THE CESSION OF FIJI. 19 



loped sense of nationality, and feeling as one people. No 

 ancient Eoman could have pronounced the civis Romanus sum 

 with greater pride or dignity than a modern Fijian calls himself 

 " Kai Viti," a Fijian.' 



In 1808 a brig called the Elisa was wrecked off the reef of 

 Nairai, and the escaped crew and passengers, mostly runaway 

 convicts from New South Wales, found there were seven 

 powerful chiefs in the group, that of Verata being leader. The 

 sailors and convicts, however, under the command of a certain 

 Charley Savage, took the side of the Bau people. Powder and 

 shot soon settled the question of ascendency, and since the loss 

 of the Elisa Bau has retained it. The chief of Bau at this time 

 was a certain Na Ulivou, and was a brave leader of men. So 

 great was his success that he was accorded the title of Vuni 

 Falu, 'Root of War/ or, as some translators have it, ' Source of 

 Power ' a distinction which has since been hereditary in the 

 chiefs of Bau. 



Internecine fighting chiefly constituted the Fijian life of 

 those days, but the Vuni Valu of the time maintained the 

 position he had won. He died in 1829, and was succeeded 

 by his brother Tanoa, who, after a troubled reign, five years 

 of which were passed in exile, died on the 8th of December, 

 1852. 



In the meantime a Wesleyan mission had been founded at 

 Levuka in 1835, and the last of the convicts had died in 1840. 

 That year Commodore Wilkes, of the U.S. Navy, visited the 

 group, where the white population was slowly but steadily on 

 the increase. 



King Tanoa, the father of ex-King Cacobau, was a fine old 

 Fijian cannibal, one of the olden time ; in other words, he was 

 a desperate heathen man-eater. 



Cacobau succeeded him, and was acknowledged by many of 



22 



