In 1823 an English adventurer, Alexander Hare, had settled on another of the islands with some runaway slaves. Hare soon departed, and Clunies-Ross alone obtained permanent rights by settlement. He planted hundreds of coconut palms and brought in Malay workers to the islands to harvest the nuts, building a business by selling copra. In the beginning, Javanese convicts were used as labourers and "crime of all kinds was rife", before "getting rid of the criminal class and obtaining a better type of Malay coolie."