In Fair Fiji

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 36, 3 September 1903, Page 1

In Fair Fiji

Sir G. W. Des Voeux has had a tolerably wide experience of colonial rulefr- He;, was Magistrate of<British Guiana in 1863-1869, Administrator and Colonial Secretary of St. Lucia from 1869 to 1880, Governor of the stormy Bahamas for a time in the last-named year, Governor of Fiji and High Commissioner of the Western

Pacific from 1880 to 1885, Governor of Newfoundland in 1886, and of Hong-Kong from 1887 to 1891. The London correspondent of the Melbourne ' Advocate ' conveys the intelligence that Sir George has just issued his reminiscences in two bulky, but entertaining volumes. His Fiji experiences have a special interest just now, in viejw of the recent spasms of controversy that shook those isles reef and palm. 'He has some severe things to>say of the Wesleyan missionaries,' says the ' Advocate ; cor respondent. ' His relations;' with (them (he remarks) were strained from the start. They caused him " much embarrassment and unexessary correspondence." ' After having described some of the annoyances to which they subjected him, this Protestant ex-Governor pays the following "warm tribute to the Marist missionaries in Fiji : ' I am bound to say that the conduct of the Roman Catholic missionaries was in marked contrast with that of their Wesleyan rivals, and that they were invariably loyal in both spirit and action, while their apostolic poverty and the extreme simplicity of their lives entitled them to special respect.'