Page:Williams and Calvert, Fiji and the Fijians, New York, 1860.djvu/43

 ORIGIN AND POLITY. ^3 that he might " taste how sweet his accomplice was, and eat of the fruit of his doings." This is a fair sample of a Fijian public execution. Those who are doomed to jdie are never, so far as I know, bound in any way. A Fijian is implicitly submissive to the will of his Chief. The executioner states his errand ; to which the victim replies, " Whatever the King says, must be done." Injured persons often take the law into their own hands ; an arrange- ment in which the authorized powers gladly concur. In such cases justice yields to passion, and the most unlicensed cruelty follows. For a trifling offence a man has been tied to a log, so that he could not move a limb, and then placed in the sun, with his face fully exposed to its fierce heat for several hours. One who had removed an article which he believed to be his own, was cruelly pelted with large stones. In another case, a man threw at a duck, supposing it to be wild : it proved, however, to be tame, and the property of a petty Chief, who regarded the act as done to himself. A messenger was accordingly sent to the Chief of the offender to demand an explanation, which was forthwith given, together with the fingers of four persons, to appease the angry Chieftain. He, however, not being yet satisfied, caused the delinquent to be shut up in a house with the lame duck, informing him that his life depended upon that of the injured bird. If he restored the use of the limb, he was to live ; but to die if the duck died. Some offences are punished by stripping the house of the culprit : in slight cases, much humour is displayed by the spoilers. The sang froid of the sufferer is an enigma to the Englishman. The virtue of vicarious suffering is recognised, and by its means the ends of justice are often frustrated. On the island of Nayau the following tragedy took place. A warrior left his charged musket so carelessly that it went off, killing two persons, and wounding two more ; where- upon the man fled, and hid himself in the bush. His case was adjudged worthy of death by the Chiefs of the tribe ; but he was absent, and, moreover, a very serviceable individual. Hence it was thought best, in point of expedition as well as economy, to exact the penalty from the offender's aged father, who was accordingly seized and strangled. Still later, a white man was killed on the island of Nukulau. The commander of the U. S. ship " Falmouth " inquired into the case, and sentence of death was passed by him on an accused native, who, when he understood his position, proposed that the Americans should hang his father in his stead. Persons liable to punishment oflen escape by the aid of a soro^ or