a tremendous amount of work in a day and the settlement is actually 60 dependent upon them for labor. It is well known that were there no prisoners, almost none of the primitive improvements that the place possesses would be here at all. There have been three groups of murders on the islands lately. Four police boys were murdered as they slept on Guadalcanal. They were killed by the friends of some prisoners they were taking from Tulagi. A white man called Cameron had his head split open by one of the natives on the B.P. plantation on Choiseul. The nigger escaped and later hung himself. A Chinaman was decapitated a few days ago here in Tulagi. Friday, September 16. (Branande, Guadalcanal). We came across to Guadalcanal last night with Mr. Robinson. Tate, Lazarus, Johnson, Tommy Elkington, Hannibal and I sat up on the corner of Elkington's pub. The recruiters had a bad evening of it. Lazarus, who is known as the Wandering Jew, and who is a strange combination of coarse obscenity and whimsicality, made a terrible row reciting his terrible tales of wandering about the earth. It broke up everyone else's attempts at conversation and got all his cronies very drunk. The whole outfit came down to the stone wharf to get Hannibal, Robinson and myself off on Robinson's launch. We left at twelve, got across to Mrs. D.'s for breakfast, and pulled into Branande at noon. Branande is a typical plantation of the Solomons. It is owned by Burns, Philp and operated by Robinson who is manager. 1600 acres or so of coconuts and about 80 acres of rubber. The rubber is not negotiated commercially. Branande is the same plantation that Jack London wrote about in his book "Adventure." It is not hard to understand why the white men of the plantation are frequently murdered by the natives. The