Note 8 — SAMOA (continued 2)

Père Gavet complained to me of what he called the unreasonableness of Sir John Thurston, the high commissioner and English governor of Fiji, when the Catholic bishop, upon his canoe’s touching the shore of some Christian village, was carried up, canoe and all, into the public place or village green, Sir John interfered, and forbade its ever happening again. And I myself could not say that it was not a small discourtesy.

But this was the point, as Sir John told me: in the old Fijian habits such things were done for a sovereign chief, and for a political ruler; and since the Church had preached the division of the two authorities, such special homage should have been reserved for the civil and not the religious power.