On their return, however, things are very {190} different, for they come laden with new and interesting goods and money.
The chief immediately appropriates all the best of these articles, and by so doing confers a great honour on the home-comer. The returned one’s relatives then swarm round him, and each takes what he or she fancies; and the welcoming party, consisting of fellow-tribesmen, receive their little lot for having welcomed the returned one home. The remainder of the goods are taken to their owner’s shed, where they probably remain a few days. Other claimants soon come forward, so that in less than a week the hut is empty of all save the worker and his three years’ experience.
In the old days the labour traffic, or “black birding” as it was called, was one of the most disgraceful trades ever carried on by British subjects. So bad did it finally get that the Government stepped in, and warships were kept on the lookout for these slave-traders, and eventually, after a lengthy period and, strange to say, much opposition, the labour traffic was made into an honest business.
THE “BLACKBIRDERS.” THE LABOUR TRADE IN THE SOLOMONS
The method adopted by the early kidnappers was to fit out a schooner in Australia in much the same way as a slave-boat, with a large hold arranged with tiers of platforms, on which the natives slept {191} at night. The owners would start out, having secured orders from the Queensland sugar-planters for so many natives at so much per head, and with these signed orders they would visit the islands. At first some of them, according to reports, did try persuasion, and even went so far as to barter with the chiefs for a certain number of natives, but if this failed, as it often did, they simply went ashore and carried off every man or woman they could lay hold of, rowed them out to the ship, and then literally pitched them into the hold. Others they would entice on board by offering to give them presents, and when once on board they never saw the shore again.
During the commission of inquiry into the ways of these slave-dealers some ghastly facts were brought to light, not only on the part of the dealers, but also of the planters, particularly in Fiji where many of the natives were sold. Here it came out that two Englishmen, who were in the habit of brutally ill-treating the natives, once overstepped the mark by tying a woman to a tree and thrashing her, and afterwards they rubbed the juice of the Chili pepper into the wounds. This was quite an ordinary form of punishment; but when they cut the same woman’s toes off, the natives banded {192} themselves together, burned down the whole plantation, and killed the planters’ children. The two planters, sad to relate, escaped.
But those days are passed now, and the planters are very different men, and live their lives in peace and tranquillity, and many of them treat the natives so well that they will do anything for them.
A YAM SHED ON THE ISLAND OF TIERRA ESPIRITU SANTO, NEW HEBRIDES