BAU. 77 



visit to Chief Kuruduadua. There being rather a strong 

 south-easterly breeze, we arrived two hours after dark 

 at Bau, thoroughly wet from salt water, and heartily 

 glad to take shelter under the hospitable roof of Mr.Collis, 

 a gentleman connected 'with the mission. Until 1854, 

 Bau, which is the name of the metropolis, as well as 

 the ruling state, was opposed to the missionaries, and 

 the ovens in which the bodies of human victims were 

 baked scarcely ever got cold. Since then, however, a 

 great change has taken place. The King and all his 

 court have embraced Christianity ; of the heathen tem- 

 ples, which, by their pyramidal form, gave such a pecu- 

 liar local colouring to old pictures of the place, only 

 the foundations remain ; the sacred groves in the neigh- 

 bourhood are cut down ; and in the great square where 

 formerly cannibal feasts took place, a large church has 

 been erected. Not without emotion did I land on this 

 blood-stained soil, where probably greater iniquities 

 were perpetrated than ever disgraced any other spot on 

 earth. It was about eight o'clock in the evening ; and 

 instead of the wild noise that greeted former visitors, 

 family prayer was heard from nearly every house. To 

 bring about such a change has indeed required no slight 

 efforts ; and many valuable lives had to be sacrificed, for 

 although no missionary in Fiji has ever met with a vio- 

 lent death, yet the list of those who died in the midst of 

 their labours is proportionally very great. The Wes- 

 leyans, to whose disinterestedness the conversion of these 

 degraded beings is due, have, as a society, expended 

 75,000 on this object; and if the private donations 

 of friends to individual missionaries and their families 



