PHASES OF ISLAND LIFE

Evening Star, Issue 14523, 26 November 1910, Page 12

PHASES OF ISLAND LIFE

FAILURE OF THE ANGLO-FRENCH CONVENTION.

DEPLORABLE STATE OF AFFAHIS,

[Special to the Star.] CHRISTCHURCH. November 2G

Bishop Wilson, of Melanesia, who is visiting Christchurch, was questioned by a reporter yesterday in regard to the conditions of the islanders, and ho described a shocking state of affairs at the Now Hebrides. Ho said that Dr Nicholson’s remarks, which were sent by cable message from Sydney, and published in New Zealand journals on Thursday, wore not exaggerated. Tho state of affairs was due largely to the —Anglo-French Convention.— When the Convention was made lie had had great hopes of tho results. Ho regretted to say that ho was greatly disappointed. Dual control had been very unsuccessful. Tho abuses wliich had arisen wore illustrated by complaints made by natives of Banks Island, which was in tho sphere of the Convention. They stated that their wives wore stolen from them by recruiting vessels for tho cocoanut plantations in the islands. A specific case was described by the natives, who said that a foreign trader and his wife persuaded the wife of a native teacher, a man who had been four years in Queensland, to go on board their vessel. They refused to let her return. Her husband went out to tho vessel in a boat. _Ho was caught, his hands wore tied behind his back, ho was struck several times in tho face, and was then thrown into tho hold and was chained for two weeks to tho foot of tho mast. The man and his wife at tho end of that time were released on consideration of a sum of £4 10s. The case was not by any means a single one. Similar eases were placed before the missionaries in hopes that —Justice Would bo Done.—

The missionaries, indeed, reported that no woman on the coastal districts was safe. Marauding vessels, with halfcaste masters and native crews, were always on tho look-out for women in order to carry them off. Ho knew a man at Oha, in the New Hebrides, whoso wife was induced to go on hoard a vessel, and was taken to Vela. Although the man repeatedly wrote to the authorities to have Ids wild returned to him, ho bad never got her back again. He know of another case of exactly tho samo kind. Besides those abuses, grog was sold to _ the natives, probably in as largo quantities as before the Convention was made, iu spite of the fact that the Convention distinctly forbade the sale of intoxicating liquor The abuses iu that respect began with the French and other foreign traders. British traders, however, evidently found that the natives wished to trade with men who supplied them with grog, and he had lately reported to tho British Resident that a well-known British trader had sold grog in tho Torres Islands. Ho had gone on board another trader’s schooner and had found that

—Grog was Being Supplied to Natives—

to help them with their claneos. The illegal sale of liquor, in fact, was going on everywhere. From what he had heard lie concluded that the evil was as had as ever it had been. He had placed his own complaints and those of his niissioners before the British .Resident, and his views were no secret to the authorities. One of the difficulties of the position, his lordship continued, arose out of the fact that when the Anglo-French Convention was signed it forbade grog-selling, but allowed the recruiting of women for plantations. Subsequently tho British Government issued aii order that there .should he no recruiting, hut the French Government did not take tho same action. There were, therefore, two laws in operation, one for tho British and the other for the French, one prohibiting the recruiting of women and tho other allowing it. As far as ho had seen, tiie

—British Traders Observed the Law—in that respect. The half-caste masters and the native recruiters went ashore fully armed to different places along the'coast. The natives were completely cowed bv the weapons in the boats of the meh-of-war, which they feared would punish them by reprisals if they retaliated. The missionaries complained that although they reported many eases nothing was done, and the natives themselves were quite powerless. In the Solomons, which are under British rule solely, Bishop 'Wilson said there was a different state of affairs. He felt quite confident in saving that in that part of Melanesia no "roc; whatever was sold to the natives. Persons who sold firearms and ammunition to the natives, when the offence was discovered, wort 1

• —Rigorously Punished.— tie had no heard of any eases of kidnapping at the Solomons. .Mr C. N. Woodford, the British .Resident at the Solomons, had a strong hand, which protected both Europeans and natives; consequently cases of ill-treatment by natives were almost unknown, and when they did occur, justice was always meted out to the offenders, llcferring to work in sotne of the outlying islands, Bishop Wilson said that the people, although of magnificent physique, were delicate, and colds spread from visiting vessels and took the form of epidemics.