Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/222

 The condition of these islanders is, in many respects, very much changed. We do not read in the papers of to-day of ships being cast away and their crews clubbed,  roasted, and eaten by the South Sea cannibals. In contrast we read in the English papers of the wonderful progress of the Christian religion among them, and how  the Salvation Army is turning many of them into "blood  and fire" soldiers.

A few months since I found myself in the Salvation Army barracks at Camberwell, George Street, London,  and had the pleasure of listening to Colonel Barker, who  had just returned from New Zealand. He stated that many of the natives had been converted and had joined  the army, and that Adjutant Holdaway had a Salvation  band, composed of Maoris, who could play and sing  many of the army tunes and hymns equal to any army  corps to which he ever listened; and that the uniform  just suited them, and was becoming very common among  them. The red ganges, with the word "Salvation" in large, white letters across the breast, was very fashionable with them.

I make a few quotations from "Cries from Fiji, and Sighings from the South Seas," by Dr. T. P. Lucas of  Melbourne:

The labor traffic has for some time occupied the attention of the British nation. It is nothing more or less than a veritable British slave-trade. What means the old song, "Britons Never shall be Slaves"?

Where is all the glory of the British liberty, battled for and obtained by Wilberforce, Buxton, and a host of others? Where is the brightness and grandeur of the British flag, which the Queen of the  Seas displayed before all nations and peoples? Destruction to}}