NATIVES NOT WITHOUT NATURAL AFFECTION. 193 
not a bosom friend, to whom he is bound by the 
strongest ties of affection. The birth of a child is a 
perfect jubilee, and it is truly touching to see how 
parents are attached to their children, and children to 
their parents. Under such circumstances, the greatness 
of the sacrifice that children are sometimes called upon 
by their infirm old parents to terminate their suffer- 
ings by putting them to death, becomes evident. It is a 
cruel slander of the native character to put any other 
construction on this singular, though mistaken proof of 
filial affection. In a country where food is abundant, 
clothing scarcely required, and property as a general 
rule in the possession of the whole family rather than 
that of its head, children need not wait “for dead men’s 
shoes,” in order to become well off, and we may, there- 
fore, quite believe them when declaring that it is with 
aching heart and at the repeated entreaties of their pa- 
rents that they are induced to commit what we justly 
consider a crime. The two old men present at our 
meeting at Namosi, were living proofs that children 
however, even in these wild parts, will not always be 
induced to lay hands on their parents. 
I told a native who sometimes called at Danford’s 
house, and seemed to be a most respectable man, a belief 
had been spread in our country that the Fijians were 
almost without natural affection. He replied, there 
might be some amongst his countrymen, as well as the 
whites, who had not much feeling; but those who de- 
nied the Fijians natural affection, either understood them 
very little, or else represented them in such black co- 
lours for some purposes of their own. ‘‘ When leaving 
) 
