534 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



cross his shadow, or the shadow of his house. No Fijian revenge was 

 assuaged until the enemy was eaten; indeed, so natural does this seem 

 to them that a high chief asked me in a casual manner whether we of 

 the United States had eaten the Spaniards whom we had killed during 

 the Avar of 1898. 



A detailed account of the ceaseless native wars is given by the 

 Reverend Joseph Waterhouse in " The King and People of Fiji " and 

 by Williams in his fascinating "Fiji and the Fijians/' and they 

 are records of treachery, murder, cruelty and vice, unrelieved by 

 the narration of a single fight for principle or an act of mercy or 

 chivalry. In all history there have been few instances of higher courage, 

 fidelity and devotion to their creed than those furnished by the lives of 

 the early missionaries to these islands, and nowhere in the Pacific has 

 conversion accomplished more good and in the process done less harm 

 than in Fiji. 



Tradition states that in former times the island of Mbengha was 

 dominant in native affairs, and its chiefs still style themselves " Qali- 

 cuva-ki-lagi," "subject only to heaven"; finally, however, the chief of 

 Rewa conquered Mbengha and slaughtered nearly all its inhabitants, 

 and then, in 1800, the village of Yerata on Viti Levu became dominant 

 in Fijian affairs. At this time, Mbanuvi, who had succeeded his father 

 Nailatikau, was the head chief of the town of Mbau, but he soon 

 thereafter died and was succeeded by his son, Na Ulivou (The Hot 

 Stone) . 



Mlmu is a little island, not a mile in width, which lies off the south- 

 eastern corner of the great island of Viti Levu, of which indeed it is a 

 mere outlyer, being connected with the mainland at low tide by a nat- 

 ural causeway. Yet this insignificant islet of a single hill, surrounded 

 by shallow mangrove flats and reefs, was destined to conquer nearly 

 half of Fiji. 



In the south seas that chief who first obtained the aid of white men 

 in the use of firearms gained a rapid and terrible ascendency. It so 

 happened that in 1809 the armed brig Eliza was wrecked on the coral 

 reef off Nairai, which was a dependency of Mbau, and the natives 

 plundered the vessel. A Swede, named Charley Savage, and three com- 

 panions made their way to the shore, and Savage was the. first white 

 man to come to Mbau. Here it is not improbable that he would have 

 been killed and eaten in accordance with Fijian custom respecting the 

 shipwrecked, had he not bethought himself of a musket which had been 

 left on board, and requested the natives to search for it. They found 

 it, built into the palisade surrounding a native village and soon Na- 

 Ulivou saw in Savage and his musket the means to "world-wide" 

 conquests. 



