Some Experiences of a New Guinea Resident Magistrate

by C. A. W. Monckton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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