108 A MISSION TO VITI. 



liverance. He immediately complied, arranged to take a small 

 armed party and make a sudden descent upon Numulo at early 

 dawn. This lie did. The people of the town, panic struck, 

 fled, and the chief was thus enabled to convey the wounded 

 prisoners and some property to Namuka, where we had gone to 

 await the result of the expedition. 



" It has been said that this chief was a party in the affair, 

 because, at a subsequent period, some boxes, taken from 

 Namuka, were seen in his house. They came into his posses- 

 sion in this manner : some time after the Namuka outrage, 

 Kuruduadua attacked and captured a town belonging to Tui 

 Solia, the defeat causing the latter to sue for peace. Friendly 

 intercourse being re-established, Kuruduadua subsequently ex- 

 changed several pigs for boxes in Tui SohVs possession, and 

 forming part of the plunder of Namuka* It is quite false that 

 Tui Solia was at the time of the outrage under the influence of 

 Kuruduadua ; so far from that, they were enemies and at war. 



" Kuruduadua has ever behaved kindly to the whites, and in 

 this respect set a good example to other chiefs. Upon one 

 occasion a vessel got ashore in the neighbourhood. He assem- 

 bled his people, got her afloat, and made his subjects return 

 the property they had taken, this at a time when, in almost 

 every other part of Fiji, the lives of the shipwrecked were taken 

 and the vessel and cargo plundered. 



" I was present at Nukubalawu, when Mr. Williams, the 

 American Consul, and Phillips, a Rewan chief, came to inquire 

 into the Namuka matter. Mr. Dolittle said, that after buying 

 the island of Namuka they were entitled to protection. Phillips, 

 the chief, then emphatically denied that the island had been 

 sold, but said that a gun, a keg of powder, and a whale's tooth 

 had been given as the 'yaqona' for permission to reside on 

 the island, and that he could not sell it, as there were others 

 who were co-owners with himself. 



" JOHN HEEKES." 



