24 A MISSION TO V1TI. 



known before the visits of white men, term " the white 

 man's disease." However, none of us were attacked by 

 it during our stay, though we were constantly exposed 

 to sun and rain, and ultimately out of biscuit, which 

 served us for bread. The natives also believe dysentery 

 catching, and hence will carefully avoid contact with a 

 person suffering from that infliction. They will never 

 sit down on a seat or lie down on a mat one of these 

 invalids has occupied, and moreover often compel the 

 poor sufferers to retire into the depths of the forests until 

 they shall have recovered. Curiously enough, those Poly- 

 nesian islands free from dysentery, as, for instance, the 

 Samoan group, are visited by fever, and those free from 

 fever, as Fiji and others, are liable to dysentery.* 



Chief Golea was absent on a fighting expedition to 

 Vanua Levu, but his wife Eleanor was at home, and 

 paid us a visit on our arrival, accompanied by two young 

 women, also wives of Golea. Eleanor is the niece of 

 Cakobau ( = Thakombau), King of Fiji and Chief of 

 Bau. She is much higher in rank than her husband, 

 who is only a younger son of a king under the suze- 

 rainty of her uncle. Bau has always understood how to 



* The early stages of dysentery are easily checked by eating basinfuls 

 of the native arrowroot (Tacca pinnatifida and sativa) so plentiful about 

 Fiji, especially on the sandy beaches, and by avoiding bananas and plan- 

 tains, which I quite agree with Eumphius and Forster in considering as 

 helping to bring on this disease. The arrowroot should be made so thick 

 that a spoon will stand upright in it, and taken with a little nutmeg, and 

 if possible white sugar. I found no arrowroot to be so effective as that of 

 the South Sea, and when, after my return from Fiji, I had a serious 

 attack of dysentery in London, and was unable to get my favourite remedy, 

 no shop having it genuine, I had an illness of several months, which nearly 

 proved fatal. 



