alietoa; a
step which may be described, to European ears, as placing before the
country his candidacy for the crown.

I do not know when the proposal was first made. Doubtless the
disaffection grew slowly, every trifle adding to its force; doubtless
there lingered for long a willingness to give the new government a
trial. The chief justice at least had been nearly five months in the
country, and the president, Baron Senfft von Pilsach, rather more than a
month, before the mine was sprung. On May 31, 1891, the house of Mataafa
was found empty, he and his chiefs had vanished from Apia, and, what was
worse, three prisoners, liberated from the gaol, had accompanied them in
their secession; two being political offenders, and the third (accused
of murder) having been perhaps set free by accident. Although the step
had been discussed in certain quarters, it took all men by surprise. The
inhabitants at large expected instant war. The officials awakened from a
dream to recognise the value of that which they had lost. Mataafa at
Vaiala, where he was the pledge of peace, had perhaps not always been
deemed worthy of particular attention; Mataafa at Malie was seen, twelve
hours too late, to be an altogether different quantity. With excess of
zeal on the other side, the officials trooped to their boats and
proceeded almost in a body to Malie, where they seem to have employed
every artifice of flattery and every resource of eloquence upon the
fugitive high chief. These courtesies, perhaps excessive in themselves,
had the unpardonable fault of being offered when too late. Mataafa
showed himself facile on small issues, inflexible on the main; he
restored the prisoners, he returned with the consuls to Apia on a flying
visit; he gave his word that peace should be preserved--a pledge in
which perhaps no one believed at the moment, but which he has since
nobly redeemed. On the rest he was immovable; he had cast the die, he
had declared his candidacy, he had gone to Malie. Thither, after his
visit to Apia, he returned again; there he has practically since
resided.

Thus was created in the islands a situation, strange in the beginning,
and which, as its inner significance is developed, becomes daily
stranger to observe. On the one hand, Mataafa sits in Malie, assumes a
regal state, receives deputations, heads his letters "Government of
Samoa," tacitly treats the king as a co-ordinate; and yet declares
himself, and in many ways conducts hims