NEW GUINEA EXPLORATION.*

MR. BEVA.N is a young and adventurous explorer, and we

hope to hear from him again. He is of that order of explorer which, we venture to think, does the most beneficent work, and merits the highest praise. He is of the men, of whom Living- stone was the most illustrious example, who alone, or with a few assistants only, penetrate regions hitherto unknown, and abstaining, even under circumstances of terror or of provocation, from violence to the natives, leave behind none of those animosities against the stranger which close the path to white men in the future, unless they come with a host, and in hostile array.

Mr. Bevan's exploration has been mainly of the nautical kind, which is most needful in a land so wholly new as New Guinea, finding navigable rivers and water-ways into the " Dark Island- Continent." Mr. Bevan, who tells us that he was in a merchant's office in the City at eighteen, served his apprenticeship in New

Guinea at the age of twenty-two by shipping himself off from Queensland with a Chinese beche-de-mer fisher, called Ah Yim,

in a thirty-ton junk, the Wong Hing,' a sufficiently adven- turous and unpleasant way of doing things. The crew consisted of three Chinamen, and the course was devious, as they could not be kept awake at the helm at night :—

"Stumbling upon deck in the dark, I was not unfrequently shocked to find the ship two or three points off her course, the sail flapping, and the head of the pig-tailed steersman nodding in happy oblivion within a few inches of the planks." " Great white ants and cockroaches crawled over one every night while trying to sleep." " There were five mongrel curs on deck, carried as some fancied protection from the natives. Every time the junk altered her tack the dogs would rush at the steersman in a body; and then, high above the thrum of the gale in the stiff cordage, a din of yelping curs and jarring imprecations of the disciple of Confucius would arise, till the mêlée would terminate for the time in one resplendent whirligig of timber, garments, and rope's-end, leaving (as a finale) the dogs to creep into corners and lick their wounds, and the Chinaman to seize the first opportunity to sew up the rents in his pants."

The moment Ah Tim's vessel arrived at Port Moresby—it was in 1884—he was served with a copy of the proclamation of the Protectorate, forbidding settlement or acquisitions of land, which Mr. Bevan had intended, and sending him back to Australia with his Chinese captain. On the way back, the single European companion who had shipped on the same

• Totl, Travel, and Discovery in New Guinea. By Theodore F. Bevan, F.11.0.8. London : Regan Paul, Trench, and Co.

voyage, Ned Snow by name, jumped overboard in despair at being prohibited from settling in New Guinea, as he had in- tended,---a somewhat tragic first-fruits of the new " Pro- tectorate." Such an ending to his first attempt would have dis- heartened most people of Mr. Bevan's youth. Owing to the opposition of the missionaries, who, without civilising the natives

—they had not even taught them the elementary lesson of not burying the dead within a few inches of the surface in the middle

of crowded villages—wished apparently to retain exclusive possession of the island, and dominated the counsels of the two first High Commissioners, not only settlement bat even trading was almost suppressed. Except, therefore, as pre- paration and training for his later explorations, Mr. Bevan's two next visits to New Guinea were rendered almost fruitless. And the result of this policy was that the murders of Europeans and Chinamen and their followers by the natives,

being followed by impunity, enormously increased, and travellers had to be continually on the watch to escape death.

The native Papuan does not appear to be a high type of the noble savage. Like many other races, he aims at a collection of skulls or vertebrae of those slain by him, but he prefers to increase his collection, whether from natives or Europeans, not by open war but by " steal-fight," or a carefully planned piece of treacherous murder. Thus the massacre of Captain Craig, three white men, and five Malays, officially reported as wholly unprovoked, was accomplished in this way. Craig had

engaged half-a-dozen Louisiade Islanders to help in pearl- fishing:—

"Stationing themselves behind the captain and his mate (as they were leaning over the ship's side at the critical moment when one of the divers was emerging from the water), the natives heaved the Europeans overboard. The Malays jumped into the sea at once through fear. Motessa and his party then cat the diver's life-line, and shot Craig and his mate as they were swimming towards the reef ; and (taking the boat) then went in chase of the Malays and despatched them one by one. The `Emily' was first completely looted of goods, stores, and weapons, and then burned."

But there is a considerable variety among the natives. In the explorations Mr. Bevan undertook in 1887, when he discovered several rivers with deep water one hundred miles from their mouths, he was attacked in the Aird River at precisely the same place where Captain Blackwood, in H.M.S. 'Fly,' had been attacked forty-two years before in open force, by a canoe fleet of openly warlike Papuans. On this occasion, the attack was harmlessly dispersed by blowing the steam-whistle. Further up, a much lighter• coloured and more peacefully disposed tribe were discovered, who waved green boughs in sign of peace, and were induced to come to the steamer. Generally speaking, the up-country natives appeared to be of a smaller and less ferocious kind than those on the coast. On the " Queen's Jubilee River," up which the 9 ft. draught steamer went one hundred miles, no natives were seen after forty miles up from the mouth. When the expedition, for want of coal, turned downwards, the river was two hundred yards wide, and flowing clear from the North, close to the German boundary. Considerable traces of gold were found, and there were high hills and fresh air; so that an excellent country for settlement, unencumbered, as the coast is, by a large and fierce native population, has been revealed. It was, by-the-way, characteristic of the extraordinary line adopted by the New Guinea missionaries, that Mr. Bevan having had several passages of arms with them in the public Press, they took revenge by attempting to prove that one of them had anticipated his discovery of the Queen's Jubilee River. The attempt, however, broke down under some searching and conclusive letters from Sir Edward Strickland, the President of the Geographical Society of Australasia, who proved that the missionary in question had, according to his own book, only rowed six miles up another river after breakfast one morning. In November of the same year (1887), Mr. Bevan was entrusted by the Queensland Government with a steam-launch called the ' Mabel,' an open boat, 48 ft. long only, drawing 6 ft. of water, and sent on a new expedition, accompanied by a Government surveyor. He had also an English engineer and

two other Englishmen, and four " coloured boys." They explored the Aird and Philip Rivers again, noticing several native buildings several hundred feet in length, perched on the tops of hills like castles. After ascending the Queen's Jubilee River again, and descending to the sea by a new branch of it, a new river was opened up, called the Centenary River. Up one arm of this, the Mabel' found herself in a two-mile-

long native village, and was surrounded by a threatening fleet Of canoes :-

"Women, children, and reserves lined the high banks, and indulged in the maddest of terpsichorean exercises, while the men—who in the space of a few minutes had decorated their persons with feathers, paint, shell ornaments, and grotesque masks—rushed about, almost tumbling over one another in their haste, and getting bows and arrows, spears and paddles between their legs, preparatory to launching big war-canoes. Wherever the eye rested, either before or behind, canoes—holding twenty to thirty men apiece—were soon seen emerging from every creek and reach, till the river, which had been narrowed to little over three hundred yards, was black with an immense flotilla.

Some were marked like skeletona."

After the steam-whistle had prevented one ugly rush, there being only half-an-hour's fire-wood left, and evening coming on, matters were brought to a crisis :- " While one load of forty stalwart Papuans made as though they would board the launch on her starboard rail—thereby cap- sizing her for a certainty—others crowded into the gig that was being towed astern, and one native already had the unshipped rudder in his hand. To the leader at the wheel, Sadleir sang out from aft that he would have to fire, as the natives were preparing for a rush. Wishing above all things to avoid bloodshed, Mr. Bevan then gave the order, 'Full speed astern.' The effect was instantaneous. While neither whistle nor the roar of guns—of whose destroying properties they were entirely ignorant—had any terror for these aboriginals, yet the magic by which this little paddleless boat, smaller than one of their own canoes, was moved backwards and forwards at will caused their retirement to a respectful distance. Before they had recovered the Mabel' was ploughing her way down stream in the gathering dusk at a speed of 10 knots. As she flew back on her own track down the watery street, an avenue was formed through that immense flotilla ; upon which the plumed and painted warriors stood awestruck. Half-an-hour after the last of the long line of houses had been passed, anchor was dropped in a by-channel.

Down the main river flew in hot haste the pursuing war-canoes of the baffled natives, gone in pursuit when they had recovered their senses."

Sovereignty has now been established in New Guinea instead of Protectorate, and we hope Mr. Bevan will give us more of his experiences as settler and explorer.