The Fijians Part 25

With the arrival of the trader who, all unconsciously, was set to teach the natives an entirely new system of trade based on currency, all need for the _solevu_ vanished, and each native product immediately acquired a recognized place in the scale of values, either in money or calico.

Nothing shows the extraordinary conservatism of the Fijians better than the fact that they did not at once abandon the _solevu_ in favour of an informal sale of native products to one another. The two systems continued to flourish side by side, the native carried his produce to the trader and took cash or groceries in exchange on the spot, but he continued to manufacture large quant.i.ties of goods intended for ceremonial presentations to his neighbours and to trust to receiving the equivalent at some time in the uncertain future. For a time the _solevu_ was encouraged by the Government upon the ground that it would form a subst.i.tute for commerce until the natives should become accustomed to money as a medium of exchange, and that it was inseparable from the native social system, which for political reasons it was convenient to retain. It was felt that without the _solevu_ the manufacture of mats, pottery, salt, bark-cloth, sinnet, wooden bowls, etc., would fall into disuse, and that the material comfort of the people would be affected for the worse. Therefore it became usual for the _solevu_ to take place at every half-yearly Provincial Council at which each district became in rotation the entertainers of the others. Upon the entertainers fell the burden of building new houses, a very salutary provision, of providing food for a vast concourse of people for several days, and of manufacturing an immense quant.i.ty of mats of native cloth to be presented to the visitors. In return the entertainers would theoretically be ent.i.tled to a share of the property presented by the guests on their arrival, and of that given at other councils when the part of playing host fell to others. This would have been well enough if the presentation had been kept within bounds, and the spoil had been properly divided, but the emulation of the chiefs to outdo one another in hospitality led them to bring pressure to bear upon their people, and the chief burden fell upon the women, whose princ.i.p.al duty was to produce the things required for the _solevu_. Moreover, less of the property reached the producers than formerly, the lion's share being appropriated by the chiefs who attended the council. Being a distortion of the real native custom, the _solevu_ began to lose much of its native character.

At Ndeumba, where the natives earn considerable incomes from growing bananas, the property given consisted exclusively of European commodities, such as kerosene, tins of biscuits and calico, purchased in Suva, while at Rewa a cutter, filled to the hatches with tins of kerosene, formed the contribution of the Tonga district. The _solevu_ had thus grown to be an intolerable burden. They were far larger and more frequent than in the old days, they were given and received by the wrong people. As long as a single tribe or joint family was concerned, every householder or head of family got his fair share according to his rank. It was not custom that the group of tribes that form the modern district should receive a presentation in common, and, as usual, the native mind could devise no new law to meet the new emergency.

Accordingly, in June, 1892, the Government formally forbade the interchange of property at Provincial Councils. By the people at large the order was welcomed, and as a means of commerce the _solevu_ may now be said to have ceased to exist.

But one evil resulting from the mutilated custom still survives. In the old days a single district or village was rarely called upon to feed large a.s.semblages of people; now, every Provincial Council is made the excuse for immense profusion and waste. At some of them as many as one hundred and sixty pigs and turtle and six thousand yams and taro are consumed in two days, and at the Annual Meeting of the Chiefs the food provided by the entertainers reaches more than ten times that amount. It is not all eaten, of course. Several tons of cooked food are thrown to rot on the seash.o.r.e, but the Government is probably right in not interfering to check this prodigality. The necessity of planting large reserves of food secures the people against an unexpected famine, caused by flood, hurricane or droughts; if they lost the fear of being reproached for being n.i.g.g.ardly it is more than probable that they would cease to plant sufficient food for their bare needs.

When the _solevu_ of the Provincial Councils was abolished the Governor laid before the chiefs the proposal to establish a system of intertribal barter in the local markets, which is a Melanesian and Papuan custom; this ought not to have been repugnant to Fijian ideas, but the chiefs could not be induced to take any interest in the proposal, which shows that their attachment to the primitive _solevu_ was no longer due to the necessity for barter, but rather to the elaborate ceremonial display which is so dear to the native mind.

[Pageheader: MARKETING AND _SOLEVU_]

Yet the Fijians are by no means deficient in the mercantile instinct. In some districts side by side with the _solevu_ a regular system of trade by barter was practised. At Lekutu in Mbau the townspeople were in the habit of bartering fish and salt with the hill people for vegetable produce. There were regular market-places, and the barter took place at fixed intervals. At Kandavu a single household or tribal sept having a store of bark-cloth, or some other commodity, would invite the possessors of some coveted article to trade with them, and on the appointed day would visit their village and hand over their property in exchange for cooked food as well as the wares they needed. Similar practices prevailed in Western Vitilevu between the natives of the coast and the mountaineers; these customs were called _tango_ or _veisa_.

The growing use of money has been developed side by side with a system of traffic in native produce, not only with European buyers, but among the natives _inter se_. Natives of the coast districts of Tailevu, who are required periodically to take contributions of food to Mbau on the occasion of some ceremonial without expecting any remuneration, at the same time carry on a regular trade with their chiefs at Mbau, hawking vegetables or fowls from house to house for money or its equivalent in European articles. Thus they draw a clear line of distinction between _lala_ and barter.

CHAPTER XXI

NAVIGATION AND SEAMANs.h.i.+P

Whatever may have been the origin of seagoing s.h.i.+ps, the evolution of the outriggered canoe is not difficult to trace. We may imagine a savage in remote antiquity standing on the banks of a river and watching logs of wood from a mountain forest floating swiftly down the current. His home lies down-stream. There is no path, for the banks are overgrown with a tangled ma.s.s of th.o.r.n.y creepers. This log will pa.s.s his village doors. He wades out and intercepts it. With one arm cast about it he is borne by the current right to his door without an effort. The women filling their jars at the water's edge applaud his originality. But when he next tries the experiment an alligator comes unpleasantly near his legs. He tries to haul himself astride of the log; it turns round with him. A bamboo is floating close at hand; he seizes it, and finds that by holding it athwart the log he can steady himself on his perch. But the bamboo, being too narrow to offer resistance to the water, tends to sink until he rests the end upon a floating branch. But on his next aquatic journey, remembering that the bamboo tired the arms and kept slipping off the branch, he takes a vine with him, and lashes the bamboo to log and branch. This leaves his hands free to use another bamboo to keep the head of his craft down-stream by poling on the bottom. He even punts it laboriously to land at the village, and ties it up for use in crossing the river on the morrow. He has taken the first step towards building a craft of his own. The thin end of the log cleft the water better than the other. He chips the end to a point. There are tribes that stop at this point. The catamarans of Eastern New Guinea are merely three shaped logs lashed together, and depend for their buoyancy upon the displacement of the solid wood. A chance experiment shows that a hollow log is more buoyant, besides having the advantage of providing a dry resting-place for the feet. The discoverer of this phenomenon widens the natural hollow with fire, lashes his cross-ties to a smaller log, also sharpened at the ends, and he has made a Fijian canoe. The next steps are easy. By trying to propel it up-stream with a bamboo too short to reach the bottom he discards the pole for a slab of bark, and he has invented the paddle. To use the wind in the estuary to the best advantage he props a slab of bark on a stick and steadies it with a stay of vine. On his next voyage he takes a mat with him, staying his mast to the outrigger, the bow and the stern. Going about on the other tack the pressure of the wind bearing on the outrigger sinks it and capsizes the canoe, teaching him by painful experience that he must turn his sail inside out, and keep the outrigger always to windward. He has now devised the most complicated, the swiftest, and in many respects the most beautiful sailing machine in existence--the sailing canoe. The raising of the sides, and the decking of the bow and stern are expedients that need no deductive process.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The _Thamakau_.]

[Pageheader: THE SAILING CANOE]

Four kinds of canoe are used by the Fijians: (1) The _Takia_--an undecked dug-out furnished with an outrigger, which is used on the rivers and on the calm water inside the reef, and is propelled with poles or with paddles.

(2) The _Thamakau_--a seagoing canoe with sides raised by planking to carry a deck; with solid outrigger and mast and sails.

(3) The _Tambilai_--a dug-out with ends cut square, several feet at each end being left solid.

(4) The _Ndrua_, or twin canoe--which is, as its name implies, made of twin hulls, the one smaller than the other, connected by a deck, on which the mast is stepped. The smaller hull is the outrigger, and is always kept to windward. These vessels being often too large to be made from a single trunk, are put together in sections with a sort of scarf joint, secured by las.h.i.+ngs of cocoanut sinnet. The adze and the auger were the only tools used, every plank being adzed from a solid trunk, and, since every joint must fit true, and the planking be less than an inch thick, and one false stroke of the adze might spoil many days of labour, some idea of the skill and patience of the native carpenter may be formed. These vessels were of great size. The _Rusa i vanua_ was 118 feet over all. Her yards were 90 feet long, and she carried a crew of 50 men. Maafu mounted cannon on two of his _ndrua_, which were capable of making long ocean voyages, and with the wind on the quarter could run from ten to fifteen knots in the hour. Though they could lie close to the wind, being keel-less, they made much leeway, and were bad sea-boats to windward or in a seaway, for the play of the twin hulls was apt to work the las.h.i.+ngs loose. There is, however, no sea sport so exciting and exhilarating as sailing on a calm sea in a _ndrua_ or _thamakau_ with the wind abeam. A clever sheet-man will contrive to lift the outrigger out of the water until it barely skims the surface, and then the canoe becomes a veritable flying-machine.

The _ndrua_ is enormously expensive to keep up, and for this reason it will be seen no more. The mat-sail, which costs far more than canvas, rots quickly if it gets wet, and must be unbent and taken into shelter after every trip. The sinnet las.h.i.+ngs, both above and below water, soon work loose and become rotten, and the whole structure has then to be rebuilt. To manage the great sail in tacking a crew of from ten to twenty men, all expert canoemen, is required. By the year 1890 the _ndrua_ in the group could be counted on the fingers, and probably the last has now fallen to pieces.

Thomas Williams has given so admirable a description of the building and management of these canoes[101] that it need not be again described.

[Pageheader: THE PAY OF CANOE-BUILDERS]

The handicraft of canoe-building was hereditary. Every considerable chief had his _matai_, but those of Rewa, descended from Tongan immigrants, were the most esteemed in the west and those of Kambara in the east. In 1860, however, the Fijian _matai_ fell upon evil days, for the chiefs preferred the Tongan craftsmen, who had begun to settle in the group. Besides canoes the _matai_ made _lali_ (wooden drums), kava and food bowls, all cut from the solid timber with the adze. Every stage of canoe-building called for its special feast and presentation to the _matai_, and in order to test the actual cost of these I once had a canoe built by a Rewa _matai_ and his mate on the Fijian system of remuneration. I was acting as Commissioner of Tholo West at the time, and being in native eyes vested with the powers of a Roko Tui, I could play the part of carpenter's patron with plausibility. The men who hauled in the logs were given the appropriate feast, the _matai_ had his feast at the completion of the hull, at the fixing of the upper works, at the las.h.i.+ng of the deck. I obtained the mats for the sails from Yasawa by _kerekere_ (begging), and sent their equivalent in kind; the neighbouring villages performed the ceremony of _rova_ (and received their reward) after the launching. When I came to reckon up the bill I found that it came to 13--a little more than the contract rate for building canoes at that time, which was 2 a fathom; or, to put it in another way, as the canoe was two months in building, about 3 a month for each man besides rations. But since my carpenters were on their mettle, the canoe was better built than it would have been by a contract builder.

Forward and abaft the deck both in the _ndrua_ and the _thamakau_ are open wells, in which a man stands baling with a wooden scoop, for the joints and seams of the planking let in a good deal of water when under sail. Beyond these wells some fluted work is left by the adze, and a line of beading is left along the lee side both to afford footholds to the men who carry over the foot of the yards in tacking and to carry fixed blocks for the _tuku_ or mast-stay. A remarkable feature about these carvings is that they never vary, though some of them have no object but that of ornamentation, and they are sufficiently elaborate to have been only arrived at after a long period of evolution.

If the Fijian canoe is so carelessly handled as to bring the outrigger to leeward she immediately capsizes, for the pressure of the wind drives the outrigger under water. In order to keep the outrigger to windward when tacking it is therefore necessary to make what was formerly the bow become the stern, the sail must be turned inside out, and the mast, yards and steer-oar must all be changed over. This complicated manoeuvre is accomplished with extraordinary skill.

Instead of luffing up into the wind as in a cutter the steersman keeps away until the wind is abeam, the sheetman slacking the sheet simultaneously until the sail is flapping. Two or three men then run out to the prow, seize the foot of the yards and carry them bodily amids.h.i.+ps. During this operation they have to bear the weight of the mast, which is sloping forward at an angle of 45 degrees, and to relieve them of some of this extra weight a man is hauling on the running stay, which runs through a block astern. As they pa.s.s the mast with their burden the lower yard is let go, the sheet is pa.s.sed round their legs, and the sail turns inside out. They tramp forward, and the mast again begins to incline, throwing its weight upon them. A man now seizes the other stay, and in obedience to their loud cries of "_Tuku!_" begins cautiously to pay it out. If he is too quick the weight of the mast precipitates the men and the sail into the water; if he is too slow he holds them back. At last the foot of the yards is planted with a thud into its nest in the carving and lashed secure, but before the sheet can be hauled in the heavy steer-oar, which takes two men to lift, has to be dragged inboard and carried aft. All this time the hull is heaving in the trough of the sea, and the mat sail is thras.h.i.+ng itself to pieces.

Sometimes the yard-carriers slip on the wet deck, and tumble overboard, sail and all, in inextricable ruin, but if all goes well the canoe is gathering way on the new tack in less than sixty seconds, and though to the spectator on board the moment is full of excitement and risk, to those watching it on sh.o.r.e it is the most precise and beautiful manoeuvre known to seamans.h.i.+p.

[Pageheader: NEW MODELS OF SCULLING]

And now we come to a remarkable paradox. The Tongans were the great navigators of the Pacific; the Fijians are not known to have voyaged beyond their own group. The Tongans were so expert with the adze that they rapidly displaced the Fijian canoe-builder in his own country. And yet the Tongan counterpart to the _ndrua_ was the _tongiaki_, a craft so clumsy and ill-finished that it did not survive the eighteenth century, when the Tongans learned the art of canoe-sailing from Fijians. The _tongiaki_ was like the _ndrua_ in build, but its mast was immovable and it tacked like a cutter. To make this possible the mast was stayed on both sides from a clumsy transom which protruded many feet beyond the deck. It could lie close to the wind on one tack, but on the other the sail was broken up into pockets by the mast, which held the wind and stopped all headway. Consequently it was the practice to wait for a fair wind, and set the sail on what would be the lee of the mast, and if the wind changed there was nothing for it but to change the course. It was, no doubt, this fact that led to so many Tongans being cast away on remote islands, and to the mixing of Polynesian with Melanesian blood.

From 1790 to 1810 it had become the custom for Tongan chiefs to voyage to Fiji in their clumsy _tongiaki_, join in the native wars, and take as their portion of the loot Fijian _ndrua_, in which they beat back to Tonga, and in a very few years the _tongiaki_[102] was extinct.

There were two ways of propelling a canoe in a dead calm--the _vothe_ and the _sua_. The _vothe_ is a leaf-shaped paddle cut from one piece of _vesi_ hardwood, five feet long and eighteen inches across the widest part of the blade. Adapted for propelling light canoes on the rivers, it is ineffective against the dead weight of the heavy _thamakau_. In shape and size the _sua_ resembles the oar of a s.h.i.+p's cutter. Thrusting it down perpendicularly into the water between the hull and the outrigger, and using the cross-tie as a rowlock, the sculler describes short, semicircular sweeps with the blade, throwing his weight against the handle in front of him as he stands upon the deck. When two are sculling they swing in time, but in opposite directions, and there is no exercise that displays the grace of the human body in action to better advantage.

A speed of three miles an hour is the maximum that can be attained with the _sua_, but the scullers can maintain this speed for a long time without fatigue. The stroke is as difficult to acquire as that of the gondolier, but when you have once acquired it you wonder wherein the difficulty lay.

The craft of seamans.h.i.+p was hereditary, and every considerable chief had his fisher tribe to man his canoes. In war time they were his navy, since many engagements were fought at sea. Manoeuvring to windward of the enemy was even more important in a war-canoe than in a frigate, because by getting within striking distance of his outrigger you had him at your mercy. While he could not venture out upon his outrigger without capsizing himself, one stroke of a hatchet at his mast-stay brought the whole of his rigging down about his ears, and you could club his head as it bobbed up under the sail. A body of etiquette grew up about the canoe. The high chief's canoe was marked by a streamer or a fan floating from the tip of the lower yard. It was an insult to cross her bows, or to sail to windward of her. The custom which required the serf to stoop in pa.s.sing or approaching a chief was extended to canoes pa.s.sing or approaching chief villages such as Mbau. All had to lower their sails, and toil past with the _sua_, however fair the breeze.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 101: _Fiji and the Fijians_, pp. 71-76, 88-89.]

[Footnote 102: A full description and diagram of the _tongiaki_ is given by Captain Cook.]

CHAPTER XXII

PHYSICAL POWERS

Though the contrary is a.s.serted by European residents, I think that the physical strength and endurance of a Fijian are greater rather than less than that of the average Englishman. Native prisoners, used as porters, will carry a box weighing from 50 to 60 lb., slung on a bamboo between two men, over very hilly roads a distance of thirty miles in a hot sun without distress, if they are allowed occasional halts, and will do this for several days in succession. A letter-carrier will cover thirty-five miles of hilly road as an ordinary day's march, and more if haste is enjoined. On a fairly level road, such as the hard beach, a native will walk ten miles easily in two hours and a quarter. It is probably true that most Europeans in good training could do all these things equally well in cool weather, if they were barefooted and could reduce their clothing to a loin-cloth; for having once been s.h.i.+pwrecked at night, with ten miles of sand in the darkness to cover, when I had given my wet clothes and shoes to a native to carry, I found that I outpaced my men easily. But this, of course, was no test, for the cool breeze which was pleasant to me cut through them like a March east wind, and left them s.h.i.+vering, starved and miserable.

On the sugar plantations the overseers have a good opportunity of comparing the strength and endurance of Fijians and East Indian coolies, and they find that where steady hard work, such as thras.h.i.+ng cane, is required the coolie is the best labourer, but that the Fijian excels in work such as unloading punts, or hauling logs, in which great muscular effort is required, with rests between. This is exactly what one would expect. In India the man who cannot work steadily must starve; in Fiji food is so easily come by that a few spurts of labour at planting and harvest and war time are the normal conditions of life.

A Fijian can hurl a spear and throw a reed into the air farther than a white man can, and in those feats in which knack is in favour of the white man, such as throwing the cricket ball, he is probably more than his equal.

His extraordinary powers of endurance in the water far surpa.s.s anything recorded of Europeans. I have twice talked with people just rescued after being 48 hours in the water, swimming without support, in both cases from the capsizing of their canoes in mid-channel. They seemed little the worse, though they had been without food or drink for two days in a burning sun and in constant peril of sharks, which had eaten several of their companions, and their faces were raw, owing to their continually brus.h.i.+ng the salt water out of their eyes. Men suffer more acutely than women in these cases, because the long immersion in salt water produces a horrible and painful affection of the male organs.

On the other hand, Fijians seem to be more sensitive to cold and hunger than Europeans. The average daily weight of roots consumed by a healthy adult Fijian is from seven to ten pounds, and the stomach is probably larger than that of a European, and feels hunger sooner. Cold and hunger tell rapidly upon his buoyant spirits, and make him silent and depressed. Fijians are heavy sleepers, and dislike being aroused. It is difficult to induce a commoner to awake his chief at all, and if he must, he does it by calling "_Iele!_" softly, or scratching at his sleeping-mats, but never by touching him. He bears deprivation of sleep less easily than a European, and for this reason he makes a bad sentry.

CHAPTER XXIII

ATt.i.tUDES AND MOVEMENTS

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. Except among the high chiefs, standing seems to be felt as a breach of good manners, for to stand up when others are sitting, or to reach over their head for something suspended above requires the apology, "_Tulou! Tulou!_" and a clapping of hands after the sitting posture has been resumed. Sitting in a chair is as irksome to the Fijian as sitting tailor-fas.h.i.+on is to us.

He will not only sit cross-legged for hours without fatigue, but will even lay one foot upon the inner surface of the other thigh. But in the presence of equals, when social restraint is removed, he prefers to lie upon his stomach with his chin propped upon his hands. It is not uncommon to find half-a-dozen men thus lying with their heads converging upon the native newspaper, _Na Mata_, which is spread out uncut between them, so that each is able to read a different page. When a visitor enters they spring up, knotting their _sulus_ round the waist, and sidle away cross-legged into the place proper to their respective ranks, the chief nearest the bed-place, and the inferiors facing him at the lower end of the house. During the brewing of the _yankona_ bowl, even in the family circle no one would think of lolling until the cup has been handed round; then tongues and att.i.tudes are loosened, and every one may loll as he pleases.

Women never sit cross-legged. They sit with their knees together and their feet drawn up under them on one side or the other, changing the side at frequent intervals, by half-rising on the knees, and s.h.i.+fting the feet to the other side. The att.i.tude in micturition is the same for both s.e.xes, namely, squatting.