RELIGION, PAST AND PRESENT. 59 



CHAPTER VIII. 



RELIGION, PAST AND PRESENT. 



IN Fiji the traveller is face to face not only with the Anglo- 

 Saxon, safe under the British flag, but with a Christian native 

 population who have only just emerged from the most horrible 

 forms of cannibalism. On all sides he will see traces of the 

 ancient devil-worship, but he will also notice how the majority 

 of the traditions of heathenism, though dying very hard, are 

 fading away, while all that is good in the old system is being 

 carefully adapted, so as to fit in with the Christianity now 

 professed. Fiji has been the last stronghold of organised and 

 systematic cannibalism, and though the history of the religion 

 and customs of Fiji prior to the country's general acceptance 

 of Wesleyan and Catholic teaching may be steeped in horrors, 

 it will be of interest to the student in after years, who will 

 marvel, in the presence of a Christian and industrious popula- 

 tion, that they ever could have had such a ferociously blood- 

 thirsty ancestry. 



I make no apology, therefore, for dwelling at some length 

 on the manners and customs of the Fijians of the 'good old 

 times,' especially as, intermingled with Catholic and Wesleyan 

 Christianity, much of the old leaven remains. My knowledge 

 of the language is so imperfect, that it is impossible for me to 

 say exactly how much still exists, though I judge that a few 

 more years will see the end of every trace of devil-worship 

 and its concomitants. 



The Fijians will, I apprehend, never in our time grasp the 

 spirit of our religion as we do, but marvellous progress ha s 

 been made, and although it may be fashionable to sneer at 

 missionaries and mission work, it is just as well now and then 



