CHAPTER XXI.

A PLANTER’S HOUSE—ANGORA GOATS—A LOVELY SHORE—SERICULTURE—THE MOSQUITO PLAGUE.

NANANU, A SMALL ISLE OFF VITI LEVU, _Sept. 30, 1876_.

DEAR NELL,—At last I have reached the Robinson Crusoe home, about which we used to conjure up such visions of romance, whenever a letter from the far-away Fiji Isles reached the old vicarage in Northumberland. I came here last Tuesday with Baron von Hügel. Captain Knollys lent us his beautiful boat and a crew of native police: we had the great luck of a fair wind, and made the run in eight hours—which is exceptionally good time. You who have never been much in the way of travelling in small ships and boats can scarcely realise how tantalising are the constant delays to which we are liable from wind and weather.

You would think that a home within eight hours’ run of the capital cannot be very isolated. Yet such are the difficulties of getting about and of leaving home, that since the day—now ten years ago—when Mr Leefe brought his bride here—a bright pretty girl of eighteen, with a tiny baby daughter—her sole expeditions have been one three months’ trip to Australia, when she was very ill, and one visit of six weeks to Levuka to stay with a friend, whose two children died while she was there,—so that was not a cheerful visit. And though a boat occasionally touches here, no ladies have ever done so except once, when Mrs Havelock called for three hours; and once also, some years ago, when a brother-planter fled here with his wife and family for refuge from the cannibals, and then the two families had to stow themselves as best they could in the one house of two rooms.

Happily, there is now an extra house, or rather quite a group of half-a-dozen small semi-Fijian houses, which severally act as feeding-room, sitting-room, sleeping-rooms, kitchen, store-room, and silk-worm house. These are all clustered beneath the cool shadow of a couple of old trees, one of which spreads its great boughs towards the kitchen, and acts as larder,—for from these branches hang such pieces of kid or goat’s flesh as may be in stock. Here are the rough-and-ready essentials of an open-air carpenter’s shop; and beneath a central tree a small matted enclosure acts as the family bath-room, to which the labour-boys bring buckets of fresh water to fill a great wooden tub. But infinitely more pleasant is the delicious sea-bathing, in which we can here indulge most freely, without any dread of sharks. Imagine the charm of walking straight out of your bedroom on to the purest white sand, and plunging just as deep as you please in the very clearest water, warm enough to make it delightful to lie and bask there at early morning and at sunset! Sometimes two brown maidens come to disport themselves with us in the water, and they and Ethel swim and dive like fishes—swimming long distances under the water, and coming up, when least expected, to seize me, in hopes of startling me with an impression of sharks.

Ethel, the tiny baby of ten years ago, is now a picturesque tall girl of eleven, a winsome wide-awake child, and a real little lady, but a thorough bushwoman, versed in all arts of foraging and bush-cooking, and her mother’s helper in many a care.

My arrival here was a funny example of how we do things in Fiji. My visit has been under discussion for a whole year; and once, owing to miscarriage of letters, Mr Leefe even came to Levuka to fetch me when I had gone up the Rewa! This time I had written about a week before starting, to announce my coming. That letter has only just arrived a week after me. So of course I was not expected; and further, both Mrs Leefe and Ethel were suffering from severe cold and headache. However, I was most cordially welcomed, and shown the various objects of interest, but saw no symptom of any special quarters being awarded to me. At bed-time I was hospitably invited to share a bed with my hostess and her daughter—Mr L. and the Baron occupying a tiny house outside. I preferred a shake-down in the drawing-room, and at early dawn awoke in time to accompany Mrs Leefe and Ethel to milk the goats—which on paper sounds very pretty, and which in fine weather is really so. But when you come to the reality of having to start at 5 A.M. every morning of your life—fine weather or foul, in sickness or in health—and walk a mile and a half up and down very steep slippery hill-paths, which in wet weather are mere slides of red mud,—and, when the milking is done, return by the same path, making a walk of three miles before the day’s work has actually begun, you can imagine that this pretty pastoral scene becomes a tolerably fatiguing item in daily life.

Of course to me there was the great charm of novelty—an early morning in lovely sunlight, blue sea and cocoa-palms on every side, and the very picturesque flock of goats. One of Mr Leefe’s most anxious experiments has been the introduction of Angora goats,—lovely white creatures, with long silky fleece. At great expense he procured two pair, and having killed off all the wild he-goats on the island, these beautiful strangers were established as monarchs of the isle. So the flock is now exceedingly pretty. There are 230 mothers, of all varieties of colour, and each has either one or two pure white kids, all, without exception, taking after their father. Alas! many of them are already orphans, one of these splendid fellows having met with a most untimely end. Its long fleece got entangled in a thorny lemon-bush, which held it prisoner, and it was not found till it was dead. The second narrowly escaped the same fate. It got astray, and was caught in a thicket by its horns, and was not discovered till the following day. It was, however, reported missing at night, and all hands turned out to seek for the lost father of the flock. Torches were lighted, and the search continued for some hours; at last it was given up as being vain, and all returned to sleep, when suddenly an alarm of fire was given, and the whole hill was seen to be in a blaze: a torch, carelessly dropped in the dry grass, had started a fire which spread rapidly, destroying a multitude of promising young palm-trees recently planted. Such are the risks of plantation life.

The fine silky hair is not the sole advantage of introducing the Angora goat. Its flesh is said to be more tender than mutton, with a slight flavour of venison; and, moreover, such a flock will thrive where sheep could not find a living.[42]

It was nearly eight o’clock before we got back from the milking, and from feeding the poultry and the pigs, and you may believe we did enjoy our good hot tea. But Mrs Leefe was so ill that she had to go to bed again. Generally she is very strong, and thinks nothing of walking ten or twelve miles.

I thought it was now time to establish my regular sleeping-quarters. My host most generously offered to give up his own little grass hut for me; but on looking round, I discovered a tiny lumber-room partitioned off the dining-room, which is a house apart, and so close to the sea that I could almost step from the window into the water. I petitioned for the use of this small room, and with much help from Ethel and an acute Solomon Island girl, I cleared out many sacks of cuttle-fish bones, maize, and “produce” of all sorts, swept it out, laid down mats, fixed up a tiny bedstead, drove in nails on which to hang up clothes, and hung one of my waterproof sheets as a door, and so made quite a cosy wee den, in which I am now comfortably established. A “bedstead” would be quite an unnecessary adjunct in a Fijian house, with its flooring of soft grass and many mats; but here we have a wooden floor which would be too hard for comfort: besides, where maize has been stored, rats are wont to congregate. My little room has only one drawback, namely, that just at the window there remains one immovable trace of its former use—that is, the corn grinder, in which the men’s daily rations are ground, with such intolerable noise as invariably to drive me up the hill to escape from it. What must it be for the wretched native who has to do it, all the time receiving general abuse for the hideous row which he cannot avoid making!

I think the plantation hands here are exclusively foreign labour, all the Fijians having been turned off when Mr Leefe purchased the whole island. He also has property on the mainland of Viti Levu, where his nephew Harry lives as superintendent, and keeps a store for the supply of cloth, lamps, sardines, tools, and other necessaries of life—a great convenience in this remote place. Most of his customers are natives.

On our way here from Ovalau, we sailed close along the north-east coast of Viti Levu, which is most picturesque,—a fine rugged land, with narrow valleys hemmed in by great cliffs, and running down to the shore, where little villages nestle beneath great trees, from which hang the fishers’ nets. I thought several points exceedingly beautiful, and hope to retrace the ground more leisurely and secure some good sketches. As we came nearer here, the scene became bleaker and less attractive. Still the general effect of the coast, as seen from this house, is like some of the better parts of Ross-shire; and the narrow strait which separates this isle from the mainland, is like a fine Highland loch.

Nananu itself is rather a low flat island, in shape something like a star-fish, whence you perceive that you cannot walk far in any direction without looking down on the sea—the bluest sea, with lines and patches of vividly emerald green, marking where the coral-reef rises almost to the surface. All the centre of the star-fish is a great grassy hill, but each of its many arms is edged with a belt of magnificent old trees, which overshadow the whitest of coral-sand, and in some places quite overhang the water. You are tempted to bathe at every turn. One bay in particular is quite lovely. I have never seen another quite so fascinating in any country. It is an immense horse-shoe of the purest white sand, where for a mile and a half you can walk along the water’s edge, shaded by noble old _mdelo_, _mbaka_, _tavola_, and _eevie_ trees, making a belt of dense cool verdure.

In every available corner of the land Mr Leefe is planting thousands of young cocoa-nut trees, which are expected to yield a good return some six years hence, provided no hurricane sweeps the isles. Many planters are now trusting chiefly to their nuts since cotton has so utterly failed. It is sad in so many places to see great tracts of forsaken cotton-fields,[43] with their pods of white soft fluff, which it no longer pays to collect.

The cotton-bush bears a lovely pale-yellow flower with a deep claret-coloured centre, precisely similar to that of the _vau_, the common hybiscus, which forms the scrub of the isles, and yields the fibre so largely used by the natives. Curiously enough, an almost identical blossom is borne by a troublesome but beautiful weed which grows profusely in the deserted cotton-fields. A peculiar kind of brilliant beetle swarms in the cotton.

The neglected fields are sadly suggestive of the fortunes of their owners. For the invariable history of almost every planter is a tale of trouble and loss,—of large sums of money sunk, and now yielding no return whatever. The varieties in the story are generally whether the crops have been destroyed by hurricanes, or the house and all that it contained was burnt to the ground,—often both in succession.[44]

I constantly hear lamentable stories of the hardships which some of these gentlemen are, even now, enduring. I hear of some, personally known to my hosts, who for months together have tasted nothing but sweet-potatoes and yams, with water for their only drink: occasionally they struggle to rear a few fowls, not for home use, but to be exchanged for the luxuries of tea and sugar—and even these fowls generally come to grief. Of course goats can only be kept by the privileged few who possess a whole island. On the mainland they would make havoc in the gardens of the natives, and however carefully tended, would give rise to many difficulties. Even a cow is not kept without much trouble on the score of trespass, and involves a lad to look after her; and I am told that there are families now living on Taviuni too poor to pay even one labour-boy to help on the plantation; indeed I heard of one case in which the father was too weak to work, and all the family were living on wild roots, dug up by the children!

My host, being a man of unbounded energy, blessed with a wife of the like temperament, has managed, by a hard struggle, to keep his head above water, and now ranks as an exceptionally well-to-do planter. Having his own “home farm,” he is able occasionally to kill some sort of animal, and its flesh, fresh or salt, generally furnishes the table with meat; but if press of work prevents his having time to slay and prepare any beast, a large _papaw_ tart, with a dish of yams and a pot of tea, suffices for palates not vitiated by over-much luxury. At present there is a sense of abundance in the house, for Mr Leefe has himself killed, skinned, and cut up a goat, the various portions of which now adorn the beautiful old tree larder; moreover, a small vessel has called here and left a barrel of flour, of which Mrs Leefe herself has made excellent scones. We are indebted to her skill for almost all our meals, her only assistant in the kitchen being a good-natured laughing boy from the Tokalau Isles, whose talents are as yet undeveloped. He manages to do the coarser laundry-work, with the help of a very wide-awake girl from the Solomon Isles (who, by the way, talks the prettiest English). But here, also, anything needing care or refinement falls to the mistress, who also has to attend to the family wardrobe; and hardest of all, to both mother and daughter, she has sole charge of Ethel’s lessons, especially that most grievous task, her music lesson. For she has managed to retain one pleasant reminder of the old life in a most musical home, in her treasured piano, the solace of many an evening when the toil of day is over. I will not say that it is strictly in tune. No piano can be kept in order in this land of mildew and damp.

So Ethel is well on in music, but infinitely prefers out-of-doors occupations, and the companionship of all the living creatures, each of whom is a personal acquaintance—the poultry, the goats, the very pigs, whose name is legion. They live in a large pen by themselves near the sea, but are allowed to roam at large through the bush. At a given hour their supply of cocoa-nuts is carried to their pen, and a wooden _lali_ (drum) is struck to summon them, when they assemble with a rush. They are hideously tame, and come running up to meet any members of the family who may pass in that direction, and gambol cheerfully round them.

But one of the principal daily cares is that of attending to a great army of silk-worms, which have to be fed six times a-day: that means going out six times to gather fresh mulberry-leaves, each of which must be carefully dried. Then the trays have to be cleaned, the eggs examined, the newly-hatched worms carefully separated and placed on leaves to begin their new life. The cocoons have to be attended to, and guarded from the attacks of insects; in short, rearing silk-worms on this scale is a task requiring as much care and patience as any human nursery. This industry is an altogether new experiment in Fiji, where it might no doubt succeed, but for what will, I fear, prove an insuperable obstacle—namely, the price of labour here, as compared with that in the silk-growing districts of China. Here the whole work is at present done by Mrs Leefe and Ethel, as none of their people are sufficiently trustworthy to be trained as assistants. So you see the life of a planter’s wife leaves small time for idle day-dreams or novel-reading! It needs a brave heart, and abundant courage and perseverance, to say nothing of physical strength, to fulfil such daily tasks.

To me, who have only to enjoy myself, there is an unspeakable charm in the easy-going open-air life here; and the air is wonderfully keen and bracing as compared with the climate of Levuka. We have had the thermometer at 74°, and have felt almost too cold. So all day long I wander about the isle, passing from one white sand bay to another, and keeping in the shelter of those great overhanging trees, whose dark foliage forms so perfect a screen from the ever-shining sun. The raised centre of the isle is, as I have told you, generally grassy; and here I sit morning and evening, overlooking the sea in every direction, and watching for the rare appearing of a sail. The only shade there, however, is that of the screw-pine, which grows abundantly, and makes an odd sketchable bit of foreground, with its long prickly leaves set screw-wise, and its roots like a cluster of white pillars, making the tree look as if it were walking on stilts. It bears a large scarlet or orange fruit, something like a pine-apple in appearance, but with so little on its woody sections to tempt the palate, that none save goat-herds, on whom the long day hangs heavy, care to gnaw them. True pine-apples have been planted in abundance, as also orange, lemon, and bread-fruit trees; so have the delicious native _keveeka_, which bears a fruit resembling a large transparent pink pear and answers the purpose of a cooling drink. Moreover, as I told you, Mr Leefe is planting thousands of young palms in every available crevice, on Sir Walter Scott’s principle of “Aye be stickin’ in a tree; it will be growing while ye are sleeping.” Close round the house there is a small kitchen-garden in which grow tiny tomatoes and the tree-pea—a shrub which bears pods very like those of our common green pea.

Whenever Ethel can be spared from her home-duties she comes with me on my exploring expeditions, and sometimes carries a kettle, a small bottle of milk, and a little packet of tea and sugar; then, while I am sketching, she lights a fire and ministers to my comfort. The only drawback to the delightful shady nooks, which we prefer, is the multitude of mosquitoes which infest them. I am sure they scent out a fresh prey in me. Never shall I forget my first day here, when I settled down to make a careful study of a magnificent old banyan (identical, I think, with the _Ficus religiosa_ of India). The mosquitoes assembled in myriads. Vainly did Ethel and a wild-looking brown goat-herd sit, one on each side of me, holding branches, with which to beat them off; and vainly did I slay six or eight at a time, so often as I could pause to slap one hand on the other. Thicker and thicker they swarmed (for there was not a breath of air stirring in the thicket where we sat); so at last we had to give it up and fly to cool our fevered hands and faces in the sea; then we lay under the orange-trees in the old garden, and ate ripe golden fruit to our hearts’ content. Next time I go to sketch in any such sheltered spot, I shall hang up my mosquito-net to a tree, so as to lessen this maddening distraction—though, of course, it will be rather dazzling to draw looking through a fine white net.

How funny some of our incidents of common life would seem to you! Last night I was awakened by the grunting of pigs all round my window, and guessed that they had broken through their fence and got into the garden. So I jumped up and gave them chase wildly, and succeeded in driving them all out.

Mr Leefe owns a second small island, separated from this by a narrow channel; there he keeps another flock of goats, and yesterday went over to count them. He took us with him, much to Ethel’s delight, as the Fijian shepherd has a pretty baby, which is her namesake and great pet. We saw a curious natural rock-bridge on the coast, concerning which, tradition says, a shark jumped through a cave and left this rock standing.

Baron von Hügel returned from the mainland this morning just as we came back from the goat-milking. He has collected some new curiosities, and gave me a funny old cannibal fork. He returns to Nasova to-day, and takes this letter to the mail. He is full of the loveliness of various places he has seen, and says I must manage to go and do some sketching. But how? That is the difficulty. Mrs Leefe, who has never yet seen anything, even within a few miles of this place, says she would delight in going if only it could be managed, but she does not see how she can be spared from her many home-cares; and it is equally difficult for either Mr Leefe or Harry to get away. And you know I never dream of going anywhere alone; besides, Mr Leefe has sold his good boat, and now has only a very small one. So really I do not see how it can be managed, though it is most tantalising. However, something may develop.