NATIVES NOT WITHOUT NATURAL AFFECTION. 193 



not a bosom friend, to whom he is bound by the 

 strongest ties of affection. The birth of a child is a 

 perfect jubilee, and it is truly touching to see how 

 parents are attached to their children, and children to 

 their parents. Under such circumstances, the greatness 

 of the sacrifice that children are sometimes called upon 

 by their infirm old parents to terminate their suffer- 

 ings by putting them to death, becomes evident. It is a 

 cruel slander of the native character to put any other 

 construction on this singular, though mistaken proof of 

 filial affection. In a country where food is abundant, 

 clothing scarcely required, and property as a general 

 rule in the possession of the whole family rather than 

 that of its head, children need not wait " for dead men's 

 shoes," in order to become well off, and w r e may, there- 

 fore, quite believe them when declaring that it is with 

 aching heart and at the repeated entreaties of their pa- 

 rents that they are induced to commit what we justly 

 consider a crime. The two old men present at our 

 meeting at Namosi, were living proofs that children 

 however, even in these wild parts, will not always be 

 induced to lay hands on their parents. 



I told a native who sometimes called at Danford's 

 house, and seemed to be a most respectable man, a belief 

 had been spread in our country that the Fijians were 

 almost without natural affection. He replied, there 

 might be some amongst his countrymen, as well as the 

 whites, who had not much feeling ; but those who de- 

 nied the Fijians natural affection, either understood them 

 very little, or else represented them in such black co- 

 lours for some purposes of their own. " When leaving 



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