fleet, who had travelled and seen the world and returned to their homes the envied possessors of tangible riches in the form of European wares. Indeed, many of the first fleet boys, like Byron's "restless spirit," soon got "sated of home," and took the first opportunity of returning to the plantations.
On the plantations themselves, I had many opportunities of observing the gangs of field labourers, and, in my opinion, they were fairly happy and contented, and took a pride in their work. They even imbibed some Christianity, no doubt of a crude order, suited to their comprehension. On this point the evidence of the Rev. A. C. Smith, Convener of the Presbyterian Foreign Missions Committee, is significant, and I should suppose him to be a sufficiently respectable and responsible authority.
As regards recruiting and its abuses, the reader who desires to pursue the subject further may profitably peruse the whole of the literature referred to in the footnote, and especially (contra) Palmer's Kidnapping in the South Seas, and Duffield's Labour Traffic (also Moresby, as in the two preceding chapters), and (pro) Wawn's The South Sea Islanders and the Queensland Labour Trade. This Captain was engaged in recruiting for practically the whole of the period during which it was practised. He declares emphatically that he never engaged in kidnapping and never saw it, but suspected that some other parties might have been guilty. He depicts the growing difficulties of the traffic under fresh enactments—one of Duffield's "points"—for instance that, whereas others might send out punitory expeditions to avenge island murders, it became at length "a hanging matter" for the recruiter to defend himself against treacherous attacks by natives, as in the words of the old adage, "one man may steal a horse while another is hanged for looking over a wall." The gist of Wawn's argument is summed up in his dedication, which is as follows:
"To the Sugar Planters of Queensland, who have spent the best years of their lives and millions of money in developing an Industry which represents not less than Ninety per cent, of the total Agricultural value of that Colony; and which at one time bade fair to eclipse even the great Pastoral and Mining Industries in wealth and importance: To those Bold Pioneers who have opened up the rich pastoral districts along the Coast, and have been the means of settling thousands of Europeans on the Land; and who have done more towards the practical civilisation of the Cannibal and the Savage than all the well-intentioned but narrow-minded enthusiasts of the Southern Pacific: To those Good Men and True who, after a quarter of a Century of hard work and doubtful prosperity, have been basely betrayed and unscrupulously sacrificed to the greed of the political place-hunter and the howling ignorance which follows in his train I dedicate this work, with much sympathy and respect."
In 1885 it was decreed that within five years all Polynesians should be returned to their homes and that from the passing of the Act no more should be landed in Queensland. Repatriation commenced forthwith, but it was complicated, embittered and delayed by a number of circumstances, chief among which was the
