Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/176

134 know all the details, but the bare facts are sufficient to show how every man carries his life in his hands in these islands.]

In all these islands, especially in New Britain, the natives are great cannibals [since 1900 many whites have been killed]. They even organise manhunting expeditions. In 1897 a man was killed and eaten at Ralum, Frau Kolbe's estate, and quite near Herbertshöhe. Fortunately they do not like white man's flesh, as it is too salt and tastes of tobacco and alcohol, and they are afraid of his spirit. When a man is killed and eaten, part of the flesh, wrapped in leaves, is sent round to friends as a delicacy, the women generally getting the breast, which they like much. One idea of the natives is that when they eat a man his strength and wisdom enters into them. It will be remembered that in 1801 the well-known missionary, Chalmers—with another, Tomkins—was killed in British New Guinea and their steamer plundered. When Queensland sent an expedition to avenge this they found that thirteen of Chalmers' party had been killed and eaten, and only a few parts of the body of Chalmers were found. They burnt eleven villages and blew up all the war-canoes with dynamite.

Even fifty kilometres from Herbertshöhe all the country is unknown and the natives most troublesome, and even that part called the Gazellenhalbinsel is not properly explored. In the Solomons, or nearer at hand in New Hanover and New Ireland, as well as on the mainland, it is just the same.

It was on New Ireland that the famous expedition of the Marquis de Ray came to such a tragical termination. This Frenchman, a Breton, got peasants and others, mostly Bretons, to realise all their possessions, placing all in his hands, to