620 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION G. 
5.—OBSERVATIONS ON THE HILL TRIBES OF 
NAVITILEVU, FIJI. 
By the Rev. Arrnur J. Wess, of Goulburn, N.S.W. 
Fist is an archipelago containing 220 islands, 80 of them 
inhabited. Two of these, Na Vitilevu and Vanua Levu, are of 
considerable size, and are not only largely peopled along the coast 
line, but the hills and valleys of the interior are held by 
mountaineers. The largest island, Na Vitilevu, has a numerous 
hill population, of which very little was known until late years. 
The country is extremely mountainous, but fertile, and abundantly 
watered ; the food supply is large, and the air healthy ; and the 
people are well developed, particularly so in the calves of their 
legs, and are superior in physical energy to those of the coast. 
The character of the land is sharply divided into the timbered 
and grassy divisions, and the people are divided into two colours, 
the black and the red men, the latter, by tradition, being descen- 
dants of a Tongan party once cast upon the shores of Nadroga, 
on the west coast. The black race, again, is divided into a class 
of tall, handsome natives, and a class of smaller, less pleasing 
folk. There are reasons for believing the mountaineers to be the 
oldest inhabitants of the country, having been, in all probability, 
the first settlers on the coast, and presumably driven by later 
arrivals back into the hills. Some communities among them 
claim to have come from people who have long been settled on 
the sea shore, and tribes on the coast claim to have descended 
from others in the hills. But on the south-west part of the great 
island are people who seem to be distinct in some respects from 
the rest of the Fijians, not only in speech, but in temperament 
and habits, and in the very shape of their houses. Their huts on 
the south-west end of Na Vitilevu are square, with one central 
post, and a round-shaped roof ; the dwellings everywhere else in 
Fiji being more akin to European shape. A remnant of a tribe 
still exists in the middle of the island, called Na Kai Navitilevu 
(the people of Navitilevu). Whether this fact indicates that they 
were the original holders of the island is a matter of conjecture. 
Many of the men are fine looking, though in their heathen state 
frequently characterised by a peculiarly furtive and savage glance. 
The women, as a rule, are remarkably plain, and in many cases 
ugly, their hard life no doubt contributing to this. The hill 
languages strike the ear as less euphonious than the other dialects 
of Fiji; they are harder to understand, and peculiarly difficult to 
imitate. To hear a mountaineer speak first his own fafozs, and 
then the smoother dialect of Bau or Rewa, would make the 
listener doubt as to whether it was the same man speaking. They 
Se | ee ee 
