A SAMPLE OF POLYNESIAN WANDERINGS. 179 



of Wai- Wai, is a four-mile march, and en route I had plenty of 

 opportunity of studying native life, denuded of the semi- 

 civilisation of Levuka. The Drek-ni-wai (or river Drek) had 

 first to be crossed, and a very rapid stream it is at its mouth, 

 requiring great care in its passage. Once safe across, in an 

 anything but safe dingy, we were welcomed by a thoroughly 

 representative Anglo-Polynesian, who occupies a Fiji-built house 

 on the right of the river's mouth. Mr. Bath was one of those 

 waifs and strays of the Pacific who are in themselves a class 

 totally distinct from every other kind of settler. Bath was, I 

 understand, a sailor in the mercantile marine, and a native of 

 Wiltshire ; but many years ago he settled in Savu Savu Bay, 

 Fiji, married a native wife, and lives to a great extent a native 

 life. He seemed perfectly happy, and was surrounded by a 

 numerous progeny. I do not think I shall offend Mr. Bath by 

 calling him an original beachcomber a settler who settles to 

 make the best of everything in the Polynesian world. These men 

 constitute a strange race ; and are to be found from Christmas 

 Island in the North Pacific to the Kermadec Group in the 

 South. They have abandoned a great deal of European know- 

 ledge, and have acquired a good deal of native je ne sals quoi : 

 they are, in fact, connecting links between the aggressive Anglo- 

 tSaxon with his sugar and coffee-planting schemes, and the 

 apparently indolent aborigine, whose only thought is how to 

 kill time with the least trouble and most pleasure. No com- 

 parison is possible between the beachcombing pioneers of tho 

 Pacific and the early settlers in any other part of the world. 

 There is a poetry about these men (a rough class of poetry, it. 

 is true) which one finds it very difficult to convey in words. 

 Some of them have possessed a fair amount of education, and 

 at one time were Europeans in tastes and habits ; but once 

 among the islands, Polynesian life was too attractive for them. 



19 2 



AM ^ 



