In January 1875 the Hon. Sir Arthur Hamilton Gordon, K.C.M.G. (son of George, fourth Earl of Aberdeen), was appointed first Governor of Fiji,—an archipelago containing seventy or eighty inhabited islands, some of which are of considerable size, the largest, Viti Levu, or Great Fiji, being about ninety miles long by fifty broad, nearly the same area as the counties of Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Middlesex, Berkshire, and Hampshire. The next in size, Vanua Levu, the Great Land, is upwards of one hundred miles long by twenty-five wide, somewhat smaller than Cornwall, Devonshire, and Somerset. Taviuni and Khandavu are each twenty-five miles long; while Bau, the native capital, is scarcely a mile in length. Besides these, there are upwards of one hundred and fifty uninhabited islets; and each of the principal islands forms a centre round which cluster from twenty to thirty minor isles, forming groups as distinct and as widely separated as are the Orkneys, the Hebrides, and the Scilly Isles, and their people are equally unknown to one another. The climate is, for the tropics, unusually healthy. At the time of the cession, they were inhabited by about 1500 whites and 150,000 natives.[1] It was June 1875 ere Sir Arthur reached the colony, and, to quote his own words[2]— “The state of things which disclosed itself to me on my arrival was not encouraging. A terrible pestilence, heedlessly admitted, had swept away one-third of the entire native population. Though its violence had diminished, its ravages had not wholly ceased. Even where it had passed by, it had left behind it terror and despair. The same cause had carried off many of the imported labourers of the planters, who, from a variety of causes, were themselves, for the most part, reduced to the greatest straits. The revenue had fallen short of even the modest estimate of Sir H. Robinson, whilst the expenditure had largely exceeded his anticipations. The introduction of labour from other parts of the Pacific had almost ceased. The season had been unfavourable for agriculture, wet, and unhealthy, and gloom and discontent pervaded all classes. “The white settlers had apparently imagined that, by some magical process, the assumption of sovereignty by Great Britain was to be followed by an immediate change from poverty to wealth, from struggling indigence to prosperity; that their claims to land would be at once allowed; that an abundant supply of labour would be at once found for them; and that their claims to supremacy over the natives, which the Government of Cakobau—whatever its faults—had steadily refused to recognise, would be at once acknowledged. They were, therefore, bitterly disappointed to find their hopes not realised.