Some six months I put in at Woodlark Island, acquiring during that time a fine strong brand of malaria, a crop of boils, which had spread like wildfire among the mining camps, catching Europeans and natives alike, a little gold, and a large amount of experience; all of which were most painfully acquired.

Sylvester, after having suffered some particularly malignant bouts of malaria and having developed some corroding and fast-spreading mangrove ulcers, parted company with me and went to New Zealand. The mangrove ulcer, commonly called New Guinea sore, is, I think, quite the most beastly thing one has to contend with on those islands; it is mainly caused, in the first instance, by leech or mosquito bites setting up an irritation which causes the victim to scratch; then the poisonous mud of either mangrove or pandanus swamps gets into the abrasion, and an indolent ulcer is set up, which slowly but perceptibly spreads, as well as eating inward to the bone, for which I know no remedy other than a change to a temperate climate. Painful when touched during the day, it is agony itself when the legs stiffen at night.

The method of obtaining gold, at the time I was at Woodlark Island, was primitive and simple in the extreme, and was performed in this way. Having located a stream, gully or ravine, in which a “prospect” could be found to the “dish,” the “prospect” consisting of one or more grains of gold, the “dish” holding approximately thirty pounds weight of wash dirt, i.e. gold-bearing gravel, the miner—or digger, as he is more generally called—pegged out a claim of some fifty feet square. When he had done this he put in a small dam, to the overflow of which he attached a wooden box some six feet long by twelve inches wide, having a fall of one inch to the foot, and paved with either flat stones or plaited vines. Into the head of this box was then thrown the wash dirt, from which the action of the water washed away the stones, sand, etc., leaving the gold precipitated at the bottom. The larger the flow of water, the more dirt could be put through, and the more dirt the more gold.

The title to a claim consisted of a document called a “Miner’s Right,” which permitted the holder to peg out and keep the above area, or as many more of similar dimensions as he chose to occupy or man. A miner’s right cost ten shillings per annum and ipso facto constituted the holder a miner—sex, infancy, or nationality notwithstanding, the only ineligibles being Chinese. “Manning ground” consisted of placing a person holding a miner’s right in occupation thereof, the wages that person received being immaterial. Thus a man employing ten or a dozen Papuans, at wages ranging from five to ten shillings a month, could, by merely paying ten shillings per annum per head for miner’s rights, monopolize ten or a dozen claims. The wages of the European miner ranged from twenty shillings a day and upwards, this, of course, being the man contemplated by the Queensland Mining Act, and adopted by New Guinea, as the person likely to man and work ground held by the miner holding ground in excess of that to which his own “right” entitled him.

In theory, it is of course manifestly unfair, that the native of a country should be classed as an alien, and debarred from any privilege conferred by law upon Europeans; but in practice, the granting of miner’s rights to them merely means that the European able to employ a number of natives can monopolize claims, to the exclusion of other Europeans. The native gets no more wages for his privilege of holding ground, and were the privilege withdrawn would still obtain exactly the employment he gets now, as his labour in working the claims is necessary and profitable to his employer, and the supply of native labour for the miner is never equal to the demand.

An interesting feature in connection with gold-mining on Woodlark Island was that frequently the gold-bearing gravel ran under old coral reefs, thus showing plainly that the whole gold-field had once been submerged under the sea. A warm spring running into one of the streams was, however, the only indication of past volcanic action. In the pearling ground off the island of Sudest, there occurs again under the sea, at a depth of fifteen fathoms, a big quartz reef running through the live coral and sand bottom—whether gold-bearing or not I cannot say—and dipping underground as it nears the shore.

Some time after my arrival at Woodlark the schooner Ivanhoe came in bringing provisions, tools, etc., for the gold-diggers, together with a number of fresh arrivals, among whom was a Russian Finn, the meanest and, in his personal habits, the dirtiest beast I have ever met. This fellow proved most successful in his mining; but eventually, while prospecting near his claim, lost himself in the forest. Upon his being missed, a search party was organized by the diggers to look for him, but after some weeks the quest was abandoned as hopeless and the man given up for lost; a considerable amount was, however, subscribed and offered by the diggers as a reward to any one finding or bringing him in. The Finn, in the long run, was discovered in a starving condition by some natives who, after feeding him and nursing him back to life, brought him to the mining camp, where he learnt of the reward offered for his recovery. He then had the ineffable impudence to object to its being paid over to the natives, on the ground that it was subscribed for his benefit, and that therefore he should receive it, magnanimously saying, however, that the natives should be given a few pounds of tobacco. Needless to remark, his views were disregarded, and the natives received the full amount; the man, however, as he was yet in a weak state of health and professed to have lost all his gold, was given sufficient to pay his passage to Samarai and maintain himself for a month from a fresh “hat” collection. At Samarai he resided for some time cadging, loafing, and pleading poverty, until one day the repose of the inhabitants was disturbed by wails of bitter grief proceeding from the interior of a small building, which was built over a bottomless hole descending through the coral rock, and was used by the islanders as a receptacle for refuse. Inquiry disclosed the fact that, during all the time he was lost and later, the Finn had worn a belt next his skin containing over two hundred ounces of gold, which he had kept carefully concealed. Having cadged a little more gold, he had gone to the small building, as being the most secluded place, to add it to his store when, being suddenly startled, he had inadvertently knocked the belt into the hole, where it lies to this day.

This was an instance of a man losing his gold, and well he deserved it; but I knew of another instance in which a large amount of gold was lost and recovered in a manner so miraculous, that but for the fact that many men are yet living in New Guinea, fully acquainted with all the circumstances, I should hesitate to tell the story.

A party of successful miners was returning to Samarai in a small cutter chartered for the occasion, the gold belonging to the individual men in their separate parcels or “shammys” as they are called—the name is derived from a corruption of chamois, the skin of which animal is fondly supposed by diggers to furnish the only material for bullion bags—being sown up together in a large hoop of canvas, and placed on the hatch in open view of all hands. The weather was fine and clear, no danger being anticipated, when as the vessel entered China Straits she was struck by a sudden squall, and heeling over shot the diggers’ shammys into the scuppers, through one of which they disappeared. So soon as the startled skipper could collect his wits and get his vessel in hand, he took soundings and bearings, and running hastily into Samarai, collected such pearlers as were there working, and offered half the gold to any of them recovering it. Several pearlers at once sailed for the spot, accompanied by the cutter of the bereaved diggers, which dropped her anchor at the scene of the accident and proceeded to watch operations. Diver after diver descended and toiled, diver after diver ascended and reported a soft mud bottom and a hopeless quest; pearler after pearler lifted his anchor and went back to Samarai, until at last the cutter hoisted her anchor also, preparatory to taking the diggers back to the gold-fields. A disconsolate lot of men watched that anchor coming up, but I leave to the imagination the change in their expressions when, clinging in the mud to the fluke of the anchor, they saw their canvas belt of gold.

After the departure of Sylvester I went into partnership with one Karl Wilsen, a Swede; he furnishing towards the assets of the partnership a poor claim and local mining experience, I, a well-filled chest of drugs and some knowledge of medicine. A couple of weeks after our partnership had been arranged, Lobb, the original prospector of the island, appeared at our claim with the news of a new gold find, at which he advised us to peg out a claim. At the same time he told me he was sailing for Samarai in a lugger owned by his partner Ede, in order to buy fresh stores, and asked me for company’s sake to go with him, holding out, as an inducement, that by doing so I could obtain some natives to assist in the heavy manual labour of the claim. Wilsen hastily left for the new find to peg out a joint claim for the pair of us, and I departed with Lobb for Samarai.

Lobb’s vessel, on which I now found myself, was an old P. and O. lifeboat, built up until of about seven tons burthen, lug-rigged on two masts, and carrying a crew of six Teste Island (“Wari”) boys. Lobb, I soon found to be absolutely ignorant of the most elementary knowledge of either seamanship or navigation; the seamanship necessary for our safe journey being furnished by the Wari boys, who had for generations been the makers and sailors of the large Wari sailing canoes trading between the islands. This kind of navigation consisted of sailing from island to island, being entirely dependent on the local knowledge of individual members of the crew to identify each island when sighted.

Shortly after leaving Woodlark we fell into a dead calm which lasted until nightfall—after which Lobb improved the occasion by getting drunk—then came on heavy variable rain squalls, during which the native crew appealed to me as to how they were to steer; being unable to see, they did not know where they were going, and Lobb was not by any means in a state to direct them. Fortunately I had noticed the compass bearing when we had left the passage from Woodlark and headed for Iwa, this being the line laid down by the crew in daylight; upon my asking them whether we should be safe if we followed that, and their replying “we should be,” I pasted a slip of white paper on the compass card and told them to keep it in a line with the jib-boom. When dawn broke, we had Iwa in front of us a few miles ahead, and running slowly up to it, hove-to in deep water, there being no anchorage off its shores.

Iwa is a somewhat remarkable island, and inhabited by a somewhat remarkable people. Rising sheer from the sea with precipitous faces, the only means of access to the summit is by the inhabitants’ ladders, made of vines and poles lashed together. The summit consists of shelving tablelands and terraces, all under a system of intense cultivation; yams, taro, the root of a sort of Arum, sweet potatoes, paw paws, pumpkins, etc., being grown in enormous quantities. The island of Iwa is quite impregnable so far as any attack by an enemy unarmed with cannon is concerned, and the natives have succeeded well as pirates in years gone by. From the top of Iwa, a clear view of many miles of surrounding sea could be had, and the husbandman, toiling in his garden, usually owned a share in a large paddle canoe, one of many hauled up in the crevices and rocks at the foot of the precipices of his island home. Sooner or later he would sight a sailing canoe, belonging to one of the other islands, becalmed or brought by the drift of currents to within sight of Iwa. At once, in response to his yell, a dozen paddle canoes, crowded with men, would take the water, and unless a breeze in the meantime sprang up, the traders usually fell easy victims. Reprisals there could be none, for no war party dispatched by one of the outraged tribes had a hope of scaling the cliffs of Iwa. The people there possessed an unusual skill in wood carving, their paddles, shaped like a water-lily leaf, being frequently marvels of workmanship.

Lobb remained hove-to for a couple of days at Iwa, purchasing copra (dried cocoanut kernel), used for making oilcake for cattle and the better quality of soap, together with the before-mentioned beautiful carved paddles of the people. Sometimes the lugger lay within a couple of hundred yards of the shore, sometimes she drifted out a couple of miles, whereupon half a dozen canoes, manned by a dozen sturdy natives, would drag us back to within the shorter distance. On the second day of our stay I witnessed a particularly callous and brutal murder. A woman swam out and sold a paddle to Lobb, for which she received payment in tobacco. Swimming ashore she met a man, apparently her husband, to whom she handed the tobacco. He, seeming not to be at all pleased with the price, struck the woman, and she fled into the sea, where he pursued and clubbed her, the body of the murdered woman drifting out and past our vessel. Lobb, to my amazement, took absolutely no notice of this little incident, and upon my drawing his attention to it and suggesting we should seize the murderer and take him to Samarai for trial, merely remarked, that I should do better to mind my own business.

Upon leaving the island, four days’ sail put us into Samarai, where, amongst other things in the course of casual conversation, I told Moreton of the murder I had seen at Iwa. Moreton questioned Lobb, who professed to know nothing about it. Lobb then tackled me, asking whether I was desirous of hanging about Samarai for three or four months, at my own expense, waiting for a sitting of the Central Court—the only court in New Guinea for capital offences—and upon my replying, that in that case I should starve as I had little money and there was no opportunity in Samarai of making any, Lobb said, “Exactly; well you had better forget all about that murder at Iwa, or you will be kept here.” I then went again to Moreton, who asked me whether I could swear to the man who did the murder, and I replied that I could not, as he was some hundred yards distant from me at the time and one native looked very like another. Moreton remarked, “I think Lobb’s advice to you is rather good, better follow it.”

Lobb remained about a week in Samarai recruiting a number of “boys” for work in his claim, and among them a couple, Sione and Gisavia, for me. We then sailed again for Woodlark. Upon our arrival back at the gold-field, I heard that the claim pegged out by Wilsen for the pair of us was a very rich one, but that he had taken Bill the Boozer into partnership instead of me. This story I found to be true; Wilsen had been tempted by a solid bribe when he found how good the ground was, and had drawn the pegs in my portion, which were at once replaced by Bill the Boozer, Wilsen declaring that I had gone for good. Wilsen and I then had a fight, in which I succeeded in giving him the father of a licking; this being followed by a law suit which I lost, mainly owing to the magnificent powers of lying displayed by Wilsen and the Boozer. I only met Wilsen twice after this, once, when he was witness in a court in which I was presiding as magistrate, and where he was so glib and fluent that I gave judgment for the opposing side, feeling quite convinced that any people Wilsen was connected with must be in the wrong; and again, when I held an inquest on his corpse, his death having been caused by his getting his life line and air pipe entangled while diving for pearl shell, and being paralysed by the long-sustained pressure. These events, however, were to occur at a later time.

In the meantime I had no claim, and it behoved me to find one; whereupon, accompanied by Sione and Gisavia, I wandered off into the jungle of Woodlark in search of a gold-bearing gully. Creek after creek and gully after gully we sunk holes in and tried, sometimes getting for our pains a few pennyweights of gold, but more often nothing. For food we depended on a small mat of rice of about fifty pounds weight carried by one boy, and as many sweet potatoes, yams or taro we could pick up from wandering natives. The other boy carried a pick and shovel, tin dish, crowbar, axe and knife, and three plain deal boards with a few nails, comprising our simple mining equipment, together with a sheet of calico, used as a “fly” or tent, to keep the rain from us at night. My pack consisted of a spare shirt, trousers and boots, rifle, revolver, ammunition, two billy cans for making tea and boiling rice, compass and matches, and last but not least a small roll case of the excellent tabloid drugs of Messrs. Burroughs and Wellcome.

In our wanderings we struck a valley—now known as Bushai—where at intervals of three hundred yards we put down pot holes without a “colour” to the dish. (A colour is a speck of gold, however minute.) This was an instance of bad luck sometimes dogging a prospector, for, some months later, a man named Mackenzie found the valley, and in the first hole he sunk found rich gold, while the claims pegged out on each side of his holding proved very payable “shows.” I came there again when it was a proved field and, recognizing the valley, asked Mackenzie whether on his first arrival he had noticed any pot holes. “Yes,” he said, “three of them. I don’t know who made them, but they were the only spots in the valley where I could not find a payable prospect.” There was then no ground left for me, so I went away, cursing the fates that had made me select the only barren parts of a rich valley in which to sink my holes.

This incident, however, belongs to a later day, and having “duffered” the valley as I thought, my boys and I prowled on through the forest over the place where the Kulamadau mine now stands, at which point we finished our “tucker” and obtained a few ounces of gold, enough to buy supplies for a few more weeks, when we should get to some place where such could be obtained. Living mainly on roots and a few birds, we fell into a mangrove swamp, where the three of us obtained such a crop of mangrove ulcers that we were hardly able to walk, and were obliged to strike straight for the sea. My boys of course wore no boots, and their swollen legs, painful as they might be, were not so inconvenient to them as mine were to me; for in my case I did not dare to take off my boots, for fear of not being able to get my enlarged feet into them again.

After a day with nothing to eat, we found the sea and an alligator. The alligator I shot, and we were eating him when we saw the sails of a schooner coming round a point close in shore. By dint of firing my revolver, and my boys howling vigorously, we attracted the attention of those on board; and a boat was lowered and sent to us, in which we went off to her, and then I discovered it was German Harry’s craft, the Galatea. German Harry had a cargo of stores for Woodlark, and was accompanied by a European wife—not his own, but some one else’s with whom he had bolted. He received me with sympathy and hospitality, and, telling his cook to boil quantities of hot water for the treatment of my own and my boys’ mangrove ulcers, set to work looking for bandages and soothing unguents, leaving me to be entertained by the other man’s wife.

A fortnight I put in with German Harry, acting for him as a sort of supercargo in tallying the sale of his cargo, listening to his tales of experiences in the islands, picking up the rudiments of navigation and the whole art of diving for pearls and mother of pearl by aid of the apparatus manufactured by either Siebe Gorman or Heinke, the only two firms of submarine engineers considered by the pearl fishers as at all worthy of patronage. Harry had on board the complete plants, from air pumps to dresses, of the rival manufacturers; and after exhaustive trials I came to the same conclusion as he, that both were equally excellent in still waters, and both beastly dangerous in currents or rough seas.

At the end of the two weeks the Galatea sailed for other parts, and I, refusing Harry’s invitation to accompany him again, plunged once more into the forest of Woodlark in search of gold and fortune. On this trip my sole discovery was some aged lime trees and old hard wood piles of European houses, which later inquiry among the natives showed me were the remains of an old French Jesuit Mission long since come and gone; these trees and piles and a few French words current among the natives, such as “couteaux,” being all that was left of their work.

Wandering back from the second and even more disastrous trip than the first (for in addition to an entire lack of gold and a second crop of ulcers, my boys and myself had now added intermittent and severe malaria to our stock-in-trade), I dropped into a gully in which a white miner was working by his lonesome self. Jim Brady was his name, and after feeding us and listening to our tales of adventure, or rather misadventure, he spake thus: “I have a damned poor show here, just about pays tucker, but if you like to chip in with your boys we will do a little better, and when we have fattened up a bit, one can keep the show going while t’other looks for something better.” Eagerly I accepted this offer, my boys and myself being only too thankful to find somewhere to rest out of the rain, with a fair prospect of three square meals a day. Brady and I then worked together for some months with varying fortune; the sole dissension arising between us being due to my stealing a piece of calico, in which he used to boil duff, with which to patch my only remaining pair of trousers.

Then one afternoon, whilst I and the two boys were digging out wash dirt and feeding the “sluice box,” he suddenly squealed, “What in the devil’s name are you sending me now? It’s a porphery leader and giving a weight to the dish,” i.e. a pennyweight of gold, worth about three shillings and fourpence. Brady then came and looked at the place where I was digging, and remarked, “Cover it up with mullock at once, it’s a good thing and we don’t want a crowd here.” I remonstrated, saying that we wanted all the gold we could get; but Brady said, “Yes, and we want all the ground we can get and enough money to clear from this blasted country; that leader wants capital, for which we shall have to arrange.” In obedience to Brady’s instructions I covered up the leader, and had hardly finished doing so, when an excited digger dropped into our claim exclaiming, “Have you heard the news? Mackenzie has struck a new gully with an ounce to the dish.” Brady and I at once bolted for a newly opened store to arrange a credit for tucker, to enable him to proceed to the new find. In the meanwhile, I was to remain and work our present claim to cover expenses. The store-keeper, one Thompson, was obdurate, refusing to give us any credit or even to sell us sufficient supplies for gold, to enable Brady to go to the new rush, he wishing to assist his own friends, or rather those men who could be depended on to spend all their earnings in grog at his store.

Brady and I were sitting most disconsolately outside the store when a cutter, the White Squall, came in loaded with diggers, but no supplies, when I suddenly overheard a remark of Thompson’s: “By God, I must buy or charter that cutter for Samarai for stores.” The cutter brought a mail, and amongst my letters I found a notice from Burns, Philp and Co., that £100 had been placed to my credit at Samarai; whereupon Thompson’s remark recurred to my memory. “Jim,” I said to Brady, “how much gold have we?” “Ten ounces,” he said. “Hand it over,” said I, “I have a ploy.” Brady handed it over, and I sought the owner of the cutter, saying I wanted to buy her. He said he was asking Thompson £100 for her, but Thompson was a ... Jew and only offered £60. I replied, “Well, here are ten ounces on deposit, and an order on Burns, Philp and Co., of Samarai, for the rest, and this letter of theirs will show it is all right.” In five minutes the deal was completed; and the White Squall papers being handed over to me, I returned to Brady. “Jim,” I said, “you need a sea trip and so do I; also we will set up as yacht owners and store-keepers. Let’s go up to Thompson and tell him the good news.” We found him and told him we had bought the White Squall, and intended to sail her to Samarai ourselves. I also pointed out that there was an absolute dearth of supplies at Woodlark, and we expected to make a good thing by store-keeping. Thompson’s language, as Bret Harte has it, was for a time “painful and free”; then he rushed off to the former owners of the cutter, to try and persuade them to cancel the deal as we were “dead broke,” and could not pay for the vessel. Unfortunately, however, for him the vendors chose to consider us as honest men, this apart from having completed the deal, and told Thompson to go to a warmer region. He then came again to me with an ad misericordiam appeal. “Look here, if I don’t get this boat I am a ruined man; how much do you want? I never thought that you two dead beats could buy a vessel, or I would have bid higher.” I gently pointed out that all Brady and I had wanted was fair treatment from him, which we had not got; also that we had no wish to become store-keepers or traders, but as he had forced us into the position, he could either buy us out or count on our opposition in his own business. I then remarked that I would leave the negotiations to Brady.

Brady’s terms were short and sweet: £100 for the vessel, £100 on top of that for ourselves, together with Thompson’s original offer of £60. Thompson squealed loudly, but as we were ready to go to sea, accepted the offer and took over the White Squall. In passing I might now remark that later knowledge showed me the White Squall was not worth £5; she was thoroughly rotten, the only good things about her being her pumps. She had sneaked out of a Queensland port without the cognizance of the authorities; but of these facts at the time I was ignorant; and Brady and I were much surprised to hear later that, after three or four highly profitable trips for Thompson, she had sunk. Her sinking was caused by an irate master leaping suddenly down into the forecastle to deal with a recalcitrant member of the crew, and in his energy sending his legs through her rotten planking.

After the completion of the White Squall deal, Brady went off to the new rush, where he pegged out a good claim, I remaining to shepherd our old one. A few days after his departure I received a note from him saying I had better abandon the claim I was holding, as our lode was safely buried, and come to the new rush. On my way thither I dropped into a gully and began prospecting it, just as another white man, accompanied as I was by two boys, started the same game. We both struck highly payable gold at about the same time, and each claimed the gully by right of discovery. For two or three minutes we—each with drawn revolvers, and each backed by our boys armed respectively with a rifle and fowling piece—argued the question; and in the end, as an alternative to murdering one another, decided to go into partnership and work it jointly, each to divide our share with our former mates.

My new partner was named John Graham; he had previously been an assistant Resident Magistrate in the service of the British New Guinea Government, and later the owner of some pearl-fishing vessels. We worked together very amicably for some months, when, receiving a good offer for our claim, we sold out and separated, he to buy the wreck of a vessel with the intention of refitting it and resuming trading. After about a week’s work again with Brady, some severe attacks of malaria gave me a distinct hint to go to sea for a short time, and at my suggestion we dissolved partnership, Brady remaining in the claim, and I, with my two boys, going to Suloga Bay with the intention of there finding a vessel bound for Samarai.