The religion of the Fijians was so closely interwoven with their social polity that it was impossible to tear away the one without lacerating the other. It was as unreasonable for the people to continue to reverence their chiefs when they ceased to believe in the Ancestor-gods, from whom they were descended, as for the Hebrews to conform to the Mosaic law if they had repudiated the inspiration of Moses. Religion was a hard taskmaster to the heathen Fijian; it governed his every action from the cradle-mat to the grave. In the tabu it prescribed what he should eat and drink, how he should address his betters, whom he should marry, and where his body should be laid. It limited his choice of the fruits of the earth and of the sea; it controlled his very bodily attitude in his own house. All his life he walked warily for fear of angering the deities that went in and out with him, ever-watchful to catch him tripping, and death but cast him naked into their midst to be the sport of their vindictive ingenuity.

The Fijian word for divinity is kalou, which is also used as an adjective for anything superlative, either good or bad, and it is possible that the word was originally a root-word implying wonder and astonishment. Sometimes the word is used as a mere exclamation, or expression of flattery, as, "You are kalou!" or "A kalou people!" applied to Europeans in connection with triumphs of invention among civilized nations, either in polite disbelief, or disinclination to attempt to imitate them.

The Fijian divinities fall naturally into two great divisions—the Kalou-vu (Root-gods), and the Kalou-yalo (Spirit-gods, i.e. deified mortals). There is much truth in Waterhouse's contention that the Kalou-vu were of Polynesian origin brought to Fiji by immigrants from the eastward, and imposed upon the conquered Melanesian tribes in addition to their own Pantheon of deified mortals, and that the Ndengei legend, which undoubtedly belonged to the aborigines, was adopted by the conquerers as the Etruscan gods were by the Romans. The natives' belief in their own tribal divinity did not entail denial of the divinities of other tribes. To the Hebrew prophets the cult of Baal-peor was not so much a false as an impious creed. The Fijians admitted from the first that the Jehovah of the missionaries was a great, though not the only, God, and, as will presently be shown, when converted to Christianity, they only added Him to their own Pantheon. So, in giving their allegiance to the chiefs who conquered them, it was natural that they should admit the supremacy of the gods of their conquerors, who, by giving the victory to their worshippers, had proved themselves to be more powerful than their own gods. Wainua, the great war-god of Rewa, is said to have drifted from Tonga, and his priest, when inspired, gives his answers in the Tongan language. The Rewans had given the chief place in their Pantheon to the god of mere visitors.

First among the Kalou-vu was Ndengei, primarily a god of Rakiraki on the north-east coast of Vitilevu, but known throughout Fiji except in the eastern islands of the Lau group. The evolution of this god from the ancestor and tutelary deity of a joint-family into a symbol of Creation and Eternity in serpent form is an exact counterpart of Jupiter, the god of a Latin tribe, inflated with Etruscan and Greek myth until he overshadows the ancient world as Jupiter Optimus Maximus. The variants of the Ndengei myths are so numerous that they must be reserved for another chapter; it is enough here to say that Ndengei and the personage associated with him are proved by the earliest myths of his home on the Ra coast to be deified mortals who have risen to the rank of Kalou-vu by their importance as the first immigrants and the founders of the race.

Next in order to Ndengei is Ndauthina (the torch-bearer), the god of the seafaring and fishing community throughout Fiji. That he is one of the introductions from another system of mythology and not a deified mortal of Fiji is strongly suggested by the fact that all the fisher-tribes are tauvu or Kalou-vata (worshippers of the same god, and therefore of common origin). These tribes, by the nature of their occupation, are prone to scatter widely, though comparatively late arrivals in the group. They seldom own any land in the province of their adoption, but attach themselves to the chiefs, from whom they enjoy marked privileges in return for their services. It would take but few years for the newest arrivals, scattering thus among far distant islands, to disseminate their cult throughout a group of islands, and there is nothing in the Ndauthina myths that disproves their Eastern origin. The fisher-tribes had the best of reasons for keeping the freemasonry of their bond of Kalou-vata (lit., same God) alive. Their calling subjected them to frequent shipwreck, and by the law of custom the lives of castaways were forfeit—a survival, perhaps, of a primitive system of quarantine. But the shipwrecked fisherman might always find sanctuary in a temple dedicated to Ndauthina, and thus win the "freedom of the city" in a village where he was a stranger.

Ndauthina was the Loki, the Fire-god of the Nibelung myth. He is the god of Light and of Fire—the fire of lightning and the fire of lust in men's blood. His love of light in infancy prompted his mother to bind lighted reeds upon his head to amuse him, and now he roams the reefs by night hooded with a flaming brazier. He is the patron of adulterers, and himself steals women away by night. He loves night attacks, and flashes light upon the defences to guide the besiegers. Taking human form he sells fish to the doomed garrison, who, noticing a strong smell of fire, know that Ndauthina has been among them, and that their warriors will not see another sun. His pranks and whims are numberless. When plots are hatched against his favourites a voice cries "Pooh!" through the reed-walls, and he flies off to put his friends upon their guard. He buoys up a rotten canoe to tempt warriors to embark in her only to lure them into club-reach of their enemies. But upon his friends the fishermen he plays no pranks, giving them fair winds and good fishing.

Ratu-mai-Mbulu (Lord from Hades), though primarily a local divinity of the Tailevu coast, is also probably a foreign intruder. Through him the earth gives her increase. In December he comes forth from Mbulu, and pours sap into the fruit trees, and pushes the young yam shoots through the soil. Throughout that moon it is tabu to beat the drum, to sound the conch-shell, to dance, to plant, to fight, or to sing at sea, lest Ratu-mai-Mbulu be disturbed, and quit the earth before his work is completed. At the end of the month the priest sounds the consecrated shell: the people raise a great shout, carrying the good news from village to village, and pleasure and toil are again free to all.

In a hole near Namara he lies in serpent form, and thither the Mbauans carried food to him once a year, first clearing the holy ground. Unlike the other gods he drinks no kava, for the wind and noise of a blast on the conch-shell are meat and drink to him. There was once an agnostic of Soso, the fisher class of Mbau, named Kowika, who set forth alone to set his doubts at rest. To a snake sunning himself at the cave-mouth he offered fish, but this was the great god's son. When he was gone to summon his father from the cave, a greater snake appeared—the god's grandson he proved to be—and he departed with a more urgent message. At length there issued a serpent so huge and terrible that Kowika doubted no longer, and proffered his gift in fear and trembling, but as the god was loosening his vast coils he shot an arrow into them and fled. As he ran a voice rang in his ears, crying, "Nought but snakes! Nought but snakes!" And so it was. The pot was cooked when Kowika reached home, but his wife dropped the skewer with a shriek, an impaled snake wriggled on its end. When he lifted the bamboo to drink, snakes poured forth instead of water. He unrolled his sleeping mat; that too was alive with snakes. And as he rushed forth into the night he heard the voice of the priest prophesying the fall of the city as a just punishment for the sacrilege of wounding the God of Increase. He took the one way of salvation left to him: he soro-ed in abject humility, and he was pardoned.

Totemism

The shark-god is the tutelar divinity of numerous tribes who are not tauvu with one another, unless they call him by the same name. Waterhouse gives the following list of names under which the shark is invoked: Ndakuwanka, (Outside-the-canoe), Circumnavigator-of-Yandua, Feeder-of-fish, Lover-of-canoe-spars, Waylayer, Rover-of-the-man-groves, Expectant-follower, Ready-for-action, Sail-cleaner, Lord-Shark-that-calls, Tabu-white, Tooth-for-raw-flesh. The tribes that invoke Ndakuwanka are tauvu, but the Soro people who worship Ndakuwanka recognize no tie with the Yandua tribe, who invoke the Circumnavigator-of-Yandua. Each of these names covers a distinct cult, and the fact that a number of unrelated tribes should have agreed in choosing the shark for their god needs explanation. That shark-worship is pure totemism is shown by the beneficence of the shark to his worshippers, and the obligation that lay upon them not to eat their divinity. Mana, a Soro native, capsized in the open sea, called upon Ndakuwanka to save him, and a shark rose near him and towed him safe to land by his back fin. The same god jumped athwart a Soro canoe in the invasion of Natewa in 1848, turned over to show the tattooing on his belly, and leapt back into the sea to lead his votaries to the attack. In 1840 a tabu shark was eaten at Navukeilangi in the island of Ngau, and all who had eaten of it died. But there the usual features of totemism stop. The spirits of the dead do not pass into the totem; men never assume the shark form; the shark-totem does not necessarily intermarry with any other totem. Totemism in Fiji does not affect the social system in any way. It is an accident rather than a design in the religious system; an anthropomorphic divinity would have served as well. Nor is it totemism in decay, as some have suggested, for with the cult of the totem so active and vigorous some survival of its attendant customs in the marriage laws or in the beliefs of the future state would assuredly have been found. The mental attitude of primitive races in all parts of the world to worship a species of living animal or plant taught the Fijians where to look for their tutelary divinity, and the shark being to a people seafaring in frail craft the most dreaded and implacable of all the animal kingdom, a number of diverse tribes chose to propitiate the shark independently.

The shark, though the commonest, is not the only totem. The hawk, the eel, the lizard, the fresh-water prawn, and man himself have their adherents. The man-totem were perhaps the only tribe who never practised cannibalism, the flesh of their totem being forbidden to them.

Totemism, in this limited form, was perfectly consistent with ancestor-worship. Except in the case of the shark—a malevolent being claiming constant propitiation from fishermen—the totem had not often a temple or a priest. Saumaki, the river-shark, was remembered as a piece of tribal tradition, but his totem worshipped other gods. They were sometimes tauvu through gods independent of their totem. Lasakau and Sawaieke, Nayau and Notho were tauvu through their shark-totem, but Rewa and Verata were tauvu through an ancestor-god, Ko-mai-na-ndundu-ki-langi, or Ko-Tavealangi (Reclining-on-the-sky), and greeted one another in the formula, "Nonku Vuniyavu" (Foundation of my house). Many tribes have either forgotten or have never had a totem, and the greater number of those who have preserve the tradition as a piece of family history, and refer to it with a smile, which is apt to fade when they survey the ruin of their property on the morrow of a visit from a devastating horde of their tauvu kin.

Gods of the After-world

Besides the divinities that concerned themselves with terrestrial affairs, there was a well-peopled mythology of the after-life. These beings had neither temples nor priests. They haunted well-known spots on the road by which the Shades must pass to their last resting-place, but as they left the living unmolested, the living were not called upon to make propitiatory offerings. They were kept alive by the professional story-tellers, who revived them after funerals, when men's thoughts were directed to the problem of Death, and they gained in detailed portraiture at every telling. In a land where every stranger is an enemy, the idea of the naked Shade, turned out friendless into eternity, to find his own way to the Elysium of Bulotu, conjured up images of the perils that would beset every lone wayfarer on earth, and the Shade was made to run the gauntlet of fiends that were the incarnations of such perils.

Though the story of the Soul's journey agreed in general outline, the details were filled in by each tribe to suit its geographical position. There was generally water to cross, either the sea or a river, and there was, therefore, a ghostly ferryman (Vakaleleyalo) who treated his passengers with scant courtesy. There was Ghost-scatterer, who stoned the Shade, and Reed-spear, who impaled him. Goddesses of fearsome aspect peered at him, gnashing their teeth; the god of murder fell upon him; the Dismisser sifted out the real dead from the trance-smitten; fisher-fiends entangled cowards in their net; at every turn in the road there was some malevolent being to put the Shade to the ordeal, and search out every weak point, until none but brave warriors who had died a violent death—the only sure passport to Bulotu—passed through unscathed. The names differed, but the features of the myth were the same. The shades of all Vitilevu and the contiguous islands, and of a large part of Vanualevu took the nearest road either to the Nakauvandra range, the dwelling-place of Ndengei, or to Naithombothombo, the jumping-off place in Mbau, and thence passed over the Western Ocean to Bulotu,[45] the birth-place of the race.

What belief was more natural for a primitive people, having no revealed belief in a future state except than that the land of which their fathers had told them, where the yams were larger and the air warmer, and the earth more fruitful, was the goal of their spirits after death. We almost do the same ourselves. Englishmen who emigrate never tire of telling their children of the delights of "home" as compared with their adopted country. If the Canadians or South Africans knew nothing of England but what they had heard from their fathers, and had no beliefs concerning a future state, England would have come to be the mysterious paradise whither their souls would journey after death, and their "jumping-off place" would be the mouth of the St. Lawrence or of the Orange River. With the Fijians the traditions have become so dim with antiquity that nothing remains but a vague belief that somewhere to the westward lies the Afterworld, and that the Shades must leap from the western cliff to reach it.

Every step of the soul's journey was taken on a road perfectly familiar to the people, and constantly frequented by daylight. But after nightfall none were found so foolhardy as to set foot upon this domain of the Immortals, while the precincts of Ndengei's cave and Naithombothombo (the Jumping-off place) were tabu both by day and night. In 1891 a surveyor, employed in sketching the boundaries of the lands claimed by the Namata tribe, was taken by his native guides along a high ridge, the watershed between the Rewa river and the eastern coast of the main island. As they cut their way through the undergrowth that clothed the hilltop, he noticed that the path was nearly level, and seldom more than two feet wide, and that the ridge joined hilltop to hilltop in an almost horizontal line. Reflecting that Nature never works in straight lines with so soft a material as earth, and that natural banks of earth are always washed into deep depressions between the hills, and are never razor-edged as this was, he had a patch of the undergrowth cleared away, and satisfied himself that the embankments were artificial. Following the line of the ridge, the saddles had been bridged with banks thirty to forty feet high in the deepest parts, and tapering to a width of two feet at the top. The level path thus made extends, so the guides said, clear to Nakauvandra mountain, fifty miles away. For a people destitute of implements this was a remarkable work. Every pound of earth must have been carried up laboriously in cocoanut leaf baskets and paid for in feasts. Even when the valley was densely populated the drain on the resources of the people must have been enormous, for thousands of pigs must have been slaughtered and millions of yams planted, cultivated, and consumed in the entertainment of the workers. With the present sparse population the work would have been impossible. It was thought at first that this was a fortification on a gigantic scale, for Fijians never undertake any great combined work, except for defence, to preserve their bare existence. It could not be a road, because the Fijian of old preferred to go straight over obstacles, like the soldier ants that climb trees rather than go round them. The old men at Mbau, whom I questioned, knew no tradition about it, except that it was called the "Path of the Shades," and that it was an extension of one of the spurs of the Kauvandra mountain range. Of one thing they were certain—that it was not built for defence. Then I asked for guides to take me over it, and three grey-headed elders of the Namata tribe were told off to accompany me. We started in the driving rain. My guides were reticent at first, but when we had climbed to the higher ridge, and were near the "Water-of-Solace," the spirit of the place seemed to possess them, and at every turn of the path they stopped to describe the peril that there beset the poor Shade. The eldest of the three became at times positively uncanny, for he stopped here and there in the rain to execute a sort of eerie dance, which, if it was intended to exorcise the demons of the Long Road, was highly reprehensible in a professing Wesleyan. Little by little I wormed the whole story out of them, together with fragments of the sagas in which it is crystallized. After I had reached home two of my native collectors were sent to Namata to reduce the tradition to writing. The following is a literal translation of what they brought me—

The Spirit Path (Sala Ni Yalo)

There is a long range which has its source at Mumuria in the Kauvandra mountain, and stretches eastward right down to Nathengani at Mokani in Mbau. It is called the Tuatua-mbalavu (Long Range), but in Tholo and Ra it is called the Tualeita. This range is nowhere broken or cut through, nor does the course of any stream pass through it. And all the streams that discharge into the Wainimbuka take their source in this range, and also the streams that run towards the sea, on the whole coast, from Navitilevu to Namata.

Now our ancestors said that the souls of the dead followed this range on their way to Kauvandra, and at the foot of the range at Mokani was their fountain of drinking water, called Wainindula. We begin our account of the "Spirit Path" at Ndravo, for at that place all the souls of those who have died at Mburetu, and Nakelo, and Tokatoka, and Lomaindreketi, and Ndravo crossed the water.

This is the story—

When a man died his body was washed, and girded up with masi and laid in its shroud. A whale's tooth was laid on his breast, to be his stone to throw at the pandanus-tree, which all the Shades had to aim at. And while his friends were weeping, the Shade left the body and came to a stream so swift that no Shade could swim across it. This stream was called the Wainiyalo (River of the Shades), but it is now called the Ndravo river. When the Shade reached the bank he stood and called towards the Mokani side, where the god Themba dwelt, the same whose duty it is to ferry the Shades across the water. Now Themba has a great canoe, divided in the middle; one end is of vesi, and in this the chiefs embark; but the other is of ndolou (a kind of bread-fruit), and on this the low-born Shades take passage. The name of the place where they stand and call Themba is Lelele. When the Shade reaches Lelele he stands and calls, "Themba, bring over your canoe." And Themba answers, "Which end is to be the prow?" If the Shade answers, "The vesi end," Themba knows that it is the shade of a chief, but if it cries, "Let the bread-fruit be the prow," it is a low-born Shade, and the bread-fruit end touches the bank.

When the Shade is ferried across from Lelele it goes straight to the bluff at Nathengani, but before it reaches it it has to cross a bridge called Kawakawa-i-rewai. Now this bridge is a monstrous eel, and while the Shade is crossing it, if it writhes it is a sign to the Shade not to tarry, for it means that his wife will not be strangled to follow him. But if the eel does not writhe, then the Shade sits down, for he knows that his wife is being strangled to his manes, and will soon overtake him.

Now, as he climbs the bluff at Nathengani the path is blocked by an orchid, and from this orchid the disposition of the man is known, whether it is good or bad; for if it is the Shade of a man kindly in his life, and he cries to the orchid "Move aside," it allows the Shade to pass, but if it is the Shade of a churlish man the orchid will not move, but still blocks the path, and the Shade has to crawl beneath it. And when he reaches the top of Nathengani he sees the pandanus-tree, and he flings his stone at it. If he hits it he sits down to await his wife, for it means that she has been strangled and is following him, but if he misses it he goes straight on, knowing that no one is following him as an offering to his manes.

It is also related of the eel-bridge that if it turns over as a Shade crosses it, that is a sign that the husband or wife of the Shade has been unfaithful during life, and that when the Shade feels the eel turning he goes forward weeping, because he knows that his wife had been unfaithful to him in life.

A goddess named Tinaingenangena guards the end of the range at Nathengani. These are the verses that relate to her:—

Let us send for Tinaingenangena,
To teach us the song,
When we have learned it we are dissolved in laughter,
Her short liku is flapping about,
As for us we are being laughed at,
The Shade of the dead is passing on,
Passing on to Nathengani,
He is stepping on the bridge; the eel-bridge,
It writhes and the Shade rolls off,
My dress is wet through,
He speaks to the orchid at Nathengani,
Speaks to the orchid that blocks the road,
Move a little that I may pass on,
He breaks the whale's tooth in half,
Breaks it that we may each have one,
That we may throw at the red pandanus,
He misses and bites his fingers in chagrin,
She loves her life too well.

And as the spirit travels onward it comes to a Ndawa-tree called "The-Ndawa-that-fells-the-Shades" (Vuni-ndawa-thova-na-yalo), which stands at Vunithava. This it climbs to tear down the ndawa fruit to be its provision for the journey, and it weeps aloud as it goes in self-pity for the deceit of the wife who had been unfaithful, as it now knows.

And now the Shade hears the voice of the god Ndrondro-yalo (Pursuer-of-Shades), and he strides towards the Shade bearing in his hand a great stone with which he pounds the nape of his neck, and the ndawa fruit the Shade is carrying is scattered far and wide. Therefore this spot was called Naitukivatu (the Place-of-the-pounding-stone).

Then the Shade comes to a place called Ndrekei, where there are two goddesses named Nino, whose custom it is to peer at all the Shades that travel along the "Spirit-path." These goddesses are terrible on account of their teeth; and as the Shade limps along the path they peer at it, creeping towards it, and gnashing their teeth. And when the Shade sees them it cries aloud in its terror and flees.

And as the Shades flee they come to a spring, and stop to drink. And as soon as they taste the water they immediately cease their weeping, and their friends who are still weeping in their former homes also cease, for their grief is assuaged. Therefore this spring is called Wai-ni-ndula (Water-of-Solace).

And as soon as they have finished drinking they rise up and look afar, and lo! the mbuli shells of the great dwellings of Kauvandra are gleaming white, and they throw away the rest of their provision of via, and to this day one may see the via they throw away sprouting at this place, where no mortal may dig it. For now they know that they are drawing near their resting-place; therefore they throw away their provisions that they may travel the lighter.

These are the verses that tell of the journey of the Shade from Vunithava to the Water-of-Solace:—

What do we see at Vunithava?
A ndawa-tree weighted to the ground with fruit,
Climb it that we may eat,
To be provision for the Shades on their long journey,
Here have we reached the "Stonebreaker,"
He pounds us and spills our ndawa fruit,
Thence we go forward limping,
Nino begin to creep forward peering at us,
Now we arrive at the garden of puddings,
We stop to rest at the Wainindula,
We meet and drink together, e e.
Having drunk we are mad with joy (forgetting the past)
The Kai Ndreketi are growing excited,
They have sight of our bourne,
The shell-covered ridge-poles to which we are journeying
They seem to pierce the empyrean
We throw down our provisions,
Soon the great via plants will appear (that have sprouted from the via thrown away).

Journeying on from the Water-of-Solace the Shade comes to a place called Naisongovitho, where stands a god armed with an axe. The name of this god is Tatovu. When the Shade reaches this place Tatovu poises his axe and chops at his back, and thenceforward the Shade goes with his back bent. Presently he reaches Namburongo, where the god Motonduruka (Palm-spear) lies in wait to impale every Shade with a spear fashioned from a reed.

Wounded with the rush-spear of Motonduruka, the Shade journeys on to a place called Natambu, where there is a god called Naiuandui who wounds him in the back, and he goes forward reeling in his gait. Therefore is this place called Naimbalembale (the Reeling-place).

There are verses that tell of the journey of the Shades from Rokowewe to Naimbalembale:—

Rokowewe ("Lord Ue-Ue!") announces us,
"Prepare, ye old women,"
They prepare their nets and shake them out for a cast,
They entangle them (the Shades), and cast them out,
Tatovuya (the Back-cutter) cuts them down,
Motonduruka (the Cane-spear) stabs them,
Naiuandui bruises them,
How far below us lies Nawakura,
How far above Mambua,
Mambua the land of insolence,
The land to which the spirits of every land come,
We are struck down, we are slain,
We go on reeling from side to side, e e.

Now when the Shades have passed Naimbalembale they reach a spot called Narewai. Here they have to crawl on their bellies. Thence they journey to a place called Nosonoso (the Bowing-place), which they have to pass in a stooping posture. There they bow down ten times.

Thence they come to Veisule, where they throw down the provisions they have taken and faint away. Thence they are dragged on to Nayarayara (the Dragging-place) as corpses are dragged to the ovens to be cooked. Thence they travel to Nangele.

Thence they come to a place called Navakathiwa (the Nine-times). This they have to encircle nine times. Thence they have to journey on till they come to a spot called the Watkins (the Pinching-stone). Every Shade has to pinch this stone. If he indents it it is known that he was a lazy man in his lifetime, for his nails were long, as they never are when a man has been diligent in scooping up the yam hills in his garden with his hands. But if his nails do not indent the stone it is known that he was industrious, for his nails were worn away with working in his plantation. From the "Pinching-stone" they go forward, dancing and jesting, towards the god Taleya (the Dismisser), who is the god that lives in the great mbaka-tree at Maumi. Then Taleya asks each Shade how he died, whether by a natural death, or by the club in war, or by strangling, or by drowning. And if he answers "I died by a natural death," Taleya replies "Then go back and re-enter your body."[46] Hence is the god called Taleya—the Dismisser. But if the Shade replies that he was slain in war or drowned, Taleya lets him pass on. The Shades that are sent back to re-enter their bodies do not always obey, for some are so eager to reach Kauvandra that they disobey his command.[47]

Thence the Shades follow the Long Road to a spot called Uluitambundra, which is on the junction of the road with Namata. At this spot there is a god who announces the Shades with a shout. His name is Rokowewe, and when a Shade reaches Uluitambundra he shouts "Ue, Ue, Ue!" And two goddesses at Naulunisanka on the road shake out their nets in readiness, for they are set to net the Shades as they pass. These goddesses are called Tinaiulundungu and Muloathangi, and they make a sweep with their net. If it be the Shade of a warrior it will overleap the net as does the kanathe; but if it be the Shade of a coward it will be entangled like the sumusumu, and the goddesses will disentangle it and bite its head as if it were a fish, and will loop up their nets and throw the fish into their baskets. These goddesses inhabit the "Long Road" (Tualeita), and they loiter in the path listening for the sound of wailing from the villages below them, for the sad sound is wafted to the "Long Road." But the real dwelling of these goddesses is Ulunisanka, a peak on the road. There is a saga about these goddesses, and how they fish for the shades of the dead. It is well known in Namata among the women there, and it is called "Shade of the Dead" (Yalo mate).

The goddesses are looping up their nets,
They are listening to the sound of weeping,
From what village does this weeper come?
Let us stand and dispute about it,
It is weeping from the village of ——?
They spread out their nets for a catch,
They spread their net across the belly of the road,
We hold the net and wait,
The shade of the dead is topping the ridge,
Let us lift up the head of the net cautiously,
The Shade leaps and clears the net at a bound,
One goddess claps, and clasps her hands, and the other bites her fingers (in chagrin).
I look after the Shade, but it is far on its way,
Let us fold up the net and return.

The Shades that have escaped from the Fisherwomen at Uluisanka follow the "Long Road" to Naikathikathi-ni-kaile[48] (the Calling-place-for-kaile). In the valley below this spot are two goddesses boiling kaile, and when the Shade reaches the spot it calls to them for kaile. If it calls for a red kaile it is known for the Shade of a man slain in war, but if it calls for a white kaile it is the Shade of one who was strangled. Some, however, call for kaile from Mburotu; these are they who have died a natural death, and kaile from Mburotu are taken to them. Other things, too, are called from this place.

When each Shade has received the kaile for which he called, he passes on to a place called Naikanakana (the Eating-place), and there he eats. Thence he goes on to a place called Naililili (the Hanging-place). Here there is a vasa tree, and from the branches are hanging like bats the Shades of the little children who are waiting for their fathers or their mothers, and when one sees its mother it drops down, and goes on with her to Kauvandra.

The children cry to the Shades as they pass, "How are my father and my mother?" If the Shade answers, "The smoke of their cooking-fire is set upright" (meaning that they are still in their prime), then the child-Shade cries, "Alas, am I still to be orphan?" But if the Shade replies, "Their hair is grey, and the smoke of their cooking-fire hangs along the ground," the Shade of the child rejoices greatly, crying, "It is well. I shall soon have a father and a mother. O hasten, for I am weary of waiting for you."

Thence the Shade follows the "Long Road" to a place called Vuningasau-leka (Short reeds). Here the Shades stop to rest for a time, and they turn to see who is following them, and there they recognize each other, and become companions for the rest of their journey to Kauvandra. Hence this place of Vuningasauleka is a by-word when there is strong anger between two persons. If one would tell the other that he will not see his face or speak to him again until one of them is dead, he says, "We two will meet again at Vuningasaleka," meaning that they will never meet again in this world.

Thence the Shades journey to Nankasenkase (the Crawling-place). Here they kneel down and crawl to the place called Naisausau (the Clapping-place), where they stand upright and clap their hands. In former times a village of the Naimbosa tribe was in this place, and they say that in those days they used to hear about them the sound of the hand-clapping which the Shades made at Naisausau.

Thence they pass on to a place called Tree-fern-target (Balabala-ulaki), where there is a tree-fern at which reeds are thrown, and here they stop to throw at it. And next they come to Levukaniwai, and then to Vakanandaku, where they rest for a time with their backs turned to one another (Vakanandaku). Then they come to Naterema (the Coughing-place), and here they cough loudly. Thence they pass through the place called Buremundu, to Nainkoronkoro (the Place of Wonder), and there they stand and marvel at the world, the beauty, the pleasures, the sorrows, and the labour of it. Here they take their last look at the world before passing on to Kauvandra.

Passing through Nakovalangi, and Bulia, and Navunindakua, and Matanikorowalu (the-Gate-of-the-eight-villages), which is a village of Vungalei, they come to a place called Naisa-vusavu-ni-weli (the Spitting-place). Each Shade as it arrives at this spot spits at the foot of a ndrindriwai tree, and go on to another place called Naikanakana (the Eating-place), and here they stop to eat. Now our fathers have told us that when we dream that the spirit of a dead man is eating us, it signifies that the Shade has reached Naikanakana-ni-yalo, and that there he finds the spirits of us the living, and that straightway he pursues our spirits with intent to devour them. Therefore we sometimes say, "Last night the Shade of so-and-so ate me, and I shouted till I almost died."

Having eaten the spirits of the living, the Shades of the dead pass onward to Vunivau-nkusi-mata (the Hybiscus-for-wiping-the-face), and here they break off leaves of the hybiscus, and wipe their faces with them. If it be the Shade of a man the leaf will be black, but if it be the Shade of a woman the leaf will be red.

Thence they pass on to a spot called Navuniyasikinikini (the Sandal-wood-tree-to-be-pinched), for in this spot there is a sandal-wood which is pinched by all the Shades, and if the nails of the spirit make an impression on the tree, it is known that it is the Shade of a lazy man, but if the Shade pinches and leaves no impression it is plain that it is the Shade of an industrious man who is diligent in gardening.

Thence they pass on through the places called Naloturango and Tova, through Navitikau and Tanginakarakara, still following the "Long Road" through Thengunawai and Naitholasama and Nathau.

Next they reach a spot called Mbalenayalo (the Spirit falls), and as each Shade reaches this spot it suddenly falls down with a loud report. Thence they pass through Thenguna-sonki (Pigeon's rest), Drakusi (the Wound), and Nambaikau (the Wooden wall), and Kelia, and Suva, and Waitamia, the waterfall of Ndelakurukuru (Thunder-hill), Namatua's city. Now this is a great city of the gods built on the "Long Road." Here the Shades enter a house near the rara (village square) called Naisongolatha (Sail-cloth door). In this house they are to rest and witness the dance of the gods of Ndelakurukuru. And when the gods have finished dancing the Shades of the dead dance before them in their turn in the great house of Nasongolatha. This is the song of the gods:—

I am in the house of Nasongolatha,
Likuse-ni-karawa speaks,
The great chiefs are met to practise a song,
Thou, dear to women, come and practise.
Mbatibukawanka leads the song,
Thavuthavu-mata (the Face-stealer) follows.
(This god used to steal the faces of good-looking men in order to seduce women.)
He carries the club Singana-i-tamana (His father's triumph).
Roko Matanivula ("Lord Moon") is next;
Whence do all these chiefs come?
They are the chiefs from Molikula,
All their brothers follow them,
They assemble in the rara,
They turn once and scrape their feet,
They stamp and the earth splits,
Like the sound of thunder in the morning.

When this song is finished the Shades leave the house to bathe in the bathing-place of Ndelakurukuru, which is called Ndranukula (the Red pond). This pool is in the middle of the city. And when they are about to bathe, the god Namatua, who rules the city of Ndelakurukuru, exorcises the water. This is the song with which he exorcises it:—

Bathe at Ndranukula and Namatua speaks,
There is a wind on Ndelakurukuru (Thunder-hill).
The breeze is scented with ndomole flowers,
As clear water flowing forth from a spring.
All my children are dancing,
Weliwelinivula (Moonshine) leads the dance,
Together with Molikula.

And after they have bathed the Shades go to look at the quicksand. This sand is white and very fine, and the spirits go to look at it, and after trying to cross it they fall asleep from very weariness, for, being a shifting sand, it cannot be crossed. This is the song that tells of it:—

I fall asleep at Nukutoro, the quicksand,
The sound of the singers and the drummers floats to me,
The sound of the spear-dance from the mountains,
The onlookers in their delight climb one upon another to see.

The guardians of the mountains sing on,
The calves of their legs are like shaddocks,
Their red turbans are of the colour of blood,
Like the fruit of the vutore tree floating down a river.

Then the children of Namatua are assembled to be counted in order that the Shades may know their numbers, the children of the god of Vungalei. And when they are counted they are found to number one hundred and two, and they are called collectively the Vuanivonokula (the Fruit-of-the-red-kula). This was their title of honour. Now all these sons of Namatua are young gods, strong and handsome. This is a portion of one of the poems that relates to them:—

Let the sons of the god be counted,
They number one hundred and two;
The fruit of the vono is drifting,
The fruit of the red vono.[49]

The Shades, watching the dances of Ndelakurukuru and marvelling at the strong and warlike appearance of the young gods, long to repay them by singing a song of their own land. But they can only sing of their own sufferings. They think that they will thus raise in the minds of the gods anger against the mortals that are still living, and against the race of mosquitoes, and flies, and black ants, for the dead are ever malignant towards the living. This is their lament:—

My Lords, in ill fashion are we buried,
Buried staring up into heaven,
We see the scud flying over the sky,
We are worn out with the feet stamping in the earth,[50]
The rafters of our house (the ribs) are torn asunder,
The eyes with which we gazed on one another are destroyed;
The nose with which we kissed has fallen in;
The breast to which we embraced is ruined;
The thighs with which we clasped have fallen away;
The lips with which we smiled are fretted with decay;
The teeth with which we bite have showered down,
Gone is the hand which threw the tinka stick,
Rolled away are the hawks' stones (testiculi),
Rolled away are the blunters of razors
(alluding to the custom of shaving the pubes).
Hark to the lament of the mosquito:
"Well it is that they should die and pass onward;
"But alas for my conch-shell that they have taken away" (the human ear).
Hark to the lament of the fly:[51]
"Well it is that they should die and pass onward,
But alas! they have carried away the eye from which I drank."
Hark to the lament of the black ant:
"Well it is that they should die and pass onward;
"But, alas! for my whale's tooth that they have taken away!"
(The male organ; the most vulnerable point of attack for that insect when
a native sits down.)

And when the gods of Ndelakurukuru heard this song they cried, "Liku tangoi ya io," which signifies in the language of the immortals, "The mortals' way of burial is well enough, are we to condemn it for a song?"

We are sitting and the stars are appearing,
My feet are in the ferry canoe,
There is trampling on the Path of the Shades
They are following the "Long Road."
I go on and speak as I go,
The world there is lying empty,
I am standing on the firm ground,
I stand on the hard path,
The path that leads straight to Kauvandra,
The dance of the "Mbuno-ni-tokalau" echoes,
What tree shall I take shelter under,
I sit under the ndanindani tree,
We sit there chattering,
Our food is thrown away,
Our children are weeping,
I hate to be buried looking skywards,
I hate being buried to be stamped upon,
The hand with which I threw my tinka stick has been torn off,
My legs have fallen off, like rotten fruit.
Our bodies have been broken in half,
Our teeth have showered down till not one is left,
Our pupils have been turned round to show the whites,
Turned so as to show the whites,
The whole land is tremulous with haze,
I sit down and weep with head bowed to the earth,
Let us go and enter the house at Naisongolatha,
Ndaunivotua has entered it (the singer of the votua),
To teach us to sing the votua,
They keep remembering as they dance,
They sleep till it is daylight.

The reminiscence of Greek myth in Themba, the ghostly ferryman, and in the Water-of-Solace is, of course, mere coincidence. The republican sentiments of Charon find no echo in Fiji, for Themba reserved the hard-wood end of his craft for aristocratic passengers. The Water-of-Solace, too, was a more complex invention than the Water of Lethe, for the Fijians, whose emotions are transient, make their Lethe an excuse for the shortness of their mourning for the dead. "And his friends also ceased from weeping, for they straightway forgot their sorrow, and were consoled." The saga is valuable for the light that it throws on the moral ethics of the Fijians. Cowardice and idleness were the most heinous crimes; a life of rapine and a violent death were passports to the sacred mountain. A natural death was so contemned that the Shade was commanded by Taleya to re-enter the body and die respectably. This part of the story was of course devised to account for recoveries from trance and fainting fits. Life on earth was not a desirable possession. Seeing the misfortunes that overtook the spirit in its last journey, the Fijians might well have exclaimed with Claudio—

"The weariest and most loathed worldly life,
Is Paradise to what we fear of death."

Yet so gloomy and joyless is the prospect of a return to life that the Shades who are offered the privilege by Taleya do not all obey, so "anxious are they to reach Nakauvandra."

Light is also thrown upon a fact wonderingly related by the early missionaries, that the widows of dead chiefs themselves insisted upon being strangled to his manes, although it was notorious that they did not love him. It was their good name that was at stake, for we read that when the Shade had missed his throw at the pandanus-tree, and knew therefrom that his wives would not be strangled, he went on weeping, for he had now a proof that they had been unfaithful to him in life.

The religion of a primitive people springs from within them and reflects their moral qualities, and the modification that it receives from the physical character of the country in which they live is a mere colour that goes no deeper than the surface. Every turn in the "Long Road" embodies an article of social ethics. If there had been no long spur protruding from Nakauvandra into the plain the story would have been different, but the moral ethics of the race would somehow have been illustrated; the industrious and courageous would somehow have been rewarded; the man of violence would have had some advantage over the man of peace; the Shades would in some way have shown their preference for the terrors of death to the gloom of life; the idle and the cowardly would somehow have been put to shame.

The Ndengei Myth

Ndengei is supreme among the Kalou-Vu (original gods), and his authority was recognized by the whole of Vitilevu and its outlying islands, and by the western half of Vanualevu. The oldest tradition in which his name occurs mentions him as one of the first immigrants with Lutu-na-somba-somba, but his fame far exceeded that of his companions, and so many myths gathered about his name, that when the first missionaries arrived he had come to be a counterpart of Zeus himself. In serpent form he lay coiled in a cavern in the Kauvandra mountain above Rakiraki, and when he turned himself the earth quaked. Enormous offerings of food were made to him by the Rakiraki people. Several hundred hogs and turtle were carried to the mouth of the cavern, which the priests approached, crawling on their knees and elbows. One of the priests then entered the cave to proffer the request. If it was for a good yam-crop he would reappear, holding a piece of yam which the god had given him; if for rain, he would be dripping with water; if for victory, a fire-brand would be flung out in token that the enemy would be consumed, or a clashing of clubs would be heard, one for each of the enemy that would be slaughtered. Beyond the limits of his own district he had scarcely a temple, and little actual worship was paid to him, though in the great drought of 1838 King Tanoa of Mbau sent propitiatory offerings to him; and even in Raki-raki itself, there is a humorous song in which Uto his constant attendant, is represented as visiting the public feasts for the god's portion, and returning to Ndengei with the rueful intelligence that nothing but the under shell of the turtle was allotted to him. In some versions Ndengei has the head and neck only of a serpent, the rest of his body being of stone. He is the creator of mankind, but he has no emotions, sensations, or appetites except hunger.[52] Another version describes him as sending forth his son, Rokomautu, to create the land. He scraped it up from the ocean-bed, and where his flowing garment trailed across it there were sandy beaches, and where the skirt was looped up the coast was rocky. He also taught men how to produce fire.

When the missionaries first attempted the conversion of Rakiraki the people thought that Christianity was a mere variant of their own cult of Ndengei, using the following argument: Ndengei = the True God; Jehovah = the True God; therefore, Jehovah = Ndengei. Many years later the false prophet, Navosavakandua, whose career is set forth hereafter, used a similar argument to prove that his teachings did not clash with those of the missionaries, but were merely a newer revelation.

Ndengei was a purely Melanesian deity, and therefore, as I have said, the whole of Abraham Fornander's argument of a settlement of Polynesians in Fiji from the second to the fifth centuries a.d., which is founded on the fallacy that Ndengei was of Polynesian origin, falls to the ground.[53] For the serpent-worship indicated in the serpent form of Ndengei, on which he lays so much stress, is a modern gloss, and, even if it had been ancient, it would have proved no connection with the Polynesians, since snake-superstitions are common throughout Melanesia.

The great saga of the war in Nakauvandra is far older than the myth ascribing serpent form to Ndengei, and there the god figures as a splenetic and irascible old man, as no doubt he was in his remote earthly career. I take the story from the version written down by Ilai Motonithothoko, to whom I have referred elsewhere. When Ndengei had grown old the settlement on the Kauvandra mountain consisted of several villages, one of which belonged to Rokola and his carpenter clan, and the grandsons of the first arrivals were grown men. In the village of Nai-lango-nawanawa, on the slopes of the mountain, lived two twin grand-nephews of Ndengei, named Na-thiri-kau-moli and Na-kau-sambaria, who having brought down a pigeon with an arrow without injuring it, clipped its wings and tamed it. They gave the bird the name of Turukawa, and every morning and evening, and at flood-tide and ebb-tide, its cooing resounded far and wide over the mountain. Old Ndengei, hearing its voice, sent a messenger to ask the youths to give it to him, but they were absent from home, and the messenger, assured by their father that their consent was not necessary, took the bird to his master. Ndengei wanted the bird for a practical purpose. Elderly Fijians are somnolent, and the pigeon's cooing at sunrise was useful in arousing him from slumber.

Next morning the twin brothers were startled at hearing their pigeon cooing in Ndengei's village, and when they heard that it had been taken away without their consent, they flew into a rage, crying, "Sombo! is this to be the way with us children of men?" And they made ready their bow, which was called Livaliva-ni-singa (Summer-lightning), and set forth to shoot Turukawa. And when they drew near the banyan-tree in which he was perched, they doffed their turbans; therefore the place is called Ai-thavu-thavu-ni-sala (the Doffing-place) to this day. And they shot an arrow at Turukawa, who fell dead to the ground. And they drew out the arrow, and went to the carpenters' village, Narauyamba, because it was fortified, and their own village was not fortified.

For four days Ndengei missed the cooing of his Awakener, and he sent Uto, his messenger, to see what had become of him. And Uto came to the banyan-tree, and found the body of Turukawa, and saw the arrow-wound, and said, "There is none who would so forget Ndengei as to kill his Awakener but the twin brothers whose bird he was. Why have they gone to live at Narauyamba, except it be because it has a war-fence?" And he told Ndengei his suspicions. Then he went to the brothers and questioned them, and they said, "Yes, we did shoot Turukawa."

Then Ndengei sent to them to come to him, and they refused. And his anger blazed up within him, and he cried with a terrible voice, "Go, tell them to depart to a land where I am not known!"

But this also they refused to do, and Rokola ordered his carpenters to build a war-fence of vesi timber, very high, with neither joint nor chink in it. And when Ndengei knew that the carpenters had entrenched themselves, he sent messengers to Rokomouto to come and help him.

Then there was war in Kauvandra—such a war as has never since been seen in Fiji. Joined to Ndengei were Rokomouto and his clan, who had settled on Viwa, and together they laid siege to the fortress. Many heroes fell on either side, but never a warrior could storm the wall of vesi built by the carpenters. But now Rokola devised a dreadful engine of war. Before the gate of his fortress there was a ragged rift in the mountain-side. He sent out his warriors to cut stout vines in the forest, and suspended a bridge of twisted vines over the chasm. From the tops of two stout posts, planted within the fortress, he stretched ropes that appeared to be mere supports to the bridge, but were in reality a trap such as the men of Notho use when they would snare wild duck in their taro-beds. For when a man trod upon them he was caught fast in a noose, and the defenders hauled suddenly upon the ropes, and swung him high over the rampart into their midst, where they could club him at leisure. Then warriors were sent out to flee before the enemy to entice them on the bridge, and many were caught in the trap, and swung into the fortress to meet their doom. Thus were Ndengei's forces dispirited.

There were traitors in Ndengei's camp, who were conspiring with the enemy, and carrying food to him by night. These men were seized, and being found guilty on their own confession, were exiled from Kauvandra for ever. They left the mountain, some going towards Matailombau, others towards Navosa. Now, when Ndengei saw that he could not prevail against the fortress, he sought out one Mbakandroti, a man related to the carpenters, who had chosen to take part with Ndengei against his own kin, and bade him devise a plan for betraying the fortress. That night a spirit appeared to Mbakandroti in a dream, and told him to cut down a vungayali-tree that grew close to the rampart. And when he had related his dream, one Vueti was appointed to cut it down. He had scarce laid his stone axe to the root when water began to gush forth from the wound. All that day the water poured into the fortress, and by nightfall it was knee-deep, and rising still. So the carpenters took counsel, and resolved to ask pardon of Ndengei, since the gods were with him. So Ndengei took counsel with his chiefs, and they said, "These craftsmen are too valuable; we cannot destroy them; let them be exiled!" The fountain had now become a mighty river flowing southward from the mountain, and the craftsmen built them canoes in haste, and embarked, and sailed down the stream till they came to a new land, and there they settled. These are the ancestors of the carpenter clan at Rewa.[54] But there was no pardon for the twin brothers; to their exile there was to be no limit. Yet, for Rokola's sake, they were given time to build their canoe. And Rokola built them a vessel such as has never since been seen in Fiji, and named it Nai-vaka-nawanawa (the Lifeboat), and sailed away down the stream into the western ocean, and were never heard of more; only the prophecy remains that one day they will come again. It will presently be related how the false teacher Na-vosa-vakandua turned this prophecy to account.

The Epic of Dengei

Ko Dengei sa tangi langalanga,
"Bongi ndua, bongi rua ka'u yandra
Bongi tolu, bongi va ka'u yandra,
Sa tambu ndungu ndina ko Turukawa,
Isa! nonku toa, na toa turanga,
Isa! nonku toa, na toa tamata,
Tiko e ulunda na ka rarawa,
Au lolova kina, au tambu kana,
Matanivanua, mai thithi manda,
Mai thithi sara ki Narauyamba,
Mo tarongi rau na ndauvavana,
'Kemundrua, ru vanai Turukawa?'
Sa tambu ndungu ni vakamataka,
Ma lolo koto Kotoinankara,
Ma mbunotha no a wai ni matana,
Vakasunka me ramothe mai wanka."

Thus did Dengei weep tears of annoyance,
"One night, two nights have I lain awake,
Three nights, four nights have I lain awake,
Not once has Turukawa cooed,
Alas! my fowl, my noble fowl!
Alas! my fowl, my man-like fowl,
Sorrow has taken possession of my brain,
I am sick with it; I cannot eat,
Come, herald, run,
Run straight to Narauyamba,
Question the archers, and say,
'You, did you shoot Turukawa?
Not once did he coo at daybreak,
The 'Cave-dweller'[55] is still fasting,
The tears are welling from his eyes;
The men are off to sleep on board.'

The Herald Speaks

Nonku nduri tiko ni karakaramba,
Sa talaki ma Kotoinankara,
"Matanivanua mai thithi manda,
Mo lakovi rau na turanga,
Nonku toa sa mate vakathava?
Au tambu kila no a kena thala."
Soraki ka tukutuku ko Mata,
Ma mbolea mai ko Nakausamba,
'Matanivanua, mo na ngalu manda,
O kenda kethe na luve ni tamata,
Oi au na luve ni mathawa,
Oi au na luve ni vula thandra,
Vakathambethambe nga ko Waithala,
Ka levu ko cava kei Mata,
Au kaya mo na sa vavi manda,
Tha nde ko senga ni na laukana,
Ni ko rui kaisi tha sara,
Au a lenkata na vula ma thandra."
Ko Nathirikaumoli ma vosaya,
"Me tukuna ma Kotoinankara,
Nona ruve e rawata vakathava?
E kune e wai, se rawata matha?
Ko la'ki tukuna me nda tu sa vala,
Sa vu ni tha nga ko Turukawa,
Me tawase kina ko Nakauvandra,
Sa tha nondatou tiko vata,
Me ngundu na masi me tou sa vala."
Kena moto ma rara no kivata,
Na malumu me thavu e na wakana,
Ko wilika ma na sai mbalambala,
Tiko sombu ndaru na okaokata,
E undolu vakatini sa rawa,
Me tou tinia na masi ni vala,
A ndrondro a ue ki sankata.
Mataisau era mbose toka,
Era mbose, era ndui vosavosa,
Me nkai vosa mai ko Rokola,
"Mbai vesi mo ndou la'ki vonota,
Matamata mo ndou la'ki karona,"
Na mbongi ni vala ka sa tini toka,
Kena wa ma mbuki ma so vota,
Velavela ko Lutunasombasomba,
Sai koya nga na ndauloloma,
Nda nkai nanuma tale nona vosa,
"Tou a nkai kune ka ngona,
O ndou nguthe tou na mbokola,
Me mai mbaleta nai votavota."
E tini na vuthu ka tambu na vosa.

I am wearied with the labour of poling,
Dispatched with this message from the Cave-dweller,
"Come, herald, run,
Summon the two chiefs to come to me,
Why was my fowl slain?
I know of no evil that he did."
Thus the herald gave his message,
Nakausamba answers him boastfully,
"Herald, hold thy peace,
We are all the children of men,
I am the child of space,
I am the child of the rising moon,
Which Waithala made to rise,
This herald is full of questions,
My way would be to have thee roasted,
It would be a pity not to have thee eaten,
For thou art the worst of lowborn men;
I have confined the rising moon."
Then speaks Nathirikaumoli,
"Tell this to the Cave-dweller,
How came he by his pigeon?
Found he it in the water, or found he it on land,
Go, tell him that we will fight for it,
Turukawa is the root of the evil,
It is by him that Kauvandra is divided,
It is not well that we should live together,
Up with the flag and let us fight."
His spear lies ready on the shelf,
And his club can be snatched from the eaves,
Have you counted the spear-points of tree-fern?
Sit down and let us number them,
Ten times one hundred in all;
Let us hoist the pennants of war,
The welkin rings with the tumult.
The craftsmen are sitting in council,
They consult, each gives his opinion,
Rokola now speaks,
"Go and fit close a rampart of vesi,
Give special heed to the gate,"
Ten days has the battle raged,
The rope has snared them; they are dismembered,
Lutunasombasomba is dishonoured,
He it is who is to be pitied,
Let us then recall his words,
"We are now in terrible plight,
You gloat over our corpses,
Thinking how ye will dismember them for the feast."
The poem is finished and there is silence.

Vunivasa

Ndungu toka ni singa ko Turukawa,
Sa tambu ndungu ni vakama taka,
Tangi ko Ndengei ru sa lomana,
Isa nonku toa, na toa turanga,
U vula ndua koto ni tambu kana,
U vula rua koto ni lolovaka,
Me ndua me thithi ki Narauyamba,
I tarongi rau na ngone turanga,
Oi ndrua, ru vanai Turukawa,
Sa tambu ndungu ni vakamataka,
"Tiko i ulunda na tiko vinaka,
Ru sanga voli nai vakayandra."
Ra tukia ni mbongi na veivala,
Ndua nai valu ma sorovi rawa.
Tambu ni sorovi mo ndru la'ki kamba,
Era mba nai valu i ruarua,
Ndua i yaviti yae; ndua i tambili, yae,
Ului Ndreketi era sa mbini.
Seu nai valu i matasawa,
Ia la'ki seu ki sawana,
Ru la'ki samuti ko Nakauvandra,
Vosa i cei a vuna vala?
Thimbi koto nai valu sa rawa,
Lave a osooso ni turanga,
Enda vala, enda vala, enda vala—i!

Second Choir

Turukawa used to coo all the day long,
He did not coo at daybreak,
Ndengei wept for love of him,
Alas! my fowl, my noble fowl,
For a whole month I have eaten nothing,
For two months have I fasted for him,
Let one run to Narauyamba,
And question the two young chiefs,
Did ye shoot Turukawa?
He did not coo at daybreak,
"Joy possesses us,
We did injure the Awakener."
They joined battle at nightfall,
It is a war that can never be atoned.
Never atoned; go, storm the fortress,
Both sides joined battle,
Ah! one is clubbed, Ah! another is down,
The bodies of the Ului Ndreketi are piled high.
The war spreads even to the shore,
Aye, spreads even to the sea-shore,
The Kauvandra tribes are thrashed,
Whose was the word that set the battle going?
Lo! the death-dance for the ending of the war!
Crash goes the club into the thick of the chiefs!
We fight, we fight, we fight—i!

This poem is given in the dialect of Rakiraki. As in all Fijian poems there are no indications of the speaker, and it is as difficult to translate as a modern play would be if all the speakers' names and the stage directions were omitted. Judging by the phraseology I take it to be a late version of the ancient story, probably not more than a century old. The older poems contain archaic words whose meaning is unintelligible to the natives of these days, for the language is being steadily impoverished as the older generation is giving place to men taught in the mission schools.

The Tuka Heresy

In 1876 the Fijians had all nominally accepted Christianity. In every village throughout the group services were held regularly by native teachers of the Wesleyan Mission; the heathen temples had been demolished; and all customs likely to keep alive the old heathen cults had been sternly discountenanced. Even the old men conformed outwardly to the new faith, and it was hoped that, as they died out, the old beliefs would perish with them. But it was not to be expected that they had really abandoned all belief in the religion of their fathers.

Towards the end of 1885 strange rumours were carried to the coast by native travellers from the mountains. A prophet had arisen, who was passing through the villages crying, "Leave all, and follow me." He had gathered around him a band of disciples on whom he was bestowing the boon of immortality (tuka), to fit them to consort with their ancestors who were shortly to return from the other world bringing the millennium with them. The Commissioner of the Province, the late Mr. Walter Carew, found the rumour to be substantially true. A man named Ndungumoi, of the village of Ndrauni-ivi in the Rakiraki district, who had been deported in 1878 to one of the Lau islands for stirring up sedition, but had been allowed to return home about three years before, had announced that he had had a revelation from the ancestor-gods. He said that the foreigners had deported him to Tonga and still believed him to be there. They had tried to drown him, he said, by throwing him overboard with the ship's anchor tied about his neck, but, being vunde (charmed), he had swum safely ashore with his body, leaving his spirit behind to deceive the foreigners. Taking the title of Na-vosa-vakandua (He who speaks but once), the native title for the Chief Justice of the Colony, he appointed two lieutenants, who went through the mountain villages enrolling disciples and teaching them a sort of drill compounded of the evolutions of the Armed Native Constabulary and native dances. The prophet carried about with him a bottle of water, called Wai-ni-tuka (Water of Immortality), which conferred immortality upon him who drank of it. People paid for the boon at a rate varying from ten shillings' to two pounds' worth of property, and so remunerative was this part of his business, that at a feast held at Valelembo he could afford to present no fewer than four hundred whales' teeth, a king's ransom according to the Fijian standard. Fortunately for the Government, the prophet was no ascetic. He had enrolled a bevy of the best-looking girls in the district to be his handmaidens, by persuading them that his holy water conferred not only immortality, but perpetual virginity, and that they therefore ran no risk of the usual consequences of concubinage. It was through the parents of these "Immortality Maidens" that information first reached the Government officers.

Ndungumoi's teachings were an ingenious compound of Christianity with the cult of Ndengei. Recognizing probably that the Mission had too firm a hold to be boldly challenged, he declared that when Nathirikaumoli and Nakausambaria, the twins who made war against Ndengei, had sailed away after their defeat, they went to the land of the white men, who wrote a book about them, which is the Bible; only, being unable to pronounce their Fijian names correctly they called them Jehovah and Jesus. His, therefore, was the newer revelation. There was some controversy among the faithful whether Ndengei was God or Satan. Most of them inclined to the latter belief, because Satan, like Ndengei, was a serpent. They named various places round Kauvandra Roma (Rome), Ijipita (Egypt), Kolosa (Colossians), etc., and they said that if a man were bold enough to penetrate to the recesses of the great cavern he might see the flames of hell.

The prophet had more practical concerns than the discussion of problems in theology. The twin gods, he said, were about to revisit Fiji, bringing all the dead ancestors in their train, to share the ancient tribal lands with their descendants: the missionaries, the traders, and the Government would be driven into the sea, and every one of the faithful would be rewarded with shops full of calico and tinned salmon. Those who believed that he was sent before to prepare the way would be rewarded with immortality, but the unbelievers would perish with the foreigners. The white men, he said, were fully aware of what was coming, as was shown by the officers of men-of-war who, when questioned as to why they squinted through glass instruments, looked disconcerted, and said evasively that they were measuring the reefs, whereas in fact they were looking for the coming of the divine twins. In the meantime the faithful were to drill like soldiers, and the women to minister to them. They used a travesty of English words of command, and pass-words such as "Lilifai poliseni oliva ka virimbaita,"[56] which is not sense in any language.

Temples were built secretly at Valelembo and other places, wherein, behind the curtain, the god might be heard to descend with a low whistling sound. A white pig, a rarity in Fiji, and probably a symbol for the white men, was being fattened against the day when it was to be slaughtered as a sacrifice to the ancestors.

The prophet had fixed the day; the feasts were all prepared; threats about what was to happen to church and state were being freely exchanged, when the prophet was arrested. He then besought his guards not to send him to Suva, and so defeat all the glorious miracles he was about to work for the redemption of the race. Unless the twin gods reappeared on earth the power of Ndengei, which is the Old Serpent, would continue in the ascendant, for the twins were they of whom it was foretold that they should bruise the head of the serpent. He was a sooty-skinned, hairy little man of middle age, expansive enough with the native warders in Suva gaol, but reticent when questioned about his mission. He was deported to Rotuma, where he is still living, and the outbreak was stamped out for the time.

In 1892 the heresy broke out afresh. One of his lieutenants, who had been allowed to remain in the district, began to receive letters from him. He would stand in the forest with a bayonet, and the magic letter fluttered down from the sky and impaled itself on the point. This was the more remarkable since Ndungumoi could not write. Holy water was again distributed, there was more drilling, and the end of British rule was again foretold. This time the Government decided to let the light and air into Ndrauni-ivi, the fount of superstition; the people, lepers and all, were deported in a body to Kandavu, and the very foundations of the houses were rased to the ground.

These false prophets were not all self-deceived, nor were they wholly deceivers. They were of that strange compound of hysterical credulity and shrewd common-sense that is found only among the hereditary priests of Fiji. They knew what strings to play upon in the native character. The people are arrogant and conservative; they secretly despise foreigners for their ignorance of ceremonial, while conforming to their orders through timidity; their nature craves for the histrionic excitement and the ceremonial proper to traffic with unseen powers. They chafe secretly at the ordered regularity imposed upon them; at the inexorable punctuality of the tax-collector, at the slow process of the courts in redressing their grievances, at the laws which forbid them to seize with a strong hand the property they covet. It would have been no disgrace to them to yield allegiance to a conqueror, but the white men never conquered them, and therefore the tribute which they pay annually in the form of taxes is an ever-recurring dishonour. They pant for change—for the coming of a time when the heroic stories that they have heard from their fathers shall be realized, and their chiefs be again lords paramount over their own lands. They have forgotten the curse of war, the horror of the night attack, the tortures, the clubbings, the ovens, the carrying into captivity, to which half at least of the tribes would again be subject if their millennium came; for all the gifts which the Empire has bestowed upon its coloured subjects, the Pax Britannica is the last to be appreciated. Good government? They would welcome the worst anarchy so it were their own and not the foreigner's!

Upon all the jangling strings Ndungumoi harped, half believing the while in the mission he professed. The Fijians secretly hated the foreigners and coveted their goods; the foreigners should be swept away, leaving their goods behind them. They found the Mission services tame; they should dabble in the black art as often as they pleased; they loved the excitement of conspiracy, and they admired the Old Testament; if they believed in him they might hatch plots against the Government with biblical sanction. Left to themselves the Tuka superstitions would have resulted in bloodshed, if not in grave political danger. To the white settlers in the outlying districts the natives are in the proportion of many hundreds to one, and these must infallibly have fallen victims to Ndungumoi's demand for blood-sacrifice. The outbreak would probably have been confined to the island of Vitilevu, and the Government could have counted on nearly one-half of the group to aid in suppressing it; but as in the case of Hauhauism among the Maoris, which the Tuka resembled, the military operations would have been protracted and costly.

The Revolt at Seankanka (Seaqaqa)

The outbreak in the Mathuata province in 1895, which had no political importance, is interesting from the fact that the rebels at once returned to heathen worship and to cannibalism, as if there had not been a break of more than twenty years. The district of Seankanka includes a number of inland villages whose people scarcely ever visit the sea-coast. Split up into little communities of three or four houses, they have been as completely cut off from the influence of the Mission and the Government as if they were in another country. It may indeed be doubted whether heathen practices of some kind were not carried on continuously, although the people were nominally lotu. They were naturally a peaceable folk who only asked to be left alone, and the coast people had long been irritating them by putting upon them more than their share of the communal and tax work of the district.

On June 11, 1895, the Governor received a letter from the Roko Tui Mathuata announcing that on the last day of May a native constable sent to serve a summons at the inland village of Thalalevu had been attacked and beaten by the inhabitants, who had subsequently taken the villages of Nathereyanga and Ndelaiviti without bloodshed. The Governor, Sir John Thurston, sailed that night for Mathuata with a small force of armed constabulary, and found that the rebels had followed up their success by burning the village of Saivou, killing two of its inhabitants, named Sakiusa and Samisoni, whose bodies were afterwards found dismembered and prepared for cooking. The rebels had retired to an old hill fortress called Thaumuremure, where they were strongly entrenched. On the march inland the besiegers had to pass the grave of the late Buli Seankanka in the village of Nathereyanga, and there they interrupted some of the rebels, who had carefully weeded the grave, and were in the act of presenting kava to the spirit of the dead chief to implore his aid. The siege of Thaumuremure will not loom large in history. The garrison numbered at the most one hundred persons; they had no arms but their spears, while the besiegers carried Martini-Henry rifles. But the garrison bravely blew their conch-shells and danced the death-dance till the last. It was all over in a few minutes. Nine men were shot dead, and the rest took to their heels, to surrender a few days later, while the Government force could boast but three spear-wounds. Nkaranivalu, the arch-rebel, and the two old heathen priests, who had eaten the arms and the legs of the two victims of the outbreak, were carried to Suva to expiate their crime. The people of the scattered villages were collected into one large village under the eye of their chief, and the district was at rest.

The outbreak is only interesting in that it shows how the Fijians confuse Christianity with the Government, and cannot throw off the one without repudiating the other; and how cannibalism was a religious rite and not the mere gratification of a depraved taste.

The Mbaki, or Nanga Rites

We have now to consider a cult which is remarkable in more than one respect—in its contrast to the religious system of the Fijians, its resemblance to certain Australian and Melanesian rites, and in the sidelights which it seems to throw upon the origin of ancient monuments in Europe.[57] Fijian mythology is essentially tribal; the Mbaki took no cognizance of tribal divisions. It was rather a secret religious society bound together by the common link of initiation. The rite of initiation is a curious echo of the Engwura ceremony of the Arunta tribe in Central Australia as described by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen. The Nanga, the open-air temple in which the Mbaki was celebrated, has more than a slight resemblance to the alignments at Carnac in Brittany and Merivale on Dartmoor.

The Nanga was the "bed" of the Ancestors, that is, the spot where their descendants might hold communion with them; the Mbaki were the rites celebrated in the Nanga, whether of initiating the youths, or of presenting the first-fruits, or of recovering the sick, or of winning charms against wounds in battle. The cult was confined to a comparatively small area, a bare third of the island of Vitilevu. Outside this area it was unknown, and even among the tribe that built and used the Nanga there were many who knew nothing of the cult beyond the fact that a certain spot near their village might not be visited without exciting the displeasure of the gods, although members of tribes that worshipped other gods, and were frequently at war with them, resorted to the Nanga, which they were not permitted to approach. Even when the two tribes were at war those of the enemy that were initiated were safe in attending the rites, provided that they could make their way to the Nanga unobserved.

The Nangas are now in ruin. There is a large and very perfect one at Narokorokoyawa, several in Navosa (Western Tholo), and three on the south coast between Serua and the Singatoka river. On the western coast there are said to be two, one in Vitongo and the other in Momi. I have visited several whose structure was so identical that one description will serve for all. The Nanga is a rough parallelogram formed of flat stones embedded endwise in the earth, about 100 feet long by 50 feet broad, and lying east and west, though the orientation is not exact. The upright stones forming the walls are from 18 inches to 3 feet in height, but as they do not always touch they may be described as "alignments" rather than walls. At the east end are two pyramidal heaps of stones with square sloping sides and flat tops, 5 feet high and 4 feet by 6 feet on the top. The narrow passage between them is the main entrance to the enclosure. Two similar pyramids placed about the middle of the enclosure divide it roughly into two equal parts, with a narrow passage connecting the two. The western portion is the Nanga-tambu-tambu (or Holy of Holies); the eastern the Loma ni Nanga (or Middle Nanga). In the Nangas on the south coast the two truncated pyramids near the entrance are wanting. At the middle of the west end there is another entrance, and there are gaps in the alignments every six or eight feet to permit people to leave the enclosure informally during the celebration of the rites. Beyond the west end of the Nanga near Vunaniu the ground rose, and on the slope were two old graves upon which were found the decayed remains of two "Tower" muskets. It is possible that chiefs were buried near the "Holy of Holies" of all the Nangas in order that their Shades, who haunted the graves, when summoned to the Nanga by their living descendants, should not have far to come.

Attention was first called to the Mbaki cult by the Rev. Lorimer Fison, of the Wesleyan Mission, who, though he did not visit any Nanga, wrote an account of the rites in the charming style that marks all his writings.[58] He overcame the natives' reluctance to reveal these dread secrets by a ruse. While he was describing the Australian Bora rites to one of the Vunilolo Matua of the Nanga a woman passed, and, lowering his voice, he whispered, "Hush! the women must not hear these things!" Covering his mouth with his hand the old native exclaimed, "Truly, sir, you are a Lewe ni Nanga. I will tell you all about it." Mr. Adolph Joske was probably the first European to see and describe the great Nanga at Nerokorokoyawa, and he has added much to our knowledge of the rites[59]. The two accounts vary in detail, perhaps because Mr. Fison drew some of his information from Nemani Ndreu, the Raisevu, who seems to have supplemented his ignorance of the Mbaki with excerpts from his own Kalou-rere cult, and from the rich stores of his imagination.

The tribes that used the Nanga were the Nuyamalo, Nuyaloa, Vatusila, Mbatiwai and Mdavutukia. All these tribes have spread east and south from a place of origin in the western mountain district. They are of Melanesian type, and have fewer traces of Polynesian admixture than the coast tribes. The Mbaki, while its Nanga-temple bears a superficial likeness to the Polynesian Marae, has a very strong resemblance to Melanesian institutions; its dissonance with the Fijian religious system at once suggests that there must be some tradition of its introduction from over-sea. For this we have not far to look, for the tradition is green in the memory of every initiate.

"Long ago two little old men, called Veisina and Rukuruku, drifted across the Great Ocean from the westward, and passing through the Yasawa Islands, they beached their canoe upon the little island of Yakuilau, which lies by the coast of Nandi. Veisina, who landed first, fell into a deep sleep, and slept till the coming of Rukuruku. From the spot where Veisina lay sprang thanga (turmeric), and from Rukuruku's footsteps sprang the lauthi (candle-nut—Aleurites triloba), and therefore the followers of Veisina smear themselves with turmeric, and the followers of Rukuruku with the black ash of the candle-nut, when they go to the Nanga.

"The two old men took counsel, saying, 'Let us go to the chief of Vitongo and ask him to divide his men between us that we may teach them the Mbaki.' And when they made their request the chief granted it, and gave them a piece of flat land on which to build their Nanga. There they built it and called the place Tumba-levu. The descendants of men to whom these two little black-skinned old men taught the mysteries of the Nanga are they which practise it to this day. When they left their home and travelled eastward they carried the mysteries with them. The Veisina do not know what the Rukuruku do in the Nanga, nor do the Rukuruku know the mysteries of the Veisina."

Here we have the earliest tradition of missionary enterprise in the Pacific. I do not doubt that the two sooty-skinned little men were castaways driven eastward by one of those strong westerly gales that have been known to last for three weeks at a time. By Fijian custom the lives of all castaways were forfeit, but the pretence to supernatural powers would have saved men full of the religious rites of their Melanesian home, and would have assured them a hearing. The Wainimala tribes can name six generations since they settled in their present home, and therefore the introduction of the Nanga cannot have been less than two centuries ago. During that time it has overspread one-third of the large island.

The following account of the rites is gathered from inquiries that I have made of old men who accompanied me to the Ndavotukia Nangas, supplemented by the full accounts written by Messrs. Fison and Joske. The Veisina and Rukuruku sects used the same Nanga, but were absolutely forbidden to reveal their mysteries to one another on pain of madness or death. In Wainimala they seem to have held their respective festivals in alternate years. But a few of the youths of each sect were initiated in the mysteries of both, in token, perhaps, of the common origin of their institutions. Mr. Joske says that no Nanga was used twice for an initiation ceremony, but I found no support for this statement among the Ndavotukia, whose Nanga was said, and certainly appeared, to have been used for generations.

Each "Lodge" comprised three degrees: (1) The Vere Matua, all old men who acted as priests of the order; (2) the Vunilolo, the grown men; and the Vilavou (lit., "New Year's men"), the youths who were novices. The great annual festival was the initiation of these youths, who were thus admitted to man's estate, and brought into communion with the ancestral spirits who controlled the destinies of their descendants. The word Vila is the inland synonym for Mbaki, which, with the distributive affix ya (ya-mbaki) is the coast word for "year." The Vilavou, or New year ceremony of initiation, was an annual festival, held in October-November, when the ndrala-tree (Erythrina) was in flower. The flowering of the ndrala marked the season for yam-planting; the same seasons were observed by the Hawaiians and Tahitians as the New Year. The rites of the Veisina differed slightly from those of the Rukuruku, but as they were more tame and formal I will give precedence to the Rukuruku.

Preparation for the Vilavou began months before the appointed time by putting all kinds of food and property under a tabu. On the occasion of the last ceremony a number of pigs had been dedicated by cutting off their tails and turning them loose in the vicinity of the Nanga. Masi was beaten, clubs and spears were carved, paint was prepared for the bodies of the worshippers, and a vast quantity of yams was planted. As the Vere of Ndavotukia expressed it, "If any man concealed any of his property, designing not to give it, he was smitten with madness." The same fate awaited any that killed one of the tailless pigs, or dared to dig up any plant that grew near the Nanga. Invitations were sent to the members of other Nangas, who were called the Ndre, and they brought lavish contributions of property.

On the day appointed the Vere and the Vunilolo went first to the Nanga to present the feast and make other preparations, while in the village novices were having their heads shaved with a shark's tooth, and being swathed in coils of masi. A procession was then formed. An old Vere went first, carrying a carved staff with a socket bored in its upper end. Blowing upon this as on a flute, he sounded a shrill whistle, and the boys followed in single file, carefully treading in his footsteps. As they approached the Nanga they heard the weird chant of the Vunilolo, which was supposed to imitate the sound of the surf breaking on a distant reef. The boys flung down their weapons outside the sacred enclosure, and with the help of the Vunilolo divested themselves of the huge swathing of masi, each lad revolving slowly on his axis while another gathered in the slack, like unwinding a reel of cotton. It being now evening, the property was stored in a temporary shelter, and the ceremony for the day was over. The ovens were opened, and all feasted together far into the night. For four successive days this ritual was repeated, until the storehouse was full to bursting. Thus were the novices made acceptable to the ancestral spirits.

On the fifth day an immense feast was prepared, and the boys were so weighted with the cloth wound about their bodies that they could scarcely walk. They followed the Vere piping on his staff as before, but as they approached the Nanga they listened in vain for the welcoming chant. The enclosure seemed silent and deserted, but from the woods broke forth shrill parrot calls, and a weird booming sound, which they presently came to know as the note of a bamboo trumpet immersed in water. The old Vere led them slowly forward to the eastern gate of the Nanga, and bade them kneel and crawl after him on all fours. Here a dreadful sight appalled them. Right across the entrance lay the naked body of a dead man, smeared with black paint from head to foot, with his entrails protruding. Above him, stretched stiff, with his head upon one pyramid and his feet on the other, lay another body, and under this hideous arch, over this revolting threshold they were made to crawl. Within the enclosure their hearts turned to water, for the dead men lay in rows, smeared with blood and entrails, and over every body they had to crawl. At the further end sat the chief Vere, regarding them with a stony glare, and before him they were made to halt in line. Suddenly he burst out with a great yell; the dead men started up, and ran to wash off the blood and filth in the river hard by. They are the Vere and a few of the Vunilolo, playing the part of the dead Ancestors with the aid of the blood and entrails of the pigs now baking in the ovens.

The ancient priest now relaxes the ferocity of his mien, and displays an activity remarkable for a person of his years. Capering up and down, he chants in shrill tones: "Why is my enclosure empty? Whither have its inmates gone? Have they fled to Tumbalevu (the deep sea)? Have they fled to Tongalevu?" Presently he was answered by a deep-toned chant, and the Vunilolo, washed, oiled and garlanded, return with rhythmic step, each carrying a club and a root of kava. When all are seated in the Nanga four of the Vere come in, the first carrying a piece of roast yam, the second a piece of pork, the third a shell of kava, and the fourth a napkin of native cloth. The first three put their offering, which is carefully wrapped against contact with the fingers, to the mouths of each of the Vilavou in turn, who nibble the food, sip the kava, and allow the napkin-bearer to wipe his mouth. Then one of the old Vere admonishes them solemnly against revealing any of the mysteries to the uninitiated, or infringing any of the tabus of the Nanga, or being niggardly in contributing their property, for the penalty attached to all these grievous sins is insanity and death.

The Vunilolo now brought in food, and towards evening the Mundu, a great pig dedicated years before and allowed to run wild in the sacred precincts, was dragged in and presented to the boys. Feasting was continued for several days, during which the boys did not leave the Nanga, except to obey the calls of nature. By the sacrament of food and water, too sacred even for the elders' hands to touch, they have become Vilavou: their Ancestors had deigned to receive them as members of the Nanga.

A few days after this it was the turn of the women, who had thus far been rigidly excluded, to come to the Nanga. The usual dress of the women of these tribes was a liku—narrow enough, truly, but still sufficient for decency. But for this occasion they were dressed in a series of such fringes as would satisfy the most puritanical if they did not begin too late and end too early. The fringes were tied one over another from the waist to just below the breast, so as to clothe the trunk in a neat thatch, and, seeing the postures the women had to assume, it was a pity that a thatch starting at the waist should not have been carried downwards instead of in the other direction. In this fantastic garb, with hair dyed black, the women proceeded to the Nanga with baskets of food. At the entrance they dropped on their hands and knees, and crawled into the enclosure in single file, the men sitting on either side of a narrow lane left for the procession, and crying, "Lovo ulu! Lovo ulu!" (Keep your heads down!) During this performance it was strictly forbidden for the women to gaze about them, or to look behind them, on pain of insanity. The lane was interrupted with little mounds of freshly-turned earth, and over these the women had to crawl. It was in topping these mounds that a better arrangement of the fringes suggested itself. In the inner chancel of the Nanga the Vere were chanting a song called the Vaya. The chief Vere dipped his hands in a bowl of water, and prayed to the Ancestors to bless the women with ample families. This is called the Vuluvulu (hand-washing), and as the Vuluvulu is the ordinary form of release from a tabu, it is possible that it is intended to absolve the women from the usual consequences of entering a place forbidden to them. As to what happened after this, the native accounts are in conflict. Mr. Joske's informants declared that women only entered the Nanga to bring food, and that the rites were orderly and inoffensive; Mr. Fison says that when the women emerged from the enclosure, "the men rushed upon them, and an indescribable scene ensued. The men and women addressed one another in the filthiest language ...," and that from this moment until the close of the ceremonies "very great licence prevailed." Mr. Walter Carew was assured that in Wainimala the men rushed upon the women while they were in the Nanga, and that any woman laid hold of was the lawful prize of her captor. Among the Ndavotukia I had no difficulty in obtaining an account of the ritual until I came to this point, but here all my informants broke off with a self-conscious giggle, and said that they knew no more. One told me frankly that they "did things that they were ashamed to think about in these enlightened days, and, when pressed upon the point, wrote down for me a song of gross indecency connected with the tattooing of women. A native of Mbau, who lived for some years near the Nanga, assured me that the visit of the women to the Nanga resulted in temporary promiscuity; all tabus were defied, and relations who could not speak to one another by customary law committed incest. This would account for the mystery that is thrown about the rite even now. The festival was a propitiatory sacrifice to the Ancestors to bless their descendants with increase, and the temporary abrogation of all human laws that interfered with freedom between the sexes had a logical place in such a sacrifice.

On finally leaving the Nanga the property was carried to the village, together with two candlewood saplings, which were set up in the village with appropriate songs, and the property was piled between them. Those who were not members of the Order had to keep fast within doors, for if they inadvertently caught sight of the worshippers they would have been smitten with insanity. The invited visitors, who were in hiding near the village, were now summoned by parties of the Order, who went out chanting a song to find them. These they followed to the village square, where they deposited enormous quantities of property by the saplings. The feasting and licence continued for several days. On the last day the Vere shared out the property, taking the best care of their own interests, and a number of the pigs were shorn of their tails and turned out near the Nanga to serve for a future celebration. It was an act of piety to feed these pigs, to which the sacrificer calls the attention of the Ancestors in words such as these: "Remember me, O ye our chiefs, who lie buried. I am feeding this pig of yours." To kill one was an inconceivable sacrilege. One of these great brutes was living within a year of my visit to the Nanga. It met its death at the hands of an irreligious half-caste, whose continued sanity after this sacrilegious deed was attributed to his foreign parentage.

The ceremony ended with the Sisili (or Bath). All the men went in company to the river, and washed off every trace of the black paint. The Vilavou were then drawn up before the Vere on the river bank to listen to a long discourse upon the new position they had assumed. They were admonished to defer to their elders, to obey the customary law of the tribe, and to keep the secrets of the Nanga on pain of the sure vengeance of the Ancestors. Especially were they to avoid eating eels and freshwater fish and all the best kinds of food. These must be presented to the elders, for their food, until they had attained a higher rank in the Order, must be wild yams and food that is held in less esteem.

Minor Rites of the Nanga

As the Nanga is the earthly dwelling-place of the Ancestral spirits, it is not necessary to seek the intervention of a Vere in order to invoke them as in the case of the Fijian tribal deities, who can only be consulted through the priest. A member of the Nanga could approach the Ancestors at any time by depositing an offering on the wall with proper invocations. For many years after the people had abandoned heathenism the native mission teachers used to keep a sharp look-out for footprints leading in the direction of the Nanga. Two years after the conversion of the Wainimala people a visitor to the Nanga found property and food and the carcasses of pigs in a state of putrefaction, showing that sacrifice was still being made. The Nanga that I last visited had not been used for twenty-eight years. At the eastern end I found the Vere's whistling staff, just where he had planted it in the earth. Moss-grown and fretted with decay, it still emits a shrill whistle when I blow upon it. All about the enclosure candle-nut trees had sprung up from the nuts that had been thrown aside, and about the walls were strewn a number of the curious funnel-shaped cooking-pots that were only used during the Nanga celebrations.

The Sevu (First-fruits) of the yam harvest were always piled in the Nanga before the yams were dug, and allowed to rot there. From these decayed offerings numerous yam-vines were seen sprouting among the undergrowth. From this custom the Nanga is generally spoken of as the Mbaki, which, as I have said, also gives its name to the Fijian year—ya-mbaki.

Before going on the war-path warriors used to repair to the Nanga to be made vunde (invulnerable). The rites appear to have been similar to those of the Kalou-rere.

But next in importance to the Vilavou celebration was the rite of circumcision, which Mr. Fison says was practised as a propitiation to recover a chief from sickness. My inquiries did not confirm this. I was assured, on the contrary, that while offerings were certainly made in the Nanga for the recovery of the sick, every youth was circumcised as a matter of routine, and that the rite was in no way connected with sacrifice for the sick. But, although Mr. Fison may have been wrong in his application of the ceremony, his description of the rite itself is undoubtedly correct. He says: "On the day appointed, the son of a sick chief is circumcised, and with him a number of other lads who have agreed to take advantage of the occasion. Their foreskins, stuck in the cleft of a split reed, are taken to the Nanga and presented to the chief priest, who, holding the reed in his hand, offers them to the ancestral gods, and prays for the sick man's recovery. Then follows a great feast, which ushers in a period of indescribable revelry. All distinctions of property are for the time being suspended. Men and women array themselves in all manner of fantastic garbs, address one another in the most indecent phrases, and practise unmentionable abominations openly in the public square of the town. The nearest relationships—even that of own brother and sister—seem to be no bar to the general licence, the extent of which may be indicated by the expressive phrase of an old Nandi chief,[60] who said, 'While it lasts we are just like the pigs.' This feasting and frolic may be kept up for several days, after which the ordinary restrictions recur once more. The rights of property are again respected, and abandoned revellers settle down into steady-going married couples, and brothers and sisters may not so much as speak to one another. Nowhere in Fiji, so far as I am aware, excepting in the Nanga country, are these extravagances connected with the rite of circumcision."

The Priesthood

The priesthood was no exception to the Fijian rule that all skilled trades must be hereditary. But inasmuch as any man who showed a natural aptitude for carpentry or haircutting or the exorcism of evil spirits might win a clientÈle as a canoe-builder, a barber, or a doctor, so a clever rogue who could shake well and make a lucky forecast of public events might pretend to inspiration by a god, and obtain a grudging recognition from the chiefs. In practice this seldom occurred, because the recognized deities were amply furnished with a priesthood who brooked no interference from an amateur, and to overcome their opposition and the cold suspicion of the chiefs demanded a very rare combination of assurance and cunning.

It is doubtful whether the high chiefs believed in the inspiration of the priests, though it suited their policy to appear to do so. There was rather an understanding between the two orders, not the less cordial that it was unexpressed. The priests depended for subsistence upon the offerings made to the god, and a priest who delivered oracles unfavourable to the chief's policy saw his temple falling into decay and his larder empty. On the other hand, so enormous was the influence of the oracle upon the common people that the chief had the best reason for keeping the priests in good humour. Both knew that neither could stand firm without the support of the other. A chief with whom the gods were angry enjoyed but a waning authority; a priest whose god the chief did not think worth propitiating fell into disrepute and was soon superseded by another who could shake as well and more wisely. Such relations between the powers spiritual and temporal are not unknown in other latitudes.

Williams relates that the Thakaundrove chief presented a large offering to the gods on the morrow of a warlike expedition. Among the gods invoked was Kanusimana, but in the subsequent division of the feast the priest of that deity was put off with one wretched pudding instead of the turtle he had expected. That night the god visited him, and foretold defeat as a punishment for the slight, and the tidings were carried to the king, who immediately countermanded the expedition, knowing that the depressing effect of the news upon the spirit of his warriors would bring defeat. In a similar case, however, matters took a different turn. "Who are you?" asked the chief angrily. "Who is your god? If you make a stir I will eat you."

A more organized resistance to sacerdotal pretensions was seen in the "Reformation" in the Rewa province. A few years before the arrival of the missionaries the chiefs found it necessary in their own interests to disestablish the whole priestly caste, which, as they said, had fallen into the hands of "low-born persons of ill repute," or, in more intelligible language, which had begun to assume the imperium in imperio that has provoked Reformations in another hemisphere. They repudiated the entire priesthood publicly, and announced that members of the ruling family had received inspiration. The sacerdotal clan immediately fell into their proper rank in society—a very humble one—but the arrival of the missionaries deprived the new state-made priesthood of a fair trial.

The priests were not always the tools of the chiefs; sometimes they were the mouthpiece of the people's discontent at some unpopular exercise of authority. "The famine is eating us up because you gave the large canoe to Tonga instead of to Mbau." "This hurricane was sent to punish us for your refusal to give the princess to the Lord of Rewa."

The priests of one god were generally, but not always, confined to one family. They owed their consideration to their office rather than to their rank, which was generally humble. They ranked according to the importance of the god to whom they ministered. When the chieftancy and the priesthood were united in the same person, both were of low order. The titular spiritual chief (Roko Tui) was not a priest, although divine honours were paid to him, for the act of inspiration appeared to be thought derogatory to the dignity of a high chief. The priesthood could not be dispensed with, because the gods could not be approached except through the medium of a priest, who could only be inspired in the temple of his god except on rare occasions, such as a campaign in a distant island, when the oracle must be consulted in a private house if at all.

"One who intends to consult the oracle dresses and oils himself, and, accompanied by a few others, goes to the priest, who, we will suppose, has been previously informed of the intended visit, and is lying near the sacred corner, getting ready his response. When the party enters he rises and sits so that his back is near to the white cloth by which the god visits him, while the others occupy the opposite side of the mbure. The principal person presents a whale's tooth, states the purpose of the visit, and expresses a hope that the god will regard him with favour. Sometimes there is placed before the priest a dish of scented oil with which he anoints himself and then receives the tooth, regarding it with deep and serious attention. Unbroken silence follows. The priest becomes absorbed in thought, and all eyes watch him with unblinking steadiness. In a few minutes he trembles; slight distortions are seen in his face, and twitching movements in his limbs. These increase to a violent muscular action, which spreads until the whole frame is violently convulsed, and the man shivers as with a strong ague fit. In some instances this is accompanied with murmurs and sobs, the veins are greatly enlarged, and circulation of the blood quickened. The priest is now possessed by his god, and all his words and actions are considered as being no longer his own, but those of the deity who has entered into him. Shrill cries of 'Koi au! Koi au!' (It is I! It is I!) fill the air, and the god is supposed thus to notify his approach. While giving the answer the priest's eyes stand out and roll as in a frenzy; his voice is unnatural, his face pale, his lips livid, his breathing depressed, and his entire appearance like that of a furious madman. The sweat runs from every pore, and tears start from his strained eyes; after which the symptoms gradually disappear. The priest looks round with a vacant stare, and, as the god says, 'I depart!' announces his actual departure by flinging himself down on the mat, or by suddenly striking the ground with a club, while those at a distance are informed by blasts on the conch, or by the firing of a musket, that the deity has returned to the world of spirits. The convulsive movements do not entirely disappear for some time; they are not, however, so violent as to prevent the priest from enjoying a hearty meal, or a draught of yankona or a whiff of tobacco, as either may happen to be at hand. Several words are used by the natives to express these priestly shakings. The most common are sika and kundru. Sika means to appear, and is used chiefly of supernatural beings; kundru means to grunt or grumble. The one refers to the appearance, the other to the sound attendant upon these inspired shakings.

As whatever the priest says during the paroxysm is supposed to be direct from the god, a specimen or two of these responses will be interesting.... A priest of Ndengei, speaking for that divinity, once said, "Great Fiji is my small club. Muaimbila is the head; Kamba is the handle. If I step on Muaimbila I shall sink it into the sea, while Kamba shall rise to the sky. If I step on Kamba it will be lost in the sea, and Muaimbila shall rise to the sky. Yes, Vitilevu is my small club. I can turn it as I please. I can turn it upside down."[61]

The propitiatory offering might be anything from a bunch of cocoanuts covered with turmeric powder to a great feast. In the last case, part, called the singana, was set apart for the god, the rest apportioned among the people. In theory the god consumed the spiritual essence of all the food, and the people ate its grosser fibre. The singana was eaten by the priest and a few privileged old men; it was tabu to youths and women.

The psychological aspect of the inspiration of the Fijian priest is difficult to appreciate. The inspired paroxysm is something more than conscious deception. Williams was present when a famous Lakemba priest was questioned by the Tongan chief, Tubou Totai:—

"Lanngu, did you shake yesterday?"

"Yes."

"Did you think beforehand what to say?"

"No."

"Then you just say what you happen to think at the time, do you?"

"No. I do not know what I say. My own mind departs from me, and then, when it is truly gone, my god speaks by me."

Williams adds that this man "had the most stubborn confidence in his deity, although his mistakes were such as to shake any ordinary trust. His inspired tremblings were of the most violent kind, bordering on frenzy."[62] He was, no doubt, absolutely sincere. In this race, as in the Hindus and the Malays, there is an undercurrent of hysteria which no one looking at their placid surface would suspect. In the first heat of conversion to Christianity it was quite common in the Mission services for a man to be inspired (by the Holy Spirit, as he said) and to interrupt the minister with an outburst of gibberish accompanied with all the contortions that seized the heathen priest. His companions would try to calm him by patting him gently with soothing exclamations, and the good missionaries, who had been enlarging on the gift of tongues at Pentecost, were not a little embarrassed in discouraging the practice. The "revival" which took place at Viwa in 1845 was a curious instance of this. To judge from John Hunt's account of it, the entire island was seized with religious hysteria, and "business, sleep and food were entirely laid aside" for several days, until the missionaries had to force the new converts to eat. Such ebullitions are rare in these days, but that they are still smouldering unsuspected is shown by the hysterical outbursts of emotion that sometimes take place at the Bolotu or Night Revival meetings, introduced from Tonga. More than one generation must come and go before all danger from this neurotic chord in the Fijian constitution is removed. Any acute cause of native discontent which might be fanned into active hostility to the white race would most certainly produce the heathen priest again, and the most dangerous of these might well be the man who now delivers eloquent emotional sermons to Wesleyan congregations Sunday after Sunday. Such a spectacle would shock the European missionaries beyond expression, but it would not surprise those who know the natives intimately. The schism of Ndungumoi and the heathen outbreak of Vanualevu in 1895 were but a bubble from the seething pitch that lies below the placid outer crust of the converted Fijian.

Even now a practised eye might pick out from an assembly of Fijians the sons of the heathen priests, by their shifty glance, their crafty expression, and their smooth, insinuating address, which are as much a part of them as the set of their eyes and the colour of their skin.[63]

Witchcraft

Ndraunikau (lit., leaves)

In 1618 two women were executed at Lincoln for burying the glove of Henry, Lord Rosse, in order that "as that glove did rot and waste, so did the liver of the said lord rot and waste." The belief illustrated by this trial is found in every people, in every country, and in every age. Dr. E. B. Tylor has remarked with much force that the occult sciences are nothing but "bad reasoning." There being obvious relation between a glove and its owner, between a waxen image and the person it represents, the sorcerer reasons that what he does to the one will happen to the other. Health being the normal condition of all, except the very aged, sickness and death must be the work of some malevolent agency, divine or human; and, if the sick person is free from all suspicion of sacrilege, the gods can have no motive for afflicting him. Instead of "Whom the gods love die young," the primitive man reads "An enemy hath done this." This theory of disease being once established, it is a short step to the professional agents of disease, who, for a consideration, will wreck the health of the strongest man with the simplest of tools—a lock of his hair, a scrap of his food, or a garment that he has worn. The belief in such powers is not more wildly foolish than our own theory of microbes would have seemed if it had been put forward before there were microscopes to prove its truth. It could at least point to success in its support, for there can be no doubt whatever that numbers of bewitched persons did actually die—from fear—and that many sick recovered as the result of curative counterspells that put new heart into them.

The terror of witchcraft was never absent from the mind of a Fijian. Williams relates that the sceptics who laughed at the pretensions of a priest trembled at the power of the wizard, and that this was the last superstition to be eradicated from the mind of the convert to Christianity. It would be more true to say that the Christian native has never lost it. The professional wizard was not necessarily a priest, but if he had not the protection of sanctity, he was a person of considerable courage, for witchcraft was a dangerous profession. The pay was very high, but since the transaction could never be kept entirely secret, the wizard had to brave the resentment of his victim's relations.

The procedure was this: If a man desired the death of a rival he procured something that had belonged to his person—a lock of hair, the parings of his nails, a scrap of food, or, best of all, his excreta, for witchcraft by these produced incurable dysentery. With these he visited the wizard by night, taking a whale's tooth as an earnest of the reward that he would pay when the death of his rival was accomplished. The wizard then prepared the charm by wrapping the object in certain leaves of magical properties, and burying the parcel in a bamboo case either in the victim's plantation or in the thatch of his house. In a few days the man began to sicken—generally, no doubt, because hints of the design had been conveyed to him—and if the charm could then be discovered and destroyed, he would recover. But if a diligent search failed, offerings were made to the gods, or the chief in whose district the wizard lived was invoked to use his authority. It was more common, however, to fee another wizard to make the charm innocuous by counterspells, which were often effective through the fresh hope infused into the sufferer, to the profit of both practitioners. When the victim died the wizard claimed his reward by attending the funeral with a blackened face, and bold indeed would be the employer who dared to bilk him. This practice was sometimes abused. Any sudden death being ascribed to witchcraft, a professional wizard, who was entirely innocent, would blacken his face at the funeral in the hope that some one who had an interest in the death would pay him the fee he had never earned. Such a case occurred as late as 1887 at the funeral of Mbuli Mbemana, who died of a chill contracted in taking a huge vesi log down the river as a king-post for the council-house at Nandronga. A man with a blackened face was pointed out to me at the funeral, and shortly afterwards a formal complaint was made by the dead man's relations against the river tribes of having fee'd this wizard to compass the Mbuli's death. I summoned them to a meeting, but all my arguments were impotent against the undoubted fact that the Mbuli was dead, that the river tribes detested him and had an interest in his death, and that their wizard had appeared with a black face at his funeral. Fiat experimentum: let them commission their most famous wizards to compound a spell that no man could withstand—I would supply them with all the material they wanted—and if I still lived they would put away this superstition for ever. They discussed the proposition with gravity, and replied through their spokesman that this would be no proof at all, for it was well known that white men, who subsist on outlandish meats, were proof against Fijian spells. There was with me a Tongan, named Lijiate (the nearest the Tongans can get to "Richard"), whose enlightened contempt for the dark-mindedness of these heathen had been expressed with unnecessary emphasis. Him I proffered as a substitute. But I had reckoned without my host. "Pardon me," he said, when I asked him for a lock of his hair, "but I almost believe in it myself." One stout-hearted Fijian servant was ready to step into the breach, but it was then my turn to interfere, for the knowledge that he was bewitched would lay the stoutest-hearted Fijian low in less than a week.[64]

A man, delirious with triumph at his narrow escape, once brought me a spell that he had found buried in the thatch of his house in Tawaleka. It was a bamboo six inches long, corked with a tuft of grass. Within was a shred of masi, torn, no doubt, from his clothing and a handful of withered leaves of some bush shrub. He wished me to hold inquisition over the countryside in the hope that his enemy would confess the crime, for ndraunikan had been wisely made a punishable offence. Its utility has long passed away, and its power for harm remains. Apart from the death and suffering it may inflict on the victim through terror, it not infrequently leads to actual violence. The murder of Mbuli Mbureta in 1884 is a notable instance. At the trial of his murderers it was elicited that a number of disaffected chiefs in his district had fee'd a wizard to remove him by witchcraft. When weeks had passed, and the unpopular chief continued in obstinate good health, the wizard's employers taunted him with his lack of skill, and received a definite promise of the Mbuli's death before a fixed date. The promise was kept; the victim disappeared, but when his body was discovered it was found that the skull had been fractured by an axe-stroke from behind.

In the face of such instances as these it demands some courage to assert that upon the whole the belief in witchcraft was formerly a positive advantage to the community. It filled, in fact, the place of a system of sanitation. The wizard's tools consisting in those waste matters that are inimical to health, every man was his own scavenger. From birth to old age a man was governed by this one fear; he went into the sea, the graveyard or the depths of the forest to satisfy his natural wants; he burned his cast-off malo; he gave every fragment left over from his food to the pigs; he concealed even the clippings of his hair in the thatch of his house. This ever-present fear even drove women in the western districts out into the forest for the birth of their children, where fire destroyed every trace of their lying-in. Until Christianity broke it down, the villages were kept clean; there were no festering rubbish-heaps nor filthy raras.

In this respect Fijian witchcraft was immeasurably superior to that of other primitive races who employ similar methods. The Gold Coast tribes slay men by spells of roots tied together with a curse;[65] the priest-king Laibou of the Wa-Nandi tried to annihilate the Uganda force sent against him by leaving a snake tied to a dog near their camp.[66] The Swahili bury medicine at the door of the hut by which the doomed person must pass.[67] But in none of these cases are the excreta of the victim necessary, nor does the superstition react in the interest of public health.

Kinda and Yalovaki

Not less important in the native polity were the wizard's services in the detection of crime. This was a special branch of the black art, and the ndaukinda seldom engaged in the deadly business of ndraunikau. When property was stolen the owner took a present to the seer, and told the story of his loss. The seer, bidding the man pronounce the names of those whom he suspected, fell into deep abstraction, and presently checked the man at a certain name, announcing that an itching in his side or this finger or toe proved the person named to be the thief. If the seer was a member of the tribe he would dispense with the names, and would begin to twitch convulsively and himself pronounce the thief's name. If he was lucky enough to hit upon the right man—and an intimate knowledge of the characters and relations of his fellow-tribesmen often enabled him to do so—the offender would confess at once, for to brazen out a theft against the evidence of a seer's little finger demanded an effrontery that no Fijian could boast. The proper course for a person wrongfully accused by a seer was shown in the case of Mbuli Yasawa, who in 1885 was charged with embezzling the district funds. It appeared that the funds in question were intact, but that, through an error in book-keeping, the scribe had led the people to believe that a considerable sum had been abstracted. Persons were deputed to consult a noted seer, called Ndrau-ni-ivi, whose finger tingled at the mention of the Mbuli's name. The poor Mbuli, knowing for the best of reasons that he was innocent, instead of taking the obvious course of submitting his books to be audited by the magistrate, presented a larger fee to a rival seer to "press down" (mbika) that given to Ndrau-ni-ivi, and triumphantly vindicated his character by the verdict of his practitioner's great toe. Upon this evidence he prosecuted his slanderers for defamation before the Provincial Court. The cunning and knack of clever guessing necessary for the lucrative calling of the seer formerly made the business a monopoly of the priests.

The yalovaki (soul-stealing) was an even surer method of detecting crime. It was the mildest form of trial by ordeal ever devised, but no boiling water or hot ploughshare could have been more effective. If the evidence was strong, but the suspect obstinately refused to confess, complaint was made to the chief, who summoned the accused, and called for a scarf. Usually the man confessed at the bare mention of the instrument, but if he did not, the cloth was waved over his head until his spirit (yalo) was entangled in it, and it was then folded together and nailed to the prow of the chief's canoe. Then the man went mad, for the mad are they whose soul have been stolen away.

Charms

There is no unusual feature in the Fijians' belief in charms. They were carried to avert calamities of all kinds, but principally shipwreck and wounds in battle. A mountain girl, who had never before seen the sea, was once a fellow-passenger with me in a stormy passage to Suva. A heavy lurch of the little vessel threw her sprawling on the deck, and I noticed that, while the other natives were bantering her, she was crying bitterly. Her fall had disengaged a pebble from her hand which had been given her as a talisman against death by drowning. Charms have their uses in litigation I had once before me a little old man who enjoyed some reputation for skill in witchcraft. Being sentenced for some petty offence, he solemnly removed his loin-cloth, and took from between his thighs a little bag, containing dried root, and flung it away with a gesture of contempt, much to the amusement of the enlightened native police, who explained that it was an amulet against conviction.

The Kalou-rere

The kalou-rere differed from other religious observances in that, though it was practised in most parts of the group, either under its prevailing name or that of ndomindomi, the form was universal. The votaries were youths of the male sex only: there was no recognized priesthood; the cult was rather one of the effervescences of youth which in England find their vent in the football field and the amateur stage. The object of the rites was to allure the "Little Gods"—the Luve-ni-wai (Children of the Water)—a timid race of Immortals, to leave the sea, and take up their temporary abode among their votaries on land. Beyond the gift of immunity from wounds in battle, and such pleasure as may be drawn from the excitement of the secret rites, it is not clear that the Little People conferred any boon upon their worshippers commensurate with the labour and privations that worship entailed, but more than this has been urged against Freemasonry by its critics.

In a retired place near the sea a small house was built, and enclosed with a rustic trellis fence, tied at the crossings with a small-leafed vine, and interrupted by long poles decorated with streamers. Within the enclosure a miniature temple was erected to contain a consecrated cocoanut, or some other trifle. No effort was spared to make the place attractive to the shy little gods; the roof of the house was draped with masi; the wall studded with crab-claws, and span-long yams and painted cocoanuts were disposed about the foundations that they might eat and drink.

A party of twenty or thirty youths spent several weeks in this enclosure, drumming every morning and evening on the ground with hollow bamboos to attract the sea-gods. During this long period they observed certain tabus, and spent the days in complete idleness. Williams heard of a party who, to facilitate the landing of the Luve-ni-wai, built a jetty of loose stones for some distance into the sea. When they were believed to be ascending, flags were set up in some of the inland passes to turn back any of them that might try to make for the forests inland. On the great day a Nanga-like enclosure was made with long poles piled to a height of twelve inches and covered with green boughs, spears bearing streamers being set up at the four angles. Within this the lads sat gaily draped, with their votive offerings of clubs and shells before them, thumping their bamboo drums on the earth. Presently the officers of the lodge were seen approaching headed by the Vuninduvu, a sort of past-master, armed with an axe, and capering wildly; the Lingu-viu (Fan-holder) circling madly round the drummers, waving a great fan; the Mbovoro, dancing and carrying in his hand the cocoanut which he is about to break on his bent knee; the Lingu-vatu, pounding his nut with a stone. Amid a terrific din of shrieks and cat-calls the gods entered into the Raisevu, who thereafter was regarded as a peculiarly favoured person. Then all went mad; the Vakathambe shouted his challenge; the Matavutha shot at him, or at a nut which he held under his arm, and all became possessed with the same frenzy as the inspired priests. One after another they ran to the Vuninduvu to be struck on the belly, believing themselves invulnerable, and if the Vuninduvu was over-simple or over-zealous he sometimes did them mortal injury. Williams, who gives the above description of the rites, says that in the old days the orgy was free from licentiousness: we shall see how they have deteriorated since the conversion of the people to Christianity.

On the western coast of Vitilevu the favourite ascending place of the Luve-ni-wai is marked with a large cairn of little stones, which has grown year by year with the stones flung upon it by each worshipper and by every passer-by. The more republican institutions of the western tribes permit a commoner to rise to considerable influence, and not a few of these great commoners can trace their eminent career to the youthful distinction of having been the Raisevu. The combination of hysteria and cunning and impudence necessary to that distinction raised Nemani Ndreu from the lowly position of a commoner of a Nandi village to be the official Roko Tui of Mba. At the date of annexation in 1874 he was Tui Rara (Town-crier); in the heathen outbreak two years later, he was naturally found upon the winning side, and his services as guide and spy were so useful that he rapidly rose in Government favour. I was present at the council when his appointment to the highest office open to Fijians was announced. In an impassioned speech to a cold and hostile audience he suddenly burst into tears that coursed down his cheeks and impeded his utterance, and his most inveterate enemies seemed to be affected. As we left the council-house he turned to me, with the tears still wet upon his cheeks, and said, "How then? Didn't I do that well?" It is unnecessary to add that he was an eminent local preacher.

The kalou-rere was one of the few offences which, under British law, was punished with flogging, a harsh provision if the rites were as innocent as Williams represents. The truth is that they have changed sadly for the worse. The rites are still occasionally practised in secret, but though the ritual is much the same, it may be doubted whether any of the votaries believe that they are alluring the "Little Gods" from the sea. A few lawless young chiefs get a band of roysterers together in a secluded place, and there go through a travesty of the rites as an excuse for nocturnal raids upon the hen-roosts of the neighbouring trader. Usually an equal number of girls are induced to visit them by night under the pretence of practising heathen dances, which are, in reality, mere orgies of debauchery. In one of these cases, reported in detail by the late Mr. Heffernan, stipendiary magistrate of Ba, the frenzy of the votaries was quite genuine, but it found vent in sensuality, the dancers having access to their partners in a set measure controlled by words of command.

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