Column 4-A Town Called Levuka--Part 1

This is the fourth column in a serialization of PACIFIC FLASH: A Year in FIJI by Gerry Takano. Copies will be available April 1, 2010. Stay tuned for more information.

Levuka is the oldest settlement in the Group and had drawn together a polyglot mixture of cotton planters, merchants, sailors, labour recruiters, hotel and kava saloon proprietors, lawyers and doctors, missionaries and consuls, the latter wondering to whom they were accredited and what were their powers, not forgetting gun-toting adventurers, who in ecstasy of spirit would burst from the saloons firing shots into the air to the annoyance of the populace and the indignation of the "Fiji Times" readers. The two chief centres seemed to have been Manton's Bar and the Planter's Arms. The latter stood where the present Anglican Church is built. Manton's Bar possessed character, an individuality that placed it above all the other hostelries. It was at once a hotel, a club, and a general rendezvous for all the idle, and some of the busiest, men in Levuka.

If you wanted a man, the first place you would naturally look for him would be at Manton's Bar, and if you did not find him there, you had only to go into the billiard room. The amount of drinking that went on there, and indeed in Levuka generally, was something pretentious. Although it has fallen to my lot to see some heavy drinking in America and at the gold diggings in Australia, Fiji outdid all my former experiences. Here every man seemed harassed by a perpetual thirst,and drank freely and often.

Levuka at this time was a small place, but for its size busy and prosperous. It possessed indeed only one street, and that contained but one row of houses. They were built close to the water's edge--not so close, however, as to leave a narrow strip of shingly beach, which formed the main street. This street extended about a mile in length, north and south, and was of unequal breadth. There were no vehicles, or, indeed, beasts of burden of any sort in Fiji in 1871, except for a few horses which had been imported as an experiment and which were not found to answer. No amusements of any sort were to be had, except drinking, and gossiping, and billiards. To men not devoted to such pursuits, life at Levuka became, after a while, extremely dull and monotonous.

Gerry Takano was reared in Honolulu, Hawaii and received his architectural education and early training in upstate New York and Boston. Gerry served as Hawaii’s National Trust Advisor and State of Hawaii Commissioner of the Historic Sites Review Board.

He currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and can be reached at gertkno@aol.com