Explore "The Call of the South" by Louis Becke on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Piracy, as most people are aware, is not yet quite extinct in Chinese and East Indian waters, despite the efforts that have been made to utterly stamp it out. But it is not generally known that along the shores of Dutch New Guinea, on both sides of the great island, there are still vigorous communities of native pirates, who will not hesitate to attack even armed trading vessels. These savages combine the business of head-hunting with piracy, and although they do not possess modern firearms, and their crafts are simply huge canoes, they show the most determined courage, even when attacking a vessel manned by Europeans.
The annual reports of the Governors of Dutch, German and British New Guinea, detailing the murderous doings of these head-hunting pirates, are as interesting reading as the tales of Rajah Brooke and Stamford Raffles, and the practical suppression of piracy in the East Indian Archipelago, but seldom attract more than a few lines of comment in the public press.