THE KING OF CAKAUDROVE. 21 



church, nor respectable strangers' house. The King of 

 Cakaudrove, whose official title is Tui Cakau, had re- 

 moved his court from Somosomo to Wairiki, and left 

 the government of Somosomo to his younger brother, 

 Golea. 



Tui Cakau is a miserable-looking man, without any 

 chief-like attributes. He is below the middle height, 

 in the eyes of Fijians, who entertain a great con- 

 tempt for little men, a serious blemish; suffering, be- 

 sides, from elephantiasis and cutaneous diseases, his 

 whole appearance is not prepossessing. Elephanti- 

 asis, incidentally mentioned, is one of the diseases 

 to which Fijians are subject, and a fearful sight it 

 certainly is, when the feet assume dimensions and 

 shapes that make them more like those of elephants 

 than human beings. The disease, however, is gene- 

 rally speaking, very local, and seems to be particu- 

 larly prevalent in low, damp valleys. I remember going 

 up a small river opposite the island of Naigani, where 

 almost every inhabitant was afflicted by this calamity. 

 Again, I have seen large bodies of natives, without no- 

 ticing a single case. I have not heard of any white 

 settlers having suffered from elephantiasis in Fiji, though 

 it is well known that the whites in Samoa, Tahiti, or 

 other Polynesian groups, are not free from this visita- 

 tion. No one knowing the cause of the disease, there 

 are of course many hypotheses respecting it. Every 

 white man has his own, and one pretty generally dif- 

 fused is, that it is brought on by drinking cocoa-nut milk. 

 Yet there was a European who, acting on this belief, 

 and scrupulously avoiding the tempting beverage, never- 



