34 A MISSION TO VITI. 
Fijian customs. Were the case tried before any com- 
petent tribunal, no doubt it would be given in favour of 
the eldest son,—a fine manly fellow, who would well de- 
serve the honour he was to be deprived of. 
Golea asked for grog,—which the natives term “ Ya- 
gona ni papalagi,” or foreign Kava,—but was told that 
there was none in the house. He then begged to be 
supplied with a cup of tea, which was cheerfully given. 
Some of the Fijians are gradually acquiring a taste for 
intoxicating drinks, as most other Polynesians have done, 
and there is not a more painful task than to be obliged 
to refuse supplying them. However, I do not think 
that the dark-coloured races of Polynesia, including 
amongst others the Fijians and New Caledonians, have 
that intense longing for spirits characteristic of the 
Hawaiians, Samoans, Tonguese, and other light-coloured 
races, who are great slaves to it, notwithstanding all 
that is done to check a habit which helps so mate- 
rially to decimate them. Yet, whether this difference 
is merely owing to the fact that the former have not 
had such unrestricted intercourse with the whites as 
the latter, or whether sobriety is to them a virtue as 
easy to exercise as it is to the Spaniards and Italians in 
comparison to the Teutonic nations, the future alone 
will show. The lower class of whites are setting them a 
bad example, and one has often reason to blush for his 
own race. Whilst I was in the islands the first grog- 
shops were opened at Levuka, and several others have 
since been established in Bau, and other parts of the 
group. What has always surprised me is, that con- 
sidering the Fijian to be a tropical climate, most of 
