52 A MISSION TO VITI. 
bered that Fijian cotton is not an annual, as it is in the 
United States, and all other countries, when killed by 
frost or too low a temperature, and that the plants will 
continue to yield for several years without requiring any 
other attention than keeping them free from weedy 
creepers and pruning them periodically, the encourage- 
ment held out to cultivators will be pronounced very 
great. 
Until the excellence of Fijian cotton had been ac- 
knowledged at Manchester, and the mercantile value of 
the different sorts been ascertained to be 7d. to 7T#d., 
8d., 9d., 11d., and even 12d. to 123d. per pound respec- 
tively, no attempt had been made to cultivate the plant. 
It was almost entirely left to itself, and perhaps only 
here and there disseminated by the natives, in order to 
furnish materials for wicks. But when in November, 
1859, Mr. Pritchard returned from England to Fiji, with 
the valuation printed in the Manchester ‘ Cotton Supply 
Reporter,’ for March, 1859, he induced the most influen- 
tial chiefs to give orders for planting it; and the Wes- 
leyan missionaries, without any exception, zealously 
aided in these endeavours by recommending the culti- 
vation, both personally and through the agency of their 
native teachers. Thus, cotton has been thickly spread 
over all the Christianized districts, and imparts to them 
a characteristic feature, occasionally very striking in 
places having a mixed religious population. In Navua, 
for instance, that part of the town inhabited by Chris- 
tians is full of cotton, whilst that inhabited by the 
heathens destitute of it. 
To guard against misconceptions, it must be stated that 
