Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/181

Rh would tell her cronies at the first evening party or afternoon “At Home” when she got back, as to the strange people who had not eaten her?

Then we saw the half-caste school for the “better classes”—nice-looking, well - mannered children, and amongst them a Parkinson boy. Dear little Princess Angela Hansen belonged to these, and was by way of showing me round and not at all inclined to leave me, nor I to leave her. They played the piano for us, sang, and showed their needlework.

All this is very pretty, interesting, and nice—but what is to become of these educated half-caste children? The little girls when they grow up, educated and taught refined ways and useful things, can never marry Papuans, of course. Some will doubtless become teachers, some may marry Germans, but many will be sought as mistresses for the European men. That must be their fate. Many of these half-castes are the offspring of the native or Malay girls who live with the Germans—no house, indeed, is without its half-caste child on the verandah. The Germans “marry” these girls young and get rid of them when tired of them; but some of the Malay girls are very attractive and keep their lord's house in perfect order, and the men get so attached to them that they do not part with them. In some cases they have legally married them, but that means that they can never return to Germany with these wives and families. It is all a great pity and a huge mistake, as the first colonists born in the land are half-caste.

As to the real natives, the Mission “adopts” small children, educates them, teaches them agriculture and other useful things, and proposes when they are of suitable age to marry them to one another, set them up in villages with some cocoa-palms, cattle, and so on. All this has been tried