and the thought, that, under the long,
bland, benevolent sentences of the Berlin Act, some trickery lay lurking,
filled him with the breath of opposition. Laupepa seems never to have
been a popular king. Mataafa, on the other hand, holds an unrivalled
position in the eyes of his fellow-countrymen; he was the hero of the
war, he had lain with them in the bush, he had borne the heat and burthen
of the day; they began to claim that he should enjoy more largely the
fruits of victory; his exclusion was believed to be a stroke of German
vengeance, his elevation to the kingship was looked for as the fitting
crown and copestone of the Samoan triumph; and but a little after the
coming of the chief justice, an ominous cry for Mataafa began to arise in
the islands. It is difficult to see what that official could have done
but what he did. He was loyal, as in duty bound, to the treaty and to
Laupepa; and when the orators of the important and unruly islet of Manono
demanded to his face a change of kings, he had no choice but to refuse
them, and (his reproof being unheeded) to suspend the meeting. Whether
by any neglect of his own or the mere force of circumstance, he failed,
however, to secure the sympathy, failed even to gain the confidence, of
Mataafa. The latter is not without a sense of his own abilities or of
the great service he has rendered to his native land. He felt himself
neglected; at the very moment when the cry for his elevation rang
throughout the group he thought himself made little of on Mulinuu; and he
began to weary of his part. In this humour, he was exposed to a
temptation which I must try to explain, as best I may be able, to
Europeans.

The bestowal of the great name, Malietoa, is in the power of the district
of Malie, some seven miles to the westward of Apia. The most noisy and
conspicuous supporters of that party are the inhabitants of Manono. Hence
in the elaborate, allusive oratory of Samoa, Malie is always referred to
by the name of _Pule_ (authority) as having the power of the name, and
Manono by that of _Ainga_ (clan, sept, or household) as forming the
immediate family of the chief. But these, though so important, are only
small communities; and perhaps the chief numerical force of the Malietoas
inhabits the island of Savaii. Savaii has no royal name to bestow, all
the five being in the gift of different districts of Upolu; but she has
the weight of numbers, and in these latter days has acqui