MEKE-MEKES. 1 1 9 



the Birmingham district has killed the native industry. I saw 

 very few specimens, and these were in the hands of Europeans, 

 and greatly prized as ' curios.' The natives had well-designed 

 globular drinking- vessels, earthen arrowroot-pans, dye-bowls, 

 and fish-pots. A friend told me that he saw on one occasion 

 an earthen pot capable of holding a hogshead, and which had 

 four apertures to facilitate its being filled or opened. The 

 ordinary earthen cooking vessels contained from five to ten 

 gallons. The Fijians employed red and blue clay, tempered 

 with sand, and although the means at their disposal for manu- 

 facture must have been of the rudest character, yet the work 

 they turned out had as true an outline as if made with a wheel. 

 Pottery work was entirely confined to the women of sailors' 

 a few puffs, and fishermen's families. 



Both sexes avail themselves of the solace of tobacco, and 

 their style of indulging in it is pre-eminently social. A cigarette, 

 being lighted, is passed from one to the other, each one taking 

 and handing it to his neighbour. 



The half-castes are great in pipes, and many of the labourers 

 about the plantations indulge in the common clay pipe of 

 British or colonial manufacture. 



CHAPTER XV. 



BRITISH NATIVE POLICY FIAT JUSTITIA. 



THE foregoing chapters will, I hope, have convinced the reader 

 that Fiji has possessed for centuries laws, customs, rights, and 

 obligations which, unlike any other system to be found in 

 Western Polynesia, bound the Fijians together as a homo- 



