environment, to permit Bindy to think of me as an irresponsible flake.
Wednesday
. The captain and crew got up early and powered the
Tau
northeast sixty miles to the island of Taveuni, which is the third largest island in Fiji, and said by some to harbor the most spectacular diving and snorkeling reef in the whole area. It is the Somosomo Strait, and of course Vane led us unerringly to a spot that could not have been more enchanting. In the late morning we dinghied out on the
Tau’s
Zodiac, into which the sea-skittish Drue was coaxed on the solemn promise, reiterated by all hands, that Zodiacs have the distinctive feature of being
absolutely unsinkable
, a proposition Drue finally came to believe until, a few days later, the Zodiac sank in front of her eyes, disappearing into the vasty deep without so much as a gurgle of resistance, leaving Captain Philip in great distress.
We went ashore in part to ogle at Fijian life, little of which we had observed. We found it to be exactly as described by
National Geographic—men
and women of all shapes and colors, pleasant, a little lethargic, that admixture of Polynesian, Micronesian, Melanesian and, finally, Indian (the Indians immigrated halfway through the nineteenth century as indentured laborers, the tending of agriculture being unappealing to the native population). They are now a peaceable race of people, and it requires an exercise of the imagination to recall that on his famous voyage from the
Bounty
to Timor in 1789 (3,600 miles in an open longboat) Captain Bligh did not dare to pause in these islands, so notoriously were the natives given to killing, and then eating, uninvited guests. The natives are cheerful, apparently unexcitable, notwithstanding the sweat they work up in their nightclub acts when imitating the frenzied manners of their forefathers. They have been self-governing since 1970, after ninety-six years of colonial rule by the British who had the uncommon good sense to leave 82 percent of the land in native hands. I am not qualified to say whether the 600,000 Fijians are competently governed, but whatever evidence there is of commercial sloth, justice is certainly swift. On Tuesday we read in the local paper that three men had been convicted the day before of raping a young woman of eighteen, receiving sentences of from two to four years of hard labor. The rape had occurred the preceding Saturday. Earl Warren never sojourned in Fiji.
Through the town of Waiyevo, on the western shore of the island, the 180th meridian runs, and the spot on the roadside where this happens is of course properly designated, with wooden signs tapering in opposite directions, one of them marked “Today,” the other, “Yesterday.” We did a great deal of picture taking, inevery conceivable pose, one foot firmly planted on Tuesday, the second on Wednesday—that sort of thing.
It reminded me of an experience a half-dozen years earlier at the exact geographical south pole when an escorting colonel, in the fifty-degree-below-zero cold, asked whether I would like to have my picture taken while standing on my head, making possible a postcard depicting me as carrying the world on my shoulders. That being a characteristic personal burden, I readily assented and was lifted by my boots by an aide. At exactly which moment my brother Jim, then the junior senator from the State of New York, in a fit of chauvinism fired off a firecracker which was programmed to waft to earth in the form of the New York State flag, which he would photograph and send out to his constituents. Unhappily the firecracker went instead directly to my nose, so that there exists only a picture of me standing on my head, being bloodied by the flag of New York State.
No such infelicity marred our picture taking this time around, though I was later advised by an obstinately literal historian of the area that the official boundary marking the international date line was, in answer to a local provocation, made to jag
Wednesday
. The captain and crew got up early and powered the
Tau
northeast sixty miles to the island of Taveuni, which is the third largest island in Fiji, and said by some to harbor the most spectacular diving and snorkeling reef in the whole area. It is the Somosomo Strait, and of course Vane led us unerringly to a spot that could not have been more enchanting. In the late morning we dinghied out on the
Tau’s
Zodiac, into which the sea-skittish Drue was coaxed on the solemn promise, reiterated by all hands, that Zodiacs have the distinctive feature of being
absolutely unsinkable
, a proposition Drue finally came to believe until, a few days later, the Zodiac sank in front of her eyes, disappearing into the vasty deep without so much as a gurgle of resistance, leaving Captain Philip in great distress.
We went ashore in part to ogle at Fijian life, little of which we had observed. We found it to be exactly as described by
National Geographic—men
and women of all shapes and colors, pleasant, a little lethargic, that admixture of Polynesian, Micronesian, Melanesian and, finally, Indian (the Indians immigrated halfway through the nineteenth century as indentured laborers, the tending of agriculture being unappealing to the native population). They are now a peaceable race of people, and it requires an exercise of the imagination to recall that on his famous voyage from the
Bounty
to Timor in 1789 (3,600 miles in an open longboat) Captain Bligh did not dare to pause in these islands, so notoriously were the natives given to killing, and then eating, uninvited guests. The natives are cheerful, apparently unexcitable, notwithstanding the sweat they work up in their nightclub acts when imitating the frenzied manners of their forefathers. They have been self-governing since 1970, after ninety-six years of colonial rule by the British who had the uncommon good sense to leave 82 percent of the land in native hands. I am not qualified to say whether the 600,000 Fijians are competently governed, but whatever evidence there is of commercial sloth, justice is certainly swift. On Tuesday we read in the local paper that three men had been convicted the day before of raping a young woman of eighteen, receiving sentences of from two to four years of hard labor. The rape had occurred the preceding Saturday. Earl Warren never sojourned in Fiji.
Through the town of Waiyevo, on the western shore of the island, the 180th meridian runs, and the spot on the roadside where this happens is of course properly designated, with wooden signs tapering in opposite directions, one of them marked “Today,” the other, “Yesterday.” We did a great deal of picture taking, inevery conceivable pose, one foot firmly planted on Tuesday, the second on Wednesday—that sort of thing.
It reminded me of an experience a half-dozen years earlier at the exact geographical south pole when an escorting colonel, in the fifty-degree-below-zero cold, asked whether I would like to have my picture taken while standing on my head, making possible a postcard depicting me as carrying the world on my shoulders. That being a characteristic personal burden, I readily assented and was lifted by my boots by an aide. At exactly which moment my brother Jim, then the junior senator from the State of New York, in a fit of chauvinism fired off a firecracker which was programmed to waft to earth in the form of the New York State flag, which he would photograph and send out to his constituents. Unhappily the firecracker went instead directly to my nose, so that there exists only a picture of me standing on my head, being bloodied by the flag of New York State.
No such infelicity marred our picture taking this time around, though I was later advised by an obstinately literal historian of the area that the official boundary marking the international date line was, in answer to a local provocation, made to jag
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