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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VIII, Issue 257, 25 October 1873, Page 1

lated as a joke that he always gave his men "an appetite for their work before breakfast," and that he had adopted an excellent plan of stopping sham illnesses. This plan consisted in fastening the invalid, to the gronnd on his back, and leaving him for the night* with a very strong mustard poultice on his stomach. The lash is not uncommonly resorted to in cases of disobedience and violent behaviour. In some districts the Fijians are always employed to administer the punishment to their fellow-countrymen, and a foreign overseer often performs the same office for imported laborers. As a rule, a Fijian on a distant plantation will prefer a good flogging to being sent to Levuka and imprisoned for three months. This power of resorting to the lash has undoubtedly been abused on some plantations. Its abuse has never been attended with' success. No notoriously cruel man in Fiji has ever been able to do any good with his labor. Messrs Bart and Underwood, who come under this denomination, were burnt out on the Singa Toka, narrowly escaping with their lives; and Underwood waa subsequently murdered by his imported laborers at Kandavc, for acts of injustice against tbem, chief among which was keeping them on his plantation 14 months after their time had expired. Another case was mentioned to me, in which a planter had stated tbat he thrashed a Fijian at the post one evening until he fainted, and he forebore, intending to give the poor wretch the balance of the lashes determined upon in the morning; but, as he brutally expressed it, " I was disappointed, for the - — took tbe sulks and died before daylight." On the plantation of a man like this the laborers would be badly fed and poorly cared for. If Fijians, they would not stay with their employer at all, and if foreign laborers they would take the first opportunity of stealing a boat and running away at whatever risk. One case was mentioned in the Fijian Parliament in which men were compelled to work six hours in the early morniog, and were then sent to seek their food in the bosb, after which they had to work another six hours, and then spend a good part of the night in hunting for the wild yam. It is needless to say thafe such plantations are invariably unsuccessful, for laborers living under such conditions grow morose and sullen, and perform their duties inefficiently. But, on ths other hand, there iB no more cheering sight than the islanders on a well-managed plantation, when they have knocked off work for the Saturday half-holiday, and are bent upon various kinds of amusement Ai_ si general rule, the men are treated, in the matter of personal violence, just as the coolies on the Indian plantations, who are well paid and comparatively independent, are treated. Tbat is to say, if they are unruly (and it must be remembered that they are a wild lot on first coming into the country, the majority of them being also cannibals), the overseers use their fists freely among them, and compel obedience. But, there is rarely any difficulty with laborers who have been a few months at the work. If the foreigners On any plantations were provoked into rebellion they would always be strong enough to destroy the few white men living on the grounds. The case of Underwood, however, is the only one in Fiji in which a white planter has been killed by his foreign labor. When an overseer on Mokongai once insulted the wife of one of his Line Islanders, the whole company surrounded hiß honse, and dictated terms to his employer. These * were' that he should quit the island, and bis employer at once give directions to that effect. Tbere is nothing in the relationship between the planter and his servitor calculated to encourage cruelty in the former. On the contrary, the position of entire dependence on him in which his laborers are placed would compel the sympathy of a respectable man. An honeßt Scotchman in Fiji, who has one of the best plantations there, speaking of his merry Sandwich Islanders, said to me, "I love these boys of mine; I take a pride in seeing them happy, and when the time comes for them to go, they will go with every penny they have earned.'* My friend would probably not have spoken quite bo warmly but for the extra glass of whisky that was in him, but ' I believe he meant what he said. Briefly, the plantation hands in Fiji have three great grievances — firstly, the constitutional dislike of Polynesians to regular work; secondly, the absence of any absolute guarantee that they will be paid their full wages at the end of their period of servitude; and, lastly, tbat many of them have been forced from their homes. But the men rarely complain of having been kidnapped. When they relate the circumstances, they generally regard it as a joke, and do not seem to consider that a great offence has been perpetrated; indeed, of late .it has become the custom of kidnapped men to carefully conceal the fact, lest, they should be laughed at for having been caught napping.