ad been stripping women and killing
cats in the interests of the Berlin Treaty; there was to be no
punishment and no inquiry; let them retire to Savaii with their booty
and their dead. Offensive as this cannot fail to be, there is still some
slight excuse for it. The King is no more than one out of several chiefs
of clans. His strength resides in the willing obedience of the
Tuamasaga, and a portion--I have to hope a bad portion--of the island of
Savaii. To punish any of these supporters must always be to accept a
risk; and the golden opportunity had been allowed to slip at the moment
of the Mataafa war.

What was more original was the treatment of the rebels. They were under
arms that moment against the Government; they had fought and sometimes
vanquished; they had taken heads and carried them to Tamasese. And the
terms granted were to surrender fifty rifles, to make some twenty miles
of road, to pay some old fines--and to be forgiven! The loss of fifty
rifles to people destitute of any shadow of a gunsmith to repair them
when they are broken, and already notoriously short of ammunition, is a
trifle; the number is easy to be made up of those that are out of
commission; for there is not the least stipulation as to their value;
any synthesis of old iron and smashed wood that can be called a gun is
to be taken from its force. The road, as likely as not, will never be
made. The fines have nothing to say to this war; in any reasonably
governed country they should never have figured in the treaty; they had
been inflicted before, and were due before. Before the rebellion began,
the beach had rung with I know not what indiscreet bluster; the natives
were to be read a lesson; Tamasese (by name) was to be hanged; and after
what had been done to Mataafa, I was so innocent as to listen with awe.
And now the rebellion has come, and this was the punishment! There might
well have been a doubt in the mind of any chief who should have been
tempted to follow the example of Mataafa; but who is it that would not
dare to follow Tamasese?

For some reason--I know not what, unless it be fear--there is a strong
prejudice amongst whites against any interference with the bestial
practice of head-hunting. They say it would be impossible to identify
the criminals--a thing notoriously contrary to fact. A man does not take
a head, as he steals an apple, for secret degustation; the essence of
the thing is its publicity. After the girls' heads were