BAU. 77 
visit to Chief Kuruduadua. There being rather a strong 
south-easterly breeze, we arrived two hours after dark 
at Bau, thoroughly wet from salt water, and heartily 
glad to take shelter under the hospitable roof of Mr. Collis, 
a gentleman connected with the mission. Until 1854, 
Bau, which is the name of the metropolis, as well as 
the ruling state, was opposed to the missionaries, and 
the ovens in which the bodies of human victims were 
baked scarcely ever got cold. Since then, however, a 
great change has taken place. The King and all his 
court have embraced Christianity; of the heathen tem- 
ples, which, by their pyramidal form, gave such a pecu- 
liar local colouring to old pictures of the place, only 
the foundations remain ; the sacred groves in the neigh- 
bourhood are cut down; and in the great square where 
formerly cannibal feasts took place, a large church has 
been erected. Not without emotion did I land on this 
blood-stained soil, where probably greater iniquities 
were perpetrated than ever disgraced any other spot on 
earth. It was about eight o’clock in the evening; and 
instead of the wild noise that greeted former visitors, 
family prayer was heard from nearly every house. To 
bring about such a change has indeed required no slight 
efforts; and many valuable lives had to be sacrificed,—for 
although no missionary in Fiji has ever met with a vio- 
lent death, yet the list of those who died in the midst of 
their labours is proportionally very great. The Wes- 
leyans, to whose disinterestedness the conversion of these 
degraded beings is due, have, as a society, expended 
£75,000 on this object; and if the private donations 
of friends to individual missionaries and their families 
