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

MALEKULA
“ Depopulation makes intensive work here impossible, and
more than depopulation, the break-up of groups, owing to recruiting
for other islands and concentration on plantations and mission
areas. Whole districts have vanished, while in the ones remaining
the population consists largely of men back temporarily between
periods of work on the big plantations. The proportion of returned
Queenslanders is high. The result is that the pattern and flow of
native life is broken ; the body politic is a desiccated corpse."