After five years, during which Mahkmoud's character was exemplary, he received a free pardon, and returned once more to his native village, where he died, an old and broken man. There is an Arab proverb, "If once you have tasted the sweet waters of the Nile, you will return to drink of them again."
[A White Woman in Cannibal-Land.]
By Annie Ker.
Some incidents of a lady's life in the wilds of New Guinea. Miss Ker went out to Papua—as the country is now called—attached to a mission, and describes the many strange, amusing, and exciting experiences she encountered during her seven years' sojourn among the natives, who, not so very long ago, were always fighting and much addicted to cannibalism—a practice which still prevails among the wild tribes of the unexplored interior.
I.
When, nine years ago, I first set out from Melbourne bound for British New Guinea—or Papua, as it is now officially called—I had very vague ideas about how to reach it, or what it would be like when I got there. I knew that New Guinea was a large island lying off the extreme north of Australia, and that the part I was going to was a little south of the Equator, but that was about all. However, I was told that I should catch a boat at Sydney which was sailing for Samarai, the island port of Papua, and that there I should be met by the schooner of the Anglican Mission. I might have to finish the journey in a whaleboat, I was informed, so my belongings had better be packed in small boxes. Thereupon I set off, armed with a thousand tabloids of quinine, a defence against malarial fever, which everyone in Papua contracts more or less badly as a matter of course.