[Footnote 17: The native poems of the time refer also to a hailstorm, which destroyed the plantations, a hurricane which caused a tidal wave and a great flood, and raised the alluvial flats of the Rewa delta several feet, a tradition which has support in the fact that a network of mangrove roots underlies the soil at a depth of four or five feet. The hurricane is said to have carried the pestilence away with it.] [Footnote 18: They boarded her and directed her to the sandal-wood district in Mbau, returning to the shore with a pig, a monkey, two geese and a cat, besides knives and axes and mirrors. The native historians name her captain "Red-face."] [Footnote 19: It is well here to correct an error for which Thomas Williams was originally responsible, and which has been copied by almost every writer on Fiji since his day, namely, that "about the year 1804 a number of convicts escaped from New South Wales, and settled among the islands." The only foundation for this story is that "Paddy" Connor, who was actually a deserter from a passing ship, was popularly supposed to have "done time," and that the morals of the early settlers were such that if they were not convicts they ought to have been. Putting aside the extreme improbability that escaped convicts should beat 1200 miles in the teeth of the prevailing wind, while so many eligible hiding-places lay near at hand, it is certain that the first white settlers were all shipwrecked sailors, deserters, or men paid off at their own request. According to M. Dumont d'Urville, two escaped convicts named "Sina" and "Gemy" (? Jimmy) were concerned in the seizure of the _Aimable Josephine_ in 1833.] [Footnote 20: Among the settlers in 1812 was one who was believed to be secretly addicted to cannibalism, and was ostracized by his own countrymen.] [Footnote 21: The story of this adventure, as narrated by Dillon, in his _Voyage in the South Seas_, is the most dramatic passage in Polynesian literature.] [Footnote 22: The same Maraia who was afterwards forcibly married to the captain of a Manila ship.] [Footnote 23: Cakobau, according to Fijian spelling.] [Footnote 24: Now included in the grounds of Government House.] [Footnote 25: The massacre took place on the site of the present residence of the manager of the Bank of New Zealand, and four hundred persons were massacred without distinction of sex or age.] [Footnote 26: See _The King and People of Fiji_, by Joseph Waterhouse.] [Footnote 27: Waterhouse, p. 188.] [Footnote 28: The second rebel chief of that name.] [Footnote 29: Author of _The King and People of Fiji_.] [Footnote 30: Maafu was the first to employ cannon in native craft in Fiji. He had two small pieces mounted on the decks of canoes, which, if they did but little execution in a bombardment, often ended a siege by striking terror into the hearts of the garrison.]