apprehends, misapprehends, and is usually silent. As in a child, a
considerable intemperance of speech is accompanied by some power of
secrecy. News he publishes; his thoughts have often to be dug for. He
looks on at the rude career of the dollar-hunt, and wonders. He sees
these men rolling in a luxury beyond the ambition of native kings; he
hears them accused by each other of the meanest trickery; he knows some
of them to be guilty; and what is he to think? He is strongly conscious
of his own position as the common milk-cow; and what is he to do? "Surely
these white men on the beach are not great chiefs?" is a common question,
perhaps asked with some design of flattering the person questioned. And
one, stung by the last incident into an unusual flow of English, remarked
to me: "I begin to be weary of white men on the beach."

But the true centre of trouble, the head of the boil of which Samoa
languishes, is the German firm. From the conditions of business, a great
island house must ever be an inheritance of care; and it chances that the
greatest still afoot has its chief seat in Apia bay, and has sunk the
main part of its capital in the island of Upolu. When its founder, John
Caesar Godeffroy, went bankrupt over Russian paper and Westphalian iron,
his most considerable asset was found to be the South Sea business. This
passed (I understand) through the hands of Baring Brothers in London, and
is now run by a company rejoicing in the Gargantuan name of the _Deutsche
Handels und Plantagen Gesellschaft fur Sud-See Inseln zu Hamburg_. This
piece of literature is (in practice) shortened to the D. H. and P. G.,
the Old Firm, the German Firm, the Firm, and (among humorists) the Long
Handle Firm. Even from the deck of an approaching ship, the island is
seen to bear its signature--zones of cultivation showing in a more vivid
tint of green on the dark vest of forest. The total area in use is near
ten thousand acres. Hedges of fragrant lime enclose, broad avenues
intersect them. You shall walk for hours in parks of palm-tree alleys,