Sydney Porter—Notes on Birds of Fiji



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Parrakeet in its native haunts. However, half-way across the engines

started up again, so back we went and our banana trading began in

earnest.


That Kandavu is intensely picturesque goes without saying, also

that it would satisfy the most ambitious imagination as to what a

South Sea island should be like. About 32 miles long and varying

from one to eight miles in width, it is composed entirely of steep

razor backed mountain ranges covered for the main part with dense

tropical forest, which has yet to be explored. There are limpid blue

lagoons where the graceful green palms for ever look down at their own

beautiful reflections mirrored in the calm waters beneath ; there is

a narrow strip of gleaming white coral strand and then the emerald

green jungle, mysterious and fascinating to a degree.


The villages are all one expects, and are typical of the islands. On

an area of close-cropped, vivid green grass, situated by the seashore and

beneath a canopy of waving coco-nut palms with their ever trembling

fronds and tall spreading native trees as often as not covered with a

profusion of sweet scented blossoms, are a dozen or two picturesque and

spacious native houses made of reeds and beautifully thatched. All

around are set bushes of the scarlet hibiscus, sweet-scented lilies, and

various flowering shrubs whose perfumed blossoms are used to decorate

the enormous bushy heads of hair of the native belles, while the men,

or at least some of the handsome village beaux, pencil round their eyes

with charcoal and sometimes wear behind an ear a hibiscus blossom.

Both the men and the women take an immense pride in their mops of

frizzy hair and the combs they use have teeth about 8 inches long !

The women mostly dye their hair red with some kind of earth.


The natives are a delightful crowd and one would little dream

that their grandfathers were the most ferocious and bloodthirsty

cannibals ever known. Their cannibalistic orgies make one sick to

read about. Fortunately that is, all past now and their descendants

hardly seem to have a care in the world, except the trouble of finding

the excessive Government tax. This is £2 2s. per annum, which to us

over-taxed people seems small enough. But the native has no income

and no money, neither does he know the value of it; half the sum

for which the bananas are sold has to be paid by the trader to the



