EARLY WHITE SETTLERS. 407 
position in Polynesia who is not a polygamist, he de- 
manded a number of wives, amongst them some of the 
highest ladies of the realm. Thus far his native friends 
seem to have been willing to allow his carefully con- 
cealed plan to succeed. Every additional step in advance 
was rendered impossible; the natives were fully aware 
that if any of his sons whom a great chief, as Savage was 
considered to be, had by the daughters of powerful kings 
and leaders, should ever attain manhood, they would be 
in a position to exercise an unmitigated despotism, and 
set on foot a centralizing influence, which the centrifu- 
gal tendency of the Fijian mind has ever as strongly re- 
sisted as the Teutonic. According to Fijian polity, the 
sons of great queens, such as Savage had for his wives, 
would, in virtue of their right as “ Vasus,” or nephews, 
hold the territory and property of their uncles at their 
absolute disposal, which, combined with their position 
as sons of a great chief, would have given them an im- 
mense preponderance. It was therefore deemed politic 
to allow none of Savage’s children to be other than 
still-born; he might have wives of the highest rank, 
but there must be no offspring. On this point the na- 
tives seem to have been inflexible, though Savage seemed 
to have strained every nerve to frustrate their cruel de- 
termination. The stand which the natives made, became 
the rock on which the hopes of the white men to esta- 
blish their permanent sway in Fiji were wrecked. Savage 
died in March, 1814, near Vanua Levu, where he carried 
on a war with the natives in order to procure a cargo of 
sandalwood for an English trading vessel, the ‘ Hunter,’ 
of Calcutta. Together with portions of the crew, he was 
