Part 6 (1/2)
But the women, not so handsome nor so elegantly coifed as the men, were excluded from a share in the toast. They were not even part of the entertainment. The s.e.xes seldom meet in any form of social intercourse.
The boys never flirt with the girls, nor do they ever seem to notice them. In public there is a never-diminis.h.i.+ng distance between them. A world without love-making, primitive life is outwardly not so romantic as is ours. The ”romance” is generally that of the foreigner with the native women, not among the natives themselves.
The daughter of the biggest living Fijian chief wandered about like an outcast. She wore a red Mother-Hubbard gown, and nothing else. Her hair hung down to her shoulders. Having gone through the process of discoloration by the application of lime, according to the custom among the natives in the tropics, it was reddish and stiff, but, being long, had none of the leonine quality of the men's hair. Andi Cacarini (Fijian for Katherine), daughter of a modern chief, spoke fairly good English.
She wasn't exactly ashamed, but just shy. The better cla.s.s of Fijians, they who have come in contact with white people, all manifest a timid reticence. Andi Cacarini was shy, but hardly what one could call bashful or fastidious. She posed for me as though an artist's model, not at all ungraceful in her carriage or her walk.
The male Fijian is extremely timid, but none the less fastidious. The care with which he trains and curls his hair would serve as an object-lesson to the impatient husband of the vainest of white women.
This doesn't mean that the Fijian man is effeminate in his ways, but he is particular about his hair. The process of discoloring it is exact. A mixture of burnt coral with water makes a fine subst.i.tute for soap. When washed out and dried, the hair is curled and combed and anointed. From the point of view of sanitation, the treatment is excellent, and from that of art--just watch the proud male pa.s.s down the road!
No matter where one goes in Fiji--or any of the South Sea Islands--the dance goes with one. Here at Davuilevu one afternoon in the hot, scorching sun, the natives gathered on the turf for merrymaking. It was no special holiday, no unusual event. To our way of thinking it is a tame sort of dance they do. We hear much of the freedom between the s.e.xes in the tropics, and one gains the impression that there are absolutely no taboos. But just as there is nothing in all j.a.pan--however delightful--to compensate the child, or even grown-ups, for the lack of the kiss, so none of the Fijian dances fill that same emotional requirement which with us is secured through the embrace of men and women in the dance. From the Fijian point of view, the whirling of couples about together must be extremely immodest, if not immoral.
Sitting in a double row, one in front of the other, were oiled and garlanded Fijians. Behind them and in a circle sat a number of singers and lali-players. As they began beating time, the oiled natives began to move from side to side rhythmically. Their arms and bodies jerked in a most fascinating and interpretative manner. No voices in the wide world are lovelier than the voices of Fijians in chorus; no other music issues so purely as the Fijian music from the depths of racial experience.
Sometimes the dancers swung half-way round from side to side, with arms akimbo, or extended their arms in all directions, clapping their hands while chanting in soothing, melodious deep tones.
Judging from what I heard of the music of the Tongans, the Samoans, and the Fijians, I give the prize to the Fijians for richness of tone. More primitive than the plaintive Tongans, the Fijian music is a weird combination of the intellectual, the martial, and the industrial,--more fascinating than the pa.s.sionate, voluptuous tunes and dances of the Samoans and the Hawaiians. The Polynesians, probably because of their close kins.h.i.+p with the Europeans, are much more sentimental in their music. The Fijian is more vigorous and to me more truly artistic.
No study, it seems to me, would throw more light on the history and unity of the human race than that of the dance and music. Why two races so far apart as the j.a.panese and the Maories of New Zealand should be so strikingly alike in their cruder dances, is hard to say. And the Fijians seem in some way the link between these two. The Fijian doubtless inherits some of his musical qualities from his negroid mixture, but he has certainly improved upon it if that is so. He has no regrets, no sentimental longings, and in consequence his songs are free from racial affectation.
The Fijians always sing. The instant the day's work is done and groups form they begin to sing. Half a dozen of them sit down and cross their legs before them, each places a stick so that one end rests lightly on one toe, the other on the ground; and while they tap upon these sticks, others sing and clap hands, swaying in an enchantment of loveliness. One carries the melody in a strained tenor, the others support him with a ba.s.s drawl. Once in a while an instrument is secured, as a flute, and the ensemble is complete. Even the tapping on the stick becomes instrumental in its quality.
As the day draws to a close, from the cane-fields smoke rises in all directions. The plantation workers have gathered piles of cane refuse for destruction. Like miniature volcanoes, these, with the coming of darkness, s.h.i.+ne in the lightless night. It makes one slightly sad, this clearing away of the remnants of daily toil, this purification by fire.
Then the sound of that other lali (the hollow tree-trunk), once the war-alarum or call to a cannibal feast, now at Davuilevu the invitation to prayer, the dampness, and the sense of crowding things in growth,--this is what will ever remain vivid to me.
9
Poor untroubled Fijians! This simple love of harmony, a majestic sense of force and brutality,--yet, withal, so nave, withal so easily satisfied, so easily led. Once a foreigner met a native who seemed in great haste and trembling. The native inquired the time, in dread lest he miss the launch for Suva. In his hand he carried a warrant for his own arrest, with instructions to present himself at jail. When the foreigner told him that it was up to the jailer to worry about it, he seemed greatly shocked. One of the missionaries had been asked to keep his eye on a friend's house. In the absence of the owner, the missionary found a Fijian in the act of burglarizing. When questioned it was found that the native wanted to get into jail, where he was sure of three meals and shade, without worry. This is almost worthy of civilized man, by whom it is perhaps more commonly practised.
But the kind of jail in which men were at that time incarcerated was not enough to frighten the most liberty-loving individual. Because of the humidity and dampness, the structure was left open on one side, only three substantial walls and a roof being practical. Before the white man got full control and the native had some iron injected into his nature, it was not an arduous life the prisoners led. The missionary told me that once the head jailer was found sitting out of sight, with the officer in charge of the prisoners, tilting his chair against the wall of the jail. The prisoners had been ordered to labor. The officer in charge was to execute the command. Between puffs of tobacco, he would shout: ”Up shot!” and rest a while; then ”Down shot!”--more rest. Not a prisoner moved a muscle, the weights never rose from the ground. The men were deep within the shadows. The period of punishment over, they were ordered into their heaven of still more rest and more shade.
From our way of thinking, these are flagrant deceptions. But to the Fijian (and to most South Sea races) the inducements for greater exertion are simply non-existent. His revelries have been tabooed, his wars have been stopped, his native arts are in constant compet.i.tion with cheap importations from our commercialized, industrialized world. What is there, then, for him to do? Little wonder that his native indifference to life is growing upon him. His conception of life after death never held many horrors. Even in the fierce old days it was easy for a Fijian to announce most casually that he would die at eight o'clock the following day. He would be oiled and made ready, and at the stated time he died. Most likely a state of catalepsy, but he was buried and none thought a second time about it. One boy was recently roused from such a condition and still lives.
The only means of counteracting this apathy are education and the awakening of ambition through manual training and the teaching of trades. This, the head of the mission told me, was his main object.
Missionary efforts, according to one man, were directed more to this purpose than to the inculcation of any special religious precepts. And there is no question that that will work. The will to live may yet spring afresh in the Fijian.
From the nucleus formed by the mission is growing a more elaborate educational system. Recently the several existing schools have been amalgamated under a new ordinance. A proposal in reference to a more efficient system of vernacular or sub-primary schools was embodied in a bill put before the legislative council. A more satisfactory method of training teachers was deliberated upon. The Fijians are, it is seen, outgrowing the kindergarten stage, but the grown-ups are largely children still.
10
A fortnight after I landed in Suva I was steaming for Levuka, the former capital of the islands, situated on a much smaller land-drop not many hours' journey away. These are the only two important ports in the group, and inter-island vessels seldom go to one without visiting the other. Levuka is a much prettier place than Suva. Its little cl.u.s.ters of homes and buildings seem to have dug their heels into the hillside to keep from sliding into the sea.
Along the sh.o.r.e to the left stood a group of Fijian huts,--a suburb of Levuka, no doubt. Only a few old women were at home, and one old man.
Nothing in the wide world is more restful to one's spirit than to arrive at a village which is deserted of toilers. Nothing is more symbolic of the true nature of home, the village being more than an isolated home, but a composite of the home spirit which is not tainted by any evidence of barter and trade.
On the other side of Levuka, however, was an altogether different kind of village, that of the s.h.i.+pwrights. Upon dry-docks stood the skeletons of s.h.i.+ps, fas.h.i.+oned with hands of love and ambition. In such vessels these ancient rovers of the sea wandered from island to island, learning, teaching, mixing, and disturbing the sweetness of nature, with which no race on earth was more blessed.
The _Atua_, on which I had sailed from Suva, was a fairly large inter-island steamer that made the rounds of all the important groups.