Of all inhabited countries in the world Fiji is probably the poorest in history. No European, who left a record behind him, had intercourse with the natives until 1810, and the historical traditions of the natives themselves scarcely carry back their history beyond the middle of the eighteenth century. While the chiefs of the Marquesas and Hawaii are said to recall the names of their ancestors for seventy-three generations,[1] the chiefs of Mbau cannot give the name of any of their predecessors before Nailatikau, who reigned during the last quarter of the eighteenth century, and the earliest name recalled by other tribes of longer memory is only the sixth generation from the reigning chief. It is not that the Fijians were less prone than other islanders to embody their tribal history in traditional poetry, but that the political _morcellement_ of the tribal units left the poets nothing to record. A century ago Mbau was nothing but a petty fortified village in the interior, governed by chiefs whose names were unknown three miles from its public square. The chiefs of Rewa were equally obscure, and the songs which celebrated their petty achievements died with the generation that sang them. When the great wave of unrest in the interior of Vitilevu sent them forth to fight their way to a new home on the coast, and to found confederations of the tribes they had subdued, their history was born; and at its birth died the old traditions of the tribes they conquered, for vassals in Fiji have nothing to do with memories of departed greatness. [Pageheader: THE BOND OF _TAUVU_] Besides the historical _meke_ there remain a few mythological sagas which refer to a far older period. With ancestor-worshippers like the Fijians the founders of their race attain immortality denied to their descendants, who at the most become demi-gods enjoying a place in mythology only as long as their deeds on earth are remembered. The founders of the Fijian race are known as _Kalou-Vu_--Gods of Origin--and the sagas that relate their exploits, overlaid as they are with glosses by the poets, undoubtedly contain the germ of traditional history of a very ancient date. The historical outline of the Nakauvandra sagas is supported by another class of evidence, namely the _tauvu_.