country and more inland manners. Our party again divided. Atamo and
myself and the momentarily ill Awoki took to the water and again went up
stream. The weather was exquisite, the draught of the river just cooled
the heat. Constant animation and struggle on the part of the boatmen for
the rapids became more and more frequent. Half the time, with the
strength of the current and the shallowness of the water, four of the
six men plunged in and pulled and tugged at the boat, pulling it through
the boiling water, lifting their legs high, one after another for
stepping over the boulders, every muscle strained with effort, the poles
bending against the rocky bottom. Occasionally the man who stood at bow
or stern, upon the little vantage nook of the thickness of the canoe,
would be slung off by a swerving of the current, and his own stretching
far away to the side, and would retain some place from which he could
join us. The other boats passed us or were left behind. We saw them far
off on the slopes of the torrents, lifting shining poles against the
shadow of the banks. Sometimes the water swept over and our own little
planking was wet with it. As the rapids increased so did the spread of
the stones and boulders of the remainder of the river. We rested once
for midday meal. Then in the afternoon we landed and walked a little way
along a causeway road to a little village on a bluff, where the wide
river turned. Then passing through many houses and turning around a deep
moat, filled with bananas and other greenery, we came upon the edge of
the little hill. Here stood a house of a different type, more like the
type of the mountains; a very high, dark, thatched roof, more than twice
the height of the wall together with the stone base, or mound embedded
with stones, called _yavu_, out of it grew bunches of the red _ti_. This
mound embedded with stones is kept and has its name; the house on top
will be built and rebuilt.
At one corner a great palm tree rose above the high roof. From the
little plateau, planted with occasional trees and rising steep from the
river, a sloping and curved path led down between water and village,
separated from the latter by the deep moat filled with trees, and coming
at length to sharp earthern steps (if one can so call anything as rude)
that took us to the river end, to our bath in shallow water, the edge of
the deep pool under the cliff. Far back behind us spread the river-bed
with the stream between, and in the distance behind the hills a line or
shoulder of mountain streaked perpendicularly with great shiny patches
of rock. In this house we spent the night. It was inside, like all those
we have yet seen, charmingly finished with patterns of fastening on the
reeds of the walls, and sennit decorations on beams and lintels and
posts. A rude representation of a cow or bull had been worked into the
roof.
The next day we began our walk, leaving the canoes for good; and after a
few hours over clay ground and some rocky streams, we came to a wide
space of the river; across which we were carried in rough litters made
of bamboo tied together, then, walking up a clay bank between trees,
came upon the little village around which the river curves. This was
Navuna.
Here the view was confined to our huts and those of our neighbours.
Behind us a plantation of bananas; visible partly around the corner of a
neighbouring house, a great tree shading the centre of the _rara_, the
village place, where in the morning the Governor and the two
magistrates interviewed the representatives of this place and of others.
I could make out fairly well that a certain court of reproof was going
on; for all through these places was something which explained itself a
little further along.
Nasogo, July 3rd.
The midday saw us off from Navuna, and through similar scenery to a
little village on the edge of a river running far below it. The village
is Navu (n) (di Waiwaivule) in the district of Boboutho.
Now we began to be helped by being carried in the litters provided us by
Mr. Joski; for crossing and recrossing streams, it was perhaps as easy a
way as being carried pick-a-back. But where it was both a triumph and an
excitement was when we were lifted up the steep sides of the gorges;
then the looking back or forward, and seeing below one’s feet the
toiling carriers of the other litters, swaying to and fro with their
burden; and behind them again the long file of what was getting to be an
enormous retinue. For a background the distant mountains, or the bottom
of the gorge, black shingle and rushing water, or shallow pools
reflecting the green above. But prettier than all was some passage along
the stream; the men in the water; the mass of the party sometimes in the
water near us, or disappearing around picturesque frames of corner
rocks, over shingles and boulders; and reflected all about us the entire
picture--the distant mountains and rocks in sun and mist, the near rocks
covered with green, or with purple and grey of conglomerate; and the
song of the rapids ahead in a black and white streak counting against
the trembling green.
But when we walked then much did we regret our litters. To the native
our good path was for the most part on the dry river-bed, and lengthily
and wearily we picked a precarious footing over innumerable pebbles and
stones and boulders; sometimes thinking that the walk was easier on the
big ones, because one went from one to another; sometimes on the smaller
and more rolling ones, because one got several under one’s slipping
foot. But my neighbours always helped me: sometimes Lingani, one of the
Governor’s men, or one of the “Army,” as we called them (the armed
constabulary), or some _mbuli_ who accompanied the escort, or some newly
accidental neighbour; so that all went well enough, and we reached our
night’s destination without the sprained ankle that had discomfited Mr.
Spence early in the trip.
All is a little hazy to me up to where we are now. I remember the look
down the ravine and up the other river. I remember that huts began to be
more peaked or more like
[Illustration: EDGE OF VILLAGE OF NASOGO IN MOUNTAIN OF THE NORTHEAST OF
VITI LEVU, FIJI]
beehives. I remember one which had been fitted up as a heathen temple or
devil house, and from whose roof many strings hung down--as conductors,
one may say of influences. There had been a basket attached to one of
them, which the Governor cut down. I remember, of course, but one
running into the other, presentations of whales’ teeth and food, and
_tappa_, and dances (_mekke mekke_), with or without the dancers being
wrapped in the enormous folds of cloth, that afterward were unwound with
more or less difficulty, to be piled up high as a man’s height into
great masses of presents. (And by the by, though all that is extinct
to-day, some thirty or forty years ago a return to this old manner of
making gifts of _tappa_ came near to bringing on a civil war in Tahiti.)
The Tahitian custom referred to came up again some while after Queen
Pomaré (Aimata) was on the throne, her brother Pomaré III having died
quite young, and leaving her, who had not been trained entirely by
missionaries, exposed to the passing influences that come up with new
conditions. At some time or other she capriciously desired that upon
certain occasions she should be received in Tahiti (on her arrival, I
think, from Eimeo--Moorea--but that is unimportant) in the old way.
Among other customs would have been that of presenting her with _tappas_
offered by a number of young women, who, having danced before her all
swathed in this native cloth, should then gradually be unwound, and
having nothing upon them, continue the dance to an end. This was part of
the thing, and I only remember this detail. It was then that Tati of
Papara, the grandfather of our old chiefess, came to the front, and in a
most remarkable manner, both by threatening armed opposition, and by the
use of an eloquence worthy of the greatest examples, broke down the will
of the Queen and the plotting of her then advisers. It is thus greatly
to Tati that peace and the final quiet prevailing of Christianity was
due.
As to Aimata, or Queen Pomaré, that she remained more or less of a pagan
at least for a long time, the fact or report that she destroyed two of
her children (probably base born) is in the direction of a testimony. Of
course the meaning of the word Christian is variable according to time
and place and especially according to date, so that the geographical and
historical limit of the meaning should never be insisted upon in too set
a manner.
The next day’s tramp brought us here, but apart from certain geological
facts in which Adams was enormously interested--for example, the
superposition of the conglomerate upon everything else, and the finding
of shells in the softish rock at this height--all was pretty much the
same.
Our present place is very charming, reminding me of the last. It is at
a corner again, with the river turning round one side of it, and the
stream up which we came on the other. Between them a bluff covered with
trees, the space of the bed of the river mostly filled with boulders and
gravel and rocks, though we roll the rapids, or slide the quiet waters;
a great rock just facing the village, as an advance buttress of the
mountain behind it, which melts tier upon tier into an entanglement of
foliage; and the town or village itself, built on a succession of
terraces, all worked over and planted, and edged with walls that seem
part of the natural structure; here and there, even right in the
village, a boulder black or grey, almost of the colour of the thatch of
neighbouring houses, and protected, shaded, encompassed with trees or
high decorative plants as they usually are. As always everywhere
apparently, the projection of any tongue of land makes itself into a
knife edge; so that the idea of a ditch or moat would be suggested to
the savage engineer by the very make of the land. Therefore from each
side the slopes go down, and below you see tops of trees, banana, palm
or what not, and tops of huts staged down.[28]
Then where the land rises again on the slopes, big boulders stand up,
reminding you again of the thatched roofs; and far away on heights are
places where villages stood, and where some years ago these very
savages were attacked and driven off.
For all these parts of the country were once a stronghold of the more
savage tribes; if not the more powerful, who sometimes came down and
attacked the lower places. And all through here some of the gentlemen
who were with us had gone, when the time had come to make an end of it,
destroying the towns and reducing the wild people to forced peace.
Occasionally I overheard these reminiscences, which do not date so many
years ago--fifteen or sixteen, I think. The Governor had headed or
accompanied expeditions, and one or more of our companions had been on
such attacks, after having suffered the loss of a number of relatives
and friends. But all that is over now; only, as in all mountain
countries, there is a sort of regrowing of that bad seed, such as we saw
in this recurrence of the old devil worship.
Here we saw of course again more ceremonies and presentations of food,
the latter becoming a serious necessity with the great number of men
accompanying us. The Governor is not only a representative of the Queen,
he is as such the chief of chiefs, and most wisely his policy, whether
or not it has been the policy of his predecessors, has insisted upon
this point. Every ceremonial of observance, everything that would belong
to the native ruler, is encouraged and kept up. Not only such natural
observances must exercise an indefinable prestige on the native mind,
but they also must allow, in what is a personal government, the use of
an apparatus of control exactly suited to the native mind: thus any
subordinate chief can be reprimanded, talked to and put in his place in
such a way, that he feels it from ancestral habit; he can be removed or
set aside. A man serving out a sentence can be kept a prisoner behind
the paling of a bamboo house that he could break through as easily as he
can see through it.
With time, as the natives change, the laws and ordinances that they have
made themselves, for most things, that have seemed good to them and
which are not contrary to the absolute essentials of English law, have
been left, and will change as they change, and may fit themselves to an
unknown future.
This will explain the naturally sensible reason for which the Governor
differed with some of the Catholic missionaries, or rather their bishop,
about which things I have heard, if not complainingly, at least with
suggestion of arbitrariness from one or two good old Samoan priests. For
instance, it is a great chief’s privilege and marks him that he should
be “_tama’d_” to in passing--that is what marks him, and establishes his
position in the hierarchy of rule.
But there is no reason why a bishop should claim it; even if in old days
the confusion with regard to power of sacredness, of respect, and
worship had always existed here as it has been all through the world. So
also the case of the missionaries objecting to the chief receiving the
first fruits of the land, often symbolized nowadays by a mere few pieces
of some growth, because long ago it bore a religious as well as civil
meaning. I fear me that our old friends, the Jesuits of China, were the
only very wise men that served as missionaries, so that they alone never
went by their personal whims or measured matters by their own fast rule.
But this is far off from my natural path of mere record of what happens
or what I see. For some things at least the sketches will help you. I
may succeed in making some note of the cheerful clearness of colour and
tone all about me, though of course I can only make a choice. If I give
you the day, then the veiled charms of morning or of evening, the
enveloping of distances in misty colour, must remain unattempted of
record. Or if I try the haze of the beginning or end of day, then I
shall not have anything for you of the lightness and gayety of the
brighter hours. But the sketches will give you the shape of the houses.
You will sympathize with the inconvenience of getting in or out, in the
dark or wet weather, excellent as it must have been as a device for
protection against too sudden intrusion of doubtful friends.
We wait one whole day: then we enter the mountains for good, and pass
over them to make our way to the coast which will be a matter of four
days or so. It may be warmer higher up, as there may be more cloud; so
far it has been cool at night, the thermometer going down as low as 56.
In Camp in the Bush.
Saturday night, July 4th.
We left Nasogo (pronounced Nasongo) early this morning in the mist;
going down into the river-bed, among the boulders, and crossing the
stream several times: the same river that rushed down around the little
point or promontory of Nasombo--a streak of black or blue or green or
white, among the black stones spread out between the rocky bluffs. Then
we attacked the mountain and the forest--stumbling and slipping over
rocks and moss, and matted tree roots. The path had been somewhat
cleared for us here and there, but it was hard travelling through the
wildwood; all damp above and below with the continuous moisture. In this
desert of leaves and tree trunks, the passages of former torrents served
for paths. Over us were quite high tall trees, but between their upper
branches and the mossy wet earth spread a broken canopy of tall ferns,
and lianas and the branches of smaller trees and plants. Here and there
a great fern connected with the tree fern, but unlike it, spread or
lifted long fronds like canes some twenty feet in length. Upon every
tree hung innumerable mosses and parasites. Below, all over, a tangle of
ferns; beautiful as ferns are, though you know that I care little for
them; I am even so unworthy, that the prospects of rare orchids does not
stir my blood; I would give them all for roses, violets or for apple
trees or the cherry. I am essentially and absolutely European in these
things, and retreat behind my rights as an artist to have preferences
and keep to my instincts. But for you who love such things, I can say
that there were many rare plants; a creeping lily, for instance, and
innumerable ferns.
The fatigue of the ascent became greater: we halted at noon on a little
open space above a high precipice, from which we could look back at the
whole course of the river sunk far into the mountains and curving in the
far distance around the amphitheatre, stands on its little bluff the
village of Nasogo which we had left in the morning some four hours
before. Beyond it the river ran, a black thread in the dark grey
shingle, below the big bluff, and around the little promontory by which
we had bathed for two days. Then we had lunch and Sir John on this
Fourth of July proposed the health of the President--and drank to that
of Mr. Harrison. Then the “Armed Native Constabulary” gave a salute of
six guns which echoed far away down the valley and into the grass
country that we hope to reach to-morrow perhaps. No doubt there will be
stories afloat that we have been attacked. We were then some 2,300 feet
up--the thermometer indicated 62°.
Later, as I was very tired, I was carried in the rough palanquin of
boughs down the steep hills--the path so narrow that much ingenuity and
noise and discussion was expended by my carriers to pass through the
trees: fortunately the conveyance was elastic and could be sloped any
way. In fact at times I stood up or sloped back so as to have to catch
on, but I fell asleep and the men carefully moved along the hanging
branches and lianas so that they should not strike me. Almost everything
that came down merely hung in an elastic way. Rarely did a big tree
stretch over the path. The last thing that I saw before closing my eyes
was the file of our party beneath me: Their heads just visible between
my feet; the “Native Constabulary” in their uniform of bushy yellow
hair, and blue shirts, and red _sulus_ worn like sashes.
The little British flag had been stowed away to prevent it striking, and
I missed its flutter or dazzle in the green. One of my big black
attendants was hanging upon a small sapling dragging it down from the
path and dropping far below afterward. The noise of the axes of the
scouts sounded in advance and started the parrots cawing in response;
the sun broke upon us and so I fell asleep in the more grateful warmth.
We reached the place chosen for camping in the early afternoon after
another couple of hours’ march. Our halt was upon a little bluff right
on the line of march--where trees had been cut down, and huts and sheds
built for us, and where already many of our people were resting. Here
had come the women sent in the morning by the other road, if one can
call it so--the bed of the stream. They were to carry food for our
people--for we had by this time some two hundred men along--many really
of use, carrying boxes and trunks and provisions, all distributed, so
that every little while I could notice in the long procession, the man
with the frying pan--the man with the governor’s chair and so forth. But
there were also amateurs who carried a club, or a little packet of food
done up in a leaf, or an odd umbrella for one of us--or like the last
page in the “Chanson de Malbrouck,” “Et l’autre ne portait rien.” Some
were so called prisoners--viz., men condemned to labour for a time--and
I was much amused at the story of three of them who were encamped in a
long shed alongside of the magistrate (Mr. Carew) who had brought them
as servants. They were all three in it owing to the eternal cause--“la
femme”--who in Fiji seems to be “_teterrima causa_”. In fact, as there
are not women enough to go around, it was not astonishing to hear that
one great influence of the recent heathen revival in this wild region of
cannibals was the hope of the young men, that if there were rows and
trouble, some stray women might fall to their share. This evening I
wandered out along the sheds and saw a good many--not more agreeable to
look at than those I had seen before and certainly far uglier than the
average ugly men. One youngster, another “prisoner” was preparing to oil
himself, surrounded by a little group of female admirers, reversing
apparently the fact of there being few women for the men.
We warmed ourselves at the fires, for, though the temperature was about
the same, all was wet and damp, the firewood all covered with green
moss. Our little hut was a fairly good one, made of wild banana, and the
interstices filled up, or rather covered up with the great leaves of the
wild ginger.
July 5th.
The night was rainy and all was damp in the morning, when after prayers
we started again into the wet woods. The cry of the parrots like a wild
_flapping_ of voices had been the first sound of early dawn. Then the
camp had begun to move with chattering and laughter; people filed along
all the morning.
When our time came, I had again the use of the loose palanquin in which
I was taken for the first two miles down the deep side of the mountain.
It was interesting to look up at the trees above, and to notice how much
more of the vegetation grew in the air above than in the earth below.
Every tree was covered with plants, mosses, creepers; the vines and
lianas that hung about were themselves covered with smaller growths.
Perpendiculars of gigantic vines hung, though they looked as if they
held themselves up, but the least pushing of our party would send great
spaces of green trembling far off. The branches that were in my way were
loose and swinging, and rarely did we meet so low down the branches of a
solid tree. High up through the great loops and festoons and upright
stretches of the creepers, or here and there the great leaves of the
wild ginger, the light was delicately stencilled with the pattern of the
leaves of the great ferns. But high as everything seemed above head in
the trembling wall of green our occasional passing of some mighty trunk
of the _da kua_ tree, whose branches began far up above everything, made
still smaller the caravan passing below. Upon the branches and curves of
the great trees, in every nook of protection they could afford,
flourished other small forests of air plants, ferns and creepers for
whose support the great oak-like limbs of this giant of the pines seemed
to spread. Lifted high in relation to the plunge beneath, I spent half
the time in looking at the details of this upper picture, unseizable
otherwise in our rapid marching--but after our rest in mid-journey I
preferred the tramp, and walked on with the others, slipping and sliding
up and down, until we reached camp (after five hours’ walk) on a little
open space. Just before this we had passed through a little park-like
country all different from the sharp edges, ascents and descents of our
usual travelling--the grass grew high, trees dotted the swellings here
and there, the sun kept all dry so that it was hard to believe that only
a few feet behind lay the eternally wet forest. In the tall grass grew
orchids like lilies, orchids large and small of the _fagus_ variety.
Butterflies and moths flitted about. The open country smiled after the
sadness of the woods. Our resting place was not quite so open, but yet
it had a similar appearance. It had evidently once been inhabited--there
had been taro patches at one extremity of the open space. Here again, as
throughout what we had seen of Fiji, the inhabitants had been chased
away from their holdings in the perpetual wars. Indeed only twelve or
fifteen years ago these good people here were cannibals and liable to be
eaten if they did not eat others. The advantages of their present lot in
this way were referred to in the sermon of the native preacher who had
accompanied us, for this was Sunday and we had prayers in the morning
and service and sermon in the afternoon. Of course I get all this at
second hand, or even further; but the good man took also occasion to
lecture his travelling flock, a flock as I understand, not his natural
audience, upon the folly of returning to devil worship, of which there
had been cases in this part of the country, as I have mentioned, I
think, and pointed out to them that it was only an agitation brought up
by people who wished to kindle trouble for their peculiar ends, as, for
instance, that in the scarcity of women, some of them might fall to the
share of fomenters of trouble, in case of any upsetting of things,
however momentary--for there are fewer women than men, as I think I was
telling you.