The centre-piece of all is the high chief himself, Malietoa-Tuiatua-Tuiaana Mataafa, king—­or not king—­or king-claimant—­of Samoa.  All goes to him, all comes from him.  Native deputations bring him gifts and are feasted in return.  White travellers, to their indescribable irritation, are (on his approach) waved from his path by his armed guards.  He summons his dancers by the note of a bugle.  He sits nightly at home before a semicircle of talking-men from many quarters of the islands, delivering and hearing those ornate and elegant orations in which the Samoan heart delights.  About himself and all his surroundings there breathes a striking sense of order, tranquillity, and native plenty.  He is of a tall and powerful person, sixty years of age, white-haired and with a white moustache; his eyes bright and quiet; his jaw perceptibly underhung, which gives him something of the expression of a benevolent mastiff; his manners dignified and a thought insinuating, with an air of a Catholic prelate.  He was never married, and a natural daughter attends upon his guests.  Long since he made a vow of chastity,—­“to live as our Lord lived on this earth” and Polynesians report with bated breath that he has kept it.  On all such points, true to his Catholic training, he is inclined to be even rigid.  Lauati, the pivot of Savaii, has recently repudiated his wife and taken a fairer; and when I was last in Malie, Mataafa (with a strange superiority to his own interests) had but just despatched a reprimand.  In his immediate circle, in spite of the smoothness of his ways, he is said to be more respected than beloved; and his influence is the child rather of authority than popularity.  No Samoan grandee now living need have attempted that which he has accomplished during the last twelve months with unimpaired prestige, not only to withhold his followers from war, but to send them to be judged in the camp of their enemies on Mulinuu.  And it is a matter of debate whether such a triumph of authority were ever possible before.  Speaking for myself, I have visited and dwelt in almost every seat of the Polynesian race, and have met but one man who gave me a stronger impression of character and parts.

About the situation, Mataafa expresses himself with unshaken peace.  To the chief justice he refers with some bitterness; to Laupepa, with a smile, as “my poor brother.”  For himself, he stands upon the treaty, and expects sooner or later an election in which he shall be raised to the chief power.  In the meanwhile, or for an alternative, he would willingly embrace a compromise with Laupepa; to which he would probably add one condition, that the joint government should remain seated at Malie, a sensible but not inconvenient distance from white intrigues and white officials.  One circumstance in my last interview particularly pleased me.  The king’s chief scribe, Esela, is an old employe under Tamasese, and the talk ran some while upon the