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SOME EXPERIENCES OF A NEW
GUINEA RESIDENT MAGISTRATE
[Illustration: THE AUTHOR]
SOME EXPERIENCES OF A NEW GUINEA RESIDENT
MAGISTRATE BY CAPTAIN C. A. W. MONCKTON,
F.R.G.S., F.Z.S., F.R.A.I., SOMETIME OFFICIAL
MEMBER OF EXECUTIVE AND LEGISLATIVE COUNCILS,
RESIDENT MAGISTRATE AND WARDEN FOR GOLDFIELDS,
HIGH SHERIFF AND HIGH BAILIFF, AND SENIOR
OFFICER OF ARMED CONSTABULARY FOR H.M.’s
POSSESSION OF NEW GUINEA WITH 37 ILLUSTRATIONS
AND A MAP
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD, VIGO ST.
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY ☙ MCMXXI
THIRD EDITION
WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES, ENGLAND
TO MY
WIFE
PREFACE
It appears to be the custom, for writers of books of this description,
to begin with apologies as to their style, or excuses for their
production. I pretend to no style; but have simply written at the
request of my wife, for her information and that of my personal
friends, an account of my life and work in New Guinea. To the few “men
that know” who still survive, in one or two places gaps or omissions
may appear to occur; these omissions are intentional, as I have no wish
to cause pain to broken men who are still living, nor to distress the
relations of those who are dead. Much history is better written fifty
years after all concerned in the making are dead. Governor or ruffian,
Bishop or cannibal, I have written of all as I found them; I freely
confess that I think when the last muster comes, the Great Architect
will find--as I trust my readers will--some good points in the ruffians
and the cannibals, as well, possibly, as some vulnerable places in the
armour of Governors and Bishops.
I do not pretend that this book possesses any scientific value; such
geographical, zoological, and scientific work as I have done is dealt
with in various journals; but it does picture correctly the life of a
colonial officer in the one-time furthest outpost of the Empire--men of
whose lives and work the average Briton knows nothing.
Conditions in New Guinea have altered; where one of Sir William
MacGregor’s officers stood alone, there now rest a number of Australian
officials and clerks. Much credit is now annually given to this host;
some little, I think, might be fairly allotted to the dead Moreton,
Armit, Green, Kowold, De Lange, and the rest of the gallant gentlemen
who gave their lives to win one more country for the flag and to secure
the Pax Britannica to yet another people.
I have abstained from putting into the mouths of natives the ridiculous
jargon or “pidgin English” in which they are popularly supposed to
converse. The old style of New Guinea officer spoke Motuan to his men,
and I have, where required, merely given a free translation from that
language into English. In recent books about New Guinea, written by
men of whom I never heard whilst there, I have noticed sentences in
pidgin English, supposed to have been spoken by natives, which I would
defy any European or native in New Guinea, in my time, either to make
sense of or interpret.
When the history of New Guinea comes to be written, I think it will be
found that the names of several people stand out from the others in
brilliant prominence; amongst its Governors, Sir William MacGregor;
its Judges, that of Sir Francis Winter; its Missions, that of the
Right Rev. John Montagu Stone-Wigg, first Anglican Bishop; and in the
development of its natural resources, that of the pioneer commercial
firm of Burns, Philp and Company.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I 1
CHAPTER II 9
CHAPTER III 16
CHAPTER IV 27
CHAPTER V 32
CHAPTER VI 41
CHAPTER VII 47
CHAPTER VIII 60
CHAPTER IX 72
CHAPTER X 83
CHAPTER XI 94
CHAPTER XII 109
CHAPTER XIII 124
CHAPTER XIV 139
CHAPTER XV 149
CHAPTER XVI 163
CHAPTER XVII 177
CHAPTER XVIII 191
CHAPTER XIX 204
CHAPTER XX 222
CHAPTER XXI 233
CHAPTER XXII 250
CHAPTER XXIII 268
CHAPTER XXIV 282
CHAPTER XXV 294
CHAPTER XXVI 304
CHAPTER XXVII 324
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
TO FACE PAGE
The Author _Frontispiece_
Cocoanut Grove, near Samarai 6
The Rt. Hon. Sir William MacGregor, P.C., G.C.M.G., C.B., etc. 10
R. F. L. Burton, Esq., and his Motuan boys 62
Port Moresby from Government House, showing the Government
Offices 70
Tamata Creek 78
Bushimai, chief of the Binandere people 80
Tamata Station 82
Village in the Trobriand Islands 86
A Motuan girl 112
Dobu house, Mekeo 114
Masks of the Kaiva Kuku Society, Mekeo 118
House at Apiana, Mekeo 120
Village near Port Moresby 136
Sir George Le Hunte, K.C.M.G. 148
The Laloki Falls 156
Two Motuan girls 162
Motuan girl 164
Sir G. Le Hunte presenting medals to Sergeant Sefa and Corporal
Kimai 166
Kaili Kaili natives 166
The _Merrie England_ at Cape Nelson and Giwi’s canoes 168
Giwi and his sons 174
View from the Residency, Cape Nelson 178
Toku, son of Giwi 184
Kaili Kaili 192
Sergeant Barigi 200
Grave of Wanigela, sub-chief of the Maisina tribe 208
Kaili Kaili dancing 208
Captain F. R. Barton, C.M.G. 212
Armed Constabulary, Cape Nelson detachment 216
Kaili Kaili carriers with the Doriri Expedition 218
The _Merrie England_ at Cape Nelson 234
Group, including Sir G. Le Hunte, K.C.B., Sir Francis Winter,
C.J., etc. 264
Oiogoba Sara, chief of the Baruga tribe 270
Agaiambu village 274
Agaiambu man 278
Agaiambu woman 280
Map 324
SOME EXPERIENCES OF A NEW
GUINEA RESIDENT MAGISTRATE
CHAPTER I
In the year 1895 I found myself at Cooktown in Queensland, aged 23,
accompanied by a fellow adventurer, F. H. Sylvester, and armed with
£100, an outfit particularly unsuited to the tropics, and a letter
of introduction from the then Governor of New Zealand, the Earl of
Glasgow, to the Lieutenant-Governor of British New Guinea, Sir William
MacGregor.
After two or three weeks of waiting, we took passage by the mail
schooner _Myrtle_, 150 tons, one of two schooners owned by Messrs.
Burns, Philp and Co., of Sydney, and subsidized by the British New
Guinea Government to carry monthly mails to that possession; in fact
they were then the only means of communication between New Guinea
and the rest of the world. These two vessels, after a chequered
career in the South Seas, as slavers--then euphoniously termed in
Australia “labour” vessels--had, by the lapse of time and purchase
by a firm of high repute and keen commercial ambition, now been
promoted to the dignity of carrying H.M. Mails, Government stores for
the Administration of New Guinea, and supplies to the branches of
the firm at Samarai and Port Moresby; and were, under the energetic
superintendence of their respective masters, Steel and Inman, extending
the commercial interests of their owners throughout both the British
and German territories bordering on the Coral Sea.
Good old ships long since done with, the bones of one lie scattered on
a reef, the other when last I saw her was a coal hulk in a Queensland
port. And good old Scotch firm of trade grabbers that owned them,
sending their ships, in spite of any risk, wherever a possible bawbee
was to be made, and taking their hundred per cent. of profit with
the same dour front they took their frequently trebled loss. Mopping
up the German trade until the day came when the heavily subsidized
ships of the Nord Deutscher Lloyd drove them out; as well they might,
for in one scale hung the efforts of a small company of British
merchants, unassisted as ever by its country or Government, the other,
a practically Imperial Company backed by the resources of a vast Empire.
But to return to the _Myrtle_, then lying in the bay off the mouth of
the Endeavour River, to which we were ferried in one of her own boats,
perched on the top of hen coops filled with screeching poultry, several
protesting pigs, and two goats; all mixed up with a belated mail bag,
parcels sent by local residents to friends in New Guinea, and three hot
and particularly cross seamen. The goats we learnt later were destined
to serve as mutton for the Government House table; the pigs and hens
were a little private venture of the ship’s cook, these being intended
for barter with natives.
On our arrival at the ship’s side, we were promptly boosted up a most
elusive rope ladder by the seamen who had ferried us across, the
schooner meanwhile rolling in a nasty cross sea and raising the devil’s
own din with her flapping sails. Tumbled over the bulwarks on to the
deck, we were seized upon by a violent little man in a frantic state of
excitement, perspiration, and bad language, and ten seconds later found
ourselves helping him to haul on the tackles of the boat that brought
us, which was then being hoisted in, pigs, goats, luggage, etc., holus
bolus; this operation completed, our violent little man introduced
himself as Mr. Wisdell, the ship’s cook, and volunteered to show us to
our berths, after which, as soon as the bustle of getting under way was
over, he stated his intention of formerly introducing us to the captain.
Just as we were somewhat dismally becoming quite assured that our
imaginations were not deceiving us as to the number of beetles and
cockroaches a berth of most attenuated size could contain; also
beginning to find that the motions of a schooner of 150 tons were
decidedly upsetting to our stomachs, after those of big vessels, Mr.
Wisdell returned and, diving into a locker, produced a bottle of
whisky, some sodawater, and four tumblers. Three of the latter he
placed with the other materials in the fiddle of the cabin’s table,
the remaining tumbler he held behind his back. Then politely bowing to
us, Mr. Wisdell signed that we were to precede him up the companion
way on to the poop, where a red-faced, cheery looking little man,
clothed in immaculate white ducks, gazed fixedly at the sails or at
the man at the wheel, a regard that the helmsman looked as if he would
willingly have done without. To him Mr. Wisdell marched, and then
“Mr. Sylvester--Captain Inman--Captain Inman--Mr. Monckton--etc.”
Never did Clapham dancing master receive the bows of his class with
greater dignity and grace, than did Captain Inman receive those which,
modelling our deportment on that of Mr. Wisdell, we made him.
Then Mr. Wisdell, still carrying the tumbler behind his back, spake
thus: “Perhaps, Captain Inman, you would like to offer the gentlemen a
little something in the cabin?” Captain Inman unbent: “Billy, the mate
has the blasted fever; send the bo’sun.” Upon the appearance of that
potentate, and his having apparently taken over the command, by dint of
fixing the man at the wheel with a basilisk glare, Captain Inman led
the way to the cabin, where Mr. Wisdell, kindly placing a glass in each
of our hands, drew attention to the bottle and, with deprecating little
coughs directed towards his commander, modestly backed away. Captain
Inman, however, was well versed in the etiquette the occasion demanded
and rose to it. “What, Billy, only three glasses! We want another!”
Out shot Mr. Wisdell’s glass from behind his back and the occasion was
complete.
Two days of violent sea-sickness then intervened, the misery of which
was broken only by the visits of Mr. Wisdell, or as better acquaintance
now permitted us to call him, “Billy,” bearing “mutton” broth prepared
from goat. These animals, by the way, appear to be indigenous to
the streets of Cooktown and to frequent them in large herds; their
sustenance seems to be gleaned from the rubbish heaps and back yards;
for of grass, at the time I was there, there was none, and their
camping places were for choice the doorsteps and verandahs of the
hotels, from which vantage points, at frequent intervals, the slumbers
of the lodgers were cheered by the sound of violent strife, and
sweetened by the peculiar fragrance diffused by ancient goats.
Then came one fine and memorable morning when our cheerful little
skipper called us to look at Samarai, at that time called by the
hideous name of Dinner Island, towards the anchorage of which we were
slowly moving, the while, from every direction, a swarm of canoes
paddled furiously towards us, crowded with fuzzy-headed natives, all
eager to earn a few sticks of tobacco, by assisting in the discharge of
the cargo we carried. The canoes were warned off pending the arrival of
a health officer to grant pratique, and that official soon appeared in
the person of Mr. R. E. Armit, a well-set-up, soldierly looking man of
about fifty years of age. Poor Armit, long since killed by the deadly
malaria of the Northern Division.
Mr. Armit was Subcollector of Customs and goodness knows what else at
Samarai, and was himself an extraordinary personality. An accomplished
linguist, widely read and travelled, I never found a subject about
which Armit did not know something and usually a very great deal. He,
however, did not possess a faculty for making or retaining money, and
did possess a particularly caustic tongue and pen, which, when the mood
took him, he would exercise even upon his superior officers; hence he
was frequently in hot water and never lacked enemies.
Samarai boasted neither wharf nor jetty; our cargo was therefore simply
shot over the side into the multitude of canoes and thence ferried to
the beach, with such assistance as the ship’s boats could afford.
Dinner Island, or as I shall from now on term it, Samarai, is an
island of about fifty acres. The hill, which forms the centre of the
island, rises from what was then a malodorous swamp, surrounded by a
strip of coral beach. The whole island was a gazetted penal district,
and the town consisted of the Residency, a fine roomy bungalow built
by the Imperial Government for the then Commissioner, General Sir
Peter Scratchley--the first of New Guinea officials to be claimed by
malaria--and now the headquarters of the Resident Magistrate for the
Eastern Division; a small three-roomed building of native grass and
round poles dubbed the Subcollector’s house; a gaol of native material,
the roof of which served as a bond store for dutiable goods, and a
cemetery: the three latter appeared to be well filled. There was also a
small single-roomed galvanized iron building which served as a Custom’s
house; in it was employed a clerk, unpaid; he was an affable gentleman
of mixed French and Greek parentage, and was at the time awaiting his
trial for murder. Two small stores, the one owned by Burns, Philp and
Co., of Sydney, and the other by Mr. William Whitten, now the Honble.
William Whitten, M.L.C., completed the main buildings.
Mr. Whitten was the son of a Queen’s Messenger, since dead of malaria,
and possessed an adventurous disposition which had taken him off to
sea as a boy. His first appearance in New Guinea was as one of the
personal guard of Sir Peter Scratchley, a body which Sir William
MacGregor replaced with his fine native constabulary. Whitten had
saved money enough to purchase a small cutter, with which he had begun
trading for bêche-de-mer in the Trobriand Islands. While dealing with
the natives for that commodity, he had discovered that pearls of a
fair quality existed in a small oyster forming one of the staple foods
of the natives. Whitten purchased large quantities of the pearls
from the natives for almost nothing, and had he only been able to
keep his discovery to himself, would have had fortune in his grasp.
Unfortunately for him, the sale of his prize in Australia brought
down upon him a host of other competitors, and the natives, having
discovered that the white man was keenly desirous of obtaining what
were to them worthless stones, raised their prices higher and higher
until there was little to be gained in the trade.
Whitten, however, had made enough to bring a young brother from
England, purchase a bigger and better vessel, also a large quantity
of merchandise. At the date of writing, Whitten Brothers own numerous
plantations, several steamers and sailing vessels, conduct a banking
business, have branches in the gold-fields, and are the largest
employers of labour in the country; in 1895, however, this greatness
was as yet undreamt of by them.
Other than the Residency and the glorified sardine box doing duty as
the Custom House, the only other building in Samarai formed of European
materials--by which I mean sawn timber and fastened with nails--was the
bungalow occupied by Burns, Philp’s manager, and situated on perhaps
the best site there. Gangs of prisoners--native--were engaged quarrying
in the hill of Samarai and filling up the swamp, a palpably necessary
work. Curiously enough in a pleasantly written little book by Colonel
Kenneth Mackay, C.B., entitled “Across Papua,” I noticed a reference to
this work, which was ultimately the means of stamping malaria out of
the place. The author attributed it, amongst others, to Doctor Jones, a
health officer who came to New Guinea in recent years. This statement
is quite incorrect; the credit of banishing malaria from Samarai
belongs to Sir William MacGregor, and to him alone.
A few sheds, occupied by boat-builders and carpenters, scattered
along the beach, complete the buildings of Samarai. Of hotels and
accommodation houses there were none, but then there was no travelling
public to accommodate; gold-diggers to and from the islands of Sudest
and St. Aignan camped in their tents, which as a rule consisted of a
single sheet of calico stretched over a pole; traders lived in their
vessels. Alcoholic refreshment was dispensed at the stores; Burns,
Philp’s manager, for instance, or one of the Whittens, ceasing from
their book-keeping labours to serve thirsty customers with lager beer
or more potent fluids over the store counter. Whitten Brothers had a
large roofed balcony with no sides, situated at the back of the store,
and here at night, as to a general club-house, foregathered all the
Europeans of the island. Under a centre table was placed a supply of
varied drinks, and as men came in and bottles were emptied, they were
hurled over the edge on to the soft coral sand. In the morning one
of the Whittens caused the bottles to be collected by a native boy,
counted them, and avoided the trouble of book-keeping by the simple
method of dividing the sum total of bottles by the number of men he
knew, or that his boy told him, had visited the “house”; each man
therefore, whether a thirsty person or not, was charged exactly the
same as his neighbour.
All Samarai was planted with cocoanut palms, the dodging of falling
nuts from which, in windy weather, served to keep the inhabitants spry.
Pyjamas were the almost universal wear, varied in the case of some
traders by a strip of turkey-red twill, worn petticoat fashion, and a
cotton vest.
Among the traders were two picturesque ruffians, alike in nothing,
save the ability with which they conducted their business and dodged
hanging. Each had spent his life trading in the South Seas and had
amassed a fair fortune. Of them and their exploits I have heard endless
yarns. Of one of these men, who was known far and wide through the
South Seas as “Nicholas the Greek”--Heaven knows why, for his real name
sounded English, and his reckless courage was certainly not typical of
the modern Greek--the following stories are told.
A vessel had been cut out in one of the New Guinea or Louisade
Islands--which it was I have forgotten--and the crew massacred. When
this became known, a man-of-war or Government ship was sent to punish
the murderers, and in especial to secure a native chief, who was
primarily responsible. The punitive ship came across Nicholas and
engaged him as pilot and interpreter, he being offered one hundred
pounds when the man wanted was secured. Nicholas safely piloted
his charge to some remote island where the inhabitants, doubtless
having guilty consciences, promptly fled for the hills, where it was
impossible for ordinary Europeans to follow them. He then offered to
go alone to try and locate them, and, armed with a ship’s cutlass and
revolver, disappeared on his quest. Some days elapsed, then in the
night a small canoe appeared alongside the ship, from which emerged
Nicholas, bearing in his hand a bundle. Marching up to the officer
commanding, he undid it, and rolled at the officer’s feet a gory human
head, remarking, “Here is your man, I couldn’t bring the lot of him.
I’ll thank you for that hundred.”
Another story was that Nicholas on one occasion was attacked and
frightfully slashed about by his native crew and then thrown overboard,
he shamming dead. Sinking in the water he managed to get under the
keel, along which he crawled like a crawfish until he came to the
rudder, upon which he roosted under the counter until night fell and
his crew slept. Then he climbed on board, secured a tomahawk, and
either killed or drove overboard the whole crew, they thinking he
was an avenging ghost. This done, badly wounded and unassisted, he
worked his vessel to a neighbouring island, where, being sickened and
disgusted with men, he shipped and trained a crew of native women, with
whom he sailed for many years, in fact, I think, until the day came
when Sir W. MacGregor appeared upon the scene and passed the Native
Labour Ordinance, which, amongst other things, prohibited the carrying
of women on vessels.
[Illustration: COCOANUT GROVE NEAR SAMARAI]
Of Nicholas also is told the story that once, in the bad old
pre-protectorate days, so many charges were brought against him by
missionaries and merchantmen that a man-of-war was sent to arrest him,
wherever found, and bring him to trial. He, through a friendly trader,
got wind of the fact that he was being sought for, and accordingly laid
his plans for the bamboozlement of his would-be captors. Summoning his
crew, he informed them that his father was dead, and that as he had his
father’s name of Nicholas, his name must now be “Peter,” as the custom
of his tribe was, even as that of some New Guinea peoples, viz. not to
mention the name of the dead lest harm befall. Then he sailed in search
of the pursuing warship and, eventually finding her, went on board and
volunteered his services as pilot, which were gladly accepted. To all
of his haunts he then guided that ship, but in all the reply of the
native was the same, when questioned as to his whereabouts, “We know
not Nicholas, he is gone. Peter your pilot comes in his place. Nicholas
is dead, and ’tis wrong to mention the name of the dead.” It was said
of him that on no part of his body could a man’s hand be placed without
touching the scar of some old wound--a story I can fully believe.
The second of this interesting couple was known as “German Harry,” a
man of insignificant appearance and little physical strength, but the
most venomous little scorpion, when thoroughly roused, it has ever
been my lot to meet; at the same time he was the most generous-hearted
little man towards the hard up and unfortunate. He had also spent
a considerable portion of his time in dodging arrest or explaining
certain alleged manslaughters of his before various tribunals. I
remember one little specimen I witnessed of Harry’s fighting methods,
and from that understood why the biggest of bullies and “hard cases”
treated him with respect.
A vessel, owned and commanded by a hulking brute of a Dane, had come
over from Queensland bringing, amongst other things, some recent
papers, one of which contained an account of a disgraceful wife-beating
case, in which the Dane figured and in which he had escaped--as such
brutes generally do in civilized countries--by the payment of a
miserable fine.
As Harry, the Dane and I, were sitting in a gold-field store, Harry
read the account, and then gazing at the Dane, said something in
German, of which “Schweinhund” was the only word I understood. A glass
of rum promptly smashed on Harry’s teeth, followed by a bellow of rage
and the thrower’s rush. Harry in a single instant became a lunatic,
and flying like a wild cat at the other’s face, kicking, biting, and
clawing, bore the big man to the ground, from where, in a few seconds,
agonized yells of, “He is eating me,” told us the Dane was in dire
trouble. Harry was dragged away by main force, and we found half his
victim’s nose bitten off, while a bloodshot and protruding eye showed
how nearly his thumb had got its work in. The wife-beater went off a
mass of funk and misery, while Harry proceeded calmly to attend to the
glass cuts on his face. “You are a nice cheerful sort of little hyena,”
I remarked to Harry afterwards. “What sort of fighting do you call
that?” “That? Oh, that’s nothing. I only wanted to frighten him or I
would have had his eye out as well. He won’t throw a glass at German
Harry again in a hurry.”
Some years later I met German Harry in a Sydney street, and though I
had long since thought I was beyond being surprised at anything he
did, he yet gave me a further shock when he told me he had purchased a
“Matrimonial Agency.”