676 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



dressed the ancestor gods : " ye, our fathers ! be not angry with 

 us. We, your children, bring you this miserably inadequate feast 

 from our impoverished gardens, this wretched root of yagona for 

 you to drink. We are poor, we are miserable. And another thing 

 be not angry with us if, for a while, we give up worshiping you. 

 It is our mind to worship the foreigner's God for a while, yet, 

 nevertheless, be not angry with us." Then the ancestor gods ate 

 the spiritual essence of the yams, and the missionary lunched on 

 its grosser material fiber, and enjoyed it greatly. 



In 1876 the natives of Fiji had all nominally embraced Chris- 

 tianity outwardly they conformed to the new faith but at the 

 end of 1885 strange rumors were brought to the coast by native 

 travelers from the mountains. A prophet had arisen, who was 

 passing through the villages, saying to the people, " Leave all 

 and follow me." His teachings were an ingenious compound of 

 Christianity and heathenism. He said that when Nacirikaumoli 

 and Nakausabaria (two of the ancestral chiefs, described in their 

 Saga) sailed away after their defeat by Degei, they went to the 

 land of the white men, who wrote a book about them, which is 

 the Bible ; only they lied about their names, falsely calling them 

 Jehovah and Jesus. They were about to appear and bring with 

 them all the ancestors of the Fijians. The millennium would 

 come, the missionaries and the Government would be driven into 

 the sea, and every one of the faithful would have shopfuls of 

 English goods. Those who believed that he was sent before, to 

 prepare their way would have immortality, but the unbelieving 

 would perish. The white men who came in the men-of-war, look- 

 ing through glass instruments, who falsely said that they were 

 surveying, were really looking for the coming of the divine twins. 

 In the meantime the faithful were to drill as soldiers and the 

 women to minister in the temples. Temples were secretly built 

 at Drau-ni-ivi and other places, and behind the curtain, where the 

 priest and the women sat, the god might be heard to descend with 

 a low, whistling sound. There was some controversy between the 

 faithful whether Degei was God or the devil. Many inclined to 

 the latter belief, because Satan took serpent form, and the tradi- 

 tions describe Degei as a gigantic serpent lying coiled in his cave 

 in Uakauvadra, and causing thunder when he turns his huge 

 bulk. The new prophet fixed the day for the resurrection of the 

 ancestors, but he was arrested and deported to Rotuma, and the 

 outbreak was stamped out for a time ; but in 1892 it reappeared, 

 and the Government then decided to remove the village of Drau- 

 ni-ivi, the fount of all these superstitions, and the houses were re- 

 moved and the site leveled to the ground. We have by no means, 

 however, heard the last of Fijian mythology. There was another 

 outbreak about a year ago. 



