185 



CHAPTER XII. 



Labourers — Markets for Produce — Land 

 Titles — Kinds of Native Produce. 



Labourers, for working plantations in Fiji, are 

 mostly obtained from the New Hebrides, Solomon 

 Islands, &c. They are engaged for three years. Their 

 wages, exclusive of food, clothes, passage to and fro, 

 is 3/. per annum ; including everything they will each 

 cost the employer about 12/. per annum. At the 

 expiration of the engagement (three years), they are 

 returned to their homes in the islands with well 

 filled boxes of trade to show themselves and their 

 goods to their friends. They prefer payment in kind 

 to money. They are strong hardy labourers, but 

 utter savages when they land in Fiji. They have to 

 be taught everything, and require a good deal of 

 breaking in before they are useful. They are ex- 

 tremely lazy ; and the expense of overseeing them is 

 very great ; besides, their work is generally badly 

 done. If the supply of these labourers is unlimited, 

 as asserted, they seem to have an unwillingness to go 

 to Fiji, where the demand for them cannot be met. 

 They prefer going to Queensland, where they get 

 double the wages which they receive in Fiji. But 

 money is said to be of no consideration to them, as 

 they do not understand its value. In emigrating 

 they are moved by what to a European would be a 

 whim or notion. There may be some truth in this ; 

 but on comparing the quantity of goods which one 

 of them takes from Queensland, with those which 



