A VIEW OF FIJI.

Otago Witness, Issue 2528, 27 August 1902, Page 65

A VIEW OF FIJI.

(Sidvey Dinaxsov. M.A.. F.R.G.S.. Bos-

ton, in the Scientific American.)

A country like Fiji, with its copious rainfall, is "naturally full of watercourses, and the mountaimms character of the land gives, opportunity for numerous waterfalls, which are among the most charming features of the Islands. Nothing can he more beautiful than these silvery cascades, set, as they ore, in a dense jungle of flowering trees, variegaced shrub 3, and mottled crotons, or in ravines where enormous orange-coloured spiders swing in webs that glitter like diamonds from the spray of the falls, and where the flight of the "orange" and "rainbow" doves and crimson and green parakeets gives movement and shifting colour to the scene. The natives are a cleanly folk, and speed much time in the water of the inland streams or in the sea within the coral reefs, where the sand is of dazzling whiteness and the water shows eveiy shade of the opal, turquoise, and sapphire.

Along the edge of the sea, extending for miles on both sides of Levuka, mns a tmooth and level path, which, built up on the wall of coral rock that rises a few feet above the water, leads by gentle curves around projecting promontories into avenues of palm trees and picturesque glades where sleepy villages drowse under the rustle and shade of the cocoamits, and in hearing of the perpetual symphony of the waves. From this path the eye extends to the encircling coral reef, against which the ponderous wavei of the Pacific burst in clouds of foam. The heavenly blue of the water inside the reef forms a beautiful contrast with the purplish -indigo expanse without, and the drowsy air is made drowsier still by the incessant reverberant roar of the distant breakers. This sound is heard nowheie else in the voice of the sea. It has no intervals, but resembles the continuous passage of a heavily loaded railroad train, the hollow, semielastic structure of the coral giving it a metallic, ringing quality that is as noticeable as it i? difficult to describe.

If you will launch a boat at noon, when the vertical sun lights up eveiy detail in the bottom of the shallow lagoon, you may introduce yourself to a strange and lovely spectacle. You float over fairy grottoes, looking into which, through translucent fathoms, yon see coral in every tint of blue, green, pink, and creamy brown — the recollection of which will give you ever after a distaste for its bleached and ghastly skeletons in cabinet or on bric-a-brac table. Through its finest of branches float armies of fish the colour of topazes and rubies, and of quaint or monstrous forms ; mous purple and crimson starfish sprawl upon snowy sands, while around them the hideous (but edibly delicious) sea-slug — the famous beche-de-mer — glides in writhing progression, and sea-urchins expand and contract their iridescent spines Now and then you drift over spaces dusky with depth, through which enormous conger-eels pass with wavering fins, and green turtles flap like strange, unwieldy birds ; while raiubow-hued shells incnist everything in wanton profusion, and add to the beauties of fish. CoraS, -and swaying weed to produce a soene of exquisite loveliness, which lingers in tie recollection like an enchanted dream.

A view of Fiji would be incomplete without some illustration of the old cannibal pr«ictices which, until less than 50 years ago, made the country a section of hell transplanted to earih. Instances of this era are found most numerously at Albau. the old heathen capital and headquarters of the late King Thakombau (to give the English pronunciation of his name), who. as the last ruW of Fjji. ceded bi> country to Gicat Britain for a pension "i £1500 a year anel other considerations, and v hose war-club, sent to the Queen as a mark of fealty, hold:- a worthy place at Wind&or beside the umbrella of King Koffee of Dahomey — reminders to the world of two as thorough scoundielsi of> evei cumbered it. Before his conversion to Christianity the ciDy of Mbau was covered with trees forming sanctuaries like the groves of Baal, and as c/e of his first acts on reformation -win. to cut thes.e down. Mbau now lacks many interesting arboreal growth*. Chief of these w\t& the famous. "Mbau Larder" — an eno.-mons tiee upon whose spreading branches tough victims were huag to acquire that "gamey"' flavour -nhieh Fjjians like in "long pig" («t« they facetiously teim the human bukemeat) and Englishmen in pheasants and grouse. The Wesleyan Mission House to-day fronts the ground where banquets weie served and victims prepared for the oven. A huge stone "-totid at one end. upon which the -Subject's brains were knocked out its a pi ehminary ; to-day it is in the church at Mbau and is used as a baptismal font for native converts, its top having been hollowed out.

I met an aged man at Mbav who me much interesting information on cannibalism. His 'father, he said, had been a famous trencherman in the good oid days, and although he denied that he himself had ever eaten the fiesh of his kind, y^t in the course ai Ms description he fingered my

arms and pinched my legs ans poked va€ in the ribs in a manner which seem-? to nic not altogether platonic. Fijian fles'i, he stated, was superior to that of whita men, who tasted of the salt they ate with almost everything ; while a tough old ssilor was practically a waste of ravr material from the tobacco and grog with which a life before the mast has a tendency to flavour the human system. Interrogated as to choice cuts, he gave the palm to the head — the brains and eyes being particularly desirable, and the cheeks, especially in young subjects, submitting to taking very kindly indeed. The upper part &f the arm, too, and the calf and upper portion of the leg were not to be despise*! ; but, paid this epicure, as for the res'/- of the body, "throw him away." In tae afternoon this interesting savage came around for me to get my gun and go into the bush with him, wl'iere he would "show me plenty parrots." After the enthusiasm of his morning description, however, I thought it prudent to decline.

A quaint feature of Fijian life is "kava" drinking — the beverage being made from the root of the angona shrub, which, being macerated and mixed with irater, ferment? and forms a mild intoxicant. It taste* like soap-suds and ginger ale mixed, and the relish for it has to be acquired. It is drunk with solemnities at meetings of; chiefs and at conferences generally, and its absorption is governed by strict rules oi etiquette. It must not* be sipped, but swallowed at a gulp, as a Western cowboyassimilates his whisky ; and it ie a fin* touch, and an instance of savoir faire,' after drinking, to "skitter" the <;oeoanutshell cup in which the beverage is served along the ground to the presiding genius at the supplying bowl. In native circles the root is chewed by women and expectorated in the bowl to be mixed with the water. This is said to give -a peculiar and agreeable flavour, but the less robust white residents reduce the root by a grater. The "Meke-Mekes," or descriptive songs and dances of the Fijians, are wonderfully impressive. Such, for instance, as a party of girls giving the "Wave Meke," describing the movement of the sea on the reefs. The hands sweep the ground slowly, with waving motions of the fingers, to chow the ripples crisping in the wind. Then the bodies sway in unison to show the roll of the ocean ; other movements of rising and falling figures show the leap and fall of the breakers Action grows more violent and confused, the performers rise to their knees, then to their feet ; ar last, with a spring and a clapping of hands, the wave is described overleaping the barrier of the reef, and as it falls intt* the still lagoon the dancers drop to the ground in unison with a long cry indiniinishing cadence, and the "Meke" ijf over.

Delicious is the life in the tropic seas, dreamy as the lotus that typifies it — ppt to he understood by residents in our colder and rifder north, but delicious even in the aftertaste to him who has experienced ii. Even I, who have sparingly partaken of this divine food, cannot forget its flavour ; for evermore will rise before n«\ in smoky London, perchance, or in bustling New York, visions of the slumbering palms in the moonlight at Levuka, and my ears hear the murmur of the surf and the plaintive "Mekes" of Fiji.