Henry Mayers Hyndman

The Record of an Adventurous Life


Chapter VIII
Polynesia

One night sitting in the Union Club the conversation turned upon Polynesia and the South Sea Islands generally, and I learnt that two or three men present were interested in various enterprises there. Shortly afterwards I met Archibald Hamilton who had been a lieutenant in the Queen’s yacht and was taking a party down to the Fijis. He proposed to me to go too, and in a happy-go-lucky fashion I agreed. Had I seen the vessel we were to embark in before I shipped in her I might have hesitated. For the Coquette entirely belied her name. She was an old topsail schooner of a collier, about as broad as she was long, which Hamilton had picked up dear and had made ready after a fashion for taking a nondescript cargo and nondescript passengers to Levuka. We were carefully tugged out through the Heads by a fussy little steamer which had on board many of our Sydney friends, and so out to sea on this queer-looking craft. And although we made about as crooked a course as could be steered on the Pacific Ocean, actually sighting the group of islands called “the Three Kings” off the Northern point of New Zealand, in Hamilton’s anxiety to save his wife from excessive sea-sickness due to a very heavy head sea, I am bound to say we had a very jolly time of it.

But I confess I did not ship with the idea that part of my duty as a passenger would be to cook in the galley in heavy weather. Yet so it befell. The man who was engaged to serve in that department turned out to be a regular “old hand.” His capacity for getting at and absorbing spirituous liquors amounted to genius. We speedily discovered his tendencies in that direction, which indeed were not uncommon on board, and strove to thwart them. In vain. Everything was locked up away from him. He contrived in some marvellous manner to fish up whisky from the hold. This earth was at last stopped, more by accident than design, and for twenty-four hours our precious specimen of a chef was sober. He cooked and cooked well. Thereafter he disappeared. It was thought he had fallen overboard as a result of this excessive sobriety. Not a bit of it. He was found in a state of hopeless imbecility under a tarpaulin which covered some baggage, with quite an array of empty chlorodyne bottles around him which he had “conveyed” out of the medicine supplies.

Thenceforward, three of us took it in turn to cook for the cabin. My experiments on the digestion of my fellow-passengers were thought to be fairly successful. But if any one wishes to train himself in the suppression of strong language let him offer to take charge of the ship’s galley on a small none-too-well-found schooner with bluff bows battering into the sort of sea which enables the craft to make what the sailors call “pretty good weather of it.” I have refrained, or so I like to believe, from speaking unadvisably with my lips when rounding up cattle under a broiling sun; I have exercised similar self-restraint – I recall it with pride – when dealing in all sincerity with the impenitent mule on the mountain road; but never was the natural inclination of the unregenerate human to anathematise at large, under great provocation, kept down with more difficulty than when a sudden lurch of the playful Coquette sent Galloway, who, like Hamilton, was an old navy officer, flying to leeward with nearly the whole of the dinner I had just cooked.

Finally we got to Levuka, and I wonder we did; for Hamilton was several miles out in his reckoning, and we entered the Fiji Group, by no means remarkable for its easy navigation, as I had occasion later to find out, in a tremendous storm of wind and rain with some fog that obscured the outlook seriously. Polynesia at this period was still one of the uttermost parts of the earth. The various groups were entirely under native rule and most of the white men who had taken up their abode with the tribes, even in Fiji, prior to the arrival of a few planters with capital, were persons whose record under other names had been adventurous, not to say criminal rather than respectable.

Levuka “beach” was indeed peopled by a curious collection of Europeans of every nationality. Beach-combers and old hands, land speculators and old head-hunters, planters with here and there a pirate, by way of variety, made up a strange set indeed, most of whom had nothing to teach the natives but their vices. White women were as yet few and far between, but such as there were were far superior to the men. We had talked much of this medley of people on the voyage down, but the reality was quite as novel to me as if we had never spoken of it. And yet, strange to say, though I wandered about the islands for many months and encountered all sorts and conditions of men and women, white and black, under the most diverse circumstances, I never saw a shot fired, or any one seriously hurt, in anger, though more than once revolvers were drawn.

That was not the impression I received on my first landing, however. I thought I was in for a rough time. Nearly all my shipmates got as drunk as drunk could be on landing. Poor Mrs. Hamilton, a bride of a month, tried her utmost to get her husband to go back to the schooner. All to no purpose, and in my well-meant endeavour to be good-natured I spent a good hour with her in the ship’s boat manned by an intoxicated crew trying hard to reach the Coquette on a pitch-dark night, it being almost impossible to steer a straight course, rowing as our sailors rowed during that weary night. It was altogether a nice introduction to island life.

The morning brought us into all the glory of the tropics. The charm of the islands is before me still. The dense foliage running right up to the peaks of Ovalau, the lovely colours of the water, the spray of the breakers driven by the trade-wind on to the reef, the beautiful cliffs of Wakaia standing out in the distance, all came out into the open, at a stroke, as the sun burst out suddenly upon us standing there upon the deck. Levuka, a scene of unseemly drunkenness and rowdyism till the early hours of the morning, now lay before us a peaceful pretty village with the native town beyond, and as the native girls laughing and calling shrilly to one another came out to fish upon the reef, and canoes and boats began to fly about the harbour, that delight in the life of these islands grew up in me which I believe all have felt who have been ready to throw aside for the time being the thought of our conventional civilisation, and have been content to enjoy the pleasures of mere existence without any regard for the morrow.

But my introduction to the Fijis was not destined to be quite so free from adventure as this my first landing. From Levuka we went up to Taviuni and Koro to discharge cargo at the cotton plantations which were then beginning on those islands. We returned in a heavy gale which speedily grew into a hurricane. A hurricane is bad enough to be in at sea when you have only one captain on board the vessel. When there are two captains then the betting is long odds on the sharks against the humans. We had two captains on the Coquette. Captain No.1 was Hamilton, who owned the vessel. Captain No.2 was a Swede named Thaggard, who had been engaged as master when he had made the islands. How it came about I don’t know; but starting from Koro to get back to Levuka with a fair wind but a rapidly falling barometer we found ourselves, so far as a dark night would permit us to discover, right in the bight of the great Wakaia reef, whose horns projected far out to sea on either side of us, rendering our escape, to all appearance, and, as shown by the chart, impossible. The only chance was to go about, itself a dangerous business in such a heavy sea, and in such a terrific gale, and try to beat out of the bight. Old sails and old cordage were not calculated to make this manoeuvre less hazardous. As we talked we seemed to drift closer to the reef every second, and no doubt we did, as the rollers both looked and were tremendously heavy, and we shipped a great deal of water. The Coquette was never great at beating and now, having discharged her cargo and being in ballast, she was at her worst, as she was far too light in the water for such a job as clawing to windward in a hurricane.

I was thinking all this and expecting the worst when, as the boom of the mainsail came over, by some bad management, it was let go too soon and broke short off at the gaff. At the same moment a tremendous sea washed over the poop and took me clean off my legs and away to leeward. Happily I managed to lay hold of a firmly fixed belaying pin and, though my arms were all but wrenched out of their sockets, I held on tight and at last dropped in board. Those close by who had had their own struggle to make head against the sea we shipped thought it was all over with me. Anyhow my inevitable fate seemed to be only postponed for a few minutes. With an almost useless reefed mainsail and a reefed foresail of doubtful standing power, it was a bad look-out, so bad indeed that we all gathered in the stern waiting for the end, having done all that could be done.

Suddenly I remembered that a one-legged man named Hunter, an excellent fellow and a very fine swimmer, terribly maimed though he had been, was below in the cabin and a white woman as well. So I pulled back the hatch a little way and bawled down to Hunter at the top of my voice; “We shall be on the reef in five minutes; won’t you come up and take your chance?” For answer Hunter called out, “Is it raining?” “Yes,” I said, “raining cats and dogs!” “Is it blowing?” “Enough to send your teeth down your throat.” “Then,” cried Hunter, “I’ll get wet all at once!” So I closed the hatch again and took my stand with the rest, wet through, miserable and hopeless. As I stood cursing my luck to myself for having to finish up so young and so unpleasantly, all the stories I had ever heard about sharks came back to my mind. How they parade like sentries, each one having his own beat, up and down along the edge of the reef, how slowly they move towards their prey, how leisurely they turn over so as to take it conveniently into their hideous maw. It was horrible to think of and it occurred to me and to others by my side, as they afterwards admitted, whether it would not be better to end life with one’s revolver rather than be crunched up alive by these frightful creatures.

By way of breaking through our sad reflections, as much as for the good-fellowship of the thing, we now shook hands all round and wished one another good-bye. As we noted the leeway we were making we knew perfectly well that nothing short of a miracle could save us. And a change of wind, within the few minutes left to us, sufficiently strong to help us out of the bight, did seem to be a miracle indeed. In fact, it never suggested itself to any of us that this could happen. Our only chance seemed to be that, as the Coquette was drawing so little water, one of the big rollers might lift her clean over the reef and wash us all up high and dry over the smooth water in among the palm trees. Indeed Captain Thaggard proposed at the very last moment to put the vessel head on to the breakers and thus take this desperate chance. Marvellous to say, however, at this very last moment, when every soul on board saw death straight before him, the wind did change to just that precise amount in direction and power that was necessary to get us out of our difficulty. None of us could believe what was taking place when, admirably handled by Thaggard, who had gone to the wheel himself, we scraped by the lower horn of the great Wakaia reef with what seemed to be scarcely 100 yards to spare. That distance at sea is no more than ten yards on land.

What struck me as odd was that all took the danger of immediate drowning and worse so coolly. There was no praying, no swearing, no lamentation. But none of us liked it a bit. I am quite sure of that. When we had weathered the reef and were heading for Levuka we were still in a good deal of peril, but this, after what we had already passed through, appeared nothing, and we drank one another’s healths with great satisfaction and fervour. That, cool as I may have forced myself to appear, I was throughout in a terrible fright is beyond question, and I am happy to know that my conduct on this occasion was adduced later as evidence that a non-believer in a future life could meet death as calmly as a Christian; for most assuredly, gauged by my own feelings at the time, I was scared not only at the prospect of my speedy dissolution and the manner of it, but I was bitterly angry at the idea of being “wiped out” so soon. When we arrived at Levuka we found that news had somehow been received of our critical position and we had been given up for lost. Several vessels were wrecked that night, though the hurricane was nothing as compared with that which devastated the group the year before. At any rate it was quite enough for me. I have had several narrow escapes in the course of my life, but none of them left such a permanent impression upon me as this “close call” with the sharks off Wakaia.

I wonder whether all men have the same personal hatred of sharks I found among the sailors I encountered in Polynesia. With some it amounts to a species of mania. The remembrance of one adventure with them also quite destroyed the nerve of a very fine young Englishman, who left the Islands in consequence. He had come from the great island of Vanua Levu in an open boat with two other white men and three natives. It was blowing hard and the sea was rough outside the reef. So Boyd, who was a very good seaman, sat up steering all night, while his friends, Cameron, the owner of the boat, and another slept. There was a full moon, and it was one of those beautiful fresh nights frequently enjoyed in the Islands after the rainy season. Nothing could be more delightful, though as hour after hour passed Boyd naturally got very weary and sleepy. At last, after twelve hours of continuous watchfulness and care, the boat was in smooth water, inside the Ovalau reef, where, protected by the mountains, there was comparatively little wind. Boyd, therefore, gave up the tiller to Cameron, saying as his last words, “Gusts will come down the gullies; whatever you do don’t fasten the sheet,” and then fell fast asleep.

He woke suddenly to find the boat careened over; guessing what had occurred he cut the sheet which had been foolishly cleated by Cameron with his jack-knife. It was too late. The boat sank, and all began to swim for their lives. The three natives soon forged ahead, and Boyd, who was considered a fine swimmer for a white man, was in advance of his two careless friends. As they swam on he heard a shriek behind him. One of them had been taken down by a shark. On he went, striking out, if possible, more vigorously than before. Then a second shriek of pain and horror from behind him. Another gone to the voracious creatures. He was now swimming alone, for the natives were a long way off by this time, and every ripple he heard in the water, every swish of the wind that went by; he thought was the rush of a shark’s fin through the waves, or the sound of the creature turning over to grip him. A whole mile of this almost unbearable anxiety did he undergo until finally, worn out with exertion and mental strain, he had just strength enough to drag himself to the shallow water whence the natives quickly pulled him out. He was indeed luckily out of it; but, as I say, his nerves were so shaken for the time being that he could not stand sailing again in an open boat, and he speedily left for New Zealand.

Another shark incident of a still more exciting character which occurred about the same time affords remarkable proof of the loyalty and discipline of the natives towards their chiefs. Tui Levuka, the chief of the island of Ovalau, was out in a big double canoe when a sudden storm came on and it capsized in a part known to be infested with sharks. Immediately Tui Levuka and the crew were thrown into the water the natives made a circle round their chief, joining hands and keeping themselves afloat with their legs while he swam about, inside the ring so formed, quite comfortably.

A shriek and a groan, and down goes one native. The two next to him release their hands and join them again over the empty place. Another is taken in the same way, and again the circle is completed as if none were missing. A third disappears, and once more silently, and as it were automatically, the narrowing circle is reconstituted with. Tui Levuka still safe in the midst. “Another for Hector” was never replied to and acted upon under more gruesome circumstances, for the men left could hear the swirl of the water as successive comrades disappeared below the surface and their blood washed up around the circle as they were devoured. Finally, after this had been going on for a considerable time, man after man going down in turn, other native canoes came up and took Tui Levuka and his much-reduced band of followers on board. Only twenty-seven out of the original number of forty-five remained. The whole occurrence made no impression on the Fijians, nor were the survivors thought to have done anything unusual.

At this time there were not more than 1,000 white men all told in the Fijian group. But, with the influence of the Wesleyan missionaries, the constant visits of men-of-war, and the persistent assertion of authority by Mr. Thurston, the British Consul, the whites had virtual control even then; though Thakombau, the chief of Mbau, was regarded as the superior Chief or King and other great Chiefs such as Tuithakau of Vanua Levu and Maafu of the Windward Islands were virtually independent. What struck me most unpleasantly then, and seems even more abominable now, was the manner in which this handful of white men carried on their usurped rule. Nothing could have been more high-handed or in many cases more unjust. Flogging was always going on. If a native refused to work he was flogged. If he was insolent or threatened a white man he was flogged. If he got very drunk he was fined and flogged. If he indulged in illicit amours he was flogged. If he stole some trifle he was flogged.

When, too, superadded to this epidemic of castigation there flourished all round the narrow, loveless cant of Wesleyan Christianity which, not content with suppressing really objectionable acts, such as cannibalism, obscene devil-dances, the launching of big canoes over men’s stomachs, the killing of a man to each post in a chief’s hut, and the placing of his body under it, the burying alive of old and worn-out men and women as useless mouths, which were common events among the polite, and in their way cultured, Fijians before the coming of the missionaries–when not content with putting a stop to these and other terrible doings, the Wesleyans did away with dancing and enjoyment altogether, and replaced the ancient fetichism, with its unbridled lust and bloody ceremonies, by a terribly woebegone Calvinistic creed that took all the life and jollity out of the people who accepted it in earnest, they did a work of doubtful beneficence.

As a matter of fact, however, the old Fijian habits naturally revolted the ideas of less intolerant folk than those brought up in the straiter seat of Nonconformist asceticism, skin-deep though that asceticism was in many cases. Mr. Lorimer Fison, a Wesleyan missionary on the Rewa River, whose studies in native social customs and relationships were acknowledged by the famous Lewis Morgan (and who, by the way, first called my attention to that great writer early in 1870) as well as rewarded many years later by the grant of a pension from the British Government, told me that he had the very greatest difficulty in finding any legends and stories of the old time which were at all decent or fit for publication. And Fison was a man of learning and distinction, quite different from the ordinary run of Wesleyan missionaries in those parts. He liked the happy childlike disposition of the negroid races around him, and understood, I think, that there was a more excellent way with them than that which even he was compelled by his superiors and paymasters to adopt.

I must admit the politeness and consideration of the Fijians in all the islands under ordinary circumstances, the charm of their arts and industries, and their general merriment when unsoured and unspoiled by Christianity, contrasted strangely with some other of their habits and customs. It was almost impossible to believe that the men and women and boys and girls who would come out with food in their hands and press you to partake of their simple hospitality as you passed through the bush, acting throughout with the most winning courtesy, were of the same breed, and indeed in some cases the very same persons, as those who would take part in a treacherous cannibal raid or revel in the obscene orgies of the unrestrained devil-dance. Yet upwards of 100 natives were killed and many of them eaten (a few of the bodies being sent as presents to neighbouring tribes) close to where I was staying in Nandi Bay; the hill-tribes of Vili Levu having raided a prosperous village armed with guns which the coast tribes were prevented by the whites from purchasing. I also saw one of the ancient devil-dances performed in full by one of the unchristianised tribes on a fine moonlight night, with torches flashing about in the surrounding bush, and a weird and unseemly scene it was. This, and a war demonstration before Thakombau when hostilities threatened, were the most imposing displays I witnessed. The latter was melodramatic enough. The Fijians are not at all a warlike people, and they seldom run any serious risks; but as boasters they stand in the front rank, and when I got to know the language I used to enjoy mightily their mendacious glorifications of their prowess.

But I cannot leave this subject of missionaries, for whom as a class I have little admiration – such, as a rule, is their bigotry and lack of appreciation and sympathy for any creed or form of society other than their own – without drawing a contrast between two different forms of proselytising for Christianity as I saw them. The Wesleyan missionaries of those days traded largely on their own account, and some of them made considerable private fortunes in this way. Their position as men of God obviously helped them materially in their capacity as men of Mammon. It was difficult for a poor unlettered native, with the fear of the Christian bake-house after death ever before him, to hold his own in a bargain with the great white medicine men who might in the harsh hereafter temper or intensify the heat to his shorn skin.

Mr. Moore was undoubtedly the Wesleyan missionary above all the rest who understood Fijians and their language best. His translation of the Pilgrim’s Progress into Fijian is a perfect masterpiece, a literary triumph, which would have brought the highest credit to its author had Fijian been a well-known tongue. He was also an excellent organiser and a first-rate man of business, accessible, good-humoured, and shrewd. To him old Jim Dyer, the cleverest and not the most scrupulous of the “beach-combers” and poor whites who had taken up their quarters in the Fijis in the early days.

This James Dyer had become owner of a small island on Rewa river duly granted to him by chiefs and tribes – there was no private property in land under native usages – to which he attached, or pretended to attach, great value. For some reason Mr. Moore was anxious to buy it. They came to a bargain, and all Dyer’s right, title, and interest in this unnamed island became Mr. Moore’s in return for a handsome amount of “trade”; which “trade,” scandal said, included certain weapons of defence, with the means of loading and discharging the same, that might seem to a mere onlooker scarcely fitting matter of barter from a man of Moore’s sanctity to a person of Dyer’s not even doubtful record – notoriously “Jim” had been a head-hunter in the days that were earlier and when hair was dressed curlier. So Dyer went away satisfied and Moore entered into possession of his eyot. A few months passed, the rainy season followed and the Rewa river rushed down in full flood. As a result, the island moved a hundred yards or so down stream. This occasioned Moore some anxiety. If his newly acquired property began to float off in this way there was no saying where it would bring up. The valuable “trade” which he had handed over to Dyer was evidently something worse than in jeopardy. The missionary, however, bethought him that he might possibly gain an advantage by an appeal to Dyer’s instincts of fair-play. He sent for the old beachcomber and this was the talk between them: – “This is a serious matter about that island you sold me, Dyer, very serious; it seems to me to be on its way down the river, and may disappear altogether before it arrives at the sea. Probably it came from many miles higher up. What do you know about it? What are you prepared to do? I certainly think you ought to hand me back the trade I paid you, or its equivalent.” To this Dyer replied. “The island was always an island in that place as long as I have known it and I don’t see that it is not just as good where it is, as it was where it was.” “Yes,” said Moore, “that is all very well, but there is no certainty it will stay, or that it won’t wash away altogether. You cannot call this a fair deal, and you ought to repay me.” “No, really, I can’t do that. But you say the property is on the move?” “Undoubtedly it is.” “Well, of course, that’s very hard on you. I admit that. But I don’t see my way to pay you back your trade: a bargain’s a bargain. I’ll tell you, however, what I will do.” “What’s that?” asked Moore eagerly. “If you will deed the island back to me, I will make out shifting leases to you and you can follow it up!” Moore went away furious and believing that Dyer was well aware that the “island” was merely a mass of mud on the move.

A very different type of man from Mr. Moore was the Catholic Jesuit missionary Père Bréheret. He had no political influence, he never traded, he did most of his work with his own hands, he trained the Fijians himself in directions where such training was beneficial, the Catholic Chapel as well as the boats for his visitations he built himself – altogether an apostolic figure of a man, toiling away year in and year out among his flock, without hope of reward or publicity, content to pass away his days in endeavouring to make life more pleasurable here, and life more enjoyable too, as he believed, hereafter, by inculcating the truths of his mild Christian morality into his people. It was noticeable that his Catholicism had adapted itself much better than the straitlaced Puritanism of the Wesleyans to the habits of the people, and that there was among the Fijian Catholics little or none of that sour self-righteousness and severe hypocrisy observable among the Wesleyans. Père Bréheret’s converts danced and sang and made merry and enjoyed life harmlessly, much as they had done before, and I could not see that they had thrown off the objectionable features of savage life any less than the others.

I dislike and even fear the Catholic Church, as an institution devoted to the misguiding of human intelligence into the jungle of superstition and mystery, though I admire it as a splendid international organisation, with its great army of devoted celibate clergy; but for those of its missionaries I have seen among peoples at an early stage of development I have nothing but sincerest regard. And of all of them the man whose humility, geniality, industry, and self-sacrifice were most noticeable was Père Bréheret of the Rewa river, whose methods appeared to me to be the highest type of them all. I heard, years afterwards, that his services were not properly appreciated by his own Church, and he must now be long since dead; but it pleases me, even so, to lay, as a passing stranger, my little tribute of respect and regard on the grave of that saintly and lovable old man.

In coming up to Levuka on the ill-fated Marion Rennie, I had another of those narrow escapes from shipwreck which lent excitement and variety in those days to a trip round the Islands. The vessel had lately returned from the New Hebrides, and was carrying what was euphemistically called “labour” to the windward plantations. A steady trade-wind was blowing, the imported natives were lying more or less comfortably about on the deck, the course had been carefully laid, and a native from the island of Rotumah – first-rate seamen they are and, by the way, exactly like Japanese – was told off to steer through the night. Then the captain got drunk, the mate got drunk, two other white men on board got drunk, all retiring to their bunks. A Swedish sailor named Gill, with a master’s certificate, the Rotumah boy, and myself were consequently left in charge.

It was a fine night but very dark, and Gill and myself were walking up and down the deck talking, with every plain sail set, drawing well, and the schooner making good way through the water, when of a sudden I thought I heard the roar of the reef – my ears had by this time been trained to be pretty sharp in this direction – sounding unpleasantly near. Down we went to the cabin after looking at the compass, and, having made out from the chart that we were perfectly safe, went up again and began once more to parade the deck. Now, however, I had no doubt about it, the sound of the breakers convinced me we must be getting very close to the reef indeed. So certain was I that we were in danger that Gill himself was impressed, and he told the Rotumah boy to give the wheel to me and run up to the fore-yard. He had scarcely got half-way up the rigging when he called out “breakers right ahead.” Happily, the vessel was very handy, and with Gill and the Rotumah lad thoroughly up to their work, she was about in no time. But as we came round we could see, dark as it was, the white foam of the breakers on the reef apparently just over the taffrail. Not a human being on board was awake but ourselves, and not until morning did we discover that the powerful current which runs here had set us in several miles to the shore.

In spite of this alarming experience I was foolhardy enough to try to catch this same Marion Rennie, when she was passing Nandi Bay on another trip to the New Hebrides. A splendid crew of Tokalau boys from the Line Islands did their utmost to head her off, and bring her to, in order to take me on board; but, well as they rowed, they were unsuccessful in their efforts, and I returned much disappointed – for I wanted to see with my own eyes how this “labour” was really recruited – to my planter friends on Viti Levu. If I had gone I should never have returned. The vessel was attacked by the natives of the island of Mullaculah and every man on board killed. From what I learned afterwards I think they deserved their fate. General loose living, unscrupulous trickery, and frequently downright brutality were the characteristics of these labour hunters at this time. There were honourable exceptions, but they were few and far between. So I was well out of that trip.

I have often observed that when Englishmen of apparently decent character and social training are removed from the influence of their early surroundings, and are quite free from the fear of Mrs. Grundy, many of them do things which nobody would believe it to be possible for them to do beforehand. This is not confined to Polynesia: it is true like wise of unsettled Australia and the West of America and not wholly unknown even on the Continent of Europe. It is this fact, I suppose, which has gained for us as a nation so unenviable a reputation for hypocrisy. The most striking case of utter indifference to all rules of decent behaviour I ever remember was that of the manager of one of the great banks in Sydney, a person renowned for his piety in that city, and filling a high and responsible position in his own religious community.

This worthy landed at Levuka in a black frock coat and a shiny top-hat, – a garb unknown on “the beach” in those days, – and expressed himself at first as being much horrified at what he saw going on, which perhaps was not altogether surprising. Within a week he had stripped off his conventional manners and morality as easily and almost as quickly as he divested himself of his tall hat and his black coat. The “beach” first laughed, and then wondered. It was my bad luck to go with him on a trip with a party to the island of Mokengai belonging to the leading storekeeper of the group, named Hennings, who took us over in his schooner. There were on board all sorts and conditions of men; among them Mackay, the famous Australian explorer, and an old sea-captain named Browning, who had passed through terrible adventures and seen all manner of horrible things, but still maintained his sobriety and surly dignity. It is safe to say that this set of “cheap trippers” were not to be easily shocked. Bad language and bad conduct were not approved of or indulged in by most of them, but simply overlooked in others as of no moment.

But so abominable was the behaviour of this godly new-comr, such language did he use in his drunken ecstasy, such scenes did he depict aloud as having attractions for him, that there was not a man, from the owner of the vessel to the half-castes and natives of the crew who understood English, who didn’t feel that he would only get his deserts if he were thrown to the sharks. And that was not the worst of it. The island of Mokengai was largely cultivated for cotton by a number of Tokalau or Line Island people brought from the flat sandy islands or islets on the equator. They are a splendid race of men, nearly all of them over six feet high and the women proportionately tall. Finer swimmers cannot be. They swim out and kill big sharks with a knife, and perform feats of strength and agility alike on land and in water that are quite surprising. Neither sex wears any clothes at all in their own islands, or, at first, elsewhere. Their hair is straight and long and black and the girls have the most magnificent figures imaginable, while their looks, though not equal to the Samoans, are far superior to the negroid type of the Fijians.

Some of us anticipated that the “holy man from Sydney,” as we called him, might bring trouble upon us after we landed, but nobody foresaw or made ready for what actually befell; the rather that he had been seriously warned to be careful what he was about. We had had some food ashore and were smoking afterwards before strolling over the plantation, all of us, happily as it turned out, keeping together, when we heard a roar of native voices and directly afterwards the bank manager came rushing towards us, pale as death, panting out in terror, “Save me, save me.” Behind him came a hundred or so of the Line Islanders with their knives drawn eager to cut the poor wretch to atoms. There was nothing for it but to push the fellow to the back of us, and stand in a line before him. It was in fact a desperate situation, and had any one drawn a revolver to protect himself I firmly believe every man of us would have perished. As it happened, there was with us a very powerful and capable Scotsman, named Campbell, who had a plantation on Viti Levu, who employed there and treated well a number of these Tokalau folk, understood and spoke their language, and who was greatly respected by them as a just and good man, well versed in their customs. He coolly stepped right in front of all of us – a pluckier thing I never saw done in all my life – and began a talk with the man who seemed to be the leader of the infuriated Tokalau boys, while the others were gesticulating and vociferating around, making it very clear what they would do to the fugitive, and even to us if we defended him. The coolest and most experienced of our party admitted afterwards that they believed their last day had come.

But Campbell, having been informed as to what had caused all this hubbub, and why the men were so exasperated against the new-comer, promised that the white man should be severely punished, that he should pay a heavy fine, and that he should at once be sent off to the schooner. Gradually, by his demeanour and promises he calmed them down, and needless to say we packed off the black sheep to the schooner as soon as possible, and gave the Tokalaus some “trade” and tobacco as a temporary solatium. While this was being done the cause of all the trouble was praying alone in the most fervent fashion to Providence to save him from the heathen who so furiously raged against him. We were glad to get rid of him. The following morning he actually talked quite big about the outrage committed upon him, but came to his senses when he was told he would be put ashore again.

I suggested to him myself that a full account of the episode by me in the Sydney Morning Herald would scarcely enhance his reputation in Australia. As the lascivious fool had grossly insulted a married woman in his half-drunken fury, and thus brought the whole tribe upon himself, the latter threat also had its effect. I did not see the man again until he was within forty-eight hours of his departure, when I learned he had carried on in the same unseemly fashion for another fortnight, but was now “straightening up.” He actually went off as sober as when he arrived, and I took a look at the brute in his office on my return to Sydney some months later. A most respectable, God-fearing citizen, implicitly trusted by his bank and almost revered by his friends and family. This is what he then was.

I am not, so far as I know, a superstitious man, nor is the circumstance which I am about to relate necessarily outside the realm of natural phenomena in these days of wireless telegraphy, telepathy, and the like; but I have never known myself of a similar case, certainly nothing of the same kind has ever happened to me before or since. I was staying with some planters – Campbell, Wolseley Markham, and Royds – at Nandi Bay, on the leeward side of the great island of Viti Levu, when it occurred; far away from any possible means of communication, and about as remote from civilisation as I could well be.

Among my numerous relations there was only one of whom I was exceptionally fond, or who had any considerable influence over me. This was one of my aunts, my mother’s sister, Margarette Mayers. She was a woman of great charm and very wide knowledge alike of the worlds of science and letters, a delightful character in every way. My mother having died when I was very young it may be that I concentrated upon her that affection which I should have felt for my mother herself had she been living. At any rate, our relations were of that close and intimate character, and I habitually confided to her all my hopes and fears and troubles and ambitions. I believe she felt for me the same sort of loving regard in her way that I undoubtedly felt for her in mine. When I left England in 1869 she was in poor health and, though I had no idea myself that her end was near, she had a sort of premonition that we should never meet again, which she expressed to me sadly when I went to see her and bid her good-bye at her house, Beech Lodge, surrounded in those days by a large garden, and facing on Wimbledon Common. “Well,” said I half jokingly, “if you do feel very ill and want me back quickly you must try and send me a message wherever I may be.” She was a deeply religious woman and upon my saying this she, lying there on a sofa, uttered a prayer for my welfare in all the changes and chances of this mortal life, and then, with tears in her eyes, told me she would try to let me know, so that I might get back in time to bid her farewell, if she was convinced that her end was approaching.

So there I was, sleeping in a native mbure or thatched cottage, under the same mosquito curtains with Markham, on the Fiji mats spread on a rough couch at Nandi, surrounded by savage tribes, thinking not at all of home surroundings that night, or of home and home influences in any way, though Margarette and one other woman were frequently in my mind at other times. In the morning when we got up and were making ready for breakfast it suddenly flashed upon me that I had had a remarkable dream, and my mind went off instinctively to my aunt and her ill health. I turned to Markham and said, “I have had a most vivid and extraordinary dream. I dreamed a telegraph boy ran up to me in great haste and pushed a telegraphic message in its envelope into my hands with the words, ’very urgent, sir.’ I tore it open and found only the words, ‘Come home, come home, come home,’ written three times. ‘Where did this come from?’ I asked the boy. ‘I don’t know, sir,’ he replied; ‘all I know is it came over three continents’.” Had I then immediately started for Levuka and taken the first steamer back to England I should have arrived in time to see my aunt before her death. I have ever since deeply regretted I did not obey what I now believe was a definite summons from her to return.

If I were to enlarge upon my Polynesian experiences and sketch even lightly all the remarkable characters, white men and natives, I met, these memories would attain to the proportions of a little library. Some of them were of such a character that perhaps it is well I saw them no more. But my stay in the Islands was most enjoyable to me and I have always longed to go back; though I am told I should be greatly disappointed now, not with the beauty of the land and the delights of the sea, which are unchanging, but with the mist of smug respectability that has settled down upon the Groups. Certainly my liking for the natives grew the longer I stayed among them, and I resented the contemptuous manner in which they were treated by the invading whites. So strongly did I feel about this that I wrote at the time a somewhat rhetorical defence of the Fijians which I put in the mouth of an educated man of the race. How it has survived the more than forty years of interval between then and now I do not know, but I give it here as a fair summary of my impressions at the time: 

“You call us naked savages, and say we are incapable of being raised much above the level of the beasts. It may be so. But to what do you white men owe your boasted civilisation? Is it not to the continuous work of those who have preceded you? Have you not built upon the foundations laid by the Babylonians, by the Chinese, by the Egyptians, by the Greeks and by many who flourished long before them? To estimate a people aright it is necessary to appreciate the conditions under which it has grown up. Nations, like individuals, can but make the best of the opportunities which are thrown in their way. We, as others, were moulded before we were born. In many points of real civilisation we are as far advanced as any race could be, separated as we have been from the main stream of humanity which, running in a slender rivulet from some forgotten spring, has had unaided to fret a channel for itself through the hard rock of knowledge.

“Destitute of iron and without other minerals can you upbraid us with lack of ingenuity because we fashioned saws out of sharks’ teeth and axes out of stones? Poor tools, true; yet can your most skilful boat-builders produce more perfect specimens of their art than our double canoes? Look at our tappa:- Is that delicate fabric made out of rough bark, are those coloured designs and geometrical patterns wrought in with nothing but rude stencil-plates the work of mere barbarians? Our language:- Does your own tongue, of which you are so proud, excel it in idiomatic vigour, or in the power of expression of refined shades of meaning? Our daily life:- Are we not respectful and polite to one another and to you? Have you met with greater or more considerate hospitality in any part of the world? Our agriculture:- Are the irrigated plains of Lombardy, the sand-recovered districts of the Waes, the high-farmed slopes of the Lothians better cultivated than our yam-beds and taro patches? Place a European pair, sequestered from all their fellows, on a tropic isle, where every air breathes listlessness and the winds come to them from the fields of sleep,’ deprive them of white men’s tools and leave but the remembrance of past knowledge to guide them on their path. Is it altogether impossible that their children might descend even below our level?

“But we are naked – naked savages. Naked to a certain extent, yes: savages, no. And what, after all, is nakedness? In your cold, inhospitable clime the naked die. We live – and live well. We thrive where you dwindle – under the sun. To us, as your crude economy would say, clothes are a luxury; to you, a necessity. In your myth of the creation the primeval pair in their purity went naked; fallen, they were clad. Are our men sots, our women harlots? No; but drunkenness and prostitution were unknown before the white men came. Gin and syphilis! Great Heavens, what boons the pale-faces have granted us Religion has tamed and bettered us. Has it? What is it? The Wesleyan. or the Catholic: which is the blind guide? Your humble Wesleyan who exacts from us a deference more servile than that paid to the haughtiest of our chiefs? Your high-souled Catholic who tries to dazzle us with painted mummeries? And you money-getting whites yourselves, what religion do you follow? Is it the golden calf or the grog-bottle that you worship?

“Cannibalism? There, indeed, is a blot never to be wiped out. Something, perhaps, may be said for us even here. I have read that white men, alone with their own kind, have been driven by want of food to batten upon those of their own species. Live upon starch alone for a time, eat yams or taro only for a few weeks or months and see if Dante’s terrific line Piu che il dolor poté il dijiuno does not acquire a hideous significance for you. You will then feel that intense, that feverish lust after flesh which – We had neither pigs nor fowls, sheep nor cattle. We could not beget them. We could not. We caught men and we ate them. Killed them that we the survivors might live. Horrible is it not? Yet is it worse to slay men to appease hunger than to burn them in the cause of religion, or butcher them in the name of liberty? We killed all shipwrecked people. Not so; there are white men now in our island who have lived amongst us unharmed for fifty years. And what if we did kill some; not a hundred years are past since the murdering wreckers of Cornwall could have echoed back a noble chorus to our man-eating song.

“Enough. You wish for an excuse to exterminate us. It is easier to exterminate than to civilise. That you know well. You are the more powerful: excuses are easily found. Say not, however, that we are mere savages. We have much to learn; we have learnt and are learning fast. But you, too, may learn one thing at least from us – not to despise that which you have taken no pains to understand.”

And about all this there is no exaggeration. It is impossible not to feel respect for a people who can attain to such a level of culture under such conditions. Their great ndruas or double canoes, held together only by cocoa-nut twine, yet making no water, and their decks so splendidly carpentered with a flint adze that a fine European plane could not touch them; their admirable and elaborate irrigation and cultivation of their lands, and the just apportionment of the product – all achieved without exchange and with no circulating medium – I look back to, even now, as foreshadowing what humanity will attain to on an infinitely higher level when, the gold fetish finally overthrown, and the exploitation of the many by the few put an end to, mankind will resume control over those vastly greater means of producing wealth by which we of to-day are over-mastered and crushed down. Meanwhile the slum-dwellers of our cities are almost infinitely worse off than the meanest kaisis of a Fiji tribe.


Last updated on 30.7.2006