At Samarai I found Moreton looking very ill, and keenly anxious to
get away; Symons, late purser of the _Merrie England_, was now his
assistant and Subcollector of Customs instead of Armit. The latter had
turned his knowledge of botany to account by setting up as a collector
and trader of rubber; he was the first man in New Guinea to commence
that business, and it was he who taught the natives the method of
collecting and preparing it for market.
I asked Moreton to give me a sketch of my duties as a Resident
Magistrate, and he said everything was a Resident Magistrate’s duty:
in the absence of a surveyor, he had to survey any land purchased;
in the absence of a doctor, he had to set and amputate limbs; he had
also to drill his own police, act as gaoler and undertaker, sail the
_Siai_, marry people, in fact do any job of any description, from a
blacksmith’s upwards, not expressly allotted to some one else. If a
job were allotted to some one else, and that some one else failed to
do it, the Resident Magistrate must do it; Sir William MacGregor,
in fact, expected his Resident Magistrates to know everything and
to do everything. It was no excuse, Moreton stated, to say that one
did not know how to do it: that was all very well for a doctor, a
surveyor, a ship’s officer, or Custom’s official, but not for the
Resident Magistrate. Another of his duties was to make every shilling
of Government money allotted to him go as far as half a crown; if he
spent money in what the Governor or Treasurer considered an unnecessary
manner, he had the pleasure and privilege of making it up out of his
own pocket. His powers, however, were extensive: he could sentence
summarily up to two years’ imprisonment with hard labour, or fine up to
two hundred pounds; and, in the absence of the Governor, he could take
administrative action in any matter of urgency or importance; finally,
he occupied the enviable position of scapegoat, when such was needed.
“All this is very fine for you, Moreton,” I said, when he had
concluded. “You have been years in the Service and know things, whilst
I am very young for such an appointment, and have no experience.”
“Go to Armit if you get into a fix,” said Moreton, “he will pilot
you through all right, he is a walking encyclopædia; but don’t you
get Jock’s back up or you will never forget it. You can practically
exercise any power you please if you do right and succeed, but if
you make a mistake or fail, Jock will make you feel small enough to
crawl through a keyhole. Now then, here is a list of things that need
attending to at once. There is a murder at Awaiama, a man cut his
mother-in-law’s throat, catch him; there is to be a new Mission Station
at Cape Vogel, survey and buy the land from the natives; Fellows is in
trouble at the Trobriands, go and put him right; Bromilow has collected
a lot of orphans at Dobu, go and mandate them to the Mission; a man
named Ryan has shot a native at Ferguson Island, arrest him and inquire
into the case; Carruth has been supplying grog to the natives on Burns,
Philp’s diving boats, catch Carruth and deal with him; the _Siai’s_
decks need caulking and she needs new wire rigging; I’ve got the wire,
but there is no money with which to pay any one to do the job. Patten
has got into some sort of trouble at the south end of Goodenough, find
out what it’s all about; Thompson has started a cocoanut plantation
on the north-east coast of the island, look him up and see that he is
all right; when you get some spare time, go and buy a cargo of yams
for the gaol, and don’t pay more than 10s. per ton for them; see that
Billy the Cook shuts his pub at twelve o’clock, there are only fights
and rows if he is open later. Don’t use the police for arresting white
men if you can possibly avoid it; arrest them yourself. Some one stole
an anchor and chain from the _Siai_, I think it was Graham; search
his vessel the first time you come across him; he was last heard of
in the Trobriands; there are a handful of summonses for debt against
him too, serve them. Find German Harry and hold an inquest into the
death of one of his crew; look at the licences of all pearl shell and
bêche-de-mer vessels you come across, they dodge paying whenever they
can; if they pretend they have no cash, make them give you an order on
Burns, Philp and Co. There are a lot of letters about missing friends,
find out about the people for whom inquiries are made and answer them,
also send duplicates of your letters to the Government Secretary. The
Chief Judicial Officer is raising Cain about a lot of Mambare murderers
in the gaol on warrants of remand, he wants to know if I intend to
keep them without trial for the term of their natural lives; just work
through them in your spare time: they are the men that killed Green and
his detachment. There are a few other things that want attention, but
Symons will give you a list. Give Symons hell, if he gets behind at all
with the Headquarters’ returns, and keep your eye on the _Siai’s_ paint
and stores, for I’ll take my oath Symons doesn’t keep his whaleboat so
smart on his paint allowance. If you give the bo’sun of the _Merrie
England_ a bottle of whisky, he will steal enough brass-cleaning stuff,
sewing twine, and needles from her stores to keep you going for a
year. By the way, Jock won’t allow holystone for the decks, he says
it is extravagant, and that we must scrub them with sand and cocoanut
husk. They have small-pox in German New Guinea; send any vessel coming
from there into quarantine at once, ‘Clean Bill of Health’ or not.”
Symons was a married man with a young family: Moreton therefore had
allowed him to take possession of the Residency, whilst he occupied
a little three-roomed house, built of native material, in the gaol
compound and alongside the Government jetty. As Moreton pointed out,
it was much more convenient for a bachelor wishing to keep only two
servants--a cook and an orderly--than the big Residency; and the
labour of shifting one’s things backwards and forwards from the _Siai_
was much reduced. There was a detached two-roomed building used as a
cook-house and servants’ room; Moreton only used two rooms, one as a
bedroom and the other as a sitting-room; we dined on the verandah. I
investigated the third room, the one to be occupied by me until his
departure, and found a couple of trestles supporting a platform of
boards. “What on earth is this, Moreton?” I asked; “it strikes me as a
devilish hard bunk!” “The fact is,” said Moreton, “there have been a
few accidents lately, dynamite and diving and that sort of thing, and
as there was nowhere else to put the bodies, I kept them here till the
inquests were over, and they could be safely planted in the cemetery;
I believe one of the ungrateful beggars walks.” “I think I’ll have
a hammock slung,” I remarked; “I don’t so much mind sleeping in a
_morgue_, but I draw the line at a corpse’s bed; his spook might take a
fancy to occupy his old berth.”
“You might hunt up a suitable place on Logia Island for a new
cemetery,” Moreton said. “The one here, next the gaol, is getting
overcrowded for one thing, and for another, it is none too wholesome,
for all the coffins are made of thin cedar--some of the inhabitants
have not got coffins at all--and the damned crabs _will_ bore holes
down to them. I had an awful job to get enough sawn timber for a coffin
for Tommy Rous, but he’s tight enough, I think; I thought I owed him
something for all the pleasant nights we had spent together. By the
way, don’t let Symons read the Burial Service over any one if you can
help it; he reads it in a voice like a cock with a quinsy.” Moreton
complained that the Woodlark and Mambare miners were getting Samarai a
bad name. “They come here,” he said, “at the last gasp with dysentery
or malaria, wait a week or two for a vessel to take them to Australia,
and then, if the schooner is late, peg out, and give me all the work
of administering their affairs and replying to the letters of their
relations. I had a little luck with one lot, though; about a dozen
came in from the Woodlark, looking very bad, and just managed to catch
the _Clara Ethel_ bound for Cooktown. The skipper told me afterwards,
that he dumped seven corpses overboard before he reached there, and
they had to carry the rest up to the hospital.”
A few days after I arrived at Samarai, the _Ivanhoe_ came in from New
Britain bound for Cooktown, and Moreton made ready to depart. “Some
little time ago,” he told me, “my brother sent me some champagne and
some pâté de foie gras, and a cheque which I am going to blow on my
leave. I think we will invite Armit and Arbouine to dinner the night
before we sail, and polish off the fizz and pâté; but how the devil am
I to get the pâté cold? It is in china pots inside a soldered tin.”
“Tie it on to the _Siai’s_ anchor and drop it in fifty fathoms,” I
suggested; “it is cool enough down there.” The dinner came, the time
for the pâté also, and Moreton’s cook proudly produced, and placed in
front of him, a steaming, loathly-looking dish of an evil-smelling
mess. Moreton prodded at it. “What is this? I sent for the pâté, you
scoundrel: what poisonous mess have you got here?” “That’s all right,
sir, that’s the pâté; I’ve curried it!” I draw a veil over the language
that followed, and also over the fate of that boy.
Earlier in the day a cutter came in, manned by escaped French convicts
from New Caledonia; Moreton promptly placed them in gaol, telling me to
keep them there until the Chief Judicial Officer came, and I could get
his advice as to what was to be done with them. “What sort of warrant
am I to hold them on?” I asked; “it is all very fine for you, you are
skipping out, but what will happen to me when his Ex. finds out I have
half a dozen Frenchmen jugged without a warrant?” “You are a bright
R.M.,” said Moreton; “men are not sent to New Caledonia for stealing
apples; only the worst of their criminals go there, and I don’t want
half a dozen of the worst sort of convicts loose in this division;
law or no law, you hang on to them; charge them with having no lawful
visible means of support, or with a breach of the quarantine laws, or
entering from a foreign port without a ‘Bill of Health,’ or hold them
on suspicion of having stolen their cutter; anyhow, it is better that
you should get the sack, than that they should be let loose; Winter
will find a way of dealing with them.”
After dinner, on Moreton’s last night, we adjourned to Arbouine’s
house, where we remained until about eleven; as we returned home,
a wild riot at Billy the Cook’s pub attracted our attention, and
running there we found O’Regan the Rager being thrown down the steps.
O’Regan was fighting drunk, and making the night hideous with yells
and blasphemy. “Go home and to bed, O’Regan,” said Moreton. He would
not, and Moreton grabbed him; he promptly hit Moreton in the ribs,
and just as promptly I hit O’Regan under the ear and also seized him.
“Will you come quietly?” said Moreton; but O’Regan wanted blood and
gore, whereupon Moreton blew his whistle and a dozen police, running
up, collared him and took him off to gaol, Moreton and I continuing
our way home. We had hardly reached the house before a warder rushed
up, exclaiming, “That lunatic, the police have run in, is killing the
Wee-wees.” I bolted down to the gaol, and found all the cells were full
of natives except the one containing the Frenchmen, and accordingly the
gaoler had put O’Regan in with them; O’Regan had immediately proceeded
to dance with his heavy mining boots over their recumbent forms, and to
challenge them to fight.
I had the cell door opened, and told O’Regan that he would be put in
irons unless he kept quiet; the Frenchmen all clamoured to be taken
away from him. “I’m a plain drunk and disorderly, I am,” said O’Regan,
“and I’m not going to be shut up with a ---- lot of ---- foreign
criminals.” “That’s all very fine,” I told him, “but all the other
cells are full of natives and you are not going to dance over them;
gaoler, bring the irons, and we will make a ‘spread eagle’ of this man
on the floor.” Here the Frenchmen chipped in, saying they didn’t want
to remain in the cell with him even when ironed, and begged to be put
in with the natives, to which I accordingly agreed. O’Regan was left
with a bucket of water and a pannikin, and told that if he gave as
much as one more howl, he would be ironed to the floor. The following
morning, Moreton paid a visit to the gaol to say good-bye to the gaoler
and warders, and some estimable native friends of his, whom he had been
obliged to gaol for various trifles--such as assault, or burying their
deceased relatives in the villages. While he was there O’Regan, who by
this time was feeling rather piano, begged his pardon for hitting him
in the ribs, and apologized for giving him the trouble of using the
police for running him in. “Let him off with ten shillings and costs as
a plain drunk, Monckton,” said Moreton; “he seems very contrite, and
he’s got a lump as big as a hen’s egg where you hit him.”
The _Ivanhoe_ sailed, and with her, Moreton; my first duty was to hear
the cases set down at the Court House, amongst them of course being
O’Regan’s drunk. When his case came up, I fined him ten shillings; upon
which he gazed at me and remarked, “I’ve seen that blank man up to his
backside in mud at the Woodlark, hunting for pennyweights of gold,
and now he sits there like a blanky lord and fines me ten bob.” “Yes,
O’Regan,” I remarked, “very true; and now that blank man is going to
add five pounds to your fine for contempt of court!”
The night after Moreton’s departure I was peacefully sleeping, being
dog tired after a hard day, when I was awakened by some one shaking my
hammock. Jumping up I saw Robert Whitten, and demanded what he meant by
coming and disturbing a tired man at that hour. “So-and-so’s wife has
died suddenly,” he said, naming a European carpenter, who was married
to a native woman, “and we want you to come and look at the corpse,
to find out why she died.” Reluctantly I dressed, called a couple of
police, and went off corpse gazing. I found the widower looking very
distressed and frightened; he told me his wife had complained of a
sharp pain in her chest at different times, and that night it had been
very bad. “I sent to every store,” he said, “and I bought chlorodyne
and pain killer, fever mixture and pink pills, cough mixtures and
Mother Seigel’s syrup; I bought every sort of medicine they had got,
and I gave her some of each, hoping that one would fix her up. There
are the bottles, you can see I’ve done my best; I then sent for Bob
Whitten to ask him if he knew of anything else, and while Bob was here,
she died. Is there going to be an inquest, and shall I bring the body
up to your house?” “No, you won’t,” I said; “you will keep it here
until it is buried, and you need not worry about an inquest. I think
your wife died of heart disease, before all those drugs you poured down
her throat had time to poison her; but no one will ever know now.”
The following morning I crawled out to breakfast at about ten o’clock,
feeling a horrible worm, and found an immaculately dressed Symons
sitting on the verandah waiting for me. “Come to breakfast, Mr.
Symons?” “No, thank you,” said Symons in a pious voice, “I had my
breakfast two hours ago; I adhere strictly to office hours.” “You are
a lucky dog,” I remarked; “it seems to me that my hours are all day
and all night as well. What’s the trouble now?” “The gaol returns,” he
replied; “the gaol is half full of people under Warrants of Remand;
the R.M. has been too busy, and latterly too ill, to attend to them;
we are over-crowded, and unless something is done, there will be a
lot of sickness. The Mambare men, too, are giving no end of trouble,
and should be transferred elsewhere; I’m getting anxious about what
will happen when you leave with the bulk of the police.” I satisfied
Symons by promising to inquire at once into the cases of all the men
on remand; and, after breakfast, began upon the men charged with the
murders of John Green, Assistant Resident Magistrate at Tamata, his
police, and five European miners.
The inquiry resulted in the committal for trial for murder of
practically the whole of the Mambare prisoners then in gaol in Samarai,
and it also involves an explanation on my part of the events leading
up to it. In 1894--I think it was--Sir William MacGregor, accompanied
by Moreton, R.M. for the Division, ascended the Mambare River from
its outfall in Duvira Bay to its highest navigable point, a few miles
above Tamata creek. What are now known as the Mambare and Duvira Bay,
were originally named by Admiral Moresby the Clyde and Traitor’s
Bay respectively. The banks of the river were found to be fairly
densely populated by a strong and warlike race of people, with whom,
however, they avoided coming into hostility. Sir William discovered
the existence of gold in the sand and shores of the river; and, upon
his reporting that fact in the course of his official dispatch, a
prospecting party of miners from Queensland was fitted out, headed
by a man named Clark, to be shortly followed by another party led by
Elliott, for the exploitation of the discovery.
Clark’s party arrived at Samarai, and, in spite of Moreton’s protests,
went to the Mambare, where they apparently had got into friendly
relations with the natives, and had employed them to assist in hauling
their boat up the rapids. A short distance above Tamata the whole of
the white men composing the party--with the exception of their leader
Clark--left their boat with their rifles in it and walked along the
bank, whilst the Mambare natives hauled her up a rapid by means of a
long rope, Clark meanwhile steering the boat. Suddenly in the middle of
the rapid the natives cut the rope, thereby allowing the boat to drift
rapidly down stream and into the midst of a swarm of following canoes
manned by armed natives, who at once launched showers of spears against
Clark. The latter used his revolver for a few minutes, and then fell,
pierced by a dozen spears; the remainder of his party rushed down the
bank, drove off the natives by revolver fire, and, having recovered
their boat, fled down stream, where they met Elliott’s party coming
up. The two parties, then uniting forces, took a quite illegal and
unnecessary vengeance by burning villages, cutting down cocoanut trees,
and generally involving every tribe and village on the river in the
murder and disturbance; having succeeded in doing this, they fled to
the beach and thence south to Samarai.
Sir William MacGregor hastily proceeded to the Mambare, some fighting
took place, and several arrests of natives were made, including,
amongst others, one Dumai. Sir William then decided to place a police
post and magistrate on the Mambare to control the miners and natives;
for this work, out of the small number of officers available, not
numbering twenty all told, he selected John Green. This officer was,
for native affairs, absolutely the best man the service of New Guinea
ever possessed; he spoke Motuan as well as a Motuan; he could speak
practically every language then known in New Guinea, and he had the
faculty of gaining a native people’s confidence and learning their
language in quicker time than any other man I have ever met; above
all, he was absolutely fearless. John Green was therefore, at this
time, the most valuable man for a difficult post in the New Guinea
service.
[Illustration: TAMATA CREEK]
When Green was appointed to take charge of the Mambare, he asked that
Dumai--the Mambare prisoner--should be released and recruited into the
Armed Constabulary, to form a unit of his detachment for that post;
this was done, and Dumai, late prisoner, became a full private of the
Armed Constabulary in the Mambare detachment. From this appointment
came later the tragedy of Tamata Station, for which many have been
blamed, including and principally Green. It is not my wish to blame
or excuse anybody, but in this matter no one other than Green was in
error. As I said before, he was the best man for native affairs New
Guinea possessed; he was given a difficult job, and it was therefore
necessary he should have a free hand in the selection of his men; he
picked his men and made a mistake; and for that error of judgment he
paid with his life and the lives of many others. But Green died--as did
in later years Christopher Robinson--a brave and gallant gentleman;
expiating with all he had to give, his mistake and not his fault.
Green and his men were encamped at the mouth of Tamata creek on the
Mambare, all the tribes along the river being in a turmoil and at
heart hostile; he--as he thought--got on friendly terms with several
of the villages, and employed the men about his new Station. He found
that the site selected for his new post was subject to inundation, and
so decided to shift it some miles inland from the river on to higher
ground; accordingly, he proceeded daily with his detachment to clear
the land and erect new buildings, the men accompanying him always
including Dumai and marching under arms. Green forbade the villagers
who worked and assisted at the Station to carry spears, clubs, or arms
of any description. About a week after he had begun his new Station,
Dumai came to him and said that the local natives complained that
though Green expected them to show trust in him by working without
arms, he did not reciprocate, as the police were always fully armed;
and that, therefore, the natives were distrustful of him. Green replied
that it was the order of the Government that the police should carry
arms at all times, even in the Government villages; whereupon Dumai
said that the confidence and trust of the Mambare people would never
be gained unless they too were trusted. Green refused to allow them
to carry arms on his station, but told Dumai that, as a proof of good
faith, he and the detail of police accompanying him would work unarmed
among the village people at the new Station site.
On the morning following this conversation Green fell-in his
detachment, under his principal non-commissioned officer, Corporal
Sedu, and told them that they were to accompany him to work at the new
Station unarmed, and then ordered them to pile arms. Corporal Sedu
protested, stating that the orders were that they--as police--were
always to carry arms. Green then repeated his order, “pile arms”;
about two-thirds of the men obeyed; Corporal Sedu and a few older
constabulary, however, retained their rifles. Green then gave the
order to march, after which he said to the men, “I see I have some
brave men and some cowards; the cowards carry their arms.” Corporal
Sedu halted and said, “If you say that, sir, look at this,” and flung
his rifle into a bush, an example followed by the rest of the armed
men. “Ah, Sedu,” said Green, “I thought I could trust you.” The whole
party then proceeded to the new Station site, where some dispersed with
Sedu to seek timber trees in the forest, whilst others remained to
work upon the houses with Green. Suddenly upon Green and his unarmed
men there fell a body of spear- and club-men, who made short work of
them. Sedu, hearing what was taking place, summoned his men and marched
them up to share the fate of their officer, even though he and the
unarmed privates with him could easily have escaped. So fell one of New
Guinea’s best officers, and a fine detachment of police.
Dumai deserted to his own people, and instructed them how--under the
leadership of their chief, Bushimai--to fall upon the white miners,
who had already settled on the river. These miners, however (in spite
of the boasted courage of the white man, a courage I have had drummed
into my ears during many weary years), upon news reaching them of
the death of Green and his men, broke and fled without waiting for
attack; five of them were accounted for as being butchered on the way
to the coast, but probably others were killed, and Heaven alone knows
how many of their native employés also. The few armed native police
at Tamata who had been left in charge of the old Station, finding
themselves apparently isolated and abandoned by all men, without even
a non-com. in charge, marched for the coast, picking up and saving on
the way several native carriers. The evidence of these fine men was
the only coherent evidence I got at the inquiry. Had but one of that
panic-stricken lot of miners had the pluck to rally his mates, go
to the Station, and take charge of the remainder of the police, all
of them might have been saved; as it was, they fled like curs, and
afterwards howled for a bloody vengeance against the Mambare people.
[Illustration: BUSHIMAI, CHIEF OF THE BINANDERE PEOPLE]
Green’s head was cut off and carried away as a trophy, and his body
buried; not one of the bodies of the white men were eaten, though some
of those of the police and carriers were. One miner climbed a tree
near Duvira village and, being discovered there, was stoned from the
tree and clubbed to death by children. A party of five miners and
some of their boys drifted out to sea on a raft, with neither food
nor water, except a tin of treacle; after seven days they were picked
up by a German man-of-war, and taken to Sydney. Eight years later, I
found Green’s cook living amongst a tribe upon the north-east coast, by
whom he had been adopted, and one of whose women he had married. Many
of the facts of the massacre I heard, a number of years afterwards,
from some of the natives concerned in it, who were--as quite reformed
characters--serving under me in the Armed Constabulary.
News of the affair at last drifted through to Moreton at Samarai; he
first sent a vessel with the report to Port Moresby, and left for
the Mambare in the _Siai_, accompanied by a miner named Alexander
Elliott. The tidings were longer in reaching the Governor than they
should have been, as the vessel carrying them encountered head winds
all the way; and a duplicate dispatch, sent by Moreton overland, was
delayed for some days at a village _en route_ by a presumptuous and
thick-headed Samoan teacher of the London Missionary Society. When
Moreton arrived at the Mambare, he ascended the river in a whaleboat
to the point where Green had been killed, the natives using against
him on several occasions the rifles they had taken at the Station; for
these, however, they had already expended most of the ammunition, and
were at the best extremely bad shots. Finding that nothing was to be
done at the Station, and that some miners, seven days’ journey further
inland, were safe, Moreton returned to the _Siai_ to await the arrival
of the Governor. During Moreton’s absence some of the crew had taken
the dingey ashore for firewood, and being suddenly surprised by the
natives, had rushed into the sea and swam off to the _Siai_. Sione
and Warapas, the coxswain and mate, had then placed their rifles in a
cask and swum ashore, pushing it in front of them; when able to get a
footing on the bottom, they had used their rifles against the men on
the beach, and recovered the dingey. This action on the part of the two
boys strikes one as an extremely plucky one, when one remembers that
both sharks and alligators haunt the waters of Duvira Bay.
Sir William MacGregor now appeared upon the scene; his patrols of
constabulary swept the country from the Opi River to the north, as
far as the Gira to the south of the Mambare; and the _Ruby_ launch
patrolled the river. Clark’s murderers and Dumai, together with
Bushimai, his sons and a number of principal offenders, were captured:
it became a question with the natives whether they were to surrender,
fight, or flee from the river beyond the reach of the patrols, and
after a time most of them decided to take refuge in flight. Shanahan
and a fresh detachment of constabulary were stationed at Tamata, the
miners returned to their work, and a fresh start was made; but a
breach had been opened between Europeans and natives that it was to
take many years to heal, and was also to lead to a great deal more
bloodshed. The only man in New Guinea who would have been able to deal
with the situation now existing--other than the Governor himself--was
John Green; and he had gone where miners and natives alike worry not.
The Northern Division was destined for many years to prove the death
of a long succession of officers or, at the best, the grave of their
reputations. Shanahan, Armit, Lynch, Park, Close, and Walker were to
die; whilst several others were either dismissed or called upon to
resign. Many officers in later years preferred to resign rather than be
sent there.
[Illustration: TAMATA STATION]