Apia, near to which Stevenson lived, was the capital of the German islands; it has an excellent harbour. On March 19, 1889, when the harbour was full of shipping, including German and American men-of-war and H.M.S. _Calliope_, one of the disastrous hurricanes which occasionally sweep over the islands of the Southern Seas began to blow. The only possible way in which these ships could escape wreck was to put to sea and there ride out the storm. All the ships tried to leave the harbour, but the only one that was able to make headway against the fearful wind and sea was the _Calliope_. All the other ships were wrecked, and many lives were lost. When King George V., then Prince of Wales, visited Wellington, the seat of the New Zealand Government, he passed under an arch of coal with this inscription: "The coal that saved the _Calliope_."
The German Samoan islands were acquired in 1899. The two largest of them have a united area of 1,000 square miles; the total population of the islands is about 35,000, and the annual trade was reckoned at £120,000. Amongst other Pacific possessions of Germany when the war began were the southern islands of the Solomon group, an archipelago of high wooded mountains, lying to the east of New Guinea. The Bismarck Archipelago, to the west of them, the coral reefs of the Carolines, Pelew, and Marianne (or Ladrone) Islands,[132] and the Marshall Islands still farther north, were also in German hands. On Neu-Pommern, one of the Bismarck group, there was a powerful wireless station.
By far the largest island possession of Germany was a portion of New Guinea. This huge, lizard-shaped island--the second largest island in the world--lies about eighty miles north of Australia, and stands like a stepping-stone between that continent and Asia. The Dutch held the western half, and the remainder was divided between Germany and Britain, the south-east part being ours and the remainder German. The German portion was known as Kaiser Wilhelm Land, and had an area of 70,000 square miles. Most of it is unexplored, but there is no doubt that it is exceedingly rich in wild tropical products, and that it possesses great mineral wealth. The Germans have not made much headway in Kaiser Wilhelm Land or in the "Spice Islands," already mentioned; but they spent much money in developing the country and in fostering trade.