29

A.— i

delights. It is of all products one of the most suited to the high woodlands of Samoa. The seed would be easily procurable from China, and if gathered at the fitting season, and packed in damp sand or sugar, would arrive in good germinating condition. The tea shrub yields its first payable crop in the third year from the planting of the seed. For the plantation labour the services of Polynesians are suitable and easily procurable. The skilled workmen required for the manipulation of the leaf arc to be met with in Hawaii, or can be obtained from China at a low rate of remuneration. I have said that the Messrs. Godeffroy have purchased from the natives of Samoa about 25,000 acres of valuable land. The greater proportion of this property Is situated upon Upolo, and consists of a triangular block extending nearly five miles along the sea-coast, and inland to the crown of the dividing sierra. All of this is easily accessible from the shore by bridle-tracks, which can in most cases be made practicable for wheeled conveyances at a trifling expense. They employ wagons in their plantation work. The area of their cultivations at present (or up to within the last two years) comprises about 500 acres. They employ usually about 400 (reported at present to be 1,200) imported labourers, chiefly from the Kingsmill Isles, besides a number of Samoans, Rarotongans* and. Nieues. The wages of the Kingsmill or Line islanders, as they are called, are two dollars per month and their food; the term of their' service three years, at the expiration of which they are returned to their homes or re-engaged at their own option. The original engagements of these people on their own land were at the rate of one dollar per month, which was increased to two by their employers after a few months of training to the plantation work, in which they showed themselves industrious and tractable. Messrs. Godeffroy and Son deservedly rank amongst the most enlightened merchants of Europe; and in no respect is this more apparent than in the wise regulations framed by them for the conduct of their plantations on Samoa. The Kingsmill islanders, on arrival upon their estates, present an example of the lowest type of Pacific savages—naked, brutal, and wolfish in aspect; having lived absolutely without laws ; having subsisted only upon cocoanuts, fish, and the fruit of the screw-palm; seamed with the scars of incessant affrays, the result of the state of chronic intoxication in which their brains have been steeped from childhood from the use of the fermented toddy of the cocoanut tree ; a large proportion being afflicted with cutaneous diseases and various forms of syphilis, introduced among them by the crews of whaling ships. They are comfortably lodged, decently clothed, well fed, and trained to honesty and peaceful industry. They arrive filthy, lazy, and ferocious. After six months of plantation life they do not resemble the same beings, and, at the expiration of their agreements, they are so far improved as to be as unfit for communion with their brutal brethren in their native isles as they were previously for contact with civilized humanity. The regulations of the Messrs. Godeffroy with respect ,to their imported labourers provide that these people shall in no case be engaged by their agents without their own consent, backed by that of their chiefs and relatives. The overseers appointed to accompany them in the field are either their own countrymen or foreigners who have been many years domesticated among them. Their dwellings are of sawn timber—large, airy, and clean. Their food consists of pork, fish, taro, yams, plantains, breadfruit, and a daily ration of wholesome bread (baked for them in brick ovens) of maize meal, of which they are very fond. Besides this regular allowance they have green corn, cocoanuts, melons, and other vegetable food ad libitum. They have nine hours of labour, from 6to 11 and from 12 to 4 o'clock. They are in no case permitted to be beaten by their overseers. If punishment is found necessary, as in aggravated cases of bodily violence or crime, such as among savages must sometimes be expected, punishment varying from one to four dozen stripes with a cat, such as is used in ships-of-war, is administered in the presence of the Consul. They are under the supervision of a properly-qualified European surgeon, and are supplied with all needful medicines and comforts for the sick, for which no charge whatever is made to them. Missionaries of both the Protestant and Catholic denomination are allowed every facility to visit or instruct them, but, being of a low order of intellect, they have not been known as yet to benefit by such teachings. On the Sunday they are not required to do any manner of work. Their matrimonial arrangements are not interfered with. They are permitted to form such connections as they please, provided that peace be preserved. It would be well for planters throughout the tropics, if the system pursued by the Messrs. Godeffroy were more generally known and adopted. All the other establishments on Samoa, where imported labour is employed, are conducted on the same .humane and just principles. The scheme propounded by the Messrs. Godeffroy for the settlement of their property on the Island of Upolo, if carried out according to their intentions, could not have failed to have been productive of important results, not only as concerns the advancement of the Samoan group, but in the furtherance of civilization and commercial enterprise throughout all Central Polynesia. The Government of the North German Confederation regarded the project with paternal interest. Several personal interviews and a voluminous correspondence upon the subject took place between Cffisar Godeffroy, sen. and Herr von Bismarck. They had been personal friends from their youth, and the astute Chancellor did not hesitate to lend his influence to the advancement of a plan of colonization which, while it promised advantageous employment for the energies of a number of the better class of German adventurers, would secure to the rising navy of the Confederation the possession of one of the most central and best-supplied harbours of rendezvous in the Pacific. The matter had not been long under discussion when the approbation of the Government assumed a practical shape. Elaborate plans prepared upon the ground by a surveyor of the locality intended for settlement were laid before the authorities in Berlin ; a programme of the system of colonization to be initiated was drawn up; extraordinary powers were delegated to the Consul of Samoa; grants of arms of precision from the Government arsenals were made for the protection of the settlement; and the "Hertha" (the first, it was said, of the Continental ironclads which passed through the

I.—The Islands generally: Mr. Sterndale.