Numa: How many bones in the human hand?
Daniele: Eight. (After an inner struggle.)
Numa: Right! (Daniele shows a thousand dollars’ worth of perfect teeth.)
[Numa turns to Mu, who is not very bright for a Samoan.
Numa: What bones are affected by a Colles’s fracture?
[Mu groans and hesitates. He won’t give up, but Numa is tired of waiting, so he passes it to Tatoa, a dark, chunky Gilbertese who usually knows the answer.
Tatoa: The radius ulna.
[Sounds of approval from the whole class, and a rather shocked expression because Mu knows so little.
As an example of the steady, capable Fijian mind I think I should select Sowani, born a chief and mentally so well endowed that he became probably the outstanding one of the old School’s graduates. He served in the Gilbert and Ellices for some thirty years, and had been stationed there for a long time when I first met him. European doctors might come and go, but most of the Europeans wanted Sowani when they were sick. During the First World War he was made Acting Senior Medical Officer, the highest medical position in the Group. The Government appreciated his services by giving him a salary and allowance which permitted him a European standard of living. About the time I left Fiji he retired on a pension and was decorated by the King, quite a distinction for a native boy. When I made my survey he had completed his 20,000th operation for glands in the neck; his surgery was beautiful. Incoming Senior Medical Officers in the G. & E. were squeamish about being successors to the dark-skinned Practitioner. When patients called for him in preference to the white doctors, poor Sowani would remain the pattern of etiquette. “Mr. So-and-So had called for you, Doctor,” he would say; but when the white physician called, the patient was disappointed. One candid and sick Australian said, “Get out, you Son of Something! It’s Sowani I want.” Sowani was always to be counted on. He was a Fijian.
When I looked over the classes in our growing school, with no intent to play favorites—for I think I know the contrasting virtues of these two fine races—I could not help but see that in practical application the Fijian was far superior to the Samoan and the Cook Islander. The latter were brilliant in theory, but set a Fijian to reasoning a thing out for himself and his conclusions were more apt to be right, for the slow logic of his mind was almost Scottish. Principal Clunie and I watched the work of one plum-colored Fijian named Ravuki. Ravuki wasn’t worth his salt, at first, and was too lazy to put on his own lavalava. But in his senior year he developed a burst of speed that was quite astonishing. He fairly shone in the preventive medicine course. He blazed his way forward at such a pace that he threatened the performance of Alo, a Tongan boy who had been the School’s wonder and had walked away with all the prizes. In the final examination Ravuki seemed to have the edge on Alo. I was afraid that my affection for Fiji had biased my judgment, so I ordered a second examination and called in two European physicians to sit with me as referees. This time the Fiji boy was so good that he was still talking when the two other judges made up their minds that he had won hands down.