At Somo Somo 
It is interesting to note the way in which those early mis- 
sionaries to Fiji were led to advance upon one stronghold 
of savagery after another, until the banner of the cross was 
triumphantly floating over the whole group of islands. The 
first missionaries were not long in discovering that while the 
island of Lakemba was the logical place at which missionary 
endeavor should be begun, because of the influence of Chris- 
tian Tongans there, it was of comparatively little importance 
as a center from which the work should spread. The place 
of first importance and of most dreadful savagery was the 
small island of Mbau off the coast of Viti Levu, the largest 
island of the group. Here it was that the dreadful king 
of all Fiji, Thakombau, ruled with absolute power and un- 
bridled cruelty. 
To this locality the missionaries advanced first from La- 
kemba, and scarcely had the work been established there 
than Mr. Hunt and Mr. Lyth, a new arrival in the field, 
were sent to Somo Somo, a kingly town on the island of 
Taviuni more than a hundred miles distant from Mbau. In 
this town dwelt Tuithakau, king of Somo Somo. This man 
was a desperate character, feared far and near. 
In Somo Somo the missionaries “found all the horrors of 
Fijian life in an unmixed and unmodified form,” and “even 
in the other islands it was spoken of as a place of dreadful 
cannibalism.’ For reasons of his own the king had pleaded 
urgently for missionaries, but on their arrival they found 
themselves unwelcome. From the first they were treated 
with the utmost indifference, but very soon this was to change 
to conditions of suffering never fully related by those who 
endured them, but which became more and more the prac- 
36 
