Page:Williams and Calvert, Fiji and the Fijians, New York, 1860.djvu/127

THE PEOPLE. 101 Early visitors to savage lands tell of the willingness with which the people gave up their goods for the gratification of the strangers ; but they expected a similar generosity in return, and simply supposed that they would be allowed to claim whatever they might fancy. On find- ing, however, that this was not the case, they helped themselves. Whatever excuse is in this, ought to be granted to the islanders, whose practical lessons from the whites on the distinction of meum and tuum have been cruelly and bloodily enforced. As to the power of envy in the Fijian nature — an emotion so fruit- ful of trouble to its subject, and injustice and ill-will towards his neigh- bours — I would merely give an illustrative and striking confession of Eatu Lewe-ni-lovo, with whom I was conversing on this topic near the seashore. I inquired, " When will you Chiefs cease from your envious plottings ? " "I cannot tell," he replied ; " envy will not let us heatheji rest. We see our likenesses in the ocean before us ; it ebbs and then it flows again, and rests not : we are like to it ; we know no peace." Ingratitude deeply and disgracefully stains the character of the Fijian heathen. A book might be filled with instances. Four years' experience among the natives of Somosomo taught me that if one of them, when sick, obtained medicine from me, he thought me bound to give him food ; the reception of food he considered as giving him a claim on me for covering ; and, that being secured, he deemed himself at liberty to beg anything he wanted, and abuse me if I refused his unreasonable request. I treated the old King of Somosomo, Tuithakau If. for a severe attack of sickness, which his native doctors failed to re- lieve. During the two or three days on which he was under my care, he had at his own request tea and arrow-root from our house ; and, when recovered, his daughter waited on me to say that he conld now eat well, and had sent her to beg an iron pot in which to cook his food t One more example. The master of a biche-de-mar vessel took a native under his care whose hand was shattered by the bursting of a musket. The armourer amputated the injured part, and the man was provided for on board the vessel for nearly two months. On his recovery, he told the master that he was going on shore, but that a musket must be given him, in consideration of his having been on board so long. Such a request was, of course, refused ; and, after having been reminded of the kindness shown him, to which he probably owed his life, the un- reasonable fellow was sent ashore, where he showed his sense of obliga- tion by burning down one of the Captain's drying-houses, containing fish to the value of three hundred dollars. Intense and vengeful malignity strongly marks the Fijian character.