FIJIAN NEWS.

Temuka Leader, Issue 936, 11 April 1882, Page 3

FIJIAN NEWS.

From Fiji we learn that Suva has been attracting a little more attention o f late. Large romantic caves have heen discovered there, swarming with swallows, which the Natives exceedingly feared as " demons." Sandstone has been discovered near Suva, and a man (Spanish Frank) has ben successfully hewing there. In the ability to properly carry out capital punishment, the Go - vernment of Fiji has made a most marked advance since annexion. The Cakobau-Rex Government hang no one, though making one or two wellmeant attempts at it. The first case was that of a Fijian, and a gallows was erected to suspend him from, but some ladies of Levuka presented a petition to the king, begging him off. The sable monarch tardily and somewhat angrily consented, pointing out the expense his Ministers had been to in putting up the gallows, the exact cost of which he accurately stated in dollars, and then asked the pertinent questions, " Who will pay the carpenters ? Shall all that money go for nought ?" The other instance was that ot a Cuban murderer, who was hung by the neck, but not until he was dead, for they had to cut him down alive, and let him go, and he, is now in the land of the living somewhere in this wide world. There ha 3 been much activity in the medical department over the matter of vaccina tion. All employers of colored servants were notified to send their servants on a given day, and have them vaccinated. On that day files of men and women from different isles of Polynesia were ranked in the yard at the back of the post-office, and the chief medical officer quietly and persistently went to work for the morning ; one or two o : f his. flo.ck made a bolt before their time

came, and mac!e good their escape over the rocks, despite the official shouts from a Customs' officer to return. The vaccination of Europeans is still going on. — Exchange.