Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/43

Rh 282 persons on board, 120 were drowned and 162 escaped. Miss Lacy, a girl of sixteen years of age, swam and floated for thirty-five hours until rescued by a boat.

The Barrier Reef has claimed, one way or the other, many victims, and many a good ship's ribs lie coral-encrusted in its beautiful waters. Danger lies there, but also mystery and even romance.

All along the land visible rose the great pyramid of earth—ant–heaps— which have such a peculiar aspect amongst the palms and other foliage. it was all very beautiful as we came through the narrow straits and entered the waters of Torres Straits, which separate New Guinea from Australia, and which straits are about eighty miles wide.

The Police Magistrate from Normanton who is on board told me a tale which is not very pleasant. You must understand that the natives are carefully protected by the Government; that is, if any one wrongs a native he is punished as severely as if it had been a white man. But if people often live beyond the reach of the law, and are, and have to be, a law unto themselves. They treat the natives as they please, and say nothing about it. There is, of course, but a small scattered community in the north of Australia at all, settled on or near the coast, with a hinterland of unexplored savage-peopled land.

This Police Magistrate was once riding, I presume somewhere in the neighbourhood of Normanton, in the Gulf of Carpentaria, and a man, known to him, joining him, they rode on together. After a time the Magistrate, looking down, was horrified to see a pair of bleeding human hands tied to his companion's stirrup.

“Oh,” said the man coolly, “it was a black