Chapter XIV: Part 14

A number of figures clothed in white sat upon the green bank and watched the governor’s approach. When he landed they made the usual salutation headed by the _roku_ or chief.

Nailaga, July 12th.

We walked into the village neatly laid out in squares, our first large place since we had left Suva: all quite uncivilized, but in native shape. We found a handsome native house, handsomely finished, with a fine _tappa_ hanging, cutting off one end, and many mats. This was the house of the _roku_ who had saluted the governor, a curious person--not a young man--with greyish hair cut short, short grey moustache, and a face looking not at all Polynesian--a very refined face--meaning one that was not in the least heavy--gentlemanly and wary, and with a peculiar indifference as if he went through his formalities without anxiety because they were the thing. He reminded me of some one at home, a little unpleasantly, for the gentleman was evidently not frank unless for his advantage, and he was old enough to have belonged to ancient cannibal days. He had a white shirt on with a turn-down collar, and a small blue scarf all which finished him; and his skin, not too dark, made still more the impression of a person who knew just how to do it. So it was also when later he gave the _yangona_ or _kava_--and led the chant, so delicately and correctly, a little bored, looking to see if it were quite ready, so that he should have no more to wave his arms and hands in a fixed way to the song. Here was an Asiatic type--my simple Polynesian was no longer there.

Later on, when he came to arrange a bamboo rail for our more convenient getting up and down the slippery plank that served for entrance, he asked our permission: the house was no longer his since we were in it. Contrariwise to him, all his companions were rude looking, some, I regret to say, exceedingly hard looking. Most all at the _yangona_ ceremony were stripped to the waist, and decorated with garlands, that emphasized more terribly some frightful countenances.

After that, the presentation of food and the great dance, like others we had seen but with many variations added, such as the moving in long files two together, or in files moving in two opposite directions, or in striking in order each other’s clubs, or in throwing arms and hands about in various ways resembling the attitudes of the famous _siva_.

All this was in the big square. On one side a great mass of women, girls, and children looked on, seated: along the road passed Indians coming and going from work: the women in their _saris_ and dresses of light red and yellow.

Since that we have been very idle; have called on Mr. Marriott, and at a sugar plantation and lounged all Sunday--the twelfth--at which date I am writing to you. It has been cool at night, but only because of the draughts of the big house, with its three big doors. The temperature inside is just 70°.

Nanuku Coa, “Black Sand.”

We left Nailaga (in Ba) on Monday morning in lovely weather. The early hour after our breakfast was spent in some conversation between the governor and chiefs, while Atamo surveyed the scene from the top of the embankment on which the house is built, enjoying the pleasant shade in which we all were, thrown across the lawn by the great house. Then again we walked off to the river bank after the governor had restored to the Roku the great stick of office, which had been received on the governor’s arrival. This was about six or more feet long, with ivory top and grip place (made, however, in England).

The _Clyde_ took us along for hours out on the Ba river, and along the coast back upon our way. We tried to descry the outlines of the heights which we had reached and descended. Peak behind peak stretched along, with the buttresses of hills sloping down, all on this side looking white or yellow or pinkish in the sun. The dry side of the island was faintly marked by the dryness of the colour, for which I regretted that I had no pastel or chalk colours to imitate the powdering glare of the sun on the great surfaces, streaked with descending bands of a shade unnamable by our categories of colour. But we knew that all this resemblance to a desert was only for the distance; nearer by, the places we had been in were green or yellow-green. There was of course dry, yellow grass and seeds, and violet of dried bracken--the grey-violet of the ferns such as we had seen even in wettest Hawaii, but wherever any hollow gave a chance, no matter how small, there things grew green. In the nearer hills drier green marked the hollows, and modelled the surfaces; and by the shore the heavy green of mangroves lined the edges.

Thambone, Monday 13th.

Late that afternoon we had turned several points, and came to a halt with want of depth of water opposite the place we were going to stop at. Here we landed in a more inconvenient way than usual. We were pulled out in the gig a little way, then carried on the shoulders of the men to a shifting sandbank on which we walked or sank, as the case might be; then again embarked on native backs that were rough with curling hair, and again reached a mud flat of considerable length, framed with mangrove trees, along which we walked to the shore; this was drier, not washed over by the tide daily as the former, upon which I saw growing green, as if never covered by salt water, the first shoots of the mangrove. Its seeds are heavy and float point downward until they stick in appropriate soil. The flat near the shore was all covered with an efflorescence of salt, and caked and broken up by exposure to the sun. Ratu Joni (Johnnie) Madraiwiwi, who had come to meet us, showed us the little pits or hollows for collecting salt water and making salt; for we had come to the dividing place of the South Seas. Here people have made salt, unlike the Polynesians of the Eastern Seas; here they have baked earth for pottery--here they have used the bow and arrow--in these ways more civilized than their half fellows, who in other ways seemed so much less savage than they. But here, as you know, the races mix: the black is all through here: and strangely enough with the black are all sorts of arts, and a higher sense of ornament and decoration and construction.

For all this I have my own theories, but this is not the place to ventilate them, even if I liked theories, and you know that I detest them--if taken seriously.

Africa--“nigger” land--was certainly pictured where we landed. There were big causeways leading to the village--ditches all about--ditches surrounded many of the houses; and especially the rather inferior one, but the best, to which we went. Visions of mosquitoes came up, fortunately not realized to the extent which we had feared.

We sat in the house while _kava_ was being prepared and while the chant went on. I noticed how the beams of the roof were prettily ornamented with sennit, more than I should have expected from outside looks. Mr. Carew told me that people were brought from far and near to do this, who knew how, and that certain ones had certain patterns, that they could best do. (R. Joni did not quite agree to the fact of such a division of labour.)

The people here seemed rougher again, more like our mountain “devils,” and a queerer lot. They sat on the edge of the little ditch about the house, which on the other side was edged with enormous bushes of the Brugmantia Stramonium, whose long white flowers have in their manner of growing and shape something poisonous (according to my feelings)--as the plant has in reality. But the place had a general look of which the plants were not contradictory--the black dry mud, the little stream, if one can call it so, with patches of water ending in a ditch of caky mud, the withered grasses, the very low cocoanut trees all squatted together in a grove--the one solitary chunk of a peak cutting the long slope of hill to the north--the knowledge of the fact that here silly brutal-beastly heathenism was still rampant or rather creeping; that we would take prisoner this evening or to-morrow the hypocritical duffer who had been reviving it where we had seen the stupid little temple, to which he had allured women from hereabouts; all this seemed to hang together. This vicinity had been once, as the governor phrased it, the Rome of the “devil” worship and the place of revered places. Here probably then--for all their worship was an ancestor worship in reality--here was, therefore, the first landing of the people who gave the islands their character of Fijians, whether they were the first of all or whether they found others before them, who succumbed to them in some way or other. The good people here take remonstrance not too uneasily. Still certainly the next morning the governor gave them all a serious talk, and took great pains evidently to see that he was fully understood, as he sat talking with Mr. Carew and slowly and distinctly and with careful emphasis of voice and gesture spoke to the assembled representatives. Near him in a rather crushed attitude sat the gentleman who had been practising “devil” priestcraft--and he followed us on board, a sort of prisoner--that is to say, to answer to the charge of heathen practices at the next court, for which warrants had been made out. His punishment will be slight: three months’ imprisonment. The law is a native law, like many others, such as laws concerning adultery, that seemed to me rather excessively constructed; but there are no rules for laws that I know of, except that they should work. As some native said to Mr. Carew, “Well, if the man be not punished we shall beat him and perhaps kill him”--and it mattered not that he had not been guilty according to our view; he had been guilty according to theirs--viz.--his intentions had been discerned. But things are not everywhere the same in this regard. I recall a story I heard from Mr. Carew of a woman who had asked the punishment of some man because he had persuaded her one day to misbehave with him. She felt that something was wrong, and ought to be redressed anyhow.

Before this next morning’s episode, however, there was a dance in the later afternoon with much _tappa_, rolled around the performers, to be given afterward, and very long spears, and handsome weapons--and a very handsome show of attitudes. The smallness of the village place (_rara_) made the scene more of a picture, which I saw across the ditch framed in by the overhanging trees. In the evening there was talk before bed, though we were frightfully sleepy; I remember only a few things and indeed I repent me of having noted nothing of any previous talks I have listened to, for there is much to be learned always from desultory conversation, in the way of side lights and a sort of querying of one’s already formed notions. I learned, for instance, that the black gentleman who was restoring ancient superstition was a church member and communicant, though every one must have known more or less of his little ways, in a country where nothing can be hidden long. Two pretty stories were told of the lately prevalent belief (perhaps existing to-day) of the value of charms, in both of which young men, charmed by the priest against fire-arms, asked at once for a trial. In the first case, on a discharge a few feet off, the man hit “tumbled about the place an instant and died, being shot through the head.” The verdict was that the incantation had been conducted too rapidly, and that something had been forgotten, and the priest who had taken to his heels returned in safety. In the other, two youngsters, who were going to try the effect of the charm, in front of the chief’s (their father’s) house, were reproved by him. “I do not wish,” he said, “that one of my sons should die before my house; go and try it, if you like, at some armed station of the white man.”

The next day (Tuesday) we again proceeded on our way and with similar scenery about us, and in the late afternoon, we anchored off the place where Ratu Joni’s house is--on a hilly up-and-down place, to which swept down the spurs of the mountain, and which, close by, hung over the town apparently a high rock (Na Korotiki).

The frame of an old house on the beach made a curious little portico, or colonnade, in front of the path that led up to the Ratu’s house. There we spent that night and the following day. The house was one upon more European models--the eaves projecting so as to make a sort of verandah of the base or mound of the house, casements being fitted into the doors and filled with glass; there were a couple of tables with the books and odds and ends that we know of placed on them--chairs also, a luxury that is pleasant always after camping. R. Joni is a magistrate, speaks nice English, writes perfectly, and is just such a person as might seem to augur well for the future. He belongs not to this part of the country, but to Ba, and formerly, and not so far back, his family used to feed on this neighbourhood in more ways than one. His uncle was the great Thakombau (Cakobau), who became the greatest chief, if he was not always that, and who ended by making the country over to England: Thakombau himself, who died but recently, was more or less of a cannibal, certainly a terror; but he is so well known that I need not dilate upon a gentleman sufficiently put down in the books. He had, as I understood, hung R. Joni’s father, his own brother, in the public square many years ago with the belief that as hanging was a disgraceful mode of death with us, it might appear so to the natives. This notion was not a success. The natives who saw the scene applauded the behaviour and good fortune of a man, who, having to die, died publicly and formally in the public square “like a chief.” Ratu Joni had taught himself to read English; when a mere boy he was discovered by the governor reading a little book on Cook’s voyages, and since that, was helped and put forward until he has become this good sort of public officer.

Wednesday, July 15th.

There is hardly anything more to say of our last day, for the next was that of return: there was much idleness and looking at newspapers, etc., received there by Mr. Joski, who together with Mr. Berry had met us there by rendezvous, after their excursion of exploration down to the sea on leaving us. They had had a rough time of it. As it was, it was pleasant to meet them again, and our last days were gayer. Mr. Joski remained to make his way to the station whence we had drawn him three weeks before, Vunidawa. Mr. Carew was only to leave us within a few hours of Suva (on the Rewa). For after steaming along past cape and headland, in this closed sea, the long line of hills and mountains receding further back, as the lowlands of the Rewa came near, we came to a little headland and there took the boats, so as to make for the Rewa, get through it to its mouth, and there catch the steamer again, and thus avoid the tossing that she would have to undergo outside the reefs. Inside even there was much sway of waves, for the expanse is great enough to make a little sea.

The day was lovely. Beyond the blue sea, as if to be looked at, came up various islands of the group, clearly or faintly made out, stretching at intervals along the sea line, big or small, and sometimes sliding one behind the other.

It was a gay day--a cheerful end to our trip, which had just lasted three weeks; so that when we landed at Suva in the last twilight, just as the new moon lit up our path up the hill, the feeling of getting back to civilization was intensified by the ease of our return. For though all was not easy there was no real hardship--for no one can make rough climbing easy, even were it in Sussex or New York County--yet we had seen a part of the islands little visited, very much out of the way, and a former foothold of all that made Fiji a terror, the synonym of barbaric cruelty--the land of the Cannibal--the “Devil Country.”

EPILOGUE

Sydney N. S. W.

August 1st, 1891.

It seems strange, after a year of summer and of free air, to have come almost suddenly into city and winter, however mild. I am writing to you by a coal fire, in a room high up, to which I go by an elevator, and I hear outside, in the damp cool air, the sound of the cable tramway, and the rolling of hansom cabs. Two weeks ago, I was resting on the ground in straw huts among mountains, and looking at darkish old gentlemen, who had killed and eaten not so long ago friends and acquaintances of members of our party. One could not get enough of the air, and the heat was still part of our living.

Our South Sea days are over; in a day or two we bid good-bye to the open spaces and make for the Straits and Java. As Polynesia has faded away, the sadness of all past things comes upon me--that summer is gone--those hours and those islands which spotted great blue spaces of time and place will be merely memories for autumn.

Here it is winter--a colder one than those last warm mild days of Fiji. There a great peace, a great quiet was around us. We were high above the little town of Suva, with an enormous landscape of mountains seen over the spread of the beautiful harbour. In the day the light was tropical, the sky all blue and radiant, the mountains clear and distinct. Morning and evening the light became more like a memory of home with slight visions of Scotland in between. The clouds filled up the distance with dimness, the light of morning or evening hung behind and over them as if asleep. In such a repose of nature we passed our days as if preparing for the final close.

We were treated with great kindness; we had no hard time on board the steamer that took us away reluctant in mind, and slowly in a week’s time we dropped down to this colder latitude and into civilization in full blast. We saw the sky grow clearer and more washed; the sea lost its blue; we could almost believe that we were home again as we ended our trip. We had passed some of the New Hebrides, had passed part of a day outside of Anaityum, had seen the Isle of Pines like a shadow on the horizon, had looked in vain for the smoke or light of Tanna, and at the end of the week entered the long, complicated harbour of Sydney.

Steamships, steamboats, street cars, hansom cabs, hotels, theatres, Sarah Bernhardt playing, all as before.

Good-bye to brown skins and skies and seas of impossible azure. Good-bye to life in presence of the remotest past.

“On the knees of the Ogre I pillowed my head;
My feet followed safely the Path of the Dead;
With my brother the Shark God I lived as a guest,
And reached through the breakers the Isle of the Blest.

“I bathed in the sea where the Siren still sleeps;
The kiss of the Queen is still red on my lips;
My hands touched the Tree with the Branches of Gold;
I have lived for a season in the Order of Old.”

THE END

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

keep steadliy=> keep steadily {pg 101}

an ememy’s=> an enemy’s {pg 165}

that is has been=> that it has been {pg 345}

plantation af Atimaono=> plantation of Atimaono {pg 372}

or an odd unbrella=> or an odd umbrella {pg 444}

FOOTNOTES:

[1] “Alofa” means everything--hail, welcome, love, respect, etc.

[2] This is properly the “_guest house_” of the village.

[3] Of course we are not allowed to pay--this would not be “chiefy”--but we shall make a present some day.

[4] Mariner, whose book all should read, was kept a prisoner in Tonga about 1806, being one of the first white men there. His companions were killed--he contrariwise, like my father in Saint Domingo, was adopted by the great chief, and learned the language and all habits. On his escape and return he was carefully examined and investigated by the intelligent physician who wrote his book for him. He repeated every gesture of the kava just as it is to-day, the scientific man taking it down in an accurate way.

[5] Religion is a better word, as in Tongan before Christianity.

[6] The traitor is Judas; the hesitating judge is Pilate. When Mataafa’s men defeated the Germans, they cut off the heads of some of the Germans killed. When reproached by him for the act as barbarous, they indignantly appealed to David’s having cut off the head of Goliath, after having slain him.

[7] My adopted sister, the Queen of Tahiti, an island enormously changed by European influence and residence, complained to me of some young man--that his walk was insolent, out of keeping, like that of a person of importance by blood.

[8] Père Gavet complained to me of what he called the unreasonableness of Sir John Thurston, the high commissioner and English governor of Fiji, when the Catholic bishop, upon his canoe’s touching the shore of some Christian village, was carried up, canoe and all, into the public place or village green, Sir John interfered, and forbade its ever happening again. And I myself could not say that it was not a small discourtesy.

But this was the point, as Sir John told me: in the old Fijian habits such things were done for a sovereign chief, and for a political ruler; and since the Church had preached the division of the two authorities, such special homage should have been reserved for the civil and not the religious power.

[9] My South Sea companion, Mr. Henry Adams.

[10] Savaii, Hawaiki, Hawaii; apparently all Polynesians come from a place of the name. It is also a name for the Unknown World. Many islanders of the Pacific believe that this Samoan island is the ancestral Savaii. The Samoans themselves assume it to be so. The island holds the home of the Malietoa, for centuries a supreme chief, one of whose representatives is now king by treaty.

[11] _Taupō_, properly _taupou_, but I have written _taupō_ because the sound of the final _u_ is too difficult to render, and hardly discernible. It lengthens the sound like our _u_, but with a gentle breathing. You get it more or less in our taboo.

[12] Siva, not Sifa, as I said it at first, and yet she certainly pronounces it with more of an _f_ sound than our neighbours of this island. Still I give in to theory, as facts always must, for they have no one to back them, no principles, no money invested.

[13] Secondary chiefs; pronounce “yatowai.”

[14] Note on Limits: There is a good account in the small edition of the voyage of the _Duff_.

[15] Tiaapuaa, “drove of pigs,” was the name of certain trees growing along the edge of the mountain Moarahi. The profile against the sky suggested, and the same trees--or others in the same position to-day--as I looked at them, did make a “procession” along the ridge.

[16] The “cloak” of the family is the rain; the Tevas are the “children of the Mist.” Not so many years ago, one of the ladies of the family, perhaps the old Queen of Raiatea, objected to some protection from rain for her son, who was about to land in some ceremony. “Let him wear his cloak!” she said. And of course there are traditions of weather that belong to the family, that accompany it, and that presage or announce coming events.

[17] I understand by this, two of the hills that edge the valley.

[18] The inland mountain peak of the central island, which he could not see.

[19] “Le ciel tout l’univers est plein de mes aïeux.”

[20] In the other family at home, into which I was born, the distance back seems shorter. Oberea first saw the European ships while my grandfather was alive, and he must have read the first accounts carried out to Europe by Bougainville and Cook.

[21] The bird messenger repeats the places and names of things most sacred to the chief (as you will see further), his mount, his cape, his _marae_.

[22] To which the chief answers that he will look at his mistress’s place or person on the shore.

[23] Temanutunu means bird that lets loose the army.

[24] Vaeri Matuahoe (mud in my ears), a Tino iia (fish body) the double man, half man, half fish, recalls the god of the Raratonga who himself recalled to the missionaries the god Dagon.

[25] Stone foundation or base of house and space around it.

[26] The founder of the Pomaré, who later became great chiefs and then kings, by European consecration.

[27] Manea appears in Cook and in the accounts of the first missionaries. The detail escapes me, as I have no book just at hand, at this moment. I have a vague recollection of some slight scandal again in family matters, but missionaries were fond of tittle-tattle, like most people.

[28] The ditches or slopes, natural or otherwise, can be filled with sharp stakes and other cruel devices scattered among the trees so as to make a serious defence to any sudden attack.