Page:Williams and Calvert, Fiji and the Fijians, New York, 1860.djvu/583

CHAPTEE XI. l.EOTUMA.— 2. NATIVE AGENTS.— 3. CONCLUSION, 1. RoTUMA. — The island of Rotuma has been mentioned severeal times in the course of this work, and its interest, from a missionary- point of view, is great and peculiar. It stands in mid ocean, 12° 30' S. latitude, 177° 10' E. longitude, encircled with reefs, through which are many opejiings for boats. Five or six rocky islets of fantastic forms lie off the coast. Rotuma is about fifteen miles long, and varies in breadth from twc) to seven miles. It is of volcanic formation, and its surface is chiefly covered with scoria and ashes, among which lies a scanty, but very productive soil. Groves of beautiful cocoa-nut and other trees, with some flowers, adorn in every direction the rugged face of the land. There are several exhausted craters on the island, but no traces of any eruption for many ages past ; and large, old trees now flourish at the mouth of the principal crater. Upon this lovely land — three hundred miles from the nearest inhabited shore — dwells a population variously computed at from three to five thousand, who have, for many years past, received frequent visits from whalers. The Rotumans are smaller in stature than the Fijians, but much lighter in complexion, being copper-coloured. They wear their hair long, but remove the beard. Generally they seem a lively and friendly people, averse to war, and not, like the Fijians, usually carrymg arms. Their language is peculiar to themselves : many of them, however, are able to express their meaning in a queer, broken English. They tattoo themselves on the part of the body between the hips and the knees, and smear their skin all over with a thick coat of turmeric and cocoa-nut oil, which they use so plentifully that not only their scanty wrapper of native cloth, but their mats and houses, and even the trees on the road-side are bedaubed with the rich yellow compound, rubbed off, from time to time, from the bodies of the people. Towards Rotuma, thus severed from the world, both by position and language, the Missionaries often looked, wishing to claim the