The Berlin convention had long
closed its sittings; the text of the Act had been long in our hands;
commissioners were announced to right the wrongs of the land question,
and two high officials, a chief justice and a president, to guide policy
and administer law in Samoa. Their coming was expected with an
impatience, with a childishness of trust, that can hardly be exaggerated.
Months passed, these angel-deliverers still delayed to arrive, and the
impatience of the natives became changed to an ominous irritation. They
have had much experience of being deceived, and they began to think they
were deceived again. A sudden crop of superstitious stories buzzed about
the islands. Rivers had come down red; unknown fishes had been taken on
the reef and found to be marked with menacing runes; a headless lizard
crawled among chiefs in council; the gods of Upolu and Savaii made war by
night, they swam the straits to battle, and, defaced by dreadful wounds,
they had besieged the house of a medical missionary. Readers will
remember the portents in mediaeval chronicles, or those in _Julius Caesar_
when
"Fierce fiery warriors fought upon the clouds
In ranks and squadrons."
And doubtless such fabrications are, in simple societies, a natural
expression of discontent; and those who forge, and even those who spread
them, work towards a conscious purpose.
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