I made a portion of my return voyage to New Zealand in the Myrtle; and her first place of call was at Yule Island, where she stopped to load a cargo of sandalwood. Large quantities of this timber were at that time exported to China by a man named Hunter, who was then commonly known as “The Sandalwood King”; he was making thousands of pounds a year, counted his employees by hundreds, owned several small vessels and many mule and horse teams. The miles of roads he made through the forest—in order to bring out his timber—would have been regarded as a credit to any ordinary civil engineer; as a matter of fact, they were then the only roads worth calling such in New Guinea.

Hunter had as a rival in his timber business—if a man could be called a rival who got in a year about as much sandalwood as Hunter got in a day—a Frenchman known as “Brother John,” a jovial fat person looking like the typical old friar. Brother John had been a lay brother attached to the Sacred Heart Mission at Mekeo, and he had, I regret to say, been smiled upon by the Papuan girl who did his washing, and, sadder still, he returned the smile. Time went on, until one day the girl’s parents appeared at the Mission, hauling along their erring daughter; they presented her to a scandalized monastery, drew particular attention to her figure, and asked what the Mission was going to do about it. Brother John was immediately expelled from the lay brotherhood of the order and commanded to marry the girl, which he did at once. Over this little incident some little time afterwards he scored rather badly off the Governor or Chief Justice, one of whom met him and, shaking his head, said reprovingly, “I am sorry to hear of your fall, Brother John.” “Fall, Monseigneur,” said Brother John, “fall! Why, before I was only ze bruzzer, now I am ze fazzer!”

From Yule Island the Myrtle sailed with every available foot of space crammed full of the pleasant-smelling wood, as it seemed to me at first; even her deck had a great pile stacked on it. For a day or so one continued to like the scent, then it got into one’s hair, into the ship’s water, into one’s clothes and food, in fact into everywhere and in everything; until one fairly loathed it, and rushed to poke one’s head to windward for a few minutes’ sniff of the clean salt sea. A guano vessel stinks, a ship loaded with copra smells of rancid oil, but a boat laden with sandalwood cloys and sickens the senses more than either. I was told that the greater part of the sandalwood imported into China is used in the manufacture of joss sticks and incense, and for making sandalwood oil; whether this is true or not I do not know.

At Thursday Island I bade farewell to the schooner Myrtle; for she, having transhipped her cargo to a China steamer, returned to New Guinea, and I took up my quarters in one of the hotels, to wait with what patience I possessed for a south-bound steamer. Thursday Island is—or rather was—the centre of the pearling industry, and is one of the most God-forsaken holes I know of; there is absolutely nothing to do in the place to kill time. With the exception of a few soldiers, Government officials, professional and business men, and pearl vessel owners, the population consists of a miscellaneous collection of Japanese, Chinese, Malays, Kanakas, Queensland aborigines, and general crossbreds and mongrels from the Lord knows where.

There has been for some years past considerable discussion in the Australian Parliament and the Press as to whether Northern Australia can, or ever will, be fully occupied by Australian or European people. One has only to give a glance at the white women, or purely white children, dwelling in Thursday Island, Cairns, or northward from there, to see the question answered; women and children alike—pale, listless, and anÆmic—show plainly the need for constant change to a cool and bracing climate. It is sheer inhumanity to expect a child-bearing woman in the tropics to perform any but the lightest of domestic duties, and if these duties cannot be done by the women, then they must be performed by native domestic servants. Australia, however, does not possess an indigenous native population sufficient for the supply of this want—or suitable, if sufficient—and as the Government has closed its doors to the admission of Papuans or Melanesians—both highly suitable races for the purpose—it naturally follows that a fitting class of white men will never settle or take their families there. No country has, as yet, been populated by men married to women of native races or half-breeds. I have frequently heard the argument used in Australia, that the white man is as good a worker as the native anywhere, and under any conditions. I do not agree with this; but even accepting it as true, the fact remains that, in the tropics, the white woman is not capable of hard work and should not be asked to do it. Shortly, therefore, my contention is this: if Northern Australia is to be populated by a white race, the men must take their white wives with them; and they can only do that if allowed to make especially favourable conditions for them by the aid of native servants. No law—not even one made by an Australian Labour Government—can alter the natural laws governing the distribution of the climates of the earth, or the disabilities of sex.

The Australasian Parliament suffers from a chronic state of nervous dread of the East; and it is likely to continue to do so, as long as it pursues the dog-in-the-manger policy of keeping a vast country unoccupied. The best thing Australia can do with the Northern Territory is to combine its administration with that of New Guinea, under the Crown Colony system of Government, and permit the introduction of native labour from New Guinea—at any rate for domestic service or work on the plantations.

Upon the arrival of the China steamer Changsha, I gladly shook the dust of Thursday Island from my boots, sailing in her for the South.

When I reached New Zealand I employed my spare time for some months in studying navigation and surgery, whilst I built up my health in preparation for a fresh venture to New Guinea. Here I met again my old friend, Richard Burton. Burton was some years older than myself and, up to that time, had lived a mixed sort of life: educated at Eton, he had then harried his parents into sending him to sea, and had made one voyage to Australia and back in a sailing ship; disgusted with that, he had passed into Sandhurst; not finding that to his liking, he was removed by his parents and sent to the College of Agriculture at Cheltenham, after which he had come to New Zealand and started sheep farming. A crack shot, a fine boxer and fencer, afraid of nothing that either walked, flew or swam, and crammed with a vast lore of out-of-the-way knowledge, I was more than pleased when he volunteered to accompany me back to New Guinea. Burton gave me news of Sylvester who had gone with me on my first trip, and of whom I had heard nothing since he left me at Woodlark Island. After leaving there he had suffered severely from protracted bouts of malaria, and had gone home to England, where, whilst paying a visit to Longner Hall, Burton’s home in Shropshire, he had become engaged to marry the latter’s sister, and meditated, after the marriage, returning to New Zealand to take up sheep farming.

The scheme Burton and I agreed upon was to go to Sydney and there purchase a small sailing vessel, ship as a crew a few Kanakas—if we could get them—load the vessel with mining gear, and go and work the reef, or rather porphery leader, which had been buried by Brady and myself in Woodlark Island. If that project failed—well, we should have a vessel under us, and British, Dutch or German New Guinea, the Solomon, Aru or Admiralty Islands, or, for that matter, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, to seek our fortunes in; neither of us cared very much what we did or whither we went, provided there was something worth having at the end. We expected to find Brady somewhere in the islands and take him on with us.

When we were on the eve of leaving New Zealand for Sydney, a man we both knew, named Alfred Cox, asked to be allowed to join us; he had been a middy in the Royal Navy, but had been obliged to leave owing to a steadily increasing deafness, and since then had been farming in New Zealand. We were not at all keen on having him, as he was not a strong man, and he somehow or other contrived to smash one of his bones or otherwise damage himself at unpleasantly frequent intervals. He, however, begged hard, and at last we consented to his throwing in his lot with us.

Arriving in Sydney from New Zealand we inserted the following advertisement in the morning papers—not knowing the deluge it would bring down upon us: “Wanted to buy a schooner, cutter or ketch, between fifteen and thirty tons burden. Apply ‘B.M.,’ MÊtropole Hotel.” On the afternoon of the day of publication of the papers, Burton and I were returning from a shopping expedition, during which we had been purchasing arms, ammunition, charts, instruments, chemicals, tools, etc., when we found the hall porter at the hotel endeavouring to stall off a mixed crowd of people all clamouring to see “B.M.” Hastily we interfered; and, taking them one by one, we arranged interviews with them at our gunsmith’s shop. Broken-down tugs, worn-out coastal steamers, fishing boats, timber scows, vessels building, vessels to be built, all sorts and conditions were offered to us at exorbitant prices; some of the owners and agents we sent off at once, the vessels of others we put on a list for private inspection, and in nine cases out of ten found the description widely different from the reality.

Cox got bored with it all, for he thought we should never get a vessel at the rate we were going on; and he suggested that he should go off and call upon Captain Anson of H.M.S. Orlando, a friend of his, and borrow a carpenter or bo’sun’s mate to assist us in our choice. To this course of action we agreed and, having carried it out, Cox returned to tell us that Captain Anson’s opinion was, that a man-of-war’s man would be of no use to us, but that a man who owned a sail-making and ship-rigging business would be the very man for our purpose. The same man was once employed to bring a yacht from England to Australia; by some misadventure or other he and his crew had run short of provisions, and had then eaten the cabin boy. How the master and crew escaped at their trial I don’t know, probably upon some plea of self-preservation, but the fact was established that the cannibalism had taken place. Many years after we had met him, he fell the first victim in Australia to bubonic plague. Upon our presenting Captain Anson’s card, he at once said he only knew of three vessels likely to suit us, and all were yachts; we found one was too large and expensive, another was too small, whilst the third was a racing cutter of sixteen tons, named the Guinevere, built in England of oak, copper fastened, and yawl rigged for cruising purposes. This vessel was now outclassed for racing, and had fallen into the hands of a money-lender named London, by whom she was used for card parties and pleasant little trips in the harbour. We were assured that the Guinevere was as sound and staunch as on the day she was built, and we accordingly bought her.

We hauled the Guinevere up on to a slip for a general overhaul and refitting, and I took the opportunity of having her fitted with a powerful rotary pump, in addition to her own, my New Guinea experience having taught me the advantage of plenty of pumps. To this pump we owed our lives a great deal sooner than I expected. We left the slip, with every foot of our little vessel chock full of stores, tools, etc., and ran down to Watson’s Bay at the mouth of Sydney harbour. There we joined a small fleet of sailing vessels all waiting for the lowering of a storm signal, then flying at the flagstaff. Among these vessels was a yawl named the Spray, owned and manned by a “Captain” Slocum—a Yankee—by whom she had been entirely built in America, and who was now engaged in the endeavour to sail her single-handed round the world. We had foregathered with Slocum, who told us he had just been visited by the master of the London Missionary Society’s steamer, the John Williams, who, after having inspected his navigating instruments, amongst which was his chronometer, consisting of what he called a “one dollar watch,” had remarked that he appeared to put a lot of trust in Providence. He then invited Slocum to lunch on board the John Williams, when with pride he exhibited that ship’s numerous and splendid instruments and expensive chronometers; Slocum gazed in admiration, and then drawled, “Waal, Captain, I calculate you sky pilots don’t put much faith in Providence!”

We had failed to find any Kanakas for a crew in Sydney, and we dared not attempt to ship white men, as the authorities asked many embarrassing questions as to certificates, objects of voyage, etc.; fortunately the liberty of a yacht still clung to the Guinevere, and they did not apparently bother very much about the three owners. While we were lying in Watson’s Bay, Burton received a cable telling him that his elder brother had broken his neck in the hunting field, and asking him to return home at once. He decided, however, not to leave me in the lurch, but to come on as far as Cooktown in North Queensland, where I could ship a black crew. We were still anchored there, when we were boarded by an official from a launch belonging to the Marine Board, by whom we were harried exceedingly, but whom we placated to a certain extent by means of mixed drinks; he, however, refused to allow us to quit our anchorage without life-buoys, which we did not possess. Our money by this time was getting extremely short, so, accordingly, Burton and I interviewed our shipwright, who sold us some dummies good enough to pass the Marine Inspector. Then, storm signals or no storm signals, for fear of further interference, we decided to go to sea, where Marine Boards and shipping authorities worried not and we could go our way in peace. Apparently some of the other sailing vessels, ships of large tonnage, had become sick of waiting for the promised storm that never came, for about half a dozen of us left the harbour in rotation.

Off Newcastle that night, however, a true “Southerly Buster” hit us and, not knowing the harbour or the coast, we stood out to sea close-hauled. We had the devil of a time: first we lost our dingey, then when, as I calculated, we were about sixty miles off the coast, our jib and staysail went in rapid succession; I was steering, lashed by my legs to cleats to prevent being washed overboard, and every time the cabin scuttle was opened a huge sea went below. It was impossible for either Burton or Cox to venture on deck, for, before they could possibly secure themselves, they were bound inevitably to go overboard, the Guinevere—like all racing vessels—having only a few inches of rail and no bulwarks; in any case, they could do no good on deck. Upon the staysail going, Burton managed, at the imminent risk of his life, to crawl on deck for a few seconds to slack the main sheet, and so let me get the vessel before the wind; hardly had he done so than a huge sea swept right over us, and fortunately, instead of taking him overboard, washed him down the scuttle. Half an hour later he poked up his head and yelled, “The cabin is half full of water which is rising fast; if we don’t pump we shall sink.” Luckily the handle of the new pump was within reach of the scuttle, and Burton, wedging himself firmly in the opening, seized the brake, and for some hours just kept pace with the inflowing water; then the pump choked, and the water steadily rose in the cabin. We did not bother very much about this, for the mainsail was tearing from its ropes, and we knew that when that went, it was only a matter of a few minutes before we broached-to and were smashed into fragments by the seas.

At last with a tearing bang the mainsail went, and I thought we were gone too; it was too dark to see, one could only hear. The vessel gave a horrid deadly sort of sideways lurch, and then instinctively I met it with the helm and found, to my amazement, that she still kept steerage way, and was running on as though under sail; and so she ran for an hour, when dawn broke, and I saw that our blown-out mainsail was jambed across her mast and rigging, and was acting as a square-sail. Cox then steered, while Burton and I securely lashed the sail in the position it then was; that done, we turned our attention to the pumps, for the Guinevere was half full of water. The first pump, her original one, we abandoned as hopeless after the first half-hour; the other, the rotary one, we carefully took to pieces, as the whole water-raising part of the mechanism of the pump was on deck. We found in it some small chips of wood jambing the valves—chips left below decks by the carpenters working at her on the slip; cleaning these we soon had the pump working, and two hours’ toil gave us a dry ship again. Then, in spite of an enormous sea and a howling gale still blowing, we felt fairly hopeful, and settled down to a three days’ fight, to bring our vessel again to a port to refit. At last we made Port Macquarie, telling a steamer that approached and wanted to tow us, to go to the devil, for we had awful visions before our eyes of claims for salvage.

At Port Macquarie we signalled for a tug, and were soon safely at anchor in the river; we here heard that a number of vessels had been wrecked at Newcastle during the gale, and found that we also had been reported as lost. The pilot and his boat’s crew very kindly gave us a lot of help in refitting our rigging and sails, for which service they would take no payment. Here Cox—after getting into a row with the police for shooting at a flock of pelicans with a rifle, these birds being strictly protected—decided to return to New Zealand; we soothed the police by explaining that anything Cox shot at was perfectly safe, the only thing likely to be hurt was something at which he was not shooting. Having completed our refitting, and Cox having departed in a sailing vessel for Sydney, Burton and I again went to sea.

For a day or two we worked the Guinevere north in bad weather, and then, as Burton and myself were utterly worn out from want of sleep, we decided to run in and anchor near the Solitary Isles; this we accordingly did, but unfortunately amongst a lot of rocks and shoals and in a very exposed position. The sailing directions described these waters as highly dangerous. About an hour before daylight the sea and wind got up, with the result that our anchor parted, whereupon we let go another, our only remaining one, and prayed that it would hold until dawn. Daylight and our remaining anchor broke together, and we did a sort of steeplechase out to sea amongst cruel-looking rocks; how we got the Guinevere through safely I don’t know, for it was a job I should not like to tackle again with a full crew and steam under me; certainly no vessel less nimble than a racing yacht could have managed it. We were now, however, without an anchor, and therefore it was necessary for us to make a port in order to get one. We did not like ports either, for fear of being prevented from going to sea again. An anchor, however, we must have, and accordingly we stood away for the Clarence River.

We fell in on the way with the Spray and Captain Slocum, who hung on to us one night while he slept. The Spray was nearly as broad as she was long, immensely strong and almost unsinkable. Slocum’s usual method of navigation was to sail his boat all day, run off shore, heave-to, and sleep all night while his vessel bobbed about like a cork. A very strong southerly current on this coast had prevented him from doing this, as his ship lost nearly as much in the night as he had gained in the day. He had left Sydney some time after us and missed the storm, but he had not been delayed by calling at ports on the way. In the morning we parted from the Spray and Slocum, he to continue his voyage round the world—which, in passing, I may mention he successfully accomplished—and we to make the Clarence River. Heaving-to off that river we signalled for an anchor, but the signalman chose to believe we had made a mistake and sent a tug out instead; so accordingly we went into port, where we decided to remain for a day or two.

Here we received a telegram from William Whitten, telling us a cutter he was taking to New Guinea had been wrecked on the coast, and asking us to wait for his arrival in a coastal steamer, after which he would come on with us. We therefore waited, being only too glad to have additional hands. Whitten had seen the report of our arrival at the Clarence River in a telegram in the daily papers; we did not at all approve of the interest our movements now seemed to be exciting, and decided that, once we were clear of this port, we should touch nowhere again until we made Cooktown. Whitten appeared, accompanied by a seaman named Otto, whose surname I never knew; we then unostentatiously slipped out to sea again, making rapid progress north, with Whitten and his man taking one watch and Burton and I the other.

We made Cooktown without any further misadventure, but for one little incident, breaking the monotony of the trip; that was a narrow escape we had of being piled up by Whitten on the coast one dark night, in consequence of his crediting the Guinevere with only doing eight knots an hour instead of nearly twelve. I happened to go on deck before dawn, and found Otto trying to persuade Whitten that a dark mass right ahead of us was land, while the latter maintained that it was impossible and must be a cloud. I thought it was land, too, and insisted upon standing out to sea again until dawn; when daylight came there, sure enough, was a high cape not more than a couple of miles off. Whitten had already piled up four vessels in the course of his career, through a mixture of recklessness and cocksureness, he never believing in danger until too late.

At Cooktown we found the whole community preparing for wild junketings in celebration of the Queen’s Jubilee, and the Warden invited Burton and myself to participate; the festivities were to culminate in a banquet at night. Cooktown is like all isolated hot towns in one respect, and that is, the inhabitants take very little interest in anything outside their own little parochial affairs, and, as most of them possess “livers,” they accordingly quarrel furiously: even when a man is of a peaceful nature, his wife is not, and the rows of the woman involve the man. One had hardly been introduced to a man for half an hour before he was explaining what awful people so-and-so, and so-and-so were—his pet bÊtes noirs; and, later on, one had a repetition of the same thing from so-and-so. The Warden told me, though, that at the great banquet all personal differences were to be buried for good: Subcollector of Customs, Inspector of Police, bankers, merchants, parsons, doctors, lawyers, post and telegraph officials, schoolmasters and ship captains, in fact, all the rank and fashion of Cooktown were to foregather and coo like doves.

The Warden was a very fine old fellow; he had at one time been British Consul in Persia, and he was also the first man to hoist the British flag in New Guinea prior to the Proclamation of the Protectorate; he was now over sixty, but his back was as straight and his step as firm as a man of half his years; he was also full of quaint stories of the experiences of his youth in Persia and Arabia; he possessed, however, a peppery temper and had a long-standing quarrel with one of the local celebrities. The hour of the banquet arrived and the guests assembled; speeches were made, and toasts were drunk—many toasts and many speeches—and as the champagne mounted to excited brains a few quarrels began, but were always promptly suppressed by the Warden in his capacity of President, and each time we sang “God save the Queen.” Burton leant over to me and whispered, “There is going to be a damned fine fight before this chivoo is over, there is too much bad blood among them for a tea-party,” and I acquiesced. After the feasting was over and we had dispersed about the room, something seemed to occur which caused all the old feeling in the room to burst out; the parsons fled through the door, the Warden seized his ancient foe by the neck and, throwing him on the floor, sat across his chest and bumped the man’s head up and down, whilst every other man sought out his own particular enemy and thumped him. Burton and I got quietly to one side and looked on; the police arrived and peeped in, but, upon seeing their Chief and the Police Magistrate involved in the turmoil, discreetly withdrew. At last peace was restored, and the guests at Cooktown’s historical banquet departed to their several homes, while Burton and I went off to the Guinevere, wondering what stories the Élite of Cooktown would manage to invent by way of explanation to their wives. A sorry looking lot of men we met next day, and they all showed a marked disposition to avoid the subject of Jubilee banquets.

Within the course of a day or two Burton left in a steamer bound for Sydney en route for England, and upon his departure I sailed for Samarai, still accompanied by Whitten and Otto. No sooner had we left behind us Cook’s Passage in the Great Barrier Reef than we fell into a howling south-easter, a wind almost dead in our teeth; Whitten, after one night’s experience of it and the Guinevere’s behaviour in a big head sea, refused to go on, and consequently I had to put back to Cooktown to land him and Otto. The Guinevere had, to a man not acquainted with her peculiarities, an alarming habit of going through, instead of over, a head sea; as a matter of fact, she was just as safe with her decks a foot under water as she was with the sea like a duck pond; but Whitten would not believe it.

At Cooktown I shipped three Queensland natives as crew and sailed again; when well out to sea, however, I discovered that only one was a sailor and therefore able to steer, the other two had been stockmen on a cattle run. I accordingly abandoned my intention of making Samarai direct, and, instead, made for Port Moresby, where I hoped to pick up a crew of New Guinea boys, and beat down the coast to Samarai. After a few days we sighted Port Moresby just as the sun was setting, and I obtained capital cross bearings on an island to the east of the entrance of the harbour and upon Fisherman Island; the night was dark, but I accepted the chart as accurate, and, being confident of the correctness of my compass bearings, I decided to risk running through the passage in the outlying reef by compass. Suddenly crash we went upon the reef; we launched the dingey, a new one purchased in Cooktown, and I told the boys to place a kedge anchor in her and drop it away in deep water, in order that we might kedge the cutter off; they promptly dropped it into the dingey and stove in her planks, rendering her useless. The wind then began to get up, bumping us further and further over the reef, until, to my surprise, I found that the vessel was bumping less and rising upon an even keel again. After two or three hours of this, we suddenly slipped off into deep water upon the Port Moresby side; and again making sail, stood into the harbour, though the Guinevere was leaking badly from the bumping she had received.

When I got into Port Moresby, I found that the tide, which had enabled me to get clean over the reef, was the highest ever registered there, the decking of the wharf having been on a level with the water. Here I found Inman with a new schooner of Messrs. Burns, Philp and Co., and to him I took my chart and cross bearings and asked how on earth, in the position in which they had placed me, I had managed to get upon the reef. Inman’s explanation was very brief: namely, that the eastern island, upon which I had taken one of my cross bearings, was half a mile out of position on the Admiralty chart.

I also came across Farquhar, who told me he was acting as an accountant in the Treasury, but that he had been offered a good position with Burns, Philp and Co., at Samarai, and was only waiting for an opportunity of getting there. Accordingly I offered him a passage in the Guinevere, with all its excitements thrown in. He told me Ross-Johnston wanted to go to Samarai too, as Sir William MacGregor had come to the conclusion that an extensive knowledge of modern languages by a private secretary was not sufficient to outweigh the fact of his being ignorant of all the practical duties of his office. Farquhar therefore went off in search of Ross-Johnston to tell him that they could both sail with me.

The morning following my arrival in Port Moresby, I was standing on the wharf watching a carpenter doing some work on the deck of the Guinevere, when I heard a Scotch voice behind me. “What do you call that pipe, Mr. Monckton?” I turned round, and saw Sir William MacGregor standing there and pointing to the stove pipe issuing from the deck of the Guinevere. “That, sir,” I said, “that is a stove pipe.” “Stove pipe, do you call it? It looks more like a cigar holder!” I felt rather hurt at this reflection upon the Guinevere, and replied, “Well, sir, stove pipe or cigar holder, it answers the purpose for which it was placed there, and that’s all I want.” “Very true, man,” said Sir William; “if men and things do their duties, it is all that is required of them. Come to Government House this afternoon, I have work for you.”

I went to Government House, where Sir William told me that Moreton was very seedy and wanted leave of absence, but that he had not been able to let him go until the Government had found some one to take his place, and that he intended to send me to relieve him. I told Sir William that I had grave doubts about being able to perform the duties satisfactorily, whereupon he told me that he had the same doubts himself, but that I seemed to be the best that offered. “Get awa’, man, get awa’; the sooner ye are in Samarai, the better pleased I’ll be with ye.” Consequently I left Port Moresby on the following morning, accompanied by Ross-Johnston and Farquhar. Some years afterwards I read, in the Illustrated London News, an account written by Ross-Johnston of the voyage of the Guinevere from Port Moresby to Samarai; it was eventful in its way, but I have not space for it here. In 1897, I took up my new duties at Samarai, which were the beginning of my official life in New Guinea.