FIJI.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 4166, 25 June 1875, Page 3

FIJI.

The following is an extract from a private letter from Fiji:—" Since I last wrote to you I have been up to the Rewa, and had a look over a sugar mill belonging to J. O. Smith ; and from there I came down here, and have t iken a billet as overseer on a suuar plantation belonging to M , of Melbourne. About oue hundred and fifty foreign labourers are employed on the place, but their liumlicra arc somewhat reduced through measles. Tae w >rk is not hard, but the hours are long—six to six, with usually a few hours' overtime. Dysentery and cramp in the stomach are killing a good mmy whites, and it is by no means an uncoinn.ou thing to see a mau quite well to-day and to hear he is dead to-morrow. I was very bad with c-amp last week, and thought it was all up. You can have no idea how helpless one feels miles away from a chemist's shop —not a drop of any sort of medicine iv the place, and not a person to come near you or care whether you pull through or not. Luckily there was some kerosene in the place, and by rubbing it on and taking doses of rum warm from the still, thirty over proof, I managed to pull through. There is a new manager come down here from the Mauritius. He condemns the whole place ; cays the machinery is a swindle, the cane good for nothing, and says he shall advise M j-to shut the whole place up, as it can never pay. I suppose you know the capital is to be changed from Levuka ; but where, it is not yet settled. At present it is a toss up between this place and Lavu Bay, on the island of Vauna Levu. The man-of-war Blanche is now bere surveying the bay, but no definite j decision will be come to until the arrival of | the Governor, in June.