CHAPTER V 
OUR EXPERIENCES ON VITILEVU, FIJI 
The Fiji club was a welcome relief after the somewhat strenu- 
ous life at Makuluva. There was a comfortable writing room 
where we could bring our notes and correspondence up to date or 
read the latest papers from New Zealand, and others which were 
about a month old, from England. I saw no papers or magazines 
from the United States and we were thus completely isolated, so 
far as home news was concerned. 
About five in the afternoon the club members, almost all of 
them colonial officials, assembled for a social hour or two before 
dinner. As seems almost universally the case, the colonials are 
not teetotalers by any means, neither were they worried by pro- 
hibition laws. 
The house servants were Indians, in red fez and white coats, 
and they were quite efficient. We were somewhat surprised to 
note that the doors and windows of the club house were always: 
open, even at night when the lights were out and everyone sound 
asleep. This denoted a sense of security from thieves that was 
novel to us, especially in a city as large as Suva; but the club 
officials assured us that there was no danger of anything being 
stolen, so sure were they of the honesty of both the Indians and 
native Fijians. Indeed, the only case of thievery we knew of was 
when some money, a silk scarf and other small articles were taken 
trom Glock’s room when we stopped at the Grand Pacifie Hotel 
just after landing. This we attributed to the fact that this hotel 
was the most thoroughly Europeanized house in Fiji. 
My most interesting experience in Vitilevu was a visit to Ratu 
Popé of Bau, who, Secretary Fell assured us, was the most power- 
ful of the present Fijian chiefs. The trip was arranged through 
Mr. Stewart who was, I understand, the Secretary of Native 
Affairs under the Colonial Government. I had also a personal 
letter of introduction to Ratu Popé from Secretary Fell. An 
American railroad man, Mr. Welch, with some other tourists, 
chartered a launch for a trip to Bau, and through their courtesy 
I took advantage of this arrangement instead of trying to get a 
89 
