PART VITO THE NORTHERN TERRITORY

CHAPTER XXTHE GREAT BARRIER REEF

Wehad already made acquaintance with the “Montoro” when she was unlading in Sydney Harbour, her final port of call, and we now spent on board three of the pleasantest weeks of our journey. There is a great sense of peace and cleanliness on a ship after long dusty travels. The “Montoro” was a small boat, less than 6000 tons, but remarkably well-appointed and arranged, our airy bedstead cabin was positively spacious, with the luxury of a large wardrobe and a full length looking-glass in its door. The staff were Chinese, efficient, ubiquitous, noiseless, and their gentle soft-voiced ways were particularly restful after the rough and ready Australian servant. On board we found awaiting us letters from home, the last we were to get for two long months, for our Java mail, delayed by the war, followed us to England. Presently we were slipping down to the sea between the low banks of the green river, with a light breeze. Venus was rising and the moon, and the shore lights began to glimmer.

Our first day out was choppy and rough, but a heavy shower smoothed out the sea like oil, and the next day saw us inside the Barrier Reef, in the Coral Sea that stretches away to the extreme north coast. Captain Cook had made the same voyage that we were making in the summer of 1770 in a boat of 368 tons, and we thought our boat small! He noted and named every headland and bay along “this dangerous coast, where the sea in all parts conceals shoals that suddenly project from the shore, and rocks that rise abruptly like a pyramid from the bottom, for more than 1300 miles.” Even now, when every inch of the course has been charted, the voyage is dangerous for the same reason, the low flat islands are nearly indiscernible at night. The mountainous coast is almost uninhabited, except by natives, unfriendly now as then; and is almost entirely unlighted, as hitherto the Government has not been able to incur the expense of erecting and maintaining lighthouses, except in the neighbourhood of the few existing townships. No ship’s library on this course should be without a copy of “Captain Cook’s Voyages,” or, at any rate, no traveller should fail to provide himself with one, as the record of this early navigator in these seas adds immensely to the interest of the journey to-day.

The voyage within the Barrier Reef will always be one of the most beautiful in the world. Once inside the Coral Sea, to awake in the morning and go on deck is to dream an exquisite dream. Here is halcyon weather, the heat of the sun tempered by light airs off the water, and seas of an indescribable translucent turquoise green rippling past among innumerable islands. One after another they appear in the distance, shadowy and vague as clouds; slowly they take shape like brown uncut opals; a nearer view discloses sandy coves, grassy slopes, pine trees and forest. They grew more and more numerous, and, as the day closed in beneath plum-coloured clouds, the soft light lay gently and hazily upon them, till the sun sank in a sky of vivid orange. The charm of this wonderful passage never palls, for its variety is endless. Sometimes the austere, dark mountainous shore is visible, with columns of smoke upon it, native fires as Captain Cook saw them two hundred years ago, for they are still used as signals.

The sea is rich in all kinds of life for those who care to look for it, and we were fortunate in having on board an accomplished naturalist, who, in shirt-sleeves for coolness, and a large-brimmed hat, looking like a sort of drawing-room pirate, sat all day in the bows searching the clear bluewater with a pair of field-glasses, and shouting to all, who were interested, to come and see what he had found. It was he who taught us how and where to look for, and what to call, the unfamiliar birds and sea beasts that we saw.

On the June days two hundred years ago on which Captain Cook cautiously essayed his dangerous journey in a rickety boat on uncharted seas, he often named the islands and headlands after days of the week or month. So it happens that one of the loveliest points on the voyage is known as “Whit-Sunday Passage,” because it was on that day that Captain Cook navigated it.

TOWNSVILLE.

Our fourth day out we reached Townsville early in the morning. Its absurd name is said to be due to the fact that the inhabitants wished to commemorate the benefactions of a fellow-citizen called Town, and did not know how to achieve their end less tautologically. We woke early to find ourselves in a beautiful land-locked bay, called Cleveland Bay by Captain Cook, who recorded that “the east point I named Cape Cleveland, and the west, which had the appearance of an island, Magnetical Isle, as we perceived that the compass did not traverse well when we were near it.” “They are both high, and so is the mainland within them, the whole forming a surface the most rugged, rocky, and barren ofany we had seen upon the coast.” He also notes that they saw “several large smokes upon the main.” To-day a picturesque little township lies under a sharply escarped granite hill, with stately, misty coastal ranges in the background. Probably Captain Cook, like ourselves, saw the beautiful yellow “white-headed eagles” flying across the harbour. We took some time getting in because the pilot ran on to a mud-bank, for the bay is very shallow. At last we came alongside a wharf, and at once went on shore and started on the long walk to the town. It was very, very hot on shore, and clouds of grey dust met us all along the road from the landing-stage. We hoped to reach the church on the hill, at all events before the Sunday service was quite over.

Townsville is a picturesque little place, a mining port growing continually in importance; and in that transitional stage, when rough wooden corrugated iron buildings are giving place to brick. There were some very showy hotels calculated to attract the miner with his pockets full of money, when he comes to town to taste the sweets of such civilisation as it affords, to spend all he has gained, and to live riotously as long as it lasts. This at least is the popular conception of the habits of miners, which was continually impressed upon us. We were never ableto verify these statements, because though we occasionally conversed with miners, they looked anything but dare-devils and spendthrifts, and it seemed scarcely delicate to ask them if it was true that they periodically repaired to the nearest town to paint it red as long as their money lasted. As for the shops on either side of the broad, dusty, empty streets over which the heat brooded, they seemed to consist principally of lettering. Every minute shanty had above it vast boards proclaiming in letters as large as itself the name of its owner and the superiority of its stock, whether bicycles or tents, both essential articles of merchandise in an outlying Australian town. The more ambitious shops had placards inside. One enterprising draper called on the passer-by to observe the rebuilding of his “palatial premises,” while another drew attention to “Dame Fashion’s latest caprices.”

We passed a cotton tree with ripe pods, growing in a garden, and several coco palms, the coconuts hanging in yellow bunches like a cluster of immense bananas. After crossing a river bordered by mangrove swamps, and passing through the main street, we struck off up a steep hill in quest of the church. On climbing a granite mound we found ourselves at its doors, with a beautiful view of the bay and its green shores, but no service,for probably to suit the habits of the people in a hot climate, it had ended about the time our churches at home are beginning. Following an admirable plan, pursued elsewhere in Australia, only a section of the church had been completed. There was an apse, and enough space beyond it to seat a fairly large congregation. It was very simply constructed, and had the dignity that simplicity gives to a building. It was of red brick with an ambulatory and a kingbeam roof, and had an air of being carefully tended. We lingered there a little wistfully, for in a country very far from home there is a sense of intimate nearness in hearing read that familiar liturgy, which contains the noblest prose in the English language. Leaving the church behind we wandered down towards the shore, and came to a wonderful tangled garden. Tall palms grew there, and masses of feathery crimson grasses; bananas drooped their immense purple bells, and the frangipani tree was bursting into bloom, holding out to us over the fence bunches of its dazzling, scented, creamy blossoms at the end of its bare, blunt boughs. Returning, we faced the strong breeze off the sea, which had been at our backs on the way up. We knew all about the dust on that walk, and were very glad to attain once more the haven of the ship.

In the afternoon the whole population came down to the wharf in cars and buggies to inspect the Australian hospital ship, which was lying alongside ready to sail. We strolled on the shore, where a large convolvulus with very succulent leaves grew profusely among the stones; and watched a forest fire on a mountain at the farther end of the bay; since the morning it had gradually worked its way right round the crest and was crawling down one side. Our stay at Townsville should have been a very brief one, but we were delayed there for three or four days by the Customs officials, as we were carrying a contraband cargo of meat. Nobody wanted to stay in Townsville, as there was nothing to be seen in the neighbourhood, and it would mean cutting short the duration of the ship’s visit to the Northern Territory.

The second day of our stay there, we climbed the granite peak that rises behind the town, going across by a little ferry-boat that plies between the wharf and the opposite side of the harbour. A strong wind was blowing in from the sea, as we steamed across to Townsville, lying deep in dust in the hot sun. We made our way up to the Castle Hill, the red granite peak that dominates the town. A very steep path leads up to it, and on the rocks above some goats andkids were silhouetted against the clear blue sky like a scrap of Swiss scenery. The town from this side is scattered along the shore, and the slopes above it half hidden in tropical foliage. Below us were the Botanical Gardens, the hospital embowered in trees, with the patients lying out on a shady balcony. Everywhere was the heavy scent and glorious bouquets of gold and white frangipani. We had been sent in the wrong direction, and missed the path, so that the ascent was very steep and rough, but we went on, slipping and scrambling up among falling stones, clinging on where we could, among big butterflies and lizards, and large brown grasshoppers with black spots. As we climbed higher Townsville spread itself out beneath us charmingly. Bungalows nestled among vivid green foliage, beyond were the blue bay, and its boats, ours amongst them, riding gaily at anchor, with the dark green wooded mass of “Magnetic Island” rising behind. Higher still we rested, while a fish hawk soared far above in the clear blue, and on the southern side Townsville looked like nothing but a vast mud flat with the river winding through it, and houses dotted among the mangrove swamps. One fancied that one big wave might submerge the whole.

On Wednesday we sailed early, keeping fairlynear the coast, and reaching Cairns the same night. Cairns is the port of Trinity Bay—“a large and deep bay which I called Trinity Bay after the day on which it was discovered,” says Captain Cook, who had spent the intervening days in coasting up here from Whit-Sunday Passage. At Cairns we wished profoundly that the stringent Australian labour laws would prohibit night work, for our boat was lading or unlading with all the clangour and shouting incidental to these operations till 3 a.m. We had to be called early, because we were only to wait long enough in port to give the passengers an opportunity of making the return journey to the famous Barron Falls, about twenty miles inland from the coast, among some of the most celebrated Australian scenery. From the porthole of the ship’s corridor we looked straight into a mangrove swamp, beyond was a background of misty dark hills with heavy clouds rolling down them.

BARRON FALLS SCENERY AT CAIRNS.

Cairns, apart from its fame for the beauty of its falls and mountain scenery, is already an important place, and will become much more so, for it is the port for the rich inland districts, with which it is connected by railway. This fertile country is suitable for bananas, maize, for dairying, as well as for the timber trade. In the neighbourhood of Herberton, south-west of Cairns, fruit-growing is carried on, and apples, plums, pears, peaches, and vines are all successfully cultivated. The sugar industry is, besides, a most important factor in the prosperity of Cairns. Not far from the railway station of Redlynch, at the foot of the Barron Range, are the Kamerunga State Nurseries for growing coffee, bread-fruit, coconut, and rubber, and carrying out all kinds of experiments designed to solve the problems of tropical agriculture.

The country is also rich in minerals. Herberton is the principal centre for the production of tin, and the Herberton and Chillagoe districts contain deposits of tin, copper, silver, lead, bismuth, gold, and coal.

Our time, however, did not admit of our penetrating far enough into the interior to inspect the development of all these agricultural and mineral sources of wealth, which have so great a future before them; nor did it admit of our extending our journey far enough for even a glimpse of the curious and beautiful volcanic Lake Eacham. We had to content ourselves with the Barron Falls. We went ashore early, but the boat was late, and the train had got tired of waiting and gone away, so there was a long interval while it was fetched back and put together again. We satabout on sacks on a high covered platform, and conversed with some of the lean, long-limbed Australian workmen about the Australian labour question.

Immediately in front three ibises were feeding on a sort of salt marsh. The range of hills behind was half hidden in cloud. There was an all-pervading smell of raw sugar from bales awaiting shipment, and though it was not yet very warm the atmosphere was heavy with moisture like that of a hothouse. There did not seem to be very much of Cairns—one or two hotels and boarding-houses, a few wide grassy streets. The scattered houses on high piles had a more than usually unfinished air, with washing hanging out, kerosene tins lying about, and bare-legged children playing among them. There were a great many goats; two of them had discovered a bag of maize on the wharf and were having a happy time. At last our train arrived, consisting of one or two carriages, so arranged that the backs of the seats could be reversed, and as they all turned sideways you faced the whole length of the carriage, like a Pullman car, and we got the whole of the view during the journey, for most of the time the train has one side against the hill.

The line from the wharf runs among the housesto the station, where the school children were just arriving from up country settlements. After passing some tea gardens, which looked oddly sophisticated in the bush, we found ourselves among banana fields and pineapples, but everything was more or less obscured by fine driving rain. There was still a fair number of scattered houses, built of wood and iron, with a deplorably drenched air, and handfuls of draggled English flowers in their little gardens among tropical fruits, paw-paws, and lemons. When the ascent begins the line soon enters the wonderful tropical forest—indescribable, unimaginable in the abounding luxuriance and the variety of its tangled, matted growth. The stately soaring eucalyptus is always the staple factor in Australian scenery, but here they are linked together and festooned with heavy ropes of giant creeper, “vines” they call them in the tropics.

In the thick undergrowth are ferns, paw-paw trees, bananas, mango trees, with dark glossy leaves and feathery flowers, and the poisonous “nettle tree,” or “stinging tree” (Laportea gigas). The leaves are very large, of delicate pale green in colour, and covered with soft hairs. The stinging hairs, though not large, are so virulent that cattle have been known to die from the poison. An Australian botanist,Mr. A. G. Hamilton, “once saw a cow which had rushed through a lot of small plants. She had lost all her hair and looked like an india-rubber cow.”23

BARRON, RIVER CAIRNS.

The construction of the line must have involved a considerable feat of engineering, for it winds up the hills like an Alpine railway. Presently we began to have glimpses of deep dark gorges with a broad green river flowing beneath us, then we crossed a waterfall slipping down an almost perpendicular rock, and in flood covering the railroad. The rain had ceased, and now the rolling clouds, soft loose masses resting gently on the tops of the tallest gums, suddenly drifted away and revealed a vast landscape of rare loveliness. Looking down the opening gorge, we saw the valley of the Barron River, for almost its whole course, winding to the sea, a pale streak below the dark slopes of the mountains. The train stopped within sound of the thunder of the Barron Falls. The swirling water takes its magnificent plunge in tumultuous clouds of white froth to the gorge below, where rare butterflies hover, and white cockatoos flutter among the tops of the gum trees. Above all the tumult two swallows were darting to and fro, they carriedone’s thoughts home. Higher up the river there were silent green backwaters, and soft sandy foreshores, where little pink bivalve shells were lying. A big hotel dominated the neighbourhood of the little station, and a young man and woman, faultlessly attired in bathing costumes that would have done credit to a French watering-place, were picking their way daintily down the steep slopes to the river, giving the oddest note of incongruity to the wildness of the place. We weighed anchor as soon as the tourist train brought us back to the wharf.

We now entered on what proved to be the most interesting part of our journey, for we kept farther inshore, and the coast became continually more enchantingly beautiful and more full of interest. It was a time of halcyon days and balmy nights. The ship’s company were very young and gay and musical. In the starlit darkness of the tropical evenings they sang and played charmingly. The Marconi-man was a violinist, the supercargo had a fine baritone,—the very name of supercargo suggests the atmosphere of Captain Marryat’s novels, an atmosphere of adventure. The night we left Cairns the captain had some of the deck lights turned out, because they made steering more difficult. He said that on a rainy night he was obliged to anchor, for the coral sea is here oftenonly six or seven fathoms deep; but that on a clear night, even when there was no moon, the officer on the watch could still “pick up the islands with glasses.” The small coral islands are innumerable, and often quite flat, so that only a practised eye could discern their neighbourhood at night, even with glasses.

A great charm of travelling by sea is that it brings one into intimate relationship with all sorts and conditions of men. People who stay at home have a tendency to get into sets, to associate too exclusively with people of their own kind, whose points of view, standards of life and habits are all more or less the same as their own, and so they settle into grooves and get dull, and their minds become inelastic. On a ship, at sea, especially a small ship, the society may be as varied as the world. One of the most interesting people we met on our travels was a passenger on the “Montoro.” His business was shipping. He knew all the islands that are scattered in enticing little groups from the Torres Straits to beyond New Guinea. He could distinguish at a glance the different types of natives—Kanaka boys from the Torres Straits islands, pale-skinned, shock-headed Papuans, yellow Melanesians, or sooty Cingalese. He knew every inch of the route we were travelling, having often made the journey. Formerly boats of thisline had gone across to Port Moresby, in New Guinea; and our original intention had been to visit the island and gain at least a passing glimpse of the curious native life there. But the boats had been taken off, because, as our fellow-passenger explained, the route was too dangerous and expensive in ships and lives. Outside the Barrier Reef there is always a swell, in which the small boats rolled heavily, and the passengers grumbled proportionately. On the return journey the prevailing strong winds heap up heavy seas, and are apt to drive a ship past the narrow opening in the Reef. Small boats of about 800 tons now run directly from Thursday Island to Port Moresby. But though we had all the inclination, we had no time to make this most interesting journey.

Our fellow-passenger had an interest in the Pearl-fishing Industry carried on in the neighbourhood of Thursday Island, by the “Island boys.” These natives of the Torres Straits Islands, for that is what the term means, have a Government inspector to look after them, and see that they get a fair proportion of the profits of the trade. Whatever those profits may be, they are sometimes hardly earned, for there are many sharks. On one occasion a boy was diving and a shark seized his head in its mouth. The boy dug hisknees and nails into its throat, forcing it to let go, and was rescued by his friends, his whole chest horribly lacerated. He was taken ashore as quickly as possible, and eventually recovered; but the doctor, who was summoned to his aid, was so impressed with his marvellous escape from death, that in the interests of science rather than of his patient, he sent for a photographer and had the boy photographed as he was, before applying his medical ministrations. One photographer had the photographs made into picture post-cards. We could buy them, our informant said, when we reached Thursday Island. The proofs of this story are, unfortunately, incomplete. We hurried to the post-card shop, when we landed a few days later, but the photographer, who also sold stamps and string, sword-fish’s fins, coral, and newspapers, said the post-cards were sold out. We asked to see the negative, but being busy with other customers, he excused himself from finding it. We were unable to inform the narrator of this missing link in his story, for he had left us to embark for New Guinea on a little boat, in which he would sleep on deck, and have his meals in the one cabin by the light of a swinging lamp. We were sorry to lose his amusing company.

It was during the passage between Cairns andThursday Island, that Captain Cook, after having so far successfully navigated these dangerous seas in his small sailing ship, “became,” by running on to the Barrier Reef, “acquainted with misfortune.” The name Cape Tribulation marks the headland to the north of the scene of his disaster. His boat had passed safely over a shoal, while the ship’s company was at dinner, though the sudden shallowing of the water to eight fathoms had caused some temporary alarm. Nevertheless, all seeming once more safe, “the gentlemen left the deck in great tranquillity, and went to bed.” A few minutes before eleven, however, they had struck upon the Barrier Reef, and remained immovable, except by the heaving of the surge that beat her against the edges of the rock upon which she lay. In a few minutes everyone was upon the deck, “with countenances which sufficiently expressed the horrors of the situation,” for “we had too much reason to conclude that we were upon a rock of coral, which is more fatal than any other, because the points of it are sharp, and every part of the surface so rough as to grind away whatever is rubbed against it, even with the gentlest motion.” It was not till a week after this disaster, a week of continual labour and acute anxiety, that they succeeded in getting the ship ashore at Endeavour Harbour.The place of Captain Cook’s landing is marked by a low brownish green mound jutting out from the coast, which along here has a most inhospitable air, the coastal ranges coming down to the water’s edge. The days passed into weeks before the damage could be sufficiently repaired to set sail again. As we passed near inshore these same coastal ranges were deeply purple, with clouds rolling down their sides. There was no sign of life, not even the smoke of a native fire, the scene had great breadth and solemnity.

THURSDAY ISLAND. VIEW OF THE HARBOUR.

It was on the same day that we too saw the Barrier Reef, at first looking like a long sandy bar. Presently the coral itself showed with some pelicans on it. Here, too, were the blue lagoons of fiction, small coral islands, with little sandy coves, and pelicans, the only inhabitants, walking under the trees. The warm water of the sea was full of life. Yellow-banded snakes swam by, from two to four feet long. We counted twenty of them in one day. Dampier, exploring the west coast of Australia in 1699, notes these curious water snakes, which are said to be very poisonous. He was sailing out of Shark’s Bay when he observed some “serpents swimming about in the sea, of a yellow colour spotted with dark brown spots. They were each about four feet long, and about the bigness of a man’s wrist.” On several occasions we saw turtles swimming just below the surface of the water. Sometimes the sea was covered with a thick floating yellow substance not unlike the brown “scum” which coats stagnant pools at home. Some of it was collected by letting down a bath sponge on a string. The microscope revealed it as a low form of animal life.

Frigate birds were not uncommon, and one night there came on board two lovely bright green “bee-eaters.”

So the long sunny days slipped away, and towards sunset the misty coastal ranges became dim and unsubstantial in the dove-coloured evening light, while inshore one little white sail could be seen, that might have been the ghostly vessel of Captain Cook himself. Wednesday Island was passed the next morning. The islands here mark the days on which Captain Cook sighted and named them, and we entered the narrow Thursday Island Passage.

Thursday Island lies at the extreme northerly point of Australia, Cape York Peninsula, that juts out, and narrows into a point forming the eastern side of the Gulf of Carpentaria. To the north of it are the Torres Straits, to the south Prince of Wales and other islands, among them that Possession Island on which Captain Cooklanded, and formally took possession of the whole eastern coast in the name of George III, calling it “New South Wales.”24It is a centre for pearl-fishing, and a Naval Base. It is a sort of native cosmopolis. Every shade and tone of colour can be seen here, Chinese, Island boys, Papuans, and Malays. We entered the harbour, where the water was again that wonderful greenish blue turquoise, and the little fleet of pearling boats rode at anchor, for the War had put a stop to the industry. Thursday Island itself was a gay-looking little place, its shores covered with scattered bungalows, and a tropical forest covering the hills beyond. Moored near to our own boat was the little New Guinea steamer, manned by native Papuans. They wore nothing, down to their waists any way, which was as much as we could see of them, andwere a pale chocolate-au-lait colour, with great mops of black hair. They returned our enraptured staring by grinning at us with all their white teeth, aware that they were objects of interest and beauty. This was the first time we had seen all kinds of natives, of different shades. They manned the boats round the steamer, that brought on board plenipotentiaries of the official visits which always precede and delay a landing. At last we drew up alongside the jetty, and were allowed to go ashore.

On the shore were innumerable empty coconut shells, also all the derelict kerosene tins that had not been utilised by Australia were washed up on the beach. Many of the little shops sell pearls, but the uninitiated will find that they will do a better bargain with their own jeweller at home, though the blister pearls are extremely pretty, and can be bought for a few shillings. We also bought for threepence a copy of the Thursday Island daily paper, which measured a few inches, and was only printed on one side. It contained war news of a bewildering nature. All the shops had large printed notices up in the windows, warning the inhabitants what to do in case of a raid by a German cruiser, for the “Emden” and the “Scharnhorst” were then at large. At the ringing of a bell the women andchildren were at once to repair to certain specified places of refuge. The little native children are extraordinarily tough, and must be nearly as difficult to finish off as a koala bear. We saw a small black naked baby of about two years old fall off a verandah. It rolled down a steep flight of steps like a football. We were hurrying forward to pick it up, but it immediately scrambled to its feet, whimpered a little, and trotted off, none the worse.

The post office to which we went to see if there were any telegrams, with news from home, had rows of private letter boxes with glass windows, as it was the custom for people to fetch their own letters. A notice warned the owners that they must do their own repairs to these boxes, as their messengers were in the habit of smashing the glass to extract the letters. Another notice proclaimed that a murderer was wanted. He was eighteen years old, the son of a half-caste Chinese mother and a Kanaka father, a parental combination which one could imagine was fraught with dire possibilities. We walked about the island in an almost intolerably hot sun, on loose cobbles, alternating with deep, soft sand. It is an arid, stony place, and bristled with khaki-clad men. Inside the provision stores, which stood wide open, Japanese were mending sails.

Following the path above the little town through a sort of rough scrub, the ground was overgrown with some strongly smelling aromatic herb, burnt brown in the sun. We saw here one of the rare ornithoptera, a gorgeous blue velvet butterfly, and numbers of grasshoppers with yellow wings that made an odd noise like little castanets as they came out of the dead herbage. There did not seem to be many living things except coconut palms and the beautiful heavily scented blooms of the frangipani. We met the gorgeous nuns belonging to some Roman Catholic sisterhood, dressed in dazzling blue raiment, which would have put the “lilies of the field” quite out of countenance; and we avoided the tropical forest that clothed the farther side of the island, tempting as it looked at a distance, and were glad that we had done so. Several of the passengers, who had made an expedition to it in search of entomological specimens, brought back more than they intended, as they got badly stung by green ants and ticks. The green ants are very pretty and interesting at a safe distance; they are green with bright red legs, and make their nests by sewing together the leaves of a tree, so as to form a sort of large bag, but their sting is very gainful. The ticks are much more seriously unpleasant, as they burrow in the skin to laytheir eggs there, leaving their legs sticking out, and if the victim fails to extract all portions of them they produce a sore and painful scar.

Thursday Island has an interesting church—the “Quetta” Memorial Church. It stands in a green enclosure, with a blooming frangipani tree, and commemorates the loss of the S.S. “Quetta” of Glasgow, which some years ago sank on an uncharted rock one moonlight night, with the loss of nearly all hands. We went into the quiet and airy place. Just inside the door hangs in a frame, what seems to be a collection of coral and shells, but closer inspection showed it to be a porthole, that sixteen years later had been recovered, after having “suffered a sea change,” and become so encrusted with the beautiful growth of the sea floor that it was hardly any longer recognisable.

Returning to the ship, glad to escape from the blinding heat, we found an oil boat moored alongside. On her some Japanese were eating their rice with chop sticks, while a brown boy of unknown nationality, and a picturesque absence of clothes, cleaned cooking pots.

We now had to cross the wide mouth of the Gulf of Carpentaria, and round the westerly headland, behind which is the bay, that shelters Port Darwin in the Northern Territory, our lastport of call in Australia. We sighted two frigate birds and quantities of large white jelly-fish. We often saw, too, bones of the cuttle-fish floating on the water, like bits of white paper. They were noted also by Dampier on approaching the Australian coast: “We began to see some scuttle bones floating on the water,” he remarks, “and drawing still nearer we saw quantities of them.” The voyage after getting free of the Barrier Reef was less entirely pleasant, as all deck and cabin lights had to be darkened, or left unlighted at night, to disguise or conceal the ship from prowling German cruisers. The portholes were blackened and kept shut, the windows of the dining saloon boarded up each evening, so that dinner was a stifling affair, and our pleasant informal musical evenings came to an end, for no one could endure the atmosphere of the music-room. There was, however, compensation, for the darkened decks were very restful in the evening, and the stars were brilliant as they had never seemed before, Venus making a path along the water like moonshine.

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