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The first island at which we called was New Ireland. It extends from Cape Santa Maria to Byron's Straits, 180 miles, and from Cape Santa Maria to Cape St. George, 60 miles. It rises to heights varying from 600 feet to 3000 feet in a series of bold ranges, whose summits and valleys are densely clothed with luxuriant vegetation. As many as 200 natives visited the ship in their frail canoes, bringing all kinds of delicious fruits and vegetables for barter. We bought a cart load of yams, cocoanuts, vegetable marrows, sugar cane, arrowroot, bananas, almonds, Chili peppers, and sweet lemons for what in money value would amount to about fifteen-pence. The canoes had no sails, but were well ornamented. The men belonged to a mixed race of feeble but graceful physique; they were below the average middle height, but a few measured 5ft. 10in. The chest of the biggest which I measured was only 32 inches round. At the invitation of the captain of the ship some thirty of the natives came on board, went over the ship, sat on the deck and had a smoke. Some of these we dressed up in red calico, painted their faces with oil colors showed them various things, and otherwise interested them and gained their good will. One of the more demonstrative wished to kiss the Government Agent, but that gentleman had presence of mind to evade the attention by giving the native his cigar.
Now, had the Government Agent been drunk in his bunk, botanising on shore, or otherwise willingly keeping his eyes shut, or had the captain been an unscrupulous scoundrel, those thirty natives could have been placed under hatches, conveyed to Mackay, and the ship have made an absolute profit of £765 by the transaction, and nobody been any the wiser.
Such things have happened.
The temptation is sufficiently great to men who have no character to lose—over whom it is next to impossible to exert control—and therefore the Government interfered, as it was bound to interfere. But it was one of the worst things that could have happened. When a Government does not make the administration of justice its one and only business, but is compelled to mix itself up with the people's business and issue regulations about how the people shall do their business, and when they shall do it and dictate what the people shall work at, the number of hands and feet they shall employ in their garden, and whether they shall be white or black and the wage that shall be given, chaos will have come into the industrial army, and the industrial army and the industrial war cannot go on.
The reason why the Government was bound to interfere, even at the awful cost of forsaking its legitimate functions, was that murder was being done under the guise of trade, and man-stealing was being carried on in the name of commerce.
Oh, the pity of it!
There was not the slightest necessity for these disgusting and disgraceful irregularities. But there is for sinful man some diabolical fascination in man-hunting that exceeds fox hunting, fishing or shooting birds as much as real war exceeds a sham fight. It has always been so under all the dynasties of recorded time. Man hunting, in all probability, achieved the acme of its infamy under Charles V., and was carried on by
