I looked over the annual import of alcoholic beverages—beer 102,204 gallons, spirits 7,534 gallons, wines 1,500 gallons, stout 1,056 gallons. This was to serve a European population totaling 1,265. The natives didn’t drink, and you must discount the women, children and missionaries.
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I was hardly established in Rabaul when Colonel Honman began urging me to take full charge of the hospital. That was a flattering offer, which I at first declined. Between my medical units and myself, we had to make some sense out of the half million neglected natives we had come there to study. But I shall never forget the grand old Colonel’s morning calls at my house. A soldier to the bone, he never complained, but I could see that he was suffering from “New Guinea fever”—in short, he needed a pick-me-up. It was a habit of my neighbors to borrow a bottle of whisky in the morning, return it at noon, and borrow it again at night. But Colonel Honman always drank his tonic on the spot. Without a word I would administer the usual dose, a drinking glass filled one third with gin and the other two thirds with French and Italian vermouth. Straight as a ramrod he’d toss it off, smack satisfied lips over his double row of false teeth, and bellow, “We breed men in Australia!”
He had a leather stomach, a golden heart and a head that nothing seemed to affect. Already we were sympathizing with Governor Wisdom’s job, for he was breaking up a racket which was as crude as any invented by Brooklyn union leaders. It was the bird of paradise racket—which may sound fantastic, but it was there, and had been ever since the military administration did its worst for New Guinea. In German days it had been customary for newcomers to shoot and sell enough birds to earn the price of a plantation. But the new Territorial Government passed a law to protect the birds. Like all prohibitions this invited bootleggers who, like all bootleggers, were followed by highjackers. It was so easy to make a rich kill and pass it across the Dutch border, where there were no game-protection laws!—and very convenient for a Chinese trader to wait on the Dutch side and pay cash for the bag. Or you could smuggle the feathered pelts into the hands of a ship’s steward. Stewards were getting rich; one of them was able to run thoroughbreds on the track.
District Officers were up to their necks in poaching. One of them came back from the Dutch border with £10,000 in his pocket. He started for Sydney, fell ill on the boat and had to be taken off at Cairns. A sympathetic friend offered to take the easy money to the invalid’s family. The “friend” was a highjacker, of course, and had arranged a clever get-away. The poacher died in the hospital.
District Officers had been up to many things never dreamed of in the philosophy of Tammany Hall. One of them revived “blackbirding,” the old-time slavery. He got a little island offshore, made raids on natives, stored his prisoners there and proceeded to sell them in job lots. When this human meat ran short through brisk sales the official used his police authority and arrested a lot more. Several succeeding District Officers went in for this thriving trade. The military administration tried to break it up. There were some records, for the Keop (District Officer) always made the deals look very legal. But when the Military Governor demanded these records, a handy filing clerk confessed that they had been mislaid.
These abuses were on the wane when Wisdom stepped in, but, even so, he had inherited a pretty kettle of fish. Colonel Honman’s principal worry was a lack of doctors who knew anything about tropical medicine. If I didn’t take over the hospital, he said, he’d have to draft my services. Well, he did finally.
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My right and left hands, Bill Tully and Chris Kendrick, were still with me. Without those two I could never have got through Melanesia. As laboratory assistant Bill used his fine eyes at the microscope, to supplement my dull ones. I had Kenny Fooks too, always good for a barefoot excursion into the swamps, gifted with a constitution that kept him plump through months of hardship. And there was young Byron Beach, an erratic fund of energy. I had picked up two new inspectors, very competent men, whom I had sent out with the other field units. I took out a unit of my own. Between us, we swept north and east over the big hook formed by New Britain and New Ireland; we traveled west under the Equator to Manus and the Admiralty Group; west again to the string of flyspecks, Marou and Ninigo, Matty and Ana.
Chris Kendrick, through fat and lean—usually lean—remained his quiet, reliable self. After his long absences in the bogs and streams and jungles, he’d show up smiling and slap down his neatly written reports, pregnant with a Britisher’s genius for understatement. “Had to climb face of cliff. Waited between jumps till surf stopped pouring over it, then jumped again. Tricky business.” “Horse broke leg in volcanic rock. Had to shoot him. Too bad, fine animal.” “Had to use a lawyer-vine stick on black assistant. First time I ever struck a native. The lik-lik doctor here brought me a boy he said had beri-beri. It proved to be a champion hookworm case. In 5 days counted 1,237 worms. Dosed him again in a week. Chenopodium very slow. Got only 25 first dose. Second yielded 1,122. Score going up. Left assistant in charge of patient, instructions to watch stools. When I got back I was annoyed to find that the idiot had thrown the whole mess away. Jungle housekeeping. I might have recovered 4,000 worms.” This item gave me a bitter laugh. Things like that have happened to us so often, with ill-trained assistants.