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H. Wilfrid Walker - Wanderings Among South Sea Savages
verandah. Ratu Lala had two grown-up daughters by other wives, but they never came to the house,
living in an adjoining hut where I often joined them at a game of cards. They were both very stately and
beautiful young women, with a haughty bearing which made me imagine that they were filled with a
sense of their own importance.
As is well known all over Fiji, Ratu Lala, a few years before my stay with him, had been deported in
disgrace for a term of several months, to the island of Viti Levu, where he would be under the paternal
eye of the government. This was because he had punished a woman, who had offended him, by pegging
her down on an ants' nest, first smearing her all over with honey, so that the ants would the more readily
eat her.[4] She recovered afterwards, but was badly eaten. As regards his punishment, he told me that he
greatly enjoyed his exile, as he had splendid fishing, and some of the white people sent him champagne.
His people were terribly afraid of him, and whenever they passed him as he sat on his verandah, they
would almost go down on all fours. He told me how on one occasion when he was sitting on the upper
verandah of the Club Hotel in Suva with two of his servants squatting near by, the whisky he had drunk
had made him feel so sleepy, that he nearly fell into the street below, but his servants dared not lay hands
on him to pull him back into safety, as his body was considered sacred by his people, and they dared not
touch him. He declared to me that he would have been killed if a white man had not arrived just in time.
He was very fond of telling me this story, and always laughed heartily over it. I noticed that Ratu Lala's
servants treated me with a great deal of respect, and whenever they passed me in the house they would
walk in a crouching attitude, with their heads almost touching the ground.
Ratu Lala's cousin, Ratu Kandavu Levu, is a very enthusiastic cricketer, and has a very good cricket club
with a pavilion at his island of Bau. He plays many matches against the white club in Suva, and only last
year he took an eleven over to Australia to tour that country. I learned that previous to my visit he had
paid a visit to Ratu Lala, and while there had got up a match at Somo-somo in which he induced Ratu
Lala to play, but on Ratu Lala being given out first ball for nought, he (Ratu Lala) pulled up the stumps
and carried them off the ground, and henceforth forbade any of his people to play the game on the island
of Taviuni. I was not aware of this, and as I had brought a bat and ball with me, I got up several games
shortly after my arrival. However, one evening all refused to play, but gave no reasons for their refusal,
but Tolu told me that his master did not like to have them play. Then I learned the reason, and from that
time I noticed a decided coolness on the part of Ratu Lala toward me. The fact, no doubt, is that Ratu
Lala being exceptionally keen on sport, this very keenness made him impatient of defeat, or even of any
question as to a possible want of success on his part, as I afterwards learnt on our expedition to Ngamia.
I intended upon leaving Taviuni to return to Levuka, and from thence go by cutter to the island of Vanua
Levu, and journey up the Wainunu River, plans which I ultimately carried out. Ratu Lala, however,
wished me to proceed in his boat straight across to the island of Vanua Levu, and walk across a long
stretch of very rough country to the Wainunu River. My only objection was that I had a large and heavy
box, which I told Ratu Lala I thought was too large to be carried across country. He at once flew into a
violent passion and declared that I spoke as if I considered he was no prince. "For," said he, "if ten of my
subjects cannot carry your box I command one hundred to do so, and if one hundred of my subjects
cannot carry your box I tell fifteen thousand of my subjects to do so." When I tried to picture fifteen
thousand Fijians carrying my wretched box, it was altogether too much for my sense of humour, and I
burst forth into a hearty roar of laughter, which so incensed the Prince that he shut himself up in his own
room during the few remaining days of my stay.
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