Chapter XIII: Part 13

All next day we rested. The sitting-room of the pretty native house was decorated with native _tappa_ (_masi_) of many patterns. Books and magazines were upon the tables and shelves of cane. The Governor and the resident magistrate, Mr. Joski, whose house this was, received reports from the _mbulis_ (chiefs) of the neighbourhood, while sitting out in the evening on the green slope of the garden.

We left again Monday morning for the first beginnings of mountain country and more inland manners. Our party again divided. Atamo and myself and the momentarily ill Awoki took to the water and again went up stream. The weather was exquisite, the draught of the river just cooled the heat. Constant animation and struggle on the part of the boatmen for the rapids became more and more frequent. Half the time, with the strength of the current and the shallowness of the water, four of the six men plunged in and pulled and tugged at the boat, pulling it through the boiling water, lifting their legs high, one after another for stepping over the boulders, every muscle strained with effort, the poles bending against the rocky bottom. Occasionally the man who stood at bow or stern, upon the little vantage nook of the thickness of the canoe, would be slung off by a swerving of the current, and his own stretching far away to the side, and would retain some place from which he could join us. The other boats passed us or were left behind. We saw them far off on the slopes of the torrents, lifting shining poles against the shadow of the banks. Sometimes the water swept over and our own little planking was wet with it. As the rapids increased so did the spread of the stones and boulders of the remainder of the river. We rested once for midday meal. Then in the afternoon we landed and walked a little way along a causeway road to a little village on a bluff, where the wide river turned. Then passing through many houses and turning around a deep moat, filled with bananas and other greenery, we came upon the edge of the little hill. Here stood a house of a different type, more like the type of the mountains; a very high, dark, thatched roof, more than twice the height of the wall together with the stone base, or mound embedded with stones, called _yavu_, out of it grew bunches of the red _ti_. This mound embedded with stones is kept and has its name; the house on top will be built and rebuilt.

At one corner a great palm tree rose above the high roof. From the little plateau, planted with occasional trees and rising steep from the river, a sloping and curved path led down between water and village, separated from the latter by the deep moat filled with trees, and coming at length to sharp earthern steps (if one can so call anything as rude) that took us to the river end, to our bath in shallow water, the edge of the deep pool under the cliff. Far back behind us spread the river-bed with the stream between, and in the distance behind the hills a line or shoulder of mountain streaked perpendicularly with great shiny patches of rock. In this house we spent the night. It was inside, like all those we have yet seen, charmingly finished with patterns of fastening on the reeds of the walls, and sennit decorations on beams and lintels and posts. A rude representation of a cow or bull had been worked into the roof.

The next day we began our walk, leaving the canoes for good; and after a few hours over clay ground and some rocky streams, we came to a wide space of the river; across which we were carried in rough litters made of bamboo tied together, then, walking up a clay bank between trees, came upon the little village around which the river curves. This was Navuna.

Here the view was confined to our huts and those of our neighbours. Behind us a plantation of bananas; visible partly around the corner of a neighbouring house, a great tree shading the centre of the _rara_, the village place, where in the morning the Governor and the two magistrates interviewed the representatives of this place and of others. I could make out fairly well that a certain court of reproof was going on; for all through these places was something which explained itself a little further along.

Nasogo, July 3rd.

The midday saw us off from Navuna, and through similar scenery to a little village on the edge of a river running far below it. The village is Navu (n) (di Waiwaivule) in the district of Boboutho.

Now we began to be helped by being carried in the litters provided us by Mr. Joski; for crossing and recrossing streams, it was perhaps as easy a way as being carried pick-a-back. But where it was both a triumph and an excitement was when we were lifted up the steep sides of the gorges; then the looking back or forward, and seeing below one’s feet the toiling carriers of the other litters, swaying to and fro with their burden; and behind them again the long file of what was getting to be an enormous retinue. For a background the distant mountains, or the bottom of the gorge, black shingle and rushing water, or shallow pools reflecting the green above. But prettier than all was some passage along the stream; the men in the water; the mass of the party sometimes in the water near us, or disappearing around picturesque frames of corner rocks, over shingles and boulders; and reflected all about us the entire picture--the distant mountains and rocks in sun and mist, the near rocks covered with green, or with purple and grey of conglomerate; and the song of the rapids ahead in a black and white streak counting against the trembling green.

But when we walked then much did we regret our litters. To the native our good path was for the most part on the dry river-bed, and lengthily and wearily we picked a precarious footing over innumerable pebbles and stones and boulders; sometimes thinking that the walk was easier on the big ones, because one went from one to another; sometimes on the smaller and more rolling ones, because one got several under one’s slipping foot. But my neighbours always helped me: sometimes Lingani, one of the Governor’s men, or one of the “Army,” as we called them (the armed constabulary), or some _mbuli_ who accompanied the escort, or some newly accidental neighbour; so that all went well enough, and we reached our night’s destination without the sprained ankle that had discomfited Mr. Spence early in the trip.

All is a little hazy to me up to where we are now. I remember the look down the ravine and up the other river. I remember that huts began to be more peaked or more like

beehives. I remember one which had been fitted up as a heathen temple or devil house, and from whose roof many strings hung down--as conductors, one may say of influences. There had been a basket attached to one of them, which the Governor cut down. I remember, of course, but one running into the other, presentations of whales’ teeth and food, and _tappa_, and dances (_mekke mekke_), with or without the dancers being wrapped in the enormous folds of cloth, that afterward were unwound with more or less difficulty, to be piled up high as a man’s height into great masses of presents. (And by the by, though all that is extinct to-day, some thirty or forty years ago a return to this old manner of making gifts of _tappa_ came near to bringing on a civil war in Tahiti.) The Tahitian custom referred to came up again some while after Queen Pomaré (Aimata) was on the throne, her brother Pomaré III having died quite young, and leaving her, who had not been trained entirely by missionaries, exposed to the passing influences that come up with new conditions. At some time or other she capriciously desired that upon certain occasions she should be received in Tahiti (on her arrival, I think, from Eimeo--Moorea--but that is unimportant) in the old way. Among other customs would have been that of presenting her with _tappas_ offered by a number of young women, who, having danced before her all swathed in this native cloth, should then gradually be unwound, and having nothing upon them, continue the dance to an end. This was part of the thing, and I only remember this detail. It was then that Tati of Papara, the grandfather of our old chiefess, came to the front, and in a most remarkable manner, both by threatening armed opposition, and by the use of an eloquence worthy of the greatest examples, broke down the will of the Queen and the plotting of her then advisers. It is thus greatly to Tati that peace and the final quiet prevailing of Christianity was due.

As to Aimata, or Queen Pomaré, that she remained more or less of a pagan at least for a long time, the fact or report that she destroyed two of her children (probably base born) is in the direction of a testimony. Of course the meaning of the word Christian is variable according to time and place and especially according to date, so that the geographical and historical limit of the meaning should never be insisted upon in too set a manner.

The next day’s tramp brought us here, but apart from certain geological facts in which Adams was enormously interested--for example, the superposition of the conglomerate upon everything else, and the finding of shells in the softish rock at this height--all was pretty much the same.

Our present place is very charming, reminding me of the last. It is at a corner again, with the river turning round one side of it, and the stream up which we came on the other. Between them a bluff covered with trees, the space of the bed of the river mostly filled with boulders and gravel and rocks, though we roll the rapids, or slide the quiet waters; a great rock just facing the village, as an advance buttress of the mountain behind it, which melts tier upon tier into an entanglement of foliage; and the town or village itself, built on a succession of terraces, all worked over and planted, and edged with walls that seem part of the natural structure; here and there, even right in the village, a boulder black or grey, almost of the colour of the thatch of neighbouring houses, and protected, shaded, encompassed with trees or high decorative plants as they usually are. As always everywhere apparently, the projection of any tongue of land makes itself into a knife edge; so that the idea of a ditch or moat would be suggested to the savage engineer by the very make of the land. Therefore from each side the slopes go down, and below you see tops of trees, banana, palm or what not, and tops of huts staged down.[28]

Then where the land rises again on the slopes, big boulders stand up, reminding you again of the thatched roofs; and far away on heights are places where villages stood, and where some years ago these very savages were attacked and driven off.

For all these parts of the country were once a stronghold of the more savage tribes; if not the more powerful, who sometimes came down and attacked the lower places. And all through here some of the gentlemen who were with us had gone, when the time had come to make an end of it, destroying the towns and reducing the wild people to forced peace. Occasionally I overheard these reminiscences, which do not date so many years ago--fifteen or sixteen, I think. The Governor had headed or accompanied expeditions, and one or more of our companions had been on such attacks, after having suffered the loss of a number of relatives and friends. But all that is over now; only, as in all mountain countries, there is a sort of regrowing of that bad seed, such as we saw in this recurrence of the old devil worship.

Here we saw of course again more ceremonies and presentations of food, the latter becoming a serious necessity with the great number of men accompanying us. The Governor is not only a representative of the Queen, he is as such the chief of chiefs, and most wisely his policy, whether or not it has been the policy of his predecessors, has insisted upon this point. Every ceremonial of observance, everything that would belong to the native ruler, is encouraged and kept up. Not only such natural observances must exercise an indefinable prestige on the native mind, but they also must allow, in what is a personal government, the use of an apparatus of control exactly suited to the native mind: thus any subordinate chief can be reprimanded, talked to and put in his place in such a way, that he feels it from ancestral habit; he can be removed or set aside. A man serving out a sentence can be kept a prisoner behind the paling of a bamboo house that he could break through as easily as he can see through it.

With time, as the natives change, the laws and ordinances that they have made themselves, for most things, that have seemed good to them and which are not contrary to the absolute essentials of English law, have been left, and will change as they change, and may fit themselves to an unknown future.

This will explain the naturally sensible reason for which the Governor differed with some of the Catholic missionaries, or rather their bishop, about which things I have heard, if not complainingly, at least with suggestion of arbitrariness from one or two good old Samoan priests. For instance, it is a great chief’s privilege and marks him that he should be “_tama’d_” to in passing--that is what marks him, and establishes his position in the hierarchy of rule.

But there is no reason why a bishop should claim it; even if in old days the confusion with regard to power of sacredness, of respect, and worship had always existed here as it has been all through the world. So also the case of the missionaries objecting to the chief receiving the first fruits of the land, often symbolized nowadays by a mere few pieces of some growth, because long ago it bore a religious as well as civil meaning. I fear me that our old friends, the Jesuits of China, were the only very wise men that served as missionaries, so that they alone never went by their personal whims or measured matters by their own fast rule.

But this is far off from my natural path of mere record of what happens or what I see. For some things at least the sketches will help you. I may succeed in making some note of the cheerful clearness of colour and tone all about me, though of course I can only make a choice. If I give you the day, then the veiled charms of morning or of evening, the enveloping of distances in misty colour, must remain unattempted of record. Or if I try the haze of the beginning or end of day, then I shall not have anything for you of the lightness and gayety of the brighter hours. But the sketches will give you the shape of the houses. You will sympathize with the inconvenience of getting in or out, in the dark or wet weather, excellent as it must have been as a device for protection against too sudden intrusion of doubtful friends.

We wait one whole day: then we enter the mountains for good, and pass over them to make our way to the coast which will be a matter of four days or so. It may be warmer higher up, as there may be more cloud; so far it has been cool at night, the thermometer going down as low as 56.

In Camp in the Bush.

Saturday night, July 4th.

We left Nasogo (pronounced Nasongo) early this morning in the mist; going down into the river-bed, among the boulders, and crossing the stream several times: the same river that rushed down around the little point or promontory of Nasombo--a streak of black or blue or green or white, among the black stones spread out between the rocky bluffs. Then we attacked the mountain and the forest--stumbling and slipping over rocks and moss, and matted tree roots. The path had been somewhat cleared for us here and there, but it was hard travelling through the wildwood; all damp above and below with the continuous moisture. In this desert of leaves and tree trunks, the passages of former torrents served for paths. Over us were quite high tall trees, but between their upper branches and the mossy wet earth spread a broken canopy of tall ferns, and lianas and the branches of smaller trees and plants. Here and there a great fern connected with the tree fern, but unlike it, spread or lifted long fronds like canes some twenty feet in length. Upon every tree hung innumerable mosses and parasites. Below, all over, a tangle of ferns; beautiful as ferns are, though you know that I care little for them; I am even so unworthy, that the prospects of rare orchids does not stir my blood; I would give them all for roses, violets or for apple trees or the cherry. I am essentially and absolutely European in these things, and retreat behind my rights as an artist to have preferences and keep to my instincts. But for you who love such things, I can say that there were many rare plants; a creeping lily, for instance, and innumerable ferns.

The fatigue of the ascent became greater: we halted at noon on a little open space above a high precipice, from which we could look back at the whole course of the river sunk far into the mountains and curving in the far distance around the amphitheatre, stands on its little bluff the village of Nasogo which we had left in the morning some four hours before. Beyond it the river ran, a black thread in the dark grey shingle, below the big bluff, and around the little promontory by which we had bathed for two days. Then we had lunch and Sir John on this Fourth of July proposed the health of the President--and drank to that of Mr. Harrison. Then the “Armed Native Constabulary” gave a salute of six guns which echoed far away down the valley and into the grass country that we hope to reach to-morrow perhaps. No doubt there will be stories afloat that we have been attacked. We were then some 2,300 feet up--the thermometer indicated 62°.

Later, as I was very tired, I was carried in the rough palanquin of boughs down the steep hills--the path so narrow that much ingenuity and noise and discussion was expended by my carriers to pass through the trees: fortunately the conveyance was elastic and could be sloped any way. In fact at times I stood up or sloped back so as to have to catch on, but I fell asleep and the men carefully moved along the hanging branches and lianas so that they should not strike me. Almost everything that came down merely hung in an elastic way. Rarely did a big tree stretch over the path. The last thing that I saw before closing my eyes was the file of our party beneath me: Their heads just visible between my feet; the “Native Constabulary” in their uniform of bushy yellow hair, and blue shirts, and red _sulus_ worn like sashes.

The little British flag had been stowed away to prevent it striking, and I missed its flutter or dazzle in the green. One of my big black attendants was hanging upon a small sapling dragging it down from the path and dropping far below afterward. The noise of the axes of the scouts sounded in advance and started the parrots cawing in response; the sun broke upon us and so I fell asleep in the more grateful warmth.

We reached the place chosen for camping in the early afternoon after another couple of hours’ march. Our halt was upon a little bluff right on the line of march--where trees had been cut down, and huts and sheds built for us, and where already many of our people were resting. Here had come the women sent in the morning by the other road, if one can call it so--the bed of the stream. They were to carry food for our people--for we had by this time some two hundred men along--many really of use, carrying boxes and trunks and provisions, all distributed, so that every little while I could notice in the long procession, the man with the frying pan--the man with the governor’s chair and so forth. But there were also amateurs who carried a club, or a little packet of food done up in a leaf, or an odd umbrella for one of us--or like the last page in the “Chanson de Malbrouck,” “Et l’autre ne portait rien.” Some were so called prisoners--viz., men condemned to labour for a time--and I was much amused at the story of three of them who were encamped in a long shed alongside of the magistrate (Mr. Carew) who had brought them as servants. They were all three in it owing to the eternal cause--“la femme”--who in Fiji seems to be “_teterrima causa_”. In fact, as there are not women enough to go around, it was not astonishing to hear that one great influence of the recent heathen revival in this wild region of cannibals was the hope of the young men, that if there were rows and trouble, some stray women might fall to their share. This evening I wandered out along the sheds and saw a good many--not more agreeable to look at than those I had seen before and certainly far uglier than the average ugly men. One youngster, another “prisoner” was preparing to oil himself, surrounded by a little group of female admirers, reversing apparently the fact of there being few women for the men.

We warmed ourselves at the fires, for, though the temperature was about the same, all was wet and damp, the firewood all covered with green moss. Our little hut was a fairly good one, made of wild banana, and the interstices filled up, or rather covered up with the great leaves of the wild ginger.

July 5th.

The night was rainy and all was damp in the morning, when after prayers we started again into the wet woods. The cry of the parrots like a wild _flapping_ of voices had been the first sound of early dawn. Then the camp had begun to move with chattering and laughter; people filed along all the morning.

When our time came, I had again the use of the loose palanquin in which I was taken for the first two miles down the deep side of the mountain. It was interesting to look up at the trees above, and to notice how much more of the vegetation grew in the air above than in the earth below.

Every tree was covered with plants, mosses, creepers; the vines and lianas that hung about were themselves covered with smaller growths. Perpendiculars of gigantic vines hung, though they looked as if they held themselves up, but the least pushing of our party would send great spaces of green trembling far off. The branches that were in my way were loose and swinging, and rarely did we meet so low down the branches of a solid tree. High up through the great loops and festoons and upright stretches of the creepers, or here and there the great leaves of the wild ginger, the light was delicately stencilled with the pattern of the leaves of the great ferns. But high as everything seemed above head in the trembling wall of green our occasional passing of some mighty trunk of the _da kua_ tree, whose branches began far up above everything, made still smaller the caravan passing below. Upon the branches and curves of the great trees, in every nook of protection they could afford, flourished other small forests of air plants, ferns and creepers for whose support the great oak-like limbs of this giant of the pines seemed to spread. Lifted high in relation to the plunge beneath, I spent half the time in looking at the details of this upper picture, unseizable otherwise in our rapid marching--but after our rest in mid-journey I preferred the tramp, and walked on with the others, slipping and sliding up and down, until we reached camp (after five hours’ walk) on a little open space. Just before this we had passed through a little park-like country all different from the sharp edges, ascents and descents of our usual travelling--the grass grew high, trees dotted the swellings here and there, the sun kept all dry so that it was hard to believe that only a few feet behind lay the eternally wet forest. In the tall grass grew orchids like lilies, orchids large and small of the _fagus_ variety. Butterflies and moths flitted about. The open country smiled after the sadness of the woods. Our resting place was not quite so open, but yet it had a similar appearance. It had evidently once been inhabited--there had been taro patches at one extremity of the open space. Here again, as throughout what we had seen of Fiji, the inhabitants had been chased away from their holdings in the perpetual wars. Indeed only twelve or fifteen years ago these good people here were cannibals and liable to be eaten if they did not eat others. The advantages of their present lot in this way were referred to in the sermon of the native preacher who had accompanied us, for this was Sunday and we had prayers in the morning and service and sermon in the afternoon. Of course I get all this at second hand, or even further; but the good man took also occasion to lecture his travelling flock, a flock as I understand, not his natural audience, upon the folly of returning to devil worship, of which there had been cases in this part of the country, as I have mentioned, I think, and pointed out to them that it was only an agitation brought up by people who wished to kindle trouble for their peculiar ends, as, for instance, that in the scarcity of women, some of them might fall to the share of fomenters of trouble, in case of any upsetting of things, however momentary--for there are fewer women than men, as I think I was telling you.

Here the desolateness of this open space (with our pretty and comfortable temporary huts it is true), but still indicating a once large population, brought up this question of the relation of the women in connection with agricultural work. They appear “sat upon” and not joyful and free as in other islands that we have seen. But of course appearances are only for _us_; they are certainly kept away and take a secondary position. But then of course they have to be put away from the mass of our men who are beginning to number heavily. Mr. Joski says that we are as many as four hundred. These women, who look so saddened, did a great deal of the heavy work, if not all--a matter which seems unnecessary at first, as the men used to idle and fight, but perhaps it might be worth while to look at the matter from inside and see how things must have stood in old times.

In the morning, when, as to-day, the mist hung over all the valley, over every point that could be cultivated or was so--when the little village alone above would be lighted up distinctly, it would have been impossible for the warriors to plunge into these shadows to look to these plantations, offering themselves as an easy prey to any ambuscade or attacking party. No; the right thing, of course, was to wait until the sun rose far enough. Meanwhile skirmishers looked about and travelled through the neighbourhood, armed against any foe. When they were satisfied that there was no immediate danger the women and children could go out and work in the fields or attend to anything necessary, while the men were about, ready to protect them in case of danger; certainly, this was to the woman’s advantage; had she, when travelling or going about, shared with the man the carrying of weights, how easily would they both have fallen a prey to the enemy. No, she would naturally have said, “you go before with your lance and club and see that the path is clear; I follow with the food.” All this is a picture of what was once, and here no more than elsewhere, except that here things were upon such a scale that there was no chance for anything but this perpetual war. By such considerations the past of _all_ nations comes back.

July 6th.

People of the neighbouring district came here to do homage to the governor and present food and they added still more to the number, filling the neighbouring hollows and moving about in and out of the lovely little brook all shaded by trees, in which we bathed in cold water, for the temperature remained pretty steadily the same, in the neighbourhood of 63° to 68°.

In the morning we left Ngalawana, and made a short and desperate plunge through the woods in the hollow to the N. W. and up the mountainside. It was raining and had rained, and anything more slippery than the road over which all these hundred of people had been travelling I cannot think of. The steepness was bad enough, and one could have rolled down if one had a good start; but some of the paths might have been “tobogganed” over. The bare feet of the natives managed it well enough, though with much slipping. And their ideas of direction of a road are peculiar, the straighter the better and across country; so that recently about the very roads that are in consideration, they say to the governor that of course they will make him _his_ roads to travel on as it suits him, following easy paths, but that he must not expect

that _they_ will use them. Still easy ways are great persuaders, and notwithstanding this conservatism, the new roads in other parts are travelled over by the now converted heathen.

We arrived at length at a little village on a spur or ridge in a large valley where we are to rest for a few days--the first village, small as it is, since Nasogo. Here the governor was waited on by two deputations who presented whales’ teeth and food and who were received in the usual way by the Mata ni Vanua (the herald) and the other attendants with the usual voices of _ah! wui! wui!--wu--u! wooe--wooe!_ and so forth, making everything look more and more African as we go along; for all the way through in these mountain tribes, the negro colour and look, and woolly hair on head and shoulders and legs, and I am sorry to add the smell, marks how far we are from our smooth brown Polynesians.

In the evening all was bathed in the afterglow; pigeons called in the trees; through the air that seemed thickened with the light-green, long-tailed parrots sailed slowly, with an occasional flap of wings.

Matakula, July 7th.

We are resting here to-day; while the governor explores the neighbourhood for the purposes of his establishment of a sanitarium. We are not so high on the present ridge as he would desire: only 2,200 feet while it might be possible to find a plateau or wide ridge as high as 3,000. It is much warmer than before and dry at least. The night was cool--as low as 54°. The day is warm. I rose early, with the cries of the parrots in the wooded hill behind us; looked at the mist in lakes about us, out of which stepped the high trees and the mountains in the distance--even the dark conical huts of the little village built along the ridge at whose extreme end we are, were still wisped with moisture. The sun rose slowly behind the mountains, bathing everything in mildly pale varieties of wet colour--and all was lit long before the sun came over the hill behind us, and poured heat and dry light upon the scene.

We have been doing nothing: sitting out under umbrellas--then under a mock grove which the men suddenly made for us, digging up neighbouring trees and tree ferns and planting them around us in the soft soil.

For this they used the digging sticks they had, merely heavy bits of wood with pointed ends, in some cases turned up at the sides. We are here in primitive country: the boys of the village brought the water in bamboo joints this morning: the huts are of a peculiar hay-mow character--the features of the people, as I said before, are remarkably “African,” though often the colour is of a rich brown--but more usually a

chocolate, that is negroish, is the type of colour, passing to a blackish grey. Most of the old people here have been cannibals; and fifteen years ago all this part was then still dangerous: on some attacks of theirs, upon the coast people and upon the whites, two of whom were eaten, war was made upon the villagers in this direction; their villages burned, and their people driven out and divided among other places. Some of the gentlemen with us talked at night of those days and of the fighting. If I have more time, I shall try to join together some memoranda or to jot them down as they come up.

At night, when there is no rush for bed, around a fire in the open the talk goes on, always interesting and rich in anecdote, and it is only a pity that we are not more acquainted with the places and people and past story: it is like looking at an embroidery that has no foundation.

But last night a story reminded me of the dream of Pomaré Vahine, told us by the old lady, Hinarii, in Tahiti, which I sent you, I believe. This is not a record of the pagan underworld, as that was, but one of a new Christianity, and as such makes a curious “pendant.” It is one of the late things reported about, and a source of comment and of influence. It appears that the wife of one of the principal people of some neighbouring place--perhaps a _mbuli_, but I was very sleepy when I heard it, and details are misty--appeared to be dead, was duly watched and prayed over--and then suddenly she called out aloud; when naturally enough, the entire assemblage scampered out of the house: at length the husband took courage and came up near the house, and heard his wife call out “Mbuli Mandrae” (I don’t remember the right name, let us call him so) “is that you?” “Yes”--“Well then I must tell you what I have seen.” So to those who returned, the good woman said that after death she found herself on the path, and crying, to find the road to Heaven. The road forked: at the one fork were a number of men dressed in white--at the other a number in black, and when she expressed a wish to go the road to Heaven, the white men passed her on, tossing her as it were from one to the other, until she reached a great gate which was made of looking-glass or mirror. There she knocked, but was told that she must go to one side, where a scribe asked who she was and what she wanted. She wished to get into Heaven. So her book was consulted, and she was asked if she was free from sin. “Yes” she replied--“I have been faithful to my husband.” (Sin with these good people is of _one_ kind.) “No indeed,” said the judge, “do you not remember one mid-day when so--and so----” The poor woman admitted her fault and was immediately handed from one white being to another, until she reached the fatal corner, when the black-clad people tossed her along as rapidly, until

she saw a large lake of fire in which were swimming, people who were shrieking out of the seething liquid, and then dropped in again with cries of agony--around the pits hung ropes from which many were suspended and dipped into the liquid fire. “See,” said some one--“that empty one is yours, but you have until _next Thursday_ to return to your home and warn your people of what is in wait for the sinner.” So the good woman had returned, and, having warned them true to her appointment, died for good on the Thursday. The impression has been great.

July 8th.

In the morning, after the night-rain and fog, the hills and the dry country below our little narrow level were grey in mist, slowly dispelled by the sun that tossed it irregularly into the air. Before sunrise, in the dawn, the distant mountains, the higher hilltops and the uppermost trees near us rose from out of a lake of white cloud; with the coming of the sun, things became less distinct, until again, just as the sun passed over the little rocky mountain behind us, the fog lay again level in hollows while the last wisps of water blew around us, dimming this or that hut of the village of which we were part. The parrots chattered again. The doves cooed in the forest a few yards off, and in the line of the hills behind, a curious bark in the distance was the voice of another variety of dove. Two or three times that morning, and again during the day, we heard the gun of our “hunter.”

This was to be our last bad day of walking and we made a good show at it. We were to drop some seven hundred feet perhaps a thousand during the day, down the other side to get toward the sea; and this in the wet wood, over clay and roots, or over wet clay and wet stones when we should be on the open mountainside. The forest was as usual; occasionally the trunks of large _da kua_ trees stood up like separate columns in the green. In one case this great cylinder was up to some fifty feet all reddish and bright with loss of bark. It had been cut off to this height by the natives, who use climbing sticks to reach far enough, in pursuit of an edible grub in the rotten bark.

The trail left the woods after a time and descended the mountainside covered with reeds that flowed away from us as we passed. This was the toughest of the path; slippery with black mud and red clay, the slippery fallen leaves giving a better hold, and only seen when trodden into; this uncertain way down a steep grade upon which occasionally we slide as easier than slipping, was the most fatiguing pull I have ever made. Once or twice to my amusement, the dog of Mr. Carews, young and inexperienced in such travel, seated himself

on his hind quarters and pushed himself down on his forepaws. The bare feet of our native companions and their powerful legs carried them along with relative ease, and when they helped me, I was carried along for a little while at a great rate; slipping of course, but balanced and getting on as if on skates.

We were often on the edge of the precipice and at length stopped at a little open spot, where on some black rocks that edge it, we stopped for a time and looked upon the deep valley, whose opposite side was different in character from what we had travelled in. We were now on the dry side of the island (a relative term), and the look of the opposite mountain was like that of the hills of Hawaii, or of Tahiti; a curious golden grey-green, intensified wherever the innumerable hollows gave protection and greater damp to trees and bushes.

We were on the slope of a tongue or ridge between two valleys, but it was only quite late that the clouds lifted enough from the tops of hills to let us catch a view of the valley we were going to, of the course of the brilliant little river and further off, of high points of blue that enclosed the sea.

Meanwhile we halted for lunch at a little level park-like space, and walked to its edge with the hope that the clouds would break, but there was nothing but a mass of white vapour in front of us that filled the valleys, rose above us, and broke against the crests that we had left, or beat around, leaving blue sky above us in deceiving patches. There, while we rested, the _shikari_ brought in, with doves, two long-tailed parrots, the one green with green and yellow breast, the other blue and red and green; the latter feeds on fruits and is not obnoxious to the natives; the green is more predaceous of their gardens. This was my first sight of the killed parrots and with the soft grey of the doves they made a brilliant and gay mat upon the green grass.

I picked out a few feathers to send to you with this, wishing that I could also send the impression of the scene, with all these groups of browns and blacks about us, and the cloudy landscape above.

Later in the afternoon, after having waited for a sight of the great view in vain, we dropped down again through the same terrible woods, and reached in the early evening the little village of Waikumbukumbu, the last of the mountain villages, whence we should find a made road to the coast. The name Waikumbukumbu means seething waters, and describes with exaggeration the look of the little gorge in which its site is chosen.

We crossed over rocks the path of the little torrent, now rolling between rocks, now filling stone pocket in its bed, or sleeping quietly between high wooded banks. The houses of the village were partly those of the mountain, the beehive; partly those of the coast with long ridge-pole, and built up on high mounds, covered with stones or grass. But the openings were the smallest I had seen--a big man in some cases might just have fitted in. One little one which I have sketched for you, and which was prettily placed by the side of the ditch, and with the adornment of a few trees, was exceedingly small and queerly bulged out in roof at once over its low reed walls. The thatch had been extraordinarily thick, projecting very far, and its edges were cut perpendicularly down so as to make a line with the wall, and you had a proportion of thickness of thatch greater than the wall or the roof. To all those roofings that were old, and which covered almost the entire houses, time had given a most delightful texture and tone, making them look as if covered with a most exquisite grey fur. The thatch of the new buildings was yellow and shaggy, giving the look entire of the reed: as the leaves are weathered off, the fine stem alone remains: the thing is exquisite as thatching, having an appearance of extreme finish.

The little house or _mbure_ placed thus at the entrance of the village just gave place to two persons within--and Mr. Carew (magistrate and commissioner, who knows all about things, has been here twenty-three years and is a student of words and languages) says that such would have been a “devil” house formerly where the priest or prophet or wise man could reside alone and be applied to.

Here, he said, with the love they have for shutting things up, he could close his door easily, and be happy in the sweating heat of the night. The horror of draughts I can sympathize with here in the hills where the change from the 80° or 83° of day to the 52° of night makes the motion of air between narrow walls easily felt, but this night was not cold and with only one door in the house we felt the closeness. Outside the temperature was exquisite (somewhere about 68°), and the picture of our carriers encamped about the village and fires, that lit up themselves, the trees, the houses, and the opposite hills by fits and starts, kept me awake notwithstanding the very fatiguing day. We had been six hours on the walk with the rests included, and such a walk.

We bathed in the hollows on the rocks that night, and the next lovely morning, and then began our last march. The mass of the carriers had been dismissed; and I think that we were not more than fifty men or so: the road, a very wide one, began by running up hill as straight as might be, in Fijian fashion, as if to show that the natives were not afraid of mere steepness.

The walk was a hard one, and we had hesitated as to whether the river-bed would not be easier, as we had been advised; but

after all a road is a road, even if it leads up the side of a house, and by noon, we had done all the worst of it. A beautiful sight opened before us, like a reminiscence of Hawaii: we had the mountains behind us and on either side, partly green, partly rose or golden. As usual, we were coming down a dividing ridge that ran into the plain; mountain edges framed the sides, far off stretched a fairy sea with points that framed it, and on one side a mountain with high perpendicular cliffs standing up against the distance. Everything swam in light; blue and violet filled the distance; a big plain, in which glittered a little water, spread from the blues to the green near us in gradations such as Turner loved: even the very stippling of the innumerable trees, so many of which were the pandamus (the _lauhala_ of Hawaii), reminded me of him, as the scene recalled Hawaiian islands. Along the road thin _lauhala_--the _fao_ of Samoa, the _fara_ of Tahiti--growing every now and then and marking the distance, and again repeated everywhere in the blazing spread of green and yellow of the plains, grew not thick and full like those of Samoa and Tahiti, but strangely and queerly with outstretched arms and straggling foliage.

We loitered along the road at places where there were big trees and water. Halfway, Mr. Marriott, the magistrate, had sent a horse for me to ride, which convenience allowed me to look further and freely upon the landscape from this height; but we were some time on the road, some five hours at least, though it was but ten miles I suppose.

Vanuakula, July 10th.

We came down in the afternoon to Vanuakula, a neat little place reached after a long promenade under the hot sun, upon the road that ran on a dike in mangrove swamps. There we found news of the little steamer _Clyde_, and saw its Captain, Mr. Callaghan, and were told that at night we should get aboard so as to get off early in the morning for Ba, in such manner as to hit the tide without which we could not possibly enter the river to-morrow morning. So we waited for the rise of tide in a little village green square, and a pretty native house and saw a native dance of armed men (_mekke_) given as a mark of honour along with the food, and as a manner of presenting _tappa_ of which an enormous quantity was given to the governor.

Each dancer, as we had seen before, carried upon him in long folds yards upon yards of the cloth, looped like a dress, caught around his shoulders perhaps, or only at his waist; sometimes folded stiffly far over his head, like the floating folds of drapery upon an archaic bas-relief; and after the dance he unwinds himself from the enormous entanglement, and adds it to the pile that our men gather together and fold up. This plunder the governor carries off: in true native fashion, he is but a conduit for gifts: when some chief or persons who have need to fill up gifts or do the proper thing, think it is time they come and beg for things, the whales’ teeth, or the _tappa_ (native cloth) and receive them. As I think I said before, it is pleasant to see the governor keep up strictly every native custom that secures order and belongs properly to their official life. He is very strict about it, insisting upon every observance that his position requires and carrying all out.

While we waited, looking on at the dance, or afterward when the ladies of the village came in bringing gifts of food, having properly asked permission to do so; two Samoan women sat beside us. They had come from a neighbouring house to call; one was younger than the other, and looked with her hair “à la Chinoise,” her slanting eyes, and flattened nose, and wide lips, very much like certain musme of the Japanese inns and tea houses. This one had been Samoan way, married to some more or less white man, who had left, and she was now a grass widow. The other was, “_faa_ Samoa,” married to some half-breed: and she of the slanting eyes noticed Awoki near us, and somehow or other took him in as a variety of Samoan.

Did he come from Africa or whence? and Japan had to be explained. But she said she was anxious to get back home, and that things here were _leanga_ including the dance which we had been looking at, and the women and girls who were coming up in a long file much bedizened with velvet, cotton, paper cut into strips (of every shade imaginable), leaves around the waist, etc.; from her all dressed all over, to her who only wore long leafage about her hips. They were prettier than any we had seen: that is to say they were some of them not unpleasant; but only a few: and after all it is only the quite young who suggest anything more delicate than the men. Raiwalui, one of the governor’s boys is more feminine looking notwithstanding his strength and height than any Fijian woman I have yet seen. All this is so far as we have seen, and as I told you, so far the women and children get out of the way, not only because they always do so more or less, but also because of our men who have numbered at times several hundred, so that the women and children are crowded away in corners to leave houses empty for the visitors. But the Samoans looked like beauties alongside of their sisters of Fiji here, and sailed off with much superiority and conscious ease while the Fijian women had walked off in single file neither looking to right nor left, but keeping a downward look and following their leader.

Dinner we had outside on the mats, and just before the new moon sank we embarked in the dark upon the little river that was to take us to the sea and the steam launch. We were poled along for some few miles near mangrove trees whose roots hung above us, the wash from our water splashing in among their roots and trunks. Occasionally some more solid ground showed a few houses, or some clump of palms against the sky half clouded. Then a long row out to the ship, all dark, large masses of dark sea and dark sky, with the moon almost set, looking at us like a half-closed eye under the forehead of an enormous band of dark cloud.

The next morning at ten we steamed for Ba, ran out quite far, but in shallows inside the far reef, where at one place the beginnings of things could be seen, as upon the horizon, at sea apparently, a line of mangrove trees, widely spaced, dotted the sharp division of blue sea and blue sky. Still between them there was a little greenish band like water and really partly water, and to one side a little line was the reef on which they had begun to grow.

Inland, the long lines of the mountains look faintly tawny and blue; the swamp belt of mangroves surrounding the shore looked very low: we could discern, at places, the circles or elevations by which we had passed over the serrated edge of the mountains.

Then we ran into a river for some little while, the usual green bank, the trees, and the sugar-cane, and the mountains in the distance with here and there a strange pillar-like mountain or a perpendicular pile, to remind one of volcanic forms.