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that their physical development is much superior to that 

 of the lower classes, that they are not only taller and 

 better made, but generally possessed of much handsomer 

 features, we need not wonder that some travellers have 

 thought them a different race from the rest of their 

 countrymen ; and that in their own land they have been 

 able to resist all democratic levelling, and remain to this 

 day as genuine an aristocracy as ever existed, because in 

 every respect a superior class. 



The widow of the late governor of Namosi asked me 

 to see the " crown jewels '' in her charge. They were 

 kept in a wooden box, and carefully wrapt up in soft 

 pieces of native cloth and cocoa-nut fibre. There were 

 among them a large whale's tooth, highly polished, 

 and quite brown from repeated greasing, a necklace 

 made of pieces of whales' teeth, the first that ever came 

 to these mountains, and a fine cannibal fork in the shape 

 of a club, and bearing the ominous name of "strike 

 twice," i.e. first the man and then his dead body. The 

 woman told me a lot of other crown property had been 

 burnt when, some years ago, the Americans destroyed 

 Navua ; among it, she assured me, was a short club which 

 would kill a man on the spot, and was never known to 

 miss when thrown by the hand of the supreme chief. 

 Whales' teeth are with the Fijians what diamonds are 

 with us, and in former days there w T as no favour a chief 

 would refuse if a number of these were offered. The 

 European and American traders soon found this out, 

 and did not fail to bring quantities whenever they 

 touched at these islands. The consequence has been 

 that on the coast and amongst the christianized popu- 



