THE QUEENSLAND LABOR TRADE. 219 
The labor trade may be summed up as having had three stages of 
development: (1) open kidnapping; (2) recruiting under conditions 
somewhat improved; (3) legitimate recruiting. Vessels of various 
sorts had been sailing in the Melanesian islands from about 1840— 
sandalwood traders, whalers, béche-de-mer curers. Of these the 
whalers had perhaps been the least unsatisfactory, in that they at any 
rate did not murder the natives, though they certainly left terrible 
diseases behind them. ‘The crews of two ships engaged in the sandal- 
wood trade in 1842 shot down 26 men in one of the southern New 
Hebrides and suffocated others with smoke in a cave. 
The regular and systematic exploitation of Melanesians as eBaRers 
in Queensland and Fiji did not begin before 1866-67. In the latter 
year Bishop Patteson wrote: 
“Reports are rife of a semi-legalized slave-trading between the South 
Sea Islands and New Caledonia and Fiji. I am told that the government 
sanctions natives being brought upon agreement to work for pay, etc., and 
passage home in two years. We know the impossibility of making contracts 
with New Hebrides or Solomon Island natives. It is a mere sham, an 
evasion of some law passed, I dare say, without any dishonorable intention 
to procure colonial labor. I saw a letter in a Sydney paper which spoke 
strongly and properly of the necessity of the most stringent rules to pre- 
vent the white settlers from injuring the colored mer.” 
In 1868 Bishop Patteson speaks of the recruiting from Tanna for 
Fiji and expresses his fears that natives were being taken under false 
pretences owing to the impossibility of the recruiters understanding 
the Tanna language, while to talk of making a contract with them was 
absurd. 
In 1869 it was found that the Nouméa and Fiji vessels were using 
the Bishop’s name in the Banks Group in order to entice people on 
board, pretending that they were his emissaries and accounting for 
his absence by saying that his ship had been wrecked, or that he had 
broken his leg, or had gone to England and had sent them to fetch 
natives to him. As yet no force had been used, but the people feared 
the recruiters. Certain English-speaking natives were employed as 
recruiting agents, and some of these had learned their English with 
the Bishop. In regard to this the Bishop wrote: 
“In most places where any of our young people happened to be on shore, 
they warned their companions against these men, but not always with 
success. This is a sad business, and very discreditable to the persons 
employed in it, for they must know that they can not control the masters 
of the vessels engaged in the trade. ‘They may pass laws as to the treatment 
the natives are to receive on the plantations, but they know that the whole 
thing is dishonest. The natives don’t intend or know anything about any 
service or labor; they don’t know that they will have to work hard. They 
are brought away under false pretences, else why tell lies to induce them to 
go on board? I dare say that many young fellows go on board without 
