108 A MISSION TO VITI. 
liverance. He immediately complied, arranged to take a small 
armed party and make a sudden descent upon Numulo at early 
dawn. This he did. The people of the town, panic struck, 
fled, and the chief was thus enabled to convey the wounded 
prisoners and some property to Namuka, where we had gone to 
await the result of the expedition. 
“Tt has been said that this chief was a party in the affair, 
because, at a subsequent period, some boxes, taken from 
Namuka, were seen in his house. They came into his posses- 
sion in this manner: some time after the Namuka outrage, 
Kuruduadua attacked and captured a town belonging to Tui 
Solia, the defeat causing the latter to sue for peace. Friendly 
intercourse being re-established, Kuruduadua subsequently ex- 
changed several pigs for boxes in Tui Solia’s possession, and 
forming part of the plunder of Namuka. It is quite false that 
Tui Solia was at the time of the outrage under the influence of 
Kuruduadua ; so far from that, they were enemies and at war. 
“‘ Kuruduadua has ever behaved kindly to the whites, and in 
this respect set a good example to other chiefs. Upon one 
occasion a vessel got ashore in the neighbourhood. He assem- 
bled his people, got her afloat, and made his subjects return 
the property they had taken,—this at a time when, in almost 
every other part of Fiji, the lives of the shipwrecked were taken 
and the vessel and cargo plundered. 
“T was present at Nukubalawu, when Mr. Williams, the 
American Consul, and Phillips, a Rewan chief, came to inquire 
into the Namuka matter. Mr. Dolittle said, that after buying 
the island of Namuka they were entitled to protection. Phillips, 
the chief, then emphatically denied that the island had been 
sold, but said that a gun, a kee of powder, and a whale’s tooth 
had been given as the ‘ yaqona’ for permission to reside on 
the island, and that he could not sell it, as there were others 
who were co-owners with himself. 
“ Joun Heexzs.” 
