PROCESS OF QUEEN-MAKING. 233 



body-guards still watch around it, as if reluctant to believe 

 their " occupation gone." Some of these loving creatures will 

 even starve upon their grief, and fall dead themselves around 

 the body of their defunct mistress. 



But the kingdom of Apia (that of which we now write) was 

 always a monarchy of marvels and of strange customs, and 

 those which regarded the succession to the crown were some 

 of the strangest among them. The chief population of the 

 country consisted of females, who were all spinsters, and who 

 filled every active office in the state, from the very lowest to 

 the highest, save one, that of the sovereign, who was also 

 always a female, but never continued a virgin queen. It 

 would, however, occasionally happen that proper heiresses, or 

 princesses of the blood-royal, were wanting to fill a vacant 

 throne, in which case a curious expedient was wont to be re- 

 sorted to. Several infants were selected from among the 

 labouring population, and from the close apartments and con- 

 fined cradles belonging to their station, were transferred to stately 

 nurseries and luxurious cots, and in lieu of common nourish- 

 ment, supplied abundantly with food expressly manufactured 

 for making queens. The quality of this precious article was 

 so nutritive and of such marvellous virtue, as not only to swell 

 these chosen vessels of royalty to a prodigious size, but also to 

 fill them with endowments, bodily and mental, quite different 

 to what they would have possessed in their original condition, 

 and exactly suited to that station which one or more of them 



