Tropicalities

THAT Pacific prototype of Trader Horn, Henry Dexter, left Papua last year with money in his pocket and joy in his over-youthful heart. He was counting the days until he could reach England—“a kindly green country, with no fever, where one could get cool.” Alas for human hopes! Henry Dexter finds that all his old friends are gone, all his old sailing clubs are in the hands of a new genera tion, and that the English climate is atrocious. He is sitting over a “damned radiator,” bitterly envying the man who bought his trade-store in Milne Bay. “If you don’t see me back in the Pacific within six months you can reasonably assume that I am dead,” writes Henry, under date of March 17. * * * A WORLD wanderer with an interesting personality arrived in Sydney recently —Colonel Gouzy, a distinguished French soldier and explorer. Colonel Gouzy has spent many years in Africa, which great continent he appears to know well from Algiers to Cape Town. He has been recently in French Oceania, and he now is on his way across Central Australia to Darwin.

In making his way back from the Tua motus to Tahiti on a native schooner, Colonel Gouzy had a unique experience.

It rained pitilessly one night, and the 40 natives aboard, who usually slept on deck, crowded into the one cabin below.

Colonel Gouzy liked their company well enough, but the odour of packed hu manity was more than he could bear, and he returned on deck, into the rain.

There the roving eye of the experienced explorer noticed one solitary shelter near the stern —the common “convenience.” He examined it and found it weatherproof.

Inside, there was a Polynesian whe seemed anxious to remain there. The Colonel prowled about the deck, awaiting his chance; but, becoming thoroughly wet and numbed from cold, he pulled the native out of the little house and ensconced himself there, with his coat wrapped around his shivering body. He spent the night in this unusual resting place. He admitted that it was a "situation extraordinaire,” and he said that whatever sanitation experts might argue, he found it preferable to the conditions in the packed cabin. * * * IF ever there was a journalistic Jack-in the-box it is our friend Marc. T.

Greene, American world-wanderer, who regularly bobs up in the most unexpected places. Some two years ago, he was in Tahiti; then he appeared as a correspon dent among the contending armies in China; next he was in Sydney; then he went to Samoa, where his breezy articles stirred various worthy gentlemen to frenzy: from there he went to U.S.A., and spent some time in Boston and New York.

Now comes a cheery letter, dated March 4, from Buenos Aires, and a copy of a daily newspaper of that city, wherein the provocative views of M.T.G. are clearly set forth. We can only hope that the fiery Argentines do not slay him. He writes: “This is a breath-taking city, this Buenos Aires —two and a half millions of people from all over the world here to make money—if they can. The size and magnificence of the place would seem to indicate that some has been made by somebody, and even now there is the ap

pearance of far more prosperity here than in most cities. Before coming here I was in Rio de Janeiro, which is beautiful as a dream—all that has been said of it and more. I expect to return there presently for a longer stay.” * * * A FEW years ago a man now prominent in Suva was manager of a firm in Levuka. In his employ as a packer was a European who owned a herd of cows, and supplemented his packer’s wages by supplying milk to the townsfolk. The manager was one of his customers.

One morning, the manager’s wife found an extraordinary little creature in the milk. They thought at first it was an overgrown microbe; but their servant diagnosed it expertly as a freshwater prawn, which swarm in the Fijian creeks.

The manager grimly wrapped the body in a piece of paper and strode off to his office. He summoned his packer-milkman.

“We found this in the milk this morn ing,” he said. “Can you explain it?”

“What is it?” asked the packer.

“It is a prawn,” declaimed the manager.

“Well, isn’t that remarkable!” said the packer. “I am very glad to have this. I am just sick and tired of telling those boys of mine that they must not use the water from the creek.” * * * THE Melbourne “Herald,” for some time, has been carrying on a campaign with the object of getting legislation to compel mining companies to issue to their shareholders periodical reports of opera tions, such reports to be in language intelligible to the layman.

The Melbourne paper is to be con gratulated. If ever a reform were needed in connection with the share-selling business, this is the one. In recent years there have been hundreds of small com panies, in one form or another, floated in

Australia to prosecute the search for gold in the Pacific territories; but it is quite impossible to keep track of them. A very few of them get beyond the stage of optimism and share-selling—the rest just disappear, and the unfortunate share holders do not know anything about their fate —not even enough to justify a few tears over their demise. This magazine for the past three years has been trying to keep track of the various syndicates companies, etc., which have been formed to seek gold in the Islands; but it is a hopeless task. And there is more than a suspicion that a considerable propor tion of the reports that are issued are deliberately couched in language that no one can really understand. * * * GERMANY’S plea for the return of her colonies, so that she may be given a source of raw materials, and scope for her colonising enterprise, grows steadily more insistent. During the month, a new note was added to the discussion.

Sir Abe Bailey, the South African min ing magnate, in a strongly-worded letter in the London “Daily Telegraph,” said: “Germany lost her colonies by a just verdict of the sword. The Power which imposed on prostrate Russia and Roumania the ruthless treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest has no right to protest against the terms of the so-called dictated peace.”

It is a not untimely reminder of an aspect of the Great War which many of us have forgotten. When the Prussian had his foot on the neck of Russia and Roumania, and thought he was winning the war, he showed very little of the con sideration he now is asking for, in a revision of the Versailles settlement.

Still, two wrongs do not make right, even in international affairs. * * * THE death has taken place at Te Kuiti (New Zealand) of Hotu, a well-known Maori identity, who caused a sensation some years ago by coming alive at his own tangi. He had been “dead” for four days, and was about to be buried when he awakened, enraged, to find that all his pigs had been slain for the feasting of the numerous visitors.