Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/212

166 but somehow they jangled the strings, played false notes, and put me completely out of tune. Therefore, it is not music I emit, but discord. Then I have roused ire by being well and saying a great deal about the effect on the fever-stricken of the constant swilling at whisky and beer. I might have been forgiven the whisky, but I have wounded them on the tenderest spot by railing against the unlimited beer, and that is an outrage on their very nationality.

Nevertheless, I am right—how could spirits and sticky beer be anything but detrimental in this overpoweringly hot, airless, moist climate?

Then my references to Troppenkoller have been a little too acid perhaps, and, if true, are none the better for that, for truth is so unpleasant to most people.

How I wish Frieda von Bülow was here! How deep would be her interest in this part of the empire she loves so patriotically and has worked so well for! What discussions we would have, and how her fine, frank, independent spirit would rouse up these people here—and they need it!

[Since these words were written, the Baroness Frieda von Bülow, so well known as a popular authoress in Germany, has passed away. This brilliant and gifted woman was in her younger days, when I first knew her, as handsome as she was clever, with a rather Byronic head. She went to South Africa to organise a hospital in one of the German colonies, and wrote several interesting books dealing with that land. After the death of her brother, Baron Albrecht Bülow, an officer who was killed by the natives, she returned there to manage for herself a plantation acquired by him. Had she not been a woman,