A run of twenty-four hours’ duration brought us to Thursday Island, one of the great centres of the pearl fishery, where many nationalities congregate for the purposes of trade. The stores are kept for the most part by Chinese, and Japanese and Chinese boats call there on their way south to Sydney. The coasters also make it a point of call as they pass from Brisbane and Sydney on their way to the Gulf of Carpentaria and Normanton, the great centre of the Eastern cattle trade. Thursday Island, so small a dot in the Eastern Archipelago that the tiniest mark a geographer can make on his map is widely out of proportion to its size, rewards the traveller well for a visit. Although one can walk round the island in an hour and a half, the locality is full of interest, and the pearl fishery is very engrossing for the observer. The boats of the fishing fleet afford a most picturesque accessory to the scene, and the harbour is full of life. Small boats dart about everywhere, and there is a continual coming and going. The large Chinese and Japanese steamers, of from 6000 to 7000 tons burden, are continually arriving at and leaving the Government wharf. The Europeans are most agreeable and hospitable. The sea round Thursday Island is a most wonderful colour—in parts emerald green and silver, deep blue varied with light yellow and brown, and everywhere perfectly clear. The tides, which at times flow with the rapidity of a mill-race, have been studied, but are not yet understood. They are tremendously erratic and very dangerous. Sometimes they run at the rate of seven miles an hour, and against this steamers can make no headway. The Torres Straits indeed, as far as Cairns, are the most dangerous seas in the world. It is, of course, very warm in Thursday Island, but the heat is tempered by the most delightful sea breezes. I could have enjoyed a longer stay than twenty-four hours, but that was the limit of our vessel’s call, and we left next day for Port Moresby, which we reached after a two days’ run. [Illustration: MY CINGALESE LIEUTENANT, SAM, AND HIS WIFE AT THEIR HOME IN PORT MORESBY. ] As we approached the coast we found that it presented a very striking contrast to that of Dutch New Guinea. Here the mountains came close down to the coast, which was rock-bound, but not cut to sheer cliffs. Inland the mountain ranges ran parallel with the shore line, range towering above range, as far as the eye could see, the whole prospect dominated by the magnificent peak of Mount Victoria, which sprang aloft into the azure to a height of 13,121 feet. Viewed from the sea Mount Victoria appears to culminate in a plateau, but Sir William MacGregor declares that it is really a mass of peaks.