THE ISLAND SLAVE TRADE.

Auckland Star, Volume II, Issue 596, 7 December 1871, Page 2

THE ISLAND SLAVE TRADE.

The Thames Advertiser of yesterday publishes the following extract from a letter received by Mr. Lloyd, of Grahamstown, from Fiji: — " I send you some newspapers containing the accounts of the late most horrible murders. These murders are horrible, but most unfortunately often the innocent suffer ; and I caa assure you that, although it scarce dare be whispered here, everyone of these crimes have been provoked by the tyranny and injustice of the white man. I could write whole pages of acts thit have been committed upon really innocent stolen men—which, had these acts been attempted to be committed on a white man, and the whits mau in defence had killed his assuiler, it would be held as a justifiable action. Slavery exists here in its very worst form ; and the sooner it is amended the better for the whites themselves. It used to be thought that if a row took place between the whites aad these aborigines, that the foreign laborers would assist the whites, but now they are more likely to turn upon the whites and assist the Fijiana. The murder of the fire whites and the Motorika man on board the j ilev&wAS provoked by the compelled separation ' of the male members of families, and the subsei quent half-starving on board of the Meva. | Wh.it is two biscuits from four o'clock one I day till five next evening. The! poor niggers ' saw the white men with plenty of food, and they starving; that accounts for one murder. The other was : These two men who are eaid |to have murdered the men on board the j Cambria, were told not to leave the hotel of the charterer, but, instead of obeying orders, they fell in with some countrymen and weuL with them, where they were staying at another hotel from 3ix o'clock at night till they were taken away at ten o'clock the secoud day after they were taken back, and received a brutal flogging and were taken on board the Cambria i and tied up in a most inhuman nianuer. Was it surprising that these two men or some of their fellow islanders wreaked their ven- [ geance on the innocent boys who were placed |to guard ihem. There has not yet been a ! murder committed by any foreigners on any i planters j but I am very much afraid that if 1 these Solomon Islanders are not caugbt in the I Meva it will induce others to seize vessel to try to escape home. These matters hate become much worse within the last six or nine months, and it is the Solomon Islanders whd are the worst."