The Fijians Part 28

[Pageheader: HOW THE EGGS ARE FERTILIZED]

At eight o'clock the _mbalolo_ have disappeared. If they break up earlier the natives believe that there will be a hurricane between January and March. As the sun gains power the _mbalolo_ may be clearly seen in dense patches with individual worms bridging the clear water between. They are now more active than in the night, the closer ma.s.ses even churning the surface of the water. A little before eight they begin to disintegrate and break up; the sea becomes turbid and milky, and when it clears they are gone. Mr. Whitmee's captives in the gla.s.s jar behaved like their fellows in the sea. After swimming more rapidly for a few moments they gave a convulsive wriggle and broke into half-a-dozen pieces each, which wriggled about near the surface, squirting out their contents. The vase looked as if a teaspoonful of milk had been emptied into it, and the little transparent envelopes of the fluid sank empty to the bottom, just as the green worms discharging their cargo of eggs began also to settle down. After a few minutes' immersion in the fertilizing fluid the eggs themselves sank gently to the bottom, where they lay among the husks that had given them birth and being. Under the magnifying gla.s.s a faint whitish spot was detected on each of the tiny green eggs. Thus by a voluntary act of self-immolation the worms had handed on their lives to a new generation.

CHAPTER XXVII

GAMES

While ceremonial dancing takes the place both of theatrical shows and of sports with the Fijians, there are two national games that have held their own, and a number of amus.e.m.e.nts which may be briefly enumerated.

_Veiyama_ was a sham fight among children, in which serious injuries sometimes resulted, and, as they have no longer the example of their elders, it is now very rarely played. A swing consisting of a rope tied to a high branch with a loop for the foot, formerly very popular, has now also fallen into disuse. The children now play hide-and-seek, and a few impromptu games, without prescribed rules, and with the warm water on the beach to sport in, and the school dances to practise, they do not feel the want of them. They have no toys except miniature canoes, which they make for themselves as they want them.

_Veimoli_, or pelting with oranges, is played both by children and young men. The skill consists in dodging the orange, which is thrown at short distance and with full force, and their activity in dodging is so extraordinary that it has given rise to the myth that Fijians could avoid a bullet by dodging at the flash of the gun.

[Pageheader: A DANGEROUS ROMP]

The _there_, or foot-race, was always run on some occasion such as the first voyage of a canoe, or the digging of a plantation, for a prize offered by the owner. In my first voyage in a canoe I had had built at Fort Carnarvon we found a crowd of young men waiting for us on the river-bank, decked in streamers, and shouting a sort of shrill war-cry.

My men declared it was a _there_, and a bale of _masi_ (at my expense) was hastily unpacked, and a streamer of the cloth fastened to a stick.

With this one of the men landed, some two hundred yards lower down, and ran at topmost speed with the whole rabble baying at his heels. The man who caught him and tore the flag from him received the bale, which he afterwards divided out among the others.

The _veisanka_ was a sort of wrestling match between men and women, who met at the top of a steep hill, and, having closed, a couple would roll down the hill together. It was a rough sport, resulting often in a sprain, and it has now been discouraged by the missionaries.

There were also the _veitenki-vutu_ (throwing the vutu), a fruit, which from its buoyancy is used as a float for fishing nets; the _veikalawa-na-sari_, a sort of "hop, skip and jump"; and a kind of skittles, played with stones. All these have been abandoned.

The _veisolo_ is a custom rather than a game, and it is still occasionally practised in Western Vitilevu. The last case I heard of occurred in 1887, and some of my armed constables were the victims. They put up in a small village in the Nandi district, and hardly had the food been brought to them when the house was beset by a number of girls bent on mischief. The traditional object of the besiegers is to disperse their visitors and take away the food, but the real motive is to have a romp. The men are expected to be gentle with their a.s.sailants, and either to take them captive or lay them gently on the ground, but in this instance they were greatly outnumbered, and all the men of the village being absent, they were really in fear for their lives, for they had heard stories of men dying from the violence of these Amazons. They barricaded the door, and, having succeeded in wresting one of the pointed sticks that were thrust at them through the gra.s.s walls, for a time prevented any of the women from getting in. Their a.s.sailants then became infuriated, and shrieked for a fire-stick with which to fire the thatch, and one of the men holding the door thought it well to take a hostage. So he drew back, and a strapping girl bounced into the hut.

Then followed a scene which suggests that there is a s.e.xual significance in the custom, for the girl was stripped and cruelly a.s.saulted in a manner not to be described. The women outside were actually setting fire to the house, and would have burned their village to the ground had not the men, alarmed by the uproar, returned from their plantations in time to put a stop to it. The guests beat a hasty retreat under cover of the darkness, and, curiously enough, no complaint of their behaviour to the girl was made, probably because it was custom.

The two national games that have held their own are _veitinka_ and _lavo_. The _tinka_ or _ulutoa_ is a reed four feet long fitted into a pointed head carved out of ironwood, and about four inches long. On the outskirts of every village in Western Vitilevu is the _tinka_ ground, a level stretch of bare earth over one hundred yards long by ten wide. The _ulutoa_ is thrown thus: the thrower rests the end of the reed on the ball of the middle finger of the right hand, and, with the arm extended behind him and the point of the _ulutoa_ on the level of his armpit, he takes a short run and discharges the weapon with the full force of the right side of his body. It flies through the air for the first thirty yards with a low trajectory, and touching the ground with its smooth surface, skims along it, barely touching the earth until its force is spent. The longest throw wins the game. The heavy head and the light shaft make the _ulutoa_ an attractive missile, but the unpractised European finds the knack of throwing straight very difficult to acquire.

Almost every fine evening finds the youths of the village at practice on the _tinka_ ground, and on feast-days challenges are sent out to the neighbouring villages and matches are played. Good players regard their ironwood heads much as golfers do their favourite driver, but they cut the reed shafts from the roadside as they want them.

[Pageheader: THE GAME OF _LAFO_]

_Lavo_ has a curious history. It was originally a Fijian game, and was played with the _lavo_, the flat round seeds of the _walai_ creeper (_Mimosa Scandens_), which from its shape has given its name to all European coins, for the dollars recovered from the wrecked brig _Eliza_ in 1809 were used for the game in preference to the seeds. The Tongan immigrants learned the game and carried it back with them to Tonga, under the name of _lafo_, where, the seeds being scarce, they subst.i.tuted discs of cocoanut-sh.e.l.l, which were a great improvement. In Tonga it flourished exceedingly; the rules were improved, special sheds were erected for it, and valuable property changed hands in the stakes.

Meanwhile it had died out in Fiji, and when it revived through the influence of the Tongans domiciled in the group, it was in its Tongan form with cocoanut-sh.e.l.ls.

I have described it elsewhere in detail,[104] and I will here only indicate the rules. A board is made with mats about fifteen feet long, slightly raised at the sides so as to form a sloping cushion. The four players sit, two at each end, so arranged that the partners are divided by the length of the board, and each is sitting beside an adversary.

Each player throws five discs alternately with his opponent, and the object is to skim the disc so as to be nearest the extreme edge, and to knock off an adversary's disc that may be nearer.

The under edge of the disc is oiled with a rag, and a very nice judgment is required to impart a "break" from the cushion so as to topple off an opponent's disc and leave your own in its place. In scoring it is not unlike tennis. You begin at six and count to ten, and the best out of five makes the set. I have taken part in many a match, and can testify to the excellence of the game and the skill that may be acquired with practice.

The men amuse themselves sometimes with a game of guessing. One flings out his hand suddenly, and the other guesses the position of his fingers.

The chiefs sometimes play practical jokes by punning (_vakarimbamalamala_). Thus as the word _ulaula_ means both to thatch a house and to throw short clubs at one another, the Mbau chiefs send to their va.s.sals to come and _ulaula_. They come expecting to thatch a house, and find themselves received with a volley of throwing clubs.

Story-telling is the princ.i.p.al amus.e.m.e.nt on long evenings, and the best story-tellers are professionals. The most successful are tales full of exaggeration of the Munchausen order, and these, especially when unfit for polite ears, provoke roars of laughter. The story-tellers have now begun to draw upon European literature for their inspiration, and the result throws a very instructive light upon the Fijian's sense of humour.

I once gave a Fijian the outline of Mr. Rider Haggard's _She_, and a few nights later I chanced to hear his version of it delivered to a spellbound native audience. The author would not have enjoyed it, for the central figure was the native servant of the travellers, who, it will be remembered, was incidentally "hot-potted" by an unfriendly tribe. This servant had become an Indian coolie, talking such broken Fijian as coolies talk in a sort of nasal whine. The narrator enlarged upon his skinniness, his absence of calf, his cowardice, and many other qualities in the coolie which the Fijians hold in contempt. There were endless interpolated dialogues, and the coolie argued at great length against the fate decreed for him, but when the red-hot pot was finally on his head the story was drowned in shouts of appreciative laughter.

"She," being but a love-sick white woman, of course talked in "pidgin"

Fijian, but she had little more than a walking part. The professional story-tellers are promised _nambu_, or fees in kind, by the audience as an inducement.

Wherever a ground is within reach, and Europeans are at hand to organize the game, the Fijians have taken keenly to cricket, though not to the same extent as the Tongans. They have a natural apt.i.tude for fielding and throwing up, but their idea of batting and bowling are still in the elementary stage, where force is thought better than skill. It was, however, possible to send a native team on tour through the Australian colonies, under the captaincy of Ratu Kandavulevu, King Thakombau's grandson.

[Pageheader: TRIBAL FEELING IN SPORTS]

The native constabulary took keenly to Rugby football for a time, but as they wore no boots the sick-list after every match was unduly swelled with men suffering from injured toes, and the game was not encouraged.

In a temperature of 80 degrees in the shade, where pa.s.sions are apt to rise with the thermometer, football is unlikely to become a national game.

English athletic sports are held occasionally at native meetings, but so strong does tribal feeling still run, that it is unsafe to encourage wrestling matches and tugs-of-war between rival tribes, such contests being apt to degenerate into free fights. The instinct of the weaker side is to run for a club with which to wipe out the disgrace.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 104: _The Indiscretions of Lady Asenath._]

CHAPTER XXVIII

FOOD

Famine, in the European sense of the word, is unknown in Fiji. Even in times of scarcity every native can find sufficient food to satisfy his hunger, but, though the quant.i.ty is sufficient, the quality is not.

Ample in amount and in variety, it is lacking in nitrogenous const.i.tuents, and it is unsuitable for young children and for women during the periods of gestation and suckling.

The staple foods of the Fijians are Yams, Taro (_Arum esculentum_), Plantains and Bread-fruit. Next to these in point of order are k.u.mala, or Sweet Potatoes (_Ipomaea batatas_), Kawai (_Dioscorea aculeata_), Kaile (_Dioscorea bulbifera_), Tivoli (_Dioscorea nummularia_), Arrowroot, Ka.s.sava, Via (_Alocasia Indica_ and _Cyrtosperma edulis_), China Bananas, Cocoanuts, Ivi Nuts (_Inocarpus edulis_), Sugar-cane, and a number of other vegetables and fruits. Meat and fish are not reckoned as "real food" (_kakana ndina_). They are eaten rather as a luxury or zest (_thoi_).

[Pageheader: METHOD OF PRESERVING FOOD]

All these vegetables contain a large proportion of starch and water, and are deficient in proteids. Moreover, the supply of the princ.i.p.al staples is irregular, being greatly affected by variable seasons, and the attacks of insects and vermin. Very few of them will bear keeping, and almost all of them must be eaten when ripe. As the food is of low nutritive value, a native always eats to repletion. In times of plenty a full-grown man will eat as much as ten pounds' weight of vegetables in the day; he will seldom be satisfied with less than five. A great quant.i.ty, therefore, is required to feed a very few people, and as everything is transported by hand, a disproportionate amount of time is spent in transporting food from the plantation to the consumer. The time spent in growing native food is also out of all proportion to its value.

The most valuable of all the staples is _ndalo_, or taro (_Arum esculentum_), which can only be grown successfully in the wet districts of the islands, or in places where there is running water. The only way of preserving perishable foods known to the natives is the _mandrai_ pit. Bread-fruit and plantains are packed in leaves and buried in a deep hole weighted with stones and earth. Fermentation, of course, sets in, and when the pit is uncovered at the end of several months the stench is appalling. The fruit is found reduced to a viscous pulp, and though it turns the best regulated European stomach, it certainly tastes better than it smells. It has never occurred to the Fijians to dry any of these fruits in the sun, and grind them into flour, as is done in Africa. The yam crop is precarious, and, at its best, only yields about seven-fold, and then after immense expenditure of time and labour. In places in which taro and bread-fruit are not plentiful the natives have become accustomed to a season of scarcity from the month of November, when the yam crop has been consumed, till February, when the new crop is ripe, and in some districts this scarcity has been increased by the ravages of the banana disease, which destroys the plantains. At these seasons, if bananas are not obtainable, the natives subsist upon _ivi_ nuts, and unwholesome and indigestible fruits and roots, such as _yaka_ (_Pachyrrhizus angulatus_) or _kaile nganga_, or upon such wild yams as are obtainable. But even at such times every able-bodied man or woman seems to be able to find enough to eat.

The staple animal food of the Fijian is fish, which is fairly abundant in the coast villages, especially in those parts where fish-fences can be erected, except in very stormy weather. Even in times of reported famine it is found that the natives can always procure enough fish to satisfy their hunger. On one occasion, when the province of Lau was reported to be starving from the damage done by the disastrous hurricane of January, 1886, the Government dispatched a relief steamer from island to island to distribute rice and biscuits, but it was found that the natives consumed the whole of their dole in one prodigal feast, having quite sufficient fish and pumpkins for everyday use. The regularity of the supply is proved by the fact that, though in Mathuata and one or two other provinces the natives are acquainted with a method of smoking or drying fish, they resort to it but seldom, preferring to waste or throw away their superfluity to the trouble of curing it. In Rewa, after a good haul, fish is preserved for a few days in leaves by repeated cooking, and is thus often eaten tainted. At Mbau mullet is eaten raw with a sauce of sea-water as a delicacy--a practice introduced from Tonga.

Pigs and fowls are to be found in every native village, but they are reserved for feasts or the entertainment of strangers, and are seldom eaten by the owners as part of their diet. Except on such occasions fowls are rarely killed, even for the use of a sick person. It is not that any complicated system of joint ownership limits the use of these animals to communal purposes, for pigs and fowls are owned by individuals absolutely, and though the native will often treat one of his pigs (called a _ngai_) with an almost Hibernian indulgence, and pet and feed it in his house like one of his children, this affection does not prevent him from slaughtering it and eating his share of it, when he considers it sufficiently fat. Whatever may be the reason the Fijian seldom eats a chicken and never an egg, although almost every other denizen of the reef and the bush--sh.e.l.l-fish, snakes, iguanas, lizards, gra.s.shoppers, rats, grubs, chameleon-eggs, cats, dogs, wild duck, and, in recent times, mongoose--at some time finds its way into his maw.

[Pageheader: PAST AND PRESENT COMPARED]

Milk, the princ.i.p.al sustenance for children in their first years, is not to be had in native villages, and many Fijians vomit on first tasting it.[105] Their agricultural system has imbued them with a prejudice against cattle, which break down their weak fences, and trample and destroy the yams and plantains. In the isolated instances, where the chiefs keep goats or cattle as pets, they show, by their callous disregard for their wants, that they have no sympathy with the sufferings of the lower animals. The want of milk, as has been shown, has an important bearing upon the relation between the s.e.xes.

The Fijians have two regular meals in the day. The princ.i.p.al meal is eaten in the afternoon when they return from their plantations.

Sometimes food is cooked for them before they start in the morning, but more often they take with them some cold yam or taro left from the previous day, or trust to being able to roast some wild food during the intervals of their work. The women, however, generally cook a meal for themselves and the children if there is sufficient food and firewood in the house. The boys either eat with their parents or forage for themselves in the bush, eating large quant.i.ties of unripe fruit, and thus inducing the bowel complaints that are so common among them. In some cases it is the custom to boil a separate pot of food for the children to eat during the day. The men eat first, and when they are satisfied the women and children may fall to upon what is left, but the latter, during the operation of cooking, know how to take care of themselves.

It is impossible to say whether the Fijians now plant less food than formerly. The traces of extensive clearings that are to be seen on almost every hillside prove nothing but that the population was once much larger, and that the native planter shifts his ground year by year.

But the decay of custom has not left the food-supply untouched, for supposing the production to be proportionately as great, the consumption is proportionately far greater. In heathen times feasts were confined to occasions of ceremony within the tribe, such as births, marriages and funerals, or the rare visits of allies. In these days every meeting connected with the Government or with the Missions is accompanied by a feast to the visitors. There are, besides the half-yearly Provincial Council, a District Council every month, and some three or four missionary meetings every quarter, and, though these feasts are often small enough, and the meetings are held in different villages of the district or circuit in turn, they are all to be added to the ordinary expenditure of food upon births, marriages and funerals, as well as the little tribal _solevus_ that are held from time to time. Moreover, with the introduction of European-built vessels, and the safety of travellers from attack, travelling for pleasure has much increased, without any diminution of the hospitality to visitors, which is enjoined by customary law. The ravages of the imported banana disease, and the damage done in some islands to the bread-fruit by horses (lately introduced), which are inordinately fond of gnawing the juicy bark, have diminished the supply of two important articles of food.