EAHLY WHITE SETTLEHS. 409 



in battle should be baked and eaten, but the Fijian never 

 displayed that determined hostility towards foreigners 

 which is common to all natives in their barbarous state, 

 and found vent even in civilized countries in a system 

 of protective laws, which modern science still struggles 

 to clear away. In some of the Smaller islands of Poly- 

 nesia, where food is scarce, and famine a common occur- 

 rence, every addition to the population is regarded 

 rather as a calamity than as a matter of rejoicing, and 

 the shores are jealously guarded against an infliction by 

 which the whole community must suffer. It is therefore 

 emphatically islands of this nature which our tract 

 charts still mark as the most dangerous for landing. 

 Viti, on the contrary, is so fertile, that food, as a general 

 rule, is abundant at all seasons; and its inhabitants 

 being well fed, and taking plenty of out-door exercise, 

 do not seriously differ from other nations who enjoy the 

 same advantages. A man who has every day a good 

 dinner is a differently-disposed being from him who has 

 to go very often without his daily meals ; and the same 

 process continued for generations must produce very 

 opposite results in their respective characters. If any 

 of the early white settlers met with a violent end, it 

 was generally the foreigner, not the native, that fur- 

 nished its primary cause. Taking undue advantage of 

 the easy terms on which they lived with the chiefs, the 

 white men often applied insulting epithets or used foul 

 language to their hosts and protectors, provoking that 

 contempt which familiarity, with a certain class of minds, 

 invariably engenders. It was generally language of 

 this kind, or demands which the chiefs deemed it below 



