I stood my ground meanwhile, trying to look utterly unconscious, and after a pause the king said, "Oku lelei be" (Very well).

We then took the oath, the terms of which forbid me to describe the proceedings, but I may say that before we rose I had succeeded in ingratiating myself with the king, and he had promised to visit Nukualofa, and to hold great meetings of his people in every province, urging them to pay their taxes, and declaring his confidence in his new Cabinet, a point on which proof was still wanting.

Shortly after the Council Fatafehi was sent for by the king, and returned with a message from his Majesty asking my pardon for his having failed to recognise me. I believe that he would have resisted my admission to the Council if he had had time to consider the question, but his natural feeling of courtesy to a stranger prevented him from insisting on my withdrawal after I had entered his house.

This curious misunderstanding, which so nearly ruined. the success of my mission, showed me that I could not trust the discretion of any of my colleagues in matters concerning the king, in so great an awe did they stand of him. Tukuaho had asked the High Commissioner for my services without daring to obtain the full assent of his sovereign, as he had obtained his leave to appoint me Assistant Premier without touching on the question of my admission to the Council. Had I known this in time, I should have taken proper measures to win the king's confidence before asking for a meeting of the Council: as it was, my colleague's blunder had saved me the delay

SOCIETY IN HAAPAI.

71

which this would have entailed. The cue given by Tukuaho was a useful one, and for the present I became to the Tongans not a Minister of the Crown, but "Koe tagata fakahinohino" (The expounder of the dark ways of civilised man).

The Privy Council over, we had time to look about us. The island at this point is barely half a mile wide: every rood of it seems to be under cultivation, from the back of the town to the edge of the rocks on the Liku upon which the ocean-rollers, driven before the steady trade-wind, beat unceasingly. The Europeans of the place live in a row of stores on the beach, each hungry for copra, each fearing to give the natives credit, yet not daring to refuse lest they take their custom to a neighbour; and each, when he has given credit, mortified by seeing his debtor pass his store to sell his copra to a hated rival. There is the agent of the great Hamburg firm, the agent for M'Arthur & Co., a free-lance or two, a carpenter, and the Customs officer of the port, who brings up a large family on £100 a-year. The only friendships in this heterogeneous society are mere alliances against a common foe, and as they are all by instinct against the Government, and can now have the exciting sport of setting the king against his Ministers, there is something very like reconciliation among them.

On Sunday we went to church in a driving rain-storm, but, notwithstanding the weather, the little building was filled. The women in their native finery looked infinitely more respectable than their brothers and husbands, who had donned threadbare coats and trousers in honour of the day, but had stopped short of shoes. The king was

there, of course-nothing but illness prevents his attendance at church. The sermon was dull, for there was no sedition in it, probably in deference to our presence: the preacher even called upon Tukuaho for an extempore prayer, and announced there would be a bolotu in the evening.

VI.

THE POLITICAL USES OF A STATE CHURCH.

THE bolotu, or night-service, is a growth of Tongan soil. As Christians the Tongans may no longer enjoy the mild excitement of taking kava to the shrine of a god, and see the priestess shiver and foam at the mouth in an ague fit, or hear her scream the favourable oracle in high falsetto. The missionaries have stopped all that. True, they may take to preaching, but they cannot all preach-there must be some to form the congregation. They have the histrionic instinct, and no outlet for it in private theatricals or drawing-room recitations; therefore they wisely make the mission supply the place of that which it has taken away, and to do them justice, they have produced an exhibition far more picturesque than the religious orgies of the Salvation Army.

The little thatched church blazed with kerosene-lamps that threw broad streaks of light from the windows upon the palm-leaves wet with the rain, lighting the gay valas and brown legs of several mysterious groups who had formed at a distance. We found the inside of the build

ing nearly empty, but there was a look of eager expectancy on the faces of the few old people who lined the walls. Then from without came the sound of singing in quartette, in perfect tune, swelling in volume as the choir reached the door. They filed in, forming fours as they passed the

doorway, men and women alternately, holding one another's hands. At the end of each phrase they took a step forward, and when they reached the reed pulpit their song merged into another in the far distance. It was the second choir: as their voices soared upward the first band became silent and scattered to their places along the