Across Papua;

Front matter

* -

THE ROYAL COMMISSION AT SAMARAI.

Centre— Col. the Hon. J. A. K. Mackay, C.B., M.L.C. (Chairman).

Preface

Having always felt a deep interest in the dark races, I was naturally anxious to visit Papua, and eventually my opportunity came in a manner totally unexpected and by a path hedged with responsibility; the Prime Minister of the Common¬ wealth Government asking me to accept the position of Chairman of a Royal Commission brought into being (to quote the letters patent) “to inquire into and report upon the present con¬ ditions, including the methods of Government, of the territory now known as British New Guinea, and the best means for their improvement.”

My colleagues, under either of whom I take this opportunity of stating I would have considered it an honour to serve, were William Edward Parry- Okeden, Esq., I.S.O., a gentleman who had held high official positions, including that of Chief Commissioner of Police in Queensland, and who, in addition to a matured departmental knowledge, had long and intimate experience both of our native races and the Kanaka problem, and Charles Edward Herbert, Esq., at one time Member for, and now Judge and Resident of, our vast Northern

VI PREFACE

Territory, and consequently of necessity, as well as by virtue of his exceptional powers of observation, closely conversant* with tropical and aboriginal conditions.

Thus the Commissioners were drawn from parts of Australia, hundreds (in the case of Judge Herbert thousands) of miles apart, and, as a not unnatural consequence, were all personally unknown to each other, when on 27th August, 1906, his Excellency Lord Northeote, Governor- General of the Commonwealth of Australia, signed the letters patent giving them official status as the Papuan Royal Commission.

The causes which led up to this step on the part of the then Government were many and complex, and appear to me to have had their roots in a period somewhat remote from the present. Prior to 1883 more or less irresponsible exploring and gold prospecting expeditions fired alike the imaginations and the cupidity of adven¬ turous spirits with their accounts of its mineral richness and tropical beauty ; but in that year Sir Thomas Mcllwraith, Premier of Queensland, lifted Papua into the domain of political and national problems by annexing it to Queensland, giving, among other reasons for his statesmanlike action, this unanswerable one, 44 That the establishment of a foreign Power in the neighbourhood of Australia would be injurious to British, and more particularly to Australian, interests.”

PREFACE vii

Unfortunately, the Imperial authorities pro¬ fessed to think otherwise — possibly, they did not take the trouble to think at all — or it may be that Australian interests were as yet of too little im¬ portance to weigh against possible friction nearer home. Be that as it may, the net result to Australia is the presence of a great foreign and naval Power (which to-day seems to have the whole British Empire in a condition of watchful¬ ness) within a week’s steam of her sea-board.

In 1884 a British Protectorate was proclaimed over part of New Guinea ; and on September 4th, 1888, the Administrator, Dr. McGregor, officially declared this portion to be a British possession.

The name of Sir William McGregor will ever be remembered in connection with New Guinea as that of a ruler who combined, both as regards natives and whites, firmness with justice; and under him an official system began which did far better work than might reasonably have been expected, when some of the material he had to work on is considered. It is hard to make bricks without straw ; yet, officially and financially, that is practically what successive Administrators have been asked to do, from the days of the Protectorate down to the advent of the Royal Commission.

Why McGregor stood alone lay in the fact that he rose in the main superior to adverse conditions, and proved that it was possible to do fine work vra PREFACE

with a staff in the main more or less hopeless, although certainly leavened by one or two highly capable and self-sacrificing officers.

With his departure, antagonistic elements in the public service, held in check by his commanding personality, gradually began to re-awaken until the officials of the Territory practically lived in two hostile camps.

Meanwhile the problem of white settlement slowly but surely began to assert its claims to more consideration than it had received in the past. Rightly or wrongly, many of the white population held that under the Crown Colony regime , and also under that of the Commonwealth, Papua had been, and was being, governed solely as a close preserve for the native race, and that little or no attention was given by officials to agricultural or mineral development — indeed that white settlement was discouraged rather than welcomed.

Rumours of official friction, of interminable delays in land matters, and of civil discontent with existing conditions roused the attention of certain members of the Federal Parliament; questions were asked on the floor of the House, and eventually on July 4th, 1906, Captain F. R. Barton, the Administrator, wrote to the Prime Minister asking for the appointment of a Royal Commission. This course was adopted by the Government on the 27th of August, 1906, but

PREFACE ix

whether in response to his request or for other reasons I naturally have no knowledge.

Accompanied by the Commission’s secretary — Mr. Herbert Harris — I sailed from Sydney on the s.s. Guthrie on the 1st of September, 1906, being joined by Mr. Parry-Okeden at Brisbane and Judge Herbert at Cairns. At Cairns we tran¬ shipped to the Malaita , arriving at Port Moresby, the official capital of Papua, on Thursday the 13th of September, 1906.

From then on till we reached Brisbane on December 6th, 1906, we sailed round the whole coastline, and visited all the important groups of the territory, including a march from Buna Bay across the island and over the Owen Stanley Range to Port Moresby.

Evidence was taken on the Merrie England , in mission houses, stores, government stations, on the diggings, and in the open on the crest of a mountain 5,000 feet above the sea — one of our camps on the overland trip.

This, of necessity, meant that I had to scribble down the following impressions after the day’s work was done, in all sorts of places, and at all sorts of times, which must be my excuse for their sketchy character and want of continuity of purpose.

I have naturally not touched on the real work of the Commission — that will be found in the Official Report — and wherever I have brought

X PREFACE

officials into the story of our wanderings it has been to speak of them as I found them, by the camp-fire, and on the march, and quite irrespective of the standpoint of a Commissioner.

Kenneth Mackay.

Legislative Council , Sydney ,

Chapter I

SYDNEY TO PORT MORESBY. PAGE

The Popular View of Papua — I Board the Good Ship Guthrie — The Life a Sailor Yearns for — Far Hills are Ever Green — I Meet a Colleague — Inside the Barrier Reef — Whitsunday Pass — Townsville —

Why Bustle ? — Our Trinity is Completed — A Man of Many Parts — Cairns — North Queensland Hill Station — The Barron Falls — Our New Com¬ pany — Cooktown — No Man’s Enemy but His Own — Papuan Patriotism — Papua Rises from the Sea -------- 1

Chapter II. Port Moresby — Past And Present

Port Moresby — Papua’s First Explorers — Sir Thomas Mcllwraith’s Annexation — Murderers as Porters— “ George ” — A Unique Gaol- Two Native Villages — The Sago Lakatois— Where One Who Deserved a Better Fate Died — Among the Villages — The First Convert — In Front of the Camera — The Legion of “The Great and Gracious Tree ” — Our Fiery Steeds — Matrimonial Disabilities— A Native Dandy — A Painting from Nature’s Gallery — A Papuan Sunset - - 13

Chapter III. Port Moresby To Kerepuna — Rubber Planting And

CHRISTIANITY.

The Mei-rie England — Kapa Kapa— Rigo — The Finest House in Papua — Novel Methods of Defence — A Charming Alternative — The Village of Hula — -Kerepuna — Old Faiths Die Hard— Striving after the Unattainable — Good Work — On a Mission Verandah — Farewell to Kerepuna - -- -- -- -- -- -

XII

CONTENTS

Chapter IV. Samarai And Woodlark — A Beauty Spot And A Mine

We go Aground — A Cocoa-nut Plantation — Fife Bay — The Fairest Scene I ever knew — Samarai — From the Residency — Men who Come to Samarai — The Lost Legion — A Walk through Samarai — Kwato — An Evening in a Missionary’s Home — We Visit Milne Bay — Dobu — Woodlark .

Chapter V. An Island Sea

Among the Islands — A Relic of the Past — Kiriwiria — Real Chiefs — On Spirits Generally — The Local Story of the Creation — The Mission — The Destroying Spirit Hovering over Papua — A Native Dance — A Picturesque Anchorage — Pigeon Island — A Worried V.C. — The Patron Snake — Moresby Passage — Bwaidoga — The Methodist Resolve — Bartle Bay Some Native Beliefs — Native Irrigation Schemes — Dogura — Noble Women — Evensong — One who has Borne the Heat and Burden of the Day .

Chapter VI. Cape Nelson To Tamata — A Brave Man And A Wonderful

MARCH.

Cape Nelson— “ Victory ’’—The One Climb Left— The Fiords— A Practical A.R.M. — The Amphibians — Blood Money — Justice, Swift and Stern — The Power of a Fearless Heart— Buna Bay — Ora Bay — Mambare Beach Tamata — Childish Sport — The Story of Corporal Sedu The Rout — Two Lessons — Bushimi and Oya — Bushimi’s March from Sea to Sea .

Chapter VII. From Sea To Sea — Buna Bay To The Divide

Getting Ready — We Divide Forces — We Begin our March from Sea to Sea— We Enter the Forest— The Fever Belts— On the Bank of the Giriuri— Some of our Fellow Travellers— Primal Papua — Kandarita — A Village Crone — Children of Nature and the Sun — The First Fruit of the Land -Half Devil, Half Child — We Reach the Yodda Road Again — Statues in Bronze — Some Types — Grass Patches — An Hereditary Office Native Gardens — Log Bridges — A Papuan Moses — A Dainty Maid A Native Climber — Running Amok — We Reach the Kumusi — A Grim Tragedy— An Epicure’s Opinion— From the Rest House— A.N.C. Dandies — A Native Market — We Cross the Kumusi — Suspen¬ sion Bridges — Natural Engineers — A Sorcerer — A Faith that should Move Mountains —Fairly Strong in the ’Seventies— The Divide — “ Purple Patches ” .

CONTENTS xin

CHAPTER VIH.

THE YODDA FIELDS AND KOKODA. PAGE

The Mambare — Kokoda — The Yodda — A Close Call — The Grim Tragedy of it All — God’s Acre — Men we Met — The Field — A Clean Up — Future Possibilities — Relics of an Older Race — We Leave the Yodda — We Part with Little — Kokoda once more — The Station Buildings — Early Morning Parade — Three Attributes of a Good Soldier — Stories of the A.N.C. — A Man who should be Laid by the Heels — A Dance under the Stars — A Garden of Plenty— A Land of Untold Possibilities — A Splendid Lot — The Route is Chosen — The Sorrows of a Photographer ---------- - 109

Chapter IX. Across The Main Range

The Costume of Experience — Farewell Kokoda — We leave the Last Outpost Behind — We Climb the Mountain’s Face — A Last Look at Kokoda — Leeches and Scrub-Itch — At the 4,272 feet Level — Getting Down — The Ascent of the Main Range — The Land of Palms and Moss — The Land of Glittering Silence — We Fall 1,000 feet — Where Perchance the F airies Dance — The Carriers’ Task — The Frozen Carriers — We Ascend Once More — 8,690 feet above the Sea — A Vision Splendid — Another Mountain Camp — The Gap — Orchids — A Sword of Water — Two Carriers go Sick — Serigina — Only One More Hill — Pitching Camp under Difficulties — Bruce answers our Shots — -A few Earnest, Simple Words — Kagi — The Commandant — The Future Road — He Never Expected to see Us — Tea and Whisky— Albert Edward —

The King of the Range — Beregi — Calm, Cold, and Silent — In the Mist Sea — We Lose our old Escort and Carriers — Farewell to Monckton ------------123

Chapter X. The Last Stage Of Our March

We Begin the Last Phase — A Strange Sepulchre — Our Mid-day Halt — A Thoughtful Leader — Our Camp — Race Suicide- — Moral and Dignified — Wearing the Breeches — A Fascinating Study — A Haunting Song — A Papuan Valhalla — Burial Customs — Sugar Cane— Our First Level Track — Our First Mail — Two go Sick — “ I’ve got it Beat ” — The Opie — Iorobaiva — Anthony — Bruce Wants to Go On — Women Carriers — A Tropical Storm — What Malaria can do — Pride of Race — The Last Hill but One — A Hornet’s Nest — The Overland Mail — Iruta Puna — Strange Customs — George’s Blandishments fail — Making Fire — George makes a Damper — Pipes and how they are Smoked — A Land of Plenty — The Last Mountain Village — Good Old Harris — Sogeri - xrv

CONTENTS

Chapter XI. Reflections And Coffee

We Shake Hands on it — In Search of Gold — We Bum our Boats — Our Condition — What the March Proved — Feather Weights — Paying Fealty — A Future Policy — A Time that is Past — Dreams — The Transition Stage — A Possibility — Shirted Chiefs — Horses at Last —Mr. Ballantine’s Plantation — Local Coffee — Mr. Greene — A Seeker after Health — A Seeker after Knowledge — Go and Do Likewise — The Plantation — What a Hundred Acres of Coffee Costs — The Soil — What Sogeri Produces— We Leave Sogeri — A Vision Splendid — The Rouna Falls — The Copper Mine — Experts from Cooktown — Warirata — We Reach the other Sea — Re-united .

Chapter XII. Possibilities Of The West

Port Moresby Again— A Prehistoric Man— Natural Barriers— Our Work is Done— We Say Farewell — Redscar Bay — Yule Island — The Sacred Heart — Women Papua owes much to — Improved Health Conditions — A Sheep Experiment — A Genial Christian — A Medical A.R.M. — Mount Yule — A River’s Mouth — Ermelo — Out of the Dry Belt — Keen Traders — Village Fathers as Teachers — Bramble Cay at Night — Rats for Lunch — Rohu’s Experience — -First Australian Land — Darnley

Island — Daru — Titanic Stone Axes — Curios — A Practical Worker _

Pythons v. Fowls — At the Gaol — Irrigation— Agriculturists — A Great Lone Land — Class of Country and Soil — Tobacco — Timber and Labour — Portable Saw-mills — The Other Side of the Picture — Agricultural

Products — Land and Natives — Climate — A Dream of the Future _

The Present— Farewell Papua .

Chapter XIII. A Last Word

APPENDIX. •

PAGE

LAND IN PAPUA.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING

PAGE

Frontispiece — The Royal Commission at Samarai.

Lakatoi, Port Moresby . 21

Natives at Pari - . 23

Maulai, First Christian Convert in New Guinea, with

his Wife and Son, and Malagu, Village Constable 26

Natives on Dubu at Pari ------ 28

India-rubber Trees, Kapa Kapa - - - 33

Sisal Hemp, Kapa Kapa - . 35

Native Teachers’ Quarters, L.M.S., Vatorata - 36

Sorcerer’s House, Kerepuna . 38

Making Copra, Cloudy Bay - 45

Settler’s House, Cloudy Bay ----- 46

Samarai from the Residency . 48

Cricket Match at Kwato . 52

Natives of Dobu ------- 61

Painted House, Dobu ------ 62

The Mines at Woodlark ------ 65

Miners at Woodlark Island . 66

Samoan Mission Teachers, Kiriwiria - - - - 71

A Native Dance at Kiriwiria . 74

The Merrie England, Cape Nelson - 80

Armed Native Constabulary, Samarai - - - 85

Warriors at Kandarita . 02

Crossing the Giriuri . 98

XVI

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING

PAGE

Crossing the Kumusi . 103

Candidate for Position of Village Constable - - 106

The same in Uniform . 106

Kokoda Squad, Armed Native Constabulary - - m

Government Station at Kokoda - - - - 115

The Main Owen Stanley Range - - - . 117

Resting . 124

At Owen Stanley Range, 8,301 feet - 126

At Owen Stanley Range, 8,690 feet - 131

A Strange Sepulchre . 139

A Native Grave - . 142

Carriers, Kagi District - - - _ . . 145

The Official Overland Mail - I49

Resting near Iruta Puna . 150

Godoi, Chief of the Baruri Tribe .... 156

Government Station, Daru . 165

Paying-off “ Boys,” Daru . 172

The First Legislative Council . 182

Map of Papua, showing Author's Route, folded in at end of hook

Chapter I. Sydney To Port Moresby

The Popular View of Papua— I Board the Good Ship Guthrie— The Life a Sailor Yearns for— Far Hills are Ever Green— I Meet a

Colleague — Inside the Barrier — Whitsunday Pass — Townsville _ Why

Bustle ? Our Trinity is Completed — A Man of Many Parts — Cairns — North Queensland Hill Station— The Barron Falls— Our New Company Cooktown —No Man s Enemy but His Own — Papuan Patriotism — Papua Rises from the Sea.

Had I taken seriously all that was told to me, both with regard to the climate and diseases of Papua, and the peculiar, not to say truculent, tendencies of certain of its inhabitants, I would have felt like begging the Prime Minister to change the objective of the Commission to Guatemala or some such peaceful and truthful health resort. Nor did most I had read help to discount the prophecies of my friends. For instance, the following quotation from a work by D’ Albertis came as a cold douche to a man who had never walked while a horse was available, and who knew that he had one eighty-mile tramp ahead of him, with a big probability of several others ' “ It is easier to ascend the highest peaks of the European Alps with an alpenstock, than to cross an ordinary hill in New Guinea.”

I may say that later, when crawling over the Owen Stanley Range, I fully realised why the

B brilliant Italian naturalist and explorer had let his vivid southern imagination get the better of him.

Having occasion to call on a Sydney doctor, loved by reason of his kindly heart and ever ready help, he put me in a chair wherein a lotus-eater might dream, gave me a cigar whose every ring framed a vision of peace and safe content, and then let himself go on the subject of Papuan malaria. Sitting surrounded by all that makes a man count life worth retaining, he told me that he had sailed many seas, but that from all he had heard of it, and a few specimens it had been his good fortune to see, the malarial microbe of New Guinea was an easy first as a man killer, and brushing aside my hope (based on previous experiences in fever countries) that I was immune, proceeded to tell me of a man who had come to him from Samarai a yellow wreck, and had died within the past week. But he gave me a specific at parting, of which we drank large quantities, and as none of us con¬ tracted anything more deadly than skinned heels, we christened it after him. On the eve of departure, I was visited by a veritable son of the sea— one who had sailed up rivers and over reefs on every face of Papua, who had explored, traded, and written a book ; and as a result of his experiences he told me that the best way to make the natives God-fearing and useful members of society was to teach them the shorter catechism, and further that while it was humanly possible to find the truth as

THE GOOD SHIP “ GUTHRIE ” 3

far north as Cooktown, from there on the telling of it was a lost art.

So, one stormy afternoon, with scarce an illusion left, I boarded the Guthrie , found Harris, our secretary, and resigned myself to do without food for a few days. Before we reached the lightship, however, the squalls had died away, and the harbour, with its plenitude of gardens, looked superb as we went out. On every height windows helioed flashes of farewell, and once more as we passed between the rock-faced gates and steamed into the open sea, it came to me that the man who ever left so good an anchorage to sail in troubled waters was a restless fool with a distorted con¬ ception of when he was well off.

Outside, each stroke of our propeller drove us into calmer waters, and when morning broke we were floating on a summer sea ; and all day long a picturesque coast line, backed by bold ranges, gave change and colour to the picture.

Why is it that sailors always want to be farmers ? Probably because they draw their inspiration from the village scenes so optimistically portrayed on the stage. But be that as it may, the fact remains that all the officers of the Guthrie yearned for the “ simple life,” and the Captain would gladly leave his graphic descriptions of the wonderful temple ruins of Java to hang on the lips of any man who chanced to open out on sub-soiling or a new breed of hens. Good fellows one and all — may the gods be never so unkind as to grant them

their desire, for a dream-farm is a beautiful and

restful vision, but a real one is a “ demnition

grind.”

A day on board showed me that the East had been “ a-calling,” and that she had not called in vain, for all were Orient bound. A young Victorian mining engineer, to join his brother in far Burmese hills — and he was such a clean-souled, straight-limbed boy, that I grudged him to so fickle a mistress. A pearl fisher, two surveyors for the Straits Settlements, a planter for Sumatra, another for Java, and just one gentle little girl off a Victorian farm, going out all by herself to make a planter happy somewhere beyond Singapore. They were all bound for the shining East, and I doubt if one of them quite realised how good a land he was leaving behind ; but some day, God send, they will remember and come back to us, and we will welcome them, for only stout hearts go out through all the earth and over every sea in answer to the world-old call. And those of them who return have strengthened their thews and broadened their souls, and so are better able to bear the burdens of nationhood.

We were lying at Pinkenba Wharf, Brisbane, and I was sitting on a deck-chair watching some punts go by, when Okeden, one of the men I would live with, think with, and possibly disagree with, for some months, came on board. A typical bush-

INSIDE THE BARRIER REEF 5

man, tall, thin, wiry, with the long thigh, and the clean cut fighting face of a cavalry Colonel, and with a world of kindness in his eyes, and a saving sense of humour hovering about his mouth. He just walked into my life as one who treads familiar ways, and I knew him as one who knows a friend of old days, no matter what dust of years may he between.

A day out from Brisbane found us inside the Barrier Reef, sailing over a sea of silver, and when off Mackay we saw the sun go down behind Percy Island, the home of an old Colonel who, his life work done, there waits the last reveille. Nor do I wonder at his choice, for the scene was surpassingly lovely. A sea of glass, and out beyond an island mystic, beautiful, crowned with pines and rugged with towers of rock, and scarred with deep cut ravines — above gold-circled clouds, and glowing through their dusky mantles the great red sun, polished and round as some old Titan’s shield. For a little it hung twixt cloud-line and hill-crest, and then plunged from sight amid a blaze of radiant colour, leaving behind bright fragments of its glory in a splendid afterglow.

That night, before turning in, I asked the officer of the watch to call me when we were entering Whitsunday Pass. When he did I regretted my after-dinner enthusiasm to commune with nature at 4 a.m. in pyjamas. I further regarded the officer as unnecessarily officious, but never give a sailor a chance to rout you out in the middle of the night. I fancy he cannot resist relieving the monotony of his vigil by hearing you swear. But when I got the sleep out of my eyes I realised that they were opening on a vision splendid.

Sentinel islands kept watch and ward on either side, as we moved on over a waterway still as the night itself. Then, sun rose, and moon set, and one shore was a realm of golden light, and one was shadow-land just tipped by the sinking moon’s silver beams.

After breakfast we passed a white-sailed schooner showing up against the background of another fairy island, and when she was hull down we were still steaming over a summer sea.

At Townsville we got ashore for a leg-stretch. I understand that the present leader of the Queensland opposition is largely responsible for the port, which, according to his opponents, should be somewhere else ; anyway, a majority of the people swear by Philp. The god of the winds is apparently anti-Philp, as he has made several energetic attempts to blow Townsville into the sea.

We lunched at a very fine hotel facing the beach, of which Mrs. McLurcan was once high priestess. I am told that gourmets still regard it as a holy place. Philp has made many laws ; Mrs. McLurcan has written a cookery book ; one rests his claim to remembrance on a people’s political

WHY BUSTLE ? 7

gratitude, the other on a nation’s stomach. Mrs. McLurgan thou hast chosen the surest path to immortality !

Still sailing over calm and beautiful seas we dropped anchor oh Cairns, the while I more than ever realised what a fair heritage we Australians possess. The further north we go the more are we impressed with the fact that if the sea-board inhabitants do not possess “ the calm of Vere de Vere,” in its Tennysonian meaning, they have at least come to the unalterable decision that Gordon was right when he sang that “ all hurry is worse than useless.”

After leaving us to roll about for hours in an open roadstead, a tender put in an appearance, and shortly a cry arose of “ sky pilot.” So did our other colleague impress some of our fellow-passengers, for it was Herbert who stood by the man at the wheel ! Something in the cut of his coat collar must have deceived, for there was little to suggest the twentieth-century cleric in the thin, silent man who stepped aboard and made our party officially complete, just as each day onward he entered into and became more and more an indispensable element in our trinity of friendship.

After an exchange of honest God-speeds with all on board the Guthrie , we put off in a tender for a German liner closer in shore, and once along¬ side of her I obtained painful personal evidence that if the principle of “ one man one job ” may be carried to a logical absurdity, the reverse as here represented by one captain, mate, bo’ sun, deck-hand, and boy rolled into an energetic, excitable, perspiring, cursing whole has certain weaknesses in detail.

As we ran alongside, our captain, dropping his role of steersman, dashed from the bridge, and in his capacity of deck-hand, threw over a fender, then, as boy, caught a rope, while as bo’ sun he exchanged curses with a nautical person on the other vessel. Meanwhile our boat drifted under a for’ard scupper pipe, and as a passenger may neither touch the wheel, nor shout an order down into the engine room, I had to watch helplessly the humiliating spectacle of my luggage being drenched with German bilge water. On the whole, I think, individualism can be carried too far.

Cairns is practically level with the sea, the tropical trees in and about it lifting it above the ordinary bush township, but that is all. The approach from the ocean is rather fine, high hills guarding the flanks of the roadstead and backing the town itself. Commercially it is very much alive, owing to the mineral, timber, and agri¬ cultural riches, of which it is the distributor.

Having a day to put in, we took the evening train for Kuranda, the local hill station. The trip up is both interesting and picturesque, being nearly all tropical, and with, for a time, splendid panoramic views astern of the rich lowlands,

THE BARRON FALLS 9

strongly reminiscent of parts of India; and out beyond, the sea, with (to-day) the old Guthrie floating on it. The railway passes a beautiful, but small, fall ; skirts the valley down which the Barron river flows, and passes the falls them¬ selves just before reaching the station.

We stayed at a comfortable, if unpretentious, weatherboard hotel, built on a rise just in front of a lovely stream, with a foreground of ridges covered with dense tropical forest, where one sees the banyan and rich foliaged milk tree, from which, when tapped, streams of fluid gush out. Here also grow palms, banana trees, and, near at hand, coflee. ’Tis the home of the paw paw, grenadilla, loquat, and mango tree, while on every hand are rich tropical blossoms. Hibiscus, bougainvillea, and great white bell-flowers, breath¬ ing perfume, delicate and sensuous — a garden to rest and dream in, a grove in which to offer up incense at the shrine of love.