Page 3 Advertisements Column 4

Auckland Star, Volume XXIII, Issue 33, 9 February 1892, Page 3

"Lyttelton Times." " ' The Black Police.*—Can it be possible that in those days of grace—for the story is written of the present time—that such j things, such b0n0.... _, .B. Vogan describes witii revolting •" ■■n happen in a I civilised Brill.•!■ '•••' ■ n '•;,: ''•" I 1 "ChrJctch 4 yah Press." " 'The lilac k Police.'—lf only one-third J (if the scenes depicted in the book by Mr. | Vogan are true, it, is time such a reproach j wa.-t wiped off the fair fame of Australia. J . . . Some of the scenes are painted i with a good deal of power. The discovery ' by Claude Angland of the rival to Mount j Morgan isawondorfullycleverpieceof word j painting; the scenery and the weird i-ur-, roundings of the cavern being described very powerfully. . . . ' The Black Police' is well worth perusal." I ~ "Otacro Times," Juno 6, 1801. "The book aims at being the 'Uncle Tom's Cabin ' of Queensland, and tho ' horrors in .Mrs. Stowe's book arc hardly more horrible than the facts recorded here. Claud Angland, the hero of the novel, who | in in Auckland when the story begins, j receives the last message of an uncle who I lias died while exploring the Australian j wilds. This communication is much in the j or.mular_t.ylo of those potsherd or parch- ! incut documents which wo know mi well in I Bider I laggards story. There is more in j the paper than at first meets the eye. Moved thereto by certain mysterious symbols on the paper, Angland proceeds to Sydney, bound for Queensland, in quest of the spot where his uncle died, which we may here say he ultimately reached, discovering at a certain place indicated a Mount Morgan mine, which made him j '.vealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. The chief part of the novel, however, is ! I alien up with the Queensland squatter .ml ' j his treatment of the blacks. According to ■ j the author there is a lirmly. established j I a!iivery of the worst kind, by wide 1 ' 'he ■ j white master oxmeises the most absniurc [ .ownership over the por-ons of Ids bi-u.i | slaves, tying them up uml hi i:tally, lashing- ; tiiem for trivia! lo'e nces, ami hunting litem i down with all the apparatus of dogs and I guns if they attempt to run away and I rejoin their tribes." "'Wanganui Herald," May 10, 1001. " 'The Black Police ' —a very timely ami J powerfully written hook from the pen of nn | ex-journalist of this Colony. We must j confess on reading Mr. Vogan's hook, we were loth to believe that matters could be I so bad as lie paints them, in these days of I improved civilisation, and thought that lie j must be giving .some of the darker deeds of | the early days a recent date, and palming I tlisin oil' as things of yesterday. Mr. Vogan gives vivid and horrifying descriptions of how the blacks are 'dispersed' in Queensland to-day, and did spue, permit we would reproduce the picture of one of these bloodcurdling scenes from, Mr. Vogan's pen. We commend the perusal of the hook itself to our readers, who will find within its covers i much that will cause them to ask with j Bret Harte's unsophisticated hero, 'Is out civilisation a dream ?' If, like us, they arc j sceptical at first of the truth of Mr. Vogan's statement that' dispersing' is only another I inune for ' butchering,' or even worse j treatment of the helpless aborigines, ami ! that the latter are hunted like dingoes by j the Native Police Oliiccrs. with their small j but well-trained packs of black trackers, j who enjoy the work with fiendish glee, they have only to recall to mind the telegrams j on the subject, "which are constantly I appearing. Mr. Vogan asserts that the j Queensland Black Police frequently arrest tlit; wrong natives wilfully, and give them a chance lo escape whilst, en route for the nearest goal '1 ho prisoners, thin kin" they j see their way to escape, attempt to do so, | and their black captor* coolly shoot them I j down, and the white officer in charge reports < ! the circumstance, uunti* the facts »,s to I j wrongful arrest and the bait held out to I tempt the prisoners to escape. Mr. Vogan's | j book, read in the light ot the disclosures I i that arc of almost daily occurrence, should I do some good, and shame the authorities of J Queensland and the other Australian colonies, within whose borders these j ! atrocities are perpetrated, into putting i dawri such crimes. The Black Police of Queensland has always been a crying evil, as its dark deeds have been frequency condemned and exposed by those who have had an opportunity of knowing something of their methods of ' dispersing' their unlucky fellowi-;, who presume to camp or hunt in. the country taken up by pioneer squatters, whose flocks and herds are held of more value than human, life. Nemesis lias overtaken these latter, who aro now in tarn harried by the shearers on strike, and outsiders -who know for the first time through Mr. Vogan's book the heartless ways of outlying squatters where the ' blacks are concerned, will see in some of 1 their present troubles from the shearers' I ! strike, a just retribution for crimes which j I ha re long cried in vain for vengeance."