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.