Explore "The Call of the South" by Louis Becke on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The _fiat_ has gone forth from the Australian Commonwealth, and the Kanaka labour trade, as far as the Australian Colonies are concerned, has ceased to exist. For, during the month of November, 1906, the Queensland Government began to deport to their various islands in the Solomon and New Hebrides Groups, the last of the Melanesian native labourers employed on the Queensland sugar plantations.
The Kanaka labour traffic, generally termed "black-birding," began about 1863, when sugar and cotton planters found that natives of the South Sea Islands could be secured at a much less cost than Chinese or Indian coolies. The genesis of the traffic was a tragedy, and filled the world with horror.