Explore "The Land of the Hibiscus Blossom" by Hume Nisbet on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
THEY made Yule Island about ten o'clock. Here they were met by the two French missionaries, Fathers Ambrose and Durand, who, having been denied permission to land on any portion of the mainland, took up their station upon the island, which is divided by only a narrow strip of water from the mainland.
Indeed, it is a wonderful system this law of permits in New Guinea, where three or four people grant, or deny permission to people wishing to land, as they--the three or four representatives of this protective Government--think proper to decide, without chance of appeal or redress. Of course, it is only a moral obligation which makes the simple--minded traders or visitors bend under this very illegal system of justice, and the Governor does not often strain his despotic authority; still that the system prevails is vile as a precedent, and that those Catholic preachers were compelled to resort to stratagems, before they could preach the charity of Christianity, is almost too great a sacrifice in this liberal nineteenth century.