10 A MISSION TO VITI. 



wild spray to great heighjt, speaking in hollow roars, and 

 showing a variety of tints which the pen must ever de- 

 spair of depicting. So far from becoming absorbed in 

 thought at such a sight, as at the monotonous grandeur 

 of Niagara, one longs to stir, to push on, to become ac- 

 tive like the never-resting element. 



Though we got a good wetting, and might have been 

 swamped had it not been for the skilful steering of our 

 mate, we landed in safety. As soon as the boat was 

 near shore fifty or sixty natives plunged into the water 

 to carry us on their backs to the beach, when we shook 

 hands with Mr. Fletcher, one of the Wesleyan mission- 

 aries stationed here. The natives were nearly all fine 

 strapping fellows, some of them quite six feet high, and 

 all Fijian, with the exception of a couple of Tonguese 

 or Tonga men, inhabitants of a neighbouring group of 

 islands. One of the latter was Charles, the son of the 

 Tonguese chief, Maafu, a mighty man in Polynesian 

 annals, and the source of much trouble, both in Tonga 

 and Fiji. When most people read of " natives " they 

 imagine them to be types of unsightliness, if not down- 

 right ugliness ; of many races, not Caucasian, that may 

 in some measure be true, but whoever goes to the 

 South Seas will have reason to change his opinion en- 

 tirely. Some of these islanders are really very hand- 

 some, both in figure and face ; and all entitled to pro- 

 nounce an opinion on the subject have agreed that there 

 are few spots in the world where one sees so many hand- 

 some people together as in Tonga. I have never been 

 in Circassia, and can therefore not speak from personal 

 experience ; but, if what one reads be correct, Tonga may 



