Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/223

Rh are visited by hurricanes, but they are apparently less violent than those of the "West Indies and come rarely.

Tonga is trying a constitutional experiment on its own account, Mr.Baker, an ex-Wesleyan missionary, has drawn up a constitution to which the venerable King George, who was over ninety years old at the time of my visit, but was as vigorous as most men of sixty, has given his approval. There is a cabinet of which the ex-missionary is the head, a parliament, and a constitutional sovereign. There ia also a regular judicial establishment. Great Britain has entered into treaty relations with Tonga, and has even accorded a limited jurisdiction over British subjects to Tongan courts. Englishmen in the South Seas are fond of laughing at the Tongan polity. But it is to the credit of the new state that its public expenditure is small, that it has been for years perfectly orderly, and that there are in the group probably five times as many miles of carriage-road as there are in our colony of Feejee. There are many Tongans still living who saw the first horse brought to their own particular island, and thought that it was a large kind of pig. There are hundreds of horses in the archipelago now, and most Tongans are fearless horsemen. They are also capital cricketers, which they owe to the good sense of that very able man, the Rev.Mr.Moulton, who is, or was till lately, at the head of the Wesleyan Mission. Mr.Moulton has founded an admirable college. The scholars receive an education equal to that given in the colonies. I was present at one of the public examinations, and among other surprises heard the first canto of the "Paradise Lost" recited in the native tongue. Most of the Tongans are Wesleyans, but there is also a Roman Catholic mission in the country, and a moderate number of the natives belong to that church.

All Pacific-Islanders, even many of the Melanesian cannibals, are distinguished by a remarkable refinement of external manners. The Polynesians excel all others; and, probably, no people in the world surpass the Tongans and Samoans in grace and dignity of deportment. The latter races are highly ceremonious, and great observers of etiquette. In Tonga at a kava party, where an infusion of the root of the Piper methysticum is drunk, the order of precedence is as strictly observed as it would be at a European state banquet. In Samoa the kava root is chewed by young ladies before being placed in the bowl. In Tonga it is invariably pounded on a lap-stone. Connoisseurs assert that the beverage is never so good as when the root has been chewed. I never quite got over my repugnance to that method of preparing it, and only drank of it sparingly and to avoid giving offense when out of Tonga. Even in Tonga I felt little inclination to indulge in it freely, possibly because I retain my youthful dislike to rhubarb and magnesia, the flavor of which that of kava closely resembles.

To one who has cruised much among the small islands of the Pacific, and who has grown familiar with the monotonous landscapes of