negotiations."
See Charles Wilkes, _Narrative of the United States Exploring
Expedition_, iii. 7 _sqq._ (my quotation is from p. 16). The
story is told from the point of view of the Protestant
(Wesleyan) missionaries by Miss S. S. Farmer, _Tonga and The
Friendly Islands_, pp. 293 _sqq._

[38] John Williams, _Narrative of Missionary Enterprise in the
South Seas_ (London, 1838), p. 264; Charles Wilkes, _op. cit._
iii. 32 _sq._

Like all the Polynesians the natives of Tonga were ignorant of the
metals, and their only tools were made of stone, bone, shells, shark's
teeth, and rough fish-skins. They fashioned axes, or rather adzes, out
of a smooth black stone, which they procured from the volcanic island of
Tufoa; they used shells as knives; they constructed augers out of
shark's teeth, fixed on handles; and they made rasps of the rough skin
of a fish, fastened on flat pieces of wood. With such imperfect tools
they built their canoes and houses, reared the massive tombs of their
kings; and did all their other work.[39] The wonder is that with
implements so imperfect they could accomplish so much and raise
themselves to a comparatively high level among savages.

[39] Captain James Cook, _Voyages_, iii. 199, v. 414 _sq._
Captain Cook says that the only piece of iron he found among the
Tongans was a small broad awl, which had been made of a nail.
But this nail they must have procured either from a former
navigator, perhaps Tasman, or from a wreck.

A feature of the Tongan character in which the islanders evinced their
superiority to most of the Polynesians was their regard for women. In
most savage tribes which practise agriculture the labour of tilling the
fields falls in great measure on the female sex, but it was not so in
Tonga. There the women never tilled the ground nor did any hard work,
though they occupied themselves with the manufacture of bark-cloth,
mats, and other articles of domestic use. Natives of Fiji, Samoa, and
Hawaii, who resided in Tonga, used to remark on the easy lives led by
the Tongan women, and remonstrated with the men on the subject, saying
that as men underwent hardships and dangers in war and other masculine
pursuits, so women ought to be made to labour in the fields and to toil
for their living. But the Tongan men said that "it is not _gnale fafine_
(consistent with the feminine character) to let them do hard work; women
ought only to do wh