Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 87.djvu/305

Rh industrious, bigoted race whom the Fijians despise and with whom they do not mingle. Indeed, there are far more half-breds between the whites and Fijians than between Fijians and Hindoos.

Although all native arts have suffered and some have wholly disappeared in Fiji, the introduction of European methods has been slower in this group than elsewhere in the Pacific. Spears and clubs and other implements of war are no longer made unless, indeed, it be to sell to tourists, and the dancing masks and wigs of former days have disappeared, along with the cannibal forks. Once the natives took great pride in their war-clubs, and a man's rank was indicated by the fashion of his club and his manner of carrying it, only chiefs being permitted to bear it over the shoulder as we would a gun. The handle was notched whenever the club had served to kill a man, and such a weapon was called a "ngandro" to distinguish it from common clubs. Indeed the more famous clubs were given individual names, a certain chief being the proud possessor of one called "the giver of rest." Elaborately carved, and built up, spears of iron-wood ten or fifteen feet long were common, and were sometimes tipped with the spine of the sting-ray, which upon breaking within the wound caused certain death. In the distant villages among the mountains of the large islands, spears and clubs were still to be seen in the houses in 1899, but from more accessible places they have long since disappeared to crowd the shelves of our museums. Everywhere the natives of the coasts have yielded, and more or less conformed to the white man's customs, but only a few miles inland, isolated by the dense forests or walled in by mountains, they were in 1900 almost as in heathen times. Yet even in these remote places the natives are not wholly separated from the world, for news is carried rapidly by word of mouth, and Wilkes speaks of a case in which a message was transmitted 20 miles through a forested country in less than six hours.

The pursuit of war was once the chief concern of the Fijians, and was often conducted in a very ceremonious fashion. An offended chief thrust sticks into the ground and removed them only when appeased. If war was determined upon a herald was sent to the village of the enemy to announce the fact. As is universal with primitive people, the mustering of the army was the occasion for much extravagant boasting, and their faces were painted red or half red and half black. Miss Gordon Cumming gives a striking description of the wild war-dance and the boasts of the warriors who assembled at the call of Sir Arthur Gordon to take part in the war against the cannibal tribes of the Singatoka River in the mountains. "This is only a musket" cried one warrior "but I carry it." By contrast the men from Mbau came up in stately fashion, their spokesman saying "This is Mbau, that is enough."

The towns were often fortified with wooden stockades or stone