Bullets were hard to digest

“They found bullets very hard to digest wrote planter James Hall James at Teidamu on Viti Levu on October 8, 1871, just after returning trom a vengeance raid on Fijian villages in the mountains.

The raid by European planters to avenge the deaths of two of their number is told by James in a letter which forms part of a collection of century-old letters recently copied on microfilm for the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau in Canberra.

James, who was born at Richmond, Victoria, in 1848, went to Fiji at the height of the cotton boom in 1869 and returned to Australia eight or nine years later after a hurricane had destroyed his crops “Well, after a great deal of bother we got 50 whites together and a lot of imported labour and Fijians,”

James wrote to his parents. , We went up inside a town and kdled a few and then retreated when the wretches commenced to follow us. Then the fun began and I felt what it was to hear a bullet go past and bob carefully. But after a bit I got over that and as I was m the rearguard and the last of i h< r? i h T ad P lent V of long shots and 1 , th . lnk 1 g Qt a few but it was raining like fun and all that night J l l" we f ca ™ d * stl J ck up on top of a hill and told to keep a

sharp lookout when I could not see five paces off, it was raining so hard; but we all got safe home and retired, when some more moun taineers came down two days after and attacked two other whites but the whites shot three of them, and we made up our minds for another expedition. Twenty-four whites started.

“Anthony had just arrived so he came this time. We went alone at 12 o’clock at night and after the d l’ s own as hard as we cou l d we reached the town just after daylight. We rushed in and shot down all we saw. We then plun dered it: and burnt everything des troymg all else we could. We then 2* a ° d . had VTHf- wi,h l ’ ad e f sca lo ° kln « at “f/ the top of a hdl a long way . , , , , , We then turned home, but had not gone far when we found a feeble attempt made by another town to ambuscade [us] so we charged and killed five the rest ran away. We then went home. This last lesson had been a very hard one, but they are all the better for it and they say now that 10 whites can do anything. They are in such a funk. Before that the brutes said if we were to bring 500 they would eat us all, but they now find that bullets are very hard to digest.”