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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VII, Issue 173, 22 July 1872, Page 2

Slavehy in Fiji. — In a recent number of the Fiji Times we find some fresh evidence of the systematic cruelty perpetrated upon the laborers, and of the existence of slavery in its most hideous form. A firm of planters, known as Burtt and Underwood, imported some laborers from Tanna, undertaking that after a year's service the men should be sent home again. When the year expired, however, and the men asked to be sent home to Tanna, Underwood ordered them to go to work. The men refusing to do so, Underwood drew a pistol and fired at them twice, one of the bullets striking a man named Larney in the arm. The men " then set upon Underwood and killed him. The evidence in detail as to the treatment these men received before they turned upon their persecutors is sickening to read. They were pinioned and flogged with jagged, pointed, and knotted sticks for disobedience, burned with red hot irons in the most tender parts of their bodies, sometimes for only merely passing inattention to their work. They were kept incessantly at work from daylight until long after dark, and were not permitted to leave it even for the ordinary purposes of nature. No page that was ever written on American slavery could bo blacker than this, and it may be hoped that the recognition of Cakobau's sovereignty by Great Britain will at least suggest to his advisers the necessity of at once giving such protection to laborers as will save Fijian society from the reproach of being I the most infamous on the face of the earth