HOTEL AT HERBERTSHÖHE--PLANTERS’ MEETINGS--DOCMAN AND
“COLLARS”--DR THURNWALD--TRACES OF GREAT VOLCANIC ACTIVITY--
THE BAININGS AND THE SULKAS--FACIAL ORNAMENTATION OF GAZELLE
KANAKAS
Late in the afternoon of the day following, having installed myself
in the hotel at Herbertshöhe, and unpacked what was necessary, I
stood at 5 p.m. at the top of the steps leading from the steep cliff
to the hotel-landing below, from whence I waved farewell to my
shipboard acquaintances.
It was a glorious evening, and as the steamer passed from sight,
my feelings at seeing the only link between myself and the outside
world disappear may be imagined. Turning back I crossed the road,
mentally determining to make the best I could out of the next four
weeks, and returned to the hotel, or rather to that building known
as the Schlafhaus, comprising three rooms on the ground floor and
three exactly above, all opening out into wide verandahs which run
round the house. I had engaged the one with a south-east aspect
upstairs, and OH! the blessing and comfort of those great covered
verandahs, where one could adjust the blinds, and in the intense heat
lie at full length in a thin wrapper on a deck-chair, for no one in
this torrid climate, if they can help it, takes outdoor exercise
at mid-day. Here I was wont to breakfast, but unless accepting
the hospitality of the residents, I usually took my meals in the
building opposite, which, as restaurant, completed the hotel. From
the long dining-room a few steps led up to a portion dedicated to
the cult of lager beer and other thirst-assuaging beverages. On the
wide verandah of this Bacchanalian haunt, the planters and officials
congregated of a Saturday evening. During these convivial meetings
the exiled sons of Germania seriously disturbed my slumbers. Lengthy
orations, interspersed with songs of patriotic fervour, impassioned
verses to their best girls, others in favour of the noble drinks of
the Fatherland, generally ending with thumping choruses, sometimes
excessively musical, at others, ear-rending, boomed through the
stillness of the hot night. When music’s golden tongue ceased, the
sable goddess had generally descended from her ebon throne, and
cheerful morn peeped in upon me, to find my mood inharmonious, my
language imprecatory! From this verandah, which served the purpose
of the well-known beergarden, many amusing things reached me. One
day as I was writing notes in the corner of the opposite Schlafhaus,
screened from view by the sun-blinds which were adjusted as a sort of
protection, not only from the afternoon sun but from chance visitors
below, I heard myself discussed with that attention to detail which
characterises the Teuton as the best thinker in the world. Theories
as to my possible age were brought forward, then contemptuously
snubbed by one wiser than the rest till at last the speakers were
content to leave it not only as an unknown quantity, but as beyond
their speculative capacity.
The manager of this hotel was a young Bavarian of about thirty years
of age. I found him polite, desirous to make me comfortable so far as
lay in his power. He gave me an outline of his somewhat adventurous
career. At the age of sixteen, he and another boy found themselves as
apprentices on a sailing-ship bound for South America. On landing,
they ran away, and actually walked from Santos to Pernambuco, taking
four months over the performance! The hotel was the property of
the New Guinea Company. It may be worth mentioning that my lot has
been cast in more luxurious quarters, but for such as it was, I was
inclined to be thankful--it might have been worse! There were no
European servants at all, and the manager did not live in the hotel.
A Chinese cook, who had scalded his foot, limped about an outhouse
which served as kitchen. A native, named Docman, waited upon me. He
swept the room and the verandah, trimmed the lamps, and performed
many small offices; he was rather a taciturn, though not an ugly
savage. He would come up the steps with his pipe in his mouth; if
he caught sight of me would surreptitiously take it out, and stick
it through his armlet of woven ratang. When in full dress, about to
enjoy himself with his fellows at a feast or dance, he adorned his
neatly-cropped hair with a bunch of double hibiscus planted in the
middle of his head, on either side two white cassowary’s feathers
waved in the breeze, the erection being adroitly fastened to the
mop with a long-toothed bamboo comb. His lava-lava was of brilliant
colours and clean.
Then a native girl, quite the smartest I saw in the colony, rampaged
about my quarters continually. She and Docman had many consultations
as to the curious cut of my garments. She demanded of me “Collars!”
in season and out of season. I had to call the manager, who came
to my rescue, for she laid violent hands on a cashmere dress, a
silk petticoat, and other quite unwashable articles, and I could
not imagine what she wanted with them. He explained she was to
be my laundress, and at the same time in forcible language made
her understand that her presence at every hour of the day was
undesirable, with a few other needful instructions. Miss “Collars,”
as I henceforth dubbed her, was a terrible nuisance, her washing
during those four weeks was a great trial, for she had not the most
elementary notion of starching or ironing. It was too hot for me
to teach her, so I endured and learnt patience! I picked up a few
necessary phrases of Pidgin-English, and learnt to shout to Docman
from my verandah in this wise when I required him to bring my lunch
upstairs: “Docman, fetch kaikai belong missus on top!” An American
lady who with her Swedish husband had occupied the same room before
my coming to Herbertshöhe, and whom I subsequently met in Japan, told
me she had been curious as to “Miss Collars’” marital relations,
or otherwise, and had asked the dusky beauty whether she “belonged
Docman?” “Me?” Miss Collars ejaculated, “Me belong all boys!” After
that the lady said she had not made further inquiries.
The first evening at dinner there were several Germans at the
table who courteously spoke very fair English for my benefit. It
was, however, most entertaining to find that a late comer proved
to be a scientist sent out from Berlin by Herr von Lüschan of
the Anthropological Society, whom I had met some years before on
the occasion of the visit of the British Association to South
Africa. This gentleman, Dr Thurnwald by name, was studying the
different languages, and the anthropological conditions generally,
of the colony. I found him somewhat despondently grappling with
the multitudinous linguistic diversities which characterise
the Melanesian languages, but I was indebted to him for much
enlightenment in our frequent conversations at meal-times. He was
fair in his references to my nation. In fact he spoke highly of our
successful dealings with coloured races, and regretted that things
went forward so slowly in the Protectorate.
“We have learnt by long and sometimes painful experience,” I said
more than once. “We have been colonising for centuries. You have but
just begun!”
“Yes, we came late into the field,” returned he; “all the best parts
of the world were taken long ago. Look at these miserable Gazelle
kanakas. What can one do with so lazy, so low a race?”
It was interesting to hear from one, or another, of the interests
which had kept, or which had brought them to this remote spot. To
grow copra, to sell it at top price, seemed to be the end and aim of
the planter’s ambition. I learnt that there were six trading firms,
with over fifty stations in the Protectorate; that at the different
harbours, such as Wilhelmshafen in Kaiser Wilhelm’s Land, there
were post-offices, and an official with subordinates to collect the
revenue, for the latter procured from taxes, dues, and licences,
averages yearly £5000, but the fact which struck me as significant,
when taken into consideration with the mental attitude of one or two
whom I met, and which I may describe as the reverse of sanguine, was
that in the whole Archipelago there are to-day only, and never have
been more than three hundred white men, and out of that number a
large proportion are officials. When I speak of the planters I refer
to the managers of plantations belonging to the various firms, whose
business naturally brought them often to the centre of administration.
Half a dozen natives wearing red caps and red lava-lavas waited at
table. Sometimes two or three were sufficient for that purpose, the
others meanwhile would squat out in the sun operating upon each
other’s shoulders. I watched the process a little way off. At regular
distances the skin was cut by an obsidian splinter, burning sand was
then rubbed into the aperture and the skin drawn over it. The raised
scars, the consequence of this treatment, represent tattooing in a
primitive phase, and in this scarifying process the _dark-skinned_
Melanesians differ radically from the tattooing of Polynesian races.
The belief is general that these kanakas at one time or another
migrated from the neighbouring island of New Ireland (Tombara), and
brought with them this type of ornamentation of the body. Whether
these scarified marks on the shoulders and chest have any totemic
signification, or any magical meaning, is not clearly known. In
the Gazelle Peninsula the kanakas belong to one of two divisions,
and must marry out of their own. In my daily conversations with Dr
Thurnwald, it dawned upon me how little was actually known of the
peoples who inhabit the Bismarck Archipelago. With deep interest I
learnt that a race whose existence was unknown twelve years ago,
called the Bainings, live in the mountainous region to the west
of the peninsula, and the curious thing about them is that their
language and customs are dissimilar to those of all other islanders
in the Archipelago. In a subsequent chapter they are described. The
ethnological conditions of this end of New Britain seem so bound up
with geological changes, that to shed some light on the somewhat
extraordinary fact of two races living within a few miles of each
other, one having retained in its pristine purity its language
and distinct customs, it may be well to refer to Mr Parkinson’s
explanation of the phenomenon. He describes the peninsula as
practically divided into two parts: a mountainous region known as
the Baining Mountains in the north-west, and a plateau formation
of volcanic origin built up with lava, pumice, obsidian and ashes,
the result of successive convulsions of nature in the north-east.
But prior to this volcanic outburst, a race who may be called the
aborigines of the island dwelt round the shores of Blanche Bay.
Those who survived the catastrophe sought refuge in the mountainous
west, out of the zone of danger. Their descendants are, he declares,
the Bainings, whose existence has lately come to light. Cut off
from intercourse with later immigrants in the fastnesses of their
mountains, they have retained their language and customs intact. If
this be a correct inference, it seems that all agree in the belief
that the bush and coast kanakas of the German settled territory,
so soon as the devastated area reclothed itself once more with
vegetation, migrated from New Ireland by way of the stepping-stones
afforded by the Duke of York’s Islands lying midway in St George’s
Channel. Finding no resistance offered them, the new-comers
apparently penetrated further along the uninhabited coasts, pushing
slowly inland. Long before the advent of the European, the natives
on the west coast in the neighbourhood of the three volcanoes, the
Father and two Sons, held friendly intercourse with natives on the
north coast of the peninsula, to whom they brought a special kind of
shell, much prized by the Gazelle kanakas.
The only other race as yet known possessing outstanding features are
the Sulkas, living in the neighbourhood of Cape Orford. A native at
Simpsonhafen, with a curiously-shaped head, had been pointed out to
me; the occiput had protruded in a remarkable manner. When mentioning
the fact, I suggested it was perhaps the result of an accident? This
was considered a capital joke by those present. They were kind enough
to enlighten my ignorance. The man, it seemed, was a Sulka. The last
few years had brought some of them to Herbertshöhe as labour “boys.”
In earliest infancy the child’s temples are tightly bound, as this
protrusion is considered a great beauty. The Sulkas, I was told,
amid laughter, understood women’s rights, for the girls choose their
husbands, and in so doing they “lay their hearts upon the men of
their choice,” according to the native saying.
[Illustration: A GAZELLE KANAKA]
Very different indeed, I was emphatically given to understand,
were the miserable kanakas of the Gazelle Peninsula. Living in
communities apart from each other, their _gunans_, or clans,
scarcely ever numbered more than nine or ten huts, which were always
encircled with a split bamboo fence from four to five feet high.
The matriarchate system of inheritance prevails amongst them: thus
a chief is succeeded in his honours by his nephew, the son of his
wife’s brother. Tamboo, (strings of shell money), is here as in most
parts of the Archipelago the medium of exchange. Fear of unseen evil,
wrought by the magic of persons antagonistic to them, is the
dominating influence in their lives, the mainspring of all action.
Everything they wear, all the face ornamentation, consisting of
painted circles and lines, have their special signification. For
instance, three marks, painted respectively black, white and red
from the eyes downwards on to the cheek, denote the shedding of
tears. Three long scars in the same direction have the same meaning.
Lines from the root of the nose semicircling the eyes represent a
butterfly, a red spot on each cheek means spotted. Sometimes the
whole forehead is painted white; an artistic finish is a line drawn
straight down the nose! Coloured circles round the eyes mean that the
person so ornamented imitates the eyes of the owl. Then certain very
superior patterns descend in families as heirlooms, and they figure
as monopolies, for if anyone covets the design, he must pay a sum of
shell-money for the privilege of being permitted to adopt it. Near
the Vunakokor Mountain there are natives of such artistic taste that
they paint half the body black and red, the other half yellow.
Nowadays when European paint can be procured from the trader,
vermilion seems the rage, but the native still makes colouring matter
out of clay, red and yellow ochres, or charred nuts mixed with oil.
Betel-nut chewing is greatly practised.