Since very little information has so far appeared through the medium of the British press concerning those possessions in the Pacific, included under the comprehensive title of the Protectorate of New Guinea, it has seemed to me that to shape my voluminous notes into book-form may be of use to future travellers. With that end in view, it also appears desirable to explain that much in these remote islands remains to be discovered. Speculative theories therefore, however tempting the data, have been scrupulously avoided.

In the compilation of this work a simple description of conditions, which came under the writer’s notice, is all that is attempted. It is, moreover, hoped that the reader will not be severe to mark amiss the latitude of expression which the authoress has permitted herself, in the belief that she has not thereby exceeded those limits of discursiveness which may justly be extended to confirmed globe-trotters.

B. P.-B.

_London, 1909._