[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]

I4 WITH NATIVES IN THE WESTERN PACIFIC

escaped from the Noumea penitentiary or otherwise
the scum of the white race. Such individuals would
settle near a good anchorage close to some large vil-
lage, build a straw hut, and barter coprah for European
goods and liquor. They made a very fair profit, but
were constantly quarrelling with the natives, whom
they enraged by all sorts of brutalities. The frequent
murders of such traders were excusable, to say the
least, and many later ones were acts of justifiable
revenge. The traders were kept in contact with
civilization through small sailing-vessels, which
brought them new goods and bought their coprah.
This easy money-making attracted more whites, so
that along the coasts of the more peaceable islands
numerous Europeans settled, and at present there are
so many of these stations that the coprah-trade is no
longer very profitable.

Naturally, many of these settlers started planta—
tions, and thus grew up the plantation centres of
Mele, Port Havannah, Port Sandwich, Epi and the
Segond Channel. Many plantations were created by
the “Société Frangaise des Nouvelles Hebrides,”
but owing to bad management these have never yet
brought any returns.

Thus, to the alcohol peril was added another
danger to the natives,-—work on the plantations.
They were kidnapped, overworked, ill-fed; it was
slavery in its worst shape, and the treatment of the
hands is best illustrated by the mortality which, in
some places, reached 44 per cent. per annum. In
those days natives were plentiful and labour easy to