Of all the islands in the South Pacific Ocean, the Fiji group is the most important. All told there are more than two hundred islands, but scarcely one-third of them are inhabited, or even habitable. Two of them are large. One, Viti Levu, is about the size of Connecticut; the other, Vanua Levu, is about two-thirds the size of that State. The famous Dutch sailor Abel Janszoon Tasman, whose name is remembered in Tasmania, saw the larger islands in 1643. About one hundred and thirty years later Captain Cook called at Viti Levu and found himself in the midst of a great cannibal feast. In 1840, Captain Charles Wilkes, in charge of a United States expedition, explored them; shortly afterward they became a possession of Great Britain.

The larger islands are great domes of lava built up by volcanic eruptions; many of the smaller ones are coral formations, and all are fringed with coral reefs. Dense forests of tropical vegetation cover the larger islands. Cocoanut and other palms are everywhere to be found. A species of pine, much like the kauri pine of New Zealand, grows on the larger islands. Among the forest trees are also several kinds of tree-ferns and a tree-nettle. When the pointed leaves of the latter prick the skin they sting the flesh as badly as does a wasp.

The English have done well by both the islands and the islanders. They have made the islands yield a good yearly profit to the government itself, but they have also made the natives industrious and contented. When the first British settlements were made in Fiji, the islanders were in a most degraded condition. They did no work except to grow a few yams, bananas, and breadfruit. Their chief employment was war, and this was carried on, not for conquest, but to capture as many as possible. A few captives were held as slaves, but most of them were fattened—to be killed and eaten at the royal feasts.

Native canoe, Fiji Islands
[LINK TO IMAGE]

Notwithstanding all this there was the making of a very superior people in them; for when the missionaries and the teachers got among them the natives proved very apt pupils. Now there are more than twelve hundred church buildings—and a school-house or two for every church. Some of the ministers and teachers are English, but there are about four thousand native teachers and ministers, nearly all of whom were trained for their work in the island schools.

They are fine farmers, probably the best in the islands of the Pacific. They grow bananas, pineapples, peanuts, and lemons for the Australians, copra and tobacco for the British, and rice, taro, and garden vegetables for themselves. They have learned to irrigate their farms, using open ditches and bamboo mains. They make the finest canoes to be found in the Pacific. Some of the canoes are barges nearly one hundred feet in length; and not even the Hawaiians are more expert in using them.

Not a little profit to the islanders comes from the sea. They are expert divers and gather large quantities of pearl shells, which find a ready market with the button-makers of Europe. Fish are caught, dried, and sold in China. One sea product, the bêche-de-mer, a marine animal commonly called "sea-cucumber," is highly prized by the Chinese, who use large quantities; most of it is gathered by the Fijians.

Sugar, however, is the chief product of the islands, and the sugar plantations are owned by great companies that have invested millions of pounds sterling in the business. The plantations altogether produce more than three million dollars' worth of sugar yearly. The native islanders will not work in the sugar fields; so coolies from India were brought to the islands to work on the plantations.