nd often upon the most trivial pretexts. In my own time I
witnessed a sanguinary naval encounter between the people of the island
of Manono, and a war-party of ten great canoes from the district of
Lepa on the island of Upolu. I saw sixteen decapitated heads brought
on shore, and personally attended many of the wounded. And all this
occurred through the Lepa people having at a dance in their village
sung a song in which a satirical allusion was made to the Manono
people having once been reduced to eating shell-fish. The result was an
immediate challenge from Manono, and in all nearly one hundred men lost
their lives, villages were burnt, canoes destroyed, and thousands of
coco-nut and bread-fruit trees cut down and plantations ruined.

Sometimes in battle the Samoans were extremely chivalrous, at others
they were demons incarnate, as merciless, cold-blooded, and cruel as the
Russian police who slaughter women and children in the streets of the
capital of the Great White Czar, and I shall now endeavour to describe
one such terrible act, which after many years is still spoken of with
bated breath, and even amidst the suppressed sobs and falling tears of
the descendants of those who suffered.

On the north coast of Upolu there is a populous town and district named
Fasito'otai. It is part of the A'ana division of Upolu, and is noted,
even in Samoa, a paradise of Nature, for its extraordinary fertility and
beauty.

The A'ana people at this time were suffering from the tyranny of Manono,
a small island which boasted of the fact of its being the birthplace
and home of nearly all the ruling chiefs of Samoa, and the extraordinary
respect with which people of chiefly lineage are treated by Samoans,
generally led them to suffer the greatest indignities and oppressions
by the haughty and warlike Manonoans, who exacted under threats a
continuous tribute of food, fine mats and canoes. Finally, a
valorous young chief named Tausaga--though himself connected with
Manono--revolted, and he and his people refused to pay further tribute
to Manono, and a bloody struggle was entered upon.

For some months the war continued. No mercy was shown on either side to
the vanquished, and there is now a song which tells of how Palu, a
girl of seventeen, with a spear thrust half through her bosom by her
brother-in-law, a chief of Manono, shot him through the chest with a
horse pistol, and then breaking off the spear, knelt beside the dying
man, kis