THE SAMOAN DIFFICULTY.

Evening Star, Issue 4111, 1 May 1876, Page 3

THE SAMOAN DIFFICULTY.

(From our own Correspondent) Auckland, May 1. There was great excitement here on the arrival of Colonel Steinberger by the mail steamer. He was cheered through the streets by the liberty men of H.M.S. Barraeouta. Steinberger was interviewed by reporters. He says he was the secret-agent of the United States Government, to whom he has applied to demand redress from the British Government for the indignity and wrongs he has suffered at the hands of Captain Stevens, of the Barracouta. He urges that forty thousand inhabitants of Samoa are in sackcloth and ashes praying in their churches for his return. He demands that the commodore shall re-convey him to Samoa, and if the natives do not receive him with acclamation then to deal with him as an adventurer and villain. He complains that the king was made drunk on board the Barracouta and then made to sign a paper deposing him. For this act the people dethroned the king and banished him. lie states further that the native attack on the Barracouta’s men was solely on account of their Premier being made a prisoner on board the war ship, and thence the bloodshed. He alleges that on his arrival at Levuka he demanded his liberty, but Captain Stevens said he had orders from the American Consul to land him in Auckland ; that Captain Stevens afterwards had an interview with the Chief Justice of Fiji, who expressed his surprise that Captain Stevens should have a foreign political prisoner on his ship, as such was against British law; that Captain Stevens hurried on board and invited him to go ashore, but on the colonel’s refusal he called a boat’s crew and drove him out of the ship by force. All bis effects and private papers were destroyed or sold by auction to the beach ccmbers under the guns of the British man-of-war. For these illegal acts he will, under the advice of the United States Government, follow the Barracouta Home and demand redless from the Admiralty. He estimates his damages at one million pounds. Of the Peerless he will say nothing beyond that her title is not worth a cent, and that she is liable to seizure by the first American cruiser entering the port.