NEW GUINEA STORIES

Waipukurau Press, Issue 298, 20 August 1908, Page 7

NEW GUINEA STORIES

Some interesting stories of the New Guinea natives were told at a missionary meeting in Sydney the other evening. A Papuan boy, whom Archdeacon Crossley . had brought to Australia, came up to him one day, rubbing his stomach violently,! with. groans. The archdeacon looked inquiring alarm. Very cold, very cold,” the Papuan murmured, and he kept it up for half an hour or so, at the end of which he seemed all right. The archdeacon discovered that some of the grammar school boys had been treating him to ice creams—a good many ice. creams —25 in fact. TLo missionaries and magistrates are not always received with open arms. At one part of rhe coast the natives are very independent. Their village had to be approached by boat, and the invading magistrate upon his rounds was wrecked upon a reel. The Papuans came out in boats, demanding who he was. ” I am the magistrate,” he said. “ I have to keep you in order.” They put their heads together ; then one spoke. • “ Ao don’t want you, she said. “Yon can stop where you are,” and the magistrate pnt -in the night upon the reef with his broken boat. One speaker was anxious that the Papuans should bring none of their barbaric habits into the Church. Ho gave an instance of their inherent cruelty, a cruelty which, from the account given, seemed more due to careless, unsympathetic ignorance than anything else. A boy, said the speaker, might be playing with some small animal,such as anopossum. He would stroke it, fondle it, like an English child with a kitten. >Then, when he grew tired of it, be would break its legs to prevent its escaping, throw it on the fire, and watch it sizzle alive.