The native reflects:
Concerning this great matter, to wit the continual decline of us natives at this time, it is a great and weighty matter. For my part I am ill at ease on that account; I eat ill and sleep ill through my continual pondering of this matter day after day. Three full months has my soul been tossed about as I pondered this great matter, and in those three months there were three nights when pondering of this matter in my bed lasted even till day, and something then emerged in my mind, and these my reflections touch upon religion and touch upon the law, and the things that my mind saw stand here written below.
He then takes up the points that have disturbed him:
Well, if the very first thing that lived in the world is Adam, whence did he come, he who came to tell Eve to eat the fruit? From this fact it is plain that there is a Prince whom God created first to be Prince of the World, perchance it is he who is called the Vu God [Noble Vu].... Consider this: It is written in the Bible that there were only two children of Adam, to wit Cain and Abel. But whence did the woman come who was Cain's wife?...
It seems to me as though the introducers of Christianity were slightly wrong in so far as they have turned into devils the Vu Gods of the various parts of Fiji; and since the Vu Gods have suddenly been abandoned in Fiji, it is as though we changed the decision of the Great God, Jehovah, since that very Vu God is a great leader of the Fijians. That is why it seems to me a possible cause for the Decline of Population lies in the rule of the Church henceforth to treat altogether as devil work the ghosts and the manner of worshiping the Vu Gods of the Fijians, who are their leaders in the life in the flesh, whom the Great God gave, and chose, and sent hither to be man's leader. But now that the Vu Gods whom Jehovah gave us have been to a certain extent rudely set aside, and we go to pray directly to the God of Spirit for things concerning the flesh [life in the flesh], it appears as if the leader of men resents it and he sets himself to crush our little children and women with child. Consider this:
If you have a daughter, and she loves a youth and is loved of him, and you dislike this match, but in the end they none the less follow their mutual love and elope forthwith and go to be married, how is it generally with the first and the second child of such a union, does it live or does it die? The children of Fijians so married are as a rule already smitten from their mother's womb. Wherefore? Does the woman's father make witchcraft? No. Why then does the child die thus?
Simply that your Vu sees your anger and carries out his crushing even in its mother's womb; that is the only reason of the child's death. Or what do you think in the matter? Is it by the power of the devil that such wonders are wrought? No, that is only the power that originates from the God of Spirit, who has granted to the Prince of men, Vu God, that his will and his power should come to pass in the earthly life.
He develops this theme with ever-increasing emotion, until his poor mind can think no more.
Alas! Fiji! Alas! Fiji is gone astray, and the road to the salvation of its people is obstructed by the laws of the Church and the State. Alas! you, our countrymen, if perchance you know, or have found the path which my thoughts have explored and join exertions to attain it, then will Fiji increase.
But Fijians have prayed to God, yet they have not increased, he exclaims, faced with the unalterable facts. Why not? Christianity has been with them many years. Does God hear their prayer! He proceeds to give his own observations of life, and asks: "Is this true, reverend sirs? Yes, it is most true." After making some comparisons between his land and others, neglected of God in that they have no Vu Gods, he expostulates: