THE ISLAND-WORLD.
On recovering myself I plunged into the leafy grove which clothed the
mountain side. Being now increasingly fearful of being seen by the
inhabitants of some inland town, I moved warily. Afflicted with a raging
thirst, I climbed a high tree, on which I observed a parasitical plant,
the leaves of which acting as a kind of rain-gauge, supplied me with
cups of the most beautifully pure water, that sparkled like dew in these
elegant green vessels. Never was mortal drought more gratefully slaked.
A shaddock plucked from its nest of green completed a light and
refreshing breakfast. Turning round to descend, I discovered on a level
with myself, in the umbrageous shade of the tree-top, the entrance to a
cave, which was not visible from the open. The locality was well guarded
from view, for close by the grotto a venerable vutu rakaraka reared its
stately form to a height of 60ft. The huge arch-like branches it threw
out were clasped by the twining roots of epiphytical fig-trees, and a
number of climbing plants, interlaced with wax flowers, formed a mass of
diverse greenery, shaping a wild fantastic scene in which the light of
day was only dimly perceptible. Entering the cavern, I found it of
considerable dimensions. The water dripping through the limestone roof
had formed, as I could see when my eyes became accustomed to the faint
light, the most beautiful stalactites, which depended in elegant forms,
fashioning crystal draperies worthy to form the hangings for a Temple of
Nature.
It seemed that the foot of man had never before entered the gloomy
chamber. This abode was admirably suited to me; I was always sure of a
safe retreat when the natives appeared in view, for the cave was only to
be discovered by climbing a high tree, and the dainties of the primeval
orchard, with an occasional wild yam, would always suffice for the
necessaries of life. (My yams I roasted at a small fire, which I kindled
with sparks produced by laboriously rubbing the point of one stick in
the grooved side of another, in the manner copied from the method of the
South Sea Islanders, which had often been shown to me on the schooner.
My cooked esculent was equal to the best floury potato I had ever
tasted.) For the rest, I could walk to the hill-tops every day and keep
a careful look-out for the arrival of some European ship on the coast,
when I would stealthily descend and once more regain my liberty.
I made frequent excursions from my subterranean dwelling. As I ascended
the high peaks of Viti Levu I noticed that the forests differed greatly
in appearance from those of the lowlands. The trees were densely covered
with mosses, lichens, and deep orange-coloured orchids. Some of the
ferns were of vast dimensions, and the deep silence and repose which
reigned in these sylvan retreats gave to them an air of impressive
solemnity. Sometimes on topping an eminence a large part of the
archipelago came into view. The sea was gemmed with islands and islets,
which lay on its bosom, adding beauty to beauty, like pearls strung on a
lovely woman’s neck, and the refreshing trade wind came across the
spangled mirror of the ocean, fanning the heights with its delicious
coolness, which was especially grateful after the steaming heat of some
of the valleys and air-excluded copses.
The strange view of scores of islands and islets scattered over the
ocean interested me greatly. In many instances the encircling reef was
visible, sending jets of milk-white foam high into the air, where they
burst like rockets, and glittered in the sun like columns of shattered
diamonds.
Occasionally a fleet of large sailing canoes appeared in sight, bound on
some pleasure excursion or warlike expedition. Sitting on a rocky
prominence on a fine day, I could see these summer islets floating on
bright spheres of tropic sea, stretching from point to point like a
beautiful panorama, and I thought the world had no fairer spectacle to
show. The canoes glided past with a stately sweep. They gradually became
mere dots in the distance, and I began to think of the nautilus
spreading its purpled wings to the wind, and coquetting in the enchanted
gulfs of the fable, till I involuntarily looked to see “the cold
sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.” The return of the canoes to
port was as magnificent a spectacle as their departure and gradual
fading from sight. Nothing could be more beautiful than to see them, one
by one, fold their coloured wings and come to anchor with the dainty
grace of a sea-bird settling on the crest of a wave.
When I took my lonely bird’s-eye views of what was visible of this small
island-world, it often occurred to me that I was looking upon fragments
which were but remnants of a vast continent in past times—rafts with men
upon them anchored out at sea, to tell us where the giant forces of
Nature tore asunder great countries, now broken into a thousand pieces.
The knowledge acquired in subsequent years confirmed my first
impressions.
A glance at the map of Polynesia is enough to show the fitness of the
name given to the myriad islands and islets that stud the whole western
half of the vast Pacific. Group after group, island after island, reef
everywhere stretching out to embrace reef, north and south of the line
for thousands of miles, keeping the mariner ever anxious by day and
sleepless by night, seem to tell us, in language that cannot well be
mistaken, of mighty continents that once were, and, for anything we know
to the contrary, are again to be.
Who could look down as from a bird’s eyrie on this great island-world,
and still adhere to some of the old theories which profess to deal with
the question of how these homes became inhabited. Turn again to the map.
Beginning at Behring’s Strait, across which the old and new worlds might
almost shake hands, we pass southward to the Aleutian islands, which
form a well-nigh unbroken semi-circular chain from the Kamschatkan to
the Alaskan Peninsula. With the help of a body of fabled giants these
islands might easily be changed into a substantial bar which should at
once block up the “North-West Passage,” and provide the foundations for
a road over which the engines of Russia and America might rush to and
fro, between the two worlds. From Cape Lopatka to the southernmost point
of Japan, a similar highway would be possible to like able workmen. Thus
on, preceded by these god-like navvies, filling up comparatively narrow
spaces between countless islands and reefs, we might travel from Japan
to the Loochoos, from the Loochoos to Formosa, from Formosa to the
Philippines, from these to the massive island of New Guinea, southerly
to Australia; thence easterly to New Britain, to the Solomons, the New
Hebrides, the Fijis, the Friendlies, the Navigators, and out beyond
mid-ocean to the Society Islands, the Low Archipelago and the Marquesas.
With this picture of Pacific highways before us, it is barely possible
to arrive at any other conclusion, than that the continent of Asia, in
vastly remote ages it may be, was spread out over the greater portions,
if not the whole, of what is now known as the North, North-West, and
South Central Pacific. We may reasonably suppose it to have been
inhabited by those races who in the first ages of their history sought
the Rising Sun. Volcanic action, and oceanic erosion were early at work
at their great engineering task of sinking and wearing away all the
lower and less protected foundations; but man lived on, taking and
keeping possession of the isolated higher lands to which by very
gradual, perhaps almost imperceptible degrees, he had been driven. Does
not this seem a better theory with respect to these Polynesians, than
one which would have us believe that, in miserable little canoes, they
must at different times have drifted away from Asia, for thousands of
miles against a whole army of opposing elements—tides, ocean currents,
trade winds, &c.
From such a theory as this it may not be wrong further to presume, at
least till some better theory arises out of scientific investigation,
that, just as these countless islands stand decked in orient beauty, as
so many broken monuments to show us where Eastern Asia once stretched
forth her arms, so the red, brown, and black Polynesian tribes remain to
tell us how the teeming populations of that great continent once flowed
eastward, even until they reached the American world, and were stayed in
their course only by the Atlantic. Every separate group seems to
strengthen this view by its geological character, its geographical
position, and its legendary lore.
Fiji is the largest group of Islands in the Western Pacific. In looking
at its chart the thought at once strikes us, that the 200 islands which
compose it must, at some remote period, have been connected by lands
which the sea has since engulfed. One cannot escape the suspicion that
what is now broken up into a thousand pieces, must once have been a
country of large proportions, and of surpassing richness and beauty. And
further, if Fiji had not at one time a continental connexion, was it not
in itself one vast island instead of many small ones.
Imagine such an island extending far beyond the limits of the present
group of remnants, say, some 600 miles from east to west, and 500 miles
from north to south, and we have before us a picture of what was, not
unlikely, ancient Fiji—a land of high mountains and far-stretching
plains, of rivers, lakes, and springs of water, of shores thrown out
here and there into bold and rocky prominence, or stretching away in
long lines of shingle and sand.
Once again, let our imagination conjure up pictures of deeds of
might,—deeds such as Fijian mythology is full of,—“shaking,” “breaking
down,” “kicking out of the way,” “undermining,” and “sinking,” all the
lower lands, and, it may be, not those alone, and it will no longer seem
strange, how that of the once magnificent whole, there remain to-day
only these 200 abrupt mountainous fragments, ranging in size from 300
miles in circumference, to a single rock, with room for nought upon it
but a solitary cocoanut palm; or lower yet, to a mound of sand only big
enough for a mother turtle to lay her eggs in without grumbling. From
these islands and islets, reefs of every size and form may be seen
spreading out their claws, as if to mark where the ancient lands stood
before their subsidence, and, perhaps, further intended for the more
useful work of reconstruction, by linking together in the course of long
ages these scattered yet valuable and beautifully luxuriant fragments.
However all this may be, one thing seems certain, that these lands would
be utterly unable to hold their own, but for the prodigious work of that
silent little builder, who, upon the sunken _débris_ of sunny plains
that were, has piled up and cemented together those grand and unique
breakwaters, in comparison with which the defensive and aggressive works
of man are but as paper walls. Against the coral-reef barrier, erosive
equatorial currents, tidal waves, and all the battalions of ocean may
charge in vain.
The natives call their country Viti (pronounced Veety.) It is to be
regretted that the harsher sounding word “Fiji,” applied by the Tongans
from the Friendly Islands, has been adopted in its stead by us, inasmuch
as “Viti” is a good representative word of the euphonious characteristic
of the language, in the most perfect and widely-known dialect, in which
there is hardly a harsh sound to be heard.