22 THE CORAL LANDS OF THE PACIFIC. 



said to Maafu : ' If you and I are of one mind, we need not 

 ask another chief in Fiji.' 



King Cacobau had other troubles besides those springing 

 from Maafu's rivalry. His squabble with the United States 

 was indirectly the means of bringing his so-called kingdom 

 under the British flag. In 1849 there were about fifty whites 

 resident at Levuka, among them the American consul, whose 

 house was burned to the ground through an accident in firing 

 a cannon on the 4th of July ; whereupon the natives improved 

 the occasion by carrying off whatever they could lay their 

 hands on. In 1851 an American war-ship, the St. Marys, 

 visited the group, and Mr. Williams, the U.S. consul, applied 

 to the commanding-officer for compensation, which he esti- 

 mated at the very precise sum of $5001 38c. 



The history of how this claim of $5000 became swollen to 

 $45,000 is anything but creditable to the American citizens 

 concerned. Advantage was taken of another robbery by the 

 natives, and, through the influence of an American naval 

 officer, poor Cacobau was forced to sign a document acknow- 

 ledging the justice of an unfair claim. Her Majesty's com- 

 missioner in 1861 reported: 'From all I can learn, one-third 

 of the sum demanded by the United States Government would 

 be amply sufficient, both as compensation for the loss of pro- 

 perty and as a fine.' And in 1874 the Queen's commissioners 

 say in their report : ' We have nothing to add to the state- 

 ments previously made to Her Majesty's Government and 

 published in England on the subject of the claim of the United 

 States against King Cacobau a claim which was unfairly 

 made and unfairly pressed, and which has led to speculations 

 of a questionable character.' 



These comments are literally true. Certain Melbourne 

 speculators conceived the idea of obtaining a cession of land 



