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Samoa Under the Sailing Gods

II

II

A circumstance which created a considerable sensation about the end of 1922, and ruffled a period of calm, was that one of the white sisters from the hospital was raped by a Samoan on the lonely stretch of up-hill road between Vailima and the Government resthouse at Malololelei. It was an occurrence, I think, entirely unprecedented in Samoa. For some days no arrest was made. The assailant, a powerful man leading a horse, had overtaken the girl and first engaged her in conversation. The Inspector of Police—an interesting character who had once drifted down the Mississippi on a raft and also travelled with a circus giving exhibitions of revolver-shooting in the United States of America, and who had a bald head and a curious clipped way of speaking—ran him to earth finally on the slender clue that the horse's bridle was of plaited straw. In due course the Samoan appeared before the court and the Chief Judge, Mr. Orr-Walker, gave him a life sentence in a New Zealand jail.

Shortly after there appeared in the columns of the Samoa Times a letter from Mr. Hills, the then head of the London Mission, decrying the severity of the sentence and making out that sympathy was thereby naturally deflected to the felon. Colonel Tate, the Administrator, privily suggested that Mr. Hills be charged with contempt of court, which the tone of his letter possibly warranted; but the Chief Justice, feeling perhaps that his position was anomalous, since there was no other judge to try the case, was not in favour of this step being taken. Another document which the case evoked was a petition signed by a large number of ladies of Apia, mostly the wives of officials, and not excepting some of the most unprepossessing, praying that, for their safety, and for the sake of example, the culprit be severely flogged.