South Sea Yarns

Published in London in 1894. Very informative book on the South Seas. (376 pages)

The Publisher has copy-edited this book to improve the formatting, style and accuracy of the text to make it readable. This did not involve changing the substance of the text.

Contents:
A Court-Day In Fiji -- The Last Of The Cannibal Chiefs -- Tauyasa Of Naselai, Reformer -- A Coolie Princess -- Leone Of Notho -- Raluve -- The Rain-Makers -- Makereta -- Romeo And Juliet -- The Woman Finau -- In The Old Whaling Days -- The Fiery Furnace -- Friendship -- The Hermit Of Boot Island -- The Wars Of The Fishing-Rod -- The First Colonist.

Excerpts:
.....Out of the many cannibals and ex-cannibals I have known, I will choose the most striking figure as the subject of this sketch. I first met the Buli of Nandrau in the autumn of 1886, when I took over the Resident Commissionership of part of the mountain district of Fiji. His history had been an eventful one, and while he had displayed those qualities that would most win the admiration of Fijians, to us he could not be otherwise than a remarkable character. Far away, in the wild and rugged country in which the great rivers Rewa and Singatoka take their rise, he was born to be chief of a fierce and aggressive tribe of mountaineers. Constantly engaged in petty intertribal wars, while still a young man he had led them from victory to victory, until they had fought their way into perhaps the most picturesque valley in all picturesque Fiji. Here, perched above the rushing Singatoka, and overshadowed by two tremendous precipices which allowed the sun to shine upon them for barely three hours a-day, they built their village, and here they became a name and a terror to all the surrounding tribes. A few miles lower down the river stood the almost impregnable rock-fortress of the Vatusila tribe, and these became the stanch allies of Nandrau. Together they broke up the powerful Noikoro, exacted tribute from them, and made the river theirs as far as Korolevu; together they blotted out the Naloto, who held the passes to the northern coast, killing in one day more than four hundred of them, and driving the remnant as outcasts into the plain. Long after the white men had made their influence felt throughout Fiji,--long after the chief of Bau was courted as King of Fiji,--these two tribes, secure in their mountain fastnesses, lived their own life, and none, whether Fijian or white man, dared pass over their borders.

.....This is a true story, or at least it is as true as any other that depends for its details upon tradition. It is the story of a man who had an opportunity and used it; who, being but a shipwrecked sailor, knew how to make himself feared and respected by the arrogant chiefs who had him at their mercy; who tasted the sweets of conquest and political power; and who brought about, albeit indirectly, the cession of Fiji to England. Many have the dry bones of the story--how the Swede, Charles Savage, a shipwrecked sailor or runaway convict, armed with the only musket in the islands, raised Bau from the position of a second-rate native tribe to be mistress of the greater part of the group; and how after a few years of violence and bloodshed he was killed and eaten by the people of Wailea who thus avenged hundreds of their countrymen whom Savage had helped to bring to the ovens of Bau. To clothe these dry bones with living flesh we must turn to native tradition,--those curious records, often silent as to great events, while preserving the most trivial details--often indifferent to sequence, always disdainful of chronology.