Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/538

534 cross his shadow, or the shadow of his house. No Fijian revenge was assuaged until the enemy was eaten; indeed, so natural does this seem to them that a high chief asked me in a casual manner whether we of the United States had eaten the Spaniards whom we had killed during the war of 1898.

A detailed account of the ceaseless native wars is given by the Reverend Joseph Waterhouse in "The King and People of Fiji" and by Williams in his fascinating "Fiji and the Fijians" and they are records of treachery, murder, cruelty and vice, unrelieved by the narration of a single fight for principle or an act of mercy or chivalry. In all history there have been few instances of higher courage, fidelity and devotion to their creed than those furnished by the lives of the early missionaries to these islands, and nowhere in the Pacific has conversion accomplished more good and in the process done less harm than in Fiji.

Tradition states that in former times the island of Mbengha was dominant in native affairs, and its chiefs still style themselves "Qalicuva-ki-lagi," "subject only to heaven"; finally, however, the chief of Rewa conquered Mbengha and slaughtered nearly all its inhabitants, and then, in 1800, the village of Verata on Viti Levu became dominant in Fijian affairs. At this time, Mbanuvi, who had succeeded his father Nailatikau, was the head chief of the town of Mbau, but he soon thereafter died and was succeeded by his son, Na Ulivou (The Hot Stone).

Mbau is a little island, not a mile in width, which lies off the southeastern corner of the great island of Viti Levu, of which indeed it is a mere outlyer, being connected with the mainland at low tide by a natural causeway. Yet this insignificant islet of a single hill, surrounded by shallow mangrove flats and reefs, was destined to conquer nearly half of Fiji.

In the south seas that chief who first obtained the aid of white men in the use of firearms gained a rapid and terrible ascendency. It so happened that in 1809 the armed brig Eliza was wrecked on the coral reef off Nairai, which was a dependency of Mbau, and the natives plundered the vessel. A Swede, named Charley Savage, and three companions made their way to the shore, and Savage was the. first white man to come to Mbau. Here it is not improbable that he would have been killed and eaten in accordance with Fijian custom respecting the shipwrecked, had he not bethought himself of a musket which had been left on board, and requested the natives to search for it. They found it, built into the palisade surrounding a native village and soon Na Ulivou saw in Savage and his musket the means to "world-wide" conquests.