Some Experiences of a New Guinea Resident Magistrate

by C. A. W. Monckton

CHAPTER VII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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