THE SOLOMONS

Press, Volume XLIX, Issue 14830, 22 November 1913, Page 11

THE SOLOMONS

INSURRECTION THREATENED

MISSION STATION FORTIFIED

(By Cable.—Press Association—Copyright.) BRISBANE, November 21. Planters from tho Solomon Islands report unrest amongst tho natives of the group.

. There has been a good deal of gunrunning, and an insurrection is threatened.

Recently a number of rifles and three thousand rounds of ammunition wero seized aboard a vessel at Tulgai, which was previously a Japanese craft. She was detained on suspicion of gunrunning, and the captain was lined £300. Tho fine was not forthcoming, and the Government is now negotiating for tho sale of the vessel.

The natives are offering big prices for guns and ammunition.

The headquarters of the Melanesian Mission at Coiseul havo been fortified against a threatened attack by the natives.

Cannibalism is still prevalent in some of the islands, and two months ago a couple of boys were killed aud eaten at San Cristoval.

Two of the murderers of a- settler named Keller were captured and sentenced to death. According to their story, tho chief of the district offered shell money to the value of £1 for the head of a white man.

There has been more progress, industrially, at all events, in tno Solomon Islands within tho last decade tliau in any other group in the Pacific (says tho "vSydney Morning Herald"). It i s only the other day when they were the cannibal isles par excellence, with, no more whites than ono could count on both hands —two or three missionaries, und a few adventurous traders and labour recruiters. Less than ten years ago thero were not tnoro than 500 acres of laud under cultivation by whites, whereas row about 30,000 acres are growing cocoanuts, rubber, and other products, while the white population has increased to over 400.

The onco popular amusement of headhunting has almost entirely ceased, but according to the Rev. J. F. Ooldie, who has been chairman of the- Solomon Islands Methodist district since its initiation in 1902, and was in Sydney in August, a state of affairs exists that is not creditable to British rule, the manner in which tho Uiw is administered being described as a travesty of justice. Some of the district magistrates, lie says, are absolutely without experience of public life. They know nothing of native life and charucter, and will not take tho trouble to learn. In fact, tho business of the missions has lately boen not so much to protect the interests of tho natives from tho traders —who were a very decent body of men on the whole—as from domineering Government officials. The present system of administration is neither good for tho white residents nor for the natives.

Mr Goldie gave some interesting information about tho Methodist mission work in the Solomons. Their mission was started at the request of (Solomon Islanders who had been influenced whilo working in the Fiji group. A great many Solomon Islanders had worked in Queensland, and some wero the better for thoir experience, while others had acquired only the vices of tho white man. The mission started eleven years ago in Now Georgia, in the western portion of the group, where it broke absolutely new ground. They had extended their work to all the central T>art of the Solomons, and also to Ontoiig, Java, and to Choiseul Island. They had reduced the language of the people of New Georgia to writing, and had translated into it portions of the Bible and of tho Methodist hymn-book. Mr Goldio considered that the Solomons were destined to be the most important commercial centre in the pacific. In the first place, they were outside the hurricane belt. Again, the area was nearly twice as large as Fiji, and most of the land, if not all of it, was capable of cultivation.