THE QUEENSLAND LABOR TRADE. 229 
some connection with the labor trade, to wrongs done to natives in 
Queensland, to judicial punishment for crime committed, to the 
abduction or the recruiting of a man’s relations, to their elas or 
prolonged absences away from home and in the white man’s country. 
In addition to these a desire to gain glory and reputation, the death of 
a chief or of some favorite child, any one of these may be the motive 
that leads to an attack upon a white man; many sudden and seemingly 
unprovoked attacks on a labor vessel’s boats were caused by the mere 
fact of their recruiting women. 
Bishop Patteson was quite of the opinion that Melanesian natives 
as a general rule would respect whites and would not treacherously 
make attacks on them, but allowances have to be made for the require- 
ments of the Heathen superstition and for the peculiar workings of the 
native mind and to the feelings of revenge. But Melanesians generally 
give short shrift to shipwrecked people and to strangers who come among 
them in a helpless plight. In 1867 a crew of English sailors from a 
whaleboat landed at Maanaoba, an island on the northeast coast of 
Malaita. They had deserted from their ship in the Kingsmill Islands 
and had been drifting for weeks. Only one of the crew, a boy named 
Renton, was allowed to survive; the rest were killed. A chief called 
Kabau saved Renton and took him across to the mainland, where he 
lived foreight years. Ships passed inthe interval, but he could not com- 
municate with them; however, a labor vessel, the Bobtail Nag, anchored 
near and he was able to send off to her a message scrawled on a board, 
afragment ofacanoe. This piece of wood is preserved in the ein 
Museum. Large presents were given and Renton was rescued. 
The accusation of treachery so often brought against Melanesians 
has a certain amount of foundation from our point of view. Attacks 
have been made by natives on white men merely to satisfy a blood lust 
or for purposes of robbery, as in the case of the massacre on board of the 
Young Dick at Singerango, Malaita; but it is indisputable that the 
white man’s behavior to natives in Melanesia has tended to cause an 
atmosphere of distrust and dislike, and in most cases is at the bottom 
of every attack by the natives. The man Rade, who chopped the 
recruiter of the Young Dick at Mapo, southeast Malaita, is reported to 
have done so with a view to killing him in revenge for the death of the 
Mapo chief in Fiji, but Rade informed me that the man was making 
indecent proposals to women; possibly both versions of the matter are 
correct. ‘The massacre of the crew of the Dancing Wave, in Florida, in 
1876, was probably caused by a feeling of anger on the part of natives 
who had been sent home without any payment of their wages, owing to 
the estate on which they were working having passed into the hands of 
mortgagees. When due regard is had to the circumstances connected 
with the inception of the trade, one can not wonder at the amount of 
bloodshed and crime which it produced. 
