Chapter VI
the fijians

In the preface to his book on The Melanesians Dr R. H. Codrington quotes¹ with approval a remark made by Dr Lorimer Fison: "When a European has been living two or three years among savages he is sure to be convinced that he knows all about them; when he has been ten years or so amongst them, if he be an observant man, he finds that he knows very little about them, and so begins to learn." A similar warning was given by John Hunt in a letter which he wrote to the Committee in London on 4 December 1847. "The South-Sea Islanders," he says, "are a difficult people to understand, and those who know them most correctly will be most cautious in forming an estimate of their character." Few people who have given their minds to a study of the Fijians will be disposed to challenge these observations. The characteristics of the people who lived in the Lau or Windward group were not the same as those of the Ra or Leeward islands; the mountain tribes or the interior of Viti Levu differed widely from the people living near the sea; the language used by the natives on the Mba River was scarcely intelligible to those living on the east coast of the same island; every tribe had its own local god who exerted far more influence over their daily lives than the great but far-removed Dengei, his sons and grandsons; the characteristics of natives living in remote islands with little fear of attack were not so savage as those who lived in continual page 51dread of invasion from neighbours who were separated from them by an ill-defined boundary; islands frequented by traders from other parts of the Pacific, or European countries were influenced to some extent by baneful contact with their visitors; in many of the islands, and in some of the districts of the larger islands, settlements were formed by distressed voyagers who drifted thither in canoes, after losing their way; or by conquerors who came with the definite intention of driving away the earlier settlers or mingling with them: in Tumbou on the island of Lakemba there were Tongan locations, and close by a settlement of Levukans from the west; in Kandavu lived a people called Tonga-Fijians; on the Singatoka River there was a strong infusion of Tongan blood, and at Mathuata on the north of Vanua Levu the influence of Rotuman women can be detected. Considered as a whole the archipelago is the meeting-ground of Polynesian and Melanesian races.

John Hunt travelled widely enough in Fiji to know from experience the danger of making generalizations. After spending six months at Rewa, he went to Somosomo for three years, and thence back to Vewa where he lived till his death. But while at Vewa he visited most of the districts round the coast of Viti Levu and the western portion of Vanua Levu. These visits opened his eyes to the truth: "We have learned," he says, "to be cautious in forming an opinion of a people among whom we do not reside," and he concludes his observations on this subject with a remark that may be recommended to the notice of people who set out to find reliable information about the Fijians: "I believe the Committee will never learn the true state of things half so well from the Journals of visitors as from the reports and letters of men on the spot." On reflection I feel convinced that this observation deserves some elaboration.

In the vaults of the building occupied by the Methodist page 52Missionary Society in London there is a mass of original material written by men who lived in Fiji for terms extending over five to sixteen years, and nearly all of them resided in different parts of the archipelago. But their evidence is by no means of equal merit. I have read carefully through all of it, and have come to the conclusion that the best and most reliable evidence is supplied by the following missionaries, and in the order in which I place them—Thomas Williams, Richard Burdsall Lyth, John Hunt, David Cargill, James Calvert, William Cross, Thomas Jaggar, David Hazlewood and John Watsford. All these men remained long enough in the archipelago to revise and correct many of their early impressions; some of them were in Fiji from the earliest days, and all of them were at work there before 1845; several of them had a seeing eye and used it with varying degrees of success—Williams, Lyth, Cargill and Hunt best of all. After 1845 the minds of the natives were influenced by the public opinion of the civilized world; and this placed the later comers at a serious disadvantage as compared with the missionaries already mentioned. The best days of the eye-witness in Fiji were past before the middle of the nineteenth century.

But in reading the journals, reports, correspondence and published works of even the best informed and most reliable of the missionaries the reader must be on his guard. There is not one of the missionaries, not even Thomas Williams, whose judgment is not distorted and sometimes vitiated by his religious prepossessions. Their main object in going to Fiji was not to study native life and customs; but to save the souls of the natives from eternal damnation by means of the Gospel and their own religious dogmas. So deeply were they convinced that their religion was wholly right, and the religion of the natives wholly wrong that it was quite impossible for them to see things as they really were unless page 53the subject under consideration could be investigated apart altogether from religious prejudice. There were not many subjects in Fiji that could for the simple reason that religion played an important part in nearly everything that the Fijian did, even in the ordinary routine of his daily life. The result is that the missionaries frequently attribute wrong motives to the chiefs and people; paint the darker side of their life with heavy hand; and though they are all essentially honest and truthful they rarely, if ever, do justice to the character of a native chief or king until he has made a public profession of the religion in which they themselves believe. But apart from this there are some big problems intimately associated with the conduct of great affairs which the missionaries did not and could hardly be expected to understand. Among these the two most important were war, and the influence of mission teaching on the whole structure of Fijian society. The student would do well to read what they have to say on these two subjects with reservations and a critical mind.

But such warnings are, perhaps, unnecessary for any scientific student accustomed to weigh evidence with impartiality. He will soon realize the need for caution. Again and again in a single letter, entry or report he will find facts enough to refute the contention of the missionary who writes it. But, besides this, and far more important, there is abundant evidence in the correspondence as a whole to enable the reader to discount prejudice, make up his own mind on the basis of fact and pick out those characteristics which are common, as distinct from those which are exceptional. Each missionary reports on his own district or circuit; the whole body of the evidence furnishes information about most of the districts in Fiji except the interior of Viti Levu, the eastern part of Vanua Levu, a few small islands on the north-page 54east of the Lau group and the Yasawas to the north-west of Viti Levu.

But though I am persuaded that in the correspondence of the early missionaries we have the best chance of finding out the truth about the Fijians before they were powerfully influenced by European civilization, there are other important original documents available. These include the narratives of marooned or shipwrecked sailors; captains of trading ships; dispatches and published reports of naval officers British, American, French and Russian. A list of the books and manuscripts examined in the preparation of this book will be found at the end of the volume with observations on their relative values. Some of the writers lived for shorter or longer periods among the natives; others were only visitors. The reader of them may be reminded once again that, making due allowance for varying powers of observation and seeing things as they really were, the narratives of those who lived among the Fijians are generally more trustworthy than those of visitors. It is a broad distinction; but worth bearing in mind.

As might be expected the missionaries were most deeply impressed, especially at first, by the savage and apparently inhuman atrocities that were practised as a matter of course, sometimes within a stone's throw of their own homes. They saw the bakola² brought into harbour on canoes, seized by an arm or a leg, and hastily dragged away to the rara, then taken back to the beach, cut up with as much sang-froid as a butcher displays in dismembering an ox, and with skill enough to astonish a trained British surgeon. After being cooked the gods got a share (which the priests and some old men eat) and the rest was distributed among the men; but if the supply was large enough the women and children would page 55get a portion. Tastes differed, but to many human flesh was a delicacy equal to chicken or turtle. The favourite portions were the thigh and upper arm,³ and the flesh of women and children was preferred to that of men.⁴ It is a mistake to suppose that the Fijians of this period eat only the bodies of their enemies taken in war.⁵ Whenever a distinguished chief came to Mbau, and there were no bakola in the city, women and children fishing on the reefs would be stalked and taken, dressed and cooked to furnish him with appetizing dishes.

The Fijians neither felt nor manifested any shame in the consumption of human flesh when the missionaries first went to Ra. Why should they? Their gods were fond of human flesh, and what the gods liked was above criticism.⁶ Cannibalism, no doubt, was practised under religious sanction. But besides that it was the most thorough-going method of taking revenge on an enemy for past injuries or slights. page 56It was not enough for the Fijian to overcome his foe; he yearned to tread upon his neck as well, and—eat him. It was one of his ways of boasting. In the war between Mbau and Verata warriors on either side were wont to salute their antagonists with the challenge "I should like to eat your liver," and when the fight was over they showed their pluck by eating it raw! A vindictive chief would sometimes tear the tongue out of his enemy's mouth and eat it forthwith in his presence. It may be that the scarcity of meat diet accounts, in some measure, for the prevalence of cannibalism in Fiji, and despite what Thomas Williams says in his book, there are passages in his Journal which might be quoted in support of that opinion. Lorimer Fison went much further. In the Introduction to his Tales from Old Fiji, page 7, he says: "On the whole it seems to me that the balance of probability is in favour of the scarcity of animal food as the primary cause of cannibalism though nothing can be absolutely proved either Pro or con."

Partiality, religion, revenge, scarcity of animal food—these are the reasons given for the practice of cannibalism in Fiji. It was prevalent in all the districts in Ra known to the missionaries, and, also, though only to a comparatively slight extent, in Lau probably because of Tongan influence, and the infrequency of wars. It is just possible that human flesh was never eaten in Fulanga Island, and certainly the tribes whose god was enshrined in the body of a man would not dare to eat human flesh.

The most notorious cannibal known to the missionaries was Ra Undreundre, chief of Rakiraki on the north-east coast of Viti Levu. He was so fond of human flesh that he was never known to give any away; but would have the remnants cooked again and again to keep them from going bad. After he had reached middle age, stones were placed in a line to register the number of bodies eaten by him. page 57When Dr Lyth visited the spot he had them carefully counted, and found there were eight hundred and seventytwo! But there were gaps, and there was no record of the bodies he eat in early life. On this calculation the old gourmand must have eaten one thousand in his lifetime! Dr Lyth does not express any doubt either of the story or the computation; on the contrary he went to considerable trouble to make accurate calculations. Thomas Williams, too, countenances it, or, at least, says nothing to discredit the report.⁷ To my mind it is incredible. How long would the population of 150,000 have lasted with such gourmands scattered about the archipelago? There would have been little need of an inquiry into the depopulation of the native tribes, if such reports had been true.

But slaughtered human bodies were in demand for other purposes than feasting. When a canoe was built, bodies of men were used as rollers in launching it. After it had been launched the decks were smeared with the blood of other victims for good luck and to pay respect to the gods. In building a temple men would be sacrificed to give strength to the posts that supported the structure. But judging by the correspondence of the missionaries it would appear that the number of bodies used or abused in these ways, in their time, was small. It is certain that a very large number of temples had to run the risk of having their posts planted in the solid earth without the mystic leaven of a dead body to make them secure.

Another custom which harrowed the feelings of the missionaries and their wives was the strangling of widows—and other relatives—on the death of a chief. When remonstrated with the chiefs would reply that it was their custom and, from their point of view, no further page 58argument was necessary. Among the reasons given the most common is that the departed spirit of a chief would experience almost insuperable difficulties on his way to Mbulu unless his wives accompanied him. But one sometimes comes across a more utilitarian explanation. Some Fijian chiefs had as many as thirty, forty, and even fifty wives. That these wives were jealous both for the sake of their children and for the favour of the chief cannot be doubted, and in their machinations or their concealed frenzy the life of the chief would sometimes be in peril. The strangling of widows was a safeguard. The wife who poisoned her husband would know that her doom was sealed too, and that she would have to plod along the weary way to Mbulu in the company of an outraged husband, and with a stricken conscience to load her feet with lead. The practice prevailed in every part of the archipelago, except perhaps in the island of Fulanga,⁸ and sometimes the slaughter was wholesale. When Rambithi, son of Tuithakau of Somosomo was drowned, full honour was paid to the dead chief notwithstanding the entreaties of the missionaries. The precise number of victims cannot be given with certainty. John Hunt and Dr Lyth who were there at the time are not quite agreed. The former says seventeen, and Thomas Williams who came to Somosomo later repeats that number. Dr Lyth who, because of his scientific training, is generally careful about details says: "It is difficult to get the exact number; some say thirteen, some sixteen, others twenty." There is, however, no reason to doubt that seventeen was very near the mark; and it is well to know this, because it affords a means of estimating the number of women who must have been strangled in a protracted war in Fiji to accompany chiefs who had been slain. The missionaries pleaded earnestly and long with page 59Tuithakau to spare the women, just as they did with Tuikilakila when Tuithakau died, and with Thakombau on the death of Tanoa; but though their entreaties were not without some effect they could not prevail upon the chiefs to abandon the practice. The reason finally urged by Thakombau was, I believe, more important than either of the two already mentioned: it would be a most serious disparagement of the dignity of a chief of noble rank to let the occasion pass without the customary honours.⁹ Not all the arguments of naval officers, nor all the entreaties of the missionaries could avail against this grim ceremonial.

There were various ways of showing respect for the spirit of a departed chief, most of them involving some personal sacrifice—the shaving of the head (a serious deprivation in Fiji); the cutting off of a little finger; the slashing of the body; but the most honoured way was by giving up life itself. This was accepted as proof that the wife loved her husband, and for that the victim would win the approval of the gods, and the applause of her relatives and friends. On the other hand the wife who was unwilling to accompany her husband on the way to Mbulu was despised for her disloyalty, and her female associates would see to it that her life was not worth living afterwards unless she chanced to be so nobly born that nobody of sufficiently exalted rank could be found to strangle her.

Here is at least one of the reasons why the missionaries were so unsuccessful in their attempts to persuade the victims themselves to live even after the chief had given his hard-wrung consent. They found, to their amazement at first, that the doomed women flatly and even jauntily declined to be rescued, and that they went away weeping and wailing, threatening to put an end to their existence themselves on the rare occasions when others could not be pre-page 60vailed upon to strangle them. A few were stricken with sorrow because they loved their husbands; some were afraid of the consequences of violating a time-honoured custom protected by religious sanctions; others were influenced by the splendour of the occasion when they were proudly arrayed in the best apparel, and decorated in the most approved fashion for the great event.¹⁰ The missionaries were inclined to believe that the women were making pretence of a wish to die, when the real motive was fear of the consequences of survival. They may have been right—in some instances; but it is probable that in expressing this opinion they were influenced more than they knew by their own feelings, and the value they placed upon human life. It was almost impossible for them to diagnose the situation. When the missionaries urged that it was their love for their fellow-creatures that constrained them to try to save the women, Thakombau replied that it was because of their love for the women that they were strangling them! Thakombau was not quibbling: the executioners who pulled the rope that strangled the women were their own sons and relatives! and the expression on their faces left no doubt that they regarded it not as a murderous act but as a pious duty. It is impossible to analyse with certainty the motives and feelings of victims, executioners and onlookers at such a time. What can be urged with safety is that the victims were generally glad to go,¹¹ and the executioners happy in sending them to eternity. It was the custom of the country!

As to the women who prepared the victims for the final scene the missionaries were all of one mind; they played their part with feelings of unalloyed satisfaction (despite page 61certain formal wailings), and resented bitterly any interruption by the missionaries, or by untoward happenings. Fijian women had a hard row to hoe, and they lived under many privations and disabilities; but when they had their day out, they generally acquitted themselves in a way that goes to show that Rudyard Kipling may have hit upon a startling truth when he sang "The female of the species is more deadly than the male." It would seem to have been so even in Fiji where the males could be very deadly indeed. In his letter of 30 September 1839 William Cross tells of a woman who fainted, and, while unconscious, was anointed for death. But she revived and continued to get better. The chief ladies of the town met and discussed this unseemly interruption of their ceremonial. Ultimately they decided that "it would be bad for her to live because, if persons were permitted to come back from Mbulu, they would be causing others to die, and that would be an evil thing!" She was strangled forthwith.

Not less appalling to the missionaries was the manner in which the old and infirm were treated in Fiji.¹² They were quickly given to understand (where it was needed) that they were a nuisance to their friends and relatives, and that it would be better for them to put an end to their existence. Some of the old folks would go to their deaths on their own initiative, either to a cave where they would remain till they died, or to a grave in which they sat huddled up while the earth was thrown over them and stamped down by their friends and relatives. Sometimes the poor creatures would plead for a cessation of the stamping, and a few are reported to have begged for a drink of water. But it was useless; on such occasions the community instinct operated with page 62irresistible power. We are told that animals are impelled to kill off the maimed and the useless so that the safety of the herd may not be imperilled; and that the same instinct accounts for the practice of savages for whom the welfare of the tribe is paramount. The Fijians were not savages; but they had some savage practices which may be explained by reference to the urge for tribal self-preservation. They would certainly have repelled a charge of cruelty, arguing that it was kindness to cut short lingering illness, or put an end to the sufferings of old age. William Cross tells of a well-born boy whose thigh was bitten by a shark in the Rewa River. His relations and friends exchanged views on the subject, and came to the conclusion that it could not be permitted that a chief should be seen going abroad whose leg had been bitten by a shark. He was strangled the same night.

But the natives were not consistent. Some of the old and infirm instead of being dispatched quickly were left to linger on in pain and die of neglect or starvation. I am disposed to think that they did not want to be bothered looking after such people, and either put them to death at once, or left them to die slowly according to circumstances and especially their mood at the time.¹³

It was a tough world, and the missionaries were on the rack. Little wonder that, fresh from their homes in England, in the first years of their life in Fiji they should have formed opinions which in the light of later and fuller experience needed modification and correction. In their report in page 63December 1836 Cross and Cargill, after giving an account of some of the savage practices of the Fijians, say "they are literally without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful." Nearly every missionary who stayed in the country only for a short time, went away with that impression. But those who remained altered their minds; or, at least, came to the conclusion that the character of the Fijian was compounded of qualities so essentially different and contrary, that it required an unusual effort of mind to think of them as coexistent in a single human being. It is interesting to mark the change of opinion in men of the calibre of John Hunt and Thomas Williams. In December 1839, six months after he went to Somosomo, John Hunt says: "No person can form an idea of their deep depravity unless he actually witnesses it, and has an opportunity of observing their absolute insensibility to everything that is good, and their pleasure in all that is bad…. So powerful is the base principle in them that the father will see his child strangled and the son his mother without any emotion except of pleasure. They are truly without natural affection." And, yet, in that very same letter when other thoughts come into his mind he betrays his doubts by falling into paradox and asserting that "they have affection, but it is most unnatural!" But that which he was referring to in this context was not unnatural at all; it was an example of genuine human sympathy and kindliness. Hunt had just lost his new-born son, and was, himself, suffering from influenza and dysentery. In these circumstances "we expected the heathen would say to us 'where now is thy God;' but they were wonderfully prevented from saying anything that could give us pain." On the contrary the king ordered his carpenter to build a tomb for the little boy, "and seemed to take a great interest in him." John Hunt did not at that time know that while the page 64Fijian could be fiendishly cruel, the tender plant of courtesy was deeply rooted in his nature.

Thomas Williams shared the first impressions of his colleagues; but before he left Lakemba he had witnessed some sights that made him pause; and after he went to Somosomo he found himself face to face with the same contrarieties as John Hunt. Writing on 27 September 1845 he says: "The portraiture of these people is correctly and ably drawn by St Paul in Romans I. 31.—'without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful;'" but in the same letter he goes on to say "and yet, strange as it may appear I doubt not but that those well acquainted with the parties will bear me out in saying that few Fijians have the happiness of being so beloved and honoured as was Tuithakau by his son Tuilaila."¹⁴ In one breath "without natural affection," in the next "beloved and honoured!" Williams had just been describing the ceremonial at the death of Tuithakau, including the burial of the old king while he was yet alive: he was heard to cough as the earth was thrown over him. The bond of affection between Tuithakau and his son had never been cracked, and yet Tuikilakila who so loved and honoured his father was a consenting party to his burial thus! Tuikilakila would have repudiated any imputation of cruelty; he would have contended that the movements of the corpse were merely involuntary and performed without any relation whatever to the mind and soul of Tuithakau; and it would never have occurred to him that his statement was inaccurate. Thomas Williams thought otherwise, and he was more profoundly shocked by what he saw on this occasion than by any other incident in his missionary career. One loving son strangles page 65his widowed mother, another loving son buries his honoured father alive! How could these things be?

The answer to this question is of more than ordinary importance, and it turns on a careful consideration of the power of habit in human life and especially the life of the Fijians at this time. Let me try to explain as clearly as I can.

Thomas Williams at this time knew quite well how low was the estimate of the value of human life in Fiji; but he had not fully reckoned with the power of habit and familiarity in drugging the sensibilities of human beings in Fiji or for that matter in any other country. He had never realized that practices which are in their nature unsportsmanlike, cruel and even revolting can not only be regarded with undisturbed equanimity, but even be invested with sanctions of propriety when once they have become customary and familiar. A heathen Fijian could cut up a human body for the ovens without the slightest sign of embarrassment or self-consciousness, or any thought of the impropriety of his conduct. A chief could gorge his appetite for human flesh; but at the call of hospitality comport himself like a gentleman of birth and training; a son could strangle his mother to death, and show by the expression on his face that he regarded it as a proper and kindly act; old men and women could be buried alive in their graves, and those who stamped on the earth over their heads never dreamt that it was other than a proper thing to do. All this was the custom of the country!

Unless the student of Fijian civilization can get his mind into an attitude in which it is possible for him to believe this he will never be able to do justice to the finer qualities of the Fijians, or the "superiority" of their civilization as compared with other races in the Pacific who were much milder in their way of life.

On this passage Dr Lyth made no comment whatever; he did not even follow it with a note of exclamation. He had been in Fiji long enough to know that this quotation expressed the stark truth concerning the influence of habit and familiarity on human life.

It will, perhaps, help us to judge the Fijian a little more sympathetically, if we look at ourselves and consider what habit can do to deaden our sensibilities to the unsportsman-like and cruel character of one of our own practices. At a page 67certain time of the year it is customary with some men in the British Empire to seek enjoyment and recreation in the wholesale destruction of game. They will drive to the scene of slaughter in motor-cars, place themselves in concealment with their guns the while birds are driven over them, and then they shoot, shoot, shoot till the day's course is run. The fuller the bag, the more successful the day. Let us turn a critical eye on this form of "sport" for a few minutes. True sport demands that the contending parties shall be fairly evenly matched, and that each side shall have a reasonable chance of victory. But what chance has the bird in such a contest? And where is the possibility of its offering any defence against a man who shoots from cover with a breech-loading gun? The man takes no risks or punishment; the bird is driven into the toils, with little chance of escape except for the marksman's want of skill. It is the instinct of every true sportsman to see that his antagonist gets as many advantages as he is willing to take himself; but what chance of fair play is there in such a form of recreation? It is a misuse of terms to dignify such a practice with the name of sport. It lacks all the essentials of true sport—willingness to enter the lists, an approximately even chance of winning, a mutual understanding concerning the discipline of the contest as well as the joy of battle.

How explain this barbarous survival among a people so essentially humane, courteous and kindly as the British? There are many explanations; but pre-eminently this—it is and has been for long the custom of the country and in certain circles the proper thing to do. It would be very unfair to condemn either the individuals who practise this "sport," or the class to which they belong, as callous or insensible to fine feeling. On the contrary some of them are men of gentle training and kindly quality.

A like discriminating tolerance must be exercised in passing judgment on the Fijians and their civilization, and this should be all the more readily conceded when we remember that they had lived for centuries in isolation; that they never had among them a John Ruskin or a William Wordsworth to draw their attention to the enormity of some of their more brutal customs, or an Arnold of Rugby to point the way to higher forms of sport; that when they first came under the influence of a wider civilization it was by contact with trading and whaling ships, runaway sailors, beachcombers and the like; that in the Fiji of the first half of the nineteenth century there was no well-organized state with one supreme authority capable of maintaining order and exercising good government throughout the archipelago; but a number of more or less independent kingdoms engaged in ceaseless wars for their own aggrandizement, or to avenge real or supposed wrongs.

It was this incessant warfare in the western islands that afforded the people so many opportunities of habituating themselves to deeds and scenes of horror; just as the Parisians in the course of the French Revolution looked with equanimity on scenes that would have made them shudder in times of peace; just as any war accustoms men to horrid sights until they are regarded as a matter of course. Soldiers could not maintain their strength and efficiency if it were otherwise. In their warfare at this time the Fijians displayed little daring or skill. In Fiji success in war was attained not so much by open fighting as by treachery, cunning and fearful surprises. What Lockerby says of the fearlessness of the fighting Fijians at Mbua Bay is contradicted by every one of the missionaries thirty and forty years later in language that is meant to apply to every part of Fiji. The people generally had wrong ideas of bravery. They confounded it with brutality; children were branded as page break

Historic Tree, Somosomo, Taviuni

The Dark Pebbled Shore at Somosomo

page 69cowards if they did not flout and fight their mothers; living victims were brought to be clubbed and speared by boys so that they might be trained in the arts of war! It never seems to have entered their heads that chivalry was an essential element in true bravery.

The Fijians had many innocent games: the children their swings and tingka sticks for throwing, and they played at hide and seek, ducks and drakes, and learnt early to swim, dive and sail a canoe; they had their sham fights and mock battles, and pointed sticks to pierce the swinging orange suspended from a branch. The men had their athletic contests on land and sea, and so high could feeling run that when one village was pitted against another at tingka each side would make an offering to the gods for victory; sometimes men and women would wrestle on a hill-top, and after struggling for a time, roll down together at peril of their limbs. There was racing in the water, diving and swimming for both sexes, and canoe racing provided days of wild delight for competitors and onlookers. But in none of page 70these recreations could the Fijians be wrought to such a pitch of frenzied joy as by success in war.

In war, too, they found their best opportunities for showing what brave fellows they were, not so much by daring exploits in the face of the enemy as by their boasting in the presence of a chief while the enemy was yet afar off. They would strike the earth repeatedly with their clubs, leap into the air, look round with flashing eye beneath their blackened brows, and assure the chief with whom they were allying themselves that the heads of his enemies were but as drums for their clubs to beat upon. This was the bolebole or challenge, and it sometimes took longer to enact than the ensuing battle!

The Fijian was full of childish vanity. He loved to parade his valour in the limelight of public attention, not under the flash of the enemy's guns. He could even acquit himself courageously at times on the battlefield in the hope of being treated as a chief for a few days after his return; and he would submit himself gladly to the rigours of a painful ceremonial if only he could bask in the sunshine of public appreciation for a few hours.

Fijian warfare could be serious enough sometimes; but there was a lot of make-believe in it; and far too often deeds of the most dastardly treachery and fiendish cruelty disgraced it. But such as it was the Fijians liked it: and their pride and covetousness made frequent wars inevitable.

War was their most engrossing form of sport; but next to it, and not far behind came the meke, a word which was used for a song or a dance; but it was in the dancing far more than the singing that the Fijians excelled and found their delight; and a good meke is something to be seen and not easily forgotten. It was my privilege in 1929 to visit some of the more distant islands with the Acting-Governor and a party of government officials. On the island of page 71Lakemba we watched a meke that lasted for fifty minutes celebrating the death of a chief in the olden time. The performers kept up their singing for about half the time the while their arms, legs, heads and fingers were kept continually in motion. We all watched carefully to detect, if possible, one false movement on the part of any one individual in that company of seventy men and women; but we saw none. The impression left on my mind there, and also on the islands of Vatoa and Matuku, was that in grace and regularity of movement, sense of time and rhythm, the native dancers of Fiji have nothing to learn from civilized people. The Fijians still love their mekes. When the head of the native village on Vatoa announced after the yangona ceremony that there would be a dance in honour of the Governor, the women scampered away for their dresses at such a pace that the sand flew from beneath their feet.

The records of the missionaries in the middle of last century fail to convey any adequate impression of the part played by the meke in sustaining the joyousness of the people, and making the wheels of government run smoothly. The missionaries looked upon it with no favourable eye: it excited lustful feeling, and sometimes ended in scenes of debauchery. Instead of preserving it, and trying to purge it gradually of its grosser elements, they adopted the usual policy of suppression. Thomas Williams in his book on Fiji and the Fijians¹⁵ defends the missionaries for this, but not in a way that carries conviction. It does not appear that he or any other missionary realized how much was due to the meke for infusing a spirit of goodwill into many of the more disagreeable duties of a Fijian's life. He tells us how the natives dressed themselves in their best, and decorated themselves with the utmost care on the day of the solevu when tribute was paid to the chiefs. The people were in the page 72best of spirits. "Surely the policy that can thus make the paying of taxes 'a thing of joy' is not contemptible," he says. Of course it was not; but that which made it a thing of joy was the meke which the missionaries were bent on suppressing. It was the policy of the king to give a feast and a dance on taxation day, and in the joyous anticipation of that these able-bodied children forgot all about the labour involved in the payment of tribute. They thought about that at other times, not on the great meke day. Even less convincing are the reasons given for discouraging the kalou rèrè. One of them was that the games practised on the high day of the celebration were rough, and occasionally one of the actors was killed. But are not football, polo and wrestling rough, to say nothing of prize-fighting? And are the games that men play to be suppressed simply because some danger or mishap may find its way into them? The missionary of those days was not a sportsman either by temperament or training, and he had no idea of the value of games—especially organized games—for the Strengthening of moral as well as physical fibre. That was one of his misfortunes. It was unfortunate for the Fijians too. In discouraging and suppressing so many of their innocent interests and activities the missionaries took far too much out of their lives and put far too little back to fill the void.

But it was in laying a heavy hand on all the rites and ceremonies of the religion of the Fijians that the missionary appears at his worst. Some of their more hideous practices such as smearing the decks with human blood, killing men to strengthen the pillars of their temples, cannibalism, widow-strangling and burying old folks alive had to go, and would have gone, missionaries or no missionaries, under the increasing pressure of civilized opinion; but there were many other activities associated with their religion that were not only innocent, but hallowing and page 73ennobling; and the missionaries were determined to get rid of them too because homage was paid through them to many gods instead of one! This plurality of Fijian gods horrified the missionaries. They believed in at least three themselves; but because the Fijians believed in many more they were a benighted people! Were the old Greeks benighted because they believed in gods of the air, sea, sky and earth? Some of the missionaries were Greek scholars and should have known better than to denounce everything in the Fijian religion as "heathen foolishness" to be suppressed because they worshipped many instead of one or three gods.

I have already spoken of the kalou rèrè in reference to sports. But it was mainly a religious celebration—the young men wooed the "children of the waters," and made a pretty little home in some retired spot by the sea for their entertainment. Thomas Williams describes it on pages 237-8 of his book, and he admits that the ceremony was "free from any pollution or licentiousness." Why then make such contemptuous references to it as he does twice in his Journal, first at Lakemba and next at Mbua Bay? He says that it encouraged idleness but the missionaries never accuse the natives of idleness when they take a holiday on the Sabbath and go to chapel. The real reason was that in the kalou rèrè goddesses were worshipped, and that was "heathen foolishness." In one sense it may have been, in another and deeper sense it improved the characters of the young men who took part in it. So did many of the other religious observances of the natives. Was it not ennobling in the natives of Savu Savu Bay to thank their gods, by giving them a portion of the cooked foods, for the hot springs at Na Kama? Did not the natives all over the archipelago set a good example to Christians by refusing to partake of any of the fruits of the ripening season before making an offering of first fruits to page 74their gods? Why should they not try to propitiate the gods who helped them to catch turtle on the reefs, sent rain to make the crops grow, and protected them in perilous voyages over the seas? Was it so very dreadful for men and women to worship the spirits of their chiefs and ancestors? And was Tuikilakila so very foolish because he weeded his father's grave, and made it neat and comely before he went to war in the hope that the spirit of the man he had loved and honoured would help him?

For my part I am quite ready to believe that all those appeals for help, and thanksgivings for benefits conferred, did the souls of the Fijians good. They kept them in touch continually with spiritual powers that they believed to be much greater and more powerful than themselves. Whether they paid homage to one god or many in so doing was a subordinate matter. It appears to me after going through the evidence that the missionaries themselves did not know whether they believed in one God or three. Sometimes they affirm that there is only one; but as soon as they settle down to teach theology they tell the natives that there are three—God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, and try by means of Athanasian supersubtleties to reconcile their irreconcilable statements.

There is no doubt there was much that was dark and dreadful in the religion of the natives: they feared their gods far more than they loved them, and they found support in some of their beliefs about the gods for very abhorrent practices and customs. But there was much that was good in their religion too, and the missionaries would have done far better to have preserved and magnified the good, than by assuming the role of iconoclasts, and striving to sweep the religious system of the Fijians away altogether. I am convinced after careful consideration that there were page 75good foundations in the religion of the Fijians for the missionaries to have built upon.

In the history of religion from the earliest times to our own day three beliefs would appear to be of fundamental importance—the existence of an overruling spiritual power; the reality of man's soul as something distinguishable, if not distinct, from his body, and its survival after death; the possibility of communication and communion between the soul of man and a great overruling spirit. In his own simple and crude way the Fijian had an intense and vivid belief in all three. His gods were many, not one; he had no doubt whatever of the existence of a soul, and that it was capable of detachment from the body even while the man was alive. Healthy Fijians have been known to call out to their straying souls entreating them to come back to their bodies! The Fijian was not sure of immortality; but he had no doubt that the spirit of man did live on after the death of the body, and for a few at least he would not deny immortality. He was so sure of the possibility of communication between the divine and the human that he regarded his priests as mediums whose bodies the gods used to become articulate and make their wills known to the people.

Thomas Williams sat listening one day to a conversation between a Fijian priest and the Tongan chief Tubou Toutai, and this is part of what he heard: "Lang-gu did you shake¹⁶ yesterday?" "Yes." "Did you think before-hand what to say?" "No." "Then you just say what you happen to think at the time do you?" "No. I do not know what I say. My own mind departs from me, and then when it is truly gone my god speaks by me." A medium at a spiritual séance to-day might answer in precisely the same language. Thomas Williams like all his brethren had his doubts, and frequently spoke in contemptuous language of page 76the rika.¹⁷ Nevertheless some of the missionaries appear at times to have been puzzled: they realize that if these inspired priests were all frauds some of them must have been uncommonly clever actors. But whether they were all frauds at all times it is not my business to inquire here—let the spiritualists of to-day fight that out with their antagonists—all that I am at present concerned with is to show how real was the Fijian's belief in the possibility of communication between the divine and the human; for there can be no doubt that the vast majority of the Fijians at this time believed in the revelation of the will of their gods through the priests. The priests were very powerful people in Fiji, and some tribes treated them as if they were themselves gods.

But this is only one of many ways in which the reliance of the people on the will of their gods might be demonstrated. The mbure or temple was generally the most conspicuous object in their towns; it had a high-pitched roof, was built on a lofty platform, sometimes a double platform, on an elevated piece of ground. On the interior decorations the Fijians lavished their skill and contributed the best they had. It was the place in which the priest was most frequently inspired, and in which the governing chiefs met to decide important questions of policy with the help of the gods. But the visits of the gods were not restricted to the mbures. The priest might be possessed in a private house, or even in the open air. Some of the gods would come with mischievous intent, and then the more daring of the natives would shower stones on the building which they occupied to drive them away. They would even try to bewilder their gods by running hither and thither, in and out, round and about, with something that they wished to conceal till their tracks were a tangle.¹⁸

The Fijians could never be far from their gods on land or sea. The gods were everywhere. The groves were sacred because they were haunted by deities; the sailor voyaging over the seas would preserve strict silence in places known to be frequented by the gods; the traveller who saw a god as he walked into the country would throw some leaves on the spot to warn others that it was holy ground. As Thomas Williams says: "There was no remarkable spot, especially the lonely dell, the gloomy cave, the desolate rock, and the deep forest that they did not people with invisible beings." Superstition! all superstition! Yes, perhaps, but far more inspiring and ennobling than the crass materialism into which the dull unraised spirits of some civilized men can subside.

Take it all in all the religion of the Fijians was much brighter and far more ennobling than the missionaries believed or were ever willing to admit. True religion finds expression not so much in conventional beliefs, or theological dogmas, as in an attitude of mind. The people who could bow their heads reverently and submissively in the presence of a superior spiritual power had the root of the matter in them. It would have been far better had the missionaries striven to retain this instead of ridiculing their gods out of existence, and grafted on to it a purer and more spiritual faith. But that was not their way. They were in a hurry, and adopted the policy of ruthless iconoclasts in their attacks on the native religion, thereby imperilling their own cause. Time brought its revenge by the middle of the century. Heathenism rose in its own defence just as it did in Tahiti in 1808, and would probably have swept the missionaries and their religion out of Fiji, just as they did in Tahiti in 1809, but for the timely aid of King George of Tonga with his two thousand warriors. Had it not been for the local dread of British, American and French men-of-war some page 78of the early missionaries in Fiji would have ended their days in cannibal ovens, for the insolent, ruthless manner in which they ridiculed and assailed the religion of the Fijians and mocked at their gods.

I have already hinted that the Fijians were wanting in bravery, notwithstanding Lockerby's unequivocal assertions to the contrary. Most people who lived among them believed that they were cowards. Every one of the missionaries who knew them in the thirties and forties said so, and, what is more important, the evidence goes to show that, allowing for some exceptions, it was true. A braggart is not always a coward, but often he is, and the Fijians were much given to the vice. But besides that they could be wantonly and fiendishly cruel; and cruelty is even more intimately associated with cowardice than boasting. I am not thinking now of their cannibalism, widow-strangling and burying old people alive: these dreadful practices can be explained, not excused, on many grounds including religion and tribal self-preservation. But what are we to think of a people who could look with indifference, and even delight, on the return of victorious warriors with little children suspended head downwards from the mast till the life was beaten out of them by the rolling and pitching of their canoes?

What shall we say of men and women who could place a live man on white-hot stones, and dance with delight as they turned him over and over and listened to his shrieks of pain? It was possible for a chief in this country to tear a limb from the body of his fallen enemy, cook it and make the poor wretch eat part of it while he taunted him; and this he could do without arousing public indignation! Women and children were stalked on the reefs as wild animals are, captured and brought home to provide palatable dishes for visiting chiefs! Warriors who returned from the page 79wars with the dead body of a woman or a child whom they had followed with secret feet, waylaid and murdered far away from the fighting lines could be received and honoured as heroes!

It is conceivable that one man in a thousand may do these things and still be daring or courageous: Richard III contrived the death of the young princes in the tower, and yet Shakespeare represents him as living and dying courageously. But enormities such as I have described were not uncommon in Fiji, and the point to which attention must be directed is that they excited no adverse comment, and aroused no general indignation among the people. We must not forget in drawing our conclusions that the life of a human being and a dog were valued at about the same price¹⁹ (sometimes a musket or a whale's tooth is given as the equivalent); something must also be conceded to the shocking methods of training boys in the art of war, and very much to the influence of habit. But when all concessions have been made the painful truth persists that these fiendishly cruel acts could not have been tolerated in a land in which the true quality of bravery, compounded as it is of honour, chivalry and courage, was even partially understood. That a man of savage impulses, morbidly sensitive to slights and concealing his wrath behind a placid countenance till the hour of revenge arrived, could at last give free rein to his pent-up rage and act like a devil incarnate is intelligible enough; but that his diabolical cruelties should be perpetrated without arousing a storm of indignant protest can only be explained in one way—the red streak of cruelty and the yellow streak of cowardice ran through the nature of the average Fijian in the middle of last century.

But though forced by the evidence to make such a deplorable criticism of the people generally I cannot refrain page 80from suggesting some exceptions. The majority of the ruling chiefs, Tuidreketi and Nggara-ni-nggio of Rewa, Tuithakau and Tuikilakila of Somosomo, Varani of Vewa, Thakombau of Mbau, Maafu the Tongan and Ritova of Mathuata were, I believe, courageous men notwithstanding the cruelties they tolerated and perpetrated. I had almost used the word brave, and, perhaps, as applied to kind-hearted old Tuithakau it might be allowed to pass. I own to a feeling of admiration for that mild and magnificent old Heathen. It is true that on one occasion he would have killed Dr Lyth had he been able to reach his club while he held him. But his rage was right in the main. Lyth had just been denouncing his gods, and it was more than the old man's soul could endure—much as he loved the doctor.

I think, too, that Thomas Williams has not been quite fair to the Fijian sailors. He says that they were not as bold as the Tongans: they did not make such long voyages. But there was ample opportunity for a display of courage in Fijian waters, and there are plenty of instances in the missionary records of native captains taking their lives in their hands, and pressing on through dangerous waters in the height of the storm or the darkness of the night without showing a sign of fear. Dr Carew, Administrator on the island of Rotumah, has had long and wide experience in Fiji, and he has some interesting stories to tell of native captains steering their canoes through the surging breakers of the reef in the height of a storm without a tremor in their nerves. The missionaries were so prone to attribute their deliverance from perilous situations to Providence that they often overlooked the skill and daring of His agents. In December 1849 Dr Lyth was voyaging in a canoe from Fulanga to Namuka. To save time his native captain steered straight across the reef through the breakers instead of going round to the entrance. The venture had its perils; but it page 81was accomplished without mishap. "The natives manage this kind of thing skilfully in fine weather," says Lyth, "but I see more of the goodness of God than the skill of man in such kind of leaving and going into harbour." A little hard on the captain. But this was the missionary's way.

It would be just, I think, to make exceptions in favour of the great chiefs and the native captains. As for the rest, there was much to account for their lack of courage: habitual dread of their gods; cringing subjection in the presence of their chiefs that etiquette and fear forced upon them; above all, the prevalence of treachery in a land so full of wars and rumours of wars. In 1850, while the war between the Heathens and Christians was raging at Mbua Bay, Tui Mbua went to the people of Nasau and made a speech in favour of peace. His chief anxiety was to allay suspicion of treacherous designs. "I am a Christian, but only of one night's growth," he said, "so that my mind is a heathen mind, and I am afraid of you. You, too, are Christians of a night more than myself. So your minds are heathen minds and you are afraid of me. But that is now done with; let us no longer fear each other."²⁰ His words were of little avail to end the war, still less to eradicate fear. It was too deeply rooted in the Fijian mind; nor did it pass away till the administration of British law had made life secure from one end of the archipelago to the other.

All the authorities are agreed that the Fijians were thieves and liars. Thomas Williams was very decidedly of that opinion from the day of his landing at Lakemba. In his first letter to the London Society he said: "Many of the Fijians are terrible thieves and infamous liars!" There was, perhaps, a little personal venom in the remark: on the day of his arrival one of his boxes had been opened, and many of page 82the articles stolen. But similar criticisms are made by all the missionaries. They did not alter their minds as to the prevalence of these vices, but they did find reasons to temper the severity of their condemnation. In Fiji a chief had been accustomed to take anything he wanted without asking anybody's leave. It was not surprising, even if it was very wrong, for him to exercise the same freedom with the goods of white people. As a matter of fact the chiefs deeply resented any interference with this traditional privilege which was practised in its most outrageous form in the custom known as vasu by which a nephew visiting the town of his uncle could lay hands on the most valuable property he had, and no protest would be made!

But there were other reasons for the prevalence of thieving. "It is astonishing to see how anxious they are to obtain European property," says John Hunt.²¹ "They are never satisfied with presents; it is always give, give, give. To obtain European property they will kill captains, take ships, plunder their own people and others of what they possess if they dare to do it. And I believe if ever they injure a missionary it will be to possess his property."²² Considering that European implements were so much more efficient, and that they could kill their enemies more easily and securely with European weapons, this passion for European property is not difficult to understand; but it is also to be accounted for by their love of ostentation. Samuel Patterson could not understand why the natives of Nairai should have stripped him and his fellows of all their clothing since they wore hardly any themselves. It was, fundamentally, I think, the promptings of a covetous nature; but the natives loved to page 83swagger in white men's clothes. Thieving was a vice common to nearly all the Pacific Islanders.²³ What captain who has left a record of his voyage in the South Seas does not complain of it? It seems to have been practised as a matter of course, and the culprits manifested no shame when they were caught in the act. Thieving seems to have been an inborn characteristic of the Pacific Islanders, and the Fijians like the rest of them displayed marvellous skill in practising it.

Thieving from the white man was sometimes, but rarely, punished, and then in a way that startled the missionaries. On their return from a visit to Rewa, Cargill and Calvert found that two kettles had been stolen from the mission premises. They went forthwith to Tuinayau and lodged a complaint. Three days later "the king's brother with several other chiefs from the principal settlement waited upon us bringing with them a pot and several articles of wearing apparel, and to our great surprise and regret presented us with the ends of four little fingers which they had caused to be cut off as a punishment to the thieves!" It was really a mild form of punishment in a land where penalties were rarely, if ever, proportioned to the gravity of the offence, and death was inflicted for trifling delinquencies. But no penalty would have been inflicted, nor the goods restored, had it not been that the missionaries were in high favour at page 84the time. Very often the real culprits were the chiefs themselves who prompted others to do the stealing for them.

Lying was another vice practised by nearly all heathen Fijians. Truth did not interest them; they regarded it with indifference. What did appeal to them was a story that could excite wonder. The mythology of all primitive races abounds with incredible stories. The Fijians were proud of their ancestors, and saw to it that posterity should not belittle their achievements. While sailing along the north coast of Viti Levu the traveller will notice a semicircular depression in a range of the Kauvaundra Mountains ten miles away. That was caused by the falling of the mast of a canoe in which one of the old gods was sailing over that very same water! Their great god Dengei lived in a cave in those mountains, and he made use of big timber too: one of the logs for his fire was thirty miles in circumference! Nothing less could be expected to warm a being of such enormous proportions: when he turned from one side to the other a shock of earthquake made the whole island tremble! As to his strength, Viti Levu with its mountain masses and three hundred miles of coast-line was no bigger than his small club! and he could turn it upside down with ease. What facilities this serpent had for wielding clubs is not explained; but that did not matter. Nothing mattered but the stimulation of wonder. The true meaning of the word kalou was—superlatively wonderful, and it was the word the Fijians used for a god.

Let the traveller sail on farther west until he reaches the Yasawas and if he is interested in bird life the story of the roc²⁴ will not fail to entertain him. The roc was a big bird. When Rokoua killed it and cast it into the sea there was such a surging of the waters that the foundations of the sky were page 85flooded! A feather plucked from its wing was used as a sail; but it was too heavy and the great canoe was in danger of sinking, so Rokoua plucked a small one, and was wafted safely back home.

These were the stories by which the Fijian whiled away the evening hours. What was truth that he should bother about that? The gods did not care for it, why should he? What child would not prefer to hear a fairy-tale rather than listen to a demonstration of the first problem of Euclid? "I do not think the Fijians are at all acute in the art of reasoning," says John Hunt, "and it is somewhat difficult to convince them of the truth of anything by argument. They will never use an argument to prove the truth of their own religion." Nor indeed of anything else: their defence generally was—it is the custom of the country.

There was no power in cold reason to restrain the rages, revenges and morbid imaginings of the Fijian. He did not want truth; he much preferred something that would make him open the large eyes of wonder; and he would rather tell a lie that pleased his listener than the truth that did not. He was one of the most unreliable witnesses in the world. Nearly everybody who knows him well will tell you that he will say just what he thinks you want him to say. In one of his letters written at Somosomo Williams remarks: "I have often been surprised at the ease with which a Fijian admits the sentiments of the person with whom he talks. It matters not however opposed they may be to his own, if he sees it is likely to please, and thus pave the way to his begging, he adopts them wholesale and is as ready at any moment to give them up wholesale."

The words "and thus pave the way to his begging" are rather too cynical. There is another and, I think, a truer explanation which Williams had just given—he wanted to please. Strange as it may appear after all that has been said page 86about the enormities which he practised and tolerated, the Fijian was essentially courteous by nature. His courtesy was not an affectation of the moment, not part of a drawing-room equipment; but an inborn characteristic that found expression in a desire to please. His courteous lying was, of course, the abuse of a very fine quality; but he had not attained to that degree of mental or spiritual development in which truth becomes a matter of paramount importance.

It is this ingrained quality of courtesy which helps to make the Fijian such an agreeable companion. I have been impressed by it a thousand times in my journeys overland and voyages over the seas of the archipelago. It acts so spontaneously and quickly that I am sure it is a kind of instinct with its roots far back in the past. I am not now speaking so positively of the Fijians one meets along the tourist tracks: some of them have been spoiled; the natives most in my mind at the moment are those who inhabit the lonely far-off islands, and the mountain districts of Viti Levu. It does not appear to me that any of the missionaries gave the natives due credit for this. It was hard for them, living in the midst of so many horrors, to believe that such people could be influenced to any great extent by one of the most tender and graceful amenities of social life. The result is that they often attribute the outward manifestations of ingrained courtesy to some less worthy feeling. The natives hang their heads when they hear the missionary reviling their religion, not in shame of their own superstitions as the missionary thinks, but of the missionary's want of respect for the gods they revere. Often the missionaries in the hour of affliction and bereavement expect the natives to deride their God who appears to have forsaken them; but instead they meet with kindliness in word and deed. The impartial student of missionary reports may well be amazed at the forbearance generally displayed by chiefs or people page break

Thakombau, "King of Fiji"
From the first volume of Fiji and the Fijians written by Thomas Williams and published in London in 1858

page 87when their gods are being denounced and ridiculed, especially when he finds that on the very rare occasions when a native ventures to make a disparaging remark about Jehovah the missionary resents it in language of high indignation, prophesying that disaster will overtake the blasphemer in this world and the next. All this will be clear from a perusal of the Journal of Thomas Williams. The missionaries did not mean to be unkind: some of them would have given their lives to save the souls of the natives, and all of them were willing to work at a stretch to help them. They were discourteous simply because they were betrayed by their own narrow-mindedness and over-confidence in the infallibility of their own religious position. Let the student who has the opportunity peruse the letter written by David Cargill at Lakemba on 27 June 1839 containing extracts from his Journal, and giving an account of his voyage with James Calvert to Rewa; let him note particularly the passages describing the events that occurred during their detention by unfavourable winds in Levuka Harbour, and he will get some conception of the contrast between native forbearance and missionary insolence when religious susceptibilities were aroused. But even that falls far short of the lengths to which Joseph Waterhouse could go.

The chiefs are not quite so impressive now, but I have met some who suggest a comparison with Apollo. One of the most courteous and dignified I was ever privileged to meet resided in a district far away from the beaten tracks where many of the more attractive characteristics of the old Fijians are still preserved. The chief of Nandrau in the mountain districts on the upper reaches of the Singatoka River seemed to me every inch a gentleman in more than appearance. His courtesy was unfailing; the dignity which he displayed at the head of the council table remained with him as he sat on the mats inside his house plaiting sinnet. His hospitality was unbounded: his home was cleared for the occupation of his guest who was supplied with the best food he had, and an escort was found to guide him over the overgrown paths to the next village beyond the watershed. It was an experience long to be remembered, bringing back memories of the brighter, kindlier life of the Fijians in the bad cruel days of cannibalism, widow-strangling and worse.

It may be that there is something of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in most men, even in highly civilized societies; and page 89that it only requires a change of circumstances to transform the kindly doctor into a malignant destroyer. The Cotter whose finer emotions prevail as he sits before his fireside on a Saturday night might be transformed into a demon of destruction on the battlefield in the face of the enemy. Certainly in the Fijian chiefs a hundred years ago the farthest extremes of good and ill could meet. They could be proud, revengeful, treacherous, lecherous, murderous; but they could also be courteous, dignified, splendidly hospitable and powerfully self-controlled. It was their very self-repression that helped to make them masters in the art of treachery, and their passion for hospitality that made them tyrannical in the demands they made on their subjects. They did not desire great quantities of tribute meanly or selfishly; it was mainly that they might enjoy a reputation for bountifulness above other men: they gave away at feasts and entertainments nearly all that they acquired by oppression. Like Richard I of England they delighted in being generous with other people's property.

Pride accounts for many of the most vicious practices in Fiji, and some of the finest achievements. A personal slight rarely failed to arouse deep resentment, smothered it may be for years, but only to flame out at last when the hour for revenge arrived; but noble birth had its obligations too, and the chief tried to play his part as a worthy descendant of the gods. It is impossible to do justice to the character of the old Fijians apart from a full realization of the fact that diametrically opposite qualities, developed to an extraordinary pitch of perfection and imperfection, did meet in the individual and the race.

Among the brighter qualities one of the most conspicuous was joyousness. It was so a hundred years ago, it is so now. Notwithstanding the horrors of his incessant wars, the eternal dread of his gods and the treachery of his fellow-page 90men, the Fijian was a light-hearted, laughter-loving man. His low estimate of the value of human life-the fruitful source of many of his mistakes and afflictions-was one of the safeguards of his exuberant spirits. He was not so much oppressed with the fear of impending death, as the man who believes that there is nothing so important in human life as the development of a soul. But apart from that the old heathen life was by no means so full of unrelieved horror as the missionaries and still more the visitors would have us believe. The victorious warrior returned full of savage joy, and his people on shore responded with wild demonstrations of welcome mingled it is true with ostentatious obscenity. The great feasts brought on violent reactions; but the Fijians looked forward to them with eager anticipation, enjoyed them heartily if grossly while they lasted, and never doubted that they were well worth while despite the aches and pains next day. The sustained rhythm of the dance, breaking here and there into wild but still harmonious movement, made them shout with delight. They were as much at home in the water as on the land, diving, swimming, racing, sailing, often to the despair of their teachers who could not keep them indoors at school. The zest of life was strong and keen in the olden days; stronger and keener than it has ever been since except for a few.

And the Fijian needed it all to enable him to bear up against the troubles, chiefly mental, with which he was beset. Under the influence of physical exercise his spirits soared; in the presence of the supernatural they wavered and sank. From athletic exercises they derived as much enjoyment as children usually do; by the dread of the supernatural they were subdued and broken. It was this that gave to the taboo its extraordinary sanctions, and made the priests, chiefs, and witch-doctors so powerful. The mind of the Polynesian page break

The Chief of Nandrau

page 91and Melanesian could be profoundly influenced for good or ill, mostly ill, by his supernatural imaginings. He was a highly impressionable being, and could rise to great heights of exultation under pleasing assurances, or sink to the depths of despair under the dread of occult powers. In his sports, mekes and successful warfare life-giving blood coursed healthily through his veins and his soul expanded with delight; but under the influence of witchcraft and other malignant forms of supernatural power he would collapse, and lay himself down to die. It is another example of the wide-stretched contrarieties of his nature.

Two of the missionaries—Thomas Williams and James Calvert-detected this, and pleaded for technical instructors to be sent out to train them in arts and crafts, and so improve their position materially, and give more body and content to the new religion that was beginning to leaven their lives. Looking back over the last ninety years there can be no doubt that this was sound advice; but unfortunately, by the time their letters reached London the Society was in financial difficulties and funds were not available for such an extension of missionary work. Thus an early opportunity was lost of doing what the most enlightened missionaries are devoting their energies to to-day—training the natives to apply their skill to work that will enable them to earn a livelihood page 94as members of the wider civilization to which they now belong. Their chance of survival in the struggle for existence in competition with other races who have now settled in Fiji depends very largely on their success in such work. The British government has very generously secured them in the possession of their lands, and some of them can live on the rents, or on produce that nature herself supplies; but that will not save the race from decay and final extinction if they lay waste their powers by living in idleness.

Among the other characteristics of a "superior" people is the love of beautiful things, and the power to make them. The Fijians of last century were by no means destitute of this: the interior of their temples and the houses of the chiefs; the designs of their mats and yangona bowls; the carving on their clubs and spears all go to show that they had a sense of the beautiful and strove to give expression to it. But when we look beyond the few manufactured articles here enumerated and consider their attitude toward the beautiful things in nature—the things that the romantic poets found so wonder-provoking and inspiring, as Chaucer and Shakespeare before them did, the superiority of the Fijian fades away, and we are left with a feeling of deep disappointment.

The Fijian language is not destitute of any sign of appreciation of natural beauty; it contains words and phrases that go to show that at some time in the history of the race there must have been people who had the seeing eye. Thomas Williams has given a few examples:²⁷ "Dying is sometimes described by the same terms as the sunset. A swearer is said to be 'armed with teeth,' and ignorance is 'the night of the mind.' The native describes the furling of a sail in the same language as the bird folding its wings for rest, and the word which expresses 'modesty' suggests the page break

Namosi Village, Viti Levu
By permission of the Fijian Government

page 95softened retiring light of evening." Mr Corbett, engineer on H.M.C.S. Pioneer, who has spoken Fijian since he was a child, drew my attention to the word senembia whose literal meaning is—flower on the wave. It is used for the crest of a wave. The word tui which means king is used also for a hawk, and it may be that the thought of a high-soaring bird with talons was in mind when it was first used to indicate the position and powers of a ruling chief in Fiji.

But the presence of such words in the language does not prove that the Fijians of last century paid much attention to the beauteous forms of nature. In his correspondence Thomas Williams states very emphatically that they did not. In the month of August 1852 he was travelling through the picturesque country in the western extremity of Vanua Levu, not far from Naithombothombo. "Amid some of these haunts," he says, "visions verdant and lovely arise, and some of them are beautiful as earth's primeval bowers; yet they impart no hallowed pleasure to the soul of a savage." He was quite close to the sandalwood district then, and contact with the old traders was calculated to give the natives more disagreeable things to reflect upon; but Williams would say that this limitation was common to all the Fijians he had met in Lau, Somosomo and Mbua Bay.

That is my experience of the Fijians too. Many a time and in many places I have given a lead and waited for some response; but hardly ever has it been forthcoming. The Fijians can people their mountains, glens and seas with invisible beings, and they will work hard to produce a beautiful design or dye; but to the beauteous forms and colours in nature, its finer aesthetic charms and suggestions, he pays little heed. These men whose picturesque dwellings of thatch still add a charm to the landscape (wherever the hideous structures of rusty corrugated iron, tilted at any angle and misshapen, have not transformed them into vulgar page 96dilapidations) are generally quite indifferent to the beauty of the landscape itself. I have tested them again and again in every way that was possible, but have found them unmoved. They never feel the witchery of the soft blue sky above them, or the stately presence of the lofty hills around them; the solemn splendour of a starlit night does not suggest thoughts that lie too deep for tears, or stir memories of old forgotten things; the moonlight that sheds its hallowing glamour over all the tropics inspires them with no poetic feeling; the rainbow colours hovering over the reefs have no power to stir the magic in their souls; in the clouds that gather round the setting sun they read no message of love; the perfume and the radiance of their gorgeous flowering trees and shrubs might just as well be wasted on the desert air. They can meet their gods on land and sea, and bow their heads in reverent silence as they sail over the haunted waters; but when they see the fishes race and play, leaving their tracks of golden fire behind them, no spring of love gushes from their hearts, no words rise to their lips to bless them unawares. There are no doubt a few Fijians here and there with a nascent appreciation of some of the subtler appeals of nature—it is impossible to generalize about a whole race with safety—but I have not met them.

Neither did the missionaries in the middle of last century. It may be that the prevalence of war and the heavy weight of custom that deadened their sensibilities to so much that was terrible and revolting for Europeans to look upon destroyed also their susceptibility to the appeals of things in nature exquisitely beautiful. But it is now half a century since inter-tribal warfare ceased, and if the faculty for such appreciation were in them at all, there should be signs of it. Perhaps it is not. There were only two seats of the muses in the olden days—Thikombia-i-ra and Nairai. But the muses came only to the poets when they were asleep, and page 97the mekes which they taught sang not of the glory of woodland, river or sea; but of the exploits of chiefs, their death and burial; and that in faulty rhymes and irregular hardly perceptible metres. The lack of appreciation of natural beauty is the more surprising that there was so much to excite aesthetic feeling in these romantic isles. It was a serious loss in reviewing the aids to happiness that were theirs for the asking.

But the heathen Fijian had many other interests to sustain him and fill the hours of leisure with delight. There is no sufficient reason—even from the evidence supplied by the missionaries themselves—to believe that the Fijian was an unhappy man. The missionaries would fain have us believe that they made them happier, and some no doubt were, especially in the island of Ono. But the evidence concerning the majority is by no means convincing on this point. In a letter here and there, written when the missionary has been on a visit to heathen districts and returned to his home in the midst of his converts, he draws comparisons—perhaps without knowing it—that set the reader thinking. On 17 December 1839 David Cargill and Thomas Jaggar set off on a trip up the Rewa River to the town of Naitasiri to sound the local chief on the propriety of receiving a native Christian teacher. They passed many populous villages on their way and reached Naitasiri at four o'clock in the afternoon. There they rested, and next day went six miles farther up through some lovely country. On their return to Naitasiri the natives were celebrating a heathen festival. "In the afternoon we were present at the temple of Naitasiri where an offering of the first yams was being made to the deity. The yams were cooked and presented in baskets with a great deal of form and ceremony. Several priests were present on the occasion. The one who officiated thanked the gods for the excellent crop of yams with which they were blessed this page 98season, and prayed for life and health." The chief of Naitasiri decided that he did not want a native teacher at that time; but he treated the missionaries in the most hospitable manner, loading their canoe with presents. When David Cargill left on the morning of the 19th it was with the conviction expressed in this letter that "the Fijians needed only the grace of God in their hearts to make them as happy as any people in the world." But the grace of the god of corn and wine was in their hearts at that festival, and it made them happy in themselves and kind to their visitors. The missionary full of religious prepossessions could not see it. It is always so—a heathen god is no god, and therefore no grace could abound even at the festival of first-fruits! What does it matter what name they called their god by at such a time? Is it not conceivable and even probable that the great God Himself was present at the festival receiving the thanks of His simple-minded children for the goods He had given them? But note what follows. The missionaries left Naitasiri on the morning of the 19th, and reached home at five o'clock the same evening. Six days later David Cargill preached to his flock at Rewa and came away from the service with impressions which, fortunately, he has left on record too: "The few Fijians of Rewa who are called Christians are not even lukewarm in the service of God: an icy coldness seems to freeze their hearts." The contrast is striking, and in justice to the missionaries and their work at this time it must not be stressed too heavily; Rewa was a hopeless centre. But what a change here in spirit from the heathen celebration at Naitasiri! Let any sensible man pause and ask himself at which place the grace of God was working in the hearts of the people—the heathen festival at Naitasiri, or the Christian service at Rewa?

Strange that experiences such as these did not open the eyes of the missionaries to the intrinsic value of some of the page 99religious ceremonies of the natives, and enable them to see the unwisdom of their sweeping attacks on everything connected with the worship of the heathen gods. This letter does not stand alone. The reader of Thomas Williams's Journal will find in more passages than one that the heathen Fijians were better men than some professing Christians, and among these he and nearly all the missionaries would have included the vast majority of the Christian Tongans who were living in Fiji!

When David Cargill wrote this report he probably had no idea of drawing a contrast between the worship of the Heathen at Naitasiri and the Christians at Rewa. It was not the way of the missionaries to make such admissions consciously. Far more common are the reports of happy Christians as at Ono chanting their creed, and singing their hymns of adoration in the chapels. Both reports were true; but in the general estimate the student who relies on the correspondence of the missionaries only for an explanation of the religion of the Fijians will get an impression far more gloomy than is consistent with the truth. The reader must consult other records, and, above all, use his own common sense in making allowance for the prejudices and prepossessions of the missionaries.

No picture of the old heathen life in Fiji should be painted in unrelieved black. There were horrors enough it is true; but most of their games and dances, and many of their religious observances made for joyousness and even enduring happiness for them—in their stage of development. It was inevitable that many of their barbarous customs should pass away as a result of their contact with civilization, and unfortunately many of their good customs and wholesome occupations too. This would have happened in the period of transition whether the missionaries had gone to Fiji or not. In the struggle for existence between native and page 100European civilization, the European was bound to win. It is futile to say now, as some people do, that it would have been better to have left the natives to themselves undisturbed; the wanderings of people over the earth cannot be disposed of in that light and airy manner. Sooner or later the white man's civilization was bound to burst in upon them as it did from the year 1800 when the first sailors landed from the wreck of the Argo on Mbukatatanoa Reef. From that year till 1830 almost the only white men the natives knew were shipwrecked or runaway sailors, adventurous traders and a few settlers at Levuka. Some of them were good men, but the vast majority were irresponsible adventurers seeking little else than the gratification of their lusts, and freedom from the wholesome restraints of civilized society. It was a good thing that a totally different class of men with high ideals and a passion for service should settle among them. That the missionaries did harm by their ruthless attacks on the religion of the natives I am unable to deny after a study of the evidence; but I believe too, that the missionaries who lived and worked in Fiji from 1835 to 1856 did far more good than harm, and that the period of transition would have been more painful and devastating than it was had they not thrown in their weight against dissolute sailors and unscrupulous traders, and laid the foundations of educational and medical services that have contributed in no small measure to the permanent well-being of the natives of Fiji.

The subsequent chapters will, I hope, make it clear that it is not fair to judge these early missionaries simply by the good or bad results of their more strictly religious work. They did both good and harm in other ways too; but there again I believe the good preponderated. But in either event I must beg leave to say again that those early missionaries ought to be judged not by the standards and knowledge of the twentieth century; but by the ideas and ideals of their own age and the condition of Fiji at the time.

Mission at Buthainambua in 1839
From a drawing by Mrs R. B. Lyth

Burial Place of Mrs Cargill at Rewa in 1840