THE FIJIS.

Southland Times, Issue 1153, 25 October 1869, Page 3

THE FIJIS.

The following extracts from a letter received by a gentleman in Dunedin from a friend in the Fijis, have been handed to the Otago Times for publication : —

" The Melbourne Company are at work surveying their land at Suva and in the neighborhood. The natives have given quiet possession, and, as far as I can learn, everything seema going on well. Mr Oooke, the manager, is in the country, and has been to Suva and the lower Rewa, but not yet up the river, although he talks of coming up to meet the planters respecting a sugar mill shortly. They also talk of making a road from Suva to liewa town — i.c, about 20 miles by river below me. If they do all this, and organise some means of getting a regular supply of foreign labor, Fiji, and this part of it especially, will make rapid progress, and the Suva will prove a formidable rival to Levuka for the use of ocean-going vessels. But considerable numbers of people have lately come here, and it is said a great many more are on the wing from Melbourne. If they come before proper preparations are made in, the matters of survey and labor — the latter especially— it will be bad for them, and cause, I fear, a reaction against Fiji. There are a great many here already who are without labor, and they know how helpless the want makes them.

"As to this labor question, small vessels are still going and coming, and bring back with them 50 or 60 men at a time. These men are engaged for three years ; wages run now at £4 a year, and the passage money £5, with an engagement to send them back again at the expiration of their agreement. These agreements are made before, and attested by, the Consul. So we hope the mad project of stopping the supply entirely has been abandoned. They are heathens and cannibals when they arrive, and give us a good deal of trouble to get them into habits of regular work at first. At the end of three years they go back with these habits and the knowledge they have gained, which cannot but do as much good as years of preaching, in effecting some degree of civilisation among them. " The Government here ia a dead letter, and, for my own part, I hope it will continue bo. 1 have little hope of doing anything through natives. They are of the wrong kind, and I look to the French aa the future probable owners of Fiji. A petition from the Germans here to the North German Government, asking them to take possession, has been extensively signed. Another has just gone to the English Government. The white population and interests will soon claim some adequate protection. If we could throw off our allegiance, and fight our own battles, we might hope by policy to hold our own ; but while declining to protect us, our respective Governments would soon interfere, if we presumed to try and protect ourselves. However, for the present, I am glad to say all is peace, and we have no need of protection by force at this moment; but with the number of white settlers coming in I fear this cannot last. The natural fear it will excite among the natives that they are going to be outnumbered will of itself, in their ignorance, be likely to excite feelings of hostility."