THE QUEENSLAND LABOR TRADE. 227 
Stories are told of men of Malaita wrapping up old pin-fire rifle 
cartridges in a bamboo, binding the whole with string, and exploding 
the cartridge by striking the pin with a stone or a billet of wood. It 
had got to such a pass on Malaita in later years that for a man to be 
without a rifle was certain death; every able-bodied man carried a gun. 
Ramofolo, the chief of Fuaga, an artificial islet by Ataa Cove, Malaita, 
had a Winchester which he informed me he had taken from a bush 
chief after he had stalked and killed him in order to obtain it. At 
Su‘u Malou, near Aio, on the east coast of Malaita, we landed onceinthe 
presence of a great crowd of armed men, and it was only after they had 
searched our boat and seen for themselves that there was no weapon 
on board that they believed our statement that we did not carry fire- 
arms. ‘Their test of being a man was the possession of a rifle. 
Queensland was a veritable refuge for wrong-doers in the islands; 
murderers, sorcerers, adulterers, wife-stealers, thieves, discontented 
wives, rebellious children, all hailed the coming of a labor-vessel as a 
chance to be freed from the likelihood of punishment or from the irk- 
someness of home restrictions. However, even a residence of 30 years 
did not always avail to protect against home vengeance for wrong- 
doing, either actual or imaginary, as was seen in the case of Amasia of 
Qai, Malaita, who was shot on a charge (probably false) of witchcraft 
committed many long years before. Amasia was quite the Fijian 
when he returned; he wore his hair and his su/u in the Fijian style and 
had notices posted up in his house in Fijian forbidding people to eat 
areca nut there, and none of the people of the place could read. One 
used to hear of cases where men were landed elsewhere than at their own 
homes, owing to a fear of reprisals for some act of wrong-doing which 
they had committed and which had led to their recruiting. In due 
time the news of their return reached their home and their friends 
paid them a visit which would result in a request that they return home, 
and all would be overlooked. If the man were persuaded he and the 
woman he had stolen would return with the party and probably the 
two would be murdered on the road or at the landing-place. 
The acquiring of possessions abroad seldom proved of any benefit 
to the native on his return. The native law everywhere in the Pacific 
is that on returning a voyager shares with his neighbors all that he has 
acquired. ‘This is absolutely de rigueur and the man quite expects it 
and thinks it natural, and when his turn comes will claim a share 
in someone else’s things. In Sa‘a a return was not allowed to open 
his boxes till the chief gave him permission; then so much was stipulated 
as the chief’s share and had to be given before any apportioning was 
done. In one case the chief claimed the boxes after they were emptied. 
The trade in later years was carried on under respectable conditions, 
and might seem to have justified the claims of those who extolled it 
as a great instrument of moral and physical good to the natives. The 
laborers were employed under good conditions in Queensland, were well 
