3-082-355 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sir William MacGregor, K.C.M.G., 1895. 'Although British New Guinea appertained to the realm before, it is only six years since Sir William declared her Majesty's sovereignty over it. He landed one September day, and before night the ceremony had been compassed, and British New Guinea became a Crown Colony...[As its administrator,] he is to deliver an address on it before the [Royal] Geographical Society...The expedition took place in what in England were the early summer months of 1889. The undertaking was at once arduous and perilous...He is the only white man who has been on the top of the [Owen Stanley mountain] range, the highest point of which he christened Mount Victoria, which has an elevation somewhat over thirteen thousand feet...Will the Papuans, now civilisation has reached them, continue to grow and multiply and people the land, or will they go down as the native Australians have done, as the Maoris of New Zealand are rapidly going?...most of this big island, hanging on to the skirts of the continent of Australia, is utterly unknown. Apart from the direct work of administration, Sir William MacGregor has been actively engaged in gathering geographical and scientific information relative to the British slice of the island'. From "Illustrated London News", 1895.