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Title: The Fijians
       A Study of the Decay of Custom

Author: Basil Thomson

Release Date: December 28, 2011 [EBook #38432]

Language: English

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THE FIJIANS

A STUDY OF THE DECAY OF CUSTOM

[Illustration: BREADFRUIT.]

THE FIJIANS

A STUDY OF THE DECAY OF CUSTOM

BY

BASIL THOMSON

AUTHOR OF "THE STORY OF DARTMOOR PRISON," ETC.

ILLUSTRATED

LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN

1908

_OTHER WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

  _South Sea Yarns_
  _The Diversions of a Prime Minister_
  _A Court Intrigue_
  _The Indiscretions of Lady Asenath_
  _Savage Island_
  _The Story of Dartmoor Prison_

  (_In collaboration with_ Lord Amherst of Hackney)
  _The Discovery of the Solomon Islands_

_Copyright, London 1908, by William Heinemann._




PREFACE


This volume does not pretend to be an exhaustive monograph on the
Fijians. Their physical characteristics and their language, which have
no bearing upon the state of transition from customary law to modern
competition, are omitted, since they may be studied in the pages of
Williams, Waterhouse and Hazlewood, which the author has freely
consulted. All that is aimed at is a study of the decay of custom in a
race that is peculiarly tenacious of its institutions--the decay that
has now set in among the natural races in every part of the globe.

The author lived among the Fijians with short intervals for ten years,
first as Stipendiary Magistrate in various parts of the group, then as
Commissioner of the Native Lands Court, and finally as Acting Head of
the Native Department. Much of the anthropological information was
collected for the Commission appointed in 1903 to investigate the causes
of the decrease of the natives, of which the author was a member, and of
that portion of the book his fellow-Commissioner, Dr. Bolton Glanvill
Corney, C.M.G., and the late Mr. James Stewart, C.M.G., should be
considered joint authors, though they are not responsible for the
conclusions drawn from the evidence.

To Dr. Corney, whose services to medical science in the investigation of
leprosy and tropical diseases in the Pacific are so widely known, his
special thanks are due. He also received valuable assistance from Dr.
Lynch, the late Mr. Walter Carew and a number of native assistants,
notably Ilai Motonithothoka, Ratu Deve, the late Ratu Nemani Ndreu, and
others. The late Mr. Lorimer Fison also helped him with many
suggestions.

The ideas expressed in the introduction were formulated in the author's
presidential address to the Devonshire Association in 1905: the marriage
system and the mythology were described in papers read before the
Anthropological Institute: some account of the "Path of the Shades" and
the fishing of the Mbalolo are to be found in others of the author's
books.

The spelling adopted for native words may be displeasing to Fijian
scholars, particularly the rendering of _q_ by _nk_, but although
_wanka_ may not represent the Fijian pronunciation as accurately as
_wangga_, it is certainly less uncouth. Hazelwood's spelling, excellent
as it is for the purpose of teaching Fijians to read and write their own
language, is misleading to English readers, and the abandonment of his
consonants _c_ for _th_, _b_ for _mb_, _d_ for _nd_ and _g_ for _ng_,
needs no apology.

  _London, 1908._




INTRODUCTION


The present population of the globe is believed to be about fifteen
hundred millions, of which seven hundred millions are nominally
progressive and eight hundred millions are stagnant under the law of
custom. It is difficult to choose terms that even approach scientific
accuracy in these generalizations, for, as Mr. H.G. Wells has remarked,
if we use the word "civilized" the London "Hooligan" and the "Bowery
tough" immediately occur to us; if the terms "stagnant" or
"progressive," how are the Parsee gentleman and the Sussex farm labourer
to be classed? Nor can the terms "white" and "coloured" be used, for
there are Chinese many shades whiter than the Portuguese. But as long as
the meaning is clear the scientific accuracy of terms is unimportant,
and so for convenience we will call all races of European descent
"civilized," and races living under the law of custom "uncivilized." The
problem that will be solved within the next few centuries is--What part
is to be taken in the world's affairs by the eight hundred millions of
uncivilized men who happen for the moment to be politically inferior to
the other seven hundred millions?

For centuries they have been sleeping. Under the law of custom, which no
man dares to disobey, progress was impossible. The law of custom was the
law of our own forefathers until the infusion of new blood and new
customs shook them out of the groove and set them to choosing between
the old and the new, and then to making new laws to meet new needs. This
happened so long ago that if it were not for a few ceremonial survivals
we might well doubt whether our forefathers were ever so held in
bondage. With the precept--to do as your father did before you--an
isolated race will remain stationary for centuries. There is, I
believe, in all the history of travel, only one instance in which the
absolute stagnation of a race has been proved, and that is the case of
the Solomon Islands, the first of the Pacific groups to be discovered,
and the last to be influenced by Europeans. In 1568 a Spanish expedition
under Alvaro de Mendana set sail from Peru in quest of the Southern
continent. Missing all the great island groups Mendana discovered the
islands named by him Islas de Saloman, not because he found any gold
there, but because he hoped thereby to inflame the cupidity of the
Council of the Indies into fitting out a fresh expedition. Gomez
Catoira, his treasurer, has left us a detailed account of the customs of
the natives and about forty words of their language. And now comes the
strange part of the story. Expedition after expedition set sail for the
Isles of Solomon; group after group was discovered; but the Isles of
Solomon were lost, and at last geographers, having shifted them to every
space left vacant in the chart, treated them as fabulous and expunged
them altogether. They were rediscovered by Bougainville exactly two
centuries later, but it was not until late in the nineteenth century
that any attempt was made to study the language and customs of the
natives. It was then found that in every particular, down to the
pettiest detail in their dress, their daily life and their language,
they were the same as when Catoira saw them two centuries earlier, and
so no doubt they would have remained until the last trump had not
Europeans come among them.

If, as there is good reason for believing, the modern Eskimo are the
lineal descendants of the cave men of Derbyshire, who hunted the
reindeer and the urus in Pleistocene times, the changelessness of their
habits is to be ascribed to the same cause--the absence of a stimulus
from without to break down the law of custom.

In the sense that no race now exists which is not in some degree touched
by the influence of Western civilization, the present decade may be said
to be a fresh starting-point in the history of mankind. Whithersoever we
turn, the laws of custom, which have governed the uncivilized races for
countless generations, are breaking down; the old isolation which kept
their blood pure is vanishing before railway and steamship communication
which imports alien labourers to work for European settlers; and
ethnologists of the future, having no pure race left to examine, will
have to fall back upon hearsay evidence in studying the history of human
institutions.

All this has happened before in the world's history, but in a more
limited area. To the Roman armies, the Roman system of slave-owning, and
still more to the Roman roads, we owe the fact that there is not in
Western Europe a single race of unmixed blood, for even the Basques, if
they are indeed the last survivors of the old Iberian stock, have
intermarried with the French and Spanish people about them. An
ethnologist of the eighth century, meditating on the wave upon wave of
destructive immigration that submerged England, might well have doubted
whether so extraordinary a mixture of races could ever develop
patriotism and pride of race, and yet it did not take many centuries to
evolve in the English a sense of nationality with insular prejudice
superadded. Nationality and patriotism are in fact purely artificial and
geographical sentiments. We feel none of the bitter hate of our Saxon
forefathers for their Norman conquerors; the path of our advance through
the centuries is strewn with the corpses of patriotisms and race
hatreds.

Nor was the mixture of races in Europe the mere mingling of peoples
descended from a common Aryan stock, for if that were so, what has
become of the Persians and Egyptians, worshippers of AEon and Serapis and
Mithras, who garrisoned the Northumberland wall; of the host of Asiatic
and African soldiers and slaves scattered through Europe during the
Roman Empire; of the Negroes introduced into southern Portugal by Prince
Henry the Navigator; of the Jews that swarmed in every medieval city; of
the Moors in southern Spain? Did none of these intermarry with Aryans,
and leave a half-caste Semitic or Negro or Tartar progeny behind them?
How otherwise can one account for the extraordinary diversity in skull
measurement, in proportion and in colour which is found in the
population of every European country?

If we except the inhabitants of remote islands probably there has never
been an unmixed race since the Palaeolithic Age. Long before the dawn of
history kingdoms rose and fell. Broken tribes, fleeing from invaders,
put to sea and founded colonies in distant lands. Troy was no exception
to the rule of the old world that at the sack of every city the men were
slain and the women reserved to be the wives of their conquerors.
Doubtless it was to keep the Hebrew blood pure that Saul was commanded
to slay "both man and woman, infant and suckling" of the Amalekites, the
ancestors of the Bedawin of the Sinai peninsula.

It may be argued that the laws of custom have been swept away by
conquering races many times in the world's history without any
far-reaching consequences--those of the Neolithic people of the long
barrows by the warriors of the Bronze Age; those of the British by the
Romans; those of the Romano-British by the Saxons; those of the Saxons
by the Normans. But there was this difference: in all these cases the
new customs were forced upon the weaker race by the strong hand of its
conquerors, and as it had obeyed its own laws through fear of the
Unseen, so it adopted the new laws through fear of its new masters. It
was a rough, but in the end a wholesome schooling. We go another way to
work: we do not as a rule come to native races with the authority of
conquerors; we saunter into their country and annex it; we break down
their customs, but do not force them to adopt ours; we teach them the
precepts of Christianity, and in the same breath assure them that
instead of physical punishment by disease which they used to fear, their
disobedience will be visited by eternal punishment after death--a
contingency too remote to have any terrors for them; and then we leave
them like a ship with a broken tiller free to go whithersoever the wind
of fancy drives them, and it is not surprising that they prefer the easy
vices of civilization to its more difficult virtues. In civilizing a
native race the _suaviter in modo_ is a more dangerous process than the
_fortiter in re_.

The law of custom is always interwoven with religion, and is enforced by
fear of earthly punishment for disobedience. This fear is strongest
among patriarchal races whose religion is founded upon the worship of
ancestors. To depart from the customs of the ancestors is to insult the
tribal god, and it is therefore the business of each member of the tribe
to see to it that the impiety of his fellow-tribesmen brings no judgment
down upon his head. In such a community a man is only free from the
tyranny of custom when he dies. As in the German's ideal of a
well-governed city, everything is forbidden. Hedged about by the tabu he
can scarce move hand or foot without circumspection. If he errs, even
unwittingly, the spirits of disease pounce upon him. In Tonga almost
every day he performed the _Moe-moe_, an act of penance to atone for
unconscious breaches of the tabu, and in the civil war of 1810 it was
the practice to open the bodies of the slain to discover from the state
of the liver whether the dead warrior had led a good or an evil life.

Among the races held in bondage by custom there were, of course, rare
souls born before their time in whom the eternal "Thou shalt not" of the
law of custom provoked the question "Why?" But they met the fate
ordained for men born before their time; in civilized states the
hemlock, the cross and the stake; in uncivilized, the club or the spear.
Perhaps the real complaint of the Athenians against Socrates was that an
unceasing flow of wisdom and reproof is more than erring man can endure,
but the published grounds for his condemnation were that he denied the
gods recognized by the State, and that he corrupted the young. This, as
William Mariner tells us, is what men whispered under their breath when
Finau, the king of Vavau in the Friendly Islands, dared to scoff at the
law of tabu in 1810, and he was struck down by sickness while ordering a
rope to be brought for the strangling of his priest. In fact the
reformers of primitive races never lived long: if they were low-born
they were clubbed and that was the end of them and their reforms; if
they were chiefs, and something happened to them, either by disease or
accident, men saw therein the finger of an offended deity, and obedience
to the existing order of things became stronger than before.

The decay of custom, which may be fraught with momentous consequences
for the civilized races, is proceeding more rapidly every year. It can
best be studied by examining the process in a single race in detail, and
for this purpose the Fijians, who are the subject of this volume, are
peculiarly suited, because by their isolation through many centuries no
foreign ideas, filtering through neighbouring tribes, had corrupted
their customary law before Europeans came among them, and so decay set
in with startling suddenness despite their innate conservatism. What is
true of the Fijians is true, with slight modifications, of every
primitive society in Asia, Africa and America which is being dragged
into the vortex of what we call progress. The fabric of every complete
social system has been built up gradually. You may raze it to the
foundations and erect another in its place, but if you pull out a stone
here and there the whole edifice comes tumbling about your ears before
you can make your alterations. It is the fashion to assert that native
races begin to decline as soon as Europeans come into contact with them.
This arises from our evil modern habit of making false generalizations.
The fact that some isolated races suddenly torn from the roots of their
ancient customs begin by decreasing rapidly is so dramatic that we
eagerly fasten on the generalization that weaker races are doomed to
wither away at the coming of the all-conquering European, forgetting the
steady increase of the Bantu races in Africa, and of the Indians and
Chinese up to and even beyond the limit of population which their
country can support.

The main cause of the sudden decrease of a race is the introduction of
new diseases which assume a more virulent aspect when they strike root
in a virgin soil, but we are now beginning to learn that this cause is
only temporary. For a time a race seems to sicken and pine like an
individual, but like an individual it may recover. In the decrease from
disease there seems to be a stopping-place. It may come when the race
has been reduced to one-fifth of its number, like the Maoris, or to a
mere handful like the blacks of New South Wales, but there comes a time
when decay is arrested, and then perhaps fusion with another race has
set in. The type may be lost, but the blood remains.

It is against the attacks of new diseases that the law of custom is most
helpless. The primitive theory of disease and death is so widespread
that we may accept it as the belief of mankind before custom gave place
to scientific inquiry. The primitive argument was this: the natural
state of man is to be healthy, and everything contrary to Nature must be
the doing of some hostile agency. When a man feels ill he knows that an
evil spirit has entered into him, and since evil spirits do not move
unless some person conjures them, his first thought on waking with a
headache is "An enemy hath done this." Out of this springs all the
complicated ritual of witchcraft, fetish and juju, which by frightening
natives into destroying or burying all offal and refuse that might be
used against them by a wizard, achieves the right thing for the wrong
reason. The "Evil spirit" theory of disease is thus not so very far
removed from the bacillus theory: in both the body has been attacked by
a malignant visitor which must be expelled before the patient can
recover. It is in the methods adopted for making the body an
uncomfortable lodging for it that the systems diverge. In all ages the
essential part of therapeutics has been faith in the remedy, whether in
the verse of the Koran swallowed by the Moslem, in the charm prescribed
by the medieval quack, in the "demonstration" of the Christian
Scientist, in the prescription of the medical practitioner. Mankind
survives its remedies as well as its epidemics. England has a population
of nearly forty millions, even though, less than a century ago, as we
learn from Creevy's memoirs, blood-letting was regarded as the proper
treatment for advanced stages of consumption.

It is, I think, safe to assume that in the centuries to come there will
be representatives even of the smallest races now living on the earth,
and that the proportions between civilized and what are now uncivilized
peoples will not have greatly altered, though the political and social
ideas which underlie Western civilization will have permeated the whole
of mankind. It is therefore important to inquire whether the
uncivilized races are really inferior in capacity to Europeans.
Professor Flinders Petrie has expressed the view that the average man
cannot receive much more knowledge than his immediate ancestors, and
that "the growth of the mind can in the average man be but by fractional
increments in each generation." In support of this view he declares that
the Egyptian peasant who has been taught to read and write is in every
case which he has met with "half-witted, silly and incapable of taking
care of himself," while the Copt, whose ancestors have been scribes for
generations, can be educated without sustaining any mental injury. I
venture to think that there are more exceptions than will prove any such
rule. In New Zealand it has been found that Maori children, when they
can be induced to work, are quite equal to their white school-fellows.
Fijian boys educated in Sydney have been proved to be equal to the
average; Tongan boys who have never left their island write shorthand
and solve problems in higher mathematics; Booker Washington and Dubois
are only two out of a host of negroes of the highest attainments.

Australian aborigines, and even Andaman Islanders, have shown some
aptitude when they have overcome the difficulty of a common language
with their teacher; New Guinea children do very well in the mission
schools. The Masai are the most backward of all the East African tribes,
yet Mr. Hollis, the Government Secretary of Uganda, employs two Masai
boys to develop his photographs. It is, in fact, doubtful whether there
is any race of marked mental inferiority, though, as among ourselves,
there are thick-witted individuals, and these may be more common in one
race than in another. Certainly there is no race that suffers mental
injury from teaching. In all uncivilized people there is a lack of
application, and any injury they sustain arises from the confinement
necessary for study. It is character rather than intellect that achieves
things in this world, and character is affected by education, by
climate, and by pressure of circumstances. There are now in almost every
uncivilized race individuals who are defying the law of custom to their
material profit, though not to their entire peace of mind, for they have
begun to understand that the riches of the European may be dearly
purchased, and that in anxiety about many things happiness and
contentment are not often found.

But though all peoples are teachable there are racial idiosyncrasies
which we are only beginning to discover. Why, for instance, should the
Hausa and the Sudanese have a natural aptitude for European military
discipline while the Waganda find it irksome? Why do the Masai, whose
social development is Palaeolithic in its simplicity, make trustworthy
policemen and prison warders, while the Somalis have been found utterly
worthless in both capacities? Why are the Maoris and Solomon Islanders
natural artists in wood-carving while the tribes most nearly allied to
them are almost destitute of artistic skill? These natural aptitudes
suggest what these races may become when we have struck off their
fetters of custom and have forced them to compete with us.

Cheap and rapid means of transit are sweeping away the distinctions of
dress, of custom, and, to some extent, of language, which underlie the
feeling of nationality, and the races now uncivilized will soon settle
for themselves the vital question whether they are to remain hewers of
wood and drawers of water for the white man, or whether they are to take
their place in free competition with him. The "Yellow Peril," which
implies national cohesion among the Mongolians, may be a chimera, but it
is impossible to believe that a white skin is to be for ever a sort of
patent of nobility in the world state of the future.

History teaches us that there can be no middle course. Either race
antipathy and race contempt must disappear, or one breed of men must
dominate the others. The psychology of race contempt has never been
dispassionately studied. It is felt most strongly in the United States
and the West Indies; a little less strongly in the other British
tropical colonies. In England it is sporadic, and is generally confined
to the educated classes. It is scarcely to be noticed in France, Spain,
Portugal or Italy. From this it might be argued that it is peculiar to
races of Teutonic descent were it not for the fact that Germans in
tropical countries do not seem to feel it. It is, moreover, a sentiment
of modern growth. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Englishmen
did not regard coloured people as their inferiors by reason of the
colour of their skin. It appears, in fact, to date only from the time of
slavery in the West Indian colonies, and yet the Romans, the Spaniards,
and the Portuguese, who were the greatest slave-owners in history, never
held marriage with coloured people in contempt. The only race hatred in
the Middle Ages was anti-Semitic, and this was due to the Crusader
spirit. The colour line, as it is called, is drawn more firmly by men
than by women, and deep-seated as it is in the Southern States just now
it may be nothing more than a passing phase of sentiment, a subconscious
instinct of self-preservation in a race which feels that its old
predominance is threatened by equality with its former servants. If you
analyze the sentiment it comes to this. You may tolerate the coloured
man in every relation but one: you may converse with him, eat with him,
live with him on terms of equality, but your gorge rises at the idea of
admitting him to become a member of your family by marriage. In the
ordinary social relations you do not take him quite seriously; if he is
a commoner you treat him as your potential servant; if a dusky potentate
you yield him a sort of jesting deference; but in that one matter of
blood alliance with him you will always keep him at arm's length. That
is the view even of the Englishman who has not lived in a black man's
country, and upon that is built the extraordinary race hatred of the
Southern States, where a white man will not consent to sit in a tramcar
with a negro, though the white man be a cotton operative and the negro a
University professor.

If this race contempt were a primitive instinct with the white race the
future of mankind would be lurid indeed, for it is impossible to believe
that one half of humanity can be kept for ever inferior to the other
without deluging the world with blood. But it is not a primitive
instinct. Shakespeare saw nothing repulsive in the marriage of Desdemona
with a man of colour. Early in the sixteenth century Sieur Paulmier de
Gonneville of Normandy gave his heiress in marriage to Essomeric, the
son of a Brazilian chief, and no one thought that she was hardly
treated. It may not be a pleasant subject to dwell upon, but it is a
fact that women of Anglo-Saxon blood do, even in these days, mate with
Chinese, Arabs, Kaffirs, and even Negroes despite the active opposition
of the whole of their relations. History is filled with romantic
examples of the marriage of European men with native women, to cite no
more than de Bethencourt with the Guanche princess; Cortes with his
Mexican interpreter; John Rolfe with Pocahontas.

It is the fashion to describe the half-caste offspring of such mixed
marriages as having all the vices of both races, and none of the
virtues. In so far as this accusation is true it is accounted for by the
social ostracism in which these people are condemned to live. Disowned
by their fathers, freed by their parentage from the restraints under
which their mothers' people are held in check, it could scarcely be
otherwise, but those who have lived with half-castes of many races will
agree that in intellectual aptitude and in physical endowment they are
generally equal to the average of Europeans when they have the same
education and opportunities, and that there is no physical deterioration
in the offspring of the marriages of half-castes _inter se_.

At the dawn of this twentieth century we see the future of mankind
through a glass darkly, but if we study the state of the coloured people
who are shaking themselves free from the law of custom, we may see it
almost face to face. Race prejudice does not die as hard as one would
think. The Portuguese of the sixteenth century were ready enough to
court as "Emperor of Monomotapa" a petty Bantu chieftain into whose
power they had fallen; and the English beachcomber of the forties who,
when he landed, called all natives "niggers" with an expletive prefix,
might very soon be found playing body-servant to a Fijian chief, who
spoke of him contemptuously as "My white man." In tropical countries the
line of caste will soon cease to be the colour line. There, as in
temperate zones, wealth will create a new aristocracy recruited from men
of every shade of colour. Even in the great cities of Europe and
America we may find men of Hindu and Chinese and Arab origin controlling
industries with their wealth, as Europeans now control the commerce of
India and China, but with this difference--that they will wear the dress
and speak the language which will have become common to the whole
commercial world, and as the aristocracy of every land will be composed
of every shade of colour, so will be the masses of men who work with
their hands. In one country the majority of the labourers will be black
or brown; in another white; but white men will work cheek by jowl with
black and feel no degradation. There will be the same feverish pursuit
of wealth, but all races will participate in it instead of a favoured
few. The world will then be neither so pleasant nor so picturesque a
place to live in, and by the man of that age the twentieth century will
be cherished tenderly as an age of romance, of awakening, and of high
adventure. The historians of that day will speak of the Victorian age as
we speak of the Elizabethan, and will date the new starting-point in the
history of mankind from the decay of the law of custom.




CONTENTS


  CHAP.                                                            PAGE
          INTRODUCTION                                              vii
       I. THE TRANSITION                                              1
      II. THE AGE OF MYTH                                             4
     III. THE AGE OF HISTORY                                         21
      IV. CONSTITUTION OF SOCIETY                                    56
       V. WARFARE                                                    85
      VI. CANNIBALISM                                               102
     VII. RELIGION                                                  111
    VIII. POLYGAMY                                                  172
      IX. FAMILY LIFE                                               175
       X. THE MARRIAGE SYSTEM                                       182
      XI. CUSTOMS AT BIRTH                                          206
     XII. CIRCUMCISION AND TATTOOING                                216
    XIII. THE PRACTICE OF PROCURING ABORTION.                       221
     XIV. THE INSOUCIANCE OF NATIVE RACES                           228
      XV. SEXUAL MORALITY                                           233
     XVI. EPIDEMIC DISEASES                                         243
    XVII. LEPROSY (_VUKAVUKA_ OR _SAKUKA_)                          255
   XVIII. YAWS (_THOKO_)                                            270
     XIX. TUBERCULOSIS                                              277
      XX. TRADE                                                     280
     XXI. NAVIGATION AND SEAMANSHIP                                 290
    XXII. PHYSICAL POWERS                                           297
   XXIII. ATTITUDES AND MOVEMENTS                                   299
    XXIV. TRAITS OF CHARACTER                                       304
     XXV. SWIMMING                                                  316
    XXVI. FISHING                                                   320
   XXVII. GAMES                                                     328
  XXVIII. FOOD                                                      334
    XXIX. YANKONA (_KAVA_)                                          341
     XXX. TOBACCO                                                   352
    XXXI. THE TENURE OF LAND                                        354
   XXXII. CONCLUSION                                                387
          INDEX                                                     391




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


  BREADFRUIT                                                 _Frontispiece_

  DESCENDANTS OF TONGAN IMMIGRANTS PERFORMING THE TONGAN DANCE _LAKALAKA_
                                                      _To face page_ 22
  BRINGING FIRST FRUITS TO MBAU                                "     60
  BUILDING A CHIEF'S HOUSE                                     "     70
  SPOIL FROM THE PLANTATIONS--(TARO, COCOANUTS AND YANGKONA)   "     78
  PAINTING A _TAPA_ SHROUD                                     "    130
  SERUA, AN ISLAND CHIEF VILLAGE IN THE _MBAKI_ COUNTRY        "    154
  THE MBURE-NI-SA (CLUB HOUSE)                                 "    176
  WOMEN FISHING WITH THE SEINE                                 "    212
  A WAR DANCE                                                  "    286
  THE _THAMAKAU_                                               "    290
  THE HAIR PLASTERED WITH BLEACHING LIME                       "    302
  THE CHIEF'S TURTLE FISHERS                                   "    320
  SLAUGHTERING THE TURTLE                                      "    326
  BREWING YANGKONA                                             "    344
  PICKING COCOANUTS                                            "    364

_Photographs by_ Waters, _Suva, Fiji_.




THE FIJIANS




CHAPTER I

THE TRANSITION


The Fijian of to-day is neither savage nor civilized. Security from
violence has fostered his natural improvidence. The missionaries, who
have effected so marvellous a change in his moral and religious
sentiments, who have induced him to join in the suppression of such
customs as polygamy, cannibalism, strangling of widows, amputating the
finger as a mark of mourning, dressing the hair in heathen fashion,
wearing the loin bandage, tattooing and many others, have neglected to
teach him to care for his health and his physical well-being. They have
taught him to cultivate his mind rather than his food plantation, and
they have given him no immediate punishment for thriftlessness and
disobedience to take the place of the old club law. He was accustomed to
be ruled by a strong hand because no other rule was possible, and he is
suffering from the fact that civilization was not forced upon him. If,
instead of being ceded, the country had been conquered and each man
relegated to his place with a strong hand, the dawn of settled
government would have been less bleak.

Having never known the struggle for existence that prevails in the
crowded communities of the old world, he was spurred into activity by
the fear of annihilation, for upon his alertness his existence depended.
Intertribal wars conquered the natural indolence and apathy of the
people, but, with the bestowal of the _pax Britannica_ this impulse
failed. The earth yielded all they required for their simple wants, and
they were free to indulge their natural indolence. They lack the
alertness of races who have to contend against savage animals, from
which the Fiji islands are free, and they have none of the steady
application of those who must compete with others for their daily bread.

Yet, in being thriftless and apathetic, they are but obeying a natural
law which the modern state socialist is too apt to minimize if not to
ignore. Without the necessity for a struggle between man and man or man
and Nature there has never been any progress. Society must stagnate or
slip backwards without the spur of ambition or of fear; the natural bent
of all men is to be idle. The old world Paradise was a garden that
yielded its fruit without cultivation; the old world punishment for
disobedience was the decree that man should earn his bread by the sweat
of his brow. Industry and thrift are hardly to be looked for in a
luxurious climate among a sparse population, but rather among those
races whose climate and soil yield food only at stated seasons of the
year, and then grudgingly in return for unremitting labour, or in those
crowded communities whose local supply of food is insufficient. When we
blame the Fijians for their thriftlessness we are prone to judge them by
too high a standard, and to forget that they are land-owning peasants, a
class which even among ourselves is exempt from the grinding necessity
of perpetual toil--a state that has come to be regarded as the natural
lot of the poor. The primitive organization of village communities among
whom the tie of individual property is loose and ill-defined enough to
please the most advanced socialist, causes thrift to be regarded as a
vice, and wasteful prodigality the highest virtue.

[Pageheader: LACK OF IMAGINATION]

The Fijians have already adopted some of the tools of civilization; the
native canoe has given place to vessels of European model, and so far as
clothing is necessary, European fabrics have taken the place of the old
_Liku_ and _Malo_. "Mbau," say the natives, "is adopting European
fashions"--the superficial fashions that take the fancy--"and where Mbau
leads others will follow in time." In spite of the whirlwind of war and
rapine that devastated the country fifty years ago, it would now be
difficult to find a more honest and law-abiding community than the
Fijian, so far as intercourse among themselves is concerned. It is true
that their sympathies are not yet wide enough to allow them to think of
others. Many an otherwise excellent Fijian will, with a clear
conscience, deceive and cheat a foreigner; if his pig strays, he will
pierce its eyes with thorns, or throw quicklime into them to blind the
animal and prevent it from straying again; a poor half-witted woman who
annoys her neighbours by wandering into their houses has the soles of
her feet scored with sharp knives to keep her at home. Sympathy has had
no time to develop, and consequently his sentiments are confined within
the limits of his own joint family, and do not reach up to the foreigner
or down to the lower animals.

In most respects the Fijian is some centuries behind us and it is
unreasonable to expect him to leap the gap at a single bound; yet it is
nevertheless unnecessary that he should follow the tortuous road by
which we arrived unguided at our present state of development.




CHAPTER II

THE AGE OF MYTH


Of all inhabited countries in the world Fiji is probably the poorest in
history. No European, who left a record behind him, had intercourse with
the natives until 1810, and the historical traditions of the natives
themselves scarcely carry back their history beyond the middle of the
eighteenth century. While the chiefs of the Marquesas and Hawaii are
said to recall the names of their ancestors for seventy-three
generations,[1] the chiefs of Mbau cannot give the name of any of their
predecessors before Nailatikau, who reigned during the last quarter of
the eighteenth century, and the earliest name recalled by other tribes
of longer memory is only the sixth generation from the reigning chief.
It is not that the Fijians were less prone than other islanders to
embody their tribal history in traditional poetry, but that the
political _morcellement_ of the tribal units left the poets nothing to
record. A century ago Mbau was nothing but a petty fortified village in
the interior, governed by chiefs whose names were unknown three miles
from its public square. The chiefs of Rewa were equally obscure, and the
songs which celebrated their petty achievements died with the generation
that sang them. When the great wave of unrest in the interior of
Vitilevu sent them forth to fight their way to a new home on the coast,
and to found confederations of the tribes they had subdued, their
history was born; and at its birth died the old traditions of the tribes
they conquered, for vassals in Fiji have nothing to do with memories of
departed greatness.

[Pageheader: THE BOND OF _TAUVU_]

Besides the historical _meke_ there remain a few mythological sagas
which refer to a far older period. With ancestor-worshippers like the
Fijians the founders of their race attain immortality denied to their
descendants, who at the most become demi-gods enjoying a place in
mythology only as long as their deeds on earth are remembered. The
founders of the Fijian race are known as _Kalou-Vu_--Gods of Origin--and
the sagas that relate their exploits, overlaid as they are with glosses
by the poets, undoubtedly contain the germ of traditional history of a
very ancient date. The historical outline of the Nakauvandra sagas is
supported by another class of evidence, namely the _tauvu_.

The word _tauvu_ means literally "Sprung from the same root," or "of
common origin." It is applied to two or more tribes who may live in
different islands, speak different dialects, and have, in short, nothing
in common but their god. They do not necessarily intermarry; they may
have held no intercourse for generations; yet, though each may have
forgotten the names of its chiefs three generations back, the site of
its ancient home, and the traditions of its migrations, it never forgets
the tribe with which it is _tauvu_. Members of that tribe may run riot
in its village, slaughter its animals, and ravage its plantations, while
it sits smiling by; for the spoilers are its brothers, worshippers of
its common ancestor, and are entitled in the fullest sense to the
"freedom of the city." In several instances I have traced back the bond
of tauvu to its origin, the marriage of the sister of some high chief
with the head of a distant clan. Her rank was so transcendent that she
brought into her husband's family a measure of the godhead of her
ancestors, and her descendants have thenceforth reverenced her
forefathers in preference to those of her husband. But in the majority
of cases--and it is the exception to find a clan which is not tauvu to
some other--the bond is too remote for tradition to have preserved its
origin, and in these the two clans were probably offshoots from the same
stock. Perhaps there was a quarrel between brothers, and one of them was
driven out with his family to find another home; or a young swarm from
an overcrowded hive may have crossed the water to seek wider planting
lands for their support, as the first Aryan emigrants burst through the
barriers of their cradle-land and overran Europe. Had the Aryans been
ancestor-worshippers Rome would have been _tauvu_ with Athens, and the
descendants of the youths driven forth in the Ver Sacrum _tauvu_ with
Rome.

The general tendency of the bonds of _tauvu_ in the western portion of
the group is to confirm the sagas of Nakauvandra in suggesting that the
cradle-land of the Fijians was the north-western corner of Vitilevu,
whence the tide of emigration set northward to Mbua, eastward along the
Tailevu coast, and south-eastward down the Wainimbuka branch of the Rewa
river. Besides the saga of Turukawa, printed in another chapter, there
are fragments of a still earlier poem relating the first arrival of the
_Kalou-Vu_ in a great canoe, the _Kaunitoni_, tempest-driven from a land
in the far West. The fragmentary saga of the _Kaunitoni_ must be
accepted with caution, since it was committed to writing so late as
1891, when educated Fijians were already aware that Europeans were
seeking evidence of their arrival in the group.

But there is proof enough of the western origin of the Fijians in the
fact that they are the eastern outpost of the Melanesian race and
language, that their blest abode of spirits lies beyond the setting sun,
and that the Thombo-thombo, or Jumping-off-places of the Fijian shades,
all point westward; there is proof enough of the Nakauvandra range being
their cradle-land in the belief that the shades of the people of the
Rewa delta must repair to Nakauvandra as the first stage in their last
sad journey.

[Pageheader: FIJI PEOPLED FROM THE WEST]

The following is a translation of an ingenious commentary upon these
fragments, written by Ilai Moto-ni-thothoka (Eli Stabbing-spear)---

     "Long ago in a land in the far West there were three great chiefs,
     Lutu-na-sombasomba, Ndengei, and Wai-thala-na-vanua; of these
     Lutu-na-sombasomba was the greatest. And they took counsel together
     to build a vessel in which they might set sail with their wives,
     their children, their servants, and their dependants, to seek some
     distant land where haply they might find a good country where they
     might abide. So they sent a messenger to a chief named Rokola
     bidding him build them a vessel. And Rokola told his clan, who were
     the carpenter clan, the orders of the chiefs, and the carpenters
     built a vessel and called it the _Kaunitoni_. And when the vessel
     was made ready, they prepared their provisions and their freight,
     and went on board. Now there were many other families that made
     ready their vessels to accompany them. In the _Kaunitoni_ went
     Lutu-na-sombasomba and his wife and five children, together with
     his chest of stone in which were stored many things--his patterns
     of work (_Vola-sui-ni-thakathaka_) and his inscribed words, and
     many other inscriptions.[2] And with them went Ndengei and
     Wai-thala-na-vanua and other families, a great company of men and
     women. And the chief Rokola went also with his family. After
     sailing many days they came to a land which seemed pleasant to many
     of them, and these beached their vessels, and abode there. But the
     remainder kept on their course. Perhaps this land at which the
     others stayed was New Guinea. And as they sailed on, lo! another
     land was sighted, and some of them, being eager to land there,
     beached their vessels and occupied it. Perhaps this land was New
     Britain. And they came upon other lands at which some tarried until
     there was left only the _Kaunitoni_ and a few other vessels. And
     these launched forth into the boundless ocean where they found no
     land. And the sky grew dark, so that the vessels parted company,
     for tempestuous weather was upon them. It was no common storm, but
     a great cyclone that struck them, for it was the wind called
     _Vuaroro_ or _Ravu-i-ra_ (west-north west). And the blast struck
     the _Kaunitoni_, so that they were sick with terror, and could
     think of nothing but that they must die.

     "In the blackness of the storm the vessels were scattered, and the
     _Kaunitoni_ drifted ever eastward down the path of the storm. And
     as the hurricane continued for thirty days, and the vessel ran
     before the wind without finding any land, Lutu-na-sombasomba's
     chest of inscriptions fell overboard into the sea. But on the
     thirtieth night the keel of the vessel struck upon a rock, and she
     lay fast, and immediately the storm abated. Then they saw land
     before them, and knew that they were saved. And in the morning they
     went ashore and built shelters there: therefore the place was
     called _Vunda_ (_Vu-nda_--lit. 'Our Origin'), because it was the
     first village that they built, and they rejoiced that they were
     saved from the hurricane that had beset them.

     "This is the _meke_ of the cyclone that struck them--

  "'Rai thake ko Ndaunivosavosa,
    Na vua ni thagi lamba sa toka,
  Na kena ua ma mbutu kosakosa
    Na _Kaunitoni_ ka sa vondoka,
  Na kena ua ma rombalaka toka,
    Tangi mate ko Lutunasombasomba,
  Nonku kawa era na vakaloloma,
    Nonku kato vatu ka mai tasova,
  Mai lutu kina na nonkui vola,
    Da la' ki moce ki ndaveta ni kamboa.'

  "'Lutunasombasomba gazed afar,
    Behind him gathered the scud of the hurricane
  The mighty rollers battered him,
    And beat upon the _Kaunitoni_,
  The mighty rollers burst over him,
    Lutunasombasomba cried a bitter cry,
  Alas! Alas! for my descendants,
    My chest of stone is overset,
  My inscriptions (_vola_) have fallen out of it,
    Let us go and sleep in the harbour of the Kamboa (a fish).'

     "And all the time they tarried at Vunda, the chief
     Lutu-na-sombasomba could not rest for thinking of his inscriptions
     that had been lost in the sea. And he sent some of his young men to
     go and seek them,[3] for he reflected that his descendants would
     grow up ignorant if these inscriptions were indeed lost to them. So
     the young men set out with their sail close hauled, and as they
     voyaged they were astonished at the sight of islands right in their
     course to the westward, and disputed among themselves, some
     affirming these to be the islands at which some of their company
     had landed before the hurricane struck them, while others cried,
     'Impossible; they were far away.' So they called the islands Yasa
     yawa[4] (Yasawa). Long did they scull the vessel up and down the
     sea seeking the lost inscriptions, but finding them not. And then
     he who commanded the _Kaunitoni_, and was named Wankambalambala
     (Tree-fern-canoe), spoke, and said that they should return to Vunda
     and tell their Lord, Lutu-na-sombasomba, that his inscriptions
     could not be found. For they were wearied with rowing up and down,
     and the wind had failed them. Then one of them called
     Mbekanitanganga climbed the mast to look for the ripple of the
     wind, and saw a puff of wind coming up from the west, and when this
     reached them Wankambalambala, the sailor, ordered the great sail to
     be hoisted and they set their course for Vunda. But they knew not
     where Vunda lay, and they beached the vessel at an island, and
     landed upon it, wondering at the fertility of the place, and they
     said 'Let us stay here awhile (tiko manda la eke) and presently we
     will seek the land where Lutu-na-sombasomba is, to tell him that we
     cannot find the inscriptions we were sent to seek.' But
     Wankambalambala said that they should go first, and afterwards
     return to live on the island 'Manda-la-eke.' So they composed a
     song telling how they found Manda-la-eke, and since the name was
     too long for the rhythm of a song they shortened it to Malake to
     suit the rhythm, as they also shortened the name Yasa yawa to
     Yasawa. This is the song they made--

  "'Rai vosa ko Lutunasobasoba,
    I Ragone, dou vakarau toka,
  Na _Kaunitoni_ mo dou tavotha,
    Mo nou yara manda nai vola,
  Nodratou latha ratou thokota,
    Ra tathiri ni lutu ni iloa,
  Sokosokoni mbongi ma siga vaka,
    Sa siri ko Natu Yasawa,
  E ruru na thangi ka thiri na wanka
    Mai kamba ko Mbeka ni tayanga
  Me sa la' ki lewa thangi toka manda,
    Yau koto na nde ni thangi thawa,
  Mbula koto mai na thangi raya,
    Ninkai vosa ko Wankambalambala,
  Mai mua ki vanua nonda wanka,
    Latha levu era vakarewataka,
  Rai ki liu na nkoluvaka,
    Ka kuvu tiko na muai manda,
  Ucui Malake ka kombuata,
    Uru ki vanua me ra thambe sara,
  Yanuyanu ka ra volita manda,
    Sa nkai ndua na koro vinaka,
  Era siro sombu ki matasawa,
    Na tokalau ka yau talatala,
  Sa thangi tamba na soko ki raya,
    Ka ndromu na singa e vakana nawa.'

  "'Then Lutunasombasomba spoke,
    Make ready boys,
  Haul down the _Kaunitoni_,
    And go and seek the inscriptions,
  Bend our sails to the yards,
    They drifted hither and thither till all landmarks were lost,
  The Yasawa group is seen on the horizon
    The breeze dies away; the vessel is becalmed,
  Bekanitanganga climbs aloft,
    To sit and look for signs of wind.
  The flying wrack of the hurricane is at hand,
    A breeze from the west is freshening
  Then speaks Wankambalambala
    Set our course towards the land,
  They hoist the great sail,
    We shout as we look ahead,
  The spray shoots up from our prow,
    We make the cape of Malake
  And lower the sail to go ashore,
    They make the circuit of the island,
  This is indeed a pleasant land,
    They go down to the landing-place,
  This wind is in exchange for the south-east wind,
    A wind permitting no westward voyage,
  The sun sets in the ocean gulf.

     And they set out from Malake and sculled[5] their vessel to the
     mainland; and there they met Ndengei standing on the shore, having
     come to explore the country. Him they told of their discovery of a
     very fair island. And they asked him of Vunda, and were directed
     towards the west. So Ndengei came on board and they coasted
     westwards to Vunda. And when they told Lutu-na-sombasomba how his
     inscriptions were lost for ever, he was sore grieved, and from this
     time his body began to be infirm because his heart was grieved for
     his lost inscriptions.

     [Pageheader: THE FIRST SETTLEMENT]

     "And when Ndengei saw that Lutu-na-sombasomba grew infirm he
     commanded that they should abandon Vunda, and remove to a fair land
     that he had seen, lest the old chief should die and never see it.
     So he bade the chief Rokola to build other canoes to be tenders to
     the _Kaunitoni_ in the eastward voyage. And as soon as all these
     canoes were built they poled them along the coast, and beached them
     opposite the land they wished for, and their stuff they carried up
     into the hills, and the first house they built was for
     Lutu-na-sombasomba. The posts and the beams of this house were all
     of pandanus trunks. In this house, therefore, abode their chief,
     and he called the whole land Nakauvandra (Pandanus Tree) to be a
     memorial of the first house built there which was built of pandanus
     trunks. And therefore, the country is called Nakauvandra even to
     this day."


Although, as I have said, this commentary is to be received with
caution, there can be no doubt that a few years ago there were still to
be found on the north-east coast of Vitilevu fragmentary traditions of a
voyage to Fiji undertaken by the personages mentioned in the poem, and
the name, Vunda, which is still attached to the north-western corner of
Vitilevu certainly indicates that it was the earliest settlement of some
party of immigrants. It would, indeed, be strange if the westerly winds,
that sometimes blow steadily for days together during the summer months,
had not brought castaway canoes to a group of islands which cover five
degrees of longitude. Instead of one arrival there must have been
several, and whether Ndengei came in the first or a later company is not
important. The subsequent superiority of Ndengei as a _Kalou-Vu_ over
his chief Lutu-na-sombasomba may be accounted for by his heroic exploits
in the great civil war that divided Nakauvandra as related in the epic
of Nakavandra which is given in another chapter.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Pageheader: ANTIQUITY OF THE FIJIANS]

In attempting to fix a date for the first Melanesian settlement in Fiji
the widest field lies open to the lover of speculation, for it is
unlikely that when a few years have passed, and the last guardians of
tradition have made way for young Fiji, any fresh evidence will come to
light. The only monuments of a past age are rude earthworks in the form
of moats and house foundations, a few stone enclosures known as _nanga_,
no older than the period covered by tradition, and a stone cairn or two
erected by the worshippers of the _luve-ni-wai_. The Melanesians buried
their dead in their own houses if they were chiefs, leaving the house to
fall to ruin over them; in the open if they were commoners, or in
limestone caves wherever there were to be found, and there is no trace
of tombs or hewn stone such as are found in Tonga and other islands
colonized by Polynesians. Until the stalagmitic floors of the limestone
caves have been examined systematically it is not safe to say that
Paleolithic Man never inhabited the islands, but it is at least very
unlikely. The earliest trace of human occupation yet discovered is a
polished hatchet found in alluvial deposit on the bank of the River Mba
about twelve feet below the surface, during excavations carried out in
the erection of a sugar mill; but in a river subject to heavy annual
floods, during which great quantities of soil are brought down from the
hills, the depth is no proof of age. In the island of Waya (Yasawa) a
_cache_ of polished hatchets was discovered in 1891. Three of these were
gouge-shaped for cutting away the wood on the inside of canoes or drums,
and of elaborate finish, but there was nothing to show that they were of
ancient date.

On the other hand, if the islands were peopled from a single immigration
as native traditions seem to show, or even by successive arrivals of
castaway canoes, many centuries would be required to raise the
population to a total of 200,000. The widespread bond of _tauvu_ between
tribes speaking different dialects, and already showing divergence of
type as in the cases of Nayau and Notho, and Mbau and Malake, sets back
the original immigration many generations. There is nothing in Fijian
tradition corresponding to Mr. Fornander's discovery in Hawaiian myth of
a culture among the early immigrants superior to their condition when
Europeans first came among them. Mr. Fornander believes that the
Polynesians were acquainted with metals in their old home and navigated
in large vessels built of planks. Their degeneracy was the natural
result of their new surroundings, for if we were to take a number of
European craftsmen, carpenters, smiths and fitters, and transport them
with their families to an island destitute of metals, where they would
be cut off from renewing their tools when worn out, we should find them
in the second generation with nothing left of their former culture but
the tradition, and perhaps the name of the metals their fathers used.
This was the case with the Hawaiians. The tradition survived, and they
had a name for the iron tools which they saw in the hands of their
Europeans visitors. But the Fijians had no name for metal. Their first
iron tools were brought to them by the Tongans, and they adopted the
Tongan name, with the prefix of _Ka_, "thing--"_Ka-ukamea_ (Kaukamea),
"iron thing," just as their name for Europeans--_Vavalangi_--was taken
from the Tongans from whom they first learned of the existence of the
white race.

[Pageheader: FORNANDER'S THEORY]

It is impossible to discuss the age of the Melanesian settlement in Fiji
without considering the traditional history of the Polynesians, and it
is with real regret that I am driven to disagree with the bold
conclusions of the principal authority on Polynesian history--Mr.
Abraham Fornander.[6] The true value of his book lies in the
preservation of the ancient genealogies and songs of the Hawaiians,
which would otherwise have died with the generation of bards who chanted
them, and in its ingenious reconstruction of the native history of
Hawaii. The industry and research which he has brought to bear upon the
kinship of the Polynesians with the Cushite races of the old world have
resulted in little more than the collection of a mass of undigested
evidence. There is no close chain of deduction to bind the whole, and
nothing stands out from the confusion except the undoubted fact that the
Polynesians are an offshoot from one of the ancient Asiatic races, and
that they reached their present widely scattered abodes by way of the
Malay Archipelago. If Mr. Fornander had not insisted upon a prolonged
sojourn (_sejour_ he prefers to call it) in Fiji before they colonized
the eastern groups, as the principal link in his chain of argument, it
would not be necessary to review his opinions here; and, so high a
respect is due to his knowledge of the Hawaiian myths and so wasteful of
energy is controversy between two workers in the same field, that I
should allow his assertions to pass unnoticed but for the fact that they
undermine the very foundations of Fijian history and ethnology. As it is
I shall confine my criticism to the portion of his argument based upon
Fiji, and leave the rest of his work to be reviewed by Polynesian
ethnologists. Fornander's temptation lay in knowing Hawaii thoroughly,
the other Polynesian groups imperfectly, and Fiji not at all. Making his
deduction from Hawaii, he sought his proofs from the others by
guesswork. The true history of a native race can never be written by one
who is not thoroughly soaked in the traditions and language of the
people, and since no one man can be an authority upon more than one
branch of a people so widely scattered as the Polynesians, a perfect
treatise will not be written until Fornanders shall be found
contemporary in Tonga, Samoa, New Zealand, Tahiti, the Marquesas,
Rarotonga, Futuna, Wallis, and Hawaii, and collaboration arranged
between them. To such a task the Polynesian Society in Wellington might
well devote its energies.

Fornander's conclusions may be summarized as follows--

     (1) That the Polynesians are of pre-Vedic Aryan descent.

     (2) That at from a.d. 150-250 they "left the Asiatic Archipelago
     and entered the Pacific, _establishing themselves in the Fiji
     Group_, and thence spreading to the Samoan, Tonga, and other groups
     eastward and northward."

     (3) That about the fifth century a.d. Hawaii was settled by
     Polynesians who reached the group by a chain of islands that have
     since disappeared, and were isolated there for some six centuries.

     (4) That in the eleventh century began a period of unrest, during
     which there was frequent intercourse between the Marquesas,
     Society, Samoan and Hawaiian peoples for five or six generations.

I quote the fourth conclusion because I believe that it has a bearing
upon the Polynesian strain of blood which we find in the eastern portion
of the Fiji islands.

Now, Fornander's route for the Polynesians rests upon the assumption
that they sojourned for more than three centuries in Fiji after the
country had been settled by Melanesians, and that they were driven out
bag and baggage by the Melanesians with whom they left behind nothing
but their mythology and customs. If this is true the first arrival of
the Melanesians in Fiji is set back beyond our era; if it is false,
Fornander's theory falls to the ground. He bases his belief not upon any
indisputable references to Fiji in Polynesian traditions, but upon "the
number of Polynesian names by which these islands and places in them are
called, even now, by their Papuan inhabitants,"[7] and upon the
Polynesian words and folklore to be found incorporated in the language
and Mythology of Fiji.[8] Upon this he estimates the Polynesian sojourn
in Fiji to be thirteen generations, and says that these alleged facts
"argue a permanence of residence that cannot well be disputed."[9] And
so they would if they were true, but, unhappily for his argument, they
are not. He conjectures the Polynesian's landing-place to have been in
the western portion of Vitilevu, where, with one exception, the local
and tribal names are pure Melanesian, and this exception--the tribe of
_Noikoro_ in the centre of the inland district--has a well-preserved
tradition of emigration from the south-eastern coast of the island.
Moreover, the dialects of Western Vitilevu are Melanesian, with less
infusion of Polynesian words than any of the languages lying eastward of
them. And lastly, it is impossible to believe that so momentous an event
as the struggle between the two races, and the final expulsion of one of
them, would have left no trace behind it in the traditions of the
victors, when so insignificant an event as the arrival of two castaways,
the missionaries of the Polynesian cult of the _Malae_ is recorded in
detail. Had Fornander had the talent for sifting evidence he held the
clue in his hand when he wrote, "The large infusion of vocables in the
Fijian language, and the mixture of the two races, _especially in the
south-eastern part of the group_, indicate a protracted _sejour_, and an
intercourse of peace as well as of war," for it is in this very fact
that the Polynesian infusion is strongest on the eastern margin of the
group, and wanes with every mile we travel westward, until it is lost
altogether, that the real truth lies. It is this. The Melanesians landed
on the north-western shore of Vitilevu, and thence spread eastward
throughout their own group. At the islands of the Lau group they met a
check in the 400 miles of open ocean that lay beyond, swept by the
contrary wind of the south-east trades. Meanwhile the Polynesians,
having long colonized the eastern groups, perhaps by way of Micronesia
or Futuna or even by the north-eastern islands of the Fiji group, but
certainly not by Great Fiji, entered on their period of navigation which
Fornander assigns, I believe erroneously, to the eleventh century, were
carried westward by the south-east trades, by single canoes whose male
castaways were generally killed and eaten, but whose females were taken
to wife by the chiefs. The superior attractions of their lighter
coloured progeny led to the women of the mixed race being in request as
wives among the darker Melanesians to the west. Many such castaway
colonies are referred to in Tongan tradition. Early in the sixteenth
century King Kauulu-fonua pursued the murderers of his father through
the islands of the Samoan group to Futuna in vessels more seaworthy than
the Tongiaki of Cook's day.[10] Kau Moala, the navigator, voyaged to
Fiji at the close of the eighteenth century,[11] when we learn that the
_grand tour_ for a Tongan gentleman included a campaign in Fiji.

[Pageheader: POLYNESIAN CASTAWAYS]

The people of Ongtong Java ascribe their origin to a Tongan castaway
canoe; the names of the Tongan ancestors of the Pylstaart Islanders
(since removed to Eua in Tonga) are recorded, though their shipwreck is
two centuries old. The people of the reef islands of the Swallow group,
though purely Melanesian in everything but their tongue, have traditions
of castaways who were influential enough to impress their language, but
not their blood upon their entertainers, just as the Aryan immigrants
impressed their customs, folklore and language upon the Neolithic
peoples they found in Europe.[12] The natives of Rennell I. and Bellona
I. in the Solomons have preserved the physical characteristics of
Polynesians. It is far more probable that Nea and Lifu in the Loyalty
Islands, and Numea (Noumea) in New Caledonia received their Polynesian
names from such chance settlement, than that they are, as Fornander
would have it, echoes of permanent colonies which passed away more than
fifteen centuries ago. Turning to Fiji itself we find innumerable
traditions of such Polynesian visitors, though never a trace of the far
more important event of a Polynesian occupation. The chief family of
Nandronga traces its descent from a single Polynesian castaway who was
washed up by the sea about 1750. The chief of Viwa three generations ago
took to wife a Tongan girl, the only survivor of a murdered crew. The
chiefs of Thakaundrove claim relationship with the kings of Tonga
through an ancestress of that family who was cast away early in the
eighteenth century and saved by clinging to the deck-house when all her
companions perished.[13]

These are only a few out of a series of Polynesian immigrations that may
be numbered by hundreds, of which a tithe would suffice to account for
the Polynesian language and blood to be found in Fiji. A stepping-stone
in Fiji was necessary to Fornander's theory of Polynesian migrations,
and if he had not been blinded by his desire to find it, he would have
seen the obvious import of his declaration that in the eleventh century
the Polynesians had a _renaissance_ of navigation. Such a period of
unrest, of distant voyages undertaken with no compass but the stars, in
clumsy craft, on seas swept continually by a south-east wind, must have
resulted in numerous shipwrecks on the eastern shores of islands lying
to the westward.

His work contains but three appeals to Fijian folklore, which are,
besides, the only evidence he stops to specify. "In the Fijian group,
where much of ancient Polynesian lore, now forgotten elsewhere, is still
retained, the god 'Ndengei,' according to some traditions, is
represented with the head and part of the body of a serpent, the rest of
his form being of stone." This he regards as a trace of serpent-worship,
a "peculiarly Cushite out-growth of religious ideas." If this be
evidence of Polynesian kinship, then were the ancient
serpent-worshippers of Kentucky also Polynesian, together with a host
of other races, who, being human, evolved the religious ideas common to
humanity. Moreover, the serpent nature of Ndengei is a modern gloss
added by the poets of Raki-raki after the Ancestor-god had been
consigned to the gloomy cavern of Nakauvandra, for to the Fijian of the
west every cave has a monstrous eel or serpent lurking in its recesses,
and issuing to glut its maw upon unwary mortals who venture too near.

[Pageheader: TRADITION OF A DELUGE]

Fornander's second quotation from folklore is designed to prove no less
than a Polynesian reminiscence of the Hebrew legend of the building of
Babel, forgotten by the Polynesians, but "stowed away" by them in the
memory of their former hosts, the Fijians. Thomas Williams is
responsible for this tradition of a vast tower erected on a great mound
in Nasavusavu Bay, Vanualevu, which collapsed, scattering the builders
to the four winds. No trace of this tradition is now to be found, and
one cannot but remember that Williams drew his information from his
converts, to whom he was teaching that the Mosaic books related the
genesis of their own race, and who knew that a confirmation drawn from
their own traditions would be highly comforting to their missionary. But
though there was no great mound to point to, and the existence of any
such tradition may be doubted, to what, even if true, does it amount? To
a coincidence such as is to be found in many primitive religions, or, if
you will, to a suggestion that the Fijians are an offshoot of the
Semitic stock, but scarcely to evidence that the Polynesians, who have
no tradition of the kind, bequeathed it to the Fijians.

Fornander's third link is the tradition of the Deluge which is found in
the folklore of both races. This, as might be expected, is quite
sufficient evidence for him, not only of a Polynesian sojourn in Fiji,
but of Polynesian descent from the "Cushite-pre-Joklanite Arabs," who,
it is true, have no such traditions themselves, as far as we know, but
certainly ought to have been at least as well favoured in this respect
as the Semites and Aryans.[14] This is not the place to discuss the
Deluge traditions. It is enough to say here that every island in the
cyclone-belt is subject to destructive floods, that every district in
Fiji has its own distinct tradition, and that in the provinces of Rewa
and Mbua floods that are known to have occurred within the last 125
years have already been canonized in the realm of myth. If the Fijian
and Polynesian heroes had sent forth a dove, which was the distinctive
feature in both the Babylonian and Hebrew accounts, owing to the custom
of the Semitic navigators carrying doves as part of their necessary
equipment to ascertain the proximity of land, then something might be
said for the traditions as evidence. But to quote so universal a human
tradition as the Deluge-myths as evidence of intercourse or common
origin is as rational as to draw such deductions from the belief in
malevolent deities.

[Pageheader: DATES CALCULATED FROM GENEALOGIES]

Now, although Fornander's chronology has no direct bearing upon the date
of the Melanesian arrival if, as I have shown, the Polynesians had no
settlement in the group, the method of calculating dates should be the
same for both races. Our only guide for events that happened in
Polynesia before Tasman's voyage, 1642, is in the natives' genealogies,
calculating by generations. They contain two obvious tendencies to
error. It was very rare for a man of consequence to carry the same name
throughout his career. Adoption, any notable exploit, or succession to a
title were constant excuses for such changes, and it is quite possible
that in the older genealogies the same hero is recorded twice under
different names. Moreover, it is by no means certain that the names were
not those of the reigning chiefs, and seeing that the succession often
went to the next brother when the son was not of an age to wield the
power, it is highly doubtful whether every name represented a
generation. I know one genealogy where, in the portion relating to
historical times, one of the recorded names was younger brother to the
chief who precedes him.[15] This may account for the great diversity of
readings found in the same genealogy, one version being shorter than
another. On the other hand, there is the tendency to omit the names of
remote personages whose short reign or insignificant character have
failed to stamp themselves on the memory of posterity. There is thus a
double tendency to error--on the one side to multiplication of
generations, and on the other to curtailment by omissions. But even
supposing that Fornander's genealogies are correct, it is difficult to
see how he could arrive at an approximate date without showing more
discrimination in fixing the length of a generation. All his dates are
calculated upon a generation of _thirty years_, because that is the
average length generally assigned in Europe. But Polynesia is not
Europe, and generations in Polynesia, where men marry much earlier, are
less than thirty years, as he might have discovered by taking the
average in historical times. This I have done both in Tonga and Fiji,
with the result that the generations in both races average from
twenty-five to twenty-seven years. The Tui Tonga family is a very fair
guide, because the office went invariably from father to son, and the
holder was so sacred that he was never cut off by a violent death. The
generations of this family since 1643 average twenty-seven years, while
those of the temporal sovereign, the Tui Kanakubola who were often the
victims of rebellion, average only twenty years apiece. The history of
Hawaii was so bloodstained, that it is unlikely that Hawaiian
generations averaged more than twenty-five. Five years in a generation
makes a vast difference, for the date given by Fornander for the
Polynesians' arrival in the Pacific is set forward from the fifth to the
seventh century, and for their arrival in Hawaii from the eleventh to
the thirteenth.

Abraham Fornander has done inestimable service to future students of
Oceanic ethnology by preserving for their use songs and traditions that
would otherwise have passed into oblivion, but he will be used as a
storehouse of data rather than as an exponent of history, and I feel
that I am best serving his reputation by cutting away the false
deductions that would have tainted the sound and wholesome facts which
form the larger portion of his work. I cannot leave him without wishing
that he had made better use of Bancroft's saying, which he printed as
his text on the title-page, "It is now a recognized principle in
philosophy that no religious belief, however crude, nor any historical
traditions, however absurd, can be held by the majority of a people for
any considerable time as true, without having in the beginning some
foundation in fact."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: _The Polynesian Race_, by A. Fornander, Vol. i, p. 193.]

[Footnote 2: We detect here a flavour of the commentator's superior
education.]

[Footnote 3: A somewhat futile proceeding unless they were of wood.]

[Footnote 4: Distant land]

[Footnote 5: Fijian canoes are sculled with long oars worked
perpendicularly in a rowlock formed by the cross-ties of the outrigger,
or of the two hulls in a twin canoe. With powerful scullers a speed of
three miles an hour is attained in a dead calm.]

[Footnote 6: _The Polynesian Race, Its Origin and Migrations._ London,
1880.]

[Footnote 7: _The Polynesian Race, Its Origin and Migrations_, Vol. i,
p. 33.]

[Footnote 8: _Ibid._, Vol. i, p. 167.]

[Footnote 9: _Ibid._, Vol. i, p. 33.]

[Footnote 10: See my _Diversions of a Prime Minister_, p. 308.]

[Footnote 11: Mariner's _Tonga_.]

[Footnote 12: _The Melanesians_, Codrington.]

[Footnote 13: Tukuaho, Premier of Tonga, and descendant of the Tui Tonga
and Tui Haatakalaua families, was staying with me at Auckland, N.Z.,
when Ratu Lala, Tui Thakau, of Fiji, arrived in the town. Both chiefs
asked me to bring about a meeting on the ground of their relationship.
Though each could speak the language of the other their shyness led them
to insist that I should interpret the conversation, which was carried on
in Fijian and Tongan. After the usual formalities the two chiefs spoke
of the adventures of their Tongan princess through whom they were
related, and the Tongan and Fijian versions of the tradition were
substantially identical.]

[Footnote 14: "Unfortunately we have no well-preserved account of the
Flood from the Cushite-Arabian quarter; but I am inclined to consider
the Polynesian version as originally representing the early traditions
on this subject among the Cushite-pre-Joklanite Arabs."--_The Polynesian
Race, Its Origin and Migrations._ London, 1880, p. 90.]

[Footnote 15: The Vunivalu geneology of Mbau.]




CHAPTER III

THE AGE OF HISTORY


Of the centuries that lie between the age of myth and the age of history
there are but the feeblest echoes. From the ethnology of the people of
to-day we may infer that the stream of immigration swept down the
northern coast of Vitilevu, and, radiating from Rakiraki, crossed the
mountain range, and wandered down the two rivers, Rewa and Singatoka,
until it reached the southern coast and peopled Serua and Namosi.
Another stream must have crossed the strait to Mbua on Vanualevu, and
spread eastward. Melanesian blood can be traced even in the Lau
sub-group, but before any permanent settlement was made there Polynesian
castaways, driven westward by the prevailing wind, must have begun to
arrive. At the dawn of history, about 1750, Vitilevu was almost purely
Melanesian, but the Lau and Lomaiviti islands, Taveuni, Vanualevu, and
Kandavu were peopled by half-breeds between Melanesian and Polynesian,
the Polynesian strain waxing stronger with every mile from west to east.

The peopling of the waste lands was accelerated by war. There is
scarcely a tribe that does not claim to have migrated from another
place, sometimes from parts relatively remote from its present locality,
and if it were worth the labour, the history of the migrations of each
of them might even now be compiled, partly from its own traditions,
partly from the tie of _tauvu_ (common Ancestor-gods) with other tribes
distantly related to it. But, as it would be merely the history of a few
fugitives from the sack of a village, driven out to find asylum in a
waste valley, and founding in it a joint family which lived to grow
into a tribe, such an inquiry would be barren and profitless.

The traditions of Tongan immigration are too numerous to be set down
here. From 1790, if not earlier, an expedition to Fiji was an annual
occurrence. The most important was the arrival of the Tui Tonga's canoe
in Taveuni, from which sprang the chief family of the Tui Thakau, and
the stranding of the two little old men who instituted the _Nanga_ Cult,
which recalls the rites of the Polynesian _Malae_. The chiefs of the
Nandronga and Viwa (Yasawa) also trace their descent from Tongan
castaways, and are very proud of the connection.

The fact that traditionary history is so meagre is in itself an
indication that there were no powerful confederations before the
nineteenth century. The related tribes of Verata and Rewa in the south
and Thakaundrove in the north-east seem to have been the only powers
that wielded influence beyond their borders, but their intercourse with
other tribes must have been very restricted. In islands where male
castaways, having "salt water in their eyes," were killed and eaten,
there was little spirit for discovery and adventure.

The imprint of the Tongan immigration is to be seen, not only in the
blood of the tribes with whom the immigrants mingled, but in their
mythology, for whereas the religion of the inland tribes is pure
ancestor-worship, that of the coast tribes is overlaid with a mythology
that is evidently derived from Polynesian sources.

[Illustration: DESCENDANTS OF TONGAN IMMIGRANTS PERFORMING THE TONGAN
DANCE _LAKALAKA_.]

Early in the eighteenth century there seems to have been an upheaval
among the inland tribes of Vitilevu which sent forth a stream of
emigrants to the coast, whether as fugitives, or as voluntary exiles in
search of new lands, there is no tradition to show. This event was
destined to have a tremendous influence upon the political destiny of
the islands, for among the emigrants was the tribe of Mbau, sturdy
mountain warriors, still bearing in their physiognomy and dark
complexion the proof of their Melanesian blood and their late arrival in
the sphere of Polynesian influence. This tribe, humble as it was in its
origin, was destined, partly through chance, partly by its genius for
intrigue, to win its way within a century to the foremost position in
the group.

[Pageheader: THE RISE OF MBAU]

Rewa, descended from the earliest settlers on the delta of the great
river, could alone boast an ancient aristocracy and a complex social
organization which entitled it to be called a confederation. The rest of
the group was split up into tribes, little larger than joint families,
which treated all strangers as enemies, and held their lands at the
point of the spear.

The Mbau people settled upon the coast about a mile from the islet now
called by their name, but then known as Mbutoni, which is connected with
the mainland by a coral reef fordable at high water. Upon the islet
lived two tribes of fishermen, named Levuka and Mbutoni, who were
supplied with vegetable food by the inland chiefs in return for fish.
Being subject to the Mbauans, they supplied them with a navy, for a
tribe lately descended from the mountains was distrustful of the sea.

Wedged in between Verata on the north and Rewa on the south, Mbau was
continually at war with one or the other. Her pressing need was men,
"the men of Verata and Rewa" (to quote from the _meke_ that records her
history), and as she held her own, those who had grievances against her
powerful neighbours, broken tribes fleeing from their conquerors in the
hills, flocked to her for protection, and her needs were satisfied. But
her territory did not exceed ten square miles.

About 1760, Nailatikau being Vunivalu, or secular king, the chiefs moved
from the mainland to the islet, which was known thenceforward as Mbau.
The fishermen had for some time been waxing insubordinate, and their
offences culminated in the eating of an enormous fish which ought, by
custom, to have been presented to their chiefs. They were expelled from
the island. The Levuka tribe fled to Lakemba, still retaining their
hereditary right to instal each successive Vunivalu in his office. The
Mbau chiefs scarped away the face of the island so as to form the
embankment upon which the present town is built. Nailatikau died about
1770, and was succeeded by his second son Mbanuve. During his reign the
fishermen of Lasakau from the island of Mbenka, and of Soso, from the
island of Kandavu, were employed in reclaiming more land from the sea,
and were allowed to settle on the island. The first intermarriage with
the Rewa chiefs dates from this period. The story goes that a Rewa
canoe, being hailed as she passed Mbau, replied that she was bound for
Verata for a princess to mate with the king of Rewa; that the crew was
induced to take a Mbau lady in her stead, and that a Rewa princess was
sent to Mbau in exchange. Thus the Mbau chiefs passed from being
_parvenus_ to a place in the aristocracy of their adopted country.

As the date of the first arrival of Europeans, which was to have so
profound an influence upon the natives, is in dispute, it may be well to
mention the recorded voyages chronologically.

Tasman, who sighted Vanua-mbalavu in 1643, did not communicate with the
natives. Cook, who had had information about the group from Fijians
settled in the Friendly Islands, discovered the outlying island of
Vatoa, the southeasterly limit of the group, and called it Turtle
Island, but bore away to the north-east.

In April 1791, a few days after the famous Mutiny of the _Bounty_, Bligh
passed through the centre of the group in an open boat. His urgent need
of provisions would doubtless have impelled him to communicate with the
shore had he possessed firearms, and had he not just lost his
quartermaster in a treacherous attack made upon him by the natives of
Tofua. As it was he was chased along the northern coast of Vitilevu by
two sailing canoes, which only left him when he cleared the group by
Round Island, the most northerly of the Yasawa sub-group.

[Pageheader: THE FIRST EUROPEAN VISITORS]

The first Europeans who had intercourse with the natives, so far as we
know, were the prize crew of the little schooner built of native timber
in Tahiti by the _Bounty_ mutineers in 1791. Having shut up the
mutineers in "Pandora's Box" (as the little roundhouse on the
quarter-deck of H.M.S. _Pandora_ was called) Captain Edwards victualled
and manned the mutineer's schooner as his tender, but he parted company
with her in a storm off Samoa an hour before a fresh supply of stores
and water was to be put on board of her. The island of Tofua had been
the appointed rendezvous in such a contingency, and the schooner duly
made the island, but, having waited in vain for the _Pandora_, her
commander, now desperate for want of provisions, made sail to the
northwest, and cast anchor at an island which was almost certainly
Matuku in the Lau sub-group of Fiji. Here she lay for six weeks with
boarding nettings up, but the natives appear to have treated their
strange visitors with friendliness and hospitality. After terrible
sufferings, from which the midshipman lost his reason, and numerous
encounters with the natives of the Solomons or the New Hebrides, this
handful of brave seamen made the Great Barrier Reef opposite Torres
Straits, which, for want of time to search for a passage, they boldly
rode at in a spring tide, and jumped, escaping without injury to their
little vessel. Mistaken for pirates by the Dutch authorities, they were
clapped into prison, where Captain Edwards found them after himself
suffering shipwreck on the Barrier Reef.

Unfortunately neither Oliver, the gunner in command of the schooner, nor
any of his shipmates published the story of these adventures, and the
Record Office has been searched in vain for the log which they must have
handed over to Edwards; otherwise we might have had a very valuable
description of the Fijians a century ago. One or other of the native
poems describing the first arrival of European ships may refer to this
voyage.

This visit, or perhaps an unrecorded one about the same year, 1791, had
a sinister influence upon Fijian history, for the evidence which will be
set forth in a later chapter points to it as the cause of the terrible
epidemic of _Lila_ (wasting sickness) which decimated the group.

In the following year, 1792, Captain Bligh ran along the coast of
Taveuni in H.M.S. _Providence_, and was followed by canoes.

On April 26, 1794, the "snow" _Arthur_ touched at the Yasawa Islands,
and was attacked by the natives.

In 1802, or 1803, a vessel was wrecked on the Mbukatatanoa Reef,
subsequently named Argo, from a vessel of that name which was cast away
upon it. A number of Europeans wearing red caps over their ears and
smoking pipes were rescued by the natives of Oneata, and gunpowder seems
to have come into the hands of the natives, who used the powder for
blackening their faces and hair, and the ramrods of the muskets as
_monke_ (hair ornaments).[16] The tradition says that some of the white
men were killed and some taken to Lakemba by the Levuka tribe, the same
that had been expelled from Mbau, who happened to be at Oneata at the
time. We do not know what became of these survivors. Perhaps they were
slain as a propitiatory sacrifice to the god of pestilence, for from the
traditions of Mbau we learn that Mbanuve, the son of Nduru-thoko
(Nailatikau), the Vunivalu of the Mbau, died of a new disease introduced
by a foreign vessel, and was surnamed Mbale-i-vavalangi (He who died of
a foreign disease) in accordance with the custom of calling dead chiefs
after the place where they were slain, as Mbale-i-kasavu (He who fell at
Kasavu, etc.). On his death the Levuka people came from Lakemba to
instal his successor, Na-uli-you (New steer-oar), and they brought with
them a canvas tent, which was the first article of European manufacture
which the Mbau people had seen. We may fix this date with some
confidence. On the day of the installation there was a total eclipse of
the sun, the heavens were like blood, the stars came out, and the birds
went to roost at mid-day. While the dysentery was sweeping through the
islands the people were startled by the appearance of a great hairy star
with three tails. Now, the only total eclipse of the sun visible in Fiji
about this period was that which occurred at 9.20 a.m. on February 21,
1803. The total phase lasted 4.2 minutes, or within one minute of the
longest possible total phase. The comet is not so easy to identify. It
may have been Encke's comet of November 21, 1805, or the famous comet of
1807.[17]

[Pageheader: THE FIRST BEACHCOMBERS]

Shortly after Naulivou's accession, that is to say some time between
1803 and 1808, the first of the sandal-wood traders touched at Koro,
where some Mbau chiefs happened to be.[18] Joseph Waterhouse, the
missionary, was told that a white man, called "The Carpenter," and a
Tahitian deserted from this ship, and came to Mbau; that the white man
became inspired by Mbanuve, the late Vunivalu, and shivered and foamed
at the mouth like an inspired Fijian, and was, much to his own profit,
accepted by the Na-uli-you as a genuine priest. He dwelt in the house
erected over Mbanuve's grave, where he took to drinking kava to his own
undoing, but that before his death he told the natives that there was a
God superior to Mbanuve or any Fijian deity. I have never been able to
obtain any confirmation of this story: on the contrary I have been
assured that Charles Savage was the first European to land at Mbau, but
as the arrival of ships must have been not infrequent as soon as the
presence of sandal-wood had become known, and whalers were ranging the
Pacific, it is not improbable.[19]

[Pageheader: MISCONDUCT OF THE WHITES]

In 1808 there happened an event which left an enduring mark upon Fijian
history. The American brig _Eliza_, with 40,000 dollars from the River
Plate on board, was wrecked on the reef off Nairai. The majority of the
crew escaped in the ship's boats, and boarded another American vessel
which was lying off Mbua for sandal-wood; the rest took passage in
native canoes that happened to be at the island, one to Mbau and the
others to Verata, while the natives looted the wreck. The man who went
to Mbau was the Swede, Charles Savage, a man of much character and
resource. Having been refused leave to return to Nairai to search for a
musket, he pointed to a _nkata_ club, which bears a distant resemblance
to a gun, and bade them bring him from the wreck a thing of that shape,
and a cask of black powder like their own hair-pigment. The native
messengers were successful; the musket was found built into a yam-hut as
one of the rafters. Having demonstrated the uses of a musket before the
assembled chiefs, Savage took part in a reconnaissance towards Verata,
the state with which Mbau was then at war. He took with him a gourd
containing a letter addressed to the white men at Verata, bidding them
flee to him at Mbau, as it was the stronger state. The gourd was tied to
a stick just out of arrowshot, and as the canoe retired the Verata
people carried it into their fort, and in a few days later the other
whites joined him at Mbau. Savage with his musket now began to carry all
before him. He had a sort of arrow-proof sedan chair made of plaited
sinnet, in which he was carried into musket-shot of the enemy's
entrenchments, and from which he picked off the sentinels until the
garrison fled. Thus Mbau subdued all the coast villages as far as the
frontiers of Rewa. Savage cleverly kept his fellow-Europeans in the
background without arousing their enmity. He alone carried the musket;
he alone could speak the language fluently, and to him the other whites
thought that they owed the good-will of the natives. Two great ladies
were given him to wife, and the order of _Koroi_ was bestowed upon him
with the title of Koroi-na-vunivalu. Yet he stoutly refused to conform
to native customs, and so he kept the respect of the chiefs. Shortly
after the shipwreck the visits of ships became frequent, from India,
America, and Australia. They lay for many weeks off the Mbua coast,
while the crew cut and shipped sandal-wood; and the sailors, allured by
the story of the dollars lost in the _Eliza_, deserted, or were
discharged in considerable numbers. The dollars, though one or two were
found as lately as 1880, were scattered beyond recovery, and the sailors
drifted away, some to Mbau, and others to the villages on the
sandal-wood coast, where they took native wives, and adopted every
native custom except cannibalism.[20] The natives could give them
everything they wanted except tobacco and spirits, and to acquire these,
and to keep their position among their hosts, they would hire themselves
out to the masters of sandal-wood ships at a monthly wage of L4, paid
partly in knives, tools, beads, and firearms. William Mariner, who
visited Mbau in 1810 on board the _Favourite_, the vessel in which he
escaped from Tonga, found a number of whites there whose reputation both
for crimes, vices, and for quarrelling among themselves was so bad that
his informant, William Lee, was glad to make his escape from them.
During Savage's absence with the army they nearly brought annihilation
upon themselves. At a great presentation of food, the king's _mata_
omitted to set aside a portion for the white men, and they, incensed at
what they took for an intentional insult, ran to the stack of food, and
slashed the yams with their knives. Now, this is an insult which no
Fijian will brook, and they were promptly attacked. They killed a number
of their assailants with their muskets, but when the hut in which they
had taken refuge was fired, they had to make for the sea. Three were
clubbed as they ran, but two, Graham and Buschart, swam out to sea, and
returned only when they were assured of the chief's protection. Thus did
they save their lives, the first to perish more miserably at Wailea, the
second to be the means of discovering the fate of de la Perouse.

Savage could not afford to jeopardize his influence with the chiefs by
mixing in the quarrels of the other Europeans. With his two wives, who
were women of the highest rank, he lived apart from the others, in the
enjoyment of all the privileges of a native chief who was Koroi. But
when not engaged in fighting, he also spent the winter months on the
sandal-wood coast, working for the trading ships. Among the regular
arrivals was the East Indiaman _Hunter_ (Captain Robson), which, on her
third voyage to Fiji in 1813, carried Peter Dillon as mate. Dillon had
spent four months in the group in 1809, and had acquired a slight
knowledge of the language, besides winning the respect of the people for
his magnificent physique, and his Irish good humour. He had, as he tells
us, prepared a history of the islands from the date of their discovery
to 1825, but the manuscript has disappeared, and is not likely now to
come to light. Interesting as it may have been, its value as a history
would have suffered from the lively imagination of the writer.

Captain Robson's methods of obtaining a cargo would not have commended
itself to the Aborigines' Protection Society. On anchoring at Wailea, he
was wont to enter into a contract with Vonasa, the chief, to aid him in
his wars in return for a full cargo. The enemy's forts were carried with
a two-pounder, and the bodies of the slain were then dismembered,
cooked, and eaten in Robson's presence. On this occasion the same policy
was pursued, but whether owing to the exhaustion of the forest or to the
indolence of the natives, a full cargo was not forthcoming. At the end
of four months, two hundred Mbauans, led by two of the king's brothers,
arrived in their canoes to take their white men back to Mbau, and with
their help Robson resolved to punish the faithlessness of the Wailea
people. The landing party fell into the ambush known in Fijian tactics
as _A Lawa_ (The Net), that is to say, they were drawn on by the feigned
flight of a party of the enemy until they were surrounded. Dillon, with
Savage and three others, gained the summit of a low hill, where they
kept their assailants at bay, while the bodies of their comrades were
cooked and eaten in their sight. Despairing of help from the ship,
Savage went down to try his powers of persuasion on the chiefs, but he
too was treacherously killed and laid in the oven before Dillon's eyes.
Their ammunition exhausted, the prospect of torture before them, the
three Europeans had resolved upon suicide, when by a fortunate accident
they were able to seize a heathen priest who had ventured too near, and
by holding him as hostage for their lives, they made their escape. In
the following year Mbau took ample vengeance for the massacre of their
chiefs.[21]

[Pageheader: THE MASSACRE OF WAILEA]

There is a story that Maraia, Savage's half-caste daughter, then a child
of four,[22] remembered her father's last night at Mbau. Lying awake she
saw him open his sea-chest which he always kept locked, and take from it
a string of glittering objects. Startled by her childish exclamation,
for he thought himself alone, he kissed her and said that he was going
away for a long time, and must hide his property in a place of safety.
That night he poled himself over to the mainland, and when she awoke
next morning the canoes had sailed for Mbua, from whence her father
never returned. Probably the string was made of Chilian dollars from the
wreck, which now lie buried somewhere on the mainland opposite Mbau.

After Savage's death Mbau continued to consolidate her power. News of
her success tempted the broken tribes to flee to her for protection, and
settle on the conquered lands. Thus did Namara become borderers
(_mbati_) to Mbau. The story is a curious illustration of Fijian
contempt for human life. Two brothers of Namara had stolen down to the
sea shore for salt, and were seen by the king, Naulivou, then cruising
along the shore in his great canoe. He presented them in sport with a
shark and a sting-ray. Overwhelmed by his condescension, the brothers
began to contend for the honour of giving his dead body in return for
the fish. Their cousin standing by exclaimed, "Is a man's life more
precious than a banana? Let the elder be clubbed." So the elder bowed
his head to the club of the younger brother, who presented the body to
the chief. Grieved at what they had done, Naulivou ordered the body to
be buried, and said, "I wanted no return for the fish. Go, fetch your
wives and children, and settle on this land, and be my _mbati_
(borderers), for I have need of true men."

The navigable canal called Nakelimusu, which shortens the voyage between
Mbau and Rewa by connecting two of the river mouths, and is almost the
only example of native engineering, was constructed in this reign
shortly after the sack of Nakelo in 1810. The Queen of Rewa at that time
was a Mbau princess, and when Nakelo sent her submission to Mbau,
craving leave to rebuild the fortress, one of the conditions imposed was
that the isthmus between the two rivers should be cut at its narrowest
point, where it is about 400 yards wide. The Nakelo men dug a ditch into
which the water could wash at high tide, and the rapid current did the
rest.

Though Mbau did not long enjoy a monopoly of muskets she was able to
purchase more ammunition than her rivals. European sailors still
continued to pour into the islands, for after the exhaustion of the
sandal-wood forests, whalers began to frequent the group, and there
sprang up a desultory, but profitable trade in _beche-de-mer_, the
sea-slug so highly prized by Chinese epicures, and in cocoanut oil. None
of these attained the same influence as Savage. They were rather the
chief's sycophants and handy men, who mended muskets, and beguiled his
leisure by telling stories of far-off lands. A chief likes to have in
his retinue some alien, unfettered by the _tabu_, whom he can make his
confidant, and a chief who could not boast of having a tame white man
was not much esteemed. A tame negro was a curiosity even more highly
prized. The natives as a body appear to have treated the white men with
tolerant contempt, as beings destitute of good manners and the
deportment proper to those who consort with chiefs.

In 1828 Mbau was at the zenith of her power. She had absorbed the
Lomaiviti islands, and was disputing the Lau group with the Tongan
immigrants. On the northern coast of Vitilevu her influence was felt as
far west as Mba, and she exercised a nominal suzerainty over Somosomo,
the state then paramount over the eastern half of Vanualevu. The inland
and western tribes of Vitilevu alone were entirely independent of her
influence.

[Pageheader: INSURRECTION AGAINST TANOA]

That her empire was the influence of a person rather than of a state was
shown in 1829, when her leader, Naulivou, better known by his posthumous
title of Ra Matenikutu (Lord Lice-Slayer) died. His younger brother,
Tanoa, who succeeded him, had neither his ability nor his physique.
Among the Europeans he was known contemptuously as "Old Snuff," from his
habit of daubing himself with black pigment, and he was unpopular among
his own people. From the day of his accession there were rumours of
conspiracy, and during his absence at Ovalau in 1832 the rebellion broke
out. Tanoa fled to Koro, and would there have been put to death, had not
Namosimalua of Viwa, who had been sent to arrest him, secretly connived
at his flight to Somosomo, where he was safe. The rebels installed as
Vunivalu one of his brothers named Tuiveikoso, chosen because he could
be trusted to act as their tool, and refrained from the usual custom of
putting Tanoa's adherents to death, though Namosimalua of Viwa, whose
motives are not easy to understand, urged that the king's son, Seru,
should be killed. But the boy was allowed to live on at Mbau, where he
grew to manhood, without exciting any suspicion of the mark which he was
to make upon Fijian history.

At first the Europeans took no part in these political disturbances. The
more respectable of them had removed to the adjacent island of Ovalau,
where they formed a settlement under the protection of Tui Levuka,
plying the trades of boatbuilding and sail-making, and selling native
produce to passing vessels. Those who chose to remain at Mbau were
Fijianized whites who lived upon the natives.

Tanoa was not idle. Being _vasu_ to Rewa he had no difficulty in
inducing the king of that state to ally himself with Somosomo and to
declare war with Mbau. By the promise of a cargo he even hired an
American vessel to bombard Mbau. Having taken up a position at the
anchorage she fired a broadside, but the Europeans on the islet, having
trained a gun upon her, carried away her jib-boom at the second shot,
and she slipped her cable and returned to Somosomo.

The leader of the rebellion was Ratu Mara, a man born before his time.
Professing to be in favour of peace, of free intercourse, and of a new
era of bloodless government, he was immensely popular with the whites.
He is still remembered as the only Fijian warrior who took fortified
villages by direct assault, and who was absolutely fearless in battle.
It is even said that, on hearing of the missionaries in Tonga, he
declared his intention of inviting them to Fiji to displace the religion
in which he no longer believed. In person he was tall and very powerful,
and his acts show him to have been of great intelligence and
perseverance. Friendly as they were to Mara, the Europeans so much
disliked the other chiefs of the usurping government, who had advocated
a massacre of all foreigners, that they resolved to support Tanoa, and
secretly sent him a contribution of arms and ammunition.

Tanoa had meanwhile been undermining the power of the usurpers by the
old expedient of bribing the borderers. In obedience to an oracle at
Somosomo he had removed to Rewa, and was intriguing with a party at
Lasakau, the eastern end of Mbau, inhabited by fishermen. A number of
villages on the mainland had also been won over. Seru meanwhile, though
grown to manhood, was believed to be above suspicion. His only objects
in life seemed to be its amusements. He was the leader and the idol of a
band of youths of his own age, who passed the days and nights in sports
and wantonness. Suddenly, by a preconcerted arrangement a number of
villages declared for Tanoa, and when the news reached Mbau one morning,
it was found that the Lasakauans had built a war fence during the night,
dividing their quarter of the town from that of the chiefs. Aghast at
this turn of events the chiefs summoned a council of war. Namosimalua
urged the immediate arrest of Seru, and his own nephew, Verani, whom he
suspected of treachery, but it was then too late. The two youths had
taken refuge in Lasakau. Namosimalua's musket, fired at his nephew, was
the signal for civil war. But the _coup d'etat_ was complete. The
Lasakauans had prepared a number of flaming darts which they threw into
the thatch of the nearest houses. A strong wind swept the conflagration
through the town. In half-an-hour every house was in ashes, and the
inhabitants were fleeing to the mainland.

[Pageheader: THAKOMBAU'S _COUP D'ETAT_]

As soon as the news reached Rewa, the army was put in motion. Village
after village was destroyed, though, contrary to the wish of Seru, its
inhabitants were spared by the king of Rewa. Tanoa himself re-entered
Mbau at the close of 1837, after an exile of five years. Seru received
three names. His own party called him Thikinovu (the centipede), which
bites without warning; the usurpers called him Na Mbi (the turtle pond),
in allusion to the number of people who were killed and eaten by him,
but the name by which he was generally known was Tha-ko-mbau
("destruction to Mbau," or "Mbau is undone "),[23] signifying the
success of his _coup d'etat_.

The day of reckoning had come. A price was set upon the head of all the
usurping chiefs, and no one dared to give them asylum. Thakombau slew
many of them with his own hand, and they were cooked and eaten by the
Lasakauans, whose hereditary duty it was to provide material for the
cannibal ovens. Grisly stories are told of this orgy of revenge. It is
said that a rebel whom Thakombau hated was brought before him, he
ordered his men to cut out the man's tongue, and that he ate it raw,
joking with the wretched man about the change in his fortunes. When
tired of the sport he sent him out to be further tortured, and when
death released him from his sufferings he was cooked and eaten.

The arch-rebels, Mara and Namosimalua, were the last to be taken.
Thakombau pursued Mara from village to village until he came to Namata,
where he suffered a repulse. He then set himself to buy over the Namata
chief. Early one morning Mara's faithless hosts surrounded him. His
magnificent courage did not desert him. For some time he fought
single-handed for his life, but numbers prevailed. Gashed by hatchets
and knives, he fell at last, and his body was presented to Thakombau.
Namosimalua was allowed to return to Mbau, and Tuiveikoso, the
figure-head of the rebellion, and Tanoa's elder brother, were not
molested.

In 1837 the first missionaries, Mr. Cross and Mr. Cargill, of the
Wesleyan Missionary Society, arrived in the group. The Lau islands,
already colonized by Tongans, were the natural starting-point for their
labours; but Mr. Cross visited Mbau, and had an interview with
Thakombau, from whom he sought permission to settle on the islet. The
moment was unfortunate, and the young chiefs answer very natural under
the circumstances. "Your words are good to me, but I will not hide from
you that I am now at war, and cannot myself hear your instruction nor
even assure you of safety." Mr. Cross misunderstood the answer. If he
had seized upon the bare permission to reside at Mbau, itself a great
concession, his labours would have been greatly lightened. As it was,
his departure gave great offence to Thakombau, who opposed all further
overtures from the missionaries, and the offer was not renewed for
fifteen years.

In September, 1837, a great meeting was held at Mbau. Having made
submission to his brother, Tuiveikoso, an aged, corpulent and lame man,
was pardoned by Tanoa, who described him as "a great hog, grown too fat
to walk about, and able to do nothing but sleep, and wake to pick his
food." The sole guilt of the rebellion was fixed upon Namosimalua. On
the following day he was brought to trial, when he frankly admitted
having accepted six whales' teeth to kill Tanoa. To the astonishment of
everybody Tanoa gave him his life. The secret of the confession and
Tanoa's clemency was that, to use a Fijian metaphor, Namosimalua had
been "eating with both sides." It says much for his diplomacy that he
preserved his life against the hatred of Thakombau, who had not
forgotten his endeavours to persuade the rebels to kill him.

[Pageheader: PUNISHMENTS FOR PIRACY]

The rebels had made one serious mistake. During Tanoa's exile in 1833
they had urged Namosimalua to seize the French brig, _L'Aimable
Josephine_ (Captain Bureau), lying at Viwa. The Viwa chief, scenting
danger, declined at first to have anything to do with the project, but
his scruples were overborne, and the crew was massacred by Namosi's
nephew, who was thereafter called Verani (Frenchman). The captured
vessel did not prove to be of much value. Her native crew did not dare
to sail her within sight of other vessels, and eventually she was cast
away. In October, 1838, M. Dumont d'Urville, who touched at the group on
his return voyage from the Antarctic sea, exacted reparation for this
act of piracy by burning Viwa, the inhabitants being in hiding in the
neighbourhood. He did not then know that Captain Bureau had to some
extent provoked his fate by taking part in native wars.

In 1840 Captain Wilkes, of the United States Exploring Expedition,
visited the group, and deported Veindovi, the king of Rewa's son, for
having instigated the massacre of part of the crew of an American
vessel. He also severely punished the people of Malolo, an islet at the
western extremity of Vitilevu, for the murder of two of his officers.
These proceedings undoubtedly had a great effect in protecting the lives
and property of Europeans from chiefs whom they had offended.

In the same year war broke out between Somosomo and Vuna, two districts
in the island of Taveuni. Mbau pursued her usual policy of weakening her
rivals by supporting the weaker side, and, regardless of the debt owed
to Somosomo by Tanoa during his exile, espoused the cause of Vuna.
Thakombau's elder brother, Wainiu, who was vasu to Somosomo, and had
designs upon the succession to Tanoa, took the opportunity of betraying
his intentions. He fled to Somosomo, whence he proceeded to buy over the
borderers of Mbau on the mainland, within a few miles of the town. The
most formidable of the tribes that joined him was Namena, which
Thakombau was powerless to reduce by open attack. The stratagem which
reduced Namena from a powerful tribe to its present condition of serfdom
is worth narrating for the light it throws upon Fijian methods of
diplomacy. Namena sent messengers to Viwa to win over Namosimalua to the
cause of Wainiu. The chief received them apparently with open arms, but
secretly informed Thakombau that he had a plan for effecting the
massacre of all Namena's fighting men without a campaign. The plan was
simple. Mbau was to lay siege to Viwa, and the Viwans were to invite
Namena to garrison the town. But only blank cartridge was to be used,
and the rest was to be left to him. The Viwans, many of whom were
nominally Christians, for the missionaries had settled in the island,
were kept in the dark till the last moment. Mbau played their part in
the comedy admirably. When the blank cartridge was fired many of the
warriors feigned death, but when they reached the moat, the gates were
thrown open, and the Viwans joined their mock assailants in massacring
the unfortunate Namenans. One hundred and forty warriors were slain, and
forty widows were strangled to their manes, a blow from which the tribe
has never recovered.

Thakombau had now virtually become regent. He had not only to direct the
foreign policy of the confederation, but to keep a watchful eye upon
conspirators at home. One of his brothers, Raivalita, sailed from Vuna
with the intention of assassinating him. But the plot was betrayed, and
as Raivalita left the house after reporting his arrival to his father,
he was waylaid and clubbed. In 1845 war broke out between Mbau and Rewa,
owing chiefly to a personal feud between Thakombau and Nkara, son of the
king of Rewa, who had had an intrigue with one of Thakombau's wives. It
was an illustration of the old Fijian proverb that a quarrel between
brothers is the most difficult to patch. There had been almost annual
skirmishes between the border villages, in which the chiefs took
desultory interest, but in this war the issue lay between the chiefs
themselves. Hostilities were precipitated by an act of treachery. Rewa
had burned the town of Suva[24] during the absence of the fighting men,
and had sent a message to Mbau saying that, as honour was satisfied, the
people would be spared. But on the following day the fugitives were
ambushed on the Tamanoa heights.[25] The war dragged on for six months,
being for the most part little more than the burning of outlying
villages, and the cutting off of stragglers, all of whom were killed and
eaten. The ties of vasu between members of the royal families had much
confused the issue. One of the sons of the king of Rewa, Thoka-na-uto
(or Mr. Phillips, as he preferred to call himself) had joined Mbau from
the first, and a number of the border villages had followed his example,
and were in the field against their feudal lord. White men were fighting
on both sides, in one or two cases naked and blackened like the natives.

[Pageheader: DESTRUCTION OF REWA]

The end came in June, 1845. Defections from Rewa had been frequent;
indeed, in this war desertion was scarcely regarded. Early in June the
Rewans had sent a chief to Mbau to treat for peace, a fatal step, for
Thakombau bought over the envoy to betray his countrymen. The Mbau army
was to invest the town, and while it was attacking, traitors within the
walls were to set it on fire, and begin slaying their fellow-citizens.
The plot was entirely successful. As the enemy reached the bank of the
river opposite Rewa, the town burst into flames. The traitors within its
walls had already begun slaughtering. Meanwhile, a Mbau chief shouted to
the queen to cross the river in a canoe to her own people, the Mbauans,
and to bring her children and Mbau retainers with her. As they were
embarking the king himself came down to the canoe. The Mbauans shouted
to him to go back, but he would not. As he was crossing the river he was
fired upon; he was wounded by a spear as he was disembarking. Then
Thakombau ordered one of his brothers to club him, but he was afraid to
strike so great a chief. The wretched king pleaded hard for life, and
his wife joined her entreaties; but Thakombau reminded him of the
calumnies he and his sons had spoken, and told him sternly that he must
die. Snatching from an attendant a club with an axe head lashed to it,
he clave his skull to the jaw, and his wife and children were splashed
with his blood.

Indirectly the Rewa war had a sinister bearing upon the fortunes of the
whites. In May, 1844, a European, who had fought on the Rewa side
against Mbau, sailed for Lakemba with one of Tanoa's wives, who had run
away from Mbau, and was now deputed by the Rewans to induce Lakemba to
revolt from Thakombau's government. He was wrecked on the island of
Thithia, and the Europeans of Levuka, hoping to recover some of the
vessel's gear, of which they stood in need, sailed to that island.
Failing in this, they went on to Lakemba, whither the shipwrecked man
had escaped. For a time they hesitated to give him a passage to Rewa,
for he was as much disliked by them as he was by the natives, and they
knew the danger of displeasing Thakombau. But he offered a sum of
passage-money which overcame their scruples, and they carried him off
just in time to escape the war canoe which Thakombau had sent in pursuit
of him.

Thakombau not unnaturally regarded this as an act of hostility, and Tui
Levuka, who was becoming alarmed at the power of the whites in his town,
and at the extent of land which he had alienated to them, seized the
opportunity for beseeching his suzerain to deport them from the island.
The peremptory order for their removal was a severe blow to the
prosperous little settlement, which had to abandon the fruits of so many
years of labour, and begin life afresh. A fine schooner, half built, had
to be abandoned on the slips, and the houses left to be gutted by the
natives. It speaks well for their peaceable disposition that they did
not remove to Rewa, where they might have restored its waning fortunes
in the struggle with Mbau, and that they chose Solevu Bay in Mbua, which
was at peace with Thakombau. The new settlement was unhealthy and
inconvenient for communication with ships, and long before the five
years of exile was completed Tui Levuka and the Mbau chiefs had repented
of their precipitancy, which had cut them off from the services of the
white artisans which were so necessary to them. The request for
permission to return, made early in 1849, was readily granted.

[Pageheader: THE SECOND REWA WAR]

In 1846 Thakombau led an army of 3000 men, nominally to help Somosomo
against Natewa, but in reality to increase his own influence at the
expense of his ally. This he did by commanding the attack in person,
and contriving to spare the lives of the defenders, while receiving
their submission himself. The result of this campaign, for which
Somosomo paid an enormous subsidy, was to make Natewa a tributary of
Mbau, and diminish the influence of Somosomo.

On September 1, 1847, Rewa was again destroyed by Thakombau. The sister
whom he had promised to Tui Nakelo as a bribe for his treachery to Rewa
had been given instead to Ngavindi, chief of Lasakau, and Tui Nakelo in
revenge offered to join Ratu Nkara, the son of the king of Rewa, whose
feud with Thakombau had provoked the last war. Between them they rebuilt
Rewa, and repulsed the Mbauans sent to prevent them. But Tui Nakelo was
assassinated by means of a plot devised by Thakombau, who advanced to
Tokatoka, and sent thence a message to Ratu Nkara that he wished him no
ill, and that if he would remove with his people to the islet of
Nukulau, and allow him to burn Rewa _pro forma_, he would molest him no
further. Ratu Nkara accordingly withdrew all his men, not to the islet
mentioned in the message, but to a hill top whence he could watch the
Mbau canoes surrounding Nukulau to capture him, "Pig's dung!" he
exclaimed; "does Thakombau take me for a fool!"

In 1849 Captain Erskine visited the group in H.M.S. _Havannah_, and gave
Thakombau an exhibition of the precision of marine artillery, which had
an important bearing on the history of the next few years. It inflamed
the king with a desire to possess a gunboat of his own, and two were
ordered, one from America and one from Sydney. The almost annual visit
of ships of war about this time had impressed Thakombau with the
importance of doing nothing that would give any excuse for foreign
intervention. But neither Captain Fanshaw, Captain Erskine, nor Sir
Everard Home, who urged Thakombau in turn to abandon cannibalism and the
strangling of widows, the last named so vehemently that they parted on
bad terms, had much effect upon him. The fact was that, as after events
proved, Thakombau did not feel himself strong enough to do so. In the
fifteen years between 1835 and 1850 he had fought his way into the
foremost place in Fiji, and his influence in the latter year was such
that the American Consul, Mr. Miller, in a letter of remonstrance
actually addressed him officially as Tui Viti (King of Fiji). But the
Europeans could not see beneath the surface, and none knew, as he
himself did, upon what a quicksand his power was built. His maintenance
of the ancient customs, his opposition to Christianity, denounced so
bitterly by the missionaries, was part of a set policy. Had he embraced
Christianity when it was first pressed upon him, he would have remained
the petty chief of a few square miles, a mere vassal of the mission, all
his days, for the missionaries discountenanced war, and it was only by
war that he could hope to extend his influence. He alone of all his
people foresaw that the mission would destroy, first the ancient polity,
and ultimately the independence of the Fijians. His dialogues with the
missionaries,[26] who for fifteen years were importuning him to let them
live at Mbau, bantering as they were in tone, show how consistent was
his policy, and they do not justify all the abuse that was heaped upon
him by the mission historians. He respected the men; he objected to
their doctrine, which, he said, might be suitable enough for Europeans,
but was not adapted to the Fijians. His forbearance to the missionaries
who so often thwarted him was remarkable: he allowed them to live at
Viwa, within sight of Mbau, and to proselytize his subjects: he was
personally kind and courteous to them, though he received nothing at
their hands in return, as by Fijian usage he had a right to expect. The
missionaries, so far from allowing him any personal credit for his
kindliness, crowed over his courtesies as surrenders to their diplomacy.
As an absolute sovereign he had cause enough to quarrel with them.
Without preaching actual treason, they were always denouncing the
customs which he practised, and denying the pretensions to divinity
which were accorded to every ruling chief; the mission stations were
cities of refuge to which every disaffected native fled when his treason
was discovered. They themselves admit that the converted natives openly
boasted that they were exempt from service in the army, and that
murderers, "who were punishable even by Fijian law, fled to mission
stations, and hypocritically professed an anxiety for Christian
instruction."[27] The Christian natives refused to fight for their
country. There was in fact a party in the state which denied their
ruler's authority, and were not only apostates from the national
religion, but disaffected towards the government. It was therefore
remarkable, not that he made an attempt to persecute, but that he made
only one.

[Pageheader: PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIAN CONVERTS]

In December, 1850, Thakombau declared war on all Christians. The heathen
villages on the Tailevu coast for a distance of fifty miles rose, and
laid siege to Dama and to the island of Viwa, where the missionaries
lived, but Thakombau had issued orders that no injury should be done to
the lives and property of the Europeans, lest there should be a pretext
for foreign intervention. The missionaries appealed to a Tongan chief,
who, with 300 men, was on a visit to Mbau. This chief dispatched a canoe
to act as a guard for the missionaries, and some of its crew were killed
by the besieging force. The Tongans were now involved in the war, and as
the whites were also supporting the Mission with supplies, Thakombau
very wisely called off his troops and there was peace.

In 1850 Thakombau had touched the pinnacle of his fortunes, and we are
now to see upon what his authority rested. So long as he ran in the
grooves of custom his power was absolute, but no sooner did he introduce
innovations than it began to crumble beneath him. Late in 1851 the two
gunboats of sixty tons, ordered by him abroad, were delivered, and the
agents began to press for payment. He ordered a levy of _beche-de-mer_
throughout his dominions. The labour entailed by this new tax was far
less than that of house-building or providing food, but the one was new,
and the others sanctified by custom. Moreover, his subjects knew that
the _beche-de-mer_ they were called upon to fish would find a ready sale
with the Europeans. Many of the villages flatly declined to obey; some
took the sacks, and let them rot in their houses; others burned the
sacks before the eyes of the king's messengers. In January, 1852,
Thakombau, who seldom abandoned any project in the face of opposition,
took 1000 fishers with him to Mathuata, and set them an example by
fishing with his own hands, but his men worked grudgingly, and the
proceeds of the expedition were small. He then sent a party in the ship
to New Caledonia, where sufficient _beche-de-mer_ was collected to pay
for one of the vessels, and she was handed over to him. This purchase
was the most unpopular act of his reign.

The long-expected death of old Tanoa occurred in 1852, and, despite the
protests of the missionaries and captains of ships-of-war, Thakombau
took part in the immemorial ceremony of strangling his father's widows,
who, in accordance with custom, themselves contended for the honour of
being strangled to prove their loyalty to the dead. The missionaries
affect to trace his troubles to this act of barbarity, but they had
probably the effect of delaying them, by proving to his chiefs that
their king was before all things a Fijian still.

[Pageheader: REVOLT AGAINST THAKOMBAU]

On the death of Thoka-na-uto (Mr. Phillips), who as Thakombau's ally was
nominally king of Rewa, Ratu Nkara came from his hiding-place in the
mountains and succeeded to the chieftainship. He is the most romantic
figure in Fijian history. Years of guerrilla warfare, when he was a
fugitive with a price upon his head, had not broken his indomitable
spirit, nor weakened his lifelong defiance of his victorious enemy,
Thakombau. He had never stooped to the acts of treachery that had
stained the career of his rival, and had he lived longer his courage and
skill in warfare would have raised the city of his fathers from its
ashes to be the capital of the first state in Fiji. Rewa was rebuilt,
and Nkara set about corrupting the border villages of Mbau. He was
successful beyond his hopes. In a few weeks Mbau was enclosed in a ring
of revolted towns, for not only was the mainland aflame from Kamba to
Namena, but Ovalau, under Tui Levuka, had declared its independence.
There can be no doubt that for this the Europeans at Levuka were partly
responsible. They had never forgiven their summary expulsion from
Levuka in 1844, nor Thakombau's request to Captain Macgruder to deport
them all from the group. They were at this time the most orderly and
law-abiding community of Europeans in the Pacific, having by hard work
and trading accumulated a good deal of property. They were not in a
position to take up arms openly against Thakombau, and their only overt
act was to punish the natives of Malaki, an island subject to Mbau, for
the destruction of an English cutter called the _Wave_. In December,
1853, Levuka was destroyed by an incendiary who was believed to be
acting under the orders of Verani, Thakombau's lieutenant. The whites
lost all they possessed, and on the following day Thakombau visited the
town in order to express his sympathy, and avert any suspicion of
connivance. During his progress through the ruined town the Europeans,
many of whom knew him well, let him pass without a sign of recognition,
and he left the place anxious and dispirited.

At this juncture he had sore need of friends. The unexpected revolt of
his personal serfs at Kamba was a veritable disaster, for they had
charge of his largest canoe, the sails and stores of his gunboat, and
his principal magazine. A few days after his formal installation as
Vunivalu on July 26, 1853, his army was beaten off by the Kambans, his
faithful lieutenant Verani was assassinated in Ovalau, and the rebellion
spread. He knew that he had now to reckon with traitors among his own
kin. Ratu Mara,[28] who had for many months been a voluntary exile from
Mbau, had returned to the delta to be the figure-head of the rebellion,
and Tui Levuka, whose authority was not sufficient to control the rebels
of Ovalau, persuaded the Europeans to send for him. At this moment a
schooner arrived from Sydney with a consignment of arms for Thakombau,
and the European consignee, Pickering, declined to deliver them.

On October 30, 1853, Thakombau yielded to the importunities of the
missionaries so far as to allow the Rev. Joseph Waterhouse[29] to take
up his residence at Mbau, probably in the hope that he would be a
useful advocate in the event of misunderstanding with European
governments. In November he received an unexpected visit from King
George Tubou of Tonga, then on his way to Sydney. He turned this visit
to good account by promising the king a large canoe (the celebrated Ra
Marama) if he would revisit him on his return home. There now seemed to
be a prospect of a favourable turn to his fortunes. Tui Levuka, doubtful
of the success of his rebellion, made a secret compact with him to play
the traitor to his own side, and Thakombau now prepared to crush Kamba.
His plans were impeded by the secession of his kinsman Koroi-ravulo, who
secretly bribed five hundred of his army to absent themselves from the
rendezvous, and in March, 1854, he set forth with barely 1500 men. He
had foolishly neglected to seize the opportunity of a hurricane, which
had levelled the defences of Kamba, and when the assault was made the
Kamba garrison had been stiffened with a number of whites and
half-castes from Levuka, who foresaw that the fall of Kamba would place
Levuka in the power of the victorious army. Thakombau commanded the
assault in person. Having cleared broad roads for retreat in case of a
sortie 500 men advanced to the attack, but they were seized with a
sudden panic, and the whole army fled in confusion to their canoes. A
further defeat at Sawakasa, the stronghold of Koroi-ravulo, completed
Thakombau's discomfiture.

Ratu Nkara and his friend Mr. Williams, the United States Consul, Ratu
Mara, Tui Levuka, and the Europeans of Ovalau, who had combined to bring
him to this pass, styled themselves the "League." Their agreement, as
set forth in a letter from Pickering to Williams, afterwards made
public, was "to stop all ships of going to Mbau," and to invoke the aid
of the first ship-of-war that might arrive. Consul Williams's
ill-directed activity in the cause proved the undoing of all the
schemes, for he wrote a violent letter to the newspapers in Sydney,
urging the destruction of Mbau as the first duty of civilized nations,
which, when translated to Thakombau, convinced him that his only chance
of salvation lay in conciliating the missionaries. A letter which he
received at the same time from King George of Tonga persuaded him that
it was high time to embrace Christianity. His defeat at Kamba after so
many favourable omens had rudely shaken whatever belief he may have had
in the gods of his fathers, and if he now rejected the support of King
George and the missionaries he would have had no friends left. He had
been profoundly moved by the news of the assassination of Tui Kilakila,
the chief of Somosomo, which, the missionaries assured him, was a
judgment on him for his opposition to Christianity, and he was moreover
suffering from a painful disease of the leg. Cut off as he was from
communication with the Europeans who opposed the conversion of Mbau,
there was no hostile counsel to neutralize the persuasions of the
missionaries.

[Pageheader: THAKOMBAU CONVERTED]

On April 28, 1854, the momentous decision was made. Assembling his
chiefs he read the two letters to them, and announced his decision,
reminding them of the prosperity of Tonga since the adoption of
Christianity. On the following Sunday he attended service with about
three hundred of his chiefs and retainers, all clad in waistcloths, for
the missionaries had ordained that the outward sign of conversion should
be clothes. As soon as the people had recovered from their astonishment
there was a convulsion that nearly cost Thakombau his life. Rewa was
still stoutly heathen, and all the malcontents in Mbau flocked to the
enemy. The island of Koro also rose. Mbau was now hemmed in, and for the
first time since 1835 it was put into a state of defence. But there were
traitors within. Yangondamu, Thakombau's cousin, won over by two of the
king's brothers who had joined the enemy, had engaged to assassinate
him. His house was crowded with young chiefs anxious to pay court to the
rising power, while Thakombau sat alone, deserted by all but the
missionary and a faithful Tongan. This immediate peril was averted by
the dispatch of Yangondamu in command of a force to reduce the Koro
rebels, and while he was away a Captain Dunn arrived from America with a
cargo of arms, which he insisted upon selling to the Mbauans despite the
entreaties of the Europeans.

The missionaries had already made a clean sweep of cannibalism, the
slaughter of prisoners, and the strangling of widows, but when they
tried to force a constitution on European lines upon the king they found
him obstinate. "I was born a chief, and a chief I will die," he said,
and his firmness, distasteful as it was to the missionaries, saved, not
only himself, but also the cause of the mission; for, as Waterhouse
himself records, "the populace, long favourably inclined towards the new
religion, now hated Christianity because it was the religion of
Thakombau," and if Thakombau had added to the other sins the abdication
of his authority, nothing could have saved him or the cause of his
foreign advisers.

On November 8, 1854, Thakombau was induced by Captain Dunn to hold a
conference with his brother, Ratu Mara, on his ship, the _Dragon_. This
meeting, effected with so much difficulty, resulted in nothing but a
profession of reconciliation. Thakombau had so far humbled himself as to
sue his enemy, the king of Rewa, for peace, but his overtures were
haughtily rejected. In the same month he attended an inquiry held by
Captain Denham on H.M.S. _Herald_, at which he formally withdrew all the
charges he had made against the Europeans, much to the chagrin of the
missionaries, who had forwarded them to the commander. The Europeans had
sent three representatives, who roundly charged the king with the
burning of Levuka, but of this charge he seems to have cleared himself.
This was the first occasion on which he officially stated the limits of
his dominions. He had explained the suzerainty which he claimed over
Somosomo, Lakemba and other states, but when asked point-blank to
declare the limits of the territory in which he would undertake to
protect the Europeans, he indicated a territory no larger than an
English country parish, and his reply was disconcerting to those who had
been styling him Tui Viti, King of Fiji.

[Pageheader: A DEATH PORTENT]

His conciliatory spirit, being set down to fear, had availed him
nothing, and in the last months of 1854, the fate of Mbau still hung in
the balance. Ratu Nkara had offered to end the contest by a duel between
the two kings. "It is shameful," he said, "that so many warriors should
perish; let you or me die": but Thakombau replied, "Are we dogs that we
should bite one another? Are we not chiefs? Let us fight with our
warriors like chiefs."

But in January, 1855, the low tide of Thakombau's fortunes began to
turn. Rewa was stricken with alarm at the news of a portent. Andi Thivo,
one of the Rewa queens, noticed that tears were exuding from one of the
roots of taro set before her. She addressed it, asking why it wept. Was
Rewa to be destroyed? Was her father about to die? Was Thakombau? Were
any of the chiefs whom she named? But the taro made no sign. Was her
lord, the king of Rewa, near his death? A voice from the taro said
"Yes," and the weeping ceased. The report spread through the length and
breadth of the land, and the people waited in hushed expectancy. To them
their king was already dead. Suddenly the war-drums themselves were
hushed. The omen was fulfilled; Ratu Nkara, "the Hungry Woman," "the
Long Fellow," was no more. A mighty man, Thakombau's only dangerous
enemy, had fallen. He died of dysentery on January 26, 1855, having in
his last moments promised to turn Christian if he recovered, swearing
nevertheless to have the blood of Thakombau. But he was speechless
during his last moments, and could not bequeath a continuance of the war
to his chiefs.

Though he had shown the missionaries many kindnesses and allowed them to
live with him, though he had had more intercourse with white men than
any other chief, he died in the faith of his fathers. In the last months
of his life he was with difficulty restrained from wading into the
river, where sharks were seen, in order to prove to the missionary,
Moore, that his person was sacred to them. A fortnight before his death
he completed the building of two heathen temples to ensure his victory
over Mbau, and sent a polite message to the missionary asking him to
hold his services in another part of the town, "lest the gods should be
angry at the noise." He said that he did not intend any disrespect to
Jehovah, but was putting his own gods on their last trial, and desired
to give them every chance of success. Though his chiefs were still
heathen, out of respect for the missionary only one of his wives was
strangled, and she, as they explained, was old and already half dead.

On the death of Thakombau's personal enemy Rewa was glad enough to make
peace with Mbau, but the Mbau rebels, who had to fear reprisals,
continued the struggle. But in March King George of Tonga arrived at
Mbau with forty large canoes to take away the war-canoe presented to him
by Thakombau. After trying in vain to bring about a reconciliation, and
suffering the loss of one of his own chiefs through the treachery of the
rebels, King George agreed to lend his troops to Thakombau. The prospect
of this foreign interference so incensed the people that tribes which
had hitherto taken no part in the struggle threw in their lot with the
rebels, and every one who opposed Christianity, or had anything to fear
from Mbau, joined the enemy. The priests were inspired; the oracles
spoke. The Tongan fleet would be derelict at Kamba for want of hands to
work the sails after the battle. It was to be a death-struggle between
the old gods and the new.

The promontory of Kamba was to be the battlefield, and the fortress at
its extremity swarmed with warriors. For three days the allied fleets
waited near the fort in the hope that it would capitulate without a
siege, but on April 7 they bore down upon the promontory--a formidable
spectacle. They were received with a volley of musketry. By all the
rules of Fijian warfare this should have checked the landing for that
day, but to the astonishment of the Kambans it did nothing of the sort.
The sails were lowered, and, leaving their dead and wounded to the care
of their women, the Tongans rushed to the attack. There were more
surprises in store for the garrison; instead of hiding behind trees, and
trying to scare the defenders into flight, the Tongans advanced to the
assault in the open, and recked nothing of the men who fell. King
George, who commanded in person, had decided to invest the town by
throwing up fortifications fronting the defences, and to starve it into
submission, but the Vavau warriors pressed on, and took the place by
assault. They afterwards defended themselves for this act of
insubordination by saying that they were looking for the defences, and,
taking the rampart for mere outworks, had found themselves in possession
of the town before they were aware of their mistake--a familiar form of
Tongan boasting. The Tongans lost fourteen killed and thirty wounded;
the Mbauans, who had been mere spectators, escaped almost scatheless.
More than two hundred of the enemy were killed, the greater part by the
heathen Fijians on the Mbau side, and two hundred prisoners were taken.
Thakombau was willing to spare all but Koroi-ravula, but King George
interfered to save his life, which was justly forfeited by European as
well as Fijian law. The submission of the rebels was complete. No less
than twenty thousand natives proved their allegiance to Thakombau by
accepting Christianity and adapting their customs to the wishes of the
missionaries.

[Pageheader: THE TONGANS TAKE KAMBA BY ASSAULT]

It is not to be understood that the conversion of Thakombau was the
first success of the missionaries. A printing press had been at work for
many years, and, even in the Mbau territory, many hundreds of the
natives had been taught to read and write. There were mission stations
in Lakemba, Somosomo, Rewa, Levuka and Mbua, and in many of the coast
villages there were native teachers, the Christian and heathen natives
living amicably side by side. The Christians claimed immunity from war
service, and it was therefore not to be wondered at that Thakombau
showed indecent glee when appealed to by the missionaries for help
against persecution at Mbau. "You have often refused to fight for me,
and now you have a war of your own on your hands, and I am glad of it."
But the Lau group professed Christianity to a man; in the Lomaiviti
islands the heathen were in a minority, and now, by Thakombau's
conversion, the north-east coast of Vitilevu adopted the new faith. Only
the inland and western tribes of the two large islands continued in the
faith of their fathers, and these were soon obliged to fight for their
religion.

In 1858 Thakombau's peace of mind was again rudely disturbed. Williams,
the United States Consul, whose enmity against Thakombau was personal,
had never relaxed his efforts to bring about foreign intervention.
During the Fourth of July festivities in 1849 Williams's house on the
island of Nukulau had been burned to the ground, and though report
attributed the fire to pure accident during a display of fireworks by
its convivial master, Williams laid his loss at the door of Thakombau.
There were other claims by American citizens, and Williams's persistency
at length induced the American Government to send a frigate to make
inquiries. Commodore Boutwell had visited Mbau in 1855. His high-handed
treatment of Thakombau, and his ready acceptance of the _ex parte_
statement of the claimants, passed almost unnoticed in that eventful
year, but in 1858 the king was made to realize that the American award
of L9000 as compensation to American residents was no empty threat, but
was a claim that must be met. He had had a sinister experience of the
danger of levying from his subjects contributions not sanctioned by
custom, and he knew that the task was hopeless.

But this was not all. A new star had risen on the eastern horizon, and
Mbau was now threatened by the Tongans. Occasional intercourse between
Tonga and Fiji had taken place for perhaps three or four centuries,
through canoes plying between the different Tongan islands having been
driven westward by the trade wind, but it was not until later in the
eighteenth century that it became regular. At the time of Cook's visit
in 1772 it had become as much a part of every young chief's education to
take part in a warlike expedition to Fiji as it was in England a little
later to make the grand tour. The Tongans steered for Lakemba, where
they took part with one or other of the factions that happened to be at
war, and, having taken the lion's share of the loot, and built
themselves new war-canoes in Kambara of _vesi_, a timber very scarce in
Tonga, they set sail for their own country. But not a few stayed behind,
and gradually a little colony of Tongan-speaking half-castes established
itself in all the principal windward islands.

[Pageheader: THE TONGAN CONQUESTS]

In 1837 the influence of the Tongans in Fiji received an unexpected
impetus from the arrival of the first Wesleyan missionaries, who sailed
from Tonga to Lakemba with a retinue of Tongan teachers. They were at
once joined by all the resident Tongans, who were now as zealous in
converting the Fijians to Christianity as they had formerly been in
converting their property to their own use. The countenance and
encouragement of the white missionaries fostered their natural
arrogance, and, when persuasion failed to effect conversion, stronger
methods were sometimes resorted to. By the year 1848 the Tongans had got
thoroughly out of hand, and King George, who was not yet secure against
conspiracy, foresaw that any rival who might choose to recruit partisans
in Fiji could return to Tonga with a formidable army. In order to
provide a legitimate outlet for the ambition of his cousin Maafu, he
dispatched that redoubtable warrior to Fiji ostensibly as governor of
the Tongan colony, in reality as conqueror of as much of the group as he
could take. Maafu's strong personality, aided by the lash, soon reduced
the turbulent Tongans to order, and island after island of the eastern
group went down before him. The Tongan teachers, now established in most
of the western islands, acted as his political agents, and the
missionaries were powerless to discountenance aggressions that were
avowedly made with the object of spreading the Christian faith. So
horrible were the excesses of his warriors in these raids that the
Wesleyan authorities were occasionally obliged to wash their hands of
him, but their somewhat half-hearted protests did not prevent Taveuni
and the greater part of Vanualevu from falling under his control.

The Tongans had carried all before them by their superior courage and
dash in frontal attack, and by their intelligent use of European
weapons.[30] In 1858 Maafu's cruisers were ravaging territory claimed by
Mbau, and the two powers stood face to face. Thakombau was wise enough
to see that, in the event of an open rupture, even if he should gain an
initial advantage over Maafu's warriors, he could not hope to stand
against a power that had all Tonga to draw upon for recruits, and that
with America pressing for its debt, and Maafu bent upon conquest, he had
every prospect of finding himself in vassalage to one or the other. In
his extremity he turned to Mr. Pritchard, the English Consul, who,
having a firm belief in the future of the islands as a cotton-growing
country, was anxious to attract immigrants with capital. On Mr.
Pritchard's advice, Thakombau executed a deed of cession, offering the
sovereignty of the group to England on condition that he should retain
the rank and title of Tui Viti (King of Fiji) accorded to him by the
American Government,[31] and that, in return for 200,000 acres of land,
the British Government should satisfy the American claims.

Some pressure was put upon the Home Government from the Australian
colonies to induce it to accept the offer upon the ground of the high
price to which cotton had risen in consequence of the disturbances in
the Southern States of the Union. Colonel Smythe, R.A., was sent out to
report upon the proposal, but, in the face of his assurance that
Thakombau's authority controlled less than half the group, the
Government, already embarrassed by the expenses of a Maori war, could
not entertain the offer.

The prospect of annexation had attracted from New Zealand a large number
of Englishmen, some of whom settled in the island. In 1861 the European
colony numbered 166 adults, of whom the majority were respectable
people. They bought large tracts of land from the native chiefs, who
sold recklessly whether the land belonged to them or not.

[Pageheader: ANNEXATION]

From 1861 to 1869 the Europeans increased to 1800, and the control of
political affairs passed from the native chiefs to Europeans, who served
as a check upon Maafu's ambition. The mission spread rapidly, until by
1870 all but a few of the inland tribes were nominally Christian.
Various unsuccessful attempts were made to establish a settled
government, but in 1871 Thakombau was declared constitutional sovereign
of the entire group, with a ministry and two houses of parliament, a
form of government ridiculously unsuited to the needs of the country,
seeing that the natives, who numbered nearly one hundred to one, were to
have no votes. Thakombau had an army officered by white men, and made
abortive attempts to conquer the interior, but the new government did
little beyond plunging into debt, and splitting the country into
factions. In 1873 the political state of the group had become
intolerable, and on British Commissioners being sent to inquire into the
matter on the spot, the chiefs were induced, after some hesitation, to
cede the sovereignty to England unconditionally. The Deed of Cession was
signed in September, 1874. No doubt the chiefs acted to some extent
under pressure from the Europeans, who had purchased land which they
could not enjoy while it was in occupation by natives, and for which
they desired to have titles. The Lands Commission had a task of
extraordinary difficulty. Tracts had been sold by chiefs who had no
title to them, and sometimes the same land had been sold to two or more
purchasers. Many of the deeds produced could never have been understood
by the natives who signed them, and often the boundaries were
imperfectly described. Sir Arthur Gordon,[32] the first Governor, wisely
decided to govern the natives as far as possible through the machinery
that he found in operation, and it encountered no open opposition with
the exception of an insignificant rising in the western interior of
Vitilevu, where the tribes, provoked by the encroachments of their
neighbours on the coast, and alarmed at the ravages of the measles,
reverted to their heathen gods for a few months. This outbreak was put
down by native levies.

Thakombau, who received a pension of L1500 a year, was loyal to the
British Government, and, both in the administration of his own province
and in his intercourse with other chiefs, used his immense influence to
promote the contentment of his people under their new rulers. At his
death in 1882 the last of the great chiefs passed away, for Maafu had
died in the preceding year.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 16: One of them, having thus smeared his head, stooped to the
fire to dry it; the powder flared up, and he leapt forth into the _rara_
singed bare to the scalp.]

[Footnote 17: The native poems of the time refer also to a hailstorm,
which destroyed the plantations, a hurricane which caused a tidal wave
and a great flood, and raised the alluvial flats of the Rewa delta
several feet, a tradition which has support in the fact that a network
of mangrove roots underlies the soil at a depth of four or five feet.
The hurricane is said to have carried the pestilence away with it.]

[Footnote 18: They boarded her and directed her to the sandal-wood
district in Mbau, returning to the shore with a pig, a monkey, two geese
and a cat, besides knives and axes and mirrors. The native historians
name her captain "Red-face."]

[Footnote 19: It is well here to correct an error for which Thomas
Williams was originally responsible, and which has been copied by almost
every writer on Fiji since his day, namely, that "about the year 1804 a
number of convicts escaped from New South Wales, and settled among the
islands." The only foundation for this story is that "Paddy" Connor, who
was actually a deserter from a passing ship, was popularly supposed to
have "done time," and that the morals of the early settlers were such
that if they were not convicts they ought to have been. Putting aside
the extreme improbability that escaped convicts should beat 1200 miles
in the teeth of the prevailing wind, while so many eligible
hiding-places lay near at hand, it is certain that the first white
settlers were all shipwrecked sailors, deserters, or men paid off at
their own request.

According to M. Dumont d'Urville, two escaped convicts named "Sina" and
"Gemy" (? Jimmy) were concerned in the seizure of the _Aimable
Josephine_ in 1833.]

[Footnote 20: Among the settlers in 1812 was one who was believed to be
secretly addicted to cannibalism, and was ostracized by his own
countrymen.]

[Footnote 21: The story of this adventure, as narrated by Dillon, in his
_Voyage in the South Seas_, is the most dramatic passage in Polynesian
literature.]

[Footnote 22: The same Maraia who was afterwards forcibly married to the
captain of a Manila ship.]

[Footnote 23: Cakobau, according to Fijian spelling.]

[Footnote 24: Now included in the grounds of Government House.]

[Footnote 25: The massacre took place on the site of the present
residence of the manager of the Bank of New Zealand, and four hundred
persons were massacred without distinction of sex or age.]

[Footnote 26: See _The King and People of Fiji_, by Joseph Waterhouse.]

[Footnote 27: Waterhouse, p. 188.]

[Footnote 28: The second rebel chief of that name.]

[Footnote 29: Author of _The King and People of Fiji_.]

[Footnote 30: Maafu was the first to employ cannon in native craft in
Fiji. He had two small pieces mounted on the decks of canoes, which, if
they did but little execution in a bombardment, often ended a siege by
striking terror into the hearts of the garrison.]

[Footnote 31: Mr. Miller, the British Consul in Hawaii, first addressed
Thakombau as "Tui Viti" (King of Fiji) in a letter written in 1849 on
the subject of the American claims, it being the policy of the claimants
to make one chief responsible for damages sustained in every part of the
group, however remote from the frontiers of Thakombau's territory.]

[Footnote 32: Now Lord Stanmore.]




CHAPTER IV

CONSTITUTION OF SOCIETY

Chiefs--The Growth of the Confederation--The Confederation in
    Decay--Lala, Communal and Personal--Community of Property through
    Kerekere.


The principal authority upon the state of society among the Fijians when
Europeans first came into contact with them, is the Rev. Thomas
Williams, a man possessing intelligence and observation and the instinct
of anthropological research without the training necessary for
systematic inquiries. Belonging to the pre-speculation period, he
described what he found and not what he wished to find, and in this
respect he is a valuable witness, but, like other missionaries, he used
a loose terminology in describing Fijian society, making the word
"tribe" serve any group of men from a family to a state. His manuscript
fell upon evil days. His scientific instinct of accuracy and detail was
ludicrously out of keeping with the spirit of the missionary
publications of those days, in which any customs that did not suit the
English middle-class notions of propriety were either passed over as
heathen wickedness too deplorable for description, or set forth (with a
rich commentary of invective) in an obvious spirit of exaggeration to
show the subscribers at home how perilous were the lives of
missionaries, and how worthy the labourer of his hire. In his simple
love of truth, Mr. Williams had forgotten to point the usual moral, and
when Mr. Calvert brought home his manuscript in 1856, the Missionary
Society decided that it must be edited with vigilance. A Bowdler was
found in the person of a Mr. George Stringer Rowe, otherwise unknown to
fame, who re-wrote most of what was supplied to him, he apparently
having no special knowledge of the subject. "But here," says this
maiden-modest editor, whenever the outspoken Williams dares to touch
upon the marriage laws, "even at the risk of making the picture
incomplete, there may not be given a faithful representation."

[Pageheader: SINISTER FATE OF WILLIAMS' MS.]

The manuscript has long disappeared, and now we can never know exactly
what was Williams and what was Rowe. In respect of its scientific
accuracy, it may be questioned whether it did not find in Rowe a worse
fate than the "Scented Garden" met at the hands of Lady Burton.
Fortunately for science the loss of Williams's manuscript is not as
irreparable as a distinguished anthropologist would have us believe. Mr.
McLennan, in rating Mr. George Stringer Rowe for his meddlesome editing,
remarks, "The natives were speedily converted first, and slowly
extinguished afterwards. Comparatively few of the natives remain, and
our chance of knowing well what were their laws and customs is perhaps
gone for ever."[33] Upon this curious assumption, he treats "Fiji and
the Fijians" as modern Biblical critics treat the Pentateuch--namely, as
an obscure treatise whose loose terminology can only be read by the
light of internal evidence. Had he taken the trouble to ascertain that
the Fijians, so far from being extinguished, still number more than
two-thirds of their strength when Williams wrote, and maintain their old
tribal divisions and some of their social organization intact; had he
cared to look through the mass of evidence collected since the cession
of the islands in 1874, he would have spared his readers a lengthy
commentary, and himself a number of errors which go far to explain his
unscientific attitude in his great controversy with Morgan on the
classificatory system of relationship.

The key to the Melanesian system of government is Ancestor-worship. Just
as every act in a Fijian's life was controlled by his fear of Unseen
Powers, so was his conception of human authority based upon religion.
Patriarchy, if not the oldest, is certainly the most natural shape into
which the religious instinct of primitive man would crystallize. First
there was the family--and the islands of the Pacific were probably
peopled by single families--ruled absolutely by the father with his
store of traditions brought from the land whence he came. His sons,
knowing no laws but those which he had taught them; planting their
crops, building their huts and their canoes under his direction,
bringing their disputes to him for decision, have come to trust to him
for guidance in every detail of their lives. Suddenly he leaves them.
How are they to believe that he whose approval they courted, and whose
anger they feared but yesterday, has vanished like the flame of
yesterday's fire? His spirit has left his body; yet, somewhere it must
be watching over them still. In life he was wont to threaten them with
punishment for disobedience, and even now, when they do the things of
which he disapproved, or withhold their daily offerings of food at his
tomb, punishment is sure to follow--the crops fail; a hurricane unroofs
the hut; floods sweep away the canoe. Thus they come to propitiate the
spirit armed with such powers to harm, and, in response to their
prayers, victory is given them over their enemies. When they are beaten
back, he is frowning upon them: when the yams ripen to abundant harvest
he is rewarding their piety.

In this most natural creed was the germ of government. Each son of the
dead father founded his own family, but still owed allegiance to the
earthly representative of their deified father--the eldest son--on whom
a portion of the father's godhead had descended. Generations came and
went; the tribe had increased from tens to hundreds, but still the
eldest son of the eldest, who carried in his veins the blood of the
common ancestor in its purest form, was venerated as the head of the
tribe. The ancestor was not forgotten, but he was now translated into
Kalou-vu (lit. Root-God) and had his temple and his priests, who had
themselves become a hereditary caste, with the strong motive of
self-interest for keeping his memory green. His descendant, the tribal
chief, is set within the pale of the tabu: his will may not be
disobeyed, nor his body touched without incurring the wrath of the
Unseen. The priests and the chief give one another mutual support, the
one by threatening divine punishment for disobedience; the other by
insisting upon regularity in bringing offerings to the temple.

[Pageheader: RISE OF THE CHIEF'S POWER]

Had there been no war in Fiji the power of the aristocracy would have
been limited. Among the mountain tribes of Vitilevu, who seldom extended
their borders by conquest, the chief, while enjoying some measure of
religious veneration, can issue no important order without the consent
of the council of elders. He can exact no truckling homage where every
member of the tribe is a blood relation. But for conquest, Fiji would
have been a country of tiny independent states, no larger than a single
village could contain. From conquests sprang the great confederations.
The chief of a conquering tribe rose to be head of a complicated social
body; the members of his tribe an aristocracy supported by the industry
of an alien plebs composed of tribes they had conquered and fugitives
from other conquerors. These too had had their tribal gods and tribal
chiefs, but what have men, reduced to open slavery, to do with such
dignities? A generation of ill-usage sufficed to wipe out the very
memory of independence. For god and chief alike they had their suzerain,
upon whose indulgence their lives depended.

Besides the fortune of war, the chiefs owed much of the enormous
increase in their power to their system of land tenure. The land
boundaries of the tribe were telescopic. Every tribe owned as much land
as it could defend against the encroachments of its neighbours. There
was, as will presently be explained, individual ownership of land
actually under cultivation, but all waste land was held, theoretically,
in common. And, since the mouthpiece of the tribal will was the chief,
the waste lands were at his disposal. So long as he gave it to his own
people to use he gained no power, but as soon as fugitives, driven out
by other conquerors, began to run to him for protection, and were
granted land on which to settle, he found a body of tenants springing up
who regarded him as their personal overlord. It was to him that they
paid their rent in kind and in labour; it was to him, and not to the
tribe, that they gave feudal service in war. The chief of a great
federation had thus two distinct classes of vassals--serfs conquered in
war, and feudal tenants.

Before the advent of Europeans and the introduction of firearms, the
confederations were never very large. Tribe fought with tribe on equal
terms; the besieged had an advantage over the besiegers. Every tribe had
a natural stronghold, stored with food and water for many weeks, into
which it would retire in times of danger. If they did not carry it at
the first assault, by surprise, or by treachery from within, the
besiegers went home to await a better opportunity, for the slow
starvation of a garrison by organized siege had never occurred to any
native leader. The largest confederations known to us by
tradition--Verata and Thakaundrove--controlled less than ten miles of
coast line. With the introduction of gunpowder in 1808 native wars
became far more destructive. The powerful chiefs immediately doubled
their power, and yet Thakombau, the head of the most powerful
confederation of all, even in the zenith of his power, never ruled
directly over more than fifteen thousand people, though, undoubtedly, he
could bring influence to bear upon half the group.

[Illustration: Bringing first fruits to Mbau.]

The development of autocracy followed certain well-defined lines. At
first the chief was priest and king after the order of Melchisedec of
the Ammonite city, Jebus--that is to say, he received divine honours
while wielding the temporal authority. But as the tribe grew the
temporal power became irksome to him. The tradition of the founding of
the temporal line in Tonga about the beginning of the seventeenth
century throws the clearest light upon the origin of the spiritual and
temporal lines. A king of Tonga had goaded his people into assassinating
him; and his son, after avenging his murder, sought to put a buffer
between himself and his rebellious subjects by delegating his executive
power to his younger brother, reserving to himself all the solid
advantages of his high station without any responsibilities. Safe from
popular outbreak, he began to enjoy increased veneration owing to the
more rigid tabu that hedged him in. In another case preserved by
tradition the temporal power was founded by the indolence of the
supreme chief. In order to rid himself of the cares of government, he
constituted his brother his hereditary minister, and bequeathed to his
descendants an ornamental and dignified retirement. The Mikado and the
Shogun are analogues of the Roko Tui and the Vunivalu.[34]

[Pageheader: ORIGIN OF SPIRITUAL CHIEFS]

In Fiji, the process of scission was found in every stage of evolution.
Among the Melanesian tribes of the interior it had not begun; in Rewa
the spiritual Roko Tui still wielded the temporal power; in Mbau and
Thakaundrove he was beginning to lose even the veneration due to his
rank. Just as the coast tribes had begun to adopt the Polynesian gods in
addition to their own ancestral mythology, so they were more ready to
follow the Polynesian example of separating the temporal from the
spiritual chiefs.

The constitution of Mbau may be taken as a type of the Fijian
constitution. First in rank was the Roko Tui Mbau (Sacred Lord of Mbau).
His person was sacred. He never engaged personally in war. He was the
special patron of the priests, who, in return, were unstinting in their
insistence upon his divinity. He alone might wear his turban during the
kava-drinking. It was tabu to strangle his widow, though the widows of
no other chief were exempt from paying that last honour to the dead. At
his death no cry of lamentation might be uttered, but a solemn blast was
sounded on the conch-shell, as at the passing of a god.

Next in rank came the temporal chief, the Vu-ni-valu (Root of War, or
Skilled in War), who was at once Commander-in-Chief and executive
Sovereign. He never consulted the Roko Tui Mbau in temporal affairs, and
he enjoyed tabu privileges little inferior to those paid to his
spiritual suzerain. The Vunivalu always belonged to the Tui Kamba (Lords
of Kamba) sept, and the Roko Tui Mbau to the Vusaratu ("Chief sept").

The Tunitonga, the hereditary adviser and spokesman of the chiefs,
ranked next. He was the state matchmaker, and disposed absolutely of the
young chief girls, whose natural guardian he was.

The Mbete (priests) and Mata-ni-vanua (Royal messengers, _lit._
Messengers of the land) were next in consequence, though the chiefs of
the Fisher septs wielded influence in proportion to their force of
character.

Each sept had its own quarter of the town, the heralds at its eastern
extremity, next the Vusarandave (hereditary soldiers), and the fishermen
nearest to the mainland. Across the narrow straits were the planting
lands of the subject tribes, who might be seen at every low tide, wading
across the ford with contributions of food.


The Confederation in Decay.

The first effects of foreign interference was to strengthen the power of
the chiefs; the second, to destroy it. For more than two years Mbau
enjoyed a monopoly of muskets, which enabled her almost to double the
extent of her territory. To the eastward the kingdom of Somosomo
swallowed up the whole of Taveuni and the eastern portion of Vanua Levu,
while the Tongan immigrants under Maafu first conquered the Lau group,
and then threatened the independence of Mbau itself. The immediate
effect of subjugation was to blight the traditions and religion of the
conquered tribe, for independence is as necessary to their life as light
and air to the life of a plant. It is astonishing how quickly the status
of a Fijian is reflected in his bearing. In an assemblage of Fijians an
unskilled eye can pick out the members even of tribes who were subdued
within the memory of men still living, by their slinking gait, their
shifty eye, and the humble curve of their spine. A few years have
changed them from warriors into beaten curs. Their chief, a hewer of
wood like themselves, ceases at once to inspire respect; they approach
him now without crying the _tama_, the prerogative he used to share with
the gods themselves; they keep the _tama_ for their alien conqueror and
his gods; of their own they pretend to have forgotten the very name, nor
dare they any more to claim _tauvu_ relationship with any cousin-tribe
that has preserved its freedom. They have dropped out of the social
fabric, and chief and subject alike spend their lives in weaving ignoble
plots to alleviate the squalor of their servitude.

[Pageheader: INFLUENCE OF CONQUEST]

Far otherwise the conqueror. He who, but a generation back, would have
sweated in the yam-field with his men, now grew fat upon the
contributions of his tenants and the toil of his kitchen-men. His harem
was crowded with the daughters of allied chiefs, and the fairest girls
from every conquered village. Panders and sycophants flocked to him;
dwarfs and negroes and renegade Europeans were in his train; buffoons
told dirty stories over his evening kava bowl; poets forged heroic
genealogies for him, and when he went abroad men squatted on the ground
with averted faces and _tama_'ed. Every vessel that he used was sacred,
and brought death to any lowborn man that touched it. Every member of
his tribe swam upon the tide of his prosperity. His village became a
village of chiefs, with serfs of their own to plant food for them, where
the youths were trained to the chief-like exercises of war and
seamanship and dancing, and the old men spent their nights in feasting
and concocting plots for extending their dominion. As for the Roko Tui,
the Sacred Chief among the conquered tribes--there being no place for
such rank among serfs--he was fain to surrender his sanctity; among the
conquerors he degenerated into an ornamental symbol of the powers
divine.

The chief was seen at his best among those tribes that had preserved
their independence without seeking to extend their borders. Among the
Melanesian tribes in the western half of Vitilevu, in a number of
isolated islands, such as Vatulele and the Yasawa islands, the chief was
veritably the father of his people. Neither his dignity, nor the
sanctity of his person depended, as with us, upon any adventitious
barriers between himself and his subjects. Familiarity bred no contempt.
Like them, he wore nothing but the _malo_; with them he plied the
digging-stick at planting time. And yet, though any might approach him,
none forgot the honours due to him. When Roko Tui Nandronga worked
himself into a drunken fury over the accidental burning of his kitchen,
his whole people, chiefs and all, besmeared themselves with ashes, and
crawled to his feet to sue forgiveness; and when the Colonial Government
threatened to deport him for unjust exactions levied on his people, the
very people who had suffered from his extortions implored the Governor
to reinstate him, saying that they loved him as a father. "Can we
picture," asks Teufelsdroeckh, "a naked Duke of Wellington addressing a
naked House of Lords?" Had the sage seen a Fijian chief among his people
he would have marked how the naked brown skin may be clothed in a
divinity that needs no visible garment to lend it dignity.

The first blow at the power of the chiefs was struck unconsciously by
the missionaries. Neither they nor the chiefs themselves realized how
closely the government of the Fijians was bound up with their religion.
No sooner had a missionary gained a foothold in a chief village than the
tabu was doomed, and on the tabu depended half the people's reverence
for rank. The tabu died hard, as such institutions should die. The
first-fruits were still presented to the chief, but they were no longer
carried from him to the temple, since their excuse--as an offering to
persuade the ancestors to grant abundant increase--had passed away. No
longer supported by the priests, the Sacred Chief fell upon evil days.
Disestablished and disendowed, he was left to subsist upon the bounty of
the temporal chief, whose power and dignity had, as yet, suffered no
eclipse, for it was not the interest of the Europeans who were now
crowding into the group to attack it. The chiefs guaranteed their lives
and property, the chiefs sold them land, and protected them in their
occupation of it; the chiefs levied contributions to pay for the
contracts they had made with them; and, in return, the white men were
always ready with muskets and ammunition to help them to keep rebellious
vassals in check.

[Pageheader: SIR A. GORDON'S NATIVE POLICY]

The temporal chiefs sounded the death-knell of their privileges when
they were persuaded to cede their country to the British Government.
Had they realized the consequences they would have preferred the danger
of conquest by Maafu and his Tongans, or bullying by American
commanders, as more than one has since confessed to me. But Thakombau
was weary of bearing the brunt of European aggression, and when
Thakombau persuaded, who was strong enough to hold aloof? The British
Government began wisely enough considering the information at its
disposal. Sir Arthur Gordon (now Lord Stanmore), the first governor, was
gifted with a rare sympathy with native modes of thought. With the
experience of the disastrous native wars in New Zealand before his eyes,
he realized the importance of governing the country through its own
strong native government. To deprive the chiefs of any of their
privileges, to deny them all share in the government of their people,
would have been to convert, not only them, but their people into
enemies. To accept and improve the native system was at once the most
just, the most safe and the most economical policy. His expert advisers
were Sir John Thurston and Mr. David Wilkinson, the former deeply versed
in native politics, and the latter in native customs, if not in
customary law. With their help he set about enclosing the natives as it
were within a ring fence. The islands were divided into provinces
coinciding roughly with the boundaries of the existing confederations as
he found them. The ruling chiefs were made lieutenant-governors under
the title of _Roko Tui_, borrowed from the Sacred Chiefs who had no
longer any use for it; the province was sub-divided into districts under
chiefs with the title of _Mbuli_ ("Crowned"); the system of village
councils was extended to the province, and to the high chiefs
themselves, who met once a year to make recommendations to the Governor.
War and cannibalism were of course put down, and polygamy, which had
long been forbidden by the missionaries, was discountenanced, but
otherwise the existing native customary law was embodied in a code of
regulations passed expressly for the natives to be administered by
native magistrates under European supervision.


Lala

It was here that the first mistake was made. The chiefs' privileges were
well understood; their limitations had never been studied. It was known
that the chief could command the gratuitous service of his subjects,
provided that he fed them while they were working for him. It was not
understood that each confederation had its own system of privileges. Mr.
David Wilkinson, the Native Commissioner, had a most complete knowledge
of the Confederation of Mbua, and he seems somewhat hastily to have
assumed that the Mbua system prevailed _mutatis mutandis_ throughout the
group. Nor does he appear to have clearly understood the difference
between the chiefs' personal privileges and his right to impose taxation
for the good of the commune.

In the native mind the distinction is very clearly marked. There are, in
fact, two distinct kinds of _lala_. The first, which I will call
"personal _lala_" was the payment of rent in the form of tribute or
service to certain powerful chiefs by the tenants settled upon their
land. The second, which is best described as "communal _lala_" was
taxation in the form of tribute or service on behalf of the commune.

[Pageheader: LEVY BY _LALA_]

It is necessary to draw a clear line of distinction between communal and
personal _lala_, because while the former was universal throughout Fiji,
the latter was limited to those confederations in which the chief had
private rights in the land, and also because the two forms of _lala_
originated in totally different institutions, which are by no means
confounded in the native mind. By Europeans, both official and
"anti-official," they seem always to have been confounded. To the
critics of the Colonial Government the word _lala_ is synonymous with
"authorized oppression," or, as a recent writer chooses to call it,
"legalized robbery"; to the framers of the Native Regulation No. 4. of
1877, the two were so confused that they are enumerated haphazard
without any attempt at classification. In that regulation _lala_ is
limited to house-building, planting gardens, road-making, feeding
strangers, cutting and building canoes, and turtle fishing. By
Regulation No. 7 of 1892, the communal aspect of _lala_ was extended by
giving any resolution of the Provincial or District Council that had
received the written assent of the Governor the force of law. The
exercise of _lala_ was limited to the Roko Tui of the province, or the
_Mbuli_ of a district, and the penalty for disobedience to their lawful
commands was a fine not exceeding 2s., or fourteen days' imprisonment in
default, with a slightly increased penalty for a subsequent offence.

Now, of the limitation set forth in the Native Regulations,
house-building, canoe-building, planting gardens and fishing turtle
belong to personal _lala_, though they may occasionally be applied for
communal purposes; while road-making, feeding strangers and complying
with resolutions of the Native Council are certainly exercised for the
good of the commune. And yet the Regulation, put into the hands of a
number of official chiefs, by no means entitled them to personal
privileges that were only due from tenants to their landlord.


Communal Lala

In its communal aspect _lala_ is the axis of the primitive commonwealth.
A native cannot by himself build his house, or dig his plantation, and
he has no money with which to pay others for doing so. Accordingly, he
applies to the chief, who, acting as the mouthpiece of the commune,
summons all the able-bodied men to come to his assistance. In return he
must provide food for them, and he must take his turn in helping each of
them whenever his services are required. Both in the larger
confederations and the miniature republics of the inland tribes, this
kind of _lala_ is applied by the chief of sept or chief of village with
the consent of the council of elders.

Communal _lala_ is also indispensable for the performance of all public
works, such as road-making, bridge-building; the erection of public
meeting-houses, such as the church or _Mbure-ni-sa_, and it was also
legitimately applied to such quasi-communal services as the repair of
the chief's canoe or house, the planting of food and catching fish, for
the entertainment of strangers coming to trade with the tribe. In this
respect the _lala_ corresponds closely with our system of local rates.
When exercised by the supreme chief to levy contributions for the
equipment of an army or an embassy, it may fitly be compared with public
taxation. Without it, the condition of the natives' houses, already bad,
would become worse; their crops, already diminished, would become
insufficient for their support; their villages, often now neglected,
would become unfit for habitation, and the purchase and maintenance of
boats and vessels become impossible. Where it has been abolished, as in
Tonga and the Tongan community settled in Fiji, the necessity for
combination is so keenly felt that the people have evolved a substitute
of their own. Men and women voluntarily form themselves into clubs
called _Kabani_ (company) under various fanciful names, which are called
together under the direction of an elected president to build houses,
plant gardens, and do other combined work for one another. Disobedience
to the order of the president is visited by a money fine, or by
expulsion. A person who belongs to no club can obtain no assistance from
his fellows.

I am not sufficiently acquainted with the history of the _corvee_ in
Egypt or the _rajakarya_ of Ceylon to say whether they, like the _lala_,
were instituted to meet the necessity of combination among a primitive
people. The _rajakarya_, we know, was abolished because the high chiefs
much abused it, but they did not begin to do so until the law of custom
had begun to decay, owing to intercourse with Europeans. We had the
_lala_ ourselves up to the thirteenth century, or the magnificent
churches of the Norman and Gothic periods would never have been built by
people who were content to live in thatched hovels: in Scotland it
survived until much later.

[Pageheader: LIMITATIONS OF THE _LALA_]

The communal _lala_ has suffered far less decay than the personal. The
chief had no selfish interest to tempt him to push it to excess; the
people felt it no injustice, though they were compelled to supply
extravagant contributions of food and property for the frequent
_solevu_. Nor do they grumble at being compelled to contribute a sum of
some L5000 annually for the purchase and repair of vessels owned in
common, for these exactions, burdensome as they are, minister to their
natural vanity. It was when the government applied the principle of
communal _lala_ to sanitation that they began to cry out, for this was a
clear infraction of the law of custom. Their fathers did well enough
with a road twelve inches wide, with bridges formed of a single slippery
log, with village squares unweeded save on the occasion of some great
public function. When the chief orders the widening of roads and
bridges, he is not voicing the want of the commune but the will of the
foreigners.

It is worth noting as an illustration of communal _lala_ that for the
first few years after annexation the communal vessels usually belonged
to the province. The people who contributed the purchase money did not
grumble, because they regarded the collection as a personal levy by
their chief. The vessel was at the disposal of the _Roko Tui_, who
regarded it as his private yacht. But as soon as the people grasped the
idea of owning a vessel in common, they began to subscribe for district
and village boats, in which they enjoyed an ample return for their
money. The government exercises a wise control over such collections. No
money may be levied until the resolution of the Native Council has
received the sanction of the government, and sanction is never accorded
when the levy is likely to put an undue burden upon the people. And here
again is an instance of how one cannot tamper with native customs
without letting loose a pack of unforeseen evils. The collection of
money for the purchase of vessels is a useful spur to activity; it
maintains a profitable colonial industry without putting any strain upon
the natives. But with increased facilities for travelling there is
growing up a practice on the part of both men and women of wandering
from island to island on the village boat, billeting themselves upon the
people they visit, and leaving their families to take care of
themselves.


Personal Lala

If there had been but one system of land tenure throughout the group,
the loose limitation of the personal _lala_ enacted by the government
would have worked well enough, so long as the hereditary chief had been
the holder of the government office. But among no primitive people in
the world, perhaps, is found so great a diversity of institutions
relating to land as among the Fijians. The group being the meeting
ground of the Polynesians, whose ruling aristocracy claimed special
rights in the soil, and the Melanesians, whose institutions are
republican and who hold their waste lands in common, there is every
grade of land tenure ranging from absolute feudalism or serfdom to
peasant proprietorship. And the systems are further complicated by the
natural peculiarities of the soil; in river deltas where cultivable land
is continually shifting and but little labour is required to reclaim
fields from the mud flats, ownership becomes necessarily individual, and
a regular system of transfer springs up.

For several years it did not occur to any one that the right to personal
_lala_ was merely a property in land. For the first few years after
annexation the government had enough to do in settling the land claims
of Europeans without touching the thorny question of native titles. The
Lands Commission established the fact that the chiefs had no right to
sell land without consulting the wishes of their people, but it was
outside the scope of the inquiry to define what their interest in the
land really was. That the government had a suspicion of the truth is
shown by Section 4 of Regulation No. 5 of 1881, in which it is provided
that 40 per cent, of the rent of lands leased to Europeans is to be
given to the Turanga i taukei--a status that exists in all the large
confederations, but which is unknown among the tribes of Melanesian
origin in western Vitilevu.

[Illustration: Building a Chief's House.]

[Pageheader: PERSONAL _LALA_ IS RENT]

It was not until 1890 that the government found leisure to attack the
native boundaries, and then the truth came out. By that time the natives
had come to regard land from a new point of view. The principal
commodity of old Fiji was food. Land had no value except in so far as
it produced food, and, therefore, the mere possession of it was not
coveted unless there were inferiors living on it as cultivators. But as
soon as it was realized that land, when leased to Europeans, produced
money, the earth-hunger of the chiefs increased a thousandfold. They now
laid claims to lands which, twenty years before, they would not have
accepted as a gift, and tried to prove their case by quoting instances
in which the resident cultivators had done them _lala_ service. The
rival claimants would as eagerly assert that the services in question
were given in token of gratitude for protection, or out of mere
neighbourly feeling in times of scarcity--for anything, in short, but
rent, and would allege delicate shades of distinction in the ritual
employed. But all alike admitted that a chief's interest in land would
be established if he could prove an ancient right to order gardens to be
planted by subject tribes, or to demand services from them in
house-building, fishing or contributions for the entertainment of
visitors. In few cases did the chiefs claim an absolute proprietorship
in the soil; they admitted that the land was vested in the people living
upon it, subject to the usual tribute.

Personal _lala_, then, was a landed interest. The chiefs of the large
confederations had acquired it partly by appropriating the common lands
of the tribe, and partly by the conquest or protection of the weaker
tribes that made up their confederations. And if this seems to be but a
slender title to so enormous a privilege, let it be remembered that the
large landed proprietors in Europe have come by their property in no
more regular or legitimate a fashion. Until the establishment of the
Copyhold Commission some of the landed interests in England were quite
as divergent from modern ideas as _lala_. Yet, among those who advocate
that property in land should be transferred from the landlord to the
State, there are few who propose to make the change except upon the
basis of fair compensation to the landlords. It is a recognized
principle of modern legislation that whenever a class has acquired
certain rights by prescription, no measure injuriously affecting such
rights shall be enacted without fair compensation. Policy as well as
justice made it incumbent upon the British Government to confirm in
their ancient rights the chiefs who had voluntarily ceded their country.

But the attempt to reduce these rights to written law was most
unfortunate. Chiefs who were landlords were, at a stroke of the pen,
given the right to exact personal _lala_ from tribes who were not their
tenants; and throughout quite half the group, the right to personal
_lala_ was conferred upon chiefs who were not landlords at all, and had
no claim to it whatever. Confusion became worse confounded when the
hereditary chiefs were expelled from office for misconduct, and persons
of inferior rank were appointed to succeed not only to their official
duties, but to their private rights to personal _lala_. Had the question
been understood it would have been easy to frame a regulation of
limiting the exercise of personal _lala_ to those chiefs entitled to it
by ancient usage, allowing each disputed case to be decided on its
merits, and to limit the holders of government offices of _Roko Tui_ and
_Mbuli_ to _lala_ for communal purposes. It says much for the tenacity
of customary law that the chiefs took so little advantage of the
ignorance of the government--an ignorance that may be compared with the
mistakes made by the Indian government in the matter of the Ryots. The
chiefs of the miniature republics of western Fiji have never attempted
to claim personal _lala_, and even chiefs, such as _Roko Tui Ra_, who
were brought from other provinces by the government to be _Roko Tui_
over people who had never been federated under a paramount chief, have
used their powers very sparingly, although they were placed in the false
position of having to maintain large establishments on very insufficient
salaries.

[Pageheader: _LALA_ RECEIVES LEGAL SANCTION]

The Colonial government has been bitterly attacked by certain European
critics for permitting _lala_ to exist at all. Insufficient knowledge of
the subject has betrayed them into expressions as inaccurate as they are
intemperate. "Slavery," and "Legalized Robbery," are not the strongest
terms that have been applied to _lala_, and the people have been
described as sunk in apathy and despair under the exactions of their
chiefs. Let us see how far these charges are borne out by facts. The
native regulations that defined the _lala_ also provided that--"If any
town shall desire to commute its _lala_ work due to any chief for a
fixed annual payment in money or in kind, and such chief shall have
accepted such commutation with the Governor's sanction, the right of
_lala_ cannot again be resumed by him. A record of all such commutations
shall be kept in the Native Affairs Office." Although many native
communities now receive large incomes from rents and surplus taxes, from
which commutation could be paid, there has been no single instance of an
application to commute the _lala_ during the thirty-one years in which
the Regulation has been in force. If the people felt the _lala_ to be
oppressive they would not have hesitated to tender the trifling annual
payment that would free them from it. There is no doubt that the _lala_
has been pushed beyond its legitimate uses, but always by the chiefs of
the confederations. Personal _lala_ cannot be legitimately applied
without the reciprocal obligation of providing the workers with food
(_vakaotho_), and when the chief neglects this obligation, or uses the
_lala_ in the execution of work for Europeans, the _lala_ at once
becomes, not legalized robbery, for it is illegal, but oppression. An
instance of this occurred before annexation, when, as already related,
the American Government had fined king Thakombau L9000 for the
destruction of Vice-Consul Williams's house in a fire that was probably
accidental. The people of the Tailevu coast were ordered to fish
_beche-de-mer_ for sale to Europeans in order to meet the American
claim, but they refused, though they knew that refusal might cost them
their lives. For Thakombau they would cheerfully have stripped
themselves of all they had, but to collect produce destined for a
foreigner was an infringement of the law of custom.

The instances of oppressive _lala_ nearly all came from one
province--that of Thakaundrove--governed by a young chief who, having
been educated in Sydney, wished to live in European style beyond his
means. For abuse of the _lala_, especially in levying goods for sale to
Europeans, he was punished more than once by the government. The people
who complained against him were those over whom the hereditary right to
_lala_ did not exist, and not those who were the natural tenants of his
estates. It is a significant fact that although the people have largely
lost their fear of lodging complaints against their chiefs, most of the
complaints that are made allege wrongful division of money or land,
while very few indeed are based upon abuse of the _lala_. The commission
appointed in 1893 to inquire into the causes of the decrease of the
natives went very fully into these charges, and reported that throughout
the largest portion of the group, no real discontent existed, and that
in those provinces where the chief had influence enough to abuse the
_lala_, the reported discontent was rather in the nature of grumbling at
the inexorable regularity of the call for tax and communal work than at
the chief's _lala_, for punctual recurrence is peculiarly abhorrent to
the desultory mind of the Fijian. These murmurs, which are not thought
worthy of being formulated in complaints, naturally reach the ears of
the resident Europeans, to whom they are given as excuses for broken
promises, and for disinclination to work. The fact is that _lala_ by a
hereditary chief, unless pushed to great excess, is not considered a
hardship by a Fijian. And seeing how lately the chiefs enjoyed absolute
power, and how the temptations laid in their way by the introduction of
money have increased, it is surprising how little they have abused their
power. It is unreasonable to expect from them an entire freedom from
errors which are not unknown in our own civilized society, where the
rich take advantage of the poor, the strong of the weak, the shrewd of
the simple.

[Pageheader: SPOLIATION SANCTIONED BY CUSTOM]

Defects are common to all social systems, and at the most the legal
recognition of the so-called communal system and the government of the
chiefs was a temporary compromise intended to last only until the people
could walk alone. The hostile critics of the system have viewed the
question solely by the light of modern civilization, holding the belief
that whatever fails to coincide with that system must be forcibly
dragged into line with it. They have forgotten that no social system is
perfect, that in civilized society there are many who own more property
than they can profitably use, while others have scarcely enough to
maintain existence. Our own system is in a process of transition. Our
upper classes, formerly basing their claim of rank upon the purity of
their descent, now rely upon the possession of wealth. The relations of
master and servant having passed from slavery to wage-earning, are now
in the first stage of evolution from wage-earning to profit-sharing. The
system may some day reach perfection, perhaps in the direction of state
socialism, but it is not in its present state a model upon which the
Fijian should be made to mould itself.

Two examples of spoliation recognized by customary law should here be
cited, because though they are "robbery" legalized by the law of custom
(albeit unlawful in the eye of the government), it has never occurred to
any one of the victims to seek redress. The first was exercised by what
is known as the right of the _vasu_ which has its origin in the peculiar
marriage laws of the Fijians. Every Fijian was said to be _vasu_ to the
clan of his mother, and in theory had a lien over all the property of
her family, but of course only the sons of women of high rank would dare
to claim such a right, though low-born _vasus_ could always count upon a
welcome at the hands of their cousins. To the rights of the _vasu levu_
(great _vasu_), _e.g._ the son of the reigning chief's daughter or
sister who was royal on both sides, there was practically no limit. He
might ransack the houses, sweep the plantations bare, kill the pigs and
violate the women without a murmur from the unfortunate dependants of
his kinsmen. In this way villages are occasionally swept of everything
of value. I do not think that in former days the people felt anything
but honour in being so singled out for plunder, and even now, when they
are fully aware of their legal right to refuse, the ties of custom are
stronger than their new-born love of independence. They give their
property with an outward show of good-humour, and vent their
mortification in grumbling among themselves, and to the neighbouring
Europeans. I remember Mbuli Malolo, who, as chiefs went, had a high
reputation for care of the welfare of his people, taking his
ten-year-old daughter, just recovered from sickness, for a tour round
the poverty-stricken islands of the Mamanutha group. The little girl was
led from house to house to point out every article of clothing and
furniture that happened to take her childish fancy; and, everything she
chose being swept up and carried instantly to her canoe, she left a
trail of destitution behind her. Though the poor people knew that I had
power to redress their grievance, they made no complaint; they only
mentioned the matter to account for their abject poverty. In 1887 I
offered to interfere on behalf of certain natives of Koro, thus
despoiled by one of the Mbau chiefs, but the natives themselves begged
me to take no action, saying that it was their custom to give whatever
their chiefs asked, and that their grumbling to Europeans who had given
me the information was not to be taken seriously. In this they could not
have been actuated by fear of the chief's resentment, for he belonged to
another province, and had no official relations with them.

[Pageheader: NATIVES MAY COMMUTE _LALA_]

The other example is the curious custom arising out of the tie of
_vei-tauvu_, which, though not due to the influence or authority of
chiefs, has also sometimes the effect of stripping a village of all
movable property. As already explained, the people of two villages, who,
though now widely separated, worship the same god--that is, trace their
origin to a common source--are said to be _vei-tauvu_, and have the
privilege, when visiting one another, of killing the domestic animals,
stripping the food plantations and appropriating all chattel property
belonging to their hosts. A remarkable instance of this occurred in
1892. The formerly influential, but now quite insignificant, island of
Nayau, on the eastern confines of the group, contrived, with the utmost
difficulty, to raise a hundred pounds for the purchase of a cutter. In
due course the people came to Suva to take over their little vessel. On
the first night out, whether by accident or design, they dropped anchor
at the chief village of the tribe of Notho. Under ordinary circumstances
they would have behaved themselves as befitted persons of their
insignificance, but, no sooner had they anchored than a deputation of
the Notho chiefs put off in a canoe to bid them welcome as brothers of
the _tauvu_. In the speeches of welcome allusion was made to the old
tradition of the origin of the Notho tribe, how, in times long past, a
princess of Nayau had been swallowed by a monstrous shark, and how a
Notho chief having slain and ripped the monster, rescued her and took
her to wife. Her rank being superior to his, her children worshipped the
Tutelary God of Nayau, which was a shark, and the two tribes became
_vei-tauvu_--that is to say, of common origin. In these poverty-stricken
islanders the men of Notho were now to recognize the elder branch of
their family. It took a little persuasion to convince the visitors of
the full extent of their good fortune, but when they were convinced they
made ample amends for their neglect. While the men of Notho sat passive
in their huts, they ran riot through the village, tearing down the
cocoanuts and plantains, rifling the yam stores, and slaughtering every
pig and fowl that did not escape by flight. They destroyed, indeed, far
more than the hold of their little vessel could contain, and they left
their dear brothers of the tauvu with nothing but complimentary speeches
to console them for the famine they would have to face.

Unlike the _vasu_, the _vei-tauvu_ was used reciprocally. The Notho clan
cherishes the intention of visiting Nayau, and exacting from their
brothers an eye for an eye. But the custom, like the tie of relationship
in which it is founded, is already in decay, being incompatible with the
growth of modern ideas of property. Had it been frequently exercised the
government would long ago have put a stop to it.

The Commission of 1893 recommended the government to encourage the
chiefs' tenants to commute the obligation of personal service. In Tonga,
on the abolition of the personal right of _lala_, the chiefs were
compensated by being made Lords of the Manor over large tracts of land
which yielded a fixed rental from every native occupying them, and from
every European settler to whom the landlord chose to lease land. The
Crown collected all rents and paid them over to the landlord, who,
however, had no right of eviction. The tenants held their land on
hereditary tenure, and default in payment of rent was visited with
distraint instead of eviction. This system was possible in Tonga,
because in ancient times the land there was regarded as the property of
the spiritual chief, the Tui Tonga, who could thus be made to grant
manors to his inferior chiefs without doing violence to native ideas:
but in Fiji, where the rights of the Crown have never been insisted on,
and the land is for the most part vested in the commune, such a scheme
would be impracticable.

In Fiji the time has come for adopting one of three schemes, for the
tendency towards the sub-division of the communal land among individuals
is growing so rapidly that unless something is done immediately, the
government will find itself face to face with a very serious difficulty.
Either the tenants should be induced to buy out their chiefs' interests
for a sum down to be invested for the chief by the government, or an
annual money compensation in lieu of all personal _lala_ should be fixed
by the native land court; or in those districts in which land is likely
to be leased to Europeans, portions of the communal land should be
vested absolutely in the chief in lieu of all personal _lala_, with the
power to lease, but not to sell, his holding. The economical aspect of
this latter arrangement would be to throw open to settlement on easy
terms considerable areas of native land in various parts of the colony,
for the chief would eagerly welcome tenants who would yield him an
income in money in lieu of the services of his people. While many of the
chiefs would gladly accept such commutation, it is doubtful whether the
people, superabundant though their land is, would voluntarily part with
any portion of it for an equivalent, so slender in their estimation is
immunity from personal service. Yet, so tenacious is the law of custom,
that for some time after they had commuted their obligation it is
probable that the people would continue to give their services
voluntarily to their chief, whose prestige would be in nowise affected
by the legislative restrictions imposed by foreigners.

[Illustration: Spoil from the plantations--(Taro, Cocoanuts and
Yangkona).]

At the end of 1898, however, a step was taken towards compelling
obedience to the Native Regulations in the appointment of four
European travelling inspectors who divide the group between them, and go
from village to village, persuading, exhorting, and, in the last resort,
threatening with prosecution persons who neglect to comply with the
Native Regulations concerning sanitation and the planting of food. It is
too early to look for any tangible results from this measure, of which
the success must chiefly depend upon the tact of the persons selected
for the appointments. But, in so far as it is a recognition of the fact
that the people cannot govern themselves, and that it is safe to
substitute Europeans for native agents now that the powerful chiefs of
confederations are passing away, leaving a mere tithe of their power to
degenerate descendants, it may be a step in the right direction.

[Pageheader: COMMUNISM THROUGH _KEREKERE_]


Community of Property through Kere-Kere

The Fiji commoner reckons his wealth, not by the amount of his property,
but by the number of friends from whom he can beg. There is no time in
the history of the Fijians when literal communism obtained. The tribal
waste land, it is true, was held in common, but the land actually in
cultivation for the time being, and the cocoanut and other fruit trees
were the recognized property of the man who planted them and of his
heirs. Poultry and pigs were held individually, and the ownership was
jealously guarded, the poultry being marked in various ways to secure
identification, and native manufactures of all kinds were the individual
property of the makers.

But, while individual rights were thus far recognized, the claims of the
tribe and of relationship were so strong as to constitute a lien upon
all individual property. A man who would regard the theft of his pig as
a deadly injury, and who would resent a stone thrown at his pig as an
insult offered to himself, would not feel aggrieved if called upon by
communal _lala_ to provide food for visitors to the village, even though
they were unwelcome, nor would he think of refusing any of his
possessions to a fellow-townsman who begged them of him, consoling
himself with the reflection that the gift affords him a claim upon the
borrower at some future time.

What the _solevu_ was between tribes, the _kere-kere_ was between
individuals--a mere substitute for trade by barter. A man had more salt
in his house than he wanted; his more needy neighbours begged it of him.
He in his turn, wanting yams for his daughter's marriage feast, has a
claim upon each one of them. And so the system works out to a balance.
It may be the first stage in evolution from the state in which the
proprietary unit was the tribe, or more probably it is the most ancient
of all laws of property, and dates from the day when Palaeolithic man
first found a bludgeon that balanced to his liking. Indeed, it is
difficult to imagine how primitive society could exist without some such
custom as communal _lala_ and _kere-kere_ within the limits of the
tribe. So long as there was but one standard of industry and all men
worked alike, the system answered well enough; but, as soon as each
individual became free to indulge his natural indolence, having no
longer the stimulus of fear, the custom was mutilated. The industrious
had no longer any incentive to industry, knowing that whatever they
accumulated would be preyed upon by their more idle relations. Fear of
public opinion still prevents the richer native from refusing what is
asked of him, though he knows very well that the recipient of his bounty
is too idle and thriftless ever to be in a position to yield him an
equivalent.

[Pageheader: THE FATE OF A REFORMER]

_Kere-kere_, which was formerly the pivot of native society, now wars
unceasingly against the mercantile progress of the people. One might
multiply instances of the resentment shown by Fijians against any of
their number who tries to improve his position, or accumulate property,
by braving the ridicule of those who would beg of him. In the few cases
in which Fijians have shown sufficient independence to defy the
importunities of their friends, they have been made the victims of a
kind of organized boycott well calculated to deter others from
attempting to follow their example. There is the case of Tauyasa of
Naselai on the Rewa river, who had a banana plantation and paid coolies
and Fijians to work for him. His industry prospered so that he was able
to buy a cutter and a horse, and furniture for his house. To the chiefs
who flattered him, and the host of idle relations who wanted to live
upon him, he turned a deaf ear, obstinately refusing to part with his
property. They retaliated by circulating infamous stories about him, and
by ridiculing him with the taunt that he was aspiring beyond his
station, and was trying to ape his superiors, the reproach that is of
all the hardest for a Fijian to bear. The worry of this petty
persecution preyed upon his mind so grievously that he took to his mat,
and foretold the day of his death. But not even his memory was allowed
to rest in peace, for the native teacher who preached on the Sunday
following his death, cried, "Who shipped China bananas on the Sabbath?"
and then in the pause that followed, he whispered hoarsely, "Tauyasa!"
Again he shouted, "Where is Tauyasa now?" and slowly twisting his
clenched fist before him he hissed between his teeth, "He is squirming
in the everlasting flames."

A native of Ndeumba, who used to make a net income of L250 a year from
his banana plantation, and had money deposited in the bank, asked not
long ago whether the government would not make the custom of _kere-kere_
illegal, so as to furnish him with an excuse for refusing to give money
away. He could only keep his profits to himself by depositing them in
the bank and saying that he had none, and who knew whether the bank
might not some day stop payment as he had heard banks had done in
Australia? If the government would only make begging between relations
illegal, he said he would have a valid excuse for refusing to give;
otherwise he would always be ashamed to refuse money to importunate
relatives. When this was mentioned to some Mbau women of high rank
without the disclosure of the man's name, they at once identified him
with Sakease, whose niggardly spirit appeared to be notorious.

Occasionally Fijians of the lower classes show real strength of
character in their thirst for progress. The province of Mba in Western
Vitilevu, having no paramount hereditary chief of its own, had been, for
administrative purposes, placed under the control of a _Roko Tui_,
artificially created by the government, and one Sailosi, a well-educated
man of inferior birth and quite unconnected with the province, was
appointed provincial scribe--an office of small pay but great
responsibility, for the scribe is not only the official adviser of the
_Roko Tui_, but also treasurer for the large sums of tax-money and rents
that have from time to time to be distributed. This man did his work
very well, and was proportionately unpopular in the province. Surrounded
by enemies who desired his downfall, he contrived to acquire property
and to live as far as he could in European comfort. He filled his house
with furniture and cultivated a flower garden. After several abortive
conspiracies to deprive him of his post by false accusation and of his
life by witchcraft, incendiaries burned down his house and all it
contained while he was absent on official business in Suva, and on his
return the people pressed forward with pretended expressions of sympathy
to enjoy his discomfiture. He surveyed the ruins of all he possessed
without a sign of emotion, and then he said, "It is well; I have always
wanted a larger house, and now you will have to build me one." And they
did. It is sad to have to record that this man, too, fell a victim to
the temptation of borrowing from the public funds, which so few Fijian
functionaries can resist.

Though few Fijians can be brought to trust a bank with their savings,
they are quite alive to the advantages of receiving interest. When the
Native Commissioner had been trying to foster a habit of investment
through the pages of the vernacular newspaper he received a letter
enclosing four shillings. "I send you this, sir," ran the letter, "in
order that you may make it give birth. I should like its yield to be one
dollar once a month."

[Pageheader: FEAR OF RIDICULE OBSTRUCTS PROGRESS]

It seems to be a common belief among Europeans that one has only to
abolish the power of the chief to secure to every native the fruit of
his own industry. That this is not so is proved by the example of the
Tongans, who, being a less conservative people than the Fijians, are
more inclined towards social progress. The powers of the chiefs were
there abolished by law in 1862, but, during the forty-four years that
have elapsed, the principal result of the change has been to impoverish
the chiefs without enriching the people, while the loss of the power of
combination has deprived them of the power of building any but houses of
the poorest description. And in Fiji the majority, being naturally
indolent, are interested in preserving the ancient right of begging
property from a relation and the fixed determination of the idle
majority to live at the expense of the industrious minority; and the
moral cowardice of the minority in not resisting their organized
spoliation quite neutralizes the encouragement to accumulate savings
which should have resulted from the recognition of private property by
English law. No less in Tonga than in Fiji is ridicule the most
effective weapon of intimidation. The people are enslaved, but to a more
merciless despotism than the tyranny of chiefs--the ridicule of their
fellows.

If native laws are to exist at all under the new order, this native
habit of _kere-kere_ must be swept away. New wants must be developed,
wealth must take the place of rank as the factor of social importance,
the idle must be made to feel the sting of poverty. The easy-going
native must be made to feel the pangs of the _auri fames_, the earth
must be cursed for him, competition with its unlovely spawn of class
hatred, pauperism, and vagrancy must be cultivated in a people to whom
they are unknown, for at present the Fijians have no spur to the
acquisition of money except the desire for some particular luxury. The
earth need only be tickled to laugh back in harvest. Most of the
necessaries of life are produced equally in every village. When a native
takes produce to the market it is for no abstract desire for the
possession of money; he has in his mind a definite object upon which the
proceeds should be spent; a new _sulu_, a lamp, or a contribution to the
missionary meeting. If he has no such object he will let the surplus
produce of his garden or his net decay rather than undergo the trouble
of taking it to the market. Facts never pointed to a clearer
conclusion. Under his own social Arcadian system the Fijian thrived and
multiplied; under ours it is possible that he may thrive again; but
under a fantastic medley of the two he must inevitably go under. No man
can serve two masters.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 33: _Studies in Ancient History_, 1876.]

[Footnote 34: That the native tradition was not invented to account for
the tribal constitution is shown in the form of the story, which records
the assassination and the subsequent delegation of power without
assigning any reason for the latter, or noticing the connection between
the two. (See my _Diversions of a Prime Minister_, p. 304.)]




CHAPTER V

WARFARE


The state of incessant intertribal warfare in which the first
missionaries found the Fijians has led certain writers to represent them
as a bloodthirsty and ferocious race whose sudden conversion to the ways
of peace could only be accounted for by supernatural agency. There was
one missionary, however, whose zeal in the cause of his church never
obscured his natural truthfulness. "When on his feet," says Thomas
Williams, "the Fijian is always armed.... This, however, is not to be
attributed to his bold or choleric temper, but to suspicion and dread.
Fear arms the Fijian.... The club or spear is the companion of all
walks; but it is only for defence. This is proved by every man you meet:
in the distance you see him with his weapon shouldered; getting nearer,
he lowers it to his knee, gives you the path, and passes on."[35]

The same writer puts the annual losses in battle, without counting the
widows strangled to their husbands' manes, at from 1500 to 2000. But
this estimate was made when every tribe had muskets, and the possession
of fire-arms emboldened tribes to take the field who would otherwise
have agreed with their enemy quickly. None of the great confederations
existed before 1800: the influence of Mbau scarcely extended beyond the
mangrove swamps that face the island stronghold; Somosomo did not claim
sovereignty even over the whole of Taveuni; even Rewa and Verata might
have reckoned their territory in acres. In the eighteenth century,
therefore, a belligerent tribe could put but a handful of men into the
field, armed with weapons no deadlier than the spear and the club. As
late as Williams's day the great confederations of Mbau and Rewa could
not, even with the help of mercenaries from Tonga and elsewhere, raise
an army of 1500 without immense difficulty; and, if the annual slaughter
amounted to less than 2000 out of a population of 150,000 almost
constantly at war when three out of every five men carried a musket in
addition to his other arms, the mortality from war must formerly have
been quite insignificant.

It used, I know, to be said that the mortality was less with fire-arms
than with native weapons, and this was true if the victims of native
marksmanship only were taken into account, but the moral effect of
gunpowder made the club and spear more deadly. The trade muskets which
were imported in the early days by the traders in enormous quantities
were flintlocks and "Tower" muskets, and when fretted by rust were often
more dangerous to the man at the stock than to the man at the muzzle.
The native marksmanship, always erratic, was not improved by a custom,
common in Vatulele and other parts of the group, of sawing off the
greater part of the stock, and firing with the barrel poised in the left
hand at arm's length.

[Pageheader: WAR FOSTERED MORALITY]

Few native traditions have come down to us from the eighteenth century,
but there are so many references in tribal histories to an upheaval
among the inland clans obliterating all earlier historical landmarks,
that there is ground for believing that the wars before 1780 were little
more than skirmishes, and that war on a larger scale began with the
convulsion that drove so many of the inland tribes to seek asylum on the
coast, and left so profound an impression on the traditional poetry. War
on a destructive scale is impossible among a people split up into petty
joint families, each bent upon defence rather than conquest. In order to
understand the political state of Fiji two centuries ago one must
examine the institutions of other races that are still in the same
condition. The natives of the d'Entrecasteaux Islands as I saw them in
1888 afford an excellent illustration. As we travelled along the coast
we found that every village had its frontier, a stream-mouth, or a
sapling stuck upright in the sand, beyond which none would venture. The
natives did their best to dissuade us from crossing these boundaries by
representing their neighbours as thirsting for the blood of strangers.
But on the other side of the frontier we found a meek folk, lost in
wonder that we had come through the last stage of our journey unscathed,
so cruel and ferocious were its inhabitants. Every man lived in active
terror of his neighbour, and went armed to his plantation, but this did
not prevent him from being a most skilful and industrious husbandman, or
from living to a good old age. The fear being mutual, there was, in
reality, scarcely any war; an occasional attack upon a woman or an
unarmed man served to keep the hereditary feud alive.

The social evils of such a state of _morcellement_ may easily be
exaggerated. The trivial loss of life is more than counterbalanced by
the activity, alertness and tribal patriotism which are fostered in an
atmosphere of personal danger. Every man having a selfish interest in
the increase of his own tribe, public opinion compelled the observance
of those customary laws that guarded the lives of women and young
children. The lazy could not then idle away their day in philandering
with the women; the adventurous could not evade their share of the
communal labour by paying long visits to distant islands, even if they
did not find enough to sate their taste for adventure at home. The
_insouciance_ that has followed the decay of custom was impossible,
because the tribe that gave way to it was lost. The teaching of all
history is that man deteriorates as soon as he ceases to struggle either
against hostile man or unkind nature. A barren soil, an overcrowded
community, or a fauna dangerous to man will serve the need, but in a
country where there is food without tillage, land enough for twenty
times the population, and no man-eating tiger or poisonous snake, there
must be war to keep the people from sinking into paralyzing lethargy. It
must be remembered that the most devastating wars are less destructive
than mild epidemics. The slaughter in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870,
estimated at 80,000 in France alone, worked out to little more than two
in 1000 of the population--less, in fact, than in recent epidemics of
influenza.

The causes of war among the Fijians rank in the following order of
importance: Land; women; insults to chiefs (such as a refusal to give up
some coveted object--a club, a shell-ornament, or a tame bird--or the
unlawful eating of turtle, which are the chief's prerogative); wanton
violation of the tabu; despotism or ambition of chiefs whom the
malcontents hope to settle by a blow from behind in the turmoil of
battle. But the most galling insult never provoked war unless success
were assured by the oracles. An apparently restless thirst for war,
which was carefully reported to the enemy, was a mere sham to feel the
temper of the border tribes, and to frighten the other side into
overtures for pardon. The real preparation consisted in rebuilding
ruined temples, clearing away the undergrowth of shrines half-buried in
weeds, and erecting new temples to the manes of chiefs who had lately
attained the Pantheon. The issue then lay with the priests who
interpreted the will of the gods, and grew fat on the offerings
presented to their patrons.

A favourable oracle depended upon the attitude of the Mbati,[36] or
border tribes, for no priest, in the paroxysm of inspiration, ever
forgot the earthly conditions of success. The borderers in large
confederations, such as Mbau and Rewa, enjoyed extraordinary
independence. They knew their value too well to pay tribute to their
nominal overlord, who, so far from expecting it, fawned upon them, and
took care that they received the lion's share in any division of
property, for any neglect was certain to drive them into coquetting with
the enemy. Though their arrogance was sometimes difficult to bear, he
must stomach the insult, for the chief was twice lost whose Mbati went
over to the other side. On the other hand, the lot of the Mbati was not
altogether to be envied, for they had to bear the first brunt of
attack, and in the struggle between Mbau and Rewa in the second quarter
of the nineteenth century, Mbati of both sides were fighting
incessantly. The constant alarms made the Mbati the finest warriors in
Fiji. Politically they formed an _imperium in imperio_, and their
influence was paramount in the tribal councils.

[Pageheader: DECLARATION OF WAR]

Assured of the loyalty of the Mbati, the chief looked about him for
allies. To tribes with which he was connected by marriage, or by the tie
of _tauvu_ (_i.e._ common ancestry), or which owed him a debt for past
help, he sent costly presents, and the enemy, who was certain to be kept
informed of every movement, followed this by sending a costlier gift to
_mbika_ (press down) the first present, and purchase neutrality.
Councils were held, in which the entire plan of campaign was laid down,
and orders were sent to all the tributary villages to hold themselves in
readiness; a refusal always meant, sooner or later, the destruction of
the village. The Mbati and the outlying villages were meanwhile
strengthening their defences, either by entrenching a neighbouring
hill-top or by deepening the moat, and building reed fences with
intricate passages through the earthwork ramparts.

It sometimes happens that inferior combatants each pin their faith on
the aid of a superior chief, while he, for his own interest, trims
between the two, inclining to the weaker party in order to reduce the
stronger, whom he reassures with flattering messages. In promising his
aid he would, in ancient times, send a spear with a floating streamer;
more recently the custom was to send a club with the message, "I have
sent my club; soon I myself will follow." It was death for tributaries
to _kanakanai yarau_ (_i.e._ eat with both sides). The other side were
kept fully informed of these preliminary negotiations, and had made
similar preparations. No formal declaration of war was therefore
necessary, though there were instances of it. Usually the declaration
took place in more practical fashion by the surprise and slaughter of an
unarmed party of the enemy--women fishing on the reef, or a messenger
returning home in his canoe. On the news of this exploit the war-drum
was beaten and the _tangka_ was held. Thereafter no visitor, though he
belonged properly to the opposing side, might depart. Custom required
that he should fight on the side of his hosts.

The _tangka_ was a review, held on the eve of leaving the chief village,
and at every halting-place on the way to the battlefield. It was a
ceremony that appealed to the Fijian temperament with peculiar force,
since, to adapt the phrase of a classic in the literature of sport, it
was "the image of war, with less than ten per cent. of its danger." The
warriors, arrayed in all the majesty of their war-harness, met to defy a
distant enemy, to boast of their exploits on a future day, not to the
unsympathizing eyes of strangers, but to a gallery of applauding
friends. The public square of the village was lined with the townsfolk
and their women; at its further end sat the paramount chief and his
warriors. Presently the approach of a party of allies is announced with
a loud shout; led by their chief they file into the open, painted with
black and white, armed and turbaned, their eyes and teeth gleaming white
in terrifying contrast with their painted skins. The _tama_, the shout
of respect, is exchanged, and a man, who is supposed to represent the
enemy, stands forth and cries, "Sai tava! Sai tava! Ka yau mai ka yavia
a mbure!"[37]

Thereupon begins the _mbole_, or boasting. The leader first, then the
warriors next in degree singly, after them companies of five, or ten, or
twenty step forward into the open, brandishing their weapons before the
presiding chief and boasting of their future exploits at the top of
their voices. Williams records a few specimens of these _mbole_:--

[Pageheader: THE BOASTING CEREMONY]

     "Sir, do you know me? Your enemies soon will!"

     "See this hatchet, how clean! To-morrow it will be bathed in
     blood!"

     "This is my club, the club that never yet was false!"

     "The army moves to-morrow; then shall ye eat dead men till you are
     surfeited!"

     (Striking the ground with his club) "I make the earth tremble: it
     is I who meet the enemy to-morrow!"

     "This club is a defence; a shade from the heat of the sun, and the
     cold of the rain. You may come under it!"

     A young man approaches the chief quietly carrying an anchor pole,
     and smashing it across his knee, cries "Lo, sire, the anchor of
     ---- (the hostile tribe); I will do thus with it!"

These boasts are listened to with mingled laughter and applause. Thus
far and no farther does Fijian courage reach, for the performance in the
field falls woefully short of the promise. There the natural timidity
and caution of the race reasserts itself, and a reputation for desperate
valour may be cheaply won. During the _mbole_ the chief will sometimes
playfully taunt the boasters; hinting that, from their appearance, he
should have thought them better acquainted with the digging-stick than
the club. At the close of the _tangka_ the presiding chief usually made
a speech, appealing rather to the self-interest of his allies than to
their attachment, promising them princely recompense, and sometimes
giving them more definite promises, such as a woman of rank, as a reward
for valour in the field. Such a woman was called "The cable of the
Land," and was highly esteemed in the tribe to which she was given.

The armies, even of the great confederations, rarely exceeded 1000 men.
A greater number could only be assembled with an immense effort. The
chief command was vested in the Vu-ni-valu (_lit._, Root of War). The
titular chiefs of the auxiliary tribes acted as officers.

The first objective of the invading army was an outlying village of the
enemy. This might be a fortress on a hilltop, strongly entrenched by
nature, or a village in the plain, defended with an earthwork about six
feet high, surmounted with a breastwork of reed fencing or cocoanut
trunks, and surrounded by a muddy moat. Sometimes there was a double or
a triple moat with earthworks between. There is endless variety in these
fortifications, for advantage was always taken of the natural defences,
and almost every important hilltop in Western Vitilevu is crowned with
an entrenchment of some kind. Though there were generally from four to
eight gateways, defended by traverses, and surmounted with a look-out
place, some strongholds had but one gateway and that so difficult of
access as to be impracticable to the besiegers. The fort of Waitora,
situated on a hill two miles north of Levuka, is a rock about twenty
feet higher than the surrounding ground, and inaccessible save by means
of a natural ladder formed of the aerial roots of a huge banyan-tree,
which arch over at the top so as to form a tunnel just big enough to
admit the body. The great rock fortress of Na-koro-vatu on the Singatoka
river was taken in the rebellion of 1876 by surprising the only approach
on a Sunday morning, when the rebels thought that the government troops
would be in church. The besiegers crept up a jagged rift in the rock as
steep as the side of a well, and utterly impregnable against more
vigilant defenders. In the island of Vatulele, an upheaved coral reef
honeycombed with caverns, the fortress of Korolamalama was a cave
defended by a breastwork of stones, watered from a well in its inmost
recesses, and provisioned for a siege of many months. The last
stronghold of the rebel mountaineers in 1876 was a cave large enough to
contain the population of all the neighbouring villages, and impregnable
to every weapon except smoke, an expedient commonly employed by the
force attacking such defences. On the other hand, the chief towns of
large confederations, such as Mbau, Mathuata and Rewa, were not
fortified at all, because if the enemy had been victorious enough to
approach them, their inhabitants would have seen that all was lost and
would have sued for peace.

[Pageheader: TORTURE OF PRISONERS]

The first care of a besieging army is to prepare for defeat. Each
division of the army prepared its own _orua_, paths diverging from the
fortification down which they could run if assailed by a sortie, or
taken in the rear by an ambush. Sieges were never of long duration: the
attacking army, lacking any kind of commissariat, seldom carried food
for more than three days, and were in straits while the besieged were
living in comfort on their ample supplies. Like every root-eating
people, the Fijians require a heavy weight of food per head to satisfy
them, from five to ten pounds' weight of yams or other roots being the
normal daily food of a full-grown man. Consequently, if the first
assault failed, they usually retired to deliberate and secure fresh
supplies. Fortresses were seldom starved into capitulation, though, as
they were generally ill-provided with water, this method of attack, so
peculiarly suited to the native character for caution, would generally
have succeeded. It was tabu for a messenger to go direct to the army
lest he should dispirit the troops. He had first to go to the capital,
whence his message was dispatched to the Vu-ni-valu by a herald of the
town.

A siege began with an interchange of abuse. The attacking chief would
cry in the hearing of both sides, "The men of that fortress are already
dead: its present garrison are old women!" Another, addressing his own
followers, shouted, "Are those not men? Then have we nothing to fear,
for we are truly men." A warrior from within retorts, "You are men? But
are you so strong that if you are speared, you will not fall until
to-morrow? Are ye stones, that a spear cannot pierce you? Are your
skulls of iron, that a bullet will not penetrate them?" Under the
excitement of this war of words indiscreet men were betrayed into
playing with the name of the chief of the enemy. They will cut out his
tongue, devour his brains, use his skull for their drinking-cup. These
became at once marked men, and special orders were given to take them
alive. On Vanualevu the punishment that awaited them was the torture
called _drewai sasa_, to carry fuel like old women. A bundle of dry
cocoanut leaves was bound upon their naked backs and ignited, and they
were turned loose to run wherever their agony might drive them.

Meanwhile, within the fort the war-drum is beating incessantly, now
signalling for help to friends at a distance, now rattling a defiance to
the enemy, for, as in Abyssinia, the drum beats have a recognized
language. As a further provocation to the besiegers, when the wind
favours, the war-kite is hoisted. This is a circular disk of plaited
palm-leaves, decorated with streamers of bark cloth. The string is
passed through a hole in a pole or bamboo twenty or thirty feet long,
erected in a conspicuous part of the fort. The string is then pulled
backwards and forwards through the hole so as to keep the symbol of
defiance floating over the heads of the approaching foe.

Upon the stronger fortresses direct assaults were rare, but when the
attacking party felt themselves to be superior, the Vu-ni-valu issued
orders for a general advance, specifying the detachment which was to
have the honour of leading. There is nothing impetuous in the manner of
attack. The assailants creep stealthily forward until they are almost
within spear-throw, and then every man acts as if his first duty was to
take care of himself. Every stone, every tree has a man behind it, for
the Fijian can outmatch the world in the art of taking cover. Having
gone so far, the assailants shout the war-cry to encourage one another
and to intimidate the enemy,[38] and watch their chance for spearing
some one exposed on the ramparts. Sooner or later the defenders are
betrayed into a sally, each man singling out an antagonist with whom to
engage in single combat. But the assailants seldom wait for the rush,
each man trusting to his heels for safety. There is no disgrace in this,
for as the Fijian proverb has it:--

  "A vosota, na mate,
  A ndro na ka ni veiwale."

  "To brave it out is death,
  To run is but a jest!"

If, however, the defenders obstinately refuse to be drawn, and the
leading detachment has shouted itself hoarse to no effect, it is
relieved by a second, or even a third, until the siege is abandoned for
the day. In the face of a determined attack a Fijian garrison loses
heart and makes but a spiritless defence, and this explains the
universal success of the Tongans, who carried everything before them by
their spirited assault.

[Pageheader: TREACHERY HELD A VIRTUE]

More often a fastness was reduced by stratagem. The favourite method was
the _lawa_, or net, which seldom failed, for all it was so well known.
Posting a strong body of warriors in ambush on either flank, a handful
of men would approach the fort with simulated fury. Seeing their small
numbers, the defenders left their defences and fell upon them, whereupon
they took to flight and led the pursuit right into the belly of the
"net." Then the horns closed in upon them, and they were surrounded. It
was such a trap as this that compassed the destruction of the landing
party from the East Indiaman _Hunter_ at Wailea in 1813, when even that
crafty and experienced warrior Charles Savage expiated his crimes.
Cunning was more esteemed than courage; the craft of Odysseus more than
the battle-fire of Achilles. There is no equivalent in the Fijian
language for the word "treachery," for _lawaki_, the nearest synonym,
signifies a virtue rather than a crime, and a successful act of
treachery evoked the same admiration as triumphant slimness is said to
do among the Boers. It is such differences in moral ethics that make the
gulf between the East and West. Williams records how a Rakiraki chief,
Wangkawai, who had contracted to assist the chief of Nakorovatu in war,
brained him with his club during the ceremony of the _mbole_, and
massacred his people in cold blood--an act which the treacherous ally
had been planning for years; how Namosimalua, chief of Viwa, having
undertaken to protect the people of Naingani against Mbau, led them into
the jaws of the enemy, and helped to slaughter them; but the annals of
every village will supply from recent history instances quite as
striking as these. If loss of life in open fight was small, treachery
often resulted in considerable slaughter. Williams thought that the
casualties in a native war commonly amounted to from twenty to one
hundred. The largest number within his own experience was at the sack of
Rewa in 1846, when about 400, chiefly women and children, were
slaughtered.

The scenes that followed the sack of a fortress are too horrible to be
described in detail. That neither age nor sex was spared was the least
atrocious feature. Nameless mutilations, inflicted sometimes on living
victims, deeds of mingled cruelty and lust, made self-destruction
preferable to capture. With the fatalism that underlies the Melanesian
character many would not attempt to run away, but would bow their heads
passively to the club-stroke. If any were miserable enough to be taken
alive their fate was awful indeed. Carried back bound to the chief
village, they were given up to young boys of rank to practise their
ingenuity in torture, or, stunned by a blow, they were laid in heated
ovens, that when the heat brought them back to consciousness of pain,
their frantic struggles might convulse the spectators with laughter.
Children were strung up to the masthead by the feet, that the rolling of
the canoe might dash out their brains against the mast.

But little loot was taken, and every man kept what he could seize upon
for his own. At the first hint of attack the women were laden with
everything of value which could be stored in a secret magazine at some
distance from the fortress; what remained was often destroyed by the
burning of the huts. Williams sets down the loot of one chief whom he
knew as seven balls of sinnet, several dogs and five female slaves, but
he believed that part of this was pay and part plunder.

The return of a victorious party, especially if they brought the bodies
of the slain, was an extraordinary scene. The noise and confusion which
shocked the early missionaries seem all to have been part of an ancient
prescribed form. If the war-party returned by sea the dead bodies of men
and women were lashed to the prow of the canoe, while the warriors
danced the _thimbi_, or death-dance, on the deck, brandishing their
clubs and spears, and uttering a peculiar falsetto yell. The women
rushed down to the beach to meet them, and there danced and sang with
words and gestures of an obscenity never permitted at other times. In
this dance young maidens took part, and when the bodies were dragged
ashore, joined with their elders in offering nameless insults to the
corpses. Then the men, seizing the bodies by the arms, dragged them at
full speed to the temple, sometimes, as at Mbau, dashing the brains out
against a stone embedded in the earth before the shrine. All social
restrictions were then loosed, and, in the mad excitement, sexual
licence had full rein in open day.

[Pageheader: THE WAR-CRY]

Every tribe has its own distinctive war-cry, or rather death-cry, for it
is shouted only when giving the death-blow to an enemy. Though this is
distinct from the name of the tribe, and very seldom uttered, it is so
firmly fixed in the mind of every tribesman that, even in these days,
when it has not been heard, perhaps, for a whole generation, every
full-grown member of the tribe can remember the word. In Land Inquiries
I made a point of asking what was the death-cry of each claimant, and
also of questioning witnesses regarding its origin. Many of the words
appeared to be place-names, though the places could not be identified,
and few of the words could be translated, nor did any have any relation
to warfare. In not a single case could a witness offer any explanation
except that the word had been handed down by the ancestors of old time,
and the origin must therefore remain in doubt. The memory of the
death-cry is as tenacious as that of the tribal _tauvu_.

The mode of treating for peace varied with the district. Sometimes a
woman of high rank, dressed in gala costume, was presented to the
victors with a whale's tooth in her hand; sometimes an ordinary _mata_
was deputed to carry the whale's tooth. In Vatulele and other places a
basket of earth was presented in token that the soil, and all that it
produced, was at the disposal of the conqueror. The terms, especially in
cases of the last of these _soro_, were hard; the vanquished were
reduced, not merely to tribute-bearers, but to actual serfs and
kitchen-men. In a single generation their very physical bearing was
changed.


The Investiture of Koroi

The religious ceremony of _Koroi_ deserves attention as having, as far
as I am aware, no parallel among other primitive races, though the
native converts profess to see in it a close resemblance to the
Christian rite of baptism. It was rather an investiture of knighthood
for prowess in battle, accompanied with the knightly preparation of
fasting and vigil.

Every warrior who has slain his man, woman, or child in battle is
entitled to the honour, and takes a new name with the prefix _Koro-i_
(_lit._, "Village of"). Every time his club is blooded the ceremony is
repeated and a new name conferred, so that it was not uncommon for a
warrior to change his name four times or even oftener. In olden times
the slayer of ten bore the prefix _Koli_ (Dog), and the slayer of twenty
_Visa_ (Burn), but as the influx of foreigners began to check war, these
honours were granted upon easier terms. There is a proverb bearing upon
these honours: "The slayer of ten closes one house; the slayer of twenty
closes two houses."

I have tried in vain to have light thrown on the origin of this
institution, which, being religious in character, and under the control
of the priests, must have had its foundation in some historical
tradition.

Waterhouse, who seems to have been an eye-witness, thus describes the
ceremony as practised at Mbau:--

     "The ceremonies last for four days. When a war-party returns the
     canoes are poled to Nailusi. The warriors who have killed their
     man, bedaubed with paint, and clothed in new _malos_, rush ashore
     carrying reeds with streamers attached. These they fix vertically
     in the posts of the temple of Thangawalu, the war-god. When they
     return to their canoes the whole army advances, the novices armed
     with spears decorated with pennons bringing up the rear. As they
     approach the square they execute the _thimbi_--death-dance, a sort
     of Fijian _Carmagnole_. The elders who have stayed behind to guard
     the town then demand the names of the new _koroi_, and give each of
     them a new weapon. At night the _wati_, or dance of the knights, is
     performed. The spectators form a ring round the dancers, who are
     divided into three companies--(1) the candidates; (2) the
     consecrated knights and warriors; (3) a select body of women.
     During the night the candidates break their fast for the first
     time, and the dancing is kept up till late in the following
     morning. In the afternoon vast quantities of plantains are
     presented to those who have played esquire to the candidates.

     "On the third day is the _Ngini-ngini_, or consecration. Each
     candidate marches separately into the square at the head of his
     personal friends, who are loaded with property. As he approaches
     the temple of the War-god, the officiating priest announces his new
     name, which the people then hear for the first time, although the
     candidate has himself chosen it on the previous evening. Piling
     their presents in a heap, the new knight and his party retire to
     make room for another candidate. This ceremony is conducted in
     silence with a stately dignity and decorum in curious contrast with
     the hideous licence and uproar of the _thimbi_ death-dance of the
     first day.

     "The last day is the Day of Water-drinking. Early in the morning
     canoes are sent to fetch the water from a certain stream on the
     mainland. When they round the point a great shout is raised, 'Lo!
     the water-canoes!' and every one shuts himself fast behind doors,
     for now every noise, even the crying of children, is tabu. In this
     strange silence the water is carried to the temple where the new
     knights are assembled, and there they drink it.

     "For several days they are kept in the temple under the usual
     restrictions laid upon persons who are tabu. They may not use their
     hands to feed themselves, nor wash themselves."

[Pageheader: AN ORDER OF KNIGHTHOOD]

John Williams thus describes the ceremony as he saw it in Somosomo:--

     "The king and leading men having taken their seats in the public
     square, fourteen mats were brought and spread out, and upon these
     were placed a bale of cloth and two whale's teeth. Near by was laid
     a sail-mat, and on it several men's dresses. The young chief now
     made his appearance, bearing in one hand a large 'pine-apple' club
     and in the other a common reed, while his long train of _masi_
     dragged on the ground behind him. On his reaching the mats, an old
     man took the reed out of the hero's hand, and dispatched a youth to
     deposit it carefully in the temple of the war-god. The king then
     ordered the young man to stand upon the bale of cloth; and while he
     obeyed, a number of women came into the square, bringing small
     dishes of turmeric mixed with oil, which they placed before the
     youth, and retired with a song. The _masi_ was now removed by the
     chief himself, an attendant substituting one much larger in its
     stead. The king's _mata_ next selected several dishes of coloured
     oil, and anointed the warrior from the roots of his hair to his
     heels. At this stage in the proceedings one of the spectators
     stepped forward and exchanged clubs with the anointed, and soon
     another did the same; then one gave him a gun in place of the club;
     and many similar changes were effected, under the belief that
     weapons thus passing through his hands derived some virtue. The
     mats were now removed, and a portion of them sent to the temple,
     some of the turmeric being sent after them. The king and old men,
     followed by the young men and two men sounding conches, now
     proceeded to the seaside, where the anointed one passed through the
     ancients to the water's edge, and, having wet the soles of his
     feet, returned, while the king and those with him counted one, two,
     three, four, five, and then each threw a stone into the sea. The
     whole company now went back to the town with blasts of the
     trumpet-shells and a peculiar hooting of the men. Custom requires
     that a hut should be built, in which the anointed man and his
     companions may pass the next three nights, during which the
     new-named hero must not lie down, but sleep as he sits; he must not
     change his _masi_, or remove the turmeric, or enter a house in
     which there is a woman, until that period has elapsed. In the case
     now described the hut had not been built, and the young chief was
     permitted to use the temple of the god of war instead. During the
     three days he was on an incessant march, followed by half-a-score
     of lads reddened like himself. After three weeks he paid me a visit
     on the first day of his being permitted to enter a house in which
     there was a female. He informed me that his new name was 'Kuila'
     (Flag)."

It is a remarkable fact that once in Fijian history an European was made
_koroi_, for among the Fijians foreigners were outside the pale of
tribal society, and could never aspire to enjoy the freedom of the
tribe. But in 1808, when Charles Savage, the Swede, escaped with his
musket from the wreck of the brig _Eliza_, and enabled Mbau to conquer
her great rival, Verata, with the aid of his new and terrible weapon, he
was made _koroi_ against his will. I had the details of the ceremony
from the old men of Mbau, who had the tradition from their fathers.
Jiale (Charlie), as they called him, submitted to be stripped to the
waist and smeared with turmeric and charcoal, but insisted on retaining
his trousers during the procession. And when he found that he was to
abstain from eating and drinking for three days, he shamefully broke the
tabu, burst out of the temple in a rage, and went to his own home, a
fact that was not likely to be forgotten.

The decay of custom in warfare began with the introduction of fire-arms,
which first made the establishment of great confederations possible, and
so diminished war. The musket made the task of the early missionaries
easier, for when they had won over the chief of a confederation, the
vassal tribes followed like a flock of sheep, and so the musket
ultimately put an end to war. The inland tribes, who could get few
muskets, and whose frontiers, therefore, were the limits of the village
lands, were the last to embrace Christianity.

There are pathetic stories of the terror inspired by the musket. At the
siege of Verata men held up mats to ward off the bullets; at Nakelo,
Savage was carried into action in an arrow-proof sedan chair of plaited
sinnet, from which he picked off the defenders until they surrendered
and were clubbed.

The rise of confederations changed everything. A village knowing itself
weak in numbers and in arms, did not dare to defy the might of a power
like Mbau or Rewa, and hastened to put itself under the protection of a
powerful chief, paying tribute to him as a member of his confederation.
Thus, while gunpowder increased the number of combatants engaged on
either side, it almost put an end to the internecine struggles of
village against village.

[Pageheader: WAR CUSTOMS CHANGED BY FIREARMS]

Between 1860 and 1870 native warfare underwent a more drastic
modification by the formation of Thakombau's army organized, officered
and drilled by Europeans. When led by Europeans, the natives developed
an unexpected courage in the field, and the campaign against the hill
tribes of Navatusila impressed the whole group with the superiority of
European methods. The Armed Native Constabulary, established immediately
after annexation, and recruited from widely distant districts, tended to
make drill so popular that the first step of any native conspirator has
been to teach his followers evolutions compounded of native war-dances
and European drill, in which the Fijians see a close resemblance.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 35: _Fiji and the Fijians_, p. 43.]

[Footnote 36: The name _Mbati_ has been erroneously derived from Mbati =
Tooth, and _Mbati-ni-vanua_ is sometimes translated "Teeth of the Land."
The true derivation is, of course, from Mbati = Edge or Border, _i.e._
Border of the land. Borderers have ever been broken reeds to lean upon
from their proneness to consult their own interests by going over to the
stronger side.]

[Footnote 37: An archaic phrase, whose meaning is now lost. Williams
translates it "Cut up! Cut up! The temple receives," which perhaps is
near enough, the meaning being that the bodies of the slain will be
dismembered, cooked, and presented to the gods.]

[Footnote 38: When the story of the _Iliad_ was being translated into
Fijian I asked a Fijian what part of the story most appealed to his
people. He said at once that it was that which describes Achilles
putting the whole Trojan army to flight by merely shouting to them from
the bank of Scamander.]




CHAPTER VI

CANNIBALISM


About 1850, when the first details of cannibalism among the Fijians
began to reach England through the missionary reports, there was a good
deal of scepticism. Naval officers who had visited the group had seen
nothing of the practice, which, indeed, seemed incompatible with the
polished and courtly manners of the chiefs who entertained them.[39] But
as soon as the existence of the practice was proved there came a
reaction, and its extent is now as much exaggerated as it was formerly
underestimated. Professor Sayce, for instance, in a book published
within the last few years,[40] has committed himself to the ridiculous
assertion that the Fijians ate their aged relations--an act which would
be regarded by them with a horror at least as great as would be felt by
an European. To eat, even unwittingly, the flesh of your relation,
however distant, or to eat or drink from a vessel used by a man who had
done this, would result, so the Fijians believe, in the loss of all your
teeth.

Except in rare cases, none but the bodies of real or potential enemies
were eaten, and these must have been slain or captured in battle, or
cast away in wrecks "with salt water in their eyes." The bodies of those
who had died naturally were invariably buried, and though there are
instances recorded of the secret desecration of graves for the purposes
of cannibalism, these were very rare, and they excited disgust among the
people themselves.

[Pageheader: THE MORALITY OF CANNIBALISM]

There are various traditions of the origin of cannibalism, but all agree
in saying that it was not introduced from without, and that there was a
time when the practice was unknown. The most plausible ascribes it to
the practice of presenting the human body a sacrifice to the gods as
being the most costly offering that could be made, and that, as all
presentations of food were afterwards eaten, the human sacrifice was
treated in the same way. It is tabu for an inferior to decline food
offered to him by a chief. If a slave cannot eat a cooked yam so
presented to him, he wraps it up and takes it home with him to eat at a
future meal, or if he throws it away, he does it secretly lest he should
give offence to the donor. Thus in 1853 the chief of Somosomo, in reply
to the missionary's remonstrance, said, "We must eat the bodies if
Thakombau gives them to us." This obligation was tenfold stronger when
the gods themselves were the givers.

But whereas in times past cannibalism was confined to ceremonial
sacrifices in celebration of victory, the launching of a chief's canoe
or the lowering of its mast, it increased alarmingly about the end of
the eighteenth century--that is, a few years before the arrival of
Europeans--just as human sacrifice and its attendant cannibalism among
the Aztecs became intolerable just before the Spanish conquest. In the
Fijian mind it was but a step from offering gifts to a god and taking
them to a high chief, and great feasts soon came to be considered
incomplete without a human body to grace the meal. Among a few of the
chiefs there began to grow a vitiated taste for human flesh, though
there were not a few who never overcame their dislike to it.

The moral attitude of Fijians towards cannibalism is as difficult to
understand as our own is difficult to explain. Apart from the fact that
cannibalism must entail homicide, there is no manifest reason for our
horror of the practice, except our reverence and tenderness for the
dead. Most, if not all, of the other carnivora are cannibals, and the
distinction we draw between the flesh of men and the flesh of other
mammalia is purely sentimental. Our other instincts are based upon some
law of Nature whose infraction is visited by Nature's penalties; yet,
so instinctive is the horror of cannibalism in Aryan races that not one
of them has thought of condemning it in its penal code, and cannibalism
has never been illegal in Europe. Some trace of this instinct is
discernible among the Fijians. Human flesh was tabu to women, and the
Mbau women of rank who indulged in it did so in secret. Except in
moments of excitement, the cooked flesh was shared out with elaborate
ceremonial, and eaten only in the privacy of the house. The care with
which the practice was concealed from Europeans, though partly due to
the knowledge that it would excite detestation and contempt, suggests
also some trace of instinctive shame. The tabus and ceremonies
surrounding it clearly indicate its religious origin. The alarming
drum-beat, called _Nderua_, which haunts all who have heard it; the
death-dance (_thimbi_); the presentation of the body to the War-god of
Mbau, and the part played by the priests in Vanualevu and other places;
the eating after decomposition had set in when the slightest taint in
other meat excited disgust; and, lastly, the fear of touching the meat
with the fingers or the lips, and the use of a special fork which was
given a name like a person, are all evidences that the gods had a share
in the rite. Every part of the body had, moreover, its symbolic name,
which was only used in connection with cannibalism. The trunk, which was
eaten first, was called _Na vale ka rusa_ (the house that perishes); the
feet, _Ndua-rua_(one-two). The fiction that bodies intended to be eaten
were popularly called "Long pig" (_Vuaka Mbalavu_) is founded upon a
_vakathivo_, or jocose toast of Tanoa, chief of Mbau, after drinking
kava, in which the object of desire was concealed in a euphemism, such
as _Sese Matairua_! ("spear with two points," _i.e._ the breast of a
virgin).

[Pageheader: AN ACT OF VENGEANCE]

Dr. E. B. Tylor gives six reasons for the practice of
cannibalism--Famine, Revenge or Bravado, Morbid Affection, Magic,
Religion, Habit. Three of these had no application in Fiji. The famines
were transitory, and in Tonga, where cannibalism was occasionally
resorted to from this cause, the practice died as soon as the cause was
removed. Cannibalism from morbid affection, such as Herodotus describes
among the Essedones of Central Asia, was equally unknown, since, as I
have already said, the Fijians had a superstitious horror of eating
their own relations; and as to magic, I do not think that any trace of a
belief that by eating the flesh of a warrior the eater absorbed his
courage can be found. There remain Religion, Revenge or Bravado, and
Habit, which were at the root of the Fijian practice in the order
enumerated. The history of the Aztecs shows how soon ceremonial
cannibalism degenerated into a vicious appetite for human flesh. In the
Fijian wars of the early nineteenth century a portion of every captive
was eaten, and raids were undertaken solely to procure human flesh for
chiefs who had become addicted to cannibalism. But bravado and the
gratification of revenge was the most powerful motive with the bulk of
the people. In Nandronga the liver and the hands of an enemy were
sometimes preserved by smoke in the house of one whose relations he had
slain; and whenever regrets for the dead would wring his heart, the
warrior would take down the bundle from the shelf over the fire-place,
and cook and eat a portion of his enemy to assuage his grief. Thus he
continued to sate his vengeance for one or two years until all was
consumed. In the native mind the poles of triumph and of humiliation are
touched by the man who eats his enemy and the man who is about to be
eaten. Even to-day the grossest Fijian insult is to call a man _Mbakola_
(cannibal meat); the most appalling threat to exclaim, "Were it not for
the government I would eat you!" There was but one higher flight of
vengeance, and that was to cook the body, and leave it in the oven as if
unfit for food. The Rev. Joseph Waterhouse dug up one of these ovens
while gardening at Mbau. The element of vengeance superimposed upon
religion is admirably illustrated in the narrative of John Jackson,[41]
who was an eye-witness of what he relates. The bodies of the slain were
set up in a sitting posture in the bow of the canoe by being trussed
under the knees with a stick as schoolboys play at cockfighting. The
drums kept beating the _nderua_ all the way across the strait, and as
they neared the village a man kept striking the water with a long pole
to apprise the inhabitants of their success, and the warriors danced the
_thimbi_ on the deck. It was usual for the women to troop down to the
water's edge dancing a lascivious dance, and when the bodies were flung
out, to cover them with nameless insults; but in this instance (on the
Vanualevu coast near Male) they were carried to the village square and
set up in a row, with their war-paint still on them, while the whole
population of the village sat down in a wide circle. An old man now
approached the bodies, and, taking a dead hand in his, began talking to
them in a low tone. Why, he asked, had they been so rash? Did they not
feel ashamed to be sitting there exposed to the gaze of so many people?
Gradually becoming intoxicated with his own eloquence and wit, he raised
his voice and delivered the last sentences as loud as he could shout. At
the climax of his peroration he kicked the bodies down, and ran off amid
the plaudits and laughter of the spectators, who now ran in upon the
bodies, and, seizing an arm or a leg, dragged them off through the mire
and over the stones to a temple standing apart in a grove of ironwood
trees. A heap of weather-whitened human bones lay before it, and other
bones were embedded in the fork of shaddock-trees, where they had been
laid many years before. An old priest, with nails two inches long, was
there awaiting them, and stones were ready heating in a fire for the
oven. A number of young girls now surrounded the bodies and danced their
lewd dance, singing a song whose import could be guessed from their
action in touching certain parts with sticks which they held in their
hands. The butcher, armed with a hatchet, some shells and a number of
split bamboos, now got to work. He first made a long deep gash down the
abdomen, and then cut all round the neck down to the bone, and severed
the head by a twist. In cutting through the joints he showed some
knowledge of anatomy, seeing that he used nothing but a split bamboo,
which makes a convenient knife, since it is only necessary to split off
a fresh portion to obtain a sharp edge. The trunk, the hands and the
head were usually thrown away, but on this occasion, the bodies being
but few, all was eaten except the intestines. Banana leaves were heaped
on the hot stones of the oven, the flesh and joints were laid on them,
and the whole covered with earth until the morning. The cooked meat was
then distributed with the ceremonies usual at feasts, and warriors from
a distance, after tasting a small portion, wrapped up the remainder to
take home as a proof of their prowess.

[Pageheader: THE EATING OF A MISSIONARY]

When a chief or a warrior of repute was cooked, portions of the flesh
were sent all over the country. The body of the missionary Baker, killed
at Navatusila (Central Vitilevu) in 1860, was thus treated, almost every
chief in Navosa receiving a portion.[42]

When a body had to be carried inland it was lashed to a pole face
downward in order that it might not double up, the ends of the pole
resting on men's shoulders. In dragging the body up the beach the
following words were chanted in a monotone, followed by shrill yells in
quick succession.

  "Yari au malua. Yari au malua.
  Oi au na saro ni nomu vanua.
  Yi mundokia! Yi mundokia! Yi mundokia Ki Ndama le!
  Yi! u-woa-ai-e!"

  "Drag me gently. Drag me gently!
  I am the champion of thy land.
  Give thanks! Give thank!"
  etc.

As the practice of cannibalism grew, many refinements of cruelty were
devised for enhancing the gratification of revenge. According to
Seemann,[43] a whole village in Namosi was doomed as a punishment to be
eaten household by household. They obeyed the chief's command to plant a
taro bed, and as soon, as the taro was ripe a household was clubbed, and
the bodies eaten with the vegetables. None knew when his turn would
come, for the house was chosen at the whim of the executioners. One
might be tempted to enlarge upon the horrible suspense in which these
unhappy villagers must have lived, and to wonder why they did not flee
to some distant province, but such sympathy would be wasted. If the
story is true, we may be sure that they went about their daily tasks
without a thought about the club hanging over them, and that the idea of
flight never entered their heads, for the Fijian looks not beyond the
evening of the next day, and certain death within a year or two seemed
no nearer to them than it does to us who pursue our futile little tasks
with Death plucking at our sleeves, having at the most but two decades
to live.

The torture (_vakatotonga_) consisted in the mutilation of the victim
before death. To avenge the of one of his relations, Ra Undreundre of
Rakiraki ordered a woman captured from the offending village to be laid
alive in a wooden trough and dismembered, that none of the blood might
be lost. This was a form of punishment practised in Tonga in ancient
times. In several well-authenticated cases the flesh of a victim has
been cooked and offered him to eat. A Fijian prisoner undergoes these
torments with stoical fatalism, making no attempt at escape or
resistance. In the entertainment of the Somosomo natives at Natewa,
Jackson saw standing by the pile of yams a young girl who was to be
killed and eaten when the ceremony of distribution was over. She showed
no outward sign of distress at her impending fate. At the risk of his
life Jackson caught hold of her and claimed her as his wife, and the
chiefs, more amused than angry at his breach of etiquette, granted his
request.

[Pageheader: THE CANNIBAL FORK]

Neither sex nor age was a defence against the cannibal oven. Aged men
and women as well as children were eaten, though the flesh of young
people between sixteen and twenty was most esteemed. The upper arm, the
thigh and the heart were the greatest delicacies; an ex-cannibal in
Mongondro told me that the upper arm of a boy and girl tasted better
than any other meat. The same man, who had eaten part of the missionary
Baker, said that the flesh of white men was inferior to that of Fijians,
and had a saltish taste. Jackson describes it as being darker in colour,
and the fat yellower than that of the turtle. In the police expedition
to Navosa in 1876, Dr. (now Sir William) McGregor surprised a village,
and found a human leg, hot from the oven, laid out upon banana leaves.
The skin had parted like crackling, disclosing a layer of yellow fat.
When the flesh is kept for several days it is said to emit a
phosphorescent light in the darkness of the hut. The Fijians cannot
understand our feeling about the killing and eating of women and
children. _Moku na katikati_ (club the women and children) is their
principle, and they explain that, since the object of war is to inflict
the maximum of injury upon the enemy, a twofold purpose is served by
killing women--distress to their relations, and the destruction of those
who might breed warriors to avenge them.

The most celebrated cannibals from liking were Tambakauthoro, Tanoa and
Tuiveikoso of Mbau, and Tuikilakila of Somosomo, but the reputation of
these pale beside that of Ra Undreundre of Rakiraki. His victims were
called _Lewe ni mbi_ (contents of the turtle-pond), and his fork had a
name to itself--_Undro-undro_, a word used to designate a small person
carrying a great burden. His son took the missionary to a line of
stones, each of which represented a human being eaten without assistance
by his father since middle-age. They numbered eight hundred and
seventy-two, but a number had then (1849) been removed! The special fork
used exclusively for human flesh points clearly to the religious origin
of the practice, forks being never employed for other kinds of food,
even food presented to a god. There was some quality in human flesh that
made it tabu to touch it with the fingers or the lips. Moreover, the
fork was tabu to every one but its owner, and if it belonged to a high
chief, it had always a name of its own. The genuine forks have now all
been removed from the country, and those offered for sale in the group
are forgeries.[44]

Persons slain in battle were not invariably eaten, for chiefs of high
rank were often spared this indignity, and if a friend of the dead man
happened to be of the victorious party he might intercede to save the
body from the oven. In such cases a truce is called, and the relations
are allowed to come and remove the body for burial. At the funeral the
mourners cut out their thumb nails and fixed them on a spear, which was
preserved in the temple to remind them of the service done to them, and
at the close of the war they made valuable presents to their benefactor
to extinguish the debt.

The abolition of cannibalism cannot possibly have had any results
unfavourable to the race. It was an excrescence upon the religious and
social system, and it might have been swept away without disturbing them
in any way. In its later development, moreover, it was responsible for
raids in which many lives were lost.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 39: It is strange that the only act of cannibalism seen by any
member of the United States Exploring Expedition in 1840 was the eating
of an eye--a part of the body which was nearly always thrown away.]

[Footnote 40: _The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia_, p. 8.]

[Footnote 41: _Erskine's Voyage_, 1853.]

[Footnote 42: There is a well-worn story that the chief of Mongondro
received a leg from which the Wellington boot had not been removed.
Taking the leather to be the white man's skin, the chief was much
impressed with the toughness of the superior race.]

[Footnote 43: _Mission to Viti._]

[Footnote 44: The Rev. F. Langham was the first to point out the test
for these forgeries. The genuine forks are carefully finished at the
root of the prongs; the forgeries have inequalities and splinters. Mr.
H. Ling Roth has questioned this distinction, but I have never known it
fail in the specimens I have examined.]




CHAPTER VII

RELIGION

Ancestor-gods--Gods of the After-world--The Ndengei
    Myth--Luve-ni-wai--Mbaki--The Priesthood--Witchcraft--Kalou-rere.


The religion of the Fijians was so closely interwoven with their social
polity that it was impossible to tear away the one without lacerating
the other. It was as unreasonable for the people to continue to
reverence their chiefs when they ceased to believe in the Ancestor-gods,
from whom they were descended, as for the Hebrews to conform to the
Mosaic law if they had repudiated the inspiration of Moses. Religion was
a hard taskmaster to the heathen Fijian; it governed his every action
from the cradle-mat to the grave. In the tabu it prescribed what he
should eat and drink, how he should address his betters, whom he should
marry, and where his body should be laid. It limited his choice of the
fruits of the earth and of the sea; it controlled his very bodily
attitude in his own house. All his life he walked warily for fear of
angering the deities that went in and out with him, ever-watchful to
catch him tripping, and death but cast him naked into their midst to be
the sport of their vindictive ingenuity.

The Fijian word for divinity is _kalou_, which is also used as an
adjective for anything superlative, either good or bad, and it is
possible that the word was originally a root-word implying wonder and
astonishment. Sometimes the word is used as a mere exclamation, or
expression of flattery, as, "You are _kalou_!" or "A _kalou_ people!"
applied to Europeans in connection with triumphs of invention among
civilized nations, either in polite disbelief, or disinclination to
attempt to imitate them.

The Fijian divinities fall naturally into two great divisions--the
_Kalou-vu_ (Root-gods), and the _Kalou-yalo_ (Spirit-gods, _i.e._
deified mortals). There is much truth in Waterhouse's contention that
the Kalou-vu were of Polynesian origin brought to Fiji by immigrants
from the eastward, and imposed upon the conquered Melanesian tribes in
addition to their own Pantheon of deified mortals, and that the Ndengei
legend, which undoubtedly belonged to the aborigines, was adopted by the
conquerers as the Etruscan gods were by the Romans. The natives' belief
in their own tribal divinity did not entail denial of the divinities of
other tribes. To the Hebrew prophets the cult of Baal-peor was not so
much a false as an impious creed. The Fijians admitted from the first
that the Jehovah of the missionaries was a great, though not the only,
God, and, as will presently be shown, when converted to Christianity,
they only added Him to their own Pantheon. So, in giving their
allegiance to the chiefs who conquered them, it was natural that they
should admit the supremacy of the gods of their conquerors, who, by
giving the victory to their worshippers, had proved themselves to be
more powerful than their own gods. Wainua, the great war-god of Rewa, is
said to have drifted from Tonga, and his priest, when inspired, gives
his answers in the Tongan language. The Rewans had given the chief place
in their Pantheon to the god of mere visitors.

[Pageheader: THE FIRE GOD]

First among the Kalou-vu was Ndengei, primarily a god of Rakiraki on the
north-east coast of Vitilevu, but known throughout Fiji except in the
eastern islands of the Lau group. The evolution of this god from the
ancestor and tutelary deity of a joint-family into a symbol of Creation
and Eternity in serpent form is an exact counterpart of Jupiter, the god
of a Latin tribe, inflated with Etruscan and Greek myth until he
overshadows the ancient world as Jupiter Optimus Maximus. The variants
of the Ndengei myths are so numerous that they must be reserved for
another chapter; it is enough here to say that Ndengei and the
personage associated with him are proved by the earliest myths of his
home on the Ra coast to be deified mortals who have risen to the rank of
Kalou-vu by their importance as the first immigrants and the founders of
the race.

Next in order to Ndengei is Ndauthina (the torch-bearer), the god of the
seafaring and fishing community throughout Fiji. That he is one of the
introductions from another system of mythology and not a deified mortal
of Fiji is strongly suggested by the fact that all the fisher-tribes are
_tauvu_ or _Kalou-vata_ (worshippers of the same god, and therefore of
common origin). These tribes, by the nature of their occupation, are
prone to scatter widely, though comparatively late arrivals in the
group. They seldom own any land in the province of their adoption, but
attach themselves to the chiefs, from whom they enjoy marked privileges
in return for their services. It would take but few years for the newest
arrivals, scattering thus among far distant islands, to disseminate
their cult throughout a group of islands, and there is nothing in the
Ndauthina myths that disproves their Eastern origin. The fisher-tribes
had the best of reasons for keeping the freemasonry of their bond of
_Kalou-vata_ (_lit._, same God) alive. Their calling subjected them to
frequent shipwreck, and by the law of custom the lives of castaways were
forfeit--a survival, perhaps, of a primitive system of quarantine. But
the shipwrecked fisherman might always find sanctuary in a temple
dedicated to Ndauthina, and thus win the "freedom of the city" in a
village where he was a stranger.

Ndauthina was the Loki, the Fire-god of the Nibelung myth. He is the god
of Light and of Fire--the fire of lightning and the fire of lust in
men's blood. His love of light in infancy prompted his mother to bind
lighted reeds upon his head to amuse him, and now he roams the reefs by
night hooded with a flaming brazier. He is the patron of adulterers, and
himself steals women away by night. He loves night attacks, and flashes
light upon the defences to guide the besiegers. Taking human form he
sells fish to the doomed garrison, who, noticing a strong smell of fire,
know that Ndauthina has been among them, and that their warriors will
not see another sun. His pranks and whims are numberless. When plots are
hatched against his favourites a voice cries "Pooh!" through the
reed-walls, and he flies off to put his friends upon their guard. He
buoys up a rotten canoe to tempt warriors to embark in her only to lure
them into club-reach of their enemies. But upon his friends the
fishermen he plays no pranks, giving them fair winds and good fishing.

Ratu-mai-Mbulu (Lord from Hades), though primarily a local divinity of
the Tailevu coast, is also probably a foreign intruder. Through him the
earth gives her increase. In December he comes forth from Mbulu, and
pours sap into the fruit trees, and pushes the young yam shoots through
the soil. Throughout that moon it is tabu to beat the drum, to sound the
conch-shell, to dance, to plant, to fight, or to sing at sea, lest
Ratu-mai-Mbulu be disturbed, and quit the earth before his work is
completed. At the end of the month the priest sounds the consecrated
shell: the people raise a great shout, carrying the good news from
village to village, and pleasure and toil are again free to all.

In a hole near Namara he lies in serpent form, and thither the Mbauans
carried food to him once a year, first clearing the holy ground. Unlike
the other gods he drinks no kava, for the wind and noise of a blast on
the conch-shell are meat and drink to him. There was once an agnostic of
Soso, the fisher class of Mbau, named Kowika, who set forth alone to set
his doubts at rest. To a snake sunning himself at the cave-mouth he
offered fish, but this was the great god's son. When he was gone to
summon his father from the cave, a greater snake appeared--the god's
grandson he proved to be--and he departed with a more urgent message. At
length there issued a serpent so huge and terrible that Kowika doubted
no longer, and proffered his gift in fear and trembling, but as the god
was loosening his vast coils he shot an arrow into them and fled. As he
ran a voice rang in his ears, crying, "Nought but snakes! Nought but
snakes!" And so it was. The pot was cooked when Kowika reached home, but
his wife dropped the skewer with a shriek, an impaled snake wriggled on
its end. When he lifted the bamboo to drink, snakes poured forth
instead of water. He unrolled his sleeping mat; that too was alive with
snakes. And as he rushed forth into the night he heard the voice of the
priest prophesying the fall of the city as a just punishment for the
sacrilege of wounding the God of Increase. He took the one way of
salvation left to him: he _soro_-ed in abject humility, and he was
pardoned.

[Pageheader: THE SHARK GOD]


Totemism

The shark-god is the tutelar divinity of numerous tribes who are not
_tauvu_ with one another, unless they call him by the same name.
Waterhouse gives the following list of names under which the shark is
invoked: Ndakuwanka, (Outside-the-canoe), Circumnavigator-of-Yandua,
Feeder-of-fish, Lover-of-canoe-spars, Waylayer, Rover-of-the-man-groves,
Expectant-follower, Ready-for-action, Sail-cleaner,
Lord-Shark-that-calls, Tabu-white, Tooth-for-raw-flesh. The tribes that
invoke Ndakuwanka are _tauvu_, but the Soro people who worship
Ndakuwanka recognize no tie with the Yandua tribe, who invoke the
Circumnavigator-of-Yandua. Each of these names covers a distinct cult,
and the fact that a number of unrelated tribes should have agreed in
choosing the shark for their god needs explanation. That shark-worship
is pure totemism is shown by the beneficence of the shark to his
worshippers, and the obligation that lay upon them not to eat their
divinity. Mana, a Soro native, capsized in the open sea, called upon
Ndakuwanka to save him, and a shark rose near him and towed him safe to
land by his back fin. The same god jumped athwart a Soro canoe in the
invasion of Natewa in 1848, turned over to show the tattooing on his
belly, and leapt back into the sea to lead his votaries to the attack.
In 1840 a tabu shark was eaten at Navukeilangi in the island of Ngau,
and all who had eaten of it died. But there the usual features of
totemism stop. The spirits of the dead do not pass into the totem; men
never assume the shark form; the shark-totem does not necessarily
intermarry with any other totem. Totemism in Fiji does not affect the
social system in any way. It is an accident rather than a design in the
religious system; an anthropomorphic divinity would have served as well.
Nor is it totemism in decay, as some have suggested, for with the cult
of the totem so active and vigorous some survival of its attendant
customs in the marriage laws or in the beliefs of the future state would
assuredly have been found. The mental attitude of primitive races in all
parts of the world to worship a species of living animal or plant taught
the Fijians where to look for their tutelary divinity, and the shark
being to a people seafaring in frail craft the most dreaded and
implacable of all the animal kingdom, a number of diverse tribes chose
to propitiate the shark independently.

The shark, though the commonest, is not the only totem. The hawk, the
eel, the lizard, the fresh-water prawn, and man himself have their
adherents. The man-totem were perhaps the only tribe who never practised
cannibalism, the flesh of their totem being forbidden to them.

Totemism, in this limited form, was perfectly consistent with
ancestor-worship. Except in the case of the shark--a malevolent being
claiming constant propitiation from fishermen--the totem had not often a
temple or a priest. Saumaki, the river-shark, was remembered as a piece
of tribal tradition, but his totem worshipped other gods. They were
sometimes _tauvu_ through gods independent of their totem. Lasakau and
Sawaieke, Nayau and Notho were _tauvu_ through their shark-totem, but
Rewa and Verata were _tauvu_ through an ancestor-god,
Ko-mai-na-ndundu-ki-langi, or Ko-Tavealangi (Reclining-on-the-sky), and
greeted one another in the formula, "Nonku Vuniyavu" (Foundation of my
house). Many tribes have either forgotten or have never had a totem, and
the greater number of those who have preserve the tradition as a piece
of family history, and refer to it with a smile, which is apt to fade
when they survey the ruin of their property on the morrow of a visit
from a devastating horde of their _tauvu_ kin.

[Pageheader: THE SOUL'S LAST JOURNEY]


Gods of the After-world

Besides the divinities that concerned themselves with terrestrial
affairs, there was a well-peopled mythology of the after-life. These
beings had neither temples nor priests. They haunted well-known spots on
the road by which the Shades must pass to their last resting-place, but
as they left the living unmolested, the living were not called upon to
make propitiatory offerings. They were kept alive by the professional
story-tellers, who revived them after funerals, when men's thoughts were
directed to the problem of Death, and they gained in detailed
portraiture at every telling. In a land where every stranger is an
enemy, the idea of the naked Shade, turned out friendless into eternity,
to find his own way to the Elysium of Bulotu, conjured up images of the
perils that would beset every lone wayfarer on earth, and the Shade was
made to run the gauntlet of fiends that were the incarnations of such
perils.

Though the story of the Soul's journey agreed in general outline, the
details were filled in by each tribe to suit its geographical position.
There was generally water to cross, either the sea or a river, and there
was, therefore, a ghostly ferryman (Vakaleleyalo) who treated his
passengers with scant courtesy. There was Ghost-scatterer, who stoned
the Shade, and Reed-spear, who impaled him. Goddesses of fearsome aspect
peered at him, gnashing their teeth; the god of murder fell upon him;
the Dismisser sifted out the real dead from the trance-smitten;
fisher-fiends entangled cowards in their net; at every turn in the road
there was some malevolent being to put the Shade to the ordeal, and
search out every weak point, until none but brave warriors who had died
a violent death--the only sure passport to Bulotu--passed through
unscathed. The names differed, but the features of the myth were the
same. The shades of all Vitilevu and the contiguous islands, and of a
large part of Vanualevu took the nearest road either to the Nakauvandra
range, the dwelling-place of Ndengei, or to Naithombothombo, the
jumping-off place in Mbau, and thence passed over the Western Ocean to
Bulotu,[45] the birth-place of the race.

What belief was more natural for a primitive people, having no revealed
belief in a future state except than that the land of which their
fathers had told them, where the yams were larger and the air warmer,
and the earth more fruitful, was the goal of their spirits after death.
We almost do the same ourselves. Englishmen who emigrate never tire of
telling their children of the delights of "home" as compared with their
adopted country. If the Canadians or South Africans knew nothing of
England but what they had heard from their fathers, and had no beliefs
concerning a future state, England would have come to be the mysterious
paradise whither their souls would journey after death, and their
"jumping-off place" would be the mouth of the St. Lawrence or of the
Orange River. With the Fijians the traditions have become so dim with
antiquity that nothing remains but a vague belief that somewhere to the
westward lies the Afterworld, and that the Shades must leap from the
western cliff to reach it.

[Pageheader: THE PATH OF THE SHADES]

Every step of the soul's journey was taken on a road perfectly familiar
to the people, and constantly frequented by daylight. But after
nightfall none were found so foolhardy as to set foot upon this domain
of the Immortals, while the precincts of Ndengei's cave and
Naithombothombo (the Jumping-off place) were tabu both by day and
night. In 1891 a surveyor, employed in sketching the boundaries of the
lands claimed by the Namata tribe, was taken by his native guides along
a high ridge, the watershed between the Rewa river and the eastern coast
of the main island. As they cut their way through the undergrowth that
clothed the hilltop, he noticed that the path was nearly level, and
seldom more than two feet wide, and that the ridge joined hilltop to
hilltop in an almost horizontal line. Reflecting that Nature never works
in straight lines with so soft a material as earth, and that natural
banks of earth are always washed into deep depressions between the
hills, and are never razor-edged as this was, he had a patch of the
undergrowth cleared away, and satisfied himself that the embankments
were artificial. Following the line of the ridge, the saddles had been
bridged with banks thirty to forty feet high in the deepest parts, and
tapering to a width of two feet at the top. The level path thus made
extends, so the guides said, clear to Nakauvandra mountain, fifty miles
away. For a people destitute of implements this was a remarkable work.
Every pound of earth must have been carried up laboriously in cocoanut
leaf baskets and paid for in feasts. Even when the valley was densely
populated the drain on the resources of the people must have been
enormous, for thousands of pigs must have been slaughtered and millions
of yams planted, cultivated, and consumed in the entertainment of the
workers. With the present sparse population the work would have been
impossible. It was thought at first that this was a fortification on a
gigantic scale, for Fijians never undertake any great combined work,
except for defence, to preserve their bare existence. It could not be a
road, because the Fijian of old preferred to go straight over obstacles,
like the soldier ants that climb trees rather than go round them. The
old men at Mbau, whom I questioned, knew no tradition about it, except
that it was called the "Path of the Shades," and that it was an
extension of one of the spurs of the Kauvandra mountain range. Of one
thing they were certain--that it was not built for defence. Then I asked
for guides to take me over it, and three grey-headed elders of the
Namata tribe were told off to accompany me. We started in the driving
rain. My guides were reticent at first, but when we had climbed to the
higher ridge, and were near the "Water-of-Solace," the spirit of the
place seemed to possess them, and at every turn of the path they stopped
to describe the peril that there beset the poor Shade. The eldest of the
three became at times positively uncanny, for he stopped here and there
in the rain to execute a sort of eerie dance, which, if it was intended
to exorcise the demons of the Long Road, was highly reprehensible in a
professing Wesleyan. Little by little I wormed the whole story out of
them, together with fragments of the sagas in which it is crystallized.
After I had reached home two of my native collectors were sent to Namata
to reduce the tradition to writing. The following is a literal
translation of what they brought me--


_The Spirit Path_ (_Sala Ni Yalo_)

There is a long range which has its source at Mumuria in the Kauvandra
mountain, and stretches eastward right down to Nathengani at Mokani in
Mbau. It is called the Tuatua-mbalavu (Long Range), but in Tholo and Ra
it is called the Tualeita. This range is nowhere broken or cut through,
nor does the course of any stream pass through it. And all the streams
that discharge into the Wainimbuka take their source in this range, and
also the streams that run towards the sea, on the whole coast, from
Navitilevu to Namata.

Now our ancestors said that the souls of the dead followed this range on
their way to Kauvandra, and at the foot of the range at Mokani was their
fountain of drinking water, called Wainindula. We begin our account of
the "Spirit Path" at Ndravo, for at that place all the souls of those
who have died at Mburetu, and Nakelo, and Tokatoka, and Lomaindreketi,
and Ndravo crossed the water.

This is the story--

[Pageheader: THE GHOSTLY FERRYMAN]

When a man died his body was washed, and girded up with _masi_ and laid
in its shroud. A whale's tooth was laid on his breast, to be his stone
to throw at the pandanus-tree, which all the Shades had to aim at. And
while his friends were weeping, the Shade left the body and came to a
stream so swift that no Shade could swim across it. This stream was
called the Wainiyalo (River of the Shades), but it is now called the
Ndravo river. When the Shade reached the bank he stood and called
towards the Mokani side, where the god Themba dwelt, the same whose duty
it is to ferry the Shades across the water. Now Themba has a great
canoe, divided in the middle; one end is of _vesi_, and in this the
chiefs embark; but the other is of _ndolou_ (a kind of bread-fruit), and
on this the low-born Shades take passage. The name of the place where
they stand and call Themba is Lelele. When the Shade reaches Lelele he
stands and calls, "Themba, bring over your canoe." And Themba answers,
"Which end is to be the prow?" If the Shade answers, "The _vesi_ end,"
Themba knows that it is the shade of a chief, but if it cries, "Let the
bread-fruit be the prow," it is a low-born Shade, and the bread-fruit
end touches the bank.

When the Shade is ferried across from Lelele it goes straight to the
bluff at Nathengani, but before it reaches it it has to cross a bridge
called Kawakawa-i-rewai. Now this bridge is a monstrous eel, and while
the Shade is crossing it, if it writhes it is a sign to the Shade not to
tarry, for it means that his wife will not be strangled to follow him.
But if the eel does not writhe, then the Shade sits down, for he knows
that his wife is being strangled to his manes, and will soon overtake
him.

Now, as he climbs the bluff at Nathengani the path is blocked by an
orchid, and from this orchid the disposition of the man is known,
whether it is good or bad; for if it is the Shade of a man kindly in his
life, and he cries to the orchid "Move aside," it allows the Shade to
pass, but if it is the Shade of a churlish man the orchid will not move,
but still blocks the path, and the Shade has to crawl beneath it. And
when he reaches the top of Nathengani he sees the pandanus-tree, and he
flings his stone at it. If he hits it he sits down to await his wife,
for it means that she has been strangled and is following him, but if he
misses it he goes straight on, knowing that no one is following him as
an offering to his manes.

It is also related of the eel-bridge that if it turns over as a Shade
crosses it, that is a sign that the husband or wife of the Shade has
been unfaithful during life, and that when the Shade feels the eel
turning he goes forward weeping, because he knows that his wife had been
unfaithful to him in life.

A goddess named Tinaingenangena guards the end of the range at
Nathengani. These are the verses that relate to her:--

  Let us send for Tinaingenangena,
  To teach us the song,
  When we have learned it we are dissolved in laughter,
  Her short _liku_ is flapping about,
  As for us we are being laughed at,
  The Shade of the dead is passing on,
  Passing on to Nathengani,
  He is stepping on the bridge; the eel-bridge,
  It writhes and the Shade rolls off,
  My dress is wet through,
  He speaks to the orchid at Nathengani,
  Speaks to the orchid that blocks the road,
  Move a little that I may pass on,
  He breaks the whale's tooth in half,
  Breaks it that we may each have one,
  That we may throw at the red pandanus,
  He misses and bites his fingers in chagrin,
  She loves her life too well.

And as the spirit travels onward it comes to a _Ndawa_-tree called
"The-Ndawa-that-fells-the-Shades" (_Vuni-ndawa-thova-na-yalo_), which
stands at Vunithava. This it climbs to tear down the _ndawa_ fruit to be
its provision for the journey, and it weeps aloud as it goes in
self-pity for the deceit of the wife who had been unfaithful, as it now
knows.

And now the Shade hears the voice of the god Ndrondro-yalo
(Pursuer-of-Shades), and he strides towards the Shade bearing in his
hand a great stone with which he pounds the nape of his neck, and the
_ndawa_ fruit the Shade is carrying is scattered far and wide. Therefore
this spot was called Naitukivatu (the Place-of-the-pounding-stone).

[Pageheader: THE WATER OF OBLIVION]

Then the Shade comes to a place called Ndrekei, where there are two
goddesses named Nino, whose custom it is to peer at all the Shades that
travel along the "Spirit-path." These goddesses are terrible on account
of their teeth; and as the Shade limps along the path they peer at it,
creeping towards it, and gnashing their teeth. And when the Shade sees
them it cries aloud in its terror and flees.

And as the Shades flee they come to a spring, and stop to drink. And as
soon as they taste the water they immediately cease their weeping, and
their friends who are still weeping in their former homes also cease,
for their grief is assuaged. Therefore this spring is called
Wai-ni-ndula (Water-of-Solace).

And as soon as they have finished drinking they rise up and look afar,
and lo! the _mbuli_ shells of the great dwellings of Kauvandra are
gleaming white, and they throw away the rest of their provision of
_via_, and to this day one may see the via they throw away sprouting at
this place, where no mortal may dig it. For now they know that they are
drawing near their resting-place; therefore they throw away their
provisions that they may travel the lighter.

These are the verses that tell of the journey of the Shade from
Vunithava to the Water-of-Solace:--

  What do we see at Vunithava?
  A _ndawa_-tree weighted to the ground with fruit,
  Climb it that we may eat,
  To be provision for the Shades on their long journey,
  Here have we reached the "Stonebreaker,"
  He pounds us and spills our _ndawa_ fruit,
  Thence we go forward limping,
  Nino begin to creep forward peering at us,
  Now we arrive at the garden of puddings,
  We stop to rest at the Wainindula,
  We meet and drink together, e e.
  Having drunk we are mad with joy (forgetting the past)
  The Kai Ndreketi are growing excited,
  They have sight of our bourne,
  The shell-covered ridge-poles to which we are journeying
  They seem to pierce the empyrean
  We throw down our provisions,
  Soon the great _via_ plants will appear (that have sprouted from the
       _via_ thrown away).

Journeying on from the Water-of-Solace the Shade comes to a place called
Naisongovitho, where stands a god armed with an axe. The name of this
god is Tatovu. When the Shade reaches this place Tatovu poises his axe
and chops at his back, and thenceforward the Shade goes with his back
bent. Presently he reaches Namburongo, where the god Motonduruka
(Palm-spear) lies in wait to impale every Shade with a spear fashioned
from a reed.

Wounded with the rush-spear of Motonduruka, the Shade journeys on to a
place called Natambu, where there is a god called Naiuandui who wounds
him in the back, and he goes forward reeling in his gait. Therefore is
this place called Naimbalembale (the Reeling-place).

There are verses that tell of the journey of the Shades from Rokowewe to
Naimbalembale:--

  Rokowewe ("Lord Ue-Ue!") announces us,
  "Prepare, ye old women,"
  They prepare their nets and shake them out for a cast,
  They entangle them (the Shades), and cast them out,
  Tatovuya (the Back-cutter) cuts them down,
  Motonduruka (the Cane-spear) stabs them,
  Naiuandui bruises them,
  How far below us lies Nawakura,
  How far above Mambua,
  Mambua the land of insolence,
  The land to which the spirits of every land come,
  We are struck down, we are slain,
  We go on reeling from side to side, e e.

Now when the Shades have passed Naimbalembale they reach a spot called
Narewai. Here they have to crawl on their bellies. Thence they journey
to a place called Nosonoso (the Bowing-place), which they have to pass
in a stooping posture. There they bow down ten times.

Thence they come to Veisule, where they throw down the provisions they
have taken and faint away. Thence they are dragged on to Nayarayara (the
Dragging-place) as corpses are dragged to the ovens to be cooked. Thence
they travel to Nangele.

[Pageheader: THE DREAD FISHERWOMEN]

Thence they come to a place called Navakathiwa (the Nine-times). This
they have to encircle nine times. Thence they have to journey on till
they come to a spot called the Watkins (the Pinching-stone). Every Shade
has to pinch this stone. If he indents it it is known that he was a
lazy man in his lifetime, for his nails were long, as they never are
when a man has been diligent in scooping up the yam hills in his garden
with his hands. But if his nails do not indent the stone it is known
that he was industrious, for his nails were worn away with working in
his plantation. From the "Pinching-stone" they go forward, dancing and
jesting, towards the god Taleya (the Dismisser), who is the god that
lives in the great _mbaka_-tree at Maumi. Then Taleya asks each Shade
how he died, whether by a natural death, or by the club in war, or by
strangling, or by drowning. And if he answers "I died by a natural
death," Taleya replies "Then go back and re-enter your body."[46] Hence
is the god called Taleya--the Dismisser. But if the Shade replies that
he was slain in war or drowned, Taleya lets him pass on. The Shades that
are sent back to re-enter their bodies do not always obey, for some are
so eager to reach Kauvandra that they disobey his command.[47]

Thence the Shades follow the Long Road to a spot called Uluitambundra,
which is on the junction of the road with Namata. At this spot there is
a god who announces the Shades with a shout. His name is Rokowewe, and
when a Shade reaches Uluitambundra he shouts "Ue, Ue, Ue!" And two
goddesses at Naulunisanka on the road shake out their nets in readiness,
for they are set to net the Shades as they pass. These goddesses are
called Tinaiulundungu and Muloathangi, and they make a sweep with their
net. If it be the Shade of a warrior it will overleap the net as does
the _kanathe_; but if it be the Shade of a coward it will be entangled
like the _sumusumu_, and the goddesses will disentangle it and bite its
head as if it were a fish, and will loop up their nets and throw the
fish into their baskets. These goddesses inhabit the "Long Road"
(Tualeita), and they loiter in the path listening for the sound of
wailing from the villages below them, for the sad sound is wafted to
the "Long Road." But the real dwelling of these goddesses is Ulunisanka,
a peak on the road. There is a saga about these goddesses, and how they
fish for the shades of the dead. It is well known in Namata among the
women there, and it is called "Shade of the Dead" (Yalo mate).

  The goddesses are looping up their nets,
  They are listening to the sound of weeping,
  From what village does this weeper come?
  Let us stand and dispute about it,
  It is weeping from the village of ----?
  They spread out their nets for a catch,
  They spread their net across the belly of the road,
  We hold the net and wait,
  The shade of the dead is topping the ridge,
  Let us lift up the head of the net cautiously,
  The Shade leaps and clears the net at a bound,
  One goddess claps, and clasps her hands, and the other bites her fingers
      (in chagrin).
  I look after the Shade, but it is far on its way,
  Let us fold up the net and return.

The Shades that have escaped from the Fisherwomen at Uluisanka follow
the "Long Road" to Naikathikathi-ni-kaile[48] (the
Calling-place-for-kaile). In the valley below this spot are two
goddesses boiling _kaile_, and when the Shade reaches the spot it calls
to them for _kaile_. If it calls for a red _kaile_ it is known for the
Shade of a man slain in war, but if it calls for a white _kaile_ it is
the Shade of one who was strangled. Some, however, call for _kaile_ from
Mburotu; these are they who have died a natural death, and _kaile_ from
Mburotu are taken to them. Other things, too, are called from this
place.

When each Shade has received the _kaile_ for which he called, he passes
on to a place called Naikanakana (the Eating-place), and there he eats.
Thence he goes on to a place called Naililili (the Hanging-place). Here
there is a _vasa_ tree, and from the branches are hanging like bats the
Shades of the little children who are waiting for their fathers or their
mothers, and when one sees its mother it drops down, and goes on with
her to Kauvandra.

[Pageheader: WHERE THE SHADES MEET]

The children cry to the Shades as they pass, "How are my father and my
mother?" If the Shade answers, "The smoke of their cooking-fire is set
upright" (meaning that they are still in their prime), then the
child-Shade cries, "Alas, am I still to be orphan?" But if the Shade
replies, "Their hair is grey, and the smoke of their cooking-fire hangs
along the ground," the Shade of the child rejoices greatly, crying, "It
is well. I shall soon have a father and a mother. O hasten, for I am
weary of waiting for you."

Thence the Shade follows the "Long Road" to a place called
Vuningasau-leka (Short reeds). Here the Shades stop to rest for a time,
and they turn to see who is following them, and there they recognize
each other, and become companions for the rest of their journey to
Kauvandra. Hence this place of Vuningasauleka is a by-word when there is
strong anger between two persons. If one would tell the other that he
will not see his face or speak to him again until one of them is dead,
he says, "We two will meet again at Vuningasaleka," meaning that they
will never meet again in this world.

Thence the Shades journey to Nankasenkase (the Crawling-place). Here
they kneel down and crawl to the place called Naisausau (the
Clapping-place), where they stand upright and clap their hands. In
former times a village of the Naimbosa tribe was in this place, and they
say that in those days they used to hear about them the sound of the
hand-clapping which the Shades made at Naisausau.

Thence they pass on to a place called Tree-fern-target (Balabala-ulaki),
where there is a tree-fern at which reeds are thrown, and here they stop
to throw at it. And next they come to Levukaniwai, and then to
Vakanandaku, where they rest for a time with their backs turned to one
another (Vakanandaku). Then they come to Naterema (the Coughing-place),
and here they cough loudly. Thence they pass through the place called
Buremundu, to Nainkoronkoro (the Place of Wonder), and there they stand
and marvel at the world, the beauty, the pleasures, the sorrows, and the
labour of it. Here they take their last look at the world before passing
on to Kauvandra.

Passing through Nakovalangi, and Bulia, and Navunindakua, and
Matanikorowalu (the-Gate-of-the-eight-villages), which is a village of
Vungalei, they come to a place called Naisa-vusavu-ni-weli (the
Spitting-place). Each Shade as it arrives at this spot spits at the foot
of a _ndrindriwai_ tree, and go on to another place called Naikanakana
(the Eating-place), and here they stop to eat. Now our fathers have told
us that when we dream that the spirit of a dead man is eating us, it
signifies that the Shade has reached Naikanakana-ni-yalo, and that there
he finds the spirits of us the living, and that straightway he pursues
our spirits with intent to devour them. Therefore we sometimes say,
"Last night the Shade of so-and-so ate me, and I shouted till I almost
died."

Having eaten the spirits of the living, the Shades of the dead pass
onward to Vunivau-nkusi-mata (the Hybiscus-for-wiping-the-face), and
here they break off leaves of the hybiscus, and wipe their faces with
them. If it be the Shade of a man the leaf will be black, but if it be
the Shade of a woman the leaf will be red.

Thence they pass on to a spot called Navuniyasikinikini (the
Sandal-wood-tree-to-be-pinched), for in this spot there is a sandal-wood
which is pinched by all the Shades, and if the nails of the spirit make
an impression on the tree, it is known that it is the Shade of a lazy
man, but if the Shade pinches and leaves no impression it is plain that
it is the Shade of an industrious man who is diligent in gardening.

Thence they pass on through the places called Naloturango and Tova,
through Navitikau and Tanginakarakara, still following the "Long Road"
through Thengunawai and Naitholasama and Nathau.

[Pageheader: THE DANCE OF THE GODS]

Next they reach a spot called Mbalenayalo (the Spirit falls), and as
each Shade reaches this spot it suddenly falls down with a loud report.
Thence they pass through Thenguna-sonki (Pigeon's rest), Drakusi (the
Wound), and Nambaikau (the Wooden wall), and Kelia, and Suva, and
Waitamia, the waterfall of Ndelakurukuru (Thunder-hill), Namatua's city.
Now this is a great city of the gods built on the "Long Road." Here the
Shades enter a house near the _rara_ (village square) called
Naisongolatha (Sail-cloth door). In this house they are to rest and
witness the dance of the gods of Ndelakurukuru. And when the gods have
finished dancing the Shades of the dead dance before them in their turn
in the great house of Nasongolatha. This is the song of the gods:--

  I am in the house of Nasongolatha,
  Likuse-ni-karawa speaks,
  The great chiefs are met to practise a song,
  Thou, dear to women, come and practise.
  Mbatibukawanka leads the song,
  Thavuthavu-mata (the Face-stealer) follows.
     (This god used to steal the faces of good-looking men in order to
      seduce women.)
  He carries the club Singana-i-tamana (His father's triumph).
  Roko Matanivula ("Lord Moon") is next;
  Whence do all these chiefs come?
  They are the chiefs from Molikula,
  All their brothers follow them,
  They assemble in the _rara_,
  They turn once and scrape their feet,
  They stamp and the earth splits,
  Like the sound of thunder in the morning.

When this song is finished the Shades leave the house to bathe in the
bathing-place of Ndelakurukuru, which is called Ndranukula (the Red
pond). This pool is in the middle of the city. And when they are about
to bathe, the god Namatua, who rules the city of Ndelakurukuru,
exorcises the water. This is the song with which he exorcises it:--

  Bathe at Ndranukula and Namatua speaks,
  There is a wind on Ndelakurukuru (Thunder-hill).
  The breeze is scented with _ndomole_ flowers,
  As clear water flowing forth from a spring.
  All my children are dancing,
  Weliwelinivula (Moonshine) leads the dance,
  Together with Molikula.

And after they have bathed the Shades go to look at the quicksand. This
sand is white and very fine, and the spirits go to look at it, and after
trying to cross it they fall asleep from very weariness, for, being a
shifting sand, it cannot be crossed. This is the song that tells of
it:--

  I fall asleep at Nukutoro, the quicksand,
  The sound of the singers and the drummers floats to me,
  The sound of the spear-dance from the mountains,
  The onlookers in their delight climb one upon another to see.

  The guardians of the mountains sing on,
  The calves of their legs are like shaddocks,
  Their red turbans are of the colour of blood,
  Like the fruit of the _vutore_ tree floating down a river.

Then the children of Namatua are assembled to be counted in order that
the Shades may know their numbers, the children of the god of Vungalei.
And when they are counted they are found to number one hundred and two,
and they are called collectively the Vuanivonokula (the
Fruit-of-the-red-kula). This was their title of honour. Now all these
sons of Namatua are young gods, strong and handsome. This is a portion
of one of the poems that relates to them:--

  Let the sons of the god be counted,
  They number one hundred and two;
  The fruit of the _vono_ is drifting,
  The fruit of the red _vono_.[49]

The Shades, watching the dances of Ndelakurukuru and marvelling at the
strong and warlike appearance of the young gods, long to repay them by
singing a song of their own land. But they can only sing of their own
sufferings. They think that they will thus raise in the minds of the
gods anger against the mortals that are still living, and against the
race of mosquitoes, and flies, and black ants, for the dead are ever
malignant towards the living. This is their lament:--

  My Lords, in ill fashion are we buried,
  Buried staring up into heaven,
  We see the scud flying over the sky,
  We are worn out with the feet stamping in the earth,[50]
  The rafters of our house (the ribs) are torn asunder,
  The eyes with which we gazed on one another are destroyed;
  The nose with which we kissed has fallen in;
  The breast to which we embraced is ruined;
  The thighs with which we clasped have fallen away;
  The lips with which we smiled are fretted with decay;
  The teeth with which we bite have showered down,
  Gone is the hand which threw the _tinka_ stick,
  Rolled away are the hawks' stones (testiculi),
  Rolled away are the blunters of razors
       (alluding to the custom of shaving the pubes).
  Hark to the lament of the mosquito:
  "Well it is that they should die and pass onward;
  "But alas for my conch-shell that they have taken away" (the human ear).
  Hark to the lament of the fly:[51]
  "Well it is that they should die and pass onward,
  But alas! they have carried away the eye from which I drank."
  Hark to the lament of the black ant:
  "Well it is that they should die and pass onward;
  "But, alas! for my whale's tooth that they have taken away!"
    (The male organ; the most vulnerable point of attack for that insect
     when a native sits down.)

[Illustration: Painting a _tapa_ shroud.]

[Pageheader: THE LAMENT OF THE SHADES]

And when the gods of Ndelakurukuru heard this song they cried, "Liku
tangoi ya io," which signifies in the language of the immortals, "The
mortals' way of burial is well enough, are we to condemn it for a song?"

  We are sitting and the stars are appearing,
  My feet are in the ferry canoe,
  There is trampling on the Path of the Shades
  They are following the "Long Road."
  I go on and speak as I go,
  The world there is lying empty,
  I am standing on the firm ground,
  I stand on the hard path,
  The path that leads straight to Kauvandra,
  The dance of the "Mbuno-ni-tokalau" echoes,
  What tree shall I take shelter under,
  I sit under the _ndanindani_ tree,
  We sit there chattering,
  Our food is thrown away,
  Our children are weeping,
  I hate to be buried looking skywards,
  I hate being buried to be stamped upon,
  The hand with which I threw my _tinka_ stick has been torn off,
  My legs have fallen off, like rotten fruit.
  Our bodies have been broken in half,
  Our teeth have showered down till not one is left,
  Our pupils have been turned round to show the whites,
  Turned so as to show the whites,
  The whole land is tremulous with haze,
  I sit down and weep with head bowed to the earth,
  Let us go and enter the house at Naisongolatha,
  Ndaunivotua has entered it (the singer of the _votua_),
  To teach us to sing the _votua_,
  They keep remembering as they dance,
  They sleep till it is daylight.


The reminiscence of Greek myth in Themba, the ghostly ferryman, and in
the Water-of-Solace is, of course, mere coincidence. The republican
sentiments of Charon find no echo in Fiji, for Themba reserved the
hard-wood end of his craft for aristocratic passengers. The
Water-of-Solace, too, was a more complex invention than the Water of
Lethe, for the Fijians, whose emotions are transient, make their Lethe
an excuse for the shortness of their mourning for the dead. "And his
friends also ceased from weeping, for they straightway forgot their
sorrow, and were consoled." The saga is valuable for the light that it
throws on the moral ethics of the Fijians. Cowardice and idleness were
the most heinous crimes; a life of rapine and a violent death were
passports to the sacred mountain. A natural death was so contemned that
the Shade was commanded by Taleya to re-enter the body and die
respectably. This part of the story was of course devised to account for
recoveries from trance and fainting fits. Life on earth was not a
desirable possession. Seeing the misfortunes that overtook the spirit in
its last journey, the Fijians might well have exclaimed with Claudio--

  "The weariest and most loathed worldly life,
  Is Paradise to what we fear of death."

Yet so gloomy and joyless is the prospect of a return to life that the
Shades who are offered the privilege by Taleya do not all obey, so
"anxious are they to reach Nakauvandra."

Light is also thrown upon a fact wonderingly related by the early
missionaries, that the widows of dead chiefs themselves insisted upon
being strangled to his manes, although it was notorious that they did
not love him. It was their good name that was at stake, for we read that
when the Shade had missed his throw at the pandanus-tree, and knew
therefrom that his wives would not be strangled, he went on weeping, for
he had now a proof that they had been unfaithful to him in life.

[Pageheader: THE ANCESTOR GOD]

The religion of a primitive people springs from within them and reflects
their moral qualities, and the modification that it receives from the
physical character of the country in which they live is a mere colour
that goes no deeper than the surface. Every turn in the "Long Road"
embodies an article of social ethics. If there had been no long spur
protruding from Nakauvandra into the plain the story would have been
different, but the moral ethics of the race would somehow have been
illustrated; the industrious and courageous would somehow have been
rewarded; the man of violence would have had some advantage over the man
of peace; the Shades would in some way have shown their preference for
the terrors of death to the gloom of life; the idle and the cowardly
would somehow have been put to shame.


The Ndengei Myth

Ndengei is supreme among the _Kalou-Vu_ (original gods), and his
authority was recognized by the whole of Vitilevu and its outlying
islands, and by the western half of Vanualevu. The oldest tradition in
which his name occurs mentions him as one of the first immigrants with
Lutu-na-somba-somba, but his fame far exceeded that of his companions,
and so many myths gathered about his name, that when the first
missionaries arrived he had come to be a counterpart of Zeus himself. In
serpent form he lay coiled in a cavern in the Kauvandra mountain above
Rakiraki, and when he turned himself the earth quaked. Enormous
offerings of food were made to him by the Rakiraki people. Several
hundred hogs and turtle were carried to the mouth of the cavern, which
the priests approached, crawling on their knees and elbows. One of the
priests then entered the cave to proffer the request. If it was for a
good yam-crop he would reappear, holding a piece of yam which the god
had given him; if for rain, he would be dripping with water; if for
victory, a fire-brand would be flung out in token that the enemy would
be consumed, or a clashing of clubs would be heard, one for each of the
enemy that would be slaughtered. Beyond the limits of his own district
he had scarcely a temple, and little actual worship was paid to him,
though in the great drought of 1838 King Tanoa of Mbau sent propitiatory
offerings to him; and even in Raki-raki itself, there is a humorous
song in which Uto his constant attendant, is represented as visiting the
public feasts for the god's portion, and returning to Ndengei with the
rueful intelligence that nothing but the under shell of the turtle was
allotted to him. In some versions Ndengei has the head and neck only of
a serpent, the rest of his body being of stone. He is the creator of
mankind, but he has no emotions, sensations, or appetites except
hunger.[52] Another version describes him as sending forth his son,
Rokomautu, to create the land. He scraped it up from the ocean-bed, and
where his flowing garment trailed across it there were sandy beaches,
and where the skirt was looped up the coast was rocky. He also taught
men how to produce fire.

When the missionaries first attempted the conversion of Rakiraki the
people thought that Christianity was a mere variant of their own cult of
Ndengei, using the following argument: Ndengei = the True God; Jehovah =
the True God; therefore, Jehovah = Ndengei. Many years later the false
prophet, Navosavakandua, whose career is set forth hereafter, used a
similar argument to prove that his teachings did not clash with those of
the missionaries, but were merely a newer revelation.

Ndengei was a purely Melanesian deity, and therefore, as I have said,
the whole of Abraham Fornander's argument of a settlement of Polynesians
in Fiji from the second to the fifth centuries a.d., which is founded on
the fallacy that Ndengei was of Polynesian origin, falls to the
ground.[53] For the serpent-worship indicated in the serpent form of
Ndengei, on which he lays so much stress, is a modern gloss, and, even
if it had been ancient, it would have proved no connection with the
Polynesians, since snake-superstitions are common throughout Melanesia.

[Pageheader: THE SHOOTING OF THE SACRED PIGEON]

The great saga of the war in Nakauvandra is far older than the myth
ascribing serpent form to Ndengei, and there the god figures as a
splenetic and irascible old man, as no doubt he was in his remote
earthly career. I take the story from the version written down by Ilai
Motonithothoko, to whom I have referred elsewhere. When Ndengei had
grown old the settlement on the Kauvandra mountain consisted of several
villages, one of which belonged to Rokola and his carpenter clan, and
the grandsons of the first arrivals were grown men. In the village of
Nai-lango-nawanawa, on the slopes of the mountain, lived two twin
grand-nephews of Ndengei, named Na-thiri-kau-moli and Na-kau-sambaria,
who having brought down a pigeon with an arrow without injuring it,
clipped its wings and tamed it. They gave the bird the name of Turukawa,
and every morning and evening, and at flood-tide and ebb-tide, its
cooing resounded far and wide over the mountain. Old Ndengei, hearing
its voice, sent a messenger to ask the youths to give it to him, but
they were absent from home, and the messenger, assured by their father
that their consent was not necessary, took the bird to his master.
Ndengei wanted the bird for a practical purpose. Elderly Fijians are
somnolent, and the pigeon's cooing at sunrise was useful in arousing him
from slumber.

Next morning the twin brothers were startled at hearing their pigeon
cooing in Ndengei's village, and when they heard that it had been taken
away without their consent, they flew into a rage, crying, "Sombo! is
this to be the way with us children of men?" And they made ready their
bow, which was called Livaliva-ni-singa (Summer-lightning), and set
forth to shoot Turukawa. And when they drew near the banyan-tree in
which he was perched, they doffed their turbans; therefore the place is
called Ai-thavu-thavu-ni-sala (the Doffing-place) to this day. And they
shot an arrow at Turukawa, who fell dead to the ground. And they drew
out the arrow, and went to the carpenters' village, Narauyamba, because
it was fortified, and their own village was not fortified.

For four days Ndengei missed the cooing of his Awakener, and he sent
Uto, his messenger, to see what had become of him. And Uto came to the
banyan-tree, and found the body of Turukawa, and saw the arrow-wound,
and said, "There is none who would so forget Ndengei as to kill his
Awakener but the twin brothers whose bird he was. Why have they gone to
live at Narauyamba, except it be because it has a war-fence?" And he
told Ndengei his suspicions. Then he went to the brothers and questioned
them, and they said, "Yes, we did shoot Turukawa."

Then Ndengei sent to them to come to him, and they refused. And his
anger blazed up within him, and he cried with a terrible voice, "Go,
tell them to depart to a land where I am not known!"

But this also they refused to do, and Rokola ordered his carpenters to
build a war-fence of _vesi_ timber, very high, with neither joint nor
chink in it. And when Ndengei knew that the carpenters had entrenched
themselves, he sent messengers to Rokomouto to come and help him.

Then there was war in Kauvandra--such a war as has never since been seen
in Fiji. Joined to Ndengei were Rokomouto and his clan, who had settled
on Viwa, and together they laid siege to the fortress. Many heroes fell
on either side, but never a warrior could storm the wall of _vesi_ built
by the carpenters. But now Rokola devised a dreadful engine of war.
Before the gate of his fortress there was a ragged rift in the
mountain-side. He sent out his warriors to cut stout vines in the
forest, and suspended a bridge of twisted vines over the chasm. From the
tops of two stout posts, planted within the fortress, he stretched ropes
that appeared to be mere supports to the bridge, but were in reality a
trap such as the men of Notho use when they would snare wild duck in
their taro-beds. For when a man trod upon them he was caught fast in a
noose, and the defenders hauled suddenly upon the ropes, and swung him
high over the rampart into their midst, where they could club him at
leisure. Then warriors were sent out to flee before the enemy to entice
them on the bridge, and many were caught in the trap, and swung into the
fortress to meet their doom. Thus were Ndengei's forces dispirited.

[Pageheader: THE GREAT DELUGE]

There were traitors in Ndengei's camp, who were conspiring with the
enemy, and carrying food to him by night. These men were seized, and
being found guilty on their own confession, were exiled from Kauvandra
for ever. They left the mountain, some going towards Matailombau,
others towards Navosa. Now, when Ndengei saw that he could not prevail
against the fortress, he sought out one Mbakandroti, a man related to
the carpenters, who had chosen to take part with Ndengei against his own
kin, and bade him devise a plan for betraying the fortress. That night a
spirit appeared to Mbakandroti in a dream, and told him to cut down a
_vungayali_-tree that grew close to the rampart. And when he had related
his dream, one Vueti was appointed to cut it down. He had scarce laid
his stone axe to the root when water began to gush forth from the wound.
All that day the water poured into the fortress, and by nightfall it was
knee-deep, and rising still. So the carpenters took counsel, and
resolved to ask pardon of Ndengei, since the gods were with him. So
Ndengei took counsel with his chiefs, and they said, "These craftsmen
are too valuable; we cannot destroy them; let them be exiled!" The
fountain had now become a mighty river flowing southward from the
mountain, and the craftsmen built them canoes in haste, and embarked,
and sailed down the stream till they came to a new land, and there they
settled. These are the ancestors of the carpenter clan at Rewa.[54] But
there was no pardon for the twin brothers; to their exile there was to
be no limit. Yet, for Rokola's sake, they were given time to build their
canoe. And Rokola built them a vessel such as has never since been seen
in Fiji, and named it Nai-vaka-nawanawa (the Lifeboat), and sailed away
down the stream into the western ocean, and were never heard of more;
only the prophecy remains that one day they will come again. It will
presently be related how the false teacher Na-vosa-vakandua turned this
prophecy to account.


The Epic of Dengei

  Ko Dengei sa tangi langalanga,
  "Bongi ndua, bongi rua ka'u yandra
  Bongi tolu, bongi va ka'u yandra,
  Sa tambu ndungu ndina ko Turukawa,
  Isa! nonku toa, na toa turanga,
  Isa! nonku toa, na toa tamata,
  Tiko e ulunda na ka rarawa,
  Au lolova kina, au tambu kana,
  Matanivanua, mai thithi manda,
  Mai thithi sara ki Narauyamba,
  Mo tarongi rau na ndauvavana,
  'Kemundrua, ru vanai Turukawa?'
  Sa tambu ndungu ni vakamataka,
  Ma lolo koto Kotoinankara,
  Ma mbunotha no a wai ni matana,
  Vakasunka me ramothe mai wanka."

  Thus did Dengei weep tears of annoyance,
  "One night, two nights have I lain awake,
  Three nights, four nights have I lain awake,
  Not once has Turukawa cooed,
  Alas! my fowl, my noble fowl!
  Alas! my fowl, my man-like fowl,
  Sorrow has taken possession of my brain,
  I am sick with it; I cannot eat,
  Come, herald, run,
  Run straight to Narauyamba,
  Question the archers, and say,
  'You, did you shoot Turukawa?
  Not once did he coo at daybreak,
  The 'Cave-dweller'[55] is still fasting,
  The tears are welling from his eyes;
  The men are off to sleep on board.'

[Pageheader: THE CRAFTSMEN DECLARE WAR]


The Herald Speaks

  Nonku nduri tiko ni karakaramba,
  Sa talaki ma Kotoinankara,
  "Matanivanua mai thithi manda,
  Mo lakovi rau na turanga,
  Nonku toa sa mate vakathava?
  Au tambu kila no a kena thala."
  Soraki ka tukutuku ko Mata,
  Ma mbolea mai ko Nakausamba,
  'Matanivanua, mo na ngalu manda,
  O kenda kethe na luve ni tamata,
  Oi au na luve ni mathawa,
  Oi au na luve ni vula thandra,
  Vakathambethambe nga ko Waithala,
  Ka levu ko cava kei Mata,
  Au kaya mo na sa vavi manda,
  Tha nde ko senga ni na laukana,
  Ni ko rui kaisi tha sara,
  Au a lenkata na vula ma thandra."
  Ko Nathirikaumoli ma vosaya,
  "Me tukuna ma Kotoinankara,
  Nona ruve e rawata vakathava?
  E kune e wai, se rawata matha?
  Ko la'ki tukuna me nda tu sa vala,
  Sa vu ni tha nga ko Turukawa,
  Me tawase kina ko Nakauvandra,
  Sa tha nondatou tiko vata,
  Me ngundu na masi me tou sa vala."
  Kena moto ma rara no kivata,
  Na malumu me thavu e na wakana,
  Ko wilika ma na sai mbalambala,
  Tiko sombu ndaru na okaokata,
  E undolu vakatini sa rawa,
  Me tou tinia na masi ni vala,
  A ndrondro a ue ki sankata.
  Mataisau era mbose toka,
  Era mbose, era ndui vosavosa,
  Me nkai vosa mai ko Rokola,
  "Mbai vesi mo ndou la'ki vonota,
  Matamata mo ndou la'ki karona,"
  Na mbongi ni vala ka sa tini toka,
  Kena wa ma mbuki ma so vota,
  Velavela ko Lutunasombasomba,
  Sai koya nga na ndauloloma,
  Nda nkai nanuma tale nona vosa,
  "Tou a nkai kune ka ngona,
  O ndou nguthe tou na mbokola,
  Me mai mbaleta nai votavota."
  E tini na vuthu ka tambu na vosa.

  I am wearied with the labour of poling,
  Dispatched with this message from the Cave-dweller,
  "Come, herald, run,
  Summon the two chiefs to come to me,
  Why was my fowl slain?
  I know of no evil that he did."
  Thus the herald gave his message,
  Nakausamba answers him boastfully,
  "Herald, hold thy peace,
  We are all the children of men,
  I am the child of space,
  I am the child of the rising moon,
  Which Waithala made to rise,
  This herald is full of questions,
  My way would be to have thee roasted,
  It would be a pity not to have thee eaten,
  For thou art the worst of lowborn men;
  I have confined the rising moon."
  Then speaks Nathirikaumoli,
  "Tell this to the Cave-dweller,
  How came he by his pigeon?
  Found he it in the water, or found he it on land,
  Go, tell him that we will fight for it,
  Turukawa is the root of the evil,
  It is by him that Kauvandra is divided,
  It is not well that we should live together,
  Up with the flag and let us fight."
  His spear lies ready on the shelf,
  And his club can be snatched from the eaves,
  Have you counted the spear-points of tree-fern?
  Sit down and let us number them,
  Ten times one hundred in all;
  Let us hoist the pennants of war,
  The welkin rings with the tumult.
  The craftsmen are sitting in council,
  They consult, each gives his opinion,
  Rokola now speaks,
  "Go and fit close a rampart of vesi,
  Give special heed to the gate,"
  Ten days has the battle raged,
  The rope has snared them; they are dismembered,
  Lutunasombasomba is dishonoured,
  He it is who is to be pitied,
  Let us then recall his words,
  "We are now in terrible plight,
  You gloat over our corpses,
  Thinking how ye will dismember them for the feast."
  The poem is finished and there is silence.


Vunivasa

  Ndungu toka ni singa ko Turukawa,
  Sa tambu ndungu ni vakama taka,
  Tangi ko Ndengei ru sa lomana,
  Isa nonku toa, na toa turanga,
  U vula ndua koto ni tambu kana,
  U vula rua koto ni lolovaka,
  Me ndua me thithi ki Narauyamba,
  I tarongi rau na ngone turanga,
  Oi ndrua, ru vanai Turukawa,
  Sa tambu ndungu ni vakamataka,
  "Tiko i ulunda na tiko vinaka,
  Ru sanga voli nai vakayandra."
  Ra tukia ni mbongi na veivala,
  Ndua nai valu ma sorovi rawa.
  Tambu ni sorovi mo ndru la'ki kamba,
  Era mba nai valu i ruarua,
  Ndua i yaviti yae; ndua i tambili, yae,
  Ului Ndreketi era sa mbini.
  Seu nai valu i matasawa,
  Ia la'ki seu ki sawana,
  Ru la'ki samuti ko Nakauvandra,
  Vosa i cei a vuna vala?
  Thimbi koto nai valu sa rawa,
  Lave a osooso ni turanga,
  Enda vala, enda vala, enda vala--i!

Second Choir

  Turukawa used to coo all the day long,
  He did not coo at daybreak,
  Ndengei wept for love of him,
  Alas! my fowl, my noble fowl,
  For a whole month I have eaten nothing,
  For two months have I fasted for him,
  Let one run to Narauyamba,
  And question the two young chiefs,
  Did ye shoot Turukawa?
  He did not coo at daybreak,
  "Joy possesses us,
  We did injure the Awakener."
  They joined battle at nightfall,
  It is a war that can never be atoned.
  Never atoned; go, storm the fortress,
  Both sides joined battle,
  Ah! one is clubbed, Ah! another is down,
  The bodies of the Ului Ndreketi are piled high.
  The war spreads even to the shore,
  Aye, spreads even to the sea-shore,
  The Kauvandra tribes are thrashed,
  Whose was the word that set the battle going?
  Lo! the death-dance for the ending of the war!
  Crash goes the club into the thick of the chiefs!
  We fight, we fight, we fight--i!

This poem is given in the dialect of Rakiraki. As in all Fijian poems
there are no indications of the speaker, and it is as difficult to
translate as a modern play would be if all the speakers' names and the
stage directions were omitted. Judging by the phraseology I take it to
be a late version of the ancient story, probably not more than a century
old. The older poems contain archaic words whose meaning is
unintelligible to the natives of these days, for the language is being
steadily impoverished as the older generation is giving place to men
taught in the mission schools.


The Tuka Heresy

[Pageheader: THE IMMORTALITY HERESY]

In 1876 the Fijians had all nominally accepted Christianity. In every
village throughout the group services were held regularly by native
teachers of the Wesleyan Mission; the heathen temples had been
demolished; and all customs likely to keep alive the old heathen cults
had been sternly discountenanced. Even the old men conformed outwardly
to the new faith, and it was hoped that, as they died out, the old
beliefs would perish with them. But it was not to be expected that they
had really abandoned all belief in the religion of their fathers.

Towards the end of 1885 strange rumours were carried to the coast by
native travellers from the mountains. A prophet had arisen, who was
passing through the villages crying, "Leave all, and follow me." He had
gathered around him a band of disciples on whom he was bestowing the
boon of immortality (_tuka_), to fit them to consort with their
ancestors who were shortly to return from the other world bringing the
millennium with them. The Commissioner of the Province, the late Mr.
Walter Carew, found the rumour to be substantially true. A man named
Ndungumoi, of the village of Ndrauni-ivi in the Rakiraki district, who
had been deported in 1878 to one of the Lau islands for stirring up
sedition, but had been allowed to return home about three years before,
had announced that he had had a revelation from the ancestor-gods. He
said that the foreigners had deported him to Tonga and still believed
him to be there. They had tried to drown him, he said, by throwing him
overboard with the ship's anchor tied about his neck, but, being _vunde_
(charmed), he had swum safely ashore with his body, leaving his spirit
behind to deceive the foreigners. Taking the title of Na-vosa-vakandua
(He who speaks but once), the native title for the Chief Justice of the
Colony, he appointed two lieutenants, who went through the mountain
villages enrolling disciples and teaching them a sort of drill
compounded of the evolutions of the Armed Native Constabulary and native
dances. The prophet carried about with him a bottle of water, called
Wai-ni-tuka (Water of Immortality), which conferred immortality upon him
who drank of it. People paid for the boon at a rate varying from ten
shillings' to two pounds' worth of property, and so remunerative was
this part of his business, that at a feast held at Valelembo he could
afford to present no fewer than four hundred whales' teeth, a king's
ransom according to the Fijian standard. Fortunately for the Government,
the prophet was no ascetic. He had enrolled a bevy of the best-looking
girls in the district to be his handmaidens, by persuading them that his
holy water conferred not only immortality, but perpetual virginity, and
that they therefore ran no risk of the usual consequences of
concubinage. It was through the parents of these "Immortality Maidens"
that information first reached the Government officers.

Ndungumoi's teachings were an ingenious compound of Christianity with
the cult of Ndengei. Recognizing probably that the Mission had too firm
a hold to be boldly challenged, he declared that when Nathirikaumoli and
Nakausambaria, the twins who made war against Ndengei, had sailed away
after their defeat, they went to the land of the white men, who wrote a
book about them, which is the Bible; only, being unable to pronounce
their Fijian names correctly they called them Jehovah and Jesus. His,
therefore, was the newer revelation. There was some controversy among
the faithful whether Ndengei was God or Satan. Most of them inclined to
the latter belief, because Satan, like Ndengei, was a serpent. They
named various places round Kauvandra Roma (Rome), Ijipita (Egypt),
Kolosa (Colossians), etc., and they said that if a man were bold enough
to penetrate to the recesses of the great cavern he might see the flames
of hell.

[Pageheader: THE ARREST OF THE PROPHET]

The prophet had more practical concerns than the discussion of problems
in theology. The twin gods, he said, were about to revisit Fiji,
bringing all the dead ancestors in their train, to share the ancient
tribal lands with their descendants: the missionaries, the traders, and
the Government would be driven into the sea, and every one of the
faithful would be rewarded with shops full of calico and tinned salmon.
Those who believed that he was sent before to prepare the way would be
rewarded with immortality, but the unbelievers would perish with the
foreigners. The white men, he said, were fully aware of what was coming,
as was shown by the officers of men-of-war who, when questioned as to
why they squinted through glass instruments, looked disconcerted, and
said evasively that they were measuring the reefs, whereas in fact they
were looking for the coming of the divine twins. In the meantime the
faithful were to drill like soldiers, and the women to minister to them.
They used a travesty of English words of command, and pass-words such as
"Lilifai poliseni oliva ka virimbaita,"[56] which is not sense in any
language.

Temples were built secretly at Valelembo and other places, wherein,
behind the curtain, the god might be heard to descend with a low
whistling sound. A white pig, a rarity in Fiji, and probably a symbol
for the white men, was being fattened against the day when it was to be
slaughtered as a sacrifice to the ancestors.

The prophet had fixed the day; the feasts were all prepared; threats
about what was to happen to church and state were being freely
exchanged, when the prophet was arrested. He then besought his guards
not to send him to Suva, and so defeat all the glorious miracles he was
about to work for the redemption of the race. Unless the twin gods
reappeared on earth the power of Ndengei, which is the Old Serpent,
would continue in the ascendant, for the twins were they of whom it was
foretold that they should bruise the head of the serpent. He was a
sooty-skinned, hairy little man of middle age, expansive enough with the
native warders in Suva gaol, but reticent when questioned about his
mission. He was deported to Rotuma, where he is still living, and the
outbreak was stamped out for the time.

In 1892 the heresy broke out afresh. One of his lieutenants, who had
been allowed to remain in the district, began to receive letters from
him. He would stand in the forest with a bayonet, and the magic letter
fluttered down from the sky and impaled itself on the point. This was
the more remarkable since Ndungumoi could not write. Holy water was
again distributed, there was more drilling, and the end of British rule
was again foretold. This time the Government decided to let the light
and air into Ndrauni-ivi, the fount of superstition; the people, lepers
and all, were deported in a body to Kandavu, and the very foundations of
the houses were rased to the ground.

These false prophets were not all self-deceived, nor were they wholly
deceivers. They were of that strange compound of hysterical credulity
and shrewd common-sense that is found only among the hereditary priests
of Fiji. They knew what strings to play upon in the native character.
The people are arrogant and conservative; they secretly despise
foreigners for their ignorance of ceremonial, while conforming to their
orders through timidity; their nature craves for the histrionic
excitement and the ceremonial proper to traffic with unseen powers. They
chafe secretly at the ordered regularity imposed upon them; at the
inexorable punctuality of the tax-collector, at the slow process of the
courts in redressing their grievances, at the laws which forbid them to
seize with a strong hand the property they covet. It would have been no
disgrace to them to yield allegiance to a conqueror, but the white men
never conquered them, and therefore the tribute which they pay annually
in the form of taxes is an ever-recurring dishonour. They pant for
change--for the coming of a time when the heroic stories that they have
heard from their fathers shall be realized, and their chiefs be again
lords paramount over their own lands. They have forgotten the curse of
war, the horror of the night attack, the tortures, the clubbings, the
ovens, the carrying into captivity, to which half at least of the tribes
would again be subject if their millennium came; for all the gifts which
the Empire has bestowed upon its coloured subjects, the _Pax Britannica_
is the last to be appreciated. Good government? They would welcome the
worst anarchy so it were their own and not the foreigner's!

[Pageheader: A HEATHEN REVOLT]

Upon all the jangling strings Ndungumoi harped, half believing the while
in the mission he professed. The Fijians secretly hated the foreigners
and coveted their goods; the foreigners should be swept away, leaving
their goods behind them. They found the Mission services tame; they
should dabble in the black art as often as they pleased; they loved the
excitement of conspiracy, and they admired the Old Testament; if they
believed in him they might hatch plots against the Government with
biblical sanction. Left to themselves the Tuka superstitions would have
resulted in bloodshed, if not in grave political danger. To the white
settlers in the outlying districts the natives are in the proportion of
many hundreds to one, and these must infallibly have fallen victims to
Ndungumoi's demand for blood-sacrifice. The outbreak would probably have
been confined to the island of Vitilevu, and the Government could have
counted on nearly one-half of the group to aid in suppressing it; but as
in the case of Hauhauism among the Maoris, which the Tuka resembled, the
military operations would have been protracted and costly.


The Revolt at Seankanka (_Seaqaqa_)

The outbreak in the Mathuata province in 1895, which had no political
importance, is interesting from the fact that the rebels at once
returned to heathen worship and to cannibalism, as if there had not been
a break of more than twenty years. The district of Seankanka includes a
number of inland villages whose people scarcely ever visit the
sea-coast. Split up into little communities of three or four houses,
they have been as completely cut off from the influence of the Mission
and the Government as if they were in another country. It may indeed be
doubted whether heathen practices of some kind were not carried on
continuously, although the people were nominally _lotu_. They were
naturally a peaceable folk who only asked to be left alone, and the
coast people had long been irritating them by putting upon them more
than their share of the communal and tax work of the district.

On June 11, 1895, the Governor received a letter from the Roko Tui
Mathuata announcing that on the last day of May a native constable sent
to serve a summons at the inland village of Thalalevu had been attacked
and beaten by the inhabitants, who had subsequently taken the villages
of Nathereyanga and Ndelaiviti without bloodshed. The Governor, Sir
John Thurston, sailed that night for Mathuata with a small force of
armed constabulary, and found that the rebels had followed up their
success by burning the village of Saivou, killing two of its
inhabitants, named Sakiusa and Samisoni, whose bodies were afterwards
found dismembered and prepared for cooking. The rebels had retired to an
old hill fortress called Thaumuremure, where they were strongly
entrenched. On the march inland the besiegers had to pass the grave of
the late Buli Seankanka in the village of Nathereyanga, and there they
interrupted some of the rebels, who had carefully weeded the grave, and
were in the act of presenting kava to the spirit of the dead chief to
implore his aid. The siege of Thaumuremure will not loom large in
history. The garrison numbered at the most one hundred persons; they had
no arms but their spears, while the besiegers carried Martini-Henry
rifles. But the garrison bravely blew their conch-shells and danced the
death-dance till the last. It was all over in a few minutes. Nine men
were shot dead, and the rest took to their heels, to surrender a few
days later, while the Government force could boast but three
spear-wounds. Nkaranivalu, the arch-rebel, and the two old heathen
priests, who had eaten the arms and the legs of the two victims of the
outbreak, were carried to Suva to expiate their crime. The people of the
scattered villages were collected into one large village under the eye
of their chief, and the district was at rest.

The outbreak is only interesting in that it shows how the Fijians
confuse Christianity with the Government, and cannot throw off the one
without repudiating the other; and how cannibalism was a religious rite
and not the mere gratification of a depraved taste.


The Mbaki, or Nanga Rites

[Pageheader: THE RITES OF THE FIRST FRUITS]

We have now to consider a cult which is remarkable in more than one
respect--in its contrast to the religious system of the Fijians, its
resemblance to certain Australian and Melanesian rites, and in the
sidelights which it seems to throw upon the origin of ancient monuments
in Europe.[57] Fijian mythology is essentially tribal; the Mbaki took no
cognizance of tribal divisions. It was rather a secret religious society
bound together by the common link of initiation. The rite of initiation
is a curious echo of the Engwura ceremony of the Arunta tribe in Central
Australia as described by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen. The Nanga, the
open-air temple in which the Mbaki was celebrated, has more than a
slight resemblance to the alignments at Carnac in Brittany and Merivale
on Dartmoor.

The Nanga was the "bed" of the Ancestors, that is, the spot where their
descendants might hold communion with them; the Mbaki were the rites
celebrated in the Nanga, whether of initiating the youths, or of
presenting the first-fruits, or of recovering the sick, or of winning
charms against wounds in battle. The cult was confined to a
comparatively small area, a bare third of the island of Vitilevu.
Outside this area it was unknown, and even among the tribe that built
and used the Nanga there were many who knew nothing of the cult beyond
the fact that a certain spot near their village might not be visited
without exciting the displeasure of the gods, although members of tribes
that worshipped other gods, and were frequently at war with them,
resorted to the Nanga, which they were not permitted to approach. Even
when the two tribes were at war those of the enemy that were initiated
were safe in attending the rites, provided that they could make their
way to the Nanga unobserved.

The Nangas are now in ruin. There is a large and very perfect one at
Narokorokoyawa, several in Navosa (Western Tholo), and three on the
south coast between Serua and the Singatoka river. On the western coast
there are said to be two, one in Vitongo and the other in Momi. I have
visited several whose structure was so identical that one description
will serve for all. The Nanga is a rough parallelogram formed of flat
stones embedded endwise in the earth, about 100 feet long by 50 feet
broad, and lying east and west, though the orientation is not exact. The
upright stones forming the walls are from 18 inches to 3 feet in height,
but as they do not always touch they may be described as "alignments"
rather than walls. At the east end are two pyramidal heaps of stones
with square sloping sides and flat tops, 5 feet high and 4 feet by 6
feet on the top. The narrow passage between them is the main entrance to
the enclosure. Two similar pyramids placed about the middle of the
enclosure divide it roughly into two equal parts, with a narrow passage
connecting the two. The western portion is the Nanga-tambu-tambu (or
Holy of Holies); the eastern the Loma ni Nanga (or Middle Nanga). In the
Nangas on the south coast the two truncated pyramids near the entrance
are wanting. At the middle of the west end there is another entrance,
and there are gaps in the alignments every six or eight feet to permit
people to leave the enclosure informally during the celebration of the
rites. Beyond the west end of the Nanga near Vunaniu the ground rose,
and on the slope were two old graves upon which were found the decayed
remains of two "Tower" muskets. It is possible that chiefs were buried
near the "Holy of Holies" of all the Nangas in order that their Shades,
who haunted the graves, when summoned to the Nanga by their living
descendants, should not have far to come.

[Pageheader: HOW THE RITES ORIGINATED]

Attention was first called to the Mbaki cult by the Rev. Lorimer Fison,
of the Wesleyan Mission, who, though he did not visit any Nanga, wrote
an account of the rites in the charming style that marks all his
writings.[58] He overcame the natives' reluctance to reveal these dread
secrets by a ruse. While he was describing the Australian Bora rites to
one of the _Vunilolo Matua_ of the Nanga a woman passed, and, lowering
his voice, he whispered, "Hush! the women must not hear these things!"
Covering his mouth with his hand the old native exclaimed, "Truly, sir,
you are a Lewe ni Nanga. I will tell you all about it." Mr. Adolph Joske
was probably the first European to see and describe the great Nanga at
Nerokorokoyawa, and he has added much to our knowledge of the
rites[59]. The two accounts vary in detail, perhaps because Mr. Fison
drew some of his information from Nemani Ndreu, the Raisevu, who seems
to have supplemented his ignorance of the Mbaki with excerpts from his
own Kalou-rere cult, and from the rich stores of his imagination.

The tribes that used the Nanga were the Nuyamalo, Nuyaloa, Vatusila,
Mbatiwai and Mdavutukia. All these tribes have spread east and south
from a place of origin in the western mountain district. They are of
Melanesian type, and have fewer traces of Polynesian admixture than the
coast tribes. The Mbaki, while its Nanga-temple bears a superficial
likeness to the Polynesian Marae, has a very strong resemblance to
Melanesian institutions; its dissonance with the Fijian religious system
at once suggests that there must be some tradition of its introduction
from over-sea. For this we have not far to look, for the tradition is
green in the memory of every initiate.

"Long ago two little old men, called Veisina and Rukuruku, drifted
across the Great Ocean from the westward, and passing through the Yasawa
Islands, they beached their canoe upon the little island of Yakuilau,
which lies by the coast of Nandi. Veisina, who landed first, fell into a
deep sleep, and slept till the coming of Rukuruku. From the spot where
Veisina lay sprang _thanga_ (turmeric), and from Rukuruku's footsteps
sprang the _lauthi_ (candle-nut--_Aleurites triloba_), and therefore the
followers of Veisina smear themselves with turmeric, and the followers
of Rukuruku with the black ash of the candle-nut, when they go to the
Nanga.

"The two old men took counsel, saying, 'Let us go to the chief of
Vitongo and ask him to divide his men between us that we may teach them
the Mbaki.' And when they made their request the chief granted it, and
gave them a piece of flat land on which to build their Nanga. There they
built it and called the place Tumba-levu. The descendants of men to whom
these two little black-skinned old men taught the mysteries of the Nanga
are they which practise it to this day. When they left their home and
travelled eastward they carried the mysteries with them. The Veisina do
not know what the Rukuruku do in the Nanga, nor do the Rukuruku know the
mysteries of the Veisina."

Here we have the earliest tradition of missionary enterprise in the
Pacific. I do not doubt that the two sooty-skinned little men were
castaways driven eastward by one of those strong westerly gales that
have been known to last for three weeks at a time. By Fijian custom the
lives of all castaways were forfeit, but the pretence to supernatural
powers would have saved men full of the religious rites of their
Melanesian home, and would have assured them a hearing. The Wainimala
tribes can name six generations since they settled in their present
home, and therefore the introduction of the Nanga cannot have been less
than two centuries ago. During that time it has overspread one-third of
the large island.

The following account of the rites is gathered from inquiries that I
have made of old men who accompanied me to the Ndavotukia Nangas,
supplemented by the full accounts written by Messrs. Fison and Joske.
The Veisina and Rukuruku sects used the same Nanga, but were absolutely
forbidden to reveal their mysteries to one another on pain of madness or
death. In Wainimala they seem to have held their respective festivals in
alternate years. But a few of the youths of each sect were initiated in
the mysteries of both, in token, perhaps, of the common origin of their
institutions. Mr. Joske says that no Nanga was used twice for an
initiation ceremony, but I found no support for this statement among the
Ndavotukia, whose Nanga was said, and certainly appeared, to have been
used for generations.

[Pageheader: THE PROCESSION]

Each "Lodge" comprised three degrees: (1) The _Vere Matua_, all old men
who acted as priests of the order; (2) the _Vunilolo_, the grown men;
and the _Vilavou_ (_lit._, "New Year's men"), the youths who were
novices. The great annual festival was the initiation of these youths,
who were thus admitted to man's estate, and brought into communion with
the ancestral spirits who controlled the destinies of their descendants.
The word _Vila_ is the inland synonym for Mbaki, which, with the
distributive affix _ya_ (ya-mbaki) is the coast word for "year." The
_Vilavou_, or New year ceremony of initiation, was an annual festival,
held in October-November, when the _ndrala_-tree (_Erythrina_) was in
flower. The flowering of the _ndrala_ marked the season for
yam-planting; the same seasons were observed by the Hawaiians and
Tahitians as the New Year. The rites of the Veisina differed slightly
from those of the Rukuruku, but as they were more tame and formal I will
give precedence to the Rukuruku.

Preparation for the _Vilavou_ began months before the appointed time by
putting all kinds of food and property under a tabu. On the occasion of
the last ceremony a number of pigs had been dedicated by cutting off
their tails and turning them loose in the vicinity of the Nanga. _Masi_
was beaten, clubs and spears were carved, paint was prepared for the
bodies of the worshippers, and a vast quantity of yams was planted. As
the _Vere_ of Ndavotukia expressed it, "If any man concealed any of his
property, designing not to give it, he was smitten with madness." The
same fate awaited any that killed one of the tailless pigs, or dared to
dig up any plant that grew near the Nanga. Invitations were sent to the
members of other Nangas, who were called the _Ndre_, and they brought
lavish contributions of property.

On the day appointed the _Vere_ and the _Vunilolo_ went first to the
Nanga to present the feast and make other preparations, while in the
village novices were having their heads shaved with a shark's tooth, and
being swathed in coils of masi. A procession was then formed. An old
_Vere_ went first, carrying a carved staff with a socket bored in its
upper end. Blowing upon this as on a flute, he sounded a shrill whistle,
and the boys followed in single file, carefully treading in his
footsteps. As they approached the Nanga they heard the weird chant of
the _Vunilolo_, which was supposed to imitate the sound of the surf
breaking on a distant reef. The boys flung down their weapons outside
the sacred enclosure, and with the help of the _Vunilolo_ divested
themselves of the huge swathing of _masi_, each lad revolving slowly on
his axis while another gathered in the slack, like unwinding a reel of
cotton. It being now evening, the property was stored in a temporary
shelter, and the ceremony for the day was over. The ovens were opened,
and all feasted together far into the night. For four successive days
this ritual was repeated, until the storehouse was full to bursting.
Thus were the novices made acceptable to the ancestral spirits.

On the fifth day an immense feast was prepared, and the boys were so
weighted with the cloth wound about their bodies that they could
scarcely walk. They followed the _Vere_ piping on his staff as before,
but as they approached the Nanga they listened in vain for the welcoming
chant. The enclosure seemed silent and deserted, but from the woods
broke forth shrill parrot calls, and a weird booming sound, which they
presently came to know as the note of a bamboo trumpet immersed in
water. The old _Vere_ led them slowly forward to the eastern gate of the
Nanga, and bade them kneel and crawl after him on all fours. Here a
dreadful sight appalled them. Right across the entrance lay the naked
body of a dead man, smeared with black paint from head to foot, with his
entrails protruding. Above him, stretched stiff, with his head upon one
pyramid and his feet on the other, lay another body, and under this
hideous arch, over this revolting threshold they were made to crawl.
Within the enclosure their hearts turned to water, for the dead men lay
in rows, smeared with blood and entrails, and over every body they had
to crawl. At the further end sat the chief _Vere_, regarding them with a
stony glare, and before him they were made to halt in line. Suddenly he
burst out with a great yell; the dead men started up, and ran to wash
off the blood and filth in the river hard by. They are the _Vere_ and a
few of the _Vunilolo_, playing the part of the dead Ancestors with the
aid of the blood and entrails of the pigs now baking in the ovens.

[Pageheader: THE INITIATION]

The ancient priest now relaxes the ferocity of his mien, and displays an
activity remarkable for a person of his years. Capering up and down, he
chants in shrill tones: "Why is my enclosure empty? Whither have its
inmates gone? Have they fled to Tumbalevu (the deep sea)? Have they fled
to Tongalevu?" Presently he was answered by a deep-toned chant, and the
_Vunilolo_, washed, oiled and garlanded, return with rhythmic step, each
carrying a club and a root of kava. When all are seated in the Nanga
four of the _Vere_ come in, the first carrying a piece of roast yam, the
second a piece of pork, the third a shell of kava, and the fourth a
napkin of native cloth. The first three put their offering, which is
carefully wrapped against contact with the fingers, to the mouths of
each of the _Vilavou_ in turn, who nibble the food, sip the kava, and
allow the napkin-bearer to wipe his mouth. Then one of the old _Vere_
admonishes them solemnly against revealing any of the mysteries to the
uninitiated, or infringing any of the tabus of the Nanga, or being
niggardly in contributing their property, for the penalty attached to
all these grievous sins is insanity and death.

The _Vunilolo_ now brought in food, and towards evening the _Mundu_, a
great pig dedicated years before and allowed to run wild in the sacred
precincts, was dragged in and presented to the boys. Feasting was
continued for several days, during which the boys did not leave the
Nanga, except to obey the calls of nature. By the sacrament of food and
water, too sacred even for the elders' hands to touch, they have become
_Vilavou_: their Ancestors had deigned to receive them as members of the
Nanga.

A few days after this it was the turn of the women, who had thus far
been rigidly excluded, to come to the Nanga. The usual dress of the
women of these tribes was a _liku_--narrow enough, truly, but still
sufficient for decency. But for this occasion they were dressed in a
series of such fringes as would satisfy the most puritanical if they did
not begin too late and end too early. The fringes were tied one over
another from the waist to just below the breast, so as to clothe the
trunk in a neat thatch, and, seeing the postures the women had to
assume, it was a pity that a thatch starting at the waist should not
have been carried downwards instead of in the other direction. In this
fantastic garb, with hair dyed black, the women proceeded to the Nanga
with baskets of food. At the entrance they dropped on their hands and
knees, and crawled into the enclosure in single file, the men sitting on
either side of a narrow lane left for the procession, and crying,
"_Lovo ulu! Lovo ulu!_" (Keep your heads down!) During this performance
it was strictly forbidden for the women to gaze about them, or to look
behind them, on pain of insanity. The lane was interrupted with little
mounds of freshly-turned earth, and over these the women had to crawl.
It was in topping these mounds that a better arrangement of the fringes
suggested itself. In the inner chancel of the Nanga the _Vere_ were
chanting a song called the _Vaya_. The chief _Vere_ dipped his hands in
a bowl of water, and prayed to the Ancestors to bless the women with
ample families. This is called the _Vuluvulu_ (hand-washing), and as the
_Vuluvulu_ is the ordinary form of release from a tabu, it is possible
that it is intended to absolve the women from the usual consequences of
entering a place forbidden to them. As to what happened after this, the
native accounts are in conflict. Mr. Joske's informants declared that
women only entered the Nanga to bring food, and that the rites were
orderly and inoffensive; Mr. Fison says that when the women emerged from
the enclosure, "the men rushed upon them, and an indescribable scene
ensued. The men and women addressed one another in the filthiest
language ...," and that from this moment until the close of the
ceremonies "very great licence prevailed." Mr. Walter Carew was assured
that in Wainimala the men rushed upon the women while they were in the
Nanga, and that any woman laid hold of was the lawful prize of her
captor. Among the Ndavotukia I had no difficulty in obtaining an account
of the ritual until I came to this point, but here all my informants
broke off with a self-conscious giggle, and said that they knew no more.
One told me frankly that they "did things that they were ashamed to
think about in these enlightened days, and, when pressed upon the point,
wrote down for me a song of gross indecency connected with the tattooing
of women. A native of Mbau, who lived for some years near the Nanga,
assured me that the visit of the women to the Nanga resulted in
temporary promiscuity; all tabus were defied, and relations who could
not speak to one another by customary law committed incest. This would
account for the mystery that is thrown about the rite even now. The
festival was a propitiatory sacrifice to the Ancestors to bless their
descendants with increase, and the temporary abrogation of all human
laws that interfered with freedom between the sexes had a logical place
in such a sacrifice.

[Illustration: Serua, an island chief village in the _Mbaki_ country.]

[Pageheader: FEEDING THE SACRED PIGS]

On finally leaving the Nanga the property was carried to the village,
together with two candlewood saplings, which were set up in the village
with appropriate songs, and the property was piled between them. Those
who were not members of the Order had to keep fast within doors, for if
they inadvertently caught sight of the worshippers they would have been
smitten with insanity. The invited visitors, who were in hiding near the
village, were now summoned by parties of the Order, who went out
chanting a song to find them. These they followed to the village square,
where they deposited enormous quantities of property by the saplings.
The feasting and licence continued for several days. On the last day the
_Vere_ shared out the property, taking the best care of their own
interests, and a number of the pigs were shorn of their tails and turned
out near the Nanga to serve for a future celebration. It was an act of
piety to feed these pigs, to which the sacrificer calls the attention of
the Ancestors in words such as these: "Remember me, O ye our chiefs, who
lie buried. I am feeding this pig of yours." To kill one was an
inconceivable sacrilege. One of these great brutes was living within a
year of my visit to the Nanga. It met its death at the hands of an
irreligious half-caste, whose continued sanity after this sacrilegious
deed was attributed to his foreign parentage.

The ceremony ended with the _Sisili_ (or Bath). All the men went in
company to the river, and washed off every trace of the black paint. The
_Vilavou_ were then drawn up before the _Vere_ on the river bank to
listen to a long discourse upon the new position they had assumed. They
were admonished to defer to their elders, to obey the customary law of
the tribe, and to keep the secrets of the Nanga on pain of the sure
vengeance of the Ancestors. Especially were they to avoid eating eels
and freshwater fish and all the best kinds of food. These must be
presented to the elders, for their food, until they had attained a
higher rank in the Order, must be wild yams and food that is held in
less esteem.


Minor Rites of the Nanga

As the Nanga is the earthly dwelling-place of the Ancestral spirits, it
is not necessary to seek the intervention of a _Vere_ in order to invoke
them as in the case of the Fijian tribal deities, who can only be
consulted through the priest. A member of the Nanga could approach the
Ancestors at any time by depositing an offering on the wall with proper
invocations. For many years after the people had abandoned heathenism
the native mission teachers used to keep a sharp look-out for footprints
leading in the direction of the Nanga. Two years after the conversion of
the Wainimala people a visitor to the Nanga found property and food and
the carcasses of pigs in a state of putrefaction, showing that sacrifice
was still being made. The Nanga that I last visited had not been used
for twenty-eight years. At the eastern end I found the _Vere's_
whistling staff, just where he had planted it in the earth. Moss-grown
and fretted with decay, it still emits a shrill whistle when I blow upon
it. All about the enclosure candle-nut trees had sprung up from the nuts
that had been thrown aside, and about the walls were strewn a number of
the curious funnel-shaped cooking-pots that were only used during the
Nanga celebrations.

The _Sevu_ (First-fruits) of the yam harvest were always piled in the
Nanga before the yams were dug, and allowed to rot there. From these
decayed offerings numerous yam-vines were seen sprouting among the
undergrowth. From this custom the Nanga is generally spoken of as the
Mbaki, which, as I have said, also gives its name to the Fijian
year--ya-mbaki.

Before going on the war-path warriors used to repair to the Nanga to be
made _vunde_ (invulnerable). The rites appear to have been similar to
those of the Kalou-rere.

[Pageheader: CIRCUMCISION]

But next in importance to the _Vilavou_ celebration was the rite of
circumcision, which Mr. Fison says was practised as a propitiation to
recover a chief from sickness. My inquiries did not confirm this. I was
assured, on the contrary, that while offerings were certainly made in
the Nanga for the recovery of the sick, every youth was circumcised as a
matter of routine, and that the rite was in no way connected with
sacrifice for the sick. But, although Mr. Fison may have been wrong in
his application of the ceremony, his description of the rite itself is
undoubtedly correct. He says: "On the day appointed, the son of a sick
chief is circumcised, and with him a number of other lads who have
agreed to take advantage of the occasion. Their foreskins, stuck in the
cleft of a split reed, are taken to the Nanga and presented to the chief
priest, who, holding the reed in his hand, offers them to the ancestral
gods, and prays for the sick man's recovery. Then follows a great feast,
which ushers in a period of indescribable revelry. All distinctions of
property are for the time being suspended. Men and women array
themselves in all manner of fantastic garbs, address one another in the
most indecent phrases, and practise unmentionable abominations openly in
the public square of the town. The nearest relationships--even that of
own brother and sister--seem to be no bar to the general licence, the
extent of which may be indicated by the expressive phrase of an old
Nandi chief,[60] who said, 'While it lasts we are just like the pigs.'
This feasting and frolic may be kept up for several days, after which
the ordinary restrictions recur once more. The rights of property are
again respected, and abandoned revellers settle down into steady-going
married couples, and brothers and sisters may not so much as speak to
one another. Nowhere in Fiji, so far as I am aware, excepting in the
Nanga country, are these extravagances connected with the rite of
circumcision."


The Priesthood

The priesthood was no exception to the Fijian rule that all skilled
trades must be hereditary. But inasmuch as any man who showed a natural
aptitude for carpentry or haircutting or the exorcism of evil spirits
might win a _clientele_ as a canoe-builder, a barber, or a doctor, so a
clever rogue who could shake well and make a lucky forecast of public
events might pretend to inspiration by a god, and obtain a grudging
recognition from the chiefs. In practice this seldom occurred, because
the recognized deities were amply furnished with a priesthood who
brooked no interference from an amateur, and to overcome their
opposition and the cold suspicion of the chiefs demanded a very rare
combination of assurance and cunning.

It is doubtful whether the high chiefs believed in the inspiration of
the priests, though it suited their policy to appear to do so. There was
rather an understanding between the two orders, not the less cordial
that it was unexpressed. The priests depended for subsistence upon the
offerings made to the god, and a priest who delivered oracles
unfavourable to the chief's policy saw his temple falling into decay and
his larder empty. On the other hand, so enormous was the influence of
the oracle upon the common people that the chief had the best reason for
keeping the priests in good humour. Both knew that neither could stand
firm without the support of the other. A chief with whom the gods were
angry enjoyed but a waning authority; a priest whose god the chief did
not think worth propitiating fell into disrepute and was soon superseded
by another who could shake as well and more wisely. Such relations
between the powers spiritual and temporal are not unknown in other
latitudes.

Williams relates that the Thakaundrove chief presented a large offering
to the gods on the morrow of a warlike expedition. Among the gods
invoked was Kanusimana, but in the subsequent division of the feast the
priest of that deity was put off with one wretched pudding instead of
the turtle he had expected. That night the god visited him, and foretold
defeat as a punishment for the slight, and the tidings were carried to
the king, who immediately countermanded the expedition, knowing that the
depressing effect of the news upon the spirit of his warriors would
bring defeat. In a similar case, however, matters took a different turn.
"Who are you?" asked the chief angrily. "Who is your god? If you make a
stir I will eat you."

[Pageheader: A HEATHEN REFORMATION]

A more organized resistance to sacerdotal pretensions was seen in the
"Reformation" in the Rewa province. A few years before the arrival of
the missionaries the chiefs found it necessary in their own interests to
disestablish the whole priestly caste, which, as they said, had fallen
into the hands of "low-born persons of ill repute," or, in more
intelligible language, which had begun to assume the _imperium in
imperio_ that has provoked Reformations in another hemisphere. They
repudiated the entire priesthood publicly, and announced that members of
the ruling family had received inspiration. The sacerdotal clan
immediately fell into their proper rank in society--a very humble
one--but the arrival of the missionaries deprived the new state-made
priesthood of a fair trial.

The priests were not always the tools of the chiefs; sometimes they were
the mouthpiece of the people's discontent at some unpopular exercise of
authority. "The famine is eating us up because you gave the large canoe
to Tonga instead of to Mbau." "This hurricane was sent to punish us for
your refusal to give the princess to the Lord of Rewa."

The priests of one god were generally, but not always, confined to one
family. They owed their consideration to their office rather than to
their rank, which was generally humble. They ranked according to the
importance of the god to whom they ministered. When the chieftancy and
the priesthood were united in the same person, both were of low order.
The titular spiritual chief (Roko Tui) was not a priest, although divine
honours were paid to him, for the act of inspiration appeared to be
thought derogatory to the dignity of a high chief. The priesthood could
not be dispensed with, because the gods could not be approached except
through the medium of a priest, who could only be inspired in the temple
of his god except on rare occasions, such as a campaign in a distant
island, when the oracle must be consulted in a private house if at all.

"One who intends to consult the oracle dresses and oils himself, and,
accompanied by a few others, goes to the priest, who, we will suppose,
has been previously informed of the intended visit, and is lying near
the sacred corner, getting ready his response. When the party enters he
rises and sits so that his back is near to the white cloth by which the
god visits him, while the others occupy the opposite side of the
_mbure_. The principal person presents a whale's tooth, states the
purpose of the visit, and expresses a hope that the god will regard him
with favour. Sometimes there is placed before the priest a dish of
scented oil with which he anoints himself and then receives the tooth,
regarding it with deep and serious attention. Unbroken silence follows.
The priest becomes absorbed in thought, and all eyes watch him with
unblinking steadiness. In a few minutes he trembles; slight distortions
are seen in his face, and twitching movements in his limbs. These
increase to a violent muscular action, which spreads until the whole
frame is violently convulsed, and the man shivers as with a strong ague
fit. In some instances this is accompanied with murmurs and sobs, the
veins are greatly enlarged, and circulation of the blood quickened. The
priest is now possessed by his god, and all his words and actions are
considered as being no longer his own, but those of the deity who has
entered into him. Shrill cries of '_Koi au! Koi au!_' (It is I! It is
I!) fill the air, and the god is supposed thus to notify his approach.
While giving the answer the priest's eyes stand out and roll as in a
frenzy; his voice is unnatural, his face pale, his lips livid, his
breathing depressed, and his entire appearance like that of a furious
madman. The sweat runs from every pore, and tears start from his
strained eyes; after which the symptoms gradually disappear. The priest
looks round with a vacant stare, and, as the god says, 'I depart!'
announces his actual departure by flinging himself down on the mat, or
by suddenly striking the ground with a club, while those at a distance
are informed by blasts on the conch, or by the firing of a musket, that
the deity has returned to the world of spirits. The convulsive movements
do not entirely disappear for some time; they are not, however, so
violent as to prevent the priest from enjoying a hearty meal, or a
draught of yankona or a whiff of tobacco, as either may happen to be at
hand. Several words are used by the natives to express these priestly
shakings. The most common are _sika_ and _kundru_. _Sika_ means to
appear, and is used chiefly of supernatural beings; _kundru_ means to
grunt or grumble. The one refers to the appearance, the other to the
sound attendant upon these inspired shakings.

[Pageheader: AN INSPIRED PRIEST]

As whatever the priest says during the paroxysm is supposed to be direct
from the god, a specimen or two of these responses will be
interesting.... A priest of Ndengei, speaking for that divinity, once
said, "Great Fiji is my small club. Muaimbila is the head; Kamba is the
handle. If I step on Muaimbila I shall sink it into the sea, while Kamba
shall rise to the sky. If I step on Kamba it will be lost in the sea,
and Muaimbila shall rise to the sky. Yes, Vitilevu is my small club. I
can turn it as I please. I can turn it upside down."[61]

The propitiatory offering might be anything from a bunch of cocoanuts
covered with turmeric powder to a great feast. In the last case, part,
called the _singana_, was set apart for the god, the rest apportioned
among the people. In theory the god consumed the spiritual essence of
all the food, and the people ate its grosser fibre. The _singana_ was
eaten by the priest and a few privileged old men; it was tabu to youths
and women.

The psychological aspect of the inspiration of the Fijian priest is
difficult to appreciate. The inspired paroxysm is something more than
conscious deception. Williams was present when a famous Lakemba priest
was questioned by the Tongan chief, Tubou Totai:--

"Lanngu, did you shake yesterday?"

"Yes."

"Did you think beforehand what to say?"

"No."

"Then you just say what you happen to think at the time, do you?"

"No. I do not know what I say. My own mind departs from me, and then,
when it is truly gone, my god speaks by me."

Williams adds that this man "had the most stubborn confidence in his
deity, although his mistakes were such as to shake any ordinary trust.
His inspired tremblings were of the most violent kind, bordering on
frenzy."[62] He was, no doubt, absolutely sincere. In this race, as in
the Hindus and the Malays, there is an undercurrent of hysteria which no
one looking at their placid surface would suspect. In the first heat of
conversion to Christianity it was quite common in the Mission services
for a man to be inspired (by the Holy Spirit, as he said) and to
interrupt the minister with an outburst of gibberish accompanied with
all the contortions that seized the heathen priest. His companions would
try to calm him by patting him gently with soothing exclamations, and
the good missionaries, who had been enlarging on the gift of tongues at
Pentecost, were not a little embarrassed in discouraging the practice.
The "revival" which took place at Viwa in 1845 was a curious instance of
this. To judge from John Hunt's account of it, the entire island was
seized with religious hysteria, and "business, sleep and food were
entirely laid aside" for several days, until the missionaries had to
force the new converts to eat. Such ebullitions are rare in these days,
but that they are still smouldering unsuspected is shown by the
hysterical outbursts of emotion that sometimes take place at the
_Bolotu_ or Night Revival meetings, introduced from Tonga. More than one
generation must come and go before all danger from this neurotic chord
in the Fijian constitution is removed. Any acute cause of native
discontent which might be fanned into active hostility to the white race
would most certainly produce the heathen priest again, and the most
dangerous of these might well be the man who now delivers eloquent
emotional sermons to Wesleyan congregations Sunday after Sunday. Such a
spectacle would shock the European missionaries beyond expression, but
it would not surprise those who know the natives intimately. The schism
of Ndungumoi and the heathen outbreak of Vanualevu in 1895 were but a
bubble from the seething pitch that lies below the placid outer crust of
the converted Fijian.

[Pageheader: THE TOOLS OF THE WIZARD]

Even now a practised eye might pick out from an assembly of Fijians the
sons of the heathen priests, by their shifty glance, their crafty
expression, and their smooth, insinuating address, which are as much a
part of them as the set of their eyes and the colour of their skin.[63]


Witchcraft

_Ndraunikau_ (_lit._, leaves)

In 1618 two women were executed at Lincoln for burying the glove of
Henry, Lord Rosse, in order that "as that glove did rot and waste, so
did the liver of the said lord rot and waste." The belief illustrated by
this trial is found in every people, in every country, and in every age.
Dr. E. B. Tylor has remarked with much force that the occult sciences
are nothing but "bad reasoning." There being obvious relation between a
glove and its owner, between a waxen image and the person it represents,
the sorcerer reasons that what he does to the one will happen to the
other. Health being the normal condition of all, except the very aged,
sickness and death must be the work of some malevolent agency, divine or
human; and, if the sick person is free from all suspicion of sacrilege,
the gods can have no motive for afflicting him. Instead of "Whom the
gods love die young," the primitive man reads "An enemy hath done this."
This theory of disease being once established, it is a short step to the
professional agents of disease, who, for a consideration, will wreck the
health of the strongest man with the simplest of tools--a lock of his
hair, a scrap of his food, or a garment that he has worn. The belief in
such powers is not more wildly foolish than our own theory of microbes
would have seemed if it had been put forward before there were
microscopes to prove its truth. It could at least point to success in
its support, for there can be no doubt whatever that numbers of
bewitched persons did actually die--from fear--and that many sick
recovered as the result of curative counterspells that put new heart
into them.

The terror of witchcraft was never absent from the mind of a Fijian.
Williams relates that the sceptics who laughed at the pretensions of a
priest trembled at the power of the wizard, and that this was the last
superstition to be eradicated from the mind of the convert to
Christianity. It would be more true to say that the Christian native has
never lost it. The professional wizard was not necessarily a priest, but
if he had not the protection of sanctity, he was a person of
considerable courage, for witchcraft was a dangerous profession. The pay
was very high, but since the transaction could never be kept entirely
secret, the wizard had to brave the resentment of his victim's
relations.

[Pageheader: A CHIEF IS BEWITCHED]

The procedure was this: If a man desired the death of a rival he
procured something that had belonged to his person--a lock of hair, the
parings of his nails, a scrap of food, or, best of all, his excreta, for
witchcraft by these produced incurable dysentery. With these he visited
the wizard by night, taking a whale's tooth as an earnest of the reward
that he would pay when the death of his rival was accomplished. The
wizard then prepared the charm by wrapping the object in certain leaves
of magical properties, and burying the parcel in a bamboo case either in
the victim's plantation or in the thatch of his house. In a few days the
man began to sicken--generally, no doubt, because hints of the design
had been conveyed to him--and if the charm could then be discovered and
destroyed, he would recover. But if a diligent search failed, offerings
were made to the gods, or the chief in whose district the wizard lived
was invoked to use his authority. It was more common, however, to fee
another wizard to make the charm innocuous by counterspells, which were
often effective through the fresh hope infused into the sufferer, to the
profit of both practitioners. When the victim died the wizard claimed
his reward by attending the funeral with a blackened face, and bold
indeed would be the employer who dared to bilk him. This practice was
sometimes abused. Any sudden death being ascribed to witchcraft, a
professional wizard, who was entirely innocent, would blacken his face
at the funeral in the hope that some one who had an interest in the
death would pay him the fee he had never earned. Such a case occurred as
late as 1887 at the funeral of Mbuli Mbemana, who died of a chill
contracted in taking a huge _vesi_ log down the river as a king-post for
the council-house at Nandronga. A man with a blackened face was pointed
out to me at the funeral, and shortly afterwards a formal complaint was
made by the dead man's relations against the river tribes of having
fee'd this wizard to compass the Mbuli's death. I summoned them to a
meeting, but all my arguments were impotent against the undoubted fact
that the Mbuli was dead, that the river tribes detested him and had an
interest in his death, and that their wizard had appeared with a black
face at his funeral. _Fiat experimentum_: let them commission their most
famous wizards to compound a spell that no man could withstand--I would
supply them with all the material they wanted--and if I still lived they
would put away this superstition for ever. They discussed the
proposition with gravity, and replied through their spokesman that this
would be no proof at all, for it was well known that white men, who
subsist on outlandish meats, were proof against Fijian spells. There was
with me a Tongan, named Lijiate (the nearest the Tongans can get to
"Richard"), whose enlightened contempt for the dark-mindedness of these
heathen had been expressed with unnecessary emphasis. Him I proffered as
a substitute. But I had reckoned without my host. "Pardon me," he said,
when I asked him for a lock of his hair, "but I almost believe in it
myself." One stout-hearted Fijian servant was ready to step into the
breach, but it was then my turn to interfere, for the knowledge that he
was bewitched would lay the stoutest-hearted Fijian low in less than a
week.[64]

A man, delirious with triumph at his narrow escape, once brought me a
spell that he had found buried in the thatch of his house in Tawaleka.
It was a bamboo six inches long, corked with a tuft of grass. Within was
a shred of _masi_, torn, no doubt, from his clothing and a handful of
withered leaves of some bush shrub. He wished me to hold inquisition
over the countryside in the hope that his enemy would confess the crime,
for _ndraunikan_ had been wisely made a punishable offence. Its utility
has long passed away, and its power for harm remains. Apart from the
death and suffering it may inflict on the victim through terror, it not
infrequently leads to actual violence. The murder of Mbuli Mbureta in
1884 is a notable instance. At the trial of his murderers it was
elicited that a number of disaffected chiefs in his district had fee'd a
wizard to remove him by witchcraft. When weeks had passed, and the
unpopular chief continued in obstinate good health, the wizard's
employers taunted him with his lack of skill, and received a definite
promise of the Mbuli's death before a fixed date. The promise was kept;
the victim disappeared, but when his body was discovered it was found
that the skull had been fractured by an axe-stroke from behind.

In the face of such instances as these it demands some courage to assert
that upon the whole the belief in witchcraft was formerly a positive
advantage to the community. It filled, in fact, the place of a system of
sanitation. The wizard's tools consisting in those waste matters that
are inimical to health, every man was his own scavenger. From birth to
old age a man was governed by this one fear; he went into the sea, the
graveyard or the depths of the forest to satisfy his natural wants; he
burned his cast-off _malo_; he gave every fragment left over from his
food to the pigs; he concealed even the clippings of his hair in the
thatch of his house. This ever-present fear even drove women in the
western districts out into the forest for the birth of their children,
where fire destroyed every trace of their lying-in. Until Christianity
broke it down, the villages were kept clean; there were no festering
rubbish-heaps nor filthy _raras_.

[Pageheader: SOOTHSAYERS]

In this respect Fijian witchcraft was immeasurably superior to that of
other primitive races who employ similar methods. The Gold Coast tribes
slay men by spells of roots tied together with a curse;[65] the
priest-king Laibou of the Wa-Nandi tried to annihilate the Uganda force
sent against him by leaving a snake tied to a dog near their camp.[66]
The Swahili bury medicine at the door of the hut by which the doomed
person must pass.[67] But in none of these cases are the excreta of the
victim necessary, nor does the superstition react in the interest of
public health.


Kinda and Yalovaki

Not less important in the native polity were the wizard's services in
the detection of crime. This was a special branch of the black art, and
the _ndaukinda_ seldom engaged in the deadly business of _ndraunikau_.
When property was stolen the owner took a present to the seer, and told
the story of his loss. The seer, bidding the man pronounce the names of
those whom he suspected, fell into deep abstraction, and presently
checked the man at a certain name, announcing that an itching in his
side or this finger or toe proved the person named to be the thief. If
the seer was a member of the tribe he would dispense with the names, and
would begin to twitch convulsively and himself pronounce the thief's
name. If he was lucky enough to hit upon the right man--and an intimate
knowledge of the characters and relations of his fellow-tribesmen often
enabled him to do so--the offender would confess at once, for to brazen
out a theft against the evidence of a seer's little finger demanded an
effrontery that no Fijian could boast. The proper course for a person
wrongfully accused by a seer was shown in the case of Mbuli Yasawa, who
in 1885 was charged with embezzling the district funds. It appeared that
the funds in question were intact, but that, through an error in
book-keeping, the scribe had led the people to believe that a
considerable sum had been abstracted. Persons were deputed to consult a
noted seer, called Ndrau-ni-ivi, whose finger tingled at the mention of
the Mbuli's name. The poor Mbuli, knowing for the best of reasons that
he was innocent, instead of taking the obvious course of submitting his
books to be audited by the magistrate, presented a larger fee to a rival
seer to "press down" (_mbika_) that given to Ndrau-ni-ivi, and
triumphantly vindicated his character by the verdict of his
practitioner's great toe. Upon this evidence he prosecuted his
slanderers for defamation before the Provincial Court. The cunning and
knack of clever guessing necessary for the lucrative calling of the seer
formerly made the business a monopoly of the priests.

The _yalovaki_ (soul-stealing) was an even surer method of detecting
crime. It was the mildest form of trial by ordeal ever devised, but no
boiling water or hot ploughshare could have been more effective. If the
evidence was strong, but the suspect obstinately refused to confess,
complaint was made to the chief, who summoned the accused, and called
for a scarf. Usually the man confessed at the bare mention of the
instrument, but if he did not, the cloth was waved over his head until
his spirit (_yalo_) was entangled in it, and it was then folded together
and nailed to the prow of the chief's canoe. Then the man went mad, for
the mad are they whose soul have been stolen away.


Charms

There is no unusual feature in the Fijians' belief in charms. They were
carried to avert calamities of all kinds, but principally shipwreck and
wounds in battle. A mountain girl, who had never before seen the sea,
was once a fellow-passenger with me in a stormy passage to Suva. A heavy
lurch of the little vessel threw her sprawling on the deck, and I
noticed that, while the other natives were bantering her, she was crying
bitterly. Her fall had disengaged a pebble from her hand which had been
given her as a talisman against death by drowning. Charms have their
uses in litigation I had once before me a little old man who enjoyed
some reputation for skill in witchcraft. Being sentenced for some petty
offence, he solemnly removed his loin-cloth, and took from between his
thighs a little bag, containing dried root, and flung it away with a
gesture of contempt, much to the amusement of the enlightened native
police, who explained that it was an amulet against conviction.

[Pageheader: TRAPPING THE LITTLE GODS]


The Kalou-rere

The _kalou-rere_ differed from other religious observances in that,
though it was practised in most parts of the group, either under its
prevailing name or that of _ndomindomi_, the form was universal. The
votaries were youths of the male sex only: there was no recognized
priesthood; the cult was rather one of the effervescences of youth which
in England find their vent in the football field and the amateur stage.
The object of the rites was to allure the "Little Gods"--the
_Luve-ni-wai_ (Children of the Water)--a timid race of Immortals, to
leave the sea, and take up their temporary abode among their votaries on
land. Beyond the gift of immunity from wounds in battle, and such
pleasure as may be drawn from the excitement of the secret rites, it is
not clear that the Little People conferred any boon upon their
worshippers commensurate with the labour and privations that worship
entailed, but more than this has been urged against Freemasonry by its
critics.

In a retired place near the sea a small house was built, and enclosed
with a rustic trellis fence, tied at the crossings with a small-leafed
vine, and interrupted by long poles decorated with streamers. Within the
enclosure a miniature temple was erected to contain a consecrated
cocoanut, or some other trifle. No effort was spared to make the place
attractive to the shy little gods; the roof of the house was draped with
_masi_; the wall studded with crab-claws, and span-long yams and painted
cocoanuts were disposed about the foundations that they might eat and
drink.

A party of twenty or thirty youths spent several weeks in this
enclosure, drumming every morning and evening on the ground with hollow
bamboos to attract the sea-gods. During this long period they observed
certain tabus, and spent the days in complete idleness. Williams heard
of a party who, to facilitate the landing of the _Luve-ni-wai_, built a
jetty of loose stones for some distance into the sea. When they were
believed to be ascending, flags were set up in some of the inland passes
to turn back any of them that might try to make for the forests inland.
On the great day a Nanga-like enclosure was made with long poles piled
to a height of twelve inches and covered with green boughs, spears
bearing streamers being set up at the four angles. Within this the lads
sat gaily draped, with their votive offerings of clubs and shells before
them, thumping their bamboo drums on the earth. Presently the officers
of the lodge were seen approaching headed by the _Vuninduvu_, a sort of
past-master, armed with an axe, and capering wildly; the _Lingu-viu_
(Fan-holder) circling madly round the drummers, waving a great fan; the
_Mbovoro_, dancing and carrying in his hand the cocoanut which he is
about to break on his bent knee; the _Lingu-vatu_, pounding his nut with
a stone. Amid a terrific din of shrieks and cat-calls the gods entered
into the _Raisevu_, who thereafter was regarded as a peculiarly favoured
person. Then all went mad; the _Vakathambe_ shouted his challenge; the
_Matavutha_ shot at him, or at a nut which he held under his arm, and
all became possessed with the same frenzy as the inspired priests. One
after another they ran to the _Vuninduvu_ to be struck on the belly,
believing themselves invulnerable, and if the _Vuninduvu_ was
over-simple or over-zealous he sometimes did them mortal injury.
Williams, who gives the above description of the rites, says that in the
old days the orgy was free from licentiousness: we shall see how they
have deteriorated since the conversion of the people to Christianity.

[Pageheader: THE CAREER OF A _RAISEVU_]

On the western coast of Vitilevu the favourite ascending place of the
_Luve-ni-wai_ is marked with a large cairn of little stones, which has
grown year by year with the stones flung upon it by each worshipper and
by every passer-by. The more republican institutions of the western
tribes permit a commoner to rise to considerable influence, and not a
few of these great commoners can trace their eminent career to the
youthful distinction of having been the _Raisevu_. The combination of
hysteria and cunning and impudence necessary to that distinction raised
Nemani Ndreu from the lowly position of a commoner of a Nandi village to
be the official _Roko Tui_ of Mba. At the date of annexation in 1874 he
was _Tui Rara_ (Town-crier); in the heathen outbreak two years later, he
was naturally found upon the winning side, and his services as guide and
spy were so useful that he rapidly rose in Government favour. I was
present at the council when his appointment to the highest office open
to Fijians was announced. In an impassioned speech to a cold and hostile
audience he suddenly burst into tears that coursed down his cheeks and
impeded his utterance, and his most inveterate enemies seemed to be
affected. As we left the council-house he turned to me, with the tears
still wet upon his cheeks, and said, "How then? Didn't I do that well?"
It is unnecessary to add that he was an eminent local preacher.

The _kalou-rere_ was one of the few offences which, under British law,
was punished with flogging, a harsh provision if the rites were as
innocent as Williams represents. The truth is that they have changed
sadly for the worse. The rites are still occasionally practised in
secret, but though the ritual is much the same, it may be doubted
whether any of the votaries believe that they are alluring the "Little
Gods" from the sea. A few lawless young chiefs get a band of roysterers
together in a secluded place, and there go through a travesty of the
rites as an excuse for nocturnal raids upon the hen-roosts of the
neighbouring trader. Usually an equal number of girls are induced to
visit them by night under the pretence of practising heathen dances,
which are, in reality, mere orgies of debauchery. In one of these cases,
reported in detail by the late Mr. Heffernan, stipendiary magistrate of
Ba, the frenzy of the votaries was quite genuine, but it found vent in
sensuality, the dancers having access to their partners in a set measure
controlled by words of command.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 45: Buro-tu, or Bulo-tu as the Samoans and Tongans call it, is
Buro, or Bouro or Bauro with the suffix _tu_, signifying high rank,
which is found in the words _tu-i_ (king) and _tu-ranga_ (chief). There
are two places of that name in the West, namely, Bauro (S. Christoval)
in the Solomon Islands, and Bouro in the Malay Archipelago. Quiros heard
of an Indian, "a great pilot," who had come from Bouro when he visited
Taumaco in the Duff Group in 1606, and Mr. Hale, the philologist in
Wilkes Expedition, tried to establish the identity of the Malay Bouro
with the sacred island, by assuming that the "arrows tipped with
silver," which Quiros says were in possession of this native, showed
that there was communication between Taumaco and the Malay Islands. But,
as Dr. Guppy points out (_The Solomon Islands_, p. 277), the Bouro there
alluded to must have been S. Christoval, which was only 300 miles
distant, and the silver arrows a relic of the Spanish expedition to that
island forty years before. Nevertheless, it is quite possible that S.
Christoval was named Bouro by emigrants from the Malay Island after
their old home, and that S. Christoval was a halting-place of the race
on their journey eastward.]

[Footnote 46: The disgrace of dying a natural death is so keenly felt
that the bodies of the Tui Thakau of Somosomo, and the Rokovaka of
Kandavu, who die naturally, are struck with a stone on the forehead or
clubbed, to avert the contempt of the gods [Waterhouse].]

[Footnote 47: Thus the Fijians explain recovery from trance.]

[Footnote 48: An edible root related to the yam.]

[Footnote 49: There are many poems relating to the gods at
Ndelakurukuru. They are all well known at Namata, where they are
performed on great occasions, such as the feast made on the departure of
the Thakaundrove chiefs.]

[Footnote 50: The Chief of Lakemba used to assure the missionaries that
they could do him no greater favour than to give him a wooden coffin,
that his body might not be trampled on [Williams].]

[Footnote 51: The indigenous fly is nearly extinct. He is larger than
the European species that has supplanted him, and his buzz is louder.]

[Footnote 52: Williams, _Fiji and the Fijians_, p. 21.]

[Footnote 53: _The Polynesian Race_, pp. 44, 167, 168.]

[Footnote 54: This was the Fijian deluge. There are traditions of great
floods within historical times. One of them, about 1793, purged the land
of the great Lila epidemic. The waters rose over the housetops; hundreds
were swept away, and the silt left by the receding waters raised the
alluvial flats of the Rewa river several feet, a statement that is borne
out by the fact that a network of mangrove roots underlies the alluvial
soil at a depth of four or five feet. This flood was preceded by a great
cyclone. Traditions of great floods are preserved by almost every
primitive people.]

[Footnote 55: Dengei was supposed to inhabit a cavern in Nakauvandra.]

[Footnote 56: _Oliva_ is the name of Captain Olive, formerly Commandant
of the Armed Constabulary; _virimbaita_ is "to hedge in." The other
words mean nothing.]

[Footnote 57: The alignments at Carnac in Brittany and Merivale on
Dartmoor are suggestive of the rites of the Mbaki.]

[Footnote 58: _Journal Anthrop. Instit._, Vol. xiv, p. 29.]

[Footnote 59: _Internationales Archiv. fuer Ethnographie_, Bd. II, 1889.]

[Footnote 60: Probably Nemani Ndreu, whose career I have described.]

[Footnote 61: Williams's _Fiji and the Fijians_, p. 224.]

[Footnote 62: Williams's _Fiji and the Fijians_, p. 224.]

[Footnote 63: Such a one was Kaikai of Singatoka, whose exploits as a
prison-breaker were set forth in my _Indiscretions of Lady Asenath_.]

[Footnote 64: In 1902, under the flooring stones of a prehistoric
kistvaen near the Sepulchral Circle on Pousson's Common, Dartmoor, two
tresses of human hair were discovered, neatly coiled up. They were
doubtless the record of witchcraft practised within the nineteenth
century, on the same plan as that of the Fijians.]

[Footnote 65: _Nine Years at the Gold Coast_, by Rev. D. Kemp.]

[Footnote 66: _Campaigning on the Upper Nile and Niger_, by Lieut.
Vandeleur.]

[Footnote 67: _East Africa_, by W. W. Fitzgerald.]




CHAPTER VIII

POLYGAMY


From the writings of early travellers it might be inferred that the
Fijians practised polygamy to the same extent as the Arabs and other
Mahommedan nations, but a moment's reflection will show that this was
impossible. The high chiefs, it is true, were accustomed to cement
alliances by taking a daughter of every new ally into their households,
and these women with their handmaids, who were also the chief's
potential concubines, swelled their harems inordinately; and as
travellers were always the guests of the chiefs, and described things as
they found them, these exceptional households were taken as fair samples
of Fijian family life. But inasmuch as the Fijians could not draw upon
other races for women, and the sexes of the children born throughout the
group numbered about the same, to say nothing of the practice of female
infanticide, it is obvious that for every addition to the chief's harem,
some commoner had to go without a wife.

This view is borne out by the missionary, James Calvert, who, in
defending the abolition of polygamy by the missionaries, says: "Polygamy
is actually confined to comparatively few. It is only the wealthy and
powerful who can afford to maintain such an expensive indulgence."

[Pageheader: MISSIONARIES PUT DOWN POLYGAMY]

The actual facts were these: The highest chiefs had harems of from ten
to fifty women, counting concubines, according to their rank and
importance; the chiefs of the inland tribes had five or six wives, who
cultivated their plantations for them, and were more agricultural
labourers than wives; the chiefs of tributary tribes had seldom more
than two wives, and the bulk of the people were monogamists. Young men
of the lower orders married rather late in life for a primitive race,
rarely, it appears, before the age of twenty-five. Under these
conditions it might be expected that there would have been some form of
prostitution, but in fact there was nothing of the kind. The nearest
approach to it was to be found in the chief's kitchen, where the women
in attendance on the chief's wives, especially those nearing middle age,
were wont to sit and gossip with their lord's male retainers. In the
tributary villages the young men were too well watched in the _mbure_,
and the girls in the houses of their parents, for there to have been
much philandering. Thus, if it comes to a question of fact--and the
terms are to be applied in their most literal sense--the Fijians have a
better title to be called monogamists than the men of civilized Europe.

The action of the early missionaries in breaking down polygamy did not
result in as much hardship as might be supposed. Their policy is set
forth in the following instructions from the Society to its ministers:
"No man living in a state of polygamy is to be admitted a member, or
even on trial, who will not consent to live with one woman as his wife,
to whom you shall join him in matrimony, or ascertain that this rite has
been performed by some other minister; and the same rule is to be
applied in the same manner to a woman proposing to become a member of
the Society." The chiefs seem to have made little difficulty about this.
They were married to their principal wife, and the rest went home to
their friends, where they had not long to wait for husbands, since there
was a certain prestige in marrying a woman who had belonged to a high
chief. The discarded wives rarely complained of their dismissal, for
their lives in the harem had been unenviable. Exposed to the jealousy
and tyranny of the chief wife, they were subjected to daily
mortification, and if they had the misfortune to displease the great
lady, they were set upon and beaten and ill-treated by her attendants.

At the time of annexation in 1874 the Mission order quoted above had
been sufficient to stamp out the custom everywhere but in the hill
districts of Vitilevu, where the older chiefs still had from two to four
wives apiece. The Government wisely resolved to recognize all these
wives as legally married,[68] but not to allow any more polygamous
marriages, and in a few years the custom died out of itself. In the
polygamous households with which I came into contact the wives were all
stricken in years, and they lived harmoniously together, dividing the
labour of wood-cutting, water-carrying, and tilling their husband's
garden between them.

I do not think that the abandonment of polygamy has had any effect upon
the vitality of the race, for the simple reason that its practice was
very limited in extent. Then, as now, practically all the women were
appropriated. The evils arising from polygamy among the natives in South
Africa, cited by the Commission appointed in 1882 by the Governor of
Cape Colony to inquire into native customs--namely, idleness of the men,
enforced work by the women, immorality of young wives wedded to old men,
forced marriages of girls, strife and jealousy among the wives leading
to the practice of witchcraft and the sale of young girls--were not
prevalent in Fiji; nor had the reasons there adduced in its favour--that
polygamy is a provision against old age, since the children of the young
wives maintain their parents when the older children have left the
home--any application in the Pacific Islands.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 68: Native Regulation 12 of 1877 provided that "all marriages
performed and confirmed according to Fijian customs before the passing
of this Regulation" should be legal and binding.]




CHAPTER IX

FAMILY LIFE


Among the tribes in Fiji, where Melanesian blood predominates, the
_mbure-ni-sa_, or unmarried man's house, was a universal institution. In
the Lau group the strong admixture of Polynesian blood had in some
degree broken down the social laws connected with this house, although
in most villages the house existed. Among the purer Melanesian tribes of
the interior of Vitilevu, after twenty-five years of Christianity and
settled government, the _mbure-ni-sa_ exists as a part of the social
life of the village, as if obedience could still be enforced.

The _mbure-ni-sa_ was usually the largest house in the village. It was
the men's club in the day-time and the men's sleeping house at night. No
woman could enter it without committing a grave breach of propriety.
Young boys below the age of puberty went naked and slept with their
parents at home; but, from the day that they assumed the _malo_, or
perineal bandage, they removed to the _mbure-ni-sa_ at nightfall, and
slept there under the eyes of the elders who either had no home of their
own or had adopted the mbure-ni-sa from choice. When the young man
reached the age for marriage his mother chose a wife for him from among
his concubitant cousins, _i.e._ the daughters of his maternal uncle; and
immediately after the marriage he removed from the _mbure-ni-sa_ to a
house of his own, or to that of his parents. In parts of Vanualevu,
where uterine descent was still recognized, he removed to the village of
his wife's parents.

As soon as his wife was confined he was banished again to the
_mbure-ni-sa_ for the entire suckling period, which lasted from two to
three years. During the whole of this time, unless he had more than one
wife, he was obliged to live a life of celibacy.

In the above description I am, of course, speaking of the ordinary
middle-class Fijian. The higher chiefs, having several wives, provided a
separate house for the confinement, and never saw the _mbure-ni-sa_
again after their marriage. Men of the lowest rank had generally no
wives at all.

The _mbure-ni-sa_ thus served a double purpose. The girls of the tribe
sleeping with their parents, and the young men being practically
incarcerated every night under the eyes of their elders, there was
little opportunity for immorality before marriage. With the duties of
defence, of fighting, of providing food and of fishing, the young men
had little time for philandering, and it is asserted by many of the
elder natives that it was a rare thing for a girl to have lost her
virtue before marriage. Such sexual immorality as took place was between
the young men and the older married women.

But the chief value of the _mbure-ni-sa_ undoubtedly lay in the
separation of the parents of a child during the suckling period.
Natives, when asked to account for the decrease in their numbers, have
for years mentioned the breaking down of this custom of abstinence as
the principal cause, asserting that cohabitation injures the quality of
the mother's milk. Not understanding the true cause that lay behind this
belief, Europeans, medical men as well as missionaries, have treated the
opinion with contempt, without, however, shaking the natives' fixed
belief. Within the last few years a missionary, the late Rev. J. P.
Chapman, characterized this custom of abstinence as an "absurd and
superstitious practice."

[Illustration: The Mbure-ni-sa (Club House).]

The teaching of the missionaries, who believed that the only perfect
social system was to be found in the English mode of family life, and
the example of the Europeans settled in the group, have broken down the
custom of the _mbure-ni-sa_ in all parts of the islands, except the
mountain districts of Vitilevu. The example of the native teachers, one
of whom is to be found in every village, was in itself enough to
discourage a custom which the men had long found irksome, and the
natives assert that a large number of infant deaths might have been
prevented if public opinion still sufficed to keep the parents apart.

[Pageheader: PROLONGED PERIOD OF SUCKLING]

The Fijian word _ndambe_ has been loosely applied to the custom of
separating the parents while the mother is suckling her child. The word
is really an adjective signifying the injury sustained by the child
whose parents cohabit too soon after its birth. It becomes _ndambe_,
that is to say, it shows symptoms of general debility, accompanied with
an enlargement of the abdomen. The infringement of the rule of
abstinence is described at Mbau by a slang word, _nkuru vou_. During the
long period of suckling--varying from twelve to thirty-six months--the
mother abstained from cohabitation from the fear of impoverishing her
milk, a superstition which hid behind it a most important truth; namely,
that a second conception taking place during the suckling period must
cause the child to be prematurely weaned. While the _mbure-ni-sa_ still
existed, secret cohabitation between the parents was made the more
difficult by the custom of young mothers leaving their husband's house
and living with their relations for a year after the birth of a child;
since the adoption of English family life, husband and wife no longer
separate, but give their parole to public opinion to preserve the
abstinence prescribed by ancient custom. The health of the child is
jealously watched for signs that the parents have failed in their duty.
If it fall off in condition it is declared to be _ndambe_, and the
mother is compelled to wean it immediately, with an effect upon the
child which varies with its age. If it suffers it is said to be _kali
ndole_--prematurely weaned. The Fijians have no artificial food for
their infants. There is nothing between the mother's milk and solid
vegetable food, and until the digestive organs are fit to assimilate
such foods the child must be kept at the breast. Among European women
menstruation is rarely re-established during the period of suckling, and
there is therefore no particular danger to the child in cohabitation
during this period. At the worst, if conception takes place, the child
can be brought up upon artificial diet. With Fijian women, however,
menstruation often recommences at the third or fourth month after
parturition, and cohabitation, even at this early stage, often results
in a second pregnancy. The mother is physiologically incapable of
nourishing at the same time the foetus within her and the child at her
breast, and the symptoms of defective nutrition become evident in the
latter very soon after the new conception has taken place. The child
must be weaned at once, since it soon becomes too weak to undergo the
strain of a change of diet; it becomes _ndambe_. An old Fijian midwife
told me that the children of elderly men are less often _ndambe_ than
those of young men, because the older father, being less ardent, is more
likely to observe the rule of abstinence.

Nearly half the Fijian children born die within the first year. In many
cases, no doubt, death is caused by premature weaning owing to a second
conception, but there is no doubt that a number of weakly children are
brought into the world through the physical incapacity of the Fijian
mother for bearing healthy children in quick succession. This incapacity
may proceed from some inherent racial defect, or from improper or
insufficient food. Under the old wise system of abstinence, the forces
of the mother had time to recuperate before she was again called upon to
bear the strain of maternity, but with the early death of her child she
is at once pregnant. The birth-rate is increased by the production of a
weak offspring that will go in its turn to swell the death-rate; in
other words, a lower birth-rate would tend to increase the population.

In Tonga and in the Gilbert Islands the separation is rigidly enforced.
In the latter group _ndambe_ is called _ngori_. The relations of the
mother exercise extreme vigilance to prevent the couple from cohabiting,
and the husband who infringes the rule is scolded by his wife's
relations and sent for the future to sleep with the young men.

Lieutenant Matthews, who visited the Sierra Leone River between 1785 and
1791, says of the Mandingoes: "Mothers never wean their children until
they are able to walk and carry a calabash of water, which they are
instructed to do as soon as possible, as cohabitation is denied to them
while they have children at the breast." Even in Japan, where there is
artificial food for infants, prolonged suckling is still the rule. Sir
Edwin Arnold[69] says: "Japan is of all countries, except England, that
where fewest children die between birth and the age of five years;
albeit a point in favour of Japanese babies is that they are nursed at
the breast until they are two or even three years old."

The Pitcairn Islanders, who possess goats, but are otherwise as ill
provided with artificial food for infants as the Fijians, were found by
Beechey in 1831 to be suckling their children for three and even four
years."[70]

It is proper here to notice traces of the couvade, not perhaps
indicating that the couvade itself was ever practised as a custom, but
showing rather how widely spread are the ideas underlying that custom.
In the province of Namosi, where children were suckled for three years,
there is a belief that if the father, when separated from his wife, has
an intrigue with another woman his child will fall off, showing the
symptoms of _ndambe_. The sickness is called there by the suggestive
name of _veisangani tani_ (_lit._, "alien thigh-locking"). Dr. R. H.
Codrington[71] says of Mota (Banks Islands): "When a child is born,
neither father nor mother eats things, such as fish or meat, which might
make the children ill. The father does not go into sacred places which
the child could not visit without risk. After the birth of the first
child the father does no heavy work for a month lest the child should be
injured." Mr. Walter Carew says of the district north of Namosi: "I have
frequently observed a father abstain from certain articles of food from
fear of affecting the child, born or unborn; and I have often joked the
people about it. Once I persuaded a man to break the tabu and eat some
fowl. Unfortunately, the child died some time afterwards, and the father
more than half believed me to have been the cause of its death." In
discussing this belief as a trace of the couvade, Starke quotes
Dobizhoffer's remarks upon the Abipones: "They comply with this custom
with the greater readiness because they believe that the father's rest
and abstinence have an extraordinary effect on the well-being of unborn
infants, and is indeed absolutely necessary for them.... For they are
quite convinced that any unseemly act on the father's part would
injuriously affect the child on account of the sympathetic tie which
naturally subsists between them, so that in the event of the child's
death the women all blame the self-indulgence of the father, and find
fault with this or that act."

Among the Lake Nyassa tribes the husband ceases cohabitation as soon as
his wife announces her pregnancy, and does not resume it until the child
is weaned. If he has no other wife "he will strive to remain chaste in
the fear lest, if he commit adultery, his unborn child will die."[72]
Among the Atonga, in the same region, the husband has no relations with
his wife for five or six months after the child's birth. If he has
access to any other woman during this period, the popular belief is that
she will certainly die.[73]

This widely extended custom of prolonged suckling among non-pastoral
peoples seems to show that Nature intended the human mother to suckle
her offspring until it had developed the teeth necessary for masticating
solid food. Civilization, ever driving Nature at high pressure, has
found artificial food for infants, leaving the mother free to bear the
stress of a second maternity. To meet this increased strain the
civilized mother is nourished and tended with a care that is never
bestowed upon her savage sister. Barbarism followed the law of Nature
and supported it by a customary law of mutual abstinence, but the
customary law of the Fijians has been mutilated and has left them
between two stools, not yet adopting the conveniences of civilization
and obliged, nevertheless, to do the high pressure work of the civilized
state without help. The reproductive powers of the Fijian woman of
to-day are forced, though her body is no better prepared by a generous
course of food to meet the strain than when she was allowed to follow
the less exacting course of Nature for which only her body is fitted.
And to make matters worse, the Fijians, recognizing the evils of too
frequent conceptions, drink nostrums to prevent them, probably injuring
thereby the child at the breast.

[Pageheader: THE MISSIONARIES' MISTAKE]

If the missionaries, as is said, are responsible for breaking down these
customs of abstinence, and still regard it as "absurd and
superstitious," it is a pity that they did not recognize another
important difference between European and Fijian society--the irregular
and insufficient nourishment for the women and the lack of artificial
food for infants--and devote their efforts to reforming this before they
discouraged a custom so admirably adapted to meet the evils of a lack of
cereals and milk-yielding animals. It is too late now to go back. The
Fijian husband will never again consent to enforced separation from his
wife. Rapid conceptions and a high birth-rate must be reckoned with, and
the only feasible remedy is to improve the diet of the nursing mother,
and induce the people generally to keep milk-yielding animals for their
children. Cattle thrive in Fiji, but the efforts of the Government to
convert the Fijian agriculturist to pastoral pursuits cannot be said to
have been successful.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 69: _Some Pictures from Japan_, by Sir Edwin Arnold.]

[Footnote 70: _Beechey's Voyage_, p. 128.]

[Footnote 71: _Notes on the Customs of Mota (Banks Islands)_, by the
Rev. R. H. Codrington, M.A.]

[Footnote 72: _British Central Africa_, by Sir H. H. Johnston.]

[Footnote 73: _Ibid._, p. 415.]




CHAPTER X

THE MARRIAGE SYSTEM[74]


There are two systems of kinship nomenclature current among Fijians, one
indicating consanguinity, and the other kinship in relation to marriage.
This latter system radiates from the central idea of Concubitancy, and
it is this system that is now to be discussed. The word "Concubitant" is
adopted because, besides being a fair translation of the Fijian word
_vei-ndavolani_ (_vei_ = reciprocal affix, _ndavo_ = to lie down), it
expresses the Fijian idea that persons so related ought to cohabit.

In order to understand the system it is necessary to free the mind from
the ideas associated with the English terms of relationship, and to
adopt the native terms, which are as follows:--

  (1) _Tama_--Father, or paternal uncle.

      _Tina_--Mother, or maternal aunt.

      _Tuaka_--Elder brother, sister, or cousin (not concubitant).

      _Tathi_--Younger brother, sister, or cousin-german (not
      concubitant). _Luve_--Child.

      _Tuka_--Grandfather.

      _Mbu_--Grandmother.

      _Makumbu_--Grandchild.

      _Tumbu_--Great-grandparent.

  (2) _Ngane_(reciprocal form, _vei-nganeni_)--The relationship of a
  male and female of the same generation between whom marriage is
  forbidden, _i.e._ brother and sister, both real and artificial.

      _Ndavola_ (reciprocal form, _vei-ndavolani_)--The relationship of
      males and females of the same generation between whom marriage is
      right, and even obligatory--consequently sister-in-law.

      _Tavale_ (reciprocal form, _vei-tavaleni_)--Male cousins who would
      be concubitant if one were a female, consequently a man's
      brother-in-law.

      _Ndauve_ (reciprocal form, _vei-ndauveni_)--Female cousins who
      would be concubitant if one were a male--consequently a woman's
      sister-in-law.

      _Vungo_--Nephew, _i.e._ son of a man's sister or woman's brother,
      also son-in-law or daughter-in-law, also used reciprocally.

      _Ngandina_--Maternal uncle or father-in-law; vocative form in the
      case of father-in-law, is _ngandi_ or _momo_.

      _Nganeitama_--Paternal aunt or mother-in-law; vocative form in the
      case of mother-in-law, is _nganei_.

[Pageheader: THE CONCUBITANT RELATIONSHIP]

Besides these there are compound names for some of the more remote
relationships, and names for certain connections, such as _karua_
(_i.e._ "the second," reciprocal form, _vei-karuani_), used of wives of
a bigamous household, and also of children of the same father by
different mothers.

I propose to call the Ngane (reciprocal form, _vei-nganeni_) tabu,
because marriage between them is forbidden. _Vei-ndavolani_ I call
"concubitants," because marriage between them is right and proper.

The tabu relationship occurs--

(1) Between the son and daughter of the same parents.

(2) Between children respectively of two brothers or the children
respectively of two sisters, such children being male and female.

From a Fijian point of view, in both these cases the relationship is
exactly the same. The father's brother and the mother's sister share
with the father and the mother an almost equal degree of paternity. Thus
a man or a woman, referring to his or her father's brother calls him
_Tamanku_ (my father), and if he is asked _Tamamu ndina?_ (your real
father?) he will answer _A Tamanku lailai_ (my little father). The same
applies to the mother's sister. The tabu relationship also occurs
artificially between the children respectively of concubitants who have
broken through the system, and have not married, but to this I will
refer in its proper place.

_Concubitants._--This relationship occurs between persons whose parents
respectively were brother and sister. The opposition of sex in parents
not only breaks down the barrier of consanguinity, but even constitutes
the child of the one a marital complement of the child of the other. The
young Fijian is from his birth regarded as the natural husband of the
daughters of his father's sister and of his mother's brother. The girls
can exercise no choice. They were born the property of their male
concubitant if he desire to take them. Thus the custom, if generally
followed, would enclose the blood of each family within itself, and
obstruct the influx of a new strain at every third generation. The
natural tendency towards the renovation of the blood would be checked,
and its stagnation be continued. Thus--

           A. (m)  marries  B. (f)
                      |
              ------------------
  E. (f) = C. (m)    tabu     D. (f) = F. (m)
             |                  |
           G. (f) Concubitants H. (m)

[Pageheader: INTOLERANCE OF THE SYSTEM]

A. and B. were concubitants, their children tabu. G. and H. being the
children of tabu relations are concubitants. They marry, and of course
their children being brother and sister are again tabu. But if D. had
been a male who had married F. a female, G. and H. would have been tabu.
It will thus be seen that the concubitant and the tabu alternate
generation after generation. The children of concubitants must be tabu,
and the children respectively of tabu must be concubitant.

It must of course happen that persons who are concubitant have a mutual
dislike to one another and do not marry, or, since a man cannot marry
all his concubitants, or a woman all her concubitants, the system is
dislocated by some of them marrying persons who are in no way related to
them. Thus--

              (m)A.  =  B.(f)
                     |
            --------------------
           |                   |
  W.(f) = C.(m)              D.(f) = X.(m)
           |                   |
  Y.(f) = G.(m) Concubitant
           |       with      H.(f) = Z.(m)
           |                   |
          L.(m)    tabu       J.(f)

G. and H. are concubitant, born husband and wife, as were their
grandparents A. and B., but they grow up and take a dislike to one
another and each marries some one else. Yet the system takes no account
of such petty interruptions as likes and dislikes. They were born
married, and married they must be so far as their children are
concerned. They have each married outside the tribe, yet their children
L. and J. are tabu just as much as if G. and H. had married and they
were the offspring of the marriage. G. and H. have in fact dislocated
the system for all posterity, but the system goes on, refusing to admit
the injury done to it. The most striking feature in the system is this
oppressive intolerance. It is so indifferent to human affections that if
a man dares to choose a woman other than the wife provided for him his
disobedience avails him nothing. His concubitant is still his wife, and
her children are his children. It will, it is true, give way so far as
to recognize as his wife the woman he has chosen, but only on the
condition that she becomes his fictitious concubitant, and that all her
relatives fall into their places as if she had actually been born his
concubitant.

This brings us to a fresh starting-point from which the concubitous
relationship is established. Since a man who is the concubitant of a
woman is necessarily also the concubitant of all her sisters, by a
natural evolution, if he marries a woman unrelated to him by blood, and
_ipso facto_ makes her his concubitant, all her sisters become his
concubitants also. In the past they would have been his actual wives,
for a man could not take one of several sisters--he was in honour bound
to take them all. In the same way a woman and her sisters became the
concubitants of all her husband's brothers, and upon his death, she
passed naturally to her eldest brother-in-law if he cared to take her.
This does not imply polyandry or community among brothers, but rather
what is known to anthropologists as Levirate, a woman's marriage to her
brother-in-law being contingent on her husband's death.

_Tabu Relationships._--Hitherto we have dealt with persons sprung from
the respective marriages of a brother and sister, and have not touched
upon the offspring respectively of two brothers or two sisters. These
are tabu to one another, being, as I have said, regarded as being as
closely consanguineous as actual brothers and sisters.

          A.            B. brothers
          |             |
  X.(m) = C.(f)  tabu   D.(m) = Y.(f)
          |             |
          G.(f)   =     H.(m) Concubitant.

C. and D., being the offspring of two brothers, are tabu. They marry
respectively their concubitants, and their offspring G. and H. are
concubitant. Thenceforward the concubitant and tabu relationships occur
in alternate generations. It must not be understood, however, that in
these remote occurrences the tabu relationships are always strongly
tabu, or that the concubitant relationships always entail marriage. The
fact is remembered, that is all. "They are _vei-nganeni_!" "But they are
married!" "Yes, but their _vei-nganeni_-ship is remote." (_Ia ka sa yawa
nondrau vei-nganeni._)

[Pageheader: CONCUBITANT MARRIAGE IS DECREASING]

It will be well at this point to examine the exact nature of the
obligation existing between concubitants. The relationship seems to
carry with it propriety rather than obligation. Concubitants are born
husband and wife, and the system assumes that no individual preference
could hereafter destroy that relationship; but the obligation does no
more than limit the choice of a mate to one or the other of the females
who are concubitants with the man who desires to marry. It is thus true
that in theory the field of choice is very large, for the concubitant
relationship might include third or even fifth cousins, but in practice
the tendency is to marry the concubitant who is next in
degree--generally a first cousin--the daughter of a maternal uncle. A
very good illustration of this occurred a few years ago among the
grandchildren of the late king Thakombau. The concubitant of his
granddaughter Audi Thakombau was Ratu Beni, chief of Naitasiri, but for
various rascalities he had been deported to the island of Ono. Meanwhile
her relations proposed an alliance with the powerful chief family of
Rewa, and she was formally betrothed to the young chief Tui Sawau. But
just before the marriage Ratu Beni was liberated, returned home, and at
once laid claim to his concubitant. The claim was allowed by her
relatives, the match broken off, and for some time the relations between
Mbau and Rewa were so strained that the chiefs went in bodily fear of
one another.

I have always been assured by the natives that the practice of
concubitancy has greatly decreased since the introduction of
Christianity and settled government. From the fact that thirty per cent,
still marry their concubitants, it may be guessed how universal the
custom must formerly have been. Now that free communication exists
between the islands, and men have a far larger field of selection, they
are said to choose rather not to marry their concubitants. Ratu Marika
explained this by saying: "One has no zest for one's _ndavola_. She is
too near. When you hear man and wife quarrelling, one says, 'What else?
Are they not _vei-ndavolani_?'" The result is curious. They do not marry
as they did formerly, but they commit adultery either before or after
marriage. No sooner is a girl married than her concubitant comes and
claims her, and so strong is custom that she seldom repulses him. It is
said that about fifty per cent of the adultery cases brought before the
criminal courts of the colony are offences between concubitants, but a
number never come before the courts because the husband does not care to
prosecute. There are few prosecutions for fornication between
concubitants, because the complainants, the parents of the girl, do not
feel themselves to be aggrieved.

_Vei-tavaleni._--It is natural to expect some peculiarity in the
relations between males, who would, if they were male and female, be
concubitants. This relationship is called _vei-tavaleni_. To break
through for once the rule of not using European terms, I may remark that
_vei-tavaleni_ must of necessity mean both cousin and brother-in-law,
and the reason is sufficiently obvious. Your _tavale_ is a brother of
the woman to whom you were born married; _ergo_, your brother-in-law.
The fact that you do not marry her makes no difference. She is your
natural wife, and he is your natural brother-in-law. Even if your
_tavale_ has no sister, he is still your brother-in-law, because,
potentially, a sister might be born to him, who would be your wife. At
this point I thought that I had found an inconsistency in the logic of
the system. As the children of _vei-ndavolani_ (concubitants) are tabu,
I supposed, naturally, that the children of _vei-tavaleni_ would be tabu
also; but I found, to my surprise, that this was not so. Their children
became _vei-ndavolani_ (concubitants). It seemed illogical, but I
supposed that it was done as a compensation. The parents could not marry
because they were of the same sex; therefore, to compensate the system
for the loss of a concubitant marriage, their children were made to
repair the accident by being concubitants.

I pointed this out to Mr. Fison, and he, looking at the system purely
from the point of view that it was a development of group marriage, when
the entire tribe was divided into two exogamous marrying classes, said
that he saw no inconsistency at all. We worked the problem out on paper,
and discovered that, with the class marriage as a clue, this fact became
perfectly consistent and logical--

                            |
                ____________________
                |                   |
  an X. woman = A.^{o} (m)          B.^{o} (f) = an X. man
  ___________                       |
  |          |                      |
  C.^{o} (f) D.^{o}(m) = G.^{x} (f) E.^{x} (m) = F.{o} (f)
  |                                 |
  H. (m)^{o}                        |
                                    |
                                    J.^{x} (f).

Let us suppose the population to be divided into two great classes, X.
and O. Descent, in Fiji, follows the father, therefore the two
_vei-tavaleni_ D. and E. belong to opposite classes. D. O. marries an X.
woman. E. X. marries an O. woman. Their children obviously belong to two
opposite classes. They cannot therefore be tabu, and, through their
relationship, they become concubitant. We thus stumbled upon an analogy
that goes far to uphold the theory that concubitancy is merely a
development of exogamous group marriage.

[Pageheader: LOGIC OF THE SYSTEM]

_Vei-ndauveni._--Let us now consider the relations between females who
would have been concubitants had they been of opposite sexes. They are
called _vei-ndauveni_, which, according to our phraseology, would mean
cousin and sister-in-law, for in the concubitant system these terms are
one and the same thing. As in the case of the concubitants, the
_vei-ndauveni_ is curiously stretched to cover the case of a man
marrying a stranger woman unrelated to him. She becomes _vei-ndauveni_
to his sister as a logical deduction from the fiction that she is
concubitant with him, and as the children of _vei-ndauveni_ must be
concubitant, so her children and her sister-in-law's children are
concubitants.

_Ngandina._--The system extends even to the earlier generations. The
_ngandina_ means in our phraseology both mother-in-law and uncle and
father-in-law, for since your wife is the daughter of your mother's
brother, it is obvious that he must stand to you in both those
relations. A man may marry a woman unrelated to him, yet his
father-in-law becomes forthwith his uncle (_ngandina_), for by the
marriage he has constituted his wife concubitant with him, and this
entails the fiction that her father was tabu to his mother (_i.e._ her
brother), and therefore his uncle.

_Vungo._--Nephew, _i.e._ son of a man's sister or woman's brother, also
son-in-law or daughter-in-law, used reciprocally, as _vei-vungoni_.

My mother's brother is my _vungo_; my sister's son is my _vungo_; my
daughter's husband is my _vungo_. Under our system there seems little
akin between these three relationships, but in the Fijian system they
are one and the same.

  D.^{x} (m) = C.^{o} (f), sister of E.^{o} = F.^{x} (f)
  |                                  |
  A.^{x}                             B.^{o} (f)
               Concubitants.

A.'s mother's brother, A.'s _vungo_, has a daughter B., who is
concubitant with A. Whether she marries him or not, A was born her
husband, and he is therefore her father's _vungo_, son-in-law and
nephew. It is to be remembered that marriage is never permitted between
relations of different generations. Under no circumstances must
_vei-vungoni_ marry, though under the rules of exogamous marrying
classes they would, unless specially forbidden, have been permitted to
marry. In the above table, A. being an X., his mother's brother is an O.
On no account must the latter marry G., A.'s sister, who is an X., but
if A.'s _vungo_ has a daughter B. O., the marriage between A. and B. at
once becomes obligatory. Here is to be found a reason for the curious
custom of the avoidance of a mother-in-law among the Australians and
other tribes. Many theories have been advanced for this, but, with the
exception of Mr. Fison, I believe that no one has propounded the true
explanation. It is that in uterine descent a man's mother-in-law belongs
to the class from which he must take his wife. But she, being of a
different generation, is tabu to him; hence he must avoid her
absolutely, lest he be tempted by her charms to break through the law of
the system.

This marriage system is practised generally throughout the Fiji Islands,
with the following exceptions and modifications:--

In the province of Namosi the descendants of two brothers or of two
sisters are regarded as tabu throughout as many generations as their
parentage can be remembered, and are strictly forbidden to intermarry.
The children of concubitants who have neglected to intermarry do not, as
in Mbau, become tabu, but are made to repair their parents' default by
themselves becoming concubitants.

[Pageheader: CONCUBITANCY UNKNOWN IN POLYNESIA]

In Lau, Thakaundrove, and in the greater portion of Vanualevu, the
offspring of a brother and sister respectively do not become concubitant
until the second generation. In the first generation they are called
tabu, but marriage is not actually prohibited. The children of two
brothers or of two sisters are, as in Mbau, strictly forbidden to
intermarry.

Inquiries that have been made among the natives of Samoa, Futuna,
Rotuma, Uea, and Malanta (Solomon Group), have satisfied me that the
practice of concubitant marriage is unknown in those islands; indeed, in
Samoa and Rotuma, not only is the marriage of cousins-german forbidden,
but the descendants of a brother and sister respectively, who in Fiji
would be expected to marry, are there regarded as being within the
forbidden degrees as long as their common origin can be remembered. This
rule is also recognized throughout the Gilbert Islands, with the
exception of Apemama and Makin, and is there only violated by the high
chiefs. In Tonga, it is true, a trace of the custom can be detected. The
union of the grandchildren (and occasionally even of the children) of a
brother and sister is there regarded as a fit and proper custom for the
superior chiefs, but not for the common people. In Tonga, other things
being equal, a sister's children rank above a brother's, and therefore
the concubitant rights were vested in the sister's grandchild, more
especially if a female. Her parents might send for her male cousin to be
her _takaifala_ (_lit._, "bedmaker") or consort. The practice was never,
however, sufficiently general to be called a national custom. So
startling a variation from the practice of the other Polynesian races
may be accounted for by the suggestion that the chiefs, more autocratic
in Tonga than elsewhere, having founded their authority upon the fiction
of their descent from the gods, were driven to keep it by intermarriage
among themselves, lest in contaminating their blood by alliance with
their subjects their divine rights should be impaired. A similar
infringement of forbidden degrees by chiefs has been noted in Hawaii,
where the chief of Mau'i was, for reasons of state, required to marry
his half-sister. It is matter of common knowledge that for the same
reason the Incas of Peru married their full-sister, and that the kings
of Siam marry their half-sisters at the present day.

_Origin of the custom._--I venture to offer here three possible
explanations of the origin of this custom, leaving it to the
acknowledged authorities upon the history of marriage to point out what
in their opinion is the true explanation:--

1. It may be a survival of an earlier custom of group-marriage and
uterine descent such as is to be found in the Banks Islands, where the
entire population is divided into two groups, which we will call X. and
O. A man of the X. group must marry an O. woman, and _vice versa_. The
children, following the mother, are O.'s, and are, therefore, kin to
their mother's brother rather than to their own father. Their mother's
brother, an O., marries an X. woman, whose children are X.'s, and are
potential wives to their first cousins; although in the Banks group the
blood relationship is not lost sight of, and close marriages are looked
upon as improper, whilst in Fiji such a union would be obligatory.[75]
The children of two brothers of the X. group, following their mothers,
would be O.'s, and therefore forbidden to marry; and so also would be
the children of two sisters. Thus far the results of the two customs are
the same; but in the Banks group consanguineous marriage is checked by
public opinion, which in Fiji favours such marriages. Group-marriage on
precisely the same lines has been noticed in Western Equatorial
Africa[76] and among the Tinne Indians in North-West America.[77]

In Fiji, agnatic has generally taken the place of the uterine descent
(although in some parts of Vanualevu traces of the custom still appear
to linger), but the existing system of _vasu_, which gives a man
extraordinary claims upon his maternal uncle, may be an indication that
concubitant marriage is a survival of the more ancient custom. The
_vasu_ system is found to some extent among all peoples who trace
descent through the mother. Tacitus, speaking of the ancient Germans,
says that the tie between the maternal uncle and his nephew was a more
sacred bond than the relation of father and son.[78]

[Pageheader: ORIGIN OF CONCUBITANCY]

2. It is also possible that concubitant marriage is a relaxation of the
stricter prohibition in force amongst the Polynesians. The origin of
these prohibitions may, perhaps, be found in some such occurrence as
that described in the "Murdu" legend of Australia, quoted by Messrs.
Fison and Howitt in _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_--

"After the Creation brothers and sisters and others of the closest kin
intermarried promiscuously, until, the evil effects becoming manifest, a
council of the chiefs was assembled to consider in what way they might
be averted."

Some such crisis must have been reached in every group of islands that
was peopled by the immigration of a single family, and the natural
solution in every case would have been to prohibit the marriage of both
classes of cousins-german. But, little by little, the desire for
alliances among chief families, for the restoration of the claims of
_vasu_, and for the restoration of an equivalent of the tillage rights
given in dowry, may have chafed against the prohibitions until these
were so far relaxed as to allow the marriage of cousins in the degree
most effective for promoting an interchange of property. For a similar
reason Moses ordered the daughters of Zelophehad to marry men of their
father's tribe, in order that their property should not pass out of the
tribe, and "their inheritance remained in the tribe of the family of
their father" (Numbers xxxvi. 12).

3. A third solution may be found in the transition from uterine to
agnatic descent, a change that came about gradually as social
development prompted the sons to seize on the inheritance of their
father to the exclusion of the nephew (_vasu_). With the admission of
the father's relationship to his son grew the idea that he was the
life-giver and the mother the mere vehicle for the gestation of the
child, and the child came to be regarded as related to his father
instead of to his mother.[79] Thus Orestes,[80] arraigned for the
murder of his mother, Clytemnestra, asks the Erinyes why they did not
punish Clytemnestra for slaying her husband Agamemnon; and, upon their
answer that she was not kin to the man she slew, he founds the plea that
by the same rule they cannot touch him, for he is not kin to his mother.
The plea is admitted by the gods. By this rule, a man is not kin to his
father's sister's daughter, she being kin to her father only; but her
affinity to him would render their marriage convenient as regards the
family possessions. From long usage a sense of obligation would be
evolved, and such cousins come to be regarded as concubitant. The
children of sisters would still be within the forbidden degrees, for,
although not kin through their mothers, their fathers, being presumably
the concubitant cousins of their mothers, would be near kin.

I incline to accept the first explanation--that the custom of
concubitancy has been evolved from an earlier system of group-marriage
and uterine descent. I think that it dates from the remote period when
there was indiscriminate intercourse between the members of two
exogamous marrying classes, when it was impossible to say who was the
actual father of the children born. Under such a system the reputed
offspring of two brothers might in reality be the children of only one
of them, and the children of two sisters might have a common father, and
their union be incestuous. But the children of a brother and sister
respectively could not possibly have a common parent, and their
intercourse was therefore innocuous. For the same reason the children of
concubitants who were not known to have cohabited were still held to be
tabu to each other, for the male concubitant had a right of cohabitation
with the female of which he might at any time have availed himself, and
their offspring reputed to be by their other partners might in reality
be half brother and sister without their knowledge.

[Pageheader: CENSUS OF CONSANGUINEOUS MARRIAGES]

Though the Fijian system of relationships is closely allied to those of
the Tamils in India and the Two-mountain Iroquois, and the Wyandots in
North America, none of these, except the Tamils, I believe, recognize
the principle of concubitant cousinship. The custom must be regarded, I
think, as being one of limited range, evolved from marriage laws of far
wider application. It undoubtedly exercises upon the Fijians a marked
influence in promoting consanguineous marriages--an influence from which
the other races in the Pacific are comparatively free, if we except the
inhabitants of the island of Tanna in the New Hebrides and possibly some
other islands not yet systematically investigated.

_Concubitancy in practice._--The fact of a race of men habitually
marrying their first cousins promised to exhibit such remarkable
features in vital statistics that we did not stop short at investigating
the theory alone. We caused a census to be taken of twelve villages, not
selected from one province, but chosen only for convenience of
enumeration in the widely separated provinces of Rewa, Colo East, Serua,
and Ba. I am indebted to the late Mr. James Stewart, C.M.G., for the
analysis of the returns which follows:--

In the twelve villages there were 448 families. The couples forming the
heads of these families have had born to them as children of the
marriage 1317 children, an average of 2.94 to each marriage. But of
these 1317 children, only 679 remain alive, 638 being dead. The heads of
these families therefore do not replace themselves by surviving
children, for only 51.5 per cent. survive, while 48.5 are lost.

We divided the married couples into four classes--

(1) Concubitant relations who have married together. These we found to
be on inquiry in nearly every case actual first cousins. They formed
29.7 per cent. of the total number of families.

(2) Relations other than concubitant cousins who have intermarried.
Two-fifths of these are near relations, uncle and niece, and
non-marriageable cousins-german, brother and sister according to the
Fijian ideas. But the remaining three-fifths are more distantly related
than are the concubitants. These form 12.3 per cent. of the total
number of families.

(3) Fellow villagers--natives of the same village, but not otherwise
related--who have married together. These form 32.1 of the total number
of families.

(4) Natives of different villages, not being relations who have
intermarried. These form 25.9 of the total number of families.

Thus it will be seen that the concubitant and other relations who have
intermarried number over two-fifths of the people, while one-third of
the married people have been brought up together in the same village,
and only one-fourth, not being relations, have come from different
villages.

When we examined the relative fecundity of these divisions the result
was not a little startling--

133 concubitant couples have had 438 children, or 3.30 children per
family.

55 families of relations have had 168 children, or 3.06 children per
family.

144 families of fellow-villagers have had 390 children, or 2.71 children
per family.

116 families of natives of different villages have had 321 children, or
2.77 children per family.

It will thus be seen that as regards fecundity, concubitant marriages
are greatly superior to any of the other classes.

But since fecundity does not necessarily mean vitality, the question is,
how many of the children born to these respective divisions have
survived? and we find the unexpected result that whereas the other
classes have changed places, the concubitants again show themselves to
be superior.

Of 133 families of concubitants, there were 438 children, of whom 232
survive, and 206 are dead.

Of 55 families of relations, not concubitants, there were 168 children,
of whom 72 survive, and 96 are dead.

Of 144 families of townspeople, there were 390 children, of whom 212
survive, and 178 are dead.

Of 116 families of natives of different villages, there were 321
children, of whom 163 survive, and 158 are dead.

[Pageheader: VITALITY OF INBRED CHILDREN]

The concubitants with an average surviving family of 1.74 show,
therefore, not only a higher birth-rate, but far the highest vitality of
offspring.

The relations other than concubitants show, it is true, the highest
fecundity next to the concubitants, but their rate of vitality is the
lowest of the four classes, since more of their children have died than
are now living.

Second in point of vitality come the fellow-villagers, but they are far
behind the concubitants.

From our preconceived ideas of the advantages of out-breeding we should
expect to find that the offspring of natives of different villages would
have shown, if not the highest fecundity, at least the highest vitality,
for this is the class in which the parents are not related. On the
contrary, we find that the families of these unrelated people are only
third in point of vitality.

In view of the unfavourable position which the "relations other than
concubitants" hold in this analysis, it is well to divide the group into
two sub-classes. Of the fifty-five families of "relations," thirty-three
are stated to be _kawa vata_ (_i.e._ of the same stock, but not
necessarily of the same family or generation). The remaining twenty-two
families, on the other hand, consist of such unions (incestuous from the
Fijian point of view) of _vei-nganeni_ or _vei-tathini_, that is to say,
brother and sister, or cousins not concubitant; _vei-vungoni_, uncle
and niece, or aunt and nephew; _vei-tamani_, father and daughter, or
paternal uncle and niece; and _vei-luveni_ or _vei-tinani_, maternal
aunt and nephew, or mother and son. We have therefore, for purposes of
identification, divided the group into--first, relations distant;
second, relations specified.

  ----------------------+------------+----------------------------------
                        |            |
  Divisions.            | Number of  |    Children of the Marriage.
                        | Families.  +----------------------------------
                        |            |     Alive.  |  Dead.  |  Total.
  ----------------------+------------+-------------+---------+----------
  Relations (distant)   |      33    |       49    |   61    |   110
  Average per family    |      --    |        1.48 |    1.85 |     3.33
                        |            |             |         |
  Relations (specified) |      22    |       23    |   35    |    58
  Average per family    |      --    |        1.05 |    1.59 |     2.64
  ----------------------+------------+-------------+---------+----------
  Total                 |      55    |       72    |    96   |   168
  ----------------------+------------+-------------+---------+----------
  Average per family                 |        1.31 |    1.75 |     3.6
  ----------------------+------------+-------------+---------+----------

The fecundity of these distant relations thus appears to be much higher
than that of the specified relations, and a little higher even than that
of the concubitants--the highest of the four groups. The comparative
figures are as follows--

  ------------------------------------+----------------------------------
                                      |          Average Family.
  ------------------------------------+-----------+---------+------------
                                      |  Alive.   |  Dead.  |    Total.
  ------------------------------------+-----------+---------+------------
  _Vei-ndavolani_ (concubitants) |   1.74    |   1.56  |     3.30
  Relations (distant)                 |   1.48    |   1.85  |     3.33
  ------------------------------------+-----------+---------+------------

The vitality therefore is much less in the case of relations distant
than among the children of the concubitants.

The fecundity of the division, "relations specified," is lower than that
of any of the four groups, and the vitality of their progeny is greatly
inferior to any of the other classes.

For the last twenty years the Fijians have been either stationary,
slightly increasing, or decreasing, according to the prevalence of
foreign epidemics, the balance being in favour always of decrease. The
different figures show that no class of the population replaces itself
by surviving children of the marriage. But the deficiency is made up by
the children of former marriages, and illegitimate children, who form a
large portion of the population, but whose case it was not necessary to
consider for the purposes of this chapter. But we find the startling
fact that the class that most nearly succeeds in replacing itself is
that of the concubitants, which, consisting of 133 families, or 266
individuals, have, out of a total number of children born to them of
438, a surviving progeny of 232. If we add the surviving step-children
of these individuals, their total surviving progeny becomes 317, thus
replacing the heads of existing families, and leaving 51 children to
replace the parents of the step-children. In every respect the
concubitants appear to be the most satisfactory marriage class. They
amount to only 29.7 per cent. of the population, but they bear 33.3 per
cent. of the children born, and they rear 34.2 of the children reared;
and, including step-children, they rear 34.7 of the children who
survive.

[Pageheader: CONCUBITANCY JUSTIFIED BY RESULTS]

It is not a little remarkable that the two extremes of vitality should
occur in the two classes in which in-breeding prevails. The larger class
of the concubitants (in which class also is found the highest fecundity)
shows the highest vitality of the four groups. The smaller class, the
relations other than concubitants, second in point of fecundity,
discloses the lowest vitality, and yet the proportion of these marriages
which would be regarded as incestuous by our system is small. It is not
to be forgotten, however, that in marriages which are regarded by the
people as socially right and proper, more care may be bestowed upon the
offspring both by the relations of the parents who nurse the mother and
child and by the parents themselves. By the same reasoning it is
probable that the offspring of marriages regarded as incestuous are
neglected by the relations of the parents, and, as a consequence, that
less pride is taken in them by the parents themselves.

It has not been found that concubitants marry either earlier or later in
life than the members of the other classes, and it is to be remembered
that concubitants are very often natives of different villages, which
may tend to prevent the relations attending upon the mother in her
confinement. One of our native witnesses assured us, moreover, that the
union of concubitants was seldom a happy one. Quarrels between husband
and wife would certainly outweigh any advantages in favour of
child-bearing which the social propriety or fitness might be held to
create. But even supposing that the influences at work to make
concubitancy so satisfactory a procreative element in the population are
of a moral nature, the difference is so marked that there is a balance
over to be accounted for by some other explanation. That they rear a
larger proportion of their children may be partly or wholly due to the
fact that their relationship to each other gives them a higher sense of
responsibility, but that they bear more children capable of being reared
argues a superior physical fitness for procreation. I am aware that the
figures are far too small to allow of any generalization from them, but
at the same time it is to be remembered that the inhabitants of these
twelve villages represent a fair sample of the population, and also that
we found the relative positions of the married classes to be generally
the same in each village taken individually.

We have here a phenomenon probably unique in the whole range of
anthropology--a people who for generations have married their first
cousins and still continue to do so, and among whom the offspring of
first cousins were not only more numerous but have greater vitality than
the children of persons unrelated. Nay more, the children of
concubitants--of first cousins whose parents were brother and
sister--have immense advantages over the children of first cousins who
were the children of two brothers or two sisters respectively. In no
other part of the world does there exist so favourable material for
investigating the phenomena of in-breeding among human beings. Is it
possible that we have stumbled upon an important truth in our physical
nature? Throughout Europe there is a widespread prejudice against the
union of first cousins, a prejudice that must have arisen from the
observation of chance unions. Two French scientists, MM. Lagneau and
Gueniot, have lately attempted to combat this prejudice that marriage of
first cousins is in itself productive of evil in the offspring. By
classifying the people of Batz, who, they affirm, are the offspring of
generations of consanguineous marriages, they found the population to be
comparatively free from the morbid characteristics usually attributed to
consanguinity, and they traced the cases of scrofula and similar morbid
taints back to its origin in the parents and grandparents. From this
they argued, that if scrofulous or rickety children are born of parents
nearly related, it is due to the fact that hereditary taint of disease
on one or both of them has not been diluted by marriage with a person
unrelated to them. It is a pity that in their investigations they did
not trace the exact tie of consanguinity between the parents. It might
have been seen, whether in Europe as in Fiji, the union of the children
respectively of a brother and sister is innocuous, while that of the
children of two brothers or two sisters respectively produces evil
effects upon the offspring.

[Pageheader: COUSIN MARRIAGE POSSIBLY BENEFICIAL]

The point at issue, therefore, is this. Is the classificatory system of
relationships after all more logical in an important respect than our
own? Is there really a wide physical difference between the relationship
of cousins who are offspring of a brother and sister respectively and
that of cousins whose parents respectively were two brothers or two
sisters? Ought marriage in the one case to be allowed or even
encouraged, and in the other case as rigidly forbidden as if it were
incestuous? More complete and detailed statistics than it is possible to
give within the limits of this chapter are at the service of any one who
will attempt to answer these questions by going more deeply into the
subject.

Due allowance being made for local variations, the marriage customs of
Fijians of the middle class in heathen times may be thus summarized.

The man's parents, having ascertained that their overtures would be
acceptable, sent betrothal gifts (_ai ndunguthi_) to the parents of the
girl. The token of acceptance was sometimes a miniature _liku_ (apron).
If _vei-ndavolani_ (concubitants), they were often betrothed in early
childhood; sometimes, however, a girl child was thus promised to a man
old enough to be her grandfather. In either case the girl's parents kept
strict watch over her, for any lapse on her part would cover them with
shame and dishonour. If the betrothed whom she thus dishonoured was a
man of rank her own relations would not scruple to put her to death, as
was done by the great chief Ritova in 1852, when his sister thus
disgraced him. While the girl is growing up her friends were supposed to
"nurse" (_vei-mei_) her, or they might take her to the bridegroom's
parents to be cared for till the marriage. When she reached puberty the
bridegroom's friends prepared a quantity of property, consisting of mats
and bark-cloth, and called the _yau-ni-kumu_, or the _solevu_, and
presented it formally to the parents of the girl, and marriages were
often delayed for years when the bridegroom's family were too poor to
acquire property commensurate with their pride. It was this pecuniary
element, and also the custom of _vasu_, which gave every Fijian a lien
over the property of his mother's family, that made each clan so jealous
in counting the interchange of wives. "_Veka!_" they would exclaim when
a fresh proposal was made, "they have had already five women from us,
and we but three from them, and now they ask us for a sixth!"

The actual ceremony varied very much with the rank of the parties to the
marriage. There was no religious element, and the priests took no part
in it. But however humble the couple there were two indispensable
ceremonies--the wedding feast, provided by the bridegroom, and the
_vei-tasi_, or clipping of the bride's hair. I have failed to discover
the author of the fiction, quoted by so many anthropologists, that
marriage in Fiji was consummated in the bush. This was never the case.
On the night of the feast the bride was taken to her husband's house,
which had been either built specially for her, or was lent by the
groom's parents. There the marriage was consummated, without any
ceremony except in the case of high chiefs, when the announcement was
made by a great shouting. On the morrow was the feast of the clipping,
when the long tresses (_tombe_) grown behind each ear as a token of
virginity were cut off.[81] In the inland districts the girl's head was
shorn, and she entered forthwith upon her labour as a hewer of wood and
a drawer of water, ugly enough by this disfigurement to discourage any
admirer. The old women of the bridegroom's family had ascertained
meanwhile whether the bride had had a right to wear these love-locks,
and if the result of their inquiries was unsatisfactory, the feast was
made the occasion for putting her friends to shame. By a slash of a
knife the carcasses of the pigs, which were presented whole to the
visitors in the village square, were so mutilated as to intimate in the
grossest imagery that the bride had had a history. The Fijians,
however, always preserved a delicacy in these matters which was
strangely wanting in the Samoans and Tongans. In Samoa the innocence of
the bride was tested in the sight of the whole village by a sort of
surgical operation performed by a third person (_digito intruso_); in
Tonga the nuptial mat was paraded from house to house.[82]

[Pageheader: FIJIAN LOVE LETTERS]

There was, in some parts of the group, an occasional "marriage by
capture" that would have gladdened the heart of Maclennan, but it was
ceremonial, and I doubt whether it ever could be described as a custom.
The betrothal gifts having been accepted some time before, the girl was
waylaid and carried off. If she was unwilling she ran away to some one
who could protect her; if she was content the marriage feast was made on
the following morning.

Though as a rule the wishes of the bride were not consulted, there were
certainly matches of _vei-ndomoni_ (mutual affection), and young people
sometimes eloped with one another to the bush. But the flame of passion
soon burnt itself out; the couple soon settled down into the comfortable
relations of mutual convenience; there was never a trace of idealizing
sentiment between lovers.

The _ndunguthi-ni-alewa_ has now given place to the _vola-ni-alewa_, and
the former phrase is obsolete. _Vola-ni-alewa_ (writing to a woman)
includes both the betrothal gift and the letter which accompanies it.
Very artless and business-like are some of these proposals. "If you love
me I love you, but if you love me not, never mind, neither do I love
you; only let us have certainty." Sometimes the women write the letter.
One that came into my hands soared to a poetic height. "Be gentle like
the dove, and patient like the chicken," but concluded somewhat lamely
with, "When you have read this my letter, throw it down the drain."

In September 1875, a few months after the cession of the group, the
Council of Chiefs recommended the prohibition of betrothal gifts on the
ground that they tended to infant betrothals, and consequently to the
compulsory marriage of ill-assorted couples, who separated immediately
without consummating it; that girls should be free to marry whom they
chose on attaining the age of sixteen; that the licence should be
granted by native magistrates after due inquiry; and that the ceremony
should be performed either by a European magistrate or by a minister of
religion. These recommendations, liberal enough when one considers how
recently those who framed them had been freed from the bonds of custom,
were embodied in a native regulation, to which was added three years
later the sensible provision that the bridegroom should first be
provided with a house of his own. But as the betrothal gifts, which were
of no great value, seemed on consideration to be less objectionable than
was at first supposed, a Regulation was afterwards passed to make them
legal.

The real obstacle to marriage proved to be the _yau-ni-kumu_. While it
consisted only of native manufactures there were few men who could not
provide it with the help of their relations, but as soon as it became
fashionable to give knives, print, etc., for which money was required,
there were difficulties. The unhappy bridegroom, knowing how lightly a
Fijian girl may change her mind, had the ceremony performed on the
understanding that the marriage should not be consummated until he was
able to pay for his bride. While he was accumulating the property to
redeem her, the bride lived with her parents. Months passed, and in many
cases a prosecution for adultery took the place of the promised
festivities, though the marriage had never been consummated. This state
of things appeared to be more common on the north-east coast of Vitilevu
than elsewhere.

[Pageheader: OBSTACLES TO MARRIAGE]

In 1892, therefore, a Regulation was passed again prohibiting betrothal
gifts, and making it illegal to keep married people apart because the
_yau-ni-kumu_ had not been presented, and provided a penalty for
enticing married women from their husbands. There still remained the
magistrate's power to refuse a licence if the relations advanced
"reasonable objections," for by the law of custom objections to
intermarriage with a tribe of traditional enemies were reasonable. The
native chiefs, mindful of their own feelings if their daughters were to
make a _mesalliance_, clung to this power of veto, and without their
co-operation it was useless to attempt more legislation. And, since
there is probably no community in which poverty, or class distinctions,
are not obstacles to marriages of inclination, the Fijians have little
to complain of.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 74: The information in this chapter was collected by the
Commission on the Native Decrease (1891), of which the author was a
member.]

[Footnote 75: Thus, John X. marries Mary O. They have two children, male
O. and female O. (belonging to the mother's group). These marry female
X. and male X. (father's group). Their children would be X.'s and O.'s
respectively, following their mothers, and, if of opposite sex, could
intermarry, although public opinion regards the union as improper in
consequence of the near relationship of the parents.]

[Footnote 76: Du Chaillu, _Trans. Ethn. Soc._, N.S., Vol. I, p. 321.]

[Footnote 77: _Smithsonian Report_, 1866, p. 315.]

[Footnote 78: De Mor., Germ., XX., quoted by Sir John Lubbock.]

[Footnote 79: We find it stated by Dr. Codrington that there is a
remarkable tendency throughout the islands of Melanesia towards the
substitution of a man's own children for his sister's children and
others of his kin in succession to his property; and this appears to
begin where the property is the produce of the man's own industry.]

[Footnote 80: Quoted by Sir John Lubbock, _Origin of Civilization_.]

[Footnote 81: In these degenerate days the _tombe_ are worn by many
unmarried girls who have no right to them.]

[Footnote 82: I remember a high chief in Fiji, who had married a Tongan
girl, complaining bitterly of the invasion of his privacy by the bride's
aunt, who insisted upon officiating as a witness, and relating with glee
how, in the small hours, he had forcibly bundled the old lady out into
the night.]




CHAPTER XI

CUSTOMS AT BIRTH


It has already been shown that the decay of the Fijian race is due, not
to a low birth-rate, but to an excessive mortality among infants. The
mean annual birth-rate for the ten years 1881-1891 was 38.48. This
compares very favourably with the mean annual rates of European
countries, which vary from 42.8 in Hungry to 25.9 in France. In England
the rate is 35.3.

The excessive mortality among Fijian infants makes it necessary to
examine very closely the practices of the native midwives at the risk of
wearying the reader with somewhat technical details.

Native midwives are generally the ordinary medical practitioners, and
are termed _Vu-ni-kalou_ (skilled in spirit-lore), or _Yalewa vuku_
(wise woman), though that term belongs more properly to the wives of the
hereditary _matai sau_ (canoe-wrights and carpenters). These women keep
their craft secret, and as a consequence it often becomes family
property, being handed down from mother to daughter. The natives assert,
however, that so far from the craft being regarded as hereditary, any
person who thinks she has discovered a new remedy is at liberty to
follow the business when so inclined. This opens a wide field to
quackery, of which any woman with more cunning or self-assertion than
her neighbours can avail herself for the sake of credit or of gain.

[Pageheader: MIDWIVES]

None but a few of the female relations of a lying-in woman are admitted
to the house when she is in labour, the mixed attendance customary in
Tonga on such occasions not being tolerated. When the labour pains begin
the woman assumes a squatting posture, but during the throes of
childbirth she lies back in the arms of two friends sitting behind her,
who support her shoulders while the midwife stations herself in front.
From a physiological point of view this is a disadvantageous position,
but it appears to be adopted by chance rather than design, it being a
natural posture for a people who both sleep and sit on a matted floor.
The midwife makes a digital examination for the purpose of ascertaining
the presentation, which is generally normal. The membranes are not
tampered with, and nothing else is done until after the natural birth of
the child. Then the midwife clears its mouth of mucus with her fingers
or with her lips. Midwives differ on the point of the moment at which
the umbilical cord should be severed. Some of them seem to know that the
cord pulsates, but they do not understand the reason, for the Fijians
know nothing of the circulation of the blood. They generally wait until
the child breathes or cries out. If it emits no cry the general practice
is to compress the cord between the finger and thumb, and to squeeze the
blood onward towards the child. Sometimes they rattle a bunch of _kitu_
(gourds) near its ear in the hope of awakening it. Neither artificial
respiration nor a dash of cold water is ever resorted to, though cold
water is used in Tonga in extreme cases, and the natives mention cases
in which children must have perished through the neglect of this
precaution. The cord is then measured from the navel to the knee, and
cut square across with a mussel-shell, or a bamboo knife. Now-a-days
scissors are sometimes used. It is never severed by biting as is done by
some natural races, nor is it ever tied or knotted. Native opinions vary
as to whether bleeding occurs in consequence of the cord not being tied.
The midwives deny that it does, but some women declare that it is a good
thing for the "bad blood" to drain out of the cord. Severance of the
umbilical cord without ligature is not so unsafe as might appear, for
the experience of obstetricians goes to show that there is less risk of
haemorrhage when the cord is left long, though, of course, bleeding is
more likely to occur from a clean transverse cut than from an oblique
cut, or a laceration. After division the foetal end is wrapped in a
shred of bark-cloth, and coiled down on the abdomen. The blood that
oozes from it is absorbed by the cloth, which is changed occasionally.

As soon as the child cries and the cord has been severed an attendant
washes it in cold water. A drink of cold water is given to the mother
with the view of stimulating the uterus to contract and expel the
afterbirth. Retention of the placenta is the one contingency dreaded by
native women, but the midwives say that it is as rare as it is
dangerous. Among the inland tribes the midwives often introduce the hand
to extract the placenta, but among the coast people they believe it to
be an experiment which is better left alone. In cases where the drink of
cold water fails in its intended effect, herbal infusions are
administered, and poultices are sometimes applied externally, but the
safe expedient of compressing the uterus by placing the hand on the
abdomen is unknown to Fijian midwives--a surprising fact in a nation of
masseuses. It seems clear that Fijian mothers sometimes die from
retained placenta, and that the blame is laid at the door of the midwife
if she has ventured upon any manual interference. One woman stated that
some of her friends went through life in dread of pregnancy through the
popular fear of retained placenta.

The occasional retention of portions of the membranes appears to puzzle
Fijian midwives. They lay particular stress upon the impropriety of
removing such fragments--_ai kumbekumbe_ (cleavings), they call
them--even when they have been extruded spontaneously, but, on the
contrary, are careful to tie them down _in loco_ under a bandage of
bark-cloth, trusting the rest to nature. They admit, however, that women
to whom this happens are usually feverish for some time, and they
evidently think the situation dangerous.

[Pageheader: FORTITUDE OF FIJIAN MOTHERS]

After the conclusion of the third stage of labour some midwives of the
inland tribes introduce the hand as far as the _bai ni yate_ (_lit._,
fence of the liver) or the _tuvu ni ngone_ (foetal source, _i.e.
Fornix vaginae_), and, bending the fingers, clear out all the clots they
can find. Others adopt the better practice of raising the mother to a
sitting posture to facilitate their discharge by gravitation.

An infusion called _wai-ni-lutu-vata_ (medicine for simultaneous birth)
is sometimes taken during the later months of pregnancy, to induce an
easy labour and the descent of the placenta at the proper moment.

Among the hill tribes of Vitilevu labour seems to be more easy and
expeditious than on the coast, and yet, notwithstanding their less
varied experience, the midwives of those tribes enjoy a higher
reputation for skill, and also follow more orthodox methods than their
sisters among the more enlightened tribes. Both, however, display the
same ignorance of the rudiments of physiology, and are as empirical in
their midwifery as in their treatment of ordinary sickness.

The infant mortality is attributed by many Europeans to the hard work
done by the women during pregnancy, and immediately after childbirth.
The native belief is that a woman should do no heavy work up to the time
of quickening, but that thenceforward the more she works the easier will
her confinement be. Though this maxim is universal, the practice during
pregnancy varies with the individual and the locality. Among the hill
tribes women leave their house as early as the day after their
confinement; they generally do so about the fifth day. Cases are
recorded in which a woman has gone out in the morning in an advanced
stage of pregnancy, and has returned in the evening with a load of
firewood on her back and a new-born child in her arms. But at Mbau, and
among the higher classes generally, women are kept to the house for a
full month, and among the high chiefs the _bongi ndrau_ (hundred days)
are observed, the mother abstaining from all but purely domestic
occupations for that period.

Accidents of childbirth seem to be rare with Fijian women. All the
midwives that have been questioned agree that mal-presentations are
uncommon, and that only one case of an arm-presentation had occurred
within their experience. When abnormal presentations do occur they are
regarded as being the fruit of an adulterous connection, and when the
child dies, as it invariably does, the death is put down to this cause
instead of to want of skill on the part of the midwife. The Vital
Statistics put the still births at 6 per cent., and in a few provinces
at 10 per cent., but it has been ascertained that many of these
represent cases of foetal death before delivery.

In western Vitilevu, the centre of belief in witchcraft, confinements
used to take place out of doors. A temporary hut is run up near the
yam-garden, often at a considerable distance from the village, and the
pregnant woman takes up her quarters there for the event. No preparation
is made beyond taking a rough creel, padded with dried grass, for the
reception of the new-born infant. The people use neither mat nor
bark-cloth for the purpose, being loath to destroy it afterwards, and
saying, "How will you get rid of the blood with which it will be
stained?" The hut, too, is floored only with grass. As a rule there is
no midwife, and the woman does all that is necessary for herself. The
key to these primitive customs is the belief in witchcraft. The most
effective tools of the wizard are the excretae of the intended victim. If
the woman was attended during her confinement a grass-blade, stained
with blood, might be secreted by a malicious person, and used to compass
her death. She uses no mats because mats are too precious to be wantonly
burned, and every mat she had used would be a weapon in the hands of her
enemies. So she brings her child into the world unaided, and burns the
hut and all it contains before she sets out for the village. Now, mark
how superstition works for sanitation. Whereas the child of the coast is
brought into the world in a stuffy hut, and swaddled in dirty
bark-cloth, reeking with impurities, the inland baby and its mother are
guarded against infection by a law of cleanliness more rigid than any
that the Mosaic code enjoined.

[Pageheader: PRACTICES OF THE GILBERT ISLANDS]

As the Gilbert Islanders are credited with being excessively prolific,
and are said to be the only race in the South Seas that would increase
if artificial means were not used to prevent the population exceeding
the capacity of the islands, it will be well to compare their methods of
midwifery as described by Tearabugu, a professional midwife. On her
island--Tamana--much attention is paid to pregnant women. They do no
work during the first two months of pregnancy. At the seventh month they
are anointed with oil; about the eighth their limbs are given passive
exercise, and they go to a separate house to be shampooed by expert
masseuses, in order to train their muscles to bear the labour pains. The
umbilical cord is measured to the middle of the child's forehead, and
cut, but not tied. The placenta is extracted by hand if it does not come
away naturally. In cases of mal-presentation the midwives know how to
give assistance. The mother does no work during suckling, and, if it is
necessary to wean the child prematurely, a substitute for the mother's
milk is found in a butter made from the fresh fruit of the pandanus. The
midwives are reputed to be exceptionally clever, and the labours easy
and safe. Tearabugu could not remember a single case which had
terminated fatally for the mother. She said that four or five children
are considered enough, and any above that number are not allowed to come
to maturity. All the women practise abortion because they are so
prolific. If they did not they would have from ten to twenty children
apiece. But neither medicine nor instruments are used. The common method
is to pound the abdomen with a billet of wood, and this is not fatal to
the mother. Now, however, the practice is being abandoned, because the
missionaries have persuaded the people that it is dangerous.


Lactation

The Fijian child begins life with a dose of medicine. As soon as it has
been washed in cold water a little of the juice of the candle-nut-tree
(_Aleurites triloba_) is put into its mouth to make it vomit. Then a
ripe cocoanut, or in some places a plantain, is roasted and chewed into
a pulp, which is dropped into a cocoanut-shell cup. A piece of
bark-cloth, shaped like a nipple, is dipped into this, and given to the
child to suck. The mother's first milk, being considered unwholesome,
is drawn off, and for the first day, or, in the case of a chief's child,
for the first three days, the baby is put to the breasts of a wet nurse,
if its rank is sufficient to command her services. The wet nurse is
strictly forbidden to bathe or fish in salt water, and there must not be
too great a disparity of age between her own and her foster child. When
the mother's breasts are full, her child is given to her to suckle, but
now, as in the old days, the children of chiefs are suckled by more than
one woman. In Tonga the mother suckles her child as soon as the milk
comes.

In one respect only have the ancient customs relating to suckling
children begun to break down; the missionaries have tried to discourage
the employment of a wet nurse, probably because her own child is likely
to suffer from neglect.

Among the common people it has always been the custom for two girls from
the wife's and two from the husband's family to feed and tend the new
mother, unless her rank is too lowly to entitle her to the services of
more than one. The two grandmothers of the child, if living, also help
to tend the mother. But at the tenth day they all leave her to the care
of her husband. This custom fits into the waning practice of concubitous
marriage, (_q. v._ ante), for if the husband and wife belong to
different islands the wife's relations are unable to contribute their
services to her support. During the first ten days the mother is
confined to a vegetable diet. She is forbidden to eat what the native
call _ka ndamu_ (red things, _i.e._ fish, crabs, pork, or broths made
therefrom), and is fed upon taro or bread-fruit puddings (_vakalolo_),
yams, taro, or spinach. At the end of ten days she goes about her
house-work, and if she cannot command the services of her relations to
enable her to lay up for the _bongi ndrau_ (hundred days), she resumes
all her ordinary outdoor work except sea-fishing, for, as the natives
say, "there is _dambe_ in the sea, and if the mother wets her leg above
the calf in salt water, her milk will be spoiled."

[Illustration: Women Fishing with the Seine.]

[Pageheader: REMARKABLE CASE]

It is perhaps owing to their hard work and low diet that Fijian mothers
so often suffer from a deficiency of breast milk, and that so many
children die from _matha na mena suthu_ (drying up of the milk) and
_londo i suthu_ (privation of milk), _i.e._ from the death, absence, or
neglect of the mother. When the mother's milk fails her breasts are
oiled and steamed and painted with turmeric, and are kept warm by
bandages of bark-cloth, while she eats spinach, _mba vakoro_ (a mixture
of spinach with shell-fish), and drinks fish soup and spinach water.
Kava, which was absolutely forbidden to women of the last generation, is
now drunk by both pregnant and nursing women under the belief that it
induces easy labour and promotes a flow of milk when all other means
fail. But if the flow of milk is re-established, the more nutritious
diet is at once discontinued, for quantity is all that is aimed at.

When the milk fails or the mother dies the child's chances of surviving
are slender indeed. Its grandmother will carry it from house to house
imploring nursing mothers to give it suck. With one accord they all
begin to make excuses. They have not milk enough for their own children;
there are many other women more able to than they. In Thakaundrove a
woman who is not nursing sometimes takes the place of the mother. She is
fed on spinach, and is oiled and tended like the real mother, and in
course of time, if the child continues to suck her breasts, the milk
comes, and the child is reared. There is a well-attested case--and it is
said to be by no means a solitary instance--in which the grandmother
suckled the children during the mother's frequent absences from home.
They were the children of her youngest daughter, and yet she contrived
to induce a flow of milk for each of the four children in succession. It
is not surprising that all the children died in infancy, for such milk
could have little nutritive value.

Statistics show that, even counting the children that are fortunate
enough to find a wet nurse to adopt them, in at least three cases out of
four the death of the mother means the death of the child also, and that
the mortality is only a shade lower in cases where the mother is
deficient in breast milk. The father's absence from home is also a fatal
condition, for the mother is then obliged to take her baby with her to
the plantation, where it is left under a tree while its mother works in
the sun. Among the Motu tribes in New Guinea a sort of creche is
improvised in the corner of the field; every nursing mother goes to work
with her child slung in a net bag. These bags are slung from the
branches of a tree, and are guarded by one of the women told off for the
duty in rotation. I remember coming suddenly upon one of these trees at
a turn in the path. Its dead branches bore a round dozen of this strange
fruit--fat brown babies fast asleep with their knees doubled up to their
chins and their flesh oozing from the meshes of the net bags. Near the
same village I saw a woman, who had probably lost her baby, doing her
maternal duty to a sucking-pig and a puppy.

The only substitute for milk known to the Fijians is _mba_ water, _i.e._
water in which the stalks of the taro (_Calladium esculentum_) have been
boiled. It contains a large proportion of glucose, a little starch, a
trace of albumen, some malic acid, a pinkish or pale violet colouring
matter intensified by acids, water and cellulose, but no tannic or
gallic acids. The microscope showed it to be free from oxalate of lime
or other raphides. In the uncooked stalks and leaves there is a highly
acrid oily matter, which, however, is completely dissipated by heat even
below 200 deg. Fahrenheit. _Mba_ is not unlike boiled beet stalks, and the
sweet and mucilaginous liquor must be a palatable and not unsatisfying
food for a child in ordinary health, though it is far from being as
nutritive as mother's milk. It is strange that the Fijians have never
thought of adding to it the strainings of grated cocoanuts which abound
in every village, though even so the food would still be deficient in
proteids.

In Tonga, on the other hand, children are generally reared safely by
hand upon a diet of cooked breadfruit made into a liquid with
cocoanut-milk. I have heard of one instance of a child that was reared
on sugar-cane. The Gilbert Islanders use a butter made of the fruit of
the pandanus made fresh every day, and they also give their children
young cocoanuts to suck through a hollow rush.

[Pageheader: INSANITARY HABITS]


Weaning

If all goes well the child is weaned when three or four of both the
upper and lower incisors appear. For a month or two before this the
mother has been in the habit of giving it a slushy mess of yam to
prepare it for solid food. While weaning it she gives it chewed yam or
taro in addition to _mba_, and there is something to be said both for
and against this practice. The saliva is rich in ptyalin, which does not
act upon proteids or fats, and is therefore not secreted in any
appreciable quantity during the first year of infant life. As the starch
that is so plentiful in yam and taro is insoluble, it must be converted
into something more digestible before it can be assimilated. The acid of
the gastric juice would retard this conversion, but the ptyalin of the
saliva, like the diastase of malt, has the property of converting
moistened starch, when kept at a warm and even temperature such as that
of the body, into dextrin and glucose, which are easily assimilated.
Thus, while the mother feeds her child upon a diet which it is not yet
prepared to deal with, she supplies from her own mouth the necessary
moisture, warmth and ptyalin for making it digestible. Without the
chewing the mashed yam would produce diarrhoea.

On the other hand, the human mouth is the hotbed of bacteria, which,
though innocuous to the adult, may well be hurtful to an infant. The
Fijian uses no toothbrush but his index finger, which is seldom as clean
as the mouth it is intended to cleanse. It is therefore possible that
the fermentative action that causes diarrhoea in children may be set
up by the chewing, and the germs of specific constitutional disease may
be sometimes introduced. Tuberculosis and leprosy, so far as our present
knowledge of them goes, appear likely to be transmissible in this way,
and the Fijians are largely affected by both tubercle and leprosy. Most
Fijian mothers are heavy smokers, and the residuum of tobacco may well
impart a poisonous property to the food.




CHAPTER XII

CIRCUMCISION AND TATTOOING


Like the Arabs, the Fijians circumcised their boys when just entering
upon puberty, about the twelfth year. In heathen times the age seems to
have been somewhat earlier, for Williams gives the age at from seven to
twelve, which corresponds with the custom of the ancient Egyptians, from
whom the Jews probably derived the custom. It does not appear to have
been strictly a religious rite, though, like all ceremonial acts of the
Fijians, it was invested with a religious observance of the tabu. The
operation was generally performed in the village _mbure_, upon ten or
twenty youths at a time, by one of the old men, who used a piece of
split bamboo. The blood was caught on a strip of bark-cloth, called
_kula_ (red), which in some places was suspended from the roof of the
temple or the house of the chief. Food, consisting of a mess of greens,
was taken to the boys by women, who, in some places, as they carried it,
chanted the following words:--

  "Memu wai onkori ka kula,
  Au solia mai loaloa,
  Au solia na ndrau ni thevunga,
  Memu wai onkori ka kula."

  "Your broth, you, the circumcised,
  From the darkness I give it,
  I give you _thevunga_ leaves,
  Your broth, you, the circumcised."

[Pageheader: CIRCUMCISION A RELIGIOUS RITE]

The word for circumcision, _teve_, may not be uttered before women; in
their presence it must be called _kula_. The proper time for performing
the rite is immediately after the death of a chief, and it is
accompanied by rude games--wrestling, sham fights, mimic sieges, which
vary according to the locality. Uncircumcised youths were regarded as
unclean, and were not permitted to carry food for the chiefs. The
ceremony was generally followed by the assumption of the _malo_, or
perineal bandage, for children of both sexes went naked to the tenth
year, or even later if of high rank; but this was not invariable, for
the _malo_ was worn sometimes many months before, and sometimes not
assumed till some time after the ceremony. The assumption of the _malo_,
or of the _liku_ (grass petticoat) by the child of a chief was the
occasion of a great feast, and the postponement of this feast sometimes
condemned the child to go naked until long after puberty. The daughter
of the late chief of Sambeto was thus still unclad till past eighteen,
and the unfortunate girl was compelled, through modesty, to keep the
house until after nightfall.

The custom of circumcision still persists despite the abandonment of the
ceremonial that attended it. The instrument is now usually a trade
knife, and the operation is performed in the privacy of the boy's
family, who may, or may not, give a feast to his near relations. I have
tried unsuccessfully to obtain any traditions that would give a clue to
its origin. The most that a Fijian can say is that to be uncircumcised
is a reproach, though to a people who cover the pudenda with the hand
even while bathing, and probably never expose their nakedness even to
their own sex throughout their lives, this can have but little weight.
No doubt the Fijians brought the custom with them in remote times, and
its origin is probably the same in their case as in that of the Nacua of
Central America, the Egyptians, and the Bantu races of Africa--namely,
the idea of a blood sacrifice to the mysterious spirit of reproduction.

Shortly before puberty every Fijian girl was tattooed. This was not for
ornament, for the marks were limited to a broad horizontal band covering
those parts that were concealed by the _liku_, beginning about an inch
below the cleft of the buttocks and ending on the thighs about an inch
below the fork of the legs. The pattern covered the Mons Veneris and
extended right up to the vulva. There is not much art in the patterns,
which are, as a rule, mere interlacing of parallel line and lozenges,
the object being apparently to cover every portion of the skin with
pigment. The operation is performed by three old women, two to hold the
patient, and the third to use the fleam. It is done in the daytime, when
the men are absent in their plantations. The girl is laid stripped upon
the mats opposite the open door, where the light is best.

With an instrument called a _mbati_, or tooth, and a cocoanut shell
filled with a mixture of charcoal and candle-nut oil, the operator first
paints on the lines with a twig, and then drives them home with the
_mbati_, which consists of two or more bone teeth embedded in a wooden
handle about six inches long, dipping it in the pigment between each
stroke of the mallet, and wiping away the blood with bark-cloth, while
the other two control the struggles of the patient. The operation is
continued until the patient can bear no more, for in the tender parts
between the thighs it is excessively painful. There is usually some
inflammation, but the wounds heal quickly. A ceremonial feast is
generally given by the girl's parents.

In addition to this tattooing, barbed lines and dots were marked upon
the fingers of young girls to display them to advantage when handing
food to the chiefs, and after childbirth a semicircular patch was
tattooed at each corner of the mouth. In the hill districts of Vitilevu
these patches are sometimes joined by narrow lines following the curve
of both lips. The motive for this practice, which even Fijians admit to
be a disfigurement, is to display publicly a badge of matronly staidness
and respectability. The wife who has borne children has fulfilled her
mission, and she pleases her husband best by ceasing for the remainder
of her life to please other men.

The tattooing of the buttocks has undoubtedly some hidden sexual
significance which is difficult to arrive at. It is said to have been
instituted by the god Ndengei, and in the last journey of the Shades an
untattooed woman was subjected to various indignities.

[Pageheader: REASON FOR TATTOOING WOMEN]

The motive of the girl in submitting to so painful an operation was the
same as that which underlies all subservience to grotesque decrees of
Fashion--the fear of ridicule. If untattooed, her peculiarity would be
whispered with derision among the gallants of the district, and she
would have difficulty in finding a husband. But the reason for the
fashion itself must be sought for in some sexual superstition. When I
was endeavouring to obtain some of the ancient chants used in the Nanga
celebrations on the Ra coast, I was always assured that the solemn vows
of secrecy which bound the initiated not to divulge the _mbaki_
mysteries sealed the lips even of their Christian descendants. I was
persuaded either that they had forgotten the chants, or that they
considered them unfit for my ears, for it was impossible to believe that
the reward I was able to offer would fail to tempt a Fijian to risk
offending deities in whom it was evident that he no longer believed.
After infinite persuasion the son of a _Vere_ was induced to dictate one
of the chants, and it proved to be an extremely lascivious ode in praise
of buttock tattooing--the only instance I am acquainted with in Fijian
chants in which lechery and not religious awe animated the composer.
Vaturemba, the chief of Nakasaleka in the Tholo hills, who was always
plain-spoken, chuckled wickedly when I questioned him upon the matter,
and declared that physically there was the greatest difference in the
world between mating with a tattooed and an untattooed woman (_Sa matha
vinaka nona ka vakayalewa, na alewa nkia_), and that the idea of
marriage with an untattooed woman filled him with disgust. He left me
with the impression that besides the other advantages he had mentioned,
tattooing was believed to stimulate the sexual passion in the woman
herself.

The Mission teachers have long waged war against the practice as a
heathen custom, and in most of the coast districts it has fallen into
disuse, but in the upper reaches of the Singatoka river, though the
people have long been Christians, it still persists, though not
universally. Interference with it by a man, albeit a Mission teacher,
was evidently considered indecent in itself, for men cannot, without
impropriety, concern themselves with so essentially feminine a business.
More than one teacher was charged before my court with indecency for
having returned to the village to admonish the tattooers while the
operation was being performed.

With the introduction of writing it has become common for young men and
women to tattoo their names on the forearm or thigh of the person to
whom they happen to be attached, and there are comparatively few who do
not carry some memento of their heart's history thus ineffaceably
recorded. The inconvenience of this custom in a people as fickle as the
Fijians does not seem to trouble them.

The keloids, or raised cicatrices, that may still be seen (though the
custom is dying out) upon the arms and backs of the women are formed by
repeatedly burning the skin with a firebrand, so as to keep the sore
open for several weeks. The wart-like excrescences that result are
arranged in lines with intervals of about an inch, in half-moons or
curves, or in concentric circles. Sometimes they are formed by pinching
up the skin, and thrusting a fine splinter through the raised part. They
are intended only for ornament, and have no other significance.

The only other interference with Nature is the distension of the
ear-lobes in the older men of the hill districts. The ear is first
pierced, and gradually distended by the insertion of pieces of wood of
increasing size, until the lobe forms a thin cord, like a stout elastic
band, and is large enough to receive a reel of cotton, or a circular tin
match-box, which are both in favour as ear ornaments. Sometimes the cord
breaks, and if the owner has not ceased to care about his personal
appearance he will excoriate the broken ends, and splice them with grass
fibre until they reunite.




CHAPTER XIII

THE PRACTICE OF PROCURING ABORTION


Procuring abortion in the old days appears to have been limited to women
of high rank who, for reasons of policy, were not allowed to have
children. When it is remembered that every lady of rank who married into
another tribe might bear children who, as _vasu_, would have a lien upon
every kind of property belonging to their mother's tribe, it is not
surprising that means were taken to limit the number of her offspring.
In a polygamous society every wife had an interest in preventing her
rivals from bearing sons who might dispute the succession with her own
offspring, and the chief wife wielded an authority over the inferior
wives that enabled her to carry her wishes into effect. Waterhouse
mentions that professional abortionists were sent in the train of every
lady who married out of the tribe, with instructions to procure the
miscarriage of her mistress. The Rev. Walter Lawry, who visited Mbau in
1847, declares, on the authority of all the resident missionaries, that
the practice was reduced to a system. But these motives did not operate
with the common people, who were seldom in a position to pay the
practitioner's fee, although, no doubt, dislike of the long abstinence
enjoined during suckling and disinclination to bear children to a man
they hated were motives strong enough to induce a few women in every
class to rid themselves of their children. The abortionist's craft was
then in the hands of a few professional experts, who made too good a
thing of their trade to trust their secrets to any but their daughters
who were to succeed to their practice.

All this is now changed. Both the motive and the means have spread far
and wide. The secrets of the trade are common property, and the act is
unskilfully attempted by the mother or older female relation of every
pregnant woman who cares to take the risk of an operation. By a strange
irony the rapid increase in the practice of abortion in recent years is
to some extent the doing of the missionaries. With the decay of the
custom of separating the sexes at night intrigues with unmarried women
increased, and to fight this growing vice the missionaries visited the
breach of the Seventh Commandment with expulsion from Church membership.
The girls have come to prize highly their _thurusinga_ (_lit._, entrance
into daylight), as communion with the Wesleyan Church is called, and,
when they find themselves pregnant, the dread of exposure, expulsion and
disgrace drive them to the usual expedients for destroying the evidence
of their frailty. Although by suppressing the usual feasts and
presentations in the case of illegitimate births, and by refusing the
sacrament of baptism to illegitimate children, the Mission authorities
may have given some impetus to the practice of abortion, there can be
little doubt that an illegitimate birth brought even more shame upon
families of every rank but the lowest in heathen times than at
present--unless the putative father was of high rank. There still exists
enough of the stern customary law that punished incontinency to cast a
social stigma upon the mother of an illegitimate child; there still
survives enough of the ethical code that refused to regard the
procurement of abortion as a criminal act to warrant women in choosing
what is to them the lesser of two evils. Moreover, the tendency to the
practice of abortion is cumulative. A girl induces miscarriage to escape
the shame of her first pregnancy. To the natural tendency of women who
have once miscarried to repeat the accident is added the temptation to
undergo, for the second time, an operation that has already been
successful. If Fijian women dislike the burden of tending children born
in wedlock, much more do they shrink from maternity coupled with the
disgrace of illegitimacy. The natives themselves quote instances of a
number of minor motives, such as the dread of the pains of childbirth,
and the determination of a wife not to bear children to a man she hates
or quarrels with--motives which have influenced women of every race from
the beginning of time, and which will continue to do so until the end.

[Pageheader: METHODS VEILED IN SECRECY]

A high birth-rate is not incompatible with the extensive practice of
abortion, where the proportion of stillbirth is also high, and the women
are so careful to conceal their practices that it is highly probable
that they conspire to represent to the native registrars as post-natal
deaths miscarriages that have been caused artificially. The natives of
Vanualevu are reputed to be the most adept in procuring abortion, and
the three provinces included in that island show the abnormal
stillbirth-rate of 10 per cent, of the total births, while their general
birth-rate is the lowest in the colony. It must be remembered that,
since procuring abortion is regarded as a criminal act, the practice is
now concealed, not from any sense of shame, but from fear of criminal
prosecution. The practice is veiled with so much secrecy that very few
prosecutions have taken place.

The methods of the Fijians are, as in other countries, both toxic and
mechanical. Certain herbs, called collectively _wai ni yava_ (medicines
for causing barrenness), are taken with the intention of preventing
conception, but the belief in their efficacy is not general. Some
midwives, however, say that, when taken by nursing mothers with the view
of preventing a second conception, they result in the death of the
child. Another midwife--one of the class to which the professional
abortionists belong--assured us that miscarriage resulted more
frequently from distress of mind at the discovery of pregnancy than from
the drugs that were taken. The abortives vary with the district and the
practitioner, but they are all the leaves, bark or root of herbs, chewed
or grated, and infused in water, and there is no reason why some of them
should not be as effective as the medicines employed for the purpose by
civilized peoples, though the mode of preparation is naturally more
crude, and the doses more nauseous and copious than the extracts known
to modern pharmacy. The "wise women" appear to know that drugs which
irritate the bowel have an indirect effect upon the pelvic viscera. Andi
Ama of Namata stated that old women caution young married women against
drinking _wai vuso_ (frothy drinks), meaning a certain class of native
medicine made from the stems of climbing plants whose saps impart a
frothy or soapy quality to the infusion, which are taken under various
pretexts, but generally as cathartics. None of these drugs have yet been
collected and subjected to examination or experiment, and if any
reliance can be placed on the belief placed by old settlers in the
efficacy of native remedies, it is possible that some of them will find
an honourable place in the Pharmacopoeia.

I do not think that many miscarriages are caused by the taking of
infusions alone, though there are undoubtedly cases in which a long
illness, or even death, has resulted from such attempts. Nevertheless,
even though it be extremely difficult to procure abortion by
administering herbs, as stated by one midwife, it is certain that every
determined interference with the course of nature must be attended with
danger.

Foremost among mechanical means is the _sau_, which is a skewer made of
_losilosi_ wood, or a reed. It is used, of course, to pierce the
membranes, and in unskilful hands it must be a death-dealing weapon.
Indeed, it must more often be fatal to the mother than to the foetus;
for Taylor has pointed out that this mode of procuring abortion is only
likely to succeed in the hands of persons who have an anatomical
knowledge of the parts,[83] and even the "wise women" have shown
themselves to be guiltless of even the most elementary anatomical
knowledge. There are, however, well-attested cases of persons living who
bear the mark of the _sau_ on their heads. In 1893 there was a man
living in Taveuni who bore the scar of such a wound on his right temple,
and the fact that the right parietal bone would be the part wounded by
an instrument used shortly before the commencement of labour in normal
presentations gives a strong colour of truth to the story of Andi
Lusiana and other trustworthy natives who knew the young man and the
circumstances of his birth.

[Pageheader: CRUDE OPERATIONS]

The various methods of inducing miscarriage by violence, such as are
practised by the Gilbert Islanders, who pound the abdomen of a pregnant
women with stones, or force the foetus downwards by winding a cord
tightly about her body, are not resorted to by the Fijians, but the
practice of _vakasilima_ (_lit._, bathing), a manual operation which
midwives are in the habit of performing with the object of alleviating
the ailments of pregnancy, do, either by accident or design, sometimes
result in a radical cure by causing the expulsion of the foetus. The
patient is taken into the river or the sea, and squats waist-deep in the
water with the "wise women," who subjects her to a vaginal examination
to enable her to ascertain the condition of the _os uteri_, and, through
this digital diagnosis, to determine the particular herb to be used
locally or internally. Some women assert that the examination under
water is adopted for cleanliness only, but most seem to believe that
there is virtue in the operation by itself without any subsequent herbal
treatment. As there are many practitioners who devote themselves
exclusively to this branch of practice, it is more than likely that it
is often used as a pretext for an attempt to procure abortion, for a
rough manipulation of the _os uteri_ may excite uterine contraction, and
so bring about expulsion of the foetus. Treatment by _vakasilima_ is
used in every form of disease in the abdominal region to which women are
subject, and the manipulation of the fundus and vagina is so rough that
the patient cries out with the pain.

_Bombo_ (massage) is sometimes practised upon pregnant women with the
result, if not the intention, of producing miscarriage. A few years ago
a notorious instance occurred at Rewa. A pregnant woman, who suffered
pain and discomfort, was received into the Colonial Hospital. After a
week's detention the surgeon advised her to go home, and await the term
of her gestation, since she was suffering from some functional
derangement common to her condition. She fell into the hands of a noted
amateur "wise woman," who diagnosed her complaint as possession by a
malignant spirit, and proceeded to exorcise it by the usual means of
forcible expulsion by massage. The pinching and kneading began at the
solid parts of the trunk, and when the evil spirit fled for refuge into
the limbs, they were continued towards the extremities, and the
apertures of the body, which are the natural avenues of escape for the
afflicting spirit. But the only spirit which the masseuse succeeded in
exorcising was the patient's own, for she died of the operation, and the
facts were concealed from the authorities for some weeks. The
magisterial inquiry did not elicit whether the object was abortion, or
merely the alleviation of pain.

A census taken in 1893 of the families of twelve villages showed that
out of 448 mothers of existing families 55 had been subject to abortion
or miscarriage. If these villages were representative of the people at
large, 12.7 per cent, rather more than one-eighth, of the child-bearing
women of the Fijians have to contend with this adverse condition, and,
as has been said, the provinces that have abnormally low and decreasing
birth-rates--Mathuata, Mbua, and Thakaundrove--are the very parts where
the "wise women" are noted for their skill as abortionists. These facts
would almost suffice in themselves to account for the decrease of the
race.

The Government has made half-hearted attempts to stamp out the practice
of abortion. The heavy penalty provided by Native Regulation No. 2 of
1887 having failed for want of prosecution, the native magistrates were
ordered to hold inquests in all cases of infant deaths, but when all the
witnesses are in league to conceal the truth, it would be surprising if
the intended effect of intimidating professional abortionists were
secured by such means. Post-mortem examinations of women dying in
premature confinement were thought of, but it was feared that the
repugnance which Fijians feel to these examinations would lead to the
concealment of death in such cases.

[Pageheader: FAILURE OF PROSECUTIONS]

It was hoped that the Travelling European Inspectors appointed in 1898
to go from village to village enforcing the Native Regulations might
initiate a few prosecutions, and so frighten the professional
abortionist, who now practises with complete impunity, for as soon as
the people have an object-lesson of the risk she is running in her
nefarious occupation, a quarrel among the women of the village will
bring forward informers to denounce her. But, since no legal penalty has
ever succeeded in stamping out a practice that is secretly approved by
the popular conscience, all that can be hoped for is a slight decrease
in the stillbirth-rate.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 83: _Medical Jurisprudence._]




CHAPTER XIV

THE INSOUCIANCE OF NATIVE RACES


If we were called upon to name the one invention that stands between
savagery and the growth of civilization we might fairly choose the
timepiece of sundial. Fixed routine in daily life is unknown to
primitive man, whose functions are controlled only by the impulse of the
moment. Even among civilized races the most stagnant are those who have
never learnt to put a value upon time, and who, like the Spanish, give
an honourable place in their vocabulary to the word _manana_, or its
equivalent. Few, if any, of the natural races have made any provision in
their vocabulary for any division of time less than the day; they have
no word for hour, minute, or second, nor would they have any for day, if
Nature had not divided the one from the other by intervals of darkness.
Only three divisions of time were known to the Fijians: the year
(_yambaki_), so named from the heathen harvest home (_mbaki_); the lunar
month (_vula_); and the day (_singa_). He identifies any greater
divisions of time by naming the reigning chief of the period, or by
saying, "When so-and-so was so high," indicating some aged man in the
party and marking his height at the time of the occurrence in the air
with the hand. He will indicate the time of an event in the immediate
past or future by the yam crop--"When the yams are ripe," or "At last
planting time"; about the remote future he never troubles himself.

[Pageheader: FIJIANS ABHOR PUNCTUALITY]

The Fijian eats when he is hungry, or when the sight of cooked food
whets his appetite; he bathes only when he would cool his body; he
sleeps when he is disinclined to work or when darkness has made work
impossible; regular hours for all these functions are quite unknown to
him. His nearest approach to regularity is his observance of the season
for yam planting, but this is because tradition has taught him that if
he fails to plant his yams when the _drala_-tree is in flower, he will
lack food in the following year. On one day he will work in his yam
patch from sunrise till evening, and bathe at five o'clock and sleep the
whole night through after a heavy meal. On another he will return from
work at noon, and slumber away the hot afternoon, spending the night in
feasting and dancing. He is improperly fed, not because food is scarce,
but because he is incapable of the routine of regular meals or of any
moderation. In times of plenty his diet is not improved, because he
wastes his surplus in prodigal feasting. In times of scarcity he suffers
because he will not husband his resources. System of any kind is
peculiarly irksome to him. The Rev. W. Slade, a Wesleyan missionary,
gives a good instance of this characteristic in the case of the mother
of a seven-months child born in the neighbourhood of his mission station
in 1893. "The woman herself cannot supply sufficient nourishment to the
child, and has been told to come to the house twice a day for fresh
cow's milk. She came for a few days and then ceased. Upon inquiry I
found that, although the child was dying of starvation, she found it
irksome to apply for the milk. Her maternal affection failed under the
strain of walking one hundred yards twice a day." In the few instances
in which a Fijian has attempted to keep cattle he has shown that he
would rather let his beasts die of thirst than be bound by the necessity
of giving them water at stated intervals. He cannot use dairy produce
because he would fail to milk his cows regularly and to wash the
utensils in which the milk was kept. The law of custom knew these
defects in his character and provided for them. In the days of
intertribal warfare if a village was to exist at all it must have food
stored against a siege. There was a season for planting yams, and the
soil would yield nothing to the slovenly planter. Public opinion took
care that no man in the community shirked his work. The pigs and poultry
thrived because they required neither feeding nor tending at regular
hours. The canoe was kept under shelter, and the matsail stripped from
the yard on the first threat of a downpour of rain, because their owner
knew that he would have to pay the carpenter for repairing them in food
planted by his own hand. But the law of custom has made no provision for
innovations. The sailing-boat, the one possession in which the Fijian
takes the greatest pride, is allowed to decay almost past repair before
he will think of refitting it, although he is well aware that a regular
supply of paint and rope would have made much of the expense
unnecessary. He is still passably energetic about his ancient pursuits
of planting and fishing, but this fishing, which might be turned to
profitable account in the supply of the daily market, is a mere
desultory sport pursued because it provides an ever-varying succession
of excitement. The desultory habit of mind which defers to the morrow
all that does not appeal to the impulse of the moment affects all his
surroundings, makes his house squalid, his diet irregular, and his
village insanitary.

His insouciance, which was kept in check by the law of custom, had its
root, like most other evils, in selfishness--a quality which is quite as
much at home in a communal as it is in a civilized state of society,
where defrauding the commonwealth is looked upon as a venial offence
provided that it is not found out. In a communal state of society the
instinct of the individual is to do and to give as little as possible.
When the law of custom is breaking down, as among the Fijians, discovery
entails but little disgrace. In being selfish the Fijian is only being
what white men are. He has no patriotism and no nationality; he does not
regard Fiji as his country, for Fiji is the whole world as he knows it.
The pride that he once took in his own little tribal cosmos is dying out
now that he no longer has to fight for it, and he concerns himself less
about the natives of the twelve provinces besides his own than an
ordinary Englishman troubles about the Andaman Islanders. So that the
enjoyment of his lands in his own lifetime is not interfered with, the
Fijian does not feel called upon to avert the total extinction of his
race by any measures that demand from him the slightest exertion.

[Pageheader: WEAKNESS OF THE MATERNAL INSTINCT]

The want of the maternal instinct in the Fijian women is no new quality,
but the law of custom took it into account and provided against it. The
tribes that reared most male children had the most fighting men, and
they alone could hold their own. A tribe of habitually neglectful
parents was wiped out mercilessly, and within the limit of the tribe the
old men and women who had grown-up sons were the last to suffer from
want or insult. These incentives to the care of children may not have
been constantly before the minds of Fijian parents in the old days, but
they moulded the daily life of the community, and gave each member of it
an interest in the welfare of his fellows. Under the _Pax Britannica_ a
tribe has no longer any interest in being numerous except the fear of
losing possession of its communal land, and this fear is tempered by the
knowledge that if the land is leased to planters the rent money will go
further among few than among many. Parents no longer look to their
children to support them in old age. The law protects them from
aggression, and they have none of the fear, which besets members of
civilized communities, of destitution in their declining years.

Instances of the absence of the maternal instinct in Fijian mothers
might be multiplied. They love their children in their own casual way;
so long as they are not called upon to make the slightest self-sacrifice
for them they are foolishly indulgent to them. One cannot spend a single
night in a native village without realizing how immeasurably inferior
the Fijians are in this respect to Indian coolies or even to the Line
Islanders. When questioned on this subject an old Line Island midwife
remarked, "We Tokelau love our children; the father loves them quite as
much as the mother." Therein lies the greater part of the difference;
the Fijian mother would look in vain to her husband for any sympathy or
assistance in the upbringing of her children. In the old days when the
safety of the tribe demanded as many boys and as few girls as possible,
female children were often destroyed, but it does not appear that any
protest or resistance was ever made by the mother. The case I am about
to relate is not to be taken as a fair example of Fijian women, because
instances quite as revolting have been recorded among women of civilized
communities. Some years ago, a woman in the Rewa province, noticing that
the dark corners of her house were much infested by mosquitoes, kept her
two-year-old child naked, and forced it to stand in the corner until its
body was covered with the insects, which she then killed by slapping it.
She set this awful mosquito trap so often that the poor child died of
its injuries. It is fair to say that natives speak of this revolting
story with disgust, for the sins of Fijian mothers are sins of omission
rather than of commission. A learned work has lately been written to
prove that the key to evolution is the development of maternal instinct,
which varies enormously in strength, not only in different species of
mammalia, but in individuals. Struggle for existence tends to develop
the instinct, since those who possess it will perpetuate their offspring
to the exclusion of those who do not.

The Fijians are in a transition stage between two systems of struggle
for existence--the physical struggle of intertribal war, and the moral
struggle of modern competition. It is vain to hope that the maternal
instinct can be artificially implanted in them, but if they are ever
moved to take up the "black man's burden," and set themselves to compete
against the motley population that is pouring into their islands,
natural affection, which is now kept down by the savage's dislike of all
restraint and routine, may be born in them.




CHAPTER XV

SEXUAL MORALITY


There is no point upon which primitive races differ more than in their
regard for chastity. Among civilized peoples there has been an ebb and
flow of sexual morality so marked that historians have had recourse to
the explanations of the example of the Court, or the fluctuations of
religious earnestness among the people, assuming that, but for
Christianity and education, mankind would be sunk in bestial licence.
Every traveller knows this to be a fallacy. In Africa, of two races in
the same stage of social development and in constant intercourse with
one another, the one may tolerate a system bordering on promiscuity, and
the other punish a single lapse with death. If it were possible to
generalize in the matter, one would say that the higher the civilization
and the greater the leisure and luxury, the looser is the sexual
morality; and the ruder the people and the harder the struggle against
nature for subsistence, the weaker is its sexual instinct and the more
rigid is its code. But there are more exceptions than will prove this
rule. The Chinese, who were civilized before our history began, are not
as a race addicted to lechery; the Fuegians, who have scarce learned to
clothe themselves against the bitterest climate in the world, do not
even seek privacy for their almost promiscuous intercourse.

Respect for chastity, in fact, is a question of breed rather than of law
and religion. A full-blooded race may use law to curb its appetites, yet
may break out into periodic rebellion against its own laws; a
cold-blooded people, like the Australian blacks, may tolerate what
appears to us a brutish indulgence, and yet apply the most contemptuous
epithet in their language to the man addicted to sensual pleasure.

There was nothing in the institutions of the two great races of the
Pacific Islands to account for the remarkable difference in their regard
for chastity. They were reared in the same climate, nourished with the
same food; the same degree of industry sufficed to provide them with all
that they required. The power of the aristocracy among the Polynesians
should have been more favourable to social restrictions than the
republican institutions of the Melanesians. If the influence of a strong
central government tended in either direction, which the fact that
sexual restrictions were the same in both the powerful confederations
and the village communes of Fiji effectively disproves, the Polynesians
should have been the more continent. And yet, with nothing save race
temperament to account for the difference, the Polynesians were as lax
as the Melanesians were strict in their social code. It was the licence
of the Tahitian and Hawaiian women which tempted seamen to desert their
ships, and so led to European settlements in the Polynesian groups while
the Melanesian remained almost unknown. The prostitution that sprang up
in the principal ports attracted whaleships, which sometimes took sides
in native quarrels. The stories of their excesses brought the
missionaries, and the destruction of such customary law as still
survived was greatly accelerated.

The Melanesians, on the other hand, offered no such temptation to
passing ships. They practised no open-handed hospitality; their fickle
temper kept their visitors perpetually on their guard against attack;
they generally kept their women out of sight, and the women themselves
were not only ill-favoured, but also excessively shy of Europeans.
Though ships have frequented Fiji for nearly a century, and the group
has had a foreign population of several thousands for five-and-twenty
years, professional prostitution among Fijian women is so rare that it
may be said not to exist. Nevertheless, the decay of custom has by no
means left the morality of the Fijians untouched. Let us compare what
it was with what it is.

[Pageheader: THE OLD CODE PUNISHED INCONTINENCE]

In heathen times, as I have already said, there was a very limited form
of polygamy. The powerful chiefs had as many wives and concubines as
their wealth and influence would support, but the bulk of the people
were monogamists. The high chiefs were an exception to the general rule
of continence. They did not, it is true, often carry on intrigues with
girls of their own station, but they could send for any woman of humble
birth, particularly in the villages of their _vasus_ or of their
dependants by conquest. In this, as in other things, the chiefs were
above the law, and many of them made a practice of asserting the
privileges of their station. A low-born woman, whether maid or wife,
received the summons as if it had been a divine command, however
distasteful it might be to her. If she hesitated, and the chief
condescended so far as to entreat her, sealing his entreaty by sniffing
at her hand (_rengu_), refusal was impossible. This kiss of entreaty
from a chief is, even now, so much dreaded by unwilling girls that they
will use violence to prevent the nose of their wooer from touching their
hand, for the Fijian kiss, like that of all oriental races, is a sharp
inhalation of breath through the nostrils.

Considerable licence was tolerated at every high chief's court between
the chief's retainers and the female servants of his wives. These were
women taken in war, or good-looking girls from the vassal villages who
had enjoyed the short-lived honour of concubinage. They did the rough
work of his kitchen, and were lent to distinguished visitors who cared
for that kind of hospitality. But the wives and daughters and favourites
of the chief were inviolable, and the man who dared to meddle with them
played with his life.

Boys and girls were allowed to associate freely during the day-time, and
to play such games as _veimbili_ and _sosovi_ together, but they were
kept apart during the night. The girls slept with their mother, and the
boys, as soon as they had attained puberty, were compelled to sleep in
the _mbure-ni-sa_, the village club-house, in which the unmarried men,
the village elders and strangers slept. The girls were so carefully
watched that they seem generally to have retained their chastity until
marriage, and the young men, fully occupied with the training proper to
their age, had neither the opportunity nor the inclination for sexual
intrigue.

In every community sexual laws were of slow growth; they were not the
expression of a high ethical standard, for primitive races see no sin in
sexual intercourse _per se_, but rather of a growing sense of public
convenience; they were not the inspiration of a lawgiver, but the
expression of the tribal conscience. The Seventh Commandment was an
inscription upon tablets of a law that was already observed by the
Hebrews. The Fijians had evolved their law from considerations that were
purely practical. Women were chattels; a virgin was more marketable than
a girl who had had adventures; an illegitimate child was a burden upon
its mother's parents. And besides these primitive considerations,
incontinence was an infringement of the Fijian marriage law which
provided each individual woman with her proper partner, and maintained
the equilibrium of exchange of women with the intermarrying tribe and a
just interchange of marriage gifts. A people who can complain in such
terms as, "They have had four of our women already, and we but two of
theirs, and here they ask us for a fifth," was not likely to tolerate
clandestine love affairs among their daughters. That a high moral
standard was not the cause of their strict law was shown by the fact
that the married women in heathen times practised a laxity of morals
unknown to them before marriage. Adultery was punished by fine if the
parties were of equal rank, and by death if the offender was of lower
rank than the husband and the act could be interpreted into an insult.
But the women went about their amours discreetly, choosing the times
when their husbands were absent on war parties, and reflecting that
"what the eye does not see, the heart does not grieve for."

[Pageheader: ILL EFFECTS OF EDUCATION]

With the introduction of Christianity there came a change. Sexual
licence, formerly prevented, was now only forbidden. The missionaries'
endeavours to inculcate "family life" on the English plan produced a
surprising result. The _mbure-ni-sa_ was gradually deserted by all but
the old men; the youths went to sleep in their parents' houses, and,
when once the novel idea of unmarried men sleeping in the same house
with women had been digested, the other houses of the village were open
to them. Association of the sexes and emancipation from parental control
did the rest. There were other changes. Education begat in the young a
contempt for the opinions of their elders. Against the precepts of the
old men, who had formerly controlled every detail of the village life,
there were the opposing teachings of the missionary and the trader, both
startling the young with echoes of a wider world than their own. While
the elders stayed at home, the young made voyages to the European
settlements of Suva and Levuka and tasted vice with the loafers on the
beach; they served three years with the constabulary and the police, or
worked a year on the plantations, revelling in their new-found freedom,
aping the manners of half-castes and white men who talked evil of
dignities, and would pass the highest chiefs, even the governor of the
colony, without doffing their turbans. Their favourite topic of
conversation is their amours, and they have the Gallic indifference to
the good fame of the women who have yielded to them. Illicit relations
extend far beyond the limits of the village. When young men are together
in a strange village some one exclaims, "_Me-nda-kari_" (_lit._, "Let us
rasp," _i.e._ shape to our will by repeated solicitation); and the
inferiors in rank will immediately constitute themselves procurers to
their chief--a _role_ which suggests no taint of infamy in their minds.
Sometimes they work through an old woman, sometimes through a young man
of the place who is dazzled by the notice taken of him by such
distinguished guests. The women are beguiled to the trysting-place, and
yield rather from feebleness of will than from appetite for vice. It is
this frailty of will that makes it difficult to believe in the charges
of rape that are frequently tried in the courts. The Fijian woman seems
rarely to yield willingly to any but her chosen lover. She is, moreover,
so muscular that any real and sustained resistance would prevail against
violence, but whether from her habit of obedience or some psychological
reaction of the sexual instinct, she cannot resist ardent solicitation.
"He took me by the hand," a girl exclaimed to the court, when asked why
she did not cry out, as if the accusation of violence was by no means
weakened. If a woman cannot be brought to a tryst her lover resorts to
_vei-ndaravi_ (_lit._, crawling); that is to say, he will crawl into the
house where she is sleeping with her companions and lie down beside her
without awakening them, and profit by her frailty of will. I have known
of cases where a young chief, personally distasteful to the woman he
desired, has compelled her lover to do the wooing in a dark house, and
has then taken his place without her discovery of the fraud. The lack of
self-control seems to be more marked in low-born than in chief women.
When Andi Kuila, the daughter of King Thakombau, had been reproving two
of her women for levity of conduct, they replied, "It is all very well
for you great ladies to talk, but as for us common women we cannot
control ourselves" (_keimami sa senga ni vosoti keimami rawa_:" _lit._,
"endure ourselves"). This speech did not imply that the sexual impulse
was uncontrollable, for in the Fijian woman the contrary is the case,
but that their power of resistance was weak.

Apud tribus quasdam quae regiones montanas habitant, dixit princeps
Vaturemba, non fit coitus in modo assueto, saltem a senioribus. Mas,
genibus nixus, crura feminae levat atque trahit donec nates in suis
femoribus jacent, et sic fit coitus. In judicio quum senex virginis
violatione accusatus est, testimonium puellae non fuit perspicuum utrum
animum verum ad deflorationem habuerit accusatus necne. Interro-gavit
ille princeps, qui judex fuit, "Crura tua levavit?" et quum negavit
puella "Ergo, quamquam animum libidinosum habuit, non te deflorare
voluit," dixit judex.

[Pageheader: INFLUENCE OF CONCUBITANCY]

There is a mass of evidence to show that in heathen times the majority
of girls were virgin until they married or entered into concubinage,
because the law of custom allowed them no opportunities for secret
amours; whereas, after fifty years of individual freedom, it is
extremely rare for a girl to preserve her virtue to the age of
eighteen. The commonest age for seduction seems to be from fourteen to
fifteen, and grown men are more often to blame than boys of the same
age. On the other hand, many young girls give themselves to their
_ndavola_ (_i.e._ concubitant cousin), who, by Fijian custom, has a
right to them, and their relations do not appear to resent this so far
as to prosecute the man for fornication. The birth-rate being high,
these early excesses cannot affect their prolificness, but it is quite
possible that it may injure the viability of the children born after
marriage.

Though the girls do not appear to fear suspicion of their chastity, they
do fear the disgrace which follows the discovery of their pregnancy. It
is to avoid such exposures that they resort to means to procure
abortion, though habitual profligacy seems to be so seldom followed by
pregnancy that this fear does not act as a deterrent. Vitienses credunt
nullam feminam ex uno coitu gravidam fieri, ultroque hymenem ruptum
sarciri posse herbis quibusdam maceratis et immissis. Itaque virgines,
quum ad coitum solicitantur, facilius concedunt. Some Fijians also
believe that girls who have been deflowered before puberty retain their
youthful appearance long after the usual period. There is also a
widespread belief that when a woman has been cohabiting with more than
one man before conception the paternity of her child is shared equally
by all her paramours.

When the morality of unmarried women is compared with that of the
married the position is reversed, for whereas in heathen times married
women were lax, they are now less accessible. This is due, no doubt, to
the state of espionage in which the married woman now lives. Formerly
the husband and his relations only were concerned with her behaviour,
and if they were indifferent, she was free to follow her inclinations;
but since the Missions have branded adultery as a crime, and the law has
made it a criminal offence, every person in the village makes it his or
her concern to bring the offenders to justice. Probably half the acts of
adultery that take place are committed by the wife to avenge herself
upon the husband for his infidelity or unkindness.

The Fijian is not naturally a hot-blooded or lascivious race, in spite
of all that I have said. Its growing profligacy has been called in to
fill the place of the forms of excitement that formerly contented it.
Yet in certain directions the sexual appetite is easily aroused. The act
of _tokalulu_ (spying upon women bathing) is reprobated by the tribal
conscience, but is nevertheless exceedingly common among the young men,
and the women exhibit their contempt for it in a remarkable manner.
Slightly clad as they are, Fijian women are as particular about absolute
nudity as their European sisters. A Mbau girl of rank who was bathing in
the river discovered a young mountaineer spying upon her from behind a
clump of reeds. Instead of concealing herself, as her instinct prompted
her, she allowed him to see that he was observed, and came out of the
water before him _in puris naturalibus_. Having passed him proudly by,
she dressed herself leisurely and returned home to announce what she had
done. The man never held up his head again in that village, for he
caught the meaning of the action--that he was of no more account to her
than a pig who had strayed down to the bathing-place. To the Fijian mind
no explanation was necessary.

Dancing in the _meke_ appears to be a strong stimulus to passion in the
women. At a big _meke_ on the Ra coast one young man surpassed all his
fellows in the war-dance, and as the torchlight gleamed on his oily
limbs a young woman, unable to contain herself, rushed into the middle
of the dancing ground, and clutching him, took his loin-cloth in her
teeth. This terrible breach of decorum became the gossip of the
district, and when she came to her senses she would have taken her own
life for shame if her friends had not prevented her.

I must touch lightly on certain horrible forms of sexual exaltation
provoked by carnage. The corpses destined for the oven were received by
the women with indecent songs and dances which were only ceremonial in
part. At the sack of a fortress the corpses of young girls were subject
to outrage, vagina cadaveris fructu bananae cocto immisso calefacta.

[Pageheader: FIJIANS ARE NEUROTIC]

Some forms of sexual perversion exist, but are not common. They are held
to be contemptible rather than criminal and horrible. Offences against
nature seem to be confined to the inland tribes of Western Vitilevu, who
have been the least affected by intercourse with Europeans, and they
have there, no doubt, been occasionally practised from very remote
times, though, curiously enough, they are there called "white man's
doings" (_valavala vavalangi_). In one lamentable case of a European
addicted to such vice, Thakombau ordered him to leave the group, and he
was afterwards killed in the New Hebrides.

The nervous system of the Fijian is curiously contradictory, and it is
at least probable that the premature excitement of the sexual instinct
in the women has an injurious effect upon their fecundity. In sexual
matters they are certainly neurotic. I have met with several cases of
what is called _ndongai_, which corresponds with what is called "broken
heart" in Europeans. Two young people who have come together once or
twice, and who have been suddenly separated, sicken and pine away, and
unless their intrigue can be resumed, they do not recover. It is not
regarded as a psychological or interesting malady, as love-sickness is
with us, but as a physical ailment for which but one remedy is known.

The causes of the growing laxity of morals lie too deep for the efforts
of the Wesleyan missionaries to check it. They have prohibited tattooing
(_veinkia_), hair cutting and hair-dressing by persons of the opposite
sex, and the old swimming games. But, on the other hand, certain church
festivals have innocently tended in the opposite direction. All the
older natives are agreed in saying that the dances of school-children
(_meke ni kilovolt_), which bring together the young people of several
villages, are made the occasion for dissoluteness as soon as the native
teachers' backs are turned. The early missionaries failed to see that in
breaking down the _mbure_ system, and inculcating family life on the
English plan, they were leaving the native to follow his own
inclinations. Intertribal peace and the possession of boats to make
travel easy did the rest. Nevertheless, the Fijians as a race practise
less sexual licence than many races which are not decreasing, and if it
were not for the frequent attempts to procure abortion on the part of
unmarried girls in order to conceal their shame, it would have but
little influence upon the vital statistics of the race.




CHAPTER XVI

EPIDEMIC DISEASES


While the great island groups of Tahiti, Hawaii, Samoa, New Zealand,
Tonga, and the Solomons had been known to Europe for many years--some of
them for nearly two centuries--the Fijians lived their lives unconscious
that there was another world beyond the reefs that encircled their
islands. They planted food sufficient for their needs, they obeyed the
rigid code of laws with which custom had bound them, they intermarried
with their friends and fought their enemies, but without the carnage
that followed the introduction of fire-arms. It is still unknown who was
the first European to enter the group.[84]

For the evils innocently produced by the first visitors we must turn to
native traditions, those irresponsible records that can lay claim to
historical value in respect of their irresponsibility, recording what
the historian would have forgotten, and omitting nearly everything to
which written histories attach value.

The Rev John Hunt,[85] writing in 1843, says:--

     "The first white people with whom the Fijians had any intercourse
     were four or five shipwrecked mariners, one or two of whom were
     dressed something like ministers of religion: probably the master
     and a passenger. The vessel was wrecked on a reef near Oneata
     called Mbukatatanoa, and the party referred to were either killed
     at Oneata or Lakemba, and, I fear, eaten also. Shortly after their
     death a dreadful distemper scourged the natives. It appears, from
     the description given of it, to have been a very acute dysentery,
     or a form of cholera. Its progress through the group was fearfully
     rapid and destructive; in many places it was with the greatest
     difficulty that persons could be found to bury the dead. Those who
     were seized died in the most excruciating agonies."

The native version, given nearly fifty years later, one was that
morning after a great gale from the eastward the men of Oneata, looking
towards the islet Loa on the great reef Mbukatatanoa, saw red streamers
waving in the wind; strange beings, too, moved about among them. It
chanced that some men of the Levuka tribe in Lakemba, off-shoots from
distant Mbau, holding special privileges as ambassadors, who linked the
eastern and the western islands, were visitors in Oneata. Two of these,
bolder than the natives of the place, launched a light canoe and paddled
near to Loa. The report they brought back ran, "Though they resemble
men, yet must they be spirits, for their ears are bound about with
scarlet and they chew burning sticks." After anxious discussion the
double canoe _Tai-walata_ was launched, and when they drew near Loa the
spirits beckoned to them, and persuaded them to draw near and carry them
to the main island. One of these they proved to be mortal as themselves
for he was buried on Loa, being dead of violence, exposure, or disease.
Here the tradition becomes confused. Muskets and ammunition were taken
from the wrecked ship, but the men of Oneata knew nothing of their uses,
else perhaps the native history of Fiji had been different. The powder
they kept to be used as a pigment for their faces, and the ramrods to be
ornaments for the hair. One warrior, relates the tradition, smeared the
wet pigment over hair and all, and when it would not dry, but lay cold
and heavy on the scalp, he stooped his head to the fire to dry the
matted locks. There was a sudden flash, very bright and hot, and a
tongue of flame leaped from the head and licked the wall, and the
warrior sprang into the square with a head more naked than when he was
born.

[Pageheader: A TERRIBLE EPIDEMIC]

The red-capped sailors had scarce landed when a pestilence broke out
among the people. Here is a literal translation of the poem that
describes it:--

  The great sickness sits aloft,
  Their voices sound hoarsely,
  They fall and lie helpless and pitiable,
  Our god Ndengei is put to shame,
  Our own sicknesses have been thrust aside,
  The strangling-cord is a noble thing,[86]
  They fall prone; they fall with the sap still in them.

         *       *       *       *       *

  A lethargy has seized upon the chiefs,
  How terrible is the sickness!
  We do not live, we do not die,
  Our bodies ache; our heads ache,
  Many die, a few live on,
  The strangling-cord brings death to many,
  The _malo_ round their bellies rots away,
  Our women groan in their despair,
  The _liku_ knotted round them they do not loose,
  Hark to the creak of the strangling-cords,
  The spirits flow away like running water, _ra tau e_.

The strangers never left Oneata alive. One tradition ascribes their
death to the pestilence, another to the vengeance of the men of Levuka,
and as the natives believed them to have brought the scourge, we may
accept the more tragic of the two. At any rate, though various strange
plunder from the wreck was carried westward to Mbau, there is no record
of any foreigner accompanying them.

It is not certain that this was the only visitation of the epidemic
called _lila_. The traditions are so confused, and the versions so
different in detail, that there is some reason to believe either that
there were two visitations or that infection travelled so slowly that
the disease only reached the western portion of the group some years
after it had decimated the islands to the eastward. The traditional
poetry of every district records the disease, and there are several data
that enable us to fix the visitation within the limits of a few years.

Most accounts refer to the appearance of a large comet with three tails,
the centre tail coloured red and the outer white, that it rose just
before dawn and was visible for thirty-seven nights in succession. Here
is the native account of it:--

  Sleeping in the night I suddenly awake,
  The voice of the pestilence is borne to me, uetau,
  I go out and wander abroad, _uetau_,
  It is near the breaking of the dawn, _uetau_,
  Behold a forked star, _uetau_,
  We whistle with astonishment as we gaze at it, _uetau_,
  What can it portend? _uetau_,
  Does it presage the doom of the chiefs? _e e_.

Now, as I have already said, the great chief of Mbau, Mbanuve, died of
the _lila_, and was thereafter known as Mbale-i-vavalangi--the victim of
the foreign disease. When the comet of 1882 appeared, the old men
declared that it presaged the death of Thakombau, for that a larger
comet had foretold the death of King Mbanuve, and a smaller one the
destruction of Suva in 1843. We know that the successor of Mbanuve,
Na-uli-vou, or Ra Mate-ni-kutu, was reigning in 1809, when Charles
Savage, the Swede, arrived in the group. The only comet recorded about
the beginning of the century--Donati's, which appeared in 1811, was too
late for Mbanuve's death--was the comet of 1803, and this date
corresponds exactly with the other traditions we have of Na-uli-vou's
reign, which we know lasted until 1829.

It is perhaps worth noting that on the day of the installation of
Na-uli-vou, while the sickness was still raging, there was a total
eclipse of the sun. "The birds went to roost at high noon, thinking from
the darkness that night had fallen." In the same year, says the
tradition, there was a hailstorm that broke down the yam-vines, followed
by a great hurricane which flooded the valley of the Rewa, swept
hundreds of the sick out to sea, and purged the land of the pestilence.
I have already given reasons for identifying this eclipse with that of
February 1803. There seems to be evidence enough for the belief that a
great epidemic was introduced by a vessel wrecked on the Argo
(Mbukatatanoa) reef in 1802-3.

And now for the symptoms. Mbanuve, it seems clear, died of acute
dysentery, but tradition also speaks of a lingering disease with
headache, intense thirst, loss of appetite, stuffiness of the nose, and
oppression of the chest. The second visitation, if indeed the two were
not raging together, seems to have been a very acute form of dysentery.

[Pageheader: CONTACT PRODUCES EPIDEMICS]

"Before white men came," says the oldest of the natives, "no one died of
acute diseases; the people who died were emaciated by lingering
infirmities. Coughs came with white men; so did dysentery, for Ratu
Mbanuve died of a foreign disease resembling dysentery soon after it was
brought here. This we have always heard from our elders." In attributing
the diminution of their race to infectious diseases introduced by
foreign ships, the Fijians do not limit their meaning to such illnesses
as measles, whooping-cough, or other zymotic epidemics, but they include
diseases now endemic among them, such as dysentery and influenza--not a
specific influenza which has overspread the world since 1889, but the
annual recurrent febrile catarrh or severe cold in the head and chest
which is now one of the commonest ailments in the country, and which
often terminates fatally in the case of the aged, infants, and those
already affected by pulmonary disease.

Fijians are not the only islanders who assert that dysentery and
influenza have been introduced among them by foreigners. The late Dr.
Turner[87] of Samoa says that this is the general belief of the natives
of Tanna and most other Pacific islands. Writing of Tanna in the New
Hebrides fifty years ago, he says:--

     "Coughs, influenza, dysentery, and some skin diseases, the Tannese
     attribute to their intercourse with white men, and call them
     'foreign things.' When a person is said to be ill, the next
     question is, 'What is the matter? Is it Nahac (witchcraft), or a
     foreign thing?' The opinion there is universal that they have had
     tenfold more diseases and death since they had intercourse with
     ships than they had before. We thought at first that it was
     prejudice and fault-finding, but the reply of the more honest and
     thoughtful of the natives invariably was, 'It is quite true;
     formerly here people never died until they were old, but now-a-days
     there is no end of this influenza, coughing, and death.'"

Turner himself, with every member of his Mission, was obliged to flee
from Tanna because an epidemic of dysentery was ascribed to his
presence. A worse fate befell the missionary family of Samoans living on
the neighbouring island of Futuna for the same reason; others were
killed at the Isle of Pines and at Niue and the Mission teachers on
Aneiteum were threatened with death.

On May 20, 1861, the Rev. G. N. Gordon and his wife were murdered by
the natives of Eromanga in consequence of an outbreak of measles which
had been introduced by a trading vessel.

Referring to Samoa, Dr. Turner writes that:--

     "Influenza is a new disease to the natives. They say that the first
     attack of it ever known in Samoa was during the Aana War in 1830,
     just as the missionaries Williams and Barth with Tahitian teachers
     first reached their shores. The natives at once traced the disease
     to the foreigners and the new religion; the same opinion spread
     through these seas, and especially among the islands of the New
     Hebrides, has proved a serious hindrance to the labours of
     missionaries and native teachers. Ever since, there have been
     returns of the disease almost annually ... in many cases it is
     fatal to old people and those who have been previously weakened by
     pulmonary diseases."

At Niue, the natives, whose demeanour earned for them from Cook the
designation of Savage Islanders, persistently repelled strangers who
attempted to land among them. Captain Cook[88] says: "The endeavours we
used to bring them to a parley were to no purpose; for they came with
the ferocity of wild boars and threw their darts."

Dr. Turner, who visited Niue in 1848 and again in 1859, says:--

     "Natives of other islands who drifted there in distress, whether
     from Tonga, Samoa, or elsewhere, were invariably killed. Any of
     their own people who went away in a ship and came back were killed;
     and all this was occasioned by a dread of disease. For years after
     they began to venture out to our ships, they would not immediately
     use anything obtained, but hung it up in the bush in quarantine for
     weeks."

He had great difficulty in landing a teacher. A native of Niue, whom he
had found and trained in Samoa, could not be left, as armed crowds
rushed upon him to kill him. The natives tried to send back his canoe
and sea-chest to the Mission ship, saying that the foreign wood would
cause disease among them. John Williams, a missionary, during his
memorable voyage in 1830, recruited two Niue lads and subsequently
brought them back to their island; but influenza breaking out a short
time after their return the two men were accused of bringing it from
Tahiti: one of them was killed, together with his father, and the other
escaped on board a whaler with a man who returned to the island in 1848.

[Pageheader: MURDEROUS QUARANTINE]

Dr. Turner states that in 1846 an epidemic broke out in the island of
Lifu in the Loyalty Group. Towards the end of 1846, the teachers who had
just arrived were accused of having brought it. "Kill them," said their
enemies, "and there will be an end to the sickness."

In New Caledonia, as elsewhere, the natives believed white men to be
spirits of the dead and to bring sickness; and they gave this as a
reason for killing them.

The Tahitians accused the Spaniards of introducing a disease like
influenza during the visit of a Peruvian ship in 1774-5. In Tonga there
is a tradition of a destructive epidemic breaking out shortly after
Cook's first visit in 1773. The only symptom now recorded was a severe
headache resulting in death after a few days' illness, and the native
name for the disease, _ngangau_, is the word used for headache. It does
not appear, however, that the Tongans associated this visitation with
the arrival of Captain Cook's ships.

The crew of the brig _Chatham_, wrecked on Penrhyn Island in 1853, were
the first Europeans to land on the island. Some three months after their
arrival an epidemic, accompanied by high fever and intense headache and
generally ending fatally, broke out among the natives. Mr. Roser, one of
the survivors, has assured me that none of the crew were suffering from
the disease when they arrived, but that some of them caught it in a
milder form from the natives afterwards. Besides this fever an epidemic
of sores had previously broken out among the natives shortly after the
wreck, but this the Europeans attributed to the unaccustomed animal food
which they had obtained from the ship. Speeches were made against the
visitors. "Why had we come to their land? They had never any sickness
like this before we came, and if we remained we should be bringing them
other complaints to carry them off. Better for us to leave. They would
furnish us with canoes and we must return to our own land."[89]

The islanders of the Kau Atolls, named on the charts the Mortlock or
Marqueen Group (lat. 4 deg. 45'S., long. 156 deg.30'E.), when the epidemic was
prevalent on shore disinfected, or disenchanted, the crew of the
barquentine _Lord of the Isles_ while parleying with them at sea. One
man in each canoe had a handful of ashes done up in leaves, which he
scattered in the air when closing the interview.[90]

In October 1888, when the present writer was with the Administrator of
British New Guinea in his exploration of Normanby Island in the
D'Entrecasteaux Group, the natives in one of the bays would not consent
to hold intercourse with the party until the old men had chewed a
scented bark and spat it over each of the visitors and his own
following.

The people of the island of St. Kilda charge visitors from Scotland with
bringing disease, and call their ailment the "stranger's cold" or "boat
cough."

Instances might be multiplied of the intercourse between different races
resulting in mysterious epidemic disease from which neither were
suffering before the meeting. The Pacific Islanders, believing that all
disease is due to the malevolence of an enemy, often resorted to the one
effective method of quarantine, and murdered their visitors; and it is
probably to this instinct of self-preservation that many of the hostile
receptions of visitors, for which they have been from time to time
severely punished, was due. In the matter of skin diseases we know as a
fact that European ships introduced _tinea desquamans_ into Fiji from
the Tokalau Islands in the persons of native passengers, and that yaws
was carried to these islands from Fiji and Samoa about the year 1864,
within the recollection of Europeans still living there.

[Pageheader: DYSENTERY PROVED CONTAGIOUS]

The Fijians recognize the infectious nature of some diseases, though
they have hardly learned as yet to separate the idea of physical
contagion from that of supernatural agency--the _mana_, or occult
influence of the disease. If it be true that dysentery, colds and coughs
were unknown until foreign ships visited the islands, their opinion that
these diseases were imported by Europeans would have a strong
probability to support it. Modern bacteriological research tends to show
that almost every acute disease results from infection. This law may
apply to fluxes and catarrhs. Dysentery is well known to be capable of
spreading by contagion, varying, of course, with the conditions of the
place and people, but still sufficiently catching to be sometimes a
distinct epidemic traceable to contagion derived from persons or
excreta. "Dysentery," says Gliezgra[91] "is an inflammatory infection of
the large intestine, due to specific virus. The exact nature of the
virus is unknown, but it is probably bacterial. The infection is
epidemic, endemic, or sporadic in its occurrence." In quite recent times
a bacterium of dysentery has actually been isolated, and we have
evidence enough both in Fiji and in Futuna (New Hebrides), where in
February, 1893, the _Empreza_, a labour ship from Queensland, landed a
child suffering from dysentery, and caused the death of nearly a third
of the population by dysentery during the following six months,[92] to
show that dysentery is highly contagious.

To those who may contend that tropical dysentery is a malarial disease,
and therefore unlikely to be conveyed across the wide stretch of ocean
which ships must traverse to reach these islands, the case of Mauritius
may be cited. Malarial fever was there unknown until the year 1867, when
an epidemic of that nature ravaged the island to such an extent that the
price of quinine rose from 21s. to L40 per ounce. Malarial fever has
remained endemic there ever since.

Besides the great epidemics of dysentery and _lila_ there is a tradition
of a less serious disease about the year 1820, called by the natives
_vundi-thoro_, from the fancied resemblance between the skin of the
patient and a scalded banana. This visitation does not appear to have
caused many deaths. There have been several smaller epidemics in various
parts of the group since 1820, but none of these approached in
importance the terrible visitation of measles in 1875.[93] The measles
were introduced by H.M.S. _Dido_ in the persons of Rata Timothe, the
Vunivalu's son, and his servant returning from Sydney, and was
communicated to the members of a great native meeting that had assembled
in Lavuka to welcome the _Dido_. They scattered to their own homes with
the seeds of the disease upon them and spread it broadcast through the
country. The people at that time numbered about 150,000, and it is
recorded, probably with fair exactitude, that 40,000 persons died from
measles, and the famine and dysentery that followed, within the space of
four months. The great mortality was due partly to the suddenness with
which the infection spread. Unprotected by any previous attack, every
person was susceptible to infection; whole communities were stricken
down at the same time, there was no one left to procure food and water,
to attend to the necessities of the sick, or even in many cases to bury
the dead. Many, therefore, died of starvation and neglect, of disregard
of the simplest nursing precautions, of apathy and despair. They became
what is so well expressed by their own word "_tankaya_" overwhelmed,
dismayed, cowed--incapable of any effort to save even their own lives.
So deep an impression did the measles leave upon the race that it has
become their principal date mark; whether it left behind it physical
effects in lowering the stamina of the survivors is a matter for
conjecture.

Since the measles the principal foreign epidemics to which the natives
have been exposed are whooping-cough in 1884, 1890, 1891; dengue, 1885;
cerebro-spinal meningitis, 1885; influenza, 1891-2.

Of these whooping-cough has proved the most fatal, being now permanently
domiciled in the colony. It appeared in Samoa in 1849, but eventually
died out there.[94] It is worth recording that in 1893 the measles
reached Samoa and Tonga from New Zealand, and destroyed nearly
one-twentieth of the Tongan population; but although the disease was
raging in every port from which steamers sailed for Fiji, the Government
succeeded in preventing it from being communicated to those on shore by
a rigid system of quarantine.

[Pageheader: BLIGHTING INFLUENCE OF FOREIGNERS]

Many Fijians believe that the white race always brings death to coloured
people, saying that they have heard it from Europeans. When the
Commission on the native decrease was sitting in August, 1893, I
received from a native of Thithia the following letter, accompanied by a
rude sketch of a Fijian grasping a Bible and retreating before a
European from whose body were drawn a series of radiations to indicate
his pernicious influence.

     _Translation._

     "The decrease of the natives.

     "I wish, sir, to make a few remarks. There has been much
     consideration and discussion on this matter. There appears to me to
     be only one reason for the decrease of the natives: it is the white
     chiefs living among us. It is this:--

     "(1) They blight us--they are blighting us, the natives, and we are
     withering away. It is not possible for a chief to live with his
     inferiors, to wear the same clothes, to use the same mat or the
     same pillow. In a few days the neck or the belly of the low-born
     man will swell up and he will die; his chief has blighted him. It
     is so with the white chiefs and us the natives. If we live near
     them for long, we, the natives, will be completely swept away.

     "(2) They are great and we are insignificant. A plant cannot grow
     up under the great Ivi tree, for the great Ivi overshadows it, and
     the grass or plant beneath withers away. It is thus with the chiefs
     from the great lands who live among us. This is the reason why we
     Fijians are decreasing. 'Let us move gently: we stand in the glare
     of the light' (Fijian proverb): let us practice religion."

     "Josefa Sokovangone."

Such a belief must naturally be accompanied by bitter feelings, and for
Europeans to foster this belief is cruel, and not devoid of danger for
the future. There is proof enough that the first contact of voyagers
with indigenous people or peoples who have been isolated for generations
is fraught with danger for the latter, and it is natural enough that
even without such promptings the Fijians should blame the Europeans of
the present day for the harm that has resulted from the introduction of
foreign epidemics; but to remind them of this, as some Europeans are
fond of doing, is not only to afford them an excuse for neglecting all
efforts of sanitary reform, but to give them justification for feeling a
resentment that may some day take the form of reprisals.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 84: See Chapter II.]

[Footnote 85: Memoir of Rev. William Cross, missionary to the Fiji
Islands, by Rev. John Hunt. London.]

[Footnote 86: An allusion to the custom of strangling the sick.]

[Footnote 87: _Nineteen Years in Polynesia_, by Rev. George Turner.
London, 1861.]

[Footnote 88: _A Voyage towards the South Pole and round the World_, by
James Cook, Book iii, chapter i. London, 1779.]

[Footnote 89: _Wild Life in the Pacific Islands_, by H. E. Lamont.]

[Footnote 90: Official Journal of Government Agent on _Lord of the
Isles_, 1882.]

[Footnote 91: _Text-book of Pathological Anatomy and Pathogenesis_
(English edition). London, 1885.]

[Footnote 92: Letter from Dr. William Gunn, Presbyterian missionary at
Futuna, dated September 14, 1893.]

[Footnote 93: Parliamentary Paper C. 634, and _Transactions of the
Epidemiological Society of London_, N.S., Vol. iii, 1884.]

[Footnote 94: _Nineteen Years in Polynesia._]




CHAPTER XVII

LEPROSY (_Vukavuka_ or _Sakuka_)[95]


No less than one per cent. of the native population of Fiji are lepers,
and, if native tradition is to be believed, the decay of customary law
has not affected the people in this respect either for better or for
worse. All the old men are familiar with the disease; they can diagnose
it with surprising accuracy; and they generally concur in stating that
it has neither spread nor decreased since heathen times.

The history of leprosy in the Pacific is remarkable. The Maoris have had
the disease ever since their arrival in New Zealand--certainly not less
than four centuries ago;[96] with the Fijians it is ancient enough to
have taken its place in their mythology. In Hawaii, on the other hand,
it seems to have been unknown before 1848, in New Caledonia before 1865,
and in the Loyalty Group before 1882.[97] It is impossible to speak with
certainty about the other groups, because the early voyagers did not
stay long enough to make accurate observations, and were prone to
mistake the disfigurements of scrofula and syphilis for the symptoms of
leprosy; the naval surgeons of the last century were generally men of
inferior attainments; and the missionaries, traders, and runaway sailors
who had the opportunity for leaving valuable information regarding
native diseases did not possess the necessary medical knowledge.
Moerenhout, who wrote in 1837, is the first to make undeniable reference
to it. In enumerating the diseases of the Society Islanders, he gives
an excellent description of the symptoms of leprosy under the native
name _Hobi_, which is identical with _Supe_[98] (H and B being
interchangeable with S and P), the Samoan term for leprosy, without a
suspicion of the real nature of the disease he was describing. It may,
therefore, be assumed that leprosy was endemic in Tahiti and the
adjacent islands long before the arrival of Europeans. Native tradition
seems to indicate that it was so in Tonga, and its history in islands
into which it has been recently introduced suggests that it was not a
recent arrival in any of the Polynesian groups except Hawaii. For,
whereas in Tahiti, New Zealand and Fiji it is no commoner now than it
was a century ago, in Hawaii it has increased so rapidly that in forty
years after its introduction it had infected one in every thirty of the
native population; in New Caledonia in twenty years it had infected
4000; and in the Loyalty Islands six years of the disease in Mare alone
had produced seventy lepers. If the other Polynesian groups had been
virgin soil the crop of lepers should have been no less fruitful.

Among the Maoris, with whom it was formerly common, it has now died out.
Their traditions relate that among the immigrants who arrived from
Hawaiki in the canoe _Tuwhenua_ there was a leper who infected all his
companions. They landed at Te Waka Tuwhenua (Cape Rodney), a little to
the south of Whangarei, and scattered among the immigrants of the Tainui
and Ngapuhi parties. Leprosy is still called Tuwhenua in the Whangarei
district, but whether the disease was called after the canoe, or the
canoe after the disease, it is difficult now to determine. In other
districts it is called Puhipuhi and Ngerengere.

[Pageheader: LEPROSY IN ANCIENT TIMES]

The fact that leprosy was endemic among some branches of the
Malayo-Polynesian stock would be another argument, if any other were
needed, for tracing it to a Western rather than an American origin, for
we may infer from the silence of the Spanish historians, that leprosy
was unknown among the aborigines of the American continent. The
primitive home of the disease was Asia and North Africa, and there is
negative evidence that it was introduced into Europe somewhere between
400 and 345 b.c., in the fact that Hippocrates barely mentions the
subject, and that Aristotle is the first to give an unequivocal
description of the disease. On the other hand, the frequent allusions in
the oldest Chinese, Syrian and Egyptian writings to a disease bearing
all the marked characteristics of leprosy, seem to show that it was as
common in the East in times of remote antiquity as it is at the present
day. The Roman conquests carried it far and wide through Europe, until
it became so terrible a scourge that nearly all the European states of
the Middle Ages were driven to enact stringent laws for the segregation
of lepers, which so far fulfilled their object that after the fourteenth
century, when leprosy had touched its culminating point, it began to
decline. The last British leper died in Shetland in 1798, and, though
indigenous lepers are still occasionally met with in most of the
countries of Southern Europe, the disease is extinct in all the northern
states except Norway, where there were still 11,000 known lepers in
1890.

Though there are lepers in Iceland, in the Aleutian peninsula and in
Kamschkatka, leprosy may be said to be a disease of tropical and
subtropical countries. With the exception of a few insignificant
islands, no country in the tropic zone seems to be entirely free from
it. In India--the only large country in which accurate statistics have
been taken--the proportion of lepers to the total population is
estimated at 5 to 10,000, though errors of diagnosis and concealment
have doubtless combined to make the estimate merely approximate. In
China, judging from the numbers observed in the southern treaty ports,
the proportion is probably higher, but both fall far short of the Fijian
figure of one per cent., and the Hawaiian of one in thirty.

Nothing was known of the specific cause of leprosy until 1874, when
Armauer Hansen isolated the _Bacillus leprae_, a discovery which has
cleared the way for formulating precise ideas on the subjects of
heredity and contagion, and the proper treatment of the leper as a
public danger.

It is, of course, impossible for any organism, however small, to create
itself _de novo_. It must come from some pre-existing germ whose habitat
may be earth, air, water, beast or man, and since leprosy has never been
found in any animal except man, nor in any virgin country to which a
human leper has not had access, and since the arrival of a leper in such
a country is followed by an outbreak of leprosy among those who have
associated with him, there is little room for doubt that man acquires
the germ of the _Bacillus leprae_ from man, and not from other animals,
nor from local or climatic conditions. The most ancient, and, as it now
turns out, the most correct belief, was that leprosy is contagious; the
leper was unclean. Driven out from the society of men, he was compelled
under heavy penalties to warn wayfarers of his approach by voice or
bell. In comparatively recent times the belief arose that leprosy was
hereditary, and even that it could be acquired from the soil of certain
countries. The latter belief has been disproved absolutely by the
behaviour of leprosy when introduced into virgin countries. The
hereditary theory is also on the wane, although the Indian Commission on
leprosy in the early nineties did not absolutely disprove it. If leprosy
be hereditary, how explain the striking fact brought out by Hansen, the
discoverer of the bacillus, that of the numerous offspring of 160
Norwegian lepers who emigrated to America none have developed the
disease, or again the equally well-attested fact that children sometimes
become lepers first, and their parents afterwards. Another strong
argument against heredity is to be found in the fact that lepers become
sterile at an early stage of the disease; unless, therefore, leprosy
finds recruits in some other way than by heredity, the disease would
inevitably die out in one or at the most in two generations. Moreover,
leprosy is often developed quite late in life, and if the germ had been
received into the system at birth, one would have to suppose that it had
remained latent for thirty, forty, or even seventy years, a circumstance
without parallel in pathology. In one respect, however, leprosy, like
tubercle, is hereditary; that is to say, it often shows a preference for
the members of a single family, whose constitutions have some
predisposing family characteristic, and who are living together,
breathing the same air, and eating the same food.

[Pageheader: LEPROSY NOT HEREDITARY]

The opinion of students of the disease is now almost universal--that
leprosy is communicated by contagion, and by contagion alone, though it
has not yet been determined how the contagion is communicated. Very few
of the nurses and doctors in leper asylums acquire the disease, and,
except in one doubtful instance, every attempt to inoculate man and the
lower animals with the _Bacillus leprae_ has failed. It may be that the
leper-germ is sterile except in certain phases of the disease, and that
only in favourable conditions in the recipient's health, combined with
intimate contact with the leper, can the disease take hold.

Modern opinion, therefore, holds that leprosy is contagious, and, in a
sense, hereditary also in so far as it tends to cling about certain
families whose members show a constitutional readiness to receive it. I
have dwelt upon this opinion at some length in order to show that this
is precisely the view which the Fijians themselves take of the disease.
A man is said to come of a _kawa ni vukavuka_ (leprosy-stock), which
implies no disgrace except among the highest families, and if he
develops the disease his misfortune is regarded as one of the family
traits as inevitable as the shape of his nose. At the same time he is
believed to have the power of infecting others (not necessarily by
actual contagion), and he was generally made to live alone or with other
lepers, at a distance from the village. In Tonga the contagious nature
of leprosy was fully recognized, and the lepers were isolated on
separate islets or uninhabited parts of the larger islands. It is there
a grave breach of good manners to apply the word leprosy (_kilia_) to
any one in polite society, and many ingenious shifts are resorted to in
order to express the meaning without using the word. In the session of
the native parliament of 1891, when a member of the upper house was
discovered to be suffering from the disease, and a resolution to assign
an island to him as asylum was passed, I covered myself with shame by
unwittingly pronouncing the forbidden word after other speakers had been
skirmishing round it for fully half-an-hour after this fashion--"Havea's
friends were pining for him at home, and therefore it was but right that
he should be excused further attendance at the house; nay, more, to the
westward lay many delightful little islands which Havea was longing to
visit, where his every wish would be gratified, and where--well--the
prevailing wind would blow pleasantly from them to him, and he would be
supremely happy."

The Fijians are no exception to other primitive races in believing that
neither death nor disease can overtake a man naturally. Their first
reflection on seeing the condition of the patient is, "An enemy hath
done this!" their second, that the enemy must be discovered and
punished, and his malignity neutralized by counterspells. It is not a
logical theory of infection, because in their simple creed it is
generally not necessary that the infecting agent should himself be
suffering from the disease. But in the case of leprosy, as in their laws
for the sexual abstinence of parents and for securing the sanitation of
villages, they arrive at right conclusions from wrong premises. Leprosy,
they argue, is inherent in certain families, therefore the evil spirit
of leprosy, which is their equivalent for contagion, is a sort of family
retainer, ever obsequious to the commands of his hereditary masters.
And, since a living spirit must live somewhere, certain stones in
various parts of the country are pointed out as his shrines, and are
hedged about with a tabu that is never in danger of infraction, inasmuch
as to touch them is to meet Gehazi's fate. The existence of these stones
was discovered by Dr. Bolton Glanvill Corney, C.M.G., the Chief Medical
Officer of Fiji, who is not only the principal authority on all medical
questions in the Pacific Islands, but has a very accurate knowledge of
the Fijian language and character. He has visited and described the
stones himself, and has elicited from their owners on the spot such
traditions concerning them as they still remembered or cared to tell.

[Pageheader: STONES THAT IMPART LEPROSY]

Until within the last few years there were three leper stones on the
river island of Tonga near the mouth of the Rewa river. One, called
Katalewe, was vested in a family called Navokai, now living at Navasa
village, but formerly of Nankavoka (the Skull), a deserted entrenchment
that lies back from the river-bank behind the present site of Mbulu
village. Two miles distant is a second stone, called Toralangi, who is
said to be still _in situ_, though Dr. Corney did not actually see him.
The third stone, known as Ratu, was missing from his former position,
the cleft between two buttresses of a _ndawa_ tree, and, although to the
consternation of the native bystanders Dr. Corney was bold enough to dig
up the ground in the hope of unearthing him, he was not to be found.
This is the less to be regretted since Ratu was a peculiarly active
little stone. When the Notho warriors were storming Nankavoka village,
one of them unwittingly dropped his _masi_, which lighted upon Ratu. It
is said that he became a leper in consequence. The leper woman Mereani,
wife of the chief of Navasa, who had her plantation within a few yards
of Ratu, is said to have acquired the disease by working in his
neighbourhood.

Katalewe was described to Dr. Corney as having been (for he exists no
more) "about the size of a large orange or small shaddock, very round
and smooth, ash-coloured, homogeneous in substance, and unlike any other
stones in the neighbourhood," which, being soft alluvium deposited on
old mangrove swamps, is singularly free from stones. So potent was he
that the creeping stems of plants withered or turned aside as soon as
they came within the radius of his poison, and a patch of ground
surrounding him, about the size of a sponge-bath, was always destitute
of vegetation. None knew whence he came. As long as tradition ran he had
been vested in the Navokai family, now extinct but for Karolaini, a
married woman about forty years of age, living at Lukia. This woman told
Dr. Corney that her father, Totokea, long since dead, was a leper, and
that she developed the disease in childhood. She had lost all the
phalanges of three of the toes of her left foot, and had besides an
extensive patch of anaesthetic skin on the right thigh. A "wise woman" of
Bureitu had treated her for leprosy, and she had observed tabus on and
off for some years. By the time she was old enough to marry the disease
had ceased to make any advance; the stumps of the toes were healed; she
could walk without lameness; and the patch on the thigh had begun to
regain its natural colour. After marriage there was no return of the
disease. Dr. Corney examined her, and found sensation to be perfect all
over the patch, and the left foot perfectly sound except for the loss of
the toes. She was quite convinced that her leprosy was hereditary, and
did not result from contagion, and that she would have died of it but
for the ministrations of the "wise woman" of Bureitu. She had two
children (the eldest about nine when Dr. Corney saw them), and both were
healthy.

[Pageheader: THE CURSE OF KATALEWE]

Katalewe's owner (_taukei ni vatu_), that is to say, the senior member
of the Navokai family, could harness the power of the stone to his own
needs if he had an enemy to injure, or to his own profit if other people
had enemies and were willing to pay for his services. It was not
necessary that the doomed person should himself be made to touch
Katalewe; it was enough if the victim's clothing, or hair, or scraps of
food he had been eating were laid against the stone with suitable
prayers by the _taukei ni vatu_. The victim would then develop leprosy,
but the mode of operation was not the same with all the leprosy stones,
as will presently appear. It remains to relate the fate of Katalewe, who
has now lost all power to harm. There came to Mbulu a pious enthusiast
to represent the Wesleyan Church, a certain Sayasi, a native of another
village. "Hors de l'eglise; point de salut," was his motto, and,
Katalewe's natural protectors having died out in the direct line, he
laid violent hands upon the unprotected stone, and carried him home in
derision for his wife to use like a paper-weight for keeping down the
mats she was plaiting. When not in use he was thrown with the other
weights into the fire hearth, where he fell a prey to the consuming
element and crumbled away to powder among the yam-pots. He did not leave
the indignity unpunished. The poor iconoclast not long afterwards had
his mind racked by the indiscretions of his wife, divorced her, and
found himself ostracized by his fellow-pastors in consequence, and
finally, a broken man, he relinquished his cure, and returned to his
native village, where death soon afterwards put an end to his
sufferings. From this tragic story one fact is patent--that Katalewe was
made of limestone, and since there are but two kinds of limestone in
Fiji, coral and dolomite, and coral would have been immediately
recognized by the people of Tonga village, it is evident that Katalewe
must have been a fragment of dolomite washed down from the head-waters
of the Rewa river, and polished smooth by the action of the water. A
stone so unusual in the delta would naturally be an object of remark; it
might be taken to decorate the grave of a dead leper, and, when time had
obliterated all other traces of the grave, tradition would still cling
about the stone--the one feature of the forgotten grave that would
survive to catch the eye of successive generations. As the graves of
ancestors are the vested property of their descendants, so the leper
stone, and together with the Djinn that was believed to inhabit it,
would belong to the seed of the original leper for ever.

In Noikoro, near the chief village of Korolevu, almost in the centre of
the great island of Vitilevu, Dr. Corney found another leprosy stone,
called simply Na Vatu-ni-Sakuka (the Leper-stone), a large basaltic rock
having upon it natural markings in which the natives see a resemblance
to the leprous _maculae_ on the human skin. Among the Vunavunga people to
whom it belonged, and who formerly lived near to it, there are several
bad cases of leprosy. The stone was vested formerly in one Mbativusi
(Cat-tooth), a leper, but on his death it passed into the hands of
Rasambasamba, his _vasu_, _e.g._ a man whose mother belonged to
Mbativusi's family, and to his children. Their family is called
Nakavindi, and the elder of the Nakavindi family, being _ex officio_
proprietor of the stone, is held to have the power of conferring leprosy
upon whom he wishes. His dreadful powers are, of course, invoked
secretly: the offended person comes to him with a root of _yankona_,
whale's teeth, bark-cloth, or mats, praying him to impart the disease to
his enemy. The leper-priest lays them on the stone with incantations
(_veivatonaki_) for a successful issue. Then, returning home, he drinks
_yankona_, and in blowing the dregs from his lips and moustache, cries
as his toast--"_Phya! Uthu i au!_" which, being interpreted, is "Phya!
May his face be as mine!" _i.e._ leprous; and speculation would run high
as to who was the object of the curse. When the curse failed there was,
as in all similar public impositions, an easy way out. No doubt Elijah
slew the priests of Baal because he knew that in five minutes they would
have been ready with a plausible excuse for their failure to call down
fire from heaven. The leper-priest could always plead the inadequacy of
the offering (which, of course, became his perquisite), and ask for
more, or decline to make a second trial. All the leading men of the
Nakavindi family, which, be it remembered, is only a collateral branch
of the original proprietors of the stone, have leprosy in its most
terrible form.

Dr. Corney found another leper stone lying in the silt of a small
stream, Nasova creek, about a mile and a half from the village of
Nankia, in the Sawakasa district. Part of its surface was rough, and the
smooth portion was interrupted with three ripplings or corrugations
which the natives called _vakalawarikoso_. The village where the family
to which the stone belonged was living proved to be a leprous centre
from which the disease appeared to be radiating to the other villages in
the neighbourhood. As this stone appears to have neither history nor
malign influence, it is possible that it owes its name to its macular
markings and its situation near a leprous centre.

[Pageheader: A GRISLY STORY]

Near Wala, a village about three miles from Fort Carnarvon on the
opposite bank of the Singatoka river, is another stone, or rather
collection of stones, for they are described as forming a miniature
cairn of red stones like jade. As the cairn stands within the
burial-ground of part of the Wala village, it may be actually a grave.
The natives are very reticent about it; I lived for more than a year in
almost daily intercourse with the Wala without hearing of it, and Dr.
Corney, who went to see it after hearing of it from the Mbuli of the
district, was adroitly put off the scent by his native guides. He
learned its history under somewhat dramatic circumstances. Being called
one day to examine a number of native prisoners recently admitted to the
prison in Suva, he found that one of four lepers among them gave Wala as
his native village. With the permission of the Superintendent of
Prisons, he took the young man to the hospital in order to question him
at leisure, and there, with the unknown terrors of prison discipline
before his eyes, his reticence gave way. The gist of his replies to Dr.
Corney's questions as taken down at the time was as follows:--"My name
is Namanka; I come from Wala, but my family belongs properly to Talatala
in Vaturu. They left Talatala in heathen times when Vaturu was burned
out by the enemy, and took refuge at Sambeto, but my father and mother
fled to the hills and settled at Wala, where we have lived ever since. I
have one brother older than myself, and he, my father, and my mother are
all lepers. My father was Kuruwankato; he died a few months ago at
Keyasi, whither he had gone for treatment for leprosy. His hands were
withered and contracted, there were ulcers and blisters upon them, he
had lost his fingers and toes, and had patches upon him that had lost
all feeling. He had no brothers; I have no uncles, and no leprous
relations except my father, mother and brother. My father was the first
to show symptoms. This was the way of it. On a certain day, several
years ago, we all went out into our plantation, and left the house
empty. Not even a child was left to keep the house. I was but a small
boy at the time, but I often accompanied my parents to the plantation.
When we returned in the evening we saw that the Sakuka (the Leprosy) had
crossed our threshold. He had entered by the end door, and had crawled
to the hearth, and there in the ashes of the hearth we saw the prints of
his hands and his feet, the prints of leper hands (_mains-en-griffe_)
and toeless feet like hoofs. Thus we knew that the Sakuka had put his
mark upon our house, and wondered which of us was to be the first. We
knew that we should be lepers, being thus marked for it by the Sakuka,
and my father was the first, my mother next, and I was last of all. The
Sakuka is a stone, red like a patch of leprosy, red like red paint. It
is in five or six pieces, heaped together. Sometimes a piece is missing
from its place at Navau. I have been at the burial-ground myself when a
piece was missing, and have seen that it was so. Vasukeyasi is
proprietor of the stone; he is not a leper, but Kaliova, who also has a
vested right in it, is. Vasukeyasi is priest of the stone, and he can
move it to infect a person with leprosy, and so compass his death. I do
not know what forms or ceremonies he uses when he would do this, but it
is a sort of _kaitha_ (witchcraft). When I said that the Sakuka marked
our hearth I meant the spirit of the stone which is obedient to
Vasukeyasi. The thing is true; there is no doubt about it. I do not know
the origin of the stone; it is an ancient institution. I have told you
all that I know about it."

In this grisly story we have the essence of the belief in leper stones.
The cairn of strange red stones set up in a burial-ground can be none
other than a tomb, probably the tomb of a leper. The spirit of the dead
man haunts the site of the grave, and his eldest descendant is his
priest. His priest can conjure him forth in corporeal shape to crawl
into the house of a person whom he has foredoomed to leprosy. This, of
course, is no explanation of the _main-en-griffe_ in the ashes on the
hearth. That episode may have been a coincidence or it may have been a
lie; but that a family of healthy aliens came to live in the
neighbourhood of a leper stone, and were infected one after the other by
means which every native believed to be the malignant ministrations of
the priest, was indubitable fact. And if we smile at his theory of
infection, let us remember that it is logical reasoning as compared with
our own in his eyes, and that he can point to more lepers in support of
his plan of infection by incantation than we can adduce as the result of
inoculation with the _bacillus leprae_.

Dr. Corney heard of two other leper stones--one at Navitiviti in the
Mbure district, Ra province; the other near Mbukuya, fifteen miles north
of Fort Carnarvon. There may be others in Vanualevu and elsewhere.

[Pageheader: DROPSY STONES]

Two instances of stones sacred to other diseases have been met with by
Dr. Corney. One of these is situated near Narokovuaka, on the Wainimbuka
branch of the Rewa river, and the other in the Tonga district, the home
of Katalewe, the leper stone. They are both called _vatu-ni-bukete-vatu_
(dropsy stones). Abdominal dropsy is generally termed _mbukete wai_
(water pregnancy), but when very tense it becomes _mbukete vatu_ (stone
pregnancy). The latter term is also applied to abdominal tumour, which,
though a rare disease among the Fijians, is occasionally met with. In
neither case does the stone appear to take an active part in imparting
the disease to which it is sacred. Probably it was the menhir of some
chief who died of the disease, or some fancied similarity to the
symptoms of the disease was noticed in its shape.

It must not be supposed that the natives as a whole have as matured a
theory to account for the dissemination of disease as might be gathered
from the foregoing account of the leper stones. Few of them have turned
their thoughts to the subject; even the youth who described the visit of
the "Sakuka" had not speculated upon what motive the proprietor of the
stone could have had in letting loose his horrible familiar upon the
unoffending family. His reasoning went no further than this: that they
had leprosy, and he supposed that it was the leper stone that did it. It
was only when Dr. Corney asked the question that the youth remembered
that the leper-priest had the power of conferring the disease, and that
he thought of connecting the fact with his own case. So with the doom
that overtook the iconoclast teacher; the natives related his
destruction of Katalewe and his subsequent fate as totally unconnected
episodes. The occult powers of Katalewe were so much a commonplace of
their lives that, when Dr. Corney translated his notes to them, they
were astonished that any one should think it worth while to collect the
scattered fragments of information they had given him into a connected
narrative.

It is, therefore, scarcely correct to say that they hold decided views
upon the manner in which leprosy is transmitted. Most of them would say
that they had never thought about it, and if pressed for an opinion,
would point to its prevalence in certain families as a reason for
thinking it hereditary. Natives of places where there are leper stones
believe it to be the heirloom of the family connected with the stone, or
the work of the leper-priest when the disease appears in other families
for the first time. But among the coast tribes there seems to be a
strong suspicion that lepers breed contagion, since in many districts
lepers are compelled to live by themselves in the bush. This has long
been the belief of the Tongans, and it is possible that Tongan
immigrants have impressed their views upon Fijians, since it is more
marked in the Lau Islands, where the Tongan influence is strongest.

A painful case came to my notice in 1887 at Lakemba. A leper had been
driven out into the bush, and his wife had been in the habit of taking
food to him daily. Her relations, having failed to dissuade her from
what they regarded as a practice dangerous to themselves, told her at
last that she must choose between their society and his, for that if she
persisted in visiting a leper, she would be debarred from ever returning
to the village, but must live thenceforth in the woods like a wild
animal. The poor woman refused to abandon her husband, and the relations
came to me to ask whether she could not be legally restrained from thus
cutting herself off from all that makes life worth living to a native.
She was brought before me, and as soon as I had satisfied myself that
she was acting of her own free-will I forbade any one to interfere with
her liberty of action. The husband was described as suffering from
nodular leprosy. He had been isolated, not from horror at his
appearance, for men afflicted with lupus in as revolting a form were
allowed to live in the village, but from fear of contagion.

In places where isolation is usual lepers conceal their condition as
long as possible, and it is not uncommon to hear that so-and-so is
strongly suspected of leprosy because he will never take off his shirt
to work, and avoids bathing in company.

[Pageheader: LEPERS IN ISOLATION]

There are, as most people know, two kinds of leprosy, nerve and
nodular. Nerve leprosy is manifested by patches of discoloration on the
skin in which all sensation is destroyed, and the Fijians suffer so much
from scrofulous affections that this symptom may be easily passed over.
Nor is nerve leprosy, at any rate in its early stages, revolting in
appearance. Nodular leprosy, on the other hand, which often attacks the
face, and is far more horrible in appearance, is unmistakable, but it is
less common in Fiji than nerve leprosy or a mixture of the two.

The isolation enforced by the Fijians appears to correspond with the
practice of the Hebrews and Philistines, who drove the pauper lepers
without the city gate, but let the high-born leper alone. Ratu Joseva,
Thakombau's son, like Naaman, still maintained a household of retainers.
The lot of the isolated leper in Fiji is not a very hard one while he
has strength to move about. A hut is built for him in the bush; firewood
is abundant; wild yams are to be had for the digging, wild fowls and
pigs for the trapping; he can pick the best land for his plantation. But
when the poor wretch loses the use of his legs an awful fate may await
him. A horrible story is told of a leper on the Tailevu coast who had
lost all sensation in his feet. Waking by his fire one morning he
noticed a smell of roasting flesh, and wondered for some moments whence
it came, until, when he moved himself to look out of the doorway, he
noticed that the logs in the fire-place stirred, and saw that his own
feet had been lying in the fire, and were burned to cinders.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 95: The greater part of this chapter is drawn from an able
paper contributed to the _Folklore Journal_, 1895, by Dr. Bolton G.
Corney, Chief Medical Officer of Fiji, who has made a special study of
the subject.]

[Footnote 96: White.]

[Footnote 97: Manson, _Tropical Diseases_.]

[Footnote 98: _Voyage aux iles du Grand Ocean_, par. J. A. Moerenhout.
(Vol. ii, p. 156.) Paris, 1837.]




CHAPTER XVIII

YAWS (_Thoko_)


While the decay of custom has been hastened by the introduction of new
diseases, it has not been accompanied by any attempt to eradicate the
old.

Chief among indigenous diseases (if diseases introduced before contact
with foreigners may be called indigenous) is yaws, called by the Fijians
_thoko_, or by its Malayo-Polynesian name--_tona_, and by various
dialectic modifications of that word, which is also used in Tonga,
Samoa, Tahiti, and many other Polynesian islands.

The disease is but little known to the medical profession in Europe,
either in practice or in medical literature. Its medical designation is
_Framboesia_, so called from the strawberry-like eruptions that
accompany it. By the French it is called "Le Pian." In Great Britain it
is now extinct, but in the Hebrides and in the south-west counties of
Scotland it was met with under the name of "sibbens," or "sivvens," as
late as the beginning of the nineteenth century.

[Pageheader: THE SYMPTOMS]

It is common throughout Africa, Malaysia and Polynesia. Being
contagious, it was carried by means of the slave traffic from Africa to
tropical America and the West Indian Islands. From the east coast of
Africa and Madagascar, about 340 years ago, the Dutch or Portuguese
traders carried it to Ceylon, where it still bears the name of "Parangi
Lede" or "Foreigners' evil." Hamilton noticed it in Timor in 1791,
saying "it seldom terminates fatally and only seizes them once in their
lives."[99] Crawfurd, who wrote in 1811-1817, noticed it in Java. Dr.
Martin, the able editor of _Mariner's Account of the Tonga Islands_,
writing in 1810, was the first to recognize the identity of _tona_ with
yaws, though he never saw the disease. But the existence of _tona_ was
recognized by Captain Cook and numerous other visitors to the South Seas
during the last and the beginning of the present century, though they
were not aware of its real nature.

The premonitory symptoms of yaws are, as a rule, insignificant and
obscure; the appearance of one of the sores is generally the earliest
indication that a child is infected, but adults have noticed pains in
the limbs, fever, restlessness, or languor. The first sore, called the
_tina-ni-thoko_, or mother-yaw, is usually a large one about
half-an-inch to an inch in extent, and is often surrounded by a group of
smaller sores. It generally appears on the site of some wound or
scratch, more often about the lips. Those that follow are generally
developed upon some part of the body where the skin is delicate, such as
the neck, the groin, or the axillae, or in parts where the true skin
joins the mucous membrane. Doubtless the lips of children are first
infected owing to the child's habit of putting the hands to the mouth,
the hand being the part most likely to come in contact with the virus of
another child.

After an uncertain interval a crop of pabules, or in some cases blebs,
begin to appear, the face and the parts already mentioned being their
favourite point of appearance. If the eruption begins with blebs the
case is spoken of as _thoko se ni niu_ (cocoanut flower _thoko_, from
the resemblance of the eruption to a spray of the unexpanded flowers of
the palm).

In the next stage a soft warty excrescence, which is the matrix of the
sore, pushes its way through the true skin by forcing it aside rather
than breaking down its substance. On reaching the surface the
granulations which form this out-growth exude a fluid which is highly
contagious. It forms in time a crust or scab, the reddish appearance of
which is very characteristic of the yaws eruption. If this be removed by
means of oil or a poultice, the granulated surface of the sore beneath
it has that resemblance to a raspberry or mulberry which has given the
name of _Framboesia_ to the disease. In some cases the crust assumes
a curvilinear outline, recalling the appearance of the well-known
Pharaoh's serpent. These are especially seen about the corners of the
mouth, the neck and the axillae, and constitute the _thoko ndina_ or true
yaws. In other cases they retain a circular shape on all parts of the
body, and are then called _thoko mbulewa_ or button or limpet yaws.
During the healing process they become converted into annular or
horse-shoe patterns, the centre receding before the periphery.

The sores may remain for two weeks or they may persist for fully two
years. Throughout the progress of the case they may number anything from
one to several hundred. The commonest number is from six to twenty or
thirty. Weakly and ill-nourished children take the disease more easily
than strong ones. While the active symptoms seldom last for more than
two months, the dormant features last much longer, and some of the
tertiary consequences may appear at almost any age.

The chief ill effects from _thoko_ are dysentery, diarrhoea, and
marasmus; sometimes the joints are implicated, even the larger ones,
such as the wrists, knees and ankles, and partial paralysis may follow;
pot-belly is a frequent concomitant, and _tabes mesenterica_ are
believed to follow it. In a later period of life the feet of those who
have had yaws as children become affected by the disease, and on account
of the thick and horny skin by which the soles of shoeless races are
protected the extrusion of the growing yaw through the sole becomes an
acutely painful process. Not only do the typical granulations known as
_suthuvi_ and _soki_ force their way through the skin, but the sole is
also liable to a cracking and peeling form of excoriation called
_kakatha_, which is nearly as painful and is also said to be contagious.
The Fijians do not recognize the connection between any of the sequelae
of yaws and the original disease, and hence perhaps the indifference
with which they regard it.

[Pageheader: MODE OF INOCULATION]

An idea of the serious nature of yaws may be gathered from the cases in
which it has been contracted by adult Europeans. Such cases have been
numerous enough in Fiji to impress the European settlers with dread and
disgust. In most of these cases the disease has permanently shattered
the health of the person attacked, its tertiary effects simulating those
of neglected syphilis, for, while no less severe, they have proved quite
as ineradicable. They are shown in permanent impairment of the digestive
functions, emaciation, inflammation of the bones or joints, intractable
ulceration, and marked constitutional weakness, thus producing liability
to other diseases such as diarrhoea, dysentery and pneumonia, and not
infrequently ending in death. From this it may be readily imagined that
the consequence of yaws to native children can be anything but trivial.
With Europeans as well as with natives an attack is more likely to pass
off easily when contracted in childhood than when taken in adult life.
The most favourable age for getting over it safely seems to be between
two and three years.

Yaws is communicated by the inoculation of virus from one of its
characteristic raspberry-like sores to the abraded surface of the skin
of another person. But, though the natives have never discovered this
for themselves, they do not, as in other diseases, attempt to explain
yaws as the work of a malignant spirit. The fact is that they scarcely
believe yaws to be a disease at all. They think that if a child makes a
good recovery it becomes more plump and healthy than one who has never
had the disease. Mothers are pleased when the first symptoms make their
appearance, regarding it as the best thing that could happen to their
children to set them on the high road to a vigorous manhood, provided
that the disease is not contracted at too early an age. At Mbau,
however, the chief women appear always to have recognized the contagious
nature of yaws. They say that in former time the children of high rank
were not allowed to enter the houses of common people or play with their
children, and in consequence of this exclusiveness they seldom
contracted yaws until they were of an age to resist its ravages. Thus
some escaped it altogether, and the majority had it very mildly. Andi
Alisi and Andi Ana are cases in point, so were the late Andi Kuila and
Ratu Joseva. Now-a-days there is scarcely an exception to the rule that
every Fijian child contracts yaws. Whatever may have been the case
formerly, it is now quite common for children to contract the disease
while suckling and teething; not infrequently before they can crawl, and
even at as early an age as three or four months. When this happens the
eruption sometimes recedes prematurely; this is the only danger feared
by the natives, who usually attribute the recedence to _ndambe_, _i.e._
incontinence on the part of the parents, or to _ramusu_ (internal
injury). When the eruption recedes, as it undoubtedly does in some
cases, the child becomes sickly and feverish and subject to diarrhoea,
and whether these symptoms be spontaneous or secondary, death is more
often the result in these cases than in others. The native treatment is
purely empirical: native drugs are administered in the expectation of
causing the eruption to reappear, but if the attack pursues its normal
course no attempt is made to heal the eruption; on the contrary, it is
intentionally abandoned to the chances of easy and plentiful
development. In very severe cases natives have occasionally made
application to the European medical officers; but, as a rule, it is only
when the eruption has almost disappeared, and only one or two of the
sores persist, that the Fijian mother will allow any interference with
it. The usual native treatment in such cases is to apply a poultice of
the leaves of the _lewe ni sau_, or some other native herb. The more
modern practice is to heat a piece of rusty hoop iron red hot and to rub
a cut lemon on it, and then to apply the rust-stained juice as a mild
escharotic. It is said that in West Africa the natives use a decoction
of iron filings in lemon juice, with the addition of ants and a portion
of the pepper plant for the same purpose. As the old Fijians had no
metals, it is possible that they have learnt the recipe from Europeans
who have read of it.

[Pageheader: CHILDREN PURPOSELY INFECTED]

The Fijians do not claim to have any positive remedy for the cure of
yaws, nor, indeed, do they desire any. They are satisfied that native
medicines suffice to "drive out" the eruption if it has prematurely
receded, and that if they do not succeed in such cases the child will
die. The great body of the people cannot be made to grasp the idea of
inoculation. While some admit that yaws can be caught from one person
by another, others assert that the cause is intrinsic and that every
Fijian child must, or ought to, develop it, and that it is solely a
Fijian disease about which white men are naturally ignorant. In Mathuata
the "wise women" administer medicines to bring on the disease in cases
where children do not readily contract it. They believe that the
occurrence of yaws in a child of a proper age--from two to six years--is
a good augury for the future physical strength and mental vigour of the
subject, and they think that persons who escape its contagion will grow
up stupid, clumsy, and dull (_dongandonga_), and useless mentally and
physically. The fear of contracting disease in adult life, when it
affects the patient far more severely than in childhood, disposes the
Fijian mother to look favourably on the acquisition of the disease in
infancy. They are, indeed, far more anxious that their children should
contract yaws than are the uneducated mothers of English factory towns
that theirs should contract measles. The desire of getting over
inevitable diseases during childhood is the same in both cases, but the
Fijians have less excuse, for yaws is not only a far more virulent
disease than measles, but it might be far more easily stamped out if the
Fijians could be disabused of the idea that it "grows out of the child."
In the days of slavery, from commercial considerations, the West Indian
planters insisted on segregation in yaws-houses, and were partly
successful in keeping the disease under control. But as soon as the West
Indian negro was emancipated and permitted to revert to his own careless
life, the disease began to gain ground very rapidly.

It is impossible to estimate the mortality directly due to yaws. In the
yaws-hospitals of the West Indies the mortality amounted to less than
the annual death-rate of the islands. When it occurs during the first
year of childhood in Fiji it is almost invariably fatal. Indirectly,
there can be no doubt that it is sapping the vitality of the whole
native race. Some authorities--Hutchinson, for example--hold that it is
possibly syphilis modified by race and climate. Syphilis is practically
unknown among the Fijians, but although there are many points of
difference that prove the two diseases to be distinct, it is highly
probable that, from its close relationship to syphilis, yaws has an
enervating effect on the child-bearing functions of the native women.

Though it would now be extremely difficult to stamp out the disease,
much might be done to keep it under if the natives could be convinced of
its contagious nature. In the mountain districts of Tholo _Tinea
desquamans_, or _Tinea imbricata_ (Tokelau ringworm), which infected
nearly 25 per cent. of the native population a few years ago, has now so
far yielded to the efforts of the people themselves that it has been
almost entirely stamped out in some of the provinces. As soon as they
were convinced of its contagion, and understood that the Government
would supply remedies to those who chose to pay for them, they buckled
to the work in earnest, and needed little driving by European
officials.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 99: A Voyage round the World in H.M.S. _Pandora_, by Mr.
George Hamilton, surgeon. Berwick-on-Tweed, 1792.]




CHAPTER XIX

TUBERCULOSIS[100]


The tubercular taint in the Fijians, though less marked than among some
of the Polynesian races to the eastward, is sufficient to influence the
vitality of the race by impairing its power of resistance to other
diseases, both in children and adults. It is seen in the form of
phthisis, strumous ulcerations, chronic bone diseases, and most commonly
as strumous ulcerations of the face, nose, pharynx, or throat, which is
named tubercular lupus. More rarely it appears as _tabes mesenterica_ in
infants, tubercular peritonitis, and tubercular disease of the internal
organs.

All these forms of tuberculosis are more common in the windward parts of
the group, in Kandavu and in Thakaundrove, where the Tongan admixture is
strongest; they are less common in Western Vitilevu and in the mountain
districts, but even in these, where the Melanesian blood is purer,
tubercular disease is far from uncommon. Half-castes are especially
tainted with struma in all its forms, and from this it would appear that
the Fijian does not bear crossing with the European, for while the
negro-Fijian half-caste is usually healthy, the English Fijian cross is
peculiarly subject to phthisis, lupus, and chronic disease of the bones.

Pulmonary tuberculosis occurs as haemorrhagic phthisis, as acute, rapidly
breaking-down pulmonary tubercle of young adults, or as chronic fibroid
phthisis in older men and women. Though the returns of the Colonial
Hospital do not show a large number of deaths from this disease, it is
probable that many die after returning home after a period of treatment,
and in the outlying districts may die without making any attempt to get
to the hospital.

Lupus, though it may make its appearance at any age, is developed most
commonly at puberty, and is most destructive in its results from fifteen
to twenty-five or thirty. It attacks the face, nose and neck, and it
usually destroys the fauces, palate and pharynx; the soft palate is
entirely destroyed, and the only remains of the pillars of the fauces
are scars of cicatricial tissue. The mouth then appears as a vast cavern
instead of being filled with the usual structures, and the nose may be
entirely eaten away. The disease is commoner among women than among men.
I remember seeing a family of high rank in Lakemba, whose women were
remarkable for beauty. The sons were fine, sturdy fellows, to outward
seeming quite untainted, but of the three daughters the eldest had no
face, the second was marred by a depression at the root of the nose,
betokening the first ravages of the disease, and the third, a girl of
sixteen, was the most beautiful girl in the island. "She will soon be
like the others," they told me; "they were more beautiful than she is,
and look at them now!" It was comforting to notice that her impending
fate did not seem to damp her enjoyment of the hour.

Strumous ulcerations of the limbs are the commonest diseases in Fiji.
Thus, out of 621 cases admitted to the hospital in 1892, including
people of many races and every kind of disease, there were 104 cases of
"ulcers" in Fijians alone--the total number of Fijians admitted being
only 246; that is to say, more than 40 per cent. of the Fijians were
admitted for ulcerations of strumous origin. This disease, which the
natives call _vindikoso_, takes the usual form of an indolent, excavated
ulceration, sometimes extending down to the bone. It generally runs a
slow course, and when of large size, the resulting _cachexia_ is
serious. It is generally left uncovered, or at most wrapped in a filthy
piece of native cloth, and unwashed for days together--a fruitful
breeding-ground for flies and parasites.

[Pageheader: FIJIANS ARE TAINTED WITH STRUMA]

To the same taint are due tubercular glandular enlargements, chronic
disease of the bones, with deformity and enlargements, necrosis of the
long bones, and the tuberculosis of abdominal glands, which is believed
to cause many deaths among children, and not improbably also tubercular
diarrhoea both in children and adults.

Yaws (_thoko_) occurring in children of tubercular parents is probably
intensified, and children whose constitution has been weakened by a
prolonged attack of yaws are more prone to die of some form of
tuberculosis. It has also been noticed that adults who bear the scars of
severe yaws in childhood are more prone to contract some form of
tuberculosis in after-life.

The possible identity in the origin of all these diseases offers a wide
and most interesting field for scientific investigation. It is but a
step, for instance, from yaws to syphilis, and from syphilis to strumous
diseases of bone and skin (especially those prevalent among the Pacific
Islanders), and from struma to pulmonary or general tuberculosis. If
such an investigation be too long delayed there is the danger that the
races who furnish the material may have ceased to exist.

The undoubted facts are these:--

(1) That the Fijian race is tainted by various forms of tubercle,
acquired and inherited;

(2) That the taint is more marked where there is an infusion of
Polynesian or European blood;

(3) That females are more affected than males;

(4) That the disease is on the increase;

(5) That the inherent debility of the race is partly due to this taint.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 100: I am indebted to Dr. Lynch, who has made a special study
of the subject, for the medical portion of this chapter.]




CHAPTER XX

TRADE


The necessity for bartering commodities, which is one of the earliest
needs of primitive society, was met by the Fijians in an original
manner. Nomad tribes, who are perpetually at war with their neighbours,
and are not self-supporting, satisfy their wants by raiding and plunder;
settled agricultural tribes in the same condition invent some artificial
condition under which combatants may exchange their goods to their
mutual advantage. Thus, in south-eastern New Guinea there are settled
markets on the tribal frontier fitted with counters of saplings on which
the women of either side may lay their goods and barter them without
fear of molestation by the warriors, for the ground is strictly tabu,
and neither side would dare to commit the sacrilege of striking a blow
within its precincts.

In Fiji the natural productions of the country led to localizing of
industries. No tribe, however wide its territory, was entirely
self-supporting. Salt came only from the salt-pans in the mangrove
swamps; cooking-pots from the clay-pits on outlying islands; the
painting of _gnatu_ was an art peculiar to a few; the carving of bowls
and the building of canoes were the craft of the carpenter clans and no
other. The comfort, if not the existence, of a tribe depended upon
barter, and the form of barter devised by the Fijians accorded exactly
with their passion for formal ceremonial.


The Solevu (_So-levu_, _i.e._ Great Presentation)

[Pageheader: CEREMONIAL FORM OF BARTER]

The _solevu_ is the formal presentation of property by one clan or sept
to another. The ceremonial was much the same whenever merchandise had
to pass, whether as tribute, reward, or free exchange between equals.
There were formerly many reasons for _solevu_. Help given by allies in
war time entitled them to a _solevu_ from the succoured; quarter given
by a conquering army in the moment of victory placed the vanquished
under a like obligation; the death of a high chief gave his relatives a
claim upon the subject tribes; a marriage entitled the relations of the
bride to a _solevu_ from the bridegroom's people. _Solevu_ celebrated
under these circumstances, being in the nature of payment for services
rendered, did not call for any return, though they brought about the
circulation of property. But between tribes of equal rank that had no
such excuse for demanding presentations from each other there was a form
of _solevu_ that was trading pure and simple. A tribe that owned
salt-pans such as those at Nandi Bay wanted mats. It would send a formal
messenger to one of the islands of Yasawa, asking permission to bring
them a _solevu_ of salt. Yasawa accepted. The _solevu_ took place, both
donors and recipients preserving a very accurate remembrance of the
value of the present. After some months, or even years, Yasawa, having
plaited a store of mats equivalent to their estimate of the value of the
salt, would propose to return the _solevu_, and the score would be wiped
off. If they seemed to hang fire, deft hints would be conveyed to them
by the gossip-mongers, that they were fast becoming a by-word on the
Nandi coast. If their offering fell short of the value due from them the
formal gratitude of their entertainers would lose nothing of its
correctness at the time. The speeches would be as complimentary as
usual, the hand-clapping as hearty, but none the less would they be made
to hang their heads with shame when they had returned to their own
island, and heard from the gossip-mongers some of the caustic epigrams
current in Nandi at their expense.

Technically, the merchandise of a _solevu_ was presented to the chief,
but the greater part of it reached the people whose labour had provided
its purchase-equivalent. A good chief divided it out upon the spot among
the septs composing the clan, who in turn assigned it to the individual
heads of houses; a selfish chief stored it away, and doled it out to
such of his dependants or subject chiefs as chose to ask for it by
_kere-kere_, but he applied it to his own use at the cost of his
popularity, and, therefore, of his power. So long as a chief felt that
his position depended on the suffrages of his subjects he did not dare
to indulge his greed, and the trade balance was preserved. He might,
however, apply it to the common advantage of the tribe, to pay off
allies, or to purchase a new alliance, in which case the consent of his
advisers carried with it the consent of the whole tribe. A European,
staying with a great chief such as the Vunivalu of Mbau, is astonished
at the number of minor presentations. Several times, perhaps, during the
course of the day the _tama_ is shouted from without the house. The
chief's _mata_ looks out, and announces the arrival of some subject clan
with an offering--a roll of sinnet, a bale of cloth, a turtle, and the
inevitable root of kava. A few of the household step out to listen to
the speech of presentation and clap their hands in the prescribed form,
but the chief himself scarcely deigns to check his conversation to
listen. The merchandise is carried to a storehouse, where in due course
it will be doled out to some chief desiring it, for the use of his
numerous dependants, or used in the tangled political negotiations on
which the safety of the federation depends. These minor presentations
are in reality public revenue, and their equivalent in England would be
found if every landowner brought his income-or land-tax in kind to
Windsor and laid it with due ceremony at the gate of the castle.

[Pageheader: THE RITUAL]

The ceremonial varied slightly according to the local custom and the
cause for which the _solevu_ was presented. The details of a
marriage-gift differed from those of the obsequies of a dead chief; the
ordinary trade _solevu_ between equals followed a simpler ritual than
that of an offering of a vanquished tribe to its victors. But the
general form was the same. Upon the appointed day the donors carried
their wares to the village of the recipients, and halted upon the
outskirts while their herald approached the chief's house and _tama_-ed,
asking permission for his people to enter. The notables of the village
being assembled in the square, the donors approached in procession, and
were dismissed to the empty houses prepared for them, or, if the party
was a large one, to the temporary shelters erected for their
accommodation. To these they carried their merchandise, and they were
scarcely settled when their entertainers filed in procession to the
door, bearing the feast (_mangiti_) of cooked and raw yams, fish, hogs
half-roasted and the ceremonial root of _yankona_. This having been
presented and accepted according to the usual formula, the visitors were
left to their own devices. In the evening individuals might visit their
acquaintances in the village; the young men or women of the village,
perhaps, entertained their guests with a night dance by the light of
bonfires, but there was no general intercourse between the entertainers
and the entertained. On the morrow, after the morning meal, the visitors
removed their merchandise to the cover of the forest or the outskirts,
and made ready their ceremonial entrance. There, the leaders wound many
fathoms of native cloth about their bodies. The leading chief wore so
cumbersome a cincture of it that his arms stuck out horizontally, and a
man had to walk beside him on either side supporting its weight. The
grown men blackened their faces and festooned the cloth about them until
their bodies were entirely hidden, and they resembled turkey cocks with
tails outspread. Armed with spears and clubs, bearing enormous turbans
on their heads, they were ready for the great ballet that was to follow.
The rest shouldered the salt or mats or pots, and the procession was
formed. A warrior with blackened face led the way. With his spear poised
he crept forward step by step as if about to launch it at his hosts,
pausing every few yards with a sharp jerk of the elbow that set the
point quivering. The chief and his elders followed, bending under the
weight of their huge girdles. Then came others with a litter of boughs
supporting a great bale of white bark-cloth, and many more followed with
the rest of the merchandise, their hosts greeting them with shouts of
"_Vinaka! Vinaka!_" (Well done! Well done!). In the centre of the square
they halted, and laid down their burdens on a fast-increasing pile,
each retiring when his task was done. The chiefs unwound their girdles,
a process that occupied many minutes, and stepped out at last, naked to
their waist-cloths, leaving the cloth as a stiff rampart about the spot
where they had halted. Meanwhile some twenty of the bearers had seated
themselves apart. They set up a chant, marking the time with a small
wooden drum, and the boom of hollow bamboos struck endwise upon the
earth. Then from behind the houses came the ballet, five or six deep,
with a few paces' interval between each. With their black faces, their
enormous turbans, their strange dress and their arms they were a
terrifying spectacle. No ballet is so well drilled as this. Every
gesture of the hands, the heads and the eyes is timed with a precision
that months of practice would not achieve were there not an inborn
dexterity to build upon. Little boys of four or five may be seen on the
outskirts of the practice-ground swaying their limbs and bodies in
elaborate contortions which Europeans after a prolonged gymnastic
training would execute very clumsily. The words chanted by the band may
either be traditional poems whose meaning is obscure, or the composition
of the leader of the dance, for nearly every district has its poet, who
retires to the forest for free access of the muse, and surpasses the
mediaeval troubadours in that he sets his words, not only to music, but
to action, and is poet, composer and ballet-master in one.

[Pageheader: A GREAT WAR DANCE]

A description of one of these dances given by the mountaineers of Bemana
at the Great Council of Chiefs held in Nandronga in 1887 will serve for
all. The dancers marched into the great square in twenty ranks of ten,
and squatted down with spears poised. In their crouching posture the
festoons of their draperies took on the symmetry of haycocks, each
surmounted with a heavy knob for ornament, for their enormous turbans
almost hid the blackened faces. Their sloping spears swayed like a
thicket of bamboos swept by a breeze. And now the chant quickened to a
sinister rhythm, and there was a menace in the stillness of the dancers.
One huge fellow, detached from the rest, began to mark the exciting
drum-beat by fluttering the enormous war-fan he carried in his left
hand; the rest seemed motionless unless you looked into the shadow of
the turbans, where their restless eyes gleamed unnaturally white from
the soot that besmeared their faces. As the chant grew in shrillness and
the drums beat a devil's tattoo that set the muscles of the vast
concourse of spectators twitching with excitement, the dancers became
unnaturally still, not a spear wavered in its slope.

The spell was broken by a shout, deep-toned and mighty, from a hundred
warriors' throats. A third of the band leaps up, and, with spears poised
aloft, marches straight and compact to the further end, turns about and
retreats to its place. But ere the foremost are within touch of their
companions another third springs up and joins them, and together they
repeat the manoeuvre. Another shout and the whole body is in motion.
The earth trembles with its tramp; the rattle of its stiff trappings
drowns the whine of the singers. This time they do not return. The first
rank is within a pace of the line of spectators when the leader--he of
the war-fan--gives the signal. They are down now, with bodies bent low,
and spears poised for stabbing or hurling. Their legs are like bent
springs, so lightly they leap as they take open order. The leader flirts
his huge fan, and runs swiftly up and down, shouting orders that need
never have been shouted. For every movement, of body, head, arm or foot,
is executed as if one wire moved the whole two hundred. They pursue,
they flee, they stab a fallen enemy, they dodge his blows by a sideways
jerk of the head, they run at topmost speed, and the earth shakes at the
tramp of their running, though they do not advance an inch, and their
running feet strike always in the same spot. Their eyes blaze and their
teeth grin with fury, the sooty sweat courses down their skin, the loops
of stiff drapery clash about them. In other dances some luckless dancer
commits a fault not to be detected by European eyes, and excites the
loud derision of the spectators, but here all the dancers are perfect in
their parts and the crowd is awed by the verisimilitude of the piece. At
the outset a few ribald spirits of the coast tribes applauded the
terrific appearance and gestures of the warriors in obvious irony, but
presently, when the play seemed to settle to sober earnest, a fearful
silence fell upon them all. The evolutions of the dancers gave occasion.
Retiring step by step before an imaginary foe to the further end of the
square, they would dash forward in compact phalanx upon the bank of
spectators, checking their onset with a suddenness that seemed to defy
the laws of momentum. If this was but the image of war, surely the
reality must be less terrible. To sit still unarmed while two hundred
untamed devils charge over one with their stabbing-spears is not
courage, but foolhardiness--so, at least, thought the men of Mbua who
faced the dance. And so, when the grass was strewn with the fragments of
the trappings, and the dancers were struck to stone in the midst of
their most furious onslaught, the solid bank of spectators broke and
fled. Only when the warriors had walked tamely off to add their finery
to the heap of presents did they begin to slink back one by one, looking
the more foolish for their heroic efforts to join in the laugh against
themselves.


The Solevu in Decay

[Illustration: A War Dance.]

[Pageheader: ABUSE OF THE _SOLEVU_]

With the arrival of the trader who, all unconsciously, was set to teach
the natives an entirely new system of trade based on currency, all need
for the _solevu_ vanished, and each native product immediately acquired
a recognized place in the scale of values, either in money or calico.
Nothing shows the extraordinary conservatism of the Fijians better than
the fact that they did not at once abandon the _solevu_ in favour of an
informal sale of native products to one another. The two systems
continued to flourish side by side, the native carried his produce to
the trader and took cash or groceries in exchange on the spot, but he
continued to manufacture large quantities of goods intended for
ceremonial presentations to his neighbours and to trust to receiving the
equivalent at some time in the uncertain future. For a time the _solevu_
was encouraged by the Government upon the ground that it would form a
substitute for commerce until the natives should become accustomed to
money as a medium of exchange, and that it was inseparable from the
native social system, which for political reasons it was convenient
to retain. It was felt that without the _solevu_ the manufacture of
mats, pottery, salt, bark-cloth, sinnet, wooden bowls, etc., would fall
into disuse, and that the material comfort of the people would be
affected for the worse. Therefore it became usual for the _solevu_ to
take place at every half-yearly Provincial Council at which each
district became in rotation the entertainers of the others. Upon the
entertainers fell the burden of building new houses, a very salutary
provision, of providing food for a vast concourse of people for several
days, and of manufacturing an immense quantity of mats of native cloth
to be presented to the visitors. In return the entertainers would
theoretically be entitled to a share of the property presented by the
guests on their arrival, and of that given at other councils when the
part of playing host fell to others. This would have been well enough if
the presentation had been kept within bounds, and the spoil had been
properly divided, but the emulation of the chiefs to outdo one another
in hospitality led them to bring pressure to bear upon their people, and
the chief burden fell upon the women, whose principal duty was to
produce the things required for the _solevu_. Moreover, less of the
property reached the producers than formerly, the lion's share being
appropriated by the chiefs who attended the council. Being a distortion
of the real native custom, the _solevu_ began to lose much of its native
character.

At Ndeumba, where the natives earn considerable incomes from growing
bananas, the property given consisted exclusively of European
commodities, such as kerosene, tins of biscuits and calico, purchased in
Suva, while at Rewa a cutter, filled to the hatches with tins of
kerosene, formed the contribution of the Tonga district. The _solevu_
had thus grown to be an intolerable burden. They were far larger and
more frequent than in the old days, they were given and received by the
wrong people. As long as a single tribe or joint family was concerned,
every householder or head of family got his fair share according to his
rank. It was not custom that the group of tribes that form the modern
district should receive a presentation in common, and, as usual, the
native mind could devise no new law to meet the new emergency.
Accordingly, in June, 1892, the Government formally forbade the
interchange of property at Provincial Councils. By the people at large
the order was welcomed, and as a means of commerce the _solevu_ may now
be said to have ceased to exist.

But one evil resulting from the mutilated custom still survives. In the
old days a single district or village was rarely called upon to feed
large assemblages of people; now, every Provincial Council is made the
excuse for immense profusion and waste. At some of them as many as one
hundred and sixty pigs and turtle and six thousand yams and taro are
consumed in two days, and at the Annual Meeting of the Chiefs the food
provided by the entertainers reaches more than ten times that amount. It
is not all eaten, of course. Several tons of cooked food are thrown to
rot on the seashore, but the Government is probably right in not
interfering to check this prodigality. The necessity of planting large
reserves of food secures the people against an unexpected famine, caused
by flood, hurricane or droughts; if they lost the fear of being
reproached for being niggardly it is more than probable that they would
cease to plant sufficient food for their bare needs.

When the _solevu_ of the Provincial Councils was abolished the Governor
laid before the chiefs the proposal to establish a system of intertribal
barter in the local markets, which is a Melanesian and Papuan custom;
this ought not to have been repugnant to Fijian ideas, but the chiefs
could not be induced to take any interest in the proposal, which shows
that their attachment to the primitive _solevu_ was no longer due to the
necessity for barter, but rather to the elaborate ceremonial display
which is so dear to the native mind.

[Pageheader: MARKETING AND _SOLEVU_]

Yet the Fijians are by no means deficient in the mercantile instinct. In
some districts side by side with the _solevu_ a regular system of trade
by barter was practised. At Lekutu in Mbau the townspeople were in the
habit of bartering fish and salt with the hill people for vegetable
produce. There were regular market-places, and the barter took place at
fixed intervals. At Kandavu a single household or tribal sept having a
store of bark-cloth, or some other commodity, would invite the
possessors of some coveted article to trade with them, and on the
appointed day would visit their village and hand over their property in
exchange for cooked food as well as the wares they needed. Similar
practices prevailed in Western Vitilevu between the natives of the coast
and the mountaineers; these customs were called _tango_ or _veisa_.

The growing use of money has been developed side by side with a system
of traffic in native produce, not only with European buyers, but among
the natives _inter se_. Natives of the coast districts of Tailevu, who
are required periodically to take contributions of food to Mbau on the
occasion of some ceremonial without expecting any remuneration, at the
same time carry on a regular trade with their chiefs at Mbau, hawking
vegetables or fowls from house to house for money or its equivalent in
European articles. Thus they draw a clear line of distinction between
_lala_ and barter.




CHAPTER XXI

NAVIGATION AND SEAMANSHIP


Whatever may have been the origin of seagoing ships, the evolution of
the outriggered canoe is not difficult to trace. We may imagine a savage
in remote antiquity standing on the banks of a river and watching logs
of wood from a mountain forest floating swiftly down the current. His
home lies down-stream. There is no path, for the banks are overgrown
with a tangled mass of thorny creepers. This log will pass his village
doors. He wades out and intercepts it. With one arm cast about it he is
borne by the current right to his door without an effort. The women
filling their jars at the water's edge applaud his originality. But when
he next tries the experiment an alligator comes unpleasantly near his
legs. He tries to haul himself astride of the log; it turns round with
him. A bamboo is floating close at hand; he seizes it, and finds that by
holding it athwart the log he can steady himself on his perch. But the
bamboo, being too narrow to offer resistance to the water, tends to sink
until he rests the end upon a floating branch. But on his next aquatic
journey, remembering that the bamboo tired the arms and kept slipping
off the branch, he takes a vine with him, and lashes the bamboo to log
and branch. This leaves his hands free to use another bamboo to keep the
head of his craft down-stream by poling on the bottom. He even punts it
laboriously to land at the village, and ties it up for use in crossing
the river on the morrow. He has taken the first step towards building a
craft of his own. The thin end of the log cleft the water better than
the other. He chips the end to a point. There are tribes that stop at
this point. The catamarans of Eastern New Guinea are merely three
shaped logs lashed together, and depend for their buoyancy upon the
displacement of the solid wood. A chance experiment shows that a hollow
log is more buoyant, besides having the advantage of providing a dry
resting-place for the feet. The discoverer of this phenomenon widens the
natural hollow with fire, lashes his cross-ties to a smaller log, also
sharpened at the ends, and he has made a Fijian canoe. The next steps
are easy. By trying to propel it up-stream with a bamboo too short to
reach the bottom he discards the pole for a slab of bark, and he has
invented the paddle. To use the wind in the estuary to the best
advantage he props a slab of bark on a stick and steadies it with a stay
of vine. On his next voyage he takes a mat with him, staying his mast to
the outrigger, the bow and the stern. Going about on the other tack the
pressure of the wind bearing on the outrigger sinks it and capsizes the
canoe, teaching him by painful experience that he must turn his sail
inside out, and keep the outrigger always to windward. He has now
devised the most complicated, the swiftest, and in many respects the
most beautiful sailing machine in existence--the sailing canoe. The
raising of the sides, and the decking of the bow and stern are
expedients that need no deductive process.

[Illustration: The _Thamakau_.]

[Pageheader: THE SAILING CANOE]

Four kinds of canoe are used by the Fijians: (1) The _Takia_--an
undecked dug-out furnished with an outrigger, which is used on the
rivers and on the calm water inside the reef, and is propelled with
poles or with paddles.

(2) The _Thamakau_--a seagoing canoe with sides raised by planking to
carry a deck; with solid outrigger and mast and sails.

(3) The _Tambilai_--a dug-out with ends cut square, several feet at each
end being left solid.

(4) The _Ndrua_, or twin canoe--which is, as its name implies, made of
twin hulls, the one smaller than the other, connected by a deck, on
which the mast is stepped. The smaller hull is the outrigger, and is
always kept to windward. These vessels being often too large to be made
from a single trunk, are put together in sections with a sort of scarf
joint, secured by lashings of cocoanut sinnet. The adze and the auger
were the only tools used, every plank being adzed from a solid trunk,
and, since every joint must fit true, and the planking be less than an
inch thick, and one false stroke of the adze might spoil many days of
labour, some idea of the skill and patience of the native carpenter may
be formed. These vessels were of great size. The _Rusa i vanua_ was 118
feet over all. Her yards were 90 feet long, and she carried a crew of 50
men. Maafu mounted cannon on two of his _ndrua_, which were capable of
making long ocean voyages, and with the wind on the quarter could run
from ten to fifteen knots in the hour. Though they could lie close to
the wind, being keel-less, they made much leeway, and were bad sea-boats
to windward or in a seaway, for the play of the twin hulls was apt to
work the lashings loose. There is, however, no sea sport so exciting and
exhilarating as sailing on a calm sea in a _ndrua_ or _thamakau_ with
the wind abeam. A clever sheet-man will contrive to lift the outrigger
out of the water until it barely skims the surface, and then the canoe
becomes a veritable flying-machine.

The _ndrua_ is enormously expensive to keep up, and for this reason it
will be seen no more. The mat-sail, which costs far more than canvas,
rots quickly if it gets wet, and must be unbent and taken into shelter
after every trip. The sinnet lashings, both above and below water, soon
work loose and become rotten, and the whole structure has then to be
rebuilt. To manage the great sail in tacking a crew of from ten to
twenty men, all expert canoemen, is required. By the year 1890 the
_ndrua_ in the group could be counted on the fingers, and probably the
last has now fallen to pieces.

Thomas Williams has given so admirable a description of the building and
management of these canoes[101] that it need not be again described.

[Pageheader: THE PAY OF CANOE-BUILDERS]

The handicraft of canoe-building was hereditary. Every considerable
chief had his _matai_, but those of Rewa, descended from Tongan
immigrants, were the most esteemed in the west and those of Kambara in
the east. In 1860, however, the Fijian _matai_ fell upon evil days, for
the chiefs preferred the Tongan craftsmen, who had begun to settle in
the group. Besides canoes the _matai_ made _lali_ (wooden drums), kava
and food bowls, all cut from the solid timber with the adze. Every stage
of canoe-building called for its special feast and presentation to the
_matai_, and in order to test the actual cost of these I once had a
canoe built by a Rewa _matai_ and his mate on the Fijian system of
remuneration. I was acting as Commissioner of Tholo West at the time,
and being in native eyes vested with the powers of a Roko Tui, I could
play the part of carpenter's patron with plausibility. The men who
hauled in the logs were given the appropriate feast, the _matai_ had his
feast at the completion of the hull, at the fixing of the upper works,
at the lashing of the deck. I obtained the mats for the sails from
Yasawa by _kerekere_ (begging), and sent their equivalent in kind; the
neighbouring villages performed the ceremony of _rova_ (and received
their reward) after the launching. When I came to reckon up the bill I
found that it came to L13--a little more than the contract rate for
building canoes at that time, which was L2 a fathom; or, to put it in
another way, as the canoe was two months in building, about L3 a month
for each man besides rations. But since my carpenters were on their
mettle, the canoe was better built than it would have been by a contract
builder.

Forward and abaft the deck both in the _ndrua_ and the _thamakau_ are
open wells, in which a man stands baling with a wooden scoop, for the
joints and seams of the planking let in a good deal of water when under
sail. Beyond these wells some fluted work is left by the adze, and a
line of beading is left along the lee side both to afford footholds to
the men who carry over the foot of the yards in tacking and to carry
fixed blocks for the _tuku_ or mast-stay. A remarkable feature about
these carvings is that they never vary, though some of them have no
object but that of ornamentation, and they are sufficiently elaborate to
have been only arrived at after a long period of evolution.

If the Fijian canoe is so carelessly handled as to bring the outrigger
to leeward she immediately capsizes, for the pressure of the wind
drives the outrigger under water. In order to keep the outrigger to
windward when tacking it is therefore necessary to make what was
formerly the bow become the stern, the sail must be turned inside out,
and the mast, yards and steer-oar must all be changed over. This
complicated manoeuvre is accomplished with extraordinary skill.
Instead of luffing up into the wind as in a cutter the steersman keeps
away until the wind is abeam, the sheetman slacking the sheet
simultaneously until the sail is flapping. Two or three men then run out
to the prow, seize the foot of the yards and carry them bodily
amidships. During this operation they have to bear the weight of the
mast, which is sloping forward at an angle of 45 degrees, and to relieve
them of some of this extra weight a man is hauling on the running stay,
which runs through a block astern. As they pass the mast with their
burden the lower yard is let go, the sheet is passed round their legs,
and the sail turns inside out. They tramp forward, and the mast again
begins to incline, throwing its weight upon them. A man now seizes the
other stay, and in obedience to their loud cries of "_Tuku!_" begins
cautiously to pay it out. If he is too quick the weight of the mast
precipitates the men and the sail into the water; if he is too slow he
holds them back. At last the foot of the yards is planted with a thud
into its nest in the carving and lashed secure, but before the sheet can
be hauled in the heavy steer-oar, which takes two men to lift, has to be
dragged inboard and carried aft. All this time the hull is heaving in
the trough of the sea, and the mat sail is thrashing itself to pieces.
Sometimes the yard-carriers slip on the wet deck, and tumble overboard,
sail and all, in inextricable ruin, but if all goes well the canoe is
gathering way on the new tack in less than sixty seconds, and though to
the spectator on board the moment is full of excitement and risk, to
those watching it on shore it is the most precise and beautiful
manoeuvre known to seamanship.

[Pageheader: NEW MODELS OF SCULLING]

And now we come to a remarkable paradox. The Tongans were the great
navigators of the Pacific; the Fijians are not known to have voyaged
beyond their own group. The Tongans were so expert with the adze that
they rapidly displaced the Fijian canoe-builder in his own country. And
yet the Tongan counterpart to the _ndrua_ was the _tongiaki_, a craft so
clumsy and ill-finished that it did not survive the eighteenth century,
when the Tongans learned the art of canoe-sailing from Fijians. The
_tongiaki_ was like the _ndrua_ in build, but its mast was immovable and
it tacked like a cutter. To make this possible the mast was stayed on
both sides from a clumsy transom which protruded many feet beyond the
deck. It could lie close to the wind on one tack, but on the other the
sail was broken up into pockets by the mast, which held the wind and
stopped all headway. Consequently it was the practice to wait for a fair
wind, and set the sail on what would be the lee of the mast, and if the
wind changed there was nothing for it but to change the course. It was,
no doubt, this fact that led to so many Tongans being cast away on
remote islands, and to the mixing of Polynesian with Melanesian blood.
From 1790 to 1810 it had become the custom for Tongan chiefs to voyage
to Fiji in their clumsy _tongiaki_, join in the native wars, and take as
their portion of the loot Fijian _ndrua_, in which they beat back to
Tonga, and in a very few years the _tongiaki_[102] was extinct.

There were two ways of propelling a canoe in a dead calm--the _vothe_
and the _sua_. The _vothe_ is a leaf-shaped paddle cut from one piece of
_vesi_ hardwood, five feet long and eighteen inches across the widest
part of the blade. Adapted for propelling light canoes on the rivers, it
is ineffective against the dead weight of the heavy _thamakau_. In shape
and size the _sua_ resembles the oar of a ship's cutter. Thrusting it
down perpendicularly into the water between the hull and the outrigger,
and using the cross-tie as a rowlock, the sculler describes short,
semicircular sweeps with the blade, throwing his weight against the
handle in front of him as he stands upon the deck. When two are sculling
they swing in time, but in opposite directions, and there is no exercise
that displays the grace of the human body in action to better advantage.
A speed of three miles an hour is the maximum that can be attained with
the _sua_, but the scullers can maintain this speed for a long time
without fatigue. The stroke is as difficult to acquire as that of the
gondolier, but when you have once acquired it you wonder wherein the
difficulty lay.

The craft of seamanship was hereditary, and every considerable chief had
his fisher tribe to man his canoes. In war time they were his navy,
since many engagements were fought at sea. Manoeuvring to windward of
the enemy was even more important in a war-canoe than in a frigate,
because by getting within striking distance of his outrigger you had him
at your mercy. While he could not venture out upon his outrigger without
capsizing himself, one stroke of a hatchet at his mast-stay brought the
whole of his rigging down about his ears, and you could club his head as
it bobbed up under the sail. A body of etiquette grew up about the
canoe. The high chief's canoe was marked by a streamer or a fan floating
from the tip of the lower yard. It was an insult to cross her bows, or
to sail to windward of her. The custom which required the serf to stoop
in passing or approaching a chief was extended to canoes passing or
approaching chief villages such as Mbau. All had to lower their sails,
and toil past with the _sua_, however fair the breeze.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 101: _Fiji and the Fijians_, pp. 71-76, 88-89.]

[Footnote 102: A full description and diagram of the _tongiaki_ is given
by Captain Cook.]




CHAPTER XXII

PHYSICAL POWERS


Though the contrary is asserted by European residents, I think that the
physical strength and endurance of a Fijian are greater rather than less
than that of the average Englishman. Native prisoners, used as porters,
will carry a box weighing from 50 to 60 lb., slung on a bamboo between
two men, over very hilly roads a distance of thirty miles in a hot sun
without distress, if they are allowed occasional halts, and will do this
for several days in succession. A letter-carrier will cover thirty-five
miles of hilly road as an ordinary day's march, and more if haste is
enjoined. On a fairly level road, such as the hard beach, a native will
walk ten miles easily in two hours and a quarter. It is probably true
that most Europeans in good training could do all these things equally
well in cool weather, if they were barefooted and could reduce their
clothing to a loin-cloth; for having once been shipwrecked at night,
with ten miles of sand in the darkness to cover, when I had given my wet
clothes and shoes to a native to carry, I found that I outpaced my men
easily. But this, of course, was no test, for the cool breeze which was
pleasant to me cut through them like a March east wind, and left them
shivering, starved and miserable.

On the sugar plantations the overseers have a good opportunity of
comparing the strength and endurance of Fijians and East Indian coolies,
and they find that where steady hard work, such as thrashing cane, is
required the coolie is the best labourer, but that the Fijian excels in
work such as unloading punts, or hauling logs, in which great muscular
effort is required, with rests between. This is exactly what one would
expect. In India the man who cannot work steadily must starve; in Fiji
food is so easily come by that a few spurts of labour at planting and
harvest and war time are the normal conditions of life.

A Fijian can hurl a spear and throw a reed into the air farther than a
white man can, and in those feats in which knack is in favour of the
white man, such as throwing the cricket ball, he is probably more than
his equal.

His extraordinary powers of endurance in the water far surpass anything
recorded of Europeans. I have twice talked with people just rescued
after being 48 hours in the water, swimming without support, in both
cases from the capsizing of their canoes in mid-channel. They seemed
little the worse, though they had been without food or drink for two
days in a burning sun and in constant peril of sharks, which had eaten
several of their companions, and their faces were raw, owing to their
continually brushing the salt water out of their eyes. Men suffer more
acutely than women in these cases, because the long immersion in salt
water produces a horrible and painful affection of the male organs.

On the other hand, Fijians seem to be more sensitive to cold and hunger
than Europeans. The average daily weight of roots consumed by a healthy
adult Fijian is from seven to ten pounds, and the stomach is probably
larger than that of a European, and feels hunger sooner. Cold and hunger
tell rapidly upon his buoyant spirits, and make him silent and
depressed. Fijians are heavy sleepers, and dislike being aroused. It is
difficult to induce a commoner to awake his chief at all, and if he
must, he does it by calling "_Iele!_" softly, or scratching at his
sleeping-mats, but never by touching him. He bears deprivation of sleep
less easily than a European, and for this reason he makes a bad sentry.




CHAPTER XXIII

ATTITUDES AND MOVEMENTS


The Fijian generally sleeps upon his back, with his head turned a little
to one side, so that the part of the skull immediately behind the ear
may rest upon the wooden neck-pillow. His hair is wrapped in a turban of
bark-cloth to keep it well off the neck, and, if he has no blanket, his
_sulu_ is spread over head and all, like a winding-sheet over a corpse.
This is perhaps as much for keeping off mosquitoes as for warmth. When
not walking, he is either sitting cross-legged on the ground, or
squatting with his haunches resting upon his heels. Except among the
high chiefs, standing seems to be felt as a breach of good manners, for
to stand up when others are sitting, or to reach over their head for
something suspended above requires the apology, "_Tulou! Tulou!_" and a
clapping of hands after the sitting posture has been resumed. Sitting in
a chair is as irksome to the Fijian as sitting tailor-fashion is to us.
He will not only sit cross-legged for hours without fatigue, but will
even lay one foot upon the inner surface of the other thigh. But in the
presence of equals, when social restraint is removed, he prefers to lie
upon his stomach with his chin propped upon his hands. It is not
uncommon to find half-a-dozen men thus lying with their heads converging
upon the native newspaper, _Na Mata_, which is spread out uncut between
them, so that each is able to read a different page. When a visitor
enters they spring up, knotting their _sulus_ round the waist, and sidle
away cross-legged into the place proper to their respective ranks, the
chief nearest the bed-place, and the inferiors facing him at the lower
end of the house. During the brewing of the _yankona_ bowl, even in the
family circle no one would think of lolling until the cup has been
handed round; then tongues and attitudes are loosened, and every one may
loll as he pleases.

Women never sit cross-legged. They sit with their knees together and
their feet drawn up under them on one side or the other, changing the
side at frequent intervals, by half-rising on the knees, and shifting
the feet to the other side. The attitude in micturition is the same for
both sexes, namely, squatting.

In regionibus interioribus feminae in medio fluvio, mares in virgeto,
defaecare solent; apud tribus litorales feminae morem hominum obsequuntur;
igitur carnem porcorum, qui foedam sentinam comedunt, edere non fas
est. Feminae fragmento panni (tapa), mares calamo deflecto usi, se
detergent. Morem Europensem papyro se detergere contemnunt; igitur pueri
Vitienses comites mestizos derident, clamantes "Ngusi veva!" (Ecce puer
qui se papyro deterget!)

There is so much difference between the carriage of the body in chiefs
and in commoners that in some districts on ceremonial occasions the
attitude is an indication of the rank. For the commoner, having always
to leave the path and squat down as a chief is passing, or at least
lower and avert the head, acquires a habit of stooping, while the chief,
accustomed to command, carries himself erect and dignified, every inch a
king. There is nothing remarkable about the gait of a Fijian, except the
freedom and swing which are common to all men unhampered with clothing.
The women do not walk as gracefully as the men, especially in the hill
districts, where they begin to carry burdens on their backs at a very
early age. They seldom carry anything upon their heads; everything is
packed in bales and baskets, which are slung on the back by cords
passing over the shoulders and under the armpits. In the old days the
men carried nothing but their weapons if they could help it. They now
carry all burdens slung to a pole or a bamboo. A single carrier will
make his load into two packages of equal weight at either end of the
pole, and balance them across his shoulder, but a heavy load is slung
midway between two carriers, who do not hold the pole in position while
walking, and touch it only when shifting it to the other shoulder for a
change. In moving any heavy object they seldom push, preferring to haul
upon it by rhythmical jerks delivered in time to a chant. They have
never taken kindly to an English saw, because it is against their
instinct to exert force in pushing, and their own tool, the adze,
delivers its blow towards them.

[Pageheader: A QUARREL BETWEEN BROTHERS]

They are the best tree-climbers in the world. While other races use a
rattan round the waist or round the ankles in climbing cocoanut palms,
the Fijians plant their soles against the trunk, grasp it with both
hands, and simply walk up it to a height of fifty feet or more.

Though very voluble in speech, they do not gesticulate, and, as a rule,
use their hands only to indicate the size of an object they are
describing. They point with the open hand, and they beckon with a
downward sweep of the hand as if they were hooking the person towards
them with their fingers. They raise the head and the eyebrows
simultaneously in token of assent, and shake it as we do in negation.
They show astonishment by cracking the finger-joints, or by shaking the
fingers loosely from side to side from the wrist, with the hand raised
to the level of the shoulder, or, if the emotion is intense, by pouting
out the lips in trumpet shape, and crying "O--o--o," on a high note,
while patting the lips with the open fingers. Their gesture of defiance
is to cross the arms on the breast and slap the biceps with the fingers
of the other hand. In sudden anger the complexion grows darker and the
eyes flash, but they have their features so well under control that they
seldom betray anger, but nurse it and brood over it, while waiting for
an opportunity for revenge. Only once have I seen an open rupture, and
that was between two first cousins, who "slanged" one another across the
barrack square, hurling imputations against the virtue of the female
ancestors who were common to them both. Their companions spent the whole
day in trying to patch the quarrel, for, they said, "a quarrel between
brethren is the most difficult of all to heal," and towards evening they
were successful, for I saw the two enemies strolling up and down with
their little fingers linked, and dressed in one another's clothes.

Their laughter is hearty, open-mouthed, and not unmusical, though I fear
that it is heartiest when the subject is of a kind of which the
missionary would not approve.

Clever as they are in not betraying their emotions in their faces, they
are very apt at making secret signals with their eyes, and many an
assignation is made by question and answer with the eyes when the house
is full of people.

They show shame or embarrassment by drooping the heads and picking at
the grass or the floor-mats. Their behaviour when in acute pain is much
the same as that of a European. When a native submits to have the
_soki_, or soft corn on the sole of the foot, to which many are subject,
touched with nitric acid, he grasps the foot with both hands, and rolls
about on the floor, sucking the air in through his teeth with a hissing
noise. When under the lash for serious offences their pride deserts
them; they dance and howl, and either implore the gaoler to have mercy,
or curse his ancestresses to the fourth generation. Yet three minutes
later the same man is laughing at the contortions of a fellow-sufferer
who has taken his place at the triangle.

[Illustration: The Hair plastered with bleaching lime.]

[Pageheader: SENSE OF SMELL]

Though the enormous heads of hair worn by the warriors of olden times
have disappeared, being regarded as the badge of heathenism, the young
men still cultivate mops which, being dyed with lime, stand out like a
golden aureole. The lime is smeared over the head on Saturdays and
washed out on Sunday morning, more than an hour being spent in combing
and oiling it with cocoanut oil scented with grated sandalwood. The
arms, neck and breast are also plentifully besmeared. Young girls wear
the hair shorter, but dyed and clipped symmetrically like the men, and
many wear the long _tombe_ locks. In Mathuata (Vanualevu) and some other
places young unmarried men also wear a cluster of _tombe_. After middle
age the men cut their hair shorter, but continue to lime it for the sake
of cleanliness even after it is grey. Widows allow their hair to grow
without liming it for a year or more after their husband's death as a
symbol of mourning. Baldness is not very common. The natives say that
baldness and bad teeth have only been known since the introduction of
sugar and other foreign goods, but though there may be some truth in
this as regards their teeth, there can be no doubt that baldness has
always existed. They never brush or cleanse their teeth, which
nevertheless are, as a rule, beautifully white. Corpora sua non depilant
Vitienses; et feminam pilosam etiam diligunt. Morem Tongicum pubes et
alas depilare derident.

Painting the face, which was inseparable from warfare, is now used for
ceremonial dances. Lampblack and vermilion are the favourite colours.
Soot is also smeared over the face as a protection from sunburn on a
journey. Girls sometimes decorate themselves with a patch of vermilion
for a dance.

The Fijians are free from the peculiar smell which is exhaled by the
negro, and though one is always aware of his presence in a room, I am
not sure that his scent differs much from that of a European under the
same conditions of nudity, physical exertion in hot weather, and absence
of soap in washing; for though the Fijian has a bath every day, mere
immersion in cold water does not do much towards cleansing his skin. The
odour of perspiration is more marked in males than in females, and in
the hill people than the coast natives. Fijians have a keener sense of
smell than we have; in examining an unknown object they will generally
carry it to the nose, and I have heard one say that they detected a
peculiar smell in Europeans and disliked it, but the man who said this
was probably retaliating for some remark of a trader in disparagement of
his race. As with us, the intensity of odour varies much with the
individual, and it is more noticeable in old men than young.




CHAPTER XXIV

TRAITS OF CHARACTER


As the natural disposition with which a child enters this world,
restrained though it may be by caution or fear of public opinion from
expressing itself in acts, remains unaltered till he leaves it, so the
character of natural man is untouched, even superficially, by the decay
of his customary law. The surface of the lake is lashed into foam by the
passing squall; but a fathom beneath the water lies untroubled.

Though the Fijian character has been described as full of
contradictions, when it is examined by the light of their moral code,
which differs vitally in some respect from ours, it will be found to be
as consistent as our own. How, it may be asked, can a people addicted to
cannibalism and to acts of ferocious cruelty be the most timid, polite
and hospitable of mankind? To any one intimately acquainted with the
people these facts are perfectly consistent, though it is a little
difficult to reconcile them in cold print. Timidity, as Williams stated
many years ago, is the key to the Fijian character. Beset by a myriad
perils from the cradle-mat to the burial-cave, he went in terror of his
life. On the one hand there were the Unseen Powers quick to avenge every
infringement of a tabu, however unwitting; on the other was his own
chief, quick to take offence, and beyond him the enemy, ever ready to
waylay the unwary in a lonely part of the road. In such an atmosphere
the cardinal virtues do not thrive, and it is not to be wondered at that
the Fijian was suspicious, and held craft and adroit lying in high
esteem. He was polite and hospitable, because, with so many enemies
already, his instinct was always to convert every new potential foe
into an ally, or at least not to give him an excuse for thinking himself
slighted. His cruelty also proceeded in part from timidity. "_Moku na
katikati_" (Slay the women and children) was, as a Christian native once
assured me, a sound maxim, for the object in war was to crush your enemy
beyond the power of retaliation, and women and children breed avengers
to harass your old age. The horrible cruelties inflicted on captives
were in part propitiations to the War-god, and in part the same
thoughtless love of mischief that moves English school-boys to tie a
kettle to a dog's tail, because its sufferings are amusing to watch, and
they do not understand.

[Pageheader: CONTRADICTIONS IN CHARACTER]

The sympathies of the Fijian reached to the limit of his tribe and no
further, but within that limit they were active enough. After torturing,
mutilating, and devouring his helpless captives, the warrior washed off
his war-paint, went home and played with his children, received his
visitors with stately politeness, and performed his part in the ornate
and elaborate ceremonial of social life. Both phases were custom, and to
his mind not in the least incongruous.

In the matter of lying he drew a nice distinction. It was a crime to lie
to his chief; it was, if not a virtue, at least a title to public
admiration to display something cruder than the craft of Odysseus to an
enemy, or to a person not a member of his tribe. The maxim "All is fair
in love and war" was applied literally. To pretend alliance, and then
treacherously to smite the ally from behind, as Namosimalua did to the
people of Naingani, was more esteemed than barren courage. I have heard
a young chief boast of having gratified his passion by compelling the
lover of the girl he coveted to overcome her scruples while he hid in
the dark behind him, so that at the last he might push him aside and
personate him. In these days the European has dropped easily into the
place formerly occupied by the extra-tribal man. By an administrative
fiction the Governor of the colony is supreme chief over the natives,
and the natives have fallen easily into the habit of paying him all the
external marks of respect which are due to their own chiefs, even,
rather incongruously, greeting him with the _tama_, or shout of respect
which is due only to the chief in whom is enshrined the ancestral
spirit of the man who utters it. There have been governors who have been
deceived into the belief that they really enjoy _ex officio_ the
prestige of a supreme chief, and that the natives will not dare to lie
to them. In 1888 an European named Stewart was murdered on the Sambeto
coast. Another European was arrested and tried for the crime, but the
issue was confused by a number of native witnesses, who came forward
with two wholly incompatible stories, both designed to fasten the guilt
upon the accused man. One of these stories hung upon a letter said to
have been written by a petty chief who in heathen times would have held
an office akin to that of hereditary executioner. The governor
interrogated this man, and, convinced from his knowledge of native
character that the man would not dare to lie solemnly to his supreme
chief, accepted the story, and placed the matter in my hands as Acting
Head of the Native Office. Everything turned upon the question whether
the man had himself written the letter, and I knew that he could not
write, but since the Governor could not be convinced without proof, I
induced him to send for the chief, and put my statement to the test. I
could not help admiring the native's courage and persistence. Even when
writing materials were put before him in the Governor's presence, and he
was ordered to copy a verse from the Fijian Bible, he did not falter.
For a full ten minutes he plodded away with an implement that he had
never had between his fingers before, trailing a drunken zigzag across
the paper like the track of a fly rescued from drowning in an inkpot. He
took his unmasking with quiet dignity, however, and the murder remains a
mystery to this day. To his own chief he would not have lied: the
Governor of the colony was simply a foreigner to whom he owed no
allegiance.

[Pageheader: DEFRAUDING WITH DIGNITY]

Europeans hold opinions regarding the honesty of Fijians according to
their individual experience. There is no equivalent for the word in the
language, though there is a word for theft. In the ancient moral code
theft and cheating were virtues or vices according to whether they were
practised upon a stranger or a member of the tribe and inasmuch as the
white man falls into the former category, and is possessed of priceless
treasures to boot, it was not to be expected that the Fijian would
regard cheating him as an offence against morality. It was an injury,
and since to injure a man who had befriended you is a mean action,
public opinion would mildly condemn the robbing of a friendly white man.
Cheating and theft really date from the arrival of Europeans, for in the
small communities of the old time it was well-nigh impossible to rob a
fellow-tribesman without being found out, and to despoil an enemy was,
as it is with us, legitimate.

In the matter of dishonesty it is, of course, the country storekeeper
who suffers most, and it is therefore he who gives the Fijian the worst
character. The native, from the highest to the lowest, will run into
debt under the most solemn promises, and would never pay unless induced
by cajolery, or compelled under the pressure of a refusal to give
further credit. Even so he will display great ingenuity. A few years ago
the Government, anxious to introduce copper coinage into a colony where
a silver threepenny piece was the lowest currency, tried the experiment
of paying a portion of the tax refund in copper. The natives showed a
great unwillingness to accept it, but the late Roko Tui Lau, an old
chief noted for his stately and dignified manners, won the gratitude of
his people by including all the copper coins in his own share. On the
following day, accompanied by his train carrying bags of money, he
presented himself at the German store, where his credit had long been
overstrained, and intimated that he had come to pay off his debts. The
heavy bags were clapped on the counter, and the unsuspecting trader,
believing the coins to be florins, pressed fresh supplies upon his
illustrious client, who loaded his men with goods and departed. The
trader's feelings (and, I suspect, his language) when he came to open
the bags and found not a florin among the lot, need not be dwelt upon.

The commoner forms of dishonesty--putting white stones among the
_yankona_, and watering the tobacco and the copra to increase the
weight--are well-nigh universal, and there have been a few instances of
childish attempts at forgery among domestic servants, but when the
Fijians are compared with Indian coolies, it must be confessed that
pilfering is rare. I have myself lived for years in native districts
without a door to my house, which has stood open night and day even in
my absences, and I can only recall one theft of a few shillings. A
Fijian servant will sometimes secrete a thing which he covets to see
whether it is missed. If inquiries are made for it he will be most
active in the search, and will eventually discover it in some unlikely
place, hoping to acquire merit by his diligence, but deceiving nobody.

On the other hand, money is a temptation which few natives can resist,
and it is to be feared that few native magistrates or scribes have not
at some time or other borrowed from the funds entrusted to them. They
might well plead the excuse that their wants and the calls of
hospitality have greatly increased, while their wretched salaries of
from L3 to L12 a year have not. It is much to say for them that bribery
is uncommon, and that though they may show partiality in the
administration of justice they are not corrupt.

Considering what must appear to the Fijian as the fabulous wealth of the
white man, unprotected save by a wooden wall and a crazy door, and so
temptingly placed at the mercy of the village as is the native store, it
is surprising that house-breaking is not more frequent. It is the belief
of many Fijians that every white man has a chest of money in his house,
and occasionally some restless spirit organizes a burglary among his
chosen associates. I have related elsewhere[103] how Kaikai robbed a
store at Navua, set it on fire, and sank the safe in the bed of the
river, but in order to show the school-boy light-hearted inconsequence
of the burglars, I may repeat here the confession of one of them:--

[Pageheader: NATIVE BUSHRANGERS]

     "Sir, the root of the matter was Kaikai. He seduced us to do this
     thing. We therefore are innocent. It happened thus: Kaikai came
     into our house in the evening and said 'Eroni, let us have
     prayers.' So we had prayers. Then Kaikai said, 'How would it be to
     break open the white man's store?' And we said, 'It is well.' And
     when we came near the store, Kaikai said, 'How would it be to set
     the store on fire, and then perhaps the white man will come out?'
     So we set the store on fire, and presently the white man did come
     out. Then Kaikai said, 'Let us trample him.' And so we did, and
     having put the chest of money in the river, we all went home."

     "And what did you do then?" asked the Court.

     "Kaikai said prayers."

A similar case occurred in Vanualevu, while the Australian papers were
of full of the exploits of the Kelly gang of bushrangers. Fired by the
halting translation of the local storekeeper, three otherwise blameless
youths, church-goers every one, resolved to take to the bush and make
the world ring with the story of their crimes. They began tentatively by
setting fire to an empty house, and waxing bolder, they waylaid an
elderly German storekeeper in broad day, and by dint of yelling their
tribal war-cry into his ears, put sufficient heart into themselves to
cut him down with a hatchet. A couple of mission teachers, attracted by
their shouts, put them to flight, and thereafter they seem to have lost
heart, for a week later their dead bodies were discovered far up the
mountain. They had perished like the Fijian widows of old. Two of them
had strangled the third by hauling on the loose ends of a noose of
bark-cloth; the first had then strangled the second by tying one end of
the noose to a tree, and pulling on the other, and had then hanged
himself, English fashion, from a bough.

Though naturally so timid, the Fijian has shown himself upon occasion to
be capable of extraordinary courage and self-devotion, generally,
however, when assailed by the forces of nature. There is no reason to
doubt the truth of the story that a Kandavu chief, whose canoe capsized
a mile from the Serua reef, when attacked by sharks, was protected by
his men, who formed a ring round him as he swam. As man after man was
dragged down, the rest closed in, until there were but three left to
reach the shore. I myself questioned two girls, the survivors of a party
of twelve, who had been picked up by a cutter off the mouth of the Rewa,
after all their companions had been devoured by sharks, and they had
been eight hours swimming in a rough sea. They described without a
shudder how a huge shark, glutted with the body of the last of their
playmates, had rubbed himself along their naked backs as they swam, and
had played about them until the moment of their rescue. Their fortitude
seemed, however, to be due to a lack of imagination.

To the European the natives must always seem wanting in natural
affection. Parents are fond of their children until sickness calls for
sustained effort or self-sacrifice, but their love will not bear the
strain of these. As with all races such affection as there is tends
downward and not upward. The mother is fonder of her child than the
child of his mother. In the old days the young man obeyed his father,
because he was one of the elders, the repositories of tribal lore, not
because he was his father; but when the father grew infirm he helped to
bury him alive without a trace of emotion beyond the mourning which
customary law enjoined. In these days of schools and Government
employment the young man regards the opinion of his elders no more. A
few years ago the senior Wesleyan missionary appealed to one of
Thakombau's sons to mend his ways, saying, "What would the chief, your
father, have said?" The young man jerked his thumb contemptuously
towards the tomb on the hill above them, and replied, "My father? Why,
he's dead." While there is a certain comradeship between brothers and
the first cousins who are classed as brothers, the customary law that
forbids brothers and sisters to speak to one another is a bar to any
affection between these. On the other hand, there is loyalty and
fidelity between husbands and wives, though it is more perhaps the
mutual regard of partners in the same firm than warm attachment. The
only instance of demonstrative family affection that I can recall
occurred in Lomaloma when a prisoner sentenced by the Provincial Court
was being sent on board a vessel bound for Levuka. His aged mother
caught hold of him, to prevent him from entering the boat, wailing and
storming at the native policeman by turns. When they had been separated
by force, and he was fairly afloat, she cast herself down on the beach,
shrieking and throwing the sand over her head in utter abandonment of
grief. Though not more noisy, this was a very different exhibition from
the ceremonial wailing at a death. At the funeral of Tui Nandrau, one of
the last of the cannibal chiefs, I came upon two or three of the widows
howling with dry eyes, like dogs baying the moon. Seeing me, one of them
nudged her neighbour to point me out, and grinned knowingly, and then
drowned her sister wives in a howl of peculiar shrillness and poignancy.
During a cricket match at Lomaloma a canoe arrived carrying news of the
death of the father of one of the bowlers. At the end of the over his
aunt came over to the pitch to tell him, and I overheard the
conversation.

[Pageheader: CEREMONIAL WAILING]

"Here is a painful thing," she said; "Wiliame is dead. Pita has just
landed and brought the news."

"O Veka!" exclaimed the boy.

"How then? Shall we wail now, or after the game is finished?"

They discussed the point for a few moments. There were, it seemed, only
three female relations on the ground, and if the others were sent for it
would make a braver show. The boy decided the point. "Send for them," he
said, "and let us finish the match first; then we can weep."

As soon as the last wicket was down I was startled by a piercing shriek
from the scoring tent: the wailing had begun. The aunt and half-a-dozen
old crones were howling "_Oo-au-e-e_" with a peculiar long-drawn wail,
ending in a sob, while real tears coursed down their wrinkled cheeks. It
was difficult to believe that the grief was only simulated.

The reasoning power of the Fijian is not easy to classify. He is
extraordinarily observant, and in respect of natural phenomena he shows
a high power of deduction. He is an acute weather-prophet; he knows the
name and the nature of every tree and almost every plant that grows in
his forest; he is a most skilful gardener. A broken twig, a fallen
berry, are enough for him to assert positively where a wild hog has its
lair; he knows by the look of the weather where the fish are to be
found. He will tell you correctly from a footprint in the sand which of
his fellow-villagers has passed that way and when, and whether he went
in haste or leisurely, for he knows the footprints of his people as he
knows their faces, and will swear to them in court. He will probe the
secret motive that lay behind every action of one of his own people, and
he is beginning to draw deductions even from the manner of Europeans.

"Mr. ----," a Fijian once said to me of a colleague of blunt manners,
"is from Scotland. I suppose that Scotland is a 'bush' village!"

When justice has to be defeated he is remarkably acute in the story he
will concoct. Assembling the false witnesses into a house by night, he
will cunningly dissect it, dictating to each witness the part he is to
tell, repeating it over and over until the man has it by heart, even
interpolating some trifling discrepancy, so as to render it more
life-like. It is only by showing in cross-examination that none of the
witnesses will budge an inch beyond his original narrative that the
fraud can be detected.

Fijian boys, educated at an European school, are probably quite equal in
capacity and intelligence to European boys of the same age, but, though
there has hitherto been no case in which their education has been
continued beyond boyhood, there is no reason to think that this equality
would not be maintained through manhood. In early boyhood they show some
talent for arithmetic, and an extraordinary power of learning by rote.
Those who had been sent to school in Sydney speak English with but
little foreign accent. For drawing, for science, and for mechanics they
do not appear to have much aptitude. As might be expected from a people
to whom oratory comes easily, they write with ease, and their letters
and articles for the native newspaper, _Na Mata_, show close reasoning,
and sometimes scathing satire. One contributor, Ilai Moto-ni-thothoka,
displayed both imagination and literary talent.

[Pageheader: PRODUCTS OF THE TRAINING SCHOOL]

In education, however, the Fijian has never had a fair chance. The
Wesleyan and Roman Catholic Missions support native teachers in every
village in the colony, and every child learns something of reading and
writing. The teachers themselves are educated at training schools, where
more attention, naturally, is paid to fitting them for their duties as
local preachers than to giving them secular education. The two
Government enterprises, the technical school and the school for native
medical students, have not been a marked success. The boys leave the
technical school with a fair knowledge of carpentry and smithing, but as
soon as they return home the fecklessness of village life crushes all
the enterprise out of them. Either a powerful chief expects them to work
for him without pay, or relations swoop down upon them, borrow their
tools, and force them back into the daily round in the village community
to which they were born. Therein lies the secret: Custom again asserts
herself. The native hereditary _matai_ (carpenter), whose labour and
remuneration were alike prescribed by Custom, plies his adze with profit
to himself: Custom never contemplated a Government-taught carpenter; she
intended the boy to take his turn at yam-planting and hut-thatching, and
she revolts. She treats the native medical practitioner in the same
fashion. During his three years' training at Suva Hospital he may have
shown great aptitude; he may know by rote the uncouth Fijian version of
his Pharmacopoeia, in which tincture is _tinkatura_, and acid is
_asiti_; he may even have acquired some skill in diagnosis. But no
sooner is he turned adrift in his district with his medicine chest than
complaints begin to come in. He has demanded from the chief four porters
to carry his chest without payment; he is behaving like a chief,
demanding food wherever he goes, and interfering with the customs of the
people; and, at last, he is doing nothing for his pay, and his chest is
rotting in an outhouse. He has his own tale to tell: the porters dropped
his box and broke the bottles; the chief stole all his _masima Episomi_
(Epsom salts), the most popular of his drugs, and what is a doctor to do
who has nothing but _belusitoni_ (blue-stone) with which to treat his
patients? It was not many months before Dr. Corney, the Chief Medical
Officer, who had trained them with so much care, was fain to confess
that the native medical practitioner was a failure.

It is perhaps the strength of the Fijian race that education makes so
slight an impression upon his habits and character. The esteem of his
own people is more to him than that of strangers, and, if he has been
brought up by Europeans in English dress, he will revert to the national
costume as soon as he is back in his native village. Ratu Epeli, the
late Roko Tui Ndreketi, insisted on wearing the _sulu_ even in Calcutta,
and cared nothing for the notice he attracted. The Tongans, on the other
hand, and the other Melanesian races love nothing better than to dress
up as white men. Most of the chiefs will dine with you with perfect
decorum, and use a knife and fork as if they had been born to them, but
in their own houses they will sit upon the ground and eat with their
fingers as their fathers did. They have adopted such of our inventions
as are better than their own--our boats, our lamps and our
dishes--merely for convenience, but they care nothing for contrivances
that entail a change of habit. The native carpenter, whose only tool is
the adze, will buy a Sheffield blade, but he will mount it on the same
handle as his fathers used in the age of stone, and will explain, with
some reason, that the movable socket, which enables him to cut a surface
at right angles to the handle, is an invention that we should do well to
adopt.

Though they have a considerable body of traditional poetry, the Fijians
cannot be said to have much literary taste. The _mekes_ are mythological
and historical, and in the latter the fiction of exaggeration is freely
mingled with fact. Without a native commentator they are difficult to
translate, being often cast in the form of a dialogue without any
indication of a change of speaker. In descriptions of the deaths of
heroes the dirge is put into the mouth of the dead hero himself. Boating
songs, lullabies, love songs and descriptions of scenery are not to be
found in the native poem. In their indifference to the beauty of nature
they are in sharp contrast to the Tongans, whose songs are full of
admiration for flowers, running water and lovely scenery.

[Pageheader: HISTORICAL POETRY]

They judge the merit of a poem by the uniformity of metre and the
regularity with which every line in a stanza ends with the same vowel or
diphthong. This is secured by a plentiful use of expletives, by
abbreviating or prolonging words, by omitting articles, and other
poetic licence, but in very few is this kind of rhyme carried out
consistently. Some bards profess to be inspired. Others make no such
pretensions, but set about their business in the prosaic manner of a
literary hack. They teach their compositions to bands of youths who
master every detail of the poem in a single evening. It is then as
permanent and unalterable as if it had been set up in type. I had a
curious instance of the remarkable verbal memory of Fijians in a long
poem taken down from the lips of an old woman in 1893. The poem had been
published by Waterhouse twenty-seven years earlier, and on comparison
only one verbal discrepancy between the two versions was found. Repeated
from mouth to mouth, a popular poem will travel far beyond the district
in which its dialect is spoken, and thus one may often hear mekes whose
meaning is not understood by the singers. English popular songs, heard
once or twice, will thus run through the group corrupted into Fijian
words that have the nearest sound to the English ones. The common
_yankona meke_ conveys no meaning whatever to the modern Fijian, but it
is not necessarily very ancient, for it may be the corruption of a poem
composed in a local dialect.

The popularity of an historical _meke_ is not often more than sixty
years; those that are older survive only in fragments. The Mission
schools have enormously increased the output of trivial and ephemeral
poetry; at every annual school feast the children perform _mekes_,
celebrating petty incidents of village life, composed by their native
teacher, and the old tragic historical poetry has fallen upon evil days
and may soon be heard no more.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 103: _The Indiscretions of Lady Asenath._]




CHAPTER XXV

SWIMMING


Swimming seems to come naturally to every Fijian. As soon as a child can
toddle, it is playing at the water's edge with older children, and
little by little it ventures out until its feet are off the bottom.
Being supposed to be a natural action like walking, no attempt is made
to teach it. Inability to swim is always a source of derisive amusement.
I remember a journey inland, where many swollen creeks had to be
crossed, and all bridges had been broken down. A servant who was with
us, a native of Malicolo, who could not swim, had to be ferried across
clinging to an impromptu raft of banana stumps. Though the wearied
carriers had to cut and make this raft anew at every crossing, the roars
of good-natured laughter seemed to be ample reward, and the joke never
grew stale.

In long-distance swimming the natives adopt a sort of side-stroke, in
which nothing but the head is above water. They move smoothly and
rapidly through the water, the legs and the right arm giving the
propulsion, and the left hand striking downwards under the body. When a
quick spurt is required, they use the overhand action with both arms
alternately, with the cheek resting flat on the water as the arm on that
side is driven aft. With this action they can swim at greater speed than
all but the best European swimmers. They can swim immense distances, and
no swimming-board or float is ever used, as in the Eastern Pacific, in
surf swimming, except by children in their play.

[Pageheader: METHOD OF DIVING]

There are many swimming games, such as chasing a fugitive and wrestling
in the water. On a calm evening the water is black with the heads of
laughing men and women. I have joined in these sports, and though I am
at home in the water, as swimmers go in England, I confess that when I
was pulled down by the legs from below, and ducked from above when I
tried to come up, I was glad to escape from them with my life. In the
game of _ririka_ (leaping) a cocoanut log is laid slantwise from the
beach to an upright post in the water. The people run up this incline in
endless file, and their plunges whiten the surrounding water with foam.

The Fijian is a good diver, though inferior to the Rotuman and the
native of the Line Islands. When diving he does not plunge head first
from the swimming position, but draws his head under, and reverses the
position of his body under water without creating a swirl. If the water
is not too deep, when he reaches the bottom he lies flat with his nose
touching the sand, his hands being behind the back, and propels himself
with incredible speed by digging his toes into the sand. English divers,
who can realize the difficulty of this manoeuvre, may be inclined to
doubt this statement, and for their benefit I will relate how I came to
have ocular demonstration. At Christmas-time in 1886 I organized
athletic sports at Fort Carnarvon, an isolated little quasi-military
post garrisoned by fifty men of the Armed Native Constabulary in the
heart of Vitilevu. The mountaineers of the neighbouring villages were
invited to compete with the soldiers, who were recruited from the coast.
In wrestling and running the soldiers held their own, but when it came
to swimming and diving they were nowhere. The course was a backwater of
the river about 8 feet deep, and I went down the bank 150 yards from the
starting-point to judge the winner. Our most expert diver was a Mathuata
coast man, and he came to the surface 20 yards short of me, after being
down 75 seconds. I had already written him down as winner, when a head
bobbed up fully 20 yards beyond me. It was a sooty-skinned,
insignificant little mountaineer, who did not seem much distressed, and
was so pleased with our applause that he offered to repeat the feat. I
sent for him next day, and took a lesson in 4 feet of clear water, where
I could plainly see his every movement. It amused him immensely to see
my futile efforts to keep my head on the bottom, for whenever I drove
myself forward with my toes, my head would rise to the surface. The art
seemed to be to arch the body so that the head and feet were lowest, and
to move the legs with the knees drawn straight up under the stomach. I
raced him, he using the ground and I swimming under water, and found
that he went more than twice as fast. The hill natives, who bathe only
in fresh water, are better swimmers than the coast people.

Another water game is peculiar to the rivers. In flood-time, when the
river is running like a mill-race, you put to sea on a banana stump,
with the thinner end held firmly between the knees, and the butt under
your chest, using the hands to steer and keep yourself in mid-stream. In
shooting the rapids, you let the submerged end take the bump over the
stones, but sometimes you receive serious bruises. Woe betide you if you
get into a whirlpool and turn over, for you then have to part from your
craft, and are in danger of being sucked under and drowned. From Fort
Carnarvon the river sweeps round a bend of fifteen miles, and returns to
a point not very far from the place of departure. We used to set forth
in a flotilla of twenty, and cover the distance in little more than
half-an-hour, our native companions keeping up an incessant chorus of
laughter and song as we swept past the villages.

In one place on the Singatoka, near Nakorovatu, the sunken rocks cause a
back current nearly as fast as the main stream, an elongated whirlpool
half-a-mile long. A few strokes at each end are enough to take you from
one stream into the other, and you may thus be carried up and down the
river without effort.

[Pageheader: THE DEEP PLUNGE]

Fijians never take headers. Under ordinary circumstances they bathe
without immersing the head, because their thick mat of hair is difficult
to dry. When they plunge from a height it is always feet first. I once
lost my ring in the deep pool at the mouth of the submarine cave at
Yasawa-i-lau, and I offered a sovereign to any one who would find it.
The water was over twenty feet deep, and the divers found that they
could not reach the bottom with breath enough to search for it without
plunging from a height. Even then they plunged in feet first, and turned
over when near the bottom. But the ring had evidently sunk into the soft
white ooze, which the divers churned into a thick cloud until further
search was useless.




CHAPTER XXVI

FISHING


Every Fijian is a fisherman by instinct. At ten years old, with a little
four-pronged spear, or with a bow and a four-pronged arrow, he is
scouring the pools left on the reef by the receding tide, and by the age
of eighteen his aim is unerring. He fishes for the pot, not for sport,
and seldom does he come home empty-handed. The spectacle of a big fish
swimming in the sea never fails to stir his emotion. A _sanka_ darting
across the bows of your boat will touch the most lethargic of your crew
to tense excitement; no spear being at hand he will poise and cast your
precious boat-hook at the monster, and fling himself into the sea to
recover it. Even among the tribes of hereditary professional fishermen
this emotion is never staled by use.

Wherever the sea runs up into sandy or muddy inlets there stands a
fish-fence belonging to some village in the neighbourhood. The fence is
from 100 to 200 yards long, built of reedwork supported by stout stakes
driven deep into the mud, and shaped like the segment of a circle with
its axis on the shore, and about the middle there is a bag-shaped annex
with an intricate entrance so contrived that a fish making for the sea
as the tide recedes will nose his way through it into the annex and not
be able to make his way out again. There is a scene of wild excitement
and confusion when the spearmen enter the annex at low-tide. Mad with
terror, the great fish lash the water into foam as they dart hither and
thither and leap clear of the water to escape the spear-thrusts.

[Illustration: The Chief's Turtle Fishers.]

[Pageheader: THE ROYAL FISH]

These fences do not survive tempestuous weather. The waves soon make a
breach in them, and the smallest hole renders them useless. When they
are rebuilt it is generally at a different place, and ruined fish-fences
may be seen at every inlet along the coast. But this is for another
reason; after some months of use the fish appear to know their danger
and to avoid the fence. Perhaps their range is very much restricted, and
when the fence has caught all the fish in its immediate neighbourhood
the sea at that point is depopulated for the time. At Nasova a superior
fence was built of wire-netting. Its daily catch for the first few weeks
was enormous--on some tides not less than 1500 fish of five pounds'
weight and over--but a few weeks later the catch failed quite suddenly,
and thereafter the trap was scarcely worth examining.

In the larger rivers the natives build stone fish weirs constructed to
lead into a basket trap. A rope bristling with fibre streamers is
dragged by men on both banks to frighten the fish down-stream, and the
basket is filled.

But these are mere amateur expedients compared with the methods of the
fisher tribes. These, as will be explained in another chapter, own no
planting lands, but barter their fish for vegetables, or live upon the
bounty of the great chiefs for whom they work. Their skill as seamen was
unsurpassed, and in the great confederations they manned the big
war-canoes.

In Fiji the royal fish is the turtle. Every considerable chief had
turtle fishers attached to his establishment. He would allow them to
take service with other chiefs for ten expeditions. The hiring chief
paid them by results; for blank days they received nothing, but food and
property were given to them for every catch, and a considerable present
was made to them at the end of their engagement. The turtle men use nets
of sinnet from 60 to 200 yards long and 10 feet wide, with meshes 8
inches square. The floats are of light wood 2 feet long and 5 feet
apart; the weights pebbles or large shells. A canoe takes the net into
deep water, and pays it out in a semicircle with both ends resting on
the reef. This intercepts the turtle on his way back from his
feeding-grounds in shallow water, and only a perfect knowledge of his
habits guides the fishermen to choose the proper time and place. If the
turtle takes fright at the net the men drive him forward by striking the
water with poles, and stamping of the canoe deck, and the dipping of a
float is the signal that he is entangled. The catch is announced by loud
blasts on the conch, and the canoes are received with the same noise of
triumph as when they brought back bodies for the cannibal ovens. The
women meet them with songs and dances, and sometimes they pelt the crew
with oranges and are chased from the beach with loud laughter.

[Pageheader: A CRUEL DEATH]

The hen turtle is taken when she crawls on shore to lay her eggs, and
the nest itself is robbed when eyes are sharp enough to detect the place
where she has so cunningly smoothed the sand over it. But in Kandavu the
turtle is actually taken in the sea without nets, and this is sport
indeed. Two men go out in a light canoe; the one paddles in the stern
while the other lies upon his stomach with his head projecting over the
bow, and with a heap of pebbles under him. With scarce a ripple from the
paddle the canoe is gently propelled to and fro over the bottom where
grows the green sea-grass which is the turtle's favourite pasture. The
watcher in the bow lifts his hand; the motion is checked; he takes a
pebble from the heap beneath him, and drops it gently into the water.
Down it goes pat upon the shell of the feeding turtle. Unsuspecting
danger, the beast crawls lazily out of range of such accidents and
begins to feed again. Steered by hand-signals from the watcher the canoe
swings her head over him again, and another stone taps rudely at his
shell. It may need a third or even a fourth to convince him that this
rain of solid bodies from the upper world is more than accidental, but
this unwonted exercise at meal times has bereft him of breath. Air he
must have, and he makes slantwise for the surface. Then the sport
begins; the watcher snatches off his _sulu_ and plunges down into the
depths to meet him. The art lies in seizing him by the edge of the
fore-flipper, and in turning him over before he reaches the surface. It
is a slippery handhold, but the hand that grasps the limb higher up will
be nipped between the flipper and the sharp edge of the shell, and to
seize a turtle by the hind-flipper is to be the tin can tied to the
puppy's tail. Having seized your flipper by its edge, you must turn the
beast over on his back (if he will let you) and propel him to the
surface, where your companion will help you to hoist him on board. The
turtle spends his few remaining days lying on his back, and throughout
Western Fiji he dies the horrible death which is prescribed by custom:
an incision is made at the junction of the hind limb with the under
shell, and through this the entrails are drawn out. After their removal,
and even during the process of dismemberment, he continues to live. I
have often reasoned with the natives against this cruelty, and they have
listened to me with amused surprise; "It was the way of our fathers,"
they said; "if we cut off his head he would not die any sooner, and the
meat would be spoiled." When a great feast is in preparation
turtle-fishing begins several weeks in advance, and the beasts are kept
alive in a stone or wickerwork enclosure in shallow water, which is
called a _mbi_. They can thus be kept alive for several months. There
was a tragic note in the fate of one little turtle captured when he was
no bigger than a soup plate, and presented to an European as a pet. The
owner had moored him to a stake by a string fastened to his
hind-flipper, and for several days and nights he swam bravely but
fruitlessly towards the open sea. But when, in pity for this wasted
expenditure of energy, his owner built a wickerwork _mbi_ for him, and
cut him loose, and he had explored every inch of his cage for an
opening, he abandoned the hope that had buoyed his spirits, and died in
twenty-four hours--a victim, one may suppose, of a broken heart.

The Fijian nets are so like our own that a newcomer may believe that
they have been imported. They are made of hybiscus fibre, and the mesh
and knot are identical with those of the European net-maker. Long seines
are used occasionally, but a commoner practice is to drag the _rau_--a
rope of twisted vines, bristling with cocoanut fronds, several hundred
yards long. The ends are brought together, and the fish are speared and
netted in the narrow space enclosed by the _rau_.

The women do most of their fishing with two-handed nets mounted on
sticks six feet long. A line is formed with two women to each net,
standing to their waists in the sea. As the fish make for the sea in the
ebbing tide they are scooped up and held aloft; the ends are brought
together, and a bite in the head from one of the women kills the fish
before it is slipped into the basket hanging from her shoulder. The
_kanathe_, a kind of mackerel, and the garfish spring high out of the
water in their efforts to escape, and it needs very dexterous
manipulation of the net to intercept them; sometimes women receive ugly
wounds in the face from these fish.

Eels grow to a great size in the rivers, and in the inland districts the
women mark their lairs in holes in the bank, and stupefy them with a
vegetable poison extracted from the stalk of a climbing plant, or with
tobacco. A sort of sponge made of bark-cloth is saturated with the
poison, and is quickly immersed and pushed into the mouth of the hole;
the poison distils into the surrounding water, and after a few minutes
it is safe to explore the recesses with the naked hand. The narcotic
effect of the poison is only temporary; left to itself in clear water
the fish would recover in about five minutes.

[Pageheader: _MBALOLO_ FISHING]

Strangest of all fishing is that of the _mbalolo_, which is still an
annual festival in the districts where it is taken. The _mbalolo_ is a
marine annelid about six inches long and of the thickness of vermicelli.
It is found on certain sea reefs in various parts of the Samoan, Tongan
and Fijian groups, and probably elsewhere in the Pacific. For ten months
in the year it is never seen at all. Somewhere deep in a reef cavern it
is growing to maturity, but on the night of the third quarter of the
October and the November moons it swarms in myriads to the surface and
dies, phoenix-like, in the propagation of its kind. So exact a
time-keeper is it that it gave names to two months in the native
almanac. October was called the _Little Mbalolo_, because the swarm in
that month was comparatively insignificant; the _Great Mbalolo_ was
November, and preparations for the fishing in that month were made
several weeks in advance. The fact--and it is a fact--that an annelid
should observe lunar time would not be very remarkable in itself, but
it seems that the _Mbalolo_ observes solar time as well. As Mr. Whitmee
has pointed out, the moon directs its choice of a day, and it follows
that the creature cannot maintain regular intervals of either twelve or
thirteen lunations without changing the calendar month of its
reappearance. For two years it rises after a lapse of twelve lunations,
and then it allows thirteen to pass, but since even this arrangement
will gradually sunder solar and lunar time it must intercalate one
lunation every twenty-eight years in order to keep to its dates. It has
now been under the observation of Europeans for more than sixty years,
and it has not once disappointed the natives who are on the watch for
it. What are the immediate impulses of tide or of season that impel it
to rise on its appointed day no one has attempted yet to show.

Consider for a moment how many centuries must have passed before the
desultory native mind became impressed with its regularity. Even on the
night of the _Great Mbalolo_ it is not a conspicuous object on the sea.
Mere chance must have brought the fisherman into a _mbalolo_ shoal;
years must have passed before a second chance again revealed its habits;
decades before the unmethodical mind of natural man had realized its
annual recurrence and had noted the day and the hour.

It is only at certain points in the sea reef fringing outlying islands
that there are _mbalolo_ holes. The canoes congregate there before
midnight. The behaviour of the fish is the first signal; they are there
in hundreds, dashing hither and thither in a criss-cross of
phosphorescence. Towards morning they lie, stupid from surfeit, flapping
their fins helplessly on the surface, and are speared in great numbers.
It is an orgie of rapacity and greed. _Salala_ gorge themselves on
_mbalolo_; _sanka_ devour the _salala_; rock-cod swallow the _sanka_; a
few sharks fill their bellies with rock-cod; and man, as usual, preys
upon all alike.

As the night advances the surface of the sea is oily and viscid with the
interlaced bodies of millions of _mbalolo_ that feel slimy to the touch
as one stirs the water. There are breaks in the mass, and natives have
assured me that through these they have seen an oscillating stalk,
about the thickness of a man's thigh, coiling up from the depths--a
fountain of worms spouting from some chasm in the reef. The fishermen
scoop up the worms with cocoanut baskets and empty them into the canoe
until the hold is full. The masses of worms are boiled, cut into slabs,
and sent, like wedding-cake, all over the country, packed in banana
leaves. To the European taste these dark-green masses, though
unappetizing to look upon, are not unpalatable. They taste like caviare.

Mr. Whitmee, who made a scientific examination of the _mbalolo_ in
Samoa, took a glass jar with him to the fishing, and watched the
behaviour of the worm in captivity. His catch included both brown and
green worms, the brown being the males and the green the females. They
varied in length, and as they swam incessantly round the jar with a
spiral motion he noticed that the shorter ones of six inches long had
two screw turns and the longer at the most three. Fished up by the
finger and thumb they broke spontaneously into short lengths at their
jointings.

[Illustration: Slaughtering the Turtle.]

[Pageheader: HOW THE EGGS ARE FERTILIZED]

At eight o'clock the _mbalolo_ have disappeared. If they break up
earlier the natives believe that there will be a hurricane between
January and March. As the sun gains power the _mbalolo_ may be clearly
seen in dense patches with individual worms bridging the clear water
between. They are now more active than in the night, the closer masses
even churning the surface of the water. A little before eight they begin
to disintegrate and break up; the sea becomes turbid and milky, and when
it clears they are gone. Mr. Whitmee's captives in the glass jar behaved
like their fellows in the sea. After swimming more rapidly for a few
moments they gave a convulsive wriggle and broke into half-a-dozen
pieces each, which wriggled about near the surface, squirting out their
contents. The vase looked as if a teaspoonful of milk had been emptied
into it, and the little transparent envelopes of the fluid sank empty to
the bottom, just as the green worms discharging their cargo of eggs
began also to settle down. After a few minutes' immersion in the
fertilizing fluid the eggs themselves sank gently to the bottom, where
they lay among the husks that had given them birth and being. Under
the magnifying glass a faint whitish spot was detected on each of the
tiny green eggs. Thus by a voluntary act of self-immolation the worms
had handed on their lives to a new generation.




CHAPTER XXVII

GAMES


While ceremonial dancing takes the place both of theatrical shows and of
sports with the Fijians, there are two national games that have held
their own, and a number of amusements which may be briefly enumerated.

_Veiyama_ was a sham fight among children, in which serious injuries
sometimes resulted, and, as they have no longer the example of their
elders, it is now very rarely played. A swing consisting of a rope tied
to a high branch with a loop for the foot, formerly very popular, has
now also fallen into disuse. The children now play hide-and-seek, and a
few impromptu games, without prescribed rules, and with the warm water
on the beach to sport in, and the school dances to practise, they do not
feel the want of them. They have no toys except miniature canoes, which
they make for themselves as they want them.

_Veimoli_, or pelting with oranges, is played both by children and young
men. The skill consists in dodging the orange, which is thrown at short
distance and with full force, and their activity in dodging is so
extraordinary that it has given rise to the myth that Fijians could
avoid a bullet by dodging at the flash of the gun.

[Pageheader: A DANGEROUS ROMP]

The _there_, or foot-race, was always run on some occasion such as the
first voyage of a canoe, or the digging of a plantation, for a prize
offered by the owner. In my first voyage in a canoe I had had built at
Fort Carnarvon we found a crowd of young men waiting for us on the
river-bank, decked in streamers, and shouting a sort of shrill war-cry.
My men declared it was a _there_, and a bale of _masi_ (at my expense)
was hastily unpacked, and a streamer of the cloth fastened to a stick.
With this one of the men landed, some two hundred yards lower down, and
ran at topmost speed with the whole rabble baying at his heels. The man
who caught him and tore the flag from him received the bale, which he
afterwards divided out among the others.

The _veisanka_ was a sort of wrestling match between men and women, who
met at the top of a steep hill, and, having closed, a couple would roll
down the hill together. It was a rough sport, resulting often in a
sprain, and it has now been discouraged by the missionaries.

There were also the _veitenki-vutu_ (throwing the vutu), a fruit, which
from its buoyancy is used as a float for fishing nets; the
_veikalawa-na-sari_, a sort of "hop, skip and jump"; and a kind of
skittles, played with stones. All these have been abandoned.

The _veisolo_ is a custom rather than a game, and it is still
occasionally practised in Western Vitilevu. The last case I heard of
occurred in 1887, and some of my armed constables were the victims. They
put up in a small village in the Nandi district, and hardly had the food
been brought to them when the house was beset by a number of girls bent
on mischief. The traditional object of the besiegers is to disperse
their visitors and take away the food, but the real motive is to have a
romp. The men are expected to be gentle with their assailants, and
either to take them captive or lay them gently on the ground, but in
this instance they were greatly outnumbered, and all the men of the
village being absent, they were really in fear for their lives, for they
had heard stories of men dying from the violence of these Amazons. They
barricaded the door, and, having succeeded in wresting one of the
pointed sticks that were thrust at them through the grass walls, for a
time prevented any of the women from getting in. Their assailants then
became infuriated, and shrieked for a fire-stick with which to fire the
thatch, and one of the men holding the door thought it well to take a
hostage. So he drew back, and a strapping girl bounced into the hut.
Then followed a scene which suggests that there is a sexual
significance in the custom, for the girl was stripped and cruelly
assaulted in a manner not to be described. The women outside were
actually setting fire to the house, and would have burned their village
to the ground had not the men, alarmed by the uproar, returned from
their plantations in time to put a stop to it. The guests beat a hasty
retreat under cover of the darkness, and, curiously enough, no complaint
of their behaviour to the girl was made, probably because it was custom.

The two national games that have held their own are _veitinka_ and
_lavo_. The _tinka_ or _ulutoa_ is a reed four feet long fitted into a
pointed head carved out of ironwood, and about four inches long. On the
outskirts of every village in Western Vitilevu is the _tinka_ ground, a
level stretch of bare earth over one hundred yards long by ten wide. The
_ulutoa_ is thrown thus: the thrower rests the end of the reed on the
ball of the middle finger of the right hand, and, with the arm extended
behind him and the point of the _ulutoa_ on the level of his armpit, he
takes a short run and discharges the weapon with the full force of the
right side of his body. It flies through the air for the first thirty
yards with a low trajectory, and touching the ground with its smooth
surface, skims along it, barely touching the earth until its force is
spent. The longest throw wins the game. The heavy head and the light
shaft make the _ulutoa_ an attractive missile, but the unpractised
European finds the knack of throwing straight very difficult to acquire.
Almost every fine evening finds the youths of the village at practice on
the _tinka_ ground, and on feast-days challenges are sent out to the
neighbouring villages and matches are played. Good players regard their
ironwood heads much as golfers do their favourite driver, but they cut
the reed shafts from the roadside as they want them.

[Pageheader: THE GAME OF _LAFO_]

_Lavo_ has a curious history. It was originally a Fijian game, and was
played with the _lavo_, the flat round seeds of the _walai_ creeper
(_Mimosa Scandens_), which from its shape has given its name to all
European coins, for the dollars recovered from the wrecked brig _Eliza_
in 1809 were used for the game in preference to the seeds. The Tongan
immigrants learned the game and carried it back with them to Tonga,
under the name of _lafo_, where, the seeds being scarce, they
substituted discs of cocoanut-shell, which were a great improvement. In
Tonga it flourished exceedingly; the rules were improved, special sheds
were erected for it, and valuable property changed hands in the stakes.

Meanwhile it had died out in Fiji, and when it revived through the
influence of the Tongans domiciled in the group, it was in its Tongan
form with cocoanut-shells.

I have described it elsewhere in detail,[104] and I will here only
indicate the rules. A board is made with mats about fifteen feet long,
slightly raised at the sides so as to form a sloping cushion. The four
players sit, two at each end, so arranged that the partners are divided
by the length of the board, and each is sitting beside an adversary.
Each player throws five discs alternately with his opponent, and the
object is to skim the disc so as to be nearest the extreme edge, and to
knock off an adversary's disc that may be nearer.

The under edge of the disc is oiled with a rag, and a very nice judgment
is required to impart a "break" from the cushion so as to topple off an
opponent's disc and leave your own in its place. In scoring it is not
unlike tennis. You begin at six and count to ten, and the best out of
five makes the set. I have taken part in many a match, and can testify
to the excellence of the game and the skill that may be acquired with
practice.

The men amuse themselves sometimes with a game of guessing. One flings
out his hand suddenly, and the other guesses the position of his
fingers.

The chiefs sometimes play practical jokes by punning
(_vakarimbamalamala_). Thus as the word _ulaula_ means both to thatch a
house and to throw short clubs at one another, the Mbau chiefs send to
their vassals to come and _ulaula_. They come expecting to thatch a
house, and find themselves received with a volley of throwing clubs.

Story-telling is the principal amusement on long evenings, and the best
story-tellers are professionals. The most successful are tales full of
exaggeration of the Munchausen order, and these, especially when unfit
for polite ears, provoke roars of laughter. The story-tellers have now
begun to draw upon European literature for their inspiration, and the
result throws a very instructive light upon the Fijian's sense of
humour.

I once gave a Fijian the outline of Mr. Rider Haggard's _She_, and a few
nights later I chanced to hear his version of it delivered to a
spellbound native audience. The author would not have enjoyed it, for
the central figure was the native servant of the travellers, who, it
will be remembered, was incidentally "hot-potted" by an unfriendly
tribe. This servant had become an Indian coolie, talking such broken
Fijian as coolies talk in a sort of nasal whine. The narrator enlarged
upon his skinniness, his absence of calf, his cowardice, and many other
qualities in the coolie which the Fijians hold in contempt. There were
endless interpolated dialogues, and the coolie argued at great length
against the fate decreed for him, but when the red-hot pot was finally
on his head the story was drowned in shouts of appreciative laughter.
"She," being but a love-sick white woman, of course talked in "pidgin"
Fijian, but she had little more than a walking part. The professional
story-tellers are promised _nambu_, or fees in kind, by the audience as
an inducement.

Wherever a ground is within reach, and Europeans are at hand to organize
the game, the Fijians have taken keenly to cricket, though not to the
same extent as the Tongans. They have a natural aptitude for fielding
and throwing up, but their idea of batting and bowling are still in the
elementary stage, where force is thought better than skill. It was,
however, possible to send a native team on tour through the Australian
colonies, under the captaincy of Ratu Kandavulevu, King Thakombau's
grandson.

[Pageheader: TRIBAL FEELING IN SPORTS]

The native constabulary took keenly to Rugby football for a time, but as
they wore no boots the sick-list after every match was unduly swelled
with men suffering from injured toes, and the game was not encouraged.
In a temperature of 80 degrees in the shade, where passions are apt to
rise with the thermometer, football is unlikely to become a national
game.

English athletic sports are held occasionally at native meetings, but so
strong does tribal feeling still run, that it is unsafe to encourage
wrestling matches and tugs-of-war between rival tribes, such contests
being apt to degenerate into free fights. The instinct of the weaker
side is to run for a club with which to wipe out the disgrace.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 104: _The Indiscretions of Lady Asenath._]




CHAPTER XXVIII

FOOD


Famine, in the European sense of the word, is unknown in Fiji. Even in
times of scarcity every native can find sufficient food to satisfy his
hunger, but, though the quantity is sufficient, the quality is not.
Ample in amount and in variety, it is lacking in nitrogenous
constituents, and it is unsuitable for young children and for women
during the periods of gestation and suckling.

The staple foods of the Fijians are Yams, Taro (_Arum esculentum_),
Plantains and Bread-fruit. Next to these in point of order are Kumala,
or Sweet Potatoes (_Ipomaea batatas_), Kawai (_Dioscorea aculeata_),
Kaile (_Dioscorea bulbifera_), Tivoli (_Dioscorea nummularia_),
Arrowroot, Kassava, Via (_Alocasia Indica_ and _Cyrtosperma edulis_),
China Bananas, Cocoanuts, Ivi Nuts (_Inocarpus edulis_), Sugar-cane, and
a number of other vegetables and fruits. Meat and fish are not reckoned
as "real food" (_kakana ndina_). They are eaten rather as a luxury or
zest (_thoi_).

[Pageheader: METHOD OF PRESERVING FOOD]

All these vegetables contain a large proportion of starch and water, and
are deficient in proteids. Moreover, the supply of the principal staples
is irregular, being greatly affected by variable seasons, and the
attacks of insects and vermin. Very few of them will bear keeping, and
almost all of them must be eaten when ripe. As the food is of low
nutritive value, a native always eats to repletion. In times of plenty a
full-grown man will eat as much as ten pounds' weight of vegetables in
the day; he will seldom be satisfied with less than five. A great
quantity, therefore, is required to feed a very few people, and as
everything is transported by hand, a disproportionate amount of time is
spent in transporting food from the plantation to the consumer. The time
spent in growing native food is also out of all proportion to its value.
The most valuable of all the staples is _ndalo_, or taro (_Arum
esculentum_), which can only be grown successfully in the wet districts
of the islands, or in places where there is running water. The only way
of preserving perishable foods known to the natives is the _mandrai_
pit. Bread-fruit and plantains are packed in leaves and buried in a deep
hole weighted with stones and earth. Fermentation, of course, sets in,
and when the pit is uncovered at the end of several months the stench is
appalling. The fruit is found reduced to a viscous pulp, and though it
turns the best regulated European stomach, it certainly tastes better
than it smells. It has never occurred to the Fijians to dry any of these
fruits in the sun, and grind them into flour, as is done in Africa. The
yam crop is precarious, and, at its best, only yields about seven-fold,
and then after immense expenditure of time and labour. In places in
which taro and bread-fruit are not plentiful the natives have become
accustomed to a season of scarcity from the month of November, when the
yam crop has been consumed, till February, when the new crop is ripe,
and in some districts this scarcity has been increased by the ravages of
the banana disease, which destroys the plantains. At these seasons, if
bananas are not obtainable, the natives subsist upon _ivi_ nuts, and
unwholesome and indigestible fruits and roots, such as _yaka_
(_Pachyrrhizus angulatus_) or _kaile nganga_, or upon such wild yams as
are obtainable. But even at such times every able-bodied man or woman
seems to be able to find enough to eat.

The staple animal food of the Fijian is fish, which is fairly abundant
in the coast villages, especially in those parts where fish-fences can
be erected, except in very stormy weather. Even in times of reported
famine it is found that the natives can always procure enough fish to
satisfy their hunger. On one occasion, when the province of Lau was
reported to be starving from the damage done by the disastrous hurricane
of January, 1886, the Government dispatched a relief steamer from
island to island to distribute rice and biscuits, but it was found that
the natives consumed the whole of their dole in one prodigal feast,
having quite sufficient fish and pumpkins for everyday use. The
regularity of the supply is proved by the fact that, though in Mathuata
and one or two other provinces the natives are acquainted with a method
of smoking or drying fish, they resort to it but seldom, preferring to
waste or throw away their superfluity to the trouble of curing it. In
Rewa, after a good haul, fish is preserved for a few days in leaves by
repeated cooking, and is thus often eaten tainted. At Mbau mullet is
eaten raw with a sauce of sea-water as a delicacy--a practice introduced
from Tonga.

Pigs and fowls are to be found in every native village, but they are
reserved for feasts or the entertainment of strangers, and are seldom
eaten by the owners as part of their diet. Except on such occasions
fowls are rarely killed, even for the use of a sick person. It is not
that any complicated system of joint ownership limits the use of these
animals to communal purposes, for pigs and fowls are owned by
individuals absolutely, and though the native will often treat one of
his pigs (called a _ngai_) with an almost Hibernian indulgence, and pet
and feed it in his house like one of his children, this affection does
not prevent him from slaughtering it and eating his share of it, when he
considers it sufficiently fat. Whatever may be the reason the Fijian
seldom eats a chicken and never an egg, although almost every other
denizen of the reef and the bush--shell-fish, snakes, iguanas, lizards,
grasshoppers, rats, grubs, chameleon-eggs, cats, dogs, wild duck, and,
in recent times, mongoose--at some time finds its way into his maw.

[Pageheader: PAST AND PRESENT COMPARED]

Milk, the principal sustenance for children in their first years, is not
to be had in native villages, and many Fijians vomit on first tasting
it.[105] Their agricultural system has imbued them with a prejudice
against cattle, which break down their weak fences, and trample and
destroy the yams and plantains. In the isolated instances, where the
chiefs keep goats or cattle as pets, they show, by their callous
disregard for their wants, that they have no sympathy with the
sufferings of the lower animals. The want of milk, as has been shown,
has an important bearing upon the relation between the sexes.

The Fijians have two regular meals in the day. The principal meal is
eaten in the afternoon when they return from their plantations.
Sometimes food is cooked for them before they start in the morning, but
more often they take with them some cold yam or taro left from the
previous day, or trust to being able to roast some wild food during the
intervals of their work. The women, however, generally cook a meal for
themselves and the children if there is sufficient food and firewood in
the house. The boys either eat with their parents or forage for
themselves in the bush, eating large quantities of unripe fruit, and
thus inducing the bowel complaints that are so common among them. In
some cases it is the custom to boil a separate pot of food for the
children to eat during the day. The men eat first, and when they are
satisfied the women and children may fall to upon what is left, but the
latter, during the operation of cooking, know how to take care of
themselves.

It is impossible to say whether the Fijians now plant less food than
formerly. The traces of extensive clearings that are to be seen on
almost every hillside prove nothing but that the population was once
much larger, and that the native planter shifts his ground year by year.
But the decay of custom has not left the food-supply untouched, for
supposing the production to be proportionately as great, the consumption
is proportionately far greater. In heathen times feasts were confined to
occasions of ceremony within the tribe, such as births, marriages and
funerals, or the rare visits of allies. In these days every meeting
connected with the Government or with the Missions is accompanied by a
feast to the visitors. There are, besides the half-yearly Provincial
Council, a District Council every month, and some three or four
missionary meetings every quarter, and, though these feasts are often
small enough, and the meetings are held in different villages of the
district or circuit in turn, they are all to be added to the ordinary
expenditure of food upon births, marriages and funerals, as well as the
little tribal _solevus_ that are held from time to time. Moreover, with
the introduction of European-built vessels, and the safety of travellers
from attack, travelling for pleasure has much increased, without any
diminution of the hospitality to visitors, which is enjoined by
customary law. The ravages of the imported banana disease, and the
damage done in some islands to the bread-fruit by horses (lately
introduced), which are inordinately fond of gnawing the juicy bark, have
diminished the supply of two important articles of food.

While intercourse with foreigners has had an unfavourable influence on
the regularity of the food supply, it has done very little to provide
the natives with new articles of diet. Preserved meats, biscuits, bread,
tea and sugar are used by many of the richer natives, but always as
luxuries, not as part of their daily diet. To these, and more
particularly to the use of sugar, the natives attribute the decay of
their teeth, a condition which they declare was unknown to the last
generation. Whether this be true or not, it is a remarkable fact that
among quite a hundred skulls which I have examined in burying-caves I
have never seen a decayed tooth, whereas it was lately possible for an
American dentist to realize a considerable sum by selling sets of false
teeth to the native chiefs.

The obvious defect in the Fijian dietary is the absence of all cereals.
It is alleged by planters of experience that in Fiji, where the
immigrant Melanesian labourer is fed upon native food, he is of less
value as a labourer than in Queensland, where he receives a ration of
bread and beef.

[Pageheader: PRIMITIVE IMPLEMENTS]

Cereals are the staple food of vegetarian races like the Indian and the
French peasant, and indeed of all races that have left their mark upon
history. But, though the Fijian has cultivated maize in the tax
plantations for many years, and has tasted rice prepared by the coolie
labourers, even growing it himself under European direction, he refuses
to regard either as fit for human food. And, though he has a liking for
bread and biscuits, he seems to consider both inferior to yams and
_taro_.

The labour of agriculture has been much lightened by European tools, and
for this reason more food may now be planted than in heathen times.
Formerly the reeds and undergrowth were broken down with a sharp-edged
wooden club, and burned as soon as they were dry enough; this work is
now performed in a tithe of the time with a twelve-inch clearing-knife.
The ground was then ready for the digging-stick, a tool which does
little credit to the inventive powers of the Fijians considering their
ingenuity in other directions. It is merely a pole of hard wood tapered
at the point by flattening one side. The diggers work in parties of
three or four, by driving their sticks into the ground to a depth of
twelve inches in a circle two feet in diameter. Then, bearing upon the
handles, they lever up the clod and turn it over. The women follow them
on their knees, breaking up the clods with short sticks, and finally
pulverizing the earth with their hands. The soil is then made into
little hillocks in which the yams are planted. The yams were weeded with
a hoe made of a plate of tortoise-shell or the valve of a large oyster.
Iron tools have superseded these, but, strange to say, the European
spade remains less popular than the digging-stick, because it cannot,
without pain, be driven into the ground with the bare foot. The most
popular implement at present seems to be a compromise between the two--a
digging-stick shod with a blade of iron--and it is astonishing how
quickly the Fijians will dig a piece of ground with this unscientific
tool.

Planting is made a picnic; the planter alternates spurts of feverish
energy with spells of rest and smoking in the shade. Though the Fijian
has learned the use of carts and wheel-barrows when working for
Europeans, he does not adopt them, preferring to harvest his roots by
carrying them in baskets slung across his shoulders with a stick. He
uses no mean skill in the irrigation of his taro beds, leading the water
to them by canals or by pipes made of hollow tree-fern trunks. For these
he is now substituting troughs of corrugated iron.

The question of diet may have but little bearing upon the stamina of the
adult Fijian, who is able to bear fatigue and exert his muscles as well
as the men of any race, but it may well be concerned with those obscure
qualities that threaten the race--the failure of the women to bear
vigorous children.


Water

It is strange that, though the islands are richer in unpolluted streams
of pure water than, perhaps, any country in the world the natives are
notoriously careless about the water that they drink. At the Annual
Meeting of Chiefs in 1885 they were reprehended by the Administrator, in
his opening address, for their careless habit of drinking bad water. In
their reply (Resolution 14) they said: "You mention bad water and
insufficiency of food as causes (for the excessive mortality), but we
are usually careful about the water we drink, and we think that there is
more food now than in former times." The Fijians are, in fact, quite
ignorant of what constitutes purity in drinking water. They assume any
water to be drinkable that is moderately clear and does not contain
solid impurities. There are villages that draw their drinking-water from
shallow holes that collect the surface-water from burying-grounds. Many
of the native wells are shallow pools lined with a sediment of decayed
leaves and supplied from the surface drainage from the village square,
which swarms with pigs. In the villages situated in the mangrove swamps
of the deltas of the large rivers no wholesome water can be obtained
without a journey of several miles, and the people use exclusively water
collected in surface depressions. In the sandy, rocky and riverless
islands the natives are content with surface-water when deep wells might
easily be sunk. And, even in villages which draw their water from pure
running streams, the water is carried and kept in bamboos and
cocoanut-shells that are half rotten, and are never cleansed. In this
respect, it is true, contact with Europeans has not affected their
customs either for better or for worse.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 105: The Government has succeeded in persuading a few chiefs
to keep milch cows, but they are not milked regularly.]




CHAPTER XXIX

YANKONA (_Kava_)


Yankona (_Yaqona_) the _Kava_ or _Ava_ of the Polynesians, is an
infusion of the root of the pepper plant (_Piper methysticum_), which is
indigenous in Fiji. Throughout Polynesia it occupies the place which
coffee takes among the Arabs, that is to say, it is used on occasions of
ceremony and in the entertainment of strangers, and its preparation,
even in private houses, is always accompanied by a ceremonial more or
less elaborate. Its geographical distribution in the Pacific may be
roughly described by saying that the races that chew betel do not drink
_yankona_. The plant is unknown in the Solomon Islands and the other
Melanesian groups, with the exception of the Banks and New Hebrides
Islands. We know that the Banks Islanders acquired the habit of drinking
it only recently, and it is possible that the New Hebrides natives
learned the habit from labourers returning from the plantations in Fiji.
Kava-drinking, indeed, seems to be so purely a Polynesian custom, that
the Fijians might be supposed to have learned it from the Polynesians
were it not for the fact that the yankona songs of the hill tribes are
so archaic that the people have quite forgotten their original meaning.
In the New Hebrides and Banks Islands the quasi-religious character of
the custom has not yet given place to everyday use, and _yankona_ is not
drunk by women.

Even in Fiji itself there was considerable diversity of custom. Thomas
Williams says it was not in common use in Vanualevu and part of Vitilevu
in his time. The hill tribes of Vitilevu seem always to have used it,
though its use was confined to the old men, who often drank it to
excess. They prepared it without the elaborate ceremonial with which
the coast tribes have made us familiar, but on great occasions they made
use of a peculiar weird chant, accompanied by gestures whose meaning has
been long forgotten. In Williams's time the natives used to assert that
the true Fijian mode of preparing the root was by grating, and that the
practice of chewing it, which is now universal throughout Fiji, was
introduced from Tonga. About thirty years ago King George of Tonga
absolutely prohibited the chewing of kava as a filthy habit, and the
practice of grating the root or pounding it between two stones has now
become so universal that the Tongans regard the Fijian habit of chewing
it, which they themselves introduced, with the utmost disgust. The
customs of the two countries have thus been reversed.

[Pageheader: A COLD-BLOODED EXECUTION]

In former times the use of _yankona_ in Fiji was purely ceremonial. A
dried root was the indispensable accompaniment of every presentation of
food. The spokesman of the donors held it in his hand while making his
speech, and the representative of the recipients tore off a rootlet or
two while acknowledging the gift. The chiefs _yankona_ circle supplied
the want of newspapers; the news and gossip of the day were related and
discussed; the chief's advisers seized upon the convivial moment as the
most favourable opportunity for making known their views; matters of
high policy were often decided; the chief's will, gathered from a few
careless words spoken at the _yankona_ ring, was carried from mouth to
mouth throughout his dominions. No public business was transacted
without _yankona_-drinking. The late Mr. William Coxon, who acted as
English secretary to Tui Thakau, told me that he witnessed an execution
at the chiefs _yankona_ ring, which it would be difficult to surpass in
cold-blooded horror. The ring was formed as usual, except that the open
space between the chief and the bowl was occupied by the condemned man,
Tui Thakau's cousin, who had been guilty of sedition after repeated
warnings. Four hulking fellows, seated on either side of him, held the
ends of the cord that passed about his neck. The chewing and mixing
proceeded with their usual decorous deliberation, and none knew better
than the condemned man that the hand-clapping of the person officiating
at the bowl, notifying that the drink was brewed, would be the signal
for his death. He could hear the liquor slopping back into the bowl as
the strainer was wrung out. Knowing exactly how often the operation must
be repeated, he could count the moments of life left to him, yet he sat
like the others in deferential silence with his eyes upon the floor and
his breathing as regular as theirs. At last the brew was made: the
brewer gathered the strainer into a tidy parcel, swept it once round the
lip of the bowl, and struck it smartly with the other hand. It was the
signal. The executioners threw their whole weight upon the rope, and the
body fell writhing upon the floor with the head almost wrung from the
shoulders, and the tongue hideously extruded from the open mouth. They
stayed so until the tortured limbs ceased to writhe, and then, at a
signal from the chief, the body was dragged by the shoulders to the
doorway, and flung, rope and all, out of the house. It fell with a heavy
thud upon the hard ground below, for the house was built upon a
foundation fourteen feet high. Not until all was finished did any one
break the silence, and the talk turned upon the ordinary topics of the
day, and the men laughed at the jester's jokes as usual.

Allowing for certain local variations, the ceremony of
_yankona_-drinking as practised throughout Fiji at the present time is a
fair guide to the ancient practice. The chief is seated with his back to
the raised bed-place at the further end of the house, the bowl is
hanging from the eaves with its strainer; a few young men, preferably
those who are known to have good teeth, are called in by one of the
attendants. A man unhooks the bowl from its hanging-place, and,
squatting on his heels, claps his hands several times in apology to the
company for having reached above their heads. The man who is to make the
brew faces the chief with the bowl before him, carefully turning it so
as to allow the cord by which it hung to be stretched out in the
direction of the presiding chief. The others, still conversing, move
their places so as to form two lines, the sides of an oblong
corresponding with the shape of the house, the president closing one end
and the bowl the other. When all is ready a herald, sitting near the
chief, says, "_Na yankona saka_" (the _yankona_, sir), and the chief, or
his own herald in his place, says carelessly, "_Mama!_" (chew!). The
outer rind is scraped off with a knife, the root is cut into small
pieces, and while water is poured over the hands of the brewer to
cleanse them, the young men munch the root into a pulp, which they
deposit in the bowl until it is studded all over with little doughy
lumps of the size of hens' eggs. When all is chewed the brewer takes the
bowl by the edge and tilts it towards the chief, and the herald calls
his attention to it by saying, "_Sa mama saka na yankona_" (the
_yankona_, sir, is chewed); the president glances at it and says, in a
low tone, "_Lomba_" (wring it), an order which the herald repeats in a
louder tone. Water is poured into the bowl from a jar or bamboo, the
brewer meanwhile stirring it into a muddy fluid. It is at this point
that the _yankona_ song is chanted. Each verse is sung in a quavering
duet, which is broken in upon by a chorus chanted in unison, each verse
ending with a sort of sigh or grunt and accompanied by gestures of the
arms and body, which are executed in absolute time. The effect of the
double line of bodies swaying gracefully in the uncertain light of the
lamp has an extremely picturesque effect. The words of the chant have
been so far conventionalized that they have ceased to convey any
meaning.

[Illustration: Brewing Yangkona.]

[Pageheader: THE _YANKONA_ CEREMONY]

Throughout the chant the brewer is busy at his task. He first places the
strainer, a bunch of the fibres of hybiscus bark, over the surface of
the infusion, on which it floats like a buoyant net. Then he presses the
outer edge of it down along the sloping bottom of the bowl, and coaxes
it upwards towards him with his fingers so as to enclose all the solid
matter of the infusion in a sort of bag or parcel. Slightly twisting the
ends of the parcel he folds them together, and doubling it again so as
to reduce its size to a comfortable hold for the hands, he lifts it
gently from the liquor and begins to wring it, allowing the liquor to
drain from it back into the bowl. Taking a new handhold he twists it
tighter and tighter until the last drop is wrung from it and the
fibres crack with the tension. On a little mat spread at his left hand
he now shakes out the woody portions of the root, holding the strainer
up with the left hand and combing it with the fingers of the right. The
operation of straining is repeated three or four times, until the liquor
is sufficiently clear, and sometimes two strainers are employed, the one
to relieve the other. An old strainer is preferred to a new one, from
which the acrid quality of the fibre has not been washed by frequent
use. If strained too often the liquor becomes weak and tasteless, and
some judgment has to be exercised by the brewer to regulate his
movements so as to bring his operation to a conclusion without
interrupting the singers in the middle of a verse. The signal, warning
them not to begin another verse, consists in making a feint in the air
as if to wipe the lip of the bowl, and in then holding the strainer in
the left hand while striking it sharply three or four times with the
hollow palm of the right. The cup-bearer now crouches before the bowl,
holding his cup over it with both hands, while the brewer fills it by
using the strainer as a sponge. The cup-bearer now approaches the chief
in a stooping posture, holding the full cup with both hands at arm's
length before him, and empties a portion of its contents into the
chief's own private cup, which has been carefully wiped for the
occasion. While the president is drinking all clap their hands in a
quick and merry measure, finishing abruptly with two sharp claps as the
president spins his cup upon the ground, the herald crying, "_Mbiu_"
(thrown away) at the same moment. At this the clapping becomes
independent. It is prolonged according to the rank of the chief, and it
is naturally more hearty on the part of his own dependants. Some
sycophant usually continues to clap for some moments after the others
have ceased in the hope of attracting the chief's attention. The next to
drink after the president is his private herald or attendant; after him
the chief next in rank and his attendant, and so on until the liquor is
exhausted. Unlike the practice of Tonga, the cup-bearer has the delicate
duty of serving the company in the order of rank without assistance from
the herald, who, to qualify himself for his hereditary office, has made
a lifelong study of the table of precedence. When two persons of nearly
equal rank are present a very pretty contest of modesty ensues, the
first served declining the proffered cup in favour of the other, who in
his turn vehemently repudiates the honour thrust upon him. It is an
empty form prescribed by convention, for the fact of drinking before
another would confer a step in the social ladder no more than preceding
another to the dinner-table in more civilized communities. If the
cup-bearer were to make a mistake--a very rare occurrence--he would be
set right by one of the heralds before he could commit his solecism. The
task was less difficult, because when custom was the law it was
impossible for reigning chiefs to eat or drink together, and even now,
when they are brought together by the Government, the feast is always
apportioned, and taken away by their attendants to be eaten in the
privacy of their temporary lodging. But, since no native council would
be fruitful of debate unless it were opened with a solemn
_yankona_-drinking, the problem of precedence has been boldly solved by
the English commissioners by prearranging a fictitious table of
precedence, alphabetical or otherwise, so fictitious that it cannot be
construed into a ground of offence, even by the most jealous and
susceptible.

It is only in modern times that women have become _yankona_ drinkers.
All the old natives agree that it used to be considered a shocking thing
for women to drink _yankona_. Some of them assert that the emancipation
of women from the old restriction was introduced from Tonga, while
others think that Nkoliwasawasa, the sister of Thakombau, was the first
to drink it in Mbau, and that she was allowed to do so to comfort her
for the loss of her husband. Others were not allowed to imitate her, for
that would have been disrespectful, but as soon as the status of women
was raised through the influence of the missionaries they began to drink
_yankona_ as the men had done before.

[Pageheader: FORMERLY FORBIDDEN TO WOMEN]

Other changes have crept in. In the old days, it was not drunk in every
house nor on every night, but only in chiefs' houses by the chief and
his retainers, and on the occasion of special feasts and ceremonies.
Now, however, it is drunk in the houses of the common people whenever
they can obtain a supply of the root. Far more _yankona_ is now planted
than before, and one chief at least is in the habit of growing it for
trade. European traders import it in large quantities from Samoa and
other Polynesian islands and retail it to natives at the usual rate of
from 1/6 to 2/- a lb.

Boys begin to drink it as soon as they leave school, say at the age of
eighteen; girls do not begin till later, though they are often required
to chew the root for others to drink. Women seem to drink it as a
beverage, as a stimulant, as a laxative, and also as a diuretic. They
drink it during pregnancy in the hope that it will give an easy labour
and produce a fine child; and also during the suckling period under the
excuse that it increases the flow of milk when all other expedients
fail. There is among some natives a fixed belief that frequent draughts
of _yankona_ are a specific in the early stages of diarrhoea.

There can be no doubt that moderate drinkers find it quite innocuous,
but it is otherwise with confirmed _yankona_ topers, who are easily
recognized. Their bodies become emaciated, and their skin, especially
the palms of the hands, the soles of the feet and the forearms and
shins, become dry and covered with scales. They lose their appetite,
their sleep is disordered, their eyes bloodshot, they complain of pains
in the pit of the stomach and sink into unwholesome lethargy. Any more
prolonged debauch than usual leaves its marks upon the drinker for two
or three days.

Natives describe the symptoms of habitual _yankona_-drinking as
follows:--

_Kaui_ (peeling of the skin), at first about the hypogastrium only, but
eventually over all those parts of the body where it usually occurs;
offensive perspiration; smarting of the conjunctivae; darkening in hue of
the nose and cheeks; _lakatha_, _i.e._ cracking of the palms and soles,
weariness and lethargy, pins and needles in the hands and feet. If an
habitual toper goes without _yankona_ for one day he feels restlessness
and sleeplessness, a parched feeling in the mouth and viscidity in the
saliva. If the abstinence is continued for two or three days he has
borborygmi, occasionally tenesmus.

The following are the effects of a single debauch on a person
unaccustomed to drink _yankona_: restlessness, headache and
sleeplessness, singing in the ears, salivation, hyperuresis, languor,
temporary loss of control of the legs, tremor of the hand when grasping,
and disinclination for food.

From my own experience I am bound to say that one may drink a very great
deal of _yankona_ without experiencing any of these symptoms. The
visitor to the Pacific who fondly hopes that a single draught of the
national beverage will send him careering over the country with a clear
head but rebellious legs will be woefully disappointed. On one occasion
I joined a party of investigation to test _in propria persona_ the
effects of a carouse. We drank a bucketful of strong _yankona_ between
the three of us in three-quarters of an hour, until, to put it plainly,
we could hold no more. The effect was negative. We felt no stimulation,
no soothing, no depression. Our lower limbs continued to behave as lower
limbs should. The drink neither kept us awake nor sent us to sleep, and
it left no headache behind it. So far from the hands trembling in the
act of grasping, one of our number played a better game of billiards
that afternoon than usual. We felt a little sick, perhaps, but not more
than if we had been compelled to swallow the same extravagant quantity
of any other liquid.

[Pageheader: A SUBSTITUTE FOR ALCOHOL]

We noticed the familiar numbing sensation of the fauces and the soft
palate which swallowing strong _yankona_ always induces. For a time the
quantity of saliva was increased, and it became more viscid than usual.
Europeans who are accustomed to drink _yankona_ in moderate quantities
find, not only that it quenches thirst better than any other beverage on
a hot day, but that it acts as a mild stimulant to social conversation,
and to the fullest enjoyment of tobacco. Its capacity for loosening the
tongue is fully recognized by all those who have to conduct native
meetings. Native chiefs of high rank, confronted with each other, are
usually tongue-tied with awkward constraint, but as soon as the
_yankona_ cup has gone round, their reserve is dispelled like the mists
of a summer morning, and they become prone to betray confidences that
would otherwise have remained locked in their bosoms. Europeans have
discovered an even more useful quality in _yankona_. The great
temptation that besets lonely Englishmen in tropical countries is
intemperance, which grows upon some of them until they lose all power of
resistance to the vice. Some confirmed drunkards have cured themselves
by substituting _yankona_ for spirits. They drink, it is true,
incredible quantities of the root, but it satisfies the craving for a
stimulant, without producing intoxication. In this respect it is a pity
that _yankona_ cannot be acclimatized in Europe.

It is a common fallacy among writers of the South Seas that "the natives
of the Pacific Islands use a fermented beverage called kava." So far
from its being fermented, kava is always drunk as soon as it is made,
and any dregs left in the bowl over night are unfit to drink the next
morning, because by that time fermentation has generally begun. Those
who desire to know more of the chemical analysis of _yankona_ can
consult the monograph on the subject given by Dr. Lewin with the German
love of ponderous detail before the German Medical Society in 1885. The
chief physiological influence of the drug in the human body is exercised
on the motor nerves, but the sensory fibres are also affected, and the
influence is cumulative. The alcoholic extract, when evaporated to the
consistency of soap, is as active as cocaine, weight for weight, in
inducing local anaesthesia.

There is, no doubt, in these days, a greater consumption of _yankona_
than in heathen times, for at present the consumption is limited only by
the supply. Except in favoured localities, such as the island of Koro,
the root requires from two to five years to come to maturity, and
demands a good deal of attention during its growth. The importation of
the dried root from other islands in the Pacific has certainly made the
natives independent of the green crop; but since a single root of the
ordinary size generally suffices only for a single occasion, and its
equivalent in dried root cannot be purchased at the local stores for
much less than 2/- a pound (a pound being the minimum required for an
evening _yankona_ party)--the constant use of the root is beyond the
power of any but the richer natives. Natives probably drink _yankona_
once a day throughout the year, far less, in fact, than persons of the
same rank in Tonga, where the pounding stones are never silent.
Commoners, unless they are in attendance on chiefs, go many days without
tasting it.

In one respect there are signs of a change for the better. The custom of
chewing the green root not only tended to foster a taste for drinking in
the young person selected to prepare the bowl, but was probably the
means of communicating the bacilli of disease through the saliva. There
are Europeans who defend the dirty habit on the ground that pounding
reduces the woody fibre to dust which cannot be removed by the strainer,
and who allege that the root is merely masticated, and leaves the mouth
uncontaminated as it went in. But this comfortable belief received a
rude shock when the experiment was made of weighing an ounce of the root
before and after chewing, and it was found that the ounce had increased
by something more than 10 per cent. Happily, the Tongan chief is the
_arbiter elegantiarum_ to the Fijian Courts, and it is fast becoming the
fashion to regard the habit of chewing _yankona_ in its proper light and
to substitute the pounding stones of Tonga.

[Pageheader: DISCOURAGED BY MISSIONARIES]

The Wesleyan missionaries have attacked _yankona_ drinking with a fiery
zeal which is scarcely commensurate with the importance of the subject,
for if it is a vice at all, it cannot reasonably be condemned for
bringing in its train any of those social evils that are due to alcohol.
A large number of the native teachers wear a blue ribbon on their
shirt-fronts in token that they have abjured tobacco and _yankona_, and
suspend conspicuously in their houses a card bearing the legend, "_Sa
tabu na yaqona kei na tavako_" (drinking and smoking are forbidden). In
the interests of the mission the wisdom of this crusade may well be
questioned, for the path of virtue for the native has been made dull
enough already by the prohibition of all his ancient heathen
distractions, and to curtail any more of his pleasures would be to
invite an inevitable reaction which up to now has taken the course of
going over to the Roman Catholics, whose policy it is to make the lives
of the Fijians as joyous as they dare. Nevertheless, in so far as they
have checked the habit of _yankona_-drinking among youths and
childbearing women, the efforts of the Wesleyan missionaries are likely
to be of some immediate if not ulterior advantage.




CHAPTER XXX

TOBACCO


The tobacco plant was indigenous in Fiji, but until the beginning of the
nineteenth century the leaf was only used for killing lice, from which
it took its original native name of _mate-ni-kutu_ (lice-slayer).
Smoking was introduced by a Manila ship, and it spread rapidly through
the group, being adopted by both sexes.

The plant is grown in dry, sandy soil, preferably on the sites of old
houses which have been well manured by the village pigs. The leaves are
hung suspended in bundles from the rafters of a house to wither, and are
then twisted tightly together to sweat. This produces a leaf of great
pungency and strength. It is smoked almost exclusively in the form of a
_suluka_, or cigarette, rolled in dry banana leaf. The ribs of the
tobacco leaf are stripped off, the leaf is partially dried over a
firebrand, and shredded before being rolled, and a supply of
ready-rolled _suluka_ is either stuck into a cleft reed to keep it from
unrolling, or carried behind the ear.

Until about 1880 every native over fourteen years of age smoked; many of
the children began at a much earlier age, and, if punished for it,
continued the practice in secret. About twenty years ago the Wesleyan
missionaries tried to discourage the practice, by instituting a blue
ribbon for total abstainers from kava and tobacco. They may have induced
five per cent. of the adults to abandon the habit.

[Pageheader: PIPE SMOKING]

As long as smoking was confined to the _suluka_ it had a picturesque
side, but latterly the inconvenience of a cigarette that goes out every
two or three minutes, even with continuous application, has favoured the
introduction of the English pipe. The young chiefs are seldom seen
without one, and as they omit to remove it when speaking to you, it has
not tended to preserve the courtliness of Fijian manners. The women have
now begun to use it, and may be seen working in their plantations,
smoking a short, black clay pipe, with the bowl turned downwards to keep
out the rain. It would no doubt be universal were it not that the
imported tobacco, though it is admitted to have a pleasant smell, is
objected to as being less narcotic than the native-cured leaf.

The women smoke a great deal during pregnancy, but abstain for the first
ten days after confinement. One woman told me that she had noticed, when
suckling, that when she was smoking heavily she had less milk, and that
her baby cried a great deal, whereupon she discontinued smoking until
the child was able to crawl. Few Fijian mothers show so much
consideration. With the view of testing the important point as to
whether excessive smoking affected the mothers, an experiment was made
on May 29, 1883. A healthy Fijian woman, with a child at the breast, was
taken to Suva hospital and given half-an-ounce of native leaf to smoke.
She consumed is all in two hours, and then declined to smoke any more.
One and a half fluid ounces of her milk were drawn off and submitted to
examination by the late Dr. Zimmer. Unfortunately there were not
sufficient appliances for securing a positive analysis, but the addition
of platinum bichloride to the distillate gave a yellow precipitate, such
as is produced by the combination of nicotine with that salt.




CHAPTER XXXI

THE TENURE OF LAND


At the cession of the islands in 1874 the form of land tenure among the
Fijians was very imperfectly understood. Most of the settlers, seeing
the large tracts of uncultivated land and the comparatively small
patches of cultivation round the native villages, planted one year and
deserted the next in favour of virgin soil, did not believe that the
natives had any definite system of land tenure, or that, with so large a
tract of waste land, they had found the necessity for evolving
proprietary rights in the soil.

[Pageheader: THE PROPRIETARY UNIT]

As soon as the sale of land by the chiefs to Europeans came to be
investigated by the Lands Commission there was a bitter controversy as
to what was the proprietary unit in the eye of customary law. It was the
object of every claimant to land to show that the proprietary unit was
the chief who had signed the deed upon which he relied. The natives on
the other hand, chiefs and people alike, were at pains to prove that the
land was vested in the people, that the chief virtually had no interest
in it at all, and had acted _ultra vires_ in selling it. The reader will
remember the disastrous mistake made by the Government in British
India--how as our empire spread our representatives took from their
Mahommedan predecessors the assumption that all private property in land
was held from the sovereign; that the soil was therefore theirs, and
that any land laws would be of their creation; how Lord Cornwallis
converted the Mahommedan tax-gatherers into landed proprietors, and how
in the southern provinces this was reversed and the Government
recognized nothing between itself and the proprietors. Both these
beliefs proved to be erroneous, because as in Fiji they were attempting
to make certain facts accord with European ideas. In India the real unit
was the village community; in Fiji, the tribal community.

The inquiries of the Lands Commission have shown that the proprietary
unit is an aggregation of Matankalis seldom less than four, subdivided
in their turn into Tokatoka (septs), but known for ordinary purposes by
the name of the village they inhabit, or on occasions of ceremony by
their title, _Thavu_. This title is in some instances, probably in all,
taken from the name of the site of their original village. Matankalis
generally took their name from the house site of their founders. A
process of fission and fusion (unfortunately the latter in these days of
excessive mortality) is continually taking place. If a Tokatoka becomes
too numerous it is subdivided, and the new sept takes its name from that
of the house in which its leader lives. If it becomes more numerous
still it is called a Matankali. When the Matankali becomes reduced to
six males or less, it is usually absorbed, and becomes a Tokatoka of the
Matankali most nearly allied to it.[106]

The early basis of society throughout the world is kinship. If a man is
not a kinsman, then he is an enemy, the craftiest order of wild beast.
Among primitive tribes the groups of consanguineous relations are much
larger than among civilized peoples, because there is always a tendency
for persons owning any tie of kinship to band together for mutual
protection. The Fijians had no territorial roots. It is not too much to
say that no tribe now occupies the land held by its fathers two
centuries ago. They are united by consanguinity, not by the joint
ownership of the soil. But the longer they stay upon land, the stronger
becomes their connection with it, until at last it becomes the basis of
brotherhood, and the adoption of a stranger confers nearly the same
privileges as those enjoyed by full-born members of the tribe.

The evolution of the chief in Polynesia is not so complicated as in
Europe. Chiefs in ancient Greece were necessarily wealthy, and in Europe
wealth led to chieftaincy. But in Fiji the chief arrived at his position
only in virtue of being the representative of the purest line of the
common ancestor, related to his inferiors of the same tribe, but
distinct from the surrounding tribes, who admitted his authority in
virtue of conquest. Sir Henry Maine well says, "When the relation which
it created lasted some time, there would have been no deadlier insult to
the lord than to have attributed to him a common origin with the great
bulk of his tenants." For tenants in England innocent names have come to
bear an insulting meaning; "villain," "churl" and "boor" are names
perverted by the chiefs to indicate their contempt for the tenants, with
whom in reality they were related.

The exalted rank of the high chiefs in Fiji does not seem to arise until
his tribe has subdued others by conquest. His people seemed to treat him
with far greater respect when he had allowed _fuidhir_
tenants--fugitives from broken tribes--to settle on the waste lands of
the tribe. The superstitious element that had hitherto lain dormant then
brought into prominence the fact that in his body ran the purest blood
of the Kalou-Vu, the ancestor-god, a being to whom reverence as well as
obedience must be paid. The priests, who always cultivated an excellent
understanding with the chiefs, encouraged this feeling, and in return
the chief took care that the offerings to the gods were not stinted. At
the death of the chief there was a limited election, such as was
practised in Ireland as late as 1596. The candidates for election were
limited first to the brothers of the deceased, and in default to his
cousins, the sons of his brothers' brother. In default of these the son
was elected if he was old enough. The reason for this law of succession
is obvious. The tribe must have a leader in the zenith of his powers,
and the dead chief's brother was looked upon as the most fit person to
be regent during the son's minority. The eldest brother succeeded,
unless there were objections to him. In Bureta the ancient ceremony was
still practised up to a few years ago. The people were assembled after
the burial of the chief, and one of the elders of the tribe proposed the
name of his successor. Often voices from the crowd shouted objections.
"No, he is hasty tempered." "One goes into his house hungry and he gives
not to eat." Even if they had resolved on the appointment of the eldest
brother as successor the objections were still made as a delicate hint
to him to amend his conduct when he became chief. He was then taken to a
stream and bathed, and the chief's _masi_ was then wrapped round him.
Once elected, whether by the actual ceremony or by a survival of it, he
assumed control over the tenants in villeinage and over the waste lands
of the tribe.

[Pageheader: THREE KINDS OF REAL ESTATE]

Now, among tribes sprung from a common origin, living upon adjacent
lands, practising the same form of religion, subjected to the same
conditions of intertribal warfare, and having attained the same social
development, one would expect to find the land laws almost identical,
but, on the contrary, in the narrow area formed by the watershed on the
eastern part of Vitilevu, no less than eight systems of tenure have been
found to exist.

The title to land is vested in the full-born members of a tribe. Three
kinds of land are recognized. The _yavu_ or town lot, the _nkele_ or
arable land, and the _veikau_ or forest. The two first of these are
nominally in the occupation of the heads of families. The _veikau_ is
common to all the members of the community, but it is always liable to
be encroached upon and appropriated according to the rules to be laid
down when I come to discuss the _nkele_.


The Yavu or Building Site

The nucleus of every Fijian village has been at no very remote date a
single family, inhabiting a single house. As Fijians from the parent
stock multiplied, houses were built round the site of the house of the
common ancestor. Each son when he married and settled down, chose for
himself a site for his house, within the limits of the fortification.
He named it after his own fancy, and when imagination failed him, after
the nearest natural object. Thus most Fijian houses are named after some
native tree. In the course of years, or the vicissitudes of war, the
village was removed, but when this was done, the new settlement was
built as nearly as possible upon the exact plan of the old one. I have
watched the process. When the site was decided upon the chief went with
his people, and selected a site for his own house. In heathen times, the
position of the _Mbure_, or temple, was first marked out, and the chief
pitched his temporary shelter in a position that corresponded with the
site of his house in the village he had abandoned. Then his nearest
neighbours marked out the sites of their houses. Their neighbours
followed, and so on until the new village corresponded exactly with the
old, as far as the nature of the ground permitted. If the town increased
in size, new ground from outside the moat was appropriated by the
householders in want of a house, and the moat was dug so as to include
it. These house sites descended by the ordinary law of inheritance to
the eldest brother, or in default of a brother, to the eldest son. One
man, especially if he were a representative of a decaying family, might
own several. For years no house might have been built upon them, and
yet, unless he formally conveyed them to another, the right of himself
and his heirs was never disputed. The proprietary rights were most
jealously guarded. Between each _yavu_ there must be space for a path,
and the eaves of your house must not project so as to drip upon a part
of the path appertaining to your neighbour's _yavu_. A _yavu_ might
occasionally, though rarely, be given in dowry, but in such cases it
reverted, as in the case of arable land, to the descendants of the
original owner.


Nkele, Or Arable Land

[Pageheader: METHOD OF APPROPRIATING COMMONS]

The _nkele_ is simply that portion of the _veikau_ or forest that has
been appropriated. Once appropriated it descends according to the fixed
laws of inheritance. But the ownership of a proprietor is strictly
limited. There is no more absolute ownership known to the Fijian
customary law than there is to the English. "No man is in law the
absolute owner of lands. He can only hold an estate in them."[107] The
tenure of the _nkele_ may be best compared to an estate for life. Each
owner holds for the household to which he belongs; the household holds
for the sept, the sept for the clan, the clan for the community, and the
community for posterity. The owner of the _nkele_ had over his land a
little less than _dominium_ and a little more than _usufruct_.

Now that the tribes have been so reduced in numbers by war and foreign
diseases, and whole villages have been swept away, leaving only one or
two representatives who have merged themselves for shelter and
protection in the community most nearly allied to them, there is still
little, even of the forest land, that has not some reputed owner. Thus,
when a man would clear and cultivate some patch far removed from the
village and overgrown by trees he first inquires (if he does not know)
who is the direct descendant and representative of the tribe that
formerly planted on the land. It is rare that no claimant can be found,
and in some cases the communal rights have apparently merged into the
individual ownership of a solitary survivor. But among tribes who have
quite lately fought their way into land belonging to their neighbours,
and who have successfully held the conquered territory until the cession
of the islands to England, no member of the tribe can have rights over
the _veikau_ greater than those enjoyed by his fellows. Among these one
may almost daily observe the manner of appropriating land when required
for planting purposes. Under the primitive system, agricultural crops
could not be grown in the same soil with success for more than two
seasons, and consequently an industrious planter will have patches of
cultivation scattered about upon the flat land bordering the
watercourses for a large area surrounding the village. When he would
acquire and dig a new garden he goes to the chief and uses some such
formula as this: "I have come, sir, to speak about my garden. I wish to
plant on the little flat known as So-and-so." The chief asks those round
him whether the land has an owner, and if they answer in the negative,
tells the man to report his intention to his Matankali. Thenceforward
the land, or the usufruct of it, is appropriated by that man and his
heirs.

So simple a procedure cannot of course be tolerated unless the land far
exceeds the requirements of the population; and it is curious to note in
some communities such as Rewa, where the people outnumber the
planting-grounds, that the procedure for appropriation or transfer
becomes at once more formal and elaborate.

The ancient boundaries of lands were continually contracting and
extending, in accordance with the military strength of the tribe. But
when tribes were of nearly equal strength, and the fortunes of war were
doubtful, both sides were as anxious to maintain peace as the
diplomatist of modern Europe. Questions of land boundaries, where the
land was so far more abundant than either side required, were submitted
to a rough form of arbitration. If one tribe could show occupation, the
other gave way rather than fight about such a trifle. Unless it had
strategic importance or bore valuable fruit-trees, or salt-pans, or some
other product whose loss would be felt, land in itself in those days was
of no account. Almost the only things of value that the Fijians
recognized in connection with land were the products of human
industry--wells, trees and crops. To claim another man's plantation was
a _casus belli_: to appropriate a patch of forest, reputed to belong to
a neighbour, was an offence that could be palliated by a paltry present.
Thus, if the council of the tribe determined to lay claim to a boundary
enclosing a strip of debatable land, they sent men to acquire and plant
gardens as near the projected boundary as possible. These gardens became
the property of the men who planted them, and of their heirs, unless of
course the neighbours resented the intrusion, and drove them back. The
same custom prevails even more largely under the English Government. As
soon as the lands court is reported to be about to visit the district,
every tribe begins extending its forest boundaries. The claims
invariably overlap, and when the surveyor visits the spot, he finds
newly-made plantations overlapping one another for several furlongs in
inextricable confusion. Any of these plantations, if the claimants be
successful, will be vested in the persons who acquired them, with of
course the same restrictions as applies to the tenure of _nkele_
generally.

[Pageheader: METHOD OF EVICTION]

Having sketched the manner of acquisition and appropriation of common
land, I will now describe the common method of divesting the person of
ownership. This could only be done immediately after appropriation, as a
protest against his right to acquire and plant, or as punishment for a
crime. In the latter case the crime must in some way have infringed upon
the rights or dignity of a chief, and that chief must feel in himself
the power to support his prohibition by force of arms if need be. The
custom was called _veisauthi_. It consisted in sticking a row of peeled
reeds into the acquired ground. From this the land-grabber understood
that he planted again at his peril. If he felt strong enough he might
continue, but he would have to fight for it. As a general rule he
desisted, because he knew that the protesting parties, whoever they
were, had not taken this step without counting the cost. If the
protestors were persons within his own tribe, the dispute would be
brought up before the council of headmen, and adjusted one way or the
other. If the _veisauthi_ was resorted to as a punishment for an injury
to the chief, it was erected upon all the planting-lands of the
offending person. It had only one meaning, that he must flee for his
life, and, conscious of his guilt, he almost invariably did so. Even if
he were stronger than the chief he fled to collect his strength among
the enemies of the tribe, for the _veisauthi_ in this case meant that he
would be killed by foul means rather than fair--by the club in his
sleep, or by poison.


The Veikau, or Forest

[Pageheader: EVOLUTION OF THE LANDLORD]

This term included all the uncultivated lands within the reputed
boundaries of the tribe. As I have already said, these boundaries
fluctuated with its military strength. Much of the land was worthless
for cultivation, rough, bare hills, from which every scrap of soil had
been washed by the summer rains, and on which the scanty herbage was
scorched dry by the winter drought, and burnt annually in the autumn
bush fires. To such land as this no value whatever was attached. At the
foot of every hill ran streams, with patches of rich land here and there
along their banks. To include this, the claim was laid to the whole
tract. Besides its value as planting land, the actual forest was often
claimed for the rights of cutting timber, and pasturing herds of
half-wild pigs. Forests containing the _vesi_, valued as the best timber
for the posts of houses, or sandal-wood, a profitable article of barter
from remote times, were claimed with the same tenacity as in the case of
the _nkele_; but they were claimed by the whole community, not by
individuals. We have now to observe a very curious transition from
communal waste lands to land owned exclusively, under the law, which is
so well described by Sir Henry Maine. The waste lands belonged,
collectively, to the tribe, but inasmuch as tribal matters were decided
for the community by the chief, and an oligarchy of his supporters, the
ordinary freeborn men of the tribe gradually ceased to ask for any voice
in the disposal of the waste lands. The chief, accustomed to decide
questions of appropriation without reference to his people, came
gradually to look upon the waste lands as his private estate. The change
finally came when fugitives approached the tribe asking for their
protection. They came, of course, to the chief, as the tribal
representative, and asked for protection, and for the usufruct of land
on which to plant their food. He, in the name of the tribe, allotted to
them a portion of the _veikau_ on the ordinary tenure of dependants,
namely, an annual tribute from the crops grown upon the land. This
tribute, presented to the chief, was divided out among his own people,
but gradually the annual tribute was supplemented by produce yielded on
the chief's demand, whenever he had a feast to make. In making these
demands he was no longer acting as a tribal representative, but as an
individual. In the course of generations, the origin of tenure faded
from the memory of the people, and it was only remembered that the land
was held upon the condition of personal tribute to the chief, to be
yielded on his demand. He was, in fact, the landlord, they the tenants.
I shall describe in detail various tenancies that arose in this manner.
We are concerned at present with its bearing upon the _veikau_. Among
the lands thus granted to dependant tribes were considerable tracts that
remained uncultivated. In theory the grant had been only in respect of
the land actually used, but in practice it was common to regard the
_veikau_ surrounding the plantations as tenanted by the dependant tribe.
This portion of the _veikau_ was held on a different tenure from the
main portion claimed by the predominant tribe. In the latter case the
chief alone claimed the disposal of it, or of the trees that grew upon
it. In the former he rarely gave leave even for the cutting of trees,
without first intimating his intention to his tenants. They had in fact
acquired rights over it allied to usufruct. They might cut timber in
moderation without leave. They could appropriate to individuals of the
tribe such portions as they required, but they might not grant leave to
cut timber to outsiders without first obtaining the chiefs permission.

The owners of the soil of a conquered tribe are reduced to a servile
status provided that their conquerors settle within reach of them. Mere
conquest without occupation produces no change in the form of tenure.
Tribute may be paid perhaps for a year or two, but as soon as the
conquered tribe feels itself strong enough to repudiate its subjection
the tribute ceases, and the tenure of land within the limits of the
tribe have from the beginning remained unaffected. It is otherwise where
conquest is followed by occupation. In such cases, from free landowners
the conquered are reduced at one sweep to the _nkalini-ni-kuro_, or
kitchen men, the lowest status known to the Fijian customary law. An
instance of this sudden change is to be found in the tribes of Maumi,
Ovea and Mokani, who were probably originally owners of the soil on
which they live, but who have been reduced by the occupation of the Mbau
chiefs to the status of kitchen men. The ceremony of transfer varied in
different districts. In Mbau it took the form of the _soro-ni-nkele_
(earth tribute). When the conquered people came to pay their submission,
besides the whales' teeth they presented a basket of earth in token that
their land was at the disposal of their conquerors. This does not
necessarily mean that the land was conveyed to their conquerors, for
land, without people to cultivate it, was valueless. They rather
conveyed their own bodies with the land on which they lived as being
inseparable, and only valuable when in conjunction. Among primitive
peoples an act done at regular intervals tends to become a permanent
institution. There is no legislation among primitive tribes, but custom,
however it may arise, tends to become law.

[Illustration: Picking Cocoanuts.]

[Pageheader: OWNERSHIP OF TREES]

We come now to a feature in the rights of property that is very hard for
a European, trained in the systems that are based upon the ancient Roman
law, to comprehend. The doctrine _ab inferno usque ad coelum_ has no
bearing in the islands of the Pacific. As I have already said, land as
land had no value. Its value arose only from its potential produce. The
thing treated with most consideration among primitive peoples is human
labour, and the products of it. In Rome, and therefore of course in
modern Europe, if a man plants fruit-trees on another's land, he has no
claim to them. They belong to the soil in which they grow; but in Fiji,
while you may be wrong in planting cocoanuts upon land which belongs to
your neighbour, you do not on that account part with your rights over
the product of your labour. The land remains his, but the trees are
yours, from the surface of the soil to the topmost frond. You have,
moreover, in virtue of your property in the trees, a right of way over
his soil to get at your trees. To our minds this seems very unjust, but
it must be remembered that in a country where the population is sparse,
and where cocoanuts have at once a commercial value which land does
not possess, cocoanut trees are held in far higher estimation than the
soil in which they grow. As a general rule this conflicting form of
tenure does not arise through the secret planting of trees. The tree
owner or his father has, in almost every case, asked the leave of the
owner of the soil before planting his cocoanuts. Where two men are
connected through the marriage of their children or by merely personal
friendship, this is a very common form of mutual obligation. In the case
of chiefs, moreover, it is no uncommon thing for the overlord to pick
out the pockets of soil most suitable for the growth of cocoanuts, and
to order his vassals to go and plant them there. The tenants still
possess their rights over the soil, but they would not dare to claim the
nuts growing upon them. The distinction may be best seen by comparing
the crops of yams or plantains. The tenants would take the first-fruits
to the chief, preserving the rest for themselves, but they would take
all the cocoanuts, even after expending their own labour in gathering
and husking them. This form of tenure has been a great embarrassment in
settling the ownership of land. Now that modern ideas have begun to take
root, and that every land-owner hopes to let his land to a European at a
fixed annual rent, payable in cash, the owners of the trees confront him
at every point with their claims. The result is that the rights in the
trees are very often disputed. European notions have been dimly seized
upon, and land-owners stand upon their rights as if they had been bred
under the English law of Real Property. The only way to settle these
disputes is to buy out one of the claimants. Where this is not done, the
owners of the trees should be allowed to have twenty-five years'
usufruct of them, after which they and all others they may have planted
in the interim should pass to the owner of the soil.


Tenures in Rewa

Rewa is the most perfect example of a Fijian state known to us. Even its
disruption in the great war with Mbau in 1845 has not been able to snap
the ties that join the various units to the central power. So intimately
is the question of its political constitution connected with the tenure
of land that it is impossible to avoid giving it at some length.

The supreme government of the state was vested in the spiritual and
temporal chiefs, the Roko-tui Ndreketi and the Vunivalu, who was the
head of Nukunitambua. Unlike the system in the rival confederation of
Mbau and many other native states, the spiritual chiefs had not yet
parted with their executive power, nor had the Vunivalu yet succeeded in
reducing them to a position of secondary importance. Before the great
war between Mbau and Rewa, every clan had its part to play in the state.
Below the two great families of Narusa and Nukunitambua, the spiritual
and the temporal, which divided the power between them, were the six
clans that formed the Sauturanga (_lit._ defence of the chiefs). These
clans owed the superior chiefs no service but that of leading the army
into battle and of conducting ambuscades. They also supplied the
_matanivanua_ (heralds or _aides-de-camp_). In order of battle they were
the horns of the net--that is to say, while the main body of the army
held back in cover, they led simultaneous flanking movements under cover
of the grass or trees, and fell upon both flanks of the enemy at once,
driving them into the arms of the main body, who were lying in wait.
They were land-owners, and received _thokovaki_ rent from their tenants,
but they supplied no _thokovaki_ produce to the two governing families.

[Pageheader: CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE]

Next to these in rank were the chiefs of the allied states of
Mburebasanga, who were the _nkase_ (elders) of the Rewa chiefs and of
Notho. These were only subject to Rewa in so far that they were pledged
to order their vassals to perform work for the supreme chiefs. Of course
this tie arose from the Rewa chiefs having at some remote time conquered
them and come to live among them, and in the case of Notho, through the
Notho people as fugitives, having obtained leave, on the condition of
tribute, to settle upon land belonging to Rewa.

Next to these came the Kaso (cross-beams), who were perhaps originally
descendants of the younger sons of chiefs. The Kai Nalea, the first of
these, were the hereditary priests, whose power was broken in the
reformation already described, and next to them were the Kai Mbuli, who
had as tenants the Kai Malase.

Next came the trade clans, the fishermen of Vutia, Nukui and Nasilai,
the carpenters of Ndorokavu and the Tongan sailors of Nambua and
Singatoka. All these tribes owed service to the chiefs in the exercise
of their trade, and received grants of land from time to time in
recognition of their services.

Below these again were the free yeomen, the Kai Nandoi, and the villages
of Nakuru, Ndrekena, and Veiniu, called collectively the Kai Mbatikeri.
Next and below them came the Muainasau; below these again were the three
clans whose lands were in the mangrove swamps, and who were therefore
called Nkalivakawai (water subjects). These were the Kai Norothivo, Kai
Tavuya, and Kai Naiteni.

Lastly came the villeins, the Kai Loki and the Kai Nandoria, who were
_adscripti glebae_, and whose proprietary rights in the soil were so
slight as to be almost indefinable.

The Kai Vanualevu enjoyed a remarkable status. They were the sacred
tribe (Nkalitambu), and they owed the chief no service. Their special
function was the investiture of the Roko Tui Ndreketi in the ceremony of
the _yankona_ drinking, but this privilege does not seem to have
conferred upon them any special rank. Nevertheless, in such veneration
did they seem to have been held, that no one dared to plant on land they
had vacated. It is possible that this tribe are descended from the same
ancestors as the chiefs, and perhaps from an elder branch, but that,
owing to some tribal upheaval, the younger branch came to the front, and
with the loss of power the consideration in which the elder was held
dwindled away to this merely nominal status.

[Pageheader: INDIVIDUAL TENURE]

While the change from the independent Fijian state to a principal
province of the colony has done much towards obliterating the old
distinctions, it has not materially affected the customary law bearing
upon land tenure. Clans who are _thokovaki_ tenants of the Rewa chiefs,
such as Waivau, Vanualevu, and Vuthi, having been included for
administrative purposes within the boundaries of the Tailevu province,
are now required by law to render tributary service to Mbuli Tokatoka,
while they still continue voluntarily to pay tribute to their landlords
at Rewa. In this respect the establishment of a settled government has
accentuated in some measure the degree of their subjection. The taxation
system, in requiring that land held by individuals shall, for taxing
purposes, be regarded as communal property, has forced upon the natives
a retrogressive movement in their views of land tenure, but otherwise
the tenure remains unchanged. When the laws that now govern the native
race were framed, very little was known of the real nature of the
services rendered by commoners to their chiefs. The levies of the chiefs
were thought for the most part to be exercised in virtue of some kind of
divine right, or at least, if exercised in connection with land, to be
in virtue of the chief's exclusive ownership. But it certainly never
occurred to any of the members of the Governor's Council that _lala_ was
merely another form of rent. If this had been so, assuredly some steps
would have been taken to see that _lala_ was only exacted by the proper
landlords. For twenty years _lala_ has remained very loosely defined,
but unfortunately it has been often necessary to replace hereditary
chiefs by well-conducted persons of inferior rank, and the _lala_ has
been allowed to be exercised in virtue of office, rather than heredity.
All the native feelings of justice have naturally been outraged by their
being required to pay rent for their holdings to the mere nominee of an
alien Government, while the one person who, in their minds, has a right
to demand service from them is prohibited from doing so. In every
instance they have continued voluntarily to pay their rent, and have
grudgingly yielded a second tribute to the Government nominee, and have
further paid in respect of their lands a tax to the Government. If there
has been murmuring against the present form of native government, it has
been due, I am convinced, to this cause. In one respect the cession of
the colony has affected land tenure in a marked degree. It has put an
end to the continued transfer of land that flourished under the ancient
custom. With the abolition of heathen customs and the cessation of
native wars all reasons for permanent transfer have been swept away.


Individual Tenure

The communal tenure of the _veikau_ is found only in parts of the
country where the land is in excess of the requirements of the
population. Fortunately for students, there are in the group districts
where, from war, migration, or other causes, the population has become
congested. This is especially so in the delta of the Rewa river. The
customary laws in force in this district deserve special study. In Rewa
there is practically no communal tenure. Individual tenure is there due
to the fact that every unit of land had to be reclaimed from the river
or the sea. To this day, if one digs down a few feet below the surface,
anywhere upon the alluvial flats, one finds mangrove roots. Perhaps the
mangrove swamps were partly reclaimed by Nature, for the great floods
that occur almost annually bring down a vast quantity of silt, which
they deposit when the water recedes. But man has done much to extend the
process.

When floods are expected long trenches are dug, which leave tiny
embankments along their edge. The surface is flooded, the little ditches
are obliterated by the deposit, and the waters, held in by the
embankments, raise the entire surface of the land an inch or two. It is
obvious that among the primitive peoples a man must acquire proprietary
rights over land upon which he has expended labour.

Besides man, there is another agent at work in reclaiming land in the
mangrove swamp, which extended from the present coast-line to about two
miles below Nausori, where islands are raised a few inches above
high-water mark. These were the haunt of a burrowing crayfish, called
the _mana_, which plays the same part in the swamps as do the
earth-worms in the grass land in England. They are continually bringing
up the subsoil of the swamp to the surface, leaving a long tunnel,
reaching from the surface to the water underneath. As the tide rises
they crawl backwards, until at high tide they are close under the mound
they have raised. The Fijians, knowing this peculiarity, set at low tide
a most effective trap, by which the _mana_ is caught in a noose. I had
heard it said that they carried a number of them to their taro
plantations, and there set them at liberty, to carry on their unceasing
work of raising the soil. But all the natives I have questioned on the
point deny this, saying, "When did you ever know a Fijian let go an
animal that is good to eat? We do not look ahead like you white men."
However this may be, the _mana_ undoubtedly does increase the size of
these islands very rapidly.

[Pageheader: RECLAMATION FROM THE SWAMP]

The Rewa province is composed entirely of the alluvial flats in the
delta of the great river. Over a large portion of these flats the land
is broken up into little plots, surrounded by ditches, in which grow
_via_ and _taro_, while the higher ground included by them is covered
with fruit-trees, and yams or plantains. Each of these plots has an
owner; but the owners of contiguous ground are not usually men of the
same tribe. We found it quite impossible to set a boundary to the land
of any particular tribe, for the holdings of the individuals were
scattered about the country, among the holdings of other tribes, in
hopeless confusion. To explain this remarkable _morcellement_, which is
unknown in any other part of the colony which has yet been investigated,
we must turn to tradition, and to the peculiar political constitution of
the Rewa people. The first settlers who came to the delta from the
higher reaches of the river were the ancestors of the people of Nandoi,
driven down by internal commotion among the tribes that inhabited the
mountains. They found, at first, no land fit to grow yams or plantains,
but the little islands in the mangrove swamp were excellently adapted
for defence, and they planted swamp _via_ and _taro_, digging for the
purpose trenches with banks on either side. The floods came and filled
the trenches with silt. The process was repeated, until by degrees the
ancient trenches and ridges were obliterated, and the whole country was
converted into a rich alluvial flat, raised above the influence of the
tide, but not beyond the fertilizing action of the highest floods. It
was at this period that individual began to take the place of communal
ownership. Considerable labour had to be expended before a supply of
food could be grown. The wide circular trench must be dug, and the earth
built up in the middle to make a bed for yams and plantains, while the
trench was suitable for taro. This work was not severe enough to be
beyond the power of a single family, and no call was therefore made upon
the labours of the community, as in the case of public works of greater
magnitude. Thus, as the Nandoi people came to regard these valueless
swamps as their peculiar property, individual families appropriated
portions of their common land, upon the undeniable claim of having
expended labour upon them. Once appropriated, the land followed the
customary law of the inheritance of chattel property--that is to say, it
descended to the eldest surviving son, or, failing a son, to the eldest
surviving brother. In default of a male heir, it passed to the clan, to
be appropriated by an individual. It was like appropriation of _nkele_
in other districts, only the appropriation was more complete, inasmuch
as the labour expended on the property had been more severe.

In Rewa, moreover, the idea of communal ownership of land has died down,
since the whole of it has been appropriated, and there is none left to
be held in common.

While this explanation suffices to account for the existence of
individual tenure, it fails to explain the curiously scattered location
of the holdings. This, we thought, could only have been produced by an
organized system of conveying land from tribe to tribe, and we were
therefore at pains to trace the history of a number of these holdings,
in order to formulate a customary law, by which such questions were
governed. The result of our inquiries may be summarized as
follows:--There are nine distinct customs under which land may be
transferred:

1. Ai-thovithovi-ni-ndraundrau (_The plucking-place for the
flooring-grass_)

This was land given by the family of a bride as her dowry. In the
ceremony of conveyance they said, "We give this land that Nambutu's
child may eat of it, since he is our child as well as his." The husband,
as long as he lived with his wife, had the control of the land, and it
descended to her male children, but if she died without male issue it
reverted to the donors at the second generation. In this case it was
redeemed by the ceremony of _vakalutu_ (making to fall back). Until it
was so redeemed, the husband or his representatives could till or lease
the land, but not dispose of it. Cases have occurred in which the donors
have so long neglected to redeem their property that the circumstances
of the original transfer have been forgotten, and the tenants have
repudiated the demands for restitution. If there were a direct line of
male descendants of the original grantee, the land never reverted, and
it may be assumed that after land has been held for four or five
generations, the failure of the male line would not lead to the
restoration of the property to the original donors. There was no actual
customary law of limitation, but the grantees would decline to accept
the offerings of the _vakalutu_, and would be upheld in their refusal by
public opinion.

There was another form of dowry, called _ai-solisoli-i-tamana_ (the gift
to the father), which was a plot of land given as a personal present to
the bride's father, with which his sept or tribe had nothing to do. Such
land could never be redeemed, but this form of dowry was rare, being
confined to the marriage of daughters of high chiefs, whose families
were large landowners.

[Pageheader: THE CHILD'S INTRODUCTION]

2. Ketenialewa (_The woman's womb_)

This is land seized as a punishment for adultery.

As soon as the offence became known, the friends of the injured man
planted reeds (_sau_) on the land of the offender, or of his family, as
a token of forfeiture. Reeds so planted were called
_ai-wau-tu-i-vu-ni-vundi_ (the club set in the banana patch). The family
of the offender knew that they must either abandon the land or fight for
it, but when by lapse of time the offence was forgotten, the land could
be redeemed by _vakalutu_.

3. Veitumalelake (_Defending the dead_)

This was land given as a reward for defending the corpse of a fallen
warrior from being seized by the enemy. If the disgrace of being spoiled
of armour by the enemy led Hector to stake so much upon the rescue of
Sarpedon's body, so much the more deserving of reward was the same
action among the people who cooked and ate all bodies of fallen enemies.

4. Ai-thovi-ni-nkanka (_Reward for bravery_)

This was land given to allies or to persons conspicuous for their
bravery, for services in war. Land so given could be redeemed after a
lapse of time.

5. Veitau-ni-vanua (_Land given out of friendship_)

This was land given by one friend to another to bind their friendship,
but the tenure was temporary only, and the land was usually redeemed
after the death of either the donor or the transferee.

6. Ai-thuruthuru-ni-ngone (_The child's introduction_)

The child of a high chief was taken immediately after birth into the
houses of the inferior chiefs to be exhibited to them. Property of
various kinds was given to it, but if there were insufficient chattels
in the house, a plot of land was often formally presented. In such cases
the tenure was not absolute, and the land reverted after _vakalutu_ had
been performed.

All these cases amounted to little more than the transfer of the
usufruct of the land for life or for an uncertain period. The person
enjoying the usufruct had the right to all the crops and timber grown
upon the soil, but the fruit-trees remained the property of the donor.
He might improve the land or let it go to waste, and in this respect his
rights were superior to mere usufruct, but, as in the usufruct, he had
no power to transfer or even to sublet. The reason for this was obvious.
He would have been creating rights in the soil, which could not be
redeemed by the original donor by the ceremony of _vakalutu_ performed
to him alone. It is worth noting that all these systems of transfer,
though temporary, did not provide for the reversion of the land
spontaneously as at any given time. Unless the donors in their own
interest redeemed their property by the ceremony of _vakalutu_, the
transferees acquired an absolute title by prescription.

Under the following kinds of transfer land could never be redeemed--

1. Ai-sere-ni-wa-ni-kuna (_Loosening of the strangling cord_)

This was land given by the family of a dead man to the family of his
widow, who strangled herself in honour of her husband's memory. The
custom of strangling wives is closely interwoven with the ancient
beliefs regarding a future state. As has been explained already, the
widow who did not court the strangling cord was assumed to have been
unfaithful to her dead husband, and by following him along the path of
the Shades she saved his memory as well as her own from dishonour, and
her services thus deserved a recompense at the hands of his kinsmen.

[Page header: THE LOPPED FINGER]

Land given in this form of transfer could never be redeemed. But it
must be remembered that the transferees belonged to a tribe very closely
connected by the ties of marriage and vasu with the donors, and that
land was therefore virtually a transfer within the limits of the tribe.

2. Ai-sere-i-soli-ni-mate (_The unrolling of the shroud_) and

3. Tholambuka (_Carrying firewood_)

Under these two customs, the relations of a sick man brought a bale of
native cloth in which to wrap his body when dead, or firewood with which
to cook his food when too ill to go and get it for himself, and the
dying man, unable to make other return, presented them with a piece of
land. Land so transferred was never redeemed, but in these cases again
it is to be remembered that it was a transfer within the limits of the
tribe.

4. Mundulinga (_The lopped finger_)

One of the chief forms of mourning for the dead was to lop off the
little finger of one of the hands. Few of the older natives can be found
who have the fingers of both hands intact; most of them, indeed, have
lost both little fingers This act of mourning was confined to the
relations of the deceased, unless he was one of the highest chiefs, and
the transfer was therefore confined to the limits of the tribe. Like the
other customs connected with death, the transfer was irrevocable.

It is to be noticed, therefore, that the only irrevocable transfers were
confined to the limits of the tribe. Transfers from tribe to tribe could
be redeemed by the ceremony of _vakalutu_. It often happened, therefore,
that the male line of succession did not fail for several generations,
and in such cases the original circumstances were forgotten, and the
transfer became absolute by prescription. The ceremony of _vakalutu_ was
as follows: On a date agreed upon by both parties the original donors
came to the house of the transferee or his heir, and formally presented
him with a whale's tooth and perhaps a quantity of native goods in
addition, saying, "We have come to make the land (naming it) fall back
to us. Akesa ate from it and her children, but now she is dead, and they
are dead, and there are none of them left to eat from it. Therefore we
would have it fall back." If the representatives of the transferee
accepted the tooth, the redemption was complete, but if on the other
hand they refused to accept it, the question remained in abeyance until
one or other of the parties had brought it before a joint council of the
tribe. Under very exceptional circumstances it might even become a
_casus belli_, but as a rule the ground for refusal was, that the
property presented was inadequate. For in Fiji, as in Europe, land, like
all other commodities, has a commercial value estimable in chattels. The
ceremony of _vakalutu_ above described varied to some extent in
different districts. In Vatulele and Tailevu, for instance, the symbol
of transfer is a basket of earth, and the symbol of usufruct a leaf or a
bunch of plantains.


Leasehold (_Thokovaki_)

[Pageheader: HOW RENT AROSE]

These holdings were not necessarily farmed by the persons to whom they
were granted. There is throughout the Rewa province a remarkable custom
of subject tenure known as _thokovaki_. This tenure is sometimes
communal, sometimes individual. It is found throughout the Rewa delta
from the Nakelo to the sea, thus including a portion of Tailevu. In the
eastern end of Kandavu it reappears again in the form of rent paid by
tenants called _uraura-ni-vanua_. Properly to understand the system it
is necessary to glance at the history and political situation of the
Rewa people. After the arrival of the Nandoi people already referred to,
other tribes came down from the mountains into the delta. Principal
among these were the Kai Rewa proper. They settled at first at
Mburembasanga, where the land was naturally elevated above the mangrove
swamp. They were warriors descended from an older branch of the first
Melanesian immigrants, and they naturally signalized their coming by
preying upon the agricultural settlers below them. In this way they
imposed upon them the task of contributing to the feasts on ceremonial
occasions, and in course of time tradition has it that the Kai Nandoi
themselves invited them to cross the river and settle on their lands, so
as to spare them the irksome necessity of ferrying quantities of food
across the river. By this time there had been intermarriage between the
tribes, and land had been transferred to the new-comers under the form
of transfer described as dowry. They did not cross the river for
nothing. We find the Nandoi lands spread in a deferential semicircle
round the holdings of the chief families, showing that the former had
been despoiled of all their lands in the neighbourhood of the new
settlement. Then the usual process of aggression began. The chief family
was strong enough to protect fugitives, and fugitives came to them
accepting at once, in return for their lives, the status of kitchen men
(_adscripti glebae_). Thus probably the most servile form of _thokovaki_
originated. The chief also began to acquire holdings further afield.
Like his peers on the highlands of the island, he ordered his
newly-conquered vassals to plant him gardens on their own lands, and in
process of time as the crops of _taro_ and _via_ succeeded each other in
the same soil, the land came to be regarded as set aside for the chief,
and as claiming the expenditure of annual labour for the chief's
support. Succeeding generations did not stop to inquire how this came
about. They had to cultivate year by year a certain plot of land for the
chief, subject to their occupation. Another, perhaps the commonest,
origin of _thokovaki_ tenure is to be found in reclamation. The swamp
was valueless and belonged to every one, but as no stranger could be
allowed to settle upon it, the tribe, if they thought of it at all,
thought of it as their communal property. The chief had a lien upon the
labours of his vassals, provided that he paid them in food, and so it
came about that the chief was the author of most of the reclamation. Of
the land thus reclaimed he was regarded as overlord, and he could put
whom he would upon it as his tenant. We found one piece of land in the
very process of transition. A reach of soil near Mburembasanga was
reclaimed by order of the former Roko-tui-ndreketi, and planted
regularly by his vassals. In Mburembasanga there was a difference of
opinion whether this land was _thokovaki_, or whether it belonged to the
tenants in fee simple. The chief left the question to the tenants, and
they immediately chose to have it regarded as a subject tenure,
_thokovaki_. Another origin of _thokovaki_ may be found in the transfer
called _kete-ni-alewa_ (forfeiture for adultery). The chief seized the
land and allowed the former owners to cultivate it under a subject
tenure.

The small coastal islands, being unoccupied for agriculture, were also
regarded as the property of the chiefs. These are sometimes found to be
tenanted by vassals who tend the chief's pigs or gather his cocoanuts,
and this is in a sense _thokovaki_ tenure.

One of the most remarkable features about _thokovaki_ tenure is that the
tenants themselves disclaim the actual ownership of the land they
cultivate. The chiefs seldom know where their land is. Before the Native
Lands Commission the Roko Tui, or some other chief, often asked his
tenants for the names and boundaries of the lands over which he was
overlord, and if the tenant denied that a particular piece of land was
_thokovaki_ the chief asked the commissioners to accept the statement.
It happened more than once that tenants gave the name of land for
registration in their own name, saying, "We hold the land only on
_thokovaki_ tenancy, but the chief has favoured us and says that he will
make it over to us absolutely."

[Pageheader: RENT ALWAYS PAID IN PRODUCE]

It must not be understood that _thokovaki_ rents are paid only to the
superior chiefs. Persons of almost equal rank are found in the position
of overlord and tenant. In the case of Nalea and Nambuli the Kai Nalea
were the principal heathen chiefs before what I must call the
Reformation, and the fact of their being extensive lords of _thokovaki_
lands is an instance of the natural disposition of all ecclesiastical
bodies to acquire landed interests. I may add that the Reformation which
reduced Notho to unimportance occurred early in this century. The
assumptions of the priesthood had grown so intolerable that they
threatened the prestige of even the chiefs themselves. At last the
chiefs and people together determined to destroy the privileges of these
upstart priests who were originally people of no birth. They therefore
deprived them of their offices, and put in chiefs of rank in their
place. The success of this experiment of a state church was never put to
the proof, for Christianity came and swept away priests and gods alike.
Of the six great clans known as the Sauturanga we find that persons of
one are often in the relation of overlord to persons of another, though
they are of almost the same rank.

The rent paid under _thokovaki_ tenure was variously called
_ndrawe-ni-vanua_, _ura-ura-ni-vanua_, etc. It varied according to the
produce of the land itself. It might even take the form of manufactured
property, but with the inexactitude of all primitive people, neither the
amount nor the time for yielding it seems ever to have been fixed. Among
the fishing tribes on the coast, who might easily have paid their rent
in fish, we find that the fish is bartered first for produce and that
the produce is then carried to the landlord. We may therefore assume
that the rent must always in some sort be in the form of produce capable
of being grown upon the land. Thus sinnet is permitted, because the
fibre composing it may have been husked from cocoanuts growing on the
land; mats, because the land grows the rushes used in their manufacture;
baskets, because the osiers could be cut upon the land. The time for
paying rent was fixed by the necessities of the landlord. If he had a
feast to make or contribute to, he sent to his tenants, apportioning
among them the total amount he required of the supply. It might happen
that he made only one call upon them in a single year, while in another
he might demand more than half their crops. But the safeguard against
excessive demands lay in the fact that the tenant had always the power
of deserting the land and offering himself as a tenant to a rival chief.
In practice, therefore, no overlord dared to make excessive levies upon
his tenants.

[Pageheader: THE CRIME OF FISH-SCARING]

The most striking example of _thokovaki_ tenure is to be found in the
tribe of Notho. From the myths which concern the origin of this tribe,
we can gather that they are an offshoot of the tribe that now inhabits
the distant island of Nayau, with which it is _tauvu_, that is, it
worships the same gods and has a common ancestress. Tradition says that
their ancestress when bathing was swallowed by a gigantic shark and was
carried to the mangrove swamp where now stands the village of
Nambundrau, where she was ejected by the fish and attended by the
natives of the place. As a proof of this tradition the natives point to
the fact that their ancient god is a shark, but it is scarcely necessary
to observe that in this case, as in many others, the romantic history
has been woven round the totem of the tribe and incorporated into the
folklore. Seven generations ago, that is about 1750, the ancestor of the
present chief moved to Nambundrau. At that time the only dry ground was
a narrow island in the mangrove swamp. The chief was followed by the
septs related to his family, and by two tribes that were tributary to
him. They immediately began the work of reclamation, until year by year
the island grew. Causeways were put forward into the swamp surrounding
the moat so as to form fish-ponds. Sites were built for six other
villages, which formed the nucleus of reclamation, until at the present
day the whole area is composed of a network of causeways, gardens and
fish-ponds. For the first fifty years of this process the swamp was
regarded as exclusively the property of the chief. But as sufficient
villages were formed under the leadership of one of his relations the
swamp came to be looked upon as the property of the chief upon whose
lands it bordered. The property rights of the chief in the swamp were of
course of a negative order. He could only exercise them by refusing to
others the right to reclaim it; but as no reclamation could be
undertaken except under his directions, the land as it grew became the
property of the chiefs. In Notho alone in all Fiji do the overlords not
draw tribute from their own dependants, but gather it haphazard from
tenants not their hereditary subjects. As each reclamation was completed
the chief chose from his followers a tenant. The tenancy descended from
father to son, but at any moment the tenant was free to throw up his
holding and become the tenant of a chief more to his liking. The chief,
too, for sufficient cause, had a right of eviction, and might offer the
holding to any person of whatever sept, so long as he belonged to the
aggregation of tribes known as Notho. So much was this liberty
recognized, that now when a child is born in a family of tenants, the
father and mother choose to which of the chiefs he should become client.
Of a family of four boys the eldest would succeed his father in the
tenancy, but the other three would each become tenants of a different
chief. It will thus be seen that the _clientele_ of the minor chiefs
have no common tie of blood, and therefore the position of the overlord
approaches far more nearly that of the landlord in Europe than is
usually to be found in primitive communities.

The property of Notho consists of _taro_ beds, cocoanuts and fish-ponds,
and the rent therefore differs slightly from that paid in other
districts. There are, besides, special offences. It was a penal offence
to walk on a causeway bordering on another's fish-pond, and stamp on it
so as to make the fish jump out.

This offence was often committed for the purpose of theft, but sometimes
also out of pure mischief. These little fish are often given to the
landlord as rent for the pond from which they were drawn. It will thus
be seen that Notho cannot be said to be divided into _matankalis_. The
only way to describe their social status is to say that the villagers of
Nakuroiwai and Nathuru are all chiefs, and that the commoners in the
remaining four villages are apportioned out among these chiefs
individually, as tenants of their lands. The first-named villages own
all the land, and the others are mere agricultural tenants, removable at
will. But even in Notho, where the chief's rights in the soil most
nearly approach to the absolute, it may well be doubted whether he could
sell his lands to any European without violating the sense of justice of
the whole district.


Province of Tailevu

The tenures of land in Tailevu vary with the status of the tribe
occupying them. They may be classified as follows--

(1) Land which is admitted by the occupiers to be the absolute property
of the Mbau chiefs subject only to their occupation on the condition of
paying regular tribute in the form of _lala_ of food and labour.

Instances of this tenure are to be found in Kamba and Nambua. The people
do not claim any rights in the soil, but represent that they are only
occupying at the will of the chiefs, who have the absolute disposal of
it. They are subject to levies of food whenever a large feast is to be
made at Mbau, but they plant no special gardens for the chiefs, and they
are unstinted in the use of the cocoanuts and other fruit. The tribute
is called _drawe ni vanua_, perhaps the nearest equivalent for the word
"rent" that can be found in the language of any primitive people. The
people account for their position by stating that they formerly lived
with the chiefs as their servants, and that when the chiefs removed from
Kamba they were left upon the land to cultivate it under the present
conditions of tenure.

Roko Tui Tailevu asked that the land should be registered in the name of
the tenants subject to his rights as overlord.

(2) Land which is the joint property of the chiefs and their
tributaries, who both plant gardens for their superiors and pay regular
tribute in food to the chiefs to whom they are attached.

This form of tenure is to be found in the lands occupied by the people
of Namuka, Nakoroiwau and Natila. These tribes hold a peculiar position.
In former times they did not _tamaka_[108] any but the chief of the
Vusarandave, and at the death of a Vunivalu they alone could prepare the
body for burial. This may be accounted for by the tradition that they
originally formed part of the Tui Kamba family, and that they were left
behind to occupy the tribal lands when the Mbau chiefs moved to their
island.

[Pageheader: THE OVERLORD]

(3) Lands of which the occupiers, though _nkali_ (tributary), claim to
be the proprietors, acknowledging only the overlordship of the chief at
Mbau, to whom on that account they are subject to _lala_.

An instance of this tenure is to be found in Mokani. The people account
for the difference in their status from that of the other _nkali_ tribes
by saying that they were given their lands by the Ndravo people, to whom
they are related. In this case the land was registered in the name of
the people, endorsing the register with a statement of the usual tribute
due to the overlord.

It should here be noted that it is only in these cases that the
_turanga-i-taukei_, provided for in the Regulation of 1883 as the
recipient of forty per cent. of the rents for lease moneys, can be said
to exist, and as a measure of justice to the people, the Regulation
should be so amended as to allow ninety per cent. to be divided among
the people in all cases in which the Native Lands Commissioners certify
that there is no _turanga-i-taukei_ (overlord).

(4) Lands which are owned by the tribes independently of Mbau, and are
subject only to the overlordship of their own local chief.

Namata may be cited as an instance of this kind of tenure. The clan was
_mbati_ to Mbau, and therefore subject only to military service. As a
consequence the Mbau chiefs have no power to levy food or personal
service from Namata.

(5) Land of which the local chief claims to be the absolute owner.

The only instance we have found of this tenure is in Nakelo, which was a
very powerful tribe until the introduction of firearms by Charles Savage
about 1802-7 enabled Mbau to reduce it.

In spite, however, of the assertion of Tui Nakelo it is doubtful whether
the chief's rights could ever have been exercised without the assent of
his own tribe. In these days at any rate, they could not be so
exercised without shocking native opinion.

(6) Lands owned by the commune without the overlordship of any chief
either local or central.

Nausori and Kuku afford instances of this tenure. It is the natural
result of their geographical situation between the _mbati_(borders) of
two rival confederations, Mbau and Rewa--of being in fact a "buffer
state."

In these communes there is a difference between waste and cultivated
land. The _yavu_ (house foundation) is held by the individual and is
inherited by his heirs. The _teitei_ or _nkele_ (cleared and cultivated
land) is also regarded as the individual property of the occupier; the
waste lands are held in common, and may be appropriated, cleared and
cultivated by any member of the tribe with the consent of the rest. A
man thus owns individually neither more nor less than he can keep in
cultivation.

(7) Lands owned by a commune who have been fugitives from a distant part
of the country, and have been placed on their lands by the chiefs under
whose protection they have placed themselves. Until their position was
assured they paid tribute both to their protector and to any other
neighbouring chief strong enough to annoy them. An instance of this form
of tenure is to be found in the Kai Naimbosa, who came from the Vungalei
country, and for some time paid tribute both to the chiefs of Mbau and
Namata.

[Pageheader: RIGHTS OF FISHER TRIBES IGNORED]

Among all the coast tribes are to be found small communities of
fishermen, who by the nature of their occupation are debarred from
cultivating the soil. As might be expected, therefore, their tenure of
land is quite different from the tribes surrounding them. In Mbau there
are two of these tribes Lasakau and Soso; in the Rewa province the Kai
Naselai and the Kai Vutia. The Kai Soso claim all the shallow shore
reefs from Kamba Point to Uthui Kumi. They use fences only, a kind of
fishing that cannot be carried on unless the right of a reef is
exclusive. The Kai Lasakau are fishermen using both traps and nets, but
not fences. They claim the exclusive right to fish on all the deeper
reefs from Waikelia in Sawakasa to the Suva Point, including those near
Moturiki. There is a clear understanding between them and the Rewa
fishermen of Naselai and Vutia that they shall not interfere with the
shallow reefs on the Rewa coast. The members of this clan live almost
entirely by their skill. As soon as a man returns from the reef, his
wife takes the fish and hawks them from house to house, in exchange for
yams or _taro_. Failing to dispose of them in Mbau, she takes them to
the villages on the mainland. This system of barter has greatly taken
the place of the old system, under which the fishermen were fed by the
chiefs to whom they owed allegiance, that is, they were a continual tax
upon the chief's tenants. The Kai Soso have acquired a plot of land by
right of occupation, and their claim is not disputed. The Kai Naselai
used in return for their fish to be allowed the run of the plantations.
They would go and take whatever food they required, provided they
confined themselves to the gardens of those who had received fish from
them. Now, however, they have acquired land in right of occupation. The
Government here encounters another difficulty. At the cession all the
reefs were declared the property of the Crown, and unless the fishermen
were made a charge upon the lands registered as the property of the
natives they would have no means of subsistence. They must either be
given land belonging to other people, or the reefs belonging to the
Crown must be handed over to them. It is to be feared that the
Government will adopt a middle course, that of giving them a right to
fish upon the Crown reefs and withholding that right from others. But
this is a course that will inevitably lead to trouble in the future. If
rights are to be defined, now is the time to define them, before holders
have had time to acquire property by prescription.

Under the pressure of European land customs the Fijian conception of
land has begun to break up. Owning two-thirds of the land of their
islands, it was impossible that they should be left in useless
possession, and though they may not sell an acre of it they have been
encouraged to lease to planters at a fair rent all that they do not
require for their own support. As soon as they understood that they were
to have the spending of the rent, land, to which they had hitherto
attached little value, became their most precious possession, and their
natural earth-hunger was keenly whetted. In some instances the
proprietary unit had dwindled to a few individuals of low birth, and
these men, contrary to all custom, found themselves courted by powerful
neighbours on account of their wealth. This sudden acquisition of money
without effort has been demoralizing, but it has quickened the growth of
new tastes and new wants, which is the first step towards material
progress. On the other hand, it is fostering a spirit of lying and
cheating in every transaction concerned with the ownership of land.
Happily it has not led to one form of demoralization--that of
drinking--thanks to the rigid enforcement of the liquor law, which
forbids the sale of alcohol to natives under heavy penalties.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 106: The divisions of Tailevu and Rewa are--

(1) _Matanitu_--Tribe or Confederation.

(2) _Matankali_--Clan.

(3) _Tokatoka ni matankali_--Sept.

(4) _Mbatilovo_ (_lit._ "brink of the same pit-oven")--Joint-family.]

[Footnote 107: Williams's _Real Property_.]

[Footnote 108: Shout the cry of respect.]




CHAPTER XXXII

CONCLUSION


It has been too readily assumed that the ancient system of the Fijians
was wholly evil. The disposition of early explorers and missionaries is
to describe the races with whom they came in contact as living in a
state of savage anarchy, the motive of travellers being to excuse their
own rapacity and cruelty; and of missionaries to vindicate their
iconoclasm and to magnify their courage and self-sacrifice. "Nothing,"
says McClennan, "is more common in these old narratives than to find the
peoples who were being sacrificed to European cupidity described as
living in a purely animal state, without government, laws, or religion,
and yet the student will sometimes be able to spell out from these very
narratives themselves that the peoples so described were intensely
religious, and that they dwelt under the constant pressure of a rigid
body of customary law, and what we would call a highly developed system
of constitutional government."[109]

It was so with the Fijians. In seeing how admirably adapted many of the
old superstitions and tabus were for securing sanitation and moral and
physical cleanliness, one is led to wonder whether they were survivals
of a code brought by their ancestors from the land of their origin; the
work of some forgotten law-giver, or merely a gradual evolution from
experience coloured by superstition. So admirably were they suited to
the haphazard and indolent character of the people who obeyed them, that
we can scarcely hope that any European system will take their place
until the character itself is regenerated.

Let us consider three instances. What could better secure the sanitation
of villages than the fear of _ndrau-ni-kau_, which taught the people to
destroy or bury all offal and excreta for fear of affording an
instrument for witchcraft to a secret enemy? The villages are no longer
swept clean, for Christianity threatens the people with no immediate
punishment for being dirty, and they have not yet come to believe that
dirt produces the germs of disease.

How could the proper nourishment of young children in a country
destitute of milk and farinaceous diet be provided for than by the fear
that intercourse between the parents during lactation would impoverish
the mother's milk and injure the child? In these days the custom of
abstinence is decaying, and the mother is again pregnant before her
child is fit to assimilate solid food, and she must either continue to
nourish the child within her and the child at the breast, to the injury
of both, or prematurely wean the latter to the certain injury of its
health.

How could the sexual morality of the people be better guarded than by
shutting up all the unmarried men at nightfall within the _mbure-ni-sa_,
and placing all the girls under the protection of their parents; by
training the young men in the emulation of arms and seamanship until
they were old enough to marry; by making death the penalty of loss of
virtue; by constituting the absence of virginity in a bride a sufficient
cause for withholding the dowry, or even by holding up an unchaste bride
to the ridicule of the community through the mutilation of the cooked
pig presented by the bridegroom's people at the feast given after the
marriage? But the _mbure-ni-sa_ was a heathen institution, and boys and
girls are now thrown together as they are in civilized communities;
there is no more war or other spur to emulation among the young men, who
now seek their excitement in sensuality, and the loss of virtue if
discovered entails only consequences that can be borne with equanimity,
so far at least as the men are concerned.

[Pageheader: EVILS OF THE TRANSITION STAGE]

It would be unjust to blame the missionaries for the mutilation of the
social system, for by the time they gained a foothold in 1840, the
native civilization--for such it is fair to call it--had been so marred
by the influence of worthless Europeans and the introduction of firearms
that the people groaned under a system of continual war, barbarity and
oppression under which no people could increase. The ancient social
system was mutilated; part of it was already broken down. During the
first twenty years of the last century whole provinces had been swept by
the powerful tribes fortunate enough to possess firearms, and their
internal affairs were dislocated by the oppression of their conquerors.
The early missionaries were no more far-sighted than others of their
class, and their zeal was as narrow as the zeal of proselytizers is apt
to be. They looked not for hidden causes of the customs they found. It
was enough for them that they were in someway connected with heathen
superstition; though often they were not incompatible with the
acceptance of Christianity their existence interfered with mission work,
and their discontinuance established a convenient line of demarcation
between the Christian and the heathen. It would have been impossible to
graft the principles, the refinements or the arts of modern civilization
upon the ancient customs. Some of them had to go, and the criticism that
occurs to the unbiassed historian is that the missionaries either
destroyed too many of the ancient customs or not enough.

For the transition stage we now have is undoubtedly worse than what it
has displaced. The Fijians have been slow to adopt foreign habits, and
for more than a generation they have been crawling upon the stumps of
their old customs propped by ragged fragments of European innovations.
Civilized sentiments have not taken the place once filled by customary
law. The Fijian, at all times the creature of circumstance has in the
passing of things a pleasant feeling of lack of permanence which affects
his whole family life and blunts his sense of responsibility for his
children's welfare.

The apathy and indolence of the Fijians arise from their climate, their
diet and their communal institutions. The climate is too kind to
stimulate them to exertion, their food imparts no staying power. The
soil gives the means of existence for every man without effort, and the
communal institutions destroy the instinct of accumulation. As Sir Henry
Maine said of the native policy of the government of India, those
responsible for guiding native races in Fiji, as elsewhere, are "like
men bound to make their watches keep true time in two longitudes at
once. Nevertheless the paradoxical explanation must be accepted. If they
are too slow, there will be no improvement; if they are too fast, there
will be no security." There is no reason to despair of the ultimate
arrival of the Fijians at some degree of physical and moral prosperity.
Our own forefathers in the time of Cicero seemed to the Romans no less
unpromising, for, writing to his friend Atticus, the orator recommends
him not to procure his slaves from Britain, "because they are so stupid
and utterly incapable of being taught that they are unfit to form a part
of the household of Atticus."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 109: _Studies in Ancient History._ London, 1896.]




INDEX


  Abipone Indians, 180

  Abortion, procuring, 221;
    compatible with high birth-rate, 223;
    by mechanical means, 224;
    in Gilbert I., 225;
    law against, 226

  Abstinence during suckling, 176;
    in Tonga, 178

  Adulteration, 307

  Agriculture, 339

  Alluvial land, 370

  _Amiable Josephine_ captured, 36

  Ancestor worship, xi;
    key to government, 57

  Ancestry, common, 5

  Annexation, 55

  _Argo_, wreck of, 25, 246

  Aristocracy created by war, 59

  Army, size of, 91;
    of Thakombau, 101

  Arnold, Sir E., 179

  Assault on forts, 13


  Banana disease, 338

  Bantus, increasing, xii

  Barter, 385

  Basques, ix

  Beachcombers, 27

  _Beche-de-mer_, 32, 43

  Bethencourt, de, xvii

  Betrothal, customs of, 201;
    gifts, 204

  Birth, customs, 206

  Bligh, Capt., 24

  Boasting ceremony, 90

  Bora rites in Australia, 148

  Borderers, 88

  Bougainville, viii

  Bouro, 118

  Burial, Lament of Shades, 131

  Bushrangers, 309


  Calico, displaces _tapa_, 2

  Canal dug by natives, 32

  Cannibalism, 102;
    seen by Whilkes, 102;
    origin of, 103;
    vitiated taste for, 103;
    tabu to women, 104;
    drum, 104;
    names for human joints, 104;
    reasons for, 104;
    act of triumph, 105;
    feast at Male, 106;
    chant, 107;
    forks, 109;
    among ghosts, 128

  Cannon first used, 53

  Canoes, 9, 46;
    evolution of, 290;
    twin, 292;
    cost of, 293;
    Tongan, 294

  Carew, Mr. W., 179

  Carnac, 147

  Castaways, 15, 22;
    eaten, 102

  Catoira, Gomez, viii

  Caves, 92

  Census, 195

  Ceremonial licence, 154, 157, 171

  Cession, proposed, 54

  Charms, 164, 168

  _Chatham_, wreck of, 249

  Chiefs, spiritual, 60;
    temporal, 61;
    titles of, at Mbau, 61;
    power curtailed by missions, 64;
    rarely complained of, 74

  Circumcision, 216

  Claims of U.S. Government, 52

  Club-houses, 175, 241, 388

  Clubs, working, 68

  Codrington, Dr. R. H., 179, 193

  Comet, 26, 246

  Community of property, 79

  Conclusions, 387

  Concubitancy, 184;
    limitations of, 190;
    fecundity of, 199

  Confederations, a modern growth, 60;
    in decay, 62

  Conquest, safest civilizing method, x

  Constabulary, armed native, 101, 317

  Convicts, myth concerning, 27

  Cook, Capt., 248, 271

  Copts, xiv

  Corney, Dr. B. G., 255, 260

  Corvee, 68

  Councils, provincial, 288, 337

  Couvade, 179

  Cows, improperly kept, 229, 336

  Creation myth, 134

  Creches, 214

  Cricket, 332

  Cruelty, 305

  Cruelty to animals, 3


  Daily habits, 229

  Dances, 284

  Dates, calculated by genealogies, 4, 18;
    of Melanesian settlement, 10

  Death dance, 96

  Decay of custom, xii

  Deluge, 17, 26, 137

  Dengue fever, 252

  d'Entrecasteaux, 86

  Depilation, 303

  Detection of crime, by witchcraft, 167;
    by soul stealing, 168

  Disease, native theory of, xiii;
    treatment of, xiii;
    epidemic, 243;
    from European contact, 253

  Disenchantment, 250

  Dismisser, 125, 132

  Divinities, 112

  Dollars, from wreck, 28

  Drugs, 223

  Drums, 93

  d'Urville, Capt. Dumont, 27, 37

  Dysentery, 246, 251


  Eclipse of sun, 26, 246

  Edwards, Capt., 24

  Eel bridge, 121

  _Eliza_, wreck of, 27

  Elysium, 118

  Epic of Ndengei, 138

  Epidemic diseases, xii, 243

  Erskine, Commodore, 41

  Eskimo, viii

  Essomeric, xvii

  Execution, 342

  Exorcism, 250


  Games, 318, 328

  Genealogies, average twenty-five years, 18

  Gilbert I., 210

  God of Fire, 113;
    of Increase, 114;
    of Origin, 5;
    of the Afterworld 117;
    of Thunder Hill, 130

  Gods, 111

  Gordon, Sir A., 65

  Gordon, Rev. G. N., 247


  Hairdressing, 302

  Half-castes, xvii

  Hatred, race, xv, xvii

  Hawaii, 4;
    genealogies, 11

  Honesty, 3

  _Hunter_, visit of, 31, 95

  Hysteria, religious, 162


  Ilai Moto-ni-thothoka, 6

  Immortality, heresy, 141

  Immortality maidens, 142

  Inbreeding, 200

  Insouciance, 228

  Inspectors, travelling, 79

  Inspiration of priests, 158, 160

  Intellect of savages, xiv

  Invulnerable, making, 156

  Iron, name for, 11

  Iroquois, 195

  Irrigation, 339


  Japanese, 179

  Joske, Mr. Adolph, 148

  Juju, xiii

  Jumping-off place, 6, 118


  _Kalourere_, rites, 169

  _Kalou-Vu_, 5

  Kamba, siege of, 46, 50

  Kaunitoni, first canoe, 6

  Kava, 213, 283, 307, 341;
    chant, 344

  _Kerekere_, 79;
    results of, 80

  Kites, war, 93

  _Koroi_, form of knighthood, 28, 97


  Labour among hill women, 209, 210

  Lakemba I., 51

  _Lala_, 66;
    misunderstood, 66;
    communal, 67;
    compared to local rates, 68;
    sanitation by, 69;
    personal, 70;
    a landed interest, 71;
    commutation of, 73, 77;
    oppressive, 73

  Lala, Ratu, 16

  Land customs increase power of chiefs, 59;
    Polynesian, 70;
    worthless without cultivation, 71;
    England confirms native titles, 72;
    tenure, 354;
    sale of, 354;
    arable, 358;
    waste, 362;
    tenure in Rewa, 366;
    leasehold, 376;
    reclaimed, 377

  Lands, sold to Europeans, 55

  Lasakau fishermen, 23

  _Lavo_, 330

  Law of custom, decay of, xviii

  Lawry, Rev. W., on abortion, 221

  Leasehold, 376

  Leper stones, 260

  Leprosy in Fiji, 255;
    in other islands, 255;
    described by Aristotle, 257;
    introduction into Europe, 257;
    contagious, 259;
    traditions concerning, 261

  Levuka town, 33;
    expulsion of whites, 40;
    burnt, 45

  Levuka tribe, 23

  Licence, ceremonial, 154, 157;
    sexual, in war, 240

  Lifu I., 249

  Lila, wasting sickness, 25, 243

  Liquor law, 386

  Loot, 96

  Love sickness, 241

  Lutu-na-sombasomba, first ancestor, 6, 8

  Lying, 305, 312


  Maafu, leads Tongans, 53;
    death, 55

  Maclennan, Mr., 57, 203

  Maine, Sir H., 356, 389

  _Malae_, Polynesian temple, 149

  Malake, 8

  Malaria, 251

  Maoris, leprosy among, 256

  Mara, Ratu, 34

  Mariner, William, 29, 271

  Markets, 288

  Marquesas I., 4

  Marriage system, 182;
    restrictions of, 193;
    origin of, 193;
    census of, 195

  Marriages, mixed, xvi

  Masai, xiv, xv

  Massage, 225

  _Mata-ni-vanua_, functions of, 62

  Matchmaker at Mbau, 62

  Maternal instinct, 231

  Matuku I., 25

  Mba province, 32

  Mbaki rites, 146

  _Mbalolo_, 324

  Mbanuve, King of Mbau, 23;
    death of, 26, 246

  _Mbati_, borderers, 88

  Mbau, sets fashions, 2;
    origin, 22;
    constitution of, 61

  _Mbole_, boasting, 90

  Mbua, province, 51

  Mbulotu, Fijian Elysium, 117

  Mbutoni, 23

  Meals, 337

  Measles epidemic, 252

  Medical students, 313

  Mendana, viii

  Meningitis, 252

  Mercenaries, 86

  Merivale alignments, 147

  Midwives, 206, 209, 210

  Milk, substitutes for, 214, 336, 337

  Missionaries, arrival of, 36, 52;
    repulsed from Mbau, 42;
    persecuted, 43;
    short-sightedness, 389

  Missionary killed and eaten, 107

  Mixed blood in Europe, ix;
    through conquest, x

  Moats, 91

  _Moe-moe_, act of homage, xi

  Moerenhout, 255

  Money, use of, 289;
    copper coin unpopular, 307;
    effect of, 386

  Monomotapa, Emperor of, xvii

  Mourning, ceremonial, 311, 375

  Murdu legend, 193

  Musket, first, 28;
    imported, 86


  Nailatikau, King of Mbau, 23

  Nakauvandra, 5, 6, 9, 134, 136

  Namara tribe, 31

  Nandronga, 15, 64

  _Nanga_ rites, 146;
    origin of, 149

  Narauyamba, siege of, 136

  Natewa, 41

  Native races, decay of, xii

  Naulivou, King of Mbau, 26

  Navigation, prehistoric, 16, 290

  _Ndambe_, injury to children, 177, 388

  Ndauthina, fire-god, 113

  Ndengei, 7, 10, 16, 112, 133;
    Melanesian deity, 134;
    epic of, 138

  Ndeumba, wealth of, 81, 287

  Negroes, ix;
    educated, xiv;
    beachcombers, 32

  Nemani Ndreu, 149, 171

  New Caledonia, Expedition to, 44, 249

  New Guinea, 214, 250

  Niue I., 248

  Nkara, King of Rewa, 41, 44, 46, 48;
    death, 49

  Noikoro tribe, 14

  Nyassa, natives, 180


  Obligatory marriage, 184

  Obstetrics, 207

  Oliver, Mr., discovered Matuku, 25

  Oneata I., 26

  _Orua_, preparation for defeat, 92

  Outriggers, 291

  Ovalau I., 33

  Overlord of land, 70


  Paddles, 295

  Palaeolithic men, viii

  Pandanus tree, 121

  Pandora, H.M.S., 24;
    tender of, 25

  Path of the Shades, 119, 120

  Peering goddesses, 122

  Penrhyn I., 249

  Perouse, Count de la, 29

  Perversion, 241

  Pigs, 336, 378;
    sacred, 151

  Pinching stone, 124

  Place of Wonder, 127

  Planting, 337

  Pocahontas, xvii

  Poetry, 314

  Polygamy, 172, 235

  Polynesians, 12;
    alleged settlement in Fiji, 13;
    route of, 14;
    sexual licence, 234

  Population, decrease of, 198

  Portent, death, 49

  Poultry, 336

  Priests, 62, 157;
    inspiration of, 158, 160;
    reformation of, 159

  Prostitution unknown, 173

  Pursuer of Shades, 122

  Pylstaart I., 15


  Race antipathy, xv, xvii

  Rajakarya in Ceylon, 68

  Rebellion of inland tribes, 55

  Reclaimed land, 377

  Reefs, property in, 385

  Relationships, 182

  Religion, ancestor-worship, xi, 111

  Rent, 376, 379

  Review, _tangka_, 90

  Revolt at Seankanka, 145

  Rewa, 23;
    war with Mbau, 39;
    burnt, 39;
    constitution, 367

  Ritova, 201

  Robson, Capt., 30

  _Roko Tui_, spiritual chief, 61

  Rokola, ancestor of craftsmen, 6, 9

  Romans, as slave-holders, ix

  Rotuma, 317

  Rowe, G. S., 56


  Sailosi, scribe of Mba, 82

  St. Christoval I., 118

  St. Kilda I., 250

  Salt-pans, 360

  Sambeto, murder of, 306

  Sandal-wood traders, 27

  Sanitation by _lala_, 69, 79;
    by fear of witchcraft, 166, 210

  Savage, Charles, 28, 95;
    made _koroi_, 100;
    armoured chair, 101;
    death, 30

  Savage I., 248

  Savings of Fijians, 82

  Scrofula, 200

  Seemann, 107

  Serpent-worship, 16, 17, 114

  Sexual morality, 233;
    decline of, 236, 388

  Shades, Lament of, 130

  Sharks, 115, 309

  Sieges, 93

  Sierra Leone, 178

  Skin diseases, 250, 276

  Slade, Rev. W., 229

  Smell, sense of, 303

  Smoking out enemy, 92

  Smythe, Col., 54

  Solevu, 68, 280;
    in decay, 286

  Solomon I., viii, xv

  Somosomo, 37, 51

  Sorties, 94

  Soul stealing, 168

  Souls of children, 126

  South Africa, report of Native Commission, 174

  Spiritual chiefs, origin of, 60

  Spoliation by _vasu_, 75

  Stewart, Mr. James, 195

  Still-births, 210

  Strangling of widows, 132

  Stratagems, 94, 136

  Submission, mode of, 97, 364

  Suckling, 176, 177, 211

  Suva, destruction of, 38

  Swimming, 316


  Tabu, decay of, 64

  _Tama_, shout of respect, 305

  Tamils, 195

  _Tanka_, review, 90

  Tanna I., 195, 247

  Tanoa, King of Mbau, 33;
    rebellion against, 33;
    return from exile, 35;
    death, 44

  Tasman, 24

  Tattooing of women, 217, 241

  _Tauvu_, kinship by, 5, 89, 380

  Taveuni I., 37

  Tenure, individual, 369;
    in Tailevu, 382

  Thakaundrove province, 60

  Thakombau, 34, 35, 38;
    assumes title of King of Fiji, 42, 54;
    becomes Christian, 47;
    limits of territory, 48;
    declares constitution, 54;
    pension, 55;
    death, 55

  Theft, rare, 308

  _Thimbi_, death dance, 96

  Thriftlessness, 2

  Thunder Hill, 128

  Thurston, Sir J., 65

  _Tinku_, a game, 330

  Tobacco, 352

  Tofua I., 25

  _Tombe_, token of virginity, 202, 302

  Tongans, voyages of, 15;
    assist Thakombau, 50;
    conquer Lau, 52;
    bravery, 94;
    canoes, 294

  Tortures, 96, 108

  Totemism, 115

  Tower builders, 17

  Trade, 280;
    in European goods, 286

  Traits of character, 304

  Transfer of land, 372

  Transition, state of, 232, 389

  Treachery, 95

  Tribal division, 355

  Tuberculosis, 277

  Tuka heresy, 140

  Tukuaho, Premier of Tonga, 16

  Turner, Rev. J., 247

  Turtles, 321;
    mode of killing, 321

  Turukawa, Ndengei's pigeon, 135

  Tylor, Dr. E. B., 104


  Ulcers, 278

  Undreundre, remarkable cannibal, 109


  _Vasu_, spoliation by, 75

  Vatulele I., 92

  Verani, 37

  Verata tribe, 22, 23, 60

  Vessels, effect of, 69

  Vitality of offspring, 197

  Viwa, massacre at, 38;
    revival at, 162

  Vunda, 7, 9

  _Vunivalu_, temporal chief, 61


  Wailea, massacre at, 30

  War, creates aristocracy, 59;
    losses in, 85, 86;
    causes of, 88;
    declaration of, 89

  War-cry, 96

  War-paint, 303

  Wasting sickness, Lila, 25, 243

  Water, drinking, 340

  Water games, 318

  Water of solace, 120, 123, 132

  Waterhouse, Rev. J., 45

  Waya I., 11

  Weaning, 215

  Wells, Mr. H. G., vii

  Wet nurses, 213

  Whooping-cough, 252

  Widows, strangled, 132

  Wilkes, Commodore, 37

  Wilkinson, Mr. D., 65

  Williams, Rev. J., 248

  Williams, Rev. T., 27, 56, 85

  Williams, U.S. Vice-consul, 51

  Witchcraft, 163;
    sanitation by, 166, 210, 388;
    detection of crime by, 167

  Wyandots, 195


  Yams, 339

  Yasawa I., 8, 63

  Yaws, 270;
    distribution of, 270, 275;
    in Timor, 270;
    symptoms, 271;
    sequelae, 272;
    contagion, 273;
    treatment, 274;
    believed beneficial, 275

_Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay._




RELATIONSHIPS OF THE CHIEF FAMILY OF MBAU.


Table.

  Ratu VISAWANKA (_TANOA_), _d._ 1852.

  Ratu Ilaitia Torotha = Andi Thethere                                Ratu Thakombau = Andi Litia Samanunu
       (_d._ 1889).        (_d._ 1875).      [Ratu Lote=Andi Sereana.]            (_d._ 1883).      (_d._ 1881).

  Ratu Vuki = Andi Alisi   Ratu Joni Tholata = Salanieta.     Nanise = Ratu Epeli Nailatikau.  Ratu Timothi = Tubou (of Vavau).        Andi Arieta Kuila = Ratu Timothi Vakaruru
  (_d._ 1888).                                                 (_d._ 1875).                         (_d._ 1888).                              (_d._ 1887).            (_d._ 1874).

                                                             Ratu Kandavu Levu.    Andi Thakombau.  Adi Vuikamba.  Ratu Nailatikau    Ratu Beni.  Ratu Ravulo. Andi Senimili. Ratu Timothi.
                                                                                                                     (_d._ 1892).


Table B.

_Table of Relationships of the Chief Family of Mbau (See Table A),
showing the Concubitant Cousins in red._

[To be read from the left-hand top corner downwards, thus:--To ascertain
what relation Ratu Beni is to Ratu Kandavu Levu, find Ratu Beni's name
on the left hand of the table, and follow the line horizontally to the
column headed "Ratu Kandavu Levu," when it will be seen that Ratu Beni
is Ratu Kandavu Levu's _tavalena_.]

  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                |    Andi      |    Ratu        |              |    Ratu     | Andi Alisi     | Ratu Epeli  | Ratu Timothi   | Andi Kuila  |  Ratu       |   Andi      |   Andi      |    Ratu     | Ratu Beni   | Ratu Ravulo |   Andi      | Ratu Timothi
                |  Thethere.   |  Thakombau     | Andi Litia.  |    Joni     |(widow of late  | Nailatikau  | (late Roko Tui |(wife of Tui | Kandavu     | Thakombau.  | Vuikamba.   | Nailatikau. | (Roko Tui   |   (Buli     | Senimili.   | Nkiolevu.
                |              |(King of Fiji). |              |   Tholata.  | Roko Tui Mba). | (Roko Tui   |   Lomaiviti).  | Naitasiri). |  Levu.      |             |             |             | Naitasiri). | Naitasiri). |             |
                |              |                |              |             |                |  Tailevu).  |                |             |             |             |             |             |             |             |             |
  --------------+--------------+----------------+--------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------
      Andi      |              |    Sister.     |Sister-in-law.|   Mother.   |    Mother.     |   Aunt.     |     Aunt.      |   Aunt.     |Great-aunt.  |Great-aunt.  |Great-aunt.  |Great-aunt.  |Great-aunt.  |Great-aunt.  |Great-aunt.  |Great-aunt.
    Thethere    |     Self.    |   Nganena.     |  Ndauvena.   |   Tinana.   |    Tinana.     |Nganeitamana.|  Nganeitamana. |Nganeitamana.|Nganeitukana.|Nganeitukana.|Nganeitukana.|Nganeitukana.|Nganeitukana.|Nganeitukana.|Nganeitukana.|Nganeitukana.
     was to     |              |                |              |             |                |             |                |             |             |             |             |             |             |             |             |
  --------------+--------------+----------------+--------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------
      Ratu      |   Brother.   |                | First-cousin,|   Uncle.    |     Uncle.     |   Father.   |    Father.     |   Father.   |Grandfather. |Grandfather. |Grandfather. |Grandfather. |Grandfather. |Grandfather. |Grandfather. |Grandfather.
    Thakombau   |   Nganena.   |     Self.      | Concubitant. | Ngandinana. |  Ngandinana.   |   Tamana.   |    Tamana.     |   Tamana.   |   Tukana.   |   Tukana.   |   Tukana.   |   Tukana.   |   Tukana.   |   Tukana.   |   Tukana.   |   Tukana.
     was to     |              |                |   Ndavolana  |             |                |             |                |             |             |             |             |             |             |             |             |
  --------------+--------------+----------------+--------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------
    Andi Litia  |Sister-in-law.| First-cousin,  |              |  Aunt by    |    Aunt by     |   Mother.   |    Mother.     |   Mother.   | Grandmother.| Grandmother.| Grandmother.| Grandmother.| Grandmother.| Grandmother.| Grandmother.| Grandmother.
     was to     |  Ndauvena.   |  Concubitant.  |    Self.     | marriage.   |   marriage.    |   Tinana.   |    Tinana.     |   Tinana.   |    Mbuna.   |    Mbuna.   |    Mbuna.   |    Mbuna.   |    Mbuna.   |    Mbuna.   |    Mbuna.   |    Mbuna.
                |              |   Ndavolana.   |              |Nganeitamana.|  Nganeitamana. |             |                |             |             |             |             |             |             |             |             |
  --------------+--------------+----------------+--------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------
    Ratu Joni   |     Son.     |    Nephew.     |    Nephew.   |             |    Brother.    |First-cousin.| First-cousin.  |First-cousin,|First-cousin,|First-cousin,|First-cousin,|First-cousin,|First-cousin,|First-cousin,|First-cousin,|First-cousin,
    Tholata     |   Luvena.    |    Vungona.    |    Vungona.  |    Self.    |    Nganena.    |  Tavalena.  |   Tavalena.    |Concubitant. |once removed.|once removed.|once removed.|once removed.|once removed.|once removed.|once removed.|once removed.
     is to      |              |                |              |             |                |             |                | Ndavolana.  |  Tamana.[A] |  Vungona.   |  Vungona.   |  Vungona.   |   Tamana.   |  Tamana.    |  Tamana.    |  Tamana.
  --------------+--------------+----------------+--------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------
   Andi Alisi   |  Daughter.   |      Niece.    |     Niece.   |   Sister.   |                |First-cousin,| First-cousin,  |First-cousin.|First-cousin,|First-cousin,|First-cousin,|First-cousin,|First-cousin,|First-cousin,|First-cousin,|First-cousin,
     is to      |   Luvena.    |     Vungona.   |    Vungona.  |  Nganena.   |     Self.      |Concubitant. | Concubitant.   |  Ndauvena.  |once removed.|once removed.|once removed.|once removed.|once removed.|once removed.|once removed.|once removed.
                |              |                |              |             |                | Ndavolana.  |  Ndavolana.    |             |  Tinana.[A] |  Tinana.    |  Tinana.    |  Tinana.    |Nganeitamana.|Nganeitamana.|Nganeitamana.|Nganeitamana.
  --------------+--------------+----------------+--------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------
    Ratu Epeli  |   Nephew.    |      Son.      |     Son.     |First-cousin.|  First-cousin, |             |    Brother,    |   Brother.  |   Father.   |   Uncle.    |   Uncle.    |   Uncle.    |   Uncle.    |   Uncle.    |   Uncle.    |   Uncle.
    Nailatikau  |   Vungona.   |     Luvena.    |    Luvena.   |  Tavalena.  |  Concubitant.  |    Self.    |     elder.     |   Nganena.  |   Tamana.   |   Tamana.   |   Tamana.   |   Tamana.   | Ngandinana. | Ngandinana. | Ngandinana. | Ngandinana.
      is to     |              |                |              |             |   Ndavolana.   |             |    Tuakana.    |             |             |             |             |             |             |             |             |
  --------------+--------------+----------------+--------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------
      Ratu      |   Nephew.    |      Son.      |     Son.     |First-cousin.|  First-cousin, |  Brother.   |                |   Brother.  |   Uncle.    |   Father.   |   Father.   |   Father.   |   Uncle.    |   Uncle.    |   Uncle.    |   Uncle.
    Timothi     |   Vungona.   |     Luvena.    |    Luvena.   |  Tavalena.  |  Concubitant.  |  Tathina.   |      Self.     |   Nganena.  |   Tamana.   |   Tamana.   |   Tamana.   |   Tamana.   | Ngandinana. | Ngandinana. | Ngandinana. | Ngandinana.
     was to     |              |                |              |             |   Ndavolana.   |             |                |             |             |             |             |             |             |             |             |
  --------------+--------------+----------------+--------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------
   Andi Kuila   |    Niece.    |    Daughter.   |   Daughter.  |First-cousin,|  First-cousin. |  Sister.    |     Sister.    |             |    Aunt.    |    Aunt.    |    Aunt.    |    Aunt.    |   Mother.   |   Mother.   |   Mother.   |   Mother.
     was to     |   Vungona.   |     Luvena.    |    Luvena.   |Concubitant. |   Ndauvena.    |  Nganena.   |     Nganena.   |     Self.   |Nganeitamana.|Nganeitamana.|Nganeitamana.|Nganeitamana.|   Tinana.   |   Tinana.   |   Tinana.   |   Tinana.
                |              |                |              |Ndavolana.   |                |             |                |             |             |             |             |             |             |             |             |
  --------------+--------------+----------------+--------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------
      Ratu      |Great-nephew. |   Grandson.    |  Grandson.   |First-cousin,|  First-cousin, |    Son.     |     Nephew.    |   Nephew.   |             |First-cousin.|First-cousin.|First-cousin.|First-cousin.|First-cousin.|First-cousin,|First-cousin.
   Kandavu Levu |   Vungona.   |   Makumbuna.   |  Makumbuna.  |once removed.|  once removed. |   Luvena.   |     Luvena.    |   Vungona.  |     Self.   |   Nganena.  |   Nganena.  |   Tuakana.  |  Tavalena.  |  Tavalena.  |Concubitant. |  Tavalena.
      is to     |              |                |              | Luvena.[A]  |   Luvena.[A]   |             |                |             |             |             |             |             |             |             | Ndavolana.  |
  --------------+--------------+----------------+--------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------
      Andi      | Great-niece. | Granddaughter. |Granddaughter.|First-cousin,|  First-cousin, |   Niece.    |    Daughter.   |    Niece.   |First-cousin.|             |   Sister.   |   Sister.   |First-cousin,|First-cousin,|First-cousin.|First-cousin,
    Thakombau   |   Vungona.   |   Makumbuna.   |  Makumbuna.  |once removed.|  once removed. |   Luvena.   |     Luvena.    |   Vungona.  |   Nganena.  |     Self.   |   Tuakana.  |   Nganena.  |Concubitant. |Concubitant. |  Ndauvena.  |Concubitant.
      is to     |              |                |              |  Vungona.   |     Luvena.    |             |                |             |             |             |             |             | Ndavolana.  | Ndavolana.  |             | Ndavolana.
  --------------+--------------+----------------+--------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------
     Andi       | Great-niece. | Granddaughter. |Granddaughter.|First-cousin,|  First-cousin, |   Niece.    |    Daughter.   |    Niece.   |First-cousin.|   Sister.   |             |   Sister.   |First-cousin,|First-cousin,|First-cousin.|First-cousin,
    Vuikamba    |   Vungona.   |   Makumbuna.   |  Makumbuna.  |once removed.|  once removed. |   Luvena.   |     Luvena.    |   Vungona.  |   Nganena.  |   Tathina.  |    Self.    |   Nganena.  |Concubitant. |Concubitant. |  Ndauvena.  |Concubitant.
      is to     |              |                |              |  Vungona.   |     Luvena.    |             |                |             |             |             |             |             | Ndavolana.  | Ndavolana.  |             | Ndavolana.
  --------------+--------------+----------------+--------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------
     Ratu       | Great-nephew.|   Grandson.    |  Grandson.   |First-cousin,|  First-cousin, |   Nephew.   |      Son.      |   Nephew.   |First-cousin.|   Brother.  |   Brother.  |             |First-cousin.|First-cousin.|First-cousin,|First-cousin.
    Nailatikau  |   Vungona.   |   Makumbuna.   |  Makumbuna.  |once removed.|  once removed. |   Luvena.   |     Luvena.    |   Vungona.  |  Tathina.   |   Nganena.  |   Nganena.  |    Self.    |  Tavalena.  |  Tavalena.  |Concubitant. |  Tavalena.
     was to     |              |                |              |  Vungona.   |     Luvena.    |             |                |             |             |             |             |             |             |             | Ndavolana.  |
  --------------+--------------+----------------+--------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------
    Ratu Beni   | Great-nephew.|   Grandson.    |  Grandson.   |First-cousin,|  First-cousin, |   Nephew.   |    Nephew.     |    Son.     |First-cousin.|First-cousin,|First-cousin,|First-cousin.|             |   Brother,  |   Brother,  |   Brother,
      is to     |  Makumbuna.  |   Makumbuna.   |  Makumbuna.  |once removed.|  once removed. |   Vungona.  |    Vungona.    |   Luvena.   |  Tavalena.  |Concubitant. |Concubitant. |  Tavalena.  |    Self.    |    elder.   |    elder.   |    elder.
                |              |                |              |  Luvena.    |     Vungona.   |             |                |             |             | Ndavolana.  | Ndavolana.  |             |             |   Tuakana.  |   Nganena.  |   Tuakana.
  --------------+--------------+----------------+--------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------
   Ratu Ravulo  | Great-nephew |   Grandson.    |  Grandson.   |First-cousin,|  First-cousin, |   Nephew.   |    Nephew.     |    Son.     |First-cousin.|First-cousin,|First-cousin,|First-cousin.|  Brother,   |             |   Brother.  |   Brother,
      is to     |  Makumbuna.  |   Makumbuna.   |  Makumbuna.  |once removed.|  once removed. |   Vungona.  |    Vungona.    |   Luvena.   |  Tavalena.  |Concubitant. |Concubitant. |  Tavalena.  |  younger.   |    Self.    |   Nganena.  |    elder.
                |              |                |              |  Luvena.    |     Vungona.   |             |                |             |             | Ndavolana.  | Ndavolana.  |             |  Tathina.   |             |             |   Tuakana.
  --------------+--------------+----------------+--------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------
  Andi Senimili | Great-niece. | Granddaughter. |Granddaughter.|First-cousin,|  First-cousin, |    Niece.   |     Niece.     |  Daughter.  |First-cousin.|First-cousin.|First-cousin.|First-cousin,|  Sister.    |   Sister.   |             |   Sister.
      is to     |  Makumbuna.  |   Makumbuna.   |  Makumbuna.  |once removed.|  once removed. |   Vungona.  |    Vungona.    |   Luvena.   |Concubitant. |  Ndauvena.  |  Ndauvena.  |Concubitant. |  Nganena.   |   Nganena.  |    Self.    |   Nganena.
                |              |                |              |  Luvena.    |     Vungona.   |             |                |             | Ndavolana.  |             |             | Ndavolana.  |             |             |             |
  --------------+--------------+----------------+--------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------
  Ratu Timothi  | Great-nephew.|    Grandson.   |   Grandson.  |First-cousin,|  First-cousin, |   Nephew.   |    Nephew.     |    Son.     |First-cousin.|First-cousin,|First-cousin,|First-cousin.|  Brother,   |   Brother,  |   Brother.  |
    Ngkiolevu   |  Makumbuna.  |    Makumbuna.  |   Makumbuna. |once removed.|  once removed. |   Vungona.  |    Vungona.    |   Luvena.   |  Tavalena.  |Concubitant. |Concubitant. |  Tavalena.  |  younger.   |   younger.  |   Nganena.  |     Self.
       is to    |              |                |              |  Luvena.    |     Vungona.   |             |                |             |             | Ndavolana.  | Ndavolana.  |             |  Tathina.   |   Tathina.  |             |
  --------------+--------------+----------------+--------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------

Note.--This table does not include all the members of the family in the
degrees represented. A selection has been made for the purpose of
illustrating the Fijian system of classing relationships, which is all
that is intended in this place. Besides the concubitant relationships
marked in the table, therefore, it must be remembered that many of the
persons are concubitant to other cousins not included in the table.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: Ratu Kandavu Levu is in reality _vungona_ to Ratu Joni
Tholata; but he calls the latter his father, because his own mother and
Ratu Joni Tholata's wife happened to be sisters--as shown in the plan.
Ratu Kandavu Levu also addresses Andi Alisi by the familiar term "_Nau_"
or "mother," and speaks of her as _tinanku_; but this is for the reason
that she and his father are _vei-ndavolani_--concubitant.]





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