FIJI.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 149, 25 November 1874, Page 3

FIJI.

[Written especially for the Globe.] IV. During the session of Parliament the native legislative body, known as the Privy Council, held its sittings under the presidency of Maafu. This consisted of the twelve governors of provinces, with their respective lieutenants. The King himself was never present at these debates, but his brother,’ Ilatu Savenatha, usually provided him, after each sitting, with a full account of the proceedings. The Privy Council held an anomalous sort of position. All Bills passed by the white House were submitted to them for approval, yet they were not allowed to initiate any measures, but merely to make suggestions for the European House to discuss, and, if they thought fit, put into form. The Ministers also were allowed to take part in these debates, but as none of them, excepting Mr Swanstou, were proficient Fijian . scholars, all explanations of what had passed in the other house usually fell to the lot i of Mr .Wilkinson, Chief Interpreter to the Government, and now continued in that capacity in the colonial service. To the old King the cares of State were exceedingly wearisome. Accustomed in former days to wander as he liked, up and down the , beach, willing to ‘ ‘ take a drink ” occasionally with acquaintances (when a newcomer invited him, he would usually, and not seldom to their discomfiture, call for champagne), he now, found himself condemned to a species of mock state and ceremony, which galled him greatly, and made him eschew Levuka as much as possible. He was never so happy as when at home at Bau, where he could occupy himself in tilling and clearing the ground with his own hands, without any guards marching before him with fixed bayonet, looking, as an Irishman pathetically remarked, “as if the ould gintleman was tuk in charge for staling. ” Much, too, was his disgust at the obligation of holding levees and giving balls, to which he was unceremoniously lugged off, wakened at an hour when he wanted to go to sleep; indeed, it usually happened that he became refractory as the hour approached, and would decline violently to stir for anybody; so that a special embassy, usually Mr Wilkinson, would have to be sent to fetch him, willywilly, to the “gay and festive scene,” where he would sit for a length of time, hearkening to the tinkling of a solitary piano, with the air of one unspeakably bored. Often, too, would the great soul of Mr Woods be filled with anguish, on encountering his gracious Sovereign sauntering along the beach, amicably holding by the hand some disreputable-looking white half-caste or Samoan, the latter not unfrequently halfseas over. The humorous, half-guilty look which the old man would assume on these meetings, was irresistibly diverting ; and he would drop the hand of his seedy companion without a word, conscious of the wrath of his Prime Minister, Mr. Woods, being totally ignorant of the Fijian language, could only explode in terms unintelligible to his Royal auditor, who would watch his indignant features, and hear him storming away, with a comical twinkle in his eye. In person King Thakombau is tall, a trifle over six feet, and of remarkably upright and dignified carriage. Many of the leading chiefs of Fiji are men of distinguished ap?earance, with unmistakable marks of _ high reeding about them ; but the superiority in look and mien of the Ynnivalu (the title by

which he is more generally known), is not less striking than that of Pius IX. is to those who see him surrounded by his cardinals on the occasion of some high feast of the Church. Throughout his life the old chief has given evidence of the possession of no mean intellectual abilities. The Lyttelton Times recently devoted an article to Fiji, worthy in authoritativeness of the late Right Honorable Nicholas Rigby, and full of the most preposterous absurdities. Not one of its inferences or assumptions, from beginning to end, are correct. Maafu, suzerain of Fiji ! Thakombau the soft and silly ! ! We cannot well express how wildly ludicrous this must appear to anyone who has the slightest acquaintance with the facts of the case. But to style a foreigner whose sovereignty is limited to the Windward Islands of this archipelago, with a population of 7000, and whose importance of late years is solely owing to his wealth and possession of some hundreds of better drilled soldiers, suzerane of Fiji, with its 150,0 t 0 inhabitants, and to bestow the epithets of soft and silly on one whose pre-eminent characteristics are hardness and astuteness, were indeed two marvellously bad shots. It is true that Maafu had occasionally much influence over another great chief, Tui Thakau, and that by an advert use of the jealousies and dissensions so long prevalent among Fijians that crafty Tongan was in former times a formidable rival to the Vunivalu. By taxing the unhappy natives of Lau nearly twice as high a« the law allowed, Maafu had accumulated wealth enough to contrive that plot which the Sydney papers have recently told us of, and which, in the very improbable event of the British authorities looking idly on, might, had the cession not been negotiated, have upset the throne of Thakombau, and established Maafu, temporarily, in supreme power, It would be interesting to know what in those recent official documents” which the Lyttelton Times has been studying, could have led it to make such a curious series of blunders. Fiji is but a small place, and has not attracted very much attention from the world ; but no subject is so insignificant as not to be worth knowing well, if knowing at all, and a newspaper writer, who professes to instruct the public, should surely be careful of the correctness of the facts he bases his arguments upon. Suzerain, by the way, exactly expresses the position held by Thakombau. independently of therecent establishment of a constitutional kingdom. The supremacy of Bau, in Fiji, was thoroughly feudal. There is nothing in any of the recent official documents to lead anyone to suppose that the hill tribes are not parties to the cession. The writerin the Lyttelton Times , beginning by announcing a natural ignorance of the principal chiefs who signed soon afterwards, declares that the chiefs of certain districts are probably not parties to the cession. How, then, has this discovery been made ? But the hill tribes have been subdued, and the fact recorded in the London Times so long ago as last June, and as prisoners of war, with their territories finally annexed to the Christianized kingdom, it is not likely that their chiefs would have been invited to discuss the matter with the company of those who had just reduced them to unconditional submission. The chances of future war are about equal to those of the Maories in the North Island coming down to attack Canterbury. The character of the Fijians is essentially different from that attributed to them.