Cocoa and chillies thrive in the Mekeo region, and this district is also very rich in fruit. The Government at Port Moresby often sends down a sailing vessel to bring back large consignments of fruit for the convicts in Port Moresby jail. The fruit-farmer might find in the Mekeo region a richer California. In about the same condition as the coffee is the rubber trade. Trees are found throughout the possession, and the natives have some understanding of the method of collecting the sap. Their operations are, however, very crude and rough. I question whether the New Guinea rubber would ever rival in excellence the South American variety (_hevea Braziliensis_), which is undoubtedly the finest in the market, although Ceylon is just commencing to send rubber which may run it hard. To the stock-raiser New Guinea offers a tempting field. At the Mission of the Sacred Heart on Yule Island I saw remarkably fine cattle—cows and oxen—which had doubtless been introduced from Australia. Not only the headquarters of the Mission, but the outlying stations, were plentifully supplied with milk and butter, and, at the time I was there, they hoped to be in a position to kill a beast a week, an important consideration, for fresh meat is valuable in New Guinea. I did not see sheep in New Guinea at all, but goats were met with at Hall Sound, although they are not raised in any great numbers. On Yule Island the pasturage is splendid, and drought, that terror of the Australian squatter, is by no means frequent. Turning to the mineral wealth, for the past five years gold workings have been carried on at the Yodda Fields, on the Mombare River, in the north-east portion of the island. The gold is alluvial. Although I cannot give the exact figures of the output, some idea of the productiveness of the region may be obtained from the fact that, for the last five years, 150 miners have been able to live on these fields. When it is remembered that the price of provisions at the Yodda Camp is prohibitive, it is not an extravagant assumption to compute that each man must be turning out at least three ounces of gold per week to make it worth his while to remain. There are other workings in the Woodlark Islands, and there are certainly evidences of gold everywhere in the streams of New Guinea. It does not seem likely that the miners are turning their earnings to the best account at the present time. The local stores, of course, consume a great deal of their dust, and when a man has got a fair pile together he not infrequently goes down to Samarai, and has what he calls “a good time,” returning with empty pockets to begin his labour over again. I believe the Government is now making a road to the Yodda Fields, and when this is completed, the longer route will be abandoned, and provisions on the fields will be cheaper.