END TO SAVAGEDOM

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1595, 12 November 1912, Page 5

END TO SAVAGEDOM

mmMtiw- work '' IN SOLOMONS.! Fr Telegrapi— '. ■ •; Sydney, November 11,. A missionary torn. Solomon-islands says that the -ErogTesSjPf'-mission work, is gradr iially eradicatnigsavage, customs. Tlio strangulation of women when the lvusbaiid. 'died,' 'head-hunting-, and, canxiibalisrn are almost things of the past. ''I%E CINDERELLA ,O.F THE SOUTE ' ..SEAS, , ■ Until tw, .years ago -there was practically no planting, at nil in' the Solomons. Industry' was: confined to the collection I . of tho produce tho natives chose, to gather and prepare, and the whito population, - ■apart from the. two or thrM, Government officials aid' the; missionaries, whose number. Was;-not much larger, was almost wholly a floating one..- As th« islandershad a reputatioii for.holding the life of a whito mnn very cheaply, residence ashore was- not sought -after. The first move towards developing the group, according to a Writer in the Sydney "'telegraph,-' was n.iado by a oomp.any. which had Lord Stamnore, at one time (Jo.vernor of i'iji,' at its Paoifio Islands. Company, It', secured concessions of, tibout a quarter of a million acros. Those interests iyere bought piit aboii.t ten ago by the Levers, who fbnped a subsidi■j»fy odnipan.r,cailcd'LovorS' Pacin.p Han"tations, Limited,, and commenced developments on a fairly extensive scalo. Messrs. Burns, Philps., and, Co, formed the first Australian company connected with tho wrpup, howev©r—thp Solomon islands Boteldpment Compariy—Uip. success of which-. has just been most practically demom. ■strafed. It was about this timo that, the Commonwealth began to. undertake, the clevelopjucnt of Papua,, and the geii-'. eral interest aroused in plantation j^t'o-. jeots led to sOmo' smaller-' cqiuiiani.e.s. being ■ formed, which; had the Solomons for theiriobjcctivOi These had headci.u'ari'.ors iii. Melbourne and Bfisbaae, as. well as in Sydney. ■ . . A year or so ago, there had been Sf Id in the Solomons 16i,G« acres of tlio 9,500,000 acres epinprised in the group, rind in ..nddifj'oiV 228,000 wcro hold uimcr occupatitn. license. The 'Commissioner estimated that 18,000 acres were then by Europeans. There tU-Jn '3?JO. indentured labonrors 0niploy«l in thi Protectorate, ah innrijase in two years- from--22fi4» and tho white and' foreign population .had' grown to 44j, of- whom. 252. wera British-. It is estimhted thai th.e,'nrtivp, pdpnla'tiph at the sanve time was Kp.flOp. :