Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/225

Rh all barricaded in their house defending themselves and withstanding a siege. King Peter wrote me an account of it, what he did, and how he "took a bloody revenge," killing so many of them with his own hand! He sent me a photograph of the Mato in harbour there. Some time after this, on my return to Europe, I saw a telegram in the papers that all the white people at Petershafen had been massacred, and the Mato seized, looted, and burnt. I have never heard more details, and I supposed King Peter perished with the others, but I have recently heard that he is living and well. I had sent out from Germany a box of toys for his children. I wonder if little or big savages are playing with them now? It was a great work to send that box, as no one in that German town had heard of New Guinea, and the post office people insisted it must be an ironbound case and that it must go by Africa—even when I showed them in their own post-book that there was a parcel post to New Guinea, and that it was quite simple to send anything from Bremen. When I told the fat old Frau who sold these toys something of the place they were going to she was amazed, and sent for her children to hear also; and when I asked how they had never read about it, she said in quite a shocked, reproving way, "We German women never read; only our husbands do that!"

This being at a time when all Germans were abusing "England" and her colonies, as well as her enormities to "the poor Boers," it gave me a splendid chance—of which I availed myself frequently—of saying, "From morning to night you abuse and talk over "England" and her colonies. You do not even know the names of your own or where they are. How then can you know about ours?" This dumbfounded