A WHITE MAN AMONG THE SOUTH SEA ISLANDERS.

Patea Mail, 26 May 1882, Page 2 (Supplement)

A WHITE MAN AMONG THE SOUTH SEA ISLANDERS.

An interesting story has just come from the South Sea Islands. Capt. M'Laughlin, while exploring among some islands of the Solomon group, discovered a naked white man among the blacks. There were 70 war canoes at the place, with 40 armed savages in each, and there was much risk in getting to terms with them, but he succeeded in buying the castaway for three American hatchets. His name is Luigi Bocro, and he is an Italian who belonged to one of the Marquis de Ray’s ill-fated expeditions. He had been 15 months among the islanders, but he fancied he had passed three years there ; and no wonder, for he had been made a slave by the barbarians. He had prior to his captivity gone on a cruise from Liki Harbor in a small boat with five others, which got on a reef and broke up, and then came the troubles of the six unfortunate whites. The blacks found them and made them the slaves of the tribe, making them do all sorts of work, and treated them most cruelly. They had to work under the burning sun of the tropics “with their skin peeling off,” and were “ beaten and tortured ” when sick and weakly and unable to do the tasks of their masters. At last Lugi was separated from his companions, and he heard afterwards that three of them had died, and he supposes there may be two survivors somewhere in the group. When the poor fellow knew he was free he grew frantic with joy, and embraced Captain MLaughlin, which excited the blacks, and it seemed as if they were about to fall upon the whites and destroy them, the barbarians meantime yelling and brandishing their weapons threateningly. However, he managed to bring off the exile safely, and since that he sailed for Bougainville and to others of the Solomon group endeavoring to find the other castaways, but without success. This tale is one more leaf out of the volume of that terrible history of the Marquis de Ray’s attempted colonisation in the South Seas.