256 A MISSION TO VITI. 
discourteously towards the whites. When Colonel Smythe 
visited Lakeba, he found its chief so surrounded by 
Tonguese, and so much under their immediate influence, 
that he almost repudiated the cession, and he could 
scarcely prevent their almost insulting him, by crowd- 
ing the house in which the official meeting took place 
to an inconvenient degree. It is impossible to deter- 
mine whether the Tonguese were emboldened by the 
impunity with which they had been able to show them- 
selves so troublesome on this and other occasions, or 
whether the nature of the intercourse of Colonel Smythe 
with the Fijian chiefs was by them regarded as proof 
that the British Government was dissatisfied with Mr. 
Pritchard’s checkmating them; but in October, 1860, 
they loudly proclaimed their intention to interfere once 
more in the affairs of Macuata. Chief Ritova was to 
be captured and sent as prisoner to Tonga, whilst the 
people living on his patrimonial estates of the islands 
of Kia and Cikobia, were to be carried over in a body to 
Udu, and placed under the control of Chief Bonaveidogo, 
whom Maafu had rewarded with the government of 
eastern Macuata. 
Ritova, since his loss of power, had taken up a tem- 
porary residence at Matei, in the island of Taviuni, where 
a party of adherents gradually gathered around him. 
He had repeatedly laid his case before Mr. Pritchard, 
showing how unjustly he had been deprived of his patri- 
monial estates, and asking permission to accept the offer 
of friendly brother-chiefs, to reinstate him by force of 
arms. Mr. Pritchard thought an appeal to arms un- 
necessary, and told Ritova that his case should be taken 
