covery of the Fiji islands, but say they went to those islands before the Fiji people came to them: perhaps their canoes were drifted there by strong easterly winds.—Since Captain Cook's time, a certain chief at the island of Tonga[1], where all the principal chiefs at that time resided, and whose name was Tooi Hala Fatai, having by former visits contracted the warlike habits of the Fiji islanders, became tired of the peaceful and idle life he led at home, and was therefore determined to repair again to those islands, in company with a number of young men of the same unquiet disposition. They were pleased with the Fiji maxim, that war and strife were the noble employments of men, and ease and pleasure worthy to be courted only by the weak and effeminate. Tooi Hala Fatai accordingly set sail with his followers, about 250 in number, in three large canoes, for the island of Laemba; not to make an attack upon the place, but to join one party or the other, and rob, plunder, procure canoes, kill the natives, and in short to do any thing that was, accord-
- ↑ It must be observed that Tonga is the name of one of the largest of this cluster of islands, and that it gives name to all these islands taken collectively, as a capital town sometimes gives name to a country; and that it must be received in this latter sense wherever the words "island of" are not used before it.
