Australia -- Description and travel; New Zealand -- Description and travel; Windsor, Edward, Duke of, 1894-1972
Sir Cecil Rodwell, High Commissioner of the Western Pacific, and Mr.
Scott, Mayor of Suva, representatives of the present system of rule,
came out by launch to the _Renown_, to pay their respects as soon as the
anchor was down. There was no official landing till the following
morning, when in hot sunshine alternating with warm, driving rain the
Prince went ashore at Suva. The entire population of the town, a place
of some six thousand inhabitants, was there to welcome him. In front,
the principal European residents, with a contingent of leading Fijian
chiefs, and representatives of the large Indian community, all in
western dress, were lined up to be presented. Behind stood a
well-drilled guard-of-honour of Fijians, in khaki, with heads protected
from the fierce rays of the sun by hair that might be the despair and
envy of the boulevards, twelve inches _en brosse_, and of a ferocity!
Further on were a number of European returned soldiers, with hospital
nurses, and other war workers, also returned members of a Fijian labour
corps which had done good service in France and Italy. The whole
assemblage was surrounded by a polyglot crowd of Islanders and Indians
in all the picturesqueness of Polynesian and Oriental garb. Municipal,
Fijian, Indian, and missionary addresses were afterwards presented, and
inspections, investitures, and receptions held, a state dinner and a
ball being amongst the functions provided.
Fijian national ceremonies took place in the afternoon, the principal
being the solemn presentation by the chiefs and headmen of "tahua" (the
whale's tooth) in token of fealty. This was celebrated, immediately
after heavy rain, on a meadow crowded with aborigines. The actors were
half a hundred well-fed, semi-naked Fijians, clad in nothing but sooty
face-paint, white cloth bustles, and loin-robes of green, pink, and
white fibre-ribbons. The general effect produced was that of an animated
contingent of frilled ham-bones that waved, leapt, swayed and chanted,
sometimes upright, sometimes squatting upon the sodden turf, a scene of
almost disconcerting gaiety. The whale teeth were handed to the Prince
by a white-robed hereditary courtier, and were the size and shape of
yellow cucumbers, strung together with coloured thread. The acceptance
produced a chorus of deep resonant grunts of "Daweha"--"It is taken."
There followed the no less solemn ceremony of preparing and drinking the
"Kava," the produce of the Yaqona root, to cement the bonds of
friendship. The emptying of the last coco-nut cup of this
sharp-flavoured, cloudy liquid was greeted with loud cries of
"Mada"--"It is dry."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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