206 Letter XVI, 
I. With the exception of those who have been abroad be- 
fore, the natives, as a rule, do not and cannot understand what 
they are going away for, when they leave their islands for three 
years’ service on a foreign plantation. 
I have been led to this’ conclusion by the consideration of 
the very simple fact that there are no persons who can ex- 
plain the terms of a contract to them. For firstly, the natives 
of the New Hebrides—as I have stated before—speak at least 
twenty different languages. Secondly, in very few cases can 
any of them understand two of these languages ; and no white 
man—with the exception of the missionaries and other three 
men, I believe—can speak any one of them. Thirdly, the na- 
tives have no words in their own language to express years, 
wages, &c. Fourthly, the few that know any broken English 
would find their knowledge of no use to them in this particular 
matter. And fifthly, I am quite convinced that, even although 
they had a more extended knowledge of the words, they 
could not form the slightest conception of what three years’ 
steady labour under plantation laws meant. 
Of what use, under such circumstances, I would like to 
know, are Queensland enactments ? Of what use is it to enact 
that the natives must comprehend the nature of the transaction 
before leaving the island or entering the plantation? Of what 
use is it to enact that there must be interpreters and agents in 
the labour vessels? If the Queensland Government were to 
make enactments steadily for the next hundred years at the 
rate of twenty per diem, do you think that they would produce 
one single interpreter capable of speaking the New Hebridean 
languages, or enable the poor, stupid, bewildered savage to 
comprehend what three years’ absence from home means, 
when he has never been a couple of miles from his hut all his 
life long, or enable him to comprehend what three years’ steady 
labour means, when his hardest work hitherto has been carry- 
