Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/199

Rh raised by foolish talk are bound to be disappointed. We travelled in this through the cocoanut, tobacco, coffee, and capuc or kapok plantations―all a very pretty scene. There were also cotton bushes. The capuc trees produce a sort of wool used for stuffing mattresses and the like.

We then inspected the tobacco factory, being shown round by a young German who had only been a few months in the country and had already had fever several times. Everything was very clean and in order. There were one hundred and sixty employees at work, forty of whom were good looking Malay girls, and the rest strong, handsome Chinese from Canton. Here, too, they had much of the capuc. We then went to another building where Malay girls were separating the seed from the capuc, and the piles of capuc and cotton in heaps looked exactly like wool. These girls, who showed us everything and explained, were very handsome and extremely well mannered. Really life at Stephansort must be very bearable!

All these plantations belong to the New Guinea Co., and there is much local wrath and scorn because, owing to a partial failure of one or two, due to some temporary climatic cause, the Directors in Berlin had sent out orders to place the plantations at other spots where they had put dots on the map―in the midst of swamps and jungles! All the governing powers of the New Guinea Co. are now being taken over by the Government, and henceforth they will be private company, but owning many choice areas. I believe the company which became the chartered New Guinea Co. in 1884, when the German flag was hoisted at Matupi, had been in possession of some plantations previously to that. On their governing powers ceasing they received a sum of somewhere about