Generally speaking, the islands, both coral and volcanic, lying east of the 180th Meridian in the Pacific are almost perfectly healthy, while those to the west of it incline to the breeding of a number of more or less virulent forms of malarial fevers, a circumstance principally due to the fact that the eastern islands, as a rule, have better natural drainage and are more exposed to the full sweep of the Trade-wind. The big island of Viti Levu, the seat of British government in Fiji, is not an exception to this rule. It is beautiful in spots, even attaining to real scenic grandeur among the high mountains of the interior; but its coast is a monotonous succession of intricate barrier reefs and mangrove swamps. Suva is, perhaps, the best location available for a capital under the circumstances, but the town in the hands of almost any other nation than the British would be a fearful pest-hole. As it is, strict attention to drainage and sanitation has made it comparatively healthy, though to no such degree as any of the capitals east of the dividing meridian.
Fiji is the meeting and mingling point—the melting-pot—of the two diverse races of the eastern and western islands of the South Pacific. While probably of the same ethnic origin, the race which inhabits the Hawaiian, Marquesan, Society, Tonga, Friendly, Samoan, and other groups of the eastern division of the South Seas—the pure Polynesian—is as different, mentally and physically, from the Melanesian or Papuan type of the New Hebrides, Solomons, New Britains and New Guinea as the Mongolian is from the Ethiopian. Each race seems to reflect the physical environment in which it has been cradled. The Polynesian—especially where he has been little subject to Caucasian influence, as in Samoa—is as bright, attractive and as fair to look upon as the islands of enchantment that give him birth. The Melanesian—kinky-haired, black of skin, sullen and fierce of disposition—is the incarnation of the fever-haunted mangrove glades through which he leads his murderous forays. The Fijian, in whose veins courses the blood of the two races, has certain of the physical and mental qualities of both. Generally speaking, however, he seems to have bred truer to his sinister Papuan forbears than to the lightsome Polynesian. Magnificent physical specimen, clever builder and brave warrior that he is, there is little in the Fijian of the frank, kindly, open-heartedness which draws one so irresistibly under the spell of the pure Polynesian. The enchantment and the glamour of the South Seas—how often those words are on one's tongue in Samoa and Tahiti!—like their salubrity, are confined to the east of the "Line of Night and Day." Absorbingly interesting are the islands and the natives of the western groups, but their appeal is to the head, not to the heart.
Forty years ago the Fijis were in a completer state of savagery than are the New Hebrides and Solomons today. Every village was at war with its neighbour, the victims falling in the tribal fights invariably being eaten; war canoes were launched over human bodies as rollers, a man's skull was placed at the base of every post of a new temple, while a custom—not unlike the East Indian one of suttee—was responsible for the strangling of all of a dead chief's widows to set their spirits free to accompany him on his journey. Every party landing from foreign ships had been attacked from the time of the early navigators. Among those thus set upon were a number of American sailors who were killed and eaten early in the last century, this incident being responsible for the visit of the first Fijian to the United States, the hardened old cannibal, Vendovi, who was brought by the corvette, Vincennes, to Hampton Roads to stand trial for inciting the offence.
Most of the first missionaries who ventured into Fiji also went into the cooking pots, and it was not until the early 7O's that the Wesleyans, whose nerve must have equalled their faith, became sufficiently well established to get the ear of King Thakambau. The conversion of this powerful ruler soon followed, the first and most important result of which being the ceding of the group—he had offered it to the United States in 1869—to Great Britain. As a token of his fealty Thakambau sent to Queen Victoria his favourite war club, hitherto,as he naïvely put it, "the only law in Fiji." This club, with the monarch's great kava bowl, is preserved in the British Museum.
The Christianization and pacification of the Fijis went on side by side, and within two decades there was a mission and a missionary in every village of the group, while a white man's life was as safe in the wilds of Vita Levu or Taviuni as in Sydney or London. For the last twenty years the end of the missionaries' endeavour has been to bring the somewhat precariously converted natives to a fuller comprehension of the meaning of Christianity, while the government has built roads, established a large and efficient native police force and encouraged agriculture to such good effect that Fiji ranks second only to Hawaii among the Pacific islands as a sugar producer and also figures extensively as an exporter of copra and fruit.
Forty years ago the Fijis were in a complete state of
savagery
A Fijian head hunting canoe
The transformation of the Fijis from cannibalism to a condition of peacefulness and prosperity has been one of the most striking achievements of its kind in the history of colonial endeavour. Just how much of the credit is due to the missionary and how much to that other quiet, unassuming bearer of the "White Man's Burden," the British official, it would be hard to determine. Popularly, on account of the spectacular nature of his early campaigns which culminated in the conversion of the terrible Thakambau, the honours are given to the missionary, which, like most popular verdicts, is not quite fair.