w
up the plantation centres of Mele, Port Havannah, Port Sandwich, Epi
and the Segond Channel. Many plantations were created by the "Societe
Francaise des Nouvelles Hebrides," but owing to bad management these
have never yet brought any returns.

Thus, to the alcohol peril was added another danger to the
natives,--work on the plantations. They were kidnapped, overworked,
ill-fed; it was slavery in its worst shape, and the treatment of the
hands is best illustrated by the mortality which, in some places,
reached 44 per cent. per annum. In those days natives were plentiful
and labour easy to get, and nobody worried about the future; so the
ruin of the race began, and to-day their number hardly suffices for
the needs of the planters.

Then the slave-trade to Queensland, Fiji, even South America began,
so that the population, relatively small from the first, decreased
alarmingly, all the more so as they were decimated by dysentery,
measles, tuberculosis and other diseases.

Against all these harmful influences the missions, unsupported as they
were by any authority, could only fight by protests in the civilized
countries; these proved effectual at last, so that the missions deserve
great credit for having preserved the native race. Yet it cannot be
said that they have restored its vitality, except in Tanna. It seems
as if the system of imbibing the native with so much European culture,
and yet separating him from the whites and regulated labour, had been
noxious to the race, for nearly everywhere the Christianized natives
die out just as fast as the heathen population.

About ten years after the French, the English began planting, and
to-day nearly all arable land along the coast is cultivated. The
English suffer much less from lack of labour, which is doubtless owing
to their more humane and just treatment of the hands. In the first
place, they usually come from better stock than the French, and,
secondly, they are strictly controlled by the Government, whereas
the French Government does not even attempt to enforce its own laws.

There is now some question of importing Indian coolies; the great
expense this would entail would be a just punishment for the
short-sighted cruelty with which the most valuable product of the
islands--their population--has been destroyed. Only by compelling
each native to work for a definite period could a sufficient amount
of labour be produced to-day; but such a system, while extremely
b