THE * CROWN JEWELS.” 187 
that their physical development is much superior to that 
of the lower classes, that they are not only taller and 
better made, but generally possessed of much handsomer 
features, we need not wonder that some travellers have 
thought them a different race from the rest of their 
countrymen ; and that in their own land they have been 
able to resist all democratic levelling, and remain to this 
day as genuine an aristocracy as ever existed, because in 
every respect a superior class. 
The widow of the late governor of Namosi asked me 
to see the “crown jewels” in her charge. They were 
kept in a wooden box, and carefully wrapt up in soft 
pieces of native cloth and cocoa-nut fibre. ‘There were 
among them a large whale’s tooth, highly polished, 
and quite brown from repeated greasing, a necklace 
made of pieces of whales’ teeth, the first that ever came 
to these mountains, and a fine cannibal fork in the shape 
of a club, and bearing the ominous name of “strike 
twice,” 7.¢. first the man and then his dead body. The 
woman told me a lot of other crown property had been 
burnt when, some years ago, the Americans destroyed 
Navua ; among it, she assured me, was a short club which 
would kill a man on the spot, and was never known to 
miss when thrown by the hand of the supreme chief. 
Whales’ teeth are with the Fijians what diamonds are 
with us, and in former days there was no favour a chief 
would refuse if a number of these were offered. The 
European and American traders soon found this out, 
and did not fail to bring quantities whenever they 
touched at these islands. The consequence has been 
that on the coast and amongst the christianized popu- 
