To me one of the strangest things here is the unaccountable jealousy of the missionaries, and their marvellous influence with the people, which pervades all classes of white men, old residents and new-comers alike. To understand the position, you must recollect that, forty years ago, two missionaries landed on these isles, to find them peopled by cannibals of the most vicious type. Every form of crime that the human mind can conceive reigned and ran riot; and the few white settlers here were the worst type of reprobates, who could find no other hiding-place; for the earliest founders of this colony were a number of convicts, who, about 1804, escaped from New South Wales, and managed to reach Fiji, where, by free use of firearms, they made themselves dreaded, and the chiefs courted them as useful allies in war. So these desperadoes gained a footing in the isles, and amazed the Fijians themselves by the atrocity of their lives. One man, known as Paddy Connor, left fifty sons and daughters to inherit his virtues! Such men as these had certainly not done much to smooth the way for Christian teachers; yet in the forty years which have elapsed since the Wesleyan missionaries landed here, they have won over a population of upwards of a hundred thousand ferocious cannibals. They have trained an immense body of native teachers—established schools in every village. The people themselves have built churches all over the isles, each of which has a crowded congregation; and there is scarcely a house which has not daily morning and evening family prayer—a sound never heard in the white men’s houses; and of course the old vile customs are dropped, and Christian manners take their place. Such is the system of supervision by the teachers, that any breach of right living must be at once known, and visited by the moral displeasure of those whom the people most respect.