A HISTORY OF FIJI 295 



It is a common mistake to assume that social anarchy is the rule in 

 primitive communities ; for the reverse is true, and savage races are the 

 ones par excellence most dominated by established forms, their system 

 of life remaining unchanged for generation after generation. This is 

 illustrated most clearly in an interesting paper by Lord Amherst of 

 Hackney and Basil Thomson published by the Hakluyt Society of 

 London in 1901, which shows that, since their discovery in 1568, the 

 customs of the Solomon islanders have remained absolutely unaltered, 

 until crushed under the rule of white men. 



Among these fixed customs of savage tribes, some are actually better 

 than our own. Thus in Fiji prostitution was checked as effectively as 

 any mere system could prevent it. This was accomplished by obliging 

 all the unmarried men to sleep each night in a special house, the 

 Mbure-ni-sa, or men's house, while the virgins were kept at home with 

 their parents. 



Indeed, the use of the Mbure-ni-sa was even extended, under cer- 

 tain conditions, to the married men. There were no milk-producing 

 animals in Fiji, and the food of the natives is still so deficient in animal 

 proteids that it can hardly afford sufficient nourishment for healthy 

 growth until the child is nearly four years old. Accordingly, when a 

 child was born, husband and wife separated; she going to live for a 

 year with her mother's relatives, and he to sleep for the following 

 two or three years in the Mbure with the unmarried men. Thus 

 throughout the suckling period the risk of a new conception was avoided, 

 and the full strength of the mother was preserved to nourish her infant. 



Unhappily, the Europeans saw fit to break up this system, main- 

 taining that it interfered with family life and was destructive of mutual 

 affection. The tabu having thus been abolished, conceptions often 

 occur within a year following the birth of a child, and the mother's 

 milk is rendered inefficient as a means of nourishment, while at the 

 same time the drain upon her strength is so great that the unborn child 

 may not properly develop. Thus the new system has increased the 

 birth-rate, but at the same time produces weak, sickly infants whose 

 death-rate is far greater than in former times. This indeed is one of 

 the most potent causes of the decrease of the Fijian population, espe- 

 cially as the married women now attempt to escape the strain of these 

 exhausting pregnancies by resorting to abortion, a practise which has 

 increased in recent years to the serious impairment of the vitality of 

 the race. 



Moreover, the abolition of the Mbure-ni-sa has brought about a too 

 sudden and promiscuous commingling of the young men and women, 

 and the commission appointed by the British government to inquire 

 into the causes which are producing the decline of the Fijian population 

 has decided that sexual depravity has increased since the abandon- 



