The law to be
enforced, causes of dispute between white and brown to be eliminated,
taxes to be raised, a central power created, the country opened up, the
native race taught industry: all these were detestable to the natives,
and to all of these he must set his hand. The more I learn of his brief
term of rule, the more I learn to admire him, and to wish we had his
like.
In the face of bitter native opposition, he got some roads accomplished.
He set up beacons. The taxes he enforced with necessary vigour. By the
6th of January, Aua and Fangatonga, districts in Tutuila, having made a
difficulty, Brandeis is down at the island in a schooner, with the
_Adler_ at his heels, seizes the chief Maunga, fines the recalcitrant
districts in three hundred dollars for expenses, and orders all to be in
by April 20th, which if it is not, "not one thing will be done," he
proclaimed, "but war declared against you, and the principal chiefs taken
to a distant island." He forbade mortgages of copra, a frequent source
of trickery and quarrel; and to clear off those already contracted,
passed a severe but salutary law. Each individual or family was first to
pay off its own obligation; that settled, the free man was to pay for the
indebted village, the free village for the indebted province, and one
island for another.
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