THE KING OF CAKAUDROVE. 21 
church, nor respectable strangers’ house. The King of 
Cakaudrove, whose official title is Tui Cakau, had re- 
moved his court from Somosomo to Wairiki, and left 
the government of Somosomo to his younger brother, 
Golea. 
Tui Cakau is a miserable-looking man, without any 
chief-like attributes. He is below the middle height, 
—in the eyes of Fijians, who entertain a great con- 
tempt for little men, a serious blemish; suffering, be- 
sides, from elephantiasis and cutaneous diseases, his 
whole appearance is not prepossessing. Elephanti- 
asis, incidentally mentioned, is one of the diseases 
to which Fijians are subject, and a fearful sight it 
certainly is, when the feet assume dimensions and 
shapes that make them more like those of elephants 
than human beings. The disease, however, is gene- 
rally speaking, very local, and seems to be particu- 
larly prevalent in low, damp valleys. I remember going 
up a small river opposite the island of Naigani, where 
almost every inhabitant was afflicted by this calamity. 
Again, I have seen large bodies of natives, without no- 
ticing a single case. I have not heard of any white 
settlers having suffered from elephantiasis in Fiji, though 
it is well known that the whites in Samoa, Tahiti, or 
other Polynesian groups, are not free from this visita- 
tion. No one knowing the cause of the disease, there 
are of course many hypotheses respecting it. Every 
white man has his own, and one pretty generally dif- 
fused is, that it is brought on by drinking cocoa-nut milk. 
Yet there was a European who, acting on this belief, 
and scrupulously avoiding the tempting beverage, never- 
