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Popular Science Monthly

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yearly tribute to the chief either in produce or in service. Thus this form of personal lala is simply rent. The whole subject of land-ownership has given the poor English a world of trouble, as one may see who cares to read the official reports of the numerous intricate cases that have come before the courts. For example, one party based their claims to land on the historic fact that their ancestors had eaten the chief of the original owners, and the solemn British court allowed the claim. Basil Thomson in his interesting work upon "The Fijians; a Study of the Decline of Custom," has given an authoritative summary of the present status of taxation and land tenure, land being registered under a modification of the Australian Torrens system. In order to protect these child-like people from the avarice of our own race they are not permitted to sell their lands, and the greater portion of the area of Fiji is still held by the natives. The Hawaiian Islands now under our own rule furnish a sad contrast, for here the natives are reduced by poverty to a degraded state but little above that of peonage. The Fijians. on the other hand, may not sell, but may with the consent of the commissioner of native affairs lease their lands for a period of not more than twenty years. The Fijians appear never to have been wholly without a medium of exchange, for sperm-whale's teeth have always had a recognized purchasing power, but are more especially regarded as a means of expressing good will and honesty of purpose. A whale's tooth is as effective to secure compliance with the terms of a bargain as an elaborately engraved bond would be with us. More commonly, however, exchanges are direct, each man bringing to the village green his taro, yaqona, yams or fish and exchanging with his neighbors; the rare disputes being settled by the village chief. In traveling you will discover no hotels, but will be entertained in the stranger's houses, and in return for your host's hospitality you should make presents to the chief. Indeed to journey in good fashion you should be accompanied by a train of bearers carrying heavy bags full of purposed gifts, and nowhere in the world is the "rate per mile" higher than in Polynesia. As in all communities, including our own world of finance, a man's wealth consists not only in what he possesses but even more so in the number of people from whom he can beg or borrow. Wilkes records an interesting example of this, for he found that the rifle and other costly presents he had presented to King Tanoa were being seized upon by his (Tanoa's) nephew who as his vasu had a right to take whatever he might select from the king's possessions. Indeed, in order to keep his property in sight, Tanoa was forced to give it to his own sons, thus escaping the rapacity of his nephew. The construction of the British law is such that a vasu who thus appropriates property to himself could be sued and forced to restore it, but not a single Fijian has yet been so mean as to bring such a matter into court. An individual as such can hardly be said to own property, for nearly all things belong to his family or clan, and are shared among cousins. This condition is responsible for that absence of personal ambition and that fatal contentment with existing conditions, which strikes the white man as so illogical, but which is nevertheless the dominant feature of the social fabric of the Polynesians, and which has hitherto prevented the introduction of "ideals of modern progress." The natives are happy; why work when every reasonable want is already supplied? None are rich in material things, but none are beggars excepting in the sense that all are such. No one can be a miser, a capitalist, a banker, or a "promoter" in such a community, and thieves are almost unknown. Indeed, the honesty of the Fijians is one of those virtues which has excited the comment of travelers. Wilkes, who loathed them as "condor-eyed savages," admits that the only thing which any native attempted to steal from the Peacock was a hatchet, and upon being detected the chief requested the privilege of taking the man ashore in order that he might be roasted and eaten. Theft was always severely punished by the chief; Maafu beating a thief with the stout stalk of a cocoanut leaf until the culprit's life was despaired of, and Tui Thakau wrapping one in a tightly wound rope so that not a muscle could move while the wretch remained exposed for an entire day to the heat of the sun. During Professor Alexander Agassiz's cruises in which he visited nearly every island of the Fijis, and the natives came on board by hundreds, not a single object was stolen, although things almost priceless in native estimation lay loosely upon the deck. Once, indeed, when the deck was deserted by both officers and crew and fully a hundred natives were on board, we found a man who had been gazing wistfully for half an hour at a bottle which lay upon the laboratory table. Somehow he had managed to acquire a shilling, a large coin in Fiji, and this he offered in exchange for the coveted bottle. One can never forget his shout of joy and the radiance of his honest face as he leaped into his canoe after having received it as a gift. Even the great chief Ratu Epele of Mbau beamed with joy when presented with a screw-capped glass tobacco jar, and Tui Thakau of Somo somo had a veritable weakness for bottles and possessed a large collection of these treasures. Intelligent and well-educated natives who know whereof they speak have told me that they desire not the white man's system, entailing as it does untold privation and heart-burnings to the many that the few may enjoy a surfeit of mere material things. As the natives say, "The white man possesses more than we, but his life is full of toil and sorrow, while our days are happy as they pass." Thus in the Pacific life is of to-day; the past is dead, and the future when it comes will pass as to-day is passing. Life is a dream, an evanescent thing, all but meaningless, and real only as is the murmur of the surf when the sea-breeze comes in the morning, and man awakens from the oblivion of night. Hoarded wealth inspires no respect in the Pacific, and indeed, were it discovered, its possession would justify immediate confiscation. Yet man must raise idols to satisfy his instinct

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