The Fijians are no exception to other primitive races in believing that neither death nor disease can overtake a man naturally. Their first reflection on seeing the condition of the patient is, "An enemy hath done this!" their second, that the enemy must be discovered and punished, and his malignity neutralized by counterspells. It is not a logical theory of infection, because in their simple creed it is generally not necessary that the infecting agent should himself be suffering from the disease. But in the case of leprosy, as in their laws for the sexual abstinence of parents and for securing the sanitation of villages, they arrive at right conclusions from wrong premises. Leprosy, they argue, is inherent in certain families, therefore the evil spirit of leprosy, which is their equivalent for contagion, is a sort of family retainer, ever obsequious to the commands of his hereditary masters. And, since a living spirit must live somewhere, certain stones in various parts of the country are pointed out as his shrines, and are hedged about with a tabu that is never in danger of infraction, inasmuch as to touch them is to meet Gehazi's fate. The existence of these stones was discovered by Dr. Bolton Glanvill Corney, C.M.G., the Chief Medical Officer of Fiji, who is not only the principal authority on all medical questions in the Pacific Islands, but has a very accurate knowledge of the Fijian language and character. He has visited and described the stones himself, and has elicited from their owners on the spot such traditions concerning them as they still remembered or cared to tell.
Until within the last few years there were three leper stones on the river island of Tonga near the mouth of the Rewa river. One, called Katalewe, was vested in a family called Navokai, now living at Navasa village, but formerly of Nankavoka (the Skull), a deserted entrenchment that lies back from the river-bank behind the present site of Mbulu village. Two miles distant is a second stone, called Toralangi, who is said to be still _in situ_, though Dr. Corney did not actually see him. The third stone, known as Ratu, was missing from his former position, the cleft between two buttresses of a _ndawa_ tree, and, although to the consternation of the native bystanders Dr. Corney was bold enough to dig up the ground in the hope of unearthing him, he was not to be found. This is the less to be regretted since Ratu was a peculiarly active little stone. When the Notho warriors were storming Nankavoka village, one of them unwittingly dropped his _masi_, which lighted upon Ratu. It is said that he became a leper in consequence. The leper woman Mereani, wife of the chief of Navasa, who had her plantation within a few yards of Ratu, is said to have acquired the disease by working in his neighbourhood.