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APPENDIX.

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

Reference -

TTTTCO 882

2 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO

1

(No. 11 A.) Sir,

Circular to Coolie Colonies.

Downing Street, July 18, 1871. I TRANSMIT to you the inclosed copy of a Report from Her Majesty's Emigra- tion Commissioners on the Report of the Trinidad Emigration Agent-General for 1870, and I commend to your careful consideration the paragraphs relative to the benefits resulting from extending the period of rationing to one and two years. I have requested the Governor of Trinidad to forward to you the Emigration Agent-General's Report for 1870, as well as any previous Reports bearing on this subject.

With reference to the 12th paragraph of the Report of the Emigration Commis- sioners I have to observe that the question of giving passages to India to coolies who have arrived from neighbouring Colonies at the expiration of their term of service, and generally to those who have no claim to this privilege on condition of their going through some term of industrial residence, has arisen also in the Colony of St. Lucia, and that I am now considering the expediency of davising such measures as may tend to produce greater uniformity of practice in this respect among the Colonies which are interested in coolie labour.

Sir,

I have, &c.

KIMBERLEY.

(Signed)

Sir T. W. C. Murdoch to Mr. Herbert.

Emigration Board, June 23, 1871. I HAVE to acknowledge your letter of 19th instant, with a despatch from the Governor of Trinidad, inclosing the Report of the Immigration Agent for the year 1870.

2. The number of emigrants dispatched from Calcutta to Trinidad in the season 1869-70 was 2,933, of whom 52 died at sea,-a mortality equal to 1.7 per cent. This is an unusually small mortality, owing, no doubt, to a careful selection of the emigrants, -to the good sanitary condition of Calcutta at the time of the emigration, and to favourable circumstances on the voyage. Dr. Mitchell anticipated the probability that future seasons may not be so fortunate, and experience shows that the mortality on the voyage varies largely in different years. There has however, been a gradual improve. ment for several years past, due in great measure to the greater attention paid to sanitary arrangements in the depôts, and the more careful examination and selection of the people before they are embarked.

3. Dr. Mitchell next proceeds to state and analyze the mortality among immigrants in the Colony. There are some apparent inaccuracies in his figures which I am unable to explain; but they are not sufficient to affect his conclusions.

4. First, as to the mortality of new immigrants. Dr. Mitchell gives the number of deaths in each year among 1,952 immigrants who have arrived since 1866. The striking fact in this Table is the large mortality, down to 1869, of the first two years after the immigrants' arrival compared with subsequent years. During those two years the average mortality was nearly 7 per cent.; during the three following it was rather less than 23. In 1809 an Ordinance requiring employers to ration their immigrants for a year after arrival, came into force, and the mortality among the new arrivals of that year fell to 41 per cent. But in the second year, when the same people rationed themselves, the mortality among them rose to 10.7 per cent.;-thus making their mortality in two years rather more than the mortality in the same period of those who arrived before 1809. An Ordinance (No. 8 of 1870) has been since passed to require

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