The Trobriands, land of pearls and parrots, were romantic. The fertile soil put the rest of Papua to shame and the delightful lagoons abounded in fish and oysters—also sharks. I shall not compete with ten thousand travelogue-poets in describing lagoons, but I never went in an outrigger over one of these beautiful sheets of crystal without a feeling of complete rest and detachment.
However, when you go on medical inspection you had best leave romance outside. I wish that a crew of Jack London’s admirers had followed me through the local hospitals and seen the cases of venereal granuloma, a disease still called “tropical.” I wish they had helped me count the cases of hospitalized gonorrhea, and helped me guess at the prevalence of that disease in villages and on plantations. I have heard sentimentalists say that the islanders are morally like ancient Greeks. Perhaps. But when Greek meets Greek, see what the doctor sees.
Dr. Bellamy, the District Medical Officer, took me over to look at the wreck of a sturdy Scot, once a wealthy pearl trader. When hard luck came with tropical ulcers he had squatted in one position so long that his joints ankylosed, and he was now unable to move except on all fours. An un-Scottish generosity had been the cause of his downfall. Because he had married a native wife and had several children, he thought of the natives as his own people. When famine came, he gave everything he had to relieve hunger. White friends warned him of native ingratitude, but it was too late. Sick and useless, he didn’t notice how his wife and children sneered when they passed him. He had taken to chewing betel-nuts because they were a cheaper anodyne than gin. A look into his eye-sockets made me ashamed of my race.
In the Trobriands, the pearl was the beautiful breeder of disease and crime. Every trading store had pearls to sell, and French buyers from Parisian jewelry firms came every year to bargain. The Government protected native fishers from the traders’ rapacity; most of the stories of greed and treachery had white men or half-castes as principal actors.
There was the one about the Britisher who married an extremely pretty half-caste and had a collection of pearls ready to show the Parisians. His little wife, who was French on the white side, was extremely fond of the short, tight-waisted corsets then in style. After her husband found that she had flaunted that corset up and down the beach to the gratification of many, he did what white men too often do there under strain. He shot himself. His wife disappeared; so did his pearls. A couple of years later the authorities found her in Sydney, living rather too well. But oh, what an innocent little lady! She had inherited the money, and what were they accusing a poor, sick widow of doing? A Sherlock Holmes could have told her how she had sneaked into the house right after the suicide, hidden some rich double handfuls inside her corset, and flitted away. The case was dropped; after all, she was the man’s legitimate widow.
I summed up this trip with a line or two in my notebook:—
Trobriands rich prize for trade. Hence heavily diseased. Am feeling much better, letting up on quinine. If I had not stuck to regular dosage feel sure that I would have died.
To economize on my budget I paid Skipper Billy Carson of the Ruby enough fuel to take me back to Samarai. When we came up from the beach the Widow Henderson’s barroom piano was thrashing out a music hall ditty, and an American voice in the doorway said, “Hello, Doctor! Gee, it is the Doctor! I was just telling the guy in there that you’d forgotten all about me. You are going to take me along, aren’t you?”
I caught young Byron Beach’s enthusiasm. I was well again, resolved that when I got back to Port Moresby I’d go on with the Foundation for another campaign, or a dozen. It was wonderful work after all, and I wasn’t going to let the tropics lick me.
After a good supper I asked, “How many of us can sing?” They all could. We were a male quartet with Beach’s pleasant voice to carry the air against Carson’s sad bass, my raw baritone and the squeaky tenor of the young man at the piano—he was the one Byron Beach called “the guy in there.” “Guy” is sufficient name for him. Drink didn’t interfere with his fingers on the keys, and he seemed to know the old standard tunes, “I’ve been working on the railroad,” “I was see-eee-ing Nelly home,” and “Farewell, my own true love.” We were happy as four men can be, making close harmony in the shadow of an admiring bar. It was late when the guy at the piano banged a fist on the keys and muttered, “That’s enough.” We had been singing about any little girl being a nice little girl.