Sir Francis Winter made me Assistant to Russell in the Survey Office, whilst awaiting the Governor’s return: I spent my time drawing maps and copying plans, and I also began a feud with the Government Store that lasted during the whole period of my service in New Guinea. Russell wanted about half a dozen tin-tacks for something or other, so I sent an orderly down to the Government Store with a note, asking Chester to give them to him; the boy came back saying that he could not get them. I went myself to the Store, and found Chester suffering from a bad attack of liver. “What’s the matter, Chester, why won’t you give me the tacks?” “Go to blazes,” said Chester, “and send me a proper requisition.” “Surely you are not going to put me to all that trouble for the sixteenth part of a penny?” I asked. “I am,” he said. I went back to the office and drew out a requisition for half a dozen tin-tacks, value one-sixteenth of a penny, and took it back again. “No good,” said Chester, “requisition for supplies for the Survey Department must be countersigned by the Government Secretary.” I said nothing, but wasted an hour in getting hold of the Government Secretary, who was engaged when I wanted him. “What tomfoolery is this, Mr. Monckton?” said Muzzy, as he glared at my requisition. “What do you mean by wasting my time like this?” “Chester has a liver and is full of red tape this morning; he won’t give me the tacks without a formal requisition,” I replied. Muzzy dashed his signature at the foot, and off I went again and handed the requisition to Chester without a word, though inwardly I was seething. “No good,” said Chester, “this requisition should have been signed by the head of the department requisitioning, not by you; Russell must sign it.” I took it back without a word, and went to Russell. “You are a damned fine assistant,” remarked that impatient individual; “do you want the whole day to get me half a dozen tin-tacks?” In lurid language I explained to him what had taken place, and Ballantine, hearing the fuss, came in and laughed at me. Russell signed the requisition, which I took, and went off again. Ballantine, who was chuckling to himself at some obscure joke, then said he would walk down to the Government Store with me to see the end of it.

Arrived there, I chucked the requisition at Chester with, “Now you attend to that at once, you blighter.” Chester took it, and Ballantine led him on one side and whispered to him. “I can’t accept this requisition,” said Chester. “Why?” I asked, hardly trusting myself to speak. “Because there is a Treasury Regulation that once the Government Secretary’s signature has been attached to a requisition, no addition or alteration shall be made without his previous approval. Russell’s signature is an addition.” Ballantine rolled over screaming with laughter. Again I took the requisition to Muzzy, and in a cold hard voice explained the position to him. He looked at my face, said not a word, and confirmed the alteration. Back I went to the Government Store, and again handed Chester the requisition, Ballantine still being there. “I can’t fulfil this,” said Chester. Boiling with indignation, I blurted out, “Why, you blank blank scrim-shanker? If you fool me any more, I’m going to the Administrator.” “Oh, go to him,” said Chester, “but if you use that language here, I’ll send for the police.” Off I bolted to Sir Francis; he listened to my heated complaint with his usual quiet smile, looked at the requisition and smiled again, then wrote across the form, “Government Storekeeper, fulfil this requisition at once. F.P.W., Administrator.” Back again I went to Chester. “Now, my beauty, you trot out my tin-tacks, unless you want to face an inquiry for disobeying orders.” Chester took the form and wrote across it, “Tin-tacks not in stock of Government Store.” Fortunately I was struck speechless, and before I recovered, Ballantine seized me by the arm and said, “Come along to lunch with me, Monckton; His Honour is coming, and I’m certain he will be pleased to hear the end of this.” As we went off to lunch, we met Russell also going to his. “Perhaps, Monckton,” said Russell, “when you have finished gallivanting about and amusing yourself, you won’t mind returning to your duties.” “Blank! Blank! Blank!” “Hush! Hush! Monckton,” said Ballantine; “Russell for the time being is your superior officer.”

In due course Sir George Le Hunte returned; and I was promptly appointed to the new North-Eastern Division, being, however, given three months’ leave of absence before I took up my new duties. Naturally, I decided to spend my three months away from New Guinea; I therefore arranged with Ballantine that he should send me out in his Custom’s boat to a steamer, that was to call off the Port with a mail, in the course of a few days.

Captain Fielden, who had been on Lord Hampden’s staff in Australia, and had been persuaded by Murray to come back with Sir George for a holiday, took it into his head to come and see me off. The day and the ship arrived: I started off in the Custom’s boat, in the face of a strong south-easter; the boat shipped a lot of water, and Fielden complained about it. “Bail out the water,” I said to the coxswain, who was a smooth-water sailor. That worthy promptly pulled the plug out of the bottom of the boat, in order to let the water run out. I did not notice what he was doing, until the boat was half full, and then the plug was lost. Accordingly, we completed our journey with a man sitting in the bottom holding his thumb in the hole, Fielden protesting all the time that we ought to turn back. I knew better, however; for I felt convinced that if I missed that steamer and returned, something would turn up to find a new job for me, and therefore cost me my leave. I have not seen Fielden again from that day to this; but when I returned from leave, Ballantine told me he had growled that I had done my best to drown him and a boat’s crew.

The day before I left Port Moresby, a full parade of the constabulary was ordered by the Governor, for the presentation of medals to Sergeant Sefa and Corporal Kimai, these two men having been recommended by Sir William MacGregor to the Home Authorities as deserving of it. Sir George Le Hunte presented the medals: then, to the amazement of the assembled officers, he also presented one to the officer at that time in command; the medal having a bar with “Tugere” stamped upon it, Sir William MacGregor’s fight with the Dutch natives in the west. Sir George (who of course had not been present at the fight) had himself recommended the Commandant for it. The medals had originally been authorized by the Home Authorities, and were only to be granted for “good conduct” on the part of a private, or some act of conspicuous gallantry on the part of an officer; and it was the sole reward that any officer or private could expect to receive, and was intended by Sir William MacGregor to be a very high one. Sir George Le Hunte, by his hasty though kindly-meant action in granting it unearned, brought it into contempt: no officer afterwards ever recommended a man for the medal; and upon this officer’s wearing it in South Africa, the War Office compelled the Colonial Office to order its recall as unauthorized. In this way was lost the only decoration to which the New Guinea Constabulary could aspire.

On my return to Port Moresby, I busied myself with preparations for the new Division; Sir George, with his usual kindness, putting me up at Government House. He told me that during my absence the Merrie England had visited Cape Nelson, and that he had selected a site for the new Station. “You will have your work cut out for you at first,” he remarked; “the people are as wild as hawks, and carry spears twelve feet long.” Another time he said, “I have made up my mind that before I leave this country, the north-east coast shall be as orderly and safe as any other portion of the Possession. I trust you to make it so.”

I went to Barton, who was now Commandant, about my police. I had asked for, and been allotted, ten men; but after looking through them and finding that they were mainly recruits—and poor ones at that—I pointed out that I had a tall order on hand and wanted the best of trained men. “His Excellency thinks that it is better for you to recruit your own men on the north-east coast,” said Barton; “anyhow, these are the best I can do for you.” “It is insanity for Monckton to recruit his own men on the north-east coast,” said Judge Winter when he heard of the plan; “it will be the Tamata business over again.” Barton then said that, as he could not spare the best of the police, he would give me fifteen men instead of ten, mainly recruits, but including Keke, Poruta, and one other of my old Mekeo men. I got my men detailed, and set Keke and Sara (the corporal) to work, to lick them into shape as quickly as possible. I then found, that recently the constabulary had been increased in strength; but, as for a considerable time no new rifles had been bought, they were very badly armed with old and worn-out Sniders. Barton said an experimental lot of Martinis had been ordered from England, but would not arrive for some time. I examined each man’s rifle separately, and groaned over them all. “I may have fifteen privates,” I then said to Barton, “but after they have been in action for ten minutes, I guarantee I won’t have more than half of them able to fire their rifles.” Eventually Barton gave me an order to the Headquarters’ Officer for a dozen condemned rifles, from which I could take parts as I wanted them, with which to mend my rubbish. The ammunition supplied to me was apparently sufficient in quantity, and I thought of even quality. Government Store had, however, run out of rifle oil; but I managed to cadge a little cylinder oil from the engineers of the Merrie England; we afterwards made oil from pig’s fat, and stinking stuff it was; but it answered the purpose in the tropics.

At last I was ready; and on the 1st June, 1900, the Merrie England pushed her way through a mass of canoes, full of howling men, women, and children, wailing for their relations in the constabulary, whom they thought they were never to see again. Arriving at Cape Nelson, my three months’ stores, men, etc., were landed; a flagstaff was then erected, the Station ensign hoisted, the men of the detachment presented arms to the Governor, and, dipping her flag, away sailed the Merrie England, leaving us in the midst of a howling mob of excited natives.

A hut had been constructed by the natives out of sago palms, for which the Governor had left payment on his last visit, and in it the police and I now took up our quarters. It was situated in a grass patch of about an acre, on a bluff overlooking the harbour: bush extended from the grass patch along the top of a shelving plateau of about thirty acres in extent. After the Merrie England had departed, I turned my attention to the defence of our post: we had three months’ stores, but a safe water supply was essential, and the Governor in selecting the site had quite overlooked this. At last we discovered a spring some few hundred yards away in the bush; so I accordingly had a four-hundred-gallon tank containing rice emptied, and then re-filled with water from the spring, in order that, should we be forced to fight, we should not be entirely without this necessary. Our first night at Cape Nelson was a very uncomfortable one: natives howled, blew horns and beat drums in the bush all round us the whole night long; whilst a large fleet of canoes assembled and hovered under the bluff on the seaward side, until we shifted them by dropping a few rifle shots into the water near them, and also shooting over them one of half a dozen rockets I had begged from the Commander of the Merrie England.

The following morning I decided to build a stockade round our hut, inside which no native was to be permitted to enter. Upon some hundreds of men appearing, we arranged with them—through Poruta, who spoke a language which a few of them understood—to bring us posts and timber for the stockade, telling them we wished to erect a fence to keep pigs in. We paid them for each piece of timber brought, in beads, or broken glass bottles, which they used for shaving: some men we kept and paid for digging a series of holes all round the camp. When all the timber was in, we got the natives to plant the posts of the stockade; and before they quite realized what was occurring, they had built for us a solid wall of about four feet high, which an hour’s toil on the part of the constabulary converted into a twelve-foot stockade. Then and only then, the police and I breathed freely and felt fairly secure: we now had a little fort, three months’ provisions, enough water to last a month, and we felt fairly confident that we could hold our new home against anything that might come against us.

The next day I thanked my stars for that stockade. The constabulary had purchased from the natives a supply of betel-nut and prepared lime, which they chewed; then, to my horror, I suddenly discovered that, with the exception of three men, the whole squad was stupid and drugged from the effects of some narcotic contained in the lime. The three men had been on guard, and had not used either the betel-nut or the lime. I thrashed the slumberers, but without effect; then I administered huge doses of castor oil and calomel, which in a few hours got in its work and restored them to their senses. A very frightened lot of men they were when they recovered, and discovered the helpless position they had placed us in.

Corporal Sara now came to me with a fresh alarm. “How many cartridges have we got, sir?” he asked. “About three thousand rounds,” I replied. “Have you looked at the boxes?” he queried next. “No,” was my answer, “they are ordinary service cartridges, I suppose.” “They are nothing of the sort,” said Sara; “with the exception of the rounds in the men’s pouches and one box of 320, they are all cartridges condemned by Captain Butterworth years ago. They burst the rifles when you attempt to fire them.” I examined the boxes, and found they were filled with a patent cartridge made by Eley Brothers, which was supposed to consume its own case when fired. I made certain experiments with these cartridges, by firmly securing rifles to trees and firing them with a string attached to the trigger, and found that they did one of three things on every occasion: either the explosive consumed the case entirely and generated gases which blew the breech block clean out of the rifle; or it did not completely consume the case and effectually blocked up the cartridge chamber with the remains; or it left the brass case of the cartridge and cap stuck firmly to the fire pin of the rifle. If I could have got hold of the Government Storekeeper then, I would have shot him, and cheerfully have hanged for doing it. Fifteen men left among some thousands of the supposed wildest savages in the world, and the larger portion of our ammunition more dangerous to the user than to an enemy!

“The fever medicine,” said Sara, “is as bad as the cartridges; the tablets go right through the men like stones.” I examined some of the quinine tablets, which were supposed to be made by some people called Heron, Squire and Francis. I took two, soaked them for a night in whisky, and they were as solid as shot after it; then I put another couple into dilute hydrochloric acid, and they resisted that. I believe the things were made of plaster-of-Paris or cement. Fortunately I had a couple of ounces of Howards’ Sulphate of Quinine, and half a dozen bottles of Burroughs and Wellcome’s Bisulphate of Quinine in tabloids, in my private stock, and could carry on with that. The iodoform supplied for wounds was just as bad: if you put it on a wound, the thing promptly festered, suppurated, and got angry-looking. Afterwards I took a bottle of the filth to Sydney, had it examined, and was told that it was composed of chalk and boracic acid, scented with iodoform and coloured with saffron. I don’t say Heron, Squire and Francis supplied it—there is a law of libel—but it was in bottles bearing their name.

A few days after I had been established at Cape Nelson, we sighted a schooner, and I went off to her in my whaler to get the latest news and exercise my tongue gossiping in English. The schooner proved to be the Albert McLaren, bound for the Mambare, and carrying Bishop Stone-Wigg; he was frightfully ill with a most malignant attack of malarial fever, and was sweltering in a tiny cabin. “I cannot go on to the Mambare, R.M.,” said Bishop Stone-Wigg; “the schooner can go on with stores. Will you give me a tiny corner in your camp until she returns?” “My Lord,” I said, “I have got a tiny tent 10 by 12 feet, and that is joined to a house 20 by 12 holding fifteen police, all contained inside a fence enclosing an area of about half a tennis lawn; we live hard and at any time we may die hard; but if you like to share it, come by all means.” “Anywhere to lay my aching head,” said the Bishop. Accordingly I took him ashore. He stayed with me a fortnight, and we only had one slight breeze, when I made him drink a glass of spirits every night before he went to bed, on the top of a strong dose of quinine; he was as weak as a kitten and badly needed a stimulant.

At the end of the fortnight, the steamer President came, and the Bishop left in her for his head Station at Wedau: I accompanied him, as he very kindly offered me the services of his Mission carpenter to repair some damage done to my whaleboat, which had come about in this way. The site chosen for my present house was situated over a rocky little bay, open to the stormy south-easters, and really unsafe for a boat to lie in: the only secure place in which the boat could be left was half a mile away, where she was likely to be either stolen or destroyed by natives. To haul the boat up on the rocky beach was a task beyond the strength of the men on the Station; we therefore usually employed some of the local natives, who were engaged clearing the Station site for us, to help haul her up: these natives, however, were always ordered away from the Station to their villages at five o’clock in the afternoon. Some of the police had been sent in the whaler during the day to collect shells and coral for lime-making purposes, and returned after five; the result of which was that we had not men enough to haul up the boat, and accordingly I told them to anchor her out at the full length of the chains. Shortly after this was done, I noticed that when the tide went out the boat’s stern would be dangerously near the rocks, and sent a couple of police to shift her further out—which they apparently did. The following morning I discovered the whaler on the rocks with her stern smashed in; and then found that the two fools I had sent had shifted her further out by hauling in and shortening the chains, thereby allowing her to drag her anchors in the strong night wind and smash on the rocks. The damage done was about equal to twenty pounds: a benevolent Government held that when accidents of this sort occurred, they were due to carelessness, and the men or officer responsible should meet the expense out of their or his private money. “Here’s a pretty pickle,” I said; “if I stop the two men’s pay, they will get nothing for twelve months.” My own pay was already mortgaged for four months ahead, to pay debts incurred on my last leave: the Bishop’s offer, however, of his carpenter, helped me out of the difficulty, and all I had to pay was five pounds towage to the President. We plastered up the stern of the whaler to get her as far as that.

I was a full week at Wedau getting the boat mended, for I managed to strike Holy Week; the carpenter, being an aged and particularly holy man, would drop his tools four or five times a day and scoot off to some sort of service, whilst I would endeavour to carry on his work: the day of silence and prayer was especially trying to me, as I was in a fever of anxiety about my men left at Cape Nelson. At last, however, I got away and started back, the Bishop coming with me as far as Cape Vogel, where we had established a Mission Station. By the way, I nearly drowned him on that trip, for there was no wind when we left late in the day, and the police had fairly well exhausted themselves at the oars long before we were across the bay; then night and a big wind came, and we got into a tide rip off the Cape, which nearly swamped us. Curiously enough, I never afterwards travelled at sea with Bishop Stone-Wigg without having the most marvellous escapes from drowning.

I remember on one occasion sighting his vessel just before dark off Cape Nelson, and—after directing that a light be hoisted at the flagstaff—I went out in the whaleboat to pilot him into the harbour: it was pitch dark by the time we got alongside, with nasty rain squalls coming up at intervals. The Albert McLaren started to stand in for the narrow rock-bound entrance of the harbour, when suddenly the light at the Station flagstaff was obscured by a rain squall, and when the squall had passed—during which we had hove-to—the light had vanished. After waiting for half an hour for it to reappear, I came to the conclusion (the right one as it afterwards proved) that the police had not noticed that the light was out, and therefore it was not likely to be relit at all. We groped our way out to sea for some distance, and anchored over a sunken reef, whilst I sent the whaler to try and nose her way into the harbour and have the lamp relit: that was the last we saw of the whaler that night, for she lost her way in the rain squalls, and could find neither harbour nor Albert McLaren again. Meanwhile, the night got worse, the schooner’s anchor carried away, and we blew up the coast in the dark, missing, Heaven only knows how, the many reefs with which the coast is sown.

I spent my time on deck with the skipper, vainly trying to fix our position on the coast from the village fires, and trying to imagine a fit punishment for the police on shore, by whom the light had been allowed to go out. Inman, who was now captain of the Albert McLaren, was full of groans and despair. “If I had not seen your light go up and your whaler coming out, I should have crept behind a reef and anchored,” he complained; “now we are bound for Kingdom come.” “It is no part of my work to be drowned in a missionary boat; it is just an obliging disposition that has got me into this fix,” I told him. Then I went down to the cabin, where Bishop Stone-Wigg was peacefully writing, in spite of the racket on deck. “Well, R.M., what news?” he asked. “The news is that we are driving through the night amongst a lot of reefs, and the first thing that we shall know will be the crash of the schooner’s forefoot on one; we can’t heave-to, or we’ll inevitably smash up on the coastal rocks.” “There is a Guiding Hand,” said the Bishop calmly. “There is no guiding hand,” I said; “neither Inman nor I have the slightest idea where we are, and the prospect of all of us being drowned before morning is particularly bright.” “Oh, I meant we are in the power of a Higher Hand,” remarked the Bishop, and calmly went on writing and making references from books. “Well, of all cool customers,” I thought, as I returned to the deck, “the Bishop about takes the cake.” Some few hours before daybreak the wind abated, the rain squalls cleared away, and Inman was able to drop a kedge at the end of about one hundred and fifty fathoms of rope, and anchor until morning showed us our position. Daylight came, and a few hours afterwards my whaler appeared searching for us, and I went back in her to my Station, while the Bishop went on in his schooner to the Mambare.

At the Mambare the Bishop heard of the Opi villages, a thick cluster of people at the mouth of that river, who at this time were by no means too safe to deal with, or to be trusted. On his return voyage, he calmly ordered the schooner to be hove-to off the mouth of the river, and, accompanied by only a few Mission boys, went ashore in a tiny dingey to pay the villages a visit, with the object of ascertaining the suitability of the site for a Mission Station. The mouth of the Opi is one of the most shark-infested spots in New Guinea, and of course the Mission boys contrived to capsize the dingey in the surf; fortunately the Bishop was a very good swimmer, as were also his boys, so he managed to swim ashore; but an enormous shark swam alongside him to the beach and, marvellous to relate, did not attack him. I heard the tale from the Bishop, his boys, and the Opi natives who witnessed it.

I was not at all pleased when I heard of the Bishop having gone into the Opi villages, for though they were not in my Division, I knew from the officers of the Northern Division how unsafe they were; and I begged the Bishop to come to me for an interpreter the next time he wished to go there. It was a long time before he did want to go, and by that time I had two police recruits from the Opi, and I gave them to him as interpreters. “You will interpret truly for the Bishop,” I told my two men, “but you must first tell the people that he is my friend, and if anything happens to him I shall take such vengeance that the women and children of the furthest Binandere people will cry at the mention of it.” Privates Kove and Arita, the two men I sent, swore that the Bishop should be safe, and that they would fittingly picture the horrors that would befall the people if they threatened or injured him. When the Bishop returned from the Opi and gave me back Kove and Arita, he told me that he was very taken with the kindness and friendliness of the natives, and had decided to put a Mission Station there. Some time afterwards, I heard from Armit, then R.M. for the Northern Division and in whose district the Opi was, asking why I had been putting the fear of God or of the Government into the Opi people, and saying that he was the only person officially entitled to do that. I soothed Armit, by pointing out that if the Bishop had got killed, he was the man who would have had to face the music with the Governor, and that I had only been trying to do him—Armit—a good turn.

Writing about Bishop Stone-Wigg reminds me of an occasion when he accompanied me to the Yodda Gold-field; the Yodda miners at this time being about as hard-bitten, hard swearing, and as utterly reckless a lot of “hard cases” as could be found under the British Flag. They had got a cemetery—which, I might remark in passing, was afterwards washed out, with the bones of its inhabitants, because a payable streak of gold was found in it—and it was well filled with dead diggers. The Bishop, after looking at it, suggested that he should read the Burial Service over the graves. I agreed that it might be a good thing; making a mental note that afterwards, when anxious relations wrote to me about their dead relatives, I could say that the Bishop of New Guinea had given them Christian burial. I sent a summons to the miners, telling them what was to take place, and they rolled up in strength to attend. The Bishop read the impressive service of the Church in a voice and manner that struck home to those miners, and produced an unexpected result. Mat Crow, a prominent man among them, was deeply affected; and, at the end, he strode up to the Bishop, struck him heartily on the back, and broke forth: “Boys, this is kind of the Bish. There’s Alligator Jack and Red Bill, there’s blank, and blank, and blank planted here, and Gawd, ’E knows whether they have rested easy; we know what they were like, and we know what the Warden is like who read prayers over them; he was better than nothing; but he is no good alongside a parson, and a Bishop is fifty parson-power in one. Boys, I move a vote of thanks to the Bish, with three times three, and may we all have a Bish to plant us. Alligator Jack would be a proud man to-day if he knew what was being done for him.” Bishop Stone-Wigg fled, as the vote of thanks was carried with enthusiasm, and the cheers for the fifty parson-power parson echoed over the graveyard.

Returning to Cape Nelson from Wedau, I found my men bottled up inside the stockade; and was told that the Okein, a pugnacious tribe to the north, had paid them a visit, swaggered about the Station, interfered with the working Kaili Kaili, and generally made themselves a nuisance.

The following is a brief description of the different tribes inhabiting the North-Eastern Division, and also a general review of the feeling existing between them at this time. The Cape Nelson (Kaili Kaili) people, under the leadership of their chief, Giwi, were a confederation of shattered tribes, regarding every one to the north or south—or, in fact, any stranger—as enemies, by whom they might be attacked or slaughtered at a moment’s notice. To the north there lay the Okein, a branch of the Binandere; a strong, warlike, and colonizing people steadily pushing their way south, but halted in their southern march by the necessity of defending the land occupied by them, against the attacks of inland raiding tribes. To the south lay the Maisina tribe of Collingwood Bay, a race of pirates, who terrorized the coast as far as Cape Vogel, but were in their turn harried by incursions from the Doriri, a mountain tribe behind them. The Kaili Kaili, who inhabited the mountains and hills at Cape Nelson, were therefore really remnants of tribes shattered by attack from either the Doriri, Maisina, or Binandere people; and also the remnants of a tribe frightfully weakened by an eruption of Mount Victory.

For some time after they had occupied the inhospitable rugged lands of Cape Nelson, they had been subjected to periodical incursions and slaughterings by the Okein fleet of canoes; but were eventually saved by the good sense of their elected chief, old Giwi, who had an uncommonly fine head and exceptional reasoning power. The Kaili Kaili were not an aquatic people, but Giwi noticed four things: firstly, that all attacks against his people must come by sea; secondly, that the canoes of the invaders were made of a heavy hard wood; thirdly, that the missiles of the invaders were heavy spears having a limited range; and fourthly, that once the northern men landed, his lighter people stood no chance against their charges. Giwi, in his way, was a Napoleon. He saw that to fight the invader successfully, he must fight on the sea; he saw that he must not fight at close quarters, but must have faster canoes, and also missiles outranging those of the Okein; and he laid his plans accordingly. First of all, Giwi made his people learn to swim in the pools of the streams running into the fiords of Cape Nelson; then he ordered canoes to be cut from a particularly light wood, of shallow draft, and capable of great speed, though they would not last many months; then he had made a great stock of a particularly light and long spear, capable of being thrown a great distance. Having completed his preparations, Giwi built an ostentatious and sham village at the head of a fiord, round the shores of which he concealed his new fleet, and then awaited developments. The developments soon came: a strong Okein fleet of canoes swept down the coast, sighted the village, and at once attacked it; it fell an easy prey, being undefended and of no value, and the disappointed Okein fleet attempted to put to sea again, only to find hovering on their flank a swarm of light canoes, with whom they could not possibly close, and by the crews of which they were, man by man, slaughtered at long range. Out-generalled, out-paced and out-ranged, they had no hope. Very few of the Okein canoes escaped, and, for many years afterwards, they gave Cape Nelson a wide berth as they passed on their southern raids. Giwi and his canoes, however, at the time I went there, were the sole obstacles to their occupying the coast south of Cape Nelson, though they could still raid it.

The account of this fight, I had from Giwi himself, and also from some of the Okein who took part in it, years after it had taken place; but all their accounts tallied. In fact, the way in which I first heard of it was rather peculiar. I was staying for the night in old Giwi’s house as an honoured guest, and rolling over on the floor to sleep, I was disturbed by the old boy’s chuckles. “What are you laughing at, you old reprobate?” I demanded. “You are lying on the exact spot where I kept the body of the Okein chief, before I ate him,” he said, and then he unfolded the tale I have just told.

Old Wanigela, a chief of the sub-branch of the Maisina, whose people had been subject to constant attack by two foes, the Okein by sea and the Doriri from the mountains, took heart of grace from Giwi’s defeat of the Okein, and laid plans for the discomfiture of the next raiders. His plan was, however, with the exception of the long light spears, much simpler than that of Giwi; for all he did, was to abandon his village at the approach of the hostile canoes, and permit them, unopposed, to enter a narrow river which ran alongside the village. After the Okein had plundered and burnt to their hearts’ content, and had lumbered up their canoes with loot, they essayed to return, and were jostling and crowding together in the current of the narrow entrance to the river, when Wanigela suddenly appeared on the bank with his men and fairly hailed spears upon the now packed Okein, who were taken entirely by surprise by the unexpected attack from people whose fighting qualities they despised; thrown into confusion by the immediate loss of many men, and unable to charge home with the favourite weapon of the Binandere people—the stone-headed club—they were all slaughtered, with the exception of one canoe-load of warriors, which managed to put to sea and escape.

The two defeats had for a time cooled the ardour of the Okein for raiding on the coast; but later, having been strengthened by fresh families from the virile Binandere, they turned their attention to a new field, and raided and slaughtered the Baruga people of the Musa River. The Baruga were now in an evil case: they could not go back, for then the Doriri from the hills raided them, that people’s war parties sweeping the whole of the flat country. The Baruga’s sole method of escape from the Doriri had originally been by canoes and river; but now the canoes of the Okein were driving them up and from the river, into the very clutches of the Doriri. Fortunately, however, Sir William MacGregor fell in with a fleet of Okein canoes returning from a raid up the Musa, laden with human flesh, and he inflicted yet another crushing defeat upon them; a defeat from which they were only just recovering when I came to Cape Nelson. They were to get yet another reverse, and at my hands next time; but that was to come much later.

Wanigela’s victory over the Okein was, however, to prove his undoing; for he and his people, cock-a-hoop over their defeat of the redoubtable Okein, decided to try conclusions with the first war party of Doriri entering their country. It was not long before a war party, a small one of about fifty Doriri, appeared in the district: Wanigela located them and their line of march; then, assembling his own men and many hundreds from the parent Maisina tribe, he laid an ambush for the Doriri. This stratagem proved entirely successful, the enemy marching into the middle of the hidden men; Wanigela then yelled, “Now we have you where we wanted you!” which was his signal for the attack; his men leapt to their feet; the Doriri merely replied with a curt “Have you?” and charged. Wanigela and thirteen of his most redoubtable fighters were killed, many were wounded, and the rest broke and fled in every direction. Nothing after this would induce the people of Collingwood Bay to stand up to resist the Doriri, who now began a policy of sending very small parties, which ceaselessly snapped up and killed men, women, and children. Sir Francis Winter, Moreton, and Butterworth, made an attempt to seek out and deal with the Doriri, but failed, in consequence of taking Collingwood Bay carriers with them, by whom they were deserted on the very first night.