Of the ancient Fijian ceremonies few now survive. The early missionaries are unjustly charged with bigotry and Philistinism, in having waged war on all native ceremonial connected, however remotely, with their heathen creeds. But the Wesleyan missionaries were before all things practical, and knew that if Christianity was to take root at all it must have bare soil, from which every weed had been carefully torn up; for savage converts have an easy-going tendency towards engrafting Christianity upon their old beliefs,—in discovering that Jehovah is only another name for Krishna or Ndengei, and that the ritual that pleased the one cannot be unacceptable to the other.
But in one corner of Fiji, the island of Mbengga, a curious observance of mythological origin has escaped the general destruction, probably because the worthy iconoclasts had never heard of it. Once every year the masáwe, a dracæna that grows in profusion on the grassy hillsides of the island, becomes fit to yield the sugar of which its fibrous root is full. To render it fit to eat, the roots must be baked among hot stones for four days. A great pit is dug, and filled with large stones and blazing logs, and when these have burned down, and the stones are at white heat, the oven is ready for the masáwe. It is at this stage that the clan Na Ivilankata, favoured of the gods, is called on to “leap into the oven” (rikata na lovo), and walk unharmed upon the hot stones that would scorch and wither the feet of any but the descendants of the dauntless Tui Nkualita. Twice only had Europeans been fortunate enough to see the masáwe cooked, and so marvellous had been the tales they told, and so cynical the scepticism with which they had been received, that nothing short of another performance before witnesses and the photographic camera would have satisfied the average “old hand.”
As we steamed up to the chief’s village of Waisoma, a cloud of blue smoke rolling up among the palms told us that the fire was newly lighted. We found a shallow pit, nineteen feet wide, dug in the sandy soil, a stone’s throw from high-water mark, in a small clearing among the cocoa-nuts between the beach and the dense forest. The pit was piled high with great blazing logs and round stones the size of a man’s head. Mingled with the crackling roar of the fire were loud reports as splinters flew off from the stones, warning us to guard our eyes. A number of men were dragging up more logs and rolling them into the blaze, while, above all, on the very brink of the fiery pit, stood Jonathan Dambea, directing the proceedings with an air of noble calm. As the stones would not be hot enough for four hours, there was ample time to hear the tradition that warrants the observance of the strange ceremony we were to see; and so seated on the spotless mats in Jonathan’s house, I listened while a grey-headed elder told me the story, pausing only to ask his fellows to corroborate, or to supply some incident that had slipped his memory.
“On an evening,” he said, “very long ago, the men of Navakaisese had collected in their sleeping-house for the night. Now the name of that house was Nakauyema. And they were telling stories, each trying to surpass the other in the story that he told. And one of them, whose name I have forgotten, called upon each to name the reward (nambu) he would give him for the story he was about to tell; for it is our custom thus to encourage a good story-teller, each one bringing to him on the morrow the nambu he has promised. And some promised one thing and some another. But Tui Nkualita, a chief and warrior of the Na Ivilankata clan, cried ‘My nambu shall be an eel!’ Then the story was told, and the night passed. And on the morrow Tui Nkualita remembered the spring called Namoliwai, that he had seen a large eel in it. And when he came to it, and, kneeling on the brink, plunged his hand into it, he could not feel the bottom though the water reached his shoulder, for the pool was deeper than formerly; and he reached yet farther down, following the rocky hole with his hand, and he touched something. He drew it out, and saw that it was a child’s cradle-mat. Then, wondering greatly, he plunged his arm into the pool, and reached yet farther down, and touched something. And as he felt it, he knew it for the fingers of a man. ‘Whoever this may be,’ he said within himself, ‘he shall be my nambu.’ And he plunged half his body into the water, feeling with his hand until he touched a man’s head. Then grasping the hair he dragged it upwards, and planting his feet firmly, he drew forth the body of a man, and held it fast on the brink of the spring.
“‘Whoever you are,’ he cried, ‘you shall be my nambu.’
“‘You must save me,’ answered the man, ‘for I am a chief, and have a village of my own, and many others who pay tribute to me.’
“‘What is your name?’
“‘Tui na Moliwai (chief of Moliwai).’
“‘I know all the chiefs of Mbengga, and many also on the mainland, but I never heard of Tui na Moliwai. I only know that you must come with me and be my nambu.’