THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
^9 
 
IN QUEST of COOLIES. 
 
LONDON : PRINTED BT 
 
 8POTT18WOODB AND CO., NEW-STREET SQtTABS 
 
 AHD PAELIAMENT STREET 
 
IN QUEST of COOLIES. 
 
 BY 
 
 James L. A. Hope. 
 
 f) 
 
 -VvriTII ILLXJSTIL^TIOiTS. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 Henry S. King & Co., 65 Cornhill. 
 
 1872. 
 
(,All right* reserved.) 
 
DU-5VO 
 
 PREFACE, 
 
 In the following sketch I have simply told the 
 tale of my own adventures in the South Seas ; 
 believing that, in the coming discussion on the 
 Coolie System, evidence at first hand will have 
 some value. I merely advance facts, and leave it 
 to others to draw conclusions. 
 
 London : Feb. 1872. 
 
 JW30S2S4 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 I see Kanakas for the first time — Cry of Slavery I'aised — * Advance 
 Australia ! ' — Old Tom's Reminiscences — Friendly advice . 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 I decide to go — Polynesian Laborers Act — I start for the South 
 Seas — Native Trade — What a Coolie takes back with him from 
 Queensland 10 
 
 CHAPTER III, 
 
 Black Rowing — Weigh Anchor in Brisbane River — First Sight of 
 the Loyalty Islands — Missionary Work — I am taken in Charge — • 
 I Fraternise with the Authorities — French Leave — System of 
 Military Colonisation 19 
 
 CHAPTER IV, 
 I land on Tanna — Military Tactics — Hair-dressing — Tattooing 31 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Tanna Pigs — Trading— Canvassing a Chief — Return Men — Intend- 
 ing Emigrants . . 38 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Signing Agreements — Slop Clothes — Feeding-time — Lost Tribes of 
 Israel — Erromango — Trowsers — Diving — Turtles . . 48 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Island of Vate — Large Canoes — Solomon Islanders — Civilisation — 
 Native Dance — Figi Craft — Cotton-growing — Rangi — Missionary 
 Schooner — Mary Tavontagisitawak — Leprosy — Currents — Coral — 
 An Accident 68 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Island of Api — Propitiatory Oifering — Wrecked Fiji Schooner — 
 Cannibalism — MalicoUomen — How to cook long Pig — Arrive at 
 Motu Lava — Trip across the Island — A Photograph in the South 
 Seas — Native Dance — ' Music hath charms ' — Good-bye . 73 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Ureparapara — * Mark day ' — Sea-sickness — ' A soft Answer ' — More 
 Recruits — Cotton-growing on Tanna — Buying Land — Yams — 
 Tanna — Bread-fruit — Two Styles of Civilisation — Earthquakes — 
 Island Quadrupeds 87 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Fever and Ague — Medicine — Dosing a Native — Medical Mission — 
 Physique — Drinking * Cava ' — Arms — Animal Poison — Then 
 Home .99 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 First sight of Brisbane — Coolies on the Plantations — Adapt them- 
 selves to circumstances — Divine Service — Burial of a Native — I 
 leave, with mutual good wishes . . . . ,108 
 
 Appendix. The Polynesian Labourers Act . . .. . 117 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTEATIONS. 
 
 THK SICK CHIEF 
 
 Frontisj^iece 
 
 
 THE ISLAND OF MAR^ .... 
 
 
 1 
 
 ABORIGINE WHEN ASKED TO WORK 
 
 
 9 
 
 THE LAST PURCHASE .... 
 
 
 10 
 
 KRE>'CH LEAVE 
 
 
 27 
 
 API MAX 
 
 
 31 
 
 MARE GIRL . . ^ . . . 
 
 
 37 
 
 GOING TO MARKET 
 
 
 39 
 
 A FATHERLY INTEREST .... 
 
 
 48 
 
 THK SUBJECT OF THE PHOTOGRAPH 
 
 
 73 
 
 ORl W0MP:N UPSET OUT OF THEIR CANOB 
 
 
 87 
 
 THE ISLAND OF ERROMANGO 
 
 . 
 
 99 
 
 A CULTIVATED COOLIE .... 
 
 . 
 
 102 
 
 pipe's GRIEF , . . . ^ 
 
 
 108 
 
THE ISTJLXD OF MARfi. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 I see Kanakas for trie first time — Cry of Slavery raised — ' Advance 
 Australia ! ' — Old Tom's Keminiscences — Friendly Advice. 
 
 Queensland has of late been praised, lectured upon, 
 and written about ad nauseam^ so that, though I 
 have enjoyed considerable experience of that colony 
 amongst sheep, cattle, and sugar growers, I am un- 
 willing to inflict a repetition of the dose on anyone 
 who does me the honour to read my book, and mean 
 therefore to confine myself entirely to the subject of 
 the South Seas and the men who come thence to 
 work for us as coolies, seen from a Queenslander's 
 point of view ; and on this subject I feel competent 
 
 /^ B 
 
Z IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 to offer an opinion, believing myself to be the only 
 man who has written an account of a trip under- 
 taken in person to recruit the labour which the 
 Queenslanders make so much use of now, and over 
 which many people, both in the colony and in 
 England, have raised the cry of slavery and kid- 
 napping. 
 
 Coming suddenly down into the civilised districts 
 near Brisbane, after a long sojourn in the interior of 
 Queensland, a sight struck us that caused me and 
 my two black stockmen to rub our ^yes, and look 
 again. A luxuriant cane-field waved dark green 
 over a spot which a few years before had been only 
 covered with the ' everlasting gum-tree ' — 
 
 Ere the base laws of servitude began, 
 When wild in woods the noble savage ran. 
 
 Having had a long experience of the aboriginal 
 darkie, I knew at once that the row of men working 
 with hoes in their hands, in the heat of the sun, could 
 never belong to any species that I had seen before ; 
 for you have but to ask an Australian native to chop 
 a little wood, to send him stalking off in his native 
 dignity without more words. No! these men -- 
 round-limbed, broad-footed, and woolly-haired — were 
 evidently strangers ; and my boys, after a long and 
 careful inspection, were so struck by the ridiculous 
 
FIRST GLIMPSE OF COOLIE LABOUR. 3 
 
 idea of working in the sim like that (why they could 
 not have been greater fools had they been white 
 men !), that they burst into yells of laughter, making 
 the woods echo again with their shrill ha-ha-hoo, 
 till all the Australian woodpeckers, or laughing 
 jackasses, on the trees around laughed and shrieked 
 in chorus/ 
 
 My further acquaintance with these men, far from 
 making me feel inclined to laugh, has given me a 
 feeling of considerable liking for them, and has 
 shown me their immeasurable superiority over the 
 degraded and rum-loving race which is either all 
 that remains to us of a widely-spread and perhaps 
 once partially-civilised nation peopling the whole of 
 Australia, or perhaps a mere link in Mr. Darwin s 
 chain of evidence that, after all, the best of us is not 
 so very far removed from an ape. 
 
 The South Sea, Islands coolie has been and will* be 
 a person of great importance both to the Australian 
 settlers themselves and to politicians at home ; and 
 my object in writing the present work is to show 
 who he is, whence he comes, and how he is treated 
 in the colony of Queensland, which has now — partly 
 thanks to him — developed an entirely new and 
 flourishing industry, which promises to rival, if not 
 to surpass, sugar-growing in the West Indies. 
 
 B 2 
 
4 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 Years ago, if you wanted to introduce an unpopu- 
 lar subject, all you had to do was to advocate the 
 introduction of coolies ; and English, Grermans, and 
 Chinamen alike resented the idea of the importation 
 of black labour into Queensland ; and not finding any 
 just reason for their objection, would immediately 
 raise the cry of ' slaves ! ' and point to the late 
 terrible civil war in America, and the millions 
 expended by England for extirpating slavery in the 
 West Indies, and say, ' All this will come on the 
 colony if you allow black labour on any pretext to 
 be established here.' 
 
 About the year 1868, however, several small sugar- 
 planters, seeing that with the then existing rate of 
 wages and scarcity of labour, sugar-growing, in 
 which they had invested all their capital, would 
 never pay, ventured to charter some small ships and 
 to •. bring over to us the South Sea Islands coolie, 
 fetching him from the large group of islands called 
 the New Hebrides, lying within about ten days' sail 
 of our coast, and densely crowded with a population 
 who, having nothing to do and sometimes very little 
 to eat, spent their whole time killing one another, 
 not as we do in Europe, for the sake of an idea, but 
 for the sake of a dinner. 
 
 The 'King Oscar,' 'Spunkie,' 'Jason,' 'Daphne,' and 
 
FIRST COOLIES IN QUEENSLAND. 5 
 
 many other little vessels, sailed for these islands, and 
 according to all accounts some of their crews did 
 overstep the bounds of legitimate recruiting for 
 labour. I had no very intimate knowledge of the 
 matter at that time, and Captain Palmer, of H.M.S. 
 ' Rosario,' has already told us his story of the cruise of 
 the 'Daphne,' which — judging from a conversation I 
 had subsequently with one of the crew of that vessel, 
 then a refugee on the Island of Taima — I believe to 
 be perfectly true, though Captain Palmer failed to 
 convince the authorities at Sydney to that effect. 
 Now that we can look at the subject dispassionately, 
 even the planters will not care to deny that the 
 system, as then carried on, was liable to grave 
 abuses. 
 
 At all events the men were brought over, some 
 from the French Loyalty Islands, and some, as I 
 said, from the New Hebrides, and their arrival very 
 soon produced a change in the aspect of the coast 
 country of Queensland. Squatters sold their sheep 
 and bought sugar plantations, foundries for ma- 
 chinery sprang up in Brisbane, trade improved, and 
 the old virgin forest was turned for miles along the 
 coast into flourishing farms. 
 
 The English working-man soon found, much to 
 his disgust, that, instead of being indispensable as 
 
6 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 heretofore, he could no longer make quite his own 
 terms for wages, and the ' coolie trade,' as it was 
 called, was made a question at every election, many- 
 pledging themselves to support no candidate till he 
 had given his promise to vote .for the prohibition of 
 black labour. I remember one planter, on coming 
 foi-ward, being greeted with cries of ' How much a 
 dozen did you give for them ? ' till he had to give 
 up the attempt in disgust. 
 
 The question as t© what we are to do with our 
 colonies has been continually under discussion. 
 Have we not millions of acres of good arable and 
 pasture land, a decent climate, an inexhaustible 
 supply of coal, copper and gold, an easy Grovernment 
 and tolerably wise Ministers, and yet who can say 
 that Australia prospers as she ought to do ? who can 
 deny that in any vital point she is so far behind 
 America that no stranger would believe she had 
 been colonised by the same mother-country ? It is 
 in vain that her sons wish and drink prosperity to 
 her, that the cry is ' Advance Australia, and speed 
 the plough I ' The plough does not speed a bit the 
 faster, simply because there are not hands enough 
 to hold it. Let the English Grovernment really put 
 its shoulder to the wheel ; let it find out that in a 
 well-managed system of emigration lies the solu- 
 
' ADVANCE AUSTRALIA ! ' 7 
 
 tion of most, if not all, its growing difficulties, and 
 that it is the great key to the vexed question of 
 paaperism, and the most profitable way of at once 
 educating and reforming what politicians are pleased 
 to call the dangerous classes. While money lies 
 idle in London, and the mere mention of Austra- 
 lian securities makes any capitalist instinctively 
 button his breeches-pocket, and while the poor 
 either starve in the streets or are glad to get 
 into gaols as vagrants, here lies beiore us a vast 
 country which those same two forces, money and men, 
 would soon convert into a smiling Eden. Let the 
 English Grovernment once organise a system of 
 assisting emigrants that will land them in Australia 
 by thousands with work before them, where it now 
 sends hundreds, and instead of being a distant and 
 unknown world, still popularly supposed to be fit only 
 for kangaroos and convicts, she may yet be a prop 
 to the old country in the not far distant days when 
 she will be forced to look round for an ally in the 
 great wars that are already throwing their dark 
 shadow over us. 
 
 But the future of England, politically considered, 
 is not the title of this work. What we have to do 
 with is the present condition of the South Sea 
 Islanders ; and in the meantime, till the English 
 
8 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 labourer does come, the planters are only too glad 
 to get the coolie to fill his place, and value him 
 greatly for want of something better. 
 
 For nearly two years the importation of coolies 
 had ceased, principally because no one could persuade 
 them to come, and the planters looked forward to 
 the expiration of their three years' agreement with 
 the labourers then in the colony with dismay. The 
 fact was that the Islanders at home suspected us, as 
 I verily believe, of having eaten their country- 
 men, and were unwilling to trust themselves with 
 the white men without further knowledge of their 
 nature. 
 
 Now we have all heard of the South Seas, and, 
 for my part, ' Masterman Eeady ' had always been a 
 rival of ' Robinson Crusoe ' in my affection'^! ; and coral, 
 cocoa-nuts and cannibalism were three things I had 
 determined from my earliest childhood to see for 
 myself. Years ago I had heard from an old shepherd, 
 in whose hut I was living as sheep overseer, of his 
 cruises in the South Seas. He used to pour into my 
 ear by the hour descriptions, which I am bound to 
 say were a good deal coloured by his own imagina- 
 tion, of the romantic beauty of these islands, of the 
 desperate fights the ' sandal-wood getters ' used to 
 have with the natives, and especially how, having 
 
OLD TOM. y 
 
 run away from his ship, he lived a sort of Grarden of 
 Eden life among the natives, and was looked up to 
 and reverenced as a king by these simple people. 
 This part of his stoiy is, however, of dubious au- 
 thenticity, as anyone less likely to be reverenced 
 I never came across than old Tom was when I last 
 saw him. 
 
 ABORKilNE WHFN ASKED TO WORK. 
 
TO SMIL FOR 
 SPLTrts'tA ISLANDS 
 
 THE I.AST PURCHASE. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 I decide to go — Polynesian Labourers Act— I start for the South 
 Seas — Native Trade — What a Coolie takes back with him from 
 Queensland. 
 
 At last, however, in the year 1870, finding that no 
 one could bring us men, and that the plantations 
 were going to ruin for want of hands, I up made my 
 mind to go myself, and make one attempt to procure 
 labourers to keep alive a little longer sugar-growing 
 in Queensland. 
 
 I will not inflict on my readers the whole of what 
 
GOVERNMENT PROTECTION. 11 
 
 I went through as soon as I made known my deter- 
 mination : how I was advised to make my will, how 
 I was offered a choice assortment of revolvers and 
 breechloading rifles, how I experienced a sudden 
 increase of friendliness on the part of the store- 
 keepers and merchants who had goods to dispose of, 
 how every drunken sailor about the place professed 
 himself to be the only man who knew anything of 
 the trade, and how one man gravely informed me 
 the nfiodus operandi was this — You took a trade 
 musket, value about fifteen shillings, and having 
 found a chief, presented it to him, requiring so many 
 men, upon which he said to his subjects, ' You go to 
 Queensland ; when you get there, in about a month's 
 time white man will probably eat you ; but if you 
 dare to stop here, I'll eat you myself to-morrow ! ' 
 
 The Polynesian Labourers Act, passed by the 
 Queensland Grovernment in 1868, obliges employers 
 to enter into heavy bonds on applying for leave to 
 import coolies, and further regulates the scale of 
 provisions with which they are to be supplied, giving 
 them (what few English labourers in the south of 
 England can make sure of) 1 lb. meat and 1 lb. 
 flour per diem, with vegetables, tobacco, tea, sugar, 
 and soap ; and causes vessels fetching them from the 
 islands to be fitted up with separate and raised 
 
12 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 sleeping-places, allowing 144 cubic feet of space for 
 each man, and good conveniences for cooking, &c. 
 
 The Act further provides that the immigrants 
 shall be furnished, immediately on their coming 
 on board, with shirts, trousers, and blankets, and 
 imposes a penalty of 50L on any and every breach 
 of these regulations. The Immigration Agent in 
 Brisbane is further bound to see that, on arrival, all 
 the men fully understand their agreements, and sign 
 them in his presence for depositing in the hands of 
 Government ; that they come of their own free will, 
 and that they are able and willing to work for three 
 years at 61, per year ; the Government guaranteeing 
 them a free passage back to their own islands at the 
 expiration of that time, and exacting from the em- 
 ployers a quarterly payment of fifteen shillings per 
 coolie to accumulate during their time of service for 
 return passage-money. 
 
 I found myself, then, at Brisbane in May 1870, 
 with a schooner of 130 tons which had been passed 
 by the Government as provided with all requisite 
 accommodation, and proceeded to lay in -a goodly 
 supply of axes, adzes, tomahawks, knives, muskets, 
 powder, bullets, blue and red calico, dozens of boxes 
 of Bryant and May's safety matches, pipes, tobacco, 
 red-lead, beads, and fish-hooks — all these articles 
 
THE SYSTEM OF PUECHASE. 1 
 
 o 
 
 being included under the generic name of ' trade,' 
 and standing as a circulating medium in the place 
 of money, which latter is of course totally valueless 
 in the New Hebrides. I remember a Tanna chief, 
 who had heard of English money, once asking me 
 for some, and on being shown both gold and silver, 
 instantly chose the latter, preferring a new bright 
 shilling to hang in his ear to an old sovereign. All 
 these articles have, in trade with the natives, their 
 separate and distinct value ; for instance, they will 
 only sell a pig for an axe or an adze, no amount of 
 tobacco would purchase one. They will exchange 
 their arms — as spears, clubs, or poisoned arrows — 
 for knives or muskets, powder and ball, and other 
 little things such as pipes. Bryant and May's 
 matches, figs of tobacco, &c., are only good for pur- 
 chasing yams, cocoa-nuts, tara, or bananas. 
 
 The trade, too, varies so much on the different 
 islands, that it is impossible to say what may strike 
 the fancy of the natives ; and it is never safe for you 
 to be without what he wants, as in most places the 
 mere fact of having to do without some longed-for 
 article would be quite enough to make an islander 
 fire his musket at you, regardless of consequences. 
 
 Once as we shoved off from the lee-side of Tanna, 
 with our boats loaded to the water's edge with yams 
 
14 IN QUEST OP COOLIES. 
 
 and pigs, a savage suddenly appeared on the beach 
 with a little pig in one hand and his musket in the 
 other, and shouted frantically to us to come back ; 
 and on my being rude enough to tell him to eat his 
 pig himself, he immediately dropped it, and, taking- 
 careful aim, to my astonishment let drive among us. 
 Fortunately a Tanna man is about the worst shot in 
 the world, so no harm was done, but this little inci- 
 dent showed me that these gentlemen of nature's 
 own making do not understand chaff. 
 
 Innumerable little superstitions, too, keep constantly 
 cropping up during the progress of every bargain ; 
 of these tobacco, which is sold in the American form 
 of figs, is a fruitful source. Ten cocoa-nuts, when I 
 was there, were worth about one fig of tobacco, but 
 the native will only sell one at a time, and if you 
 break the fig, you must take care that he gets all 
 the different portions himself, as he firmly believes 
 that anyone else getting part of the same fig can 
 exercise a power of witchcraft over him. 
 
 Just about this time the three years' agreements 
 of about thirty Kanakas expired, and as they took 
 their passages by my vessel I went to see their wages 
 paid at the immigration office. The Act directs that 
 this shall be done in coin of the realm, 18^. for the 
 three years, and accordingly each man received his 
 
OUT MARKETING. 15 
 
 handful of yellow sovereigns, at which they stared 
 with an amusing look of helplessness. I went round 
 the town with them to see that tliey got their 
 money's worth, and I need scarcely say that these 
 islanders were objects of the utmost interest to many 
 store-keepers who had axes or muskets in stock. A 
 Grovernment agent from the immigration ofl&ce is 
 very wisely always sent round with coolies under 
 these circumstances, as the men have confidence in 
 him, and his character is a guarantee for fair dealing. 
 A very short time served to remove the diffidence 
 of my new friends, who soon found out that money 
 is power, and could scarcely be restrained from 
 spending all their hard-earned cash in one shop. And 
 a most miscellaneous assortment of goods they 
 managed to secure ! First, every man must have a 
 chest, and one of the party having bought a cedar 
 chest, the rest discovered that they must each have 
 a cedar chest too. Next, most of them put inside a 
 tolerable sized grindstone as a sort of ballast, with 
 perhaps a camp-oven or a fish-kettle to keep the 
 balance true, which little articles made the baggage 
 transport through the streets a serious matter, until 
 we chartered a few two-wheeled Melbourne cars for 
 the day, and drove about, filling up the chests with 
 Crimean shirts, handkerchiefs, jews' harps, pounds 
 
16 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 of beads, gunpowder, &c., much to the amusement of 
 the worthy Brisbanites ; and I had for many days after 
 good reason for cursing those same chests, as the 
 owners kept up a constant state of distm*bance, never 
 being able to decide, when their money was running 
 short, what desirable article they would purchase 
 next, and, when at sea, always fetching their whole 
 property on deck every morning and bartering among 
 themselves, both sides being always dissatisfied with 
 the result, and insisting on bringing me into the 
 squabble as arbitrator. Of course such two inflam- 
 matory things as a native and his gunpowder must 
 be always kept separate, and all arms were stowed 
 carefully away in my private store till we should 
 arrive at the Islands, the fortunate possessors being 
 allowed to feast their eyes on them every morning 
 througli the doorway, any intrusion into that 
 sanctum being always stopped at once with a stern, 
 ' S'pose you stop outside, very good, my boy ! ' 
 
 Finally, however, not seeing any other way of 
 getting rid of their last pound or two, and not appre- 
 ciating the good old Australian custom which their 
 betters have of drinking it, they invested in a silk 
 umbrella each, and held them gleefully over their 
 heads, rain or no rain. By this time I fancy most 
 
THE SYMBOL OF OFFICE. 17 
 
 of these umbrellas are contributing to save the com- 
 plexion of their respective chiefs, who are generally 
 seen, at least in the Northern Islands, carrying a 
 broad leaf over their heads — their only insignia of 
 office. 
 
18 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 3Iack Rowing — Weigh Anchor in Brisbane River — First Sight of 
 the Loyalty Islands — Missionary Work — I am taken in Charge — 
 I Fraternise with the Authorities — French Leave — System of 
 Military Colonisation. 
 
 LoYERs of the picturesque would, I think, have 
 experienced a new sensation could they have been 
 present at the start of these, the first Kanakas who 
 were returning to their islands. I had hired some 
 half-dozen natives who had served their time in 
 Brisbane, or had been on board of whalers, intending 
 to use them as interpreters on the different islands, 
 and to help to man two whale-boats, pulling four 
 oais each, which I had fitted with masts and sails^ and 
 triced up to the davits. And capital oars these men 
 proved. Islanders seem to have a natural gift for 
 pulling ; they have a long sweeping stroke, and pull 
 with a dash and vigour that would warm the heart of 
 a Thames waterman, reaching well forward and pick- 
 ing up their stroke from the start. They have, how- 
 ever, rather the Chinese style of rowing, a side wrench 
 
ox BOARD. 19 
 
 as they feather, which looks awkward at first, but I 
 think the four natives I had in my boat would have 
 showed creditably in any Thames regatta, and in 
 the fearful heat of a South Sea calm would have 
 rather astonished a few very good English amateurs. 
 
 Our vessel, dressed up with the gay flags of the 
 new code, the group of merry friends who had come 
 to see us off, the red woollen caps of my boats' crews, 
 and the villainous countenances of most of the 
 natives who paraded the deck, all gave more the 
 effect of a filibustering expedition than the start of a 
 trading voyage as we hove our anchor up in the 
 Brisbane river, and dropped slowly down with the 
 tide mid the cheers and chaff of the lookers-on. The 
 captain, mate, four sailors, cook, trading-master, and 
 myself made up our little party of nine white men, 
 and I was glad to find that the first-mentioned -had 
 been on a similar voyage before, as his valuable 
 advice was of great service to me, and he had a 
 cheery, off-hand sort of way in dealing with the 
 blacks which always kept them in good humour. 
 
 As nothing of consequence happened on the voy- 
 age — which, on the part of the Kanakas, was princi- 
 pally spent in making as many different toilettes in 
 the day as a lady at the sea-side — I shall pass over 
 the contents of my journal till we sighted the French 
 
 c 2 
 
20 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 island of Mare and a new world suddenly opened 
 its wonders before me. It was a high and rocky 
 island, with pines growing down to the water's edge, 
 and the smoke of the natives' fires rose to attract 
 our notice from every part of the beach. As we had 
 on board three men for this island, I was for running 
 right in at once, but it was thought wiser to send a 
 note on shore to the missionary, asking if it was 
 safe. 
 
 In the meantime, from every little passage in the 
 reef, canoes had put off, bringing coral, fowls, eggs, 
 and yams, and the deck was covered with natives 
 asking eager questions about eveiybody and every- 
 thing. These natives were by far the most civilised 
 I saw in the course of my cruise. The French priests 
 had long been on the island, and it was at that 
 moment occupied by a detachment of soldiers. The 
 natives had no arms, and were evidently in a state 
 of the most abject subjection to the French. 
 
 The captain, astride on the foreyard, kept a bright 
 look-out for the passage in the reef, and the light 
 breeze favouring us, we managed to get on to the 
 anchorage, our keel just grazing a fragment of coral 
 as we turned sharp round, and dropped anchor (in 
 twelve fathoms of clear transparent water) before 
 the mission station.. 
 
MISSIONARY WORK. 21 
 
 Mr. M 5 the missionary, who, with his wife, was 
 
 allowed to live here, sent us a civil message and 
 received us kindly in his own house, where I had an 
 opportunity of seeing some of the fruits of his work 
 amongst the natives. A decent-looking house had 
 been built for him, and one for the school, and here 
 I heard the native children reading the Bible very 
 fluently in their own tongue. A printing-press had 
 also been set up, and copies of the book of Genesis 
 were being quickly turned out by a few native boys 
 
 and girls. Mr. M informed me that he sold 
 
 each copy to the natives for a pound of cotton. 
 
 The men were all decently dressed in shirts and 
 waist-cloths, the women in long loose gowns of blue 
 
 calico ; and, wonder of wonders, Mr. M had a real 
 
 live pony, which fed about in front of the house, and 
 evidently lived in clover on maize and bananas. 
 
 On going down to our boat we found the beach 
 literally covered with natives of all ages and sexes, 
 each with a pile of yams, gesticulating and talking 
 at the pitch of his or her voice ; and in the midst of 
 them two dirty little soldiers, in straw hats and 
 without shoes, but each armed with a chassepot 
 rifle and cartridge pouch. They stood ominously 
 between us and our boat, and as we approached, came 
 forward with fixed bayonets, and in a guttural tone 
 
22 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 told us a long story in a language which, as far as I 
 was concerned, might have been Hebrew or Chinese. 
 Now I had had a fair French education in my youth, 
 had studied at Paris, and was in the constant habit 
 of reading the sentimental works of Michelet and 
 Edmond About when I could get them, and so 
 thought no small things of my powers in that line, 
 and had always boasted to my party, that if we met 
 any Frenchman I could tackle him in his own 
 tongue ; and the blank look that came over the 
 captain's face when he saw that I did not understand 
 a word, warned me that for my own credit I must 
 risk something. 
 
 The soldiers, I found, were from the Island of 
 Bourbon, which may perhaps account for their 
 language, and had been sent down by the com- 
 mandant with full authority to seize our vessel, 
 persons, and property, and keep possession of the 
 same, till such time as we should have satisfied that 
 gentleman, first, as to why we had not saluted his 
 flag ; secondly, as to how we came there at all, con- 
 trary to the regulations of his government; and 
 lastly, how much tobacco and spirits we had on 
 board, and whether we would sell them quietly at 
 French prices, or have them requisitioned for the 
 
CALLED TO HEAD-QUAETERS. 23 
 
 use of the French nation as represented by M. le 
 Commandant. 
 
 There was nothing for it but to obey a summons 
 issued in so solemn a manner, and go up to the 
 Commandanf'S in person to answer all these grave 
 charges. And here a new difficulty arose. The 
 head-quarters of this army of fourteen men and a 
 sous-lieutenant was six miles off ; and as for walking 
 all that distance in the heat of a tropical sun, it was 
 not to be thought of. Matters looked grave, and we 
 were seriously consulting in English as to the 
 propriety of making a rush at our two little friends 
 and taking them, chassepots and all, over to the 
 New Hebrides with us, when the missionary ap- 
 peared, and volunteered the loan of his fat pony. 
 Seated in triumph on this beast I proceeded, with 
 my legs hanging down to the ground and altogether 
 guiltless of stirrups, to scramble through the jungle 
 that covers this island, now threading my way 
 through native villages lying among cocoa-nut trees, 
 now emerging suddenly on the coral beach, and 
 startling groups of girls getting shellfish among the 
 rocks, or bathing in the deep pools beside the path. 
 
 M. le Commandant, as he styled himself, received 
 me civilly, and ushered me into his domain, con- 
 sisting of three little mud huts and one banana tree, 
 
24 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 on perhaps the hottest spot of the whole island. 
 ' This,' he said, ' is my house,' pointing to the 
 biggest one ; ' that other is the guardhouse, where at 
 present, I regret to say, six men and the sergeant 
 (the only man who speaks English) are confined for 
 drunkenness ; and this,' he added, pointing to the 
 smallest and dirtiest, ' will be monsieur's quarters till 
 I receive word from my government how to deal 
 with him.' 
 
 Here was a scrape! It seems I had broken 
 through regulations published in the Sydney news- 
 papers forbidding the trading of any vessels to the 
 Loyalty Islands. A month before my arrival another 
 Queensland vessel had run into the same island, and 
 the master, who had a few returning natives on 
 board, was fined so much per head, and the natives 
 themselves marched up to the station, and their 
 goods quietly distributed amongst those who had 
 remained behind, while the returning prodigals did 
 penance for the sin of having left their native 
 islands three years before, in a few days' handcuffs, 
 or, as they pithily called it, ' were made fast.' This 
 is a short-sighted policy on the part of the possessors 
 of the island, as Queensland is the only place where 
 the natives have a chance of raising themselves a 
 little in the scale of civilisation. My new acquaint- 
 
DISCUSSING THE MATTER. 25 
 
 ance read me four pages of closely written foolscap, 
 which meant, to put it concisely, ' Keep the first 
 vessel you can catch.' ' Monsieur,' I replied in the 
 best French I could muster, ' since I am to be a 
 guest of your great nation, allow me to send down 
 to the ship to fetch some of the rum of Queensland 
 which I happen to have, and which you have pro- 
 bably never tasted, and over this we will discuss the 
 matter.' 
 
 How we discussed the matter and the rum ; 
 how at last, on hearing I had been in Paris, the 
 lieutenant, overcome by his feelings, burst into a 
 flood of maudlin tears, and swore I was his brother ; 
 how at the announcement I wept in his arms, and 
 how in about half an hour I crept out, leaving my 
 friend to give orders, as he said, about my bed being 
 got ready, and, finding the fat pony still tied up in 
 the sun, made use of my early lessons in Australian 
 bush-riding to get that animal along over the rough 
 path, may be left to my reader's imagination. I 
 need scarcely say that I did not sleep that night in 
 French quarters, and that I carried nothing away 
 with me but the French leave I took. 
 
 Now that I think seriously over the whole matter, 
 it seems to me that I had rather a narrow escape. 
 The orders were strict, there were two war steamers 
 
26 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 close by to enforce obedience, and we had unwit- 
 tingly run our heads into about the nastiest trap it 
 has ever been my bad fortune to encounter. At all 
 events, the respect I have for France and her repre- 
 sentatives has prevented my showing myself in that 
 port again. 
 
 After landing another native at one of these islands, 
 we were only too glad to find ourselves bowling 
 along towards Tanna with a stiff north-west breeze, 
 probably before the Commandant had awakened to 
 the consciousness of the fact that light claret is 
 scarcely good training for new Queensland rum. 
 
 Not having been in New Caledonia, or seen the 
 working of the system of French colonization at 
 Noumea, the head-quarters of all the troops stationed 
 in the Loyalty Islands, I have scarcely a right to 
 speak of it, and anything I know of their method of 
 government is from the mouths of the natives them- 
 selves, and is, therefore, perhaps hardly an unpreju- 
 diced account. 
 
 The old story in history of two nations squabbling 
 among themselves aid calling in a foreign power to 
 help and gradually disarm both sides seems to be 
 frequently repeated in these islands. On Mare, the 
 partially civilised tribe was attacked by the 
 Wonifeelyahs (outer barbarians), who inhabited the 
 

28 IX QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 north-east part of the island, but had defeated their 
 enemies with great slaughter. Unfortunately the 
 French stationed in Noumea heard rumours of wars 
 going on in an island which, by a pleasant fiction, 
 was supposed to be under French protection, and, 
 seizing the opportunity, appeared as arbitrators on 
 the scene. 
 
 The settlement of the dispute, I need scarcely say, 
 was speedy ; indeed, the matter was very simple. 
 When I was at school I remember having a bloody 
 and ferocious combat with another boy of about my 
 own age, in which I am bound to say, in case this 
 should happen to meet his eye, I got decidedly the 
 worst of it, when lo ! a mediator in the shape of the 
 head-master, who, having listened to both sides of 
 the story, very impartially thrashed us both, and, for 
 the further improvement of the occasion, adminis- 
 tered a very fair caning to the bystanders, ' pour 
 encourager les autres,' as the French master told us 
 afterwards. After all, the Commandant was quite 
 justified in thinking that nations who, in the 
 nineteenth century, could disgrace themselves by 
 going to war on the frivolous pretext of some pre- 
 tended aggression of the other side, did not deserve 
 to govern themselves, but should be treated like 
 children under the English system of compulsory 
 
FRENCH DISCIPLINE. 29 
 
 education, especially as he had the advantage of 
 being both school board and inspector in his own 
 person. 
 
 So this is what he did. He put everyone he 
 could catch into handcuffs at night (by the way, my 
 informant could not tell me how he happened to 
 have, at this precise juncture, so many of these 
 useful articles by him), and set them to work in the " 
 daytime to build him a house and barracks for his 
 soldiers, as he was graciously pleased to inform them 
 that he had come to stay, and that in fact he had 
 brought his things with him. The house and 
 barracks have been finished long ago, but, alas ! for 
 the natives, the roads are still in progress, and if we 
 are to judge from the architecture of the house, will 
 scarcely do credit to the sudden stride in civilization 
 the Mare men are supposed to have made. To do 
 the French justice, however, I must say that they 
 have at least maintained discipline in their new 
 possessions, and that going to war with his neighbour 
 is for the native a dream of the past, partly because 
 such proceedings do not chime in with French ideas, 
 but chiefly because they have been left no arms to 
 fight with. Perhaps the Mare men would get on 
 better if they understood French, but as the English 
 missionaries have been beforehand, it is a little hard 
 
30 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 to expect a savage to speak three languages ; and I 
 actually had to interpret between a soldier and a 
 native, the former telling me what he wanted in 
 French, while I, in broken English, adapted it to 
 the comprehension of the latter. 
 
 When I look at these beautiful Loyalty Islands, 
 occupied by really the highest type of coloured men 
 I have seen, blessed with a glorious climate and fair 
 soil, I cannot help thinking of what they might have 
 been under English rule. Where only a dense jungle 
 spreads over the whole island, English enterprise 
 would have had thousands of acres of cotton; harbours 
 would have been made ; and where my little craft 
 was looked upon as a curiosity, and forbidden to stop 
 for a single day, a whole fleet of trading vessels 
 would have been peacefully lying at anchor. The 
 only bright spot in the whole arrangement was that 
 
 little settlement where Mr. M , the missionary, 
 
 notwithstanding the hostility of the French priests, 
 had collected a few scholars around him out of the 
 large and degraded population of the island. 
 
>^ 
 
 CHAPTEH IV 
 
 Island on Tanna — Military Tactics — Hair-dressing— Tattooing. 
 
 I WISH I had been an artist to paint the glorious 
 scene that rose before me on the morning of my 
 arrival at Tanna — the long swell breaking heavily 
 on the sunken coral-reef, the glassy water beyond, 
 then the cocoa palms down to the water's edge, the 
 steep rocks matted with such verdure as perhaps 
 
32 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 only Tanna produces, and in the distance the light 
 cloud of smoke hanging over the sulphur volcano 
 that crowns this island, catching the rays of the 
 morning sun and standing out against the sky like 
 a mountain of gold. 
 
 I think I never appreciated the lines — 
 
 Where every prospect pleases, 
 And only man is vile, 
 
 till I landed there, for a viler looking lot it has 
 never been my ill- fortune to behold. The shore was 
 literally black with the lordly savage, every man 
 with a musket over his shoulder, and every man 
 daubed to the eyes with vermilion. It was with 
 great satisfaction that I made out that the display 
 merely meant that the gentlemen had had their 
 breakfast and were going out to fight their next 
 neighbours (a tribe headed by a warrior named 
 ' Washerwoman,' certainly not from his habits or his 
 linen), in which little employment they regularly 
 spent their days, coming back in the afternoon, 
 happy and hungry, in much the same way as we 
 should come in from shooting in England to 
 afternoon tea in the drawing-room. I must say, 
 however, to give them their due, they very seldom 
 hurt any one, an islander's military tactics generally 
 consisting in walking along with his musket at full 
 
THE NATIVES OF TAXXA. 33 
 
 cock, performing at the same time on an instrument 
 resembling Pandsean pipes hung round his neck ; and 
 if, during his martial progress, he happened to see 
 anybody or anything, or thought he did, he would 
 let fly forthwith, and, without waiting to see if he 
 had bagged anything, would scamper back to his 
 own bit of beach, where, after a long harangue to 
 the women, he would reload his weapon and repeat 
 the dose. In this style of fighting the great advan- 
 tage is that you are always pretty sure, judging from 
 your own experience, that your adversary's musket 
 won't go off. 
 
 I must say, however, that I was a little startled 
 at the clamorous rush of the Tanna men when our 
 boat shot the passage in the reef, and turning round, 
 backed stem first up the narrow cove till we came 
 close to the shore, when, casting our stone anchor 
 overboard, we rode gently on the swell which alter- 
 nately drove us nearly high and dry upon the beach, 
 or, suddenly washing back, pulled us twenty or 
 thirty yards at a bound from the shore. 
 
 A grinning crowd of stark-naked men painted as 
 I have described, and shouting out their customary 
 salutation of ' Grood night ! good night ! vagaree ! ' 
 which in some extraordinary way has got twisted 
 into meaning, ' How are you, stranger ? ' is a little 
 
 D 
 
34 IX QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 alarming to a novice ; and I could not help thinking 
 how completely in the power of these same grinning 
 rascals we were, as they seized on the boat and held 
 on to it by main force, a dozen of them barely suf- 
 ficing to keep it still in the heavy back wash. But 
 if they were strong, they were at all events merciful 
 and very friendly. If I shook one black paw that 
 morning I shook three hundred ; indeed, it only 
 wanted the presence of the newspaper reporters to 
 remind one of the reception of Mr. Martin Chuzzle- 
 wit before he started on his trip to the new City of 
 Eden in the United States. 
 
 The natives of each island have a method of hair- 
 dressing peculiar to themselves ; and as I shall in 
 these sketches have but little to say with regard to 
 costume (as we understand the word), the natives 
 following generally the fashion of our first parents, 
 I shall here describe the various styles of coiffure in 
 all the islands I have visited, premising that if London 
 hair-dressers find anything new or suggestive, they 
 are perfectly at liberty to make use of the. idea, as 
 it is not copyright. A Tanna boy, from his earliest 
 infancy, has his hair dressed in the following manner. 
 Some half-dozen hairs are gathered up together and 
 bound round with soft grass, leaving enough of the 
 ends to frizzle out, till all the head has been served 
 
HAIR-DRESSING. 35 
 
 the same way ; the ends are then rubbed with 
 chunam, or quick-lime, which soon takes out the 
 black colour ; I have seen very young boys with 
 their hair a bright red, flowing down to the waist, 
 and really forming a ' waterfall ' that many ladies 
 would give gold to buy. This sort of thing is all 
 very well at that age ; but a ' gray barbarian,' with a 
 few straggling spikes of hair dressed in this style, 
 always made me laugh, which perhaps only further 
 cemented the feeling of good fellowship already 
 existing between us. 
 
 Most of the women of all savage races wear their 
 hair shorter than their husbands, and the Tanna 
 woman's ' kinky curls ' hang round her face like 
 those of a negress, partially covered by a banana leaf, 
 which latter addition seems to be de rigueur 
 amongst the older ones. On Sandwich or Vate the 
 man has his hair matted, and flattened down to his 
 head, and always fixes two semicircular hog's tusks to 
 the love-locks hanging before his ears ; and a chief 
 of that island, who condescended to come with me 
 for part of the trip as one of my boat's crew, used 
 actually to wear a queue, but weighted with a shell 
 instead of the ribbon bow of our grandfathers ; and 
 though I offered him a considerable sum in exchange, 
 he would not part with it. Their women, however, 
 
 D 2 
 
36 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 shave their heads clean, and, sun or no sun, wear 
 no covering, but rub themselves over head and all 
 with yellow turmeric or ochre. The effect is not 
 pleasing. 
 
 I have said that in Mare the native approaches 
 nearer to civilisation than any other I have seen ; and 
 this is particularly borne out by the women, who wear 
 their hair long and parted in the middle, and try, 
 vainly it is true, to make it lie down neatly, under the 
 ►slightly erroneous idea that smooth hair is the fashion 
 at present prevailing among their white sisters ! 
 
 The men of Tonga, on the other hand, wear a 
 chignon, which is puffed over a cushion a la regie, and 
 kept steady in front by a piece of string, and their 
 girlish faces are quite in keeping. Their women I 
 have never seen. On Api they build their hair up 
 on end as high as possible, decolorizing one side with 
 lime and leaving the other black ; but as I have only 
 been on very distant terms with this treacherous 
 tribe, I cannot claim any acquaintance with their 
 women, who, I believe, shave clean. But the coif- 
 fure of the inhabitants of Vauna Lava is perhaps the 
 most extraordinary of all, reminding me always of 
 the quaint designs that used to be cut out of 
 privet hedges in old-fashioned gardens. A sort of 
 
HAIR-DRESSING. 
 
 37 
 
 curved helmet is shaped with the knife out of the 
 solid mass of hair, and rises in semicircular form on 
 each side of the head. This tribe, the most docile 
 
 mar6 girl. 
 
 and friendly of any I have seen, is also the only one 
 which seems to have any knowledge of tattooing, and 
 
38 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 all its members bear on their cheek a star quaintly 
 executed with a sharp fish-bone. Here, again, the 
 women are doomed to sober fashions, and wear their 
 hair aii naturel, which is, perhaps, the reason of 
 their appearing sometimes remarkably pretty. 
 
GOIXa TO MAUKET. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Tanna Pigs — Trading — Canvassing a Chief — Return Men — 
 Intending Emigrants. 
 
 But to return to my reception. My trade box — an 
 old deal case with a hinged cover, previously filled 
 from the ship with tobacco, pipes, red calico, and 
 blue beads, as these, with adzes, are the best articles 
 for the Tanna trade — was produced. And now signs 
 of native produce suddenly appeared. The women, 
 who, with the pigs and yams, had been hid in the 
 bushes till the men could ascertain our friendly 
 
40 IX QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 intentions, trooped forth in hundreds, and far from 
 showing any fear, besieged the boat with their shrill 
 cries for beads, while the fat little children larked 
 about in the water, and as they were not tall enough 
 to hold on to the side of the boat, every long roll of 
 the swell caught them unawares and washed them 
 high and dry on the shingly beach, to be incon- 
 tinently seized by their mothers and chastised with 
 loud vociferation, I have often wondered at the im- 
 perfect idea of number which a native possesses. He 
 grasps easily enough the idea of one pig for one axe, 
 but three pigs for three axes bothers him. We found 
 no difficulty in getting as many pigs as we liked for 
 an adze apiece, but they were by no means in fine 
 condition ; and if it be true that these are the 
 descendants of pigs left by Captain Cook in the last 
 century, they must have wonderfully altered, or else 
 the English breed at that time must have been very 
 different from what it is now. They are shaped 
 like the West Indian peccary, black and hairy, long 
 in the leg, and hollow in every part where they 
 should be full, and the only point in which they 
 excel is in biting. I had on a pair of thick blue 
 serge trousers, which seemed to strike the fancy of 
 one of these beasts as something novel, and no 
 sooner had he been put into the boat than he made 
 
KAXAKA PORK. 41 
 
 a dart at them, and, as he would not let go, [ 
 was obliged to let him have nearly all one leg to 
 satisfy him. 
 
 To do the island pig justice, however, I must say 
 that their flesh is firm, white, and well flavoured, 
 and when fattened up on cocoa-nuts is to my taste 
 infinitely superior to any English pork I ever tasted. 
 During the whole cruise I lived on no other meat 
 than pork — roasted, boiled, and fried — save an 
 occasional junk of ship's beef, and have ever since 
 had a high opinion of Kanaka pork. The tribes 
 living inland generally supplied these pigs, and 
 used to bring the unhappy brutes down for miles 
 with their legs tied together slung on a pole, two 
 men to a pig, paying toll on their way to every 
 tribe through whose territory they passed, which 
 considerably took the gilt off their profits. In my 
 subsequent dealings with the tribes living on the 
 beach, I used to impress upon them that as I had 
 come there for their benefit, not for my own, the 
 produce intended for me ought to pass free, but they 
 showed so marked a dislike to establishing this pre- 
 cedent that I was obliged to waive that point. Pigs 
 were of course taken on board alive, and being 
 given their liberty, used to run about the decks, 
 squeaking and quarrelling amongst themselves, and 
 
42 m QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 every now and then having a stand-up figlit like two 
 bulldogs. During one part of the cruise I had 
 nearly a hundred pigs on board at a time, as the 
 coolies used to consume at least three per diem, and 
 I generally went armed with a stout club to save my 
 legs while walking about the deck ; as, though they 
 took no notice of the islanders, they evidently looked 
 upon a white man as an enemy. The surplus pigs 
 we had were, on our return to Brisbane, eagerly 
 bought up there by the butchers, and I have no 
 doubt that some of their descendants have al- 
 ready acquired considerable colonial experience in 
 Queensland. 
 
 A native on the look out for a bargain is a curious 
 study of human nature. He places all his merchandise 
 together in one heap, and then, singling out the 
 smallest yam from the lot, brings that forward and 
 offers it for anything it will fetch ; and, if the price 
 realised suits his book, produces another, and so on. 
 This, of course, makes trading with the islanders 
 rather tedious, and a matter requiring considerable 
 experience. In old days, before so many vessels 
 went down to the New Hebrides, the crews of 
 the sandal-wood traders used to make a large profit 
 out of their empty bottles. 
 
 Natives are so fond of shaving, that anything 
 
THE ART OF TRADING. .43 
 
 having a sharp edge, such as a bit of broken glass, 
 is of great value; and a man with half-a-dozen 
 bottles and a heavy stone could in those days earn 
 as much money out of them as he liked, getting a 
 nautilus shell for every piece. I think, however, 
 that these shells must have got very rare lately, as I 
 scarcely ever saw one during my cruise. 
 
 The constant state of internal warfare in which 
 they live, makes powder and ball necessaries of life ; 
 and as they have an idea that a white man can do 
 anything, they used, after they found they could 
 trust me, to bring all their broken muskets to be 
 mended, or have ne^ nipples put in. Sometimes 
 they will take a fancy to some sort of trade which 
 you have not got with you, and altogether it requires 
 to be a very fair salesman to dispose of the contents 
 of the trade box. 
 
 But now to the main object of my cruise — that of 
 recruiting labourers for the plantations. I determined 
 first of all to gain over the chiefs by impressing on 
 them the advantages the men would gain in going 
 with me, and the accession of strength they would 
 be to their several tribes when they returned from 
 Queensland, bringing their muskets and powder with 
 them. An old and shrewd-looking man, whom I at 
 once singled out for my purpose, listened attentively 
 
44 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 to my harangue and smiled graciously enough, 
 manifesting a sudden fancy for my own private 
 sheath-knife, which being in a moment of weakness 
 given to him, he walked off, leaving me to a crowd 
 of excited applicants, who had seen the transaction, 
 for more sheath-knives of the same sort ; and I was 
 not a. little disgusted on finding that he had not 
 understood a single word of all my eloquence, being 
 of a different tribe to my interpreter ; and so I 
 learnt a lesson I have never forgotten about indis- 
 criminate charity, which many people besides myself 
 might profitably take to heart. 
 
 I found the hearts of all the men hardened against 
 the idea of emigration to Queensland, so long a time 
 had elapsed since they had seen their countrymen 
 who had gone before. They said, if you will bring 
 back our brothers we will go and work for you, but 
 until then not a man shall leave the island. 
 
 Now, in canvassing an election, there is an old 
 and trite saying that ' the woman once gained, the 
 man follows,' and as there were plenty of them 
 standing round, I singled out a matronly-looking 
 female with a ring in her nose and a child on her 
 shoulder, and tried to make friends, inwardly hoping 
 that she would not expect me to kiss the baby, as I 
 hear candidates for Parliament have to do, on which, 
 
HOME AGAIX ! 45 
 
 drawing her grass petticoat fringe close round her, 
 she sat up such a piteous howling that it was clear 
 that the tide of advancing civilisation had not as 
 yet wafted the doctrine of woman's rights so far, and 
 that far from having any influence over her husband, 
 she actually seemed afraid of him ! 
 
 They little knew that at that moment some of the 
 identical men they had been asking for were on 
 board the schooner ; and great was the astonishment 
 and delight when our two whale-boats appeared, 
 bringing a load of happy-looking fellows in gaudy- 
 coloured shirts, who, too impatient to wait till we 
 had beached the boat, jumped up to their waists 
 into the water and began tugging out their chests, 
 which, as they carried them through the breakers, 
 got so filled with sea water, that the shirts, muskets, 
 and silk umbrellas must have suffered severely in 
 consequence. The centre of an admiring crowd, we 
 overhauled the chests of these, the first men who 
 had ever returned to Tanna, and every article, from 
 a fish-hook to a grindstone, as it was pulled out and 
 its use explained, was hailed with shrill cries of 
 delight. The grindstones struck their fancy espe- 
 cially, and when the bran new double-barrelled guns 
 were produced, the eagerness which the chiefs 
 displayed to have a look at them boded ill for their 
 
46 IX QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 present possessors on an island where the only 
 security to property lies in — 
 
 * The simple rule, the good old plan, 
 That they shall take who have the power, 
 And they shall keep who can.' 
 
 It was then that I appreciated in what danger we 
 should have been had these coolies had any reason 
 to complain of their treatment in Queensland. 
 Fortunately they had all served under good masters, 
 and were satisfied that they had received the amount 
 of wages they had bargained for ; otherwise I am 
 quite sure that, as Artemus Ward puts it, the head 
 chief would have ordered a feast for that afternoon, 
 and ' the corpse would have been ready ! ' 
 
 Instead of this, however, they all seemed veiy 
 grateful to us for bringing back their men, and 
 several relations of the new comers brought me 
 presents of pigs and fruit as an offering of good-will 
 for such a fulfilment of contract. The opportunity 
 was too good to be thrown away, and I saw by the 
 faces round me that now was the time to strike the 
 iron while it was hot ; so, shutting up the chests, my 
 interpreter, standing in the centre of a ring of squat- 
 ting natives, explained that these things were the 
 wages earned by three years' service in Queensland 
 (thirty-nine moons he called it) ; that there was plenty 
 
MORE VOLUNTEERS. 47 
 
 of provisions on board of the schooner, that my 
 tobacco was the best he had tasted, and I myself a 
 first-rate fellow, one of the right sort. That afternoon 
 a good many of the young men joined me ; and as 
 soon as their intention to leave the island was known, 
 there was a general rush of all the women to stop them. 
 Some, indeed, yielded to female influence, but niost 
 of .them, indignant at being treated as children, and 
 perhaps afraid of being laughed at by the boat's crew, 
 insisted on getting into the boat — generally, however, 
 paying a last tribute to nature by sitting down in a 
 circle and howling melodiously for a little bit, after 
 which the tears, which every savage can call so 
 readily to his eyes, would vanish, and the sun of 
 cheerfulness come out as he stepped briskly into 
 the boat like a child let loose from school, and, far 
 from wishing to bring the women with him, seemed 
 to have forgotten all about them before he went on 
 board; and the sight of the beloved tobacco and 
 clay pipes, with some of which they were always 
 immediately supplied, quite obliterated all traces of 
 home sickness. 
 
A FATHERLY INTERKST. 
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 Signing Agreements — Slop Clothes — Feeding-time — Lost Tribes of 
 Israel — Erromango — Trowsers — Diving — Turtles. 
 
 The Polynesian Labourers' Act of 1868 requires that 
 all agreements shall be signed by the coolies and the 
 recruiting agent, and endorsed by the master of the 
 vessel, in the presence of some consul, missionary, or 
 European resident, before they leave the island, but 
 this is one of the regulations which it is very difficult 
 to enforce, for the simple reason that on very few of 
 
* MAKING PAPEE.' 49 
 
 the islands are there missionaries or white residents, 
 and on none as yet is there any such thing as a consul. 
 On Tanna, however, as it happened, there was a white 
 man, and when he had come on board the business 
 of signing the agreements began. The chiefs of the 
 tribe had also come, and they took a sort of fatherly 
 interest in the matter. One after the other our 
 new recruits came down to the cabin and gazed 
 about them with astonishment at probably the first 
 tables and chairs they had ever seen, while the chiefs 
 made themselves at home ; and one of them, acting 
 on the nil admirari principle, in trying to show 
 that he knew the use of a fork, ran about half an 
 inch of cold steel into his great blubber lip, and 
 dropped it with a very rueful countenance. The 
 form of agreement having been translated to the 
 men, each came forward readily to affix his mark, 
 and evidently attached great importance to the 
 ceremony, which they called 'making paper,' and 
 when we reached Brisbane instantly recognised their 
 marks on the agreements. 
 
 Another provision of the Act requires that the 
 men shall be provided with shirts, trousers, and 
 blankets, and having got these out of the stores we 
 proceeded to try them on. Now these clothes had 
 all been bought wholesale in Sydney, and were of 
 
50 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 course all of different sizes, numbered from three to 
 seven, after the manner of slop-made goods. " It was 
 a source of great amusement to see the face of 
 delight with which a little boy would array himself 
 in No. 7 trousers, which were longer than his whole 
 body, and proceed to walk across the deck, while a 
 huge savage in a pair of No. 3, scarcely reaching to 
 his knees, and not buttoning round his waist, turned 
 himself round and round for the admiration of his 
 brethren ; and I saw at once the reason why so many 
 English soldiers look uncomfortable in their clothes 
 — they have been made by contract. Even after we 
 had suited them all, it was as much as I could do to 
 prevent them cutting off all the buttons to hang as 
 ornaments round their necks, and it was long before 
 they could moderate their martial stride to suit their 
 new clothing. 
 
 I may as well describe here how they were fed, 
 and so get rid of the subject. As soon as it was 
 light, Sam the cook used to light the fires under the 
 huge pots on deck, and would then have the morning 
 supply of rice and pork or yams served out to him. 
 Four buckets of rice, thirteen of fresh water, and 
 a pig, would, on our return voyage, about do for 
 breakfast. As soon as this was cooked, every man 
 ^ok his tin plate to the copper for his share, and it 
 
DIET. 51 
 
 required a good deal of sharpness on the part of the 
 cook to see that all got fairly treated, as they soon 
 got knowing enough to duck round behind the others, 
 reappearing instantly with a clean plate and grave 
 face, a black ' Oliver asking for more.' This diet of 
 rice and fresh pork, however, was so much richer 
 than anything they had been accustomed to at home, 
 that I very ?oon had a host of sick men on board, 
 and had to put them for a week at a time on yams 
 and cocoa-nuts again, which always chased away 
 every symptom of illness. I found the only way 
 was to let them cook as much and as often as they 
 liked, and I never interfered with them in any way 
 if I could possibly help it ; unless, indeed, as some- 
 times happened, one native would fancy that some 
 stranger had looked cross at him, in which case, 
 though without arms, they would all take sides, and 
 if not prevented by a speedy exhibition of authority, 
 would have made a sort of Donnybrook Fair of the 
 ship's decks. 
 
 I cannot leave the island of Tanna without 
 indulging in a few speculations as to the origin of 
 this remarkable tribe, and the place they came 
 from. I have heard many cogent reasons given in 
 support of the opinion that they are the descendants 
 of some canoe-load of Maories, who had been blown 
 
 E 2 
 
52 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 away from New Zealand. The principal evidence 
 brought forward for this theory is the remarkable 
 similarity in the two languages, they being indeed 
 in some words identical. A tree very much 
 resembling the bread-fruit tree of New Zealand, but 
 bearing no fruit, is called by a name signifying the 
 Tree of Disappointment in the Maori tongue; and 
 the supporters of the ' lost Maori ' doctrine argue, 
 that on the landing of this boatload of hungry men 
 this was the first tree they saw, and supposing it to 
 be the bread-fruit, they had nm towards it only to be 
 disappointed. They are on the whole, too, a large- 
 limbed, powerful, and warlike race, just as the 
 Maories are ; but, strange to say, they have not got 
 the custom of tattooing themselves which might be 
 expected from such an origin, and I think this is one 
 of the customs which would never have died out. It 
 was gravely told me not long ago that these must be 
 a part of the lost tribes of Israel, but the only argu- 
 ment which my informant could produce was that 
 they had hooked noses and generally a Jewish phy- 
 siognomy. Mr. Wilson, however, in his book on 
 ' Our Israelitish Origin,' seems to think that the 
 children of Israel, properly so-called, had by no means 
 what we should now-a-days consider a Jewish caste of 
 feature ; and at all events the remarkable fondness 
 
CRUISING. 53 
 
 of the Tanna man for pork, and the skill with which 
 he breeds that forbidden animal, is, I think, also an 
 argmnent for the other side. 
 
 Finding ourselves unable to get any more men at 
 this place, we proceeded slowly northwards, trying 
 every little spot along the shore where we saw, from 
 the smoke of the natives' fires, that a tribe was 
 settled ; but the tribes in Tanna are so small and 
 divided, and live in such a state of deadly enmity 
 with each other, that, as we had not with us any 
 more return passengers for that island, they would 
 have nothing to say to us except in the way of 
 bartering pigs. We did not venture to leave the 
 boat on these occasions, but anchored it where the 
 water was breast high, so as to guard against 
 treachery, and only one boat at a time dared go in, 
 the other boat's crew lying by on their oars at a 
 little distance ready to pull in to our help in case of 
 a row. 
 
 Leaving Tanna, we made for the island of Erro- 
 mango, where Mr. Williams and Mr. Harris were mas- 
 sacred in 1839. An English missionary is settled in 
 Dillon's Bay at the present time on the same spot 
 where these two gentlemen died, but I believe he 
 does not make much progress among the islanders, 
 who have earned the character of being the most 
 
54 IN qUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 ferocious of any in these seas. I had one native to 
 land here, and accordingly started in with the two 
 boats, taking him with me ; but there was such a 
 heavy sea running, and the passages in the reef were 
 so small, that, when about 200 yards off the land, 
 we had to lie on our oars. ' Trouser,' the boy I 
 have mentioned, said he would swim ashore, and 
 accordingly, accoutred as he was, he plunged in; 
 and his chest, fortunately a light one and pretty sea- 
 worthy, having been lowered over the side to him, 
 he started gallantly for the shore, pushing it before 
 him. The beach was covered with natives, some, 
 like the Tanna men, armed with muskets, and some 
 carrying bows, who received him as he landed with 
 loud cries. In about a quarter of an hour a black 
 head bobbing up and down in the surf showed where 
 someone was swimming off to us ; and the new- 
 comer succeeded, after a tremendous struggle, in 
 reaching the boat, the natives in the meantime, 
 being evidently angry at his going, fired their 
 muskets at him and at us, but we were out of shot, 
 and their target practice was scarcely good enough 
 to allow them to hit so small an object as a man's 
 head in the surf. We pulled him into the boat, 
 and made out, through my stroke-oar Pipe, an Erro- 
 mango boy, that he belonged to one of the bush 
 
'TROUSER.' 55 
 
 tribes, and had been anxious for some time to leave 
 the island, where, as he said, there was nothing to 
 eat ; so when he saw the schooner's boat coming in, 
 he made a sudden dash for it through the surf. 
 We instantly named him ' Trouser,' after his late 
 countryman, which name he bears to the present 
 day ; and so good a boy did he turn out, that after 
 two days on board, he was installed as cook's mate, 
 and was soon chopping wood and washing tin plates 
 and dishes in a way that pleased old Fritz the cook 
 greatly, and cajoled him into giving 'Trouser' 
 many a cup of hot coffee in the first watch. 
 
 The natives of all these islands are excellent 
 swimmers, seeming to be quite as much at home 
 in the water as on land, and showing very little 
 fear of the innumerable sharks that abound in these 
 waters. Lying at anchor one day in about four 
 fathoms of water, and working at one of the boats 
 hung on the davits, my gimlet, a very small one, 
 slipped and fell overboard. Grimlets are scarce 
 articles in the South Seas ; and, much annoyed, I 
 offered half-a-crown to any boy who would fetch it 
 for me. In a minute the whole of the natives I 
 had on board were over the side, had dived to the 
 reef we were lying over, and were groping about 
 amongst the coral branches ; and in another minute 
 
56 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 one of them had brought it to the surface in 
 triumph, and seemed to think that if half-crowns 
 were to be earned so easily as that in Queensland 
 it must be a good place to go to. During the cruise 
 I made a rule that after breakfast every morning 
 all the men should jump overboard and have a 
 swim, and generally took the opportunity of having 
 one myself. We used to heave to, with the topsail 
 aback, and enjoy ourselves in the water for about 
 half an hour, having ropes hung over the sides as 
 ladders to go up and down with ; but the constant 
 fear I was in of a shark distinguishing me by my 
 white skin, and singling me out from among so many 
 black ones for his dinner, kept me pretty close to 
 the ship's side. 
 
 Sonaetimes, too, while pulling wearily along under 
 the hot sun in my whale-boat, the quick sight of the 
 man stationed in the bow would make out a turtle 
 asleep on the glassy water, and we would start in 
 instant pursuit. Having got within about fifty 
 yards of him, the oars were laid in, and my boat's 
 crew getting over the side of the boat swam gently 
 along with it, while I sculled with the steer oar. 
 On getting close to him the boys would all noiselessly 
 disappear under the water, and coming up quietly 
 under the unsuspecting turtle, would try and seize 
 
TURTLE- HUIS'TING. 57 
 
 him by the legs on each side. The turtle, however, 
 always got the better of us in all the hunts we had ; 
 and amidst yells, splashing, and shots from my re- 
 volver, would vanish, leaving my crew with rueful 
 countenances to be laughed at for the rest of the 
 day. 
 
58 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 Coral — Island of Vate — Large Canoes — Solomon Islanders — Civili- 
 sation — Native Dance — Figi Craft — Cotton-growing — Eangi — 
 Missionary Schooner — Mary Tavontagisitawak — Leprosy — Cur- 
 rents — An Accident. 
 
 But I despair of conveying to my readers any idea 
 of the strangeness of everything in those waters 
 where ' 't is always afternoon ; ' where a gentle trade 
 wind just ripples the surface of the ocean; where 
 groups of islands, some looming dark green in the 
 foreground, some fading away softly into the haze, 
 cluster round the ship on every side ; where the only 
 sound you hear above the monotonous splash of the 
 oars, as you pull gently along, is when some whale 
 rolls half his vast length out of the water, or the 
 cry of the lonely diver as he hovers near you, some- 
 times only dipping his wing in the water, sometimes 
 coming down like an arrow on his prey. 
 
 All these islands are of volcanic origin, and rise 
 abruptly like fortresses from the sea ; and round their 
 
CORAL. 50 
 
 base for thousands of years the coral insect, finding 
 something to shelter him from the break of the 
 water, has gone on piling atom on atom, till the 
 branches of his submarine palace loom like a forest 
 of trees through the clear water. The most beauti- 
 ful coral (blue, green and red) that I saw was on 
 the island of Api, where the reef extends nearly a 
 mile from the shore, and, as • you go over it in a 
 boat, breaks into all sorts of fantastic shapes. As 
 this coral was alive, it had to be boiled immediately 
 on being broken off the reef, which preserved it 
 indeed, but bleached it to a chalky white, and made 
 it so brittle that very few fine pieces reached 
 Queensland. 
 
 Leaving Erromango, we sailed over to Sandwich 
 or Vate, where there is a mission-station, bringing 
 up in a little bay on the south-west side. We had 
 several men to land here, but failed to get any re- 
 cruits, as the missionaries objected to their going. 
 Here, as the natives were very friendly, I went ashore 
 and had long talks with several of the Vate men who 
 had been in whalers, and hired six of them to come 
 and pull in one of my boats. One of these was the 
 chief whom I have mentioned as wearing a queue. 
 They made an excellent crew they are strong hardy 
 men and pull well, only wanting a few words of chaff 
 
60 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 and encouragement to keep them rowing all day in 
 the heat of the sun. 
 
 Unfortunately, however, I had given each of them 
 a little trade to start with, and they used to set their 
 whole minds on a little private bargaining with the 
 natives for themselves wherever we went, and con- 
 sidered themselves so much aggrieved if they did 
 not get everything at their own prices that we nearly 
 had several quarrels on our hands in consequence. 
 
 Here I first saw the larger-sized canoes of the 
 South Sea Islands : they are cut generally out of one 
 solid tree, being about a foot broad, and out-rigged 
 like the Cingalese proa ; the large sails are made of 
 matting in a triangular shape, and though good for 
 running are of very little use on a wind. As they 
 are sharp at both ends, tacking becomes a simple 
 matter, the man in the bow simply turning round 
 and becoming de facto the man at the wheel. Some- 
 times these canoes are made so large that fifty or 
 sixty men can crowd into them ; but they are little 
 used for fighting purposes, being chiefly kept for 
 friendly visits to neighbouring islands, or for going 
 oflf to ships. On these occasions the crew all kneel 
 down, one behind the other, with short single-bladed 
 paddles, and the chief stands in the centre by the 
 mast and beats time with a long monotonous chaunt 
 
DRIFTING. 61 
 
 on a sort of drum. I have heard of three of these 
 canoes pursuing a whale-boat for miles, but of course 
 without a strong breeze they could not overtake it. 
 
 We reached the harbour of the north-west bay of 
 Vate in the dusk of the evening, and could just dimly 
 discern a great number of small craft lying therCj 
 before the darkness (that closes in so suddenly in 
 these latitudes) shut out everything from our view, 
 and the dying away of the breeze left us becalmed 
 in the shadow of the land at the mercy of a strong 
 current, which was drifting us we knew not where. 
 Calling up both crews, we lowered the boats and 
 proceeded to tow the schooner ' against the current 
 by a hawser, while I took my place in the leading 
 boat with a torch and lead-line to look out for the 
 navigation, and after four hours' weary pulling we 
 got to the anchorage just as the moon rose over the 
 land, and showed us the shoal of reefs we had come 
 through, and by some miracle escaped. 
 
 These craft hailed from the Fiji Islands, and had 
 come down to get labour for the cotton plantations 
 there, and I soon saw what a good thing it was that 
 the Queensland government made such strict regu- 
 lations as to the fitting-up of their ships. Most of 
 the Fiji crafts were little ketch or cutter-rigged 
 boats, and the wretched natives had nothing else 
 
62 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 to sleep on than the stone ballast that covered the 
 bottom, and as far as I could see very little to eat. 
 One of these had just returned so far on its way home 
 from a cruise to the Solomon Islands, and was filled 
 with a number of natives of both sexes. On going 
 ashore, we found them all bathing in the fresh water 
 stream which runs into the harbour, men and women 
 together, and evidently delighted to get a drink 
 of fresh water again. These natives, far from being 
 black, were very nearly white, with long, straight 
 and coarse black hair, and reminded me very much 
 of the Chinese. They crowded round my captain 
 and myself with great curiosity, and were evidently 
 much struck by our fair complexions, and could 
 scarcely take their eyes off E , who was a fine- 
 looking specimen of a Swede with red hair. 
 
 After all, we must appear even more astonishing 
 to all black races when they first see us than they 
 do to us. The idea of a man having civilised 
 himself to such a state of perfection that he cannot 
 go into the sunshine without an enormous plaited 
 hat on his head, lest he should fall down dead of 
 sunstroke ; or walk twenty yards across a coral reef 
 without his boots to save his life ; or even take off 
 his clothes in company from a sense of modesty, 
 must be an incomprehensible puzzle to any man 
 
SOLOMON ISLANDERS. 63 
 
 who walks with the 'native majesty' of Adam, 
 thinking no evil, and with no dragging trousers to 
 confine his limbs, or blacked boots to pinch his feet ! 
 I never shall forget the horror-struck start of 
 a crowd of natives when I sat down upon the beach 
 and deliberately proceeded to pull off my boots; 
 and how they examined them, and at last, gaining 
 courage, pricked them with their spears to see if 
 they were really part of my body and had feeling. 
 It was like the scene in ' Gulliver's Travels,' when the 
 Hounhyms carefully examine the shipwrecked tra- 
 veller's clothes and wonder at his stupidity in never 
 having learnt to do without them. On several 
 occasions, after we got further north among the more 
 (as we should call them) uncivilised tribes, a 
 mob of women nearly tore the shirt off my back in 
 their anxiety to see whether it was flesh and blood, 
 and insisted on stroking my hands and face, and, 
 last but not least, my red beard; and I can now 
 appreciate from experience what Garibaldi must 
 have felt during his visit to this country, when every 
 romantic young lady in England pestered him for a 
 lock of his hair. 
 
 These Solomon Islanders were at last induced, by 
 presents of tobacco, to leave off admiring us ; and, in 
 gratitude for this unaccustomed luxury, they formed 
 
61: IX QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 a ring and struck up a lively dance, accompanying 
 themselves in the Scotch fashion by whistles and 
 shrieks, the women especially distinguishing them- 
 selves by the novelty of their ideas and the vigour 
 of their gymnastics. 
 
 Poor things ! they had very little to laugh about, 
 as I soon found. The master came to me almost 
 with tears in his eyes to tell me they had no food on 
 board except cocoanuts, and I believe the bags of 
 biscuits and rice I furnished him with must have 
 saved many lives. 
 
 I think if the Fiji cotton-growers could have 
 seen the state of things on board of some of their 
 vessels, brought on by mismanagement, it would 
 have given them a lesson to enquire into the cha- 
 racter of their men before entrusting the care of so 
 many lives to them ; and the stories with which the 
 papers have lately been so rife are doubtless owing 
 in a great measure to these craft being sent down 
 with very little trade to buy provisions with, and 
 under the charge of such a bad class of men. The 
 name of Fiji is held in abhorrence on most of the 
 islands, and the discredit brought on this traffic 
 might be very easily obviated by the appointment 
 of an immigration agent in the Fijis, armed with 
 full power to enforce his decrees, and carefully to 
 
COTTON-GROWIXG. 6 5 
 
 examine the vessels sent out ; and I am sure that 
 all the planters there would in the end find the bene- 
 fit of such an act, which would gradually restore the 
 confidence of the coolies, and make emigration to 
 the Fijis as much liked as it is to Queensland. 
 What became of all these little vessels after I left 
 the islands I never heard, but they were certainly 
 very ill-prepared for a long beat to windward, home- 
 ward bound, of at least four hundred miles, against 
 the strong trade-wind ; all I can say is, that I was 
 very glad to part company with them, as their 
 masters crowded our decks all day long, and drank 
 and fought among themselves till the grog ran short. 
 While my men filled our water-tanks and washed 
 their clothes in the stream, I strolled along the 
 shore to a spot where two white men have started a 
 small cotton plantation. They had a few labourers 
 from other islands, and were busily engaged in 
 picking when I arrived. The great scarcity of 
 labour, however, prevents their doing justice to the 
 crop, which was lying strewn all over the ground. 
 Cotton-growing here — though the island is blessed 
 with a capital soil and climate, and above all with 
 what we have not in Australia, certain rainy and dry 
 seasons — is still in a very primitive state : the want 
 of any ginning machinery, or even bales to pack it in, 
 
 F 
 
66 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 obliges the planter to put it seeded as it comes from 
 the pod into blankets, and to pack it in loosely with 
 the spade. I am convinced, however, that before long 
 all these islands will be great cotton plantations, as 
 the land is so cheap to start with, and living so easy, 
 that Englishmen must sooner or later be tempted 
 over from Australia ; but I propose to enter more 
 fully into this subject in a future chapter. 
 
 The Vate islander generally goes armed with bow 
 and arrows and club, but his favourite weapon is a 
 tomahawk with a long carved handle, which he is 
 very expert with, and which he has a nasty habit 
 of flourishing round his head while he is talking, 
 in a way embarrassing to a stranger. They do not 
 let the art of war die out for want of practice, and as 
 the tribes are much larger here, and use large 
 canoes, their expeditions are formidable. Many 
 years ago, a Malay, who had deserted from some 
 whaler with the biggest boat he could lay his hands 
 on, got driven on to Erromango, where, far from 
 being ill treated, he seems to have been made a 
 chief, and formed a regular harem of wives. Tiring, 
 I suppose, of the monotony, he used to make a series 
 of piratical excursions on his neighbours, and at last 
 settled on Vate, where he acquired territory and 
 renown. In fact, if he had lived under more favour- 
 
BLOWIXG A GALE. 67 
 
 able circumstances some centuries earlier, he would 
 have been just the man to found new colonies on 
 the Spanish main to the glory of Queen Elizabeth. 
 The son of this Viking is at present a smart waiter 
 in a white tie, serving in a Brisbane hotel, who used 
 always to talk proudly of his father as a man of pro- 
 perty, till the Vate men summoned courage to 
 knock poor Rangi on the head and divide his 
 effects amongst themselves by general consent. 
 
 We got away, to my great delight, from Havannah 
 harbour at last, but as soon as we got outside found 
 that instead of tlie usual gentle south-east trade- 
 wind, it was blowing half a gale from the north, and 
 we had to run, in company with the mission schooner 
 ' Dayspring,' for shelter behind the island of Pelli. 
 The ' Dayspring ' had a missionary on board to land 
 on this island, hitherto quite uninhabited by whites, 
 and her decks were crowded with missionaries and 
 their wives, who had come for the cruise from 
 Sydney. We had a fair start together for a long 
 beat to the anchorage, and the missionaries evidently 
 regarded us with great suspicion, and wished to shake 
 us off, while we determined not to be left behind, 
 and kept tacking and tacking, in the stiff squall that 
 heeled us right over on our beam ends, to get ahead. 
 To do the reverend gentlemen justice, they worked 
 
 F 2 
 
68 IX QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 with a will to sustain the honour of their schooner, 
 pulling and hauling like mad, and I could see that 
 we had by no means lessened the jealousy with which 
 they originally regarded us as we drew slowly ahead 
 and at last fairly gave them the slip, leaving them 
 to set all the rest of their staysails to try and over- 
 haul us. 
 
 We got about twenty natives off the island, as we 
 had two or three to land there, their well-filled chests 
 being as usual immediate passports to friendliness. 
 One of our new recruits, however, had apparently 
 meanly tried to give his wife the slip, and his 
 disgust was perfect when we brought her to him 
 on board on our next trip — a tall, stately woman, 
 wbo looked the last person to be put upon by anyone, 
 much less by her own husband. We rigged her out 
 in a shirt and petticoat made of a blanket, and slie 
 was delighted. In this little conjugal tiff I take 
 great credit to myself for having been the mediator, 
 as they turned out after a bit to be a most loving 
 couple, nor was the insulted wife 'above sharing the 
 cup of tea I always gave her (as a mark of respect 
 to her as a woman) with her spouse. For all I know 
 she may now be a decent cook in some household in 
 Queensland, as I last saw her going off quite happy 
 in a little coasting steamer, dressed in a blue print. 
 
AN ATTEMPTED ESCAPE. 69 
 
 and seemingly still on good terms with Tavongtagi- 
 sitawak, her husband. 
 
 Less fortunate was another very pretty girl, who 
 tried to escape from her tribe and swim off to us. 
 She appeared suddenly on the beach as we were 
 pulling off, running as if possessed, and followed by 
 her indignant husband and friends, and plunging 
 into the surf, made for the boat ; but she had mis- 
 calculated her strength, iand .her husband was too 
 powerfid a swimmer for her, for before she could 
 get out of the breakers he had caught her up, and, 
 dragging her ashore again by the hair of her head, 
 proceeded on the spot to administer, contrary to all 
 precedent in civilised life, a sound thrashing with 
 a stick as a lesson for the future, to the vociferous 
 delight of the bystanders. 
 
 The natives of all these more northern islands, 
 and especially one called Aoba or Lepers' Island, are 
 generally supposed to be subject to leprosy ; but, 
 though I have seen many Albinos and speckled men 
 and women, I do not believe that the disease is 
 really known here in its true form, as there is in the 
 cases I have examined no appearance of decay in the 
 flesh, or of the formation of scales. A rumour had 
 gained ground that a white woman had for a long 
 time been kept a prisoner, with her child, in the 
 
70 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 Island of Vate, and the chiefs produced her for my 
 inspection ; but she turned out to be only an Albino, 
 and I was delighted, for the honour of my country^ 
 women, that so hideous a creature could claim no 
 kindred with them. 
 
 Leaving this island, we had three or four days of 
 most unpleasant weather near Mai, sometimes scud- 
 ding under a close reefed mainsail in a squall, some- 
 times becalmed and drifting helplessly about in the 
 strong currents which are always running and always 
 changing in these latitudes, and the boats' crews had 
 many a long and [weary pull to tow the schooner 
 past some black and shining rock whose nose was 
 j ust visible ahead. The two great difficulties of the 
 navigation of these waters are these currents and the 
 want of an accurately laid down chart. The chart I 
 possessed, and which I believe is the latest one yet 
 published, was grossly incorrect in many places, and 
 I regret that want of time and knowledge of survey- 
 ing prevented my rectifying it. I think it would be 
 well worth while, if so Inany vessels are to go down 
 year after year to these islands, for the government 
 to send down a regular surveying- ship to take accu- 
 rate soundings and lay down the position of the reefs. 
 
 Some of the principal harbours of i eiuge in the 
 hurricane season on Tanna and Sandwicli have been 
 
DANGERS OF NAVIGATION. 71 
 
 tolerably surveyed, but many of the islands them- 
 selves are placed in quite a wrong position on the 
 map. During the whole of the hot season navigation 
 nearly ceases in these latitudes, owing to the danger 
 to which any such small vessels as usually congregate 
 here in the winter would be exposed if caught in 
 one of the awful hurricanes that generally once or 
 twice in the year sweep across the islands ; and it 
 requires a great knowledge of the various anchorages 
 to be able to find them, as the bottom mostly consists 
 of coral reef, which either fouls the anchor or breaks 
 away on the first strain, allowing the ship to drag 
 ashore ; and shipwreck here assumes a very grave 
 aspect, when the sailor knows that, even if the sharks 
 let him off, he will certainly form the piece de resis- 
 tance at a native feast the same night that he lands. 
 On the whole, I do not wonder that insurance 
 companies in Sydney charge so high a premium as 
 ten per cent, for insuring vessels bound to these 
 islands. 
 
 Our difficulties were further complicated by our 
 foreyard snapping suddenly in two pieces, and to 
 make another with only one auger on board, and that 
 a bad one, and no iron, was a task that taxed all 
 our invention. However ' Patience and perseverance,' 
 
72 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 they say, ' got a wife for his reverence,' and at all 
 events it proved equal to the more difficult task of 
 rigging us up something that would carry a sail, and 
 brought us in sight of the island of Api or Tasiko 
 just as our fresh provisions had run out. 
 
THE SUBJECT OF THE PHOTOGRAPH. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Island of Api — Propitiatory Offering — Wrecked Fiji Schooner — 
 Cannibalism — Malicollomen — How to cook long Pig — Arrive at 
 Motu Lava — Trip across the Island — A Photograph in the South 
 Seas — Native Dance — ' Music hath charms ' — Good-bye. 
 
 We made the island of Api, then, early one morning ; 
 and, lowering the two boats, pulled in, in a heavy- 
 swell, to see if we could recruit men, and especially 
 to try for yams and pigs. A reef extending for 
 miles along the shore makes it by no means an easy 
 place to land on, and just then the waves were 
 breaking and hissing at half-tide, sometimes rising 
 like a wall, sometimes learing the whole reef exposed, 
 and forming one vast line of spray. 
 
74 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 Our boats soon attracted crowds of natives with 
 green branches in their hands — a sign of peace ; but 
 no passage in the reef could we find. We had, in- 
 deed, one little boy on board to land there, but he 
 had almost forgotten what part of the island he came 
 from ; so we pulled up and down in despair, not 
 venturing to face the breakers, and by no means 
 encouraged by a nearer inspection of the gentlemen 
 on shore, about whose bloodthirsty and treacherous 
 character we had heard so much. Finding that this 
 boy did not know the navigation, we persuaded him 
 to swim ashore, promising to wait till he had brought 
 off a canoe to take his chest. At last he appeared 
 mounted on a little canoe, which at every wave 
 almost disappeared under the water, bringing his 
 father with him, who had not forgotten to fetch a 
 propitiatory offering in the shape of one wretched 
 little half-starv«d pig. His eyes brightened with 
 delight at the sight of the huge chest his son had 
 brought. His pig was given to the boat's crew, and 
 used to run about the deck with a necklace of twigs 
 round his neck; till some older pig, wrathful at 
 this, must have killed him in the night, as he was 
 found dead. When the tide ebbed the natives swam 
 off to the reef and opened trade with us, and brought 
 us out of the water, at the side of the boat, some 
 
CANNIBALS. 75 
 
 lovely specimens of coral ; but they distrusted us so 
 much that not one of them could be induced to lay 
 aside his bow and arrows, but held them in his hand 
 while he waded along with a yam in the other ; and 
 I, not to be behindhand in courtesy, took care to let 
 them see my revolver hanging to my wrist while I 
 paid them in beads and fish-hooks. 
 
 These natives, like most of their neighbours, are 
 thorough-going cannibals, and many a tale could I 
 unfold of the white and black men they have roasted 
 and eaten. In the midst of our bargaining we heard 
 from our late passenger that there had been a ship 
 stranded a few days previously, somewhat further 
 down the coast, so we started off at once and soon 
 descried the wreck in the distance. The vessel was 
 a New Zealand schooner in search of labour for Fiji, 
 and she lay upon the reef with her back broken. 
 The crew, consisting of five or six whites, with some 
 twenty islanders, had only succeeded in saving one 
 of the sails, together with their arms and trade-box. 
 They had formed a sort of camp on the beach, which 
 was guarded by sentries with muskets. Bound this 
 swarmed innumerable fierce-looking Api men, each 
 armed with his bow and bundle of poisoned arrows, 
 and evidently only restrained by the sight of the 
 muskets from making a rush at the trade-box, which 
 
76 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 they knew was so full of what was to them untold 
 wealth. They cleared out, however, on seeing us, and 
 allowed us to approach the tent where the poor 
 whites had been shut up for three or four days ; and 
 I found myself the object of attraction to three little 
 black boys ; who, appreciating I suppose something in 
 my face, never left my side till I had promised to 
 take them with me. Poor fellows ! two of them never 
 lived to get on board ; decoyed away by the Api men 
 the same night, the third with difficulty escaped to 
 tell us how his two brothers had been knocked on 
 the head and immediately roasted. I fancy the 
 whole of these castaways would have shared the same 
 fate if we had not had the good fortune to pass so 
 near them and take them off the island. The sur- 
 viving boy is now on a plantation in Queensland, 
 and looked happy and flourishing when I last saw 
 him. 
 
 I bought the wreck as she lay on the reef, and we 
 had three hard days' work stripping her of all her 
 spars, wire-rigging, cables and anchor, and every 
 piece of iron that the natives had left ; and it was a 
 service of some danger, as the chiefs, seeing what our 
 intentions were, surrounded the ship and insisted 
 that she was their property ; and I had to put five or 
 six of the boat's crew in a circle round her, armed 
 
CANNIBALISM. 77 
 
 with gims, and with orders to fire if the natives made 
 a rush, allowing no one on board till he had laid 
 down his club and bow. At the request of her late 
 master we set fire to the wreck, and she was soon 
 burning merrily, giving the Api men a bonfire at 
 wliich they would have been only too glad to roast 
 some of us ; and, setting off to regain our own 
 schooner, fired a last salute over her remains. 
 
 Talking about cannibalism reminds me of a 
 gliastly story I heard, but for which, as it did not 
 occur to myself, I cannot vouch. A white man living 
 in Fiji had a boat's crew of men from Malicollo, the 
 next island to Api, and with them he used to make 
 long excursions all over the South Seas. One cruise, 
 however, when he happened to have a white man 
 with him, his blacks seemed suddenly to have taken 
 a great fancy for learning navigation, and persisted 
 in having the use of the compass explained to them, 
 always asking whereabouts Malicollo was. At last 
 they rose on the unsuspecting whites, killed the 
 captain and turned the boat's head west, in the direc- 
 tion in which they knew their native island lay. 
 They sailed so for many days, apparently taking 
 little notice of the remaining white man. Conceive 
 his horrible position. They had roasted his friend, 
 and kept offering him pieces in derision to eat, or 
 
78 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 threw them in his face, covering him with blood ; 
 and he knew well that as soon as that body was 
 finished his own turn would come ; and all this time 
 they were steadily sailing with the trade-wind 
 towards the island where he felt sure he must die 
 sooner or later. I wonder the situation did not 
 drive him mad — the heat, thirst, loneliness, and the 
 having constantly before his eyes the fast diminish- 
 ing body of his friend. The story goes on to say, 
 however, that by some extraordinary fortune they 
 actually did hit on the island of Malicollo, hav- 
 ing threaded the mass of islands that lay between, 
 by which time he was reduced to such despair that 
 he begged the savages to finish him ofi* at once ; but 
 no ! . . . their minds had changed, or they had 
 suddenly tired of human flesh ; so he lived on Mali- 
 collo in a sort of slavery for years, till he managed 
 by some feint to get on board a whaler. Though I 
 cannot vouch, as I said, for the above story, I am 
 convinced that it is quite possible, and the fact of 
 their allowing either of the men to escape seems the 
 strangest part of it all. Some little time after 
 hearing this story I managed to get a Malicollo 
 native for my boat's crew who spoke good English, 
 and he seemed to know the story and corro- 
 borated it. 
 
HOW HUMAN FLESH IS COOKED. 79 
 
 On Tanna, a celebrated man-cook — I mean a 
 cooker of men — detailed to me the process which is 
 de rigueur in the cooking of human flesh, and which 
 is supposed to impart a peculiar relish to such a 
 feast. A shallow hole is dug in the ground, and 
 filled with fire and round stones ; when the fire is 
 burnt out and the stones red hot, the body is split 
 open and the stones are put inside ; it is then 
 wrapped round and round with leaves to keep it 
 from being burnt, and laid in the native oven, and 
 a large tire built on the top of it, till sufficiently 
 baked. The leaves, he told me, keep in the j uices, 
 and, I suppose, give it the sort of tenderness which 
 we find in ' cotelettes en papillote.' I believe the 
 Newzealander's method of cooking what he calls 
 'long pig' is much the same, and I have seen human 
 flesh-forks that have come from the Fiji Islands, 
 made of wood, so beautifully carved as to show 
 apparently a high state of civilisation ! Altogether, 
 I can quite understand the great dislike whaling- 
 ships have of getting too close to these islands in 
 the treacherous currents, as they know that, unless 
 they can save men and arms enough to make them 
 masters of the situation, a native oven will be their 
 inevitable fate. 
 
 The aborigines of Australia, on the other hand — 
 
80 m QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 though of course often driven to cannibalism in 
 self-preservation, during a dry season — seem to look 
 on it generally as a sort of melancholy duty they 
 owe their friends ; and I have seen gins (the native 
 women) carrying about the well-picked bones of 
 their dead relations for months at a time. I re- 
 member a little girl, child of a very nice black 
 couple we had on a cattle-station in Queensland, who 
 died ; and as the father was half civilised and very 
 fond of the child, he wished it buried in the earth 
 in white-man fashion ; but the tribe of which he was 
 king insisted on its being roasted, and it was accord- 
 ingly formally divided amongst them and eaten 
 with all the honours. 
 
 But enough of this unpleasant subject. Leaving 
 Api, we sailed slowly northwards, passing Ambrym, 
 where a great volcano raises its head 3,500 feet, till 
 it touches the clouds ; past Pentecost and Aoba or 
 Leper's Island, not daring to call at these islands, 
 which are shunned by every trader since the days of 
 the sandal-wood getters; and having Vanua Lava 
 on our left, and Motu — where the late Bishop 
 Patteson had at one time formed a small mission — 
 on our right, we made steadily on for Motu Lava, 
 called Valua on the chart. The whole of our re- 
 maining passengers belonged to this place, and we 
 
A RECEPTIOX. 81 
 
 were sure of a welconae, especially as we had a chief's 
 son on board. 
 
 I look back with pleasure to the week we spent 
 among these people, who are as yet in a state of 
 primitive simplicity, and more disposed to welcome 
 white men than natives generally are. It was such 
 a rest, after the fatigues and dangers of our cruise, 
 that we were prepared to appreciate it. Our MotU 
 Lava passengers, decked out in their best clothes, 
 clustered in the rigging, and hailed with cheers 
 every fresh view that opened out to us, as we dropped 
 slowly to our anchorage. More than one of them 
 wore tall black hats, and all wore collars and neck- 
 ties, putting our own disreputable clothing to shame ; 
 and they were certainly a contrast to their less 
 fortunate uncles and aunts, who had absolutely 
 nothing on. Our decks were soon crowded with 
 inquirers for long absent friends ; and, having regaled 
 as many as we could with biscuits and tea, we started 
 for the shore, where the joyful natives received us, 
 
 with great respect ; and E and myself, both 
 
 tolerably heavy men, were carried pick-a-back 
 across the reef, the sharp points of the coral seeming 
 to make no impression on the horny feet of our 
 bearers. 
 
 Getting all our boat's crew together, we set off 
 
82 m QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 across the island, where a great dance was to be 
 held. We tramped through narrow jungle-paths 
 for miles, passing through the numberless little 
 villages which are so thickly strewed over the 
 country, and causing great excitement amongst the 
 women and children, who rushed out to gaze at us, 
 at first in fear, but who, gathering courage from a 
 ilearer inspection, joined our procession, and crowded 
 so close on us as almost to stop our way. I had 
 armed all my own followers for fear of accidents, 
 but I believe it was quite unnecessary ; and at every 
 halt we used to have a little target practice with 
 revolvers at the trees, or at cocoa-nuts set up on a 
 stick, greatly to the edification of the islanders, 
 who were never tired of examining these little 
 weapons, and who hailed every good shot with cries 
 of astonishment, as the bullets went right through 
 the soft young trees which grow here. 
 
 When we felt thirsty we had only to signify as 
 much, and forthwith some graceful young girl would 
 start off, and climbing a cocoa palm, throw us down 
 clusters of juicy green cocoa-nuts, the tough outside 
 fibre of which was torn open by the teeth of our 
 attendants. I know nothing more delicious on a 
 hot day than the green cocoa-nut, before the milk 
 inside has hardened into the ripe nut ; it has a 
 
THE PORTRAIT. 83 
 
 peculiar sweet taste, which seems to relieve thirst 
 better than anything else. On many of these islands 
 no fresh water is found, and the natives live entirely 
 on this juice, which of course in such a climate 
 is forthcoming all the year round. 
 
 One of my boat's crew, a boy belonging to this 
 island, had had himself photographed in Brisbane. 
 It was a very second-rate photograph, the sort of 
 thing one used to get framed and glazed for a 
 shilling at the Crystal Palace, but Sir Joshua 
 Keynolds himself never gained more sincere praise 
 for his best portrait. It was handed round and 
 wondered at both back and front ; in fact I believe 
 many of the islanders thought it was alive, and the 
 lucky boy whom it represented, though remarkably 
 ugly by nature, actually began to give himself airs 
 on his good looks ; and I found him some time 
 afterwards admiring himself and pulling up his 
 shirt collar before a pocket looking-glass, evidently 
 thinking that he could compare very favourably 
 with his white master. 
 
 At last, however, we entered on an open green 
 space, and found ourselves on the scene of the 
 festivities. A huge hollow log had been scooped 
 out till it was quite thin, and the ends filled up ; at 
 this was seated the chief musician, with a piece of 
 
 G 2 
 
84 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 stick in each hand, while the dancers stood in long 
 single file, one behind the other, ready to proceed 
 at the first tap of the drum. They were all painted 
 and had their hair dressed with feathers ; and the 
 word being given, they started in a sort of slow 
 inarch, or minuet step, keeping beautiful time, and 
 whistling shrilly in chorus ; the drum beat faster 
 and faster, and they stamped with more energy, till 
 the perspiration streamed off them. This had not 
 gone on long, before my boysj who had been restlessly 
 shifting about, first on one leg and thSn on the 
 other, as the well-remembered roll of the drums 
 struck their ears, could restrain themselves no 
 longer, but threw away their arms, rushed in and 
 
 took their places, while E and I, not wishing to 
 
 remain altogether wall-flowers, brought up the pro- 
 cession, singing at the top of our voices. A little 
 of such exercise, however, in latitude 13° 14' south 
 goes a long way, and we soon had to return to our 
 shady tree and begin again at the cocoa-nuts ; where 
 our black friends came round and listened atten- 
 tively, while E struck up a comic song, and 
 
 they caught up the refrain of the chorus, and made 
 thfe old jungle of Motu Lava ring with the unac- 
 customed strains of ' Champagne Charley,' or ' Slap 
 bang. Here we are again.' Music is an inexhaustible 
 
NATIONAL DANCING. 85 
 
 pleasure to all islanders, but especially to these 
 Motu Lava men, who seem to spend their whole 
 time over it, and whose ears are astonishingly quick 
 at catching a new tune. Their own songs are in a 
 high falsetto, and the words seem to be invented on 
 the spur of the moment. Having once found out 
 
 K 's powers of singing, they kept him at it, poor 
 
 fellow ! till nature gave in, and his sailor-songs will, I 
 fancy, be long remembered there. Often during our 
 subsequent passage to Queensland did I start all 
 the different natives on board at their national 
 dances ; and the scene of babel that ensued while one 
 tribe jumped and howled, another stamped and 
 shrieked, and a third whistled plaintively, used to 
 drive the mate engaged on his navigation nearly 
 mad, and he would rush frantically on deck with a 
 volley of execrations which only added to the noise. 
 Several of the men we had brought from Brisbane 
 to this island volunteered to return with me, and 
 divided all their newly-acquired wealth amongst 
 their people, giving every one his share of calico and 
 beads ; and the scene of crying that ensued amongst 
 the women, when the whole procession — men, women, 
 children, recruits and all — arrived on the beach, I 
 shall never forget. However the best of friends 
 must part sooner or later, and after having faith-r 
 
86 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 fully promised to go and see them again in two 
 moons at the latest, and having been offered as 
 much land and power as I liked if I would settle 
 there for good, we shoved off, having at last got 
 our full complement of men, and said good-bye to 
 the only island of the South Seas in which I could 
 get rid of the continual uneasy feeling that some- 
 one was aiming a spear at me from behind a tree. 
 
OBI WOMEN UPSET OUT OP TIIEIR CANOE. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Ureparapara — ' Mark day ' — Sea-sickness — ' A soft Answer ' — More 
 Eecniits — Cotton -growing on Tanna — Buying Land — Yams — 
 Tanna — Bread-fruit — Two Styles of Civilisation — Earthquakes — 
 Island Quadrupeds. , 
 
 A TRIP to Ureparapara, one of the Bank's Islands, 
 and inhabited by a tribe speaking the same language, 
 to land another native, completed the outward- 
 bound part of my cruise, and we prepared for a long- 
 beat to the southward against the S. E. trades, home- 
 ward bound. We happened to arrive in Ureparapara 
 Bay on what they call ' mark day,' which is a cere- 
 mony that answers to our old border custom of 
 ' riding the marches.' Every tribe turns out dressed 
 
88 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 in its best — I mean of course the hair dressed — 
 and marches solemnly round the boundaries of its 
 respective territory, ending up with a dance, as 
 usual, in the evening ; so we did not see many natives 
 on the beach, and were delighted to get out of this 
 land-locked bay, which the shifting currents of air 
 that came down from the hills rendered a very 
 difficult process indeed. So partial were the gusts of 
 wind we got, that I have seen the fore-topsail dead 
 aback, while the foresail itself was drawing beauti- 
 fully. 
 
 The only traces of religious belief I have observed 
 in any of these islands were a few masks which I found 
 on Motu Lava ; they were kept in a separate grass 
 house, and were evidently looked up to by the women 
 and children with awe. The men, however, laughed 
 at them, and even put them on at my request and 
 danced about. There is certainly a virgin soil for 
 missionaries to work on here, and I believe that 
 they would be pretty well received by the younger 
 men at all events, who reap the benefit of their 
 presence ; the principal opponents of Christianity on 
 the Islands being of course old and rich men, who 
 have bought several wives, and do not care to see 
 polygamy abolished. 
 
 The Bank's Islanders, as I think I have mentioned. 
 
HOMETARD BOUXD ! 89 
 
 have the custom of tattooing, which they do very 
 neatly with a sharp fish-bone, three little points 
 being tied to a stick and hammered into the flesh. 
 I saw the operation successfully performed on one of 
 our white crew ; but as they seemed to have no 
 originality of design, beyond a star or cross, I de- 
 clined to have it tried on my own person. 
 
 Here we are, then, clear of Ureparapara, with the 
 south-easter making us dive and pitch in the 
 chopping seas as we thrash laboriously against it ; 
 and now commence the troubles of my new friends. 
 Their faces of astonishment and dismay at the heavy 
 waves, the way they refused their food, and huddled 
 together like sheep, refusing to go below although 
 the spray drenched them through and through, need 
 not be described. All these things, and worse, may 
 be seen any rough day on board of a Dover and 
 Calais packet ; but I fancy that most of them, if they 
 could have had the choice during that first storm, 
 would have jumped at the idea of getting their feet 
 safe on Motu Lava again, and would have given up 
 all notion of going to Queensland even to learn to 
 dress in shirts of many colours. 
 
 Nothing of any consequence happened as we 
 slowl57" and laboriously passed the Islands of Espirito 
 Santo and Malecola, off which latter islands several 
 
90 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 large canoes hailed us ; and it turned out that star- 
 vation was amongst them, making them very glad to 
 exchange their war-clubs and bows for pigs. Here 
 too, I picked up Jack, a smart young native who had 
 been on board of a whaler for a long time, and who 
 spoke capital English. ^He advised us, however, not 
 to land. 
 
 In about a fortnight we got to Sandwich, where 
 I had to discharge my hired crew, and sent them on 
 shore well pleased with a gun a-piece, a good store of 
 tobacco, and a piece of calico, with powder and shot ; 
 and I took an especially affectionate leave of their 
 chief, again failing to tempt him to part with his 
 beloved queue. 
 
 The natives here, seeing that we really had brought 
 back their chief, looked on us as tried friends, and 
 the vessel was quickly surrounded by canoes, most 
 of them manned (if I may use the expression) by two 
 or three old women bringing yams for sale. One of 
 our boats, in passing an old woman, splashed her in 
 the face for fun, upon which she got so angry that 
 she made a spring at the offenders, upsetting her 
 canoe and losing its contents, and swam to the ship 
 demanding vengeance with shrill cries, her bald head 
 coloured with turmeric, a bright yellow, and her 
 skinny arms giving one the idea of some strange fish. 
 
NO MORE EOOM ! 91 
 
 A present of a box of Bryant and May's matches 
 soothed her feelings, but the matches were probably 
 useless by the time she got on shore. 
 
 Leaving Vate at last for good, a beat of sixty 
 miles took us in two days to Tanna again, to lay in 
 a fresh store of pigs and yams for our final start for 
 Queensland. 
 
 Charlie, one of the Tanna men I had, had always 
 been pestering me for leave to go on shore and say 
 good-bye again to his friends ; so, just to try his good 
 faith, I let him go, and in two days he reappeared 
 with four more men, whom he had recruited, and who 
 were immensely disgvisted on being told there was 
 no room for them, as they had already cut their 
 hair short to be in white-man fashion. 
 
 I slept on shore here for two nights at the house 
 of — — , who has got already about seventy acres of 
 land under cotton, and cultivates it with tolerable 
 success. He has a hand-gin which works well, and 
 the quality and staple of the cotton I saw turned out 
 by it was very good. His labourers are mostly 
 Motu Lava men and women, and turn out with 
 great regularity every morning to the sound of the 
 bell, and work all day contentedly enough, though 
 looked on with a good deal of suspicion by the Tanna 
 men themselves. Their pay is about the same as it 
 
92 IX QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 is in Queensland ; and as they require no clothes and 
 raise their own yams and pigs, the labour is very 
 cheap. They are only hired for one year at a time. 
 
 The cotton-growing in Tanna, which already seems 
 to show signs of being a great business in the future', 
 is only a thing of the last three or four years ; but 
 the climate is so good, and the rich volcanic soil s6 
 really magnificent, that a very few years will, I think, 
 see it a rival of the Fijis in this production. 
 
 While we stayed here K bought a large 
 
 tract of land, certainly not less than 1,000 acres, 
 paying for it in trade about 251., the conditions being 
 that he should reside there in person, so as to bring 
 trade to that particular tribe ; that he should leave 
 the villages and cava houses alone, and that he 
 should always help his particular tribe in case of a 
 row — all which agreement I solemnly witnessed and 
 signed, sitting cross-legged on the beach, having a 
 large sheet of paper in my hand and my revolver 
 
 lying across my knee. Since that time R has 
 
 taken a couple of draught horses down to Tanna 
 with him, but whether the cotton plantation is pro- 
 gressing I have not heard. As to the exact value 
 of Tanna cotton I cannot speak ; the samples which 
 I showed to merchants in Brisbane were much 
 approved of, and I really think — and hereby publish 
 
A NEW FIELD FOE COTTON-GEOWIXG. 93 
 
 the fact for the benefit of all whom it may concern — 
 that of all the speculations a man of small capital 
 can best go in for, cotton-growing on Tanna is the 
 most promising, provided of com-se that the intend- 
 ing settler has a stout heart, is a fair shot with a 
 pistol, and really means to work at his plantation, 
 and not sit down on the beach all day, making his 
 natives feed him. Any Tanna chief would be 
 delighted to get a white man with his trade-box to 
 stop with him, and would protect and fight for him 
 to the last drop of his blood ; but then, the white 
 man must have a thorough knowledge of pative 
 character, and above all must let the chief see that 
 the white man makes rules for himself, and goes 
 with the tribe as king and not as subject. 
 
 While on the subject of agriculture I may as well 
 describe the vegetable products of these islands, and 
 at the head of these stands the yam. This is a 
 sort of vine- like plant of the same nature as the 
 sweet potato, and which sends down one long tap- 
 root. It takes five months to come to perfection, 
 so that the natives have two crops in the year ; 
 it has a delicious mealy flavour, and is very nourish- 
 ing ; it is the principal article of food, and the chief 
 trade with all vessels. They always roast it them- 
 selves, and are very fond of it ; but boiled in salt 
 
94 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 water like the English potato, it is, I think, still 
 better. It grows sometimes to an astonishing size, 
 and I brought two specimens to Brisbane of seven or 
 eight feet in length and as thick as a man's thigh. 
 The smaller ones, however, are the best to eat. The 
 inside is white, sometimes red, but always good 
 and wholesome, and makes a capital substitute for 
 bread or potatoes, which latter are not to be pro- 
 cured on the islands. 
 
 Of much the same nature, but of even better taste, 
 is the tara, a thick round root like a mangold-wurzel ; 
 but it is difficult to get it, the privilege of eating it 
 being considered on many islands as belonging to the 
 chiefs only. These root-crops remind me of a curious 
 superstition I met with on Sandwich. The father of 
 one of my boat's crew had lately died, and his son was 
 debarred by the custom of the island from eating 
 anything that came up out of the ground, for I for- 
 get how many moons. He was, as my readers may 
 imagine, very thin in consequence when he came to 
 me, and had to be fed upon biscuits and pork for 
 some time before he regained his strength, but 
 nothing would induce him to touch a yam. 
 
 The cocoa-nut palm and its fruit needs perhaps no 
 description, as it is so well known in all tropical 
 countries, and I am sure that the natives of these 
 
VEGETABLE PRODUCTS OF TAXXA, ETC. 95 
 
 islands would thrive perfectly well on it and nothing 
 else, eating the ripe nut and drinking the milk of the 
 green in default of water. Bananas grow here, but 
 do not flourish very well, perhaps from want of good 
 cultivation'; the fruit is much smaller than that 
 grown in Australia, and though sweet has no flavour. 
 
 The bread-fruit tree grows well, and the dried 
 fruit makes a delicious sort of biscuit ; and besides 
 these fruits and roots, they have spice-nuts of various 
 kinds which they make into a cake and eat hot ; and 
 altogether, if these islands were not so densely popu- 
 lated, the natives would be pretty well off, though 
 as it is I fancy that hundreds of them in the year 
 die of starvation on some islands, which fact perhaps 
 makes cannibalism a necessity of existence. 
 
 All the field-labour is done by the women, as is 
 generally the custom among savage tribes ; and you 
 see large groups of them in the yam-patches felling 
 and burning the scrub, and clearing new plantations 
 for themselves, as their idea of cultivation is, that 
 when one piece of land does not yield well, it is not 
 worth while to continue working on it any longer, 
 but shift to another patch and begin again. And I 
 have often thought that an islander, wJien first 
 brought to Queensland and set to work in the fields, 
 must have some very curious reflections passing 
 
96 IX QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 through his mind when he sees the ' white missus ' 
 dressed in gay attire, taking her ease under her 
 verandah, and looking at her husband working very 
 hard with his men in the fields, under the full glare 
 of an Australian sun. Whether he thinks us the 
 more civilised race of the two, I am not prepared to 
 say. 
 
 While sleeping that night on Tanna, I had a new 
 experience of life, to wit, an earthquake, and a pretty 
 violent one. About the middle of the night a heavy 
 sickening roll made me dream I was on board again ; 
 and I had just turned round, to try and get another 
 snooze, when with a crash I tumbled off the bed, and 
 rushing out of the house, found all the whites and 
 natives too, in a state of the greatest trepidation, and 
 holding on to the sides of the house as if they were 
 on the deck of a rolling ship. They all wished to 
 go on board ; evidently the earth would open and 
 swallow them up. But we had no more shocks, and 
 at last gathered courage to turn in again. Even 
 if the house had fallen in upon us, I do not think it 
 would have hurt us much, as it was only built of dry 
 grass, and thatched with leaves of the cocoa-nut, as 
 indeed are all the houses I have seen on the islands. 
 
 A native going to bed in his house simply lies 
 down on the bare clay, which is generally strewed 
 
SCARCITY OF ANIMAL LIFE. 97 
 
 with a little small shingle ; and putting a block of 
 wood under his neck to keep his elaborately-dressed 
 locks from being disordered, snores peacefully, while 
 his wife sits up to see that the fire is kept alight, 
 and takes the opportunity to smoke her husband's 
 tobacco. 
 
 We read in Captain Cook's voyages that goats and 
 dogs were left on some of the South Sea Islands, 
 but the goats have entirely disappeared from the New 
 Hebrides. Some few wretched dogs, indeed, with sharp 
 noses, prick ears and bushy tails, are sometimes seen 
 upon the beach, whose ancestors may have sailed in 
 the ' Endeavour 'just a hundred years ago ; but if so, 
 they have nearly reverted to their great ancestor the 
 jackal, and the bark of civilisation is the only thing 
 they have retained to show their origin. Beyond 
 these and pigs I have seen no quadrupeds. Fowls 
 abound on all the Islands, but they have run out so 
 small as to be more like bantams than the sort of 
 speckled Hamboroughs they must originally have 
 come from. The wild birds are scarce, and all go 
 under the generic name of pigeon ; very few gulls 
 are to be seen on the water, and only a species of 
 green fruit-eating dove on the land. We formed a 
 party once, while on Motu Lava, to shoot these birds, 
 and succeeded in getting five-and-twenty or thirty of 
 
 H 
 
98 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 them by careful . stalking. Their flesh is delicious, 
 and resembles that of the pink-breasted fig-eater of 
 the Australian scrub. But the natives, having no 
 guns, and being such bad shots with their bows, very 
 seldom succeed in killing any. 
 
THE ISLAND OF ERIIOMAXGO. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Fever and Ague — Medicine — Dosing a Native — Medical Mission — 
 Physique — Drinking * Cava ' — Arms — Animal Poison — TheH 
 Home. 
 
 Before 1 leave the subject of Tanna and its pros- 
 pects, I must mention that fever and ague are as 
 common there as they are on all tropical coasts, and 
 the disease assumes a peculiarly virulent form in the 
 case of white men living on the beach, leaving 
 however, the hills, which appear to be perfectly free 
 from this exhausting sickness. 
 
 Some few miles from the cotton plantation I have 
 
100 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 described, two white men had settled under the care 
 of my friend ' Washerwoman,' and had built them- 
 selves a little grass hut close to the water's edge, for 
 the purpose of making ' copera,' which is the inside 
 of the ripe cocoa-nut split and dried on a sort of 
 gridiron, and sold to the traders for the Sydney and 
 New Caledonia markets. 
 
 Hearing of my arrival, these men sent me a mes- 
 sao"e to come and see them, as one of them was in a 
 dying condition. When I got there, however, the 
 tribe which protected them seemed very little dis- 
 posed to let me pass, possibly because I had been 
 paying a visit to some of their enemies ; and it was 
 not until I had produced a big bottle, and said that 
 I came to cure their white men, that they allowed 
 me to approach. One of the poor fellows was lying 
 on the bare earth in the last stage of exhaustion, 
 rambling incoherently to himself about some scene of 
 his youth ; his native labourers would not come near 
 him to give him a drink, and the fits had already 
 got so bad as to recur twice in the same day. The 
 large doses of Hollands and sulphate of quinine I 
 administered at last brought him round, but they 
 were obliged to shift their house up on to a higher 
 spot immediately. 
 
 And here 1 may remark what a very useful thing 
 
USEFUL MEDICINES. 101 
 
 a little knowledge of the simpler medicines, and a 
 well filled chest, is in the South Seas. Scarcely a day- 
 passed without my being called in as a doctor to some 
 native, either amongst my coolies or on shore. 
 Epsom salts, castor oil, opium, quinine, Holloway's 
 ointment, and linseed, are nearly sufficient for every- 
 thing ; but sometimes more violent remedies would 
 be required, such as bluestone, &c. Brandy, too, 
 has an astonishing medicinal effect on a native, a 
 teaspoonful being generally sufficient to rouse him, 
 even if very ill with fever. I remember being much 
 struck by a naked savage on a reef, up to his neck in 
 water, demanding Epsom salts, ' kiki ' (eating) salts 
 he called them, and refusing all other trade, though 
 I am pretty sure, judging from the place in which I 
 found him, he had never seen a white man's face 
 before. 
 
 Their own panacea for everything seems to be a 
 copious draught of salt water, which, however cheap, 
 is not good in every case. But, at all events, the 
 native is an easy patient to deal with ; instead of 
 cavilling at the treatment, and putting the doctor 
 through his facings as to what good such and such a 
 drug in the prescription can possibly do him, he 
 just opens his mouth and swallows everything like a 
 good child ; and his faith in medicine is so strong, 
 
102 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 that the remedies almost always turn out to have 
 done him good ; and a homoeopathist might travel 
 far in Europe before he found such hopeful subjects, 
 if, as the opponents of that system say, the patient's 
 own imagination is the doctor's strongest weapon. 
 I remember on Tanna a very great chief came to me 
 
 A CULTIVATED COOLIE. 
 
 most submissively and complained of being sick, 
 placing his hands expressively on the seat of the 
 evil ; whereupon, anxious to create a good impression 
 on the crowd, I sat him solemnly down on the beach, 
 cross-legged, with his face to the sun, which was 
 just setting ; and taking my watch in one hand, and 
 
CURING A CHIEF. 103 
 
 a large blue pill in the other, I ' held him with my 
 glittering eye,' till, just as the sun went down, 
 I popped the pill into his mouth and told him that 
 in the morning when the sun got up he must drink 
 the huge dose of salts with which I presented him, 
 weighing about three ounces, and he would be all 
 right. I consider it due to myself to say that the 
 result justified my expectations, and the chief ranks 
 me among his greatest friends from that day, and 
 has on every occasion since then delighted to honour 
 me by coming on board the schooner and drinking 
 as much pale ale as I would supply him with. 
 
 I know of no stronger weapon in all dealings with 
 savage races than medicine ; I found it of much 
 more service in making an impression than any 
 display of wealth or arms, and it creates besides a 
 confidence and feeling of good fellowship that is not 
 easily marred. I remember creating a great sen- 
 sation amongst a lot of natives by administering to 
 one a dose of ipecacuanha and tartar emetic, and 
 telling the bystanders that when the hand of my 
 watch got to a certain place that man would be 
 very sick; and so he was, very sick, and the astonish- 
 ment was proportionably great. 
 
 Why should not all missions to blacks be put on 
 some such basis as what we call in England a medical 
 
104 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 mission ? Why should not the intending missionary 
 supply himself with a large stock of simple and 
 strong remedies for dysentery, fever, and ague etc., 
 and begin the good work he has on hand by healing 
 the sick ? I believe that this would be not only the 
 quickest but the safest way of getting a chance to 
 minister to their souls also, and a native who should 
 propose to his countrymen to kill the doctor would 
 mn a bad chance for his own life at their hands. 
 
 The physical constitution of an Islander is, after 
 all, very bad. He has seldom any chest, and never any 
 stamina ; and though he very often looks a strong man, 
 he is always flabby and soft, and walks in a lazy, 
 slouching sort of way, that is the very opposite of his 
 black brother, the aborigine of Australia, who, if 
 lower than the Islander in intellect, is a wiry, hard, 
 active and muscular man, always in training, and 
 always fit to climb the tallest tree in the bush for 
 his dinner, or ride the most vicious horse you can 
 find him. This may be partially owing to the dif- 
 ference in their feeding, the Islander living almost 
 wholly on yams, while the Australian rarely eats any- 
 thing but meat ; but I think it is mostly because the 
 Islander has such a glorious climate and soil that the 
 fruits of the earth grow for him almost untilled, and 
 that it is a much easier thing to send out one's wife 
 
AN INTOXICATING DRINK. 105 
 
 to dig up a yam for dinner than to run down a kan- 
 garoo. As an instance of the difference in physique, 
 I may mention that a native, brought from Api, fell 
 sick, and had to be taken to the Brisbane Jiospital. 
 In the next bed to him lay an aborigine who had 
 been nearly killed in some drunken quarrel, and was 
 apparently dying ; and I was surprised to hear 
 the surgeon say that in a fortnight that man would 
 be as well as ever, while as for the Api native he had 
 no chance, as a South Sea islander never recovers 
 from a serious illness, but gives up in despair and 
 lies quietly waiting for death. When I next was 
 able to visit the hospital I found the surgeon's word 
 had come true : my man was buried ; while I saw the 
 aborigine up a tree in the court-yard, very con- 
 tentedly cutting away with his tomahawk, as if ten 
 days before his life had not hung by a thread. 
 
 I had nearly forgotten to mention the great in- 
 toxicating drink of these islands, made from the 
 cava root. This is a small plant with a fibrous root 
 which is cultivated with great ceremony in every 
 village, and has a separate house set apart for the 
 observance of the rites connected with it. Only the 
 men are allowed to drink it, and only after they are 
 grown up ; one or two old women of the village are 
 chosen to prepare it, and sitting down, chew it in 
 
106 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 small pieces, spitting the plentiful saliva which is 
 caused by it into a bowl. Having filled as many 
 bowls as may be required, they retire and take care 
 to keep out of sight while the men go into the hut 
 and, standing in a row, swallow it at a gulp exactly as 
 the sun goes down. It tastes like soapsuds and has 
 a stupefying effect, and for two hours after sundown 
 no native is quite in possession of his senses. I tried 
 to prepare it myself by maceration in water, but 
 I suppose the principal ingredient was absent, as I 
 could not appreciate any delicacy in the draught, 
 and it had what Sam Weller calls ' a strong flavour 
 of warm flat-irons.' 
 
 The arms in use among the islanders of the New 
 Hebrides consist, as I have already said, of bows and 
 arrows, spears, clubs and hatchets. The bow is a 
 very short one, though tough and powerful ; the 
 arrows, though harmless-looking, are, next to fire- 
 arms, the most deadly weapons I have seen. They 
 are tipped with animal poison by dipping the points 
 into a putrid corpse and letting the matter dry on ; 
 this poison will, I believe, retain its virulence for about 
 six months. The only reputed cure for a wound by 
 one of these arrows is the gi*eat snake-bite antidote, 
 immediate injection of strong ammonia into a vein 
 by Professor Halford's method. It is said to rouse 
 
NATIVE WEAPONS. 107 
 
 the patient from the torpor, and to stop the swelling 
 and intense pain that follows the poison of the arrow. 
 Their clubs are elaborately carved, and always 
 carried suspended by a thong from the waist ; their 
 spears are, I think, more for show than for use, and 
 in some of the islands are made entirely of fish-bones, 
 neatly jointed in, and projecting in all directions, or 
 out of the back-bones of two or three sharks joined 
 together. Weapons made of greenstone, in the 
 Maori fashion, they do not possess, though New 
 Caledonia produces jade, and I have seen small 
 pieces of jade on Tanna ; but I never could find out if 
 it came from that island, which would be a strong 
 presumption in favour of the idea that gold may 
 also be found there. Perhaps the ancestors of the 
 Tanna men, if the Maori origin doctrine be true, 
 might have brought these stones with them from 
 New Zealand. 
 
FIFE S GRIEF. 
 
 CHAPTEK XI. 
 
 First sight of Brisbane — Coolies on the Plantations — Adapt them- 
 selves to circumstances — Divine Service — Burial of a Native — I 
 leave, with mutual good wishes. 
 
 I SHALL pass over all the little incidents of our run 
 home round Walpole Island for Brisbane, till we 
 sighted Moreton light, all well, and sent a telegram 
 
NEARING HOME. 109 
 
 from the lighthouse station for the inspecting and 
 health officer of the immigration department. A 
 steam-tug came for us the same evening, and the 
 Kanakas soon had cause for wonder and jabbering 
 in what must have appeared to them a horrible 
 monster, as seen in the dark, with its tall funnel 
 sending out smoke and flame, and its paddles 
 dashing up the foam, as it made fast, puffing and 
 snorting, and took us up the Brisbane river. The 
 inspecting officer's duty is to look over the list of the 
 new immigrants, and to compare it with the papers 
 furnished him by the master of the vessel, of the 
 namber on board; to see that they are not afflicted 
 with any disease, and are neither ' maimed, halt, 
 blind, deaf, dumb, idiotic, or insane ;' and to give a 
 certificate to that effect. All these formalities 
 being got through, we dropped anchor in the middle 
 of the town on Saturday night, and, late as it was, 
 were glad to go on shore to a comfortable civilised 
 bed with sheets, and slept none the worse for the 
 knowledge that the difficulties and dangers of our 
 South Sea cruise were over. 
 
 So far I have told the tale of my trip to the New 
 Hebrides for labourers, and it only remains for me 
 to give an account of what they were wanted for in 
 Queenslacd, and how they fulfilled their duties in 
 
110 m QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 their new life. Who shall describe the astonishment 
 of these children of nature, at our houses, streets, 
 horses, and women? For hours they would sit 
 motionless, gazing at the stream of life hurrying 
 past them on the wharves, and too much afraid 
 of losing themselves to venture from the ship till 
 taken away by their masters. Within two or 
 three days the employers of all these men had come 
 for them, had signed their agreements in presence 
 of the immigration agent ; and I said good-bye to 
 most of my late friends, and saw them off with their 
 various bundles en route for their different scenes of 
 work, not without a sincere feeling of liking for the 
 patient, docile fellows, who had put up with all the 
 discomforts of a sea voyage, and the beginning of a 
 life so totally unlike anything they could have 
 imagined, with a good deal more philosophy than I 
 have seen displayed by the same number of English 
 emigrants ; and who, even when the storm was at its 
 highest, and cooking and sleeping by no means easy 
 matters, only wanted a little chaff or two or three 
 kind words to light up their faces with a grin. 
 
 The South Sea coolies have now been inhabitants of 
 Queensland for several years, but I have scarcely ever 
 heard of a single instance of bad behaviour on their 
 part. They are provided with barracks or huts on 
 
DILIGENT WORKERS. Ill 
 
 the plantations or sheep stations on which they are 
 employed, and turn out every morning at six o'clock 
 and work the customary hours with great cheerful- 
 ness. Most of them, certainly, never get beyond 
 hoeing or corn-picking ; but some turn into capital 
 horse-drivers, ploughmen, or sugar-boilers, and will, 
 in the press of work in the sugar season, cheerfully 
 toil on late at night over the steaming tache, getting 
 a little extra tea, bread and butter, or tobacco served 
 out to them for doing so, and presenting a marked 
 contrast to the white men who are grumbling and 
 growling all round them. 
 
 I quote from Mr. E. B. Kennedy's ' Four Years in 
 Queensland ' a few of the remarks of Mr. Spiller, a 
 well-known sugar grower in the north of the colony, 
 a projpos of this : 
 
 ' The work of these plantations is carried on with 
 the mixed labour of Europeans and Polynesians, the 
 latter in every case working well. To this fact I 
 would earnestly draw the especial attention of some 
 of the numerous letter- writers on the slavery 
 question. I have had twenty of these labourers 
 since May 1867. In the first onset I made it my 
 study to learn their language, so that I can make 
 them understand me ; and I began putting them to 
 their work. It required all the patience I could 
 
112 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 muster at first, but they gradually got acquainted 
 with the use of different tools before unknown to 
 them ; and now I am reaping the benefit, and proud 
 to see every morning turning out for the field four 
 good ploughmen, with their six bullocks each and 
 drivers ; others with their horse-teams that can mark 
 out a drill as straight as I can. Not only do they 
 do their work well, but they are contented. I do 
 not put them on rations ; they get all they require 
 of beef, sweet potatoes, yams, corn-meal, green corn, 
 arrowroot, sugar, molasses, milk, and one plug of 
 tobacco per week. Tea they do not much care 
 about, but when they want tea they are not afraid 
 to ask for it. I find a great advantage in being able 
 to talk to them, and I think it has helped to make 
 them fond of me. They also like this country very 
 much and often ask me to keep them, and get their 
 wives over, and let them have a bit of land. They 
 are far from being so ignorant as is often supposed ; 
 they know well when the term of agreement expires, 
 but they would much prefer having their wives over 
 here, to returning to their native islands ; and in 
 this I will certainly assist them, if the government 
 will allow me to do so.' 
 
 All the above is entirely corroborated by my own 
 experience. A few months is quite sufficient to make 
 
COOLIE AMUSEMENTS. 113 
 
 them all fall naturally into their places ; and a 
 judicious pitting of the natives of one island against 
 those of another gets an immense deal of work out 
 of them. It is quite astonishing to see the change 
 in physique that a short stay on a plantation pro- 
 duces. The fat and grinning fellows working in the 
 j&elds one would almost suppose to be of a dififerent 
 race from the thin and truculent- looking savage loi- 
 tering on the beach, with an old musket in his hand, 
 afraid of his own life, and on the look-out for some- 
 body, else to shoot at. 
 
 The coolies on the plantation I was connected 
 with in Queensland were a very cheerful lot, and I 
 for my part would sooner, for the sort of work I had 
 in hand, have a gang of them than the same number 
 of white men. I used to take them on expeditions 
 in a steamer all about the coast, and they would work 
 at any hour with great cheerfulness, fully rewarded 
 if I lent them my gun, after working hours, to go 
 and shoot pigeons in the scrubs — not that they ever 
 hit any that I could hear of. Pulling off all they 
 had on, and taking their spears, they would wade 
 about in the mud that forms our Queensland sea- 
 beach, and spear fish with great dexterity ; or, joining 
 in a ring and improvising a drum, would dance and 
 sing far into the night. 
 
114 IX QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 A few of them who had come from islands where 
 there was a missionary, sucli as Lifii or Mare, used 
 to appear regularly at church-time, in the little 
 school-house where ■ divine service was read ; and 
 would read out of their hymn-books, or join in the 
 tunes with a vigour that would surprise a London 
 congregation ; and always crowded round at the close 
 of the service, to go through the ceremony of shaking 
 hands with the clergyman. 
 
 Most of them, however, spent their Sunday in 
 wandering all over the country, visiting their friends 
 at the neighbouring plantations ; and sometimes, 
 while riding late at night, I have seen little knots of 
 two and three, all holding each other's hands, as is 
 their fashion, starting out on some expedition. 
 
 One of these half-civilised boys, 'Jim Crow' by 
 name, died on the plantation of consumption, and a 
 coffin was made for him ; he was laid out in state in 
 his hut, and his countrymen came and told me they 
 would pray over him. I was much struck by the 
 devout way in which they all behaved : one of them 
 said a long prayer ; they then sang a hymn ; then, 
 standing up beside the body, ' Faith,' the leading 
 man of the tribe, gave a long address to his country- 
 men, expatiating on all the good qualites of the 
 deceased, and pointing upwards, told them, as far as 
 
A COOLIE FUNERAL. 115 
 
 I could make out, that if they behaved themselves, 
 they would see him again. This being done, they 
 seemed to think they had cried enough over him ; 
 and with much laughing and singing, they caught 
 up the coffin, and ran by turns with it till they came 
 to the place where the grave had been dug, followed 
 by all the islanders on the place ; some of the latter, 
 Tanna men, evidently thinking that it was a great 
 waste of time and ceremony to bestow on so slight a 
 matter as a dead man, and, bundling the coffin 
 underground as quickly as possible, dispersed merrily. 
 I do not think I need follow the fortunes of my 
 recruits any further. Suffice it to say that all, as far 
 as I could hear, turned out well, and have, no doubt, 
 by this time got through the first half of their three 
 years of servitude, with credit to themselves and 
 profit to their several employers. Often since then, 
 while riding through the coast country, have I heard 
 myself hailed by name ; and some Kanaka has rushed 
 out to shake hands, and asked me to go and fetch 
 his brother or his wife, and bring them on to the 
 same plantation ; and has invariably, when questioned, 
 professed himself satisfied with his master, his place, 
 and his food. My favourite boy. Pipe, who pulled 
 stroke-oar in my boat, pestered me for a long time 
 to be allowed to go with me to England. He fol- 
 
 I 2 
 
116 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
 lowed me to the ship in which I was leaving the 
 colony, and it was only by ghastly tales of English 
 frost and snow that I finally persuaded him to go 
 ashore. The last thing I saw of my pet South Sea 
 Islander was somebody in my old Sydney hat and a 
 pilot coat many sizes too big for him, crying bitterly 
 behind one of my old pocket-handkerchiefs on the 
 wharf, as I sailed away. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 The following is the Act of Parliament relating 
 to the subject of this Book, 
 
 QUEENSLAND. 
 
 ANNO TRICESIMO PEIMO. 
 
 VICTORIA REGIN^, 
 
 No. 47. 
 
 ' An Act to Regulate and Control the Introduction and 
 Treatment of Polynesian Laborers. 
 
 [Assented to 4th March, 1868. 
 Whereas many persons have deemed it desirable Preamble, 
 and necessary in order to enable them to carry on their 
 operations in tropical and semi-tropical agriculture to 
 introduce to the colony Polynesian laborers And 
 whereas it is necessary for the prevention of abuses 
 and for securing to the laborers proper treatment and 
 protection as well as for securing to the employer the 
 due fulfilment by the immigrant of his agreement that 
 
118 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Not Ltwful 
 io introduce 
 Polynesian 
 laborers 
 except ac- 
 cording to 
 regulations. 
 
 Present em- 
 pi oyers to 
 make re- 
 turns within 
 four months 
 from passing 
 of Act. 
 
 Penalty for 
 failure in 
 making re- 
 turns. 
 
 Act to apply 
 to employers 
 and la- 
 borers at 
 time of 
 passing. 
 
 Inspectors 
 to be ap- 
 pointed. 
 
 an Act should be passed for the control of such immi- 
 gration Be it therefore enacted by the Queen's Most 
 Excellent Majesty by and with the advice and consent 
 of the Legislative Council and Legislative Assembly of 
 Queensland in Parliament assembled and by the 
 authority of the same as follows — 
 
 1. It shall not be lawful for any person or persons to 
 introduce any Polynesian laborers into the Colony of 
 Queensland unless and except in accordance with the 
 regulations contained in this Act and the forms there- 
 unto attached. 
 
 2. Within four months from the passing of this Act 
 all persons who have in their employment any Polynesian 
 laborers shall make a return to the Immigration 
 Agent or other authorised agent of all such laborers 
 in their employment setting forth the number and 
 names of such laborers the nature and duration of 
 their agreements together with all such particulars as 
 may be required. 
 
 3. Any person employing any Polynesian laborers 
 who shall fail to make a return as required by the 
 foregoing clause shall on conviction of the same before 
 any two justices of the peace be subject to a penalty 
 not exceeding fifty pounds. 
 
 4. The provisions of this Act shall so far as practi- 
 cable be applied to all Polynesian laborers introduced 
 into this Colony before the passing of this Act and to 
 their employers. 
 
 5. The Governor with the advice of the Executive 
 Council shall appoint from time to time such person or 
 persons as shall be found requisite for the proper 
 inspection of the said Polynesian laborers and enforcing 
 the provisions of this Act» 
 
APPENDIX. 119 
 
 6. All persons desirous of importing laborers from Form of 
 tlie South Sea Islands shall make application to the 
 Colonial Secretary at Brisbane in the Form A appended 
 hereto stating the number required and how they are to 
 
 be employed such application to be accompanied 
 by a bond in Form K signed by applicant and two 
 sureties to secure the return of the laborers to their 
 native islands at the expiration of three years or thirty- 
 nine moons from date of arrival A license in Form C 
 may then be issued authorising the applicant to import 
 the number required. 
 
 7. The owner or charterer of any vessel so licensed Vessel to be 
 shall provide for the use of the passengers a supply of found, 
 medicines medical comforts instruments and other things 
 
 proper and necessary for diseases and accidents incident 
 to sea voyage and for the medical treatment of the 
 passengers during the voyage including an adequate 
 supply of disinfectant fluid or agent together with 
 printed or written directions for the use of the same 
 respectively and such medicines medical comforts 
 instruments and other things shall in the judgment of 
 the emigration officer at the port of clearance be good 
 in quality and sufficient in quantity for the probable 
 exigencies of the intended voyage and shall be properly 
 packed and placed under the charge of the medical 
 practitioner when there is one on board to be used at 
 his discretion In case of non-compliance with any of penalty. 
 the requirements of this section the master of the ship 
 shall for each offence be liable to a penalty not exceed- 
 ing fifty pounds nor less than five pounds sterling. 
 
 8. The master of any vessel arriving with Polynesian Master of 
 laborers shall be bound to report on arrival at any of report arri- 
 
 val &c. 
 
 the ports of Queensland the number of such laborers 
 
120 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Master of 
 vessel to 
 produce 
 certificate. 
 
 Employers 
 to produce 
 certificate of 
 Immigra- 
 tion Agent. 
 
 Immigrants 
 to under- 
 stand the 
 nature of 
 their agree- 
 ments. 
 
 and the names of the employers to whom they have 
 been or are to be indented and shall not be permitted 
 to land any of the immigrants until he has received the 
 certificate (Form L) of the Immigration Agent or other 
 officer of the Government empowered to grant same 
 that the following regulations have been complied 
 with — 
 
 (1.) The production by the master of the vessel 
 of a certificate in Form I or certificates signed 
 by a consul missionary or other known person 
 that the laborers have volimtarily engaged 
 themselves and entered into their agreements 
 with a ftill knowledge and understanding of the 
 nature and conditions of same and that when 
 they were embarked they were not known to be 
 afilicted with any disease and were neither 
 maimed halt blind deaf dumb idiotic or insane. 
 (2.) The production by the employers or parties 
 to whom the laborers are or are intended to 
 be indented of the certificate in Form C autho- 
 rising them to recruit. 
 (3.) That proper means have been taken since the 
 arrival of the ship by the Immigration Agent or 
 other ofiicer by explanations questions and en- 
 quiries amongst the laborers themselves to 
 ascertain whether they have a proper under- • 
 standing of the conditions of the agreements and 
 did voluntarily enter into same That the agree- 
 ments have been signed in the form prescribed 
 and the employers bound to observe the rules 
 laid down for the treatment and management of 
 the laborers. 
 
APPENDIX. 121 
 
 9. All agreements (Form D) shall be completed on Agreements 
 board the ship if possible and the immigrants taken pietedon 
 
 ■^ ^ ^ ^ . board ship 
 
 from same by their employers and should there arise a where prac- 
 
 , . \. 1 , -, IX • ticable. 
 
 necessity for taking any of the laborers to the immi- 
 gration Depot their maintenance there shall in all cases 
 be borne by the employer. 
 
 10. The arrival of the immigrants shall be registered immigrants 
 
 ° ° to be regia- 
 
 in the Immiarration Office Brisbane or at the Custom tered on 
 
 ° _ arrival. 
 
 House in any other port and in the latter case a copy 
 of the register shall be forwarded by the Customs officer 
 to the Immigration Office by following mail. 
 
 11. The scale of rations and wages shown in Form G Scale of 
 and printed on the form of agreement shall in no case 
 
 be deviated from. 
 
 12. A reo-ister of hired Polynesian laborers shall be Register to 
 
 . . be kept by- 
 
 kept by each employer in Form E which shall be open employer. 
 
 for the inspection of any magistrate or other person 
 
 appointed by Government for the purpose who shall 
 
 record his visit therein No entry except the state of 
 
 muster at the expiration of each quarter shall be made 
 
 in the register of the employer unless from a document 
 
 of hiring transfer death or desertion countersigned by 
 
 the Immigration Agent or other authorised officer. 
 
 13. No transfer of an immigrant shall be made except Transfers 
 with the full consent of the transferror the immigrant 
 
 and the Government in Form F and no immigrant shall 
 be allowed to leave his employment under transfer 
 until the same has been recorded in the books of the 
 Immigration Office or other appointed office All 
 transfers shall be signed by the transferror and immi- 
 grant in presence of a magistrate who shall before such 
 signing explain to the immigrant the full meaning and 
 effect of such transfer Provided that every transferree 
 
122 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Deaths or 
 desertions to 
 be reported 
 imme- 
 diately. 
 
 Masters of 
 vessels to 
 execute 
 bonds prior 
 to proceed- 
 ing to hire 
 laborers. 
 
 Niftiber of 
 passengers. 
 (Fide Im- 
 perial Act, 
 16 and 17 
 Vict. 0. 84.) 
 
 Proportion 
 of passengers 
 to deck area. 
 
 shall enter into a bond similar to that of the transferror 
 prior to any transfer being consented to. 
 
 14. All deaths or desertions shall be immediately 
 reported to the nearest bench of magistrates and to the 
 Immigration Agent by the employer and in case of 
 death a medical certificate of the cause thereof shall be 
 forwarded if possible. 
 
 15. All masters of vessels about to proceed to the 
 South Sea Islands in order to obtain laborers there- 
 from shall enter into a bond in form B with two 
 sufficient sureties for the prevention of kidnapping and 
 for the due observance of these regulations so far as 
 they are concerned. 
 
 16. No ship shall carry a greater number of passen- 
 gers than in the proportion of one statute adult to every 
 twelve clear superficial feet allotted to their use Pro- 
 vided that the height between decks shall not be less 
 than six feet six inches from deck to deck when the 
 height of the 'tween decks exceeds six feet six inches an 
 extra number of passengers may be taken at the rate of 
 one for every one hundred and forty -four cubic feet of 
 space Each ship must be fitted with open berths or 
 sleeping places in not more than two tiers — the lowest 
 tier shall be raised six inches from the deck and the 
 interval between the two tiers of berths shall not be less 
 than two feet six inches All passengers shall be berthed 
 between decks or in deck houses. 
 
 17. But no ship whatever her tonnage or superficial 
 space of passenger decks shall carry a greater number 
 of passengers on the whole than in the proportion of 
 one statute adult to every five superficial feet clear for 
 exercise on the upper deck or poop or if secured and 
 fitted on the top with a railing or guard to the satisfac- 
 
APPENDIX. 123 
 
 tion of the emigration officer at the port of clearance 
 on any round-house or deck-house. 
 
 18. The length of the voyage to or from the South Length of 
 Sea Islands shall be computed at thirty days for sailing 
 vessels and fifteen days for steamers. 
 
 19. Three quarts of water daily during the voyage water on 
 shall be allowed to each adult exclusive of the quantity 
 
 used for cooking purposes. 
 
 20. Provisions shall be issued to each statute adult Provisions 
 
 on the 
 
 during the voyage according to the following scale voyage. 
 namely : — 
 
 Daily Provisions for Statute Adult. 
 
 Yams 
 
 Or rice 
 
 Or maize meal 
 
 Meat (pork or beef) 
 
 Tea 
 
 Sugar 
 
 lbs. oz. 
 
 . 4 
 
 . 4 
 
 . 4 
 
 . 1 
 
 . Oi 
 
 . 2 
 
 Tobacco (during good behaviour) per week .0 1-| 
 
 The undermentioned clothing shall be supplied to each 
 labourer immediately on embarkation in advance : — 
 
 1 Flannel Shirt 
 1 Pair Trowsers 
 1 Blanket 
 
 21. Nominal returns of laborers shall be made by Nominal 
 
 employers of South Sea Island labor to the Immigra- sentaiex- 
 
 . . , . . _ . piration of 
 
 tion Agent at the expiration of each quarter m each quarter. 
 Form H. 
 
124 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Returns to 
 be forwarded 
 to Colonial 
 Secretary 
 each quar- 
 ter. 
 
 Penalty for 
 harbouring 
 runaway 
 laborers. 
 
 Breaches of 
 regulations 
 punishable 
 by fine. 
 
 Engage- 
 ments sub- 
 ject to 
 25 Yic. No. 
 11. 
 
 Tax on tcs- 
 ««els in de- 
 fault of com- 
 pliance. 
 
 Exi)enses 
 incurred by 
 Govermnent 
 chargeable 
 to employers 
 
 22. At the end of each quarter the police magistrates 
 or bench of magistrates in each district where South 
 Sea Island laborers are employed shall forward to the 
 Colonial Secretary a return of all cases adjudicated 
 upon in relation to Polynesian laborers employed 
 under these regulations such returns to include the 
 names of employers and laborers and the nature of the 
 offences. 
 
 23. All persons harbouring or employing Polynesian 
 laborers otherwise than under these regulations without 
 reporting the same to the nearest bench of magistrates 
 and to the Immigration Agent in Brisbane shall be liable 
 on conviction thereof to a penalty not exceeding twenty 
 pounds. 
 
 24. All breaches of these regulations shall be 
 punishable by fine to be recovered in a summary 
 manner before two justices of the peace for the first 
 offence a fine not exceeding ten pounds for second and 
 subsequent offences not exceeding twenty pounds nor 
 less than five pounds. 
 
 25. All engagements made or to be made with Poly- 
 nesian laborers already in the colony or to arrive are 
 hereby expressly declared to be subject to the provisions 
 of the Act twenty-five Victoria number eleven. 
 
 26. A tax of twenty pounds per head for eveiy 
 Polynesian laborer introduced contrary to the provi- 
 sions of this Act shall be levied on all vessels in which 
 such laborers may be brought to this colony and in 
 default of payment of such tax such vessel shall be 
 absolutely forfeited to Her Majesty. 
 
 27. All expenses incurred by the Government in 
 affording hospital relief to sick Polynesian laborers or 
 by their detention in immigration depots shall be 
 
APPENDIX. 125 
 
 chargeable to the employers of such men and may be in certain 
 recovered from them by summary progress on the 
 information of Immigration Agent or other authorised 
 ojpficer. 
 
 28. Any person who shall without the consent of the not'trbe re- 
 laborer and the written permission of the Government ^e^coio*ny °' 
 remove or attempt to remove any such laborer out of ^^i^gfJj^OT^' 
 the Colony of Queensland except for the purpose of his consent. 
 return to his home shall be liable to a penalty of twenty 
 
 pounds for every such laborer so removed or attempted 
 to be removed and it shall be lawful for the Govern- 
 ment in any case to prevent the removal of any such 
 laborer except for the purpose of his return to his 
 home as aforesaid. 
 
 29. Any person supplying Polynesian laborers with ^^}^^^ g 
 spirits shall be punishable as at present in the case of ^°^ ^^ ^f 
 
 ^ ^ ^ ^ '^ supplied 
 
 aborip-inals under fifty-first section of " Licensed Pub- ^^^^ spiri- 
 
 . ., tuous 
 
 hcans Act twenty-seven Victoria number sixteen. liquors. 
 
 30. It shall not be lawful for any employer of ^oun^Jj^t 
 Polynesian laborers to charge such laborers with the *° ^® ^l' 
 
 '' ° ducted from 
 
 payment of any moneys on account of stores supplied waacs. 
 or to deduct any sum in respect thereof from any wages 
 due to them. 
 
 31. This Act shall be styled and may be cited as the 
 " Polynesian Laborers Act of 1868." 
 
126 APPENDIX. 
 
 FORM A. 
 
 Application for permission to introduce South Sea Island 
 agricultural or pastoral laborers. 
 
 I request to be allowed in accordance 
 
 with the Act now in force to procure from the South Sea 
 Islands immigrants for agricultural or pastoral pur- 
 
 poses to be employed in the district. A.B. 
 
 Applicant's signature. 
 The above requisition lodged with me this day of 
 
 186 . 
 
 G.H. 
 Immigration Agent Queensland. 
 
 FORM B. 
 Bond to he entered ir^to by Shipmasters. 
 
 Know all men by these presents that of of 
 
 and of are held and firmly bound unto our 
 
 Sovereign Lady Victoria by the grace of God of the United 
 Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Queen Defender of 
 the Faith in the sum of five hundred pounds of good and 
 lawful money of Great Britain to be paid to our said Lady 
 the Queen her heirs and successors to which payment well 
 and truly to be made we bind ourselves and every of us 
 jointly and severally for and in the whole our heirs 
 executors and administrators and every of them firmly by 
 these presents. 
 
 Sealed with our seals 
 
 Dated this day of one thousand eight 
 
 hundred and 
 
APPENDIX. 127 
 
 Whereas by the Polynesian Laborers Act of 1868 it 
 is amongst other things enacted that all masters of 
 vessels proceeding to the South Sea Islands in order 
 to obtain laborers therefrom shall enter into a 
 bond with two sufficient sureties for the prevention 
 of kidnapping and due observance of the require- 
 ments of the said recited Act Now the condition 
 of this obligation is such that if the above-bounden 
 J. K. master of ship ' about to proceed to the 
 
 South Sea Islands to procure laborers shall faith- 
 fully observe the requirements of the said recited 
 Act and shall satisfy the Government of Queensland 
 through its officer duly appointed for the purpose 
 that no kidnapping was allowed countenanced or 
 connived at then this obligation to be void other- 
 wise to remain in full force and virtue. 
 
 Signed sealed and delivered by the above- 
 bounden [l s.] and in the presence 
 of 
 
 I hereby certify that the above bond was duly signed 
 sealed and delivered by the said and 
 
 in my presence this day of 18 . 
 
 Immigration Agent. 
 
 FOEM C. 
 
 License to recruit laborers from the South Sea Islands. 
 
 This is to certify that [or his agent] is 
 
 hereby licensed to recruit immigrant laborers from 
 
 the South Sea Islands for Queensland in conformity with 
 the Act passed regarding "such recruiting. This license is 
 
128 APPENDIX. 
 
 to remain in force only until the number mentioned above 
 have been recruited. 
 
 Dated this day of 186 . 
 
 Colonial Secretary of Queensland. 
 Immigration Agent Queensland. 
 N.B. — This license is to be returned to the Immigration 
 Agent when the labourers have been received. 
 
 FORM D. 
 
 186 . 
 Memorandum of Agreement made this day between 
 of of the first part and 
 
 native of per ship 
 
 of the second part The conditions are that the said party 
 of the second part engages to serve to the said party of the 
 first part as a and otherwise to make 
 
 generally useful for the term of calendar months 
 
 and also to obey all or overseer's 
 
 or authorised agents lawful and reasonable commands dur- 
 ing that period in consideration of which services the said 
 party of the first part doth hereby agree to pay the said 
 party of the second part wages at the the rate of not less 
 than six pounds (€6) per annum to provide with 
 
 the understated rations daily to provide suitable clothing 
 and proper lodging accommodation and to defray the expense 
 of conveyance tcf the place at which to 
 
 be employed to pay wages in the coin of the realm at the 
 end of each year of the agreement and provide them with 
 a return passage to their native Island at the expiration of 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 129 
 
 three years 
 attendance. 
 
 No wages shall be deducted for medical 
 
 Daily Ration. 
 
 Beef or mutton (or 2 lbs. of fish) * 
 Bread or flour ..... 
 Molasses or sugar .... 
 Vegetables (or rice 4 oz. or maize meal 8 oz 
 Tobacco per week . . . ■ . 
 Salt per week . . * . . 
 Soap per week 
 
 lbs. ozi 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 14 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 Clothing. 
 
 Yearly. 
 
 Shirts (one of flannel or serge) . ... 2 
 
 Trowsers, pairs ....... 2 
 
 Hat 1 
 
 Blankets, pair ....... 1 
 
 In witness whereof they have mutually affixed their 
 signatures to this document. 
 Witness : 
 The above contract was explained in my presence to the 
 said immigrants and signed before me by them with their 
 names or marks and by or his authorised agent at 
 
 this day of 186 . 
 
 G.H. 
 Immigration Agent or Custom House Officer. 
 Registered at the office Brisbane Queensland this 
 
 day of 186 . 
 
 G.H. 
 Immigration Agent. 
 
130 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 <3 
 
 
 
 GQ 
 
 
 5 ft. 
 
 ja^jjBn^ 
 
 papua 
 joj njn:}8'a 
 
 jaiJBti^ 
 
 papua 
 
 papua 
 ja^JBn^Jo^jajnpa 
 
 papua 
 ja^Btif) JOJ ujni^^'jj 
 
 2 
 
 iaqxsn^ 
 
 papua 
 JOJ runcjaa 
 
 ja^jBii^ 
 
 papua 
 JOJ ujn^aH 
 
 jaajBn^ 
 
 papua 
 JOJ tun^an 
 
 JwjJBii^ 
 
 papua 
 JOJ ujtKja'jj 
 
 papua 
 ja^JBii^ JOJ pjn^a'a; 
 
 ja^j'Bn^ 
 
 papua 
 JOJ uan^aH 
 
 ja^BU^ 
 
 papua 
 JOJ ujn^aa 
 
 •8981 ''-^^K le PaP^8 
 ja:^'Bn5 Joj uju'^a'a 
 
 o- 
 
 •spu'Bisi 'Bag q^noQ O!^ 
 ujni^aj JOJ anp uaqM. a^^^a 
 
 'IBAUjy JO a^Bd 
 
 •raojjj 
 
 •aui'B^ 
 
 'jaquinij I 
 
 IziH. 
 
 PH. 
 
APPENDIX. 131 
 
 FORM F. 
 
 We [name and designation of employer and names and 
 numbers of immigrants engaged"] being respectively the 
 master and servants under a contract of service made before 
 the Government Emigration Agent at on the 
 
 day do hereby agree that the whole rights and 
 
 obligations of the said first party under the said contract 
 shall be and the same are hereby transferred as at the date 
 hereof to [name and designation] who hereby agrees to 
 accept the said transfer and the contract hereby transferred 
 with all its rights and obligations. 
 
 X.I. -, 
 
 A.B > Signatures or marks of all the parties. 
 I. J 
 The above transfer signed by all the parties thereto its 
 nature and effect having been first fully explained to the 
 immigrants above-named all in my presence. The said 
 transfer also approved and concurred in by me as on behalf 
 of the Government. 
 
 At this day of 186 
 
 G.H. 
 Immigi-ation Agent [or Justice of the Peace.] 
 Registered this day of 186 
 
 G.H. 
 Immigration Agent. 
 
132 APPENDIX. 
 
 FORM G. 
 
 Scale of Rations. 
 Daily. 
 
 lbs. oz. 
 
 Beef or mutton (or 2 lbs. of Fish) . . .10 
 
 Bread or flour 10 
 
 Molasses or sugar . . . . , .05 
 Vegetables (or rice 4 oz. or maize meal 8 oz.) . 2 
 Tobacco per week . • . . . .0 1^ 
 
 Salt per week 2 
 
 Soap per week , . . . . .04 
 
 Wages — Not less than six pounds (£6) per annum, in the 
 coin of the realm. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 133 
 
 ^ 
 
 i 
 
 o 
 
 
 8 
 
 2? ^S 
 
 
 e I 
 
 
 
 P^ 
 
 '^ 
 
 
 
 ce CO 
 
 
 
 • * ^ a» 
 
 I 
 
 1 
 
 O 
 
 I 
 
 
 1 
 
134 APPENDIX. 
 
 FORM I. 
 
 Whereas duty licensed by the Government of 
 
 Queensland to recruit South Sea Island laborers according 
 to license exhibited to us and natives of 
 
 appeared before us this day of 186 . 
 
 The said agent has hired the said natives to serve various 
 employers in Queensland as laborers for a term of three 
 years and undertakes that they shall be furnished with the 
 undermentioned rations and clothing that they shall be 
 paid at the rate of not less than six pounds (£6) per head 
 per annum in coin of the realm that they shall be provided 
 with proper lodging accommodation and that the cost of 
 their passage to and from Queensland and all other costs 
 and charges shall be defrayed by their employers and that 
 they shall be returned free of expense to this place at the 
 expiration of three years and that the Government of 
 Queensland shall exercise supervision over their employers 
 and otherwise protect them during their term of service 
 and during their passage to and from Queensland. 
 
 Now we certify that this document has been read and its 
 full meaning and effect explained to the said before-men- 
 tioned natives in the presence of the said agent and of our- 
 selves and that the said natives have consented to accom- 
 pany said agent to Queensland And we further certify 
 that to the best of our belief none of the said natives are 
 suffering from any disease or are maimed halt blind deaf 
 dumb idiotic or insane. 
 
 In witness whereof we have hereunto attached our 
 signatures this day of 186 at 
 
 Missionary [or European Resident or 
 Chief Interpreter]. 
 
 Agent. 
 
 Natives. 
 
APPENDIX. 135 
 
 Clothing per AnnUxM. 
 
 Hat 
 
 Shirts (one flannel or serge) . . . 
 Trowsers, pairs ..... 
 Blankets, pair . . . 
 
 Rations per Diem. 
 
 Bread ....... 
 
 Beef or mutton (or fish 2 lbs.) . 
 
 Molasses or sugar ..... 
 
 Vegetables (or rice 4 oz. or maize meal 8 oz.) 
 
 Tobacco (per week) 
 
 Salt 
 
 Soap (per week) ..... 
 
 Countersigned by Master of Vessel. 
 To be furnished to Immigration Agent or Customs* 
 ofiicer with report of arrival. 
 
 2 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 lbs. 
 
 1 
 
 oz. 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 H 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 FORM K. 
 
 Form of Bond to he given by Employer. 
 
 Know all men by these presents that we A. B. of C. D. 
 and E. F. of are held and firmly bound unto our 
 
 Sovereign Lady Victoria by the grace of God of the 
 United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Queen De- 
 fender of the Faith in the sum of ten pounds of good and 
 lawful money of Great Britain for each Polynesian 
 laborer employed by us to be paid to our said Lady the 
 Queen her heirs and successors to which payment well and 
 
136 APPENDIX. 
 
 truly to be made we bind ourselves and every of us 
 jointly and severally for and in the whole our heirs execu- 
 tors and administrators and every of them firmly by these 
 presents. 
 
 Sealed with our seals. 
 
 Dated this day of one thousand eight 
 
 hundred and 
 
 Whereas by the Polynesian Laborers Act of 1868 it 
 is amongst other things enacted that all persons 
 desirous of importing laborers from the South Sea 
 Islands shall enter into a bond with two sureties to 
 secure the return of the laborers to their native 
 Islands at the expiration of three years or thirty- 
 nine moons from date of arrival at the rate of ten 
 pounds sterling for each laborer introduced Now 
 the condition of this obligation is such that if the 
 above-bounden A. B. shall pay to the Immigration 
 Agent at the rate of fifteen shillings per quarter for 
 every Polynesian laborer in his employment for the 
 purpose of providing a return passage for each and 
 every South Sea Islander introduced by him under 
 his application and also all the charges or expenses 
 incurred by the government of Queensland in con- 
 nection with the same then this obligation to be 
 void otherwise to remain in full force and virtue. 
 Signed sealed and delivered by the above- 
 bounden A. B. C. D. and E. F. in the 
 presence of [l.s.] 
 
 I hereby certify that the above bond was duly signed 
 sealed and delivered by the said A. B. CD. and 
 E. F. in my presence this day of 
 
 18 
 
 Immigration Agent [or Justice of the Peace]. 
 
APPENDIX. 137 
 
 FORM L. 
 
 I hereby certify that the master of the ariived 
 
 from on the day of 186 has pro- 
 
 duced to me the necessary certificates (Form I) that the 
 whole of the laborers on board have voluntarily engaged 
 themselves &c. &c, 
 
 2. I further certify that the license (Form C) has been 
 produced in all cases. 
 
 3. I also certify that by careful examination of the 
 laborers I have ascertained that they appear to have xi 
 proper understanding of the full meaning and effect of the 
 agreements and that they voluntarily entered into the same 
 and that the agreements have been signed in the form pre- 
 scribed (Form D.) 
 
 Dated at this day oi 18G 
 
 Immigration Agent \_or Officer of Customs.] 
 
 LOKDOir: PBINTED BY 
 
 8POTTISWOODK AKD CO., NBW-STREKT SQCABB 
 
 AWD PARLIAMENT STEEK'" 
 
Works Published by Henry 8. King dt Co. 
 
 BOKHABA: its History and 
 
 Conquest. By Professor Arminius 
 Vambery, of the University of Pesth, 
 Author of ' Travels in Central Asia ' 
 &,c. [Shortly. 
 
 OVEB VOLCAIsrOES ; or. 
 
 Through France and Spain in 1871. 
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 BOUND THE T/VOBLD IN 
 
 1870. An Account of a Brief Tour 
 
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 Leview. 
 
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 A GOOD MATCH. By Amelia 
 Pekrier, Author of ' Mea Culpa.' 
 [In the press. 
 
 Henry S. King & Co., 65 Cornhill. 
 
London, February, 1872. 
 
 Catalogue of Books, 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 Henry S. King & Co., 
 
 65, CORNHILL. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Forthcoming Works i 
 
 Recently Published Works .4 
 
 Sermons by the Rev. S. A. Brooke 10 
 
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 Recently Published Novels 14 
 
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6s, CORNHILL, 
 
 February, 1872. 
 
 LIST OF BOOKS 
 
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 Henry S. King & Co 
 
 Forthcoming Works. 
 
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 New Editions of his LIFE and Works in preparation. 
 
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 By Professor Arminius Vambery, of the University of Pesth. 
 Author of "Travels in Central Asia," etc. 
 
 n. 
 
 MEMOIRS OF THE COUNTESS LEONORA CHRISTINA 
 
 OF SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN. 
 
 (By marriage, COUNTESS Ulfeldt.) 
 
 Written during her imprisonment in the Blue Tower of the 
 
 Royal Palace at Copenhagen, 1663- 1685. 
 
 Translated from the German by F. E. Bunnett. 
 
 Translator of Grimm^s ''''Life of Michael Angelo^^ etc. 
 
 65, Cornhill, London, 
 
2 Books Published by Hetiry S. King <5n (7(7., 
 
 III. 
 
 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 By Walter Bagehot. A New Edition, revised and corrected, 
 
 with an Introductory Dissertation on recent changes and events. 
 
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 IV. 
 
 THE OPERATIONS OF THE GERMAN ARMIES IN 
 FRANCE, 
 FROM SEDAN TO THE END OP THE WAR OF 1870-1. 
 
 From the Journals of the Head Quarter Staff. 
 
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 Translated from the German by E. M. Jones, Captain 2oth 
 
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 IN QUEST OF COOLIES. 
 
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 JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 GEORGE LEWES. 
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 JEAN JAROUSSEAU, THE PASTOfe OF THE DESERT. 
 
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 THE SECRET OF LONG LIFE. 
 
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 DISCIPLINE AND DRILL. 
 
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 late 105th Light Infantry, and Adjutant of the Edinburgh 
 
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 65, Cornhillj London, 
 
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 in his own Arm of the Service, 
 
 Whether Cavalry, Artillery, Engineers, Infantry, or Marines, 
 
 Specifying their particular Corps, 
 
 And distinguishing those holding Higher Brevet-rank. 
 
 By Captain F. B. P. White, ist W. I. Regiment. 
 
 8vo, sewed, 2s. 6d. 
 
 IX. 
 
 THE NILE WITHOUT A DRAGOMAN. 
 
 (Second Edition.) 
 
 By Frederic Eden. 
 
 In one vol., crown 8vo, cloth, ys. 6d. 
 
 " Should any of our readers care to imitate Mr. Eden's example, and 
 wish to see things with their own eyes, and shift for themselves, next winter 
 in Upper Egypt, they will find this book a very agreeable guide." — Times. 
 
 " Gives, within moderate compass, a suggestive description of the 
 charms, curiosities, dangers, and discomforts of the Nile voyage." — 
 Saturday Review. 
 
 "The subject ... is treated from an original point of view, 
 and we can safely recommend the little volume to public favour." — 
 Examiner. 
 
 " We have in these pages the most minute description of life as it 
 appeared on the banks of the Nile ; all that could be seen or was worth 
 seeing in nature or in art is here pleasantly and graphically set down. 
 . . . It is a book to read during an autumn holiday." — Spectator. 
 
 "Written in bright and pleasant style, and full of practical common 
 sense. "^iV<7/^j and Queries. 
 
 "Very pleasantly written. . . . An agreeable compagnon de 
 voyage.''^ — London Society. ♦ 
 
 "This bright and clever little book." — British Quarterly. 
 
 "Useful for a traveller . . . extremely readable for a person 
 who stays at home." — Fortnightly Review. 
 
 " Stored with useful information. ... A very entertaining 
 account of a very interesting trip." — Illustrated London News. 
 
 " Mr. Eden is a first-rate narrator. . . . His descriptive powers 
 are of a very high order. " — Literary Churchman. 
 
 65, Cornhill, London. 
 
Books Published by He fir y S. King cr* Co.^ 7 
 
 X. 
 
 ASPROMONTE, AND OTHER POEMS. 
 
 Second Edition, cloth, \s. 6d. 
 
 ' ' The volume is anonymous ; but there is no reason for the author to be 
 ashamed of it. The ' Poems of Italy' are evidently inspired by genuine 
 enthusiasm in the cause espoused ; and one of them, ' The Execution of 
 Felice Orsini,' has much poetic merit, the event celebrated being told 
 with dramatic force." — AthencBum. 
 
 " The verse is fluent and free.*' — Spectator. 
 
 *' We mention the book for its uncommon lyrical power and deep 
 poetic feeling." — Literary Churchman. 
 
 ** The poems are nearly all worthy of preservation." — Nonconformist. 
 
 XI. 
 
 THE INN OF STRANGE MEETINGS, 
 AND OTHER POEMS. By Mortimer Collins. . 
 Crown 8vo, ^s. 
 
 *'Mr. Collins has an undercurrent of chivalry and romance beneath 
 the trifling vein of good humoured banter which is the special cha- 
 racteristic of his verse. . . . The ' Inn of Strange Meetings ' is a 
 sprightly piece," — Athenceum. 
 
 " Sometimes the reader will be pleasantly reminded of Mr. Frederick 
 Locker, sometimes of Mr. Browning ; but if many of the tunes are 
 caught from other musicians, Mr. Collins plays them after his own 
 fashion, and with considerable execution." — Fall Mall Gazette. 
 
 "Altogether the volume sustains his reputation." — John Bull. 
 
 ** Mr. Mortimer Collins's new volume will please thousands of old 
 friends, and win him hundreds of new. . . . The poem which 
 gives its name to the book is vigorous and graceful withal ; has many 
 pretty conceits, and possesses a healthy tone." — Standard. 
 
 ' ' Abounding in quiet humour, in bright fancy, in sweetness and 
 melody of expression, and, at times, in the tenderest touches of pathos." 
 — Graphic. 
 
 Xll. 
 
 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 By a New Writer. 
 Fcap. 8vo, cloth, ^s. 
 "The volume is marked both by lyrical feeling and lyrical art. . . it 
 is poetic both in substance and form." — Daily News. 
 
 xin. 
 THE DREAM AND THE DEED, AND OTHER POEMS. 
 
 By Patrick Scott, 
 
 Author of " Footpaths Between Two Worlds," etc. 
 
 Fcap. 8vo, cloth, 5^-. 
 
 65, Cornhill^ London. 
 
8 Books Published by Henry S. King 6^ Co., 
 
 XIV. 
 
 JOURNALS 
 KEPT IN PRANCE AND ITALY, PROM 1848 TO 1852. 
 
 With a Sketch of the Revolution of 1848. 
 
 By the late Nassau William Senior. 
 
 Edited by his daughter, M. C. M. Simpson. 
 
 In two vols., post 8vo, i&^. 
 
 *' The year which follows the fall of the French Empire and the final 
 consolidation of the Italian kingdom is a most appropriate time for the 
 publication of these * Journals. ' . . . The present volume gives us 
 conversations with some of the most prominent men in the political 
 history of France and Italy ... as well as with others whose 
 names are not so familiar or are hidden under initials. Mr. Senior had 
 the art of inspiring all men with frankness, and of persuading them to 
 put themselves unreservedly in his hands without fear of private cir- 
 culation." — AthencEum. 
 
 ' • The book has a genuine historical value. ... A suggestive 
 commentary on the present state of affairs in France." — Saturday Review. 
 
 *' No better, more honest, and more readable view of the state of 
 political society during the existence of the second Republic could well 
 be looked for." — Examiner. 
 
 ** Will be read with interest by all Englishmen, and might be studied 
 with advantage by all Frenchmen." — Notes and Queries. 
 . "Of the value of these volumes as an additional chapter in the history 
 of France at the period when the Republic passed into the Empire, it is 
 impossible to speak too highly." — Public Opinion. 
 
 ** It is impossible to imagine two volumes more instructive to read, 
 or more replete with matter for reflection, information, and com- 
 parison." — Civil Service Gazette. 
 
 *'To the student of this period the glimpse into the private opinions 
 of the men whom Mr. Senior meets will be both entertaining and 
 instructive." — Morning Post. 
 
 •' The Journals .... are interesting, and they appear at a 
 peculiarly opportune time." — Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 XV. 
 
 THE DIVINE KINGDOM 
 ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN. 
 
 In demy 8vo, bound in cloth. Price JOi-. dd. 
 " Our Commonwealth is in Heaven." 
 "No one can rise from the study of this book without riper and 
 larger ideas of the designs and purposes of the Divine mind in the 
 constitution of His Church. . . . There will be found in this 
 volume a manliness of tone, a grasp of thought, and an avowed honesty 
 of statement." — English Churchman. 
 
 65, Cornhill, London. 
 
Books Published by Henry S. King ^ Co., g 
 
 XVI. 
 
 SCRIPTURE LANDS 
 
 IN CONNECTION WITH THEIR HISTORY. 
 
 By G. S. Drew, M.A., 
 
 Rector of Avington, Winchester, Author of " Reasons of Faith," 
 
 "Scripture Studies," etc. 
 
 Second Edition. 
 
 Bevelled boards, 8vo, price los. 6d. 
 
 ** Mr. Drew has invented a new method of illustrating Scripture 
 history, — from observation of the countries. Instead of narrating his 
 travels, and referring from time to time to the facts of sacred history 
 belonging to the different places, he writes an outline history of the 
 Hebrew nation from Abraham downwards, with special reference to the 
 various points in which geography illustrates the history." — Saturday 
 Review* 
 
 "A reverent faith pervades the whole, and nothing sceptical or 
 calculated to raise painful doubts will be found in these pages ; and this 
 is the more important because the writer is so evidently thoughtful, and 
 in every way competent to his work." — Clerical yournal. 
 
 *'The volume contains a large mass of information very carefully 
 collected, and is besides not a mere compendium of other men's observa- 
 tions and ideas, but presents the results of considerable personal re- 
 search and extensive travel." — New Quarterly Review. 
 
 "No work on the subject can be better read with the Bible in the 
 hand, for everywhere the attempt is to illustrate and explain it. There 
 is also a poetic fancy regulating the whole." — Critic. 
 
 * ' A volume written with great skill and ability, exhibiting a profound 
 study of the Scriptures, and illustrating their historical portions by an 
 amount of learning and a shrewdness of personal observation seldom 
 found combined in the writings of one person." — London Review. 
 
 " There is to be met with in it a great deal of useful and interesting 
 geographical information." — Westminster Review. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 THE FOUR-FOLD BOND. 
 
 By Robert Carr. 
 i2mo, IS. dd. 
 
 65, Cornhill, London. 
 
lo Books Published by Henry S. King 6- Co., 
 
 Sermons by the Rev. Stopford A. Brooke, M.A. 
 
 Honorary Chaplain to Her Majesty the Queen. 
 
 I. 
 
 CHRIST IN MODERN LIFE. 
 
 Sermons preached in 
 St. James's Chapel, York Street, London. 
 
 Crown 8vo. ^s. 6d. [Jusi out. 
 
 ir. 
 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 
 
 (Second Edition.) Six Sermons suggested by the Vpysey 
 
 Judgment. 
 
 In One Volume. Crown 8vo, cloth, 3^-. 6d. 
 
 '* Every one should read them. No one can be insensible to the 
 charm of his style, or the clear logical manner in which he treats his 
 subject." — Churchman's Monthly. 
 
 "We have to thank Mr. Brooke for a very clear and courageous 
 exposition of theological views, with which we are for the most part in 
 full sympathy." — Spectator. 
 
 "Interesting and readable, and characterized by great clearness of 
 thought, frankness of statement, and moderation of tone." — Church 
 Opinion. 
 
 * ' A very fair statement of the views in respect to freedom of thought 
 held by the liberal party in the Church of England." — Blackwood' s 
 Magazine. 
 
 III. 
 
 SERMONS PREACHED IN ST. JAMES'S CHAPEL, 
 YORK STREET, LONDON. 
 
 Crown 8vo. ds. Fifth Edition. 
 
 '* No one who reads these sermons will wonder that Mr. Brooke is a 
 great power in London, that his chapel is thronged, and his followers 
 large and enthusiastic. They are fiery, energetic, impetuous- sermons, 
 rich with the treasures of a cultivated imagination." — Guardian. 
 
 " Mr. Brooke's sermons are shrewd and clever, and always readable. 
 He is better off than many preachers, for he has something to say, and 
 says it." — Churchman' s Magazine. 
 
 " A fine specimen of the best preaching of the Episcopal pulpit." — 
 British Quarterly. 
 
 65, Cornhillj London. 
 
Books Published by Henry S. King ^^ Co., ii 
 
 Books on Indian jSubjects. 
 
 THE EUROPEAN IN INDIA. 
 
 A Hand-book of practical information for those proceeding to, 
 
 or residing in, the East Indies, relating to Outfits, 
 
 Routes, Time for Departure, Indian Climate, &c. 
 
 By Edmund C. P. Hull. 
 
 WITH A MEDICAL GUIDE FOR ANGLO-INDIANS. 
 
 Being a compendium of Advice to Europeans in India, relating 
 
 to the Preservation and Regulation of Health. 
 
 By R. S. Mair, M.D., F.R.C.S.E., late Deputy Coroner of 
 
 Madras. 
 
 In one vol., post 8vo, ds. 
 
 "The way in which the whole subject-matter of the volume is 
 treated will ensure for it many readers." — Public Opinion. 
 
 ** Full of all sorts of useful information to the English settler or tra- 
 veller in India." — Standard. 
 
 II. 
 
 EASTERN EXPERIENCES. 
 
 By L. BoWRiNG, C.S.I., 
 Lord Canning's Private Secretary, and for many years the 
 
 Chief Commissioner of Mysore and Coorg. 
 In one vol., demy 8vo, 16^-. Illustrated with Maps and Diagrams. 
 
 *' An admirable and exhaustive geographical, political, and industrial 
 survey. " — AthencEum. 
 
 "The usefulness of this compact and methodical summary of the 
 most authentic information relating to countries whose welfare is in- 
 timately connected with our own, should obtain for Mr. Lewin Bowring's 
 work a good place among treatises of its kind. " — Daily News. 
 
 "Interesting even to the general reader, but more especially so to 
 those who may have a special concern in that portion of our Indian 
 Empire."— Pc?j/. 
 
 " An elaborately got up and carefully compiled work." — Hbftte News. 
 '• A large, but certainly most enjoyable volume." — Public Opinion. 
 
 65, Cornhill^ London. 
 
12 Books Published by Henry S. King 6^ Co., 
 
 BOOKS ON INDIAN SUBJECTS- (c^//««<r^). 
 
 III. 
 
 WESTERN INDIA BEFORE AND DURING THE 
 MUTINIES. 
 
 Pictures drawn from Life. 
 
 By Major- General Sir George Le Grand Jacob, K.C.S.I., C.B. 
 
 In one vol., crown 8vo, ^s, 6d. 
 
 "The most important contribution to the history of Western India 
 during the Mutinies, which has yet, in a popular form, been made 
 public." — AthencBum. 
 
 " His suggestions being based upon a lengthy experience, extending 
 to nearly half a century, command respectful attention." — Public 
 Opinion. 
 
 ** The legacy of a wise veteran, intent on the benefit of his country- 
 men rather than on the acquisition of fame." — London and China 
 Express. 
 
 •'Few men more competent than himself to speak authoritatively 
 concerning Indian affairs." — Standard. 
 
 IV. 
 
 EXCHANGE TABLES OP STERLING AND INDIAN 
 RUPEE CURRENCY, 
 
 Upon a new and extended system, embracing values from one 
 farthing to one hundred thousand pounds, and at rates progress- 
 ing, in sixteenths of a penny, from \s. ()d. to 2s. 3^. per rupee. 
 
 By Donald Fraser, 
 
 Accountant to the British Indian Steam Navigation Co., Limited. 
 
 Royal 8vo, \os. 6d. 
 
 This work, which is compiled by a gentleman thoroughly 
 acquainted with the needs of persons trading with the East, 
 will be found to be the most complete and reliable set of 
 Exchange Tables for Indian currency which has yet been 
 published. 
 
 65, Cornhillj London, 
 
Books Published by Henry S. King 6^ Co. 13 
 
 BOOKS ON INDIAN SUBJECTS— (<r^«//««^^). 
 
 V. 
 
 A CATALOGUE OP MAPS OP THE BRITISH POSSESSIONS 
 IN INDIA AND OTHER PARTS OF ASIA. 
 
 Published by Order of Her Majesty's Secretary of State for 
 
 India in Council. 
 
 Royal 8vo, sewed, is. 
 
 1^* Messrs. Henry S. King <Sr» Co. are the authorised agents 
 by the Government for the sale of the whole of the Maps 
 enumerated in this Catalogue, 
 
 VT. 
 A MEMOIR OP THE INDIAN SURVEYS. 
 
 By Clement R. Markham. 
 
 Printed by order of Her Majesty's Secretary of State for 
 
 India in Council. 
 
 Imperial 8vo, los. 
 
 VII. 
 
 THE PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT OP INDIA- 
 WHY SO COSTLY? 
 
 By Captain C. S. Thomason, 
 8vo, sewed, \s. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 THE BENGAL aUARTERLY ARMY LIST. 
 
 Sewed, \^s. 
 
 IX. 
 
 THE BOMBAY QUARTERLY ARMY LIST. 
 
 Sewed, 93-. 
 
 X. 
 
 THE MADRAS QUARTERLY ARMY LIST. 
 
 Sewed, lis. 
 
 65, Cornhill, London. 
 
14 Books Published by Henry S. King &> Co., 
 
 Recently Published Novels. 
 I. 
 
 PERPLEXITY. 
 
 By Sydney Mostyn, a New Writer. 
 
 Three vols., crown 8vo. \Just out 
 
 II. 
 LINKED AT LAST. 
 
 By F. E. BUNNETT. 
 One vol., crown 8vo. 
 
 *' Miss Bunnett's story derives most of .its interest from the picture of 
 peasant life in Germany which it contains. There is much that is true 
 and well described in the simple routine of the Massingers' homestead 
 at the foot of the Odenwald." — AthencBum. 
 
 ** 'Linked at Last' contains so much of pretty description, natural 
 incident, and delicate portraiture, that the reader who once takes it up 
 will not be inclined to relinquish it without concluding the volume. " — 
 Morning Post. 
 
 III. 
 
 HALF A DOZEN DAUGHTERS. 
 
 By J. Masterman. 
 Two vols., crown 8vo. Second Edition. 
 
 '* A thoroughly wholesome and fairly interesting tale. So natural 
 are the characters, that the book possesses that air of probability which 
 is an important element in a good novel, and calls out sympathies 
 which a more pretentious, more romantic, and consequently more im- 
 probable tale, would fail to awaken. . . . We can honestly recom- 
 mend our readers to order * Half a Dozen Daughters ' from the 
 Circulating Library, and can also say of it, that which can but rarely be 
 said of the novels of the day, that it is a work M^hich the most careful 
 mother may confidently place in the hands of her own daughters." — 
 Athenczum. 
 
 *' One of the brightest and pleasantest pictures of domestic life 
 that we have seen for some time." — Graphic. 
 
 *' J. Masterman wields a pen which, for purity and delicacy of touch, 
 is not unworthy a disciple of Jane Austen." — Daily News. 
 
 ' * One of those pretty, healthy, natural books which remind one of a 
 breezy day in the country ... a charming little story, besides 
 having the recommendation of being short and compactly put together." 
 Saturday Review. 
 
 65, Cornhill, London. 
 
Books Published by Henry S. King 6^ Co., 15 
 
 RECENTLY PUBLISHED NOVELS— (<:<7«^/««^<^). 
 
 IV. 
 
 CRUEL AS THE GRAVE. 
 
 By the Countess von Bothmer. 
 Three vols., crown 8vo. 
 
 " Jealousy is cruel as the Grave.'''' 
 
 "The Wise Man's motto is prefixed to an interesting, though some- 
 what tragic story, by the Countess von Bothmer. . . . Her German 
 prince, with his chivahous affection, his disinterested patriotism, and his 
 soldierHke sense of duty, is no unwortiiy type of a national character 
 which has lately given the world many instances of old-fashioned 
 heroism . ' ' — A thenceum. 
 
 "This graceful story— tender and gay, with the sweetest tenderness 
 and the brightest gaiety, — whether pathetic or satirical, is always natural 
 and never dull. . . . The perusal of ' Cruel as the Grave ' will 
 amply repay its readers." — Morning Post. 
 
 V. 
 
 HER TITLE OF HONOUR. 
 
 By Holme Lee. One vol., crown 8vo. (Second Edition.) 
 
 *' It is unnecessary to recommend tales of Holme Lee's, for they are 
 well known, and all more or less liked. But this book far exceeds 
 even our favourites. Sylvan HoWs Daughter, Kathie Brande, and 
 Thorney Hall, because with the interest of a pathetic story is united 
 the value of a definite and high purpose."— Spectator. 
 
 * ' The graceful writer and accomplished lady who takes the name ot 
 Holme Lee as her nom de plume has never written a more fascinating 
 story than the one under the above heading. " — Public Opinion. 
 
 " A tenderly pathetic story, well told in good plain English. It is a 
 story of service and heroic sacrifice spent in the best and holiest cause. " 
 — London Quarterly. 
 
 " We need scarcely say of a book of Holme Lee's writing, that it is 
 carefully finished and redolent of a refined and beautiful soul. We 
 have no more accomplished or conscientious literary artist." — British 
 Quarterly. 
 
 " The novelist writes, we need scarcely say, with considerable literary 
 skill, and many bright bits of colour and passages of word description 
 mark the hand of the artist." — Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 " The tale is a charming one, and the characters are thoroughly well 
 drawn." — Churchman's Monthly. 
 
 " A most exquisitely written story." — Literary Churchman. 
 
 *' A simple and unambitious story of every-day home life among 
 English people, just what Holme Lee knows how to write, and she has 
 done it in her very best manner." — Examiner. 
 
 65, Cornhill^ London, 
 
1 6 Books Published by Henry S. King &> Co. I 
 
 Forthcoming Novels, 
 I. 
 
 THOMASINA. 
 
 By the author of " Dorothy," " De Cressy," etc. 
 
 Two vols., crown 8vo. [Immediately. 
 
 II. 
 A GOOD MATCH. 
 
 By Amelia Perkier. Author of " Mea Culpa." 
 
 \Shorily. 
 III. 
 SIR EDWARD'S WIFE. 
 By Hamilton Marshall, Author of " For Very Life." 
 One vol., crown 8vo. [Shortly. 
 
 IV. 
 HESTER MORLEY'S PROMISE. 
 
 By Hesba Stretton, Author of " Little Meg," " Alone in 
 London," " David Lloyd's Will." 
 
 V. 
 
 ISRAEL MORT ; OVERMAN. THE STORY OP THE 
 
 MINE. 
 
 By John Saunders, Author of '' Hirell," "Abel Drake's Wife," 
 
 etc. 
 Three vols., crown 8vo. 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE PRINCESS CLARICE. A STORY OF 1871. 
 
 By Mortimer Collins. 
 Three vols., crown 8vo. 
 
 vn. 
 
 MANaUEE. 
 
 By Alice Fisher, Author of " Too Bright to Last." 
 Three vols., crown 8vo. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 HONOR BLAKE; 
 THE STORY OF A PLAIN WOMAN. 
 
 By Mrs. Keatinge, Author of " Enghsh Homes in India." 
 Two vols., crown Bvo. [Nearly ready. 
 
 65, Cornhill, London, 
 
Monthly^ Price One Shilling. 
 
 THE MINING MAGAZINE 
 
 AND 
 
 RE VIE\V; 
 
 A RECORD OF MINING, SMELTING, QUARRYING, 
 AND ENGINEERING. 
 
 Edited by Nelson Boyd, F.G.S., etc. 
 
A HANDSOME GIFT BOOK. 
 
 PLEASURE, 
 
 A HOLIDAY BOOK 
 
 OF 
 
 pr^O^E AND Y^R^E. 
 
 Illustrated. Elegantly Bound in Ornamental Cloth Cover, 
 
 with Gilt Edges and Illuminated Frojttispiece, 2s. 6d. 
 
 Illuminated Cover, sewed, \s. 
 
 WRITTEN BY 
 
 Miss Amelia B. Edwards. 
 
 Miss A. C. Hayward. 
 
 The Author of "Too Bright 
 
 TO Last." 
 Holme Lee. 
 Algernon C. Swinburne. 
 
 The Hon. Mrs. Norton. 
 
 Tom Hood. 
 
 Thomas Archer. 
 
 Godfrey Turner. 
 
 Hain Friswell. 
 
 The Countess Von Bothmer. 
 
 Rev. Chas. Kingsley. 
 
 " From a literary point of view Mr. Swinburne's new poem is the most 
 notable of its contents." — Athenceum. 
 
 " By far the best on our list." — Public Opinion. 
 
 " An extraordinary shilling's worth. 'Tristram and Iseult' is alone 
 worth far more than the price of the publication, which is a very good 
 annual, and very creditable both to the editor and publisher." — Standard. 
 
 " One of the best of its kind." — Manchester Examiner. 
 
 " 'Pleasure' has within its pages some of the best poetry that we 
 remember to have seen of late in periodical literature." — Bradford 
 Observer. 
 
 "A handsomely got up holiday book." — Warrington Guardian. 
 
 "Contains some exceedingly well written pieces." — Brighton Ex- 
 aminer. 
 
 " One of the best Christmas books we have seen." — Kelso Mail. 
 
 " A well got up collection of stories and poems by popular writers." 
 —Rock. 
 
 ' ' Its contents do not belie the promise of its title. " — Cardiff Times. 
 
 " The tales are very well written." — Hawick Advertiser. 
 
 ' ' Will take rank among the best of this season's * holiday books. ' " 
 — Dundee Advertiser. 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
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