232 THE QUEENSLAND LABOR TRADE. 
been accustomed for years to a regular diet of beef and bread or 
biscuit and sweet potatoes three times a day, the haphazard style of 
feeding which the islanders follow was certain to prove upsetting. 
If work was to be done in Queensland style, then a great deal more food 
must be forthcoming; of yams and taro for planting there never 1s 
an abundance, and though a man might have returned with a good 
round sum in gold, yet this would profit him but little if he wanted to 
use it to give himself a start in buying stuff to plant. ‘The large colony 
of returns at Fiu on Malaita had the greatest difficulty for years to get 
enough food to supply their bodily needs. 
Sewing-machines and gramophones might have been bought up 
cheaply a week or two after the returns had landed. In some cases 
sewing-machines were actually abandoned on the beach, for no one 
cared to carry them slung on a pole into the interior over razor-back 
ridges and up the bed of swollen mountain torrents. Brown boots 
and bowler hats and starched shirts and collars and ties were seen 
adorning the persons of all and sundry in the neighborhood when the 
trade boxes of the returns had been opened. Babies that were brought 
ashore in all the glory of woolen socks and bonnets and white clothes 
were rolling about naked by nightfall. 
The pure Heathen amongst the returns proved generally a menace 
to their neighborhoods by opening up old feuds and awakening feelings 
of malice and wickedness. Some of them in fact rejoiced in their 
reputation as “bad fellow alonga Queensland”’ and boasted of their 
proficiency in evil ways and stated their determination to cause trouble. 
The Christians among them, in proportion to their zeal and earnest- 
ness, aided the mission work, but in many cases they felt completely 
at sea, owing to their having learned their Christianity through the 
medium of English and not through their own tongue, and unless they 
were sincere and well instructed, their tendency was to hold aloof 
or gradually to absent themselves from the services of the Church. 
On the whole it may be said that the results of the repatriation have 
caused unrest and lawlessness and increased difficulty in carrying on 
any work whatever. ‘The returns expected to buy goods in the traders’ 
stores at Queensland prices; they demanded Queensland rates of pay, 
and both traders and missionaries were faced with labor troubles, and 
crude socialistic ideas circulated freely everywhere. In fine, while 
as a result of the repatriation, but few murders, comparatively speaking, 
were committed and but little suffering or hardship was entailed, yet 
the main result was unrest and disturbance, difficulty and confusion. 
