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Hundreds of scattered tribes had learned to revere their great leader "Tamate," as they called him, who brought peace and prosperity to his followers. Yet a danger to Papua that he himself foresaw and did all in his power to avert came as a result of the introduction of the very civilization of which he was the champion, for with peace came new wants that the most unscrupulous of traders at once sought to supply at prices ruinous to the social and moral welfare of the natives. Also, the proximity of Queensland threatened to become a menace; for Chalmers himself was well aware of the dark history of the "blackbird trade" wherein practical slavery was forced upon the indentured laborers, lured from their island homes to toil as hopeless debtors upon the Australian plantations. A government of the natives for the native interests he desired; not one administered from the Australian mainland in the interest of alien whites. The hopes of Chalmers were only partially realized, for Papua is still only a territory of Australia. In most respects this condition appears to be unfortunate. The crying needs of a new country are usually peculiarly local and not likely to be appreciated by a distant ruling power. Moreover, Australia is itself an undeveloped land and requires too large a proportion of its own capital for expansion at home to be a competent protector of a colony across the sea. One feels that Papuan development might have proceeded with greater smoothness had the colony been more directly under the British empire, rather shall an Australian dependency. The strategic necessity that Australia should command both the northern and the southern shores of Torres Straits might still have been secured without the sacrifice of any important initiative in matters of government upon the part of Papua. The cardinal evil that Chalmers feared has, however, been averted. The natives still own 97 1/2 per cent. of the entire land area, and wise laws guard them in this precious possession, and aim to protect them from all manner of unjust exploitation. It is much to the credit of the government that the cleanest native villages and the most healthy, ambitious and industrious tribes, are those nearest the white settlements. Contact between the races has resulted in the betterment, not in the degradation, of the Papuan natives. The touch of a master hand is apparent in a multitude of details in managing the natives of Papua; and it is of interest to see that in broad essentials the plan of government is adapted from that which the English have put to the test of practice in Fiji; the modifications being of a character designed to meet the conditions peculiar to Melanesia, wherein the chiefs are relatively unimportant in comparison with their role in the social systems of the Polynesians and Fijians. Foremost in the shaping of the destiny of Papua stands the commanding figure of Sir William Macgregor, administrator and lieutenant governor from 1888 to 1898. As a young man Macgregor was government physician in Fiji, where he became prominent not only as a competent guardian of the health of the natives, but as a leader in the suppression of the last stronghold of cannibalism along the Singatoka River. In Papua his tireless spirit found a wide field for high endeavor, and upon every department of the government one finds to-day the stamp of his powerful personality. Nor did he remain closeted in Port Moresby, a stranger to the races of his vast domains, for over the highest mountains and through the densest swamps his expeditions forced their way; the Great Governor always in the van. It was thus that he conquered the fierce Tugeri of the Dutch border, who for generations had been the terror of the coasts; and wherever his expeditions passed, peace followed, and the law of the British magistrate supplanted the caprice of the sorcerer. But his hardest fight was not with the mountain wilds or the malarious morasses. It was to secure from the powerful ones of his own race the privileges of freemen for the natives of Papua. In his youth he had seen the blessings that came with the advent of British rule in Fiji; and here, in broad New Guinea, upon a vaster scale, he strove to make fair play the dominant note in the white man's treatment of a savage race. Arrayed against Chalmers and Macgregor were conservatism and suspicion founded in ancient precedent, and a commercial avarice that saw in native exploitation the readiest means to convert New Guinea into a "white man's country." Aversion there was also in high places to embarking upon a possibly fruitless experiment, involving generations of labor and expense for a remote and uncertain harvest. Chalmers and Macgregor, however, through the force of their high convictions and the wisdom of their wide experience, won the great fight for fairness; for civilization's cardinal victories are those, not of the soldier, but of the civil servant who dares risk his reputation and his all for those things he deems just and generous; and when Papua comes to erect statues to her great leaders, those of these two patriots must surely occupy the highest places, as champions of the liberties of the weak. The noble policy of Macgregor is still, and let us hope it long may be, the keynote of the administration in Papua, which to-day is being ably carried forward under the great governor's disciple, the Honorable John H. P. Murray. The proclamation given by Captain Erskine in 1884 declared that a British Protectorate had become essential for the safeguarding of the lives and property of the natives of New Guinea and for the purpose of preventing the occupation of the country by persons whose proceedings might lead to injustice, strife and bloodshed, or whose illegitimate trade might endanger the liberties and alienate the lands of the natives. It is, however, one thing for a government to declare its altruistic intentions, but often quite another to carry them into effect. In Papua, every effort has been made to prevent robbery of the natives by unscrupulous whites. The natives are firmly secured in the possession of their lands, which they can neither sell, lease nor dispose of, except to the government itself. Thus the natives and the government are the only two landlords in the

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