Following the Equator - Mark Twain (the reading list .txt) 📗

way to the trader, who gives a trifle for it; or the inside is taken
out, the wheels strung on a thread and hung round the neck. Knives,
axes, calico, and handkerchiefs are divided among friends, and there
is hardly one of these apiece. The boxes, the keys often lost on
the road home, can be bought for 2s. 6d. They are to be seen
rotting outside in almost any shore village on Tanna. (I speak of
what I have seen.) A returned Kanaka has been furiously angry with
me because I would not buy his trousers, which he declared were just
my fit. He sold them afterwards to one of my Aniwan teachers for
9d. worth of tobaccoa pair of trousers that probably cost him 8s.
or 10s. in Queensland. A coat or shirt is handy for cold weather.
The white handkerchiefs, the 'senet' (perfumery), the umbrella, and
perhaps the hat, are kept. The boots have to take their chance, if
they do not happen to fit the copra trader. 'Senet' on the hair,
streaks of paint on the face, a dirty white handkerchief round the
neck, strips of turtle shell in the ears, a belt, a sheath and
knife, and an umbrella constitute the rig of returned Kanaka at home
the day after landing."

A hat, an umbrella, a belt, a neckerchief. Otherwise stark naked. All in a day the hard-earned "civilization" has melted away to this. And even these perishable things must presently go. Indeed, there is but a single detail of his civilization that can be depended on to stay by him: according to the missionary, he has learned to swear. This is art, and art is long, as the poet says.

In all countries the laws throw light upon the past. The Queensland law for the regulation of the Labor Traffic is a confession. It is a confession that the evils charged by the missionaries upon the traffic had existed in the past, and that they still existed when the law was made. The missionaries make a further charge: that the law is evaded by the recruiters, and that the Government Agent sometimes helps them to do it. Regulation 31 reveals two things: that sometimes a young fool of a recruit gets his senses back, after being persuaded to sign away his liberty for three years, and dearly wants to get out of the engagement and stay at home with his own people; and that threats, intimidation, and force are used to keep him on board the recruiting-ship, and to hold him to his contract. Regulation 31 forbids these coercions. The law requires that he shall be allowed to go free; and another clause of it requires the recruiter to set him ashoreper boat, because of the prevalence of sharks. Testimony from Rev. Mr. Gray:

"There are 'wrinkles' for taking the penitent Kanaka. My first
experience of the Traffic was a case of this kind in 1884. A vessel
anchored just out of sight of our station, word was brought to me
that some boys were stolen, and the relatives wished me to go and
get them back. The facts were, as I found, that six boys had
recruited, had rushed into the boat, the Government Agent informed
me. They had all 'signed'; and, said the Government Agent, 'on
board they shall remain.' I was assured that the six boys were of
age and willing to go. Yet on getting ready to leave the ship I
found four of the lads ready to come ashore in the boat! This I
forbade. One of them jumped into the water and persisted in coming
ashore in my boat. When appealed to, the Government Agent suggested
that we go and leave him to be picked up by the ship's boat, a
quarter mile distant at the time!"

The law and the missionaries feel for the repentant recruitand properly, one may be permitted to think, for he is only a youth and ignorant and persuadable to his hurtbut sympathy for him is not kept in stock by the recruiter. Rev. Mr. Gray says:

"A captain many years in the traffic explained to me how a penitent
could betaken. 'When a boy jumps overboard we just take a boat and
pull ahead of him, then lie between him and the shore. If he has
not tired himself swimming, and passes the boat, keep on heading him
in this way. The dodge rarely fails. The boy generally tires of
swimming, gets into the boat of his own accord, and goes quietly on
board."

Yes, exhaustion is likely to make a boy quiet. If the distressed boy had been the speaker's son, and the captors savages, the speaker would have been surprised to see how differently the thing looked from the new point of view; however, it is not our custom to put ourselves in the other person's place. Somehow there is something pathetic about that disappointed young savage's resignation. I must explain, here, that in the traffic dialect, "boy" does not always mean boy; it means a youth above sixteen years of age. That is by Queensland law the age of consent, though it is held that recruiters allow themselves some latitude in guessing at ages.

Captain Wawn of the free spirit chafes under the annoyance of "cast-iron regulations." They and the missionaries have poisoned his life. He grieves for the good old days, vanished to come no more. See him weep; hear him cuss between the lines!

"For a long time we were allowed to apprehend and detain all
deserters who had signed the agreement on board ship, but the
'cast-iron' regulations of the Act of 1884 put a stop to that,
allowing the Kanaka to sign the agreement for three years' service,
travel about in the ship in receipt of the regular rations, cadge
all he could, and leave when he thought fit, so long as he did not
extend his pleasure trip to Queensland."

Rev. Mr. Gray calls this same restrictive cast-iron law a "farce." "There is as much cruelty and injustice done to natives by acts that are legal as by deeds unlawful. The regulations that exist are unjust and inadequateunjust and inadequate they must ever be." He furnishes his reasons for his position, but they are too long for reproduction here.

However, if the most a Kanaka advantages himself by a three-years course in civilization in Queensland, is a necklace and an umbrella and a showy imperfection in the art of swearing, it must be that all the profit of the traffic goes to the white man. This could be twisted into a plausible argument that the traffic ought to be squarely abolished.

However, there is reason for hope that that can be left alone to achieve itself. It is claimed that the traffic will depopulate its sources of supply within the next twenty or thirty years. Queensland is a very healthy place for white peopledeath-rate 12 in 1,000 of the population but the Kanaka death-rate is away above that. The vital statistics for 1893 place it at 52; for 1894 (Mackay district), 68. The first six months of the Kanaka's exile are peculiarly perilous for him because of the rigors of the new climate. The death-rate among the new men has reached as high as 180 in the 1,000. In the Kanaka's native home his death-rate is 12 in time of peace, and 15 in time of war. Thus exile to Queenslandwith the opportunity to acquire civilization, an umbrella, and a pretty poor quality of profanityis twelve times as deadly for him as war. Common Christian charity, common humanity, does seem to require, not only that these people be returned to their homes, but that war, pestilence, and famine be introduced among them for their preservation.

Concerning these Pacific isles and their peoples an eloquent prophet spoke long years agofive and fifty years ago. In fact, he spoke a little too early. Prophecy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks. This prophet was the Right Rev. M. Russell, LL.D., D.C.L., of Edinburgh:

"Is the tide of civilization to roll only to the foot of the Rocky
Mountains, and is the sun of knowledge to set at last in the waves
of the Pacific? No; the mighty day of four thousand years is
drawing to its close; the sun of humanity has performed its destined
course; but long ere its setting rays are extinguished in the west,
its ascending beams have glittered on the isles of the eastern seas
. . . . And now we see the race of Japhet setting forth to
people the isles, and the seeds of another Europe and a second
England sown in the regions of the sun. But mark the words of the
prophecy: 'He shall dwell in the tents of Shem, and Canaan shall be
his servant.' It is not said Canaan shall be his slave. To the
Anglo-Saxon race is given the scepter of the globe, but there is not
given either the lash of the slave-driver or the rack of the
executioner. The East will not be stained with the same atrocities
as the West; the frightful gangrene of an enthralled race is not to
mar the destinies of the family of Japhet in the Oriental world;
humanizing, not destroying, as they advance; uniting with, not
enslaving, the inhabitants with whom they dwell, the British race
may," etc., etc.

And he closes his vision with an invocation from Thomson: