Forty years on the Pacific : the lure of the great ocean, a book of reference for the traveler and pleasure for the stay-at-home . work for wages than to leavethem behind. Although strongly objected to by missionaries,many of the natives insist on having several wives. In the early days various devices were resorted to inorder to abduct native laborers. One skipper told me heinduced 25 native boys to go into the hold of his ship toadjust a water tank, and while they were engaged in thistask he fastened down the hatches and carried them time a chief offered to get him 25 boys if he
Forty years on the Pacific : the lure of the great ocean, a book of reference for the traveler and pleasure for the stay-at-home . work for wages than to leavethem behind. Although strongly objected to by missionaries,many of the natives insist on having several wives. In the early days various devices were resorted to inorder to abduct native laborers. One skipper told me heinduced 25 native boys to go into the hold of his ship toadjust a water tank, and while they were engaged in thistask he fastened down the hatches and carried them time a chief offered to get him 25 boys if he wouldtake him, his wife and daughter to San Francisco and skipper consented and the chief supplied the boys—afterwhich he and his family were taken to Noumea, where theyspent two weeks, returning quite satisfied that they had vis-ited San Francisco. I know of a case where a white man married a nativewoman, and afterwards recruited his own father-in-law andmother-in-law for labor on his plantation, but considerationwas shown* the mother-in-law—she was not sent into thefields, but kept in the house as a BLACKBIRDING 293 Reports of the cruelties practised by kidnappers in thesixties reached England, with the result that H. M. S. Rosario,Captain George Palmer, was despatched to the South Seas toinvestigate. He states: Various tactics were resorted to In order toabduct natives, and if they attempted to escape by swimming,no means were considered too cruel to recapture them. Hedescribes one case of a native being hauled back with a boathook piercing his cheek. Scarcely any law was planters connived with labor agents andschooner captains to obtain labor at any cost. After arrests various devices were employed to delaytrials and defeat convictions. Influential people were inter-ested in sugar growing and labor was indispensable for thecane fields. Captain Palmer describes one instance to illustrate themany obstacles placed in his way in
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjectoceania, bookyear1920
