POLYNESIA.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 36, 5 August 1911, Page 5

POLYNESIA.

SOLOMON ISLANDERS. I THEORIES AS TO THEIR ORIGIN. By Cable —Press Association—Copyright Sydney, August 4. Professor MaeMillan Brown, in an interview, stated that the natives of the Solomon Islands were steadily dying out. The only island in which they were increasing was Malaita, where they were still in a wild state. The result of 'the reduction in population is that there is not enough labor to go round, and the plantations in three or four years would from indifT In* tune tlie feolonions', like Fiji, would become a mere annex of India. The only thing to save the Islanders would be for them, like the Maoris, to abolish primeval communism and adopt steps against too great laxity and idleness. Professor MaeMillan Brown is of opinion, from the racial characteristics and language of the Solomons, that the islanders are. a mixture of a great number of races. Negroid races came to the islands probably during the geological period when the process of earth elevation was going on, and so were able to travel the whole wav across on dry land. Other waves, of the Caucasian race, also from Southern Asia, afterwards swept down over the negroids. During tens of thousand of years the waves musl hare kept coming down. When Polynesia was first populated there might have been, where the atolls now are. fairly broad and high islands. Through all human time these may have been gradually sinking; hence came the practice of abortion and infanticide, and the knowledge of oceanic navigation. The land sinking under them, they were compelled to go somewhere. THE NEW HEBRIDES. CHARGES REFUTED. Melbourne, August 4. The Rev. Mr. Paton. the secretary of the Presbyterian Foreign Missions Society, states that letters from Presbyterian missionaries more than confirm Bishop Wilson's statements regarding oppression of the New Hebrides natives. The annual session of the New Hebrides Synod drew up minutes stating that cases of irregularities were so numerous as to lead to wonder if there was any hope of redress against wrongdoers who happen to be under the French jurisdiction. The minute, after making charges of illegal recruiting, supplying liquor, kidnapping and flogging natives, and offences against morality, urges in the interests of justice and for the advancement of the civilisation of the natives, that the Home authorities make the strongest possible representations to the French Government that the provisions of the convention be enforced, without fear or favor, upon all under the French jurisdiction. The Synod absolutely repudiated the absurd and groundless charges made in the French Chamber bv the late Gover-nor-General of Madagascar against Presbyterian missionaries in New Hebrides.