CAPTAIN CROKER’S DEFEAT. 239 
Tonguese. As the case stood, the British Government 
did not deem it just to ask for any reparation, and simply 
demanded the guns left behind. However, the Ton- 
guese were not slow in taking advantage of this turn of 
affairs, and quite ignoring that it was their own govern- 
ment as much as the foreigners who were repulsed, they 
have magnified the catastrophe into a grand victory, and 
become so arrogant, that Captain Cook, could he pay 
them another visit, would never dream of confirming the 
name of the “Friendly Islanders” which he gave them, 
in total ignorance of the fact, related by Mariner, that 
they had laid two plots to take his life, not carried out 
because no agreement could be arrived at respecting the 
details of the projected murder.* 
Ethnologists have long been watching the spread of 
the Tonguese over the South Sea, and Viti has become 
a field of high interest, as the light-coloured Tonguese, 
a genuine Polynesian people, have here met face to face 
powerful representatives of the dark-coloured Papuan 
race. There seems to have been an intercourse between 
Fiji and Tonga from time immemorial, distinctly spoken 
of in the story of the Vasu ki Lagi and the Princess 
Vilivili-tabua, and other ancient Fijian legends, as, for 
instance, that about the spread of the practice of tatoo- 
ing. Independent of this legendary evidence, there are 
other proofs of an early intercourse. The Tonga islands 
not furnishing any large timber, it was necessary to go 
to Fiji for materials for canoes. Fine mats and native 
cloth, printed in choice patterns, were bartered away for 
permission to cut timber and build canoes. The eastern 
* Mariner’s ‘Tonga,’ vol. ii. pp. 64, 65. 
