the
social scale. Long before the white man visited his shores he had made
very considerable progress towards civilisation. His intersexual code
had advanced to the 'patriarchal stage': he was a skilful and diligent
husbandman, who carried out extensive and laborious agricultural
operations: he built good houses, whose interior he ornamented with no
little taste, carved his weapons in graceful and intricate forms,
manufactured excellent pottery, beat out from the inner bark of a tree a
serviceable papyrus-cloth, upon which he printed, from blocks either
carved or ingeniously pieced together, elegant and elaborate patterns in
fast colours; and, with tools no better than a stone hatchet, a pointed
shell, and a firestick, he constructed large canoes capable of carrying
more than a hundred warriors across the open sea."[647]

[Sidenote: Political superiority of the Fijians over the other
Melanesians.]

Politically the Fijians shewed their superiority to all the other
Melanesians in the advance they had made towards a regular and organised
government. While among the other branches of the same race government
can hardly be said to exist, the power of chiefs being both slender and
precarious, in Fiji the highest chiefs exercised despotic sway and
received from Europeans the title of kings. The people had no voice in
the state; the will of the king was generally law, and his person was
sacred. Whatever he touched or wore became thereby holy and had to be
made over to him; nobody else could afterwards touch it without danger
of being struck dead on the spot as if by an electric shock. One king
took advantage of this superstition by dressing up an English sailor in
his royal robes and sending him about to throw his sweeping train over
any article of food, whether dead or alive, which he might chance to
come near. The things so touched were at once conveyed to the king
without a word of explanation being required or a single remonstrance
uttered. Some of the kings laid claim to a divine origin and on the
strength of the claim exacted and received from their subjects the
respect due to deities. In these exorbitant pretensions they were
greatly strengthened by the institution of taboo, which lent the
sanction of religion to every exertion of arbitrary power.[648]
Corresponding with the growth of monarchy was the well-marked gradation
of social ranks which prevailed in the various tribes from the king
downwards through chiefs, war