AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9052, 30 March 1908, Page 5

AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

RETURNED KANAKAS. ERRONEOUS. IMPRESSIONS. SYDNEY, March 28. The Right Rev. Dr. Wilson, Bishop of Melanesia, interviewed, stated that the idea that returned kanakas would be killed had proved erroneoup. There were numbers who were afraid to return because they had been concerned in murders before they '.vent to Queensland. Otherwise,, the repatriated had been welcomed. Their I compulsory return had proved the thing for them. It had made, one difference, however; they had an exaggerated idea of the value of their labour, and thought that* the land which they bought should realise prices equal to those ruling in Queensland. It was impossible now to get men for work at the old prices. SENTENCED TO DEATH. BRISBANE, March 28. A man named Jftileyy' sentenced to fourteen years' imprisonment for burning the Coongoola woolshed in 1895, has been"sentenced to death for tho murder of a man named Martyr in the same year at the same woolshed. [Four years ago a woolshed at Cunnamulla, Queensland, was destroyed "by fire. Incendisrism was suspected, but the guilty person was not detected. In September last a man was arre&ted at Glen Innqs, New South Wales. He confessed to having committed the crime, and also stated that in order to escape detection he murdered a man who was wanted as a witness in connection with the murder of a child, and who mysteriously disappeared.]