Indeed to journey in good fashion you should be accompanied by
a train of bearers carrying heavy bags full of purposed gifts,
and nowhere in the world is the "rate per mile" higher than in
Polynesia.

As in all communities, including our own world of finance, a
man's wealth consists not only in what he possesses but even
more so in the number of people from whom he can beg or borrow.
Wilkes records an interesting example of this, for he found
that the rifle and other costly presents he had presented to
King Tanoa were being seized upon by his (Tanoa's) nephew who
as his vasu had a right to take whatever he might select from
the king's possessions. Indeed, in order to keep his property
in sight, Tanoa was forced to give it to his own sons, thus
escaping the rapacity of his nephew. The construction of the
British law is such that a vasu who thus appropriates property
to himself could be sued and forced to restore it, but not a
single Fijian has yet been so mean as to bring such a matter
into court.

An individual as such can hardly be said to own property, for
nearly all things belong to his family or clan, and are shared
among cousins. This condition is responsible for that absence
of personal ambition and that fatal contentment with existing
conditions, which strikes the white man as so illogical, but
which is nevertheless the dominant feature of the social fabric
of the Polynesians, and which has hitherto prevented the
introduction of "ideals of modern progress." The natives are
happy; why work when every reasonable want is already supplied?
None are rich in material things, but none are beggars