Copy of diary when in Torres Straits and New Guinea, 1899:

April 6.

Arrived at Cooktown on Japanese steamer Kusuga Maru and leave on schooner Shilo for New Guinea next day.

April 8.

York Island, only three white men besides Captain Mosly, live here. The captain tells sympathetic stories about the storm of March 3, when he saw the ship his son was on go down. He thinks about 200 men from pearl hunting crafts were lost in the storm.

April 9.

At sea, bound for Fly River. Hot as tophet, but a stiff breeze. Find small island inhabited by birds, but no land quadrupeds, as in dry season the small fresh water streams dry up.

April 10.

At mouth of Fly River. Approach main land. High mountains appear in the distance. Great marshes on either side, which cause Guinea fever to the whites, but not to the natives.

April 11.

Go ashore, several miles up the river. Birds, birds, birds on all sides. I shot a Guinea pigeon, looks like a pheasant, big as a hen, soon have her cooked. Natives never travel singly, always in groups. Several missionaries have been eaten here. One from Boston, but the natives do not look to me particularly hungry.

April 12.

Head on for Port Moresby, where I am to catch Burns-Phillips Co. steamer. Go ashore on a lagoon island. Go through the palms to the miniature ocean, find a beautiful helmet shell and concluded to keep it and gather others to send home.

April 13.

Strike fleet of pearl shell boats. Go down in diving suit about 160 feet. Bad job, starts the blood out of my ears. Get but one shell, which I will send to Arthur. Most of the divers are natives or Japs. One shipmaster owns and supplies about twenty diving boats. All shells opened on the ship. Average about one pearl to 300 shells. I buy of native four pearls for $6.25.

April 14.

Port Moresby only five houses. Bishop Stowigg, English missionary, here. Find three missionaries at each of these little ports. Became acquainted with Miss Tully from Brisbane, Australia. She is lonesome and shed tears when she bid me farewell.

April 15.

Land at Samaria. Find a native here who came from the interior, where the people go naked and build their houses in the trees. He speaks a few words in English and considers himself an interpreter. For two silver dollars I hire him to go with me anywhere as long as I feed him, and when through with him can leave him anywhere on the shore. We board the steamer here for the west, along the north shore. Everything and everybody looks and smells as though they had sat on the equator and fried ever since they had been born.

April 16.

At sea. My appreciative companions are a mother and four kittens, a captive young cassowary, about four feet tall, who the captain declares will eat his hammer and nails if he does not hide them, and three dogs. All small dogs around here will dive from the bow of a boat into deep water and bring up a knife or anything you show them before you throw it in. Dear little curs.

April 17.

Reach Kaiser Wilhelm's land and leave steamer. Am hearing terrible stories about the natives, men who eat an antelope at a meal, women with pompadours three feet high; also hear about snakes ninety-five feet long, but the stories come from natives who cannot count higher than the number 5.

April 18.

Catch excursion boat at Cape Croiselles and start west in search of village where the inhabitants live in nests in the trees. Captain and mate are from Adalaide, Australia, out for the season on about the same kind of a mission that I am. Captain continually teasing me that I am about at the end of my rope. Says he will write to Chicago and inform them that I escaped a Jonah whale only to be swallowed by a Guinea nigger. The mate says he will venture into the interior with me, at which I assure him if he will not attempt to coquette with the ladies he will not be hurt. Of course, I advise the captain to stay by his anchor and avoid temptation, for I tell him I see by the size and shape of his neck that he would become completely betwaddled in the presence of nature's fair adornments, or Papuan simplicity.

April 19.

The mate, guide, three stalwart blacks and myself leave the boat in the night. Several miles in we cross a clear running brook, through which we wade to our hips. After climbing several mountain trails we continue for five or six miles along a zigzag course under the brow of a mountain range, crossing ravines in which the large birds, all of them beautiful in color, do not seem to fear us or fly at our approach.

At openings I can view the evergreen, palm tree valley below, which seems awaking from its dreams to greet the rising sun. I call a halt and look and listen, for I am charmed.

About ten o'clock, when motioned by our guide, we somewhat nervously follow him to a crystal lake, surrounded by tropical verdure, where we were confronted with from sixty to one hundred houses or nests built in the trees covered, water-proof tight, with a sort of long sea grass, which grows abundantly in all tropical marshes. Apparently some of the larger dwellings, like those of the Alaska Indians, would accommodate several families. Here and there naked people, looking out or climbing up or down the swinging ladders.

The king, a young fellow, after learning our wants, invites us to stay a moon, which I think would have been perfectly safe if we did not wander away from the village.

I then presented the king with the presents I had brought, six large jack knives and six cheap hatchets, after which they began to show us things, how and what they cooked, how they caught game, fight, dance, worship and lastly how they clear a guilty conscience.

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This is done by immersion in clear water by moonlight, when the god in the moon forgives all. They believe that the souls of the dead linger around those whom they loved on earth.

The king and several others gave me rudely ornamented shell rings. A lady to whom I gave a silver dollar gives me a pretty shell which she had herself ornamented with the sharp end of a stone, also she gave me her petticoats which females wear when at the sea shore. (I have these momentoes yet.) The petticoat consists of a waist-band to which is attached loose ringlets down to the knees, all made of sea grass. Once I caught two girls winking, laughing and making fun of me. All females stand sideways to the males and look and talk over their shoulder. Many have fine physiques.

There are few quadrupeds here, but this seems to be the home of birds.

The cassowary is larger than an ostrich. Their flesh is said to taste like turkey. The plumage of some birds is wonderful. Especially the lyrebird, who struts like a tom-turkey. Over twenty species of the bird of paradise are said to live here.

All kind of tropical fruit grow wild and in great abundance. Bread fruit trees grow quickly and furnish 500 to 1,000 pounds of food each, substance about equal to oatmeal.

Many from Chicago may well envy these kind, timid, primitive people their sunshine career as compared to our daily struggle for ascendancy.

As I am about to leave these people, who are huddled around me, out of curiosity I look one after another of each sex squarely in the eyes for recognition, and I get the response everytime. Not that steady stare of the snake, dog, or gorilla, but that conscious response of affection between souls. This satisfies me that men are not improved beasts, but rather distinct creatures endowed with certain soul-responsive looks, self-controlling powers, gifts which cannot be mentally experienced.

April 24.

After several days among the verdure islands with broad, glistening, sandy shores, strewn with large and small shells, I find myself among the Solomon Islands, about 500 miles from New Guinea.

I am glad I came here, for it seems like a dream of the long, long ago. With the exception of a few naked natives, flying foxes, and shore fowls, these islands must resemble the great lake region at home in the carboniferous age. The age after the great Mississippi Valley inland sea had fled away from the shores. The age before the vegetation had lured the sea family through the long reptilean age into the mammalian age, when the mastodon roamed the palm groves of Michigan and the great dinotherium lived on the marshy plains of Colorado, before the Rocky Mountains had raised their now silent, dreary forms.

If there was a day in Illinois when the Crustacean invertebrate families lined the hot ocean shores and the vegetation grew thirty feet high, it must have resembled this equatorial region now, for although clear today, I am told it rains almost daily, and up the mountain sides as far as I can see the vegetation is wonderful.

A sort of inspiration seems to pervade the forests of New Guinea and the Samoa group, but this carboniferous clime has little charm. For although white sand beaches miles wide strewn with shell against a background of waving palms, is a sight long to be remembered, I somehow feel I am associating with clams, turtles and pelicans of the "evening and morning of the fifth day," so I will now leave for Cape York, to catch the Futami Maru, which is to call there May 17th.