the dog-in-the-manger policy of keeping a vast country unoccupied. The best thing Australia can do with the Northern Territory is to combine its administration with that of New Guinea, under the Crown Colony system of Government, and permit the introduction of native labour from New Guinea—at any rate for domestic service or work on the plantations.

Upon the arrival of the China steamer Changsha, I gladly shook the dust of Thursday Island from my boots, sailing in her for the South.

When I reached New Zealand I employed my spare time for some months in studying navigation and surgery, whilst I built up my health in preparation for a fresh venture to New Guinea. Here I met again my old friend, Richard Burton. Burton was some years older than myself and, up to that time, had lived a mixed sort of life: educated at Eton, he had then harried his parents into sending him to sea, and had made one voyage to Australia and back in a sailing ship; disgusted with that, he had passed into Sandhurst; not finding that to his liking, he was removed by his parents and sent to the College of Agriculture at Cheltenham, after which he had come to New Zealand and started sheep farming. A crack shot, a fine boxer and fencer, afraid of nothing that either walked, flew or swam, and crammed with a vast lore of out-of-the-way knowledge, I was more than pleased when he volunteered to accompany me back to New Guinea. Burton gave me news of Sylvester who had gone with me on my first trip, and of whom I had heard nothing since he left me at Woodlark Island. After leaving there he had suffered severely from protracted bouts of malaria, and had gone home to England, where, whilst paying a visit to Longner Hall, Burton’s home in Shropshire, he had become engaged to marry the latter’s sister, and meditated, after the marriage, returning to New Zealand to take up sheep farming.

The scheme Burton and I agreed upon was to go to Sydney and there purchase a small sailing vessel, ship as a crew a few Kanakas—if we could get them—load the vessel with mining gear, and go and work the reef, or rather porphery leader, which had been buried by Brady and myself in Woodlark Island. If that project failed—well, we should have a vessel under us, and British, Dutch or German New Guinea, the Solomon, Aru or Admiralty Islands, or, for that matter, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, to seek our fortunes in; neither of us cared very much what we did or whither we went, provided there was something worth having at the end. We expected to find Brady somewhere in the islands and take him on with us.

R. F. L. BURTON, ESQ., AND HIS MOTUAN BOYS

When we were on the eve of leaving New Zealand for Sydney, a man we both knew, named Alfred Cox, asked to be allowed to join us; he had been a middy in the Royal Navy, but had been obliged to leave owing to a steadily increasing deafness, and since then had been farming in New Zealand. We were not at all keen on having him, as he was not a strong man, and he somehow or other contrived to smash one of his bones or otherwise damage himself at unpleasantly frequent intervals. He, however, begged hard, and at last we consented to his throwing in his lot with us.

Arriving in Sydney from New Zealand we inserted the following advertisement in the morning papers—not knowing the deluge it would bring down upon us: “Wanted to buy a schooner, cutter or ketch, between fifteen and thirty tons burden. Apply ‘B. M.,’ Mêtropole Hotel.” On the afternoon of the day of publication of the papers, Burton and I were returning from a shopping expedition, during which we had been purchasing arms, ammunition, charts, instruments, chemicals, tools, etc., when we found the hall porter at the hotel endeavouring to stall off a mixed crowd of people all clamouring to see “B. M.” Hastily we interfered; and, taking them one by one, we arranged interviews with them at our gunsmith’s shop. Broken-down tugs, worn-out coastal steamers, fishing boats, timber scows, vessels building, vessels to be built, all sorts and conditions were offered to us at exorbitant prices; some of the owners and agents we sent off at once, the vessels of others we put on a list for private inspection, and in nine cases out of ten found the description widely different from the reality.

Cox got bored with it all, for he thought we should never get a vessel at the rate we were going on; and he suggested that he should go off and call upon Captain Anson of H.M.S. Orlando, a friend of his, and borrow a carpenter or bo’sun’s mate to assist us in our choice. To this course of action we agreed and, having carried it out, Cox returned to tell us that Captain Anson’s opinion was, that a man-of-war’s man would be of no use to us, but that a man who owned a sail-making and ship-rigging business would be the very man for our purpose. The same man was once employed to bring a yacht from England to Australia; by some misadventure or other he and his crew had run short of provisions, and had then eaten the cabin boy. How the master and crew escaped at their trial I don’t know, probably upon some plea of self-preservation, but the fact was established that the cannibalism had taken place. Many years after we had met him, he fell the first victim in Australia to bubonic plague. Upon our presenting Captain Anson’s card, he at once said he only knew of three vessels likely to suit us, and all were yachts; we found one was too large and expensive, another was too small, whilst the third was a racing cutter of sixteen tons, named the Guinevere, built in England of oak, copper fastened, and yawl rigged for cruising purposes. This vessel was now outclassed for racing, and had fallen into the hands of a money-lender named London, by whom she was used for card parties and pleasant little trips in the harbour. We were assured that the Guinevere was as sound and staunch as on the day she was built, and we accordingly bought her.

We hauled the Guinevere up on to a slip for a general overhaul and refitting, and I took the opportunity of having her fitted with a powerful rotary pump, in addition to her own, my New Guinea experience having taught me the advantage of plenty of pumps. To this pump we owed our lives a great deal sooner than I expected. We left the slip, with every foot of our little vessel chock full of stores, tools, etc., and ran down to Watson’s Bay at the mouth of Sydney harbour. There we joined a small fleet of sailing vessels all waiting for the lowering of a storm signal, then flying at the flagstaff. Among these vessels was a yawl named the Spray, owned and manned by a “Captain” Slocum—a Yankee—by whom she had been entirely built in America, and who was now engaged in the endeavour to sail her single-handed round the world. We had foregathered with Slocum, who told us he had just been visited by the master of the London Missionary Society’s steamer, the John Williams, who, after having inspected his navigating instruments, amongst which was his chronometer, consisting of what he called a “one dollar watch,” had remarked that he appeared to put a lot of trust in Providence. He then invited Slocum to lunch on board the John Williams, when with pride he exhibited that ship’s numerous and splendid instruments and expensive chronometers; Slocum gazed in admiration, and then drawled, “Waal, Captain, I calculate you sky pilots don’t put much faith in Providence!”

We had failed to find any Kanakas for a crew in Sydney, and we dared not attempt to ship white men, as the authorities asked many embarrassing questions as to certificates, objects of voyage, etc.; fortunately the liberty of a yacht still clung to the Guinevere, and they did not apparently bother very much about the three owners. While we were lying in Watson’s Bay, Burton received a cable telling him that his elder brother had broken his neck in the hunting field, and asking him to return home at once. He decided, however, not to leave me in the lurch, but to come on as far as Cooktown in North Queensland, where I could ship a black crew. We were still anchored there, when we were boarded by an official from a launch belonging to the Marine Board, by whom we were harried exceedingly, but whom we placated to a certain extent by means of mixed drinks; he, however, refused to allow us to quit our anchorage without life-buoys, which we did not possess. Our money by this time was getting extremely short, so, accordingly, Burton and I interviewed our shipwright, who sold us some dummies good enough to pass the Marine Inspector. Then, storm signals or no storm signals, for fear of further interference, we decided to go to sea, where Marine Boards and shipping authorities worried not and we could go our way in peace. Apparently some of the other sailing vessels, ships of large tonnage, had become sick of waiting for the promised storm that never came, for about half a dozen of us left the harbour in rotation.

Off Newcastle that night, however, a true “Southerly Buster” hit us and, not knowing the harbour or the coast, we stood out to sea close-hauled. We had the devil of a time: first we lost our dingey, then when, as I calculated, we were about sixty miles off the coast, our jib and staysail went in rapid succession; I was steering, lashed by my legs to cleats to prevent being washed overboard, and every time the cabin scuttle was opened a huge sea went below. It was impossible for either Burton or Cox to venture on deck, for, before they could possibly secure themselves, they were bound inevitably to go overboard, the Guinevere—like all racing vessels—having only a few inches of rail and no bulwarks; in any case, they could do no good on deck. Upon the staysail going, Burton managed, at the imminent risk of his life, to crawl on deck for a few seconds to slack the main sheet, and so let me get the vessel before the wind; hardly had he done so than a huge sea swept right over us, and fortunately, instead of taking him overboard, washed him down the scuttle. Half an hour later he poked up his head and yelled, “The cabin is half full of water which is rising fast; if we don’t pump we shall sink.” Luckily the handle of the new pump was within reach of the scuttle, and Burton, wedging himself firmly in the opening, seized the brake, and for some hours just kept pace with the inflowing water; then the pump choked, and the water steadily rose in the cabin. We did not bother very much about this, for the mainsail was tearing from its ropes, and we knew that when that went, it was only a matter of a few minutes before we broached-to and were smashed into fragments by the seas.

At last with a tearing bang the mainsail went, and I thought we were gone too; it was too dark to see, one could only hear. The vessel gave a horrid deadly sort of sideways lurch, and then instinctively I met it with the helm and found, to my amazement, that she still kept steerage way, and was running on as though under sail; and so she ran for an hour, when dawn broke, and I saw that our blown-out mainsail was jambed across her mast and rigging, and was acting as a square-sail. Cox then steered, while Burton and I securely lashed the sail in the position it then was; that done, we turned our attention to the pumps, for the Guinevere was half full of water. The first pump, her original one, we abandoned as hopeless after the first half-hour; the other, the rotary one, we carefully took to pieces, as the whole water-raising part of the mechanism of the pump was on deck. We found in it some small chips of wood jambing the valves—chips left below decks by the carpenters working at her on the slip; cleaning these we soon had the pump working, and two hours’ toil gave us a dry ship again. Then, in spite of an enormous sea and a howling gale still blowing, we felt fairly hopeful, and settled down to a three days’ fight, to bring our vessel again to a port to refit. At last we made Port Macquarie, telling a steamer that approached and wanted to tow us, to go to the devil, for we had awful visions before our eyes of claims for salvage.

At Port Macquarie we signalled for a tug, and were soon safely at anchor in the river; we here heard that a number of vessels had been wrecked at Newcastle during the gale, and found that we also had been reported as lost. The pilot and his boat’s crew very kindly gave us a lot of help in refitting our rigging and sails, for which service they would take no payment. Here Cox—after getting into a row with the police for shooting at a flock of pelicans with a rifle, these birds being strictly protected—decided to return to New Zealand; we soothed the police by explaining that anything Cox shot at was perfectly safe, the only thing likely to be hurt was something at which he was not shooting. Having completed our refitting, and Cox having departed in a sailing vessel for Sydney, Burton and I again went to sea.

For a day or two we worked the Guinevere north in bad weather, and then, as Burton and myself were utterly worn out from want of sleep, we decided to run in and anchor near the Solitary Isles; this we accordingly did, but unfortunately amongst a lot of rocks and shoals and in a very exposed position. The sailing directions described these waters as highly dangerous. About an hour before daylight the sea and wind got up, with the result that our anchor parted, whereupon we let go another, our only remaining one, and prayed that it would hold until dawn. Daylight and our remaining anchor broke together, and we did a sort of steeplechase out to sea amongst cruel-looking rocks; how we got the Guinevere through safely I don’t know, for it was a job I should not like to tackle again with a full crew and steam under me; certainly no vessel less nimble than a racing yacht could have managed it. We were now, however, without an anchor, and therefore it was necessary for us to make a port in order to get one. We did not like ports either, for fear of being prevented from going to sea again. An anchor, however, we must have, and accordingly we stood away for the Clarence River.

We fell in on the way with the Spray and Captain Slocum, who hung on to us one night while he slept. The Spray was nearly as broad as she was long, immensely strong and almost unsinkable. Slocum’s usual method of navigation was to sail his boat all day, run off shore, heave-to, and sleep all night while his vessel bobbed about like a cork. A very strong southerly current on this coast had prevented him from doing this, as his ship lost nearly as much in the night as he had gained in the day. He had left Sydney some time after us and missed the storm, but he had not been delayed by calling at ports on the way. In the morning we parted from the Spray and Slocum, he to continue his voyage round the world—which, in passing, I may mention he successfully accomplished—and we to make the Clarence River. Heaving-to off that river we signalled for an anchor, but the signalman chose to believe we had made a mistake and sent a tug out instead; so accordingly we went into port, where we decided to remain for a day or two.

Here we received a telegram from William Whitten, telling us a cutter he was taking to New Guinea had been wrecked on the coast, and asking us to wait for his arrival in a coastal steamer, after which he would come on with us. We therefore waited, being only too glad to have additional hands. Whitten had seen the report of our arrival at the Clarence River in a telegram in the daily papers; we did not at all approve of the interest our movements now seemed to be exciting, and decided that, once we were clear of this port, we should touch nowhere again until we made Cooktown. Whitten appeared, accompanied by a seaman named Otto, whose surname I never knew; we then unostentatiously slipped out to sea again, making rapid progress north, with Whitten and his man taking one watch and Burton and I the other.

We made Cooktown without any further misadventure, but for one little incident, breaking the monotony of the trip; that was a narrow escape we had of being piled up by Whitten on the coast one dark night, in consequence of his crediting the Guinevere with only doing eight knots an hour instead of nearly twelve. I happened to go on deck before dawn, and found Otto trying to persuade Whitten that a dark mass right ahead of us was land, while the latter maintained that it was impossible and must be a cloud. I thought it was land, too, and insisted upon standing out to sea again until dawn; when daylight came there, sure enough, was a high cape not more than a couple of miles off. Whitten had already piled up four vessels in the course of his career, through a mixture of recklessness and cocksureness, he never believing in danger until too late.

At Cooktown we found the whole community preparing for wild junketings in celebration of the Queen’s Jubilee, and the Warden invited Burton and myself to participate; the festivities were to culminate in a banquet at night. Cooktown is like all isolated hot towns in one respect, and that is, the inhabitants take very little interest in anything outside their own little parochial affairs, and, as most of them possess “livers,” they accordingly quarrel furiously: even when a man is of a peaceful nature, his wife is not, and the rows of the woman involve the man. One had hardly been introduced to a man for half an hour before he was explaining what awful people so-and-so, and so-and-so were—his pet bêtes noirs; and, later on, one had a repetition of the same thing from so-and-so. The Warden told me, though, that at the great banquet all personal differences were to be buried for good: Subcollector of Customs, Inspector of Police, bankers, merchants, parsons, doctors, lawyers, post and telegraph officials, schoolmasters and ship captains, in fact, all the rank and fashion of Cooktown were to foregather and coo like doves.

The Warden was a very fine old fellow; he had at one time been British Consul in Persia, and he was also the first man to hoist the British flag in New Guinea prior to the Proclamation of the Protectorate; he was now over sixty, but his back was as straight and his step as firm as a man of half his years; he was also full of quaint stories of the experiences of his youth in Persia and Arabia; he possessed, however, a peppery temper and had a long-standing quarrel with one of the local celebrities. The hour of the banquet arrived and the guests assembled; speeches were made, and toasts were drunk—many toasts and many speeches—and as the champagne mounted to excited brains a few quarrels began, but were always promptly suppressed by the Warden in his capacity of President, and each time we sang “God save the Queen.” Burton leant over to me and whispered, “There is going to be a damned fine fight before this chivoo is over, there is too much bad blood among them for a tea-party,” and I acquiesced. After the feasting was over and we had dispersed about the room, something seemed to occur which caused all the old feeling in the room to burst out; the parsons fled through the door, the Warden seized his ancient foe by the neck and, throwing him on the floor, sat across his chest and bumped the man’s head up and down, whilst every other man sought out his own particular enemy and thumped him. Burton and I got quietly to one side and looked on; the police arrived and peeped in, but, upon seeing their Chief and the Police Magistrate involved in the turmoil, discreetly withdrew. At last peace was restored, and the guests at Cooktown’s historical banquet departed to their several homes, while Burton and I went off to the Guinevere, wondering what stories the élite of Cooktown would manage to invent by way of explanation to their wives. A sorry looking lot of men we met next day, and they all showed a marked disposition to avoid the subject of Jubilee banquets.

Within the course of a day or two Burton left in a steamer bound for Sydney en route for England, and upon his departure I sailed for Samarai, still accompanied by Whitten and Otto. No sooner had we left behind us Cook’s Passage in the Great Barrier Reef than we fell into a howling south-easter, a wind almost dead in our teeth; Whitten, after one night’s experience of it and the Guinevere’s behaviour in a big head sea, refused to go on, and consequently I had to put back to Cooktown to land him and Otto. The Guinevere had, to a man not acquainted with her peculiarities, an alarming habit of going through, instead of over, a head sea; as a matter of fact, she was just as safe with her decks a foot under water as she was with the sea like a duck pond; but Whitten would not believe it.

At Cooktown I shipped three Queensland natives as crew and sailed again; when well out to sea, however, I discovered that only one was a sailor and therefore able to steer, the other two had been stockmen on a cattle run. I accordingly abandoned my intention of making Samarai direct, and, instead, made for Port Moresby, where I hoped to pick up a crew of New Guinea boys, and beat down the coast to Samarai. After a few days we sighted Port Moresby just as the sun was setting, and I obtained capital cross bearings on an island to the east of the entrance of the harbour and upon Fisherman Island; the night was dark, but I accepted the chart as accurate, and, being confident of the correctness of my compass bearings, I decided to risk running through the passage in the outlying reef by compass. Suddenly crash we went upon the reef; we launched the dingey, a new one purchased in Cooktown, and I told the boys to place a kedge anchor in her and drop it away in deep water, in order that we might kedge the cutter off; they promptly dropped it into the dingey and stove in her planks, rendering her useless. The wind then began to get up, bumping us further and further over the reef, until, to my surprise, I found that the vessel was bumping less and rising upon an even keel again. After two or three hours of this, we suddenly slipped off into deep water upon the Port Moresby side; and again making sail, stood into the harbour, though the Guinevere was leaking badly from the bumping she had received.

When I got into Port Moresby, I found that the tide, which had enabled me to get clean over the reef, was the highest ever registered there, the decking of the wharf having been on a level with the water. Here I found Inman with a new schooner of Messrs. Burns, Philp and Co., and to him I took my chart and cross bearings and asked how on earth, in the position in which they had placed me, I had managed to get upon the reef. Inman’s explanation was very brief: namely, that the eastern island, upon which I had taken one of my cross bearings, was half a mile out of position on the Admiralty chart.

I also came across Farquhar, who told me he was acting as an accountant in the Treasury, but that he had been offered a good position with Burns, Philp and Co., at Samarai, and was only waiting for an opportunity of getting there. Accordingly I offered him a passage in the Guinevere, with all its excitements thrown in. He told me Ross-Johnston wanted to go to Samarai too, as Sir William MacGregor had come to the conclusion that an extensive knowledge of modern languages by a private secretary was not sufficient to outweigh the fact of his being ignorant of all the practical duties of his office. Farquhar therefore went off in search of Ross-Johnston to tell him that they could both sail with me.

The morning following my arrival in Port Moresby, I was standing on the wharf watching a carpenter doing some work on the deck of the Guinevere, when I heard a Scotch voice behind me. “What do you call that pipe, Mr. Monckton?” I turned round, and saw Sir William MacGregor standing there and pointing to the stove pipe issuing from the deck of the Guinevere. “That, sir,” I said, “that is a stove pipe.” “Stove pipe, do you call it? It looks more like a cigar holder!” I felt rather hurt at this reflection upon the Guinevere, and replied, “Well, sir, stove pipe or cigar holder, it answers the purpose for which it was placed there, and that’s all I want.” “Very true, man,” said Sir William; “if men and things do their duties, it is all that is required of them. Come to Government House this afternoon, I have work for you.”

PORT MORESBY FROM GOVERNMENT HOUSE, SHOWING THE GOVERNMENT OFFICES

I went to Government House, where Sir William told me that Moreton was very seedy and wanted leave of absence, but that he had not been able to let him go until the Government had found some one to take his place, and that he intended to send me to relieve him. I told Sir William that I had grave doubts about being able to perform the duties satisfactorily, whereupon he told me that he had the same doubts himself, but that I seemed to be the best that offered. “Get awa’, man, get awa’; the sooner ye are in Samarai, the better pleased I’ll be with ye.” Consequently I left Port Moresby on the following morning, accompanied by Ross-Johnston and Farquhar. Some years afterwards I read, in the Illustrated London News, an account written by Ross-Johnston of the voyage of the Guinevere from Port Moresby to Samarai; it was eventful in its way, but I have not space for it here. In 1897, I took up my new duties at Samarai, which were the beginning of my official life in New Guinea.

CHAPTER IX

At Samarai I found Moreton looking very ill, and keenly anxious to get away; Symons, late purser of the Merrie England, was now his assistant and Subcollector of Customs instead of Armit. The latter had turned his knowledge of botany to account by setting up as a collector and trader of rubber; he was the first man in New Guinea to commence that business, and it was he who taught the natives the method of collecting and preparing it for market.

I asked Moreton to give me a sketch of my duties as a Resident Magistrate, and he said everything was a Resident Magistrate’s duty: in the absence of a surveyor, he had to survey any land purchased; in the absence of a doctor, he had to set and amputate limbs; he had also to drill his own police, act as gaoler and undertaker, sail the Siai, marry people, in fact do any job of any description, from a blacksmith’s upwards, not expressly allotted to some one else. If a job were allotted to some one else, and that some one else failed to do it, the Resident Magistrate must do it; Sir William MacGregor, in fact, expected his Resident Magistrates to know everything and to do everything. It was no excuse, Moreton stated, to say that one did not know how to do it: that was all very well for a doctor, a surveyor, a ship’s officer, or Custom’s official, but not for the Resident Magistrate. Another of his duties was to make every shilling of Government money allotted to him go as far as half a crown; if he spent money in what the Governor or Treasurer considered an unnecessary manner, he had the pleasure and privilege of making it up out of his own pocket. His powers, however, were extensive: he could sentence summarily up to two years’ imprisonment with hard labour, or fine up to two hundred pounds; and, in the absence of the Governor, he could take administrative action in any matter of urgency or importance; finally, he occupied the enviable position of scapegoat, when such was needed.

“All this is very fine for you, Moreton,” I said, when he had concluded. “You have been years in the Service and know things, whilst I am very young for such an appointment, and have no experience.” “Go to Armit if you get into a fix,” said Moreton, “he will pilot you through all right, he is a walking encyclopædia; but don’t you get Jock’s back up or you will never forget it. You can practically exercise any power you please if you do right and succeed, but if you make a mistake or fail, Jock will make you feel small enough to crawl through a keyhole. Now then, here is a list of things that need attending to at once. There is a murder at Awaiama, a man cut his mother-in-law’s throat, catch him; there is to be a new Mission Station at Cape Vogel, survey and buy the land from the natives; Fellows is in trouble at the Trobriands, go and put him right; Bromilow has collected a lot of orphans at Dobu, go and mandate them to the Mission; a man named Ryan has shot a native at Ferguson Island, arrest him and inquire into the case; Carruth has been supplying grog to the natives on Burns, Philp’s diving boats, catch Carruth and deal with him; the Siai’s decks need caulking and she needs new wire rigging; I’ve got the wire, but there is no money with which to pay any one to do the job. Patten has got into some sort of trouble at the south end of Goodenough, find out what it’s all about; Thompson has started a cocoanut plantation on the north-east coast of the island, look him up and see that he is all right; when you get some spare time, go and buy a cargo of yams for the gaol, and don’t pay more than 10s. per ton for them; see that Billy the Cook shuts his pub at twelve o’clock, there are only fights and rows if he is open later. Don’t use the police for arresting white men if you can possibly avoid it; arrest them yourself. Some one stole an anchor and chain from the Siai, I think it was Graham; search his vessel the first time you come across him; he was last heard of in the Trobriands; there are a handful of summonses for debt against him too, serve them. Find German Harry and hold an inquest into the death of one of his crew; look at the licences of all pearl shell and bêche-de-mer vessels you come across, they dodge paying whenever they can; if they pretend they have no cash, make them give you an order on Burns, Philp and Co. There are a lot of letters about missing friends, find out about the people for whom inquiries are made and answer them, also send duplicates of your letters to the Government Secretary. The Chief Judicial Officer is raising Cain about a lot of Mambare murderers in the gaol on warrants of remand, he wants to know if I intend to keep them without trial for the term of their natural lives; just work through them in your spare time: they are the men that killed Green and his detachment. There are a few other things that want attention, but Symons will give you a list. Give Symons hell, if he gets behind at all with the Headquarters’ returns, and keep your eye on the Siai’s paint and stores, for I’ll take my oath Symons doesn’t keep his whaleboat so smart on his paint allowance. If you give the bo’sun of the Merrie England a bottle of whisky, he will steal enough brass-cleaning stuff, sewing twine, and needles from her stores to keep you going for a year. By the way, Jock won’t allow holystone for the decks, he says it is extravagant, and that we must scrub them with sand and cocoanut husk. They have small-pox in German New Guinea; send any vessel coming from there into quarantine at once, ‘Clean Bill of Health’ or not.”

Symons was a married man with a young family: Moreton therefore had allowed him to take possession of the Residency, whilst he occupied a little three-roomed house, built of native material, in the gaol compound and alongside the Government jetty. As Moreton pointed out, it was much more convenient for a bachelor wishing to keep only two servants—a cook and an orderly—than the big Residency; and the labour of shifting one’s things backwards and forwards from the Siai was much reduced. There was a detached two-roomed building used as a cook-house and servants’ room; Moreton only used two rooms, one as a bedroom and the other as a sitting-room; we dined on the verandah. I investigated the third room, the one to be occupied by me until his departure, and found a couple of trestles supporting a platform of boards. “What on earth is this, Moreton?” I asked; “it strikes me as a devilish hard bunk!” “The fact is,” said Moreton, “there have been a few accidents lately, dynamite and diving and that sort of thing, and as there was nowhere else to put the bodies, I kept them here till the inquests were over, and they could be safely planted in the cemetery; I believe one of the ungrateful beggars walks.” “I think I’ll have a hammock slung,” I remarked; “I don’t so much mind sleeping in a morgue, but I draw the line at a corpse’s bed; his spook might take a fancy to occupy his old berth.”

“You might hunt up a suitable place on Logia Island for a new cemetery,” Moreton said. “The one here, next the gaol, is getting overcrowded for one thing, and for another, it is none too wholesome, for all the coffins are made of thin cedar—some of the inhabitants have not got coffins at all—and the damned crabs will bore holes down to them. I had an awful job to get enough sawn timber for a coffin for Tommy Rous, but he’s tight enough, I think; I thought I owed him something for all the pleasant nights we had spent together. By the way, don’t let Symons read the Burial Service over any one if you can help it; he reads it in a voice like a cock with a quinsy.” Moreton complained that the Woodlark and Mambare miners were getting Samarai a bad name. “They come here,” he said, “at the last gasp with dysentery or malaria, wait a week or two for a vessel to take them to Australia, and then, if the schooner is late, peg out, and give me all the work of administering their affairs and replying to the letters of their relations. I had a little luck with one lot, though; about a dozen came in from the Woodlark, looking very bad, and just managed to catch the Clara Ethel bound for Cooktown. The skipper told me afterwards, that he dumped seven corpses overboard before he reached there, and they had to carry the rest up to the hospital.”

A few days after I arrived at Samarai, the Ivanhoe came in from New Britain bound for Cooktown, and Moreton made ready to depart. “Some little time ago,” he told me, “my brother sent me some champagne and some pâté de foie gras, and a cheque which I am going to blow on my leave. I think we will invite Armit and Arbouine to dinner the night before we sail, and polish off the fizz and pâté; but how the devil am I to get the pâté cold? It is in china pots inside a soldered tin.” “Tie it on to the Siai’s anchor and drop it in fifty fathoms,” I suggested; “it is cool enough down there.” The dinner came, the time for the pâté also, and Moreton’s cook proudly produced, and placed in front of him, a steaming, loathly-looking dish of an evil-smelling mess. Moreton prodded at it. “What is this? I sent for the pâté, you scoundrel: what poisonous mess have you got here?” “That’s all right, sir, that’s the pâté; I’ve curried it!” I draw a veil over the language that followed, and also over the fate of that boy.

Earlier in the day a cutter came in, manned by escaped French convicts from New Caledonia; Moreton promptly placed them in gaol, telling me to keep them there until the Chief Judicial Officer came, and I could get his advice as to what was to be done with them. “What sort of warrant am I to hold them on?” I asked; “it is all very fine for you, you are skipping out, but what will happen to me when his Ex. finds out I have half a dozen Frenchmen jugged without a warrant?” “You are a bright R.M.,” said Moreton; “men are not sent to New Caledonia for stealing apples; only the worst of their criminals go there, and I don’t want half a dozen of the worst sort of convicts loose in this division; law or no law, you hang on to them; charge them with having no lawful visible means of support, or with a breach of the quarantine laws, or entering from a foreign port without a ‘Bill of Health,’ or hold them on suspicion of having stolen their cutter; anyhow, it is better that you should get the sack, than that they should be let loose; Winter will find a way of dealing with them.”

After dinner, on Moreton’s last night, we adjourned to Arbouine’s house, where we remained until about eleven; as we returned home, a wild riot at Billy the Cook’s pub attracted our attention, and running there we found O’Regan the Rager being thrown down the steps. O’Regan was fighting drunk, and making the night hideous with yells and blasphemy. “Go home and to bed, O’Regan,” said Moreton. He would not, and Moreton grabbed him; he promptly hit Moreton in the ribs, and just as promptly I hit O’Regan under the ear and also seized him. “Will you come quietly?” said Moreton; but O’Regan wanted blood and gore, whereupon Moreton blew his whistle and a dozen police, running up, collared him and took him off to gaol, Moreton and I continuing our way home. We had hardly reached the house before a warder rushed up, exclaiming, “That lunatic, the police have run in, is killing the Wee-wees.” I bolted down to the gaol, and found all the cells were full of natives except the one containing the Frenchmen, and accordingly the gaoler had put O’Regan in with them; O’Regan had immediately proceeded to dance with his heavy mining boots over their recumbent forms, and to challenge them to fight.

I had the cell door opened, and told O’Regan that he would be put in irons unless he kept quiet; the Frenchmen all clamoured to be taken away from him. “I’m a plain drunk and disorderly, I am,” said O’Regan, “and I’m not going to be shut up with a —— lot of —— foreign criminals.” “That’s all very fine,” I told him, “but all the other cells are full of natives and you are not going to dance over them; gaoler, bring the irons, and we will make a ‘spread eagle’ of this man on the floor.” Here the Frenchmen chipped in, saying they didn’t want to remain in the cell with him even when ironed, and begged to be put in with the natives, to which I accordingly agreed. O’Regan was left with a bucket of water and a pannikin, and told that if he gave as much as one more howl, he would be ironed to the floor. The following morning, Moreton paid a visit to the gaol to say good-bye to the gaoler and warders, and some estimable native friends of his, whom he had been obliged to gaol for various trifles—such as assault, or burying their deceased relatives in the villages. While he was there O’Regan, who by this time was feeling rather piano, begged his pardon for hitting him in the ribs, and apologized for giving him the trouble of using the police for running him in. “Let him off with ten shillings and costs as a plain drunk, Monckton,” said Moreton; “he seems very contrite, and he’s got a lump as big as a hen’s egg where you hit him.”

The Ivanhoe sailed, and with her, Moreton; my first duty was to hear the cases set down at the Court House, amongst them of course being O’Regan’s drunk. When his case came up, I fined him ten shillings; upon which he gazed at me and remarked, “I’ve seen that blank man up to his backside in mud at the Woodlark, hunting for pennyweights of gold, and now he sits there like a blanky lord and fines me ten bob.” “Yes, O’Regan,” I remarked, “very true; and now that blank man is going to add five pounds to your fine for contempt of court!”

The night after Moreton’s departure I was peacefully sleeping, being dog tired after a hard day, when I was awakened by some one shaking my hammock. Jumping up I saw Robert Whitten, and demanded what he meant by coming and disturbing a tired man at that hour. “So-and-so’s wife has died suddenly,” he said, naming a European carpenter, who was married to a native woman, “and we want you to come and look at the corpse, to find out why she died.” Reluctantly I dressed, called a couple of police, and went off corpse gazing. I found the widower looking very distressed and frightened; he told me his wife had complained of a sharp pain in her chest at different times, and that night it had been very bad. “I sent to every store,” he said, “and I bought chlorodyne and pain killer, fever mixture and pink pills, cough mixtures and Mother Seigel’s syrup; I bought every sort of medicine they had got, and I gave her some of each, hoping that one would fix her up. There are the bottles, you can see I’ve done my best; I then sent for Bob Whitten to ask him if he knew of anything else, and while Bob was here, she died. Is there going to be an inquest, and shall I bring the body up to your house?” “No, you won’t,” I said; “you will keep it here until it is buried, and you need not worry about an inquest. I think your wife died of heart disease, before all those drugs you poured down her throat had time to poison her; but no one will ever know now.”

The following morning I crawled out to breakfast at about ten o’clock, feeling a horrible worm, and found an immaculately dressed Symons sitting on the verandah waiting for me. “Come to breakfast, Mr. Symons?” “No, thank you,” said Symons in a pious voice, “I had my breakfast two hours ago; I adhere strictly to office hours.” “You are a lucky dog,” I remarked; “it seems to me that my hours are all day and all night as well. What’s the trouble now?” “The gaol returns,” he replied; “the gaol is half full of people under Warrants of Remand; the R.M. has been too busy, and latterly too ill, to attend to them; we are over-crowded, and unless something is done, there will be a lot of sickness. The Mambare men, too, are giving no end of trouble, and should be transferred elsewhere; I’m getting anxious about what will happen when you leave with the bulk of the police.” I satisfied Symons by promising to inquire at once into the cases of all the men on remand; and, after breakfast, began upon the men charged with the murders of John Green, Assistant Resident Magistrate at Tamata, his police, and five European miners.

The inquiry resulted in the committal for trial for murder of practically the whole of the Mambare prisoners then in gaol in Samarai, and it also involves an explanation on my part of the events leading up to it. In 1894—I think it was—Sir William MacGregor, accompanied by Moreton, R.M. for the Division, ascended the Mambare River from its outfall in Duvira Bay to its highest navigable point, a few miles above Tamata creek. What are now known as the Mambare and Duvira Bay, were originally named by Admiral Moresby the Clyde and Traitor’s Bay respectively. The banks of the river were found to be fairly densely populated by a strong and warlike race of people, with whom, however, they avoided coming into hostility. Sir William discovered the existence of gold in the sand and shores of the river; and, upon his reporting that fact in the course of his official dispatch, a prospecting party of miners from Queensland was fitted out, headed by a man named Clark, to be shortly followed by another party led by Elliott, for the exploitation of the discovery.

Clark’s party arrived at Samarai, and, in spite of Moreton’s protests, went to the Mambare, where they apparently had got into friendly relations with the natives, and had employed them to assist in hauling their boat up the rapids. A short distance above Tamata the whole of the white men composing the party—with the exception of their leader Clark—left their boat with their rifles in it and walked along the bank, whilst the Mambare natives hauled her up a rapid by means of a long rope, Clark meanwhile steering the boat. Suddenly in the middle of the rapid the natives cut the rope, thereby allowing the boat to drift rapidly down stream and into the midst of a swarm of following canoes manned by armed natives, who at once launched showers of spears against Clark. The latter used his revolver for a few minutes, and then fell, pierced by a dozen spears; the remainder of his party rushed down the bank, drove off the natives by revolver fire, and, having recovered their boat, fled down stream, where they met Elliott’s party coming up. The two parties, then uniting forces, took a quite illegal and unnecessary vengeance by burning villages, cutting down cocoanut trees, and generally involving every tribe and village on the river in the murder and disturbance; having succeeded in doing this, they fled to the beach and thence south to Samarai.

Sir William MacGregor hastily proceeded to the Mambare, some fighting took place, and several arrests of natives were made, including, amongst others, one Dumai. Sir William then decided to place a police post and magistrate on the Mambare to control the miners and natives; for this work, out of the small number of officers available, not numbering twenty all told, he selected John Green. This officer was, for native affairs, absolutely the best man the service of New Guinea ever possessed; he spoke Motuan as well as a Motuan; he could speak practically every language then known in New Guinea, and he had the faculty of gaining a native people’s confidence and learning their language in quicker time than any other man I have ever met; above all, he was absolutely fearless. John Green was therefore, at this time, the most valuable man for a difficult post in the New Guinea service.

TAMATA CREEK

When Green was appointed to take charge of the Mambare, he asked that Dumai—the Mambare prisoner—should be released and recruited into the Armed Constabulary, to form a unit of his detachment for that post; this was done, and Dumai, late prisoner, became a full private of the Armed Constabulary in the Mambare detachment. From this appointment came later the tragedy of Tamata Station, for which many have been blamed, including and principally Green. It is not my wish to blame or excuse anybody, but in this matter no one other than Green was in error. As I said before, he was the best man for native affairs New Guinea possessed; he was given a difficult job, and it was therefore necessary he should have a free hand in the selection of his men; he picked his men and made a mistake; and for that error of judgment he paid with his life and the lives of many others. But Green died—as did in later years Christopher Robinson—a brave and gallant gentleman; expiating with all he had to give, his mistake and not his fault.

Green and his men were encamped at the mouth of Tamata creek on the Mambare, all the tribes along the river being in a turmoil and at heart hostile; he—as he thought—got on friendly terms with several of the villages, and employed the men about his new Station. He found that the site selected for his new post was subject to inundation, and so decided to shift it some miles inland from the river on to higher ground; accordingly, he proceeded daily with his detachment to clear the land and erect new buildings, the men accompanying him always including Dumai and marching under arms. Green forbade the villagers who worked and assisted at the Station to carry spears, clubs, or arms of any description. About a week after he had begun his new Station, Dumai came to him and said that the local natives complained that though Green expected them to show trust in him by working without arms, he did not reciprocate, as the police were always fully armed; and that, therefore, the natives were distrustful of him. Green replied that it was the order of the Government that the police should carry arms at all times, even in the Government villages; whereupon Dumai said that the confidence and trust of the Mambare people would never be gained unless they too were trusted. Green refused to allow them to carry arms on his station, but told Dumai that, as a proof of good faith, he and the detail of police accompanying him would work unarmed among the village people at the new Station site.

On the morning following this conversation Green fell-in his detachment, under his principal non-commissioned officer, Corporal Sedu, and told them that they were to accompany him to work at the new Station unarmed, and then ordered them to pile arms. Corporal Sedu protested, stating that the orders were that they—as police—were always to carry arms. Green then repeated his order, “pile arms”; about two-thirds of the men obeyed; Corporal Sedu and a few older constabulary, however, retained their rifles. Green then gave the order to march, after which he said to the men, “I see I have some brave men and some cowards; the cowards carry their arms.” Corporal Sedu halted and said, “If you say that, sir, look at this,” and flung his rifle into a bush, an example followed by the rest of the armed men. “Ah, Sedu,” said Green, “I thought I could trust you.” The whole party then proceeded to the new Station site, where some dispersed with Sedu to seek timber trees in the forest, whilst others remained to work upon the houses with Green. Suddenly upon Green and his unarmed men there fell a body of spear- and club-men, who made short work of them. Sedu, hearing what was taking place, summoned his men and marched them up to share the fate of their officer, even though he and the unarmed privates with him could easily have escaped. So fell one of New Guinea’s best officers, and a fine detachment of police.

Dumai deserted to his own people, and instructed them how—under the leadership of their chief, Bushimai—to fall upon the white miners, who had already settled on the river. These miners, however (in spite of the boasted courage of the white man, a courage I have had drummed into my ears during many weary years), upon news reaching them of the death of Green and his men, broke and fled without waiting for attack; five of them were accounted for as being butchered on the way to the coast, but probably others were killed, and Heaven alone knows how many of their native employés also. The few armed native police at Tamata who had been left in charge of the old Station, finding themselves apparently isolated and abandoned by all men, without even a non-com. in charge, marched for the coast, picking up and saving on the way several native carriers. The evidence of these fine men was the only coherent evidence I got at the inquiry. Had but one of that panic-stricken lot of miners had the pluck to rally his mates, go to the Station, and take charge of the remainder of the police, all of them might have been saved; as it was, they fled like curs, and afterwards howled for a bloody vengeance against the Mambare people.

BUSHIMAI, CHIEF OF THE BINANDERE PEOPLE

Green’s head was cut off and carried away as a trophy, and his body buried; not one of the bodies of the white men were eaten, though some of those of the police and carriers were. One miner climbed a tree near Duvira village and, being discovered there, was stoned from the tree and clubbed to death by children. A party of five miners and some of their boys drifted out to sea on a raft, with neither food nor water, except a tin of treacle; after seven days they were picked up by a German man-of-war, and taken to Sydney. Eight years later, I found Green’s cook living amongst a tribe upon the north-east coast, by whom he had been adopted, and one of whose women he had married. Many of the facts of the massacre I heard, a number of years afterwards, from some of the natives concerned in it, who were—as quite reformed characters—serving under me in the Armed Constabulary.

News of the affair at last drifted through to Moreton at Samarai; he first sent a vessel with the report to Port Moresby, and left for the Mambare in the Siai, accompanied by a miner named Alexander Elliott. The tidings were longer in reaching the Governor than they should have been, as the vessel carrying them encountered head winds all the way; and a duplicate dispatch, sent by Moreton overland, was delayed for some days at a village en route by a presumptuous and thick-headed Samoan teacher of the London Missionary Society. When Moreton arrived at the Mambare, he ascended the river in a whaleboat to the point where Green had been killed, the natives using against him on several occasions the rifles they had taken at the Station; for these, however, they had already expended most of the ammunition, and were at the best extremely bad shots. Finding that nothing was to be done at the Station, and that some miners, seven days’ journey further inland, were safe, Moreton returned to the Siai to await the arrival of the Governor. During Moreton’s absence some of the crew had taken the dingey ashore for firewood, and being suddenly surprised by the natives, had rushed into the sea and swam off to the Siai. Sione and Warapas, the coxswain and mate, had then placed their rifles in a cask and swum ashore, pushing it in front of them; when able to get a footing on the bottom, they had used their rifles against the men on the beach, and recovered the dingey. This action on the part of the two boys strikes one as an extremely plucky one, when one remembers that both sharks and alligators haunt the waters of Duvira Bay.

Sir William MacGregor now appeared upon the scene; his patrols of constabulary swept the country from the Opi River to the north, as far as the Gira to the south of the Mambare; and the Ruby launch patrolled the river. Clark’s murderers and Dumai, together with Bushimai, his sons and a number of principal offenders, were captured: it became a question with the natives whether they were to surrender, fight, or flee from the river beyond the reach of the patrols, and after a time most of them decided to take refuge in flight. Shanahan and a fresh detachment of constabulary were stationed at Tamata, the miners returned to their work, and a fresh start was made; but a breach had been opened between Europeans and natives that it was to take many years to heal, and was also to lead to a great deal more bloodshed. The only man in New Guinea who would have been able to deal with the situation now existing—other than the Governor himself—was John Green; and he had gone where miners and natives alike worry not. The Northern Division was destined for many years to prove the death of a long succession of officers or, at the best, the grave of their reputations. Shanahan, Armit, Lynch, Park, Close, and Walker were to die; whilst several others were either dismissed or called upon to resign. Many officers in later years preferred to resign rather than be sent there.

TAMATA STATION

CHAPTER X

The night before I sailed from Samarai, Sione came to me and told me that he had recently been married, and that Moreton had promised to allow him to take his wife on the next round trip of the Siai; he also asked a like permission for Warapas. I remarked, that if Moreton had given leave I had no objection, and that if one woman came, I saw no reason why two should not. “Very good, sir,” said Sione; “if you have no objection, Warapas will get up anchor and take the Siai out when you are ready, and a new boy, who signed on to-day, will act as mate; I will go off in a canoe and pick up my wife and Mrs. Warapas, and come on board as you go through the passage, since the tide will not allow me to come back.” To this I consented, telling Sione to order Warapas to send a boat off for me at midnight, when the tide served.

Night and eleven o’clock came, my books, papers, and private stores were sent off to the Siai, when Poruma—Moreton’s private attendant who had been handed over to me during his absence—said, “You have no whisky on board, sir.” Accordingly I went up to Billy’s pub to buy some; emerging from there, with a bottle of whisky clasped in each hand, I encountered a boat’s crew from the Siai, and the newly signed-on acting mate. That potentate gazed at my bottles and me, and then commanded his boat’s crew to seize me and take me on board; protests, curses, and threats were unavailing; seized I was, held firmly, dragged on board, and shoved down into my cabin, to be joined the next moment by a frightfully angry and protesting Poruma. “What the devil is the meaning of this, Poruma?” I demanded. “I don’t know, sir, I think the new mate is mad.” The cabin door was locked, and I cursed through the ports, while Poruma abused the crew in Suau and threatened the vengeance to come. Slowly the Siai dropped down the harbour, until a canoe scraped alongside and Coxswain Sione came on board, and in a moment the cabin scuttle was unfastened and Poruma and I released. Foaming with rage, I paraded the crew on deck and demanded an explanation of the outrage, which was explained in this way: the acting mate had served in a trading vessel at Thursday Island, where his master was in the habit of getting beastly drunk on the eve of sailing, and refusing then to come on board; and he always instructed a boat’s crew to land, dodge about outside the pub, and carry him on board whether he liked it or not. Going ashore with a crew to fetch me, he had been told by Poruma that I had gone to the pub; he had followed me there and, seeing me emerge with two bottles of whisky in my hands, had concluded that his old Thursday Island custom was to be carried out. My violence, threats, and curses he had taken as quite in the natural order of events. I listened to the explanation, and then gently suggested that the acting mate should spend the next two days at the mast-head; Poruma said he ought to be ironed and put in the hold, as his violent action had prevented him from telling me that there was no soap on board. “Where is the ship’s soap, Sione?” I asked. “That has nothing to do with my private stores.” “Mr. Moreton,” said Sione, “met plenty ships and plenty dirty men; when a dirty man came on board the Siai, Mr. Moreton would say as he left, ‘take this with my compliments,’ and give him a bar of soap. I suppose Mr. Moreton or Poruma forgot to tell you that it was all done.”

At Dobu I landed and called on the Rev. William Bromilow; as both he and Mrs. Bromilow had spent many years engaged in missionary work among the islands and were great friends of Moreton’s, he acted as a sort of bureau of information in regard to the native affairs of Normanby and Ferguson Islands. He nearly always had a long list of native crimes for one to investigate, principally murder, sorcery and adultery; the two latter, unless promptly attended to, invariably ended in the former. Bromilow gave me word of the man Ryan, and some particulars as to where I could find the native witnesses to the murder, which he had been reported as having committed; off accordingly I went, and arrested him.

The affair shortly was this. Ryan and his mate had been prospecting Normanby Island for gold: having no luck, they had gone to a native village and endeavoured to hire a canoe and some natives to take them to Dobu, where they hoped to find a vessel bound for Samarai. The natives undertook to take them there, “to-morrow”; several days passed and it was still always, “to-morrow.” The two white men became angry, thinking that the natives were merely fooling them and keeping them hanging on for what they could get in the shape of tobacco and “trade.” Accordingly Ryan had gone to a canoe that was lying on the beach and threatened that, unless the natives launched it at once and took them to Dobu, he would break it up; it was explained to him that the owners of that canoe were away and therefore it could not be used. Ryan refused to believe the natives and began to smash it with a tomahawk; at once a native, armed also with a tomahawk, rushed at him to protect the canoe. Ryan then drew his revolver and shot the man. I committed him to the Central Court for trial; and, not wishing to carry him and his mate about with me on the Siai, decided to run back to Samarai and lodge him in the gaol, pending the arrival of the Chief Justice.

Hardly had the Siai dropped anchor in Samarai harbour, than Symons came running down the beach yelling, “The Mambare men in the gaol have broken loose; they have cleared out the warders and are now armed with crowbars and picks. For God’s sake hurry up!” Hastily I ran up to the gaol, followed by my armed boat’s crew, and in a few minutes we had the Mambare men in irons. Then I sent for Armit, to ask his advice as to what I should do with them. “Flog the ringleader and keep the lot in irons,” said Armit; “there is nothing else to be done.” The following morning, as visiting Justice to the gaol, I held an inquiry into the whole affair, the result of which was that I ordered Goria, the murderer of Clark, and Bushimai, who were responsible for the outbreak, each to receive six lashes with a “cat of nine tales.” This being done, and Ryan having been safely lodged in gaol, I sailed again for Dobu and the Trobriands.

At Dobu I learnt from Bromilow that Fellows needed me badly, and so went straight on to the Trobriands. One morning at daybreak, when the Siai was about twenty miles away from the group, Sione came to my cabin and said, “The Eboa is in sight, sir.” I went on deck and sighted Graham’s old tub about five miles distant, and palpably endeavouring to dodge away from us. “Chase, Sione,” I said. “Give the Siai all she can carry.” It was a dirty morning, with a rough sea and nasty fierce rain squalls at intervals. Until the Eboa was sighted we had been dodging along under mizzen, staysail and jib only; Sione—who was at all times only too pleased to carry on—at once set mainsail and topsails, and the Siai, with her lee rail under water, tore after the Eboa as if she liked it. We began rapidly to overhaul her, while the wretched Eboa tried every point of sailing in an effort to escape. “Look, sir,” said Sione, “a guba to windward.” A guba is a fierce blinding rain squall, very narrow in width—sometimes only half a mile and seldom more than three miles—tearing its own track across the sea, and rarely lasting more than half an hour to an hour in duration. I looked at the guba, then I looked at the wriggling Eboa, still carrying every possible stitch of her ragged canvas. “Carry on, coxswain,” I said; “it would be a disgrace for the Government ship to shorten sail while that old tub carries it.” Whish! came the guba; on her beam ends went the Siai; bang! bang! bang! went topsail, staysail and mainsail; and, amidst the devil’s own din, we brought the crippled Siai up into the wind, hove-to, and began to clear away our wreckage. Nothing was to be seen more than fifty yards away in the blinding rain and spray torn from the tops of the waves by the squall. “God help the Eboa,” I said to myself, “for she must have gone to Kingdom come.”

As we worked at our wreckage, the guba passed as swiftly as it had come, and when the sky cleared we sighted the Eboa uninjured, still carrying all sail, the squall having missed her altogether. While we watched her, she apparently became aware of the crippled state of the Siai, for she suddenly went about and stood down to us; when within hailing distance Graham jumped on her rail and hailed: “Black Maria, are you in any danger?” “No,” I yelled back, “but there is a fine big bill for sails, thanks to you.” “All right, good-bye, this is no place for me;” and away went Graham, while the Siai proceeded to crawl into the Trobriands. I did not again fall in with Graham for many months, by which time he had paid his debts and the summonses had been withdrawn. When I did fall in with him, however, there still remained the matter of the anchor and chain. “Touching the matter of that anchor and chain,” I remarked. “There will be nothing further said about it by either Moreton or myself; that matter is settled once for all, after the way you stood down to my assistance in the guba, knowing well that, even if you helped me, I should have been obliged to serve the summonses on you and haul you into Samarai to answer to them, and that if I discovered the Government anchor and chain in your ship, I should also have had to jug you. I have reported the gear as lost, and if there is any further fuss, either Moreton or I will pay for them; but I want to know whether you really did collar them?” “If nothing further is to be said,” replied Graham, “I don’t mind telling you that I did take them. By the time I had refitted the Eboa, I was up to my eyes in debt to the stores; and they—knowing that they had the security of my boat whilst in Samarai—would not sell me an anchor and chain, for fear of my clearing out to German New Guinea and leaving them in the lurch. I always meant to pay my debts to them, but I couldn’t do it while the Eboa was tied up in Samarai; I would not steal the gear from a trader who could ill spare it, but I thought the Government could well afford an anchor and chain for an enterprising pioneer. Accordingly, one night I quietly sailed alongside the Siai, when only a few of her crew were on board, and sending a couple of my boys to her with a concertina and a supply of betel-nut, they wiled her anchor watch into going into the forecastle. I then unshackled the Siai’s chain at her windlass, fastened it on to my own, and—as the Siai drifted away—got my own boys back on board, lifted the anchor and went out to sea. The rest of the story you know; but, as a matter of fact, when you chased me, the Siai’s anchor and chain were the only ones I possessed. Now they are at the bottom of the sea, for as soon as I had money enough to pay my debts and buy some gear, I let her anchor and chain go in deep water.” I only met Graham again once or twice, but he afterwards took an appointment under some German prospecting company, and was killed in German New Guinea.

VILLAGE IN THE TROBRIAND ISLANDS

At last the Siai came to anchor off Kavitari, and I called upon the Rev. —— Fellows, and asked him what all the trouble was about. The first thing was, that there had been an epidemic of some sort among the natives, scores had died, and been buried a few inches below the surface in the houses of the village; truly the stench was appalling. The village was situated only a few score yards from the Mission house. I sent for the village constable, and demanded what he meant by allowing burials in the village. “I cannot do anything with the people,” replied the village constable; “they will not listen to the wise orders of the Government or the good advice of the missionary.” “He is a liar,” said Poruma; “make him dig up the corpses and put them in the cemetery. That man has got ten wives, and is always gammoning Mr. Moreton; some of his relations are buried in his own house.” “Is this village constable to be altogether trusted?” I asked Mr. Fellows. “No,” was the reply; “I regret to say that he gives me more trouble than any one else, and shelters himself under the protection of the Government and his office.” “Then, Mr. Fellows,” I said, “I should be greatly obliged if you would send off your Mission boat to the Siai, to carry a messenger from me, who will instruct Sione to land all available men, whilst I pay a visit to the v.c.’s house.” Poruma told the v.c. that we were going to his house, and he at once tried to make excuses to leave, upon the ground that he wished the village and his house cleaned up to a fitting state to receive me. “Don’t let him go,” said Poruma; “the last time we were here, he got ten pounds of tobacco from Mr. Moreton to buy yams with, and then got called away to see a sick mother.” Poruma then kindly leading the v.c. by the hand, we proceeded to his house; there—as Poruma had said—we found several bodies just beneath the floor, which the v.c. swore must have been placed there without his knowledge.

Going along through the village, Poruma still kindly leading the v.c. by the hand, we found everywhere freshly buried bodies. Mr. Fellows, who had at first accompanied me, then, at my request, went back to the Mission house, for the village was now swarming like a hive of angry bees. Sione, Warapas and a dozen armed men having by this time made their appearance, I ordered the v.c. to tell the villagers at once to disinter their dead and bury them in the cemetery. For a few minutes we were defied, but the police—mercilessly using the butts of their rifles on the heels and bare toes of the men—made them see reason, and drove them to the graves, where they were compelled to gather up the rotting remains of the corpses in baskets, and carry them to the cemetery. Once, and once only, they turned nasty; but Warapas immediately withdrew a boat’s crew and, before half a dozen levelled rifles, the Kavitari men funked. That exhuming of bodies was altogether a sickening and disgusting business, for matter and beastliness dripped the whole time from the baskets, and carriers, police and myself were seized by periodical fits of vomiting.

Having cleaned up the village, I again visited Mr. Fellows and asked him what his further troubles were. I found they were mainly due to the influence of the old paramount chief of the islands, Enamakala, who lived some ten miles inland, and who instigated thefts from the Mission and attacks upon the teachers. Plainly it was necessary for me to deal with the old chief, but I knew that, if I marched inland with an armed force, there would be a lot of bloodshed and the chief would escape; if I left, however, without doing anything, he would become bolder, and the position of the Mission after my departure would be an impossible one.

Accordingly, accompanied by Poruma and Warapas, I went off to his village, first sending one of the local natives ahead to tell him I was coming. Poruma wore Moreton’s revolver under his jumper, and I, a couple of revolvers under a loose shirt: Warapas carried my gun, for the ostensible purpose of shooting pigeons, but had a supply of ball cartridges in his pouch. For fighting in scrub, a double-barrelled fowling piece with ball is just as effective as a rifle—shot, of course, is not much use against men carrying thick shields. Passing through the numerous villages on the way to the centre one, where the old chief lived, I noticed everywhere fresh graves under the houses, and found there were large numbers of the villagers sick and dying from dysentery. Arriving at my destination, I found the chief seated on a sort of raised platform, surrounded by at least two hundred men, who all set up a tremendous clamour as I walked up to him. “Tell him, Poruma, that I have come to have a little friendly conversation with him,” I said, as I climbed up on to the platform alongside old Enamakala, who was an enormously fat man with a shaved and shining head. Poruma told him what I said, and he replied that it was good and he was pleased to see me. Then he wanted to know why Warapas and Poruma did not stoop half-double before him as did his own people. “Because they serve the great white Queen whom the Governor told you about,” I replied, “and stoop before no man.” Old Enamakala gave me some fruit, and I presented him with some cigarettes; then we settled down to business. First of all I asked him to make his people stop yelling, as it was not fitting that our conversation should be carried on in such a babel; a sort of grand vizier person, with a face like a fowl, screeched at the crowd and the noise fell to a murmur. The chief suddenly bent over to me and ran his hands over my waist; as they came in contact with the pistol butts he smiled knowingly at me and said: “That is good. Poruma, tell your master I wanted to know whether he was fool enough to walk the bush paths unarmed.” Poruma told him, that as an act of politeness to him I had covered up my arms (great always was the cheek of Poruma), as I did not wish to make him nervous, but that now, as we were on such friendly terms, I should wear them openly. Accordingly I slipped my hand inside my shirt, unhooked my belt and fastened it on again outside, Poruma doing the same.

Then, through Poruma, I told him the Government was exceedingly displeased with him for allowing his people to steal from the Mission, and for threatening the teachers with spears; also for permitting the burial of the dead in the villages, and for refusing to send the children to school. Then I demanded that some six men, whose names the missionary had given me as having behaved in a particularly outrageous manner, should be given up; also that he should come out with me to the coast and attend at the Court, at which I should punish the wrongdoers, as a sign that he supported the authority of the Government. The chief said he did not want to go to the coast, and that he did not know where the men were. “If I don’t get the men I want,” I said, “I shall keep you in gaol until I do get them; as for coming to the coast, you must do that, whether you like it or not; I promise you safety and release when I get them.” The devil’s own clatter was set up by the natives at this, but Poruma yelled at them to shut up. “Tell the chief, Poruma, that I have twelve lives at my belt, and if there is any hostility, I’ll blow a hole through him as a start.” Old Enamakala said, that he would not have seen me, if he had known I was going to treat him in such a fashion. “Tell the old reprobate, Poruma, that I know he thought he was safe, when he heard there were only three of us coming; and that I also knew, that if I had come with a strong force, he would have slipped into the bush, and set his people chucking spears.” The chief argued and protested for some time; then he said that he would come in his own palanquin, as he was fat, and also that it was not dignified for him to walk so far. “You tell him that the Governor is the biggest chief in New Guinea, and he walked right across the island, so that he can walk to the coast. I walk first, then he comes, then follow you and Warapas, and Enamakala can have as many men as he likes bringing up the rear.” The chief grumbled and complained, but at last we set off in the order named, with Heaven only knows how many hundred men following us, and the women all howling behind. Half an hour after we started on our journey to the coast, a messenger caught us up and told me that the six men I wanted were coming after us to surrender themselves.

Half-way to the coast, we got one bad fright, for a terrific yelling broke out ahead of us and was taken up by the men behind. The chief gabbled excitedly to his followers, whilst I held him affectionately by the arm with one hand, and ostentatiously displayed a heavy revolver in the other. “Ask him what the devil all the racket is about, Poruma.” Then we found that a large body of natives was preceding us, warning the villagers, that they were not to interfere in what was taking place; this party had come into contact with a couple of boats’ crews from the Siai, whom Sione, getting nervous, had dispatched after me. I sent Warapas off with one of the chief’s followers to bring the Siai’s men to me, and told Enamakala that there was nothing to get excited about, as it was only an escort coming up to accompany me home in fitting state. When we arrived at the Mission Station, I found the six offenders whom I wanted, sitting outside, they having made a detour in the bush and passed us on the way. “Good Heavens!” called out Mrs. Fellows to her husband as I entered the Mission grounds, “here comes the great Enamakala, following Mr. Monckton like a little dog!” “Mrs. Fellows,” I remarked, “if you want to make a lifelong friend of the old fellow, you will give him some sugary tea at once, for he has walked further and faster than ever in his life before. He is not a bad old chap when you know the way to treat him.” The chief spent the night on board the Siai: I reassured him by permitting about twenty of his people to sleep on board also.

On the following morning I held a session of the district court at the Mission house, and sentenced the six offenders to varying terms of imprisonment. The chief at once became very friendly with the missionary, and begged him to intercede with me for the men, saying that if Mr. Fellows could get them let off, he would help the Mission in every possible way. Mr. Fellows accordingly begged me to let them go again, and I like a fool consented, thinking that I should encourage friendly relations, and at the same time save the Government the expense of six prisoners; but later, when the Governor heard what I had done, he gave me—as I have previously mentioned—a severe lecture for permitting the Mission to interfere with the course of justice. The old chief then made me a present of his own carved lime spoon; I told him that I should like to make him a return present, but that I did not know what to give him—the trade in pearls had filled his villages with tomahawks, print, trade goods, etc., and really I had nothing to give that he did not possess already. “I have not got a knife to cut off my hair with, such as that you used this morning,” he said; therefore I conferred upon him my razor, strop, and brush, with a couple of bars of yellow soap, which I got from the Mission. Old Enamakala was much pleased with the gift, and, when we parted, he swore there should be no further burials in the villages, or harrying of the missionaries.

At the Trobriands more outward and visible signs of respect were paid to the chiefs than I have met with in any other part of New Guinea. The old paramount chief never walked, but was always carried in a palanquin borne on the backs of men, and was invariably accompanied by his sorcerer and a sort of grand vizier. Before the old chief, women crawled on their bellies, and men bent almost to the ground.

I have lately received from Dr. Seligman, F.R.S., a book written by him entitled, “The Melanesians of British New Guinea,” in which he flatly contradicts a statement made by Sir William MacGregor that Enamakala was the paramount chief of this group of islands. Dr. Seligman is a personal friend of my own, and a man of world-wide celebrity as an authority upon anthropology, and he is a man to whose views, in most cases, I should immediately defer; but, in this instance, I have no hesitation in saying that he is not right.

Sir William MacGregor’s statement was quite correct; he is not a man in the habit of making rash assertions upon hearsay evidence. Moreton knew the Trobriand Islands better than any man either before or since, and he always held that undoubtedly Enamakala was paramount chief. I, when acting for Moreton, never had occasion to doubt this fact, and never met a chief who disputed his position as such; in fact, I myself have seen the chiefs stooping before him and paying homage. Certainly after his death, “Christianized” chiefs, under the influence of the Mission, declared that his successor had no authority over them, as did also other chiefs holding Government authority as village constables; but before the domination of Government and the influence of the Mission were established, there is no doubt Enamakala was supreme.

Elaborately carved and painted shields and spears of heavy ebony were the arms of offence and defence of the Trobriand Islanders; both plainly showing, by their exaggeration of design and size, that long since, this people had finished with fighting or war as a serious thing. Broad-bladed wooden clubs, shaped like a Roman sword or a Turkish scimitar, were also carried; but all alike showed, from their fantastic carving and shape, that beauty of pattern and design had been far more considered by the makers than effectiveness as weapons. The Trobriand people, or rather their sorcerers, had brought poisoning to a fine art, using as their most deadly poison the gall of a certain species of fish.

The Trobriand people acquired so many steel tools from their trade in pearls, that afterwards, the astute German Harry made a good haul in money by purchasing back from the natives—for tobacco—hundreds of axes, adzes, and tomahawks, which he then sold to miners bound for the Mambare, or traders working at other islands where the steel tools still possessed a very high value. Leaving the Trobriands I fell in with his vessel, the Galatea, and held an inquiry into the death of one of his crew; he, however, came out of it with a clean sheet, and was rather aggrieved at the Government considering it necessary to watch him so closely. Harry’s vessel was loaded with native sago, cocoanuts, tobacco, and a deck cargo of pigs, which he was going to exchange for pearls. Parting with him, the Siai sighted and chased a cutter, but the people on board her apparently had bad consciences, for she fled over a reef where the water was too shallow for the Siai to follow, and disappeared into the night.

At Wagipa we caught Patten, and I committed him to the Central Court for trial for shooting a native during a quarrel; we also took with us his native wife, Satadeai, and half a dozen native witnesses of the shooting affray. The Siai left Wagipa towing Patten’s boat—a thing little bigger than a whaleboat, and hitherto manned solely by Patten and his wife. As we stood across the Straits between Ferguson and Goodenough Islands, the look-out at our mast-head reported a large canoe, crowded with men, and apparently trying to dodge out of our way. The Siai ran down to the canoe before a strong breeze; she came from the northern coast of Goodenough Island, but we found nothing suspicious in her; so, after exchanging a few sticks of tobacco for fish, we went on our way.

Night, a strong south-easter and rough seas came together; by morning we were still battling against the head wind, in much the same place as we had been on the previous evening. Again the look-out reported a canoe; this time a small out-rigger, struggling in the big seas, with but a single man in it. To the canoe went the Siai, only to find the man half paralysed by fright and exhaustion; time and again we got within a few yards, yelled at him and threw ropes, but all he would do was to look straight ahead and mechanically keep, with his paddles, his tiny craft’s head to the waves. The sea was too rough for us to drop a boat, but at last, sailing close to the canoe, Poruma and Warapas—secured by ropes round their waists—leapt into the sea and fastened a rope round the stranger and his canoe, whereupon we hauled the lot on board together. We found the native to be a Ferguson Islander, who had been taken by surprise and blown out to sea by the squalls of the previous night. The man at first was greatly relieved and overjoyed at finding himself safe on the Siai; then, when warmed and fed, he got in a funk that we should carry him away with us, as others of his people had been carried off by strange vessels. “Take me to my home,” he said, “and I will give you pigs or women, yams and sweet potatoes.” Satadeai told him we did not want his gifts, but would safely land him at his village when the weather permitted; also that I should be pleased if he would induce his friends to sell us all the yams and sweet potatoes they did not require. The Siai then put in three uncomfortable days, waiting for the weather to moderate sufficiently to permit us to land the man; then land him we did, and that was the last we saw of either him or his yams.

We learnt one thing, however, from his village friends and relations, namely, that the large canoe we had spoken the day before we picked him up, had been to Ferguson on a cannibal raid, where they had captured and eaten several people. I groaned as I thought how I had had that canoe full of malefactors in my hands, and had let them go; I also thought of the delightful story they would be able to tell in the villages. Poruma said, “Mr. Moreton would have known; he would not have let that canoe go. Mr. Moreton, he——” What Moreton would have done, I don’t know, as Poruma was asked to go to the mast-head and wait there until I needed him. Poruma at times was trying to the nerves! From here we sailed for Samarai.

CHAPTER XI

While we were at Samarai, I put Patten to work re-rigging the Siai. When Sir William MacGregor arrived, he gently hinted that he rather thought I must have caught Patten for the express purpose of refitting the Siai, a remark that I thought was better passed over in dignified silence!

Hardly had the Siai dropped her anchor, when in came a cutter owned by Thompson—the man owning the plantation on Goodenough Island—who reported that his Station had been surprised, and many of his native employees murdered by the islanders. Thompson himself only escaped by the accident of being engaged with some of his boys in night fishing on a reef when the attack occurred. Hastily, therefore, the Siai prepared for her departure to Goodenough Island once more; Thompson refused to accompany us, upon the ground that he had escaped once, and never wished to see the island or its inhabitants again.

Before leaving Samarai, I had to hear several cases set down for trial at the R.M.’s Court; among which were charges against Billy the Cook and Carruth of supplying natives with grog. The Ordinance, under which the cases were heard, was the first act passed by Sir William MacGregor, upon his Excellency assuming control of New Guinea, and was probably the most severe act of its kind in the world. It provided a minimum fine of £20 or two months’ imprisonment, and a maximum one of £200 and two years’ imprisonment, for any person convicted of supplying firearms, liquor or opium to a native. It defined a native, as any person other than of European parentage. The Emperors of China or Japan, or the Rajahs of India would be natives under the act; Sir William MacGregor was nothing if not thorough, and when he said that the natives should not have liquor, he left no loop-hole of escape for the person found guilty of supplying it.

Up to the time I left New Guinea, this act was always very strictly enforced; so much so, in fact, that hotel-keepers would not even supply ginger ale to a coloured man, for fear of having to defend themselves against a charge of liquor selling; and this is exactly what I found had occurred. Billy the Cook had imported a wife and a sister-in-law to help in the hotel; his sister-in-law, being ignorant of the local law, had sold a glass of something to a Malay over the bar, and a native boy passing, saw him drinking it and told Symons, who promptly charged Billy with a breach of the act. A nice time I had with this case; Billy, of course, swore he knew nothing about the matter, the girl and his wife wept and contradicted themselves half a dozen times over, and the Malay said he had bought ginger ale. My difficulty chiefly lay in the fact, that should I convict, the minimum penalty was too great for an innocent mistake; so at last I threw the case out of Court. Carruth’s case came on next. The evidence here was clear, but he tried to wriggle out of it, by saying that he had merely supplied the stuff for medicinal purposes; that was a little too thin, as the Malays all looked as tough as wire rope. I forget what I fined Carruth, but it was something heavy. “I am going to appeal,” he remarked; “I believe you think you are here to raise revenue for the Government.” “There is no appeal under this act,” I replied, “and if you are not careful you will get a little more; if, however, you are dissatisfied, you can petition his Excellency for a reduction or remission of the fine.” Carruth did petition the Governor, and I heard afterwards that the reply he got from the Government Secretary was, “I am directed to express his Excellency’s surprise at your petition and the leniency of the Magistrate.”

Under this act, a Resident Magistrate was empowered to issue an annual permit, to a “native,” to keep and use fire-arms; and in the case of a “native” possessing a greater proportion of white than coloured blood—in order to avoid individual hardship—a permit could be granted to purchase intoxicating liquors.

The Siai now sailed again for Goodenough Island, calling on the way for Satadeai, who was needed as an interpreter. Carefully picking our way among the shoals of the north-east coast of Goodenough, we at last dropped anchor abreast of Thompson’s Station and plantation. Here we found that the bodies of the murdered men had been buried by the natives, not eaten as I expected; and the house, though looted, had not been burnt. On this trip I had with me the Queensland boys—Billy, Harry, and Palmer—who had latterly formed the crew of the Guinevere, as I intended to use them as trackers. From the plundered house we found tracks of natives leading in a northerly direction; these we followed until we came to a village, the tracks leading into which were thickly sown with small sharpened foot spears, pointing in the direction from which we came; picking these out as we passed, we at last came to within a hundred yards of the village—apparently unperceived by the natives—and, rushing it, secured two men. The remainder bolted, and set up a clamour in the bush some distance away; dragging our two unwilling prisoners with us, we hastily returned to the Siai, reaching that vessel unattacked. Safely on board I examined the men, and found that the village from which we had captured them was innocent of complicity in the murders; they, however, were able to give me the names of the actual murderers and the inland villages from which they came.