408 A MISSION TO VITI. 



put to death and eaten, whilst his hones were converted 

 into sail-needles, and distributed amongst the people as 

 a remembrance of victory.* 



However, it was not only from shipwrecked mariners 

 and runaway seamen, that the early white population 

 was recruited. In 1804, a number of convicts escaped 

 from New South Wales, in all about twenty-six, who took 

 up their abode in Fiji, who however died out rather ra- 

 pidly, either in the intertribal wars, in desperate fights 

 amongst themselves, or in consequence of the irregular 

 life led in a tropical climate. In 1824 only two, in 1840 

 only one of them, an Irishman of the name of Connor, 

 survived, who occupied the same position towards -the 

 king of Rewa as Savage had done towards that of Bau. 

 Connor does not seem to have been of such a deep, plod- 

 ding nature as his comrade, or to have troubled his head 

 much about the affairs of the future. Even when, after 

 the loss of his royal patron, misfortune overtook him, 

 he appears to have preserved all the humour for which 

 his nation is proverbial, and was fully aware that the 

 natives would never let him starve as long as he could 

 while away an idle hour by the narration of a telling 

 tale upon which he depended towards the close of his 

 clays, quite as much, or perhaps even more, for a liveli- 

 hood, than upon the rearing of fowls and pigs. 



On the whole, the natives seem to have treated the 

 first white men that came to live among them with hos- 

 pitality and kindness. This is exactly what, from the 

 nature of their country, might have been predicted. A 

 sanguinary custom may have demanded that bodies slain 



. * Dillon, ' Discovery of the Fate of De la Perouse.' 



