The Project Gutenberg eBook ofSouth Sea YarnsThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: South Sea YarnsAuthor: Basil ThomsonRelease date: September 1, 2021 [eBook #66195]Most recently updated: October 18, 2024Language: EnglishOriginal publication: United Kingdom: William Blackwood and Sons, 1894Credits: Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOUTH SEA YARNS ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: South Sea YarnsAuthor: Basil ThomsonRelease date: September 1, 2021 [eBook #66195]Most recently updated: October 18, 2024Language: EnglishOriginal publication: United Kingdom: William Blackwood and Sons, 1894Credits: Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
Title: South Sea Yarns
Author: Basil Thomson
Author: Basil Thomson
Release date: September 1, 2021 [eBook #66195]Most recently updated: October 18, 2024
Language: English
Original publication: United Kingdom: William Blackwood and Sons, 1894
Credits: Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOUTH SEA YARNS ***
front
While the men were digging the oven and lining it
“While the men were digging the oven and lining it.”
title page
SOUTH SEA YARNS
BY
BASIL THOMSON
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONSEDINBURGH AND LONDONMDCCCXCIV
All Rights reserved
TOMY WIFE
In the greatbureof Raiyawa there was a story-telling. The lying-places filled three sides of the house—mats spread upon grass four feet wide,—and between each lying-place was a narrow strip of bare earth sprinkled with wood-ashes, on which three logs, nose to nose, were smouldering. A thin curl of blue smoke wreathed upwards from each to the conical roof, where they met and filtered through the blackened thatch; so that from outside theburelooked like a disembowelled haystack smouldering, ready to burst into flame. On the fourth side was a low doorway, stopped with a thick fringe of dried rushes, through which ever and anon a grey-headed elder burst head-foremost, after coughing and spitting outside to announce his arrival. Beside the doorwaywas a solitary couch, the seat of honour, to which the foreigner, footsore and weary with his tramp across the mountains, was directed, having in his turn dived trustingly through the rushes like the rest. The couches were filling, and the elders were settling down in twos to rest, slinging their legs over the fender-bar that lay conveniently on its forked supports, and turning to the grateful glow that part of his anatomy that man delights to roast—for the night was falling, and a chilly mist was rising from the river. Then one of them rose and made with his hand a tiny aperture in the rush-screen, through which the dull twilight showed white. “Beat!” he cried; and the rest beat the reed walls with their open palms, and the house was filled with the angry hum of a myriad mosquitoes, that flew into the smoke and out towards the king-post, and then, seeing the twilight and the fresh air, sailed in a compact string through the opening, so that in three minutes there was not one of them left. Thereafter one might sleep in peace without slapping the back and the bare thighs, for the rushes brushed them from the body of each incomer, and their furious hum outside was impotent to hurt.
At length every place was filled, and from thedarkness Bongi began and told of the mountain-paths—how the foreigner would rest before the hill was climbed, gasping like a fish, and asked many foolish questions of the old time and the present; and of the courts, how Bitukau had had his hair cropped, having been taken in sin and judged; and of how the foreigner had given him strange meats to eat that were enclosed in iron, having first broken the iron and cooked the meats on a fire.
“Yes,” said Bosoka, “such were the meats that a foreigner gave to the men of Kualendraya, bidding them heat the meats on a fire and eat; but when they did so, the meats blew up like a gun, and scalded them grievously. Foreigners must be strong indeed to eat such meats.”
“And the foreigner told me tales,” continued Bongi—“wonderful tales, hard to believe: of stone houses larger than this whole village; of strings going under the sea to other lands by which men talk, sending no ship to bear the tale; of steamers that go on land faster than a horse can run.”
“Foreigners are great liars,” said old Natuyalewa, sententiously. “But the land steamers may be true, for at Nansori it is said the sugar-cane is carriedby steamers on the land. Tomase, who worked there, told me of this; and it may be true that they talk with strings, for a man may make many signs by jerking a sinnet cord which another holds, pulling harder at times and then softly. But the stone house—such tales as these they tell to increase their honour in our eyes, but they are lies, for there is no land so great as Great Viti.”
Now the foreigner feigned sleep and listened.
“Well,” cried Ngutu from the corner, “the teacher says that our fathers lied about Rokola’s canoe—that the mast fell at Malake and dented the mountains of Kauvandra. He says that a canoe cannot sail so far in a day, even with the wind on the outrigger.”
“The teachers are the foreigners’ mouths, and bark at all our ancient customs, seeking to dishonour them,” growled Natuyalewa. “I am growing old, and the land is changed. When I was young we listened to the words of our elders, but now the young men——”
“Ië! Tell us tales of the old time,” interrupted Bongi: “we will each bringnambu: mine shall be thesevuof my yams.”
The elders grunted approval from the darkness.
“Mynambushall be fish.” “A bunch of whiteplantains.” “Mine shall be prawns from the stream,” cried several.
“I want nonambu,” replied Natuyalewa, with dignity; “thenambushould be given to those who tell tales for gain, seeking to entertain the chiefs, that mats, and finemasi, and other property, may be given to them. These will tell of gods and giants, and canoes greater than these mountains, and of women fairer than the women of these days, and of doings so strange that the jaws of the listener fall apart. Such a one gains great honour, and the chiefs will promise himnambubefore they even hear his tale, remembering the wonders of the last. And he, being known for a teller of strange tales, must ever lie more and more, lest, if he turn back to the truth, the chiefs hearing him may say, ‘This fellow’s tales were once like running water, but now they are like the village pool: why give himnambu?’ But I will ask nonambu, for I can only tell of that I have seen with my own eyes or heard with my ears; and though I tell you tales of the old time or of distant lands, yet can I tell only of the doings of men and women like to yourselves, who did deeds such as you yourselves do; and when all is told,you will call the tale emptier than the shell of the Wa-Timo fruit.”
Then Natuyalewa began to tell of Rusa, the fisherman of Malomalo, and the foreigner, himself a story-teller in Natuyalewa’s line of business, thought ruefully of the wonder-mongers of his own land, and thenambuthey won, and so pondering, fell asleep.
SOUTH SEA YARNS.
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A bright sky vying with the sea for blueness, a sun whose rays are not too hot to be cooled by the sea-breeze, the distant roar of the great Pacific rollers as they break in foam on the coral-reef, the whisper of the feathery palms as they wave their giant leaves above yonder cluster of brown native huts,—all these form a picture whose poetry is not easily reconciled with the stern prose of an English court of law. It is perhaps as well that the legal forms we are accustomed to have been modified to meet the wants of this remote province of the Queen’s dominions, for the spot we are describing is accounted remote even in remote Fiji, and the people are proportionatelyprimitive. The natives of Fiji are amenable to a criminal code known as the Native Regulations. These are administered by two courts—the District Court, which sits monthly and is presided over by a native magistrate; and the Provincial Court, which assembles every three months before the English and native magistrates sitting together. From the latter there is no appeal except by petition to the governor, and it has now become the resort of all Fijians who are in trouble or consider themselves aggrieved.
For several days witnesses and accused have been coming in from the neighbouring islands, and last night the village-crier proclaimed the share of the feast which each family was called upon to provide. The women have been busy since daylight bringing in yams, plantains, and taro from the plantations, while the men were digging the oven and lining it with the stones that, when heated, will cook the pigs to a turn.
But already the height of the sun shows it to be past ten, and the District Court has to inquire into several charges before the Provincial Court can sit. The order is given to the native police sergeant to beat thelali, and straightway two huge wooden drums boom out their summons to whomsoever it may concern. As thedrum-beats become more agitated and pressing, a long file of aged natives, clad in shirt andsuluof more or less irreproachable white, is seen emerging from the grove of cocoa-nut palms which conceal the village. We have but just time to shake hands with our dusky colleague, a shrewd-looking old man with grizzled hair and beard carefully trimmed for the occasion, when the crowd begins to pour into the court-house.
The gala dresses are not a little startling. Here is a dignified old gentleman arrayed in a second-hand tunic of a marine, in much the same plight as to buttons as its owner as to teeth; near him stands a fine young village policeman, whose official gravity is not enhanced by the swallow-tailed coat of a nigger minstrel; while the background is taken up by a bevy of village maidens clad in gorgeous velvet pinafores, who are giggling after the manner of their white sisters until they are fixed by the stern grey eye of the chief policeman, which turns their expression into one of that preternatural solemnity they wear in church. The court-house, a native building carpeted with mats, is now packed with natives, sitting cross-legged, only a small place being reserved in front of the table for the accused and witnesses. The magistrate takes his seat, and his scribe, sitting on thefloor at his side, prepares his writing materials to record the sentences. The dignity with which the old gentleman adjusts his shirt-collar and clears his throat is a little marred when he produces from his bosom what should have been a pair ofpince-nez, seeing that it was secured by a string round his neck, but is in fact a Jew’s-harp. With the soft notes of this instrument the man of law is wont to beguile the tedium of a dull case. But although the spectacle of Lord Coleridge gravely performing on the Jew’s-harp in court would at least excite surprise in England, it provokes no smile here. The first case is called on. Reiterated calls for Samuela and Timothe produce two meek-faced youths of eighteen and nineteen, who, sitting tailor-fashion before the table, are charged with fowl-stealing. They plead “Not guilty,” and the owner of the fowls being sworn, deposes that, having been awakened at night by the voice of a favourite hen in angry remonstrance, he ran out of his house, and after a hot chase captured the accused red-handed in two senses, for they were plucking his hen while still alive. Quite unmoved by this tragic tale, Vatureba seems to listen only to the melancholy notes of his Jew’s-harp; but the witness is a chief and a man of influence withal, and a periodof awed silence follows his accusation, broken only by a subdued twanging from the bench. But Vatureba’s eyes are bright and piercing, and they have been fixed for some minutes on the wretched prisoners. He has not yet opened his lips during the case, and as the Jew’s-harp is not capable of much expression, it is with some interest we await the sentence. Suddenly the music ceases, the instrument is withdrawn from the mouth, the oracle is about to speak. Alas! he utters but two words, “Vula tolu” (three months), and there peals out a malignantly triumphant strain from the Jew’s-harp. But the prosecutor starts up with a protest. One of the accused is his nephew, he explains, and he only wished a light sentence to be imposed. Three months for one fowl is so severe; besides, if he has three months, he must go to the central jail and not work out his sentence in his own district. Again there is silence, and the Jew’s-harp has changed from triumph into thoughtful melancholy. At length it is withdrawn, and the oracle speaks again, “Bogi tolu” (three days).
The prisoners are pounced upon and dragged out by the hungry police, and after a few more cases the District Court is adjourned to make way for the Provincial.The rural police—a fine body of men dressed in uniform—take up positions at the court-house doors, and we take our seats beside our sable colleague at the table. A number of men of lighter colour and different appearance are brought in and placed in a row before the table. These are the leading men of the island of Nathula, who are charged with slandering their Buli (chief of district). They have, in fact, been ruined by a defective knowledge of arithmetic, as we learn from the story of the poor old Buli, whose pathetic and careworn face shows that he at least has not seen the humorous side of the situation. It appears that a sum of £70, due to the natives as a refund on overpaid taxes, was given to the Buli for distribution among the various heads of families. For this purpose he summoned a meeting, and the amount in small silver was turned out on the floor to be counted. Now as not a few Fijians are hazy as to how many shillings go to the pound, it is not surprising that the fourteen or fifteen people who counted the money made totals varying from £50 to £100. They at once jumped to the conclusion that the Buli, who was by this time so bored with the whole thing that he was quite willing to forego his own share, had embezzled the money; butto make suspicion certainty they started off in a canoe to the mainland to consult a wizard. This oracle, being presented with a whale’s tooth, intimated that if he heard the name of the defaulter who had embezzled the money, his little finger, and perhaps other portions of his anatomy, would tingle (kida). They accordingly went through the names of all their fellow-villagers, naming the Buli last. On hearing this name the oracle, whose little finger had hitherto remained normal, “regardless of grammar, cried out, ‘That’s him!’”
On their return to Nathula, they triumphantly quoted the oracle as their authority for accusing their Buli of embezzlement. The poor old gentleman, wounded in his tenderest feelings, had but one resort. He knewhehadn’t stolen the money, because the money hadn’t been stolen at all, but then who would believe his word against that of a wizard? and was not arithmetic itself a supernatural science? There was but one way to re-establish his shattered reputation, and this he took. His canoe was made ready, and he repaired to the mainland to consult a rival oracle namedNa ivi(the ivi-tree). The little finger of this seer was positive of the Buli’s innocence, so that, fortified by thesupport of so weighty an authority, he no longer feared to meet his enemies face to face, and even to prosecute them for slander. As the Buli was undoubtedly innocent, and had certainly been slandered, the delinquents are reminded that ever since the days of Delphi seers and oracles have met with a very limited success, and are sentenced to three months’ imprisonment. And now follows a real tragedy. The consideration enjoyed by the young Fijian is in proportion to the length and cut of his hair. Now these are evidently dandies to the verge of foppishness. Two of them have hair frizzed out so as to make a halo four inches deep round the face, and bleached by lime until it is gradated from deep auburn to a golden yellow at the points. Pounced on and dragged out of court by ruthless policemen, they are handed over to the tender mercies of a pitiless barber, and in a few moments they are as crestfallen and ridiculous as that cockatoo who was plucked by the monkey. The self-assurance of a Fijian is as dependent on the length of his hair as was the strength of Samson.
But now there is a shrill call for Natombe, and a middle-aged man of rather remarkable appearance is brought before the table. He is a mountaineer, and isdressed in a rather dirtysuluof blue calico, secured round the waist by a few turns of native bark-cloth. He is naked from the waist upward. The charge is practising witchcraft (drau ni kau), a crime which is punishable with twelve months’ imprisonment and forty lashes; for the Fijians are so persuaded that a bewitched person will die, that it is only necessary to tell a person he is bewitched to ensure his death within a few days from pure fright. The son of the late Buli of Bemana comes forward to prosecute. The substance of his evidence is as follows: Buli Bemana, who was quite well on a certain Saturday, was taken ill on the Sunday, and expired in great agony on the Monday morning. The portion of his people to whom the accused belongs had complained more than once of the Buli’s oppression, and desired his removal. It is the custom for a wizard who has compassed the death of a man to appear at the funeral with blackened face as a sign to his employers that he has earned his reward and expects it. The accused attended Buli Bemana’s funeral with blackened face. Moreover, an old woman of Bemana had dreamed that she had seen Natombe bewitching the Buli, and the little fingers of several Bemanas had itched unaccountably. Theselast the witness considered were convincing proofs. The accused, in reply, stated that he was excessively grieved at the Buli’s death, and that his face at the funeral was no blacker than usual. Several witnesses followed, who deposed that the accused is celebrated throughout the district for his skill in witchcraft, and that he had boasted openly in days gone by that he had caused the death of a man who died suddenly.
Now, as stated above, the belief in witchcraft among Fijians is so thorough, and the effects of a spell upon the imagination of a bewitched person so fatal, that the English Government has found it necessary to recognise the existence of the practice by law. It is, however, none the less wise for the Government officials, without pooh-poohing the existence of witchcraft, to attempt to discourage the belief in its efficacy. Accordingly we call for evidence as to the particular manner in which the alleged spell was cast. There was no caldron nor blasted heath in this case; indeed the whole ceremony was a decidedly tame affair. It was only necessary to procure some of the Buli’s hair or the portions of his food left untasted, and bury them with certain herbs enclosed in a bamboo, and death would ensue in a few days. To our questionwhether the Buli himself thought he was bewitched we receive a decided negative; indeed, we happen to know that the poor old man died of acute dysentery, brought on by cold, and that in this case, if witchcraft had been really practised, the death was a most unfortunate coincidence. As no evidence more incriminating than dreams and the finger-tingling is forthcoming, the accused is acquitted, to be condemned by the other tribunal of public opinion, which evidently runs high. When he has left the court we address the chiefs of Bemana upon the subject of witchcraft generally, as if seeking information. Upon this a number of white-haired old gentlemen, whose boredom has been for some time exchanged for somnolence, wake up and hold forth upon the relative value of hair and nail-parings as instruments for casting spells. While the discussion becomes animated and the consensus of opinion appears to be gathering in favour of toe-nails, we electrify the assembly by suggesting an experiment. They are to select two of their wisest wizards, we are to supply the necessary means, and they are to forthwith cast their most potent spell over us. On the result is to rest their future belief in witchcraft. If we have not succumbed in a month’stime there is no truth in the practice. If we do die, they may not only believe in it, but they will, of course, be held guiltless of our death. A dead silence ensues. Then, after much whispered conversation, an old man addresses the court, pointing out that white men eat different food from Fijians, for do they not live upon flour, tinned meat, rice, and other abominations? And do they not despise the succulent yam, and turn up their noses at pork, dried lizard, and tender snake? Therefore is it not obvious that the powers of witchcraft will be lost upon such beings? Now we have with us a Tongan servant, by name Lijiate (being the nearest Tongans can get to Richard). This man, being half-educated, and above all a Tongan, is full of contempt for Fijians and their barbarous customs. He has long talked contemptuously of witchcraft, which he considers fit only for the credence of heathens, not of good Christians like himself. Here is a chance for Richard to distinguish himself and us. We make the offer. Richard is to be bewitched on the same terms as ourselves. He at least does eat yams and pork, and though he has not yet taken kindly to snake, the difference is trifling. But we have counted without our host. “Fakamolemole”(pardon), says Richard, “I almost believe in it myself. I pray you have me excused.” This spikes our gun, for though, doubtless, some of our Fijian servants would consent to be experimented on, they would probably pine away and die from pure fright, and re-establish the belief in witchcraft for ever.
Our discomfiture is best covered by attention to business. Two more cases of larceny are heard and disposed of, and now two ancient dames, clad in borrowed plumes, consisting of calico petticoat and pinafore, are led before the table. Grey-headed and toothless, dim as to sight and shapeless as to features, they look singularly out of place in a court of law. Time was (and not so very long ago) when women so decrepit as these would have had to make way for a more vigorous generation by the simple and expeditious means of being buried alive, but now they no longer fear the consequences of their eccentricities. One of these old women is the prosecutrix, and the charge is assault. We ask which is the prosecutrix, and immediately one holds out and brandishes a hand from which one of the fingers has been almost severed by a bite. She has altogether the most lugubrious expression that features such as hers can assume, butwith the bitten finger now permanently hung out like a signboard, words of complaint are superfluous. The other has a truculent and forbidding expression. She snaps out her answers as if she had bitten off the ends like the prosecutrix’ finger, and shuts her mouth like a steel trap. The quarrel which led to their appearance in court might have taken place in Seven Dials. Defendant said something disparaging about prosecutrix’ daughter. Prosecutrix retaliated by damaging references to defendant’s son, and left the house hurriedly to enjoy the luxury of having had last word. Defendant followed and searched the village for her, with the avowed intention of skinning her alive. They met at last, and having each called the other “a-roasted-corpse-fit-for-the-oven,” they fell to with the result to the prosecutrix’ finger already described. The mountain dialect used in evidence is almost unintelligible to us, so that our admonition, couched in the Bauan, has to be translated (with additions) by our native colleague. But our eloquence was all wasted. Defendant utterly declines to express contrition. Our last resource must be employed, and we inform her that if she does not complete the task imposed on her as a fine she will be sent to Suva jail, there to be confinedwith the Indian women. This awful threat has its effect; and the dread powers of our court having thus been vindicated, the crier proclaims its adjournment for three months. The spectators troop out to spend the rest of the day in gossiping about the delinquents and their cases. The men who have been sentenced are already at work weeding round the court-house, subjects for the breathless interest and pity of the bevy of girls who have just emerged from court and are exchanging whispered comments upon the alteration in a good-looking man when his hair is cut off. None are left in the court-house but ourselves, the chiefs, and the older men. The table is removed, and the room cleared of the paraphernalia of civilisation. Enter two men bearing a large carved wooden bowl, a bucket of water, and a root ofyangona, which is presented to us ceremoniously, and handed back to some young men at the bottom of the room to chew. Meanwhile conversation becomes general, witchcraft is discussed in all its branches, and compassion is expressed for the poor sceptical white man;sulukas(cigarettes rolled in banana leaves) are lighted; the chewed masses ofyangonaroot are thrown into the bowl, mixed with water, kneaded, strained, and handed to each personaccording to his rank to drink; tongues are loosened, and it is time to draw the meeting to a close. The sun is fast dipping into the western sea when the last of our guests leave us, and we have a long moonlight ride before us. There is but just time to pack up our traps and have a hasty meal before we are left in darkness, but the moon will rise in an hour, so we may start in safety in pursuit of the train of police and convicts who are carrying the baggage.
When Swift wrote his “Modest Proposal,” and argued with logical seriousness that the want and over-population in Ireland should be remedied by the simple expedient of eating babies, the satire was not likely to be lost upon a people who regarded cannibalism with such horror and loathing as do the European nations. The horror must of course be instinctive, because we find it existing in the lowest grades of society; but the instinct is confined to civilised man. The word cannibal is associated in our minds with scenes of the most debased savagery that the imagination can picture; of men in habits and appearance a little lower than the brute; of orgies the result of the most degrading religious superstition. It is not until one has lived on terms of friendship with cannibals that one realises that the practice is notincompatible with an intelligence and moral qualities which command respect. And after all, if one can for a moment lay aside the instinctive horror which the idea calls up, and dispassionately consider the nature of cannibalism, our repugnance to it seems less logically grounded. It is true that it must generally entail murder, but that is certainly not the reason for our loathing of it. It is something deeper than this; and the distinction we draw between the flesh of men and of animals is at first sight a little curious. One can imagine the inhabitants of another planet, whose physical necessities did not force them to eat flesh,—to take life in order to live,—regarding us with much the same kind of abhorrence with which we look on cannibals. Most of our natural instincts are based upon natural laws, which, when broken, are sure to visit the breaker with their penalties. The eating of unripe fruit, of putrid meat, or poisonous matter, are some of these. But no penalty in the shape of disease seems to be attached to cannibalism.
What, then, are the motives that lead men, apart from the pressure of famine, to practise cannibalism? Among certain African tribes, and lately in Hayti, it has been the outcome of a debased religioussuperstition, or that extraordinary instinct common to all races which leads men to connect the highest religious enthusiasm with the most horrible orgies that their diseased imagination can conceive. The feeling that leads members of sects to bind themselves together by the celebration of some unspeakable rite perhaps led to the accusations laid against the Christians of the second century and the Hungarian Jews of the nineteenth. But in the South Seas, although the motive has been falsely attributed to a craving for animal food, it was generally the last act of triumph over a fallen enemy. Thus Homer makes Achilles, triumphing over the dying Hector, wish he could make mince-meat of his body and devour it. Triumph could go no further than to slay and then to assimilate the body of your foe; and the belief that, by thus making him a part of you, you acquired his courage in battle, is said to have led a chief of old Fiji to actually consume himself the entire body of the man he had killed, by daily roasting what remained of it to prevent decomposition.
This is not a very promising introduction to a paper intended to show that some cannibals at least may be very respectable members of society. But it must beclearly understood that the eccentricity which seems so revolting to us is not incompatible with a strong sense of duty, great kindness of heart, and warm domestic affection.
Out of the many cannibals and ex-cannibals I have known, I will choose the most striking figure as the subject of this sketch. I first met the Buli of Nandrau in the autumn of 1886, when I took over the Resident Commissionership of part of the mountain district of Fiji. His history had been an eventful one, and while he had displayed those qualities that would most win the admiration of Fijians, to us he could not be otherwise than a remarkable character. Far away, in the wild and rugged country in which the great rivers Rewa and Singatoka take their rise, he was born to be chief of a fierce and aggressive tribe of mountaineers. Constantly engaged in petty intertribal wars, while still a young man he had led them from victory to victory, until they had fought their way into perhaps the most picturesque valley in all picturesque Fiji. Here, perched above the rushing Singatoka, and overshadowed by two tremendous precipices which allowed the sun to shine upon them for barely three hours a-day, they built their village, and here they became a name and a terror toall the surrounding tribes. A few miles lower down the river stood the almost impregnable rock-fortress of the Vatusila tribe, and these became the stanch allies of Nandrau. Together they broke up the powerful Noikoro, exacted tribute from them, and made the river theirs as far as Korolevu; together they blotted out the Naloto, who held the passes to the northern coast, killing in one day more than four hundred of them, and driving the remnant as outcasts into the plain. Long after the white men had made their influence felt throughout Fiji,—long after the chief of Bau was courted as King of Fiji,—these two tribes, secure in their mountain fastnesses, lived their own life, and none, whether Fijian or white man, dared pass over their borders.
But their time was come. The despised white man, whom they had first known in the humble guise of a shipwrecked sailor or an escaped convict, was soon to overrun the whole Pacific, and before him the most dreaded of the Fijian gods and chiefs, the most honoured of their traditions, were to pass away and be forgotten.
In the year 1867 a Wesleyan missionary named Baker, against the advice of all the most experienced of the European settlers and the native chiefs, announcedhis intention of exploring the mountain districts alone. He said that he would take the Bible through Vitilevu. What good to the missionary cause he hoped for from his hazardous journey it is difficult to imagine. The harm that would certainly result to his fellow-missionaries if he were killed, and the loss of life that must ensue, must have been apparent to him and to every one else. But in spite of every warning, he persisted in his foolhardy enterprise, and he paid for it with his life and with the lives of several hundred others. He ascended the river Rewa with a small party of native teachers, but when he passed into the mountain district a whale’s tooth followed him: for the power of the whale’s tooth is this—that he who accepts it cannot refuse the request it carries with it, whether it be for a mere gift, or for an alliance, or for a human life. So he went on, while tribe after tribe refused to accept the fatal piece of ivory; but none the less surely did it follow him. At length one night, while he slept in a village of the Vatusila, the whale’s tooth passed on before him to the rock fortress of Nambutautau, and their chief, Nawawambalavu, took it. When, next morning, Baker resumed his march, this chief met him in the road, and together they crossed the Singatoka river. As theyclimbed the steep cliff which leads to Nambutautau, it is recorded in a popular song of that time that the chief warned him ironically of his impending fate. “We want none of your Christianity, Mr Baker. I think that to-day you and I shall be clubbed.” Suddenly, at a spot where the path lies between high reeds, on the edge of a precipice, an attack was made upon them, and they were all struck down except two native teachers who crawled into the thickest of the reeds and made their way, the one to Rewa and the other to Bau, hiding during the day-time and travelling under cover of the darkness. Baker’s body was flung over the precipice, and the great wooden drum boomed out its death-beat to the villages far down the valley. That night the stone-ovens were heated for their work, and the feast was portioned out to the various allies. But the most honourable portion—the head—was sent to Nandrau, the subject of my sketch. At first he refused it, disapproving of the murder, which his foresight warned him would bring trouble upon them. But as his refusal threatened to sever the alliance, he afterwards accepted it. It is recorded that the feet, from which the long boots had not been removed, were sent to Mongondro, whose chief, a melancholy, gentle-manneredold man, was much disappointed at finding the skin of white men so tough.
After terrible hardship and danger, the wounded teacher made his way to the coast, and carried the news to Bau. A strong alliance was at once formed among the coast tribes to avenge the murder, and to crush the power of the mountaineers. There is in this part of Fiji no gradation between the plains that fringe the coast and the mountains. A sheer barrier of rock, looking like the ruins of a gigantic fortification, rises boldly from the plain, broken only by the valleys which form the river-beds. Behind this wall lay a land of mystery, whose inhabitants were invested with superstitious terrors, to which their ferocity and the extraordinary appearance of their huge mops of hair had doubtless contributed.
The attacking party was divided into three forces. One of them was to advance up the Singatoka from the south, a second to enter the “Devil” country by way of the Rewa from the east, and the third, commanded by the King of Fiji in person, was to surprise the valley of Nandrau from the northern coast. With the two first we have nothing to do, because they were defeated by the intervening tribes and turned back long beforethey reached their destination. The third, hoping to form a junction with their allies, advanced boldly through the mountain passes. The country seemed deserted. They burned two or three abandoned villages, and emboldened by their success, they pressed on, more like an eager rabble than a military force, each man hoping to be the first to secure plunder. As they straggled over the grassy hills that surround Nandrau, suddenly from every clump of reeds big-headed warriors sprang up; they found themselves hemmed in, and Nandrau, headed by their chief, spent the day in slaughtering the flower of the Bau army. A remnant fled to the coast, hotly pursued by the mountaineers; and so crushing was the defeat that the king, Thakombau, narrowly escaped death at the hands of his vassals of Tavua.
Not long after this victory, which had so firmly established his prestige in the mountains, Buli Nandrau seems to have become favourably inclined towards the Europeans; and when a joint expedition of whites and natives was despatched to reduce Nambutautau, he seems to have been permitted to remain neutral. Nambutautau was burnt, and the Vatusila and Noikoro tribes compelled to sue for peace. In1874 Buli Nandrau met Consul Layard, and promised his allegiance to the British Government. Teachers were allowed to enter the principal mountain villages, and until the year 1875 the mountaineers became nominal Christians. In that year an event occurred which severely tried the firmness and good sense of Buli Nandrau. The islands had been annexed to Great Britain, and the mountain chiefs were invited to meet the first Governor, Sir Arthur Gordon, at Navola on the southern coast. Some of them accepted the invitation, among whom was Buli Nandrau, who was anxious to judge for himself what the new order of things really was. He frankly gave his allegiance to the Government, and in spite of the strongest temptation he never wavered afterwards. For in the same year a terrible epidemic of measles, introduced accidentally from Sydney, carried off 40,000—nearly one-third of the whole population of the islands. It was natural that the mountaineers, perishing under this relentless and unknown disease, should have regarded it as the vengeance of the gods they had so lately deserted. If Christianity were a good thing, they said, why could it not save their children from death?
And so, early in 1875, most of the mountain tribes threw off thesulu(the Christian dress), and returned to the worship of their heathen gods. Only Buli Nandrau, seeing what the end must be, remained stanch, and by forming a barrier between the revolted tribes and those still wavering in their loyalty, prevented the disaffection from spreading. An expedition was despatched under Captain, now Major, Knollys, and, with the assistance of the native allies, soon reduced the rebels to submission. They all nominally again embraced Christianity, and an entrenched camp, garrisoned by an armed native force, and commanded by a Resident Commissioner, was established to ensure the future peace of the district.
Protected by their isolation from the vices of civilisation, and enjoying a large share of self-government, these reformed cannibals are to-day the most contented and prosperous of all the Queen’s subjects in Fiji; and if ever it has been necessary to adopt measures for their good which they could not understand at the time, the Commissioner has been always sure of the support and influence of Buli Nandrau.
I first saw him at the Provincial Council at Navolain 1886. He had no sooner arrived with his retinue than he sent hismata(herald) to announce him, and in a few minutes entered my house alone. He was a very tall, erect old man of about sixty-five or seventy—grey-haired, keen-eyed, and intelligent-looking. After the usual ceremonies inseparable from Fijian etiquette, he sat down and spoke of the politics of the district. It appeared to me remarkable that a man who had only left his native mountains two or three times, to take part in the great Council of Chiefs, should be so well acquainted with the history and political situation of the coast tribes of Fiji. He spoke with great affection of Sir Arthur Gordon and of the ex-Commissioner, and bewailed the death of the great mountain chiefs whose places were now inadequately filled by their sons.
He was never absent from his place for a moment during the three days the council lasted, and his interest in the trivial affairs of other districts never flagged. It was curious to observe the great deference paid to his opinion by the other chiefs. When one of them, Buli Naloto, was found to have failed in his duties, Nandrau was appointed to reprove and caution him. His speech, which was short and to the point,was a model of that kind of eloquence. “Art thou,” he said, “a chief in thine own right, to make war and to make peace as it pleases thee? Where was thy tribe before the Government came? A scattered remnant, seeking refuge on the plains from the vengeance of Nandrau! But the Government has taken pity on thee, and the land is at peace. Why art thou then disobedient to the Government, who has made thee a chief, and re-established thee in the lands of thy fathers?” This reproof was received by Buli Naloto with the most abject humility.
Not long after this, Buli Nandrau consulted me about the projected marriage of his daughter with the provincial scribe, who lived with me. He wished, he said, to cement by this marriage the ancient ties between Nandrau and Noikoro, but the day had passed for marrying girls against their will. His elder daughter had been a great grief to him. She had been so married, and had not long ago put an end to her life. Did I, he asked, from what I knew of Durutalo, think that Janeti would be happy with him?[1]This was not the only example I had of his strong domestic affection.
In the spring of the following year he wrote to me, asking for medicine to relieve a pain in his jaw, and from this time he was unable to leave his village. At length, one day early in July 1887, I received a pathetic letter from him, asking me to lose no time in coming to him. “I am very ill,” he wrote, “and I would have you see my face before I die.”
As the messenger, when questioned, made light of his illness, and I was myself not well enough to undertake so tiring a journey, I determined to wait until I was sure that his urgency was not merely the result of low spirits. But late on the following Sunday night I was awakened by the challenge of the sentry, and immediately afterwards the deep cry of respect, known as thetama, sounded outside my sleeping-house. Lights were brought, and on the doorstep crouched a man, muddy, travel-stained, and exhausted by a long journey. I recognised him as a native of Nandrau, who was selected for his fleetness as district messenger, and when I saw that his hair and beard were cut short, I knew the nature of his errand.
“The chief is dead,” he said; “and he told Tione not to bury him till you, sir, had seen his face. Tione sends you this message.”
There was another reason that required my presence at Nandrau: Tione was not the only claimant to the succession, and I must be there to prevent a disturbance. The messenger would not even wait for food, but returned at once to announce my coming.
In a moment the camp was all awake, and the men turned out to prepare for the journey. The horses were brought in and saddled, and the baggage rolled up in parcels to be carried over the mountain roads. Before daybreak we were fording the river with an escort of some thirty armed constabulary and baggage-carriers. The road lay for some miles along the crest of a forest-clad ridge more than three thousand feet above the sea-level, and when it emerged near the old site of Nambutautau into open country, nothing could exceed the grandeur of the scenery. Two thousand feet below us on the right rushed the Singatoka, foaming among great boulders of rock, and still towering above us was the great wooded range that formed the watershed of the island; while far away before us rose the mountain-wall which separatedTholo from the plains, seeming with its bare masses of castellated rock like a great ruined fortification. And now the road began to descend, and following a precipitous path, which momentarily endangered the legs of our horses, we plunged into the cool shadow of the precipices that overhung Nandrau. At a turn in the road we saw below us the now historical village, jutting out over the river upon a broad ledge of rock. Therara, or village square, was crowded with people, and I noticed a train of women descending the sheer face of the opposite cliff, with loaded baskets on their backs, holding on to stout vines to steady themselves. Here we halted to give time to a messenger to announce our arrival, according to native custom. We watched him enter the village, and saw the people vanish as if by magic into the houses, or sit in groups at the foot of the cocoa-nut palms, and then, in perfect silence, we passed through the village. At the fence that separated the dead chief’s enclosure from the square we dismounted, and were conducted by his eldest son, Tione, to the clean matted house in which we were to lodge.
All through the night there was an incongruous mixture of the sounds of merriment and sorrow. Onthe river-bank behind our house the five widows of the dead chief, with their women, howled and wailed till morning, like animals in pain. Sometimes the wails would die away into faint moans, and then a wild shriek from one of them would set them all going again. But on the other side stood the greatbure, where all the funeral guests were feasting and drinkingyangonain honour of the departed spirit.
Early next morning a messenger came to the door of our hut to ask if we would see the Buli’s face. Followed by several of my men carrying the funeral gifts, I climbed to a small house built upon a high stone foundation. The inside was crowded with the neighbouring chiefs, and I took my seat in silence. At the far end, wrapped in folds of native cloth and the finest mats, lay the body. The whale’s tooth and funeral gifts were now brought in and formally presented by theMata-ni-vanua, and accepted by an old man in the ancient Nandrau dialect, of which I could scarcely understand one word. And then, when a costlyRotumamat had been given for the body to lie upon in the grave, I made a short speech in the Bau dialect, and was conducted to see the face uncovered.
At mid-day the great wooden drum was tolled, andthe armed constabulary, looking very neat in their whitesulusand blue tunics, were drawn up as a guard of honour near the cairn which was to form the grave. At length the body, wrapped in mats, and followed by the wives and relations of the dead chief, passed slowly to the grave. Among all the mourners, I only noticed one case of genuine grief—the chief’s daughter, Janeti; all the others, as is usual in Fijian funerals, appeared to wail in a prescribed form. Indeed one of the widows, having probably seldom seen a white man before, stopped wailing for a moment to point me out eagerly to the other mourners. Then the body was carried into the little hut that surmounted the cairn, and we stood in the broiling sun until a native teacher had delivered a sort of funeral sermon.
When all was finished, every one acted according to the old proverb, “Le roi est mort!—Vive le roi!” and the question of whom I would appoint as his successor became the subject of discussion. When I returned to my house, I saw the widows at the water’s edge breaking up a number of carved wooden utensils with stones. These were the cups and dishes of their dead husband, which no man must henceforth touchlest their teeth drop out or they be bewitched. For if a man should drink from the cup of one who has eaten his relation, such evil will certainly befall him. But as I was exempt from this danger, the cup and the platter and fork, used by the Buli in old days for human flesh, were presented to me.
At three o’clock I summoned a great meeting of all the natives, at which speeches in honour of the late chief were made, and I there provisionally appointed Tione—a rather unintelligent man of about thirty-five—to succeed his father, having first ascertained that this appointment would be acceptable to the majority. In the evening the people of Nandrau made a great feast to their visitors, and gave them return presents—a polite intimation that they were expected to leave on the following morning. These having been divided among the various tribes who were represented, feasting was continued until a late hour. But about nine o’clock, before the moon rose, an old man went out into the bush to call the dead Buli’s spirit. We heard his voice calling in the distance for several minutes, and then, amid the breathless silence of the assembled people, we heard the footsteps of some one running. “He has the spiriton his shoulders,” said a man near me, as the old man rushed past me to the tomb. Apparently he must have thrown the spirit into it, for after crying out, “It is all well,” every one retired quietly to their huts for the night.
Before daybreak the next morning, Buli Nandrau was forgotten in the bustle of speeding parting guests, and as the sun rose our bugle sounded the “fall-in.” Passing out of the sombre shadow of the great cliff, we rode into bright sunlight, and we felt that just so had the shadows of the past given place to the light of a clearer knowledge, and that with this old warrior the old order had passed away, and a new had come.
[1]This marriage afterwards took place, and, less than a year later, Janeti, too, attempted her own life. This was after her father’s death.
Tauyasa, commoner, of Naselai village, of the tribe Kai Nuku, lived years before his time. It was his misfortune that he was born a savage with a brown skin: it should not be his fault if he did not enjoy the sweets of civilisation. White men owned land on the banks of the great river: so did he. White men wore trousers and ate with a knife and fork: so would he. White men owned cutters and paid his countrymen to work for them: and so he bought a cutter of his own and paid his fellow-villagers to plant his bananas. White men had chairs and tables, glass windows and wooden floors, horses and saddles, and an account at the bank: Tauyasa persevered until at last he possessed all these. And so Tauyasa came to be well thought of and patronised by his white neighbours, and the more he rose in their estimation the deadliergrew the envy of his own people. For Tauyasa was no chief, and among his people to attempt to rise above the station to which one is born, and to refuse to give to him who asks, are social crimes beside which all other sins are mere errors of judgment. But Tauyasa cared for nothing but that his bananas should have fifteen “hands” to the bunch, and that his cutter should not be too late for the steamer. When the commission agent showed him his account sales, he took the cheque straight to the bank, and received from the teller a slip on which his total balance was written, which he would compare with some cabalistic signs he had in a soiled copy-book at home. For Tauyasa applied his knowledge of human nature wherever his financial reasoning failed him. “The foreigner,” he argued, “who owns this bank does not guard my money and make it multiply because he loves me, but because he hopes some day to steal some of it. Therefore will I ask him every two weeks to confess how much he has. Then, although I am black, he will not rob me unless he robs the other foreigners whose money he keeps, and this he will not dare to do.”