Page:Picturesque New Guinea.djvu/161



N the morning of the 16th we were agreeably surprised by the arrival of H.M.S. "Raven" which we had last seen at Cooktown, where she had been stationed for six months. She brought us a mail, and remaining two days only, returned to Cooktown. Before she left, and while we were still engaged devouring the contents of the welcome budget of letters and newspapers, the "Herbert," for which we were waiting, made her appearance after a somewhat long passage, which was explained by the fact of her having bumped on a coral reef and narrowly escaped wreckage at Hood Bay, nearly forty miles to the east, where she had no business. Her getting off, after dragging her anchor cast in ninety fathoms, was a piece of good fortune for which her captain has reason to be thankful. Attempting to profit by the detention of the "Blackall" at Port Moresby, I constructed a temporary studio of framework covered with calico for the purpose of making photographic studies of native heads, but I reckoned without my host, or rather without the south-east trades, which blew very heavily nearly all the time we lay in port. My studio