Those Fattened Chinamen

And the Rossel Islanders

WHEN Mr. Jack Hides, who is now on an important special Government patrol in the centre of Papua, was Assist ant Resident Magistrate at Misima Island last year, he visited Rossel Island, a small irregularly shaped islet at the extreme end of the Louisiade Archipelago, about 100 miles south-east of Misima.

While there he investigated the well known story of the 300 Chinamen who were wrecked there some 60 years ago.

When the French boat Styx arrived on the scene of the wreck four months after wards, so the tale goes, they found that all except one lonely Chinaman had been fattened on a nearby reef and taken ashore to be eaten.

“I met and talked with an old Rossel Islander,” wrote Mr. Hides on his return to Misima Island, “and he explained to me the mystery which has confounded many people for so long. The Chinese were wrecked near the island, when their vessel foundered off the coast in bad weather. The captain and several others put off in a small boat to secure help.

The passengers and crew, numbering 326, made their way along the reef at low tide to Herron Island, a rocky little atoll about a mile from the Rossel Island main land.

“The little Rossel Islanders, afraid of such a large band of men, were frightened to attack them openly. Eventually, they conceived a cunning plan, and decided to bring the victims ashore a few at a time.

Two small canoes with two natives in each were paddled across to Herron Island and the Chinamen.

“By means of signs, the natives made the stranded men understand that there was plenty of food and comfort on the mainland, and that they would take them across in the canoes. Being small, each canoe could carry only one or two Chinese a trip. And so the massacre was carried out; canoe after canoe load of unsuspect ing Chinamen were taken over to Rossel Island, and butchered as they landed.

“The old Islander refused to tell me whether they were eaten or not. How ever, I am inclined to believe they were not, more especially if the Chinese had particularly yellow skins. The Papuans will not eat white pig, if it is strange to them. This may have been the case with the Chinamen.”

Sir William McGregor, who was Ad ministrator of Papua from 1888-1898, visited the scene some years after the occurrence, and in his report stated that the theory that the Chinamen had been openly attacked and killed was absurd.

Fifty Chinese armed with stones, he said, could have beaten off any tribe so small in physique and numbers and poor in weapons as were the Rossel Islanders. In view of this report, it seems that the account of a “pacific massacre,” as told to Mr. Hides by the old native, has some foundation of truth.

To-day the meek and gentlemanly Ros sel Islanders are in great demand in Papua as domestic servants; but they seem to have lost the great interest in life which formerly held them together, and they are dying out.

Matron F. Watson, of the Methodist Hostel for missionaries’ children in Suva, Fiji, returned to Australia by the Niagara at the end of December.