Foreigners in these islands know little of the course of native intrigue.  Partly the Samoans cannot explain, partly they will not tell.  Ask how much a master can follow of the puerile politics in any school; so much and no more we may understand of the events which surround and menace us with their results.  The missions may perhaps have been to blame.  Missionaries are perhaps apt to meddle overmuch outside their discipline; it is a fault which should be judged with mercy; the problem is sometimes so insidiously presented that even a moderate and able man is betrayed beyond his own intention; and the missionary in such a land as Samoa is something else besides a minister of mere religion; he represents civilisation, he is condemned to be an organ of reform, he could scarce evade (even if he desired) a certain influence in political affairs.  And it is believed, besides, by those who fancy they know, that the effective force of division between Mataafa and Laupepa came from the natives rather than from whites.  Before the end of 1890, at least, it began to be rumoured that there was dispeace between the two Malietoas; and doubtless this had an unsettling influence throughout the islands.  But there was another ingredient of anxiety.  The Berlin convention had long closed its sittings; the text of the Act had been long in our hands; commissioners were announced to right the wrongs of the land question, and two high officials, a chief justice and a president, to guide policy and administer law in Samoa.  Their coming was expected with an impatience, with a childishness of trust, that can hardly be exaggerated.  Months passed, these angel-deliverers still delayed to arrive, and the impatience of the natives became changed to an ominous irritation.  They have had much experience of being deceived, and they began to think they were deceived again.  A sudden crop of superstitious stories buzzed about the islands.  Rivers had come down red; unknown fishes had been taken on the reef and found to be marked with menacing runes; a headless lizard crawled among chiefs in council; the gods of Upolu and Savaii made war by night, they swam the straits to battle, and, defaced by dreadful wounds, they had besieged the house of a medical missionary.  Readers will remember the portents in mediaeval chronicles, or those in Julius Caesar when

   “Fierce fiery warriors fought upon the clouds
   In ranks and squadrons.”

And doubtless such fabrications are, in simple societies, a natural expression of discontent; and those who forge, and even those who spread them, work towards a conscious purpose.