Each of the islands of the archipelago has a characteristic ethnic and linguistic composition of the population and, accordingly, its own culture, sometimes noticeably different from its immediate neighbors. When you are on the islands, you should take as a starting point the rather well-known cultural characteristics of the peoples of Polynesia and Melanesia (community, complex everyday rituals, the presence of numerous taboos and unwritten rules), but on each particular island you will have to carefully monitor the life and behavior of local residents so as not to disrupt their usual way of life. Guadalcanal is noticeably influenced by Western (primarily American) culture, but almost all peripheral islands live in the same rhythm and style as a hundred or two hundred years ago.

The islanders usually live in villages gravitating towards the coastline, most often inhabited by representatives of one or two families. Large settlements have some signs of organized construction (usually paths-streets radiating from the central square, often intersecting randomly or disappear altogether). The center of the village is either this square, or the large house of the leader (leader) traditionally located on it, which is also used as a guest house (it should be borne in mind that both women and men live in it in one large room).

In coastal villages, the so-called canoe house stands out - an exclusively male territory, where women are not allowed to enter. Rites of initiation of young men are held here, as well as a rather long period of training and solitude, after which the young man gets into a traditional canoe and demonstrates his art of fishing and managing this fragile boat at first glance. The traditional opening ceremony of the fishing season is also held here (usually mackerel plays the role of such a symbolic fish), the sacred relics of the tribe, weapons, fishing items, ships, trophies and, which is still not uncommon, the heads of enemies killed in battles are stored here. Tourist access to such an establishment is also allowed only with the explicit approval of the leader of the community.

Village life in the Solomon Islands is still surrounded by many taboos. Many of them are so complex and intricate that their meaning often eludes the understanding of a European, so when visiting villages one should be careful and limit one's curiosity as much as possible. The term "taboo" means "sacred" ("holy"), as well as "forbidden", therefore taboos are not only prohibitive, but simply necessary for the islanders in some way. All sorts of table ceremonies, a number of foodstuffs, the color of clothing, the rites of transferring or donating something, family relationships and even many rituals of communication with the outside world are often tabooed. The attitude to promises is strictly regulated (apparently, due to this tradition, the islanders rarely guarantee anything directly), and breaking an oath is considered one of the most serious crimes at all - the violator of such can be subjected to a huge fine as compensation and even imprisonment.

In many areas it is considered taboo for a woman to stand above a man, and even more so a man, even a foreigner, should not deliberately take a place below a woman. The same attitude towards the leaders - to rise above the leader of the tribal group is considered the height of indecency, and this is very likely, since the locals are short in stature, so most conversations and negotiations are carried out while sitting. It is also forbidden to swim under a canoe in which there are women - it will probably have to be destroyed later, and for many islanders canoes are the only means of obtaining food. There are countless such prohibitions and restrictions, especially given the abundance of tribal groups, each of which has more than a dozen taboos of its own, different from their neighbors. Local residents are generally very tolerant of the manifestation of someone else's way of life and minor violations of their customs, especially in large settlements (foreigners usually belong to the group of the uninitiated, so applying your own rules to them is also a kind of taboo), but violation of some elements of local etiquette may have very sad consequences.

For these reasons, the tourist is advised to visit isolated local communities only under the guidance of an experienced guide who can suggest certain features of local etiquette. And before entering the territory of the settlement, it is imperative to ask its inhabitants for permission and inform them of the entire "action program" on their land - this will eliminate many omissions and allow you to coordinate your actions with the desires or customs of the natives.

Property rights for the Melanesians, unlike the Polynesian tribes, are very important - a tree, fruit or flower by the side of the road in the vicinity of the settlement most likely belongs to someone, and damage to them or unauthorized harvesting of fruits from them can cause a conflict situation. Even in isolated hinterlands, there is a whole network of all kinds of "private plots", which are indicated by a system of designations understandable only to local residents - pegs, serifs, or strips of fabric tied to branches. For many islanders, income is directly dependent on what can be harvested or grown on such plots (it should be recalled that only 0.62% of the islands are suitable for cultivation), so the invasion of their territory can be considered a manifestation of aggression. It may be possible to negotiate compensation for a simple violation of this rule (for example, for picking a fruit that was intended for sale), but in the case of serious violations (a felled tree, for example), a quite adequate aggressive reaction can be expected.

Pretty typical of the western part Pacific Ocean and the attitude of the islanders to clothing. They themselves can wear literally anything, often without bothering with it at all (the local hot and very humid climate does not favor wearing thick outerwear). However, the opposite rule applies to foreigners - they must always remain literally fully dressed. In the local climate, this is not easy, but often it is almost the only way to avoid the impact of a fairly aggressive local fauna. By public holidays the islanders dress very colorfully, while those of them who profess Christianity try to comply with all the attributes of European clothing. Women are advised to wear long skirts and dresses, especially in the evening, and in general to follow a fairly conservative style of clothing (legs above the knees must be covered!). Dress is perfectly acceptable during the day and on some informal visits. Oddly enough, a tie for men is almost banned, although in business circles it is considered a sign of good taste. Beachwear and shorts are allowed only outside the settlements, and even then not everywhere - a lot depends on the owner land plot, where, for example, swimming in the sea is performed, since all more or less convenient outlets to the water are used by local residents for their needs. However, most of the beaches either belong to the whole community, and then the permission of its leader is enough, or they do not belong to anyone, since collecting some kind of seafood on local beaches is unproductive - the reef wall often simply does not allow the sea to throw anything significant ashore.

Officially, the majority of the country's population professes Christianity (Anglicanism, Catholicism and Protestantism). However, in practice, many elements of the ancient animistic beliefs that were characteristic of the Melanesian peoples before the arrival of Europeans are preserved here. Often the dogmas of different religions mix so strongly with each other that it is no longer possible to distinguish where the postulates of faith of European missionaries end and the worship of the forces of nature, traditional for these places, begins. Many European saints have acquired multiple features of the gods of the local pantheon, so you should not be surprised if some Christian saint is "made an offering" in the form of a freshly mined shark (a symbol of the spirit of ancestors in local mythology), or vice versa - behind the prayer house traditional for these places a Catholic chapel will rise. The islanders themselves try not to talk about the peculiarities of their religion, however, they enthusiastically tell legends literally permeated with local mythology, and in everyday life not a single fisherman will go to sea without a prayer to Saint Nicholas, after which he will immediately give praise to the spirits of the sea. Ancient cults are especially strong in the hinterland local islands, therefore, when traveling to the provinces, attention to local rites should be taken into account along with various taboos.

The same ancient elements of local culture include folk dances, songs and oral traditions. They are based on local mythology and countless parables or historical elements, so they usually form the basis of all festive ceremonies on the islands. The islanders mainly celebrate war, harvesting crops, successful hunting or fishing, some events in the natural world around or the world of spirits, so the series of festivities on the islands stretches almost continuously. In addition, some islanders believe in various forms of magic. The most common belief is that the spirit of a person after death has migrated to various inhabitants of the local fauna (most often sharks, birds and even reptiles), where he lives for a certain time. Such an animal becomes sacred for some time and is forbidden to be eaten. And regarding the honoring of this taboo, it is also extremely necessary to arrange a holiday!

The craft culture of the Solomon Islands is extremely original and has a fairly high aesthetic data, even despite its apparent simplicity at first glance. Fine carvings in wood, fishbone or shells can be found throughout the islands, and their forms can vary from decorative ritual balls in the Makira (Olava) area to miniature gift canoes in the Western Region, Malaita, Santa Ana and the Nggela Islands. The high craftsmanship of local artisans and their special aesthetics, mixed with the centuries-old traditions of the peoples of the sea, clearly stem from the rich local mythology and in many cases are of a clear cult nature. Accordingly, the meaning invested by the master in each item can be different, so you should carefully ask the seller about the meaning of this or that item before buying - it may well be that an innocent at first glance thing or jewelry made on the same island can cause a negative a reaction to another (for example, due to a long-standing intertribal feud, which this subject can tell about). The art of tattooing, traditional for the countries of the region, which in the eyes of local residents has a mystical or narrative meaning, also belongs to the same category.

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Miloslav Stingl

Black Islands

FOREWORD

The publication offered to the reader includes four books by the famous Czechoslovak ethnographer, journalist and writer Miloslav Stingl. They were the result of his many trips to Oceania during the 1970s and early 80s.

M. Stingl visited almost all the archipelagos of this remote region of our planet from Europe. In his books, he talks about all three historical and cultural regions of Oceania: Melanesia, Polynesia and Micronesia.

In the last decade and a half, many books about the South Pacific Islands have been published, but M. Stingl's works have not been lost in this international "Oceanian". They are distinguished by the author's high professionalism both as an ethnographer and as a writer, as well as his deep love for the islanders.

In his latest work from the oceanic series, Enchanted Hawaii, M. Stingl emphasizes: “I wrote these books with passion and love. Of course, my home is where I was born, grew up, I want to live and die. But also where I have been more than once: on the islands of Oceania ... where I returned with such joy and where I left a piece of my heart. In the same work, M. Stingl defines the goal of his oceanic books as follows: “I tried to present the islands and peoples ... Oceania ... I wanted the four books of the cycle to give the most concrete and complete picture of the whole of Oceania ... But I am an ethnographer and, first of all, I searched on the islands for everything related to the traditional culture of their inhabitants.”

Since M. Stingl touches little on the history of colonialism in Oceania, the current political and socio-economic situation on the islands, and years have passed since the first publications of his books, we will dwell on this, at least briefly, before the reader begins his fascinating journey through Oceania, led by such a talented guide.

Oceania is located in the central and western parts of the Pacific Ocean. Most of the islands of Oceania are grouped into archipelagos, stretched along the coasts of Asia and Australia, and away from these continents - mainly from the northwest to the southeast.

In the vast waters of Oceania, there are a wide variety of islands - from large mountainous to the smallest low-lying coral, barely noticeable among the expanses of water. The largest islands are located in the west of the ocean, small and tiny islands are scattered over the entire surface of the open ocean.

Having fallen into the sphere of colonial conquests by European states four and a half centuries ago, the Pacific islands until the second half of our century were a kind of "reserve of colonialism", in which the positions of the colonial powers seemed unshakable.

The outside world showed very little interest in the life of the peoples of the Pacific islands. Until relatively recently, Oceania seemed to most people far and inaccessible. She was rarely mentioned and only to emphasize the vastness of our planet or the boundlessness of our own glory. So, Igor Severyanin stated:

My brilliant poetry

It will sparkle like a spring dawn!

Paris and even Polynesia,

They will tremble, lift up glory to me!

Almost nothing was known about Oceania. Having read with pleasure in childhood the fascinating stories of Robert Stevenson and Jack London about the South Seas, most people kept in their memory the distant and inaccessible Pacific islands shrouded in a romantic haze for the rest of their lives. In the tightness, bustle and noise of big cities, they seemed to be an "earthly paradise", inhabited by carefree and cheerful people who did not know the worries and anxieties of the rest of the world. In reality, this is not at all the case. The history of Oceania is full of drama. This is, first of all, the history of courageous peoples who in ancient times inhabited unknown, deserted islands and suffered enormous sacrifices, which could not but affect the process of their further development.

Moving for many centuries from the Asian and American continents to the Pacific islands, they expended colossal forces, found themselves in unusual conditions and were forced to adapt to them. At the same time, the inhabitants of the islands, due to geographical remoteness, found themselves in complete isolation from other civilizations and were left to their own devices. It is well known that the culture of peoples develops successfully only in conditions of mutual influence, mutual penetration, and mutual enrichment.

When Europeans first came to the islands of Oceania, they saw people who were at a rather low level of development. The islanders did not know not only firearms, but also bows and arrows, their dwellings were primitive, they did not know how to process metal, and there was almost no clothing.

But all this was explained not by the "organic inferiority" of the islanders, but by the objective conditions of their existence: on most of the islands there were no metal ores, the flora and fauna were very limited, in favorable climatic conditions complex house-building and clothing were not required. At the same time, the products of the islanders made of stone, wood and shells were distinguished by a high degree of artistry. Historians, ethnographers and anthropologists who study the culture and life of the peoples of Oceania testify to the high level of agriculture (careful cultivation of the land, the use of artificial irrigation and even fertilizers), as well as the success of these peoples in domesticating animals and, finally, their high seafaring art.

The newcomers loved the land of their new homeland, although sometimes it was a tiny island of coral, rising only a few feet above the ocean waves. This lofty patriotism was passed down by the islanders from generation to generation and helped them to endure and endure all the hardships that befell them in such abundance.

The invasion of "Western civilization" on the Pacific islands led to the extinction of the natives, the plunder of the few riches that they possessed - sandalwood, phosphates, gold - to spiritual depression, oblivion of the original means of subsistence. At the same time, having met with Europeans and Americans, the islanders realized that there is another world where life is rich and diverse. They wanted to really learn about the great achievements of the human mind, to join them.

But the colonialists firmly isolated the islanders from the outside world, conducting colonialist experiments on this kind of experimental field, separated from the centers of human civilization by thousands and thousands of miles of sea space. What forms of colonial dependence the islanders did not know; "crown" colony, protectorate, condominium, mandate, guardianship, etc. etc. Theorists and practitioners of colonialism created a whole literature, the task of which was to prove the usefulness of the activities of the capitalist powers in relation to the peoples of Oceania, their "great civilizing mission." The peoples of the Pacific islands continued to remain outside the general historical process. Oceania was, as it were, on the "shallows of time." As a result of gigantic battles, some rulers left and others came, receiving these "paradise islands" in the form of military booty.

The turbulent events of the first half of the 20th century, in essence, did not affect the position of the peoples of the Pacific islands. “Which area of ​​the world gave the Western nations the least trouble after World War II? asked the American author C. Skinner rhetorically in an article published in the early 1960s. And he himself answered: "Pacific Islands".

Indeed, there were no noticeable changes in Oceania between 1945 and 1960. Only the Hawaiian Islands were included in the United States as the fiftieth state by a law passed by the 86th US Congress on March 18, 1959. From the point of view of the American government, this was the greatest mercy towards the "natives", whom they "raised" to their level . One could argue about whether this is good or bad, if it were not for one, in our opinion, decisive circumstance: by the time they were included in the United States, there were very few indigenous people left on the islands. So, in 1950, according to American data, the population of the islands was 499,769 people, the Hawaiians numbered 80,090 people (the overwhelming majority are mestizos), and for a long time the Americans themselves considered the data on the number of indigenous people to be very conditional.

The apologists of colonialism tried in every possible way to prove that the Western powers continued to be in Oceania only because they did not want to leave the islanders to their fate, without having completed their "great civilizing mission" to the end. They argued that the actions of the colonial powers in Oceania were aimed at helping the peoples of the South Pacific Islands achieve self-government and independence.

No even, approximate terms for granting independence to the subject territories were not called.

The course of development of political, economic and cultural processes in Oceania already in the early 1960s created real conditions for the emergence of independent states there.

On January 1, 1962, the first independent state in Oceania emerged - Western Samoa. This event was quite natural. The struggle for freedom of the people of Western Samoa has continued almost uninterrupted throughout the previous years of this century. Back in 1921, the Samoans petitioned the English King George V, asking for the status of self-government. This struggle gained special development after the end of the Second World War. In early 1947, the Samoans petitioned the UN for independence. At its first session (March-April 1947), the UN Trusteeship Council decided to send a visiting mission to Western Samoa to investigate the circumstances set out in the petition. Despite its obvious sympathy for New Zealand governing Western Samoa, the mission, in its report of September 12, 1947, after assessing the political, economic and social development of the population of Western Samoa, noted that the political organization and social structure of the territory had reached such a development that they could serve basis for the creation of a progressive developing self-government. Based on the report of the visiting mission, the Trusteeship Council adopted the recommendations of the administering authority on the need to accelerate the political development of the territory. But the New Zealand authorities were in no hurry to develop self-government in Western Samoa. It took the Samoans another decade and a half of stubborn struggle for the New Zealand guardian to give up his rights.

Did the emergence of a sovereign state in Oceania force a change in the policy of the colonial powers in that region of the globe? No, if we talk about the principle side of the matter.

But if there were no significant changes, then the colonial powers still had to, albeit extremely reluctantly and inconsistently, make political maneuvers under the influence of the growth of the liberation movement in Oceania and the growing criticism at the UN.

The actions of the colonial powers in this regard, despite all external differences, had common fundamental features.

The representative bodies created on the islands retained a decorative character, the indigenous population was still removed from managing their own affairs, and all power continued to be in the hands of the colonialists.

In the second half of the 1960s, the events that took place in Oceania already indicated the beginning of serious changes in the political situation in the region. The process of decolonization accelerated, the liberation movement on the islands grew. Nevertheless, the colonial powers did not yet feel the irreversibility of the process of liberation of the Oceanic peoples and pursued their policy in principle by the old methods. The exception was New Zealand, which showed great efficiency. In the 1960s, she changed the political status of the two largest of the oceanic territories subject to her, granting independence to Western Samoa and self-government of the Cook Islands and firmly linking them to itself.

By the early 1970s, three more Oceanic countries had gained independence - Nauru, Fiji and Tonga. They occupied a total area of ​​about 23 thousand square meters. km with a population of 750 thousand people, while the area of ​​​​all the islands of Oceania is 0.5 million square meters. km without New Zealand, the Hawaiian Islands and Irian Jaya, and inhabited them at that time (again without New Zealand, the Hawaiian Islands and Irian Jaya) about 4 million people.

The turning point in the attitude of the imperialist powers towards Oceania occurred in the mid-1970s, when the course of decolonization took on dimensions that threatened the administering powers and they had to adapt their policies to the new situation in order to maintain dominance over the island world.

The colonial powers began a complex political maneuvering aimed at delaying the process of granting independence to the subject territories as much as possible. But this turned out to be impossible. The course of the liberation of the Oceanian peoples was irreversible. By the early 1980s, eight more sovereign oceanic countries had formed: Nauru, Tonga, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Kiribati, and Vanuatu.

More than 85% of the total population of Oceania lives in independent oceanic states (excluding New Zealand, Hawaii and the province of Irian Jaya). The total area of ​​the islands liberated from colonialism is 93% of the territory of Oceania.

Thus, by the beginning of the 1980s, the process of eliminating direct colonial domination in Oceania was completed. Over the years of independence, the sovereign states of Oceania have achieved some success in the development of the economy and culture. But this process is extremely slow. The progressive development of the oceanic states is seriously hampered by both the profound backwardness of socio-economic relations and the neocolonialist policy of the imperialist powers, which stubbornly refuse to leave Oceania. By agreeing to give the Oceanian territories formal independence, they are trying to maintain control over their former possessions. And the United States and France have not granted and are not going to grant independence to any of the oceanic territories subject to them.

In an effort to retain the islands of Micronesia, the United States unceremoniously violates the norms of international law, ignoring the requests of the progressive public of the planet.

The United States, for strategic reasons, has long dreamed of taking possession of the countless scattering of islands in the Pacific Ocean, united by the geographical concept of Micronesia. It includes the archipelagos of the Mariana, Marshall and Caroline Islands.

It was from the Mariana Island of Tinian on August 6, 1945 that the B-29 bomber took off with a terrible atomic load for Hiroshima. And in July 1946, a year before the United States officially took over the administration of Micronesia as a "guardian" under an agreement with the UN, they began to intensively test there, on Bikini Atoll, the deadliest weapon in the history of mankind.

The UN Charter obliges the Guardian State to "promote the political, economic and social progress of the Trust Territory, progress in education and development along the path to self-government or independence..." islands in the military-strategic interests of the United States.

From the very beginning of their administration of Micronesia in 1947, the American authorities began to oust the indigenous population from their ancestral lands in order to use them for their military needs. By the mid-1970s, only 38% of the land remained in the hands of local residents (on the Mariana Islands - 12%, on Palau - 24%).

Agriculture, the backbone of the Micronesian economy, has declined. Rice, meat and many other foodstuffs now have to be imported into the Trust Territory. Even fish!

The United States, in defiance of its duties as administering Power, also hampered the political development of Micronesia. Only in 1965 was the Congress of Micronesia formed, which, however, did not have legislative functions. Four years later, Congress, speaking on behalf of the entire Trust Territory, began negotiations with the American government about its future status.

However, Washington began to delay them, at the same time by all means inciting separatist sentiments in individual archipelagos, among pro-American-minded local figures. The United States, in violation of the UN Charter, the Trusteeship Agreement between the United States and the Security Council, and the Declaration of Decolonization, set out to dismember the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands in order to subjugate it piece by piece. First, the American authorities achieved the signing in 1975 of an agreement with the Mariana Islands, according to which the archipelago called the "Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands" should become a "state freely affiliated with the United States", like Puerto Rico. Under this agreement, the United States received the right not only to maintain existing military bases, but also to build new ones.

By the early 1980s, three more “state” entities had been created in Micronesia: the Marshall Islands, Palau, covering the western part of the Carolines, and the Federated States of Micronesia, including the rest of the Caroline Islands. Their status was defined as "free association" with the US. Despite the terminological differences, it meant the same thing: maintaining US military and economic control over these parts of Micronesia after the formal end of the trusteeship.

No matter how fiercely the American authorities pressed the Micronesians, Washington failed to fully achieve its goals. Thus, in the Palau Islands, the indigenous population resolutely opposed the draft constitution being imposed on them. The inhabitants insisted on the inclusion of articles in the new constitution that would guarantee their rights to their land and prevent its capture by the Americans, establish Palau's sovereignty over a 200-mile maritime economic zone, and prohibit the use of the archipelago for the storage and testing of nuclear weapons.

During 1979-1980. Palau has held three referendums on the text of the constitution that excludes the above provisions. And every time over nine-tenths of the electorate voted for her. The American "guardians" refused to recognize the will of the inhabitants and demanded to vote again. But the result did not change: the people of Palau confirmed their position. The American authorities have rejected this overwhelming majority constitution, stating that it is "inconsistent with the draft treaty of 'free association' proposed to Micronesians by the US government at a meeting held in Hawaii in January 1980.

Incidentally, representatives of the three districts of Micronesia also expressed their dissatisfaction with the proposed conditions at this meeting. They insisted on settling issues related to the seizure of land by the American authorities, opposed articles that, in fact, nullify the possibility of independent foreign relations. Similarly, they objected to the articles in the draft treaty regarding the continued US military presence in Micronesia.

The actions of the United States caused widespread international outcry. The UN Trusteeship Council has received numerous petitions urging Washington to meet the demands of the people of Palau.

The deep disappointment of the Micronesian people with American "trusteeship" was expressed at a meeting in New York in May 1980 between members of the UN Trusteeship Council and representatives of four Micronesian "states" created under US pressure. For example, the President of the Federated States of Micronesia, Toshivo Nakayama, has bluntly stated that the United States has failed in its custodial duties. He pointed out that Micronesians are now even less able to provide for themselves than at the very beginning of the guardianship, since the existing local economy was destroyed by the Americans and nothing positive was created to replace it.

Going ahead, the United States secured the initialing in late 1980 of separate agreements providing for the "free association" of the Marshall Islands and Palau with the United States.

It should be noted that the United States consistently avoids mentioning these strategic rights and interests in its treaties with the Micronesians, replacing these "dangerous" words with the euphonious term "mutual security." Thus, the treaty of "free association" between the Federated States of Micronesia and the United States is called the "Agreement between the Government of the United States and the Government of the Federated States of Micronesia for Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Security." It is clear that this magnificent terminology cannot deceive anyone, just like the indication, or rather the lack of indication, of the terms of the agreements. The said agreement, for example, states that it shall remain in force "until it is terminated or amended by mutual agreement." In practice, this means that the agreement will last as long as the United States wishes.

US actions in Micronesia are in blatant contradiction to the UN Charter, because, according to the Charter, any changes in the status of Micronesia as a strategic trust territory are exclusively within the competence of the Security Council.

This circumstance was most emphatically pointed out in a TASS statement published on August 13, 1983.

The actions of the United States were once again condemned at a meeting of the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization at its meeting on October 10, 1983.

But the US persisted in its illegal actions. In an effort to secure the actual annexation of the Trust Territory, the US administration has taken further steps in this direction. In particular, the "free association" agreements between the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia with the United States were submitted to the US Congress for approval.

In connection with these actions of the American administration, the Permanent Mission of the USSR to the UN sent a letter to the UN Secretary General, published on March 29, 1984, in which the US expansionist policy in Micronesia was again analyzed and stated: “Under these conditions, the United Nations, under whose leadership the United Nations was created international trusteeship system, must take all steps without delay to ensure that the United States fulfills in full its obligations under the UN Charter and the trusteeship agreement to prevent the realization of US attempts to present the world with a fait accompli of colonial enslavement of Micronesia.

The French government is just as merciless in its opposition to the broad liberation movement in the subject Pacific territories. By pursuing the "carrot and stick" policy traditional for the colonialists, France is trying to get away from any serious changes in the political status of New Caledonia and French Polynesia.

Having granted independence status to nine countries, the former colonial powers, primarily Australia and New Zealand, not only did not reduce the scale of their activities in Oceania, but, on the contrary, expanded it to the maximum.

Figuratively speaking, the Australian-New Zealand attack on Oceania began in all directions. It consisted primarily in the fact that both states began to strongly emphasize the identity of their interests with the interests of the oceanic countries, a deep interest in the development of South Pacific regionalism, trying with all their might to become the head of this movement, because they came to the firm conviction that regionalism is the most effective means maintaining "political stability" in the South Pacific.

Both states have created a wide network of diplomatic, consular, and trade missions in the countries of Oceania. They tied these countries with numerous bilateral agreements of a political, military, economic, and cultural nature. They participate very energetically in the work of the South Pacific Forum, the South Pacific Economic Cooperation Bureau, the South Pacific Commission, and the South Pacific Conference.

The policy in Oceania is also being changed by the United States, which until recently concentrated its attention only on the oceanic territories subject to them. The US Department of State has set up an independent department for Pacific island affairs. The United States opened an embassy in Suva, the capital of Fiji; concluded treaties of friendship with Tuvalu and Kiribati, respectively. Both treaties contain clauses: a) that the territory of these oceanic states cannot be used by a third party without prior consultations with the United States; b) on the permission of American fishing in the waters of both archipelagos.

The significance of the Pacific islands for the imperialist powers is ever growing. This is due to both military-strategic and economic reasons. These islands are used to accommodate naval and air bases, space observation and warning stations. Weapons depots are being created there, test sites for testing nuclear missile systems, training fields for the marines and saboteurs are being built.

The islands of Oceania lie at the crossroads of the main transoceanic sea and air lines connecting the United States and Canada with Japan, Australia and New Zealand, trade and economic relations between which are rapidly expanding. Already now they serve as a kind of junction stations through which they pass and where cargo and passenger flows are redistributed, where ships and aircraft are refueled.

In the 1960s and 1980s, exploration work in Oceania expanded: deposits of bauxite, copper ore and other valuable minerals were discovered on the islands, which raised the importance of the Pacific islands as a supplier of raw materials to industrialized countries. The role of Oceania in this respect will increase even more with the future development of the seabed and the extraction of minerals there.

Fishing is of great importance in the economy of Oceania. Foreign entrepreneurs are also attracted to the Pacific Islands as an area that is very promising for the development of international tourism.

The expanding economic opportunities of Oceania are leading to the growth of foreign capital in the island countries. Japanese entrepreneurs were especially active. Japanese capital was channeled mainly into the mining and timber industries, fishing, and the "tourism industry."

As a result of their powerful multifaceted influence on the oceanic countries, the imperialist powers not only did not lose their dominant position in Oceania after the loss of the overwhelming majority of the territories subject to them, but, on the contrary, strengthened it.

Now we can talk about the collective, coordinated policy of the imperialist forces in the South Pacific region, the essence of which is neo-colonialism.

That imperialism has managed to maintain its position in the region is not surprising. The establishment of the neo-colonial system was facilitated by the same factors that ensured such a protracted persistence of colonialism in Oceania: the political, economic and cultural backwardness of the peoples of the island countries, the tiny size of the territories and the small population, disunity, and internal contradictions.

For a long time, the islanders were instilled with the idea that they could not survive in the most difficult conditions of the modern world without the support of the colonial powers. And it dominated and still dominates the minds of the oceanic public.

The former colonial powers retain, moreover, expand their positions in the economy, finance, foreign trade of the independent states of Oceania, and finance all regional organizations.

That the imperialist powers have managed to maintain their influence in Oceania is not surprising. It hurts something else. All the might of the political, economic, and ideological influence of the imperialist forces proved incapable of suppressing the freedom-loving tendencies of the Oceanian peoples, their passionate desire to preserve their national identity and find their own path of development. Since their entry into the international community, the newly independent oceanic states have vigorously opposed all forms of colonialism and neo-colonialism in general and, of course, in the Pacific Ocean.

Thus, the events of recent years testify, on the one hand, to the growing striving of the countries of Oceania for independence in domestic and foreign policy, to strengthen inter-oceanic ties, and, on the other hand, to the stubborn opposition of the imperialist powers to this.

The sun of freedom has risen over Oceania. But ahead of the peoples of this region is a difficult path of struggle against the remnants of colonialism, against neo-colonialism, against deep socio-economic backwardness.

K. V. Malakhovskiy.

Doctor of historical sciences, professor.

FROM THE COMPILER

This book is composed of four works by the Czech writer and ethnographer Miloslav Stingl: The Black Islands, The Last Paradise, Through Unfamiliar Micronesia, and Enchanted Hawaii. With the consent of the author, the most interesting materials of a scientific and artistic nature, which are of interest to the widest readership, have been selected from each book.

BLACK ISLANDS

The sea rolls its waves, the sky blazes. And in the azure waters in the west of the greatest ocean of our planet float amazing islands. This is a different world. He is ten thousand years behind. Has time stopped here? No, it goes here too. But while civilization has not yet completely penetrated here, this world - Melanesia, a world distant and mysterious, distant and forgotten, distant and silent - will be an image of our own past. The time in which our ancestors lived, perhaps many generations ago.

I want to understand the world in which I live. The whole world. To see, to know all its manifestations and all ages. That's why I travel. The path I want to talk about was the longest. I traveled around the globe, trying to get to know all the inhabitants of the planet most distant from us.

First of all, I visited the American Indians, to whom I have always been so attracted. Then he stayed in the cold-bound north with the simple-minded Eskimos, who do not; may not inspire admiration for their resilience. They confront the most terrible thing in the world - the loneliness of white spaces. I ended up in "paradise", among the inhabitants of affectionate Polynesia, and among those who share the Pacific Ocean with the Polynesians - among the inhabitants of Melanesia.

Melanesia is located in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It includes New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago, the Solomon Islands, Santa Cruz, Banks and Torres, the New Hebrides, New Caledonia, Loyalty, Fiji and Rotuma. Sometimes New Guinea is considered separately (Papuasia). New Caledonia, together with the islands of Loyalte (Austromelanesia) and Fiji, together with Rotuma (Melano-Polynesia), can also be singled out as special subregions or even regions.

Melanesia means "Black Isles" in Greek. Their inhabitants are characterized by dark skin. Moreover, they belong to the most interesting and, moreover, the least studied groups of the planet's population.

I started my trip with a visit to the archipelago, which modern cartographers called Fiji.

For more than three generations, Fiji has been the main crossroads for the sea and air routes of Oceania, and therefore the island, more than any other part of Melanesia, has been flooded with many migrants, so if I want to find Fiji Fijians as it once was, I should go to the central regions of the main island of the Viti Levu archipelago. True, it is not easy to get there because of the hard-to-reach mountains. The largest river of the island, the Reva, leads here.

Dozens of villages are located along its banks. It is the river, and not the land at all, that is the source of livelihood for the inhabitants of the central part of Viti Levu. Life here is in many ways reminiscent of pre-colonial times, also because in these remote villages, as a rule, you will not meet a single white settler. And so traveling along the Rewa is the best opportunity to see the true Fiji.

I had to choose one of these villages. It turned out to be easy. In Nakamakama, upstream of the Rewa, that week began a period of festivities during which the men of the village performed the ancient dances of the Fijian warriors.

For a few days I said goodbye to Suva. The car took me to the river pier. A man from Nakamakama was already waiting there. Together with my fellow travelers, I moved into a narrow long boat and with every yard, with every mile, I began to move away from Suva, this Melanesian Britain, returning hundreds of years ago, to the world of the courageous warriors of the Reva River, to the past of the islands, on which the first white man stepped less two centuries ago.

I will talk about this daredevil later. Before him, Fiji was seen only by the Dutchman - Abel Tasman. However, he was not looking for Fiji at all, his dream was to discover the notorious "Southern Continent", the future Australia. Instead, he discovered the island, which, in honor of the famous navigator, is named after him. Leaving Tasmania, her godfather moved back to the Tropic of Capricorn, visited the peaceful islands of Tonga, and from there went further north.

On February 6, 1643, Tasman saw islands that no one had known anything about until now. He noted their coordinates and named them after Prince Wilhelm, but, fortunately for him, did not land on the shore. He was really lucky, because the inhabitants of these islands killed not only their opponents captured in endless wars, but also the unfortunate sailors, who were thrown by sea storms onto the fatal coral reef surrounding Viti Levu.

A terrible reputation scared away sailors and scientists from the coast of Fiji and other Melanesian islands for many decades. Even the famous J. Cook, who briefly stopped at the local shores during his third trip across the Pacific Ocean, noted in the very first lines of his diary: “The local natives are terrible cannibals ... they eat their defeated opponents ...”

However, it was not Cook or other famous sailors who discovered these islands to the world. So little attention has been paid to the true discoverers of Fiji in the history of Oceania that we now do not even know their names. It is only known that these pioneers were brought to the shores of Fiji by a storm.

The schooner with the beautiful Greek name "Argo" was not transporting the Argonauts to Colchis. She delivered arrested people to Australian prisons and various supplies to these inhospitable lands. One day, a schooner cruising between Australia and China was overtaken by an incredible typhoon. He knocked her off course and hurled her into the sharp coral reefs surrounding Fiji. Some sailors - and it was really a miracle - managed to lower lifeboat and get to the coast.

We already know what awaited shipwrecked sailors on these islands, whom the "wrath of God" deprived of their ships. But the crew members of the Argo were not killed with heavy clubs. Rescuing people from a ship that hit the reefs is not the only miracle in this incredible story. On the night that the sailors from the Argo landed, the sky over the Fiji Islands was brightly lit by a beautiful golden star - a comet of such magnitude that the islanders considered it an omen, announcing the approach of some unusual event, which turned out to be the arrival of white people.

But the miracles didn't end there. At that moment, when the Europeans and the Fijian warriors met, something even more amazing happened: the heavens “opened up” and white cold balls fell to the ground. It was a city. The islanders had never seen anything like it and did not know what it could mean. But they guessed. The balls that fell from the sky were surely stars, as white as the skin of strange aliens. The white stars that the white gods sent to white people to protect them. And they completed what the golden star had begun: they took the clubs away from the shipwrecked.

Thus, it was not Cook or Tasman, but it was these, now nameless for us, sailors from the schooner Argo who discovered the Cannibal Islands (as the Fiji Islands were previously called) to Europeans. Then the sailors dispersed throughout the archipelago, became military advisers to their warlike masters, owners and husbands of dozens of wives, fathers of countless children and true pioneers.

TASTE OF YANGGONY

Overcoming the rather strong current of the Reva, I and my companions are heading into the depths of Viti Levu. Behind them are villages on green banks, which have probably not changed since the white people began to enter here a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago.

Finally, our helmsman turns towards the shore, and we are in Nakamakama. The village is already waiting for us. Where the boats approach, people crowded. Women in long skirts, some of them also have fringed skirts on top. Among the greeters is the leader of Nakamakama. He invites all the guests who came from Suva to watch the ancient dances of the Nakamakam warriors. Soon from his house, a spacious building, rising on an artificial foundation - this probably emphasizes the higher position of the leader - we pass into a kind of public, or "men's" house. The roof of the structure, supported by several pillars, is covered with large pandanus leaves. Mats are placed on the rammed ground, on which men solemnly sit, ready to begin the annual celebrations by performing the yanggon rite.

Yanggona is a drink made from the roots of a type of Pacific pepper, ground into a powder. Yanggona increases appetite, calms, invigorates, helps to lose weight and, finally - and, this property is most valued in tropical countries - quenches thirst.

And yet, I personally yanggon, although I tried it quite often in Oceania, did not really like it. Besides, after the first cup, my tongue always went numb. The taste of yanggon is impossible to describe. It is bitter, and sometimes the smell of cheap soap is mixed with it.

Nevertheless, this soapy liquid is the favorite drink of all the people of Fiji. Yanggon is slightly intoxicating, but I felt this property of her only once during my stay in Fiji, apparently because I preferred, as a rule, a weakly concentrated drink.

Growing yanggon is not easy: this plant requires constant care. Carefully cleaned soil is fertilized with calcium obtained from shells or sea corals. Previously, the yanggon fields, apparently, were divided into three parts in some areas. The harvest from the first part belonged to the gods - the guardians of miracle workers and healers, from the second - to the gods - the patrons of sleep, and only the third went to the one who cultivated the field.

In the upper reaches of the Reva, one of the primitive ways of preparing yanggony is still preserved. A shallow but wide hole is dug in the packed earth, which the priest then covers with giant leaves of the Fijian lily. They are sprinkled with the powder of ground yanggon root. One of the participants in the ritual brings a bamboo vessel, from which he gradually pours water into an earthen bowl, while carefully stirring the prepared drink with his hand.

When the yanggon is ready and the priest again prays, the leader enters the sanctuary with the rest of the participants in the ritual. They lie on their stomachs around the bowl and draw the drink until there is not a single drop left in it. Previously, in these places, yanggon was not ground on stone slabs. It was given to young priests, who chewed the root and then spit out the resulting mass into a bowl.

The yanggony ceremony, which used to be performed in shrines, is now performed either in the tribal council house - a local club, or in the open air.

Only men could take part in the yanggon ceremony on the island of Niau, and, moreover, the closest relatives of the leader. In the cave where the ceremony took place, the roots of the "sacred" plant were brought by specially selected girls. (I should note that earlier in Fiji, the chastity of girls was evidenced by ten or twelve braids braided on both sides of the head, which, after the first sexual intercourse, unraveled. Unmarried young women differed from married women in hair and clothing. longer than the latter.)

Twelve chosen girls, lined up in pairs in front of the entrance to the cave, knelt down. In the hands of the first four couples were lit torches, the rest carried the "sacred" root. The torchbearers parted and, when it was light enough in the sanctuary, to a wooden bowl carved from a piece of wood - tanoa where the drink was to be stirred, the four most beautiful girls of the tribe slowly approached on their knees.

Having passed the root to the men, they also moved back on their knees, keeping their eyes on the leader of the tribe, until they left the cave. As soon as the girls left, the chosen men picked up thin sticks and began to prepare a drink.

The rite of preparation of yanggona, this authentic ritual of savoring the “sacred” drink, from the moment I saw it for the first time; finally conquered me. Only the famous "tea ceremony" in Japan could compare to it.

I come from a country that is farther away from Nakamakama than the homeland of the other guests. And that is why it is me who, before the dance begins, needs to give a gift to the dancers. What to present to them? The Fijian protocol, of course, prescribes to give again to the yanggon.

I hand the leader some half-ground yanggon roots wrapped in a white handkerchief. And since I know only a few words of Fijian, the speech that is expected of me is forced to be delivered in English; however, here in the British colony, many should understand me. I say that I am happy to see the famous warriors of the Rewa River, their ancestral dances, their beautiful village, and as a sign of respect of my fellow tribesmen for their tribe, I pass this "sacred" root to the leader and people of Nakamakama.

Gift accepted. Now the ceremony of preparing yanggona can begin. Here, in Nakamakama, the classic form of preparation and serving of the drink has been preserved. In the old days, similar rites in different parts of the archipelago differed from each other. Over the past hundred years, however, all "orthodox" Fijians have begun to prepare, serve and drink their "sacred" drink in a way that has become established over time on the island of Mbau.

The main condition for the Mbau method of preparing yanggon is absolute silence. Therefore, from the moment I handed over the gift, no one said a word.

I sit Turkish on mats spread out on the floor in the tribal council house. Each participant of the rite occupies a strictly defined place. In the center sits a group of men preparing yanggon and leading the ceremony. A little further away are we, the honored guests of today's celebration, and then - ordinary members of the tribe. The "auditorium" is passive; everything is played out on the stage. The first minutes of the ritual resembled a Catholic mass. However, only one person serves there, and here I distinguish several "actors".

The leader sits in the front row on the stage. However, the rite is performed not by him, but by representatives of the main clans of the tribe. The one who sits on the left is called “bringing the yanggon bowl”, the one in the middle is called “stirring the yanggon”. On both sides are assistants, and behind them - "bringing or adding water."

“Stirring the yanggon”, “bringing the bowl” and “adding water” play the main roles during the ceremony in Nakamakam. Behind them is a choir of girls who will later accompany the rite with hymns. But for now, silence still reigns.

Before the main actors a tanoa stands on a tripod. It is in this bowl that the “sacred” drink is prepared. Tanoa is actually a symbol of the Fiji Islands; moreover, the bowl itself seems to be endowed with supernatural power. Not so long ago, anyone who inadvertently crossed the invisible, mental line connecting the leader with the tanoa indulged in immediate death.

Now in front of the bowl sits a "stirring yanggon". With uniform movements, he grinds the root. Then the “pouring water” approaches on his knees and gradually fills the bowl with water from a bamboo vessel. The ground root is wrapped in a piece of cloth, and the “stirring yanggonu” rinses it, slightly kneading it in water. Until now, the islanders consider a person at the time of the ceremony to be a different creature. In their opinion, the "sacred" root changes the property not only of the bowl in which it is cooked, but also of the one who dares to touch it.

Today everything is going like clockwork. And now the first part of the ceremony - the preparation of the drink - is over. Until this moment, everyone was sitting, and then one of the participants in the action rose. This is a "bringing drink". It is only now that I notice that he is wearing richer clothes and more decorations than anyone I followed in the process of preparing yanggon. The skirt is made of very beautiful multi-colored leaves, a belt of tree bark is tied at the back with a huge knot. The larger the node, the higher the social position of the “bringing drink”. His body is rubbed with coconut oil, his face, and mainly his eyes, are painted with black paint.

In his clothes and stately gait, he surpassed, at least at this moment, even the leader. His task is to give the leader mbilo- a vessel (half of a coconut), which he does. The leader drinks a filled mbilo to the brim.

The next mbilo "bringing a drink" presents me. I, too, whether I like it or not, must drink it to the dregs in one gulp. As soon as I finish drinking yanggon and raise my head, all the participants of the ceremony, as if on command, make a clap. Now I should say maka, which means dopito.

The ceremony continues until everyone is drunk. The master of ceremonies gives the mbilo, the next participant in the ceremony drinks a dirty liquid, says: poppy, those present clap, and everything repeats from the beginning. This activity takes at least an hour. The Fijians drank yanggon just as solemnly ten and even a hundred years ago. And just as zealously worshiped and worship this drink, the inhabitants of most other Melanesian islands.

Yanggon in the views of the islanders is far from an ordinary plant. He is credited with healing properties. As far as I have noticed, the inhabitants of Viti Levu consider the drink to be an effective laxative. Women use yanggon to facilitate childbirth and stimulate milk production in a young mother. And men believe that this drink helps to get rid of sexually transmitted diseases, especially gonorrhea.

Doctors have noticed that gonorrhea in Oceania is more common where yanggon is not drunk at all or is drunk in small quantities. Many Fijians believe that yanggona is generally a cure for all diseases.

It has long been a custom on the islands that has survived to this day - to bury the head of the family right in the earthen floor of the hut. And so that the spirit of the deceased does not disturb the living, an offering of yanggony is made over the place where the deceased lies. The British colonial authorities prohibited the burial of corpses in or near huts. The missionaries also convince their flock that the dead should be buried in cemeteries. And so now the islanders often perform their pagan ritual on Christian graves.

Yanggon also serves to predict the future. In the old days, these prophecies most often dealt with the main question - whether the intended war would be successful and how many prisoners would be.

Thus, the yanggona led the Fijian warriors on the warpath. And the grandfathers and, perhaps, the fathers of my current owners were famous warriors.

At last the leader rises; we rise too. The "sacred" drink is drunk.

PEOPLE ON FIRE

At the end of the ceremony of preparing yanggona, I returned to the capital of the Fiji archipelago - Suva. The purpose of my next trip is Fijian dancers and their past. The most ancient, mythical layers of the history of the "Black Islands". Those that have been preserved since antediluvian times.

The flood? To Fiji? Yes, it was with the flood, with the legends of the great flood, known from the Old Testament, that I met during my travels in Fiji.

The inhabitants of Fiji say that their land was once filled with water up to the very tops of the mountains. And the flood fell on them not by itself, but as a punishment for the perfect sacrilege. Two guys, whose names the memory did not retain, killed the "sacred" bird that belonged to the highest deity of the Fijians - the snake god Ndengei. An eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth. Death for death. Such were the orders on these islands from the day of the creation of the world. And therefore it is not surprising that the snake god, according to the legend of the Fijians, avenged the killing of a single bird by the mass destruction of an entire people, all the people who lived on the islands.

And - as is often the case in history - only the guilty managed to escape God's punishment. When the water began to rise, they (attention!) built a huge tower, gathering on it male and female representatives of all genders, speaking all the languages ​​​​of the Fiji archipelago. As you can see, we meet in the Fijian legends not only with the flood, but also with the “Tower of Babel”.

But " tower of babel» failed to resist the rising water. Therefore, the sinners and their girlfriends had no choice but to build a raft together with representatives of some other tribes and set off on it in search of a place on the unfortunate islands that the flood would spare. They found him, but not on Viti Levu - the "Great Land", but on the island of Mbenga, located to the southeast. The water did not reach the highest peak of the Mbenga mountains, and people escaped here, preserving all their antediluvian customs and traditions on this single piece of land sticking out of the water.

The indisputable proof of the exceptional abilities of the inhabitants of Mbenga is the so-called vilavi laireve- walking on fire. I heard about it many times, but I did not believe that I, from their point of view - unfaithful, would be able to see the famous ritual.

I found a notice in Suva that men from the island of Mbenga would come to Korolev, a village in the province of Tolo, to demonstrate their ability to walk on fire in honor of foreign visitors.

After Suva, the road turns towards the mountains. It runs along the southernmost borders of the Fijian jungle, then begins to descend until it returns to the sea, passing the village of Na vua and the amazingly beautiful coastal village of Ndeumbu, and finally ends in the village of Queen. To the south-east of it, across the sea, lies Mbenga, an island that survived the flood.

The direct descendants of the people who lived here before the flood are the Savau tribe, settled in four villages in the south of Mbengi. One of them, Dakuimbengga, serves as the residence of the supreme leader of the Tui.

The inhabitants of Mbenga left their island for one day. They crossed the strait in boats and brought with them the wood of those species that grow on Mbenga: allegedly only it can burn in the sacred fire. With them came the musicians and the bete, the chief priest of Mbengi, who would lead the upcoming mysterious rite.

What exactly should happen? A special ritual will be performed, demonstrating the amazing abilities of its participants, which I would, using primitive terminology, call "fire resistance". Dancers from the island of Mbenga during the ritual walk, without burning themselves, on white-hot stones.

When I arrived at the Queen, preparations for the ceremony, which took place throughout the day, were in full swing. First, a hole was dug, one meter deep and about six meters in diameter. It was filled with stones, on which a fire will be made later. These stones were also brought from Mbengi. The priest directs the digging of the hearth and the placement of stones in it. I am closely following all the preparations, but so far I have not discovered any "deception". There is nothing that would explain the amazing abilities of the descendants of people who survived the flood. The fire flared up, the stones became red-hot. The participants themselves begin to prepare. In fact, they had already been doing this for two weeks before the start of the sacred ritual: they did not touch women, they changed their diet (coconuts are considered especially harmful to them during this period). Later, I was told of several cases where the dancers did not observe the prescribed taboos before walking on fire. All of them received severe burns, and one even died. The fire did not cause any harm to the rest of the natives.

In these last minutes before the rite, its participants are busy weaving peculiar wreaths, bracelets from fern, which are called here ndraunimbalambala. They are tied at the ankle. Only the soles of the feet up to the ankles have an amazing ability to withstand heat. Hips, stomach are deprived of this wonderful property.

The night is coming. Only white, red-hot stones glow in the dark. I am sitting at a distance of four meters from them, it is impossible to get closer: the heat becomes unbearable. Unfortunately, the onset of darkness does not make it possible to photograph this amazing rite. I didn't have flashbulbs then; I purchased it later in Japan. But I can watch in peace.

At the command of the priest, unburned firewood is removed from the pit with long sticks, leaving only stones, then they bring the trunk of a tree fern, the leaves of which are tied around the dancers. It burns slowly until it is completely burned out.

Now everyone is looking at the priest. It seems to me that he is calm, all focused, as if praying, trying to guess the moment when his people should step into the fire.

Seconds drag on. The priest is waiting. And suddenly he shouts, as if giving the command "attack!":

- Forward! Forward!

He jumps up, walks around the pit and resolutely, without fear, enters the fire-breathing hearth with bare feet. Representatives of the Savau tribe calmly walk behind him. They walk firmly, do not tremble, do not knock down a step. I can't understand it.

The pit is so hot that even I, sitting next to it, find it difficult to withstand such a high temperature. The stones were heated for at least twenty hours, and yet these people calmly, even proudly, walk over the stones of the hearth without burning themselves.

At first I thought that perhaps we were under the influence of some kind of hypnosis. I have read about such things. But then the priest, as if to dispel my secret doubts, came out of the pit, took some branches that he had prepared in advance, and threw them on the stones. They burned out within seconds. Smoke rose, with which believers supposedly greet the god of fire.

So, the branches are burning, and next to them, imperturbable people calmly walk along the hot stones. When the rite finally ends, I break down and ask several dancers to show me my feet. Everyone willingly agrees. Like unbelieving Thomas, I touch my heels. There are no burn marks. Moreover, all the feet are completely cold. It was as if the people with Mbengi were walking on dewy grass and not on fire.

It's impossible to explain. And no one with whom I later spoke about the amazing "fire resistance" of the people of the Savau tribe could give me a satisfactory answer. Naturally, I asked the Mbengi dancers how they themselves explained such a miracle.

Then they told me the legend:

“In ancient times, even before the terrible flood flooded the whole world, except for Mbenga, the leader of the Sawau tribe was Tingalita, a great hunter, who could not be compared with anyone, except, perhaps, the old storyteller Ndrendre. That evening, when the flood began, Ndrendre told his fellow tribesmen of especially interesting stories. They were so entertaining that each of the listeners promised to bring the narrator the first prey that he would catch tomorrow.

Early in the morning the great hunter Tingalita went to the mountain river and soon caught a big eel, but when he pulled it out of the water, the eel turned into a little man! However, this, of course, was not just a man, but a god. However, here even the gods fear for their future. And no wonder, because Tingalita immediately told the prisoner his fate:

- I'll take you to our storyteller, let him cook you and eat you. Ndrendre is worthy of such a gift, he speaks very well!

God, however, did not want to accept such a fate.

“Let me go,” he said, “and I will make you the tribe’s greatest hunter.”

Tingalita only laughed in response:

“Am I not the Savau’s first hunter already?” And has anyone else managed to catch a god?

“I will give you a woman, many women.

But Tingalita again refused:

“I can sleep with twenty, thirty women if I want to. And I don't need more.

And he began to prepare a large basket in which he wanted to carry his captive to the storyteller.

Then God offered him the best he could give.

- Hunter! - he said. “I am the god of fire. Release me and you will never even feel burned or die in the fire. No one else can roast you at the stake.

Tingalita did not believe God, but nevertheless dug a hearth, lit a fire and, when the stones became white hot, invited him to show his abilities. To the surprise of the hunter, the man entered the fire and ... did not burn out. Tingalita followed him and also passed the test.

Thus, the storyteller lost his prey, but Tingalita, his sons and grandsons learned to resist the withering power of fire. They keep this art secret on Mbenga, the only place in the world where people can walk on hot rocks.

Maybe all this became possible because only Mbenga survived the flood? Who knows? Who even knows this? How can I, who came from another world, understand such things?

Gods, people, "sacred" fire and "sacred" islands - all this was long before the first white man appeared in Melanesia. Why ask, why not believe? After all, only "faith can overcome fire ...".

STRONG MAN FROM MBAU ISLAND

The next trip I have to make will take me from the largest island in the archipelago, on which Suva is located, to the islet, probably the smallest, Mbau.

Mbau lies near Viti Levu. About a thousand people live here. And yet the inhabitants of this midget island, the people of the tribe bearing the same name as the island itself, once dominated the entire archipelago. And they not only dominated, but also led all the neighboring islands towards a new, modern life, towards our age with everything that it brings good and, unfortunately, bad. In order to get acquainted with the small homeland of the rulers of Fiji, I went to Mbau.

Once, about a hundred years ago, Mbau was a bustling center, the heart of the entire archipelago. Let's go back to the time when the Argo schooner crashed off the Fiji Islands. In those years, several hundred people of the Mbau tribe were ruled by the energetic leader Mbanuwe. He erected adobe dams in shallow coastal waters, annually taking away a piece of land from the ocean. Thus Mbanuwe built a port for warboats. He increased the population of the island, attracting artisans and other gifted people from neighboring islands. All this was for Fiji and for Melanesia in general of those years a completely unusual phenomenon.

After the death of Mbanuwe, his place was taken by a no less talented ruler - the leader of Nauliwu, who significantly strengthened the power and authority of his small island. If Mbanuwe, strengthening the position of the island, led his unusual construction, then Nauliwu managed to enlist the support of the first Europeans. They were: the crew of the Argo, the crew of the Elisa, and chiefly Charles Savage, who played an outstanding role in the history of Mbau and the entire archipelago. All of them were daredevils and adventurers, which Oceania did not know yet.

At the time when Naulivou became the leader on the island of Mbau, the Elisa, which began its voyage in the Australian Port Jackson, left the port city of Nukualofa in the Polynesian archipelago of Tonga. During a short stop in Tonga, the ship's crew was replenished with two sailors. One of them was named John Husk, the other, whom many things on Mbau remind me of, was Charles Savage. Both of them used to be members of the crew of the pirate ship Port-au-Prince. The English pirates of Port-au-Prince plundered Spanish ships in the South Pacific until their ship, in turn, was attacked by the inhabitants of Tonga and killed the British. However, two - Husk and Savage - escaped death and remained on the island as prisoners.

Later, both of them were released by the leader of the island, and when the Elisa approached the archipelago, the pirates finally had the opportunity to leave Tonga. The ship's commander, Captain Corey, welcomed the arrival of new crew members on board. The British could be very useful to him, as the ship was on its way to the shores of Fiji. But he did not achieve his goal, having run, like the Argo, onto a terrible coral reef.

A former pirate, Savage survived this catastrophe as well. With part of the crew and forty thousand Spanish dollars, which he managed to save, he reached the island of Nairai. They also took several guns from the ship.

On the island of Nairai, which lies away from the sea lanes, the sailors from the Elisa turned out to be the first white people in its entire history. Therefore, they were stripped naked, since all the Nairai men and women were interested in strange aliens of such an unusual skin color. Finding that the bodies of the sailors are nothing special, and one of them, Savage, can even speak to them in their native language, the islanders decided to let the strangers go. The Whites were given a long canoe, and a few days later Captain Corey left Nairai with most of his sailors.

The pirates did not take all the gold dollars with them, since most of the coins were buried immediately after landing, even before the locals arrived in time for the shipwrecked. But one man from the Alice, Charles Savage, remained on the island. For the first time in his life, this homeless beggar, an outcast tramp, felt that he meant something here. The Fijians, at least on Nairai, have never seen a gun before. And a man who, moreover, owned it with such skill as this experienced adventurer, was in the eyes of the locals a demigod.

They immediately brought him the most beautiful women of the tribe, and as many as he wished, gave him many yanggons and gave him the best hut on the whole island. Thanks to Savage, the island began, as we would say today, the influx of "tourists". Curious people came to Nairai from everywhere to look at an extraordinary man who shoots from an unprecedented weapon.

Once I came to look at Savage and the leader of the island of Mbau, the cunning Nauliwow. He immediately realized that the man, who for the people of Nairai is just an attractive personality, can help him achieve what he had in mind - to strengthen and expand the power of the island of Mbau. After all, Savage has a weapon that no one else has, that is, invincible for that time.

And the “magic shooter”, having taken the ammunition, moves to the island of Mbau. He becomes an adornment of the Naulivou court, its main force, the "atomic bomb" of his master. The first time Nauliwow used Savage was during an attack on the village of Kasava, located on the banks of the Reva, on the island of Viti Levu. The warriors from Mbau crossed the strait separating the islands, rose up against the current of the river and stopped at a distance of a shot from the village. Then Savage began to shoot at her defenders. With each shot, he killed a man, although he himself remained at such a distance that neither spears nor throwing clubs reached him. After several shots, the defenders surrendered. Naulivow celebrated his first triumph.

The old enemy of the Mbausians - they fought among themselves dozens of times - were the inhabitants of the village of Verata on Viti Levu. A lot of blood was shed, but all the fights did not give either side a decisive advantage. And in a few hours, the inhabitants of Verata were defeated by a single person - Charles Savage.

Then the pirate, shipwrecked and now an invincible warrior, conquered the village of Nakelo for his master. And every week, every month, the power and importance of the dwarf island of Mbau increased.

For five years the English pirate really lived like a god. Never had a man had so many beautiful islanders in his hut as he did. And no one, they say, had so many children. Within five years, the former pirate strengthened the power of the small island so much that in 1813 tribute was paid to the Mbau leader from dozens of distant islands.

However, in the same year, the Fijian Buffalo Bill, during a punitive expedition to the island of Vanua Levu, was defeated by the warriors of the village of Wailea and killed in front of his associates. The victors made fishhooks from his bones.

The tragic end of the great adventurer did not yet mean a decline in the power of the island of Mbau. Chief Nauliwow by that time realized that white volunteers were best suited to deal with enemies. He found new mercenaries, sailors from a ship sailing from Manila, who rebelled near the Fiji archipelago, killed the officers and accepted the offer to become riflemen of the Naulwow army.

Nawliwow reaped the fruits of his policy until the whites shot each other. But by this time, the warlike leader himself had already died. His successor was the younger brother Tanoa. During Nawliwow's lifetime, they could not stand each other. Evidence of family strife was a terrible wound on the head of Tanoa, which was inflicted on him by his own brother with a club, lost hearing and a broken bridge of the nose. Since then, Tanoa has always been breathing heavily, so the English mercenaries called their boss the old snorer.

Despite his physical wretchedness, Tanoa managed to gradually acquire eight exceptionally beautiful wives. All of them were daughters of famous chiefs of various villages and islands of Fiji. Mbanuwe strengthened the power of Mbau with the help of construction, Nauliwu - military victories, Tanoa - diplomatic marriages. From each marriage, at least one son appeared, who was supposed to strengthen paternal power in a given territory. It soon became clear that the policy of "marriages of convenience" was more than successful.

And yet there was a palace coup on Mbau. Tanoa had to run. He took refuge with relatives of one of his wives in the village of Somosomo on the island of Taveuni. However, the rebels decided to seize the escaped king at all costs. They turned to the whites for help. For several months now, the French schooner La Belle Josephine has been sailing in the waters of Fiji, the captain of which de Bureau, for a decent fee, helped local leaders capture enemy villages. This "charitable occupation" brought de Bureau a very decent income.

The Mbau rebels hired the "Beautiful Josephine" and, deciding that she was really beautiful, first of all killed her captain, and then continued sailing as full owners of the first European ship owned by the islanders. Due to poor handling, the schooner soon ran into the reefs, so that in the end no one disturbed Tanoa in his exile.

While the enemies of the "legitimate king" were sailing on the ship de Bureau, on the political scene, to everyone's surprise, one of the sons of Tanoa appeared, whom no one took into account. His name was Ser. He was the only son of Tanoa left on Mbau. Tanoa's enemies did not consider Sera a serious rival and therefore did not even take him into custody. The fact is that, according to the Fijians, the nature of the child depends on the food that he receives in the first months of life. If a brave woman feeds him, then the boy will be brave, if the mother is truthful, then the son will become the same. But Seru lost his mother a few weeks after his birth, and he was fed sugarcane juice. Everyone knew and was convinced that the boy would turn out to be weak, like a stalk of a reed that leans to the ground in any breath of the breeze, and his life will be as sweet as the juice of sugar cane is sweet.

Seroux seemed to fully justify these assumptions. Growing up, he did not take part in military campaigns, preferring to spend time with Mbau women. But one day, Seru secretly gathered his father's followers and attacked the self-proclaimed rulers of Mbau. The attack was so unexpected that within one night the son returned power to his father.

The father rewarded Sera by changing his name. From that day on, Sera began to be called Tacombau, which means "Winner of Mbau." Tacombau was proclaimed crown prince of the mighty island and its many vassals, and during the life of his father gradually concentrated great power in his hands. His country took taxes from the most distant islands of the archipelago, grew richer and stronger every day. And Tacombau began to achieve a goal that seemed impossible thirty years ago - to unite the entire archipelago under the rule of Mbau. He wanted to become the first, only and all-powerful Tui Viti - "the supreme leader of all Fiji."

However, the fate of the island of Mbau and the whole of Fiji was beginning to be controlled by this time by a new significant force - Christianity. Oddly enough, but the first spreaders of the faith of white people in Fiji were not Europeans, but residents of another island in Oceania - Tahiti. They were sent to the archipelago by the well-known London Missionary Society. Atea and Hanai, as these Tahitians were called, began to fulfill their “apostolic mission” in the east of the archipelago, in the Lau group of islands, then they moved north, but then left Fiji without achieving tangible results.

A few years later, the champions of the faith of Christ again found themselves in the archipelago. To the great surprise of the islanders, two rival Christian churches began to fight for their pagan souls - Protestant and Catholic.

The first missionary to appear on Mbau was the Reverend William Cross. By coincidence, he ended up on the island at the moment when the islanders killed four captives from a hostile tribe with clubs. “During the war, the Muses are silent,” the Romans said. Tacombau supplemented this saying with the admonition that now is not the time for religion, especially a new one. After all, Mbau is again waging one of his wars. Maybe next time...

However, Cross did not give up. He decided to force the supreme leader to renounce the pagan faith with the strongest argument in his supply - the story of the hellish torments that await the pagan after death. Tacombau listened attentively to the description of hell and remarked:

“As for me, it’s not so bad to warm yourself by the fire, especially in cold weather.

Since the bet on the fear of hellish torments failed, the entire mission of the Reverend Cross turned out to be fruitless. He left the island, and Tacombau remained to live there in the old way.

The Tacombau warriors continued their triumphal march. They captured more and more new territories. At the end of the 40s, on none of the islands, and even more so on the main one - Viti Levu, there was no longer a single village, not a single tribe that would not obey Tacombau in one way or another.

However, Tacombau had to learn the other side of the coin. The first "ambassadors" from Europe and the United States began to arrive in the archipelago. And all these "diplomats", but in reality traders, turned to Tacombau as the sole ruler of all Fiji. One of them, Mr. John Williams, settled in 1845 on the islet of Nukulou opposite Suva. Here he established a trade mission and a consulate of the United States.

One of the main tasks of each diplomatic representative is to organize celebrations on the occasion of the national holiday of their country. Therefore, on July 4, 1849, when, as you know, the United States celebrates Independence Day, it was planned to arrange a holiday. The consul decided that it would be best to celebrate this day with fireworks, which none of the "distinguished guests" of the diplomatic celebration had ever seen before. One of the first rockets, unfortunately, set fire to the consul's own shop; making a real "fiery spectacle". The guests fled, having previously taken everything they liked from the burning store.

The fire soon ended, but its flame cast a shadow over the entire subsequent history of Fiji. Williams stated that the United States Consulate had been attacked and looted by "Fijian cannibals" and that the ruler of the Tacombau Islands was under an obligation to compensate for everything his subjects plundered and carried away. This diplomat kept silent about the unsuccessful fireworks in the report. Williams determined the amount of damage caused - five thousand dollars. But where could Tacombau get them from? Of course, he didn't pay. However, Williams was in no hurry. The "ambassador" only added interest to the amount he had originally determined, and Fiji's "public debt" increased all the time.

This incident did not end the complications with White. In the early 50s, Tacombau allowed several missionaries to settle right on the island. For some time the supreme leader did not interfere in their affairs, and they, in turn, did not disturb their master. In 1852, old man Tanoa, father of Tacombau, who had lived in seclusion for the last years, died, and the son decided to strangle all his wives so that their souls would accompany their master on the road to a happy afterlife. The missionaries appealed to Tacombau with a request to abandon their intention. One of them, Calvert, even declared that he would cut off one of his fingers for every surviving wife of Tanoa. Other missionaries offered ten sperm whale teeth, so prized by the islanders, for the women's lives. But Tacombau did not heed their requests and ordered all widows to be strangled.

This ritual murder was used by John Williams, who from the very beginning sought to turn the Fiji Islands into a colony of the United States of America in order to unleash a campaign against Tacombau and his island.

Tacombau was forced to defend himself. His friend, the supreme leader of Tonga, advised him to convert to Christianity in order to propitiate the white people. Tacombau hesitated for a long time. On April 30, 1854, he finally accepted baptism, destroyed "pagan idols" and banned the strangulation of widows in his empire.

But the whites did not leave Tacombau alone. The following year, the American warship John Adams approached the Fiji Islands, the captain of which was E. B. Boutwell, who was supposed to resolve a dispute between the consul of his country and the Fijian paramount leader about compensation for damage caused by an unsuccessful fireworks display. Boutwell added another fire to this, as well as interest. Fiji's "public debt" increased from $5,000 to $44,000. During this unprecedented trial, the "King of Fiji" was not even present. Only at the end of the trial, Tacombau was invited aboard the ship and offered a choice - either he would seal the contract with his signature, or he would be taken aboard the John Adams to the United States.

Tacombau put his signature. He knew, of course, that he was unable to pay the debt. But he did not want to lose everything, and he did what was done quite often then - he offered his country at the mercy of another power, so that internal control in Fiji remained in his hands. This is exactly what Williams wanted.

But the far-reaching intrigues of Williams eventually benefited a third party. As soon as the first British consul to Fiji, William Pritchard, took up his duties, Tacombau immediately offered his islands to England. Pritchard managed to win the support of the treaty he was preparing from many Fijian leaders, including the leader of the island of Lau, located in the eastern part of the archipelago and heavily influenced by Tonga.

However, another twenty years passed before England formally annexed Fiji. By that time, Pritchard had already left the islands, but he did not go to England, but to the American West, where he was killed by the Indians.

Since Britain hesitated for a long time whether to acquire the islands or not, Tacombau decided that he himself would establish European orders in his country. His English advisers drafted a constitution that turned Fiji into a monarchy. Thus Tacombau became the "constitutional" king of his archipelago. The royal flag was raised - a red sun on a blue field, above the sun - a royal crown. In the end, Tacombau also created a parliament, the majority of deputies in which were white. They enjoyed another privilege in Fiji - they did not pay taxes. And since only whites were engaged in trade and, consequently, had money, the economically new “kingdom” did not flourish in any way. In addition, American warships began to appear in the waters of Fiji. So Tacombau with great joy gave the newly created "kingdom" into the hands of Great Britain, led at that time by one of its most cunning politicians - Benjamin Disraeli.

Tacombau lived for several more years. He must have been one of the most remarkable subjects of Her Majesty Queen Victoria. A brave warrior, Tacombau strictly observed loyalty to his new sovereigns. He probably thought that this was the best way to help his country. And yet, ironically, it was he who, at the end of her life, brought on her a terrible catastrophe. At the invitation of the British authorities, Tacombau went to Australia with his two sons. There he became ill with measles, which until then was completely unknown in Fiji. And although he got to his feet, he was not completely cured and, returning to his homeland, infected his advisers and members of his personal guard. Those, in turn, infected their families. A terrible epidemic engulfed the entire archipelago.

About fifty thousand people died from measles in a short time - a quarter of the entire population. And only after that Tacombau died.

FOR THE GOLD OF KING SOLOMON

Economically, the Solomon Islands are the most backward and, moreover, the least known part of Melanesia. I felt a certain pride because I was the first Czech who visited these islands, forgotten by God and people.

However, I later found out that I was somewhat hasty in my conclusions. It turns out that back in 1896, a Czech was part of the first research expedition that visited the Solomon Islands. This Austro-Hungarian expedition landed in the northern part of one of the Solomon Islands - Guadalcanal near Tetera. In order to penetrate deep into the islands, guides were hired here. The nearest goal of the expedition was the top of Mount Tatuve. But the participants never reached it: they were attacked by warriors of one of the local tribes, and neither firearms nor cold steel saved the expedition. Among the dead was my fellow countryman. I never managed to find his name in the archives of the protectorate. True, in Honiara, when it comes to those who died on this first research expedition, they also remember one Bohemian.

What brought my compatriot and all the members of this unlucky expedition to unfamiliar islands? Gold. Just as it drew people to many other parts of the world.

But is there really gold on Guadalcanal, Mount Tatuwe? Local resident Gordon, a knowledgeable person, answered my question in the affirmative:

– It is worth looking out of the window of my house in Honiara, as before my eyes there is a picture of the majestic and hostile Golley Ridge (Golden Ridge) towering over the city, covered with clouds. Its name is justified - they say that there is so much gold in these wild, jungle-covered mountains that it would be advisable to start industrial development. But the difficulties of any such undertaking and the impenetrable jungle that would have to be cut down in an area of ​​​​several square miles - all this has so far held entrepreneurs back.

So, Gordon assures, there is gold on Guadalcanal, as well as on Fiji and New Guinea. This is what gave the name to these islands. Their discoverer was sure that he was in the legendary country of Ophir, where the fabulously rich mines of King Solomon were located and from where ships sailed loaded with gold for the Great Jerusalem Temple.

Thus, the name of King Solomon, the poet and builder of Jerusalem, entered the history of Melanesia. It happened like this. When the Spaniards reached the shores of America in search of gold, they found in Mexico, the country of the Aztecs, and Peru, the Inca empire, such fabulous riches that it seemed to them that everything that treasure seekers could only dream of really comes true.

In Peru, which was captured by Pizarro, the new rulers of the Indian empire were haunted by two countries that had not yet been found. In one of them, the “golden” king allegedly lived (in Spanish “Eldorado”). The country where the king wore golden clothes was actually discovered in the north South America. There were also yellow metal, which the Spaniards so dreamed of, and many emeralds.

The legend of the "golden" king had a real basis - each new ruler of the strong Colombian principality of Chibcha was "crowned" as follows: they carried him on a golden stretcher to Lake Guatavita. There, on the shore, the future ruler threw off everything, clothes; his body was rubbed with fragrant resin, and then covered with thick layers of golden dust. The king was literally showered with gold. The sparkling sovereign entered the lake and in its sacred waters washed off the precious metal from himself, and the participants in the “crowning” threw hundreds of gold items into it.

So, the legend associated with the "golden" king of El Dorado turned out to be a reality. Such a king really existed, and his country too. And another country remained unfound, but alluring, the wealth of which was so great that the legend about them even got on the pages of the Bible, every word of which at that time was taken for granted. But where to look for this biblical country of Ophir? Who will be able to find the fabulous mines of King Solomon?

One of the rulers of Peru, the famous Tupac Yupanqui, eighty years before the arrival of the whites, undertook a large sea expedition on balsa tree rafts to the islands of Ninyachumbi and Avachumbi, located in the Pacific Ocean. From this expedition, Tupac Yupanqui brought a lot of gold, silver, a bronze throne, dozens of black captives, as well as the skin of an animal that had never been seen here before - a horse. The entire expedition to the islands of Ninyachumbi and Avachumbi lasted less than a year.

Today, the story of the expedition of the powerful Inca may seem implausible, in particular, for example, the somewhat naive story of a horse skin. But in those days, after the legends of the wealth of Mexico and Peru were confirmed, the message of the golden island sounded to the Spaniards like heavenly music. And now, a quarter of a century after Pizarro captured the Inca empire, a request was sent to the viceroy in Lima to equip an expedition with the aim of "search for those islands in the Southern Ocean that are called Solomons."

Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa became the person who wrote down the story about the voyage of the powerful Inca to the "golden" islands and put an equal sign between them and the biblical country of Ophir with the mines of King Solomon. He was not an empty dreamer or a swaggering, stupid conquistador, a phenomenon common in Spanish America. Sarmiento had an excellent education, in addition, he gained a wealth of experience in navigation, as he traveled all over the world. From Spain, he went first to Mexico, where, however, he was not lucky. The Catholic Inquisition accused Pedro of "witchcraft". He was tried, and in the square in Guadalajara, where Pedro then lived, he was punished with whips, and then completely expelled from the island.

From New Spain - Mexico - Sarmiento went to another center of the Spanish colonial empire in America - the capital of Peru, Lima. There history repeated itself. And although he held the high post of chief astrologer at the viceroy's court, the Inquisition again accused him of black magic. Pedro's house was searched and several navigation instruments were found bearing the usual orientation signs. Despite the fact that sailors used such devices for many years, the inquisitors declared them magical. Sarmiento was found guilty again, arrested and expelled from Lima. Living among the Indians in one of the Peruvian villages, Sarmiento wrote down the story of the voyage of the Inca Tupac Yupanqui to the unknown islands of the Pacific Ocean.

At first glance, a very true story about the journey of the ruler of Peru prompted Sarmiento, after he was forgiven, and he was allowed to return to Lima, to write a petition to prepare an expedition for gold to the "Islands of King Solomon."

The astrologer, pagan, navigator and engineer offered his detailed plan to the then Spanish governor of Peru, Lope Garcia de Castro, who was very interested in this proposal. But since he wanted the honor of discovering or, more precisely, the second discovery of the mines of King Solomon to belong to him or at least to one of his family members, he appointed the head of the expedition not its ideological inspirer - Sarmiento, but his nephew Alvaro Mendanya de Neira.

Sarmiento took part in the expedition, but only as captain of one of the two ships. Garcia de Castro equipped the Los Reyes with a displacement of two hundred and fifty tons and the Todos Santos with a displacement of one hundred and ten tons.

Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa commanded the flagship, which the members of the expedition called the Captain, on the captain's bridge of another ship, nicknamed the Almiranta, stood Pedro de Ortega. The route in the ocean was laid by "pilot major" Hernan Gallego. The head of the entire expedition, as we have already said, was Alvaro Mendaña de Neira.

It was a very bold decision on the part of the Viceroy. He entrusted more than one hundred and fifty lives to a young man who was barely twenty-one years old and who until then experienced his most dangerous adventures not among ocean waves and in the beds of married Peruvian beauties. Soon, however, it became clear that the smart and tactful Mendanha was able to cope well with experienced sea wolves. The crew of the "Captains" and "Almiranta" consisted of eighty sailors, seventy soldiers, ten black slaves, several miners and gold diggers who can pan for gold, and, finally, four Franciscan monks.

November 17, 1567 "Almiranta" and "Captain" finally left with a fair wind Callao - the main port of Spanish Peru. This was the first voyage across the Pacific Ocean from South America, and the leader of the expedition, I repeat, was a young man with no experience.

Neither Sarmiento nor Mendaña thought that the voyage to the islands they wanted to find would last too long. However, only on the sixty-third day, when all supplies were almost exhausted, they saw the land - a small atoll, which Mendanya named after Jesus.

On February 7 of the following year, the flotilla anchored off a relatively large island. And since this voyage into the unknown began on November 17 - the day of St. Elizabeth, then Mendanya, the first large island from the archipelago, which had not yet been visited by a white man, named her after her - in Spanish, Santa Isabel.

In the travel diary of Hernan Gallego, the first message about the Melanesians is found. He describes them as follows: "They have brown skin, curly hair, they go almost completely naked, wearing only short skirts made of palm leaves." The Spaniards needed food. And there was no other food except yams, taro and coconuts in the Solomon Islands. Local residents, however, raised pigs, but they did not have enough of them for themselves. And Mendanya decided that he would get food, especially pork, for his people by force. When the chief Bilebanarra refused to feed the intruders, Sarmiento went ashore to seize him and collect food ransom. But Bilebanarra managed to escape in time in the mountains, and the only member of the leader's family who fell into the hands of the whites was his old grandfather.

The Spaniards captured prisoners with the help of specially trained dogs. The captured islanders Mendanya again sold in exchange for food, mainly for pigs.

While some of the Spaniards were engaged in obscene trade with the inhabitants of Santa Isabeli, the rest of the crew were hard at work building a small brigantine with a displacement of thirty tons. Don Alvaro believed that for navigation among the Solomon Islands, part of which was visible on the horizon, a smaller vessel than the Almiranta and the Captain would be more suitable.

On April 4, the brigantine, named "Santiago", was launched. She headed along the northern coast of Santa Isabela, crossed the strait and anchored off the Big Island. Ortega later renamed the Big Island Guadalcanal after the city where he once lived in Spain.

From Guadalcanal, the brigantine returned to Star Bay, and then all three ships headed for the newly discovered island. The place where they anchored I often visited during my stay in Honiara. Here, where there was once the first fortified point of the Spaniards in the Solomon Islands, is the Office of the Protectorate. Today, this place in the vicinity of Honiara is called Point Cruz. Mendanya called it Puerto de la Cruz. Less than a week had passed since the Spaniards dropped anchor, and the first expedition on foot had already set off inland in search of gold in the mountains and rivers. The leader of this group of twenty-two was Andree Nunez.

The gold diggers had too little time, and they were unable to conduct real exploration. And yet the Spaniards were optimists, and Mendanha believed until the end of his days that there was gold on his islands.

While the prospectors were looking for gold in the depths of the island, the brigantine went in search of other unknown lands. Indeed, the Spaniards soon discovered another rather large, and today the second most important island after Guadalcanal, the island of the archipelago - Malaita. In the south, seafarers found land, which they named after St. Cristobal. In the waters of San Cristobal, Mendanya's ships had to endure their most difficult battle - they were attacked by almost a hundred canoes of the islanders.

But more dangerous than the constant skirmishes with the locals, for the crew members were tropical diseases. And first of all - severe malaria. More than fifty Spaniards gradually died from high temperature and fever. Despite this, the youthfully bold and stubborn Mendanya wanted to continue sailing. He suggested going even further west, about five hundred kilometers from the coast of the Solomon Islands. If the Spaniards had carried out this intention, then Mendanya would have discovered New Guinea from the east and, possibly, reached the unknown continent - Australia.

However, the discontent among the deadly tired sailors was too great. And Mendanya gave up, agreeing to turn back. On August 11, after six months in the Solomon Islands, the first European expedition to Melanesia left San Cristobal. She made her way back north. We crossed the equator, passed the Marshall Islands, survived a terrible storm, which even Gallego, who sailed for almost half a century, did not remember.

During the storm, the flotilla was scattered, and each ship got back alone. When the hurricane subsided, a riot almost broke out on Mendaña's ship. The sailors decided that they would never be able to return home to Peru. And they, who were in such a hurry to leave the Solomon Islands, demanded that Mendanya turn the helm and sail back to Guadalcanal, otherwise, they say, everyone will die. But this time the commander resolutely insisted on returning to Peru.

The crew members, meanwhile, continued to die of hunger and thirst, some went blind, others lost all their teeth from scurvy.

More than five terrible months passed before they finally saw the deserted coast of California. Then the sailors changed course and sailed along the coast of America all the time to the South. In the nearest Mexican port, all three ships that had been scattered during the storm met again.

However, here Mendanyu was in for a terrible disappointment. The harbor captain refused to help the crew, did not give any food, and forbade repairs to the ships. And the dilapidated ships were again forced to raise anchors in search of another shelter. After a difficult voyage, they reached the next port on the Pacific coast in what is now Nicaragua. The same story repeated itself here. But now they would no longer be able to swim to Lima. The head of the expedition had no choice but to sell his personal property to local merchants in order to pay for the repair of ships.

Only after that, after thirty days spent at sea, Mendanya's ships finally dropped anchor in the Peruvian port of Callao. They returned home. But the homeland, which the Spaniards stole from the Indians some fifty years ago, met them not very warmly. After all, they returned exhausted and poor, even poorer than at the beginning of the voyage. Yes, there may be gold in the Solomon Islands, but they did not bring a single ounce in the holds. And where is the silver, precious stones, spices? Mendaña found none of this. The expedition only brought hunger, thirst, suffering, and many even death to those who took part in it. Juan de Orozco, an official of the Viceroyalty, who, after Mendaña's return, listened to him, sent a completely unambiguous message to the Spanish king about the results of the expedition: “In my opinion, the islands discovered [Mendagna] in the west are of no importance, since they no traces of gold, silver or other sources of profit have been found, and because only naked savages live on these islands.

Mendanya really did not bring any precious metals from the expedition, although, as we know today, there is a lot of gold on the archipelago he discovered. However, for the first time he opened a new sea route in the South Pacific Ocean, managed to sail from the coast of America almost to Australia, passing about three thousand kilometers. The expedition of Mendaña, having covered a huge distance and encountered numerous obstacles on its way, significantly surpassed the sea campaign of Columbus. But Columbus, however, discovered America with its silver, gold and Indian empires. What about Mendanya? He found, Juan de Orozco reported, only "a few naked savages."

Mendanya, however, did not lose faith in his islands. For thirty years he sought to return there again. After numerous projects and requests, the authorities finally approved the plan for a new expedition. This time she was not supposed to look for gold, but to populate these wild islands with Spanish colonists. Mendanya obtained consent from the king himself, who awarded the discoverer of the Solomon Islands the title of marquis.

And he justified the hopes placed on him. However, in Panama, despite the royal order, the newly minted marquis was thrown into prison by the governor. God knows for what reason. Perhaps so that Mendanya could not carry out a broad plan for the colonization of Oceania and thus would not bypass his envious but lazy rivals. At large, Mendanya was only after a long time.

Having withstood these difficult trials, the marquis set about organizing a new expedition. He appointed Pedro Fernandez de Quiros as his deputy. Mendaña's wife, Isabel de Barreto, also played a significant role in the new expedition.

Mendaña this time had four ships, two large ones, the San Jeronimo and Santa Isabel, and two smaller ones, the San Filipe and Santa Catalina. They were several hundred future Spanish colonists for the Solomon Islands - farmers, artisans, miners, priests and girls of easy virtue.

The flotilla left Callao in April 1595. Mendaña's route was different from his first voyage. Thanks to this, he was able to add to his discoveries one of the archipelagos of Polynesia - the Marquesas Islands.

The result of Mendaña's brief stay in the Marquesas was tragic for their inhabitants. In just two weeks, the Spaniards managed to exterminate more than two hundred people. And therefore it is not surprising that when Mendanya tried to find among his passengers three dozen colonists who would want to settle in the Marquesas Islands, then after all the crimes committed against the locals, there was not a single volunteer who wished to stay. Everyone dreamed of the Solomon Islands, about which, despite the unsuccessful results of the first Mendanya expedition, many fantastic stories were told.

But the "fabulously rich" Solomon Islands is their discoverer - what an irony of fate! - never found it. He skipped them. Instead, Mendanya discovered the Santa Cruz group - several small islands located south of the Solomon archipelago. The islanders initially met the Spanish colonists in a friendly manner. And Mendanya decided to establish his colony here, on the shores of the amazingly beautiful bay, which he called Graciosa.

They landed on the shore and began to build dwellings. But very soon the colonists found themselves face to face with malaria, an enemy much more dangerous than the Melanesians with their bows and clubs. More and more people became dissatisfied.

Manrique, one of Mendaña's deputies, even began to plot a rebellion against his commander. But the wife of Mendaña found out about the impending rebellion and she herself showed determination. She lured Manrique out of the camp and, with the help of her relative Lorenzo de Barreto, also Mendaña's deputy, killed him.

However, Lorenzo de Barreto himself soon died of malaria. And on October 18, 1595, Mendanya, the courageous discoverer of the Melanesian and Polynesian islands, died of tropical fever.

He was not the first and far from the last victim of his unfortunate expedition. By that time, about fifty freshly carved crosses already stood at the Gracios cemetery. The night before Mendaña's death, there was a total eclipse of the moon. The surviving colonists had no doubt that this unprecedented sight was a sign of heaven. Now no one could keep the first European colonists in Melanesia.

Mendaña's widow, Doña Isabel, took the fate of the expedition into her own hands. She decided to send a flotilla to the Philippine Islands, located close to the Asian coast, and she herself led the ships through these unfamiliar waters. Probably for the first time in the history of navigation, a whole flotilla, moreover, along a completely unfamiliar route, was directed by a woman. And, oddly enough, she coped with this matter more successfully than her husband. With the help of Quiros, she brought two ships to Manila, the main port of the Philippines. The third ship separated during the voyage, and no one else saw its crew. The fourth ship was lost even earlier.

After a long time from the Philippines, some members of the expedition returned to Peru. And since Mendanya hid the maps he made during his first voyage, for a long time none of the European navigators could find the Solomon Islands. For over two hundred years, no one has seen either Guadalcanal or San Cristobal. The only exception was the stubborn Kyros, who returned from the Philippines. He traveled once more to Oceania, making a short stop in the Solomon Islands.

And only at the end of the 18th century Malaita was rediscovered by Carteret. But by this time, Europeans began to look in Oceania no longer for gold, but for other treasures - trepangs and sandalwood. In search of gold, only the ill-fated Austro-Hungarian expedition went to Guadalcanal again, among the dead members of which was my fellow countryman. But she also failed to take the gold from the Guadalcanal mountains. Today it has already been found, but so far it has not been touched. It awaits those who have modern mining equipment and sufficient funds. But this is no longer the past, but the future of the Solomon Islands.

MESSENGER OF PARADISE

My boatman pushed off the bank of the Auca and steered our canoe straight south across the wide lagoon. I would like to visit several more islands scattered around the Langa Langa lagoon, protected from the ocean on all sides by a coral reef. The Solomon Islands are cut off from the rest of the world by vast expanses of ocean water, and Langa-Langa is doubly isolated from it. In addition, several dozen white people live in Guadalcanal and Malaita in our time. But here, on Auki, Alita, Laulasi and other islets, there is not a single white one. I have to rely entirely on the boatman and my own knowledge of the Melanesian pidgin.

The lagoon is a source of life for hundreds of local residents, because it contains fish and sea shellfish. But first of all, I want to look at those Auk men who collect shells for their women. They're looking for them right here in the shallow water. To the great regret of the islanders, there are no rare rum shells in Langa Langa, from which red money is made. However, white and black shells in the lagoon are quite enough.

I must say that the collection of shells is not at all such a simple matter. Since local money, despite its widespread use, as already mentioned, was considered a sacred subject - a taboo, the preparation and collection of shells are led by fatambo- sorcerers of individual genera Auki. Fatambo determine the time when canoes of shell seekers can enter the waters of the lagoon. And they call the term not just because it “it occurred to them”, but by making a preliminary attempt to make contact with the “spirits of sharks” - the rulers of the seas. To do this, they solemnly sacrifice a fat pig to the spirits, and then also turn to them with a prayer. They ask the spirits to indicate the day the boats enter the lagoon, and also protect the gatherers from sharks and barracudas, the most terrible enemies of shell seekers.

Before the start of the gathering, the men gather in a separate large hut. From this moment until the end of the work, they will all live together, getting and preparing food themselves and doing all the housework. Under no pretext, men during this period should not talk to women, and they have no right to even look at them. It goes without saying that they cannot sleep together lest the men be "defiled".

And finally, the long-awaited day arrives. Men in their canoes swim out into the blue expanses of the Langa Langa lagoon to look for black and white shells here. As a rule, men of two or three kinds work together. The sorcerer who directs the collection does not, of course, immerse himself in water. While the men work, the fatambo sits in a canoe and prays to the "shark spirits". Again and again he repeats the request to protect the gatherers from marine predators.

The divers are connected to a boat rope to which a basket is attached; in it they put shells under water. As soon as the basket is full, the sorcerer pulls it out, pours the contents into the boat and throws the basket back into the water. Divers break off shells from growths at the bottom of the lagoon with a special narrow stone a quarter of a meter long, similar to a primitive knife. They call him in Auki fauboro; he, too, is "sacred." Between catching shells, sorcerers store stones in a special "house of spirits".

Finally, the area chosen by the sorcerer is robbed, the collection of shells ends. The sorcerer donates another pig to the shark spirits, and the pickers can return to their women.

I was present at the gathering, observing divers in several parts of the lagoon, who, holding stone knives in their hands, from time to time appeared on the surface to breathe air and then plunge back into the water.

Canoes, however, are not only among the divers from Auki, but also among the inhabitants of other islands of the lagoon, who are not averse to earning extra money, supplying raw materials for the production of money. After several hours of sailing, we dock at Laulasi, one of the islands in the southern part of the lagoon. I remember visiting this island as often as I remember about “minting” “coins” on Auki, so I will tell you about one story that I got into here.

Our canoe was followed for a good twenty minutes before we landed. In fact, we were already waiting. And the white man here seems to everyone to be a black sheep. When the canoe hit the bank and I jumped out of it, a tall, elderly man waiting for us greeted me in a fairly decent pidgin. I was about to introduce myself, but this man, probably Chief Laulasi, beat me to it.

The islanders only distinguish between the British and the Americans. There are no other white people for them. English tourists do not visit this most abandoned of the Melanesian archipelagos. And the British, who permanently live here, very soon acquire some kind of specific local flavor, which, of course, I did not have. Therefore, from the point of view of the locals, I was an American.

I had become accustomed to this division of whites into two groups by the islanders in the Solomon Islands. Chief Laulasi, not at all doubting the affirmative answer, asked:

- You are an American?

I, unfortunate, not knowing what I was doing, nodded. What else was there for me to do? Who else could I be? Then the chief asked:

- Where from?

I blurt out:

- From Kansas.

The fact is that in Kansas I have two good friends, with whom I once experienced one of my most interesting adventures, when I was looking for Indian cities lost in the jungle from an airplane.

“From Kansas,” repeated the chief.

This name meant nothing to him, of course. Then he asked another question:

- Where are your things?

I understood the question, because the leader spoke the word cargo. This English word in Melanesian “pidgin”, which is so common in international transportation, means many concepts, mainly “goods”, “ship cargo”. I translated it as "baggage".

In general, I have few things, and almost everything that was not absolutely necessary, I left on Guadalcanal. So I told the truth

“My cargo is in Honiara.

The leader, as if he was impatiently waiting for this news, turned to his countrymen and began to speak excitedly in the local dialect. The same excitement gripped those present. They stopped listening to the leader and began to explain something, interrupting each other. In each phrase, by the movement of the lips, I guessed one word: “cargo”.

So, the inhabitants of Laulasi are clearly not interested in me, but in the cargo that remained on Guadalcanal. Taking advantage of the general excitement, I left to walk around the village and take some pictures. The most interesting on the island are the ramparts, real stone fortifications that protect the village. I have never seen anything like it in the Solomon Islands. Equally unusual is the central building of the village, reminiscent rather of a barracks or a "men's house".

And at that moment it dawned on me. My God, because I ended up on an island where masinga still exists! That's why they wanted to know where my cargo was! And that's why they wanted me to be an American. Feverishly rummaging in memory. I try to remember everything I know about the period when the Americans landed on the Solomon Islands. And what I was told about on Auki and Malaita was about the activities of the inhabitants of this and other islands of the Langa Langa lagoon in the Solomon Islands Labor Cora, auxiliary detachments of the American army.

Perhaps we should start with the fact that neither Malaita nor the islands of the Langa Langa lagoon were ever completely subdued by the British. A few years before the start of the Second World War, the Malaita District Commissioner and his assistant and twenty policemen were killed by local residents in Sinaranza. In 1935, mass riots took place here and on the islands of Langa Langa. Their reasons were purely economic. The plantations were derelict, and the men of Malaita had two options: either go to the plantations of distant islands, even to Australia, or put up with a beggarly life in their poor villages.

The Langa Langa lagoon, and, in fact, Malaita itself, was not affected by the war. But when the Americans landed on Guadalcanal, they offered more than three thousand islanders, mostly residents of this particular part of the archipelago, to join auxiliary labor detachments. At the same time, the Americans began to pay unheard-of amounts to workers - fourteen pounds sterling a month. On the plantations, as I have already said, at the beginning of the war, the monthly wage of a local laborer was one pound sterling. And now the Americans have offered them fourteen times more!

But this was only the first shock, the first meeting, probably the poorest inhabitants of the planet, with representatives of the richest country in the world. American soldiers, who did not know how to spend their high salaries on the islands, bought any "native souvenirs" from the islanders for fantastic money. For some trifle, a skirt of pandan leaves or a carving, which had no value in the eyes of the islanders, its owner often received from the American buyer more than a month's work on the plantations.

Local residents were struck by another circumstance. There were thousands and thousands of people in the American army whose skin was as dark as their own. And yet these American Negroes received the same salary for their service in the army as whites - at least so the natives thought. And not just salaries. The Americans had everything in abundance: canned food, Coca-Cola, cigarettes, chewing gum, chocolate and, finally, military equipment. And besides, it's all free. Just reach out and take it. Take as much as you need, as much as you want.

And the result? I really can’t find another word: it was a massive shock to an entire nation. The islanders made the following conclusion for themselves. There are two groups of white people in the world. The English, who are poor and therefore keep everything they have, and the Americans, people who are amazingly rich, who will gladly give everything they have to the islanders. The simple man, and the Melanesians lived until that time in a world of extremely primitive ideas, tries to explain everything new that he encounters by the action of supernatural forces, with the help of religious ideas and his own, for us often almost incomprehensible, course of reasoning.

So the islanders had the idea that the Lord God, in the existence of which the Melanesians were convinced by the missionaries, created this cargo - wealth for everyone. The British wanted to take over. Now, however, everything will change, and other, kind, white Americans will bring cargo to the islanders on big ships - things that rightfully belong to them.

The American army, after the end of the war, naturally left the island. But the locals believe that the Americans will return, and when cargo ships arrive in the Solomon Islands, there will come the same "paradise" that, according to them, exists in America. That "paradise" from which the islanders, like once Adam and Eve, were expelled.

The departure of the American army exacerbated the economic crisis in this part of the protectorate. On Malaita, the most densely populated island of the archipelago, all plantations were empty during the war (in 1965, only one thousand six hundred and seventy-two tons of copra were received here, while on the New Hebrides, where the population is less than here, on one island, in the same 20 times more copra was produced in 2009).

So the symbol of "paradise", which should soon come, on the Solomon Islands became ships carrying cargo. In the specialized literature, such representations are called "cargo-cult". And the islanders began to wait for the arrival of cargo ships with increasing impatience, until they themselves began to look for evidence of the return of the Americans to the islands.

Sophisticated fantasy has generated and still generates a variety of "reliable" evidence of this. Footprints were allegedly found on the sandy beaches of Malaita. Over the central regions of Guadalcanal, someone saw American planes dropping paratroopers. A large American caravan was seen south of San Cristobal. On the coast of Nggela, lights were lit for several nights in a row.

And now, on the island of Laulasi, in the heart of the Langa Langa lagoon, I am standing, an unintentional herald who announced that the cargo is on its way, an accidental messenger of the approaching "paradise".

The expectation of the return of the "lost paradise" merged with general discontent in the Solomon Islands, associated with the deteriorating economic situation in the protectorate and with the resistance of an alien government. That's when cargo comes, the islanders will receive American goods and will manage everything themselves. The manifestation of this discontent was a movement that expressed religious, as well as political and social demands, the so-called masinga. In the southern part of Malaita there is an Ari-ari tribe. In the language of this tribe, the word "masinga" means a young shoot of taro, in a figurative sense - "brotherhood".

The masinga movement (in the protectorate it is called "masinga-rul", from the English "rul" - "power") soon spread throughout Malaita and spread to the islets of the Langa Langa lagoon. The name "masinga-rul" was later distorted by the British and turned into "marching-rul". On this basis, European journalists who did not delve into the essence of the matter concluded that the movement was originally called “Marxien-rul” - “Marxist power!”. Now it was possible to accuse the communists of inciting. The most piquant thing in this whole story was that the “masinga-rul” movement was brought to life by the presence of the American army in the Solomon Islands, therefore, the communists had to be looked for among the American military personnel!

From Malaita and Langa Langa, the masinga spread to San Cristobal, Nggela and finally to Guadalcanal. The movement was inspired by a former coconut plantation worker named Nori. And although local officials remember Nori as a man who could neither write nor read English and knew only "pidgin", this illiterate people's leader managed to give the movement a clear structure. And more importantly, he quickly stripped the Masingu of most religious elements, turning it into a militant organization fighting for the liberation of the Solomon Islands.

The Masinga leaders, of course, did not have a definite program. Nevertheless, the organization of the movement was perfect. Nori divided Malaita into nine districts. In each of them, commanders were elected, who were little dependent on the supreme leadership of the masings. The districts were divided into small sections, which were commanded by local chiefs. They had assistants in charge of masinga activities in districts or in separate areas.

After the internal structure was determined, Masinga leaders began to build fortified settlements. Something unheard of for Melanesia began to happen on the islands - entire villages moved to new, more convenient places from a defensive point of view, walls were erected around the settlements, and sometimes even high watchtowers.

The buildings here were deliberately copied from the military barracks that the islanders saw in the camps of the American army. They held meetings of the local Masinga leadership, or they remained - and still remain - empty. The "barracks" are waiting to be filled with cargo, when the Americans come and start distributing to the islanders what they need. Once in one of these settlements, forty-three empty warehouses were found waiting for American cargo.

Masinga fortresses were guarded by patrols armed with clubs. The order during agricultural work among the inhabitants of these settlements was military. But on the plantations that remained on the Solomon Islands after the war, almost no one worked. Masinga leaders were in principle opposed to any work in enterprises headed by Europeans. And those who still wanted to leave the village for the plantation had to pay twelve pounds to the cashier of the local organization.

Masinge contributions are a separate chapter. During Gordon and I's visit to Tasimboko, wherever we could get by car, we were accompanied by a driver from the Protectorate Office. I asked Gordon what the driver's salary is and what he spends it on. It turned out that the driver keeps only a small part for himself, and gives the rest of the money to the local masingi organization in his village. There they are buried in the ground. This has been going on for many years. By the way, during this time the monetary system in the Solomon Islands has undergone great changes.

Since the end of the war and since Nori founded the movement, Masinga organizations have amassed huge amounts of money. Moreover, initially they collected money allegedly in order to pay for the departure of the British from the Solomon Islands.

Nori's deputy, the Masinga Viceroy, who called himself Timothy George, knew how to write and signed everywhere: "Timothy I is the king." One day, within a few weeks, he collected nineteen hundred pounds sterling to arrange for the export of copra, obtained from the fields of the organization, directly to the United States, without the mediation of English trading companies.

In the masinga movement, the old is intertwined with the new. The most striking example of this is alaga ogu- secret judges and police masings. They had to take care of the preservation of "good old manners". Thus, for example, the inhabitants of Langa-Lang considered adultery the most terrible crime, the most disgusting form of "theft." And the English laws did not punish adultery at all, just as they did not punish other crimes and did not protect Melanesian customs. All this caused discontent among the local population. And alaga ogu, the judges of the movement, were called upon to put an end to the violation of morality.

This is one face of alaga ogu, turned to yesterday. But there was also a second one, which looked into the present. It was necessary to achieve the absolute obedience of the rank and file members and the absolute authority of the leading figures of the organization, which was the duty of the Alaga Ogu. They made sure that the decisions of the leaders of the masinga were carried out accurately and strictly. Those who did not agree with the leadership of the movement in general or in particular were tortured and often executed.

It was the alaga ogu that gave the British authorities the occasion to finally speak out against this peculiar movement. By this time, "masinga-rul" subjugated almost the entire territory of the protectorate. The inner regions of the island of Malaita practically no longer depended on the power of the British. The islanders refused to pay taxes, and when the British decided to conduct a census, the locals began to boycott it, no one worked on Guadalcanal plantations.

Over Nggela, Malaita, the islands in the Langa Langa lagoon, it was not the Union Jack that flew, but the new Masinga flag, which depicted a bow and arrow. It must be said that this is not the first movement that sought the independence of the Solomon Islands. Even before the war, one of the missionaries, unwittingly, led a similar, though incomparably weaker movement, when he suggested to his flock that they seek power over their archipelago. He encouraged the islanders to take seats in the representative body of the protectorate. The leaders of the movement, which, thanks to this goal, became known as "Cher and Rul" ("Chair and Power"), depicted on their flag ... a chair.

The Black and Rule movement died out of its own accord even before the war, when the missionary was forced to leave his believers.

This time, against the flag with a bow and arrow, the most powerful warships of the British Pacific Fleet entered the waters of the Solomon Islands: the Contest cruiser, several frigates, the Theseus aircraft carrier and, God knows for what purpose, even submarines.

The British police arrested the Masinga leaders. In Honiara they were put on trial. The defendants, defending themselves, claimed that they created their organization in order to take care of children, while they themselves pretended to be firefighters or employees of kindergartens, although such professions - firefighters and nannies - existed only in the water city of the protectorate - Honiara.

Despite such an original method of defense, the Masinga leaders were condemned. The sentences were, however, very lenient, and on the occasion of the birthday of the king of chiefs they were released fairly soon.

During my visit to the Solomon Islands, I became convinced that the masinga movement continues to exist, despite the fact that it has lost its political coloring, or rather, lost the peaceful battle. The fact is that the British created representative bodies in the Solomon Islands, in which a number of posts were occupied by progressive islanders who had previously been actively working in masinga. Among them was, for example, my acquaintance from Roroni, Sergeant Vause. Many of the social and economic goals set by masinga have been achieved. Thus, for example, the protectorate courts take customary law into account, and planters are required to pay Melanesian workers much higher wages than before.

Today, it seems to me, religious motives have again begun to play a major role in the masinga movement. In particular, the indestructible faith in saviors, the expectation of "paradise", which in all sixty-five languages ​​\u200b\u200bof existing in the Solomon Islands is called the same - "cargo". They are waiting for this "American paradise", the onset of which I, unwittingly, proclaimed on one of the small islands of the Langa Langa lagoon.

RESIDENTS OF NEW GUINEA

Finally, after the Solomon Islands and the Bismarck Archipelago, I went to the island that interested me most in Oceania - New Guinea! The path was not easy: from Rabaul (New Britain) to Kavieng, to New Ireland, from there to the Admiralty Islands, and then from Manus Island across the sea to the nearest port of New Guinea - Madang. In these places, where the famous Russian traveler N. N. Miklukho-Maclay once lived and worked, I did not linger and went on to Lae, a small town located on the shores of the wide Huon Bay on the northeast coast of New Guinea.

This is one of the first strongholds of Europeans in New Guinea. It was from here, from the shores of Huon Bay, that Kaiser Germany began to spread its influence to the northeastern part of New Guinea, which managed to achieve recognition of its power over this territory and renamed it “Kaiser Wilhelm Land” (today it is still controlled by Australia).

It did not include the entire island of the Papuans, but only its northeastern part. Its border in the south ran along the eighth degree of south latitude, in the west - along one hundred and forty-first degrees of east longitude. The western part of the island was appropriated by the Dutch, and the southern part - in 1888 - by the British, who soon transferred the southeastern part of New Guinea to the control of the Commonwealth of Australia. Since then, this Part of the island has been called Papua.

Thus, New Guinea became the only island of the tens of thousands of islands in the South Seas, which was divided among themselves by several owners. So, economically the most important part, the one where Lae is located, was captured by Bismarckian Germany. To those who are familiar with the history of the discovery and conquest of New Guinea, the success of the Kaiser's policy will seem somewhat strange. More than three hundred and fifty years sailors from different countries of Europe plowed the waters of New Guinea. At first it was the Spaniards and the Portuguese. One of them, Jorge di Minesis, having undertaken an expedition to the Moluccas, slipped through them and discovered the land of the Papuans, naming it after his "patron" the island of St. George. Another Spanish navigator who visited New Guinea in 1545, Iñigo Ortiz de Retes, christened the island a second time, with a name that has survived to this day. He called it that because he knew African Guinea well, and the Papuans somehow reminded him of its dark-skinned inhabitants.

At the beginning of the 17th century, Dutch navigators appeared in the waters of New Guinea - Janz, Schouten, Carstens, and others. Of the English, the pirate William Dampier was the first to visit here. And finally, in the first half of the 19th century, the French entered the New Guinean land - Isidore Duperry and Bruny d'Entrecasteaux.

Even the “godfather” of New Guinea, Iñigo Ortiz de Retes, proclaimed the authority of his king in the country of the Papuans. But only more than three hundred years later, the Germans began their colonial activity from the coast of Huon Bay, whom no one had simply taken into account before. Representatives of the trading firms Deutsche Seehandelsgesellschaft and Neugvinea Company settled on the coast of Huon Bay. One of her commissioners opened an office in Lae.

Since the time of the German domination, the city of Lae has changed a lot. First of all, it has grown in breadth. Lae used to look at the ocean, at the picturesque Huon Bay that connected him to the rest of the world. Nowadays, it faces west, to high mountains, far on the horizon hiding their peaks in the clouds.

There are located the central regions of New Guinea, until recently completely unknown and absolutely inaccessible. It is from Lae that the first and, of course, the only road leads to this world of mountain Papuans. It ends in a high mountain valley, in the very heart of New Guinea, where some little-studied ethnic groups still live.

So far, I am standing at the zero kilometer of this unique road. The local tropical, humid climate is hard to bear, but otherwise I like Lae. This is a beautiful, cozy town with a small park. For Lae, and indeed for the entire coast of Huon Bay, the fighting between the Australians and the Japanese was so heavy that the entire city was destroyed to the ground. After 1944, a new city grew up on the old site.

Tourists who occasionally appear here, as a rule, visit a small botanical garden, which demonstrates the entire rainbow palette of New Guinean orchids and hibiscus growing on this island. In addition to the amazing botanical garden, visitors will certainly be shown another, less cheerful attraction - a giant, well-kept military cemetery, probably the largest in this part of Oceania. Here, Japanese, Australian and American intelligence officers, pilots, sailors, infantrymen who fell in the battles for Lae and the coast of Huon Bay sleep, who fought in this territory not for life, but for death.

The capture of the strategically important point of Lae was one of the main goals of the Japanese landing in New Guinea. And I must say that the soldiers of the imperial army landed here much earlier than expected by the allied command.

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese launched military operations against the United States with the attack on Pearl Harbor. In less than two months, they captured Rabaul and took possession of the Bismarck archipelago. On February 10, they landed in New Guinea, first on its northern coast, and on March 8 here, in Huon Bay. From that day on, for two years, Lae remained a key point in the Pacific War. Already two days after the invasion, the allied fleet withstood a difficult battle with Japanese ships in the Lae roadstead.

Lae was especially important for the Japanese as a base for the offensive on Port Moresby, the largest city of New Guinea, located on the opposite, southern, coast of the island. The attackers knew perfectly well the laws of warfare in the jungle. The whole world was amazed when the Japanese managed to go through the terrible jungle and take control of "impregnable" Singapore from land on the move. They were preparing a similar operation against Port Moresby. The road to it began in Lae. This road through the jungles of New Guinea has been called the "Kokoda Trail" by historians of the Pacific War.

In the green twilight, without seeing the enemy, the twenty-first and thirtieth Australian infantry brigades fought steadfastly for the "kokoda trail". The Japanese advanced almost within artillery range of Port Moresby. Less than fifty kilometers separated them from the largest city in New Guinea.

But the defenders of the road did not give up. In the end, during the offensive on the coast of Milne Bay, military happiness left the Japanese. They lost over ten thousand men. The Australian infantrymen were actively assisted by the American air force and navy. In August 1943, the allied forces launched a double attack - by land and sea - on Lae. The operation was successful, and Lae, destroyed and deserted, again passed into the hands of the allies.

This victory was not easy. But unlike Honiara on Guadalcanal, the graves of the victims of the Pacific War in Lae remained intact. Two thousand seven hundred and eighty-two Australians, Americans and Papuans are buried in a huge quiet cemetery. The bodies of many of the dead were transported to their homeland after the war, others remained in the jungle on the road, or rather, the green path, which the soldiers of both armies cursed hundreds and hundreds of times.

Already twenty years after the end of the war, from the city of Lae, they began to build another road into the hitherto unknown depths of the vast central regions of the island.

New Guinea differs from its Melanesian neighbors primarily in size. Its territory is equal to eight hundred twenty-nine thousand square kilometers. The distance from one end of the island to the other is more than two and a half thousand kilometers. But it is, of course, on the map. In fact, the central regions of New Guinea are impregnable mountain ranges, exceeding the highest ranges of Europe. And it is there, in the mountain valleys, that tribes live, about which scientists still know practically nothing.

Two years before my visit to the center of this, the second largest island in the world after Greenland, a dirt road was finally laid, in some places very bad. As I was told, when it rains (and it happens very often in the mountains), the road becomes completely impassable. Nevertheless, I was determined to use it.

On this unusual road, I moved in various ways. I made the longest trek in the company of Hendrick, a middle-aged Dutchman. He was born in the western part of New Guinea, which once belonged to Holland, and knew the local dialect well. Hendrik proved energetic and persistent. Besides, he had a car, a reliable Volkswagen.

Ever since the first objects of the material culture of the Papuans found their way into European museums, New Guinea has become especially attractive to ethnographers. Therefore, I was also more interested in the central regions of the island with the Papuan tribes living there than in any other part of Oceania. Not so long ago, the mountain valleys of New Guinea were firmly closed by walls. high mountains. However, since the new road crossed the famous Kassem Pass, a keyhole has been opened to this world of "Stone Age people".

Finally the day of my departure came. Lae stayed behind. There followed a long, uninteresting journey through the broad valley of Markham, formed by the river of the same name. From time to time we passed a Papuan village, but the further we went, the less the population became. The ascent to the highest mountain range began, which since time immemorial has separated the mountains from the sea.

Until the middle of the 20th century, or rather, before the construction of the road, there were two New Guineas. One, coastal, which Europeans have known for four hundred years, and the second, mountainous, completely unknown. The boundaries of these two worlds are clearly distinguishable. The ridge that rises before us, the white man for all these endless years, during which he was in contact with New Guinea, never managed to conquer. A pass is visible from the Markham Valley, which, probably, could be overcome (even its local name is known - Kassem). However, there was not a single person who could pass through it. And only thirty years ago this was done. And then they built a road. The road leading to the last, very "last frontier of mankind."

Mountain ranges separate Ehu territory from the rest of the world with a stone wall. Until the advent of aviation, not a single foreigner managed to get into this country. The first Europeans entered here only in the 30-40s of the XX century. But even now, white spots remain on the map of the central regions of New Guinea - the last on the globe.

The first owners of the island, the Germans, were certainly mistaken when they believed (and after all, all the scientific literature on New Guinea initially accepted these ideas of theirs) that the entire central part of it, like some other islands of Melanesia, is covered by a continuous sea of ​​​​jungle. The Germans called the green cover of the mountainous interior regions Urwalddeke.

In reality, there is no Urwalddeke, at least not in the mountains and valleys. Instead of the jungle, I see here an endless savannah, overgrown with grass of mountain meadows. I soon became convinced that the idea that no one lived in these wild mountains, which in the past could be seen from Markham Valley only with binoculars, was also incorrect. In fact, the number of inhabitants of this highland country, the so-called "Highlands", probably reaches a million people. The overwhelming majority of them the administration of New Guinea can take into account only formally, it does not even know about the existence of many.

Separate Papuan tribes live in river valleys, which have made their way among parallel mountain ranges that occupy the entire northern part central New Guinea. Not all of these highlands have been explored, some do not even have names. True, the main ridges - those that are visible from the coastal valleys - received names from the first colonizers of the island. For example, I make my way along the only overgrown road in the highlands that bear the name of Bismarck. The names of the mountains also remained in my memory forever - Kubora, rising to a height of four thousand two hundred and sixty-seven meters, Akana, distant Piora, Hagen and, finally, the majestic Carstens, five thousand and thirty meters high.

Various Papuan tribes live in the valleys of this amazing mountainous country. Naturally, I could not visit all the places that I wanted to see, but I tried to get acquainted at least with the way of life and modern culture of the Papuans, who live next to the only, just recently built road, rather, a path that dared to step over the mountains and continue on their way further and further to the "last frontier of mankind".

From the Kassem Pass I traveled several tens of miles across the high savannas to Kainanthu. Further along the mountain road, from where from time to time a view of the Finisterre highlands opened, I reached the settlement of Rintebe, and then to the settlement of Goroka, where numerous Benabena Papuan tribes live. Behind Goroka, another stone wall rises, blocking the way for those who have already reached here. Its height reaches two thousand seven hundred and fifty meters, but even here, along the Daulo pass, in 1966 a road passed leading to the center of the island.

Having overcome the pass, constantly hidden behind a rain net, we descended to the territory of the district inhabited by the Chimbu tribe, from there we got to Kundiawa, and then even further - to the Mount Hagen settlement, named after the nearby "four-thousander" - an important orientation point of the central massif . From Mount Hagen I went even further west to the Bayer River, into the territory of the Kyaka tribe. So I moved west all the time, usually parallel to the ridges and never - with the exception of the Daulo Pass - without crossing them.

Travelers also tried to get into the unexplored interior regions of New Guinea along this, perhaps the most convenient route. The first white man who penetrated the mountains through the Kassem Pass and ended up in still no one known world mountainous country, was neither a scientist nor a traveler. In the 20th century, as before, there was only one real value in the world that could bring white people even here, to these vast areas of white spots on the map of the island. Gold and more gold. According to the surviving information, at the end of the 20s of this century, the gold digger William Park, who was called "Shark's Eye" in New Guinea, climbed here. However, he failed to cross the pass. Only in 1930 was the European Ned Rowlands able to overcome Kassem. Near the present Kainantu, on the banks of the mountain river Ramu, he actually found gold.

Soon, two more whites, who were also brought here by the gold rush, accountant Michael Leahy and locksmith Michael Dwyer, followed in the footsteps of the Rowlands and discovered the country of the Benabena tribes to the west of Cainantu. Here they cleared a small landing area, from where they then penetrated into the next important area of ​​​​the high mountain massif, which stretched around Mount Hagen.

Here, in the densely populated valley, they were followed by the first missionaries in the mid-1930s. But even further to the west, the discoverers dared to penetrate only after the war. With one exception, however. The Austrian adventurer Ludwig Schmidt penetrated the area west of Mount Hagen as early as 1935 and then turned north.

Later, Schmidt managed to cross the northern mountain ranges, descend to the navigable Sepik River and reach the ocean itself. This fantastic campaign, unfortunately, will never leave a trace in the history of the knowledge of the island of the Papuans: after all, Schmidt did not keep a diary and did not take any notes at all. And when he finished his incredible journey, the Australian authorities arrested him. The fact is that Schmidt, without any reason, killed so many Papuans that even the administrative bodies of New Guinea were forced to put him on trial on charges of murder, and three times. In the end, Schmidt was sentenced to death, and in 1936 he was hanged in Rabaul. As far as I know, this was the only white man executed here.

Exploration of the territories located to the west, south and north of Mount Hagen continued after the Second World War. Gold diggers and police established small field airfields and sites, and two years ago, the first road, quite decent during the dry period, was finally laid on this vast territory. I take one last look at Markham Valley. Below me, more than a thousand meters below me, flows the Markham River, and behind it rises the Finisterre Highlands. Now up to the mountains!

Right after the pass we met the first mountain Papuans. Then we cross a rather large, fast-flowing river Rama. Rowlands once found gold in its sediments. Nowadays, local residents have also learned how to extract precious sand from a mountain river.

On the open, plateau of the riverbed of the Ramu, one of the first settlements arose - the village of Kainantu. When I talk about the villages that I saw in the central regions of New Guinea, I do not express myself very accurately. The mountain Papuans live, rather, in “farms”, consisting of only five or six huts, built near their fields. When the soil of the land is depleted, they find another field, and the whole "farm" moves there. In the mountains of New Guinea, there are hundreds of such “farms”. The first missionary at the foot of Mount Hagen found about eighteen thousand people living in about five hundred settlements, that is, on average, there were more than thirty-five natives in each.

Huts in the mountains of New Guinea are built of wood or bamboo, their roofs are covered with kunai grass. Relationships between the residents of individual settlements are friendly. But they are connected rather by a common dialect and similar ideas about the same ancestors than by any clearly functioning tribal organization.

Having crossed the Rama, we continue our way further west and enter the land of the Benabena group.

The Benabena was the original name of a huge tribe that lived in the area where Leahy and Dwyer cleared their first landing area in the 1930s. Today, this name unites all sixty-five Papuan groups, about twenty thousand people in total, living in more than one hundred settlements scattered from each other. Men do not live here with women, but in their "men's houses". Benaben settlements used to be attacked frequently. The main blow at the same time was directed against the "men's houses". Therefore, the huts were either disguised as women's huts, or tunnels were dug under them, through which men left their homes in case of danger. For the same reasons, the settlements of the Benabena were fortified. Today, the original, paramilitary nature of the life of the benaben is gradually being lost.

The purpose of my trip was the "metropolis" of the valley where the Benabena live - Goroka (today - a small town). Moreover, the first house in Goroka was built less than ten years ago. Now there is even a clinic and a hospital.

This hospital and its patients went down in history due to the fact that the Papuans were found here with a special bowel disease. Every third patient suffered from this mysterious disease.

Among the inhabitants of this district, another terrible disease is common, which is quite accurately called "laughing death." The ethnographer Berndt, who first saw the patient and described this disease, called it kuru, which means “shaking” or “trembling”.

Every second woman and every tenth man die here from kuru. At first glance, kuru resembles the well-known Parkinson's disease, but nevertheless, it has nothing to do with it, as well as with any other similar ailment.

At its initial stage, the patient is attacked by uncontrollable, convulsive laughter, which is replaced by deep depression or violence. Then he gradually loses the ability to control his limbs, speech becomes incoherent, the body constantly trembles, appetite disappears. In the end, "laughing death" affects the central nervous system. Ten or twelve months after the onset of the first signs of the disease, the person dies.

The locals are naturally convinced that the kuru that kills them is the result of sorcery. Gorok doctors, who have been studying this strange disease for several years, have not yet figured out what is the causative agent of "laughing death." Most of them are inclined to the point of view that the disease is hereditary, thus explaining the fact of its spread among only one group of Papuans.

I traveled from Viti Levu to Papua, from Suva to Guadalcanal and the East Highlands of New Guinea. How: A person interested in history, during my travels I mainly looked for the past of these islands. But I also see their future. And it should be just as fair to the Melanesians and Papuans as it is to all people and nations that live on Earth.

Yes, the sea rolls its waves, and the sky blazes. On the azure waters of the greatest ocean of our planet, islands float - Melanesia and Polynesia. You have already passed all these archipelagos of Melanesia, traveler. In search of which of the faces of the "Land of people" will you go now? To the amazing people of the southern islands. To Polynesia. To the Tahitians, Hawaiians, Samoans. To those who created the statues of Easter Island. To all those who, together with the Papuans and Melanesians, inhabit the Great Ocean. There, to the east, to sweet Polynesia, where the "last paradise" of the "Land of Men" still exists...

Notes

"Foreign Affairs", OA, 1963, p. 137.

Cook James (1728-1779) - the largest English navigator. He made a number of important sea expeditions, including two round-the-world voyages. A number of important geographical discoveries are associated with his name (many islands of Oceania, including such large ones as New Caledonia and Hawaii).

Inca, more precisely, the Supreme Inca is the name of the ruler of the state of Tahuantinsuyu.

Masinga, more precisely, the “masinga power” movement, is a national liberation movement that unfolded in the Solomon Islands after the British colonial authorities returned to the archipelago at the end of World War II. The administration brutally suppressed the performance of the islanders.

It is characteristic that in the American colonies of Oceania, where officials and businessmen from the USA behave somewhat differently than soldiers who did not know how to spend their salaries, no idea of ​​an "American paradise" arises.

The Union Jack is the name of the British flag.

Initially, the archipelago was administered as part of the mandated territory of New Guinea, but after the Second World War, this territory was transformed from a mandate into a trust.

The term "Papuans" is used in several meanings. Ethnographers and linguists often call Papuans the population speaking Papuan languages, anthropologists - people belonging to the Papuan racial type. Sometimes the entire population of New Guinea or only the inhabitants of the former territory of Papua are called Papuans.

Papua - the former "outer" territory of Australia, from the end of 1973 became part of the self-governing territory of Papua New Guinea.

Their production has always been the privilege of the inhabitants of several small and still extremely inaccessible islands, located quite far from the heart of the archipelago - Guadalcanal.
I had to first move to Malaita, also a large, once densely populated island. Thanks to the progress of civilization - I will talk about this process later - in our time, three times fewer people live in Malaita than a hundred years ago. In 1968, when I was here, Malaita was inhabited by five to ten seven thousand islanders.
From this island, I already need to cross to the islets located in the remote atoll of Langa Langa, in the western part of its lagoon. My first goal is the nearest island of Auki. But first you need to get a boat.
Soon I managed to persuade a Malait boy who spoke Melanesian "pidgin" quite fluently. For five Australian dollars, he rented me not only himself and his boat, but also a huge black umbrella to protect me from the hot equatorial sun.
About the price and everything that I wanted to see on Auki and in general in the Langa Langa lagoon, I agreed with the guy pretty quickly. After a short, but because of the tropical heat of a tiring journey, we came to the islet of Auki. The surrounding view seemed to be cut out of a promotional film about the beauties of Oceania. The diameter of the island barely reaches hundreds of meters. Coconut palms grow in the empty spaces between the primitive huts of the islanders, and long narrow boats wait by the shore.
A lost, inconspicuous piece of land, of which there are thousands in Oceania. And at the same time, in these primitive shacks, the only wealth is created that the islanders, wherever they are, know and recognize - their money. Their strange money derived from shells.
And although this money circulated and still circulates in most of the Solomon Islands, their production is limited to a few local "mints", hidden precisely in the Langa Langa lagoon. And this has its reasons. It is enough to take a look at this small island to understand that not a single agricultural crop survives here. The fact is that the coral islands in this bay were formed from limestone, on which only a coconut palm can grow. So the main source of food and moisture for the inhabitants of this lagoon are coconuts and, of course, the sea, which is especially generous here. But the islanders are accustomed to taro, yams, pork, they need more varied food, and for this they have to exchange food for their handicrafts. The most sought after, and now the only product of Langa Langa artisans, is shell money.
The production of such "coins" is difficult. It requires not only patience, but also great skill. On Auki, and earlier on other islands of the bay, shells have been minted since time immemorial. Today, the only "mint" of the Stone Age has been preserved. Right here.
With the help of my guide, I get to know those who "make" money on the island. These are women. Men have never had anything to do with the production of money. They only provide their "mint" with raw materials.
The Auki women produce three kinds of "coins" from three different kinds of shells. I noticed even earlier that in Malaita and other Solomon Islands, "white money" is most often used, that is, obtained from white shells - the so-called cockatoo. They are “minted” here most of all.
Cockatoo shells, with an average diameter of about five centimeters, are caught by local men right in the waters of the lagoon. But I soon became convinced that the shell fishermen tried to shirk their work and preferred to buy raw materials for their toiling wives on the island of Nggela. The standard price for a basket of semi-finished products, which includes about two hundred and fifty white shells, is equal to half an Australian dollar.
In front of the worker of this primitive "mint" is a half-empty basket. First, the islander carefully examines the shell. The bad ones are thrown out immediately. A woman breaks a good shell, breaking it into several plates, as round as possible, because the finished “coins” should be exactly round, with a diameter of eight millimeters. The shells are breaking falburoy- with a hammer of black stone. The material for the production of these hammers is mined by the inhabitants of Auki on a neighboring island, from the bottom of the Fiu River. Limestone, the only rock available on Auki, is not strong enough to break a hard shell.
After the woman beats the shell fragments so that they approximately meet the required dimensions, she puts them in a coconut shell. This concludes the first stage of "minting coins". Now we need to polish them, since the white cockatoo shells become rough after the initial processing. Polishing women produce at first glance in a simple, but at the same time ingenious way. To do this, they use a wooden block - maai, in the bottom part of which about fifty pits were made, corresponding in size and depth to “coins” from shells. One shell fragment is inserted into each of these recesses, and when the "grinding machine" is full, it is turned over. "Coins" are polished in a circular motion along faolisave- a lime board sprinkled with water. This completes the chasing process.
In the Solomon Islands, they pay not with single "coins", but with beads made of processed shells strung on a string. But in order to string the finished "coin", it is necessary to drill a hole in it. The third phase of the production of money on the island is the drilling of holes in them. But for this, the white discs are first lowered into the water so that they become softer.
The drill with which the local "mint" drills a hole in "coins" made a great impression on me. This is undoubtedly the most complex, most amazing device that I have ever seen in Melanesia. I could not have expected that in a society that only a few generations ago was at the level of the Stone Age, such a technically perfect device could be created without someone else's help.
How does this drill still look and work?
Its main part is a rod ending in a drill made of very hard pink stone - landy, which is also mined in Malaita by the inhabitants of Auki. On a vertical rod, a horizontal rod is suspended on two ropes. The vertical rod is first twisted by hand, and the woman protects it with a plate of tortoise shell. With the other hand she is holding a horizontal one. During the twisting of the vertical rod, ropes begin to wind around it. Then the woman presses on the horizontal rod. Unwinding, the ropes rotate the vertical axis. Thanks to oscillatory movements - up and down - the ropes are wound in one direction or the other, and the hole in the shell is drilled in a few seconds.
This original drill is the most complex tool used by the local "chasers". The operation of turning the hole ends the production of "coins". However, in order to turn them into a means of payment, women must also give them a traditional look. I was convinced several times that a separate "coin" in the Solomon Islands is absolutely of no value. Another thing is laces, chains of shell “coins”. Therefore, women string "coins" on ropes woven from special fibers. The finished laces are then passed through a groove in the limestone board. Its diameter corresponds to the size of the "coins". With this operation, their edges become even more even and smooth. The "coins" are so closely pressed to each other that up to five hundred of them fit on one cord.
Naturally, I was interested not only in the production technique of Stone Age "coins", but mainly in their value, their social and economic functions. The price of certain types and units of money from shells changes quickly and often. As for white money, in the Solomon Islands I most often met with a unit that is called in Auki galia. Galia is one string of white “coins” of a cockatoo of a standard length equal to ninety centimeters. The price of a gallia while I was here was about twenty-five Australian cents. Four galia laces tied together represent a higher value - truck equal to approximately one Australian dollar. Isaglia- the largest monetary unit of white shells - is formed by connecting ten wagons. And finally, from roughly processed white "coins" is made galiabat- double galia, double the length of the standard white lace.
On Auki, I also saw how they make "coins" in other colors - red and black. Black money is made in the same way as white money, but from shells. smoked approximately thirty centimeters in diameter. The Kuril men of Auki either fish the lagoons from the shallows or buy them from the inhabitants. north coast Malaitas. Twenty smokes are equal to about a quarter of an Australian dollar. Black money in the Solomon Islands is the cheapest. But red is a hard currency. There is a set exchange rate between the most common white money and the most expensive red money. Red ones are exactly ten times more expensive than those made from cockatoo shells.
Red money is made from shells Roma. Their high value is determined by the difficulty of extraction. Roma can be found only at great depths and only in two places throughout the archipelago. The inhabitants of Auka usually buy them from the fishermen who inhabit the shores of the Malamasica Channel. The fishermen, in turn, refuse to accept Australian dollars or any goods for these shells, they demand only red money in exchange. A basket of rum shells costs one standard length, that is, ninety centimeters of red money.
The manufacture of the latter requires one additional operation. Here on Auki it bears the name paraya. The fact is that the rum shells are a pale pink hue. To achieve the thick carmine color that red money should have, the shells are placed on white-hot stones and literally boiled. Only after that they turn red.
Auki red money is either a string of standard length - ninety centimeters, or beads of two, three or more threads. fire- the highest monetary unit is a necklace of ten laces of especially carefully selected "coins". No one could tell me the exact price of fira. But, apparently, it exceeds fifty Australian dollars, and this is incredible wealth for the poor inhabitants of a distant lagoon.
To red money, which in the Langa Langa lagoon is called rongo, always showed interest and white people. After all, the first European sailors came to the islands of King Solomon in order to find gold here. And the red money helped them, without much difficulty, to draw out a huge amount of precious metal from the Melanesians. The fact is that at the turn of the 20th century, English and German merchants discovered that the inhabitants of New Guinea had gold dust. The New Guinean Papuans, however, refused to accept European goods and money for their gold; all they wanted was rongo, red "coins" from the Langa Langa lagoon. The profit that traders received from this exchange was fantastic - two and a half thousand percent! So Melanesia was seized by a fever not only of gold, but also of red money.
I was generally surprised by the stability of the money made at this “mint”. While sterling and dollars fluctuate, shaken by various financial crises, the white and especially red money of the Solomon Islands remains stable, and recently their value has even increased. I have often seen islanders returning home after work exchange their hard-earned wages for money made in Auki, which they trust more than the coins of white people.
Red money is also circulating among the white colonists. Before the war, for example, a plantation worker's monthly wage was equal to one string of red money. At that time, the exchange rate was established - however, today it is no longer observed - the exchange rate: one English pound, the monthly salary of a worker, - one standard length of red money. Thus, this money began to contribute to the development of commodity exchange, that is, to perform the functions inherent in money in a modern, developed society. However, the circulation of red money in the protectorate was never legalized.
Shell money even contributed to the expansion of plantations in the Solomon Islands. The islanders were more willing to go to a white man who paid with such a "coin", since they came to the plantations mainly in order to earn money for a wife, which could only be bought with money from shells. In addition to wives, which the inhabitants of Auka often bring from the mainland - the island of Malaita, they can buy pork for anniversary celebrations with local money. Thus, the money produced in Auki makes a constant turnover.
And since they do not depreciate, the islanders keep them everywhere at home, stacking them in heaps in their huts and covering them with limestone tiles. The social position on the islands of the Langa Langa lagoon is determined by how much shell money a person has accumulated. Part of this wealth is constantly withdrawn from circulation, which avoids inflation. The total amount of money is limited by the productivity of this only “mint” today and the lack of raw materials. So in the Solomon Islands there is always a lack of money, as, indeed, everywhere in the world.
Money from shells is distinguished by another feature. This is taboo. Young men before the test of maturity do not dare to touch them.
The chiefs of the villages, who possess real treasures of shell money, sometimes lend the necessary sums to those men who want to marry. For these debts, Auki does not charge interest, although this probably does not exist on other islands.
I'm not going to get married. In spite of this, the chief of Auk gave me as parting a parting string of money made by local women during my stay on the islet. From my trips to different countries, I brought many different objects of material culture of those groups of peoples that I visited. Auki shell money string is one of the travel commemorative gifts that I value the most. It testifies that I visited the "mint" of the Stone Age, which is not found anywhere else in the world.

MESSENGER OF PARADISE

My boatman pushed off the bank of the Auca and steered our canoe straight south across the wide lagoon. I would like to visit several more islands scattered around the Langa Langa lagoon, protected from the ocean on all sides by a coral reef. The Solomon Islands are cut off from the rest of the world by vast expanses of ocean water, and Langa-Langa is doubly isolated from it. In addition, several dozen white people live in Guadalcanal and Malaita in our time. But here, on Auki, Alita, Laulasi and other islets, there is not a single white one. I have to rely entirely on the boatman and my own knowledge of the Melanesian pidgin.
The lagoon is a source of life for hundreds of local residents, because it contains fish and sea shellfish. But first of all, I want to look at those Auk men who collect shells for their women. They're looking for them right here in the shallow water. To the great regret of the islanders, there are no rare rum shells in Langa Langa, from which red money is made. However, white and black shells in the lagoon are quite enough.
I must say that the collection of shells is not at all such a simple matter. Since local money, despite its widespread use, as already mentioned, was considered a sacred subject - a taboo, the preparation and collection of shells are led by fatambo- sorcerers of individual genera Auki. Fatambo determine the time when canoes of shell seekers can enter the waters of the lagoon. And they call the term not just because it “it occurred to them”, but by making a preliminary attempt to make contact with the “spirits of sharks” - the rulers of the seas. To do this, they solemnly sacrifice a fat pig to the spirits, and then also turn to them with a prayer. They ask the spirits to indicate the day the boats enter the lagoon, and also protect the gatherers from sharks and barracudas, the most terrible enemies of shell seekers.
Before the start of the gathering, the men gather in a separate large hut. From this moment until the end of the work, they will all live together, getting and preparing food themselves and doing all the housework. Under no pretext, men during this period should not talk to women, and they have no right to even look at them. It goes without saying that they cannot sleep together lest the men be "defiled".
And finally, the long-awaited day arrives. Men in their canoes swim out into the blue expanses of the Langa Langa lagoon to look for black and white shells here. As a rule, men of two or three kinds work together. The sorcerer who directs the collection does not, of course, immerse himself in water. While the men work, the fatambo sits in a canoe and prays to the "shark spirits". Again and again he repeats the request to protect the gatherers from marine predators.
The divers are connected to a boat rope to which a basket is attached; in it they put shells under water. As soon as the basket is full, the sorcerer pulls it out, pours the contents into the boat and throws the basket back into the water. Divers break off shells from growths at the bottom of the lagoon with a special narrow stone a quarter of a meter long, similar to a primitive knife. They call him in Auki fauboro; he, too, is "sacred." Between catching shells, sorcerers store stones in a special "house of spirits".
Finally, the area chosen by the sorcerer is robbed, the collection of shells ends. The sorcerer donates another pig to the shark spirits, and the pickers can return to their women.
I was present at the gathering, observing divers in several parts of the lagoon, who, holding stone knives in their hands, from time to time appeared on the surface to breathe air and then plunge back into the water.
Canoes, however, are not only among the divers from Auki, but also among the inhabitants of other islands of the lagoon, who are not averse to earning extra money, supplying raw materials for the production of money. After several hours of sailing, we dock at Laulasi, one of the islands in the southern part of the lagoon. I remember visiting this island as often as I remember about “minting” “coins” on Auki, so I will tell you about one story that I got into here.
Our canoe was followed for a good twenty minutes before we landed. In fact, we were already waiting. And the white man here seems to everyone to be a black sheep. When the canoe hit the bank and I jumped out of it, a tall, elderly man waiting for us greeted me in a fairly decent pidgin. I was about to introduce myself, but this man, probably Chief Laulasi, beat me to it.
The islanders only distinguish between the British and the Americans. There are no other white people for them. English tourists do not visit this most abandoned of the Melanesian archipelagos. And the British, who permanently live here, very soon acquire some kind of specific local flavor, which, of course, I did not have. Therefore, from the point of view of the locals, I was an American.
I had become accustomed to this division of whites into two groups by the islanders in the Solomon Islands. Chief Laulasi, not at all doubting the affirmative answer, asked:
- You are an American?
I, unfortunate, not knowing what I was doing, nodded. What else was there for me to do? Who else could I be? Then the chief asked:
- Where from?
I blurt out:
- From Kansas.
The fact is that in Kansas I have two good friends, with whom I once experienced one of my most interesting adventures, when I was looking for Indian cities lost in the jungle from an airplane.
“From Kansas,” repeated the chief.
This name meant nothing to him, of course. Then he asked another question:
- Where are your things?
I understood the question, because the leader spoke the word cargo. This English word in Melanesian “pidgin”, which is so common in international transportation, means many concepts, mainly “goods”, “ship cargo”. I translated it as "baggage".
In general, I have few things, and almost everything that was not absolutely necessary, I left on Guadalcanal. So I told the truth
“My cargo is in Honiara.
The leader, as if he was impatiently waiting for this news, turned to his countrymen and began to speak excitedly in the local dialect. The same excitement gripped those present. They stopped listening to the leader and began to explain something, interrupting each other. In each phrase, by the movement of the lips, I guessed one word: “cargo”.
So, the inhabitants of Laulasi are clearly not interested in me, but in the cargo that remained on Guadalcanal. Taking advantage of the general excitement, I left to walk around the village and take some pictures. The most interesting on the island are the ramparts, real stone fortifications that protect the village. I have never seen anything like it in the Solomon Islands. Equally unusual is the central building of the village, reminiscent rather of a barracks or a "men's house".
And at that moment it dawned on me. My God, because I ended up on an island where masinga still exists! That's why they wanted to know where my cargo was! And that's why they wanted me to be an American. Feverishly rummaging in memory. I try to remember everything I know about the period when the Americans landed on the Solomon Islands. And what I was told about on Auki and Malaita was about the activities of the inhabitants of this and other islands of the Langa Langa lagoon in the Solomon Islands Labor Cora, auxiliary detachments of the American army.
Perhaps we should start with the fact that neither Malaita nor the islands of the Langa Langa lagoon were ever completely subdued by the British. A few years before the start of the Second World War, the Malaita District Commissioner and his assistant and twenty policemen were killed by local residents in Sinaranza. In 1935, mass riots took place here and on the islands of Langa Langa. Their reasons were purely economic. The plantations were derelict, and the men of Malaita had two options: either go to the plantations of distant islands, even to Australia, or put up with a beggarly life in their poor villages.
The Langa Langa lagoon, and, in fact, Malaita itself, was not affected by the war. But when the Americans landed on Guadalcanal, they offered more than three thousand islanders, mostly residents of this particular part of the archipelago, to join auxiliary labor detachments. At the same time, the Americans began to pay unheard-of amounts to workers - fourteen pounds sterling a month. On the plantations, as I have already said, at the beginning of the war, the monthly wage of a local laborer was one pound sterling. And now the Americans have offered them fourteen times more!
But this was only the first shock, the first meeting, probably the poorest inhabitants of the planet, with representatives of the richest country in the world. American soldiers, who did not know how to spend their high salaries on the islands, bought any "native souvenirs" from the islanders for fantastic money. For some trifle, a skirt of pandan leaves or a carving, which had no value in the eyes of the islanders, its owner often received from the American buyer more than a month's work on the plantations.
Local residents were struck by another circumstance. There were thousands and thousands of people in the American army whose skin was as dark as their own. And yet these American Negroes received the same salary for their service in the army as whites - at least so the natives thought. And not just salaries. The Americans had everything in abundance: canned food, Coca-Cola, cigarettes, chewing gum, chocolate and, finally, military equipment. And besides, it's all free. Just reach out and take it. Take as much as you need, as much as you want.
And the result? I really can’t find another word: it was a massive shock to an entire nation. The islanders made the following conclusion for themselves. There are two groups of white people in the world. The English, who are poor and therefore keep everything they have, and the Americans, people who are amazingly rich, who will gladly give everything they have to the islanders. The simple man, and the Melanesians lived until that time in a world of extremely primitive ideas, tries to explain everything new that he encounters by the action of supernatural forces, with the help of religious ideas and his own, for us often almost incomprehensible, course of reasoning.