FIJIAN COURT AT EXHIBITION

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 282, 26 August 1939, Page 9

FIJIAN COURT AT EXHIBITION

Replica Of Native Meeting-House

CANE SUGAR, COCONUTS AND NATIVE CRAFTS

The court of the Crown Colony of Fiji at the Centennial Exhibition will take the form of a replica of a native meeting-house. In it will lie exhibited the products of the archipelago, native handcrafts, and South Sea Island curios.

The court will have an area of 1000 sq. ft. Prominent among its contents will be the industrial and agricultural produce of Fiji—sugar, fruit, copra, and tobacco. The colony’s most lucrative industry, production of cane sugar and molasses, will be fully illustrated. The banana and pineapple plantations will contribute examples of their produce .and canned pineapples, jellies, pickles, mango chutney, and various other preserves, will show the wide range of industrial purposes to which tropical fruits may be adapted. The fresh fruits of the tropics will be eent down constantly from Fiji during the exhibition period to replenish the exhibits of a perishable nature. Emblem of the tropics, among the most beautiful and most useful trees in the world, are the coconut palms that fringe every South Sea beach. Young coconut palms will be shown at the court, as well as a range of coconut derivatives.

To the Islander, the coconut fills almost every purpose. The trunk of the palm provides wood for many purposes, and poles for the uprights of houses. The leaves are used to thatch the houses, and to plait mats, hats, and baskets. The green shoots in the heart of a fallen palm make a delicious salad. 'The sap of the palm, tapped, provides a sweet beverage; fermented, it forms toddy; boiled down, it thickens to molasses, and crystallizes into a coarse sugar.

The jelly-like llesh of the young, green coconut, is the food of native infants and invalids, and the clear, sweet juice is the ordinary drink of the islanders. Later, the flesh hardens and becomes' the coconut of commerce; from it. grated, may be expressed a thick, rich cream. After the nut falls and the juice turns sour, the nuts are split and sun-dried, and the rotting, sweet-smell-ing copra is bagged and sent away to the soap-factories and cosmetic makers. From it may easily be squeezed the thick, scented oil beloved of the natives for annointing hair and bodies. The last stage in the life of the coconut is its germination; the milk dries away, the llesh vanishes, and the interior becomes filled with a soft, spongy pulp that is crisp and sweet for eating.

From the shell of the nut are made the native drinking bowls used in the kava ceremony and in daily life; while as a fuel the shards of a broken coconut burn as hotly as coal. The husk fibres are the coir from which ropes are spun and string twisted, and the sennitplaited from them is used by the Fijian for every purpose from canoe-building to holding his house together, for knots, not nails, are the structural principle of Fiji carpentery. Tobacco grows well in Fiji, and is cultivated in most native villages. It will be displayed in leaf form, and made up into twist, cigars, and cheroots.

The Fijian are deft craftsmen, along traditional lines. The court will be lined with native tapa cloth, beaten from the bark of the mulberry bush, and decorated with patterns in black an'd brown. Spears and clubs, carved wooden kava bowls and many other examples of the material culture of this fine native race will lie displayed, and will make the court an interesting one to all who are interested in travel or ethnology. Native Fijians, fuzzy-headed and in the kilted “stilus” of the islands, will explain to visitors the significance and story of the articles displayed there, and will supply all information required about the colony.