having worn itself out, and no real interest in his unknown mother kept her image before him; but he felt the jar in him of these two existences, so strangely, widely separated. His head felt giddy, as if the world were turning round with him. But every moment the river was becoming more gay and bright, and the moving panorama before him after a while overcame his individual reflections. The "fellows" newly arrived were already crowding down to the river - little

you," he said; "and I doubt if either you or me are the stuff to make one of; but your father was. I'll show you an old school-list at home with his name in it. I've heard his Latin verses were something very fine indeed; Val, Latin verses are grand things. Poetry in English is a thriftless sort of occupation; but dead language makes all the difference. If you ever can make Latin verses like your father, you'll be a great man, Val." Val never knew whether his grand-new boys standing about with their hands father was laughing at him when he adopted this tone. "Is my father a great man?" he asked, with a serious face. "I should like to know a little more about him. I have only seen him once. Once is not much for a fellow to have seen his father; and I was so small then, and never thought of anything."

66

"Most of us are just as well without thinking," said Lord Eskside, with a suppressed sigh, "except about your work, my boy. You may be sure. you will want all your thoughts for your work."

"That is just how you always turn me off," said Val. "I ask you about my father, grandpa, and you tell me about my work. will do my work," said the boy, with a dogged air, which he sometimes put on ; "but why does my father never come home? why doesn't he care for me? All these fellows there are with their fathers. I like you a great deal better · but why doesn't he come?"

"Because he likes his own way," said the old lord, "better than he likes you or me-better than he likes his own country or our homely life. Observe, my boy, this is nothing for you to judge, or make your remarks upon," he added, bending his brows at Val, who was not used to be looked on frowningly. "Your father is no boy like you, but a man, and able to judge for himself. His profession takes him abroad. He will be an ambassador one of these days, I suppose, and represent his sovereign-which is more honour than often falls to the lot of a poor Scots lord."

Val did not make any reply, and the pair continued their walk along the riverside. His father a representative of his sovereign; his mother. For the last time before he was engulfed by the practical schoolboy life which was more congenial to his years, Val felt the whirl of wonder, the strange chaos of his double life which was made up of such different elements, and lay as it were between two worlds. His panic was gone,

in their pockets looking wistfully on; but the old habitués of the Thames asserted their superiority, and got afloat in swarms—some in the strange outriggers which Val had heard of, but had never seen before. Lord Eskside was as eager about the sight as if it had been he who was the new boy. "Look how light they are, Val!" he cried. "how cleverly they manage them! If those long oars get out of balance the thing upsets. Look at that small creature there no bigger than yourself.

"Bigger! he's not up to my elbow," cried Val, indignant.

Well, smaller than yourself: but you could not do that, you lout, to save your life."

Val's face grew crimson. "Come back next week, grandpa," he said, "and see if I can't; or come along, I'll try now: it would only be a ducking-and what do I care for a ducking? I'll try this very day."

You

"Come back, come back, my boy; they won't let you try to-day," cried the old lord, laughing at the boy's impetuosity. Val had turned back, and was rushing down to the "rafts" where boats were to be had; and it was all that his grandfather could do to restrain him. are not, Val Ross, your own masternot to speak of other people's - here," he said, holding the boy by the arm, "but a member of a corporation, and you must obey the laws of it. They'll not give you a boat, or if they do, it will be because they think you don't belong to Eton; and if you were to go out without fulfilling all the regulations, they'd punish you, Val."

"Punish me!" cried Val, with nostrils dilating, and a wild fire in his eyes.

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'Ay, punish you, though you are such a great man. This will never do," said Lord Eskside; "do you mean to struggle with me, sir, in the sight of all these lads? Master yourself! and that at once."

The boy came to himself with a gasp,

as if he had been drowning. I don't think he had ever in his life been spoken to in so severe a voice. He ceased to resist, and the old lord gave up his hold on his arm, and continued in a lower tone

him wonderingly, and for the first time
realized that he was left alone.

However, it is useless to enter upon the details of so very common a scene. Perhaps the boy shed a few tears silently "You must learn this lesson, my boy, when the maid took away his candle, and at once. You are nobody here, and you he felt that no soft step, subdued lest he must master yourself. Do it of your own should be sleeping, no rustling silken will, and you show the makings of a man. garments, could come into his room that Do it because you are compelled, and night. In the morning he faced his new The thing is existence vigorously, and hung his picwhat are you but a slave? in your own hands, Val," said Lord Esk-tures, and began his work without any side, softened, and putting off his per- weakness of recollection. The old peoemptory tone; "you have almost made ple felt it a great deal more, and a great an exhibition, before all these strange lads, of yourself — and me."

deal longer; but Val could not have
been known from the most accustomed
and habitual schoolboy, and stranger
At the end of the
still, scarcely knew himself for anything
else after that night.
week he felt as if he had lived there all his
as if he had been there before in
some previous kind of existence. I sup-
pose this readiness of a child to adapt
itself to new habits, and make them its
own, does but increase the strange un-
reality of life itself to the half-conscious
mind-life which changes in a moment,
so that one week seems like years, and
years, being past, look as if they had
never been.

Val did not say anything; his breast was swelling high, his heart throbbing with the effort he had made; and he was not pleased that he had been obliged to make the effort, nor did he feel that satis-life faction in having done his duty which is said always to attend that somewhat difHe walked along the ficult operation. river-side panting and drawing his breath hard, as if he really had tried the experiment of a ducking. How he longed to do this thing which he had been assured he must not do! He would have liked to jump into the river and swim out to one of the long slim boats, poised like big dragon-flies on the water, and eject its rower, and take the vacant place; in which case, no doubt, Val would have come to signal grief, as he would have deserved for he had never been in an Outrigger in his life.

At the end of the week Val wrote home; and in his first letter there was this paragraph, written in his clearest hand :

"Tell grandpapa I rowed up to Surly Hall, a long way above where we walked, above locks, in an outrigger, this morning. I rowed another fellow and licked him. I passed swimming on Thursday, and outriggers is very easy. You have nothing to do but keep steady, and it flies like a bird."

"What is an outrigger?" said Lady Eskside, as she gave her husband the letter.

Then the pair went and dined at the hotel, where Val recovered his spirits; and then the old lord took the boy to his little room, where they found his things unpacked, and his pictures standing in a little heap against the wall, and his room The old lord gave an internal almost filled up with the bed which had been folded up out of the way when they shiver, and thanked heaven that she did were there before. It was not like the not remember; and Val did not think it luxurious large airy room which had been necessary to inform his anxious grandVal's at home, any more than the house parents how often he had swamped his with its long passages, with regiments of little craft on the Friday, before he sucdoors on either side, was like the old-ceeded in making that triumphal progress fashioned arrangements of Rosscraig. to Surly on Saturday morning. "He's a And here at last the parting so often re-determined rascal, that boy of yours, my to be done in earnest. lady," was all the answer Lord Eskside hearsed had "Master yourself," said the old lord, with a voice which was neither so cheery nor so firm as he meant it to be; "and God bless you, Val!" And then he was gone, walking up the dark street with a heavy heart in his old bosom, and his eyebrows working furiously.

made.

I would not assert, however, that Val found all his difficulties at school to be surmounted so easily as the outrigger. He had to go through the average number of accidents and perils, and overAnd Val come various wild stirrings of nature sat down upon his bed and looked round | within him, before he learned, as a true

Etonian does, to take pride in the penal | Latin. He clenched his teeth at the ties and hardships as well as the pleas- thought of being inferior to his fatherures which distinguish his school. Val's not from love for how should he love natural pride in his own person as Val the man who had not spent a kind word Ross had to be met and routed by his on him, or seen him, but once in his life? artificial and conventional pride as a but from a violent instinct of opposi schoolboy, before, for instance, he could tion which had sprung up in his soul, he reconcile himself to be some one's fag. could not tell why. He would not be a fate which overtook him instantly. beaten by his father; and this visionary Little Lord Hightowers, the Duke's son, jealousy overcame all Hightowers' phiwho was in the same house, took to it losophizings, and even the attractions naturally, without any stirring of repug- of the match beteween Whiting's and nance, and made his master's toast with Guerre's. conscientious zest, and went his master's errands, and accepted his share of the dainties he had fetched when that potentate was in a liberal mood, without any struggle whatever with himself. But Val had a struggle, the wild blood in his veins being unused to obedience and finding subjection hard. I am happy to say, however, that his powers were equal to the necessary sacrifice, and that he never made an exhibition of himself as he had been on the eve of doing on the day of his arrival. Time passed on, and Val grew and "mastered himself; " but sometimes did not master himself, and got into disgrace, and scrambled out again, and had no fair-weather voyage, but all a schoolboy's troubles at their hardest. Hightowers had a very much easier time of it, for he was neither proud nor ambitious, but was just as happy at the foot of his division as anywhere else, quite as happy looking on at a game as playing, and took the floggings which overtook him periodically with the most heavenly calm; whereas the mere threat of one wrought Val to the point of desperation. Hightowers was better off than Val by right of his temperament and calmer blood. He took everything much more lightly, and used to discourse to his companion on the vanity of "making a fuss" with ponderous and precocious wisdom. Why don't you take it easy, as I do?" said Hightowers; "what's the good of verses, for instance? A fellow never does verses after he leaves school. If you get complained of, it don't hurt you; and even a swishing, though it stings, it's only for a minute

66

I don't mind. There's a house match on to-day between Guerre's and Whiting's. Put that rubbish away and come along." Val was on the point of going, when a recollection of what he had heard of his father's eminence in the way of versemaking returned to his mind; whereupon he sat down again doggedly to grind the smooth English into rugged schoolboy

Thus the boy grew, not perhaps a very amiable boy, though with a side to his character which was as sweet and soft as the other was rugged; and with his grandfather's lesson well learned and bearing fruit. People who do right by a struggle are not so pleasant as those who do right because it comes natural to them -or even sometimes as those who do wrong in an easy and natural way without any effort; and when Val went home he would carry occasional traces of the conflict, and sometimes showed a chaotic condition of mind which disturbed the peace of his elders almost as much as it disturbed his own; and his career at school was of a mixed character, sometimes almost brilliant, sometimes very doubtful. What wild impulses would rise in him, longings for he knew not what, desires almost uncontrollable to rush away out of the routine in which his life was spent! Sometimes a fierce inclination to go to sea seized upon him; sometimes he would be suddenly tempted by the sight of the soldiers, of whom he saw so many, and for the moment the fancy of enlisting and going off unknown to India, China, or the end of the world, in search of adventures - a veritable knight-errant moved the boy. But only himself knew how sudden and fierce were these temptations. He did not confide them to any one. He could not tell where they came from, not being learned enough or clever enough to refer them to his mother's vagrant blood, which stirred and rose in spring-tides and periodical overflowings with the rising of his youth. But his practical schoolboy life had this excellent effect, that it withdrew him from everything visionary, giving him only practical difficulties and temptations to struggle against. He forgot at Eton all about the other strange and jarring elements in his existence which had perplexed him in his childhood. And, indeed, the boy had no leisure, even had he been disposed, to brood over his pa

rentage, or ask himself why his father and mother were unlike those paters and maters of whom his companions talked. It was so; and what more could be said? He accepted the fact without further questioning, and thought no more about it. He had enough to do with his schoolboy occupations, and with that high art in which he was being trained by all the influences round him the art of mastering himself.

From The Pall Mall Gazette.
THE FIJI ISLANDS.

II. THE NATIVES.

contrived to procure in the Rewa district of the births and deaths in the native villages showed quite a remarkable fallingoff in the former. It is, perhaps, difficult to account satisfactorily for the almost invariable fading away of native races; but in this instance the complete change which has been brought about in their social system by the introduction of Christianity must have produced a great effect, even if gin and disease had not of late years worked together in the same direction. The more enlightened of the Fijians themselves are convinced that their race is doomed, and sometimes say to white men who have gained their confidence that the Kai Viti have run their course, and that the Kai Papalangi will soon possess the country undisturbed. And so it is throughout Polynesia, from the Sandwich Islands to New Zealand.

It

THE Fijians, among whom so many of our fellow-countrymen have thought proper to risk their lives and their fortunes, were formerly though by no Fijian society, before the coming of the means quite without civilization of an in- white man, rested almost entirely upon choate sort - one of the most treacher- the system of chieftainship, which ́linked ous and bloodthirsty races of cannibals together in a more or less stringent bond to be found in the South Seas. Neither the different islands of the group. so black nor so woolly as the natives of was, in fact, a sort of rude feudalism, the groups to the west of the New Heb- which was thrown off or submitted to acrides, the Solomon Islands, or the great cording to the strength of each great or island of Papua, they are nevertheless petty chief at the particular time. The nearer akin to the full-blooded negro than chiefs of Mbau, a little island scarcely they are either to the Tongan or to the separated from Viti Levu, have long Samoan. The comparative lightness of claimed a nominal supremacy over most skin to be observed in the windward por- of Fiji, but in reality they had little means tion of the group, and among some of the of enforcing it, especially in the two chiefs on the coast of Viti Levu, is due large islands. The chiefs took rank by to an admixture of Tongan blood. In their mothers, but wars of succession the interior of the two large islands the were common enough. All below them negro type is more apparent, and to this were bound to show the most complete day the mountaineers, with their great deference, and any unfortunate artisan unshapely heads of hair and singular or slave who failed to display a grovelmethods of painting their bodies, might ling obsequiousness to his superior stood pass muster as immigrants from Central a good chance of being clubbed on the Africa. The men are for the most part spot. An accident which happened to tall stalwart fellows; but those who live Tui Levuka, the chief of Ovalau, before on the leeward side of the islands, he died of gin-drinking a few years ago, sheltered from the trade winds, seem, will serve to show the extraordinary delike the vegetation, somewhat weak and votion displayed towards a chief by his stunted. This no doubt arises from the immediate followers in some cases. Tui greater difficulty in getting food. The Levuka was upset in his large canoe women, too, are scarcely a match for the when about half-way between Wakaia men in appearance, and become flabby and Ovalau, seven miles from land. He or wizened at an early age. Various es- had with him at the time some forty-six timates, between 120,000 and 250,000, dependants. As the canoe sank these have been made of the numbers of the men made a circle round their chief, joinnative population. Probably at the pres- ing hands and keeping themselves afloat ent time 150,000 would not be very far with their feet. One by one the sharks, from the mark. There can be no doubt who quickly gathered to the spot, took that they are rapidly dying out before the his attendants down. The remainder advance of the white man, like the Mao-joined hands afresh over the gaps thus ries, the Kanakas, and other Polynesians. caused, and Tui Levuka continued to The statistics which Mr. Lorimer Fison'swim about peaceably in the midst of the

constantly narrowing circle. The sharks kept steadily at their work, and when at length the whole party was picked up only twenty out of the forty-six survived. There can be no doubt that the chief's retinue were the less inclined to shirk their duty from the knowledge that if they had landed without their chief they would have been considered candidates for the oven.

great skill by streams brought down the mountain sides through rock-channels and bamboos. Of late years, of course, they have had the advantage of European imp'ements and have shown themselves by no means incapable of turning them to advantage.

Thakombau, the chief of Mbau, who has been such a prominent figure in the recent history of Fiji, is a very fitting repNotwithstanding the power which resentative of the transition period from these rulers possessed, their right of club- the old system to the new, and to him is bing whom they saw fit was in practice owing in great part the change which considerably restricted, and they held has been wrought. In his early youth much of their authority in trust for the he commenced by retrieving his father's benefit of the artisans, the sailors, the fortunes and his own by the exercise of cultivators, and others who went to make an astuteness, a determination, and a up the population. The slaves, however, cruelty beyond that of the ablest and oldseem to have been fair game, and the est among his adversaries. Warfare and vilest insult in the Fijian language is to conquest in Fiji are as a rule carried call a man "kaisi mbukola," or slave on without much actual fighting. It is ready dressed for the oven. The canni- from the outset one long contest of balism to which this refers, and which is treachery and lying manoeuvring on the not even now wholly extinct, appears to part of both. The moment either side have arisen from very simple causes; obtains by deception an overwhelming and though curiously enough baked advantage then of course the foe is to be man is now called "long pig" in Fijian, slaughtered without mercy. Thakomthere can be no doubt that man was bau was the beau-ideal of a Fijian waroriginally eaten because he was the only rior. He was in no hurry; but when he meat handy. The lust after flesh which struck he took care that he should have comes from a constant vegetable diet no chance of failure. After his triumph, drove the Fijians to eat their enemies, like Narvaez he had little need to ask and religion afterwards sanctified the pre-pardon of his enemies; he had clubbed vailing usage. It is not impossible that the man-eating instinct might be awakened anew even among some of the Christian tribes; and the cry of "To the oven!" sometimes breaks out when dis-years. There is little doubt, indeed, that putes have become bitter between the had it not been for the interference of natives of different islands or between the white men and their war-vessels, Fiji the Fijians and the imported labourers. would have been conquered by the TonIt is believed that no white man has been gans long ago. The Tongans fight in no eaten in the group since Mr. Baker, the Fiji fashion, and hold the Fijians themmissionary, so rashly courted his fate in selves altogether in contempt. On one the mountains of Viti Levu. But the Fi-occasion when Thakombau himself was jians were not simply brutal cannibals. They showed a considerable advance beyond the stage of pure barbarism when white men first made their home in the islands. Their canoes, their houses, their agriculture, their pottery, their tappa were by no means to be despised. The large double canoes are marvels of patience and ingenuity, put together as they are without a nail and without the use of iron tools. Their yam-beds and taropatches have evidently been cultivated for centuries with the greatest care and industry, the latter being irrigated with

The best account of the Fijians in their native state

is to be found in the Wesleyan Mr. Williams's admirable "Fiji aud the Fijians."

them all. In spite, nevertheless, of his early success and of his being proclaimed chief of Mbau, he was more than once sorely troubled to hold his own in after

present at a battle with them, the Fijians were so amazed that their enemies continued to advance after a few of their men had fallen that in true Fiji fashion they, without losing a man, ran away. Still, in the end, Thakombau, by negotiation, and by the support of the white men, assured his position; and about ten years ago, when it was suggested to King George of Tonga that Fiji might be a desirable acquisition, he replied that the islands were already "too white." These Tongans are a very fine race, and whether the Malayan or the American theory of their origin which Mr. William Colenso now so stoutly maintains in reference to the Maories-be correct, it