y and at the same time reap a further advantage. Let Mataafa
leave Malie for any other district in Samoa; it should be construed as
an act of submission and the confiscation and proscription instantly
recalled. This was certainly well devised; the government escaped from
their own false position, and by the same stroke lowered the prestige of
their adversaries. But unhappily the chief justice did not put all his
eggs in one basket. Concurrently with these negotiations he began again
to move the captain of one of the war-ships to shell the rebel village;
the captain, conceiving the extremity wholly unjustified, not only
refused these instances, but more or less publicly complained of their
being made; the matter came to the knowledge of the white resident who
was at that time playing the part of intermediary with Malie; and he, in
natural anger and disgust, withdrew from the negotiation. These
duplicities, always deplorable when discovered, are never more fatal
than with men imperfectly civilised. Almost incapable of truth
themselves, they cherish a particular score of the same fault in whites.
And Mataafa is besides an exceptional native. I would scarce dare say of
any Samoan that he is truthful, though I seem to have encountered the
phenomenon; but I must say of Mataafa that he seems distinctly and
consistently averse to lying.

For the affair of the Manono prisoners, the chief justice is only again
in so far answerable as he was at the moment absent from the seat of his
duties; and the blame falls on Baron Senfft von Pilsach, president of
the municipal council. There were in Manono certain dissidents, loyal to
Laupepa. Being Manono people, I daresay they were very annoying to their
neighbours; the majority, as they belonged to the same island, were the
more impatient; and one fine day fell upon and destroyed the houses and
harvests of the dissidents "according to the laws and customs of Samoa."
The president went down to the unruly island in a war-ship and was
landed alone upon the beach. To one so much a stranger to the mansuetude
of Polynesians, this must have seemed an act of desperation; and the
baron's gallantry met with a deserved success. The six ring-leaders,
acting in Mataafa's interest, had been guilty of a delict; with
Mataafa's approval, they delivered themselves over to be tried. On
Friday, September 4, 1891, they were convicted before a native
magistrate and sentenced to six months' imprisonment; or, I sh