vented the people from availing themselves of the confusion to carry off their property. While performing the open-air service, they were also pelted with stones, some weighing as much as two pounds, though no one seems to have been hurt. One night, too, they were alarmed by wild outcries on the other side of the river, and on rushing out were horrified by the sight of seventeen dead bodies. being landed from a canoe, and dragged about in the most indecent and shocking manner. These bodies formed the Rewa share of 260 human beings slain in Verata by the people of Mbau and their allies. One was that of a man who had apparently reached the term of threescore years and ten, and another was that of quite a young woman, the rest being those of male adults. The king, it is said, held aloof from these inhuman barbarities, and even prevailed upon his warriors to refrain from hostilities on Sundays, for fear of incurring the displeasure of the Christians' God.

A great storm, accompanied by a deluge of rain which flooded the country, in the early part of 1840, carried off a large portion of the roof of the mission-house, leaving only the centre apartment habitable, in which were crowded the two missionaries, their wives, and five children, together with the teachers and their wives and children, besides the servants, the goats, the pigs, and the poultry. Much of their property was destroyed or seriously injured; but the king and some of the chiefs sent them presents of food. Shortly afterwards, Mr Cargill suffered from an alarming attack of inflammation, delirium supervening. He indeed recovered, but on the 2d of June his wife died, completely worn out by anxiety, apprehension, and hard work, and was buried on the following day with her

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babe, five days old. This irreparable calamity did not, however, detract from the reputation for medical skill which the Rewa Mission had acquired, and which was so firmly established that even the pagan priests, no longer confiding in the protection of their own gods, repaired thither to be healed of their sicknesses. Among the Fijians themselves little if any care was bestowed upon the sick, and when an illness was serious, the sufferer was usually strangled and buried. By slow degrees the many acts of kindness performed by the missionaries, combined with their meekness under affronts and their admirable self-abnegation, began to make a favourable impression not only upon the common people, but upon many of the chiefs who had been eager to maltreat them on their first arrival at Rewa. Converts, indeed, were added only now and then to the little congregation, but a spirit of inquiry was abroad, and the idols sank into merited neglect.

The worst heathenish practices, however, continued to prevail. Polygamy was still the rule, and cannibalism, if abated in time of peace, revived with its old intensity as soon as war broke out—an event of almost unceasing recurrence. Wives and mothers, too, were still strangled on the death of a husband or a son. "Poor creatures," says Mr Calvert, "were buried alive; and bodies were frequently brought to Rewa for cannibal purposes, where, just opposite the mission premises, they were dragged, washed, and abused with every obscene indignity, and then cut up or torn to pieces and cooked, while a crowd of men, women, and children gathered round, yelling and rejoicing like fiends. Other bodies were floated away down the river."

Domestic afflictions seem never to have been wanting

to fill to the brim the bitter cup held to the lips of the Fijian missionaries. Not only Mr Jaggar himself fell greviously ill, but two of his children were hurried away to their long home.

As if all these troubles were not sufficient to discourage and break down the stoutest heart, a sanguinary war blazed forth between Rewa and Mbau, and for seven months Mr Jaggar worked assiduously at the printingpress, disseminating far and wide the precepts of Christianity, while the fire of musketry was daily resounding in his ears, and the death-drum was summoning the warriors to hideous orgies on human flesh. In August 1844, however, it was resolved to remove the press to a safer locality, and the faithful missionary with his wife and surviving children were rescued from their perilous and disheartening position, between two parties of savages literally thirsting for one another's blood, and heedless of the misery inflicted upon the innocent.

Twice was Rewa burnt to the ground, and twice rebuilt. The old king was treacherously slain, and great numbers of his people shot or clubbed, and many of them cooked and eaten. After a time, however, the power of Mbau was exhausted, when its chief became as desirous of peace as he had previously been urgent for war. Mr Moore was accordingly deputed to Rewa to re-establish the mission, and was presented by the new king, formerly a deadly enemy of the Christians, with a house lately occupied by the American Consul, on the same side of the river as the town. The only obstruction offered was by a Romish priest; but the king let him know, in an unmistakable manner, that he would not suffer him or his adherents to molest his Protestant friend.