Page:Williams and Calvert, Fiji and the Fijians, New York, 1860.djvu/133

 CHAPTEE YI MANNEES AND CUSTOMS. The habits, manners, and customs of a savage people must always prove interesting, and to a certain extent, instructive. In the present instance, the people described are but little known, and there are very- few who have had the opportunity of long and intimate acquaintance with them, and who, at the same time, have been either able or disposed to give a fair and unprejudiced statement of what they have witnessed. Hence, to the other attractions belonging to a description of Fijian life, private and public, will be added much of the charm of novelty. Any portraiture, too, of a people living, for many generations, under the un- interrupted power of influences different from any which ,we daily feel, and strangers to those motives and forces which have, more than any- thing else, modified the development of our own individual and social character, must convey instruction, imparting, as it does, revelations which shed new light on the difficult study — man. Although domestic habits are found to a great extent among the Fijians, yet, as was intimated at the close of the last chapter, there is too much reserve to allow the social element full influence. A general kindness of manner is prevalent, but the high attachments which con- stitute friendship are known to very few. A free flow of the affections between members of the same family is further prevented by the strict observance of national or religious customs, imposing a most unnatural restraint. Brothers and sisters, first cousins, fathers and sons-in-law? mothers and daughters-in-law, and brothers and sisters-in-law, are thus severally forbidden to speak to each other, or to eat from the same dish. The latter embargo extends to husbands and wives — an arrangement not likely to foster domestic joy. Husbands are as frequently away from their wives as with them, since it is thought not well for a man to sleep regularly at home. Among other similar practices may be men- tioned the forbidding of wives, when pregnant, to wait on their hus- 8