he home, being transferred
elsewhere."

[14] Come-a-thousand.

[15] The German company, from which we got our black boy Arick, owns
and cultivates many thousands of acres in Samoa, and keeps at least a
thousand black people to work on its plantations. Two schooners are
always busy in bringing fresh batches to Samoa, and in taking home to
their own islands the men who have worked out their three years' term
of labour. This traffic in human beings is called the "labour trade,"
and is the life's blood, not only of the great German company, but of
all the planters in Fiji, Queensland, New Caledonia, German New
Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and the New Hebrides. The difference
between the labour trade, as it is now carried on under Government
supervision, and the slave trade is a great one, but not great enough
to please sensitive people. In Samoa the missionaries are not allowed
by the company to teach these poor savages religion, or to do
anything to civilise them and raise them from their monkey-like
ignorance. But in other respects the company is not a bad master, and
treats its people pretty well. The system, however, is one that
cannot be defended and must sooner or later be suppressed.--[L.O.]

[16] When Arick left us and went back to the German company, he had
grown so fat and strong and intelligent that they deemed he was made
for better things than for cotton-picking or plantation work, and
handed him over to their surveyor, who needed a man to help him. I
used often to meet him after this, tripping at his master's heels
with the theodolite, or scampering about with tapes and chains like a
kitten with a spool of thread. He did not look then as though he were
destined to die of a broken heart, though that was his end not so
many months afterward. The plantation manager told me that Arick and
a New Ireland boy went crazy with home-sickness, and died in the
hospital together.--[L.O.]

[17] "Bullamacow" is a word that always amuses the visitor to Samoa.
When the first pair of cattle was brought to the islands and the
natives asked the missionaries what they must call these strange
creatures, they were told that the English name was a "bull and a
cow." But the Samoans thought that "a bull and a cow" was the name of
each of the animals, and they soon corrupted the English words into