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The Project Gutenberg eBook of
South Sea Yarns
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOUTH SEA

YARNS ***
 SOUTH SEA YARNS

“While the men were digging the oven and lining it.”
SOUTH SEA YARNS
 BY

BASIL THOMSON

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS

EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCXCIV

All Rights reserved

TO

MY WIFE
 INTRODUCTION.

In the great bure of Raiyawa there was a story-telling. The lying-

places filled three sides of the house—mats spread upon grass four
feet wide,—and between each lying-place was a narrow strip of bare
earth sprinkled with wood-ashes, on which three logs, nose to nose,
were smouldering. A thin curl of blue smoke wreathed upwards from
each to the conical roof, where they met and filtered through the
blackened thatch; so that from outside the bure looked like a
disembowelled haystack smouldering, ready to burst into flame. On
the fourth side was a low doorway, stopped with a thick fringe of
dried rushes, through which ever and anon a grey-headed elder
burst head-foremost, after coughing and spitting outside to
announce his arrival. Beside the doorway was a solitary couch, the
seat of honour, to which the foreigner, footsore and weary with his
tramp across the mountains, was directed, having in his turn dived
trustingly through the rushes like the rest. The couches were filling,
and the elders were settling down in twos to rest, slinging their legs
over the fender-bar that lay conveniently on its forked supports, and
turning to the grateful glow that part of his anatomy that man
delights to roast—for the night was falling, and a chilly mist was
rising from the river. Then one of them rose and made with his hand
a tiny aperture in the rush-screen, through which the dull twilight
showed white. “Beat!” he cried; and the rest beat the reed walls with
their open palms, and the house was filled with the angry hum of a
myriad mosquitoes, that flew into the smoke and out towards the
king-post, and then, seeing the twilight and the fresh air, sailed in a
compact string through the opening, so that in three minutes there
was not one of them left. Thereafter one might sleep in peace
without slapping the back and the bare thighs, for the rushes
brushed them from the body of each incomer, and their furious hum
outside was impotent to hurt.
At length every place was filled, and from the darkness Bongi began
and told of the mountain-paths—how the foreigner would rest
before the hill was climbed, gasping like a fish, and asked many
foolish questions of the old time and the present; and of the courts,
how Bitukau had had his hair cropped, having been taken in sin and
judged; and of how the foreigner had given him strange meats to
eat that were enclosed in iron, having first broken the iron and
cooked the meats on a fire.
“Yes,” said Bosoka, “such were the meats that a foreigner gave to
the men of Kualendraya, bidding them heat the meats on a fire and
eat; but when they did so, the meats blew up like a gun, and
scalded them grievously. Foreigners must be strong indeed to eat
such meats.”
“And the foreigner told me tales,” continued Bongi—“wonderful tales,
hard to believe: of stone houses larger than this whole village; of
strings going under the sea to other lands by which men talk,
sending no ship to bear the tale; of steamers that go on land faster
than a horse can run.”
“Foreigners are great liars,” said old Natuyalewa, sententiously. “But
the land steamers may be true, for at Nansori it is said the sugar-
cane is carried by steamers on the land. Tomase, who worked there,
told me of this; and it may be true that they talk with strings, for a
man may make many signs by jerking a sinnet cord which another
holds, pulling harder at times and then softly. But the stone house—
such tales as these they tell to increase their honour in our eyes, but
they are lies, for there is no land so great as Great Viti.”
Now the foreigner feigned sleep and listened.
“Well,” cried Ngutu from the corner, “the teacher says that our
fathers lied about Rokola’s canoe—that the mast fell at Malake and
dented the mountains of Kauvandra. He says that a canoe cannot
sail so far in a day, even with the wind on the outrigger.”
“The teachers are the foreigners’ mouths, and bark at all our ancient
customs, seeking to dishonour them,” growled Natuyalewa. “I am
growing old, and the land is changed. When I was young we listened
to the words of our elders, but now the young men——”
“Ië! Tell us tales of the old time,” interrupted Bongi: “we will each
bring nambu: mine shall be the sevu of my yams.”
The elders grunted approval from the darkness.
“My nambu shall be fish.” “A bunch of white plantains.” “Mine shall
be prawns from the stream,” cried several.
“I want no nambu,” replied Natuyalewa, with dignity; “the nambu
should be given to those who tell tales for gain, seeking to entertain
the chiefs, that mats, and fine masi, and other property, may be
given to them. These will tell of gods and giants, and canoes greater
than these mountains, and of women fairer than the women of
these days, and of doings so strange that the jaws of the listener fall
apart. Such a one gains great honour, and the chiefs will promise
him nambu before they even hear his tale, remembering the
wonders of the last. And he, being known for a teller of strange
tales, must ever lie more and more, lest, if he turn back to the truth,
the chiefs hearing him may say, ‘This fellow’s tales were once like
running water, but now they are like the village pool: why give him
nambu?’ But I will ask no nambu, for I can only tell of that I have
seen with my own eyes or heard with my ears; and though I tell you
tales of the old time or of distant lands, yet can I tell only of the
doings of men and women like to yourselves, who did deeds such as
you yourselves do; and when all is told, you will call the tale emptier
than the shell of the Wa-Timo fruit.”
Then Natuyalewa began to tell of Rusa, the fisherman of Malomalo,
and the foreigner, himself a story-teller in Natuyalewa’s line of
business, thought ruefully of the wonder-mongers of his own land,
and the nambu they won, and so pondering, fell asleep.
 CONTENTS.

PAGE
A COURT-DAY IN FIJI, 1
THE LAST OF THE CANNIBAL CHIEFS, 17
TAUYASA OF NASELAI, REFORMER, 37
A COOLIE PRINCESS, 47
LEONE OF NOTHO, 61
RALUVE, 68
THE RAIN-MAKERS, 111
MAKERETA, 125
ROMEO AND JULIET, 130
THE WOMAN FINAU, 142
IN THE OLD WHALING DAYS, 173
THE FIERY FURNACE, 195
FRIENDSHIP, 208
THE HERMIT OF BOOT ISLAND, 254
THE WARS OF THE FISHING-ROD, 261
THE FIRST COLONIST, 288
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE
“WHILE THE MEN WERE DIGGING THE OVEN AND
Frontispiece
LINING IT,”
“ON THE NIGHT OF EACH RETURN FROM THE
38
CAPITAL,”
“AND THEN RALUVE CAME IN, SHYLY FOLLOWED BY
TWO
76
ATTENDANTS OF DISCREET AGE AND MATURE
CHARMS,”
“THE CANOE WAS AFLOAT, AND LADEN WITH SUCH OF
THE
LOW-BORNS’ HOUSEHOLD GODS AS THEIR 84
ARISTOCRATIC
VISITORS THOUGHT WORTH TAKING AWAY,”
MAKERETA, 126
FRIAR LAURENCE’S HOUSE, 134
“NOTHING NOW REMAINS OF KOROLAMALAMA BUT
THE NAME 178
AND A FEW MOUNDS,”
“WHEN THE WOOD WAS ALL OUT THERE REMAINED A
CONICAL 202
PILE OF GLOWING STONES,”
LEVUKA, 248
“RASOLO, BEING SWIFTEST OF FOOT, REACHED THEM
FIRST, 268
AND SLEW THEM WITH HIS THROWING-CLUB,”
SOUTH SEA YARNS.
 A COURT-DAY IN FIJI.
A bright sky vying with the sea for blueness, a sun whose rays are
not too hot to be cooled by the sea-breeze, the distant roar of the
great Pacific rollers as they break in foam on the coral-reef, the
whisper of the feathery palms as they wave their giant leaves above
yonder cluster of brown native huts,—all these form a picture whose
poetry is not easily reconciled with the stern prose of an English
court of law. It is perhaps as well that the legal forms we are
accustomed to have been modified to meet the wants of this remote
province of the Queen’s dominions, for the spot we are describing is
accounted remote even in remote Fiji, and the people are
proportionately primitive. The natives of Fiji are amenable to a
criminal code known as the Native Regulations. These are
administered by two courts—the District Court, which sits monthly
and is presided over by a native magistrate; and the Provincial
Court, which assembles every three months before the English and
native magistrates sitting together. From the latter there is no appeal
except by petition to the governor, and it has now become the resort
of all Fijians who are in trouble or consider themselves aggrieved.
For several days witnesses and accused have been coming in from
the neighbouring islands, and last night the village-crier proclaimed
the share of the feast which each family was called upon to provide.
The women have been busy since daylight bringing in yams,
plantains, and taro from the plantations, while the men were digging
the oven and lining it with the stones that, when heated, will cook
the pigs to a turn.
But already the height of the sun shows it to be past ten, and the
District Court has to inquire into several charges before the
Provincial Court can sit. The order is given to the native police
sergeant to beat the lali, and straightway two huge wooden drums
boom out their summons to whomsoever it may concern. As the
drum-beats become more agitated and pressing, a long file of aged
natives, clad in shirt and sulu of more or less irreproachable white, is
seen emerging from the grove of cocoa-nut palms which conceal the
village. We have but just time to shake hands with our dusky
colleague, a shrewd-looking old man with grizzled hair and beard
carefully trimmed for the occasion, when the crowd begins to pour
into the court-house.
The gala dresses are not a little startling. Here is a dignified old
gentleman arrayed in a second-hand tunic of a marine, in much the
same plight as to buttons as its owner as to teeth; near him stands a
fine young village policeman, whose official gravity is not enhanced
by the swallow-tailed coat of a nigger minstrel; while the
background is taken up by a bevy of village maidens clad in
gorgeous velvet pinafores, who are giggling after the manner of
their white sisters until they are fixed by the stern grey eye of the
chief policeman, which turns their expression into one of that
preternatural solemnity they wear in church. The court-house, a
native building carpeted with mats, is now packed with natives,
sitting cross-legged, only a small place being reserved in front of the
table for the accused and witnesses. The magistrate takes his seat,
and his scribe, sitting on the floor at his side, prepares his writing
materials to record the sentences. The dignity with which the old
gentleman adjusts his shirt-collar and clears his throat is a little
marred when he produces from his bosom what should have been a
pair of pince-nez, seeing that it was secured by a string round his
neck, but is in fact a Jew’s-harp. With the soft notes of this
instrument the man of law is wont to beguile the tedium of a dull
case. But although the spectacle of Lord Coleridge gravely
performing on the Jew’s-harp in court would at least excite surprise
in England, it provokes no smile here. The first case is called on.
Reiterated calls for Samuela and Timothe produce two meek-faced
youths of eighteen and nineteen, who, sitting tailor-fashion before
the table, are charged with fowl-stealing. They plead “Not guilty,”
and the owner of the fowls being sworn, deposes that, having been
awakened at night by the voice of a favourite hen in angry
remonstrance, he ran out of his house, and after a hot chase
captured the accused red-handed in two senses, for they were
plucking his hen while still alive. Quite unmoved by this tragic tale,
Vatureba seems to listen only to the melancholy notes of his Jew’s-
harp; but the witness is a chief and a man of influence withal, and a
period of awed silence follows his accusation, broken only by a
subdued twanging from the bench. But Vatureba’s eyes are bright
and piercing, and they have been fixed for some minutes on the
wretched prisoners. He has not yet opened his lips during the case,
and as the Jew’s-harp is not capable of much expression, it is with
some interest we await the sentence. Suddenly the music ceases,
the instrument is withdrawn from the mouth, the oracle is about to
speak. Alas! he utters but two words, “Vula tolu” (three months),
and there peals out a malignantly triumphant strain from the Jew’s-
harp. But the prosecutor starts up with a protest. One of the
accused is his nephew, he explains, and he only wished a light
sentence to be imposed. Three months for one fowl is so severe;
besides, if he has three months, he must go to the central jail and
not work out his sentence in his own district. Again there is silence,
and the Jew’s-harp has changed from triumph into thoughtful
melancholy. At length it is withdrawn, and the oracle speaks again,
“Bogi tolu” (three days).
The prisoners are pounced upon and dragged out by the hungry
police, and after a few more cases the District Court is adjourned to
make way for the Provincial. The rural police—a fine body of men
dressed in uniform—take up positions at the court-house doors, and
we take our seats beside our sable colleague at the table. A number
of men of lighter colour and different appearance are brought in and
placed in a row before the table. These are the leading men of the
island of Nathula, who are charged with slandering their Buli (chief
of district). They have, in fact, been ruined by a defective knowledge
of arithmetic, as we learn from the story of the poor old Buli, whose
pathetic and careworn face shows that he at least has not seen the
humorous side of the situation. It appears that a sum of £70, due to
the natives as a refund on overpaid taxes, was given to the Buli for
distribution among the various heads of families. For this purpose he
summoned a meeting, and the amount in small silver was turned out
on the floor to be counted. Now as not a few Fijians are hazy as to
how many shillings go to the pound, it is not surprising that the
fourteen or fifteen people who counted the money made totals
varying from £50 to £100. They at once jumped to the conclusion
that the Buli, who was by this time so bored with the whole thing
that he was quite willing to forego his own share, had embezzled the
money; but to make suspicion certainty they started off in a canoe
to the mainland to consult a wizard. This oracle, being presented
with a whale’s tooth, intimated that if he heard the name of the
defaulter who had embezzled the money, his little finger, and
perhaps other portions of his anatomy, would tingle (kida). They
accordingly went through the names of all their fellow-villagers,
naming the Buli last. On hearing this name the oracle, whose little
finger had hitherto remained normal, “regardless of grammar, cried
out, ‘That’s him!’”
On their return to Nathula, they triumphantly quoted the oracle as
their authority for accusing their Buli of embezzlement. The poor old
gentleman, wounded in his tenderest feelings, had but one resort.
He knew he hadn’t stolen the money, because the money hadn’t
been stolen at all, but then who would believe his word against that
of a wizard? and was not arithmetic itself a supernatural science?
There was but one way to re-establish his shattered reputation, and
this he took. His canoe was made ready, and he repaired to the
mainland to consult a rival oracle named Na ivi (the ivi-tree). The
little finger of this seer was positive of the Buli’s innocence, so that,
fortified by the support of so weighty an authority, he no longer
feared to meet his enemies face to face, and even to prosecute them
for slander. As the Buli was undoubtedly innocent, and had certainly
been slandered, the delinquents are reminded that ever since the
days of Delphi seers and oracles have met with a very limited
success, and are sentenced to three months’ imprisonment. And now
follows a real tragedy. The consideration enjoyed by the young Fijian
is in proportion to the length and cut of his hair. Now these are
evidently dandies to the verge of foppishness. Two of them have hair
frizzed out so as to make a halo four inches deep round the face,
and bleached by lime until it is gradated from deep auburn to a
golden yellow at the points. Pounced on and dragged out of court by
ruthless policemen, they are handed over to the tender mercies of a
pitiless barber, and in a few moments they are as crestfallen and
ridiculous as that cockatoo who was plucked by the monkey. The
self-assurance of a Fijian is as dependent on the length of his hair as
was the strength of Samson.
But now there is a shrill call for Natombe, and a middle-aged man of
rather remarkable appearance is brought before the table. He is a
mountaineer, and is dressed in a rather dirty sulu of blue calico,
secured round the waist by a few turns of native bark-cloth. He is
naked from the waist upward. The charge is practising witchcraft
(drau ni kau), a crime which is punishable with twelve months’
imprisonment and forty lashes; for the Fijians are so persuaded that
a bewitched person will die, that it is only necessary to tell a person
he is bewitched to ensure his death within a few days from pure
fright. The son of the late Buli of Bemana comes forward to
prosecute. The substance of his evidence is as follows: Buli Bemana,
who was quite well on a certain Saturday, was taken ill on the
Sunday, and expired in great agony on the Monday morning. The
portion of his people to whom the accused belongs had complained
more than once of the Buli’s oppression, and desired his removal. It
is the custom for a wizard who has compassed the death of a man
to appear at the funeral with blackened face as a sign to his
employers that he has earned his reward and expects it. The
accused attended Buli Bemana’s funeral with blackened face.
Moreover, an old woman of Bemana had dreamed that she had seen
Natombe bewitching the Buli, and the little fingers of several
Bemanas had itched unaccountably. These last the witness
considered were convincing proofs. The accused, in reply, stated that
he was excessively grieved at the Buli’s death, and that his face at
the funeral was no blacker than usual. Several witnesses followed,
who deposed that the accused is celebrated throughout the district
for his skill in witchcraft, and that he had boasted openly in days
gone by that he had caused the death of a man who died suddenly.
Now, as stated above, the belief in witchcraft among Fijians is so
thorough, and the effects of a spell upon the imagination of a
bewitched person so fatal, that the English Government has found it
necessary to recognise the existence of the practice by law. It is,
however, none the less wise for the Government officials, without
pooh-poohing the existence of witchcraft, to attempt to discourage
the belief in its efficacy. Accordingly we call for evidence as to the
particular manner in which the alleged spell was cast. There was no
caldron nor blasted heath in this case; indeed the whole ceremony
was a decidedly tame affair. It was only necessary to procure some
of the Buli’s hair or the portions of his food left untasted, and bury
them with certain herbs enclosed in a bamboo, and death would
ensue in a few days. To our question whether the Buli himself
thought he was bewitched we receive a decided negative; indeed,
we happen to know that the poor old man died of acute dysentery,
brought on by cold, and that in this case, if witchcraft had been
really practised, the death was a most unfortunate coincidence. As
no evidence more incriminating than dreams and the finger-tingling
is forthcoming, the accused is acquitted, to be condemned by the
other tribunal of public opinion, which evidently runs high. When he
has left the court we address the chiefs of Bemana upon the subject
of witchcraft generally, as if seeking information. Upon this a number
of white-haired old gentlemen, whose boredom has been for some
time exchanged for somnolence, wake up and hold forth upon the
relative value of hair and nail-parings as instruments for casting
spells. While the discussion becomes animated and the consensus of
opinion appears to be gathering in favour of toe-nails, we electrify
the assembly by suggesting an experiment. They are to select two of
their wisest wizards, we are to supply the necessary means, and
they are to forthwith cast their most potent spell over us. On the
result is to rest their future belief in witchcraft. If we have not
succumbed in a month’s time there is no truth in the practice. If we
do die, they may not only believe in it, but they will, of course, be
held guiltless of our death. A dead silence ensues. Then, after much
whispered conversation, an old man addresses the court, pointing
out that white men eat different food from Fijians, for do they not
live upon flour, tinned meat, rice, and other abominations? And do
they not despise the succulent yam, and turn up their noses at pork,
dried lizard, and tender snake? Therefore is it not obvious that the
powers of witchcraft will be lost upon such beings? Now we have
with us a Tongan servant, by name Lijiate (being the nearest
Tongans can get to Richard). This man, being half-educated, and
above all a Tongan, is full of contempt for Fijians and their barbarous
customs. He has long talked contemptuously of witchcraft, which he
considers fit only for the credence of heathens, not of good
Christians like himself. Here is a chance for Richard to distinguish
himself and us. We make the offer. Richard is to be bewitched on the
same terms as ourselves. He at least does eat yams and pork, and
though he has not yet taken kindly to snake, the difference is
trifling. But we have counted without our host. “Fakamolemole”
(pardon), says Richard, “I almost believe in it myself. I pray you
have me excused.” This spikes our gun, for though, doubtless, some
of our Fijian servants would consent to be experimented on, they
would probably pine away and die from pure fright, and re-establish
the belief in witchcraft for ever.
Our discomfiture is best covered by attention to business. Two more
cases of larceny are heard and disposed of, and now two ancient
dames, clad in borrowed plumes, consisting of calico petticoat and
pinafore, are led before the table. Grey-headed and toothless, dim
as to sight and shapeless as to features, they look singularly out of
place in a court of law. Time was (and not so very long ago) when
women so decrepit as these would have had to make way for a more
vigorous generation by the simple and expeditious means of being
buried alive, but now they no longer fear the consequences of their
eccentricities. One of these old women is the prosecutrix, and the
charge is assault. We ask which is the prosecutrix, and immediately
one holds out and brandishes a hand from which one of the fingers
has been almost severed by a bite. She has altogether the most
lugubrious expression that features such as hers can assume, but
with the bitten finger now permanently hung out like a signboard,
words of complaint are superfluous. The other has a truculent and
forbidding expression. She snaps out her answers as if she had
bitten off the ends like the prosecutrix’ finger, and shuts her mouth
like a steel trap. The quarrel which led to their appearance in court
might have taken place in Seven Dials. Defendant said something
disparaging about prosecutrix’ daughter. Prosecutrix retaliated by
damaging references to defendant’s son, and left the house hurriedly
to enjoy the luxury of having had last word. Defendant followed and
searched the village for her, with the avowed intention of skinning
her alive. They met at last, and having each called the other “a-
roasted-corpse-fit-for-the-oven,” they fell to with the result to the
prosecutrix’ finger already described. The mountain dialect used in
evidence is almost unintelligible to us, so that our admonition,
couched in the Bauan, has to be translated (with additions) by our
native colleague. But our eloquence was all wasted. Defendant
utterly declines to express contrition. Our last resource must be
employed, and we inform her that if she does not complete the task
imposed on her as a fine she will be sent to Suva jail, there to be
confined with the Indian women. This awful threat has its effect;
and the dread powers of our court having thus been vindicated, the
crier proclaims its adjournment for three months. The spectators
troop out to spend the rest of the day in gossiping about the
delinquents and their cases. The men who have been sentenced are
already at work weeding round the court-house, subjects for the
breathless interest and pity of the bevy of girls who have just
emerged from court and are exchanging whispered comments upon
the alteration in a good-looking man when his hair is cut off. None
are left in the court-house but ourselves, the chiefs, and the older
men. The table is removed, and the room cleared of the
paraphernalia of civilisation. Enter two men bearing a large carved
wooden bowl, a bucket of water, and a root of yangona, which is
presented to us ceremoniously, and handed back to some young
men at the bottom of the room to chew. Meanwhile conversation
becomes general, witchcraft is discussed in all its branches, and
compassion is expressed for the poor sceptical white man; sulukas
(cigarettes rolled in banana leaves) are lighted; the chewed masses
of yangona root are thrown into the bowl, mixed with water,
kneaded, strained, and handed to each person according to his rank
to drink; tongues are loosened, and it is time to draw the meeting to
a close. The sun is fast dipping into the western sea when the last of
our guests leave us, and we have a long moonlight ride before us.
There is but just time to pack up our traps and have a hasty meal
before we are left in darkness, but the moon will rise in an hour, so
we may start in safety in pursuit of the train of police and convicts
who are carrying the baggage.
 THE LAST OF THE CANNIBAL
CHIEFS.
When Swift wrote his “Modest Proposal,” and argued with logical
seriousness that the want and over-population in Ireland should be
remedied by the simple expedient of eating babies, the satire was
not likely to be lost upon a people who regarded cannibalism with
such horror and loathing as do the European nations. The horror
must of course be instinctive, because we find it existing in the
lowest grades of society; but the instinct is confined to civilised man.
The word cannibal is associated in our minds with scenes of the
most debased savagery that the imagination can picture; of men in
habits and appearance a little lower than the brute; of orgies the
result of the most degrading religious superstition. It is not until one
has lived on terms of friendship with cannibals that one realises that
the practice is not incompatible with an intelligence and moral
qualities which command respect. And after all, if one can for a
moment lay aside the instinctive horror which the idea calls up, and
dispassionately consider the nature of cannibalism, our repugnance
to it seems less logically grounded. It is true that it must generally
entail murder, but that is certainly not the reason for our loathing of
it. It is something deeper than this; and the distinction we draw
between the flesh of men and of animals is at first sight a little
curious. One can imagine the inhabitants of another planet, whose
physical necessities did not force them to eat flesh,—to take life in
order to live,—regarding us with much the same kind of abhorrence
with which we look on cannibals. Most of our natural instincts are
based upon natural laws, which, when broken, are sure to visit the
breaker with their penalties. The eating of unripe fruit, of putrid
meat, or poisonous matter, are some of these. But no penalty in the
shape of disease seems to be attached to cannibalism.
What, then, are the motives that lead men, apart from the pressure
of famine, to practise cannibalism? Among certain African tribes, and
lately in Hayti, it has been the outcome of a debased religious
superstition, or that extraordinary instinct common to all races which
leads men to connect the highest religious enthusiasm with the most
horrible orgies that their diseased imagination can conceive. The
feeling that leads members of sects to bind themselves together by
the celebration of some unspeakable rite perhaps led to the
accusations laid against the Christians of the second century and the
Hungarian Jews of the nineteenth. But in the South Seas, although
the motive has been falsely attributed to a craving for animal food, it
was generally the last act of triumph over a fallen enemy. Thus
Homer makes Achilles, triumphing over the dying Hector, wish he
could make mince-meat of his body and devour it. Triumph could go
no further than to slay and then to assimilate the body of your foe;
and the belief that, by thus making him a part of you, you acquired
his courage in battle, is said to have led a chief of old Fiji to actually
consume himself the entire body of the man he had killed, by daily
roasting what remained of it to prevent decomposition.
This is not a very promising introduction to a paper intended to
show that some cannibals at least may be very respectable members
of society. But it must be clearly understood that the eccentricity
which seems so revolting to us is not incompatible with a strong
sense of duty, great kindness of heart, and warm domestic affection.
Out of the many cannibals and ex-cannibals I have known, I will
choose the most striking figure as the subject of this sketch. I first
met the Buli of Nandrau in the autumn of 1886, when I took over
the Resident Commissionership of part of the mountain district of
Fiji. His history had been an eventful one, and while he had
displayed those qualities that would most win the admiration of
Fijians, to us he could not be otherwise than a remarkable character.
Far away, in the wild and rugged country in which the great rivers
Rewa and Singatoka take their rise, he was born to be chief of a
fierce and aggressive tribe of mountaineers. Constantly engaged in
petty intertribal wars, while still a young man he had led them from
victory to victory, until they had fought their way into perhaps the
most picturesque valley in all picturesque Fiji. Here, perched above
the rushing Singatoka, and overshadowed by two tremendous
precipices which allowed the sun to shine upon them for barely three
hours a-day, they built their village, and here they became a name
and a terror to all the surrounding tribes. A few miles lower down
the river stood the almost impregnable rock-fortress of the Vatusila
tribe, and these became the stanch allies of Nandrau. Together they
broke up the powerful Noikoro, exacted tribute from them, and
made the river theirs as far as Korolevu; together they blotted out
the Naloto, who held the passes to the northern coast, killing in one
day more than four hundred of them, and driving the remnant as
outcasts into the plain. Long after the white men had made their
influence felt throughout Fiji,—long after the chief of Bau was
courted as King of Fiji,—these two tribes, secure in their mountain
fastnesses, lived their own life, and none, whether Fijian or white
man, dared pass over their borders.
But their time was come. The despised white man, whom they had
first known in the humble guise of a shipwrecked sailor or an
escaped convict, was soon to overrun the whole Pacific, and before
him the most dreaded of the Fijian gods and chiefs, the most
honoured of their traditions, were to pass away and be forgotten.
In the year 1867 a Wesleyan missionary named Baker, against the
advice of all the most experienced of the European settlers and the
native chiefs, announced his intention of exploring the mountain
districts alone. He said that he would take the Bible through Vitilevu.
What good to the missionary cause he hoped for from his hazardous
journey it is difficult to imagine. The harm that would certainly result
to his fellow-missionaries if he were killed, and the loss of life that
must ensue, must have been apparent to him and to every one else.
But in spite of every warning, he persisted in his foolhardy
enterprise, and he paid for it with his life and with the lives of
several hundred others. He ascended the river Rewa with a small
party of native teachers, but when he passed into the mountain
district a whale’s tooth followed him: for the power of the whale’s
tooth is this—that he who accepts it cannot refuse the request it
carries with it, whether it be for a mere gift, or for an alliance, or for
a human life. So he went on, while tribe after tribe refused to accept
the fatal piece of ivory; but none the less surely did it follow him. At
length one night, while he slept in a village of the Vatusila, the
whale’s tooth passed on before him to the rock fortress of
Nambutautau, and their chief, Nawawambalavu, took it. When, next
morning, Baker resumed his march, this chief met him in the road,
and together they crossed the Singatoka river. As they climbed the
steep cliff which leads to Nambutautau, it is recorded in a popular
song of that time that the chief warned him ironically of his
impending fate. “We want none of your Christianity, Mr Baker. I think
that to-day you and I shall be clubbed.” Suddenly, at a spot where
the path lies between high reeds, on the edge of a precipice, an
attack was made upon them, and they were all struck down except
two native teachers who crawled into the thickest of the reeds and
made their way, the one to Rewa and the other to Bau, hiding during
the day-time and travelling under cover of the darkness. Baker’s
body was flung over the precipice, and the great wooden drum
boomed out its death-beat to the villages far down the valley. That
night the stone-ovens were heated for their work, and the feast was
portioned out to the various allies. But the most honourable portion
—the head—was sent to Nandrau, the subject of my sketch. At first
he refused it, disapproving of the murder, which his foresight warned
him would bring trouble upon them. But as his refusal threatened to
sever the alliance, he afterwards accepted it. It is recorded that the
feet, from which the long boots had not been removed, were sent to
Mongondro, whose chief, a melancholy, gentle-mannered old man,
was much disappointed at finding the skin of white men so tough.
After terrible hardship and danger, the wounded teacher made his
way to the coast, and carried the news to Bau. A strong alliance was
at once formed among the coast tribes to avenge the murder, and to
crush the power of the mountaineers. There is in this part of Fiji no
gradation between the plains that fringe the coast and the
mountains. A sheer barrier of rock, looking like the ruins of a
gigantic fortification, rises boldly from the plain, broken only by the
valleys which form the river-beds. Behind this wall lay a land of
mystery, whose inhabitants were invested with superstitious terrors,
to which their ferocity and the extraordinary appearance of their
huge mops of hair had doubtless contributed.
The attacking party was divided into three forces. One of them was
to advance up the Singatoka from the south, a second to enter the
“Devil” country by way of the Rewa from the east, and the third,
commanded by the King of Fiji in person, was to surprise the valley
of Nandrau from the northern coast. With the two first we have
nothing to do, because they were defeated by the intervening tribes
and turned back long before they reached their destination. The
third, hoping to form a junction with their allies, advanced boldly
through the mountain passes. The country seemed deserted. They
burned two or three abandoned villages, and emboldened by their
success, they pressed on, more like an eager rabble than a military
force, each man hoping to be the first to secure plunder. As they
straggled over the grassy hills that surround Nandrau, suddenly from
every clump of reeds big-headed warriors sprang up; they found
themselves hemmed in, and Nandrau, headed by their chief, spent
the day in slaughtering the flower of the Bau army. A remnant fled
to the coast, hotly pursued by the mountaineers; and so crushing
was the defeat that the king, Thakombau, narrowly escaped death
at the hands of his vassals of Tavua.
Not long after this victory, which had so firmly established his
prestige in the mountains, Buli Nandrau seems to have become
favourably inclined towards the Europeans; and when a joint
expedition of whites and natives was despatched to reduce
Nambutautau, he seems to have been permitted to remain neutral.
Nambutautau was burnt, and the Vatusila and Noikoro tribes
compelled to sue for peace. In 1874 Buli Nandrau met Consul
Layard, and promised his allegiance to the British Government.