Let him go further afield. He
will find the roads almost everywhere to cease or to be made impassable
by native pig-fences, bridges to be quite unknown, and houses of the
whites to become at once a rare exception. Set aside the German
plantations, and the frontier is sharp. At the boundary of the _Eleele
Sa_, Europe ends, Samoa begins. Here, then, is a singular state of
affairs: all the money, luxury, and business of the kingdom centred in
one place; that place excepted from the native government and
administered by whites for whites; and the whites themselves holding it
not in common but in hostile camps, so that it lies between them like a
bone between two dogs, each growling, each clutching his own end.
Should Apia ever choose a coat of arms, I have a motto ready: "Enter
Rumour painted full of tongues." The majority of the natives do
extremely little; the majority of the whites are merchants with some four
mails in the month, shopkeepers with some ten or twenty customers a day,
and gossip is the common resource of all. The town hums to the day's
news, and the bars are crowded with amateur politicians. Some are office-
seekers, and earwig king and consul, and compass the fall of officials,
with an eye to salary.
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