CHAPTER XVIIA NOTE ON BRITISH TRADE PROSPECTS INNEW GUINEA
CHAPTER XVIIA NOTE ON BRITISH TRADE PROSPECTS INNEW GUINEA
CHAPTER XVIIA NOTE ON BRITISH TRADE PROSPECTS INNEW GUINEA
CHAPTER XVII
A NOTE ON BRITISH TRADE PROSPECTS IN
NEW GUINEA
The intelligent observer of New Guinea cannot fail to recognise that the country presents a vast unopened field for the development of British trade. Many sources of wealth are as yet absolutely untouched, but experiments that have recently been made in coffee, tobacco, cocoa, and rubber, yield the richest promise. The geographical configuration of the coast will greatly aid the enterprising trader, for many centres of industry can easily be approached by water at such inlets as Hall Sound, and the cost of transport from the interior would consequently be a mere bagatelle.
One of the chief industries is sandalwood cutting. The sandalwood is found in arid, elevated regions, and the particular spots where the trees grow in any quantity are known to the trade as patches. These patches, however, do not signify that the trees grow closely together. One tree might be found here and another might not occur for a hundred yards or so; but still there is an area of sandalwood growth sufficiently definite to justify the title “patch.” For any one who understands the intricacies of the situation, and the proper method of going to work, there is something to be made; but at present the developmentof the trade is beset with difficulties which can only be surmounted by one who is thoroughly familiar with the country and the conditions.
A rich source of income, still only little worked, is the trade inbéche-de-mer, the sea-slug, which is an indispensable article of seasoning in every Chinese kitchen. This commands £70 a ton in the China market, and the variety known as the “black fish” fetches as much as £100 a ton. It is used for thickening gravies and soups. These molluscs are about 9 inches long and 3 inches thick, and are to be found adhering to the corals. The Papuans dive for them, and when they have secured them they are split open, dried in the sun, and packed in boxes. This trade could be made very profitable to any capable operator who cared to embark a moderate capital in its development. Divers can be had for a little tobacco or a few shells, a knife or an axe, but the chief expense is the preparation and preservation for the market. As a matter of fact, an enterprising Brisbane firm has lately introduced the tinning system for this mollusc, but the China market is supplied with the dried commodity untinned.
There is also much to be done in copra and in cocoanut products generally. Large cocoanut plantations pay well, as every part of the tree can be utilised, and there is no doubt that a great deal of business can be done with Java, which at present cannot produce enough cocoanut fibre for its mat industry, and actually brings consignments all the way from Ceylon. The copra is in great demand amongst soap-makers, and one large firm has prospectors at work in the interior of the islands with a view to increasing the supply. To my own knowledge efforts are being made to extend this trade, by several Europeans, east and west of Hall Sound, but there is plenty of room for others without in any way damaging the prosperity of the industry.
HAULING UP A LOG FOR BUILDING THE CAMP AT DINAWA
HAULING UP A LOG FOR BUILDING THE CAMP AT DINAWA
HAULING UP A LOG FOR BUILDING THE CAMP AT DINAWA
New Guinea is favourable to the production of coffee, although the plant is not indigenous to the island. A fine quality is grown at Wariratti. The plantations are flourishing, but here again the enterprise is still young. The trade is so new that the experimental stage is hardly passed. It cannot be doubted that Australia offers a vast and lucrative market to the future coffee grower of New Guinea.
Cocoa and chillies thrive in the Mekeo region, and this district is also very rich in fruit. The Government at Port Moresby often sends down a sailing vessel to bring back large consignments of fruit for the convicts in Port Moresby jail. The fruit-farmer might find in the Mekeo region a richer California.
In about the same condition as the coffee is the rubber trade. Trees are found throughout the possession, and the natives have some understanding of the method of collecting the sap. Their operations are, however, very crude and rough. I question whether the New Guinea rubber would ever rival in excellence the South American variety (hevea Braziliensis), which is undoubtedly the finest in the market, although Ceylon is just commencing to send rubber which may run it hard.
To the stock-raiser New Guinea offers a tempting field. At the Mission of the Sacred Heart on YuleIsland I saw remarkably fine cattle—cows and oxen—which had doubtless been introduced from Australia. Not only the headquarters of the Mission, but the outlying stations, were plentifully supplied with milk and butter, and, at the time I was there, they hoped to be in a position to kill a beast a week, an important consideration, for fresh meat is valuable in New Guinea. I did not see sheep in New Guinea at all, but goats were met with at Hall Sound, although they are not raised in any great numbers. On Yule Island the pasturage is splendid, and drought, that terror of the Australian squatter, is by no means frequent.
Turning to the mineral wealth, for the past five years gold workings have been carried on at the Yodda Fields, on the Mombare River, in the north-east portion of the island. The gold is alluvial. Although I cannot give the exact figures of the output, some idea of the productiveness of the region may be obtained from the fact that, for the last five years, 150 miners have been able to live on these fields. When it is remembered that the price of provisions at the Yodda Camp is prohibitive, it is not an extravagant assumption to compute that each man must be turning out at least three ounces of gold per week to make it worth his while to remain. There are other workings in the Woodlark Islands, and there are certainly evidences of gold everywhere in the streams of New Guinea. It does not seem likely that the miners are turning their earnings to the best account at the present time. The local stores, of course, consume a great deal of their dust, and when a man has got a fair pile together he not infrequently goes down to Samarai, and has whathe calls “a good time,” returning with empty pockets to begin his labour over again. I believe the Government is now making a road to the Yodda Fields, and when this is completed, the longer route will be abandoned, and provisions on the fields will be cheaper.
As regards imports for commerce with the natives, the chief desiderata are the articles technically known as “trade,” with which the labour to be used for developing the exports is remunerated. The native generally desires to receive from the white man knives, axes, tobacco, Jews’ harps, beads, dogs’ teeth, and red calico; but it is to the exports that the enterprising trader has to look in the future.
The finest field for enterprise in New Guinea—and one which I have therefore left to the last to be dealt with—is tobacco. The district of Mekeo produces a magnificent leaf, of which the seed has been imported from Cuba. The syndicate that imported the leaf applied to the Government for 100,000 acres of land in the central division of British New Guinea, but this request was opposed by the New South Wales Government, without reason vouchsafed to the Government of the possession, whose officials in a recent report described this action as “a very serious blow to the immediate development of the country by Australian capitalists of high standing.” The same report, while deploring this misfortune, remarks that the tobacco should do very well if the leaf is properly treated for the market, as the soil appears to be very rich. Very different was the action of the German authorities in the Kaiser’s New Guinea possessions. With their usual indefatigableenterprise, the Teutons have financed a large tobacco undertaking, and are exporting the leaf in great quantities. Their syndicate has so far introduced methods of civilised trade that they have struck and issued their own coinage (which bears the image of a bird of paradise), and their five-mark, two-mark, and one-mark pieces are accepted by the natives instead of trade. These pieces are, of course, spent by the natives in the German stores. Not without reason did the Prince of Wales advise Great Britain to wake up.
With all these extraordinary opportunities, it is a curious fact that, as regards shipping, the island is in a worse position for trade than it was twenty years ago. Even as recently as 1902, theMoresbywas calling every five weeks at Port Moresby, but now her route has been changed, and she sails from Sydney to Singapore, calling at Port Moresby only once every two and a half months. In the interval goods and mails are carried in an erratic manner by a little steamer called theParua, by theMerrie England(a Government survey boat), or by theSt. Andrew, the Sacred Heart Mission boat. Two small sailing vessels, it is true, sail between Cook Town and Samarai, but this does not improve the communication with Port Moresby, the seat of Government, as these vessels make no call there. It is almost incredible that the second largest island in the world—the “Pearl of the East,” probably the richest region in proportion to its size that Great Britain has the option of developing—is thus left hermit-like in the midst of the eastern seas. It is the more surprising when it is rememberedthat New Guinea lies directly on the trade route between Sydney and the great commercial centres of China and Japan. We might have had a magnificent coaling station on the east coast of the island, in the Dampier Strait, but for the action of Lord Derby, when he permitted the Germans to extend their possessions so as to occupy almost a quarter of the eastern peninsula of the island. As matters stand now, a coaling station could only be established at such a point on the south-eastern coast that vessels coming and going from Sydney would have to double the south-east cape, thus making an awkward and almost impossible détour in these days when time is more than ever the essence of every shipping contract.