Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/30

8 navigation. The islands and rocks are countless, corals and fish of the most varied and curious character. We steamed inside it all the way.

It is a great haunt of the bêche-de-mer fishers. This disagreeable looking thing is a sea-slug from six to eight inches long and five inches in circumference, but one variety is some feet long.They are found frequently about coral reefs and shallow, but also in deeper waters. Some of them discharge long white filaments when touched, and these blister the skin. As soon as caught they are split open, cleaned, the body distended by sticks, then smoked over a wood fire, when they shrivel up and look like dry indiarubber. After being left to dry in the sun for a time they are packed in sacks and sold to the Chinese, who pay from 50 to 150 a ton for them, and make soup of them. They may be obtained, as a delicacy, at Fortnum & Mason’s in London, by those who like such nasty things. Tortoise-shell is also a Barrier product.

Shortly after leaving Townsville we passed the Palm Islands, the largest of which is said to be one of the best islands on the coast. It is inhabited cannibal blacks and by a white missionary. The old sea-captain says the latter is “cranky,” and that is why the blacks do not eat him. My sympathy is with the blacks, as “cranky missionary served up with sea-slugs” does not sound inviting. It is a large, thickly wooded,and pretty island, with numerous adjacent smaller isles. The Queensland Government, which has gone in for Henry George's theory that the land belongs to the people, will neither lease nor sell any of these islands. [They do now (1909), I think, lease them.]

We next passed Hinchinbrook Island, the largest up here, very high and with a bold pictureesque outline. The Rockingham Channel lies between it and the mainland.