FOOD
Famine, in the European sense of the word, is unknown in Fiji. Even in
times of scarcity every native can find sufficient food to satisfy his
hunger, but, though the quantity is sufficient, the quality is not.
Ample in amount and in variety, it is lacking in nitrogenous
constituents, and it is unsuitable for young children and for women
during the periods of gestation and suckling.
The staple foods of the Fijians are Yams, Taro (_Arum esculentum_),
Plantains and Bread-fruit. Next to these in point of order are Kumala,
or Sweet Potatoes (_Ipomaea batatas_), Kawai (_Dioscorea aculeata_),
Kaile (_Dioscorea bulbifera_), Tivoli (_Dioscorea nummularia_),
Arrowroot, Kassava, Via (_Alocasia Indica_ and _Cyrtosperma edulis_),
China Bananas, Cocoanuts, Ivi Nuts (_Inocarpus edulis_), Sugar-cane, and
a number of other vegetables and fruits. Meat and fish are not reckoned
as "real food" (_kakana ndina_). They are eaten rather as a luxury or
zest (_thoi_).
[Pageheader: METHOD OF PRESERVING FOOD]
All these vegetables contain a large proportion of starch and water, and
are deficient in proteids. Moreover, the supply of the principal staples
is irregular, being greatly affected by variable seasons, and the
attacks of insects and vermin. Very few of them will bear keeping, and
almost all of them must be eaten when ripe. As the food is of low
nutritive value, a native always eats to repletion. In times of plenty a
full-grown man will eat as much as ten pounds' weight of vegetables in
the day; he will seldom be satisfied with less than five. A great
quantity, therefore, is required to feed a very few people, and as
everything is transported by hand, a disproportionate amount of time is
spent in transporting food from the plantation to the consumer. The time
spent in growing native food is also out of all proportion to its value.
The most valuable of all the staples is _ndalo_, or taro (_Arum
esculentum_), which can only be grown successfully in the wet districts
of the islands, or in places where there is running water. The only way
of preserving perishable foods known to the natives is the _mandrai_
pit. Bread-fruit and plantains are packed in leaves and buried in a deep
hole weighted with stones and earth. Fermentation, of course, sets in,
and when the pit is uncovered at the end of several months the stench is
appalling. The fruit is found reduced to a viscous pulp, and though it
turns the best regulated European stomach, it certainly tastes better
than it smells. It has never occurred to the Fijians to dry any of these
fruits in the sun, and grind them into flour, as is done in Africa. The
yam crop is precarious, and, at its best, only yields about seven-fold,
and then after immense expenditure of time and labour. In places in
which taro and bread-fruit are not plentiful the natives have become
accustomed to a season of scarcity from the month of November, when the
yam crop has been consumed, till February, when the new crop is ripe,
and in some districts this scarcity has been increased by the ravages of
the banana disease, which destroys the plantains. At these seasons, if
bananas are not obtainable, the natives subsist upon _ivi_ nuts, and
unwholesome and indigestible fruits and roots, such as _yaka_
(_Pachyrrhizus angulatus_) or _kaile nganga_, or upon such wild yams as
are obtainable. But even at such times every able-bodied man or woman
seems to be able to find enough to eat.
The staple animal food of the Fijian is fish, which is fairly abundant
in the coast villages, especially in those parts where fish-fences can
be erected, except in very stormy weather. Even in times of reported
famine it is found that the natives can always procure enough fish to
satisfy their hunger. On one occasion, when the province of Lau was
reported to be starving from the damage done by the disastrous hurricane
of January, 1886, the Government dispatched a relief steamer from
island to island to distribute rice and biscuits, but it was found that
the natives consumed the whole of their dole in one prodigal feast,
having quite sufficient fish and pumpkins for everyday use. The
regularity of the supply is proved by the fact that, though in Mathuata
and one or two other provinces the natives are acquainted with a method
of smoking or drying fish, they resort to it but seldom, preferring to
waste or throw away their superfluity to the trouble of curing it. In
Rewa, after a good haul, fish is preserved for a few days in leaves by
repeated cooking, and is thus often eaten tainted. At Mbau mullet is
eaten raw with a sauce of sea-water as a delicacy--a practice introduced
from Tonga.
Pigs and fowls are to be found in every native village, but they are
reserved for feasts or the entertainment of strangers, and are seldom
eaten by the owners as part of their diet. Except on such occasions
fowls are rarely killed, even for the use of a sick person. It is not
that any complicated system of joint ownership limits the use of these
animals to communal purposes, for pigs and fowls are owned by
individuals absolutely, and though the native will often treat one of
his pigs (called a _ngai_) with an almost Hibernian indulgence, and pet
and feed it in his house like one of his children, this affection does
not prevent him from slaughtering it and eating his share of it, when he
considers it sufficiently fat. Whatever may be the reason the Fijian
seldom eats a chicken and never an egg, although almost every other
denizen of the reef and the bush--shell-fish, snakes, iguanas, lizards,
grasshoppers, rats, grubs, chameleon-eggs, cats, dogs, wild duck, and,
in recent times, mongoose--at some time finds its way into his maw.
[Pageheader: PAST AND PRESENT COMPARED]
Milk, the principal sustenance for children in their first years, is not
to be had in native villages, and many Fijians vomit on first tasting
it.[105] Their agricultural system has imbued them with a prejudice
against cattle, which break down their weak fences, and trample and
destroy the yams and plantains. In the isolated instances, where the
chiefs keep goats or cattle as pets, they show, by their callous
disregard for their wants, that they have no sympathy with the
sufferings of the lower animals. The want of milk, as has been shown,
has an important bearing upon the relation between the sexes.
The Fijians have two regular meals in the day. The principal meal is
eaten in the afternoon when they return from their plantations.
Sometimes food is cooked for them before they start in the morning, but
more often they take with them some cold yam or taro left from the
previous day, or trust to being able to roast some wild food during the
intervals of their work. The women, however, generally cook a meal for
themselves and the children if there is sufficient food and firewood in
the house. The boys either eat with their parents or forage for
themselves in the bush, eating large quantities of unripe fruit, and
thus inducing the bowel complaints that are so common among them. In
some cases it is the custom to boil a separate pot of food for the
children to eat during the day. The men eat first, and when they are
satisfied the women and children may fall to upon what is left, but the
latter, during the operation of cooking, know how to take care of
themselves.
It is impossible to say whether the Fijians now plant less food than
formerly. The traces of extensive clearings that are to be seen on
almost every hillside prove nothing but that the population was once
much larger, and that the native planter shifts his ground year by year.
But the decay of custom has not left the food-supply untouched, for
supposing the production to be proportionately as great, the consumption
is proportionately far greater. In heathen times feasts were confined to
occasions of ceremony within the tribe, such as births, marriages and
funerals, or the rare visits of allies. In these days every meeting
connected with the Government or with the Missions is accompanied by a
feast to the visitors. There are, besides the half-yearly Provincial
Council, a District Council every month, and some three or four
missionary meetings every quarter, and, though these feasts are often
small enough, and the meetings are held in different villages of the
district or circuit in turn, they are all to be added to the ordinary
expenditure of food upon births, marriages and funerals, as well as the
little tribal _solevus_ that are held from time to time. Moreover, with
the introduction of European-built vessels, and the safety of travellers
from attack, travelling for pleasure has much increased, without any
diminution of the hospitality to visitors, which is enjoined by
customary law. The ravages of the imported banana disease, and the
damage done in some islands to the bread-fruit by horses (lately
introduced), which are inordinately fond of gnawing the juicy bark, have
diminished the supply of two important articles of food.
While intercourse with foreigners has had an unfavourable influence on
the regularity of the food supply, it has done very little to provide
the natives with new articles of diet. Preserved meats, biscuits, bread,
tea and sugar are used by many of the richer natives, but always as
luxuries, not as part of their daily diet. To these, and more
particularly to the use of sugar, the natives attribute the decay of
their teeth, a condition which they declare was unknown to the last
generation. Whether this be true or not, it is a remarkable fact that
among quite a hundred skulls which I have examined in burying-caves I
have never seen a decayed tooth, whereas it was lately possible for an
American dentist to realize a considerable sum by selling sets of false
teeth to the native chiefs.
The obvious defect in the Fijian dietary is the absence of all cereals.
It is alleged by planters of experience that in Fiji, where the
immigrant Melanesian labourer is fed upon native food, he is of less
value as a labourer than in Queensland, where he receives a ration of
bread and beef.
[Pageheader: PRIMITIVE IMPLEMENTS]
Cereals are the staple food of vegetarian races like the Indian and the
French peasant, and indeed of all races that have left their mark upon
history. But, though the Fijian has cultivated maize in the tax
plantations for many years, and has tasted rice prepared by the coolie
labourers, even growing it himself under European direction, he refuses
to regard either as fit for human food. And, though he has a liking for
bread and biscuits, he seems to consider both inferior to yams and
_taro_.
The labour of agriculture has been much lightened by European tools, and
for this reason more food may now be planted than in heathen times.
Formerly the reeds and undergrowth were broken down with a sharp-edged
wooden club, and burned as soon as they were dry enough; this work is
now performed in a tithe of the time with a twelve-inch clearing-knife.
The ground was then ready for the digging-stick, a tool which does
little credit to the inventive powers of the Fijians considering their
ingenuity in other directions. It is merely a pole of hard wood tapered
at the point by flattening one side. The diggers work in parties of
three or four, by driving their sticks into the ground to a depth of
twelve inches in a circle two feet in diameter. Then, bearing upon the
handles, they lever up the clod and turn it over. The women follow them
on their knees, breaking up the clods with short sticks, and finally
pulverizing the earth with their hands. The soil is then made into
little hillocks in which the yams are planted. The yams were weeded with
a hoe made of a plate of tortoise-shell or the valve of a large oyster.
Iron tools have superseded these, but, strange to say, the European
spade remains less popular than the digging-stick, because it cannot,
without pain, be driven into the ground with the bare foot. The most
popular implement at present seems to be a compromise between the two--a
digging-stick shod with a blade of iron--and it is astonishing how
quickly the Fijians will dig a piece of ground with this unscientific
tool.
Planting is made a picnic; the planter alternates spurts of feverish
energy with spells of rest and smoking in the shade. Though the Fijian
has learned the use of carts and wheel-barrows when working for
Europeans, he does not adopt them, preferring to harvest his roots by
carrying them in baskets slung across his shoulders with a stick. He
uses no mean skill in the irrigation of his taro beds, leading the water
to them by canals or by pipes made of hollow tree-fern trunks. For these
he is now substituting troughs of corrugated iron.
The question of diet may have but little bearing upon the stamina of the
adult Fijian, who is able to bear fatigue and exert his muscles as well
as the men of any race, but it may well be concerned with those obscure
qualities that threaten the race--the failure of the women to bear
vigorous children.
Water
It is strange that, though the islands are richer in unpolluted streams
of pure water than, perhaps, any country in the world the natives are
notoriously careless about the water that they drink. At the Annual
Meeting of Chiefs in 1885 they were reprehended by the Administrator, in
his opening address, for their careless habit of drinking bad water. In
their reply (Resolution 14) they said: "You mention bad water and
insufficiency of food as causes (for the excessive mortality), but we
are usually careful about the water we drink, and we think that there is
more food now than in former times." The Fijians are, in fact, quite
ignorant of what constitutes purity in drinking water. They assume any
water to be drinkable that is moderately clear and does not contain
solid impurities. There are villages that draw their drinking-water from
shallow holes that collect the surface-water from burying-grounds. Many
of the native wells are shallow pools lined with a sediment of decayed
leaves and supplied from the surface drainage from the village square,
which swarms with pigs. In the villages situated in the mangrove swamps
of the deltas of the large rivers no wholesome water can be obtained
without a journey of several miles, and the people use exclusively water
collected in surface depressions. In the sandy, rocky and riverless
islands the natives are content with surface-water when deep wells might
easily be sunk. And, even in villages which draw their water from pure
running streams, the water is carried and kept in bamboos and
cocoanut-shells that are half rotten, and are never cleansed. In this
respect, it is true, contact with Europeans has not affected their
customs either for better or for worse.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 105: The Government has succeeded in persuading a few chiefs
to keep milch cows, but they are not milked regularly.]