A.—6

8

Mr. Gibbon,* supercargo of the " Active " states : — I saw the labourers when they arrived. They were in a most wretched condition. I complained to the captain on Mr. Cornwall's behalf. He said he could not help it. The strong men would not come without their families. Many of the natives, when questioned, stated, "We get rice once a week; beans every four days. There are very few breadfruit. We get no fish. We have to work on Sunday; most of the houses were built on Sundays."

Enclosure 2. Mr. Alfred P. Maudslay to Mr. F. Cornwall. Sir,— British Consulate, Apia, 9th May, 1878. I have given careful consideration to the statements made at the inquiry held at Lata on the 23rd April, regarding the condition of the Tapitenca labourers employed by you on that plantation, and I now wish to communicate to you fully the conclusions I have arrived at from what I then saw and heard, and to repeat the directions I gave to you before leaving Saleailua. 2. Before considering the general condition of the labourers, I will deal with the direct charges made against the manager of the estate. 3. That the first charge made in Mr. Hunt's letter which was read to you at Lata is one of brutal cruelty to a woman : as this is said to have occurred on your estate at Magia it must be left uninvestigated for the present. 4. With regard to the woman Kilokilo, the inquiry shows that she ran away from Lata three times, complaining of want of proper food, and that on one occasion her child was found dead in the bush, it having died whilst the woman was on her way from Lata to Saleailua. That on her running away a second time Mr. Moors had the woman lashed to a pole, and carried in that manner from the Saleailua road through the plantation, and then gave her a severe flogging in the presence of all the other labourers. That she ran away a third time, and died a few days after she was brought back. The explanation given by Mr. Moors that the woman was out of her mind does not satisfy me, and I consider his treatment of her brutal. 5. With regard to the man who, after several days' exposure in the bush, died in the bouse of Joane, the Samoan minister at Saleailua, Mr. Moors does not satisfactorily explain how it happened that, knowing the bad state of the man's health, he did not make a greater effort to find out where he had got to. The excuse that he thought the Samoans had enticed him away is not sufficient; and the fact of <S5 reward being offered for all runaway labourers tends to show that the practice of running away must have been a common one. Yet the Tapitcnea and Samoans are not on such friendly terms that a Tapitenea labourer would go to a Samoan village very willingly. 6. I will now notice the general treatment and condition of the labourers on the plantation. To begin with, you yourself state that seventy persons (in addition to yourself Mr. Moors and crew) were brought from Tasitootai to Lata in the cutter "Bertha," of 15 tons register. I consider this an unjustifiable case of overcrowding. 7. These seventy men, women, and children were landed at a place on the coast whei'e no preparation had been made to receive them, and, although you state sufficient food was brought in the cutter, and that a temporary house was erected for their shelter before dark, I cannot consider that it was a proper proceeding to land a number of women and children, many of whom are stated to have been in bad health, at a place totally unprepared for them. 8. I have now to notice the second trip of the " Bertha," when, again overcrowded, she brought sixty-five more persons to Lata. These, according to your statement, were the weaker labourers and their families who had been kept for three weeks at Magia to recover their strength, and, according to Mr. Moors' statement, they were supplemented by the sick people from the Magia estate. Why the latter should have been removed from a plantation already in working order, and where a certain amount of food has already been jDlantod, I am at a loss to understand. 9. With regard to the supply of food, I have no doubt that a considerable supply of provisions was forwarded by you to Lata, but I am by no means sure that these provisions were used with proper liberality by Mr. Moors, nor do I think that they were of a nature altogether suited to the large number of persons stated to be in a sickly condition. The labourers all admit that they receive plenty of corn ; but all complained to me of want of other food. There are certainly a few breadfruit trees on the land, but the labourers state that they have been able to gather very little fruit from them, and the only bananas I could see were a few young shoots of sa, which have sprung up since the ground has been cleared. 10. The account of the rations served out to them, as given by the labourers, is very different from that given by Mr. Moors, the former stating that they get beans every four days, and rice once a week. The letters from Mr. Moors to Tv, the Tahitian, show that the amount of yams and taro brought for the labourers was inconsiderable. 11. The water supply I consider both insufficient and of an inferior quality, consisting as it * Mr. Oibbon is employed by McArthur and Co., of Auckland, for whom Mr. Cornwall works.