34 A MISSION TO VITI. 



Fijian customs. Were the case tried before any com- 

 petent tribunal, no doubt it would be given in favour of 

 the eldest son, a fine manly fellow, who would well de- 

 serve the honour he was to be deprived of. 



Golea asked for grog, -which the natives term " Ya- 

 qona ni papalagi" or foreign Kava, but was told that 

 there was none in the house. He then begged to be 

 supplied with a cup of tea, which was cheerfully given. 

 Some of the Fijians are gradually acquiring a taste for 

 intoxicating drinks, as most other Polynesians have done, 

 and there is not a more painful task than to be obliged 

 to refuse supplying them. However, I do not think 

 that the dark-coloured races of Polynesia, including 

 amongst others the Fijians and New Caledonians, have 

 that intense longing for spirits characteristic of the 

 Hawaiians, Samoans, Tonguese, and other light-coloured 

 races, who are great slaves to it, notwithstanding all 

 that is done to check a habit which helps so mate- 

 rially to decimate them. Yet, whether this difference 

 is merely owing to the fact that the former have not 

 had such unrestricted intercourse with the whites as 

 the latter, or whether sobriety is to them a virtue as 

 easy to exercise as it is to the Spaniards and Italians in 

 comparison to the Teutonic nations, the future alone 

 will show. The lower class of whites are setting them a 

 bad example, and one has often reason to blush for his 

 own race. Whilst I was in the islands the first grog- 

 shops were opened at Levuka, and several others have 

 since been established in Bau, and other parts of the 

 group. What has always surprised me is, that con- 

 sidering the Fijian to be a tropical climate, most of 



