comfortable temporary huts it is true), but still indicating a once
large population, brought up this question of the relation of the women
in connection with agricultural work. They appear “sat upon” and not
joyful and free as in other islands that we have seen. But of course
appearances are only for _us_; they are certainly kept away and take a
secondary position. But then of course they have to be put away from the
mass of our men who are beginning to number heavily. Mr. Joski says that
we are as many as four hundred. These women, who look so saddened, did a
great deal of the heavy work, if not all--a matter which seems
unnecessary at first, as the men used to idle and fight, but perhaps it
might be worth while to look at the matter from inside and see how
things must have stood in old times.
In the morning, when, as to-day, the mist hung over all the valley, over
every point that could be cultivated or was so--when the little village
alone above would be lighted up distinctly, it would have been
impossible for the warriors to plunge into these shadows to look to
these plantations, offering themselves as an easy prey to any ambuscade
or attacking party. No; the right thing, of course, was to wait until
the sun rose far enough. Meanwhile skirmishers looked about and
travelled through the neighbourhood, armed against any foe. When they
were satisfied that there was no immediate danger the women and children
could go out and work in the fields or attend to anything necessary,
while the men were about, ready to protect them in case of danger;
certainly, this was to the woman’s advantage; had she, when travelling
or going about, shared with the man the carrying of weights, how easily
would they both have fallen a prey to the enemy. No, she would naturally
have said, “you go before with your lance and club and see that the path
is clear; I follow with the food.” All this is a picture of what was
once, and here no more than elsewhere, except that here things were upon
such a scale that there was no chance for anything but this perpetual
war. By such considerations the past of _all_ nations comes back.
July 6th.
People of the neighbouring district came here to do homage to the
governor and present food and they added still more to the number,
filling the neighbouring hollows and moving about in and out of the
lovely little brook all shaded by trees, in which we bathed in cold
water, for the temperature remained pretty steadily the same, in the
neighbourhood of 63° to 68°.
In the morning we left Ngalawana, and made a short and desperate plunge
through the woods in the hollow to the N. W. and up the mountainside. It
was raining and had rained, and anything more slippery than the road
over which all these hundred of people had been travelling I cannot
think of. The steepness was bad enough, and one could have rolled down
if one had a good start; but some of the paths might have been
“tobogganed” over. The bare feet of the natives managed it well enough,
though with much slipping. And their ideas of direction of a road are
peculiar, the straighter the better and across country; so that recently
about the very roads that are in consideration, they say to the governor
that of course they will make him _his_ roads to travel on as it suits
him, following easy paths, but that he must not expect
[Illustration: FIJIAN BOY]
that _they_ will use them. Still easy ways are great persuaders, and
notwithstanding this conservatism, the new roads in other parts are
travelled over by the now converted heathen.
We arrived at length at a little village on a spur or ridge in a large
valley where we are to rest for a few days--the first village, small as
it is, since Nasogo. Here the governor was waited on by two deputations
who presented whales’ teeth and food and who were received in the usual
way by the Mata ni Vanua (the herald) and the other attendants with the
usual voices of _ah! wui! wui!--wu--u! wooe--wooe!_ and so forth, making
everything look more and more African as we go along; for all the way
through in these mountain tribes, the negro colour and look, and woolly
hair on head and shoulders and legs, and I am sorry to add the smell,
marks how far we are from our smooth brown Polynesians.
In the evening all was bathed in the afterglow; pigeons called in the
trees; through the air that seemed thickened with the light-green,
long-tailed parrots sailed slowly, with an occasional flap of wings.
Matakula, July 7th.
We are resting here to-day; while the governor explores the
neighbourhood for the purposes of his establishment of a sanitarium. We
are not so high on the present ridge as he would desire: only 2,200
feet while it might be possible to find a plateau or wide ridge as high
as 3,000. It is much warmer than before and dry at least. The night was
cool--as low as 54°. The day is warm. I rose early, with the cries of
the parrots in the wooded hill behind us; looked at the mist in lakes
about us, out of which stepped the high trees and the mountains in the
distance--even the dark conical huts of the little village built along
the ridge at whose extreme end we are, were still wisped with moisture.
The sun rose slowly behind the mountains, bathing everything in mildly
pale varieties of wet colour--and all was lit long before the sun came
over the hill behind us, and poured heat and dry light upon the scene.
We have been doing nothing: sitting out under umbrellas--then under a
mock grove which the men suddenly made for us, digging up neighbouring
trees and tree ferns and planting them around us in the soft soil.
For this they used the digging sticks they had, merely heavy bits of
wood with pointed ends, in some cases turned up at the sides. We are
here in primitive country: the boys of the village brought the water in
bamboo joints this morning: the huts are of a peculiar hay-mow
character--the features of the people, as I said before, are remarkably
“African,” though often the colour is of a rich brown--but more usually
a
[Illustration: STUDY OF HUTS AT END OF VILLAGE. MATAKULA, FIJI]
chocolate, that is negroish, is the type of colour, passing to a
blackish grey. Most of the old people here have been cannibals; and
fifteen years ago all this part was then still dangerous: on some
attacks of theirs, upon the coast people and upon the whites, two of
whom were eaten, war was made upon the villagers in this direction;
their villages burned, and their people driven out and divided among
other places. Some of the gentlemen with us talked at night of those
days and of the fighting. If I have more time, I shall try to join
together some memoranda or to jot them down as they come up.
At night, when there is no rush for bed, around a fire in the open the
talk goes on, always interesting and rich in anecdote, and it is only a
pity that we are not more acquainted with the places and people and past
story: it is like looking at an embroidery that has no foundation.
But last night a story reminded me of the dream of Pomaré Vahine, told
us by the old lady, Hinarii, in Tahiti, which I sent you, I believe.
This is not a record of the pagan underworld, as that was, but one of a
new Christianity, and as such makes a curious “pendant.” It is one of
the late things reported about, and a source of comment and of
influence. It appears that the wife of one of the principal people of
some neighbouring place--perhaps a _mbuli_, but I was very sleepy when I
heard it, and details are misty--appeared to be dead, was duly watched
and prayed over--and then suddenly she called out aloud; when naturally
enough, the entire assemblage scampered out of the house: at length the
husband took courage and came up near the house, and heard his wife call
out “Mbuli Mandrae” (I don’t remember the right name, let us call him
so) “is that you?” “Yes”--“Well then I must tell you what I have seen.”
So to those who returned, the good woman said that after death she found
herself on the path, and crying, to find the road to Heaven. The road
forked: at the one fork were a number of men dressed in white--at the
other a number in black, and when she expressed a wish to go the road to
Heaven, the white men passed her on, tossing her as it were from one to
the other, until she reached a great gate which was made of
looking-glass or mirror. There she knocked, but was told that she must
go to one side, where a scribe asked who she was and what she wanted.
She wished to get into Heaven. So her book was consulted, and she was
asked if she was free from sin. “Yes” she replied--“I have been faithful
to my husband.” (Sin with these good people is of _one_ kind.) “No
indeed,” said the judge, “do you not remember one mid-day when so--and
so----” The poor woman admitted her fault and was immediately handed
from one white being to another, until she reached the fatal corner,
when the black-clad people tossed her along as rapidly, until
[Illustration: RATU MANDRAE--FIJIAN CHIEF]
she saw a large lake of fire in which were swimming, people who were
shrieking out of the seething liquid, and then dropped in again with
cries of agony--around the pits hung ropes from which many were
suspended and dipped into the liquid fire. “See,” said some one--“that
empty one is yours, but you have until _next Thursday_ to return to your
home and warn your people of what is in wait for the sinner.” So the
good woman had returned, and, having warned them true to her
appointment, died for good on the Thursday. The impression has been
great.
July 8th.
In the morning, after the night-rain and fog, the hills and the dry
country below our little narrow level were grey in mist, slowly
dispelled by the sun that tossed it irregularly into the air. Before
sunrise, in the dawn, the distant mountains, the higher hilltops and the
uppermost trees near us rose from out of a lake of white cloud; with the
coming of the sun, things became less distinct, until again, just as the
sun passed over the little rocky mountain behind us, the fog lay again
level in hollows while the last wisps of water blew around us, dimming
this or that hut of the village of which we were part. The parrots
chattered again. The doves cooed in the forest a few yards off, and in
the line of the hills behind, a curious bark in the distance was the
voice of another variety of dove. Two or three times that morning, and
again during the day, we heard the gun of our “hunter.”
This was to be our last bad day of walking and we made a good show at
it. We were to drop some seven hundred feet perhaps a thousand during
the day, down the other side to get toward the sea; and this in the wet
wood, over clay and roots, or over wet clay and wet stones when we
should be on the open mountainside. The forest was as usual;
occasionally the trunks of large _da kua_ trees stood up like separate
columns in the green. In one case this great cylinder was up to some
fifty feet all reddish and bright with loss of bark. It had been cut off
to this height by the natives, who use climbing sticks to reach far
enough, in pursuit of an edible grub in the rotten bark.
The trail left the woods after a time and descended the mountainside
covered with reeds that flowed away from us as we passed. This was the
toughest of the path; slippery with black mud and red clay, the slippery
fallen leaves giving a better hold, and only seen when trodden into;
this uncertain way down a steep grade upon which occasionally we slide
as easier than slipping, was the most fatiguing pull I have ever made.
Once or twice to my amusement, the dog of Mr. Carews, young and
inexperienced in such travel, seated himself
[Illustration: BEGINNING OF VILLAGE--DAWN. MATAKULA, FIJI]
on his hind quarters and pushed himself down on his forepaws. The bare
feet of our native companions and their powerful legs carried them along
with relative ease, and when they helped me, I was carried along for a
little while at a great rate; slipping of course, but balanced and
getting on as if on skates.
We were often on the edge of the precipice and at length stopped at a
little open spot, where on some black rocks that edge it, we stopped for
a time and looked upon the deep valley, whose opposite side was
different in character from what we had travelled in. We were now on the
dry side of the island (a relative term), and the look of the opposite
mountain was like that of the hills of Hawaii, or of Tahiti; a curious
golden grey-green, intensified wherever the innumerable hollows gave
protection and greater damp to trees and bushes.
We were on the slope of a tongue or ridge between two valleys, but it
was only quite late that the clouds lifted enough from the tops of hills
to let us catch a view of the valley we were going to, of the course of
the brilliant little river and further off, of high points of blue that
enclosed the sea.
Meanwhile we halted for lunch at a little level park-like space, and
walked to its edge with the hope that the clouds would break, but there
was nothing but a mass of white vapour in front of us that filled the
valleys, rose above us, and broke against the crests that we had left,
or beat around, leaving blue sky above us in deceiving patches. There,
while we rested, the _shikari_ brought in, with doves, two long-tailed
parrots, the one green with green and yellow breast, the other blue and
red and green; the latter feeds on fruits and is not obnoxious to the
natives; the green is more predaceous of their gardens. This was my
first sight of the killed parrots and with the soft grey of the doves
they made a brilliant and gay mat upon the green grass.
I picked out a few feathers to send to you with this, wishing that I
could also send the impression of the scene, with all these groups of
browns and blacks about us, and the cloudy landscape above.
Later in the afternoon, after having waited for a sight of the great
view in vain, we dropped down again through the same terrible woods, and
reached in the early evening the little village of Waikumbukumbu, the
last of the mountain villages, whence we should find a made road to the
coast. The name Waikumbukumbu means seething waters, and describes with
exaggeration the look of the little gorge in which its site is chosen.
We crossed over rocks the path of the little torrent, now rolling
between rocks, now filling stone pocket in its bed, or sleeping quietly
between high wooded banks. The houses of the village were partly those
of the mountain, the beehive; partly those of the coast with long
ridge-pole, and built up on high mounds, covered with stones or grass.
But the openings were the smallest I had seen--a big man in some cases
might just have fitted in. One little one which I have sketched for you,
and which was prettily placed by the side of the ditch, and with the
adornment of a few trees, was exceedingly small and queerly bulged out
in roof at once over its low reed walls. The thatch had been
extraordinarily thick, projecting very far, and its edges were cut
perpendicularly down so as to make a line with the wall, and you had a
proportion of thickness of thatch greater than the wall or the roof. To
all those roofings that were old, and which covered almost the entire
houses, time had given a most delightful texture and tone, making them
look as if covered with a most exquisite grey fur. The thatch of the new
buildings was yellow and shaggy, giving the look entire of the reed: as
the leaves are weathered off, the fine stem alone remains: the thing is
exquisite as thatching, having an appearance of extreme finish.
The little house or _mbure_ placed thus at the entrance of the village
just gave place to two persons within--and Mr. Carew (magistrate and
commissioner, who knows all about things, has been here twenty-three
years and is a student of words and languages) says that such would have
been a “devil” house formerly where the priest or prophet or wise man
could reside alone and be applied to.
Here, he said, with the love they have for shutting things up, he could
close his door easily, and be happy in the sweating heat of the night.
The horror of draughts I can sympathize with here in the hills where the
change from the 80° or 83° of day to the 52° of night makes the motion
of air between narrow walls easily felt, but this night was not cold and
with only one door in the house we felt the closeness. Outside the
temperature was exquisite (somewhere about 68°), and the picture of our
carriers encamped about the village and fires, that lit up themselves,
the trees, the houses, and the opposite hills by fits and starts, kept
me awake notwithstanding the very fatiguing day. We had been six hours
on the walk with the rests included, and such a walk.
We bathed in the hollows on the rocks that night, and the next lovely
morning, and then began our last march. The mass of the carriers had
been dismissed; and I think that we were not more than fifty men or so:
the road, a very wide one, began by running up hill as straight as might
be, in Fijian fashion, as if to show that the natives were not afraid of
mere steepness.
The walk was a hard one, and we had hesitated as to whether the
river-bed would not be easier, as we had been advised; but
[Illustration: MOUNTAIN HUT OR HOUSE AT WAIKUMBUKUMBU, FIJI]
after all a road is a road, even if it leads up the side of a house, and
by noon, we had done all the worst of it. A beautiful sight opened
before us, like a reminiscence of Hawaii: we had the mountains behind us
and on either side, partly green, partly rose or golden. As usual, we
were coming down a dividing ridge that ran into the plain; mountain
edges framed the sides, far off stretched a fairy sea with points that
framed it, and on one side a mountain with high perpendicular cliffs
standing up against the distance. Everything swam in light; blue and
violet filled the distance; a big plain, in which glittered a little
water, spread from the blues to the green near us in gradations such as
Turner loved: even the very stippling of the innumerable trees, so many
of which were the pandamus (the _lauhala_ of Hawaii), reminded me of
him, as the scene recalled Hawaiian islands. Along the road thin
_lauhala_--the _fao_ of Samoa, the _fara_ of Tahiti--growing every now
and then and marking the distance, and again repeated everywhere in the
blazing spread of green and yellow of the plains, grew not thick and
full like those of Samoa and Tahiti, but strangely and queerly with
outstretched arms and straggling foliage.
We loitered along the road at places where there were big trees and
water. Halfway, Mr. Marriott, the magistrate, had sent a horse for me to
ride, which convenience allowed me to look further and freely upon the
landscape from this height; but we were some time on the road, some five
hours at least, though it was but ten miles I suppose.
Vanuakula, July 10th.
We came down in the afternoon to Vanuakula, a neat little place reached
after a long promenade under the hot sun, upon the road that ran on a
dike in mangrove swamps. There we found news of the little steamer
_Clyde_, and saw its Captain, Mr. Callaghan, and were told that at night
we should get aboard so as to get off early in the morning for Ba, in
such manner as to hit the tide without which we could not possibly enter
the river to-morrow morning. So we waited for the rise of tide in a
little village green square, and a pretty native house and saw a native
dance of armed men (_mekke_) given as a mark of honour along with the
food, and as a manner of presenting _tappa_ of which an enormous
quantity was given to the governor.
Each dancer, as we had seen before, carried upon him in long folds yards
upon yards of the cloth, looped like a dress, caught around his
shoulders perhaps, or only at his waist; sometimes folded stiffly far
over his head, like the floating folds of drapery upon an archaic
bas-relief; and after the dance he unwinds himself from the enormous
entanglement, and adds it to the pile that our men gather together and
fold up. This plunder the governor carries off: in true native fashion,
he is but a conduit for gifts: when some chief or persons who have need
to fill up gifts or do the proper thing, think it is time they come and
beg for things, the whales’ teeth, or the _tappa_ (native cloth) and
receive them. As I think I said before, it is pleasant to see the
governor keep up strictly every native custom that secures order and
belongs properly to their official life. He is very strict about it,
insisting upon every observance that his position requires and carrying
all out.
While we waited, looking on at the dance, or afterward when the ladies
of the village came in bringing gifts of food, having properly asked
permission to do so; two Samoan women sat beside us. They had come from
a neighbouring house to call; one was younger than the other, and looked
with her hair “à la Chinoise,” her slanting eyes, and flattened nose,
and wide lips, very much like certain musme of the Japanese inns and tea
houses. This one had been Samoan way, married to some more or less white
man, who had left, and she was now a grass widow. The other was, “_faa_
Samoa,” married to some half-breed: and she of the slanting eyes noticed
Awoki near us, and somehow or other took him in as a variety of Samoan.
Did he come from Africa or whence? and Japan had to be explained. But
she said she was anxious to get back home, and that things here were
_leanga_ including the dance which we had been looking at, and the women
and girls who were coming up in a long file much bedizened with velvet,
cotton, paper cut into strips (of every shade imaginable), leaves around
the waist, etc.; from her all dressed all over, to her who only wore
long leafage about her hips. They were prettier than any we had seen:
that is to say they were some of them not unpleasant; but only a few:
and after all it is only the quite young who suggest anything more
delicate than the men. Raiwalui, one of the governor’s boys is more
feminine looking notwithstanding his strength and height than any Fijian
woman I have yet seen. All this is so far as we have seen, and as I told
you, so far the women and children get out of the way, not only because
they always do so more or less, but also because of our men who have
numbered at times several hundred, so that the women and children are
crowded away in corners to leave houses empty for the visitors. But the
Samoans looked like beauties alongside of their sisters of Fiji here,
and sailed off with much superiority and conscious ease while the Fijian
women had walked off in single file neither looking to right nor left,
but keeping a downward look and following their leader.
Dinner we had outside on the mats, and just before the new moon sank we
embarked in the dark upon the little river that was to take us to the
sea and the steam launch. We were poled along for some few miles near
mangrove trees whose roots hung above us, the wash from our water
splashing in among their roots and trunks. Occasionally some more solid
ground showed a few houses, or some clump of palms against the sky half
clouded. Then a long row out to the ship, all dark, large masses of dark
sea and dark sky, with the moon almost set, looking at us like a
half-closed eye under the forehead of an enormous band of dark cloud.
The next morning at ten we steamed for Ba, ran out quite far, but in
shallows inside the far reef, where at one place the beginnings of
things could be seen, as upon the horizon, at sea apparently, a line of
mangrove trees, widely spaced, dotted the sharp division of blue sea and
blue sky. Still between them there was a little greenish band like water
and really partly water, and to one side a little line was the reef on
which they had begun to grow.
Inland, the long lines of the mountains look faintly tawny and blue; the
swamp belt of mangroves surrounding the shore looked very low: we could
discern, at places, the circles or elevations by which we had passed
over the serrated edge of the mountains.
Then we ran into a river for some little while, the usual green bank,
the trees, and the sugar-cane, and the mountains in the distance with
here and there a strange pillar-like mountain or a perpendicular pile,
to remind one of volcanic forms.
A number of figures clothed in white sat upon the green bank and watched
the governor’s approach. When he landed they made the usual salutation
headed by the _roku_ or chief.
Nailaga, July 12th.