Book Reviews

Trader With A Reporter's Eye

I made the observation in PIM a few months ago that because the adventurers of this world are usually unable to express themselves on paper, a lot of worthwhile Pacific experience has been lost to the record.

Captain Andrew Cheyne is among the exceptions, as The Trading Voyages of Andrew Cheyne 1841- 1844, gives absorbing testimony. And praise be not only to the energy and power of intelligent observation of the good captain, but also to the ability of Canberra’s Dr. Dorothy Shineberg, who has transcribed the :aptain’s story from his original, virtually unknown, MS in the Mitchell Library and edited it as the third in he Pacific History Series put out by he Australian National University kress.

As Beaglehole did for Captain Look, Dr. Shineberg has done for Laptain Cheyne that is, made a food narrator even more readable.

Vhat she doesn’t clarify in illuminat ng footnotes or intelligent editing of he text, she gives us in a long and nteresting introduction to the back ;round of this Scots sailor-trader uthor, who sailed the South Seas or many years before being murdered n 1866 by the natives of Palau, in he Carolines.

He had begun as a sandalwooder •ut of the infant Sydney. He came 3 grief only after he had become a rader and ship owner on his own ccount and failed to take note of ie fact that the people upon whom e depended his crews and mployees, and the natives with 'hom he traded were not as -Hable or as honest as he was him- Although Cheyne had contempt )r the savagery of the savage, he laintained a high sense of justice )wards them, for, as he said, “We Hight them, not they us”. Cheyne id not see himself as the strong white laster of the Melanesians. As Dr. nmeberg notes, such a conventionai ew was not one that either Cheyne r other traders of the time accepted, Jcause they knew from experience iat the Islanders were just as wily, ist as adept at sharp trading prac :es as any merchant of Sydney own, Europe or the East.

Cheyne, with his contemporaries, had to shed his ethnic skin to the extent of discovering what the Islanders wanted, not what the traders thought they should have, for this was the way they could establish a prac tical business relationship.

It was in their own interests not to interfere with local usages and some times even to conform to them. The traders were very much in the hands of the locals.

Cheyne’s narrative gives many examples of how discretion is the better part of any permanent busi ness arrangement, but the incident I like best happened when he and his colleagues were ashore on the Isle of Pines, New Caledonia, in 1841. Cheyne’s account of that ex pedition was, incidentally, the first to have, in any detail, recorded the island and its people.

They were loading up with sandal wood, the natives going to a great deal of trouble to help them to it in return for empty glass bottles, beads and hoop iron. But there were too many incidents of stealing, so Cheyne brought the ship’s bulldog ashore and chained it at the door of the house they used as a trade store house.

“This had the desired effect,” reported Cheyne in his MS, “as the natives had never seen a dog before, and were very much afraid of him— but unfortunately we nearly got into

a serious scrape through it—for the King Motuka came down to the trade house about noon and being, of course, a privileged person was going in the door as usual when the dog seized him behind and nearly took a piece out of his posteriors.

“On hearing the noise I ran out and took the dog off him, he was in an awful rage and shook his club over my head—but seeing one of the men close behind me with a musket, he dropped it, ran out of the yard and told the natives to bring a fire brand which he was about apply ing to the thatch when I stopped him with a pistol to his head.

“Had he been allowed to fire the house it would have been the signal for a general massacre—as there was at least 300 armed men round the trade house at the time, and it would have been impossible for any of us to have escaped as our men were scattered about in small parties cut ting sandalwood in the bush with hundreds of natives around them.

“Although it was hazardous on my part to threaten his life, I knew it was the only chance we had and the natives respected their king too much to do anything which might endanger his life. By removing the dog and giving him a number of presents I soon pacified him.” Such were the good relations Cheyne established with the king that he was able to return again.

Incidentally, Dr. Shineberg makes the observation that the posterior biting English bulldog probably was the first dog the Isle of Pines had seen, as dogs were not indigenous to New Caledonia, and the name in the local language for the animal is “dog”, suggesting that the arrival of the name coincided with the arrival of the dog.

Captain Cheyne, still writing about the same period on the Isle of Pines, also makes these observations: “The articles most in request here are tomahawks, axes, adzes, cloth, fish hooks, knives, iron hoop and large

lue glass beads, but the greater part t our sandalwood was purchased )r beads and iron hoop. The natives >r a long time could form no idea as > the use we made for the sandal °od-—and would not believe it was >ed for burning [as incense in China], iter seeing us eating biscuit, which ey thought was made of sawdust ey came at last to the conclusion at we ground it into powder and f°°d> and no explanation >uld dissuade them from holding at opinion. ‘‘At first they took our salt beef id pork for human flesh and it was me time before we could convince em to the contrary, having no idea

than ami ££ ls la J ger I existence. They have 5 whth Th P° rk t l bul \ ma tV < eVe they T Ve teaches ” fr ° m SamOan native , stin !?’i ° f a WO f d Pacific odJ ?n y m p? rOl i gh ? Ut cuTarlv b±V°f S eef ’ ? artl_ As nf th. L/r ♦ New ?£ lieSt , visitors to naturallv of f MS h h a L°* spec ’ al interest for what “ok IfsT find plenty of life among the early traders in the

Carolines, and of his involvement with the natives. Cheyne acquired tracts of L and in Palau and Pona Pe and had drea . ms of develo P in g a vast trading empire. He might have done it if not * or his own personality weaknesses, and when his native fading Partners des P atched him with a stone it was found he left onl V $ l7 - 78 his years of struggle and labour. It’s a pity he was so far before his time. As a true adventure story, today’s after noon tabloids would have paid him era?™^ N ? r^ YA c?nbe r °ra. A S N 7 D 9?) EW