Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/140

106 table on the wall and said in an emphatic way, “We must look up that Dampfschiff” (steam-boat). The old ladies turned on each other with a horrified start, “What dreadful language these awful Americans use!"

King Peter is not friendly with Queen Emma, and particularly with her son, Mr. Forsayth, and it is when passing the house of the latter that he hoists his flag of the nigger standing on the cocoanut. King Peter has a very natural pride in the success he has attained and his position as actual king of a whole group of beautiful islands; but Queen Emma is the most important person in German New Guinea, as, besides the great plantations, she owns quite a fleet of schooners and other craft for trading purposes, and has over a thousand people in her employment, so that others have cause to be jealous.

Trade with the natives is all done with goods—beads, cloth, paint, and various things, and the native money—cowrie shells strung on fibre and worth so much a fathom; but German money, adorned with a bird of paradise, has been introduced and is eventually to come into universal use. It will be long ere the natives understand it.

The native tribes inhabiting the different territories and islands, and, as I said, even villages, differ in looks, customs, and language, so that there are many dialects or languages. Some are more Polynesian than Papuan in looks, but, speaking generally, the Papuans are a very fine race, well built and fine featured. They vary in colour, some being dark brown and others much more fair. The girls when young are tolerably attractive, but become wrinkled old women at an early age, and a really old woman is a terrible-looking old hag, generally skinny with a protruding stomach and long, hanging breasts. The men, however,