Lolóma, or two years in cannibal-land: A story of old Fiji

by Henry Britton

INTRODUCTION.

It has often occurred to me that I ought to write the story of my adventures in Fiji in the old times, when, to the great bulk of the inhabitants, the white man was little more than a myth; when the people were as yet uncontaminated by contact with civilized races, many of whose vices they have since acquired; when they were dutifully following their long established customs, and faithfully adhering to the religions of their fathers. My acquaintance with kings, chiefs, priests, poets, ambassadors, soldiers, artisans, turtle-fishermen, and other classes of Fijians, made me familiar with many legends in prose and verse, containing ideas and pictures which must vanish for ever if not now preserved, for they belong to times which have long since faded into the thick darkness of the past.

If, in my old age, I can place on record some facts which may be received as a historical memento of the most numerous and interesting race of men in the South Pacific—a race which is rapidly disappearing under the dominion of the white man—I may not only afford some food for the speculation of ethnologists, but even amuse the present generation. To look into the mind and heart of the cannibal as that mind and heart thought and beat within him—while he lived his tropical life in his own land, climbing his own hills, sailing his own canoes, fighting his own battles with his own weapons, building and planting, courting and marrying in his own way, training up his children to tread in his own steps, and, finally, after a few dreamy yet not inactive years, passing away by the blue light of his own religion to his own Heaven—shall be the object of these reminiscences of a strange experience in my life, which seems to me now, as the events crowd upon me, like a dream; but not a half-forgotten one; for in early life the mind is highly receptive, and there are no impressions so deep and lasting as those of our youth.

CAMERON, LAING AND CO.

PRINTERS.

112 FLINDERS LANE EAST.

LOLÓMA:

OR, TWO YEARS IN CANNIBAL-LAND.

CHAPTER I.
OLD SYDNEY.

I was a boy in Sydney, the son of a Commissariat officer of the Imperial establishment, when New South Wales was a penal colony, during the time of the despotic rule of the military governors. We had as an assigned servant a young man, Joe Whitley, who, at 18 years of age, was transported from his native English village for poaching. He was but two years my senior, and we were great friends. On Saturday afternoons we often set forth on pleasant bush excursions of our own arranging, and we even contemplated exploring the Blue Mountains, beyond which the ignorant people said China lay, and in whose picturesque ravines there were whitening in the sun the bones of many an unhappy bondsman who had escaped his chains to perish of hunger and thirst while vainly hoping to be able to tramp to the Flowery Land.

Sometimes we went boating in the romantic coves of Port Jackson, which, with the same attractive natural scenery they now possess, had then the additional charm of solitude. It was a pleasure to get away from the rum-shanties of the infant city of Sydney, and the foul language of a large part of its brutalised convict population, to the calm waters of the harbour with its numerous prospects of wood-crowned heights, and the soft airs perfumed by the wild bush flowers of the virgin forest or untilled plain. One could not see the procession of stately ships which are now for ever passing under the windows of one half of Sydney, calling to the mind’s eye of him who has learned to read in their appearance the varied businesses of these white-winged messengers of commerce, something like a panorama of the world. Nor was there a fleet of yachts to glide past with graceful sweep. But there were the same charming points and eminences on which villa residences have since been built, commanding views which on bright sunny mornings were of rare beauty. And we had the romance of the sea to ourselves. We listened to its many voices alone. There were none to interrupt our contemplation of its sublime mystery, and we never tired of its fascinating companionship.

These pleasant trips had an abrupt termination. My companion had the misfortune to gain the ill-will of a fellow servant, who made interest with the police, and had him unjustly sent back to prison for an alleged breach of one of the regulations controlling the bond servants.

In those days even free persons were subject to the lash for very trivial offences. What chance had a man, opposed to the false swearing of convict constables, with an offended officer of the law for his judge? Flogging was administered to the extent of 1,000 lashes, and sometimes a magistrate would order a witness to be taken out of court and subjected to the shameful indignity of a public flagellation, in the hope of getting more satisfactory information out of him.

Whitley, in addition to a term of imprisonment, was sentenced to undergo the lash for an offence of which he was not guilty. I was incensed. It was the period of my hot youth, in which I had more enterprise than discretion. I determined to procure his escape at all hazards.

The old Sydney prison in which Whitley was confined was situated near Hospital Creek, in which private vessels unloaded their cargoes, and where a barque, whose owner I was well acquainted with, was moored. The gaol was surrounded by a strong high wall, and a numerous guard was mounted day and night. By bribing a turnkey I gained access to my friend’s cell one cloudy night, and forced open the lock with implements I had brought for the purpose, for the turnkey had only bargained to admit me and raise no alarm. A wheelbarrow and a couple of tubs piled on top of each other brought me near enough to the iron chevaux-de-frise of the wall to fasten a stout rope to one of the spikes. We were soon astride of the awkward obstruction, and then, casting the rope on the other side, we slid down to the ground, and congratulated ourselves that we were out of danger. The whizz of a bullet over our heads, followed immediately by the sharp report of a musket, soon undeceived us on that point. A treacherous cloud had for a moment disclosed the previously hidden moon. We were observed by the guard, a shot was fired, and chase was immediately given. We soon outran our pursuers, and all would have been well, but I was unfortunately recognised by the serjeant of the guard, for, immediately after the report of his weapon, he called upon Whitley and myself by name to stand.

The boom of a cannon from the signal battery at the north point of Sydney Cove announced to the sleeping town that a prisoner had escaped. The tramp of feet and the flickering of lights from point to point told us that we must be away. As I had previously arranged, we made straight for my friend’s barque in Hospital Creek. He had promised a place of concealment in the hold; but, thinking the pursuit would be too hot for that, he put us in a dingy, and we rowed over to Pinchgut, a small islet a mile and a half from Sydney. This place was a mere rock, whose clefts Joe and I had often searched for oysters (which grew abundantly there) during our holiday rambles. It was occasionally used by the Government for drying powder, but the place was avoided by the townspeople, because upon the summit there stood a gibbet, on which a miscreant who had murdered a colonist in return for half a pint of rum had paid the penalty of his crime. The island was named Pinchgut by some irreclaimable convicts who had been put there on short commons as a punishment. Yet this place of sinister renown was sheeted with the fragrant gold of the feathery mimosa, and was garlanded with bright red creepers, as though nature mutely protested against the vileness of man.

Aided by our friends, it was easy for us to remain in concealment until a good opportunity for getting away from the officers of the law presented itself. I had succeeded in securing my companion’s liberty, but I had not only broken the law and made myself liable to the same cruel punishment from which I had saved him—I had compromised my father, whose name I had used in the transaction with the turnkey. I determined that, if possible, I would leave the colony. Whitely preferred making his way to a relation in the country.

As luck would have it, while I was in concealment a sandalwood trafficker from the South Seas put into Port Jackson to refit and provision. I met her captain one night at a well-known locality of dubious reputation called The Rocks, and had no difficulty in shipping under the name of Thomas Whimpey as a common seaman before the mast. Great was my grief that I could not take with me the sharer of my youthful frolics. He was in hiding 20 miles inland from Sydney, and was in a fair way to become a bushranger.

As I shall not have occasion to refer to my friend again, I may as well state here what befell him. There came a time when so many prisoners were at large, and the means of getting them in were so utterly inadequate, that the Governor issued a proclamation inviting them to return before a certain date, with the assurance that all who had not been guilty of murder or highway robbery should receive free pardons. My escapee accepted a free pardon, and going into business not long afterwards, became a highly-prosperous man.

CHAPTER II.
AT SEA.

On a hot summer morning the Molly Asthore, a topsail schooner of 120 tons, tripped her anchor in Watson’s Bay, where she had been snugly moored during the previous night. Her square sails hung from the yards in graceful festoons, waiting to be sheeted home by her not very active crew, and under a light wind she slowly glided through Port Jackson Heads, where the swell of the lonely Southern Ocean was making itself heard in measured cadence.

The rich perfume of the wattle trees was slowly wafted to us by the lagging breeze. The shrill sounds of the garrulous cicadæ animated the thick bush which sheltered them on the shore. The wild flowers drooped under the heat. A lizard ventured forth upon the trunk of a dead tree for a moment, but quickly retired before the universal glare; and an occasional bright-winged parrot or lemon-crested cockatoo flashed through the palpitating atmosphere in search of a more leafy neighbourhood. A glimmering haze overspread the distant little straggling town of Sydney, and we left port under the gaze of but one man—a swarthy aboriginal, who brandished a spear at us from a neighbouring cluster of mia-mias lying in the shadow of a rock.

As we cleared the South Head the wind freshened, the gaff-topsails were run up, and soon the long line of Australian coast faded into dim perspective.

The Molly Asthore was a roughly-built vessel. She had not the sharp, yacht-like bows of the island traders of to-day. Her decks were neither white nor well-kept; rope ends usually trailed about instead of being Flemish-coiled, and she was innocent of brass work or ornamentation of any kind. The cuddy, to which access was obtained by a short perpendicular ladder, was furnished with two rude bunks for the master and mate, and a little square table, round which there was barely room to walk. The schooner had carried cocoanut oil, a commodity whose penetrating scent is never eradicated from ships in which it has once been stored, and the offensive odour of rancid oil and bilge-water was almost overpowering in this little room. The men who slept forward were not so well off, but they counted on a fine weather voyage, which would admit of lying on deck through the nights. The provisions consisted chiefly of weevily biscuits and bad salt meat, and the cockroaches which abounded in all parts of the schooner showed a shocking tameness.

But a sailor bound for the South Seas in those days was not over particular about his personal comfort. He had the romance of adventure before him. Little was known of these seas, and all vessels which sailed on them were more or less ships of discovery. The fate of La Perouse, whose visit to Port Jackson, where he last saw the home of the white man, I had often heard my father speak of, was still shrouded in mystery, and we might even come upon the survivors of his unfortunate expedition, who were believed to be imprisoned in some of the island groups we purposed visiting. With all the interest of a new world opening before me I was disposed to think lightly of the hardships in store.

The ship’s company consisted of the master, Jacob Turner, an old weatherbeaten tar, of mahogany complexion, with short, thick whiskers like tufts of cocoanut fibre, who had many strange experiences of lawless regions to tell; the mate, Silas Cobb, a Yankee who had served in an American whaler and knew much of the adventurous life of the whale fisheries; two English sailors who had run away from their last ship in Hobart Town; an escaped New South Wales convict, a cabin boy, and myself. We were short-handed, but that was no unusual occurrence.

We gave the dreary convict-home of Norfolk Ireland a wide berth for obvious reasons, and entered the tropics when ten days out from Sydney without having sighted land since leaving port.

For a whole fortnight an almost vertical sun blazed upon our crawling ship. Idle days dawned in soft rose colour, swooned through languid airs, and melted away in golden sunsets. Sapphire seas shimmered beneath the sun across limitless fields of azure. One day a gentle regular breeze came down upon us. It was the refreshing trade wind, which rippled the ocean with tiny wavelets, and carried us along without the sense of motion. We were in the Elysian Fields of Neptune’s empire.

The silver sheen of the flying-fish now added to the dreamlike splendour of the view as they skipped through the pearly atmosphere to fall with a faint rippling splash in the cool waters. I watched them through the lazy hours from the ship’s side, and saw that the shower of brilliants which entertained us was due to the keen pursuit of the dolphins and bonitos. When the silvern cloud arose and took its arrow-like series of flights and dips, like an imitation on a small scale of the ricochet of a cannon-ball in the water, the relentless pursuers would describe the chord of an arc, judging accurately where the spoil would fall when the last drop of water on their wings had dried, and the poor little things that escaped the gulls and frigate-birds in the air were often devoured on touching the other element, though the smallest sprinkling of water seemed to be sufficient to give the fish strength for another aerial rebound.

The dolphins were not free from the vicissitudes of life. The sailors amused themselves by spearing them from the forechains, and a fish was often transfixed with jaws extended in the moment of an expected banquet. Then the death of the dolphin was a picture—a beautiful dissolving view. He always made a good end. “Nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it.” The fleeting shades of green, yellow, and gold which shot through him as he lay quivering on the deck, arrayed in all the enchantments of colour, made a fascinating transformation scene. He died emitting a flood of exquisite hues, as the swan is said to sing his sweetest note at the moment of death. Rainbows served for his apotheosis as his spirit ascended to the happy hunting grounds of all good fishes, where there are no wicked sailors to annoy.

All that is bright must fade. Fair weather does not last for ever, even in the Pacific. For a time we had heavy tropical showers, repulsive mists, and short, fierce squalls which blew with hurricane force for a few minutes.

The weather cleared again. We knew that we were very near the Fijian archipelago, and we were expecting to sight land every moment, when a great peace fell upon the ocean. It was an ominous calm. The barometer indicated some startling change. As yet there was not a ripple on the water, but heavy clouds hung motionless in the sultry air, and gradually grew more lowering. The face of nature turned livid. The oppressive silence communicated itself to all on board. We waited for the coming storm, wondering from which direction we should feel it first. The atmosphere was hot, lurid, obscure.

In a moment there was a perceptible chill. Turning round I noticed a movement in a pillar of cloud on the far horizon astern of us, which had become as black as ink. The whole mass seemed to be bearing down upon us, and gathering volume as it progressed, till what was originally a black spot filled half the heavens. Then we caught the sound of an angry wind rapidly increasing in force. The water was lashed into fury, and was being driven towards us in a compact body, which rose several feet above the level of the smooth sea that lay between us and the blast. We could hear the coming whirlwind screeching along the surface of the water. Then it was upon us with a prolonged relentless shriek, and we knew that we should soon be in the vortex of a South Sea hurricane.

The wind caught the schooner astern. She had been luckily brought under easy sail, or she would have been dismasted. The canvas she carried lifted her forward with one tremendous bound, and then every inch of it was furiously torn from her and hurried away on the wings of the gale. The vessel was now fairly enveloped in the tempest, running with it under bare poles—a skeleton ship engaged in a terrible race with Death. Her shrouds and stays rang responsive to the wind, like the strings of a harp, furnishing a weird musical accompaniment to the howling of the storm.

The noise was terrific. The sound was that of air travelling with the highest attainable velocity, and carrying with it the ocean spray. It was as if we were actually enclosed by a great body of water rapidly in motion, forming part of a concrete moving mass, and as though every particle of the element was endowed with the power of shrieking demoniacally. No man’s voice could by any possibility be heard, nor could anyone stand on deck without holding on to something. It was appalling. We felt that the Angel of Death had encompassed us with his wings.

In the course of the night the wind changed its direction several times. Towards morning the fury of the storm had abated a little, but hoisting sail was still out of the question. The two sailors who manfully stood lashed to the wheel in an exposed position during the night had had their jackets and shirts blown off their backs. With great difficulty a bit of tarpaulin was made fast to the bowsprit to do duty as a storm-jib, but the vessel was practically beyond control.

To add to the dismal terror of the time, a fearful thunderstorm broke upon us. The vivid lightning flashes which lit up the whole of the inky vault above brought the sweltering desert of water into view with a weird effect which dazed us. The air was charged with electricity, and our vessel became the subject of the phenomenon known as St. Elmo’s light. Each mast was crowned with a baleful fire which shed a ghastly bluish light upon the men on deck, imparting a corpse-like hue to their faces. It was many hours since I had eaten or slept, and this gruesome sight so held my fancy that I could not divest myself of the idea that I was with the terrible crew of the spectral ship of old Vanderdecken, to look upon whose fleshless heads was death to all respectable seafarers. We sped along under those fearful candles, while the thunder with its claps and peals and long-reverberating roll seemed to form the mad music of a wild funeral march.

Day broke upon a woeful scene of desolation. The struggling dawn showed through the gray mirk a canopy of clouds torn and mangled by the wind into every conceivable shape, and a seething sea which boiled away to a dismal horizon, where the broken surface was tinged with a wan light, which added to the feeling of isolation and mystery that gathered round the scene. On our lee was a great misty dome, which we were rapidly approaching. It might be a cloud-form, or it might be an island, for all that we could see in the neutral-tinted gloom.

It seemed to me that our captain, who had lashed himself to the mizzen shrouds, was listening most intently to the thunder peals, which were now rapidly dying away. Suddenly he started and shrieked in my ear. “Did you not hear it?”

“I hear nothing but the distant roll of the thunder,” said I. “Let us hope we are now through the worst of it.”

“I am not mistaken,” he continued. “No one who has once heard the sullen roar of the South Sea reef with a lee shore before him ever forgets the sound. And see you not the big island rising right before us through the haze? Say all the prayers you know, boys, for to-night we sup with Davy Jones.”

I gazed through the chilly light which was gradually spreading itself around, and there was the clear outline of what seemed precipitous high land coming out of the sea to meet us. I could not distinguish the break upon the reef amid the circumambient foam driven in clouds before the wind; but I could hear a low rumbling sound, gradually gaining in force and then dying away again, which had a cadence of its own.

The sun rose like a molten globe shorn of his beams and powerless to outstare a man, but giving a pale effulgence like that of the moon. As the spectral light crept up towards the zenith it disclosed a sight which has often appalled stout hearts, though forming in itself a magnificent spectacle—a storm-tossed sea breaking in mad fury upon the South Sea reef—one of those mighty fabrics of coral which myriads of tiny architects, the conquerors of the ocean surge, have raised as natural breakwaters for all the islands of the Fijian archipelago.

The gale was hurrying us with uncontrollable power upon Viti Levu, the largest island of the group, and its girdle of coral, on which the furious sea was breaking in magnificent desolation. The sound came to us now like a roar of fierce anger, now with a measured dirge-like tone, and now in melancholy strains mellowed by distance, tristfully surgent like those of an Æolian harp. These reefs usually encircle the islands at a distance of from half a mile to two miles. Within the barrier the water is as smooth as a lake, but the trade winds, which blow for nine months in the year upon the shore, send the long rollers of the Pacific against the reef, which varies from 5ft. to 30ft. in width. Dashing upon this impregnable barrier, they rise in columns of rosy foam often to a height of from 20ft. to 50ft., and, glittering in the rays of the tropical sun, fall like obelisks of diamonds. A long line of silent ripples is often at first the only indication of the presence of one of these spines of coral and volcanic rock; then the rollers come against them with a sound like a thunder-clap, and the waters, broken into milk-white foam, hurry along the side with wonderful impetuosity, like an immense jet of vapour, until, meeting with a greater obstruction, a column is thrown high into the air, and forming an aqueous arch, bursts suddenly into spray.

As we neared what we felt to be our doom—for it was impossible to alter the course of the schooner, which continued to be driven before the wind under a storm-jib—the captain told us we had two chances, though very small ones. One was to be driven in at the reef-opening, which is usually found opposite a river or creek, and where the water is generally of sufficient depth to admit of the largest vessel entering. The other was to jump the barrier. If the vessel took the reef in a narrow place it was possible for her, by great good fortune, to ride clear over it on the back of a wave into smooth water, but the chances were ten thousand to one that she would be caught on the obstruction, or perhaps be dropped by a receding billow on a pointed coral patch and be shivered to fragments.

The members of the ship’s company prepared themselves for the crisis of their fate in the manner which seemed best to them. The skipper descended to the cuddy, and occupied himself in gazing fondly upon a miniature painting of a young woman which he took from his sea-chest. The mate found some relief in turning up at hazard passages of Scripture in an old Bible, opening the page by inserting a pin at random in the closed leaves. The sailors discovered some rum in the hold, and my mind was busy with a hundred plans, rejected as soon as conceived, for buoying myself up until I could float into the smooth water on the landward side of the reef; for that the schooner would go to pieces and leave me like a bit of driftwood in the spray I had not the slightest doubt.

As the wind slackened the sea rose. The hurricane no longer flattened its surface. We were thrown up to dizzy heights and slid down fearful green valleys with the sickening sense of a fall from a pinnacle in some horrid nightmare. While buried in these terrible ravines we saw nothing but the mountainous sides of imprisoning watery hills. As we shot to the summit of one of these ranges I looked out wearily into the world of throbbing ocean, and saw with a thrill which I can recall at this moment that we were within a few hundred yards of a white wrath—the broad belt of gleaming surge, the stupendous rampart of water, seething and boiling in a vast chaos of foam—which marked the break on the reef.

In a moment we are thrown between two gigantic pillars in this leaping and thundering aqueous gallery. It is the narrow opening in the reef, where the flux and reflux of the sea form a miniature maelström of sufficient power to engulf the largest ship afloat. We are wrapped in mist and spray. We are being drawn into the boiling cauldron. The schooner has a gyratory motion for some seconds as she is sucked by the vortices, and it is doubtful which way she will be carried. Suddenly, with a roar and a bellow which made me shake in every limb, we are upborne on a mighty wave, which ascends like a waterspout, tapering to a pyramidal point. Clinging desperately to a belaying cleat, I was blinded and deafened by the drenching spray, and strangled by the wind.

For a moment we are poised on the watery apex in mid air. At that instant I suffered a syncope of all my faculties. I did not lose consciousness, but was spell-bound with the fascination of the rabbit under the gaze of the rattlesnake. I even noticed without shuddering in that terrible sixtieth part of a minute, during which our vessel trembled at this dizzy height, that the sides of the column of malachite-green had a ghastly radiance caught from the sickly sun, that the interior rolled with the gleam of a sapphire, and that there were faint rainbow tints on the outermost edge of spray, while below the sea was churned into a thundering abyss in which it was impossible to distinguish the coral bank from deep water.

I involuntarily shut my eyes. I gasp for breath as the closing waters ring in my ears, crashing, and roaring, and booming with the voice of a thousand cannon. Now we are falling with incredible velocity. Falling! Falling! Oh God! Will the end never come?

---

My next recollection was that of being awakened by a hot sun playing on my face. To my amazement I found that I was lying with my head on a crown of cocoanut leaves, and that the deck of the schooner, which was quite uninjured, was half-buried in the thick green foliage of a tropical island. During the prolonged horror of the descent from the starry-pointing sea I had swooned. It was not all descent, for the vessel had been carried right through the avalanche of falling waters before she reached the natural level of the sea, and she had been driven on a tidal wave clear over the reef, high and dry on shore, and into a grove of bread-fruits and cocoanuts.[^[1]] All hands—with the exception of the master, the mate, and myself—had been swept away in the tumult of waters, and we never saw a trace of them again. Turner had been lashed to the rigging, and Cobb having got jammed between the rudder and the displaced binnacle, they outlived the adventure, though all but drowned in the hail of salt sea which had fallen on them.

[1]. In the year 1871 this also happened to an iron ship, the Ellesmere, on the island of Kandávu. She was purchased by a Levuka storekeeper for a small sum and successfully launched.

CHAPTER III.
AN INHOSPITABLE RECEPTION.

We were cast ashore on the coast of Viti Levu. It was not a desert island, but a land of tropical luxuriance, which supported 80,000 natives with very little labour; and these natives, as far as the coast tribes (the only part of the population the white man had any knowledge of) were concerned, were known to be the most bloodthirsty and treacherous savages in the world, who carried on heathen abominations to an extent unknown in any other part of the globe, while they were privileged to live on a portion of the earth’s surface which was marked by singular beauty.

The master and mate, who survived the wreck with me, had made a former visit to the sandalwood coast, and knew something of the language and ways of the natives, whose acquaintance with the white man was of comparatively recent date. The captain expressed the opinion that our prospects of escape from a cruel death were very small.

“The customs of this country,” said he, “oblige the natives to kill castaways. They look upon all such people—whom they describe as persons with ‘salt-water in their eyes’—as being delivered to them by the gods to be eaten, and if they neglected the practice they would be fearful of some terrible calamity befalling them.”

“To be killed and eaten,” added the mate, “is not the worst there is to fear, either. These wretches sometimes torture their helpless victims in a fiendish way. Only a year ago an English sailor, who had been hospitably received on one island, got wrecked on another in a canoe while endeavouring to reach a ship in the offing, and he had not the good fortune to be clubbed outright. His eyelids were cut away by the sharpened shell of the pearl-oyster, and he was then bound to a tree with his exposed orbs turned to the full glare of the sun. When the poor fellow was perfectly blind they skinned the soles of his feet, and then tormented him with firebrands to make him jump about in that wretched condition.”

For the present we were safe, however. The hurricane and the tidal wave had destroyed the villages on the coast where we were driven ashore, and the terrified inhabitants had fled inland, leaving the strand strewn with their household gods, and littered with uprooted trees and fragments torn from the dense vegetation.

Soon the storm-wrack cleared away, the heavens were a vault of blue faintly laced with thin transparencies of clouds, the sun appeared in all his splendour, playing on the still waters within the reef with a myriad flashing colours, while the rainbow-tinted coral forest seemed to wave gracefully in the shades and gleams as some bright-coloured fish lazily stirred the thick subaqueous undergrowths. A soft pearly haze rested on the purpling ocean, and it was difficult to believe that an awful tempest had so recently swept over the peaceful scene. When night came, the full moon rose radiantly in the east, throwing a broad track of silver across the crisp wavelets, and shedding a soft halo round the sad wreck of the Molly Asthore, so plainly doomed no more through rolling seas to ride again.

The neighbouring thicket in which we had made some slight timorous explorations, skirted a tropical forest in which the trees and tangled undergrowth were so closely packed that the hurricane had done but little damage except upon the seaward edge. The cocoanut trees, which are not very firmly rooted, and have at the top of their high cylindrical stems a heavy plume of leaves, among which the nuts nestle in luscious clusters, had suffered severely wherever they were exposed to the fury of the gale. The bread-fruit trees, which are of sturdy growth and well-balanced with thickly-fruited branches, were not much injured.

As we advanced into the depths of the forest, amidst the sombre foliage, the rank matted grasses, and the festooned canopy of interlacing parasites, the balmy air of the beach gave place to a hot, moist, and sickly atmosphere that was very oppressive. But the luxuriant vegetation of the jungle was of transcendant beauty. Sometimes there was a plot of grass of a delicate green, wonderfully soft and fragrant, and illuminated at intervals by the flaming blossoms of the hibiscus and cactus. The kowrie or dakua grew intermingled with wild nutmegs, which exhaled a pleasant aroma. An enormous yevu-yevu tree formed a complete bower in itself. The small white flowers of the ivi emitted a delicious perfume, and the kavika or malay apple-trees, had densely strewn the ground beneath their branches with petals and stamens, giving the turf the appearance of a tesselated pavement. Innumerable creepers and trailing plants depended from trunk and bough, interlaced with each other in endless coils, which turned and twisted from the roots of the large trees, and ascended to the highest branches to fall again in leafy steps of glossy green, or assume some new fantastic shape, and so shut out the sun that in some of the shady dells it was impossible to avoid a chill. The whole neighbourhood was fragrant with the scent of the lemon, the jasmine, the pine-apple, and the orange. It was only necessary to stretch forth one’s arm to secure a delightful repast.

We knew that the savages would not be long absent from their fishing grounds on the reef, and we were very circumspect in our movements, always retiring to the stranded schooner at nightfall, and keeping careful watch.

On the third day after our almost miraculous landing on the island the air was rent by the yells of a hundred Fijians, who had doubtless been watching us for some time previously, and who had now determined to take us and our fortress, the wrecked vessel, by assault.

On they came, under cover of the trees, launching at us volley after volley of arrows, and, what were more formidable, stones from slings. There was a breeze blowing which diverted the course of the former missiles to some extent, and many fell short. But the stones rattled about our ears in very uncomfortable proximity. We had a few guns, but there were not more than half-a-dozen rounds of ammunition that had not been hopelessly damaged by the salt-water. However, we kept the savages at bay by occasionally dropping a man. Firearms were not unknown to them, having been introduced in another part of the group some years previously, but they were still very scarce, and our munitions of war would be considered a great prize, could they be taken.

Towards evening our last shot had been expended, and the enemy held off, waiting for the cover of darkness to make a grand rush and finish us with the club. Ovens were already being prepared for the approaching cannibal feast, so sure were they of the result. The captain remarked that among the insulting fire of words the natives kept up he could distinguish that they were bespeaking the three of us joint by joint. They were also preparing the three kinds of vegetables always eaten with bokola, as baked human flesh is called. These I afterwards learned were the leaves of the malawathi, the tudano, and the borodina. The two former are middle-sized trees, growing wild. The borodina is cultivated; it is a bushy shrub, seldom higher than 6ft., with a dark, glossy foliage, and berries very much like tomatoes, which have a faint aromatic smell, and are sometimes prepared like tomato sauce. These plants are wrapped round the several joints of the prepared human body, and baked with them on the hot stones of the cannibal oven.

When it became apparent that our capture by club and spear was only a question of an hour or two if we remained on the schooner, we determined to make good our retreat to the friendly shelter of the forest. As soon as night fell we quietly slid down a rope at the stern into the sand, and wading some distance into the sea, travelled along the coast-line until we were well out of reach of the cannibal horde. Then we struck into the woods and concealed ourselves in a vast cabin formed by the roots of a baka.

This tree resembles the famous banyan of India. Its branches are propped up by aerial roots which run along the ground, assuming strange shapes, and forming a fantastic maze, which is perfectly indescribable in its convolutions. At first a parasite on other trees, it soon acquires such dimensions that it sucks all their sap, when they die, and it then has to draw its nourishment from the soil. The crown of the giant baka, upborne on air roots, expands into a cloud of foliage frequently 150ft. in diameter, or 450ft. in circumference. This hanging garden of vegetation is decorated with pendant cacti and brilliant orchids. Gorgeously-plumaged parrots hang among the boughs nibbling at the blossoms, gem-like lizards bask on the trunk, and innumerable insects hum in chorus in the foliage. Bush-ropes of every size and degree of pliancy climb and twist about, running from tree to tree. Some stately trunks, supported by these natural stays and braces, looked like the masts of a fleet at anchor. The mighty baka forms an awe-inspiring object, and is frequently made sacred to priestly incantations. Such a tree having this character is never approached by Fijians not in the priestly office, so that our place of concealment seemed very secure.

Presently we heard the demoniac yells of the savages. They had leaped upon the schooner, club in hand, and found that the birds had flown. They searched the vessel diligently, pilfering every article that could be easily removed. It was then determined that we were hidden in some part of the hold. They set fire to our craft, and soon the hulk, which lay exposed on the sand, a hundred yards from the water-line, was reduced to ashes. In the lurid light of the conflagration we could see from our leafy cavern the forms of the all but naked Fijians dancing in hideous glee, and anxiously watching for some sign of their expected victims in the flames. As soon as they were satisfied that the white men had escaped, the beach and the forest were scoured in all directions. Numerous search parties passed close to us, but did not enter the sacred precincts of the baka tree.

When daylight came, and we were able to see distinctly the sable forms flitting about the wood, the captain said he thought he recognised a chief with whom he had had transactions on his former visit to the Sandalwood coast. He believed now, that with his slight knowledge of the language and his acquaintance with this chief, we could deliver ourselves up with safety, and hope to live in comfort until the arrival of some European vessel. I was opposed to this scheme, having no confidence whatever in the natives. But I was overruled by my two companions.

We had each a cutlass and a gun, but no ammunition fit for use. When the skipper called out that we surrendered, we emerged from our hiding-place, and walked boldly towards one of the wrecked villages, which was rapidly being set in order again, threatening the common people around us with instant death if they offered to molest us. The head chief of the district, Waikatakata (Hot-Water), who had been apprised of our coming, awaited us, seated on a large stone at the door of his roofless house, with his counsellors and a large assemblage around him.

The captain presented a whale’s tooth, which was one of a number stowed in the schooner for the purpose of trade, and asked the protection of the tribe for the white men.

The important personage he addressed, called the Turanga Levu by his vassals, had, it seemed, had no previous personal acquaintance with foreigners.

Waikatakata said—“Welcome to the men with shark’s eyes. The people from beyond where the ocean carries the sky can bring us guns and hatchets, and help us to punish the insolent foe. We have heard of their prowess in the kingdom of Bau, and desire that they should make this land their home.”

Then rose an old priest of uncanny aspect. “Not so,” quoth he, “or evil days will assuredly fall upon the land. When we first saw the gleam of a foreign sail, like a spirit walking on the waters, at the meeting place of sea and sky, where the sun is daily drowned,[^[2]] we said, ‘These are god-ships,’ and we longed for a visit from those divine navigators. The white man came, as we have heard, and was believed to be a god. With his arms of might he has done wonders for Naulivou of Bau. But when for his oppression he fell under the avenging club of his former friends, it was seen that he bled and was no god, but mortal as ourselves. The white man’s gods are not the gods of Fiji. If they are to be set up here the wrath of the great Dengeh will be aroused; he will shake with anger in his cave, and the whole earth will be barren. It is he who has sent us these castaways. They must die. The customs of our country and our religion not only sanction but demand and sanctify the deed.”

[2]. The Fijian expression for horizon.

As the priest ended, it was clear that the populace sided with him. Had it not been so he would not have spoken so boldly. The chief wavered. He feared to arouse the ill-will of his conservative people, and at the same time he ardently desired the power which he believed the presence of white men could bring him.

After a brief address, in which he insinuated his own views without appearing to express them, he concluded, “The priest has spoken with words of earthly wisdom, but not with inspiration. Let the oracle be consulted, and I will abide the result.”

The priest anointed himself with scented cocoanut oil, and became absorbed in thought. The assemblage waited in breathless silence. We watched him with a fearful interest, for our fate hung upon the end of this strange scene.

In a few minutes a perceptible tremor agitated the old man’s frame. His limbs twitched, and faint, rapid distortions passed over his face, like shadows chasing each other on the water. These gradually increased till a violent muscular action set in; foam appeared upon his lips, and he gasped and sobbed in strong convulsions. He shouted, gnashed his teeth, clenched his hands, swayed himself backwards and forward. He shook from head to foot; his veins swelled till they seemed just about to burst, and his muscles tightened till they threatened to snap. He seemed to be lashed and torn by hurricanes of racking torture.

“Now he is possessed by his god,” it was whispered round, and every ear was strained to catch the first words of the supernatural deliverance.

The excitement was intensified by the priest jerking forth at intervals sundry exclamations about his god, or himself, or both of them together, thus:—“I! I! I! It is I! The god! The god! It is we! We two!” Then, still writhing, trembling, groaning, looking like a mad paralytic kneeling on ground shaken by an earthquake, the people, unable to remain quiet any longer, shouted deliriously, “That is it! See! see! Wonderful! True! There they are! Both of them!”

The climax had now been reached. The priest, with rolling eyes and frenzied voice, screamed, “It is I! It is I! Listen to Dengeh! Trust not the white men. They grow slowly like the nut, and abide—the Fijians like the plantain, and wither in a few days. Hear not the words of the religion they bring. It is the lie of a far away path.”

The divination was clearly against us. We gathered from the satisfied grunts and expressive gestures of our neighbours that we should shortly be clubbed and consigned to the oven.

Meanwhile the priest was gradually recovering from his paroxysm. He looked round with a vacant stare, as though waking from a trance, and as the god uttered the words, “I depart,” violently flung himself down on the ground. He remained quivering for some time, but shortly sat up, took a draught of water, and was himself again.

The chief had been a deeply-interested spectator of the scene, but it seemed to us that he was more moved by the attitude of the people than by the vaticinations of the priest, in whose inspiration it is doubtful if he believed. After some minutes of reflection he remarked, “The god has spoken, but the fate of the white men is not decreed. The priest shall visit the cave of the great Dengeh and show us an omen before the club falls.”

That evening costly offerings of food, clubs, spears, native cloth, &c., were prepared and presented at the mouth of a cave in a neighbouring hill, the road to which was known only to the priest. These valuable articles were afterwards appropriated by the servant of Dengeh. Before the offerings could be presented and the ear of the oracle gained, the priests on these occasions must draw slowly near the holy places in a manner that is most painfully reverential. This they do kneeling, not crawling on all fours, as serfs do when approaching their chiefs—in this country, a process far too easy and pleasant—but “walking” on their knees only, without letting their hands share the burden, and without steadying help from the toes, which dare not touch the ground, however gently, at the peril of their owner. If, unhappily, they flagged in this weary and painful progression, and but once allowed their feet to touch the sacred soil, the god would turn those feet white; while if they ventured to rest or move forward at a quicker pace, by putting their hands on the ground, the incensed Dengeh would cause the land to be stricken with famine.

When the god was consulted as to a declaration of war, the priest bent his ear over the cave and listened attentively for the reply. If there came up from the divine hiding-place a noise like the clash of arms in battle, the priest was bound to declare that war must be the order of the day; but if no sound broke the silence of the god’s retreat he had as plainly to say that for the present at least the tribes might continue in the prosperity and gladness of unbroken peace. If blood were found on the path the following morning it was a sure indication that the god was favourable to war, or demanded human sacrifices. If the priest was desired to pray for rain, and to ask if the time was near when it would be poured down on their thirsty and parched-up lands, bending his ear again towards the Oracle he listens. Should the answer be given in sounds like the gurgling of water streams, he has simply to say, “The drought is at an end my friends, and the land is saved.” The priest was generally an elderly and experienced man, with his “weather eye,” always open, and perhaps also with a somewhat rheumatic body. If the experienced eye could detect in the change of wind or the state of the atmosphere that the rain was not far off, or if the sensitive nerves from sundry twitchings and pains proclaimed it near, it is not difficult to imagine how easily the prophetic ear of the owner of such nerves and eye could hear the gurgling of water streams, and, if need were, even the thunder of mighty falls.

In the present instance our ecclesiastical friend, on his way to the cave in the screw-pine hills, took a fowl with him, and decapitated it en route. It so happened that on the following morning there was blood upon the path. We were condemned to die.

CHAPTER IV.
A RACE FOR LIFE.

During the night all three of us had been securely bound with sinnet, and vigilantly guarded to prevent any attempt at escape. Preparations for the cannibal feast were also industriously prosecuted in our presence. A hideous blear-eyed savage, sitting cross-legged on the grass, superintended the construction of the oven and the placing of the fires to thoroughly heat the layers of hot stones. He occasionally directed our attention to the proceedings with a self-satisfied leer, remarking that we should soon have the salt-water taken out of our eyes. He also felt my limbs, which were well fleshed, and pronounced them to be good.

The word was secretly given to club us. The captain and the mate fell prostrate under two thwacking blows delivered from behind. Instinctively feeling that the same fate was overtaking me, I made a vigorous bound forward, burst asunder the fastenings of my wrists and ancles, and saw the club which was intended to alight on my head sink in the turf at my side.

I was fleet of foot, and very lightly clad, having nothing on but boots, white duck trousers, and a shirt. I sprang like a deer into the jungle and ran for the hills like the wind. A number of the natives darted after me, but I soon saw that the only one who was likely to overtake me was the objectionable individual who had charge of the cooking preparations. He was a well-formed man of about 25, but had some loathsome sores on his body, which did not, however, affect his health. He had the advantage of knowing the country, and of carrying nothing in the way of clothes but a slight loin-cloth of tapa, worn in the form of a T bandage, while his well-oiled body enabled him to bear exposure to the sun, and helped him to glide through opposing brambles.

In threading the luxuriant tropical forest with the matted network of the tangled undergrowths which impeded me at every turn, my pursuer rapidly gained upon me, but whenever it was a question of open ground, as sometimes happened for a time, as I began to ascend one of the numerous ravines which radiate from the highest point of the island to the sea, I saw that I fully held my own. My enemy, nevertheless, showed no sign of flagging. It was a race for life, and I was not likely to give in while there was a breath left in my body.

In the woods I could hear the crackling of breaking branches in my rear, and in the open there was always the dusky form pressing eagerly on with a relentless stride, his chest well expanded, the head well up, and the clenched hands in measured motion at his sides, one of them grasping by the middle a short club curiously knotted at the end—a weapon capable of being thrown a considerable distance, or of being used effectively in a hand-to-hand encounter.

At length, after the best part of an hour’s running, with occasional rests, I got into a sort of labyrinthine canebrake which lined the banks of a small stream trending to the coast, hoping that I might here effectually baffle my pursuer. I knew that he dare not follow me far from the coast-line for fear of the inland tribes—the landsmen, who were never on friendly terms with the mariners who lived on the shore. This was also a difficulty with me. I had a dread of momentarily rushing into the arms of some anthropophagistical mountaineer. Occasionally in my flight I had caught sight of a small native village perched on a castled crag, or half hidden in a distant ravine, and I had carefully avoided approaching those places.

But now an altogether unexpected source of anxiety beset me. I found that I was fairly entrapped in this dense patch of vethos. The reeds reached such a height that they shut out all surrounding objects. In their gloomy shade I could distinguish nothing clearly. As I passed through these prison bars they closed upon me from behind with a snap like so many spring doors, preventing the air from circulating and making the atmosphere close and sultry beyond expression; while the sickly graveyard smell emitted by the fermenting vegetable matter was almost overpowering. After some 20 minutes of plunging about over a flooring honeycombed with pitfalls concealed by undergrowths—frequently sprawling full length over thong-like creepers and tendrils which it was impossible to break—I reached a nerveless state of exhaustion, in which I saw that I put forth my arm without making the smallest impression upon the stubborn wires of my thickset cage. On the one hand I feared that I should never find my way out of this maze, and on the other that if my strength returned I should as likely as not work down to the coast and the dangerous locality I had fled from, while the noise of every breaking twig caused me to look round for my pursuer. Were he to come upon me now I should be helpless. I already pictured myself prostrate with the glowering eyes of the horrid savage upon me.

Having rested awhile I made a supreme effort, and clambered up the gnarled trunk of a withered old tree, about 12ft. high. From this elevation I could see no end to the labyrinth. As I descended, the night mist began to steam and wreath in loathy forms. As I viewed the stems and withes, with their endless webs of roots, choking out air and sky, I became a prey to the depressing influence of the horrid place. The premonitory symptoms of malarious fever were shuddering through my frame. I again lay down, reflecting that it was impossible to make a way in a straight line, even though I knew the proper direction, or had vigour enough remaining to advance at all. Turning my head wearily round, to my delight I caught a glimpse of blue sky through a little break in the vethos. Following this direction a few steps, I discovered that the reeds suddenly thinned down at this point, and in a few minutes I was out on lightly-timbered land, breathing the pure air of heaven once more.

The sun set all aglow on the sea-girt horizon, bathing the hill-tops in a ruddy light, which lasted but a few seconds. Darkness followed almost instantly, and heavy dews began to fall, compelling me to seek some sort of shelter. I crept back into the edge of the cover I had just left, and there slept the sleep of exhaustion.

I awoke shortly before daybreak, shivering with the cold. Glancing to the top of the hill in front of me I was startled by seeing the trees and shrubs shining in a bright light, and looking as though they had been worked by a skilful artificer in frosted silver, while the birds flitted about in a cloud of white sparks. I thought at first that there must be a conflagration in the valley beyond; but shortly the strange illumination faded, and I knew that the phenomenon was due to the rising sun. Not daring to delay longer, I resumed my journey up hill, hoping to find a secure hiding-place on some prominence commanding the ocean, so that I might watch for the arrival of an English sail.

Emerging from the patch of reeds upon a stretch of comparatively level ground, I felt greatly fatigued, for my night’s rest was taken in a mephitic atmosphere of rank decaying vegetable matter. I noticed a thousand yards ahead a craggy solitude on the hill-side, shaded by thickly clustering ivi and wi trees, and I determined to rest there for a time.

At that moment my enemy shot out from the reeds in my rear. He must have passed the night quite close to me. Animated by his nearness to the quarry, he doubled his speed. I could no longer outrun him. Soon his footfalls on the turf were distinct in my ears. I counted them as I ran, and found he made three paces to my two. Then I heard his labored breathing. I felt his hot breath on my shoulder—the scented oil from his beastly person was in my nostrils. The blood burst from my ears and mouth and bubbled up in my boots (which had been torn and mangled out of all shape) with the exertions I made to reach the cover in view, and I was sure that I should be in the grasp of the foe in a few seconds. Suddenly stooping, on the instinctive impulse of a moment, I seized a pointed stick used for digging yams, which had been left in my path by some agricultural laborer. I dropped on one knee, facing about instantly, and, holding the yam stick as an infantry soldier prepares to receive cavalry with his bayonet, the Fijian ran upon my weapon and impaled himself. With one convulsive gasp, when the shaft entered his breast, he fell dead; and I rolled over by his side, panting, bleeding, and thoroughly exhausted.

CHAPTER V.
THE ISLAND-WORLD.

On recovering myself I plunged into the leafy grove which clothed the mountain side. Being now increasingly fearful of being seen by the inhabitants of some inland town, I moved warily. Afflicted with a raging thirst, I climbed a high tree, on which I observed a parasitical plant, the leaves of which acting as a kind of rain-gauge, supplied me with cups of the most beautifully pure water, that sparkled like dew in these elegant green vessels. Never was mortal drought more gratefully slaked. A shaddock plucked from its nest of green completed a light and refreshing breakfast. Turning round to descend, I discovered on a level with myself, in the umbrageous shade of the tree-top, the entrance to a cave, which was not visible from the open. The locality was well guarded from view, for close by the grotto a venerable vutu rakaraka reared its stately form to a height of 60ft. The huge arch-like branches it threw out were clasped by the twining roots of epiphytical fig-trees, and a number of climbing plants, interlaced with wax flowers, formed a mass of diverse greenery, shaping a wild fantastic scene in which the light of day was only dimly perceptible. Entering the cavern, I found it of considerable dimensions. The water dripping through the limestone roof had formed, as I could see when my eyes became accustomed to the faint light, the most beautiful stalactites, which depended in elegant forms, fashioning crystal draperies worthy to form the hangings for a Temple of Nature.

It seemed that the foot of man had never before entered the gloomy chamber. This abode was admirably suited to me; I was always sure of a safe retreat when the natives appeared in view, for the cave was only to be discovered by climbing a high tree, and the dainties of the primeval orchard, with an occasional wild yam, would always suffice for the necessaries of life. (My yams I roasted at a small fire, which I kindled with sparks produced by laboriously rubbing the point of one stick in the grooved side of another, in the manner copied from the method of the South Sea Islanders, which had often been shown to me on the schooner. My cooked esculent was equal to the best floury potato I had ever tasted.) For the rest, I could walk to the hill-tops every day and keep a careful look-out for the arrival of some European ship on the coast, when I would stealthily descend and once more regain my liberty.

I made frequent excursions from my subterranean dwelling. As I ascended the high peaks of Viti Levu I noticed that the forests differed greatly in appearance from those of the lowlands. The trees were densely covered with mosses, lichens, and deep orange-coloured orchids. Some of the ferns were of vast dimensions, and the deep silence and repose which reigned in these sylvan retreats gave to them an air of impressive solemnity. Sometimes on topping an eminence a large part of the archipelago came into view. The sea was gemmed with islands and islets, which lay on its bosom, adding beauty to beauty, like pearls strung on a lovely woman’s neck, and the refreshing trade wind came across the spangled mirror of the ocean, fanning the heights with its delicious coolness, which was especially grateful after the steaming heat of some of the valleys and air-excluded copses.

The strange view of scores of islands and islets scattered over the ocean interested me greatly. In many instances the encircling reef was visible, sending jets of milk-white foam high into the air, where they burst like rockets, and glittered in the sun like columns of shattered diamonds.

Occasionally a fleet of large sailing canoes appeared in sight, bound on some pleasure excursion or warlike expedition. Sitting on a rocky prominence on a fine day, I could see these summer islets floating on bright spheres of tropic sea, stretching from point to point like a beautiful panorama, and I thought the world had no fairer spectacle to show. The canoes glided past with a stately sweep. They gradually became mere dots in the distance, and I began to think of the nautilus spreading its purpled wings to the wind, and coquetting in the enchanted gulfs of the fable, till I involuntarily looked to see “the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.” The return of the canoes to port was as magnificent a spectacle as their departure and gradual fading from sight. Nothing could be more beautiful than to see them, one by one, fold their coloured wings and come to anchor with the dainty grace of a sea-bird settling on the crest of a wave.

When I took my lonely bird’s-eye views of what was visible of this small island-world, it often occurred to me that I was looking upon fragments which were but remnants of a vast continent in past times—rafts with men upon them anchored out at sea, to tell us where the giant forces of Nature tore asunder great countries, now broken into a thousand pieces. The knowledge acquired in subsequent years confirmed my first impressions.

A glance at the map of Polynesia is enough to show the fitness of the name given to the myriad islands and islets that stud the whole western half of the vast Pacific. Group after group, island after island, reef everywhere stretching out to embrace reef, north and south of the line for thousands of miles, keeping the mariner ever anxious by day and sleepless by night, seem to tell us, in language that cannot well be mistaken, of mighty continents that once were, and, for anything we know to the contrary, are again to be.

Who could look down as from a bird’s eyrie on this great island-world, and still adhere to some of the old theories which profess to deal with the question of how these homes became inhabited. Turn again to the map. Beginning at Behring’s Strait, across which the old and new worlds might almost shake hands, we pass southward to the Aleutian islands, which form a well-nigh unbroken semi-circular chain from the Kamschatkan to the Alaskan Peninsula. With the help of a body of fabled giants these islands might easily be changed into a substantial bar which should at once block up the “North-West Passage,” and provide the foundations for a road over which the engines of Russia and America might rush to and fro, between the two worlds. From Cape Lopatka to the southernmost point of Japan, a similar highway would be possible to like able workmen. Thus on, preceded by these god-like navvies, filling up comparatively narrow spaces between countless islands and reefs, we might travel from Japan to the Loochoos, from the Loochoos to Formosa, from Formosa to the Philippines, from these to the massive island of New Guinea, southerly to Australia; thence easterly to New Britain, to the Solomons, the New Hebrides, the Fijis, the Friendlies, the Navigators, and out beyond mid-ocean to the Society Islands, the Low Archipelago and the Marquesas.

With this picture of Pacific highways before us, it is barely possible to arrive at any other conclusion, than that the continent of Asia, in vastly remote ages it may be, was spread out over the greater portions, if not the whole, of what is now known as the North, North-West, and South Central Pacific. We may reasonably suppose it to have been inhabited by those races who in the first ages of their history sought the Rising Sun. Volcanic action, and oceanic erosion were early at work at their great engineering task of sinking and wearing away all the lower and less protected foundations; but man lived on, taking and keeping possession of the isolated higher lands to which by very gradual, perhaps almost imperceptible degrees, he had been driven. Does not this seem a better theory with respect to these Polynesians, than one which would have us believe that, in miserable little canoes, they must at different times have drifted away from Asia, for thousands of miles against a whole army of opposing elements—tides, ocean currents, trade winds, &c.

From such a theory as this it may not be wrong further to presume, at least till some better theory arises out of scientific investigation, that, just as these countless islands stand decked in orient beauty, as so many broken monuments to show us where Eastern Asia once stretched forth her arms, so the red, brown, and black Polynesian tribes remain to tell us how the teeming populations of that great continent once flowed eastward, even until they reached the American world, and were stayed in their course only by the Atlantic. Every separate group seems to strengthen this view by its geological character, its geographical position, and its legendary lore.

Fiji is the largest group of Islands in the Western Pacific. In looking at its chart the thought at once strikes us, that the 200 islands which compose it must, at some remote period, have been connected by lands which the sea has since engulfed. One cannot escape the suspicion that what is now broken up into a thousand pieces, must once have been a country of large proportions, and of surpassing richness and beauty. And further, if Fiji had not at one time a continental connexion, was it not in itself one vast island instead of many small ones.

Imagine such an island extending far beyond the limits of the present group of remnants, say, some 600 miles from east to west, and 500 miles from north to south, and we have before us a picture of what was, not unlikely, ancient Fiji—a land of high mountains and far-stretching plains, of rivers, lakes, and springs of water, of shores thrown out here and there into bold and rocky prominence, or stretching away in long lines of shingle and sand.

Once again, let our imagination conjure up pictures of deeds of might,—deeds such as Fijian mythology is full of,—“shaking,” “breaking down,” “kicking out of the way,” “undermining,” and “sinking,” all the lower lands, and, it may be, not those alone, and it will no longer seem strange, how that of the once magnificent whole, there remain to-day only these 200 abrupt mountainous fragments, ranging in size from 300 miles in circumference, to a single rock, with room for nought upon it but a solitary cocoanut palm; or lower yet, to a mound of sand only big enough for a mother turtle to lay her eggs in without grumbling. From these islands and islets, reefs of every size and form may be seen spreading out their claws, as if to mark where the ancient lands stood before their subsidence, and, perhaps, further intended for the more useful work of reconstruction, by linking together in the course of long ages these scattered yet valuable and beautifully luxuriant fragments.

However all this may be, one thing seems certain, that these lands would be utterly unable to hold their own, but for the prodigious work of that silent little builder, who, upon the sunken débris of sunny plains that were, has piled up and cemented together those grand and unique breakwaters, in comparison with which the defensive and aggressive works of man are but as paper walls. Against the coral-reef barrier, erosive equatorial currents, tidal waves, and all the battalions of ocean may charge in vain.

The natives call their country Viti (pronounced Veety.) It is to be regretted that the harsher sounding word “Fiji,” applied by the Tongans from the Friendly Islands, has been adopted in its stead by us, inasmuch as “Viti” is a good representative word of the euphonious characteristic of the language, in the most perfect and widely-known dialect, in which there is hardly a harsh sound to be heard.

CHAPTER VI.
THE PRINCESS LOLÓMA.

As I rambled about the mountain solitudes, the sound of the lali, or native drum, beaten in celebration of some heathen rite, and faint echoes from the shrill blast of the conch-shell, blown in honour of some chiefly observance, not infrequently floated up from an extensive valley lying in the centre of the hill country. Occasionally I had seen men moving in the distance, but I was always careful to keep out of view.

One day a party of village maidens, searching for the gay flowers of the forest, with which to decorate themselves for some festival, approached my hiding-place. I observed their gambols on a wooded slope, as they laughed, and danced, and sang with gladsome air, and I would willingly have joined the merry throng had not prudence forbidden. The queen of the company, to whom a certain deference was always paid, was a handsome girl of fifteen. Her dress and mien proclaimed her to be a lady in the land.

The elegant simplicity of her attire was well calculated to heighten the charm of her fine figure. She wore a cincture of hibiscus fibres a few inches broad, forming a girdle of beautifully variegated braidwork, from which depended a fringe of coloured grasses ten inches deep, ornamented with small shells and berries. The long fringe playing on her softly-rounded limbs had a most graceful appearance. Her ears were decorated with the brilliant blossom of the Chinese rose; garlands of bright flowers were hung on her neck, and a chaplet of pure white ivi blossoms lay on her brow, emitting a delicious perfume, and contrasting well with the glow of her dusk bosom. The likus or petticoats worn by her handmaidens were much scantier. They were of a bright, jet black colour, made from the stem of a parasite called waloa. They did not meet by several inches at the hip, and they were put on in such a coquettish way that they gave the idea that they must fall off every moment.

I could not but watch with interest the lovely forms of these gentle savages of the wild as they capered in the shade of the tropic afternoon. Soon they tired for a while of their innocent sports. The queen sank luxuriously into a crown of fern leaves, and lay like Aphrodite in her shell, with all her dimpled loves around her.

The whole party slept for a time in careless abandonment upon the leaves and grass, their floral treasures thrown around them in picturesque disorder. In the cool of the evening they awoke from refreshing slumbers and regaled themselves on the luscious fruits which hung around. The full moon arose, filling the dell with a soft splendour, and the maidens looked timorously at the shimmering trees, for the woods of Fiji are filled with diminutive fairies and elves, whose delight it is to plague poor mortals, who are no match for the trickeries of these little folks, who people the tangled grass and bushes, spring from hollows of the pine trees, tread softly as the lizards, and will eat the banquet spread for others when the feasters’ backs are turned, laughing merrily the while, and then retire to the branches of the trees, where anyone may hear them chattering together, and singing their little songs with the multitudinous voices of the cicadæ.

Breaking into a wild dance, full of animation and graceful movements, the girls, with rustling leaves and streamers of green about them, imitated the ebb and flow of the tide, counterfeiting the rippling and soft sighing of the water on some sandy beach with wonderful accuracy. After this they performed the flying-fox dance, mimicking with equal cleverness the gyrations of that animal as it lazily hangs from the branch of a tree, or, suddenly spreading its wings, takes its dive-like flight from some monarch of the wood to the lowest branch of a bread-fruit. The girls tripped as lightly over the grass as their fabled fairy elves, singing the while in merry measure—

“Away, away, away to the trees,

To dance, and dance as long as you please,

To sing and dance all night in the breeze,

As from trees the flying foxes!”

“Away to dance, the yellow-flow’r dance,

The white flow’r dance, the scarlet-flow’r dance!

Come dance and sing, and merrily dance.

For the world will soon be empty!”

While I was the unobserved witness of these pretty dramas of gesture I could not but think of the fabled dead dancing maidens whom the Germans call “The Willeis.” They are young brides who died the day before their happiness was to be consummated, but who, their passion for dancing still living within them, leave their graves at midnight, and give themselves up to the wildest measures, while the nearer the approach of the hour which recalls them to the silence of the tomb, the more deliriously they abandon themselves to the enjoyment of the fast-fleeting moments.

But I had no feeling that the mysterious rites of which I was the privileged beholder were fraught with perdition to man. The twittering prattle of voices low and sweet, and the vigorous gambols of these merry lassies, seemed full of the palpitating passion of life; while the dances of the fairies, the pirouettes of the elves, and the gambadoes of the earth-spirits, could not have had more of dainty grace. As for the queen herself, when she danced, like Perdita’s admirer, I wished her a wave of the sea that she might never do anything but that.

The evening’s madcap revels over, the frolicsome party prepared to return to their village. They ran down the green slopes, waking the echoes with their wild laughter. I followed at a distance, and saw that they gradually became divided into small knots, often walking in twos and threes linked in each other’s arms.

The queen, while roaming alone, struck her foot on a sharp twig, and stayed to bathe the injured member in a transparent pool into which a miniature cascade, lacing a bank like a thread of silver, fell. She sat looking at her reflection in the water with the innocent delight of a flower enjoying its own perfume.

Her companions passed on, and I confronted her. She was speechless with terror. She thought at first, as I afterwards learned, that I was either the departed spirit of some ancestor who had undergone a strange metamorphosis in the other world, or else that I was a goblin of a kind that she had never before heard of. Then she recollected the fables of the Kalou vulavula or white God, she had heard the court minstrel relate, and determined in her own mind that I must belong to that species of deity.

I reassured her by making use of a few Fijian phrases I had at command, and she soon felt satisfied that my intentions were friendly. I contrived to make her understand that I was tambu, and that my presence in the woods must be kept a profound secret. I also gained enough of her good will to feel sure that we should meet again. The event justified that belief. Whenever the Princess and her companions visited the locality I managed to have a secret interview with her.

In course of time I was able to explain to her that I had been cast ashore in the recent hurricane, and had wandered into the hills after the death of my companions. All she knew of white men was that they were god-like beings who lived in a far country beyond the seas, and who voyaged in ships as large as islands. Much that she had heard on this subject from the tribal minstrel she had always regarded as an idle tale invented for the amusement of the populace.

I said that I feared to surrender myself to her people, told her I was living in a cave which was difficult of access, and obtained from her a promise that she would come back alone some day, and advise me whether it would be safe for me to enter the town. I learned that her name was Lolóma, and that she was the daughter of Tui Thangi-Levu (King Big-Wind), who lived in Koroivónu (Turtle Town), in the neighbouring valley, and was sovereign of the inland tribes for many miles around.

One day the Princess sought me out alone. She brought me a welcome addition to my fare—some native puddings made of ripe bananas, served with a sauce compounded of the milky juice expressed from the cocoanut, and sweetened with rasped sugar-cane.

I showed her the mysterious entrance to the cave. She ascended the tree with the infinite grace of her nation. As she glided through the leaves into the darkened cavern, I thought she must be a veritable wood nymph or sylvan goddess. The sun penetrating through the thick-leaved trees’ glossy veil of green, dimly showed the fretted buttresses, the aisles, the naves, and the fantastic columns and architraves of our sparry bower.

Lolóma was not darker than a Spanish-born gipsy. Though a child in years, as judged in colder climes, she had the rounded form of perfect womanhood. Short curly hair set off a bright and laughing face, in which a pair of dark eyes danced like twin stars in the first shade of night. The soft caressing fingers and daintily-turned feet, the arched neck and the dimpled knee, were as perfect as statuary. The voice so sweet, and untaught smile so flattering, proclaimed the unsophisticated naturelle. And there was that which no sculptor’s art could copy—the heightened color which shone in her face and neck as her bosom heaved with some fresh emotion of joy or fear, and showed on her nut-brown skin like the red coral of the still lagoon seen blushing through the shadowed wave, or the warm glow of the young leaves of the dawn, which often makes a whole forest look in the distance as if it were in bloom.

She was as natural as the plants and flowers among which she lived, and as joyous as a waterfall. She was subject to none of the distractions of her compeers of civilisation. No sorrow had as yet fallen on her young life, and she knew not “passion’s desolating joy.”

Under the instruction of my teacher I made rapid progress in the Fijian language, that soft labial tongue,

“Which melts like kisses from a female mouth,

And sounds as if it should be writ on satin.”

The meaning of her name in Fijian I found to be love or pity. My home in the grotto soon ceased to be a hermit’s cell. A supply of elegantly-worked mats and printed tapa gave one nook in it an air of comfort. When illuminated with flambeaux of resinous wood, and liberally furnished with all the delicacies of the Fijian cuisine, it was a dwelling-place which an epicure need not have despised.

Lolóma pitied me for my loneliness and complete severance from kith and kin. Our daily conversation turned on the advisability of adopting some plan by which I could join her tribe and have full liberty among her people.

The Princess’s frequent unexplained absences from the village green of Koroivónu had been noticed. On several occasions she was followed up the mountain steep, but whenever she approached the tree which guarded the entrance to the cave she disappeared as if she had been swallowed up in the earth, and the mystery remained unsolved. The report in the village was that she was in secret communion with the spirits of the departed. One day Lolóma suggested that she should announce to her friends her discovery of a hobgoblin in the woods, whose acquaintance was worth making. I knew that the superstitions of the common people would induce them to believe anything, but I was not so sure of passing muster with the more intelligent chiefs in the character of an elf. However, the experiment seemed to be worth trying, and as I had escaped the cannibal pot of the coast tribe, I was not likely to be treated as flotsam and jetsam here, where the people were milder-mannered, and rarely indulged in human sacrifices, except in time of war, which but seldom visited their peaceful vale. The interest the account of the hobgoblin would excite would at least cause some search to be made, and I should have the opportunity of disclosing myself if the circumstances seemed favorable.

CHAPTER VII.
FAIRY FOLK.

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

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

“Those things

That befall preposterously.”

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

“What is that in thy hand, Master Cook?

Carver! Carver for what, Master Cook?

For the little chap, Puck, Master Cook?

Then carve away at his Ma, Master Cook!

For the son has made off, Master Cook!”

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

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

“Up and down, up and down;

We will lead them up and down.

We are feared in field and town;

Goblin, lead them up and down.”[^[4]]

[3]. Kava, or yangona, is the Fiji grog expressed from the masticated fibres of a root. Kava is an introduced Tongan word.

[4]. The words of the Fijian poet are so near to those of Shakespeare, that I have preferred this quotation to my own translation.

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

[5]. Foreigners. Vavalangi is the Fijian word. Papalangi, the introduced Tongan word, is now more commonly known.

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VIII.
THE VALLEY OF TIVÓLI.

I was conducted by my newly-found friends into the valley where the chief town of the district was situated, and from which I had often heard sounds denoting the presence of a numerous population. The valley was called Tivóli, the Fijian word for wild yam. The thick-eaved houses were clustered together in the shade of an extensive grove of bread-fruit trees. The buildings formed in a somewhat irregular way three sides of a square. The central space was the village green, on which the sports of the inhabitants and the friendly tournaments they often engaged in were enacted.

Entering the chief’s house, I found him reclining in the midst of his wives and concubines on a pile of coloured masi or tapa[^[6]]. Three sides of a mosquito-net made of the same material, only much finer in texture, hung in festoons around him. Some fathoms of native cloth wrapped round his waist lay in graceful folds upon his brawny limbs. In his hand he held a neatly-made fan of palm leaves; and close by was his wooden pillow, shaped like an office-ruler fixed on two low stands. His hair was worn like an enormous ball of jetty frizz, which projected an equal distance on all sides, and added greatly to the appearance of his stature. He was not more than 6ft. 1in. in height, but he seemed to be several inches taller. Regular features, a pointed beard, dark-brown skin, and luminous black eyes, which glowed when they lighted up with some hidden feeling of savage joy like a piece of charcoal when the slumbering fire is blown upon, completed the external marks of a distinguished personage of far from unprepossessing appearance.

[6]. Native cloth. Masi is the Fijian word; tapa, a Tongan word, is also now in common use.

The house in which I found myself was about 30ft. long and 15ft. broad. The structure was externally not handsomer than a hayrick, which it closely resembled, with the exception that there were holes in the side, over which mats were hung, for windows. The projecting end of the ridgepole was ornamented with cowrie shells. The walls were about 5ft. high, but the ridgepole was a good 25ft. from the ground. The doorway was cunningly contrived to be so low that the most exalted personage could not gain audience of the master without stooping almost with his hands to the ground. The walls had a thickness of three reeds. The outer and inner rows of reeds being arranged perpendicularly and the middle horizontally, the builders had been enabled to produce a handsome and artistic effect by a pattern in sinnet worked with great regularity and neatness. The most prominent object in the middle of the floor was a sunken fireplace, protected by a wooden kerb. Here a large earthenware pot was simmering, and a thin smoke curled up from a slow fire, slightly obscuring the light in the room. An elevation at one end of the dwelling, where the chief reclined, had dividing curtains of masi, which showed that it was a divan by day and a place of repose by night.

The walls were as plentifully hung with useful articles as an English farmers kitchen. The most noticeable was the kava-bowl, with strainer and cup. Ornamental baskets, gourds and bottles, fans, sunshades, and oil and food dishes of strong wood, attracted immediate attention. Wooden bowls, earthen pans, and glazed water-vessels rested at the base of the walls. Near the hearth I noticed a knife—made, as I afterwards learned, from some human bone—for cutting bread (decayed bread-fruit) from the pit in which it is kept buried till it is in a putrescent state, highly relished by Fijian bon vivants; a kneading board for the bread, some cocoanut cups, a bamboo drinking vessel plugged with grass, and a soup dish. Several earthen pots, capable of holding three or four gallons each, were propped against the kerbing of the fireplace. The Fijians have no mean skill in the potter’s art. In most of their water-vessels they have taken for their model the nest of the mason bee, which builds its little round dwelling with an opening at one side, terminating in a narrow neck with a turned-back lip, in the precise form of a common Fijian pot. A skewer for trying cooked food, and a wooden fork or two, were also among the things which a hasty glance round disclosed to me, and encouraged me to believe that my daily fare was likely to be of a far from contemptible kind in a place where the culinary appliances were so good.

The company included a liberally-provided harem and some important minor chiefs and councillors. There was Qio (shark), the priest; Thikinovu (the centipede), King Big-Wind’s brother; Na Ulu (the head), the King’s herald; Kuila (the flag), the chief ambassador; Davui (trumpet shell), the tribal minstrel; Matauloki (bent-axe), half-brother to the King, a crooked-backed individual of sinister aspect, who eyed me in no friendly way; and Lalabalavu (long-emptiness), the court fool. Among the ladies the most distinguished in appearance was Lolóma, the chief’s favourite daughter. There were two fine stout women, his favourite wives—Randivanua and Watina; and two pretty little girls—Ko Sena (the flower), and Sénimóli (orange blossom), Lolóma’s youngest sisters.

King Big-Wind received me with great solemnity, directing that I should be treated with divine honours. He bestowed on me the name of Ratu Thava, or Sir Hurricane, telling me that I had come with the storm, and must be its spirit. The herald proclaimed my appellation at the palace door, and three fearful blasts on the conch-shell announced to the distant townsfolk that the Child of the Hurricane, a white God from the unknown countries, had been adopted by the tribe as their papalangi.

The King told me to make myself quite at home in his family, remarking that the coast tribes would not dare to attack him, as they had threatened, now that he had a white God with him. Kava and food in abundance were offered me, and I was soon on friendly terms with my neighbours, some of whom had a difficulty at first in satisfying themselves that I was really a human being. It was, indeed, many days before any of the children could be induced to come within a stone’s throw of me.

After I had given the company some description of the vessel in which I was wrecked, in whose construction they took an intense interest, Big-Wind reminded them of a legend in the tribe which said that a priest, under the inspiration of his God, had predicted that one day an “outriggerless canoe” would arrive at the islands from some foreign land. The natives could not conceive of a vessel being at sea without an outrigger, which is the mainstay of their own canoes, and the prophecy was disbelieved, notwithstanding that the old priest successfully launched a wooden dish on a pool of water in proof of the possibility of his idea being carried out. After hearing my description of the Molly Asthore the company one and all asserted that the prediction had been fulfilled.

There was a tradition in the tribe of a further prediction that after the arrival of a canoe without an outrigger a vessel without ropes or cordage would come. Some of the young Fijians of Big-Wind’s court lived to see, nearly half a century later, a steamship in Levuka harbour, which they considered verified this prediction also.

In the evening, sports were celebrated by the light of the moon on the village green in honour of the new arrival. The dancers numbered over 100, and there was an orchestra of 20 persons. The musical instruments of the Fijians are the conch-shell, a flute played by blowing through the nose, pandean pipes, a sort of jew’s harp (which consists of a strip of bamboo), drums made of hollowed logs or bamboos with cross-pieces near the ends, and a long stick, from which clear notes are produced by striking it with a shorter one.

The shadowy ball-room is at length prepared. It is bounded by groves of thick-leaved trees in which the fireflies have set their lamps, and it is canopied by the moon-lit firmament, which sheds a silvery light over all. The night is radiant as the day, and infinitely more ethereal.

The dancers are all in gala attire. The women are profusely decorated with flowers and green garlands, or red ribands made of the fine membrane of a leaf. Their hair is tricked out to an immense size, their lissom bodies are scented with sandalwood, and they wear likus dyed all manner of colours. The men’s faces are painted in grotesque patterns, and they sport ornamental garters and armlets of shells and coloured grasses. The step begins slowly to the accompaniment of a low chanting and clapping of hands, the striking of bamboos on the ground producing a sound like that of the tambourine. The speed is gradually accelerated, but the inflections of the body and every movement are done by the company in exact time. The violence of the stamping increases, the measure becomes inconceivably animated and wild—for the Fijians dance with their whole bodies, eyes and all—till at length, the climax reached, there is a grand shout of “Woi!” by the whole party at the top of their voices, and the task of the exhausted performers is ended for a time.

There were several kinds of dances, and among them the Flying Fox Dance and the Waves of the Sea Dance. These, of which I had seen a mere indication from my leafy retreat in the hills, were now performed with the elaborateness proper to a state occasion.

A large company stood up for the Flying Fox Dance, and began by singing a soft air, to which responses were made by a chorus, the women accompanying the music with graceful motions of the hands, making a step forward and back again with one foot, while the other remained fixed. Presently there was a quicker measure, the dancers made a half-turn, leaping and clapping their hands. Then the company broke into two parties, which advanced towards each other and went through some evolutions, which terminated the introduction. The next part depicted the robbing of a banana-tree by flying foxes. The banana-tree was represented by a pole set up in the middle of the square, with a bunch of fruit at the top. The ballet d’action then proceeded. The foxes met in consultation, determined on a robbery, sent out skirmishers to guard against a surprise, and then made the attack. One old fox climbed the tree, and the little foxes clustered under it crying with delight at the prospect of ripe fruit. While the fox in the tree hung by his legs and flapped his arms, another climbed after him, and there was a great deal of fighting, scratching, and squalling, after the manner of these animals, until one obtained the mastery. All the evolutions of the dancers were in imitation of the motions of the flying foxes, and their cry was also accurately imitated.

The dance representing the waves of the sea was equally graceful. There was the advance of a long wave and its little shoots running up the beach, the band representing the roar of the surf. The ocean ebbed and flowed, low waves sighed upon the shore and advanced in merry laughing ripples, throwing here and there a fringe of spray. The winsome prattling lasses assumed a graver mood. The sea was lashed into fury, surges vast as hills roared to the sound of rhythmic feet, and, breaking on some rocky prominence, clove the air with milk-white jets. The dancers flung their arms above their white masi-covered heads as they met, and when they bounded high above the ground, like the white foam of the sea when it hurls its columns of spray and surges of beaded water in the face of the sun, the spectators, no longer able to control themselves, fairly shouted with delight.

Every movement was performed in the most exact time; and, as in the case of the Flying Fox Dance, the performance seemed like a poetic drama represented by the perfection of pantomime.

The scene is a singularly wild one. The flash of dark eyes, the gleam of white teeth, and the spectacle of bosoms, arms, and ankles glancing bare in utter abandonment to the enjoyment of the moment, with the dark forms of the savages sitting around make a picture not readily to be forgotten. The weird music of the drum and fluttering pipes adds to the wonder, glow, and tumult. As the girls shout, stamp, and reel in maddest ecstacies, their eyes aglow under their short curly hair, and sparkling with the grace and glitter of the movement, strangely mixing with the mass of blending hues, it is intoxicating.

The evening closes with laughter and endless chatter. Presently the love-chirp ceases. The village sleeps, silvery and still.

In a few days I was fully initiated in the mysteries of the native menu. The Fijians usually take two meals in the day. I soon got used to their bill of fare, which is a liberal one. The bread-fruit was served up in an infinite variety of ways; there are a score of different kinds of puddings, and of soups there are at least a dozen sorts, including turtle soup—though they prefer roast turtle. The juice of the cocoanut, the ti-root, and the sugar-cane, make excellent pudding sauces.

The Fijians’ life in the good old times was largely made up of eating and sleeping. If a man keeps at work till mid-day, he likes to bathe a little after that hour, then to take a rather long siesta, hard as his pillow is. Towards evening you may see him strolling in his garden, or along the beach if he lives on the coast, cooling himself in the pleasant breeze. Presently he returns to his snug and well-matted hut to enjoy the warm evening meal. If the song, the dance, and the moonlight do not allure him, the soft cool mat, the wooden pillow, and somebody present to talk, may occupy him even till morning. Wanting the song or the tale, hard sleep is his sole refuge.

The men usually collect in the bures or strangers’ houses, which serve the purposes of an English club, at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon to talk. The married men sleep there till dawn, and then return to their wives. The Fijian in the thinly-peopled hill districts does not sleep with his consort. The nuptial bower is in some secluded part of the woods, known only to the pair, where, as with our first parents, a soft downy bank, damasked with flowers, invites to amorous dalliance. Boys, until they have been publicly recognised as adults, have a sleeping bure to themselves.

Among the occupations of the villagers which interested me greatly was the art of native-cloth making. Strips of the bark of the malo tree, which have been steeped in water, are beaten by women on a log with a grooved mallet. The masi or tapa is pieced together with the starch of the taro. The cloth is then printed in divers patterns with strips of bamboo, several kinds of dye being used. The rhythm of tapa-beating has as cheerful and industrious a sound as that of threshing corn in an English village.

In a very short time I was a familiar friend in all the houses in the valley. Sometimes I extended my walks to a neighboring village, and was always received as an honoured guest. I often felt disposed to say with the poet—

“Among the hills a hundred homes have I,

My table in the wilderness is spread;

In these lone spots one honest smile can buy

Plain fare, warm welcome, and a rushy bed.”

The tropical forest was an unending source of admiration to me. The palm, rearing its polished shafts, stately as a Corinthian column, with its coronal of sighing plumes through which the golden clusters of nuts appear dangling so temptingly far up in the sunshine, is in itself a beautiful object, worthy of imitation in architecture. The Fijians ascend these smooth pillars, with no other aid than that of their hands and feet, with surprising rapidity. Tapping the nuts with their fingers, they know by the sound those which are fit for food. They prefer the young nuts, in which the milk is as clear as spring water, and the flesh of the consistency of cream. When a cocoanut has lain on the ground a short time, a shoot emerges from one of its three eyes and enters the ground. A cord connects it with the nut, and supplies half the nourishment of the young plant till it is strong enough to draw all it requires from the ground. The tree and its products are put to such an infinite variety of uses that without it the natives would be badly off.

A delightful object in the landscape, full of repose, and restful for the eye to light upon, is the banana, with its lush fat green stem rising from 10ft. to 15ft., and sometimes as much as 2ft. in diameter. The sheath-like stalks end in vast green blades, often 12ft. long and 4ft. broad, which serve the natives for dishes and sunshades. The whorls of fruit hang below the curving fronds, with a heart of deep-red flowers forming a brilliant bouquet behind them.

But the true glory of the Polynesian forest is the bread-fruit, crowning the dewy grove with its ample form and luxuriant foliage, and showing itself a beneficent providence to the races it supports without demanding any attention in return. The fruit of this tree is the staple article of food of the Fijians. The imposing figure, with horizontal branches and cone-shaped head, rises to a height of from 30ft. to 40ft. Its broad spreading branches are covered with large oblong glossy leaves, which, during the progress of decay, assume the most beautiful tints. The fruit, weighing from 4lb. to 5lb., is about the size of a rock-melon, which it also somewhat resembles in shape, and when ripe is of a rich yellow colour. The surface of the rough rind is reticulated, and has small square or lozenge-shaped divisions, which rise like little conical prominences. The inside is a white pulp, all of which is eaten except a small core containing the seeds. In taste it is insipid, with a slight sweetness. When roasted, or when eaten with a preparation of cocoanut, like batter-pudding with melted butter and sugar, it is very palatable. The natives are fond of the sour paste they make of the fermented bread, baked, and eaten both hot and cold. The bread is allowed to ferment in pits lined with grass. It is often kept in this way for months. In this putrescent state, however, it is disgusting to white men. The bread-fruit trees, which are always a prominent object in the landscape, have a picturesque appearance peculiar to themselves, which no description can convey.

In my walks I was occasionally accompanied by Lolóma. Our friendship was not viewed with a favourable eye by Bent-Axe, who had been betrothed to her from her infancy, but she lost no opportunity of showing her disinclination for his society.

The happiest time, however, was in the long silvery nights, when the valley was filled with the mild splendour of the regent of the sky, and the people turned with glee to joys which tire not. When the moonlight, falling softly, lighted with sheen the little village of Koroivónu, Lolóma and her handmaidens were always ready for the song and dance. They were as merry as a sisterhood of parakeets who cannot sleep in the trees for the exhilarating play of the moon. There seemed to be nothing to dim the brightness of those lightsome hours.

As time wore on, and I explained to my friends something of the history of the white man and his mode of life, the more intelligent of them ceased to regard me as a supernatural being. I did many things which seemed very wonderful to them, and explained some natural phenomena in a manner which they regarded as marvellous, but they gradually discovered what I always impressed on them, that my powers were limited. The common people, nevertheless, continued to regard me as one divinely endowed.

CHAPTER IX.
CANNIBAL CHIEFS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That leaveth him

A corse most vilely shatter’d.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER X.
WISDOM OF CANNIBAL-LAND.

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

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

“Now the wasted brands do glow,

Whilst the screech-owl screeching low

Puts the wretch that lies in woe

In remembrance of a shroud.”

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

“In the eastern sky the rainbow,”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[7]. Made of tortoise shell.

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

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

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

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

‘Last scene of all,

That ends this strange, eventful history,’

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

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

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

‘Is second childishness and mere oblivion.’”

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

CHAPTER XI.
THE FIJIAN NIGHTS’ ENTERTAINMENTS. FIRST NIGHT—THE WONDER OF CANNIBAL-LAND.

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

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

[8]. Good! Good!

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

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

“For the vain tribute of a smile—”

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

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

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

“Turn them to shapes, and give to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.”

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

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

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

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

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

“A blood-power stronger than steam.”

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

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

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

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

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

“While all the world wondered!”

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

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

[9]. Dammava Vitiensis, Seem; Vulgo ‘Dakua.’

[10]. C. Burmanni Whight; Vulgo ‘Damanu.’

[11]. Afzelia bijuga, A. Gray; Vulgo ‘Vesi.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Scull away with a mighty hand;

Great is the calm on all the land!”

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

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

“The ocean breaks in frightful form,

And none can stand before the storm.”

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

“Scull away with a mighty hand,

Great is the calm on all the land!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who is like the great Ritóva,

The chief with a million wives?

I’m weary with asking—“Who?”

CHAPTER XII.
THE FIJIAN NIGHTS’ ENTERTAINMENTS.—SECOND NIGHT.—CAPTURE OF THE EBBTIDE.

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

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

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

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

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

Tanóva had not been long in his elevated position,

“Bestriding the narrow world like a Colossus,”

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XIII.
THE FIJIAN NIGHTS’ ENTERTAINMENTS—THIRD NIGHT.—ELOPEMENT OF A GODDESS.

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

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

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

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

“By merit raised

To that bad eminence.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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