Page:What I Know Of The Labour Traffic.djvu/29

26 interest in your welfare and criticising everything and everybody all round. Moreover, she was married a few days after she had come into her kingdom of glass beads.

The explanation of this mystery is as follows:—The natives of those Islands are great artists in shells. They make lovely bracelets out of shells, which they call "altiltol ambulot." Earrings, nose, and finder rings, all out of shells, which they call kabón. Kabón is a generic word for wealth. The man or woman with the longest string of kabón, is the most important person in the village; it is equivalent to the family diamonds of our own aristocracy. An ample necklace of real kabón takes a life-time to make, and these children of the Coral Sea regard our Brummagem moulded glass beads (coloured), as of equal value. This is the solution of the small bead mystery, which, in all probability, will be a mystery for some time yet, but may not last quite so long as some mysteries of less importance to the families of men, which hold them in as deep a spell and give as deep a tone, and tint to their lives.

From New Ireland we made a rapid run to Melapheelee, Melaleff, and Maleur, known on the charts as the Khaan Group. From these Islands we obtained, on two visits, forty-five men and women. We could easily have doubled the number but that women were refused. There was no difficulty whatever in obtaining the men brought away. Some sold themselves, and gave the proceeds to their kingsfolk and acquaintance. In other cases the "king" got a portion of the barter gauds for himself. The "king" on more than one island was not at all a bad looking scoundrel. He seemed to have absolute command over the lives of the natives; he orders this man to go, and he goes: this other to stay, and he remains; otherwise they pay their king no respect; he paddles his own canoe, catches his own fish, and takes his place like the rest in a canoe of twenty, and works as a common man when any common work is done

Limited as the authority of the king or chief is, it has a marked effect on the life and conduct of the natives, for they learn obedience, and readily fall into any rule or regulation under which they may come on board ship, or on a plantation.

I am morally persuaded that the great attraction which brings the Islanders to Queensland is, that they may carry back muskets and gunpowder. They come, as I have said, with readiness, and are contented to come, but they have no idea of the duration of time; they cannot realise the meaning of three years or three yams, as applied to a space of time; they have no memory, not even so much as the domestic dog, and you can only impress their minds by the same or similar means. As for understanding, a "contract" printed on paper, the thing is simply a solemn farce.

On our way from New Ireland to Melapheelee, we spoke an American whaler, and made a very near acquaintance with a sperm whale, whose leviathian-bevelled sides were sixty feet in length; and I could not help feeling jealous for Queensland, that a traffic so