Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/152

114 islands. They tell me he is most eccentric, has few interests or tastes of his own, but has brought out as his guests several scientific men.

Matupi is an island very near the mainland, with which it is to be eventually joined by a bridge {now completed]. It is quite a lovely spot, beautifully situated in Blanche Bay, and is dominated by the three volcanoes known as the Mother and Daughters—the North and the South Daughters. The Mother is quite alive and very active at times, but the Daughters are modest creatures, quiescent, and clothed with vegetation to almost the very top. There are hot springs in a river running into the bay, which is itself a crater into which the sea has broken.

In 1878 a volcano rose in Blanche Bay. At Cape Gloucester, the extreme west point of New Britain, is a nest of volcanoes found by Wilfrid Powell to be in eruption in 1877. There were one hundred craters, large and small, erupting fire, smoke, and fine ashes. The Father (4000 ft.) and the South Son (3000 ft.) are also volcanoes.

The sulphur fumes from the Mother are borne over Matupi by the wind; so it is quite free from fever, and one has only to glance at its German inhabitants to see how healthy it is. Herr Walin is a fine bronzed specimen of what a German be- comes under such conditions, and besides being a handsome, vigorous man, is also most pleasant and agreeable.

In Blanche Bay lie the two Bienenkorb Inseln, or Beehive Islands, two perpendicular rocks 220 ft. high, separated by a few feet of water and surrounded by deep sea. These islands are of ideal beauty. At the foot of one, on a coral ledge amidst cocoanut palms, is a native village with three hundred people who live by fishing. Some day there will be a great upheaval here, and all