KANDAVU. 185 



a musket, and his paper-cloth for calico, civilisation can offer 

 him nothing farther which would compensate him [for the 

 labour required as an equivalent. The fancy or caprice of 

 the head chiefs may give a spasmodic extension to trade,^ as 

 the purchase of a small vessel, or a hundred muskets, requires 

 a large quantity of oil in payment ; but wherever the authority 

 or influence of the chief has dechned, the trade of that district 

 has likewise fallen away. In many places the natives, after 

 having adopted some of the habits of civilisation, have volun- 

 tarily abandoned them, and returned to their national customs. 

 Befoie the arrival of Eui'opean speculators, the natives 

 never considered unoccupied land woi th claiming. Wherever 

 a man planted his yams, tobacco, or taro, that land was his 

 so long as it was occupied by his crops; but, as soon as these 

 were dug up, it was free for any one to make use of it for the 

 same purpose. About the time ^ that the sovereignty of these 

 islands was first proffered to Great Britain, many speculators 

 from the Australian colonies purchased land in Fiji, seldom 

 caring to enquire into the nature of the titles they obtained. 

 A common practice was to draw up the deeds in English, to 

 have them translated to the native chief by some one pro- 

 fessing to understand the Fijian language, but generally as 

 ignorant of it as the principal who employed him, and the 



' But, according to Captain Erskine, ' the Fijians have a decided turn 

 for commerce, a constant internal trade being carried on in their own 

 canoes, which we constantly saw either arriving or sailing, heavily- 

 laden with bales of cloth, rolls of cordage and quantities of earthen 

 pots.' Seemann, p. 269. This is confirmed by what I myself saw on 

 the Rewa river. 



« In 1862. 



