A FOREIGNER'S IMPRESSION OF FIJI.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 314, 5 March 1875, Page 3

A FOREIGNER'S IMPRESSION OF FIJI.

J The following lively description of the sights to be seen in Levuka, is written by a reporter for the ' Sydney Herald.' The impression made by the first sight of Levuka upon the stranger, as he enters the Barrier Reef, is a very pleasing one, for its great length makes it appear much larger than it is Y*asd its white houses, long winding streets* churches, and villa residences on the heights are setoff by a magnificent mass of mountain and forest scenery which rises, for upwards of 2000 feet, at the back of the whole picture.. The shipping, the boats, and the canoes of the natives give an air of animation to the foreground, while the troops of dusky figures moving: restlessly 'along the beach have a novel -and- not' uhpleasing effect upon the spectator. Then he notices with some surprise that .thehouses/are all without chimneys, and that neither horse nor cart nor vehicle of ; any kind—nor even a wheelbarrow—is to be seen or heard in the noiseless streets. The "Labor." (Tanna men and others) shoulder everything, and carry their burdens in their silence , or els 6 sit and dose in the sun on the beach—j-6r stretch themselves at full length in' 'the : verandahs of untenanted houses. When you have landed, it f.oon becomes easy to distinguish between the " bond" and the free, for the labor man has a dull and satisfied air, and is of a different tint, and bodily figure to the Fijian, who saunters along in ; ,his white sulu, erect, smiling, to trade with you by the sale'oF something or other, if your countoh'afice shall but relax for a single momfertt^f- r language you hear'on all sidei'ls & ;! cMterhig of Fijian. The f«w white merrwhb you see in the streets halt-unconsciously' interlard their deliveries therewith— the white boys chatter in it volubly, the foreign la-

bor-man speaks it as a matter of ourse, and Fiji women, young and old, absolutely shriek out their remarks in it to each other, with a vociferation that is positively bewildering. Hundreds upon hundreds of colored men m sulus —and a score or two of white men in white clothing, all ot whom looked awfully tired, but still delighted to see you. No horses, no cows, no goats, no pigs, no sheep ; only darkskinned men and women moving along, whose id<-a of dress are totally indifferent to your own, but on the whole, considering the climate, not bad ideas either. Still as regards the gentle sex, and apparently perfectly modest and well-behaved, might (although the day is very warm) veil some of their fully developed charms. Wait, however, till you see them on Sundays, in the full glory of upper garments, as well as those short petticoats they wear upon week days. However, they dress, and whether old or young, the Fijian women, though .prone to be garrulous at .times, are seldom unwomanly, and contrast pleasantly' with those bold-faced half-castes, with tawny white skins, long greasy black ringlets, and preposterously long loose wrappers—jades that are staring at everybody as they go sailing down the streets. It is a curious fact, but half-castes everywhere seem generally disappointing. The few halfcaste Fijian men to-be met with in Levuka and its neighborhood, have, T am told, usually been, looked upon as " white by law," and they ingeniously claim the white man's social privileges, and get drunk accordingly. To the pure Fijian, intoxicating liquor is, I am happy to say, as yet strictly tambii;.,and he very seldom takes it at all ; consoling himself, however, whenever he can, with . his almost equally deleterious angona, or kava. The black children to be seen in Levuka appeared to be but very few, and of these I found the rule was for them all to run about in a perfectly nude state until 10 or 11 years of age. All these circumstances, so new and so strange, were observed by me as I walked down from the jetty near Niutaumbi to South Beach street,: on the 11th of September last—my first ;day in Levuka, the capital of Fji. ..■ I found myself at once to all intents and purposes in the centre of a j foreign community.