ever saw so good a place as this
Apia," said one of these; "you can be in a new conspiracy every day!"
Many, on the other hand, are sincerely concerned for the future of the
country. The quarters are so close and the scale is so small, that
perhaps not any one can be trusted always to preserve his temper. Every
one tells everything he knows; that is our country sickness. Nearly
every one has been betrayed at times, and told a trifle more; the way
our sickness takes the predisposed. And the news flies, and the tongues
wag, and fists are shaken. Pot boil and caldron bubble!

Within the memory of man, the white people of Apia lay in the worst
squalor of degradation. They are now unspeakably improved, both men and
women. To-day they must be called a more than fairly respectable
population, and a much more than fairly intelligent. The whole would
probably not fill the ranks of even an English half-battalion, yet there
are a surprising number above the average in sense, knowledge, and
manners. The trouble (for Samoa) is that they are all here after a
livelihood. Some are sharp practitioners, some are famous (justly or
not) for foul play in business. Tales fly. One merchant warns you
against his neighbour; the neighbour on the first occasion is found to
return the compliment: each with a good circumstantial story to the
proof. There is so much copra in the islands, and no more; a man's share
of it is his share of bread; and commerce, like politics, is here
narrowed to a focus, shows its ugly side, and becomes as personal as
fisticuffs. Close at their elbows, in all this contention, stands the
native looking on. Like a child, his true analogue, he observes,
apprehends, misapprehends, and is usually silent. As in a child, a
considerable intemperance of speech is accompanied by some power of
secrecy. News he publishes; his thoughts have often to be dug for. He
looks on at the rude career of the dollar-hunt, and wonders. He sees
these men rolling in a luxury beyond the ambition of native kings; he
hears them accused by each other of the meanest trickery; he knows some
of them to be guilty; and what is he to think? He is strongly conscious
of his own position as the common milk-cow; and what is he to do?
"Surely these white men on the beach are not great chiefs?" is a common
question, perhaps asked with some design of flattering the person
questioned. And one, stung by the last incident into an unusual flow of
English, remarked to