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The land commission and the municipal council are in process of organization. A rational and evenly distributed scheme of taxation, both municipal and upon imports, is in operation. Malietoa is respected as King. The new treaty of extradition with Great Britain, after due ratification, was proclaimed on the 25th of last March. Its beneficial working is already apparent.
He was now a lord of land, a householder in his unpretentious Abbotsford, and "a great chief" among the natives, distracted as they were by a king de facto, and a king over the water, with the sonorous names of Malietoa and Mataafa. My conjectures as to the romantic side of his dealings with the rightful king are vague and need not be recorded.
Amatua then announced that the feast was ready, and the Governor and his wife were seated at the head at one end of the long table, with Tamasese and Malietoa Tanu on either side. The board, figuratively speaking, groaned under a great spread of native delicacies.
He ordered the usual green cocoa-nut leaves to be plaited, and himself to be done up in them, slung on a pole, carried by two men, and laid down before his father as if it were the baked victim from Savaii. Malietoa saw a bright eye peering through the leaflets, opened, and behold! there was his son Polu-leuligana.
Stuebel it seemed simple enough: the offenders were to be effectually punished, the sufferers partially indemnified. To the Samoans, the thing appeared no less simple, but quite different: "Malietoa was selling Samoans to Misi Ueba." What else could be expected?
"Do not pursue in wrath against Malietoa," said Mataafa "but try to bring about a compromise, and form a united government." "Very well," said Tamasese, "leave it to me, and I will try." From Mulinuu, Mataafa went on board the Bismarck, and was graciously received.
Yet when Weber's spiriting was done, and the curtain rose on the set scene of the coronation, Mataafa was absent, and Tamasese stood in his place. Malietoa was to be deposed for a piece of solemn and offensive trickery, and the man selected to replace him was his sole partner and accomplice in the act.
To perpetuate the remembrance of the victory, the Salafai district was called Lele'ale'a, or the "Mooring-stick," and further merged into Faasaleleanga, or "Made sacred to the mooring-stick." When the district after that time united to raise war it was called the lifting of the Le'ale'a club of Malietoa; and all the Faasaleleanga people rose and followed wherever Malietoa and the club preceded.
They are perhaps the finest people in a physical point of view of any, yet they had more pharisaical pride and less consciousness of sin; and this, it is possible, prevented them from adopting some of those cruel practices prevalent among their neighbours. "The teachers left by Williams laboured perseveringly. Still they could not persuade Malietoa to abandon the war.
A curious episode, which might have turned out to be dangerous, happened during the war troubles, when King Malietoa went up to Vailima secretly to have a talk with Tusitala. After the talk Louis offered him a present, asking what he preferred. Malietoa said he would like a revolver, and Louis took one from the safe and handed it to his wife, who happened to be sitting next the king.
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