Hervey Isles and the British Protectorate.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 878, 28 December 1888, Page 10

Hervey Isles and the British Protectorate.

*"■ STANDARD: The proclamation of the British Protectorate over Hervey Isles is not likely to surprise those "who are best acquainted with the condition of affairs in that part of Polynesia. Indeed, considering the evident intentions of the French, and the fact that British subjects are the chief white inhabitants of most of them, the wonder rather is that the step was not taken long ago; As it is, so thoroughly have the natives been accustomed to the English missionaries, the English language, and the English ways, that, except as a protect tion against any more pronounced absorption by other Powers, they will scarcely consider’ the proclamation as a change from the condition of affairs which has for many years prevailed* It is nearly a hundred and twenty years since the group was discovered by Captain Cook, and named in honour of Captain Hervey, one of the Lords of the Admiralty, though they have generally received from seafaring men the name of the great navigator himself. Lying between the Friendly and the Society Islands, the inhabitants shared at that time in the good and bad qualities of. the other Polynesians—in their hospitality, simplicity, light-hearted-ness, loose morals, and savagery ; but a brief intercourse with European traders soon taught them to regard the white man and his ways with less friendly eyes. This was the condition of affairs when, in the year 1822, Karatonga was visited by John Williams, ‘ the martyr of Erumanga/ and became the centre of those remarkable labours by which, in a short time, almost the entire population was so effectually rescued from barbarism that at present few, if any, of the people cannot read and write, while all of them profess Christianity. Here Williams built his missionary ship, the ‘ Messenger of Peace when he fell a victim to the ferocity of Erumanga, the people of Raratonga mourned for him as a father j and to this day their first teacher is spoken of with sincere affection, though few of his early converts are still alive. The island has, for years past, been the headquarters of the London Missionary Society in the Pacific. When the voyager lands and enters the comfortable houses, many of them built of stone, well furnished with useful and even elegant articles of furniture, and tenanted by a handsome brown people, clothed after the European fashion, well fed, and not infrequently capable of speaking two or three languages, he finds it hard to realise that, within the memory of men still alive, they were pagans of no very attractive sort, addicted to cruel wars, and with an evil repute, from which even cannibalism was not excluded. The Hervey group as a whole, and Raratonga in particular, afford a really striking instance of the triumphs of the English missionaries. It was often up-hill work. The ferocity of the Raratongans was so irrepressible that the missionaries were for some time compelled to leave the island, only one venturing to remain, and the admirable results which have followed the daring enterprise of Williams have been compassed within little more than sixty years. Yet, in that comparatively short period, the people have been taught the arts of peace, and the means of earning a livelihood without resorting to pillage. They supply passing ships with provisions, cultivate the ground for their own benefit, and even export furniture made of the beautiful woods with which their islands abound. In their homes may be seen Eui’opean books, and many of the necessaries and even luxuries of civilised life, while a considerable traffic- is carried on between them and the Sydney traders who cruise about the Pacific. . e T have regular market houses, m -which supplies for the shipping are collected, and salesmen are appointed to manage their little commerce with the strangers. It is more than fifty years since the printing press was introduced into Raratonga, though it is not quite five years since one was set up in the ancient Empire of Morocco; and already portions of the Scriptures, spelling-books,

and various primers in geography, arithmetic; astronomy, natural history, and other subjects have been pnblished in the Raratongan and other dialects. The island has even become A civilising nucleiis of wide regions-of the Pacific, for books in the tongues of the New Hebrides, New Caledonia; and other isles have been printed; and bound; all by young Raratongan natives under the tutition of the missionaries. What is more, many of the Hervey islanders have qualified themselves to act as teachers, and nothing is more common than to find these brown missionaries labouring in other islands; in languages which are foreign to them. ing what England has done for the group; it would have been cruel to the natives to have allowed them to run any risk of passing under the flag df any other power, more especially when we know the attitude of the French to the English teachers in other groups which they have annexed* Within the last year, Uvea or Wallis Island has passed under the French Flag, and though the Marquesas are still in tlieti-ansition state of a Protectorate, sooner or later they will share the fate of Tahiti, and become one of the colonies of France. For the present, the independence of the. New Hebrides has been preserved, though Samoa, in spite of the understanding entered into between England, the United States, and Germany, is rapidly becoming a virtual dependency of the latter Power. It has been no secret that the the French colonies in the Pacific exist mainly for the benefit of a host of needy placemen —who managed to get the agreement of 1847 with Eugland abrogated, in order to permit them to annex the Society Islands, had their eye on the Hervey group. Indeed, it has never been denied in Tahiti that the active assertion of dominion over Raiatea was but a move toward the annexation of the islands to the south-west. Raratonga would soon have been the chief coaling station for French vessels. plying between Panama and Australia. Apart from other objections, such a rounding off of their possessions in this part of the Pacific could not bub have been regarded with uneasiness by the Australian Colonies, the loyality of which has of late years suffered so many strains by what they regard as our apathy toward their [interest in permitting European Powers to plant their outposts within striking distance of the Autipodean shores.