Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/226

180 them, and "Es ist wahr!" ("It is true") they cried in astonishment.

In winter, in Wiesbaden, whilst I was visiting a dear kinswoman, a number of people were present in her salon discussing the ways and means for augmenting the subscription got up in Wiesbaden for "the poor Boer widows and orphans being frozen to death on the open veldt in South Africa." I quietly remarked that it was very sad, but there could not be much freezing about it, as they were more likely to be broiled alive by the great heat. Silence and consternation fell on these people, for they had never thought of that, and I am afraid that, so far as they were concerned, that fund collapsed there and then. My hostess beamed on me and rubbed her hands with delight, as she had been telling me how much she resented the outrageous way the Germans behaved during that war.

Mr. Alan Burgoyne, M.P., who visited many of these places, including the Admiralty and French Islands, and who has many interesting tales to relate, tells me that in the French Islands dwelt a peculiar dwarf race who had characterirics of their own. At Friedrich Wilhelms Hafen—at Jomba, I think he met a Baron del Abaca who had been a friend of the missing Archduke " Johann Orth."]

We arrived at the important port of Potsdamhafen early in the morning. You can see it marked on the map.

It consists of one small house inhabited by two Catholic missionaries—only that and nothing