Читать книгу Lolóma, or two years in cannibal-land - Henry Britton - Страница 9

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On recovering myself I plunged into the leafy grove which clothed the mountain side. Being now increasingly fearful of being seen by the inhabitants of some inland town, I moved warily. Afflicted with a raging thirst, I climbed a high tree, on which I observed a parasitical plant, the leaves of which acting as a kind of rain-gauge, supplied me with cups of the most beautifully pure water, that sparkled like dew in these elegant green vessels. Never was mortal drought more gratefully slaked. A shaddock plucked from its nest of green completed a light and refreshing breakfast. Turning round to descend, I discovered on a level with myself, in the umbrageous shade of the tree-top, the entrance to a cave, which was not visible from the open. The locality was well guarded from view, for close by the grotto a venerable vutu rakaraka reared its stately form to a height of 60ft. The huge arch-like branches it threw out were clasped by the twining roots of epiphytical fig-trees, and a number of climbing plants, interlaced with wax flowers, formed a mass of diverse greenery, shaping a wild fantastic scene in which the light of day was only dimly perceptible. Entering the cavern, I found it of considerable dimensions. The water dripping through the limestone roof had formed, as I could see when my eyes became accustomed to the faint light, the most beautiful stalactites, which depended in elegant forms, fashioning crystal draperies worthy to form the hangings for a Temple of Nature.

It seemed that the foot of man had never before entered the gloomy chamber. This abode was admirably suited to me; I was always sure of a safe retreat when the natives appeared in view, for the cave was only to be discovered by climbing a high tree, and the dainties of the primeval orchard, with an occasional wild yam, would always suffice for the necessaries of life. (My yams I roasted at a small fire, which I kindled with sparks produced by laboriously rubbing the point of one stick in the grooved side of another, in the manner copied from the method of the South Sea Islanders, which had often been shown to me on the schooner. My cooked esculent was equal to the best floury potato I had ever tasted.) For the rest, I could walk to the hill-tops every day and keep a careful look-out for the arrival of some European ship on the coast, when I would stealthily descend and once more regain my liberty.

I made frequent excursions from my subterranean dwelling. As I ascended the high peaks of Viti Levu I noticed that the forests differed greatly in appearance from those of the lowlands. The trees were densely covered with mosses, lichens, and deep orange-coloured orchids. Some of the ferns were of vast dimensions, and the deep silence and repose which reigned in these sylvan retreats gave to them an air of impressive solemnity. Sometimes on topping an eminence a large part of the archipelago came into view. The sea was gemmed with islands and islets, which lay on its bosom, adding beauty to beauty, like pearls strung on a lovely woman’s neck, and the refreshing trade wind came across the spangled mirror of the ocean, fanning the heights with its delicious coolness, which was especially grateful after the steaming heat of some of the valleys and air-excluded copses.

The strange view of scores of islands and islets scattered over the ocean interested me greatly. In many instances the encircling reef was visible, sending jets of milk-white foam high into the air, where they burst like rockets, and glittered in the sun like columns of shattered diamonds.

Occasionally a fleet of large sailing canoes appeared in sight, bound on some pleasure excursion or warlike expedition. Sitting on a rocky prominence on a fine day, I could see these summer islets floating on bright spheres of tropic sea, stretching from point to point like a beautiful panorama, and I thought the world had no fairer spectacle to show. The canoes glided past with a stately sweep. They gradually became mere dots in the distance, and I began to think of the nautilus spreading its purpled wings to the wind, and coquetting in the enchanted gulfs of the fable, till I involuntarily looked to see “the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.” The return of the canoes to port was as magnificent a spectacle as their departure and gradual fading from sight. Nothing could be more beautiful than to see them, one by one, fold their coloured wings and come to anchor with the dainty grace of a sea-bird settling on the crest of a wave.

When I took my lonely bird’s-eye views of what was visible of this small island-world, it often occurred to me that I was looking upon fragments which were but remnants of a vast continent in past times—rafts with men upon them anchored out at sea, to tell us where the giant forces of Nature tore asunder great countries, now broken into a thousand pieces. The knowledge acquired in subsequent years confirmed my first impressions.

A glance at the map of Polynesia is enough to show the fitness of the name given to the myriad islands and islets that stud the whole western half of the vast Pacific. Group after group, island after island, reef everywhere stretching out to embrace reef, north and south of the line for thousands of miles, keeping the mariner ever anxious by day and sleepless by night, seem to tell us, in language that cannot well be mistaken, of mighty continents that once were, and, for anything we know to the contrary, are again to be.

Who could look down as from a bird’s eyrie on this great island-world, and still adhere to some of the old theories which profess to deal with the question of how these homes became inhabited. Turn again to the map. Beginning at Behring’s Strait, across which the old and new worlds might almost shake hands, we pass southward to the Aleutian islands, which form a well-nigh unbroken semi-circular chain from the Kamschatkan to the Alaskan Peninsula. With the help of a body of fabled giants these islands might easily be changed into a substantial bar which should at once block up the “North-West Passage,” and provide the foundations for a road over which the engines of Russia and America might rush to and fro, between the two worlds. From Cape Lopatka to the southernmost point of Japan, a similar highway would be possible to like able workmen. Thus on, preceded by these god-like navvies, filling up comparatively narrow spaces between countless islands and reefs, we might travel from Japan to the Loochoos, from the Loochoos to Formosa, from Formosa to the Philippines, from these to the massive island of New Guinea, southerly to Australia; thence easterly to New Britain, to the Solomons, the New Hebrides, the Fijis, the Friendlies, the Navigators, and out beyond mid-ocean to the Society Islands, the Low Archipelago and the Marquesas.

With this picture of Pacific highways before us, it is barely possible to arrive at any other conclusion, than that the continent of Asia, in vastly remote ages it may be, was spread out over the greater portions, if not the whole, of what is now known as the North, North-West, and South Central Pacific. We may reasonably suppose it to have been inhabited by those races who in the first ages of their history sought the Rising Sun. Volcanic action, and oceanic erosion were early at work at their great engineering task of sinking and wearing away all the lower and less protected foundations; but man lived on, taking and keeping possession of the isolated higher lands to which by very gradual, perhaps almost imperceptible degrees, he had been driven. Does not this seem a better theory with respect to these Polynesians, than one which would have us believe that, in miserable little canoes, they must at different times have drifted away from Asia, for thousands of miles against a whole army of opposing elements—tides, ocean currents, trade winds, &c.

From such a theory as this it may not be wrong further to presume, at least till some better theory arises out of scientific investigation, that, just as these countless islands stand decked in orient beauty, as so many broken monuments to show us where Eastern Asia once stretched forth her arms, so the red, brown, and black Polynesian tribes remain to tell us how the teeming populations of that great continent once flowed eastward, even until they reached the American world, and were stayed in their course only by the Atlantic. Every separate group seems to strengthen this view by its geological character, its geographical position, and its legendary lore.

Fiji is the largest group of Islands in the Western Pacific. In looking at its chart the thought at once strikes us, that the 200 islands which compose it must, at some remote period, have been connected by lands which the sea has since engulfed. One cannot escape the suspicion that what is now broken up into a thousand pieces, must once have been a country of large proportions, and of surpassing richness and beauty. And further, if Fiji had not at one time a continental connexion, was it not in itself one vast island instead of many small ones.

Imagine such an island extending far beyond the limits of the present group of remnants, say, some 600 miles from east to west, and 500 miles from north to south, and we have before us a picture of what was, not unlikely, ancient Fiji—a land of high mountains and far-stretching plains, of rivers, lakes, and springs of water, of shores thrown out here and there into bold and rocky prominence, or stretching away in long lines of shingle and sand.

Once again, let our imagination conjure up pictures of deeds of might,—deeds such as Fijian mythology is full of,—“shaking,” “breaking down,” “kicking out of the way,” “undermining,” and “sinking,” all the lower lands, and, it may be, not those alone, and it will no longer seem strange, how that of the once magnificent whole, there remain to-day only these 200 abrupt mountainous fragments, ranging in size from 300 miles in circumference, to a single rock, with room for nought upon it but a solitary cocoanut palm; or lower yet, to a mound of sand only big enough for a mother turtle to lay her eggs in without grumbling. From these islands and islets, reefs of every size and form may be seen spreading out their claws, as if to mark where the ancient lands stood before their subsidence, and, perhaps, further intended for the more useful work of reconstruction, by linking together in the course of long ages these scattered yet valuable and beautifully luxuriant fragments.

However all this may be, one thing seems certain, that these lands would be utterly unable to hold their own, but for the prodigious work of that silent little builder, who, upon the sunken débris of sunny plains that were, has piled up and cemented together those grand and unique breakwaters, in comparison with which the defensive and aggressive works of man are but as paper walls. Against the coral-reef barrier, erosive equatorial currents, tidal waves, and all the battalions of ocean may charge in vain.

The natives call their country Viti (pronounced Veety.) It is to be regretted that the harsher sounding word “Fiji,” applied by the Tongans from the Friendly Islands, has been adopted in its stead by us, inasmuch as “Viti” is a good representative word of the euphonious characteristic of the language, in the most perfect and widely-known dialect, in which there is hardly a harsh sound to be heard.