Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 87.djvu/43

Rh The floor is covered with several layers of pendamu mats, and a raised dais at one end of the single room serves as a bed and may be screened by mosquito-proof curtains of masi (tapa). A rectangular earth-covered depression serves for the fireplace and the smoke escapes as best it may, the smoldering embers imparting always a pleasant aroma to the air.

In speaking of everything Fijian, we must remember that the peoples of the Ra, or western islands of the Archipelago, and of the mountains, are of purer Papuan stock and are more primitive than those of the Vititonga race of the Lau group and the eastern coasts of the large island. Accordingly, the houses differ in different places, being smaller, more crudely and flimsily made among the Papuan than among the Vititonga tribes. Also in the western parts of the large islands and in the Ra islands, the chiefs are not so highly respected as among tribes whose blood has been mingled with the aristocratic Polynesian. At Mbau, the Roko Tui was almost god-like in native estimation, whereas in the mountains of Vita Levu the chief was only the leading councilor of the tribe, and labored in the fields in common with his subjects. Indeed the Mbau chiefs looked down upon those of the western part of Viti Levu, calling them Kai-si (peasants).

If the house were that of a high chief, as at Mbau or Rewa, the roof-beams were wrapped with interlacing strands of cocoanut fiber sennit, displaying a pattern in rich browns, black and yellow, so pleasingly contrasted that one is forced to regret that work of such high artistic merit should be suffered to remain in a house as inflammable as a haystack. Yet these houses withstand a hurricane far better than do the hideous corrugated-iron-roofed structures of Europeans.

Several old wooden basins, yaqona bowls, are hung upon the wall, their naturally dark wood coated with pearly blue where many a brewing of the drink has stained them. Carved war-clubs and long elaborately decorated spears may be seen suspended from the beams, and as the eye becomes accustomed to the dim light one beholds such treasures as a sperm whale's tooth strung as were old-fashioned powder horns upon a rope of cocoanut fiber and polished through repeated rubbings with cocoanut oil until its surface is as brown as tinted meerschaum. A few fly-brushes, pandamus fans for awakening the fire, a huge ceremonial war-fan of palm-leaf, some wooden food bowls, and crude cooking pots of fire-baked clay, and a clock that never goes, complete the list of the furniture. Yet one thing of painful memory one would fain have overlooked—the universal pillow. This consists of a block of wood or stick of bamboo supported upon legs so that it stands horizontally four or five inches above the floor. In old days when the hair was most elaborately dressed and trained into a huge mop, this pillow was doubtless a necessity, but in this shaven and shorn period of