If one stops a chief or his wife on the forest track and says, “Aloha! Mitai Chipi,” and grasps their hand in true friendship, one is liable to be taken before the high chief and fined five hundred dollars.
The forest idols are gone, but the natives still kneel in amphitheatres, before stone images, where they hold festivals, and their old high priest accepts confessional bribes and then forgives them their sins—which are many.
The old-time convivial spirit has passed away; you cannot jump in the island lagoons unless fully dressed. Many of the old barbaric customs are still in vogue, but are practised in secret. They have wild festivals, still play tom-toms, big drums and reeds, and whirl round and round in the old tribalistic Siva dance, clinging to each other’s bodies and gazing lasciviously into each other’s blue eyes. Their fantoes,[[17]] instead of being carried on their mothers’ backs in the old primitive basket, are wheeled along in vehicles to an advanced age; and dominate the native villages and the lives of the chiefs. There is no camping out now; free dens have disappeared. For camping in the forest as of old, one is liable to get fastened up between stone walls for six months. One cannot pick coco-nuts, yams and bread-fruit if one is hungry.
[17]. Children.
There is an organization for starving natives, presided over by high chiefs with cheerless, glassy eyes. The elder natives have to apologise for being old when they go there; but most of them when they are hungry run for their lives, and starve to death sooner than approach the organization’s cave kindness. The poor-class natives drink a mysterious concoction made from a herb called the hop, and the high chiefs drink stuff called kava, or whisky. When those high chiefs are sober, they become solemn; and hold councils for putting down the drinking of hop-toddy. All the native girls aspire to marry chiefs. The code of morals is so peculiar that thousands of them die childless and mateless.
They are withal a brave, warrior-like race; and at present are engaged in one of their old tribalistic clashes with another tribe, of a group that lies not far from their own isle; a bloodthirsty race that are at heart still cannibalistic. The king of this other tribe is somewhat like old Thakambau, the late Fijian Emperor of the Cannibal Isles; he pretends to have embraced Christianity, but his real god is the high chief Krupp. I feel sorry for him, for the islanders are sure to get hold of him and he will wish he had embraced their creed. Several other warrior tribes are crashing away with the island natives; they charge well and sing fine old war-songs. It is much safer at present to live in the Solomon Isles.
The island country is very beautiful. In the springtime the landscapes and valleys are dotted with yellow things called primroses; other wild flowers grow on the hedgerow banks. Little birds sing in old trees to the sunsets; the grass grows, and grows high ere they cut it down. The woods smell of peat; the native homesteads in the villages burn wood, and you can smell its delightful odour along the lanes as you tramp by. It is a beautiful country; but violin-playing, music and poetry are not appreciated by the natives as they are appreciated in the South Seas.
But still I love the memory of the hedgerows, wild flowers and far-off hills, and the remains of the old forests wherein long ago their ancestors camped; by old hills where the young lambs bleat in the springtime and wild birds sing in leafy woods and hollows. I hope in the end I shall be buried somewhere near where the wind and the wild blackbird sing; and not very far from the shores of the sea, where their ships go down Channel with sailors outbound for distant lands.
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