The young lady seemed to lean to my way of thinking, and following up the story of the historical voyage, asked if I had visited the point farther down the harbor where the great circumnavigator was murdered.
This took my breath, but a bright school-boy coming along relieved my embarrassment, for, like all boys, seeing that information was wanted, he volunteered to supply it.

Said he: "Captain Cook wasn't murdered 'ere at all, ma'am; 'e was killed in Hafrica: a lion et 'im." Here I was reminded of distressful days gone by.

I think it was in 1866 that the old steamship _Soushay_, from Batavia for Sydney, put in at Cooktown for scurvy-grass, as I always thought, and "incidentally" to land mails.

On her sick-list was my fevered self; and so I didn't see the place till I came back on the _Spray_ thirty-one years later.
And now I saw coming into port the physical wrecks of miners from New Guinea, destitute and dying.

Many had died on the way and had been buried at sea.