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Charles Arthur Whitmore Monckton (1873–1936) was a British colonial official and explorer who served in Papua New Guinea (then known as British New Guinea) during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Monckton was born in 1873, and was educated at Bedford School in England. In 1895, he moved to British New Guinea, where he initially worked as a recruiter of native laborers for plantations. He later joined the British New Guinea Armed Constabulary, eventually rising to the rank of Resident Magistrate.

Monckton spent a significant amount of his time in British New Guinea on expeditions and explorations of the territory. He was the first European to climb Mount Victoria and was involved in several other pioneering expeditions. His experiences during these trips were often dangerous, as they included encounters with previously uncontacted indigenous tribes and hazardous local wildlife.

Monckton's observations and experiences during his time in Papua New Guinea formed the basis of several books, including "Some Experiences of a New Guinea Resident Magistrate." These works provide important historical and ethnographic records of Papua New Guinea during the era of British colonial rule, although they also reflect the biases and attitudes of that era.

After returning to England in 1906, Monckton continued to write and lecture about his experiences in Papua New Guinea. He died in 1936.

Overall, Charles Monckton's life and work offer important insights into the history of British colonialism in Papua New Guinea.
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CHAPTER I

In the year 1895 I found myself at Cooktown in Queensland, aged 23, accompanied by a fellow adventurer, F. H. Sylvester, and armed with £100, an outfit particularly unsuited to the tropics, and a letter of introduction from the then Governor of New Zealand, the Earl of Glasgow, to the Lieutenant-Governor of British New Guinea, Sir William MacGregor.
After two or three weeks of waiting, we took passage by the mail schooner Myrtle, 150 tons, one of two schooners owned by Messrs. Burns, Philp and Co., of Sydney, and subsidized by the British New Guinea Government to carry monthly mails to that possession; in fact they were then the only means of communication between New Guinea and the rest of the world. These two vessels, after a chequered career in the South Seas, as slavers--then euphoniously termed in Australia “labour” vessels--had, by the lapse of time and purchase by a firm of high repute and keen commercial ambition, now been promoted to the dignity of carrying H.M. Mails, Government stores for the Administration of New Guinea, and supplies to the branches of the firm at Samarai and Port Moresby; and were, under the energetic superintendence of their respective masters, Steel and Inman, extending the commercial interests of their owners throughout both the British and German territories bordering on the Coral Sea.
Good old ships long since done with, the bones of one lie scattered on a reef, the other when last I saw her was a coal hulk in a Queensland port. And good old Scotch firm of trade grabbers that owned them, sending their ships, in spite of any risk, wherever a possible bawbee was to be made, and taking their hundred per cent. of profit with the same dour front they took their frequently trebled loss. Mopping up the German trade until the day came when the heavily subsidized ships of the Nord Deutscher Lloyd drove them out; as well they might, for in one scale hung the efforts of a small company of British merchants, unassisted as ever by its country or Government, the other, a practically Imperial Company backed by the resources of a vast Empire.
But to return to the Myrtle, then lying in the bay off the mouth of the Endeavour River, to which we were ferried in one of her own boats, perched on the top of hen coops filled with screeching poultry, several protesting pigs, and two goats; all mixed up with a belated mail bag, parcels sent by local residents to friends in New Guinea, and three hot and particularly cross seamen. The goats we learnt later were destined to serve as mutton for the Government House table; the pigs and hens were a little private venture of the ship’s cook, these being intended for barter with natives.
On our arrival at the ship’s side, we were promptly boosted up a most elusive rope ladder by the seamen who had ferried us across, the schooner meanwhile rolling in a nasty cross sea and raising the devil’s own din with her flapping sails. Tumbled over the bulwarks on to the deck, we were seized upon by a violent little man in a frantic state of excitement, perspiration, and bad language, and ten seconds later found ourselves helping him to haul on the tackles of the boat that brought us, which was then being hoisted in, pigs, goats, luggage, etc., holus bolus; this operation completed, our violent little man introduced himself as Mr. Wisdell, the ship’s cook, and volunteered to show us to our berths, after which, as soon as the bustle of getting under way was over, he stated his intention of formerly introducing us to the captain.
Just as we were somewhat dismally becoming quite assured that our imaginations were not deceiving us as to the number of beetles and cockroaches a berth of most attenuated size could contain; also beginning to find that the motions of a schooner of 150 tons were decidedly upsetting to our stomachs, after those of big vessels, Mr. Wisdell returned and, diving into a locker, produced a bottle of whisky, some sodawater, and four tumblers. Three of the latter he placed with the other materials in the fiddle of the cabin’s table, the remaining tumbler he held behind his back. Then politely bowing to us, Mr. Wisdell signed that we were to precede him up the companion way on to the poop, where a red-faced, cheery looking little man, clothed in immaculate white ducks, gazed fixedly at the sails or at the man at the wheel, a regard that the helmsman looked as if he would willingly have done without. To him Mr. Wisdell marched, and then “Mr. Sylvester--Captain Inman--Captain Inman--Mr. Monckton--etc.” Never did Clapham dancing master receive the bows of his class with greater dignity and grace, than did Captain Inman receive those which, modelling our deportment on that of Mr. Wisdell, we made him.

Then Mr. Wisdell, still carrying the tumbler behind his back, spake thus: “Perhaps, Captain Inman, you would like to offer the gentlemen a little something in the cabin?” Captain Inman unbent: “Billy, the mate has the blasted fever; send the bo’sun.” Upon the appearance of that potentate, and his having apparently taken over the command, by dint of fixing the man at the wheel with a basilisk glare, Captain Inman led the way to the cabin, where Mr. Wisdell, kindly placing a glass in each of our hands, drew attention to the bottle and, with deprecating little coughs directed towards his commander, modestly backed away. Captain Inman, however, was well versed in the etiquette the occasion demanded and rose to it. “What, Billy, only three glasses! We want another!” Out shot Mr. Wisdell’s glass from behind his back and the occasion was complete.
Two days of violent sea-sickness then intervened, the misery of which was broken only by the visits of Mr. Wisdell, or as better acquaintance now permitted us to call him, “Billy,” bearing “mutton” broth prepared from goat. These animals, by the way, appear to be indigenous to the streets of Cooktown and to frequent them in large herds; their sustenance seems to be gleaned from the rubbish heaps and back yards; for of grass, at the time I was there, there was none, and their camping places were for choice the doorsteps and verandahs of the hotels, from which vantage points, at frequent intervals, the slumbers of the lodgers were cheered by the sound of violent strife, and sweetened by the peculiar fragrance diffused by ancient goats.
Then came one fine and memorable morning when our cheerful little skipper called us to look at Samarai, at that time called by the hideous name of Dinner Island, towards the anchorage of which we were slowly moving, the while, from every direction, a swarm of canoes paddled furiously towards us, crowded with fuzzy-headed natives, all eager to earn a few sticks of tobacco, by assisting in the discharge of the cargo we carried. The canoes were warned off pending the arrival of a health officer to grant pratique, and that official soon appeared in the person of Mr. R. E. Armit, a well-set-up, soldierly looking man of about fifty years of age. Poor Armit, long since killed by the deadly malaria of the Northern Division.
Mr. Armit was Subcollector of Customs and goodness knows what else at Samarai, and was himself an extraordinary personality. An accomplished linguist, widely read and travelled, I never found a subject about which Armit did not know something and usually a very great deal. He, however, did not possess a faculty for making or retaining money, and did possess a particularly caustic tongue and pen, which, when the mood took him, he would exercise even upon his superior officers; hence he was frequently in hot water and never lacked enemies.
Samarai boasted neither wharf nor jetty; our cargo was therefore simply shot over the side into the multitude of canoes and thence ferried to the beach, with such assistance as the ship’s boats could afford.
Dinner Island, or as I shall from now on term it, Samarai, is an island of about fifty acres. The hill, which forms the centre of the island, rises from what was then a malodorous swamp, surrounded by a strip of coral beach. The whole island was a gazetted penal district, and the town consisted of the Residency, a fine roomy bungalow built by the Imperial Government for the then Commissioner, General Sir Peter Scratchley--the first of New Guinea officials to be claimed by malaria--and now the headquarters of the Resident Magistrate for the Eastern Division; a small three-roomed building of native grass and round poles dubbed the Subcollector’s house; a gaol of native material, the roof of which served as a bond store for dutiable goods, and a cemetery: the three latter appeared to be well filled. There was also a small single-roomed galvanized iron building which served as a Custom’s house; in it was employed a clerk, unpaid; he was an affable gentleman of mixed French and Greek parentage, and was at the time awaiting his trial for murder. Two small stores, the one owned by Burns, Philp and Co., of Sydney, and the other by Mr. William Whitten, now the Honble. William Whitten, M.L.C., completed the main buildings.

Mr. Whitten was the son of a Queen’s Messenger, since dead of malaria, and possessed an adventurous disposition which had taken him off to sea as a boy. His first appearance in New Guinea was as one of the personal guard of Sir Peter Scratchley, a body which Sir William MacGregor replaced with his fine native constabulary. Whitten had saved money enough to purchase a small cutter, with which he had begun trading for bêche-de-mer in the Trobriand Islands. While dealing with the natives for that commodity, he had discovered that pearls of a fair quality existed in a small oyster forming one of the staple foods of the natives. Whitten purchased large quantities of the pearls from the natives for almost nothing, and had he only been able to keep his discovery to himself, would have had fortune in his grasp. Unfortunately for him, the sale of his prize in Australia brought down upon him a host of other competitors, and the natives, having discovered that the white man was keenly desirous of obtaining what were to them worthless stones, raised their prices higher and higher until there was little to be gained in the trade.
Whitten, however, had made enough to bring a young brother from England, purchase a bigger and better vessel, also a large quantity of merchandise. At the date of writing, Whitten Brothers own numerous plantations, several steamers and sailing vessels, conduct a banking business, have branches in the gold-fields, and are the largest employers of labour in the country; in 1895, however, this greatness was as yet undreamt of by them.
Other than the Residency and the glorified sardine box doing duty as the Custom House, the only other building in Samarai formed of European materials--by which I mean sawn timber and fastened with nails--was the bungalow occupied by Burns, Philp’s manager, and situated on perhaps the best site there. Gangs of prisoners--native--were engaged quarrying in the hill of Samarai and filling up the swamp, a palpably necessary work. Curiously enough in a pleasantly written little book by Colonel Kenneth Mackay, C.B., entitled “Across Papua,” I noticed a reference to this work, which was ultimately the means of stamping malaria out of the place. The author attributed it, amongst others, to Doctor Jones, a health officer who came to New Guinea in recent years. This statement is quite incorrect; the credit of banishing malaria from Samarai belongs to Sir William MacGregor, and to him alone.
A few sheds, occupied by boat-builders and carpenters, scattered along the beach, complete the buildings of Samarai. Of hotels and accommodation houses there were none, but then there was no travelling public to accommodate; gold-diggers to and from the islands of Sudest and St. Aignan camped in their tents, which as a rule consisted of a single sheet of calico stretched over a pole; traders lived in their vessels. Alcoholic refreshment was dispensed at the stores; Burns, Philp’s manager, for instance, or one of the Whittens, ceasing from their book-keeping labours to serve thirsty customers with lager beer or more potent fluids over the store counter. Whitten Brothers had a large roofed balcony with no sides, situated at the back of the store, and here at night, as to a general club-house, foregathered all the Europeans of the island. Under a centre table was placed a supply of varied drinks, and as men came in and bottles were emptied, they were hurled over the edge on to the soft coral sand. In the morning one of the Whittens caused the bottles to be collected by a native boy, counted them, and avoided the trouble of book-keeping by the simple method of dividing the sum total of bottles by the number of men he knew, or that his boy told him, had visited the “house”; each man therefore, whether a thirsty person or not, was charged exactly the same as his neighbour.
All Samarai was planted with cocoanut palms, the dodging of falling nuts from which, in windy weather, served to keep the inhabitants spry. Pyjamas were the almost universal wear, varied in the case of some traders by a strip of turkey-red twill, worn petticoat fashion, and a cotton vest.
Among the traders were two picturesque ruffians, alike in nothing, save the ability with which they conducted their business and dodged hanging. Each had spent his life trading in the South Seas and had amassed a fair fortune. Of them and their exploits I have heard endless yarns. Of one of these men, who was known far and wide through the South Seas as “Nicholas the Greek”-Heaven knows why, for his real name sounded English, and his reckless courage was certainly not typical of the modern Greek--the following stories are told.

A vessel had been cut out in one of the New Guinea or Louisade Islands--which it was I have forgotten--and the crew massacred. When this became known, a man-of-war or Government ship was sent to punish the murderers, and in especial to secure a native chief, who was primarily responsible. The punitive ship came across Nicholas and engaged him as pilot and interpreter, he being offered one hundred pounds when the man wanted was secured. Nicholas safely piloted his charge to some remote island where the inhabitants, doubtless having guilty consciences, promptly fled for the hills, where it was impossible for ordinary Europeans to follow them. He then offered to go alone to try and locate them, and, armed with a ship’s cutlass and revolver, disappeared on his quest. Some days elapsed, then in the night a small canoe appeared alongside the ship, from which emerged Nicholas, bearing in his hand a bundle. Marching up to the officer commanding, he undid it, and rolled at the officer’s feet a gory human head, remarking, “Here is your man, I couldn’t bring the lot of him. I’ll thank you for that hundred.”
Another story was that Nicholas on one occasion was attacked and frightfully slashed about by his native crew and then thrown overboard, he shamming dead. Sinking in the water he managed to get under the keel, along which he crawled like a crawfish until he came to the rudder, upon which he roosted under the counter until night fell and his crew slept. Then he climbed on board, secured a tomahawk, and either killed or drove overboard the whole crew, they thinking he was an avenging ghost. This done, badly wounded and unassisted, he worked his vessel to a neighbouring island, where, being sickened and disgusted with men, he shipped and trained a crew of native women, with whom he sailed for many years, in fact, I think, until the day came when Sir W. MacGregor appeared upon the scene and passed the Native Labour Ordinance, which, amongst other things, prohibited the carrying of women on vessels.

Of Nicholas also is told the story that once, in the bad old pre-protectorate days, so many charges were brought against him by missionaries and merchantmen that a man-of-war was sent to arrest him, wherever found, and bring him to trial. He, through a friendly trader, got wind of the fact that he was being sought for, and accordingly laid his plans for the bamboozlement of his would-be captors. Summoning his crew, he informed them that his father was dead, and that as he had his father’s name of Nicholas, his name must now be “Peter,” as the custom of his tribe was, even as that of some New Guinea peoples, viz. not to mention the name of the dead lest harm befall. Then he sailed in search of the pursuing warship and, eventually finding her, went on board and volunteered his services as pilot, which were gladly accepted. To all of his haunts he then guided that ship, but in all the reply of the native was the same, when questioned as to his whereabouts, “We know not Nicholas, he is gone. Peter your pilot comes in his place. Nicholas is dead, and ’tis wrong to mention the name of the dead.” It was said of him that on no part of his body could a man’s hand be placed without touching the scar of some old wound--a story I can fully believe.
The second of this interesting couple was known as “German Harry,” a man of insignificant appearance and little physical strength, but the most venomous little scorpion, when thoroughly roused, it has ever been my lot to meet; at the same time he was the most generous-hearted little man towards the hard up and unfortunate. He had also spent a considerable portion of his time in dodging arrest or explaining certain alleged manslaughters of his before various tribunals. I remember one little specimen I witnessed of Harry’s fighting methods, and from that understood why the biggest of bullies and “hard cases” treated him with respect.
A vessel, owned and commanded by a hulking brute of a Dane, had come over from Queensland bringing, amongst other things, some recent papers, one of which contained an account of a disgraceful wife-beating case, in which the Dane figured and in which he had escaped--as such brutes generally do in civilized countries--by the payment of a miserable fine.

As Harry, the Dane and I, were sitting in a gold-field store, Harry read the account, and then gazing at the Dane, said something in German, of which “Schweinhund” was the only word I understood. A glass of rum promptly smashed on Harry’s teeth, followed by a bellow of rage and the thrower’s rush. Harry in a single instant became a lunatic, and flying like a wild cat at the other’s face, kicking, biting, and clawing, bore the big man to the ground, from where, in a few seconds, agonized yells of, “He is eating me,” told us the Dane was in dire trouble. Harry was dragged away by main force, and we found half his victim’s nose bitten off, while a bloodshot and protruding eye showed how nearly his thumb had got its work in. The wife-beater went off a mass of funk and misery, while Harry proceeded calmly to attend to the glass cuts on his face. “You are a nice cheerful sort of little hyena,” I remarked to Harry afterwards. “What sort of fighting do you call that?” “That? Oh, that’s nothing. I only wanted to frighten him or I would have had his eye out as well. He won’t throw a glass at German Harry again in a hurry.”
Some years later I met German Harry in a Sydney street, and though I had long since thought I was beyond being surprised at anything he did, he yet gave me a further shock when he told me he had purchased a “Matrimonial Agency.”

CHAPTER II

The day following our arrival in Samarai, loud yells of “Sail Ho!” from every native in the island announced that the Merrie England was returning from the Mambare River, where the Lieut.-Governor had been occupied in punishing the native murderers of a man named Clarke, the leader of a prospecting party in search of gold; and in establishing at that point, for the protection of future prospectors, a police post under the gallant but ill-fated John Green. Clarke’s murder was destined, though no one realized it at the time, to be the beginning of a long period of bloodshed and anarchy in the Northern Division--then still a portion of the Eastern Division. These events, however, belong to a later date and chapter.
On her voyage south from the Mambare, the Merrie England had waited at the mouth of the Musa River, while Sir William MacGregor traversed and mapped that stream. Whilst so engaged, accompanied by but one officer and a single boat’s crew of native police, His Excellency discovered a war party of north-east coast natives returning from a cannibal feast, with their canoes loaded with dismembered human bodies. Descending the river, Sir William collected his native police and, attacking the raiders, dealt out condign and summary justice, which resulted in the tribes of the lower Musa dwelling for many a year in a security to which several generations had been strangers.
Some little time after the ship had cast anchor, my friend and myself received a message that Sir William was disengaged; whereupon we went on board to meet, for the first time, the strongest man it has ever been my fate to look upon. Short, square, slightly bald, speaking with a strong Scotch accent, showing signs of overwork and the ravages of malaria, there was nothing in the first appearance of the man to stamp him as being out of the ordinary, but I had not been three minutes in his cabin before I realized that I was in the presence of a master of men--a Cromwell, a Drake, a Caesar or Napoleon--his keen grey eyes looking clean through me, and knew that I was being summed and weighed. Once, and only once in my life, have I felt that a man was my master in every way, a person to be blindly obeyed and one who must be right and infallible, and that was when I met Sir William MacGregor.
Years afterwards, in conversation with a man who had held high command, who had distinguished himself and been much decorated for services in Britain’s little wars, I described the impression that MacGregor had made upon me, the sort of overwhelming sense of inferiority he, unconsciously to himself, made one feel, and was told that my friend had experienced a like impression when meeting Cecil Rhodes.

The story of how Sir William MacGregor came to be appointed to New Guinea was to me rather an interesting one, as showing the result, in the history of a country, of a fortunate accident. It was related to me by Bishop Stone-Wigg, to whom it had been told by the man responsible for the appointment, either Sir Samuel Griffiths, Sir Hugh Nelson, or Sir Thomas McIlwraith, which of the three I have now forgotten. Sir William, at the time Doctor MacGregor, was attending, as the representative of Fiji, one of the earlier conferences regarding the proposed Federation of Australasia; he had already made his mark by work performed in connection with the suppression of the revolt among the hill tribes of that Crown Colony. At the conference, amongst other questions, New Guinea came up for discussion, whereupon MacGregor remarked: “There is the last country remaining, in which the Englishman can show what can be done by just native policy.” The remark struck the attention of one of the delegates, by whom the mental note was made, “If Queensland ever has a say in the affairs of New Guinea, and I have a say in the affairs of Queensland, you shall be the man for New Guinea.” When later, New Guinea was declared a British Possession, Queensland had a very large say in the matter, and the man who had made the mental note happening to be Premier, he caused the appointment of Administrator to be offered to MacGregor, by whom it was accepted.
Of Sir William, a story told me by himself will illustrate his determination of character, even at an early age, though not related with that intention.
MacGregor, when completing his training at a Scotch University, found his money becoming exhausted; no time could he spare from his studies in which to earn any, even were the opportunity there. Something had to be done, so MacGregor called his old Scotch landlady into consultation as to ways and means. “Well, Mr. MacGregor, how much a week can you find?” “Half a crown.” “Well, I can do it for that.” And this is how she did it. MacGregor had a bowl of porridge for breakfast, nothing else; two fresh herrings or one red one, the cost of the fresh ones being identical with the cured one, for dinner; and a bowl of porridge again for supper. Thus he completed his course and took the gold medal of his year.

This thoroughness and grim determination MacGregor still carried into his work; for instance, it was necessary for him, unless he was prepared to have a trained surveyor always with him on his expeditions, to have a knowledge of astronomy and surveying. This he took up with his usual vigour, and I once witnessed a little incident which showed, not only how perfect Sir William had made himself in the subject, but also his unbounded confidence in himself. We were lying off a small island about which a doubt existed as to whether it was within the waters of Queensland or New Guinea. The commander of the Merrie England, together with the navigating officer, took a set of stellar observations; the chief Government surveyor, together with an assistant surveyor, took a second set; and Sir William took a third. The ship’s party and the surveyors arrived at one result, Sir William at a slightly different one; an ordinary man would have decided that four highly competent professional men must be right and he wrong; not so, however, MacGregor. “Ye are both wrong,” was his remark, when their results were handed to him by the commander and surveyor. They demurred, pointing out that their observations tallied. “Do it again, ye don’t agree with mine;” and sure enough Sir William proved right and they wrong.
My part in this had been to hold a bull’s-eye lantern for Sir William to the arc of his theodolite, and to endeavour to attain the immobility of a bronze statue while being devoured by gnats and mosquitoes. Therefore later I sought Stuart Russell, the chief surveyor, with the intention of working off a little of the irritation of the bites by japing at him. “What sort of surveyors do you and Commander Curtis think yourselves? Got to have a bally amateur to help you, eh?” “Shut up, Monckton,” said Stuart Russell, “we are surveyors of ordinary ability, Sir William is of more than that.”

The same sort of thing occurred with Sir William in languages; he spoke Italian to Giulianetti, poor Giulianetti later murdered at Mekeo; German to Kowold, poor Kowold, too, later killed by a dynamite explosion on the Musa River; and French to the members of the Sacred Heart Mission. I believe if a Russian or a Japanese had turned up, Sir William would have addressed him in his own language. Ross-Johnston, at one time private secretary to Sir William, once wailed to me about the standard of erudition Sir William expected in a man’s knowledge of a foreign language. Ross-Johnston had been educated in Germany and knew German, as he thought, as well as his own mother tongue. Sir William while reading some abstruse German book, struck a passage the meaning of which was to him somewhat obscure; he referred to Ross-Johnston, who, far from being able to explain the passage, could not make sense of the chapter. Whereupon Sir William remarked that he thought Ross-Johnston professed to know German. Ross-Johnston, feeling somewhat injured, took the book to Kowold, who was a German. Kowold gave one look at it, then exclaimed, “Phew! I can’t understand that, it’s written by a scientist for scientists!”
One little story about MacGregor, a story I have always loved, was that on one occasion while sitting in Legislative Council some member, bolder than usual, asked, “What happens, your Excellency, should Council differ with your views?” “Man,” replied Sir William, “the result would be the same.” But I digress, as Bullen remarks, and shall return from stories about MacGregor to his cabin and my own affairs.
Sir William told my friend and myself, that for two reasons he could not offer either of us employment in his service. Firstly, that the amount of money at his disposal, £12,000 per annum, did not permit of fresh appointments until vacancies occurred; secondly, that his officers must be conversant with native customs and ways of thought, which experience we were entirely lacking. His Excellency, however, told us that he had just received word of the discovery of gold upon Woodlark Island, to which place the ship would at once proceed, and that we might go in her; an offer we gladly accepted.
Then for the first time I met Mr. F. P. Winter, afterwards Sir Francis Winter, Chief Magistrate of the Possession; the Hon. M. H. Moreton, Resident Magistrate of the Eastern Division; Cameron, Chief Government Surveyor; Mervyn Jones, Commander of the Merrie England; and Meredith, head gaoler.
Winter had been a law officer in the service of Fiji, and upon the appointment of Sir William MacGregor to New Guinea, had been chosen by him as his Chief Justice and general right-hand man; the wisdom of which choice later years amply showed. Widely read, a profound thinker, possessed of a singular charm of manner, simple and unaffected to a degree, Winter was a man that fascinated every one with whom he came in contact. I don’t think he ever said an unkind word or did a mean action in his life. Every officer in the Service, then and later, took his troubles to him, and every unfortunate out of the Service appealed to his purse.
Moreton, a younger brother of the present Earl of Ducie, had begun life in the Seaforth Highlanders; plucky, hard working, and the best of good fellows, he was fated to work on in New Guinea till, with his constitution shattered, an Australian Government chucked him out to make room for a younger man; shortly after which he died.
Cameron, the surveyor, was another good man, and wholly wrapped up in his work. Of Cameron it was said, that he imagined that surveyors were not for the purpose of surveying the earth, but that the earth was created solely for them to survey. He, good chap, was luckier than Moreton, for his fate was to die in harness; he being found sitting dead in his chair, pen in hand, with a half-written dispatch in front of him.
Mervyn Jones was a particularly smart seaman and navigator; educated at Eton for other things, the sea had, however, exercised an irresistible fascination for him; being too old for the Navy, he had worked up into the Naval Reserve through the Merchant Service, and thus had come out to command the Merrie England. The charts of the Coral Sea owe much to his labour, and to that also of his two officers, Rothwell and Taylor. All these officers were destined later to share a more or less common fate: Jones died of a combination of lungs and malaria, Taylor of malaria at sea, whilst Rothwell was invalided out of the service. Meredith was taking a gang of native convicts down to Sudest Island; they had been lent by the New Guinea Government to assist in making a road to a gold reef discovered there which was now being opened by an Australian company. It was here that he and many of his charges left their bones.

Not far from Sudest lies Rossel Island, a wooded hilly land, inhabited by a small dark-skinned people differing in language and customs from all other Papuans. Personally I do not believe they have any affinity with Papuans, either by descent or in other ways, whatever views ethnologists may hold. The Rossel Islanders have among their songs several Chinese chants, the origin of which is explained in this way. In September, 1858, the ship St. Paul, bound from China to the Australian gold-fields, and carrying some three hundred Chinese coolies, was wrecked on an outlying sand-bank of Rossel. The European officers and crew took to the boats and made their way to Queensland, the Chinamen being left to shift for themselves. Thus abandoned to their fate, the Chinamen were discovered by the islanders, and were by them liberally supplied with food and water; when well fattened they were removed in canoes to the main island, in lots of five and ten, and there killed and eaten. The Chinamen, when removed, were under the impression that they were merely taken in small numbers as the native canoes could only carry a few passengers at a time, being ignorant of the distance of the sea journey. As they left their awful sand-bank in the canoes, they sang paeans and chants of joy, which the quick-eared natives picked up and incorporated in their songs. In 1859 but one solitary Chinaman remained of the three hundred, and he, fortunate man, was taken off Rossel by a passing French steamer and landed in Australia, where history or scandal says he later pursued the occupation of sly grog seller at a Victorian gold rush, and being convicted thereof, was later pardoned in consideration of his sufferings and being the sole survivor of three hundred.
From Sudest the Merrie England went on to Woodlark Island, from whence the discovery of gold had been reported by a couple of traders, Lobb and Ede. These two men were a very good example of the old gold-field’s practice of “dividing mates.” Lobb was professional gold or other mineral prospector, who had sought for gold in any land where it was likely to occur; when successful, his gains, however great, soon slipped away; when unsuccessful, he depended on a “mate” to finance and feed him, in diggers’ language, “grub stake” him, until such time as his unerring instinct should again locate a fresh find. Ede was a New Guinea trader owning a cocoanut plantation on the Laughlan Isles, together with a small vessel. Ede landed Lobb on Woodlark with a number of reliable natives, and, keeping him going with tools, provisions, etc., at last had his reward by word from Lobb of the discovery of payable gold. Thereupon they had reported their discovery and applied for a reward claim to the Administration, together with the request that the island should be proclaimed a gold-field; and at the same time had informed their trader friends, some twenty in all, of what was to be gained at the island.
Lobb and Ede, with their twenty friends, formed the European population of the island when the Merrie England arrived there; with the exception of Lobb, there was not an experienced miner in the lot. The twenty were a curious collection of men: an ex-Captain in Les Chasseurs D’Afrique, whom later on I got to know very well, but who, poor chap, was always most unjustly suspected by the diggers of being an escapee from the French convict establishment at New Caledonia, merely because he was a Frenchman; an unfrocked priest, who by the way was a most plausible and finished scoundrel; and the son of the Premier of one of the Australian colonies; these now, with Ede and myself, constitute the sole survivors of the men who heard Sir William declare the island a gold-field. Here it was that an ex-British resident, and the son of a famous Irish Churchman, jostled shoulders with men whose real names were only known to the police in the various countries from which they hailed. “Jimmy from Heaven,” an angelic person, who was once sentenced to be hanged for murder and, the rope breaking, gained a reprieve and pardon, hence his sobriquet; “Greasy Bill”; “Bill the Boozer”; “French Pete”; and “The Dove,” a most truculent scoundrel; the names they answered to sufficiently explain the men.
All nationalities and all shades of character, from good to damned bad, they however all held two virtues in common: a dauntless courage and a large charity to the unfortunate; traits which will perhaps stand them in better stead in the bourne to which they have gone than they did in New Guinea.