After reading my letter of introduction he asked me to stay as long
as I liked, and he called his head servant and told him to find me
a room. This servant's name was Tolu, and as he spoke English fairly
well, I soon learned a great deal about Ratu Lala and his people.

Ratu Lala was married to a very high-caste lady who was closely related
to the King of Tonga, and several of whose relatives accompanied us
on our expeditions. By her he had two small children named Tersi (boy)
and Moe (girl), both of whom, during my stay (as will hereafter appear)
were sent to school at Suva, amid great lamentations on the part of
the women of Ratu Lala's household. Two months before my visit Ratu
Lala had lost his eldest daughter (by his Tongan wife). She was twelve
years old, and a favourite of his, and her grave was on a bluff below
the house, under a kind of tent, hung round with fluttering pieces
of "tapa" cloth. Spread over it was a kind of gravel of bright green
Stones which he had had brought from a long distance. Little Moe and
Tersi were always very interested in watching me skin my birds, and
their exclamation of what sounded like "Esa!" ("Oh look!") showed their
enjoyment. They were two of the prettiest little children I think I
have ever seen, but they did not know a word of English, and called me
"Misi Walk." They and their mother always took their meals sitting on
mats in the verandah. Ratu Lala had two grown-up daughters by other
wives, but they never came to the house, living in an adjoining hut
where I often joined them at a game of cards. They were both very
stately and beautiful young women, with a haughty bearing which made
me imagine that they were filled with a sense of their own importance.

As is well known all over Fiji, Ratu Lala, a few years before my stay
with him, had been deported in disgrace for a term of several months,
to the island of Viti Levu, where he would be under the paternal eye