BRITISH TRADE PROSPECTS 
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 out- 
lying 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 con- 
sideration, 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 por- 
tion 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 assump- 
tion 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 
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