Tropicalities

ONE can overtrain a house-boy.

A Rabaul woman had spent many fretful hours, teaching a “monkey” exactly how to wait at table, and the use of the various articles.

One day, there came to luncheon a gentleman of much personal merit; but he had been trained in a hard school, and his table manners were not quite of the best. He talked loudly; and, while he talked, he seized a piece of bread in his left hand and, with his own knife, reached across the table to nip off a piece of butter.

The watching “monkey” jumped in, seized the butter-knife, and thrust it upon the guest. “No, no, master —’im ’e feller butter” he cried, pushing the knife into the gentleman’s hand.

The guest was a sport. He grinned, and used the butter-knife.

THERE are few more devoted couples than Resident Magistrate Cridland, of the Papuan Service, and his clever, goodlooking wife; but this cynical scribe can record, with satisfaction, that he saw a domestic brawl in the making. It was at Cairns, and people were leaving the Mac dhui to visit Barron Falls.

“You people coming?” said someone to Mr. and Mrs. Cridland.

“No,” said the magistrate. “Got an appointment this afternoon. Got to get my hair cut.”

“Get it done this morning,” said the other man.

“Can’t. Going out into the Delta Divi sion, where there are no barbers, so I always leave the cutting of my hair to

the last possible moment, before leaving Australia.”

“But what do you do when your hair grows? Come back to Australia?”

“Oh, no—then I have to let my wife cut it!”

Mrs. Cridland was swallowing hard, pre paratory to the commencement of a long speech, when the interrogator fled.

Major Clifford collinson, of Simbo, Solomon Islands, tells a very amusing story of a visit to Sydney with one of his “boys.” He took the “boy” to the Sydney Zoo and had many a good laugh at the amazement of the native. On seeing an elephant the “boy” refused to believe it was true until he touched the animal and its trunk swung around. The “boy” jumped about three feet in the air, and with horror-stricken face exclaimed, “Masta, what name this fella? ’E carry one fella tail along front, one fella tail along behind. Which way ’e go?” Need less to say, Mr. Collinson was too doubled up with laughter to reply.—S.L.

THE numerous exploration feats per formed by Mr. E. W. P. Chinnery, N.G. anthropologist and explorer, among the Kukukuku and other less-known tribes of New Guinea received much attention when he was in England recently. A special representative of one of the lead ing London daily newspapers interviewed Mr. Chinnery at Australia House. The next day the following tersely written “thumb-nail biography” appeared in the paper: “Works in wool pullover because, after 25 years in the bush, feels cold in Eng land’s July. Rolls his own, and many of them. Trusted on sight by savages, ani mals, and children. Hero-worshipped by men who work with him. Never knowm to lose temper. Combines authority (scientific and administrative) with patience, sympathy, humour, and charm.

Entirely without vanity. In civilisation, gains weight rapidly. In bush, lean as razor on poor food and rough leg-work.

But in either place always fit.”

“WAIBEN ” sends us a scientific note on “Head-hunting in Torres Straits.”

A few years ago, he writes, the Torres Strait Islanders were notorious as hun ters and collectors of heads, not as a hobby but as a means of barter with the natives of Papua. The “Tree of Skulls” at Boigu Island bears silent witness to the grim past. With the advent of the Europeans such practices were rigorously suppressed, and, to-day, the authorities will not permit the natives of the Strait

to visit New Guinea friends and acquire their dusky craniums.

The “Guv’ment,” however, does not seem to object to the milder, but much more extensive, “head-hunting” as prac tised by the Islands women. Very few Islanders are free from an enormous sized species of head-louse, and it is quite common to see females picking lice out of another party’s head and eating them.

They declare the lice to be “plenty fat.”

THE Chief Officer of the Macdhui, Mr.

Campbell, is a cheery soul, and well loved by the European residents of Mela nesia. But on matters connected with the weaker and more deceitful side of human nature, he is hard, and cynical and sour.

Gain Mr. Campbell’s confidence, and you will learn why. One of the windows of Mr. Campbell’s cabin opens out on the only dark corner on the Macdhui —a cun ningly-set angle of the boat deck, into which two deck-chairs fit comfortably.

More often than not, when lying in bed in the darkness, Mr. Campbell has been compelled either to bury his head under stifling blankets, or arise and noisily upset his water-bottle. He says he can bear up with plain spooning; but the tale which the middle-aged commercial traveller pours into the ear of the unsophisticated Islands lass makes him sick; while ap parently one out of every three married women travelling alone has a husband who is either without refinement or is an unsympathetic, misunderstanding brute.

THE fauna of New Guinea is sparse, and of few varieties, and white men to day are busily introducing many common animals, from guinea-pigs to racehorses.

But there is one new-comer that is not welcomed —he is what mining men know as the “wild cat.” His advance agent usually is a shrewd-eyed, smooth-spoken, gentleman from “south,” who is anxious to acquire some land that reputedly is gol(Vbearing. There are scores ready to oblige, and the gentleman returns south, with data for a pretty story in the pros pectus of the “Paradise Plumes Gold Seeking and Development Company,” which makes its impressive appearance soon afterwards.

Sometimes, a kind of mining engineer blows in a little later from the coast, pessimistically collects a few “boys” and a little equipment, makes a dismal investi gation, and fades out again. But usually the prospectus and the formal registra tion in Wau are the end of it: a few score of trusting folk have been separated from their surplus cash, and proudly dis play their “Paradise” stock until they for get all about “my speculation in New Guinea gold.” Scores of these “wild cats” have appeared on the Morobe field in the last few years, to the discredit of a great industry.

Now, there is a movement afoot to stop the thing. One proposal is that members

of the Institute of Mining and Metallurgy who are interested in New Guinea should form a local branch, with the special ob ject of protecting the good name of min ing: and that this body, with Administra tion support, should keep a watch for “wild cats,” and deal with the undesirable animals as circumstances require. • • • • RIPPLING streams of cold, clear water are encountered everywhere on the Morobe goldfield in New Guinea —the gift of the mist-swathed mountains to the cool and fertile table-lands. In the circum stances, no one should be thirsty. Actually, it is one of the thirstiest communities on earth. There is an, enormous, incredible consumption of beer, brought from Aus tralia by steamer and aeroplane and lorry. Recently, when the young men of Wau and Edie Creek held a week-end cricket match at Edie Creek, the beer consumption was nine cases. There are 48 bottles in each case and each bottle costs, at Edie Creek, 3/9. One is not advised to drink the tempting water in this district —they say it carries the germs of dysen try, THEY tell this one in Papua.

A well-known trader of South Euro pean birth c'ame into Port and asked the price of copra.

“Oh, just the same,” he was told.

“H’m —I s’pose he go backward again— he always go back,” commented the trader. “It all this b Lever Com pound!”