One morning about five o’clock I was aroused by hearing a shrill war-cry close by. The police rushed up with their rifles and told us we were attacked. It can be imagined it did not take us long to buckle on our revolvers and seize our rifles and run, half-asleep as we were, in the direction of the noise, which was repeated from time to time in a very ferocious manner. On turning a sharp corner by the river, instead of warlike warriors, we beheld about a dozen natives hauling in the sharkline we had left baited in the water the previous evening, with a very large shark at the end of it. Being greatly excited they had from time to time yelled out their war-cry. We felt very foolish at being roused from our slumbers for nothing, but still there was some slight consolation in knowing that even the police were deceived.
Owen, the Australian, not long before had had rather an amusing, and at the same time exciting, adventure with a large crocodile in a swamp close to the store. He noticed it fast asleep in the swamp, and so waded out to it through the mud, making no noise whatever. When within a few yards of the saurian, he threw a double charge of dynamite close up to it, and then turned to fly. He found he could not move, but was stuck firmly in the mud. His struggles and yells for help had meanwhile awoke the crocodile, which came for him with open jaws. It looked as if it was a case of either being blown to pieces by the dynamite or furnishing a meal for the crocodile.
Luckily the fuse was a long one, and the crocodile floundered about a good deal in the mud ere it could reach him. Some friendly natives rushed in and dragged him out just as the crocodile reached him. The crocodile fled in one direction and the dynamite went off in another, but Owen and the natives only just avoided the explosion.
Owen told me that there were about fifty miners in the goldfields of the Yodda Valley, but that most of them were beginning to leave, although there is plenty of gold to be got. The climate is a bad one, and provisions, etc., are very dear, and so gold has to be got in very large quantities to pay. As the miners decrease, there is bound to be trouble with the natives, who are very treacherous. The miners, who are nearly all Australians or New Zealanders, have generally to work in strong bands with their rifles close at hand.
Only a short time ago the two miners, Campion and King (whom I have elsewhere mentioned), while working in the bed of a creek, had just traded with some apparently friendly natives for a pig and some yams, and sat down for a smoke and a rest, thinking that the natives had left, but these cunning cannibals were awaiting just such an opportunity, and were lying hid amidst the thick foliage clothing the steep banks of the creek. Suddenly, making a rush, they got between the miners and their rifles, and speared both in the legs, taking care not to kill them, as the cannibals in this part of New Guinea consider that meat tastes better, be it pig or man, when cooked alive. They then tied them with ropes of rattan to long poles and carried them off to their village, where they were both roasted alive over a slow fire. These facts were gathered from some prisoners afterwards captured by a government force. A strong band of miners also attacked their villages, and gave no quarter.
On the fifth day of our stay here one of our police came rushing up to us excitedly with the information that a whaleboat was in sight, and we knew that a white man would be in it. There was at once a cry from Monckton, “After you with the razor, Acland.” Now it had been understood that none of us were to shave during the expedition, and consequently we had grown large crops of beards and whiskers, and looked a veritable trio of cut-throats. However, it appeared that Acland had smuggled away a razor-possibly for all we knew to enable him to captivate some fair Amazon, who might otherwise have thought he was only good for her cooking pot. Half-an-hour later three clean-shaven individuals met a tall unshaven man as he stepped out of his boat on to the beach, and his first remark was, “Oh, I say, (reproachfully) you fellows, where’s that razor!” It was Walsh, Assistant Resident Magistrate for the Northern Division, and none of us had met him before.
He and another Englishman, a celebrated trader named Clark (he was an old resident, well-known in New Guinea), with a force of police, were returning from an expedition down the coast, and were at present encamped about sixteen miles south of here, near some small islands known as Mangrove Islands.
Leaving Clark in charge, Walsh had come over with a small cutter, which we promptly hired to carry the extra stores of rice and provisions which we had purchased from Owen. It is astonishing the amount of rice it takes to feed one hundred carriers and twenty-five native police during a six weeks’ exploring expedition.
Two days later ten police arrived, sent down at Monckton’s request from the Mambare or Northern Station. These, with Walsh’s nine, made an addition of nineteen police to our force. A celebrated old Mambare chief named Busimaiwa arrived at the same time, together with many of his tribe, which was friendly to the government. I say celebrated because he was the leader in the murder of the resident magistrate of the Northern Division, the late Mr. ——, together with all his police. But he has since been pardoned by the government. The magistrate and his police were killed through treachery, being unarmed at the time. They were all eaten, but ——’s skull was afterwards recovered. Old Busimaiwa, had a son in our police force.
We were off early the next morning, we four white men and most of the police going in the two whaleboats, while the rest walked along the shore. These latter had to pass through many small villages on the way, but the inhabitants did not wait to find out whether they were friends or foes, and the police found the villages empty.