Lolóma

Lolóma was full of wild dreaming imaginations. Her airy fancy had fed upon the romantic legends and ballads of her native land, and her belief in pixies, dreams, omens, and a whole world of Fijian impossibilities was as profound as her belief in the existence of the sun.

The fairy folk of Fiji are never so happy as when engaged in some sort of mischief. It has happened more than once, tradition says, that some of their number have been captured and detained as objects of worship by their captors, but everyone admits that to entrap them is one of the most difficult things in the world. Every wood, valley, hill, and mountain of Cannibal-land is alive with fairies, elves, imps, hobgoblins, and other children of the imagination. They are always represented as miniature creatures in the image of human beings. Some wear their hair hanging down their backs and trailing on the ground. Others have it lying over and completely veiling their faces, while not a few prefer it short, and keep it well oiled and powdered in imitation of an animal of a higher order than they. Many of these mannikins are exceedingly ugly-looking dwarfs of a remarkably ancient and shrivelled appearance. The country has its Titanias and Oberons and Robin Goodfellows in great numbers; but they never seem to be beautiful or attractive creatures. They present themselves only as ill-favoured, “shrewd, and knavish sprites.” They dress in leaves and flowers, and speak a language of their own. A large part of the lives of these fairies is spent in preparing and playing off all 49sorts of mischievous tricks. Their whole enjoyment, and perhaps their very existence, depends on

Once, so at least Lolóma told me, some wags took it into their heads to entrap a noted “Puck,” and if possible bake and eat him. The trap succeeded admirably. Puck was caught and covered up in a well-heated oven, made, as all Fijian ovens are, in the ground. When it was time to open the oven, a man, looking like the head cook of the party, came up, carrying in his hand a bamboo knife. This movement of the cook’s made it quite clear that everything was now ready for making a feast off the poor elf. So at least thought our wags, but not exactly so thought Robin himself. In his view, he was the last who should be served in that way. He hated cannibalism, as every real cannibal hated it, when it was to become a matter of personal experience, and he was doomed to be the eaten instead of the eater. When, therefore, the party began to uncover the oven, and the cook to flourish his bamboo knife, Puck’s voice was heard from the hollow of an adjacent tree, singing ironically, yet most jubilantly, what has ever since been known as one of the songs of Elfland:—

Nothing comes amiss to these troublesome little imps when pilfering is the work to be done. The fruit trees are stripped, the ladies’ reticules and other depositories of valuables are emptied of their contents; the hot yams just ready for the evening meal are snapped out of the crock, and the fish off the rack, to the utter heartbreaking of the poor women and the irrepressible wrath of their savage lords on their return from their planting, building, fighting, or games. The only explanation is, “’Twas done by the elves!”

50On the occasion of a family gathering one evening round the festive ^[3]kava-bowl, Lolóma undertook to relate a mysterious experience which had recently happened to her. “As I wandered with my playmates in the valley,” said she, “where the palm-tree bowls of nectar yields to quench the thirst of Koroivónu’s, warriors and the sacred vesi sheds its solemn shade, we heard the fairies mocking our speech. If we greeted each other with the daily salutation of ‘Good morning,’ we were sure to hear out of some tree close by ‘morning!’ Then, getting frightened, we shouted ‘The elves are coming,’ and they added to our terror by a quick, short call of ‘coming’! Following what I thought was the voice of one of my companions, I was led by the elfin tribe in roundabout ways until at last I was helplessly lost in the midst of thick forests and the blackness of night, and I heard the elfin choir merrily chanting—

“Suddenly a strange apparition appeared before me. Its form was that of a full-grown man, its aspect that of the ^[5]papalangis whom the minstrels fable. The creature looked kindly upon me, spoke a few words I could not understand, and vanished. Often have I visited the spot since, drawn by an irresistible fascination, but only once again did I catch a glimpse of the figure, which ascended a tree and disappeared.”

When the Princess had finished her recital there was hardly one of her superstitious auditory who did not believe that she had seen either the departed spirit of some mortal lingering about the scene of his earthly labours, as is the wont of Fijian 51spirits for some days before taking their flight to Hades, or else that the sprites had played her a trick and bewitched her senses.

The wise men, nevertheless, determined that it was a matter which must be seen to. It was arranged that on the following evening a few of Big-Wind’s courtiers should accompany her to the spot on which the apparition last appeared.

Lolóma duly communicated the plan to me, and I determined to declare myself a white man and trust to the friendship of the tribe, knowing that I should always have the good word of the chief’s daughter.

The eventful time arrived. Lolóma and a party of friends approached my hidden cave. I descended the tree unobserved, and suddenly broke upon their startled sight. They were surprised beyond measure at my appearance, but were delighted on finding that I could make myself understood in their language. I explained to them how I became an inhabitant of the country. They determined that I was a Kalou vulavula. They all expressed a strong desire to have a papalangi in the tribe, and I was hurried away to the town for the purpose of being presented to the King with as little delay as possible.

Crossing the ridge which commanded a view of the Tivóli valley, just after sunset, I came in view of the locale of the town.

I observed that the grove in which it was embosomed was all aglow with dancing lights. My first thought was that the inhabitants were coming out to meet me with lighted fire-sticks, and that the warlike demonstration boded me no good. My companions laughed heartily at my startled expression, for the illumination was that of fireflies, a common enough sight to them. Now I saw that the whole forest sparkled with myriads of winged starlets. Conducted by this gorgeous torchlight procession, whose glittering cohorts seemed to be as numerous as the sands of the sea, I cheerfully advanced, feeling assured that their bright companionship was a good omen.

52

Big-Wind took a great fancy to me. He was always pleased to have me talk to him as he lay on his mats, or accompany him in his walks abroad. Seen standing erect, he was a magnificent savage. His head of hair, from which a comb projected over his forehead, measured some forty inches 62round. A long train of white masi trailed behind him like a comet’s tail. A massive club rested on his shoulder, and he walked with a proud and haughty step which proclaimed his chiefly rank.

Cannibal chiefs are mostly men of fine build with naturally intelligent minds, not infrequently well-furnished with local knowledge of that practical sort so much needed by the lower classes of their subjects. They are the brains of the nation. All beneath them are the bones and muscles of it. The governing work they have to do places them high up in intellectual ability above the common people, just as the care and attention they receive, when children, in matters of diet, exercise, and rest, make them physically superior to their neglected serfs.

The heads of some of these men would be pronounced by phrenologists fine specimens of cranial architecture; and here and there may be seen a magnificent encasement of a more than commonly vigorous brain. But the eye, though often large and beautiful, spoils the man. As with Big-Wind, its ever-restless activity tells of an undisciplined and suspicious mind; of the daily waste of mental power in constant thought about everything, and effective concentration of thought on nothing. The true chief is, notwithstanding, wonderfully calm and self-possessed. Ruffle his temper if you can! If the test of good breeding is what Euripides says it is, that “A well-bred man may feel angry, but never show it,” the cannibal chief may be called the best bred man in the world. He will sit and listen to news of the most dreadful and melancholy nature, just brought, it may be, from various parts of his dominions; or he will witness some sudden and startling occurrence; or submit to be addressed by an impulsive foreigner in language the most offensive without shedding a tear, blinking an eye, or twitching a single nerve of his inexpressive countenance.

One day, while talking with Big-Wind, I observed that a messenger, burdened, evidently with weighty intelligence, came 63up, and seating himself on the ground, finished the respectful greeting due from him as the manner of Fijians is, by clapping his hands in slow and solemn style. Then, addressing his royal master, he said “Sir, I am come to inform you that death has fallen upon us, and your sister is gone.” I eyed the lordly savage scrutinizingly, but without discovering any emotion in his face. He coolly clapped his leg with his right hand. Then, turning to me, he continued the conversation he had previously been engaged in. This is characteristic of the race, but particularly so of the chiefs. To an Englishman their coolness is something distressing. At times, however, it displays itself to great advantage.

Once we were assembled on the public court ground of Turtle Town, 2000 strong, the occasion being the reception of an ambassador from a neighbouring tribe. We were all comfortably seated on the green sward, and the duties of the day were proceeding in a regular and orderly way, when suddenly, as if thrilled by an electric shock, a group of 200 persons sprang to their feet, uttering, as they did so, loud cries of “ah! ah! ah!” in rapid staccato, and accompanied with looks and gestures indicative of imminent danger. This was too much for the majority, who were ignorant of the cause, and the whole crowd rose in wild excitement to rush helter skelter into uncontrollable confusion, and perhaps a needless fight. One glance, however, at a little knoll which could not well be hid, turned aside this calamity. There sat a body of chiefs, perfectly cool and self-possessed, though equally in darkness with all but the 200 as to the cause of the stir. This act of the chiefs was an instantaneous and mighty rebuke; for it is an almost unpardonable offence in cannibal-land to stand in the presence of great chiefs at any time without leave, but more especially so when those chiefs themselves are seated. The calmness of the chiefs, therefore, with a shout or two from a stentorian voice of “down! down! your chiefs are sitting down,” brought the heaving mass of humanity to itself again. Whereupon the cause of all the disturbance 64was found to be that the 200 people who were seated opposite a grove of banana trees, had observed a man with a bow and arrows quietly trying to pass on his way under cover of those trees. The crowd, as in duty bound by its characteristically suspicious nature, rushed to the conclusion that what they saw must be the first act of some tragic and savage plot.

A chief seldom laughs—never in the presence of strangers or in counsel assembled. It would be unchiefly to do so. This virtue of not laughing is both well illustrated and encouraged by a tale of one Keelai, a spirit guarding one of the ways to the interior of the spirit-world. He is in truth an armed constable, a kind of Cerberus, though not of the canine species, whose duty it is to see that none but the spirits of chiefs of great distinction pass along that sacred road. But how shall he know a chief from a common man? for there are fine-looking men among the lower orders of Cannibal-land as elsewhere. According to Fijian reasoning, therefore, it would not be wrong to suppose that the spirits of such men are at least as fine as their bodies were, and for this reason not much inferior to the spirits of men of higher rank.

Keelai, however, is at no loss for an easy and eminently successful test. He is armed with a club, which, to the cannibal soldier, is of the most laughable shape imaginable. Who, that is acquainted with the arms of war, can look on that club and not split his sides with laughter? Thus armed, the boneless watcher is ever ready for duty.

Nor has he long to wait for the sound of a fresh footfall. It is the tramp of a spirit just freed from fleshy bonds. As the stranger draws near, Keelai steps out into the middle of the path to give the challenge. The paths in Fiji’s spirit-land are like those in Fiji itself, very narrow, and fit only for marching in single file, so that when two travellers meet, one must stand aside to let the other pass. Holding up in warlike attitude his ridiculous club, Keelai utters a wild laugh like the neighing of a spirited horse, and fixes his steady but fire-flashing eye on 65that of the new arrival. Should this candidate for immortality laugh, Keelai smites him down with a blow

But, if he presses boldly on, with a straight, stern face, and princely bearing, the officer steps out of his way and subsides.

The high-born chief is a perfect study. Whether you see him stretched on his cool, scarlet-fringed mat in dreamy and tropical laziness, smoking his cigarette, or out working in his garden planting taro and trimming banana trees, like one of his serfs; or strolling through the village or along the beach; or sailing in his favourite clipper canoe, often with the outrigger dangerously balanced just above the water, and scudding along like a flying-fish on nothing, to show you how cleverly he can sail without capsizing her; or in the presence of his subjects on some state occasion—in comparison with most of his countrymen you are bound to declare him every inch a chief. In national gatherings particularly it is impossible to mistake him, and almost equally impossible to counterfeit him. Good-looking, when out of their coating of red and black paint, good-tempered and chief-like as were many of these first-rank men, they nevertheless had in an exaggerated degree all the vices of feudal lords in general.

One of the most curious social customs of the country is that of the Vasu, or Nephew, who has the right of “requisitioning” the property of all to whom he is related. His influence is in proportion to the height of his position, which is fixedly his mother’s rank. If she were a lady of high station in her husband’s tribe, her children would be vasus of the highest order, but their power would be limited to that tribe. Whereas, if the mother were a lady of another tribe or kingdom, her children, though a shade lower as vasus, would yet have far more influence there than in their father’s tribe. According to the Fijian idea, the Prince Royal of Prussia, having taken to wife the Princess Royal of England, the children of the marriage are vasus to 66England; and the Prince of Wales, having married the Princess Alexandria of Denmark, the young princes and princesses are vasus to Denmark. This custom was a terrible tax on the people, as the following illustration will show.

Suppose a young lord of London marries a daughter of an old lord of Manchester, the children being vasus to Manchester, the eldest son takes the train one fine morning for the great northern city, and, after spending a few pleasant days there, goes back laden with any amount of wealth obtained from the rich manufacturers. How did he get it? Ex officio, by the simple exercise of his rights and privileges as their vasu. He went in and out boldly among his mother’s kinsfolk and townsfolk, putting his hands on this, that, and the other, taking the trouble to say as he did so, “mine, and mine, and mine.” When he reappeared at the West End, he was looked upon as not much inferior to Sindbad, the rich and lucky sailor. This state of things naturally ended in Manchester insisting on having vasus to London. Marriages were arranged with that view, and the evil was intensified.

A faint idea of how banefully this system worked in Fiji, may be got from the fact, that, of two great tribes, which, to avoid the use of savage names, may still be called London and Manchester, who tested this plan as completely as they were able, consistently with their absolutely selfish political economy, London, by hook or by crook, by diplomatic intrigue and quiet scheming, in which Fijian politicians are masters, succeeded in getting ten vasus to Manchester’s one.

It will thus be seen that this must have been one of the most destructive and savage instruments ever wielded in a savage land. There was not a man in the country who was the bona-fide owner of anything he presumed to call his own. This institution threw its meshes over every kingdom, tribe, family, and individual, and was often the fruitful source of deep-laid plots, dark assassinations, wholesale massacres, and prolonged wars, together with all their concomitants and consequences—fresh 67roots of bitterness, new wounds to carry the corruption forward, and wrath treasured up for other days of wrath.

It happened, however, that the institution of the vasu proved of signal service to me in time of need.

When outdoor amusements were not attractive, the warm house, though smoky, and the comfortable mat never failed to bring together a goodly company of young and old, who, sitting around the man of best memory and talking powers, would listen hour after hour to stories of bygone days, the miraculous doings of gods, the marvellous exploits of great heroes, theories, proverbs, omens, &c.

Often as I have sat listening to a Fijian talking of omens, tokens, auguries, &c., in his dark hut, where flashes of light ever and again flare through the gloom and smoke, like spirits rushing to and fro between this and the other world, have I thought of the words of our own poet—

Presages of all kinds of events and of fortune’s endless changes are to be met with in great numbers in every part of cannibal-land. What with sounds heard in the night—soft, ghostly hands touching sensitive bodies during sleep—animals running about in a wild and excited state—birds coming out of the woods at unusual seasons—fish springing out of the water and striking a canoe, or any of its passengers—dreams—strange lights hovering over graves—a first failure in any new enterprise—shooting 68stars—comets—various appearances in the western sky at sunset, and, as with other races,

one never need be at a loss to find something clearly ominous of something else.

Riddles, enigmas, and verbal conceits were always forthcoming when asked for in the cannibal hut, where the inmates would often chat long and pleasantly to while away the time. Now an old grey-headed man, glorying, as almost all old men do glory, in the golden days that have been, would open his mouth in parables, or tell long tales of great chiefs, who ruled the land as only they could rule it, and sailed fast canoes as none but they ever sailed them before or since. Or, if such subjects were thought too long and tedious, someone else would produce from his fruitful brain a lighter literature—a sort of “after-dinner talk.”

One evening I was lying full length among a number of dusky forms in the chief ambassador’s cottage. The subject of a recent village scandal had been well threshed out, and the silence which followed had been much too long. At last there was a stir, and an evident waking desire for talk, so a voice began—

“There’s a path that leads to no home. What is it?” Everybody tried, and of course, if only for courtesy’s sake, everybody “gave it up.” “It is the path of the traveller travelling, a stranger in strange lands!”

“The longing eye—whose is it?” Answer.—“The dog’s, looking and longing while we eat.”

“There is a wind that blows for many years without stopping, but at last there comes a lull—it stops—and a world falls. What wind is it that blows? and what is the world that falls when that wind ceases to blow?” Answer.—“The wind is the breath of man, and the world that falls is man himself.” A thought like this picked out of a savage mind is a poetic gem.

“We have just buried some old men, who, however, will ere long come back to us again, fresh and youthful. If you cannot 69unravel the matter, I will.” It was Long-Emptiness, the Court fool, who proved to be the intellectual Samson of the evening, who spoke. “Do you not know,” said he, with an air of triumph, “that we are just back from burying a lot of old yams, which six months hence will come to us again as young ones?”

Cannibal-land is not over rich in proverbs, or, if they can be said to abound in it, they are, for the most part, either far-fetched or unclean. One or two will suffice to show the character of this class of cannibal literature.

“Scratch, but do not cry, said the cat to the dog, who was getting the worst of it.” The meaning of which is, Do not be such a coward as to call others to help you, thereby involving them in your squabbles.

“Eat but drink not,—drink but eat not.” Good advice at meals, well attended to by the Fijians.

“Rest is better than food.” The over-worked man declines to eat until he has rested.

“Our greatest earthly treasures—what are they? Food and sleep.” True cannibal philosophy for both worlds.

“The source of all chopping power is the stomach.” This is one of the greatest articles in the creed of all canoe-builders and cannibal carpenters in general. The carpenters have the credit of invariably talking about being well fed. This must be a well understood clause in every contract made with them. Often, when the employer happens to be present, the artisan may be heard talking quite philosophically with his comrades on the great question of the “origin of power,” and the answer is as given above. The more civilised artisan of other countries will probably feel little inclination to find fault with philosophy of this practical and commonsense character, although it comes from a dark-skinned and savage “brother-chip” in the South Seas. For who could work in a tropical sun, or out of it either, without food, and plenty of it? Not, certainly, the vegetarian “brown man” of Polynesia, who has not strength of spirit enough to force himself to any lengthened physical endurance.

70The conversation, of which the foregoing is the substance, had aroused the drowsy company to a little more intellectual activity, and Shark, the priest, struck in with some remarks on a more abstruse subject—the question of the eternity or non-eternity of the universe. This is what he said thereanent:—

“The land is waiting for the water; both the land and the water are waiting for the sky; one cannot pass away without the other. Therefore, when one goes, all the others go with it.”

For savage philosophy this is not so bad. The next remark of the priest’s is not so good; but it will help to show how imagination in the cannibal brain employed itself on objects which it could not understand.

“When the sun is drowned (i.e. set), he goes down to the spirit-world to enlighten the lands and people there. So, when it is day there it is night here, and vice versa.”

The following theory, propounded by the same authority, will have to be revised or thrown away as false science—as false as that of the ancients which taught that the earth was firmly planted on the back of an elephant, &c.

The tides are caused by a great fish in mid-ocean, alternately drinking and vomiting up the water. While he drinks the tide ebbs, even till all the flats and reefs are dry, at which crisis the converse operation begins. The fish ejects from his mouth all the water that has passed through it. The tide is now turned, the reefs gradually become covered, the rivers rise, it is high tide; or, as our ecclesiastical friend put it, “the lagoons on the giant’s back are full of water, and the fishermen may sail up and down here in their double canoes.” Thus for ever does this wonderful fish keep at the post of duty.

In respect of tides there is a belief among the natives that the wood-pigeon is never heard cooing at either high or low tide; nor is any human being ever known to die, but at one or the other of those times. In cases of sickness where the patient is sinking, and all hope of recovery has died out in the hearts of watching friends, it is quite common to hear the announcement 71that “the spirit will depart at the next low tide;” that passed and the person still alive, “he will not die till the high tide.” And so on, a crisis happening at each change of tide, until death closes the scene or hope revives.

Some of the fables of cannibal-land are not mere useless compositions without point or moral in them, but often teach, in their rough and inelegant way, valuable lessons. The following from the lips of Centipede, who, on this particular night, had the monopoly of this part of the conversational entertainment, teaches practical benevolence as clearly and forcibly as our own “Love me—love my dog.”

“Our teeth will be covered with blood to-day,” said a lean and hungry dog in a tete-à-tete with an equally gaunt and hungry cat. “Why?” asked puss, probably thinking there was a prospect of a good meal of flesh. “Because,” said her canine friend, “although there is plenty of fish, those long posts will be sure to eat it all up, leaving you and me nothing but the bones.” The long posts are the human masters and mistresses, who on hearing this fable ought never again to treat their dogs or servants as though they never had any appetite, or enjoyed only the leavings of others.

“I’ll stay and take care of the foundation,” said the snake who would gladly have escaped from the burning house, but could not because the flames were too fast for him. This is our “fox and the grapes” over again, but with this important difference, that the snake was burnt, whereas the fox had only to walk off without the grapes.

In the following we come upon resurrection gleams:—“The Moon and the Rat talked together of death. ‘Let us all die like me,’ said the Rat, ‘run our course, die therein, and have done with it.’ ‘Nay,’ answered the Moon, ‘let us all die like me—run our course, and die in it, but after a little while appear again!’” Unhappily the rat’s proposal was adopted. In this fable the cannibal notion as to a resurrection is briefly dealt with and dismissed. There is, indeed, little or nothing in any 72of the mythologies pointing to a belief in a bodily resurrection.

Here we have a fable which points at the numerous class of persons who would have us “do as they tell us—not as they do.”

“The great and little fish once called a monster meeting to consider the best thing to be done to escape or get rid of the new danger which had lately made its appearance below water, and snatched away so many of their friends and kinsfolk. The new danger complained of was a baited fish-hook^[7] which a fish of another sort was always letting down from above. After many large and small fry had told their minds, one Rakasalah, who must have been a very important fish in his own eyes if no where else, darted forward and delivered himself thus:—‘Fellow fishes! let me tell you a bit of my mind. When the hook comes down be sure you never bite it; swim wide of it, and your lives will never be snatched away!’ The words were hardly out of his mouth when down came a bait, which Rakasalah darted at with the swiftness of lightning, and, without even the slightest precautionary nibble, bolted hook and all. Of course he was hooked up into another world—one much less conducive to his health than that in which he delivered his last oration. The last thing he ever heard from his own land was, not the deafening applause of his fellow-fishes, which would have charmed his ear had he been consistent, but their angry scoffing shout—‘Behold the fish that told us not to bite the bait, and was the first to swallow it all himself!’” From this fable is derived the proverb “He preaches like Rakasalah, the fish.”

As I listened to the following tale given with some others of a similar character by Flag, the King’s herald, I thought involuntarily of the “Green Isle,” and the “Blessed St. Patrick.” There are neither parrots nor pine trees on the island of Ono. This Ono was once the abode of a powerful hero who was great in arms and in jealousy. One day a parrot, in a pine tree near his house, kept up a continual chatter, chattering away as only 73parrots can. The jealous god, influenced by but one idea, and that as “cruel as the grave,” rashly concluded the voice to be that of some hero like himself, come perhaps from another island to pay his addresses to the lady whose heart was already bestowed on him. This thought overpowered him and forced him to an act of folly. Dashing furiously at the pine tree he tore off one of its branches, and chased therewith the beautiful bird, shouting as he drove him from the shores of the island, “Begone! flee! avaunt! and never show your colours again this side of the water!” Since that fatal day the soil and air of Ono have been unfriendly alike to pine trees and parrots. No sooner are they landed there than they die.

Conjurors’ tricks formed a common source of amusement when idlers were gathered together, though in the minds of the priesthood they were regarded as powers to excite the fears and command the homage and obedience of the simple and weak-minded. Nearly all the priests gained and kept public patronage by juggling tricks, many of which were akin to those performed at English fairs and by street conjurors. One cannibal juggler would drink large draughts of cocoanut oil, swallow uncooked giant beans, eat fire, and chew the ends of trumpet-shells, while the astonished lookers-on shouted their plaudits or sat trembling in every limb at what to them appeared to be horrible realities. One great magician lives in the poetry of his country, because he possessed a spear that would spring into life at his bidding. With this living spear, glowing as if on fire with the life that was in it, he would go forth and hush the roaring of the waterfalls!

The cannibal poets, though unacquainted with anything like the “Seven Ages” of human life as pictured for us by our own Shakespeare, have nevertheless sketched fairly enough “Four Ages” in the following enigmatic and pictorial way, as I gathered from my garrulous friend Long-Emptiness, who always contributed largely to the general amusement at social gatherings.

“There is a little animal which at sunrise, and for a short 74while afterwards, has but one leg. As, however, the sun climbs upward, he gains four legs. Presently, when the sun is a little higher, and begins in good earnest his course towards mid-heavens and the west, this strange creature returns to the use of two legs! This may be said to be the longest and best stage of all. Then—

when the sun, or ‘Eye of Day,’ as the language poetically calls it, prepares to go down to enlighten the inhabitants of the spirit-world, and the wind spoken of before is abating, and a world is about to fall, this wonderful animal may be seen hobbling along on three legs.”

Though Englishmen would be ashamed to give this up, our cannibal fire-side company of minds more opaque, or hurrying off to dreamland, did so without a single mental effort; whereupon Long-Emptiness, assuming the air of the only wise savage present, ended the night’s amusements by thus untying the knot:—

“The little animal I have been telling you of is man, who for some time after his birth cannot move—he does nothing but lie still on the mat. This is the one-leg stage in man’s life. After a while the infant begins to crawl on all fours. This, clearly enough, is the four-leg era. But when the sun rises higher in the sky, the being which a few weeks ago could only travel by means of hands and knees, finds, after many falls and hair-breadth escapes, that he can stand sublimely on his feet. He has now entered on the two-leg stage. As, however, the sun goes to his setting, i.e., as man’s life wanes, ‘two-legs’ begin to tremble;—they can do duty no longer without the help of a third leg. ‘Give me my walking-stick,’ says the tottering old man, who now feels that he is come to the last stage of his earthly existence, even that of three legs. All beyond

75The close resemblance of the foregoing to the riddle the Sphinx propounded to Œdipus will be noticed. The Fijian author, however, had no inspiration from the white man. The similarity is another item in support of the theory that all these mythologies have a common origin, and that the Fijians were once in communication with Asiatic races.

You may talk till doomsday to a genuine old cannibal about the greatness of your country and the littleness of his, before he will show the slightest sign of yielding any credence to your story. However truthful and astonishing may be your tales, he soon recovers from the effects they have produced on his imagination, and turns to say something of his own land, of which he is truly proud, and in which he thinks there will be no difficulty in finding things as great and surprising as you have found in yours. Tell him all you know, show him everything you have brought with you, do something which in his eyes shall appear to be, what he will not hesitate to call it, the work of a God; but having done all this, you will find him obstinately clinging to the one simple, yet natural enough idea, that his land is not to be despised after all, nor, indeed, is it to be thought second to that of any curious foreigners who may find pleasure in interviewing him. Tell him of one of the many wonders of civilisation, and, if it strike his fancy, or if he has some hidden object in view for doing so, he will become quite demonstrative as you proceed; he will clap his hands, snap and bite his fingers, shake them as if he had just burnt them in the fire, make clicking noises with the tongue and roof of the mouth, 76pour forth a shower of interjections, in which his language is rich, and finally declare himself dumb in your presence, and be careful to remain so, as if your tale had suddenly benumbed his brains, and paralyzed his tongue. This is the impression he gives you, but it is not the correct one, for presently awakening as from a dream or reverie, in which his memory had been at work, recalling something learnt in younger days, and coming to the conclusion that you have no more “lions” to show, he will begin to conjure up one, at whose proportions, as they slowly emerge from the mist of his wordy speech, your own quickly subsides.

Assembled one evening with a large company in Big-Wind’s house, the conversation had flagged. The dull light from a wick in a pan of cocoanut oil shed a faint sickly glare on the prostrate forms of the King’s courtiers, many of whom were already asleep, when Lolóma begged me to tell them the story of Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, with which I had greatly interested her on a former occasion. I recited the Arabian legend to the best of my ability, drawing on my imagination for some details of the original which I had forgotten, and when I had finished there were loud approving calls of “Vinaka! Vinaka!”^[8] The King was so pleased that he directed three pigs to be presented to me.

This put on his mettle Trumpet Shell, the tribal minstrel, who considered that he was entitled to a monopoly of this line of business, and he proposed to relate the story of Prince Hightide and his Leviathan Canoe, an ever-welcome legend in verse, which the company were never tired of hearing.

The tribal minstrel in Fiji is a remarkable character. He is at once the historian and poet of his people. Every clan can boast a bard of some sort, and the office is held in high honour. On subsequently comparing three versions of Prince Hightide in their different dialects, I regarded their remarkable agreement as matter for surprise, especially when it is remembered 77that they were never reduced to writing by the natives, but were preserved only in the memories of a few old poets or teachers of poetry. Such old men are very scarce in the present day. Here and there one may yet be found, but not many days hence the “Lay of the last Minstrel” will be sung for the last time. Already it has become a rare thing to hear a really old song. That simple race who in Fiji wasted “their toil”

though not, perhaps, so often or with as much intellectual enjoyment as Scotia’s bards—in a few more years will have passed away for ever.

The poets of Fiji were not necessarily either chiefs or common men. The really popular poets were doubtless “poets born.” Such men were greatly appreciated by all ranks of society, but were patronised mostly by great chieftains, who were able to pay for the luxury of poetry and the honour of encouraging it. There were poetesses too, but they were never a numerous class.

The poet was not a man to be neglected or treated with contempt. He was a being possessed of far higher abilities than those of ordinary men. The poet of the day in any tribe required at least a house which was always to be considered as sacredly set apart for his own particular use. This abode was regarded in a very special sense as the “poet’s corner.” His turbans and ornaments were hung here; and in no other place in the land did he ever expect to get such gracious visitations from the muses. When required to compose a poem and teach it—for his duty not infrequently included both—those demanding of him a song never came to his temple empty-handed, but laden with gifts of various sorts, and wearing sweet-smelling garlands. The interview with his patronising visitors over, he would fix a time for beginning the arduous task. As soon as the appointed season arrived, he would enter his sacred room to sleep and dream, and dream and sleep, until the song, or principal parts of it, had dawned on his internal consciousness. At this stage 78he would rise and go forth to some solitary spot where, all alone, he would train his “imagination to body forth,” more clearly, “the forms of things unknown,” then

Having accomplished this, he had yet to compose a tune for the words that were soon to move his countrymen to tears or laughter.

It was held by some sagacious cannibals that while the poet slept, his spirit, freeing itself from the flesh, wandered abroad to find and court the muses. Others believed that the gods sometimes suggested pictures, and dictated to the poet’s mind the words to paint them with, the poet himself making hardly any effort at composition. If any part of a poem thus divinely whispered, proved too difficult for the comprehension of poet or people, the bard was sure to lay the blame on his god who was the real author, and therefore the only party responsible. If we accept the poet’s decision, the gods of Cannibal-land have an enormous weight of such responsibility to bear, inasmuch as great numbers of the old compositions are, of all the mysteries of cannibal poetic art, the most mysterious. Not a few of Fiji’s verse-makers did their work by dint of, for them, long-sustained and arduous mental effort. The author of the song of Prince Hightide and his Monster Canoe, must be ranked with this number of laborious workers. Others depended very much on fasting for the more easy production of what they were pledged to supply. Perhaps, however, the notion having the strongest hold on the popular mind, was that the spirits of great poets were permitted to visit that State of the spirit-world known to the people as the “State of Music and Song,” and to bring to earth some of the choicest things sung in that delightful place. To the poet it mattered little where or by what means the song was obtained, so long as it gained the public favour, and its supposed author the public pay. In the best days of the cannibal poets there were songs which so won their way, 79and gained for themselves such a wide popularity, that voyages were made from the most distant places to obtain them. Trumpet Shell was a very good specimen of his class, and he delivered his lay,—the theme of which was this wonderful canoe and her still more wonderful captain,—with excellent effect.

It being impossible to give the reader anything like an intelligible translation in verse, of the song referred to, it must take the form of a tale in prose. Without doubt it is Cannibal-land’s greatest story, if not its best poetic composition.

I gathered from the poet’s few first words, that the Ebbtide was a monster canoe, in fact, the greatest ever known; and that her captain, Prince Hightide, was a mighty giant and hero-god. The poet, unfortunately I think, tells us not one word about the building of this enormous vessel, but begins her history at the moment when her builders declare her to be ready for launching. This is a great point with the poet, who forthwith proceeds to show that those wise and wonderful builders have, for certain, either woefully over-calculated the needful degree of human muscle and bone power, or undercalculated the size and weight of their big ship. It is quite possible, and even probable that they did both, for such calculations are entirely outside of the range of Fiji’s mathematical science.

This much, however, is clear, that when the day arrived for launching the Ebbtide, she could not be moved from the stocks or rollers, notwithstanding the application to every part of her at once, of

In this fix a whole tribe of soldiers was brought up to add its strength to that of the people now weary with trying. These united forces all tugged and pushed and shouted, and pushed and tugged again and again, but to no purpose. After these repeated failures, another tribe was added to the human engine, and more rollers were placed under the vessel; but in spite 80of everything, she remained like a rock, planted where she was. This was quite beyond endurance; and the humiliating and piteous cry arose that, for once, men had built a canoe they could not launch,—doomed not to be wrecked at sea, or laid up to decay on land after long and honourable service, but to rot on the very spot where her builders laid her down, and whence they had no power to make her budge an inch.

In this dilemma it was proposed to report progress, or non-progress rather, to the god-descended hero, Prince Hightide, for whom this monster of the deep was built. With this suggestion, ends the first act.

While the reporters are gone to picture this unpleasant state of things to the Prince, a word or two may be said about this great personage.

Prince Hightide was a son of Dengeh, king of gods and men. He has, therefore, always stood very near the top of the line of aristocratic deities. His courage was thought to be many degrees above that of earth’s bravest sons; nothing could daunt it; while the resources of his massive mind, being vastly superior both in number and power to those of all his rivals, placed him well nigh beyond the possibility of being defeated by any difficulty. At the mere waving of his right hand all puny tribes would stand aghast! If he could not accomplish his designs in one way, he would in another. Now, he would assume the form of a goddess, anon, that of some animal, or even fruit or vegetable, sooner than give up what he had set his mind on doing. In the legends he is spoken of as the great patron of song, and is sometimes called The Singer. But his monster canoes, more especially the one now to be launched, and his own gigantic strength, have placed his fame high up out of the reach of every other aspirant after greatness in Cannibal-land.

At the time of the departure of the builders’ messengers to report the failure of all their attempts to launch this latest wonder, the Prince was living in easy style a little distance inland, but there was no keeping him there now that he knew the 81true position of things. Up he rose, and went down calmly, but determinedly, to the scene of action, where he surveyed with a sneer the ponderous thing that had balked the world. Then he stepped forward, and, after giving the canoe a few smart raps with his broad hand, as the manner is when getting canoes into the water, causing her to sound like a drum, or Chinese gong of unheard-of size—he put his own “shoulder to the wheel,” and shouting the usual shout, “ee!—oh!—yah!—eh!” as if expecting all to help on hearing the last syllable, he, of his own strength, sent the Ebbtide at full speed over the rollers, dashing and splashing into the sea,

Here the poet drops the curtain on the second act in the history of the Ebbtide.

The largest canoes of modern Cannibal-land, i.e., Cannibal-land as known by the white man, had but one mast, which consisted of two parts spliced, or bound together with sinnet. But the Ebbtide, as the poet goes on to say, had three masts, namely, a “main,” a “main-top,” and a “main-top-gallant.” The first was made of a wood commonly known in Fiji as the “Fiji pine;”^[9] the second of a harder and darker wood;^[10] and the third of the most highly valued wood in the country.^[11] Now the mainmast was so high that from its top the land near which the canoe lay at anchor looked somewhat hazy. From the “main-top,” a spectator could look right over the mountains of Viti Levu (Great Fiji), and see, eighty miles away, the island of Kandávu looming darkly up in the south. While, stranger yet, from the “main-top-gallant-mast,” all the flats and lowlands, that before lay hid immediately behind the above-named mountains, came into full view.

Before a canoe-sail can be hoisted to its proper place, a sailor must climb the mast, carrying with him the halliard, which he 82passes through or over the mast-head. To do this on the Ebbtide would be a thing utterly beyond the power of the weakling climbers of modern times. And even in those days, when giants and god-strengthened men were by no means few, Prince Hightide, believing that for such a task one free man was worth two pressed men, thought it prudent to appeal for a volunteer. “Who will climb to the main-top-mast-top?” shouted the noble prince, and paused for a reply.

“Not I,”—said one of the small-canoe men, aside,—“I know only work on deck, my lads, and there I can serve ten bows.” Meaning by this last statement that he could keep ten of the enemy armed with bows and arrows, pretty fully employed.

The climbing had to be done, however; thus much was settled in the Prince’s brain beyond a doubt; as was this also, that as difficulties arise the men to battle with, and overcome them, will always be forthcoming. The numerous crowds of powerful sailors that now were gathered on the deck of the Ebbtide could not be without a man equal to the emergency of the hour. The poet here introduces us to that man. He was but a stripling, when compared with his great captain; but, in comparison with ordinary men, he was a man of might, being a “chip of the old block,” and brother of the Prince. He was known on board as the “Bat-o’-the-top-mast-head,” on account of his wonderful climbing powers, and his prehensile ability, which placed him side by side with the flying-fox, with whose habits and flesh the natives are perfectly familiar.

When this god-possessed giant sailor sprang from the crowd and clasped the mast with his hands, at the same time pressing the soles of his feet firmly against it, and curving his back outwards from it, in the true Fijian climbing attitude, quite a scene took place. The climber’s mother rushed forward to stop him from his foolhardy attempt, which she looked upon as the act of a madman. When her maternal fury was at its sublimest height she discharged at him volley after volley of the hardest epithets to be found in cannibal vocabularies. Such epithets 83are neither few nor weak. Then, as, a blighting climax, she told him that he was but a “baby,” in proof whereof she called all present to witness that the eruptive disease, which almost without exception afflicts young Fiji from 1 to 3 years old, was not yet dry on him!

Few minds could have stood this without recoiling. But the woman’s eloquence and impassioned manner failed utterly. She could not convince him that youth was incompatible with climbing ability. Indeed, he did not stay to ask whether it were or no; “for,” says the bard, “while his mother was yet speaking, he was gone; not climbing, but literally running up the mast!” And there was every reason why he should run, for the journey was not to be done in a day, as we shall presently see. The poet would have us not forget that this brother of Prince Hightide was distinguished by the possession of many powers besides that of climbing, one of which was a marvellous keenness of sight. His eyes could discover small objects hundreds of miles away! But let us follow the climber up the mast; or, better still, remain while he climbs, with the sailors on deck, who, in the meantime will continue sculling the vessel out to sea.

At the close of his first day’s work, the “Bat-o’-the-top-mast-head,” says, “I climbed, and climbed, and climbed all day. When at last I halted to rest and look about me, I saw that, far down on the tops of the screw-pine hills, and lower yet, it was blowing furiously. The iron-wood trees were bowing and falling before the wind, which, to our canoe, was only as a calm.”

At sea, and in a storm, there is nothing like cheerfulness, except calmness. These two should always go together at such times. Who does not like to hear the cheery song of our own jolly English tars, mingling with the noise of many waters and the roar of the hurtling gale? The cannibal sailor had his sea songs too, numbers of them.

Our model climber, now a day’s journey up, hidden in the thick darkness, with the storm howling beneath him, would not 84allow himself to feel lonely, but sang out into the night one of the cannibal-seaman’s songs, the chorus of which, delivered of course as a solo, was clearly heard on deck; as, indeed, it was intended to be, for the purpose of encouraging the hard-worked men who were kept propelling this floating island of a canoe, with their heavy sculls. He sang this chorus over and over again, without weariness, as Fijians only can sing a couplet, for half a night and longer, at a sitting, enjoying it more the last time than when they began. Why, a foreigner can hardly guess, for often the words seem to him to contain no meaning. But hark to the “Bat-o’-the-top-mast-head:”

Whereas, it was blowing half a hurricane at the time. But what was that to a big ship and brave hearts? “Only a calm!” The “land is calm,” is the true Fijian nautical way of saying the “sea is calm” and “there is no wind.”

The second day our young hero continued his journey upward. Likewise the third day, and thus on for ten days! At intervals he would stay his climbing, and directing his telescopic eye toward some remote part of the Archipelago, report what he saw. Once he appeared to lose some of his calmness. It was on discovering far away an assembly of chieftains feasting delightfully on the fat of the land! “Oh,” said he, “how much I longed to be there! At other such rests, he would declare himself able to see places which we now know to have been at least 250 miles off; out where, as other two lines of his express it,

It was all but as bad where the Ebbtide was, but what matter? What sea could make her roll or pitch? So his unfaltering voice would come down again from the clouds, refreshing the weary hearts on deck, with a

85At length, on the tenth day, he reached the “top-mast-head,” where, as the poet puts him before our imagination, he is somewhat nearer the moon and stars than he had ever been before. Now he passed the halliard over the mast-head, and at once announced his intention of dining with those heavenly bodies before beginning his downward trip to join his captain and comrades on deck. Here the poet once more drops the curtain, and leaves us to picture for ourselves this banquet in the celestial sphere.

As the curtain lifts, we see that the climbing and sculling have ceased. The poet now proceeds to show that, when the order to hoist sail was given, all hands on board, giants though they were, failed in every attempt. And so again when men’s hearts began to lose all hope, Prince Hightide came to the rescue; and with one Samsonian pull of his prodigious arm, sheeted home that sail of measureless expanse; thus giving to the world another proof of his god-like strength, and making more than ever clear his claim to a high position in the first rank of the aristocratic gods of Cannibal-land.

No sooner was the sail up than into the water went a hundred steering oars at one splash. This is the only steering apparatus the Fijian was practically acquainted with. The number of steering oars, or long, heavy blades, which they resemble, necessary for canoes of these later and puny days, varies from one to six, but seldom more than two are needed.

But the Ebbtide would not answer her helm with a hundred at work. So down went another hundred; but with no better result. Then a third hundred, but the vessel was still in the wind. Now was the order given for hundred after hundred to be added to the number, which soon rose to one thousand; and still the awful sail was shaking and flapping against the mast! At this juncture it was no small comfort to know that the Prince had always some power in reserve, equal to any and every emergency that might arise. And it is interesting to note how our unknown poet displays his skill, both in the creation 86of emergencies for the exercise of the Prince’s wisdom and power, and in making him ‘bide his time,’ till the moment when he is most wanted at the front. A thousand rudders in the water, and the unwieldy craft is as disobedient and unanswering as ever! Here his Royal Highness rose—his countenance all aglow with unwavering confidence in the omnipotence of mechanical power—“Bring aft the rudder with a thousand oars;” shouted the god. The order was no sooner given than executed. The instant this most mysterious piece of machinery splashed into the sea, the sail filled; and away swept the glorious Ebbtide on her first voyage to the Friendly Islands, where we must follow her. Now the curtain falls, until we discover her in the land of the red man.

Where the poet got his idea from, of a “rudder with a thousand oars,” branches, tongues, divisions, or whatever they may be called, no native mind has been able to tell us. No steering machine like it has ever been heard of by Fijian sailors of modern days anywhere but in this great song.

We are driven therefore to the conclusion, that it must have had its origin in the imagination of the poet, who, thinking of the divisions in fishes’ tails, invented a rudder with a thousand such divisions.

Arrived off Tongatabu, in the Friendly Islands, all the islanders gathered on the shore to see this wonder from Fiji. “But,”—says our historical bard, in order to give us a notion of the canoe’s carrying capacity,—“the whole population of Tonga was small in comparison with the number of passengers and crew on the Ebbtide.”

The noble prince remained on board till the great Tongan chieftains came off to pay their respects, which they soon did, and gave him a hearty invite to become their guest. Some difficulties now occurred on the question of accommodation on shore for the giant captain, and his countless company of giant attendants. The Tongan Chiefs were asked what number of “strangers’ houses,” or as we should term them, “hotels,” were 87ready. On being told that twelve commodious places were waiting for occupants, the visitors were bold enough to advise that these should be pulled down, and that with the materials, and others in addition, an immense palace should be erected for the sole use of Prince Hightide, the giant-god and wonder worker from the Kingdoms of Fiji. The suggestion was at once acted upon, but to the infinite amazement and awe of the Friendly Islanders, the palace was far too small for its intended tenant. Now the poet rises to his highest efforts in exaggerated description. It is this very exaggeration which leads to the discovery that the poet’s hero is, in all probability, some great natural phenomenon.

In further sketching the terrible captain, the bard says that he was in the habit of going down on his hands and knees, and placing his head only in the palace for shelter.

With no better hotel accommodation than this, the rest of his body was, of course, exposed to sun and storm. While in this position during wet weather, the rains that fell collecting in the hollow of his back and between his shoulders, formed an extensive lagoon, where the people went to catch fish and turtle, and double canoes went sailing up and down.

As the day drew near for the departure of these awful visitors, the Friendly Islanders made such a farewell festival as had never before been known throughout the length and breadth of their land. Among many things too numerous to be named, not fewer than 2000 pigs were served up, but only to be laughed at aside by the guests, who knew too well that the eating capabilities of their captain were in proportion to everything else done by him, which was always on a scale so large as to utterly dwarf the greatest achievements of lesser mortals. The parting came at last, however, and by no means too soon for the generous Friendly Islanders, who, as the last act of courtesy, and to save the credit of their nation, filed out by hundreds, headed by their chief, and presented their parting offerings, which, in Cannibal-land, are called “The-sending-away.” These presents 88consisted of two monster bales of native cloth, each containing 20,000 yards. This cloth was for the princely captain, who, on being dressed therein, in Fijian fashion, took the whole 40,000 yards round him, and, even then, was declared to be but poorly dressed, for as yet he had no train. More, however, was not to be had of the good people of the Eastern Isles; so the god and his people and monster canoe returned to Cannibal-land, the canoe to fall into other hands for a brief season, and her captain to learn, from his temporary loss, the useful lesson that there were other heroes in the world besides himself.

Many points in this tale will have been observed by the reader, which seem pretty conclusively to show that the author intended his composition to be understood as an allegory, wherein he has represented two great natural powers, or, to speak more correctly, one such power in its two regular fluctuations, namely the tide—as the names imply—the prince being the high tide, and the monster canoe the ebb-tide. When man’s power failed to launch the big canoe, in came the tide and lifted her off the land with the greatest ease. The out-going tide carried her to sea. Fijians hardly ever think of putting their large canoes in the water except at the time of the high tide. The reason is obvious. Then, when at Tonga the water filled the hollow places on the prince’s back, we have a picture of the inflow of the tide over the reefs into the smooth lagoons formed by those coral walls—lagoons, where daily may be seen the large canoes “sailing up and down, and the people catching fish and turtle.”

But in the execution of his work, the poet does more than this, for he brings repeatedly before us many of the manners and customs, with some of the more prominent characteristics, of his country and countrymen. That he should tell us of a chief devouring 2000 pigs, and wrapping about his body 40,000 yards of native fabrics, yet complaining still of scarce provisions and a want of clothes, can only be accounted for by the fact 89that the cannibal is a hungry and covetous personage, according to his own estimate of himself.

The poet, though often hiding his meaning by overdrawing, as is always the case with savage poets, had evidently no intention that students of his song should interpret literally its numerous pictures, which, so interpreted, would be nothing less than frightful exaggerations.

If everything else in the performance could be interpreted as readily as that portion which exhibits the power and usefulness of the “full tide” in lifting weights, such as canoes, and the force of the out-going tide in floating them to sea, the whole would become clothed with truth. There is little doubt that the poet himself, and the more intelligent men of the heroic days of Fiji, were well able to find the exact counterpart of every figure and exaggerated picture in the song, the entire drift and meaning of which they well understood.

In those parts which paint the eating propensities and capabilities, together with the characteristic greed and generosity of the race, there is little more—making every allowance for the savage brain that produced it—than a well-charged caricature; just as another cannibal poet, wishing to represent the almost unlimited extent to which polygamy was carried in his time, asks, respecting a chief of great renown, and after whom many chiefs have since been named—

On the next occasion on which the company assembled in Big-Wind’s house disposed themselves to story-telling, I gave them “Ali Baba, or the Forty Thieves,” which was quite to the taste of my audience.

90Trumpet Shell responded with a continuation of “Prince Hightide,” in which is recorded the wonderful capture of the leviathan canoe.

The people of Cannibal-land are a selfish and jealous race, as, likewise, are all their gods. Each tribe likes to be thought first in everything. If a tribe in the North has a great and wonderful god, who, by many miraculous deeds has clearly established his reputation, and made his name a household word, a tribe in the South must place itself in a position to be able to boast such another, or it will never rest. If the former can talk of its monster canoe, with her god-like captain and giant crew, sweeping gloriously over the waters of the Pacific, the latter will fume and fret till it also can tell to future generations, that its god was one of no second-rate powers, inasmuch as he captured that very canoe, in a way that put into the shade every other capture ever made on the high seas, and, by many other deeds of might, utterly astonished both the world of men and the world of gods.

The Prince Hightide was indeed a powerful god—a worthy son of him who shakes the world! As for his canoe, the Ebbtide, who can measure her proportions? But Tanóva, a god of Kandávu, claimed to be as high and mighty as the Prince. A poet says that this Tanóva used often to ask: “What will the world say of me, if, to prove my equality with Prince Hightide, I capture his beautiful craft? Let the world decide the question—‘which is the greater god, he that builds a monster canoe, or he that captures her when she is built?’” The capture of the Ebbtide now became the object of Tanóva’s ambition, and he determined to take advantage of every opportunity for completing and carrying out his plans. The scheme was in his brain, and there he kept it for a time to ripen. One day Ratúva, another god of Kandávu, sailed away on a visit to the great northern deity, Prince Hightide, whom he found on board his canoe of world-wide renown. The Prince having been informed of the distinguished visitor’s arrival alongside, 91looked down from the deck and very graciously invited him to climb the vessel’s side. The invitation was, of course, accepted; and Ratúva set about climbing; but the distance was so great that it took him a whole day to reach the deck, and what astonished him still more, another day to reach the Prince’s quarters amidships. In the course of conversation between these two important personages, Ratúva took occasion to inform the Prince that he should shortly be in need of all the canoes he had left at home, but the worst of it was that most of them were out of repair, and must be re-lashed before they could be sent again to sea. He being therefore greatly in want of sinnet for this work, had come over the ocean to beg some of that most necessary article of His Highness. The Prince replied, “It is well! It is good! There is sinnet enough and to spare; far more than you can take in your canoe; so in a few days I will send my sons in the Ebbtide with a good cargo of the ‘pith of your petition.’” This is quite a Fijian phrase, and a very pretty one it is. With this princely promise, Ratúva returned to his own land more than satisfied with the result of his mission. On his way he called on the Hero-god Tanóva, to pay his respects and to give him the good news. “I have been,” he began, “to the gates of the Spirit-land, even to the home of the noble Prince Hightide.” “Oh, you have, have you?” said Tanóva, “and what is the news?” “Why, that I begged sinnet of him, and he not only gave a large quantity, but promised to send his sons in the Ebbtide with more.” “And what else?” asked Tanóva. “Well, all about the Prince himself, to be sure, and his miracle of a canoe!” “Pshaw! What canoe?” asked the envious Tanóva, with a sneer. “Well all I know is,” replied the successful sinnet-beggar, “we may live for ten generations and never set our eyes on such another wonder! Why just think, I climbed, and climbed, and was a whole day in getting on board, then I walked, and walked, and walked, and was another day in making my way to the Prince’s cabin.” These cabins, or canoe-houses, are 92always placed in the middle of the canoe, and on deck, there being no accommodation whatever between-decks on these rough ocean coaches.

Here the conversation stopped; but it had gone far enough to fan into a flame Tanóva’s desire to capture this unique canoe. “Now,” said he to himself, “is my time! How shall I take her when she comes this way with the promised sinnet?” Now, just about the time for expecting the Ebbtide, Tanóva took down, from the place where it usually hung in the house, a cocoanut water-bottle, with which he went out to fetch, as he said, a bottleful of sea-water to season his vegetable soup with. This is often done by Fijian cooks, who, for all in-door cookery, are women. It is not usual for men to fetch water; but this was a special case, with a special object in view. The ordinary cocoanut water-bottle holds from half a pint to a pint; extraordinary ones would hold a quart. This kind of bottle is in very common use for holding drinking-water, and sea-water for cooking purposes. But the water-bottle of the poet’s imagination was, of course, one that in every way became a hero-giant and god. Tanóva first let down his capacious bottle in seas near home, but found them much too shallow. He could not get water enough, for his object, to flow into its enormous mouth. Wherefore, after trying in two or three other places, which were all too shallow, he proceeded in an Easterly course from his own island, and, with a little leaning to the North, was able presently to plant his right foot on the beautiful island of Moála, at the same time raising his left, and putting it firmly down on Ono, in the West. Here he again let down his cocoanut shell in deep water, taking care to turn its mouth towards the North, from which point the Ebbtide would steer her course. Let every voyager to Fiji imagine the figure of this god standing as described in that part of the group pointed out by the poet! The island of Moála is situated in 179° 50′ E., and 18° 35′ S. Ono is in 178° 30′ E., and 180 50′ S. The two islands are, therefore, about 80 miles apart, which distance of ocean is 93spanned by Tanóva’s legs of wondrous length, while his enormous body, topped by a head of prodigious size, towers upward towards the sky! In his hands he grasps a cord, to the other end of which is attached the water-bottle in the position already described, and now holding within it quite a sea of water. That portion of the ocean thus arched over by the great god, is the highway for steamers and sailing vessels bound for central Fiji. It is, in truth, the great and grand gate of entrance for all foreign vessels making for the now well-known port of Levuka.

Tanóva had not been long in his elevated position,

when, to his unbounded delight, the Ebbtide hove in sight. Coming swiftly up, she pressed, full sail, right through the mouth of the partly sunken bottle, and on inside, where she continued sailing to and fro, tacking about whenever she came near the bottle’s side. Having thus clearly and fairly entrapped the greatest canoe of that or any age, the god drew up his bottle, and hastening home, quietly hung it up in its place,—the glorious prize being all safe inside.

Many days had passed away since this miraculous capture; when one morning a fine large canoe, the admiration of all who saw her, sailed into Tanóva’s bay. The stranger proved to be no other than the second great canoe of Prince Hightide, with the anxious prince himself on board,—come in search of his renowned ship, and missing sons. On entering Tanóva’s palace he reported himself, as the manner of all visitors is, and as the etiquette of Cannibal-land requires. “Having waited a long time at home,” said he, “looking and hoping for the return of my sons and my big canoe, but receiving no tidings of either it or them, I am here to-day in search of both.” Ratúva the successful sinnet-beggar, being present, was the first to reply.—“We know nothing of either your canoe or your sons. I have been wondering why they did not come with the sinnet!” The words were hardly out of his mouth when the whole household, 94together with the Prince and his company, were startled by a great noise, as of sailors putting their canoe about—“ee!—oh!—yah!—eh!”—There was a pause in the house for an instant, and only for an instant,—such a pause as might be caused by the sudden rushing into the hearts of the assemblage of unexpected fear or joy,—which, passed, Prince Hightide shouted in a fit of irrepressible gladness,—“That’s my Ebbtide! There she is!! Here she comes!!!” There was an immediate rush to the doors, and even to the beach, to look at her coming into harbour;—but not a speck could be seen on the blue waters. This surely must have been one of Tanóva’s moments of highest enjoyment, when he saw the chagrin of the great and loudly talked of Prince of Northern Fiji.

After remaining some little time longer, the prince said he must be going; but Tanóva pressed him to stay, saying, “Don’t go yet, some vegetable soup is getting ready; wait and take some.” So he waited; for neither man, nor hero-god could have been so unpolite as to decline such hospitality. Tanóva presently rose, and taking down the water-bottle, made as if he were going to pour its contents into the soup, when, behold! while he was in the very act of doing this, out fell the monster canoe and her hardy crew! As might be supposed, the astonishment of all the assembled gods was great beyond the power of tongue to tell. Dumbness was the only proper expression of it. But on none were the signs of mingled wonder and joy more visible than on the noble prince himself.

As soon as the panic occasioned by these mysterious doings had in part subsided, Ratúva, who could not forget his promised sinnet, addressing the prince, said, “Of course you will now go on with me with the sinnet?” but the wary old aristocrat replied, “Don’t you wish you may get it! You won’t catch me sailing into any more of your Kandávu water-bottles.” Thereupon he and his sons returned home, intensely disgusted with all the gods and vegetable soups and cocoanut bottles of that island.

95Now this is how the cannibal poet has shown in his song that Prince Hightide was taught a lesson of humility; and how, too, the Northern tribes of that age came to understand that there were gods in the South, as mighty as their own.

We had yet a third story-telling entertainment, the leading points of which I well remember. On this occasion Lolóma was the chief narrator. I had drawn largely on my recollections of Lempriere’s classical dictionary, and thought I had fairly distanced the efforts of the cannibal poets, with the loves of the Olympian gods and goddesses, but I found that the company had local legends of equal interest. Lolóma discoursed eloquently on a love theme with an elopement for its central incident, and I was bound to confess that the conduct of the hero was worthy of Paris himself.

This love-song of Lolóma’s is now done into English for the first time.

The author’s style is imitated more closely, and the lines are more literally translated than was possible, or desirable, with other compositions which have been worked into these pages. The poet’s theme is the “Elopement of a Hero-god with a Goddess.” The artist’s laconic, business-like and elliptical lines, necessitate an introduction to these high personages, and a few words explaining what, by some readers, may be accepted as an addition to their knowledge of the manners and customs of Cannibal-land.

Bulitaundúa the “first-crowned,” or “sole-crowned,” or “chief one,” was a hero-god of comparatively small importance, 96but great pretensions. The tribe acknowledging him as its tutelar god called him “Chief of Gods,” a title which none but the tribe in question could show that he had any claim to. By all the legendary accounts, he must have been a sort of Beelzebub, for, when the gods assembled in council, he sat on an elevated seat or dais, above them all—

His food was the wind. As a god, he was far from being wholly given to wrong-doing. He used to promise—or his priests did for him—that the trees should yield their fruit in great abundance. When the season came, he was in the habit of taking these ripe fruits, which he called his “play-things,” and tossing them hither and thither for his amusement, over all the lands of his people. Thus sketched by the poet, we may imagine him standing by an inexhaustible pile of fruits, into which, ever and anon, he plunges his hands, awful in their wondrous breadth and capacity, with which, like a giant sower sowing seed, he scatters broadcast on all the trees, his ripe and luscious gifts.

Such a god as this could not but gain a place in the poetry of Cannibal-land. But the poet who has enshrined his memory in verse, has chosen no such theme as that of “Universal fruit-scattering,” to perpetuate his name with, but has simply placed him before his country as a great love-making hero, seeking, wooing, winning, and carrying off a goddess of matchless beauty.

From the oldest traditions of the place, it appears that at Vúya—once the head town of an ancient kingdom of power—there lived a lovely lady, so lovely indeed, and beautiful, that her name was named on every island. She was in truth a goddess, but all the gods of note, except Bulitaundúa, had sought her hand, and sought in vain.

Now Bulitaundúa lived a long way off on another island, the largest of the group; and unfortunately too, he was a landsman, 97knowing little or nothing of sailing. He was, however, an expert rower, in the long, narrow canoes used for river work. But who would venture to sea in a craft of that sort.

Certainly none but Bulitaundúa, who determined at all risks to cross the ocean to Vúya, distant some 80 miles, and there, should he ever reach the place alive, to offer his hand and heart to the goddess of world-wide renown. His ability to eat the wind may account for the total absence of fear in this, to all seafaring men, foolhardy attempt. At the time of his leaving home, a stiff breeze was blowing from the East, but whether he ate it all up or not, the bard does not tell us; he only says that when the hero reached the sea there was a great calm. But he says this in such a way as to leave the impression on our minds that the wonderful and necessary deed was actually and instantaneously done.

In the first stanza Bulitaundúa is represented as talking to himself. Coming out of his house, and looking round, he finds that the usual “trade” breeze is blowing, and hopes it may prove just the breeze to help him over to the fair lady’s land. In the second stanza he is in his canoe, paddling away down the river, and singing, as he glides along, a song in which are mentioned the most prominent points of land as they come in sight ahead. In the third stanza he reaches the ocean, where, as we are led to infer, finding the wind too strong, he causes a great calm, and then, dashing bravely out, he pulls away for the “Great Land,” where lives the object of all his hopes. The difficulties and dangers of ocean passed, the undaunted hero joyfully prepares to land. As he poles his canoe towards the beach, over what in that part of Fiji is a shore-reef, and draws nearer and nearer to the home of the illustrious goddess, he descries in the hills that form the immediate background of the picture before him, a silvery waterfall, the dancing glories of which greatly gladden his heart, especially as the thought impresses itself strongly in his mind that such a fall can be no other than the bathing-place of the “World’s Attraction.” In 98the fourth stanza, the princess, hearing that a canoe has arrived, sends her maid in great haste to see who the stranger can be. The girl, in wild astonishment at the truly princely bearing of Bulitaundúa, bites her fingers and claps her hands, which is one of the ways in which Fijian young ladies let people know that they are exceedingly filled with wonder! On being addressed by this maiden as “Lord-o’-the-Lands,” the princely sailor-god, enquires naturally enough, and with a proper eye to business, if what she says is true, “how would it be for him to be crowned in that land also?” Whereupon the maiden’s surprise rushes suddenly to a climax, and away she runs to her mistress to report the stranger’s most astounding proposal. Now, the goddess goes to the beach and interviews the newly-arrived hero, who, presently discovering that he has given the inquisitive lady satisfactory answers to her queries, “pops” the all-important question without further delay. The battle is fought and won. It was a “bloodless victory.” And the poet deemed it as fit a subject for the efforts of his genius as those victories which, if he knew the way to write at all, he would have had to write with blood. The goddess being now the hero’s own, he tells her to take her place, where the lady’s place always is when rowing with her lord, namely, “forward.” The short oars, or more correctly, paddles, in general use in Cannibal-land, are in shape like flattened hearts, with small, round smooth handles, about 4 feet in length. The wood of which they are made is a very valuable one, known among the natives by the name of “vesi,” and said to resemble the “green-heart” of India. It was a paddle of this sort, the poet tells us, which the goddess used on the morning of her elopement. The loving pair having been placed by the bard fairly on their way home, the song concludes.

From other compositions which refer to this conquest, I subsequently learned that a large family of gods and goddesses arose out of the happy union. The names of some of these personages are worth recording for their poetic character. They 99are:—“Parrakeet-Lord,” “Eight-Eyes,” “Grass-flower-skirt,” i.e. the goddess whose skirt was made of the flowers of grass;—and, last and most wonderful of all—“Spirit-skirt,” or the goddess whose skirt was composed of spirits!

100

The Fijian cure for leprosy is submission to the ordeal by smoke. It is like the old English ordeal by water in cases of suspected witchcraft. If the subject survived the experiment she was no witch; if she were drowned, as generally happened, she was a witch well got rid of.

Lepers in Fiji are cured or killed by smoke from the wood of the sinu ganga. This tree attains a height of 60ft., and is generally found in mangrove swamps. It bears minute green flowers arranged in catkins. When the tree is pierced, a white milk flows which is burning to the skin. The suspected leper is taken to a small empty house. Having been stripped naked, his body is rubbed all over with green leaves, and then buried in them. A small fire is lighted, and a few pieces of the sinu ganga are laid on it. Soon a thick black smoke begins to ascend. The patient is bound hand and foot, and drawn up over the fire by a rope fastened to his heels, leaving his head some 18in. from the ground, in the midst of the poisonous exhalations. The door is closed, the victim’s friends retire to a little distance, while he shouts and screams in the agony caused by the suffocating heat. The unfortunate wretch sometimes faints after a few minutes of this treatment. When the man is considered to be sufficiently smoked, the fire is put out, the slime is scraped from his body, and deep gashes are cut in his flesh with sharpened pearl-oyster shells, until the blood flows freely. He is then taken down and laid on the mats to await 106the result, which is sometimes death, and sometimes, strange to say, complete recovery.

I protested vehemently that I was no leper, and Lolóma joined her weeping remonstrances to mine, but without effect. The suspicion was too grave.

“I shall be avenged for this,” I cried, as I was hurried away, though I believed my hours were numbered. “I will come with the front of battle and the thunder of Britain, and Bent-Axe shall see if a white man can be tortured with impunity.”

“Every man is a wind in his own bay,” laughed the savage. “You are not in the land of the white man now, and your words are as idle as the sea-foam. To-morrow’s sun will see the fair Lolóma at rest in these arms.”

Smarting with rage, I was borne away to a native house, in which preparations for the ordeal I was to be subjected to had been made by the cunning priest and his friend the previous night. I was satisfied that it would not be their fault if I left the chamber alive. Soon the whole room was filled with smoke. I was triced up by the heels with my head dangling over the fire, and my two enemies and their assistants, being unable to bear the fumes any longer, left me. I knew that if possible, Lolóma would contrive my escape, but it took her a long time to divest herself of her gala trappings, in which she could not move, and the demons who plotted my destruction had laid their plans so well that I was in a fair way to be suffocated before a friendly hand could reach me.

The sun had just set when I found myself swinging in the accursed smoke, a prey to reflections which assumed the form of a horrid phantasmagoria, owing to the blood rushing to my head, and the stifling heat of the baleful exhalations. After the lapse of a few seconds I became incapable of clear thought. My brain thumped and bounded, and I shrieked aloud. Once, after terrible struggling, I reached the rope with my hands, and endeavoured to haul myself into an endurable position, but my nerveless fingers lost their hold, and I fell back in a swoon—an 107inert mass swinging to and fro in the smoky glare. I must have fainted when I had been suspended two or three minutes, though it seemed as many hours, for I felt as if my head were bursting all the time.

When I recovered consciousness I was lying on the ground in the hut, a few paces from the fire. Lolóma stood by, emptying a pipkin of water over me.

On my way to the place of torture I had learned from the conversation of Shark and Bent-Axe that its locality had been kept secret. Lolóma, watched by her relatives, had great difficulty in getting away until it was thought that sufficient time had elapsed for the ordeal by smoke to be accomplished. Then she tracked my executioners to the house. With her light step and lithe figure she was able to elude them in the gloom, and enter the building through a small aperture in the side, used as a window, and which was only closed by a mat. To cut the rope of sinnet with a bamboo knife was the work of a moment, and I fell to the ground in her arms.

“Run for your life,” were her first words to me as soon as she saw that I had regained consciousness.

I recovered myself quickly. My eyes were blinded and smarting with the smoke, but I snatched up a club which lay on the floor, and ran, as near as I could guess, after the retreating form of the girl through the doorway. Outside the hut a man emerged from the smoke and gloom and seized me by the left shoulder. It was Bent-Axe. With one blow from the club I felled him, and darted up a ravine towards the hills. In an hour’s time I was safe in my old cave, where there was some food, for Lolóma and I had kept up the habit of making festival excursions there, and the existence of the bower was still known only to us two.

The trees and shrubs around the entrance to the cave were spangled with a cloud of dancing fireflies, though I had never seen these insects in the locality before. Capturing three or four, I contrived an excellent lantern by placing them in a cocoanut 108cup, covering the top with a film of fine masi, through which the light shone. I found that by shaking the bowl violently I could excite these interesting insects to increase the light they emit from the luminous discs on each side of their bodies. Subsequent experience proved to me that with a little sugar-cane for food they would live in captivity for weeks. Furnished with my new-made lamp, I explored at leisure the long aisles and fretted vaults of my picturesque cell, which was beautiful beyond the dreams of architecture.

In the course of an hour’s time I was rejoined by Lolóma, who told me that any thought of return to the town was out of the question, and that, as search would certainly be made for us, we must gain the protection of another tribe. There was a powerful chief on the coast, she added, to whose family she was vasu, and whose protection she would be sure of if she could once reach his dominions.

We set out in the moonlight, hand in hand, like another Adam and Eve, leaving our garden of Eden behind us, and not feeling very confident in regard to the adventures in store.

As we rambled on in the direction of the coast, Lolóma, whose natural gaiety of heart had returned, prattled of many things, but was often beguiled into silence by the splendour of the firmament. It is not surprising when one calls to mind the wondrous beauty of the calm, cloudless nights in Fiji, and the length of time the natives spend in the open air after the sun has set, that they pay some attention to the Heavenly bodies, and have names for them, and theories in regard to them, though bearing no resemblance to those of Copernicus or Galileo.

109I learned from Lolóma’s astronomical discourses that when two stars are observed near the moon they are called “the moon’s wives;” the moon is therefore a masculine noun, a point which the language does not settle. What with us is superstitiously called the “man-in-the-moon” is by the Fijian spoken of as “The man and his wife.” The man is plaiting cocoanut fibre into sinnet, while the woman, mallet in hand, is beating out the bark of which she is going to make native cloth. Emblematic this, of the two great industries, for, food excepted, to the Fijian there is nothing like cordage and cloth—the former is used in building houses, lashing canoes, &c., and the latter, if not much used on the person, is valuable property for exchange or barter.

When a star is seen preceding the moon, as is often the case, the Fiji observer would be heard to say, “That star is the tug, towing the moon through the skies.” This is not a borrowed figure either, for the Fijian sailors on a large craft will often take small ones in tow.

The Southern Cross is called “Nga,” i.e., the “duck constellation.” The Fiji imagination sees in this constellation a resemblance to a flying duck. Popular belief says: the two “pointers” are two men; that nearest the cross is a blind man, the other can see. They were both after the duck to throw at it. The blind man threw first, and, as might be expected, missed. Off goes the duck, giving the man who can see, no chance. Our Fiji proverb-maker and moral philosopher has added this good moral lesson to the fable, “Let him that can see throw first.” Sometimes the “pointers” are referred to as viz., a slave and a chief. The slave shoots first and misses, thereby greatly disappointing his chief. Moral—“Never precede your superiors.” Mothers will sometimes try to quiet their peevish little ones by pointing to the “Nga,” in the Southern sky, and saying to “baby,” “Look up there at your duck.”

Orion and his belt are called Iri, i.e., the “Fan,” from their resemblance to a Bau fan. This is said to be the fan of the 110great god Dengeh. An accident happened to it once upon a time, when the god had fallen asleep near the fire. The fan dropping out of his hand got burnt on one side; hence the blank—the apparent absence of stars on one side. Another tale is, that the fan is that of a local god at a place called Nakasaleka, where, it is reported, mosquitoes never bite, for the simple reason, there are none there to bite, and there are none there to bite because the god with his big fan swept them all away.

One of the first stars, or, rather, the first star seen in the evening, is called “Dingodingo,” i.e., “One who eats in another’s house,” because he comes out to shine so close on the heels of day; in other words he enters into Day’s house, when, in fact, he himself belongs to Night. Another meaning of the same word is “the inspector.” This star, therefore, is out having a look at things before his companions.

A superstition with regard to comets says: “Whichever way the flag (i.e., the luminous tail) flies or streams, from that quarter we may expect to hear the news of the death of a great chief.”

A fable of the sun’s setting says: “A big fish swallows him, but in a little while will cast him up again in the East, i.e., he will rise in the morning.” The usual way of saying the “sun has risen” is “the sun has climbed.” The Fijian speaks of the sun as still climbing the sky, till he reaches the meridian. After that the expression is, “he goes to his drowning.”

An hour before daybreak, which is always the coldest part of the night in Fiji, we took shelter in a thicket, and rested till the sun was well up in the Heavens. We had scarcely any provisions with us, and there was little occasion for that. A piece of sugar-cane, easily carried, and renewable at many places, as we walked along, furnished a sweet and nourishing juice which appeased at once both thirst and hunger.

The heavy dew of tropical countries lies long upon the ground, the valleys are often filled with vapour until several hours after sunrise, and the steamy billows are frequently seen 111ascending after the bright glare of the sun has made itself felt severely in exposed places.

As we went on our course, the grass was spangled with mountain dew. The carpets of bright green in the thick glassy glades of the forest glistened. The bosky landscape was for a time half veiled in the thin vapouries of the early morning. Soon the atmosphere became as lucid as crystal, pure as an opal, and a sky of pale turquoise blue, free as yet from the mid-day sheen, lent a softening splendour to the view. Sometimes the eye took in at a glance, orange and lemon trees bending under the weight of their golden spheres, the umbrageous bread fruit with its scolloped and variegated leaves, the green tops of the palm, the tapioca, guava, ginger, turmeric, arrowroot, and croton oil plants, the luscious pine-apple, and banks covered with the wild chili, brilliant with a rare combination of colours, and gay with the fresh verdure of eternal spring. Little rivulets glided from the base of one hill to the other, bubbling round grassy knolls, glancing from beneath low tree-fringed rocks, and singing in soft tones of the cool green woods through which they came. Huge cloud-capped hills rose to a height of 2,000 feet on either hand like a vast natural amphitheatre, their sides often perforated by peaceful valleys radiating down to the sea, and the crannies and crags of their summits ringing with the sound of the wind.

On the banks of the rivulets were groves of Tahitian chestnuts, with their grooved trunks and knobby roots, affording a refreshing shade. After the monotonous grass and isolated screw-pines of the open plain the eye was often refreshed by the variegated leaves of the deciduous tavola, which, preparatory to falling off, assumes a variety of tints, in which brown, red, yellow, and scarlet are the most prominent. The balsamic odours of fragrant shrubs accompanied us on our way, and our road was tapestried with ferns and flowers, the graceful form of the wild plantain giving dignity to the landscape. The forest silence was broken only by the rustling of the leaves and the chattering of 112the cicadæ, and we saw no living object save that indicated by the occasional flash of a bright-winged parrakeet as it flew from tree to tree, startled by our approach. Gaining an eminence, the sedgy hollows below seemed covered with a veil of vapoury tissue.

Late in the afternoon we rested in a clump of sago palms on the verge of a pretty waterfall descending like a rainbow flash in a wildly romantic mountain gorge, above which towered a conical rock of great height. The approach was through tangled masses of diverse greenery which almost shut out the sunlight from this fairy dell. The water fell some 20ft. in a triple cascade down into a transparent pool formed in a rocky bed, and the three little jets there uniting made two more similar leaps to add their small volume to a pebbly brook which flowed on to the coast. As we sat in the shade of over-arching boughs, munching bananas and sugar-cane, and listening to the music of the waterfall, we were startled for a moment by a sudden splash, which resounded in the solemn stillness of the place. It was only a large shaddock, grown too heavy for its stem to bear, dropping into the stream.

Of all the flowers that gemmed the mead there were none more fair than Lolóma. Her rounded limbs, unmarked by vein or muscle, the small hand, and well-kept nails of her tapering fingers, bore testimony to the life of ease she led. Her complexion, the tender peach colour which lingers in the western sky for awhile after the disappearance of the great luminary, was in itself a proof that she had been carefully guarded from the sun. Her short but pliant neck, gently swelling shoulders, and moderately slender waist, her well-shaped feet with slightly-spreading toes, and her frank laughing eyes which knew no doubt, made her a fit subject for an artist. How piquantly she poised as she lingered on some grassy knoll, her small head resting on the neck buoyant as a flower on its stem! Replace her chaplet of dewy blooms by a crescent diadem, her simple liku by a light classical tunic, and there is the chaste huntress of ancient fable, 113of a darker hue, lacking only the thinness of the nose, the longer neck, the fuller eyes, and the compressed toes of the Grecian ideal. Vigorous in youthful blooming beauty, the unadorned charm of her flowing figure was a lovelier vesture than that of the lilies of the field. Full of passionate and impulsive affections, the soft smile of the south now played on her sun-kissed face, partly disclosing twin rows of fairy pearl.

We rioted in the mere physical enjoyment of life. We were happy with the happiness of the child who neither questions the wisdom of the moment, nor its hereafter. Her easy, unstudied abandonment, gave to Lolóma the grace of a fawn. It was enough for me in those idle moments to watch the shadows play on her soft wanton limbs, or to listen to her merry rippling laugh, showing her teeth white as the core of the fresh bread fruit, as she told some romantic or humourous story learnt in the village.

Sometimes the forest seemed an enchanted garden, in which we were en-canopied by a chaos of creepers which threw their garlands of gay flowers over all, adorning the scene with the varying enchantments of color. The primeval orchard was hung with luminous fruits like those stolen from Aladdin’s garden, and a curious dreamy golden hue rested on leaf and bough. From elevated spots we could see valley opening into valley in oft repeated succession; and beyond, the ocean, studded with islands, whose outlying reefs carded the waters into foam, while in the sky was reflected the soft blue of the sea.

We went on through dell and dingle, where intercepting boughs made sunny chequers on the green sward; on through mountain passes, where miniature cascades shook their loosened silver in the sun; on through thickets of flags and bamboos; and on through wide-reaching seas of verdure, till at last we sighted, from easy walking distance, the heaving ocean, flecked with constantly changing cloud-shadows, and glistening with the reflected radiance of the westering sun.

Casting her eye along the coast-line, Lolóma declared that she 114saw the chief town of the tribe to which she was vasu, though I could discern nothing but tree-tops. The name of the town, she said, was Ramáka, which means, “shining from a distance,” and its chief was the great Waikatakata whom she had visited three years previously.

I remembered the name Waikatakata. It was Hot-Water, whose people wished to make a hash of me, and from whom I had escaped in so marvellous a way, leaving my two companions, as I believed, to a terrible death. I knew, however, that on introducing myself as the husband of Lolóma, we should both be received with the honours due to vasus, and that the past would be entirely forgotten.

We made the shore line some two miles from the town. The sand was still luminous with the ebbed tide, and strewn with shells in glittering profusion. In one place these spoils of the ocean, were collected in a huge bank. When stirred with a stick, the shells ran down in rainbow streams. Lolóma gathered enough of vari-colored pieces for a new necklace, and I secured a magnificent orange cowrie, as a present for Waikatakata. As we threw ourselves down among the sea-born treasures of scarlet and gold, and yellow and saffron, which made a gorgeous mosaic pavement on the white sand, Lolóma’s shapely hands idly played with the brilliant shells, and a shade of sadness stole over her at the thought that we should soon be among strangers.

Towards evening we reached the outskirts of the town and intercepted a young slave, who told us that two white men were living with the chief, but he either could not or would not give us any particulars in regard to them. Could it be that an English ship had called there since the wreck of the Molly Asthore, and that I had missed the opportunity of returning to civilisation? Even if it were so, I felt at the moment that I hardly regretted it.

Our approach was duly heralded, and fitting preparations were made for the reception of the vasus. Once more I stood in the 115square fronting the chief’s house, where a year ago I had lain, bound hand and foot, and expecting immediate death. I thought of my unhappy companions, cut off in the prime of life, of the vile use to which their bodies had been converted, and of the probability that their friends and relatives would never learn their fate. At that moment what I took for two singularly light colored natives, wearing the ordinary malo, and naked otherwise, approached me.

“By all that’s wonderful,” said one of them.

“Jeerusalem! Tom Whimpy, is that you?” shrieked the other.

The recognition was mutual. To my infinite delight I saw before me in perfect health, Jacob Turner and Silas Cobb, the master and mate of the Molly Asthore, whom I had mourned as dead.

They had much to tell me of their adventures among the natives. I gathered from them in subsequent conversations that the body of the man who pursued me so closely after I had burst my fetters, and whom I had killed, was found and buried by his friends, and that the general opinion was that I had either died in the woods or been eaten by the kai tholos, or mountaineers.

The return to life of Turner and Cobb was more wonderful than my escape. It seemed that when they fell under the clubs, having good thick skulls, they were only stunned. On regaining consciousness, the cannibal oven was ready to receive them. They had been stripped, and were just about to be thrust in, when the captain, recalling his previous slight knowledge of the country, remembered the words of the prayer which is said by the priest, before the final act of sacrifice. The man who has used those words is sacred, and must not be eaten. He repeated the brief formula, and taught it to the mate who said it after him. They accordingly escaped death, and were adopted by the tribe, all of whom had behaved well to them since. Hot-Water had from the first desired that the 116white men should live, and the success of the ruse adopted gave him great pleasure.

As I entered the square with Lolóma and was formally presented to Hot-Water, who said he was glad I had come to join his tribe, I was no longer glared upon by a defiant crowd, but was waited upon by a cringing and obsequious populace. We were received with the homage due to vasus.

Two Matas^[14] were sent to us by the King, holding by either end a mat. They crawled up to us, and having spread the mat, we sat upon it. An official, whose rank was that of an ambassador, now shouted in a high key, the proper greeting, “Sa tiko!” (They sit.) “Sa tiko! Sa tiko! Sa tiko!” repeating the cry with increasing rapidity, and in descending tones for about a dozen times. Having rested long enough to recover breath, the man shouted again, “Sa tawa!” (Inhabited.) This was a compliment implied in the graceful insinuation that the place was empty before our arrival, but that it was now inhabited, the presence of such august personages being in itself security against social retrogression. “Sa tawa! Sa tawa!” was repeated many times quickly. Then half a dozen Matas advanced slowly towards us in sitting posture. When within a few feet of us, they bowed till their beards swept the ground. Rising, and clasping their beards with their hands, they cried, “Sa uru!” (Furled are your sails) “Sa uru! Woi! Woi!” Then they returned to the positions they had formerly occupied near their master.

I made a short speech to the chief, the people clapped their hands several times in the way peculiar to the Fijians, and the ceremony ended. Henceforth, this formal homage having been done us, we were honored guests, and at liberty to do almost as we chose. Such is the power of the vasu lévu, or great privileged.

117

In the course of a few months, the interval having been employed in the valley of Tivóli in making preparations for war, ambassadors were received from King Big-Wind, at the instigation of Bent-Axe, demanding the restoration of Lolóma and myself. The reply was an emphatic refusal, Hot-Water being desirous of keeping all the white men who came within his influence about him; and it was understood on both sides that war was inevitable.

The time was now one of stirring interest to all the tribes under the dominion of Hot-Water. Every village and hamlet was on the move. The great chieftains and their warriors of all ranks, with blackened faces and ornamented clubs and spears, were in readiness to march for the enemy’s land. Their last offerings to the gods must, however, be first presented, and words of encouragement and blessing be received in return from the soothsaying and shaking priests.

The old temple of Ramáka was rebuilt to propitiate the deities. The frames of this spirit-house were composed of rough hardwood posts, chopped from the vesi, one of the most sacred trees in cannibal mythology. The rafters were made of lighter wood or bamboos, and the walls were reed-work. The roof was thatched with long grass; the interior was lined with a beautiful net of sinnet-work.

There were some singular ceremonies in connection with the erection of the temple, which only occupied a few days. When 128everything was ready for planting the first post, or, as we should say, “laying the foundation stone,” the priest took a bunch of cocoanuts, and shook them lustily over each hole that had been dug for the principal posts or pillars of the building. This shaking loosened some of the riper nuts from the stalk. The first hole into which a nut dropped was chosen for the first, or foundation post, which was thenceforward called the “god-pillar,” and the part of the temple where it stood was “holy ground”—a charmed spot, where the oracle delighted to dwell, and the priest to sleep and dream. It was in truth his sanctum sanctorum. There was a tradition in the tribe that on the erection of the first temple in Ramáka, living human bodies were put into the holes with the posts, and buried with them. It was a common practice to kill men for the occasion, and place them standing on their feet in the holes with the temple pillars.

When the edifice was ready for “opening,” or “consecration,” a fast of four days was proclaimed and strictly observed. While it lasted, work of every description, and conversation, as well as eating and drinking, were tabooed, and the large town remained as still and silent as death. At the end of the fourth day the silence was broken by the blast of trumpets and the roll of drums; the people burst forth from their houses as from so many graves, and gave themselves up to the wildest revelry. The night was kept awake with noise. The disturbed parrots in the trees hard by, joined in the chaos of sounds, which lasted till dawn, when, suddenly, the scene changed to one of hearty industry in preparing puddings, killing pigs, and making and heating ovens for a great feast. Four days of fasting had whetted the people’s appetites; their feelings may, therefore, be imagined, when they sat down to a dinner consisting of 200 pigs, and untold quantities of yams, taro, vegetable puddings, bananas, cocoanuts, &c.

The temple furniture was as sacred as the temple itself. The edifice contained a stone dressed up in white native cloth, on which libations were poured. A small “wooden-face,” or 129idol, a trumpet shell or two, some cups and bowls for the priest’s own use in kava-drinking,—a few wooden forks for eating human flesh with,—a rack for spears and clubs, which had taken part in some horrible tragedy, and, being defiled with blood, were regarded as god-favored arms, against which no enemy would be able to stand,—some turmeric and cocoanut oil, a few turbans, smoked and oiled,—a string or two of white cowrie shells,—a couple of wooden pillows, some ornamental mats on the floor, two or three bundles of new mats on the beams overhead for future use, and a few bleached skulls, together with a long strip of white native cloth, reaching from the roof to the floor, forming the path down which the god passes to enter the priest, concluded the inventory of the sacred utensils and trappings of the new temple.

Simple as were the temple, its furniture, and all its surroundings, the pretensions of the place and its inhabitant (the priest, Katonivére, which means basket for plots, or box-of-tricks) were by no means of a character in keeping. You could not become acquainted with the priest, whose scheming heart was a bottomless deep, or with the laws and superstitions of his abode, without feeling that you had got within the circle of darkness and mystery, hypocrisy, and spiritual jugglery.

Many were the prohibitions that guarded the place. No native dared to enter with his turban on. Women and children were not admitted. It was not a place for worshipping assemblies, and those who came on religious business with the priest sat down on the grass plot outside. No eating was permitted within the walls, except to the priest and a favored few. No animal that was believed to be the shrine^[16] of a god worshipped by any person serving the temple, was accepted as an offering. On entering, the visitor had to pass the threshold on his hands and knees, to show his respect for the place, its priest, and its god. If repairs were ordered, an offering of food 130was required by the gods before the workmen could begin their work. If anyone passing the temple pointed at it, if children played in front of it, if, in a word, anything at all was done which the priest had said was not to be done, the offender or offenders were sure to be punished sooner or later by cruel anathemas. The ban of the angry priest would rest upon the objects of his displeasure, not unfrequently till it had wrought its work of death.

One afternoon the bulk of the warrior bands were seated on and around the lawn in front of their god’s house. The usual gifts of food and whale’s teeth were presented and accepted according to the formal custom, and short speeches were made both by petitioners and petitioned. The war being a popular one, the priest’s address and invocation, offered in the same breath, were favourable and inspiriting to the soldiers.

Then the yangona or kava-drinking party was formed. The liquor being ready, the chief men gathered round to pay their respects to the spiritual powers, and to hear from the old man representing those powers, the various oracular sayings he had to deliver, the influence of all of which on the warrior was to make him sleep soundly on that, his last night at home, and dream of fighting and victory, of a safe and glorious return to his wives and children; of the pleasure of eating the unholy meal of human flesh, and, having washed the paint, and sweat, and dust of battle from his face, of the peaceful and still more victorious work of planting yams and sugar-cane.

The first bowl of kava was handed to the priest—Box-of-Tricks—that venerable and wily man, who had been oiled up for the occasion. The drink was quaffed by him to the last drop, and the vessel was returned to the cup-bearer amidst a great clapping of hands. Now came the moment of chief interest in listening to the deliverance of the people’s “guide, philosopher, and friend.”

With a whining, sing-song, and rapid utterance, old Box-of-Tricks spoke as follows:—“In the presence of our great chiefs, 131the chiefs of the land, the ‘Eyes-of-the-Country,’ the chiefs of tribes, the chiefs of towns great and small, in the presence of the ‘Strength-of-the-Country,’ the ‘Fruit-of-the-Screw-Pine,’ let me be bold to speak. Our land is in evil plight, my chiefs! We are at war with our enemies! You are going to fight! Go! Club the impudent foe and burn his towns! May the ‘Teeth-of-the-Yangona’ fight bravely, and all come back alive. May none of them be clubbed! May every arrow of the enemy fly wide of the mark! May the young men live and be strong to kill in the battle! May they beat back all our foes, spoil all their plots, and fill our ovens with flesh that the gods may have plenty to eat, and once more bring us peace and rest.”

Here, though somewhat exhausted by this mental effort, yet proceeding more rapidly than ever, and speaking as if he were the god he represented, the old priest, after referring to the offerings made and accepted, concluded with the cheering words:—“Hereby is my wrath appeased. I will no longer be angry with the Teeth-of-the-Yangona.” At which most gracious announcement the people shouted with remarkable emphasis “Mana endeena!” wonderful and true!

After a few more formalities, and a little more drinking, the ceremony concluded, and stern faces relaxed.

The “Eyes-of-the-Country” named by the priest are the ambassadors, who, as their name suggests, are supposed to be wide awake enough to see everything going on in and out of the land. They are universal spies, the bearers of royal messages to other tribes, clever mischief makers, and generally notorious for negotiating political affairs in any way but according to their instructions. In all fairness, however, it must be added that they were without doubt as a class, the first and only genuine orators in Cannibal-land. Three other poetical expressions used by Box-of-Tricks deserve a passing notice. They are the “Teeth-of-the-Yangona,” the “Fruit-of-the-Screw-Pine,” and the “Strength-of-the-Country.” These figures of speech mean the strong young men, and experienced warriors going forth in the 132conscious pride and might of their youth and manhood’s prime, to meet the foe. Young men are employed to masticate the kava-root, so that when put into water it may the more readily give out its intoxicating juices. These young men are therefore called the “Teeth-of-the-Yangona,” or the “kava-root chewers.” The best portion of the army is spoken of as the “Fruit-of-the-Screw-Pine” or Pandanus,—the most sacred and popular tree in the mythologies of Fiji. The fruit when ripe resembles the pine-apple, but is of a deeper and richer colour. Used by our cannibal orator, it represented the ripeness of manly strength, and was another name for the men whom he also called the “Strength-of-the-Land,” or as we should say, the “Flower of the Army.” The “plenty of flesh to eat” referred to, meant human flesh, the word used having no other signification.

At length the day of conflict arrived. The enemy had been seen clustering on the heights, two miles distant from Ramáka, the bolebole or public review of the soldiers had been held, and Hot-Water’s forces marched forth, led by their chief, redolent of oil, turmeric, and sandalwood preparations, and his great head of hair glistening like dew in the sunlight The priest bore before the host a sacred stone, which was said to have fallen from the sky, and was venerated and feared as a representative of the God of War. Hot-Water delivered a spirit-stirring harangue to his troops, in which he bid them roll on like the multitudinous sea, break on the enemy with the roar and irresistible force of ocean waves, and drive them to their fastnesses like the receding tide.

The head-dresses were of a most elaborate and grotesque kind. 133The Fijians exhaust their ingenuity in arranging striking coiffures. Sometimes the hair was black, sometimes white with lime obtained from the coral, or powdered ashes of the bread-fruit leaf, and sometimes marked with different shades of red. Many had their hair frizzed out with a comb till it resembled a wig 8 or 9 inches thick, being of an equal height at the top, back, and sides. I noticed one man with whitened hair from which black tufts arose in regular order. Another appeared to be enveloped in a thick hood. A third presented a wall-like front a few inches back from his forehead, the carving appearing to have been done on a solid substance. A fourth wore his hair in corded tassels behind; the hirsute ornamentation of a fifth took the form of tiers arranged with geometrical accuracy, while a sixth presented alternate cones and flat spaces. In short, the variety of styles was infinite, and these dandies were as vain of the figure they cut as any ball-room belle. There were faces painted in stripes, circles, and spots; faces like clowns, and faces with only a brilliantly red nose glaring from a wide surface of jet black. To produce these effects the seeds of the vermilion tree, charcoal, fungus, and coral lime are used. When the lime has been washed off, the hair is left a set tawny colour.

Big-Wind must have had under his command altogether 2,000 men, but they were not so well skilled in war as the redoubtable foes they had to meet. Hot-Water’s army did not number more than 1,500 effectives, but they had a tower of strength in their three white men, Turner, Cobb, and myself, each armed with a brown bess and 12 rounds of ammunition.

As we advanced up hill I thought of the following words which the warriors chanted the previous evening as a stimulus to the brave, and in ridicule of renegades:

The first engagement took place on the wooded slope of a hill. Big-Wind’s picked men descended boldly from the crest to the attack. None of the combatants carried either shield or target. With their athletic figures and polished weapons glinting in the sun, they made an imposing and formidable appearance. Clubs were always directed against heads, and spears against the body. The conch-shell sounded the onset, and soon the wood rang with the clash of these lustily wielded weapons. Spears armed with the thorns of the sting-ray, were burst into shivers up to the very grasp, and sharp-edged clubs, sometimes thrown, and sometimes used like a battle-axe, were occasionally buried fast in the skulls at which they were aimed. I more than once distinguished the exquisitely symmetrical form of Big-Wind, his turban of white masi floating in the wind as he laid about him in the eddy and whirl of the fight, the markings on his painted skin shining like diamonds embossed upon a black velvet ground. I also saw Bent-Axe leading another wing of the attacking party in all the splendour of savage raiment, and with the habitual look of dissolute audacity on his ill-favoured visage.

The battle raged fiercely and without advantage to either side. A shout of exultation from the Tivóli people told us that they had been the first to secure a body, which was immediately tied with sinnet and carried off on a pole rove through the corpse. The obtaining of the first offering for the temple, was considered a good omen for Big-Wind. Believing that the tide of fortune was turning against him, Hot-Water called upon the white men to bring their foreign weapons into play.

The rattle of musketry was heard in the hills of Viti Lévu for the first time. The people saw the flash, heard the report, and soon learned that a terrible messenger of death was among 135them. Recognising me, they shouted that the Child of the Hurricane was a god after all, and that it was useless to attempt to prevail against the enemy for whom he fought.

Bent-Axe, the King’s Lieutenant, was furious when he found his soldiers deserting him. He reminded them that he was born in the daytime, and was therefore a great warrior; and, moreover, that he was invulnerable, not only against white men, but against gods, being the possessor of god-armour.

It will be as well to explain here that one of the most wonderful elfin tribes of Cannibal-land is a marine tribe, remarkable for two things—its population, which defies arithmetic, and the depth of mystery, which, as the Fijian imagines, inwraps it. Its people are a sort of demigods, known in many places as “Children of Water,” or “Water Babies.” Some of the poets and legend-mongers speak of them as the “People of the Plain,” and “God-soldiers,” i.e., soldiers, who, on great occasions, are specially favoured by the gods, and in their turn are able to help landsmen in their battles with their own species. They are believed to be more nearly related to gods than men; and the former, in consequence of that nearer relationship, have made them war-proof—living fortifications in fact—against which no weapon whatever can prevail. From this belief arose numbers of professional men who gave it forth to the world that they likewise were favoured with this close connexion with the gods, and had thereby gained possession of the grand secret by which any hero going out to meet his foe, might be so clothed with “god-armour,” as to cause arrows to glance aside, clubs to fall harmlessly, and spears to lose their piercing power.

Turner and Cobb blazed away, and the enemy rapidly melted in presence of the sulphurous charm. Bent-Axe, however, advanced, club in hand, to the spot where I stood, perfectly drunk with passion; his heavy brow was corrugated with anger; his large nostrils were distended, and fairly smoking; his eyeballs blazed red like a lighted coal when blown upon; and his foam-covered mouth wore a murderous and contemptuous grin.

136I raised my musket, and called on him to surrender.

“When the shell of the giant-oyster shall have perished by reason of years, still will my hatred of you be hot,” roared the savage.

“The white man,” said I “is merciful. He knows his power, but does not wish to exercise it.”

“You are like the kaka,”^[17] tauntingly responded Bent-Axe, “you only speak to shout your own name.”

He swung his massive club aloft to fell me, and I discharged my weapon at his breast. When the smoke cleared away, the savage was gone, but his club lay at my feet, and it was stained with blood.

Big-Wind withdrew his forces behind a rampart of brushwood six feet thick, and his men, with renewed courage, waving long streamers from the battlements, shouted defiance to the foe. Under the direction of Hot-Water, a huge fascine of boughs and dried leaves tied together with sinnet, was constructed. His soldiers rolled it before them in the complete security of its shelter. When it reached the rampart, a light was applied. The fascine burst into flames, and in a few minutes the brushwood fence had disappeared with it. A volley from the white men’s muskets completed the discomfiture of the enemy.

The fortune of war was all with us. Hot-Water’s troops followed up their advantage, and a fearful scene of carnage ensued. The women of Ramáka came out to meet the victorious soldiers on their return, laden with hopelessly wounded prisoners and dead bodies. Nameless indignities were put upon the slain, and songs were chanted which will not bear translating.

In the impromptu triumphal chants, allusion was made to the men who had most distinguished themselves in the contest. I heard frequent reference to myself as the slayer of the redoubtable Bent-Axe, and also to the might of the white man’s matchless arms.

137

High noon in the tropics! The giant bakas twist and flicker in the mirage, as though they were floating on the sultry air. The glaring slopes roll and welter in the sun, whose convex gleams build up the pearly dome of air. The landscape, viewed through the luminous atmosphere, is adorned with all the enchantments of colour. A hanging rock is clothed with luxuriant masses of the deeply blue clitoria. Tufts and 148rosy tassels flutter from the dilo trees, and showers of pink stamens illuminate the shadows cast by the boughs. The small grey-green leaflets of the sensitive plant contract in quivering circles over a rood of ground, as I set the nearest one in motion with my foot.

As the sun climbs to the zenith, a great silence reigns. There is a lull in the almost ceaseless buzz and chirp of insect life. The bronze lizards, with bright blue tails and sparkling diamond eyes, lie motionless with heads raised, gasping in the heated air. The coloured tree-snakes, which are hardly distinguishable from the foliage in which they seek their prey, ensconce themselves in cool leafy wrappings. The butterflies—the rare pale yellow, the small white silvery one resembling the silkworm moth, and the richly coloured dark beauty with spots on its wings like those in a peacock’s tail—which so bravely unfolded their charms to the morning sun, have retired from the mid-day glare, and are lying exhausted with outspread wings on glossy leaves. The cooing of the wood-pigeon and the ring-dove is hushed. The hardy hawk no longer skims the upper air. The parrots of splendid garb which animate and adorn the woods—the winged gems which illuminate the atmosphere at every turn—are lazily swinging in the sheltered foliage. The soil appears to undulate with the flickering exhalations of heat. The tree-ferns lean aside in langour. Not even the shrill trumpet of the mosquito is now heard.

The sun sinks towards the west, and soon the palpitating life of the tropics is in full flow again. The chorus of innumerable insects is deafening. Every tree, shrub, and blade of grass seems to live and to breathe at every pore. The great heart of Nature with its teeming life throbs around.

Lying lazily in the dark shadow of a bread-fruit tree, I watched through the veil of leaves the strange procession of cloud-forms, following their capricious imagery and their monstrous and curiously changing shapes. Lolóma, playing in the leafy folds of a shaddock tree which scented the neighborhood, was fancifully 149decorating herself with its fragrant flowers, which resemble the orange blossom. When I told her that was the bridal flower of English people, nothing would satisfy her but a full description of the wedding ceremonies of the kai papalangis. Disporting herself in the glories of a new parti-coloured liku, which shone like shot silk in the sun, she tripped lightly on the sward, courting my admiration of some fresh artistic arrangement of flowers. So the hours fled away with childish prattle, the dreamy melody of merry words, and the low soft laughter of perfect happiness.

When the sun had lost his power, the more vivid colours in the landscape died out, and were succeeded by rich purple tints, and the long woodland reaches assumed a tint of pale emerald beneath the indigo blue of the sky. Then the populace came out to amuse themselves with the sport of reed-throwing on the level turf, swimming in the surf on the coral beach, engaging in loud-voiced fishing parties, or searching the shell-strewn sand for decorative ornaments. There were bleaching on the sand, volutes, harps, marginelles, cones, and every variety of exquisitely colored shells, which, being daily washed by the sea, retained their beauty for a long time. The orange cowrie is here the costliest gift of the sea. This beautiful shell, once quite plentiful, is now extremely rare. Wading out to the reef, which separates the lagoon waters from the dark purple of the outer ocean, we enter on the wonderfully beautiful submarine rainbow produced by the sun gleaming on the sunken coral. The colors of the solar prism are marvellously blended. The parrot fishes which glide about—the tiny fishes of pale blue and bright green, with bands of black, white, and gold, and sky-blue collars, which dart in and out of the subaqueous growths—give an indescribable charm to the picture. It was Lolóma’s delight to watch her own supple reflection gleaming in these tranquil depths. She was bright as the sunshine, and wild as the sea-spray with which she sported. As she rose from the waves, her limbs glistening, after a dive in the surf, she was a veritable sea-nymph.

As the sun went down, the little town of Ramáka was enveloped 150in an ethereal golden mist, that rose from the water and the shore. The buildings floated on a lake of rose-hued radiance;—the mountaintops in the background, bathed in a brief flush of crimson, seemed to flicker with flame. When the great Eye of Day, as the Fijians poetically name the sun, was closed behind the watery horizon, the rosy cones of the hills faded to a duller hue. But soon the stars rushed out, for there is no twilight in the tropics; the moon illuminated the sea with long lines of rippling light; the reef, the ocean, the coral strand and the hills above, shone like a sparkling garland of jewels, and the long cool night was welcomed after the blazing heat of the day. Then the inhabitants gave themselves up to evening amusements, prominent among which were the fishing parties.

There were various methods adopted for catching fish. Fishhooks of wood, shell, or bone, were used; and sometimes the craftsmen relied on the glare of the torch made of bunches of dried reeds, when the finny spoils were to be secured by spearing. Occasionally fish were temporarily stupefied, and made easy of capture with the hand, by throwing into the water the pointed fruit of the vutu rakaraka, and the stem and leaves of the duvu ganga, which were also on some occasions drawn through the water by a long vine or creeper. The favourite method, however, was the construction of a fence of bark, leaves, and sticks, which enclosed the fish in the middle of the circle. The space in the middle was gradually contracted by hauling on both ends of the fence. Soon the space became so small that the fish were forced to jump over the barrier on every side. Then the fun commenced. Some caught the scaly creatures in their hands, others speared them, and not a few scooped them up in hand-nets. The babel of sounds with the shouting, prancing, splashing, and laughter which all this gave rise to, as the merry people gathered in the silvern harvest of the sea, it would be impossible to describe. Not infrequently a single canoe was brought into requisition in the sport. The frail skiff often got swamped in deep water. Nothing damaged, the 151occupants would jump out, and pressing down one end until the greater part of the water had run out, they let go suddenly; then swimming along by the side, they baled out the remainder and jumped in again.

But the most curious fishing incident is that of the arrival of the balolo—the Fijian whitebait season. The balolo is a strange annelidan, which comes into these waters regularly each November, just after the first quarter of the moon. Its periodical appearance is always predicted with unerring certainty. The worm-like creature, with its cylindrical jointed body, coloured green, red, brown, or white, is found floating on the surface in millions in the early morning. The water becomes thick with wriggling balolos, and they are scooped up by the hand. The Fijians carry their vermicelli away in leaves, and bake them in ovens, afterwards going in for a “diet of worms.”

I often joined in the fishing excursions. One evening, some hours after the sun had sunk like a globe of fire beyond the watery horizon, and the moon had risen high in the Heavens,—lured by the beauty of the silver-shining sea, I had remained out on the reef, unmindful that the prattling fishing parties had trooped home. Enchained by the magic beauty of the spectacle, and lulled by the monotonous booming of the heaving ocean, as it rolled against the great natural breakwater, I hardly noticed that the tide was rapidly coming in, and that the water on the highest point of the reef was already above my ancles. Turning shorewards, my right foot sunk into a depression in the coral formation, and I immediately felt that I was in the grip of a vice. My foot had entered the expanded jaws of an enormous clam-shell, which instantly shut upon it. These bi-valves, in shape like an oyster, have a terrible power of holding whatever comes within their grip, though I was not aware of it at the time. A good wrench failing to give me liberty, I stooped and sought to disengage my foot with my hand. I might as well have tried to tear a rock in two. The shell was firmly fixed in the coral, which seemed to have grown 152round it, and no mortal fingers could dislodge it from its position.

Now for the first time the desperate peril of my situation dawned upon me. I was paralysed for a few moments with the thought that entered my mind like a flash, that I had no chance of escape from death—a slow and lingering death—death in its most agonising form—dying by inches while in the full flow of health. My recent companions were all out of hail, the town was two miles distant, and I should remain bound to this rock till the flowing tide drowned me. The water rose with each succeeding wave, and chilled me with the terror of the prospect. I shouted aloud for help, though knowing none could come. My puny voice was lost in the hollow murmuring of the sea, as it rambled among the branching coral and cavernous ledges. Straggling members of the fishing parties were still visible a thousand yards from me, but they were rapidly widening the distance. Faint echoes of their jocund songs borne on the light wind, added another pang to the thought that I should never rejoin them. They would soon regain the town. I should probably not be missed for several hours, and then no one would know where to search for me. Even now, with the water up to my waist, and the sea breaking on the reef, I was not an object that could be discerned more than a few paces off.

A long roller passed over my head. When it receded, I remained shoulder-deep in the water. I shouted again, aimlessly. I tugged with desperation at the trap which held me, and sickened at the sense of the utter hopelessness of my position. I wondered how long I should live after it became a question of holding my breath while the waters passed over me. The feeling of fearful loneliness that crept over me was intensified by the wild uproar of the waves as they dashed upon the barrier, sounding in the broken spaces with a terrible bellowing and hissing, which seemed to my excited fancy demoniacally malignant, as though evil spirits were rejoicing in the prey so soon to be delivered up to them, and were now sporting around it with 153malicious glee. The moon threw down her soft light, striking with silvery sheen the familiar peaks and headlands, and lacing the sea with paths of glittering quicksilver. The stars were twinkling above like so many fireflies. The beauty of the night only added to my misery.

The level water reached to my chin. I strained my neck to keep it from gurgling in my throat. I shrieked again, and was answered by the deep moaning of the sea. A heavy bank of clouds sailed over the moon and obscured her light. There was nothing visible but the long stretch of dusky waters. My death, thought I, is near at hand, and my last moments are to be shrouded in pitying darkness. I could no longer bear the frightful situation. With a wild despairing cry, I closed my eyes, determined to end my life at once, and make no fresh struggle to keep my lips above the salt flood. My voice was answered by an excited question in Fijian: “Ah thava?” “What is that?” Could I be dreaming, or had I already passed into the world of spirits? I felt my head seized by a friendly hand, and then I sunk into unconsciousness.

Three men were poling along in their canoe from a point lower down the coast, to which they had been to fetch firewood, and the prow of the wanqua had almost run against me. These sailors took in the situation at once. Their long sharp-pointed poles were brought to bear in detaching the clam from the rock, one of their number sinking in the water and directing the operation with his hands. Then I was lifted into the canoe, the shell adhering bodily to my foot. I presently revived. After I had been deposited in the town, one half of the shell was pulverised by a hardwood club. The flesh on my ancle was a good deal torn by the frantic exertions I had made to free myself. I was not long in recovering from these injuries, but the incident itself made a lasting impression on me, and ever afterwards I was very careful about wandering on the reef alone.

154

A week or so after the incident of the capture and death of the crocodile, Hot-Water, who had been in indifferent health for some time, was attacked by a violent cold, which settled on his chest, and it was apparent that he would not live long. One evening he sent for me to his house to say farewell. A large company were assembled, silently expecting his death. It was known that his end was very near, for the town had recently been enveloped in a dense fog, and there was an eclipse of the moon that night,—certain forerunners of the death of a great chief.

Hot-Water was greatly exhausted, but he raised himself as I entered the gloomy chamber, lighted only by the flickering flame of a wick floating in a pan of oil placed near the chief. Addressing the assemblage, though speaking with difficulty, he told them in symbolic language that as the musket and axe of the white man were truthful, so was his religion true—that as the foe fell before his firing and the tree before his chopping, so should fall their old religion smitten by the new and truthful one—that in a few more years they would set aside their gods of darkness and conform in many respects to the habits of the papalangis. Commending me to the protection of the tribe 158when he was gone, he lay back and became incapable of further speech.

Glancing round the company, I saw that these remarks had been received with anything but favour. It was well known that the King’s successor, his brother, Ratu Bolatha (ill-omened canoe), would be no friend to me for personal reasons; also, that he was opposed to the settlement of white men in the country, and the minor chiefs and people were preparing to follow the views of the new régime, under which white men would be regarded as no better than themselves, while I had always been looked upon as a sort of God.

On the following day I went to the King’s house, to enquire after Hot-Water again. Entering the building, I found the floor occupied by three groups of men and women, the middle figure of each group being held in a sitting posture and covered by a large veil of masi. On either side of each veiled figure there stood in line, seven or eight men, one company hauling against the other on a cord of sinnet passed twice round the neck of the central figure, which was in each case one of the old chief’s wives. All were motionless as wax figures. I had arrived during a strange hush—a haunted silence—it was the moment of death with the victims. Accustomed as I was to barbarous scenes, I could not but feel a thrill of horror. I was told that ten widows had now been strangled to accompany their lord to Hades.

Turning to the body of the King, I found, to my great surprise, that he was not dead. He raised his hand feebly and tried to speak, but without articulate utterance. At that moment the dolorous wail of two conch-shells, like a passing knell, published his death to the community. I remonstrated with the bystanders; they replied that his spirit was gone, and that he was dead;—his body might move, but that it did unconsciously. The body was already dressed for the grave. It was covered all over with a coat of black powder; the turban was secured by a chaplet of white cowries, and the flowing folds of a new sulu lay at the feet. An attendant approached, and laid in the hollow of the King’s 159arm his famous war club. It was an ushering in of Death with all the etiquette and observance of a punctilious court—a grim masquerading of the King of Terrors, in which there was no real sorrow or feeling displayed. And yet Hot-Water was a chief, distinguished by a few of the rarer Fijian virtues as well as by personal attractions.

At the sound of the conch-shells announcing the demise of the King, the chief priest turned towards the King elect and saluted him with the words “Peace, Sir, the King is dead; but his successor lives.” Then a loud flourish of trumpet-shells from the door of the royal residence informed the people that they owed allegiance to Bolatha, Tui Ramáka.

The bodies of the women, whose lives had been so cruelly sacrificed, were dressed in gala attire with vermilion powder spread on their faces and bosoms, as though they were being decked for the bride-bed rather than the grave. Then they were laid by the side of the dead chief. Visitors came in large parties to weep over the bodies, after the manner of the keening at an Irish wake. The corpses were watched during the night, the watchers singing a succession of dirges.

The burial of the late King was accompanied by many strange observances. The grave was lined with mats on which the bodies of the wives selected to accompany their husband to the spirit-world were laid, the King being placed on them. He had with him his club to help him in making his way through the difficulties which beset the paths of Hades. A strong man was also killed and buried with him in order that he might go before and hold the Fijian Cerberus when he attempted to prevent His Majesty from entering any of the spiritual Kingdoms. The old King was heard to moan after the soil had been heaped on him, but that was not regarded as a sign that his spirit was still in its earthly tenement, and the grave closed over him. The grave was only three feet deep, and its place was well indicated by the deceased’s long train of masi, some yards of which, being left above ground, were festooned on the branches of a neighbouring tree.

160Many mourning ceremonies followed on the death of the King. His children prepared a feast in honor of his spirit, which was now to them a god, and made wreaths and necklaces of sweet-smelling flowers and leaves, which were called “garlands for the departing spirit.” Many near relations each cut off a finger, and the digits were stuck in rows along the eaves of the late King’s house. The coast, for several miles, was made tambu, which meant that no one might fish there. Vast groves of cocoanuts were also declared to be sacred. One mourning custom observed, called Vakavindiulo, “jumping-of-maggots,” was a public lamentation in which the mourners pictured to themselves the corruption which had taken place in the body of the departed, the fourth day after burial. Another was called the Vakandrendre, “causing-to-laugh.” It consisted in the performance of comic games to help the friends of the deceased to forget their grief.

At length the funeral banquetings were over, all necessary usages had been fully complied with, the old King was gathered to his fathers, and Ratu Bolatha reigned in his stead. The passing of the chiefdom into the hands of a ruler who was not friendly to the white man, would, I was fully aware, lead to disagreeable consequences to me. However, it was not in accordance with Fijian custom to do anything hurriedly, and I knew that I should have time to look about me. So I continued the even tenor of my way, secretly revolving in my mind, however, various methods of protecting myself from an impending blow.

161

To while away idle hours, I had many conversations with the old priest on the subject of the religion of his countrymen. The cannibal, I found from him, as, indeed I had had many previous opportunities of observing, was a most fanatical believer in spirits and the spirit-world. His creed taught him that everything in nature and art was a duality in unity. In other words, that everything had two kinds of life, physical and spiritual. These two were but one in this visible existence, but at death the physical nature returned to earth, while the spiritual, retaining the form of the physical, lived on in another world. According to this teaching, animals, plants, stones, and in brief, all things in creation, and every work of man’s hand, had inner and spiritual selves. And just as there were starting places and paths for human spirits bound from this world to another, so also were there the same conveniences for the spirits of pigs, rats, snakes, bananas, taro, yams, canoes, clubs, spears, etc.

The Hades of the cannibal is both physical and spiritual, but its physical character is so only in appearance. The spirit of 166the body goes to the other world, retaining the likeness of the living man in an impalpable form. This belief has sometimes proved a stumbling-block to Fijians, particularly the older men, in their attempts to become acquainted with one of the main doctrines of the Christian religion. When examining candidates for baptism, missionaries have frequently been struck with the answer to their question, “Do you believe in the resurrection?” “Yes, I believe that my spirit will rise from the grave, and that my body will go to ruin.” The cannibal had no notion of a resurrection of the body until he learned it from Christianity. But he was no materialist, for he not only held that every material thing had a spirit of its own, but that when done with in this world, it would send to the invisible one its spiritual counterpart.

As departed spirits approach the shores of the new land, they are not unfrequently met by kindred spirits who have gone before. Among the first things which these friends are anxious to learn from the fresh arrivals, is the cause of separation between their spirits and their bodies. Was it the weakness of old age, the diseases of childhood, an epidemic, the wreck of a canoe, the wrath of a chief, the club of an assassin, the spear of a foe in fight, or a wilful leap from a precipice? The persons thus met, and greeted with earnest enquiries like these, are generally of some standing in society. No one takes any interest in the spirits of serfs. They have to tramp the weary road to the hidden country all alone, and introduce themselves on reaching it. Their liberated spirits pass into Hades to be again crushed with heavy burdens—to be tried and persecuted in a thousand ways, to be slain over and over again, and driven to other “states,”—but only to go through like trials, and be for ever hammered about for the sole crime of not being chiefs.

The spirit-world of the cannibal, as revealed to us in his mythologies, is certainly a very wonderful one. It is a vast country in the interior and on the outside of our earth. That it begins on the surface there is no doubt, but how far down its 167boundaries reach has not been determined. There are not fewer than six provinces or states. Dante would call these divisions of the spirit-world, “circles.” To be nearer the Fijian’s idea, it is better to regard them as lands or countries, which, if we saw them, we should look upon as duplicates of the islands forming the Fiji group. The future life of human spirits is occupied in travelling through all these states; the last of which, in the course of ages, admits the wandering ones to an unmistakeable immortality; or, if that be too much for them, to a kind of half-and-half annihilation, the true nature of which the philosophers of this religion have failed to explain. Each of these spiritual states is inhabited by aboriginal spirits, the real owners of the spiritual soil, who are governed by a king or great chieftain. In poetry the aborigines are spoken of as “the people who sprung up in Hades,” or “the people who arose out of the taro-beds of Hades.” Immigrants from earth have to be very careful that they respect the people and laws, and obey the chiefs of these mysterious realms. There is in each state a class of aboriginal chiefs called “Ambassadors to Earth.” Their duty is one of the utmost importance. They are expected to keep open communication with mortals, to whom they are required to make known the excellencies of the spirit-world, and the character of its government. We will now enter the region itself, and with the reader and our cannibal guides, pass at a good walking-pace through each of its six divisions.

The first of these is on the earth’s surface, and in the air about us. It is named the “Place of Dying.” It is the locality and its neighborhood where a human spirit leaves the body at death. For the convenience, as it would appear, of being able to think of the departed, congregated in one or two spots instead of in many, each village in Fiji has its one or two “Places of Dying” in or near it. Such a place may be regarded as the spirit-village of the real and visible one. At death, spirits go to this place and abide there for a season. It is from this sacred and most dreaded waiting place, that they watch the movements of the 168living; observe how they grieve at their bereavement, and how they show their grief by fulfilling all funeral rites and ceremonies.

The spirit does not take its departure till after some flitting and fluttering around old scenes,—as though, like the butterfly just burst forth from its cocoon, and taking short flights to prepare itself for greater efforts, he were anxious by shaking off the stiffness of his bodily life to be ready for some grand achievement. With some spirits the object of thus waiting about is to fall in with other spirits, whose company will lessen the dreariness of the untravelled way. Company is a delightful thing to the cannibal, whether his road lie on this or the other side of the dividing line between the two worlds. When spirits prefer remaining for kindred spirits, they must keep themselves well employed in the meantime. The spirits of old men take great pleasure in plaiting sinnet. The art they know so well in this world will not be forgotten in the other. The spirits of houses, canoes, &c., must be tied with spiritual sinnet; the demand for workmen will therefore never cease. But the day comes, sooner or later, when there can be no more lingering of departed spirits near the dear old village, with its groves of cocoanut palms and bread-fruit trees. The dreadful dive must be taken, and every spiritual shark and other enemy infesting the watery way, be fought and overcome, or the second state of the cannibal’s Hades will never be reached. The said dive is mostly made after rough and smooth journeys of various distances by land, to some place on the sea coast, or to islands and reefs near it. These places, whence the spirits start for a new sphere, are known by different names, more or less appropriate, as the “Leaf,” the “Bath,” the “Distant Reef,” “the Great Passage,” &c. It was strongly asserted, and by many almost as stoutly believed, that spirit-canoes used to arrive at these stations, to convey the spirits of great chieftains to the spirit-shore. But whether passengers by canoes, or brave swimmers trusting solely to the might of their own spiritual muscles, all, or nearly all, come up 169in due time on the beach leading to the grand entrance of the second state.

This may be known as the “Rocks” or “Place of Refuge.” It is on the western end of Vanua Levu. Here is the universal gathering place—the much talked of rendezvous of human spirits. It is from here that, after numerous crucial tests, the spiritual immigrants are permitted to pass on to further trials, hardships, and pleasures. That company of spirits you see yonder, coming from the beach, is a party of warriors whose bodies not long since licked the dust. The war-paint is still upon them, and in their present condition they cannot be allowed to proceed much further. No newly-arrived spirit can, until he has been exhibited four successive days to the aboriginal dwellers. Their exhibition over, they are removed to a place called the “Face-Washing-Water,” where they are washed with boiling water, which removes their outward and worldly appearance,—the very epidermis of their spirits,—after which their true spiritual skin shines forth. But here comes a spirit who has evidently had some attention given to his toilette de mort ere he came here. He will surely pass without the application of boiling water. Perhaps! but he has to find a lake somewhere in this neighbourhood called “Reflecting-Water,” which is the great looking-glass for spirits. If the oil, turmeric, and sandalwood preparations, with other cosmetics used upon him by his mourning friends for the purpose of improving his make-up and rendering his personal appearance as perfect as possible, shall be seen in this mirror to have effected that most desirable object, well and good; he shall pass without having to submit to the scalding trial experienced by the soldiers; but if not, why then there is nothing for him but the “Face-Washing-Water,” which will not fail to wash out every trace of the art known in other parts of the world as Madame Rachel’s, and, by a virtue and process peculiar to itself, make him “beautiful for ever.” Now there enters the spirit of a bachelor, who is much to be pitied, not so much because of his “single 170blessedness” when in the world, as for the long and intensely painful solitude that is before him, not to speak of other miseries, which, see! are already beginning! The officers of the place are putting him under a huge rock, which will press him as a cheese is pressed. He has but lately shuffled off his mortal coil, and, judging from our limited knowledge and experience, it seems not unlikely that this process will make him shuffle off his spiritual one. Honours are heaped upon the married, but the unmarried are greeted from all sides with the taunting words, “Most miserable of men!” Old maids receive no better treatment. If it could be avoided, it should at any expense, for this is no place for spinsters and bachelors. Let the living take timely warning, and never venture here, if men, without their “better halves;” if, women, without the sign of marriage, viz.: the absence in their hair of certain curls or locks, which will exempt them from these tortures. The laws of cannibal-land and its spirit-world are very plain on this important business. He is no hero who has not a wife, and but a very little one who has not many. No more is a woman a heroine who has not a husband, or who has more than one.

Let us now seek the shade of that beautiful tree, which, of course, is a spiritual one, for we are still in spirit-land, where things and people of every name and character are but

A grim monster abides in the vicinity of this tree. He is an aboriginal spirit, and the King of the state. That lake hard by is the Face-Washing-Water; and there, coming along the narrow path by that clump of banana trees, is a stranger with blackened face. He is making for the lake, but there is in his way a fence well guarded by the King, whose title of office for this particular duty is “Spirit-Smiter.” Our friend will not be able to pass him without a challenge. But if he be a chieftain of high rank, he may succeed in dashing bravely through the fence in spite of its ghastly guardian. If, on the contrary, he be a man of low degree, 171a turncoat or a coward, or one of the “uncircumcised,” he will make for the woods to avoid the hurdles and their awful guard, even as Bunyan’s pilgrim turned aside into “Bye-path Meadow,” to escape the roughness of the right road. Woe betide the poor wretch if the “Clubber” or any of his tribe catch him anywhere out there. He will be eaten by the cannibal aborigines of the state as sure as he is a spirit. On, the warrior presses, wielding his club right dexterously. The fence is smashed, and the Smiter is vanquished. Had the dreaded Spirit-Smiter prevailed, instead of the glorious son of Mars, the inhabitants of Fiji would have been made aware of the melancholy event by a great calm, which to them is always a sign that the Smiter has smitten a spirit.

The spirit of another man is busily picking up stones to throw at the fruit of a screw-pine, standing some 40 or 50 yards from his right hand. Count the stones as he throws them, and you will learn both the number of his widows and how many of them are being strangled and hurried off with the utmost despatch to follow and wait upon their lord throughout his future career in the land of spirits. Unfortunate wretch! He has thrown ten times, and never once hit the object of his aim. He left ten wives behind, not one of whom is coming to alleviate the miseries of his solitude, in whose face he discovers no charms; and he therefore sits down to moan and howl over his lonely and pitiful lot, or to address himself upbraidingly to his yet unstrangled wives, and their thoughtless and hardhearted friends. “Oh, I am weary of waiting here,” he exclaims. “Once I was weary with collecting many riches for you and your kinsfolk, and this is their love to me for all my pains.” The state of morals among his countrymen is growing worse and worse. The greatest and most dearly cherished institutions of the land are falling into neglect; and so this disconsolate spirit has nothing before him but wailing and weeping to tramp his lonely way.

But here is another spirit of far more chiefly bearing than the last. He is too rich to throw stones at the screw-pine, and uses 172whales’ teeth instead. Out of 20 shots he has struck the mark 7 times. He has 20 wives, and 7 of them are being strangled, that they may have the unspeakable privilege of accompanying their lord through all the kingdoms of this mysterious world.

The love of cannibal women for their husbands was not the outcome of the heart’s deepest and tenderest affections, but a compound made up of one part of something akin to love, and nine parts of fear; the whole leading to a hero-worship which enslaved both body and mind here and spirit hereafter. While he lived, the woman was the hero’s beast of burden, not his loving or beloved companion; and when he died the mesmeric power of his tyrannic will, sweeping once more over and through her spirit, like the last and fiercest gust of a hurricane, bent all her nature to one idea, which, inspired by superstition, led her to court death for his sake.

Some in the crowd have never had their ears bored; their future life will in consequence be one of much misery. An officer, whose duty it is to punish such unprepared immigrants, will presently come along, and, piercing every unbored ear with his ponderous spear, will thrust into the hole thus made the heavy log of wood from 2 to 3 yards long, used by the women of Fiji for beating native cloth or tapa on. The merciless judge condemns each offender to carry this burden in his ear forever; i.e., during the unknown period of his stay in this state. How great must be the necessity for having one’s ears bored while in this life. Men used to bore the lobes of their ears, and stretch them so much afterwards, that in the course of a few years they would hang dangling on their shoulders.

State the Third, like all the other States, has its “Spirit-Smiter,” who is distinguished by peculiar and special characteristics of his own. He of this State is its King. It is said that he keeps a cock which crows without fail on the approach of a 173human spirit. When once the Smiter strikes with his club, the effect is as though the very bones of the smitten child of earth crumbled away from his less material substance. This bone dust, the old dogmas tell us, is saved, and afterwards passed forward to another state in the Cannibal Hades, where it serves as fuel for the household fires of that country. The most remarkable feature of spiritual existence here, is that each earth-born spirit carries about with him an appropriate mark by which the work he was most distinguished for before leaving the body is published to all who meet him. The spirit now passing up the hill to the right was a great yam-planter, for his forehead bears upon it the figure of a yam. On another you will see the impress of sugar-cane, or bread-fruit, or taro, or whatever sort of vegetable he was in the habit of cultivating most abundantly. Here and there we shall meet some fine old men having their foreheads branded with figures of various vegetables, and carrying fire-sticks in their hands. They were men reported in their day as noted planters, the real producers of their country’s wealth—men who would not let the tall reeds grow where the yam-vine ought to creep, for want of fire to burn them off the ground. It is one of the first duties of the chief of this state to see that his country is well planted for the benefit of expected arrivals from earth. He has gardens for the spirit of each inhabitant of Fiji. The disembodied spirit on arrival hurries away to the banana plantation. Should no ripe bananas be found, he will have to put up with unripe ones; whence it will be known by the people of the place that he left the earth before his time. If he committed suicide, or was drowned or murdered, or if in any other unnatural way he met his death, his friends will say, “He died before his bananas in Hades were ripe.”

Sounds of music strike upon the ear. We are in the Fourth State—the land of song. The subjects of this mirthful state, sing again and again the natural songs of the aboriginal race without weariness. It were well if they could abide here for ever. But 174the spirit-world of the cannibal is too like his old one, for that, in its countless alternations between pleasure and pain. There are some even now, whose time being up, are gliding away to the Fifth State.

The indescribable delights they so lately experienced are in this state all unknown. Death comes at last to their relief, and grim King Back-Chopper loses his prey. Spirits whom he has long tortured are hourly escaping him and passing to the Sixth and Last State, which is known in the old legends as “The-Place-of-Everlasting-Standing.”

Here, for ever, the spirits remain in a standing posture. They may never walk, sit, or lie down. It is the state of upright, motionless, absolute immortality, for every spirit that can bear it. But restless spirits who hate so monotonous and statue-like a life, are taken in hand by the King of the realm, and reduced to something akin to annihilation! Hence, perhaps, the opinion that chiefs alone are heirs of immortality; all others being unable to pass the trials which thicken around them, in the several states through which we have hastened our tour of inspection. If, however, they should succeed in outliving the dangers and deaths encountered there, they can surely never survive the last and greatest test of all, with which King Lothea never fails to try every spirit that comes within the circle of his jurisdiction. All who cannot stand, Fakir-like, for ever, and without any sign of unrest or discontent whatsoever, must at last submit to have their spiritual legs taken from under them. Every leg thus removed is forthwith converted into spiritual mould, for the spiritual taro-beds of the great Spirit-King. The annihilation here indicated is, to say the most, but very partial; for, if nothing but the extremities of human spirits are destroyed, we may safely infer that our cannibal philosopher’s doctrine of annihilation is one of milder form than that contended for by learned “destructionists” of other lands.

I have now gone the round of the “Circles,” having faithfully followed my native guides into the very heart of the land 175of shadows and out again. Nothing remains but to note two or three general characteristics of the cannibals’ future home, and then to take our leave of the Spirit-World—a world which, in whatever light we may view it, to the Fijian is a very matter-of-fact one after all.

Spirits dwell a long time in each state unless they fail of endurance, when they are at once removed by a process akin to, and in Cannibal-land called, another death. The doctrine therefore that a man can die but once, is not to be found in the cannibals’ creed. Transmigration is an article in it, but it is only a spiritual migration from place to place, not from one body to another, except in the case of high-class gods, who have the power of passing from body to body when necessary, in order to effect more readily and perfectly their deep designs, either for or against the cannibal portion of the human race. The popular notion in Cannibal-land and times about these future homes of departed spirits, was that on the whole more happiness could be found in them than in this, the first stage of man’s existence. The least pleasant thing connected with it was the difficulty of getting there in safety; and when there, in passing the several tests in such a manner as to be entitled to be let alone to a full enjoyment of whatever was enjoyable. All things considered, it is a fine country, where the spirits of chiefs live with chiefs, and those of common men with spirits of their own order. Youth is seldom or never renewed, for old folks are seen there in great numbers, trusting to their walking-sticks in all their feeble attempts to shamble along the public walks of the place. There is work to be done, but it is always pretty easy, special trials excepted. There is no lack of what the Fijian would call fine houses and good gardens. There is, moreover, no scarcity of food, for the spirits feast ad libitum on the fat of the land. And there will always be enough of sailing and fighting to satisfy the characteristic craving of cannibal-spirits for the “spice of life.”

The cannibal was taught not to dread the thought of going to this Spirit-World, but on the contrary to long rather for the 176change. It was such beliefs as are now before us, and such teaching of them, that doubtless nerved many a widow to follow her departed husband with cheerful obedience to the wishes of his friends, and kept her from shrinking at the sight of the rope which was to end her miseries in this life. Bodily life was valued at a low price,—at no price at all in fact, and nowhere, either in the philosophy or poetry of Cannibal-land, were the people taught to consider

Turner and Cobb, the two companions who survived with me the wreck of the Molly Asthore, were absent from Ramáka when Hot-Water died. They were away on a visit to the sandalwood coast, on the island of Vanua Levu, with a party of natives. About three weeks had elapsed from the date of the consignment of our friendly old chief to the earth when they returned in a large double canoe, bringing the joyful intelligence that an English-manned barque from the East Indies, named the Sarah Jane, was at Bua, trading with the natives, her chief object being to obtain a cargo of sandalwood for the China market. Captain Jackson, of the Sarah Jane, having lost two men in a skirmish with the natives in Natewa Bay, was short-handed, and he had expressed his desire to ship Turner, Cobb, and myself for the voyage to China.

I had now been two years in the country. I spoke the language fluently, and had become thoroughly accustomed to 177the native mode of life. The intense desire to return to a civilised land, and the fellowship of white people, which afflicted me during the first few weeks of my enforced residence in the islands, had gradually worn off. I had not only become reconciled to my fate—I liked it. And what would become of Lolóma if I said farewell to Fiji? She could not accompany me to the home of the white man, and to part from her was impossible. When I listened to her beguiling voice, looked into her frank and tender eyes, and watched the gay, pretty toss of her head, in fresh, unconscious coquetry, or gazed upon the fiery langour of her embrowned limbs, the idea of separation became intolerable.

A few days after the return of Turner and Cobb from Vanua Levu, the Sarah Jane put into the port of Ramáka to take on board a quantity of yams, which had been promised in a message sent to her captain by Bolatha. I stepped once more on an English ship. As I listened to brief, fragmentary accounts of the most striking events that had occurred in Europe during the past two years, and to some items of Sydney news (for the vessel had called there only two months back), strange reflections crowded upon my mind, and I felt that the spirit of civilisation was strong within me. However, the authorities against whom I had transgressed in Sydney were still in power, and it would not do for me to return there at present.

The delight Lolóma felt in inspecting the cordage and fittings, the hold, the forecastle, and the cuddy of a real ship, was unbounded. Her sunny-natured disposition was all aglow with happiness. Life never seemed to her to be more a merry and gladsome frolic than it did that day. It was pleasure enough to be in the sun and laugh like the rippling torrent as it leaps from stone to stone.

Bolatha paid a visit of state to the Sarah Jane, accompanied by a large number of his retainers, and exchanged presents with the captain. As he carefully inspected the various quarters 178of the vessel, I noticed the covetous gleam which fired his eye, and boded no good to the Englishmen.

On the following day, Captain Jackson was invited by Bolatha to a grand meke (song and dance) given in his honour. He had been treated with a great show of friendliness, and, nothing doubting, he went ashore unarmed, accompanied by two of his sailors. The barque was left in charge of the mate and the remainder of the crew. Turner and Cobb, who had already taken up their abode on the vessel, were also on board.

In the midst of the shore festivities, of which I was an idle spectator, Lolóma ran to me in intense excitement, saying she had overheard the chiefs talking, and that the ship was to be captured, and all the white men, including myself, slain. I started to my feet with the intention of secretly giving warning to Jackson, but I was too late. Before I had gone three paces, Jackson, and the two sailors who accompanied him, were clubbed from behind, and I was near enough to see that the blows were fatal. At the same moment, by a preconcerted signal, the ship was attacked. She was surrounded with canoes, whose occupants had been trading with the sailors in a friendly way. Her decks were also covered with natives. Suddenly an onslaught was made with clubs, spears, and bows and arrows. The white men were taken unawares, but they were prompt in resistance. Turner and Cobb were luckily below at dinner, and sitting within reach of the arm-rack. The sailors on deck had vigorously laid about them with belaying pins, sheath-knives, and capstan-bars; and Turner and Cobb’s steady firing of musketry through the skylight soon cleared the decks of Fijians, with the exception of seven who lay dead. As soon as Turner and Cobb gained the deck, and fired upon the canoes, the whole flotilla retreated in disorder. The well-planned attempt to capture the vessel had failed. The casualties on the side of the Europeans were two sailors badly wounded.

At this time I was running my fleetest with Lolóma to the cavernous retreat in which I had waited for the crocodile to 179make his appearance. Pausing on rising ground to take breath, I was overjoyed to see that the attack on the barque, which lay half a mile from the shore, had aborted. I now believed that by making a detour, and gaining possession of a small canoe, I could paddle on board in the night time without much difficulty.

In the evening we were imprisoned by an unexpected event—a sudden thunderstorm of great violence. There was a premonitory hollow uproar in the higher regions of the air, and then the storm broke with magnificent fury on the flank of the mountain range which backed the town. Monarchs of the wood, held in the python-folds of enormous creepers, were levelled. The atmosphere was filled with branches driven before the wind, and they added to the noise of the sweeping ruin. Then the gloom was pierced with vivid flashes of forked lightning, tracing deep fissures in the clouds; the thunder leaped from peak to peak with its salvos of flying artillery; and the storm plunged through space, enacting a direful tragedy. No wonder that at such a time the Fijians picture to themselves their war-god riding on the whirlwind and directing the storm. Lolóma clung to me in wild affright.

The sea rolled mountainously towards my hiding-place. As it hurled itself against the crags, the concussion was terrific—the tumult deafening. The earth seemed to tremble beneath me. After nightfall the storm abated, leaving the atmosphere filled with electricity. Streams of electric fire exploded in every direction. The fretting and churning sea was filled with a dazzling blaze of phosphorescence; rocks in this mysterious realm were bathed with strange splendours, forming dancing phantoms in a scene of weird revelry. The kelps and sea-weeds were stars and comets—the waters cast up on the hill-side were gleaming rivulets in their return. Away to the horizon stretched an ocean of molten metal, changing with lambent flames of green, blue, and white; and on this ghastly welter of coloured fire was projected the shadow of the hulk of the Sarah Jane, whose silent spars 180reeled among the sheafs of vivid flame. On the shore the subsiding waves rippled beneath the mangrove bushes, flooding them with an unearthly pale light. More than once a globe of fire descended from the inky clouds, and on reaching the sea burst into a shower of sparks. Whenever I caught sight of the ship on which my fortunes depended, she was dragging heavily at her anchor chains; and she often seemed, from the constant play of the lightning upon her spars, to be on fire in a dozen different places at once. Slowly the strange and terrifying aspect of the lava-sea faded away, giving place to the blackness of night.

It was long, however, before the electrical disturbance of the atmosphere completely subsided. With the first streak of day, I clambered up the irregular face of the rocky promontory which had given me shelter, and gained the table-land at its summit. The trees occasionally emitted livid wavering flames, similar to those of St. Elmo’s light. Their appearance was accompanied by a crackling sound, like that of the burning of wet powder. I found that when I touched these flames, the light clung to me without causing any sensation. Marvelling much at this phenomenon, I turned my face to the ocean, being anxious about the safety of the barque. At that moment a party of Bolatha’s men, lying in ambush to take me prisoner, rushed upon me. I was too quick for them, and rapidly gained the summit of a small rocky eminence from which I could look down upon them. Carrying my flame-tipped fingers to my head, which was uncovered, I was suddenly illuminated by an electric aureola, and presented the appearance of a glorified saint. On beholding this strange transformation, the Fijians ran off, screaming with terror. Before they were out of ear-shot I heard them shout, partly from conviction, and partly with the view of propitiating the newly-found deity, “The Child of the Hurricane is a God indeed!”

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