CHAPTER XXVII.

FAREWELL TO CANNIBAL-LAND.

As soon as the natives were well out of sight, I made my way to the coast, accompanied by Lolóma. Reaching the beach in the rear of a narrow headland, which shut out the town from view, we took possession of a small canoe, which was lying unoccupied on the sand, and, launching the frail skiff, we were soon on our way to the ship, which would be within half a mile as soon as we rounded the headland referred to. When we reached the point, a double canoe, with its huge mat sail, and full of armed men, shot out from the river side, and gave chase. It seemed that Bolatha had taken extraordinary precautions to prevent my escape. The sea was smooth, with a light breeze blowing, and Lolóma and I, paddling vigorously, were making good headway. Had the double canoe got the wind on her quarter, she would have overhauled us in a very short time, but fortunately she was obliged to make “boards,” and the tacking manœuvre being slowly executed, we forged ahead. The light wind shifting a couple of points, however, the double canoe gained a distinct advantage. Our only chance now was to be observed by the barque, and to get within the protection of her muskets. We strained every nerve. The prow of our light skiff cut through the vari-coloured surface of the water like a knife ripping up a piece of silk. The occupants of the large canoe were within thirty yards, and I saw them stringing their bows. I also saw, to my unspeakable satisfaction, that we were observed from the Sarah Jane. Another three minutes, and her fire would send the miscreants to the right-about. I rose in the little canoe, and shouted derisively at our pursuers. They saw the situation, and saluted us with a flight of arrows. At the same moment three musket-shots from the barque laid low two of the cannibals, and the big canoe was put about.

The tension of the moment was so great that I had not noticed that several of the arrows struck our canoe, though most of them fell short. Turning my head (for in paddling I sat with my back to my companion) to cheer Lolóma with the prospect of speedy safety, I saw that the paddle had fallen from her hand, and that, with an expression of intense pain in her usually merry face, she was endeavouring to pull from her bosom a bone-headed arrow which had pierced her. I drew out the envenomed shaft, and she fainted. The life stream flowed from her side, in spite of all that I could do to stanch the wound, which was clearly mortal. Seeing our distress, three of the sailors in the barque put off in a boat to our assistance. Lolóma was tenderly lifted into it, and I followed, hardly knowing what I did. The canoe was allowed to drift away.

Laid on a mattress on the deck of the barque, Lolóma revived for a few minutes. Her eyelids opened, quivering with a sweet surprise, as of one not knowing what had happened, and what was the meaning of the saddened group around her. They closed again, and she lay dreaming soft and warm, and smiling in her dream as I had so often seen her in happy days. Once more she moved. The tear-drops gemmed her eyes dark fringes; her lips parted, and, bending low, I heard the faintly whispered words which to the Fijian mind convey a whole world of pathos which cannot be reproduced in English: “Au sa lako! Dou sa tiko!” (Literally, “I go! You remain!”) Her necklace of pink shells, fresh from the ebbing wave, burst asunder with the last movement which shuddered through her frame, and her little sea-born treasures rolled upon the deck. They would never be strung together again. So also was the silver cord of her life for ever broken. Her spirit had flown like that of a flower, whose existence is all too short. I turned my face seaward, and looked out into the gray moaning world of waters. The gulls were solemnly rocking on the heaving billows of the barren, dreary, ever-restless main, and all the light seemed to have gone out of the heavens.

Lolóma was buried next day in deep water, just inside the reef. The ship’s carpenter made a coffin, which was heavily shotted, and her remains were lovingly decorated with gay flowers which the maidens of Ramáka had brought on board two days before. As her body was committed to the deep, to find its resting place among the branching coral and brilliant marine growths, the sky was draped in sables—its changing splendours were gone; the monotonous lap of the water was a dirge, the screech of the sea-bird was a knell. The cocoanut tufts on the beach were waving dismally like funereal plumes, when an immense wave dashed upon the barrier with the roar of a thunder-clap, sending a vast column of foam into the air. The sun showed himself with sudden brightness through the clouds, and the sifted spray was shot with all the prismatic hues. Now I remembered the Fijian belief that when the reef roars louder than usual it is a sign that the newly departed spirit has been borne to the future world on a rainbow.

* * * * *

All our ammunition being exhausted, it was impossible to punish Bolatha and his abettors for the murder of Jackson and the two sailors; but, by threatening to take the ship close in shore and destroy the town, we obtained possession of the bodies and buried them at sea. They were thus saved from the cannibal oven, and from the disinterment and indignities they would have suffered had we committed them to the earth.

Turner navigated the ship to Calcutta, where her owners gave him the command, and he completed the voyage to China to dispose of the sandalwood on board, Cobb and myself accompanying him as second and third officers. Years elapsed before I again saw my old home in Sydney. I wrote to my father from Calcutta, but the letter miscarried, and I had long been mourned as dead. My youthful escapade had been forgotten, and there was no more respected merchant in the city than Joe Whitley, whose liberation from gaol I secured in so illegal a way.

Since the time of my two years residence in Fiji, great changes have come over the country. The prophecy of Hot-Water in regard to the acceptance of the new religion has been fully verified, and the islands have been given up to the rule of the white man. That this beautiful archipelago is destined to become a valuable British possession there can be no doubt. It is equally true that the native race is doomed to extinction, so that the words of the sable goddess of Vúya to her successful lover may be taken prophetically as the piteous wail of a people,

“Whose home at the dawn shall deserted be.”

The dawn for the new heroes is already falling on our eyes. For the aboriginal heroes it is the twilight of evening. They will pass, to be remembered only as an intelligent race of savages who wisely changed their religion, but foolishly sold their country. They will soon be seen paddling swiftly away in their own canoes, through the mists and shadows of their closing history,

“To the islands of the blessed, To the kingdom of Ponemah, To the land of the hereafter.”

But it is not with such thoughts that I prefer to think of Fiji and its people. Memory will always carry me back to the days when their many virtues and vices were their own, and a dignity of character was theirs which could not co-exist with the white settlements. I think of a land bright with flowers, and gay with the bloom of perpetual spring; of a little brown figure coquettishly braided with colored grasses, of her merry ways and words, of the delight I took in her simple stories of fairies and pixies, of the charm of her lithe form as she danced in the moonlight with her handmaidens, the fireflies like diamonds in her hair, while I was intoxicated with the beauty and wonder of the scene; of the ripple of a low laugh, of the musical sound of words that died in a caress; and of the fresh fragrance of sea and mountain wafted on cool winds in the land of malua, where the people sat, “every man under his vine and under his fig-tree,” and reaped the fruits of the earth almost without toil.

THE END.

APPENDIX. I.

THE RELIGION OF OLD FIJI.

Within the last 45 years more than 100,000 persons, or two-thirds of the whole population of Fiji, have abandoned their old gods, in obedience to new influences to which their country has been subjected during that period. Some account of the now rapidly departing religious beliefs of this people, supplementary to the information conveyed in the story, will be interesting to those who are curious in such matters.

GODS AND THEIR SHRINES.

The history of the higher class gods of Cannibal-land is the history, painted by poets and exaggerated by garrulous retailers of old traditions, of kings and chieftains, heroes and heroines, who, no less human than their worshippers, once walked this earth, fretting and fuming away their lives in it, though not without leaving behind some claim to be remembered by the generations of men, women, and children who were to come after them.

The study of Fijian mythology suggests that in past ages one great master-mind threw its influence over the untamed elements of destruction then at work upon the human race in this country, and subjected them to its will. Such a hero as the possessor of this power must have been, would before his death glory in having reached a position which enabled him to send out his sons and minions to represent him in all the conquered districts and islands of his empire. These deputy governors or chiefs in the course of time would grow as ambitious and heroic as their great and now deified ancestor. What he had laboriously worked up into one great whole, would at this point turn again towards disunion. The breaking-up process would have to be perpetuated in order to satisfy and satiate the wild and savage ambition of an ever-multiplying host of ungovernable aspirants after dominion. The ever-remembered “Great Father” would from the moment of his apotheosis continue to rise in the minds of each succeeding generation from mere humanity to divinity, until at last he would be found, as he has been by us, in the throne of another but now unknown God, who preceded him. His sons and sons’ sons, who had divided and subdivided every divisible part of the original kingdom among them, would at death ascend to god-like ranks in the spirit-world, and be regarded thereafter by the people they had governed as among their chief deities. As this god-creating work proceeded through each succeeding generation, the world of gods ere long came to be an almost perfect copy of the world of men, and followed all the vicissitudes of its fortune. So long as the nation continued to recede from unity, so long did its gods continue to increase, until the tribes, burning with an enthusiastic desire for divinities of every class and name, at length started on a furious race to see which at last should be able to boast the greatest number. The breaking-up of the nation produced new gods for each province. The division of the provinces called into the divine circles hosts who but just before, being only human, were both little and unknown. New gods sprang up with every slight addition to a tribe; a god was called into being with each new-born child, and every death added a god to the long since countless number.

Such was the character of Fiji’s religion before the presence of the white man began to turn the current another way. While, politically, the nation was as a vessel shivered into a thousand pieces, religiously it was like one that had been dashed into a million atoms, which, though found without cohesion, were not without marks of having once cohered. Polytheism then was, and in many places still is, the religion of cannibal-land. But the term fails to express the thing to which by general consent it is applied, so infinitely numerous are the deities which have been crowded into the vast pantheon of the Fijian’s imagination. Every nation, tribe, clan, and individual in Fiji vied one with another in making the most of their gods, and in seeking to hold them up as mighty and terrible facts. From a study of the attributes assigned to them by priests and people, it soon became evident that great and almost numberless differences existed. These, however, were not of such a nature as to prevent a classification of the gods. As the work of investigation proceeded these divinities arranged themselves in three interminably long and deep columns. The first may be called aristocratic gods, the second middle-class gods, and the third democratic gods; not, however, meaning thereby that they are the gods of the several orders of people which these terms represent, but that among themselves they stand in these relative positions to each other.

Advancing to the phalanx of aristocratic gods, it is observable that it is composed of different ranks. Standing apart from it, yet looking towards it with dignified admiration, in serpent shrine, is the Great Father of the host, whose title to deity of the highest degree is universally acknowledged, and whose right to which no rival has ever risen throughout the heathen era powerful enough to wrest from him. So high above all others was this god, and so important were the many works he did for his cannibal children, that it will be necessary to devote some future space to him individually.

In the second but not much inferior rank of these nobles of the god-world, standing by themselves, are the sons of this Great Father. They are his own sons, who for unknown periods were his chief assistants and the generals of his armies; but in the onward flow of ages they climbed up, some by patient waiting and endurance, others by rebellious ambition, to thrones of power equal in their own eyes in everything but its extent to that of their grand-parent. Of this rank is the “Scrutinizer,” variously know as the “Shiner,” “Lord One-tooth,” the “Seer,” and the “Immovable.” Temples were reared to him in every tribe for he was greatly to be feared. He was believed to be the cleverest of his class in the manipulation of that metamorphosing power which more or less distinguished these high divinities. At one time and place he would be seen as an enormous giant, awing the people by the ponderousness of his limbs and his heaven-towering head The cloud-capped mountains were mole-hills to him, and the race of men who feared his nod, ants scrambling awkwardly up their sides. At another place and time he would be reported by his priests as an ugly dwarf, all head, aided in his miserable attempts to crawl about by thin long hands and arms and twisted trailing legs. To-day he would be met as a black man of the ordinary height, and to-morrow as a red one. The next day he might be seen with a head of hair black, crisp, and shiny, like that worn by a great chief in the heyday of youth, and the day following with one crowned with the snows of many years. Like the “enchanted horse,” he could travel with wondrous swiftness, often transporting himself from the Windward to the Leeward Islands and back again in a time and manner utterly incomprehensible by the human mind. Were he only half as popular now as he used to be, he would challenge for speed that modern and infinitely more useful god of the white man—electricity. Great, however, as was his power to assume any form he pleased, it was nothing to that with which, as his first name implies, he looked into the minds of men, and made himself acquainted with all their doings.

The third and last order of this divine aristocracy includes all gods descended from the sons of the “great source” down to the third, fourth, fifth, and last generation. As time swept by, these gods scattered themselves like locusts over all the islands, eating up everything where they or their priests, which is the same thing, alighted, leaving their worshippers poor indeed. They insinuated themselves into every place which had not yet named them with reverence.

In the first rank of “middle class” deities are gods of no parentage. They have neither come down from the class above nor ascended from the one below them, but are an entirely unique and original order sprung from trees and from what the wise men of the land call their “mother earth.” Numerically they are as formidable as any other army of gods whose history the poets and priests have handed down to us. To give an idea of the popular belief as to the origin of these powers, it will be enough to name a single example.

One day a man went off to his garden to dig some yams. Yams are grown in little cone-shaped hillocks from one to three feet high. On opening one of these mounds, expecting to find therein three or four fine yams, the man was struck dumb at seeing not yams, but a living being, who rose straight up out of the ground, and stood before him. What could the poor fellow do but at once adopt this genius as his God? and if he had an eye to business, as most Fijians have, when the business affects their own interests, what less would he be likely to do than to declare himself henceforth this earth-sprung God’s duly appointed priest? All of which, whether predetermined or not, was accordingly done. In this way thousands of new Gods have come to light, and as many cunning priests been self-ordained.

In the second rank of this “middle class” we have hero-gods. These are the deified spirits of generally acknowledged heroes. They take up their places of honour according to their earthly rank as chiefs and the deeds of valour they are believed to have done. Besides these, but far back in the shade behind them, are vast multitudes of human spirits, who, though far from being heroes in the highest meaning of that title, were nevertheless heroes in the limited circles in which they once moved, and to their own kinsfolk, by whom they were raised to the ranks of demigods, of no mean influence. These gods, while yet men in the world we live in, were heads of families or guardians, and only attained to the position they now adorn by complying with the condition which alone entitles them to it. This condition is that, after death, they visit the earth, and make such visit most unmistakably clear to their old friends.

In this middle class are also to be found goddesses. These do not appear to be so numerous as deities of the sterner sex, nor are they so often brought on the stage where cannibal divinities “have their exits and their entrances.” Like their humbler sisters of human birth and mien, they are made to follow on behind, never coming to the front, except when placed there through the irresistible influence of surpassing beauty, or that law which, in the-place-of-Everlasting-Standing, brings a lady before the world in order to fix, by her own nobility, the precise legal degree of that of some chief of whom she is the honoured mother.

Coming now to the third and last great class, it may be noted that democratic gods are by far the most numerous, and the most difficult to arrange. These gods are everywhere and in everything. Each inhabits some favourite shrine, from the human body in all its stages and conditions before and after death down to the mosquito, which, by the way, is one of the most annoying and sanguinary little gods in Fiji. With regard to what the cannibal says about these gods there is a greater confusion of ideas and contradictory statements than are to be found clinging to the gods of the other classes. Our cannibal theologist tells us there is no object, animate or inanimate, which has not a spirit of its own. But this spirit, according to some, is not _the_ God, for, say they, “every object is the shrine of something more than its own spirit, even that of a genuine god.” Here we enter further into the sphere of confusion and darkness, inasmuch as when we ask the old mythologies if every object has two spirits, its own and a god, or whether its own spirit is the god, their answers agree not. It may be either that the spirit of the object is the god, or that the god, being independent of both the object and its spirit, has only taken up his abode with them. This portion of the cannibal’s creed leads to the conclusion that Fijian mythology points to a kind of pantheistic doctrine of this peculiar type, which, while it recognises god in everything, does not seem to recognise everything as a “part or particle of god.”

Great respect was paid to shrines, which the people called the god’s “covering.” Indeed, the respect shown to the “covering” or “shell” often exceeded that given to the “covered,” or the god in possession. From the chaos of opinions which the Fijian brain has cast up, it seems impossible to discover where the priests and people drew the line of demarcation, if they drew it at all, between the shrine and the enshrined. Whenever one met with the shrine of one of his gods he would offer it all the honours in his power, as if it were the actual god himself. He would, moreover, call the object his god. The Fijian was not a worshipper of idols of his own making, but of spirits which had taken up their abode in natural objects. Such worship was not, therefore, of the basest sort, seeing that while the apparent objects of it were shrines for the purpose of bringing divinity near and making it palpable, the real object was that divinity. Thus we see that, although the cannibal may in some sense be said to have lived by faith, inasmuch as he believed in the existence of spirit-gods, he did so through the medium of what was tangible, and which could not deprive him of the happiness of living by sight.

If, on the sudden appearance of his god, a devotee was not in a position to make a proper offering, he would not fail as the next best thing to make the “shout of respect” due to a great chief. Turbaned heads in respectful acknowledgment of their gods, would quickly uncover, and all ornaments would be removed from the person. Very pious men on finding a shrine would take it up, and carefully carry it home. Here they would deposit it in some part of the house, or in one of the village temples: and, often stealing away to the spot where it lay, would address it in these or like words—“Oh, Sirs, great is our joy that you two,” meaning the god and his shrine, “have been of so good a mind as to make your appearance in this gracious and unlooked for way to us, your unworthy and useless servants.”

It is a crime to be visited with death for anyone to eat the shrine of his god. He, whose god is enshrined in a shark, turtle, duck, or what not, must for ever abstain, however pressed by hunger, from the sacrilegious deed. This is the reason why, in every kingdom, there were to be found persons to whom the eating of human flesh was an abomination. The shrine of their god was human. Funeral honours were not unfrequently paid to deceased shrines, which, whatever might be asserted or proved of the divinity within them, were themselves far from being immortal. The last remains of a divinely-honoured vase would be interred with every formality. Festivals would be held and offerings made _in memoriam_ of the shrine which death had conquered, perhaps through the god deserting it, and sacred to the memory of the god himself, who, whether by his own act or not, was now shrineless.

Not only do shrines cease to be shrines, but gods to be gods, for some are said to be gods only so long as their popularity lasts. When this goes, divinity goes with it, but not immortality. The Fijians’ belief in the immortality of spirit, whether that of a man or of a god, is, with some slight qualifications, a cardinal one. But “once a god, always a god,” is not so, except as regards the “aristocratic gods,” who are not easily thrown down from the pedestal of their divinity. All sorts of demigods, however, cease to be gods whenever the tribes serving them happen to be conquered in war and become the slaves of their conquerors. The gods of the victor thereupon take the place of those whose names were for ages “household words” ever on the lips of men, women, and children, who had suffered so much and fought so long to keep their independence, but who at last had helplessly failed.

Strange things are told of the way in which condign punishment overtakes those who slight, injure, or kill the shrines of their gods. The cock is the shrine of a god called by the natives who paid him homage “Fire-face,” or “Fire-eye.” Should any worshipper of this god kill any of these sacred fowls, the avenger will some day suddenly appear before him in the shape of a real game bird, with awful spurs and wrathful eye, the departed spirit of the veritable fire-eyed chanticleer against whom the offence was committed. Flying full and furiously at his victim, he will leap upon his head and leave him hairless. The culprit’s feet will also become divided and twisted, so as to assume the appearance of chicken’s feet, claws and all included. No wonder that, not so very long ago, old priests might have been seen sitting at the low doorways of every spirit-house in the country, cautioning all and sundry, saying, “Oh ye chiefs and people, be sure you respect your gods, and never harm their shrines.”

The patronage of all the gods was a thing most anxiously desired and sought by the people, who believed that these superior beings encouraged and governed their wars, made the yam crops good or bad, loaded the trees with fruit or blighted them, brought fish to their nets and human flesh to their ovens, and did a thousand and one other important things, but always on the clearly advertised condition that every divine command must be obeyed, the temples be kept in good repair, and the priests revered, feared, and well-cared for. The last part of the contract was by no means the least important, for between the gods and their priests there was believed to be the closest connection—hence the necessity to treat the priest with no less attention than that due to his god.

While it would seem to be quite true that certain of the lower-class gods are continually passing away into oblivion, as their popularity wanes or the people paying their homage die out, it is said to be no less true that gods of the first-class neither pass away nor change, but, strangers alike to the greenness of youth and the decay of age, are ever hale and strong. If such is the case with the aristocratic gods themselves, they certainly have not allowed it to be so with surrounding nature, upon which, as it would appear from the oldest traditions, they have played some most “fantastic tricks.” The legends are full of exaggerated tales of great physical changes, which in the silent ages came again and again, gradually or suddenly, over the face of the country. At one period fields of pumice-stone are said to have been swept by winds and ocean currents into the group from the south-east, and, settling at the foot of the hills of Eastern Great Fiji, helped in forming the foundation of the present extensive flats and deltas of rich alluvial soil, which, after feeding many generations of cannibals with yams and taro, are at last destined to put gold into the pockets of industrious sugar-growing settlers.

All the geological changes alluded to in the country’s legends are attributed to the miraculous power of the old gods. Here some mighty divinity, influenced by the spirit of revenge, has dug down the tops of cone-shaped hills that were carrying their heads too high. In the laborious undertaking he conveyed away the earth in enormous baskets slung at the ends of a long pole resting on his Herculean shoulders, as the manner of bearing heavy burdens sometimes is in Fiji. Dropping portions of this earth as he passed along the shores of the larger islands, he caused to grow up therefrom many of those lovely islets which add charm to charm, and give to scenery in the South Seas such enchantment. In this and that place, reefs and portions of reefs that were in the way, roaring too loud, or offering too many advantages to an enemy, have been kicked further off, broken down, had gaps knocked in them where gaps were dreaded, or stopped up where they were most prized, while rocks and points of land have been altogether submerged; and all by the passionate, capricious, miracle-working gods of this people, who, more perhaps than any other savage race on the earth’s face, were “in all things eminently religious.”

Tortuous and dark as all this of necessity is, it helps us to increase our knowledge of the cannibal and his religion; while the fractions of scientific truth, though conveyed in broken echoes from dark and unexplorable caverns, tell us of changes which the forces of nature have made in this southern world—changes so stupendous that the unphilosophising brain of the cannibal could not allow them to be forgotten, but must needs report them in the history of every god, interlace them with the inventions of every legend, and embalm them in the wild effusions of every poet.

II.

CHIEF OF GODS AND MEN.

Dengeh (spelt Degei in Fijian) is chief of gods and men.

The tops of the “Screw-pine Hills” on the north side of Viti Levu are his abode, and a serpent is his shrine. Two of the most sacred and prominent objects in cannibal mythology are the screw-pine or pandanus tree and the snake. The best emblems of the old religion of the country would be a fine screw-pine with red, ripe fruit at its top, a large snake coiled up asleep under its supporting roots, and a fine bright-feathered cock, its legs decorated with pure white cowrie shells, close by, crowing away with all his might to wake the dreaded sleeper. Fiji adds another to the already long list of countries in which the serpent was either worshipped or regarded in various degrees with reverential awe.

Dengeh was the acknowledged father of all gods next in rank to himself, and, through these, of other ranks. He was likewise the creator of men. We are told in some of the legends that although he was the generally admitted father of all, yet he himself had an ancestor. But this seems very much like an afterthought of some of our cannibal historians, who can never rest till they succeed in tracing the precise ancestral line of everybody worthy of notice. While the priests of inferior and more modern deities told the people that the fathers of their gods were such and such great heroes, the priests of Dengeh made reply on his behalf by pointing triumphantly to a rock which lay in the bed of a stream in the immediate neighborhood of the god’s mountain. “That stone,” said they, “is his father.” This, doubtless, was symbolical, and the symbols, a snake and a rock (in their interpretation) are one and the same. If the serpent is the universal emblem of eternity, not less so of uninterrupted duration is the rock. The name Dengeh has been defined to mean immortal. The Fijians have been heard to say of an old man distinguished for his extreme age and undiminished strength, “He is as immortal as Dengeh.” Others have maintained that the original meaning of the word is “to shake,” as when an eggshell is shaken. This is backed up by the statement that whenever the god turns about or trembles in his cave the earth shakes and quakes exceedingly. His priests imitated him in this habit of shaking. The Fiji world was, no doubt, very “shaky” at one time—so much so that Dengeh, in all likelihood, never turned or shook without causing an earthquake. There are slight shocks even now, especially on the western end of what is called the “great land,” but their force is not what it was when Fiji was less of an island country than it is to-day, and Dengeh was without a rival. The Fijian believed that the shaking of his serpent-enshrined god was as much a fact as the shaking of the ground under his feet, and he believed that the latter was but one of the many natural effects of the former. To him, therefore, Dengeh was inferior in nothing to a god of greater pretensions and far greater race, the

“Mighty Poseidon ... Who shakes the world with his earthquakes.”

There was a periodical shaking of the god which was anything but calamitous, for a whole train of blessings followed it, and its non-occurrence, while always deprecated, had sometimes to be most deeply deplored. The cannibal was sure that when Dengeh shook the earth by shaking himself, the rains descended in their season; when he shook it again the fruit trees became laden with luscious fruit; and yet again, behold the yam crops grew to be the finest ever seen. When, unhappily, Dengeh stopped shaking there came a change over the face of the earth and its people began to fade and perish. By these teachings we are able to enter the cannibal mind, and to read therein his recognition of the kindly revolution of the seasons, and of the wakeful presence of some hidden but competent power to keep those seasons ever moving round.

But there is a nearer approach to the true signification of this god’s name in a word found in one of the older and now almost obsolete dialects, the dialect of the land of poetry, where most of the songs and other compositions were produced, and whence they were issued from a Fijian Grub-street or Paternoster-row, though in oral publications instead of printed volumes. The discovered word is—as pronounced—Dengehah. This word is a verb, meaning “to plant, to stick firmly in the ground.” The god’s name, Dengeh, is the passive participle of the verb, and signifies “planted,” &c. After hearing all that the priests had to declare about the attributes of their ancient deity, we see at once the clear appropriateness of this hitherto unexplained name—“The Planted One,” “He That is Set Up,” “The Established.” On this point there is more agreement than is usually discoverable in the legends of savage races.

One explanation teaches us to regard Dengeh as the great shaker, shaking the earth to cause certain natural and periodical results. A second explanation connects this shaking with the god’s serpentine shrine, in which we see the emblem of eternity. A third requires us to believe that the god had a great father, whom we are directed to see in a rock, the symbol of that which is everlasting; while a fourth leads us to gaze on what is immovably set up. Such consistency in the mythology of a savage race is somewhat remarkable. It forces us to the admission that the cannibal mind had a pretty fair notion, considering how absolutely that mind was shut up within itself, of what the work and attributes of a god ought to be.

Dengeh was not always what he now is. He has undergone a change of form and abode. The reason given in the biographical legends for the first change is that in very ancient times, when living on the beach as a great chief, in human shrine, of course, another god made war upon him; whereupon, in order to teach his enemy a lesson he should never forget, he let in the ocean from the north over all the lower lands, and, Dutchman-like, swamped the impudent invader, he himself taking refuge in the hills that form the immediate background to that part of the country, and which became his permanent dwelling-place. It was at this time that he changed his appearance. “Once upon a time,” so goes the tale, “when viewing himself in Nature’s own looking-glass, clear water, he was unfortunate enough to discover for the first time, and much to his disgust, that he was repulsively ugly.” Talking to himself, he said, “Lest I be hated by all men for my ugliness I will retire to the hollow places on the mountain tops.” He did so, and thenceforward lived in a serpent shrine; “For,” added he, continuing the soliloquy, “if I remain in the form of a man I shall be despised, but if I assume that of a snake, everybody will fear and obey me.” The inundation from the sea named in this legend may be the grain of truth which at the time was thought to be worth preserving. The other parts of the story suggest that the cannibals’ ideal of a superior deity was once far higher and nearer perfection than it has since grown to be. At one time it was a purer hero-worship, which, instead of gradually ascending to something still higher, began at some undiscoverable turning-point to take a downward course, deteriorating from its great ideal—a glorious conqueror—first to an invaded and retreating warrior, then to a miserable craven, and last of all to a crawling reptile, seeking to do by the terror which his outward shape inspired what in better days he had accomplished by heroic wisdom and courage. In pointing out the changes said to have come over the people’s god, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that these changes were rather in the people themselves than in their god. Hence, much that is attributed to him, while purely fabulous, will, if interpreted as concerning them, be simply historical.

Dengeh is a god of wrath. His ire burns at times with dire effect. He often punishes his offending people, one year by blighting their crops, another by floods that carry everything before them, and a third by hurricanes, which not only strip the trees of their fruits, but utterly destroy the trees themselves, and blow away houses and temples and everything else capable of being blown away. Such a god would surely find it an easy thing to destroy man from off the face of the earth. The legends tell us that he actually attempted something of the sort on a small scale when his two mischievous sons once so successfully tried their eye and hand on their father’s sacred bird, which every morning was in the habit of waking the god by its crowing. For the never-forgiven crime of shooting this pet-bird, the old god visited the country with a flood, which washed away every place where the refugees sought shelter. The criminal twin-brothers drifted at last into the Rewa district, where they became the patron deities of that most important branch of industry in Fiji, canoe-building, which, from the date of the catastrophe that brought it such high patronage, has flourished amazingly, and outstripped every other industry for which the country is noted.

Some have regarded this legend as a traditionary account of Noah’s flood, but there is nothing to support that view. The tradition itself is not one of the oldest productions of the Fijian brain. The flood was a local one, and many places not more than 60ft. above the usual river level remained untouched by it. The Bau kingdom was already a power in Fiji, yet it is well-known that this power did not begin to rise in importance till towards the end of the last century. Floods in some districts are also almost of yearly occurrence, and they form the subject of a torrent of legends. The nature of the sacred bird to revenge whose death the flood was sent has been wrapped in a good deal of mystery. In the old legends the bird has what is clearly an onomatopoetic name. It is spelt “Turukawa,” and pronounced “Toorookawwah.” Now let anyone pronounce it thus in a somewhat drawling manner, and see if he cannot recognise in the tones a resemblance to the voice of the bird that wakes the village before the dawn. It is plain from other legends that the bird was a bright-colored cock. His legs are represented as being covered with large white cowrie shells, and his feathers as being so abundant that when one wing only was plucked they rose up and covered the mountain tops like a dense fog. In times of drought and famine Dengeh was supplicated with costly offerings. The priests would beseech him to send forth his greatest ambassador and foreman of works, Breadfruit by name, to mass up the clouds for rain, or cause the yam plantations to flourish, or ripen the fruits, or do any other good work to meet the most widely-pressing want of the times.

The demigods were the offspring of later and corrupter ages. How corrupt may be imagined from legends which tell us that men were not wanting who, dissatisfied with the god or gods that were, would start on god-hunting expeditions, hoping to find something nearer their notions of what a god should be—a being more worthy of their homage, and more likely to bestow upon them his favors. There was a chief named King of the Little Water. One day, after due thought on the subject, this chief became convinced that the gods his fathers had told him about were not only too few, but they were not the kind of gods he needed and must have. Moreover, he had a selfish object in view in seeking an additional master. Impelled by these motives, he one day made a rush to the hills, on reaching which he began to run hither and thither, shouting wildly as he ran, “Who will be my god? Who will be my god? Ho! ho! Who lives here? Who will be my god? Ho!” But no voice answered. The king of the Little Water rushed down again to the beach, where, repeating the cries, he was at last answered by a snake. Uncoiling from sleep, this snake replied, “Why are you calling me? I will be thy god. I! I! I will be thy god!” Whereupon the indefatigable god-hunter ceased his ravings, adopted the common snake as his god, and, which was the chief object he had in view, was in his turn appointed priest.

In Dengeh’s most flourishing days his priests were a numerous and wealthy body. Pilgrims from all parts of the group were in the habit of visiting them during important crises, in order to consult the greatest known oracle in Cannibal-land. The canoes of these pilgrims were generally well laden with every kind of Fijian property, such as clubs, spears, sacred shells, kava-root, native cloth, and, in later times, whales’ teeth, and other riches from the ships of the white man. It was the custom for the priests to throw many of these offerings into Dengeh’s caves on the Screw-pine Hills, some to remain there for ever, and others to be taken out again no doubt as soon as possible after the visitors were fairly out of sight. Whether this was done in every case or not it is certain that the greater portion of the gifts were never taken up to the hills at all, being the undisputed fees and perquisites of the priestly office. Those articles that were thrown to the god and not subsequently abstracted from the sacred treasury, were left either to rot or to remain in undisturbed quiet till the foot of the white man crashed in upon the tall reed-grass, and his native guides brought them once more into the light in various stages of decay.

In some of the sayings reported by poets and priests as Dengeh’s own, resurrection gleams appear here and there, but only very dimly, as in this one:—“In far back times when a certain corpse had lain a long period in the grave, Dengeh gave orders for it to be disinterred, but the people refused to obey. He commanded again and again, but only to be disobeyed. Whereupon he said, “Very well; do it not. Had you done what I desired, the dead body would have been restored to life, and all flesh should thereafter have taken part in a resurrection. But since you have refused to disinter this one body, all your bodies shall die once and for ever.”” In this death of the body the cannibal philosopher firmly believes.

From all that is discoverable to the contrary in the mythical accounts of Dengeh, it would seem that this god, in whose existence the Fijian had such strong faith, did at some unknown period of that existence become enshrined in the person of a great and powerful chief, probably the most wonderful man and greatest hero ever known in cannibal-land. From the time of this enshrinement till the kingdom began to decline, the interests of god and chief were one; but afterwards, when men began to regard this union as less powerful than formerly, and something which they might even venture to disregard, Dengeh left the human for the serpent form, in order to retain his influence over them and, if possible, stay the work of ruin. Of course these changes are the inventions of the priests, and not the result of any action or revelation on the part of the god himself. The lowering of the god to a hero and the raising of the hero to be one with the god, are acts perfectly consistent with cannibal mythology, in which we discover a religion that, if on its upward path of improvement, compels us to wonder greatly at its progress, seeing it has climbed to where the object of the people’s best thoughts and worship is seen clothed in god-like attributes and widely spoken of as the “Model Inventor,” the “Creator and True Appreciator of Beauty,” the “Giver of Good Things for Man’s Good and Evil Things for his Correction,” the “Great Earth-shaker” for the earth’s special benefit, and the “Rock” that knows no decay. But if, as is more probable, this religion when found by us, was on its road to ruin, our astonishment need be none the less, for then we see the soul of it struggling hard against ever-growing corruption to hold fast its first possession, or at least the next best representative of it as developed in the highest models among the worshippers themselves—the worship of Genius and Power.

Cameron, Laing & Co., Printers, 112 Flinders Lane East, Melbourne.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling. 2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed. 3. Footnotes have been re-indexed using numbers. 4. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.