“CAUGHT IN SIN"

Evening Star, Issue 19272, 10 June 1926, Page 10

“CAUGHT IN S IN"

AH ISLAND DRAMA NATIVE WOMAN KILLED SUVA (Fiji), May 20. It is tho custom among _ natives that a woman caught in sin must die. Custom dies hard in tho Islands, and once again “murder,” as the white man styles it, has been committed. A husband has lost his wife, and a lover has lost his sweetheart —and the tribesmen aro content. In tho white man’s gaol is a man who is not worrying, even though the white man’s law has been invoked against him.

Tho little town of Nabuisa nestles away up in the mountains of the province of Colo North, in tho island of Viti Levu. Hero a native woman named Vulore Salusalu lived with a man who was not her husband. Tho pair had a youngster, aged eighteen months. For five years the woman had lived in peace, separated from her husband Serernaia, who worked far away. But a day of reckoning was coming. On Sunday, May 2, Nemesis, in the person of a man, came up the junglo path to the town. He carried a cane knife, a rather unusual weapon for a native, who generally prefers tho club of his ancestors. Ho camo to a washing pool on the confines of the village, where three women were washing clothes. TRIBE LOOKS ON. Suddenly he stiffened, rushed at tho erring wife, and, with a growl, gripped her by the hand and slashed at her until she was a mass of freely-bleeding wounds. Finally death came to end her agony. Only then did tho killer let go, as his victim sank to the ground. Her companion had called out to the men of tho town, but no ono moved to help. Then tho slaver remembered the child. It was a pledge of the woman’s guilt, and had to die, and he went off to find it. But by this time tho village constable had awakened to tho fact that tho law expected him to keep order. The retribution had been executed, and the native law' had been fulfilled, so now the majesty of tho white man’s law must intervene.