THE QUEENSLAND LABOR TRADE. 
The first laborers imported into Queensland from the Pacific Islands 
arrived there in the year 1864. They were imported by Captain 
Towns, of Brisbane, for work on the cotton plantations. In 1847 
certain pastoralists of New South Wales had requisitioned ships to 
procure natives from the islands for employment as shepherds and 
drovers. [wo ships were employed, the brig Portania and the schooner 
Velocity, and their object was described as “trading for cannibals,” 
and when the so-called cannibals could not be obtained by fair means 
they were to be taken by force. These two ships called first at the 
Loyalties and obtained 30 men, who were far from being cannibals 
and who certainly had not the least idea of the agreement under which 
they were supposed to serve, but thought they were out on a pleasure 
trip to see the world. They next procured men from the Gilberts and 
Kingsmills and then made for Rotuma, where the Loyalty Islanders 
absconded. An affray followed, during which the whites fired on the 
natives, and one native was killed and two whites. Thus early was 
that traffic begun which was to lead to the death of so many men, 
both white and brown. ’ 
In 1867 there were taken to Queensland, for a period of three years, 
382 natives, but only 78 of them returned. From this year till the 
end of 1890 there was a constant stream of native laborers flowing to 
Queensland from the islands. ‘Then for a few months the trade ceased, 
owing to legislation passed in 1885, but it was revived in the following 
year for a period of ten years. In 1901 provision was made for its 
complete suppression and all the natives were ordered to be deported 
by December 1906. 
The trade has generally been called the “Polynesian labor trade” 
or the ‘Pacific Islands labor trade,’’ and the laborers have been 
known as Polynesians or Kanakas, or occasionally as Papuans, but 
never once by their real name of Melanesians. The western Pacific 
has suffered from the fact of its late development and from the inhos- 
pitable character of its natives. The eastern Pacific, Polynesia 
proper, was well known to white people early in the nineteenth century 
and the hospitality of its natives was proverbial, whereas New Guinea 
and the islands of Melanesia, though close to Australia, long remained 
unexplored and unknown, the ferocity of the people being in a measure 
responsible for this. Accordingly everything was measured in white 
men’s minds by Polynesia. Thus Dr. Codrington had a long fight to 
gain a hearing for the Melanesian languages and to convince people 
that they were real independent languages and not mere offshoots of 
Maori on the one side or of Samoan on the other. In effect he has 
triumphantly proved that Melanesian languages are really older than 
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