[Illustration: VICTORIA BRIDGE, BRISBANE.]
The practice of employing these South Sea Islanders, or "Kanakas," as they were called, soon became general, and parts of Queensland had all the appearance of the American plantations, where crowds of dusky figures, decked in the brightest of colours, plied their labours with laughter and with song, among the tall cane brakes or the bursting pods of cotton. The "Kanakas" generally worked for a year or two in the colony, then, having received a bundle of goods--consisting of cloth, knives, hatchets, beads, and so forth, to the value of about £10--they were again conveyed to their palm-clad islands. A system of this kind was apt to give rise to abuses, and it was found that a few of the more unscrupulous planters, not content with the ordinary profits, stooped to the shameful meanness of cheating the poor islander out of his hard-earned reward. They hurried him on board a vessel, and sent after him a parcel containing a few shillings worth of property; then, when he reached his home, he found that all his toil and his years of absence from his friends had procured him only so much trash.
Happily, this was not of very frequent occurrence; but there was another abuse both common and glaring. As the plantations in Queensland increased, they required more labourers than were willing to leave their homes in the South Sea Islands; and, as the captains of vessels were paid by the planters a certain sum of money for every "Kanaka" they brought over, there was a strong temptation to carry off the natives by force, when, by other means, a sufficient number could not be obtained. There were frequent conflicts between the crews of labour vessels and the inhabitants of the islands. The white men burnt the native villages, and carried off crowds of men and women; while, in revenge, the islanders often surprised a vessel and massacred its crew; and in such cases the innocent suffered for the guilty. The sailors often had the baseness to disguise themselves as missionaries, in order the more easily to effect their purpose; and when the true missionaries, suspecting nothing, approached the natives on their errand of good will, they were speared or clubbed to death by the unfortunate islanders. But, as a rule, the "Kanakas" were themselves the sufferers; the English vessels pursued their frail canoes, ran them down, and sank them; then, while struggling in the sea, the men were seized and thrust into the hold, and the hatches were fastened down. When in this dastardly manner a sufficient number had been gathered together, and the dark interior of the ship was filled with a steaming mass of human beings densely huddled together, the captains set sail for Queensland, where they landed those of their living cargoes who had escaped the deadly pestilence which filth and confinement always engendered in such cases.