hey served admirably to
supply the necessary cheap labour.

[Illustration: VICTORIA BRIDGE, BRISBANE.]

The practice of employing these South Sea Islanders, or "Kanakas," as
they were called, soon became general, and parts of Queensland had all
the appearance of the American plantations, where crowds of dusky
figures, decked in the brightest of colours, plied their labours with
laughter and with song, among the tall cane brakes or the bursting pods
of cotton. The "Kanakas" generally worked for a year or two in the
colony, then, having received a bundle of goods--consisting of cloth,
knives, hatchets, beads, and so forth, to the value of about L10--they
were again conveyed to their palm-clad islands. A system of this kind
was apt to give rise to abuses, and it was found that a few of the more
unscrupulous planters, not content with the ordinary profits, stooped
to the shameful meanness of cheating the poor islander out of his
hard-earned reward. They hurried him on board a vessel, and sent after
him a parcel containing a few shillings worth of property; then, when he
reached his home, he found that all his toil and his years of absence
from his friends had procured him only so much trash.

Happily, this was not of very frequent occurrence; but there was another
abuse both common and glaring. As the plantations in Queensland
increased, they required more labourers than were willing to leave their
homes in the South Sea Islands; and, as the captains of vessels were
paid by the planters a certain sum of money for every "Kanaka" they
brought over, there was a strong temptation to carry off the natives by
force, when, by other means, a sufficient number could not be obtained.
There were frequent conflicts between the crews of labour vessels and
the inhabitants of the islands. The white men burnt the native villages,
and carried off crowds of men and women; while, in revenge, the
islanders often surprised a vessel and massacred its crew; and in such
cases the innocent suffered for the guilty. The sailors often had the
baseness to disguise themselves as missionaries, in order the more
easily to effect their purpose; and when the true missionaries,
suspecting nothing, approached the natives on their errand of good will,
they were speared or clubbed to death by the unfortunate islanders. But,
as a rule, the "Kanakas" were themselves the sufferers; the English
vessels pursued their frail canoes, ran them down, and sank them; the