Pigs were the next trouble—my own pigs and the pigs of the general public. When I landed on the island I had brought with me from Sydney a lady and gentleman pig of exceedingly high lineage. They were now the proud and happy parents of seven beautiful little black-and-white piglets, and at any hour of the day one might see numbers of natives looking over my wall at the graceful little creatures as they chased one another over the grass, charged at nothing, and came to a dead stop with astonishing rapidity and a look of intense amazement. One fatal day I let them out, thinking they would come to no harm, as their parents were with them. As they did not return at dusk I sent E'eu, the under-nurse, to search for them. She came back and told me in a whisper that the father and mother pig were rooting up a sweet-potato patch belonging to the local chief. The piglets she had failed to discover. Enjoining secrecy, I sent E'eu and Harry to chase the parents home. This was effected after considerable trouble, but the owner of the potato patch claimed two dollars damages. I paid it, feeling his claim was just. Next morning the seven piglets were returned one by one by various native children. Each piglet had, according to their accounts, been in a separate garden, and done considerable damage; and 'because they' (the piglets) 'were the property of a good and just man, the owners of the gardens would not hurt nor even chase them,' etc. Glad to recover the squealing little wanderers at any cost, I gave each lying child a quarter-dollar. Next day I had a piece of ground walled in with lumps of coral and placed the porcine family inside. Then I wrote to the councillors, asking them to notify the people that if any of the village pigs came inside my fence and rooted abyssmal holes in my ground, as had been their habit hitherto, I should demand compensation. His Honour the Chief Justice stated in court that this was only fair and right; the white man had paid for the damage done by his pigs, and therefore he was entitled to claim damages if the village pigs caused him trouble. (I had previously squared his Honour with the promise of a male sucker.) One day the seven young pigs escaped from their mother and went out for a run on the village green. They were at once assailed as detestable foreign devils by about two hundred and forty-three gaunt, razorbacked village sows, and were only rescued from a cruel death after every one had lost its tail. Why is it that pigs of different breeds always bite off each other's tails? I claimed fifty cents per tail, and was awarded $3.50 damages, to be paid by the community generally. The community refused to pay. His Honour then notified by the town crier that I was at liberty to shoot any pig that broke into the station grounds. I put a cartridge into a Snider rifle and told my servants to call me if they heard a grunt in the night.
Three days after this, as I was discussing theology and baked fowl one night with the local teacher in his own house, a boy burst in and said that there was a strange pig in my garden devouring my crop of French beans. In two minutes I was back in my house, snatched up the Snider, and ran to the garden wall. There was the brute, a great black-and white beast, the biggest native pig I ever saw. His back was turned, but hearing my steps he 'went about' and faced me. 'Twas a bright moonlight night, and the bullet plugged him fair between the eyes. Over he rolled without a kick. Then I heard a shriek or laughter, and saw half a dozen girls scuttling away among the coco-palms. A horrible suspicion nearly made me faint. Jumping over the wall I examined the defunct, and could scarce forbear to shed a tear.
'Twas mine own prized black Australian boar, daubed over with splashes of coral lime whitewash. And the whitewash came from a tub full of it, with which the natives had that morning been whitening the walls of the newly-built village church. The one-eyed old scoundrel of a deacon told me next day it was a judgment on me.
MAURICE KINANE
Eastward, from the coast of New Guinea, there lies a large island called, on the maps, New Britain, the native name of which is Berara. It is nearly three hundred miles in length and, in parts, almost sixty in width, and excepting the north-eastern portion, now settled by German colonists, is inhabited by a race of dangerous and treacherous cannibals, who are continually at war among themselves, for there are many hundred tribes living on the coast as well as in the interior. Although there have been white people living on the north-east coast for over thirty years—for there were adventurous American and English traders living in this wild island long before the natives ever saw a German—not one of them knew then, or knows now, much of the strange black tribes who dwell in the interior of the centre and western part of the island, save that they were then, as they are in this present year, always at enmity with the coast tribes, and are, like them, more or less addicted to cannibalism.
Sixty miles from the western end of the island is the mountainous land of German New Guinea; and sometimes, when the air is clear and the south-east trade wind blows, the savages on Berara can see across the deep, wide strait the grey loom of the great range that fringes the north-eastern coast of New Guinea for many hundred miles. Once, indeed, when the writer of this true story lived in New Britain, he saw this sight for a whole week, for there, in those beautiful islands, the air is very clear at certain seasons of the year.
From Matupi, where the principal settlement in New Britain is situated, to the deep bay at Kabaira, fifty miles away, the coast is very beautiful. And, indeed, no one who looks at the lovely grassy downs that here and there show through the groves of waving palm trees stretching from the beach away up to the rising land of the interior could think that such a fair country was the home of a deadly fever; and that in the waters of the bright limpid streams that ran gently down from the forest-clad hills to meet the blue waters of the Pacific there lurked disease and death to him who drank thereof.
At the time of my story (except for the adventurous American whalemen from Nantucket and New Bedford, and the sandal-wood cutters from New South Wales, who sometimes touched there) white men were unknown to the people of New Britain. Sometimes when the sperm-whaling fleet was cruising northwards and westward to the Moluccas, a ship would sail along the coast in the daytime, but always anchored at night, for it was dreaded for the many dangerous reefs that surround it. And once the anchor was down a strict watch was kept on board, for the natives were known to be fierce and treacherous.
Between where is now the German settlement and the great native town at Kabaira Bay there is an island called Mano, which stands five miles off from the mainland. Early one morning, when the wild people of the villages among the palm-groves which lined the long winding beach came out of their thatched huts for their morning bathe they gave a great cry, for a large full-rigged ship was standing in close under the lee of Mano, and clewing up her sails before she came to an anchor.