Читать книгу Down Under with the Prince - Everard Cotes - Страница 10

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Fiji was the next place of call. Warm rain drove blusterously into our faces, while dense grey mist enveloped the land and shut out the sun, as the Renown felt her way between wreck-strewn barrier reefs, over which the surf was breaking heavily, and dropped anchor, to the tick of the appointed time, in the sheltered water of Suva Bay. As the ship cleared the harbour entrance, a fleet of sailing craft, including a number of decked, outrigged war-canoes, with pear-shaped mat-sails and half-naked crews, tore dipping through the waves to escort her in. These war-canoes tacked, in the stiff breeze, by a simple expedient. The sail was reversed. The rudder, a big movable oar, was then carried from one end of the canoe to the other, so that what had just been the prow became the stern, the floating log, that served as outrigger, remaining always to windward—apparently an attempt at realizing the historic account of the bow-sprit that "got mixed with the rudder sometimes."

The little craft were identical with those that Tasman may have seen when his brig cast anchor off these islands three hundred and seventy years ago. But everything else has changed. Generations of Wesleyan missionaries have transformed snake-worship into universal Christianity. Sixty thousand coolies from India have rendered it possible for the sugar-cane to replace unproductive forest. The ninety thousand fuzzy-headed Fijians who have survived successive epidemics of measles and influenza have given up the savoury heresies of roast long pig and have taken on trousers, education, and wealth. The substantial maroon-coloured roofs of their dwellings upon the shore, which emerged from a tumbled background of cloud-topped mountain when the mist lifted, were indicative of the prosperity and civilization which have been steadily growing in the forty-six years since the British Government took over the administration from King Thakombau.

Sir Cecil Rodwell, High Commissioner of the Western Pacific, and Mr. Scott, Mayor of Suva, representatives of the present system of rule, came out by launch to the Renown, to pay their respects as soon as the anchor was down. There was no official landing till the following morning, when in hot sunshine alternating with warm, driving rain the Prince went ashore at Suva. The entire population of the town, a place of some six thousand inhabitants, was there to welcome him. In front, the principal European residents, with a contingent of leading Fijian chiefs, and representatives of the large Indian community, all in western dress, were lined up to be presented. Behind stood a well-drilled guard-of-honour of Fijians, in khaki, with heads protected from the fierce rays of the sun by hair that might be the despair and envy of the boulevards, twelve inches en brosse, and of a ferocity! Further on were a number of European returned soldiers, with hospital nurses, and other war workers, also returned members of a Fijian labour corps which had done good service in France and Italy. The whole assemblage was surrounded by a polyglot crowd of Islanders and Indians in all the picturesqueness of Polynesian and Oriental garb. Municipal, Fijian, Indian, and missionary addresses were afterwards presented, and inspections, investitures, and receptions held, a state dinner and a ball being amongst the functions provided.

Fijian national ceremonies took place in the afternoon, the principal being the solemn presentation by the chiefs and headmen of "tahua" (the whale's tooth) in token of fealty. This was celebrated, immediately after heavy rain, on a meadow crowded with aborigines. The actors were half a hundred well-fed, semi-naked Fijians, clad in nothing but sooty face-paint, white cloth bustles, and loin-robes of green, pink, and white fibre-ribbons. The general effect produced was that of an animated contingent of frilled ham-bones that waved, leapt, swayed and chanted, sometimes upright, sometimes squatting upon the sodden turf, a scene of almost disconcerting gaiety. The whale teeth were handed to the Prince by a white-robed hereditary courtier, and were the size and shape of yellow cucumbers, strung together with coloured thread. The acceptance produced a chorus of deep resonant grunts of "Daweha"—"It is taken." There followed the no less solemn ceremony of preparing and drinking the "Kava," the produce of the Yaqona root, to cement the bonds of friendship. The emptying of the last coco-nut cup of this sharp-flavoured, cloudy liquid was greeted with loud cries of "Mada"—"It is dry."

The Yaqona root, from a twig or two of which the kava drink was brewed, might have been an enormous ash-tree stool, with partly-grown ground-shoots, uprooted from an English copse. The stripping of the bark, the pounding it with stones, the macerating it with water in a big carved wooden bowl, and its presentation to the Prince and other guests in coco-nut shells, was performed with solemn chanting. The ceremony included the stretching of a coco-nut fibre string, strung at intervals of a few feet with cowrie-shells, in token of Royal authority, between the Prince's chair and the men preparing the kava. To cross this string, in days gone by, while the proceedings were in progress, would have involved nothing less than to be clubbed to death. Those were doubtless days when such functions were less chronicled and more respected.

Timed clapping, which sounded like the thuds of successive buckets of water thrown from an upper window upon the pavement, completed the first part of the performance. A "meke"—dance—by three hundred gorgeously caparisoned Fijian warriors, wielding each an ancient battle-axe, which followed, was a marvel of well-timed movement. The muddy ground shook as the men stamped in unison, their bodies swaying in perfect rhythm as they acted the spirited paddling of canoes, the hauling at ropes, the pointing at the enemy, the leaping from the boat to the attack, and, after the fight was over, the sad breaking of the waves upon the shore. Their deep "Dua-ho," or grunt of welcome to the Prince, might have been the roll of many drums.

The final stage in the performance came with the marching up of some hundreds of white-garbed bearers, each carrying a locally woven mat. These mats, some of them of a texture that challenged the fineness of a Panama straw hat, were deposited upon the ground in front of the Prince in a heap that grew to the dimensions of a small haystack before the last had been laid upon it, and this, although special steps had been taken to reduce the number of the offerings by restricting the issue of permissions to contribute.

The size of the haystack indicated the prosperity, as well as the loyalty, of the Fijian chiefs, who still own much of the land in the islands. The rule of these hereditary potentates dates through centuries prior to the advent of the missionaries and the taking on of civilization. Their dislike of live intruders, combined with their appreciation of them dead and roasted, kept their own Papuan stock remarkably pure-blooded. The race to-day thus presents characteristics of its own not found in other Pacific island groups. The only other outside races, in addition to a few thousands of Europeans, now found in Fiji, are coolies, of mixed descent, from India. These coolies were originally imported under a system of indenture requiring them to work for a definite number of years for planter masters. They have been the means of developing sugar and copra industries which would not otherwise have been established upon anything like their present scale. Of late years the indenture system has been discontinued, and some trouble has arisen in connexion with the question of wage-rates, riots having occurred in which several lives were lost. The gradual appreciation of the possibilities of peaceful bargaining, however, combined with the enlightened efforts of the present administration to understand grievances and to remedy them, is reducing the unrest, which is, in some ways, a healthy one, since it connotes conditions of prosperity enabling the coolie to assert claims he was not previously strong enough to press.

The rich soil of the islands, and the equitable climate, which is much like that of the rice-growing districts of the south of India, promise enhanced prosperity as the years go by, Fiji being a locality especially suitable for the Indian immigrant. It is a place that, during the war, sent a remarkably large proportion of its manhood to fight for the allies, those who remained at home also keeping up their end with spirit. The visitor is told a story, which has the virtue of being authentic, of an occasion when Suva was without any naval protection. Its wireless installation picked up signals sent out by the German raider Scharnhorst, showing that this vessel was on its way to attack the place. Sir Bickham Scott, at that time High Commissioner, rose to the situation and sent a message into the air for the Scharnhorst to pick up. It was addressed to Admiral Patey, aboard H.M.S. Australia, the only allied warship which, as the commander of the Scharnhorst knew, might conceivably have been within call. It ran: "Thanks for your message. Will expect you in the morning." The Scharnhorst presumably read this and pondered, for Fiji was left alone.