A HISTORY OF FIJI 39 



The floor is covered with several layers of pendamu mats, and a raised 

 dais at one end of the single room serves as a bed and may be screened 

 by mosquito-proof curtains of masi (tapa). A rectangular earth-cov- 

 ered depression serves for the fireplace and the smoke escapes as best 

 it may, the smoldering embers imparting always a pleasant aroma to 

 the air. 



In speaking of everything Fijian, we must remember that the 

 peoples of the Ea, or western islands of the Archipelago, and of the 

 mountains, are of purer Papuan stock and are more primitive than 

 those of the Vititonga race of the Lau group and the eastern coasts of 

 the large island. Accordingly, the houses differ in different places, 

 being smaller, more crudely and flimsily made among the Papuan than 

 among the Vititonga tribes. Also in the western parts of the large 

 islands and in the Ea islands, the chiefs are not so highly respected as 

 among tribes whose blood has been mingled with the aristocratic Poly- 

 nesian. At Mbau, the Eoko Tui was almost god-like in native estima- 

 tion, whereas in the mountains of Vita Levu the chief was only the 

 leading councilor of the tribe, and labored in the fields in common with 

 his subjects. Indeed the Mbau chiefs looked down upon those of the 

 western part of Viti Levu, calling them Kai-si (peasants). 



If the house were that of a high chief, as at Mbau or Eewa, the 

 roof-beams were wrapped with interlacing strands of cocoanut fiber 

 sennit, displaying a pattern in rich browns, black and yellow, so pleas- 

 ingly contrasted that one is forced to regret that work of such high 

 artistic merit should be suffered to remain in a house as inflammable 

 as a haystack. Yet these houses withstand a hurricane far better than 

 do the hideous corrugated-iron-roofed structures of Europeans. 



Several old wooden basins, yaqona bowls, are hung upon the wall, 

 their naturally dark wood coated with pearly blue where many a brew- 

 ing of the drink has stained them. Carved war-clubs and long elab- 

 orately decorated spears may be seen suspended from the beams, and 

 as the eye becomes accustomed to the dim light one beholds such treas- 

 ures as a sperm whale's tooth strung as were old-fashioned powder 

 horns upon a rope of cocoanut fiber and polished through repeated rub- 

 bings with cocoanut oil until its surface is as brown as tinted meer- 

 schaum. A few fly-brushes, pandamus fans for awakening the fire, a 

 huge ceremonial war-fan of palm-leaf, some wooden food bowls, and 

 crude cooking pots of fire-baked clay, and a clock that never goes, com- 

 plete the list of the furniture. Yet one thing of painful memory one 

 would fain have overlooked — the universal pillow. This consists of a 

 block of wood or stick of bamboo supported upon legs so that it stands 

 horizontally four or five inches above the floor. In old days when the 

 hair was most elaborately dressed and trained into a huge mop, this 

 pillow was doubtless a necessity, but in this shaven and shorn period of 



