In New Ireland the people of each village are divided into two classes and marriage between the classes is strictly forbidden. If a woman marries outside her class the punishment is death, but the male offender merely pays a fine. Both women and men go naked, and cannibalism is common. The people live in small huts shaped like beehives, surrounded by bamboo fences. The young unmarried men have common houses where they live together.
Most of the few hundred Europeans living in the Archipelago are gathered at Rabaul, in New Britain. This is a well-planned, spick-and-span town, once the capital of German New Guinea. Here one of the most interesting characters of the Pacific islands had her headquarters. This was a woman of remarkable courage and business ability, half Samoan, who back in the eighties started German New Guinea on the road to prosperity in the coconut business. “Queen Emma,” as she was called, was a most enterprising trader, and it was from her that the German New Guinea Development Company, in which the former Kaiser was said to be a heavy investor, bought trading rights. The enormous areas under her management were finally forbidden to German officers because of their cruelty to the natives, whom Queen Emma always championed. She was almost worshipped by the islanders, of whom she employed thousands. At length, however, she married a handsome young German officer and went to Europe to take a high place in the society of Berlin. She died several years ago at Monte Carlo.
New Ireland, too, has its romance, for it was here that some forty years ago a wealthy Frenchman, the Marquis de Rays, tried to start the Free Colony of Oceania. In his prospectus New Ireland was described as an earthly paradise in which each settler was to have fifty acres with a house and every comfort. Would-be colonists from the crowded lands and streets of France, Belgium, and Italy were numerous. Money was poured into the enterprise, which, however, suffered from mismanagement and poor organization. Arrived at the spot chosen on the unsheltered southeast point of the island, the colonists’ ship dumped its cargo on the open beach. Steam cranes, sugar-mill machinery, handsome carriages, agricultural implements, bricks, crates of food, and immense piles of clothing lay in confusion under the tropical sun. Boxes of handles for shovels and axes were landed, but neither shovels nor axes could be found to go with them. There were stacks of wheelbarrows without wheels. Much of the clothing was heavy and unsuited to the climate. The only thing entirely complete to the last detail was the building material for a cathedral, a gift to the settlers from the French people! It was never put up.
Among some Pacific island men a big waist is considered the sign of a glutton, so they lace themselves in tightly with belts of fibre. This man, owing to his necklaces, looped earrings, and unusual nose plugs, is the envy of his village.
The Tasman Sea is named for Abel Tasman, greatest of all Dutch navigators. He discovered, also, New Zealand and Tasmania and was the first man to circumnavigate Australia.
At Wellington, capital and chief port of New Zealand, the hills come so close to the water that some of the streets run through tunnels and many of the houses are seven hundred feet up.
Many of the intending colonists did not even leave the ship. Some died of malaria, for quinine had been left out of the medical stores. The rest of them scattered, a number going on to Australia. Only one, a mere boy, decided to stay on, and he at last grew to be one of the wealthiest men of New Guinea.