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; 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 TAMATA STATION |