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Well: the diary did not become continuous as you see; there was so little doing it wasn´t worth writing of. This trip again has been most disappointing; we came up here full of information and expectations. We were told that a German Cruiser & 800 men were concealed up the Sepik river (Kaiserin Augusta) and we were going to have the time of our lives searching for her. But it all ended in smoke as usual & I shouldn't be surprised if you see us in Sydney before many months. There really doesn't seem to be anything to do up this way now & probably by the time this is posted we'll be off elsewhere. We've been about 250 miles up the river & some are going up further, it has been rather interesting but quite unexciting. The Natives up here are quite friendly we're a bit too much for them I expect
tho still in a wild & cannibal state: I understand the Germans had a scrap with some 1200 of them a month or so ago & burned a couple of Villages. I am rather surprised to see how civilized they are in the wild state; they build comparitively good huts, have well kept gardens along the river banks, make quite good canoes paddles spears &c which are well curved considering their stone implements & make earthenware pots with quite clever decorative work on them. The country (German New Guinea) is very marshy all the way up the river & looks as tho tobacco or rice might do well in the dry ground and swampy parts respectively. Rice I think has been tried but the natives can't stand the continual wet work necessary. Tobacco they grow themselves. They seem a pretty intelligent & industrious crowd; they say they are treacherous. I can say that they are pretty filthy even for natives & smell most fearfully; I don't know whether it is natural or from some aloe juice that they may use to keep off the mosquitoes which have more powerful & varied methods of attack than any I've ever met before. I've been duck shooting a couple of days in the swamps among the reeds & undergrowth & am a mass of lumps all over for nothing less than leather will stop them, shirts & trousers they go through without noticing them. There are plenty malaria specimens; hope the quinine does the job properly. The pigeon up here are extroardinary: I've never seen such fine big ones as the larger varieties (white & pink plumage) or such gorgeous ones as the smaller fruit pigeons as they are called which are gay as our parrots not unlike a king parrot in plumage. There are thousands of duck mostly wood duck I think & cranes & shags innumerable; the sky gets dark patches in the evening with flighting pigeon, duck, shags, I've never seen the latter in such mobs before -- & cranes. I believe fish (mostly eels) are plentiful tho we haven't tried for any. This is a most wonderful river; it's not very wide as big rivers go, only about a 1/4 of a mile in the narrower places, but for 300 miles it has a depth of from 35 100 feet & apparently no shoals or mud banks. It runs right up into the central hills of New Guinea
what a river if one could settle along it or strike oil up at the head of it! So far as I can see there are practically no animals in the country except a few dreadful objects of pig & dogs among the Native Villages -- I wonder if that is the reason