Women Fishing with the Seine.Women Fishing with the Seine.
Women Fishing with the Seine.
REMARKABLE CASE
It is perhaps owing to their hard work and low diet that Fijian mothers so often suffer from a deficiency of breast milk, and that so many children die frommatha na mena suthu(drying up of the milk) andlondo i suthu(privation of milk),i.e.from the death, absence, or neglect of the mother. When the mother's milk fails her breasts are oiled and steamed and painted with turmeric, and are kept warm by bandages of bark-cloth, while she eats spinach,mba vakoro(a mixture of spinach with shell-fish), and drinks fish soup and spinach water. Kava, which was absolutely forbidden to women of the last generation, is now drunk by both pregnant and nursing women under the belief that it induces easy labour and promotes a flow of milk when all other means fail. But if the flow of milk is re-established, the more nutritious diet is at once discontinued, for quantity is all that is aimed at.
When the milk fails or the mother dies the child's chances of surviving are slender indeed. Its grandmother will carry it from house to house imploring nursing mothers to give it suck. With one accord they all begin to make excuses. They have not milk enough for their own children; there are many other women more able to than they. In Thakaundrove a woman who is not nursing sometimes takes the place of the mother. She is fed on spinach, and is oiled and tended like the real mother, and in course of time, if the child continues to suck her breasts, the milk comes, and the child is reared. There is a well-attested case—and it is said to be by no means a solitary instance—in which the grandmother suckled the children during the mother's frequent absences from home. They were the children of her youngest daughter, and yet she contrived to induce a flow of milk for each of the four children in succession. It is not surprising that all the children died in infancy, for such milk could have little nutritive value.
Statistics show that, even counting the children that are fortunate enough to find a wet nurse to adopt them, in at least three cases out of four the death of the mother means the death of the child also, and that the mortality is only a shade lower in cases where the mother is deficient in breast milk. The father's absence from home is also a fatal condition, for the mother is then obliged to take her baby with her to the plantation, where it is left under a tree while itsmother works in the sun. Among the Motu tribes in New Guinea a sort of crèche is improvised in the corner of the field; every nursing mother goes to work with her child slung in a net bag. These bags are slung from the branches of a tree, and are guarded by one of the women told off for the duty in rotation. I remember coming suddenly upon one of these trees at a turn in the path. Its dead branches bore a round dozen of this strange fruit—fat brown babies fast asleep with their knees doubled up to their chins and their flesh oozing from the meshes of the net bags. Near the same village I saw a woman, who had probably lost her baby, doing her maternal duty to a sucking-pig and a puppy.
The only substitute for milk known to the Fijians ismbawater,i.e.water in which the stalks of the taro (Calladium esculentum) have been boiled. It contains a large proportion of glucose, a little starch, a trace of albumen, some malic acid, a pinkish or pale violet colouring matter intensified by acids, water and cellulose, but no tannic or gallic acids. The microscope showed it to be free from oxalate of lime or other raphides. In the uncooked stalks and leaves there is a highly acrid oily matter, which, however, is completely dissipated by heat even below 200° Fahrenheit.Mbais not unlike boiled beet stalks, and the sweet and mucilaginous liquor must be a palatable and not unsatisfying food for a child in ordinary health, though it is far from being as nutritive as mother's milk. It is strange that the Fijians have never thought of adding to it the strainings of grated cocoanuts which abound in every village, though even so the food would still be deficient in proteids.
In Tonga, on the other hand, children are generally reared safely by hand upon a diet of cooked breadfruit made into a liquid with cocoanut-milk. I have heard of one instance of a child that was reared on sugar-cane. The Gilbert Islanders use a butter made of the fruit of the pandanus made fresh every day, and they also give their children young cocoanuts to suck through a hollow rush.
INSANITARY HABITS
If all goes well the child is weaned when three or four of both the upper and lower incisors appear. For a month or two before this the mother has been in the habit of giving it a slushy mess of yam to prepare it for solid food. While weaning it she gives it chewed yam or taro in addition tomba, and there is something to be said both for and against this practice. The saliva is rich in ptyalin, which does not act upon proteids or fats, and is therefore not secreted in any appreciable quantity during the first year of infant life. As the starch that is so plentiful in yam and taro is insoluble, it must be converted into something more digestible before it can be assimilated. The acid of the gastric juice would retard this conversion, but the ptyalin of the saliva, like the diastase of malt, has the property of converting moistened starch, when kept at a warm and even temperature such as that of the body, into dextrin and glucose, which are easily assimilated. Thus, while the mother feeds her child upon a diet which it is not yet prepared to deal with, she supplies from her own mouth the necessary moisture, warmth and ptyalin for making it digestible. Without the chewing the mashed yam would produce diarrhœa.
On the other hand, the human mouth is the hotbed of bacteria, which, though innocuous to the adult, may well be hurtful to an infant. The Fijian uses no toothbrush but his index finger, which is seldom as clean as the mouth it is intended to cleanse. It is therefore possible that the fermentative action that causes diarrhœa in children may be set up by the chewing, and the germs of specific constitutional disease may be sometimes introduced. Tuberculosis and leprosy, so far as our present knowledge of them goes, appear likely to be transmissible in this way, and the Fijians are largely affected by both tubercle and leprosy. Most Fijian mothers are heavy smokers, and the residuum of tobacco may well impart a poisonous property to the food.
Like the Arabs, the Fijians circumcised their boys when just entering upon puberty, about the twelfth year. In heathen times the age seems to have been somewhat earlier, for Williams gives the age at from seven to twelve, which corresponds with the custom of the ancient Egyptians, from whom the Jews probably derived the custom. It does not appear to have been strictly a religious rite, though, like all ceremonial acts of the Fijians, it was invested with a religious observance of the tabu. The operation was generally performed in the villagembure, upon ten or twenty youths at a time, by one of the old men, who used a piece of split bamboo. The blood was caught on a strip of bark-cloth, calledkula(red), which in some places was suspended from the roof of the temple or the house of the chief. Food, consisting of a mess of greens, was taken to the boys by women, who, in some places, as they carried it, chanted the following words:—
"Memu wai onkori ka kula,Au solia mai loaloa,Au solia na ndrau ni thevunga,Memu wai onkori ka kula."
"Your broth, you, the circumcised,From the darkness I give it,I give youthevungaleaves,Your broth, you, the circumcised."
CIRCUMCISION A RELIGIOUS RITE
The word for circumcision,teve, may not be uttered before women; in their presence it must be calledkula. The proper time for performing the rite is immediately after the death of a chief, and it is accompanied by rude games—wrestling, sham fights, mimic sieges, which vary according to the locality. Uncircumcised youths were regarded as unclean, and were not permitted to carry food for the chiefs. Theceremony was generally followed by the assumption of themalo, or perineal bandage, for children of both sexes went naked to the tenth year, or even later if of high rank; but this was not invariable, for themalowas worn sometimes many months before, and sometimes not assumed till some time after the ceremony. The assumption of themalo, or of theliku(grass petticoat) by the child of a chief was the occasion of a great feast, and the postponement of this feast sometimes condemned the child to go naked until long after puberty. The daughter of the late chief of Sambeto was thus still unclad till past eighteen, and the unfortunate girl was compelled, through modesty, to keep the house until after nightfall.
The custom of circumcision still persists despite the abandonment of the ceremonial that attended it. The instrument is now usually a trade knife, and the operation is performed in the privacy of the boy's family, who may, or may not, give a feast to his near relations. I have tried unsuccessfully to obtain any traditions that would give a clue to its origin. The most that a Fijian can say is that to be uncircumcised is a reproach, though to a people who cover the pudenda with the hand even while bathing, and probably never expose their nakedness even to their own sex throughout their lives, this can have but little weight. No doubt the Fijians brought the custom with them in remote times, and its origin is probably the same in their case as in that of the Nacua of Central America, the Egyptians, and the Bantu races of Africa—namely, the idea of a blood sacrifice to the mysterious spirit of reproduction.
Shortly before puberty every Fijian girl was tattooed. This was not for ornament, for the marks were limited to a broad horizontal band covering those parts that were concealed by theliku, beginning about an inch below the cleft of the buttocks and ending on the thighs about an inch below the fork of the legs. The pattern covered the Mons Veneris and extended right up to the vulva. There is not much art in the patterns, which are, as a rule, mere interlacing of parallel line and lozenges, the object being apparently to cover every portionof the skin with pigment. The operation is performed by three old women, two to hold the patient, and the third to use the fleam. It is done in the daytime, when the men are absent in their plantations. The girl is laid stripped upon the mats opposite the open door, where the light is best.
With an instrument called ambati, or tooth, and a cocoanut shell filled with a mixture of charcoal and candle-nut oil, the operator first paints on the lines with a twig, and then drives them home with thembati, which consists of two or more bone teeth embedded in a wooden handle about six inches long, dipping it in the pigment between each stroke of the mallet, and wiping away the blood with bark-cloth, while the other two control the struggles of the patient. The operation is continued until the patient can bear no more, for in the tender parts between the thighs it is excessively painful. There is usually some inflammation, but the wounds heal quickly. A ceremonial feast is generally given by the girl's parents.
In addition to this tattooing, barbed lines and dots were marked upon the fingers of young girls to display them to advantage when handing food to the chiefs, and after childbirth a semicircular patch was tattooed at each corner of the mouth. In the hill districts of Vitilevu these patches are sometimes joined by narrow lines following the curve of both lips. The motive for this practice, which even Fijians admit to be a disfigurement, is to display publicly a badge of matronly staidness and respectability. The wife who has borne children has fulfilled her mission, and she pleases her husband best by ceasing for the remainder of her life to please other men.
The tattooing of the buttocks has undoubtedly some hidden sexual significance which is difficult to arrive at. It is said to have been instituted by the god Ndengei, and in the last journey of the Shades an untattooed woman was subjected to various indignities.
REASON FOR TATTOOING WOMEN
The motive of the girl in submitting to so painful an operation was the same as that which underlies all subservience to grotesque decrees of Fashion—the fear of ridicule. If untattooed, her peculiarity would be whispered with derision among the gallants of the district, and she would have difficulty in finding a husband. But the reason for the fashion itself must be sought for in some sexual superstition. When I was endeavouring to obtain some of the ancient chants used in the Nanga celebrations on the Ra coast, I was always assured that the solemn vows of secrecy which bound the initiated not to divulge thembakimysteries sealed the lips even of their Christian descendants. I was persuaded either that they had forgotten the chants, or that they considered them unfit for my ears, for it was impossible to believe that the reward I was able to offer would fail to tempt a Fijian to risk offending deities in whom it was evident that he no longer believed. After infinite persuasion the son of aVerewas induced to dictate one of the chants, and it proved to be an extremely lascivious ode in praise of buttock tattooing—the only instance I am acquainted with in Fijian chants in which lechery and not religious awe animated the composer. Vaturemba, the chief of Nakasaleka in the Tholo hills, who was always plain-spoken, chuckled wickedly when I questioned him upon the matter, and declared that physically there was the greatest difference in the world between mating with a tattooed and an untattooed woman (Sa matha vinaka nona ka vakayalewa, na alewa nkia), and that the idea of marriage with an untattooed woman filled him with disgust. He left me with the impression that besides the other advantages he had mentioned, tattooing was believed to stimulate the sexual passion in the woman herself.
The Mission teachers have long waged war against the practice as a heathen custom, and in most of the coast districts it has fallen into disuse, but in the upper reaches of the Singatoka river, though the people have long been Christians, it still persists, though not universally. Interference with it by a man, albeit a Mission teacher, was evidently considered indecent in itself, for men cannot, without impropriety, concern themselves with so essentially feminine a business. More than one teacher was charged before my court withindecency for having returned to the village to admonish the tattooers while the operation was being performed.
With the introduction of writing it has become common for young men and women to tattoo their names on the forearm or thigh of the person to whom they happen to be attached, and there are comparatively few who do not carry some memento of their heart's history thus ineffaceably recorded. The inconvenience of this custom in a people as fickle as the Fijians does not seem to trouble them.
The keloids, or raised cicatrices, that may still be seen (though the custom is dying out) upon the arms and backs of the women are formed by repeatedly burning the skin with a firebrand, so as to keep the sore open for several weeks. The wart-like excrescences that result are arranged in lines with intervals of about an inch, in half-moons or curves, or in concentric circles. Sometimes they are formed by pinching up the skin, and thrusting a fine splinter through the raised part. They are intended only for ornament, and have no other significance.
The only other interference with Nature is the distension of the ear-lobes in the older men of the hill districts. The ear is first pierced, and gradually distended by the insertion of pieces of wood of increasing size, until the lobe forms a thin cord, like a stout elastic band, and is large enough to receive a reel of cotton, or a circular tin match-box, which are both in favour as ear ornaments. Sometimes the cord breaks, and if the owner has not ceased to care about his personal appearance he will excoriate the broken ends, and splice them with grass fibre until they reunite.
Procuring abortion in the old days appears to have been limited to women of high rank who, for reasons of policy, were not allowed to have children. When it is remembered that every lady of rank who married into another tribe might bear children who, asvasu, would have a lien upon every kind of property belonging to their mother's tribe, it is not surprising that means were taken to limit the number of her offspring. In a polygamous society every wife had an interest in preventing her rivals from bearing sons who might dispute the succession with her own offspring, and the chief wife wielded an authority over the inferior wives that enabled her to carry her wishes into effect. Waterhouse mentions that professional abortionists were sent in the train of every lady who married out of the tribe, with instructions to procure the miscarriage of her mistress. The Rev. Walter Lawry, who visited Mbau in 1847, declares, on the authority of all the resident missionaries, that the practice was reduced to a system. But these motives did not operate with the common people, who were seldom in a position to pay the practitioner's fee, although, no doubt, dislike of the long abstinence enjoined during suckling and disinclination to bear children to a man they hated were motives strong enough to induce a few women in every class to rid themselves of their children. The abortionist's craft was then in the hands of a few professional experts, who made too good a thing of their trade to trust their secrets to any but their daughters who were to succeed to their practice.
All this is now changed. Both the motive and the means have spread far and wide. The secrets of the trade are common property, and the act is unskilfully attempted by the mother or older female relation of every pregnant woman who cares to take the risk of an operation. By a strange irony the rapid increase in the practice of abortion in recent years is to some extent the doing of the missionaries. With the decay of the custom of separating the sexes at night intrigues with unmarried women increased, and to fight this growing vice the missionaries visited the breach of the Seventh Commandment with expulsion from Church membership. The girls have come to prize highly theirthurusinga(lit., entrance into daylight), as communion with the Wesleyan Church is called, and, when they find themselves pregnant, the dread of exposure, expulsion and disgrace drive them to the usual expedients for destroying the evidence of their frailty. Although by suppressing the usual feasts and presentations in the case of illegitimate births, and by refusing the sacrament of baptism to illegitimate children, the Mission authorities may have given some impetus to the practice of abortion, there can be little doubt that an illegitimate birth brought even more shame upon families of every rank but the lowest in heathen times than at present—unless the putative father was of high rank. There still exists enough of the stern customary law that punished incontinency to cast a social stigma upon the mother of an illegitimate child; there still survives enough of the ethical code that refused to regard the procurement of abortion as a criminal act to warrant women in choosing what is to them the lesser of two evils. Moreover, the tendency to the practice of abortion is cumulative. A girl induces miscarriage to escape the shame of her first pregnancy. To the natural tendency of women who have once miscarried to repeat the accident is added the temptation to undergo, for the second time, an operation that has already been successful. If Fijian women dislike the burden of tending children born in wedlock, much more do they shrink from maternity coupled with the disgrace of illegitimacy. The natives themselves quote instances of a number of minormotives, such as the dread of the pains of childbirth, and the determination of a wife not to bear children to a man she hates or quarrels with—motives which have influenced women of every race from the beginning of time, and which will continue to do so until the end.
METHODS VEILED IN SECRECY
A high birth-rate is not incompatible with the extensive practice of abortion, where the proportion of stillbirth is also high, and the women are so careful to conceal their practices that it is highly probable that they conspire to represent to the native registrars as post-natal deaths miscarriages that have been caused artificially. The natives of Vanualevu are reputed to be the most adept in procuring abortion, and the three provinces included in that island show the abnormal stillbirth-rate of 10 per cent, of the total births, while their general birth-rate is the lowest in the colony. It must be remembered that, since procuring abortion is regarded as a criminal act, the practice is now concealed, not from any sense of shame, but from fear of criminal prosecution. The practice is veiled with so much secrecy that very few prosecutions have taken place.
The methods of the Fijians are, as in other countries, both toxic and mechanical. Certain herbs, called collectivelywai ni yava(medicines for causing barrenness), are taken with the intention of preventing conception, but the belief in their efficacy is not general. Some midwives, however, say that, when taken by nursing mothers with the view of preventing a second conception, they result in the death of the child. Another midwife—one of the class to which the professional abortionists belong—assured us that miscarriage resulted more frequently from distress of mind at the discovery of pregnancy than from the drugs that were taken. The abortives vary with the district and the practitioner, but they are all the leaves, bark or root of herbs, chewed or grated, and infused in water, and there is no reason why some of them should not be as effective as the medicines employed for the purpose by civilized peoples, though the mode of preparation is naturally more crude, and the doses more nauseous and copious than the extracts known to modern pharmacy. The"wise women" appear to know that drugs which irritate the bowel have an indirect effect upon the pelvic viscera. Andi Ama of Namata stated that old women caution young married women against drinkingwai vuso(frothy drinks), meaning a certain class of native medicine made from the stems of climbing plants whose saps impart a frothy or soapy quality to the infusion, which are taken under various pretexts, but generally as cathartics. None of these drugs have yet been collected and subjected to examination or experiment, and if any reliance can be placed on the belief placed by old settlers in the efficacy of native remedies, it is possible that some of them will find an honourable place in the Pharmacopœia.
I do not think that many miscarriages are caused by the taking of infusions alone, though there are undoubtedly cases in which a long illness, or even death, has resulted from such attempts. Nevertheless, even though it be extremely difficult to procure abortion by administering herbs, as stated by one midwife, it is certain that every determined interference with the course of nature must be attended with danger.
Foremost among mechanical means is thesau, which is a skewer made oflosilosiwood, or a reed. It is used, of course, to pierce the membranes, and in unskilful hands it must be a death-dealing weapon. Indeed, it must more often be fatal to the mother than to the fœtus; for Taylor has pointed out that this mode of procuring abortion is only likely to succeed in the hands of persons who have an anatomical knowledge of the parts,[83]and even the "wise women" have shown themselves to be guiltless of even the most elementary anatomical knowledge. There are, however, well-attested cases of persons living who bear the mark of thesauon their heads. In 1893 there was a man living in Taveuni who bore the scar of such a wound on his right temple, and the fact that the right parietal bone would be the part wounded by an instrument used shortly before the commencement of labour in normal presentations gives a strong colour of truth to the story of AndiLusiana and other trustworthy natives who knew the young man and the circumstances of his birth.
CRUDE OPERATIONS
The various methods of inducing miscarriage by violence, such as are practised by the Gilbert Islanders, who pound the abdomen of a pregnant women with stones, or force the fœtus downwards by winding a cord tightly about her body, are not resorted to by the Fijians, but the practice ofvakasilima(lit., bathing), a manual operation which midwives are in the habit of performing with the object of alleviating the ailments of pregnancy, do, either by accident or design, sometimes result in a radical cure by causing the expulsion of the fœtus. The patient is taken into the river or the sea, and squats waist-deep in the water with the "wise women," who subjects her to a vaginal examination to enable her to ascertain the condition of theos uteri, and, through this digital diagnosis, to determine the particular herb to be used locally or internally. Some women assert that the examination under water is adopted for cleanliness only, but most seem to believe that there is virtue in the operation by itself without any subsequent herbal treatment. As there are many practitioners who devote themselves exclusively to this branch of practice, it is more than likely that it is often used as a pretext for an attempt to procure abortion, for a rough manipulation of theos uterimay excite uterine contraction, and so bring about expulsion of the fœtus. Treatment byvakasilimais used in every form of disease in the abdominal region to which women are subject, and the manipulation of the fundus and vagina is so rough that the patient cries out with the pain.
Bombo(massage) is sometimes practised upon pregnant women with the result, if not the intention, of producing miscarriage. A few years ago a notorious instance occurred at Rewa. A pregnant woman, who suffered pain and discomfort, was received into the Colonial Hospital. After a week's detention the surgeon advised her to go home, and await the term of her gestation, since she was suffering from some functional derangement common to her condition. She fell into the hands of a noted amateur "wise woman," whodiagnosed her complaint as possession by a malignant spirit, and proceeded to exorcise it by the usual means of forcible expulsion by massage. The pinching and kneading began at the solid parts of the trunk, and when the evil spirit fled for refuge into the limbs, they were continued towards the extremities, and the apertures of the body, which are the natural avenues of escape for the afflicting spirit. But the only spirit which the masseuse succeeded in exorcising was the patient's own, for she died of the operation, and the facts were concealed from the authorities for some weeks. The magisterial inquiry did not elicit whether the object was abortion, or merely the alleviation of pain.
A census taken in 1893 of the families of twelve villages showed that out of 448 mothers of existing families 55 had been subject to abortion or miscarriage. If these villages were representative of the people at large, 12·7 per cent, rather more than one-eighth, of the child-bearing women of the Fijians have to contend with this adverse condition, and, as has been said, the provinces that have abnormally low and decreasing birth-rates—Mathuata, Mbua, and Thakaundrove—are the very parts where the "wise women" are noted for their skill as abortionists. These facts would almost suffice in themselves to account for the decrease of the race.
The Government has made half-hearted attempts to stamp out the practice of abortion. The heavy penalty provided by Native Regulation No. 2 of 1887 having failed for want of prosecution, the native magistrates were ordered to hold inquests in all cases of infant deaths, but when all the witnesses are in league to conceal the truth, it would be surprising if the intended effect of intimidating professional abortionists were secured by such means. Post-mortem examinations of women dying in premature confinement were thought of, but it was feared that the repugnance which Fijians feel to these examinations would lead to the concealment of death in such cases.
FAILURE OF PROSECUTIONS
It was hoped that the Travelling European Inspectors appointed in 1898 to go from village to village enforcing the Native Regulations might initiate a few prosecutions, and sofrighten the professional abortionist, who now practises with complete impunity, for as soon as the people have an object-lesson of the risk she is running in her nefarious occupation, a quarrel among the women of the village will bring forward informers to denounce her. But, since no legal penalty has ever succeeded in stamping out a practice that is secretly approved by the popular conscience, all that can be hoped for is a slight decrease in the stillbirth-rate.
FOOTNOTES:[83]Medical Jurisprudence.
[83]Medical Jurisprudence.
[83]Medical Jurisprudence.
If we were called upon to name the one invention that stands between savagery and the growth of civilization we might fairly choose the timepiece of sundial. Fixed routine in daily life is unknown to primitive man, whose functions are controlled only by the impulse of the moment. Even among civilized races the most stagnant are those who have never learnt to put a value upon time, and who, like the Spanish, give an honourable place in their vocabulary to the wordmañana, or its equivalent. Few, if any, of the natural races have made any provision in their vocabulary for any division of time less than the day; they have no word for hour, minute, or second, nor would they have any for day, if Nature had not divided the one from the other by intervals of darkness. Only three divisions of time were known to the Fijians: the year (yambaki), so named from the heathen harvest home (mbaki); the lunar month (vula); and the day (singa). He identifies any greater divisions of time by naming the reigning chief of the period, or by saying, "When so-and-so was so high," indicating some aged man in the party and marking his height at the time of the occurrence in the air with the hand. He will indicate the time of an event in the immediate past or future by the yam crop—"When the yams are ripe," or "At last planting time"; about the remote future he never troubles himself.
FIJIANS ABHOR PUNCTUALITY
The Fijian eats when he is hungry, or when the sight of cooked food whets his appetite; he bathes only when he would cool his body; he sleeps when he is disinclined to work or when darkness has made work impossible; regularhours for all these functions are quite unknown to him. His nearest approach to regularity is his observance of the season for yam planting, but this is because tradition has taught him that if he fails to plant his yams when thedrala-tree is in flower, he will lack food in the following year. On one day he will work in his yam patch from sunrise till evening, and bathe at five o'clock and sleep the whole night through after a heavy meal. On another he will return from work at noon, and slumber away the hot afternoon, spending the night in feasting and dancing. He is improperly fed, not because food is scarce, but because he is incapable of the routine of regular meals or of any moderation. In times of plenty his diet is not improved, because he wastes his surplus in prodigal feasting. In times of scarcity he suffers because he will not husband his resources. System of any kind is peculiarly irksome to him. The Rev. W. Slade, a Wesleyan missionary, gives a good instance of this characteristic in the case of the mother of a seven-months child born in the neighbourhood of his mission station in 1893. "The woman herself cannot supply sufficient nourishment to the child, and has been told to come to the house twice a day for fresh cow's milk. She came for a few days and then ceased. Upon inquiry I found that, although the child was dying of starvation, she found it irksome to apply for the milk. Her maternal affection failed under the strain of walking one hundred yards twice a day." In the few instances in which a Fijian has attempted to keep cattle he has shown that he would rather let his beasts die of thirst than be bound by the necessity of giving them water at stated intervals. He cannot use dairy produce because he would fail to milk his cows regularly and to wash the utensils in which the milk was kept. The law of custom knew these defects in his character and provided for them. In the days of intertribal warfare if a village was to exist at all it must have food stored against a siege. There was a season for planting yams, and the soil would yield nothing to the slovenly planter. Public opinion took care that no man in the community shirked his work. The pigs and poultry thrived because they required neither feeding nor tending atregular hours. The canoe was kept under shelter, and the matsail stripped from the yard on the first threat of a downpour of rain, because their owner knew that he would have to pay the carpenter for repairing them in food planted by his own hand. But the law of custom has made no provision for innovations. The sailing-boat, the one possession in which the Fijian takes the greatest pride, is allowed to decay almost past repair before he will think of refitting it, although he is well aware that a regular supply of paint and rope would have made much of the expense unnecessary. He is still passably energetic about his ancient pursuits of planting and fishing, but this fishing, which might be turned to profitable account in the supply of the daily market, is a mere desultory sport pursued because it provides an ever-varying succession of excitement. The desultory habit of mind which defers to the morrow all that does not appeal to the impulse of the moment affects all his surroundings, makes his house squalid, his diet irregular, and his village insanitary.
His insouciance, which was kept in check by the law of custom, had its root, like most other evils, in selfishness—a quality which is quite as much at home in a communal as it is in a civilized state of society, where defrauding the commonwealth is looked upon as a venial offence provided that it is not found out. In a communal state of society the instinct of the individual is to do and to give as little as possible. When the law of custom is breaking down, as among the Fijians, discovery entails but little disgrace. In being selfish the Fijian is only being what white men are. He has no patriotism and no nationality; he does not regard Fiji as his country, for Fiji is the whole world as he knows it. The pride that he once took in his own little tribal cosmos is dying out now that he no longer has to fight for it, and he concerns himself less about the natives of the twelve provinces besides his own than an ordinary Englishman troubles about the Andaman Islanders. So that the enjoyment of his lands in his own lifetime is not interfered with, the Fijian does not feel called upon to avert the total extinction of his race by any measures that demand from him the slightest exertion.
WEAKNESS OF THE MATERNAL INSTINCT
The want of the maternal instinct in the Fijian women is no new quality, but the law of custom took it into account and provided against it. The tribes that reared most male children had the most fighting men, and they alone could hold their own. A tribe of habitually neglectful parents was wiped out mercilessly, and within the limit of the tribe the old men and women who had grown-up sons were the last to suffer from want or insult. These incentives to the care of children may not have been constantly before the minds of Fijian parents in the old days, but they moulded the daily life of the community, and gave each member of it an interest in the welfare of his fellows. Under thePax Britannicaa tribe has no longer any interest in being numerous except the fear of losing possession of its communal land, and this fear is tempered by the knowledge that if the land is leased to planters the rent money will go further among few than among many. Parents no longer look to their children to support them in old age. The law protects them from aggression, and they have none of the fear, which besets members of civilized communities, of destitution in their declining years.
Instances of the absence of the maternal instinct in Fijian mothers might be multiplied. They love their children in their own casual way; so long as they are not called upon to make the slightest self-sacrifice for them they are foolishly indulgent to them. One cannot spend a single night in a native village without realizing how immeasurably inferior the Fijians are in this respect to Indian coolies or even to the Line Islanders. When questioned on this subject an old Line Island midwife remarked, "We Tokelau love our children; the father loves them quite as much as the mother." Therein lies the greater part of the difference; the Fijian mother would look in vain to her husband for any sympathy or assistance in the upbringing of her children. In the old days when the safety of the tribe demanded as many boys and as few girls as possible, female children were often destroyed, but it does not appear that any protest or resistance was ever made by the mother. The case I am about torelate is not to be taken as a fair example of Fijian women, because instances quite as revolting have been recorded among women of civilized communities. Some years ago, a woman in the Rewa province, noticing that the dark corners of her house were much infested by mosquitoes, kept her two-year-old child naked, and forced it to stand in the corner until its body was covered with the insects, which she then killed by slapping it. She set this awful mosquito trap so often that the poor child died of its injuries. It is fair to say that natives speak of this revolting story with disgust, for the sins of Fijian mothers are sins of omission rather than of commission. A learned work has lately been written to prove that the key to evolution is the development of maternal instinct, which varies enormously in strength, not only in different species of mammalia, but in individuals. Struggle for existence tends to develop the instinct, since those who possess it will perpetuate their offspring to the exclusion of those who do not.
The Fijians are in a transition stage between two systems of struggle for existence—the physical struggle of intertribal war, and the moral struggle of modern competition. It is vain to hope that the maternal instinct can be artificially implanted in them, but if they are ever moved to take up the "black man's burden," and set themselves to compete against the motley population that is pouring into their islands, natural affection, which is now kept down by the savage's dislike of all restraint and routine, may be born in them.
There is no point upon which primitive races differ more than in their regard for chastity. Among civilized peoples there has been an ebb and flow of sexual morality so marked that historians have had recourse to the explanations of the example of the Court, or the fluctuations of religious earnestness among the people, assuming that, but for Christianity and education, mankind would be sunk in bestial licence. Every traveller knows this to be a fallacy. In Africa, of two races in the same stage of social development and in constant intercourse with one another, the one may tolerate a system bordering on promiscuity, and the other punish a single lapse with death. If it were possible to generalize in the matter, one would say that the higher the civilization and the greater the leisure and luxury, the looser is the sexual morality; and the ruder the people and the harder the struggle against nature for subsistence, the weaker is its sexual instinct and the more rigid is its code. But there are more exceptions than will prove this rule. The Chinese, who were civilized before our history began, are not as a race addicted to lechery; the Fuegians, who have scarce learned to clothe themselves against the bitterest climate in the world, do not even seek privacy for their almost promiscuous intercourse.
Respect for chastity, in fact, is a question of breed rather than of law and religion. A full-blooded race may use law to curb its appetites, yet may break out into periodic rebellion against its own laws; a cold-blooded people, like the Australian blacks, may tolerate what appears to us abrutish indulgence, and yet apply the most contemptuous epithet in their language to the man addicted to sensual pleasure.
There was nothing in the institutions of the two great races of the Pacific Islands to account for the remarkable difference in their regard for chastity. They were reared in the same climate, nourished with the same food; the same degree of industry sufficed to provide them with all that they required. The power of the aristocracy among the Polynesians should have been more favourable to social restrictions than the republican institutions of the Melanesians. If the influence of a strong central government tended in either direction, which the fact that sexual restrictions were the same in both the powerful confederations and the village communes of Fiji effectively disproves, the Polynesians should have been the more continent. And yet, with nothing save race temperament to account for the difference, the Polynesians were as lax as the Melanesians were strict in their social code. It was the licence of the Tahitian and Hawaiian women which tempted seamen to desert their ships, and so led to European settlements in the Polynesian groups while the Melanesian remained almost unknown. The prostitution that sprang up in the principal ports attracted whaleships, which sometimes took sides in native quarrels. The stories of their excesses brought the missionaries, and the destruction of such customary law as still survived was greatly accelerated.
The Melanesians, on the other hand, offered no such temptation to passing ships. They practised no open-handed hospitality; their fickle temper kept their visitors perpetually on their guard against attack; they generally kept their women out of sight, and the women themselves were not only ill-favoured, but also excessively shy of Europeans. Though ships have frequented Fiji for nearly a century, and the group has had a foreign population of several thousands for five-and-twenty years, professional prostitution among Fijian women is so rare that it may be said not to exist. Nevertheless, the decay of custom has by no means left the morality of theFijians untouched. Let us compare what it was with what it is.
THE OLD CODE PUNISHED INCONTINENCE
In heathen times, as I have already said, there was a very limited form of polygamy. The powerful chiefs had as many wives and concubines as their wealth and influence would support, but the bulk of the people were monogamists. The high chiefs were an exception to the general rule of continence. They did not, it is true, often carry on intrigues with girls of their own station, but they could send for any woman of humble birth, particularly in the villages of theirvasusor of their dependants by conquest. In this, as in other things, the chiefs were above the law, and many of them made a practice of asserting the privileges of their station. A low-born woman, whether maid or wife, received the summons as if it had been a divine command, however distasteful it might be to her. If she hesitated, and the chief condescended so far as to entreat her, sealing his entreaty by sniffing at her hand (rengu), refusal was impossible. This kiss of entreaty from a chief is, even now, so much dreaded by unwilling girls that they will use violence to prevent the nose of their wooer from touching their hand, for the Fijian kiss, like that of all oriental races, is a sharp inhalation of breath through the nostrils.
Considerable licence was tolerated at every high chief's court between the chief's retainers and the female servants of his wives. These were women taken in war, or good-looking girls from the vassal villages who had enjoyed the short-lived honour of concubinage. They did the rough work of his kitchen, and were lent to distinguished visitors who cared for that kind of hospitality. But the wives and daughters and favourites of the chief were inviolable, and the man who dared to meddle with them played with his life.
Boys and girls were allowed to associate freely during the day-time, and to play such games asveimbiliandsosovitogether, but they were kept apart during the night. The girls slept with their mother, and the boys, as soon as they had attained puberty, were compelled to sleep in thembure-ni-sa, the village club-house, in which the unmarried men, thevillage elders and strangers slept. The girls were so carefully watched that they seem generally to have retained their chastity until marriage, and the young men, fully occupied with the training proper to their age, had neither the opportunity nor the inclination for sexual intrigue.
In every community sexual laws were of slow growth; they were not the expression of a high ethical standard, for primitive races see no sin in sexual intercourseper se, but rather of a growing sense of public convenience; they were not the inspiration of a lawgiver, but the expression of the tribal conscience. The Seventh Commandment was an inscription upon tablets of a law that was already observed by the Hebrews. The Fijians had evolved their law from considerations that were purely practical. Women were chattels; a virgin was more marketable than a girl who had had adventures; an illegitimate child was a burden upon its mother's parents. And besides these primitive considerations, incontinence was an infringement of the Fijian marriage law which provided each individual woman with her proper partner, and maintained the equilibrium of exchange of women with the intermarrying tribe and a just interchange of marriage gifts. A people who can complain in such terms as, "They have had four of our women already, and we but two of theirs, and here they ask us for a fifth," was not likely to tolerate clandestine love affairs among their daughters. That a high moral standard was not the cause of their strict law was shown by the fact that the married women in heathen times practised a laxity of morals unknown to them before marriage. Adultery was punished by fine if the parties were of equal rank, and by death if the offender was of lower rank than the husband and the act could be interpreted into an insult. But the women went about their amours discreetly, choosing the times when their husbands were absent on war parties, and reflecting that "what the eye does not see, the heart does not grieve for."