YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES THE GEOGRAPHICAL LIBRARY Nearest the Pole, By Robert E. Peary, V. S. N. Fighting the Polar Ice, By Anthony Fiala The Awakening of China, By Dr. W. A. P. Martin The Opening of Tibet, By Perceval Landan The Passing of Korea, By Homer B. Hulbirt, A. M. Flashlights in the Jungle, By C. G. Schillings Fiji and its Possibilities By BEATRICE GRIMSHAW Illustrated from photographs New York Doubleday, Page & Company 1907 Copyright, 1907, by Doubleday, Page & Company Published, September, 1907 All Rights Reserved Including that op Translation into Foreign Languagss Including the Scandinavian PUBLISHERS' NOTE THIS STORY FIRST APPEARED IN ENGLAND UNDER THE TITLE "FROM FIJI TO THE CANNIBAL ISLANDS" CONTENTS Chapter I. Descriptive and Humorous. A Far Cry to Fiji— The Wonderful Hills— History of Fiji — Link Between Eastern and Western Pacific — The Days of Thakombau — How the Colony is Governed — Trade of the Islands — The Humours of the Penal System Chapter II. On the Trail 27 Garden of the Swiss Family Robinson — Over the Hills and Far Away — The Pandanus Prairies — Fijian Luggage — The Curse of the Spotted Bun — A Tropical Forest — Benighted on the Way Chapter III. Native Food — A Fijian Home 41 Night in a Fijian House — A Colossal Bed — The City of a Dream — A Fascinating Fijian — How to Drink Yanggona — Wanted, a Stanley — Where are the Settlers? — The Fairy Fortress Chapter IV. Hospitality 67 "Plenty Shark" — Introduction to a Mbili-mbili — Down the Singatoka River — A Mek^-mekd at Mavua — Thalassa ! Chapter V. Personal Impressions 83 The Song of the Road — Fijian Fun — Night on the Wain- ikoro— The Noble Savage Fails— The Village Plate— The Lot of the Kaisi— Sharks Again— A Swim for it viii FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES PAGE Chapter VI. Contrasting Scenes 101 Off to the Ndreketi — Fijian Smart Society — A Native Princess — The Sugar-cane Dance — Getting Bogged — The Use of Bad Language — The Ndreketi River — A Splendid Timber Country — A Native Diary — Truth About Tropical Forests — How to Live on Nothing a Day Chapter VII. Industrial Surprises 121 At the Back of Beyond — The Last of the Cannibals — A Pleasant Old Devil — The Plague of Fleas — When Gideon Went Wild — Nanduri Once More — The Vanilla Planters — Cattle-ranching in Fiji Chapter VIII. An Anglo-French Dilemma 139 The Mysterious Islands — Where No One Goes — What Happened to the Cook — A Fairy Harbour — Extraordi nary Vila — History of the New Hebrides — What France Intends Chapter IX. The New Hebrides 155 New Hebridean Natives — Life in an Explosive Magazine — The Delights of Dynamite Fishing — The Sapphire and Snow Mele — On a Coffee Plantation — Plan to Eat a Planter — The Recruiting System — The Flowering of the Coffee Chapter X. Malekula — An Uncanny Place .... 177 Bound for Sou'-West Bay — The Wandering Steamer — The Marriage Market in Malekula — An Avenue of Idols — The Unknown Country — A Stronghold of Sav agery — Ten Stick Island Chapter XI. Malekula — The Outer Man 193 How Bilyas Made Itself Strong— The Slaughtered Traders —Into the Unknown Country— The Cannibal Toilet- New Fashions in Murder— The Ignorant White Woman CONTENTS XX page Chapter XII. Malekula — The Inner Man 209 How a Malekulan Town is Defended— The Idol Dance — Fintimbus and the Pig — Gregorian Chant in the Wilder ness — What are the Malekulans? — An Interview with a Cannibal Chief — The Lost Opportunity — No Admittance to the Temple — A Marvellous Mummy — The Bluebeard Chamber — Making a Conical Skull — The Captain's Story Chapter XIII. Malekula — Pagan and Warlike . . . 225 Idols of the New Hebrides — The Famous Poisoned Arrows — The Threatened Schooner — The Breaking of Navaar — An Ill-natured Sea-chief ChapterXIV. Hot Times in Tanna 237 Hot Times in Tanna — An Island of Murderers — The Terror that Walks in Darkness — A Tannese Village — Avenging a Chieftain — Was it an Accident? — A Council of War — Netik— The Work of British-made Bullets Chapter XV. Tanna — Its Scenery and Resources . . 257 Somebody's Picnic — The Simple Life in Tanna — The Returned Labour Trouble — Up the Great Volcano — The Valley of Fire Chapter XVI. Norfolk Island — Good-bye 279 The Story of Norfolk Island — A Woman in the Case — The Fate of the Mutineers — In the New Home — A Valley of Peace — Good-bye ILLUSTRATIONS .Beatrice unmshaw Front ispiece _ . . . . PACING PAGE Fijian chiefs and armed native constabulary . . 17 Fijian chief ....... i7 Armed native constabulary • i7 Sugar boats, Rewa River . 19 A Fijian jail 19 Coca .... • 3° Cinnamon 3° A mountain house 32 Joni making fire • 36 A root of yanggona . • 36 TinyTambale . • 45 The ndalo beds • 45 Yanggona bushes • 45 House of the Turanga LileVa 62 A feast by the way . 65 Bringing up the yams 65 Morning, Lemba-Lemba 7i The Buli of Lemba-Lemba, with father and family 7i My followers on the Mbili-Mbili . 74 Getting ready for the mek6-meke 74 "Three Sisters" Mountain, Vanua Levu 86 The village plate ..... 95 Unpeopled country . 95 The boatless Wainikoro 98 The wild pineapples . 98 Makarita in festival dress . 103 Makarita in Sunday dress . 103 Sunday morning in Nanduri 106 Xll FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES FA The sugar-cane dance ..... CING PAGE 106 In the prince's house — Fijian bed in The wood-cutter ...... 119 A dakua tree ........ 119 "Bad Lot" 122 The"Tevoro" 122 Vanilla ......... J33 On a cocoanut plantation ...... J33 Drying vanilla ........ i33 The Anglo-French Naval Commission . 140 H. M. S. Pegasus 140 Entering the stock-yards ...... 149 Havana Harbour, Efate" ...... 149 Coffee-drying ........ 172 Coffee in flower ........ 172 The refuge island of Wala — natives coming home to sleep 179 The avenue of idols ....... 179 Chief's collection of boar tusks and jaws 184 Afraid to land — Sou'-West Bay . . . . . 198 Conscience-stricken ....... 198 Malekula warrior ....... 203 The women's dance ....... 211 Dancing and singing ...... 211 The dance of Atamat and Fintimbus . 213 A dancing mask ...... 213 The forbidden temple ..... 215 Bringing out the mummy ..... 218 Town of Lemba-Lemba ..... 220 Infant head-binding ...... 220 Typical idols ....... 227 "Wishing-arch"idol . 229 The strange-faced idol ..... . 229 A notorious cannibal ...... . 234 Poisoned arrows ...... . 234 ILLUSTRATIONS Tannese scar-tattooing Shooting fish Night refuge In the yam fields The bad old man Looking out for trouble The allies coming in . The council of war — the speaker for war The council of war — "What was that?" Tannese woman .... Tanna man ..... Tannese girl climbing a cocoanut palm At the foot of the cone Bushmen coming to see a white child . Fashions in Erromanga "After life's fitful fever" . The shore road, Norfolk Island . Captain Drake, R. N., and Mrs. Drake. House ..... Garden fence of whales' ribs and vertebras Tennis, Norfolk Island Government House, Norfolk Island xm PACING PAGE 238 240 240243 245247247250 250252252259270 275275 282 282 Government 286 286292 292 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES CHAPTER I DESCRIPTIVE AND HUMOROUS A Far Cry to Fiji— The Wonderful Hills— History of Fiji- Link between Eastern and Western Pacific — The Days of Thakombau — How the Colony is Governed — Trade of the Islands — The Humours of the Penal System IT IS a " far cry " to Fiji. Take ship from London, sail down the coasts of France and Spain, journey up the Mediterranean, by Scylla and Charybdis, and all the ancient world; reach Port Said, pass through the Gate ways of the East, and steam through the torrid Red Sea into the Indian Ocean— and as yet you have hardly started. A little further, and one comes to sun-baked Aden, and isees the India-bound passengers leave the ship, con gratulating themselves that the long tiresome voyage is over now. . . . Ceylon, and the magnificent East, lift like a splendid comet on the horizon, glow for one gorgeous day, and slip back into the past. Now the East lies behind, and the West is long forgotten, and what is there to come? The South is still to come — the wide, free, wonderful world that lies below the Line, and that is as utterly unlike all things met with above, as the countries East of Suez are unlike the countries lying West, in outworn, unmysterious Europe. 4 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES Happenings are largely a matter of latitude. About the fiftieth parallel, nothing interesting happens but policemen, bankruptcies, and Lord Mayors' shows. (Millionaires also happen — if you wish to be a millionaire you must on no account stray below forty north — but millionaires are not interesting, only instructive — in the uselessness of money.) Down toward the thirties, colour begins to glow upon the gray outlines of Northern life, and in the twenties, strange scenes and astonishing peoples paint it over and over. Cross the Line, and now you may take the brush, and indulge your vagrant fancy to the full, for nothing that you can paint will be too bright or too strange. Below the equator is the world of the south, and here anything may happen, for here the new and the wild and the untried countries lie, and here, moreover, you shall come upon unknown tracts and places in yourself, on which, if you had stayed within sound of the roaring throat of Piccadilly, no sun had ever shone. . . . And as yet, we are scarce half-way on our journey. More weeks slip by, and, yellow, nude, and harsh, West Australia of the goldfields and the great unvisited plains lies on our port bow. More days, and sparkling Melbourne is passed, and Tasmania has sunk below the horizon, and still we are travelling on. . . . Sydney, bright and eager and curiously young (where have all the graybeards hidden themselves? or are they all at home in the old gray lands that suit their outworn souls?), is forgotten, and the great English ship is left at the quay, making ready for the homeward journey, and still, in another vessel, for ever and ever, as it seems, we are going on. . . . Seven weeks now since we sailed from Tilbury in a storm of parting cheers, friendly faces, wet with driving English rain, and with something DESCRIPTIVE AND HUMOROUS 5 more, growing white and far away upon the pier — and still the blue seas run in an unceasing river past our rail, and we sleep at night to the sound of beating waves. . . . It is nearly eight weeks now, but the eighth will not be completed. One morning we are all waked early by the sound of the steamer shrieking for a pilot, and when we hurry on deck, we are confronted by a sparkling harbour, a green lagoon, and a pile of the most extraor dinary and incredible mountain ranges ever seen outside the dreams of a delirious scene painter. There are peaks three and four thousand feet high, the colour of a purple thundercloud, jagged and pinked like broken saws; peaks like side-saddles, peaks like solitary, mysterious altars raised to some unknown god, and in the heart of the glowing violet distance, one single summit fashioned like a giant finger, pointing darkly to the sky. Opposite the hills lies a pretty little town, under the shelter of rich-green wooded heights. A quay runs out from the land, and there are wharf officials, and custom house men on the quay, and in the background well- dressed men and ladies all in white, and carriages and in a word, civilisation — the last thing that we expected, here at the ends of the earth. It is some time before the new-comer realises that Suva, the capital, is to Fiji in general as the feather in the factory-girl's hat to the rest of her attire. Such a splendid level as this is only attainable locally, and the rest of the country suffers by comparison almost as much as the decaying garments of Mary Ann from Bermondsey pale before the proximity of that marvellous erection of feathers and tinsel on her head. Still, to the traveller from home, who has probably arrived with undefined fears of "savages" about the beach, and the roughest 6 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES of tavern accommodation in the town, the first impression is astonishing. Suva, on landing, proves to be a good-sized town, with a long handsome main street, edged on one side by neatly cut grass, and great flamboyant trees in full flower of vivid scarlet, bordering the still, green, waveless lagoon that lies inside the barrier reef. On the other side stand shops with big plate-glass windows, clubs, offices, hotels. A little way out of the town is Government House, perched upon its own high hill to catch the trade wind — long and wide and deeply verandaed, with a tall flag-staff bearing the Union Jack on the roof, armed native sentries pacing at the avenue gates, and a stately flight of steps leading to the porch, to be covered with red carpet on great occasions. . . . And this is savage Fiji! When we have chosen a hotel, disposed of our lug gage, dined, and settled down to have a rest on the coolest veranda — for it is exceedingly hot, and the laziness of the Pacific world begins to press hard upon us — we may as well try to increase our understanding of the place where we find ourselves, by reading it up, until the heat and the sleepy swing of the long cane rocking-chair shall prove too much. Fiji is a British Crown Colony, situated in the South west Pacific, lying between the 15th and 22nd parallels of south latitude, and between 157 E. and 177 W. longi tude. It consists of 155 islands, with a total area of 7,400 square miles. Most of the land is contained in the two great islands of Viti Levu (Great Fiji) and Vanua Levu (Great Land), which account for 4,112 and 2,432 square miles respectively. These two islands are ex ceptionally well wooded and watered, and could, it is said, support three times the population of the whole DESCRIPTIVE AND HUMOROUS 7 group. Viti Levu is in every way the most important island in the archipelago. It contains the seat of govern ment, the principal harbours, and all the roads, and much the greater part of the colony's trade. There is one town in the group besides Suva — Levuka, the capital of former days, on the small island of Ovalau. The climate is certainly hot, though the thermometer does not rise to any extraordinary heights. During the three hottest months — January, February and March— the highest shade temperature ranges between 900 and 94° Fahr., and the lowest between 670 and 720, roughly speaking. In the cooler months of June, July and August, 590 and 890 are the usual extremes. The air is moist as a rule, and in Suva, at all events, one may safely say that a day without any rain is almost unknown. On the northern side of Viti Levu, the climate is a good deal drier, and in consequence less relaxing. Dysentery is fairly common, but there is no fever to speak of, and the climate, on the whole, is considered healthy. Mosqui toes are so troublesome that most of the better class private houses have at least one mosquito-proof room, with doors and windows protected by wire gauze. One hears a good deal about hurricanes in Fiji, and the stranger might be pardoned for thinking that they are common features of the so-called "hurricane season." As a matter of fact, however, they are rare, many years often elapsing between one hurricane and the next. Between 1848 and 1901 inclusive, there were only thirteen hurricanes in the group, and of these only six were really destructive. Most tropical climates would have a worse record to show if carefully investigated. Although the rainy months are damp and enervating, the drier half of the year, from April to October, is extremely pleasant, and not at all too hot. 8 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES a . . . Not asleep yet? . . . The trade wind hums in the great vanes of the palm-trees outside the hotel veranda. It is very warm, and the flash of white foam on the barrier reef, between the flat tops of the quaint "rain- trees," and the red roofs of the lower town, is too far away to offer even a suggestion of coolness. Is it not too hot and drowsy a day to study Fijian geography and history? No, for we are in the hot season, and every day for the next three months is going to be just like this, and if one only reads and works in a tropical climate when one feels like it, one will never get through any work at all. That is part of the "white man's burden," and pluckily he shoulders it as a rule. Most intellectual work in the hot season is done clear against the grain from beginning to end, after a fashion that would make the London city clerk stand aghast. Yet it is excellently done for the most part, and it does not, in Fiji, at all events, seem to tell against the health. So, beginning as we mean to go on, we will look up the history books, and see what is the past record of this strange land into which we have come. We have already .noted, passing down the street, the curious mixture of the population — whites, half-castes, Samoans, Indians, Chinese, and more conspicuous than any, the Fijians themselves, tall, magnificently built people of a colour between coffee and bronze, with stiff brush-like hair trained into a high ''pompadour," clean shirts and smart short cotton kilts, and a general aspect of well-groomed neatness. They do not look at all like "savages," and again, they have not the keen, intellectual expression of the Indians, or the easy amiability of the Samoan type of countenance. They are partly Melanesian, partly Poly nesian in type, and they form, it is quite evident, the DESCRIPTIVE AND HUMOROUS 9 connecting link between Eastern and Western Pacific. East of Fiji, life is one long lotus-eating dream, stirred only by occasional parties of pleasure, feasting, love- making, dancing, and a very little gardening work. Music is the soul of the people, beauty of face and move ment is more the rule than the exception, and friendliness to strangers is carried almost to excess. Westward of the Fijis lie the dark, wicked cannibal groups of the Solomons, Banks, and New Hebrides, where life is more like a nightmare than a dream, murder stalks openly in broad daylight, the people are nearer to monkeys than to human beings in aspect, and music and dancing are little practised, and in the rudest possible state. In Fiji itself, the nameless dreamy charm of the Eastern Islands is not; but the gloom, the fevers, the repulsive people of the West are absent also. Life is rather a serious matter for the Fijian on the whole; he is kept in order by his chiefs and by the British Govern ment, and has to get through enough work in the year to pay his taxes ; also, if the supply of volunteers runs short, he is liable to be forcibly recruited for the Armed Native Constabulary, and this is a fate that oppresses him a good deal — until he has accustomed himself to the discip line of the force, when he generally makes an excellent soldier. But all in all, he has a pleasant time, in a pleas ant, productive climate, and is a very pleasant person himself, hospitable in the highest degree, honest, good- natured, and clever with his hands, though of a less highly intellectual type than the Tongan or Samoan. Fijian solo dancing is not so good as that of the Eastern Pacific, but there is nothing in the whole South Seas to equal the magnificent tribe dancing of Vanua and Viti Levu, only seen at its best on the rare occasions of a great chief's wedding or funeral. The Waves of the Sea to FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES dance is one of the most celebrated ; it is danced by several thousand men wearing long white streamers of tappa cloth (a native-made stuff beaten out of the inner bark of the mulberry-tree, and looking like fine white paper) . These streamers, skilfully managed, suggest the crests of breaking rollers with extraordinary vividness, and the roaring song of the dancers closely reproduces the boom of the waves. The history of the country goes back a very little way — only as far as 1643, when Tasman discovered the group and named it Prince William Islands. He did not land, or make any explorations. Cook sailed within sight of Vatoa in 1773, but did not visit any other of the islands. Bligh, after the mutiny of the Bounty, in 1789, passed Moala during his wonderful boat voyage to Timor, and in 1792 returned in the Providence, and made some observations. In spite of these visits, however, and in spite of the fact that a number of Australian convicts escaped up to the islands about 1802, they remained almost unknown until D'Ur ville, in the Astrolabe, made a rather brief exploring tour in 1827, and constructed the first chart. Captain Bethune in 1838, the United States Exploring Expedition in 1840, and a number of British vessels afterwards, completed the survey of the group. In 1835 the first missionaries arrived, and from this time onward the islands began to make progress toward civilisation. There is no need to repeat here the story of the cannibal days in Fiji, since mission literature has made this part of Fijian history famous all over the world — rather too much so, as the colonist of to-day declares. It takes a long time to uproot any fixed idea from the mind of the slow-going British public, and English people have not yet succeeded in realising that the cannibal and heathen days of Fiji passed away more than thirty years ago. To most of the home public, the DESCRIPTIVE AND HUMOROUS ii Fijis are still the gloomy land of mission story, or else the "Cannibal Islands" of music-hall and nigger-minstrel humour — a place impossible to take seriously from any point of view, and certainly not a spot where any sane man would either travel for pleasure or emigrate for profit. Theirs is the loss, since the country is eminently adapted for both. It is enough, then, to say that in the earlier part of the Nineteenth Century, the Fijian was the most deter mined cannibal known to savage history, and that murders of the white settlers and missionaries were frequent. By degrees, however, the untiring efforts of the missionaries, and the influence of the settlers them selves, few as they were, began to make an improvement, and in the early fifties the country was advancing rapidly toward a better state of civilisation, when the rise into power of the infamous King Thakombau, one of the worst monsters of cruelty known since the days of Nero, for a time held back the tide. Murders and massacres of the whites increased, war among the natives was continual, and there was small security for property. In 1855, however, came a serious check to Thakombau's power. The United States Government, incensed at the brutal murder of a number of shipwrecked sailors, demanded ^9,000 compensation, which the savage king found him self quite unable to pay. He offered to cede the islands to Great Britain in 1858, on the condition that the in demnity should be taken over with the country and settled for him. England, as it happened, did not think that a fine colony right in the middle of the Pacific trade routes was worth buying at the cost of a decent country- house in the shires; so the offer was refused, and the richest prize in the South Seas went begging for more than sixteen years longer. 12 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES The American Civil War proved the importance of Fiji's cotton industry, and was the cause of a sudden increase in the number of respectable settlers. Danger ous as the country still was, many families pluckily emigrated from Australia, took up waste lands, and began to make money rapidly. Some of them, it seems, thought that war and war prices would last for ever, since they lived splendidly on what they made, put down more and more cotton, and made no provision for the reaction that was bound to come. When it did arrive, many were ruined. Some left the colony, others lingered on, half heartedly trying one kind of occupation after another, and failing in all. It is the remnant of these, and in many cases their children, who are the drag upon the wheel of the country to-day. They are the failure element, the unfit, the inefficient, and with the later importations of ne'er-do-wells, from which no colony is free, they make up an element of continual discontent and pessimism, not only discouraging to the enterprising new-comer, but actually hostile to him, in some cases, and bitterly envious of his progress. The successes among the early emigrants, on the other hand, have in many cases done extremely well, acquired large properties, and formed the beginning of a native white population of the most desirable kind. Cotton-growing has long been dead in Fiji, but sugar, copra and other products have taken its place, and the children and grandchildren of the early settlers are in many cases quite as prosperous as their adventurous forefathers. To return to the days of the American War and shortly after. A second check now came upon Thakom- bau's power. The warlike tribes of Tonga, a neighbour ing group that had always been a rival of Fiji, began to DESCRIPTIVE AND HUMOROUS 13 give serious trouble. Maafu, a powerful chief, invaded the Fiji Islands, and it seemed as if a Tongan conquest were imminent. Thakombau, in alarm, called the whites to his aid, and arranged a constitutional government to support his waning power. It was to be carried out by white officials and ministers under himself as King, and would, he hoped, enable him to keep his country out of the hands of Tonga, without making any costly concessions. The hope proved vain. After two years (187 1 to 1873), the mixed government broke down completely, and the King and his chiefs saw themselves confronted with a choice of two evils — to be conquered by Tonga, or to give up the country to Britain. They chose the latter, as the smaller evil, and in 1874 offered Fiji uncon ditionally to England. England accepted the gift, and Fiji thenceforth became a Crown Colony. From 1874 onward there is little history to relate. History means trouble, and Fiji's troubles were over. Thakombau, retired on a good salary, and given enough royal honour to make him happy and content, ceased to annoy. He became a Christian, at all events nominally, and died, a good deal more peaceably than he deserved, in 1883. The missionaries, Catholic and Protestant, had succeeded in Christianising the greater part of Fiji before the annex ation, and the rest followed soon after. White settlers increased, Indian labour was largely imported to work the plantations, as the natives of the islands did not care to engage; trade developed; a new town — Suva — was built, and took the place of the older chief town, Levuka, as capital of the group. A succession of British Governors, beginning with Sir Hercules Robinson, did their best to develop the country and improve the 1 4 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES condition of the natives. In some cases their efforts were more well-meaning than wise, and left a melancholy legacy of mistakes for their successors to improve away, but, on the whole Fiji has been fortunate in her rulers. The Governor of Fiji is also High Commissioner of the Western Pacific, holding jurisdiction over all British owned and protected groups in those seas, and also over British subjects living in groups owned by other countries, or not owned at all. These powers are by no means nominal; the position, indeed, is one of highest respon sibility, and the cause of law and order in the islands generally has benefited much since the strong hand of British authority has extended its powers so far. The Governor is assisted by an executive council of five, and a legislative council of twelve, six of whom are unofficial members elected by popular vote. The natives are governed through their chiefs, who are appointed by the Governor. There are several degrees of official chief, the smallest being the chief of a town called the Turango ni Koro. Over each district is a superior chief, with con siderable power, called a Mbuli, and the whole country is divided into sixteen provinces, fourteen of which are ruled over by native chiefs who rank for the most part as princes, and are called "Roko Tui." The remaining two are under the control of British magistrates. The chief of one province (Kandavu), is the grandson of Thakombau, and would be King of Fiji were the country not the property of Great Britain. He is quite contented, however, being very well off, and held in considerable honour by natives and whites. He is the only one of the chiefs who habitually wears European dress; the others preferring the national kilt or "sulu," worn with a shirt, and without shoes. The present Governor, Sir Eveiard im Thurn, C.B., DESCRIPTIVE AND HUMOROUS 15 K.C.M.G., came into office in 1904. Although his time has been short, it has been long enough to prove that in him the islands have the ablest ruler they have yet enjoyed. Much has been done to improve the con dition of the lower-class natives and repress the occasional exactions of the chiefs. Public works have been under taken, obsolete laws removed, and representation in council granted to the planters. The vexatious ancient system of land-tenure, which was complicated and un satisfactory, and a serious bar to settlement, has been reformed, and many minor improvements made, under circumstances difficult enough to excuse most rulers from attempting any reform at all. Fiji certainly owes much to Sir Everard im Thurn. Nor must the influence in the colony of Lady im Thurn pass without notice. There has never been a more popular governor's wife in Fiji than this exceptionally cultured and charming lady, who has so far identified herself with the interests of her South Sea home that she has even acquired the Fijian language, and speaks fluently to the native dignitaries in their own tongue when chiefs are entertained at Government House. The decline of the native population is a matter that has occupied the attention of many governors, but so far it continues unchecked. It is not as serious as the fall that has taken place in the Cook Islands and other British dependencies, but nevertheless the numbers of the people, no matter what is done to ensure good hygiene in the villages, and to preserve infant life, fall by some hundreds every year. The 1901 census gave the follow ing result for the entire colony, including the outlying island of Rotumah: Europeans, 2549; half-castes, 15 16; Indian coolies, 17,105 ; islanders from other Pacific groups, 1950; miscellaneous, 457; Fijians, 96,631. Total, 120,128. The reasons suggested for the decline are many — 1 6 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES introduction of European diseases, increase of chest troubles owing to the wearing of clothes, over-indulgence in tobacco (especially in the case of nursing mothers), improper feeding of infants, &c, &c. No one, as a matter of fact, really knows why almost every Pacific race dies out by degrees through contact with the white, and certainly no one knows how to stop the decline. The causes do not lie so near the surface as might be supposed. Here and there, all over the Pacific, one meets with a stray island — sometimes part of a rapidly declining group — in which the population is more than holding its own, without any apparent reason. Niue- is one example, Mangaia is another, and it has been claimed that the Tongan people are not diminishing, though satisfactory proof of this is not at present to be had. In any case, Fiji is not among the lucky nations, and so far has the population declined even since the cannibal days, that large tracts of fertile land are lying waste and uninhabited in many parts of the group. Some of this is being taken up, with the assistance and encouragement of the Govern ment, by those Indian coolies who do not take advantage of the free return passage at the end of the five years for which they are engaged to work in the plantations. The Indians make industrious cultivators and good subjects on the whole, and as they increase very rapidly, the time cannot be many generations removed when an Indian population will have replaced altogether the dying-out Fijian race. It may yet happen, however, that science will find some means of arresting the decay, and that one of the finest coloured races in the world will be saved from an extinction which every colonist and traveller would deeply regret. The Fijians themselves are, unfortunately, quite indifferent about the matter. The trade of Fiji is by no means a negligible quantity. FIJIAN CHIEFS. ARMED NATIVE CONSTABULARY BEHIXD FIJIAN CHIEF ARMED NATIVE CONSTABULARY DESCRIPTIVE AND HUMOROUS 17 The value of the yearly exports amounts to well over half a million annually, and the imports are nearly as much. Sugar is the most important product. The Colonial Sugar Refining Company owns much of the good river-flat country, and employs quite an army of employees of all kinds, apart from the thousands of imported Indian labourers who cultivate the land. A good many inde pendent planters cultivate cane for the company at a fixed price, and seem to do well on the proceeds. Bananas are largely grown, and exported for the most part to Australia. Peanuts have been tried lately, with some success. Tea and coffee are both grown, but do not usually attain to the best quality. Copra (the dried meat of the cocoanut) is a very important article of commerce, and many planters have done extremely well with it. Stock-raising is carried on with considerable success in Taviuni, about Ba, and other parts of the colony. There are a number of minor industries and products which are still more or less on trial, among them vanilla and drugs of many kinds. The timber industry is important. And now, having been serious for so long, we may look for a little amusement. We have not yet finished our study of Fijian social and economic conditions, but we can find all the humour we require without going outside it. Is there not the penal system still to consider ? Certainly, at home, one does not look for delicate humour inside the walls of a jail, or expect practical jokes in the shape of a convict system. In topsy-turvy Fiji, how ever, the whole penal apparatus is one gigantic jest, and is regarded as such by most of the whites, and not a few of the natives. To begin with, there is hardly any real crime, what there is being furnished chiefly by the Indian labourers i8 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES employed on the estates of the Colonial Sugar Refining Company. The Fijians themselves, though less than two generations removed from the wild and wicked days of the Thakombau reign, are an extremely peaceable and good-natured set of people. In the fifties and sixties, and even later, murder, torture and cannibalism were the chief diversions of a Fijian's life, and the power of working one's self into a more violent and unrestrained fit of rage than any one else of one's acquaintance was an elegant and much-sought-after accomplishment. This change, effected largely by the work of the missionaries, but also by the civilising influences of the British Govern ment, and of planters and traders innumerable, is most notable. Nothing can be more amiable and good-natured than the Fijian of to-day; no coloured citizen in all the circle of the British Colonies is less inclined to crime. Yet the great jail in Suva, and the various smaller ones dotted about among the country police-stations, are always well filled; for the Fijian, being naturally rather thick-headed, manages, in spite of all his amiability, to run up against the British Constitution every now and then. There are laws for his guidance and restraint that do not exactly please him; and, as he cheerfully drives a coach-and-six, or its Fijian equivalent, right through them whenever he feels inclined, it follows that an inter lude of jail is an extremely common incident in Fijian life. " What are most of the prisoners in jail for ? " I asked a government official one day. "Saying 'Boo!' to a Buli," he replied; "that's about the commonest crime. You see, no Fijian is allowed to leave his village without the permission of the Buli, or chief of the district." "What on earth for?" " Well, the idea is that the village can't get on with- SUGAR BOATS, REWA RIVER A FIJIAN JAIL DESCRIPTIVE AND HUMOROUS 19 out him. But sometimes he goes off without leave, and when the Buli sends for him to come back, he tells him to go and put his head in a bag— or words to that effect. So then the Buli has him arrested by the native police, and taken to Suva for trial and imprisonment. That is the law." "Aren't there any other offences?" "Oh, yes. Sometimes they don't pay their taxes, which have to be paid in kind, to encourage industry: so much tobacco, or maize, or timber, or what not. Then it's jail again. And sometimes they run away when they have entered into a contract to stay a certain time working at a special place. And just now and then — though very seldom — some man hits another over the head with a club for running away with his girl; so there's another case. One way and another, the jails are kept at work." "Well, it seems to me cruel and tyrannical to make convicts of the poor Fijians for such trifles." " Oh, is it ? You wait and see ! ' ' I did. I saw. And I felt, on the whole, that my sentimental pity was wasted. The jail in Suva is a most imposing place. It presents a fine stone wall of considerable height to the view of the visitor coming up the road ; and there is a great gate, and a small door to come in by, quite like a European jail. But when you have got inside, and begun to notice the buildings scattered about the courtyard — dormitories, solitary cells, cook-houses, and what not — it comes upon you with something of a shock that the imposing wall is nothing, after all, but a joke — one of the many jokes of the wonderful Fijian penal system. It extends round only three sides of the grounds, leaving the back com pletely open to the bush and the hills — as if the whole 2o FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES establishment were a toy to be set on the mantelshelf, and looked at only from the front. "What on earth is that wall for?" I asked, in a state of stupefaction. "To look pretty. Don't you think it looks pretty?" solicitously asked the friend who was accompanying me. "Do they never run away?" "Hardly ever, and if they do, they generally come back." "Why do they stay, when they needn't?" " Well, I think, because they rather like being in jail!" This statement seemed almost too much to swallow at one time, but I found out afterward it was very near the truth. The Fijian attaches no disgrace whatever to being in jail ; indeed, it would be hard for him to do so, since the larger proportion of his acquaintance have passed through that experience at one time or another. He regards it as a slight inconvenience; an interruption to his occupations at home, largely compensated, how ever, by the delights of a trip on a steamer down to Suva, and a sight of the busy capital. Furthermore, he is sure to find plenty of old friends in the jail, and they welcome him joyfully. "A-wa-w6! Reubeni, is that you? Well, well, I'm glad to see you. Here, Wiliami, Lomai, Volavola! Here's Reubeni from Thakandrove! Come along, Reu beni, we're just going to supper. Why, you've come at a splendid time; most of us are gardening at the Kovana's (Governor's), and there's going to be a big festival in the grounds to-morrow, and a tug-of-war. You've never been to Suva, have you? No — well, it's a fine place, and very gay just now. I hope you'll enjoy your stay." This, or something like it, spoken in Fijian, is the DESCRIPTIVE AND HUMOROUS 21 prisoner's welcome to the jail. He is lodged in a building fitted up with long shelves, on which he sleeps very comfortably, and is looked after by a warder belonging to the Armed Native Constabulary, who usually acts as a sort of general servant to the prisoners, preparing their food for them, and making himself universally handy. In the morning, refreshed and inspirited by a meal considerably better than anything he gets at home, the convict starts out with a group of friends, in charge of a warder, to the place where he is assigned to work. Probably he has been put on hard labour, but — unless there is any roadmaking or building to be done — the labour available is not very exhausting. The grass edgings and lawns of the town want a good deal of trim ming, so the convict probably has a knife handed over to him, with a sharp, heavy blade, two feet long, and squats down on the grass by the border of the main street, to hack and trim at his ease all day. Perhaps his neighbour is a friend from home, sent to jail for break ing a labour contract; perhaps it is an Indian who has killed a Sugar Company overseer, and cut him into little bits. In any case, they squat side by side, dressed alike in neat shirts and "salus" of unbleached calico stamped over with broad arrows, working away in as leisurely a manner as possible, and thoroughly enjoying the gay sight presented by the busy main street. . . . There is a steamer in to-day; the pavement is dotted with tourists — British, American, Colonial — armed with guide books and cameras and the totally unnecessary pugaree that the travelling Briton loves to deck himself withal. The tourists look at the convicts and their knives appre hensively. Reubeni is a mountain lad, and his hair is very wild and long, and his teeth are big and sharp, and he looks cannibal every inch, though in reality he 22 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES is as mild as milk, and the light of the local Sunday- school. . . . "James! James!" vociferates a lady tourist, fat and elderly and nervous. "Why did you not bring your revolver on shore with you, as I told you? I am sure these savages are most dangerous — and the road is literally full of convict murderers and thieves, all armed with daggers! Do let us go back to the steamer!" But perhaps Reubeni has some other variety of " hard labour" assigned to him. The Government Office up on the hill — a great bee-hive of red-roofed buildings, full of rooms and "departments" — needs a good many messengers, and all day long one may see stalwart, jolly-looking Fijians in broad-arrowed suits loafing agreeably on the shady verandas, or strolling about the town, conveying letters to Government House, or the Commandant of the Forces, or the Club, or the Bank. Every letter means a pleasant "yarn" with the house- servants, and perhaps a lump of cold yam, or a bit of tinned meat, out of the kitchen, while the answer is being written. There may be money to send to, or from, the Bank, or from one department to another. The convict carries it, gets a receipt, and brings it back again. His acquaintances among the white people recognise him pleasantly as he passes. " Well, Reubeni, you up here ! What are you in for ? " "Not paying taxes, saka (sir)." "That's very wicked of you; you won't go to Heaven if you don't pay your taxes, you lazy beggar. Is this your first time?" "Eo, saka (Yes, sir). I have never been in the King's service before." (Fijian term for being in jail). "How do you like it?" " It is not a bad service, saka, we have plenty to eat." DESCRIPTIVE AND HUMOROUS 23 "Well, look me up when your time is out, if you'd like to engage in Suva; I want a house-boy." "Savinaka, saka (Very good, sir). I will come; I think your service will be quite as good as the jail, saka." One of the pet jokes of Suva is the home-going of Reubeni and his kind, every evening a little before six o'clock. The gates of the jail are closed at six, and a few minutes earlier gangs of prisoners can be seen col lecting from every part of the town — some under the care of a warder, but many alone — all hurrying anxiously toward the jail. As the hour draws nearer, they hurry more and more, and many begin to run, with anxiety painted plain on their copper countenances. If they are not in at six o'clock, a terrible punishment awaits them — a punishment they would do anything to avoid. Dis cipline must be kept up, and there is no mercy for the prisoner who neglects the closing hour. What happens to him? He is shut out of jail. No supper for him — an unspeakable calamity this — no evening gossip, no bed Until to-morrow he is an outcast without a home. You may see him, perhaps> if you drive past the jail a little after sunset, crouching low on the threshold of the gateway, wiping his tearful eyes with the hem of his broad-arrowed "sulu," and presenting an excellent living picture of the famous line: "Oh, who would inhabit this cold world alone?" Poor Fijian! I was staying with the resident magistrate in one of the Vanua Levu districts during my subsequent tour, and, hearing that there was a vanilla plantation some eight miles away, asked if I could go and see it. 24 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES "Oh, certainly," said my host. "You can go on a truck down the company's tram-line — they allow all the white residents to use it — and I'll send a couple of convicts with you, as I can't go myself to-day!" The convicts were produced — a pair of sleepy, wild- haired Fijians, in jail clothing — and the magistrate told them to push the truck for me down to the plantation, and wait till I came back to it. "Savinaka, saka," they replied, saluting in military fashion, and off we set — myself in a kitchen chair perched somewhat perilously upon a flat, edgeless truck, the convicts standing one each side of me, also upon the truck, and "putting" it along with poles. They kept up an astonishing pace along the eight miles of line, being in excellent spirits over their job, which certainly was pleasanter than the monotonous rice-husking on which they had been at work. I should have preferred their being a little less happy, however, if it had made them a little less reckless, for they punted the crazy vehicle along at fifteen miles an hour round every curve, and chanced the meeting or overtaking of anything else; the result of which was that, on one occasion, we swept round a corner "full bat" toward an advancing truck occupied by eight Indians going up to the settlement we had just left. It was a single line, and destruction seemed imminent; however, the Indians, seeing a "mem- sahib" on the truck that was roaring down upon them like a devouring lion, leaped wildly from their seats, and contrived by unearthly efforts to overset their own vehicle off the line into the ditch alongside, where it lay with its whirling wheels turned up to Heaven, look ing extremely like a helpless, overturned beetle, as we rushed wildly past. Arrived at the plantation, the convicts sat down on DESCRIPTIVE AND HUMOROUS 25 the truck, and feasted on biscuits and tinned salmon which I bought for them at the store (having been solemnly warned by the Government of Fiji not to dare to give them money). I spent an hour or two in the plantation, and returned when I was ready. The jail birds, who could, of course, have run away a hundred times over if they had felt like it, were asleep in the shade, waiting my pleasure. We spun merrily home again, and at the foot of the hill leading to the house my two con victs delivered me back safely to my host, and I delivered them back to the same person. Whether they were in charge of me for the day, or I of them, is a problem that I have not yet been able to solve, even with the aid of mathematics, because, if things that are equal to the same thing are equal to one another, and if the convicts were equal to taking charge of me and I was equal to taking charge of them, then we were equal to each other — which means either that they were English lady travellers or that I was a Fijian convict; and both solutions seem unsatisfactory somehow. One other form of hard labour inflicted on the Fijian convict is worth noting. The mails from Suva are frequently carried up-country, to distances of forty or fifty miles, by convict letter-carriers! They journey alone, always come back as nearly up to time as a Fijian can, and evidently see nothing anomalous in the fact of being thus made their own jailors. One might have a worse billet, in a hard and mis trustful world, than that of a Fijian convict. CHAPTER II ON THE TRAIL Garden of the Swiss Family Robinson — Over the Hills and Far Away — The Pandanus Prairies — Fijian Luggage — The Curse of the Spotted Bun — A Tropical Forest — Benighted on the Way WHEN I had driven up to the top of the Flag-staff hill in Suva, gone to see the Botanic Gardens, boated up the Tamavua River, looked at Thak- ombau's monument, exhausted the attractions of the curio shops, and seen something of Suva society (which is tiresomely like society at home, though so hospitable and kindly that one must forgive it), somebody very kindly told me about the plantations on the other side of the harbour, and thereby started me on a quest after information spiced with amusement that lasted the better part of six months, and gave me what was, on the whole, the second-best, if not the best, time of all my life. The sail over to the plantation was a journey of exquisite loveliness, for Suva Harbour is famous even among the countless beautiful harbours of the wonderful South Sea world. But it did not interest me very much on the return journey. I had been seeing and hearing things that made me think. There seemed to be nothing that did not grow in the place I had been seeing. Unkindly discredit has been cast on the dear old " Swiss Family Robinson " and its remark ably catholic list of fauna and flora : vet it appeared to me, 27 28 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES walking about the plantation — a mere private experiment, unsupported by much capital — that I had stepped right back into childhood and the pages of that marvellous book. Bananas, oranges and pine-apples were, of course, as common as dust. Allspice dangled on one green bough, fat red chillies on another. Turmeric, excellent for curries ; fragrant limes, delicate vanilla, croton and castor oils, ramie fibre, erythroxylon coca (where the cocaine comes from), gum arabic, sisal hemp, cassia, teak, West India arrowroot, cloves, annatto, areca-nut palms, ginger, cocoa, papya, and a whole regiment of other useful or pleasant things, "flourished" (as the early Victorian novels used to say) "in the richest luxuriance." And all these plants, without exception, had been proved to do exceptionally well in Fiji. Many of them grew wild all over the country; others, imported (such as cocoa, all spice and vanilla), had produced seeds and beans of a quality surpassing anything else in the markets of the world. Withal, there were tens of thousands of acres all over the islands unused and unoccupied; white settlers and planters seldom or never came to try their luck, and the resources of this, the richest of all the rich Pacific archipelagoes, was not one-hundredth part developed. As to the reason of this, Suva, the European capital, could offer me no suggestion, except the old, familiar statement that no one had ever tried these things, and, therefore, no one ever ought. A few Government officials, primed with figures that looked extremely useful, and, somehow, weren't, gave me quantities of information that left the matter just where it was before. It is a strange fact, and one I cannot explain, though I have often noted it, that Government information seems to lose much of its vitality in the canning process. It is like canned butter or meat correct in weight, good to ON THE TRAIL 2Q look at, of excellent material, and yet, somehow, unsatis fying in the end. So it came about that I made a resolve, and kept to it, in spite of the objections of Suva — Suva, which was clearly convinced, first, that I could not; secondly, that I ought not ; and thirdly, that I should find it use less — to go through the interior of the islands myself and see just what the native and his life were like, and of what value the country still might be to possible settlers. One or two white women, accompanied by Europeans, had seen a little of the native country in recent years; but none had gone very far, and certainly none had ever travelled alone, I was told. Were the natives cannibal now? Certainly not ; cannibalism was as dead in the Fijis as painting with woad in England. Were they rude to strangers? By no means; they were the soul of hospi tality. But the sum of objection remained the same — the objectors, who had never been ten miles from Suva themselves, maintaining that "it was too rough." One can always find the man who really knows, if one takes time. I found him — a Government dignitary of brisk and authoritative presence, energetic to the ends of his smartly trained moustache, learned in the ways of wild countries, and (strange to say) knowing not a little of the country he was engaged in helping to govern. He did not feed me with statistics, but came down at once to fact. "Rough? Yes, but not too much so," he said. "Cer tainly, go if you fancy it ; you'll have a royal time. The natives are capital fellows; they'll make a queen of you everywhere you go, and you'll see some of the finest scenery in the world. Firearms? Well, you might as well have a Colt with you, as not ; it's eas; tc carry — but you won't need it. ... No trouble at all. 3o FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES Anything else that I can do? . . . Well, good-bye, and good luck!" Then. came the delightful preparations. I had never been "off the road" before, and everything that had to be bought was an added prophecy of enjoyment. The side-saddle, the leather saddle-bags for small articles, the minute steel trunk, two feet by one, for all my clothes ; the mosquito-net and oilcloth-covered pillow, the tin billy for tea-making, tin cups and saucers, common knife and fork and spoon, common canvas shoes for rough walking, parcels of ship's biscuits, tinned meat, tea and sugar and salt — all spoke eloquently of freedom, and the "call of the road," and long, bright days under the open sky. And when I had engaged a time-expired native soldier of the Governor's armed constabulary force to act as interpreter and courier, and picked up a couple of carriers at Ba, the " jumping-off place " into the unknown, I was absolutely inflated with pride, and felt that Stanley, Burton and Speke were not to be named with myself. It would, of course, have been possible to walk throughout the trip. But Fiji lies between the fifteenth and twenty-first parallels of south latitude, and its hot season is no trifle. By riding, I could cover twenty to thirty miles daily of rough mountain bridle-tracks (there being no roads in the interior) without suffering from the heat, or feeling any fatigue, whereas the same amount of walking, in a tropical climate, would have been tiring and extremely hot. As for the men, forty miles a day would not have exceeded their powers ; they were always on the heels of my horse, burdened though they were; and they travelled with a long, slow, wolf -like stride that never slacked or altered, up hill or down, no matter what the heat might be, or how sharply the rough track inclined. Ba, the last fortress of civilisation on the northern COCA CINNAMON ON THE TRAIL 3i side of the great highland region I was to cross, is a half- Fijian, half-European town; very hot in the burning days of March, very much plagued with flies, fairly pretty, and inordinately devoted to the interests of the great Sugar Company. There is no escaping the Colonial Sugar Refining Company in Fiji, save in the far interior. Thou sands of acres are covered with the beautiful verdigris- green of the growing canes; hundreds of the white popu lation are employed as overseers, mechanics, clerks and managers on the various estates, while, as for the Indian, Polynesian and Fijian labourers, they form a very large item indeed in the census returns of the islands. I have not the least doubt that the original pioneers of this enormously wealthy company were met with exactly the same cold-water-bucket comments and remonstrances as the smaller would-be planters of to-day. The "oldest inhabitant" (who is just as unbearable a nuisance in Fiji as in any English shire) must certainly have told them that sugar had never been grown in the Fijis, therefore never could be; that the cotton industry had failed be cause of the close of the American Civil War, and, on that account, all planters who planted anything would cer tainly be ruined; and that there was no possible market for sugar, if they did succeed in growing it. Also, that the oldest inhabitant had lived x years in Fiji, and you couldn't teach him anything (which was painfully true) . The "C. S. R. " has drawn its hundreds of thousands out of Fiji for many years now; but the oldest inhabitant is not a whit abashed. He had been rampant in Suva; he was genuinely distressed at my leaving Ba for the mountains. There was only wild bush and barren rock there, he said; I had better go back to Suva and take drives along the Rewa Road, if I wanted to be amused. . . . 32 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES But what mattered the oldest inhabitant, or anyone else, to me, that splendid morning when I started off with my three Fijians and the good Australian horse that a kindly resident had lent me, toward the lonely country of the brown men and women, away from white faces and white folk's unnecessary luxuries, into the wilds at last? These first times! how one turns back to them again and again with a glow of kindly remembrance, in the hours when memory sits idle, feeding upon the honey comb of stored-up delights! The first day in a foreign port with its strange brilliancy of light and colour, and music of Southern tongues — never so bright, never so musical again — the first night in the tropics under the silvered palms and the purple, warm-breasted sky — above all, the first day in the real wilds, alone with flowers of an alien race, whose presence scarcely breaks the solitude; the whole responsibility of the expedition lying upon one's own single pair of shoulders and the certainty of new experiences, adventures, perhaps even dangers, making strange music upon chords that have] lain untouched through all a lifetime — such first times possess a fresh ness and a keen delight of their own, as perfect as first love itself. The weather was faultless, although the sun beat hotly on the unprotected track. Fiji has one of the few really satisfactory tropical climates of the world. Its hot season is never too hot to allow of travelling in the middle of the day, and its cool season is no warmer than an English summer. It is true that in February, the month when I commenced my travels, the power of the sun is almost alarming; but sunstroke is practically unknown in the islands, and I rode all day with perfect safety, protecting myself from the scorching rays by a grass hat and a hol- land coat, worn over my thin cotton blouse. This is A MOUNTAIN HOUSE ON THE TRAIL 33 quite necessary for riding in the hot season; without a coat, one feels as though the flesh of one's neck, arms and shoulders would soon begin to crackle and cook. But the molten-gold glory of the searching sun at high noon — the minute, photographic clearness of the "thousand shadowy pencilled valleys" on the far horizon hills — the fulness of light and life poured out by those blinding rays that strike down through the slender bush foliage as through glass, and bleach the very colour out of the shadeless, quivering sky — these things, to the traveller from the dim gray north, are worth all the heat and glare, destruction of hands and skin, that must be encountered. Enough sun, enough light, a royal pro fusion of God's most glorious gift; clear air like crystal; a far-reaching sweep of silent, sunny prairie-land; the warm wind in the feathered guinea-grass; the long, unknown track winding ahead into the heart of wild, battlemented, purple hills — this was the beginning of my hundred miles' march through the great island. A happy augury of happy days to come. There is nothing under the northern star quite so quaint, so weird and witch-like, as the pandanus prairies of Fiji. The pandanus, or screw-pine, is an unnatural- looking plant at the best, even when young and tender. It begins its life in a most extraordinary screw-like shape, looking much as though some malicious hand had seized its long sword-like leaves, and twisted them round and round. Later, it straightens out, and grows a number of tall wooden stilts, on which it stands, firmly sup ported in all directions. Its foliage now consists of a number of drooping mops, inexpressibly mournful and depressed-looking. Among these mops hangs the fruit, very like a pine-apple, but not eatable (for Europeans), being made up of a number of hard red and yellow kernels, 34 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES woody and fibrous in structure. It is, all in all, a most decadent-looking thing, strongly suggestive of the eighteen-nineties and Aubrey Beardsley — who, it is true, did not know or draw the pandanus, but who certainly ought to have been acquainted with such a kindred spirit of the vegetable kingdom. All the hot morning I rode over rolling uplands of pandanus prairie, the air growing cooler as the heights increased, the threatening, dark hill-ranges still barring the sky in front. The men, striding tirelessly along in the rear, caught up with the horse every time I stopped to walk. They were a dandy trio, my three Fiji-men: neatly dressed in white singlets and coloured cashmere "sulus" finished off with a smart leather belt; their hair trained, clipped and oiled with the greatest care, and their personal luggage tidily packed away in Fijian trunks. A Fijian trunk is quite a curiosity in its way. It consists simply of an oblong kerosene tin, about eigh teen inches by ten, cut in half lengthwise and the halves fitted over each other after the fashion of those Japanese travelling baskets that have become so common of late years. Inside, the Fijian carries his clothes, his "sulus" (a "sulu" is a piece of stuff two yards square, doubled and fastened round the loins to form a kilt) of cotton, cashmere, or flannel ; his spare shirt or singlet, his bottle of cocoanut oil, looking-glass and wooden comb, with teeth six inches long, his tobacco, and all the rest of his personal property of every kind. Contact with the white man has not driven out the stolid common sense of the Fiji-man, so far as to induce him to burden his life with unnecessary possessions. Your carrier is provided for six months with the contents of that little tin. He will always have clean clothes and a smartly dressed head out of its minute store of goods ; and, as for other wants, ON THE TRAIL 35 the ever-ready bush and river supply them. A razor? He will shave himself so clean with a chip of broken glass, or a piece of shell, that you doubt his ever having had a beard. A sponge? soap? tooth-brush? Green cocoanuts supply him with an oily, juicy husk that does the work of the first two, and as for the third, he rinses his mouth after eating, and that is enough to keep his magnificent teeth in repair, even if he does put them to uses (such as tearing open tins that resist the tin-opener, and husk ing cocoanuts) that make the white man's grinders shiver sympathetically in their sockets. He does not wear shoes, even in the fullest of full dress, and the only use for a pocket-handkerchief that he knows is to stick it in the front of his singlet, for style. He wears a night-cap — that is, a deep band of stuff intended to keep his mar vellous hair erect — but any banana-tree supplies him with that. So finely has he cut down the superfluities of life, that he does not even possess an inch of cotton stuff to tie up a chance cut with. A bit of dried leaf, neatly tied on with banana fibre, will serve instead. With the inexhaustible bush to draw from, he is never at a loss. About midday I felt hungry, and called a halt. Gideon, my personal servant and interpreter, came up for orders. There was a nice, shady little spot under a big rock, and it seemed an excellent place to boil the kettle; so I told him I would have some tea. A Fijian's face is as plain a mirror of passing thoughts as a child s. Gideon's dark countenance expressed something like respectful scorn, if such an emotion were possible, as he replied briefly: "No water stop." I felt first cousin to a fool, as I shook my horse into a canter again. No water! The habits of the 36 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES hotel-living tourist had not yet been fairly shed. How could I expect taps and filters on the Naloto Range? Yet there was something curiously pleasant that day, and many days after, in the dependence on Nature her self that was involved in just such delays and searchings. No water for the children till Mother gave it; no lemon ade, till Mother threw a dozen great, gold citrons or lemons out of her storehouse into their hands; no rope to tie up the bundles, if Mother's store of slender tough lianas was not at hand ; no lantern for the dark, if she had not lit up the moon in time. . . . I was meditating thus, on the bank of a glassy little stream, half an hour later, when the boys discovered that nobody had got any matches for the fire ; and down I came with a run. I did not feel like Stanley now. Stanley would certainly have remembered the matches, nor would he have forgotten to carry water, even if he had omitted from his outfit the bag of spotted "buns with which the last trader I had visited had successfully tempted me. I did not feel that I ought to have had those buns. It was not like an explorer ; it was sure to bring bad luck. And now there were no matches. But Joni had got astride a bamboo that was lying on the ground, and begun hacking at it with his knife, carving a small, deep groove in its flinty surface, and carefully shaping a splinter he had cut off from one of the broken ends. Now Nasoni seated himself opposite, and held down the bamboo with all his weight, while Joni rubbed the end of the splinter violently up and down in the groove. The exertion was great, and he panted as he worked; but it was several minutes before a little spire of smoke rose up from the groove, followed, shortly after, by just a tiny petal of orange flame. Nasoni was ready at once with a bit of crackling dried leaf; and JONI MAKING FIRE A ROOT OF YANGGONA ON THE TRAIL 37 in another twenty seconds the fire was blazing and the billy was on, while the boys relaxed after their efforts, and tumbled themselves down in the grass, in dislocated heaps of happy laziness. So I had really seen the famous South Sea method of making fire by rubbing two sticks together! I had always been rather sceptical about it, at best, and cer tainly did not expect to see a Twentieth-Century Fijian, who dressed in "store" cotton stuffs, and went to church five times on a Sunday, performing this famous savage feat. It was my first example of a truth most thor oughly rubbed in by subsequent events, that the Fijian's civilisation is only varnish-deep. Cannibalism has been abandoned, cruelty and torture given up, an ample amount of clothing universally adopted, yet the Fijian of to-day, freed from the white control and example that have moulded all his life, would spring back like an un strung bow to the thoughts and ways of his fathers. This is a truth doubted by no man who knows the inner life of Fiji. Taking things easily, and not at all troubled by the fact that I was not "making good time" (that malignant fetish of the average traveller), I found myself, in the afternoon, well up the slopes of the Naloto Range, and entering the forest. For the best part of ten miles I had ridden through land that was absolutely deserted; land where the great, rolling prairies stretched like a pale-green sea to right and left, unbroken save by the melancholy mop-headed ghosts of the pandanus-tree. There were no towns or houses, not so much as a stray native padding along the track, or a patch of yam- or taro-land, to show that the country was of use to some one. And all the earth was thickly clothed with dense, rich, reedy grass, six to ten feet high, excellent food for 3 8 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES horses, cattle or sheep — and every mile or two, tinkling streams, or deep- voiced torrents, furrowed the heart of the valleys. Twelve miles away there was a port with calling steamers; three days' sail distant lay the great, barren, populous land of New Caledonia, ready to take any meat that fertile Fiji could send. Already, nearer to Ba, more than one man had braved the scorn of the oldest inhabitant by raising cattle for Fiji itself, and accumulating a comfortable fortune. Why should these great wastes of grass lie idle? The native owners, I knew, were ready to let, and had given good grazing land as low as a shilling an acre; there was no clearing required, and no difficulty in driving stock to market. Why should not Gideon, who began to find the day wearisome, if not tiring, here broke in on the current of my reflections by gathering and presenting a splendid pink orchid, per fumed with a scent of such exquisite novelty and delicacy that I could not make up my mind to throw it away, even when it got in the way of my whip and reins. There were large numbers of these about the edges of the track. I could not, however, help sneering conceitedly, as the afternoon wore on, at the want of accuracy displayed by most travellers, in describing a tropical forest. The "blaze of flowers" so often spoken of is not a feature of the usual tropical bush. Every variety of green is there, in choking, strangling luxuriance— exquisite tree-ferns like great, green, lace parasols blown inside out; huge, handsome trees with big, varnished leaves, or dangling pale-green tassels a yard long; tall shaddocks, casting down things that looked like oranges ten inches in diame ter, and were only a bitter delusion, nearly all rind; a rare citron-tree or two, with rough-rinded yellow fruit; numbers of pretty shrubs and bushes; and — tangled ON THE TRAIL 39 through and round and under and over everything — lianas thick and thin, brown and green, running like the cordage of some gigantic sailing-ship from airy heights right down to the ground. This was the forest. True, there were flowers — one big tree was starred with waxy- white, perfumed tuberoses; a handsome bush had blos soms like a pink-and- white azalea; another bloomed like a meadow buttercup ; scarlet salvia lit flames in dim green corners, and an exquisite lilac-flowered creeper tangled itself about the borders of the track. But all these were swallowed up, as it were, in the overflowing life of leaf and tree, which shut out so much of the burning sun above that we tramped along in a cool green gloom. Why must the globe-trotter belittle the very real beauty of these tropic jungles by plastering it over with his own sensational falsehoods ? It is lovely enough, in all conscience, without the non-existent "blaze of flowers." I was not the first to make this observation, as I found when I returned to Suva, and read the fascinating book of South American travel written by His Excellency the Governor of Fiji, Sir Everard im Thurn, C.B., K.C.M.G. I fear I quoted the classical curse about the people who capture our pet ideas before we secure them ourselves, when I found my remarks anticipated in this manner. However, the truth is a truth; let it stand. For an hour or two the track was now so steep that I had to walk, letting the horse scramble after me as best he could. Then, when the sun was already setting (for I had delayed a long time on the way, gathering flowers and photographing), we came out into a narrow gap that framed in a minature picture of half the island of Viti Levu, or so it seemed. Here was the summit of the 3,000-foot range, and somewhere in those wild, 4o FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES barren hills below we must find shelter for the night, since there was now no chance of reaching the town of Nambukuya that day. The men told me that there was a small village — Nandrunga — within a couple of miles; and toward this we made, scrambling and clattering madly down the mountain side, to cheat the growing dark. The black, monstrous peaks gloomed about us, sinister, strange and evil in the gray-green dusk; the ten-foot reed-grass waved its melancholy heads above us like funeral plumes ; my three wild-eyed Fijians tramped silently in the rear. Among these very peaks, and in this valley that we were traversing, countless murders and ambushes had taken place, and cannibal feasts been held, in the stormy seventies. I was going to sleep in a native village, far from any white people; I could speak hardly anything of the language, and no white woman had ever before ventured through these regions alone — indeed (so far as I know), I was the first white woman who had ever travelled through these mountains under any circum stances. All this, in the uncanny dusk, among these wicked hills, fell rather coldly upon my heart; and I resolved to sleep with my revolver under my head, when rest and shelter should at last be reached. ... It was absurd, dear reader, but I did not know it then. CHAPTER III NATIVE FOOD— A FIJIAN HOME Night in a Fijian House — A Colossal Bed — The City of a Dream — A Fascinating Fijian — How to Drink Yang gona — Wanted, a Stanley — Where are the Settlers? — The Fairy Fortress IN THE pitch dark, we forded a river, allowing the horse to find his own way in and out, and at last came up to a five-foot high palisade of thick bamboos, surrounding a cluster of dim, tall objects that looked more like haystacks than anything else. My men low ered the bars of a gate, and I rode into the village. All was dark and silent, but the men soon routed out the inhabitants of the biggest house, ran and looked for a light, and succeeded in finding a ship's lantern. This they lit, and then proceeded unceremoniously to take possession of the house, lighting a fire in the small square fire-pit near the door, "shooing" the sleepers out from under their mats on the floor, and depositing my various packages in convenient places. The inhabitants took all this quite as a matter of course, merely asking (or so I judged) , who the marvellous apparition might be, and then squatting down outside the doorways to stare their fill, in stolid amazement. While the men were making tea, and opening a tin of meat, I looked about me with interest, examing my quarters. The house was about thirty feet by fifteen or twenty. There was only one room. The roof was very 41 42 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES high, and supported by a central post cut from a big bread-fruit tree. All round the walls were pillars, or, rather, pilasters, of similar wood, about four feet apart. The rafters were of bamboo, the ridge-pole of bread-fruit. Between the pillars of the walls was fine tapestry-work of reeds, which were laced together with black and red sinnet (cocoanut fibre) woven in pretty patterns. The floor was covered with a neat parquet of interlaced slips of bamboo, hidden here and there by the sleeping-mats of fine plaited rush or pandanus. There were three doors, one in the gable end, and one at each side, but no win dows. I had been careful to enter by the side door, being warned by Gideon not on any account to go through the end door, which was for him and other kaisi (com moners), the side door being reserved for chiefs. The outside of the house, as I saw it next morning, was very neatly covered with reed-work, the roof being deeply thatched with dried grass. Like all mountain houses, it stood on an earthen platform about four feet high, faced with stones, and surrounded by a shallow ditch. Cocoanut logs, slightly notched, formed the only means of ascent to the doors. Not a nail was used in the whole building, everything being laced and tied together with sinnet. Now some of the natives entered by the end door, carrying small plaited cocoanut-leaf mats, on which lay green banana-leaf platters full of baked yam. These they placed at my feet, bowing low as they did so. I was glad of the yams , for I knew by experience in other islands what a satisfying food these crisp white tubers make, and the mountain air had made us all hungry. The natives and my men sat at a distance, watching me eat, till I had done, and then divided the remains of the yam, also of my tinned meat and tea, among themselves. NATIVE FOOD— A FIJIAN HOME 43 Scrupulously just and generous they were over these fragments of rare luxury, although the Fijian loves tinned meat and tea as his own soul. One man would take a bite off a small piece, then hand it on to the next ; the recipient would have a bite in his turn, and imme diately, with watering mouth, give the delicious morsel to someone else, and so it circulated till finished. It was nearly time for bed now, so my men put up my mosquito-net on the bedplace, and told the Nandrun- gians that only the women might remain in the house for the night. This evidently impressed the Fijians as the funniest idea they had ever struck; the men cackled with laughter at the notion of anyone's object ing to sleep in a miscellaneous crowd of both sexes, while the women crowed with triumph at having the wonderful marama (lady) all to themselves. It is not often that a Fijian woman gets a chance of making herself prom inent or getting the best of anything; she is simply a drudge and a slave, as a rule, eating the leavings of the men, doing all the hardest work, and pushed into a corner at once, if such a rarity as a white visitor passes through, because it is not modest for her to talk to, or even look at, strange men, also because she is a dog, a slave, and does not count. Now, the tables were turned, and the utter delight with which the women cleared the house, and ran about waiting on me after the men were gone, was something worth seeing. They screamed when I began to comb my hair, which was certainly unlike their own short stiff brush, and remarked, in a flattering tone, that it resembled the tail of a horse ! They went into hysterics of joy over all my clothes, uttered strange savage "tck-tcks" of wonder at the riding-gloves I hung up to dry, and told each other that the marama wore "tarowis" on her hands, a word that 44 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES I could easily translate without a dictionary. One young woman, shoebrush-haired, wild-eyed, and long of tooth, caressed my arm in a passion of delight, even going so far as to set her teeth gently in the flesh, and exclaim longingly, "Vinaka na kakana!" (What good food!) I knew that she was too young to have been a cannibal, and that her exclamation was only a compliment — some what left-handed, it is true — to my British skin; but the remark was interesting as an unconscious outbreak of heredity. The young lady's parents, a fine old couple residing in the next house, had, without any doubt at all, enjoyed many a hearty meal of human limbs, in the good old days, when the forearm was always considered the choicest and tenderest bit. A Fijian bed is a curious resting-place, but not un comfortable to a tired traveller. It is an immense platform, about three feet high, occupying the whole end of the house, and covered with six or eight layers of clean, cream-coloured mats, edged with tufts of red and blue wool. The foundation is made by screwing a big log across the end of the room, and filling up the enclosed space with close-packed grass and fern. Pillows, made of a short section of bamboo trunk, lie about the platform.; the Fijians place them under their necks, Japanese fashion, and protect their wonderful heads of hair from disturbance. Fortunately for comfort, I had my own travelling-cushion. The women lay on the floor, and I slept well on the big bedplace, although I felt very much as if I had strayed into the Great Bed of Ware, and was in danger of losing myself, and although rats, cats, bat and scut- itering crawlies suggestive of centipedes created a sound of revelry by night all over the excellent ballroom floor furnished by the dais, until six o'clock thrust gray fingers ¦i TINY TAMBALE THE NDALO BEDS ¦**k.y^MWal <»>>.¦<> a>... ' A. - :-.-.v.- 4, rl#f^>® ¦¦ P35« .¦¦ - ' ; " '' It ¦,-. ^--JV ii^t^k^L' ."*«' " • ' 5y w$1,f! St > .•¦'?kr A ^V YANGGONA BUSHES NATIVE FOOD— A FIJIAN HOME 45 under the narrow doors, and waked me up. The women, still exulting in their triumph, escorted me down to the river, and showed me a deep, cool hole to bathe in. While I enjoyed a dip, they sat on the bank and slapped their hands on the rocks, beating time to a strange, hum ming, monotonous chorus in which they sang of my many wonders and virtues. These impromptu addresses in verse are very common in Fiji, and men and women alike are most skilful in improvisation. It was rather a novelty to take one's morning tub to the sound of a hymn eulogising one's clothes, remote ancestors, rich possessions of tinned meats and biscuits, and gorgeous Turkey-cotton swimming-dress ; but a tour through , the Fijis is one continual succession of humorous novel ties, and one soon gets used to them. The little village looked indescribably quaint and pretty in the slanting rays of the early sun. It num bered only about a dozen houses, clustered on their tidy little green, like toys on a table. The curious stands on which most Fijian mountain houses are perched added to the toy-like appearance, and the immense beehive roofs of the older buildings stood up among the delicate young palms with the odd, almost sinister effect that is a feature of all these lovely hill fortresses. A strange mixture of opposing qualities, truly. Everything was odd and new — the scanty sulus of the men and women, worn without upper clothing, for the most part ; the long bamboos that stood in every house, to hold water, all the joints except the bottom one being skilfully pierced, so as to create a very useful water- vessel ; the big, frizzled head-dresses of the men, so much larger than the neat, small coiffures popular in the coast towns below. The Fijian of to-day seldom or never dresses his hair in the enormous mop of ancient 46 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES times, for the early missionaries insisted that all their converts should show their abandonment of heathen ways by cutting their locks. Still, the hair of these islanders is so extraordinarily thick, stiff and wiry, that it can hardly be dressed after any European fashion, and many heads may be seen in the mountains which, un cultivated and undressed, save for the popular bleaching with lime to a yellow tint, display a ragged halo standing loosely out for at least a foot round the face. The Fijian who is careful of his hair — and most are — does not allow it to run wild like this. It is his chief object in life, first, to train his stiff locks to stand on end, and secondly, to cut and trim them into the neatest possible busby, some six inches high. At night, and when en deshabille, he wears a compressing band, as religiously as an East End coster-girl wears her curling- pins. When the hair is long and erect enough, he takes a looking-glass and scissors, gives the latter to a friend, and holds the former himself, critically observing the friend as he clips and shapes the dense bush with won derful skill. There are fashions in Fijian hair-dressing; at present, the favourite mode is to shape the hair off the forehead in a deep, slightly overhanging bevel, curved sharply outward at the temples so as to make a bush at each side of the head. The rest of the hair is rounded off so neatly that it looks like a block of black or yellow wood, several inches deep. Cocoanut oil, scented with flowers, is freely used, and the men con stantly decorate their heads by sticking scarlet or white flowers into them, exactly as one sticks pins into a pin cushion. I may here observe that Nasoni, anxious to make an impression on the hearts of the country maidens, turned up for the start that morning with his mahogany bush of hair adorned with two kinds of red flowers, three NATIVE FOOD— A FIJIAN HOME 47 kinds of white, a bunch of green-and-white ribbon-grass, and an aigrette of fern ! It rained a little after we started, but Nasoni protected his elegant coiffure with a giant taro-leaf, some four feet by three, held up umbrella-wise by the stalk, and did not get a drop. The rain cleared off soon, and we covered some sixteen miles by afternoon, journeying for the most part along the crests of narrow ridges, surrounded by a sea of the most magnificent hill scenery in all Fiji. Never before had I witnessed the solid lap of Mother Earth tossed up into such a strange tumult as this. The worn- out term "rolling mountains" exactly describes the general appearance of the Fiji highlands, for they seem ever about to break in colossal waves upon the valleys and rivers below. And the colouring, the marvellous blues — blue as hyacinths under a summer sky, blue as sea-water lying six fathoms deep over a white coral reef, blue as a carven cup of sapphire filled with the violet light of sunset — what pen, what picture, can hope to reproduce them? For many miles there was no sign of human life, and then, looking down from a windy crest of upland we saw a tiny village, Tambale\ nestling far below in a deep wooded cleft of the hills. We passed this by, but after came upon an occasional small patch of yam or taro or banana; and soon the dark red variegated crotons and dracaenas, planted along the track, showed us that we were near ing Nambukuya, the principal "town" of the district, where the Mbuli, or local chief, had his dwelling. I wish I could describe Nambukuya, as I saw it on that golden afternoon, sleeping among the slanting shadows of its rich orange-groves, in the round green cup of a highland valley. On three sides of the little town the hills rose up like fortress walls of purple 48 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES porphyry, but on the fourth, the lip of the cup was broken, and through the break one saw, dim and delicate and shadowy pencilled, the far-off pale blue plains of half a province lying below. . . . Surely I had seen Nam bukuya before, but not on this mortal earth. It was in the strange country guarded by the "ivory gate of dreams " that I had wandered down those shaded, scented pathways and entered this little city of perfect rest and silence, soundless save for the cool murmuring of the stream that leaped right through the town in twenty little crystal falls, shut in from all the world, save for that one far-away glimmer of distant lands below. Every one who has ever been young, and dreamed over a book of poetry on some endless summer afternoon, knows of just such a spot. Mrs. Browning's "Lost Garden," Tenny son's "Island Valley of Avilion" — "Where falls not hail nor rain nor any snow, Nor ever wind blows loudly, but it lies Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns And bowery hollows ..." — the sweet, sleepy "Garden of Indolence," the solitary mountain valleys of "Endymion" — all these I had wandered through in the days when birthdays were far apart, and the dream-world endlessly wide; but I never thought to find myself, years after, in the prosaic noon day of life, riding a mortal horse through the actual Fijian highlands, right into the visionary city of my childish fancies. All the pretty toy houses dotted about the neat little lawns were quiet when I jumped my horse over the bars, and entered the bamboo fence; for the people had gone away to dig in the yam-fields, and cut bananas. Just on my left rose, tier after tier, a strange erection of NATIVE FOOD— A FIJIAN HOME 49 terraces, decorated with handsome, large-leaved water- plants standing in an inch or so of clear water. From terrace to terrace, a tiny stream slipped downward, losing itself at last in the river below. Nasoni and Joni told me that this really beautiful piece of landscape gardening was a ndalo bed, where the ndalo, one of Fiji's most im portant roots, was grown in the slowly running water that suited it best. Seeing that I was about to photo graph it, they hastily got into the middle, and struck becoming attitudes. (I may here remark that Nasoni, who was the biggest and very much the ugliest of my men, was evidently the beau of the party, from the Fijian point of view, for when we left the village a day or two later, Gideon and Joni were allowed to go without remark, while a plump young woman, in lilac sulu and an arsenic- green pint, or tunic, followed Nasoni to the farthest out skirts of the fence, sobbing unrestrainedly, and hanging on \is apparently unconscious arm, without a shadow of mauvuise honte. I am bound to say that Nasoni acted exa*. ~y as if she were not there, and walked away, when she nally loosened her clasp, without a single look or wore. Like beauty-men of other nations, he evidently set a j.air value on himself.) Out entry into the village roused out one or two lazy sleepers, who hurried forward in great excitement, for word had gone on of our coming, and we were expected. The native mission-teacher's wife was sent for, and in formed us that the Mbuli, or district chief, was away, so I must come to her house. She proudly showed me in; and, indeed, the house was an excuse for pride. Big as a ballroom, and cool as a cave, in all that burning heat, it had an immense floor-space of the cleanest possible mats gaily edged with tufts of scarlet, orange, green, pink, blue, violet, black and white wools (of European make, 5o FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES these last). The great dim roof rose far overhead, un- lighted ; but the three doors that pierced the windowless walls gave each a different view of exquisite beauty, spread out below the lofty platform of green lawn on which the house was built. The walls were three feet thick, covered inside with elegant reed and sinnet-work, and outside with a deep thatch of grass and leaves that made the house look like an immense bird's nest. Now, and many times after, I was struck with the common sense shown in the design of these Fijian houses, and the excellent way in which they shut out the heat. I have never once felt hot in a Fijian house, no matter what the temperature outside might be, although European houses are often oppressively warm in the hot season. Great was the excitement when the villagers came back, and found that the long-expected traveller was really there. A bush town in Australia visited by an unexpected circus may furnish a feeble parallel; or a remote English village, upon which a black princess, with her suite, should suddenly descend. The material fur nished for chatter and discussion was, of course, in valuable. The two great ends of a Fijian's existence are eating and talking; he is always ready for either in unlimited quantities. Five pounds weight of solid yam is the minimum allowance for a single man's meal, among all employers of Fijian labour ; and the abnormal capacity for eating which this suggests is fully balanced by the appetite for talk possessed by these mighty trenchermen. Wherever I spent a night, the greater part of the village sat up to talk till morning. In the nearest houses I could hear the faint buzz going on for hour after hour, as I slept and -woke, and slept again, and I knew that in every town the same eager catechising of my men was going on, and the same endless discussion of my hair, teeth, eyes, nose, NATIVE FOOD— A FIJIAN HOME 51 blouses, ties, belts, pins, skirts, shoes, shoelaces, prob lematical "underneaths," manners, temper, religion, age, history, financial position, relations, intentions, posses sions and characteristics of every kind, down to the buckles on my side-saddle, and the things I had been heard to say when I stepped on a nest of wood-centipedes. But the folk in Nambukuya were considerate and polite, in spite of their burning curiosity. They did not shove or push, and when I lay down on the mats to rest, they softly closed the doors and slipped away, one by one, leaving me with nothing but the murmur of the high hill- winds about the house-top for company, and gentle twilight to encourage sleep. Later on, came a feast — baked yam, and the great blue roots of the ndalo, served with the inevitable mur dered fowl that is always given to a guest in Fiji. They don't truss fowls in the Fiji Islands, but serve them up with wildly divergent legs and wings, ghastly screwed neck still decorated by the protesting head, beak wide open and blank boiled eyes astare. After I had fed, the Turanga ni Koro (head-man of the town) , came in with a formal gift of uncooked yams and a great yanggona- root, which he laid at my feet with an elaborate speech. Yanggona (the "kava" of the Eastern Pacific) is the universal drink of Fiji. It is the hard, woody root of a handsome bush (the Piper methysticum) , which grows freely in the mountains. The Fijians prepare the root by grating or pounding, pour water over the pounded mass, and strain it through a wisp of bark fibre. The resulting drink looks like muddy water, and tastes much the same, with a flavour of pepper and salt added. One soon gets to like it, however ; and, drunk in moderation, it is extremely refreshing and thirst-quenching. The Fijians do not drink moderately, I regret to say; they 52 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES often sit up all night over their yanggona, drinking until they are stupefied and sleepy, and quite unable to walk — for yanggona, taken in excess, paralyses the legs for an hour or two, even though the head may be quite clear. The British Government has forbidden the ancient method of preparing the root, in which it was chewed and spat out into the bowl, instead of being pounded. For all that, yanggona is very frequently chewed at the present day, when no white people are about. I understood native customs sufficiently to give back the root to the donor, with many thanks, and request that it should be prepared for the people. We had, therefore, a single brewing from a portion of the root, little ceremony being made over the drinking, although the people clapped their hands loudly at me when the first cup was brought over to me. This is a form of greeting used for chiefs. The Turanga ni Koro, a rather unimportant personage, of no lofty descent, was the only dignitary present, so the affair was necessarily informal. In almost all the Pacific islands, kava (yanggona) is the favourite drink of the natives. Its connection with early religious ceremonies is obvious, since it is generally prepared with considerable solemnity, and according to a prescribed ritual. Women and youths are not usually allowed to drink it. Having finished the first bowl (which was prepared in a tin basin, as the mission-teacher's house dare not own a real yanggona bowl), most of the natives with drew to another house with the root and the bark strainer ; and I am of opinion that they kept it up that night until every bit of the great root, which weighed at least a couple of stone, was finished. At all events, my men were sleepy next morning, and informed me, with a satis fied air, that Nambukuya was "plenty good place." NATIVE FOOD— A FIJIAN HOME 53 I stayed in the little village over Sunday, and a very interesting Sunday it was. At daybreak, the "lali," or canoe-shaped wooden drum, was beaten, and the natives held prayers in their own houses, first praying, and then singing Fijian hymns — loud, determined, sonorous chants, that sounded much more like war-songs than pious petitions. Three times during the day they assembled in the church (a large native house) for more praying and singing, and again at night they held prayers in their own houses. No work was done, except cooking yams and killing a pig for a feast in honour of my arrival. The women dressed themselves gaily in green, pink and lilac tunics and sulus, the men all turned out in spotless white sulus and shirts, with black ties. It was evident that the religious exercises of the day were thor oughly to their tastes, and not at all too long. Fijians cannot be bored, and one of their favourite occupations, at all times, is sitting down on the mats in rows to chant in chorus, for many hours at a stretch, about anything and everything that may come into their heads. As for an unlucky white person, entrapped into a Fijian church, he must simply endure until it is over, as best he may. He will not want to go twice. In the afternoon, everybody lay about on the mats, both sexes rolling and smoking endless cigarettes made of Fijian tobacco wrapped up in a slip of banana-leaf, and chatting rather lazily and sleepily. There was a smell of roasting food in the air; the shadows were lengthening, the cool of evening coming on. What thing that lay beyond that encircling wall of wide blue hills could the heart of man desire? Was not this the Valley of Peace, where no one wanted for anything, no one quarrelled or nagged, no cold or hunger ever came, nor fear for to-morrow, nor regret for yesterday? How 54 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES easily might one forget all the world outside, and dream away the last years of a stormy life, cast up in this quiet bay of nothingness and peace, out of the wild waters of the white man's fierce existence? But I was strong and young, and the white man's world still called for me. And next morning, when the sun was just lifting above the hills, and the great, green banana leaves were crystalled all over with dew, and the plumes of the waving guinea-grass were frosted glass and silver, I mounted and rode away for ever. . . . Yet, perhaps, in the gray years to come, I may find the gate among the orange-trees once more; may come back when the heart is old, and the world has wearied, to rest here in the arms of the purple hills, until the end. One must stop somewhere in the matter of descrip tions ; I cannot make a pen-picture of the day's ride that followed. Enough to say that it was very lovely, and that my mind was almost wearied with beauty before that thirty-mile march was ended. There were other things to think of besides the scenery, however. The track was mostly red clay, and slippery as greased glass. My good Australian horse, Tanewa, knew every inch of the road, and civilly declined to carry me over any spot he knew he could negotiate better without my weight. Once, at the top of a long down-slope that looked safe enough, I urged him on, after he had stopped. He grunted, and went forward under protest, picking his way carefully, for the path was but a foot or two wide, and there was a big unprotected drop into a mountain gorge on the off side. Suddenly, he struck a slide of red clay, treacherously hidden by leaves. Away went his hind legs, and, with a louder grunt than ever, he sat down on the slope, like a horse in a circus, his forelegs squarely planted in front, his hind hoofs tucked under the girths. NATIVE FOOD— A FIJIAN HOME 55 Most horses would have snorted and struggled, and probably rolled over the precipice, but Tanewa, as cool as a green cocoanut (there are no cucumbers indigenous to Fiji), merely turned round his head to look at me as I sat on his uncomfortably shaped back, saying as plainly as a horse could say it, "Who was right? I suppose you will get off now?" I did get off, feeling very apologetic, and the good Australian rose deliberately to his four feet, and pursued his way downward, quite unmoved. By this time, word of our coming had gone round the whole countryside, and at every village we came to the same ceremony took place. I would jump Tanewa over the pig-bars, and cross the green, desirous only of getting away (for the path invariably led right through the villages). The Turanga ni Koro, in a clean white shirt and sulu, would rush out at the sound of hoofs, and waylay my men. Then Gideon, all one grin, would approach me, and begin: "Missi Ngrims'aw!" "Yes?""Turanga ni Koro, he say toa (fowl) an' yam in the pire, pish he cook. He like you stop, ki-ki (eat)." Then the Turanga ni Koro would proudly lead the way to his house, instal me on a new mat, specially unrolled, and enjoy a good gossip with my men. Enter the murdered fowl, and the inevitable yam; perhaps a steaming leaf -full of plump river-prawns as well. I would cut a small piece off the fowl, and eat it for man ners' sake, while my men, after I had done, would joyfully rend the remains limb from limb, and devour every bit, not to speak of a trifle of five or six pounds of yam apiece. Then I would make a small present, for courtesy's sake, and call a fresh start. After four feasts (counting the morning meal at Nambukuya), I began to reflect that 5 6 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES neither Stanley, Burton, nor Speke would have allowed his men to make themselves sick with over-eating (for even a Fijian can eat himself sick on animal food, which he does not often get), and I resolved to put a stop to it. I wished very much, however, that Stanley had been around to tell me how to do it. I had an idea that he generally hanged his followers when they disobeyed him, but I had never hanged any one, or even seen it done, which was certainly a difficulty in the way. There is nothing like travel in rough countries for teaching you your own deficiencies, as I had already learned. I could write Latin verses, but I couldn't make bread — I could em broider on silk and canvas, but I didn't know how to grease my boots properly — and here was another simple thing, just the hanging of a Fijian, that I could not do, either. I felt it was like something in "Sandford and Merton" — something with a moral to it — but could not quite remember what. Under the circumstances, the best thing to do seemed simply to decline to stop at any more villages, and I did, though the disappointed faces of the villagers I left behind me almost shook my resolution. The plan seemed to be working all right, and I was getting rapidly on toward the Singatoka Valley, when, a mile or so after we had crossed a river, where a party of natives were cooking yams on the bank, I missed Joni and Nasoni. "Where are those men?" I demanded sternly. Gideon, with an ingratiating smile, replied: " I think they stopping along water— get some-sings to eat!" This was the last straw. I gave Gideon my opinion of himself, in what the popular novelists call "fine, nervous English " (it must have been, because it obviously made him nervous as to what might be coming next), and NATIVE FOOD— A FIJIAN HOME 57 told him that it was entirely his fault for letting the men stay ; also that I would not give them any tobacco money for the next Indian store, or any more stray handfuls of sugar to eat on the road ; and that I was going to ride on now, and let them follow as they liked. The country was growing more level, so I put Tanewa to a canter, and kept him at it for a good while. As a result, the three men were very tired and hot when they caught me up later in the day, and looked rather penitent. I was glad, on the whole, that I had not hanged them, especially when I heard Nasoni remark, with a chuckle, to Joni that they would get plenty of roast pig at Natuatuathoko, where we were to stop the night — for it seemed to me that Nature herself would probably attend to the matter of their extermination before very long. All day, as I rode along, the same thought kept coming up in my mind. Why should all these miles and miles of fine highland country lie empty, untouched, uninhabited? The Fijians did not need them, and were ready enough to let, or even to sell, under the new laws which provide for the improvident native by giving the capital into the permanent charge of the British Govern ment, and only paying out the yearly interest. The climate was splendidly healthy; the occasional forests only covered a small part of the country, and were val uable in themselves for their timber; there was abun dance of water, and the bridle-tracks were everywhere good enough for driving stock down to the coast. It had been proved that horses and cattle did excellently all over the country, and sheep in the hills. The sales of Australian and New Zealand tinned beef and mutton in the country were enormous, in spite of a heavy duty. Anyone who started a cannery in the islands, so as to avoid the duty and undersell the imported article, would 5 8 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES make a fortune. Further, there was a good export trade in beef only half developed. And apart from this alto gether, coffee, sisal hemp, jute, and many other valuable commercial products, were known to do excellently in the hill country. Where were the settlers? and why did they not come? I have never, as yet, been able to find a satisfactory reply to the latter question, except in the aggressive attitude adopted by the oldest inhabitant to all new blood and new-fangled ways, and, possibly, in the small attention paid to such matters by the Fijian Government, until very recently. Even at the time of writing, it is not at all easy to obtain reliable information about the exact amount of waste lands available for cultivation. I can only tell the would-be settler that there is certainly plenty of land to be had, and that details can best be obtained by going inland to look matters up 'in person. I hear that the Government is having a survey made, but it will probably be a long time in the making, as a government, like an alligator, requires considerable space and time to turn around in. In the meantime, a few of the rough facts which I obtained about this part of Fiji, in the early part of 1905, from local residents of long standing may be of interest. On the Ba River, about 100,000 acres of native land, 600 feet above sea-level, is available. It is extremely suitable for stock-raising. Rents probably not more than a shilling an acre. On the Tavua River, about 1,000 acres of similar land. Between Ba and Nandrunga, a stretch of land six or seven miles across, some hundreds of feet above sea-level, suitable for coffee, or for stock-raising. Quite unin habited. Plenty of water. Between Nandrunga, Nambukuya and Natuatua- NATIVE FOOD— A FIJIAN HOME 59 thoko (over forty miles) the entire country, with one exception of a few small yam-patches about the villages, is unoccupied, and the greater part available as above mentioned. Yanggona, which sells for is. 6d. a pound in Fiji, and is used in the pharmacopcea of almost every country in the world, grows wild among these hills, in the woods. Citrons and lemons of fine quality also grow wild. I would like to add here, that the present state of Fiji — just beginning to open up for settlement, with lands as yet unsurveyed in great part, and much of the interior only roughly known — is just the period, in any country's history, when settlers light upon the best chances, and get on most rapidly. After everything has become smooth and easy, and the value of all the lands is accurately known, and the products that suit the country and the markets best have all been tried and exploited, the cream is off the milk — skimmed up by those who were enter prising enough to take the chances, and try to be the first in the field. Fiji is no place, as yet, for the young man who never had an enemy in his life, but, somehow, isn't wanted at home; who has a moderate capital, and a moderate amount of character, and can get along very nicely if some one tells him just where to go and what to do, and how to do it ; who is excellent on a tram-line of habit and custom, but as incapable of making a fresh path for himself as the tram-car itself might be, off the line. Men of another stamp, who will help the colony to find itself, are what Fiji wants, and there can be no manner of doubt that it will have them, as soon as the public can be got to realise that the country is one of our most important Crown Colonies, that Fijians are neither dangerous nor cannibal, and that the climate is one of the finest and healthiest in the world. 60 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES . . . But, after all, who could be practical and statistical within sight of Natuatuathoko? We were nearing it now, this mountain fortress town in the very heart of the highlands. The Singatoka River lay on our right, the hills were behind and before, but we were travelling now over a stretch of rich, level, meadow country, where the fine, soft grass rose waist-deep on either side, and the road itself was a wide, turfy avenue, bordered here and there by splendid orange and lemon- trees in full fruit. By-and-by, the track took a sharp turn upward. We were leaving the river valley, to ascend the strange little hill on which the town stands, as upon a tower. Now the grassy road became steep and stony, and the orange-trees almost closed in overhead. And on each "side, as I rode along, bushy crotons and dracaenas, scarlet and black and yellow, made a quaintly ornamen tal hedge, while tall guavas shot above them, and dan gled great golden eggs, bursting with the richness of the luscious pink pulp within, right over my lap. I accepted the generous invitation freely; and in the rear I heard a crunching and sucking that told me the ever-hungry Joni and Nasoni were "at it again." Well they might be, for nowhere in Fiji are oranges and guavas like these to be found. Higher up, and still higher! The path was neatly edged with stones, and partly paved, but the horse scrambled and clattered a good deal, for the way was steep. Groves of exquisite bamboo, orange and lemon shut in the track so that one could see little ahead. But suddenly the way opened out, and before me stood an immense Fijian house, seventy or eighty feet high, the great roof crowded with men who were rethatching it, aided by a scaffolding of bamboo. They raised a yell that made even the sedate Tanewa start and shy, and NATIVE FOOD— A FIJIAN HOME 61 shook their knives in the blue air, high up under the sky. Then they began to scramble down the house like cats or flies, and made a rush for me and my men. Even so, thirty years ago, had the fathers of these men — some of the elders themselves, indeed — rushed to greet visitors to Natuatuathoko, with brandished weapons and terrify ing cries. But in the old days, there was war-paint on their faces, the weapons meant strict business, and the cooking-ovens, in the village above, were hot to receive the luckless visitor, not to entertain him. To-day, the men of this mountain town, once the home of every devilish cruelty, were running and shouting, and swinging their cutting-knives about, simply to express their uncon trollable delight at my arrival. A white woman up here ! a white woman alone! what a tremendous event, and what a source of mad excitement ! Why, there was not a white face for fifty miles on either side of Natuatuathoko, and the magistrate himself only came round to hold his court, in the big house they had been thatching, once in every six months! I feel inclined to say that "a hundred willing hands were extended to lead my horse into the town, and help me to dismount," because it is the proper, signed-and- sealed sort of phrase to use on an occasion of this kind, and the Natuatuathokians certainly ought to have done it. But, as a matter of fact, they did not, being far too much occupied in staring at me to think of anything of the kind. When I dismounted outside the bamboo stockade, and scrambled over the stile into the town, they rushed to look at my side-saddle, crying out, "Sombo, sombo!" (Wonderful!) Then they stared at my habit-skirt, which I was holding up as I walked, and expressed their admiration of its length by loud "tck- tcks." They told my men that I must be rich, to have 62 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES such a long sulu as that, and that I was certainly an " Andi" (high chief tainess) , because of my height, which was equal to their own. (In Fiji, the chief families are all tall, and a tall woman, in particular, is almost sure to be of the blood royal of Bau, Thakombau's birthplace.) Following at a respectful distance, they accompanied me into the town; my men, as usual, enjoying the glory of the arrival exceedingly, and competing with each other in the size and splendour of the lies they told about me. I was the sister of the Governor of Fiji (a fact that would have greatly surprised His Excellency if he had heard it) ; I was also a most intimate friend of King Edward VII., who had specially despatched me from England to tell him what Fiji was like. Moreover, my father had so many cattle that England was too small to contain them, and I was therefore asking questions, wherever I went, about the amount of vacant grazing-land to be had in Fiji for these superfluous "bulimacow." (Bulimacow is the Fijian word for beef, and for cattle, singular or plural. A milch cow is a bulimacow; also a bull. The origin is obvious: confusion caused by asking the name of the strange creatures when they were first brought to Fiji.) I did not pay much attention to these pleasing fictions, however, for I was now within the town, and Nambukuya at once fell from its pride of place in my heart. It was not the most beautiful village in the world ; that honour was transferred to Natuatuathoko, henceforth and for ever. . . . . . . Little enchanted town, how you linger in my memory, though I spent only a night and a morning in your wonderful citadel! How often I think of you, as I first saw you from the grassy orange avenue below, perched high upon your green pinnacle like a fairy wffit ?'*/$$¦£'.:?'.; " .. HOUSE OF THE TURANGA LILEWA NATIVE FOOD— A FIJIAN HOME 63 town in an old-world story-book! The tale seemed to tell itself, as Tanewa plodded steadily along in the yellow sunset. " . . . And they travelled all day long, through the black woods where the goblins live, and over the mountains of No-man's-land. And at evening they came to a beautiful river, that was deep blue, and the birds sang in the trees beside it. Then they saw the road that led to the magic city, stretching right before them, all green and soft, and the most lovely fruits grew beside it, and dropped on the path, with no one to pick them up. And the magic city stood up in the clouds, and there was a wall all round it, but if one stood at the gate, and pronounced the words, 'Open, Sesame!' it opened immediately. ... And upon what did the magic gate open? Upon a small grassy lawn, surrounded by a ring of about a dozen quaint little native houses ; upon a tangle of heavy-fruited mandarin orange-trees, lemon-trees, guavas, scarlet-blossomed hibiscus, and graceful giant bamboo, framing blue distances in the most beautiful of natural arches and windows; upon an airy circle of clouds and shadow-dappled hills, and far-away faint-green meadows, ringing round the little fortress town with what seemed a vision of "all the kingdoms of the earth, and the glory of them." Very far below, the blue Singa toka wound like a ribbon about the base of the hill, murmuring sleepily and ceaselessly all day and all night long, in the stillness of the mountain air. They are strangely silent, these hill towns, even in the early morn ing and evening hours, when all the people are at home. The lightly treading bare feet of the mountaineers make not so much noise upon the grass as a ripe orange falling from the tree; children do not shout at play; there is 64 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES no calling out to teams, or dragging of heavy boats, or sound of wheel or hoof, for countless miles beyond the mountain wall — only the high hill winds in the whispering bamboos, and the long murmur of the river. The house to which I was conducted remains in my memory as the most delightful I saw in Fiji. It be longed to a chief of some importance — the Turanga Lilewa. It stood upon a mound at least twenty feet high, approached by a long flight of steep stone steps, and from every one of its three doors one looked down, in the early morning, upon a rolling sea of pearl-coloured mountain mists, islanded by sharp violet crags and summits. With the springing up of the clear white sun, these opalescent mists broke and shredded away to garlands of lightest thistledown, hanging about the dark-blue shoulders of the hills ; the river turned to golden glass, the yellow balls of the oranges began to burn like fire, and sudden day broke upon the silent town. Yet, perhaps, it was more lovely still in the moonlight, the warm, wonderful tropic moonlight that painted all the widespread distances in delicate silver and misty blue, and frosted the dew-wet domes of the strange peaky houses with elfin touches of sparkling crystal. ... If Nambukuya was a place for the old and weary, here was a place for the young and happy: for Romeo and Juliet, for Sidney and Geraldine, for wonderful story princesses, eloped from gloomy palaces to the wilderness, and a cottage, and love. . . . And there, in the middle of the village, was the cottage all ready — a cottage orn^e, fit for a princess who had not yet learned to do without her high-heeled satin shoes and her necessaire — quaint beyond description, with a Euro pean veranda, and an enormous high-pitched Fijian roof, and odd little rooms partitioned off from one another by cool walls of fitted reeds. It had been built for a former A FEAST BY THE WAY BRINGING UP THE YAMS NATIVE FOOD— A FIJIAN HOME 65 white resident — the officer in command of the native garrison that used to occupy the town — and was still in good repair, being occasionally used by the district magistrate on his travels. An odd, delightful spot; a hothouse for strange fancies, and fantastic fairy imagin ings born of long days' solitary travel and long hours' moonlight thought. . . . But, really, it is time to get away, for there is a big distance to cover to-day, and the men have finished their feast of yams and pig and fat river-crayfish, and the bridle is being forced upon Tanewa's mildly protesting head once more. So it is "boot and saddle" again, and ride away, the richer by an exquisite picture of beauty, and one or two oddly comic experiences. Among these must be included the special honour paid me by the wife of the Turanga LileVa, who proudly brought out a chair and table (evidently home-made) , at which I was requested to take my dinner. Chairs and tables, in the mountains, are unheard-of luxuries, and the Turanga Lilewa is very proud of possessing these objects of art; so much so, that I had not the heart to tell him that he had got the relative heights hopelessly mixed — the chair being a giant of its species, while the table was not eigh teen inches high. I ate my dinner on it, rather than hurt his feelings, but I felt inexpressibly ludicrous, and remarkably like a chicken drinking. CHAPTER IV HOSPITALITY "Plenty Shark" — Introduction to a Mbili-mbili — Down the Singatoka River — A Meke-meke at Mavua — Thalassa AFTER Natuatuathoko, the journey became inextri cably involved with the Singatoka River. All day I was concerned with that stream, fording it more than once, climbing up and down the hills that bordered its banks, and at last cantering easily for many a mile through the beautiful river flats of the middle reaches, the richest land in Fiji. There is almost nothing that this land will not grow, and grow excellently. Sugar does well on it; vanilla would flourish in all the little valleys; bananas grow splendidly here and there, where an enterprising Chinaman or two has taken up land; cocoanuts bear heavily; cattle, if one may judge by the specimens feeding here and there along the banks, grow as beefy and big, as silken of coat and bright of eye, as any prize beast bred in English meadows. It may be said here, once for all, of the Singatoka River country, that the land is unsurpassable, that many thousands of acres are to be had, and that the rents asked by the natives are very low — only a very few shillings per acre in many cases. It is popularly said in Suva, by people who have never left the towns, that the bar at the mouth of the river is an insuperable obstacle to the development of the country. This however, is not the case. The bar does 67 68 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES prevent steamers from coming up, but the Chinese settlers seem to experience no difficulty in getting their fruit disposed of, by means of lighters, which convey it down to the sea, to meet the calling steamers. Nor is the bar necessarily a permanent obstacle, since something less than two thousand pounds will remove it, as soon as the Fiji Government sees its way to spend the money. The climate of the Singatoka is excellent; clear, bright and healthy, and not excessively wet. There are no fevers or diseases of any kind, not even malaria. Villages were very few to-day, so the men did not secure more than one or two feasts before we reached the stopping-place for the night. We halted after a day's travel of only about fifteen miles, since heavy rain that fell in the middle of the day had delayed us an hour or two. The sun had just slipped behind the hill when we reached the lower Singatoka — a stream very different from the shallow, brawling waters we had left earlier in the day. This was wide and strong, dark agate green in colour, and exceedingly deep. The night was coming very rapidly; there was not a soul in sight, and no boat visible. My men tied up Tanewa in the long grass (since he was to be sent back next morning from this side of the river), and then sat down and began roll ing cigarettes. Whether we were going to get across the river before dark — whether we were going to arrive any where to-night — what we were going to do anyhow — did not trouble them in the least. That was "the white man's burden" (or, in this case, the white woman's)— their burdens were my box and provision-bag, nothing more. "Is there no boat?" I asked Gideon. "No, sir," replied Gideon, with the utmost cheerful ness. (The Fijian generally addresses a lady as " sir.") HOSPITALITY 69 " No ford anywhere? — no place we cross? " "No, sir," "Then we'll have to swim, and pretty quick about it. It's getting dark." "All right, sir," lighting a cigarette and rising to his feet. I had dressed myself in expectation of some such contingency, and had only to remove my riding-skirt and shoes. This I was proceeding to do, when Gideon remarked conversationally, with a brilliant smile: "Plenty s'ark here." I stopped at the laces of the second shoe, and asked anxiously : "What shark? All same Rewar shark stop here?" "Yes, sir. All same. Plentee." This gave me an unpleasant sensation down the spine, for I had heard many things of the ReVa River sharks — how fierce they were, how they would swim up the river for fully thirty miles, how they bit arms and legs off care less bathers, as the records of the local hospital testified. And now I was informed that the Singatoka was infested in the same way. Stanley wouldn't have minded those sharks, I felt certain. The men obviously did not. But I did, and I hesitated. "Sa lakomai mbili-mbili" ("There is a 'mbili-mbili' coming"), remarked Nasoni at this stage, pointing out across the water. I looked about, half expecting to see some strange river-beast or fish rising from the glassy tide ; but a much more welcome sight met my eyes — a small bamboo raft, coming across from the other side, paddled by a native. In a few minutes it was alongside — a mere bundle of sticks with a depression in the middle, and a sort of 7o FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES rough bow formed by tying the small ends of the bam boos tightly together. Such as it was, however, I wel comed it gladly, for Lemba-Lemba, an important town, was on the other side, and I had got to cross to-night, or drown. Saddle and luggage were piled on the mbili-mbili, and I perched myself as safely as possible on one side. In the gathering dusk I could just see white sulus flitting about upon the further shore ; it was evident that we were expected. When the raft grounded, a big, jet- eyed, jet-bearded native, with a fine, dignified presence, a neck and chest like a bull, and a voice to match, came forward and welcomed me as one having authority. I did not need to be told that this was the Buli, or high chief of the district, for the deference paid to him by my men at once informed me of the fact. Good Buli of Lemba-Lemba ! what a pleasant memory you left in the mind of the wandering marama, long after she had sailed away from your hospitable town. Here, at last, was someone with a head — kindly, hospitable and jolly, quick to give orders, ready to stir about — a relief indeed from the amiable dependence of the men. The ascent from the river to the village was almost unscalable that night, being nearly perpendicular, and so slippery with recently soaked red clay that it resembled a huge toboggan slide much more than a path. Even the bare feet and strong prehensile toes of the Fijians slipped on it, while I simply could not keep my footing at all. But the Buli roared like his namesake animal, and out of nowhere appeared two men armed with spades. These scrambled in front of me, cutting steps as they climbed, while another man, and the Buli himself, held my elbows, and hoisted vigorously. In this fashion, all in the dark, I came up to Lemba-Lemba, and was ushered into the MORNING, LEMBA-LEMBA THE BULI OF LEMBA-LEMBA, WITH FATHI FAMILY HOSPITALITY 71 Buli's own house, where supper was already waiting, hot from the cooking-pits — ndalo, yams, crayfish, cocoanuts, fowls, and a brace of plump sucking-pigs, cut up into joints. All this was laid out on a real table, with two real chairs, on one of which the good Buli took his seat, a perfect firework of eyes and teeth and glowing good nature, while I took the other. He would not eat till I had finished, however, and all the time, according to custom, my hungry men squatted quietly on the floor, waiting for their turn. Many a time, both then and afterward, I longed to give the patient, tired creatures their food, as soon as I was helped myself, instead of keeping them waiting until my tea was made and my meal finished; but I knew that this was undesirable, and would probably make them unmanageable later on. One hard lesson that the white man or woman must learn with regard to Fijian servants is not to be too kind. They may be considered in private, but one must never openly show them that their comforts are a matter of thought; and the respect that they freely offer must not be broken down by any lessening of dignity on the white person's part. Like all savage races, they count kindness as weakness, and although I have not, personally, found them incapable of gratitude, I have found that an act of indulgence, such as a gift of tea or tobacco, or a little skilled care for some small injury, must needs be balanced by a certain manufactured hardness of demeanour, if it is not to form a ground for future laziness and carelessness. This question of gratitude is a vexed one. Most of the other writers say that the Fijians possess no such feeling ; and certainly, what they may have is of a quality different from ours. I have heard of a kindly old lady (a white settler in Fiji), who tended a young Fijian through a bad attack of dysentery, and succeeded, with 72 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES much trouble, in saving his life. After he was well, he came up to her house, planted himself on her veranda, and demanded food and lodging. When she refused, he was extremely indignant, and asked her, in an injured tone: "Did you not save my life?" "Certainly I did," said the lady. "Then, of course, it belongs to you, and you must provide for me!" declared the Fijian. His benefactress, rather taken aback, tried to decline the responsibility as politely as might be, but the Fijian stuck to his point, and, only for the intervention of a Govern ment official, who was so tickled with the originality of the affair that he carried the man off to Suva for a ser vant, the kindly lady would probably have suffered a good deal of annoyance. This is one side. There is, however, another. I have known one of my men, to whom I had given an odd sixpence for tobacco, collect all my shoes, and take them off to clean immediately; and, on the journey through the mountains, my interpreter more than once refused tea for himself and the others, on the grounds that I gave them "plenty ki-ki" (food), and that I should not have tea enough for myself if they shared it. To see them afterward, when we had reached an Indian store, boiling their tea furiously over the fire till it was black and thick as treacle, and then drinking it, sweetened to syrup, with an expression of the most heavenly ecstasy on each black face, was to understand that they had, previously, made a real sacrifice. The Buli shared my tea, on this occasion, with much delight. Gideon prepared a specially powerful cup, well stewed, for him. To present it, he squatted down on the ground before the Buli, lowered his head, and held up the cup, humbly saying: "Na ti, Turanga" ("The tea, O chief!") The Fijian "kaisi," or commoner, pays HOSPITALITY 73 immense respect to chiefs, and never dares to address them unless squatting humbly on the ground at their feet. Only an equal addresses a chief while standing. After everyone had fed, and was satisfied, the Buli put my men through a searching catechism as to myself and my doings, enjoying the good gossip as heartily as any old maid in an English chimney corner, and roaring with laughter over some of their replies. It was then explained to him that I should want the whole house to myself that night, with his wife to keep me company. The idea of being turned out of his chiefly mansion in favour of that unimportant item, his wife, struck the Buli as the greatest joke of the season, and his fat sides fairly shook with laughter, as he bade me good-night, and waddled down the cocoanut log out into the dark. I fancy he ordered Gideon to sit up in the neighbouring house and entertain him with conversation all night long (Fiji fashion) , for the low buzz of talk, punctuated by an occasional bellow of enjoyment, was distinctly audible until daybreak. In the morning, the Buli offered me a pressing invita tion to stay a day or two longer; but time was not unlimited, so I rather reluctantly left the pretty town and its hospitable chief, giving two or three shillings in exchange for my lodging, and, as usual, finding that my small "tip" was considered extremely liberal. Now came a difficulty. Tanewa had been sent back, according to previous arrangement, and behold, the boat we had expected to meet us was not there. It had gone down the river because of the " Bosi Vakaturanga," I was told. As the Bosi, or Council of Chiefs, was being held in Suva, a hundred miles away, it was difficult to see the connection, but the fact remained. The mbili-mbili must carry us down to Koronisingana ; there was nothing else to be had. 74 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES So, on to this bundle of sticks my baggage, my saddle, myself and followers were packed, and we began our slow drifting down the river. A proper mbili-mbili is not too rough a craft ; it has a sort of fence in the centre, enclosing a comfortable seat, and is made with some con sideration for the matter of keeping its cargo dry. But our conveyance boasted only a sort of rise or hillock on each side of the central hollow; and, as I sat with my feet in the latter, I could feel the water squirting up my ankles every time the men made a feeble stroke with the awkward bamboo pole. It had to be used as an oar, for the river — which I could see right under my feet between the bamboos, green, sunlit and clear — was much too deep about here to allow the raft to be punted along. There was every opportunity for observing the coun try as we drifted by ; and a very lovely country it was — rich flats along the river shores, thick with the finest grass, wasting away untouched, year after year ; pictur esque cliffs sheltering the stream; long, hot, damp gullies here and there, just the places for vanilla-growing; and always the murmuring green river, winding endlessly ahead, and the far, soft hills of hyacinth blue. So we drifted on, into the country that I did not know; and under the open sky, in the warm, fresh, river wind, life seemed very good. . . . We had had a feast of fowl and pig in the morning, and a lunch of tinned meat and biscuit about midday. But that did not trouble the men at all when we got to Koronisingana in the early afternoon, and found that the local chief had slain the fatted hen once again. I will swear upon my honour and conscience that they had eaten enough for ten already that day, before they sat down to two fowls among the three, and cleared them away, with ten or twelve pounds of MY FOLLOWERS ON THE MBILI-MBILI GETTING READY FOR THE MEKF>MEKE HOSPITALITY 75 yam. When they had finished everything within sight, they got up, said it was a good town, and that the Singa toka people would all go to heaven; and then went off to bale out the boat I had hired, and transfer my goods from the mbili-mbili. I wandered about, looking at the pretty village, which was quite unlike the mountain towns — much more straggling; not in any way fortified, and less quaint in its architecture, since it wanted the high mounds on which the mountain houses stood. But the beauty of its trees and shrubs quite made up for any lack of architectural interest. Every house stood in a grove of many-coloured shrubs, and white and yellow flowers, with splendid tall cocoanuts and big, shady mangoes overtopping all. Paw-paws loaded with their delicious little tree-melons, stood by almost every door, and there were oranges there, too, as in every Fijian town. The Buli's house had a European toilet-glass; and my men took full advantage of this, setting it on the floor, and squatting before it in turn, to oil, stick up, and decorate their hair. No London lady with a mass of artificially produced waves and curls is more anxious about her hair than a Fijian. In rainy weather, a smoked banana-leaf is often used as a waterproof cover for it, closely tied over the head. Those who do not dye the hair yellow with coral lime, or red with annatto, generally touch it up with soot to ensure its being of a dense blackness. It is, therefore, not so completely weather-proof as one might imagine, and is only kept smart by continual vigilance. The boat leaked badly, and the men had to bale in turn all afternoon. This did not trouble them, however, since all native boats leak, and the baler is generally as active as the oar. We had neither oars nor paddles, 76 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES the only means of progression being a bamboo pole. This was slow, so when we came to the shallows, Joni would get out, and run, knee-deep, behind the boat, pushing it gaily in front of him, for miles at a time — a method of progression entirely new to me, but apparently well known to the men. Towns were scarce in this part of the river, and my followers only succeeded in securing a fourth feed of one fowl and a few pounds of yam, before we reached Mavua, the biggest town on the Singatoka, where the growing dusk obliged us to stop. How much they ate there, I should not care to say, being anxious to retain some character for truth-telling, in the midst of a sceptical world. The town could not be seen from the river, but as our boat turned in to the shore, and grounded near the bank, a Mavuan suddenly appeared from nowhere, dressed in an extremely small sulu, and armed with a knife three feet long. Seeing that we were going to land, he com menced a mad dance on the river flat, under the orange sunset, his high, stiff hair shaking about on his head like a bed of sword-grass in the wind, his knife circling round and round, while his huge mouth, every now and then, emitted a yell of the wildest excitement. I longed for a better light, to snapshot this strange vision, and stranger welcome, but the sun was already below the horizon, so that I could not secure a picture that forcibly recalled — in appearance — the not-so-long- ago days of the death-drum, the strangling noose, and the "bokolo" (human body) served up smoking hot, with savoury herbs, for the sunset meal. . . . The amiable savage on the bank stopped dancing as soon as we reached the shore, and hastened to hand me out of the boat with a vigour that simply "yanked" me over the gunwale, two or three yards out on to the gravel HOSPITALITY 77 flat. He then drove my rings into my flesh by an agonis ingly hearty shake-hands, went and picked up the bundle of reeds he had been cutting, and ran ahead of us up to the town, whence an excited crowd issued at once to escort us in. Another pretty village — another hospitable Buli; and something new this time in the way of houses, for the Buli of Mavua has one of the very finest houses in Fiji. It is about as large as an ordinary country church, or town hall, with a tremendously high-pitched roof, and a touch of European civilisation in the shape of two glass windows, which make it unusually light. The bedplace would accommodate three or four large families, and the yanggona bowl is the pride of the Singatoka. By its dark colour and thick, opalescent blue enamelling, I judged it to be an heirloom many generations old. It was the size of an ordinary spongebath, and was cut out of one solid block from a giant forest-tree. Such a bowl as this is greatly prized, and proportionately valuable, for collectors of island curiosities are ready to pay large sums in order to obtain a good specimen. Most of the chiefs, however, prefer to keep them. At Mavua, I was entertained with an excellent mek£- meke\ or song and dance. There had been a small one at Natuatuathoko — a sing-song that lasted for several hours, beginning with some verses about myself, going on to celebrate the glories of the horse Tanewa, branching off after that into something about the Andi Keva, a coasting steamer, and subsequently chanting the saga of all crea tion, from Adam down to the latest Colonial Secretary, so far as I could judge. But that was rather an unim portant function, whereas the Mavua mek6-mekd was one "with all the frills on," got up, at some cost of trouble, by the young men of the town to honour my visit. 7 8 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES It took place after the usual pig-and-poultry feast, in the morning. A number of the youngest and best- looking men attired themselves in white sulus, rubbed themselves with scented cocoanut oil until their skins were like dark-brown satin, and tied bracelets of striped green-and- white ribbon-grass about their arms. They also placed aigrettes of ribbon-grass in their hair, and fastened bunches of brilliant coral-coloured flowers wherever they could be made to stay about arms and shoulders, or among the ribbon-grass in their yellow-dyed locks. Thus attired, they looked a very smart and personable set of young men, much more pleasing in appearance than any other Fijians I had yet seen. The people of Mavua have a tradition that, early in the nineteenth century, a white man came to live in their town, and took to himself several Mavuan wives. The half-caste children of these, marrying among the pure Fijians, introduced a strain of white blood, the effects of which (or so they say), are felt to the present day. Certainly, the Mavuans are somewhat lighter-coloured as well as better-looking than the people of the other river towns. But I could notice no trace of white ancestry in the hair, which is as stiff and woolly as that of any other group of Fijian people. A mat was spread on the ground, and the young men squatted on it in a row; one, placed at the rear, keeping time to the music by clicking two sticks. The per formers began by slapping their hands in unison, and then launched out into an extraordinary and graceful sitting dance; heads, bodies, arms and hands swaying with one impulse, in perfect time. Sometimes they all swept low to the left, as if mown down by a scythe ; some times they gathered invisible armtuls into their arms, or HOSPITALITY 79 pointed at unseen sights ; sometimes they raised an inde scribable twitter and twinkle of all their bristling decora tions, shivering and shaking as they sat. And all the time they sang, with strong, splendid, sonorous voices, a wild, sinister chant, that waxed louder and louder, fiercer and fiercer every minute. What brazen throats! what resonant lungs they had! The booming of the bass resounded like the "bourdon" stop of an organ, and the wild wanderings of the melody (if such it could be called) brought to mind the rushing of sea-winds in the huge fronds of the cocoa-palm, above the surf of a spouting island reef. For an hour or so they sat and sang and swayed, and then they stopped to clap in chorus once more, and ended. The words were indistinguishable throughout — not many of even the Fijians can tell the exact meaning of the verses used in one of the traditional ancient mek£-mekes — and I could not obtain any explana tion of the actions, but some of them seemed distinctly suggestive of fishing, and the river. Of how we got away — of how we passed several towns and stopped (by earnest request) to feast at four, on pig, yam, crayfish, fat river-clams, and stewed fowls cooked with native peppers and shallots ; of how the men plotted to stop at yet a fifth, and incited Gideon (who was a lordly person, and didn't have to row) to tell me that Nasoni was worn out with fatigue, and would be ill if I did not shortly call a rest ; of how I sternly answered that Nasoni might rest in the boat, and Gideon (who laughed wildly when he saw how he was caught) should take his turn at the oar for once ; of how the Buli stood at the foot of his river-stairs, in his best Sunday sulu, and shrieked to us to come up and have something to eat ; of how we floated relentlessly past, like Elaine going down to Camelot, and wouldn't call; of how, at long last, we came toward the 80 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES mouth of the river, near the open sea, and I got up on the seats, and said " Thdlassa, thalassa!" (or, at least, felt like it) ; of how I reached a white magistrate's house, and quartered myself therein, and was hospitably wel comed, also given clean clothes, and tea with real milk in it — I cannot write in detail. Nor is it necessary to add (therefore I add it, since the superfluities of life are the only things anyone really cares to have) that Joni, Nasoni and Gideon picked up most of the guavas, and 75 per cent, of the oranges, that we met floating down the river from the trees on the banks ; that they ate them, and that, furthermore, arrived at the constabulary station where they were put up, they consumed (in addition to one feast at Mavua and four coming down the river) all the tinned meat, biscuit, tea, yam and rice offered them by the Governmental authorities, as liberal rations for travelled and hungry men. That they were ill, after all, I know; for they left me a day or so later (not in too good condition) when I hired a cutter to take me down the coast; and months after ward, I heard that "the marama had taken Joni and Nasoni away from Ba River down to the Singatoka, and they came back very sick, for she had worked them nearly to death!" Before leaving the district, I heard that many thou sands of acres of the best land in all Fiji were to be had on the Singatoka for banana-growing, tea, coffee, vanilla, or stock-raising; and that the complicated and trouble some native laws which had caused much difficulty about land tenure in Fiji were being swept away. By the time these lines appear in print, it will be possible for any desirable settler to obtain land at low prices direct from the Native Office in Suva, without any fear of offending and, consequently, living on bad terms with his coloured HOSPITALITY 81 neighbours, and also without any doubt as to the security of his own title. There is no necessity to tell how I got back to Mavua, and thence to Suva, seventy miles from the mouth of the Singatoka. There was a very rough sea, and a cutter, with a little dog-kennel forward, and a miserable creature that crouched within, for a wretched day and night. . . . But let us draw a rug over it, as I did. CHAPTER V PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS The Song of the Road — Fijian Fun — Night on the Wain- ikoro — The Noble Savage Fails — The Village Plate — The Lot of the Kaisi — Sharks Again — A Swim for it. NORTHWARD of Viti Levu ("Great Fiji"), where I had been travelling, lies Vanua Levu ("Great Land"), the second largest island of the group. It is over one hundred miles long, and thirty miles across. On the map, it looked interesting and easy; so I took a steamer up to Lambasa, the principal port, intending to see something of the island. Six weeks afterward I came back, having travelled about a hundred and eighty miles in the interior; spent the best part of a month, in different slices of time, waiting for steamers; and learned, once for all, what being " off the road" really meant. Viti Levu was a mere summer's day picnic compared to Vanua Levu. Stanley (I cannot get rid of the comparison) would have liked Vanua Levu. He would have enjoyed the total absence of bridges, the fine profusion of swamps and gullies, the days when the men had to keep their knives always ready to hack a path through choking lianas, the mornings when it rained horribly, and one had to go on, and get soaked ; the evenings when one had to put up in a house without any doors, each open doorway serving as a sort of opera- box for a score or two of greatly excited and interested 83 84 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES natives, looking on eagerly at the performance inside. He would have liked to eat ancient biscuits soaked through with rain, and thoughtfully wrapped up by one of the men in a spare sulu, only half soiled — he would have enjoyed rough-washed clothes, cleaned by himself in a river with a scrap of toilet soap — the acquirement of a permanently scarlet nose would not have grieved him as it grieved me, and I am quite sure that he wouldn't have got surly and unamiable every time it was necessary to dirty his clothes with wet red clay. I do not apologise for writing about the mere personal impressions of this trip, because many books of travel have taught me that the modesty which omits them is mistaken. Most people like to know how a traveller in out-of-the-way regions feels and thinks; without such details, the account becomes a mere dose of undiluted geography. There were some small risks in the Vanua Levu journey, but no great perils; many little hardships, but no starvation, fever, thirst, dangerous heat or cold. The only real difficulty was the responsibility, which, hour after hour, and day after day, lay somewhat heavily on my unaccustomed mind, new to uncivilised travel. I wanted to see and understand the resources of the country for myself s and to this end, it was necessary to select the best tracks, from data furnished by a mass of incoherent native statements, badly translated — to decide where to go, in a country where each rare white settler knew his own neighbourhood, and very little beyond — to keep my horse from breaking his legs, or getting drowned, every hour in the day, prevent my men from running away, and keep myself in good condition on a diet of tinned meat, dry biscuit, and milkless tea — all these were tasks that called for a good deal of energy PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS 85 small though they might appear to those real explorers whose feats I was faintly copying, as Early Victorian ladies used to copy fine steel engravings in pale niggling pencil-work. Yet I enjoyed the trouble, enjoyed even the inconveniences, after a fashion, since they were richly paid for, in the pure gold coin that Nature mints for sailors, campers, and gipsy wanderers alone. Some need, so exceedingly deep down in the roots of humanity that one cannot even define or name it, seems to be satisfied by wanderings such as these. It is a need not felt by all (though lying latent in very many who never suspect its existence, until sudden changes of circum stances call it out), and those who do not experience it find it hard to understand. Yet it is one of the strongest forces in the world — hunger, love, the lust of battle, alone can rank with it in power over humanity. The "Song of the Road"— the "Call of the Wild"— and other terms coined by an analytical generation for this name less power, describe it more fairly than the trumpery tinsel names of the guide-books describe the miracles of the awful canyon lands of western America. But those who know what it is to come home to Earth, under stand the meaning of the call, although at the very com ing, she lays a cold finger on their lips for welcome, and says, "You shall know, you shall enjoy, but you shall never tell. ... " . . . After the monotony of Society in Suva — after the days under galvanised iron roofs, and the chatter about infinite nothings, and the long-tailed frocks worn in shaded, scented drawing-rooms — came the out-of- doors again; " boot-and-saddle " once more (it hurt my sense of the dramatic unities to think that I didn't wear boots, but shoes), and again the rough, half -known 86 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES country of the kindly brown men. Lambasa is the only oasis of civilisation on Vanua Levu, and even it consists merely of a Colonial Sugar Refining Company estate, with what Goldsmith would have called "all its busy train" of Indian and Solomon Island labourers, and white managers, overseers, clerks and mechanics. There is a store or two, also a Government Armed Native Con stabulary Station, and outside, the wilderness. No roads, no towns save some Fijian villages, no white men, except single specimens at intervals of several days' ride; no regular mails, no stores, save a little shanty or two at very wide intervals, kept by Indians or Chinese. Even the native villages are far apart; you may journey twenty miles without seeing one, whereas in Viti Levu there is always food arid shelter within ten miles at farthest. Nor are the people of Vanua Levu like the people of Viti Levu. Farther away from civilisation, and less under the influence of their own chiefs, they are rougher and wilder in every way than the natives of the greater island. In Viti Levu, any native I might chance to meet on the road at once removed his headband, and laid down his bundle from his shoulder (both acts of respect), whereas, in Vanua Levu, parties of Fijians travelling along the bush tracks would stare boldly and rudely, swagger past with their head-bands in place, and even keep their bundles of food on their shoulders while passing , — which, in a Fijian, is simply an act of deliberate rude ness and defiance. Nor did my men remonstrate with them for their discourtesy. A Fijian, at best, is only outwardly submissive to the white race. He is a craven at heart, and therefore easily kept down by the British rule; but loyalty to an employer is not one of his virtues. Attack from these natives was a thing barely within the ' THREE SISTERS " MOUNTAIN, VANUA LEVU PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS 87 bounds of possibility, so I did not fear it; but I knew that if any trouble had occurred, my three big Fijians would simply have run away to avoid being concerned in it, and left me to see it out by myself. Hearing that there was a good deal of excellent native land available at Wainikoro, some twenty-two miles from Vuo, where I landed, I secured a horse, and engaged a couple of carriers to accompany myself and Gideon, my special interpreter and servant, whom I had brought on from Viti Levu. The horse belonged to the local Buli, and had every vice that a native horse can have. He shied, in a manner that I can only classify as virulent, deleterious and disconnective; he bit like a rat at bay; he kicked at me one-leggedly, like a misogy- nistic ostrich; he was thick in the wind, didn't like hills, was afraid of slippery places, and endeavoured (ap parently as a matter of principle) to wipe me off against every cocoanut-tree he met. Such as he was, however, he was the only means of travel available, so I engaged him for a few weeks, and trusted to time and care to improve his manners. The men named him "Somo- somo," and always addressed him by his title. I asked what it meant, and they told me, "Fiji flower, plenty good flower' : — which led me to infer that either their knowledge of horses was small, or their charity large ; for if Somo-somo was the flower of Fijian horse-flesh, it did not say much for the remaining steeds of the colony. The Flower did not like my side-saddle, first of all; secondly, he entered a protest against that unexpected outrage, my riding-habit; and thirdly, he objected very strongly, in gross and in detail, to myself. These prej udices having been overcome in some degree, and a start made from the hospitable house where I had been enter tained on my arrival, we got on our way to Wainikoro. 88 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES The chiefs of Vanua Levu would not allow their men to go away for more than a few days, so (as a Buli, or chief, has power over all the men in his district, and none of them can leave it without his permission), I had several different sets of carriers during my journey ings, instead of keeping the same men right through, as in Viti Levu. This was not so good a plan, as the men were making less money, and were therefore much more prone to desert me, and to lag carelessly behind, over country where they could easily have beaten my horse. On the way to Wainikoro, I saw little of them, except at meals. There was no question in Vanua Levu of the demoralising Capuan luxury that I had experi enced on the Singatoka. Villages were far apart, and poor, and though the contents of my purse obtained sufficient food for all, there was no superfluity. Half the day's journey to Wainikoro lay through "The Company's" fields of bright-green sugar-cane. Afterward, we came into woods beautiful as all the Fijian forests are, and most pleasantly cool. The track was about a couple of feet wide in most places, and so steep that a good deal of walking had to be done. Gideon was in his element, with a new audience for his boastings and braggings about me. I caught odd fragments of conversation, as we journeyed on, that told me my social status was increasing. In Viti Levu, I had merely been an intimate friend of King Edward's. Here I was an " Andi," or princess, according to Gideon: I had bags full of gold, and a hundred boxes of clothes in Suva — he had carried them up from the steamer him self. I was such a great lady that I lived on tinned meat and biscuit every day, and constantly had tea with sugar in it, and I was splendidly generous, as befitted such a personage; for every now and then I would give PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS 89 as much as sixpence to buy tobacco for the men (Fijian tobacco, of which one gets a good handful for that sum) , and I often gave away whole quarter-pounds of sugar, just to eat as they liked. I had a revolver that would kill twenty men at half a mile, and I had fought all through the Boer War (in which struggle the Fijians took the warmest interest), shot hundreds of Boers, and cut their heads off afterward. . . . With these and other fictions did my henchman entertain the gaping carriers, who evidently swallowed every word and, in consequence, respected their informant all the more, in that he was privileged to be the servant of such a celebrity. I was not sorry that the men stayed out of sight a good part of the day, for I could enjoy the beauty of the scenery better when quite alone, and it certainly was very lovely. Once the track broke suddenly out of a grove of feathery ironwoods into the staring sun, and dipped downward toward a wide green plain bor dered by brown and purple hills, with just one line of distant mountain peaks rearing their blue battlements on the horizon. . . . Only a range of mountains, covered with reeds and forest here and there, rough and uninteresting, no doubt, when one reached it, with ups and downs and gullies and thickets just like the ground about my feet, and yet . . . And yet, if I could write all that those distant summits said to me, as they lay sleeping in the still yellow light of the waning after noon — all that the eternal hills, far away and blue and utterly out of reach, have said to countless souls since the beginning of time — I should speak with the tongues of men and angels, and tell what human lips have never told, and never will. I turned the horse down into the valley, and soon go FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES the woods shut in the path again. But for long after, as I rode through the quiet forest, with no company but the murmuring hill-river at my side, two lines from some half -forgotten poet kept chanting in my mind, sadly, as befitted the lonely land and the waning day: " . . . The heights of heaven Where I shall never win." Sunset was near, and sunset, in these latitudes, means dark. I waited for the men, and told them they must hurry. It was well that I did so, for we came soon to a place where the track disappeared in a bog, and " Somo- somo" had to be coaxed and driven over the narrowest part, where it was quite safe for him to cross, although he could not be induced to see the matter in that light at first. After ten minutes' dragging and yelling and beating, he was compelled to make the attempt, and landed safely on the opposite side, not without a flounder or two that made me glad I had had the sense to dismount. Then one of the carriers opened a window into that strange storehouse of contradictions and oddities, Fijian char acter, and showed me the queerest curiosity it had yet furnished — a specimen of Fijian sense of humour. He had watched the horse being got over with a perfectly grave countenance, but as soon as it was fairly across and I was mounting again, he went to the side of the track, carefully picked out a soft piece of grass, laid aside his load, and, flinging himself down on the ground, began to roll and kick and screech with a mad, violent, almost terrifying laughter, that surpassed any effort in that direction I could have imagined in my wildest dreams. That any human being could laugh like that, and not kill himself, was in itself a most astonishing thing. He choked, he crowed, he howled, he let out wild, eldritch PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS 91 yells that woke all the echoes of the black, sinister valley along which we were travelling; he lay on his face and kicked, he lay on his back and writhed, he gave himself over body and soul to a very devil of laughter. And, at intervals, he screeched, in a voice half choked with cackling; "The horse wouldn't go over. It wouldn't go over." It took some time before I realised that I was merely witnessing a Fijian struck with amusement, not a man dying in a fit. When I did realise it, I called him a com moner of the fourth degree (which is Fijian vituperation), and told him to get up and come on. But I have never yet been able to make out where the fun came in. I had brought no watch on this journey (having unluckily lost mine overboard from a ship, a little while before), and I had been trying to learn to tell the time by the sun. It sounds simple enough, until one attempts it and then one discovers that even in tropical latitudes the sun is not exactly in the centre of the sky at noon; also, that it seems to travel much faster at the beginning and end of its journey than in the middle. After a good many day's practice I found myself able (judging by the sunset, which was about six o'clock), to tell the time within half an hour or so; but I never got any nearer. As for the natives, they have extremely little knowledge of time in any case, and are never troubled at the prospect of being benighted on the road. That, again, is " the white man's burden," not any business of theirs. We did get benighted on this occasion, and extremely unpleasant it was, trying to bring Somo-somo safely over the various bad and boggy bits in the dusk. Dark had fallen by the time we reached the Wainikoro RiVer, which I knew to be near the town — and behold, there was not a sign of a human being, and no boat ! 92 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES A lovelier spot I had never seen, even in beautiful Fiji. There was no moon, but the wonderful tropic starlight burned in the purple sky with such a clear radiance of its own that the wide glassy river, edged with feathered reeds, the splendid palms, lifting their dark coronets eighty feet up among the stars, the orange-trees on the further side, dropping their juicy globes now and then into the wave- less mirror below with a dull, dead-ripe splash, all were plainly visible. It was like a daylight scene viewed through a piece of deep violet glass. The stillness was intense ; the palm-trees on the banks stood motionless as ebony-coloured plumes on a catafalque; the black river moved by without a ripple. A spot where one could have dreamed and wondered for hours; where Oberon and Titania, in the magic starlight, might have. " Sa senga na kakana, saka " (" We have no food, sir ") . A Fijian has no poetry in his soul — especially if he has also nothing inside the most vital part of his mortal machinery. My poetical musings were scattered at once, and I came down to the plain prose of night, hunger, an impassable river, and the men wanting their supper. We had only a few biscuits left — the tinned meat was unavailable until we reached a town, as none of the men happened to have a knife. (I don't think Speke or Livingstone would have forgotten the tin-opener, as I did.) I gave out the biscuits, reserving rather less for myself, in the dark, as I knew my hunger was more easily satisfied than theirs; but the men seemed to guess what I was doing, and gave back part of their share determinedly. A Fijian woman would have had to man age with the scraps they left ; a white woman was as good as a man to them, and men must share equally. We could do nothing but wait for a native to pass ; so the men made a fire to keep the mosquitoes off; walked PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS 93 up the cocoanuts like flies, and threw down half a dozen green nuts, husked them on a sharp stick stuck in the ground, opened them, and handed them about. Then they lay down about the fire to eat and drink, while I walked up and down the river bank, waiting for a native. It seemed as if no one was likely to come; but after half an hour or so, I heard a crackling in the woods on the far side. The noble savages ought to have heard it before I did ; but they never noticed it, being intent on sucking cocoanuts, and when I pointed it out, they said it was probably a pig. When the dark form of a native, very slightly clad, appeared like a slim shadow on the opposite bank, I called the men up again, and pointed across. "That is not a pig," I said. They laughed; and one more delusion about the "noble savage" vanished from my mind. If he couldn't tell the time by the sun, never knew when it was going to rain, and did not know a man's footstep from a pig's, it seemed to me that he was not fit for his part, and ought to be hissed off the stage. Gideon, at my direction, yelled to the man and asked if there was a boat or a canoe. No, there was neither. They had a canoe, but it was away up the river, and wouldn't be back till to-morrow. The men laughed — they always did when we came to a dead-lock — and sat down at once to smoke. I hustled them up again, and told them to unsaddle Somo-somo, and lash a few sticks together to put my luggage on. We should have to swim for it. They .did as they were told, and I went down to the river's edge to reconnoitre. I tasted the water — it was brackish. Now, if there is danger of sharks high up in the Fijian rivers, there is very much more close to an estuary. I did not like it. " Ask that man if there are any sharks," I told Gideon. 94 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES " No shark stop ! " he replied confidently. As neither he nor the carriers had ever been within twenty miles of the river, and as Fijians are absolutely reckless about sharks, I did not set much value on his remarks, but called over to the native on the far side, in rather bad Fijian: "Sa senga na ngeo?" ("Are there any sharks?") Instead of the loud, comforting "Seng'ai, saka" ("None, sir") which I hoped for, came a complicated reply I could not translate. Gideon's version was: "He say sometime shark he stop, sometime no stop." This was not good enough. Facing the astonishment of the native, and the amused scorn of the men, I declared I would not swim; that they must get the canoe ; that I was a great chief, and would assuredly kill somebody if the Wainikoro people didn't go and capture that boat, and bring it along, alive or dead — and other things to the same effect. The men's amusement at my fear of sharks broke up into fright, and they yelled to the native to get the canoe — get anything — for this was a terrible marama (lady) , and there was no knowing what she would do unless pacified. There is no power on earth like that of ill-temper — real or manufactured. In an hour's time, the canoe appeared, and Gideon hastily packed my goods and myself on board. Across the Wainikoro we went, followed by the small, meek, dripping head of Somo- somo just above the water, and in another half-hour I was installed in the usual native house, with the usual gaping crowd at the doors, and the usual fowl and yam preparing. Fowl is the one thing that a Fijian eats off a plate, instead of a leaf. He does not care to lose any of the precious water it was boiled in, so he always serves the murdered bird on a tin plate, which in many cases THE VILLAGE PLATE - UNPEOPLED COUNTRY PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS 95 belongs to the village at large, and is sent about from house to house, whenever a feast is in progress. There was the usual fuss about hunting up the village plate while the food was preparing, and at last it was brought triumphantly in. Next morning, as I left, I saw it being hurried to the native teacher's house, by which I concluded that godly men from another village were expected, and entertainment was being prepared for them. Yam and ndalo are the common food of the people, fowl and pig being rare luxuries, except among the chiefs. In these days, the British Government keeps some curb on the exactions and tyrannies of the native rulers, and they cannot treat the " kaisi," or commonalty, as high-handedly as of old. Yet, even so, the lower classes live plainly and poorly, while the chiefs annex everything that takes their fancy, in the way of food, order the "kaisi" about like dogs, and compel them, as a mat ter of course, to work for their superiors without pay. In Vanua Levu, which is nearly all wild unbroken country, with very few white residents, I saw Fiji in the rough, and it did not seem to me that the lot of the kaisi was at all a happy one. Thirty or forty years ago, their chiefs could slay them at pleasure. Now they must respect life, at least; but the kaisi is not allowed to have a soul of his own. He cannot leave his village without the chief's permission; he must work without pay as much as his superior desires, building houses or boats, or cultivating the communal patches of yam and ndalo. Ambition is impossible to him; born a kaisi, he must remain one, and cannot hope for improvement in his lot. Something of this is reflected in his ways of living and even his expression of face. In the other Pacific groups I have visited, a village at dusk is bright and merry, sounding with music and laughter, and full of lights. In 96 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES Fiji, the towns are dark and silent at night; there is little singing, and the amusements are of a quiet kind, card- playing and yanggona-drinking being the chief. The Samoan, the Tongan, the Tahitian, or Cook Islander lives for pleasure and amusement — picnics, travelling parties, continual dances and songs, games of every kind enliven ing his day and night. Chiefs, in these other groups, are less oppressive, and the communal system, with its care for the tribe, and harshness to the individual, is much less strictly carried out. But in Fiji, the kaisi has not much heart to invent games and amusements. He can be a jolly fellow enough in his own way ; he is exceed ingly good-natured, readily pleased, and delighted with a joke. Still, at bottom, he has a spring of darkness and melancholy that is ever ready to rise and overflow the surface sunniness. His fathers lived lives of gloom and terror, always under the shadow of the war-club and the braining-stone, and within sound of the terrible "lali," or death-drum. When a chief died, the kaisi were slain in dozens, and thrown into his grave, because — "a chief must have grass to line his tomb, so that he may lie soft." When a war-canoe was launched, it went down to the sea over hundreds of writhing human bodies, whose life-blood stained its keel, and whose death-yells sped it on its way. Living men were placed in the holes that received the supporting pillars of every chiefly mansion; human bodies, frequently alive, were daily forced into the red-hot cooking-ovens that supplied the meals of the chief. What wonder that the shadow of these hideous days — which can yet be remembered by the older men — should still rest upon the younger generation? I left Somo-somo peacefully grazing at Wainikoro next morning, and went off to look at a stretch of country immediately beyond, which I had been told was good PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS 97 land for planters. What I saw was a patch about four miles long, and apparently not much less in width, com posed of low, grassy flats, and pandanus prairie ; all nat ural land, but practically cleared. I heard that there was a good deal more of the same kind further along the coast. No one could tell me what the probable rent might be, but it could not exceed a very few shillings an acre. Next day, the horse was saddled early, but we could not get away at once, as one of my men had gone off to a mekd-meke" in a neighbouring town, and had to be fetched. It was well on toward noon when we got to the river again — a few hundred yards higher up this time but, nevertheless, at a spot where it was wide and deep — and found that the canoe had been taken away again ! It was irrecoverably gone this time — gone out to sea on a fishing excursion, sure to last till next day at least — and there was not even a raft to be had. Could not the men make a raft? I asked Gideon. Gideon, indifferently chewing sugar-cane, said there was no bamboo about here. Could they not make one of anything else? Gideon was not much interested; did not think so, sir; didn't know what they did when they wanted to get things across the river dry. Did not know anything. Obviously wanted to sit down and smoke. With the calmness of despair, I extracted my swim ming-dress from my box, and went off into the wood. Returning clad in "rationals" and a cloak, I told Gideon to follow me with my goods, and to keep them dry, somehow, anyhow, on pain of frightful retribution. Then I left the cloak on the bank, waded across the shallows, feeling unconscionably cold and shaky, but assuring myself that I wasn't a bit afraid, and plunged into the fifty yards' stretch of deep water. . . . 98 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES I never swam like that before; I never shall again. Imaginary sharks chased my horribly conspicuous fed swimming-dress and white English skin right up to the bed of greasy mud on which I landed. I was half up the bank before I remembered that my clothes were on the other side, and that Gideon in all probability would rather die than bring them to my side of the river,, since it is strictly "taboo" for a Fijian man to. bathe at. the same time as a woman. So I sat in the mud, and screamed to a native woman who was watching the proceedings from the farther shore ; and she (having no fear of sharks, as I, miserable craven of a "papa-langi," had), put my things on her head and came over at once. And I took them into the bush and dressed, reflecting that Cook would have made a raft; La Pefouse wouldn't have minded the sharks, and Sir Samuel Baker would never, never have forgotten to tie his clothes on his head before he started across. So, very humble, I mounted Somo-somo. who was steaming and dripping in the sun, and rode away, back to civilisation, as represented by the solitary house of the kindly white magistrate and his wife,' who had enter tained me at Vuo. It was a long day's ride and a pleasant, and never, while my mortal frame hangs together, shall I forget the wild pineapples that the men discovered beside the track in a baking, sun-smitten little valley. We were all hot and thirsty, and the fruit, though it was as warm as if just taken out of an oven, was delicious — rich, wild-flavoured, and so juicy that the men and I had to go back to a stream and wash, after eating a pine apple apiece — with one over for Somo-somo, who sturdily begged for his share. I heard afterward that the Wainikoro River certainly had sharks, and that recently, just below the spot where THE BOATLESS WAINIKORO THE WILD PINEAPPLES PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS 99 I swam across, a native man and woman, crossing with a dog between them, had seen the dog taken down by a shark before their eyes. It is well known, of course, that brown or black people run much less risk from sharks than white; which may explain the stolidity of the Fijian mind regarding these horrible creatures. The river-sharks are not large — only six to eight feet, as a rule — but they are quite capable of biting off a limb, or inflicting a fatal injury. CHAPTER VI CONTRASTING SCENES Off to the Ndreketi — Fijian Smart Society — A Native Princess — The Sugar-cane Dance — Getting Bogged — The Use of Bad Language — The Ndreketi River — A Splendid Timber Country — A Native Diary — Truth about Tropical Forests — How to Live on Noth ing a Day THE next trip I decided to take in Vanua Levu was a much longer one — up the Ndreketi River, and into its forests, to see the timber country. The river was only about fifty miles from my starting-place — a two days' journey, if the tracks had been good — but it took me four days' travel to get there. Only thirteen miles could be covered the first day, because of a tidal river, that had to be crossed late in the afternoon or not at all. Tambia, my stopping-place for the first night, can be cordially recommended to all future travellers as an excellent place to let alone. We came in at dusk, and were at once surrounded by the usual crowd ; but it was not a pleasant crowd on this occasion. Nearly half of them seemed to be suffering from unpleasant skin diseases. One or two were scaly like fish; several were marked with horrible Fijian "thoko" — a disease that shows itself in flat, button-like eruptions, turning by- and-by to formidable sores — some had open ulcers, all black with flies, on arms and legs; and not a few were generally sick and decrepit-looking. Their clothes — 102 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES — only a loin-cloth apiece — were unspeakably dirty, and every unoccupied moment seemed to be spent in hunting through each other's huge frizzled heads for certain small game ; which, when found, were immediately eaten by the finder! This unsavoury gang pointed out the Turanga ni Koro's house, and I entered by the side door; the men, as befitted their low estate, going in by the door at the gable end. This, as I have said before, is an important piece of etiquette in Fiji, the side doors of the houses being strictly reserved for chiefs and distinguished visi tors. Even at the present day, a kaisi who entered by the side instead of the gable door, would probably be thrown out again with considerable violence, and in old times he would certainly have been clubbed. The chief of the town was not in when I arrived. I let the men put down my baggage, and seated myself on the "tabu kaisi" mat (forbidden to commoners), which the women at once spread at the upper end of the room. The house seemed to be clean, but I did not like it. It smelt close and heavy — a faint yet curiously revolting odour seemed to cling about everything in the place. I could not make out the cause, nor could I call up any recollection of a similar smell, even from the varied experiences of the last few months. I wondered greatly, but my wonderings soon came to an end, for the Turanga ni Koro appeared in a few minutes, and limped across the floor to welcome me, leaning on a stick. His foot, half hidden by a rough scrap of bandage, was almost dropping off ;the bone was visible, and the odour. . . . "Gideon!" I said, turning to my indolent head man, who was lying on the floor, chewing sugar-cane. "This man got leprosy!" "Huh?" MAKARITA IN FESTIVAL DRESS MAKARITA IN SUNDAY DRESS CONTRASTING SCENES 103 "This man leper? — all same sick Indiaman, Suva?" "Yes, sir. All same," replied Gideon, taking another plug of sugar-cane. He had seen cases of leprosy among the Indians in Suva, and I knew he was almost certainly right. That anyone could object to a leper as a host and entertainer did not, however, enter into his view of life. The Fijians are absolutely reckless about such matters, and cannot understand the meaning of infection, which, like the sceptical American farmer's wife, they take to be merely "an idee in folk's heads." I was sorry for the man, and still more sorry to hurt his feelings, as I knew I should do, in leaving his house; but leprosy ! the mats and dishes and bed belonging to a leper — the floor over which he trailed that fearful stump. . . ! No, it was impossible! I told Gideon to inform the chief that I could not possibly stay in the house, because of his sickness, although I was very sorry to leave it. Gideon told him, and the chief, sitting on the floor, bowed his head sadly, and said in a low voice: "Savinaka!" ("It is well!"). I got up and retired, with a few incoherent politenesses ; the men turned a small, passably clean family out of another house, and I slept fairly well, enveloped in my closed mosquito-net of fine lawn, till morning. Needless to say, I was very early indeed on the way again. Nanduri, ten miles further on, should not by rights have been a stopping-place ; but who could have resisted it, especially after Tambia? A big, handsome town of several hundred inhabitants was Nanduri, with a wide, grassy main street, and clusters of the prettiest little houses imaginable running away all round it to hide themselves in clumps of orange, palm, hibiscus and flame-coloured crotons. The Roko Tui Macuata, or Prince of Macuata, lived here, also a few minor chiefs. io4 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES The tone of society in Nanduri seemed as high as in Tambia it had been low. Clean clothes were the rule; nearly all the men and women had shirts and "pinis"; there was no visible skin disease, and the town actually enjoyed the luxury of water laid on in pipes from the river above! The white magistrate who ruled over that district had had the pipes laid down, on one of his peri odical visits; and the people had taken very kindly indeed to the labour-saving arrangement of stand-pipes all along the street, and a shower-bath on the largest green. This latter was in constant use all day long, the natives delighting in the cool cataract that descended from a perforated disc overhead, at the turning of a tap. The publicity of its situation did not, of course, em barrass them at all, but they had some glimmerings of European ideas and customs in such matters ; and there fore, for sheer style, they had enclosed the shower-bath — with a bird-cage of bamboo bars! The Roko was away; but his wife, Makarita, re ceived and entertained me right royally, giving me the largest of the Roko's three fine houses to stay in, feeding me on fowls, pork, and the best of river-crayfish during the whole of my three days' stay, and organising various mek£-mek£s for my entertainment. Makarita's marriage, which took place only a year or two ago, was quite a pretty little romance. The Roko is neither young nor lovely, but he is a prince, and therefore should, by rights, have married into some branch of the Thakombau family — the descendants of King Thakombau, last mon arch of Fiji, under whom the 1874 cession of Fiji to Britain took place. Indeed, a suitable lady had been selected, and the Roko was thinking it over, when he happened to meet Makarita, a girl of good but non-royal family, and a great beauty, after Fijian fashion. He fell in love CONTRASTING SCENES 105 with her at first sight, and shortly married her, against the wishes of all the Fijian "smart set," and the open remonstrances of his own district. The marriage has proved a happy one, and the "beggar maid" fills her position as King Cophetua's partner with dignity and grace. I photographed her in three costumes — mek6- meke' dress, with mats and arrowroot-fibre kilts wrapped round her into something very like a crinoline, and cocoa- nut oil all over her body ; ordinary day costume of brown cashmere (and very good cashmere at that); and "best dress," composed of a pink satin "pini" or tunic, sulu of white-brocaded silk, gold locket set with pearls, and long gold chain. Shoes and stockings, of course, she never wore, and her thick, stiff hair was trained upright, clipped and neatly bevelled off at the edges, in native fashion. The wretched Somo-somo seemed to be a little sick; Gideon had been kicked by him, and was rather lame; Nanduri was exceedingly pleasant — and so I stopped three days, much to the delight of the men, who "went out" a great deal, in this fashionable town, and enjoyed themselves exceedingly. There were card-parties, where euchre and whist were played with furious excitement from eight o'clock p. m., until three a. m. — stakes nothing but the glory of winning. There were yanggona parties, where the men met to drink, and talk, until daylight and paralysis of the legs (the effect of excess in this drink) set in together, and they had to be propped up against the wall, still talking, while the women fed them with roasted bananas to drive away the effects of the orgy, and enable them to walk home. There was a dance one night at a town two miles away, which simply cleared out Nanduri; and there were also daylight mek.6-m.ek6s, performed for my amusement by the boys of the town. These last were the only festivals I witnessed, for Makarita 106 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES politely warned me that the other entertainments were "no good for me," and I took the hint, and remained at home. It is unfortunately true that festivities got up by Fijians are not, as a rule, possible for any white woman to attend, as they usually end in indescribable orgies. The passion for card-playing common to Fijians of every class set me wondering what the result would be if any one introduced bridge to the natives of these islands. Judging by what I know of them, I should suppose that it would sweep like a devastating plague over the country. Work would be at a standstill, and sleep and food would be taken only in snatches, while the natives gave themselves up heart and soul to the new game. They are excellent card-players, and they know no medium in their amusements — witness the law that had to be passed shortly after the introduction of cricket to the islands, forbidding the game to be played except on certain days of the week, because the Fijians had taken to it so ardently that they would do nothing else. The boys' mek£-meke' was both pretty and original. A number of very bright and attractive little brown lads dressed themselves up in white sulus, and armlets of red and white flowers. They then commenced a clever pantomime dance, singing as they danced, to keep time. I was told that it was the "Sugar-cane mek^-mekeV' representing the growth of the sugar-cane. In the first figure, they all squatted low on the ground, shaking their heads, with shut eyes, and murmuring slowly and softly an unintelligible sentence that sounded like "Eratchi- keveechi, eratch-keveechi ! " Gradually they all stood up together, growing taller and taller, and as they grew, they waved their arms, and trembled all over from ankle to crown, like the tall tasselled canes waving in the wind, and still they kept on chanting, louder, faster with every SUNDAY MORNING IN NANDURI THE SUGAR-CANE DANCE CONTRASTING SCENES 107 figure: " Eratchi-keveechi, eratchi-keveechi ! " There were several figures that I could not make out, for want of proper interpretation, but I succeeded in understand ing that one figure, which represented a series of hearty fights (and nearly broke up the dance, through the fer vour displayed by some of the little actors), was meant to picture the exactions of the chiefs, who compelled the "kaisi," willing or unwilling, to come and cut their crop. When the dance was over, I gave the boys some biscuit and tinned salmon, and left them amicably shar ing the small gift with at least forty friends, Fiji fashion. Nobody wanted to leave Nanduri, myself least of all; but the Ndreketi was far ahead, and Somo-somo was well again; so a start had to be made. Away in the slanting early sun I rode from the pretty town — away from all comfort, all decent food, all safe roads, all kindly natives, and, apparently, from all good luck as well. I lost my purse the first day, and though an honest youth from a half-caste village (a curious spot, that village, if I had time to write about it) , found and brought it back, later on, the loss caused delay and vexation incalculable. Two days' hard travel it took to cover the thirty miles between Nanduri and Tumba, on the Ndre keti. The first day, Gideon all but hanged Somo-somo by tethering him with a slip-knot. The next day was a series of perils for the unlucky brute, and anxiety for me. If I had known all that lay ahead, assuredly I would have sent him back, and walked, but the mis leading accounts I got of the country ahead induced me to push on. There was no road, no real track even. We travelled by bare indications in the shape of crushed branches or trodden grass; smashing through miles of liana-knotted bush by the aid of knives, struggling through marshes, scrambling up and down hills as steep io8 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES as a house-roof, and slippery as butter, and worst of all — encountering streams every mile or so. Every stream or river was at the bottom of a perpendicular gully with greasy clay sides, down which the protesting horse had to be pushed and dragged, while I walked over on a cocoanut log; some of them were deep and rapid, and many had dangerous bottoms of soft clay. And now, after a fash ion that was exceedingly unpleasant, came my oppor tunity of learning what the people up in Lambasa had meant when they warned me: "Don't get your horse bogged!" It does not sound very alarming, and I had supposed that "getting bogged" was merely a case of floundering into a soft bit, a rapid dismount, and a dirty habit, while the horse got over by himself. Alas! it was con siderably more. I had just dismounted to let the men lead the horse down a gully that looked much like those we had passed, and was scrambling up the far side, after crossing on a log, when I heard a terrified yell from Gideon: "Missi N — grimshaw! Horsie lie down, by-n'-by he n-dead!", Turning round, I saw poor Somo-somo, having missed the jump at the bottom, plunging and struggling madly in the gully, which was filled with treacherous mud. He had already sunk up to his belly ; his eyes were start ing from his head, and he snorted fearfully through his dilated nostrils, in the very extremity of terror. The men hauled helplessly on the reins, screaming at each other, and shaking with nervousness; it was clear enough that they thought the days on earth of the poor " Flower " were ended. They were perfectly useless, and I had never seen a horse in such a plight, and had not even heard what ought to be done. The banks were hopelessly steep; it was not far off dusk; the nearest village where CONTRASTING SCENES 109 help might be obtained was two hours away — and all the time, poor Somo-somo, whom I had really grown fond of, was dying a horrible death, staring wildly at me in vain hope of help, and breathing now in long-drawn, painful snores of agony. ... I would have given twenty pounds for liberty to sit down on the bank and go into hysterics. If there had been anything human with a head on it about, I certainly should have done so, for the sight was indescribably painful, and the feeling of helplessness still worse. But my three men were three children of Nature, which meant three useless babies in trouble of any kind, and Somo-somo's life hung on me. I told one of them to take a stick at once, and test the depth of the mud. The horse had now sunk to half-way up the chest. Fortunately, the test revealed that he had touched bottom, and would go no further. The danger, however, was none the less, I knew that he might struggle himself to death, and guessed that his head would sink when he became exhausted. As for the men, they were squatting down to their eternal cigarettes, quite prepared to watch the horse die, and, with true savage cruelty, to laugh over its expiring struggles as an excellent show. "Horsie he n-dead, by-n'-by," was all the answer I got to my orders, when I told them to get up and try to help. . . . Then I lost my manners. It does not matter what I said. There is a kind of English that every Fijian understands and obeys. I gave them that English, reproducing it phonographically from my recollections of the sort of thing the South Sea Islander mates used to say to the cargo- workers on the quays. I missed the real style of it, no doubt, but what I gave them was the no FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES best I could do, for a first attempt, and it seemed to touch the spot. They got up and went to work. I told them to haul on the head-rope, and lift the horse's quarters with saplings. I made them cut down a considerable section of bush, and fling it wholesale in front of the poor "Flower." I compelled them to batter down the perpendicular bank of solid clay, and cast it on to the sticks and boughs, at the same time making a practicable exit. I worked them like mules for over an hour, and scolded like a turkey-hen all the time. At the last, a piece of fairly solid standing-ground was manu factured, and Somo-somo, filthy, exhausted, terrified and trembling, gpt out with one final struggle, and stood on the bank, swaying on his feet, and looking like death. But he was saved. There was a long walk through the twilight and the dark then, and a big, unseen river — the Ndreketi at last — to cross in the starlight, carried almost on the necks of men who were walking shoulder-deep. In a strange, dim valley, half a dozen natives started up out of nowhere, and offered me food — bananas, cocoanuts, odd little packets of porridge, made from ndalo roots, sugar-cane, and cocoanut cream, tied up in green leaves. I took it thankfully, and Somo-somo, who had been walking behind me, relieved any fears I might have had about his recovery from the late accident, by sud denly projecting a yard or two of dirty neck over my shoulder, and grabbing the biggest packet of porridge for himself. He was always well fed under my care, but his manners, none the less, were those of a shameless buccaneer. The welcome sound of a white man's voice, calling out of one of the endless gullies, told me at last that I had reached the neighbourhood of the little settlement I IN THE PRINCE'S HOUSE— FIJIAN BED CONTRASTING SCENES in had been aiming for since I left Nanduri two days before. In another half-hour, I was enjoying a real meal at a real table, in the smallest and cosiest of the three " white " houses that, together with a sawmill and its buildings,' formed the settlement of Tumba. Here, as everywhere else in Fiji, I met with the kind^ est and most ungrudging hospitality. The white settlers of the Fijis are surely the most hospitable people in the world. A dirty, untidy hungry stranger suddenly ap pearing from the wilderness is welcomed as a long- invited guest, given the best of everything, almost fought over by several eager hosts, and pressed to stay as long as possible. His entertainers apologise for not being able to feed him on every civilised dainty known to Suva or Levuka, and hope he can put up with a room that is furnished less luxuriously than the guest-chambers of a big hotel. They neglect their business to "show him round," press gifts of curios, plants, shells, etc., upon him when he is leaving, and send him away with a hearty God-speed and a hope that he will come back again soon. And the return for all this? Read most of the books of travel that have been written on the Fijis, or other islands. Note the sneers at rough accommodation and primitive living; the unkindly fun poked at people who have, perhaps, dropped a few of the customs of great capitals; the "paying off scores" against generous hosts who have managed in some way to incur the wrath of consideration-loving guests — and wonder then, as I wondered, that island hospitality should still be what it is. A Fijian who eats and rests under the roof of another regards such hospitality as a sacred claim, to be liberally repaid in kind if opportunity should arise. A white man takes all he can get, and laughs at his entertainers ; would not dream of " knowing them at home," if he should j i2 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES ever meet them there; and regards the sacredness of the eaten bread as a fancy only fit for savages. Truly, we do not seem to send our best a-voyaging in strange countries. The timber industry was what I had come up to he Ndreketi to see, and exceedingly interesting I found it. There are no woods in the world more beautiful and valuable than the woods of Fiji, athough want of capital, and, to some extent, want of enterprise, has prevented their becoming widely known. "Bua-bua," the box wood of the Pacific, is vey common, and grows to an immense size. It weighs 80 pounds to the cubic foot, is very hard, and most durable. The "cevua," or bastard sandalwood — a strong-scented, very durable wood — grows freely, in logs one foot and two feet in diameter; and the real sandalwood is also found, though not plenti fully. Another useful wood is "vesi," which grows two and three feet in diameter. It is much like teak, hard, heavy, and extremely lasting in the ground or out of doors; it is also rich-coloured and very easily polished. The " dakua " is one of the most valuable woods ; it much resembles the New Zealand kauri pine, and grows to a large size, sometimes six and seven feet in diameter. It contains a great deal of gum, and quantities of this can be taken out of the ground wherever a tree has been. The timber is useful for almost any purpose. The "yaka" might be called the rosewood of the Pacific, if it did not also, in some degree, resemble mahogany. It is a wood of the greatest beauty, being exquisitely marked and veined, and taking a high polish. This is a wood that certainly should be known to cabinet-makers, and no doubt will be later on. The "savairabunidamu," a curious dark-red wood, is extraordinarily tough, and can be steamed and bent to almost any shape — a valuable CONTRASTING SCENES 113 quality. The "bau vundi" is a kind of cedar, very workable, and most lasting. A singularly beautiful timber is the "bau ndina," which is deep rose-red in colour, tough and firm, and suitable for engravers' use. Besides these, there are more than sixty varieties of other woods, all useful or beautiful, and most to be found in great profusion. The quantities available are very large; a great proportion of Vanua Levu and Viti Levu, and nearly the whole of many outlying islands, is covered with dense forest, untouched so far, except in two places — the small island of Ngeo, and the lower Ndreketi River, where sawmills have been established. It was the latter place that I visited. The upper reaches of the Ndreketi are untouched, and there is valuable timber along the course of almost every Fijian river, within easy reach of rafts and steamers. At Tumba Mills, most of the timber is obtained from the forest eight miles farther up the river. I journeyed up the Ndreketi in a boat one day, to see the timber cutting, being conyeyed by four natives from the mill, and attended by Gideon, who acted the distinguished stranger, lounging on the seats, and entertaining the rowers with long tales and many boastings. By this time I had learned a good deal more Fijian than Gideon supposed me to possess, and I could understand some thing of what he said. One long serial story that oc cupied nearly an hour, and was listened to with the deepest attention and interest, excited my curiosity, after a while, and I tried to make it out. ... It was neither more nor less than an exact inventory of everything we had had to eat since we left Lambasa! "On Monday," it ran, "we had lots of yam, and rice with sugar, and tea, and four biscuits each, at the magistrate's, before we started. And on the way, there u4 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES were some oranges; and Rubeni got a lot of cooked chestnuts from some people we met. Then, by-and-by, the marama had lemons and water at a stream, and I got the sugar she left in the cup, to eat. There was a good town presently, where the Turanga ni Koro had killed a pig, and we ate most of it, but the marama had tinned meat, because she said the pig was sick when it was killed. What did that matter? At Tambia, where we slept, we got two plates of crayfish, and yam, and a cup of tea the marama didn't finish. We stayed three days at Nanduri, and that was good, for the first day we had two boiled fowls among us, and yam, and ndalo, when we came in; and next morning there was broken biscuit the marama left, and the end of a tin of jam, before breakfast ; and for breakfast . . ." So it went on, day after day, disposing of Vanua Levu first, and then going back into the history of the journey through Viti Levu, six weeks before — a mar vellous feat of memory, and a most curious enlightenment on certain points of native character. I enjoyed the odd exhibition very much, until a sudden recollection sprang up among the tangled oddments of three years' travel, and brought to my mind a conversation I had heard between two highly educated and greatly travelled white men, on the smartest of the Cunard liners: "Milan? yes, they do you very well there, if you know where to go, but if you don't However, the Hotel makes up for everything. We got real English food there, the genuine article, beefsteaks not scorched or stewed, good bacon and eggs, excellent joints and puddings — what does one want more? We stopped over at Marseilles. Try the bouillabaisse there — do, old man! Over-estimated? Not a bit. Couldn't be 1 Last time I went by the Mediterranean route, we found time CONTRASTING SCENES 115 to run up to Venice, but you won't catch me there again. Look what they charge you for soda-water! and at the Z Hotel, where there is food fit to eat, the drains are murderous; while the Y gives you oil in everything, and makes soup out of the roasts . No more Venice for me!" . . . Was there much to choose, after all, between the Fijian and the Briton? The forest, or "bush," when we reached it, was delightfully dim and cool, after the glare of the river. A rough "skid road," crossed over with logs, had been cut through it down to a cliff above the river, over which the timber was slid into the water. Teams of ten to sixteen bullocks hauled each log from its home in the forest to the river highway, and once in the water, the timber was floated or rafted, according to its weight, down to Tumba Mill. The "bush" here has very few flowers. There is little light under the overarching roof of lofty boughs, where the sun comes only as a thin trickle of stray beams, sifted through the canopy of close-set green. Orchids are found at times; and I heard rumours of strange, rare blossoms, unknown to botanists, appearing here, and in Taviuni, a great island not far from Vanua Levu. (It may interest men of science to know that in Septem ber, 1904, some white settlers in the latter island found a single specimen of a flower never seen there before — a huge single blossom, shaped like a vase, and larger across the top than an ordinary soup-plate. It grew close to the ground, had apparently no leaves, and was very much ruffled and fluted at the edge. The colour was a grayish-lilac, with a large, dark-brown, cone-shaped pistil in the centre.) ". . . Oh, the wonders of a tropical forest! the tough lianas that barred our way at every step, and 116 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES had to be slowly and painfully hacked through — the brilliant honey-birds hanging like living gems on the rich blossoms — the marvellous chameleons, three feet long, that crept sullenly away at our steps, changing colours as they went ! We could hear the fierce, wild boars and dangerous wild cats crashing their way among the thickets not far off; myriads of beautiful birds darted through the air; serpents and centipedes crept at our feet, and formidable ticks let themselves down from overhanging boughs, and buried their jaws, through all our clothes, in our flesh. . . ." The above, I know very well, is what the reader expects, when hearing about tropical forests; so I have done my best to write the kind of thing that is popular. It will out, however. I didn't see all those things — though they were undoubtedly there, and I suppose, therefore, I ought to have seen them. Stanley would have seen them ; so would Burton or Livingstone, or any decent traveller. The wild boars and cats would have come up to call on him at once, instead of keeping ten miles away; the snakes (harmless all) and chameleons would have come out of their holes, and off their high branches, and sat in his lap, or he'd have known the rea son why. Even the ticks would have shown their ugly faces, and submitted to be photographed, like criminals in jail. But as for me, all I saw was a flight of parrots, gorgeous green and blue, with red necks, squawking away across a clearing, and a nest of wood centipedes — hideous, ill-smelling creatures, the size and shape of large sausages — on which I nearly trod. It would not have mattered if I had, as they were not the active, biting kind, but the sluggish sort that is only dangerous to a bare foot or hand, which they burn as if with carbolic acid wherever the skin touches. These loathsome creatures must live in CONTRASTING SCENES 117 the shade; the sun is fatal to them. If a wood centipede stays out too late at night, and is caught by the morning sun while crossing some unshaded bush track on his way home, he dies at once, and leaves his corpse rotting in the cruel rays, as a warning to all won't-go-home-till-morning bush people. Venomous centipedes are met with in Fiji, but they are not very common, and their bite is more painful than dangerous. I have found them under my bed, and about the bathroom, in Suva houses — ugly beasts seven or eight inches long, black, with red legs and feelers, horribly active, and very ready to bite if touched — but I never saw them in the bush. The only scorpion I saw in Fiji came out of one of my own trunks; it was about three inches long, and I shook it out of a nightdress just as I was going to put that garment on. I saw one tick, hang ing on my horse's neck, as I rode back to Lambasa from the Ndreketi. The wonderful stick insects of Fiji, familiar in all home museums, are found on nearly every cocoanut- tree. They are very ill-smelling, and squirt a fetid fluid at one's eyes, if handled. Leaf insects I never saw, except when the natives caught and brought them to me, but all the guava-bushes have them, although a white man's eye can seldom distinguish them from their shelter. They are most miraculous and uncanny creatures, absolutely leaves endowed with the power of motion, so far as the most scrutinising eye can see — for even their legs and heads are a precise copy of stalks and small leaflets. Honey-birds— dainty little black-and-white creatures that hang on the scarlet hibiscus blossoms, and dip their beaks into the honey-vessel of the flower — I only saw about the suburbs of Suva; and wild boars, cats, fowls, goats, or cattle I never got a glimpse of anywhere. This is not what is expected of a traveller, I know, and I humbly u8 FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES apologise for my deficiencies, offering only the excuse that, like George Washington, I cannot tell a lie, even when I ought. A white man cannot, as a rule, find his way about the Fijian bush, but a native is never at a loss, even if he is new to that part of the country. He will slash his way through, with the heavy knife he uses so cleverly, at an easy two miles an hour, and he will never be at a loss for food and drink, even though the cocoanut palm is absent from the forests of the interior. If there are no streams, there is a thick ropy liana which oozes good water when cut; and eatables are never wanting. Almost every where, the flat, arrowy leaves of a certain trailing vine advertise the presence of plump yams underground; wild potatoes are also found, and several other excellent roots — among the best being the sugary root of a tall thin shrub, conspicuous enough for even a white man to see at once. There are also plenty of chestnuts, and one or two kinds of berry. It is small wonder that, in a country such as this, the native should be accused of indolence and want of enterprise. If the roadsides and commons of England grew roasts of beef and loaves of bread (yams, potatoes and chestnuts being fair equiva lents of these, for a Fijian), we might find less industry among our own working classes. And certainly, if every man owned or shared enough acres of land to make him independent of outside employment (as is the case with nearly all Pacific islanders), most people would think as little about the "sacred dignity of labour" — for some one else, at some one else's starvation prices — as does the provoking Fijian of to-day, who will not go and improve his mind by toiling twelve hours a day in a big company's plantation, for money that he doesn't particularly want. - v\. ¦ , i r ..u *s "\i WI e^V ''