Now, as I have already said, the great chief of Mbau, Mbanuve, died of the _lila_, and was thereafter known as Mbale-i-vavalangi--the victim of the foreign disease. When the comet of 1882 appeared, the old men declared that it presaged the death of Thakombau, for that a larger comet had foretold the death of King Mbanuve, and a smaller one the destruction of Suva in 1843. We know that the successor of Mbanuve, Na-uli-vou, or Ra Mate-ni-kutu, was reigning in 1809, when Charles Savage, the Swede, arrived in the group. The only comet recorded about the beginning of the century--Donati's, which appeared in 1811, was too late for Mbanuve's death--was the comet of 1803, and this date corresponds exactly with the other traditions we have of Na-uli-vou's reign, which we know lasted until 1829. It is perhaps worth noting that on the day of the installation of Na-uli-vou, while the sickness was still raging, there was a total eclipse of the sun. "The birds went to roost at high noon, thinking from the darkness that night had fallen." In the same year, says the tradition, there was a hailstorm that broke down the yam-vines, followed by a great hurricane which flooded the valley of the Rewa, swept hundreds of the sick out to sea, and purged the land of the pestilence. I have already given reasons for identifying this eclipse with that of February 1803. There seems to be evidence enough for the belief that a great epidemic was introduced by a vessel wrecked on the Argo (Mbukatatanoa) reef in 1802-3. And now for the symptoms. Mbanuve, it seems clear, died of acute dysentery, but tradition also speaks of a lingering disease with headache, intense thirst, loss of appetite, stuffiness of the nose, and oppression of the chest. The second visitation, if indeed the two were not raging together, seems to have been a very acute form of dysentery. [Pageheader: CONTACT PRODUCES EPIDEMICS] "Before white men came," says the oldest of the natives, "no one died of acute diseases; the people who died were emaciated by lingering infirmities. Coughs came with white men; so did dysentery, for Ratu Mbanuve died of a foreign disease resembling dysentery soon after it was brought here. This we have always heard from our elders." In attributing the diminution of their race to infectious diseases introduced by foreign ships, the Fijians do not limit their meaning to such illnesses as measles, whooping-cough, or other zymotic epidemics, but they include diseases now endemic among them, such as dysentery and influenza--not a specific influenza which has overspread the world since 1889, but the annual recurrent febrile catarrh or severe cold in the head and chest which is now one of the commonest ailments in the country, and which often terminates fatally in the case of the aged, infants, and those already affected by pulmonary disease.