CHAPTER XXXII.

A GLIMPSE OF TONGAN HISTORY.

HAVING dwelt at length on some of the natural productions of the islands, I must now come back more strictly to my tour through the Coral Lands themselves. Fiji and Samoa have already been treated of; I now come to Tonga. According to Mariner the Tongans did not deserve the name Cook gave them, that of the Friendly Islanders; he says that the chiefs intended to treacherously massacre Cook and his company, but the scheme came to nothing on account of differences among themselves as to how their amiable designs should be carried

out.

It is probable that the Tongans, always a daring, ambitious, and piratical people, were compelled to keep in check their natural desire to kill the confiding white men, and get possession of the weapons and other useful things which they coveted, in order to increase their power. In referring to Fiji and Samoa, I have pointed out the influence of these people in both groups. Maafu's history and the cause of the rise of the Malietoa family in Samoa are evidences of the 'pushing' tendency of the Tongans; in fact, they have been well called the Anglo-Saxons of the South Pacific.

The Tongan Archipelago is composed of at least a hundred islands and islets, comprised between 18° and 20° S. lat., and 174° and 179° W. long. The three principal islands of Tongatabu, Vavau and Eoa, are alone of any extent, each ranging from 15 to 20 miles in length. Six others, namely, Late, Tofua, Kao, Numuka, Lefuga, and Haano, are from 5 to 7 miles in extent. The rest are much smaller. Many of them are in fact only banks of sand and coral, covered with some

tufts of trees. Tofua, Kao, and Late are sufficiently high to be distinguished 15 or 20 leagues off at sea. Eoa, Namuka, and Vavau are of a moderate height; Tongatabu and the rest are all very low-in fact, the highest point at the capital is only 100 feet above high-water level. I have heard a great many estimates of the population; but I do not think I am very far wrong in guessing it at about 30,000.

Tongatabu is in the form of an irregular crescent, whose convexity faces the south, and the concavity the north, deeply indented by a lagoon of 5 miles broad and 3 miles deep. Immense reefs of coral extend 6 or 8 miles off the island on all its north part, and form different channels, with a useful road for any ship that anchors there. Many islets are situated among these coral reefs, the greater number being covered with trees. Eoa lies to the south-east of Tongatabu, a channel of some 9 miles separating them. It is about 600 feet in height, rocky and barren, and has few inhabitants. The principal island of the Namuka Group is rather low, and has a salt-water lake in its centre, without communication with the

sea.

This extraordinary lake is about a mile and a half broad. To the north and east of Namuka, the sea is sprinkled with a vast number of islands, which lie scattered around at unequal · distances. Most of them are entirely clothed with trees of all sorts, including the cocoa-nut palms and flowering shrubs, and each presents the appearance of a beautiful garden placed in the sea.

The Hapai, Lifuka, and Kotoo Groups call for no special remark. Tofoa, an active and volcanic island to the northwest of Kotoo, in lat. 19° 45′ S., long. 175° 3′ W., is about 2800 feet high. A remarkable lake, as in Taviuni, is said to exist upon it, from which the natives bring small black volcanic pebbles, which are greatly prized, to cover the graves of their

friends. This island is covered with trees to its summit, and is about 5 miles in diameter.

One of the most frequented of the groups is that of Vavau, which lies 70 miles to the north of the Hapai Group. Late Island has a peak about 1800 feet high in the centre of the island, which at one time was a volcano. It is from 6 to 7 miles in circumference.

After this summary of the geography of the Tongan Group I can proceed to other matters. The Tongans, like the Fijians and Samoans, have had, from time immemorial, a civilisation of their own. They have more moral stamina, energy, and self-reliance than any other existing race in the Pacific. Had they been acquainted earlier with the use of metals, there can be no doubt that they would have subdued all Polynesia.

When Captain Cook was in the islands, the habits of war were little known to the natives; the only quarrels in which they had at that time engaged had been among the inhabitants of the Fijis. They visited that group for the purpose of getting sandal-wood, and to join the fighting Fijians for their own ends. From the latter they gained a knowledge of improved spears, and bows, and arrows. In Captain Cook's time, this warlike spirit of the Tongans was confined to the young men, who adopted a maxim they attributed to Fiji, that war and strife were the noble employments of men, and ease and pleasure only suitable for the weak and effeminate. Thus, some years after Captain Cook's visit, a certain Tui Hala Fatai set sail with his followers, about 250 in number, for the Fijian island of Lakemba, and first joined one party, then another, robbing, plundering, and murdering the natives, and doing all things necessary to maintain the pomp and ceremonial observance of the precepts of 'glorious war' as they understood it. Not content with 'washing their spears' (as the Zulus have it)

with the blood of the unfortunate Fijians, who had fighting enough of their own without the gratuitous assistance of the Tongans, these enterprising gentry took to quarrelling among themselves on Fiji soil. For two years and a half they seem to have had, according to their notions of manly employment, 'a thoroughly good time.' Whether the Fijians appreciated their visitors and their ways is another question. At any rate, the dislike of the Tongans manifested by the Fijians to this day is very easily accounted for. These interesting filibusters returned to Tonga, but not in their own canoes, those of the Fijians being, as I have said, much better. So, very considerately, they made the Fijians a present of the clumsy vessels in which they had emigrated, and, as exchange is no robbery, took some new and fast-sailing Fiji-built canoes in

return.

I am giving a very condensed account of what I know about these remarkable people, but I cannot resist saying that, in view of some of their proceedings, I rather regret having mentioned the fact that they are sometimes dubbed the Anglo-Saxons of the South Pacific.

On his arrival, Hala Fatai found that a certain Togo Ahu, who had long since been King of Tonga, had made himself as disagreeable as possible to his subjects. On one occasion, for instance, he gave orders ('Divine right to rule wrong' was a Tongan tradition, and the orders were instantly obeyed) that twelve of his cooks, who were always in waiting at the public ceremony of his kava-drinking, should have their left arms amputated, to gratify his vanity by distinguishing them from other men not occupying so enviable a rank.

A chief of the name of Tubu Neuha and his brother, called Finoo (I am by no means certain of the correct spelling), indignant at the eccentric surgical operations of their king,

determined to depose him. They 'deposed' him in a characteristic Tongan fashion.

One evening Tubu Neuha and Finoo, attended by several of their followers, waited on Togo Ahu, as was now and then customary, to pay their respects to him by presents of kavaroot (angona), cloth, a pig, and several baskets of yams; they then retired. This served as a plausible reason for their being that night in the neighbourhood of the king's house. About midnight they again repaired to his house with their followers, whom they placed around it as watchful guards, ready to despatch all who might attempt to escape from the place: of these Finoo took the command, while Tubu Neuha entered, armed with his axe, and burning with a thirst for blood. As he passed along on either side by the wives and favourite mistresses of the king, the matchless beauties of Tonga, perfumed with the aroma of sandal-wood and bearing around their necks wreaths of the freshest flowers, the sanguinary chief might have wept over their fate; but the freedom of his country was at stake, and the opportunity was not to be lost. He sought the mat on which his destined victim lay buried in profound sleep; stood over him for a moment, then, resolving that his victim should know from whom he received his death, he struck him upon the face with his hand. Togo Ahu started up, and hearing only the words,

'Tis I, Tubu Neuha, that strike!' was by a tremendous blow felled to the ground, never to rise again.

The loyalists rose en masse ; a battle ensued, and the regicides were repulsed, when Hala Fatai and his Fiji party appeared on the scene and sided with Finoo. Another desperate engagement took place it lasted three hours, and it is said that Tubu Neuha alone slew on that day (well remembered by tradition here in Tonga) forty royalists with