BRITISH NATIVE POLICY FIAT JUSTITIA. 131 



from India ; but the planters wisely prefer the Polynesians, 

 who contemptuously describe our Eastern felloAv-subjects as 

 'rats.' 



I venture to suggest whether it would not be a good plan to 

 institute additional payment for time-work, as adopted on the 

 sugar-estates of Demerara. Perhaps the most interesting fact 

 observable at the present time is that the natives of Fiji are 

 becoming very large producers ; the value of the articles paid 

 by them in the form of taxes only, reached in 1879 the 

 respectable figure of 22,514, or, in produce, 300 tons cotton, 

 1100 tons copra, 180 tons of candle-nuts, 30 tons of minor 

 products, and 30,000 bushels of maize. 



So much for the Native Taxation Scheme. I am no blind 

 partisan, but justice necessitated no faltering comments on 

 such a topic as the native policy of the British Government. 

 Liberavi animam meam. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY OF FIJI. 



As I have previously said, Fiji has one enemy, the mosquito, 

 and he is no despicable foe. In some parts of the group he is 

 simply a supreme nuisance though no worse in Fiji than in 

 other places that I have visited. The bites of these gentry, 

 scratched by the finger-nail, turn into troublesome sores ; but 

 these, with healthy constitutions, soon heal. The natives seem, 

 however, very indifferent to them, and let crowds of black flies 

 feed upon the open wound, utterly regardless of what to a 

 white man would be the most exquisite torture. They say the 



flies take the poison out. 



q 9 



U ^ 



