FIJI OF TO-DAY

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 16, 9 April 1927, Page 18

FIJI OF TO-DAY

ROMANCE AND BUSINESS From cannibals to cricketers ■would be a frivolous but a not altogether inaccurate summary of the progress of the native subjects of the Crown In the Fiji Islands. There are, it is said, still a few surviving Fijians who have tasted human flesh, but, as the result of 50 years of British rule, the Islands are now civilised and contributing materially to the Empire’s wealth. Cricket, soccer, and rugger have been Introduced, and a touring team from New Zealand has found Itself faced with very sporting opposition. It is hardly possible to judge the extent of Fiji on an ordinary map, for the islands are so many and so small that they are lost in the huge expanse of the Pacific. Actually the area of the colony is about the same as that of Wales, but it is made up of between 200 and 250 islands, only about SO of which are Inhabited. The principal island, Viti Levu, with its fine harbour, Suva, occupies by itself roughly half the whole area of the colony, and its neighbour, Vauua Levu, another quarter, so most of the rest are mere volcanic specks of rock. The hot season in Fiji is not so formidable as strangers are apt to think, the mean temperature in February and March being S 3 degrees. Indeed, from the European point of view Fiji is peculiarly healthy. There is no malaria and no outstanding tropical disease. The natives were terribly attacked in the early days of British occupation by an epidemic of measles which, flourishing on that virgin soil, caused about 40,000 deaths in a short period, and many died also in the influenza epidemic of 1918. But they are holding their own now under the novel conditions of civilisation. Besides the British colonists, there is a mixture of other strangers, Indians, Chinese, Samoans, and Solomon Islanders. The Beche-de-mer industry It is the Chinese wlio control a minor but extremely unusual industry that goes on in Fiji. From the coral reefs at low tide a large black sea-slug is gathered and—when dead and dried in the sun—exported to China. This traffic in Beche-de-mer gives to soups a flavour highly prized by Chinese epicures. Another queer trade is the collection of Sici (pronounced “seethee”) shell, also from the reefs. The fish who makes his home in this shell is removed and the shell itself sent to Japan, where it is used by the mother-of-pearl merchants. But these are merely picturesque side-shows. Fiji gets its living mainly from sugar, cotton and coconuts. The importance of the coconut is not, perhaps, quite appreciated at home; it still rather suggests swings and roundabouts and all the fun of the fair. Up to quite recently that was ,in fact, a true enough estimate, for coconuts were only used —and then to a limited extent—for soap manufacture. Now

in enormous quantities from all over the tropics, and under the name “copra” is one of our most valuable vegetable oils for margerine and other purposes. Even the waste comes in useful as a cattle food. Fact and Fiction A great obstacle to the growth of all kinds of economic plants in Fiji, including sugar-cane, cotton, and coconuts, was the unequal balance of animals and insects. But emigration has done much to restore tliis equilibrium, as it has in Australia and New Zealand. A parasite, for instance, introduced from the Straits Settlements, is coping successfully with the purple iridescent moth that used to find nothing to prevent its preying upon the coconut palms. Various insectivorous birds, such as the mynah, the drongo, and the magpie robin are performing similar functions, and the mongoose has shown a more than feline efficiency in dealing with the plague of rodents. The shortage of animal life in primitive Fiji (as all over the South Seas) may be illustrated from the fact that the Fijians had no words for bull or cow and now have only one portmanteau word, “bulumacau.” The little colony has been interpreted rather too often by lurid writers of the * ‘Passion in the Tropics” school of fiction. In fact, Fiji is a delightful but a businesslike place. Its inhabitants are more concerned now with the prospects of the new pineapple industry than with dusky romance.