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Auckland Star, Volume XXII, Issue 35, 11 February 1891, Page 5

Several adventurous spirits in Auckland have balked aboub migrating to the newlyformed Congo Free State, tempted, no doubt, by the magnificent rewards offered. They will do well to consider bhe following lebber from a good-nabured nabive, senb bo the editor of the "Freetown Weekly News "■•-—•" Your countrymen of Sierra Leone are induced to come hither ac workmen, and afterwards are compelled to serve as soldiers : they are cOnbraebed wibh for a salary bo be paid in English money, and they are compelled to take their pay in inferior Belgian goods. Their food consists of fish dried many moons ago, and rice only. They are beaten with the • chikote,' dried Hippo hide, for the slightest reason or for no reason ; the sick languish in wretched native huts, through which the rain and sun stream, and are denied either blankets or beds by the State. If they complain they are punished, and if they write to their friends ab home or complain to the Governor of Sierra Leone, the letters are opened and stopped by bhe officials. Men whose term of service has expired are kept in distant parts of the river, The natives are cruelly treated, their homes are burned, their property confiscated, and their wives and children reduced to bondage by the State. The State not.only allows the slave trade to go on, ib is itself engaged in the wholesale and retail traffic of human beings,"