SETTLEMENT AT CAFE YOBK. 
203 
scenery— Anchor off Ternate — The village — Club-house — Sultan’s 
Palace — Mohammedan mosque — Visit the spice plantations — Trees 
and fruits — Ball at Government House. 
The half-dozen houses forming the settlement are 
readily seen from the anchorage ; hut we looked in 
vain for the town with its several streets, as shown 
on the charts. There is only one small store in the 
place. The remaining dwelling-houses are those 
left behind by the detachment of Royal Marines, 
when they gave up the place to the Queensland 
Government in 1867. One is now occupied by the 
agents of the London Missionary Society, as a train- 
ing establishment in connection with the mission 
they are successfully working at Port Moresby, 
New Guinea. The Colonial Government have for 
some time been endeavouring to establish a settle- 
ment here, but the soil is found to be very poor, 
and the climate anything but healthy ; the chances, 
too, of frequent skirmishes with the savage natives 
from the adjacent islands make it far from a de- 
sirable locality for settling. I frequently landed, 
and had opportunities of seeing the country in 
the immediate vicinity. It appears to consist of 
low, wooded hills, valleys, and plains of great ex- 
tent ; the coast line, when not consisting of rocky 
headlands, being either a sandy beach or swamps 
fringed with mangroves. On the plains, character- 
istic of the poor soil, the first objects to attract 
attention are the enormous pinnacled ant-hills of 
