My colonial service in British Guiana, St. Lucia, Trinidad, Fiji, Australia, Newfoundland, and Hong Kong, with interludes

My colonial service in British Guiana, St. Lucia, Trinidad, Fiji, Australia, Newfoundland, and Hong Kong, with interludes

抜粋

In April or May, 1879, my attention was drawn to the inconvenient consequences which might ensue, as the colony became more populous, from the fact that the meridian of 180° passes through the group. As it actually traverses Taviuni, the island which, after Viti Levu and Vanua Levu, is next in point of area and importance, it would be pos- sible, given observations of sufficiently exact accuracy, for a man to stand there with one leg in Monday and the other in Tuesday nearly at the same hour! And even in the absence of this unattainable precision, he could, within the compass of a very short walk, pass from what is certainly Monday to what is with equal certainty Tuesday, or vice versâ.

Doubts might thus be easily raised as to the date on which any event had taken place, such as the commission of a crime, or the signature of a promissory note, and an opening would be given for fraud and legal complications. To obviate this inconvenience, I drafted with some difficulty and passed into law an ordinance which is of a sufficiently singular character to deserve insertion here, together with my message to the Legislature explaining it. 1

[1] The Ordinance ran in this wise : —

Fiji.] AN ORDINANCE. [No. XIV., 1879.

(Enacted by the Governor of the Colony of Fiji, with the advice and con- tent of the Legislative Council thereof.)

TO PROVIDE FOR AN UNIFORM DATE THROUGHOUT THE COLONY, (L.S.) G. W. Des Vœux.

Preamble.

Whereas according to the ordinary rule of noting time any given time would in that part of the Colony lying to the east of the meridian of 180 degrees from Greenwich be noted as of a day of the week and month different from the day by which the same time would be noted in the part of the Colony lying to the west of such meridian :

And whereas by custom the ordinary rule has been set aside and time has been noted throughout the Colony as though the whole were situate to the west of such meridian :

And whereas in order to preclude uncertainty for the future it is expedient that the above custom should be legalised :

Be it therefore enacted by the Governor with the advice and consent of the Legislative Council as follows :―

Time―how calculated. I. Time in this Colony shall be noted as if the whole Colony were situate to the west of the meridian of 180 degrees from Greenwich.

(Exempli gratiâ.―To-day, which according to the ordinary rule for noting time is on the island of Ovalau the fifth day of June and on the Island of Vanua Balavu the fourth day of June, would by this Ordinance be deemed to be the fifth day of June, 1879, in the whole Colony.)

Short Title. II. This Ordinance may be cited as the Uniform Date Ordinance, 1879.

Passed in Council this fifth day of June in the year of Our Lord one thousand eight hundred and seventy-nine.

MESSAGE TO THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.

“G. William Des Vœux.

“The Lieutenant-Governor administering the government has directed to be laid on the table an Ordinance of which the short title is ‘The Uniform Date Ordinance, 1879.’

“The Colony of Fiji being crossed by the meridian of 180°, reckoned from the meridian of Greenwich, that part of it lying to the west of this line, is, according to the ordinary rule of noting time, nearly twenty-four hours in advance of that lying to the east―so that, for instance, when at the town of Vuna, in the island of Taviuni, it was noon on the first day of January, 1879, it was, properly speaking, only a few seconds after noon of the 31st December, 1878, at Nai-sele-sele, situate only a few miles distant in the same island.

“The custom which has obviated this inconvenience by adopt- ing for the whole Colony the date which, according to the ordinary rule, is correct only in the western portion, has besides uniformity, the additional advantage that the date in question is the correct date in all the other Australian Colonies, and is in use even in islands lying to the eastward, where communications are principally with those Colonies.

“The Ordinance in question, by legalising this custom, will remove all doubts on the subject for the future, doubts which, as the affairs of the Colony increase in number and importance, might otherwise be productive of much inconvenience.

“By His Excellency's Command,

“John B. Thurston,

“Colonial Secretary.

“Nasova, 19th February, 1879.”

This law may well be cited as unique. Except, perhaps, some coral atoll in the Pacific, the meridian of 180° passes over no other land but Taviuni in Fiji and the extreme end of Asiatic Russia, some hundreds of miles east of Kam- schatka. Yet such a law may be required in the Chatham Islands, which though situated some five hundred miles from New Zealand, form part of that colony. Though the 180th meridian does not pass over them it lies between them and the principal islands, so that they are in the western hemisphere, while New Zealand proper is in the eastern. Should these islands continue subject to the courts of justice of the main colony, it is possible a case may some day occur which will necessitate a similar law in New Zealand.

With respect to the change of date caused by crossing the 180th meridian, before my first voyage across the Pacific I was ignorant on the subject, as I believe still are the great majority of Englishmen. The dropping of a day from the week, or the adding one to it, according as the voyage is westward or eastward, naturally occasions curiosity as to the cause of this anomaly. The average brain does not, I still find, grasp the situation easily, and in each of my several voyages across the Pacific, I have been rendered weary by demands from many quarters for explanations, which sometimes had to be reiterated again and again to the same person before the dawn of comprehension.

Confusion of mind on this subject is not, however, con- fined to ordinary steamboat passengers. When reading in Fiji in this same year 1879, a well-known book of travel, I was surprised to find the following in the description of a yacht-voyage from Hawaii to Yokohama :―

“Thursday, January 11th, had no existence for us, as in cross- ing the 180th parallel of latitude (sic) we have lost a day. Friday, January 12th. Wednesday morning with us was Tuesday even- ing with people in England, and we are now twelve hours in advance of them. To-day the order of things is reversed, and we are now twelve hours behind our friends at home.”

Apart from what may be regarded as a slip of the pen, viz, the mention of “latitude” instead of longitude, there are here two serious errors, which I leave the reader to detect for himself.

While on the subject of this change of date, I may men- tion that when in 1883, during my second administration of Fiji, in discharge of the functions of High Commis- sioner, I paid a visit to Samoa in H.M.S. Diamond, there was in harbour an American ship-of-war which was keeping as Sunday the same day as that which we were regarding as Monday, our Sunday having been kept the day before. The Americans were in fact right and we were wrong, but the Diamond having only within a few days entered into west longitude, and it being our intention to return im- mediately, it was naturally not deemed desirable to alter the day twice within one week, and this especially as Samoa, though east of 180°, having been first settled from Australia and New Zealand, had adopted the day of those colonies.

関連

[5] フィジーの標準時