Explore "The Call of the South" by Louis Becke on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
When I was first learning the ropes as a "recruiter" in the Kanaka labour trade, recruiting natives to work on the plantations of Samoa and Fiji, we called at a group of islands called Nisan by the natives, and marked on the chart as the Sir Charles Hardy Islands. I thought it likely that I might obtain a few "recruits," and the captain wanted fresh provisions.
The group lies between the south end of New Ireland and the north end of the great Bougainville Island in the Solomon Archipelago, and consists of six low, well-wooded and fertile islands, enclosed within a barrier reef, forming a noble atoll, almost circular in shape. All the islands are thickly populated at the present day by natives, who are peaceable enough, and engage in _beche-de-mer_ and pearl-shell fishing. Less than forty years back they were notorious cannibals, and very warlike, and never hesitated to attempt to cut off any whaleship or trading vessel that was not well manned and well armed.