on the other hand, holds an unrivalled position in the eyes of his fellow-countrymen; he was the hero of the war, he had lain with them in the bush, he had borne the heat and burthen of the day; they began to claim that he should enjoy more largely the fruits of victory; his exclusion was believed to be a stroke of German vengeance, his elevation to the kingship was looked for as the fitting crown and copestone of the Samoan triumph; and but a little after the coming of the chief justice, an ominous cry for Mataafa began to arise in the islands.  It is difficult to see what that official could have done but what he did.  He was loyal, as in duty bound, to the treaty and to Laupepa; and when the orators of the important and unruly islet of Manono demanded to his face a change of kings, he had no choice but to refuse them, and (his reproof being unheeded) to suspend the meeting.  Whether by any neglect of his own or the mere force of circumstance, he failed, however, to secure the sympathy, failed even to gain the confidence, of Mataafa.  The latter is not without a sense of his own abilities or of the great service he has rendered to his native land.  He felt himself neglected; at the very moment when the cry for his elevation rang throughout the group he thought himself made little of on Mulinuu; and he began to weary of his part.  In this humour, he was exposed to a temptation which I must try to explain, as best I may be able, to Europeans.

The bestowal of the great name, Malietoa, is in the power of the district of Malie, some seven miles to the westward of Apia.  The most noisy and conspicuous supporters of that party are the inhabitants of Manono.  Hence in the elaborate, allusive oratory of Samoa, Malie is always referred to by the name of Pule (authority) as having the power of the name, and Manono by that of Ainga (clan, sept, or household) as forming the immediate family of the chief.  But these, though so important, are only small communities; and perhaps the chief numerical force of the Malietoas inhabits the island of Savaii.  Savaii has no royal name to bestow, all the five being in the gift of different districts of Upolu; but she has the weight of numbers, and in these latter days has acquired a certain force by the preponderance in her councils of a single man, the orator Lauati.  The reader will now understand the peculiar significance of a deputation which should embrace Lauati and the orators of both Malie and Manono, how it would represent all that is most effective on the Malietoa side, and all that is most considerable in Samoan politics, except the opposite feudal party of the Tupua.  And in the temptation brought to bear on Mataafa, even the Tupua was conjoined.  Tamasese was dead.  His followers had conceived a not unnatural aversion to all Germans, from which only the loyal Brandeis is excepted; and a not unnatural admiration for their late successful adversary.  Men of his own blood