MORE ABOUT THE FIJIAN OF TO-DA Y. 105 



friends, but will go away for a time, make a modest fortune, 

 which he generally invests in useless boxes, butchers'-knives, 

 necklaces, looking-glasses, and Jew's harps ; and then he will 

 return to the paternal domain, divide his purchases among his 

 friends, and have a good spell of downright laziness, until his 

 people get quite tired of him and make him go away and work 

 again. 



Some of the English-made handkerchiefs with comic pictures 

 on them, illustrating the growth of civilisation in Fiji, are 

 much appreciated by the natives, who are beginning to like a 

 few articles of European clothing. While staying with my 

 brother at his place in Savu Savu Bay, Vanua Levu (the 

 second-largest island of the group), I managed to ruin a grey 

 tweed waistcoat by pouring over it a quantity of sulphuric 

 acid. My brother immediately remarked, ' Give it to Eowena ' 

 (his servant) ; 'he will glory in it.' I did so, and at dinner 

 that evening Mr. Rowena entered the room, his face beaming 

 with smiles, and arrayed in my damaged vest, half of which 

 was a light grey, the other a brilliant yellow. He told my 

 brother in confidence afterwards that he was now half a papa- 

 lagi, or white man. 



The natives work in Levuka as ordinary labourers at a shil- 

 ling to eighteenpence a day, and it seemed to me that they 

 took the most amazing pains not to overtire themselves. In 

 the provinces they work much better, and, according to an 

 anonymous pamphlet which I recently received from Levuka, 

 native boys of twelve or thirteen can drive the engines of 

 sugar-mills just as well as white men. 



The characteristics of native life are much the same in Fiji 

 as they are everywhere else. Its chief phenomena are irre- 

 gular alternations of excessive labour and excessive repose* 

 and so it will continue till the fitful and uncertain habits of 



