SWIMMING
Swimming seems to come naturally to every Fijian. As soon as a child can
toddle, it is playing at the water's edge with older children, and
little by little it ventures out until its feet are off the bottom.
Being supposed to be a natural action like walking, no attempt is made
to teach it. Inability to swim is always a source of derisive amusement.
I remember a journey inland, where many swollen creeks had to be
crossed, and all bridges had been broken down. A servant who was with
us, a native of Malicolo, who could not swim, had to be ferried across
clinging to an impromptu raft of banana stumps. Though the wearied
carriers had to cut and make this raft anew at every crossing, the roars
of good-natured laughter seemed to be ample reward, and the joke never
grew stale.
In long-distance swimming the natives adopt a sort of side-stroke, in
which nothing but the head is above water. They move smoothly and
rapidly through the water, the legs and the right arm giving the
propulsion, and the left hand striking downwards under the body. When a
quick spurt is required, they use the overhand action with both arms
alternately, with the cheek resting flat on the water as the arm on that
side is driven aft. With this action they can swim at greater speed than
all but the best European swimmers. They can swim immense distances, and
no swimming-board or float is ever used, as in the Eastern Pacific, in
surf swimming, except by children in their play.
[Pageheader: METHOD OF DIVING]
There are many swimming games, such as chasing a fugitive and wrestling
in the water. On a calm evening the water is black with the heads of
laughing men and women. I have joined in these sports, and though I am
at home in the water, as swimmers go in England, I confess that when I
was pulled down by the legs from below, and ducked from above when I
tried to come up, I was glad to escape from them with my life. In the
game of _ririka_ (leaping) a cocoanut log is laid slantwise from the
beach to an upright post in the water. The people run up this incline in
endless file, and their plunges whiten the surrounding water with foam.
The Fijian is a good diver, though inferior to the Rotuman and the
native of the Line Islands. When diving he does not plunge head first
from the swimming position, but draws his head under, and reverses the
position of his body under water without creating a swirl. If the water
is not too deep, when he reaches the bottom he lies flat with his nose
touching the sand, his hands being behind the back, and propels himself
with incredible speed by digging his toes into the sand. English divers,
who can realize the difficulty of this manoeuvre, may be inclined to
doubt this statement, and for their benefit I will relate how I came to
have ocular demonstration. At Christmas-time in 1886 I organized
athletic sports at Fort Carnarvon, an isolated little quasi-military
post garrisoned by fifty men of the Armed Native Constabulary in the
heart of Vitilevu. The mountaineers of the neighbouring villages were
invited to compete with the soldiers, who were recruited from the coast.
In wrestling and running the soldiers held their own, but when it came
to swimming and diving they were nowhere. The course was a backwater of
the river about 8 feet deep, and I went down the bank 150 yards from the
starting-point to judge the winner. Our most expert diver was a Mathuata
coast man, and he came to the surface 20 yards short of me, after being
down 75 seconds. I had already written him down as winner, when a head
bobbed up fully 20 yards beyond me. It was a sooty-skinned,
insignificant little mountaineer, who did not seem much distressed, and
was so pleased with our applause that he offered to repeat the feat. I
sent for him next day, and took a lesson in 4 feet of clear water, where
I could plainly see his every movement. It amused him immensely to see
my futile efforts to keep my head on the bottom, for whenever I drove
myself forward with my toes, my head would rise to the surface. The art
seemed to be to arch the body so that the head and feet were lowest, and
to move the legs with the knees drawn straight up under the stomach. I
raced him, he using the ground and I swimming under water, and found
that he went more than twice as fast. The hill natives, who bathe only
in fresh water, are better swimmers than the coast people.
Another water game is peculiar to the rivers. In flood-time, when the
river is running like a mill-race, you put to sea on a banana stump,
with the thinner end held firmly between the knees, and the butt under
your chest, using the hands to steer and keep yourself in mid-stream. In
shooting the rapids, you let the submerged end take the bump over the
stones, but sometimes you receive serious bruises. Woe betide you if you
get into a whirlpool and turn over, for you then have to part from your
craft, and are in danger of being sucked under and drowned. From Fort
Carnarvon the river sweeps round a bend of fifteen miles, and returns to
a point not very far from the place of departure. We used to set forth
in a flotilla of twenty, and cover the distance in little more than
half-an-hour, our native companions keeping up an incessant chorus of
laughter and song as we swept past the villages.
In one place on the Singatoka, near Nakorovatu, the sunken rocks cause a
back current nearly as fast as the main stream, an elongated whirlpool
half-a-mile long. A few strokes at each end are enough to take you from
one stream into the other, and you may thus be carried up and down the
river without effort.
[Pageheader: THE DEEP PLUNGE]
Fijians never take headers. Under ordinary circumstances they bathe
without immersing the head, because their thick mat of hair is difficult
to dry. When they plunge from a height it is always feet first. I once
lost my ring in the deep pool at the mouth of the submarine cave at
Yasawa-i-lau, and I offered a sovereign to any one who would find it.
The water was over twenty feet deep, and the divers found that they
could not reach the bottom with breath enough to search for it without
plunging from a height. Even then they plunged in feet first, and turned
over when near the bottom. But the ring had evidently sunk into the soft
white ooze, which the divers churned into a thick cloud until further
search was useless.