C H A P T E R X.
TO R R E S S T R A IT S IS L A N D S .
WE remained for nearly four months anchored at or in the
neighbourhood of Thursday Island, During this period
our boats were employed in making a survey of the Prince of Wales
Channel, which is now the route almost invariably used by steamers
and sailing ships in passing through Torres Straits. There is a small
settlement at Thursday Island consisting of about a dozen houses,
wooden built, which are occupied by white families and their
coloured domestics. There is a police magistrate, whose jurisdiction,
as an official of the Queensland government, extends over
all the islands in Torres Straits ; an officer of customs, through
whose hands passes all the trade of the Straits ; a staff of white
policemen to enforce the Queensland law ; a prison for the incarceration
of the refractory pearl shellers ; a store for the supply of
tinned provisions and all the miscellaneous requirements of the
pearl shell trade ; and, finally, there are two public-houses which
do a flourishing business and supply ample material for the official
ministration of the police. The entire population, white and
coloured, does not exceed a hundred.
Thursday Island owes its importance to being the shipping port
for the produce of all the pearl shell fisheries in Torres Straits. It
IS visited monthly by steamers of the “ British India” and “ Eastern
and Australian ” Steamship Companies, and also by a small coasting
steamer, the Corea, belonging to an Australian firm. The
latter plies regularly and constantly between Thursday Island
and Sydney, and does most of the business in connection with the
fisheries, conveying the shell to Sydney, and returning with a
cargo of tinned provisions, slops, and other stores for the use of
the pearl shellers. The inhabitants of Thursday Island, and those
belonging to the various pearl shell stations scattered through the
group of islands, are dependent for support upon extraneous
supplies of provisions. Cattle will not thrive on the islands,* owinn<3
to the poisonous nature of the grass, and as yet all attempts at
growing fruit and vegetables have in most cases proved unsuccessful.
The native inhabitants of the Torres Straits Islands are a small
tribe of Papuan origin, who lead a wandering life, and show little
inclination to hold intercourse with either white or coloured
colonists. They have the frizzled hair, the aquiline hooked nose,
and the wide curved lips of the Papuans ; and among their implements
are the long “ hour-glass ” drum, headed with lizard skin,
the tortoise-shell mask worn at corrobories, and the pearl shell
ornaments dangling from the neck ; but their intercourse with the
North Australian aborigines is shown by their having acquired the
practice of using the “ throwing sticks” for their spears. Their
food being almost solely of marine origin, their camps are only
found on the shores of the islands. A t certain seasons in the
year they catch the turtle and dugong, and apparently in great
numbers, if one can judge by the quantity of bones of these
animals seen by us in the midden-heaps. Fish they obtain in
abundance by means of the hook and line, and the shore molluscs
also supply them with food; so that it is not to be wondered at
that we generally found them to be in a well-nourished condition,
and not at all anxious to barter their fish for such a commodity
as ship’s biscuit. Their boats are long dug-out canoes, fitted with
double outriggers, and very rudely constructed. Whether under
sail or paddle, they manoeuvred very badly, and were on the whole
very poor specimens of naval architecture, even for a tribe of
savages.
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