Basil Thomson

“ The wise one snatches the cloth from under the familiar’s arm and thrusts it under the stone, which falls on it with a heavy thud. Then in the pitchy darkness, with no sound but the faint gurgle of the shallow stream, he chants magic words in a quavering treble—words whose meaning is hidden from degenerate man, but which were handed down by the wise men of old, in the days when gods came up from the sea with white faces, strange head-gear, and turtles’ shells on their backs, and slew their forefathers, and sailed away in a magic canoe to the heavens whence they came. ”

“ To depart from the customs of the ancestors is to insult the tribal god, and it is therefore the business of each member of the tribe to see to it that the impiety of his fellow-tribesmen brings no judgment down upon his head. In such a community a man is only free from the tyranny of custom when he dies. As in the German's ideal of a well-governed city, everything is forbidden. Hedged about by the tabu he can scarce move hand or foot without circumspection. If he errs, even unwittingly, the spirits of disease pounce upon him. ”

“ Rain, rain, rain! The sodden thatch has long since ceased to turn the flood. The water beats down the tree-tops, bowing beneath its weight. A raging torrent has been formed through the village square. The soil is crumbling away to the house-foundations, and fast pouring out seawards. There are six inches of water in every house. The crazy rafters of Turo’s house have given way, and the last trophy has fallen and been whirled out to sea, grinning at its enemies’ new misfortunes. Voices are drowned in the never-ceasing roar of rushing water. ”

“ THE RAIN-MAKERS.
In Ambrym there is foolishness upon the coast, and wisdom among the hills. For two whole months there had been peace: the clubs lay idle in the eaves; the digging-stick replaced the spear; bold warriors ingloriously tilled the soil; and yet there was scarcity. Peace, and yet famine! December had come, but the yam-vines, already twining on the sticks, had sickened and withered; the taro swamp was hard and fissured, like old Turo’s face, and a stalk or two, blackened as by fire, was all that was left of the taro ”

“ New wants must be developed, wealth must take the place of rank as the factor of social importance, the idle must be made to feel the sting of poverty. The easy-going native must be made to feel the pangs of the auri fames, the earth must be cursed for him, competition with its unlovely spawn of class hatred, pauperism, and vagrancy must be cultivated in a people to whom they are unknown, for at present the Fijians have no spur to the acquisition of money except the desire for some particular luxury. ”

“ Far from the haunts of men there is a place where none dare to come alone. The land sloping up from Neiafu is broken here in a great precipice, against whose feet the mighty ocean-rollers, unchecked by any reef, break ceaselessly with a dull roar, making the overhanging rocks tremble a thousand feet above them. Landwards Haafulu Hao, with its myriad islets, is spread out like a map; seawards is nothing but the sleepless ocean meeting the blue sky. Thither the dead are brought to sleep in their white graves, untroubled by the living ”

“ When the law of custom is breaking down, as among the Fijians, discovery entails but little disgrace. In being selfish the Fijian is only being what white men are. He has no patriotism and no nationality; he does not regard Fiji as his country, for Fiji is the whole world as he knows it. The pride that he once took in his own little tribal cosmos is dying out now that he no longer has to fight for it, and he concerns himself less about the natives of the twelve provinces besides his own than an ordinary Englishman troubles about the Andaman Islanders. ”

“ In another moment the beach would be alive with men. Raluve drew Vere back into the shadow of the oleanders, and made him lie down lest his white face should be seen. He could see her crouching at the edge of the sand. Gradually he began to distinguish a dull rhythmical beat, and the girl drew back into the shadow. The sound grew louder, and then he saw a dark mass emerging from the night, which took the shape of a great canoe, creeping inshore against the light land-breeze which had just sprung up. ”

“ It is only at certain points in the sea reef fringing outlying islands that there are mbalolo holes. The canoes congregate there before midnight. The behaviour of the fish is the first signal; they are there in hundreds, dashing hither and thither in a criss-cross of phosphorescence. Towards morning they lie, stupid from surfeit, flapping their fins helplessly on the surface, and are speared in great numbers. It is an orgie of rapacity and greed. ”

“ And they, suddenly awakened, snatched every man a weapon, and ran hither and thither in the darkness, not knowing what they did. And the women shrieked, and the children wailed, and there was a great uproar. And when the men of Valekau heard it they leapt into the ditch, caring nothing for the sharp stakes, and tore down the war-fence, and thrust fire-sticks into the thatch of the houses, and the wind from the forest fanned the glow into a flame, and the thatch was ignited so that it became as light as day. ”

“ Steered by hand-signals from the watcher the canoe swings her head over him again, and another stone taps rudely at his shell. It may need a third or even a fourth to convince him that this rain of solid bodies from the upper world is more than accidental, but this unwonted exercise at meal times has bereft him of breath. Air he must have, and he makes slantwise for the surface. Then the sport begins; the watcher snatches off his sulu and plunges down into the depths to meet him. The art lies in seizing him by the edge of the fore-flipper, and in turning him over before he reaches the surface. ”

“ Romeo loved Juliet, there was not the slightest doubt about that; for although Juliet had been tattooed round the mouth, and had already married Tybalt, and had dug Tybalt’s yams and cut Tybalt’s firewood for the last two years, yet was Romeo ready to die for her. Verona slept peacefully in the bosom of a tiny green valley, shut in by great jagged mountains, and soothed by the lazy music of a tiny river whose water must travel many days before it mixed with the great salt ocean. ”

“ Through him the earth gives her increase. In December he comes forth from Mbulu, and pours sap into the fruit trees, and pushes the young yam shoots through the soil. Throughout that moon it is tabu to beat the drum, to sound the conch-shell, to dance, to plant, to fight, or to sing at sea, lest Ratu-mai-Mbulu be disturbed, and quit the earth before his work is completed. At the end of the month the priest sounds the consecrated shell: the people raise a great shout, carrying the good news from village to village, and pleasure and toil are again free to all. ”

“ Raluve had run to the nearest house, and it was that of Vere’s landlord and particular friend. But she outstripped him, and was among Vere’s assailants, raging like a tigress, long before he came up. It is no easy matter to quiet savages when their blood is once up; but her prestige among them was still great, and one after another they slunk off before her indignant flow of invective. She was almost terrible in her anger, as a woman can only be when she is defending some one she loves. ”

“ When we blame the Fijians for their thriftlessness we are prone to judge them by too high a standard, and to forget that they are land-owning peasants, a class which even among ourselves is exempt from the grinding necessity of perpetual toil—a state that has come to be regarded as the natural lot of the poor. The primitive organization of village communities among whom the tie of individual property is loose and ill-defined enough to please the most advanced socialist, causes thrift to be regarded as a vice, and wasteful prodigality the highest virtue. ”

“ How could the proper nourishment of young children in a country destitute of milk and farinaceous diet be provided for than by the fear that intercourse between the parents during lactation would impoverish the mother's milk and injure the child? In these days the custom of abstinence is decaying, and the mother is again pregnant before her child is fit to assimilate solid food, and she must either continue to nourish the child within her and the child at the breast, to the injury of both, or prematurely wean the latter to the certain injury of its health. ”

“ Rara is a stronghold set upon a hill, and the young men within it are as the kai-shells about the cooking-places for multitude, and they have Wanganivanua and Tumbanasolo, both terrible in war. If a man would climb the hill on this side, surely his body would be like a balawa-tree at the cross-roads, at which the boys throw their reeds, so thick would it be stuck with spears ”

“ To the Fijian mind no explanation was necessary.
Dancing in the meke appears to be a strong stimulus to passion in the women. At a big meke on the Ra coast one young man surpassed all his fellows in the war-dance, and as the torchlight gleamed on his oily limbs a young woman, unable to contain herself, rushed into the middle of the dancing ground, and clutching him, took his loin-cloth in her teeth. This terrible breach of decorum became the gossip of the district, and when she came to her senses she would have taken her own life for shame if her friends had not prevented her. ”

“ But Vere’s life was happy enough to be worth paying for. He had met Raluve every day, and had come to look on life as quite impossible without her. Sometimes they had met at a trysting-place of Raluve’s choosing in the forest, where a great tavola-tree barred the entrance into a narrow gorge in the hills. Sometimes they had wandered on moonlight nights along the sandy beach; and once Raluve had plunged, laughing, into the warm sea, daring him to follow her, and had swam to the little islet that lay a few hundred yards from the shore. ”

“ The insouciance that has followed the decay of custom was impossible, because the tribe that gave way to it was lost. The teaching of all history is that man deteriorates as soon as he ceases to struggle either against hostile man or unkind nature. A barren soil, an overcrowded community, or a fauna dangerous to man will serve the need, but in a country where there is food without tillage, land enough for twenty times the population, and no man-eating tiger or poisonous snake, there must be war to keep the people from sinking into paralyzing lethargy. ”

“ Government of the colony, were all exhaustively discussed in language more forcible than elegant. Long after Meli had hustled her companions off to their work, she was still declaiming in a voice that cut the ear like a knife. But when she became conscious that her audience had dwindled to five grinning native prisoners who did not understand her, the outbursts of eloquence became spasmodic, and at last she fell back upon the jail to brood over her wrongs. Then Meli’s courage returned to him, and, armed with a murderous-looking weeding-knife, he followed her to her lair. ”

“ The Fijian generally sleeps upon his back, with his head turned a little to one side, so that the part of the skull immediately behind the ear may rest upon the wooden neck-pillow. His hair is wrapped in a turban of bark-cloth to keep it well off the neck, and, if he has no blanket, his sulu is spread over head and all, like a winding-sheet over a corpse. This is perhaps as much for keeping off mosquitoes as for warmth. When not walking, he is either sitting cross-legged on the ground, or squatting with his haunches resting upon his heels. ”

“ It was just such a morning as the rest, and the rain-god laughed at spells. Nevertheless, the women were sent to cut firewood to store in the huts, and to gather a store of bush-nuts against the time when the bush would be impassable. The canoes at the river-mouth were hauled up lest the flood should carry them away, and old Turo sat on the beach looking eastwards, and chuckling to himself.
But at noon the day is not like other days. The cockatoos are screaming, which they never do at noon on other days. Insect life is awake. ”

“ Among civilized peoples there has been an ebb and flow of sexual morality so marked that historians have had recourse to the explanations of the example of the Court, or the fluctuations of religious earnestness among the people, assuming that, but for Christianity and education, mankind would be sunk in bestial licence. Every traveller knows this to be a fallacy. In Africa, of two races in the same stage of social development and in constant intercourse with one another, the one may tolerate a system bordering on promiscuity, and the other punish a single lapse with death. ”

“ It resolves into a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand; there is a muttering in the heavens, the clouds rush up the sky, though not a breath as yet cools the simmering air or stirs the palm-leaves. The muttering grows to a murmur, the murmur to a distant roar. The air becomes dark; the roar gathers volume. There! there! to the south a great [Pg 119] grey pillar rolls towards us, lashing the forest beneath it: the air grows cold. To your huts! it is upon us! and with a savage roar the rain-storm bursts. ”

“ There are pathetic stories of the terror inspired by the musket. At the siege of Verata men held up mats to ward off the bullets; at Nakelo, Savage was carried into action in an arrow-proof sedan chair of plaited sinnet, from which he picked off the defenders until they surrendered and were clubbed.
The rise of confederations changed everything. A village knowing itself weak in numbers and in arms, did not dare to defy the might of a power like Mbau or Rewa, and hastened to put itself under the protection of a powerful chief, paying tribute to him as a member of his confederation. ”

“ Then Bonawai of Valekau spoke. “It is true, O chiefs of Rara, that the war has been an evil one, for all our fortresses have been burned, and the land is empty. But neither did the war begin with us. True it is that the tree grows from the root, but there would be no root unless a seed had first been sown. Chiefly do I blame you, chiefs of Rara, for you were the cause of these wars. Have you forgotten that stick with which fish are taken—a magic contrivance of the foreigners—by which a man could stand and take fish until his arms fell to his sides from weariness? ”

“ In life he was wont to threaten them with punishment for disobedience, and even now, when they do the things of which he disapproved, or withhold their daily offerings of food at his tomb, punishment is sure to follow—the crops fail; a hurricane unroofs the hut; floods sweep away the canoe. Thus they come to propitiate the spirit armed with such powers to harm, and, in response to their prayers, victory is given them over their enemies. When they are beaten back, he is frowning upon them: when the yams ripen to abundant harvest he is rewarding their piety. ”

“ Rara esteemed them as slaves, things of no account, to be flouted at will; but they should know that a long peace does not blunt the spears nor paralyse the arms of Valekau. The bodies of their youths were not gross with slothful ease, nor the limbs of their elders stiff with wallowing on the mats. This insult must be paid for! But how? Then spoke Bonawai, the Odysseus of the tribe, versed in all the wiles and craft that bring a people to greatness—Bonawai na dau vere, Bonawai the schemer. ”

“ But are you so strong that if you are speared, you will not fall until to-morrow? Are ye stones, that a spear cannot pierce you? Are your skulls of iron, that a bullet will not penetrate them?" Under the excitement of this war of words indiscreet men were betrayed into playing with the name of the chief of the enemy. They will cut out his tongue, devour his brains, use his skull for their drinking-cup. These became at once marked men, and special orders were given to take them alive. On Vanualevu the punishment that awaited them was the torture called drewai sasa, to carry fuel like old women. ”

“ A man runs out, and in a moment returns. “It is Ana Finau,” he says; “the police are doing something to her.”
The wail of agony comes again, mixed with the accents of a man’s voice in anger, and a dull sound like a blow.
“Go and tell them to be quieter,” says the presiding Matabule; “or stay,” he adds, “tell them to take her farther off. Don’t they know we are drinking kava?”
Franz Kraft is entertaining to-night. It is a fact to be remembered in Vavau when one copra-trader spends the evening with another, for competition is strong and the milk of human kindness watery. ”

“ To the eastward the kingdom of Somosomo swallowed up the whole of Taveuni and the eastern portion of Vanua Levu, while the Tongan immigrants under Maafu first conquered the Lau group, and then threatened the independence of Mbau itself. The immediate effect of subjugation was to blight the traditions and religion of the conquered tribe, for independence is as necessary to their life as light and air to the life of a plant. It is astonishing how quickly the status of a Fijian is reflected in his bearing. ”

“ And with the dawn the wind grew stronger, till it would have been unsafe for Finau to [Pg 163] stand up, even if she would. The face of the cliff, too, behind her became visible, and she saw with terror the dangers of the path she had traversed by the dim light of the stars. One false step and her body would have fallen down there, where ledge upon ledge and pinnacle upon pinnacle of grey limestone-rock are half hidden by ferns and creepers, as the thorns of the matolu are hidden by its velvet leaves, and beneath all a white hell of roaring waters. ”

“ No less in Tonga than in Fiji is ridicule the most effective weapon of intimidation. The people are enslaved, but to a more merciless despotism than the tyranny of chiefs—the ridicule of their fellows. ”

“ The spirits of the coast natives jumped from the north-west cliffs into the sea, and the wraiths of the old mountain chiefs lived in the thick forest—at least so the old men said; but as no one had ever been there and come back, how could any one know? True, the teacher said that a white man had been there and come back, but then white men eat biscuits and things out of tins, and have other gods, and so they probably go to a different place. For the place Romeo was thinking of, with bitterness gnawing at his savage heart, was Death, and the path that led to it was Langaingai. ”

“ It was such a trap as this that compassed the destruction of the landing party from the East Indiaman Hunter at Wailea in 1813, when even that crafty and experienced warrior Charles Savage expiated his crimes. Cunning was more esteemed than courage; the craft of Odysseus more than the battle-fire of Achilles. There is no equivalent in the Fijian language for the word "treachery," for lawaki, the nearest synonym, signifies a virtue rather than a crime, and a successful act of treachery evoked the same admiration as triumphant slimness is said to do among the Boers. ”

“ Suddenly they heard a woman’s voice in the road calling her name, and in another moment one of her women looked in at the door breathless, saying, “I am dead of looking for you. The chief sent me. We sail to-morrow, and it is his word that you come at once.”
Raluve looked at Vere appealingly. “There will be much anger shown to me,” she said; “how shall it be? Am I to go?”
We never know the turning-points in our lives at the time; and so Vere, following that which supplies healthy-minded men with a substitute for a conscience, his own inclination—said, “Do not go. If they are angry come to me.” ”

“ These too had had their tribal gods and tribal chiefs, but what have men, reduced to open slavery, to do with such dignities? A generation of ill-usage sufficed to wipe out the very memory of independence. For god and chief alike they had their suzerain, upon whose indulgence their lives depended.
Besides the fortune of war, the chiefs owed much of the enormous increase in their power to their system of land tenure. The land boundaries of the tribe were telescopic. Every tribe owned as much land as it could defend against the encroachments of its neighbours. ”

“ The wind was increasing in force, and it boomed across the [Pg 164] mouth of the cave like a great organ-pipe. In the lulls a hollow roar seemed to come from the very bowels of the island. Somewhere far below the great ocean-rollers poured in, driving the imprisoned air through the mouth with terrific force. Surely no living man could dare the feats of those old heroes of tradition?
No! Death in such a place, and in such a way, were too horrible, and Finau, trembling and weak, looked round for a way of escape. ”

“ The assailants creep stealthily forward until they are almost within spear-throw, and then every man acts as if his first duty was to take care of himself. Every stone, every tree has a man behind it, for the Fijian can outmatch the world in the art of taking cover. ”