"labour" for themselves, if they could afford it, and would probably
maltreat them if they dared. It is said the whip is very busy on some of
the plantations; it is said that punitive extra-labour, by which the
thrall's term of service is extended, has grown to be an abuse; and it is
complained that, even where that term is out, much irregularity occurs in
the repatriation of the discharged. To all this I can say nothing, good
or bad. A certain number of the thralls, many of them wild negritos from
the west, have taken to the bush, harbour there in a state partly
bestial, or creep into the back quarters of the town to do a day's
stealthy labour under the nose of their proprietors. Twelve were
arrested one morning in my own boys' kitchen. Farther in the bush, huts,
small patches of cultivation, and smoking ovens, have been found by
hunters. There are still three runaways in the woods of Tutuila, whither
they escaped upon a raft. And the Samoans regard these dark-skinned
rangers with extreme alarm; the fourth refugee in Tutuila was shot down
(as I was told in that island) while carrying off the virgin of a
village; and tales of cannibalism run round the country, and the natives
shudder about the evening fire. For the Samoans are not cannibals, do
not seem to remember when they were, and regard the practice with a
disfavour equal to our own.

The firm is Gulliver among the Lilliputs; and it must not be forgotten,
that while the small, independent traders are fighting for their own
hand, and inflamed with the usual jealousy against corporations, the
Germans are inspired with a sense of the greatness of their affairs and
interests. The thought of the money sunk, the sight of these costly and
beautiful plantations, menaced yearly by the returning forest, and the
responsibility of administering with one hand so many conjunct fortunes,
might well nerve the manager of such a company for desperate and
questionable deeds. Upon this scale, commercial sharpness has an air of