Vatulele
p. 10 · Read in the full issue
Prawns and Paintings
Written for The Pacific Islands Monthly by J. H. L. Waterhouse, F.R.G.S., F.R.A.I.
PASSENGERS by the Vancouver and ’Frisco mail boats pass quite close to a most interesting but little known island in the Fiji Group. Vatulele, though only a few hours’ steam from busy Suva, is but little visited by white folk, mainly, perhaps, owing to lack of good anchorage.
The island, so runs Fijian tradition, was originally a bare reef. Then, in the time of the great snake-god, Degei, came the mythical Deluge, in which a great banyan tree was swept down from the distant Kauvadra range on Viti Levu and carried far out to sea till it stranded on the reef. The earth still clinging to the banyan’s roots was the commencement of the transformation of Vatulele into an inhabitable island.
When the writer’s kinsman, the author of “The King and People of
Fiji” visited the island some 70 vears ago, the local natives proudly exhibited their “ura buta,” or cooked prawns.
These are so called from the strange fact of their exhibiting, while still alive and kicking in their rock ponds, the red colour of the enticing article exhibited in the fish shop windows. The story of the “cooked prawns” as then related to the visitor was as follows: A Vatulele god dess with the formidable name of Lewenicagi bula, was being
courted by a certain admirer, Lalai, who brought some live prawns as a gift.
Fijian etiquette prescribed ready-cooked food for these love gifts so that it was not strange when the recipient of the prawns at once proceeded to sample them. Disgusted and angry at finding that the crustaceans were raw, the god dess threw them away, and there they are still, alive and red.
Primitive Art
But Australans will be more inter ested perhaps in the reported discovery of rock paintings or drawings within a few hundred yards of the abode af the “cooked prawns.”
Mr. R. W. Paine, the entomologist whose research work in Fiji and the British Solomon Islands Protectorate has attracted attention in scientific circles, has published an interesting account of his discovery in “Man,” the official organ of the Royal Anthropo logical Institute.
The rock paintings, which in some cases show a marked resemblance to the handiwork of the Australian Abo rigines, include representations of the Fijian native bush-fowl —unhappily now extinct on so many islands in the Group—pigeons and human faces and hand outlines.
Mr. Paine says: “The paintings are, where least weathered, brick red in colour, the latter resembling rather closely that obtained from the bark of a species of mangrove (the doga tree of the Fijians) used by the natives as a dye. They show up quite distinctly against the pale grey surface of the limestone cliff.”
It has been suggested that the paint ings were done by shipwrecked sailors, but this can hardly be, as “the face of the cliff hereabouts is quite perpendi cular and remarkably smooth, so that an artist wishing at the present time to avail himself of that portion of the rock occupied by the ancient paintings would be obliged to use a ladder or to have himself lowered from the top of the cliff by means of a rope.”
As there are evidences of a “recent negative movement” on Vatulele, simi lar to that described by the American geologists, H. S. Ladd and J. E. Hoff meister, on the nearby mainland of Viti Levu, it is, as Mr. Paine suggests, “conceivable that when the paintings were made that part of the cliff on which they appear was nearer sea level.”
The discovery certainly seems to war rant further investigation, both from its possible geological interest and with a view to careful comparison with Aus tralian rock paintings. With regard to the paintings, there does not appear to be any record of similar primitive art elsewhere in Fiji.