10 A MISSION TO VITI. 
wild spray to great height, speaking in hollow roars, and 
showing a variety of tints which the pen must ever de- 
spair of depicting. So far from becoming absorbed in 
thought at such a sight, as at the monotonous grandeur 
of Niagara, one longs to stir, to push on, to become ac- 
tive like the never-resting element. 
Though we got a good wetting, and might have been 
swamped had it not been for the skilful steering of our 
mate, we landed in safety. As soon as the boat was 
near shore fifty or sixty natives plunged into the water 
to carry us on their backs to the beach, when we shook 
hands with Mr. Fletcher, one of the Wesleyan mission- 
aries stationed here. ‘The natives were nearly all fine 
strapping fellows, some of them quite six feet high, and 
all Fijian, with the exception of a couple of Tonguese 
or Tonga men, inhabitants of a neighbouring group of 
islands. One of the latter was Charles, the son of the 
Tonguese chief, Maafu, a mighty man in Polynesian 
annals, and the source of much trouble, both in Tonga 
and Fiji. When most people read of “natives” they 
imagine them to be types of unsightliness, if not down- 
right ugliness; of many races, not Caucasian, that may 
in some measure be true, but whoever goes to the 
South Seas will have reason to change his opinion en- 
tirely. Some of these islanders are really very hand- 
some, both in figure and face; and all entitled to pro- 
nounce an opinion on the subject have agreed that there 
are few spots in the world where one sees so many hand- 
some people together as in Tonga. I have never been 
in Circassia, and can therefore not speak from personal 
experience ; but, if what one reads be correct, Tonga may 
