FIJI.

Southland Times, Issue 1317, 4 October 1870, Page 3

FIJI.

The Alhambra, after an absence of one month, returned to Melbourne on the 23rd. She brought Fiji dates to the 3rd, from which the following particular* are gleaned : — " More than 500 immigrants have arrived during the past few months, and a great deal of capital has been brought into the country. Our harbor is crowded with shipping, and new buildings are going up in every direction. The native chiefs are changing their clumsy double canoes for the finest Syduey-buift yachts, and everything speaks of progress and advancement. The Bau chiefs are leasing lands for long terms of years for Is per acre per annum, with an idea of encouraging permanent improvements. Short leases only tend to the exhaustion of the soil ; the planter will get all he can out of it during the few years he may hold it ; but a long lease is an inducement to permanent outlay, and the planter will not be likely to confine himself to growing cotton only, but will plant breadfruit trees, cocoa-nuts, Ac. The Bau chief has also decided to follow in the wake of leasing land on the islands. The natives are not so eager to sell as they were a few years ago, and thus alienate for ever large tracts of country, but a long lease at a low . price will meet the wants of those whose capital is limited. They do not thus exhaust their resources or cripple their means in the first purchase, but by a small payment for the lease, reserve their capital for the working purposes of the plantation, in procuring Line labor, &c. A lease, with the right of purchase at a fixed price, is, perhaps, the best thing for anyone whose i capital is limited. The weather has been all in favor of the present cotton crop, and picking finds employment for all available hands."

Tobacco Chewing ts Cbktbch. — The editor of the * National Baptist,' attending the Southern Baptist Convention, brings away this among other recollections .- — " Perhaps we had no right to be shocked by an object so common as tobacco-juice, but we were rudely roused from our meditations above suggested by the incessant recurrence of ' short and sharp spirts all over the house, like the firing of miniature musketry. The explanation, we soon discovered, was in the fact that we were in the midst of a company x)f tobacco chewers, and that without thought of irreverence or unclean* liness, they were, each for himself, firing their saliva and their " quids " under the seats in front of them. Many a poor spittoon was the target for multitudinous shots, which only missed their mark to spatter their tilth upon the floor and furniture. Little lakes of tobacco saliva were numerous over the fine carpet, under the pews, and around the pulpit, and the excellent and hospitable sisters of the Walnut Street church— if they feel as ladies usually do about such mattersmust have been almost disgusted with some of the habits of some of their guests."