LEVUKA. 



47 



dotted with the Avhite sails of pleasure-crafts, racing, it may be, 

 out of one entrance of the coral-reef and in at the other. The 

 German becomes a naturalised British subject, and in time 

 learns almost to forget the Fatherland nay, as I know from 

 personal experience in America, repudiates all connection with 

 it ; but John Bull is John Bull wherever he may be found. 

 The average British pioneer colonist always reminds one of a 

 commercial traveller ; he is eternally pushing the claims and 

 introducing the specialities of Messrs. Jno. Bull & Co. 



And here a line in defence of gentlemen Avho used to be 

 much maligned in dear stop-at-home Old England. I allude 

 to the majority of the settlers whom I happened to come across, 

 and I use the word ' gentlemen' advisedly. To many, both in 

 Australia and the Mother Country, a Fijian colonist has meant 

 nothing else than a runaway bankrupt from Australia or New 

 Zealand, happy enough to have settled down years ago in a 

 little-known archipelago which, if it did boast man-eaters, was 

 equally able to glory in the non-existence of the principles of 

 extradition. An editorial of mine, contributed to the Fiji 

 Times towards the end of 1876, deals with this opinion in the 

 following fashion : 



' The people in England know nothing of us ; the vast 

 majority of them believe firmly that these islands were 

 annexed by the Imperial Government because the cannibals 

 residing here were a dangerous nuisance to the few semi-crazed 

 settlers who, in defiance of everything practical, would, 

 paradoxically insist on courting death by living here ; that 

 not only were these colonists mad themselves, but almost as 

 objectionable to the world's pacific relations as the cannibals 

 with whom they so willingly took up their abode. The whites 

 in Fiji were supposed to be the offscourings of the Australian 

 colonies, men who, having failed by want of honesty, industry, 



