Those Things That Make Fiji

Book Reviews

MR. R. A. DERRICK calls his new book on Fiji (The Fiji Islands) a “hand book and not a text book.” If by that he means that it is more interesting to read than a text-book, he is quite cor rect. But it contains such a wealth of information about the Colony that it can be regarded as a happy combination of the two.

Mr. Derrick, a man of varied minor interests and one major one—the Fijians —has spent 30 years in Fiji; 30 years of observation of the country and its native people and of close association with the Fijians. Most of those years he has been associated with the technical training of Fijians and since 1939 has been in charge of the Technical branch of Fiji’s Edu cation Department. It was Mr. Derrick who recently was chosen by the South Pacific Commission to make a survey of technical training requirements in other South Pacific territories.

It seems a far cry from the instruction of young Fijians in carpentry to the writing of authorative works on the his tory and geography of Fiji. A numoer of years ago, having observed that the Colony lacked school text books on local history and geography, he set out to write some.

These books were printed on a press he had installed at Davuilem for his students and compiled by those students he had trained in book-binding, cover decoration and lino cuts.

Then after much research he gave us his first major book a few years ago—The History of Fiji—which takes the story of Fiji from its remotest beginnings up to the time of Cession in 1874. It is under stood that a companion piece to this book, the history of the Colony from 1874 to the present day, will be added later.

THE present book tends more towards the geography of the Colony, although the story of the Fijians must naturally impinge itself upon any descrip tion of the islands. Every facet of the make-up of the islands we call Fiji—the dry zones, the rain forests, the coral islets, the rivers, the reefs and the characteris tic saw-toothed mountain chains—is dis cussed, bisected and its secrets revealed.

For example, that oddity called Joske’s Thumb which every visitor sees sticking up out of the ranges as he sails into Suva Harbour—how many, even among the residents, know that it is a “volcanic

plug” (as also is the Devil’s Thumb south of Levuka)? The volcanic cones from which these masses once extruded have weathered away, the volcanoes themselves have become extinct but the finger-like, or thumb-like, projections remain. These sharp-toothed mountains are characteris tic of Fiji.

And Mr. Derrick gives us another slant on the coral reefs which stud the seas of Fiji like a maze and are usually cursed by snipping. He says that they form barriers against the sea, that they cause the rivers to drop their silt thus causing large fertile plains to be built up; they

provide valuable products such as trochus and pearl-shell and beche-de-mer.

The book is no mere catalogue of geo graphical phenomena. While a fund of information to the student it is also in teresting enough to be read for pleasure.

There are 140 maps and diagrams pre pared by Mr. Derrick and 110 photographs taken by Mr. Rob Wright of the Fiji Public Relations Office. It is a book of about 350 Crown quarto pages, admirably indexed. Wholly set up and produced by

the Government Printing Office, Fiji, the cost is 25/- (Fijian) for a fully-bound copy.