NARRATIVE OF THE CRUISE. 



490 



fast and had to remain in that condition till the tide came up and turned again. Joe 

 cautioned us against jumping over into the water, as he said there were sharks. A 

 shark about 3 feet long is common as far up as Mr. Storck's plantation, and large 

 ones are believed to be common in the lower parts of the stream, and are mentioned 

 in Jackson's Narrative, in the appendix to Capt. Erskine's Islands of the Western Pacific, 

 as often taking down natives in the neighbourhood of Eewa. At Nadawa, however, 

 Mr. Page had never seen one, and I saw women there constantly standing up to their 

 necks in the water, collecting fresh water Mussels ( Unio), evidently without fear. The 

 Shark of the Wai Levu is Carcharias gangeticus, found also in the Tigris at Bagdad, 

 350 miles distant in a straight line from the sea, where it attains a length of 2i feet, 

 and is common in large rivers in India. It breeds in fresh water in Viti Levu, inhabiting 

 a lake shut off from the sea by a cataract. 1 There are sharks inhabiting fresh water in 

 other parts of the world, as in South America, in the Lake of Nicaragua ; 2 and in a 

 fresh water lake in the Philippines there lives permanently a ' ray,' a species of saw fish. 

 A peculiar genus of Mugilidse occurs in the Wai Levu, Gonostomyxus (' sa loa,' Fijian), 

 which has been described by Dr. Macdonald. 3 



" Joe was, I suppose, about thirty-five years old. He had no notion of his age, but 

 said, when asked by the interpreter in his own language, for he knew no English at all, 

 that he was five years old. When asked if he had eaten human flesh, he said ' No,' that 

 he had killed four men, but had never been allowed a taste by the chiefs ; he evidently 

 thought himself in this respect an injured man. He had had four wives. He suffered 

 much from cold on the river in the early morning ; but, dressed up in a blanket suit by 

 the blue-jackets, who were very kind to him, he managed to keep alive, and seemed to 

 enjoy himself pretty well, especially at meal times. 



" We passed a hill, opposite which the water of the river is supposed to have the effect 

 of making the whiskers and beard grow, and the spot is resorted to by young Fijians, in 

 order to force their hair. Joe said that he had been and bathed there when young. We 

 passed numerous villages on the river side, and landed at some to buy clubs, spears, kaava 

 bowls, and other implements, and the river was lively with canoes laden with yams and 

 cocoanuts. In most places the people crowded to the banks to stare at us, and the girls 

 and boys shouted as we passed. On the upper part of the river I heard a call used which 

 reminded me somewhat of a European mountaineer's ' Jodel ' ; it sounded like ' He, Hah, 

 h5, hS, h5.' Our guides to the top of the mountain in Matuku used the same call when 

 at the summit. Mountaineers in all parts of the world seem to have a similar cry ; 

 the echo no doubt provokes it. 



" One village, Navusa, some few miles above Nadawa, interested me, as having its 



1 Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 4, vol. iv. p. 36, 1874. 



2 Thos. Belt, The Naturalist in Nicaragua, p. 45, London, 1874. 



3 J. D. Macdonald, Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., p. 38 1869. 



