SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE FIJIS.

Grey River Argus, Volume XII, Issue 1157, 13 April 1872, Page 4

SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE FIJIS.

The Fiji Gazette begins a leader with the rather startling inqniry, " The next generation in Fiji, what will it be I" And then proceeds to explain the difficulty standing in the way of the problem : — The vast majority of our settlers appear to have no desire or intention to form such matrimonial and family alliances as are essential to the respectability of society. With too many, the morality of society is only a subject to be laughed at. We cannot understand the position they take up. The charms of Fiji women we have failed to appreciate. We could never see them. What qualifications do they possess to enchant ? Is it their manners ? Or is it the mental superiority of these sable beauties that obtains for them preference amongst white men over white ladies 1 Nor do the white admirers of black beauty confine their affections to the aboriginal females of Fiji. As the palates of old used to scour the oceans for a variety of fish, so the varying tastes of many of our settlers rake the islands of •the entire Polynesian group for a supply of spouses, varying in color from a London chimney-sweep juat emerged from a six-storeyed chimney, to the color of a faded penny, or the face and features of a Chinaman. What will the next generation be, then ? "We pause to consider. But it is not in their tints and their features, their face and their form only, we feel curious. A far more serious consideration lies in their morals. What will be the morality of such an offspring generation? What can it be? The early settlers in America never sank to this.i Even the best looking red Indian chief tainess could not draw their affections from the British maids who, though separated from them by the ocean, they resolved should be their wives. And where is the mother in the colonies who would refuse to the Fiji planter the hand of her daughter? It is not a scarcity of the white material that makes him' buy the black. How many young' and accomplished ladled there are in the colonies who would cheerfully fly to the sunny tropics? How readily would they come, and as loving wives make home happy.