24 A MISSION TO VITI. 
known before the visits of white men, term “the white 
man’s disease.” However, none of us were attacked by 
it during our stay, though we were constantly exposed 
to sun and rain, and ultimately out of biscuit, which 
served us for bread. The natives also believe dysentery 
catching, and hence will carefully avoid contact with a 
person suffering from that infliction. They will never 
sit down on a seat or lie down on a mat one of these 
invalids has occupied, and moreover often compel the 
poor sufferers to retire into the depths of the forests until 
they shall have recovered. Curiously enough, those Poly- 
nesian islands free from dysentery, as, for instance, the 
Samoan group, are visited by fever, and those free from 
fever, as Fiji and others, are liable to dysentery.* 
Chief Golea was absent on a fighting expedition to 
Vanua Levu, but his wife Eleanor was at home, and 
paid us a visit on our arrival, accompanied by two young 
women, also wives of Golea. Eleanor is the niece of 
Cakobau (= Thakombau), King of Fiji and Chief of 
Bau. She is much higher in rank than her husband, 
who is only a younger son of a king under the suze- 
yainty of her uncle. Bau has always understood how to 
* The early. stages of dysentery are easily checked by eating basinfuls 
of the native arrowroot (Zacca pinnatifida and sativa) so plentiful about 
Fiji, especially on the sandy beaches, and by avoiding bananas and plan- 
tains, whieh I quite agree with Rumphius and Forster in considering as 
helping to bring on this disease. The arrowroot should be made so thick 
that a spoon will stand upright in it, and taken with a little nutmeg, and 
if possible white sugar. I found no arrowroot to be so effective as that of 
the South Sea, and when, after my return from Fiji, I had a serious 
attack of dysentery in London, and was unable to get my favourite remedy, 
no shop having it genuine, I had an illness of several months, which nearly 
proved fatal. 
