CHAPTER XXVIII.

Notes on Fijian folk-lore—Legend of the rat and cuttle-fish: the crane and the crab: essay of roast-pig: of gigantic birds—Serpents worshipped as incarnate gods—Sacred stones worshipped—Mythology and witchcraft, 345

APPENDIX, 356

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

OUR HOME IN FIJI, _Frontispiece_

ISLES OF OVALAU, MOTURIKI, BAU, AND VIWA. FROM VITI LEVU, 111

HOT SPRINGS, ISLE NGAU, 180

A CHIEF’S KITCHEN, 208

MAP, _At the end_

NOTE.—CANNIBAL FORK.

The Cannibal Fork represented on the binding of this book is a facsimile of a fair average specimen. Some of the chiefs had forks eighteen inches long, of dark polished wood, with handles richly carved.

* * * * *

With reference to the vegetables specially reserved for cannibal feasts, Dr Seemann describes the Boro dina (_Solanum anthropophagorum_) as a bushy shrub, seldom higher than six feet, with a dark glossy foliage, and berries of the shape and colour of tomatoes. This fruit has a faint aromatic smell, and is occasionally prepared like tomato-sauce. The leaves of this plant, and also of two middle-sized trees (the Mala wathi, _Trophis anthropophagorum_, and the Tudano, _Omalanthus pedicellatus_), were wrapped round the _bokola_ and baked with it on heated stones.

AT HOME IN FIJI.

INTRODUCTION.

In the autumn of 1874 it was announced that Fiji had been formally annexed by Great Britain: in other words, that her Majesty’s Government had finally decided to accept the offer of cession of the group repeatedly made by the highest chiefs of Fiji. To this course they were impelled chiefly by the conviction of their own utter inability to cope with certain unscrupulous white men, who had here established a footing beyond reach of English law, and who, to promote their own selfish schemes, did not scruple, by every means in their power, to foster the jealousies of the chiefs, and so to keep up the bloody intertribal wars by which the lands were laid waste, and the population decimated.

In the prolonged struggle for power, two great chiefs rose pre-eminent—namely, Maafu, a powerful Tongan chief, who ruled supreme in one portion of the group; and Thakombau, who (at the instigation of the foreigners who had formed themselves into a government of which he was the nominal head) had been formally crowned as Tui Viti—_i.e._, King of Fiji. The position thus assumed by Thakombau proved, however, untenable. An adverse party of white men opposed every measure which the Government strove to enforce; and at length this nominal king, then upwards of seventy years of age, wearied by these unprofitable contentions, persuaded the other great chiefs to crave the protection of England’s Queen. Their petition was at first rejected; but, when repeated as an act of absolute and unconditional cession, it was deemed wise to accept it.

Sir Hercules Robinson, G.C.M.G., Governor of New South Wales, was deputed by the Home Government to visit the group in person. Accordingly, on 12th September 1874, he sailed from Sydney in H.M.S. Pearl, Commodore Goodenough, and arrived in Levuka (the headquarters of the white population of Fiji) on the 23d inst. Two days later he had a formal interview with Thakombau, in which he explained her Majesty’s willingness to accept the responsibility, and to endeavour to exercise her authority in such a manner as should best secure the prosperity and happiness of the people; adding, that such conditions as had been at first attached would render impracticable the proper government of the country. To this Thakombau replied—

“The Queen is right; conditions are not chief-like. I was myself from the first opposed to them, but was overruled. If I give a chief a canoe, and he knows that I expect something from him, I do not say, ‘I give you this canoe on condition of your only sailing it on certain days, of your not letting such and such a man on to it, or of your only using a particular kind of rope with it;’ but I give him the canoe right out, and trust to his generosity and good faith to make me the return which he knows I expect. If I were to attach conditions, he would say, ‘I do not care to be bothered with your canoe; keep it yourself.’

“Why should we have any anxiety about the future? What is the future? Britain.

“Any Fijian chief who refuses to cede cannot have much wisdom. If matters remain as they are, Fiji will become like a piece of drift-wood on the sea, and be picked up by the first passer-by.

“The whites who have come to Fiji are a bad lot. They are mere stalkers on the beach. The wars here have been far more the result of interference of intruders than the fault of the inhabitants.

“Of one thing I am assured, that if we do not cede Fiji, the white stalkers on the beach, the cormorants, will open their maws and swallow us.

“The white residents are going about influencing the minds of Tui Thakau and others, so as to prevent annexation, fearing that in case order is established a period may be put to their lawless proceedings.

“By annexation the two races, white and black, will be bound together, and it will be impossible to sever them. The ‘interlacing’ has come. Fijians, as a nation, are of an unstable character; and a white man who wishes to get anything out of a Fijian, if he does not succeed in his object to-day will try again to-morrow, until the Fijian is either wearied out or over-persuaded, and gives in. But law will bind us together, and the stronger nation will lend stability to the weaker.”

Sir Hercules Robinson next proceeded in H.M.S. Pearl to visit the great chief Maafu at his capital, Loma-Loma. Tui Thakau, another powerful chief, was present; and both declared their full assent to the cession and to the document already signed by Thakombau, which runs as follows:—

“We, King of Fiji, together with other high chiefs of Fiji, hereby give our country, Fiji, unreservedly to her Britannic Majesty, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. And we trust and repose fully in her that she will rule Fiji justly and affectionately, that we may continue to live in peace and prosperity.”

Finally, on the 10th of October 1874, all the great chiefs assembled at Nasova (which was, and still continues to be, the seat of government, and is situated one mile from the town of Levuka), and there signed the deed of cession.

The signatures affixed are as follows:—

CAKOBAU, R. _Tui Viti and Vunivalu._ MAAFAU. TUI CAKAU. RATU EPELI. VAKAWALETABUA. _Tui Bua._ SAVENAKA. ISIKELI. ROKO TUI DREKETI. NACAGILEVU. RATU KINI. RITOVA. KATUNIVERE. MATANITOBUA. HERCULES ROBINSON.

Thus did Fiji pass from the dominion of misrule to the orderly position of a British colony,—a change touchingly alluded to by the old king (or, as he is called by his own people, the Vuni Valu, or Root of War), who on this occasion desired his Prime Minister, Mr Thurston, to present his war-club to Queen Victoria. Mr Thurston interpreted the king’s words as follows:—

“Your Excellency,—Before finally ceding his country to her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, the king desires, through your Excellency, to give her Majesty the only thing he possesses that may interest her.

“The king gives her Majesty his old and favourite war-club, the former, and, until lately the only known, law of Fiji.

“In abandoning club law, and adopting the forms and principles of civilised societies, he laid by his old weapon and covered it with the emblems of peace. Many of his people, whole tribes, died and passed away under the old law; but hundreds of thousands still survive to learn and enjoy the newer and better state of things. The king adds only a few words. With this emblem of the past he sends his love to her Majesty, saying that he fully confides in her and in her children, who, succeeding her, shall become kings of Fiji, to exercise a watchful control over the welfare of his children and people; and who, having survived the barbaric law and age, are now submitting themselves, under her Majesty’s rule, to civilisation.”

The king then handed the club to his Excellency, who informed Thakombau that he would not fail to transmit to the Queen the historic gift which he desired to present to her, and that he would at the same time communicate to her Majesty, _verbatim_, the trustful and gratifying message by which the gift was accompanied.

This magnificent club, together with Thakombau’s huge _yangona_ bowl, is now in the safe keeping of Mr Franks (of the British Museum), and is kept with the Christie Collection in Victoria Street. Both club and bowl are at least twice the size of any others we have seen in the isles.

Five days later Sir Hercules held a farewell meeting with the chiefs, many of whom had hitherto met only as open foes. In closing his farewell speech, he said—

“I hope that all differences and animosities will now be forgotten and subdued. The Vuni Valu’s (Root of War) war-club has been sent with a dutiful and loving message to our Queen. I hope all other weapons of strife have in like manner been buried at the foot of the staff upon which we have raised the Union Jack.”

To this the two chiefs, hitherto rivals for the supreme power, thus replied. First spoke Thakombau.

“I hope that all present will now understand that they are her Majesty’s subjects and servants, and that, as the Governor has said, their future is in their own hands. They will be judged according to their behaviour and their deserts, and according to such judgment they will stand or fall.

“We know that we are not here now simply as an independent body of Fijian chiefs, but as subordinate agents of the British Crown; and being bound together by strength and power, that strength and power will be able to overcome anything which tends to interfere with or interrupt the present unity.

“Any chief attempting to pursue a course of disloyalty must expect to be dealt with on his own merits, and not to escape by any subterfuge, or by relying upon any Fijian customs, or upon his high family connections.”

Maafu then said—

“What more can any of us say? The unity of to-day has been our desire for years. I have now been twenty years in Fiji, and I have never before seen such a sight as I see to-day—Fiji actually and truly united. We tried a government ourselves; we did not succeed. That has passed away. Another and a better and more permanent state of things has been brought into existence. I believe that I speak the mind of all present when I say that we are really and truly united in heart and will, and we are all gratified with what we have heard. We are true men, and will return to our homes knowing that the unity of Fiji is a fact, and that peace and prosperity will follow.”

On the eve of Sir Hercules’s departure, a deputation of the Wesleyan Mission waited upon him to express their intense satisfaction with the deed of cession; but for which, they considered that their work as Christian missionaries would have received serious injury. They added: “We venture to remind your Excellency that it is not forty years since missionaries representing the British Wesleyan Churches came to Fiji, then in a state of savage heathenism; and that, but for the blessing of God upon their labours, there would have been no British Fiji at the present day.”

Sir Hercules’s reply must have been truly gratifying to his hearers. Its conclusion was—

“I fervently trust that a new era has now dawned upon Fiji, and that under British rule the moral as well as the material progress of the new colony may, by the blessing of Providence, be effectually secured. The great social advances which have already been made within the last forty years from savage heathenism, are due to the self-denying and unostentatious labours of the Wesleyan Church; and I can therefore heartily wish to your missionary enterprise in this country continued vitality and success.

“With renewed thanks for the good wishes which you are pleased to express for myself personally, I have, &c.,

“HERCULES ROBINSON.

“To the Rev. JOSEPH WATERHOUSE, ” SAMUEL BROOKES, ” D. S. WYLIE.”

With reference to the provision to be made for the chiefs who had thus voluntarily resigned their rights, without knowing to what extent these might be really taken from them, Sir Hercules suggested that Thakombau should receive a pension of £1500 a-year, and a present of £1000 to buy a much-coveted little vessel for his own use; that in the event of his death, his queen, Andi Lydia, should continue to receive £1000 a-year for her life. Their three sons would probably find employment under Government, with suitable salaries; as would also be the case with the principal chiefs, all of whom would continue to hold their office of Rokos of the twelve Provinces—a native dignity held in much reverence.

In January 1875 the Hon. Sir Arthur Hamilton Gordon, K.C.M.G. (son of George, fourth Earl of Aberdeen), was appointed first Governor of Fiji,—an archipelago containing seventy or eighty inhabited islands, some of which are of considerable size, the largest, Viti Levu, or Great Fiji, being about ninety miles long by fifty broad, nearly the same area as the counties of Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Middlesex, Berkshire, and Hampshire. The next in size, Vanua Levu, the Great Land, is upwards of one hundred miles long by twenty-five wide, somewhat smaller than Cornwall, Devonshire, and Somerset. Taviuni and Khandavu are each twenty-five miles long; while Bau, the native capital, is scarcely a mile in length. Besides these, there are upwards of one hundred and fifty uninhabited islets; and each of the principal islands forms a centre round which cluster from twenty to thirty minor isles, forming groups as distinct and as widely separated as are the Orkneys, the Hebrides, and the Scilly Isles, and their people are equally unknown to one another. The climate is, for the tropics, unusually healthy. At the time of the cession, they were inhabited by about 1500 whites and 150,000 natives.[1] It was June 1875 ere Sir Arthur reached the colony, and, to quote his own words[2]—

“The state of things which disclosed itself to me on my arrival was not encouraging. A terrible pestilence, heedlessly admitted, had swept away one-third of the entire native population. Though its violence had diminished, its ravages had not wholly ceased. Even where it had passed by, it had left behind it terror and despair. The same cause had carried off many of the imported labourers of the planters, who, from a variety of causes, were themselves, for the most part, reduced to the greatest straits. The revenue had fallen short of even the modest estimate of Sir H. Robinson, whilst the expenditure had largely exceeded his anticipations. The introduction of labour from other parts of the Pacific had almost ceased. The season had been unfavourable for agriculture, wet, and unhealthy, and gloom and discontent pervaded all classes.

“The white settlers had apparently imagined that, by some magical process, the assumption of sovereignty by Great Britain was to be followed by an immediate change from poverty to wealth, from struggling indigence to prosperity; that their claims to land would be at once allowed; that an abundant supply of labour would be at once found for them; and that their claims to supremacy over the natives, which the Government of Cakobau—whatever its faults—had steadily refused to recognise, would be at once acknowledged. They were, therefore, bitterly disappointed to find their hopes not realised.

“The natives were cowed and disheartened by the pestilence, which they believed to have been introduced purposely to destroy them,—a belief encouraged, I am ashamed to say, by some of our own countrymen, and which was probably the main cause of the disturbances in the Highlands of Viti Levu in the following year. They were perplexed by reiterated assurances, from the whites living among them, that by the mere fact of annexation to Great Britain their own laws and customs had been abolished; that their rules of succession, and for the transmission of property, had no longer any existence; that many of their cherished habits were illegal; that their lands had become the property of the Crown; and that they would themselves be expected, if not required, to labour on white men’s plantations. They were told, moreover, that all distinctions of rank among them were at an end,—a notification more perplexing than pleasing, in its suddenness, to the people generally, and which naturally caused irritation and distrust among the higher chiefs.

“A third element in the population, the immigrant labourers from other parts of Polynesia, whose contracts of service had long expired, but whose employers had no means to send them back to their homes, and who had remained, in some cases, for many years in by no means voluntary servitude, were exasperated by the bad faith they had experienced.

“At the end of the year 1875 I found myself with a revenue of £16,000, from which I had to meet an expenditure of over £70,000, and at the head of a dissatisfied and impoverished white population of some 1500 persons, in the midst of a native population nearly one hundred times as large, suspicious, watchful, and uneasy; while on but too many estates, bands of wrongfully detained immigrants formed a real, though apparently unrecognised, source of danger.

“It is not my object, in the present paper, to narrate the steps taken in the administration of the government since that time. Suffice it to say, generally, that the revenue of the colony has swelled rapidly from £16,000 in 1875 to £38,000 in 1876; £47,000 in 1877, and over £61,000 in 1878,[3] while the expenditure has been reduced to a level with the income; that the receipts from customs, which were, in 1875, but £8000, amounted in 1878, under practically the same tariff, to £20,000; that the imports have nearly doubled in value, and the exports (which exceed the imports) have quite done so; that the Polynesian labourers, whose term of service had expired, have been conveyed home and replaced by labour newly recruited; that more than 800 land titles have been settled after laborious and minute investigation; that measures have been passed by the Legislative Council which do honour to those who framed them, and compare favourably with those of many older colonies; that the Government service has been organised, Courts of Law established; that a dangerous disturbance has been put down quickly, cheaply, and effectually; that capital is being invested; and that, after a careful investigation, extending over more than a year, it has been reported to me, by most competent and most cautious scientific authority, that the annual value of the agricultural exports of the colony, when its powers of production have been fully developed, will probably exceed £10,000,000 sterling.”

After alluding to the purely native organisation of Bulis, Rokos, and other functionaries whom Sir Arthur found it desirable to continue to employ in the same capacities, in the administration of local government, and in carrying out various measures, he goes on to speak of the system on which these were framed.

“It was always borne in mind that these regulations had, to a great extent, to be administered by the natives themselves, and that a code which they thoroughly understood and had taken part in preparing, and which was in harmony with their own ideas and modes of thought, would be far more easily worked, and far more willingly and intelligently obeyed, than much better regulations imposed by external force, but which they might neither comprehend nor appreciate, and which would therefore be of far less real utility....

“I may say that I have no reason to be dissatisfied with the results. I have no doubt that the native magistrates make mistakes, and sometimes grave mistakes; I have no doubt that in individual instances the Roko Tuis are harsh and overbearing; but it is, I think, far better that they should now and then be so than that all share in the administration should be taken away from them. The employment of natives in the administration of the government was, indeed, a financial necessity, for the means did not exist, and do not yet exist, for the payment of such a staff of white officials as would have been required had the services of natives been dispensed with. But had no such imperative cause existed to render their employment inevitable, I should equally have deemed it to be required by considerations of policy. Unless removed from their habitual places of residence, and treated with a harshness wholly incompatible with the understanding on which the islands had been ceded to England, chiefs of intelligence, high rank, and great social influence, would have become, if stripped of all authority, and deprived of all employment except that of brooding over their own changed condition, very dangerous elements in the colony. For, be it remembered, the legal non-recognition of their position would not have in any way deprived them of the power they possessed over those who yielded to them an instinctive and unquestioning obedience. As it is, they are cheerful and willing assistants to the Government in the performance of its duties.

“The results of the system actually adopted were apparent when the mountaineers of Viti Levu attacked the Christian villages of the Singatoka. I appealed to the Rokos for help, and named thirty men as the contingent each was to send. Had the same state of mind existed that I found on my arrival, sullen and reluctant submission would at best have been given to the order, and more probably excuses would have been made for the non-appearance of the force; the mischief would have spread, and a long and costly war would have resulted. What was in fact the answer to the appeal? From almost every province came double the number of men asked for—picked men out of a host of volunteers—and the troubles were suppressed by native forces alone, without delay and at a trifling cost....

“I will only say one word on the future prospects of the colony—namely, that I believe Fiji to be an admirable field for the investment of large capital, whether in sugar or coffee estates. Sugar grows spontaneously, is of the first quality, and has a practically boundless market in Australia. As regards coffee culture, Fiji is now in much the same position as Ceylon thirty or forty years ago, and I have no doubt that those who now found estates there will find them in no long time amply remunerative. I have never seen finer tobacco than that raised in Fiji, and the cotton produced there is admitted to be of the best description.”

Fiji lies 1760 miles N.-E. of Sydney, and 1175 miles N. of Auckland. The value of its principal exports may be gathered from the following table:—

Coppra. Cotton. Sugar. 1875, £40,003 £28,706 £3,417 1876, 45,908 21,122 10,433 1877, 79,403 15,690 16,170 1878, 122,194 20,700 18,640

At the close of 1878 the area under cultivation was as follows:—

Coppra—_i.e._, cocoa-nut, 9166 acres. Cotton, 2390 ” Sugar, 1772 ” Maize, 1000 ” Coffee, 1219 ”

The cultivation of coffee is as yet in its infancy.

Tobacco, arrowroot, cocoa, cinchona, tea, vanilla, rice, pepper, &c., have been produced as yet only in small quantities, experimentally. The export of green fruit for Australia and New Zealand is a rapidly increasing item. Thus in 1877, 3100 bunches of bananas were exported; in 1878, 21,316 bunches; in 1879, 43,062 bunches.

The form of Government is that of a Crown Colony, with Executive and Legislative Councils.