I found the
Prince slowly recovering from an attack of fever, and lying on a heap
of mats (which.
Formed his bed) on the floor of his own private room,
which, however, greatly resembled an old curiosity shop. Everything
was in great disorder, and piles of London Graphics and other papers
littered the ground, and on the tables were piled indiscriminately
clocks, flasks, silver cups, fishing rods, guns, musical boxes, and
numerous other articles which I discovered later on were presents from
high officials and other Europeans, and which he did not know what
to do with. Nearly every window in the house had a pane of glass[3]
broken, the floors were devoid of mats or carpets, and in places were
rotten and full of holes. This will give some idea of the state of
chaos that reigned in the Prince's "palace."
Ratu Lala himself was a tall, broad-shouldered man of about forty, his
hair slightly grey, with a bristly moustache and a very long sloping
forehead. Though dignified, he wore an extremely fierce expression,
so much so that I instinctively felt his subjects had good cause to
treat him with the respect and fear that I had heard they gave him. He
belongs to the Fijian royal family, and though he does not rank as
high as his cousin, Ratu Kandavu Levu, whom I also visited at Bau,
he is infinitely more powerful, and owns more territory. His father
was evidently a "much married man" since Ratu Lala himself told me
that he had had "exactly three hundred wives." But in spite of this
he had been a man of prowess, as the Fijians count it, and I received
as a present from Ratu Lala a very heavy hardwood war-club that had
once belonged to his father, and which, he assured me, had killed a
great many people.
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