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IV.

HOW I FARED AT COURT.

AT length, on August 27, Fatafehi's schooner the Malokula was declared ready for sea, and I embarked with Tukuaho, Fatafehi, and Chief Clerk Mataka. The vessel was unpleasantly crowded with old women, whose prostrate bodies made the traverse of the deck at night impossible. At sunset we passed Malinoa, where lay the four men who were shot after the attempt on Mr Baker's life. Thence, clear of reefs, we stood on with a fair wind through the night until we could see the glare of the volcano of Tofua, then in eruption. After a fruitless attempt to capture a pig at Haafeva, which wasted a precious hour, we dropped anchor at Lifuka at nearly noon. We were on the lee side of a low narrow island, nowhere more than thirty feet above high-water mark, but covered with grass and cocoa - nuts to the water's edge. Other islands of the same kind stretched away to the north and south of us. The town was a mere row of ironroofed stores on the beach: behind them could be seen the usual native huts dotted about among the trees, with grass growing right up to the doors, and horses tethered

THE KING'S KAVA.

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here and there between them. A few cable lengths to the northward of our anchorage was the spot where the privateer Port-au-Prince was treacherously taken by Finau Ulukalala, and on the beach opposite to us the master and crew were murdered. The two rusty iron guns among the ballast in the hold of our schooner are part of her armament. To this event we are indebted for a book of travels that closely approaches Robinson Crusoe' in style and surpasses it in interest. Mariner, one of the survivors, spent scarcely four years among the people, yet his account of the Tongans, elicited by questions put to him by Dr Martin, leaves little to be added by later travellers. The book so produced has become a classic: one does not know which most to admire, Mariner's observation and wonderful memory, or Martin's ingenuity, industry, and pure style.1

As our visit to the king was to be one of state, we had brought with us an old matabule, or master of ceremonies, who landed with a root of kava to announce our arrival. We followed him immediately afterwards along the beach to the great native house occupied by the king. Before we reached it we saw the old man coming down from the unfinished church, followed by a train of his matabules. We halted until a mat was spread under the shade of some large trees, and his attendants formed a kava-ring, a large oval, with the bowl facing the king. Fatafehi then led me round outside the oval of sitting men, and we took our seats on the king's left, with our matabule between us and him. On my left was a whitehaired man with very bright eyes, who afterwards proved

'Mariner's Account of the Tonga Islands.

to be Kaho the chief jailer, and therefore the most important authority after the Governor. The king sat quite silent and impassive except for a nervous side glance of the eyes, which would have given him a suspicious look if it had not been evidently involuntary. Tukuaho had slunk off to the place of dishonour behind the bowl, where some of the attendants were pounding the root on a flat stone that rang out melodiously. This was because his

The king's kava-ring.

father is still living, and no man in Tonga has any titular rank or status until his father be dead. At the king's kava the circle is sacred to chiefs and the matabules. For fully five minutes, while the kava was being pounded, not a word was spoken. The thirty or forty men who composed the ring stared straight at the grass, oppressed by a sense of decorum as rigid as the etiquette at St James'. Suddenly, without a word of warning, our matabule shouted at the top of his voice to the matabule on the king's right,

"Oku lelei a Tonga" (All is well at Tonga), and the other shouted back, "Koe !" (Indeed). Then our voice yelled, "We left Tonga yesterday with a fair wind, and arrived to-day." The other barked his monosyllable, "Koe!" After this conversation languished. I looked at the king to see how he would take their flagrant breach of manners, expecting that these unmannerly vassals who talked across him at the top of their voices would receive some reproof; but he made no sign, and I was left to conclude that this mode of conversation was adopted in deference to the king's growing deafness.

The pounded root, which had fallen from the stone upon a small mat, had been from time to time shot into the bowl, which was now handed to a man who sat directly opposite to the king with a crowd of commoners behind him. He tilted it up to show the contents, and cried, "Koe kava eni kuo tuki" (This kava is pounded). The matabule on the king's right shouted, "Palu" (Mix), and two men came forward and sat one on each side of the bowl facing one another-the one with a fan to keep off the flies, and the other with some water-gourds. The man who presided at the bowl now rinsed his hands by pouring water over them from one of the gourds, and then squeezed the pounded root into a pyramid in the bottom. of the bowl. The matabule now cried, "Lingi ae vai” (Pour in the water), and the contents of the gourds were slowly poured in, while the kava-maker kneaded the mass with both hands. Then the matabule cried, "Tuku ae vai" (Stop pouring), and the man dropped his gourds, and took up a banana-leaf to help his fellow in keeping off the flies. The matabule now cried, "Ai ae fau" (Put in the

strainer), and a tassel of the fibres of the yellow hibiscus, in shape and size looking not unlike a deck-swab, was laid floating upon the surface of the kava. The kava-maker now pushed the edges of this strainer carefully down to the bottom of the bowl, drawing it gently towards him, and bringing it up to the rim of the bowl till it overlapped the part that still floated, thus enclosing the fibres of the root in a sort of net. Then drawing the whole to the broad rim of the bowl, he folded it double, and wrung it out till the muddy fluid had slopped back into the bowl, and the strong fibres of the strainer cracked. He now handed it to his companion on the left, who shook it out and combed out the fibres with his fingers before giving it back. This process was repeated until all the fibres of the kava suspended in the fluid had been removed. These waste fibres, called efi, were afterwards pounded again in one of the neighbouring houses by some of the commoners.

During this operation the most perfect silence was kept. Three men now came into the circle carrying baskets of boiled plantains, which they emptied in a heap on bananaleaves, and, by the direction of the matabule, distributed amongst us two plantains each. Before eating mine I waited to see what the others would do, but no one touched them, and before the end of the ceremony they were swept up and taken away in baskets. In Mariner's time, eightyseven years ago, they would have been eaten now the custom has become an empty form, and survived like the buttons on the back of the modern dress-coat.

The straining of the kava being now completed, the man at the bowl cried, "Kuo ma ae kava ni" (This kava is clear), and the matabule answered, “Fakatau" (Pour out).