THE

DIVERSIONS OF A PRIME MINISTER

THE DIVERSIONS

OF

A PEIME MINISTER

BASIL THOMSON
AUTHOR OF ' SOUTH SEA YARNS '

WITH A MAP
NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. W. CAWSTON AND OTHERS
AND EEPRODUOTIONS OP EAEE PLATES OF EARLY VOYAGES
OP XVIITH AND XVIIITH CENTURIES

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCXCIV

TO
GEORGE TUKUAHO, GEORGE FATAFEHI,
WILLIAM TUNGI, and ASIBELI KUBU,
TO WHOSE
TACT AND UNSELFISH DEVOTION TO DUTY
WAS DUE THE SUCCESS OF OUR JOINT ENTERPRISE
IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.

PREFACE.

Foe the benefit of those to whom the name Tonga has an
unmeaning sound, and latitude and longitude convey no
distinct impression, let me say that the realm of King
George Tubou will be found in the map under the name
of the " Friendly Islands," about 1000 miles north of New
Zealand, 300 miles east of Fiji, and 350 south of Samoa.
I count among the Tongans so many true friends that
it would touch me nearly if I should seem in the follow
ing pages to have been lacking in recognition of their
many admirable qualities. If I have spoken of their
institutions with levity, it is because I have judged the
nation from the standard of a European people, with
whom, in intelligence, physique, and disposition, they
are fit to be compared. I have printed these pages with
the knowledge and permission of the chiefs best fitted to
speak for the whole people; and when I refuse to treat
seriously the fatal experiment of engrafting Western
customs upon their own ancient and admirable polity,

vm PREFACE.
I am only reproducing the sense of grotesqueness with
which their present hybrid institutions inspire the best
of them. Where I have laughed, they have laughed with
me ; what I have deplored, they have no less regretted.
For the materials of the slight historical sketch I am
specially indebted to Tukuaho, Tungi, and Fatafehi ; and
I take this opportunity for thanking the Hon. Bolton
Corney, M.D., by whose kindness I am able to repro
duce the rare plates of Schouten's voyage.
Ascot, November 1894.

CONTENTS.

I. A BLOODLESS REVOLUTION . 1
II. HOW I TOOK OFFICE 26
III. THE SHIP OF STATE AND HER CREW . 34
IV. HOW I FARED AT COURT . 50
V. HOW I BECAME A PRIVY COUNCILLOR . 65
VI. THE POLITICAL USES OF A STATE CHURCH 73
VII. MEETINGS ORDINARY AND EXTRAORDINARY 85
VIII. CONVICTS AND POLICE . . 105
IX. A SCHOOL OF COOKERY FOR ACCOUNTANTS 118
X. THE WOLF AT THE DOOR 143
XL VAVAU ... . 161
XII. MISSIONARIES 185
XIII. ODIUM THEOLOGICUM . 204
XIV. AMATEUR LAW-GIVING . 220
XV. INCUBATION . 234
XVI. LORDS AND COMMONS IN COUNCIL . . 247
POSTSCRIPT 285

X CONTENTS.
A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA —
I. THE BORDERLAND OF MYTH . 291
II. THE COMING OF THE FOREIGNERS 308
III. THE REVOLUTION . . 321
IV. KING GEORGE ... . 342
THINGS ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND ZOOLOGICAL . 369
APPENDIX —
I. LIST OF THE TUI TONGA . . 395
II. TRANSLATION OF EXTRACTS FROM THE ' JOURNAL OF
THE WONDERFUL VOYAGE MADE BY W. CORNELIS
SCHOUTEN OF HOORN, 1615-17 ' . . . 396
III. TABLE SHOWING GENEALOGY OF THE CHIEFS NEAREST
TO THE THRONE OF TONGA 404
INDEX 405

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

"IAM MINISTER OF FINANCE"
ONE OF THE EXILES
NUKUALOFA GEORGE TUKUAHO ...
"HE PLUNGED AT THE CURTAIN HEAD-FOREMOST"
THE KING'S KAVA-EING .....
"HE PAID US A VISIT IN A HAND-CART"
KING GEORGE TUBOU . . . .
THE FIRST CHOIR .
"THE LORD HAS GOT MY SOUL ! "
"HE TORE OPEN HIS SHIRT"
" WHEN MART ' TOLD HER SOUL ' " . .
TOFUA IN ERUPTION
ASIBELI KUBU, MINISTER OF POLICE
SATEKI ...
THE LORD CHIEF-JUSTICE .....
"FEED ME, AND I WILL SIT IN MT OFFICE ALL DAT"
A CARD-PARTT IN THE JAIL ....
PROMOTION-HUNTINGA DYING ART AND A LOST KEY ....
"HE HAD WITH HIM HIS BOOKS FOR THE LAST THREE TEARS

PAGE 23293035
47 52
59 66 n
76
7779S3 95 9697
99
no 113
125
141

Xll LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
THE MAGIC-LANTERN IN TONGA — "THIS IS THE COW WITH THE
CRUMPLED HORN " 1*5
LOBASB . . • 1*8
"THERE WAS AN ANIMATED DISCUSSION" 158
A GIRL OF VAVAU ... • 162
"MANASE TOOK IT ALL IN SILENCE" 168
THE LIKU IN TONGATABU . ... 171
MOURNING . . • 172
"HE WAS DISCOVERED BT A PAETT OF GIRLS " . . . 177
"SENDING UP A THICK COLUMN OF SMOKE TO THE LEAFT
CHIMNEY " . . 180
" LET NOT THT LEFT HAND KNOW WHAT THY RIGHT HAND
DOETH" ..... 188
"TO WIN ONE MORE YELL OF APPLAUSE" 191
A TONGAN SCHOOLGIRL . . 194
COMBS ... . . 201
A GIANT YAM . 221
A BEAUTY- SHOW . 248
" THE FAINT TAP OF THE GATU MALLETS " 250
"KOE TU'l!" . . . .253
PORTRAIT OP KING GEORGE TUBOU . . 255
THE CLERK OP THE PARLIAMENT . . 257
ONE OF THE ELECT ..... 261
"THE SERGEANT-AT-ARMS CREEPS STEALTHILY TOWARDS THE
LORDS "... ... 263
"SHE FLED SWLFTLT UP THE SAND" . . . 296
"THERE HAD BEEN NO OTHER WOMAN BORN INTO THE WORLD
SO FAIR AS SHE" . .... 299
THE TOMB OF A KING . . ... 3QQ
THE TONGIAEI, THE CANOE, NOW OBSOLETE, IN WHICH THE
EARLT VOTAGES OF THE TONGANS WERE MADE . 3Qg

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Xlll

THE DISCOVERT OF NIUA-TOBUTABU BT SCHOUTEN AND LEMAIRE,
1616 ........ 310
SCHOUTEN AND LEMAIRE BUTING PROVISIONS IN FUTUNA, 1616,
SHOWING ANCIENT MODE OF WEARING THE HAIR . . 311
AN UNPROVOKED ATTACK BT SCHOUTEN UPON A TONGIAEI OFF
NIUA, MAY 1616 .... . 312
A BO-MEE OR NIGHT-DANCE AT HAAPAI, JUNE 1777 . . 315
THE GREAT INAJI AT WHICH CAPTAIN COOK WAS PRESENT,
JUNE 1777 ....... 317
A WARRIOR OF FIJI ...... 319
THE TUI TONGA'S FISH-HOOK .... 322
FINAU ULUKALALA, THE REBEL, AFTER LABILLARD1ERE . . 339
A TAFAANOA IN THE SURF ... . . 343
THE HAAMONGA MONUMENT . . . 393

. at end

WORKS CONSULTED.

Translation of Yoyage of Schouten and Lemaire.
London, 1619.
Journal of Tasman. Amsterdam, 1863.
Wallis's Yoyage.
Cook's First and Third Yoyages.
Labillardiere, Account of d'Entrecasteaux' Voyage.
Missionary Yoyage of the Duff. Wilson.
Maurelle's Yoyage.
Voyage of de la Perouse.
Blyth's Journal of the Mutiny of the Bounty.
Hamilton's Voyage of the Pandora.
Vason's Four Years in Tongatabu.
Mariner's Account of the Tonga Islands. Martin.
Erskine's Voyage.
Dillon's Voyage.
D'Urville's Voyage.
Wilkes's Narrative of the United States Exploring
Expedition.
Farmer's Tonga.
West's Ten Years in Polynesia.
Missionary Records.
Wreck of the Minerva Brig.
Yonge's Missionary Journey.
Koe Makajini (Tala tubua). [The Magazine.]

THE

DIVERSIONS OF A PRIME MINISTER.

A BLOODLESS REVOLUTION.

1HE High Commissioner had sailed for
Tonga in H.M.S. Eapid. His official
visits to the island kingdom had generally
been so uneventful, that for the first three
weeks of his absence from Suva the public
interest in his movements had been languid ;
but when the day appointed for his return
had passed, and Saimone of the signal-station had swept
the southern horizon in vain for a fortnight, " the beach "
began to occupy itself with the usual pessimistic spec
ulations. The Eapid had run short of coal — had broken
down — was piled up on a new reef : King George was
dead at last, and there was a row among the natives :
Baker had been shot at again, and was hit this time.
To the professional news-mongers of the beach only one
A

2 A BLOODLESS REVOLUTION.
suggestion did not occur — namely, that the " Honourable
and Eeverend " Shirley Waldemar Baker, First Minister of
the king and the State Church, had fallen from his high
estate, and had been removed from the little kingdom
where he had so long ruled the natives for their good and
his own profit.
The tongue of rumour was hushed at last. Suva awoke
one morning to find the Eed Cross fluttering from the
signal-staff, and her Majesty's ship, ironically christened
the Eapid, creeping slowly along the reef. Almost before
the yellow flag had been hauled down the news flashed
along the beach that Baker had indeed fallen, and could
not again set foot in Tonga for two years on pain of
imprisonment. A sketch of the events of the last few years cannot be
avoided, but it shall be a sketch in outline only.
When George Tubou became king in 1845 his people
were in the white-heat of a conversion to Christianity.
The missionaries had taught them to read and write, and
to pass a simple code of law. They had imbued them with
envy of the dignity of civilised States, — their law courts,
their police, the uniforms and salaries of their officials,
and their other blessings of civilisation — including taxes.
All these the Tongans might have if they were shown how
to begin. For years there was no one to direct their
nascent aspirations. Their teachers had no enterprise,
and devoted themselves to the spiritual rather than the
temporal needs of their flock ; but at last with the neces
sity came the man. Mr Baker was a genius in his way.
None knew better than he how to work upon the feelino-s
of his congregation, or could better gauge the exact

THE BOULANGER OP TONGA. 3
moment to send round the collection-plate. None could
lay out the funds thus collected in church-building with
better effect. None was so jealous of the honour and in
dependence of Tonga, warning her when any of the great
nations cast greedy eyes upon her emerald shores. He
designed the national ensign, and the royal standard with
three club-knives, such as the European officers strap to
their sides, and a dove carrying a branch in its beak, and
the Great Seal, and many other things that make a nation
respected. These were foreigners' things and their mean
ing was therefore not known to Tongans, but they were the
emblems of civilisation. He it was who ordered the tim
ber for the palace and the churches and all the public
buildings, which cost a great deal of money. And lastly,
it was he who persuaded a German Consul-General to
come to Tonga in a man-of-war to make a treaty, so that
Tonga was recognised of the Great Powers : for this
honour only a small island was given to Germany as a
coaling-station, and for his labours as interpreter between
the plenipotentiaries Mr Baker received, as was right and
proper, a decoration from the German Emperor.
Then Unga, the premier and the king's son, died in
Auckland, and Mr Baker, out of his love for the king,
brought back the body to Tonga in a German man-of-war,
and consented to fill the place that Unga had left empty.
For charges had been made against Mr Baker — the great
are always envied ! — and a committee of his peers in the
Methodist Church had advised his removal to Australia.
Thus Unga's death saved him from the pain of leaving
the Tongans whom he loved.
Now the king had a grievance against the Conference.

4 A BLOODLESS REVOLUTION.
Every year the mission collected for church purposes
large sums that were not spent in Tonga, but were trans
ferred to some other circuit more in need of money.
He contended with reason that this money ought to be
spent for the benefit of those who had contributed it.
Mr Baker, as head of the mission, had been the most
active in developing a doubtful method of collecting
funds ; but as he, too, had a grievance against the Con
ference who had profited by his ingenuity, and turned
round upon him when the facts became too notorious to
admit of denial, he threw in his lot with the king. After
King George he was now the most powerful man in the
kingdom, and his power could be greatly developed, pro
vided that the missionaries left him alone. He had to
choose between conciliating or fighting them, and he chose
the latter alternative as more consonant with his tastes.
If he failed, their opposition to him could not be more
bitter than it was before ; whereas if he succeeded in
driving them from Tonga, his government would be in
dependent of all opposition, while his thirst to avenge
his private wrongs would be gratified. It was a bold
scheme, and it very nearly succeeded.
King George had long been asking that Tonga should
be constituted a separate Conference, having control over
its own finances; but unsuccessfully, because the Wes-
leyan authorities felt that an infant Church, whose mem
bers were but yesterday practising heathen rites, and who
were never remarkable for diffidence or stedfastness of
purpose, were scarcely in a fit state to be freed from
leading-strings. Mr Baker began to irritate this old sore.
He suggested to the king that, if the Conference persisted

THE STATE CHURCH. 5
in resisting his most reasonable demands, he ought to set
up a Wesleyan Church of his own, a national Church,
ruled by the same laws as those that governed other
Methodist churches. He even persuaded his successor in
the chairmanship of the district, a Mr Watkin, to betray
Ms trust and secede with him. When all was ready, he
telegraphed to the Australian Conference, then sitting,
warning them to accept the king's terms, or suffer the
consequences. He was probably aware, when he sent
this telegram, that there was no time for the receipt
of a favourable reply before the date he had fixed in
his ultimatum, but he had, he considered, cleared his
own character, and he now proceeded to make his couji-
d'dtctt. So the new Church was set up, and in a few weeks it
had been embraced by a majority of the people and of the
native ministers, who joined the new Church " out of
their love for Tubou " and received higher salaries for
their loyalty to their sovereign. The king's influence
was enormous, but Mr Baker had slightly overrated it;
for, in spite of all persuasions and threats, a very re
spectable minority were left who flatly refused to turn,
not probably for conscientious motives, — for the tenets of
the two Churches were exactly the same, — but because
they disliked Mr Baker and were attached to the Wes
leyan missionary, and also because their natural ob
stinacy and dislike of being "hustled" came to their
support. He had now to face the Wesleyans, armed
with very good grounds for complaint, and, to save him
self from losing ground, he had recourse to persecution,
petty at first, but descending later to rather gross out-

6 A BLOODLESS REVOLUTION.
rages. Unfortunately for the Wesleyan cause, these
outrages were much exaggerated by well-meaning but
inaccurate friends, so that people grew sceptical as to
the truth of any of them.
Being now in the zenith of his power, in the enviable
position of a ruler who is his own treasurer and auditor
and also controls the law courts, he became, as men of his
stamp always do become, a petty tyrant, without the tact
or temper to control the disaffection he created. A dan
gerous feeling against him began to develop itself among
the chiefs, and instead of conciliating them, as a shrewder
man would have done, he trusted everything to his
ascendancy over the king, and treated chiefs and com
moners alike as his inferiors in virtue of his office. In
1886 four prisoners, undergoing imprisonment for petty
offences, escaped from jail, and hid for months among
the caves at the back of the island, living upon such food
as the sympathy of the people procured for them under
cover of night. On the night of January 5, 1887, they
lay in wait for Mr Baker as he drove home in the dusk
with his son and daughter. They fired, but the shot
missed its mark, breaking the boy's arm as he ran to stop
them, and wounding the girl as she tried to screen her
father. The horse, not less terrified than its driver, bolted,
leaving the two wounded children on the ground, nor
could it be stopped until it had carried its master to a
place of safety. It was a savage crime, but the revenue
taken for it was scarcely behind it in savagery. There
were wholesale arrests : there was a trial in the presence
of the native Chief Justice, a native jury, and Mr Baker •
but as the public was not admitted to the court, and the

AN EYE FOR A TOOTH. 7
few Europeans present were ignorant of Tongan, we have
only native accounts of the proceedings to rely upon.
Several men were condemned to death, including the
actual perpetrators of the crime, and four, one of whom
was more than probably innocent, were taken to Malinoa
island and summarily shot. Others would have followed
had not the Europeans interfered and threatened Mr
Baker personally, and during the delay thus secured
H.M.S. Diamond arrived with the High Commissioner,
Sir Charles Mitchell, from Fiji.
Mr Baker had affected from the first to regard the
attack upon him as a conspiracy of the Wesleyans, and
sought to connect the missionary, and even the English
Vice-Consul, with the crime. It was an opportunity for
wiping out the remnant of the Wesleyan Church. On the
pretence that there was an insurrection against the king's
authority in Tongatabu, he summoned the men of Haapai
and Vavau to come and restore order. They came with
all the savage ruffianism in them aroused by the remem
brance that Tongatabu was their ancient enemy. Armed,
and with blackened faces, they spread over the country,
plundering the houses of the Wesleyans, flogging and in
sulting all who refused to join the Free Church. The
remnant of those who still held out, some two hundred
souls, were huddled on board two small schooners, and
shipped off to Fiji. They were thus thrust destitute upon
the Government of that colony, which was put to no
small inconvenience and expense in providing for them.
Eventually they were settled on the fertile island of Koro,
dissatisfied, and in continual disagreement with their
Fijian neighbours. It was their sudden arrival that

8 A BLOODLESS REVOLUTION.
caused the High Commissioner to visit Tonga. The ex
haustive judicial inquiry which he held furnished ample
grounds for the removal of Mr Baker under the Order in
Council which empowers the High Commissioner to remove
any British subject who, in his opinion, is dangerous to the
peace and good order of the island in which he is living.
But since Mr Baker, in fact, constituted in himself the
Tongan Government, it was not clear that his removal
would not be followed by anarchy ; and as the king under
took to put a stop to the persecution of the Wesleyans,
and to adopt certain other reforms, Sir Charles Mitchell
preferred allowing them to be effected through Mr Baker's
agency to incurring the risk of the chaos that might result
from his removal. The ship of war therefore sailed for
Fiji, taking with her the rest of the prisoners lying under
sentence of death.
Now Mr Baker had expected to be removed,- and he
attributed this leniency to a different motive. He argued,
doubtless, that if the High Commissioner had failed to
remove him after the wholesale persecution of the Wes
leyans and other illegalities, it was because he was afraid
to do so, and that he was not likely to take extreme action
against him for any lesser cause. So long, therefore, as
he restrained himself within certain limits, he might con
tinue his former policy without let or hindrance. The
king, who had so often been his scapegoat, could be made
to bear the sole blame of breaking the promises made to
Sir Charles Mitchell. So the promises were not fulfilled,
and things went on very much as before, except that the
annoyances to which the Wesleyans were subjected were
a little less flagrant. Not content with having escaped

STATECRAFT. 9
retribution, he wanted to celebrate his triumph to the
world. He was living in the king's palace, and to some
extent at the king's expense. His crippled children were
drawing pensions from the Treasury. It was time to
settle with his enemies — such, at least, as had not been
shot or exiled to Fiji. He called a shorthand writer, and
dictated in Tongan a report of the attack on him, which
he persisted in calling " the assassination," writing with
gross disrespect of the High Commissioner, and accusing
the British Vice-Consul, since deceased, of having fur
nished the musket with which the crime was committed.
This document was thereupon taken to the native Chief
of Police to be signed as his report to the king, for
by this means did Mr Baker innocently suppose that he
would protect himself from the penalties for the libels
of which he was the author. It was then translated,
and published as a Blue-book headed " Private and Con
fidential," probably with the view of protecting the Auck
land printers.
But this time he had gone too far. The High Commis
sioner at once called upon him to retract the libels or take
the consequences, and he apologised in the most abject
manner ; but, when it came to publishing a refutation of
the libel, difficulties arose. The Chief of Police flatly
refused to sign it, and when at last he was induced to
present it to the king, his Majesty threw it on the ground,
declaring that he had been made a fool of. But it was
printed all the same, " By his. Majesty's command."
The Tongans were beginning to have quite enough of
Mr Baker, who lived most of his time in Auckland devis
ing obnoxious laws, travelling backwards and forwards at

10 A BLOODLESS REVOLUTION.
their expense, and only coming among them accompanied
by a retainer armed with a revolver. In 1889 they simply
neglected to pay their taxes, and the Premier was in con
sequence unable to pay the salaries of his numerous
officials. Now when a Government, however small, fails
to pay its own servants, its time is near. The power to
distrain for taxes was useless, for as soon as the sheriffs
officer was abroad the defaulter made temporary loans of
his property to his relations. The alternative was to sell
the defaulter's labour to the highest bidder, but a Govern
ment cannot put the whole of its subjects up to auction.
So the Premier wisely went to Auckland, and, to tide
over his more pressing necessities, floated a loan on the
security of copra to be hereafter levied.
But the High Commissioner had not clone with him.
The king's promises to Sir Charles Mitchell had not been
fulfilled : the Wesleyan exiles were still a burden upon
the Government of Fiji. It was useless for Mr Baker to
shelter himself behind the king, because a Minister whose
advice is not taken ought logically to resign. Mr Baker
had, however, no intention of resigning, and could not
afford to let the High Commissioner see the king in his
absence. In May 1890, therefore, he went from Auckland
to Tonga to await the expected visit, writing to some
friends that he would return as soon as he had disposed
of the " champion of the Wesleyans," as he playfully
termed Sir John Thurston.
H.M.S. Eapid anchored at Nukualofa on the 25th June
1890, and on the 27th Sir John and his suite paid an
official visit to King George at his house, the greater part
of which was occupied by Mr Baker and his family. He

A SHUFFLE FOR DEAL. 11
found the king supported on the one side by his Prime
Minister, and on the other by Mr Watkin, the missionary
who had deserted his employers to become the head of
the Free Church of Tonga. After the usual interchange
of courtesies the High Commissioner asked the king to ap
point some of his chiefs to represent him in a Conference
on matters of State, and especially on the subject of the
promises made to his predecessor two years before. After
a long and painful hesitation, King George said that he
would like the proposal to be put in writing, and that he
would see him again in a few days. In taking his leave
Sir John desired Mr Baker to visit him on board the
Eapid that afternoon. This interview must have been a
painful one for Mr Baker, whose system of diplomacy,
being founded upon habitual concealment of the truth,
was quite unsuited for an encounter with one who knew
as much about the secret history of Tonga as he did him
self. To the question whether he intended to support Sir
John's proposal for the appointment of a council of native
chiefs, he would at first give no definite reply, hinting that
if he were a party to the return of the exiles from Fiji
he would be himself giving an opportunity for another
attempt upon his life ; but when further pressed, he
affected to pity the High Commissioner's ignorance of
native matters in thinking that he could go to the king
and virtually tell him that he was thought too old or too
foolish to manage his own affairs. He at any rate would
refuse to attend any such meeting. Sir John assured him
that he was free to attend or not as he pleased, but that
as it was clear that he meant to prevent any Conference
taking place, he would not be accepted as an intermediary

12 A BLOODLESS REVOLUTION.
between the High Commissioner and the king or any of
the native chiefs. Then Mr Baker tried to retrieve his
lost ground, and asked what he had done to forfeit the
confidence of the High Commissioner, receiving his answer
in the form of a catalogue of his more notorious Ijreaches
of faith.
War was declared, and Mr Baker's only resource was
to cut off stragglers and impede the baggage-train of the
enemy. He would not, he said, interfere in any way, but
he ought to mention that the king was much annoyed
at the employment of Mr Moss as interpreter, and had
instructed him to write a complaint to the Vice-Consul.
It subsequently appeared that the ingenuous Premier had
invented this difficulty in order to hamper the High
Commissioner in the choice of an interpreter ; for besides
Mr Moss, there was no one well versed in the Tongan
language who was not either a creature of the Premier or
a persona ingrata to the king. After waiting some days
for the letter of complaint, Sir John sent an apology to
the king by the hands of the Vice-Consul and Mr Moss
himself. They found him sitting on the verandah of
his house in the best possible humour. He denied ever
having complained about Mr Moss, for whom, he said, he
had the most friendly regard, emphasising this by pinch
ing him and laughing heartily. Indeed from a native
point of view King George would regard Moss as his
grandson, for he had adopted his father under the name
of Tubou Haapai.
The same afternoon the High Commissioner with his
staff waited on the king by appointment. To their great
surprise they found him looking very ill and abstracted,

A LOSING HAND. 13
attended only by two chiefs of the third rank, and by Mr
Watkin as interpreter. Sir John did his best to explain
the object of the visit, but it was quite evident that the
king could not follow what was said. He seemed to hear
the last sentence — that the High Commissioner came as
a true friend to Tonga — and said after a long silence that
every good thing came from Britain, adding several times,
" Thank you ! Thank you ' " He was again asked whether
he would appoint a council of chiefs, but he remained
silent, and was so evidently suffering from illness that
Sir John Thurston rose, telling Mr Watkin that he could
not think of troubling the king in his present state of
health. Mr Watkin replied that the king was suffering
from la grippe, and the party retired, convinced that,
though his Majesty was certainly unwell, his complaint
was not la grippe.
The king's relations were very angry at the ill-success
of this interview, and indulged in the most threatening
language towards the Premier. The High Commissioner
had now to consider whether, in view of the continual
acts of oppression committed with Mr Baker's sanction
and authority, and the dangerous irritation of the natives
against him, his presence in Tonga would not almost cer
tainly lead to the murder of himself and others after the
ship of war had left the group. His life had already
once been attempted before the higher chiefs had de
clared their hostility towards him. He decided — and
after-events have proved the wisdom of his decision- —
that the case demanded the exercise of his authority
under the Western Pacific Order in Council in prohibit
ing Mr Baker from remaining in Tonga after the 17th of

14 A BLOODLESS REVOLUTION.
the month, when the mail-steamer would leave for New
Zealand. On the following morning Mr Collet, the Secretary to
the High Commissioner, and Mr Leefe, the Vice-Consul,
called on Mr Baker at Mr Watkin's house, and handed to
him the written intimation. He was doubtless congrat
ulating himself at the moment on the success of his diplo
macy, feeling secure that if Sir Charles Mitchell could not
deport him in 1887 for fear of anarchy, none of his suc
cessors in office would dare to take such a step in the
present embarrassed and disturbed state of the country.
The letter came upon him like a thunder-clap : he turned
very red, and asked if a reply was expected. " None,"
was the answer, " but we are to say that the High Com
missioner will be glad to afford you protection from per
sonal violence on board H.M.S. Eapid."
" Oh, that's all bunkum." replied the fallen Minister,
heatedly. He then went off to see the king, but there he
found the redoubtable Tungi, Lord of Hahake, and Speaker
of the House of Assembly. The torrent of Tungi's vitup
eration, aided by an excellent memory for Mr Baker's
delinquencies during the past thirteen years, was too
much for him. It was an inauspicious moment in which
to approach the king, seeing that his most influential
enemy had the royal ear.
During the evening a message was delivered from the
chiefs that they wished Mr Baker to leave the king's
house, as they feared he would do him some mischief.
The High Commissioner tried to reassure them, but, two
hours later, they returned with a sworn statement that
they feared he would do the king some serious harm.

A FALLING STAR. 15
It is probable that their real fear was that he would use
the night to regain some of his lost influence, and that
the progress of events would be arrested by some unfore
seen action on the part of the king ; but, as it was quite
possible that, in the present temper of the people, Mi-
Baker might be rouglily handled, the captain of the Eapid
was asked to land a few marines and station them for the
night at the palace already vacated by Mr Baker. Ac
cordingly seven marines were landed unarmed under the
command of a lieutenant. The verandah was occupied by
a number of chiefs, and the night passed quietly.
Mr Baker had unfortunately time to remove several
packages of papers from the palace, and he and his children
were seen late in the night burning papers, perhaps those for
which a diligent and unsuccessful search was made by his
successors. At daybreak he made an attempt to enter the
Palace, but went away when refused admission by the
marines. He was met at the gate by Taufaahau, the
king's great-grandson and heir, who, with the title of
" Crown Prince of Tonga," had been sent to school in
Auckland under Mr Baker's supervision. Infuriated at
the ingratitude of his old protigd, he cried out, " You shall
pay me for your keep in my house in Auckland."
" And you," shouted the boy, " shall pay for living for
years in my grandfather's house ! "
A few weeks later Taufaahau received the bill for his
entertainment in Auckland ; but I have reason to fear that
the debt is still owing, although he has long ago come into
his kingdom and the command of his privy purse.
A little later his Majesty himself came forth for his
morning bath in the sea. One of the marines, having

16 A BLOODLESS REVOLUTION.
orders to allow no one to pass, and seeing nothing in an
elderly native gentleman to betoken royalty, interfered.
King George, much amused, attempted to explain the
situation in the vernacular, but the marine was obdurate.
The poor king had to go without his bath, but his admira
tion for the sentry outweighed any annoyance on that score.
" No wonder," he said, " that Britain is so powerful : these
soldiers obey their officers and no one else. Ah ! if the
Tongans were like that."
This day being Sunday, the High Commissioner at
tended church with the king, and after service accom
panied him home by invitation. He had made a wonder
ful recovery from la grippe, and was in the same high
health and spirits as he had been forty-eight hours before
when visited by the Vice-Consul without notice, and as
he had not been when seen by the High Commissioner
by appointment. He spoke for some time with great
animation, repeatedly expressing his thankfulness for the
action taken by his chiefs and his release from Mr Baker.
He also cordially accepted an invitation to visit the
Eapid, which he had previously declined on the advice
of Mr Baker. The marines were now withdrawn, and on
the following day the Premier was formally dismissed
from office by the king.
The vacancies thus created were rather numerous, for
Mr Baker was Premier, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Presi
dent of the Court of Appeal, Auditor-General, Minister
of Lands, Judge of the Land Court, Minister of Education,
Agent-General, and Medical Attendant to the king.
His Majesty at first wanted to appoint Josateki Tonga
to the post of Premier, because, though a chief of inferior

A SECRET OF STATE. 17
rank, he had so long acted for Mr Baker in his absence
that the king had a great belief in his knowledge of
affairs. Sateki (as he is commonly called) declined, say
ing that he was more fit to follow than to lead. Tungi
was then proposed, but he excused himself on the ground
of age and infirmity. The choice, therefore, fell on his son,
George Tukuaho, the ablest young chief in Tonga. Tungi
became Minister of Lands, and Asibeli Kubu, a young
chief of Vavau of high rank on his mother's side, took
the portfolio of Minister of Police, an important office
including the control of Crown prosecutions and prisons.
The other offices remained unchanged. The new Min
isters at once took charge of their respective departments.
The Premier's office was found to be in a state of the
greatest confusion, and Mr Smart, one of the Customs
clerks, was employed in endeavouring to set the papers
in order, when Mr Baker appeared on the scene, anxious
to remove some of his account-books. He was stopped by
a native sentry, and for the moment he forgot that the
reins of office had fallen from his hands — indeed at this
time his dismissal from office, though already signed, had
not yet been handed to him. His temper gave way. " By
whose orders was he prevented from entering his office ? "
" By the king's."
''But I insist on removing my private property from
the office."
Consent was given provided that nothing was removed
without the permission of a Government officer. They
passed through the outer office to Mr Baker's elegantly
furnished sanctum. Behind this was a " holy of holies "
into which no Tongan had ever been known to penetrate.
B

18 A BLOODLESS REVOLUTION.
There had always been a mystery about this inner room
with barred windows. All that was known of it was that
Mr Baker frequently retired thither during office hours,
and returned to his work with renewed vigour and in
spiration ; and that large and heavy cases, marked " T. G.,"
were periodically landed by the steamer to be carried into
this inner chamber. When they reached the door they
found that Mr Smart had succeeded in opening it, and
that the secret lay disclosed. Straw pyramids littered the
floor : there were empty cases and cases yet unemptied ;
and a terrible array of " dead marines," square-shouldered,
round-shouldered, and sloping-shouldered, shocked the eye
as they lay in unblushing and uncompromising evidence
in every corner. The ex-Premier blushed deeply. " This
is all my private property," he said, angrily. But Mr
Smart had been examining the cases. " I think not," he
said, with conviction ; " the cases are marked ' T. G.,'
which stands for Tongan Government."
" But I paid for them," retorted Mr Baker.
" In that case," said Smart, " they must have evaded
Customs duty, — private goods imported as Government
property ! "
Mr Baker was speechless with indignation. " I'll make
you pay for this some day," he said, and turned away to
claim other property. If views differ regarding Mr Baker's
abilities as an administrator, no one who has since visited
that inner room has thought of denying his genius as a
judge of champagne. More than once have I heard a
Cabinet Minister, the bitterest of his enemies, say with
real conviction after repairing the tedium of a weary
debate in the House, " Misa Beika was a wise man ! "

THE CASE FOR THE EXILES. 19
He now wanted to remove his account-books, which
were, he said, his private property ; but the writing was
the writing of Otto Lahnstein, who was paid with Govern
ment money, and the books had been paid for from the
same funds. So he took his last view of the scene of his
labours, and withdrew protesting. His son, who had been
his Private Secretary, gazed with pride at the havoc of the
clerk's office, and remarked to Smart, " Well, at any rate
you fellows can't say that we haven't done a lot of work
here." A day or two later the king visited the Eapid in his
State barge, and the High Commissioner paid an informal
visit to him the same afternoon. He found him attended
by thirty or forty chiefs in the ordinary native dress, a
sure sign that they felt at ease. After a warm greeting
the conversation turned upon Tongan affairs. Sir John
expressed a hope that all petty oppression and persecution
would now cease, and that the people would be allowed
to return to their normal state of quietude. The king
replied that he felt sure that a time of peace had arrived.
The opportunity for testing the sincerity of his promises
had come, and the High Commissioner decided to ask him
to do that which Mr Baker had persisted in declaring he
would never do — namely, to allow those exiled to Fiji for
their religious views to return. He referred to the chiefs
present who had relations among them — to Fatafehi,
Governor of Haapai, whose mother, Charlotte, the king's
daughter, was among the exiles, though past sixty years
of age. The king was visibly affected, and said, " I never
sent them away : I did not want them to go. Let them
come back. They were driven away. Bring them back

20 A BLOODLESS REVOLUTION.
to their friends." After a short silence the High Com
missioner said, " Will you also release the people at Tofua
and other places who have been deprived of their liberty
for years past, in some cases for no other reason than that
they attended prayers at the house of a Wesleyan mis
sionary ; others who have been unjustly convicted by
illegal sentences being passed upon them ; and others
who are in confinement upon the personal order of Mr
Baker, after being duly discharged by a judge of the
Tongan Supreme Court ? " The king answered, " Why go
on ? This is a day of joy. I do not want them to be
imprisoned. Let us rejoice at what has happened, and
let all prisoners be set free." The High Commissioner
explained that he had not asked for the release of
prisoners properly convicted of offences against the law,
and that the wholesale liberation of such people might
be inconvenient ; but, nevertheless, every convict who
had more than twelve months of his sentence to serve
was turned loose upon society.
The king then invited his guests to drink kava in
another part of the house, and seated the High Commis
sioner near himself. He asked more than once whether
there was anything more that he wished done, and begged
him to help his Government to keep clear of the disturb
ances and embarrassments into which they had been led
by Mr Baker. Then one of the chiefs seated near the
bowl cried out, " We, too, have something to ask. We
want to break up this kava-party, that we may go out into
the roads and cry the good news to all the people." There
was a shout of applause, and the High Commissioner
shook hands with the king and took leave. Except the

THE APOTHEOSIS. 21
children, scarcely any one in Nukualofa went to sleep
that night.
The Europeans living in Tonga were apparently not
above kicking their enemy when he was down, for the
High Commissioner received information that they were
preparing to make Mr Baker run the gauntlet of a shower
of rotten eggs as he went along the wharf to embark.
There was also a growing disposition among the natives to
mate an attack on him before he left the country. The
native Government undertook to restrain its subjects ; and
to control Mr Baker's compatriots, Sir John made it known
through the Vice-Consul that the order of prohibition
would not be served upon him till he embarked, and that
if any European attempted to insult him it would probably
not be served at all. One of these gentry told me after
wards how disappointed he was. He said that the High
Commissioner seemed first to take one side and then the
other. " If Baker was a rascal, what did he want to take
his side for ? "
The mail-steamer Wainui anchored on July 17, and Mr
Baker embarked before any one in Nukualofa was stirring.
At ten o'clock the order of prohibition was served on him,
and at half-past two he left the islands for New Zealand.
At ten o'clock the High Commissioner and his staff landed
at the king's invitation to receive the thanks of the people
for his exertions on their behalf. They were conducted to
seats on the lawn that separates the public offices from
the sea. The native band of the king's Guards played
" Eule Britannia " when they arrived, and continued to
play while thousands of natives of both sexes filed past,
laying their offerings before their visitors. The procession

22 A BLOODLESS REVOLUTION.
seemed interminable, and the pile of gifts — mats, fans,
combs, ngatu, and yams — grew to unmanageable dimensions,
while the visitors' arms ached with the exercise of shaking
hands. The barge had to be sent to bring off the presents;
and one of the blue-jackets, with his mouth full of fresh
pork and yam, was heard to sum up the situation in the
evening, " Tell yer what, Jack, I wish we'd a Baker to Re
port every day."
The High Commissioner, anticipating the storm that
would arise among Mr Baker's friends — that is, among
those to whom he gave the custom of the Tongan Govern
ment — sent by the mail-steamer a full account of his action,
to be telegraphed from Auckland to the Secretary of State
for the Colonies. Now that Mr Baker was gone, he had to
consider what means could be adopted to fill his place.
For the last few years the plan of Government had been
becoming more and more complicated, and it was out of
the question for any native to take up the reins of power
without very considerable modification. All public records
had been kept (when they had been kept at all) in the
English language, with which no Tongan is acquainted.
The code of law was most cumbrous and ambiguous ; a
considerable portion of it had been published in the
' Gazette ' in English, and had never been translated for
the benefit of the people who were to obey it. It had
been Mr Baker's policy to complicate the administrative
machinery, so as to imbue his colleagues with conviction
that the simplest matter was beyond their power without
his help ; and he thus gradually acquired control, not only
of the law courts, but also of the Treasury. There was, it
is true, a Minister of Finance, Junia Mafileo, the king's

THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER.

23

nephew. He certainly looked the part of Treasurer of
an insolvent kingdom. His brow was deeply seamed
with the furrows of care, and he spoke little, as befits one

'/ am Minister of Finance.'7

upon whose wealth of resource the financial fate of a
country hangs. But when the High Commissioner ques
tioned him, the following conversation took place : —

24 A BLOODLESS REVOLUTION.
" What is your office ? "
" I am Minister of Finance."
" What is the revenue of Tonga ? "
" I don't know."
" But what is your office ? "
" Minister of Finance " (warmly).
" Well, who knows what is the revenue of Tonga ? "
" Misa Beika."
" Who takes care of the money ? "
" I do."
" How much have you got in the Treasury ? "
"I don't know."
" But you are Minister of Finance ? "
" Yes ; I have told you that I am."
" Well, where's the money ? "
" In the safe."
" Who knows how much there is ? "
" Misa Beika."
" Yes ; but he's gone. Can't you go and count it ? "
" No ; I haven't got the key."
" Why, who keeps the key of the Treasury ? "
" Misa Beika."
It was clear that before the country could emerge from
its difficulties some fuller information was required. Junia
must have an assistant. On the High Commissioner's
advice Mr Campbell, the Collector of Customs, was ap
pointed Assistant to the Minister of Finance, and a better
selection could not have been made.
The liabilities were believed to be very large, and the
balance in the Treasury, on being counted, proved to be
less than £2000. The ex-Premier was believed to have

"THE KINGFISHER HAS FALLEN.' 25
made a number of yet unfulfilled contracts, for which
his successors would be liable ; and the new Cabinet, com
petent though they were to conduct kava-bowl diplomacy,
were filled with an unconcealed awe of the mysteries of
office-work. " Was the High Commissioner," they asked,
" going to leave them to themselves before their path was
clear ? " They were not afraid of Tongans, " but what
about the white men ? Could he send no one to help them
for a time ? " Sir John Thurston was prepared for the
request. It was clear that they must have help without
involving the Imperial Government in any direct respon
sibilities on their account. He told them that if the king
made a formal request to him he would send them an
officer not altogether unknown to them ; but that if he
came they must follow his advice, and he must have a
seat in the Privy Council.
There being nothing more to do, the Eapid sailed for
the northern groups of Haapai and Vavau, touching at
each place, and telling the people the good news of the
"Jikota's"1 fall, and of the return of the exiles. In
Vavau they received it with mixed feelings, for, while
they hated Mr Baker, they could not forget that the exiles
were Wesleyans, and Vavau is staunch Free Church.
1 Mr Baker had a number of nicknames — such as Kingfisher (Jikota),
Empty Bottle, &c. The jikota of Tonga is an irrepressibly active and
pugnacious bird, and Mr Baker seemed to be proud of the comparison. Of
some of his other sobriquets he had less reason to be proud.

26

II.

HOW I TOOK OFFICE.
I heard the High Commissioner's announcement with
rather mixed feelings. To be at the age of twenty-nine
elder brother to a monarch of over ninety does not fall
to the lot of many, and new adventures are always worth
undertaking ; but, on the other hand, I had already been
to Tonga, and I knew enough of the place and the people
to realise that, after the enthusiasm and excitement of Mr
Baker's ejectment, would come a strong reaction. By this
time no doubt every Tongan had made up his mind that
the millennium had arrived, in which there would be no
more taxes nor Government, and every man would be a law
unto himself. Any Government that tried to undeceive
them on this point would be unpopular, and any white
man who was associated with such a Government would
bear the whole brunt of the popular distrust, already
aroused by the revelations of Mr Baker's delinquencies
imperfectly understood. With a people who would pay
no taxes, how were the liabilities to be paid off ? Besides,
I was to go there without any authority at my back but
that which the king might choose to give me, and if I

MY INSTRUCTIONS. 27
failed, I alone must take the blame. The blame of failing
in such a service would probably dog me for the rest of
my official career.
On the other hand, I might have the luck to succeed,
and the experience was certain to be amusing. On the
whole it seemed worth the risk. The High Commissioner
was still telling me his proposals when my mind was
made up.
The plans were soon arranged. I was to go to Tonga in
the steamer chartered to take back the Wesleyan exiles.
I was not to be hampered by a detailed letter of instruc
tions, but, furnished with a mere outline of the policy to
be pursued, I was to present myself to the king, and there
after be left with a free hand, to be guided by circum
stances as to my future course.
Meanwhile the exiles had been sent for from the island
of Koro, and on their arrival they were assembled to hear
from the High Commissioner the steps that were to be
taken on their behalf. They were, he said, to go back to
their homes after three years of exile, which they had
borne with praiseworthy fortitude. They were not sent
back by the British Government: they were invited to
return by their own king, to whom alone they owed
allegiance. They were not to think that because they had
been exiled for wishing to continue in their Church, this
invitation implied that their Church had triumphed. If
they adopted a triumphant attitude in Tonga, or tried to
push forward the cause of their Church, disturbances
would be quite certain to follow, and they would be in a
worse plight than before. Any such conduct on their
part would be a poor return to the British Government

28 HOW I TOOK OFFICE.
who had befriended them, and whose one desire was to
see Tonga at peace. They were especially to understand
that the late events had come about from a true desire to
help the king, and not from any ulterior object of extend
ing British influence. Foolish things were often said in
Tonga, and the most foolish of all was that England
wished to take the country for her own. Victoria was
not a " stealing Queen," and wanted no country that
belonged to others. She and her officers were now, as
ever, ready to endorse the proverb, " Tonga maa Tonga "
(Tonga for the Tongans), and it was their duty, whenever
they heard this foolish statement made, to contradict it.
Then William Maealiuaki replied on behalf of the
exiles. He began with a long and very wearisome list
of the presents given to them by the Fijian chiefs, and
finished with a flowery oration of thanks. Charlotte, the
king's daughter, an old woman of past 'sixty, had called
upon Lady Thurston with her women, and had presented
an immense roll of native cloth, which, she explained, had
been brought to Fiji to serve as her shroud, but since
God had allowed her to see her native country again and
would let her die there, she wished to leave the shroud
behind her.
On August 16th the steamer Pukaki hauled into the
wharf to receive her passengers. Counting children, the
exiles numbered more than 120 souls. It was a curious
scene. Half the population of Suva had assembled to see
them off, including the High Commissioner and the Govern
ment officials, and the wharf was crowded. Their native
friends were weeping demonstratively, and the Tongans
themselves were in a state of high emotion. The steamer

THE PROFITS OF MARTYRDOM.

29

dressed with all her signal flags, cast off amid deafening
cheers from the shore party, and as she swung out into the
stream she fired a salute. As the echoes of the last shot
died away, the voices of the exiles were heard singing
" Home, Sweet Home," in their
own language, taking well-sustained
parts ; and they continued singing
until we passed through the white
line of reef -breakers, and the figures
on shore had melted away in a
cloud of white draperies. We had
cast off our nationality, and were
now Tongans.
Our fellow-passengers spent their
first day at sea in holding religious
services, and in fussing about their
luggage. These exiles for conscience'
sake had already reaped the reward
of their constancy — an earthly re
ward in the form of mats, native
cloth, kava - bowls, and all things one 0fthe Exiles.
that are most precious to the native
heart. They numbered more than 120, and had left
their homes almost naked. They went back with eighty
tons of luggage — -far more than they could possibly have
accumulated in three years had they remained in their
own country. Persecution had not been unprofitable.
A grey fuzzy line just above the horizon, gradually re
solving itself into cocoanut-palms — such was our first
sight of Tongatabu. We steamed along the south-east
coast, the Liku, watching the surf spout up in a hundred

30 HOW I TOOK OFFICE.
geysers as each heavy sea forced the water into the cave
like tunnels in the reef; between the main island and
picturesque Eua ; through an intricate channel among the
reef islets, until some houses showed white against ¦ the
thick mass of palms. This was Nukualofa. In the sun-
light every colour was intense
— the blue of the sea, the white
of the foam and coral-sand,
rtS^~_~:C~;-:; -.-. -.-^ „ and the green of the
-- "" ~ " — vegetation.
Nukitalofa. -~ .
irom the moment
when the first land was sighted the exiles began to show
signs of anxiety, which increased with every throb of
the propeller. They got out mats from their bundles,
presumably in order to land neatly dressed ; but, to our
surprise, we saw that the outer mat petticoats they
were putting on were impossibly dirty and ragged. Not
ragged enough, however, to satisfy their critical taste,
for as we n eared the shore they began nervously to
tear and ...unravel the edges of these filthy garments,
stopping at times to inspect their progress towards
disreputability. We had yet to learn that a Tongan
expresses humility, repentance, and respect for dignities
by the raggedness of his attire. The High Commis
sioner's advice regarding their demeanour on arrival had
not been lost upon them.
We were boarded by the Collector of Customs and the
Vice-Consul, and while we were still talking to them, two

THE SWING OF THE PENDULUM. 31
excited missionaries dashed up the ladder and fell upon
their flock. It was a demonstration that might well have
been spared, for the wharf was now filling with people,
and it was the interest of the mission, as well as of the
exiles, that they should return as the king's subjects, and
not as members of a Church of which he disapproved.
Meanwhile the chief men among the exiles, William
Maealiuaki and Matealona, landed to report themselves
to Tukuaho, the Premier, and we pulled to the wharf
and landed among the crowd of sight-seers. I tried in
vain to detect any enthusiasm, but, with the exception of
the near relations of the exiles, who could be distinguished
from the others by their eager questioning of the native
crew of our boat, the people, who numbered perhaps 150,
seemed to have come from mere motives of curiosity.
Mrs S., the daughter of one of the missionaries, explained
the absence of demonstration by saying that we had been
expected on the previous Sunday, when large numbers
had awaited our arrival ; but this explanation scarcely
accounted for the absence of the townspeople, who had
had fully two hours' notice of the arrival of the steamer.
The people assembled were scarcely more than would have
come to see the arrival of the ordinary monthly steamer.
Mrs S. went on to say that affairs were less satisfactory
than had been hoped. The king had gone away to Haapai
to finish the building of a church. There had been a free
fight between the lads of the Government and the Wes-
leyan colleges. The Collector of Customs had had a differ
ence with the Premier about a copra contract, and, to the
great inconvenience of the public, had closed the Customs
office for a whole day as a protest. Moreover, " certain

32 HOW I TOOK OFFICE.
persons" had been endeavouring to set my native col
leagues against me, and they were so demoralised by the
turn affairs had taken that they talked freely of resigna
tion. There were, in short, rumours of wars everywhere,
and not a shilling had been taken as taxes since the High
Commissioner left a month before. A little later I heard
the other side of the story, which was that an enterprising
copra-trader had persuaded the native Premier to proclaim
that the Government would accept copra in lieu of money
for taxes, and to sell the copra thus obtained to him at a
fixed rate ; and Tukuaho, being new to the business, had
been easily persuaded that the offer was disinterested, and
had acted upon it, to the great indignation of the rival
traders and . the detriment of the Government, as will be
explained hereafter.
But the worst news of all, although the least unexpected,
was that the Free Church ministers were up in arms.
They felt, naturally enough, that in Mr Baker they had
lost a powerful champion, and that the Government was
no longer to use its machinery for the annoyance of their
adversaries, the Wesleyans. The return of the exiles was
a triumph for the minority, for among them were the only
persons of rank who remained faithful to the old Church.
Mr Baker was their prophet and their defensor fidei, who
alone could keep alive the spirit of enthusiasm, and insure
the punctual payment of their salaries from the annual
mission collections. Naturally enough, therefore, they
" talked lotu " from their pulpits— that is to say, they vili
fied the rival sect, and hinted that the removal . of Mr
Baker was but the preface to the seizure of the country by
Great Britain. Now every Tongan is hysterically patri-

REACTION. 33
otic, and has a deep-seated conviction that the sovereigns
of the other Powers do not sleep well of nights for ponder
ing how they may plausibly compass the enthralment of
Tonga. To accuse the chiefs who had taken office in the
new Cabinet of selling their country to England was the
surest way to make them extremely unpopular. This had
been the news from Haapai, and the minds of the people
in Tonga, both white and black, were deeply tinged with
pessimism. There was a general undefined feeling that
something was going to happen.

34

III.

THE SHIP OF STATE AND HER CREW.
My first business was to see my colleague, George
Tukuaho, who had sent to say that he was confined to
his house with a bad headache. On my last visit to
Tonga, four years before, he was just recovering from a
serious illness ; and though I had seen much of his father,
Tungi, I had only conversed once with Tukuaho, and then
only upon such general subjects as the comparison of the
military genius of Julius Caesar and the first Napoleon,
whose lives I had found him reading in his own language.
He was then commandant of the king's Guards, who
numbered twenty men, and in that capacity he had had
the shrewdness to outwit Mr Baker, then all-powerful.
It had suggested itself to the Premier's fertile brain that
military service might be turned to account against the
stiff-necked Wesleyans, and he had accordingly compelled
a number of the College boys to enlist in the militia.
They were first required to take the oath, but this they
refused to do, unless they were told to what they were
going to bind themselves. A refusal to take the oath
being at that time in the nature of sedition, they were

THE NATIVE PRIME MINISTER.

35

charged with that offence before the police court; but
Kubu, the new Minister of Police, who was then Police

¦ .^f

George Tukuaho.

Magistrate, was not a creature of Mr Baker, and dis
missed the case. This would not do at all, and Mr Baker

36 THE SHIP OF STATE AND HER CREW.
ordered them to be tried by court-martial. How a man
who has not yet enlisted can be tried by court-martial
was a technicality that did not trouble him. He sent an
order to Tukuaho to form a court, but Tukuaho replied
that he would like to have the order in writing. Mr
Baker committed the order to paper. The court sat, and
the men were found guilty of refusing to take the oath
with their eyes shut. A messenger was despatched to
Mr Baker to inquire what sentence was to be pro
nounced. The verbal answer was, "Two years." But
Tukuaho wanted to have this in writing too, and Mr
Baker, grumbling at his pertinacity, wrote the order on
a half sheet of note-paper. All this showed no very high
degree of intelligence on the part of the commandant;
but the surprising incident was that he carefully pre
served both letters, feeling that some day they might be
useful. Many months later the High Commissioner, Sir
C. Mitchell, held the inquiry before alluded to, and Mi-
Baker was examined as to the reason for the monstrous
sentence inflicted on these men. He knew, he said, noth
ing whatever about it ; indeed he thought it severe him
self, but, being inflicted by a court-martial, he had no
power to interfere. Then Tukuaho was asked why he
had pronounced such a sentence for no offence at all, and
he said that he would not have passed such a sentence
without written orders. Could he produce these orders ?
He thought he could, and went to fetch them. The
Premier's face meanwhile had been undergoing a chance ;
he was evidently feeling very uncomfortable. When the
letters were produced, he said that he had quite forgotten
having written them, but that they now refreshed his

THE PREMIER AT HOME. 37
memory, and he glanced at Tukuaho in a very peculiar
way. Soon after this Tukuaho was relieved of his command,
and made mayor of his father's town, Mua, some twelve
miles from the capital. He had occasion to see the
Premier upon matters connected with his duties. The
great man was busily writing in his office. After waiting
many minutes Tukuaho rose to go, saying that he saw the
Premier was engaged. " Sit where you are," replied Mr
Baker, "until I am ready," — and he wrote on as if the
safety of the nation depended on his pen. At last he
stopped writing, and swung round in his chair. Tukuaho
had heard from others of this mode of inspiring awe, and
was in nowise disconcerted ; he returned the First Minis
ter's fixed gaze. " We are alone : tell me what cause for
ill-will you have against me." Tukuaho raised his eye
brows with a mild surprise, and intimated that he did not
understand the question, but had come to ask when he
was to distribute tax-allotments in Mua. " You know
well enough what I mean. Why did you betray me ? "
said the Premier, coming to the point. "I have much
love for you," answered Tukuaho, " and I want you to tell
me about Fifita's allotment." From that day Tukuaho
was a marked man, but one to be conciliated rather than
threatened. I found him in his new house still unfinished. A ngatu
screen was suspended across the room, behind which a
mosquito - net was visible. A lamp stood upon a trade
box, and the corner of the room was piled high with
official-looking papers and torn envelopes in hopeless eon-
fusion. I made a mental note of an admonition to be

38 THE SHIP OF STATE AND HER CREW.
administered to my colleague on this head, for any papers
left in a Tongan's house are certain to be read by his re
tainers, who will straightway bruit their contents at every
kava-ring in the town, supplying the gaps with imagina
tive but sensational details. Tungi was sitting in the
middle of the floor, and rose to greet me with his usual
courtly grace. He seated me on a box, and went to wake
his son, who was sleeping off his headache in the mosquito-
net. Tukuaho presently emerged looking very unwell, but
delighted to see me. He has the same massive head and
features as his father; and though only thirty -two, he
already shows signs of attaining the ample proportions
that no Tongan chief seems to escape. His face is plea
sant, though the eyes are set at a peculiar Mongolian
angle, very far apart, and the eyelids habitually droop
over them. His manners err if anything on the side of
showing too great a desire to please, but his conversation
in his own language is very intelligent. I had hoped that
he and some of my other colleagues could speak English,
but I now found that their English was " pidgin," and
quite unsuited for conducting diplomatic negotiations with
exactitude. It was a serious disappointment, for my
knowledge of Tongan was slender, and my experience in
Fiji and elsewhere had taught me never to trust to an
interpreter in dealing with natives. I had before me the
necessity of mastering the language sufficiently to speak
in public before I could really begin my work, but for
tunately my knowledge of Fijian stood me in good stead ;
for though the two languages differ more than French
differs from English, yet the idiom and metaphor is much
alike, as one might expect among races who live under

THE DANGERS OF CABINET MEETINGS. 39
similar conditions and have occasional intercourse with
one another. Henceforward I devoted all my spare mo
ments to the study of the language, particularly that
form of it in use towards the chiefs, which may be. called
the language of respect : the mastery of such nuances gives
the appearance of far greater facility than I was likely to
acquire in the limited time at my disposal. Before I left
Tonga the necessity for using the language in public, and
for drafting the new code of law, had given me consider
able fluency; and I was able to realise the vast superiority
and richness of Polynesian as compared with Melanesian
languages. My two colleagues were in a state of the deepest de
jection. They were inclined to be reticent, and told me
that they could make no changes without consulting the
king. I said that one change at least did not require the
sanction of his Majesty — namely, that the members of the
Cabinet should meet together periodically to agree upon
a common policy, and that none of them should take any
important action without consulting his colleagues. This,
I explained, was the rule of action in every Cabinet
in the world, and it was, moreover, provided for in the
Tongan Constitution. They seemed much disturbed at
this announcement, and Tukuaho replied that it was a
new thing in Tonga, and that his colleagues would not
understand it, but would say that he was arrogating to
himself the powers of the king. He said that already
the Hahavea chiefs, Maafu and Lavaka, actuated by
jealousy, were stirring up the people against him though
he had as yet done nothing, and had said bitter things
in public about being subject to his family : that Tungi,

40 THE SHIP OF STATE AND HER CREW.
his father, wanted to resign, and was pressing him to
follow his example. They were sowing distrust of him
in the king's mind, and there was a strong party of Free
Church ministers and their sympathisers in Haapai and
Vavau who were doing all in their power to damage him.
I soundly rated Tungi for his pusillanimity, saying that
it was cowardly to throw up the sponge before we had
even made one effort. They were appointed by the king,
and as long as they had the king's support it did not
matter two straws what people said or did. As for words,
no Government in the world existed without- enemies who
abused it, but men who undertook public duties knew
that words hurt no one. Our course was plain: we
must see the king, and assure ourselves of his support ;
if he refused to support us, then it would be time to
resign. Tukuaho assented ruefully. Other Governments, he
said, did not mind having enemies because they had
friends as well; but he seemed to have lost all his
friends, and the king himself listened to others rather
than to him. Poor Tukuaho's political prospects did not
look very bright certainly, but I would not admit this to
him, and before I left we had arranged to visit the king
in Haapai, while Kubu, the Minister of Police, and his
uncle, Sateki, were to leave at once for the outlying-
groups of Vavau, Niua-foou, and Niua-tobutabu,1 to hold
meetings and explain the nature of the changes that had
taken place, before any garbled account should reach
them. Until the house lent to us by the Tongan Government
1 See map at end.

THE PUBLIC DEBT. 41
should be ready, we enjoyed the hospitality of Mr Camp
bell, who had the pretty house occupied by Mr Baker
until the attempt on his life caused him to remove to
the king's palace for safety. The officers of H.M.S.
Egeria, who had finished their survey-work and were
about to leave for China, dined with us. Our host had
wisely imposed a fine for any one who uttered the word
" Baker " at his table, for since the great Minister's de
parture his exploits had been so much discussed as to
become nauseating. Fortunately for the conversation
there had been a mutiny on the Egeria, and her transfer
to the China station was designed to take her crew out
of the Australian atmosphere, where freedom, as known
to the rampant section of the press, means resistance to
all constituted authority.
I spent the next day in the Premier's office. It is
elaborately furnished with bookshelves and padded leather
arm-chairs ; but when I opened one of the cupboards in
the clerk's room my heart sank. A ton or so of official
documents had been pitchforked into the pigeon-holes
like so much waste-paper: these must all be examined
and set in order before the actual position of the Govern
ment could be ascertained. Tukuaho had been fairly
active with his pen since his accession to office, but no
copies of his letters were forthcoming, and none of his
papers had been filed. The claims against the Govern
ment, as far as could be ascertained, amounted to some
£7000, which under proper scrutiny could be reduced to
something over £6000 ; but the arrears . of pay due to
Government officials exceeded £8000 — £15,000 in all
— and to meet these claims there was £2000 in the

42 THE SHIP OF STATE AND HER CREW.
Treasury. The European officials were hard-working men,
wretchedly underpaid, two of them being married men
with families. To leave their salaries nine months in
arrear was sheer cruelty, but the native officials were
certain to grumble if their claims were given precedence.
When, however, a few days later, a proposal to pay the
European officials was laid before the king, he laughed
and said, " Why not ? We Tongans can live on a bit of
yam or Jcumala, but these white men must eat money or
die of hunger. Let them be paid."
One of Mr Baker's later freaks had been to import, at
great expense, a number of labourers from Mangaia in the
Cook group, to form banana plantations on a large scale.
To make the prospect of earning working expenses still
more illusory, he had ordered railway plant to take the
bananas to the steamer, and had even included a passenger
car, the distance being at most a mile. We had now to
pay off these labourers and send them home. They had
done little work, and even if they had, the proceeds of
their labour would have gone into the pockets of the New
Zealand firm who had contracted to buy the bananas.
This charge and the Europeans' arrears of salary nearly
swallowed up our scanty balance.
Our financial difficulties did not affect the spirits of the
Government employees. The Premier's clerks were thor
oughly happy with their new toys. Mataka, the chief
clerk, had unearthed the Great Seal and a box of wafers,
and was affixing it to blank sheets of note-paper. Sibu,
his junior, was experimenting with a very messy contriv
ance, called, I believe, a pantograph, by squeegeeing print
ing-ink upon a stencil-paper, whence it travelled to his

AN UNNECESSARY COMPLICATION. 43
face and clothes by way of his fingers. When order was
resumed I tried to ascertain what prospect there was of
our receiving any of the arrears of taxes. The first act of
the new Government had been to remit the arrears of
taxes due in the year 1888, and those who had paid were
not unnaturally indignant, and declared that they would
regard their taxes paid in that year as those due for 1889.
Then the copra-trader had got hold of Tukuaho, and per
suaded him that he would earn the lasting gratitude of
his people if he would make them pay their taxes in
copra, and refuse to accept money. But, to save appear
ances, tenders had been called for, and the trader in ques
tion tendered, but informally. I, knowing nothing of any
arrangement between him and Tukuaho, called upon him
to amend his tender to coincide with the conditions pub
lished in the ' Gazette,' and within an hour I received a
visit from his partner, who flatly declined to amend the
tender, on the ground that he had a private arrangement
with Tukuaho. My unwary colleague seemed to have
tied a millstone about our necks, for his signature could
not be repudiated. He had pledged himself to compel
the natives, who could readily pay money for their taxes,
to bring copra — a product which many of them did not
possess, and which had to be transported many miles in
carts over bad roads instead of being sold to the store
keeper in their own village. Knowing that I was on my
way to advise him, he had yet yielded to the first trader
who had approached him ; and, at the time when the
natives needed every encouragement to pay their taxes,
he had thrown a serious difficulty in their way. I have
dwelt thus at length on this incident because it had after-

44 THE SHIP OF STATE AND HER CREW.
wards most disastrous results, and led to a lawsuit which,
though amusing enough in the facts it brought to light,
wasted seventeen days of valuable time. I felt bound to
compromise the matter in the most advantageous manner
possible, and to content myself by making the trader
sign a bond which left the Government quite free as to
the amount of copra they delivered, and allowed them to
receive money for taxes after January 1, four months
hence. I had many times to curse Tukuaho's naivete and
good-nature when I saw taxpayers turned away from the
tax-office windows with money in their hands, and carts
full of copra passing the Government sheds on the way
to the traders', while the Treasury safes were nearly
empty. During the next few days it was clear enough that,
friendly as my colleagues were, the people did not care to
conceal their distrust. This was easily explained. The
white traders as a body were quiet, law-abiding men, but
there was the usual proportion of malcontents who are
" agin any Guv'ment." If these people must have a Gov--
ernment, they infinitely prefer a purely native one, which
allows them opportunities unattainable when a country
man of their own is at the head of affairs. Some of these,
fearing that my presence would upset their pet schemes
of abolition of the poll-tax on Europeans and the Customs
dues, had been telling the natives that I had been sent to
Tonga to smooth the way for annexation. This is the one
story that every Tongan will believe, even though a white
man has told it to him, and I knew that it would take
months of hard work to live it down. The Free Church
ministers, moreover, had not been idle, and their per-

A SON OF THE IMMORTALS. 45
sistent misrepresentation of me as a champion of the
Wesleyans had contributed to the popular suspicion. The
manners of the average Tongan to a white man whom he
dislikes and does not fear leave much to be desired. I
found myself jostled off the road by men on horseback,
and subjected to many other petty annoyances. All this
had to be borne good-temperedly if my mission was to
be successful ; and I knew that in a few months I could
succeed in changing the hostility and suspicion into
friendliness. My first task was to inspire the chiefs with confidence :
the people would follow their lead all in good time. As
soon, therefore, as we were installed in our new house, I
invited Fatafehi, the king's grandson, to visit me. This
chief enjoys a far higher degree of rank than his relation
ship to the sovereign would confer upon him, for he is a
chief of the spiritual line ; and now that the office of Tui
Tonga has been abolished, and Christianity has removed
the superstition by which the descendant of the Immor
tals was surrounded, he enjoys the highest consideration
in the kingdom after the king. To him alone, besides the
king, is used the peculiar language of respect by which
the deity is addressed. Of the curious polity of Tonga
before the introduction of Christianity I shall speak here
after. Although hedged by divinity, Fatafehi bears his honours
with great ease and good-humour. He has a jolly round
face, fringed with grizzled whiskers and moustache ; and
his kindly expression and burly figure give him the appear
ance of a gentleman farmer when times were good. He
is, moreover, almost the only Tongan who, in dress clothes,

46 THE SHIP OF STATE AND HER CREW.
looks like a gentleman. We had been good friends during
my former visit, while his wife Fujipala was still alive.
When they dined with me on that occasion, they drove up
in an antiquated buggy, with a Hindustani coachman from
Fiji, he in dress clothes, and she in mauve satin, bonnet
and boots included, attended by four maids of honour, as
befits a king's granddaughter who weighs seventeen stone.
Poor Fuji ! her good sense and influence are badly wanted
now. Her son, Taufaahau, deprived of her control, was
running wild, and since he was generally regarded as the
heir to the king, it was imperative that Fatafehi should
bring him under some sort of discipline. It was partly to
urge this upon him that I had invited him to visit me,
and partly because he had never shown animus against the
Wesleyans ; and I wished him, as Governor of Haapai, to
endeavour to check the disaffection which the speeches
of the Free Church ministers were creating. When he
arrived, Vaea, a chief among the returned exiles, was
drinking tea. He had just taken a cup in one hand and a
piece of bread-and-butter in the other when the great man
was announced. " Who ? " asked Vaea, not catching the
name. " Tui Belehake," I answered, giving his title ; and
as I spoke the portiere was flung aside and Fatafehi strode
in heartily. When I looked round Vaea had disappeared
from his chair, and was squatting in the corner with de
pending lower jaw and eyes fixed vacantly on the ceiling.
I spoke to him once or twice, trying to include him in the
conversation, but he did not seem to hear. The only sio-n
of life about him was the trembling of the teacup in his
palsied hand. Suddenly he got up, and having no free
hand to move the curtain, he plunged at it head-foremost,

A HEREDITARY LAUGH.

47

teacup and all, and disappeared. We found the empty
cup afterwards on the lawn, turned upside down in the
saucer. When his hostess had recovered from the effect
of this unexpected exit, she asked Fatafehi for an explan
ation. He laughed
heartily at her ignor
ance of the usages of
polite society, and said,
" It is the tabu. He
can't eat while I'm
here. Ha ! ha ! ha ! "
Fatafehi's laugh once
heard was not to be
forgotten. It began
low down in his per
son and bubbled up
wards, until suddenly
the upper part of his
head fell back, and
a mirthful roar burst
forth that shook his
portly presence to its
foundation. It was a
ready laugh, mirth-
compelling, and it car
ried far. When we
told Mrs S. of our august visitor, her first question was,
" Did you notice his laugh ? No other Tongan laughs
like that. They say that it is hereditary in his family.
You see it is his rank : no other Tongan would be allowed
to laugh like that." Thereafter I looked with great respect

" He plunged at the curtain head-foremost.''

48 THE SHIP OF STATE AND HER CREW.
upon Fatafehi's hereditary laugh, the more since I found
it useful when debates in the House were stormy, and
the opposition had to be silenced.
I was anxious to learn from Fatafehi what reception
the exiles had really had, for rumours were most con
flicting. From his account it appeared that while they
had received no welcome from the people at large, this
had been unnoticed in the presents that had been
showered upon them, by their immediate relations and
friends irrespective of Church. They were housed in a
large disused building called the "Women's College,"
until such time as they could make arrangements for
moving to their old homes, or the mission should appoint
such of them as were native ministers to vacant parishes.
They had not forgotten the hospitality shown to them in
Fiji, for late in the afternoon G  , who was alone in the
house, saw a long train of men and women approaching
with bales on their shoulders, evidently bent on perpe
trating a ceremony. Now one cannot express gratitude
with any accuracy in dumb-show, and the servants were
therefore despatched in hot haste for an interpreter.
Fortunately kind Mrs S. arrived just in time to save the
situation, and reply to the set speech in which we received
vicariously the gratitude due to the Government of Fiji.
It took the practical shape of a pony, several live pins,
rolls of ngatu, mats, combs, and the inevitable kava. Like
all native presents, they had eventually to be paid for in
return gifts of an equal or higher value.
Our new house adjoined the Government College, bein°-
in reality the house of the English principal when such
an officer existed. The undergraduates were a continuous

SHOE-LEATHER AS A MEANS OF SALVATION. 49
source of amusement for the first few days. On week
days they were taught shorthand and the higher mathe
matics by native tutors in cap and gown ; in the evenings
they sang incessantly in excellently sustained parts.
On Saturday they turned out with knives and baskets to
clean up the College premises ; and on Sunday they all
put on trousers and mortar-boards, and were marched off
two and two to church, carrying their shoes in their
hands. At the church-door the whole sixty pairs halted
to put on their boots, and enter the house of God with
dignity. They formed a magnificent choir of bass voices,
and rendered the trashy Methodist hymns with a grandeur
that would have greatly surprised their composers.
During the sermon the sixth form were busy transcribing
the homily in shorthand.

50

IV.

HOW I FARED AT COURT.
At length, on August 27, Fatafehi's schooner the Malokula
was declared ready for sea, and I embarked with Tukuaho,
Fatafehi, and Chief Clerk Mataka. The vessel was un
pleasantly crowded with old women, whose prostrate
bodies made the traverse of the deck at night impossible.
At sunset we passed Malinoa, where lay the four men
who were shot after the attempt on Mr Baker's life.
Thence, clear of reefs, we stood on with a fair wind
through the night until we could see the glare of the
volcano of Tofua, then in eruption. After a fruitless
attempt to capture a pig at Haafeva, which wasted a
precious hour, we dropped anchor at Lifuka at nearly
noon. We were on the lee side of a low narrow island,
nowhere more than thirty feet above high-water mark, but
covered with grass and cocoa-nuts to the water's edge.
Other islands of the same kind stretched away to the
north and south of us. The town was a mere row of iron-
roofed stores on the beach : behind them could be seen
the usual native huts dotted about among the trees, with
grass growing right up to the doors, and horses tethered

THE KINGS KAVA. 51
here and there between them. A few cable - lengths to
the northward of our anchorage was the spot where the
privateer Port-au-Prince was treacherously taken by Finau
Ulukalala, and on the beach opposite to us the master and
crew were murdered. The two rusty iron guns among
the ballast in the hold of our schooner are part of her
armament. To this event we are indebted for a book of
travels that closely approaches ' Eobinson Crusoe ' in style
and surpasses it in interest. Mariner, one of the sur
vivors, spent scarcely four years among the people, yet his
account of the Tongans, elicited by questions put to him
by Dr Martin, leaves little to be added by later travellers.
The book so produced has become a classic : one does not
know which most to admire, Mariner's observation and
wonderful memory, or Martin's ingenuity, industry, and
pure style.1
As our visit to the king was to be one of state, we
had brought with us an old matdbule, or master of cere
monies, who landed with a root of kava to announce our
arrival. We followed him immediately afterwards along
the beach to the great native house occupied by the king.
Before we reached it we saw the old man coming down
from the unfinished church, followed by a train of his
matdbules. We halted until a mat was spread under the
shade of some large trees, and his attendants formed a
kava-ring, a large oval, with the bowl facing the king.
Fatafehi then led me round outside the oval of sitting
men, and we took our seats on the king's left, with our
niatabule between us and him. On my left was a white-
haired man with very bright eyes, who afterwards proved
1 Mariner's Account of the Tonga Islands.

52

HOW I FARED AT COURT.

to be Kaho the chief jailer, and therefore the most im
portant authority after the Governor. The king sat quite
silent and impassive except for a nervous side glance of
the eyes, which would have given him a suspicious look
if it had not been evidently involuntary. Tukuaho had
slunk off to the place of dishonour behind the bowl, where
some of the attendants were pounding the root on a flat
stone that rang out melodiously. This was because his

The king's kava-ring.
father is still living, and no man in Tonga has any titular
rank or status until his father be dead. At the kino-'s
kava the circle is sacred to chiefs and the matabules. For
fully five minutes, while the kava was being pounded, not
a word was spoken. The thirty or forty men who com
posed the ring stared straight at the grass, oppressed by a
sense of decorum as rigid as the etiquette at St James'.
Suddenly, without a word of warning, our matabule shouted
at the top of his voice to the matabule on the kind's rio-ht

THE CEREMONY. o3
" Oku lelei a Tonga '' (All is well at Tonga), and the other
shouted back, "Koe!" (Indeed). Then our voice yelled,
" We left Tonga yesterday with a fair wind, and arrived
to-day." The other barked his monosyllable, " Koe ! "
After this conversation languished. I looked at the king
to see how he would take their flagrant breach of manners,
expecting that these unmannerly vassals who talked across
him at the top of their voices would receive some reproof ;
but he made no sign, and I was left to conclude that this
mode of conversation was adopted in deference to the
king's growing deafness.
The pounded root, which had fallen from the stone
upon a small mat, had been from time to time shot into
the bowl, which was now handed to a man who sat directly
opposite to the king with a crowd of commoners behind
him. He tilted it up to show the contents, and cried,
"Koe kava eni kuo tuki" (This kava is pounded). The
matabule on the king's right shouted, " Palu " (Mix), and
two men came forward and sat one on each side of the
bowl facing one another — the one with a fan to keep off
the flies, and the other with some water-gourds. The
man who presided at the bowl now rinsed his hands by
pouring water over them from one of the gourds, and then
squeezed the pounded root into a pyramid in the bottom
of the bowl. The matabule now cried, " Lingi ae vai "
(Pour in the water), and the contents of the gourds were
slowly poured in, while the kava-maker kneaded the mass
with both hands. Then the matabule cried, " Tuku ae
vai " (Stop pouring), and the man dropped his gourds, and
took up a banana-leaf to help his fellow in keeping off the
flies. The matabule now cried, "Ai ae fan " (Put in the

54 HOW I FARED AT COURT.
strainer), and a tassel of the fibres of the yellow hibiscus,
in shape and size looking not unlike a deck-swab, was laid
floating upon the surface of the kava. The kava-maker
now pushed the edges of this strainer carefully down to
the bottom of the bowl, drawing it gently towards him,
and bringing it up to the rim of the bowl till it overlapped
the part that still floated, thus enclosing the fibres of the
root in a sort of net. Then drawing the whole to the
broad rim of the bowl, he folded it double, and wrung it
out till the muddy fluid had slopped back into the bowl,
and the strong fibres of the strainer cracked. He now
handed it to his companion on the left, who shook it out
and combed out the fibres with his fingers before giving it
back. This process was repeated until all the fibres of the
kava suspended in the fluid had been removed. These
waste fibres, called eft, were afterwards pounded again in
one of the neighbouring houses by some of the commoners.
During this operation the most perfect silence was kept.
Three men now came into the circle carrying baskets of
boiled plantains, which they emptied in a heap on banana-
leaves, and, by the direction of the matabule, distributed
amongst us — two plantains each. Before eating mine I
waited to see what the others would do, but no one touched
them, and before the end of the ceremony they were swept
up and taken away in baskets. In Mariner's time, eighty-
seven years ago, they would have been eaten : now the
custom has become an empty form, and survived like the
buttons on the back of the modern dress-coat.
The straining of the kava being now completed, the
man at the bowl cried, " Kuo ma ae kava ni " (This kava is
clear), and the matabule answered, "Fakatau" (Pour out).

A BIT OF FOLK-LORE. 55
Three or four men rose from behind the bowl and squatted
within the circle, each holding a polished cocoa-nut shell.
The kava-maker filled each in turn, using the strainer as
a sponge, and, as each shell was filled, the man holding
the fan cried in a peculiar long-drawn wail, " Kava kuo
heka " (The kava is lifted), and the matabule replied, "Angi
maa  ," naming the title of each recipient. As each
was named he clapped his hands to show the cupbearer
where he was sitting. Two of the king's matabules drank
first, then the king, then Fatafehi, then another mata
bule ; then there was a pause, for the presiding matabule
had to ascertain my name, which, being imperfectly caught,
was reproduced as "Angi maa Tobisoni." After several
others had drunk, the matabule cried, " Mai ma'aku " (Bring
it to me), and received his own share. The distribution
followed certain strict laws of precedence, which it is the
matabules trade to know. The first cup is given to the
principal matabule, the second to the chief next in rank
to the presiding chief, the third to the chief himself.
Had Fatafehi been a visitor instead of Governor of the
island, he would have received the first cup, but being
regarded as a chief of the place, to whom no special com
pliment was necessary, he received it immediately before
the king, a sure indication that he was next in rank to
him. In kava-parties of less ceremony, when the kava is
brewed more than once, the order is changed. At the
second brew the president drinks first, and the person
next to him in rank third, the matabule intervening.
The Tongans give a rather crude piece of folk-lore to
account for this custom, the opposite of that observed in
Fiji, where the chief always drinks first. They say that

56 HOW I FARED AT COURT.
there was a time, many years ago, when their fathers
believed that the kava, growing everywhere wild in the
forest, was a deadly poison. But one day a man going to
his plantation saw a rat gnawing a kava-root. He waited
expecting to see it die, but it ate on greedily, and at last
ran off uninjured. Much excited by what he had seen,
he hastened to tell the Tui Tonga, taking the gnawed root
with him to bear out his statement. The chief listened to
him and said, " If the rat gnawed the kava and lived, then
surely is the plant not poisonous : perhaps it is even a
useful medicine; let us try it." So they took shell-
knives, and scraped the root, and kneaded it with water,
and presented it to the Tui Tonga in a cup. But he, look
ing at it, said, " Perhaps this fellow lied, and the kava is
poison after all : let another drink first, that we may
know." And he gave the cup to the matabule on his left
hand, bidding him drink, and the chief sat gazing at him
to see if he would die ; and after a while he called for
another cup, and gave it to the matabule on his right hand,
saying, "Drink, for perhaps your fellow has a stronger
stomach than I, and that which harms him not may kill
me." And when both had drunk and were unharmed the
Tui Tonga drank the cup, and found it pleasant to the
taste, and bade them gather the kava from the forest, and
let him drink of it daily. Thus it became the usage of
the chief to drink the third cup, after the fashion of that
Tui Tonga who made a trial of it on the bodies of his
matabules. When the bowl was empty I whispered to Fatafehi that
he should announce me as the bearer of a letter to the
king from the High Commissioner. He passed the mes-

THE HOUSE OF AN HONEST OFFICIAL. 57
sage on to our matabule, who shouted a mangled version
of it across the king to the fellow sitting on his Majesty's
right hand. This functionary as usual shouted " Koe ! "
to the sea-birds circling over the reef. My letter was
then passed to the king, who laid it down without looking
at it.
Meanwhile the second brew was being prepared, and
although the formalities were sufficiently relaxed to per
mit conversation, still the king stared straight before him,
speaking to no one, and seeming not to hear the conver
sation which was carried on at speaking-trumpet pitch
out of compliment to his deafness. As soon as the cup
had gone round again he rose without any warning,
passed behind Fatafehi, and stooping over me, extended
three fingers of his right hand in welcome, not from any
motive of hauteur, but because the fourth finger had been
sacrificed in his old heathen days to the manes of a
deceased relative. Then without a word he walked off,
carrying rather than leaning on his staff for all his ninety
years, and disappeared into the long native house where
he was staying. The kava-party at once broke up and
went their several ways ; and Tukuaho emerged from his
humble seat behind the bowl, and led us to a large but
ruinous house that had once been the king's palace. This
was to be our quarters during our visit. Fatafehi left us
here to go to Government House and attend to his
executive duties. A glance at that building — we could
see it from our verandah — convinced me that whoever
may have squandered the public funds, the Governor of
Haapai was as guiltless as the Minister of Finance, whose
house I had seen in Nukualofa.

58 HOW I FARED AT COURT.
In Government House there were traces of a weather
board bungalow, but the shingles had long ago rotted
away, and been replaced from time to time with odd
scraps of galvanised iron, rust-eaten through and through.
The verandah posts had fallen, bringing down the roof
with them, and the gaps in the flooring were mended with
bits of an old canoe. But dilapidated as the house of his
Majesty's representative was, it was a mansion in com
parison to that of the Minister of Finance in Nukualofa,
which seemed only to hold together to clear the character
of its owner from any suspicion that an empty treasury
might reasonably attach to him.
It now transpired that Tukuaho had in his suite a
couple of spies devoted to his interests, whose business
was to loaf into the houses of their acquaintances and
gauge public opinion. One of them, Peter Vi, would have
surpassed even the " Sham Squire " if they had been con
temporaries. His fat empty face and rotund person
disarmed suspicion ; and he had besides an odour of the
cloth about him, for his father and grandfather were both
reverend pillars of the Free Church. The latter, indeed,
was the oldest native minister, and a contemporary of the
king. He paid us a visit in a hand-cart soon after we
arrived, with a black coat over his vcdct, and a tall, hat,
carefully brushed the wrong way, upon his reverend head.
The poor old gentleman had lost the use of his lower
limbs and of part of his intellect ; but he said a prayer
over us, and went his way, leaving a vapour of respect
ability behind him which doubtless served to rehabilitate
such disreputable politicians as we were believed to be :
for although his son, as a Free Church minister, is dis-

THE BLESSING OF THE CHURCH.

59

affected to the present Cabinet by profession, old Peter is
long past polemics, for all creeds seem much alike when
one is ninety, and expecting every day to have one's
doubts explained away. Young Peter was only a third
clerk in the Treasury at £10 a-year, and bad at arith
metic, and he wanted to be Sub-Inspector of Police at

' He paid us a visit in a hand-cart. "

£25 ; so, having his way to make in the world, he was a
loyal spy. The other was Tukuaho's cousin. He was an
ex-convict, and looked his part of spy so well that I
suspect that the conversation at once turned upon the
weather in any house that he entered ; but this did not
prevent him from bringing blood-curdling reports of the
hostility of the people, drawn probably from hearsay
aided by a facile imagination.
Having despatched our spies on secret service, we had

60 HOW I FARED AT COURT.
time to examine the three great rooms that formed our
quarters. There was a depressing air of decayed grandeur
about the worm-eaten furniture and weather-stained floor.
A large room at the end became our pantry, and through
the reed screen that divided it from the rest of the house
came the incessant chatter of a Princess and two ladies
from the jail who had been told off to attend to our
wants. When not engaged in the menial service of wash
ing dishes, they were drinking kava and retailing the
local scandal in an atmosphere reeking with the fumes of
sulukas. Lest I should seem to boast of my single experi
ence of eating from the hand of a Princess of the Blood
Eoyal, I hasten to add that Charlotte, the lady in ques
tion, was a member of Fatafehi's household, and since
we were his guests, it was in accordance with native
etiquette that she should take charge of the culinary
department. She discharged her task admirably, and
rang the changes on fried chicken, fried sucking-pig, with
baked cocoa-nuts and raw fish * for dessert, in the most
practised manner.
After luncheon Tukuaho became gloomy. Not a soul
had come to greet him, and he was not accustomed to
unpopularity. During his last visit, he said, his arm had
been tired with shaking hands, and his digestion upset
with the quantity of kava he had been obliged to drink
with his admirers ; but now he saw all his old friends
pass the door without looking in. Fat Peter's appearance
1 Raw fish is described by Mariner as a delicacy, and it was provided at
my special request. It is cut up into lozenge-shaped pieces, and washed
in salt water. When I had overcome the natural repugnance of the idea,
I found it rather good. There is no valid reason why raw fish should be
nastier than raw oysters, which it much resembles in taste.

THE BUDGET AS A NEW INVENTION. 61
did not make matters better. He returned from spying
with black care on his brow, and with rumours of war
on his lips. The people were talking of fighting ; they
were not going to submit tamely to the yoke of Tungi
and his son. " When was Haapai under the authority of
the Tongatabu chiefs ? " But their resentment was not
confined to Tukuaho — poor good-natured Fatafehi, their
own Governor, came in for a share of the obloquy. Had
he not sold his country to England ? And, as a proof of
it, here was a white man sent down by the British Govern
ment to meddle in their affairs. Tukuaho was much
depressed, but, fortunately, at this juncture the burly
Governor himself came in bursting with good-humour.
He had heard the news too, but it did not disturb him in
the least. As a descendant of the Immortals, human
affairs were never more to him than food for amusement.
His own rank was too secure for any popular aberration
to disturb his composure, and his digestion was too good
to allow him to look far into the future. "Let them
alone," he said ; " they're all fools. All that we have to do
is to prevent the king from listening to these Free Church
ministers. Only wait until the bolotu on Sunday, then
we'll talk to them. No, thanks. I have just eaten. I
am full." The son of the Immortals sat down, and we
got to business.
The first thing to do was to persuade the king to hold a
Privy Council, and to appoint me a Minister of the Crown ;
the next, to pass certain draft Ordinances restraining the
public expenditure within the limits of the Budget. First,
I had to explain to my fellow-conspirators what a Budget
really is. " But," I asked, " how is it that you do not

62 HOW I FARED AT COURT.
know all about this ? It is provided for in clause 19 of
the Constitution." "That may be," retorted Tukuaho;
" many things are provided for in Mr Baker's Constitu
tion, but we have never seen any of them done in Tonga.
When has there been a ballot ? Yet the Constitution
says no one may sit in Parliament without being first
elected by ballot. It is unlawful to confine any person
without a warrant, yet where are the warrants for the
prisoners in Tofua ? There are none, because the men
were taken there without trial."
I produced my draft Estimates, drawn up by Mr Camp
bell, and unfolded the idea that no expenditure not first
authorised by the Privy Council could be incurred. My
colleagues scarcely contained their admiration ; but when
I modestly produced voucher forms, and explained that
not a penny could be spent without the signature of the
Premier and the Auditor-General, and then only when
proper detailed accounts are attached, my reputation as
a statesman was thoroughly established. Fatafehi, giving
short barks of half -comprehending appreciation, asked me
to say it all over again. Then he leaned back in his
chair, and laughed long and loud, looking all the while
at Tukuaho, and crying, " How now, boy ? If it had
been like this in Mr Baker's time, eh ? Would there
now be debts, eh ? Would the money have been stolen,
eh ? This is a real thing. Look here," he added, be
coming grave, "you go and see Tubou now, and tell
him all about it. Get him to fix the Council for to
morrow, — just we three, and we will pass this law, and
keep our money."
" Wait a moment," I interposed ; " you must first have

LEGISLATION BY EXPRESS. 63
me appointed one of the Ministers and a member of the
Privy Council."
" Oh, Tubou will do that, of course. We cannot pass
it without you. Look here, boy," he said, addressing his
leader, " go to Tubou now — he's alone : I saw him as I
came up. I will send a policeman to keep the listeners
off." So Tukuaho rather reluctantly girded on a ragged mat and
walked down the slope to see his sovereign, and a police
man in a smart uniform tunic and bare legs followed to
clear the anteroom. This precaution proved to be useless,
for anon we heard the voice of our colleague proclaiming
State secrets in a voice that wounded the ear. He came
back delighted with himself. The king had laughed more
than once. The policeman had seen him laugh and would
tell the town : it would have great results. Tubou had
told him all about the church he was building, and he
told Tubou the news from Tongatabu. It was this that
had made him laugh.
" But did he say that he would have a Council ? " I asked
anxiously, surprised at my colleague's levity.
" Yes, at ten o'clock. I had almost forgotten."
" And did he say that I should be appointed Assistant
Premier ? "
" Yes, so he did. I am to write a letter of appointment
for you."
Then we laid our plans. The new Ordinances must
first be passed, and as the king knew that the Privy
Council had power to pass Ordinances between the ses
sions of the Legislative Council, there ought to be no
difficulty in persuading him to sign them. Then, if he

64 HOW I FARED AT COURT.
were still in a good humour, we were to urge upon him
the necessity of returning to Tongatabu to hold a great
meeting of the people, and order them to pay their taxes.
We sat on far into the night, discussing our plan of cam
paign between the bowls of kava, until the Head Jailer
and the Sub-Inspector of Police, both malcontents, came
in, ostensibly to do us honour, but in reality to hear us
talk and spread the news. But when they had all gone
Peter's moon - face clouded, and he whispered his dire
tidings into Tukuaho's willing ear. The town was sus
picious and uncomfortable. " Tukuaho sits all day with
the white man writing. Let them write on. The coun
try will not be lost to us by writings. There will be war
before that happens."

65

V.

HOW I BECAME A PRIVY COUNCILLOR.
I woke early with the feeling that a crisis had to be gone
through during the day, and that we should need all our
energies. I fondly hoped that a spark of enthusiasm would
have been awakened in the breast of my colleague, and
that he would be as eager as I to have a common plan of
action laid down before our visit to the king, on which so
much depended. But to my intense disgust the kava-
bowl, surrounded by its ministering spirits, was in course
of preparation, and a precious hour was wasted. I lived
to know .that to expect a Tongan chief to forego native
ceremonial in the exigencies of public business is to court
disappointment. We had time for a hurried meal when
Fatafehi, clad in decent black, came to escort me to the
royal presence. He thought it better that I should see
the king alone before the Council, and present the precious
log of sandal- wood that I had brought as a present from
the High Commissioner. He would stay, he said, during
the interview and interpret for me. Eight men were pro
duced, who lifted the tree on their shoulders, and preceded
us to the native house that did duty for a palace, and,
E

66

HOW I BECAME A PRIVY COUNCILLOR.

laying it endways to the door so that its entire length
could be seen from within, retired. Then Fatafehi and I
came forward. As soon as the king saw us he rose from
his seat to fetch a chair for me from several that were set
round the table in readiness for the Council. He was
dressed in European clothes of rusty black cloth, and
appeared to have been waiting for us for some time. The
house was divided
into three by reed
partitions, and very
meanly furnished:
a green iron bed
stead in the inner
room covered with
mats was the only
bedroom furniture,
and besides the
table and office
chairs in the middle
room, there was
only a shelf of the
commonest crock
ery. The outer
room was occupied
by his servants, who, I believe, were prisoners. It was
characteristic of the king that while he had a well-
found house in Nukualofa, he lived from choice on the
barest necessaries, and spent a large portion of his
income on building churches.
After we had shaken hands, Fatafehi announced in a
stentorian voice that I had brought a little sandal-wood

King George Tubou.

AN AUDIENCE. 67
from the High Commissioner. The king said, "Fakafetai"
(Thanks), and there was a pause. I looked round for my
interpreter : he was gone ! Here was I left sitting face
to face with a monarch whose language I knew very
imperfectly, bound to make a good impression while
bellowing my halting sentences into his uncomprehend
ing ear.
" Fatafehi shall pay for this," I thought savagely, trying
the while to assume what I hoped was an ingratiating
smile. The king laughed pleasantly.
" Malo hoo lelei " (I am glad you are well), he said.
I thought of the matabules, blessing them, and shouted,
" Koe ! "
" Ah, you speak Tongan," said his Majesty, amiably.
" A very little," I replied.
There was silence, and to save the situation I said that
I had lately been in the part of New Guinea to which the
missionaries were going. The king was interested, and
asked what the people were like. " Is it true that they
are telefua ? " he said. The word telefua was unfamiliar,
but I nevertheless shouted the universal "Koe ! " He
chuckled much at this, and I wondered more than ever
what telefua could mean. Then I tried to lead the
conversation into political channels, and spoke of the
debt. '' But we will pay it," he said.
" Yes, if the people will pay their taxes," I replied.
" Of course they will pay their taxes," he answered with
easy conviction.
After a few more remarks I murmured something about
the Privy Council, and took my leave. Upon Fatafehi,

68 HOW I BECAME A PRIVY COUNCILLOR.
airing himself outside, I poured the vials of my wrath,
and asked what telefua meant.
" Having no covering — naked," he answered ; " but why
do you ask ? "
" Because," I replied savagely, " since you did not stay
to interpret for me as you promised, I have told the king
that the New Guinea people go about naked, which is not
true." Fatafehi laughed his hereditary laugh.
At ten o'clock we went down to meet the king in
Council, followed by Mataka with his shorthand note-book
and the Council minutes. As we went in the king took
his place before a large Tongan Bible at the head of the
table. Fatafehi and Tukuaho had moved to their seats,
and I was on the point of taking mine when the king
caught sight of me. My back was to the light and my
face in shadow. He peered at me and said, " Who is this
papalagi (foreigner) who comes to our Council ? "
Tukuaho said, " It is he of whom I told your Majesty.1
He who has come to help us, and make things plain."
" We have sent one foreigner away," said the king, " and
you bring another : I thought that the Council was to be
for ourselves."
This was a facer : without being in the Privy Council I
should be utterly powerless, quite apart from the loss of
prestige that such a rebuff would entail if it got abroad.
1 " Eoo Afio " is an exact equivalent for your Majesty, and the words are
used in precisely the same connection. In former times they were ad
dressed to the Tui Tonga only. In speaking of the king to a third person,
" Ene Afio " (his Majesty) is said. Besides these words a number of special
words for the verbs of sensation are used in speaking of, or to, the king or
the Deity.

A REBUFF. 69
I had never been warned that the king was less anxious
for my coming than were his Ministers, nor that the prin
cipal argument used by his chiefs to induce him to dismiss
Mr Baker was that they were quite prepared to govern
their country without help from any foreigner. It flashed
through my mind that I might stand on my dignity as the
emissary of a foreign Government sent at the king's own
request conveyed through his chief Minister, and insist
upon the choice between admitting me to the Council. or
allowing me to resign and leave Tonga ; but with the
thought came the reflection that he would either admit me
unwillingly, and henceforth regard me with suspicion, or
accept my resignation. In the latter event I should return
to Fiji to confess myself unable to do the work I had un
dertaken : and English interests would be in a worse posi
tion than if I had never come ; for with their sovereign's
views every Tongan would agree, the Government would
flounder deeper into the mire, and the German Vice-Con
sul would be invited to give the aid in financial matters
that I had failed to afford. So during the silence that
followed the king's last remark, my mind was made up ;
I would simply stand where I was, and pretend not to
hear what was said. Fatafehi's elbow was close to me,
and I fell back upon the undignified expedient of pinching
it. He understood, and began to shout persuasive words
into the king's ear.
" Pardon me," he said, " it is about the money. Which
of us understands the way of money, and such foreigners'
things ? But this gentleman will explain it all to us : he
is here only as an expounder."

70 HOW I BECAME A PRIVY COUNCILLOR.
I stood my ground meanwhile, trying to look utterly
unconscious, and after a pause the king said, " Oku lelei be"
(Very well).
We then took the oath, the terms of which forbid me to
describe the proceedings, but I may say that before we
rose I had succeeded in ingratiating myself with the king,
and he had promised to visit Nukualofa, and to hold great
meetings of his people in every province, urging them
to pay their taxes, and declaring his confidence in his new
Cabinet, a point on which proof was still wanting.
Shortly after the Council Fatafehi was sent for by the
king, and returned with a message from his Majesty ask
ing my pardon for his having failed to recognise me. I
believe that he would have resisted my admission to the
Council if he had had time to consider the question, but
his natural feeling of courtesy to a stranger prevented
him from insisting on my withdrawal after I had entered
his house.
This curious misunderstanding, which so nearly ruined
the success of my mission, showed me that I could not
trust the discretion of any of my colleagues in matters
concerning the king, in so great an awe did they stand of
him. Tukuaho had asked the High Commissioner for my
services without daring to obtain the full assent of his
sovereign, as he had obtained his leave to appoint me
Assistant Premier without touching on the question of
my admission to the Council. Had I known this in time,
I should have taken proper measures to win the kind's
confidence before asking for a meeting of the Council:
as it was, my colleague's blunder had saved me the delay

SOCIETY IN HAAPAI. 71
which this would have entailed. The cue given by
Tukuaho was a useful one, and for the present I became
to the Tongans not a Minister of the Crown, but "Koe
tag.ata fakahinohino " (The expounder — of the dark ways
of civilised man).
The Privy Council over, we had time to look about us.
The island at this point is barely half a mile wide : every
rood of it seems to be under cultivation, from the back of
the town to the edge of the rocks on the Liku upon which
the ocean-rollers, driven before the steady trade-wind, beat
unceasingly. The Europeans of the place live in a row of
stores on the beach, each hungry for copra, each fearing
to give the natives credit, yet not daring to refuse lest
they take their custom to a neighbour ; and each, when
he has given credit, mortified by seeing his debtor pass
his store to sell his copra to a hated rival. There is the
agent of the great Hamburg firm, the agent for M' Arthur
& Co., a free-lance or two, a carpenter, and the Customs
officer of the port, who brings up a large family on £100
a-year. The only friendships in this heterogeneous society
are mere alliances against a common foe, and as they are
all by instinct against the Government, and can now have
the exciting sport of setting the king against his Ministers,
there is something very like reconciliation among them.
On Sunday we went to church in a driving rain-storm,
but, notwithstanding the weather, the little building was
filled. The women in their native finery looked infinitely
more respectable than their brothers and husbands, who
had donned threadbare coats and trousers in honour of
the clay, but had stopped short of shoes. The king was

72 HOW I BECAME A PRIVY COUNCILLOR.
there, of course — nothing but illness prevents his attend
ance at church. The sermon was dull, for there was no
sedition in it, probably in deference to our presence : the
preacher even called upon Tukuaho for an extempore
prayer, and announced there would be a bolotu in the

73

VI.

THE POLITICAL USES OF A STATE CHURCH.
The bolotu, or night-service, is a growth of Tongan soil.
As Christians the Tongans may no longer enjoy the mild
excitement of taking kava to the shrine of a god, and see
the priestess shiver and foam at the mouth in an ague fit,
or hear her scream the favourable oracle in high falsetto.
The missionaries have stopped all that. True, they may
take to preaching, but they cannot all preach — there must
be some to- form the congregation. They have the histri
onic instinct, and no outlet for it in private theatricals or
drawing-room recitations ; therefore they wisely make the
mission supply the place of that which it has taken away,
and to do them justice, they have produced an exhibition
far more picturesque than the religious orgies of the
Salvation Army.
The little thatched church blazed with kerosene-lamps
that threw broad streaks of light from the windows upon
the palm-leaves wet with the rain, lighting the gay valas
and brown legs of several mysterious groups who had
formed at a distance. We found the inside of the build-

74 THE POLITICAL USES OF A STATE CHURCH.
ing nearly empty, but there was a look of eager expectancy
on the faces of the few old people who lined the walls.
Then from without came the sound of singing in quartette,
in perfect tune, swelling in volume as the choir reached
the door. They filed in, forming fours as they passed the

The first choir.

doorway, men and women alternately, holding one another's
hands. At the end of each phrase they took a step for
ward, and when they reached the reed pulpit their song
merged into another in the far distance. It was the
second choir : as their voices soared upward the first band
became silent and scattered to their places along the

A PIOUS DEBAUCH. 75
walls, amid the plaudits of the audience. So a second
choir filed in, and a third and fourth, until the church
was filled to overflowing. It was in reality a choral com
petition between the different divisions of the town, the
outcome of three weeks of practice under the direction
of the composer. The native parson meanwhile took his
stand in the pulpit, and gave out a text, which was sung
with fine effect by the combined choirs to a tune of
native composition. An inspiriting address followed,
often interrupted by cries of applause. They were
working up their enthusiasm for the real business of
the evening.
After the sermon there was a long pause, during which
the people looked furtively at one another. At last an old
woman stood up, and the shouts of "Fakafetai" became
deafening. " She is going to tell about her soul," whis
pered my neighbour. Upon this interesting subject she
had a great deal to say in a monotonous flow of verbiage,
drowned at times by the cries of " Malo ! " I noticed, in
deed, throughout the evening that the women had a far
greater command of language than the men. Before she
had finished, two middle-aged men and a very villanous-
looking policeman were on their feet. The first to rise
caught the parson's eye, and gave us a very long and weary
diagnosis of his spiritual symptoms. The second elder
was jaunty, and gently chaffed his soul, exciting bursts
of merriment by screwing up his eyes at the laughing
places. Three or four others had now risen, and remained
standing in penitent attitudes until their turn came. The
criminal-looking policeman had his say first. With forced

76 THE POLITICAL USES OF A STATE CHURCH.

calm he told us what a sinner he had been, and at each
disgraceful confession the audience shouted their applause.
Then with bated breath he told of his awakening ; with
suppressed emotion he described his inward tumult :
words failed him ; he
caught his breath, he
flung up his arms pas
sionately, and after a
silent struggle his voice
rent the air in a hideous
yell, "The Lord has got
my soul ! " He raved ;
he tore open his shirt as
if he would pluck the
heart out of him; and
then, still raving, he flung
himself on the ground
in a frenzy of simulated
sobs, and another took up
the tale. It was a dis
gusting exhibition, but it
was the success of the
evening. The performance of the
next penitent — a grey-
haired and respectable
man — was original, but it had been eclipsed. He said
nothing : he simply stood and was shaken by sobs, while
real tears ran through his fingers. After some minutes
of this repentance in dumb-show he made a gesture of
despair, and sat down amid loud acclamations.

" The Lord has got my sottl!

jtuijuliois xn unun,un.

There were some tame imitations of the three principal
performers : then Tukuaho rose, and a hush fell upon the
excited crowd. Eeligion was to give place to politics.
He told them that he had come to the church that
evening to find comfort for his wounded spirit. He had
landed on their shore with
joy, thinking that he had
come among old friends, but
his joy had been turned
into sorrow. They were his
friends no longer — why ?
He knew not, unless it was
because a distasteful office
had been forced upon him.
Did they think that he had
sought office ? No ! he was
Premier by Tubou's com
mand, not by his own choice.
Out of his love for his king-
he had undertaken work for
which he was unfitted, and
with God's help he would
carry it through. Many
foolish things had been said
(was not Tonga the land of
lying reports ?). It had even
been asserted that the independence of their country would
be lost. Lost ? Well, he could tell them that there was
one man who would fight if the independence of the
country was endangered. That man was himself. But
was there a man present who would not fight ? (Hitherto

' He tore open his shirt.'1

78 THE POLITICAL USES OF A STATE CHURCH.
only the women had been impressed, but now the men's
set faces relaxed, and there was a chorus of "Mcdo!")
But that was not all. There were some perhaps who
loved the man who was gone. Well — he .was not there to
speak ill of the absent, but he would say this, that the
accounts were now being audited, and that some very
strange things were coming to light. Did they think that
any Tongan could thread the dark passages of such cun
ning; ? No. The king knew that when he asked for a
white man to be sent to audit the accounts, and to make
the dark ways plain. He was present, sitting at his side.
(I tried to look unconscious.) In six short months he
would leave them : it would be useless for them to ask
him to stay longer — he could not. But he (Tukuaho) was
there to-night to speak of his soul, and not of politics.
What had politics to do with a church in which before
God all men were equal ? It was true that his soul was
pained, but he had at least the comfort of knowing that
he was doing his duty.
Before the applause had subsided Fatafehi was on his feet.
" I hear that you are all angry with me. Very well :
that's your affair. But what is it about ? " He laughed —
not his hereditary laugh, but a less pleasant sound. " I
will tell you why you are angry," he went on, and lashed
the mischief-makers with great vehemence, not even deign
ing to end his speech with a devotional peroration.
" There will be less foolish talk to - morrow," said
Tukuaho as we came away. " It was a good bolotu, only
I am sorry that Fatafehi's words were so hot."
As soon as we reached home the spies were set in

MARY IN THE CONFESSIONAL.

79

motion to feel the pulse of the people after their close
of tonic.
Besides a pleasurable excitement the bolotu supplies the
place of the confessional, though, owing to its publicity,
the sins confessed are generally the more venial slips of
omission rather than of commission. But not always.
Tradition has it that the unregenerate Mary Butako, when

' ' When Mary ' told her soul.' '

past her first youth, showed leanings towards repentance,
and there was dire consternation among the men of Sa-
wana. They took heart, however, when it was found that
though she attended every bolotu, yet she never was moved
to "tell her soul." A night came at last when the en
thusiasm passed the bounds. The acclamations were
mingled with the sobs of the penitents overwhelmed with
a sense of their sin, and in the midst Mary was seen

80 THE POLITICAL USES OF A STATE CHURCH.
standing, weeping aloud. The dreadful day had come,
and one after another the men of the place slunk out to
spread the dire news among their comrades in distress.
Plaudits and tears were alike suppressed : this was too
serious a matter for ordinary demonstrations. A terrible
and damning history fell from the lips of this penitent
Phryne of the South Seas. When she had finished there
was scarcely a man in the church, but the women sat and
drank it all in, and many a household in Sawana dates its
domestic troubles from that terrible bolotu when Mary
"told her soul."
We began next day to reap the fruit of the seed
scattered at the bolotu overnight. We were haunted by
visitors. Our political opponents came in, each carrying
in his hand the inevitable root of kava — for a Tongan
making a visit of any ceremony would as soon forget his
kava as an English lady her card-case under similar cir
cumstances. They sat rubbing shoulders with the spies
from whom we knew exactly how much their new-born
friendship was worth. There was, moreover, a nervous
hilarity about them that showed their sense of the awk
wardness of their sudden change of front.
At mid-day we summoned a meeting of the Govern
ment officials in the wooden court-house. There were the
judge, the police magistrate, and the pound-keeper, all
malcontents ; a dozen policemen and jail - warders, be
lieved to be the same ; the Treasury clerk, said to be
loyal; and greater than all — the head jailer, Kaho, a
dark horse whom it was important to win over. He
proved to be the white-haired, bright-eyed matabule, who
had been my neighbour in the king's faikava, where he sat

PROPAGANDA BY PHOTOGRAPHS. 81
in virtue of his local rank. His office, however, seemed
to place him next to the Governor in importance, for he
alone can have the ordering of other men's labour without
paying for it — a distinction that carries weight in every
community. Tukuaho told them how much he regretted
that an empty Treasury had tied his hands, so that he
could not yet pay them the nine months' salary due to
them on Mr Baker's departure ; but he announced that
from that day forward their salaries would be punctually
remitted to them, and that the payment of the amount
owing to them by his predecessor (he was not going to
speak ill of the absent) would depend upon their own
loyalty. The sooner they could induce their friends to pay
their taxes, the sooner would they receive the arrears due
to them.
Next day the mail-steamer from New Zealand put in,
after touching at Nukualofa. From the former place she
brought Mr Baker's son — formerly his private secretary —
carrying, for distribution among the natives, a bundle of
lithographs of his father, subscribed " The Premier ap
pointed by Tubou " ; and from the latter Mr Watkin,
the chief minister of the Free Church, and the staunch
ally of the late Premier, ostensibly to make church collec
tions, but also, as it afterwards proved, to further unsettle
the minds of his flock.
At mid-day we set sail for Nukualofa. A chain of
volcanoes traverses the Tongan group from north to south,
and one or other of the craters is generally in a state of
sufficient activity to be employed by one of the contend
ing Church parties against the other. In August 1886,
the sudden eruption in Niuafoou was pointed to by the
F

82 THE POLITICAL USES OF A STATE CHURCH.
persecuted Wesleyans as a sign of the wrath of heaven
against the Free Church ; but the tables were turned,
and the dull glare of Tofua, which we had seen every
night from Haapai, was now seized upon by the Free
Church ministers as a warning of the peril of the State
from British machinations. But an eruption is public
property, and I was told that Tofua was used by our own
supporters to awe the opponents of "the just-dealing
Government" into complacency.
With the view of seeing the crater more closely we
steered direct for Tofua, and were becalmed within two
miles of the volcano long after sunset. The night was
very dark, but every few 'minutes the dull glare of the
crater was illuminated with a burst of flame, and masses
of red-hot rock were projected into the air with deep
reverberations. The crater was not more than 200 feet
above the sea-level, and was close to the north shore of the
island. I therefore tried to persuade the crew to take us
into the deep strait that separates the island from the
sugar-loaf cone of Kao. But they were frightened at the
explosions, and flatly refused, urging that we should be
becalmed on the lee side, and become a target for the
missiles from the crater. It was useless to urge that the
stones would not fall into the sea: they were obdurate,
and we had reluctantly to steer southwards.
It was within sight of this island that, on the mornin«
of May 1789, the crew of H.M.S. Bounty mutinied and
set their commander, Lieutenant Bligh, adrift in the
launch. On landing at Tofua he was treacherously at
tacked by the natives, and John Norton, his quarter
master, was struck down as he was casting off the stern-

THE MUTINY OF THE BOUNTY.

83

fast. The sequel is thus told by the natives. They
dragged the body inland to a malae1 (the island being
the property of the Tui Tonga, there are many there),
and after exposing it for three days, they buried it. But
the whole of the track made by the body as it was
dragged along has ever since remained bare of grass,
as well as the spot where the corpse lay exposed.

Tofua in eruption.
Mariner, who visited the place in 1808, saw this track,
and says that it had not the appearance of a beaten
path. At the end was a bare place, at right angles to
the path, about the length and breadth of a man's body.
Daylight found us within sight of the " new island."
Early in 1886 a submerged reef broke out into sub-
1 Sacred enclosure where sacrifices were offered.

84 THE POLITICAL USES OF A STATE CHURCH.
aqueous eruption. It suddenly rose, and formed an island
160 feet above the sea, composed of smoking scoria. A
question arose in Nukualofa as to the nationality of this
new land, and an enterprising expedition was despatched
to settle the matter by planting the Tongan ensign on the
summit. We found that the sea was making great havoc
of this, the latest addition to King George's dominions.
With every storm great masses of the soft pumice were
dislodged, so that in a few years the island will be re
duced to its old form of a reef awash at low tide.

85

VII.
MEETINGS ORDINARY AND EXTRAORDINARY.
The politics of Tonga are a never-ending struggle between
the faikaxa and the fono. In the intervals of the solemn
ceremony of kava-drinking the most outrageous scandal
is talked, the most startling lies invented, — for kava
loosens the tongue-strings without muddling the senses.
Were it less cheering and more inebriating it would be
politically innocuous, for it is easier to govern a nation of
drunkards than a people suffering from the diseased gar
rulity born of the pepper-root. Kava is drunk in every
village in Tonga at least once a-day. Beside the door
post in every house lie the flat and the round pounding-
stones whitened with the dusty fibres ; and at each
gathering, failing the moral character of an absent friend,
politics, or church matters — which are so interlaced with
politics that they are the more dangerous of the two — are
the subject of conversation. To purify the air of the
cloud of lies and miscomprehension that the faikavas
have discharged into it, periodical fonos are necessary.
A fono is a compulsory meeting of the people to listen
to the orders of some person in authority. Before Chris-

86 MEETINGS ORDINARY AND EXTRAORDINARY.
tianity changed the face of the land the fono took the place
of written law. The matabules, hereditary censors of public
morals, summoned a fono to lecture the young chiefs
whenever they had made a wider breach of the proprieties
than their rank permitted. Nowadays its uses are various.
In every village at six o'clock on Monday mornings there
are fonos, at which the mayor reads out Government
orders, and urges diligence on the defaulting taxpayers.
There are Premier's fonos and king's fonos, the latter being
very solemn functions, only adopted in cases of great
national importance ; but in all fonos alike no discussion
is allowed, and the people are only summoned to hear
what those set in authority choose to tell then).
The chief's orders of old were published abroad by
the crier (fanongonongo), and this custom is revived when
ever Government orders have to be proclaimed without
the formality of a public meeting ; but this time-honoured
method is not often resorted to on account of the inac
curacy to which the human memory is subject. When
Mr Baker promulgated his Wild Birds Protection Act, he
instructed the criers to cry the preamble and a risume of
the Act — That whereas certain birds, particularly speci
fied, were of public utility as the destroyers of worms,
fleas, and other noxious insects, they were not to be killed
on pain of heavy penalties. But the crier's version was :
" Hear me, all people. It is the command of the Govern
ment — worms, fleas, and all creeping things are useful, so
also are birds, therefore it is ordained that they shall not
die ; whosoever shall kill any bug, or flea, or worm, or
bird, or other such thing, shall be grievously punished."
It is right to say that the Tongans received the order

A MEETING OF THE MAYORS. 87
without surprise, for the protection of insects seemed to
them quite as reasonable as the protection of birds, or
indeed as any other of Mr Baker's statutes.
On our return to Tongatabu we found the air surcharged
with the gossip of the faikava. Two noblemen and the
Government bandmaster, all disaffected for different rea
sons, had filled the islands with a story that ran as
follows : " The Government was lying when it said that
it was in want of money, for had not the Premier, when
he opened the Treasury, found a bag containing a hun
dred thousand sovereigns, and hidden them for the use
of the Cabinet Ministers ? Was he not deceiving the
people when he told them to pay their taxes, or their
country would be ruined ? " " Mr Baker has gone to
America, and has told the President what Britain has
clone, and he will come back in an American man-of-war
to try the High Commissioner, and punish his enemies."
" A British official is in Tonga to pay Tukuaho for betray
ing the country, and to arrange for annexation." It was
plain that a fono must be held to cleanse the political
atmosphere. My colleague did not dare to summon the entire island
to a, fono without the express sanction of the king, so he
determined to assemble the mayors from every village,
knowing that they would carry an embroidered version
of his speech to their constituents. Shortly after sun
rise on the appointed day horsemen poured into the town,
and tethered their horses outside the disused church at
Pangai whither we were called to address them. As
we entered the building at the pulpit end a policeman
cried "Koe Palemia," and the mayors rose and saluted

88 MEETINGS ORDINARY AND EXTRAORDINARY.
with hands lifted above their heads. They were of every
age — from the dressed-up monkey fresh from college, in
black coat, trousers, and bare feet, proud in the possession
of all human knowledge, to the grey-headed elder in the
quiet dignity of the vala of native cloth. Tukuaho made
a capital speech, denying emphatically the false reports
that had been set about, and appealing to the patriotism
of his hearers to get their taxes in and save their country
from ruin. They must, he said, hold fonos, at which only
those who were in arrears with their taxes should attend,
and as each man completed his payments he should be
relieved from further attendance. Then he called upon
me for my maiden speech in Tongan, and I delivered
myself of a string of platitudes about the independence
of Tonga, and the desire of England to see her stand alone :
that England did not want Tonga, having quite enough to
do with the slice of the world she had already, to which
Tonga was but a fly-blow on the map : that I had come at
the king's request, not to meddle in their concerns, but to
help them, and when they wanted help no longer I should
go away. Then the spokesman fidgeted and asked leave
to proffer a request. They were tired, he said, of talking
to those who would not listen to them : would the Premier
himself come and hold their fono ? After some discussion
it was settled that we should hold a fono in each of the
three great divisions of the island.
News now came from Vavau that Mr Watkin and
Mr Baker's son and former private secretary had between
them contrived to stir up a hornet's nest. The boy, with
the secrecy of a conspirator, had been distributing leaflets
and photographs of his celebrated father, and the minister

WARS AND RUMOURS OF WARS. 89
of peace had been talking war. My informant, the Wes-
leyan missionary, showed me a letter from one of his
native colleagues which left no doubt upon the point.
Mr George Brown, the energetic and able head of the
mission, would have liked Mr Watkin to be allowed rope
enough to hang himself, but as that would have involved
the starvation of the Government, already reduced to
inanition, I decided to " belay." I was armed with a
letter from the High Commissioner — to be given or with
held as I thought fit — warning him in plain terms that
abstention from politics was required of him. The time
for using this letter had now come. There being a special
reason for an interview for the purpose of adjusting the
outstanding accounts between the Government and the
Free Church, I invited him to meet me at the public
offices, and asked C  to be present and take notes
of the conversation. The reverend gentleman was rather
restless throughout the interview, and seemed particularly
uncomfortable at seeing an unobtrusive figure busily
writing columns of figures at the other table. Experience
of his absent colleague's methods of diplomacy had taught
him where traps were to be suspected. I kept him in
conversation for some minutes upon matters affecting
the welfare of the Church, and then he seized his hat,
and would have beaten a precipitate retreat had I not
stopped him, and handed him the letter. As he read
it his face became cadaverous, and his hand trembled
so that he could not have understood the words. I told
him that there was a particular reason for giving him the
letter at this moment, since he was reported to have been
using the language of disaffection at Vavau, and, before he

90 MEETINGS ORDINARY AND EXTRAORDINARY.
could express the denial that rose to his lips, I read him
a quotation from one of his sermons in which he talked of
the injustice done to the good Baker, and of fighting. I
asked him whether to talk to natives of fighting was not
likely to put the idea into their heads, if it was not there
already. He said, "When I said that I meant to warn
them of doing anything so foolish ; and though I do
sympathise with Mr Baker, there were many of his
actions with which I did not at all agree." I then told
him that the Government, with great reluctance, had re
solved to take action against him unless he gave me a
formal assurance that he would not only abstain from
opposing them, but would also hold himself responsible
for the actions and language of his subordinates; and
I added that we expected more from him than mere
abstention — he must give us a loyal support. After
some hesitation he promised to do all that lay in his
power, and C  took his words down as he spoke
them. He then said that there was one thing which
he wanted very much to know — who had given me the
information ? I told him that I did not doubt his
curiosity, but that I had not the slightest intention of
enlightening him. The man might have fared badly if
his identity had been known. Whoever he was, he was
a good reporter.
However difficult it may be to sympathise with a man
who has betrayed his employers, I could not help pitying
Mr Watkin, who was made responsible for the actions
of the most self-satisfied and insubordinate body of ecclesi
astics in the world. Since Mr Baker's departure it was
evident that his influence over them was waning, and

A COLONY OF FLYING-FOXES. 91
already they were asking why they should not elect
one of themselves as President of their " Conference,"
and why their salaries should be lower than that of their
white brother. From this it is only a step to a new
and original interpretation of the Scriptures, and to a
bastard Christianity like the Hauhauism of the Maories
and the Tuka of Fiji.
Our three great fonos were a decided success. We rode
first to Hihifo with an informal escort of mounted police
and clerks, not excepting the faithful spy, Peter. Tungi,
being past the age and figure for equestrian exercise,
travelled in an American buggy, which stuck fast every
now and then in the deep mud caused by the rains, while
we rode on at the untiring canter that is the easiest pace
for Tongan ponies. Few of our escort had girths, and not
all had saddles, but this did not seem to incommode them
in the least. We reached Kolowai, the chief town, plas
tered with mud, and halted under the celebrated colony of
flying-foxes. They were a revolting sight. Four great
banyan and ironwood trees shaded the road, and these
were covered with the living fruit so thickly clustered
that the branches drooped with their weight. Thousands
upon thousands hung there from their hind-claws, sleep
ing, crawling, squealing, quarrelling, stretching their
uncanny sails, and scratching their light - brown heads
with a winged claw. The leaves and the grass beneath
the trees had long ago been killed by their unwholesome
presence ; and the stench was so overpowering that we
had to edge to windward. They are tabu — Heaven knows
why, for they do immense damage to the plantations —
and they are never shot at. Formerly, it is said, they

92 MEETINGS ORDINARY AND EXTRAORDINARY.
frequented some ^oa-trees near to the sea, but the great
battle fought there in May 1799 frightened them away,
and they chose to emigrate to the large trees in the centre
of the town. Ata told me that at sunset half go away to
feed, while the others keep guard during their absence,
but that they never fail to come back about midnight to
take their turn of sentry -duty. Without vouching for
this as a scientific fact, I can bear witness that they fly
beyond Nukualofa, thirteen miles away, for hundreds of
them were shot at nightfall as they flew in a continuous
string towards the Government banana plantations near
the lagoon. One thus brought clown had a little one
clinging to her body, befurred and bewinged, a perfect
miniature of its mother. In a few days it became per
fectly tame, and at night showed no inclination to leave
the verandah where it hung in the daytime.
The fono was held opposite Ata's house. Only tax
payers were summoned, but they numbered several hun
dreds, and included a few women — widows — holding tax-
allotments. They formed a compact semicircle, each bring
ing a cocoa-nut-leaf to sit upon. On the outside of the
ring a few policemen, armed with thick batons, stood
erect in attitudes of stern attention. We, the authorities,
sat in a row in the verandah and addressed the crowd in
turn, — Tukuaho in mood of suave conditional, I in bald
indicative, and Ata, their chief, in uncompromising im
perative. Taxes, — we must have taxes, or — many terrible
thing's would happen. Tonga would lose her independence
for one thing, and the police would come and sell by auc
tion the property of defaulters for another. I am bound
to confess that the latter threat appeared to be the more

A FONO. 93
dire of the two. Having lunched at the sacred enclosure
of Kanokubolu, the scene of the massacre in 1800 in which
the recreant missionary Vason took part, we rode off along
the shore, leaving Tungi to water the seed we had sown.
The meeting at Mua was a far more picturesque affair.
Five or six hundred people were assembled in a wide
circle, six deep, under the shade of the historical banyan-
trees beneath which Captain Cook sat when he witnessed
the Great Inaji on the 17th June 1777.1 Acting on my
colleague's advice, I gave some sensational instances of the
squandering of money by our predecessor, and this part of
my speech was listened to with breathless attention. As
I told of the sums spent on cab-hire in Auckland, on
boots and shoes, and on strong liquors, even Mr Baker's
supporters looked discomfited. It was curious to note the
alteration in Tukuaho's style when addressing his own
people at Mua. Elsewhere his style was persuasive : here
he took no trouble to give reasons or explanations. He
simply asserted facts, and his people accepted them. He
is a fine speaker, less polished in delivery .than his shrewd
old father, Tungi, but more manly and open. The audi
ence was enthusiastic — even old Nuku cried " Malo ! " as if
he had forgotten that he was in disgrace. He had advised
his people not to pay their taxes, an offence that would
have landed him in jail if he had been less aristocratic ;
but being a member of the Upper House, he could be
threatened only with impeachment for conduct unbecom
ing a Nobele. I watched him carefully at this meeting,
and decided that he was mad, but not sufficiently so to be
harmless, for he is an inveterate talker. When Tongan
1 See illustration on p. 317.

94 MEETINGS ORDINARY AND EXTRAORDINARY.
troubles were at their worst in 1886 Nuku held a fono,
and thus addressed his people : —
" All the great nations of the earth have made treaties
with Tonga. We have a treaty with Germany, a treaty of
mutual love and respect. We have a treaty with France :
this is for the mutual protection of religion. We have a
treaty with America : this is to secure freedom of trade,
so that a Tongan may go and sell things in America, just
as an American may come and sell things in Tonga. And
we have a treaty with Britain, but that is a very different
thing : Tonga and Britain are like two cocks, each stand-
ing on his own dunghill, trying to raise his head above
the other and crow him down ! "
The fono at Nukualofa was held at sunrise, and I was
awakened by an excited policeman who came to say that
chiefs and people were assembled and waiting for me.
Launched hungry, sleepy, and uncomfortable upon an
audience tired of waiting, I did not make a brilliant
speech. By holding these fonos we had now done all that lay in
our power to hasten the payment of taxes pending the
arrival of the king from Vavau. We were in great straits
for want of money, for we had undertaken to pay the
salaries regularly from the day on which we assumed
office, and hitherto not a penny of poll-tax had been taken
at the windows. The Government was being carried on
with the Customs dues alone, which, regular though they
were, did not suffice to meet the current demands upon
the Treasury, exclusive of salaries. But we could do no
more, and it was high time to agree upon the line of
policy to be pursued to promote unanimity among our-

THE MINISTER OF POLICE.

95

selves. The two Cabinet Ministers, Kubu, the Minister
of Police, and Josateki Tonga Veikune, the Paymaster,

Asibeli Kubu, Minister of Police.

now appointed Auditor-General in his absence, had re
turned from their mission to Vavau and the Niuas to

96 MEETINGS ORDINARY AND EXTRAORDINARY.

announce the change of Ministry. We therefore sum
moned our first Cabinet Council.
It was held in the Parliament House, a large wooden
building furnished with pews and a long table. At one
end was a faded crimson dais surmounted with the royal
arms : here the king sits when he opens Parliament. We
took our seats round the table, Tukuaho, as President,
sitting at one end, and Mataka, with his shorthand note
book, at the other. Let me describe my colleagues.
Asibeli Kubu, the Minister of Police, is a short, dark
little man of about thirty, with a stiff moustache, and
erect rebellious black hair. He is full of restless energy,
impulsive and boyish, full of loyalty to Tukuaho, and of
devotion to his administration. His mother is Lavinia,
who would be Tui Tonga fefine if such dignities existed
nowadays ; and his father is Inoke Fotu, a Judge of Vavau,
a chief of the second rank. By his mother, therefore,
Kubu is a great chief. He began his official career as a
Police Magistrate under the Baker
rSgime, and got himself into sad
disgrace by not convicting to
order. Being a creature of im
pulse, and not endowed with cal
culating tact, our Minister of
Police is safer under discipline
than when left to his own judg
ment. To-day he is dressed in a
suit of flannel pyjamas with quasi-
military braid facings, his head is covered with an em
broidered smoking-cap with a tassel, and his feet are bare.
Josateki, or Sateki as he is universally known, is a dif-

Sateki.

THE LORD CHIEF-JUSTICE.

97

ferent stamp of man. A chief of the third rank in Vavau,
he was selected by Mr Baker as his Paymaster and As
sistant Premier because of his implicit obedience to orders
and his power of silence. In person he is erect and slim,
with grizzled hair and beard, and fine features deeply
wrinkled. He lives only for his work : he is an official
first and a man after
wards, a very rare
quality for a native,
to whom, as a rule,
sustained purpose is
unknown. We are not
yet sure of Sateki.
He is said to be hurt
at my appointment as
Assistant Premier, a
post which, till now,
he has nominally filled.
If we once win him
over we need not fear
that he will desert us,
but as he will not talk,
and has never been
known to laugh, he is
difficult to conciliate.

The Lord Chief -Justice.

Then there was Ahomtie (day of dancing), the Lord
Chief-Justice, a white-haired old gentleman, one of the
first converts, and a great pillar of the Church in days
gone by, but now very deaf of ear and dull of understand
ing. The Minister of Finance, Junia Mafileo, the king's
nephew, had not yet arrived, and Tukuaho, as President,
G

98 MEETINGS ORDINARY AND EXTRAORDINARY.
called upon Mataka to open the proceedings. The first
business was to read a letter from Mr Campbell tendering
his resignation as Assistant Minister of Finance because
his chief does not come to his office, and no business can
be transacted in the old gentleman's absence. The Lord
Chief - Justice now fell asleep, and we passed to other
matters while Mr Goschen was being sent for. We had
granted tea and sugar to the policemen on duty, and were
deep in the discussion of the advantages of subsidising a
mail service when he arrived. He is a careworn-looking
old gentleman with very round eyes, classic features, and
a beautiful set of false teeth, which in moments of excite
ment snap to and remain obstinately closed. When this
happens he continues his remarks over his upper jaw, with
a hissing noise like an angry snake. His hair stands up
in scanty grey bristles half an inch long all over his bullet
head. Though the thermometer registers 85°, he is dressed
in a thick double-breasted ulster, thrown open to display
a checked Crimean shirt and trousers, and an enormous
pair of lawn-tennis shoes. At the desire of the Premier
I rise and read Campbell's letter of resignation. The
Auditor-General pokes up the Chief-Justice, who, waking
suddenly, under the impression that a motion is being
put, holds his right hand aloft, and babbles of tea and
sugar, the last question but one before the meeting. The
Premier with due solemnity says that there is a grave
accusation against the Minister of Finance. As all eyes
are fixed upon the unconscious Goschen, it gradually dawns
upon him that he is being attacked, and his round eyes
gape in startled surprise.
" What is it ? " he asks, blankly.

AN EMPTY OFFICIAL.

99

" You are to attend your office every day," says Tungi,
with emphasis.
Goschen springs to his feet in a state of frenzied
emotion. "I know," he cries, "I have not been to my office for a
week. And why ? Because I am
alone in the world. You talk of
work ; well, I have been at work —
my work is to fill my stomach"
(he clutches the organ in question
with both hands). His eyes roll,
his false teeth shut with
snap, and he hisses over ^_,
them, " I have no wife,
no sons, no daughters.
Who is to fill my stomach for me ?
Why," he cried, as the whole pite-
ousness of the situation thrust itself
upon him, " it's empty now. Order
me to do what you will and I will
do it, but only feed me." He sat
down choked with his impassioned
burst of eloquence. The Premier
suggested that a convict should be
told off to catch fish for the Min
ister, and dig his yams. This was
a straw to the drowning financier. " Yes," he cried, " give
me a prisoner, two prisoners, or even three to feed me,
but I think that it will want four : feed me, and I will
sit in my office all day." It was eventually decided that
Goschen should attend his office on alternate days, and

' ' Feed me, and I will sit
in my office all day."

100 MEETINGS ORDINARY AND EXTRAORDINARY.
upon this understanding Campbell withdrew his resigna
tion. Goschen can scarcely write his own name, much
less add up figures, but he is the king's nephew, and
receives £120 a-year as Treasurer, and no money can be
paid out of the Treasury except in his presence.
One of the many weak features in the former adminis
tration was Mr Baker's fear of dealing with Europeans.
He had so wholesome a dread of consular intervention,
that in the few cases in which he dared to prosecute a
European in the courts the sentence was not carried into
effect, and the natives were not slow in attributing this
leniency to its true cause. The Constitution that declared
all men equal in the eye of the law looked, well enough
on paper, but in practice they had come to believe
that there was one law of Draconian severity for the
Tongan, and another of timorous laxity for the white
man. The judicial machinery in Tonga is not less complicated
than it is in other little States which are allowed to keep
their independence, although within the sphere of British
influence. As native magistrates are liable to human
error, subjects of the treaty Powers are exempted from
their jurisdiction in civil suits and in offences recognised
as felonies and misdemeanours by English law. In such
cases British subjects are only amenable to the High Com
missioner's Court, presided over by the Deputy Commis
sioner in Tonga: Germans and Americans are theoreti
cally amenable to the Consular Courts of those nations •
but as there is no competent authority within the group
itself, and their representatives in Samoa cannot find time
to visit Tonga, they are virtually exempt from all penal-

RESPECT FOR THE COURTS. 101
ties. For offences against the local laws of police, public
health, customs, and taxation, foreigners are amenable to
the Tongan courts, the Consul being duly notified to be
present if he will ; and the subjects of all States having
no treaty with Tonga may be tried by the Tongan courts
without reference to any one. It was to provide for such
cases that Mr Baker was about to import a European
magistrate when he himself was deported.
If the native courts were to be respected they must
be reformed, and they must not be afraid to deal impar
tially with foreigners. It happened that a Eussian Finn,
named Holt, had brutally assaulted a German in an out
lying village, where the two men were rival bakers. The
case could not be trusted to a native magistrate without
reducing the courts to a farce ; and as there was no one
else available, I reluctantly had myself appointed Special
Magistrate under an Act of Mr Baker that was still in
force. Eather to my surprise, the defendant appeared to
his summons ; the prosecutor was represented by amateur
counsel, and there was a curious audience of traders and
natives. Bloodstained clothes were produced and identi
fied, and the evidence showed the feeling between the
two men to be very bitter. The only defence was that
the prosecutor " had done it himself by running his
head against a tree." Holt was fined £10 or a month's
imprisonment, and, as I expected, he chose to serve his
time. Perhaps he thought that the native Government
would not dare to carry out the sentence, but in this he
was disappointed. I at once had a disused lock-up cleaned
out and roughly furnished, and installed a white police
man as jailer, with a contract to feed his prisoner accord-

102 MEETINGS ORDINARY AND EXTRAORDINARY.
ing to scale at a fixed rate. The man was restive at first,
and made dire threats of what he would do when he came
out. He wrote to the Eussian Consul in Sydney to claim
an indemnity, and received answer that the consular juris
diction did not extend to Tonga. But he served his full
month, and gave no more trouble. This imprisonment of
a white man had the very best effect upon those natives
who were inclined to trade upon the weakness of the new
Government. I had only two other cases. A trader assaulted a native
boy whose friends laid an information. I fined him 30s.
or fourteen days' imprisonment in default. He raised no
question of nationality until after the court rose, when he
came to say that he was a naturalised American, and that
I had therefore no jurisdiction over him. As he seemed a
decent fellow enough, and likely to listen to reason, I
pointed out that he was an Englishman by birth, and that
he had no papers to prove his naturalisation : that unless he
paid his fine I should certainly put him in jail : he would
then, no doubt, appeal to his Consul in Samoa, who would
call upon the Government for particulars : the copy of the
evidence we should send would show that he had beaten a
Tongan with very little provocation : the Consul would
not, therefore, be likely to make a demand for indemnity
in such a case, but if they did, the Government would of
course pay it : by that time, however, he would have
served his time in jail, which was a very uncomfortable
sort of place, and full of mosquitos. Did he think that
all this was worth the 30s. ? Being a reasonable man he
did not, and paid the money.
My third and last case very nearly led to a breach with

THE POLICE ARE JUSTLY SCANDALISED. 103
my valued colleague, the Minister of Police. A white man
was summoned by the police for not keeping the road in
front of his leased land free from weeds. As there had
been bitter complaints by the Europeans that the native
magistrates would only listen to the police in such cases, I
determined to test the prosecution by hearing the charge
myself. The police mustered in force, headed by the
Inisipeketa. The clerks of the court sat below me with
their shorthand note-books. The accused, a German, was
charged with having left a clump of weeds in the road two
yards from his fence: three policemen swore to the size
and position of the clump. The defendant pleaded that
the so-called road was an impassable swamp, and that he
had weeded the road on which the traffic went. The
police, however, said that they had nothing to do with the
traffic, nor with the marsh. The road used to skirt the
fence, and it was therefore the road within the meaning of
the Act. The case was dismissed, and the myrmidons of
the law exchanged glances. A few hours later Tukuaho
received an official letter from Kubu saying that he could
not discharge his duties if the magistrates gave such deci
sions ; that the police were much pained with the " Ex
pounder," and were threatening to resign. Tukuaho showed
me the letter, begging me not to be angry, but to under
stand that the police were a little dark-minded. I sent
for Kubu and his Inisipeketa, and asked them to tell me
their grievance, and I would answer it. They said that it
was a new thing in Tonga for any man whom the police
accused to be let off; that if this were done the people
would respect them no more, and crimes would greatly in
crease, to the shame and discomfiture of the Government.

104 MEETINGS ORDINARY AND EXTRAORDINARY.
Gently but firmly I explained to Kubu that if the police
were always to obtain convictions, it was a waste of time
to bring offenders before a magistrate ; that the police, if
they would be' worthy of their hire, should only bring
accusations that they were sure of sustaining ; and then,
when I had manured his mind for a new idea, I told him
that to punish a man simply because the police accused
him was "contrary to the Constitution." At the magic
word " Konisitutone " the Minister and his satellite gave
way, utterly crushed. That they should have unwittingly
fallen under the charge they had so often launched against
Mr Baker overwhelmed them. " Pardon us," said Kubu,
with humility, " what do we know ? We are dark-minded,
Misa Tomisoni ; you must bear with us and teach us." I
pardoned him.

105

VIII.
CONVICTS AND POLICE.
There are times in life when one should be allowed four
hands, two brains, and sustained insomnia. There was a
great deal to do, and the sun, unmindful of the political
importance of Tonga, would not stand still. I was threat
ened with lawsuits by merchants in New Zealand, who
wanted me to recognise ruinous verbal contracts alleged
to have been made with my predecessor ; the British Vice-
Consul was remonstrating with me for demanding rent
from a British subject who claimed the fee-simple of the
land he occupied ; the courts were playing football with
the law ; the police were trampling airily on the rights of
private property ; the convicts walked the town with all
the liberty and twice the assurance of free men ; and the
Europeans had resuscitated the defunct Chamber of Com
merce, and were for once united in a determination to
embarrass the Government. The Treasury and Customs,
it was true, were safe in the hands of my able second ;
but Baker's accounts were crying to be audited, and if I
were to relax my vigilance among my native colleagues,
they were sure to fall out with me and with each other.

106 CONVICTS AND POLICE.
And with all this we knew that our enemies were busy in
Vavau trying to sow distrust of us in the mind of the
king. Of all non-financial departments in the public service,
the Prison was that which called first for reform. The
jail was a wooden building fitted with tiny cells, so ill-
ventilated that to -confine any person in them for many
hours would be dangerous. In practice, only persons just
arrested were confined there pending their trial : con
victs were not confined at all. It was the most economi
cal penal system in the world, for the convicts had to
lodge, feed, and clothe themselves. A man sentenced to
a fine of £20 must work for the Government for 400 days
(his daily task being valued at Is.) He might live at
home, and work for the Government during the daytime :
his sentence was counted by working days only, and did
not include Sundays, nor clays too wet to allow of work.
The same rule applied to convicts sentenced to penal
servitude. An original sentence of two years would be
lengthened by sickness or wet weather to nearly three
years, for it meant 730 days' labour. He could take a
few holidays here and there when he pleased ; but if he
absented himself for many days in succession, he would
receive a domiciliary visit from the head jailer. If he
had a horse and cart, the loan of it to the Government,
when the steamer was in, would reduce the sentence at
the rate of 4s. a-day. The prisoners were variously em
ployed. Some were the household servants of the king
and the Cabinet Ministers — my seat in the Cabinet en
titled me to two ; others formed the crew of the Govern
ment vessels ; others were stationed at the pilot station

THE SOCIAL PRESTIGE OF CONVICTS. 107
on an island in the bay ; but the majority lived upon the
Government banana plantations. All alike were free to
sleep where they pleased, and, if their homes were at a
distance, were obliged to beg or steal their food. The
female prisoners, who were generally in trouble for social
offences, might be seen any day weeding the public
squares ; while their brown babies, oblivious of the fact
that they had no right to exist, rolled about in the shade
of the nearest tree. As a natural consequence of such a
system, there was not only no disgrace attaching to im
prisonment, but, since the beginning of the Church
quarrels, there was even a certain cdchet in being one of
the goodly company of ministers of the Church and men
of rank in trouble for their religious views.
Let it not be supposed that so great a legislator as Mi-
Baker had forgotten to provide regulations for the control
of his convicts. I discovered them by mere accident, for
they were not published. As already related, the son of
the late Premier had passed through the group distributing
photographs of his estimable father. The day he left
Nukualofa, Ula, the head jailer, came to Tukuaho with a
document in Tongan in the young man's handwriting,
which may be translated as follows : " I, Ula, do declare
before God that I have never flogged a woman by the
orders of Mr Baker." There was a date and a place for the
signature and the seal, neither of which had been affixed.
"He sent twice to me to ask me to sign this," said Ula,
" but I would not. Then he came himself, and asked me
to sign by the love that I bore his father, but still I would
not, so he called me by bad names and went away in the
steamer."

108 CONVICTS AND POLICE.
" And did you flog women by order of Mr Baker ? " I
asked. Ula fumbled in his waistband, and produced a tiny
green-paper book, printed in Tongan, and pointed to the
words, " It shall be lawful to flog any prisoner guilty of
unruly conduct." Then turning over the pages he showed
me the signature at the foot, " Misa Beika." They were
the Prison Regulations, and I at once annexed them for
future study. " There is nothing there forbidding me to
beat women," continued Ula, " so I beat them when they
were unruly, and Mr Baker knew that I did and said
nothing. It is not forbidden in our customs." It ap
peared that the story of the women being flogged had
been carried to Auckland by one of the ships-of-war, and
the fallen Premier wanted to clear his character by an
affidavit from a Tongan jailer.
As the right to punish was vested in the jailer, it was
of course not used against those who had taken the pre
caution of winning his favour. There was in fact no dis
cipline, and the prisoners were fast becoming a source of
public danger.
Yet smooth as was the life of a Tongan malefactor, no
Tongan likes work ; and since it was so easy to escape, it
became fashionable to steal boats and set sail for Samoa
or Fiji. There was a spice of adventure and danger about
such an escape that exactly suits a Tongan. They suffered
sometimes. Jope, who reached Lakemba in an open boat
in 1886, would have died of hunger in another twelve
hours. Two men who sailed from Niuafoou were never
again heard of. On the other hand, several such attempts
were successful. The men who stole the Government

THE GENTLEMEN OF THE JAIL. 109
despatch-boat Beatrice have settled at Wallis Island, and
those who escaped in the boat of the German firm from
Vavau reached Samoa in safety. But for the extradition
clause of the English treaty they would all have safely
made Fiji with a fair wind, but they knew that from a
British colony they would be sent back to be dealt with
in a Tongan court. The German firm was now pressing a
demand for compensation for the value of their stolen
boat ; and an English storekeeper, from whom the prisoners
had stolen their clothes, was arguing with reason that a
Government that would not keep its prisoners under lock
and key should be held responsible for the consequences
of their acts. It was high time to introduce prison reform,
if I could find a prison.
The houses built for the labourers introduced by Baker
to work the Government plantations were still standing,
and could be made prisoner-proof pending the erection of
a proper jail, for which I had plans prepared. One of the
long buildings would do for the men and the other for the
women, while the warder could live in the small house
between the two. I hunted up a lot of iron bars, and
set the native carpenters to sink them into the window-
frames. Then I drafted Prison Regulations of the usual
kind, and passed them through the Cabinet under the
authority of one of the existing laws. As soon as they
had been printed in the native press, a day was appointed
when, to their intense indignation, the gentlemen of the
jail were made to bow their heads to the scissors, and,
worse indignity still, were locked up at night. Even the
Cabinet was aghast at the boldness of this step. The
prisoners vowed vengeance. Tonga under such circum-

110

CONVICTS AND POLICE.

stances was not to be endured: the Government must
either be turned out, or the prisoners must seize the Gov
ernment vessels and escape to Samoa. For a time —
strange though it sounds — the prisoners proved themselves
to be an influential body of men, and actually embarrassed
the Government by appealing to the sympathy of their
friends. Their confinement at night was thought to be
a despotic exercise of power, and the compulsory hair-

A card-party in the jail.

cutting little short of a barbarity. For several days the
prisoners appeared in hats, and as this marked them from
other people, and also kept the sun off their heads, they
were not interfered with. The only precaution we thought
it necessary to take was to arm the night warder and the
masters of the Government vessels.
One evening a few weeks later I strolled towards the
jail, whence most unpenitential sounds of merriment had
been reported. The men's ward and the warder's cottage

A CARD-PARTY IN PRISON. Ill
were in darkness, but a blaze of light streamed from the
windows of the female ward. I thought I caught the
muffled ring of kava-stones, and — oh, horror ! — the sound
of masculine laughter. Kubu, my companion, vowing
vengeance against the unsuspecting warder, led me towards
the window. There were two kerosene-lamps on the floor,
a female prisoner was pounding kava, while the other
prisoners of both sexes were squatting in a circle watch
ing a game of euchre between the warder and a house
breaker, each with a good-looking partner from the female
ward. I left Kubu to break in upon this pleasant little
party, and I heard next day that the warder had retired
into private life.
Not long after this two prisoners, who formed the crew
of the Government ketch Kumeti, took the opportunity
of seizing the Government despatch-boat Alice while her
police crew and their own warder were making a night
of it on shore. They guarded against pursuit by taking
with them the gear belonging to the Kumeti. Reaching
Samoa, they stranded the boat, and joined the settlement
of Tongans on Upolu. We had no extradition treaty with
Samoa. The bickerings between the three Powers were
slaked for the moment by the Treaty of Berlin, under
which brilliant effort of statecraft a Consular Board, a
Municipal Council, a Lands Commission, and a Swedish
Chief-Justice had been sent to fight the quarrel out upon
the spot. But Malietoa was king, and to Malietoa I applied
for the recovery of the boat and the prisoners. I chose
the smart embossed paper headed "Ministry for Foreign
Affairs," and wrote in the king's name to request his royal
brother to arrest the runaways, and to send back the boat.

112 CONVICTS AND POLICE.
In clue course I received an answer, written by the king's
native secretary in excellent English, saying that the men
had been arrested but had broken loose again. A month
later, however, they were rearrested very cleverly, and
landed with the stolen boat at Nukualofa, where they
received in the Supreme Court a sentence likely to deter
others from similar attempts. With them came a second
letter from King Malietoa, enclosing his account for ex
penses — £3, 15s. — and a polite intimation that he was
obliged to make this charge, owing to the unsettled state
of his Government ; but that in a few months, when he
had had time to organise his staff, he would be very glad
to do such small services for his brother's Government for
nothing. We heard afterwards that at that time he had
no police at all, but that he had offered a reward for the
capture, and a number of big Samoans had gone man-
hunting until the runaways were caught. The whole
transaction was probably illegal, but it was morally justi
fiable, and not more irregular than most other movements
of public affairs in Samoa at the time.
The police also had so fine a disregard for legal forms
that they were becoming a source of embarrassment.
They were cursed with an excess of zeal bred of ambition.
They were classed in three ranks — the Inisipeketa (Inspec
tor) with a salary of £30, the polisi (policeman) with £20,
and the kateta (cadet) with £10 a-year. Kubu had hit
upon the happy idea of letting promotion depend upon
individual activity, as shown by the number of prosecu
tions instituted by each man. Just as even the best of
Christians does not pass a single day without committing
some sin, so must a Tongan be morbidly law-abiding who

HOW TO EARN PROMOTION.

113

%AL

can lie down at night without having been entangled in
the meshes of Mr Baker's code by sins of omission or
commission. An ambitious kateta had only to note a hole
in the road, or a few dead
leaves in the town square, or
to peer through the trans
parent reed walls of a private
house at illicit card-playing
after ten o'clock curfew, to
have ground for laying an
information. If he wanted
excitement, he might chase
one of the numerous stray
horses and pigs, and lead it
in triumph to the pound ; or,
if all these failed, he need
only lie in wait at dusk on
the road leading to the planta
tions for some heedless wretch
returning home with his shirt

P romotion-hunti n ?.

over his arm, to secure a conviction for indecent exposure
of the person. If he had a taste for gossip — and what
Tongan has not ? — he might forestall his own Inisipeketa
by hunting down a flirtation, and haling the delinquents
H

114 CONVICTS AND POLICE.
before the grim tribunal ; but this, being the special sphere
of his superior officer, was dangerous ground.
The eighteen policemen of Nukualofa were divided into
three " classes " (kalasi). Each class was on duty in the
police-station for seven days ; during the following week
they rode about the island picking up from the mayors
and village constables materials on which to found charges
in the police court ; but for the third week they were off
duty, and were free to attend to their food-plantations.
The Inspector and his assistant took it in turns to be on
duty at the station to receive reports. Each policeman
was expected to find his own horse, but the Government
supplied him with a saddle. He had also to provide his
own rations, except during the week he was on duty,
when he had the run of a tin of biscuits. The station
was a ruinous little building, containing two rooms and
a row of ill-ventilated cells. One of Kubu's first acts was
to dismantle a number of these cells to make bunks, in
which one or two policemen might always be found asleep,
while the rest sat on the floor pounding kava. They had
no regular beats, and besides attending court and execut
ing distress warrants, their principal occupation seemed
to consist in carrying messages for the Cabinet Ministers,
who summoned them for the purpose by an electric bell
that connected the station with the Premier's office.
Besides the native police there was one white constable,
who for £50 a-year was content to obey the orders of
his native superiors. He was an assiduous officer when
sober, and even at other times he could not be described
as inactive, if hoisting the American flag of a Sunday
afternoon, and fighting any of his colleagues who tried

THE DISADVANTAGES OF "ZEALOUS OFFICERS." 115
to haul it down, may be held to establish a claim to
energy. As promotion depended upon the quantity rather than
the quality of the prosecutions instituted by the police,
they naturally chose those that entailed the least amount
of labour. Thefts are troublesome to unravel, therefore
thieves were wisely let alone in favour of luckless wights
guilty of wearing turbans, or of not wearing girdles within
the town, or of failing to dismount in the presence of a
member of the House of Lords ; for though the penalty
for these offences was only one dollar, yet the convictions
would all count for promotion. Less simple, but more in
teresting, were the prosecutions for flirting ; and although
the glory of conviction would redound to the sole credit
of the Inisipeketa, yet the policeman who worked up the
case had the reward of every good man who fearlessly
does his duty.
The mistaken zeal of these assiduous officers was pro
voking loud murmurs against us. Their little fingers, it
was said, were thicker than their predecessors' loins, and
I was accused of having destroyed the last lingering re
spect for a white man in the mind of the Tongan police
man — a respect which even Mr Baker had been at pains
to preserve. They pounced upon horses tethered in the
road by their European owners and took them in triumph
to the pound: under the late Administration the police
left white men's horses unmolested. They even built a
pound for pigs, and initiated it by the imprisonment of
Mr L  's sow, thus bringing upon me several consular
remonstrances headed "Re L  's sow." They trampled
under foot the sanctity of private property by pursuing

116 CONVICTS AND POLICE.
stray cattle into private enclosures ; and — last indignity
of all — they made the Consul's servant take his turban
off, and threatened to prosecute him for wearing it. This
last piece of effrontery precipitated the crisis, and I lost
no time in providing Kubu with a hastily drafted code of
Police Regulations for submission to the Cabinet. They
set forth the offences which the police should prosecute,
and those which should be left to the injured party, and
among the latter class I included flirting, which I con
sidered to be a matter for the relations of the offenders
rather than for the police. Kubu and Tukuaho both
agreed with me ; Tungi and Sateki were doubtful, think
ing it a dangerous innovation. The Chief-Justice did not
understand the question, and therefore voted with us ; and
the Minister of Finance was far away in some fiscal prob
lem, or deep in the difficulties of his domestic commis
sariat, and did not vote. So the Regulations were passed
and printed. The police took them cheerfully until they
understood that they were to be debarred from prosecu
tions for philandering. When this was explained to them,
a deputation, consisting of the Inisipeketa and Peter Vi, —
whose enterprise as spy had won him his heart's desire,
the post of Assistant Inspector, — waited respectfully upon
Tukuaho as representatives of their body. They said that
when they first read the clause they supposed it to be a
mistake, but the Minister had undeceived them. If these
Regulations became law their occupation would be gone.
Thefts ? Why, there were but few thefts, and they were
all past finding out, being of various kinds ; whereas flirta
tions were many and easily fathomable, since their nature

FLIRTING A FELONY. 117
did not vary. But we were obdurate. The law did not
make the police moral censors, nor was it so written in
the Constitution. The awful word "Konisitutone" silenced
argument, and the question was shelved until the meeting
of Parliament, when, as I shall presently relate, we were
worsted.

118

IX.

A SCHOOL OF COOKERY FOR ACCOUNTANTS.
Mutual confidence has so far decayed in this cynical age
that the financial powers of statesmen are usually limited
to the disbursement of the money voted to them by the
Legislature, while even this limited authority is subjected
to the rigid scrutiny of an uncompromising auditor. But
Mr Baker saw the ignoble suspicion that such a system
implied. He said to King George, " Trust me not at all,
or all in all," and thenceforth voted his own supplies,
kept his own Treasury, and was his own auditor, — a com
bination of offices that reflects equal credit upon the in
tellect that devised it and the high-minded confidence of
the people who suffered it to be.
But what public character escapes the self-debasing
slings of calumny ? There were many who dared to throw
doubts upon this arrangement, and to ask how the Hon
ourable and Reverend Shirley Waldemar Baker so far
transcended his fellow-men as to be exempted from the
audit to which other Ministries are subject. It showed a
mean and grovelling spirit; but the hydra-headed body
called the public is composed for the most part of mean

THE ANNUAL AUDIT. 119
and grovelling spirits, who pay their taxes without en
thusiasm, and persist in regarding their rulers as men of
like passions with themselves. So wise a man as the
ex-Premier was not ignorant of the fact that public con
fidence was worth maintaining, even by pandering to the
lower wants of his constituents, and he gave them the
independent audit they sighed for. He selected as audi
tors a doctor, since deceased, an ease -loving soul, who
chose life in Tonga because it was far from the irksome
conventionalities of an effete civilisation, and the manager
of the German firm — both unconnected with his detractors,
and above the suspicion of partiality for himself. On the
appointed day the books, and as many of the receipts as
could be found, were laid before the two auditors, who
added up the totals, and ticked off the receipts against
the corresponding entries in the ledger. Then they asked
for more receipts, and the Premier's office was ransacked
without complete success for documents that had been
mislaid. The audit dinner followed — a very sumptuous
repast, if the viands bore any analogy to the wine-
merchant's bill, — the audit certificate was signed, and
forthwith printed and published to the censorious world.
The auditors conceived that their business began and
ended with the books. If the money spent was all
accounted for, it was not their affair to ask the Premier
whence he derived authority for building a railway, for
whom a cargo of strong liquors was intended, or why his
club subscription should be paid from public funds. They
were called in as accountants to audit certain books, not
to ask irrelevant questions. They had perforce to accept
the statement of the books as to the amount of revenue,

120 A SCHOOL OF COOKERY FOR ACCOUNTANTS.
because Mr Baker said they were correct, and there was
no means of checking a calculation that was arrived at by
the ingenious yet simple method of counting the balance
of coin in the safe at the end of the year, and adding it to
the expenditure. This, by the way, is the best of all
methods for ascertaining one's income, because the sum
must come out right. Once a-year the Premier published
a financial statement, but with this the auditors had
nothing to do, and one must reluctantly confess that it
was received by the world with cold suspicion.
I have already related that the fallen statesman was
very anxious to take away some of his account-books.
Not long after my arrival in Tonga he had written offici
ally to demand them, and to challenge the right of an
auditor to examine accounts which (he was pleased to
say) had received the approval of Parliament ; adding that
if any adverse criticisms were made upon his financial
transactions, he would demand an independent audit of
his own. He was indeed so hyper-sensitive upon the
subject of this threatened audit, that we felt a pardonable
anxiety to lose no time in setting to work.
One glance at the disorder of the books and papers
sufficed to convince me that I could not hope to make
a complete audit for months to come, and I therefore
wrote to the High Commissioner to ask him for the
services of an accountant from the Colonial Govern
ment of Fiji. The return steamer brought Mr Forth,
the present Auditor of that colony. He was allowed a
fortnight only in which to attack his difficult task, and,
considering the confusion and deficient information with
which he had to contend, he made remarkable progress.

THE "TREASURY ORDERS. 121
Some time was lost in attempting to begin at the date of
Mr Baker's dismissal and work backwards ; but with the
discovery that many of the vouchers were missing, and
that there was no means of ascertaining the exact amount
of revenue, we abandoned hope of making a complete
audit of the past year, and contented ourselves with a
scrutiny of the payments we knew to have been made.
But before examining the books for which an audit cer
tificate had been published, I applied to Herr T  , the
only surviving auditor, for permission to publish a criti
cism of these accounts, a request to which he very kindly
acceded. The financial system is worth describing. There was a
head-treasury at Nukualofa, and sub-treasuries at Haapai,
Vavau, and the two Niuas. The native revenue-collectors
were required to pay in their weekly receipts to the sub-
treasurer, who kept with intermittent exactitude elaborate
books ruled in columns for every conceivable head of
receipt. When sufficient time had been allowed for ac
cumulation the Premier made a descent upon the sub-
treasuries, and carried off the money to Nukualofa, amid
the murmurs of the men of Haapai and Vavau, who thought
that the money should be spent in their own island.
When the bags of silver reached the head-treasury, Tubo.
the chief clerk, patiently counted it over, entered it in his
books as revenue from Haapai or Vavau, as the case might
be, and put it into his safe for the liquidation of " Treas
ury Orders." These " Treasury Orders " were a financial
triumph of which any Chancellor of the Exchequer
might be proud. When salaries or accounts became clue
the " Paymaster " drew a cheque upon the Treasury,

122 A SCHOOL OF COOKERY FOR ACCOUNTANTS.
which, when countersigned by Mr Baker as Auditor-
General, became virtually a floating paper currency until
redeemed by presentation at the head-treasury. Let us
trace the career of one of these " Treasury Orders " now
before me. It was drawn on January 7, 1889, in favour
of Sekonaia Tuuhetoka for 27 dollars, probably a quarter's
rent of one of the leases in Haapai, since it is indorsed
" Department of Leases." It bears Mr Baker's signature
lithographed, besides Sateki's name as Minisita Feimasita
(Minister Paymaster), and S. E. W. Baker's as clerk to the
Premier. Tuuhetoka has long ago forestalled this money
at the nearest store, and he hands over the "Treasury Order"
towards the reduction of his score, in the hope that it may
so far soften the heart of the merchant as to procure fresh
credit for him. In March the storekeeper buys a cartload
of copra from a native, and tenders Tuuhetoka's " Treasury
Order " in payment ; and a week later the man hands it to
the tax clerk in settlement of his poll-tax, now two years
in arrear. It is written in the law that the sub-treasurers
shall not cash " Treasury Orders," but it is nowhere for
bidden to receive them as revenue. So the clerk gives
him a receipt in full for his taxes, and the revenue-books
show the country to be 27 dollars richer for the worthless
paper which has never been debited as expenditure. Then
the Premier's descent upon the sub-treasury is made,
and the " Treasury Order " finishes its mendacious career
in the wastepaper-basket in Nukualofa. Sometimes a
" Treasury Order," eight years old, was presented for pay
ment, grimy and frayed from wandering from hand to
hand in some distant island, but the finances were con
ducted on too large a scale to be disturbed by such trifles.

THE CRAMPING EFFECT OF BUDGETS. 123
The salary or rent due for 1881 was paid in 1889, and no
one but the auditors — who were not expected to worry
about such minutiae — could be one whit the worse.
The " Treasury Orders " served their purpose, however.
Printed in Tongan, and countersigned by Sateki, they kept
the natives from asking inconvenient questions, and left
the Premier free to indulge his overmastering appetite for
spending money. The Customs duties and rents were
paid by Europeans in cheques upon Australian and New
Zealand banks, and these, being beyond the ken of Ton
gans, were handed over to Mr Baker to be paid into an
account in the Union Bank in Auckland, of which he had
the absolute control. To clothe this position with a sort
of authority, he kept two sets of books, — the one labelled
Agent-General, and the other Auditor-General, — hoping
probably to suggest the inference that the Auditor kept
a suspicious check upon the Agent. But the Auditor-
General seems to have been an easy-going, pliant sort of
official, who hated to make himself disagreeable, and
contented himself with keeping his books on a plan of
his own, which — so great was the sympathy that existed
between the two officers — proved to be identical with that
adopted by his methodical colleague.
Estimates were made for grovelling spirits. They are a
useful check upon incompetent rulers, but a blighting drag
upon the soaring genius of a dictator. The Constitution,
it is true, says —
Nor shall any money be paid out of the Government Treasury
or debts contracted by the Government but as shall be arranged
by the Legislative Assembly excepting in cases of war or rebel
lion or fearful epidemic or a like calamity and in such case it

124 A SCHOOL OF COOKERY FOR ACCOUNTANTS.
shall be done with the consent of the Cabinet and the King
shall call together at once the Legislative Assembly and the
Treasurer shall give the reason why that money was expended
and the amount (sic).
The Legislative Assembly had not " arranged " that the
Agent-General should have the spending of some £6000
a-year at will, nor did a " war ... or like calamity ''
warrant him in breaking the Constitution ; but he must
be held blameless, for we read —
The Treasurer shall not permit any moneys to be paid out of
the Treasury on any consideration whatever excepting in cash
ing " Treasury Orders " of the Tongan Government duly signed
by the Paymaster and the Auditor-General.
So poor old Goschen was responsible, and upon his grey
head would the blow fall if Parliament ever demanded a
reckoning. There was a pathos about Goschen's position
in the matter. Responsible for public moneys, solemnly
required by the Constitution to submit a financial report
to Parliament accounting for the last penny, liable to im
peachment and other unknown terrors if he were found
wanting, he sat placidly upon the hidden mine, agitated
only by anxiety as to whether the cravings of his physical
nature would be satisfied. But who would have thought
of blaming Goschen ? He himself had severer views as to
his responsibilities than had his colleagues. He had never
read the Constitution — his education had been neglected
in early youth — and he believed that the duties of a self-
respecting Minister of Finance began and ended with the
guardianship of the key of the safe, which, as he could
trust no other with so precious a charge, hung round his

HOW THE KEY WAS LOST.

125

neck by a shoe - lace. Had Goschen been a less con
scientious person, the business of the country could
have been continued even while he was providing for
his appetite ; but since no money could be paid out with
out the key of the safe, his
frequent absences from the
Treasury had called
forth those remon
strances from his col
leagues which I have al
ready related. Now Gos
chen had a passion beyond
the mere satisfaction of his
grosser appetites. He was
the professor of a dying art.

At low tide his lone figure might be seen at the outer
edge of the reef in sharp silhouette against the blue water,
his vala girded up, his hand-net balanced on his forearm,
lifting his skinny legs high, and sinking his feet into the

126 A SCHOOL OF COOKERY FOR ACCOUNTANTS.
knee-deep water without making a ripple as he crept
upon his prey. He would poise his body as he watched
the manoeuvres . of a shoal of little fish, his right arm
would be cautiously drawn back, and would presently
dart out like lightning, cunningly flinging the small
net in a circle round the shoal. Then, with incredible
agility, he would leap upon the net, and transfer the
entangled prey to the fish -basket hanging from his
shoulder. The clay came when, after an almost miracu
lous haul had demanded special effort from his age-
stiffened limbs, he felt at his neck for the precious key
and found that it was missing. The string had snapt as
he flung the net, and the key lay buried under a foot of
water. He felt about for it with his toes ; he lay face
downwards in the water with his nose upon the coral, and
crawled about with eyes wide open. Four hours later,
when the reef was dry, he made a further unavailing
search with his convict servants. Then he came to make
his confession. His colleagues indulged in no vulgar re
crimination. They had expected it, and their annoyance
was tempered with the reflection that the loss of the key
would be a full and adequate excuse for closing the Treas
ury for a time, and for thus allowing funds to accumulate.
Goschen was sternly commanded to make further search,
and a bunch of old duplicate keys from the Premier's office
were tried one by one. A week passed during which
Goschen daily scoured the reef at low tide, and the Pre
mier's office was ransacked for a duplicate. The situation
began to look serious. A month's salaries were due, and
our creditors were becoming importunate. A locksmith
must be sent for from New Zealand or the iron doors be

"BY SPECIAL VOTE." 127
burst open. At last, dusty and rust-eaten, in the corner
of a drawer a key was found which, when oiled and cleaned,
proved to be the duplicate. The Treasury was reopened,
and the news spread among the hungry creditors, who
formed a continuous stream to and from the building for
two days before their claims could be satisfied. But no
one thought of telling Goschen. One day, after the Treas
ury had been open for a week, and the episode of the lost
key had been almost forgotten, the old man sat down beside
me in the Council-room. His anxieties had added another
wrinkle to his furrowed brow, and he longed for a sympa
thetic ear. " What shall we do ? " he said. " I am dead
of looking for the key. It is now clear that it is lost.
' How would it be to break open the doors ? " I felt the
glow that must have warmed the heart of the pitiful
Samaritan, as I told him that his office had been open for
at least a week, and watched the smile of deep relief
smooth out his harassed features. " Malo ! " he said,
" they never told me ; " and he shuffled off to resume
control of the finances of the country.
But my admiration for the patient Goschen has led me
into a digression. I must return to his fallen chief.
When deep in empirical research into the abstruse
science of book-keeping — in which an Auditor- General
cannot seek instruction without a loss of public confi
dence and dignity — one can imagine with what satisfac
tion the many-sided statesman penned the words " By
special vote of the Legislative Assembly ; " " By vote of
the Privy Council." While the issue of the year's finances
lay hidden in the womb of the future, in the midst of
uneasy doubt whether there would be cash enough in the

128 A SCHOOL OF COOKERY FOR ACCOUNTANTS.
safe to pay the serried array of bills, how that ray of
order and regularity must have soothed the faint twinges
of a seared conscience ! If the words comforted him as he
stifled the remembrance of his own Constitution, who will
quarrel with him for writing them ? The obsequious Par
liament would have voted the money had they been asked.
But to ask them involved a loss of time and prestige, and
detailed explanations, abhorrent to any right-minded dic
tator, would then have become necessary. If all the bills
before Legislatures were to be actually read through three
times, parliamentary business would be even more dilatory
than it is ; and if bills may be taken as read, why may
not money be taken as voted ? This must have been the
Auditor-Premier's reflection as he ornamented his ledger
with the soothing phrase ; while the Hansard of the Legis
lative Assembly bore silent witness to the absence of all
money votes but life-pensions to Mr Baker's children and
a doctor's salary.
When the fateful day for balancing the books came
round, the poor Auditor- General must have discovered
that, besides his revenue and expenditure, he had a ter-
tium quid to reckon with — a mysterious balance one way
or the other that could no more be absorbed than the
waste products of an abortive chemical experiment. One
of his predecessors in the chair of the Wesleyan mission,
a most estimable man, used to be troubled with the same
difficulty when he presented his accounts to his district
meeting. But he never allowed the fact that his credit
and debit columns failed to balance by £5 to ruffle him.
"You have only to subtract £2, 10s. from this column
and add it to the other, and the two will be the same,"

QUEER PUBLIC EXPENSES. 129
he would say with mild triumph. Whether Mr Baker
had sat at the feet of this elder of the Church, or had
arrived at the same discovery by an independent chain
of reasoning, concerns us not : that he had devised such
a process for the absorption of the tertium quid may be
gathered from a naive letter of his clerk and accountant,
Mr 0. Lahnstein, dated the 13th of August 1889: "The
differences of $700 and $250 have to be taken out of the
books. The easiest way would be by alteration, as the
books have not been added up with ink." It must have
been a very pretty piece of financial jugglery this absorp
tion of the tertium quid among the columns that had not
been added up with ink.
When the books were at last balanced, and the fleeting
figures caught and fixed with pen and ink, the Annual
Statement of Accounts was prepared for publication.
There was a haziness of outline about this that invited
scrutiny. Items such as " Police uniforms, hardware,
parliamentary expenses, tanks, medicine, building mate
rials, lime, &c, £769, 6s. 2d.," flung together in hetero
geneous incongruity, provoked speculation as to what the
" et-cetera " might comprise ; and when the vouchers dis
closed the fact that groceries (£35, 19s. 2d.), Mr Baker's
subscription to the Northern Club, Auckland, his son's
cab, tram, and boat hire (£46), and boots and shoes (£2,
9s. 9d.) were included, it was felt that the search had not
been in vain. A wicked curiosity prompted us to write
to the fallen Minister to inquire whether his club sub
scription had not been charged to the Government in
error; but if we hoped to abash him, we were much
mistaken. He had the honour to inform us that the
i

130 A SCHOOL OF COOKERY FOR ACCOUNTANTS.
payment had been approved by his Majesty in Council.
The minute-book was silent on the point, and the em
phatic disclaimer of the king and his Ministers has
plunged the question in a doubt from which I shall not
attempt to extricate it. The £46 spent in cab-hire by the
ex-Premier's son could not be impugned, for certain offi
cial despatches, written by the son in the family dining-
room to his father in the study, beginning and ending,
" Sir, I have the honour," showed that the rather stolid
youth had spent much of this money in peripatetic di
plomacy. He had called upon the British Admiral and
a Colonial Minister to discuss the question of national
defence and the purchase of ordnance ; and his tolerant
reception by these dignitaries seems to have turned his
head. Even at the Auckland prices £46 would provide
a vast number of jaunts, sweetened no doubt by the re
flection that they were at the public expense. Possibly
the £2, 9s. 9d., paid for boots and shoes on the authority
of Mr Baker, junior, as Public Officer, was charged to the
Treasury to cover the expenditure of shoe-leather in cross
ing the curbstone to the cabs.
An absentee First Minister was an expensive luxury to
the Tongans. In 1889 it cost the country £171 to provide
steamboat passages for him in his frequent trips to Auck
land. Among the miscellaneous items in the published state
ment is the following disquieting entry : —
Assassination .... £45 16 9
My hand trembled as I unfolded the voucher, speciously
folded and docketed among its innocent fellows, — the

A PAYMENT FOR ASSASSINATION. 131
damning evidence of the price of blood, of some poor
human life sacrificed to the demands of inexorable state
craft. Had this ex-missionary reverted to the methods of
medieval Italian republics to choke opposition ? and dared
he flaunt his infamy in the pages of his Government
' Gazette,' proclaiming with cynical insolence the exact
price to a penny at which he valued human life ? But an
examination of the voucher brought relief not unmixed
with bewilderment. It was headed "Assassination," but
the money had been paid to an Auckland coachbuilder
for the entire renovation, on the most expensive scale, of
the Premier's private carriage. I tried honestly to dis
cover by what process of reasoning the repair of a private
carriage at public expense could be classed as Assassina
tion. At last a light broke in upon me. Mr Baker had
been driving when he was shot at three years before, and
a bullet had struck the splash-board of his carriage. He
had always spoken of the attempt on his life as " the
Assassination," and he was now soothing his conscience
for repairing the ravages of time at public expense in the
same way as when he wrote " By special vote of the Legis
lative Assembly " in his account-books.1
The last item in the statement — '- Extraordinary ex
pense, £62, 7s. 9d." — included the cost of an enlarged
photograph of Mr Baker, besides some other mysterious
payments which we were willing to believe deserved the
classification given to them, although we could never
discover their nature.
In the ledger we found the entry, " Loan Account,
1 I have been told that Mr Baker munificently presented this carriage
to the king.

132 A SCHOOL OF COOKERY FOR ACCOUNTANTS.
£1085." Sateki, the Paymaster, enlightened us. The
Free Church was about to hold its annual collection. The
enthusiasm had been wrought by soul-stirring sermons to
the pitch when a Tongan will strip the coat from his back,
and fling it into the basin to win one more shout of
applause ; but it chanced that money was tight, there was
no copra, and the Civil servants all had debts at the stores.
Mr Baker had surmounted such difficulties before when
he was a missionary, and he was not to be beaten now
that he was Prime Minister as well. He advanced their
salaries on the eve of the collection, and stopped the loans
out of their pay as it became due. As none of them seem
to have died or to have been dismissed before they had
had time to earn the amount of their advances, the
Government lost nothing but the interest.
The financial relations between the Government and
the Free Church had been an inexhaustible theme for the
Opposition, and there was some disappointment among the
mission party that our revelations were not more startling.
There was indeed nothing to reveal, for the only record of
these transactions was contained in a few sheets of loose
foolscap, evidently compiled from memory within the last
few months ; for although the transactions had extended
over a period of five years, none of the entries were dated.
Mr Watkin, the President of the Free Church, assured me
that he knew nothing about the state of the account, and
in this respect he was probably no more ignorant than his
wily colleague. The Treasury seems to have acted as
banker to the Free Church, and to have imported at public
cost whatever goods were required by the Conference, who
paid over money on account from time to time as the

WEIGHED AND FOUND WANTING. 133
takings of the collection-plate permitted. The account
was never adjusted, but the Government is said to have
advanced £5177, and to have received £5065, leaving a
balance of £112 still due. When asked to pay this, Mr
Watkin, who appeared relieved at getting off so easily,
only asked for time. The Free Church had been living
beyond its means.
It was hopeless to verify undated transactions five
years old, but one strange entry provoked my curiosity.
Among the Government disbursements I read, " Loss
of mission copra, against — £167, Is. 5d." In 1889 the
Free Church collections were paid in copra, which the
Government bought and stored in their sheds, crediting
the Free Church with £1289, 9s. 3d., the estimated quan
tity being 120 tons or more. When, however, this copra
was sold by the Government and weighed out to the
purchaser, it proved to be so much less than the reputed
quantity, that the loss could only be accounted for on
the theory of fraudulent weighing by the native who
received the contribution. Instead of charging the loss
to the Free Church, the Government complacently con
sented to bear it.
In a burst of loyalty to his royal master the ex-Premier
had, during the closing months of 1886, inaugurated a sub
scription for a statue of King George, to be executed by an
Italian artist, and erected in the centre of the Malaekula,
the public square of Nukualofa. Money flowed in rapidly.
The High Commissioner headed the list, and scarcely a
European or native in the group failed to give accord
ing to his means. Sateki, as trustee, took charge of the
money, and the Premier was commissioned to order the

134 A SCHOOL OF COOKERY FOR ACCOUNTANTS.
statue. Four years passed away, during which the
curious learned that an artist in Italy was carving the
marble at the very moment of the inquiry. But this
picture of the patient Italian artist failed to satisfy the
subscribers, and I was entreated to track the sealed bag
of silver, last seen in the hand of Sateki, and to set
the question, of its fate beyond a doubt. Sateki re
membered the occurrence perfectly. He had given the
bag to the Treasury clerk for custody in the safe. That
was all he knew. It was the last clerk but one — he
who was dismissed for embezzlement. I waded through
the incoherencies of the Treasury book till I found
the entry I wanted, "Revenue from the Paymaster —
£1299, 13s. 6d.," — the exact amount of the subscriptions
— used for purposes of general expenditure. Let us char
itably suppose that the purchase of a statue was really
intended, and that, when the Premier published the
financial statement in which this sum figured as revenue,
the divers cares of office had chased the recollection of
its purpose from his mind.
Among the disbursements for the past year was the
following : —
Julian Thomas £50 0 0
Printing . . 37 10 0
A peripatetic journalist, writing under the pseudonym
of "The Vagabond," had passed through Tonga durino-
the previous year, stopping some six hours in Nukualofa,
and about half that time in Haapai and Vavau. He was
bound for Samoa, where the political squabbles promised
to furnish him with material for "copy." Lack of ac-

THE WAY HISTORY IS WRITTEN. 135
quaintance with his subject never yet deterred a special
correspondent — least of all when he hails from Australia
¦ — from writing about it. In a style founded upon that
of Mr Pomponius Ego, the correspondent immortalised
by Mr Jorrocks, he chatters unblushingly of personal ad
ventures in every quarter of the globe, of those playful
familiarities which personages seem to reserve for their
intercourse with " specials," of the miracles which dis
criminating Nature disdains to reveal to less gifted mor
tals, — till the bewildered reader, forgetting the purpose
of the letter, finds himself speculating whether Mr Julian
Thomas was coeval with his grandfather, and possesses
the gift of ubiquity and the personal friendship of the
celebrities of half a century, or whether  But the
alternative is too discourteous to be set down here.
It so happened that he was smarting from an action for
libel in which the plaintiffs, the Wesleyan Mission, had
been successful, and the spectacle of their reverses in the
religious strife in Tonga tempted him to turn aside and
curse them. In seven long letters to the ' Melbourne
Age,' he worked up his seven hours' visit into an indict
ment of their agents personally and their methods in
general, contriving by the way to bespatter Mr Baker
with the eulogy of faint dispraise. He wrote of the
history of the islands, lacking, we may charitably sup
pose, the time to read more than the opening chapter of
Mariner's ' Tonga,' which he glibly quotes as his authority
for the remarkable statement that King George was the
grandson of Finau, and that the latter murdered the Tui
Tonga. He wrote of Mr George Brown, and so unlovely
is the picture that he paints of the gifted Secretary of

136 A SCHOOL OF COOKERY FOR ACCOUNTANTS.
Missions, that the reader instinctively scrutinises the line-
spaces for the record of some affront offered to the special
correspondent. " He calls upon me," says the guileless
Vagabond, " as the heathen did upon Balaam, to also curse
the Premier of Tonga." But not even the son of Beor
could surpass Mr Julian Thomas in incorruptibility and
a delicate sense of honour; for he at least allowed the
Balak to offer burnt sacrifice, and the latter, if we may
believe him, feared the blunting influence of even a dinner
upon his sensitive conscience. " I may hint here that I
am bidden to sit at meat with the king, . but neither
from monarch nor Premier nor missionary could I accept
the slightest hospitality. I do not know what I may have
to say about each, and keep perfectly unfettered and un
biassed by any considerations which the reception of any
courtesies might enforce upon me. My attitude in this
matter rather offends the Tongan Premier."
It is a fine image this of the pressman, after years spent
in the hurly-burly of colonial journalism, so punctilious
of his honour that he puts behind him the temptations
of a meal, lest they turn him from the stern duty which
he owes to society. Would that no rude hand had been
put forth to smutch so fair a picture ! But there in
damning evidence lay the voucher " for the right of
reprinting 'Holy Tonga,'" signed by The Vagabond as
claimant, and by its side a copy of Mr Baker's letter
inviting him to fix his own honorarium, and his reply
naming the modest sum of £50.
The letters to the * Age ' were reprinted in Auckland in
pamphlet form under the title of 'Holy Tonga,' and a
thousand copies now lay upon the floor of the Premier's

TO BE BURNED BY THE COMMON HANGMAN. 137
office. Since Mr Baker shared with Mr Watkin the
honour of The Vagabond's eulogy, the Free Church had
with unanswerable logic been debited with half the
" honorarium " ; but the remaining £62, 15s. was a dead
loss to the Government. The fate of the pamphlet was
decided from the moment when a kind friend translated
to Tungi the following passage : " Tungi wipes his greasy
fingers on his fat thighs, and then looks up at us with a
query in his wicked black eyes. . . . He is very obese,
the fat swelling into wrinkles on his wrists and legs like
those of a prize baby. He looks sensual and wicked, and
strikes us as the very model of a black Tiberius."
But the late Premier, probably uneasy as to the view
that might be formed regarding his share in the transac
tion, authorised his son to buy the pamphlet at the price
it had cost the Treasury. The offer was tempting in view
of the emptiness of the Exchequer, but I could not close
with it until the consent of my colleagues had been
obtained. The proposal was laid before the Cabinet.
Kubu and Tukuaho were against making terms with Mi-
Baker of any kind ; Sateki thought that the money should
not be refused; the Chief- Justice did not catch the pro
posal, and Goschen's thoughts were elsewhere. Then Tungi
rose. He had heard, he said, that the book was libellous,
and spoke evil of dignities. He thought he remembered
seeing the white man who wrote it: he was a man of
disreputable appearance (matamata tu'a), and he looked
as if he drank much strong kava. If the book were sold
Mr Baker would distribute it abroad, and Tonga would
have an evil smell. ' Holy Tonga ' was brought to judg
ment and condemned to suffer at the stake, like many a

138 A SCHOOL OF COOKERY FOR ACCOUNTANTS.
better book before it. But the time of execution was put
off from day to day, and I strongly suspect that the thou
sand copies still lie piled away forgotten in the Premier's
back-office. There were no offers to buy back the other extrava
gances of the late Premier, though the inventory showed
a tempting variety. There was a passenger car to run on
the tram-line from the wharf to the banana plantation ; a
safe that cost £150, so large as to be unsaleable even in
Auckland; a book of New Zealand birds costing £11, lis.,
bought in order that Mr Baker's name might figure on the
title-page as joint patron with the Queen and other per
sonages ; an electric - light installation of an antiquated
and useless pattern ; a full outfit of electrical toys, induc
tion coils, miniature pumps, tiny lights, dancing-dolls, &c. ;
and a quantity of quasi-scientific apparatus stored in the
Fale Saienisi (Science House) at the College ; besides a
vast quantity of stores of all kinds dissipated among the
natives. We had now to devise some system of book-keeping for
the revenue clerks, simplified to suit that peculiar mathe
matical talent that can solve a problem in higher algebra
without being able to add up a column of figures cor
rectly, yet sufficiently elaborate to admit of an accurate
statement of revenue from any source at a given time, and
of a check being kept upon dishonest officials.
We abolished at one sweep the old books with their
complicated headings, and substituted common cash-books
for them. The revenue collectors gave printed receipts
for every payment made to them, retaining a duplicate to
show to the officer who audited their books. Once a-week

ON HIS DEFENCE. 139
they paid their revenue to the sub-treasurer, who gave
them a receipt, which they sent every month, pinned to a
copy of their cash-books, to Nukualofa. The sub-treasurer
had also to post a copy of his book to the capital, where
it was carefully compared with the receipts he had given
to the revenue collectors. If they failed to agree, it was
plain that the sub-treasurer had received more than he
accounted for, and any defalcations of the revenue col
lectors could be checked by an examination of the num
bered butts of their receipt-books. Embezzlement could
therefore only pass unnoticed if the sub-treasurer and the
revenue collectors were in league to defraud the country.
This elementary trap was no sooner set than it secured a
quarry. The monthly statement of the sub-treasurer of
Vavau tallied with the receipts he had given to the
revenue collectors in so far as the total was concerned ;
but the various items, when added up, fell short of the
reputed amount by some 70 dollars. Each item had been
clipped in accordance with a system that had probably
been going on for years without detection. Explanations
were called for ; but the sub-treasurer took the high
ground that as it cast a personal reflection on his honour,
the demand was beneath his notice. My colleagues
were loath to proceed to extremities ; for the defaulter
was highly connected in Vavau, and was likely to use his
influence to estrange the Civil servants already wavering
in their loyalty to the Government. He was, moreover,
the pet clerk of old Inoke Fotu, Kubu's father, on whose
devotion we counted to defeat the hostile influence of
Manase, the Governor. But I was firm. Campbell had
established the defalcations without a doubt; the facts

140 A SCHOOL OF COOKERY FOR ACCOUNTANTS.
were well known to numbers of the native clerks ; and to
allow so flagrant an offence to go unpunished would be to
invite dishonesty from all our employees. Tukuaho at
last gave way so far as to consent to the man's dismissal,
if I would allow him to bring the end about in his own
way. He showed me a letter from the defaulter in which
he forgave him (Tukuaho) from his heart for the wrong
he had done him. It was, he wrote, not Tukuaho's fault
that so wicked a conspiracy had been formed, for he
knew that it was the work of these deceitful foreigners
who were his advisers ; and in a magnificent peroration he
besought him by their common God, Jehovah (with whom
they both appeared to have relations of an intimacy
denied to deceitful foreigners), to become the saviour of
his country by casting out his two advisers, especially
Kamibeli, and by restoring him (the writer) to the emi
nence to which his own superior qualities had raised him.
The tone of the letter was magnanimous throughout, and
from a clerk guilty of embezzlement to the Premier of
the country it would have been a startling production in
any other part of the world. Tukuaho's object was to get
the man away from his friends in Vavau before dealing
with him. He therefore invited him to clear himself
before the Cabinet in Nukualofa, handing over his office
during his absence to the sub-treasurer of Haapai. He
swallowed the bait, and in due course stood at the bar of
the Council-house to clear his character before his Majesty's
Ministers. He was a large cow-faced man, with his lips
pursed into a perpetual whistle. I was commissioned by
Goschen to prefer the charge, and described the dis
crepancy between his monthly statement and the receipts

COOKING THE FIGURES.

141

he had given to the revenue collectors. The accused was
calm, collected, and perfectly respectful. He had with
him his books for the last three years, and he proceeded
to read them, pausing at intervals to take breath and to

"He had with him his books for the last three years.''

explain that, but for Mr Baker of execrable memory, the
matter would be clear to a person of even Campbell's
limited comprehension. Although his harangue had as
much to do with the point at issue as it had with the

142 A SCHOOL OF COOKERY FOR ACCOUNTANTS.
English Budget, I could see that the array of figures had
produced a favourable impression. It was in vain that
I put direct questions to the accused about the missing
$70 ; he continued blandly to quote the monetary trans
actions of past years with the superior consciousness of
convincing argument. Goschen was nodding ; Tungi wore
the expression of a disinterested spectator at a prize-fight ;
Kubu was honestly trying to understand what it was all
about; and Tukuaho was wavering between his faith in
me and his respect for the display of erudition on the part
of the defaulting treasurer. At my instance the accused
was cut short, and ordered to withdraw while we discussed
the matter. As soon as he was released from the spell of
the treasurer's bovine countenance, Tukuaho pointed out
that, whether the charge was proved or not, it was clear
that the books were badly kept to have given rise to any
doubts on the score of the treasurer's honesty ; and as the
work was going on very well in his absence, he thought
he should be relieved of active employment until the
meeting of Parliament, who might reinstate him if they
pleased. This middle course having been agreed to, the
cow-faced sub-treasurer was sent home to do his worst
with the members for Vavau. Alas for human proposi
tions ! When Parliament did meet, his grievances were
forgotten in the intoxication of debate, and in the en
thusiasm evoked by a Ministry who catered well for the
physical wants of its supporters. Manase, his chief ally,
was himself impeached, and his case never even came to
a hearing.

143

X.

THE WOLF AT THE DOOR.
There were several troublesome claims upon the Govern
ment to be settled. One of the steamboat companies was
receiving a Government subsidy of £50 a -month, and
alleged a twelvemonth's contract as a reason for its con
tinuance. We did not want the steamer, nor could we
afford to pay the subsidy. Fortunately our predecessor's
rooted objection to being bound by paper stood us in good
stead. There was no formal written contract, and the
claim was compromised. Another New Zealand firm de
clared that Mr Baker had promised to sell them 500 tons
of copra at current market rates in return for their com
placence in lending him money at a time when he was hard
pressed for it. We had repaid the borrowed money, and
we had already sold all our tax copra to another firm for
a higher price. In this case also no written agreement
was forthcoming. I proposed arbitration by the Consul-
General. The case was referred to his law officers, and
decided in our favour. The claimants were Plymouth
Brethren, and if all the elect are as sharp in business as
they were, they are likely to enjoy the good things of this

144 THE WOLF AT THE DOOR.
life as well as of the next. Except for trivial amounts,
they put their trust in no one ; for it was currently re
ported that the agent in Tonga wrote to his partners in
New Zealand telling them to fully insure all goods of over
£50 in value, but that they might trust shipments of lesser
value " to the care of Almighty Providence."
These difficulties were no sooner settled than a new
source of annoyance broke forth. Mr Baker, just before
his departure, had engaged a schoolmaster for the Govern
ment College for five years, at an annual salary of £200,
which the impoverished Treasury was quite incapable of
paying. He was offered, and accepted, a sum of £100
and a free passage to Sydney in full release of all claims
he might have upon the Government. But before he left
Tonga he had made a secret compact with the College
boys to return if his salary could be collected. The lads,
actuated partly by a genuine desire for education, and
partly by a boyish delight at their new-found importance,
had gone to the king with Maafu — who joined them in
the hope of annoying Tukuaho — and persuaded him to
countermand the arrangements made for the school
master's departure. The order arrived in Nukualofa too
late, and before the man could be recalled from Sydney
his communications to the Australian newspapers had
effectually dissipated the king's wish for his return. But
the scholars of the College, all thirsting for excitement,
set themselves to raise contributions to. pay the salary,
and formed themselves into a guild to encourage educa
tion and defy the Government. The College had a brass
band and a magic-lantern : these were embarked in the
Malokula, and taken off to Haapai and Vavau as the

THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT.

145

nucleus of an entertainment for a money-collecting tour.
Tukuaho, Tungi, and Fatafehi were indignant, but power
less to interfere. The entertainments were reported to be
an immense success. The band paraded the towns, and
took the half-dollars at the doors, and exhibited in rapid

succession lantern - slides of the Holy Land and " The
house that Jack built," with a fine disregard to subject
and sequence. The people cheerfully paid their half-
dollars, dimly understanding that the money was to be
used in embarrassing the Government. At last the glass
chimney of the lantern broke, and the schooner made a

146 THE WOLF AT THE DOOR.
special voyage to Nukualofa to beg a new chimney from
Tukuaho. It was high time to interfere with these boyish
escapades, and we therefore temporised, sending a message
to the band that they had overstayed their leave, and
would be expelled unless they came back. This brought
them to their senses, and they sailed in with flags flying,
and the big drum beating defiance. They were forthwith
assembled, and offered the choice between obedience to
orders or expulsion. They were at first inclined to be
mutinous, but on the reflection that the instruments were
Government property they became more amenable to
discipline. Tonga is not the first State whose public affairs have
been deranged by feminine frailty. Was there not a
Mark Antony ? But Mark Antony did not write short
hand nor keep the minutes of the Council, and it may
therefore be doubted whether he was as necessary to the
dying Republic as Uiliame Umufuke, alias Mataka, was
to the kingdom of Tonga. Mataka was invaluable. He
knew all the secrets of the Cabinet and Privy Council, yet
his mouth was closed ; he understood the business of each
office better than the head of the Department ; he could
take down a speech in shorthand faster than the speaker
could utter the words ; and he was a more useful spy and
detective than fat Peter or any of his satellites. A blow
was struck at the wellbeing of the State when Mataka
got into trouble, for there was but one inexorable law
for the rich and the poor, the indispensable and the un
necessary. Mataka's troubles fell on this wise. Tukuaho had 'a fair
cousin, Lobase, who had espoused Lulu the bandmaster,

A FRAIL FAIR. 147
now absent in Vavau in the train of the magic-lantern.
Mataka, it seems, had been indiscreet, and Lulu had
instructed the Inisipeketa of Police to prosecute on his
behalf. I know nothing of the details — they did not
interest me ; I only know that Mataka and Lobase were
weighed in the scales of justice, and that their scale kicked
the beam. Mataka's seat was empty next morning, and
the office was disorganised. Sibu made four mistakes in
his first letter, and could not find the correspondence
register. Later in the day, in the person of a sulky convict
with cropped head unloading a banana waggon, I recog
nised the Clerk of the Privy Council.
The frail fair meanwhile, being unable to find the 60
dollars required to pay her fine, delivered herself up to
work it out at the rate of Is. a-day, and was told off to
G.'s household. She was a fair specimen of the grisette
of the country, coquettish, naive, and thoroughly frivolous.
Her views of life were matured. She was born into the
world, she said, to enjoy herself, and as the capacity for
enjoyment wanes when one is old and ugly, pleasures
must all be crowded into the fleeting hours of youth. She
had heard that there were people who gave their hearts
once and for all — she could indeed dimly imagine the
condition of mind that brought it. It was very nice and
all that, but her own experience was different. She had
been in love a great many times, and always just as much
each time. What made her fall in love ? She did not
know. She supposed that the man surpassed all others
for strength and beauty — then she loved him, and after a
while he grew to seem less handsome in her eyes, and she
saw another who surpassed even him. No ! She never

148

THE WOLF AT THE DOOR.

loved Lulu. He was her husband, chosen for her by her
friends : moreover, he was an angry man.
Lobase's punishment sat lightly on her. In due course
bandmaster Lulu returned and compounded the matter
with the jailer ; but even this did not seem to soften the
heart of his
spouse. Less
than a week af
ter his return he
burst into my
office in great ex
citement to com
plain that band
practice was im
possible because
his cornet was
locked up in his
house, and " the
woman Lobase "
had hidden the
key. The con
jugal recrimina
tions, when she
was called upon
for explanations,
were bitter and shrill. Poor Lulu ! His band in the
act of rehearsing the grand march from Tannhauser was
easier to manage than his fair but fickle wife.
There is a lack of thoroughness about the Tongans.
They pine to live like Europeans, to own implements and
horses and saddlery, yet not one of them can bake a loaf

Lobase.

THE RULES OF THE SERVICE. 149
of bread; nor forge a bolt, nor splice a strap. Their thirst
is not for knowledge, but for showy accomplishments : their
genius is frothy and ephemeral. This moral untidiness
pervades everything. In the king's palace there is a
throne -room furnished like an Australian parlour, with
Kidderminster carpet, ormolu ornaments under glass
shades, and crewel^work mats on the tables, — the whole
in unimaginable order, — while in a bare room on the
ground -floor the king sleeps on his mat spread on the
boards, and eats his yams from a single plate. A Cabinet
Minister may be seen sitting on the floor of his well-
furnished office eating his mid-day meal from a large dish
with his fingers. The Minister of Police bustles about his
work, delighted with the new routine he imperfectly un
derstands. " It is excellent," he says with enthusiasm,
only he cannot say how many officials draw pay in his
department, nor can the Premier as Minister of Education.
The latter thinks that they are paid in proportion to the
number of their pupils, but he does not know for certain.
Shrewd old Sateki, the Auditor- General, alone is not en
thusiastic. He dares to think that some clay his work
will be plain to him, but at present his mind is darkened.
He is a really dependable subordinate this Sateki, but
I can see that he sighs for the clay when he received
his orders, right or wrong, and had only to carry them
out without the responsibility of deciding anything for
himself. He was the only official besides Tukuaho who attended
his office every day. The pay of the Civil servants was
fixed on the supposition that they should have time for the
cultivation of their food-gardens. The clerks had to attend

150 THE WOLF AT THE DOOR.
their offices on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, but
they were free on all other days in the week. This
arrangement had its inconveniences, but so long as it
afforded a reason for not increasing the salaries, it could
not be altered. Tukuaho did his best to attend every day ;
but funeral feasts or the requirements of religion (he was
a local preacher) often interfered to keep him from the
office, and I had to content myself with the reflection that
he was advancing our interests by the not less effective
means of making friends with the mammon of unrighteous
ness. But the others did not even keep the short hours
required of them. Not many days after our first Cabinet
Council there was a fresh alarm that the Treasury was
closed again on a Friday. A policeman was despatched in
hot haste to fetch the Treasury officials, and in. ten min
utes a melancholy procession filed into the office, headed
by Goschen. " This is Friday," I began, " and the Treas
ury is closed again at three o'clock. How is our work to
go on under such conditions ? " The aged Minister and
his satellites crouched cross-legged before me like a lot of
naughty schoolboys. " We were in church," said Goschen,
solemnly. This spiked my gun, and I handed them over
to Tukuaho, who knew more of their spiritual require
ments than I.
The Tongans are a race of athletes. In foot-races and
feats of strength, notably the tug-of-war, they have gener
ally worsted the blue-jackets whom they have challenged,
but their real passion is cricket. Soon after its intro
duction the game became a national danger. The planta
tions were neglected ; the cocoa-nuts lay rotting on the
ground : for the whole population played cricket from

A HOSTILE PRESS. 151
dawn till dusk all over the island, with a bat if they
could get it, but otherwise with a cocoa-nut branch and
an unripe orange. They played matches, one village
against another, and all the men of each village took
an innings. With perhaps seventy-three on one side and
fifty-two on the other a match lasted for days ; and party
feeling sometimes ran so high that at the end the losers
fell upon the victors with the bats and stumps to avenge
their disgrace. This was all changed when cricket was
regulated by law, and confined to Tuesdays and Thursdays
only ; besides, the heat of the cricket - passion has had
time to cool. But I record the matter if only to serve
the speakers at cricket-dinners with a useful illustration.
The two principal papers in Auckland were bespatter
ing us with satirical abuse. This was not unexpected, for
we had been warned that Mr Baker was a shareholder in
one of them. It is good for a Government to be reviled by
the press — it produces a healthy glow of reaction, like a
shower-bath on a cold morning ; but we owed money in
Auckland, and were dependent upon our credit for our sup
plies. I had a weapon to brandish over the head of one of
these organs : the Government printing was done in its office,
but I could scarcely insist on its closing its columns to
hostile criticisms without providing it with a correspon
dent free from prejudice. I knew of no one in Tonga at
the time who could be trusted to write without bias
against the new Administration except myself. I there
fore had a message conveyed to the proprietors of the
' Herald ' that we could not continue to give our printing
to a hostile journal, and that if they wanted our custom
they must amend their tone. If their " own correspon-

152 THE WOLF AT THE DOOR.
dent " was past reform, I promised to provide them with a
monthly letter. To the ' Star ' I wrote that we were think
ing of dividing our printing if we could find a friendly
firm to undertake a portion of it, but that the inimical
tone of their paper had hitherto prevented us from doing
so. If, however, they would adopt an impartial attitude,
I should be glad to meet them half-way by supplying regu
lar news. Thenceforth I became " Our own Correspon
dent " to both papers, and wrote by each mail two separate
letters, alike only in their colourless stolidity, in which
neither favour nor ill-will to the Government of Tonga
shocked the eye, and the printing was divided. This
arrangement was not made too soon, for the wordy effu
sions of the disappointed schoolmaster, had they appeared
in print, would have created a panic among our creditors.
The impartiality of the Government in sectarian dis
putes had had the effect of allaying to some extent the
bitter feeling between the rival Churches. But the Wes
leyans still suffered disabilities, and were far from satisfied.
The dbi, or plantations of the ministers, confiscated during
the disturbances, had not yet been given back to them,
and indeed could not be restored without injustice to the
present occupants, who were given possession in good faith
by the late Government. The Free Church ministers still
had possession of a quantity of timber, some windows, and
a church bell, bought with the mission funds, and refused
to give them up, on the ground that they were paid for
with the subscriptions of the Wesleyans who have since
turned to the Free Church. No doubt the property was
vested in the trustees of the Wesleyan Church, but I
urged forbearance, for every day of harmony was a o-ain

CHURCH SQUABBLES. 153
to the Wesleyan cause worth far more than the value of
the trumpery church property said to be unlawfully de
tained. So long as the Eev. George Brown remained in
Tonga as the head of the mission the Wesleyans showed
the most admirable self-restraint. They bore their disa
bilities with good temper, and did not run the risk of irri
tating the susceptibilities of the Free Church ministers
by attempting to regain any of their lost ground. But
he was the General Secretary of Missions, and could not
continue to stay in Tonga now that his Church was no
longer in imminent danger of extinction. As soon as
his restraining influence was withdrawn, and Mr C 
became the head of the mission, there was a change. He
was an amateur lawyer, whose natural turn for hair
splitting polemics had been sharpened by much bandying
of words with Tongan magistrates during the Eeign of
Terror. In an evil hour he came to Nukualofa, and with
his brother-in-arms began to plan cutting-out expeditions
into the enemy's country. They held the fallacious belief
that the people were only deterred by fear of the king
from returning to the bosom of their old Church, and that
since a period of toleration had been proclaimed they
might safely hold services again in the villages that they
had lost. It chanced that an old woman from Havelu
had lately been reconverted, and she, questioned as to
the spiritual attitude of her fellow-villagers, declared that
they were only waiting for a favourable opportunity to
follow her example. Mr C  consulted the impetuous
Kubu, who told him that there would be no danger in
holding services again in Havelu, and upon the following
Sunday a chosen band of native teachers rode thither,

154 THE WOLF AT THE DOOR.
and reopened the long-disused church with a thanks
giving service. In the evening the Free Church held a
bolotu, and in the excitement of that inebriating act of
worship vowed that they would not again suffer their
village to be desecrated by the hosannas of the Fakaongo.
Each speaker surpassed the last, until nine fanatics rushed
out of the church for their axes and fell upon the Wes
leyan church, hacking at the tie-beams until the roof fell
in with a crash. The news reached Nukualofa very late
on the Sunday night, and before daylight the nine men
of action had been haled to the police station, and thrown
into the dark cells. Then the fiery Kubu, having had
time for reflection, came to me for advice. I called at
the mission -house and tried to point a moral. The
reverend gentlemen were not a little aghast at the (to
them) unexpected result of applying a match to dry
gunpowder, and were as anxious as I to repair the damage
they had done. The men had been arrested for rioting.
They could not be kept in jail, but it would not be politic
to let them out without trial. On the other hand, if they
were severely punished there would be a new outbreak of
indignation against the Fakaongo. I suggested that they
should be brought before a magistrate that afternoon, and
that Mr C  should attend to beg them off on condition
that they rebuilt the church. He seemed to feel quite a
glow of Christian forbearance in anticipation of the lustre
that so politic an act would shed upon him. An intima
tion of the stage arrangements was conveyed to the magis
trate. The culprits — the only actors in the scene who
had not learned their parts — had been so calmed by nine
hours in the dark cells that they were ready to promise

A MUTINOUS GOVERNOR. 155
anything, and the magnanimity of the Wesleyans in
begging them off was not without its effect. A dis
agreeable crisis was thus averted, but the incident did
considerable damage to the cause of the mission.
Church matters were not going smoothly at Vavau.
The mayor of a small village took the opportunity of the
change of Government to turn Wesleyan, and Manase, the
Governor, immediately dismissed him. The right of dis
missal of Civil servants, including mayors, is vested only
in the Premier, and therefore Manase was obviously ex
ceeding his powers ; but being a bigoted Free Churchman,
without sufficient brains to see that the Church had now
to learn to stand alone without bolstering from the State,
he did not stop to think of legality. If Manase's action
had been one of intolerance only, I do not think that we
should have interfered, for the coveted end of sectarian
peace would have been better served by the patient endur
ance of all present injuries for the sake of allaying the
natural irritation of the Free Churchmen at the change
in their circumstances ; but Manase had wilfully broken
the law, and this could not be passed over. Tukuaho
wrote to order him to reinstate the mayor : Manase took
no notice of the letter. To a stronger command he replied
that " it was not his wish that any Fakaongo should hold
office," and therefore he could not reinstate him. This
was a declaration of war, but the king only had power to
dismiss a governor, and he was at Vavau at the time, and
more likely to listen to Manase than to his Ministry.
News from the distant islands of Niuafoou and Niuatobu-
tabu was equally disquieting. No sooner had Kubu and
Sateki set sail than Tuia of the former and the powerful

156 THE WOLF AT THE DOOR.
Maatu of the latter island began simultaneously to intimi
date the Wesleyans. "Mr Baker might be gone," they
said, " but the church that Tubou set up was still stand
ing, and they, as his deputies, would allow no other within
his dominions. As for what Kubu said about toleration,
that was a lie. Tubou had not changed." Maatu was
reported to have reached Vavau about the time that
Manase had declared his defiance of the Ministry, and it
seemed not improbable that their false representation to
the king would land us in still deeper embarrassments.
It was clear that at all hazards we must get hold of the
king, or, if we could not persuade him to come to the
capital, take it in turns to shepherd him at Vavau. We
decided to first send Tukuaho and his father Tungi, on the
understanding that they would call at Haapai and per
suade Fatafehi to accompany them, since he had the
greatest influence with the king. At the last moment
Tungi, who is too old for any diplomacy that involves
physical exertion, withdrew — as every one had prophesied
— and Tukuaho sailed on the 16th of October, undertaking
to return in eight days with or without the king.
Two months had now elapsed since my arrival, and,
but for the Customs dues, we were still existing upon
credit. To retain the wavering loyalty of our Civil ser
vants we had paid them a month's salary, and had given
a public assurance that the arrears due to them by our
predecessors would be dealt with by Parliament. With
the remnant of our slender balance we had paid a quarter
of our liabilities to merchants in New Zealand and Sydney
— some £1500 — so as to restore our credit abroad, but we
had now to depend solely upon the arrears of the poll-tax

PHILATELY AS A SOURCE OF REVENUE. 157
for our current expenses. Before all things I was resolved
not to negotiate a loan, and so exchange one set of liabili
ties for another, besides setting my colleagues a dangerous
example which they were sure to follow in future times
of financial embarrassment. It was better to make our
creditors wait, and silence them by doling out instalments
from time to time. I must now make a disgraceful con
fession. Among the letters in the postmaster's office were
a number from firms in England and America which deal
in postage stamps, some of which had enclosed consider
able sums of money. The Treasury was in dire straits,
and a sum of £200 well worth a sacrifice of self-respect.
We determined to change our stamps. The change could
be effected for £40, and the sale of our old stamps, thus
enhanced in value, would bring us in £200 or more. I
have since heard that a year later the Government of
Costa Eica descended to the same disreputable expedient,
but I believe I may fairly take to myself the discredit of
being the first to devise the scheme.
Many a time did I curse the complaisancy of Tukuaho
in binding his people to pay in copra when they were
so ready to pay in coin. Numbers had been turned away
from the tax-office with money in their hands, vowing
that they would not hire a cart to carry their copra
along miry roads for many miles when they could sell
it advantageously to the storekeeper in their own vil
lage. The main road from the interior branched just
opposite our house, one branch leading to the Govern
ment copra -sheds and the other to the stores of the
traders. At the sound of wheels I used to come out to
watch the copra-laden carts reach the turning. If they

158

THE WOLF AT THE DOOR.

turned to the left they were loyal subjects of King
George, going to pay their just debts to his Government ;
if they took the straight road on they were traitors and
renegades, who loved filthy lucre better than the honour
of their country. I tried to guess from the drivers' faces
which way they would turn. "Here," I thought, "is a
loyalist." The mild -faced, semi -clerical -looking driver
left the reins slack on the horse's neck : the cart creaked

" There was an animated discussion."
onward. For one moment it seemed to pause as if about
to turn off, but it was fancy : the horse did not leave the
middle rut, and the driver was a traitor in loyalist cloth
ing after all. Clumsily disguised though, for I used then
to remember that he had a cunning expression about the
mouth, for all. his assumed benevolence. Once a lono-
string of carts going towards the traders so exasperated
me that I sent a servant to waylay the next comer, and
to tell him to take his freight to the Government stores.

SEDITIOUS PAPERS. 159
The cart stopped, and there was an animated discussion.
My envoy was apparently successful, for at last the wheels
creaked again, and I saw it crawling down the road to the
left. But when I saw the store -books that evening I
found that no copra had been received. The man had
taken the road to escape my importunity, but as soon as
he was out of sight he had diverged along the beach to
wards the traders' stores.
Through the influence of the Wesleyan missionaries,
who were anxious to compare favourably in loyalty with
their rivals, a few of the Fakaongo had paid their arrears,
but not enough to satisfy the contractor, who was becom
ing restive as time passed and his prospective profits grew
more and more hazy in the distance. He now proposed
to lend the Government money, thinking, no doubt, that if
he could put us under an obligation to him, we should
bring a pressure to bear upon the defaulters more effectual
than the mere threat of seizure and sale of their chattels ;
but we " feared the Greeks even when bringing gifts," and
declined. He objected to the issue of writs of distress,
thinking rightly that the majority would prefer even that
disagreeable formality to a few days' steady work.
The captain of the mail-steamer that arrived about this
time put into the hands of the Government a parcel of
printed papers, which had been handed to him by Mr
Baker for secret conveyance to some of his friends to
distribute among the natives. Not wishing to involve
himself in the turgid politics of the little kingdom, or to
infringe the Customs law, he landed it at the Custom
house like any other parcel of merchandise. It proved to
be an ingenious mistranslation in Tongan of the letter of

160 THE WOLF AT THE DOOR.
prohibition, the High Commissioner being styled through
out as " the Governor of Fiji," probably in the hope of
exciting native jealousies of their despised neighbours
interfering in Tongan affairs. As it was doubtless sent
to pave the way for more seditious documents, and was
designed to further disturb the native mind, a Cabinet
Council was summoned to consider the propriety of con
fiscating the packet. It so happened that Mr Baker,
fearing hostile criticism in the vernacular, had passed an
Act that all printed documents should bear an imprimatur,
on pain of heavy penalties ; and this Act being still in
force, the temptation to hoist him with his own petard
was too great to be resisted. The packet was accordingly
seized and burned with due indignity in the backyard of
the police station by Ula, the jailer. From an angry pro
test in the Auckland ' Star ' we learned that our shaft had
gone home : at any rate, we were troubled no more with
seditious papers.

161

XL

VAVAU.

Many pens have written of Vavau. Missionaries have
extolled it for its sensational conversion to Christianity ;
journalists have described it as a future health-resort ; a
naval officer has enlarged upon the natural defences of its
harbour ; Byron, mixing up the two books on the Pacific
of his day, Mariner's ' Tonga ' and the ' Mutiny of the
Bounty,' describes it in the " Island " with more rhyme
than geographical accuracy ; and lastly, Mr St Johnstone,
a sentimental young gentleman into whose soul the smell
of cocoa-nut-oil had entered, raved of the beauty of its
scenery and its women. In short, for its size and its
distance from the civilised world, Vavau has had its full
share of paper and printing-ink.
But it deserves it all. The harbour may be a little less
safe, the girls on nearer inspection a little greasier and
less virtuous than they are painted, but the scenery, and
the indescribable romance that clings about the miniature
precipices of the wild Liku, cannot be exaggerated.
The king had come and gone. By his great fono he had
sown a seed that would certainly have borne fruit if he
L

162

VAVAU.

had stayed to water it, but this he would not consent to
do. His church was still a-building in Vavau, and, unless
he were there, the people would be wasting their time in
selling oranges and copra. For a while he must do the
work of God, after which he would return to his worldly
duties. I was fain to acquiesce, hoping that
as the king now knew more about the diffi
culties with which his Ministers had to con
tend, he would fight their bat
tles for them in Vavau, the
head centre of opposition.
But ere he had been gone a
fortnight disquieting rumours
reached us. He had
held a fono, and had,
as he promised, urged
the payment of
taxes ; but in
defiance of our
orders the Gov
ernor, Manase,
had accept
ed these -
taxes in
money.This was a breach of implied contract with the firm who
had tendered for the tax-copra, and although they had
taken advantage of Tukuaho's inexperience to obtain the
contract, and had therefore little claim upon our consider
ation, I felt that we were morally bound by Tukuaho's
word to refuse to accept money for taxes until after Dec-

A girl of Vavau.

THE CELTS OF TONGA. 163
ember. The Free Church had taken this opportunity for
holding their annual collections in Vavau, and the people,
having sold all their available copra to get money for the
church, had none left from which we could draw for the
benefit of the contractor. With this news came stories
of persecution in the Niuas. The Wesleyans were again
being persecuted, and it was rumoured that the people
had formed a league to pay no taxes. We held a Cabinet
meeting, and resolved that the four principal members of
the Cabinet, Tukuaho, Fatafehi, Kubu, and myself, should
make a tour through the islands as far as Niua. The
mail-steamer was to drop us at Niua on her way to the
north, and a schooner was to be sent from Vavau to bring
us back. But at Vavau the state of affairs was so un
satisfactory that it was decided to leave me behind to
settle matters with the copra- contractor.
At the moment of entering the landlocked channel
to the harbour one passes into a different atmosphere.
The mood of the people of Tongatabu and Haapai matches
their flat shores. They cover their restlessness with a
crust of reserve even as the honeycomb of water-caves
is hidden by plains and palm-groves : but in this land
of orange-trees and wild precipices lives a different race.
There is an unquiet activity about them, a vivacity of
manner, a use of gesture to illustrate speech never seen
among their cousins of the southern islands. The air,
heavy with the scent of orange-blossom, is yet full of
impulse. The men stride down to the wharf to meet
the steamer, not ashamed to show that they have curi
osity : the girls assemble in groups on the grassy road to
chaff new-comers with an easy familiarity more respect-

164 VAVAU.
able than the mission primness of the Tongatabu maidens,
whose discreet deportment invites suspicion.
From the wharf one climbs a grassy slope, and straight
way one is in the orange-groves. The whole town is an
orange-garden. Beneath the dark shiny foliage lie piles
of rotting fruit, half-concealed by the rank couch-grass.
Some of the trees are bent with their green load, others
are white with blossom, for the crops succeed each other
with little intermission. Behind the long rows of trees
nestle the brown thatched houses, set down, as it were,
upon the grass like the toy cottages of a child.
There is no beach here. The shores of the inlet are steep
to, and the main road runs along the edge of the cliff.
On this road stands the "Palace," a barn-like decaying
structure of wood, from which the paint has long ago been
washed by successive rainy seasons. Poor Laifone main
tained the place with magnificence, — that is to say, there
were marble mantelpieces (never paid for), cut-glass de
canters, china, plate, whips, walking - sticks, boot - trees,
ornaments, and saddles scattered in heaps over the fur
niture and floors, very dirty and in indescribable confusion;
while the royal master of all this luxury slept on the floor,
ate his meals with his fingers, and drank his liquor simply
from the black bottle without the intermediary of a cut-
glass decanter. But now even those glories have departed,
and the house is empty except when the king pays a fly
ing visit to Vavau. Beyond the " Palace " were the stores,
built on the seaward side of the road for greater facility
in shipping copra, which comes next to oranges as the chief
product of Vavau. These stores, kept by rival traders
struggling for the custom of the passing Tongans, breed by

UNITED BY DIVISIONS. 165
their juxtaposition an inextinguishable hate in the breasts
of their proprietors. Flung together in this outer corner
of the world, the Europeans did not scruple to slander
one another to the natives, a fact that would alone suffice
to account for the low estimation in which Europeans are
held in Tonga. A wicked slander has it that no fresh
meat can be eaten in Vavau because a sheep is too much
for one family, and no man is on good enough terms with
his neighbour to ask him to share with him. These men
are nearly all substantial traders. Living harder lives,
and dealing with a more energetic class of natives, than
their compatriots in Tongatabu, more than one of the
Germans could, if he sold out, realise £20,000, made in a
few years from a wretched little store built and furnished
without capital. The Englishmen, here as elsewhere
in the Pacific, were behind the Germans in wealth, as
they were in industry and frugality, and as they were
before them in the faculty of meddling in the local
politics. I found that for once there was something resembling
unanimity among the traders of Vavau, who were gener
ally too busy to care about politics, and paid their taxes
without grumbling. The " Chamber of Commerce," re
vived in Tongatabu for the joint object of worrying the
new Government and of helping the insolvent publican by
holding their thirst-provoking meetings at his hostelry, had
lately sent a delegate to their brothers of Vavau to invite
their co-operation. The unwonted excitement of a public
meeting and a real live political agitation was so new, that
for the moment personal enmities were laid aside. There
were even suggestions by some wild enthusiast that a

166 VAVAU.
"Chamber of Commerce" should be founded in Vavau
itself ; but though the more sober-minded renounced this
proposal as impracticable, they eagerly assured the sister
Chamber in Tongatabu that they might be counted upon
for support in the righteous crusade against the Customs
department. A deputation from the still-born Chamber
of Commerce waited upon me the morning after my
arrival. The fumes of the public meeting had had time
to evaporate, and I found the deputation to be sensible
fellows, whose views contrasted favourably with the intol
erant resolution of the body which they represented. The
good sense and moderation of the traders of Vavau is not
to be measured by the ferocity of their language when
convened in a public meeting, — a phenomenon not alto
gether unknown in other parts of the world.
Two of the traders, a Eussian Jew and an Englishman,
were accused by the police of carrying on an illicit trade
in liquor. The law of Tonga forbids the sale of intoxi
cants to natives under a heavy penalty, and it speaks well
for the good sense of the people themselves that the native
Parliament has always confirmed this wise restriction.
British subjects are, besides, liable to penalties before the
Deputy-Commissioner's Court. Yet probably no offence is
committed with greater impunity, owing to the difficulty of
obtaining convictions when it is the interest of both seller
and buyer to commit perjury.
I once tried a case in Fiji in which it appeared that
the police had given an Indian coolie 6s. to buy whisky
from a storekeeper, had watched him go empty-handed to
the store and return with a bottle of the damning fluid in
his hand, and had proved it by tasting to be nearly allied

SLY GROG-SELLERS. 167
to " Cape smoke " and " Nail-rod." The trader was a
respectable and God-fearing man, and he appeared to his
summons clad in decent broadcloth and patent-leather
shoes without socks. He swore with awful solemnity
that neither he nor any of his men had sold spirits to the
Indian ; he even produced a number of his assistants to
corroborate his statement. The coolie swore that he had
deliberately humbugged the policeman, and that he had
picked the bottle up in the grass on the way from the
store. He found another Indian to swear that he had
put it there, and the trader got off. Two years later he
retired with a fortune.
To return from this digression. My Eussian was a man
of substance, and was reputed to be a man of his word ;
my Englishman was an old offender, whose sense of honour
had possibly been blunted by the joint effect of the climate
and his own stock-in-trade, — so the cases had to be treated
differently. I sent for the Eussian Jew, and got him to
make a clean breast of his delinquencies. I showed him
how the law had been enacted for the protection of the
Europeans themselves, for, with his thirty years' experience
of the Pacific, none knew better than he what sort of a
community was a native mob in liquor. He grew penitent,
and promised solemnly never to sell liquor to a native
again, adding that if I doubted his word he would give
me a bond for £1000. I declined this characteristic offer,
saying that I did not doubt his word, and I believe that
he justified my confidence. With the Englishman I made
shorter work, simply telling him there was evidence to
obtain a conviction, but that as the police had of late been
so remiss as to cast a doubt upon the efficacy of the law, I

168

VAVAU.

should make them hold their hand until he neglected my
warning, and offended again.
One of our first acts on landing had been to pay our
official visit to the Governor, who had disobeyed and
defied us. One always forms a clear mental picture of a
person whose acts and utterances are familiar, and the
picture is generally ill-drawn. I had imagined this truc
ulent Free Churchman as a self-sufficient middle-aged

- Manase took it all in silenced

Tongan of the blatant kind: I found him a mild-man
nered old gentleman, endowed with an apostolic saint-
liness of feature and expression that must have disarmed
my colleagues had they not known their man so well.
Manase was a chief of the third rank in Vavau, who owed
his elevation to his zeal in persecuting the Wesleyans and
his willingness to second Mr Baker in questionable trans
actions. Hitherto I had supposed him to have some

FINAU ULUKALALA. 169
strength of character, if only in refusing to swing to the
change of wind, but during this interview I realised that
his steady opposition to us was due solely to crass and
unimaginative stupidity. He was, in fact, quite incapable
of realising that the old order had changed. We sat in
a circle on the floor of his house and made conversation
while the kava was brewed, and then, when the bowl had
been removed, and we were so far alone that his household
and their friends only formed a wall of ears on the other
side of the reed -partition, Tukuaho and Fatafehi spoke
their minds. Manase took it all in silence with furrowed
brow and meek eyes, as who should say, " This too I for
give for the Gospel's sake ! " As we left the house Tukuaho
said that Manase would take his lesson to heart. I thought
otherwise, and in this instance I was right.
Until the king's reign, as I have related elsewhere, the
nobles of Vavau have always held a somewhat independent
position. The Finau Ulukalala, the chiefs of the principal
family, have, so long as history recalls them, been men of
strong personal character and individuality. They seem
to have acknowledged the Tui Kanakubolu as their suze
rain from inclination rather than from necessity. To a
Finau of the eighteenth century we owe Captain Cook's
hospitable reception in Tonga — a hospitality that would
have resulted in his massacre at Maofanga instead of in
Hawaii but for a fortunate accident. To another was due
the great revolution of 1799, and all the stirring times
that succeeded it. His strong individuality, so wonder
fully painted by an eye-witness, called forth from a Quar
terly Reviewer of the day a comparison between him and
the heroes of Greek tragedy. Another, Tuabaji, after re-

170 VAVAU.
sisting for years the teachings of the missionaries, brought
about that dramatic conversion of the whole island to
Christianity that seemed to the missionaries so striking an
instance of divine interposition. The line was not extinct.
Though Manase was governor under the king, a Finau
Ulukalala lived in the person of an unwieldy man of
thirty, a nobele of the House of Lords, it is true, and the
king's aide-de-camp, but in all other respects ignored by
the Government. He was not a man of high moral eleva
tion, nor could the missionaries point to him as a cheering
instance of the efficacy of their work. He swore fluently
in both German and English, and had a cultivated taste
for strong waters. Finau was a ne'er-do-weel, but perhaps
a scapegrace of the kind that is not past reform if in
trusted with responsibility. There was no doubt about
his being the hereditary ruler of the place : one might
see that from the manner of the old men as he rode
through the country. Surrounded by rowdy young boon-
companions, holding no post that gave him a vestige
of authority, he yet could not enter a village without
holding an informal levee of all the inhabitants, while
Manase the Governor might pass unnoticed. Possessed
of such inherent influence, he was certainly worthy of trial
as Manase's successor if the king could be induced to dis
miss so ardent a Free Churchman, and to appoint in his
place the descendant of the chiefs whom he had dispos
sessed. Perhaps guessing my sentiments, Finau attached
himself to me throughout this visit. He offered to escort
me to the Liku, and as I could best enjoy the scenery of
this weird place alone, I was at some pains to o-ive him
the slip. But though I rode fast Finau rode faster, and

THE ROMANTIC LIKU.

171

caught me up at that strange white burying-ground, hung
between sky and sea at the precipice's edge. He led me
along the cliff to the open plain, whence, looking back
ward, one may see the hundred isles of Haafulu Hao
spread out like a map. Leaving our horses, we crept to
gether along the razor-edge that still connected a rocky
pinnacle with the cliff from which it jutted. Clinging to
the roots of a starving screw-pine, we knelt and felt the
shaft twang as the great seas boomed into the caverns at
the cliff's base. We tried to shout against iv
the roar of the trade- wind sweeping along "
the face of the rock- wall, but could
not distinguish a word.

J>?'-"'1 " ¦ '~">-"r'.\ . fr) -a

The Likti in Tongatabu.

This place has been a favourite point of departure
for the love - sick of Vavau who would escape their
misery. Finau said that the body of a girl of Halaufuli,
who leapt hence into eternity a few months before,
never reached the water, but was sucked inwards by
the cliff, and so clashed to pieces on the sharp rocks
at its foot. Whether the attraction of the cliff would
always do this or not, death would be certain in falling

172

VAVAU.

from such a height, even if the body struck the water
only. And here let me digress on the subject of suicide. The
rough average rate of suicide in the Pacific — the figures
dealt with are too insignificant for unvarying accuracy —
is about equal to the rate for the United Kingdom, viz., .006
per mille of the population ; but since most of the suicides
in Europe are committed under the influence of mania or

Mourning.

extreme misery, — conditions that are generally absent in
these favoured isles, — we may assume that the Pacific
islanders have a predisposition towards self-destruction.
The usual causes are lovers' quarrels, and the fear of being
neglected in incurable illness. In the latter case suicide
is a mere survival of the old custom that constrained a
sick man to importune his relations to strangle or bury
him alive, — itself an evolution from an earlier time when

FAREWELL IN CIPHER. 173
the existence of a family depended upon its having no
disabled members to protect. The lovers' quarrels that
result in suicide are quite as trivial as those of civilised
communities. On the sudden impulse of some slight
misunderstanding the distressed lover resorts to the
picturesque but inadequate method of climbing to the
top of a cocoa-nut-palm and jumping off, with the usual
result of a broken limb, a reconciliation with the beloved
object, and permanent lameness. Of late years the cocoa-
nut-tree has become less fashionable for men who are in
earnest. These generally prefer a precipice, or, if their
despair be of the more deliberate kind, poison, which, being
a mere infusion of bark or leaves, must be drunk in such
large quantity that it more often produces vomiting than
death. The ancient mode of execution in Tonga — putting
the condemned adrift in leaky canoes — still occasionally
survives as a method of suicide. In February a schooner,
bound from Niuatobutabu to Nukualofa, picked up a
derelict canoe floating unharmed, with her paddles and
baler in her, and a crumpled letter which ran as
follows : —
162 78982
810 6126 74 m2 127216 ni2 892 162 9812 74 ni2 m274
b4 810 m2 892 16274 16m807850 892 270
1820 2m454 m8 232.
The schooner's crew connected their discovery with the
disappearance of two girls from Niua a few days before ;
but, not knowing the cipher, they brought the letter to
the capital and handed it to Kubu. Tukuaho at once
declared it to be written in a cipher known to most of

174 VAVAU.
the younger generation of Tongans, and called the Kaneli
Tofu cipher. He made a table thus—
KANELI TOFU
1234567890
and the letter then read —
162 78982
Kia Tofoa
810 6126 74 m2 127216 m2 892 162 9812 74 m2 m274
Oku ikai te ma kataki ma ofa kia Foka te ma mate
b4 810 m2 892 16274 16m807850 892 270
be oku ma ofa kiate kimoutolu ofa atu
1820 2m454 m8 232.
koau amele mo ana.
which being interpreted, ran —
To Tofoa. We two cannot endure our love for Foka ; we would
rather die. We send our love to you all. Farewell.
Amele and Ana.
It was a suicide. The poor girls had stolen the canoe, and
had paddled themselves out of sight of land, and then,
having scribbled their letter to their friend in cipher, they
folded it, wrote the address on the back, and jumped over
board. I never heard what part Foka had played in the
tragedy. Persons intending suicide have also learned a lesson
from the method of executions in Europe. Strangling
with a cord of ngatu was common among the Poly
nesians of the olden time, but they seem never to have
thought of hanging, and the idea at once struck them

THE LAST OF THE BUSHRANGERS. 175
as picturesque. Moreover, a man cannot very well strangle
himself without help. A pretence of hanging is much
resorted to by people who imagine themselves to be
misunderstood, or who wish to frighten their friends into
making some concession, because a dramatic effect can be
produced with the least possible personal inconvenience.
Yet whenever confederates can be found to help, the
South Sea Islander appears to prefer strangling to hang
ing. In Fiji a few years ago, when Australia was ringing
with the achievements of the Kelly gang of bushrangers,
a trader in Vanualevu, with the aid of a Sydney news
paper, was entertaining a gaping circle of Fijians by try
ing to make their flesh creep. In the minds of two of his
listeners, youths from the neighbouring village, the seed
fell upon a rich soil. Why should they be condemned to
this life of spiritless toil in subjection to their chiefs
and the Government, compelled to drudge in the fields
and the tax-plantations, while the free, glorious bush lay
behind them ? If these foreigners, who could not exist
without tinned meats, could live in the bush, how much
more they who only wanted a wild yam or kaile roasted
on the embers of an open fire ? They could rob all the
foreigners' stores, and with the plunder tempt the girls
of the vdlage to come and join them, and they would
eat tinned meats and turkeys and fowls every day with
out having to pay for them or work to make money.
They discreetly opened their project to one of their
friends, but when he understood the full daring of the
scheme he modestly withdrew, in words that were trans
lated by the magistrate who afterwards held the inquest
as, " Pardon me, but this thing is beyond my capacity."

176 VAVAU.
So the three went out into the bush alone. During the
first week they robbed two stores, and stabbed an elderly
German in the back, escaping after each exploit into
the impenetrable bush. They succeeded in establishing
a real panic, so that none dared to leave the village
alone ; and the native police nightly thanked Providence
that they had not stumbled across them. When the
magistrate reached the place a week or two later with
a force of police, he found that the outrages had ceased,
and that nothing had been heard of the daring bush
rangers for more than ten days. Weeks passed, and the
confidence of the villagers was so far restored that they
ventured armed into their gardens, believing that the
bushrangers had gone to another part of the island.
At last an old man, whose garden lay far afield, was
drawn by the evidences of corruption to look into his
yam-shed. Two bodies were there, decayed almost beyond
recognition. One had a masi cord tied tightly round the
neck, with both the ends free ; the other had been strangled
by a cord tied by one end to the upright post. Further
search led to the discovery of a third body hanging by
the neck from a tree. It was the poor trio, who had
also found bushranging beyond their capacity. They got
lonely, and longed for companionship to prop their failing
courage ; and when they could bear it no longer, and they
had to choose between giving themselves up or suicide,
they chose death by their own hands rather than by
the unknown terrors of the law of the foreigners. So
A and B put a noose round C's neck in the old style,
and pulled at the ends till he was dead. Then B tied
the end of his malo to the post, wound it round his neck

TUTAWI THE HERMIT.

177

and gave the end to A to pull. And when A was left
alone with none to help him, he climbed the nearest tree,
tied his neck to a branch, and died like a foreigner. Their
deaths were better planned than their lives.
To return to Vavau, from which I have strayed
many degrees of longitude. Our ride now lay through
the wild rocks, buried in flowering creepers that in 1810

' ' He was discovered by a party of girls. ' '

were the home of Tutawi the hermit. At the beginning
of the disturbances that followed the revolution of 1799,
this man, weary of the violence of men and the perfidy
of women, left his home secretly to live a solitary life,
communing with Nature and the spirits of the haunted
Liku. The great war and the siege of Feletoa had raged
within a few miles of his hiding-place unheeded by him.
M

178 VAVAU.
Years after his relations had eaten his funeral feast, in the
belief that he had perished in one of the numerous night
attacks of that perilous time, he was accidentally dis
covered by a party of girls who had wandered hither in
search of scented flowers for garlands, and here the great
Finau sought an interview with him and tempted him
with the promise of land, slaves, and wives if he would
return to the life he had left. But he refused them all,
and died as he had lived, alone and unheeded of the few
who remembered his existence.
At length we stood upon the precipice of the Ana
Matangi, or " Cave of the winds." Through a cleft in the
rock a narrow path led to a ledge whence the adventurous
might climb to the cave's mouth ; but the Government had
taken alarm at the fatal accidents that had occurred here,
and had made it a penal offence to make the attempt.
The cave's mouth is the top of a vast subterranean funnel
whose base is below the sea-level, so that when the tide is
rising the air within is compressed with immense force
and rushes out of the hole with a deep vibrating hum,
and at ebb-tide is sucked in with a whistling hiss audible
many yards away. Four times a-day, for a few minutes
when the tide is turning, this cave of the winds is at rest,
and at these moments it is safe to enter ; but at half -tide
any one crossing the mouth is either blown off the ledge
or sucked in, unless he have a firm foothold and a clear
head. This was not the only expedition in which Finau
shepherded me. Like every tourist who stopped at Vavau
before me, I paid a visit to the Hunga submarine cave
twice famed by Mariner and Byron. It lies some miles

THE CAVE OF BYRON'S " ISLAND." 179
to the seaward of Neiafu up the harbour, and when we
reached it a heavy swell was rolling in towards the cliff.
I was well prepared for the dive into the mouth by my
experiences of the Yasawa-i-lau cave in Fiji, but my fol
lowers were obdurate, declaring that no one would attempt
the Hunga in a westerly swell unless he was resolved on
self-destruction. They, cited the ease of the captain of
a ship of war, who was driven upwards by an incoming
wave as he was in mid-passage, and who escaped indeed
with life, but with his spine so lacerated by the sharp
stalactites that he was permanently crippled. While we
were still debating the question a smart sailing-boat bore
down on us with a stout figure at the tiller, whom I
recognised as Finau. He hailed us to say that he had
come to pilot us to the other show-cave of the place,
and (parenthetically, of course) to point out the bound
aries of some land of which it was proposed illegally to
deprive him. The cave just allowed our boats to run in
with masts standing. Inside it heightened and broadened
to a width of 60 or 70 feet. The limestone walls were
disfigured with the names of Europeans and Tongans, and
the dates of their offence ; for, with the art of writing,
has come the Cockney instinct to deface Nature with a
record of existences to which she and all her creatures
are supremely indifferent.
The stock entertainment of the place was a shaft of
rock which, when struck with the handle of an oar, gave
out a deep musical note. But Finau had something more
serious in view than this puerile amusement. Leaving
our boats, we clambered over the rocks through a dark
passage and emerged into another cave, in size and shape

180

VAVAU.

like the interior of a large lime-kiln, even to the hole in
the conical roof. Acting under Finau's orders, one of our
men now swam back to the entrance of the cave, and a

" Sending up a thick column of smoke to the leafy chimney."

few minutes later a shout from the dome warned us to
"stand from under." Through the chimney- hole invisible
hands showered down great billets of firewood. Matches

RAIDING THE TREASURY. 181
were produced, and in a few moments a large fire was
heating the stones in the middle of the cave's floor, and
sending up a thick column of smoke to the leafy chimney
in the roof. When the stones were red-hot and the oven
was ready for its lining, the same invisible hand, in obe
dience to Finau's shout, poured through the hole a shower
of green branches and banana-leaves, that fluttered down
like the ruins of Klingsor's garden. The chickens and
yams were soon baking in the steam of the leaves, buried
under a foot of soil. Picnics such as this are to the
idle young Tongan one of the highest forms of earthly
happiness. Fonos and addresses to the Civil servants had done
something towards allaying suspicion and discontent in
Vavau, in spite of the strenuous efforts of Mr Baker's
son and the other Europeans to foster hostility to the
Government. The result of the Governor's misconduct in
accepting coin in payment of taxes had been to pour into
the empty local treasury between £2000 and £3000 in
silver. Seeing that the cow-faced sub-treasurer, in addi
tion to his other delinquencies, reported that £6 had
miraculously vanished from a saucer in which he guarded
the public funds, though the fastenings of the treasury
were intact, it was plainly time to remove the whole sum
to a place where it could be employed in liquidating the
debts of the country rather than those of the local officials.
There was a strange display of emotion among the treasury
clerks when I announced my intention. The Customs
officer, an Englishman, enlightened me. The nobles of
Vavau were Home Rulers to a man, at least in so far as
their money was concerned. They held that every dollar-

182 VAVAU.
piece paid into their treasury should be spent in their
island— the very self-same coins, not changelings from
Tongatabu. Therefore, though the law enjoined them, on
receipt of instructions from the Minister of Finance, to
remit their money to Nukualofa, even in the zenith of
Mr Baker's power they habitually disregarded such orders,
until the Premier himself, accompanied by a Cabinet
Minister or two, had to come and remove the money
under escort, amid the outspoken murmurs of the whole
island. As soon as the clerks had spread the news of
my intention, all sorts of obstacles sprang into existence.
There were no bags to put the money in ! It could not
be counted in time ! It was safer in Vavau than in
Nukualofa ! The king did not wish the money to go !
The king's sanction was not in the least necessary; but
as I always preferred to take the least thorny path to my
object, I called upon his Majesty to ask his permission, as
well as to obtain the royal pardon for Tevita Finau, one
of the religious exiles who still lay under sentence of
penal servitude for church offences. I found the king in
the back verandah of the tumble-down Palace, apparently
alone ; but a glance at the rickety kitchen, that stood
within earshot, told me that the building was packed with
the gossips of Vavau assembled to take notes of our
interview. " Is not this a time for forgiveness ? " the king said, in
reply to my formal request for a pardon for Finau. " Sign
the papers in my name." To my second demand he said,
" Let them talk. Take the money. Is not Vavau the land
of foolish talking ? "
But I wanted more than this. Manase had to learn a

I OBTAIN AN ORDER IN COUNCIL. 183
lesson, and I asked for a Privy Council for the ostensible
purpose of passing a short Ordinance of routine. To
make the necessary quorum, I suggested that Inoke Fotu,
the judge, Kubu's father, should be sworn in as an extra
ordinary member. Though a professed adherent of our
party, he had shown signs of independence under the
suspension of his relative and protigi, the cow-faced sub-
treasurer, and I thought that the appointment, besides
flattering him, would force him to declare against his old
adversary Manase. The king was in an executive mood.
" Hau ha taha ! " (Let some one come !) he cried.
From among the trees in the distance a burly Tongan
burst at a quick run. Gathering speed as he approached,
when at ten yards from the king he leaped suddenly into
the air and landed in a sitting posture right at the king's
feet, with head bowed and body rigid in the attitude of
respect. It was the most physically painful act of rev
erence I had ever witnessed.
" Tell Inoke and Manase to come at once."
The man sprang to his feet and dashed off into the
trees at his topmost speed. In a few moments the two
chiefs arrived, evidently perturbed at the urgency of the
summons. We moved into the dining-room, and held our
Council there and then. Manase's feeble protest against
the first resolution, that the funds in the treasury should
be remitted to Nukualofa according to law, was unheeded
by the king, but it sufficed to rouse old Inoke, and the
resolution was of course carried.
Armed with so formidable a mandate as an Order of
the king in Council, I summoned all the treasury officials
to count the cash, and ordered canvas bags to be made at

184 VAVAU.
the nearest store. There is no dirtier or more wearisome
task than that of counting £2000 or £3000 in silver,
especially in a country where coins are grimy with
handling, and one is distracted with the necessity of
watching that the subordinates do not levy a toll upon
their task. The bags were scarcely sealed when the
steamer came in. An escort of sulky police was requisi
tioned ; and I superintended an unwilling train of money-
carriers down the hill to the wharf, and heard the mut
tered reproaches of the bystanders, who believed themselves
to be again defrauded of their hard-earned treasure by
their rivals of the capital.

185

XII.

MISSIONARIES.

In our efforts to induce the people to pay their taxes,
our principal competitors were not the traders, but the
Churches. There was but one money-harvest in the year,
and the directors of the several bodies that preyed upon
the Tongans — the Government, the two Wesleyan mis
sions, and in a lesser degree the Roman Catholics — set
themselves to reap the golden crop simultaneously as
soon as the sun had dried the copra. I must admit that
the Wesleyans, in their anxiety to prove their loyalty,
did not hold their missionary collections until the ma
jority of their people had paid their taxes. The other
missions were less considerate, and took largely of the
things that were Caesar's. The fakamisonali is so charac
teristic an entertainment that I must attempt to describe
one. For some days previously six or seven chosen vessels
had been canvassing their friends on behalf of the plates
for which they were to be responsible on the great day.
There was a keen rivalry between them, and to the im
portunities of one of them I fell a victim, defending

186 MISSIONARIES.
myself from the others by sheltering behind the promise
I had given him not to contribute to any plate but
his. Their method was ingenious. The tout took care to
approach his victim in the evening when the house was
full of people. He would remark that Pita (a neighbour)
had promised two dollars this year, and would hint that
he scarcely supposes the victim will allow himself to be
outdone by such a one as Pita ! The unfortunate man,
constrained by false shame, promises more than he can
afford ; the amount is noted in a book, and has to be
found by importunity or petty larceny.
As the day drew nearer we were set upon by numbers
of the faithful, including our convict groom, who came to
borrow money to give to the Church. For these I had
but one form of argument — forcible if not altogether
reverent. They were, I said, proposing to give my
money to the Church — not their own ; and as it was
extremely unlikely that they would ever pay me back,
and therefore either I or the Church would have to go
without the money, I thought the Church was better able
to afford the loss. Cynics among the traders even went
the length of declaring that the fakamisonali is always
accompanied by the disappearance of their ducks and
fowls, which may generally be found in the yard of a
rival trader living at a distance, who has innocently
bought them from a native bent upon contributing his
mite to the Church. This is no doubt a slander.
On the appointed day the whole population donned
their gala trousers and petticoats, and streamed to the
church, whose big bell was being tolled by relays of
urchins. The pews were crowded : there was not even

SENDING ROUND THE HAT. 187
standing-room round the walls. At the pulpit end was
a semicircle of seats for the European aristocracy, includ
ing, of course, Mr M  , the contractor for the Govern
ment copra, who aspired to be thought the deliverer of
oppressed Tongans, and could not therefore allow such an
opportunity for advertisement to pass.
How shall I describe the scene that followed ? How
shall I portray the unction of the presiding missionary,
as he poured forth his prayers for a full plate in a voice
shaken with emotion, the roar of "Malo!" as each senti
ment found expression, the rich smiles of the owners of
the filling basins, and the mortified anxiety of the owners
of the still empty ones ? How tell of the magnificent, if
somewhat ostentatious, liberality of the portly Mr M  ,
as his interpreter, the local butcher, announced, amid
deafening cheers, that he was about to give £20 to the
Lord out of his deep compassion for the suffering and
oppressed ? If the bolotu was a pious orgy, the faka
misonali was a religious debauch. In front of the pulpit
stood a table on which lay a common wash-hand basin
and an account-book, guarded each by a native teacher.
The patrons of the basins sat in a stiff row behind.
After the preliminary religious exercises the missionary
announced the name of the patron of the " plate " first to
be filled. It might be the name of the person in charge of
it, or that of some dead or absent one to whose memory it
was dedicated. In one case a young blood of Vavau called
his plate after a favourite dog, deceased some months
before ; but the presiding missionary had to draw the line
somewhere, and he elected to draw it at dead dogs, because
he feared that it might import a spirit of levity into the

188 MISSIONARIES.
proceedings. As the name of each patron was called she
rose in a stately manner and cast her contribution into
the basin as a nest-egg. And now those who had promised
contributions to the "plate" just announced, swaggered
up the aisle and flung their coins into the basin. It was
amusing to note the difference of gesture. Here a man
would march up with an air of deep disdain and toss his

' Let not thy left hand knozu what thy right hand doeth."

coins into the basin one by one. Another would approach
with proud humility and dash down a handful of threepenny
pieces with a crash, retiring as he had come amid the
shouts of well-merited applause for the dramatic contrast
between his bearing and his bounty. In earlier days,
before the glare of publicity had checked the spontaneity
of the fakamisonali, the real sensation, as in all well-

A PIOUS ORGY. 189
arranged spectacles, was kept until the end. A band of
men and women would come up together and walk round
and round the basin, each throwing in a threepenny piece
as he passed. After a few rounds a man whose stock of
coins was exhausted would fall out, and the procession
continued without him. Then only two were left to
circle round each other in a sort of dance, amid deafening
applause. At last one of the survivors gave out, and the
victor was left alone to stand before the basin and chuck
in his coins from a distance. He was the hero of the
day. Behind the pulpit were the tables of the money-changer,
who, so far from being driven out of this temple, was con
sidered necessary to its very existence, being, in fact, the
missionary himself. The mode of collection demanded a
larger stock of small coins than was obtainable at the
local stores, and as every contributor was encouraged to
enlighten his right hand as to the doings of his left, the
smaller coins are made to do double duty. When the
congregation would no longer respond to the taunts or
the entreaties of the basin-man, the contents of the basin
were counted and dumped upon the money-changer's table,
thus supplying him with change to satisfy the require
ments of the contributors whose turns were yet to come.
In the palmy days of the Wesleyan mission, when Mr
Baker was still the trusted shepherd of an undivided
flock, the mission treasury was filled by a system for the
ingenuity of which I believe he deserves the entire credit.
In the hysterical enthusiasm so cleverly fostered by the
missionaries, the natives were quite ready to mortgage
their crops for the brief glory of surpassing their neigh-

190 MISSIONARIES.
bours ; but it was thought that if the missionaries them
selves advanced the money and afterwards sued their
debtors in the courts when the excitement of the collection
had had time to cool down, adverse criticism, and perhaps
even the resentment of the faithful, might be aroused. So
Mr Baker entered into an unholy alliance with Messrs
Ruge & Co., a German firm newly arrived in the group.
The agents of the firm were to advance cash to any native
who wanted it for the church collections on promissory
notes, to be repaid in copra when the crop was ripe ; and
as the firm had not sufficient coin to satisfy all comers,
the mission was to hand back the coin to the agents as
fast as it was collected, taking bills on Sydney in exchange.
Thus the firm secured a lien on all the future crop, to the
exclusion of its rivals, the mission trebled its collections,
and when the bills became due, it was the German firm
who incurred the obloquy of haling the over -generous
debtor before the court, and of selling up his live stock
and furniture. The complacency of the courts might be
counted on, for the chairman of the mission was also the
unofficial adviser of the Government. Strange stories of
the fakamisonali of those days were told to the Commis
sion of Enquiry sent to investigate Mr Baker's proceedings
— how, when the trading agent at the church door dared
not advance any more cash, the disappointed native would
rush back to the basin, stripping off his coat as he ran,
and fling it in to win one more yell of applause from his
excited fellow-worshippers.
These more picturesque incidents have now given place
to sober business. When the basins had drained the
congregation of all their cash, the contents were quickly

ARTISTIC MUNIFICENCE.

191

counted and the amount whispered to the presiding
teacher. In crying aloud the contents of each basin he
allowed pauses for the cheering, and artistically kept the
largest until the last. Mr M  , the deliverer of the
oppressed, showed a fine eye for effect. He cared noth-

" To win one more yell of applause."

ing for the cheap and ephemeral burst of admiration that
might have been won by flinging his twenty sovereigns
into the same basin at once, but sat proudly erect while
his almoner, the butcher, distributed his munificence
equally between all the six basins, thereby winning to

192 MISSIONARIES.
his interests the hearts of all the patrons and their
friends. After the benediction had been pronounced,
the congregation walked thoughtfully home to cool down
and face the future.
It is easy to sneer at the missionaries in the South
Pacific as drones sucking the honey that others have
stored; as ministers of the collection -plate rather than
of the Gospel ; as moral teachers whose grim code is re
sponsible for the deterioration of native morality. The
books written about the Pacific Islands have been the
work of either missionaries or passing travellers, and
hostile criticism by the latter has been in obedience to
the natural law of reaction after the sometimes nauseous
series of self-laudatory books given to the world by the
missionaries themselves. Casual travellers, who hoped to
see the natives in their primitive simplicity of manners,
are disappointed to find them clad and in their right
minds, and galled at the restrictions, apparently arbi
trary and unreasonable, laid upon them by their spirit
ual guides. They have read much of the hardships of the
missionary's life. They find him sleek and prosperous, the
autocrat of his flock, living in a good house, travelling
in a comfortable and well-found boat : they feel that an
attempt has been made to obtain their sympathies under
false pretences, and they write down mission enterprise
a fraud, and the system a mere institution for raisino-
money from the gullible native. In this extreme view
they are supported by the Europeans of the place,  for
traders do not love missionaries, regarding them as com
petitors who, besides crippling trade, interfere with their
domestic arrangements.

A DEFENCE OF ICONOCLASM. 193
They are wrong, of course. It may be true that, with a
few brilliant exceptions, the missionaries are men of but
slight education and extreme narrowness of views, and
that the time for hardship and danger has passed away;
but one need only compare the past with the present to
acknowledge how great is the work they have accom
plished. The early missionaries went with their lives in
their hands, having nothing to gain from their enterprise
but the inward reward of self-sacrifice. As for the women
who followed their husbands to suffer with them the pri
vations they were less able to endure, forced to bear and
rear children in unhealthy climates, shocked almost daily
by'scenes that disgust us even to read about, and relieved
at last only to return to their fellows with shattered health,
— no praise can be too great for them. If the first mis
sionaries were ignorant and narrow-minded, so also, ac
cording to modern lights, have the apostles seemed, but
no less in their case than in that of their great prototypes
was their very narrowness of vision a means of success.
Natives, like children, do not understand half-measures.
If their gods were false gods, then was every custom con
nected with their worship, whether mutilations of the
body, or ornaments, or dances, or ceremonies, fit only for
the most rigid prohibition. To gain an ascendancy over
them, something more was wanted than the mere ingraft
ing of a new belief upon their lives. Their own creeds
were hedged about with tabus, each enforced by the fear of
death, and a religion without such prohibitions could not
long hold their respect. So, from no calculating wisdom,
they took unconsciously the wisest course and made their
new code as uncompromising as that they were displacing.

194

MISSIONARIES.

But now that the missionaries are only called upon to
carry on the work founded by their predecessors, and
know nothing of the danger their predecessors had to
encounter, it is not astonishing that, among men recruited
from a lower stratum of society and education, there
should be some whose behaviour has detracted from the
credit of the Missionary Society, and that these have been
taken by hostile critics as
types of the body of which
they are members. The
two main charges brought
against the missionaries of
to-day are that they give a
first place to the collection
of money, and that they
have introduced and kept
alive among the natives
the unedifying spectacle of
warring Churches. To the
first charge it may be
answered that no Church
ever was or ever will be
carried on without funds,
and it is surely to the credit of a mission that they
should have induced the people whom they benefit to
support their Church and schools instead of leaving
them to make appeals to philanthropists for funds to
carry on their work. For the missions are not con
cerned only with the spiritual needs of the natives — they
also do the great practical work of maintaining day-
schools in every village. The missionaries themselves

A Tongan schoolgirl.

FIRST BEGINNINGS. 195
would not deny that there have been grave abuses in
the means adopted for obtaining subscriptions ; but these
abuses have not been general, and they have been clue
to the fact that among the missionaries, as among every
considerable body of men, there have been a few who were
unworthy of the cause in which they were employed.
The second charge is unfortunately true.
I shall not speak of the Church of England Mission
working in Melanesia, of the Presbyterian Mission of the
New Hebrides, nor of the London Mission of Raratonga,
Samoa, and New Guinea, for none of those Societies are
concerned with Tonga ; but I shall confine myself to a
review of the Wesleyan Methodist Mission of Australasia
and the Roman Catholic Mission of the Societe de Marie.
The Wesleyans sent their first missionary to Tonga in
June 1822, and after three years' interruption they began
work in earnest in 1826. There were two years of doubt
and difficulty, three of slow but certain advance, and then
they found themselves successful beyond their wildest
hopes. With the conversion of King Josiah Aleamotu
and of Taufaahau their cause was assured. The people
followed their hereditary chiefs, and the heathen party
became an ever-dwindling minority. Haapai and Vavau
were Christian to a man : two-thirds of Tongatabu had
embraced the new religion. Yet in the year 1835 we find
this minority so hostile to Christianity that they are pre
pared to fight rather than accept it. In 1837 they are
actually embarked in the hopeless struggle against an
overwhelming majority. In 1840 they have driven back
their assailants, even when supported by an English ship-
of-war, and the hated missionaries are in flight. Yet there

196 MISSIONARIES.
was no advance on their side, no plundering nor laying
waste after the manner of the cruel savages the mission
aries represent them to be. With the discomfiture of
their aggressors they seem to ask only for peace.
The story of these events, as told by the missionary
historians, lacks cohesion. The finger of Providence, it
is true, is pointed in every page. We are invited to
shudder at the dark - mindedness of the heathen who
reject the proffered salvation; to thrill at the virtue of
the Christian troops fighting in a holy crusade ; to feel
a glow of triumph as we read of the fall of each heathen
town ; to pity the peace-loving missionaries forced into
war's alarms, but enduring all things for compassion of
their erring flock ; and yet, when we have read it all, there
is a sense of something kept back. Missionary records are
unfortunately never remarkable for lucidity. They were
not penned for the eye of an unsympathetic public, nor
should we expect them to be impartial histories of public
events. They were written with a purpose, by men who
viewed all things by the light of their appointed task;
who classed all events, all native customs and ceremonies,
as helping or retarding " the work '' ; who revelled in
iconoclasm, destroying recklessly with that narrowness
of vision which is the characteristic of all human evan
gelists ; who saw divine interposition in the most trivial
occurrences of their lives. To advance their cause money
was necessary, and to win money from a cold and in
different public, compassion for their hardships and sym
pathy with their self-sacrifice had to be aroused. It is
an ungrateful and even a dangerous task to read between
the lines of these records; yet, since they are our only

A MISSION ACCOUNT OF THE WAR. 197
published sources of information, I may be acquitted of
a wish to detract from a really great work if I submit
them to the tests from which even sacred history is no
longer exempt.
The principal facts, as related by the missionaries, are
these. With the conversion of the higher chiefs Chris
tianity spread with a rapidity that proved the direct
interposition of Providence. Five years later there re
mained but a minority inspired by the evil one to resist
the truth. Not content to remain heathen, they took up
arms in the cause of Antichrist, and even made their
religious differences an excuse to rebel against the civil
authority of their king. Two reasons are assigned for
their hostility : they " set themselves to the task of up
rooting Christianity," and " they were an army of rebels,
fighting against their earthly and their heavenly sove
reign." A more grievous thing followed : they received
into their midst the " emissaries of Borne," and their last
state was worse than the first. The mission party fought,
we are repeatedly assured, not as Christians against
heathen, but as soldiers of the State against rebels ; and
the missionaries visited the besiegers morning and even
ing to give them the consolations of religion, while the
French " Jack priests," as the Eev. Mr Yonge is pleased
to call his fellow-workers, stayed within the walls of the
fort, and encouraged the heathen in their seditious resist
ance to lawful authority.
Several questions occur to the reader of this narrative.
If the war was really a mere civil disturbance, it is strange
that the line of cleavage between loyalists and rebels
should have been the same as that which separated the

198 MISSIONARIES.
Christians from the heathen. If the heathen were the
aggressors, why do we always find them in the position
of besieged rather than of besiegers? If, on the other
hand, they were simply fighting for liberty to dissent
from the majority, they can scarcely have been the
aggressors ; and indeed for persons fighting " for the
express purpose of destroying their king, whom they
hated on account of his religion, and of slaughtering all
his Christian subjects," they showed a singular neglect
of their own interests, for they allowed King Aleamotu
to return to his friends after he had voluntarily placed
himself within their power. With questions such as
these to solve, the reader feels that if he accepts the
statement that the civil war in Tonga was the work of
the " great enemy of God and man," he must also admit
that, with diabolical cunning, the devil chose the pious
missionaries as his instruments for producing strife.
If the missionaries succeeded in blinding themselves
regarding the origin of these wars, they did not deceive
the natives. In October 1893 it was my good fortune to
find Akesa, the daughter of Lavaka, chief of Bea, still
living in Fiji as a pensioner-servant of a mission family,
— bright-eyed and intelligent for all her seventy years.
From her relationship to the chief of the heathen party,
she had been selected by King George to carry messages
to and from the enemy, and had been present both at the
death of Captain Croker and the fall of Bea. She began
her narrative with the words, " You must know that there
were three wars to make the heathen turn to Christianity."
Besides the missionaries there was but one writer who
was an eye-witness of the disturbances of 1840. Com-

THE REAL CAUSE. 199
modore Wilkes of the United States navy, after vainly
endeavouring to mediate between the two belligerent
parties, did not hesitate to lay some of the blame of the
war at the door of the missionaries, thereby calling down
upon himself a torrent of vituperation from their apolo
gists. He hints that they had it within their power to
avert the bloodshed by consenting to allow the heathen
freedom of choice, but that they would listen to no terms
but the enforced conversion of the enemy to Christianity.
Whether they were or were not to blame, the war of 1840
did not leave them scatheless. When H.M.S. Favourite
left the island after the disaster at Bea, we are told that
the surviving officers " took with them the two mission
aries, Messrs Tucker and Rabone, with their families."
Commodore Wilkes is more explicit. He says that the
Christian party, the aggressors, were put to flight, and
that the missionaries hastened away from the storm they
had provoked and were powerless to allay.
The missionaries have accused Wilkes of a bias against
them, and of " a strange prejudice in favour of man in his
savage state " : it is therefore fair to compare the state
ment of an observer who was confessedly an admirer of
the great results they had accomplished. Commodore
Erskine, who visited the group in 1853, writes : —
I am indeed bound in justice to remark that in respect of
their treatment of the people here [in Haapai] and in Vavau,
the gentlemen of this mission do not compare favourably with
those of the London Society in the Samoan islands. A more
dictatorial spirit towards the chiefs and people seemed to show
itself ; and one of the missionaries in my presence sharply
reproved Vuke, a man of high rank in his own country, for

200 MISSIONARIES.
presuming to speak to him in a standing posture, — a breach of
discipline for which, if reprehensible, I was probable answerable,
having encouraged the chief on all occasions to put himself
on an equal footing with myself and the other officers. The
missionaries seemed also to live much more apart from the
natives than in Samoa, where free access is allowed to them at
all times. Here, on the contrary, the gates of the enclosures
were not merely kept closed, but sometimes locked, — a precaution
against intrusion which, although perhaps warranted in some
degree by the custom of fencing their grounds, and by the
greater propensity on the part of these people to theft, I never
saw adopted elsewhere, and which must operate unfavourably
to that freedom of intercourse so necessary to the establishment
of perfect confidence between the pastors and their flock.
If the missionaries were overbearing to the chiefs even
at that early date, a light is thrown upon the curious
persistence with which some of them clung to paganism.
The ancient beliefs of the Polynesians never formed a
system of religion, and, to compare small things with
great, as the way was already smoothed for Christianity
by the growing scepticism of the Roman empire, so were
the minds of the Tongan chiefs ripe to seize upon any
religious creed with a more logical foundation than the
worn-out mummeries of their own ancestor-worship. Per
haps the ancient priestcraft, with its exactions of votive
offerings and its hysterical oracles, would have shared the
fate of its forgotten predecessor, phallus-worship, had the
priests been less politic and tactful. But they knew that
the existence of their order depended upon the union of
Church and State ; and their oracular utterances, plastic
as those of Delphi, were directed always to upholding the
privileges of the chiefs. Between the two orders there

A WORN-OUT HEATHEN CREED.

201

was a thorough understanding. The chief saw that the
regular offerings to the spirits were not stinted ; the
priest, possessed by his god, retained sufficient self-com
mand to gasp prophecies in re
markable accordance with the
chief's interest. That they, like
the Augurs, could meet without
grinning, was doubtless due to
the grim reality of the risk that
often attached to the sacerdotal
office ; for was not the priest of
Tubou Totai already doomed to
be strangled for failing to restore
Finau's daughter, when sudden
death overtook his patron?
Even seventeen years before the
arrival of the first missionaries,
the chiefs did not care to con
ceal their scepticism ; and per
haps, if the tragic death of Finau
had not seemed so signal a re
venge of the outraged gods, the
missionaries would have found
that the ancient faith had
crumbled away of itself before
their arrival.
The influence of the priests
had been so slight that, even with the fear of seeing
their occupation gone, they could oppose no obstacle to
the new creed. They are scarcely mentioned even by
missionaries. The opposition came from the chiefs them-

iilimKllilslillfilti Combs.

202 MISSIONARIES.
selves, inspired thereto, not as the good missionaries tell
us, by the " great enemy of God and man," but by
what has since proved to be a well-grounded alarm for
the safety of their order. Some of them were shrewd
enough to see in the new creed a political system that
struck directly at their privileges. In Tonga, as in
Galilee and in Rome, the first Christian convert was a
commoner. The chiefs, who held that their inferiors
possessed no souls, learned with dismay that in the sight
of the missionaries all men, not ministers of the Gospel,
are equal ; that one law was to bind the chief and his serf
alike — that the proudest aristocracy in the world were to
be abased to the level of the meanest plebeian. Their real
stumbling - block was the socialism of Christianity ; for
the Tongan chiefs having, like Nicodemus, great posses
sions, were not masters of the higher Biblical criticism
that has adapted the creed to the social inequalities that
clash with its teachings. To them the new system seemed
to strike directly at the privileges of their order. Their
power rested upon superstition, hardened and cemented
by long custom, and to admit mere foreigners to superior
authority was to lower them in the eyes of their sub
jects. They did not resist the new teachers, they simply
claimed the liberty to dissent from the majority, — a
liberty which of all others men are least willing to grant
to one another.
Missionaries are by the nature of their calling in
tolerant. Tolerance in an evangelist is a sign that he is
unfit for his mission. If Messrs Rabone and Tucker
had been the men to discourage their new converts from
coercing the heathen, they would not have achieved their

THE SOCIALISM OF CHRISTIANITY. 203
remarkable success. Expecting hardships, disappoint
ments, and possibly martyrdom, they suddenly found
themselves the most powerful persons in the country.
Whatever measure of influence the chiefs possessed, that
they were able to exert for the furtherance of their cause ;
and, as the unrealised possibilities of their position were
borne in upon them, they gave God the praise, and began
to make their power felt on their own account. The
chiefs whose favour they had courted were now to discover
that these foreigners, who had so meekly sought their pro
tection, were, as the vicars on earth of a great and ter
rible Otua, to assume their rightful position of superiority.
Henceforth the chiefs must pay to them the deference
they had themselves received from their inferiors. Small
wonder that, to those who still hesitated, this new portent
of the secular power of the priesthood, never admitted
under their heathen system, became so insurmountable a
difficulty that they chose rather to cleave to their heathen
gods and their independence.
It is easy to blame the missionaries after the event, to
point to the lessons of history by which they might have
been guided, and to forget that if they had been of that
cool and calculating temper that is capable of founding a
policy upon the teachings of history, they would never
have come to Tonga. These men were not members of an
Order trained to obey the direction of a central authority ;
they were homely men of slight attainments, burning with
a zeal that drove out all considerations of policy and
caution.

204

XIII.

ODIUM TSEOLOGICUM.

It has been the fate of all Churches to be tempted with
the apple of temporal power ; to lack the moderation to
thrust it aside ; and to fall by tasting of it. The errors
that once ruined the Church of Rome — that may yet de
stroy her successor in England — may be watched in min
iature in the South Pacific. There is something in the
education of ecclesiastics, no less than in that of soldiers,
that unfits them to wield the civil power. The messengers
of peace and of war are prone alike to strain the authority
committed to them, perhaps because they believe that the
world has the same instinct of obedience as a regiment
or a congregation. As in the fifteenth century the Popes,
the successors of Peter the fisherman, exacted the obeis
ance of sovereigns, so (to strain a comparison) the follow
ers of Him who took the world for His parish claimed from
the chiefs of Tonga the same marks of respect as were
paid to them by their own vassals. They mistook the
enthusiasm of a hysterical people for a permanent warmth
of devotion to the new faith, forgetting that the very sud
denness of their conversion marked them with the brand

EVANGELISTS OF PEACE. 205
of Athens, — a people ever running after some new thing.
While they were complacently receiving the homage of
their flock, when they reproved the chief Vuke for presum
ing to stand in their presence ; when they humbled the
chiefs and exalted the commoners ; when they taught their
flocks the rudiments of a representative government ; when
they allowed the natives to see their thirst for money, —
they were infecting their cause with the disease of which
it is now dying : while they wrangled with the priests of
the rival Church, and taught the natives that to worship
their crucified God with a visible crucifix was a degree
lower than the heathenism they had cast away, they
drilled with their own hands the holes by which their ship
has foundered. There are many who blame Mr Baker
only for the deplorable state of things that has made
the Wesleyan Church in Tonga a byword throughout the
southern hemisphere. Baker was not alone to blame.
He must share the responsibility with the founders of the
mission who begat the traditions of temporalities exacted
by the ministry, of intolerance of rival creeds, and of the
auri fames which their successors have inherited.
It is difficult to say which mission is most to blame for
the unseemly antagonism which they displayed towards
each other. The Wesleyans have reproached the Roman
Catholic priests with having joined and assisted the king's
enemies in a rebellion against his authority, and so justify
themselves for reviling them to the half-converted natives.
The reproach seems to me to be in a great measure unde
served. The French priests found that the Protestant
missionaries had failed to convert a large body of the
natives, — that they had even sanctioned an attack upon

206 ODIUM THEOLOGIOUM.
them by the forces of the Protestant chiefs. What more
natural than that they should take their message to the
heathen who had refused Protestantism than to natives
who had already accepted it ? What more natural than
that they should retaliate with the same weapons for the
slanders heaped upon them ? Is there a sadder picture in
mission history than this, of men charged with the mes
sage of peace and love, choosing this distant field to fight
out their old quarrel, forcing their half-savage converts to
take sides with them, proclaiming aloud their divine mes
sage of peace and goodwill, and whispering gross slanders
of one another into the wondering ears of those whom
they were sent to teach ? Had they made the civi
lised world the umpire of their quarrel, we might have
deplored the evil chance without blaming the combatants,
but since they chose to submit their theological disputes
to the judgment of half -tamed savages, no censure can be
too severe for them. It is no compensation that they are
punished for it, that in slandering one another they have
damaged the cause of both for all time. Savages are
logical : it is because they are too logical that we class
their intelligence as inferior to our own. These men came
to teach them peace, and bade them love one another, and
with the same breath they declared that the other foreign
ers who were preaching the same doctrine were liars and
worse. If these foreigners, they argued, thus disagreed
among themselves about their religion, how was it more
true than the teachings of their own priests ? If, while
commanding to love, they could thus hate one another,
which of the commandments of God need be read liter
ally ? The seed of the odium theologicum never fell upon

THE SCARLET CATECHISM. 207
a more rankly fertile soil than in Tonga. As soon as the
people had grasped the idea that their foreign leaders were
not themselves above criticism, they rushed into the field
of sectarian strife with the same savage ardour that had
fired them in battle a few years before. The Gospel was
true, but its evangelists were fallible. They did well
enough as leaders of the Church forces, but they were open
to the free criticism of their own followers.
Of the means used by the missionaries to inflame the
natives against their rivals I might quote many instances.
In the ' Apologia,' printed in France by the priests in the
most atrocious Fijian, Martin Luther is described as a
" disgusting fellow," Wesley as a lying teacher, and the
Reformation as brought about by Henry VIII. from even
lower motives than those usually assigned to him by hos
tile historians. The Wesleyans replied to this by a
pamphlet printed in red ink in Fijian, intituled ' A Cate
chism concerning the Catholic Church,' from which I take
a few extracts : —
6. Q. Do they adduce evidence of their teachings from the
Bible ?
A. Certainly not. Nor has their religion at any time been
general throughout the world.
7. Q. Is it right that they should be called disciples of
Christ 1
A. This is strangely like false teachings and evil deeds, and
therefore we disbelieve them.
17. Q. Why do not the Papists injure people in England
and other countries in these days?
A. Because it is forbidden in the law of the land, and because
the people of the true faith are numerous in some countries,
and it is therefore impossible.

208 ODIUM THEOLOGICUM.
20. Q. Is not he [the priest] perhaps a deceiver ?
A. In very truth he is. He is like an animal that conceals
its claws, and pretends to be inoffensive and tame, and some
times snaps and bites.
32. Q. Are men tortured there [in Roman Catholic
countries] ?
A. There are many Papists in Rome ; and if any one declares
the evils of the Popish Church, he is seized in the night and
dragged to the House of Inquisition, and shut up there, and is
probably never seen again.
120. Q. May we not do anything to check those that in
jure us ?
A. Yes, if we do it in a lawful manner, but not in a spirit of
anger, but quietly, that good may come of it.
121. Q. How then? Is it right that we should feel ill-will
towards them [the Catholics] ?
A. Certainly not ; for Jesus bade us love our enemies.
131. Q. Can a priest lie ?
A. It is true that many do so, because they are taught that
it is allowable, if it be to the glory of God.
134. Q. Is it your meaning that it is lawful for the priests
or the Papists to lie if they think that it would be of service to
their Church when truth would not serve it ?
A. It is so. They conceal their sins, and approve the liar,
for they say that that which serves the Church of the Pope is
to the glory of God.
151. Q. Cannot the Englishmen who live in those lands
[Spain, Portugal, and Italy] practise their religion?
A. Yes, for they cannot be altogether prevented : but they
do it as strangers and very quietly ; and if they attempt to
teach the people or distribute Bibles, they are dragged to prison
or to the Inquisition.
182. Q. Who is the "Man of Sin" spoken of by Paul
(2 Thess. ii.)?
A. Wise and good men believe that it refers to the Pope.

AN ACTION FOR SLANDER. 209
223. Q. Is it true that they [the priests] beat people of the
lower orders ?
A. Yes. The priests of Ireland take staves and whips, and
sometimes beat grown men, and they say nothing.
237. Q. What will the Popish priests say of this Catechism ?
A. Alas ! that it is all lies, and that not a word of it is true.
238. Q. What ! are we to disapprove of it if they say this?
A. Certainly not, &c, &c.
Such is a fair translation of passages selected from this
remarkable document, which, it is to be feared, will be
criticised by others than the priests in the terms antici
pated by the writer in answer No. 237. Mr Moore, who
prostituted his excellent Fijian scholarship to such an
end, does not bear the odium of this production alone, for,
with a few redeeming exceptions, none of the missionary
body have had the taste and Christian feeling to withhold
their approbation. The pamphlet was widely distributed
among the natives, but whenever the priests could hear
of the existence of a copy, they immediately bought it up.
As lately as the end of 1892 a Mr Chapman, one of the
Wesleyan missionaries in Fiji, whose excuse for his con
duct was that he was returning evil for evil, translated to
a public meeting of Fijians, which Roman Catholics were
compelled to attend, some revoltingly horrible stories,
printed by Father Chiniquy, the Canadian priest who left
the Roman Church after fifty years' ministration as a
priest, and published two of the most obscene books in
the English language. The priests, conceiving the stories
to be applied personally to two of their number, sued
Chapman in the Supreme Court of the colony, and though
they lost their case, they had the satisfaction of hearing
o

210 ODIUM THEOLOGICUM.
the defendant's conduct reprobated by the Chief-Justice as
it deserved. Nothing abashed, the Wesleyan body rallied
to the support of their calumnious brother, and appealed
to the public to subscribe the costs of his defence.
Gradually the fervour of the first converts gave place
to the mere heat of partisanship. The Churches flourished
simply from their rivalry with each other. The Wesley
ans poured their offerings into the missionary-basins as
a defiance to the taunts of the Roman Catholics. The
Catholics flocked to the church festivals to prove the
superior attractions of their form of worship. But after
the fall of Bea, and the consequent conversion of the
heathen to one Church or the other, the active quarrels.
between the two missions began to die down. The Wes
leyans were the strongest, and the Catholics saw that they
could gain nothing by over - zeal in proselytising. The
king and most of the influential chiefs were on the other
side, and the attractions of pictures, music, and processions
in their services did not outweigh the pleasures of being
allowed to pray and preach, which were permitted to
every Wesleyan who had a turn in that direction. As an
intelligent Wesleyan in Fiji once put it in accounting for
the popularity of his Church, "among the Catholics there
is no torotoro (promotion). In our Church we may hold
family prayers twice a - day, and one may be a local
preacher without ever entering the ministry. If that is
not enough, one may enter the ministry and at last be
ordained like the white clergy, and may preach continually,
waxing hot in the discourse. The Papists have none of
these pleasures. They may only listen to the priests
without ever being allowed to preach."

MISSION COLLECTIONS. 211
The Wesleyan missionaries had made two mistakes —
they had humbled the chiefs, and they had vilified their
rivals. They were now to make a third. Political power
was in their grasp, and with the fearlessness of deep
ignorance they rushed on their doom. Brought up in
Australia to believe that universal suffrage and repre
sentative government is the nearest approach to Utopia
attainable by mortal man, they persuaded the king and
chiefs against their better judgment to exchange the
ancient communal system for a bran-new constitution on
the English plan. Those who have seen the machine at
work in the Australian colonies will know best how it
was to behave in Tonga. They had sealed the fate of
their own cause. The commoners, accustomed to let their
chief think for them, now found themselves free to think
and act as their inclinations led them, and the first result
was a weakening of the influence of the missionaries,
who began to find the smattering of education they had
given to their native helpers a source of danger. The
native ministers had a vote in their district meetings, and
began to exercise it independently. Awkward questions
were whispered about salaries. What was the difference
between the foreigner and the Tongan, that the one should
have £200 a-year and a wooden house, and the other £20
and a grass hut ? When Mr Baker brought his acquisi
tive genius to bear upon the system of mission collections,
the conference in Sydney had still the absolute disposal
of the funds, and the country was annually drained of
many thousands of dollars over and above the cost of local
expenditure. Demands were not unnaturally made for
a share in the disposal of this money, and, as I have

212 ODIUM TEEOLOGICUM.
related elsewhere, the Conference unwisely resisted the
demand for home -rule until it was too late, and Mi-
Baker had gone over to the enemy and founded the Free
Church. Then all the dormant fires of sectarian hatred
burst out afresh. The majority of the native ministers,
tempted by the promise of higher salaries, went over in
a body to a Church in which they had greater liberty,
higher pay, and a satisfied feeling of patriotism. They
scarcely needed Baker's encouragement to persecute the
minority that remained faithful, for they knew that upon
the universality of the new Church depended their ap
pointments. The old, regarding them as traitors, would
never have taken them back except at a great disadvan
tage. So they persecuted, and thereby awoke in their
opponents all the obstinacy of the Tongan character.
The old Church flourished under persecution as Churches
always have flourished. Left contemptuously alone, it
might possibly have died a natural death : under the
shadow of a promise of martyrdom, some of the vigour
of its lost youth returned to it. But the life-giving fire
was party spirit, not religious feeling. From the estab
lishment of the Free Church dates the real overthrow
of devotional earnestness among the Tongans. The
change had been long impending, for the temperament
of the people is incapable of a steady warmth. A fire
of enthusiasm that had blazed so fiercely must needs
soon smoulder away into ashes. Henceforward the
form only survived — the spirit had burnt itself out.
With the Free Church a fourth party, who mockingly
called themselves the Lotu jio or " Looking-on Church,"
came into existence. They were the lukewarm, who

PERSECUTION. 213
had now an excuse for declaring' their indifference. For
the sake of peace they professed to belong to the Free
Church, but they attended none of the services, and in
reality they belonged to no Church at all. The Roman
Catholics, as neutrals, sucked no small advantage out
of the quarrel, for they opened their doors to all those
who feared to be Wesleyans and refused to be Free
Churchmen. It is a compliment to the Rev. J. E. Moulton to say
that, in their hour of need, the Wesleyans were un
fortunate in their champion. They wanted a rough-
handed fighting man, cool, thick-skinned, and not over
scrupulous, who would meet such a man as Baker on his
own ground, and fight him with his own weapons. They
had instead a gentleman and a scholar, full of generous
impulses and enthusiasm, a born teacher, whose field
was the class-room, not the atmosphere of low political
intrigue. Against each successive outrage his only
resource was protest ; and until it was too late and he
had earned the king's enmity, he failed to see that calm
good-humoured toleration of insult might have under
mined Baker's influence where indignant remonstrance
only served to strengthen his position. He left all the
fighting to his coadjutor, — a gentleman with a natural
turn for litigation, whose ill-directed efforts, while they
embarrassed the native Government, inflamed the chiefs
of the Free Church against the people he was endeav
ouring to serve.
These missionaries were unable to realise that the
steadfastness of their followers was obstinancy under
the lash of persecution rather than the fire of religious

214 ODIUM THEOLOGICUM.
conviction. The tenets of the new Church were the
same as those of the old, and therefore no conscientious
scruples could have weighed with the inflexible minority.
They were held really by the natural repugnance of
every man of independent character to being bullied into
doing a thing he has at first refused. But the mission
aries expected that, as soon as the removal of Mr Baker
put an end to persecution, the people would flock back to
their old Church. They were bitterly disappointed when
they found that very few of their old adherents cared to
do so. The truth was that the old Church had become
unfashionable, now that its members could no longer have
the distinction of aspiring to martyrdom. Indifference
had permeated the new Church and the old alike.
People still went to church because the king did, and
because it was the sole opportunity for the display of
new clothes ; but they dropped religion from their con
versation, and spoke of their respective Churches only
as political organisations. The Wesleyan Conference had
withdrawn Mr Moulton, and substituted for him one of
their ordinary ministers, ignorant of the Tongan language
and character, who found himself confronted with an un
expected difficulty. The returned exiles from Fiji, of
whom the majority of their leading men were composed,
had been spoilt by the fuss that had been made over
them. Their natural conceit as Tongans had been so
fostered by their admiring friends, that they would no
longer submit to the control of any foreigner were he
a hundred times their minister. Perhaps the antagonism
to Europeans, which the early missionaries in their war
against the traders had so industriously cultivated, was

THE MISSION CODE. 215
partly responsible for this. The missionary found himself
outvoted by the members of his own district meeting,
and the last vestige of the power of the missionaries was
gone. One of the strangest features in this struggle of op
posing forces was the unwitting modification in the Chris
tian code as taught by the missionaries themselves. The
people were polygamists. Their climate, physique, and
mode of life conduced to incontinence, which, however, was
kept in check by a severe social code of their own. This
the missionaries swept away. For the dread of immediate
physical punishment which the people felt, the mission
aries tried to substitute the fear of retribution in another
world, — a contingency too remote to have much weight
with them. The standard of social morality, never very
high, was at once lowered, and the astonished missionaries
tried in vain to stem the flowing tide with every penalty
they could invent and enforce. Gradually their own sense
of proportion became warped. The seventh command
ment overshadowed all the others in their mental horizon.
The police, taking their cue from the Sunday sermon,
let felons go their way, and spent all their energies in
tracking down philanderers. Even the Legislature, copy
ing the early missionary codes, gave such a prominence
to offences against the social laws, that, provided a man
kept the seventh commandment in its widest application,
he might commit almost any other crime in the calendar.
The change in the temper of the people has not taken
place without a corresponding change in the spirit of the
missionaries. Tonga and Fiji are no longer regarded as
the fields for men of special talents. The young men sent

216 ODIUM THEOLOGICUM.
there by the Conference in Australia seem to be chosen at
haphazard from among the ordinary recruits for the Wes
leyan ministry. They themselves appear to regard their
mission as a profession rather than as a call, and to attach
greater importance to the details of church government
than to the spirit of missionary enterprise. Few of them
are sufficiently interested in the natives to care to learn
more of their inner life than has a direct bearing upon
their church membership. I may even say without harsh
ness that their chief efforts are devoted to securing ade
quate collections, and to defeating the work of their rivals,
the Roman Catholics. From the 'Methodist Missionary
Review' of November 1892 I take the following ingenuous
passage from the pen of the most active among the present
missionaries in Fiji : " Our average for the past three
years has been £1000 a-year. Some of our mountain
sections have greatly increased their subscriptions, so that
I do not walk hundreds of miles across the awful paths of
Colo for nothing." In another place the same writer
jocosely alludes to a curious system of remuneration :
" Now there arose a new Mission Board over the brethren
in foreign fields, and they said — through the General
Secretary — ' Behold, the children of these missionaries are
more and mightier every year ; come, let us deal wisely
with them, lest they multiply and cause a debit balance
in the annual accounts.' So it has come to pass that the
brethren in the foreign fields have been notified that a
reduction of five guineas per annum will be made on all
children born after the Slst December next." One cannot
forbear wondering whether this heartless order had the
desired effect.

THE FATE OF THE MISSIONS. 217
The experience of Hawaii, New Zealand, Tonga, and
Fiji, goes to teach us that the active life of Christian
missions in the South Seas is from fifty to seventy years.
A mission was founded in New Zealand by Mr Marsden
in 1814. The missionaries, being men of a lower class
than those who laboured in Polynesia, used their oppor
tunities for acquiring private property in land, a fact that,
among a people so earth-hungry as the Polynesians, may
have precipitated the crisis. Hauhauism, that strange
compound of Christianity and paganism, broke out in
1865, and finally quenched the spark of life that remained
to the mission after the war.
The mission in Tonga, founded in 1822 by Mr Lawry,
and shattered by the dissensions of 1887, enjoyed an active
life of sixty-five years. The Wesleyan mission in Fiji,
founded in 1837, is already showing evident signs of
decay. I do not allude to the practice of Tuka (Immor
tality), a pagan cult curiously like Hauhauism, which was
put down by the Government in 1887, and has since reap
peared at intervals, but to that general inanition that has
proved fatal to the Church in Tonga. Nor is this sur
prising when one remembers upon how slender a base
most of these conversions rest. A vast majority of Ton
gans and Fijians embraced Christianity because, for poli
tical reasons, it suited their chiefs to do so. One who was
present at the conversion of an entire tribe in Fiji once
gave me an account of the ceremony. A great feast was
made for the missionary, who took his seat by the side
of the chief. The heathen priest, taking a kava root in
his hand, thus addressed the ancestor-gods : " This is the
paltry feast which we, your poverty - stricken children,

218 ODIUM TSEOLOGICUM.
have made for you. It is our farewell to you: do not
be angry with us that we are going to leave you for a
time. We are your children, but for a time we are going
to worship the god of the foreigners : nevertheless, be not
angry with us ! " Then the gods consumed the spiritual
essence of the meat, and the missionary and his suite ate
its grosser material fibre and enjoyed it very much. To
the converted native the heathen gods are not always
false gods ; they continue to exist, but they have been
deserted for a time in favour of the gods of the foreigners.
This is why relapses into heathenism on the part of the
most promising converts will always be so dangerously
easy. The spirits of their ancestors are to them what
Baal and Rimmon were to the people of Israel — existing
beings, who may at any time become malignant and
demand propitiatory sacrifice. With so thin a curtain
drawn between the old and the new faith, the fickleness of
the natives, and the coolness that always follows hard
upon the white heat of conversion, have doubtless each
contributed their share to the decay of mission influ
ence; but I venture to assert that the main cause has
been the unseemly dissension between the Churches,
and the enlistment of the natives in feuds utterly un
worthy of the Christianity the missionaries profess to
be teaching.
I do not forget that the Wesleyans were first in the
field, and that all these evils might have been avoided if,
as in British New Guinea, the Churches had agreed upon
exclusive spheres of influence, with well-defined boun
daries for each mission. But the time for that has gone
by, and it remains for the missions to look to the condi-

APOLOGIA. 219
tions of their very existence in a spirit of mutual concilia
tion and tolerance.
It is an ungrateful task to endeavour to pass a friendly
criticism upon so privileged a body as the missionaries.
No one has yet attempted it without being accused of
blind prejudice or envy that wilfully ignores the good in
order to drag into a false prominence the defects from
which no great undertaking is free. If I seem to have
erred in speaking strongly of imperfections that continue
to suck the life-blood of the mission, it is because they
might easily be removed if the missionaries could clear
their eyes from the petty irritations of the moment, and
see that their real interests lie in following the doctrine
they are teaching — to have charity one toward another.
Their predecessors achieved a great work. They found
the natives almost irredeemable savages, and they so far
influenced their outward lives that every man, woman,
and child in the islands is a professing Christian ; but
they are going far towards casting away this precious
result for want of a little patience and self - restraint.
No one can admire more than I the admirable work
that has been done : no one can more deplore the waste
of so great an opportunity.

220

XIV.
AMATEUR LAW-GIVING.
The dismissed Premier was not only a spiritual and tem
poral dignitary, he was also the lawgiver of Tonga ; yet
it was only in the most limited sense that he united the
qualities of Moses and Melchisedec.
It has been the fate of Tonga to furnish the vile body
on which the legislative experiments of amateurs have
been tried. The first written code of law in Tongan
history was promulgated in Vavau in 1839, and, crude
though it was, it may be doubted whether it was not
far better suited to the people than the elaborate but
often incoherent effusions of the missionary lawyers of
later days. It was King George's own composition,
and it was intended for his own people only, to be ad
ministered by judges of his own race. There was a long
preamble filled with Biblical quotations, after which
follow a few plain straightforward clauses such as the
following : — ¦
It is my mind : That the land should be brought into culti
vation and be planted. Hence, I inform you it is unlawful for
you to turn your hogs outside the sty. If a hog be found

THE FIRST CODE.

221

eating the yams, or destroying the produce of the land, the
owner of the hog shall be at once informed that he may shut
the hog up, and he shall restore whatsoever be damaged. If
the owner neglect to take
warning, either in con
fining his hog, or in re
compensing the damage
done, and the hog be
again found eating the
yams, it shall then be
lawful to kill the hog,
and the owner of the
plantation shall have the
carcase for his own.
By the end of 1855
the original code had
been so tinkered by
the missionaries that
little of the original
remained. Their hand
is detected in the fol
lowing excellent pro
vision, designed to
check the growing in
dolence of the people, and turn their labour into a channel
of profit to the reverend legislators : —
XXXVI. The law relating to men. — You shall work and
persevere in labouring for the support of your family as well
as yourself, and in order to contribute to the cause of God
and the chief of the land, and each man shall find a piece
of land to cultivate. Any man who is not willing to work,
shall not be fed nor assisted, all such persons being useless to
the land and its inhabitants, and unprofitable to their friends.

A giant

yam.

222 AMATEUR LAW-GIVING.
Hitherto the laws had merely expressed in writing the
prohibitions that already existed in the native mind, but
for which no fixed punishment had been stipulated. The
government by chiefs was defined and their powers de
scribed, but it was the same form of government that had
been in force since the social organisation of the people was
crystallised out of the primitive family. King George —
to his credit be it said — long resisted the importunities of
the missionaries to grant his people a Constitution, and
ape the form of government evolved in Europe from
centuries of civilisation. The people were not ready for
it, he said. It might suit England very well. There the
people were perhaps accustomed to think for themselves,
but the Tongans were wont to let their chiefs think for
them. The Tongans had reached a stage of development mid
way between the patriarchal and feudal systems. Their
chiefs had the blood of the founder of the family in its
purest form, and were the earthly incarnation of their
deified ancestors. Each chief had hereditary retainers
who followed him to battle, and obeyed him in time of
peace ; but the constant wars during the latter half of
the eighteenth century had created a lower class of ser
vants than these — the tu'a, children of prisoners of war.
These, together with the illegitimate children of the
chief's father or grandfather (his cousins, in fact, for a
chief bred servants for his descendants), were in the
nature of serfs, leading, however, an easier life than such
a designation would imply. The missionaries had perhaps
read of Peter the Great and Wilberforce, and they too
panted to win the grateful admiration of posterity. To

THE CONSTITUTION GRANTED. 223
their heated fancy the people appeared as slaves, because
they yielded service without fixed wages, and nothing
would content them but a formal liberation. They did
not stop to reflect that these " serfs " were fed and clothed
by their chief, and that as members of his household they
enjoyed privileges which men of their low rank could not
hope for in other societies. If they were contented, they
ought to be taught a noble discontent, and to pine for the
Anglo-Saxon fetish, freedom. King George, as he hoped
to be saved, must " liberate the serfs."
In 1862 he yielded, and signed a bran-new Constitution,
drawn up by the missionaries, after a model devised for
the King of Hawaii by a Mr St Julian. On the 4th of
June 1862 there was a solemn meeting of the newly con
stituted Parliament. In the intervals of feasting the code
was passed, and at the end of two months the legislators
dispersed, leaving the land as bare as if a swarm of locusts
had passed over it. The missionary historian waxes emo
tional as he tells of how they contrived to eat 150,000
large yams and 9000 hogs, besides other provisions, and
of how they feasted daily at a board spread in Euro
pean fashion, clad in decent black broadcloth and white
chokers, to the glory of God and the triumph of mis
sionary statecraft.
This code was considerably altered,— I reject the word
"amended" advisedly, — and in 1875 a complete penal
code, far too elaborate for the Tongans, yet infinitely
better than the pretentious laws that afterwards repealed
it, was passed by the native Parliament. From 1875 to
1888 Mr Baker tried his 'prentice hand at legislation.
He altered the Constitution four times, and he drafted

224 AMATEUR LAW-GIVING.
and passed laws and ordinances whenever the fit took
him, until the body of law had become so confused and
conflicting that not even a Blackstone could have cut a
path through its thorny labyrinths. Some of these laws
were not even read to the Parliament that passed them :
more than a few were enacted in English, and never trans
lated into Tongan. Of these, some were printed in the
' Gazette ' in English ; others had not even this courtesy
extended to them. The fatal ease of legislation bred in
the Premier's mind a kind of disease — Legislatitis — until
every idea that flitted through his facile imagination was
crystallised into an ordinance, and the cause of every
passing annoyance was made penal by enactment. Some
one remarked that the wild duck were becoming scarce :
an ordinance was passed to preserve them. A ship-of-
war was disappointed in not finding coal : a statute con
verted Nukualofa into a coaling-station for foreign ships.
Some urchins shouted " Sail ho ! " on the beach near the
Premier's office : to cry " Sail ho ! " became forthwith a
penal offence. Many of these enactments were extremely
unpopular; but the wily Premier knew how to let the
fury of the mob beat upon other heads than his, and
generally caused his laws to be promulgated the day after
he sailed for one of his frequent holidays to New Zealand.
By the time he returned the people had become accus
tomed to them.
The confused state of the law had a remarkable effect
upon the magistrates. The only written law within their
reach had been so often altered and repealed that they
had come to rely for their decisions not upon the written
law, but upon the verbal directions of the Prime Minister.

ABUSE OF THE COURTS. 225
I myself came at last to admit the advantages of this
system, since, when I declined to give them advice upon
cases sub judice, much of my time was occupied in ap
peasing consular representatives for illegalities practised
by the courts upon the subjects of foreign Powers. If I
had attempted to right the wrongs of Tongans suffered at
the hands of their own magistrates, I should have had
time for nothing else. The stumbling-block of the magis
trates was the subtlety of their reasoning. Not long before
my arrival three men were indicted for stealing a pig. It
transpired in the evidence that two of them had agreed to
keep watch while the third committed the theft. " This,"
said his worship, " was no ordinary theft ; it was con
spiracy ! " He found that his law-book defined conspiracy
as a synonym for talisone (treason), and the punishment
provided for talisone was twenty years' penal servitude.
These criminals were said to be languishing in prison
when the general amnesty that followed Mr Baker's fall
set them at liberty.
The pliancy of the police magistrates made them, in the
hands of a Free Church Government, ready instruments
of persecution. The courts took their bias from the atti
tude of the Executive. Every law that could be made to
bear hardly upon the Wesleyans was strained to their dis
comfort. By an abuse of the land laws they were deprived
of their holdings. In places where the minister was the
only Wesleyan, he was charged with neglecting to keep
the church lands weeded — each enclosure being treated
as a separate cause of offence — and imprisoned in default
of paying the enormous fines imposed upon him. For all
these abuses Mr Baker has, with some injustice, been
p

226 AMATEUR LAW- GIVING.
made personally responsible. He, it is true, gave the
bias to the courts, but, once started on their devastating
way, the magistrates in their crass stupidity went to
lengths he would have repudiated had he dared.
They were generally men of inferior calibre. Tongotea,
the most notorious, was a handsome, bright-eyed man of
about fifty, too young to be naturally tolerant, too old to
be reformed. In the missionary reports on the Church
troubles his name recurs as often as Mr Baker's in these
pages. Execrated by the missionaries, he was not less
hated by the traders for his habitual discourtesy and dis
like to Europeans when on the bench. He was too hardened
an offender to realise that the old order had changed, and
we had at last to yield to the continued petitions for his
dismissal. At the beginning of 1888 the confusion in the laws had
become such a scandal that Mr Baker determined to
codify them. He lacked either the courage or the energy
to submit his code to Parliament, and he therefore passed
an Act empowering him to " revise " the code of laws and
print them in Tongan and English — surely the widest
power ever conferred upon an individual in the history
of representative government. At the end of two years
he had written the English version and about half the
Tongan. I have it on the authority of the pundits 
native and European — that the Tongan version was so
full of errors as to be quite unintelligible; but it is
possible that in his anxiety to retain his position as leo-al
adviser to the magistrates, he intentionally made their
path thorny and difficult.
The English version is entitled to rank high anions the

A LITERARY CURIOSITY. 227
curiosities of literature. If compositors turned loose with
all the known founts of capitals can alone make a code,
then the work was a monument to jurists ; but, since the
lavishness of printer's art only brings into greater promi
nence confusion in arrangement, gross contradictions, and
vital omissions, the Ministry were justified in not feeling
proud of a production for the revision of which they had
to pay a bill of fifty guineas to a solicitor in Auckland.
But regarded merely as a literary " sport," it was well worth
the money. In the "Act relative to Murder" we read: —
Section 11. — Should any one poison any water with As to
evil intent to cause the death of another or others and Polsonmg-
should the same die he shall be considered guilty of
murder and punished accordingly but should the same
be known before the death of any one it shall be con
sidered manslaughter of the first degree.
In honestly trying to understand this section, the mind
reels backward as in an attempt to realise eternity. Did
the reverend jurist mean that if the poisoned person dies
he shall be considered guilty of murder, but that if he
(the unfortunate victim) be known before the death of
some one else, it (i.e., the poison, the water, or the death)
shall be considered manslaughter ? And if not this, what
did he mean ?
In the " Act relative to Assault and Battery " there is
the following remarkable passage : — ¦
Section 13. — Whoever shall strike or assault or As to as-
throw anything; at one's father or one's mother as saultlnSetc one s
stated in this Act such person's penalty for any such parents.
offence shall be doubled.

228 AMATEUR LAW-GIVING.
A Tongan who wished to strike his enemy had first to
ascertain whether he had children. These are only two
out of the many claims put forth by the late Premier
in this wonderful book to a high place among the un
conscious humourists of literature.
Following the general policy of complicating the ad
ministrative machinery of the tiny State, the law estab
lished a vast number of unnecessary law courts. There
were (1) the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council;
(2) the Supreme Court ; (3) the three District Courts ;
(4) the Police Courts. There were thus three appeals
against a decision of the police court, and each appeal
brought in fees. Even in criminal cases the unfortunate
defendant was mulcted in fees which had to be worked off
in the form of additions to his term of imprisonment.
Besides these courts there were — the Probate Court,
the Divorce Court, the Admiralty Court, the Lands Court,
and Courts-Martial, for none of which was any form of
procedure laid down. In the case of disputed wills I
found the practice to be for one claimant to seize the
property, and for the other to prosecute him for larceny.
In one case an unfortunate widow was convicted at the
suit of her stepson of stealing her late husband's house in
which she was living.
We condemned this code on its first hearing. No
amount of amendment could make it work. The Tono-an
version was unintelligible; the English was ridiculous.
Nothing less than a new code would meet the necessities
of the case. I confess that at first I recoiled from the toil
of drafting a code, translating it into Tongan, takino- it
through Parliament, and passing both volumes through

DRAFTING THE CODE. 229
the press with compositors ignorant of the language they
were setting up. The work must be done in odd hours,
snatched from arduous administrative duties, in a period
of less than six months. I succeeded, and a consideration
of the difficulties against which I had to contend should
soften the harsher criticisms that may be passed upon my
code in the future. I worked upon the Indian Penal Code
and the existing law of Tonga, using the plan of the
former, and simplifying the latter as far as the constitu
tion would let me. Working far into the night, I made
my rough draft in English, and then with the help of a
little shorthand writer, Pauli by name, I turned the draft
into halting Tongan. This version went sheet by sheet to
Tukuaho for conversion into elegant Tongan, and then
came back to me for careful revision, lest the sense should
have suffered in the process of decoration.
My principal difficulty lay in the Constitution. Though
the king readily consented to the abrogation of the laws,
he had an almost superstitious dread of tampering with
the Constitution. This attitude had its advantages when
we wanted to silence our opponents of the Radical party
in the House. We had only to point to the Constitution,
which " Tubou did not wish to alter," as a reason for re-
enacting an old statute, and the opposition collapsed ; but
we were well aware that the pretentious document begin
ning, " Seeing it appears to be the Will of God for man
to be free," with its complicated machinery, designed to
deceive strangers into the belief that Tonga was a State
growing in importance and prosperity, was utterly un-
suited to the Tongans. I had a strong objection to include
in my code any matter couched in such wretched English

230 AMATEUR LAW-GIVING.
— English of which a schoolboy would be ashamed. I was
spared this necessity by an inspiration. Had not Mi-
Baker himself declared that the Constitution was passed
by a Tongan Legislature ? It must therefore have been
enacted in the native language, and the Tongan version
was the original. I had only to translate it back into
English, and my code would be cleansed of the phraseology
that constitutes Mr Baker's principal claim to distinction.
Chief among the purely Tongan enactments of the new
code were the land laws. In former times the soil of
Tonga was vested in the Tui Tonga — the spiritual chief.
The great nobles and small cultivators held their lands
from him, and he had theoretically the right to dispossess
them at will. When the office of Tui Tonga became
vacant, and the title was absorbed by the present king,
the people readily adopted the idea that all the land was
vested in the Crown who had the power to grant holdings
in return for taxes. But in 1888, Mr Baker, acting either
under pressure from the chiefs, or spontaneously wishing
to create a landed aristocracy, foolishly caused the king
to grant large estates, which he called " inheritances," to
a number of hereditary lords, who were to receive from
the tenants a rental of $1 per annum for each holding of
about eight acres. In dealing with the land I could not
hope to rid myself of these superfluous landlords, but I
could, without evoking dangerous opposition, deprive them
of all power over their estates. I determined to make the
Crown collect their rents and pay it over to them, while
reserving to itself all rights of granting allotments and
evicting tenants. Thus for all practical purposes the land
still belonged to the State ; for so long as the rents were

THE LAND LAWS. 231
paid to the lords of the manor, the Government was
virtually the landlord, and the king had voluntarily made
over to the Treasury all rents due upon the lands not
included within any " inheritance."
The chief obstacle that would confront every Govern
ment in Tonga would always be the difficulty in collecting
the poll-tax. The people required some stronger incentive
to pay than the fear of levy by distress. To meet this
difficulty I adopted an idea, suggested to me by Mr Han-
slip, that the tenure of land should be made dependent
upon the regular payment of taxes. I converted the poll-
tax into a land-tax, and gave to every taxpayer the right
of occupying one allotment of a fixed area, inalienable in
his family so long as he and his heirs continued to dis
charge their debts to the State, but liable to forfeiture if
for three successive years they were guilty of neglect. As
each man arrived at manhood he was entitled to claim an
allotment ; and when the father of grown-up sons died
his widow kept his allotment for her lifetime. At her
death each of the sons might choose whether they would
relinquish their own holdings in favour of their father's
or not; but in no case could a man occupy more than
one holding. Thus we combined the " Nationalisation of
land " with the institution of lords of the manor. By
changing the name of the tax I disposed of the necessity
for claiming it from Europeans, since, being possessed of
no land of their own, they could not reasonably be called
upon to pay a "land-tax." The poll-tax had for many
years been the chief grievance of the traders, for Euro
peans will pay an amount of. indirect taxation which, if
imposed in direct form, would cause a rebellion.

232 AMATEUR LAW-GIVING.
A more delicate, if less important, question was that of
the marks of respect to be paid to nobles. The Tongans
still cling tenaciously to certain ancient forms of respect,
such as the unturbaned head and the cinctured waist in
the precincts of a village. To traverse Nukualofa without
a girdle would be a greater solecism than to walk the
length of Piccadilly hatless and in one's shirt - sleeves.
But the more servile forms of homage to chiefs — squatting
at the roadside or performing moemoe — were so incon
venient that by the king's order a gwflsi-military salute
was generally substituted. In Polynesia, to raise your
self physically above another is to lay claim to a moral
superiority over him, and the introduction of horses
brought a new difficulty. To sit elevated above the
world on the back of a horse tends to make Tongans
cheeky, just as in Fiji the consciousness of having long
hair makes the most respectful man insolent to his
superiors. Many years before, a law had been enacted
compelling commoners to dismount when they passed a
member of the Upper House, or rode past his house.
The Europeans laid the blame of this enactment at Mr
Baker's door ; but, if I may judge from the savage
tenacity with which the nobles clung to this obnoxious
section, it is more probable that the law was passed in
spite of him. Puerile as the restriction appears, let it
not be forgotten that a primitive people is always ruled
by outward forms ; and wherever in the Pacific, and in
deed elsewhere, a tribe is found who show no respect to
their chiefs, there will be a people less susceptible to
government and good order. Such laws, of course, always
tend towards the ridiculous. A noble died, and one Jone

RESPECT FOR DIGNITIES. 233
Fifita, his distant cousin, was invested with the vacant
title. He was taking the air on the day of his elevation,
marching in the middle of the road with the noble mien
suited to his new dignity, when seven horsemen, his boon
companions in humbler days, met him, showing no dis
position to get out of his way.
" Why do you not dismount ? " he shouted.
For answer they snatched the empty sacks that lay
across their horses' withers, and, covering their faces with
them, deliberately rode him down, crying through the
sacks, " Recognise us, and take us to court for insolence,
Jone ! " His lordship laid informations against several
innocent persons who were able to prove an alibi, bring
ing down upon his head thereby the lampoons of half
Tonga ; for it is fair to say that the Tongans, who have
been called the " Snobs of the Pacific," are as quick to
recognise and ridicule the peculiar failings of the snob as
even Thackeray could have wished.

234

XV.

INCUBATION.

In February our prospects began to look brighter. The
copra contract was at an end, and we were free to accept
coin for taxes. In order to show defaulters that we were
in earnest, we directed the police to sue those of two or
three villages, and to follow the judgments with execu
tion so closely that they should not have time to transfer
their chattels to a neighbour and usher the bailiff into a
house swept of its contents, as was the usual custom.
After patrolling the town for half an hour with a hand
bell to attract buyers, the police swooped down upon the
doomed house, planted the Tongan ensign before the door,
and seized all the portable property in it. Then the
fakatautuki (sale by the hammer) began. The mats, pots,
and gnaiu were knocked down without much attempt
being made to obtain the highest available price, and
then as many of the horses, fowls, and pigs as could be
caught were sold at an average price — for the horses and
poultry at eighteenpence each, and for the pigs at fifteen
or twenty times that amount. There are recorded cases
of horses being disposed of at these sales for threepence.

LOG-ROLLING. 235
This unusually spirited conduct of the Government
produced a panic among the defaulting taxpayers. They
became, indeed, almost as unscrupulous in their way of
raising money for the Government as for the Churches.
In the next three weeks we began to see our way out
of our financial difficulties. The debt could already be
-discharged by instalments, and the arrears of salary to
officials could safely be left to Parliament, upon whose
rather reckless imagination it might have a healthy re
straining influence when the Budget came to be discussed.
My chief concern was to prevent my colleagues from re
volting against the rigid economy I had enforced upon
them, now that they knew there was a balance in the
Treasury. About this time a meeting of the Cabinet was
held to decide finally upon the Budget that was to be
laid before Parliament. Tukuaho fully explained that the
sole object of the meeting was to secure unanimity among
the Ministers. We took the items seriatim — salaries first.
When we came to the Premier's department, Kubu pro
posed that Tukuaho should withdraw, and thus relieve us
of the delicacy of discussing the question of his emolu
ments in his presence. And now began a very elegant
display of log-rolling. Tukuaho's salary was raised at
one stroke from £400 a-year to £700. Then Kubu's turn
came, and he withdrew, to receive an addition of £50 ; and
the whole of the Cabinet, except the Chief-Justice, who
was absent, were in like manner handsomely provided for.
My lips were sealed, because my own salary was being
voted for the additional term of six months for which
the High Commissioner, at the king's request, had allowed
me to remain, and the Ministers would have been in-

236 INCUBATION.
capable of distinguishing between voting an ordinary salary
and voting themselves an addition, since both acts sprang
from a high-minded liberality. But that night Tukuaho,
who was the one member of the Cabinet who cared more for
his work than for its emoluments, came to ask me whether
the minutes of the meeting might not be cancelled and
expunged from the book. He wanted no increase of
salary, he said; but when they had voted him one, he
could not in decency refuse the same courtesy to others.
It was a mea fakaionga — a necessity of Tongan etiquette ;
and since even the incorruptible Sateki had yielded to
the prevailing spirit of generosity, and had accepted an
increase of £30, I suppose that it was.
We now gave political dinners almost nightly. As.
Parliament drew near, and rumours reached us of ven
geance vowed over the kava-bowls of Vavau, Tukuaho
lost no opportunity of seizing and converting all the
influential Vavauans who chanced to visit Nukualofa.
No sooner did they set foot in the capital than they
received an invitation to dine with me. Besides G 
and myself, the party usually consisted of Tukuaho, his
father or Kubu, and the victim. Our quarry would
fain have borrowed from his friends for the occasion
the full panoply of European dress, but the invitation
always specified native attire. There was a dinner with
champagne, and as soon as the only lady had withdrawn,
whisky and politics. The guest always went away with
triumph in his heart that among all the chiefs of Vavau
the Cabinet had thought his advice only as worth seek
ing. He generally wept over the parting glass : he always
swore by " Jihovah" to support us to the death. From

THE OLD ELECTIONS. 237
that day forth he had no part with his fellow-mal
contents. What knew they of the secrets that had been
intrusted to him ? When they grumbled he wagged his
head as befits one who could speak 'an he would.
My code was nearly finished. My little clerk had well
earned the copy of ' Hymns Ancient and Modern ' he had
begged as the guerdon of his services, and a large part of
the Tongan version had come back in type from the Auck
land printers. Parliament was to be opened in May, and
there was little enough time for holding the general elec
tion. The existing code contained elaborate directions for
the guidance of the electoral officers, and laid down as one
of the qualifications for electors that they should have paid
up all arrears of taxes before voting. In this we thought
we recognised an opportunity for a final effort to induce
the defaulters to pay their debts to the State. Nightly
for a whole week the crier proclaimed throughout the
villages that defaulters would be deprived of the price
less right of choosing their representatives in Parliament.
It was perhaps the experience of past elections that robbed
our scheme of the result we had so good a right to expect.
If the proper ritual had been followed, an election should
have been just such a ceremony as would delight the soul
of a Tongan. By law an elector could write the name of
his dearest friend on the ballot-slip and pop it into the
box, and until the result was declared the excitement
must have far transcended the stir at the most hotly
contested election in England, since even the meanest
elector might find parliamentary honours showered upon
him unsought. I understood, however, from my col
leagues, that in practice the free and enlightened elec-

238 . INCUBATION.
tors played a very secondary part. "We were called,"
said my informant, " to a fono on the grass behind the
Government offices. Mr Baker came out on the ver
andah and said, 'You are summoned to-day to choose
a representative of the people. I propose So-and-so.
Those who are in favour of So-and-so will hold up
their hands ! ' Then several held up their hands, and
Mr Baker said that So-and-so was elected, and we all
went home."
It was not to be hoped that after such experiences the
privilege of being an elector would succeed where the
terrors of the law had failed. We heard afterwards,
when it was too late, that had the hundreds of dis
qualified electors known the nature of the entertain
ment we provided for them, they would have sold
their goods and given to the Government rather than
miss it.
To invest the first free election with proper solemnities
a deputation of his Majesty's Ministers presided. Below
the verandah where we sat was a table furnished with
writing materials and the ballot-box. The entire male
adult population of Nukualofa sat in a semicircle on the
grass-plot, hemmed in with police as at a fono. Tukuaho
read the clauses of the Constitution relating to elections,
and explained that every qualified elector might write the
name of whomever he would upon the ballot-slip. Then
he called upon those who still owed their taxes for the
year 1889 to withdraw : about half the people rose and
went away laughing. The dismissal of the defaulters for
1890 sent away fully one-half of the remainder ; and when
" all persons under twenty-one years of age " had left us,

AN ALARM. 239
there remained barely one hundred persons, composed, I
saw with growing consternation, almost exclusively of
Wesleyans — returned exiles — and men so old and infirm
as to be excused from taxes altogether. It was our own
fault. We had forgotten that the Wesleyans, having
been excused all taxes due for the period of their exile,
had only had one dollar to. pay, and had paid it in order
to prove that their loyalty to the State was stronger than
that of the Free Churchmen. The qualified electors were,
therefore, Wesleyans almost to a man. The inevitable
came to pass. Each man came to the ballot-box and
filled up his paper without hesitation, and the scrutiny
showed that four Wesleyans had been chosen to repre
sent a constituency in which a vast majority were Free
Churchmen. Fortunately one of them was a British
subject, and I was able to give him his choice between
repudiation of his nationality or voidance of his seat.
As I expected, he chose the latter, and in his place Hoho,
pre-eminent among Roman Catholic schoolmasters, was
elected. Having thus initiated Sibu, the new ballot-clerk,
in his duties, we left him to hold the other elections
throughout the kingdom.
" He never yet stood sure that stands secure." With a
balance in the treasury, and an ever-strengthening party,
we were comfortably congratulating ourselves when the
bolt fell. One evening while the Ministry were playing
bowls on the sea-front after a protracted meeting of the
Cabinet, a schooner was seen bearing down upon the
anchorage. She was recognised as Maatu's vessel from
Vavau, and we were idly speculating on her errand when
she brought to unexpectedly and lowered a boat without

240 INCUBATION.
going to the wharf. Two men sprang ashore and ran
towards us. Their news justified their haste. Tubou was
dying, and they were sent to summon the lords of Tonga
tabu to be with him at the last. Divested of the exag
geration natural to all bearers of evil tidings, the story
ran that four days previously the kiug had bathed as
usual at daybreak and had caught a chill. For two
days his illness caused no alarm, but on the third he
grew worse and sent for his chiefs. When old Tungi
heard this he collapsed and said, "If Tubou summoned
his chiefs, it is the end; by this time the heavens have
fallen ! " (kuo halcc ae langi.)
For me, no less than the country, no more disastrous
event could have happened than the king's death. The
whole castle of cards that I had been so painfully rearing
during the last eight months would topple headlong to
the ground. The balance in the Treasury, nursed with
unflinching watchfulness and parsimony, would be swal
lowed up at one gulp in the expenses of the funeral ; the
public servants, trained to attend their offices by a system
of judicious nagging, would, in the idleness inseparable
from great public ceremonies, return to their former
habits ; public tranquillity, so hardly won, would give
place to disturbance, and perhaps civil war. Even if,
by a miracle, all these disasters could be averted, and
Parliament be brought together, the Ministry could not
hope to pass the new laws without the king's sanction.
If the king was dead there was nothing left for me but to
stay and try to keep the peace. It was idle to hope that
the work on which I had built so much could survive.
It was one of those crises in which one is paralysed by the

SUSPENSE RELIEVED. 241
knowledge that effort is useless. Impending misfortune
that calls for action is endurable : it is the passive waiting
for the bolt to fall that is so hard to bear.
After the first moment of consternation all the para
phernalia of civilisation were thrown to the winds, and
for the first time I caught a glimpse of old Tonga. In the
presence of death the king's Ministers sank each to the
social status his forefathers had held for generations before
him. Ata, Lord of Hihifo, who was, politically speaking,
a nonentity, became now the chief figure. He with Tungi
must be at the dying king's side. Tukuaho and Kubu,
having fathers still living, sank into obscurity. The
schooners were victualled and loaded far below safety
mark with a living freight of chiefs and matabules. Tonga
tabu was left to the care of Sateki and me, for neither of
us had concern in the great affairs that were toward. A
hush fell upon the island— the hush of a great expectancy.
Men spoke to one another in low voices when they met
in the street, and all traffic of carts from the plantations
was suspended. The houses were all crowded with men
and women, even at high noon, always talking earnestly of
the time that was coming upon them.
Tukuaho had sailed primed with good advice for all
emergencies. I spent two days of great anxiety. On the
third a sail was seen in the northern passage. A huge
concourse of people had collected on the beach when she
brought to, and suppressed excitement was in every face.
Scarcely a word was spoken as the dinghy pulled ashore.
Would the men never speak ? At last the steersman, a
grey-haired matabule, stood up and cried, " Oku lelei a
Tubou I " (It is well with Tubou !) and a great sob of
Q

242 INCUBATION.
gratitude and relief went up from the assembled people.
The suspense of the mob turned to wild garrulous joy, and
the news ran from mouth to mouth that the king had
awakened from a long stupor and had called for food,
and that from that moment his recovery had been rapid
and sure. Two days later we learned that he and all his
chiefs were on their way to the capital ; and at daybreak
one morning the five schooners that formed the fleet of
Tonga, led by the Toafa Haamea flying the royal standard,
made their appearance in the passage.
Strange are the uses of flattery ! I had occasion to see
the king alone a few days after his arrival. He was at
his best when seen informally, and I generally found my
way to his room unannounced, leaving — if the conversa
tion was to be of a private nature — a trusty policeman,
sworn to Tukuaho's interest, to keep the sentry from play
ing eavesdropper at the corner of the Palace verandah.
The room was empty, and hearing voices from the back-
verandah, I reconnoitred from the screen of an oleander-
bush. The old man was sitting cross-legged between two
burly native carpenters, and was trying with his tremulous
hands to shave down an axe-haft to fit the steel head,
discoursing to his companions of his ancient prowess in
their craft. They meanwhile watched his nerveless efforts
with affected admiration, looking like schoolboys who are
taking their first lesson in tying flies from the village
poacher. At last the king flung his knife and axe-haft
petulantly aside, saying, " What has come to me ? You
do it." A burly courtier took up the tool with a silly
smile. For him the job was the work of a moment ; but
as the knife neared the wood his hand shook so that not a

THE USES OF FLATTERY. 243
single shaving curled off. He kept up the farce until the
king snatched the tool from him with a good-humoured
laugh, saying, " You're worse than I am ! " I do not know
whether that axe was ever finished, because in the laugh
that followed I was seen and recognised, and the carpen
ters disappeared. This was delicate flattery, for besides
his prowess in battle and on the sea Tubou was most
famous for his skill in carpentry, and in Tonga the carpen
ter enjoys the same consideration as the artist in Europe.
In the South Seas imitation is not always the sincerest
flattery. Some years ago I was walking with Roko Tui
Nandronga on an impassable goat-path, which he dignified
with the title of "Government road." We had to pass
along a steep descent of red clay, ice-slippery with the
night's rain. The Roko was followed by a dozen or so of
his retainers in single file. Half-way down the hill the
chief slipped and fell flat on his back with a loud shout,
and almost simultaneously every one of his followers did
the same, leaving me standing alone. When they got up,
with their clean white sulus bedaubed with red mud, they
pretended one and all not to have seen the chief's fall, and
for the next ten minutes they discoursed to each other
of the exact cause of their tumble. One knew from the
first that he would fall, another had a sore toe, and so on.
Of course the chief knew perfectly well that the falls
were intentional, as did each one of his followers ; but the
act has become conventional, and so they all play their
proper parts in the farce. Can we, who limp in imitation
of a personage's deformity, or who wore crinolines which
were designed to conceal a personage's misfortune, afford
to laugh at them ?

244 INCUBATION.
Hardly had the king returned when a new task was
thrust upon my collar-galled shoulders. The contractor
for the tax-copra, to whom I have before alluded, brought
an action against the Government in the High Commis
sioner's Court to recover damages for the losses he had
sustained through over-estimating the amount of copra
the taxpayers would bring in. To the Tongans, knowing
nothing of civil jurisdiction, the position of defendant in
a court of law has mysterious terrors. " Here," they said,
" is the fruit of this new Government ! We are to be
haled to court and punished for the sins of Tukuaho and
his foreign adviser. We shall be fined, and then a man-
of-war will come and perhaps seize the country." There
being no counsel within reach, I had to conduct the case
in person. I felt sure enough of my ground to promise
the king a victory, or at least that, in the event of defeat,
I would myself pay whatever damages were given against
us ; and this confident assurance went far to dispel his
alarm : but the case occupied seventeen precious days at
a time when they could least be spared. Yet our victory
afterwards proved to be almost worth the waste of time,
for the fickle mind of the Tongans leans ever to the win
ning side, and our contractor unwittingly gained us many
adherents in Parliament.
The Free Church ministers, aghast no doubt at the
portent of the election of four Wesleyans to represent
Nukualofa, now shot their last bolt. They began to
preach against me in the pulpit. Early one Monday
morning a letter written in Fijian was handed to me
with great secrecy by a mounted messenger from Hihifo,
who had followed me about until he found me alone. It

AN ATTACK FROM THE PULPIT. 245
was from an old Fijian friend of mine, who wrote to tell
me that in two pulpits at least I had been the text for
the sermon of the previous day. One preacher, after
describing the distrust with which my arrival had in
spired him, said, "We hear a great deal about stealing
and embezzlement. What ? Do foreigners never steal ?
This one who guides our Government has stolen 7000
dollars from the Treasury, and who knows how much
more of our money he will take ? In the sermon of the
other there was a passage not less startling. " When the
theft became known the foreigner went to Tukuaho and
said, ' Who told the people this ? ' And Tukuaho said,
' It was Sateki. You know his way : let a matter be
ever so secret, Sateki will find it out.' Hearing this the
foreigner was silent and cast down."
I put the matter in Tukuaho's hands. The police made
inquiries, and traced the story to its source in the fertile
brain of the first preacher. The Cabinet decided that
policy demanded a prosecution for slander, but that if the
man was convicted I might obtain a pardon for him from
the king. This course was taken. The incident was in
structive in the light it threw upon the estimation in
which Europeans are held in Tonga. No calumny against
them is thought too gross to be ridiculous. The respon
sibility for such a state of things must rest upon those
Europeans — missionaries as well as laymen — who have
stooped to defame one another to the natives.
The High Commissioner, in H.M.S. Cordelia, now
appeared upon the scene. It chanced that the gunboat
Goldfinch, bound from Rarotonga to Fiji, had put in on the
preceding day in search of coal, knowing nothing of the

246 INCUBATION.
Cordelia's visit. Tongans never admit coincidences. I
was asked for explanations and gave them, but my ques
tioners shook their heads gravely, and spread it abroad that
the gunboat had been sent by the High Commissioner
to prepare his way, but that for his own purposes "the
expounder" had chosen to shroud the truth in mystery.
Since this self-deception was more likely to do good
than harm, I made no effort to belittle the importance of
Sir John Thurston's visit. The king received him with
effusion, and had evidently lost all uneasiness about the
ulterior objects of his coming. An amendment to the
treaty between Great Britain and Tonga was to be signed,
and I found myself in the odd position of representing a
foreign Government in negotiations with my chief — being,
in fact, at the same time an officer in the English and the
Tongan services. The presence of the Cordelia had a
curious effect upon my relations with the king and my
colleagues. They seemed suddenly to remember that I
was not one of them, and the old confidence between us
gave place to an almost imperceptible constraint, which,
as soon as the ship sailed, disappeared as suddenly as it
had come. To Sir John Thurston, who remembered the
anxieties that had beset him a year before, the visit must
have brought that satisfaction which is the reward of
every one who, having chosen one of two opposite courses,
finds that it was the wisest as well as the most courageous.

247

XVI.
LORDS AND COMMONS IN COUNCIL.
The Ministry were at last in a position to fix the day for
the making of history. The Code was drafted, the repre
sentatives of the people were all duly elected, the new
uniforms had come from a Sydney tailor, and the store on
the wharf was piled high with sacks of provisions and
cases of strong liquors, upon which the fate of the Min
istry mainly depended, since legislators cannot be com
plaisant on empty stomachs. In this again I was com
pelled to recognise the master mind of the late Premier.
It may be inconvenient to force upon the Ministry the task
of catering for the parliamentary table, but so long as one
has to reckon with the physiological fact that the road to
a man's heart is clown his throat, the arrangement gives a
Government of epicurean tendencies an immense advan
tage over the Opposition.
The King's Guards, the band, the College students, and
the clerks of the House had all undergone rehearsals :
there remained but one important function before the Par
liament was ready for the business of the country. Wait-

248

LORDS AND COMMONS IN COUNCIL.

resses had to be selected for the dining-table of the House.
Kubu invited me to form one of the committee charged
with the delicate duty of selecting a band of twenty from
among the competitors. We took our seats at the long
table in the hall, and sternly ordered the candidates to
be brought before us. A clerk with the instruments of
his trade sat beside us, to give an air of formality to
the proceedings. "Two things are necessary," I heard it
whispered ; " they must be comely, and they must be

intelligent. Who will eat if they
be ugly ? and stupid women will break
the plates." Then from the door that led kitchenwards
twenty damsels sidled in and sat down on the lon°-
form facing us. Some sucked their fingers in bashful-
ness ; a few looked shyly defiant ; the majority gigo-led.
None of them looked as if they would break plates, but
several fell short, very far short, of the first require
ment. One damsel in particular had been so harshly
treated by Nature that I whispered my doubts to my

THE SPEECH FROM THE THRONE. 249
neighbour. "It is true," he answered, "but we can
never reject her for such a reason. She would die of
shame. The other girls would cast it in their teeth." So
they were all taken and divided into watches under the
leadership of matrons of experience, — four to the kitchen,
and eight to each of the tables destined to accommodate
the Lords and Commons. Those who had never waited
at table before were ordered to take lessons in the houses
of the missionaries ; and Joe, the captain of the Kumeti,
was appointed head steward and keeper of the spirit-
room, because strong liquors were known to disagree with
him. At last the contingent from the distant Niuas arrived,
and we became anxious that the opening of Parliament,
already delayed three weeks beyond the appointed time,
should take place without further delay. Rumour had
been busy on the beach. The king, it was said, would not
open Parliament until the High Commissioner had left :
the Government were afraid to face the Vavau contingent
in their present frame of mind. The former rumour de
termined us to fix the opening ceremony a day or two
before H.M.S. Cordelia left. The king made no diffi
culties; and the last week of preparation was spent in
meetings of the Cabinet and Privy Council, in final re
hearsal, and in providing with open-handed liberality for
the creature comforts of the Opposition.
There was but one hitch in the arrangements. We had
prepared the King's Speech with some care. The only
allusion to the political events of the recess was a short
sentence, " You all know that I have lately dismissed my
Premier, and have appointed a Tongan in his stead." The

250

LORDS AND COMMONS IN COUNCIL.

Speech had been copied out and submitted to the king ;
for several days we heard no more of it. Half afraid that
our opponents would contrive to see it and endeavour to
have it altered, at the last moment I insisted upon Tukuaho
asking for it back. After some delay it was produced —
in another handwriting as I expected. The passage about
Mr Baker had been so altered as to convey an untrue and
improper meaning. The handwriting was Sateki's, but he
seems to have been merely the amanuensis. Eather than
that it should stand in its present form, I took the Speech
to the king. He was evidently expecting a remonstrance,

The faint tap of the gatu mallets:

and showed in his tone that he was on the defensive.
" But why allude to the past ? " I asked.
"Was it I who did so?" he said. Then apparently
satisfied with having his advantage, he laughed, and
readily allowed me to expunge the whole passage.
The great day dawned cloudless and drowsy. The hum
of the fleecy breakers on the distant reef, the faint tap of
the gatu mallets, vaguely suggested a reverie in a hammock
and the unsubstantial folds of the vala ; but native «ar-
ments were to-day forbidden, for Parliaments in civilised

SION A CENTURY AGO. 251
lands are not opened in bare legs save in the imagination
of Carlyle.
For days past the stores on the beach have done a
spirited trade in trousers, coats, and shoes — not the sort
of shoes that may be bought by the dozen at any boot
maker's, but majestic fabrics of leather, built expressly for
the opening of South Sea Parliaments, upon a special last
14 inches long by 8 or 9 broad. Such shoes as these
cannot be lightly used. And so the spiritual guides of the
people, when teaching that no self-respecting Tongan
should attend church without black coat and trousers,
admitted the religious principle that a man might work
out his salvation in bare feet, and the shoes were relegated
to the meetings of Parliament.
The scene outside is very picturesque. It is high tide,
and the sea laps to the very edge of the short grass that
carpets the approach to the white Parliament House.
The tall spars of the Cordelia tower above the spires of
the miniature palace. The College students, dressed in
white, are drawn up in two lines, so as to form a lane
from the palace to the doors. The band and guard of
honour look undeniably smart, both in their bearing and
the polish of their accoutrements. It is a strange con
trast with the same scene as it is described by Labil
lardiere in 1791, exactly a century ago, when Mumui held
his faikava on Sion Hill, now crowned with a church, but
then with those twenty-four funny little huts into each of
which a Cabinet Minister crawled to sleep off the effects
of the Court bowl. Those were dark days before the lotu
had illumined the minds of men, and most of the actors
in to-day's scene, booted and be -trousered, full of the

252 LORDS AND COMMONS IN COUNCIL.
pride of progress and the odium theologicum, are heartily
ashamed of their forefathers. Truly missionary enter
prise has worked great changes.
The House was filled long before the appointed hour.
Tukuaho had issued invitations to most of the traders.
Native ladies of rank, and a few of the chiefs who held
no seat, were accommodated below the gangway : men
and women of every shade of colour filled the benches in
front of them. It is an anxious moment for the newly-
appointed Sergeant-at-Arms, Kubu's brother, Kalauta, who
is charged with the duty of finding room for every one.
The " Eepresentatives of the People " (as the Constitution
calls them) are packed into the benches on the right side
of the House above the gangway ; the Nobles on the left
behind the Treasury bench, where sit the Cabinet Minis
ters, headed by Goschen, who, in a naval frock-coat and
check trousers, gives a tone of elegance to the whole
Ministry. The next front bench has with difficulty been
reserved for the suite of the High Commissioner, whose
British uniforms are thrown into shade by the magenta
satin gowns that clothe the portly forms of the Princesses
Charlotte and Anna Jane behind them. On the crimson
dais is the king's gilt chair ; and beside it the royal crown,
the heaviest in the world, reclines upon its cushion sup
ported by a three-legged table. The crown was bought
by the late Premier from some merchants in Sydney, and,
but for the verdigris in the flutings, might very well pass
for gold.
The suspense is broken at last by the rattle of saluting
arms, and the blare of the Tongan National Anthem.
Kalauta shouts " Koe Tu'i ! " and we all rise as the king

THE ROYAL ENTRY.

106

strides into the room soberly clad, almost erect for all his
ninety years, the one dignified figure in all this motley
assembly of his subjects. A sovereign who wields
absolute power may well tire of pomp and circumstance
after his ninetieth year. He is followed by his aides-de
camp, George Finau, dressed in the uniform of a British

,. -'. - •^."KrSS^Vf-iV';-' r-i,- -.1*^

¦Koe Tu'if"

admiral, and Taufaahau in that of a colonel of the Colonial
Defence Forces. As the king takes his seat Taufaahau
steps forward and unrolls the Speech from the Throne.
May I be acquitted of the charge of disrespect to a reign
ing monarch if I remark that King George Tubou IL,
when still Taufaahau and aide-de-camp to his great-grand-

254 LORDS AND COMMONS IN COUNCIL.
father, did not read well. The Speech consisted of the
usual Ministerial platitudes, congratulations upon "our
cordial relations with the other Powers," and promises for
the future. The allusion to the past was very brief. He,
the king, gave thanks to God that these clouds were hap
pily dispersed, and left it to the Legislature to provide for
the future by revising all the laws and regulating finance.
Convinced that their efforts in pursuit of civilisation
would not be crowned with complete success until they
mastered another language besides their own, and that
national prosperity could not be assured unless the popu
lation ceased to decrease, he had provided them with a
schoolmaster for their minds and a doctor for their bodies.
In conclusion, he commended them to God, and trusted
that there would be no more dissension between the
Churches — the expectation which, in the present temper
of the missionaries, is, of all those contained in the Royal
Speech, the least likely to be realised. The king inter
rupted the Speech twice, telling the reader impatiently
to speak up.
It had been intended to unveil a picture of the king,
but almost before Taufaahau had articulated the closing
words, his Majesty rose and strode out as he had come,
with the air of a man who has loyally discharged an irk
some duty. The band dash recklessly into the triumphal
march from Tannhauser, struggle awhile, and arrive breath
less at the end within a bar or two of one another.
The senators streamed away to their quarters at Pangai
to disrobe ; the guests strolled home to doff their finery.
The morning had been devoted to propriety ; pleasure was
now to have its turn. In half an hour not a black coat

FESTIVALS ANCIENT AND MODERN.

255

was to be seen. Sacrifice had been made on the altar of
the god Civilisation : Parliament was now to be opened
after the custom of their despised ancestors. Groups
formed wherever a tree-top east a patch of shade. Strings
of men, swinging their limbs with the glorious freedom of

Portrait of King George Tttbou.
trouserless man, filed up and flung their burdens of pig
and yam upon an ever-increasing heap, while a claque of
aged men shouted approval. Roast-pig scents the hot air.
A grave and melancholy matabule is counting pigs in a
monotonous chant, and each successive decimal evokes

256 LORDS AND COMMONS IN COUNCIL.
loud applause. In ten minutes the members of both
Houses will be pig-smeared to the elbows. Let them be
happy in their own way to-day, for the morrow will bring
debates, shoes, and the knife and fork.
At ten o'clock next morning H.M.S. Cordelia steamed
through the hazy reef as the great wooden drum announced
that the business of the country was to begin. The House
had been cleared for action. On the dais the throne had
been replaced by the Speaker's chair ; and a long table, at
which sat four clerks of the Parliament, filled the place of
the visitors' benches. Two sentries of the Guards and four
policemen drawn up at the door saluted as we went in.
The members of both Houses were in their places — Nobles
on the right and Commons on the left of the chair. The
Cabinet had a bench to themselves among the Nobles, and
below them sat the governors of districts — sixty-eight
members in all, counting myself. So long as I continued
to hold the portfolio of Fakahinohino I had a seat ex officio
as a member of the Upper House.
For twelve minutes not a word is spoken. We are
waiting for the Speaker. When the delay has become
unbearable a messenger is sent to him ; for though Tungi
had been in sight when we came in, he suffers so much
from asthma that he has to rest to recover breath at every
few yards of the road. Some moments later there is a
movement behind the dais-screen. Claud, Sero-eant-at-
Arms, clatters in and cries, " Koe Sea ! " (The Chair !) We
all rise. Tungi climbs the dais panting, but with the de
liberate air of a man who knows his business ; for he held
his office through two at least of Mr Baker's Parliaments
and is not in the least collar-shy like the rest of us. He

MEMBERS TAKE THE OATH.

257

is, moreover, held in awe by the Commons, for "Tungi
ne montre jamais le fond du sac," as one of the French
priests said of him. He is followed by Mr W  , the
Pontifex Maximus of Tonga, clad in decent black, and
wearing an expression of deprecating piety. He is to
earn to-day his stipend as Royal Chaplain, an item that
has received the anxious atten
tion of the Cabinet, to whom
a retrenchment of £100 a-year
is of importance. He gives out
a hymn, the member for Vavau,
who forms the choir, bellows the
tune, while the rest follow him
two octaves lower pianissimo.
The House shades its eyes with
its hand, while the prelate wres
tles in prayer and discreetly
withdraws. There is a pause.
Then Mataka, the chief clerk
(who, by the way, is still sup
posed to be undergoing imprison
ment for flirting with the fair
Lobase), calls the roll. The new
members are now to take the
oath. The ceremony is imposing
until the turn of the two Roman Catholic members
arrives. They object to be sworn upon the Protestant
Bible, and a clerk runs in haste for a version of the Bible
translated into Tongan by the Roman Catholics. He
returns with a thick shiny-covered book, which the two
members kiss cheerfully. I examined it afterwards, and
E

The clerk of the Parliament.

258 LORDS AND COMMONS IN COUNCIL.
found it to be a French and English dictionary. The
oath taken contained the words, " I swear . . . that I
will to the utmost of my power discharge my duty as a
member of the Legislative Assembly "—a phrase that we
had cause to remember, since a majority of the Commons
held that to discharge their duty as representatives meant
opposition to the Government, whether right or wrong,
upon every question submitted to them.
We were anxious not to afford the Vavau contingent an
opportunity for making an attack upon the Government
until we had had time to win the confidence of the other
members, and we therefore proposed that the duty of
drafting an Address in reply should be relegated to a
Committee of six, selected from the Lords and Commons
in equal numbers. As scarcely three members in the
House knew what an Address in reply was, it was at once
suggested by the nominated members that the Cabinet
should stay to help them, while the rest of the House
adjourned. With an air of intense relief the members
trooped out to smoke sulukas in the shade. The Select
Committee conversed in knots, leaving the draft to Tu
kuaho and myself. My draft was couched in terms of
excessive politeness, and read a little flat and colourless, —
a defect clue as much to my ignorance of the higher forms
of the language as to my anxiety not to introduce contro
versial matter. It was handed to Tukuaho as a skeleton
to work upon, and it came forth glorified, bristling with
expressions of gratitude of which I had never dreamed.
It was unanimously adopted by the Committee. The
Sergeant-at-Arms recalled the House by shouting to the
members from the doorstep. The Address was read. At

THE PROFESSOR QUESTION. 259
the words, " We feel confident that God will avert religious
strife, for He is the God of peace," I saw a cynical smile
curl the lips of Hoho the Romanist, who has a stronger
sense of humour than the others who are in the secret of
the Mission politics.
The Address had been voted, and we were congratulating
ourselves that the Vavau party had decided to reserve
their grievances for a more fitting opportunity, when we
discovered Manase, the Governor of Vavau, upon his feet,
wearing his usual expression of apostolic saintliness, but
labouring under some mental excitement. We had not
expected an attack from this quarter, for it had doubtless
been conveyed to Manase that there was a proposal before
the Cabinet to impeach him for disaffection. Instigated
by Mr W  , the disappointed schoolmaster, he rushes
blindly on his doom. "The Address is good," he says,
" with one exception. Why was a schoolmaster ap
pointed without consulting the wishes of Vavau ? " Three
Cabinet Ministers rise at once. "Is it becoming," asks
the Auditor-General, " in a governor appointed by the
king to question his Majesty's action ? " The House
murmurs. The unfortunate Manase would explain ; but
the House wants no explanation, and he has to sit down,
crushed and humbled. Tukuaho whispers to me that it
is a good opportunity to reassure the House as to the
truth of a rumour that Mr H  , the College master
appointed by the Government, is a failautohi and not a
faiako. As the words both mean "school-teacher," it
seems to my untutored ear to be a distinction without
a difference, and I fail to grasp the full significance
of the rumour. In the whispered explanation that

260 LORDS AND COMMONS IN COUNCIL.
follows it is borne in upon me that faiako has the
restrictive meaning of professor, and that Mr H  's
enemies have put it abroad that he is a mere school
master and no professor. I am able to reassure the
House on this point with a clear conscience, on the
authority of no less a personage than the Minister of
Education of New Zealand.
By the time the Address had been despatched to the
king by the hands of the chief clerk the wooden drum had
begun to beat. Aged Nobles, whose eyes had been getting
dim, and whose heads had fallen forwards, started and
straightway threw off twenty years of their burden of life.
The whole House fixed its gaze upon the clock. It was the
dinner-hour, and the Speaker, with an indulgent smile,
adjourned the House. A stream of black-coated legislators
hobbled to a long white building a few yards away, and
besieged the doors as if it were the pit entrance to a
theatre. A bolt was drawn, and both Houses surged
inwards. There were two long tables, each accommo
dating forty guests, — the one reserved for the Lords, and
the other for the Commons. The ministering damsels
were ordered to appear in a white uniform, without lace
or other ornaments. They had treated the order with the
scorn it deserved. The ox-eyed Sau, breathing propriety
with every sigh, was dressed in white satin trimmed with
furniture lace, and had a crimson sash tied coquettishly
round her waist; the demure Vika — demure only in the
presence of her elders — had broken out in bugles of jet
and a cincture of native cloth. The trader who supplied
her striped vala would be sold out of that pattern on the
morrow, for the fashion in Tonga is set by the pretty

ONE OF THE ELECT.

261

One of the elect.

262 LORDS AND COMMONS IN COUNCIL.
girls. When not languidly handing plates these damsels
whispered and giggled in the windows, and hid their
blushes on each other's glistening shoulders.
The morning sitting has induced a remarkable appetite.
The dinner on the first day numbered some seventeen
courses of solid viands, yet scarce a plate goes away with
enough upon it to indicate its contents. It is right to
say, however, that this scale of entertainment is not main
tained throughout the session. As the days went on,
course after course fell away as the supplies in the store
house diminished. The Lords are allowed a glass of sherry
and a glass of beer each, the Cabinet Ministers half a
tumbler of rum in addition ; the Commons have to content
themselves with beer only. At last the Chaplain hammers
on the table with his knife-handle and says grace, and
the places of the legislators are taken by as many of the
Civil servants as can muster trousers and shoes. There
follows a fatal half hour, during which the fell effects of
such a dinner become apparent. When the bell rings
members sink into their places, glare determinedly at the
ceiling for a few moments, and lapse into unconsciousness.
The Sergeant-at-Arms, having drunk neither ele nor lamu,
rises and creeps stealthily towards the Lords. Such of
the members as still retain consciousness crane their necks
in breathless excitement. He is stalking Havea, Lord of
Haapai. Catlike he creeps on, gold-mounted scabbard in
hand, poises the weapon over the bowed head, and — Havea
starts up with an exclamation that I could translate
exactly, though I never heard it before. The House in
dulges in a well-bred titter. Meanwhile the clerks are
looking round the House, and making frequent entries in

THE LORDS AWAKENER.

263

a book. It is the book of the Sleeping. I have since
heard Hoho, the Roman Catholic member, declare that the
insertion of his name was a malicious libel. His lotu, he
said, obliged him to pray at noon, and to pray he had to
close his eyes. The clerk retorted that if he could not
begin his prayers with a hymn, as is the usage of any
respectable sect, his name must be recorded in the book.
After -experience taught us that the morning was more

J.i/.C.

The Sergeant-at-Arms creeps stealthily towards tlie Lords''

suitable for Committees, and the afternoon for third read
ings, for during a third reading even the Sergeant-at-Arms
would close his eyes. The monotonous reading of the
Premier has long ago lulled the most active of the Opposi
tion to sleep. When the voice becomes silent the Speaker
thunders out the question, eyelids tremble open, and hands
go up. " Those who are against the motion will hold up
their hands," but the eyelids have all closed again, and the

264 LORDS AND COMMONS IN COUNCIL.
bill defining the procedure of the courts becomes law. It
is high time to adjourn.
The second day brought a storm from an unexpected
quarter. This bolt from the blue came from the Commons,
who are possessed with a burning zeal for debate, and
have not had time to appreciate the limits of their duties.
The chief business of the session being to enact a com
plete code, and to sweep away all former enactments, time
is valuable, and the Premier expresses the hope that the
House will not waste it in opposing such parts of the code
as are transcribed from the Constitution, and are neces
sary only for completeness. " The king is supreme over
all the chiefs and people, but his Ministers are alone
responsible for good government." Rises Hoho, repre
sentative of a Eonian Catholic constituency, lately a lead
ing schoolmaster and a light of intellect and culture,
who resigned his school in order to qualify as a repre
sentative of the people. Tall, attenuated, and Mephisto-
pheliail, he looks more like a Spaniard than a Tongan.
With palms turned outwards and uplifted shoulders, he
has even caught the Latin gestures. "Why," he asks,
" should the king be supreme, and why should his Min
isters be responsible?" He for one can never vote for
such a measure. The House snorts impatiently. The
Premier points out that the words are transcribed from
the Constitution, and that Hoho should reserve his steel.
Hoho retorts that he resigned his post as schoolmaster
to make himself eligible for election ; that he has taken a
solemn oath to do his duty to the best of his ability;
and that if he did not oppose this measure he would
not be doing his duty. At this all the members with

THE UPPER HOUSE IS INSULTED. 265
a reputation for intelligence start up, slap their chests,
and quote the terms of their oath. The Sergeant-at-Arms
rages up and down, calling upon all but Wiliame to sit
down. William is understood to say that he respects
the terms of his oath, but defers to the wisdom of the
Nobles. Hoho springs to his feet with a sense of having
the whole Catholic hierarchy at his back, and passionately
exclaims that if comparisons are to be made between
the two sides of the House, he thinks he knows on
which side wisdom will be found. There is a solemn
hush. Aged noblemen gasp and make a mute appeal
to the Speaker, who rises in agitation. " Never in the
whole course of his parliamentary experience had such
a terrible insult been offered to the chiefs of the land.
That a commoner, a vile commoner, who after all was
only there to listen to the words of his superiors, should
have so dared to throw decency to the winds, was un
known in the history of their country. But, thank
heaven, he was there to deal with such cases." Then
waving his arm in the direction of the jail he continued,
"Without stand the dark cells, within the Sergeant-at-
Arms. To the cells with the low-born ! "
The oration lasted many minutes, during which the
low-born sat with bowed head until the storm should
pass over him. The Nobles thanked the Speaker with
their eyes ; there was an awkward pause. The Premier,
who had been looking very uncomfortable during this
exposition of the liberty of speech about which the
Government organ had been singing so joyously of late,
filled the breach by reading the next section. But it
was evident that another storm was brewing, for when

266 LORDS AND COMMONS IN COUNCIL.
the question was put not one of the Commons would
vote. A message was accordingly conveyed to the
Speaker from the Treasury bench that he should ad
journ the House. As the author of the mischief stalked
out a group at the door cried derisively, " Go thou with
the priest to France." In the evening poor Tukuaho
received an indignant protest from the resident priest,
hinting that the consequences would be serious for Tonga
if any rumour of this national insult should reach the
ears of the Government of the great Republic.
A mild reproof must have been conveyed to Tungi
before the morning sitting, for he rises after prayers to
apologise to the Commons for the strength of his language
over-night. They look pleased. He goes on to remind
them of the severe provocation he had received, and as
the full magnitude of the insult is borne in upon him,
he lets fly again, and gives the Commons a more furious
lashing than in the speech for which he rose to apologise.
The Ministers cover their faces, and the Commons look
sulky. The Premier implores the House to regard the
incident as closed, and to believe that they have the
fullest liberty of speech — in short, not to mind what
his father says. After a long silence Vili Tai, member
for Nukualofa, rises. His heart is subdued by fear:
in spite of his oath he no longer dares to speak. The
Commons sadly shake their heads.
Some unwritten standing orders appear to have sur
vived from Mr Baker's last Parliament three years ago.
Kubu is an authority upon these, for he then held the
influential post of Sergeant-at-Arms, now occupied by his
brother Claude. When the House goes into Committee

CATCHING THE SERGEANT'S SWORD. 267
after the second reading, the Speaker vacates the chair
and takes part in the debate as an ordinary member
of the Upper House. But the most important of these
rules is that, until the House is in Committee, no one
but a Cabinet Minister may speak more than once upon a
measure. In Committee no restriction is exercised but
that very necessary one of preventing more than one
member from speaking at a time. The Sergeant-at-Arms
is the arbiter between rival claimants to be heard ; for
the gold-hilted sword is no idle tapper of sleepy heads,
— it imperiously indicates the favoured member who may
address the House. In Tonga one does not catch the
Speaker's eye — one catches the Sergeant's sword.
Feeling certain that the Commons, however sulky, will
not be able to resist the temptation of the freedom of
debate permitted in Committee, I move the election of
a Chairman of Committees. Four candidates, whom eti
quette requires to be reluctant, are put forward, and Ata,
Lord of Hihifo is elected. As I expected, the Commons
immediately forget their wounded pride in the excite
ment of passionate debate. At the conclusion of each
speech half a dozen members are discovered standing
and talking at once, while the rest of the House calls
" Order." Each speaker is trying to impress the Sergeant-
at-Arms with his claim to be first heard. That officer
strides into the middle of the floor and points his dicta
torial sword at the member who has found favour. The
others perforce sit down till their turn comes. These
standing orders were as useful to the Government as
a closure. Often when time was short, and we were
sure of the support of a majority, we relentlessly refused

268 LORDS AND COMMONS IN COUNCIL.
to move that the Speaker do vacate the chair, and were
deaf to the entreaties of members who had discharged
one wordy flood and longed for a Committee of the House
to reopen the sluice-gates of their eloquence.
The best speakers in the House were Manase (not the
Governor of that name) and Sovea of Vavau. The former
was nervous, impulsive, and given to the display of
rhetorical fireworks ; the latter, a cool keen debater,
with a logical mind and an inconvenient habit of asking
questions. He had served through the last Parliament,
and was credited with knowing all the weak spots in
the Government armour. In person he was an insignifi
cant little man, disfigured by bad teeth. He sat by him
self at the extreme end of the House, and a compact
body of members from Vavau and Haapai, his admirers,
separated him from the rest of the Commons. He proved
to be a far more dangerous opponent than the generous
Manase, whom we soon won over to our cause. The
chief grievance of the Vavau contingent was the pre
dominance of Tongatabu chiefs in the Cabinet, and the
favour which the present Cabinet were alleged to show
to the Wesleyans. Their discontent had been fostered
by the traders of Vavau, who, in the hope of effecting
a reduction in the Customs tariff, had persuaded them
that the Government was really in the hands, not of
Tongans, but of C  and myself, and that if there
were no Customs the prices of all important articles
would be lowered. The king had announced that he
did not wish any revision of the Constitution to be dis
cussed this session. Their mouths were therefore closed
in respect of their principal grievance, and they were

THE WESLEYAN MEMBERS. 269
compelled to reserve their main attack for the discussion
of the tariff. The four Wesleyan members were a trial
to us. They seemed to believe that they had a monopoly
of intelligence as well as of independence of character.
This was probably a natural effect of exile for conscience'
sake and the triumph of the cause for which they suffered.
The worst of these was Josaia, the head tutor at the
Wesleyan College. Teaching had become so much a
habit with him, that he spoke only to pour upon the
House the stores of his cultured mind. The House was
not grateful, and but for the standing order already
alluded to, I fear that Josaia would have been held to
deserve the fate of Socrates, and for the same reason.
Wiliame Maealiuaki was less didactic and more sensible,
but he had long been in the hands of the trading com
munity, and had a mission to get the Customs tariff
reduced. In other respects he was a supporter of the
Government. Vili Tai was cursed with a sensitive con
science, which took him by the throat whenever he was
going to vote in accordance with his better judgment,
— at least that is what he told us. He has an ominously
long upper lip, and looks altogether like a retired Non
conformist grocer of truculent respectability. Upon Vili
Tai's conscience assaults of reason beat in impotence.
We could only beg him earnestly to make a second and
more careful diagnosis of his symptoms before finally
committing himself to the cause of the Opposition.
The chapter relating to the Executive was passed with
out serious opposition. " The Premier shall provide ac
commodation for the members of the Legislative As
sembly," &c. Tuuhetoka rises with troubled face. "It

270 LORDS AND COMMONS IN COUNCIL.
is a good law, but this year it was not obeyed. When
I came to Haapai on my way hither I wandered hungry
up and down the beach, and slept on the cold sands, and
 (laughter). There is nothing to laugh at. I was
 " He got no further. The Speaker waved his
hand, the gold-hilted sword was raised, and he sat down
and poured the rest of his story into the sympathetic
ear of the member next to him.
Tukuaho must have got through a great deal of work
in propitiating the Opposition over the kava-bowl at night,
for, on the whole, there was great good sense and intelli
gence shown throughout the debates of the first few days.
The idea of civil procedure was, it is true, rather hard
to convey to their understanding, Hitherto all injuries,
whether malicious or accidental, were treated as criminal
offences. There was also a haziness regarding the defini
tion of larceny ; for the Tongan magistrates had been
unaccustomed to distinguish between the taking of pro
perty dishonestly, and property removed by a person who
honestly believes that it lawfully belongs to him. My
draft Code, after the Indian Penal Code, upon which it
was founded, was interspersed with frequent illustrations
of the law in operation, and these illustrations had an
unfortunate tendency to evoke personal reminiscences,
so that the House wandered away into the bypaths of
anecdote, and much precious time was wasted. The errors
in translation from my draft were not very numerous, for
Tukuaho professed to have asked me the meaning of all
the passages that were not absolutely clear to him when
he revised my draft. A somewhat remarkable provision
was, however, nearly enacted in respect of Quakers or

THE CURSE PRESCRIBED FOR QUAKERS. 271
other persons who could not properly be sworn when
called as witnesses. I knew of no word that signified
" affirmation " as distinguished from oath (fuakava). I
endeavoured to explain to Tukuaho that the word required
had a meaning akin to oath but fell short of it. After
mature thought he declared that talatukii had the exact
meaning required. Talatukii was accordingly printed in
the draft. An expression of surprise and inquiry crossed
the faces of the more intelligent of the Commons, and
Sovea rose to inquire from the fakahinohino why Quakers
should be permitted to talatukii in a court of law, and
who they were to do it to. On more exact inquiry, I
learned that the word talatukii means to curse — to use
imprecations so deadly and horrible, that the person
against whom they were directed usually died from the
effect ; and this was the conduct prescribed by my Code
for Quakers in the witness-box !
In Titipu, if Mr Gilbert is to be taken seriously, flirting
is punishable with death ; in Tonga the penalty is penal
servitude. Whether the severity of the punishment or
the frailty of human nature is to blame for the prevalence
of this crime I know not, but whatever be the cause, the
police are so actively engaged in hunting clown delinquents
that they have neither time nor inclination to attend
to burglaries, thefts, or other less interesting offences.
Once before I had tried to reform the practice in this re
spect, by inserting in the instructions to the police an
injunction to leave prosecutions of this nature to the in
jured parties. The Cabinet agreed with me, but, as I have
already related, a deputation of policemen, headed by the
grey - headed Inspector, subsequently waited upon the

272 LORDS AND COMMONS IN COUNCIL.
Premier to implore him to reflect before committing him
self to an innovation that would not only destroy the
traditions of the "Force," but would also without doubt
call down upon his country the divine wrath. At
Tukuaho's desire I had consented to shelve the question
until the meeting of Parliament, lest ill-conditioned per
sons might misrepresent our motives to the king. I was
therefore prepared for opposition, but having the support
of the Cabinet, I was determined to relieve the police
of this part of their duties, and to sacrifice the prison
labourers and the revenue in fines with which these pro
secutions annually provided the Government. The pro
posal evoked a passionate debate. Vili Tai opposed the
measure in a burst of fiery oratory. He fully believed
that it may suit Britain or France to regard flirting as an
offence against the individual, but in Tonga, at least, it
is a crime against the State. For have not the Tongans
solemnly dedicated their country to God ? Pointing to the
royal arms blazoned above the dais, he cried, " What other
nation has the right to that motto, ' God and Tonga are
my inheritance ' ? If you quote what is done in Bilitania,
I will quote you the motto of the nation." There was a
murmur of applause. It was in vain to point out that a
restriction of the functions of the police is not in itself
likely to call down the divine wrath. The reservoir of
Tongan eloquence had burst its banks, and cold common-
sense could never stem the flood. Another enthusiast
fixed a rapt and inspired gaze on the ceiling, and de
manded whether the House would dare to break its
faith with the Almighty. "It may be true that under
our present laws our country is becoming depopulated,

THE GREAT DEBATE ON FLIRTING. 273
but better we should perish from the face of the earth
than break our solemn covenant with God." William
Maealiuaki, who generally talks sense, reminds the
House that thirteen years ago a similar measure was
passed, and that within three months an epidemic
attacked the people, but when the measure was re
pealed the sickness abated. He only mentions the fact
without drawing any deduction, except that there is
room for belief that the Almighty does expect higher
things from Tonga than from other countries. A personal
element is imported by one of the Nobles, who remarks
that the law would be entirely unnecessary if it were
not for the professional bachelors, such as Moengan-
gongo, Kubu's brother, and Matealona, and half-a-dozen
others who sat among them. These unfortunates, having
no defence ready to meet this unprovoked attack, look
foolish. A fortnight after the session Moengangongo
espoused the ox-eyed waitress Sau, but whether in conse
quence of this public attack, or the young lady's charming
poses in the windows of the dining-room, has not as yet
transpired. Forced against our will to play the unwel
come part of " devil's advocate," we at last applied the
closure, and the votes were taken. Two of the Ministry,
Sateki and Kubu, voted against us. I was about to ex
plain to Kubu that one of the principles of party govern
ment was that the members of the Cabinet should act in
concert, and that, as he had promised to vote for this
measure, his attitude required explanation ; but he fore
stalled me by saying that during the debate his konisienisi
(conscience) had met him face to face, and that there
fore the terms of his oath compelled him to desert his
s

274 LORDS AND COMMONS IN COUNCIL.
party. The Government carried the motion by a bare
majority of two. That evening Mataka read it to the
king, sitting at the old man's feet. When the fateful
words were reached Tubou expressed his disapproval, and
declined to sign until it had been taken back to the House
for further discussion. The news leaked out, and at the
next division the Ministers were left alone. A Tongan
has no convictions that are not shared by his king.
These debates were useful to us, for they enabled us to
sift the dispositions of the members, and to gauge our
chances of overcoming opposition in the more important
debate on the Customs. As soon as our position seemed
sufficiently secure, we determined to skip the intermediate
part of the Code, and at once attack the chapter dealing
with the tariff. The announcement was made without
warning, so that we might hear the views of the members
themselves without prompting from the Europeans. I
told them that the Customs at present produced a revenue
of about £6000 a-year, which we could not afford to do
without unless the expenditure was considerably reduced ;
but that before proceeding further with the Code, we
must know the views of the House regarding the con
tinuance of the tute, as they called the collection of Cus
toms dues. If they refused to raise revenue by this
means, it would be a waste of time to pass an elaborate
Customs law. There was some whispering amongst the
Commons, and William rose to ask a question. If the
Customs were abolished, what would happen ? To this I
replied that the revenue must be raised by increased
direct taxation, or by a reduction of the expenditure by
one - third. Vili Tai wished to know whether it was

THE SELECT COMMITTEE. 275
true, as they had heard, that the tariff was heavier in
Tonga than in other countries, and that the most pros
perous countries owed their success to there being no
Customs at all ? I had a list of the ad valorem tariffs
showing that Tonga, with a duty of 10 per cent, levied a
lighter tax than New Zealand, Canada, Queensland, or
even Fiji. Then a member from Vavau rose to put the
all-important question whether, in the event of the aboli
tion of the Customs dues, the prices of calico and kerosene
would be lowered by the storekeepers, as the white men
had promised ? At this stage the Speaker joined in the
debate. He remembered the prices of such things before
there ever was a tariff, and he could assure the House
that the prices were not a farthing lower then. He could
tell them what the effect would be. The traders' profits
would be increased, but the Tongans would not be one
whit the better for it. When the question was put, the
House was unanimous in voting for a continuance of the
duties, provided that the laws relating to Customs were
translated so as to be intelligible to them. This proviso
enabled us to complete our victory. We asked the House
to nominate a committee of pundits to assist the Govern
ment in translating the mercantile laws, knowing full
well that we should thus convert our adversaries into
champions of a bill which they had themselves helped to
draft. William, Filimone, and Manase of Vavau were
obviously flattered at being singled out as the Govern
ment nominees for such a work. For the next fortnight
we met nightly at seven o'clock, and adjourned at two in
the morning, after submitting each clause of the law to
the most careful system of polishing by the entire com-

276 LORDS AND COMMONS IN COUNCIL.
mittee. Every half -hour during the sitting four convicts
entered with a full bowl of kava and retired with an
empty one, until the air was so charged with tobacco-
smoke that they were scarcely discernible. Hearing the
disputes over the meaning of every phrase and idiom, I
learned more Tongan during that fortnight than during
all the rest of the time I spent in the country.
The Government was pledged to the Chamber of Com
merce to introduce certain reductions in the tariff which
provided some rather vexatious duties on articles little
used. As soon as the debate was opened Hoho rose.
He for one fully approved of the principle of collecting
revenue by Customs dues, but he thought it became the
Government to be magnanimous, and not to press for
duties on the necessaries of life, as, for instance, red
wines. (Laughter, and a voice, "Drinking liquor is for
bidden.") Hoho stopped, disconcerted, and the Minister
of Police pointed an accusatory finger at him. " This
man," he said, "is speaking the words of the priests.
Who drinks red wine but the priests ? And yet he has
sworn to follow the dictates of his own conscience." Not
only did the House decline to lower the duty on claret,
but they showed a stubborn disinclination to listen to any
of the Government proposals for reduction. In vain we
told them that we were prepared to sacrifice revenue to
the extent of £400 a-year. The Europeans had overdone
their part in declaiming against the Customs, and the
natives, sore at having been made the victims of defective
arithmetic, were disinclined to vote for any proposal that
might appear to be concession to the agitation. The
Government was beaten on a division, and was regarded

HANSARD. 277
by Parliament as being in league with the traders, and by
the traders as being guilty of the blackest duplicity. The
Chamber of Commerce, indeed, with its dying breath de
manded from me why the Government, so ignominiously
beaten on so vital a point as the import duty on kerosene,
had not at once tendered their resignation.
The shipping laws were more intelligible to the House.
Many of them, as the owners or masters of small craft,
had had a bitter experience of the law regarding coasting
licences, and a strong party were in favour of exempting
craft owned by Tongans and used only as yachts from
the coasting dues paid by steamers and vessels plying
for hire. But the majority were against enacting any
thing that might be cast up against them as one-sided
legislation. Hansard, meanwhile, was growing to unmanageable
dimensions. The clerks took down every speech in
shorthand, and sat up till daylight night after night
transcribing their notes. Not the smallest spoken word
passed unrecorded. It was time for a brief holiday, for
the sick-list was heavy ; and many noblemen who could
take the air in native attire could not attend the House
until their feet had sufficiently recovered to encounter
again the penalties attaching to boots. The Speaker an
nounced a three days' holiday, and added that by special
arrangement the Government medical officer would pre
scribe gratis for all members in need of medical treat
ment. During the morning a dense crowd of legislators
besieged the dispensary. Within was the newly arrived
doctor, heated and gesticulating, trying to drive back the
mob of senators, who were all striving to describe in

278 LORDS AND COMMONS IN COUNCIL.
dumb-show the peculiar symptoms of stomach-ache from
generous living.
The debate upon the land question, scarcely less im
portant than the Customs, opened inauspiciously. Manase,
the orator, made a set speech upon the history of the land
laws of the country, incidentally alluding to the magnan
imity of the king. The House seems to be moved— per
haps by his eloquence. There is a long and ominous
silence. Then Niukabu, a noble of Vavau with a grey
moustache, rises to order. He has with difficulty con
tained himself, he says, during the last indecent speech.
What does Manase think ? Have the lords of Hahavea no
feelings ? Do they like to be reminded of the past ? The
three lords of Hahavea glare responsive at the ceiling. I
ask Kubu my neighbour what Manase has said to hurt
their feelings. He whispers that when the king conquered
them in the last war of 1853, contrary. to Tongan custom,
he restored their lands to them, and to speak of the king's
magnanimity recalls unpleasant memories. I mentally
resolve not to make even the most distant allusion to
Tongan history. In spite, however, of the temporary
gloom thrown over us by this incident, our pet land scheme
was passed with but slight alteration. In future a tax
payer who refused to pay his taxes was to lose his land.
I was absent from the second reading of the Minor
Offences Bill. When I came in the Premier, who is not
often moved to express himself strongly, was rating the
House in unmeasured terms. He had not believed, he
said, that the Legislative Council of Tonga could so far
forget its dignity as to indulge in such a disgraceful scene.
What would be said of Tonga if such a thing were known

A DISGRACEFUL SCENE. 279
outside the walls of that House ? What respect for Tonga
could any of the civilised nations retain if they heard of
this disgrace ? The Commons seemed quite overcome
with a sense of their guilt. " What has happened ? " I
whispered to Kubu. " A disgraceful thing." " But what ? "
" A shameful thing. When Osaiase Puaka [Osaias
Hogg] was speaking, some of the Representatives of the
People pretended to cough, and shuffled their feet." The
House had been lashed by the Speaker before his son took
them in hand, and Kubu described his remarks as " very
heavy." He spoke to me afterwards about it. " I was glad,"
he said, " that you were not there to see this shameful
thing ; if the miscreants had not been so many, I would
have committed them all to the dark cells. I suppose if
such a thing were to happen in the Parliament of Bili-
tania, the delinquents would go to prison ? " " Ye-e-s," I
answered. " But such a thing never has happened ? "
" Oh, no ; though I have heard of it happening in the
French Parliament," I said, and thought of the House
during one of Mr Conybeare's speeches. But this was
before Messrs Carson and Fisher had taken their seats.
A gloom fell over the House during the debate on the
land laws. For some days Havea, a lord of Haapai, had
been absent from his seat. At last it is whispered that
his illness is unnameable — that leprosy, the scourge of the
Pacific, has seized upon him. It makes one thoughtful to
remember that until a week ago we were sitting and eating
with a leper; but the consternation in the faces of my
colleagues is due to other causes. For by Tongan etiquette
it is more than questionable taste to speak of the illness
of a chief; it is forbidden in polite society to mention

280 LORDS AND COMMONS IN COUNCIL.
leprosy at all ; but to describe a chief as a leper is too
gross an offence to be conceivable. But the thing has to
be done somehow, and the Premier nobly fills the breach.
They had all heard, he said, about their dear friend and
colleague, and they all mourned when they heard. He
felt sure that he expressed the sentiments of them all
when he said that Havea's friends were pining for him at
home, and therefore it was but right that they should
cheerfully sacrifice their own wishes and relieve the long
ing of his friends by allowing him to return to them. At
the same time it was right to say that the doctor had
pronounced the report about Havea to be not entirely
true — in short, that the proximity of Havea was not likely
to render it advisable that his companions should return
to their friends. But Tuuhetoka was less guarded, being
of a coarser fibre than his chief. " I am in favour," he
said, " of gratifying the longing of Havea's friends to see
his face. Nay, more : to the westward are delightful little
islands, which I know Havea is longing to visit, where
his every wish may be gratified, and where — -well — where
the wind would blow so nicely from us to him that Havea
would be more than happy." I improved the opportunity
by urging the necessity of isolating infected persons to
check the alarming increase in the disease. The Com
mons watched me with the uneasy interest felt by the
crowd at a dangerous tight-rope performance without a
net underneath. I soon floundered helplessly, and before
I was aware of it I uttered the fatal word leprosy (kilici).
The House shuddered, and I was covered with shame. To
effect a diversion, I described the labours of Father Damien
at Molokai. At the adjournment Jesuit Hoho button-

LEGISLATION IN WHITE MAN'S FASHION. 281
holed me, and said, " I come to thank you for your words
about the priest Tamiene. I shall report your words to
my priest and the bishop, who will be much gratified."
There was a fierce battle over the Taxes Bill. It was
in vain for us to explain that the abolition of interest on
arrears was a large concession, and that the land-tax
of 9 dollars was no higher than the old poll-tax, since
the education rate had been abolished. It was in vain
that we promised that as soon as the country was out of
debt we would consider a proposal of reduction. The
majority had expected in a vague way that Parliament
would reduce the individual taxes from £2 to £1 a man ;
and, had the country been out of debt, we should have been
ready enough to recognise that their request was reason
able, — for direct taxation, vexatious to a Tongan as to a
white man, is only defensible when it is light. But the
Government knew that any reduction would mean a
deficit in their Budget, unless Parliament would consent
to abolish some half of the offices of the cumbrous Civil
Service, and they declared their intention of resigning in
a body if they were beaten. Then the aged Niukabu rose
sobbing, and cried aloud, imploring the Premier not to act
fakapapalagi (in white man's fashion). " We are all Ton
gans, not white men, therefore pity us and reduce our
taxes." But the Ministry were obdurate, and Niukabu's
sobs were drowned by those who dreaded a change of
Ministry worse than taxes.
I had now been eleven months in Tonga, the greater
part of my Code had become law, and the remainder was
certain to be passed without alteration : the Ministry had
the confidence of Parliament, and there was a sufficient

282 LORDS AND COMMONS IN COUNCIL.
balance in the Treasury to meet all immediate liabilities,
after paying off two instalments of the debt to Civil ser
vants for arrears of pay. My work was done: there re
mained only the printing of the Code, and this I was to
superintend in Auckland. For the last five weeks I had
been working the House at high pressure, for they were
not accustomed to sit for six successive days in the week.
It was time to leave them to finish the session after their
own fashion. The last days before the arrival of the
steamer were spent in leave-taking. The Privy Council
met in order that I might take a formal leave of the king.
I was spared any speech-making. The old man said a
few words full of quiet dignity and regret that pleased
me more than any elaborate and effusive thanks would
have done. Later in the day a formal letter of thanks,
signed in his tremulous handwriting, was brought to me.
On the day of the steamer's arrival a message was con
veyed to me that my presence in the House was not
desired. During the course of the morning Nuku, now
converted into an ardent supporter of the present Min
istry, by his threatened impeachment, and by a term of
imprisonment for a civil offence, appeared in correct par
liamentary attire, and presented me with an address of
thanks. He added a message that the House was waiting
to receive me. I went first to say farewell to the king,
for whom I, in common with every one who knew him
well, felt a strong respect and affection. There was in this
good-bye an added sadness, in that we both knew that we
should never meet again. " May God guard you ! " he
said, as we shook hands. " Who knows whether we shall
meet again, taw ? but I think not, for my time is near."

&

FAREWELL. 283
As I passed the gates he was still standing in the sun
looking after me. I never saw him again, for eighteen
months later he was carried to the Malaekula, full of days
and honour, wanting but four years to complete a century
of life.
In the House every member was in his place. As soon
as I had taken my seat Tungi left the chair and came to
the table. He had, he said, been deputed by the House
to tender to me the thanks of the chiefs and people of
Tonga, and to ask me to accept from them a memento of
my sojourn among them. At the end of his speech he
put a heavy bag into my hands. In my reply I explained
that the rules of my service forbade me to accept any
present from them, and that for doing no more than was
required of him no man was entitled to reward. Instead
of so valuable a present, I begged them to give me some
thing of little value to remind me of them when I was far
away, — whose value should lie in the associations that
clung to it instead of in its intrinsic worth ; for I should
prize such a present even more highly, in that it would
not carry with it the discharge of an obligation. I
afterwards found that, despite my representations, they
had asked the High Commissioner to present me on their
behalf with a beautiful service of plate, a gift that I shall
always prize the more that it was sent after I had left
them, and any temporary heat of enthusiasm had had
time to flame out, leaving a steady warmth of feeling
behind it.
As I spoke of the vicissitudes of life that throw men
into close companionship for a common work, and then
separates them, perhaps for ever, I saw that they as well

284 LORDS AND COMMONS IN COUNCIL.
as I were overcome with emotion. It was hard to part
with men who had been such staunch comrades in a hard
fight, knowing that in the ordinary course of the world I
should never see them again.
The king's band had meanwhile assembled outside the
House, struck up a march as we came out, and I found
myself the centre of a procession led by the band, and
followed by all the members of Parliament. The third
whistle had long sounded, and the steamer began to
cast off as I said my last good-bye. The propeller
churned the sleepy water into foam, we glided seawards,
and in a few moments the faces became indistinct, and
faded into a confusion of waving draperies, — fainter and
fainter, till the low shore grew grey and woolly, merged
into a cloud-bank, and disappeared. We were alone in
the Pacific, bound for the great world, and all the brief
turmoil of Tonga and its turgid politics slid into a pleasant
memory as unreal as the clouds that hung over the spot
on the horizon where it had vanished.

285

POSTSCRIPT.
Many things happen in three years. My narrative should
properly have ended where I have left it ; but, since circum
stances have combined to defer its publication, I cannot pass
over all that has happened since 1891. I left Tonga clear
of her embarrassments, with a strong popular Government, and
every promise of prosperity. In 1894 she is divided in her
councils, suspicious of her rulers, and financially unsound.
Her destiny depended upon the wisdom of the king's advisers.
It was too much to hope that, without any European assist
ance, a native Government could steer clear of difficulties ;
but I hoped, at least, that the lessons of economy they had
learnt so painfully would ensure the native Cabinet against
living beyond their means. When I left, Mr Moss was ap
pointed clerk to the Premier, and for a time all went well. In
December 1891 there was a balance of =£8000 in the treasury,
after all debts had been discharged. Then came a series of
disasters. Mr Moss died, and there was keen competition for
his vacant place. While they were still wrangling and in
triguing, the king was taken suddenly ill, and after only four
days' illness he died on February 18, 1893. He had alarmed
them so often with his sudden seizures that the blow came
upon the people almost unprepared. They had come to look
upon their king of ninety-six as immortal. Even the oldest of
them could not remember a time when George Tubou was not
a central figure in the country. All work came to an end.
The cocoa-nuts lay unhusked upon the ground for months :

286 POSTSCRIPT.
trade was at a standstill. The people went to their planta
tions only to dig up and carry away food for the great funeral
feasts. Their only labour was the erection of the great tomb in
the Malaekula (Red square). Contrary to general expectation,
the king's great-grandson, George Taufaahau, succeeded him
without disturbance. This was in a great measure due to the
loyalty and good sense of Tukuaho, who might easily, had he
pleased, have divided the country into factions. The young
king of twenty ill repaid this devotion. For the first few
months, it is true, he followed his Premier's advice. But no
sooner did he begin to feel secure in his new position than he
began to listen to advisers of another kind. The balance in
the treasury had melted away in the expenses of the funeral.
Under the most favourable circumstances, the country could
only recover under careful management. But before the people
could return to work, an epidemic of measles, then prevalent in
New Zealand, broke out in Nukualofa. We all know the story
of the measles in Fiji, — how, in 1876, it swept away 40,000 out
of the population of 150,000. Measles, when it attacks the
Polynesians, is no longer the infantine malady we know of. It
becomes a devastating plague. The Tongans, with the experi
ence of Fiji in their memories, took, it is true, some precautions
against the after-effects of the disease ; but, nevertheless, one-
twentieth of the population was carried off, and the remainder
was so demoralised that it was threatened with famine. The
measles gave the enemies of the Government the opportunity
they wanted. The infection must have been brought by a
steamer, and the Premier had been responsible for the granting
of pratique. It mattered not that the king had himself sanc
tioned the hauling down of the yellow flag. An excuse was
wanted for dismissing him, and the king availed himself of it.
There was a coup-d'etat. One morning the European officers
of Customs found sentries at their office doors. Tukuaho was
summarily dismissed without any assigned reason, Sateki ap
pointed in his place, and an unemployed schoolmaster and a

A FORECAST AND A WARNING. 287
fisherman appointed in the room of the two dismissed Euro
pean officers. These, not content with their triumph, pro
ceeded to audit the Customs' accounts, and declared that they
had discovered defalcations. The ex-collector of Customs im
mediately brought an action for wrongful dismissal and slander
before the High Commissioner's Court, and, to the great dis
comfiture of a majority of the storekeepers (what Customs
officer was ever loved?), triumphantly cleared his character.
Since then things have gone from bad to worse. The people
are less than ever inclined to pay their taxes, now that the Gov
ernment has no longer the strong arm of Tubou to support it.
I should be wiser if I said nothing about the future ; for no
man ever yet succeeded in foretelling accurately the shifts and
turns of political events. Yet even at the risk of hurting the
feelings of my good friends in Tonga, I will state my belief in
the hope that it may act as a warning. England does not want
Tonga, nor New Zealand either, if she knew her own interests ;
and yet, even if there were none of those restless spirits that egg
on the Governments of our half-populated colonies to extend
their boundaries and responsibilities, Tonga must eventually
fall under the flag of England or of Australasia. When this
happens, it will be the fault of the Tongans themselves. If,
instead - of hysterical professions of patriotism, the Tongans
would show the very moderately patriotic feelings that prompt
other peoples to pay their taxes, Tonga might remain inde
pendent for generations ; but with a wreak Government and a
divided people, how can a little State, hemmed in by powerful
and growing neighbours, maintain her independence ? We do
not want Tonga, and yet we cannot allow any other great Power
to take our place there. If Tonga must be taken, it is we who
must take her; but though I am no "Little Englander," I have
seen enough of our small possessions to know that the increased
incentive to British trade that may result from the hoisting of a
flag does not compensate for the weakness that a host of half
bankrupt islands throws upon the Empire.

A SKETCH OF
THE HISTOEY OF TONGA

A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA.

THE BORDERLAND OF MYTH.
Seeing that the past is the key to the present, I was at
some pains to learn the history of Tonga. This tiny
kingdom of 20,000 people, inhabiting widely scattered
islands, but speaking the same language, intermarrying,
and obeying the same Government, boasted so compli
cated a social polity that its history, as an illustration
of the growth of human institutions, is worthy of study
for its own sake.
Until the introduction of Christianity swept away the
old beliefs and the institutions that depended on them,
there were in Tonga a spiritual and a temporal king. The
former — the Tui Tonga — was lord of the soil, and enjoyed
divine honours in virtue of his immortal origin; but he
had an ever-diminishing share in the government, and he
could take no part in any civil quarrel. His sole duty

292 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA.
was to absolve his subjects from the penalties of the
broken tabu, and to take the good things provided for
him without descending into the arena of political strife :
he was, in fact, the heaven -appointed sovereign in a
limited monarchy. The temporal king — the Tui Kano
kubolu — was the irresponsible sovereign of the people,
wielding absolute power of life and death over his subjects,
and was charged with the burden of the civil government
and the ordering of the tribute due to the gods and their
earthly representative, the Tui Tonga. None but the son
or grandson of a Tui Tonga could succeed to that dignity,
and his mother must be the daughter of the Tui Kano
kubolu. The temporal king was therefore always grand
father or uncle of the Tui Tonga. Thus was the blood
kept pure.
Although the Tui Tonga had no executive functions,
yet, as representative on earth of the immortals, he was
environed with the most rigid tabu. As it would be
inconvenient to multiply personages of such transcendent
rank, his wife was always taken from him after having
borne him two children. Her son was the heir, but her
daughter attained an even higher rank than her father
or brother. She was the Tui Tonga fefine (female Tui
Tonga), and even her father must bow to her for absolu
tion of the tabu. No mortal might aspire to marriage
with her, but she might, without loss of dignity, have
children, and her daughter, if she had one, became the
Tamaha — the highest earthly dignity. Neither her
mother nor her grandfather, to whom all others paid
homage, could eat in her presence, nor neglect to per-

THE BORDERLAND OF MYTH. 293
form the moemoe x by embracing her feet when they left
her. These higher dignities, however, were a superstructure
built of the high estimation in which women were held
upon the fundamental idea of the divine affinity of the
Tui Tonga. The key to this belief is to be found in the
epic of Kau-ulu-fonua, from whose reign Tongan history
may be said to date.2 The following is an unworthy
prose version of the story : —
In days of old the Tui Tonga was lord of all Tonga —
lord of the soil and of the men, and of the first-fruits ;
and to no other chief was tribute paid but to the Tui
Tonga only. He received tribute from Haapai, from
Haafulu hao,3 from Niuafo'ou,4 from Niua-tobutabu,5 from

1 A salute paid to the highest chief present. The person performing it
sits cross-legged before him, and bows the head until the forehead touches
the sole of the chief's foot, and then brushes the foot first with the palm
and then with the back of each hand. After touching a chief's person the
moemoe must be performed on pain of the liver swelling up and causing
death. As they are subject to scrofulous diseases, which they attribute
to an unwitting breach of the tabu, they used to perform the moemoe
frequently from motives of caution, without reference to any special tabu
they had broken.
2 Circa 1535. There are fragmentary traditions of an earlier time when
the Tongans were in a lower social state, and cannibalism was practised.
A colony from Tonga founded a powerful clan in Mangaia (Cook Islands)
before the end of the fifteenth century, and it is probable that Pj'lstaart
was peopled from Tonga before the sixteenth century ; but the names of
the kings before Kau-ulu-fonua are unreliable (vide Appendix I. ), and the
traditions are too disconnected to be classed in their proper sequence.
The old men who stored up these traditions have passed away, and it
cannot now be hoped that the records of the dim past will ever be rescued
from oblivion.
3 Vava'u. 4 Boscawen Island. 5 Keppel's Island.

294 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA.
Uvea,1 from Eutuna,2 and even from Haamoa 3 and the far
islands to the North.4 No man knows whence he derived
his power, unless indeed he was a descendant of the gods
themselves, of Tangaloa, of Ikuleo, and of Mau'i, but this
is hidden in the clouds of the ages. The people of
Tonga were so thick in the land that the commands of
the king were carried from one end of the land to the
other, the people lying on their mats and shouting the
message one to the other. It was the time of " Fanogonogo
Tokoto " (making proclamation when reclining).5 And
seeing that all men were his slaves, and that the world
held none that did not do him homage, the Tui Tonga put
heavy burdens upon the people, and made them drag great
stones and set them up for a memorial of his greatness ;
and the people neglected their yam plantations to do the
tasks set them by .their king, so that there was a great
scarcity. And when they hungered they began to cry
out against their king, for men are ever hard to govern
when their bellies are empty.
Now there came a Tui Tonga, named Takalaua, who
was strong and harsh, and was greatly feared of the
people. Every day he sent out his fishermen from Mua
into the bay, and they would land on the islands to
arrange their nets. One day they landed on Ata, near
Euaiki, and when they sailed the two old people who
1 Wallis Island. 2 Hoorn Island.
3 Samoa. * Gilbert Islands.
5 At the time of Tasman's visit in 1643 there seem to have been no
villages. The land was highly cultivated and fenced, and each family
lived in its own plantation. It is more probable that the Fanogonogo
Tokoto referred to this than that the population was ever much greater
than at present.

THE BORDERLAND OF MYTH. _ 295
lived on the island went down to the landing-place to
see whether perchance they had left anything. They saw
a bunch of cocoa-nuts and ran to pick it up, and when
they reached the spot they saw lying near it the body
of a little new-born child, but the head was like the,
head of a dove. The old woman took it up gently, and
found that it still breathed. She had no children, and
she begged her husband to let her adopt it and bring
it up as her own ; and she took it home and reared it in
secret. And as the girl grew up she lost the dove's head,
and grew into the fairest woman that was ever born into
the world. So fair was she that her foster-parents greatly
feared lest some man should see her and take her from
them ; and they taught her to hide always in the cover of
the trees, and to look well abroad before she ventured into
the sea to bathe, for great monsters floated on the sea,
who, if they saw her, would swallow her up. But the days
passed and she saw no one, for Ata was remote from the
ways of men, and the fishermen knew it for a barren
spot. Now there came a clay when the Tui Tonga sent his
fishermen, bidding them return with fish, for he hungered
for them. But the chief of the fishermen hesitated, saying
that the weather was too stormy for their nets, whereat
the Tui Tonga grew very wroth, and swore that unless he
had fish that day the chief fisherman should die. So they
went out into the bay and tried to cast their nets, but each
cast was spoiled by the wind and waves, which twisted the
net and drove the floats under. And towards evening the
chief said, " Let us at least try Ata : perchance the water
is smoother there. Let us cast' but once, and if we fail,

296

A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA.

then let us return and face the anger of the Tui Tonga,
for only the gods could catch fish in this weather."
So they sailed to Ata and cast their nets on the lee side
of the island, but could catch nothing. And the chief fish
erman left the others to roll up the nets and went round
the beach of the island to look to windward. And as he
passed the point he saw a girl bathing, who, seeing him,

" She fled swiftly tip the sand."
fled swiftly up the sand and was hidden in the trees;
and he wondered greatly, for he knew not that any man
lived on the island, and this girl was the fairest that he
had ever seen. He said nothing to his companions, but
returned to Mua with them, and went into the presence of
the Tui Tonga.
" Where are your fish ? " the king asked.

THE BORDERLAND OF MYTH. 297
" The gods themselves could not take fish in such a
sea. Pardon thy servants, for we have toiled as never
man toiled before."
" Did I not say that unless you brought me fish you
should die ? Have ye ever known me to lie ? Bring
bamboos and the trough, and cut him in pieces."
So they brought the great trough and the bamboo
knives, and bound him with vines, unresisting. But when
the king's cooks took the knives to cut his flesh he cried
out, " Let me speak one word to the Tui Tonga. If I must
die I must. I do not ask for a life that is of no value to
my chief ; but I know something that will never be known
unless I tell it before I die."
" What does he know ? " said the king : " if he knew
the secret of the wind to make it fair at will, yet it should
not save him."
And the men went to seize him again, but he cried, " It
is well : let me die, since the chief cares not for a beautiful
girl." When he heard this the Tui Tonga cried, " Stop. Do
not harm him. What is this he says about a girl ? Let
him tell us first : if he has fooled us then he shall die."
And the fisherman said, " What am I that I should lie
to my chief ? I know the fairest girl in all the world, and
if the chief wills I can bring her here."
And the Tui Tonga said, '' Loose him and make ready a
canoe ; but if he has lied to us, he shall be hewn in pieces
with tortures."
So they prepared the canoe, and the chief of the fisher
men called his men together and they set sail, and dragged
their canoe ashore at Ata ; and the chief fisherman bade

298 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA.
his men wait near the canoe, and he went up alone into
the trees. There he saw two houses, the one closed and
the other open, and he went in and found an old woman
sitting on the mats. And he said, " I have come for the
maiden to be the chief's handmaid."
But she feigned not to understand him, and said,
" What maiden will you take ? Only I and my husband
live on Ata, and we have seen no maiden."
But he said, ''You cannot hide her from me; for we
are many, and you but two only. Come now, I will break
down the door of the house if you do not show her to me."
And the old woman began to weep, crying for her only
daughter ; but he bade her be of good heart, for she ought
rather to rejoice that her daughter was chosen to be the
handmaid of the Tui Tonga. And she said, " Wait till I
have prepared her for her lord ; " and she took the girl and
bathed her in the sea, and oiled her with scented oil, and
bound flowering wreaths in her hair, weeping all the while,
and took the finest mats of Haamoa, fringed with the pre
cious scarlet feathers of the kula, and bound them round
her slender waist, and brought her to the canoe. And the
men who saw her were smitten with her beauty, for there
had been no other woman born into the world so fair as
she. And they set sail, leaving the woman weeping on
the shore, and bore the girl away weeping for her foster-
mother's grief, and for fear of that which should befall
her. And when they came near to Mua they saw a great
crowd assembled at the landing-place, for the Tui Tonga-
in his impatience had left his house to watch for the
return of the canoe ; and he kept calling to them to ply
their paddles with a stronger , hand. When they drew

THE BORDERLAND OF MYTH.

299

near he cried out to them to tell her name ; and they re
plied, " Vae-lavea-mata " (The-foot-that-wounds-the-eye).
And he took her to his house.
And when her first child was horn he called him Kau-
ulu-fonua (Dweller-in-the-hilltops), and he ordered him to
be taken away from his mother lest she should suckle him
and her beauty be spoiled. So they took him to Niutao,
and nursed him there. And a second child was born to
her, and they called him Mounga-motua (Old-mountain),

There had been no other woman born into the world so fair as she.'

and his father ordered that he too should be taken from
his mother, and nursed by one of her women. And a
third child was born — a girl — who was called Melino-a-
Tonga (The-peace-of-Tonga). Her also they took away.
And Vae-lavea-mata grieved for her children whom she
had never seen, so that when her fourth child would be
born she besought the king earnestly that he would let
the child be with her. "For," she said, "to what end
have I suffered in bringing them forth, if I may not

300 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA.
suckle them as other women suckle their children ? "
And he granted her prayer, and let her suckle the child ;
and she called him Lo-tawai. So he only of them all
saw his father, the Tui Tonga.
And as the years passed the Tui Tonga's face was
changed towards his people, and he laid heavy tasks upon
them, even in the planting-time, when every man should
be in his own yam-garden. For he built a tomb for him-

i Ar//rh'^r^> \\mJi->P',^
y / wm ^;wm k ;

t? ¦^¦c^'^&i3m^i<,>.rim^ The Tomb of a King.

self in the burying- place of his fathers; but he would
surpass them all, and bade the people hew great stones
from the reef, greater than any of his fathers had taken
for their malae. And the stone-cutters hewed a huge
stone upon the Liku, like an island for greatness ; and the
Tui Tonga sent to the people of Belehake, saying, " Go,
and drag the stone for the side of my malae ; so I shall
not be forgotten hereafter."

THE BORDERLAND OF MYTH. 301
They toiled at the stone all day, sore at heart, for it
was planting-time, and in the evening they sent to Tui
Tonga, praying that he would suffer them first to plant
their yams, and afterwards return to drag the stone, for
that it would take many days, and the time for yam-
planting was far spent. But he returned answer that they
were idle and dishonoured his commands. And the people
were afraid when they heard his answer, and gathered to
gether to the stone before it was yet day. And the sun
rose on their toil, but the stone was so heavy that when it
was low in the west they had only reached the cave Ana-
meama, on the Liku, where there is fresh water. Their
throats were dried up with thirst, and they crowded one
upon the other in their haste to drink ; but so many were
they that before they had all drunk the pool was dry,
and they licked the mud, and cursed their king in their
hearts. Then one said, " How long shall we suffer this ? He has
other tasks in his mind for us, and who knows whether
we shall live or die, and our wives be given to others ?
Shall we not take rest ? "
So they conspired that night to kill the Tui Tonga, and
in the morning two old men, Tamajia and Malofafa of
Belehake, met him in the path as he went to bathe, and
slew him there, and cut up the body so that none might
know it, and hung the limbs in a tree.
And one of the king's women ran to Niutao, to tell the
children that their father was dead. They were racing-
toy canoes in the shallow water ; and Kau-ulu-fonua, the
elder, now almost grown to manhood, was intent upon his
canoe, and saw not that the sea was rising and falling

302 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA.
unnaturally, but his brother, Mounga-motua, saw it as he
sat watching the game on the beach. And he cried,
"Chief, the sea is strange." But the elder, thinking-
only of his game, told him roughly to be silent. Then
the younger saw the sea turn to blood, and as he again
cried out in fear, the woman came and sat down re
spectfully before her chief, therefore the place is called
Faete (Crouching-place) to this day. She said, " I bring
tidings (tola fo'ou) " (therefore the place is called Tala-
fo'ou to this day). "The chief, your father, has been
slain." Kau-ulu-fonua leaped to his feet, and seizing the mast
of a canoe, he broke it into three pieces, and gave them to
his brothers and to his sister, saying, " Which of us knows
our father ? Only the child Lo-tawai has seen him." And
Lo-tawai answered, " Yes, I shall know him."
So they went forth, led by the woman, and came to the
wood called Vao-tabu (Sacred Grove) in which the king
had been slain ; and the woman led them to the tree in
which their father's body hung in a basket. The place is
called Tatatinga-o-Tui-Tonga, because the body was cut up
there. And Lo-tawai looked on it and said, " This is our
father : I know the face for his face." x And they buried
their father there, and called the people to them to war
against his murderers, who fled to Eua.
There Kau-ulu-fonua fought them and drove them out,
and they fled to Haapai : thither the brothers pursued
them, and they fled to Vavau. And as the avengers still
1 Penem etiam patris per granditatem mirabilem recognovit ; cui quidem
nomen proprium datum erat, " Ulie-hae-a," scilicet " Anguis-qui-sepi-
menta-perrumpit . ' '

THE BORDERLAND OF MYTH. 303
pursued, they launched forth upon the ocean, and sailed
to Niua-tobutabu, and thence before the wind to distant
Niua-foou; but even thither did Kau-ulu-fonua pursue
them. And they fled northward again to Haamoa, whose
ancient name was Hahafakamoa,1 and were driven out
from thence. Then they put forth again, and fled to
Uvea, and still they were pursued. So they fled west
ward to Futuna; and because this was the end of the
world, and there was no land beyond them to which they
might flee, they awaited the coming of Kau-ulu-fonua and
his brothers with the remnant of their army.
And when he landed, he prepared his men for war, and
the men of Futuna, marvelling at his prowess, said, " Thou
art not brave of thyself, but by favour of the gods." And
he mocked them, and cried, " Then I will leave my back to
the gods to defend, and myself defend my face." And as
he was attacking the gate of the wall which his father's
murderers had built, one of them wounded him in the
back as he was passing through the gate. Thereat he
cried, " The gods are fools : they cannot even shield my
back." And he seized the old man who had wounded
him, and held him until his men came up ; and they took
the town, and bound both the murderers, and brought
them before him, and there was peace. Therefore to this
day are there two divisions of Futuna — the one Futuna,
and the other Futuna Tini because it was left unharmed
by the war. And Kau-ulu-fonua told the people of
Futuna that, as a reward to them for having helped him
to seize his father's murderers, he would grant that they
should always spoil the Tongan canoes that reached their
1 Hahafakamoa = beating like a cock's wings.

304 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA.
shores.1 And he gave to the people of Uvea that they
should comb the hair of the Tongans who landed on their
island with the tail of a sting- ray ; and to Niua that they
should push away the canoes of the Tongans, and not let
them land : therefore is Niua called Niua-teke-vaka (Niua
the canoe spurner).2
Now the murderers were old men and had no teeth,
and when they were brought before Kau-ulu-fonua, he
ordered hard dry kava to be brought, and made them
chew it before him, so that their mouths were filled with
blood. And he bade them pour water into the bowl, and
knead and strain the kava, and he drank the draught
alone. Therefore was he named Kau-ulu-fonua-fekai
(Kau-ulu-fonua the savage) ; and he slew his father's
murderers in Futuna and returned to Tonga.
When he was returned he called his brothers to him,
and he said, " I am the chief, but this people have
dared to slay the Tui Tonga. What will they not dare ?
And how shall the land stand fast if the chief be slain ?
Now therefore it is my mind to set a chief over the
people to govern them, and I will be supreme lord of the
soil only, and of the offerings." And he made his brother,
1 "When the Tongan matabule Kau Moala visited Futuna in 1808 he was
spoiled of all his goods, and his canoe was broken up. On leaving he was
presented with everything he required, but, despite his entreaties, not a
single article of his own property was returned to him.
¦ After I had left Tonga I asked an old native of Futuna whether he
knew any legends of a Tongan invasion. He wrote down for me an old
Saga describing an invasion by the King of Tonga, who cried, when
wounded in the back, " The gods are fools ! " The only difference in the
two stories was that the Futuna account describes the utter rout of the
Tongans with so great a slaughter that stacks were made of the dead
bodies. Traditions so corroborated rise at once to the dignity of history.

1610.] THE BORDERLAND OF MYTH. 305
Mounga-motua, lord over the people, and sent him to the
peninsula, calling him Tui Haatakalaua.
Since that day, though there have been wars in Tonga,
and chief has fought against chief, yet the Tui Tonga has
passed unharmed through them all, for he was lord of the
soil only and of the offerings.
And there came a Tui Haatakalaua, named Mounga-
tonga, who took to wife a chief woman of Haamoa
(Samoa), of the land of Safata. in Upolu, named Tohu'ia.
She bore him a son, Ngata (Snake), from whom the lords
of Kanokubolu, the kings of Tonga, are descended. For
Moungatonga saw that they did not honour the chief whom
they obeyed, but only him to whom they gave the offer
ings ; and he made his son Ngata lord over the people and
his descendants, and called him Tui Kanokubolu, and he
himself was content to receive the offerings only. From
this Ngata, child of the woman of Haamoa, were all the
Tui Kanokubolu sprung, even to Tubou, the king.
Such is the tradition of the origin of the curious politi
cal system of Tonga that so puzzled Captain Cook. It is
easy to divest the story of its envelope of heroic fiction,
and to find the kernel of sound history. The chiefs in
Polynesia represent the blood of the original family in its
purest form, and to ancestor-worshippers they naturally
become the living embodiment of the ancestral spirit. As
the tribe grows in numbers and importance, they begin
to receive semi-divine honours: with the superstitious
respect comes power, and with power the inclination to
abuse it. The people are goaded into resistance, and the
chief, to protect himself and his successors, delegates the
u

306 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA.
executive power to an inferior chief, and by thus plac
ing a buffer between himself and his subjects, he secures
not only his own safety from popular outbreak, but an in
creased reverence for the rigid tabu that begins to environ
him. This evolution of a sacred line of chiefs is not pecu
liar to Tonga, but the system was there complicated by a
repetition of the process by which the temporal sovereign
again delegated his authority ; and by the curious higher
degrees of rank enjoyed by females of the spiritual chief's
family, arising from the high estimation in which women
were held.
As Tongan history may be said to begin with the reign
of Kau-ulu-fonua, it is important to fix approximately the
date of his exploits. In Appendix I. will be found a list
of the Tui Tonga from Kau-ulu-fonua to the last holder of
the office. Since the visit of Captain Cook in 1777 the
frequent civil wars, and the introduction of Christianity,
caused years to pass without the installation of a Tui
Tonga, and the office was abolished on the death of Lau-
filitonga. There have therefore been only four since that
date. From 1613 to 1777, a period of 134 years, five Tui
Tonga reigned for an average of twenty-seven years each.1
By the same computation the four Tui Tonga who preceded
Tasman's visit in 1643 would have covered 108 years, and
Kau-ulu-fonua was Tui Tonga in the year 1535.
From a list of the Tui Kanokubolu it appears that
there have been ten since 1777, and eight before that date,
including Ngata, who was the first to assume the title.
1 Captain Cook found that the natives remembered the circumstances of
Tasman's visit in 1643, and were able to point out his anchorage, and to say
correctly how many days he stayed. They gave the name of the Tui Tonga
then reigning, and the names of five successors of the same dynasty.

1535-1610.] THE BORDERLAND OF MYTH. 307
Taking twenty years as the average reign of a Tui Kano
kubolu before 1777 (for the short duration of reigns dur
ing the past century was owing to the incessant civil wars
that followed the murder of Tukuaho), the date of Ngata's
assumption of the title would be about 1610.
The Tui Kanokubolu was not strictly a hereditary office,
like that of the Tui Tonga. None but a member of the
reigning family could succeed, and a custom seems to have
grown up of choosing the successor alternately from the
families of the Tui Haatakalaua and the Tui Kanokubolu ;
but it was always open to the principal chiefs, who formed
the electoral college, to reject any aspirant to office who
was physically, mentally, or morally unfit to reign. Two
conditions weighed with them — the dying wishes of the
late king, and the relative power and popularity of the
candidates. The election took place immediately after the
funeral ceremonies, when the entire nation was assembled ;
and the election of the most influential chief was a guar
antee against civil disorder.
Considering the primitive character of the canoes and
their ignorance of navigation, the geographical knowdedge
of the Tongans was already wide at this remote date.
Their canoes must have often been carried out of their
course to Fiji, which lies only 400 miles direct to leeward.
That they made voyages to and from Samoa in the sixteenth
century is shown by the fact that Ngata's mother was a
woman of Upolu in Samoa ; and the pursuit of his father's
assassins by Kau-ulu-fonua shows that they knew of the
existence of the Niuas, Uvea, and Futuna, as early as the
sixteenth century. A very' ancient saga describing the
customs of one of the Line Islands indicates that they
were visited at a very remote date. Colonies of Tongans

308 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA.
are known to have settled in Mangaia to the eastward,
and in Ongtong Java to the westward, — castaways, per-

The Tongiaki,1 the canoe, now obsolete, in which the early voyages of the
Tongans were made. (From a plate in the British Museum.)

haps, who fought their way into the possession of lands
belonging to the aborigines.

II.

THE COMING OF THE FOREIGNERS.

Under a strong central Government, knowing nothing
of civil disturbances, never called upon to repel invasions
from without, the people had time to digest the new in-
1 Unlike the Fijian canoe, the Tongiaki had a fixed bow, and went about
like the modern cutter. In tacking, the sail was unlaced from the yards
and carried to leeward of the mast. It was entirely displaced by the more
complicated Ndrua of Fiji about the beginning of this century. Both
Schouten and Captain Cook give detailed descriptions, and I have an
excellent model built for me under King George's directions.

1610.] THE COMING OF THE FOREIGNERS. 309
stitutions. If their young men wanted excitement, there
was Fiji : there they might have their fill of war and rap
ine, but in Tonga they must obey the chiefs set over them
by the gods or brave the consequence of the broken tabu.
In those days no Tongan had dared to test the belief.
It was not a superstition. They had seen men die whom
they knew to have infringed a tabu, and others, cursed by
some enemy, had withered away before their eyes. Thus
was royal authority strengthened by physical fear — eve.r
the strongest influence with the mob.1
For sixty years the land was at peace. They built great
tombs for their chiefs, and turned the islands into vast
gardens, so that there was abundance, and rich portions of
the first-fruits were presented to the gods. Then Mou-
ngatonga, the Tui Haatakalaua, took the Samoan woman
Tohuia to wife, and when her son Ngata grew to man
hood, Moungatonga grew wearied with the weight of
authority, and charged him with the dominion of the
people, while he withdrew himself into the honoured
obscurity of rank without power. The new temporal
king took his title from the sacred soil of Kanokubolu
1 Now that the bugbear of the tabu has been put to flight before the
light of Christianity, they have preserved the belief in a changed form.
They believe that he who swears falsely, after kissing the Bible, must die.
In 1886 a house was burned down by an incendiary, and before the courts
could interfere, all the villagers met together for a trial by ordeal. A Bible
was brought, and each person took a solemn oath that he or she was inno
cent of the crime. They took no interest in the judicial inquiry, feeling
sure that the culprit would die within a few weeks. Not long afterwards
an elderly woman named Ana began to sicken and refuse her food. She
grew rapidly worse, and at last confessed that, in a fit of jealousy, she had
set fire to the house of her rival. Her end was hastened by the warnings
of her relations that if she was guilty of perjury she had no chance of re
covery. She was fairly frightened to death.

310 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA. [1616.
in Hihifo. At first probably he was the mouthpiece or
messenger of the higher chiefs, their Chancellor and per
petual Prime Minister ; but the power was destined to
grow until it overshadowed the dignity of the heaven-
descended Tui Tonga himself.
In Ngata's reign the Tongans first heard of a world
outside their own. On May 16, 1616, the two high-

The discovery of Niua-tobutabu by Schouten and Lemaire, 1616.
Vide Appendix II.
(Reduced from a rare Dutch plate in the possession of Dr Corney.)
pooped Dutch ships of Schouten and Lemaire anchored
at Niua-tobutabu. To the fierce inhabitants they were
no visitants from the world of spirits, but men like them
selves, possessed of property worth seizing. Under colour
of selling cocoa-nuts to the crew they tried to carry off a
boat ; and one of them was shot dead before they would
desist. They then made a general attack upon the ship,

1643.] THE COMING OF THE FOREIGNERS.

311

and were repulsed with heavy loss. Thus one fact was
learned — the strangers could not be openly assailed with
safety ; and the fame of Schouten's prowess, recorded in a
rough poem, may have served to protect his great country
man Tasman.
On January 27, 1643, Abel Tasman anchored off Hihifo

Schouten and Lemaire buying provisions in Futuna, 1616, showing
ancient mode of wearing the hair. Vide Appendix II.
( Reduced from a rare Dutch plate in the possession of Dr Corney. )

in Tongatabu. The natives crowded on board his ships
to barter provisions for iron, but beyond pilfering when
unobserved, they did not annoy their visitors. A chief,
probably the Tui Tonga, Tabuoji, entertained them very
hospitably, and invited them on shore. They found that
the country was cultivated like a garden. It was divided
by neat reed fences into plantations, within which stood

312 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA. [1643.
the house of the owner. They saw no weapons and no
villages, for the time had not yet come when the alarms
of civil war would drive the people together for mutual
protection. The age of Fanongonongo Tokoto (making pro
clamation while reclining) meant the age of peace and
plenty rather than the age of a crowded population.
Among the presents given to the Tui Tonga was a wooden

An unprovoked attack by Schouten upon a Tongiaki off Niua, May 1616.
Vide Appendix II.
(Reduced from a rare Dutch plate in the possession of Dr Corney.)
bowl, said to be that which, in the Tui Tonga's absence,
was used by his subjects to absolve the tabu in the cere
mony of moemoe. Tasman sailed away, and the Tongans
saw no more of the foreigners for 124 years. The priceless
iron tools they had given them had long been worn out and
disappeared, but the memory of their coming, embalmed by
one of the native poets, remained fresh to its smallest de
tails. Four kings had reigned and had been laid in their

1767.] THE COMING OF THE FOREIGNERS. 313
malae when foreigners again set foot on the soil of Tonga.
On August 13, 1767, Wallis, fresh from the discovery of
Tahiti, brought to for one day at Niua-tobutabu, and gave
the people a few nails in exchange for provisions. These
gifts, so precious to a people still in the stone age, were
at once carried to their suzerain chiefs in the islands to
the far southward; and when Captain Cook landed six
years later in Tongatabu, he saw them in the hands of
his entertainers.
When the Discovery anchored at Hihifo on the 10th
June 1773 the principal chiefs were absent in the islands
to the northward, and he saw no one but Latelibulu, the
brother of the Tamaha, whom, judging from the honour
paid to him, he mistook for the king. Four years later
he landed at Namuka in the Eesolution and Discovery,
and met Finau Ulukalala, whose restless character had
raised him from the position of hereditary chief of Vavau
to one of greater power than the Tui Kanokubolu himself
wielded. Cook thus describes him : "He was tall and thin,
and appeared to be about thirty years of age. His features
were more of the European cast than any we had seen
here." His evident authority in Namuka led Cook at first
to suppose that he was king, but when he was confronted
with Pau, the Tui Tonga, and performed to him the humble
act of moemoe, he rated him as an impostor of that con
temptible kind that pretends to a dignity to which he is
not entitled. When, however, he realised in Tongatabu
the extent of his influence with the older chiefs, and saw
that even the Tui Tonga did homage to his female relative
the Tamaha, he abandoned all hope of solving the mystery
of the Tongan Constitution, and, for want of a better

314 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA. [1777.
definition, elevated Finau to the dignity of Commander-
in-Chief. Anxious to keep the visitors to himself, Finau showed
them the most lavish hospitality at Haapai, and did all in
his power to persuade them to visit Vavau. But the Tui
Tonga, attracted by the accounts of the priceless posses
sions of the strangers, now arrived, and invited them to
become his guests at Tongatabu. Finau, nothing abashed
at having fallen in his visitors' estimation, followed in his
own fleet, and encamped on the shore opposite the little
island of Pangaimotu, where the ships were anchored.
The white men were not always conciliatory. The peas
ants, or serfs, were a noisy, uncouth set, who, when unre
strained by their chiefs, treated the strangers with scant
respect, and robbed them whenever they had an oppor
tunity. In their eyes a successful theft was an achieve
ment to be boasted of rather than a crime ; and as a serf
has no soul, it was a matter of indifference to the chiefs
how they were punished. Thieves were flogged almost
daily on board the ships without disturbing the friendli
ness of Finau in the least ; indeed he himself recom
mended this punishment. An officer wrote in his journal :
" One was punished with seventy-two lashes for stealing
only a knife ; another with thirty-six for endeavouring to
carry off some drinking-glasses ; three with three dozen
each for throwing stones at the wooders; but, what was
still more cruel, one man, for attempting to carry off an
axe, was ordered to have his arm cut to the bone, which
he bore without complaining." As no such punishment
as seventy-two lashes was allowed in the navy at that
time, and the writer was so evidently hostile to his com-

1777.]

THE COMING OF THE FOREIGNERS.

315

mander, it is probable that the severity of the punishments
has been exaggerated.
The chiefs owed their visitors no gratitude. Every
present they had received, every condescension shown to
them, had been repaid by liberal gifts of provisions. The
ships were filled with treasures as precious in their eyes
as gold would have been in the eyes of their visitors, and
in a few days they would sail away never to return. Why,

A bo-me'e or night-dance at Haapai, Jitne 1777. (From
a steel engraving in the British Museum. )

they thought, should they not prevent this ? For the de
tails of the conspiracy they had recourse to Finau, who
had seen more of the white men than any of the others.
Preparations had already been made for the assemblage of
a vast concourse for the performance of dances in honour
of the visitors : what would be easier than to fall upon the
white men during a night dance by torchlight, conceal the
bodies, and, when a party came from the ships to look for

316 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA. [1777.
their commander, to lead them inland and massacre them ?
The ships thus weakened would be an easy prey. But
Finau thought that the attempt should be made by day
light, lest, in the confusion caused by the darkness, they
should fail in boarding the ships. When he found that
the majority were disinclined to adopt his advice, Finau
declared that he would have nothing to do with the
scheme, and it was reluctantly abandoned. On Tuesday,
June 17, Cook and his officers attended the dances with
out suspicion, surrounded by nearly 10,000 natives, who,
if the signal had been given, would assuredly have suc
ceeded in massacring the whole party.1 The gathering of
so vast a crowd in the neighbourhood of the ships could
not fail to produce disorder. There was a scarcity of food,
and the parties landing for wood and water were insolently
plundered. Several turkeys were stolen, and for the first
time Cook determined to hold the chiefs responsible for
the acts of their serfs. He landed with an armed guard,
and without any warning put Finau and Maealiuaki, the
Tui Kanokubolu, under arrest in their own house. A
number of armed men now assembled with the evident
intention of attacking the guard, but Finau, concealing
his feelings, ordered them to disperse, and despatched
messengers to recover the turkeys. As soon as these
returned with the birds the guard was withdrawn, and
their friendly relations were resumed. They still dined
on board, and continued to send provisions to the captain,
But when, a few days later, the muskets of one of the
shore parties were stolen, and Cook proceeded on shore to
repeat his policy, he found that the chiefs had wisely with-
1 Mariner's Account. of the Tonga Islands,

1777.] THE COMING OF THE FOREIGNERS.

317

drawn, and it was not until he had given them solemn
assurances of their safety that they consented to return.
The stolen arms were eventually recovered through the
medium of the chiefs, who were not in the least concerned
that one of the thieves, who had been wounded with a
ball, was not expected to live.1
Cook now prepared to leave Tonga, but contrary winds
detained him long enough to witness the ceremony of the

The great inaji at which Captain Cook was present, June 1777.
(From a steel engraving in the British Museum.)

inaji, or the presentation of the first-fruits to the gods in
the person of the Tui Tonga, their representative on earth.
The ceremonial, the dresses, the wooden symbols for the
yams, puzzled him extremely. Though forbidden to ap
proach, he forced his way into the inner circle that sur
rounded the Tui Tonga, and was allowed to remain on the
1 This man was seen alive and well sixteen years later by D'Entrecasteaux-
Labillardiere.

318 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA. [1777.
condition that he bared his shoulders; for the Tongans,
then as now, did not expect foreigners to conform to their
manners, and were lenient to any breach of their laws
committed by a stranger in ignorance. On June 25 he
set sail, after a stay of seven weeks, and not many months
later met his tragic end in Hawaii from an over-confidence
in the natives, which his experience of the Tongans (whom
he misnamed the " Friendly Islanders ") may have helped
to engender.
It seems strange that a people who, to both Tasman and
Cook, appeared unaccustomed to the use of arms, should,
twenty-two years after the visit of the latter, be found
practising all the barbarities of savage warfare. What
internal ferment, one asks, can have produced so abrupt
a change ? Native traditionary history supplies the
answer. Intercourse with Fiji was warping the Tongan
character. At the time of Cook's visit increasing and regular
intercourse with Fiji was rapidly changing the Tongans
for the worse. Ethnologically, between Fiji and Tonga
there is a great gulf fixed. The former belong to the
great family of the Melanesians ; the latter to the pure
stock of the light -skinned race, which, for want of a
better name, are called the Malayo- Polynesians. The
Fijians knew no higher form of society than that of the
family or clan, shut up within its own intrenchments, at
perpetual war with its neighbours ; no nobler occupation
than the devising of treachery against their enemies. But
generations of peace had dulled the warlike instincts of
the Tongans, and allowed their institutions to take a firm
root. Timber for sea-going canoes was scarce in Tonga,

THE COMING OF THE FOREIGNERS.

319

A warrior of Fiji.

320 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA. [1777.
and it was not until the eighteenth century that any
but the principal chiefs could fit out expeditions for
distant voyages. A little before 1750 several canoes had
run down the wind to Lakemba, and their crews, after
joining one or other of the local chiefs in war, and gaining
him the victory by their superior daring, had taken their
share of the spoil, exchanged their small canoes for larger
craft, built of vesi from Kambara, and returned to their
own country laden with exotic plunder, and boasting of
their foreign experiences. Thenceforth an expedition to
Fiji became the keystone of a Tongan chief's education,
just as in Europe at the same period the " grand tour "
was considered essential to the training of an English
gentleman ; and as our travellers brought back outlandish
habits and strange wares, which were admired because
they were foreign, so Cook found that the Tongans spoke
of their neighbours as their superiors in war and in the
useful arts. The cold-blooded treachery that will betray
a brother to gratify the thirst for blood; the brutal
ferocity that spares neither sex nor age ; the depraved
lust that is gratified in outrage on the dead ; the foul
appetite of revenge that will eat the body of a slain
enemy, — all these seemed to the young Tongan the badges
of a manliness worthy of imitation. He regarded the
comparative refinement of his own people as effeminacy,
and vied with his fellows in imitating the accomplish
ments of his more travelled countrymen. It would sur
prise the Tongan of to-day to hear that his fathers looked
up to the Fijians as his superiors. A contempt born of
familiarity has ^taught him to estimate the characteristics
of his neighbours at something less than their proper

1790.] THE REVOLUTION. 321
value. The taste for licence engendered by intercourse
with Fiji could not but have its effect upon the political
situation of Tonga. The young chiefs chafed at their
enforced inaction, for there was no scope for personal
ambition in a State controlled by so firm a central
Government.

III.

THE REVOLUTION.
Tukuaho now became the central figure upon the stage.
In his morose and cruel temper, his unbending policy,
his tragic end, and the long years of bloodshed and
misery that followed it, he stands out in the memory
of his countrymen in lurid relief. About the year 1784
the Tui Tonga, Pau, who had so hospitably entertained
Captain Cook, died, and Tukuaho immediately seized the
estates claimed by his widow on behalf of her son Mau-
ulu-beko-tofa, who was still a minor. Her resistance
was useless, and she was driven to take refuge in the
island of Eua. It was the first sign of the waning power
of the Tui Tonga, and the growing assumptions of the
high temporal chiefs. Tukuaho's motive was doubtless
to seize upon a conspicuous place and secure to himself
in due course the reversion of the office of Tui Kano
kubolu. About 1790 Finau Ulukalala died, and was suc
ceeded by his brother under the same title. The younger
Finau was Tukuaho's only rival for the leadership of the
young party, and he, being occupied with the affairs of
x

322 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA. [1797.

Haapai, could not as yet interfere in the affairs of Tonga
tabu. As soon as the office of Tui Kanokubolu became
vacant by the death of Mulikihaamea, Tukuaho success
fully schemed for the election of his father Mumui to the
title, that he himself might wield the power. His father
was already so old that he could not long stand in his
way. Meanwhile a bitter jealousy sprang
up between Finau and Tukuaho, none the
less bitter that it was concealed. It was
unfortunate for their country that the
two men should have existed in the same
generation. Both ambitious, both un
scrupulous, both of inflexible purpose, the
tiny stage was not large enough for both
to play their parts, and a struggle to the
death was inevitable.
At this juncture the ship Duff, fitted
out by the London Missionary Society,
landed nine artisan missionaries, who at
tached themselves to various chiefs, and
were thus enabled to record the events
of the most stirring times in Tongan
history. Unfortunately for themselves,
they quarrelled with two runaway sailors
who had landed some months before them,
and were already in high favour with the chiefs ; and
these men lost no opportunity of damaging them with
the natives, by representing their religious services as
witchcraft designed to destroy them, — a statement to
which a prevailing epidemic among the chiefs gave
colour.

Tlie Tui Tonga's
fish-hook.

1797.] THE REVOLUTION. 323
Mumui was now very infirm, and not likely to survive
many months. The executive power had therefore passed
into the hands of his son Tukuaho, who lived at Hihifo,
but virtually governed the whole island. The power of
the spiritual chiefs had so far declined since Cook's visit
that the missionaries describe the Tui Tonga as coming
below the Tui Kanokubolu in power and influence. On
the 29th May 1797 Mumui died, in spite of the sacrifice
of one of his relations at the shrine of the gods. Two of
his widows, after the custom of Fiji, now fast becoming
the fashion, were strangled at his grave, and the usual
scenes of barbarous grief ensued.1 At the close of the
funeral ceremonies Tukuaho was formally elected Tui
Kanokubolu, and inducted with the ceremony of kava-
drinking. He is thus described by a contemporary : " He
is a stout man, and may be about forty years of age, is
of a sullen, morose countenance, speaks very little, but
when angry bellows forth with a voice like a roaring
lion." Possessed at last of the supreme power in name
as well as in substance, he gave rein to his instincts
¦ — the instincts of a beast of prey. Many stories are
told of his cruelties: how for a mere whim, worthy of
a Commodus, he ordered the right arms of twelve of his
servants to be amputated; how, as a punishment for a
woman who had offended him, he had her sawn asunder
lengthwise while still alive.2 But these were not the true
causes of Finau's hatred against him, though they served
as an excuse for his ambition and insatiable restless
ness. Against a more popular ruler he would not have
dared to rebel; but the savage and wanton cruelties of
1 'Missionary Voyage of the Duff.' 2 Mariner's 'Tonga.'

324 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA. [1799.
Tukuaho had rendered him so unpopular, that it was
easy to gain adherents to the cause of rebellion. He
had long been gathering the young men round him, thus
taking the position which Tukuaho had himself used to
raise himself to the position he held.
At last the opportunity came. It was the time of the
annual inaji, or the offering of the first-fruits to the
Tui Tonga, when the whole nation gathered to Mua to
implore a bountiful harvest from the gods. At such a
time enmities and political distinctions are laid aside,
and the Tui Tonga becomes for the time, as of old, the
head of the nation. Thus when Finau and Tubou Niua,
the tributary chiefs of Haapai and Vavau, arrived at
Mua with a large body of followers carrying their share
of the offering, there could be no suspicion of their
designs. In the evening they took leave of the chiefs
and set sail with their followers as if bound for Haapai,
but in reality to wait on one of the small islands at
the mouth of the lagoon until the people, wearied with
dancing, should be asleep. In the dead of night they
landed on the coast some miles from Mua, and returned
overland to the capital. The night was very dark, and
they had to feel their way to the door of the king's
house. When Finau had posted guards in every ap
proach, Tubou Niua, whom he had put forward to do
the deed, crept into the house among the sleeping forms,
until he could smell the precious sandal-wood-oil with
which he knew the king's head only could be anointed.
Unwilling that he should die in ignorance of the hand
that struck him, he smote him on the face with his
open palm, and, as the sleeper started up, he cried, " It

1799.] THE REVOLUTION. 325
is I, Tubou Niua, that strike," and immediately shattered
his skull with a tremendous blow from his club. He
snatched up Tukuaho's adopted son, whom he wished to
save, and rushed out of the house as Finau's guards ran
in to kill the women just awakened. The alarm was
now given. The frightened attendants tried to escape
the unknown danger by flight to the bush, but in every
road they were met by Finau's guards and struck down.
Hastily collecting their party, the assassins made for
the beach and broke up all the canoes but those sufficient
to transport them to the eastern end of the island. The
sun rose at Mua upon a scene of bewilderment and con
fusion. Men from all parts of the island were crowding
into the town; warriors, hastily armed, were blackening
their faces for war ; women were wailing over the dead ;
and old matabules went from group to group exhorting
them to avenge the death of their chief. To Muliki-
haamea — now the most important executive chief in the
island after the dead king — they all looked to lead them
against the murderers, whom they knew to be awaiting
the turn of events at Hahake. The hopes of the Eoyalist
party were centred in him, but he would take no decisive
action, and the half-hearted expedition despatched against
the rebels returned in the evening with the loss of half
their number, and reported that Finau had sailed to
Haapai for reinforcements. Three clays later he re
turned with ten war - canoes carrying a large body of
men. Thousands had now joined Mulikihaamea, who
was expected to dispute Finau's landing: but, to the
dismay of the Eoyalists, he went over with his whole
force to Finau, and together they swept the country as

326 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA. [1799.
far as Mua, driving their enemy before them to Hihifo.
The eastern and central portions of the island were
thus ranged against the western. Tradition has left us
no clue to the motive of Mulikihaamea, but, to judge
from Finau's subsequent conduct, it seems probable that
the rebels were assured of his support before they ven
tured to strike the blow.1
For the events that followed we have the accounts of
the missionaries who accompanied the Eoyalist army ; of
the apostate Vason, who actually fought on the side of
the rebels ; and the descriptions given by the natives to
Mariner eight years later.
Tukuaho fell on the night of the 21st April 1799.
The missionaries were scattered throughout the different
districts, each living under the protection of some leading
chief, who, though willing to protect them during times
of peace, was quite unable to restrain his people after war
had broken out. With the first news of the rebellion the
serfs broke down all restraint, and slaughtered pigs and
fowls wholesale to compensate them for their enforced
abstinence in times of peace. For the first fortnight
there was no general engagement, but there were slight
skirmishes which served to embitter the hostility between
the two parties. One of the rebels was taken prisoner,
and was cut up alive and eaten, — a reversion to cannibal
ism, after the lapse of two centuries, that was owing,
doubtless, to the baleful example of Fiji. Ata, the hered
itary chief of Hihifo, ordered the bones of Finau's father
to be exhumed, and hung upon a tree in Pangaimotu.
This was the grossest insult that could be offered to the
1 Vason's ' Four Years in Tongatabm.'

1799.] THE REVOLUTION. 327
Ulukalala family, and it served several chiefs as an
excuse for deserting to the rebels.
On the 9th May news reached Hihifo that the rebels
were advancing, supported by Finau's fleet of fifteen sail
of canoes. Their plan was to shut the Eoyalists up in
the narrow promontory of Hihifo and utterly destroy
them. The rebel army, led by Mulikihaamea in person,
marched on the evening of the 9 th as far as Teikiu, and
despatched an advance - guard to reconnoitre. Among
these was Vason. This party advanced till nightfall, and
then took shelter for the night in a house near the road
without taking the precaution of posting sentries. The
Royalists meanwhile, led by Ata, left Hihifo at four
o'clock in the afternoon, halting during the night to allow
a party time to push to the front. The night was very
dark, and they crept forward, each holding the belt of the
man in front of him. They could have slaughtered the
rebel outpost as they slept, but they chose rather to pass
them and take the main body by surprise at Teikiu. At
daybreak the rebel outpost was surprised by the main
body of the Eoyalists. They observed no sort of order or
formation, and in a few moments they were in full flight.
They rallied again at the end of the cross-road that led to
the position of their main force ; but the enemy, leaving a
small force to keep them from effecting a junction, ran off
to reinforce their comrades then engaged with Muliki
haamea. At the sight of this reinforcement the rebel
army, which had been taken by surprise at daylight, was
filled with dismay. Their leader tried in vain to restore
confidence: they wavered and fled. In his efforts to rally
them Mulikihaamea was left behind in his litter, and the

328 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA. [1799.
enemy, making a sudden rush, surrounded the twenty
people who formed his guard and overturned the litter.
They gave no quarter to his companions, three of whom
were women ; and while they hesitated to slay so great a
chief, a man ran up crying, " Kill him ! " and upon the
sudden impulse he was clubbed where he lay. After the
death of their leader the rebels made no further stand,
and the Eoyalists pursued until they reached Haateiho,
where three of the missionaries, who had declined to ac
company either army, were still living. They had been
warned by the fleeing rebels to come with them, but,
trusting in their known neutrality, they preferred to
remain to protect their houses. Among the Eoyalists
was a man to whom they had refused an axe which
he coveted. Calling to his companions, this man set
upon them, clubbed them, and looted their house.
Tired of pursuit, the Eoyalists returned and found that
the rebel outpost had succeeded in driving off the few
men who had been left to keep them in check, and were
trying to succour their wounded. They now set off in full
flight for the coast, pursued by the victors. On their way
they met Finau's contingent, who had just disembarked.
By their direction they continued their flight, drawing the
enemy across the beach towards the canoes. Suddenly
they turned and fell upon their pursuers, who, taken by
surprise, dropped Ata's litter and took to flight. There
was now a debate as to what should be done with their
prisoner, who was related to one of the chiefs who had
captured him. This chief, unwilling to seem partial to
an enemy, wished them to kill him, but his attendants
insisted that, out of respect for himself, the prisoner's life

1799.] THE REVOLUTION. 329
should be spared. They therefore retired and called to
his sons, who came forward and bore him off in his
litter. The three surviving missionaries, who had accompanied
the victorious army, had left it very early in the day,
disgusted with the acts of ferocity they had seen. In
one place they had come upon an old man in the act of
cooking part of the body of an enemy, intending ap
parently to eat it ; in another a man was celebrating his
triumph over a fallen chief by cutting up his body, — and
even some of the women dipped their hands in his blood
and licked them. On their return to their house in
Hihifo, they found that it had been looted by their own
party and destroyed. In despair they took refuge among
the caves on the deserted Liku.
The rebel army passed the night in their canoes. At
daybreak they saw that the enemy was preparing to
attack them in force as soon as they landed, hoping to
take them by surprise at the sacred enclosure of Pangai,
the burying-place of the Tui Kanokubolu ; but Finau,
warned of their intention, landed his men and attacked
them simultaneously from three points. After an ob
stinate resistance they fled to the enclosure within which
stands the king's tomb, hoping that the sanctity of the
place would protect them. The rebels, not daring them
selves to desecrate the place, applied to Vason, who set it
on fire. No quarter was given, and the refugees, driven
out by the fire, were all slain, except a few women who
preferred slavery to death. These became the property of
their captors. The victors now dragged the dead bodies to
the shore, exhausting their ingenuity in insulting them,

330 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA. [1799.
and there had roasted, and begun to eat them, when the
enemy returned to the attack. There was a rush for the
canoes. Overloaded and nearly sinking, they put off
from the shore before the fugitives could all embark.
One canoe laden with men and women was aground, and
its occupants, together with those left behind, were all
massacred. The remnant of the rebel army succeeded
in reaching the island of Atata, where they were confined
for three days by a severe gale : they spent the time in
murdering the defenceless inhabitants, who were supposed
to have Royalist sympathies. From Atata they sailed to
Mua to take counsel for a renewal of the attack.
The missionaries, who had taken refuge on the Liku,
now ventured to come out of their hiding - place and
accompany a number of the Royalists to Maofanga.
This is a sacred spot, situated a mile to the eastward
of Nukualofa, which, from the rigid tabu that attached
to it, had become a place of refuge never violated by war.
In a few clays Finau's army made another descent upon
Hihifo by sea, and on May the 29th, after an obstinate
engagement, they utterly routed the enemy. On the 3d
of June he summoned the refugees before him at Maofanga,
and allowed all except ten of the leaders to go free.
Man, the bravest and most influential of the Royalist
warriors, and nine others were sentenced to various pun
ishments. Some, bound hand and foot, were taken out
to sea and put adrift in leaky old canoes, while Man
and the others were led to the canoes amid the loud
lamentations of their wives and children, and landed at
Lofanga, a small island of the Haapai group, where they
were bound naked to cocoa-nut-trees and left to starve to

1800.] THE REVOLUTION. 331
death. There, exposed to the heat of the sun, to raging
thirst and hunger, they were tortured by the boys of the
place, who amused themselves by sticking spears into
their flesh, or by showing them food to tantalise them ;
yet some of them lingered till the eighth day, and all
bore their sufferings without complaint. The people of
Lofanga still say that at night they hear the groans of
the spirits that haunt the spot.
Having settled the affairs of Tongatabu, Finau Uluka
lala returned to Haapai. He found a body of Eoyalists
drawn up to meet him at Haano, who after a sharp
conflict surrendered to him. He disarmed the lower
orders, and punished the chiefs with the same barbarity
he had practised on the chiefs of Hihifo. From Haapai
he sailed with Tubou Niua to Vavau, which submitted to
him after a desultory warfare lasting for several weeks.
For nine months there was peace. The Hihifans had
not in truth accepted the new order, but they had not
recovered sufficient strength to resist. On the 24th of
January 1800 the privateer Betsy, with a Spanish prize
in tow, took away all the survivors of the ill-fated mis
sion except the apostate Arason. A few days later, while
a party of Finau's men were at Hihifo collecting provisions
to relieve the scarcity at Haapai, the rebellion against
Finau broke out. A party of Hihifans ravaged the cen
tral district, burning and laying waste, and at last hemmed
in the Haapai men at the narrow promontory of Hihifo.
Here they took an ample revenge for the wrongs they
had suffered. When the slaughter was ended they made
stacks of the bodies, laying them transversely one upon
another.

332 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA. [1800.
As soon as the news reached Finau he set sail with all
his forces from Haapai, and disembarked at Hahake, the
eastern end of Tongatabu, in order to procure provisions
for his army ; but he found that the country had been
utterly laid waste by the enemy. He therefore lost no
time in coasting westward. In Hihifo he met an unex
pected check. The enemy had intrenched themselves
behind earthworks surmounted with a strong reed fence.
He tried in vain to force the gate, and when his men were
wearied with repeated attacks the enemy rushed out and
put them to flight. They ran for their canoes, and sailed
at once for Haapai. Finau was now driven to revenge
himself by a series of night attacks. He would arrive off
the coast at nightfall, and post men in every road leading
to the fortress. A sudden attack would then be made,
and the enemy, taken by surprise, would rush into the
country for shelter, where they were struck down by the
men in ambush. Before the alarm could spread to the
neighbouring forts Finau's men had re-embarked and were
under sail for Haapai. These expeditions were made in a
single canoe carrying 250 men.
The planting season had come and gone, and the con
stant alarms had prevented any provision for the ensuing
year from being made. The object of every hostile expe
dition had been to destroy as much of the crops as pos
sible. The year 1800 opened, therefore, with a terrible
famine in Tongatabu, while in Haapai the land proved
insufficient to support the large number of men congre
gated there. Each district had thrown up intrenehments,
within which the people lived, not daring to resume the
cultivation of their lands. Many were driven to can-

1806.] THE REVOLUTION. 333
nibalism for the support of life, and the warfare between
the different fortresses degenerated into mere head-hunt
ing expeditions.
Tukuaho had been nominally succeeded by Maafuli-
niuloa, and upon his death, a few months later, Tukuaho's
eldest surviving son, Tubou-malohi, was proclaimed Tui
Kanokubolu, albeit a king without subjects. Safe within
their fortresses the petty chiefs acknowledged no superior ;
and Tubou-malohi was so harassed by Takai, the one-eyed
chief of Bea, that he became in reality a fugitive from his
own subjects. Misfortunes attended all his enterprises.
Having failed to avenge his father's death upon Finau and
Tubou Niua, he set sail for Fiji. There he remained in
voluntary exile for nearly five years ; but in 1805, hearing
that Finau's descents upon Tonga had become mere annual
predatory expeditions, he returned and built a large for
tress on the hill at Nukualofa.
In 1806 an event occurred that vastly strengthened
Finau's position. An English privateer, the Port - au -
Prince, put into Haapai for repairs, having on board Mr
Mariner, the son of one of the owners. The crew were
mutinous, and insisted on going ashore, and the temptation
was too great for Finau. They were massacred, and the
ship was then surprised and captured by the natives. Mr
Mariner became a great favourite with Finau, with whom
he spent four years, and to his captivity we are indebted
for a most charming book of travel.
With the carronades of the captured ship, manned by
English sailors, Finau made an attack upon Tubou-malohi's
fortress and destroyed it with great slaughter. But instead
of pursuing his victory he withdrew, and had the mortifi-

334 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA. [1808.
cation of seeing his works burnt by Takai, his pretended
ally, as he was sailing away. Tubou-malohi henceforth
became a wanderer from fortress to fortress, taking refuge
with his tributary chiefs, being driven out by each of his
hosts in turn, until at length he became the guest of
Teukava r in Hihifo. Unfortunately for both of them,
his restless spirit could not be satisfied with inaction.
They laid siege to the neighbouring fortress of Nukunuku,
against the advice of their matabides, and in attempting
to garrison it, Teukava lost his life. Emboldened by his
death, his enemies attacked the fortress at Hihifo, and
although they were beaten off by the bravery of its de
fenders, yet Tubou-malohi feared to remain there. He
accordingly despatched an embassy to his younger brother,
Tubou-toa, then Governor of Haapai, begging him to in
tercede with Finau Ulukalala to allow him to live in
security at Haapai. In due course the two brothers
visited Vavau, and the elder did homage to his father's
murderer and his own subject. It must have been a
proud moment for the usurper. Tubou-malohi lived in
retirement in Haapai until 1812, leaving his kingdom of
Tongatabu to the civil war and anarchy that he had been
unable to repress.
Tubou-toa, though he had given in his adhesion to the
stronger party, had not forgotten the murder of his father.
He had taken a solemn vow not to drink from a cocoa-
nut-shell until he had had his revenge upon Tubou Niua,
and his submission to Finau, whom he knew to be equally
guilty with his brother, was designed to bring him nearer
1 This chief had a white woman, Eliza Mozer, for his wife. She was
taken from the American ship Duke of Portland.

1807.] THE REVOLUTION. 335
to his object. Tubou Niua, as Governor of Vavau, had
become very popular with his people. He was of a brave
and open character, little fitted to cope with the cunning
of his inveterate enemy, who lost no opportunity of poison
ing Finau's mind against .him. He was, he said, plotting
a rebellion against Finau's authority, and he habitually
neglected to send tribute of the value clue to Finau's rank
and power. At last he openly proposed his assassination ;
and Finau, never deaf to any proposal that would advance
his own interests, even at the cost of the treacherous
murder of a brother, listened to him. The murder is thus
described by an eye-witness : —
One evening, about an hour before sunset, the king desired
Mr Mariner to accompany him. and his daughter to Mahina
Fekite, about three-quarters of a mile off : he was going, he said,
to consult an old chief, Toki-ae-moana, who resided there, upon
some political business. Finau usually carried with him a large
whaling-knife (the blade of which was 2 feet long and 3 inches
wide). Mr Mariner, observing on this occasion that he did not
take his knife, asked him if he should take it, and carry it for
him: he replied, "No, I have no need of it." Mr Mariner
obeyed, and followed him and his daughter unarmed. In their
way they came near to a pool, and Finau stepped aside to bathe,
previously sending an attendant to Tubou Niua to desire him to
come to him. By the time he had done bathing Tubou Niua
arrived, and all four pursued their walk to the old chief's house,
where, when they arrived, the two chiefs and Finau's daughter
entered the inside fencing, while Mr Mariner went into a house
within the outside fencing, and remained in conversation with
a female attendant of Finau's daughter. They had not been
long here before Tubou-toa came in, and shortly after went out
again. There entered soon after four men belonging to him,
who immediately began to take down the sail, mast, and spars

336 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA. [1807.
of a small canoe, stating as their reason, when questioned by
the woman, Tubou-toa's orders to prepare a canoe : having taken
what they wanted they went out. In about two hours Finau
came out of the inner fencing, followed by Tubou Niua and his
own daughter. As they passed on, Mr Mariner followed her,
and the female attendant walked last. It was now night, but
somewhat moonlight. As they passed the corner of the outer
fencing, Tubou-toa and the four men just spoken of rushed
from their hiding-place, and made a violent assault on Tubou
Niua. The first blow of a club he received on his shoulder
(intended for his head). He immediately exclaimed, " Oi-au-e
Finau, teu mate ? " (0, Finau, am I to be killed 1), and retiring
a few steps, he set his back against the fencing. Finau, who
was several paces in advance, immediately made what was
thought to be a feigned attempt to defend him, exclaiming,
" Oi-au-e seuke, law mate ae tangata!" (Alas! this noble man
is killed;) but he was held from his strong, yet pretended,
endeavour to run to his assistance by some other attendants of
Tubou-toa, who came up and forced Finau into the fencing.
(It must be recollected that Finau did not choose to bring his
whaling-knife with him.) Tubou Niua, who was without any
offensive weapon, as he had been without any suspicion, warded
off several blows with his hands and arms till, these being both
broken, he was unable to lift them up, when a blow from
Tubou-toa on the head made him stagger, another knocked him
down, and he was beaten as long as signs of life remained, and
for some time after. At this moment a young warrior, whose
name was Latuila, and whose father had been formerly killed
under suspicions, strong suspicions, of conspiracy by Tubou
Niua, came up to the spot possessed by a spirit of implacable
revenge. He struck the body of the dead chief several times,
and exclaimed, " The time of vengeance is come ! Thou hast
been long enough the chief of Vavau, living in ease and luxury,
thou murderer of my father ! I would have declared my senti
ments long ago if I could have depended upon others to second

1807.] THE REVOLUTION. 337
me : not that I feared death by making you my enemy, but the
vengeance of my chief, Tubou-toa, was first to be satisfied, and
it was a duty I owed the spirit of my father to preserve my life
as long as possible that I might have the satisfaction to see thee
thus lie stinking '' (dead). He then repeated the blows several
times upon his stomach.
In spite of Finau's positive denial of complicity with
the murderers of his brother, he did not deceive the chiefs
of Vavau. In Haapai, in the centre of Finau's army, they
were at a great disadvantage. When the stone was let
down upon the tomb of their murdered chief, one of the
assassins publicly challenged any of them to single combat ;
but none of them accepted, preferring to reserve their
revenge. They swore allegiance to Finau upon a con
secrated bowl, and received his commands to put them
selves under the authority of his aunt, Toe-umu ; and all,
except the late chief's matabules, who were kept back by
Finau, returned to Vavau. But a fortnight later the news
came that Toe-umu herself had declared her independence
of Finau, who had so treacherously allowed the death of
his brother, her great friend. They had built the largest
fortress ever seen in Tonga, and they were prepared to
resist Finau to the death. While the preparations for
an invasion of Vavau were being made, Finau's son,
Moengangongo, and Vuna, the former Governor of Vavau,
arrived from Samoa, where they had been absent for some
years. One of their canoes, with sixty people on board
and all their treasures, was lost in a gale which the other
five succeeded in weathering.
Finau, in obedience to an oracle, first visited Vavau
alone to endeavour to make terms with the inhabitants,
Y

338 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA. [1808.
but they would only consent to listen to him on the
condition that he would cut off all communication with
Haapai. He therefore returned to Haapai and embarked
his forces, about 5000 men and 1000 women, in fifty war-
canoes, with four carronades and ammunition. The siege
lasted many months, and the garrison only submitted in
obedience to the gods, and after imposing conditions upon
their assailants to take no revenge upon any of them.
These conditions were not observed. Finau heard, or pre
tended that he had heard, of a plot upon his life. Several
of the leading chiefs were seized at his kava-party, bound,
and summarily despatched ; but eighteen were reserved for
the more signal punishment of being turned adrift in leaky
canoes. On their way to the open sea they implored their
executioners to knock out their brains instead of consigning
them to the slow and ignominious death of drowning, and
the request was granted in twelve cases. The other six,
all chiefs of high rank, were turned adrift, and died regret
ting their foolishness in trusting to the honour of Finau.
In Finau's mind there was a growing scepticism regard
ing the religion of his ancestors. He was now in the
zenith of his prosperity, and he had never deserved well
of the gods by submission to their will, or by regularity
in his offerings. To him the institution of a Tui Tonga
seemed a useless tax upon the people — a worn-out cult, a
mere survival of the superstition of a darker age. He
was proposing seriously to abolish the inaji, the great
annual presentation of food to the Tui Tonga, which, in the
famine that had succeeded the war, was very difficult to
provide, when a great misfortune fell upon him. His
daughter, after a long illness, died. While there was

1809.]

THE REVOLUTION.

339

still hope he humbled himself before the deities he had
slighted, and implored them to visit his sins on his own
head rather than upon hers ; but the inspired priest
answered that her death was required as an atonement for
his continued neglect, and that a severer punishment was
in store for him. As soon as the first paroxysms of grief
were passed he deter
mined on the most
impious revenge he
could devise — name
ly, to kill the priest
of his god, Tubou
Toutai. He had
actually sent for a
rope with which to
bind him when he
was seized with sud
den illness. It was
in vain that one of
his children was
strangled to appease
the gods : in twenty-
four hours he was
dead. But the evil
he had wrought in
Tonga could not end with his life. He had found his
country in peace and plenty, he left it torn by famine
and civil war, having in his short life caused more
bloodshed and human suffering than the aggregate in
the whole of Tongan history before his time. A con
temporary writer thus sums up his character: "A char-

Finau Ulukalala, the rebel, after Labillardiere.
(From an engraving in the British Museum.)

340 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA. [1810.
acter like Finau's would have well suited the Greek
drama. The great masters of that drama would have
desired no better elements than are to be found in the
history of this remarkable man : his remorseless ambition
and his natural affections — his contempt for the fables
and ceremonies of his country, when in prosperity — his
patient submission to them, when in distress — his strong
intellect — his evil deeds — and the death which was be
lieved to be inflicted on him in vengeance by the over
ruling divinities whom he defied." :
He was succeeded by his son, Moengangongo, a chief of
milder character, whose one desire was peace. His first
act was to banish to Haapai the chiefs who were likely to
plot against his Government, and to announce that hence
forth all communication with Haapai would be at an end.
His people were, he said, to devote themselves to cultivat
ing the soil, and those who preferred less peaceful pursuits
had this opportunity of joining Tubou-toa ; for after the
canoes left there would be no further intercourse with the
islands to the southward. A few months after his acces
sion the Tui Tonga, Fatafehi Fuanunuiava, died, having
reigned only four years, and the young chief, now to be
known by the family title of Finau, seized the opportunity
for carrying out his father's intention of abolishing the
office. Like his father, he regarded the institution with its
attendant ritual as a useless tax upon the people ; and he
foresaw too that as long as the annual presentation of the
inaji was continued, it would be impossible to cut off all
intercourse with the outside world. The office was there
fore abolished for some years, and when it was revived in
1 Quarterly Review.

1812-1820.] THE REVOLUTION. 341
the person of Laufilitonga, the last of the Tui Tonga, the
ceremony of the great inaji had been discontinued too
long to be resumed.
Mariner, the only historian of this period, left in 1810 ;
and for the events of the next few years we are depen
dent upon native sources. In 1811 Finau II. died, and
was succeeded by his uncle, Finau Fiji, otherwise known
as Tuabaji — a wise and temperate chief, with greater
experience if less natural mental activity than his
nephew. Under his rule intercourse with Haapai was
resumed, for he felt himself strong enough to keep dis
orderly spirits in check.
Haapai now became the political, as it was the
geographical, centre of the kingdom. Tubou - toa had
gathered round him the great warriors of Tonga, many
of them trained in the arts of war as practised in Fiji.
With him were his brother Tubou-malohi, the nominal
Tui Kanokubolu, and Vuna, the banished chief of Vavau.
To keep his warriors employed, he was obliged to make
an annual descent upon Tongatabu without any decided
success. In 1812, however, Tubou-malohi died, and his
brother became the natural successor, although his mother
had been a woman of inferior rank. He was duly elected
to the post by the chiefs who were under his leadership,
and he lost no time in invading Tongatabu. During the
eight years that remained to him, he succeeded in mak
ing some at least of the revolted chiefs acknowledge his
authority ; but at his death, in 1820, the fortresses were
rebuilt, and the island relapsed again into anarchy.

342 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA. [1820.
IV
KING GEORGE.
When Tubou-toa was establishing himself in Tongatabu,
he did not leave the government of Haapai unprovided
for. His son Taufaahau1 was now growing up to man
hood. Born in the year 1797, he was two years old when
the murder of his grandfather, Tukuaho, plunged the
country into civil war. His childhood was spent among
scenes of famine and bloodshed, the horrors introduced
from Fiji, where boys of his age were taught to torture
wounded prisoners in order to make them pitiless. He
saw the crew of the Port-au-Prince struck down on the
beach at Haano, and stood by while eight of his country
men perished, stifled by the oil in the vessel's hold,
in which they could not swim. He remembered the
alarms of that night when his father slew Tubou Niua,
and so avenged his grandfather's death. At an age
when boys are still playing with toy canoes, he was join
ing his father in the night attacks that have made his
name a terror to Tongatabu. His great natural powers
were enhanced by the most careful athletic training. As
he surpassed his fellows in stature and length of limb,
so was he their superior in all sports that demand skill.
None was so fleet of foot, none could meet him in a
wrestling- or a boxing-match, none could endure against
him in swimming in the surf, nor handle a tafaanga laden
1 In this chapter King George is called Taufaahau until his accession to
the throne under the royal name of Tubou.

1820.]

KING GEORGE.

343

with fish in a seaway as he ; none was his match in a fight
to the death. During one of the annual attacks upon
Tonga, he had left his comrades near the canoe, and had
gone a little way from the shore. Suddenly he found
himself, armed with only a Fijian throwing-club, face to
face with five assailants, who had lain in ambush for him.
His followers were too far off for his voice to reach them,
and he knew that against their long spears his throwing-
club could avail him little. He turned and ran before
them, keeping just out of reach of their weapons, leading

A tafaanga in the surf.
them inland towards a place that he knew of where the
soil gave place to jagged limestone rocks. Little dis
tressed himself, he ran on until he knew by their labour
ing breath that his pursuers had begun to tail off. This
was his opportunity. He turned and met the leading-
man, and struck him clown before he could recover from
his surprise. Seizing the spear that dropped from his
hand, he fell upon the second and third, who, gasping for

344 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA. [1822.
breath after their run, were at a great disadvantage. The
other two did not await his onset, but fled, leaving him
victorious. Such was his reputation as a warrior, that he was
marked as the future leader of the Haapai people when
he had scarcely attained manhood. He was twenty-three
when his father died in 1820, and the unity of Tongatabu,
bought by years of hard fighting, was again swept away
by civil war. Taufaahau saw no advantage in following
his father's example, who ever wearily pushed up the
stone of conquest in Tongatabu only to see it roll back
upon him weakened by his hopeless labour. The Govern
ment of Haapai, impoverished as it was by the years
of war, would give him work enough.
For six years there was no Tui Kanokubolu. The
garrisons of Tongatabu still lived within their intrench-
ments, but they were tired of war, and for a time there
was an armed peace. But a power was at hand which
was destined to accomplish that which invading armies
had fought in vain. In June 1822 a Methodist mis
sionary named Lawry, fired by the writings of the sur
vivors of the artisan missionaries landed by the Duff,
made a second attempt to teach Christianity. The grow
ing disbelief in the ancient superstitions that had led
Finau Ulukalala to attempt the abolition of the great
inaji, and to curtail the privileges of the Tui Tonga,
had spread to Tongatabu. The influence of the priests
had been undermined by the licence of war, and Lawry
had not to face the difficulties that beset the pioneers
of the Duff. He found the chief power in Tongatabu
to be in the hands of Maealiuaki, or Talau as he was

1826.] KING GEORGE. 345
also called, the son of Mulikihaamea, who was temporal
sovereign before Mumui. He had married Kananga, a
granddaughter of Mumui, who had just borne him a son,
Tungi,1 who was through his grandfather, Mulikihaamea,
the representative of the Tui Haatakalaua. Fortunately
for Lawry's influence, in November 1823 a young chief
named Futakava, who had been taken to New Zealand
and Sydney by a passing vessel, returned to Tonga.
They had treated Lawry's accounts of the wonders of
foreign countries with scepticism, but they did not think
of doubting the evidence of one of their own countrymen,
even when, after the manner of travellers, he indulged in
exaggeration. But before Lawry could expect to reap
the fruit of his labours he left the islands. His stay
of fourteen months served, however, to pave the way
for his successor.
In 1826 two Tahitian teachers landed at Nukualofa
and began to hold services ; and two months later a
Mr Thomas, despatched by the Methodist Society in
England, landed at Hihifo, and put himself under the
protection of the chief Ata. For some months he had
to contend against opposition, but in 1827 the spirit
of curiosity was so far awakened in the natives as to
make it safe for him to hold services in Nukualofa. At
the close of the previous year Tubou, a half-brother of
the murdered Tukuaho, was elected Tui Kanokubolu,
and formally installed. It has been said that he was
elected as a bribe to wean him from his leanings towards
the new faith ; but a comparison of the dates of his
appointment and Mr Thomas's arrival makes it more
1 Speaker of the Assembly, and Tukuaho's father.

346 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA. [1827.
probable that his election was the result of a prolonged
peace of six years, which gave the chiefs time to revert
to the ancient constitution of society. One year after
his election he publicly embraced Christianity, and a
party, having for its object active resistance to the new
faith, was immediately formed against him. Tubou was
utterly wanting in force of character. His impulse to
please every one led him to temporise with the heathen
party, which was composed for the most part of chiefs
who saw in the new faith a menace to their own power
over their people. Had he been less vacillating he might
have crushed the growing resistance to his authority at
its birth, but his resolution failed him until it was too
late. Against his irresolution the character of Taufaahau
stood out in strong relief. He had long been sceptical
about the gods of his ancestors, and his mind was ripe
to imbibe new ideas. He had heard of the new teachings,
and he longed to hear them for himself. He therefore
wrote to Mr Thomas asking that a missionary might be
sent to him. No white missionary was available at the
time, and he had therefore to be content with Peter Vi,1
the ablest of the new converts. Bitterly disappointed,
Taufaahau refused at first to receive him, but at last his
curiosity prevailed, and he allowed Peter to teach him
to write. As soon as he understood the teachings of the
new religion he signed the death-warrant of the old. To
silence the opposition of the native priests, he dragged
Peter with him into many escapades intended to discredit
the deities of his ancestors. They presented kava to
i The same who visited us on a hand-cart in Haapai.

1831.] KING GEORGE. 347
the priestess of Haehaetahi, and beat the unfortunate
woman, challenging her god to avenge the insult ; they
hanged five idols by the neck, and burned the spirit-
houses, to convince the people by ocular demonstration
that infringement of the tabu had no penalties.
In 1827 Captain d'Urville in the Astrolabe anchored
at Pangaimotu,1 and was attacked by a party of natives,
who carried off with them one of his marines. Not being
disposed to land, or apply to the local authorities, and
knowing the evil character the people had earned in
their attempts to take ships, he bombarded the island
for two clays without doing serious damage. Later in the
year Peter Dillon, on his way to find the remains of
de la Perouse's ill - fated expedition at Vanikoro, put
in for a few days to secure interpreters.
Finau Ulukalala III. (Tuabaji, alias Finau Fiji 2), who
now held independent sway over Vavau, following Tau-
faahau's example, had also written for a missionary ; but
his motive proved to be that of mere curiosity, and he
soon cast off his new professions. In April 1831 Tau
faahau visited Vavau with twenty -four sail of canoes,
on political business, and took that opportunity for
attempting the conversion of his eccentric neighbour.
It was a hard task, and he found it necessary to sail
back to Haapai unattended to ascertain from the mis
sionary whether it would be safe to promise Finau a
missionary if he would consent to renounce his gods.
Satisfied upon this point, he returned to the attack.
Being before all things practical, Finau determined to
give his fathers' gods one last chance before finally
1 Near Nukualofa. 2 Described by Mariner.

348 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA. [1832.
breaking with them. He had seven of the principal
idols placed in a row, and addressed them as follows:
" I have brought you here to prove you, and I will tell
you beforehand what I am going to do, so that you may
have no excuse. I am going to burn you. If you be
gods, escape ! " But as the idols made no attempt to
escape, he gave orders that the spirit-houses should be
set on fire. Eighteen were thus destroyed ; but the
weather being damp, they took four days to consume,
and the people sat by terrified, waiting for the retribu
tion that must follow such iniquity.
Meanwhile Finau's brother prepared to oppose the new
faith by force of arms. After plundering the outlying
villages of Vavau, he intrenched himself on an uninhabited
island. Finau called upon Taufaahau to help him out of
the difficulty brought about by following his advice. At
the head of a strong party of Haapai warriors he landed
on the island, and tried his powers of persuasion upon the
hostile force. Besides his physical prowess Taufaahau
possessed another gift that appeals most powerfully to
primitive man — eloquence. Often when his men were
jaded, hungry, and dispirited, a few words from him would
turn their thoughts from their own sufferings to the glory
to be won by fiery courage and the shame of failure.
"When Tubou spoke like that," said one of his chiefs,
" the warriors would not wait to hear the end, but rushed
upon the enemy and bore them down."
While the enemy still hesitated he prepared for the at
tack, but they did not await his onset. They threw open
the rude gateway and sued for peace. No blood was shed,
but the leader was banished to Fiji, and a number of his

1833.] KING GEORGE. 349
followers were taken to Haapai as prisoners of war. This
moderation on the part of conquerors was the first-fruits
of the new faith, for by ancient usage the lives of the
chief rebels would have been forfeited.
In 1833 Finau Ulukalala died, and on his deathbed
committed the government of Vavau to Taufaahau until
his heir should be grown up. Upon this the Roman
Catholic missionaries have founded a charge of usurpation
against King George which may be easily answered. The
heir died, and before his successor had attained manhood
Tonga had become a united kingdom with a Constitution,
and to give Vavau an independent government would
have brought the whole fabric to the ground. But Tubou
showed me on more than one occasion that he was uneasy
about Finau's dying charge.
Taufaahau was now in reality an independent sovereign
of the joint kingdoms of Haapai and Vavau, and was free
to acknowledge the suzerainty of the Tui Kanokubolu or
not as he pleased. Under his influence the new religion
had been embraced by the people of Haapai and Vavau
with all the emotional zeal of new converts. In their
restless energy, and the ease with which enthusiasm or
suspicion may be excited in their minds, the Vavauans
are a race distinct from their neighbours of the southern
groups, — as distinct as the contrast between their moun
tainous romantic island and the flat shores of Haapai and
Tongatabu. They may be violent partisans or bitter
enemies — they cannot be neutral. They are, in short,
the Irish of Tonga. It was not long before the mis
sionaries, by awakening this curious quality of hysterical
enthusiasm, had established over them a clerical despot-

350 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA. [1837.
ism that made them independent of political changes.
But against the silent forces of inherited enmities in
Tongatabu, the legacy of years of civil war, Christian
ity could make no headway. It was enough that Tubou
the king had accepted the white man's religion for
the chiefs averse to his rule to remain heathen. That
Tui ATakano had been converted was reason enough
for Lavaka, lord of Bea, to continue unregenerate. In
1835 the chief holding the title of Tui Vakano joined
the missionaries, and his people formally deprived him
of his title, and expelled him from their midst. Furious
at the treatment he had received, he reported that
the heathen party were determined to depose King
Tubou by force of arms. The Christians immediately
threw up intrenchments at Nukualofa, and thus pre
cipitated the outbreak of hostilities. But a severe hurri
cane, that destroyed the food supplies, compelled both
parties to remain inactive throughout 1836. At this
juncture it is probable that the king might have averted
war had he shown the least firmness or energy ; but as he
made no effort to win over the hostile party by diplomatic
means, and the missionaries were powerless to quell the
strife they had raised, civil war became inevitable.
In January 1837 the Christian party took up arms with
the avowed object of suppressing a rebellion, and met a
body of the heathen near Bea, defeating them. "The
heathen party could put more fighting men into the field,
and Tubou therefore sent to Taufaahau for reinforce
ments from Haapai. It was a missionary war — a crusade
in which the club and the Bible were linked against
the powers of darkness ; and no knight-errant ever went

1837.] KING GEORGE. 351
against the Crescent with greater zest than the new con
verts showed in their quarrel with their heathen country
men. By the middle of March the struggle was at an
end and peace was declared, but still neither party felt
safe outside of their intrenchments. The principal con
ditions imposed upon the heathen were that no person
should be persecuted for his religion.
They did not long keep their undertaking. Both at
Hihifo and Bea the new converts were subjected to petty
annoyances that more than once drove them to arms
again, and goaded several to return to the gods of their
forefathers. But the threatened renewal of civil war
did not prevent the hostile parties from meeting on the
occasion of a great national festival. On the 14th of May
1837, Tui Belehake, a chief of the family of the Tui Tonga,
married Charlotte, Taufaahau's daughter. At this mar
riage all the heathen chiefs attended and mixed with the
Christian chiefs on friendly terms.1
One can sympathise with the feelings of the heathen
chiefs. The new religion, they saw, would soon destroy
the little power that remained to them. It was introduced
by foreigners, and was being forced on them by their hered
itary enemies of Haapai and Vavau, who made it an ex
cuse for plundering their homes, just as they had done in
their annual raids before the Christian religion had been
1 This event enables us to fix the king's age with some degree of proba
bility, Taking King George to have been twenty-five years old at the
time of Charlotte's birth (for he had a son older than Charlotte), and her
age at marriage to have been at least seventeen, King George must have
been born in 1797. Charlotte's grandson, Taufaahau, succeeded King
George in March 1893. She died at Nukualofa in August 1891, after her
return from exile for adherence to the Wesleyan Church.

352 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA. [1840.
even heard of among them. It was a foreign religion, and
it aimed at destroying their influence over their people
and substituting that of a foreigner; therefore they, as
Tongans, would resist it to the death.
In 1839 it was reported that a plot to assassinate the king
had been discovered. The storm-clouds were gathering
thick, but still they did not break. In January 1840 King
Josiah Tubou paid a friendly visit to Ata in Hihifo, and
some of Ata's followers took that opportunity for attacking
and killing a party of Christians in their plantations. This
outrage being a declaration of war, a strong party was at
once despatched from Nukualofa to bring the king to a
place of safety. The heathen party invested Fou'i, and
Tubou, knowing that the fall of Fou'i would be the signal
for an attack upon Nukualofa, sent a fast-sailing canoe to
Haapai to implore Taufaahau's help. When he arrived it
was arranged that he should meet the enemy and submit
terms of peace to them. A deserter from the enemy met
him on the way to the meeting, and warned him that a plot
had been formed to shoot him from an ambush as soon as
he reached the appointed place. He at once returned to
Nukualofa, and advanced upon Hihifo with all his forces.
After investing the place for nearly a fortnight he had re
course to a curious stratagem. When civil war breaks out
in Tonga, it is the custom for each man to fight on the side
of the people with whom he happened to be staying on the
outbreak of hostilities. Thus brothers often find them
selves ranged against one another. He now ordered such
of his men as had relations or friends among the enemy to
advance to the ditch and call upon his friend to desert, as
suring him of safety. When this was done numbers of the

KING GEORGE. 353
besieged jumped over the wall and joined the besiegers,
leaving the garrison too weak to resist. Hihifo thus yielded
without the loss of a single life, and Taufaahau, true to
his promise, spared the lives of the 500 prisoners who fell
into his hands.
He now consented to take up his permanent quarters in
Nukualofa with his army of 900 men and their families.
On April 20, 1840, an attack was made upon some strag
glers near Nukualofa. The Christians were upon the point
of making reprisals when Commodore Wilkes of the United
States exploring expedition arrived, and offered his ser
vices as mediator between the hostile parties. But his
efforts were frustrated by a fresh attack by the heathen,
and he left the island without effecting his object. Rightly
or wrongly, he formed the opinion that the missionaries
by their incliscriminating zeal had brought about the war,
and that King George Taufaahau was using the oppor
tunity to so increase his prestige as to secure his succession
to the office of the reigning king. Although the result of
the war was the advancement of the interests both of King
George and the missionaries, I see no reason to believe that
either were disinclined for peace. The worst that can be
said is that it was a missionary war, brought about by zeal
untempered with discretion, and that in this respect only
can the bloodshed be laid at the missionaries' door.
On the 21st May 1840 Captain Croker anchored at
Nukualofa in H.M.S. Favourite, and was appealed to by
the missionaries to help them out of their difficulties. He
landed half his ship's company, and advanced upon the
fortress of Bea with three field-pieces. The guns were
brought into position within range of the enemy's muskets,
z

354 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA.
and Captain Croker entered the fort under a flag of truce.
The garrison were willing to listen to his terms, and he
left them with the understanding that they should have
half an hour to consult their allies. At the end of the
time an English sailor, nicknamed Jimmy the Devil,1 who
was armourer to the heathen forces, appeared above the
gate and asked for more time — indeed it afterwards trans
pired that they were upon the point of accepting the terms;
but Captain Croker stood watch in hand, and upon the
stroke of the half-hour he ran towards the gate crying,
" Now, men, follow me." In the first volley from the fort
he and several of his men were wounded, and as he leaned
for support against a cocoa-nut-tree he was shot through
the heart. Two of his officers were killed, and nineteen
men wounded : the survivors succeeded with great diffi
culty in carrying off the injured, and they at once put to
sea, taking with them the missionaries and their families.
The field-pieces are still in the hands of the Tongans, and
serve to keep green the memory of how they beat a British
man-of-war. The whole blame of this extraordinary incident, which
has done so much to damage British prestige with the
Tongans, must rest upon Captain Croker, who paid for his
folly with his life. For becoming the aggressor in a quar-
1 There was more than one "Jimmj' the Devil" in Tonga. A few
months after the attack upon Bea, some of the blue-jackets were discuss
ing the affair in a public-house in Sydney. A man sitting near, hearing
the word Tonga, joined in the conversation, saying that he had been in
the islands. "They called me 'Jimmy the Devil' down there " he added.
The wretched man barely escaped from the blue-jackets with his life.
They had mistaken him for the " Jimmy " who shot down their com
mander.

KING GEORGE. 355
rel that did not concern him he may be excused — for, in the
excitement of the time, it is more than probable that the
missionaries greatly exaggerated their own danger, and
thus placed him in the position of a protector of British
interests ; but for the gross incompetence and indiscretion
shown in leading the attack he must bear the sole respon
sibility. The heathen party, having beaten off their assailants,
began to grow tired of the confinement of life within their
intrenchments, and readily accepted peace without the
imposition of terms on either side. The new converts,
with the doctrine of universal love ringing in their ears,
were now to learn something of Christian hate, and, to do
them justice, they made very apt pupils. In 1842 some
Roman Catholic priests landed and joined the heathen at
Bea, among whom they had as much right to be as the
Methodist missionaries who had failed to convert them.
The mutual recriminations of the rival teachers could not
leave their followers unaffected. Eeligious differences
among natives, fostered as they always are by their
spiritual guides, invariably lead to political troubles.
The heathen chiefs now asserted that they had a right
to be independent, and that they would give asylum to
any fugitive from the laws promulgated by the king.
The priests had set their followers in the road that
leads to civil war, and for the misfortunes that overtook
them they had only themselves to thank.
On November 14, 1845, King Josiah Tubou died. On
his deathbed he summoned Tungi, the representative of
the Tui Haatakalaua and the principal heathen chief, and
charged him to regard George Taufaahau as his succes-

356 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA.
sor. Perhaps his dying wishes would have failed to out
weigh the claims of a competitor possessing higher influ
ence with the chiefs whose duty it is to elect the member
of the reigning family best fitted to succeed, but there was
no such competitor. The two chiefs who had the nearest
claims were Mumui, and Maafu, King Josiah's son ; but
as Tubou-toa's son and Tukuaho's grandson, Taufaahau's
rights were unquestioned.
George Taufaahau went through the usual native form
of disclaiming any desire to succeed ; but resistance to
the proffered honour is expected of every candidate. On
December 4, 1845, the chiefs from all parts of the king
dom assembled in the time-honoured grove at Pangai in
Hihifo, under the hoary toa-tiees that had seen the royal
cup placed in the hands of Ngata and his successors in
lineal descent for two centuries, and whose roots had
been watered with the blood of the avengers of the
murdered Tukuaho in the great rebellion of 1799. The
state kava-ring was formed ; the two hereditary king
makers took their seats on either side of the king-elect ;
the kava was poured into the cup ; the presiding matabule
proclaimed that this was the kava of Taliai-Tubou, Tui
Kanokubolu. George Taufaahau, the warrior, the chief
of Haapai and Vavau, was no more ; and George Tubou,
the champion of the new faith, reigned over all Tonga as
his fathers had reigned before him.
King George Tubou, as he will now be called, spent the
first years of his reign in cementing his authority. Sions
were not wanting that the heathen party had not accepted
the new order of things. In 1847 he decided to remove
his Court from Nukualofa to Haapai, as a warning to such

KING GEORGE. 357
of the chiefs of Tongatabu who had failed in their re
spect towards him. He left Tongatabu under the govern
ment of the two Hahavea chiefs, — Maafu and Lavaka of
Bea, — making them responsible for the maintenance of
peace. They, in common with the other chiefs, had
taken a pledge not to repair the fortifications of any of
the fortresses, and to punish the first chief who should
dare to disturb the peace. But as soon as he had left
the island they lost no time in repairing the earthworks
of Bea. When the news reached the king, he returned
to Tonga in a fleet of war-canoes, and summoned the ac
cused chiefs to his presence. They strenuously denied the
charge of sedition, and renewed their assurances of loyalty.
But the king had scarcely returned to Haapai when
they began again to annoy their more loyal neighbours,
hoping to goad them into open resistance. The chiefs
now petitioned the king to return to Nukualofa, and in
July 1851 he acceded to their request. The rebel chiefs
now showed their intentions more clearly. They refused
to meet the king, and declared their intention of separ
ating themselves from his Government. They had with
them some French priests, who have been accused of
encouraging them in their resistance. In February 1852
the works of Bea were hurriedly restored, and a col
lision became inevitable. The quarrel was again a ques
tion of the new religion. The heathen had for a time
been allowed to follow their own inclinations ; but in
1850 Tungi, the son of Maealiuaki, the most influential
of their party, joined the Christians, and they saw that
they must either follow his example and surrender their
influence, or take up arms in the defence of their in-

358 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA.
dependence. They were the more ready to adopt the
latter alternative since the priests pointed out to them
that they would be surrendering not to King George —
that they had already done — but to the English mission
aries, who had become his Ministers of State as well as
of the Gospel.
Before finally taking the field, the king made an effort
to induce the priests to leave the rebels — for his foresight
told him that any injury they might sustain would afford
a pretext for the demands of a foreign Power for in
demnity. They refused, however, to leave the fort, pro
bably feeling that the desertion of their friends on the
approach of danger would destroy their prestige beyond
repair. The courage they showed in braving the dangers
of a siege by a stronger party, with the prospect of the
horrors of savage victory at the close, compares favour
ably with the conduct of their rivals who fled the island
in 1840, and deserves something better than the sneers
that have been heaped upon them by the Wesleyan
missionaries. On March 1st the king distributed muskets among his
chiefs, and formally declared war. After two slight skir
mishes, a pitched battle was fought near Bea, with con
siderable loss on both sides, but without decisive result.
On the 14th the Eoman Catholic Bishop of Samoa arrived
in a French ship-of-war to inquire into the cause of the
war, and left again with the avowed intention of bringino-
help for the beleaguered priests from Tahiti. On the 12th
of April the king closely invested Bea, by throwing up
four earthworks at different points of the fortification,
garrisoning them with a total force of 10,000 men. He

KING GEOEGE. 359
might probably have taken the place by assault, but for
some reason he hesitated from day to day in the hope that
the enemy would themselves sue for peace.
Houma meanwhile had resisted all Ata's efforts to carry
it by storm, and the king's troops were driven to try the
expedient of starving the garrison into submission. Early
in July the Houma people sued for peace, and received
the king's pardon, sitting before him with m-leaves, em
blematic of submission, hanging from their necks. Five
weeks later a large ship was reported off the anchorage,
and the king, supposing it to be the help promised to the
enemy from Tahiti, prepared to assault Bea before the
French should have time to interfere. But she proved
to be H.M.S. Calliope, commanded by Sir Everard Home,
who offered his services to the king as mediator with
his enemies. Terms were again sent to the enemy by
four chiefs of high rank, — that the lives of the entire
garrison should be spared, on the condition that the fort
should be given over to pillage and destruction. But the
enemy distrusted the faith of the king's troops, and asked
for one of the missionaries and the king's son as hostages
for their safety. To this the king would not consent, and
the negotiations threatened to break down when news
reached Nukualofa that the principal chiefs had left the
fortress, and that the royal forces were sacking the place.
The king, accompanied by Sir Everard Home, set off for
Bea in hot haste, and traversed the four intervening miles
almost at a run. They arrived just in time to prevent
the victors, drunken with the excitement of rapine, from
proceeding to outrage. The town was in flames, and the
priests were threatened with rough treatment. By the

360 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA.
king's efforts they were removed to a place of safety, and
their property was dragged out of their burning houses.
Lavaka, Maafu, and Tubouleva were pardoned, and they
forthwith renounced both heathenism and the Christianity
of the Eoman Church, which the Protestant chronicler
naively classes together. Thus ended the second Wes
leyan crusade, and Protestantism, sustained by the musket
and the club, was again triumphant.
In the following November the long-expected help from
Tahiti arrived in the person of Captain Belland of the
Imperial frigate Moselle. A formal inquiry was held to
investigate the charges brought by the priests and the
captain of a French whaler ; and the French commander,
while acquitting the king of responsibility for any injury
sustained by the priests, warned him against allowing
his zeal to blind him to the right of his subjects to entire
freedom of conscience. In closing the inquiry he said to
the interpreter, " Tell him that I have known many chiefs
in the South Seas, but I have never met his equal."
Relieved of his anxieties at home, King George had
now the leisure to consider his long-cherished scheme of
travelling abroad More than once in his youth he had
almost yielded to a temptation to ship before the mast in
one of the passing whalers that made Tonga their annual
port of call. Had he done so, the history of his country
would have been different, but he was reserved for higher
things. His mind naturally turned to Fiji, where a new
kingdom had been unexpectedly won for him. The num
ber of Tongans settled in Fiji had grown into a standing
menace to the peace of Tonga. Any disaffected chief
might recruit an army of free-lances there, well trained in

KING GEORGE. 361
arms, and return to Tonga as an invader. The only safe
guard against this was to set a chief over them who would
find an outlet for their restless energy in Fiji itself. Fiji
would be, moreover, a vent for the disaffection of a num
ber of his own subjects, who would be glad enough to
become exiles with the brilliant prospect of conquest and
booty before them. The man lay ready to hand. Maafu,
the son of his predecessor, had all the qualities for a leader
of such an expedition. He had, besides, a strong claim to
the succession, and would be made the figurehead of any
rebellion that might be launched against the throne by
the heathen party. An expedition was soon fitted out,
and early in 1848 Maafu, at the head of a strong and
numerous following, set sail for Lakemba. During the
next five years he fought his way into the supremacy of
the whole of the Lau group, wresting the power from the
hands of Tui Nayau, and vesting the lands in his principal
followers. Maafu, accustomed to the Tongan system of
land tenure, did for Fiji what the British Government
has never had the courage to do. He cut the Gordian
knot of boundary disputes by dividing out the communal
lands into small individual holdings, and securing them
to the grantees with a strong hand. He did not, more
over, allow his Fijian subjects to alienate an inch of
land to Europeans except on lease. He was a student
of history. Asked by what right he divided the lands
of the Fijians, he replied sardonically, " I am King
William — William the Conqueror ! " Having established
settled government upon the Tongan model, he turned
his eyes westward, and threatened the powerful chieftain
cies of Bau, Thakaundrove, and Mathuata. The cession

362 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA.
of- Fiji to England reduced him from the position of an
independent viceroy to that of a pensioner of the British
Government. Deprived of all stimulus to activity, he
became demoralised, took to drink, and died in 1880.
Affairs stood thus when, in 1853, King George em
barked for Sydney in the mission brig John Wesley.
The ship dropped anchor at Bau, and King George met
Thakombau and formed the alliance that ultimately
brought about the annexation of the group by England.
The Fijian chief promised him the canoe Ea Marama, the
largest craft afloat, if the king would visit him to bring
her away. His power was already waning, and he hoped
that his alliance with the Tongan king, whose name was
become a terror throughout the group, would cow his
enemy Ratu Mara.
Sydney made a deep impression upon George's mind.
His questions were unending. Nothing escaped him,
from the form of legislature to the uniforms of the police
men. One fact, indeed, he lost no time in applying to his
own country, and to it is due the present independence of
the kingdom of foreign interference. European settlers
had already been pressing him to sell land to them, and
he had resisted hitherto, feeling that it would give them a
status in the country that would sooner or later affect his
own independence. He now found that in Sydney land
could be granted to a stranger without passing out of the
hand of its real owner. He resolved that not a rood of
Tongan land should be alienated except upon lease, and
he kept his resolution.
On his return to Tonga he wrote to Thakombau the
letter that induced him to accept the missionaries' teach-

KING GEORGE. 363
ings which he had so long rejected, and he then made
his preparations for the visit he had promised. His fleet
consisted of thirty sail of double canoes, manned by many
hundreds of warriors. He had no intention of joining in
any of the local wars, but he knew the necessity of being
independent of the protection of his host, whose power,
he knew, was not undisputed. From Moturiki he de
spatched a canoe to Ovalau, commanded by Tavake, one
of his own relations. Before the canoe could reach the
shore it was fired upon by the natives, who were at the
time in alliance with Eatu Mara, Thakombau's revolted
brother. Tavake was killed, and the canoe hastened back
to the king with the news. The murderer could not be
captured without a general attack upon Ovalau and a
war with the whites, who sided with Mara, and would
not surrender the murderer to any ally of Thakombau.
King George therefore resolved to join Thakombau in an
attack upon the fortress of Kamba on the mainland, where
the enemy were massed in force. Thakombau's fortunes
were now at the lowest ebb. If he failed in reducing
Kamba, his fate was sealed. His enemies had hemmed
him in ; his vassals had revolted ; even his own town,
filled with his own relations, was against him, and in
open communication with the enemy. His conversion to
Christianity had alienated many of those who still clung
to him, and his only hope lay in his Tongan allies.
On the 7th of April 1853 the allied armies landed on
the peninsula. A party of Tongans was despatched to
reconnoitre the fort, and they had scarcely left the main
body when news came that they were engaged with the
enemy. The rest of the Tongans advanced to the attack,

364 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA.
dashed against the stockade, and after a few minutes'
hand-to-hand fighting the enemy were in full flight, and
Kamba, invincible to Fijian methods of warfare, was in
flames. None of their Fijian allies appeared until the
looting had begun. With the fall of Kamba the heart of
Mara's rebellion was crushed, and Thakombau recovered
his prestige. Had King George failed him, Bau would
have fallen, and the cession of the country to England,
which Thakombau brought about, might never have taken
place. Before leaving the group, King George made a tour
through some of the heathen islands to urge upon the
chiefs the adoption of Christianity. Traces of this ex
pedition may still be seen in the wavy seal-like hair of
some of the natives of Kandavu and Vatulele, who were
born shortly after the departure of the Tongans.
After settling the policy to be adopted by Maafu in
Lau, the king set sail for Tonga. He found the Governor
of Tahiti, M. du Bouzet, awaiting his return with a treaty
ready for his signature, which was so worded as to give
the French priests the fullest liberty of action. It was
then the policy of the Empire, as it is now of the Ee-
public, to lend the Church the powers of the State abroad
while ignoring her claims at home.
To this point, in spite of the bloodshed the introduction
of Christianity had cost, the missionaries' influence had
been for good ; but from the king's return from Fiji they
felt their position to be secure, and they began to abuse
their power by meddling in the affairs of the State. They
were burning with a desire for radical reform : they panted
to see their flock enjoying the sweets of constitutional
government. Mr St Julian, the King of Hawaii's Mayor

KING GEORGE. 365
of the Palace, having persuaded his own patron to bow
down before the freedom-god, wrote a flattering letter to
the Tongan missionaries to enlist them in the same holy
cause. The king, to his credit be it said, long resisted, ob
jecting that his people were not ready for such reforms ;
that, though in Sydney it might be well to curtail the
power of the chiefs, the Tongans would use their new
liberty for the indulgence of their natural idleness. But
in 1862 he was over persuaded, and a Constitution was
granted which swept away the form of government which
had taken centuries to elaborate, and substituted exec
utive machinery on the English plan. A system evolved
from centuries of experiment to suit the needs of Anglo-
Saxons was forced in a single day upon a handful of ignor
ant Orientals, with whose inborn convictions it was in com
plete antagonism. The Konisitutone became thenceforth
the fetish of the Tongan people. Most of them did not
know what it was, but it had been introduced by the
missionaries, and was intimately connected, they believed,
with its outlandish fellow Konisienisi (Conscience), and
in some mysterious way it elevated their country to the
level of one of the Great Powers. It was not until after
the feasting and the speech-making and the ecstatic ser
mons of the black-coated missionaries that the chiefs had
time to realise that they had sold their birthright for a
sheet of vellum, and that their power was gone. It was
a heavy price to pay for being sivilaisi.
The power of the missionaries was now at its height.
The king had no other advisers, and it was natural that he
should rely upon them. The early indifference to their
teachings had given place to an almost hysterical en-

366 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA.
thusiasm. They had scarcely to ask for contributions —
the emulation among their congregations filled the mission
oil-tanks — and they, too, began to be astonished at their
own moderation. As the king's advisers they now began
to dabble in politics. They designed a Royal Standard
with doves and crossed swords, and other un-Polynesian
devices ; they ordered a Crown and a Great Seal ; they
taught the officers of State to pace the beach in Eng
lish military uniforms ; they encouraged the women to
disfigure themselves with bonnets and European dress.
They had laboured hard, and if they now complacently
accepted the blind adoration of their flock, it was but
human nature.
But there was one among the new converts who was
less blind than his teachers. One of the missionaries was
leaving the group, and the villages for miles round as
sembled to take leave of him. A vast pile of mats, cloth,
and other native property was heaped up before the smil
ing clergyman : the excitement was hysterical. Tungi, the
latest convert, was curiously watching the scene with a
companion by his side. " Uiliame," he said, " do you re
member how they treated Mr  when he came, how
they stole his things and insulted him, and do you see
them now ? They are dying of love for him, Uiliame •
yet I think that you and I will live to see the time when
their love will be turned into hate. This will not last for
long, Uiliame ; their minds are too hot." Uiliame re
membered these words twenty years later, when he saw
an angry crowd assembled outside the mission - house
demanding the bodies of the native Wesleyans who had
taken refuge there, and he told the story as a proof of

KING GEORGE. 367
Tungi's wisdom. But the missionaries had no misgiv
ings. They had learned the fickleness of their people by
bitter experience, but in the days of their apotheosis they
forgot the law of reaction.
The first cloud was no bigger than a man's hand. For
some years the contributions exceeded the needs of the
Church in Tonga, and the people asked that the surplus
might be spent among them, instead of being swallowed
up by impecunious missions in other lands. The hesita
tion of the Wesleyan Conference in Australia in granting
this very reasonable request gave birth to a desire for
ecclesiastical self-government. The ignorant but self-
effacing missionaries of the early days had made way
for a very different stamp of man, not less ignorant,
perhaps, but far better versed in the affairs of the world.
The modern missionary was not called to the post owing
to any inward conviction : he took up the work as he
would any other profession, and he aimed at the aggran
disement of the Church of which he was a member, rather
than the ultimate good of the people committed to his
care. He saw that the moving spirit of the Tongan mind
was display and emulation, and he skilfully adapted it to
the needs of the collection-plate. The chairman was now
Mr Baker, a plausible and not over-scrupulous man, half-
educated, but possessed of considerable knowledge of the
world. Little by little he brought the king to look to
him for advice in secular matters. The secret of his
influence was the king's fear of losing his independence.
Mr Baker worked upon this fear, representing England as
only waiting for an opportunity to seize the country as
she had done in Fiji. It was only by following his advice

368 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TONGA.
that these nefarious designs could be frustrated. He now
began to play into the hands of Germany, thinking that
he would flatter the king by negotiating a treaty with one
of the Great Powers. He approached the German Consul-
General in Samoa, and found him ready to treat with him
for a fair price — namely, the cession of a coaling-station
in the unequalled harbour of Vavau. On the 1st of Novem
ber 1876 the native plenipotentiaries, with their reverend
interpreter, proceeded to a German ship-of-war to sign the
treaty that had been prepared for them. It was read, and
when the passage about the coaling-station was reached
Tungi objected that he would like to consult the king
before signing such a clause, but the German commander
sternly told him that it was all settled, and that it was
too late to withdraw. So the treaty was signed, and the
coaling-station ceded " without prejudice to the rights of
sovereignty of the King of Tonga," and the " interpreter "
received a decoration from the Emperor of Germany for
the trouble he had taken in the matter.
I have now brought this sketch to the point of the
establishment of the Free Church, whence I have traced it
in the opening chapters of this volume. For those who
have heard of King George only as a persecutor, or as a
sovereign ruled by his own Minister, owe it to themselves
and to his memory to give at least an equal prominence
in their minds to the story of his early career.

THINGS ANTHEOPOLOGICAL AND
ZOOLOGICAL

THINGS ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND ZOOLOGICAL.

It was the census year, and the law provided that the
Minister of Police should be responsible for numbering
the people. His arrangements were somewhat primitive,
but I daresay that they produced more satisfactory results
than would the more elaborate machinery of our Eegistrar-
General if put into the hands of such workmen. Kubu
simply ordered his policemen to visit every village and
write down the names of the inhabitants. In a country
where every individual is personally known if not related
to the enumerator, not many omissions are likely to have
been made. The total census of the natives was 19,196.
The registers of the births and deaths for the previous
ten years showed the population to be steadily decreasing,
not so much on account of excessive mortality as of a low
birth-rate. The death-rate (36 per mille), however, was high
when compared with European countries ; and it would be
strange if it were not so, when it is remembered that the
arrival of Europeans has introduced the germs of many
diseases from which the natives were formerly free, and
to which they are therefore not yet inured. Chiefly de-

372 THINGS ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND ZOOLOGICAL.
structive among these are dysentery and whooping-cough,
both of them unknown to the Tongans before the advent of
European ships. But apart from bacilli of actual foreign
diseases, there is now no doubt that the different races
of men are themselves uncongenial, and that their first
meeting generates a mysterious poison fatal to the weaker
race. In the Bacific, Tahiti, Niue (Savage Island), and
Penrhyn Island in particular were swept by a destructive
epidemic immediately after the visit of the first European
ship, though the visitors were not themselves suffering from
any such ailment at the time. Such disasters have led
the natives of some of the islands to adopt a murderous
system of quarantine, and the loss of many lives has been
the result. Tonga, however, seems to have been spared
this penalty that attaches to the " blessings of civilisa
tion," unless the tradition of an epidemic following Tas
man's visit has been lost. The first sickness preserved
by tradition is the ngangau (lit. headache), a new disease
that ravaged the group about the year 1776, but which
was not associated in the natives' minds with the visit of
Captain Cook three years before. Of this many hundreds
are said to have perished.
I do not believe that the population of Tonga ever
greatly exceeded 20,000. It is true that the natives have
traditions of a time when the king's orders could be
shouted from house to house as the people lay on their
mats ; but I think that this refers to the time when each
family lived in its own plantation instead of in villages, 
a state of things that was observed by Tasman in 1643.
Cook estimated the people present at the entertainment
given to him at Maofanga in June 1777 at 10,000, the

THINGS ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND ZOOLOGICAL. 373
present population of Tongatabu. Since that time the
population has been either stationary or decreasing —
slightly under normal circumstances, rapidly in time of
epidemic. In 1893 the measles and the diseases con
sequent upon it carried off one-twentieth of the people.
In the absence of such severe visitations whooping-cough
is the most destructive of the introduced diseases. The
mothers lack the knowledge and the self-devotion re
quired to successfully nurse their children through such ill
nesses, and content themselves with calling in one native
quack after another to close the unfortunate child with a
succession of nostrums until death puts an end to its
sufferings. For the low birth-rate there are several reasons. In
ancient times the women were required to do no work
beyond the light occupations of fishing and cloth-beating.
The men planted the food, carried in the wood and
water, and did the cooking. The missionaries have so
industriously cultivated the idea of family life that in
most Tongan households the women, after marriage, do the
same work as the wives of the peasantry in Europe. In
other respects they have greater liberty than under the
heathen system. Formerly a girl's hair was cropped short
at about twenty, and she was thenceforward classed as
an old woman (fefine motua). No woman of mature age
could then masquerade in the guise of a young girl, and
there was no inducement to defer marriage and the cares
of maternity ; for the woman who aspired to be younger
than her years had no peace from the sneers of her con
temporaries. This is all changed. Under the grim social
code of the missionaries, by a mockery of fate, a laxer

374 THINGS ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND ZOOLOGICAL.
moral tone allows a girl to prolong her independence to
the limit set by time to her attractions, and she finds life
so amusing that she defers marriage until the last possible
bridegroom has left her for a younger generation. Even
after marriage she is at a disadvantage as compared with
her grandmother, who could count in childbed upon the
help of her female relatives, according to certain fixed
rules, instead of having, as now, to receive help as a favour
only. These reasons and the increased skill of the women
in forbidden forms of surgery tend to a decrease in the
birth-rate. To those who would know more of this sub
ject, I commend the Report of the Commission appointed
to inquire into the decrease of the native race in Fiji,
1893. The report, besides being interesting, is of high
anthropological value.
Though the Tongans are vastly particular about out
ward modesty, they cannot truthfully be described as an
over-sensitive people. We halted one day for lunch in a
small village at the back of Tongatabu. The house was
filled with the notables of the place, and the children
stared at us six deep through the crevices in the reed
walls. There was a sudden cry of faele ! and in a few
seconds we were left alone in the house. The children
dashed off at the first cry, and after a decent interval our
hosts made excuses one after another to leave the house.
From the doorway I saw the whole population of the
village thronging into a hut on the opposite side of the
square. It was a birth.
A Tongan mother is delivered in a reclining posture,
supported in the arms of her husband. There is no
privacy,— the whole village is present. There is always a

THINGS ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND ZOOLOGICAL. 375
" wise woman " officiating, generally one of the hereditary
sisterhood, but sometimes an old woman who had adopted
the profession from choice, and is consequently looked
down upon as an interloper and a quack. The fees, given
in kind, are high when the poverty of the donors is con
sidered — ngatu and mats to the value of 30s. or more.
The " wise woman " receives the child on a tiny mat
specially plaited for the occasion. If it is a boy, the
umbilicus is severed on a digging-stick to make him a
good cultivator ; if a girl, on a ngatu - mallet to make
her a good beater of cloth. The child is then washed and
rubbed over with oil and turmeric, a small quantity of
candle-nut and cocoa-nut juice is forced into its mouth to
make it vomit, and for the first two days it is fed by
hand upon cocoa-nut-milk, or suckled by another woman,
because at that early stage the mother's milk is believed
to be insufficient and unwholesome. During the first
month the child's grandmothers, or its unmarried aunts,
are told off to supply the mother with food and look after
the house, and the mother is spared all exertion. It
would be better for her and the child if at this stage
she were also deprived of kava and tobacco. Before the
missionaries had inculcated family life on the European
plan, the native social system recognised a physical
peculiarity in Tongan women, and insisted upon the
seclusion of the mother during the whole period of lacta
tion in order to avoid a second gestation within too short
a period of the birth, and consequently the premature
weaning of the first child. As in Japan, the time of
suckling was prolonged until all the teeth had come ; for
the Tongans have no good substitute for the mother's

376 THINGS ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND ZOOLOGICAL.
milk, and could only give the children taro, yam, or fish
as the first food after weaning. The change in this system
of family separation is the cause most commonly quoted
by the natives for the high mortality among children.
I have said that the Tongans are sticklers for propriety
in appearances. In some respects, however, they share
with the other Polynesian peoples a gross lack of delicacy.
Ancient custom still constrains the elderly female relations
of the bridegroom to go home with the married pair and
stay with them until they are in a position to prove to the
other relations that the marriage is satisfactory, and that
the dower is therefore clue.
All the weaknesses of pride of race that we laugh at in
ourselves, and feel none the less keenly, may be studied
among these other islanders of the antipodes. There is a
Tongan colony in Fiji, the children of the army of occu
pation taken over by Maafu in 1848. The real Tongans
patronise their colonials, and speak of them behind their
backs as barbarians, ignorant of the usages of polite society.
The colonists affect to ridicule the Tongan aristocracy, as
effete and effeminate, and envy them in secret, bestowing
on them the involuntary flattery of imitation. A Tongan
colonist who has been to Nukualofa and conversed with
the great of the earth returns home to be a nuisance to
his fellows, who try to disguise their feeling of inferiority
by disparagement of the intercourse which they so much
envy. Thus, as between the English and the Australians,
a gulf is gradually being fixed between the Tongans of
Tonga and Fiji. Not less instructive is the feelino-
between the Tongans and the Fijians. While affecting
to despise the Fijians for their want of refinement, the

THINGS ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND ZOOLOGICAL. 377
Tongan chief, stripped of his wealth and influence by his
new-fangled communism, secretly envies the authority
which his Fijian neighbour has been too wise to sur
render : the Fijian chief, though full of contempt for the
leaning towards foreign customs that has reduced the
Tongan chief to poverty, tries hard to imitate his air of
superior refinement. The Tongan chief likes nothing
better than to be entertained by a great chief in Fiji, and
feel again vicariously the glories of his lost estate, and eat
taro, and hear the murmur of running water, both luxuries
unknown in his own dry country. The Fijian loves to
have such guests, and show them off to his neighbours as
proof of the wide range of his influence. So each reflects
glory on the other. They are ridiculously shy of one
another. While Tukuaho was paying a visit to me in
Auckland, Eatu Lala, the Tui Thakau, came from Fiji
to make a tour through the Australian colonies. The
two chiefs, on the ground of their relationship through
a common ancestress, were very anxious to meet, and
they both besought me to bring about the introduction.
Tukuaho spoke excellent Fijian, and Eatu Lala is no
less fluent in Tongan, but to my astonishment I found
that I was expected to act as interpreter between them.
Their conversation was complimentary and formal.
Tukuaho reminded his Fijian relative of the romantic
legend that connected their families. Eatu Lala pressed
him to make the bond closer by paying him a visit.
They were both so painfully shy that even this stilted
conversation would have been impossible unless I had
stayed to interpret their languages to each other.
I have spoken already of the music and poetry of the

378 THINGS ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND ZOOLOGICAL.
present day. As in most primitive countries, both words
and music are the work of the same hand. The modern
music has adopted the harmonies and cadence of the
European compositions which the composers have heard,
but it retains a distinctly native character, widely differ
ent though it is from the form of the ancient melodies.
The songs are all sung in four-part chorus without accom
paniment. The poetry is uninteresting in that it gen
erally treats of scenery and flowers, seldom of the drama
of life, never of the drama of love.
Of traditionary poetry little remains. The admirable
efforts of the Eev. J. E. Moulton came too late to rescue
the stores of legendary lore that passed away with the
advent of Christianity, but the purely historical traditions
that have been rescued, and which form the basis for the
early history of the people, may be relied upon as having
been correctly handed clown. I had a curious instance
of the durability of tradition. While conducting the
native newspaper in Fiji, I took some trouble to collect
and preserve the fragments of historical poetry that were
still remembered, and invited contributions from the
whole native community. At the same time I sent to
press some fragments that were published in a missionary
book about 1860. Among the contributions received in
response to my appeal was a poem of the murder of
Koroitamana (circa 1825). It had been gathered from
the mouth of a very old woman of Bau. My native sub
editor recognised it as being the same as one of the frag
ments from the missionary book, and brought me the
printer's proof. Here, then, was an opportunity of com
paring versions of the same poem taken thirty-three years

THINGS ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND ZOOLOGICAL. 379
apart. The poem contained five or six stanzas of ten
lines, and in all these there were but two differences of
one word each.
The ancient monuments of Tonga have an interest of
their own, since they are the rare efforts of a people who
build their houses and temples of materials no more en
during than grass. The tombs of the Tui Tonga, described
by so many travellers, are in the ordinary form of the
Polynesian malae, a quadrilateral mound faced by huge
blocks of stone, rising sometimes in terraces to a height of
20 feet. From the account left to us by the first mission
aries of the funeral of Mumui in the year 1797, we know
that each of these mounds contains in its exact centre the
body of a dead king. The tombs are now so overgrown
with forests that it is almost impossible to photograph
them. Banyan -trees have sprouted on the terraces, and
have bored their roots into every crevice, covering the
stones with a lacework of tendrils which, year by year,
force great blocks asunder, till the form of the terraces is
almost obliterated. I tried to persuade a leading man of
Mua to clear away the forest and preserve the tombs ; but
I found that even in these days the tradition of the tabu
is strong enough to make this a sacrilege. The rule was,
that after a body was laid to rest, Nature should be allowed
to shroud it from the vulgar gaze, and that no foot should
trample the hallowed ground until the death of a successor.
When this happened, the people reverently cleared the
whole ground, and built a new tomb, and practised the
extraordinary funeral rites that have been so minutely de
scribed by Mariner. But now that the office of Tui Tonga
has been abolished, the tombs will never again be cleared

380 THINGS ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND ZOOLOGICAL.
until their site has been forgotten by posterity, or they
have themselves crumbled away into a shapeless mound.
Besides these tombs, there is an older monument con
cerning which no tradition has been preserved. It stands
upon land which is the peculiar property of the Tui Tonga,
at a spot perhaps two furlongs from the beach. It consists
of two upright monoliths of hardened coral, neatly squared,
and across them rests a similar stone mortised into their
summits. Each of these stones must weigh at least fifty
tons. I climbed them and found upon the top of the cross
stone a cup-like depression, very carefully cut. The only
tradition preserved, is that the stones are the property of
the Tui Tonga, and are called Haamonga, but their meaning
is now forgotten. I carefully examined the surrounding
ground for a sign of excavation, but there was none ; yet
I believe that one may argue from analogy that these
stones were set on end by inclined planes of earth as
heavy house - posts are sometimes raised to this day.
Probably Stonehenge and all the similar monoliths of
primitive peoples were raised in the same way. It once
fell to my lot to build a native house which was to
gratify the natural vanity of the mountaineers in Fiji
by surpassing all other houses in size and magnificence.
The main posts were enormous logs of vcsi, a timber
heavier than oak, and each of them must have weighed
more than ten tons. I had the holes dug to receive them,
and lined them with two feet of stones to prevent the
trees from driving farther into the earth than the
measured depth. Then I borrowed some strong tackle-
blocks and ropes, and summoned all the able-bodied men of
the district to help in lifting them. I carefully explained

THINGS ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND ZOOLOGICAL. 381
the use of the tackle, and tried to get them into their
places ; but a council of elders sat on the case, and flatly
declined to use it. There was only one way, they said,
of raising heavy weights, and that was the way of their
fathers. What could one lone white man do against an
army of pig-headed ancestor worshippers ? I gave in and
watched them. They spent the first day in getting stout
logs with forked tops. With these they built a solid
platform sloping upwards to a height of 15 feet above
the holes. Then they fastened strong vines to the end of
the logs, and rolled them to the base of the inclined plane.
Butt-end first, they dragged them inch by inch along the
platform — 100 men on either vine — until the logs lay
at length horizontal, with their bodies projecting over
the platform, above the hole. Then the council of elders
sat on them, literally and metaphorically, and had them
shifted an inch or two to the side. When they were satis
fied, two men with axes hacked at the logs that formed
the end of the platform. One by one these snapped,
until, as the supports were cut away, the great butt-end
overbalanced, and the huge log began to tip up. Its head
rose to an angle of 45°, and then with a crash and a
deep thud it shot down into the hole, and then men
swarmed up and fastened vines to its summit by which
it was easily hauled into position. 1 must say, in paren
thesis, that I was unlucky enough to intervene at this
juncture with my bloek-and-tackle. I made it fast to a
cross-beam lashed to two trees, but no sooner had my
twenty men begun to strain upon the rope than the beam
snapped like a watch-spring, and swept the council of
elders into the hole ; so that, until this accident is for-

382 THINGS ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND ZOOLOGICAL.
gotten, the primitive method of raising weights is likely
to prevail in that district. I asked the old men what
they did with heavier weights still, and they immediately
answered, "We make the platform of earth, and dig it
away to make the log tip up." No doubt, when the log
or stone is on end, they dig away the platform, throwing
the earth into its old position, so that no trace remains.
Having seen the whole process, I shall continue to believe
that Stonehenge was built like this, until some one offers
a better explanation.
There is a legend that the Haamonga stones were
brought by the god Maui in a gigantic canoe from Uea
(Wallace Island), and that you may see there great holes
in the rock whence they were quarried. A European
even assured me that the stone is of a kind not found
in Tonga at all. This part of the story at least is not
true, for the stone is mere coral, hardened by exposure, of
exactly the same quality as the reef close by.
In discussing the peculiarities of man I have altogether
neglected the lower animals in Tonga. The only indig
enous mammals were a small field-rat, a fruit-eating bat
or flying fox, and a small cave-bat. The rat, having no
enemies but man, swarmed throughout the islands : so
numerous were they that it was a chieflike sport to shoot
them in the paths with a bow and arrow. They have
almost vanished now before the cats, dogs, and their
voracious Norway cousin, and rat - shooting is now as
extinct as bear-baiting in England.
The first foreign arrival was of course the pig. It is a
popular fallacy that Captain Cook, among his other benefi-

THINGS ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND ZOOLOGICAL. 383
cent actions, introduced the pig into the islands of the
Pacific. It would be questionable whether, if he had done
so, he would have deserved the gratitude of posterity ; for
the pig, in his role of universal scavenger, adds to the
insanitary state of the village when alive, and when dead
disagrees with his owners. For he was never an article
of common diet, being killed only on occasions of cere
mony, and then eaten to excess. So far from taking pigs
to Tonga, Cook called there to obtain them in order to
preserve his crew from the scourge that wrecked so many
other expeditions, the scurvy. One hundred and thirty
years before Cook's visit Tasman exchanged iron for pigs
at Hihifo. But pigs had not then reached all the islands.
Eenrhyn was without them ; and tradition tells of a time
when even Fiji, so rich in all else, knew not the taste of
pork. The story comes from Samoa, and its very inco
herence seems to stamp it as having a core of true metal
within its thick coating of alloy : —
" Many generations ago, when the world was still young,
the crops in Upolu failed, and there was a great famine.
And a man, who had a daughter married to the chief of
Tutuila, called his son to him and said, ' The people are
dying of hunger, and beside these two pigs we have naught
to eat. If we kill these the neighbours will come in and
take the meat from us, and afterwards we shall all perish
together. But I have heard that in thy sister's land, in
Tutuila, there is yet plenty. Now go to her and ask her
for shelter for me and thy mother and thy brothers who
made her marriage-feast for her, for we would live with her
until there be again plenty in Upolu.'

384 THINGS ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND ZOOLOGICAL.
" So the young man launched his canoe and sailed for
his sister's village. It chanced that oh that clay the men
of the village had taken a great haul of fish from the
reef, and were laying it upon the beach to be shared out
among the households. And as the canoe drew near, and
the girl recognised her brother, she cried to the men to
hide the fish in the house, ' lest these hungry ones take
all ! ' And when her brother landed she said, ' Alas ! that
you seek relief from a fasting land. The famine with
us is more grievous than with you.'
" Now the youth had seen the men hiding the fish as
his canoe approached the shore, and he returned and told
all to his father. There was bitter grief that day in their
house when they knew that the daughter had treated
them as strangers, and the old man would not be com
forted, but said, ' If we are strangers, let us be strangers
indeed.' So he made ready his canoe, and they prepared
to leave their land for ever. They took with them the
people of their house and their two hogs and food for four
days, and sailed towards the west, caring not whether they
reached a land or no. On the fourth day they reached
Fiji, and beached their canoe on an uninhabited part of
the shore. They let their hogs go in the bush and came
to the village of the chief, who entertained them for many
days. This people had no hogs, but when they made
their feasts human flesh was the thoi (relish) of the yams.
When they had dwelt there many months misfortune
began to follow the chief's warriors. Many were slain
and eaten of the enemy, and the chief had not tasted the
flesh of men. Then the priests, speaking the voice of the
gods, said that the strangers were bringing disaster upon

THINGS ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND ZOOLOGICAL. 385
the warriors, and that only if they were killed and eaten
would the doom of the tribe be averted. When the young
Samoan heard this he took counsel with his father, and
went to the chief and said, ' If I find thee a sweeter dainty
than the flesh of men, will you spare our lives ? ' And the
chief said Yes, for he thought that he knew all the foods
that were in his island. So the youth went into the bush
that now swarmed with hogs, the offspring of those he
had set free there, and took a young hog and baked it
secretly and presented it to the chief with due ceremony.
And when the chief tasted it he was transported with
delight, and swore that no more men should be eaten in
his island as long as there were hogs to eat ; and he felt
a great gratitude towards the Samoan strangers, and would
refuse them nothing. And they, being now weary of life
in this barbarous country, asked a boon of him that he
would give them a canoe, and let them depart to their
own land. And when this was granted they asked that
they might load her with all things necessary for a long
voyage ; and the chief granted them all kinds of provisions
except hogs, for he would not allow any of this precious
food to be removed from the country. But when they
still entreated, he granted that they might take with them
one cooked hog, but no live ones, lest they should give the
animals to any of his enemies. So they killed a very large
hog, and disembowelled it, and caught a sow big with
young, and sewed up the living sow in the belly of the
dead hog, and so carried them both to the canoe ; for they
rightly judged that in the famine the people of their land
of Upolu had destroyed all the hogs. So they sailed, and
reached their land in safety with the sow still living ;
2 B

386 THINGS ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND ZOOLOGICAL.
and there was great rejoicing, for there were no hogs in
the island. And from this sow was the whole island
replenished." Some writers have remarked upon the Folynesian word
for pig — puaka or vuaka — as being a proof that the pigs
were first introduced by the Portuguese. There are, how
ever, other words of Melanesian origin for the animal in
Fiji — nngo and vore — that show the animal to have been
known in the Pacific by others than the Malayo-Poly-
nesians. It is most probable that the name is a mere
coincidence, and that the people brought their pigs
to the Pacific with them. The name may even be
onomatopoeic. The pig of the Pacific is long- snouted, humpbacked, lean,
and out-at-elbows. He seems to have forgotten such of
the decencies as may be traditionary among his civilised
cousins, and will eat putrid flesh and other things that
are unmentionable. He is, besides, stricken with a deep
melancholy, from which neither the sunshine nor the cloud
of flies in which he passes his existence can rouse him.
Domestic poultry must also have come to the Pacific
with the ancestors of the present Polynesians. The
Tongan name moa and the Fijian toa are of course onoma
topoeic. The Maories, already possessing the word to
denote domestic fowls, applied it to the great wingless
birds they saw on their arrival in New Zealand ; for the
moa in their eyes was simply a hen on a gigantic scale.
The cat was probably the next arrival, and its native
name is proof-positive that it was introduced by a person
who called it "pussy," therefore an Englishman. In an

THINGS ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND ZOOLOGICAL. 387
ancient poem celebrating one of the earliest visits of a
European ship, an unsuspecting cat has been handed down
to posterity as sitting on the fo'csle : —
" Pusi ka tiko e mua ni wanga."
To the native poet it was the most remarkable feature of
the ship. In Tonga it is pusi, in Fiji vusi, and, by meta
thesis, kusi. If the Polynesians had brought their cats
with them, we should no doubt find that, like the ancient
Egyptians, they called it miau. As for " puss," has not a
living writer remarked that the god Pasht had a cat's
head? Then came the dogs. The name kuli has given rise to
a popular delusion that the first dog was a colley, but this
satisfying theory will not withstand the fact that the
accent of the native name falls on the ultimate, and that
dogs were called kuli as early as 1777, before sheep-dogs
were generally known as colleys, the dogs in the Pacific
at that date being not colleys at all. The more ancient
Fijian name for clog is tui, but the word kuli is in use
in all parts of that group that have been affected by
Tongan immigration. Captain Cook found no dogs in
Tonga in 1773, but on his return four years later he
noticed numbers of dogs, " commonly of a sallow colour,
small and pretty, nearly resembling the Pomeranian dog,"
which the natives declared they had lately obtained from
Fiji. Whence the Fijians acquired them will now never
be known ; but, since the dingos or native dogs of Aus
tralia and New Guinea are very unlike the animals
described by Cook, it seems probable that they are late
introductions, landed from some vessel the tradition of

388 THINGS ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND ZOOLOGICAL.
whose visit has now been forgotten. Vessels from Manilla
and the East Indies probably visited Vanualevu for sandal
wood at intervals throughout the eighteenth century,
recording their visit in their log-book, but not thinking it
worth while to report their discoveries on their return to
port. In one of these the first dogs may have been landed.
It is perhaps safe to assume that animals whose names
are onomatopoeic are indigenous, and that those that are
called by a corruption of a foreign name are recent intro
ductions. A curious instance of the latter kind of nomen
clature is to be found in Rotuna and the Gilbert Islands,
where a dog is called a kamia, the elegant native conver
sion of the homely " Come 'ere " with which the first dog
was addressed by his illiterate master. The natives fled
in terror from the new monster, and the sailor called it
off, little thinking that he was adding a new word to the
language of the island.
Little less curious is the origin of the Fijian name for
cattle. The first cattle brought to Tonga were presented
by Cook to Finau at Haapai. The two animals were
pointed out to him as a bull and a cow (bulu mo kau).
When they were afterwards shown to the Fijians, whose
conjunction is not mo, the names were taken to be one
word ; and thenceforward all cattle, irrespective of sex,
were called bulumokau, the sex being distinguished by
suffixing the words for male or female. The ridiculous
word is applied even to beef, and by the Melanesian
servants domiciled in Fiji to mutton, when qualified by
the word sipi (sheep). The Tongans have now forgotten
the kau, and speak only of the bulu, adding the words
tagata orfejine to denote the sex. Thus with them a cow

THINGS ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND ZOOLOGICAL. 389
is a female bull (koe bulu, fefine). D'Entrecasteaux, who
visited Tonga fourteen years after Cook, found that the
existence of the cattle left by that navigator was so far
forgotten that the natives did not know which island they
were on, if indeed they were alive at all. They were then
spoken of as puaka tute (Cook's pigs). Cook himself
records the fact that the new animals excited but little
interest. This indifference still survives in the unwilling
ness of the people to keep cattle, in spite of the excellent
pasture in the island and the large profits to be made from
the sale of milk. Almost every Tongan owns a horse ;
scarcely half a dozen keep cows. A cow cannot be ridden,
and it must be watered and milked with absolute regularity
or it will run dry ; and of all the products of civilisation,
regular routine is the most hateful to the Polynesian.
I have spoken elsewhere of horses. The ancestors of
the present breed were brought from New Zealand some
forty years ago, but through promiscuous breeding they
have dwindled to the size of the American mustang, —
hard wiry ponies, without either mouth or paces, full of
tricks and ill-temper, but capable of covering immense
distances without fatigue. They vary in price from a
few shillings to £7 or £8. The Government might easily
have improved the breed by making gelding compulsory,
or by enforcing the horse -tax ; as it is, the country is
overrun with wretched beasts, covered with sores, whose
only use is to keep the grass short. I remember one
of the police magistrates applying to the Government
for an impounded horse, — "not that I may ride it, but
because I am old, and there is no one to weed my
enclosure."

390 THINGS ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND ZOOLOGICAL.
One result of the introduction of horses has been the
almost entire destruction of the bread-fruit-tree through
out Tonga. The glutinous sap is irresistible to horses,
and they greedily tear off the bark as far up the trunk
as they can reach, of course killing the tree.
The men ride like centaurs, but, unlike centaurs, they
have no hands. As a consequence, the Tongan pony
has no mouth. Almost as soon as the boys can walk
they are galloping barebacked, with no bridle but a rope
knotted round the horse's nose. Grown men generally
use a saddle of some kind without girths or surcingle,
and too often without stuffing. The women have not
yet taken to riding like their cousins in Hawaii, who
have even converted the European women of the place
to trousers and a man's saddle.
The people are as cruel to their animals as the Egyp
tian donkey-boys. A sore back is never thought a reason
for sparing a horse. I have seen ponies returning from
the plantations in the evening with a basket of yams
slung on either side with a sinnet cord, which was cutting
deep into a bleeding raw on the withers. I stopped the
man and tried to convince him of his brutality. He was
simply incapable of comprehending the idea of cruelty to
animals, — an idea which, after all, is only found among
the stricter Buddhists and the Anglo-Saxons, and with
the latter is but the growth of a single century.
The wheel traffic of Tonga has increased enormously.
Every man who can afford it has a cart, the richer natives
American buggies. In wet weather the wheels cut the
soft grass-roads into rivers of mud, in which the wheels
are logged to the axle-trees. On such roads the heaviest

THINGS ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND ZOOLOGICAL. 391
cart is noiseless, and so after nightfall they are compelled
by law to carry a light. The law is satisfied by the
economical expedient of a smouldering brand, visible no
farther than a lighted cigar.
There is little bird-life in the islands, but two of the
species show remarkable peculiarities. The kaka, a green
parrot common to all the islands of Fiji, is in Tonga con
fined to the little island of Eua. Though tame parrots
have been taken across the narrow strait that separates
Eua from Tongatabu, and have escaped in the larger
island, they have never bred there. Wallace has recorded
the fact that land-birds will not cross a deep-water strait,
however narrow ; but no one has offered a plausible ex
planation of the arrival of the kaka in Eua without touch
ing at Tongatabu. The Eua species differs slightly from
the green parrot of Fiji.
Stranger still is the presence of the megapodius (malao)
in Niuafoou (Boscawen Island), which, if one may judge
from the absence of a fringing reef and the volcanic nature
of the soil, is of more recent formation than the others.
It is covered with the large mounds in which this ener
getic little bird lays its eggs, leaving them to be hatched
by the sun if they be fortunate enough to escape the eyes
of the people or the pigs of the place. These eggs, enor
mous when compared with the size of the bird, have been
for centuries regarded as a delicacy of Tongatabu, and
have been exported thither in every canoe sailing south
ward during the breeding season. I was told (with what
truth I know not, for I tried it and failed) that the eggs
thus taken to Tongatabu are often hatched artificially and
the young malao reared. The jungle of the southern

392 THINGS ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND ZOOLOGICAL.
islands differs little from that of Niuafoou. Whence
comes it, then, that a bird so hardy in its breeding
arrangements should be confined to that one small island ?
and how is it that a bird whose eastern limit is the
Solomon Islands should be found in Polynesia at all,
after skipping all the intermediate islands of Melanesia ?
If it was brought thither by man, of what strange story
of the migration of races is it the only surviving record ?
This is not Nature's only caprice in respect of this strange
bird. Its enormous egg, its untiring industry in mound-
building, its unnatural indifference to its young, its wari
ness on foot, and its wonderful stupidity when forced to
take to flight, give to it and its allied species an exclusive
position among birds. The natives of New Guinea catch
and tame the young by the simple expedient of building
a fence round the mound. The little creatures, hatched
by the warmth of the decaying leaves among which the
mother lays them, scratch their way to the surface fully
equipped for their fight with Nature, and are easily caught
within the circle of the fence. In British New Guinea,
where the megapodius was often our only animal food, it
was some time before I learned the secret of shooting him.
When he first sees you he runs like a pheasant, stopping
every twenty yards or so to reconnoitre. You stalk him,
but find that he always keeps a few yards out of
shot, until you lose him altogether among the trees.
The only way to make sure of him is to run after
him as soon as he sees you. He then discovers that
his legs are not fast enough, and reluctantly takes to
wing, flaps awkwardly to the nearest bough, and there,
secure in his commanding position, and proud of the

THINGS ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND ZOOLOGICAL. 393
mighty effort he has made, he sits blinking at you until
you get within easy shot. This fatuous behaviour is not
likely to bring about his extermination, for the natives of
New Guinea prize his eggs so much as a delicacy that
they are most unwilling to kill him.

r\

\^^{'^&^W kd. \ifi/ j

77^ Haamonpa monument.

APPENDIX.

I.— LIST OF THE TUI TONGA.
(As given by Mr E. Tregear on the authority of the
Rev. J. E. Moulton.)
Kohai and his descendants.
Then these were dispossessed, and there .came to rule —
Ahoeitu, descendant of Tangaloa.
Lolo Fakanga-la.
Fanga- one-one.
LlHAU.
5 Kopu-tu.
Kaloa.
Mauhau.
Abuanea.Ahulunga.
10 Momo. Tuitatui.Talatama.Tui-tonga-nui-tama-tou.Tala-hala-abeabe, his brother.
15 Tala-kai-fai-ki. Tala-fabi-te.

396 APPENDIX.
Havea-tui-tonga (Makaue tui-tonga i buibui).
Tata-fuu-eiki-mei-mua (Lomi ae tubu Havea).
Takalaua (murdered, circa 1535).
20 Kau-ulu-fonua Fekai.
Vara Fuhu.
Buibui Fata.
Kau-ulu-ponua.
Tabuoji (flourished 1643, and entertained Tasman).
25 Uluaki Matatelea.
Fatafehi.Uluaki Matata.
Tui Bulotulua.
Bau (who entertained Cook, 1777).
30 Maulubek.otofa. Fatafehi Fuanu Nuiava.
Laufilitonga.

II. —TRANSLATION op EXTRACTS from the 'Journal
of the woxderful voyage made by w. cornelis
Schouten of Hoorn, 1615-17, in the ship Eendracht
(Unity) ' : 1648, Hoorn (with Plates), relating to the
discovery of Niua-tobutabu and Futuna.
May. — On the 9th we were in latitude 15° 20', and by reckon
ing 1510 miles from the coast of Peru and Chili. At noon, just
after dinner, we saw a sail, which seemed to be coming towards
us from the southward. As she came near to us we shot at her
with one of our pieces right over her to make them strike, but
they would not ; so then we lowered our boat with ten small-
arms men in her to catch them, which, calling to them, we shot
another piece, yet without any intent to reach or hurt them,
but they would not strike.

EXTRACTS FROM JOURNAL OF SCHOUTEN. 397
When at about half a musket-shot's distance from them our
men fired four times at them. Some jumped into the water,
one of them with a small child. We hauled one out of the
water, and another was hurt, and had three holes in his back,
but not very deep, for it was hail-shot. In our vessel we secured
two men who had overstayed on board the canoe, they not once
resisting, for in truth they had no arms. One was an old and
grey mau, the other was a youth.
Presently the shallop rowed to fetch those that leapt overboard
to save their lives ; but they got only two of them that drove
upon one of their oars, and pointed to our men with their hands
to the ground, as much as to say that the rest were drowned.
In the canoe were eight women with three young sucking
children, and some were about ten years old, so that altogether
there may have been about twenty-five people in the canoe.
Towards evening we put the men aboard again, and they were
much welcomed by their women. We gave them some beads,
which they hung about their necks, and some knives. And to
us they presented two fine mats and two cocoa-nuts, which were
all they had to eat and drink. In fact they had drunk all the
water of the nuts, so that there remained nothing more to them
to drink. We saw them drink salt water out of the sea, and
give it also to their young children to drink, which we thought
to be against nature. They were reddish people, and had
certain clothes of a yellowish colour which they wore before
their persons. They were smeared with oil, and the women had
all short hair, like the men in Holland. The men's hair was
long and frizzed, and very black.
Their vessel was fashioned as shown in the drawing — very
remarkable to see — and consisted of two long canoes covered
by a good broad table. Along each canoe were laid two wide
planks, about the midship portion, to keep out the water ; and
at either end timbers were laid crosswise from the one hull to
the other, securely lashed, and the ends were also decked over
in a watertight fashion. [Further description of mast and steer-

398 APPENDIX.
ing-gear.] As they departed from us they set their course
towards the south-east, in the hopes of picking up some of the
others, who were good swimmers.
On the 10th the wind was S.S. -easterly, veering from S.E. to
S. The course was W. and S.W. ; and in the morning, after
breakfast, we saw [on the horizon ?] some very high and blue-
looking land lying between S.E. and S., about eight miles from
us. We sailed all day towards it with a light air, but were un
able to get within reach, so stood off and on for the night ; and
towards evening we saw a sail a good way out off the land, and
shortly after another one, which we took to be fishing craft,
because they put to sea at night time and used torches.
On the 11th we arrived by mid-day at an island which was
very high ; and about two miles beyond it we saw another
island, long and low. During the day we sailed over a bank
with fourteen fathoms water on it, rocky bottom, lying about
two miles off the land. As soon as we had passed over it we
were unable again to get soundings. We anchored in twenty-
five fathoms, sandy bottom, a long shot from the shore of the
farther island.
The island is a high mountain, shaped nearly like one of the
Moluccas, and is covered with timber, mostly cocoa-nut palms,
wherefore we called it Cocos Island.
The other island is much longer, but narrower, and lies east
and west. . . .
[Intercourse with the people followed readily, and great
numbers swarmed on board the ship. They traded freely, and
sold 180 cocoa-nuts by evening, at the rate of 5 nuts for a
few beads.]
Canoes from the other island came off to the ship. The
natives had hardwood staves in their hands like assegais.
They boarded our shallop, and thought to have taken it from us •
but our men being thereby constrained to defend themselves, let
fly three muskets among them. At first they thought this was
child's play ; but the third shot struck one of them in the

EXTRACTS FROM JOURNAL OF SCHOUTEN. 399
breast, and they fled to one of the canoes with sails and tried
to persuade them to attack, but they would not, having been
well used by us. They were very thievish and exceedingly de
sirous of iron, trying to draw the bolts out of the ship. They
were of fine stature, well-proportioned, naked but for an apron.
Their hair was dressed and frizzed, and some had long hair tied
up in a knot. They were notable swimmers. Cocos Island
liesinlat. 16° 10'.
On the 11th, in the morning, trading was reopened. We
bought 1200 nuts that day ; also bananas, obas [yams], and some
water. The ship had eighty-five people all told on board, and
every one had a dozen nuts. The king of the other island sent
a canoe with a black wild pig as a present to us. In the after
noon the chief himself came with a great sailing canoe, fashioned
as has been described heretofore, like an ice-sled, and was ac
companied by quite thirty-five small canoes. This chief was
called by his people Latou.1 We received him with drums
and trumpets, no little to his astonishment, as he had not seen
or heard these instruments before. Many of the people who
accompanied this chief kissed our feet, bowing and clapping
their fists together over their heads, and other strange cere
monies, and showed great wonderment at our ship. The chief
seemed to have good authority over his people. The chief
himself could not be induced to come on board our ship, but
his son did.
13th. — In the morning fully forty-five small canoes and an
armada of twenty-three sailing ones came off towards us to
trade. The latter had about twenty-five men in each, and the
former four and five apiece. They wanted us to sail over to
the other island, and we weighed anchor and proceeded — the
chief sailing in his canoe abreast of us.
Presently the chief made a signal, and boarded us with great
force, breaking the prow of his canoe, and thereat the rest began
1 Latu is still the title of the chief of Niua-tobutabu. Cf. Fijian title
Ratu.

400 APPENDIX.
to sling stones at us ; but we shot at them with muskets and
three great pieces loaded with nails, whereat they leaped over
board, not knowing whither to go. But we continued our course,
sailing W. and W. by S. This king must have assembled all
his forces, for we were surrounded by quite 1000 people afloat,
of whom one we noticed was wholly white.
The first island — the high one — we called Cocos bergh, and to
the other, about a mile from it, we gave the name of Verraders
Eylandt, because the people from it sought to betray us.
[Discovery of Niuafoou.]
lith. — This morning we saw another island right ahead of us,
about seven miles distant, appearing as if round in form, and by
our reckoning about fifty miles from the islands we had left.
We named this one " Hope," and hurried towards it, in the
hope that we might find better facilities for watering there than
we had hitherto.
. . . The soundings were irregular, forty, twenty, thirty
fathoms, and no bottom. . . . Twelve canoes came off: were
friendly. They gave us four flying-fish, and we gave them beads.
Sent the boat along shore for water : some jumped overboard
from canoes to capture the boat, which seeing, we fired six
musket-shots at them, and two were killed, one shot dead, while
the other sat in the canoe wiping the blood from his chest with
his hand. They could not understand the shooting, for they
saw no missile. The people on shore cried out Bou ! bou ! bou !
So did people in the canoes. Finding no anchorage, we got our
boat in and went on our course, in the hope of soon finding other
land, to the S.W.
The island was full of black cliffs, green on the top, and
black, and was full of cocos - trees and black earth. There
was a large village and several other houses on the sea-shore :
the land was undulating, but not very high. We called it
Good Hope, because we had had good hope of refreshing there.

EXTRACTS FROM JOURNAL OF SCHOUTEN. 401
15th.— At noon we were in 86° 12' [misprint for 16° 12'] :
the wind being S.E., course W. and W. by S., fine weather.
17th. — Wind N.E., course W. by S., but the two last quar
ters we set our course WN.W. Short of provisions.
18th. — In 16° 5' we had variable westerly winds.
[On this day Schouten reviewed his position and prospects,
and spoke to his crew, pointing out the shortness of food, and
the impossibility of returning eastwards. The Terra Australis,
of which they were in search, had not appeared, though they
were 1600 miles to the westward of the coast of Peru. It
remained only to steer more northerly and make for the Moluc
cas, braving the clangers of the New Guinea navigation, and
making the best of their ill luck. The course was therefore
altered to N.N.W.] [Discovery of Futuna.]
19th. — Southerly wind. Course N. In the afternoon saw
three islands to the N.E. by E., eight miles distant, and appar
ently a cannon-shot from each other. Made for them, sailing
N.E., with fine weather, but fresh.
20th.— Wind N.N.E.
21st. — Wind easterly. When one mile from the land twenty
canoes came out to us. We proffered friendliness, but one
with a very sharp wooden spear in his hand threatened one of
our men, and the people from the next island were shouting, as
we took it, to urge them against us. Fired two cannon-shots.
Sent boat out to sound, but got no bottom, eight small-arms
men in her. A fight ensued, and six were kjHed. Stood off
and on all night.
22c?. — Sent the boat in to sound again, and got anchorage in
thirty-five fathoms, a gun-shot from shore. The Captain went in
the boat and got a convenient place for the ship to moor in, close'
to a fresh-water creek inside the reef. Canoes came and brought
cocoa-nuts, and obas, and two roast pigs. We paid them in
2c

402 APPENDIX.
knives, beads, and nails. We sent four of our men to be hos
tages on shore, and kept some of the people in the ship. These
people were very active, swam and dived with great skill, like
those we met with at the other islands. There were round huts
along the beach, thatched, about 25 feet in circumference, and
12 feet in height, with a doorway. . . .
[The Journal contains the earliest published description of
the drinking of kava, which coincides with the rjresent cere
mony. Peace was established, visits of ceremony paid, and
cordial relations maintained. These islands lie in 14° 56', and
were named Hoorense Eylanden = Hoorn Island or Futuna.]
Summary as to the Plates reproduced in the Text.
Plate on p. 312 shows the meeting with a native canoe at sea,
off the islands they called Cocos (Mua-tobutabu), which lay just
out of sight to their S.W.
Plate on p. 310 shows the islands in question, which they
sighted the morning after meeting with the canoe, but failed to
reach until the following day — i.e., Cocos and Verraders Islands :
lat. 16° 10'. Here the ship's company had a collision with the
natives. The chief's name was Latou.
Plate on p. 311. This is a plate which represents several sub
jects described in the text all in one picture. The two chiefs
are shown twice over, and the large figures on the left are in
troduced to illustrate the descriptions of various forms of head
dress. The trumpeters from the ship are blowing and the
drummer beating, the four or five standing figures on the outside
of the shed, to the left of the two chiefs sitting under it, are
making kava, and the chiefs themselves conversing, all at once.
The round or conical huts to the right are introduced merely as
types of dwellings.

EXTRACTS FROM JOURNAL OF SCHOUTEN. 403

Explanation of Plate on p. 311.
a. Meeting of the two chiefs, welcoming one another with
remarkable ceremony.
B. The same two chiefs sitting in state together on two mats
under a thatched shed.
c. Our trumpeters and drummer playing before the chiefs,
from which they derived great satisfaction (or took as
a great compliment).
d. Commoners chewing a green root called by them kava.
When it is chewed up water is added to it, and thus
a drink is made from it, which is greatly esteemed by
them.
e. Shows the fashion of the houses. They are round and
pointed, and covered with thatch.
f. Shows the costume of a chief, and coiffure.
G G. Shows the plaits of hair worn by chiefs.
h. Shows an instance of frizzed hair.
i. Another, whose hair stands up stiff like the bristles of a
pig, more than a quarter of an ell long.
k. Shows how the women wear their hair cut short.
l. Are cocoa-nut palms.

[Appendix III.

IIL— TABLE SHOWING GENEALOGY OF THE CHIEFS NEAREST TO THE
THRONE OF TONGA.

o

temporal line.

Maeliuaki,
(entertained Captain
Cook, 1777.

Mulikihaamea
(Tui Haatakalaua awl
Tui Kanokubolu).

Maeliuaki.

Mumui,
died 1787
I

Fononga Vaiga.

SPIRITUAL LINE.
Tui Tonga.
Tuboulalii m. Latueuubeka (The Tamnha),
 I highest earthly dignity.

tub0uahomee.
Kaunanga. Lusiane, Tubutubu,
m. Malakai Lavulo. m. Ulukalala of Vavau.

Tungi. I

George Tukuaho.

Anaseini Tubou Veihola. Fane Tubou.
 _J l_l

Ulakai,
m. Tuboukolotolu.

Junia Mafileo.

Mele Siukilikutabu.

Vili.

Tukuaho,
murdered 1709.

Tubou Toa.

George

ubou I.,

Tevita Unga,
died 1S79. I
FUSIPALA,
died 1SS8 ;
m. Fatafehi
of the Spiritual Line.
George Tubou II.,
King 1SU3.

>
ta
b

INDEX.

Accession of King George, 356.
Action for slander, 209.
Ahomee, 97.
Assassination, 130.
Attack on Mr Baker, 6.
Audit, US.
Bea, siege of, 358.
Birth, 374.
Birth-rate, 373.
Bolotu, 73.
Bounty, mutiny of, S2.
Budget, 62.
Bushrangers, 175.
Catechism, 207.
Cats, 386.
Cattle, 388.
Cave, Hunga, 17S.
Census, 371.
Chairman of Committees, 267.
Chamber of Commerce, 165.
Charlotte, 19, 60.
Church squabbles, 153.
Cipher letter, 173.
Club subscription, 129.
Code, first, 221.
„ Baker's, 227.
,, draft, 229, 270.
Collection, missionary, 185.
Constitution granted, 223, 365.
Convicts, 105.

Cook, Captain, 313.
Copra, 133.
ii contract, 32, 43.
Court-martial, 36.
Courts, 100.
ii abuse of, 225.
Cricket, 150.
Croker, Captain, his death, 354.
Customs, debate on, 274.
Debt, 41.
Defalcations, 139.
Dillon, Peter, 347.
Dining-room, 260.
Dinners, political, 236.
Dogs, introduction of, 387.
D'Urville, 347.
Egeria, 41.
Elections, 237.
Erecting monuments, mode of, 381.
Erskine, Commodore, 199.
Estimates, 123.
European opposition, 44.
Exiles, 7, 19, 27.
Faikava, 51, So.
Fctkamisonali, 185.
Falcon Island, 84.
Fatafehi, 45, 61.
Favourite, H.M.S., rout of, 354.
Fiji, 318.

406

INDEX.

Finau Ulukalala, 169, 322, 339.
Flattery, 242.
Flirting, 116, 271.
Flying-foxes, 91.
Fono, 85, 93.
Forth, Mr J., 120.
Free Church, 5.
Haafeva, 50.
Haapai, 50, 71.
Hansard, 277.
Hermit, 177.
High Commissioner, 1, 245.
Historical sketch, 2-10.
Hoho, 264.
Holy Tonga, 136.
Home, Sir Everard, 359.
Horses, 389.
Hostile press, 151.
Houma, siege of, 359.
Humility, mode of expressing, 30.
Illness of king, 239, 241.
Inaji, 313.
Jailer, 108.
Jails, 109.
Josiah, death of King, 355.
Junia Mafileo, 23, 124.
Kava, king's, 51.
ii origin of, 55.
King, 56, 66.
n George, 342, 356, 362.
n of Fiji, 364.
King's campaign in Fiji, 364.
n pardon, ]82.
„ Speech, 250, 254.
Kubu, 95.
Laifone, 164.
Land laws, 230.
Language, 39.
Lawry, Rev. W., 344.
Laws, oppressive, 224.
Lawsuit against Government, 244.
Leave-taking, 2S2.
Legislation, 220.
Leprosy, 279.

Libel, 9.
Liberation of convicts, 20.
Liquor-selling, 166.
Lobase, 147.
Lord Chief -Justice, 97.
Lulu, 148.
Maafu, 361.
Maealiuaki, 28, 269.
Magic-lantern, 145.
Magistrate, Special, 101.
Malao, 391.
Manase, 168, 259, 268.
Mangaia labourers, 42.
Mariner's 'Tonga,' 51, 135.
Mary Butako's confession, 79.
Mataka, 50, 146, 257.
Mayors, 87.
Megapodius, 391.
Minister of Finance, 23, 99.
ii Police, 95.
Missions, failure of, 217.
Mitchell, Sir C, 7, 8.
Monuments, 379.
Moss, 12.
Moulton, Rev. J. E., 213.
Mutinous Governor, 155.
Nuku, 94.
Nukualofa, 30.
Offices, Baker's, 16.
Opening of Parliament, 249, 251,
253.
Order of Prohibition, 14.
ii in Council, 183.
Origin of Tui Kanokubolu, 301.
Palace, Vavau, 164.
Parrots, 391.
Persecution, 5, 7.
Peter Vi, 58.
Philately, 156.
Photographs, distribution of, 81.
Pigs, 383.
Plymouth Brethren, 143.
Poems, 378.
Police, 103, 112.
Population, 372.

INDEX.

407

Port-au-Prince, 333.
Postscript, 285.
Poultry, 386.
Prison, 106.
Privy Council, first, 68.
Profits of persecution, 29
Quarrels, missionary, 205.
Rapid, 1, 10, 14.
Rats, 382.
Raw fish, 60.
Respect for dignities, 232.
Revolution, 324.
Salaries, 235.
Sandal-wood, 65.
Sateki, 96, 149.
Schouten, 310.
Science, 138.
Seditious papers, 159.
Select Committee, 258, 275.
Sergeant-at-Arms, 252.
Shipping laws, 277.
Sion Hill, 251.
Slander from pulpit, 244.
Sleeping lords, 262.
Speaker, 256.
Spirit-room, 18.
Spy, 58.
Stamps, changing, 156.
Statue, 133.
Suicide rate, 172.

Tasman, 311.
Taufaahau, 15.
Thakombau, 364.
Thomas, Rev. J., 345.
Thomas, Mr Julian, 134.
Tofua, 50, 82.
Tongiaki, 308.
Tradition of Kau-ulu-fonua, 303.
Treasury Orders, 121.
n Vavau, 181.
Treaties, 94, 368.
Tubou Niua, assassination of, 335.
Tubou-toa, 334.
Tui Haatakalaua, 305.
Tukuaho, 35, 38, 321.
Tutawi the hermit, 177.
Undergraduates, 49.
Unga, 3.
Vaea in flight, 47.
Vagabond, 134.
Vason, 326, 331.
Vavau, 161.
Vili Tai, 269.
Waitresses for Parliament, 248,
260.
War, 197, 352, 353.
Watkin, Rev. Mr, 5, 13, 88.
Wild Birds protection, 86.
Wilkes, Commodore, 199.
Women's College, 48.

THE END.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.

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