262 THE CORAL LANDS OF THE PACIFIC. 



Christianity ; and it was on account of some of these people 

 that a Lord High Commissioner of Western Polynesia was 

 appointed. If the Anglo-Saxon race is prepared to accept the 

 responsibility that undoubtedly belongs to it in the Southern 

 Seas, beachcombing, as beachcombing has been understood for 

 years, will be a thing of the past. It was the ' mean whites ' 

 of the Southern States who ill-treated the negroes when they 

 had the chance, and then stirred up the negroes to rebel 

 against their masters. The beachcombers of the South Pacific 

 are, taking them as a class, of a superior order to the almost 

 extinct American caste referred to ; but they will have to rise 

 with the rise of Polynesia, or seek some other l islands at the 

 gateways of the day.' Face to face with an organisation 

 having a higher end than mere money-making, and backed by 

 the imperial power of Britain, the vast majority of the beach- 

 combers would, I feel convinced, accept the situation, serve 

 themselves and advance their nationality and race. The 

 majority of these men are of British stock, some of them Avith 

 good yeomen's blood in their veins, but they could not be 

 persuaded by any human inducement to return to the old 

 world. One of them at Samoa used to say : 



' Sir, I wouldn't go back to Britain now if you would give 

 me 1000 a year; yet I will say that when I came here 

 first, more than fifty years ago, I had a fashion of sitting on 

 the stones by the seaside of a night, and crying to myself for 

 the home and friends I should never see again. I know better 

 now, and have done so many a year.' 



When Commodore Wilkes's exploring expedition visited the 

 Navigators' Isles our friend went on board the Porpoise, dressed 

 in savage mats, and begged the captain to take him away. 



' I don't want any men,' was the answer ; 'but what country- 

 man are you V 



