Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/95

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S.S. Stettin, Dec. 1900.

How small a steamship on which you are about to travel appears when you first view it, and how impossibly confined and oppressively cooped-up its cabins—then use makes it seem spacious, and the cabins, and even your narrow berth, become roomy and comfortable. So it was that the German boat of the Nord Deutscher Lloyd Co., the Stettin, appeared to me when I first viewed her in Sydney Harbour, and I wondered whether I was not doing something foolish. But I had hankered for years after New Guinea—that unknown, unexplored, mysterious land. Only to gaze upon its shores would be happiness to me, and I knew I could do little more than that, as I must merely pass by and had no time to linger.

Look at the map and you will see all those countless islands lying between Australia and Asia, including New Guinea, the Celebes, Borneo, Java, Sumatra, and the Philippines—thousands of isles of all sizes and sorts. You dismiss them as small unknown isles—Great Britain amongst them would be lost sight of almost, as compared to her some of the others are very large. You will see how near they all are to Australia, New Guinea being separated from it only by, at one point, narrow Straits. Look at it, study it all, and remember 5