the
larger islands. Among the forest trees are also several kinds of
tree-ferns and a tree-nettle. When the pointed leaves of the latter
prick the skin they sting the flesh as badly as does a wasp.

The English have done well by both the islands and the islanders. They
have made the islands yield a good yearly profit to the government
itself, but they have also made the natives industrious and contented.
When the first British settlements were made in Fiji, the islanders
were in a most degraded condition. They did no work except to grow a few
yams, bananas, and breadfruit. Their chief employment was war, and this
was carried on, not for conquest, but to capture as many as possible. A
few captives were held as slaves, but most of them were fattened--to be
killed and eaten at the royal feasts.

[Illustration: Native canoe, Fiji Islands]

Notwithstanding all this there was the making of a very superior people
in them; for when the missionaries and the teachers got among them the
natives proved very apt pupils. Now there are more than twelve hundred
church buildings--and a school-house or two for every church. Some of
the ministers and teachers are English, but there are about four
thousand native teachers and ministers, nearly all of whom were trained
for their work in the island schools.

They are fine farmers, probably the best in the islands of the Pacific.
They grow bananas, pineapples, peanuts, and lemons for the Australians,
copra and tobacco for the British, and rice, taro, and garden vegetables
for themselves. They have learned to irrigate their farms, using open
ditches and bamboo mains. They make the finest canoes to be found in the
Pacific. Some of the canoes are barges nearly one hundred feet in
length; and not even the Hawaiians are more expert in using them.

Not a little profit to the islanders comes from the sea. They are expert
divers and gather large quantities of pearl shells, which find a ready
market with the button-makers of Europe. Fish are caught, dried, and
sold in China. One sea product, the beche-de-mer, a marine animal
commonly called "sea-cucumber," is highly prized by the Chinese, who use
large quantities; most of it is gathered by the Fijians.

Sugar, however, is the chief product of the islands, and the sugar
plantations are owned by great companies that have invested millions of
pounds sterling in the business. The plantations altogether produce more
than three million dollars' worth