In And About New Guinea.

How Fortunes Were Made And Lost

(By Frank Reid in The Melbourne Argus.)

PERHAPS romance has gone from the tropical seas to the north of Aus tralia, but there was a time —and not so long ago —when some of the most daring adventurers in the seven seas drifted to the little palm-clustered and coral-girdled isles which lie like a green necklace to the east of the New Guinea coast.

There they set up trading stations.

Some prospered and retired to spend their easily earned wealth in gay cities; others died of fever; and not a few went down fighting against sav ages. They were brave and reckless men who carried their lives in their hands, and who knew that once they showed the slightest sign of fear of the dusky inhabitants of these coral specks their lives would flicker out as sud denly as a candle exposed to a sudden gust cf wind.

The first traders to these islands mainly came from Melbourne and Syd ney with ships laden with trade goods, which they bartered for copra, pearl shell, and, occasionally, the valuable gems that lay within. Many of these men were the skippers of South Sea trading schooners, and experience had taught them how to deal with the treacherous islanders.

They would leave Melbourne or Syd ney with perhaps £100 worth of the goods so much appreciated by the simple islanders —coloured prints, look ing-glasses, bead necklaces, mouth organs, clay pipes, and vile smoking tobacco. Soon afterward they would return to their home ports with full cargoes of copra, coconut oil, tortoise shell, bird cf paradise plumes, curios, native weapons, and other odds and ends which, when sold in a southern city, returned the owner any amount up to £500.

Some of the skippers of these boats included in their cargoes of trade goods a couple of hundred dogs, usually homeless mongrels picked up in the streets of the cities. These were eagerly sought by the natives. They com manded more value in barter than any thing else. Many of the animals ob tained good homes; others were speedily included on the native menu.

Their teeth went to the making of a necklace for a chief.

Then came the traders who settled on the islands, mainly with the object of obtaining what the natives had to barter before the boats came and traded with them. These men erected palm-thatched stores and filled the shelves with cheap goods and vile spirits. It was foolish to introduce this rank rum and gin to the savages, who became murderous when they drank too much.

It is surprising how many of these island traders met violent deaths at the hands of the natives. At Weber hafen alone 14 traders were killed in less than two years. The total number done to death in New Britain was almost 100.

Captain Fergusson, one of the best known traders in the South Seas, who was said to be able to handle natives better than any other white man at that time, opened, a store in the Duke of York group, and was killed a week later. In 1883 a trader at Rabaul sent half a dozen men to open stores on the Hermit Islands, but they were all killed by the natives.

Then there were the men who made fortunes out of these trading ventures.

The stories of their success often read like the wildest fiction.

One of these men was Captain Her sheim, the skipper of a South Sea schooner. He began in a small way on seme of the islands, but gradually he extended his operations, placing men in charge of trading stores on half a hundred islands. Then he purchased a fleet of schooners to collect the goods obtained by barter at his numerous trading stations, bought large areas of land for a few shillings, and estab lished plantations. Eventually he was the possessor of the largest trading enterprise in New Guinea waters, and he accumulated immense wealth.

The trading ventures of Rudolf Wahlen are tinged with romance. It is no wonder that he has been called “the Aladdin of the South Seas.” Thirty years ago he was a young German em ployed as a clerk at the headquarters of Hersheim and Co., at Rabaul. Then there came an opportunity for him to acquire for a little more than £200 the trading interests of his firm in the Western Islands. During the first year of occupation he cleared £4,000 from pearl shell alone. Supported by Ger man capital, he purchased from the Government for a trifling sum many acres of the most fertile soil on several islands, the Governor, unaware of the facts, not considering them of any value. Later the Governor was aston ished when Wahlen in one year alone obtained about 200 tons of copra from his native coconut plantations already in bearing.

In a few years Rudolf Wahlen was one of the wealthiest men in New Guinea. He owned the Hermit group, and on the crest of a hill on the island of Maron he erected a magnificent dwelling lt is still standing. It is a great house, with a

high tower. On each side there are broad stone verandahs with pergolas, stone balustrades, and decorations, cloaked in creeping vines. Inside are great rooms with French windows open ing out on to balconies; electric light and water are laid on. There are a tennis court, a photographic dark room, and a garden, and the grass-grown paths along which Wahlen used to drive in an open landau drawn by two small ponies may be seen. Before the war the luxury in this magnificent re sidence outrivalled that of Government House at Rabaul.

During one of his visits to his native land Wahlen married a Swedish woman of noble birth, and he acquired a fine estate in Germany. He was residing there with his wife when war broke out, and he did not return to the southern seas where he made his for tune. The magnificent residence on Maron Island, with its 47,000 coconut palms, is now the property of two Aus tralians, both of them returned soldiers.

Many Chinese also made fortunes out of trading on these islands. One of these men, who had previously been employed as cook for Captain Her sheim, eventually became the owner of the Rabaul post-office, a shipyard, sev eral plantations, and a considerable portion of Chinatown in Rabaul.

The old-time traders are gone, and the graves of many of them are scat tered about the islands, where they faced a thousand perils before they were killed or died of fever. The op portunities of making speedy fortunes are no more. To-day the native knows to a penny the value of anything he has to sell, and he gets it in good Aus tralian currency. He has lost his fond ness for such gaudy things as coloured prints or bead necklaces. He scans the pages of an Australian catalogue and orders his requirements as the white planter does. The modern native of these once savage isles is a very shrewd gentleman.