Page:Williams and Calvert, Fiji and the Fijians, New York, 1860.djvu/169

TVfANKEBS AXD CUSTOMS. 139 might endanger the child's life, hj leading the mother to suspect that her offspring was uncared for. It is a common practice to name the first child after the man's father, and the second after the mother's father. In the first case, the friends of the man make the wife a pres- ent ; and in the other, her friends offer the gift to the husband. The ahove practice, however, is very variable ; and the naming of children is often left to accident, caprice, or malice. Some peculiarity in the infant, or in the time or circumstances of its birth, often decides the name. Or, in the absence of more durable monuments, the epithet is made a record of the family triumphs, or the weakness, folly, and disgi-ace of their enemies. Such instances abound, and names worse than these, of the lowest and filthiest kind, such as ought to be rejected from the language* Natives nurse in eastern style, the child sitting, quite naked, astride the mother's hip, where it is kept from falling by her arm passed round its body. Children who have the coko — an ulcerous disease, like the yaws of the West Indies — stand at the back of their mother, whose hands are clasped behind, forming a soft standing-place for the feet of the little sufferer, who holds on by the parent's shoulders. Most na- tive children have this disease, and those who escape are said to grow up sickly and feeble, and incapable of much exertion, — an opinion which, I believe, is well founded. Women who regard the health of their child generally abstain from the pleasures of fishing during the time of nursing. One of the first lessons taught the infant is to strike its mother, a neglect of which would beget a fear lest the child should grow up to be a coward. Thus these people are nurtured " without natural affection," and trained to be " implacable, unmerciful." Several proofs of this I witnessed at So- mosomo ; mothers leading their children to kick and tread upon the dead bodies of enemies. The violent passions of revenge and anger are fostered in the native children, so that, when offended, they give full vent to their fury ; and it is not surprising that their riper years exhibit such fearful developements of rage. Visiting, on the same island, a family who were mourning the recent slaughter of six of their friends, one of the first objects I savr was a good malo — a man's dress — much torn, by which sat a child of about four years old, cutting and chopping it with a large butcher's knife, while his own hand was covered with blood, which flowed from the stump where, shortly before, his little finger had been cut off, as a token of affection for his deceased father. The malo had been stripped from one of the party who had attacked the friends of that child, and was placed before him to excite and grat- ify a revengefiil disposition. 10