290 FIJI ISLANDS. 



One feature of interest in the Fijis, which I have forgotten to 

 mention, arises from the importation of labour. At Levuka 

 are to be seen men from the New Hebrides and Solomon 

 Islanders. Further, the curious straight-haired, most character- 

 istically featured Tokelau race, or Union Islanders, mostly 

 girls : also Tongans and Samoans and a few Negroes from the 

 United States. Representatives from almost all Polynesia 

 assemble here, and may be studied by the Anthropologist. 



Nothing surprised me more than the great power of the 

 chiefs in Fiji, and the absolute subserviency of the lower classes 

 to them. The reality of the various grades of rank amongst 

 such savages, and the abject condition of the slaves, were facts 

 which I had not previously realized. 



Facial expression is far less marked in the Fijians than the 

 Tongans. Amongst the lower classes there is a remarkable 

 want of expression ; there is also, as far as I saw, entire absence 

 of gesticulation during conversation. The methods of affirma- 

 tion and beckoning are the same as in Tonga ; the throwing up 

 of the head in affirmation is common to many races, being used 

 by the New Zealanders, Abyssinians, and Tagals of Luzon."''' 

 The forehead muscles are little used, at least by the ordinary 

 people. Amongst the families of the chiefs there is much 

 Tongan blood. Thackombau wrinkled his forehead constantly 

 during his conversation with our party, and one of the moun- 

 taineer prisoners whom I saw at Livoni in Ovalau, knit his 

 brows frequently when I was asking him about his eating 

 human flesh. 



Our interpreter, an Englishman, who had married a Fijian 

 woman, and who knew the people well, told me that old 

 women sometimes clap the hands twice in expressing astonish- 

 ment. This habit of expression is evidently derived from the 

 clapping of hands in expressing respect to a chief, and is 

 interesting as showing how peculiar means of expression may 

 thus be of entirely artificial origin. The clapping of hands is 

 used as a ceremony of respect to superiors in Japan, as at the 

 funeral of Okubo, the minister lately assassinated in Yedo, at 

 which " all present saluted the deceased with three claps of the 

 hands." t 



The interpreter further said that the mountaineers in express- 

 ing astonishment, shake backwards and forwards transversely 

 once or twice, the right hand held hanging back foremost from 

 the half-extended arm ; a similar gesture is stated by Darwin 

 to be used by Northern Australian natives, to express negation. 

 A short click made with the tongue and repeated severa 



* C. Darwin, "The Expressions of the Emotions," p. 275. 

 t "The Japan Mail," June 6, 1878, p. 306. 



