DISTRESS IN NEW GUINEA.

Press, Volume XXX, Issue 4079, 23 August 1878, Page 3

DISTRESS IN NEW GUINEA.

The Cook Town correspondent of the Melbourne " Argus " telegraphed on August 12th as follows:— H.M.S. Sappho has arrived from Port Moresby, which she left on the 7th inst., wanting coals. Captain Digby reports that affairs at Port Moresby were bad. Great numbers were doing nothing, and in a state of great destitution and misery from want of provisions. He had visited the main camp at Laloki, and found all the men either ill or recovering. He says their state is most pitiful, with no work and no prospects whatever. • From the character of the country, as described by the diggers, there seems to be nothing but dense tropical vegetation, with continual rain. There is no open country. The worst calamity that can befal Australia is the discovery of gold, for working in such a climate and country will kill nearly all who go to it. He considers New Guinea unfit for habitation, except along the coast. As passengers the Sappho has brought five of the Colonist party, viz. :—E. Hanran, Ferguson, J. and W. Armstrong, and Goethe ; also a colored man, Spraule, belonging to the Annie, a beche-de-mer and trading vessel on the coast. At Keppel Point, forty miles from Port Moresby, tho natives being dissatisfied with the trade with the whites, a fight ensued, in which Spraule was severely wounded in the stomach by a spear. He and three others were taken in a conveyance from a boat to the hospital, being too ill to walk. The captain held a court-martial over a man named Trotter, of Cooktown, late a confiuee of St. Helena, for a shooting affray. He was charged with enticing a native woman into his hut for an immoral purpose, and going through a native village drunk, with firearms, and threatening the natives. Owing to the want of evidence, he was acquitted, the captain saying, with great regret, that he would very much like to make examples of such characters. A second court was held to inquire into a charge against a man of committing a rape. Two men ri turning from Laloki heard screams, and on entering the scrub, found a European assaulting a woman. He begged to be let go, as Lynch law prevailed. They let him go, and said nothing. The matter, however, leaking out, the captain insisted on an inquiry, at the instance of the colonists' party, but the discoverers denied the identity of the man, although they distinctly described the crime. Knowing how particular the Natives are about their women, all the well-meaning members of the party and the captain are exceedingly disgusted at the miscarriage of justice in these the two worst known cases. On the next day the same correspondent sent the message subjoined :—John Hanran, one of the Colonist party, has arrived here, very ill. He gives particulars of several excursions by members of the Colonist party into tho country from Liloki Camp without finding gold. During the trip of the party they saw many villages, some of which con-, t.ined 1000 inhabitants, who were all friendly and appeared anxious to assist and feed them with yams and Bugar-caae. At one place they found a village on thc high bank of a river, with a ladder ascending 60ft., and houses built on platforms in the highest branches of tre.s. One portion of the party returned to camp after thirty-two days' absence, two of them being very ill. In the course of the return trip the party saw sugarcane and yams pf an immense size. Hanran and others still say that good gold must exist, and they now propose returning first to the top of the camp, crossing a small range to N.W., from which the gold found in the Goldie river is supposed to have come, and then reach another river which is supposed to run under the Owen Stanley Bange, in the dire-tion of Bed Scar Bay. The Emily party will probably join the remnant of the Colonist party in this attempt. When Hanran left the rivers were still flooded. He helieves that it never topped raining in the Oiren Stanley Bange while the party were out. He states "that the range, although but forty miles from the coast, was only once seen by the party, owing to cont-nnal mist. The total distance traversed by the Colonist party is 370 miles, and sot half a grain of gold "has yet teen discovered.