192 LAKEMBA AND SAVU-SAVU. 
sented to him. He was attended by a white man, an Englishman by 
the name of Wilson, who lives with him, and is a partner of Hough- 
ton, the owner of the Currency Lass. Ngaraningiou was accused of 
having robbed, with the connivance of Wilson, the house of the 
latter, and possessed himself of all the property; but it appeared to 
me, on an investigation of the business, that it was a complication 
of roguery all round; I therefore left it for them to settle among them- 
selves. 
The officers at the observatory, whilst at dinner, were one day 
visited by her majesty the queen of Ambau, one of Tanoa’s hundred 
wives. She was not dressed differently from the rest of the females. 
The usual liki was worn; she had a trochus ring on her arm, and a 
spondylus hung from her neck, and her head was covered with a pro- 
digious mass of parti-coloured hair. Her majesty and retinue soon 
cleared the table of its contents; and it was quite fortunate that the 
officers had finished their dinner before she arrived. 
Mr. Eld procured from her majesty her bracelets and two baskets, 
in return for which he presented her with a small looking-glass and a 
few brass rings, with coloured glass in them, with which her majesty 
and the attendants were highly delighted. | 
The ladies of the seraglio were constant visiters, and seemed de- © 
termined to obtain all the presents from us they could possibly extract. 
The expense of gratifying them was trifling; but after seeing many of 
them they became tiresome, and were not a little annoying by leaving 
large grease-spots where they sat, from the profusion of oil and 
turmeric with which they were covered. The highest queen of Am- 
bau came last, and she took great pains to impress this on every one. 
She brought a large retinue with her, among whom was a young son 
of Tanoa. 
Among the natives who had been round the observatory, were some 
from the town of Lebouni, mountaineers, who had been living in the 
neighbourhood, and doing some little jobs for the men stationed there. 
This young son of Tanoa began throwing stones at the cocoa-nut 
trees, to insult these natives; and when they remonstrated, he threat- 
ened to stone them also. Some of these natives soon secured the 
youth, near the village of Vi Tonga, and had his head on a stone, and 
their clubs raised to knock his brains out, when he was rescued by 
some of the white men. The affair was finally settled by the queen 
and the chiefs of Levuka and Vi Tonga. 
On the breaking up of the observatory, when I was desirous of 
building the stone pile, the natives of Lebouni, or mountaineers, would 
not assist, alleging that the three who had been working for the 
