XII.

MISSIONARIES.

IN our efforts to induce the people to pay their taxes, our principal competitors were not the traders, but the Churches. There was but one money-harvest in the year, and the directors of the several bodies that preyed upon the Tongans-the Government, the two Wesleyan missions, and in a lesser degree the Roman Catholics-set themselves to reap the golden crop simultaneously as soon as the sun had dried the copra. I must admit that the Wesleyans, in their anxiety to prove their loyalty, did not hold their missionary collections until the majority of their people had paid their taxes. The other missions were less considerate, and took largely of the things that were Cæsar's. The fakamisonali is so characteristic an entertainment that I must attempt to describe

one.

For some days previously six or seven chosen vessels had been canvassing their friends on behalf of the plates for which they were to be responsible on the great day. There was a keen rivalry between them, and to the importunities of one of them I fell a victim, defending

myself from the others by sheltering behind the promise I had given him not to contribute to any plate but his. Their method was ingenious. The tout took care to approach his victim in the evening when the house was full of people. He would remark that Pita (a neighbour) had promised two dollars this year, and would hint that he scarcely supposes the victim will allow himself to be outdone by such a one as Pita! The unfortunate man, constrained by false shame, promises more than he can afford; the amount is noted in a book, and has to be found by importunity or petty larceny.

As the day drew nearer we were set upon by numbers of the faithful, including our convict groom, who came to borrow money to give to the Church. For these I had but one form of argument forcible if not altogether reverent. They were, I said, proposing to give my money to the Church-not their own; and as it was extremely unlikely that they would ever pay me back, and therefore either I or the Church would have to go without the money, I thought the Church was better able to afford the loss. Cynics among the traders even went the length of declaring that the fakamisonali is always accompanied by the disappearance of their ducks and fowls, which may generally be found in the yard of a rival trader living at a distance, who has innocently bought them from a native bent upon contributing his

mite to the Church. This is no doubt a slander.

On the appointed day the whole population donned their gala trousers and petticoats, and streamed to the church, whose big bell was being tolled by relays of urchins. The pews were crowded: there was not even

SENDING ROUND THE HAT.

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standing-room round the walls. At the pulpit end was a semicircle of seats for the European aristocracy, including, of course, Mr M, the contractor for the Government copra, who aspired to be thought the deliverer of oppressed Tongans, and could not therefore allow such an opportunity for advertisement to pass.

How shall I describe the scene that followed? How shall I portray the unction of the presiding missionary, as he poured forth his prayers for a full plate in a voice shaken with emotion, the roar of "Malo!" as each sentiment found expression, the rich smiles of the owners of the filling basins, and the mortified anxiety of the owners of the still empty ones? How tell of the magnificent, if somewhat ostentatious, liberality of the portly Mr Mas his interpreter, the local butcher, announced, amid deafening cheers, that he was about to give £20 to the Lord out of his deep compassion for the suffering and oppressed? If the bolotu was a pious orgy, the fakamisonali was a religious debauch. In front of the pulpit stood a table on which lay a common wash-hand basin and an account-book, guarded each by a native teacher. The patrons of the basins sat in a stiff row behind.

After the preliminary religious exercises the missionary announced the name of the patron of the "plate" first to be filled. It might be the name of the person in charge of it, or that of some dead or absent one to whose memory it was dedicated. In one case a young blood of Vavau called his plate after a favourite dog, deceased some months. before; but the presiding missionary had to draw the line somewhere, and he elected to draw it at dead dogs, because he feared that it might import a spirit of levity into the

proceedings. As the name of each patron was called she rose in a stately manner and cast her contribution into the basin as a nest-egg. And now those who had promised contributions to the "plate" just announced, swaggered up the aisle and flung their coins into the basin. It was amusing to note the difference of gesture. Here a man would march up with an air of deep disdain and toss his

coins into the basin one by one. Another would approach with proud humility and dash down a handful of threepenny pieces with a crash, retiring as he had come amid the shouts of well-merited applause for the dramatic contrast between his bearing and his bounty. In earlier days, before the glare of publicity had checked the spontaneity of the fakamisonali, the real sensation, as in all well

arranged spectacles, was kept until the end. A band of men and women would come up together and walk round and round the basin, each throwing in a threepenny piece as he passed. After a few rounds a man whose stock of coins was exhausted would fall out, and the procession continued without him. Then only two were left to circle round each other in a sort of dance, amid deafening applause. At last one of the survivors gave out, and the victor was left alone to stand before the basin and chuck in his coins from a distance. He was the hero of the day.

Behind the pulpit were the tables of the money-changer, who, so far from being driven out of this temple, was considered necessary to its very existence, being, in fact, the missionary himself. The mode of collection demanded a larger stock of small coins than was obtainable at the local stores, and as every contributor was encouraged to enlighten his right hand as to the doings of his left, the smaller coins are made to do double duty. When the congregation would no longer respond to the taunts or the entreaties of the basin-man, the contents of the basin were counted and dumped upon the money-changer's table, thus supplying him with change to satisfy the requirements of the contributors whose turns were yet to come.

In the palmy days of the Wesleyan mission, when Mr Baker was still the trusted shepherd of an undivided flock, the mission treasury was filled by a system for the ingenuity of which I believe he deserves the entire credit. In the hysterical enthusiasm so cleverly fostered by the missionaries, the natives were quite ready to mortgage their crops for the brief glory of surpassing their neigh