A CHAPTER ON CONTRASTS
In Papua the dryest statistician might easily burst into the literary
style of Sinbad the Sailor. At the time of year that folks back in
Utica call “autumn” I had traversed great areas of ragged mountains and
boggy shores, and had done my best to hold on to my statistical mind in
a land where census figures were evasive as blowing chaff. Meanwhile my
field units had been working all over the Territory, and the inspectors
who led them were often lost to me for months at a time. Aside from my
fact-finding studies of hookworm I was following the course of malaria,
which is Melanesia’s deadliest blight.
Field technique may seem monotonous to the reader, for it is just a
matter of making the same tests over and over, moving on and continuing
the motion in another tribe or village. But it was never monotonous to
me.
* * * * *
Compare the mountains of Mafulu with the delightful little village of
Gaile, not more than twenty-five miles from Port Moresby. The Gaile
folk lived Venetian-style, their houses stilted over tidewater. They
were gentle, industrious and generous Motuans, and with no evil history
behind them. An invading maritime race, they had built over water
to avoid their savage enemies; and the water had always been their
blessing, for it carried away the bodily waste that breeds so many
worms and germs. Gaile I remember as one of the few truly restful spots
I have visited in the Pacific. There were no diseases worth worrying
about.
Then, since I’m dwelling on comparisons, let’s look at Tepusilia, a
few miles away. My whaleboat got stranded there on the way to Gaile,
otherwise I should never have seen the row of dirty chicken coops
that leaned crazily over the inlet. I hadn’t much time to look into
their case, but I found the inhabitants covered with tropical ringworm
that had turned their skins into a brownish crêpe. But there was
no hookworm, because they evacuated into the sea, as the Gaile folk
did. A few miles inland, where the people had no access to the water,
ankylostomiasis was very prevalent.
I can’t pass Tepusilia by without mentioning the lone policeman there.
Because his house was the only clean one, I was glad to sleep in it. He
sat in a chair not quite wide enough for Shirley Temple, and kept me
awake with a constant stream of questions. How had the World War come
out? (That, mind you, was 1920.) Sleepily I informed him that Britannia
still ruled the waves, and he seemed surprised. He told me that he had
served his time in Port Moresby jail, and had come out well-educated.
Then he looked wistfully at my chin and asked if I shaved with a razor.
“Yes,” I said, “and don’t you?” “No,” he said, “I shave with a shark’s
tooth.” He showed me the shark’s tooth and asked me if I wouldn’t give
him a real razor, a nice sharp one. The subject was growing a bit
morbid, so I sat up and asked him what he had gone to jail for. “Oh,”
he sighed, “I was falsely accused of killing a man. Taubada, don’t you
think you can give me a razor?” “No,” I said softly and turned my face
to the wall.
* * * * *
From pleasant Gaile I followed the course of the lakatoi for 700 miles
across the Gulf of Papua into the land of the Goaribari savages. The
lakatoi was already growing extinct. From time immemorial the watermen
in the Motu district had been building these giant vessels, from five
to ten long canoes lashed side by side and covered with a platform that
would support houseroom for maybe twenty men. Every spring, when the
wind blew toward the northwest, Motuan traders would carry a load of
pots and jars over to the wretched Purari Delta and exchange them for
logs and sago. They would stay until Christmas, when the hot monsoon
could blow them home again. During the trading season there was a
truce between the peaceful Motuans and the man-eating Goaribaris. The
annual voyages in these raft-ships were among the strangest things that
charmed a Polynesian wanderer.
* * * * *
Unromantically in a chugging steamer I crossed the Gulf and came upon
the terrible land of terrible people. The business of public health
called me there; Kenny Fooks had been surveying the Delta region for
months, and was so lost to me that he might have been sucked into
the prevalent mud. The Delta region is ravaged by rivers that pour
mud upon mud or throw up shifting sand banks that wallow and stink
like dead sea monsters. As I came ashore with Ahuia, long-nosed faces
stared hungrily. These were the type of Goaribaris I had seen on the
plantations, but dirtier, skinnier. You think of cannibals as tiger
men, fierce-faced and lusty. But these were brothers to the jackal.
I was interested in something curiously inhuman that wagged from the
buttocks of the queer fellows. The old men around Port Moresby had told
me that Goaribaris grew tails as long as monkeys’ tails, and let them
hang down through holes bored in their floors; and the way to catch a
Goaribari was to sneak under the house, tie a knot in his tail then
run up top and grab him at your leisure. This story, unfortunately, is
another nature fake. What this Delta savage wears at the stern of his
breechclout probably gave rise to the yarn. It is a sort of dangler,
not unlike a horse’s tail, and, with his long hair done in ringlets
stuck together with mud, adds to his mildly demoniac look.
The customary nude policeman, distinguished by a cap and an entirely
empty cartridge belt, told Ahuia that his house, where we would sleep,
was in Dopima where the famous martyr missionary, James Chalmers,
was murdered in 1901. But our policeman gallantly assured us that we
needn’t be afraid now, because Government took care of everything.
The house was stilted very high to keep devil-devils out. A sickly
looking native stood at the foot of the ladder, wistfully waiting. In
the background were a pack of the most repulsive women I have ever
seen. Their breasts hung like empty bags, their greasy black faces were
puckered to an animal look--a picture of lost femininity.
Kenny asked the policeman to go tell the fellow that it wasn’t the
fashion to solicit white men. I looked at Kenny’s soiled legs and
remarked that he was inviting hookworms. “Inviting them? They accepted
the invitation weeks ago, and I’m all fed up with chenopodium and
salts. My score was twenty-six good ones--Necators, of course. You’ve
got to go barefoot in this bloody country or you’ll be sucked under,
feet-first.”
The popular name for these Delta people is Goaribari, but there are
really several related tribes, many of them of a somewhat higher type.
They are named after their principal or central village--like the
Kaimares, for instance. The Kaimares are much the better builders, but
they get none of the benefits of over-water sanitation and live quite
innocent of anything like a latrine. The hookworm infestation was
probably much less general in the old days of unchecked cannibalism and
warfare. Even when I inspected various sections and compared notes with
Kenny Fooks I found that some places reeked with worms, others were
comparatively free. It was spreading, I could venture. The Goaribaris
no longer hunt each other openly, and they do a great deal of visiting
around.
A village consists of three houses, one of them 100 to 150 yards long
and 30 yards wide. These are “crocodile houses”; the main entrance
is a gaping mouth, the rear narrows to a long tail. A corridor
runs full-length; small cubicles open on either side, in the less
pretentious dwellings, and each cubicle suffices for an entire family.
But the largest of the houses is a sort of clubhouse where the men live
and teach pubescent boys the arts of Delta manhood. In this building
there is a smaller door halfway down the passage; beside it a niche
contains an altar painted with the frightful face of a devil-devil, and
in front of it is an offering of human skulls.
I did not quite believe the grisly tales of peddling women’s hacked
bodies around the sandspits and offering choice cuts to willing
purchasers. They said a lot of things about these miserable creatures.
As to cannibalism, the Government had hanged so many of them for it
that if they ate “long-pig” at all they must have conducted their
banquets with Masonic secrecy. Yet I saw the pile of skulls around
the devil-devil altar. The interpreter told me they were “skulls of
ancestors.” Perhaps.... I had a mental picture of Missionary Chalmers,
whose bones had been very hard to recover, according to one eyewitness.
We were quite unarmed. The man with the cap and cartridge belt seemed
to exercise a remarkable control over the other natives. Along the line
of publicity he was another P. T. Barnum. After his fireside chats the
people came slinking in, droves of them, milling around the imported
magician who could take snakes from the belly. We didn’t recover many
snakes, for our job was to make microscopic examinations and determine
the ratio of infection. However, from a lad named Komo, I recovered
107, and Kenny Fooks did better still. Now and then as I looked over my
scrawny audience I would see a man with clean skin and good muscle; and
I would know that he had just returned from indentured service on one
of the plantations.
Kaimare houses looked more like crocodiles than the Goaribari jumbles.
In going through one of their larger buildings I found a sort of
sanctum, completely shut off. As I started through the door my guides,
who had been pleasant enough, suddenly showed their teeth and attempted
to block my entrance. I pushed my way through; perhaps my prestige as
a magician saved me from rough handling. Then I jumped back. The room
was full of crocodiles, big ones, little ones, on the floor, crawling
up the walls. I blinked, and saw what these things really were--woven
of some sort of pliable reed, they were artfully modeled; and as I
sighed my relief I remembered scraps of what Cushing, who lived among
the Zuni Indians, had written: “Primitive peoples generally conceive of
everything made ... as living ... a still sort of life, but as potent
and aware nevertheless and as capable of functioning....”
There were more human skulls. I decided to get out.
* * * * *
In the Bamu country beyond, I saw the most repulsive people in all
Papua. The Bamus live in mud, and nature seems to have fitted them for
their environment. They are as skinny and long as dead eels, and appear
to be split clear to the breastbone in order to give their storklike
legs a chance to hoist them out of the muck.
No white man can stay long in this blighted country without a feeling
of extreme depression and hopelessness for the ill-favored branches of
the human race. It was fortunate for my peace of mind one morning when
our canoe swept into a deep estuary and I saw something that blossomed
like a flower garden in a city dump: a lakatoi from the Gaile region!
A big, seven-canoe one, and a crowd of laughing, gesturing, bargaining
Motu men busily trading with the Delta folk. The shore was bright with
pots and jars, the water was jammed with loose logs which the savages
had floated down from faraway hills, hundreds of miles from Mudland. A
curious trading.
There was a carnival air. Even the Goaribaris puckered their jackal
faces into a smile. I asked a Motu trader if he wasn’t getting tired of
it; and didn’t he want to go home? He laughed and answered in effect,
“And how!” Soon the hot December wind would be blowing homeward to fill
their coco sails and take them blundering back to their clean little
Venice. Then the long truce would be over and the Goaribari would be
his old sweet self again.
I was glad when the Purari Delta and I parted company. If professional
work had called me back I would have gone, but not without a secret
wish for some cleaner, greener land. This is probably the lousiest
place that God ever made and didn’t quite finish.
* * * * *
I had been closely watching the principal carrier of malaria, a lady
mosquito of the _Anopheles punctulatus_ tribe, and the odder varieties
of flies and mosquitoes I had been sending to Dr. Francis Root,
biologist of Johns Hopkins. Since quinine was malaria’s one known
specific, I was rather fussy about teaching my inspectors to take their
daily dose. I knew what a delirious wreck an attack can make of a white
man in the jungle, and I had impressed upon my young inspectors that I
would not forgive any carelessness about quinine--five grains a day as
a prophylactic, and at the slightest symptom increase the dose until
the temperature swings back to normal. Those were written orders.
Then as I worked down the coast on the last leg of my Papuan adventure,
I came down with malaria, in spite of large precautionary doses of
quinine which swamp and jungle conditions had made necessary. I was too
miserable to laugh at myself when I got to the snug little settlement
on Samarai, the eastern tip of Papua’s tail. I was a bilious wreck; I
saw yellow. The neat British town was pretty as a bride, but I was in
no bridegroom mood. One of my inspectors, a new one who had already
proven shiftless, also showed up with malaria. I had to be restrained
from throwing him downstairs. Why? Because he hadn’t taken his quinine,
and had allowed himself to get sick. At the Widow Henderson’s hotel,
the town’s only meeting place, I invited another fight. A one-armed
planter and I sat in the barroom, the only possible place to talk, and
were discussing a survey in his district when a dough-faced stranger
poked his head between us and asked if the planter was afraid of
him, or what? Instead of brushing him off I kicked over my chair and
reverted to common Australian: “Open your mouth to say one word and I’m
inta you, right now!” The stranger departed. A couple of days later
the Widow Gofton, who served the bar, said: “When that man gets tough
around here now I just say to him, ‘Look out, or I’ll call the Doctor.’”
I saw Samarai through jaundiced eyes, and biliousness gave me a sort
of malign power when it came to an argument. However, I managed to
be diplomatic when I found that Samarai was having a City Beautiful
campaign and didn’t want its view spoiled by a row of over-water
latrines. To the health officer, of course, that was nonsense; Paradise
might be lined with those coquettish little shrines and he would call
it perfect--at least, that was what the esthetes implied when I argued.
Swallowing bile, I combined architecture with diplomacy and devised
some dainty palm-thatched sanctums to sit over the tide, with rustic
bridges running out to them and clumps of croton to act as screens. I
became an engineer and sketched out plans for deep pits to be dug into
the coral and filled with rubble so that the contents would be sifted
gently out to sea. I left too soon to find out whether or not they
followed my plan. It was just another quarrel between Hygeia and Mrs.
Grundy. In such a fracas Mrs. G. usually comes out the winner.
* * * * *
The two fights in Samarai were more than counterbalanced by two
fortunate meetings. One night I came into Bob Whitten’s sheet-iron
trading store and saw a figure quite out of harmony with the smelly
hurricane lamps and piled-up canned goods. His smart dinner suit gave
him a clubby look which stirred the old bile, for I had been out in the
field and was a mass of dirt and scratches. He turned a wind-hardened
business face and a pair of Scotch-gray eyes. “Are you Dr. Lambert?” he
asked. I said that I was. “My name’s George Fulton,” he said. George
Fulton was executive head of the powerful Lever Brothers firm, who
bought and sold islands, controlled supplies and shipping, over a great
watery empire. He began popping keen, intelligent questions at me, and
I forgot his evening clothes after one exciting revelation.
“Know anything about Rennell Island, Doctor?” I had heard of it
sketchily from a skipper who said that nobody ever went ashore, for
fear of the natives, and that there was nothing worth trading for.
George Fulton said: “It’s just off the blue-black Solomons, but the
people aren’t black. Nobody knows what they are. They’re primitive
as monkeys, but rather superior humans. Sleep in caves, worship an
invisible god, have traditions that may be either Polynesian or
Caucasian. Since the white man came to the Pacific, there hasn’t been
a landing party that’s penetrated Rennell farther than the beach. They
simply won’t let strangers get in. Why? Maybe they’re protecting
themselves against foreign disease, or maybe it’s the same old tabu.
For ages they’ve been practically untouched.
“Missionaries tried it not long ago, and three of them got knocked on
the head. I know more about this island than most. It’s a sort of lost
world, terrible cliffs all around it, one small beach protected by a
reef. Last year we were short on labor and thought we might recruit
some of the men. Fine, strapping fellows--incidentally, the women are
very pretty. Well, we picked up a handful of laborers, bribed them with
hatchets and jackknives. They’re crazy for steel and iron. They do
their carving with shells.”
I asked what became of the men he took away; I was afraid he’d stop
talking and go to somebody’s bridge table, but he said:
“Around the Solomons we would put a few of them ashore here and there
to work on the plantations. Before we could up-anchor they would
plump into the sea and swim back to the ship. Finally we gave them up
and took the survivors home. Interesting folk? Rather! They’re not
castaways or newcomers. They’ve been there since God made them. They
might be worth a scientific man’s time.”
He moved away but I almost tripped him up. “Mr. Fulton, if they are an
untouched people, they must be free from imported diseases. I’ve pretty
well decided that the natives are dying off from the worms and germs
that white men, orientals, and friendly tribes bring in.” He nodded
approvingly, and I plunged on, “It would be very valuable to me, and
to the world too, if I could study these Rennellese. Hookworm, for
instance ... If they have it at all it might be a variety we have never
seen ...”
“Well, Doctor--some time when one of our boats swings your way....”
George Fulton was a super-businessman. I decided not to let him forget
his offer, and for half a year I showered his Australian office with
remindful letters. Finally my insistence bore fruit--of a mixed variety.
* * * * *
The young inspector whom I had found guilty of idleness and malaria and
ejected from my staff had been scheduled to survey the Trobriands, two
or three days sailing to the north. The shortage of help compelled me
to take my headache and a supply of quinine and cover the job myself.
But in the South Pacific you don’t just buy a ticket and start. You
play Micawber until something turns up. In this case the turn-up
was the fantastic little cutter _Bomada_, owned in partnership by a
professional butterfly collector and a hairy-chested planter-adventurer
named Bob Bunting. The butterfly collector had a German name and
looked rather Chinese. Bob Bunting was something of a slave driver
when he managed plantations; if native laborers lay down to die of
witch-doctoring he revived them with a bull-whip. Bob’s sort survive in
the tropics.
So we were off in the crazy craft, which promptly broke down in a
mushy, drizzly rain. And that was where I had the other pleasant
meeting. Out of the glazed mist loomed a whaleboat, steadily rowed.
A gorgeously American voice yelled, “Hey, can I do anything for you
fellows?” A young man sprang aboard; almost before he spoke again I was
thinking, “I just kicked out an incompetent, and there’s the boy to
take his place.”
His name, he said, was Byron Beach. Enthusiastically he scrambled into
his whaleboat and brought back an outdated pile of _Saturday Evening
Post_ copies, and Theodore Roosevelt’s book on the “River of Doubt.”
Americanism stuck out all over the boy. He had graduated from one of
the better New England preparatory schools, then war broke out and he
decided to “travel.” Possibly he was a conscientious objector; but
Byron Beach was no slacker. His headlong bravery and resourcefulness in
a later adventure proved that.
Bob Bunting, who knew everybody, accused him of being too keen for the
Milne Bay traders; they were ganging up against him. Beach had been
out after copra and had bought so much under competitive noses that
local dealers were swearing vengeance. An enterprising lad. When the
old engine came to life again I said, “Beach, if they make it too hot
for you here, why not join my outfit?” His young face flushed with
pleasure. “Golly, Doctor, that would be swell!”
I was afraid that would be the last I’d ever see of him.
* * * * *
Our breakdown at Dobu gave us a view of the geyser field at Seymour Bay
which matches the Yellowstone. The greatest spouter is Seo-seo-kuna,
which roars like a hundred menageries. Beside one of the boiling
pools I saw a group of natives kneeling reverently. Ah, this would be
something worth seeing; the primitive heart bowed down to some powerful
goddess of fire and water.... When I came closer I soon found what
they were doing. They were cooking yams.
Probably they did say a little heathen prayer--if the missionary was
not looking. Unofficial paganism is the custom everywhere in the
Christianized Pacific. In choosing my native assistants I usually
rejected the mission-trained boys, who were too often slackers, liars
and hypocrites. “Him Mission” meant “He’s a Christian,” and was a
scornful term.
I do not underrate the work of missionaries, the best of them; I have
known so many who tackled their problems cheerfully on the pittance
doled out by Foreign Boards. They had volunteered for a life so
bitterly hard and so meagerly paid that it might easily have brought
out something more petty than the helpful generosity which the best of
them showed me. But the days of the great missioners like Chalmers and
Brown, who fought and died in the midst of ferocious savagery, have
passed away.
The man of God down there, when he went in for selfish profit, usually
made his investments in his wife’s name and took advantage of special
concessions allotted by the Government for legitimate mission work;
or he used the funds from good Christian collection plates at home.
Professional traders had a right to complain of unfair competition in
the labor market, for the business-missions often secured labor for
nothing under a forced system of “donating” work. Among the missions
which “came clean” were the Catholics, who were accustomed to look to
Europe for their support; but when 1914’s war came on that support was
cut off. They faced the music manfully, and did their bit toward paying
their own way. The fruits of this labor were turned back to the native,
in the form of an intelligent attempt to better his condition. But too
often the missionaries were wrapped in a dream of heavenly perfection,
seeing nothing, hearing nothing, smelling nothing. It was refreshing to
meet an honest-minded one, who could be fair enough to rationalize his
ideals....
Our cutter _Bomada_ had staged her terminal breakdown in one of the
Trobriands’ divine lagoons which seemed to take its color from the
pearls that lay below. The _Bomada_, I felt, had killed every noble
impulse in my heart. Especially that rainy day when we tried to
hoist sail and saw the rotten thing--which hadn’t been looked at for
two years--fall to pieces in the first breeze. And now I was taking
afternoon tea in the pleasant garden of a pleasant missionary. The
prettily formed native girls who served us wore single garments, brief
fiber skirts. The only shamed person present was the missionary’s
wife, who kept chirping, “Isn’t it disgusting, Doctor!” Her husband,
who had entered the ministry from Oxford, had educated these people
in cleanliness and right living. He had taught them many things that
natives must know in order to meet the perils of European civilization.
On purely scientific grounds he had opposed the missionary custom
(encouraged by the traders) of dolling the women up in disease-breeding
clothes.
I asked this sensible messenger of Christ, “How many converts, in our
sense of the word, have you made here?” He rubbed his tired forehead
and replied, “Doctor, not one in twenty years.” I honored him for that,
and was willing to wager that he had won his way many times over a
“civilizer.” He was human, and he knew humanity.
He was in refreshing contrast to at least one luxuriously living
Christian who had entertained me in Samarai. He “instructed” the
natives in collecting nuts, cutting copra and building boats. His
fine house and teeming acres revealed how well he had profited by his
instructions. If he had made any attempt to civilize the people, the
effect was not apparent. Except in the case of the lone missionary who
honestly despaired of making converts, there seemed to be no attempt to
teach the natives English.
But there must have been another exception once, for on a small
Trobriand island a native boy addressed me primly: “Undoubtedly, sir,
you will find more clement weather for the remainder of your voyage.”
Startled, I asked, “Where did you learn to talk like that?” The boy
said, “My missionary taught me. Unfortunately he expired in an insane
asylum. He had been irrational for quite a long time.”
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.
I asked Beach what was the matter with him. He said, “Back from the
war, living on booze. He’s really quite a nice guy.”
That night the guy shot himself, but his aim was ineffective. I took
care of him long enough to tell him that liquor is a poor substitute
for quinine. I heard later that he sobered up and married some little
girl who was a nice little girl. I like to record one story with a
happy ending. But Billy Carson, who sang bass for us, had a grimmer
finish. He had married a wealthy half-caste, and when he sent his
children to Australia to be educated he had found that they were being
set aside as “blackfellows.” One morning on Samarai wharf a loiterer
found a neat bundle of clothes. Billy was always methodical.
In our tidy Port Moresby bungalow, comforted by my dear wife, whom
I had seen too little during my restless months in Papua, I told my
senior, Dr. Sawyer of the Foundation, that I would undertake a year’s
survey of what some still called German New Guinea. Sawyer said,
“Lambert, you’re certainly a hard man to kill!”
My farewell to Ahuia may supply a good finishing scene. Eloisa, like
the perfect housekeeper she is, always packed and unpacked my boxes in
his presence. She would give him the keys; when we returned from the
field he would hand them over to her for inspection. On this day of
parting the boy was proud as a chancellor, delivering the keys. How
could anything be missing? Hadn’t he served the best doctors in Papua
and acted as the Governor’s orderly? And when he started out on his
expeditions with me hadn’t he stopped his ears against the wail of his
friends, howling that he’d never come back alive?
Counting the wash, Eloisa giggled. Mine was all there, plus many
unidentified shirts, socks, shorts and singlets. It was hardly worth
while asking him the names of various hosts he had borrowed them from.
Ahuia had conveniently forgotten.
When he was about to depart with my bonus of cash and tobacco he
maintained his fierce expression, but there were tears in his eyes.
Melanesians weep rather easily. Could he serve the _taubada_ again? He
would so like to serve the _taubada_ if he came back....
I was a little rough, pushing him out of the place. I didn’t want him
to see that white men can also weep. I would miss Ahuia.
* * * * *
So ended the Papuan chapter, with a few hard figures. I had covered
2,284 miles on foot and horse, in motor cars, canoes, whaleboats,
sailing boats, motor launches and steamers. Fourteen miles of it I
had done in the quaint vehicles they call “track cars,” iron-wheeled
bone-breakers pushed by cannibal labor. With my inspectors we had
covered 8,461 miles. Nor did my official report include the few miles
we swam when our canoes heeled over. In villages and plantations we had
examined people by tens of thousands. We had marked down a grand total
of 59.2 per cent infection. We had upset an old theory that hookworm is
carried from the plantations into the villages; our survey had gone to
prove that quite the reverse was true.
The Papuan people by the Government’s reckoning of 1920-21 had been
roughly estimated at 300,000. More likely, in the light of what a few
explorers had found among the lost mountains, the population figures
should have run nearer 500,000. The estimate of 166,721 for New Guinea
Territory was ridiculously low; it was more reasonable to put it
around the half million mark. The immense Dutch end of the island held
something like a million more; but Dutch New Guinea was outside my
itinerary.
The tens of thousands we inspected and the thousands to whom we gave
first treatment may be just a splash in a huge puddle of disease. But
the very careful instruction in treatment which we offered to planters,
officials and missionaries (in fact to everybody whose heart was in
the work of bringing back a failing population) might have been more
important than anything else we did. I hope so. Month after month we
had been hammering into the white man’s head the grave necessity for
pollution-proof sanitary arrangements under conditions which varied
between mushy swamp soil and solid rock.