inevitable reaction which up to now has taken the course of going over to the Roman Catholics, whose policy it is to make the lives of the Fijians as joyous as they dare. Nevertheless, in so far as they have checked the habit of yankona-drinking among youths and childbearing women, the efforts of the Wesleyan missionaries are likely to be of some immediate if not ulterior advantage.
CHAPTER XXX
TOBACCO
The tobacco plant was indigenous in Fiji, but until the beginning of the nineteenth century the leaf was only used for killing lice, from which it took its original native name of mate-ni-kutu (lice-slayer). Smoking was introduced by a Manila ship, and it spread rapidly through the group, being adopted by both sexes.
The plant is grown in dry, sandy soil, preferably on the sites of old houses which have been well manured by the village pigs. The leaves are hung suspended in bundles from the rafters of a house to wither, and are then twisted tightly together to sweat. This produces a leaf of great pungency and strength. It is smoked almost exclusively in the form of a suluka, or cigarette, rolled in dry banana leaf. The ribs of the tobacco leaf are stripped off, the leaf is partially dried over a firebrand, and shredded before being rolled, and a supply of ready-rolled suluka is either stuck into a cleft reed to keep it from unrolling, or carried behind the ear.
Until about 1880 every native over fourteen years of age smoked; many of the children began at a much earlier age, and, if punished for it, continued the practice in secret. About twenty years ago the Wesleyan missionaries tried to discourage the practice, by instituting a blue ribbon for total abstainers from kava and tobacco. They may have induced five per cent. of the adults to abandon the habit.
PIPE SMOKING
As long as smoking was confined to the suluka it had a picturesque side, but latterly the inconvenience of a cigarette that goes out every two or three minutes, even with continuous application, has favoured the introduction of the English pipe.