Goldfields Pioneers.

AN interesting group, photographed on the steps of the Salamaua Hotel.

Left to right: Mr. GEORGE ARNOLD, one of the first men on the Morobe goldfield, where he did well. He goes south occasionally —which he can well afford to do —but the tropics, and his warm goldfields friendships, always draw him back again.

Mrs. ALAN INNES, proprietress of the Salamaua Hotel—the first establish ment of its kind on the goldfields, and now a sort of social centre for all these districts, Mr. E. ROWLANDS , out in Salamaua, enjoying a taste of civilisation, after 34 years prospecting in and around the head-waters of the Ramu. To get “home,”

Ned Rowlands walks 90 miles up the Markham, and 40 miles across the water shed into the Ramu country. For years, his only neighbours were the truculent and treacherous natives, but now the natives behave themselves, and there are half a dozen other white men seeking in there for gold.

Mr. E. J. ROACHE, prospector and miner, convalescing on the coast. He was far in the interior, gold-seeking, when he became desperately ill. His native boys stuck to him, and somehow carried him through wild country— soaking with almost continuous rain and mostly up on end —into Wau. He recovered —which fact he feelingly says is due to the devoted nursing of Mrs.

Stewart, proprietress of the Wau Hotel.