s; almost all because it tended to precipitate and
embitter war. In the midst of the turmoil he had raised, and under the
immediate pressure of certain indignant white residents, the baron fell
back upon a new expedient, certainly less barbarous, perhaps no more
legal; and on Monday afternoon, September 7th, packed his six prisoners
on board the cutter _Lancashire Lass_, and deported them to the
neighbouring low-island group of the Tokelaus. We watched her put to sea
with mingled feelings. Anything were better than dynamite, but this was
not good. The men had been summoned in the name of law; they had
surrendered; the law had uttered its voice; they were under one sentence
duly delivered; and now the president, by no right with which we were
acquainted, had exchanged it for another. It was perhaps no less
fortunate, though it was more pardonable in a stranger, that he had
increased the punishment to that which, in the eyes of Samoans, ranks
next to death,--exile from their native land and friends. And the
_Lancashire Lass_ appeared to carry away with her into the uttermost
parts of the sea the honour of the administration and the prestige of the
supreme court.

The policy of the government towards Mataafa has thus been of a piece
throughout; always would-be violent, it has been almost always defaced
with some appearance of perfidy or unfairness. The policy of Mataafa
(though extremely bewildering to any white) appears everywhere consistent
with itself, and the man's bearing has always been calm. But to
represent the fulness of the contrast, it is necessary that I should give
some description of the two capitals, or the two camps, and the ways and
means of the regular and irregular government.

_Mulinuu_. Mulinuu, the reader may remember, is a narrow finger of land
planted in cocoa-palms, which runs forth into the lagoon perhaps three
quarters of a mile. To the east is the bay of Apia. To the west, there
is, first of all, a mangrove swamp, the mangroves excellently green, the
mud ink-black, and its face crawled upon by countless insects and black
and scarlet crabs. Beyond the swamp is a wide and shallow bay of the
lagoon, bounded to the west by Faleula Point. Faleula is the next
village to Malie; so that from the top of some tall palm in Malie it
should be possible to descry against the eastern heavens the palms of
Mulinuu. The trade wind sweeps over the low peninsula and cleanses it
from the contagion of