Fiji Islands

“ The population of the Fiji Islands is 87,000 natives and 90,000 Indians. A governor is appointed by the British parliament. He receives three thousand pounds a year. The total revenue is £240,000 annually.
The future of the Fijian Islands is described as uncertain, owing to the Indian Government blocking the importation of industrial labor—the contracts of the present laborers expire in 1921.
The natives are a happy lot, and they do not worry so long as they have enough to eat. Elephantiasis prevails among them, as it does in most islands of the Pacific. ”

“ It was nearly ten days after we had been tangled up in the Fiji Islands when we sighted the large island of Viti Levu, and turned the Snark's bow into another of the South Seas' famous ports. Suva, Fiji, looms up from the sea, quite like a modern city, and is really the most modern in this part of the world. Nearly half of its eight thousand persons are of white blood; and Suva is also chief station of the Pacific commercial cables. Several modern hotels and large headquarters for the trading concerns are to be found here. ”

“ All the young men on board could not refrain envying him his happiness in the possession of so lovely and interesting a creature. They arrived safe at one of the Fiji islands, and resided with a certain chief during two years: at the end of which time, hearing of the death of the tyrant THE TONGA ISLANDS. 265 of Vavaoo, the young chief returned with his wife to the last mentioned island, and lived long in peace and happiness. ”

“ In their case, the spirits left the N.W. point of the island at Te Raki Point on their way to the general gathering place with their ancestors at Hawaiki.
At the west end of Vanua-lava, the largest of the Fiji Islands, is a balawa tree (Pandanus) where the spirits depart for the ancestral home by passing into the sea. It will be shown later, how much the Fiji group has been connected with the Polynesian race, though the present inhabitants are a cross between that race and the Melanesian. ”

“ When one glances at the map the members of the stupendous island wilderness of the Pacific seem to crowd upon each other; but no, there is no crowding, even in the center of a group; and between groups there are lonely wide deserts of sea. Not everything is known about the islands, their peoples and their languages. A startling reminder of this is furnished by the fact that in Fiji, twenty years ago, were living two strange and solitary beings who came from an unknown country and spoke an unknown language. ”

“ From 40,000 to 50,000 Indian coolies live in these rich islands, most of whom work in the sugar-cane fields. Then there are what is known as the Solomon Island "boys," in considerable numbers in Fiji, engaged at the same work. The Fijian will not do hard work if he has a chance to run away. Indians are brought to Fiji under the indenture system for a term of five years. At the end of the indentureship, though, they may remain in Fiji. Herein a similar blunder was made in Natal, South Africa. Indians will eventually own the sections of Fiji worth having ”

“ Section 5 State and religion Although religion and the State are separate, the people of the Fiji Islands acknowledge that worship and reverence of God are the source of good government and leadership. ”

“ At the Fiji islands the boys and girls go quite naked, the girls till they are about ten years old, the boys till they are about fourteen : after which periods the girls wear the usual dress of the women, which consists merely in a sort of circular apron, about a foot or fourteen inches broad, worn quite round the waist : when they grow old, it is increased to about a foot and a half in breadth. ”

“ THE FIJI (FEEJEE) ISLANDS. (?)
Situation.—Eastward of the New Hebrides, the most eastern part of Kelænonesia. Westward of the Tonga Isles, the most western part of Polynesia.
The physical conformation of the Fiji natives is Negrito as well as Polynesian.
The language of the Fiji natives is more Polynesian than Negrito.
The social institutions, manners, and customs of the Fiji natives are partly Polynesian, partly Negrito, and partly neither one nor the other.
These statements, combined with their geographical position, give importance and prominence to the Fiji group of islands. ”

“ No, not for a long time, but I did hear that the American corvette Adams was expected here last year, but she must have passed by here, and gone on to Fiji There is always work for a man-of-war there at any time—the Fijians are a rough lot, and hardly a month passes without some European trader or sailor being killed and eaten, or else badly hurt. Even at the present time all the people living in the eastward islands of the Fiji Group are rank cannibals. ”

“ The colony of Fiji is a group of 225 islands, between which the communications by sailing-vessels or steamers are not very regular, the former being frequently becalmed or retarded by head-winds, while the latter are of small power and low speed. An important part of the trade of the Islands consists in exporting fruit and other produce to Australia and New Zealand, the largest portion consisting of bananas, of which a single steamer will sometimes carry about 12,000 bunches. ”

“ They were pleased with the Fiji maxim, that war and strife were the noble employments of men, and ease and pleasure worthy to be courted only by the weak and effeminate. Tooi Hala Fatai accordingly set sail with his followers, about 250 in number, in three large canoes, for the island of Laemba; not to make an attack upon the place, but to join one party or the other, and rob, plunder, procure canoes, kill the natives, and in short to do any thing that was, according to their notions, active, noble, and glorious. ”

“ Since, however, as we have previously seen, the Fijian Islands still enjoy a fairly free communication with the islands westward, whilst the Hawaiian group is largely cut off, it is apparent that the tendency to generic differentiation in Fiji might have been often swamped by immigration, and that Fiji with its much smaller number of endemic genera may even be older than Hawaii. ”

“ This canoe is capable of great speed, though it does not look very [127] 14 safe. It is giving place now to boats of a European type.
The Fiji Islands, the most important group in this 15 part of the Pacific, are really the higher parts of a great bank in the ocean; the bank is fringed by reefs and coral islands, and in the middle is the Koro Sea, like a vast lagoon, with a wide opening to the south. On the western side of the bank are the islands of Viti Levu and Vanua Levu ”

“ Owing to the geographical nature of the Fiji group, which consists of seven groups of islands, some of them very large and some very small, the mode of government has never been monarchical, the country being ruled by a number of chiefs of greater or less importance, according to the amount of territory over which their sway extended. ”

“ They remained here about two years and a half, towards the end of which period they were not contented with joining the wars of others, but entered into one of their own, for the greater acquirement of plunder: and their superior bravery rendered them very successful. Tired at length with their long absence from home, they returned to Tonga; leaving their own canoes behind them, and coming away in the better formed ones of the Fiji islands. In their passage however they experienced a heavy gale, during which one of the canoes, with some of the choicest men, was lost. ”

“ Similar instances are familiar amongst the other Pacific archipelagos, and notably in the case of Bau in Fiji; and they may all be attributed to the fact that the coast-tribes are of more robust physique and of more enterprising character than the inhabitants of the interior of the larger island, or “bush men” as they are often termed.
The large island of St. Christoval is divided amongst numerous tribes between which there are constant feuds, each tribe having its own chief. A wide distinction exists between the inhabitants of the interior and those of the coast ”

“ This, however, is not to be consi- dered the natural disposition of the Tonga peo- ple, but a practice which, along with that of war, they have learned from the natives of the Fiji islands, where a man seldom goes out, even perhaps with his greatest friend, without being armed, and cautiously upon his guard. ”

“ The mountains on the western side, called Ta- cownove, are the highest On the base of one of these mountains are two hot springs, situated near together, at which a neighbouring garri- son generally boil their yams and plantains, by putting them into a vessel with holes in the side, and suffering the boiling water to pass through it*. The natives of the Fiji islands are much more curly headed than those of the Tonga islands ”

“ These Lau islands are set one after another, like the leeward isles of the West Indies, in a long sweeping crescent along the eastern edge of the archipelago, and are only about 270 miles west of Tonga, hence the Tongans, under their great chief Maafu, overran them, killing the men and capturing the women, and producing a tall, fine-featured, brown-skinned "Vititonga" race, far superior to the negroid peoples of the western islands of the Fijis.
In Fiji, as elsewhere in the Pacific, the strongest natives live along the shore where coral reefs and cocoanuts afford abundant and varied food. ”

“ They find a difficulty in getting the natives of Fiji to work for them, so they have to obtain labourers from other islands, and this was the work our schooner was engaged in. Our cargo was quickly distributed among the planters, some taking ten, some twenty, or as many as they could get.
“The natives of Fiji are black and fine big fellows. They wear their hair frizzled out, and big turbans on the top of all; some of them, indeed, wear great wigs over their own hair, for the larger a man’s head is, the more important he thinks himself. ”

“ So from island unto island the Percy Edward cruised, looking more disreputable every day, until as the months went by she began to resemble in her tattered gear and dejected appearance her fatuous passengers. At last, after being considerably chivvied about by the white and native inhabitants of the various islands touched at, the forlorn expedition reach Fiji. Here fifty of the idealists elected to remain and work for their living under a Government... ”

“ War on a destructive scale is impossible among a people split up into petty joint families, each bent upon defence rather than conquest. In order to understand the political state of Fiji two centuries ago one must examine the institutions of other races that are still in the same condition. The natives of the d'Entrecasteaux Islands as I saw them in 1888 afford an excellent illustration. As we travelled along the coast we found that every village [Pg 87] had its frontier, a stream-mouth, or a sapling stuck upright in the sand, beyond which none would venture. ”

“ For the last twenty years the end of the missionaries' endeavour has been to bring the somewhat precariously converted natives [299] to a fuller comprehension of the meaning of Christianity, while the government has built roads, established a large and efficient native police force and encouraged agriculture to such good effect that Fiji ranks second only to Hawaii among the Pacific islands as a sugar producer and also figures extensively as an exporter of copra and fruit. ”

“ I have engaged to go to Fiji (D.V.) at the end of my island work, i.e., on my return to Norfolk Island, probably about the end of September. I shall go there in the "Southern Cross," send her on to her summer quarters in New Zealand, and get from Fiji to New Zealand, after six or eight weeks in Fiji, in some vessel or other. There are about 4,000 or 5,000 white people in Fiji, mostly Church of England people, but (as I suppose) not very clearly understanding what is really meant by that designation. It is assumed that I am to act as their Bishop ”

“ The others we kept pretty peaceable by similar tricks, though they kept asking somewhat anxiously, when they were to be put on shore.
“At last we reached one of the many islands of the Fiji group. I had never been there before; but I had heard that the people were terrible cannibals. So they were till the missionaries persuaded the king and his chiefs, and most of his subjects, to give up the practice. A considerable number of white men have of late years settled on several of the islands, and have bought land to grow coffee and other things. ”

“ When dealing with the general character and composition of the strand-plants of the tropical Pacific, it is shown that in Fiji the beach-plants often assert their primary xerophilous habit or fitness for occupying any dry station by extending into the inland plains on the dry sides of the islands. The Fijian shore-plants are divided into three formations, those of the beach, those of the 516mangrove-swamp, and those of intermediate stations on the borders of the swamps. The great majority of the Fijian shore-plants are dispersed by the currents. ”

“ The rich soil of the islands, and the equitable climate, which is much like that of the rice-growing districts of the south of India, promise enhanced prosperity as the years go by, Fiji being a locality especially suitable for the Indian immigrant. ”