the cultivation of copra—the labour traffic; when slavery really existed, and the traffic in natives of to-day.
copra is the staple industry of the new hebrides, as they say in the geography books, but the output of it is about as reliable as the rainfall, for the supply depends not, as might be expected, on the demand, but on the whim of the natives; if they feel industrious, or are hard pressed for tobacco and provisions, they will go into the bush and bring in a sufficient quantity to meet their needs; but as a rule they will only collect it from their own particular trees near their village and will not go far afield, where they could get double the amount for half the labour.
cocoa-nut palms grow in patches all over the islands, and particularly along the coast, and they make a charming picture viewed from the sea, with their swaying trunks, and the quaint cluster of leaves at the top: storm-tossed as they are, owing to {184} being top-heavy, they all lean in one direction, the way the wind blows strongest, and give the islands a wild appearance. the rustle of their leaves as one walks beneath them makes a strange noise, and the falling of the nuts on a windy day is a thing one has to be careful to avoid, as a good-sized nut would seriously injure, if not kill, the person on whom it fell.
i have seen a natural grove of these trees nearly a mile long; the dark stems and sage-green leaves against a blue sky, a bright yellow road underneath which scintillated in the sun, and at its far end was all blurred by the heat which rose as heat does from a stove making everything quiver, presenting a beautiful picture not easily forgotten.
all along the coast of malekula and tanna the cocoa-nuts grow in abundance. at samari, new guinea, there is one giant tree standing by two others and away from the rest, the height of which has been the means of many a sovereign changing hands. for the first thing a new chum, fresh trader, or captain is asked is to guess its height, and few ever guess it correctly, for a more deceptive-looking tree was never born. it grows just behind the village and towers over everything, and is a landmark that guides many a wanderer by land and sea.
the island of samari, british new guinea
{185}
the copra trade is of course carried on all over these and the adjoining islands, but one sees more of it going on in the new hebrides than in the solomons or new guinea.
copra is the white of the cocoa-nut and is not eaten by the natives at all; all they do with the nuts is to drink the milk and use the fibre. nearly everything out there is made either of the leaves or fibre, and even the trunks of the tree come in very handy for manufacturing articles. when gathering copra the natives scale the trees to get at the nuts, and having collected a good supply they sit down, break them open, and lay them out to dry in the sun.
the oil of the cocoa-nut is chiefly made in england and america, and the only process the nut goes through in the islands is that of drying. when the nuts have been collected they are split in halves very carefully with an axe, and then the halves are laid out in the sun. very soon the heat loosens the kernel, which comes away and is then broken up into pieces. it is again put in the sun on mats, where it remains until it is thoroughly dried; then it is collected in sacks and sold by weight. some traders, however, go in for making cocoa-nut oil, but not many, and if they do, a different process {186} has to be gone through. the nut, instead of being split open, has the husk cracked on a sharp pointed stake, it is then torn off and the inside split in two. next the kernel is scraped out on an iron scraper, which is attached to a stool on which the native squats during the operation, and the white part drops from the scraper into a vessel underneath, and is then put into a cask to rot, after which it is pounded and made into a pulp and placed at the end of a tilted trough—a hollowed-out log or old canoe—until all the oil runs out of it. this oil is then strained and put into casks.
the stench of a copra boat is proverbial, and this, without the copra bugs, is enough to make one keep clear of them as much as possible. each trader has his copra shed and drying ground, and when burns philp’s trading boats call, the sacks of copra are taken out by the resident trader’s “boys” and again sold, this time to be shipped home for further handling. when the oil is extracted in england, nearly double the quantity is obtained from the same amount of nuts, and the refuse is made into cakes for cattle.
a trader receiving cocoa-nuts, aoba, new hebrides
when the trading steamers come it is quite an event in the monotonous life of many of the small traders. mails and provisions are sought with an {187} eagerness that is delightful, for when a man has talked nothing but native languages, and seen nothing but black men for weeks, these visits are naturally the important event, and a newspaper or two, if such luxuries can be found, no matter how old, are seized on by traders as if they were gold.
copra is practically the only industry that flourishes without artificial aid. even that is now being helped along, as the natives see there is money in it, and some of the thrifty chiefs are making their men plant the trees and look after them.
traders and settlers now have plantations of coffee, bananas, and a few other profitable products, as i have already mentioned, and this industry is beginning to be successful. taros and yams are cultivated by the natives, and require a good deal of attention, and so nearly all the work is left to the women. yams vary from about the size of a small marrow to a much larger affair. the “chief’s yam” is pale pink in colour, and the ordinary ones are like a white mealy potato. in taste they resemble a cross between an artichoke and a potato. nearly all the villages possess a yam-house, which is a sort of platform made of bamboo with a thatched roof over it; the yams are hung from the top or lie on the platform to dry. {188}
there is a kind of arrowroot which grows wild in the bush, besides a few other native vegetables, but the latter are not of much account unless they are cultivated.
the knowledge of agriculture learned by some of the natives who have returned from queensland comes in useful. sometimes evidences of it are to be seen here and there, but it is a lamentable fact that they do not make better use of their opportunities.
whilst in queensland they work well, especially the women, and nowadays there is no difficulty experienced in getting labour from these islands. when the labour boat calls, the recruiting agent is soon able to fill his vacancies, and the men he brings back laden with goods make an excellent bait for others.
when engaging the natives a small quantity of money in advance is, i believe, paid to them as an inducement to go, and then they sign on for two, three, or more years to work at the queensland sugar refining company’s places at bundaberg, mackay, and elsewhere on the queensland coast.
when there, they live chiefly in compounds, and seem to enjoy the change of life. their chief duties are to cut the sugar-cane, stack it, and put {189} it on the trolleys, which carry it to the refinery works.
copra boys off to the shore, new hebrides
the tremendous heat of these fields is beyond description, owing to the number of the canes.
many of the natives who have gone for a term of three years become so fond of the life that they remain on for much longer periods. many have been known to petition the queensland government to be allowed to remain in the country altogether. they mix up with natives from all the islands, and intermarry in quite a friendly way. if by chance a native of malekula happened to be left, on his return, in the solomon islands by mistake, he would probably be made into mincemeat: but abroad they get on very well together.
the labour trade in new guinea was stopped some years ago, partly by governor macgregor, and partly through the natives’ objection to work. in this trait they resemble the fijians, and consider work is a form of slavery and so beneath them.
there is very little real affection between the natives, they part from one another when going to queensland with hardly any show of regret. sometimes when a woman is going her companions cry, but such scenes are exceptional.
on their return, however, things are very {190} different, for they come laden with new and interesting goods and money.
the chief immediately appropriates all the best of these articles, and by so doing confers a great honour on the home-comer. the returned one’s relatives then swarm round him, and each takes what he or she fancies; and the welcoming party, consisting of fellow-tribesmen, receive their little lot for having welcomed the returned one home. the remainder of the goods are taken to their owner’s shed, where they probably remain a few days. other claimants soon come forward, so that in less than a week the hut is empty of all save the worker and his three years’ experience.
in the old days the labour traffic, or “black birding” as it was called, was one of the most disgraceful trades ever carried on by british subjects. so bad did it finally get that the government stepped in, and warships were kept on the lookout for these slave-traders, and eventually, after a lengthy period and, strange to say, much opposition, the labour traffic was made into an honest business.
the “blackbirders.” the labour trade in the solomons
the method adopted by the early kidnappers was to fit out a schooner in australia in much the same way as a slave-boat, with a large hold arranged with tiers of platforms, on which the natives slept {191} at night. the owners would start out, having secured orders from the queensland sugar-planters for so many natives at so much per head, and with these signed orders they would visit the islands. at first some of them, according to reports, did try persuasion, and even went so far as to barter with the chiefs for a certain number of natives, but if this failed, as it often did, they simply went ashore and carried off every man or woman they could lay hold of, rowed them out to the ship, and then literally pitched them into the hold. others they would entice on board by offering to give them presents, and when once on board they never saw the shore again.
during the commission of inquiry into the ways of these slave-dealers some ghastly facts were brought to light, not only on the part of the dealers, but also of the planters, particularly in fiji where many of the natives were sold. here it came out that two englishmen, who were in the habit of brutally ill-treating the natives, once overstepped the mark by tying a woman to a tree and thrashing her, and afterwards they rubbed the juice of the chili pepper into the wounds. this was quite an ordinary form of punishment; but when they cut the same woman’s toes off, the natives banded {192} themselves together, burned down the whole plantation, and killed the planters’ children. the two planters, sad to relate, escaped.
but those days are passed now, and the planters are very different men, and live their lives in peace and tranquillity, and many of them treat the natives so well that they will do anything for them.
