Between the 1870s and the 1880s, hundreds of thousands of Pacific islanders (many of them from the New Hebrides) were forced to work on plantations, mainly in the state of Queensland, Australia, and Fiji. A pidgin was formed out of the several languages spoken in these plantations. It combined English vocabulary with the grammar from the languages of the region. This early plantation pidgin was the origin of Bislama, Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea and Pijin from the Solomon Islands.