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On the skulls of the American tribes, see Nott and Gliddon, 'Types of Mankind, 1854, p. 440; Prichard, 'Physical History of Mankind, vol. i. 3rd ed. p. 321; on the natives of Arakhan, ibid. vol. iv. p. 537. Wilson, 'Physical Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, 1863, p. 288; on the Fijians, p. 290.
The islands of the Fijians are but small; no Fijian Attila can lead forth his hosts into neighboring countries; no Fijian Goths can pour down from Polynesian Alps into an Oceanic Italy; no Athenians can there send sons and gods to a Coreyra: and no Fijian Miles Standish can there walk up and down before his pipe-clayed bandoleers in foreign colonies.
"No, not for a long time, but I did hear that the American corvette Adams was expected here last year, but she must have passed by here, and gone on to Fiji There is always work for a man-of-war there at any time the Fijians are a rough lot, and hardly a month passes without some European trader or sailor being killed and eaten, or else badly hurt.
And yet everything he saw would be natural just as natural as all this is, once we get the answer to it. Not that we're Fijians, of course, but the principle is the same." The Norseman considered this; nodded gravely. "Ja!" he answered at last. "And at least we can fight. That is why I have turned to Thor of the battles, Ja! And one have I hope in for mine Helma the white maiden.
One sea product, the bêche-de-mer, a marine animal commonly called "sea-cucumber," is highly prized by the Chinese, who use large quantities; most of it is gathered by the Fijians. Sugar, however, is the chief product of the islands, and the sugar plantations are owned by great companies that have invested millions of pounds sterling in the business.
The Fijians generally fished with nets and a many-pronged fish-spear, with which they are very expert, and I saw them do wonderful work with them. They also used long wicker-work traps. Ratu Lala, on the contrary, being half-civilized, used an English rod and reel or line like a white man. Ratu Lala told the women here to give an exhibition of surf-board swimming for my benefit.
God is neither a spirit nor a body; but rather like Ndengei of the Fijians: "an impersonation of the abstract idea of eternal existence;" one who is to be "regarded as a deathless Being, no question of 'spirit' being raised;" so that the first intuition of the unsophisticated mind is found to be in more substantial agreement with the last results of reflex philosophical thought, than those early philosophizings which halt between the affirmation and denial of bodily attributes, unable to prescind from the difficulty and unable to solve it.
I have never seen it in a platform of grievances, but it is true that among the Fijians she is not, unless a better civilization has wrought a change in her behalf, permitted to eat people, even her own sex, at the feasts of the men; the dainty enjoyed by the men being considered too good to be wasted on women. Is anything wanting to this picture of the degradation of woman?
"I am tired almost to death! This country visiting is an intolerable bore! I am worn out with small talk and back-biting. Society nowadays is composed of cannibals infinitely more to be dreaded than the Fijians who only devour the body and leave the character of an individual intact. Child, let us have some music by way of variety.
Fijian, or Fijician, results, by a slight change of letters, from the word Phoenician; and there can be no doubt that the Fijians are descendants of those Phoenicians who, according to Herodotus, sailed, in the reign of the Egyptian King Necho, from the Persian Gulf round the Cape of Good Hope, and entered the Mediterranean through the Pillars of Hercules.
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