“E-mbia wanga é-mbi,E-dua thombo, ié!”
“E-mbia wanga é-mbi,E-dua thombo, ié!”
“E-mbia wanga é-mbi,E-dua thombo, ié!”
“E-mbia wanga é-mbi,
E-dua thombo, ié!”
and each time they criedié!they hauled on the vine-rope with all their strength, and the great tree moved on a step. And now they had come to a place where the river was hemmed in with high cliffs, and the bed was obstructed by great boulders that had fallen from above. They could see the black rocks of Vatuloaloa below them. And there was a shout from the cliffs above, and when they looked up they saw the men ofRara standing on the edge, but instead of food-baskets they had spears and war-fans in their hands, and their faces were painted. And there came a shout from the cliff toward Tovutovu, and they looked and saw the men of Valekau standing prepared for battle. And one said, “What does Valekau here prepared for battle? Surely this is treachery!” So they threw down the Vine-rope and shouted, “How is it?” And the men of Valekau answered, “You shall be repaid to-day!” And they threw great stones down on them as they stood waist-deep in the angry water, and the men of Tovutovu fled, some up-stream and some down, splashing the water high above them; but when they reached the low bank there were armed men guarding them. Thus were they like a wild boar at bay encircled by barking dogs. And in their madness they took stones from the river-bed, and ran at the men of Valekau; but many were slain, and those who escaped lay all day in the thick rushes, and saw a great smoke rising from the plain where Tovutovu was, and knew that the doom of their wives and children was accomplished. And when night was come they crept from their hiding-places, and fled into the forest until the remnant of them was gathered together there. Thus wasTovutovu wiped out, and Rara and Valekau divided the spoil.
And the remnant of them went up the river to Uthadamu, and dwelt there many months. But their hearts yearned after their own land. So when the yams were ripe they sent an embassy to Rara saying, “We are few in number and in pitiable plight. We pray you, let us return again to our own earth and the foundations of our ancestors, that we may breathe again.” And the messenger returned, and said, “They accepted the whales’ teeth and said, ‘It is well. Return.’” So they went back, and built houses on their old foundations, and sent to Rara saying, “Appoint a day when we shall bring you offerings of atonement.”
And the elders of Rara spoke to the chiefs of Valekau, “Are we not weary of war? Our young men thirst only for battle, and neglect the food-plantations, so there is scarcity. It was not so when we were young. Now therefore let us lay war aside, and make peace.”
So they appointed a day when they should all meet together and take counsel. And on the appointed day the men of Tovutovu brought whales’ teeth and rolls of bark-cloth, and presented them to the chiefs of Raraand Valekau as an offering of atonement. And Dongai said, “We are met to-day to make peace, for we are all weary of war. Many brave warriors are dead, and the land is empty. As for us of Rara, the war did not come from us. We only repaid that which was done to us. To what end has it been, this fighting between brothers?”
Then Bonawai of Valekau spoke. “It is true, O chiefs of Rara, that the war has been an evil one, for all our fortresses have been burned, and the land is empty. But neither did the war begin with us. True it is that the tree grows from the root, but there would be no root unless a seed had first been sown. Chiefly do I blame you, chiefs of Rara, for you were the cause of these wars. Have you forgotten that stick with which fish are taken—a magic contrivance of the foreigners—by which a man could stand and take fish until his arms fell to his sides from weariness? This we sent to beg of you, and you churlishly refused.”
The men of Rara bowed their heads, and picked at the ground. Then Dongai spoke: “O chiefs of Valekau, it is true that ye sent to beg this stick, but we hungered for fish, and—how could we give it, not having yet seen its magic?—and—and——”
“And ye knew not how to use it,” said Vasualevu.
“Then,” said Nkio, the herald, “if it be peace show us now this magic stick, for we know that ye have it hidden.”
“We cannot show it to you.”
“Why?”
“We dare not, lest the gods of the foreigners be angry.”
“This is foolishness,” muttered the elders of Valekau. “What peace is this when we ask and are refused? We pray you, show us the stick.”
“Be not angry, O chiefs of Valekau, but in truth we know not where it is.”
Then the anger of Valekau was roused, and they said, “Ye are befooling us! Have ye forgotten how ye refused us before?” And they began to go out from the house.
Then Koronumbu of Rara spoke. “Why do ye hide the truth in doubtful sayings? Know then, chiefs of Valekau, that we never had this stick ye speak of, but when ye sent to beg it of us shame came upon us that we had it not, and we could not tell you, fearing that ye would despise us.”
There was silence for a space, and the elders of Rarasat with bowed heads. Then Bonawai, the crafty, spoke, “See that ye tell no one, for if the coast people hear this tale how shall we endure their ridicule when they ask us, ‘Why went ye up against Rara? Did ye hunger for fish?’ Therefore hide this thing, and let no one know it.”
[3]A reed-lance tipped with ironwood (toa) with which the game oftinkais played.
[4]Women and children—non-combatants.
This is a true story, or at least it is as true as any other that depends for its details upon tradition. It is the story of a man who had an opportunity and used it; who, being but a shipwrecked sailor, knew how to make himself feared and respected by the arrogant chiefs who had him at their mercy; who tasted the sweets of conquest and political power; and who brought about, albeit indirectly, the cession of Fiji to England. Many have the dry bones of the story—how the Swede, Charles Savage, a shipwrecked sailor or runaway convict, armed with the only musket in the islands, raised Bau from the position of a second-rate native tribe to be mistress of the greater part of the group; and how after a few years of violence and bloodshed he was killed and eaten by the people of Waileawho thus avenged hundreds of their countrymen whom Savage had helped to bring to the ovens of Bau. To clothe these dry bones with living flesh we must turn to native tradition,—those curious records, often silent as to great events, while preserving the most trivial details—often indifferent to sequence, always disdainful of chronology.
Fiji is linked to the rest of the Pacific by that romantic history, stranger and more absorbing than any fiction, which ended in the tragedy and the pastoral comedy of Pitcairn Island; for Lieutenant Hayward, who was despatched from Tonga in a native canoe by Captain Edwardes of the Pandora to search for the missing mutineers of the Bounty, was the first white man of whose landing in Fiji we have any authentic record. His visit was forgotten by the natives in the horror of the great pestilence, theLila balavu, or wasting sickness, the first-fruits of their intercourse with the superior race. “From that time,” says an epic of the day, “our villages began to be empty of men, but in the time before the coming of the sickness every village was so crowded that there was no space to see the ground between the men, so crowded were they.” From this pestilencedated the custom of strangling those sick of a lingering illness lest they should, in the malignity of misery, spit upon the food and lie upon the mats of the healthy, and thus make them companions in their suffering. No wasting sickness was like the greatLila, for men and women lay till the bark-clothes rotted from their bodies, and their heads seemed in comparison to be larger than food-baskets; and they were so feeble that they lacked the strength to pull down a sugar-cane to moisten their parched throats unless four crawled out to lend their strength to the task.
Twelve years passed. The places of the dead were filled. The crops and animals wasted in the funeral feasts were again abundant, when the men of the eastern isles saw white men for the second time. On a night in the year 1803 there was a great storm from the east. When morning broke and the men of Oneata looked towards the dawn, they saw a strange sight. On the islet Loa, that marks the great reef Bukatatanoa, red streamers were waving in the wind. Strange beings, too, were moving on the islet—spirits without doubt. There were visitors in Oneata, men of Levuka in the island of Lakeba, offshoots in pasttime from distant Bau, holding special privileges as ambassadors who linked the eastern with the western islands. Two of these, bolder and more sophisticated than the natives of the place, launched a light canoe and paddled cautiously towards Loa. They gazed from afar, resting on their paddles, and returned with this report: “Though they resemble men, yet they are spirits, for their ears are bound up with scarlet, and they bite burning wood.” Then the elders of Oneata took much counsel together, wishing yet fearing to approach the spirits that were on Loa; but at last they bade the young men launch the twin canoe Taiwalata, and sailed for Loa. And as they drew near, the strange spirits beckoned to them, until at last they drifted to the shore and took them into the canoe to carry them to Oneata. But one of them they proved to be mortal as themselves, for he was buried on Loa, being dead, whether of violence or disease will never now be known. Here the traditions become confused. There were muskets and ammunition in the wrecked ship, but the men of Oneata knew nothing of their uses, else had the history of Fiji perhaps been different. They hid the casks of powder to be used as pigment for the face,and the ramrods to be ornaments for the hair. And one of them, says the tradition, smeared the wet pigment over hair and all, and when it would not dry as charcoal did, but lay cold and heavy in the hair, he made a great fire in the house and stooped his head to the blaze to dry the matted locks! None knew what befell. There was a sudden flash, very bright and hot, and a tongue of flame leaped from the head and licked the wall, and the chief sprang into the rara with a great cry, for his hair was gone, and the skull was more naked than on the day when he was born. It was, they said, the work of spirits; and they used the black powder no more.
The strangers had scarce landed when a second great pestilence broke out. There is pathos in the fragmentary saga of the time which has been handed down to us—
“The great sickness sits aloft,Their voices sound hoarsely,They fall and lie helpless and pitiable,Our god Dengei is put to shame,Our own sicknesses have been thrust aside,The strangling-cord is a noble thing,They fall prone; they fall with the sap still in them.* * * * * * *A lethargy has seized upon the chiefs,How terrible is the sickness!We do not live; we do not die,Our bodies ache; our heads ache,Many die, a few live on,The strangling-cord brings death to many,Themaloround their bellies rots away,Our women groan in their despair,Thelikuknotted round them they do not loose,Hark to the creak of the strangling-cords,The spirits flow away like running water,ra tau e.”
“The great sickness sits aloft,Their voices sound hoarsely,They fall and lie helpless and pitiable,Our god Dengei is put to shame,Our own sicknesses have been thrust aside,The strangling-cord is a noble thing,They fall prone; they fall with the sap still in them.* * * * * * *A lethargy has seized upon the chiefs,How terrible is the sickness!We do not live; we do not die,Our bodies ache; our heads ache,Many die, a few live on,The strangling-cord brings death to many,Themaloround their bellies rots away,Our women groan in their despair,Thelikuknotted round them they do not loose,Hark to the creak of the strangling-cords,The spirits flow away like running water,ra tau e.”
“The great sickness sits aloft,Their voices sound hoarsely,They fall and lie helpless and pitiable,Our god Dengei is put to shame,Our own sicknesses have been thrust aside,The strangling-cord is a noble thing,They fall prone; they fall with the sap still in them.* * * * * * *A lethargy has seized upon the chiefs,How terrible is the sickness!We do not live; we do not die,Our bodies ache; our heads ache,Many die, a few live on,The strangling-cord brings death to many,Themaloround their bellies rots away,Our women groan in their despair,Thelikuknotted round them they do not loose,Hark to the creak of the strangling-cords,The spirits flow away like running water,ra tau e.”
“The great sickness sits aloft,
Their voices sound hoarsely,
They fall and lie helpless and pitiable,
Our god Dengei is put to shame,
Our own sicknesses have been thrust aside,
The strangling-cord is a noble thing,
They fall prone; they fall with the sap still in them.
* * * * * * *
A lethargy has seized upon the chiefs,
How terrible is the sickness!
We do not live; we do not die,
Our bodies ache; our heads ache,
Many die, a few live on,
The strangling-cord brings death to many,
Themaloround their bellies rots away,
Our women groan in their despair,
Thelikuknotted round them they do not loose,
Hark to the creak of the strangling-cords,
The spirits flow away like running water,ra tau e.”
Many of the foreigners never left Oneata alive. A doubtful tradition ascribes their death to the pestilence; a more detailed says that they were slain by the men of Levuka. As the natives believed them to be the cause of the sickness, we may accept the more tragic of the two.
It was a year of terror. Here is a fragment of another poem of the same time:—
“Sleeping in the night I suddenly awake,The voice of the pestilence is borne to me,uetau,I go out and wander abroad,uetau,It is near the breaking of the dawn,uetau,Behold a forked star,uetau,We whistle with astonishment as we gaze at it,uetau,What can it portend?uetau,Does it presage the doom of the chiefs?e e.”
“Sleeping in the night I suddenly awake,The voice of the pestilence is borne to me,uetau,I go out and wander abroad,uetau,It is near the breaking of the dawn,uetau,Behold a forked star,uetau,We whistle with astonishment as we gaze at it,uetau,What can it portend?uetau,Does it presage the doom of the chiefs?e e.”
“Sleeping in the night I suddenly awake,The voice of the pestilence is borne to me,uetau,I go out and wander abroad,uetau,It is near the breaking of the dawn,uetau,Behold a forked star,uetau,We whistle with astonishment as we gaze at it,uetau,What can it portend?uetau,Does it presage the doom of the chiefs?e e.”
“Sleeping in the night I suddenly awake,
The voice of the pestilence is borne to me,uetau,
I go out and wander abroad,uetau,
It is near the breaking of the dawn,uetau,
Behold a forked star,uetau,
We whistle with astonishment as we gaze at it,uetau,
What can it portend?uetau,
Does it presage the doom of the chiefs?e e.”
From contemporary traditions we gather that thecomet had three tails, the centre tail being coloured and the two outer white; that it rose just before daybreak, and that it was visible for thirty-seven nights in succession. Was this the comet of 1803, or Donati’s? Here, as in all ages and countries, the comet was believed to be an omen of coming evil—not the ravages of the unknown plague, but the death of some great chief. In like manner the comet of 1843 presaged the fall of Suva, and that of 1881 the death of King Cakobau.
Bau was now rising into fame. Her people, like their neighbours of the Rewa delta, had swept down from the sources of the Rewa, the cradle of the race, had for a time held a precarious footing among the older tribes by dint of constant fighting, and had at last fought and schemed their way to independence. Opposite to their stronghold Kubuna lay the tiny island of Bau, protected from a land attack by two miles of shallow sea.
Bau, or Butoni as it was then called, was occupied by the chiefs’ fishermen, who bartered their fish for the produce of the plantations on the mainland. But the security of their island made them insolent, and, to punish them, the chiefs resolved to attack andoccupy their village. The incursion was made about the year 1760, and the fishermen were banished from the place for a time. With the help of their dependants the chiefs scarped away the side of the hills and reclaimed land from the shallow sea, facing it with slabs of stone. Thenceforth Butoni was known as Bau, the place of chiefs.
Secure in their island stronghold, the chiefs of Bau soon forgot their common origin with the poor relations they had left behind on the mainland to cultivate the plantations. The pursuit of arms has in every age conferred aristocracy, while the cultivation of the food on which warriors and cultivators alike exist has ever tended to sink men to serfdom. Under Banuve, the son of Durucoko, Bau had begun to make her power felt. Banuve had a definite policy; he tolerated no rivals. When the chief of Cautata presumed on his relationship to Bau by his mother, no warning was given him. He was attacked in the night, and his stronghold of Oloi burned. Yet this harsh discipline failed to satisfy his jealous kinsman. Intrenchments could be rebuilt, and half-beaten tribes are doubly dangerous. Eight times was Cautata rebuilt, and eight times was it reduced to ashes; norwas there peace until earth had been brought as asoro, and Cautata had acknowledged herself to be a hewer of wood and a drawer of water for Bau. But Banuve did not often risk open battle when there were so many who would fight for fighting’s sake. In his day Bau was first known as the nest in which plots were hatched, because Bau knew that the whale’s tooth proffered to an ally in secret was a surer weapon than the club. When the comet threw its glare over Bau, presaging evil, there were two States against whom Banuve’s plots could not prevail. Seven miles north of the little island was Verata, an intrenched fort in a deep bay that faces the island of Viwa. Till Bau was colonised, Verata drew tribute from the coast as far as Buretu, and the struggle for the mastery was ever impending. To the southward was Dravo allied with Nakelo, too strong to be yet attempted.
Such was the position of Bau when the pestilence reached it, by means, it is said, of a canoe from Ovalau. Cholera, dysentery, or whatever it may have been, it struck chief and commoner alike. “Their limbs became light, and when they would walk they reeled and fell, and where they fell they lay; nor was there any to tend them, for all were stricken alike. Then didwar cease, for the strong warriors were stricken and withered like thedaigathat droops in the evening. They were as men bereft of sense, for those who had strength launched the canoes and sailed away, and the sick died more swiftly when there was none left to bring them food: their bodies rotted in the houses, or were devoured by the hogs. Yet the living could not escape by flight, for the pestilence, borne on the wind that filled their sails, overtook them even in the place whither they fled.... None can tell the terror and the pity of that time.”
From Bau, however, they did not attempt to escape, for the sickness was raging on the mainland opposite to them, and beyond the mountains there were none but enemies. They stayed and sickened and died, and the last to die was Banuve, surnamed Sevuniqele (“the first-fruits”), their Vunivalu. And his spirit went and stood on the bank of the swift stream at Lelele, and Cema answered his cry, and brought to him the vesi canoe on which chiefs only may embark. And he crossed the eel-bridge and made ready his stone to throw at the great pandanus by which the love of wives is proved. And his stone went true to the mark. So he rested, knowing that his wives mustsoon follow him to bear him company in the world of spirits. Nor did he wait in vain, for on that very day four of his wives were strangled and buried with him in the same tomb. Henceforth he was not Banuve, but Bale-i-vavalagi (“He-who-fell-by-the-foreign-pestilence”). The doom of the forked star had fallen.
Banuve’s eldest son, Ra Matenikutu (“The lice-killer”), succeeded naturally to the office of Vunivalu; but the rites of confirmation could not be performed until the arrival of the men of Levuka, whose peculiar province it is to conduct the ceremony. The traditions of Oneata say that they took with them to Bau on this occasion one of the white men; but the historians of Bau affirm that they came bringing with them no strangers, but a canvas house and the first foreign possessions seen by the Bauans.
We shall never know now what became of the red-capped sailors cast upon the reef at the ends of the earth in that stormy night of 1803. Perhaps they perished of the disease they brought with them; perhaps, like Gordon in the New Hebrides, they were sacrificed to the Manes of those whose death they had unwittingly brought about. Their fate is not even oneof the thousand mysteries of the sea which men would fain solve.
On the day fixed for the rite there was another portent. The sky was cloudless at high noon, when the sun suddenly paled and turned to the colour of blood. The air grew dark, the birds settled on the trees to roost, and the stars came out. There was silence among the people sitting before the spiritbure, Vatanitawake—the silence of a great fear. Then the god entered into one of the priests, and he screamed prophecies in the red darkness, foretelling war and the greatness of Matenikutu, the son of Bale-i-vavalagi, and crying that the face of the sun was red with the blood that he should shed.
This dramatic scene was no invention of the elders of Bau, for the tradition of the eclipse is to be found in Rewa, in Nakelo, and in Dawasamu, and in every case the day is fixed as the day of the confirmation of Ra Matenikutu. He saw many strange sights during his stormy reign, but assuredly none more weird and terrible than this scene in the lurid twilight, when he was declared Vunivalu.
In that year there were other strange omens, foretelling the change of the old order. The heavensrained lumps of ice, that broke down the yam-vines and the stalks of the taro; and the people, touching them, said that burning stars had fallen from heaven. There followed a great storm. For many days the rain fell without ceasing, and the waters rose. The basin of the Rewa river, draining half the island, was swept with a torrent greater than any that have been seen before or since, and the waters rose over the housetops, sweeping seawards in a roaring muddy flood. The strong fled to the hills and saved their lives; the sick and the aged were swept out to sea. When the waters subsided, the face of the country was changed, for the flood had covered the land and the reefs with a great layer of black earth. Thus were the flats of Burebasaga raised above the reach of the water, and thus was the land purged of the pestilence.
And now the new order was at hand. In 1808 the American brig Eliza, with 40,000 dollars from the River Plate, was wrecked on the reef of Nairai Island. The crew were allowed to live. Some of them made their way in the ship’s boats to another American vessel that chanced to be lying at Bua Bay, ninety miles distant; five others, two of them Chinamen, were carried by the natives to Verata; one, namedCharles Savage, made his way to Bau in a canoe that chanced to be sailing thither. The hull was looted by the natives, who used the silver dollars—lavothey call them still, from their resemblance to the bean of that name—as playthings to be skimmed along the shallow water, or buried with the posts of a new house. Eighty years have passed, and though many sailors have deserted their ships with the purpose of enriching themselves from this lost treasure, and the natives have long ago learned the value of money, these records of the wreck are still occasionally found.
As soon as Savage reached Bau he besought Ra Matenikutu to send him to Nairai to search for a thing he wanted from the wreck, and when this was not granted he promised that if the thing were brought to him he would make Bau pre-eminent above all her enemies, even over Rewa and Verata. The thing they were to look for was like angataclub, but heavier, and they must also find a black powder such as men use to paint their faces for war. The messengers searched diligently. They found the black powder, but none knew this thing of which the White man spoke. But at the last, when they were wearied with the search, one remembered that angataclubof a strange pattern had been built into a yam-house set up to hold the crop that was but just dug. There they found it, as the ridge-pole of the yam-shed, the weapon that should enable Bau to crush her rivals, and should bring even her at last under the dominion of a stronger than she.
When they returned to Bau, Savage took the thing to his house, and shut the doorway that no one might see. “And presently he bade Naulivou summon all the elders of Bau to therarabefore thebureof the war-god Cagawalu—the same that was the untimely birth of the woman of Batiki—and there on the seaward side he set on end the deck-plank of a canoe; and he went with his weapon and stood before the foundation of thebure. Then he cried to the elders to watch the deck-plank, and he aimed and fired. And the people, knowing nothing of what would happen, dashed their heads upon the ground so that the blood flowed, and they were angry that the white man had not told them what he would do. He did not listen to them, but only pointed to the plank that the lead had pierced, saying that so would he slay the enemies of Bau. Then the young men took their spears and clamoured to be led against Verata; but Savagebade them be silent, saying that they could not prevail against the place while there were white men like himself within the town. And he took a piece of whitemasi, and mixed water with the powder so as to make a black pigment, and with a reed split into many points he painted words upon themasi, and put it in a gourd and fastened the gourd to a stick.
“Then a canoe was made ready to carry him to Verata, where the other white men were. But they could go no farther than the point of the bay where the beach is open, for this was the frontier of Verata, and they were enemies. Here they set up the stick with the gourd hanging to it; and afterwards they sailed near to the town, but out of bow-shot, and shouted to the people to go and take the gourd. Now within the gourd were words from Savage to the white men bidding them leave Verata and come to Bau, which, he said, was the stronger, and a land of chiefs, where they would live unharmed.”
“On the next day these men fled to Bau in a canoe which they had taken, and the forces were made ready to go against Verata. In the first canoe went Savage with his musket. When they were near the town he made them lower the sail and pole the canoe into theshallow water close to the moat. And the warriors in the town ran up and down behind the moat and taunted them, but their arrows fell short of the canoe. Then Savage stood up and shot at a man standing on the bank of earth beating the air with his club, and he fell forward into the moat. And all the others ran to him to see his hurt, and there was silence for a moment while they wondered, and fear gathered in their hearts. Then Savage loaded his piece again and fired at the men as they stooped over him that was wounded, and another fell; and panic seized the rest, and they fled behind the war-fence. Then Savage fired many times at the fence, and the lead passed through the banana-stumps that arrows could not pierce, and wounded the men that stood behind; for it was not until the bow gave place to the musket that the war-fence was made of earth. Then the men of Verata began to flee, and Savage leaped from the canoe and ran to tear down the fence. But as he broke through it a warrior of Verata, who stood just within, stabbed him in the side with his spear. The men of Bau who followed close upon him seized the man before he could escape, and bound him, and took him to the canoes, and he was afterwards slainat Bau and baked in the ovens. Meanwhile the warriors from the other canoes were burning the houses and taking the spoil to the canoes, and clubbing all who had not escaped except a few of the women, who might serve as slaves for Bau. They took also a few of the men as prisoners to be slain at thebureof the war-god and cooked in the ovens. Thus was the power of Verata broken.
“They carried Savage to his own house. Here he had hung a hammock of sail-cloth between the posts, and in this he was laid, for he had lost much blood. But when the old men came with theirlosi-sticks and other implements to performcokalosion his body, they found him swinging in his hammock and swearing strange oaths with the pain of his wound. Nor would he let them touch him, but rather cursed them when he understood what they would do, and called for water to pour upon his wound.
“Bau fought no more till Savage was recovered of his wound. None dared touch his musket, for he had told them that there was magic in it that would kill any that touched it except himself; nor did the other white men dare to take it, for he had threatened them that if any disobeyed him he would require hisdeath at the hands of the chief, who would refuse him nothing.”
When his wound was healed and he could move about the town, they prepared to make himkoroifor the number of the enemy that he had killed. In Fiji, when a man had slain another in battle, he was led to theburewith great honour and dedicated to the god; his old name was taken from him, and a new name, with the prefix of “Koroi” (signifying “dwelling of”), was given to him in its place. A stone’s-throw from Bau lies the little islet of Nailusi, on which Ra Matenikutu had built a house for his wives after it had been enlarged with stones carried from the reef. To this islet was Savage taken by several of the elders. There they stripped off his shirt and painted his face and breast with black paint and turmeric, though he mocked the while at their mummeries, protesting that he was cold. When all was ready they embarked again in the canoe with their spears, and landed opposite to the war-god’sbure, where the priests and the old men were sitting. Here the warriors that were to be made “koroi,” taught by the elders, poised their spears and crept slowly on the temple, dancing thecibi, the death-dance. AndSavage, painted and festooned like the rest, but wearing his trousers, went with them; but he would not dance to the chant of the old men. They planted their spears hung with streamers against the wall of the temple, and took new spears from the attendants. At night the feast was apportioned, and there was a great dance that lasted till the sun was high on the next morning. And when the dance was ended the chosen warriors brought offerings and piled them in therara, and as each approached the priests called his new title. And after them all came Savage, bringing nothing but his musket, and the priest cried “Koroi-na-Vunivalu,” a more honourable title than them all. But when they were taken into thebureand forbidden to bathe or eat with their hands for the space of four days, Savage scoffed fiercely at the priests who besought him to comply with their customs, and broke thetabu, leaving thebure, and going to his own home.
From this time they made Savage greater than any save the Vunivalu; some say, indeed, that greater honours were paid to him than to Ra Matenikutu himself. He was a chief of the tribe by adoption, not a foreigner as the others were. Two ladies were given him to wife, the daughters of the spiritual chiefand of the Vunivalu himself, and a great house was built for him at Muaidele, on the borders of the fishermen’s town of Soso. We hear little of the other white men who were living at Bau. They took wives, and ate and drank and slept, while Savage sat in the councils of the tribe. Children were born to them, but they were all destroyed except Maraia, the daughter of Savage by a woman of Lomaloma—she who was afterwards married by force to the master of the Manila ship before he was murdered by his crew. She died in 1875.
Verata had given her submission with the basket of earth, and her enmity was no longer to be feared. The rival of Bau now lay to the southward. Through the system of navigable creeks in the delta of the Rewa river there was a water highway to Rewa, interrupted only by a narrow isthmus, over which the canoes had to be dragged. Commanding this isthmus stood Nakelo, whose strength no enemy had broken. Nakelo had refused to the Bau canoes the right of passing their town, and had compelled the messengers between Bau and Rewa to make the long and tedious journey by sea. The conquest of Nakelo would therefore be the first step towards thesovereignty of the fertile delta. Savage took entire command of this expedition. He ordered them to plait a litter of sinnet large enough to hold him, and dense enough to turn arrows. On one side a slit was left as an embrasure for the musket, but the rest of it was arrow-proof. Then poles were fixed to it as handles, and Savage was carried round the town of Bau to test its strength. The force went against Nakelo by water, taking the litter in the canoes. When they were near to the place and could see the embankment crowned with the war-fence, Savage chose from among his followers two of the strongest and most fearless, and ordered them to set the litter down within bow-shot of the walls, and then to run back to their comrades, for he would engage the enemy alone. No sooner was the litter set down than it was stuck as full of arrows as the spines of an echinus. But when the garrison saw that there was but one man against them and no ambush, they were bolder, and made as if they would leave their defences and rush down upon him. For this Savage was waiting. As they mounted on the fence to take the better aim with their bows he fired through the embrasure of his litter, and a chief among them fell. The rest stood,helpless with terror, until he had loaded and fired again. Then, as at Verata, a panic seized them, and one among them took a mat and held it up to ward off the lead from the wounded chief as if he would ward off arrows; but the bullets pierced this also and wounded him who held it. Then they fled. And the warriors of Bau, who had been waiting out of bow-shot, leaped over the fence into the town, clubbing all they met and shouting their death-cry. So Nakelo the invincible was burned, and many prisoners were taken to Bau, to be dashed against the temple-stone and baked in the ovens. Savage was given of the captive women as many as he would take, and he gave them to the other foreigners that were in Bau. And the chief of Nakelo fled to Rewa, and sent from thence his submission by the hand of Matainakelo, craving leave to rebuild his village. So Ra Matenikutu took the whale’s teeth, but ordered the men of Nakelo to dig a canal through the isthmus that obstructed the water-way, and henceforward to suffer canoes from Bau to pass to Rewa without hindrance, for the Queen of Rewa was a Bauan lady. And Nakelo dug a ditch into which the water could wash at high tide, and the swift current did the rest,making the wide channel through which we pass to-day.
And now the power of Bau was swelled by the fame of these victories. Broken tribes, fleeing from their enemies in Vugalei, came to Ra Matenikutu, asking leave to settle on his waste lands in return for the tribute they would pay him for protection. Thus did Namara becomebatito Bau; for when they chanced to meet the chief at Kubuna where they had come for salt, and he gave them a shark and a sting-ray to eat, there was a friendly contest between two of them that were brothers, as to which of them should be clubbed by the other as an offering to the great chief in return for the fish; and their cousin hearing the dispute cried, “You speak as if a man were as precious as a banana. What is a man’s life? Let the elder be clubbed.” So the younger clubbed him and presented his body to the chief. And when he knew what they had done he was grieved, and bade them bury the body there and not cook it; and he said, “I wanted no return for the fish, but ye have shown that ye are true men. Return to your place, and bring your wives and children, and come and settle on this land, and cultivate it, and be my borderers, for I have need of true men.”
There is no need to tell of how Buretu and Kiuva were subdued, and Tokatoka was driven out, until there remained only Rewa that was not subject to Bau. Against all these Bau prevailed through Savage, who ever led her forces with his musket. Other ships called in the group for sandal-wood, and left deserters and discharged seamen, attracted by the news of the dollars stored at Nairai, to swell the foreign colony at Bau—Graham from Sydney, Mike Maccabe and Atkins discharged from the “City of Edinburgh.” These men, and three others whose names are lost, lived together in a house between Soso and the chief’s town, practising every native custom except cannibalism, and far surpassing them in one form of licence. When a ship called for a cargo of sandal-wood, they would hire themselves out to pull the boats at a wage of £4 a-month, to be paid in knives, tools, and beads, which clothed them with a brief importance among the natives of Bau when they returned; but, for the rest, the natives looked on them with scorn and fear, as men with the manners of beasts and as breakers of thetabu. There came a day when one of the tributary tribes of Bau brought a great offering of food to the chief, Savage being absent with the army. The yams and turtle werepiled in theraraopposite the dwelling of the white men. Here it was apportioned by the chief’smata; but when he called out the names of those who were to come and take a share, he did not cry the names of the white men. These then became very angry, and two of them, less prudent than the others, ran into therarawith their knives and slashed at the heap of yams, trampling the food under foot. Now the Fijians will endure any insult before this, and when the tidings reached the town every man caught up his weapon and ran towards Soso. But the white men were armed and ready, and as they came on three muskets flashed out from the dark doorways and three fell. And when they rushed on again it was the same. Many fell that day by the muskets; but the Bauans knew them to be but three, and their thirst for the blood of the white men only grew the stronger. Then one of them ran and took a firestick, and bound drymasiround it, and flung it into the thatch on the windward side, and the wind fanned it into flame. Still, though the white men knew that the house was burning, they would not leave it, for they saw the clubs brandished without, and knew that there was no escape. At last, when they could bear the heat no longer, they ran out, hoping toreach the water, and two of them leapt into the sea and dived, swimming out to sea; but three were clubbed and slain as they ran. And while the men were preparing to follow those who were escaping by swimming, the words came from the chief to spare them. Thus were Graham and Buschart spared—the first to perish more miserably at Wailea, and the other to be the means of discovering the fate of De la Pérouse.
Savage had now the government of the group in his own hands. He had raised Bau to the mastery of the surrounding tribes; he could determine the future policy of the Bau chiefs; he had food, and man-servants, and women as many as his soul could desire. Yet there was one thing the lack of which poisoned all his existence. He had neither liquor nor tobacco; and what earthly paradise could be complete to a sailor of those days unless he had the power of getting drunk? It was this want, together with the necessity of maintaining his influence by the possession of the tools and muskets so eagerly coveted by the natives, that led him to take his last journey from Bau. In May 1813 news reached Bau that a large ship was anchored on the Bua coast, ninety miles distant, to load sandal-wood. From the description of the vessel the whites knew her to bethe East Indian ship Hunter, for which some of them had worked during the preceding year. It was arranged with the chiefs that in three months an expedition should be despatched to Bua to bring them back, so that they might not be left among the treacherous natives of that coast. Taking their wives with them, they reached the ship without accident, and were employed to pull the boats at the usual wage.
Maraia, Savage’s daughter, remembered his last night in Bau, though she was then but four years old. She was alone in the house when her father came in and opened the sea-chest, which he always kept locked. From this he took a string of bright objects that glittered and flashed in the light from the door. Her exclamation startled him, for he thought that he was alone. He told her that he was going away for a long time, and that he must therefore hide his property in a place of safety. Then he kissed her and went out, taking a canoe to the mainland. She was asleep when he returned, and the canoe sailed for Bua before she awoke. She never saw him again. Perhaps his treasure was a string of silver dollars that still lies buried somewhere on the land opposite Bau.
The second mate of this ship was Peter Dillon, the lively Irishman who was afterwards made a Chevalier of the Legion d’Honneur for his services in finding the remains of De la Pérouse’s expedition. His story of the death of Savage and of his own escape has become, as it deserves, a classic in Polynesian literature. The sandal-wood had been coming in too slowly to suit the captain of the Hunter, and a bargain was at last struck between Captain Robson and the chief of Wailea, that if he would help them against their enemies they for their part would fill the ship within two months. On April 4 the crew, in three armed boats, accompanied by about 4000 of the natives, laid siege to the town of Nabakavu and took it, killing eleven of the enemy and destroying several villages. The bodies were there and then jointed, cleaned, baked in stone ovens, and eaten by the victorious natives, after which the boats returned to the ship. Four months passed away and two-thirds of the cargo were still wanting, when the chiefs sent a message to say that they could get no more sandal-wood. Nor would they come near the ship for fear of being taken as hostages. The captain now resolved to punish his old allies. Accordingly heattacked a fleet of their canoes and captured fourteen of them with a loss to the natives of one man. At this juncture two canoes arrived from Bau with a force of about 220 men under the command of Tabakaucoro and Matavutuvutua, the brothers of the Vunivalu, and Namosimalua, the chief of Viwa, afterwards one of the first Christian converts. Their ostensible object was to escort the white men and their wives back to Bau, but they did not intend to return with empty hands. The captain now determined to capture and destroy the canoes that were left to the people of Wailea, lest they might annoy him during the repairing of his tender. On September 6, 1813, the crew of the ship and about a hundred of the Bau warriors landed armed near the village, and proceeded towards it without any attempt to maintain order. They did not know that the few natives who were retiring before them, using the most taunting and insulting gestures, were “the bait for the net,” and a certain indication that they were walking into an ambush. They reached a small village and set it on fire, and as the flames shot up they heard a horrible uproar from the path they had just traversed. The Bau chiefs knew the criesfor thevakacaucauor death-cry of the Wailea, signifying that they had killed an enemy. The ambush had fallen upon the straggling party in the rear. Dillon and his companions now tried to fight their way back to the boats; but after emptying their muskets into the crowd of infuriated savages, they were driven to take refuge on the crest of a little hill. Only six of them reached it: the Bau chiefs and two of the white men from Bau were clubbed in the plain below. The party on the hill were Dillon, Savage, Buschart, Luis, a Chinaman who was wrecked with Savage in the Eliza, and two sailors from the Hunter. It was not yet mid-day; their ammunition was nearly exhausted, and they were hemmed in by many hundreds of infuriated natives, all sworn not to let them escape. From the top of the little hill they could see their boats at anchor, and the ship in the offing. Beneath them in the plain they saw the enemy carrying the bodies of their comrades, slung across poles, to the shade of some trees, where they were cut up and wrapped in green banana-leaves, to be roasted with the taro. But first they were set in a sitting posture, and insulted with unnameable indignities, while musket-balls were fired into them.The natives made several rushes at the hill, and were driven back by the steady fire of the little party. But the position was so appalling that Savage proposed an escape into the mangrove at the back of the hill, and was only prevented from doing so by Dillon’s threat to shoot the first man that left the hill. Most fortunately for Dillon’s party, there were eight prisoners on board the Hunter who had been captured by Captain Robson in his attack upon the canoes a few days before. As soon as the natives became calm enough to listen to Savage, they were reminded that these men were still alive, that one of them was the brother of the priest of Wailea, and that as soon as the news of their death reached the ship the prisoners would assuredly be sacrificed. The natives had hitherto supposed these men to have met the usual fate of prisoners of war. The priest now pressed forward, asking eagerly whether they were speaking the truth, and Savage (the unblushing Dillon says that it was he himself, but he also says that he could speak the language perfectly in four months, and gives some curious specimens of his proficiency) promised that if one of their number were taken to the ship the prisoners would be released, and a largeransom be paid for the lives of himself and his companions. These terms being agreed upon, Dafny, the wounded sailor, was induced to trust himself to the protection of the priest, and was seen to embark in a canoe and reach the ship in safety. Soon after his departure a number of the chiefs came within a few paces of the crest of the hill and spoke in the most friendly way to Savage, promising him safe-conduct if he would go down among them. So convinced was he of their sincerity that he urged Dillon to let him go down, assuring him that by so doing he could obtain safe-conduct for all. Having at last won his consent, he left his musket and went down to a spot about two hundred yards from the base of the hill, where the chief Vonasa was sitting. For a time they seemed to be on friendly terms, and the natives tried their utmost to persuade Dillon to follow Savage’s example, saying, “Come down, Peter, we will not hurt you; you see we do not hurt Charlie.” At this moment the Chinaman, Savage’s former shipmate, stole away from behind Dillon to claim the protection of a chief to whom he had rendered former service in war. He had scarcely reached the foot of the hill when the natives, seeing that it was hopeless topersuade Dillon to come down, yelled their war-cry and rushed up the hill to the attack. Savage was seized suddenly by the legs and thrown down, and was then held by six men with his head in a pool of water near to which he had been standing, until he was suffocated, while at the same moment a powerful native came behind the Chinaman and smashed his skull with his club. The two bodies were immediately disembowelled, cut up, and wrapped in leaves to be baked in the ovens.
Meanwhile the chiefs furiously incited their men to capture the hill with a rush. There were four muskets between the three defenders. Wilson, being a bad shot, was kept loading while the other two fired. Buschart, an old rifleman, shot twenty-seven men with twenty-eight shots: Dillon seldom missed. In the face of these heavy losses the men would not respond to their chiefs, but kept off, shouting defiance. The ovens containing the bodies of the men killed in the morning were now opened, and the roast joints of human flesh distributed among the different chiefs, assembled from all parts of the coast, with the same order and ceremony as is used in the apportionment of feasts on publicoccasions. From time to time the chiefs shouted to Peter to come down before it grew too dark to cook his body properly, and boasted of the number of white men they each had killed. To his reply, that if they killed him their countrymen on board the ship would suffer, they cried that the captain might kill and eat his prisoners if he chose, but that they meant to kill and eat him (Peter) as soon as it grew dark enough to approach him without being shot. Dillon’s greatest fear was that they would be tortured. He had heard from Savage stories of the flaying and branding of prisoners, of eyelid-cutting and nail-drawing, and he resolved to use the last cartridges upon himself and his companions.
Late in the afternoon the little party were horrified to see the boat returning from the ship with all the eight hostages. They believed that the captain would take the precaution of releasing four only until they were safe on board, but now they had no longer any lien upon the mercy of their assailants. As soon as they landed, the hostages were led unarmed up the hill by the priest, who delivered an imaginary message from the captain, bidding them hand over the muskets tohim and return to the ship. While he was haranguing Buschart, the idea of seizing him flashed across Dillon’s mind. It was a desperate expedient, but they were in a desperate plight. He suddenly presented his musket at the man’s head, swearing that he would shoot him dead unless he led him safely to the boat. The priest was the only man among the natives who possessed sufficient influence to keep the infuriated warriors in check. He was taken by surprise, and did not attempt to escape. Shouting to his people to sit down, he led the strange procession down the hill, through the angry multitude, now silent under protest, and on to the beach, walking slowly with a musket-muzzle at each ear, and another between his shoulders. Arrived at the beach, he said that he would rather be shot than move another step towards the boats. The whites backed into the water, still covering him with their muskets, until they reached the boats. Then, as they pushed off, the natives rushed down and sent a shower of harmless arrows and stones after them. Six of the crew and eight of the white men from Bau had perished.
On the following morning Dillon made anunsuccessful attempt to recover the bones of the Europeans. A native flourished the thigh bones of the first mate, but refused to part with them, saying that they were to be made into sail-needles.
The canoes had set sail for Bau with some fifty of their company wounded. They had not communicated with the ship, and had therefore left behind two Europeans and a number of their women. The ship sailed the same day, and being unable to land her native passengers at Bau, carried them on to New South Wales. Buschart and a Lascar were, however, landed at Tucopia, where they were found thirteen years afterwards, and were instrumental in the discovery of the remains of De la Pérouse’s ill-fated expedition.
So gross an insult as the slaughter of two of the Vunivalu’s brothers could not go unpunished. On the return of the canoes the indignation in Bau was intense. A strong expedition was at once fitted out, and before the end of the year Wailea was in ashes, and Vonasa and half his tribe had followed their victims to Naicobocobo. Many were slain in the sack of the town, but a few were carried captive to Bau to glut thevengeance of Vunivalu himself. There, at the mercy of their captors, they died such a death as amply avenged the chiefs who fell at Wailea.
Thus did Charles Savage, the Swede, meet a death in harmony with his stormy life, and with the fate that he had brought upon so many others. His works followed him. Epic poems, now half-forgotten, were composed in his honour. With the descendants of the people among whom he lived he has almost attained the dignity of a legendary hero, and but for their conversion to Christianity he would undoubtedly have been given a place in their Pantheon. He is remembered while all that is left of the gigantic and heroic Dillon is the name of the little hill that saved his life in Wailea Bay. Though the tragedy itself is almost forgotten, the knoll is still called Koroi-Pita (Peter’s Hill). Through Savage, Bau rose to a rank among her sister tribes that she never forfeited. When the growing intercourse with foreigners demanded the recognition of Fiji as a people obeying acknowledged leaders, Bau fell naturally into the place of sovereign over all her rival States, and as possessing power to cede to England the territory of all for the common good.Therefore in time to come, when some historian, weary of seeking an untried field for his pen, turns to Fiji, he will, in valuing the political forces that have led to this end, give a leading place to the deeds of Charles Savage, the first colonist.
THE END.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.