'We are now about 250 miles east of Fiji, and sighted land this afternoon; we have just anchored off Tonga, which certainly compares unfavourably with our beautiful Fijian Isles. This is the dullest, flattest land I have yet seen - a low shore, fringed with long lines of coacoa-palm, which seen from the sea are singularly monotonous. The Kings Town Nukualofa, consists of a long row of more or less ugly villas, stores, and barracks, built of wood and painted white: one is bright green ... About a mile and a half along the shore is another village called Maofanga, where there is another Wesleyan Church, but it is chiefly a Roman Catholic Settlement;' (C.F. Gordon Cumming, A Lady's cruise in a French Man-of-War, London, 1882, I, pp. 9-10)