CAPTAIN CHOKER'S DEFEAT. 239 



Tonguese. As the case stood, the British Government 

 did not deem it just to ask for any reparation, and simply 

 demanded the guns left behind. However, the Ton- 

 guese were not slow in taking advantage of this turn of 

 affairs, and quite ignoring that it was their own govern- 

 ment as much as the foreigners who were repulsed, they 

 have magnified the catastrophe into a grand victory, and 

 become so arrogant, that Captain Cook, could he pay 

 them another visit, would never dream of confirming the 

 name of the " Friendly Islanders" which he gave them, 

 in total ignorance of the fact, related by Mariner, that 

 they had laid two plots to take his life, not carried out 

 because no agreement could be arrived at respecting the 

 details of the projected murder.* 



Ethnologists have long been watching the spread of 

 the Tonguese over the South Sea, and Viti has become 

 a field of high interest, as the light-coloured Tonguese, 

 a genuine Polynesian people, have here met face to face 

 powerful representatives of the dark-coloured Papuan 

 race. There seems to have been an intercourse between 

 Fiji and Tonga from time immemorial, distinctly spoken 

 of in the story of the Vasu ki Lagi and the Princess 

 Vilivili-tabua, and other ancient Fijian legends, as, for 

 instance, that about the spread of the practice of tatoo- 

 ing. Independent of this legendary evidence, there are 

 other proofs of an early intercourse. The Tonga islands 

 not furnishing any large timber, it was necessary to go 

 to Fiji for materials for canoes. Fine mats and native 

 cloth, printed in choice patterns, were bartered away for 

 permission to cut timber and build canoes. The eastern 



* Mariner's ' Tonga,' vol. ii. pp. 64, 65. 



