Identifier: countriesofworld04brow (find matches)
Title: The countries of the world : being a popular description of the various continents, islands, rivers, seas, and peoples of the globe
Year: 1876 (1870s)
Authors: Brown, Robert, 1842-1895
Subjects:
Publisher: London New York : Cassell, Petter, Galpin & co.
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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at one time frightfully prevalent among theFijians, is now on the wane, and will soon become extinct. Tonga, or Friendly Isi^nds. These islands are situated about 260 miles to the west of the Fijis, but are neitherso fertile nor so well wooded. The inhabitants number about 22,000, and owing to theirenterprise, intelligence, and capacity for colonisation and association, have been called theAnglo-Saxons of the Pacific. Their Government, which is now framed on a Europeanmodel, is said to be well conducted, and altogether very creditable to the King and hisPrime Minister, an American gentleman. Coffee cultivation is being forced by a lawwhich compels every householder to possess 25 coffee trees, and 200 cotton bushes, but theindolence of the natives does not always permit of their picking the crop, for it must notbe lost sight of that the history of Tongas civilisation is really the history of the King—George Tabu—his people showing little interest in the progress which he is forcing
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NATIVES AND IDOL OF THE MARQUESAS. 33 THE TONGA ISI.oiNDS. 6.3 them to adopt * At latest accounts f he was a man over eig-hty years of age, and possessesmore sagacity, energy, and liberality than any man in his dominions. The soil, tlioiighnot so rich or so e.^tensive as that of the Fijis, is sufficiently fertile. Indeed, it is toofertile for anything but the indigenous flora. For instance, potatoes yield only one crop, freshseed having to be sown each time, but the sweet potato and yam succeed very well. Buyingand selling copra is the chief commerce here, as in all the South Sea islands, and has of latealmost displaced the cocoa-nut oil trade from the market. There are, besides, several Britishfirms, branches of German houses, which carry on an immense trade with the Polynesianand Papuan Islands, and have theii- chief depots in Samoa, doing business in Tonga.

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