THE GERMANS IN NEW GUINEA AND NEW BRITAIN.

Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2462, 21 April 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE GERMANS IN NEW GUINEA AND NEW BRITAIN.

A traveller, writing from Ralune under date af 20th February, says "We passed through German New Guinea, New Britain, and New Ireland, and found affairs in those parts rather quiet. In Finch Hafen, the capital, there is a large settlement. The present Governor is on the eve of departing for Germany to take home his children, and will be absent 12 months. The New Guiuea Company havo spent already about £250,0-0 in starting tlis colonisation of New Guinea and adjacent islaudu, They have erected a great many stations along the coast, started a local government, and surveyed all the harbours. Besides, they havo been having trials in agriculture, and now, after this experience, havo started largo plantations in New Guinea. This schome, we believe, will be the success of the country, owing to cheapness and abundance of native labour. Already they have 500 natives from the adjacent islands, and 200 Malays. They are cmployed in growing cotton, coffee and tobacco. The company has forbidden home emigration, and has thrown the country open now, wishing the emigration to come from Australia. The adjacent islands, New Britain and Now Ireland, are only two days steaming from Finch Hafen, there live the old pioneer traders, two German firms and one American firm, who have been there these last 12 years. The firm of T. Farrel and Co. have been trading as well as planting. Their Kalune plantation was started five years ago, and seems to bo a great success They informed us that the labour market is not expensive, as they recruit natives from the next island, Bouganville; that their plantations were more or less a trial of the soil, and that as they own hundreds of thousands of acres of land in New Britain, they mean la enlarge it. They grow South Sea Island cotton well, coffee, coaeoanuts and broomcorn. We saw three Wesleyan mission stations, too, and a great many of their teachers. They seem to have done a great deal of good amongst the natives. VY r e hope some of our enterprising people of Australia will visit these islands and help to colonise them.—Sydney Daily Telegraph.