A short time ago I came across in a daily newspaper the narrative of
a traveller in the South Seas full of illuminating remarks on the ease
with which any one can now acquire a fortune in the Pacific Islands; it
afforded me considerable reflection, mixed with a keen regret that I
had squandered over a quarter of a century of my life in the most
stupid manner, by ignoring the golden opportunities that must have been
jostling me wherever I went. The articles were very cleverly penned, and
really made very pretty reading--so pretty, in fact, that I was moved
to briefly narrate my experience of the subject in the columns of the
_Westminster Gazette_ with the result that many a weary, struggling
trader in the Solomon Islands, the New Hebrides and other groups of
islands in the South Pacific rose up and called me blessed when they
read my article, for I sent five and twenty copies of the paper to as
many traders. Others doubtless obtained the journal from the haughty
brass-bound pursers (there are no “supercargoes” now) of the Sydney and
Auckland steamers. For the steamers, with their high-collared, clerkly
pursers, have supplanted for good the trim schooners, with their
brown-faced, pyjama-clad supercargoes, and the romance of the South Seas
has gone. But it has not gone in the imagination of some people.
I must mention that my copies of the _Westminster Gazette_ crossed no
less than nine letters written to me by old friends and comrades from
various islands in the Pacific, asking me to do what I had done--put the
true condition of affairs in Polynesia before the public, and help
to keep unsuitable and moneyless men from going out to the South Sea
Islands to starve. For they had read the illuminating series of articles
to which I refer, and felt very savage.
In a cabin-trunk of mine I have some hundreds of letters, written to
me during the past ten years by people from all parts of the world,
who wanted to go to the South Seas and lead an idyllic life and make
fortunes, and wished me to show them how to go about it. Many of these
letters are amusing, some are pathetic; some, which were so obviously
insane, I did not answer. The rest I did. I cannot reproduce them in
print. I am keeping them to read to my friends in heaven. Even an old
ex-South Sea trader may get there--if he can dodge the other place.
_Quien sabe?_
Twenty-one of these letters reached me in France during February, March
and April of last year. They were written by men and women who had been
reading the above-mentioned series of brilliant articles. (I regret to
state that fourteen only had a penny stamp thereon, and I had to pay
four francs postal dues.) The articles were, as I have said, very
charmingly written, especially the descriptive passages. But nearly
every person that the “Special Commissioner” met in the South Seas seems
to have been very energetically and wickedly employed in “pulling the
'Special Commissioner's leg”.
The late Lord Pembroke described two classes of people--“those who know
and don't write, and those who write and don't know”.
Let me cull a few only of the statements in one of the articles entitled
“The Trader's Prospects”. It is an article so nicely written that it is
hard to shake off the glamour of it and get to facts. It says:--
“The salaries paid by a big Australian firm to its traders may run from
£50 to £200 a year, with board (that is, the run of the store) and a
house.”
There are possibly fifty men in the Pacific Islands who are receiving
£200 a year from trading firms. Five pounds per month, with a specified
ration list, and 5 per cent, commission on his sales is the usual
thing--and has been so for the past fifteen years. As for taking “the
run of the store,” he would be quickly asked to take another run. The
trader who works for a firm has a struggle to exist.
*****
“In the Solomons and New Hebrides you can start trading on a capital of
£100 or so, and make cent, per cent, on island produce.”
A man would want at least £500 to £600 to start even in the smallest
way. Here are some of his requirements, which he must buy before leaving
Sydney or Auckland to start as an independent trader in Melanesia or
Polynesia: Trade goods, £400; provisions for twelve months, £100; boat
with all gear, from £25 to £60; tools, firearms, etc, £15 to £30. Then
there is passage money, £15 to £20; freight on his goods, say £40. If
he lands anywhere in Polynesia--Samoa, Tonga, Cook's Islands, or
elsewhere--he will have Customs duties to pay, house rent, and a
trading licence. And everywhere he will find keen competition and measly
profits, unless he lives like a Chinaman on rice and fish.
“In British New Guinea you can dig gold in hand-fuls out of the mangrove
swamps” (O ye gods!) “and prospect for any other mineral you may
choose.”
Gold-mining in British New Guinea is carried out under the most trying
conditions of toil and hardships, The fitting out of a prospecting-party
of four costs quite £500 to £1,000. And only very experienced diggers
tackle mining in the Possession. And his Honour the Administrator will
not let improperly equipped parties into the Possession.
“It is the simplest thing in the world” to become a pearl sheller. “You
charter a schooner--or even a cutter--if you are a smart seaman and know
the Pacific, use her for general trading... and every now and then go
and look up some one of the innumerable reefs and low atolla... Some are
beds of treasure, full of pearl-shell, that sells at £100 to £200 the
ton,” etc.
All very pretty! Here is the “simplicity” of it--taking it at so much
_per month_: Charter of small schooner of one hundred tons, £200 to
£300; wages of captain and crew, £40; cost of provisions and wear and
tear of canvas, running gear, etc., £60 (diving suits and gear for two
divers, and boat would have to be bought at a cost of some hundreds of
pounds); wages per month of each diver from £50 to £75, with often
a commission on the shell they raise. Then you can go a-sailing, and
_cherchez_ around for your treasure beds. If you dive in Dutch waters,
the gunboats collar you and your ship; if you go into British waters you
will find that the business is under strict inspection by Commonwealth
officials who keep a properly sharp eye on your doings. If you wish to
go into the French Paumotus you have first to visit Tahiti, and apply
for and pay 2,500 francs for a half-yearly licence to dive. (Most likely
you won't get it) If you try without this licence to buy even a single
pearl from the natives, you will get into trouble--as my ship did in
the “seventies,” when the gunboat _Vaudreuil_ swooped down on us, sent
a prize crew aboard, put some of us in irons, and towed us to
Tahiti, where we lay in Papeite harbour for three months, until legal
proceedings were finished and the ship was liberated.
“About £150 would be the lowest sum with which such a work” (scooping up
the treasure) “could be carried out. This would provide a small schooner
or a cutter from Auckland for a few months with all necessary stores.
She would require two men, competent to navigate, two A.B.'s, and a
diver, in order to be run safely and comfortably; and the wages of
these would be an extra cost. A couple of experienced yachtsmen could, of
course, manage the affair more cheaply.”
Some of these recent nine letters which I received contained some very
interesting facts. One man, an old trader in Polynesia, wrote me as
follows: “Some of these poor beggars actually land in Polynesian ports
with a trunk or two of glass beads, penny looking-glasses, twopenny
knives and other weird rubbish, and are aghast to see large stores
stocked with thousands of pounds' worth of goods of all kinds, goods
which are sold to the natives at a very low margin of profit,
for competition is very keen. In the Society Islands the Chinese
storekeepers undersell us whites--they live cheaper.” And “in Levuka
and Suva, in Fiji, in Rarotonga and other islands there are scores of
broken-down white men. They cannot be called 'beachcombers,' for there
is nothing on the beach for them to comb. They live on the charity of
the traders and natives. If they were sailor-men they could perhaps
get fifteen dollars a month on the schooners. Why they come here is a
mystery.... Most of them seem to be clerks or school-teachers. One is a
violin teacher. Another young fellow brought out a typewriting machine;
he is now yardman at a Suva hotel. A third is a married man with two
young children. He is a French polisher, wife a milliner. They came from
Belfast, and landed with eleven pounds! Hotel expenses swallowed all
that in three weeks. Money is being collected to send them to Auckland,”
and so on. There is always so much mischief being done by globe-trotting
tourists and ill-informed and irresponsible novelists who scurry through
the Southern Seas on a liner, and then publish their hasty impressions.
According to them, any one with a modicum of common sense can shake the
South Sea Pagoda Tree and become bloatedly wealthy in a year or so.
Did the “Special Commissioner” know that these articles would lead to
much misery and suffering? No, of course not. They were written in good
faith, but without knowledge. For instance, the wild statement about
looking up “some one of the innumerable reefs and low atolls... beds
of treasure, full of pearl-shell that sells at £100 to £200 the ton,”
etc.--there is not one single reef or atoll either in the North or South
Pacific that has not been carefully prospected for pearl-shell during
the past thirty-five years.
Then as to gold-mining in British New Guinea, “where you can dig gold in
handfuls out of the mangrove swamps”.
Diggers who go to New Guinea have to go through the formality of first
paying their passages to that country from Australia. Then, on arrival,
they have to arrange the important matter of engaging native carriers
to take their outfit to the Mambaré River gold-fields--a tedious and
expensive item. And only experienced men of sterling physique can stand
the awful labour and hardships of gold-mining in the Possession. Deadly
malarial fever adds to the diggers' hard lot in New Guinea, and the
natives, when not savage and treacherous, are as unreliable and as lazy
as a Spanish priest.
In conclusion, I can assure my readers that there is no prospect for any
man of limited means to make money in the South Seas as a trader. Any
assertions to the contrary have no basis of fact in them. In cotton and
coco-nut planting there are good openings for men of the right stamp; in
the second industry, however, one has to wait six years before his trees
are in full bearing.