The Call Of The South by George Lewis Becke (i read book .TXT) 📕

Cook's Islands, or elsewhere--he will have Customs duties to pay, house rent, and a trading licence. And everywhere he will find keen competition and measly profits, unless he lives like a Chinaman on rice and fish.

"In British New Guinea you can dig gold in hand-fuls out of the mangrove swamps" (O ye gods!) "and prospect for any other mineral you may choose."

Gold-mining in British New Guinea is carried out under the most trying conditions of toil and hardships, The fitting out of a prospecting-party of four costs quite L500 to L1,000. And only very experienced diggers tackle mining in the Possession. And his Honour the Administrator will not let improperly equipped parties into the Possession.

"It is the simplest thing in the world" to become a pearl sheller. "You charter a schooner--or even a cutter--if you are a smart seaman and know the Pacific, use her for general trading... and every now and then go and look up some one of the innumerable reefs and low atolla... Some are beds of treasure, full of pearl-shell, that sells at L100 to L200 the ton," etc.

All very pretty! Here is the "simplicity" of it--taking it at so much _per month_: Charter of small schooner of one hundred tons, L200 to L300; wages of captain and crew, L40; cost of provisions and wear and tear of canvas, running gear, etc., L60 (diving suits and gear for two divers, and boat would have to be bought at a cost of some hundreds of pounds); wages per month of each diver from L50 to L75, with often a commission on the shell they raise. Then you can go a-sailing, and _cherchez_ around for your treasure beds. If you dive in Dutch waters, the gunboats collar you and your ship; if you go into British waters you will find that the business is under strict inspection by Commonwealth officials who keep a properly sharp eye on your doings. If you wish to go into the French Paumotus you have first to visit Tahiti, and apply for and pay 2,500 francs for a half-yearly licence to dive. (Most likely you won't get it) If you try without this licence to buy even a single pearl from the natives, you will get into trouble--as my ship did in the "seventies," when the gunboat _Vaudreuil_ swooped down on us, sent a prize crew aboard, put some of us in irons, and towed us to Tahiti, where we lay in Papeite harbour for three months, until legal proceedings were finished and the ship was liberated.

"About L150 would be the lowest sum with which such a work" (scooping up the treasure) "could be carried out. This would provide a small schooner or a cutter from Auckland for a few months with all necessary stores. She would require two men, competent to navigate, two A.B.'s, and a diver, in order to be run safely and comfortably; and the wages of these would be an extra cost A couple of experienced yachtsmen could, of course, manage the affair more cheaply."

Some of these recent nine letters which I received contained some very interesting facts. One man, an old trader in Polynesia, wrote me as follows: "Some of these poor beggars actually land in Polynesian ports with a trunk or two of glass beads, penny looking-glasses, twopenny knives and other weird rubbish, and are aghast to see large stores stocked with thousands of pounds' worth of goods of all kinds, goods which are sold to the natives at a very low margin of profit, for competition is very keen. In the Society Islands the Chinese storekeepers undersell us whites--they live cheaper." And "in Levuka and Suva, in Fiji, in Rarotonga and other islands there are scores of broken-down white men. They cannot be called 'beachcombers,' for there is nothing on the beach for them to comb. They live on the charity of the traders and natives. If they were sailor-men they could perhaps get fifteen dollars a month on the schooners. Why they come here is a mystery.... Most of them seem to be clerks or school-teachers. One is a violin teacher. Another young fellow brought out a typewriting machine; he is now yardman at a Suva hotel. A third is a married man with two young children. He is a French polisher, wife a milliner. They came from Belfast, and landed with eleven pounds! Hotel expenses swallowed all that in three weeks. Money is being collected to send them to Auckland," and so on. There is always so much mischief being done by globe-trotting tourists and ill-informed and irresponsible novelists who scurry through the Southern Seas on a liner, and then publish their hasty impressions. According to them, any one with a modicum of common sense can shake the South Sea Pagoda Tree and become bloatedly wealthy in a year or so.

Did the "Special Commissioner" know that these articles would lead to much misery and suffering? No, of course not. They were written in good faith, but without knowledge. For instance, the wild statement about looking up "some one of the innumerable reefs and low atolls... beds of treasure, full of pearl-shell that sells at L100 to L200 the ton," etc.--there is not one single reef or atoll either in the North or South Pacific that has not been carefully prospected for pearl-shell during the past thirty-five years.

Then as to gold-mining in British New Guinea, "where you can dig gold in handfuls out of the mangrove swamps".

Diggers who go to New Guinea have to go through the formality of first paying their passages to that country from Australia. Then, on arrival, they have to arrange the important matter of engaging native carriers to take their outfit to the Mambare River gold-fields--a tedious and expensive item. And only experienced men of sterling physique can stand the awful labour and hardships of gold-mining in the Possession. Deadly malarial fever adds to the diggers' hard lot in New Guinea, and the natives, when not savage and treacherous, are as unreliable and as lazy as a Spanish priest.

In conclusion, I can assure my readers that there is no prospect for any man of limited means to make money in the South Seas as a trader. Any assertions to the contrary have no basis of fact in them. In cotton and coco-nut planting there are good openings for men of the right stamp; in the second industry, however, one has to wait six years before his trees are in full bearing.



CHAPTER XV ~ THE STORY OF TOKOLME

Early one morning some native hunters came on board our vessel and asked me to come with them to the mountain forest of the island of Ponape in quest of wild boar. Glad to escape from the ship, which lay in a small land-locked harbour on the south-eastern side of the island, I quickly put together my gear, stepped into one of the long red-painted canoes alongside, and pushed off with my companions--men whom I had known for some years and who always looked to me to join them in at least one of their hunting trips whenever our brig visited their district on a trading cruise. Half an hour's paddling across the still waters of the harbour brought us to a narrow creek, lined on each side with dense mangroves. Following its upward course for the third of a mile, we came to and landed at a point of high land, where the-dull and monotonous mangroves gave place to giant cedar trees and lofty palms. Here were two or three small native huts, used by the hunters as a rendezvous. Early as it was, some of their women-folk had arrived from the village, and cooked and made ready a meal of baked fish and chickens. Then after the inevitable smoke and discussion as to the route to be taken, and telling the women to expect us back at nightfall, we shouldered our rifles and hunting spears, and started off in single file along a winding track that followed the turnings of the now clear and brawling little stream. At first we experienced considerable trouble in ridding ourselves of over a dozen mongrel curs; they had followed the men from the village (two miles distant) and the women had fastened all of them in, in one of the huts, but the brutes had torn a hole through the cane-work side of the hut and came after us in full cry. Kicking and pelting them with sticks had no effect--they merely yelped and snarled and darted off into the undergrowth, only to reappear somewhere ahead of us. Finally my companions became so exasperated that, forgetting they were newly-made converts to Christianity, they burst out into torrents of abuse, invoking all the old heathen gods to smite the dogs individually and collectively, and not let them spoil our sport. This proving of no effect, an exasperated and stalwart young native named Na, who was the owner of one of the most ugly and persistent of the animals, asked me to lend him my Winchester, and, waiting for a favourable chance, shot the brute dead. In an instant the rest of the pack vanished without a sound, and we saw no more of them till we returned to the huts in the evening.

These natives (seven in all) were, with the exception of a man of fifty years of age, all young men, and fine types of the Micronesian. Although much slighter in build than the average Polynesian of the south-eastern islands of the Pacific, they were extremely muscular and sinewy, and as active and fleet of foot as wild goats. Their skins, where not tanned a darker hue by the sun, were of a light reddish-brown, and the blue tatooing on their bodies showed out very clearly; most of them had a very Semitic and regular cast of features, and their straight black hair and fine white teeth imparted a very pleasing appearance. Unlike some of the natives of the Micronesian Archipelago on the islands farther to the westward they dislike the disgusting practice of chewing the betel-nut, and in general may be regarded as a very cleanly and highly intelligent race of people. Somewhat suspicious, if not sullen, with the European stranger on first acquaintance, they do not display that spirit of hospitality and courtesy that seems to be inherent with the Samoans, Tahitians and the Marquesans. From the time when their existence was first made known to the world by the discoveries of the early Spanish voyagers to the South Seas they have been addicted to warfare, and the inhabitants of Ponape in particular had an evil reputation for the horrible cruelties the victors inflicted upon the vanquished in battle, even though the victims were frequently their own kith and kin. When, less than twenty years ago, Spain reasserted her claims to the Caroline Islands (of which Ponape is the largest and most fertile) and placed garrisons on several of the islands, the natives of Ponape made a savage and determined resistance, and in one instance wiped out two companies of troops and their officers. A few years ago, however, the entire archipelago passed into the hands of Germany--Spain accepting a monetary compensation for parting with territory that never belonged to her--and at the present time these once valorous and warlike savages are learning the ways of civilisation and--as might be expected--rapidly diminishing in numbers.

*****


After ridding ourselves of the dogs we pressed steadily onward and upward, till we no longer heard the hum of the surf beating upon the barrier reef, and then when the sun was almost overhead we emerged from the deep, darkened aisles of the silent forest into a small cleared space on the summit of a spur and saw displayed before us one of the loveliest panoramas