III

Colonel Tate, the Administrator, was a little man. He was supposed to be known among the natives as Monga-Monga—page 134or the Cockroach; and the name had somehow a certain humorous aptness. But those who knew him best said that he was a man of high principle, and I also was of that opinion. Under his administration, it is true, were sown the seeds of future abuses; but I do not think he would have allowed them to propagate as they eventually did. He was modest and retiring, and that he had courage is evinced by his wish to charge the head of the London Mission with contempt of court. The power of the missions, it must be understood, is considerable. That Logan's administration was unpopular with two of them is notorious, and had Logan kept on the right side of the missionaries he might still have been in office. This phase of the situation must have been from the first apparent to his successor.