Page:A few facts in connection with the Employment of Polynesian Labour in Queensland.djvu/13

10 with a hobby and his charges where legitimate are grossly exaggerated and are otherwise entirely unfounded and a base libel on Kanaka morality." Mr. Johnson adds to his report:—"I find the boys themselves like to come back to Queensland. I have had boys coming and going to and from the islands several times, and when I asked them why they had come back again they said they liked Queensland better."

The Rev. Mr. Brown, Wesleyan Minister at Bundaberg, writes that Dr. Paton in his recent deliverances on the Kanakas had been carried away by prejudice.

The Rev. W. Morris, Rector of the English Church, Bundaberg, writes, "I read with much amazement Dr. Paton's protest. If one tenth of the charges brought against Queensland were true to-day in respect to Kanaka recruiting and treatment here every Christian man and woman in the Colony would cry out against it. We know how guarded is the recruiting now and we know how much better fed, clothed, and housed these men are now than they would be in their own islands. Numbers of them have from £5 to £100 in the bank. There are thousands in the mother-country not half so well off as these islanders. Week day and Sunday they meet for instruction, singing, and prayer, and many return to their own islands Christian communicants, join the native churches and make themselves useful there. I have had classes of these men and women thirteen years and know the astonishing changes that have taken place in many of them. There are some 1,400 under Christian instruction in this district, and very many of them are teetotallers. Many who return to their island again come to Queensland. They would hardly do this were they treated as Dr. Paton represents."

Final brief quotations will be made from communications written by missionaries at present labouring in the South Sea Islands. The Rev. A. A. Macdonald, missionary in the New Hebrides, the scene of Dr. Paton's past labours says, "there can be no complaint on the score of the manner in which the Kanakas are recruited." Rev. Mr. Fraser, Solomon Islands writes to a correspondent in Queensland that he had engaged a returned islander, named Philip Kalu as an assistant teacher and Kalu himself wrote that "he held a very good class of his own people whom he was telling about the Saviour."

A correspondent of the Melbourne Argus, wrote that he had boarded a labour vessel The Empreza," in Danae Bay, Maron Island, Solomon group. "The majority of the Solomon boys were having a sing-song on deck. The hold seemed deserted, but on descending I found in a secluded corner between 30 and 40 natives of the Hebrides and Solomons holding a religious service. Though the barbaric dance was in full swing over-head the worshippers below were very attentive and reverential at the prayers, the boys knelt with one accord and with subdued but musical voices joined in the 'Amen.' I was informed that all the Solomon boys who took part in the service had been Christianised through the agency of Mission Schools in Queensland."