EARLY WHITE SETTLERS. 409 
in battle should be baked and eaten, but the Fijian never 
displayed that determined hostility towards foreigners 
which is common to all natives in their barbarous state, 
and found vent even in civilized countries in a system 
of protective laws, which modern science still struggles 
to clear away. In some of the smaller islands of Poly- 
nesia, where food is scarce, and famine a common occur- 
rence, every addition to the population is regarded 
yather as a calamity than as a matter of rejoicing, and 
the shores are jealously guarded against an infliction by 
which the whole community must suffer. It is therefore 
emphatically islands of this nature which our tract 
charts still mark as the most dangerous for landing. 
Viti, on the contrary, is so fertile, that food, as a general 
rule, is abundant at all seasons; and its inhabitants 
being well fed, and taking plenty of out-door exercise, 
do not seriously differ from other nations who enjoy the 
same advantages. A man who has every day a good 
dinner is a differently-disposed being from him who has 
to go very often without his daily meals; and the same 
process continued for generations must produce very 
opposite results in their respective characters. If any 
of the early white settlers met with a violent end, it 
was generally the foreigner, not the native, that fur- 
nished its primary cause. Taking undue advantage of 
the easy terms on which they lived with the chiefs, the 
white men often applied insulting epithets or used foul 
language to their hosts and protectors, provoking that 
contempt which familiarity, with a certain class of minds, 
invariably engenders. It was generally language of 
this kind, or demands which the chiefs deemed it below 
