FIJI.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 227, 2 March 1875, Page 4

FIJI.

The Auckland correspondent of the Otago Daily limes furnishes the following incident in the recent history of Fiji:— One of the most important events to record is, perhaps, the success of Mr Walter Carew, a gentleman who also left Otago for Fiji some six years ago, in bringing to the coast the whole of the mountain chiefs to make submission to the new Government. Mr Carew was the secretary to Cakobau's Government for the Upper Rewa district. Speaking the language, and in the confidence of some of the principal chiefs of the interior, he was deputed by the present Government to bring about their submission if possible. They are cannibal? and heathens, and have for centuries been at war with each other, and with the tribes on the coast, and the lower Eewa especially. Inhabiting the high mountains of Viti Levu, they were invincible in their strongholds, and the terror of their lowland neighbours. They are the men who ate the Rev Mr Baker and his native teachers when trying to travel through their hills on an exploring expedition in 18G6. They killed poor Burns and his family and laborers, and Spiers and Mackintosh on the Ba river recently, and are not by any means a sweet lot to know. Mr Carew, however, went among them, and by persuasion and personal influence succeeded in getting them to submit to the new Government. He brought them, numbering, with their head men, over 200, to the Lower Rewa, which many of them must have seen for the first time, and dared not have visited there without the confidence in the safeguard offered them. There they were met by his Honor the Administrator, the Colonial Secretary, the Colonial Treasurer, and a small host of minor officials who had come from Levuka for the purpose. Cakobau's son Abel and his foster brother Savanaea were with the Government party. Both had been defeated by these mountain chiefs when they went up to avenge Baker's death seven years ago. Captain Chapman, of the Dido, was also present, and the interview turned chiefly on two points. What were the chiefs to do with their numerous wives if they embraced Christianity ? and what benefit were they to have from the expenditure of their taxes? Mr Layard told them as to the first they would have no difficulty. He did not tell them, but they must have well-known, how Cakobau and others before them have overcome it, by marrying off their surplus wives to young chiefs —a course these hill chiefs would be sure to follow. As to taxes, the expenditure would be strictly "localised," for their people would be employed to make roads through their own country. The latter is a wise course, and no opportunity of following it could be better than the present, while labour is so low. The roads would open up the country for settlement, and it has always been considered some of the best in Fiji for sugar and coffee. They would also be able to trade freely with the coast. The interview ended by Captain Chapman taking them on board the Dido, and showing them rocket practice, &c, with which they were no doubt much delighted ; but they must have smiled to themselves as they remembered how little mischief these rockets and cannon balls did when fired over their heads at Diuka in 1868. Of course, they could not know that Commodore Lambert had given special orders for that great feat, and which ended in the retreat of 70 men-of-warßmen before the old muskets of these people, and the abandonment of their plantations by the settlers at and above Diuku. The enraged sailors and their commander were obliged to obey the Commodore's orders, which were peremptory also against landing men on the river bank, and they retreated sullenly, but they had no help for it. The chiefs of the mountains have in their ignorance chuckled over this exploit many a time, and probably do so still. As one of the collateral benefits from this submission, the planters driven away in 1868 will find themselves able to resume possession of their deserted plantations. The troops of Cakobau's Government, under Major Thurston, did much to make this feasible by their capture of hill towns in the last war, and the present submission of the chiefs ought to complete the work. Many of the old Otagonians who settled in Fiji will benefit by this, and among them I recall Luks, Pfluger, Kinross, and Middleton, who had then suddenly to desert the plantations on which they had prided themselves greatly.