FIJI.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 154, 1 December 1874, Page 2

FIJI.

[Wkittbn fob the "Globe."] VI. Another of the odd assertions made hi the article we have alluded to, is that those who have carefully " traced the history " of the Fijian group, which means, we presume, studied the history of Fiji, will find that there have been fierce struggles between the inland and shore tribes for supremacy. It is clear that the writer in the Lyttelton Times is not one of the these person. There have never been any such struggles as he represents. Wars there have been in plenty ; but struggles for supremacy between inland and coast never. Throughout the frequent wars carried on amongst the different maritime territories of Fiji, the inhabitants of the hills of Viti Levu have been usually left to themselves. They in fact are almost a different people from the dwellers on the coast, and consider themselves, probably with justice, as the true aboriginal inhabitants of Fiji. It has been noticed by every traveller who has visited the country that the Fijians bear every trace of being halfbreds between the Polynesians and Negritos or Melanesians; occupying as they do, a borderland between the two. The language contains about one-fifth of Polynesian words; and there is a sufficient resemblance in many words with the dialects of Mindanao and the Sula and Sanguir Islands, to point to some immigration having taken place from that direction, besides the one which that eminent.ethnologistjJM. de Quartrefages, cou*

siders to have started from Bourn. He has ingeniously interpreted the Tongan legend of Tangaloa and his sons to refer to the arrival of the Malaisian emigrants on the shores of Fiji, and their subsequent expulsion and flight to Tonga. The fact of Burotu, or Bulotu, being almost the universal Polynesian name for another world, leads him to.fix on the island of Bourne, or Bourn, as the "original home of the race who have since populated most of Oceanica. The legend of Tangaloa, as related in Tonga, is as follows :—The god of that name had two sons, Vaka-akau-uli and Tube, of whom one was lazy and evil-minded, and the other light-colored and industrious. The lazy one, jealous of his brother, arose and slew him, and appropriated his wives. Tangaloa, wrath at this, and pitying the children of the slain, conveyed them to another land, where he promised they should be safe from the attacks of him who had killed their father—of whom he foretold that his descendants should remain black, and shoiild be unable to visit the new land in their canoes till the people of the latter should choose to "make the first call." Tangaloa, no doubt, was one of the early chiefs of the emigrations from the Spice Islands, and like Odin, had become deified after his death. The Malaisian voyagers arrived at Fiji, then occupied by a Papuan race, with whom they resided in amity perhaps for some generations ; till the darker race, jealous of the other, attacked and overpowered them, eventually driving them to take flight, leaving in the hands of the victors the greater number of their women. They landed in the Friendly Islands, which they found already occupied by colonists who had come thither from Samoa. This time fortune declared in their favor, and the race expelled from Fiji, became the conquerers and dominant caste in their new land. The name of Tonga they probably brought with them to the island, and the existence of a place on the western coast of Viti Levu, called Vi-Tonga, indicates possibly that it was there that their vessels first arrived in Fiji. The dialects of Bouro are as yet mostly unknown to philologists ; the Dutch have merely a settlement or two on the eastern coast ; and a considerable number of words of the dialect of Kajeli have been collected and published by Mr Wallace in his work on the Spice Archipelago. The circumstance of the Dutch Government absolutely prohibiting missionary work within their East Indian Empire, is the chief reason of these islands being so unknown to the world, and hence is the difficulty ethnologists experience in their labours of tracing the original seat of the races which occupy Oceanica. The Polynesian portion of those races being now, mostly, partially civilised, and under mission influence, their traditions have been carefully investigated and gathered up—but Micronesia and Melanesia are still, to a great extent, terrce incognito?. It is a pity that the Wesleyan Missionary Society do not undertake some newmission,nowthat Fiji is pretty well all under their'control. The iiphill work there, is pretty well over, and we should think they must possess some ardent souls longing to attack some new stronghold of heathenism among the lovely islands of the Pacific. We have heard, indeed, that such a project has been mooted. In Tonga, at all events, they have long since passed from the state of a Church militant to that of a Church trium phant, in a wordly point of view, and now, since the surrender of the hill tribes, in Fiji also. And their expenditure is so much lessened, by the really enormous contributions made by the natives to their missionary fund, that although the balance, by the published accounts, seems still a few hundreds on the wrong side, unless the missionary zeal of that body has declined, which it would be unreasonable to suppose, they would be fully warranted in "taking up" some newpopulous heathen ' block in the Carolines or the Louisiade archipelago. In the published accounts of the Australian Wesleyan Missionary Society, the retxmis of "the Binner estate," now belonging to the Mission, are not included. As these amount, it is said, and we believe, without an exaggeration, to an least £2OOO per annum, they would change the balance very materially. The Tongans, out of a population believed now to be under 20,000, contribute upwards of £SOOO yearly. And the Fijian," follow suit with almost as considerable a sum. Though these contributions are nominally voluntary, the power of the Tongan and Fijian "Mrs Grundy" make them an absolute and unavoidable tax; and one is really tempted to inquire, wiry, with such considerable sums in hand, the native churches are not built out of the proceeds, or. at least furnished with doors and windows. The writer has often heard natives commenting on this, and their being invited to contribute afresh to the embellishment of these buildings, which they have themselves raised labor of love, by more money to buy doors and window sashes in Sydney. The work, the missionaries have gone through, in early days, in Fiji, is worthy of admiration, and the senseless calumnies so perpetually spread about them usually by worthless Europeans, should be treated with contempt. There are not, and never have been in Fiji, any of the Chadband type, as .has sometimes been represented to be the case, and the relations between the missionaries and the planter have nearly always been of the most cordial description.