A Non-Paying Enterprise: Seychelles Vessel in the Solomons

Jarvis Island, United States.

A Non-Paying

ENTERPRISE Seychelles Vessel in the Solomons From a Special Correspondent TULAGI, Jan. 10. was visited by a strange-looking craft on December 20.

It proved to be the Felice, from the Seychelles Islands, manned by her owner and two men. The Felice is a double ended craft of over 65 tons, painted black, of no particular rig, but two-masted. She stands very high out of the water, and is very roughtly built.

When she arrived in Tulagi, her engine was giving trouble, and the foremast was badly sprung. The three men on board were “fed up” and disillusioned.

The owner, Mr. H. Parsons, an Englishman of birth and education, bought the Felice on “spec,” and used her for trading and freighting along the African coast, and to and from the Seychelles. He was told of great possibilities in the “prosperous” Solomons and in New Guinea, and so he set sail, taking with him an engineer and mate, both Seychelles men.

They called at Singapore, Kavieng and Rabaul. According to their story they were given no work and were on the point of starvation.

At Rabaul they were advised to go to the Solomons, where freighters were required. They left Rabaul with a cargo of rice for W. R. Carpenter and Co. and took three months to get to Tulagi, owing to bad weather, a sprung mast and engine trouble.

After a week in Tulagi, where they got no work and scant hospitality, they left once more for the African Coast.

Mr. Parsons, the owner, said that native conditions in the Solomons were extraordinary, compared with the Seychelles.

He was astounded at the large wages, want of discipline * and general velvetglove system. What surprised him more than anything were the number of Chinese in Tulagi and the way in which they traded and held licences on an equality with the Europeans.

Seychelles, said Mr. Parsons, was a prosperous and industrious group of islands of 40,000 inhabitants. There was plenty of work and labour, and good con-