34 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



bau "lotued" 3 in 1854, a powerful faction in Mbau rebelled and fled 

 to Eewa where they arrayed themselves under the banner of the great 

 chief Eatu Quara or Tui Dreketi (the Hungry Woman or the Long 

 Fellow), a famous warrior and an implacable enemy of Thakombau 

 who threatened to destroy Mbau and to kill and eat its king in revenge 

 for the burning of Eewa in 1847. At one time only a single Tongan 

 and a missionary guarded Thakombau in his house at Mbau, but, at 

 this critical juncture, an American ship under Captain Dunn arrived 

 and, aided by the missionaries, Thakombau and his party were enabled 

 to purchase guns and ammunition. Eewa might still have conquered, 

 however, had it not been that Eatu Quara died of dysentery in Jan- 

 uary, 1855. 



Indeed, as the Eeverend Mr. Waterhouse states, the people of Mbau 

 grew to hate Christianity after Thakombau had professed it to be his 

 religion. The Fijians had a highly developed system of constitutional 

 government, which varied somewhat with the locality, but was nowhere 

 an absolute despotism. In fact the influence of unprincipled white 

 men and the introduction of firearms led to conquests which had done 

 more to exalt the power of a few chiefs and to develop the worst ex- 

 crescences of the social and religious system of Fiji than had any 

 other factor. 



At Mbau there were two high chiefs, the head priest of Eoko Tui 

 (the reverenced king) who was above all in rank and was held in re- 

 ligious veneration but took no part in war or political affairs; and the 

 Vunivalu (root of war), the executive head of the tribe. Upon the 

 death of the Vunivalu, his successor was elected from among his rela- 

 tives by the land-owners and chiefs of the tribe, and should he fail to 

 carry out their policy they refused to provide him with food. 



After white men came and the lust for conquest overpowered all 

 else at Mbau, their ancestral veneration for the Eoko Tui declined, 

 and the Vunivalu became correspondingly more powerful. Thus 

 Thakombau was not the Mikado but the Tycoon of his people. 



But to return to the historic narrative: King George Tubou of 

 Tonga, the most powerful Christian convert in the Pacific, came to the 

 aid of Thakombau in 1855, and for the moment reestablished his su- 

 premacy, but at the same time he acquired a knowledge of Thakombau's 

 weakness, and became convinced that a Tongan conquest of Fiji was 

 possible. 



For generations the Tongans had been in the habit of sailing to 

 Lakemba, Kambara, and other islands of the Lau group in Fiji, where 

 the forests afforded large trees for the making of canoes. A year or 

 more would be employed in canoe building, and thus the newcomers had 



3 Assumed the waist-cloth which the missionaries obliged all converts to 

 wear. 



