The inexhaustible mineral and gem deposits of New Guinea are only glanced at, but the description of those marvellous tropical forests, through whose deep ravines rush the gold-bearing torrents, from which "Mac" was able to wash out thirty pounds worth in one day, proves what possibilities England possesses in that great island, and sheds light on the policy of a time, now happily past, when I had hoisted the Flag, in 1872, and thus taken formal possession of Eastern New Guinea. I reported to my chief, and his reply has a curious interest in view of many later developments.
"Have we not enough tropical possessions, without requiring more? Enough issues to sap the strength of our Englishmen, without giving Government patronage to the infliction of new wounds on our body? Enough circumstances in which there must be a subjected race alongside of our English proprietors, without putting the Government stamp on a new scheme which will help to demoralise us, and weaken our moral sense as a nation?"
Such were the views of the Little Englanders thirty years ago. Such seem strangely out of date when explorers of the Alexander Macdonald type are tapping the remotest sources of commerce in the interests of the old country.
So I leave the little band to the reader—very human, compound of great generosities and small failings, travellers, like ourselves, on "the Great Trail" that leads to the Mountains of the Moon, and beyond, but always men, and knit together by so strong a bond that each might well say of the other, with Walt Whitman—
| "Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade." |
| J. MORESBY. | ||
| Admiral Rtd. | ||
| Blackbeck, | ||
| April 19, 1905. |