There is not much to please the eye about Suva harbour, but it is deep and safe, and the loss of shipping there in hurricanes rarely proves so complete as in Tahiti or Samoa. The storm through which Lurline passed en voyage from Samoa destroyed several houses in the town and wrought great damage on the outlying plantations, but the loss in the harbour was limited to a few carelessly-moored native sloops which were piled up on the beach. Suva, both on land and water, is far better prepared than the island ports to the east to meet these heavy blows, nearly all of the houses being strongly guyed with steel cables, while numerous securely anchored buoys in the bay give shipping a fair chance to ride out the storms in safety.
Socially, Suva is more developed than the French or other South Pacific island capitals, and one dropping in for afternoon tea at the Fiji Club or Government House might easily imagine himself in Cape Town, Hongkong, Colombo, or one of a dozen other outposts of the British Empire. The Briton's first move in colonization is to make his seat of government a bit of old England; to say that he has succeeded in Suva means much, both as to the magnitude of the work accomplished as well as to the attractiveness of the life there.
Sir H. M. Jackson, K.C.M.G., the Governor of Fiji, had left for his new post in Trinidad shortly before our arrival in Suva, the place being temporarily filled by the Chief Justice, Sir Charles Major, by whom we were pleasantly entertained. Colonel Leslie Brown, the American Consular Agent, proved a most agreeable gentleman, as did also his business partner, the Honourable Arthur Joske, to both of whom we were indebted for much kindness.
H.M.S. Clio, Captain Wilkins, arrived in Suva during our stay and proved good company for Lurline. This smart little gunboat was in the South Pacific on what appeared to be a sort of roving commission, the principal object of which seemed to be the blowing up of a troublesome rock that was somewhat indefinitely located off to the northeast. At one of our dinner parties Captain Wilkins challenged us to sail a cutter from Lurline against that of the Clio's. The Commodore promptly accepted, and the race was contested on the first of July. Well handled by Victor and Gus, our boat secured a good lead on the run to the buoy at the outer reef, but in the beat home, owing to the faulty adjustment of a detachable keel borrowed from Clio for the occasion, made heavy leeway, lost all she had gained, and finished a poor second.
I spent most of our stay in Fiji on a visit to Mbau, the ancient native capital, a guest of the distinguished Roku Kandavu Levu. The trip by launch, horseback and canoe is a somewhat arduous one, but well worth the trouble, as this little island is one of the most picturesque and historic spots in the South Pacific. It was here that the great King Thakambau, who ceded the group to the British, made his headquarters, and the beautiful village still contains many evidences of its former greatness. Thakambau's great war canoe, a huge double dugout over a hundred feet in length, its shattered sides carefully protected from the ravages of the elements by a regularly-renewed shed of palm leaves, is still religiously preserved on the leeward beach. It is this canoe which history records was, whenever possible, launched over live human bodies as rollers, one division of the king's army being kept continually on the foray to provide the wherewithal. The body of the king, who died in 1883 after enjoying an annual pension of fifteen hundred pounds for a decade or more, rests under a tall shaft of marble on the top of a hill in the centre of the little island and, not unfittingly, in the shade of the Wesleyan mission church.
"Lurline's cutter finished a poor second"
"Thakambau's great war canoe, over a hundred feet in length, formerly
launched over human bodies"