In the paucity of Fiji news, which a meticulous censorship contrives to secure with wonderful success, it is impossible to grasp the full significance of the telegram, which we published the other day, that thirty thousand Indian settlers in the north of the island are about to sell away their property and sail down to India. The northern and western portions of the island had remained unaffected by the recent riots and were saved from the humiliations and sufferings of martial law. Though not entirely above discontent on account of low wages, the Indians in the north were comparitively better conditioned and there were even wealthy men among them who leased out extensive areas of land from the Colonial Sugar Company. In 1916, according to Mr. C.F. Andrews, there were 1,000 Indian lease-holders who cultivated roughly 13,000 acres of sugar-land and received about £100,000 for the sugarcane which their fields produced.
