^\\s dlorneU Intucrsity Hihrarg attfaca, Htm fork BOUGHT A'lTH T H (T INCOME OF THE FISKE ENDOWMENT FUND THE BEQUEST OF WILLARD FISKE LIBRARIAN OF THE UNIVERSITY 1868-1883 1905 Digitized by Microsoft® This book was digitized by Microsoft Corporation in cooperation witli Cornell University Libraries, 2007. You may use and print this copy in limited quantity for your personal purposes, but may not distribute or provide access to it (or modified or partial versions of it) for revenue-generating or other commercial purposes. Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® Pi < i 1) ,) ' DigKized by Microsoft® ^ o ■J \ TO MY ONE TIME COLLEAGUES AND FOR ALL TIME FRIENDS. Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® PREFACE. HAvnsTG always felt a deep interest in the dark races, I was naturally anxious to visit Papua, and eventually my opportunity came in a manner totally unexpected and by a path hedged with responsibility; the Prime Minister of the Common- wealth Government asking me to accept the position of Chairman of a Royal Commission brought into being (to quote the letters patent) " to inquire into and report upon the present con- ditions, including the methods of Government, of the territory now known as British New Guinea, and the best means for their improvement." My colleagues, under either of whom I take this opportunity of stating I would have considered it an honour to serve, were William Edward Parry- Okeden, Esq., I.S.O., a gentleman who had held high official positions, including that of Chief Commissioner of Police in Queensland, and who, in addition to a matured departmental knowledge, had long and intimate experience both of our native races and the Kanaka problem, and Charles Edward Herbert, Esq., at one time Member for, and now Judge and Resident of, our vast Northern Digitized by Microsoft® VI PREFACE Territory, and consequently of necessity, as well as by virtue of his exceptional powers of observation, closely conversant with tropical and aboriginal conditions. Thus the Commissioners were drawn from parts of Australia, hundreds (in the case of Judge Herbert thousands) of miles apart, and, as a not unnatural consequence, were aU personally unknown to each other, when on 27th August, 1906, his Excellency Lord Northcote, Governor- Greneral of the Commonwealth of Australia, signed the letters patent giving them official status as the Papuan Royal Commission. The causes which led up to this step on the part of the then Government were many and complex, and appear to me to have had their roots in a period somewhat remote from the present. Prior to 1883 more or less irresponsible exploring and gold prospecting expeditions fired alike the imaginations and the cupidity of adven- turous spirits with their accounts of its mineral richness and tropical beauty ; but in that year Sir Thomas Mcllwraith, Premier of Queensland, lifted Papua into the domain of political and national problems by annexing it to Queensland, giving, among other reasons for his statesmanlike action, this unanswerable one, " That the establishment of a foreign Power in the neighbourhood of Australia would be injurious to British, and more particularly to Australian, interests." Digitized by Microsoft® PREFACE vn Unfortunately, the Imperial authorities pro- fessed to think otherwise — possibly, they did not take the trouble to think at all — or it may be that Australian interests were as yet of too Uttle im- portance to weigh against possible friction nearer home. Be that as it may, the net result to Australia is the presence of a great foreign and naval Power (which to-day seems to have the whole British Empire in a condition of watchful- ness) within a week's steam of her sea-board. In 1884 a British Protectorate was proclaimed over part of New Guinea ; and on September 4th, 1888, the Administrator, Dr. McGregor, officially declared this portion to be a British possession. The name of Sir Wilham McGregor will ever be remembered in connection with New Guinea as that of a ruler who combined, both as regards natives and whites, firmness with justice; and under him an official system began which did far better work than might reasonably have been expected, when some of the material he had to work on is considered. It is hard to make bricks without straw ; yet, officially and financially, that is practically what successive Administrators have been asked to do, from the days of the Protectorate down to the advent of the Royal Commission. Why McGregor stood alone lay in the fact that he rose in the main superior to adverse conditions, and proved that it was possible to do fine work Digitized by Microsoft® vm PREFACE with a staff in the main more or less hopeless, although certainly leavened by one or two highly capable and self-sacrificing officers. With his departure, antagonistic elements in the public service, held in check by his commanding personality, gradually began to re-awaken until the officials of the Territory practically lived in two hostUe camps. Meanwhile the problem of white settlement slowly but surely began to assert its claims to more consideration than it had received in the past. Rightly or wrongly, many of the white population held that under the Crown Colony regime, and also under that of the Commonwealth, Papua had been, and was being, governed solely as a close preserve for the native race, and that little or no attention was given by officials to agricultural or mineral development — indeed that white settlement was discouraged rather than welcomed. Rumours of ofl&cial friction, of interminable delays in land matters, and of civil discontent with existing conditions roused the attention of certain members of the Federal Parliament; questions were asked on the floor of the House, and eventually on July 4th, 1906, Captain F. R. Barton, the Administrator, wrote to the Prime Minister asking for the appointment of a Royal Commission. This course was adopted by the Government on the 27th of August, 1906, but Digitized by Microsoft® PREFACE IX whether in response to his request or for other reasons I naturally have no knowledge. Accompanied by the Commission's secretary — '■ Mr. Herbert Harris — .1 sailed from Sydney on the s.s. Guthrie on the 1st of September, 1906, being joined by Mr. Parry-Okeden at Brisbane and Judge Herbert at Cairns. At Cairns we tran- shipped to the Malaita, arriving at Port Moresby, the ofl&cial capital of Papua, on Thmrsday the 13th of September, 1906. From then on till we reached Brisbane on December 6th, 1906, we sailed round the whole coastline, and visited all the important groups of the territory, including a march from Buna Bay across the island and over the Owen Stanley Hange to Port Moresby. Evidence was taken on the Merrie England, in mission houses, stores, government stations, on the diggings, and in the open on the crest of a mountain 5,000 feet above the sea — one of our camps on the overland trip. This, of necessity, meant that I had to scribble down the following impressions after the day's work was done, in all sorts of places, and at aU sorts of times, which must be my excuse for their sketchy character and want of continuity of purpose. I have naturally not touched on the real work of the Commission — that wiU be found in the Official Report — and wherever I have brought Digitized by Microsoft® X PREFACE officials into the story of our wanderings it has been to speak of them as I found them, by the camp-fire, and on the march, and quite irrespective of the standpoint of a Commissioner. Kenneth Mackay. Legislative Council, Sydney, July 26th, 1909. Digitized by Microsoft® CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. SYDNEY TO PORT MORESBY. PAGE The Popular View of Papua — I Board the Good Ship Guthrie — The Life a Sailor Yearns for — Far Hills are Ever Green — I Meet a Colleague — Inside the Barrier Reef — Whitsunday Pass — ^Townsville — Why Bustle ? — Our Trinity is Completed — A Man of Many Parts — Cairns — ^North Queensland Hill Station — The Barron Falls — ^Our New Com- ptmy — Cooktown — ^No Man's Enemy but His Own — Papuan Patriotism — Papua Rises from the Sea - - - 1 CHAPTER II. POET MORESBY — ^PAST AND PRESENT. Port Moresby — Papua's First Explorers — Sir Thomas Mcllwraith's Annexation — ^Murderers as Porters — " George " — A Unique Gaol — Two Native Villages — ^The Sago Lakatois — ^Where One Who Deserved a Better Fate Died — Among the Villages — The First Convert — In Front of the Camera — The Legion of "The Great and Gracious Tree" — Our Fiery Steeds^Matrimonial Disabilities — A Native Dandy — A Painting from Nature's Gallery — A Papuan Sunset - 13 CHAPTER III. PORT MORESBY TO KBRBPtTNA — ^RTTBBER PLANTING AND CHRISTIANITY. The Merrie England — Kapa Kapa — Rigo — The Finest House in Papua — Novel Methods of Defence — A Charming Alternative — ^The Village of Hula — Kerepuna — -Old Faiths Die Hard — Striving after the Unattainable — Good Work — On » Mission Verandah — Farewell to Kerepilna - - - 29 Digitized by Microsoft® xn CONTENTS CHAPTER IV. SAMABAI AlTD WOODLAEK A BEAUTY SPOT AND A MINE. PAGE We go Aground — A Cocoa-nut Plantation — Fife Bay — The Fairest Scene I ever knew — Samarai — From the Residency — Men who Come to Samarai — The Lost Legion — A Walk through Samarai — Kwato — An Evening in » Missionary's Home— We Visit Milne Bay — ^Dobu — Woodlark - - ■ - 43 CHAPTER V. AN ISLAND SEA. Among the Islands — A Belie of the Past — Kiriwiria — Heal Chiefs — On Spirits Generally — The Local Story of the Creation — The Mission — The Destroying Spirit Hovering over Papua — A Native Dance — A Picturesque Anchorage — ^Pigeon Island — A Worried V.C. — ^The Patron Snake — Moresby Passage — ^Bwaidoga — The Methodist Resolve — Bartle Bay — Some Native Beliefs — Native Irrigation Schemes — Dogura — Noble Women — Evensong — -One who has Borne the Heat and Burden of the Day - 67 CHAPTER VI. CAPE NELSON TO TAMATA — A BKAVE MAN AND A WONDBEFUL MARCH. Cape Nelson — "Victory" — The One Climb Left — The Fiords — A Practical A.B.M. — The Amphibians — Blood Money — Justice, Swift and Stern — ^The Power of a Fearless Heart — Buna Bay — Ora Bay — Mambare Beach — Tamata — Childish Sport — The Story of Corporal Sedu — The Rout — Two Lessons — Bushimi and Oya — Bushimi's March from Sea to Sea - - - - gO CHAPTER VII. FEOM SEA TO SEA — BUNA BAY TO THE DIVIDE. Gtetting Ready — We Divide Forces — ^We Begin our March from Sea to Sea — ^We Enter the Forest — The Fever Belts — On the Bank of the Giriuri — Some of our Fellow Travellers — Primal Papua — Kandarita — A Village Crone— Children of Nature and the Sun — The First Fruit of the Land— HaU Devil, Half Child— We Reach the Yodda Road Again — Statues in Bronze — Some Types — Grass Patches — An Hereditary Office — ^Native Gardens — Log Bridges — A Papuan Moses — A Dainty Maid — ^A Native Climber — Running Amok — ^We Reach the Kumusi A Grim Tragedy — An Epicure's Opinion — From the Rest House — A.N.C. Dandies— A Native Market — ^We Cross the Kumusi — Suspen- sion Bridges — ^Natural Engineers — ^A Sorcerer — A Faith that should Move Mountains— Fairly Strong in the 'Seventies — The Divide " Purple Patches " . oq Digitized by Microsoft® CONTENTS xm CHAPTER VIII. THE YODDA FIELDS AND KOKODA, PAOB The Mambare — Kokoda — The Yodda — A Close Call — The Grim Tragedy of it All — God's Acre — Men we Met — The Field — A Clean Up — Future Possibilities — Belies of an Older Race — ^We Leave the Yodda— We Part with Little — Kokoda once more — The Station Buildings — Early Morning Parade — Three Attributes of a Good Soldier — Stories Of the A.N.C.^A Man who should be Laid by the Heels — ^A Dance under the Stars — A Garden of Plenty — A Land of Untold Possibilities — ^A Splendid Lot — The Route is Chosen — The Sorrows of a Photographer - ... . 109 CHAPTER IX. ACBOSS THE MAIN RANGE. The Costume of Experience — Farewell Kokoda — We leave the Last Outpost Behind — ^We Climb the Mountain's Face — ^A Last Look at Kokoda — Leeches and Scrub-Itch — ^At the 4,272 feet Level — Getting Down — The Ascent of _the Main Range — The Land of Palms and Moss — The Land of Glittering Silence — We Fall 1,000 feet— Where Perchance the Fairies Dance — The Carriers' Task — The Frozen Carriers — ^We Ascend Once More — 8,690 feet above the Sea — A Vision Splendid— Another Mountain Camp — The Gap — Orchids — A Sword of Water — Two Carriers go Sick — Serigina — Only One More Hill — Pitching Camp under Difficulties — Bruce answers our Shots — A few Earnest, Simple Words — Kagi — The Commandant — The Future Road — He Never Expected to see Us — Tea and Whisky — ^Albert Edward — The King of the Range — Beregi — Calm, Cold, and Silent — In the Mist Sea — ^We Lose our old Escort and Carriers — ^Farewell to Monckton ..... . 123 CHAPTER X. THE LAST STAGE OF OUK MABCH. We Begin the Last Phase — A Strange Sepulchre — Our Mid-day Halt — A Thoughtful Leader — Our Camp — Race Suicide — Moral and Dignified — ^Wearing the Breeches — ^A Fascinating Study — A Haunting Song — A Papuan Valhalla — Burial Customs — Sugar Cane — Our First Level Track— Our First Mail — Two go Sick — "I've got it Beat" — The Opie — lorobaiva — Anthony — Bruce Wants to Go On — Women Carriers — A Tropical Storm — What Malaria can do — Pride of Race — The Last Hill but One — ^A Hornet's Nest — The Overland Mail — Iruta Puna — Strange Customs — George's Blandishments fail — Making Fire — Gteorge makes a Damper — Pipes and how they are Smoked — A Land of Plenty — The Last Mountain Village — Good Old Harris — Sogeri 139 Digitized by Microsoft® XIV CONTENTS CHAPTER XI. EBFLBOTIONS AND COFFEE. PAQB We Shake Hands on it — In Search of Gold — ^We Bum our Boats — Our Condition — ^What the March Proved — Feather Weights — Paying Fealty — A Future Policy — A Time that is Past — Dreams — The Transitibn Stage — A Possibility — Shirted Chiefs — ^Horses at Last — Mr. Ballantine's Plantation — Local CoHee — Mr. Greene — A Seeker after Health — A Seeker after Knowledge — Go and Do Likewise — The Plantation — ^What a Hundred Acres of CofiEee Costs — The Soil — ^What Sogeri Produces — We Leave Sogeri — ^A Vision Splendid — The Rouna Falls — The Copper Mine — Experts from Cooktown — ^Warirata — We Reach the other Sea — -Re-united - - 152 CHAPTER XII. POSSIBILITIBS OF THE WEST. Port Moresby Again — A Prehistoric Man — ^Natural Barriers — Our Work is Done — We Say Farewell — ^Redscar Bay — Yule Island — The Sacred Heart — Women Papua owes much to — Improved Health Conditions — A Sheep Experiment — A Genial Christian — A Medical A.R.M. — Mount Yule — ^A River's Mouth — Ermelo — Out of the Dry Belt — Keen Traders — Village Fathers as Teachers — Bramble Cay at Night — Rats for Lunch — Rohu's Experience— First Australian Land — Darnley Island — Daru — Titanic Stone Axes — Curios — A Practical Worker — Pythons v. Fowls — At the Gaol — Irrigation — Agriculturists — A Great Lone Land — Class of Country and Soil — Tobacco — -Timber and Labour — Portable Saw-mills — The Other Side of the Picture-— Agricultural Products — Land and Natives — Climate — A Dream of the Future — The Present — Farewell Papua 165 CHAPTER XIII. A LAST WORD. 182 APPENDIX. LAND IN PAPTTA. 137 Digitized by Microsoft® LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS lACINO FAGIZ: Frontispiece — ^The Royal Commission at Samarai. Lakatoi, Port Moresby 21 Natives at Pari - 23 Maulai, First Christian Convert in New Guinea, with his Wife and Son, and Malagu, Village Constable 26 Natives on Dubu at Pari ------ 28 India-rubber Trees, Kapa Kapa . - . . 33 Sisal Hemp, Kapa Kapa ------ 35 Native Teachers' Quarters, L.M.S., Vatorata - - 36 Sorcerer's House, Kerepuna ----- 38 Making Copra, Cloudy Bay ----- 45 Settler's House, Cloudy Bay 46 Samarai from the Residency 48 Cricket Match at Kwato - - - 52 Natives of Dobu - - - 61 Painted House, Dobu . . - - - 62 The Mines at Woodlark 65 Miners at Woodlark Island - - 66 Samoan Mission Teachers, Kiriwiria - - - 71 A Native Dance at Kiriwiria - - - 74 The Merrie England, Cape Nelson - - - 80 Armed Native Constabulary, Samarai - - - 85 Warriors at Kandarita - 92 Crossing the Giriuri - - 98 Digitized by Microsoft® XVI LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FAonsra PAGE Crossing the Kumusi 103 Candidate for Position of Village Constable - - 106 The same in Uniform ...... 106 Kokoda Squad, Armed Native Constabulary - - 111 Government Station at Kokoda - - - - 115 The Main Owen Stanley Range - - - - 117 Resting - - - ... . 124 At Owen Stanley Range, 8,301 feet - - - - 126 At Owen Stanley Range, 8,690 feet - - - - 131 A Strange Sepulchre - - - - - - 139 A Native Grave - 142 Carriers, Kagi District ...... 145 The Official Overland Mail .... 149 Resting near Iruta Puna ... . . 150 Godoi, Chief of the Baruri Tribe - - - - 156 Government Station, Daru 165 Paying-ofi " Boys," Daru - - - 172 The First Legislative Council - - - 182 Map of Papua, shomng Author^s Route, folded in at end of hook Digitized by Microsoft® CHAPTER I. SYDNEY TO PORT MOBESBY. The Popular View of Papua — I Board the Good Ship Guthrie — The Life a Sailor Yearns for — Far HiUs are Ever Green — I Meet a Colleague — ^Inside the Barrier — ^Whitsunday Pass — ^Townsville — Why Bustle ? — Our Trinity is Completed — A Man of Many Parts — Cairns — North Queensland Hill Station — The Barron Falls — Our New Com- pamy — Cooktown — No Man's Enemy but His Own — Papuan Patriotism — ^Papua Rises from the Sea. Had I taken seriously all that was told to me, both with regard to the climate and diseases of Papua, and the peculiar, not to say truculent, tendencies of certain of its inhabitants, I would have felt like begging the Prime Minister to change the objective of the Commission to Guatemala or some such peaceful and truthful health resort. Nor did most I had read help to discount the prophecies of my friends. For instance, the following quotation from a work by D'Albertis came as a cold douche to a man who had never walked while a horse was available, and who knew that he had one eighty-mile tramp ahead of him, with a big probability of several others : — " It is easier to ascend the highest peaks of the European Alps with an alpenstock, than to cross an ordinary hill in New Guinea." I may say that later, when crawling over the Owen Stanley Range, I fully realised why the Digitized by Microsoft® 2 ACKOSS PAPUA brilliant Italian naturalist and explorer had let his vivid southern imagination get the better of him. Having occasion to call on a Sydney doctor, loved by reason of his kindly heart and ever ready help, he put me in a chair wherein a lotus-eater might dream, gave me a cigar whose every ring framed a vision of peace and safe content, and then let himself go on the subject of Papuan malaria. Sitting surrounded by all that makes a man count hfe worth retaining, he told me that he had sailed many seas, but that from all he had heard of it, and a few specimens it had been his good fortiine to see, the malarial microbe of New Guinea was an easy first as a man kiUer, and brushing aside my hope (based on previous experiences in fever countries) that I was immune, proceeded to tell me of a man who had come to him from Samarai a yellow wreck, and had died within the past week. But he gave me a specific at parting, of which we drank large quantities, and as none of us con- tracted anything more deadly than skinned heels, we christened it after him. On the eve of departure, I was visited by a veritable son of the sea — one who had sailed up rivers and over reefs on every face of Papua, who had explored, traded, and written a book ; and as a result of his experiences he told me that the best way to make the natives God-fearing and useful members of society was to teach them the shorter catechism, and further that while it was humanly possible to find the truth as Digitized by Microsoft® THE GOOD SHIP " GUTHRIE " 3 far north as Cooktown, from there on the telling of it was a lost art. So, one stormy afternoon, with scarce an illusion left, I boarded the Guthrie, found Harris, our secretary, and resigned myself to do without food for a few days. Before we reached the lightship, however, the squaUs had died away, and the harbour, with its plenitude of gardens, looked superb as we went out. On every height windows helioed flashes of farewell, and once more as we passed between the rock-faced gates and steamed into the open sea, it came to me that the man who ever left so good an anchorage to sail in troubled waters was a restless fool with a distorted con- ception of when he was well off. Outside, each stroke of our propeller drove us into calmer waters, and when morning broke we were floating on a summer sea ; and all day long a picturesque coast line, backed by bold ranges, gave change and colour to the picture. Why is it that sailors always want to be farmers? Probably because they draw their inspiration from the village scenes so optimistically portrayed on the stage. But be that as it may, the fact remains that aU the ofl&cers of the Guthrie yearned for the " simple life," and the CaptatQ would gladly leave his graphic descriptions of the wonderful temple ruins of Java to hang on the lips of any man who chanced to open out on sub-soiling or a new breed of hens. Good fellows one and all — b2 Digitized by Microsoft® 4 ACROSS PAPUA may the gods be never so unkind as to grant them their desire, for a dream-farm is a beautiful and restful vision, but a real one is a "demnition grind." A day on board showed me that the East had been "a-caUing," and that she had not called in vain, for all were Orient bound. A young Victorian mining engineer, to join his brother in far Burmese hills — and he was such a clean-souled, straight-hmbed boy, that I grudged him to so fickle a mistress. A pearl fisher, two surveyors for the Straits Settlements, a planter for Sumatra, another for Java, and just one gentle little girl off a Victorian farm, going out all by herself to make a planter happy somewhere beyond Singapore. They were all bound for the shining East, and I doubt if one of them quite realised how good a land he was leaving behind ; but some day, God send, they will remember and come back to us, and we wiU welcome them, for only stout hearts go out through aU the earth and over every sea in answer to the world-old call. And those of them who return have strengthened their thews and broadened their souls, and so are better able to bear the burdens of nationhood. We were lying at Pinkenba Wharf, Brisbane, and I was sitting on a deck-chair watching some punts go by, when Okeden, one of the men I would hve with, think with, and possibly disagree with, for some months, came on board. A typical bush- Digitized by Microsoft® INSIDE THE BARRIER REEF 5 man, tall, thin, wiry, with the long thigh, and the clean cut fighting face of a cavalry Colonel, and with a world of kindness in his eyes, and a saving sense of humour hovering about his mouth. He just walked into my life as one who treads familiar ways, and I knew him as one who knows a friend of old days, no matter what dust of years may lie between. A day out from Brisbane found us inside the Barrier Reef, sailing over a sea of silver, and when off Mackay we saw the sun go down behind Percy Island, the home of an old Colonel who, his life work done, there waits the last reveUle. Nor do I wonder at his choice, for the scene was surpassingly lovely. A sea of glass, and out beyond an island mystic, beautiful, crowned with pines and rugged with towers of rock, and scarred with deep cut ravines — above gold-circled clouds, and glowing through their dusky mantles the great red sun, polished and round as some old Titan's shield. For a little it hung twixt cloud-line and hiU-crest, and then plunged from sight amid a blaze of radiant colour, leaving behind bright fragments of its glory in a splendid afterglow. That night, before turning in, I asked the officer of the watch to call me when we were entering Whitsunday Pass. When he did I regretted my after-dinner enthusiasm to commune with nature at 4 a.m. in pyjamas. I further regarded the officer as unnecessarily officious, but never give a Digitized by Microsoft® 6 ACROSS PAPUA sailor a chance to rout you out in the middle of the night. I fancy he cannot resist relieving the monotony of his vigil by hearing you swear. But when I got the sleep out of my eyes I realised that they were opening on a vision sjdendid. Sentinel islands kept watch and ward on either side, as we moved on over a waterway still as the night itself. Then, sun rose, and moon set, and one shore was a realm of golden light, and one was shadow-land just tipped by the sinking moon's silver beams. After breakfast we passed a white-sailed schooner showing up against the background of another fairy island, and when she was hull down we were still steaming over a summer sea. At Townsville we got ashore for a leg-stretch. I understand that the present leader of the Queensland opposition is largely responsible for the port, which, according to his opponents, should be somewhere else ; anyway, a majority of the people swear by Philp. The god of the winds is apparently anti-Philp, as he has made several energetic attempts to blow Townsville into the sea. We lunched at a very fine hotel facing the beach, of which Mrs. McLurcan was once high priestess. I am told that gourmets still regard it as a holy place. Philp has made many laws ; Mrs. McLurcan has written a cookery book ; one rests his claim to remembrance on a people's poUtical Digitized by Microsoft® WHY BUSTLE? 7 gratitude, the other on a nation's stomach. Mrs. McLiirgan thou hast chosen the surest path to immortality ! Still sailing over calm and beautiful seas we dropped anchor off Cairns, the while I more than ever reaUsed what a fair heritage we Australians possess. The further north we go the more are we impressed with the fact that if the sea-board inhabitants do not possess " the calm of Vere de Vere," in its Tennysonian meaning, they have at least come to the unalterable decision that Gordon was right when he sang that " aU hurry is worse than useless." After leaving us to roll about for hours in an open roadstead, a tender put in an appearance, and shortly a cry arose of " sky pilot." So did our other colleague impress some of our fellow- passengers, for it was Herbert who stood by the man at the wheel ! Something in the cut of his coat coUar must have deceived, for there was httle to suggest the twentieth-century cleric in the thin, silent man who stepped aboard and made our party officially complete, just as each day onward he entered into and became more and more an indispensable element in our trinity of friendship. After an exchange of honest God-speeds with all on board the Outhrie, we put off in a tender for a German liner closer in shore, and once along- side of her I obtained painful personal evidence that if the principle of " one man one job " may Digitized by Microsoft® 8 ACEOSS PAPUA be carried to a logical absurdity, the reverse as here represented by one captain, mate, bo' sun, deck-hand, and boy rolled into an energetic, excitable, perspiring, cursing whole has certain weaknesses in detail. As we ran alongside, our captain, dropping his r61e of steersman, dashed from the bridge, and in his capacity of deck-hand, threw over a fender, then, as boy, caught a rope, while as bo'sun he exchanged curses with a nautical person on the other vessel. Meanwhile our boat drifted under a for'ard scupper pipe, and as a passenger may neither touch the wheel, nor shout an order down into the engine room, I had to watch helplessly the humiliating spectacle of my luggage being drenched with German bilge water. On the whole, I think, individualism can be carried too far. Cairns is practically level with the sea, the tropical trees in and about it lifting it above the ordinary bush township, but that is all. The approach from the ocean is rather fine, high hills guarding the flanks of the roadstead and backing the town itself. Commercially it is very much alive, owing to the mineral, timber, and agri- cultural riches, of which it is the distributor. Having a day to put in, we took the evening train for Kuranda, the local hill station. The trip up is both interesting and picturesque, being nearly all tropical, and. with, for a time, splendid panoramic views astern of the rich lowlands, Digitized by Microsoft® THE BARRON FALLS 9 strongly reminiscent of parts of India; and out beyond, the sea, with (to-day) the old Guthrie floating on it. The railway passes a beautiful, but small, fall ; skirts the valley down which the Barron river flows, and passes the falls them- selves just before reaching the station. We stayed at a comfortable, if unpretentious, weatherboard hotel, built on a rise just in front of a lovely stream, with a foreground of ridges covered with dense tropical forest, where one sees the banyan and rich foliaged milk tree, from which, when tapped, streams of fluid gush out. Here also grow palms, banana trees, and, near at hand, coffee. 'Tis the home of the paw paw, grenadflla, loquat, and mango tree, while on every hand are rich tropical blossoms. Hibiscus, bougainviUea, and great white beU-flowers, breath- ing perfume, delicate and sensuous — a garden to rest and dream in, a grove in which to offer up incense at the shrine of love. The Barron Falls are different from those in our mountains, in that they flow on the face of sloping rocks from summit to base, and so are white with foam in all their downward course. The gorge on either side is rich in foliage, and during the rainy season the effect must be inspiring, when the rocks re-echo the roar and thunder of the waters' voices as they rush downward to the sea. There is a beautiful creeper here with a delicate lavender flower, which one sees through the Digitized by Microsoft® 10 ACROSS PAPUA dining-room windows. In truth, all things here are beautifxil, for the warm blood of the tropics is in their veins. Om- fellow-lodgers suggested little out of the common, and we would have gone our several ways unknowing and unknown, save that Herbert had his word doubted as to the height of the falls by an old Scotchman, with the result that the latter, at any rate, will probably regard Herbert in particular, and aU Australians in general, as ripe and ready liars. It is difl&cult to draw a comparison between the scenery of Kuranda and that of our Blue Mountains ; but, wherever such comparison is possible, it appears to me that the mountains completely overshadow the Queensland Hill Station alike in broad expansiveness and rugged grandeur. Among our new passengers we found a labour recruiter, a missionary and his wife, a widow going to visit the various Mission Stations of Papua, and the lady journalist we had been expecting to meet ever since leaving Sydney, so we steamed out from Cairns with aU the dramatis personce necessary for an up-to-date South Sea Island melodrama of a moral and moving character. A night out, and we were at Cooktown, a hot, not too stirring port, but still full of interest as the spot where Cook careened and repaired his Digitized by Microsoft® NO MAN'S ENEMY BUT HIS OWN 11 vessel, and fortunate in possessing a monument to the memory of Mrs. Watson and the story of her heroic death on a lonely atol not far away. Here we spent a hot hour or so in buying for- gotten but necessary trifles, and watching one of our party making masterly but ineffective efforts to lose one of that hopeless brigade which are popularly but erroneously dubbed "no men's enemies but their own." What cheap and lying begging of the real question is this. Ask miser- able wives, starving children, robbed mothers, and victimised friends if this be a fair epitaph for a life of weak and selfish indulgence. As we left the wharf we saw a crew of fuzzy- headed Papuans gazing after us, for they knew we were bound to the island that was in their hearts, waking and sleeping. Indeed, so strong is their love for their mother-land, that when a steamer that is bringing them back nears it they will crowd her bow and gaze out for hours across the water for a first glimpse of its bold and cloud-crowned mountains. I would that every countryman of mine loved his land as well. The captain of the Malaita was a raconteur of no mean order, and a most genial fellow to boot. His officers were all pleasant comrades, and one I found to be the son of an old friend of my early bush days, while Miss Gullet (the lady journalist) had enough vivacity and enthusiasm to make a Digitized by Microsoft® 12 ACROSS PAPUA centenarian feel young, or to transform a saint into a human being. But still, once we got out- side the barrier, I left them all and lived the simple life — and practised not only the no- breakfast theory but the " no food at aU " theory, till blue mountain crests showing skyivard through veils of mist told us that Papua was rising out of the Coral Sea. Digitized by Microsoft® CHAPTER 11. PORT MORESBY — PAST AND PRESENT Port Moresby — Papua's First Explorers — Sir Thomas Mcllwraith's Annexation — ^Murderers as Porters — " George " — A Unique Gaol — Two Native Villages — The Sago Lakatois— Where One Who Deserved a Better Fate Died — Among the Villages — The First Convert — In Front of the Camera — The Legend of "The Great and Gracious Tree" — Our Fiery Steeds — Matrimonial Disabilities — A Native Dandy — A Painting from Nature's Gallery— A Papuan Sunset. Riding at anchor, we had a distant view of Government House, a most unpretentious bunga- low, more suggestive of an early squatter's home than the one time official head-quarters of a pro- consul, such as Sir William McGregor was; and yet, when later I got to know the man through those who served under him, just the sort of house I would expect him to live in, for one, so austerely simple on his expeditions, and so indifferent to, or contemptuous of, official state as to face a Brisbane garden party in blue sand shoes and a frock coat, could have Httle use for more than four waUs and a roof. On one flank of Government House, and nearer the shore, the Mission showed over a huddled-up native village, but except for this village, and a few cocoa-nut and banana trees, little else suggested tropical surroundings. Port Moresby itself, built on the right hand slopes of the hills as the harbour is entered, and now beginning Digitized by Microsoft® 14 ACROSS PAPUA to grow out towards the gaol, over on to the flats that fringe Ela Beach, consists of a small collection of official offices and dwellings, two stores, and one public house, and is in no sense architecturally beautiful. Once ashore, we took up our quarters in a house set on the side of a hill about a mile from the town, and facing the open sea. Sitting on the verandah, I watched the waves flowing slowly on a strip of sandy shore, while out beyond a line of light marked the course of the reefs ; and thanking God for deliverance from the Malaita fell to thinking on the past of this island, which at present so little known, is yet marked out alike by geographical position and natural richness to play no inconsiderable part in Australia's future destiny. Men, other than English, first sailed Papuan seas, and to-day various islands and bays bear the names of some of these intrepid navigators. First came Don Jorge de Menesis, who in 1526 was driven to the island by foul weather, stayed on it for a few weeks, and named it Papua, which, according to some, means "curled"; to others, " black hair." Then came another Portuguese, Alvarez de Saavedra, who christened it " Isla del Oro," and I believe that the near future will prove the correctness of his supposition. In 1545 a Spaniard, Ynigo Ortiz de Retez, sailed along its northern coast, and, thinking it resembled the Guinea Coast of Africa, dubbed the island Neuva Digitized by Microsoft® PAPUA'S FIRST VISITORS 15 Guinea. In 1606 Inis Vaez de Torres sailed on its eastern coasts, and in 1616 a Dutchman named Schouten discovered " burning mountains." Then came Abel Tasman, who explored some of the coast in 1643, while during 1699 Dampier sailed clear round it. Carteret visited the island in 1767, and in 1768 M. de Bougainville, in command of two French ships, sailed the south and east coasts. In 1770 came Cook, confirming the state- ment that Papua was separate from New HoUand (Australia). Captain Edwards touched its shores in 1791, losing the Pandora on the Barrier Reef just after. D'Entrecastreau followed in 1792, and in 1793 the East India Company, Hke the grand old land grabbers they were, annexed Papua, and an island in Geelvink Bay was occupied by soldiers belonging to their service. The occupa- tion was, however, not approved by the English Government. During 1795 Bampton, and in 1804 M. Constance, visited New Guinea, while during 1828 Captain Steenboom took possession of part in the name of the Dutch Government; but after a few years the settlement had to be abandoned owing to its unhealthy nature. In 1845 Captain Blackwood discovered the Fly River, naming it after his ship. During 1846-50 Captain Owen Stanley made a survey of the coast and marked off many of the more important mountains of the range which now bears his name. In 1858 came the Dutch warship, Etna, exploring and Digitized by Microsoft® 16 ACROSS PAPUA surveying, followed by other Dutch expeditions led by Van der Crab, Teysman, Correngei, Lange- weldt, Hemert, and Swann. It is worthy of more than passing note that almost without exception these practical, and in many cases cultured, navigators speak of the natural possibilities of Papua with enthusiasm, comparing it to some of the richest of the then known tropical islands. In 1871 the London Missionary Society founded a station on Darnley Island in Torres Straits. From there they established stations between the Baxter and Fly Rivers, at Redscar Bay, and Port Moresby, where in 1874 the veteran missionary leader. Dr. Lawes, took command. So that the whole honour of being the pioneer missioners of Papua justly belongs to this society, though I believe the Jesuits started a mission on Woodlark Island at an earlier date ; but, for some reason unknown to me, it has long ago disappeared. In 1893 Captain Moresby discovered and gave a name to the present capital ; nor do I think I need further trace the course of events which led down to the taking over of Papua by the Commonwealth, for they belong to a period well within the recollection of most men, and are easy of discovery by every schoolboy. Still, as I consider that every Austrahan should fully realise Sir Thomas Mcllwraith's statesman- like effort on behalf of the safety of our future Digitized by Microsoft® REASONS FOR ANNEXATION 17 race, an eflEort unfortunately rendered largely futile through the hostility of the British Govern- ment of that day, I will quote his reasons given for undertaking to annex Papua to Queensland in 1883. "1. That its possession would be of value to the Empire, and conduce especially to the peace and safety of Australia, the development of Aus- tralian trade, and the prevention and punishment of crime throughout the Pacific. " 2. That the establishment of a foreign Power in the neighbourhood of Australia would be injurious to British, and more particularly to Australian, interests." In July of the same year Lord Derby declined to confirm the act of annexation, and in December, 1884, Germany hoisted her flag over the north coast of Papua, and in the Admiralty, Hermit, Anchorite, New Britain, and New Ireland Groups. So to-day and for all time a great military and naval power is established within easy striking distance of Australia's most vulnerable points, in spite of Sir Thomas Mcllwraith's patriotic action, and, indeed, I am inclined to think, largely as the result of a desire on the part of the Colonial Office to snub that far-seeing statesman. Then I was waked out of the past with its quaint old ships and picturesque sea captains, and my musings on what might have been had my Lord Derby's digestive organs only been working Digitized by Microsoft® 18 ACROSS PAPUA smoothly, by a clank, clank, that could only come from hobbled horses, or a chain gang, and looking down I saw twenty or more prisoners, most of them shambling in leg-irons, carrying our belongings, and sundry articles of furniture. A majority were not of the best physique, were varied as regards shades of colour, and wore immense mops of hair. I was told that a fair proportion of them were waiting trial for the brutal murder of the only vegetable grower in the place ; but they seemed perfectly indifferent alike to their fate, and the outrage they had committed on the people generally, and indeed chatted and laughed as if fresh vegetables were neither here nor there in their scheme of life. Mr. Musgrave, the Government Secretary, who came on board as representative for Captain Barton, not only found us a house for which we paid rent to a Bishop, but also " George," and as George was by way of being chef, major-domo, inter- preter, medicine man, and Encyclopedia Papuanica, I think that it is only fair to deal with him in detail. Son of a High Chief of Samoa and an Irish woman, at one time a dweller on our Hunter River, then in our pilot service, he drifted to New Guinea, was a digger, a carrier of goods from Buna Bay to the Yodda, and one of Sir William MacGregor's most trusted men, ascended with him the Fly River to the 600 mile camp, and was one of the four to climb with Sir William the Digitized by Microsoft® A UNIQUE GAOL 19 summit of Mount Victoria. Save that his skin was darker, he would have passed for a twin brother of Bill Beach, and while he kept at times our livers active, he was, taking him aU in aU, a con- tinual feast, and I will ever look back to the weeks we spent together Avith genuine pleasure. The gaol at Port Moresby, viewed from a European standpoint, has no more reality about it than the baseless fabric of a dream, for any properly educated criminal could break cells when he liked, for to leave the yard called for nothing more difficult than stepping through a wire fence. StiQ Head-Gaoler Macdonald told us his children seldom left him, and that when one did the natives almost invariably gave him away, the prisoner being usually from another district; and indeed they would be fools to escape from a man who is in the best sense a firm but kindly father to them all. A majority of the prisoners were doing time for manslaughter, which seems to be a popular form of local crime, and those with skin disease — apparently a majority — were being treated by being steamed in a sulphur box. Having occasion to visit one of the local stores we found natives lounging under the verandah, indeed in the buUding itself, and a fair proportion with skin disease. We then rode round the harbour shore to visit the two villages that lie side by side below the Queensland Mission Society Station. These provide a striking illustration c2 Digitized by Microsoft® 20 ACROSS PAPUA alike of Papuan custom and the multiplicity of dialects which there obtain, for though it is difficult to determine where one village begins and the other ends, yet their people speak two languages and foUow different occupa- tions, one tribe being fishermen and the other agriculturists. The view over the bay, with ranges rising in the distance, the harbour entrance guarded by an island, and the thatched-roofed villages and cocoa-nut and plaintain groves, backed by treeless sharp-cut hills, made up a picture still only semi- tropical but possessing a rare charm of its own. The village houses were all built on poles rising out of the water, with floors about ten feet above the ground, their roofs and walls being of thatch, and obviously whole families slept in practically the one room. They mark a clear stage of development as compared to the primitive mia-mias of our Australian aborigines, but in no sense compare with the well-built and scrupulously clean kraals of many of the Rhodesian and other uncontaminated African tribes. Each house was hung about with charms, and the women and men, whether making earthen pots, mending fishing-gear, or playing cat's-cradle, seemed listless and inert, and just about as superstitious, and probably more dirty than before the white man came. It is only fair, however, to point out that these villages, being beside a seaport, have probably been demoralised Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® m CO H O H « O o R t) « n w « i-l ?; 5 ■< en p fq t> fi o > M 14 H << a H w o H 2i Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® MISSIONARY AND SORCERER 37 chair and all ! When we again got into smooth water, we saw the village of Hula surrounded by- cocoa-nut plantations, and I was told one might walk for five miles through nothing else, indeed, all the country from there to Kapa Kapa is suitable for copra raising. At Hula are some of the finest swimmers in the world. Just behind the plantations rise bare but rather picturesque sugar-loaf-topped hills backed by the Owen Stanley mountains. We dropped anchor in the narrow mouth of a big lagoon fringed with palms, mangroves, and other shady trees. At its farther shore rose bare hiUs, backed by lordlier ranges ; Lq front the foam line of the reef cut us off from the sea ; on our left cocoa-nut trees stretched away right to Hula ; while on our right, huddled on a narrow tongue of sandy soil, lay the village of Kerepuna, its conical shaped houses buUt clear of the water, and a Mission house standing on the point by the sea. On landing, we were met by Mr. Pearse, a stout, cheery old missionary, who showed us over the village. Several tall spires, slightly suggestive in shape of the goporams of Southern India, gave a certain individuality to the place. They marked the abode of the sorcerer, and, I take it, other homes of importance. The sorcerer's house stood on rudely carved posts — on one of which an alligator was cut. I asked our guide how he thought he would fare in Digitized by Microsoft® 38 ACROSS PAPUA a trial of strength with his rival, and his answer gave me the distinct impression that he considered the chances would be against him. Once a year this man stUl stands near" the mission house and cries as of old, " I am lord of the sea, crocodiles, sharks, and turtles belong to me," and the people admit it by bringing him his share when any are caught. They still build their houses on high poles, not for protection from mortals, but because they believe spirits cannot climb — and at this season they beat drums at night so that the spirits may dance, and thus, being kept in good humour, give them abundant crops. As we walked, men passed us wearing bunches of white feathers in their hair as tokens that they had killed a man, and behind the mission house we were shown a sacred place where they stUl spread their nets before fishing for turtle. Indeed, to all intents and purposes, they seemed to be stiU in the thrall of the old gods. Still I fully belieive that Mr. Pearse has put up a good fight during his nineteen years' residence at Kerepuna. It has just been his misfortune to have to strive after the unattainable, though from one Indian philosopher's point of view this should rather be counted his good fortune. The Papuan is "intensely conservative," to quote Dr. Lawes, while Sir William McGregor considered that "they have not as yet been deeply impressed by the truths of the Gospel, Digitized by Microsoft® SORCEBER S HOUSE, KEREPUNA. [38 Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® A COMPARISON 39 to religious fervour they are strangers, while generally they cannot be said to be devotees to the Church, or to be otherwise than indifferent to her teaching." My observation, certainly limited by time, has led me to the conclusion that what these two men said of the Papuan years ago is practically true to-day. Doubtless there were then, and are now, exceptions, but the people as a whole are still as their fathers were as regards true soul develop- ment. Common sense revolts against the idea that it could be otherwise. Undeveloped peoples adopt with comparative ease the outward forms of new faiths ; the more ornate the ceremonial the more are their senses captivated by it, while music and song ever appeal to and charm them. But after all, these things are only practised by them along with, not to the exclusion of, primal super- stitions, for an absolute change of religious thought must be a process of gradual evolution moving upwards, hand in hand with mental race develop- ment. For no man can put new wine into old bottles, nor new and higher beliefs into souls not fitted and strengthened by mental exercise for such food. That at least is what my study of the question has taught me. Possibly I have not learnt my lesson aright, — aU I can say is that if I have misread the history of the ages I have not done so wUfuUy. In another dispatch Sir WiUiam McGregor Digitized by Microsoft® 40 ACROSS PAPUA states — " the lapse of time has steadily strength- ened the conviction that mission labour is of immense value and importance in the possession." This is undoubtedly true, Drs. Lawes and Chalmers, Bishop Vergus, and Dr, Genocchi, the Revs. A. A. Maclaren and Copland-King, and the Rev. W. E, Bromilow have all done splendid work not only as the pioneers of their particular missions, but as citizens of Papua, and many others are following in a path far smoother to-day than when in 1870 the Rev. Dr. S. Macfarlane established a mission on Darnley Island prepara- tory to exploiting New Guinea. I gladly acknowledge the work they have done and are doing in Papua. I do not believe they have made any real impression on the natives from the standpoint of an intelUgent conception of what Christianity reaUy is, and in some instances I fear in their laudable desire to win confidence and love they have encouraged a familiarity which, particularly in the case of savage peoples, tends to want of respect and to indolence. On the other hand, however, they have stood between the native and unscrupulous white men in the past. Their influence has ever been in the direction of morality and general cleanliness of life, and their homes have always been centres of hospitality for men of every creed and social status, whUe their wives have nursed many a fever-stricken wanderer back to health. Digitized by Microsoft® MISSIONARY AND ALLIGATOR 41 While Mrs. Pearse, a motherly, pleasant lady, was giving us tea, her husband told us of an adventure he had at Kerepuna, which called to mind Sydney Smith's well-known doggerel: — " I would I were a cassowary on the banks of the Timbuctoo, For then I'd eat a missionary, his prayers and his hymn books too." It seems that one day as he was strolling along the sand, an alligator came ashore and sprinted along the beach after him (and truly he would have made excellent eating), but Pearse put on such a spurt in getting away from the pearly gates, that he winded the alligator, and so is still in this veil of tears. From where we sat we could see the thin trail of a narrow canal leading out to the coral reef through which at low tide a single canoe could pass to the fishing ground. Who cut this passage, or how it was excavated, or whether it was simply worn, is not known. 'These people just use it, and trouble not at all about its history. Their songs seem to teU the story of their past, but as they have forgotten what they mean, one is no further ahead — at present they can about get back to a great grandfather, which, after aU, is a genealogical effort which would stagger many people claiming a far higher stage of development. Just as we got on board again the canoes came back from the other shore bearing the workers home from the plantations. The Kerepunians are Digitized by Microsoft® 42 ACROSS PAPUA a tall people for Papua, and some of the men standing spear in hand and with hibiscus in their hair looked veritable sons of war. There were also a goodly array of ladies au naturel to the waist. Taken all in all, the picture was full of local colour, and as they paddled for the shore where grew the rubber trees and yellow hibiscus it all became beautiful — softened and ideaUsed by the distance. So we left the two old missioners to dream for a little whUe by the Coral Sea ere they sailed away for ever, and I wonder if, in the days to come, they will ever look from the windows of some quiet English home out over all the intervening space of sea and shore to palm-shaded, hibiscus-drowned Kerepuna — and holding each other's hands, just softly sigh. Digitized by Microsoft® CHAPTER IV. SAMABAI AND WOODLARK. A BEAUTY SPOT AND A MINE. We go Aground — A Cocoa-nut Plantation — Fife Bay — The Fairest Scene I ever knew — Samarai — From the Residency — Men who come to Samarai — The Lost Legion — -A Walk through Samarai — Kwato — An Evening in a Missionary's Home — ^We Visit Milne Bay — Dobu — Woodlark. Out from Kerepuna we ran on to a sand bank opposite Cape Rodney, but backed off without hurt, and later passed between two reefs not a cable-length apart. In fact, navigating this coast close-in means feeling every inch of it, with a look- out in the " cage " in accord with whose warnings the ship is steered. During the afternoon we anchored off a planta- tion the property of Whitten Brothers, of Samarai, and landing, walked under long avenues of palms to watch the husking of the nuts. Each native stood beside a stake with a sharp-pointed end, on which he drove the husk once or twice, thus creating a break which made it easy to tear it away from the shell. The nuts are then split open, drenched with salt water, and laid on tables when, after 48 hours' sunning, the copra is easily taken out of the broken shells, cut into small pieces, and bagged. This plantation, like most others in Papua, had Digitized by Microsoft® 44 ACROSS PAPUA been started with little method, but its present owners are trying to get it into good working order. Copra should be one of Papua's staple industries. The soil is equal, if not superior, to that of Herbertshohe, while the trees are not subject to attack from the hurricanes which prevail on most of the other islands, and the present price (£14 per ton) leaves a reasonable margin for waiting, cost of planting, and production. In this connection, the following quotation from the Papuan Commission's report may prove of interest : — Copra. — Cocoanut trees grow in many parts of Papua, but, judging from their observations and the evidence given, your Commissioners have little doubt that the eastern and western portions of the southern coast-line contain the pick of the copra-producing country. Asked how much copra was ex- ported last year, the Treasurer replied, " Eight hundred and twenty-eight tons," and in answer to the question, " Do you think that industry is going to increase ? " said, " I think so, more particularly as the value has gone up quite recently ; it no w fetches £14 per ton, while a few years ago it was only £7." Mr. William Whitten also stated that he considered there was a good future ahead of this industry, and as a practical proof of his belief has lately purchased a cocoanut plantation between Port Moresby and Samarai. Mr. Carpenter, manager for Burns, Philp and Co., in the course of his examination, gave the following evidence : — " There can be no doubt about cocoanut and rubber planta- tions going ahead. I was at Herbertshohe some years ago, and saw the land there, and I think the land is better here." The most systematic attempt at cocoanut planting has been made on an island of the Conflict Group, distant about 70 miles from Samarai ; on this island — which is named Panassesa — 10,000 cocoanuts have been planted in pits about 3 feet deep, into which leaves and rubbish generally are swept. The ring barking and fire grubbing of the indigenous timber are done about the time of planting, and as this Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® a o D O o 5 < Digitized by Microsoft® FIFE BAY 45 timber falls it is heaped up clear of the lines to decay, and thus add manure as time goes on. Some of this begins to fall in the first year, and from thence on till it is all down : the loss of young cocoanut trees during this process is inappreciable. When in full bearing it is estimated that an average of about 80 nuts per tree per annum will be obtained ; a good yield might produce 100 nuts per tree. The 10,000 cocoanut trees referred to as producing an average of 80 nuts per tree are estimated to yield about 100 tons of copra per annum, in between seven and eight years ; that is, assuming they will then be in full bearing. Many, however, will begin to bear at five years. Your Commissioners can see no reason why numbers of such plantations should not be started and worked with profit and success on many parts of the mainland of Papua, and they wish particularly to point out a fact which must have an important bearing on the value of plantations as reliable assets, namely, that trees in Papua are not subject to the devastating hurricanes which prevail on most of the other islands. After a night of pitching and rolling, during which Herbert was swamped in his cabin, we ran in and anchored in Fife Bay, a spot of real tropical beauty. Groing ashore we met the London Missionary Society'sMissionary,Mr.Rich,a young and vigorous fellow, evidently firm, and a good organiser, for the natives were all clean and bright, and their houses natty and well built. We had morning tea with Mrs. Rich, and her three winsome little children, who were whiter faced than I liked to see, but some day hUl stations will go far to alter all that, and fortunately for the future of settlement they are possible of easy attainment on all this coast line. Mrs. Rich teaches the girls how to make most beautiful lace, and her husband, among many Digitized by Microsoft® 46 ACROSS PAPUA practical acts, has faced the problem of curing the loathsome skin disease with the best results. He is also fighting the anopheles mosquito (the cause of malaria) by clearing the mangroves, and by- draining. The view from his house was superb. In front, three palm-crowned islands guarded the entrance to the bay, while steep ranges, clad in deepest verdure, stood sentinels behind. In the middle distance another island, stretching on the left a semi-circle of lower lands, palm-clad and radiant, and on the right bolder hills rolling fold on fold down to the foam- white beach. So fenced about by the ranges we stood and gazed over the islands and out td the Coral Sea. Some day Fife Bay wiU take the place of Samarai as the official capital of this part of Papua, for its harbour possibilities are better, it is on the mainland, while immediately beyond the hills that rise from its shores lie rich lands that will yet support a big population both of white settlers and natives, if each are properly handled and encouraged. Meanwhile, Mr. Rich and his wife are paving the way by teaching the people habits of cleanli- ness, industry, and discipline, and in proving what can be done in the way of banishing malaria. That afternoon we passed between the mainland and a chain of islands. The richness of colour on either shore, the lights and shades, the suggestion Digitized by Microsoft® m R o D O P3 H Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® A GARDEN OF THE GODS 47 of sensuous content, of nature triumphant over all the lures of the artificial, made up the fairest scene I have ever known out of a dream. As evening fell we dropped anchor ofi Samarai — a mystic island, a toy domain, a scene from "Florodora," all palms and crotons set in a crystal sea. Samarai is one of the places that first made me hopeful for the future of Papua. A few years ago it was a death-trap. When we visited it — as the direct result of filling in a swamp, exterminating the mangroves, doing away with stagnant water, and attention to general sanitation — ^there was not an anopheles mosquito in it, and Dr. Jones, one of the men who is largely responsible for this changed condition of things, assured us that local' malaria was practically a thing of the past. Eight years ago it was a white man's grave, to-day, as tropical islands go, it is a sanatorium. We were quartered in the Resident Magistrate's house, an airy bungalow with wide verandahs built on practically the summit of the island. From this central vantage post we looked down on all the falling slopes covered with magnificent palms intermingled with bread-fruit trees, mangoes, just beginning to show their fruit, poncianas, like cedars of Lebanon in leaf, now crowned mth glorious red flowers, crotons robed in deep tinted foliage, and lower still long avenues of cocoa-nuts circling the tennis and cricket grounds, while rows Digitized by Microsoft® 48 ACROSS PAPUA of stately trees shaded the grass-carpeted flat, once a deadly swamp. Everywhere were coral-paved paths flanked with hedges of crotons, and winding along the shore ran a roadway roofed by spreading fronds. Circling it all were the straits, studded with tree-crowned isles, and ringed as with a jewelled girdle by mainland hills rising fold on fold, and high-peaked islands, twixt which came sUver gleams of narrow waterways leading to the outer sea. I doubt if in aU the world there be a more beautiful spot, for it is a cameo cut by immortal hands out of sea, and shore, and sky, and ever to me it wUl remain a very garden of the gods. Commercially Samarai is to-day the most im- portant town in Papua, set as she is fair in one of the waterways that lead from Australia to the East, and being by reason of her situation at the extremity of the mainland, a convenient centre of distribution for both coasts, and the islands of the South-eastern DiArision. She is, however, handicapped both from a commercial, and ad- ministrative point of view in possessing no harbour (the roadstead which does duty for one is of limited extent), and in having no frontage of good soil on the mainland; but her most serious dis- ability lies in the fact that, being on an island of only fifty-nine acres there is no possibility of serious expansion. Still even if this were not so, the fact of being cut off from the mainland would Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® LOVELY ISLANDS 49 be fatal from the standpoint of settlement. If white men are to be induced to develop this part of Papua they must not be handicapped by being forced to carry their produce over ranges, and across the water to their seaport, or asked to undertake such a journey each time they want to visit a government department. By reason however of her position on the trade route, her possibilities as a sanatorium, her beauty, and her accessibility as a resort for tourists, and yachtsmen wishing to explore the lovely islands that he in the surrounding seas, she must always hold her own, but it wiU not be as capital of the south-eastern littoral. From an Australian point of view this com- mercial capital of the largest island in the World is a small township ; but, judged from that standard, it more than holds its own, for it possesses three public-houses and one bishop. It also supports a soda-water factory, which must be accounted unto it for righteousness, and as a crushing answer to the inhabitant, who assured me that " this was too hard a country for soft drinks." Three stores, a church, a school, the Kectory, Government buildings, a few private residences, and a hospital about account for the other buildings, all of which are constructed of wood, and, if my memory serves me correctly, roofed with iron. Here come diggers from the far Yodda and Digitized by Microsoft® 50 ACROSS PAPUA Gira fields, to pay off and sign-on " boys," some recruiting personally among the adjoining islands, others obtaining fresh hands from the professional recruiters, whose tiny schooners and luggers he off in the roadstead, others again being supplied by Messrs. Whitten Brothers, their steamer bringing natives from the distant Fly River to work in the Northern Division. Good masters have little difficulty in getting labour, the same " boys " often signing-on for a fresh term. Bad ones the natives will have nothing to do with — if they know, and, while I believe that to-day most of the recruiters play fair, I am just as strongly of opinion that aU do not, and so feel absolutely certain that the Government should take over all recruiting in the best interests of good employers, but more particularly to safeguard the natives, who, through ignorance of English, are placed at a terrible disadvantage if they fall into the hands of un- scrupulous men. I realise, of course, that in the case of planters employing purely local labour this danger need not be feared, and consequently need not be so drastically guarded against. Apart from recruiting, all miners from the north and Woodlark make this their port of departure for Australia. Some never get further south, beginning and ending their spree, and leaving their hard-won gold in one or all of the hotels, going back to risk and toil, so that six or twelve months later they may do the same thing Digitized by Microsoft® THE LOST LEGION 51 over again. Poor fellows ! they haven't even the satisfaction of the old western shepherd, who, after vainly striving for seventeen years to get beyond the first " pub," was at last carried past it dead, for their bodies even don't get past Samarai — they generally rot on the Mambare, or on some unknown track. Others reach Cooktown, a few Brisbane, a remnant spend what is left in Sydney, while here and there one of stiU sterner stuff may even see the Melbourne Cup. I speak, of course, only of that lost legion yearly, thank God, growing weaker for want of recruits. A big majority of the miners to-day are, I hope and beUeve, neither so weak nor so foolish as to work for months just for a few weeks of mad carousal, with sure delirium as the sum and substance of it all. Here, too, come pearl buyers, traders of the baser sort, and certain Greeks fallen from their one-time high national estate, who barter for pearls and curios among the islands, and whose deportation from Papua would not make one good citizen the fewer. One day after work we walked over part of this fairy island, past coral trees in scarlet bloom, glorious hibiscus blossoms, caladium leaves rich in wondrous shading and broad enough for elves to sit upon, and rare orchids. We passed by hedges of green and up pathways of crotons radiant with leaves of yellow, deep maroon, red, E 2 Digitized by Microsoft® 52 ACROSS PAPUA and bright scarlet, and, walking among betel trees with slender stems and graceful fronds, paw paws, corkscrew palms, and grenadilla vines laden with great green fruit, we heard birds of rare plumage carolling from out each perfumed bower their love-songs, happy as when the world was young. Another afternoon we strolled down past the sago palms, and were rowed over to Kwato, the headquarters of the Rev. M. Abel. He in no way suggested the type of missionary dear to my child- hood and often still depicted in comic papers as sitting in an uncomfortably small, and — ^judging by the blazing hymn books — sufficiently hot pot, the wMle his congregation dressed in his top hat, shockingly cut frock coat and trousers, and huge boots, smilingly waited dinner. If such mission- aries ever existed in Papua they have, I take it, been deservedly eaten. We, at any rate, did not meet one. The type we foregathered with in no way suggested overdone clericalism, they being in the main muscular and business - like looking Christians. Indeed, I was told that the Rev. Ramsay of Samarai had a particularly "dirty left," whUe Mr. Abel looked weU fitted to slog a baU or a head, did either merit punishment. He has played cricket for his county in days gone by, and has coached a team of his native boys who met a white eleven from Samarai the day we were at Kwato, and, alas for race prestige, beat them " out of their socks " ! Some of their bowling and Digitized by Microsoft® o M H O H M < w o H EH H o Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® NATIVE SKILLED LABOUR 53 fielding was excellent, while one fellow knocked up a century in quite Jessop-like form, but how he and the wicket-keeper stood up to fast " stufiE " in their bare feet is one of the race problems I will leave alone. That Mr. Abel has proved what natives can do in the way of carpentry and joinery, and other forms of skilled labour is amply shown in his saw mill and workshop, both of which, including the driving of the engine and the handling of the logs on the sawing benches, are entirely run by natives. They also make tables, chairs, and other furniture, turning legs splendidly, erect houses, and build their own boats. It may be objected that all this is an interference with white labour, but those who take this ground must remember that these natives are in their own country, not an alien race imported into it, and that consequently by every law of justice they should have first claim to their own laboiir-market, and that their only bar to employ- ment should be their inability to perform skilled work satisfactorily. We are aU agreed that the unskUled labour be left to them, and indeed that they alone can do it, but if men like Mr. Abel can lift certain of them out of the slough of being mere " hewers of wood and drawers of water " so much the better for them, and the better for us, and for Papua. There wiU always be a vast majority who will remain as they are, but if we stifle the upward inspirations of the few we shall inevitably Digitized by Microsoft® 54 ACROSS PAPUA some day turn their thoughts inward to brood on the injustice of it, and they in turn will fan into discontent the many who are ignorant and easily led. We want our skilled labour for Australia. Papua wiU never be a white working-man's country, but if some decide otherwise and go when settlement has created openings, there wiU be room enough for both for years to come, only as a matter of common fairness there can be no line drawn as to colour, it must just be a case of the survival of the fittest. I can further realise that workers in Australia would have just cause for complaint if they were flooded with the products of cheaply paid skilled Papuan labour, but in view of local conditions this is unthinkable, and under any circumstances easy of prevention. I was told that Mr. Abel used picked boys, and that no fresh ones were coming on. Doubtless they were picked, probably it may be difficult to get others, for the Papuan is by choice an agri- culturist. If this be so, the opponents of his experiment have all the less to fear, but be that as it may he is doing good and practical work, if only as an object lesson which may bear fruit in years to come. Water is laid on to the mill and house, which is supplied with milk and butter from cows fed and kept on the island, and taking him all in all Mr. Abel was one of the smartest and most up-to- Digitized by Microsoft® AN UP-TO-DATE MISSIONARY 55 date men I met in Papua, and one who at any rate believed in teaching the natives both healthy- sport and practical work. Leaving the cricket ground, which was once a swamp and a harbour for anopheles — now practi- cally banished from Kwato — we were led by our host past well-kept milking sheds up a winding path to where the mission house, a spacious broad-verandahed bungalow, stood bathed in the warm glow of sunset. Pirst entering a big room like a haU open at the back, we saw Ijdng on mats spread along either wall, and rolled in bright-coloured rugs, about twenty of the dearest little children, some asleep, some looking at us out of great soft dark eyes. Later their mothers would carry them off to their respective homes ; meanwhile they worked and chatted near them. These are Mrs. Abel's special care, and she showed us excellent fancy- work and plain-sewing by the girls under her tuition. Her cousin helps her in aU her labour, and we spent a most pleasant dinner-hour chatting to these two ladies about the possibilities and limitations of Papuan women. Then they gave us coffee, and let us smoke on the broad verandah with an outlook over the moonlit islands, while the natives sang part songs, and solos, to the accom- paniment of the organ, and plaintively beautiful their voices sounded floating out among the palms and over the sleeping sea. Then we said " good- Digitized by Microsoft® 56 ACROSS PAPUA bye," and Harris hastened our sleepy oarsmen by trolling out a boating song over the pulseless bay. Thanks to the kindness of the Hon. W. Whitten, M.L.C., we had an opportunity to visit Milne Bay as his guests. Apart from ourselves, the party consisted of the three unofificial members of the newly appointed Legislative Council, Messrs. Whitten, Weekley, and Little, and Mr. Campbell, Resident Magistrate for the Division, a well-read ofi&cer full of native lore, and keenly interested in his work. The captain of our host's little steamer was, I found, a son of the late Commander Connor of our Naval Brigade, a very pleasant and in- teresting young fellow who had seen service in South Africa, and kicked over a lot of the world between times. We ran out through the China Straits, the islands of Fergusson and Norlnanby rising like sea wraiths thirty mUes ahead. After steaming forty miles we landed and walked in the shade of palms to Mr. Whitten' s plantation, where grew cocoa-nuts, sago-palms, betel-nuts, pine-apples, a fruit of far Ceylon, grenadilla vines, rubber trees, taro, sweet-potatoes, and indeed most things that spring from the fruitful womb of the tropics, but it seemed to me that the owner leant somewhat heavily on Providence, for his fences, as obstruc- tions, were an insult to the intelligence of the dullest pig, while his manager — doubtless a hard- Digitized by Microsoft® COCOA-NUT GROWING 57 working and reliable sailor — held the most primi- tive views as to how to start a soil scarifier. Before re-embarking, Mr. Campbell pointed out how absurdly and persistently close together the natives plant their cocoa-nuts, with the result that the struggle to get high enough to reach sunlight and wind resolves itself into a case of the survival of the fittest trees. It seems that a certain amount of moisture is necessary to bring the nuts to fuU maturity, and this nature provides in a very ingenious way by using the porous stem as a pipe and the head of the tree as a windmill, which by swaying the trunk to and fro pumps the water from the roots up to the fruit. If this be so, it is easy to reaUse how close planting must be fatal to aU those trees that fail to reach the wind zone, and provides another instance of the inadequacy of primal methods in obtaining proper results. Individual Resident Magistrates are doing what they can to alter this state of affairs, but in the near future the Government must take in hand the whole question of the gradual improvement of the present native methods of agriculture. Once on board we slowly steamed round the shores of the bay. It is a vast amphitheatre, sharp-peaked mountains scarred by great ravines, with here and there threads of water falling down their rugged sides, rising round it from cape to cape, while in between the central shore of the Digitized by Microsoft® 58 ACROSS PAPUA bay and the hills lies a rich delta of tropical forest watered by winding streams. We rowed up one of these in the Resident Magistrate's boat. The banks were only about two feet above the water, and consisted of rich made soil covered with tropical foliage. A short pull brought us to a village extending for a couple of miles on each bank. As we approached, some of the women made a great show of sweeping up, for the Resident Magistrate is a man who sees that the village cleaning ordinance is no dead letter. But here there was little to cavil at, so we paddled on past houses weU-made and clean, women rowing about in light canoes, and happy children playing in the water, here and there a tiny island, and everywhere lovely trees and splashes of scarlet hibiscus, and out beyond the mountains rising into white clouds and bluest sky. About 1,000 people dwell in this village of Naigara, named after the river on whose banks it stands ; and that row up and back was just a voyage into a world where primal man and primal nature still dwelt, both as yet in great part protected from civiliza- tion's utilitarian hands. Still, the old order must change none the less, giving place to the new, but Government must see to it that the coming period of transition is marked by no acts of injustice, and that the dark memories of Milne Bay are never re-awakened. In this frmtful region there is room enough for Digitized by Microsoft® A MOON-LIT SEA 59 white and brown alike to work out and mutually improve each other's destinies, if only the more highly developed race will realise that morality, industry, honesty, firmness, and patience are virtues that to be rightly claimed must be con- sistently practised in every-day intercourse with a people who can respect these attributes, and will eventually respond to them, and in certain in- stances possibly absorb them into their own Mves. As we sailed back over a moon-lit sea, we listened to tales of Torres and Cook, and early Papua, weU told. What gallant seamen one and all they were, steering their crazy sailing ships on unknown seas, and picking their unfamiliar way through a very labyrinth of reefs, where, now for- tified with aU the knowledge handed down from that fearless past, men tie their steamers up at night and creep with fearful steps by day. How stout old Moresby must have cursed when, after he had charted all this coast, they found in some forgotten drawer on the Continent charts as good as his drawn years earher by some adventurous navigator. Many ships have left their skeletons on these islands and coral patches, many men have died by the hand of treachery and revenge, but I think the most wholesale butchery was that of 300 Chinese wrecked in the St. Paul on Rossel Island on September 30th, 1858. The story goes that the natives placed all the Chinamen on a small Digitized by Microsoft® 60 ACROSS PAPUA atol close by, supplied them liberally with food, and then, as their condition warranted it, rowed them over to the mainland and ate them. The survivors appear to have been under the im- pression that as they did not come back their mates were liberated, and so as each batch left they were given a Celestial God-speed in the shape of a song by those left behind. It is said that to this day the natives of Rossel Island include this Chinese ditty in their national collection ; but, be all this as it may, the fact remains that in 1859 a lYench steamer took off one Chinaman, who was in the fulness of time arrested for "sly grog selling " on a Victorian " rush," and pardoned when he explained that he was the sole survivor of that Celestial holocaust. Campbell told us of certain tribes where the women wield considerable power even to deciding for war or peace. It seems that if at the feast, held prior to a proposed foray, the women sang and danced, the men saw it through ; but that if on the other hand the women sat silent and moody, the men still marched off to save their faces, but always on some pretence or other abandoned the expedition. In another tribe, if a woman took off her " rami " and threw it over the shoulders of any man about to be killed, he became at once '' tabu " and no one dared to touch him. But Campbell's best story was of a sorcerer. It appears that this man was brought Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® o p pR o > WBi ^d^^ ^%mk H^j^Hp^l^^^ ^H^J^v^L?" EHH^I^^^Hin^di -rTffiffwBHf fc&aa_ jfaiLHeE*fl '^'^^1 ^^^^^I^^^HBSysl^^in iB^HMiSBii ''<.P^H| ^Bi^^Hl^^K^ni^Bl ^^BH9 ^9HnHH[ BWH mMt H^^mH^ ^gg ^^hI ^H^ak i-s^^^r^ra^^BI^HBi 1 Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® MORESBY PASSAGE 75 average matters. Anyway, we had to decline on the score of want of time, to say nothing of absence of official status. According to native behef there dwells in the mountain which towers above the village, a great snake possessing power to make or mar their crops. I fancy he has too much regard for his stomach to interfere with them personally. We left Ealkeran at sunrise, its peak shooting up out of a sea of mist, and coasted along the shores of Fergusson. As we passed through the narrow Moresby Passage wonderful effects came and went. On one shore rose a mountain its sides in shadow, its crown partly in glorious light, in part full of gloom. On our other bow Goodenough or Morata rose, aU its billowy slopes and bands of foliage reflecting every shade of emerald, and aU its peaks shrouded in fleecy cloud. Beneath us was the water full of changing hues ; on high the sky pale blue beyond the mountain tops and richly deep as rare cut sapphires above the lower cloud banks. Ahead were a conical peak and long ranges of mist-shrouded hills, behind lay the open sea. White-winged birds floated about our vessel, and inshore crept a schooner, her sails showing clear against a green-carpeted hill. We anchored off the Mission Station and got out our boat just as the missionary and his bride of yesterday sailed in, and so together we landed, our party joining with the natives in welcoming Digitized by Microsoft® 76 ACROSS PAPUA. Mrs. Ballentine to her new home. It was a picturesque and in a way a pathetic episode of missionary life. The marriage had taken place on the previous afternoon at the new Methodist Headquarters, immediately on the close of the annual conference, and they had sailed away the same evening in an open boat manned by natives, being at sea all night but reaching Bwaidoga as we hove to. So these young people began two voyages at one and the same time, one of which we saw safely accomplished, and I pray that the other, which I hope wiU be vastly longer and I know will be far more fuU of incident, will also end in some sure anchorage protected alike from life's reefs and hurricanes. We all admired the way the bride rose to the occasion. Picture the situation, no other white woman, and the brown ones strange and from a "maid" stand- point hopeless; home a batchelor one, husband anxious to help, but a man ; no idea where any- thing was, never having seen the place before, and four utter strangers to entertain at her first four o'clock, and yet she accomplished the feat without fuss or outward worry and was most kind and nice in the doing of it. I found Mr. Ballentine, the first Methodist so far met, a practical, earnest young fellow who had seen service in South Africa. He told me the late conference had unanimously decided to teach English at all their stations, and while I am not Digitized by Microsoft® TEACHING ENGLISH A DUTY 77 clear as to how this is to be effectively done where island teachers are in charge, I still feel a deep respect and an earnest desire for the ultimate success of men who came to this decision " because they felt it was their duty to teach English to British subjects." It will be well for the Papuan when all men hold similar views as to the duty they owe alike to him and the Empire to which all — both white and brown — ^belong. After a slight roU and a i&ne view of a tropical storm on the hUls, we anchored off the Anglican Station at Bartle Bay. Landing on a shore dotted with palms and shady trees we were met and taken up a well-made winding road to the comfortable mission house, which stands on a small plateau with a wonderful background of peaks ' and volcanic formations, indescribably picturesque in colouring, and remarkable ahke in the grandeur and delicacy of their contours. The natives believe that in two of these moun- tains dwell spirits, nor do I wonder, for they seemed to me too stately as abodes for puny mortals. They also assert that somewhere amid their solitudes an old woman stands changed to stone, which is interesting by reason of its likeness to the Biblical story of Lot's wife. Close by are three purely native irrigation schemes. In one a tunnel has been cut through the base of a cliff ; in all they dam the natural stream and so flood a main channel from which Digitized by Microsoft® 78 ACROSS PAPUA branch lesser tributaries, each man having an allotted time during which he may drain the water from these into his own ground. I know of no other place in Papua, save on the Fly, where methodical irrigation is carried out by the natives. Dogura shows evidence of care and systematic management both in its buildings and grounds, and it was a pleasant picture and hopeful future sign to see a fine herd of cattle feeding on the grassy slopes. I understand they number between eighty and ninety, that milk is abundant, and that at Hioge they have a team of bullocks doing good work. This mission has planted a considerable number of cocoa-palms, and grows large quantities of native food at its various stations. We had tea in a cool basement room with four ladies of the mission, the Rev. Copland King, and a young student not long from Victoria, who was very keen but as yet somewhat worried by the native languages. Two of the four ladies had been on the Mambare doing medical nursing, aU alone, in one of the dreariest and most deadly spots in Papua. Such gentle, patient, heroic women are alike the salt and sweet savour of the earth. Another was in charge of the school, and indeed I feel certain that all were walking with singleness of heart and purpose what they held to be the path of duty. Later we attended evensong, and heard the boys sing in their own language, Mr. King con- Digitized by Microsoft® PRACTICAL USEFULNESS 79 ducting the service in Papuan with a fluency I wish he could induce his congregation to emulate from an English standpoint. He is an Australian, being a member of an old and well-known New South Wales family, and came to this coast when a missionary's work was full of risk and hardship, and in a quiet, unosten- tatious way has been leading a life of practical usefulness ever since. He believes in white settle- ment, and I feel will do all in his power to help it on, for being in no sense hide-bound by old Crown Colony traditions or prejudices, he realises that a settled white population is more likely to do the natives good than harm. This mission is ruled over by a Bishop, who was absent from Papua during our visit, but who, I understand, has given practical proof of his love for the work by spending most, if not aU, his private fortune on his diocese. As the moon came up, Mr. King and his comrade saw us to the shore, and then we sailed out into the night and away from this most lovely and hospitable spot. Digitized by Microsoft® CHAPTER VI. CAPE NELSON TO TAMATA — A BRAVE MAN AND A WONDERFUL MARCH. Cape Nelson — " Victory " — The One Climb Left — The Fiords— A Practical A.R.M. — The Amphibians — Blood Money — Justice, Swift and Stem — ^The Power of a Fearless Heart — ^Buna Bay — Ora Bay — Mambare Beach — Tamata— Childish Sport— The Story of Corporal Sedu — The Rout — Two Lessons— Bushimi and Oya— Bushimi's March from Sea to Sea. We arrived off Cape Nelson in the midst of a shower which utterly spoUt the view from the sea, but in the afternoon our disappointment was all forgotten. For we rowed up a marvellous arm of the sea, fenced on each shore by sheer cliffs and steep-faced ranges, all clothed and crowned with palms and mangoes and giant vines, whUe ever ahead rose in splendid confusion a very tumult of hiUs, broken and torn and tumbled before the feet of Britannia, Temaraire, and Trafalgar, while Victory's crater, whence smoke for ever rises, towered in their rear. When last in active eruption, a stream of boiling water and lava rose out of one of its craters and poured down its side into the sea, sweeping away to ruin and death the villages nestling on its slopes, and leaving as a sign and mark of vengeance a great rift cut through the forest and into the earth itself. Victory is about the only mountain of Digitized by Microsoft® o CO a Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® THE FIORDS 81 importance still unclimbed in British Papua. In the past at least one attempt has been made but failed, and when we were there the Resident Magistrate, Mr. Manning, meditated a try, but he has since departed, so the field is still open for any adventurous soul with a leaning towards cremation. This delta is pierced by over thirty fiords, aU radiating outwards from the mountains like the ribs of an open fan, and all beautiful as the one we rowed up on that still, sensuous afternoon. The station is picturesquely situated on a bluff near the mouth of one of the fiords, and we looked down almost sheer on to the masts of the Merrie England as she lay at anchor below. Mr. Manning and his Assistant Resident Magistrate, Mr. Higginson, made us very comfortable. The latter, by the way, appears to have profited by his Queensland bush training, for his chief told me he had buUt the gaol and was the handy man of the station. Young Australians of this type are the men to send to Papua where an ounce of practical experience of how to make the best of things is worth a ton of theory. Mr. Manning showed us some interesting photo- graphs of a tribe, erroneously said to be " web-footed," who live in some marshes on the north-east coast. The pictures we saw were of ugly, thin, misshapen creatures, their legs, through constant kneeling in canoes, being abnormally Digitized by Microsoft® 82 ACROSS PAPUA developed in certain directions, their feet splay, but not webbed. Apparently driven into the marshes in the past, they build their houses on poles above the water, fattening the pigs in nets himg under them, and using light canoes that can skim over or through the flags and reeds. At one time they used to procure wives by capturing women, probably by cunning, from the mainland, but when Captain Barton and Mr. Manning visited them, this means of perpetuation was evidently a thing of the past, for only seven or eight of these miserable amphibians remained. While we were at Cape Nelson some natives came in, bringing with them a half -starved poor devil of a boy who had run away from a digger on the Mambare and was attempting to make for his home. Having handed him over, they were given some blood money in the shape of tobacco and went away happy. Possibly experience has proved that this is alike the right, only, and most merciful method of stopping desertions, and saving these escapees from starvation and murder among strange and savage tribes, but frankly I do not like it, not because the criminal is given up — for that is properly insisted upon wherever laws obtain — but by reason of the payment for, or bribery to do, an act which can only be justified on the ground that it is performed not for gain but in the public interest. To my mind it is offering a premium Digitized by Microsoft® JUSTICE SWIFT AND STERN 83 for treachery to undeveloped minds unworthy of our best traditions, and calculated to sap all true sense of race loyalty in the people we have accepted the responsibiUty of guiding and govern- ing. Soon after leaving Cape Nelson we passed the mouth of a river where Sir William McGregor meted out blood-red justice to a tribe before warned, and yet caught in the very act of cooking and eating human flesh. For, avowed champion though he was of native rights, he yet never hesitated to take life if, in his opinion, it was the only way to prevent inter-tribal cruelty and slaughter. I was told a story of McGregor's African rule which, even if not true, is at least typical of the man. He had experienced considerable trouble with an inland and rebeUious chief, and at last decided to settle with him personally, so started his march through the forest in search of him. Full of vigour, he soon left his escort far behind, and at last, striding on in deep abstraction, tore some vines out of his path to find himself in the entrance of a clearing and face to face with the chief, who sat on a rude dais, a double row of warriors, clubs in hand, hning the path from where McGregor stood to where the rebel insolently waited. like a flash he realised that he was alone, and then, without a moment's hesitation, strode on past all those scowling faces, and seizing g2 Digitized by Microsoft® 84 ACROSS PAPUA the astonished chieftain by the throat, hurled him to the ground, and mounting the throne, sat upon it. Twenty minutes later his escort found him still sitting there with folded arms and steady eyes — the warriors held by his imperious gaze, their chieftain grovelling at his feet. For a time we saw the smoke rising into the clear morning air above " Victory's " bare and scarred summit, but afterwards the beauty seemed to fade out of sea and shore. The Port of the Northern Division and sea terminus of the Yodda and Kokoda road is a wretched hole, low lying, and surrounded by mangrove and other anopheles breeding swamps. A few days before our arrival they had an earth- quake and tidal wave. Had the latter meant business we would have looked in vain for either Government or private stores, as all three are practically level with the water. In addition to these land disadvantages, the approach from the sea is very bad, and the anchorage itself almost an open roadstead. In view of the splendid land for sugar-cane and for aU-round tropical agriculture, and the timber and mineral possibilities of this division, it can be only a question of a short time till Ora Bay is made the port. Unlike the present disease centre, Ora Bay, which is only thirty miles distant, could be made a fairly healthy settlement, being surrounded by Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® g ^ P5 «! J P m en o a Digitized by Microsoft® A DAY OF TERROR 85 high ground and possessing fresh water. As a harbour it is also far superior, being much better protected from the prevailing winds. A short deviation would connect it with the main Yodda road, and if the Government is really anxious to save the health and lives of its white settlers they will make the change without delay, for a great percentage of the malaria which develops inland is contracted in the narrow anopheles belt that surrounds Buna Bay. Town there is none, and I doubt if I am even justified in dubbing township, a Government dep6t and a private store set side by side, and a third one half- a-mile further round the bay. To reach Mambare Beach we sailed along a prettily-wooded coast with the main range in full view, the great peaks of " Victoria " and " Albert Edward " (the twin giants of Papua) rising in bold relief, and in the dim distance " The Gap " which two of us would soon have to climb. Passing "Mitre Rock" we saw the German frontier and dropped anchor opposite the low- l3dng mouth of the Mambare River, that stream of dead hopes and live mosquitoes. The day we lay there it was aU so silent and lifeless that it took an effort to conjure up that other day of terror in '96 when diggers and their "boys," flying from black revolt, left Tamata in flames and their comrades weltering in blood and unavenged, and, drifting out to sea on rafts, found Digitized by Microsoft® 86 ACROSS PAPUA safety on German ground. They showed us the tree where one poor wretch, not so fortunate, sought cover, only to be given up as a plaything to the children, who stoned him until he fell to earth — and death. Two episodes stand out in strong relief against a dark background of treachery in this Tamata massacre. The surprising trust in " moral suasion" displayed by the gallant and experienced Mr. Green, a trust which was apparently not shaken even by the warnings of his own men, and the heroic death of Corporal Sedu, who, when he might have escaped, elected to return unarmed and die with a leader who taunted him with being a coward. This is shortly the story as I heard it. The tribes about Tamata showing signs of unrest, Mr. Green, a man noted for his successful handling of natives, was sent there. In pursuance of his theory that trust begets trust, he ordered his men to work unarmed. Very soon they heard enough to make them realise the danger this course involved, and at last, one morning. Corporal Sedu told Green of their fears and begged him to let them carry their carbines. Green refused to believe there was treachery, and on Sedu insisting, called out, " All who are not cowards pile arms." All, including Sedu, obeyed. Once in the bush, Green sent Sedu on some message, and while he was away the attack began which could only have Digitized by Microsoft® TWO LESSONS 87 one ending. Still, though well knowing this, and indeed while probably still smarting under his leader's contemptuous disregard of his warning, Sedu, on hearing the cries of battle, deliberately ran back, and, unarmed, was killed at his master's side, being like a true soldier " faithful unto death." With the death of Green and his police, forty white men, armed, but without discipUne or a leader to rally round, became a panic-stricken rabble. Tamata was destroyed, and a demoralized remnant drifted down the river and out to sea, whUe for a season red revolt reigned supreme. To my mind the death of Sedu and his comrades, and the magnificent discipline displayed by them in the face of what they knew to be certain annihilation, teUs us with no uncertain voice what splendid material *for soldiers we have in Papua if led by men they respect and love. The failure on the other hand of an undisciphned mob of white men, armed but leaderless, to hold their own, should be a lesson atid an answer to those who, relying solely on race prestige, too often to-day neglect all ordinary precautions, and so make possible another Tamata. For, under similar con- ditions, what happened once may happen again, and to-day in parts of Papua conditions are little different from those on the Mambare in 1896. Papua is in truth a land which is a law unto itself in many ways, for as we sat talking of Digitized by Microsoft® 88 ACROSS PAPUA Tamata, the old chief, Bushimi by name, who planned and led the massacre, came on board, accompanied by his son Oya. They were physically both splendid men — Bushimi, now fuU of years and respectability, being a retired policeman, his mantle having fallen on Oya who later was on our escort, and I often wondered if he was one of the bright little children who stoned the fugitive out of the tree on Mambare beach. Bushimi had some stirring times after Tamata, and before he joined the " foorce," was captured and sent with three others to Port Moresby gaol on the other side of Papua. From there he and they managed to escape, and attempted the apparently impossible feat of walking across an luiknown country, through hostile tribes, speaking languages different from their own, and over a perfect maze of mountains, including the main Owen Stanley range. But impossible was a word without meaning to the stout-hearted old Bushimi, so he did it, arriving home alone. History is silent as to the fate of his mates. Ill-natured people say he brought aU of them back with him save their bones, but this I do not believe, although I admit that to keep the commissariat going must at times have strained even the ingenuity of a Bushimi. Digitized by Microsoft® CHAPTER VII. FKOM SEA TO SEA — BUNA BAY TO THE DIVIDE. Getting Ready — We divide Forces — We begin our March from Sea to Sea — We enter the Forest — The Fever Belts — On the Bank of the Girinri — Some of om' Fellow Travellers — Primal Papua — Kandarita — A Village Crone— Children of Nature and the Sun— The First Fruit of the Land — Half Devil, Half Child — We Reach the Yodda Road Again — Statues in Bronze — Some Types — Grass Patches — An Hereditary Office — ^Native Gardens — Log Bridges — A Papuan Moses — A Dainty Maid — A Native Climber — Running Amok — ^We Reach the Kumusi — A Grim Tragedy — An Epicure's Opinion — From the Rest House — A.N.C. Dandies — A Native Market — ^We Cross the Kiimusi — Suspen- sion Bridges — Natural Engineers — A Sorcerer — A Faith that should Move Mountains — Fairly Strong in the 'Seventies — The Divide — "Purple Patches." Abriving back at Buna Bay Mr. Monckton had a busy time on shore with the carriers, while George essayed the deHcate task of getting his own way as to the clothes we were to carry. I still feel certain he broke faith with me on the trousers question. Parting with Okeden was the one big fly in our ointment, not only for loss of his comradeship but because we both knew how keen he was to come. StiU one of us had to sacrifice inclination to duty, and so ever generous he turned his back on a long cherished hope and wished us both God-speed. Being left behind was also a knock-down blow to poor Harris, but in his case I dared not risk the extra danger of fever that the trip entailed, for being not only Secretary, but taker and transcriber of evidence as well, his breakdown would have Digitized by Microsoft® 90 ACROSS PAPUA dislocated all our work, but he too put his dis- appointment behind him — ^like the loyal fellow he was — and handed over his camera to Herbert gladly, and yet I fancy with fear and trembling. On the morning of October 15th we saw long lines of black figures (every second one carrying a pole) marching along the beach to the Government Dep6t, and at eight o'clock we went over the side and were rowed ashore, armed with revolvers and water bottles, Herbert sporting, to my exceeding envy, a pair of English shooting boots he had pur- chased from Manning, while I wilted in Australian bluchers at lis. 9d., further brought into iU-shapen relief by service putties. The Hon. William Little, M.L.C., chose as his travelling costume a pair of dehcately-toned pyjama pants stuck into pale blue socks with white toes and facings at Is. 8d., bluchers tied with severely simple twine, and dark blue shirt cut low at the neck, with regulation evening sleeves, and a felt hat of a colour known to connoisseurs as rusty brown. Being an old hand, he didn't worry about a water bottle, and carried his revolver wrapped up with his blanket on some native's back. Greorge ran to moles, bluchers, a twill shirt, and a battered topi, the butt of a revolver, presented to him by Sir William, showing — early buccaneer style — above his belt ; while Mr. Monckton, Resident Magistrate for the Northern Division and commander of our escort and carriers, was spic and span and Digitized by Microsoft® WE ENTER THE FOREST 91 business-like, from his well-roUed putties to his oiled and flexible revolver cross-belts. Marshalling his squad of twelve armed native constabulary and 130 carriers, who either bore their loads singly in bags held on their backs by shoulder straps, or swung midway on a pole rest- ing on the shoulders of two, he set his column in motion, while out in the bay the Merrie England gathered way. Then, as she whistled farewell, we turned our backs, but not our hearts, on our good friends, and plunged into the forest. Passing through a village we tramped along a narrow track which would have been a quagmire in bad weather, through tropical forest broken by open patches of high, coarse grass, Monckton forcing the pace to get us through the anopheles belt, and eight mUes out crossed a broad but shallow river, and camped in at least comparative safety, as malarial mosquitoes were not so numerous from here on. Herbert had a slight visitation of Barcoo as we came along, but apparently vanquished an old enemy effectually, as he was neither sick nor sorry from then out, while George spent the evening livening up our boys and wrestling with old fever germs. As a personal servant the Papuan has distinct limitations. We found the tramp trying, being out of form, and came in soaked with perspiration. Still, the experience was all fresh and fuU of interest. Digitized by Microsoft® 92 ACROSS PAPUA Round our camp the forest rose, and from it came the famihar cry of cockatoos and the unknown songs of other birds. We had a fly each and a taut canvas hammock covered with a suffocating cheese - cloth net, ordinary ones being useless to counter the on- slaught of a Papuan mosquito ; but the rest of our camp was picturesque, the carriers having in an incredibly short space of time transformed the road into a street of palm-thatched "lean-to's," where, on platforms raised two or three feet above the ground, they sat and ate and made merry, and slept huddled together, the clean utterly indifferent to the presence of those scaled with skin disease. Under this platform they often built a small fire, and in the high altitudes I have seen them packed round it as weU as on the stage above. Camp seems for them to be a continual feast, for often in the night if they wake, a fresh attack is made on anything handy. In their quick erection of shelters they are greatly aided by the soft and easily-split timber and the broad leaves which grow ready to hand for roofing. In our party were nine men in chains, about to be tried for eating a mail boy. I was told they would get about a year apiece, not an excessive price to pay it struck me, particularly if they were epicures. Our carriers were of the Berindiri race and men Digitized by Microsoft® 1 PS t) w <: EH CO !?; o Q > H CO •»! O M O M Digitized by Microsoft® GOD'S ACRE 111 diggings of song and story, and drama, and yet to reach it men have left love and home, and certain work and sure safety, have died in fever swamps amid unknown mountains, by slow starvation, by swift and treacherous spear and club ; and many have gone from it broken in pocket and in health, while stiU a remnant remain paying in strength and hard won gold for the dubious privilege of doubtful gain and certain exile from all that most men prize. So in very truth the dimly-remembered cradle- songs of dead or distant mothers, the stories of high hopes that died on river beaches, or were buried deep in barren gulches, the dramas of ruined lives and lonely deaths all have their part and place in the short unknown but deeply tragic history of those who have sought "for the immortal fire Prometheus stole from Heaven," on the Mambare, the Gira, and the Yodda fields. We pitched our camp in a potato patch on the edge of the forest, facing the vaUey and the ranges; behind, and higher up the slope, rest the bodied of those so fortimate as to find a friendly hand to cover their poor bones. Some little time before our coming Bishop Stone- Wigg, with kindly thought, held a service in this acre, forgotten by aU but God and an odd old mate or so, at which the miners attended, then when he had finished, a digger, full of whisky and gratitude, rose and solemnly moved a vote of thanks to him. Poor Digitized by Microsoft® 112 ACROSS PAPUA fellows all, so far it has been a hopeless life, with only the squalid joy of an occasional carouse for most, with certain mental rot for all. The miners we met were in the main men of considerable personality, and several were well educated, one having held a good social position in Australia before he took up Ufe in Papua; another was a rector's son, and a gentleman stiU, but he told me he had now no one in the old country who wanted him, and so he meant to live and die where he was. Most of the claims are some distance from the stores, and scattered at that. Little's being ten miles away, which all says much for the diggers' recklessness or the natives' peacefulness — probably a good deal for both. So far as I could learn, the average miner takes no precautions, often going to his work and leaving his gun to look after itself and his hut. If this be so, I hold that it is alike foolish from a personal standpoint and unfair to the native, as putting an unnecessary temptation in his way. Still, the fact that aU this is possible proves to my mind that a big majority of the diggers treat the natives fairly, and their women with respect. We went into the valley and saw a " cleaning up," the digger washing three dishes, but only getting fair colours. The " boys," of whom men employ from four or five to thirty or forty, according to their means or needs, do all the manual labour. Digitized by Microsoft® FUTURE POSSIBILITIES 113 the digger attending to the " clean up," which, I understand, took place on an average once a fort- night. So far as I could see they just sluice everything on a face, piling the big boulders out of the way, and putting the rest through primitive boxes. We were told that men, sometimes in spite of high prices, cleared from £500 to £1,000 as the result of a year's work, but even so, I doubt if the Yodda has a future as a poor man's diggings under present conditions. Fresh patches may be discovered, but if it is to take its place as a permanent field, capital — either Government or private — must be forthcoming. So far the true bottom has not been struck, and to sink through the conglomerate in search of it means money. No reef has yet been discovered, yet the gold must come from one. Mr. Monckton reports that he saw well defined reefs on the faces of Mount Albert Edward — why not in other and even nearer ranges — ^but no ordinary digger could bear the cost of such prospecting. Hydraulic sluicing will yet, I believe, pay, and pa/ well, but not until a practicable mule-road makes possible the carriage of machinery to, and cheapens the necessaries of life on, the field. Some day I believe one or aU of these things may happen, and if so I hope the plucky men who have lived on hope so long will stUl be there to reap their just reward. Though they have not in the Yodda unearthed Digitized by Microsoft® 114 ACROSS PAPUA all the gold one wishes them, they have brought to light evidence of the existence of an earlier and more developed race, for twelve feet down in the wash, stone-bowls, round, shallow, and with a simple but clearly defined pattern cut on the rim, have been discovered. In other parts the stone-heads of cassowaries have been found, used by the present natives as charms to protect their gardens from harm, but about which these people really know nothing. In these also the workmanship evidences a higher skiU than is displayed by the Papuan, while in digging into some mounds in the midst of a village in Collingwood Bay, broken pottery was unearthed, redder in colour, harder in texture, and bearing a design totally superior to any made by the natives of to-day. All this points to finds of deep historic value, being not only possible but inevitable in this most interesting but Httle known island. Saying good-bye to our digger friends, who all wished us good luck in our attempt to march from " sea to sea," both on our own account and also, as one put it, "because if we reached Port Moresby in good health we would have established a record," we made a start a little after six, mists rising in white shafts and rolling billows off the hills that keep watch and ward over the valley. At the foot of the ridge we parted with Little, our companion of many days, and my particular comrade on the march, for all through we had Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® O o Digitized by Microsoft® A GOLD SEEKER'S RUSH 115 walked together, and a right good mate he had been. Ever a speculator and a born gold seeker, more I feel sure for the sake of adventure than for mere sordid lust of gain, he was off to try his fortune on the Waria, a "rush " then in all men's mouths. The following extract from a letter since received from him tells of some novel personal experiences, and one more " duffer." He says : — " Monckton and I started for the Waria, and had a very rough trip, having to do things crossing rivers on native bridges that would have drawn a crowd in Sydney willing to pay to see us perform. We got on well with the natives, who were aU bow-and-arrow men, the country passed through being very thickly populated. All their houses were fuU of skeletons, whether of friends or enemies I could not say, as we could not talk to them. They also, unlike any other natives I have met in Papua, had an idea of flower gardens round their houses. The plants were chiefly crotons arranged in nice order. After three months' wandering I had to leave. There is gold, but we found nothing payable, at least not payable after reckoning distance from the coast and consequent ruinous cost of living. Something may be found richer by the eight men remaining, but I don't think it will ever support many." Kokoda is a most radiant spot, set high on the edge of a small plateau. At the rear and right virgin forests fence it about, in front, in a basin, i2 Digitized by Microsoft® 116 ACROSS PAPUA grow all things that tell of shade — great plantain fronds, broad and spacious as green sails, and many another plant with leaves of varied hue and shape, and all gigantic. About this basin dwell trees tall and stately, courted of lovely parasites. Near by the water flows, and then the mountains rise fold on fold till Mount Victoria pierces the sky at 12,000 feet. To see the mists rising out of their ravines, rolling athwart their slopes, and breaking into fleecy fragments against their top- most peaks, is to stand with God and gaze with humbled eyes upon the work of His Omnipotent hands. The house is native, rambling and picturesque, and the garden fuU of aU rich tones of colour. There are really three houses built on piles, and connected by covered passages, balconies running round all, and quaint porches rising over the steps that lead down into the garden, the whole being evolved from sago bark, palm leaves, and native wood, bound together with cane and loya vine. The morning after our arrival I was awakened by the sound of sharp, familiar words of command, and looking out saw Mr. Naylor putting the Armed Native ConstabulS.ry through some simple movements in the Barrack Square, and a smart and soldierly lot they looked in their dark blue jumpers, low cut at the neck and short in the sleeves, with red braiding, their sulas held in position by a black bayonet belt, a full bandolier Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® O <1 Digitized by Microsoft® FINE FEATHERS: FINE BIRDS 117 over the shoulder, 0-303 carbines in their hands, and neat forage caps (with the bird-of-paradise badge) cocked jauntily on the side of their crisp black heads. These caps have been abolished on the score of economy, and, like their white brethren in arms, the Armed Native Constabulary have bitterly resented being robbed of their plumes. I was told the Northern detachment were about the only ones who now possessed them, and that they cherish them, fondly carrying them in safe places, and only sporting them when meeting a bareheaded squad. Personally I think the saving alike both paltry and foolish, for fine feathers make fine birds, be they white or black. After Naylor (who by-the-way had seen service in South Africa with one of the Victorian con- tingents and showed all the snap of a smart officer) had shaken them up, a Kawai sergeant drilled them, also by English words of command. Doubt- less his vocabulary was strictly limited, still it was a beginning capable, I feel sure, of expansion if only this question is seriously and methodically faced by officials. The work done was in the main excellent, and I was told, and quite believe, that these fellows are proud of their uniform, obedient to discipline, and keen fighters. Monckton told me a story of one of them worth repeating. During an expedition behind the Hydrographers he got into a scrap, and his sergeant drew his attention to a man who had grounded Digitized by Microsoft® 118 ACROSS PAPUA his carbine. Asked why, he said his relations were among the attacking party, so as a matter of precaution Monckton ordered the sergeant to take charge of his carbine, and in the press of the fight forgot all about him untU matters, becoming really critical, he saw him at his side firing away with the best. " I thought you wouldn't risk kUHng your people," said Monckton. " Neither I would," replied the poHceman, "if you could have beaten them off without me, but now that they may kill you it becomes a totally different affair," and went on shooting as if nothing had happened. On another occasion during a fight a native coming on a pohceman whose carbine had choked, thrust a spear clean through his right arm, but like a flash the latter jumped back, drew it out with his left, and drove it through his enemy's chest. Indeed, it appears impossible to kill or cripple these men by ordinary methods, for we had with us one fellow who not so long before walked into a hidden spear trap, a hole about five feet deep in which were a number of spears, point up ; while another had his head aU dinted from the blows of an axe wielded by a prisoner named O'Brien when escaping from Kokoda gaol. StiU both men were as good as new. The case of this man O'Brien is interesting as showing how a mistake on the part of a keen, but at the time somewhat inexperienced, officer aroused a certain feeling of sympathy in the minds of Digitized by Microsoft® A DANCE UNDER THE STARS 119 decent men totally unwarranted so far as this dangerous criminal was concerned, and even under the circumstances only to be accounted for as the outcome of a somewhat quixotic sense of abstract justice. Why no serious attempt has been made to bring this man to trial is a question the authorities should be asked alike in the interests of the magistrate, the men, and the upholding of justice and order in a country dependent for its future peace on a strict observance of both the one and the other. At night some hundreds of natives, and the Armed Native Constabulary all decked for the occasion, danced in the square to the sound of drum and swelling chorus. Out of the dark- ness they came in phalanxes, each dusky band moving in a figure of its own. The ratthng of spears struck on the ground, and the guttural cries of the dancers, the booming drums, and weird, uncanny chants rose into the stiU, cloudless night from out a setting of tropical forest, and above a scene of primal abandon. I was told these men dance on for hours, once the ecstasy of motion floods their brain, and indeed, as I watched, I could see the same spirit that moves the Dervish to whirl until he sinks to earth with froth-dyed lips, shining out of the eyes of some of them. Everythiag about Kokoda, police barracks, married men's quarters, garden, and drill yard, was alike as clean and well ordered as the strictest Digitized by Microsoft® 120 ACROSS PAPUA quartermaster could wish for, and yet it was aU so native as to blend with, rather than show as an excrescence amid, its surroundings. Situated at the foot of the main range and 1,000 feet above sea level, the climate is, from a tropical stand- point, good, while the plateau is rich almost beyond behef. As an illustration, in the station garden (thirty acres being under cultivation) there grew taro, yams, sweet-potatoes, bananas (I saw fifteen dozen in one bunch), Indian corn, cocoa- nuts, betel-nuts, paw paws, granadillas, pine- apples, chillies, oranges, lemons, English cabbages, carrots, parsnips, radishes, lettuces, French beans, melons, and swede turnips. Cocoa should do well, but coffee would do better on sloping lands, while all the surrounding tribes grow sugar, though I was told it flourished best on the upland slopes. During the twelve months preceding our arrival, an average of about fifty police, prisoners, and carriers were fed from the produce of an average area of twenty acres under cultivation for that period. The character of the soil is a rich, dark, sandy loam, and I was told that 1200 acres on the plateau would soon be declared Crown lands, and that 160 square miles additional had been gazetted as such, starting from Kokoda and extending as far as McLaughlin's Greek, twelve miles north of the Yodda field. From Kokoda right back to Buna Bay, the country is magnificently watered, level, and heavily Digitized by Microsoft® UNTOLD POSSIBILITIES 121 timbered, and judging from the quantities of cane, vegetables, and fruit brought in by the natives all along the route, must be rich. With the exception of the Kumusi River, and even this can be crossed at a ford a short distance from the wire bridge, and the Divide, which could be made practicable for pack traffic at a comparatively small cost, the present track is to-day possible for horses and mules during the dry season. So there are no insurmountable natural obstacles in the path of development from the sea to Kokoda, when the right men choose to tread it. During the afternoon we saw 260 carriers lined up for inspection, and a splendid lot they were. That night Monckton decided to abandon the route over the Gap and to try a new one just discovered by Mr. Bruce, which a yoimg fellow who had come with the Commandant declared to be, if steeper, and attaining to a greater altitude, still more direct. He mentioned incidentally that we should have to walk along the edge of a 2,000 foot precipice for a hundred yards or so, but after all a precipice more or less does not count for much when crossing the roof of Papua. Later I nearly broke my neck, for mooning along with a lamp I was awakened to the enormity of my offence by a yell from George, and a glow of red light, and hurriedly trying to run down some steps soaked with rain, slipped and landed at the bottom with two barked shins. Poor Herbert was Digitized by Microsoft® 122 ACROSS PAPUA trying to remove plates in an improvised dark room with George on guard to scare away natives and other idiots with lights. What the Judge suffered in the cause of photo- graphy no man save himself knoweth ; what he said is fortunately hushed for ever in the forests of Papua. For the first part of our walk the camera was never up when wanted, then Monckton gave it to a policeman who just haunted Herbert night and day. He tried the gaol, and the prisoners lit matches ; the house, and I nearly spoilt the whole set, but aU these experiences paled before the operation of changing plates on the march, when he had to block the ends of his fly, crawl under a blanket, and eventually emerge half smothered and streaming with perspiration, each falling drop representing tissue he grudged to lose, which reminds me that I was weighed at the Yodda and turned the scale at II st. 4 lb., having lost 12 lb. since Buna Bay. Digitized by Microsoft® CHAPTER IX. ACEOSS THE MAIN RANGE. The Costume of Experieuee — Farewell Kokoda — We Leave the Last Outpost Behind — We Climb the Mountain's Face — A Last Look at Kokoda — Leeches and Scrub-Itch — At the 4,272 feet Level — Gettiag Down — The Ascent of the Main Range — The Land of Palms and Moss —The Land of GHttering Silence— We Fall 1,000 feet— Where Perchance the Fairies Dance — The Carriers' Task — The Frozen Carriers — We ascend once more — 8,690 feet above the Sea — A Vision Splendid — Another Mountain Camp— The Gap— Orchids — A Sword of Water — Two Carriers go Sick — Serigina — Only one more Bill — Pitching Camp under Difficulties — ^Bruce answers our Shots — A few Earnest, Simple Words — ^Kagi — -The Commandant— The Future Road — HeNever Expected to See Us — Tea and Whisky — Albert Edward — The King of the Range — Beregi — -Calm, Cold, and Silent — In the Mist Sea — ^We Lose our old Escort and Carriers — Farewell to Monckton. As we stood ready to leave Kokoda our marching kit gave evidence of experience gained since we went over the side of the Merrie England. Herbert's EngHsh shooting boots had given place to bluchers, while since a day out from Buna Bay I had discarded putties as a weariness of the flesh, and now instead tucked the ends of a pair of light loose trousers into my socks, these with either a digger's flannel or a Jaeger undershirt, and stout boots and a topi are all a man wants for this class of work in Papua. The great secret of comfort in a clammy climate being freedom for legs and arms, and for health, flannel next the chest, and a com- plete change on getting into camp, A policeman now carried my revolver and water-bottle, for in Digitized by Microsoft® 124 ACROSS PAPUA a land like this even a grasshopper would, become a burden. At nine o'clock on October 26th we left lovely Kokoda, passing through an avenue half a mile long, plantains, and taro growing on each side, and plants with radiant leaves lining the broad straight road. Then leaving it, and parting with cut tracks for good and aU, we put the last out- post of the white man behind our backs, and plunging into the virgin forest, scrambled over roots and logs and along creeks for about an hour — and then up the mountain's face. With breathers every 100 feet or so up we went getting foothold as best we could, now dropping for a little, but only to rise again. At noon we halted on a steep slope, and facing about saw Mount Lamington, and all the way we had travelled from the sea spread out before us. We were now 3,200 feet above sea- level, and had risen 2,200 above Kokoda, Starting again we dropped for a while, and creeping along some nervy places reached camp without mishap ahead of the rain. Striking camp at 7.45 next morning we clambered over rocks and trees and along the edge of things till we reached a village perched above the valley. Later we had a great view of the Yodda valley with Kokoda showing dimly, and the clouds rolling up the sides of the distant ranges, and then we started on a wild downward career, descending by gripping roots, rocks, and saplings, with every Digitized by Microsoft® ' ' ' " ■* H^v fi^^^r ^^^HIi^^v^€'lm^i^!^:W ^HHp ^^QI^^^^IIiH^^I •i^: ■• IS'--*"'^'- ^t^ -^^j^m^^^/'^ t' 1 .' '^&|l>' ' '" '~^T' Z^ VN^ RESTING. [1-4 Right— Col. Mackay. Centre— Mr. Mosokton. Left— Mr. Justice Herbeet. Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® LEECHES AND SCRUB-ITCH 125 now and then a slide ; while in places the drop was almost sheer. At the bottom we came on a rushing torrent fed by a waterfall that shot out of a wooded mountain and plunged down in a stream of living light. Round us rose great walls of hills, the mist clinging to their rugged fronts, while at our feet the foaming water flowed on over the rocks to bury itself again in the clefts of the ranges. We were now in the region of leeches and scrub- itch, the former rising in the pad till they stood half erect, and fastening on to boots or the natives' legs as we walked ; while touching a bush frequently resulted in a leech hanging to a finger. They crawled through any opening in a boot, and if putties are not well rolled, or trousers not tucked into socks, one was apt to find blood in one's boots on reaching camp. The best method to dodge them is to send the carriers on ahead, and I have often seen ours scraping them off their legs with their long knives as they marched along. Of itch, thank Heaven, we had small experience, but men have been nearly, if not quite, driven mad with it in parts of Papua. Crossing the river on four wet and swaying poles we immediately began a climb as steep as our descent had been, the process now being reversed in that we pulled ourselves up instead of letting our- selves down. Reaching the top of the gorge we began to pitch camp on the 4,272 feet level, but the Digitized by Microsoft® 126 ACROSS PAPUA rain beat us. Just as everything was fixed, they brought in a carrier who had slipped and fallen backward, his load on top of him. His liver was injured, and next day he had to go back, my only wonder being that he was not killed outright. Starting at 7.15 we (clinging to roots) almost at once dived down into a ravine, and crossing a rushing torrent climbed up a face like the side of a house where a slip meant bruises if not breaks. Reaching the top, winded but intact, we began to ascend a spur of the main range, and after a solid climb of four hours, with frequent breathers, — the perspiration falling off hands and face in great drops — we passed into a new world. First the " Brocken " and then the " Fairy King's Domain." Here grew pandanus palms, and gradually as we rose the trees became covered in moss until it hung in festoons from every limb, and crowned with great coronets of sparkling gems and living green each leafless branch. Then aU the prone logs became moss-grown couches, while under foot a carpet of springy verdure lay so thickly spread that it bore our weight, while we could thrust our staffs down several feet through the net-work of leaves and roots on which it lay. As we moved on in silent wonderment, each stem we grasped was soft and cold, while when the sun broke through the mists the whole magic forest glittered with millions of crystal drops. So ever upward we made our way above cloud and Digitized by Microsoft® AT OWEN STAJ^LBY RANGE, 8,301 FEET. [126 Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® A SYMPHONY IN GREEN 127 mist alike, and entered the world of the nature spirits — cold, silent, lifeless, but supremely beauti- ivl in its chaste contours and immeasurable breadth of vision — ^not after the fashion of the flesh, but rather of a great and snow-white soul. Then quickly we fell 1,000 feet, and camped in a wondrous spot in the bosom of the hiUs where two streams met. Here we had barely space to pitch our flys, the usual difficulty in these ranges, where flat surfaces are few and far between. Above us the slender tree stems rose, festooned and clad as for the festival of some Titanic race, with garlands and caskets of moss, a radiant symphony in green, while beneath our feet the wedded streams flowed on through fronded ferns, and giant-leaved white and pink begonias. Here, perchance, the fairies driven by unbehef, and man's strange fear, from their old-world greens, stiU danced on moon-lit nights to the music of the rippling water, for it had all the uncanny loveli- ness of "the Httle people's" storied land. After a time the carriers began to struggle round a bend and down the slippery, awful hill. How, laden as they were, they ever got to the bottom, save on their heads, I know not. I doubt if the depths of endurance possible to the best Papuan carriers have ever been plumbed, for they have been known to keep up with the Armed Native Constabulary during a pursuit through the hills. We were aU soaked in perspiration on arrival, Digitized by Microsoft® 128 ACROSS PAPUA but after a hot douclie were glad to pile on all the clothes we possessed, and the night closed in bitterly cold and wet. I slept in socks, under- clothes, trousers, pyjamas, flannel shirt, "sweater," a cap, two pairs of blankets, and an overcoat, and stiU was not too warm. God only knows what the poor carriers suffered, for burning wood was so scarce and wet that some of their poles had to be sacrificed, and they were practically nude to a man. Huddled in heaps, they must have had a fearful time. In the morning some of them refused to go on, pleading that they would die, while to add to our anxiety Monckton was bad with fever. However, he was as plucky as they are made, and thanks to him we got away at eight, and at once, by aid of roots and saplings, began a fresh climb. Ever ascending — with an occasional level patch to cheer us on — we twisted among the moss-clad trees, and passed under lichen-hung arches, the ridge at times being so sharp that a swerve of a few feet either way would have toppled us over the edge and down the steep, unthinkable slope. Then the trees grew more gnarled, the mosses richer, the silence one that could be felt — and at last we stood on one of the summits of the Owen Stanley Range, 8,690 feet above the sea, and out beyond the intervening valleys we caught ghmpses of great distances, and saw toothed peaks, and broad plains, above and beneath the Digitized by Microsoft® A VISION SPLENDID 129 clouds, for part of Papua lay stretched at our feet, and part rose in splendid isolation sheer through the mists that floated far above our heads. Here stood the palace of the mountain king, and the sun breaking through his hoary rafters, all its dim corridors grew fuU of elfin light, while wondrous soft tones of colour tinted each sparkling column, caressed each moss-grown couch, and flushed with mellow glory all the rare tapestry hung within its fairy aisles. But time was pressing, so down we dropped by perilous sidelings, and sheer set paths, leaving the kingdom of mystery and sUence and beauty behind, but catching rare glimpses of mountain peaks and great ravines, and spreading valleys as we came. That night we camped weU down the main range at an altitude of 6,786 feet, and consequently had a chilly time, but the wood was good, so the carriers could fight the cold and were happy. Monckton, too, was better, and so things looked promising for a good day to Kagi. But Kagi was further than we reckoned, and our guide was either a liar, or had woefully, if flatteringly, over- rated my walking powers when he told us "it was five hours away." Breakfast over, the usual chmb began, and landed us on the summit of a narrow ridge which had been burnt by natives. From here we got a grand view of the mountains we had come over — and away to our left saw, over the shoulder of a Digitized by Microsoft® 130 ACROSS PAPUA spur (down which ran an older track), the original Gap. Then down once more we went, sometimes along narrow crests, or clinging to their sides, then dropping sheer by aid of roots till we came upon two torrents, meeting above a waterfall — a lovely gorge upon each side. Here we felled a tree covered with orchids, and added them to one we had picked at 8,000 feet. Scrambling up a watercourse we faced a steep grass hill bare of timber, and radiating lintempered heat. Crawling up, we faced about and got a magnificent view of the ranges, a great peak piercing the clouds on our right, on our left long chains fading into dim distances, and in our front a great sword of water leaping out of the timber and piercing it again half-way down the mountain side. Crossing the crest, down we tramped through deserted native gardens, dodging old spear traps, and skirting the edge of a neck-or- nothing ravine, till hand-over-hand we landed in a dehghtful basin fed by a singing stream. Starting again at two, word came from the rear that two of the carriers were dying, so Monckton asked us to push on with the guide to Kagi — said by that optimist to be over the next hiU — whUe he attended to his men. Having climbed about 2,000 feet and passed through gardens of taro, yams, and maize, we reached the village of Serigina, clean, and with a splendid outlook over the way we had come ; and Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® AT OWEN STANLEY RANGE, 8,690 FEET, [131 Digitized by Microsoft® AN IKFAMOUS GUIDE 131 gazing back at the piled-up peaks I registered a mental vow never to be so fooUsh again. The women here were taU and well-built, but the chief, a plausible, shop-walker type of savage in a dirty shirt, filled me with a dislike further acquaintance only intensified. I later found he was one of those who, not long before, had raided a village within eighteen miles of Port Moresby, killing all, both men and women, after ravishing the latter. I fancy he was used as a sort of informer. Per- sonally, I regret that expediency so often permits such men to live. When not far from the village we saw Monckton entering it, and as he shouted to us to go on, and as our infamous guide still informed us that we had only one more hill to cross, on we went, over another 2,000 feet of earth, followed by a whole series, tiU six o'clock and darkness arrived simultaneously. As our guide when questioned as to the where- abouts of Kagi now helplessly pointed in two diametrically opposite directions, we decided to halt in a basin beside a stream, and presently up came Monckton with the sick men and a few police. Then the fun began — darkness, no lamps up, no flys, and a camp to pitch, with the rain, which for the first time during our trip had so far held off, momentarily expected. But our police were wonders, and by the time the moon rose the fly poles were cut and up, and things generally k2 Digitized by Microsoft® 132 ACROSS PAPUA straightening out. Meanwhile George had foTUid some cocoa, but no sugar ; anyway it w^as a Godsend, as we were still in our wet things, and chilled to the bone. Monckton then began to fire, in the hope of locating our missing carriers, and got an answering volley from Bruce' s camp, but no response from the faithful Sergeant Beregi, who had been left to bring them along. Fears that they had missed the right spur now arose, and Monckton started back into the night to look for them. At 10.30 he returned, and we knew of his coming by some earnest, simple words he let drop as he picked himself up out of the bottom of the creek ; soon after the carriers (who despite Beregi had stayed to feed at the village) arrived. Then we got food, our flys, and a change, and so all ended well. For the first and only time it did not rain at all. Had it done so we should have been in a bad way, for we had been marching from 7.45 a.m. to 6 p.m., and were dog-tired and wet through with perspiration, having climbed 7,500 feet in crossing three ranges alone, to say nothing of the ordinary everlasting up and down. In the morning one of Bruce's men came in, and leaving at 7.40 we reached Kagi at 9.30, after crossing creeks, clambering over logs and roots, toiling up wooded slopes and through native gardens, with a long hot grass hill for the last lap. Commandant Bruce, who was a veritable son of Digitized by Microsoft® THE FUTURE ROAD 133 Anak, brought his men to attention, and I took an excellent salute as we marched in. The camp was pitched on a high plateau com- pletely fenced in by mountains, save where one long valley wound through the encirchng hills towards Port Moresby. Some day the road con- necting Kagi with the capital will foUow this route; the engineering difficulties at any rate as regards mule traffic being comparatively slight ; mean- while the native path leads up and down and along the crest of the ranges partly because the Papuan has no use for easy grades, principally for commissariat reasons, the villages being, as a rule, built on high ground. Bruce had been here some months quieting the district, and had been marking time waiting our arrival, as in the event of that happening he was to relieve Monckton and escort us to Port Moresby. He frankly admitted that he never expected to see us, and so was most agreeably disappointed when we turned up fit and well and on time. Warned by our firing of the night before that we were approaching, he had done everything possible for our comfort, so we walked in to find a bush break erected, and all our fly poles up — ^and lighting our pipes we looked towards the sea, the Astrolabe Range showing dimly against a misty sky. We had lost Little at the Yodda, and now the time had come to part with Monckton. At Buna Bay he had lent me his aluminium water bottle. Digitized by Microsoft® 134 ACROSS PAPUA which since had been filled with tea each morning, a sip of it now and then being alike a comfort and a stimulant to me during the stiffest climb. I know that many people consider tea is a poison. Personally I can only say I have used it as a daUy drink from Beira to Capetown ; over 8,000 miles of India ; and from sea to sea in Papua with such good results that I would never dream of drinking anything else in a tropical country, or when engaged on work that demanded constant and severe exertion. Whatever may be said for or against tea, one thing is beyond aU possibility of denial — alcohol is the very worst drink a man can indulge in in Papua. It is directly responsible for more breakdowns than aU the diseases put together, and indirectly accounts for an enormous percentage of malarial deaths and recurrences. Sir William McGregor, a medical man of great tropical experience, as a result of personal observa- tion among missionaries and others, says " even the man that is temperate does not endure hard- ship or keep his health so long or so well as the total abstainer. What happens in the case of the drunkard must, I take it, be self-evident." The natives who are practically universally free from alcoholic craving, call aU Hquor " siUy white men's medicine." As regards Papua they coiild not give it a better name. I had become quite fond of Monckton's bottle, and so was more than pleased when he asked me Digitized by Microsoft® THE KING OF THE RANGE 135 to keep it in memory of our trip. Indeed it was no common or parochial flask, for it had been with him when he climbed Momit Albert Edward, and so stood nearer the sky than any man before him in Papua. During our march he told me many an interesting tale of his wanderings on that mysterious hill — how once the mists came racing after them as they were flying back to camp and safety, and how in the dim light they halted on the rim and verge of swift death, the mist rising above the brink of a precipice at their very feet. How in the heart of the mountain 10,000 to 12,000 feet above the sea he came on huge hunting lodges of the natives ; and how one of his police walking alone met an animal described by him as a great pig, and became so terrified by the abnormal proportions of this new, yet ancient, relic of primal ages that aU strength left him, and he would have miserably perished in the freezing night had not Oya, son of Bushimi, chanced upon him and hammered life and strength into him once more. But he did not hammer the vision out of his eyes, for next day he took Monckton to the spot and there sure enough were fresh rootings, and the niarks of cloven hoof -prints. So from that day the policeman has been known among his comrades as " Ogi of pig fame." No snow crowns this king of all the range, but its heart is of ice and its breath freezes the marrow Digitized by Microsoft® 136 ACROSS PAPUA in men's bones, and from its summit Monckton saw a land of forests, and plains, and lakes, and tumbled peaks, and winding from behind Mount Yule a track leading towards the Waria. He told me he was going to try to get back that way from the river to the sea. Since, I have been told, he did, wallowing for days in morasses and deadly swamps. One of our escort I had grown to admire was Beregi, a non-com. above price, and when we were discussing the absolutely hopeless condition of Kokoda if ever seriously attacked, Monckton told me of another station now abandoned, but which then stood, cut off from water in the middle of a high grass patch. Here he and Beregi came, and he asked his sergeant if he could explain why the former resident magistrate had chosen such a death-trap of a position. Gazing round, Beregi shook his head, and then summed up the whole situation thus, " He must have been mad, even unto death." Now that the main range lay behind, and we had practically a whole day in which to rest, I remembered being struck by the absence of stone on the highest ridges, and the extreme narrowness of their root-strewn, moss-carpeted crests. How also, as we approached the higher altitudes, lichen and moss gradually enveloped the timber until they covered limbs and leaves alike, but what impressed me most was the serene calm that Digitized by Microsoft® IN THE MIST SEA 137 reigned over all, for I heard no crash of fierce or fearful animal, no sound of human voice, no song of radiant bird in all that kingdom of mist and sunshine, of sparkling dew-gems, and immemorial sUence. That night we sat in the moonlight and watched the white mists roll up out of the depths below until they covered the range, and only the ragged peaks stood out like islands above a flood that eddied and flowed about the edge of our lonely eerie. Next morning, on the 1st November, at 7.30 a.m., our two parties were drawn up ready to move off. Our old escort presented arms, and so I parted with that good soldier. Sergeant Beregi, Oya the magnificent, Dambia, Ogi of pig fame, and the rest, one and all smart men, fit to go anywhere, and well led to do anything. With them our 130 carriers returned. Men who, carrying single loads of 35 lb., and double ones of from 50 to 70 lb. over torrents spanned by single logs and swaying vine bridges, up and down innumerable and practically pathless hills and ravines, culminating in crossing the main range at nearly 9,000 feet, had taught us a lesson in human endurance never to be forgotten. For a moment we stood there, each reluctant to go our various ways, for if the world be small where tracks are beaten with the feet of commerce, it is large and lonely in untrodden wilds. Then Digitized by Microsoft® 138 ACEOSS PAPUA we clasped Monckton's hand, and up into the heart of the hills he marched with his face set to a two months' tramp over unknown and possibly hostile country, there to bear alone the white man's burden — and, starting on the last phase of our march, down the steep descent we plunged, Bruce, our new leader, towering 6 feet 4 inches, in front — Cleaving Kagi to the sUence and the mists. Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® A STRANGE SEPULCHRE. [139 Digitized by Microsoft® CHAPTEK X. THE LAST STAjBE OF OUR MARCH. We begin the Last Phase — A Strange Sepulchre — Our Mid-day Halt — A Thoughtful Leader — Our Camp — Race Suicide — Moral and Dignified — ^Wearing the Breeches — A Fascinating Study — A Haunting Song — A Papuan Valhalla — Burial Customs — Sugar Cane — Our First Level Track — Our First Mail — Two go Sick — " I've got it Beat " — The Opie — lorobaiva — Anthony — Bruce wants to go on— Women Carriers — A Tropical Storm — What Malaria can do— Pride of Race — The Last Hill but One — A Hornet's Nest— The Overland Mail— Iruta Puna — Strange Customs — George's Blandishments fail — Making Fire^George makes a Damper — Pipes and how they are Smoked — A Land of Plenty— The Last Mountain Village— Good. Old Harris — Sogeri. Alternately rising and falling, we at last reached a plateau, and looking back saw the crests of Mount Victoria towering above the clouds, with a peak to the right that marked our march, and still further the dark outline of the Gap. In front was a deserted native hut, and close by, in a grove of pandanus palms, a strange sepulchre j the body being encased in a sort of barrel made of rude staves and bound with cane, and fixed in an upright position on four poles. And there we left it in its grove, with the great fronds meeting over- head. Then down once more, with villages showing on the opposite slopes, again up a sheer bank, and through a garden, followed by a 2,000 feet climb, when after the usual steep drop we found ourselves in a beautiful spot whqre, beside a stream bright with rich blossoms and radiant butterflies, we halted. Digitized by Microsoft® 140 ACROSS PAPUA Out of this the ascent was sharp, and then we moved along a gradual fall ; and Bruce and I having waited to finish our pipes, getting caught in the rain, took shelter in a native house, or rather under the platform of one, where we were entertained by the village fathers. The rain, lightening, we literally sHd down a greasy hiU, to find everyone snug in a dry camp, for Bruce, taking no chances, always sent on a fly pitching party at the mid-day halt, so that even if the rain caught us we knew our tents would be up. From Serigina we had been in the zone of mountain villages and gardens, and the one we were now camped in was set high on a slope, with mist-hung hiUs ia front full of ever-changing effects — here lovely tree-ferns grew, some I should say seventy feet high, straight and slim, and crowned with tufts of feathery fronds. These mountaineers, both men and women, are of glorious physique, but unfortunately for Papua are on the decrease, as each year the girls show less inclination for marriage, preferring the freer single life to the drudgery of growing and cooking a husband's food. Possibly also the fact that the girl knows that she will only be one of several wives, neglected in inverse ratio to her seniority, has something to do with this growing distaste for wedded bliss — and both these reasons are under- standable and reasonable, if, from a race point of view, to be regretted. But in other parts of Digitized by Microsoft® WEARING THE BREECHES 141 Papua popiilation is on the decline, because married women use primitive but effective methods to avoid giving birth to children ; and this a magistrate of long experience told me was on the increase. So after aU race-suicide is not wholly peculiar to white peoples. These mountaineers are, however, I was told, a moral — and they cer- tainly are a dignified — people ; while on the Venapi River, at the foot of Mount Victoria, even a finer type is found, both men and women being of perfect symmetry. There, I believe, the women wear no ramis, while aU the men from Kagi on, unlike those on the other side of the range, use short ones, in place of the breech string. I was told that in the case of one tribe, somewhere in the south-east, the men wear women's ramis, the women men's breech clouts, in memory of a long dead day when the warriors ran away and left their wives to save the situation, and establish an unanswerable claim "to wear the breeches" for aU time. Taking them aU in aU these hill men and women were the finest we saw in Papua, the mountain land, as ever, giving the noblest race. Indeed, one of the most interesting studies in this fasci- nating island is that of its many tribes, often distinct in physical tjrpe, language, occupation, customs, dress, weapons, and character. At night they sang us a haunting song, in part recitative, in part waltz time, and at 6.45 we left Digitized by Microsoft® 142 ACROSS PAPUA Maneri, and dropping down crossed a stream to face a 2,000 feet climb, but here a track was cut, and some attempt had been made to grade it. Half way up we got a view of the hUl-tribes' Valhalla, Mount Victoria, and saw the mists rising above "the gardens of the ghosts," to use the poetic, imagery of these people. They hold the belief that the spirits of their dead dwell in the great mountain, and that the rolling mist is smoke caused by the ghosts burning trees in preparing their gardens up on the ragged slopes and faces of the ravine-scarred range. Halting at Kurogaru we saw a grave covered with sticks (to keep off the pigs) set just beside a house. Others, again, bury their dead right Under their huts, but Government has forbidden a continuance of this custom on sanitary grounds. Other mountain tribes keep the body in the house, smoking it, whUe the nearest relations watch by the bier day and night for three months, singing the while in mournful chants the dead man's life story. Then the mummy is taken into the forest and put on a platform. A feast is held in the village, from which they all march with torches to the place of death, put some of the food beside the corpse, cast away their torches, and saying : " We have done all we could for yoii, so harm us not," leave their dead in the silence of the trees. These people have a supreme respect for the dead, a fact well illustrated by the following story : — Digitized by Microsoft® m > O > M O c Digitized by Microsoft® CHAPTER XII. POSSIBILITIES OF THE WEST. Port Moresby Again— A Prehistoric Man— Natural Barriers — Our Work is Done— We Say Farewell — Redscar Bay — Yule Island — The Sacred Heart — ^Women Papua owes much to — Improved Health Conditions — A Sheep Experiment — A Genial Christian — A Medical A.B.M. — Mount Yule — A River's Mouth — Ermelo — Out of the Dry Belt — Keen Traders — Village Fathers as Teachers — Bramble Cay at Night — Rats for Lunch — Rohu's Experience — First Australian Land — Darnley Island — Daru — -Titanic Stone Axes — Curios — A Practical Worker — Pythons v. Fowls — At the Gaol — Irrigation^ Agriculturists —A Great Lone Land— Class of Country and Soil — Tobacco — Timber and Labour — Portable Saw-mills — The Other Side of the Picture — Agricultural Products — Land and Natives — Climate — A Dream of the Future — The Present — Farewell Papua. I TAKE it that Port Moresby is the smallest capital in the world, the white population consisting of forty-one men, sixteen women, and twelve children. According to the Chief Government Medical Officer the health of the women is excellent, while children get on very weU up to the age of four or five, when, if not sent to a more bracing climate every two or three years, they, as in every tropical country, show a tendency to grow flabby and anaemic. When at Samarai we saw a dear Httle girl of two, born on the island, and looking the picture of health. Given a hill station at Astrolabe and a good school at Port Moresby, I can see no reason why both adults and children should not live there and enjoy reasonable health all the year round without frequent and expensive trips to Australia. Digitized by Microsoft® 166 ACROSS PAPUA Captain Hunter told me that while fishing off a small island lying just outside the harbour he saw embedded in a sort of cement just washed by the tide the perfect skeleton of a man. Unfortunately on his return he told of his find, with the result that certain of the inhabitants tried to shift it with dynamite, succeeding so effectually that a most interesting and possibly prehistoric aborigine was lost for ever to science. While I doubt if a road will ever be constructed over the main range practicable for general traffic, it, on the other hand, must for all time remain an effectual barrier between Port Moresby and hostile invasion from the north-east, while the reef- strewn coast will ever make attack from the sea both difficult and dangerous, for in the inner basin, completely landlocked and only possible of entrance from Port Moresby proper (which is a good har- bour of decent depth and reasonable scope for jetty buildings), destroyers could crouch in safety and unseen, ready to dash out and into a hostile fleet. So if in the fulness of time the capital develops in proportion to the richness of the country, it is well situated by reason of its harbour to accommodate the needs of commerce and, thanks to its natural advantages, to resist foreign occupation. One evening — our work done — we looked upon the clear cut islands and soft mystic ranges and peaks for the last time. That night the sun set out Digitized by Microsoft® YULE ISLAND 167 beyond the harbour gates glorious in raiment of rose and green and gold, but we said farewell with- out regret, for on the morrow we saUed for the South land, and love and home. Bidding good-bye to the faithful George, two or three ofl&cials, the corporal who had served me splendidly from Kagi, and our two " boys," we left Port Moresby at 9.15 on the morning of November 23rd. As the Merrie England steamed out of the harbour a soft azure light mantled the hills that rise behind Fairfax Harbour. Then as we cleared the bluff beneath whose base Ela lies, we caught a glimpse of "HUlworth" with the mists floating midway on purple hiUs, while behind rose the blue Astrolabe — and coast-wise all things swam into dim mystic distances of ever-changing tones of colour. Hugging the shore, which consisted of barren hiUs, and low-lying country backed by cloud- capped ranges, and passing an occasional lakatoi, we reached Redscar Bay, into which the Rivers Brown, Venapi, Goldie, and Laloki aU empty. About this point we dropped the reef, nor did we pick it up again on this coast. About 3.30 Yule Island was sighted, the country, now consisting of low wooded ranges with tree-clad flats by the shore. Here a lakatoi passed, having four square cut ugly canvas sails in place of the graceful pinions of native fibre. So, already, the old order changeth, giving place to the new, and in Digitized by Microsoft® 168 ACROSS PAPUA a case such as this, I can only say, alas the pity of it! Dropping anchor off the Grovernment Station at Yule Island we were met on landing by the co-adjutor Bishop, and Father Theodore, both French and charming. They took us up to the Sacred Heart Mission Station where we made the acquaintance of other priests, and later. Archbishop Navarre, a pleasant old gentleman, and a veteran missioner, he having been in Papua twenty-five years. He told me he meant here to await his call — a labourer to the end. These missioners (their coast-line being ex- tremely limited) have penetrated about ninety miles inland, constructing at a cost of £900 a horse-road for most of the distance. I understand they did a lot of the labour personally, as is the habit of their order in all things, and that, as a consequence, some of them died, and many suffered severely from fever. This I can quite under- stand, as I am fully convinced that white men will never be able to perform hard manual work in the open in Papua, save possibly on some of the high altitudes. They graze a hundred head of cattle and eight horses on the island, and about 200 cattle on the mainland, where they also have a cocoa-nut planta- tion of over 400 acres, using ploughs drawn by horses, which latter they hope soon to replace by oxen for this class of work. Having plenty of mUk Digitized by Microsoft® WOMEN PAPUA OWES MUCH TO 169 they make butter and cheese, and, as each Father is master of a trade, are all qualified alike to do every class of practical work, or teach it to the natives. A band of sisters is attached to the Mission as teachers and nurses. For these noble and self- sacrificing women, be they sisters, or lay nurses, or missionaries' wives, in whatever part of Papua, I have naught but unqualified admiration. Yule Island is undulating, with clumps of trees alternating with stretches of grass land, and when this is green it must be a lovely spot. Once very unhealthy, it is now a fairly healthy station, thanks to clearing away a lot of the mangroves, and owing to the fact that the cattle both eat down the grass, and provide better food for the Mission. The Fathers are experimenting with sheep on the mainland, but while this is an interesting and praiseworthy departure, I person- ally have small hope of any practical result. I do not think the Sacred Heart employs island teachers. If not, a great field for teaching the natives English lies in front of young Australian Catholics, always provided that they are eligible for work in this Mission. After a simple dinner, cooked and served by our hosts, we returned to the ship, where we met Mr. Dancy of the London Missionary Society, who lived on the opposite mainland. He was a fine looking, healthy, genial man, whose nineteen years Digitized by Microsoft® 170 ACROSS PAPUA in Papua had left no sign, at least outwardly. Unfortunately time would not allow us to accept his hearty invitation to visit his station, so after a pleasant chat he bade us farewell, and we went on with our work. Dr. Strong, the Assistant Resident Magistrate for the District, was also on board. He is a doctor of medicine, and, were it possible, it would be a splendid thing for both whites and natives if every resident magistrate and assistant resident magistrate had even a sound elementary medical, but especially surgical, knowledge. Leaving Yule Island, and steaming in sight of a wooded but uninteresting coast-Une, we passed a range broken into great clefts, and fang-like peaks, having for a cidminating point and centre Mount Yule, shooting its lonely head into the sky 10,040 feet above sea level. Hundreds of white fleecy clouds floated quiescent along the whole dark blue front of this chain, resting above, behind, and about its sharp cut crests. All the coast was now broken, in one spot a column of mist defining the existence of a river's mouth. StiU bearing across the Gulf of Papua we almost lost sight of land, tUl at four we ran into a bay with a bar in shore, and anchored about four miles oflf Ermelo Station. Here cocoa-nuts grew in profusion, this country being out of the dry belt. The coast-land is low-lying, backed by ranges 4,000 feet high, but beyond a Govern- Digitized by Microsoft® KEEN TRADERS 171 ment, and London Missionary Society Station; white population — save for an odd trader — ^is non-existent. The natives are of good physique, possessing shghtly Jewish features and keen trading instincts, and they soon swarmed about the ship in canoes, trying to seU us dancing masks, and prettily dyed ramis. The Resident Magistrate, Mr. Griffin, a retired officer of artillery, who won his D.S.O. for good work in South Africa, told us that they not only build great dobus (or houses) holding from 200 to 300 men, but that it is their custom to place young male children in certain of these, where they grow to manhood under the care and super- vision of the elders of the village, who instruct them in all manly and warlike exercises, point out the dangers of immorality, both from a personal, but more particularly a tribal standpoint, and generally inculcate a high standard of living, based on the duty each individual owes to his State here representied by his particular village. Griffin added that this custom was on the decline. It is regrettable that it cannot be re-awakened and fostered on broader and, in certain matters, more industrial lines. Leaving at eight in the morning, we found our- selves in calm water out of sight of land, and at mid-day anchored about a mile off Bramble Cay, a small sandy atol a quarter of a mile long, and Digitized by Microsoft® 172 ACROSS PAPUA from 200 to 300 yards across, its centre — which is a guano deposit — being carpeted with a sort of spinach plant. A cluster of rocks near were covered by sea-guUs, boobies, and other smaller birds, while hundreds flew about our heads when we landed. The atol was strewn with coal, a ship laden with 2,000 tons having been wrecked on a reef close by, and some " boys " we were taking to Daru to be paid off, and an odd murderer or so going to the same place "to do time," amused themselves by throwing it, and sticks, at the birds, which were very tame. Having brought down a few, and caught some rats, they singed them and ate the lot practically raw. A bird-catcher named Rohu had a somewhat grim experience here. Left with enough pro- visions to last a month, and depending for water on a depression partly full, he one day, in trying to clean it out, poked a hole in the rotten bottom and lost his supply. Being a man of resource, he fixed up a condenser with his pint, and just managed to hold out until the Merrie England chancing that way saw his signal and took him off, but it was a close call. This was the first Australian land we touched, for it belongs to Queensland, and possesses a beacon erected by the Government of that State. Rowing back, we ran into three or four large turtles at play, and saw a fine sunset with Darnley Island rising out of the sea thirty miles away. Digitized by Microsoft® 1= o ffl o I— I Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® IN THE MOONLIGHT 173 There many divers have perished through going too deep for pearls, which are very fine off this island. Once the Daru pearling fleet used to coal at Bramble Cay, but that is now a tale that is told, the grounds being worked out. At eight we went ashore again to catch turtles, but without success, they being too shy or too smart for us. Still, it was cool and beautiful in the moonlight, with the white sand, and dark sea in contrast, and a little weird as well, for we were alone on the waters, save for the lights from our vessel shining out of the night. At 6.30 the following morning we sighted a flat coast-line, and about 7.30 anchored off Daru, a low-set island facing a shore of mangroves and taller trees, unrelieved by any backing of hills. Rowing over acres of mud, we landed near the Customs House, and a couple of stores, and, walking by well-kept, shell-paved paths through a space of cleared ground, reached a higher slope, on which stood the gaol, resident magistrate's house, and, further on, the London Missionary Society's Station, everything being very park-like, and made beautiful by glorious crotons, clumps of palms, oleanders in bloom, and other flowers; the whole fenced about by primal forest (in parts where the underbush was cleared), somewhat suggestive of our own bush. On either side of the steps leading up to the resident magistrate's bungalow a row of stone- Digitized by Microsoft® 174 ACROSS PAPUA axes stood, edge up. Some must have been over fourteen inches long, and all were beautifully made. Mr. Jiear told me he got them on the beaches of the Ply River, and later, when I asked a store- keeper and trader if he had seen any, he replied that he had a lot in his boat as ballast. If so, a race physically more powerful, and infinitely more numerous than that of to-day, must have lived on the banks of the great river. Mr. Jiear showed us a head-dress made of white feathers, which, when on, would reach to an ordinary man's heels, and was in shape exactly like some worn by the North American Indians. He told me that during one of his inland trips he had been given certain privileges of brotherhood by one of the tribes, which admitted him to their councils, and gave him the right to claim their help and protection, and that this head-dress was worn by initiates at their ceremonies. If I properly understood him, then certain of the Western tribes hold at least one important rite in common with the red man. His house was full of artistically marked arrows and other interesting curios ; but, after Mrs. Jiear had given us a dainty Irnich on a broad, cool verandah, we had to leave them, being due at the London Missionary Society's Station. Here everything was in splendid order, and we found Mr. Riley to be a practical enthusiast, who believed in teaching the natives how to make the best use of their Digitized by Microsoft® PYTHONS V. FOWLS 175 agricTiltural opportunities, and who had no time for lazy converts. The school, however, was what interested me most, and more than ever confirmed me in the belief that the Papuan can and will master English if given a fair chance, and an enthusiastic and capable teacher. Both these essentials are combined in Mrs. Riley, a Nowra girl by the way, and one of the healthiest, brightest women I met in Papua. The teaching during school hours was purely secular, and eminently practical and useful, with, I should say, most satisfactory results as regards both boys and girls. Several of the latter were, as well, excellent needlewomen, and one girl was working with the objective of buying a sewing- machine for herself ; while one boy at least — a brainy-looking little feUow — would have held his own anywhere, and Mr. Riley told me he was con- stantly being critically questioned by his pupUs after telling some of the Bible stories. As an instance, having given his class an account of how Noah took two of each type of bird, animal, and insect into the Ark, and so preserved the various species, a boy next day came to him and asked, " Did Noah take two of each sort ? " "Yes," rephed Riley. "Two fowls?" "Yes." " Two pythons ? " " Yes." " No fear," said the boy. "But why?" "Why," laughed the boy, "because if Noah had put two pythons in the same Ark as those fowls, there wouldn't be any Digitized by Microsoft® 176 ACROSS PAPUA fowls now." Which reminds me of the story of the bewildered savage on the south-east coast, who, on being asked how he was getting on spiritually, shook his head, and in the bitterness of his soul cried, " Before missionary come me have plenty debil, then Dr. Lawes come, he fetch noder debU, then Dr. BromUow him bring noder, then Bishop Stoney Wigg him come along with anoder, now me got three new debils to dodge as well as old ones." At the gaol we saw vats full of native sago, solid, pasty, sour-smelling stuff, but appreciated by the prisoners. Of these, all the Kiwais we saw, both men and women, had a distinctly Jewish type of features, and were strongly buUt. Jiear told us adultery was a crime on the increase, nor is the reason difficult to find. UntU. Government stepped in and abolished club law, this moral lapse meant death or nearly as bad at the hands of the injured husband. Now at worst it only results in a short stay ia durance of the most free and easy order, with good and regular meals thrown in. The Western tribes have the reputation of being not only sensual, but inclined to the practice of unnatural crimes, but Jiear said that his experience did not warrant him in coming to the latter con- clusion, at any rate to the extent of regarding it as a race vice. They are physically a fine people, and should make good soldiers. By occupation agriculturists. Digitized by Microsoft® A GREAT LONE LAND 177 they grow, besides cocoa-nuts, plantains, and the ordinary native foods, tobacco, and irrigate their gardens on the Fly by means of the rise of the tide. As their methods appear to be in advance of those adopted by most of the other tribes, it seems reasonable to hope that some day they will not only profit by white example, but will also take kindly to working on European plantations. The West is to-day a great lone land, vast areas of which no white man's eyes have seen. But enough is known to forecast for it a future of great agricultural, pastoral, and industrial prosperity. Mr. Bruce, who in twenty-five years had never been further south than Thursday Island, save for one year in the old country, and who looked hard, and fit enough to face another quarter of a century, told the Commission that he had been 350 miles up the Fly, the first sixty miles being mangrove, the next twenty nipa palms, after that open forest, then forest and grass land. Eighty miles up the river he went inland for about one hundred miles, and found rich open forest country, well grassed. It was generally very flat for about twenty miles from the river, with then a rise of thirty to forty feet above the plain, followed by timber country. Ninety miles from the mouth he measured the depth of the bank, and found it to be seventeen feet six inches of black loam down to the clay, and he expressed the opinion that this Digitized by Microsoft® 178 ACROSS PAPUA character of soil obtained for the whole 350 miles of his voyage. He had shipped tobacco leaf preserved by the natives to manufacturers in various parts of the world, who informed him that it was first class tobacco (but badly cured) and most suitable for the manufacture of cigars. Speaking as a man with a certain knowledge alike of timber and vessels, he considered that the possibilities ahead of this industry on the Fly and other Western rivers were great. In his opinion a steamer of 500 tons shallow draft could get up the Fly from 300 to 400 miles, and for 300 miles there was any amount of splendid hardwood, with enough native labour to do the hauling and cutting cheaply, but that at any rate in the west there should be no trouble in this connection either as to supply, or cost. For the Fly he advocated portable saw-mUls capable of being moved from place to place, as in America, the steamers to go alongside the bank and load. One hardwood men- tioned by him being ant-resisting should be invaluable on the Indian railways, while others were excellent cabinet woods, showing beautiful figuring. The other side of the picture, according to Captain Hunter, is that from the break of the barrier at Redscar Head to HaU Sound, and from thence to Daru, there is no safety save during five months of the year, namely, from the beginning of Digitized by Microsoft® TIMBER AND CULTIVATION 179 November to the beginning of March, and that Hall Sound is the only harbour west of Port Moresby where vessels can he in security aU the year round, though the other anchorages are safe in the north-west season. Further, that the west coast, including the mouth of the Fly, is girdled with long shoals and sand-bars, and that the channels of this river are ever changing — islands disappearing and appearing with marvellous rapidity on its uncertain bosom. StiU these, if serious, are not insuperable difficulties, and in my opinion, a practical timber expert should be sent without delay to Papua to report on its timber possibilities. Among products indigenous to the Fly, manilla hemp, sago, tobacco, and kapok or cotton, grow wild, while the natives cultivate sugar cane, and enormous quantities of bananas. According to Bruce, there should be small difficulty in obtaining land without injustice to the natives, as " that occupied by them is a mere flea-bite," while Mr. Jiear stated that "generally speaking they are particularly friendly to whites." Speaking of the climate, the Resident Magistrate said that " with the exception of ordinary malaria Europeans can live here without getting much disease, but they appear to run down very quickly, and have to go away frequently," which doubtless refers to, and is true of, the low-lying coast. Bruce, on the other hand, stated, " I would caU it n2 Digitized by Microsoft® 180 ACROSS PAPUA good, when you get away from the mangroves, I say then there is no fever, and very few mosquitoes " ; which is also doubtless an honest opinion. Strike an average, and I think the result would be about the climate of the West. Drained, and niu^tured by a mighty river which, fed by streams we would account splendid, pours its waters, bom in the womb of mountains on whose crests no white man's feet have ever trod, into the Gulf of Papua, from a mouth seventy miles across ; clad in forests that hold imtold poten- tiaUties ; possessed of broad acres that yet may bear vast herds of cattle, and horses numerous enough to mount a host ; its rivers fringed with the agricultural plenty of a primitive people ; the West may, in the passage of the years, give of its riches to thousands, but not tiU the World is more crowded, more hungry than it is to-day. Mean- while, every pioneer of futurity must be treated in no niggardly spirit, but be heartened and encouraged on his lonely and adventurous way by every legitimate means at the disposal of the Government. The Customs House stood near the edge of the water, and as we drank our last cup of shore-tea with Mrs. Symons and her daughters on the balcony of the Sub-CoUector's quarters, the warning siren rang out across the roadstead where the trading luggers rode at anchor. So, parting with our kindly hostess, we were carried through the Digitized by Microsoft® FAREWELL, PAPUA 181 mud to our boat, and at 4.50 on November 26th, just when a lovely rainbow spanned the passage from shore to shore as if in farewell, the Merrie England got under way, and at last we bade good- bye, and God-speed to Papua. Digitized by Microsoft® CHAPTER XIII. A LAST WORD. The saying " give a dog a bad name, and you may as weU hang him " applies with equal force to countries. Papua is a striking instance in point. Travellers returning from, and often men who have lived long in, a practically unknown land, seldom minimise its dangers and disadvantages. To do so would be more than human. Men again, who are so constituted physically as to be suscep- tible to malaria in its more malignant form, naturally on their return look back with jaundiced eyes on the scene of their past sufferings and ever- recurring inheritance of pain. Further, the fact that odd missioners, officials, and traders have been kiUed and in rare instances eaten, in some instances probably, because they deserved it, — often as a result of their own rashness, not seldom because they have been so unlucky as to reap a legacy of vengeance sown by unscrupulous men of their own race— has in the past helped to supply the colouring for a painting of this daughter of the coral seas, of which the best that can be said is that it is an overdrawn picture, but in no sense a fair or faithful Hkeness, That men have suffered loss of fortune, health, and life while treading the Digitized by Microsoft® « Hi ■5 a la *^ g 1 f-i o g ' H a ^ ; ^ a jc s b Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® PAPUA AND AUSTRALIA 183 paths of official duty, mission enterprise, and private speculation, is true. It is alike true that men die sacrificed on the altar of public duties, martyrs for Christ in city slums, and as a result of private over-work in every country in the Western world. But the vast majority do not, neither do a majority die or indeed become either physical or financial wrecks in Papua. To compare it with the Commonwealth climati- cally, socially, or from the standpoint of settlement, as the term is at present understood at any rate in Southern Australia, would be manifestly absurd, but even in this connection it is interesting to recall the fact that Australia faced by the pioneers and their heroic wives was a wilderness unoccupied save by wandering tribes of blacks, often swept by droughts and bush fires, and in no sense so generally healthy as it is to-day ; and that even now in many parts of Northern Queensland reasonable hygienic conditions are obtained only as a result of opening up the country by settlement. To-day Papau is where AustraUa was one hun- dred years ago, with the additional handicap of a worse climate, a more difficult seaboard, and the fact that some of her best products must come into competition with those of tropical Australia. Her compensations are that she starts her career over one hundred years ahead of her elder sister, and consequently can call on science, electricity, and steam, to aid her development, and can look Digitized by Microsoft® 184 ACROSS PAPUA to the ever-increasing wants both of the Western and the swiftly awakening Eastern worlds to find markets for her wares. Nor need her tropical climate be any fatal bar to her onward progress, for her native population is both numerous and agricultural in its instincts, and only wants firm, honourable, and kindly handling to develop quali- ties of at least comparative industry which would be alike helpful to agricultural development, and the material and moral good of the natives them- selves. Her rainfall is as a whole regular and abundant, whUe as regards her rivers and general water conditions she compares most favourably with Austraha. Less than one hundred — or to be absolutely exact, ninety-four years ago. Governor Macquarie, then ruling over what is now South Australia, Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales, wrote in the bitterness of his soul an official report on those districts, of which the following is an extract : — " I found the colony barely emergiag from infantile imbecility, and suffering various privations and disabilities ; the country impene- trable beyond forty miles from Sydney ; agriculture in a languishing state ; commerce in its early dawn ; revenue unknown ; threatened with famine ; distracted with factions ; the public buildings in a state of dilapidation, and mouldering to decay ; Digitized by Microsoft® AUSTRALIA TO-DAY 185 the popidation in general depressed by poverty ; no public credit or private confidence ; the morals of the great mass of the population in the lowest state of debasement ; and religious worship almost totally neglected." And to-day — ^well, the Conservatives call the Socialists rascals, and vice versa, while the self- dubbed Liberals are sorry for both ; but taken bye and large, I doubt if the caustic old Pro-consul would write us down as short-coated imbeciles. If we have privations and disabihties they are mostly of our own making, and we can generally do our own mending. We have left no space imcharted within the wash of our encircling seas. Each year the plough drives deeper into the heart of our virgin lands ; commerce has merged from dawn into the fuller light of wealth-compelling day ; our revenues expand with each succeeding year ; and soon irrigation and a more systematic storing in our years of plenty wiU banish famine from our sand-swept deserts. True we are distracted by factions, or rather most of our Governments are, but given good seasons we can stand it, if they can, while if we have bad, the most scientific system of political economy ever evolved is as useless as a Chinese cracker for a rain compeller, and from an industrial standpoint nothing else is worth getting distracted about. Our public buildings are solid guarantees that we are neither depressed nor, indeed, poverty-stricken. Why Digitized by Microsoft® 186 ACROSS PAPUA should we be, when we are about the richest people fer capita in the world ! As to our morals, well, I suspect they are as good as our neighbours', and perhaps better than some of those who cry- out against them ; whUe, if we don't crowd the churches to an uncomfortable extent, we fill the hospital boxes to the brim, and worship God by feeding the hungry and ministering to the sick and suffering, be their call from the ends of the Earth. So, looking back to Governor Macquarie's vivid word picture, which I have no reason to suppose was unduly overdrawn, and then turning to that which of my own knowledge I know to be in all essentials true, I feel that splendid possibilities also he waiting in the womb of time for Papua. No man could possibly write such a despatch from Port Moresby to-day as Macquarie penned from Sydney in 1813, nor do I imagine any man will be able even one hundred years hence to point to a progress so splendid as Australia's has been, but much scope for noble achievement lies ahead of Papua's children, both native born, and adopted, and I beheve they will yet build it into an outpost of the Commonwealth, strong, self- contained, united, and free from aU reproach of cruelty or wrong. THE END. Digitized by Microsoft® APPENDIX. LAND IN PAPUA. It is only possible to lease Crown lands in Papua, as the Government will not sell. Leases are issued for periods not exceeding ninety-nine years, and the terms are most liberal. Crown lands are classified: (a) Those fit for agriculture, and (b) lands not suited for that purpose, such as grazing country. No survey fees are charged, but a deposit must be paid, £1 being the amount for 100 acres or less, £2 for 100 acres to 500 acres, £5 for 500 to 1,000 acres, and £10 for over 1,000 acres. For agricultural land the rent is fixed at 5 per cent, on the unimproved value. No rent, however, is payable for the first ten years, and for the second ten years the payment is not to exceed 6d. per acre. The unimproved value will be appraised every twenty years during the lease, and the rent determined accordingly, and if the latter should be raised by more than one-third, the lessee may disclaim the lease and receive com- pensation for improvements. For Class B lands no rent is chargeable in the first ten years, and not more than 10s, per annum for every 1,000 acres during the second ten years. After that the rent is fixed at 2| per cent, on the unimproved Digitized by Microsoft® 188 APPENDIX value, appraised every twenty years ; but, should it be raised by more than one-quarter, the lease may be thrown up and the lessee receive com- pensation for improvements. All the leases are subject to improvement con- ditions. On agricultural leases one-tenth of the area is to be planted with approved plants within the first two years, one-fifth in five years, two- fifths in ten years, three-quarters in twenty years, and for the remainder of the term three-quarters are to be kept planted. On pastoral leases the land is to be stocked within ten years, and be kept stocked, twenty head of cattle or one hundred sheep or goats to be maintained to the square mile. Digitized by Microsoft® INDEX. Abel, Rev. M., 52 Aborigine, A Prehistoric, 166 Agricultvire, Native Methods of, 57, 100 Albert Edward, Mount, 113, 135 Alcohol, Effects of, 134 Alligator, Adventure with an, 41 Anlplet Group, 73 Annexation, Reasons for, 17 Anthony, 145 Astrolabe District, The, 25, 164 Axes, Stone, 174 Bakai Tribe, 94 Ballantine, Mr., 30, 158 Ballentine, Mr., 76 Hampton, 15 Bturier Reef, 5 Barron River and Falls, The, 9 Bartle Bay, 77 Barton, Capt., 18, 152, 154, 156 Baxter River, 16 Beliefs and Superstitious, 25, 38, 69, 70, 75, 77, 102, 142, 149 Bellamy, Mr., 71 Beregi, Sergt., 104 Berindiri Race, 92 Bwaidoga, 76 Bird Shooting, 74 Birds of ParEidise, Snarer of, 99 Blackwood, Capt., 15 Blood Money, 82 Bougainville, M. de, 15 Bramble Cay, 171 Bramell, Mr., 24, 30, 36 Bridges, Native, 100, 105, 107, 109, 110 Brisbane, 5 Bromilow, Rev. W. E., 40 Brown River, 143, 167 Bruce, Mr., 121, 132, 135, 144, 145, 178 "Bucoucuna" (Dance), 73 Buna Bay, 88, 133 Buna-Yodda Road, 110 Burial, Native Methods of, 139, 142, 149 Bushimi, Chief, 88 Cairns, 7 Campbell, Mr., 57 Cannibalism, 74, 83, 92, 97, 102, 108 Canoes, 67 Carriers, 91, 121, 127, 128, 137, 145, 162 Carteret, 15 Carved Spoons, 69 Cattle, 78, 168 Chain Gang, A, 17 Chalmers, Dr., 40 Charms, Native, 20, 22, 114 Chiefs, Position of, 69, 131, 154, 157 China Straits, 56 Christianity, First Papuan Convert to, 24 Climbing Trees, Native Method of, 101 Clock, The New Guinea, 99 Clothing, European, of Natives, 24, 71, 90, 157 Suitable for Travel, 90, 123 Churches Built by Natives, 25 Cocoa-nuts, 37, 43, 57, 78, 94, 168, 170 Coffee-growing, 101, 158-161 Colonizing, Possibilities of, 32, 54, 56, 78, 120, 158, 168, 170, 177- 181 Constabulary, Armed Native, 86, 91, 109, 116, 117, 137 Constance, M., 15 Cook, 15 Cooking, Native Method of, 149 Cooktown, 10, 13 Copland-King, Rev., 40 Digitized by Microsoft® 190 INDEX Copper Mine, 163 Copra, 44 Correngei, 16 Crab, Van der, 16 Creation, Legend of the, 70 Cricket played by Natives, 53 Customs, Strange, 149 D'Albertis, Quotation from, 1 Dambia, 15 Dampier, 15 Dances, Native, 22, 27, 73, 119 Dancy, Mr., 169 Darnley Island, 172 Daru, 173 Dawson Straits, 61 Death, Native Respect of, 143 D'Entrecastreau, 15 Derby, Lord, and Annexation of Papua, 17 Dialects, Multiplicity of, 20 Digger, A Grateful, 111 Diseases, Skin, 19, 46, 63, 72, 92 Divide, The, 107 Dobu, Island of, 62 Dobus (Houses), 171 Dogura, 78 Driuk, A Comparison of, 134 Dubu or Temple, 24 East Cape, 61 Education, Native, of Children, 171 Edwards, Capt., 15 Egofi River, 149 Egum Group, 67 Ela Beach, 14, 164 EngUsh, Mr., 31 English, Teaching Natives, 76, 175 Equipment for March, 90, 92 Ermelo, 170 Etna, The, 15 Fairfax Harbour, 167 Fergusson Island, 56, 61, 73 Fems, Tree, 140 Ficus elastica, 33 Ficus rigo, 33 Fife Bay, 46 Fire, Native Method of Producing, 149 Fish, Method of Obtaining, 68 Flowers, Native Love of, 27, 110, 115 Fly River, 15, 174, 177-179 Fruits, 9, 31, 37, 43, 47, 56, 93, 96, 104, 120, 124, 151, 159, 161 Gap, The, 121 Geelvink Bay, 15 Grenocohi, Dr., 40 " George," 18, 144, 167 Goldie River, 149 Green, Mr., 86 Greene, Mr., 158 Griffin, Mr., 171 Griffiths, Miss, 61 Guide, Our Infamoijs, 131 Guinea, New, 15 Gullet, Miss, 11 Outhrie, The s.s., 3 Hardwood, An Ant-Resisting, 178 Harris, Mr. Edward, Secretary of Commission, 3, 89, 151 Headache, Primitive Cure of, 102 Hemp, Sisal, 31 Herbert, Mr. Charles Edward, 7 Herbertshohe, 44 Higginson, Mr., 81 "Hillworth," 164 Houses, Native, 20, 37, 116 Hula, 37 Himter, Capt., 30, 178 Hunting Lodge, Native, 135 lorobaiva, 144 Irrigation, Native Scheme of, 77 Iruta Puna, 149 " Isla del Oro," 14 Islands, Building of Artificial, 36 Jiear, Mr., 174 Jones, Dr., 71, 106 Kagi, 132 Kandarita, 94 Kapa Kapa, 30 Kapok Trees, 31 Kawai Sergeant, 117 Kerepuna, 37 " Ki Ki," 98 Kilkeran, 75 King, Rev. Copland, 78 Kira Kira, 23 Kiriwiria, 68 Kiwais, The, 176 Knutsford, Mount, 151 Kokoda, 109, 115-122 Korabada, 23 Kumusi River, 102 Kuranda, 9 Kurogaru, 142 Kwato, 52 Digitized by Microsoft® INDEX 191 Labour Questions, 32, 50, 53 Lakatois, 21, 167 Laloki River, 162 Lamington, Mount, 99, 124 Land, 187 Langeweldt, 16 Lawes, Dr., 16, 35 Lawes, Mount, 162 Leeches, 125 Lessons of our March, 153 Little, The Hon. W., 56, 90, 114 Maodonald, Head Gaoler, 19 Macfarlane, Rev. Dr. S., 40 Mackay, 5 Maclaren, Rev. A. A., 40 Mails, System of Carrying, 148 Malaita, The, 11 Malaria, 2, 46, 47, 85, 91, 144, 147, 154, 182 Mambare Beach, 85 Mambare River, 109 Maneri, 142 Manning, Mr., 81 Marshall Bennett Group, 67 Massacres by Natives, 59, 85, 131 Maulai, 24 McGregor, Sir William, 13, 18, 38, 83, 157 Mollwraith, Sir Thomas, 16 McLaughlin's Creek, 120 McMaster, Matron, 66 Menesis, Don Jorge de, 14 Merrie England, The, 29, 167 Milne Bay, 56 Miners, 51, 112 Mines, Copper, 163 — — Waria, 115 Woodlark, 64-66 Yodda, 110-114 Minter, Capt., 163 Mission Stations, 16, 19, 35, 45, 52, 71, 76, 77, 78, 168, 169, 170, 174 Missionaries: Mr. Abel, 52 Dr. Lawes, 16, 35 Mr. Pearse, 37 Mr. Ramsay, 52 Mr. Rich, 45 Mr. Turner, 35 Work of, 40, 45. 52, 168, 174 Ifissionary Societies :^ Jesuit, 16, 168 London, 16, 35, 45, 169, 171, 173 Methodist, 62, 71, 76 Queensland, 19 Mistake, A Regrettable, 23 " Mitre Rock," 85 Monckton, Mount, 103 Monckton, Mr., 89, 90, 129, 135, 138 Moresby, Capt., 16 Moresby Passage, 75 Morton, Hon. M., 71 Mosquitoes, 46, 47, 55, 85, 91, 92 Moss covering Trees, 126, 127, 136 Mourning, Native Sign of, 67, 149 Murray, Judge, 146 Musgrave, Mr., 18, 143 Naigara, 58 Natives, Treatment of, 59, 82, 87, 155, 176 Navarre, Archbishop, 168 Navigation, Difficulties of, 43 Naylor, Mr., 109, 110 Nelson, Cape, 80 Normanby Island, 56, 61 O'Brien, 118 Ogi of Pig Fame, 137 Opie River, 144 Ora Bay, 84 Orchids, 130 Orokolos, Meaning of Word, 94 Owen Stanley Range, 37, 128, 136 Oya, 88, 135 Papua Annexation, Reason for, 17 Crossing of, 88, 152 First Visitors to, 14 Future of, 113, 182, 186 GuH of, 170 Name Origin of, 14 — • — Security in, 31 The Twin " Giants ' of, 85 Papuan, Dishonesty of the, 70 Honesty of the, 96 Physical Characteristics of the, 21, 42, 96, 98, 118, 140, 146, 176 Possibilities of the, 53, 69, 87, 105, 118, 156, 158, 171, 176 (See also Agriculture, Bridges, Burial, Cannibalism, Carriers, Charms, Chiefs, Churches, Cloth- ing, Cooking, Customs, Dances, Death, Education, Fire, Fish, Flowers, Houses, Irrigation, Labour, Massacres, Mourning, Natives, Population, Religion, Smoking, Songs, Sorcerers, Web- footed, Weapons, Women) Digitized by Microsoft® 192 INDEX Parasite, The Vegetable, 64 Pari, 23 Parry-Okeden, Mr. William Edward, 4, 89, 164 Pearls, 69, 173 Pearse, Mr., 37 Percy Island, 5 Philp, 6 Photography, Difficulties of, 121 Pig, A Great, 135 Piae-apples, 151, 159 Pinkenba Wharf, 4 Population, Decline in, 141 Port Moresby, 13, 19, 165 Pottery, Ancient, 114 Ranisay, Rev., 52 Redscar Bay, 16, 167 Religion and the Papuan, 38 Retez, Ynigo Ortiz de, 14 Rich, Mr., 45 Rigo, 31 Riley, Mr., 174 River, Methods of Crossing, 100, 104, 107, 109 Road, The Future, 133 Rocky Creek, 105 Rodney, Cape, 43 Rohu, 172 Rossel Island Massacre, 59 Rouna Falls, 163 Rubber, 31-34, 56, 159 Saavedra, Alvarez de, 14 Sago Fleet, The, 21 Saraajrai, 49 Schouten, 15 Scrub-itch, 125 Sedu, Corporal, 86 Sentinel Islands, 6 Sepulchre, A Strange, 139 Serigina, 130, 140 Sheep, 169 Smoking, Native Method of, 150 eri, 151 Horses at, 157 Songs, Native, 41, 141 Sorcerers, 37, 60, 69, 106 Steenboom, Capt., 15 Stone- Wigg, Bishop, 96 Strong, Dr., 170 Sugar Cane, 143 Sulphur Springs, 62 Swann, 16 Symons, Mrs., 180 Tamata, The Massacre at, 85 Tasman, Abel, 15 Tea as a Drink, 134 Teysman, 16 Theodore, Father, 168 Timber, 177 Tobacco, 150, 178 Torres, Inis Vaez de, 15 Townsville, 6 Trobriand Group, 67 Turner, Mr., 35 Undesirables, 51 Vagi, 30 Vatorata, 35 Vapagori, 23 Vegetation, 9, 31, 37, 43, 47, 51. 56, 64, 93, 96, 98, 101, 116, 130, 126, 127, 140, 158, 173, 177 VerguB, Bishop, 40 Venapi River, 141 Victoria, Mount, 142 Victory, Mount, 80 Wamaia, 143 Waria, The, 115, 136 Watson, Mrs., 11 Weapon, A Curious, 68 Weapons, Native, 31, 174 Web-footed Natives, Supposed, 81 Weekley, Hon. F., 65 White Man's Prestige, 147 Whitten Bros., 43, 50 Whitten, Hon. W., 56 Whitsunday Pass, 5 Women, Position of, 27, 55, 60, 141, 145 Woodlark Island and Mines, 63-66 Yodda Road, The, 100 Yodda Goldfield, 110-114 Yule Island, 167 Yule Mount, 136, 170 Digitized by Microsoft® Fold out Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® BOOKS OF TRAVEL . Published by WITHERBY & CO. 34 i« » » JHE FRONTIERS OF BALUCHISTAN. By G. P. TATE, F.R.G.S., M.R.A.S., of the Indian Surveys. With Introduction by Col. Sir A. Henry McMahon. Travels on the Borders of Persia, India and Afghanistan. It is full of Stories of Wild Frontier Life, Ancient Folk-lore, and Observations on the Manners and Customs of the People. Coloured Frontispiece. Thirty-six Plates emd Two Maps. Demy 8vo. 1 2s. 6d. net. RECENT HUNTING TRIPS IN BRITISH NORTH AMERICA. By F. C. SELOUS. A work of interest to all Big Game Hunters and Naturalists. Illustrated with 65 Plates, many from Photographs of Wild Animals. 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