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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:36:51 -0700 |
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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:36:51 -0700 |
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+} + +a.navline:hover, a.hidden:hover, a.noteref:hover +{ + color: red; +} + +</style> +</head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11400 ***</div> + +<p> +<a id="d0e109"></a> +<span id="d0e111" class="pageno">page ii</span> +<p id="d0e113"> +<div id="d0e115" class="divFigure"> +<p class="legend"><img src="img/plate-1.jpg" alt="The banners of the tropics fly in wild disorder"> +<p class="figureHead">The banners of the tropics fly in wild disorder +</div> +<span id="d0e121" class="pageno">page iii</span> + +<h1 class="docTitle"> +Mystic Isles of the South Seas +</h1> +<h2 class="byline">By +<span class="docAuthor">Frederick O’Brien</span> +</h2> +<span id="d0e140" class="pageno">page v</span> +<h1 id="d0e142">Ia Ora Na!</h1> +<p id="d0e147">This is a simple record of my days and nights, my thoughts and dreams, in the mystic isles of the South Seas, written without +authority of science or exactitude of knowledge. These are merely the vivid impressions of my life in Tahiti and Moorea, the +merriest, most fascinating world of all the cosmos; of the songs I sang, the dances I danced, the men and women, white and +tawny, with whom I was joyous or melancholy; the adventures at sea or on the reef, upon the sapphire lagoon, and on the silver +beaches of the most beautiful of tropics. + +<p id="d0e150">In this volume are no discoveries unless in the heart of the human. I went to the islands below the equator with one thought—to +play. All that I have set down here is the profit of that spirit. + +<p id="d0e153">The soul of man is afflicted by the machine he has fashioned through the ages to achieve his triumph over matter. In this +light chronicle I would offer the reader an anodyne for a few hours, of transport to the other side of our sphere, where are +the loveliest scenes the eyes may find upon the round of the globe, the gentlest climate of all the latitudes, the most whimsical +whites, and the dearest savages I have known. + +<p id="d0e156">“Mystic Isles of the South Seas” precedes in experience my former book, “White Shadows in the South <span id="d0e158" class="pageno">page vi</span>Seas,” and will be followed by “Atolls of the Sun,” which will be the account of a visit to, and a dwelling on, the blazing +coral wreaths of the Dangerous Archipelago, where the strange is commonplace, and the marvel is the probability of the hour. + +<p id="d0e161">These three volumes will cover the period I spent during three journeys with the remnants of the most amazing of uncivilized +races, whose discovery startled the old world, and whom another generation will cease to know. + +<p id="d0e164">Tirara! + +<p id="d0e167">Maru-tané. + +<p id="d0e170">Kaoha, Sausalito, California. + +<p id="d0e173">In this book the reader may be tempted to stumble over some foreign words. I have put them in only when necessary, to give +the color and rhythm of Tahiti. The Tahitian words are very easily pronounced and they are music in the mouth of any one who +sounds them properly. Every letter and syllable is pronounced plainly. The letters have the Latin value and if one will remember +this in reading, the Tahitian words will flow mellifluously. For instance, “tane” is pronounced “tah-nay,” “maru” is pronounced +“mah-ru.” “Tiare” is “tee-ah-ray.” The Tahitian language is dying fast, as are the Tahitians. Its beauties are worth the few +efforts necessary for the reader to scan them. + +<p id="d0e176">Frederick O’Brien. +<span id="d0e178" class="pageno">page vii</span> + +<h1 id="d0e182">Contents</h1> +<p id="d0e187"> +<a id="d0e189" href="#d0e457">Chapter I</a> + +<p id="d0e193">Departure from San Francisco—Nature man left behind—Fellow-passengers on the <i>Noa-Noa</i>—Tragedy of the Chinese pundit—Strange stories of the South Seas—The Tahitian Hula + +<p id="d0e199"> +<a id="d0e201" href="#d0e667">Chapter II</a> + +<p id="d0e205">The Discovery of Tahiti—Marvelous isles and people—Hailed by a wind-jammer—Middle of the voyage—Tahiti on the horizon—Ashore +in Papeete + +<p id="d0e208"> +<a id="d0e210" href="#d0e902">Chapter III</a> + +<p id="d0e214">Description of Tahiti—A volcanic rock and coral reef—Beauty of the scenery—Papeete the center of the South Seas—Appearance +of the Tahitians + +<p id="d0e217"> +<a id="d0e219" href="#d0e1091">Chapter IV</a> + +<p id="d0e223">The Tiare Hotel—Lovaina the hostess, the best-known woman in the South Seas—Her strange ménage—The Dummy—A one-sided tryst—An +old-fashioned cocktail—The Argentine training ship + +<p id="d0e226"> +<a id="d0e228" href="#d0e1552">Chapter V</a> + +<p id="d0e232">The Parc de Bougainville—Ivan Stroganoff—He tells me the history of Tahiti—He berates the Tahitians—Wants me to start a newspaper +<span id="d0e234" class="pageno">page viii</span> + +<p id="d0e237"> +<a id="d0e239" href="#d0e1775">Chapter VI</a> + +<p id="d0e243">The Cercle Bougainville—Officialdom in Tahiti—My first visit to the Bougainville—Skippers and merchants—A song and a drink—The +flavor of the South Seas—Rumors of war + +<p id="d0e246"> +<a id="d0e248" href="#d0e2371">Chapter VII</a> + +<p id="d0e252">The Noa-Noa comes to port—Papeete <i>en fête</i>—Rare scene at the Tiare Hotel—The New Year celebrated—Excitement at the wharf—Battle of the Limes and Coal + +<p id="d0e258"> +<a id="d0e260" href="#d0e3002">Chapter VIII</a> + +<p id="d0e264">Gossip in Papeete—Moorea, a near-by island—A two-days’ excursion there—Magnificent scenery from the sea—Island of fairy folk—Landing +and preparation for the feast—The First Christian Mission—A canoe on the lagoon—Beauties of the sea-garden + +<p id="d0e267"> +<a id="d0e269" href="#d0e3304">Chapter IX</a> + +<p id="d0e273">The Arearea in the pavilion—Raw fish and baked <i>feis</i>—Llewellyn, the Master of the Revel; Kelly, the I. W. W. and his himene—The Upaupahura—Landers and Mamoe prove experts—The +return to Papeete + +<p id="d0e279"> +<a id="d0e281" href="#d0e3760">Chapter X</a> + +<p id="d0e285">The storm on the lagoon; making safe the schooners—A talk on missing ships—A singular coincidence—Arrival of three of the +crew of the shipwrecked <i>El Dorado</i>—The Dutchman’s Story—Easter Island + +<p id="d0e291"> +<a id="d0e293" href="#d0e4303">Chapter XI</a> + +<p id="d0e297">I move to the Annexe—Description of the building—The baroness and her baby—Evoa and Poia—The corals of the lagoon—The Chinese +shrine—The Tahitian sky +<span id="d0e299" class="pageno">page ix</span> + +<p id="d0e302"> +<a id="d0e304" href="#d0e4850">Chapter XII</a> + +<p id="d0e308">The princess suggests a walk to the falls of Fautaua, where Loti went with <i>Rarahu</i>—We start in the morning—The suburbs of Papeete—The Pool of Loti—The birds, trees and plants—A swim in a pool—Arrival at the +cascade—Luncheon and a siesta—We climb the height—The princess tells of Tahitian women—The Fashoda fright + +<p id="d0e314"> +<a id="d0e316" href="#d0e5567">Chapter XIII</a> + +<p id="d0e320">The beach-combers of Papeete—The consuls tell their troubles—A bogus lord—The American boot-blacks—The cowboy in the hospital—Ormsby, +the supercargo—The death of Tahia—The Christchurch Kid—The Nature men—Ivan Stroganoff’s desire for a new gland + +<p id="d0e323"> +<a id="d0e325" href="#d0e6161">Chapter XIV</a> + +<p id="d0e329">The market in Papeete—Coffee at Shin Bung Lung’s with a prince—Fish the chief item—Description of them—The vegetables and +fruits—The fish strike—Rumors of an uprising—Kelly and the I. W. W.—The mysterious session at Fa’a—Hallelujah! I’m a Bum!—the +strike is broken + +<p id="d0e332"> +<a id="d0e334" href="#d0e7102">Chapter XV</a> + +<p id="d0e338">A drive to Papenoo—The chief of Papenoo—A dinner and poker on the bench—Incidents of the game—Breakfast the next morning—The +chief tells his story—The journey back—The leper child and her doll—The <i>Alliance Française</i>—Bemis and his daughter—The band concert and the fire—The prize-fight—My bowl of velvet +<span id="d0e343" class="pageno">page x</span> + +<p id="d0e346"> +<a id="d0e348" href="#d0e7786">Chapter XVI</a> + +<p id="d0e352">A journey to Mataiea—I abandon city life—Interesting sights on the route—The Grotto of Maraa—Papara and the Chief Tati—The +plantation of Atimaono—My host, the Chevalier Tetuanui + +<p id="d0e355"> +<a id="d0e357" href="#d0e8169">Chapter XVII</a> + +<p id="d0e361">My life in the house of Tetuanui—Whence came the Polynesians—A migration from Malaysia—Their legends of the past—Condition +of Tahiti when the white came—The great navigator, Cook—Tetuanui tells of old Tahiti + +<p id="d0e364"> +<a id="d0e366" href="#d0e8561">Chapter XVIII</a> + +<p id="d0e370">The reef and the lagoon—Wonders of marine life—Fishing with spears and nets—Sponges and hermit crabs—Fish of many colors—Ancient +canoes of Tahiti—A visit to Vaihiria and legends told there + +<p id="d0e373"> +<a id="d0e375" href="#d0e9112">Chapter XIX</a> + +<p id="d0e379">The Arioi, minstrels of the tropics—Lovaina tells of the infanticide—Theories of depopulation—Methods of the Arioi—Destroyed +by missionaries + +<p id="d0e382"> +<a id="d0e384" href="#d0e9449">Chapter XX</a> + +<p id="d0e388">Rupert Brooke and I discuss Tahiti—We go to a wedding feast—How the cloth was spread—What we ate and drank—A Gargantuan feeder—Songs +and dances of passion—The royal feast at Tetuanui’s—I leave for Vairao—Butscher and the Lermantoffs + +<p id="d0e391"> +<a id="d0e393" href="#d0e10129">Chapter XXI</a> + +<p id="d0e397">A heathen temple—The great Marae of Oberea—I visit it with Rupert Brooke and Chief Tetuanui—The Tahitian religion of old—The +wisdom of folly +<span id="d0e399" class="pageno">page xi</span> + +<p id="d0e402"> +<a id="d0e404" href="#d0e10513">Chapter XXII</a> + +<p id="d0e408">I start for Tautira—A dangerous adventure in a canoe—I go by land to Tautira—I meet Choti and the Greek god—I take up my home +where Stevenson lived + +<p id="d0e411"> +<a id="d0e413" href="#d0e10952">Chapter XXIII</a> + +<p id="d0e417">My life at Tautira—The way I cook my food—Ancient Tahitian sports—Swimming and fishing—A night hunt for shrimp and eels + +<p id="d0e420"> +<a id="d0e422" href="#d0e11213">Chapter XXIV</a> + +<p id="d0e426">In the days of Captain Cook—The first Spanish missionaries—Difficulties of converting the heathens—Wars over Christianity—Ori-a-Ori, +the chief, friend of Stevenson—We read the Bible together—The church and the <i>himene</i> + +<p id="d0e432"> +<a id="d0e434" href="#d0e11539">Chapter XXV</a> + +<p id="d0e438">I meet a sorcerer—Power over fire—The mystery of the fiery furnace—The scene in the forest—Walking over the white-hot stones—Origin +of the rite + +<p id="d0e441"> +<a id="d0e443" href="#d0e12135">Chapter XXVI</a> + +<p id="d0e447">Farewell to Tautira—My good-bye feast—Back at the Tiare—A talk with Lovaina—The Cercle Bougainville—Death of David—My visit +to the cemetery—Off for the Marquesas +<span id="d0e449" class="pageno">page 3</span> + +<h1 id="d0e457">Chapter I</h1> +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e464">Departure from San Francisco—Nature man left behind—Fellow-passengers on the Noa-Noa—Tragedy of the Chinese pundit—Strange +stories of the South Seas—The Tahitian Hula. + +</div> +<p id="d0e468">The warning gong had sent all but crew and passengers ashore, though our ship did not leave the dock. Her great bulk still +lay along the piling, though the gangway was withdrawn. The small groups on the pier waited tensely for the last words with +those departing. These passengers were inwardly bored with the prolonged farewells, and wanted to be free to observe their +fellow-voyagers and the movement of the ship. They conversed in shouts with those ashore, but most of the meanings were lost +in the noise of the shuffling of baggage and freight, the whistling of ferries, and the usual turmoil of the San Francisco +waterfront. I was glad that none had come to see me off, for I was curious about my unknown companions upon the long traverse +to the South Seas, and I had wilfully put behind me all that America and Europe held to adventure in the vasts of ocean below +the equator. + +<p id="d0e471">But the whistle I awaited to sound our leaving was silent. Officers of the ship rushed about as if bent on relieving her of +some pressing danger, and I caught <span id="d0e473" class="pageno">page 4</span>fragments of orders and replies which indicated that until a search was completed she could not stir on her journey. Then +I heard cries of anger and protest, and caught a glimpse of a man whose appearance provoked confusing emotions of astonishment, +admiration, and laughter. He was dressed in a Roman toga of rough monk’s-cloth, and had on sandals. He was being hustled bodily +over the restored gangway, and was resisting valiantly the second officer, purser, and steward, who were hardly able to move +him, so powerfully was he made. One of his sandals suddenly fell into the bay. He had seized hold of the rail of the gangway, +and the leather sandal dropped into the water with a slight splash. His grasp of the rail being broken, he was gradually being +pushed, limping, to the dock. His one bare foot and his half-exposed and shapely body caused a gale of laughter from the docks +and the wharf. + +<p id="d0e476">The gangway was quickly withdrawn, and our ship began to move from the shore. The ejected one stood watching us with sorrow +shadowing his large eyes. He was of middle size; with the form of a David of Michelangelo, though lithe, and he wore no hat, +but had a long, brown beard, which, with his brown hair, parted in the middle and falling over his shoulders, and his archaic +garb, gave me a singular shock. It was as if a boyhood vision, or something seen in a painting, was made real. His eyes were +the deepest blue, limpid and appealing, and I felt like shouting out that if it was a matter of money, I would aid the man +in the toga. + +<p id="d0e479">“Christ!” yelled the frantic dock superintendent. “Get that line cast off and let her go! Are you ceemented to that hooker?” +<span id="d0e481" class="pageno">page 5</span> + +<p id="d0e484">Instantly before me came Munkácsy’s picture of the Master before Pilate, evoked by the profanity of the wharf boss, but explaining +the vision of a moment ago. The <i>Noa-Noa</i> emitted a cry from her iron throat. The engines started, and the distance between our deck and the pier grew as our bow swung +toward the Golden Gate. The strange man who had been put ashore, with his one sandal in his hand, and holding his torn toga +about him, hastened to the nearest stringer of the wharf and waved good-by to us. It was as if a prophet, or even Saul of +Tarsus, blessed us in our quest. He stood on a tall group of piles, and called out something indistinguishable. + +<p id="d0e490">The passengers hurried below, to return in coats and caps to meet the wind that blows from China, and the second officer and +the surgeon came by, talking animatedly. + +<p id="d0e493">“Oh, yus,” said the seaman, chuckling, ”’e wuz ’auled out finally. The beggar ’ad ’id ’imself good and proper this time. ’E +wuz in the linen-closet, and ’ad disguised ’imself as a bundle o’ bloomin’ barth-towels. ’E wuz a reg’lar grand Turk, ’e wuz. +Blow me, if you’d ’a’ knowed ’im from a bale of ’em, ’e wuz so wrapped up in ’em. ’E almost ’ad us ’ull down this time. The +blighter made a bit of a row, and said as ’ow he just could n’t ’elp stowin’ aw’y every boat for T’iti.” + +<p id="d0e496">“He’s a bally nut,” said the surgeon. “I say, though, he did take me back to Sunday school.” + +<p id="d0e499">I recalled a man who walked the streets of San Francisco carrying a small sign in his upraised hand, “Christ has come!” He +looked neither to the right nor the left, but bore his curious announcement among the crowds <span id="d0e501" class="pageno">page 6</span>downtown, which smiled jestingly at him, or looked frightened at the message. If many had believed him, the panic would have +been illimitable. He was dressed in a brown cassock, and looked like the blue-eyed man who had been refused passage to my +destination. Probably, that American in the toga and sandals, exiled from the island he loved so well, had a message for the +Tahitians or others of the Polynesian tribes of the South Seas; Essenism, maybe, or something to do with virginal beards and +long hair, or sandals and the simple life. I wished he were with us. + +<p id="d0e504">We were in the Golden Gate now, that magnificent opening in the California shores, riven in the eternal conflict of land and +water, and the rending of which made the bay of San Francisco the mightiest harbor of America. Before our bows lay the immense +expanse of the mysterious Pacific. + +<p id="d0e507">The second officer was directing sailors who were snugging down the decks. + +<p id="d0e510">“What did the queer fellow want to go to Tahiti for?” I asked him. + +<p id="d0e513">He regarded me a moment in the stolid way of seamen. + +<p id="d0e516">“The blighter likes to live on bananas and breadfruit and that kind of truck,” he replied. “The French won’t let ’im st’y +there. ’E’s too bloomin’ nyked. ’E’s a nyture man. They chysed ’im out, and every steamer ’e tries to stow ’imself aw’y. ’E’s +a bleedin’ trial to these ships.” + +<p id="d0e519">That was puzzling. Did not these natives of Tahiti themselves wear little clothing? Who were they to object to a white man +doffing the superfluities of dress <span id="d0e521" class="pageno">page 7</span>in a climate where breadfruit and bananas grow? Or the French, the governors of Tahiti? Were they, in that isle so distant +from Paris, their capital, practising a puritanism unknown at home? Was nature so fearful? The figure of the barefooted man +often arose as I watched the Farallones disappear, the last of land we would see until we arrived at Tahiti, nearly two weeks +later. + +<p id="d0e524">The days fell away from the calendar; they obliterated themselves as quietly as our ship’s wake to the north, as we planed +over the smooth waters toward the equator. Gradually the passengers took on character, and out of the first welter of contacts +came those definite impressions which are almost always right and which, though we modify them or reverse them by acquaintance, +we return to finally. + +<p id="d0e527">There was a Chinese, the strangest figure of an Asiatic, with a thin mustache, and wearing always a black frock-coat and trousers, +elastic gaiters, and a stiff, black hat. His face was long and oval and the color of old ivory. He had tried to gain admission +to Australia and New Zealand, and then the United States, and had been excluded under some harsh laws. He was plainly a scholar, +but had brought with him from China a store of curios, probably to enable him to earn money in the land of the white. Australia +had refused him; he had been shut out of San Francisco, and the very steamship that brought him was compelled to take him +away. He had failed to bring a necessary certificate, or something of the sort, and the inexorable laws of three Christian +countries had sent him wandering, so that it was inevitable he must return to China by the route he had <span id="d0e529" class="pageno">page 8</span>come. He was the most mournful of sights, sitting most of the day in a retired spot, brooding, apparently over his fate. He +never smiled, though I who have been much in China, tried to stir him from his sadness by exclamations and gestures. His race +has a very keen sense of humor. They see a thousand funny things about them, and laugh inwardly; but they never see anything +amusing in themselves. The individual man conceives himself a dignified figure in a world of burlesque. + +<p id="d0e532">This man’s face was rid of any self-pity. I think he was stunned by the horror of the thing, that he, a man of Chinese letters, +who had departed from the centuried custom of his pundit caste of remaining in their own country, who had left his family +or clan to increase his store of lesser knowledge, should be denied the door by these inferior nations of the West. He might +have recalled Chien Lung, a Manchu emperor, who, when apologized to in writing by a Dutch governor of Batavia who had murdered +almost all the Chinese there, replied that China had no interest in wretches who had left their native land. A thousand years +ago the Chinese put the soldier lowest in the scale and the scholar highest, with the man of business as of no importance. +And yet these commercial peoples barred their gates to him! For a number of days he took his place in the shade of a davited +boat, and now and again he read from a quaint book the Analects of Confucius. + +<p id="d0e535">We sailed on Wednesday, and on Sunday made the first tropic, nearly twenty-three and a half degrees above the line. No rough +weather or unkindly wind had disturbed us from the hour we had left the “too <span id="d0e537" class="pageno">page 9</span>nyked” man upon the wharf, and Sunday, when I went to take my bath before breakfast, I felt the soft fingers of the South +caress my body, and looking out upon the purple ocean, whose expanse was barely dimpled by gleams of silver, I saw flying-fish +skimming the crests of the swinging waves. The officers and stewards appeared in white; the passengers, too, put off their +temperate-zone clothes, and the decks were gay with color. We all seemed to feel that we must be in consonance with the loving +nature that had made the sky so blue and the sea so still. + +<p id="d0e540">The Chinese—he was Leung Kai Chu on the list—did not change his melancholy black. The deck sports were organized, ship tennis, +quoits, and golf, and the disks rattled about his feet; but though he often moved his chair to aid those seeking a lost quoit +or ring, and bowed ceremoniously to those who begged his pardon for bothering him, he kept his position. I felt a somber sense +of gathering tragedy. In his face was a growing detachment from everything about him; he hardly knew that we were there, that +he ate and slept, and took his seat by the boat. All of us felt this, but with many it meant merely remarking that “the Chink +is getting off his head,” and a wish that he would not obtrude his grief when we were filled with the joy of sunny skies and +a merry company. + +<p id="d0e543">The tragedy came sooner than expected by me. I had cast a thought to my understanding that the philosophy of Confucius did +not contemplate self-destruction, and had been divided between relief and wonder that it was so. + +<p id="d0e546">It was dusk of Monday. The sun had sunk behind <span id="d0e548" class="pageno">page 10</span>the glowing rim of the western horizon, and the air was suffused with a trembling rose color, when Leung Kai Chu tapped at +my cabin-door, which gave on the boat-deck. I opened it, and he bowed, and handed me an image. It was of porcelain, precious, +and I was at a loss to know whether he had felt the need of a little money and had brought it to sell, or had been impelled +to give it to me because of my feeble efforts to cheer him. I made a gesture which might have meant payment, but he raised +his hand deprecatingly, and for the first time I saw him smile, and I was afraid. He bowed, and in the mandarin language invoked +good fortune upon me. He had the aspect of one beyond good and evil, who had settled life’s problem. When he left me I stood +wondering, holding in my hands the majestic god seated upon the tiger, the symbol of the conquest of the flesh. + +<p id="d0e551">I heard a shout, and dropping the image, I rushed aft. Leung Kai Chu had thrown himself over the rail just by the purser’s +office. A steward had seen him fling himself into the white foam. I tore a gas-buoy from its rack and tossed it toward the +screw, in which direction he must have been swept. A sailor ran to the bridge, the whistle blew, and the ship shook as the +engines ceased revolving, and then reversed in stopping her. Orders were flung about fast. A man climbed to the lookout as +the first officer began to put a boat into the water. The crew of it and the second officer were already at the oars and the +tiller as the ropes slid in the blocks. The passengers came crowding from their cabins, where they were dressing for dinner, +and there were many expressions of surprise and slight terror. <span id="d0e553" class="pageno">page 11</span>Death aboard ship is terrible in its imminence to all. The buoy, with its flaming torch, had drifted far to leeward, and the +lookout could do no more than follow its fainting light as the dark of the tropics closed in. An hour the <i>Noa-Noa</i> lay gently heaving upon the mysterious waters in which the despairing pundit had sought Nirvana, until the boat returned +with a report that it had picked up the buoy, but had seen no sign of the man. Doubtless he had been swept into the propellers, +but if not quickly given release in their cyclopean strokes, he may have watched for a few minutes our vain attempt to negative +his fate. If so, I imagine he smiled again, as when he gave me the god upon the tiger. + +<p id="d0e559">As they hoisted the boat to its davits, I found in the lantern light his ancient volume, the “Analects of Confucius,” and +claimed it for my own. It was the very boat he had been accustomed to sit under, and he must have laid down the ancient philosopher +to procure the gift for me, his grim determination already made. I had caught a glimpse of him Sunday morning listening to +the Christian services conducted by the captain in the social hall, and when I told the brooding captain that, he was struck +by the idea that perhaps some word of his preachment might have come to Leung Kai Chu’s mind in his agony in the waters, and +that at the last moment he might have repented and been saved. + +<p id="d0e562">“One aspiration, and he might be washed as white as snow. ‘This day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise,’ ” said the commander, +who was known as the parson skipper, dour, but ever on the watch for the first sign of repentance. +<span id="d0e564" class="pageno">page 12</span> + +<p id="d0e567">On the other hand, Hallman more nearly stated the general feeling: + +<p id="d0e570">“By God, he spoiled sport, that black ghost on deck. He was like a <i>tupapau</i>, a Polynesian demon.” + +<p id="d0e576">Hallman was in his early forties, with twenty years of South-Seas trading, a tall, strong, well-featured, but hard-faced, +European, with thin lips over nearly perfect teeth, and cold, small, pale-blue eyes. He talked little to men, but isolated +young women whenever possible, and bent over them in attempted gay, but earnest, converse. He was one of those cold sensualists +whose passion is as that of some animals, insistent, prowling, fierce, but impersonal. An English South-Sea trader aboard +gave me an astonishing light upon him: + +<p id="d0e579">“Some dozen years ago,” he said, “I made a visit of a few weeks to the Marquesas Islands. Hallman had kept a store there then +for more than ten years, and had a good part of the business of buying and shipping copra and selling supplies to the natives +and a few whites. He lived in a shack back of his little store, with his native woman and four or five half-naked children. +They told me queer stories about his madness for women. They said he would go out of his house and into the jungle near the +trails and would lie in wait. If a woman he coveted passed, he would seize her, and even if her husband or consort was ahead +of her, in the custom of these people, he would grab her feet, and make her call out that she was delaying a minute, that +her companion was to go along, and she would catch up in a minute. He had some funny power over those women. Anyhow, that’s +the story they told me in those cannibal islands. And yet, you know, there’s something <span id="d0e581" class="pageno">page 13</span>different in him, because he sent two of his sons to school, and afterward to a university in Europe. To make it queerer yet, +one of them is here on this ship, in the second class, and wouldn’t dare to speak to his father without being asked. Of course +he’s a half-Marquesan—the son—and looks it. I know them all, and only yesterday I heard Hallman call his son on the main-deck, +away from where any one could see him, and threaten him with ‘putting him back in the jungle, where he came from,’ if he appeared +again near the first-class space. I tell you, I’d hate to be in his hands if I was in his way.” + +<p id="d0e584">Fictionists who take the South Seas for their scenery too often paint their characters in one tone—black, brown, or yellow, +or even white. Their bad men are super-villains, and yet there are no men all bad. I know there are no supermen at all, bad +or good, but only that some men do super acts now and then; none has the grand gesture at all times. Napoleon had a disgraceful +affliction at Waterloo, which rid him of strength, mental and physical; the thief on the cross became wistful for an unknown +delight. + +<p id="d0e587">Hallman had said to me in the smoking-room that he never drank alcohol or smoked tobacco, because “it took the edge off the +game.” Now, a poet might say that, or even a moralist, but he was neither. + +<p id="d0e590">That night I walked through the waist of the ship and on to the promenade-deck of the third-class passengers, where a huddle +of stores, coiled ropes, and riff-raff prevented these poor from taking any pleasurable exercise. I stood at the taffrail +and peered down at the welter of white water, the foam of the buffets of <span id="d0e592" class="pageno">page 14</span>the whirling screws, and then at the wide wake, which in imagination went on and on in a luminous path to the place we had +departed from, to the dock where we had left the debarred lover of nature. The deep was lit with the play of phosphorescent +animalculae whom our passage awoke in their homes beneath the surface and sent questing with lights for the cause. A sheet +of pale, green-gold brilliancy marked the route of the <i>Noa-Noa</i> on the brine, and perhaps far back the corpse of the celestial philosopher floated in radiancy, with his face toward those +skies, so brazen to his desires. + +<p id="d0e598">A Swiss with a letter of introduction to me presented it when seven days out. It was from the manager of a restaurant in San +Francisco, and asked me to guide him in any way I could. The Swiss was middle-aged, and talked only of a raw diet. He was +to go to the Marquesas to eat raw food. One would have thought a crude diet to be in itself an end in life. He spoke of it +proudly and earnestly, as if cooking one’s edibles were a crime or a vile thing. He told me for hours his dictums—no alcohol, +no tobacco, no meat, no fish; merely raw fruit, nuts, and vegetables. He was a convinced rebel against any fire for food, +making known to any one who would listen that man had erred sadly, thousands of years ago, in bringing fire into his cave +for cooking, and that the only cure for civilization’s evils was in abolishing the kitchen. He would live in the Marquesas +as he said the aborigines do. Alas! I did not tell him they ate only their fish raw. + +<p id="d0e601">Ben Fuller, the Australian theatrical manager, frowned on him. Fuller was as round as a barrel, and he also was certain of +the remedies for a sick world. +<span id="d0e603" class="pageno">page 15</span> + +<p id="d0e606">“How you ’re goin’ a get any bloody fun with no roast beef, no mutton, no puddin’, and let alone a drop of ale and a pipe?” + +<p id="d0e609">The Swiss smiled beatifically. + +<p id="d0e612">“You can get rid of all those desires,” he said. + +<p id="d0e615">“My Gawd! I don’t want to get rid o’ them, I don’t. I’m bringing up my kiddies right, and I’m a proper family man, but I want +my meat and my bread and my puddin’. The world needs proper entertainment; that’s what’ll cure the troubles.” + +<p id="d0e618">The Swiss was also ardent in attention to the women aboard, and I wondered if there was a new school of self-denial. The old +celibate monks eschewed women, but had Gargantuan appetites, which they satisfied with meat pasties, tubs of ale, and vats +of wine. + +<p id="d0e621">There were two Tahitians aboard, both females. One was an oldish woman, ugly and waspish. She counted her beads and spoke +to me in French of the consolations of the Catholic religion. She had been to America for an operation, but despaired of ever +being well, and so was melancholy and devout. I talked to her about Tahiti, that island which the young Darwin wrote, “must +forever remain classical to the voyager in the South Seas,” and which, since I had read “Rarahu” as a boy, had fascinated +me and drawn me to it. She warned me. + +<p id="d0e624">“<i>Prenez-garde vous, monsieur!</i>” she said. “There are evils there, but I am ashamed of my people.” + +<p id="d0e630">The other was about twenty-two years old, slender, kohl-eyed, and black-tressed. She was dressed in the gayest colors of bourgeois +fashion in San Francisco, with jade ear-rings and diamond ornaments. Her face <span id="d0e632" class="pageno">page 16</span>was of a lemon-cream hue, with dark shadows under her long-lashed eyes. Her form was singularly svelt, curving, suggestive +of the rounded stalk of a young cocoa-palm, her bosom molded in a voluptuous reserve. Her father, a clergyman, had cornered +the vanilla-bean market in Tahiti, and she was bringing an automobile and a phonograph to her home, a village in the middle +of Tahiti. + +<p id="d0e635">One night when a Hawaiian <i>hula</i> was played on the phonograph, she danced alone for us. It was a graceful, insinuating step, with movements of the arms and +hands, a rotating of the torso upon the hips, and with a tinge of the savage in it that excited the Swiss, the raw-food advocate. +Hallman was also in the social hall, and, after waltzing with her several times, had persuaded her to dance the <i>hula</i>. He clapped his hands loudly and called out: + +<p id="d0e644">“<i>Maitai!</i>” + +<p id="d0e650">That is Tahitian for bravo, and I saw a look in Hallman’s face that recalled the story by the Englishman of the jungle trail. +He was always intent on his pursuit. + +<p id="d0e653">Was I hypercritical? There was Leung Kai Chu with the sharks, and the nature man left behind! The one had lost his dream of +returning to Tahiti, in which the Chinese might freely have lived, and the other had thrown away life because he could not +enter the America that the other wanted so madly to leave. The lack of a piece of paper had killed him. Was it that happiness +was a delusion never to be realized? If the pundit had bribed the immigration authorities, as I had known many to do, he might +now have been studying the <span id="d0e655" class="pageno">page 17</span>strange religion and ethics which had caused the whites to steal so much of China, to force opium upon it at the cannon’s +mouth, to kill tens of thousands of yellow men, and to raise to dignities the soldiers and financiers whom he despised, as +had Confucius and Buddha. And if that white of the sandals had kept his shirt on in Tahiti, he might be lying under his favorite +palm and eating breadfruit and bananas. + +<p id="d0e658">People have come to be afraid to say or even to think they are happy for a bare hour. We fear that the very saying of it will +rob us of happiness. We have incantations to ward off listening devils—knocking on wood, throwing salt over our left shoulders, +and saying “God willing.” + +<p id="d0e661">What was I to find in Tahiti? Certainly not what Loti had with Rarahu, for that was forty years ago, when the world was young +at heart, and romance was a god who might be worshiped with uncensored tongue. But was not romance a spiritual emanation, +a state of mind, and not people or scenes? I knew it was, for all over the earth I had pursued it, and found it in the wild +flowers of the Sausalito hills in California more than among the gayeties of Paris, the gorges of the Yangtse-Kiang, or in +the skull dance of the wild Dyak of Borneo. +<span id="d0e663" class="pageno">page 18</span> + +<h1 id="d0e667">Chapter II</h1> +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e674">The Discovery of Tahiti—Marvelous isles and people—Hailed by a windjammer—Middle of the voyage—Tahiti on the horizon—Ashore +in Papeete. + +</div> +<p id="d0e678">What did Tahiti hold for me? I thought vaguely of its history. The world first knew its existence only about the time that +the American colonies were trying to separate themselves from Great Britain. An English naval captain happened on the island, +and thought himself the first white man there, though the Spanish claim its discovery. The Englishman called it King George +Island, after the noted Tory monarch of his day; but a Frenchman, a captain and poet, the very next spring named it the New +Cytherea, esteeming its fascinations like the fabled island of ancient Greek lore. It remained for Captain James Cook, who, +before steam had killed the wonder of distance and the telegraph made daily bread of adventure and discovery, was the hero +of many a fireside tale, to bring Tahiti vividly before the mind of the English world. That hardy mariner’s entrancing diary +fixed Tahiti firmly in the thoughts of the British and Americans. Bougainville painted such an ecstatic picture that all France +would emigrate. Cook set down that Otaheite was the most beautiful of all spots on the surface of the globe. He praised the +people as the handsomest and most lovable of humans, and said they <span id="d0e680" class="pageno">page 19</span>wept when he sailed. That was to him of inestimable value in appraising them. + +<p id="d0e683">About the beginning of the nineteenth century the first English missionaries in the South Seas thanked God for a safe passage +from their homes to Tahiti, and for a virgin soil and an affrightingly wicked people to labor with. The English, however, +did not seize the island, but left it for the French to do that, who first declared it a protectorate, and made it a colony +of France, in the unjust way of the mighty, before the last king died. They had come ten thousand miles to do a wretched act +that never profited them, but had killed a people. + +<p id="d0e686">All this discovery and suzerainty did not interest me much, but what the great captains, and Loti, Melville, Becke, and Stoddard, +had written had been for years my intense delight. Now I was to realize the dream of childhood. I could hardly live during +the days of the voyage. + +<p id="d0e689">I remembered that Europe had been set afire emotionally by the first reports, the logs of the first captains of England and +France who visited Tahiti. In that eighteenth century, for decades the return to nature had been the rallying cry of those +who attacked the artificial and degraded state of society. The published and oral statements of the adventurers in Tahiti, +their descriptions of the unrivaled beauty of the verdure, of reefs and palm, of the majestic stature of the men and the passionate +charm of the women, the boundless health and simple happiness in which they dwelt, the climate, the limpid streams, the diving, +swimming, games, and rarest food—all these had stirred the depressed <span id="d0e691" class="pageno">page 20</span>Europe of the last days of the eighteenth and the first of the nineteenth centuries beyond the understanding by us cynical +and more material people. The world still had its vision of perfection. + +<p id="d0e694">Tahiti was the living Utopia of More, the <i>belle île</i> of Rousseau, the Eden with no serpent or hurtful apple, the garden of the Hesperides, in harmony with nature, in freedom +from the galling bonds of government and church, of convention and clothing. The reports of the English missionaries of the +nakedness and ungodliness of the Tahitians created intense interest and swelled the chorus of applause for their utter difference +from the weary Europeans. Had there been ships to take them, thousands would have fled to Tahiti to be relieved of the chains +and tedium of their existence, though they could not know that Victorianism and machines were to fetter and vulgarize them +even more. + +<p id="d0e700">Afterward, when sailors mutinied and abandoned their ships or killed their officers to be able to remain in Tahiti and its +sister islands, there grew up in England a literature of wanderers, runagates, and beach-combers, of darkish women who knew +no reserve or modesty, of treasure-trove, of wrecks and desperate deeds, piracy and blackbirding, which made flame the imagination +of the youth of seventy years ago. Tahiti had ever been pictured as a refuge from a world of suffering, from cold, hunger, +and the necessity of labor, and most of all from the morals of pseudo-Christianity, and the hypocrisies and buffets attending +their constant secret infringement. + +<p id="d0e703">One morning when we were near the middle of our voyage I went on deck to see the sun rise. We were <span id="d0e705" class="pageno">page 21</span>that day eighteen hundred miles from Tahiti and the same distance from San Francisco, while north and west twelve hundred +miles lay Hawaii. Not nearer than there, four hundred leagues away, was succor if our vessel failed. It was the dead center +of the sea. I glanced at the chart and noted the spot: Latitude 10° N.; Longitude 137° W. The great god Ra of the Polynesians +had climbed above the dizzy edge of the whirling earth, and was making his gorgeous course into the higher heavens. The ocean +was a glittering blue, an intense, brilliant azure, level save for the slight swaying of the surface, which every little space +showed a flag of white. The evaporation caused by the blazing sun of these tropics made the water a deeper blue than in cooler +latitudes, as in the Arctic and Antarctic oceans the greens are almost as vivid as the blues about the line. + +<p id="d0e708">I watched the thousand flying-fishes’ fast leaps through the air, and caught gleams of the swift bonitos whose pursuit made +birds of their little brothers. Then, a few miles off, I saw the first vessel that had come to our eyes since we had sunk +the headlands of California more than a week before. She was a great sailing ship, under a cloud of snowy canvas, one of the +caste of clippers that fast fades under the pall of smoke, and, from her route, bound for the Pacific Coast from Australia. +The captain of the Noa-Noa came and stood beside me as we made her out more plainly, and fetching the glasses, he glanced +at her, started, and said in some surprise: + +<p id="d0e711">“She ’s signaling us she wants to send a boat to us. That’s the first time in thirty years in this line I have <span id="d0e713" class="pageno">page 22</span>ever had such a request from a wind-jammer. She left her slant to cross our path.” + +<p id="d0e716">Half a mile away a beautiful, living creature, all quivering with the restraint, she came up into the eye of the wind, and +backed her fore-yard. A boat put off from her, and we awaited it with indefinable alarm. It was soon at the gangway we had +hastily lowered, unknowing whether woman or child might not be our visitor. It was a young Russian sailor whose hand had been +crushed under a block a fortnight before, and who, without aid for his injury other than the simple remedies that make up +the pharmacopoeia of sailing vessels, was like to die from blood-poisoning. Had our ship not been met, he would undoubtedly +have perished, for no other steamer came to these points upon the chart, and, as we were to learn, his own ship did not reach +her port for many weeks. He was a mere boy, his face was drawn with continued pain, but, with the strong repression of emotion +characteristic of the sailor, he uttered no sound. The passengers, relieved from silent fears of any catastrophe aboard the +sailing ship, and perhaps salving their souls for fancied failure toward the drowned Leung Kai Chu, crowded to fill the boat +with books, fruit, and candy, and to help the unfortunate boy. When he had been made comfortable by the surgeon, he was overwhelmed +with presents. + +<p id="d0e719">My vis-à-vis at table, Herr Gluck, a piano manufacturer of Munich, was a follower of Horace Fletcher, the American munching +missionary. Unlike the Swiss, who craved raw food, Herr Gluck ate everything, but each mouthful only after thorough maceration, +salivation, and slow deglutition. At breakfast he absorbed a <span id="d0e721" class="pageno">page 23</span>glass of milk and a piece of toast, but took longer than I did to bolt melon, bacon and eggs, toast, coffee, and marmalade. +He sold the pianos his family had made for a hundred years, and munched all about the world. He professed rugged health, and +never tired of dancing; but he looked drawn and melancholy, and had naught of the rugged masculinity of the bolters. Once +or twice he drank in my company a cocktail, and he munched each sip as if it were mutton. He would occupy the entire dinner-time +with one baked potato. I was endeared to him because I had known his master, Fletcher, and with him, too, had chewed a glass +of wine in the patio of the Army and Navy Club in Manila. I longed to pit the Swiss and Herr Gluck in argument, but in sober +thought had to give the laurel to the latter, because, in case of stress, one might, with his system, live on a trifle, while +raw, nourishing food might be difficult to get in quantity. + +<p id="d0e724">Most of the passengers were Australians and New-Zealanders returning home, and only a few were bound for Tahiti—the Tahitian +women, the Swiss, Hallman and his son, and M. Leboucher, a young merchant, born there, of a Spanish mother. William McBirney +of County Antrim, but long in Raratonga, an island two days’ steaming from Tahiti, was going back to his adopted home. + +<p id="d0e727">“Sure,” he said, “I’m never happy away from the sound of the surf on the reef and the swish of the cocoanuts. I was fourteen +years in the British army in England when I made up my mind to quit civilization. I put it to the missus, a London woman, +and she was for it. I’ve had nearly ten years now in the Cook group. <span id="d0e729" class="pageno">page 24</span>D’ye know, I’ve learned one thing—that money means very little in life. Why, in Aitutaki you can’t sell fish. The law forbids +it, but do you suppose people don’t fish on that account? Why, a man goes out in his canoe and fishes like mad. He brings +in his canoe, and as he approaches the beach he’s blowing his <i>pu</i>, the conch-shell, to let people know he has fish. Fish to sell or to barter? Not at all. He wants the honor of giving them +away. Now, if he makes a big catch, do you see, he has renown. People say, ‘There’s Taiere, who caught all those fish yesterday.’ +That’s worth more to him than money. But if he could sell those fish, if there was competition, only the small-minded, the +business souls, would fish. I’m not a socialist, but Aitutaki shows that, released from the gain, man will serve his fellows +for their plaudits. And, mind you, no person took more fish than he needed. There was no greed.” + +<p id="d0e735">“That’s rot!” broke in Hallman, who entered the smoking-room. “The natives are frauds. You’ve got to kick ’em around or bribe +’em to do any work. Haven’t I lived with ’em twenty years? They’re swine.” + +<p id="d0e738">“It depends on what you bring them and what you seek,” said McBirney. “Ah, well, it’s getting too civilized in Raratonga. +There’s an automobile threatening to come there, though you could drive around the island in half an hour. And they’re teaching +the Maoris English. I must get away to the west’ard soon. It’s a fact there are two laws for every inhabitant.” + +<p id="d0e741">Would I, too, “go native”? Become enamored of those simple, primitive places and ways, and want to keep going westward? Would +I, too, fish to be honored <span id="d0e743" class="pageno">page 25</span>for my string? Would I go to the Dangerous Archipelago, those mystic atolls that sent to the Empress Eugénie that magnificent +necklace of pearls she wore at the great ball at the Tuileries when the foolish Napoleon made up his mind to emulate his great +namesake and make war? Would I there see those divers who are said to surpass all the mermen of legend in the depths they +go in their coral-studded lagoons in search of the jewels that hide in gold-lipped shells? Was it for me to wander among those +fabulous coral isles flung for a thousand miles upon the sapphire sea, like wreaths of lilies upon a magic lake? + +<p id="d0e746">The doldrums brought rain before the southeast wind came to urge us faster on our course and to clear the skies. Now we were +in the deep tropics, five or six hundred miles farther south than Honolulu, and plunging toward the imaginary circle which +is the magic ring of the men who steer ships in all oceans. Our breeze was that they pray for when the wind alone must drive +the towering trees of canvas toward Australia from America. + +<p id="d0e749">The breeze held on while games of the formal tournaments progressed, and prizes were won by the young and the spry. + +<p id="d0e752">One night I came on deck when the moon had risen an hour, and saw as strange and beautiful a sight as ever made me sigh for +the lack of numbers in my soul. A huge, long, black cloud hung pendent from midway in the sky, with its lower part resting +on the sea. It was for all the world of marvels like a great dragon, shaped rudely to a semblance of the beast of the Apocalypse, +and with its head lifted into the ether, so that it was <span id="d0e754" class="pageno">page 26</span>framed against the heavens. The moon was in its mouth; the moon shaped like an eye, a brilliant, glowing, wondrous orb, more +intensely golden for its contrast with the ominous blackness of the serpentine cloud. I felt that I had found the origin of +the Oriental fable. Some minutes the illusion held, and then the cloud lowered, and the moon, alone against a pale-blue background, +the horizon a mass of scudding draperies of pearly hue, lit the ocean between the ship and the edge of the world in a tremulous +and mellow gilded path. + +<p id="d0e757">There was dancing on the boat-deck, the Lydian measures of the Hawaiian love-songs, those passionate melodies in which Polynesian +pearls have been strung on European filaments, filling the balmy air with quivering notes of desire, and causing dancers to +hold closer their partners. The Occident seemed very far away; even older people felt the charm of clime that had come upon +them, and laughter rang as stories ran about the group in the reclining-chairs. + +<p id="d0e760">The captain, though grim from a gripping religion that had squeezed all joy from his scripture-haunted soul, added an anecdote +to the entertainment. + +<p id="d0e763">“Passing from Fiji to Samoa,” he said, “I had to leave the mail at Niuafou, in the Tongan Islands. It is a tiny isle, three +miles long by as wide, an old crater in which is a lagoon, hot springs, and every sign of the devastation of many eruptions. +The mail for Niuafou was often only a single letter and a few newspapers. We sealed them in a tin can, and when we met the +postmaster at sea, we threw it over. He would be three miles out, swimming, with a small log under arm for support, and often +he might be in company with thirty <span id="d0e765" class="pageno">page 27</span>or forty of his tribe, who, with only the same slight aids to keeping afloat, would be fishing leisurely. They carried their +tackle and their catch upon their shoulders, and appeared quite at ease, with no concern for their long swim to shore or for +the sharks, which were plentiful. They might even nap a little during the middle afternoon.” + +<p id="d0e768">“When our people wanted to sleep at sea,” said McBirney, “if there were two of them, though we never bothered to take along +logs, one rested on the other’s shoulder.” + +<p id="d0e771">One listened and marveled, and smiled to think that, had one stayed at home, one might never know these things. Forgotten +was the wraith of Leung Kai Chu, the jungle trail of Hallman, and even the trepidation with which we had awaited the sailing +ship’s boat. I was soon to be in those enchanted archipelagoes, and to see for myself those mighty swimmers and those sleepers +upon the sea. I might even get a letter through that floating postmaster. + +<p id="d0e774">There was a Continental duchess aboard, whom I pitied. She was oldish and homely, and couldn’t forget her rank. She had a +woman companion, an honorable lady, a maid, and a courier, but she sat all day knitting or reading poor novels. She had nothing +to do with the other passengers, eating with her companion at an aloof table, and sitting before her own cabin, apart from +others. The courier and I talked several times, and once he said that her Highness was much interested in a statement I had +made about the origin of the Maori race, but she did not invite me to tell her my opinion directly. Poor wretch! as Pepys +used to say, she was <span id="d0e776" class="pageno">page 28</span>entangled in her own regal web, and sterilized by her Continental caste. + +<p id="d0e779">For days and nights we moved through the calm sea, with hardly more than the sparkling crests of the myriad swelling waves +to distinguish from a bounded lake these mighty waters that wash the newest and oldest of lands. It seemed as if all the world +was only water and us. The ship was as steady in her element as a plane in those upper strata of the ether where the winds +and clouds no longer have domain. The company in a week had found themselves, and divided into groups in which each sought +protection from boredom, ease of familiar manners, and opportunity to talk or to listen. + +<p id="d0e782">Often when all had left the deck I sat alone in the passage before the surgeon’s cabin to drink in the coolness of the dark, +and to wonder at the problem of life. If a man had not his dream, what could life give him? In his heart he might know by +experience that it never could come true, but without it, false as it might be, he was without consolation. + +<p id="d0e785">One night, the equator behind, I saw the Southern Cross for the first time on the voyage, its glittering crux, with the alpha +and beta Centaur stars, signaling to me that I was beyond the dispensation of the cold and constant north star, and in the +realm of warmth and everchanging beauty. + +<p id="d0e788">Tahiti, the second Sunday out, was a day off. I arose Monday with a feeling of buoyancy and expectancy that grew with the +morning. I was as one who looks to find soon in reality the ideal on earth his fancy has created. The day became older, and +the noontide passed. I had gone forward upon the forecastle head <span id="d0e790" class="pageno">page 29</span>to seize the first sign of land, and was leaning over the cathead, watching the flying-fish leaping in advance of the bow, +and the great, shining albacore throwing themselves into the rush of our advance, to be carried along by the mere drive of +our bows. + +<p id="d0e793">I drew a deep breath of the salt air when there came to me a new and delicious odor. It seemed to steal from a secret garden +under the sea, and I thought of mermaids plucking the blossoms of their coral arbors for the perfuming and adornment of their +golden hair. But sweeter and heavier it floated upon the slight breeze, and I knew it for the famed zephyr that carries to +the voyager to Tahiti the scents of the flowers of that idyllic land. It was the life vapor of the <i>hinano</i>, the <i>tiare</i> and the frangipani exhaled by those flowers of Tahiti, to be wafted to the sailor before he sights the scene itself, the +breath of Lorelei that spelled the sense of the voyager. No shipwrecked mariner could have felt more poignancy in his search +for a hospitable strand than I on the plunging prow of the <i>Noa-Noa</i> in my quest through the bright sunshine of that afternoon for the haven of desire. I strained my eyes to see it, to realize +the gossamer dream I had spun since boyhood from the leaves of beloved poets. + +<p id="d0e805">It was shortly after three o’clock that the vision came in reality, more marvelous, more exquisite, more unimaginable than +the conception of all my reveries—a dim shadow in the far offing, a dark speck in the lofty clouds, a mass of towering green +upon the blue water, the fast unfoldment of emerald, pale hills and glittering reef. Nearer as sailed our ship, the panorama +was lovelier. It was the culmination of enchantment, the <span id="d0e807" class="pageno">page 30</span>fulfilment of the wildest fantasy of wondrous color, strange form, and lavish adornment. + +<p id="d0e810">The island rose in changing shape from the soft Pacific sea, here sheer and challenging, there sloping gently from mountain +height to ocean sheen; different all about, altering with hiding sun or shifting view its magic mold, with moods as varied +as the wind, but ever lovely, alluring, new. + +<p id="d0e813">I marked the volcanic make of it, cast up from the low bed of Neptune an eon ago, its loftiest peaks peering from the long +cloud-streamers a mile and a half above my eyes, and its valleys embracing caverns of shadow. It was a stupendous precipice +suspended from the vault of heaven, and in its massive folds secreted the wonders I had come so far to see. Every minute the +bewildering contours were transmuted by the play of sun and cloud and our swift progression toward the land. + +<p id="d0e816">Red spots appeared rare against the field of verdure where the mountain-side had been stripped naked by erosion, and the volcanic +cinnabar of ages contrasted oddly with the many greens of frond and palm and hillside grove. Curious, fantastic, the hanging +peaks and cloud-capped scarps, black against the fleecy drift, were tauntingly reminiscent of the evening skies of the last +few days, as if the divine artist had sketched lightly upon the azure of the heavens the entrancing picture to be drawn firmly +and grandly in beetling crag and sublime steep. + +<p id="d0e819">Most of all, as the island swam closer, the embracing fringe of cocoanut-trees drew my eyes. They were like a girdle upon +the beautiful body of the land, whose <span id="d0e821" class="pageno">page 31</span>lower half was in the ocean. They seemed the freewaving banners of romance, whispering always of nude peoples, of savage whites, +of ruthless passion, of rum and missionaries, cannibals and heathen altars, of the fierce struggle of the artificial and the +primitive. I loved these palms, brothers of my soul, and for me they have never lost their romantic significance. + +<p id="d0e824">From the sea, the village of Papeete, the capital and port, was all but hidden in the wood of many kinds of trees that lies +between the beach and the hills. Red and gray roofs appeared among the mass of growing things at almost the same height, for +the capital rested on only a narrow shelf of rising land, and the mountains descended from the sky to the very water’s-edge. +Greener than the Barbadoes, like malachite upon the dazzling Spanish Main, Tahiti gleamed as a promise of Elysium. + +<p id="d0e827">A lighthouse, tall minister of warning, lifted upon a headland, and suddenly there was disclosed intimately the brilliant, +shimmering surf breaking on the tortuous coral reef that banded the island a mile away. It was like a circlet of quicksilver +in the sun, a quivering, shining, waving wreath. Soon we heard the eternal diapason of these shores, the constant and immortal +music of the breakers on the white stone barrier, a low, deep, resonant note that lulls the soul to sleep by day as it does +the body by night. + +<p id="d0e830">Guardian sound of the South Seas it is, the hushed, echoic roar of a Jovian organ that chants of the dangers of the sea without, +and the peace of the lagoon within, the reef. + +<p id="d0e833">A stretch of houses showed—the warehouses and <span id="d0e835" class="pageno">page 32</span>shops of the merchants along the beach, the spire of a church, a line of wharf, a hundred tiny homes all but hidden in the +foliage of the ferns. These gradually came into view as the ship, after skirting along the reef, steered through a break in +the foam, a pass in the treacherous coral, and glided through opalescent and glassy shallows to a quay where all Papeete waited +to greet us. + +<p id="d0e838">The quay was filled with women and men and children and dogs. Carriages and automobiles by the score attended just outside. +Conspicuous above all were the Tahitian and part-Tahitian girls. In their long, graceful, waistless tunics of brilliant hues, +their woven bamboo or pandanus hats, decorated with fresh flowers, their feet bare or thrust into French slippers, their brown +eyes shining with yearning, they were so many Circes to us from the sea. They smiled and looked with longing at these strangers, +who felt curious thrills at this unknown openness of promise. + +<p id="d0e841">Louis de Bougainville wrote in his diary at his first coming to Tahiti a hundred and fifty years ago: +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e845">The boats were now crowded with women, whose beauty of face was equal to that of the ladies of Europe, and the symmetry of +their forms much superior. + +</div> + +<p id="d0e850">Leboucher called to his mother. “<i>Madre mia! Como estas tu?</i>” + +<p id="d0e856">Cries rang out in French, in Tahitian and in English. Islanders, returning, demanded information as to health, business ventures, +happenings. Merry laughter echoed from the roof of the great shed, and I felt my heart suddenly become joyous. +<span id="d0e858" class="pageno">page 33</span> + +<p id="d0e861">The girls and women absorbed the attention of passengers not of Tahiti. The New-Zealanders of the crew called excitedly to +various ones. Most of the men passengers, tarrying only with the vessel, planned to see a <i>hula</i>, and they wondered if any of those on the wharf were the dancers. + +<p id="d0e867">A white flower over the ear seemed a favorite adornment, some wearing it on one side and some on the other. What struck one +immediately was the erect carriage of the women. They were tall and as straight as sunflower-stalks, walking with a swimming +gait. They were graceful even when old. Those dark women and men seemed to fit in perfectly with the marvelous background +of the cocoas, the bananas and the brilliant foliage. The whites appeared sickly, uncouth, beside the natives, and the white +women, especially, faded and artificial. + +<p id="d0e870">The <i>Noa-Noa</i> was warped to the wharf, and I was within a few feet now of the welcoming crowd and could discern every detail. + +<p id="d0e876">Those young women were well called <i>les belles Tahitiennes</i>. Their skins were like pale-brown satin, but exceeding all their other charms were their lustrous eyes. They were very large, +liquid, melting, and indescribably feminine—feminine in a way lost to Occidental women save only the Andalusians and the Neapolitans. +They were framed in the longest, blackest, curly lashes, the lashes of dark Caucasian children. They were the eyes of children +of the sun, eyes that had stirred disciplined seamen to desertion, eyes that had burned ships, and created the mystery of +the <i>Bounty</i>, eyes of enchantresses of the days of Helen. +<span id="d0e884" class="pageno">page 34</span> + +<p id="d0e887">“<i>Prenez-garde vous!</i>” said Madame Aubert, the invalid, +in my ear. + +<p id="d0e893">Mixed now with the perfumes of the flowers was the odor of cocoanuts, coming from the piles of copra on the dock, a sweetish, +oily smell, rich, powerful, and never in foreign lands to be inhaled without its bringing vividly before one scenes of the +tropics. + +<p id="d0e896">The gangway was let down. I was, after years of anticipation, in Tahiti. +<span id="d0e898" class="pageno">page 35</span> + +<h1 id="d0e902">Chapter III</h1> +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e909">Description of Tahiti—A volcanic rock and coral reef—Beauty of the Scenery—Papeete the center of the South Seas—Appearance +of the Tahitians. + +</div> +<p id="d0e913">Tahiti was a molten rock, fused in a subterranean furnace, and cast in some frightful throe of the cooling sphere, high up +above the surface of the sea, the seething mass forming into mountains and valleys, the valleys hemmed in except at their +mouths by lofty barriers that stretch from thundering central ridges to the slanting shelf of alluvial soil which extends +to the sand of the beach. It is a mass of volcanic matter to which the air, the rain, and the passage of a million years have +given an all-covering verdure except upon the loftiest peaks, have cut into strangely shaped cliffs, sloping hills, spacious +vales, and shadowy glens and dingles, and have poured down the rich detritus and humus to cover the coral beaches and afford +sustenance for man and beast. About the island countless trillions of tiny animals have reared the shimmering reef which bears +the brunt of the breaking seas, and spares their impact upon the precious land. These minute beings in the unfathomable scheme +of the Will had worked and perished for unguessed ages to leave behind this monument of their existence, their charnel-house. +Man had often told himself that a god had inspired them thus to build havens for his vessels and abodes of marine life <span id="d0e915" class="pageno">page 36</span>where man might kill lesser beings for his food and sport. + +<p id="d0e918">Always, in the approach to the island in steamship, schooner, or canoe, one is amazed and transported by the varying aspect +of it. A few miles away one would never know that man had touched it. His inappreciable structures are erased by the flood +of green color, which, from the edge of the lagoon to the spires of La Diadème, nearly eight thousand feet above the water, +makes all other hues insignificant. In all its hundred miles or so of circumference nature is the dominant note—a nature so +mysterious, so powerful, and yet so soft-handed, so beauty-loving and so laughing in its indulgences, that one can hardly +believe it the same that rules the Northern climes and forces man to labor in pain all his days or to die. + +<p id="d0e921">The scene from a little distance is as primeval as when the first humans climbed in their frail canoes through the unknown +and terrible stretches of ocean, and saw Tahiti shining in the sunlight. A mile or two from the lagoon the fertile land extends +as a slowly-ascending gamut of greens as luxuriant as a jungle, and forming a most pleasing foreground to the startling amphitheater +of the mountains, darker, and, in storm, black and forbidding. + +<p id="d0e924">Those mountains are the most wonderful examples of volcanic rock on the globe. Formed of rough and crystalline products of +the basic fire of earth, they hold high up in their recesses coral beds once under the sea, and lava in many shapes, tokens +of the island’s rise from the slime, and of mammoth craters now almost entirely obliterated by denudation—the denudation which +made <span id="d0e926" class="pageno">page 37</span>the level land as fertile as any on earth, and the suitable habitation of the most leisurely and magnificent human animals +of history. + +<p id="d0e929">A thousand rills that drink from the clouds ever encircling the crags, and in which they are often lost from view, leap from +the heights, appearing as ribbons of white on a clear day, and not seldom disappearing in vapor as they fall sheer hundreds +of feet, or thousands, in successive drops. When heavy rains come, torrents suddenly spring into being and dash madly down +the precipitous cliffs to swell the brooks and little rivers and rush headlong to the sea. + +<p id="d0e932">Tahiti has an unexcelled climate for the tropics, the temperature for the year averaging seventy-seven degrees and varying +from sixty-nine to eighty-four degrees. June, July, and August are the coolest and driest months, and December to March the +rainiest and hottest. It is often humid, enervating, but the south-east, the trade-wind, which blows regularly on the east +side of the islands, where are Papeete and most of the settlements, purifies the atmosphere, and there are no epidemics except +when disease is brought directly from the cities of America or Australasia. A delicious breeze comes up every morning at nine +o’clock and fans the dweller in this real Arcadia until past four, when it languishes and ceases in preparation for the vesper +drama of the sun’s retirement from the stage of earth. + +<p id="d0e935">Typhoons or cyclones are rare about Tahiti, but squalls are frequent and tidal waves recurrent. The rain falls more than a +hundred days a year, but usually so lightly that one thinks of it as liquid sunshine. In the wet quarter from December until +March there are <span id="d0e937" class="pageno">page 38</span>almost daily deluges, when the air seems turned to water, the land and sea are hidden by the screen of driving rain, and the +thunder shakes the flimsy houses, and echoes menacingly in the upper valleys. + +<p id="d0e940">Papeete, the seat of government and trade capital of all the French possessions in these parts of the world, is a sprawling +village stretching lazily from the river of Fautaua on the east to the cemetery on the west, and from the sea on the north +to half a mile inland. It is the gradual increment of garden and house upon an aboriginal village, the slow response of a +century to the demand of official and trading white, of religious group and ambitious Tahitian, of sailor and tourist. Here +flow all the channels of business and finance, of plotting and robbery, of pleasure and profit, of literature and art and +good living, in the eastern Pacific. Papeete is the London and Paris of this part of the peaceful ocean, dispensing the styles +and comforts, the inventions and luxuries, of civilization, making the laws and enforcing or compromising them, giving justice +and injustice to litigants, despatching all the concomitants of modernity to littler islands. Papeete is the entrepot of all +the archipelagoes in these seas. + +<p id="d0e943">The French, who have domination in these waters of a hundred islands and atolls between 8° and 27° south latitude, and between +137° and 154° west longitude, a stretch of about twelve hundred miles each way, make them all tributary to Papeete; and thus +it is the metropolis of a province of salt water, over which come its couriers and its freighters, its governors and its soldiers, +its pleasure-seekers and its idlers. From it an age ago went the Maoris to people Hawaii and New Zealand. +<span id="d0e945" class="pageno">page 39</span> + +<p id="d0e948">Papeete has a central position in the Pacific. The capitals of Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand, and California are from two +and a half to three and a half thousand miles away. No other such group of whites, or place approaching its urbanity, is to +be found in a vast extent of latitude or longitude. It is without peer or competitor in endless leagues of waves. + +<p id="d0e951">Yet Papeete is a little place, a mile or so in length and less in width, a curious imposition of European houses and manners +upon a Tahitian hamlet, hybrid, a mixture of loveliness and ugliness, of nature savage and tamed. The settlement, as with +all ports, began at the waterfront, and the harbor of Papeete is a lake within the milky reef, the gentle waters of which +touch a strip of green that runs along the shore, broken here and there by a wall and by the quay at which I landed. Coral +blocks have been quarried from the reef and fitted to make an embankment for half a mile, which juts out just far enough to +be usable as a mole. It is alongside this that sailing vessels lie, the wharf being the only land mooring with a roof for +the housing of products. A dozen schooners, small and large, point their noses out to the sea, their backs against the coral +quay, and their hawsers made fast to old cannon, brought here to war against the natives, and now binding the messengers of +the nations and of commerce to this shore. Where there are no embankments, the water comes up to the roots of the trees, and +a carpet of grass, moss, and tropical vegetation grows from the salt tide to the roadway. + +<p id="d0e954">Following the contour of the beach, runs a fairly broad road, and facing this original thoroughfare and the sea are the principal +shops of the traders and a few <span id="d0e956" class="pageno">page 40</span>residences. French are some of these merchants, but most are Australasian, German, American and Chinese. France is ten thousand +miles away, and the French unequal in the struggle for gain. Some of the stores occupy blocks, and in them one will find a +limited assortment of tobacco, anchors, needles, music-boxes, candles, bicycles, rum, novels, and silks or calicos. Here in +this spot was the first settlement of the preachers of the gospel, of the conquering forces of France, and of the roaring +blades who brought the culture of the world to a powerful and spellbound people. Here swarmed the crews of fifty whalers in +the days when “There she blows!” was heard from crows’-nests all over the broad Pacific. These rough adventurers, fighters, +revelers, passionate bachelors, stamped Tahiti with its first strong imprint of the white man’s modes and vices, contending +with the missionaries for supremacy of ideal. They brought gin and a new lecherousness and deadly ills and novel superstitions, +and found a people ready for their wares. An old American woman has told me she has seen a thousand whalemen at one time ashore +off ships in the harbor make night and day a Saturnalia of Occidental pleasure, a hundred fights in twenty-four hours. + +<p id="d0e959">As more of Europe and America came and brought lumber to build houses, or used the hard woods of the mountains, the settlement +pushed back from the beach. Trails that later widened into streets were cut through the brush to reach these homes of whites, +and the thatched huts of the aborigines were replaced by the ugly, but more convenient, cottages of the new-comers. <span id="d0e961" class="pageno">page 41</span>The French, when once they had seized the island, made roads, gradually and not too well, but far surpassing those of most +outlying possessions, and contrasting advantageously with the neglect of the Spanish, who in three hundred years in the Philippines +left all undone the most important step in civilization. One can drive almost completely around Tahiti on ninety miles of +a highway passable at most times of the year, and bridging a hundred times the streams which rush and purl and wind from the +heights to the ocean. + +<p id="d0e964">The streets of Papeete have no plan. They go where they list and in curves and angles, and only once in a mile in short, straight +stretches. They twist and stray north and south and nor’nor’west and eastsou’east, as if each new-comer had cleft a walk of +his own, caring naught for any one else, and further dwellers had smoothed it on for themselves. + +<p id="d0e967">I lost myself in a maze of streets, looked about for a familiar landmark, strolled a hundred paces, and found myself somewhere +I thought a kilometer distant. Everywhere there are shops kept by Chinese, restaurants and coffee-houses. The streets all +have names, but change them as they progress, honoring some French hero or statesman for a block or two, recalling some event, +or plainly stating the reason for their being. All names are in French, of course, and many are quaint and sonorous. + +<p id="d0e970">As the sea-wall grew according to the demands of defense or commerce the sections were rechristened. The quai des Subsistences +tells its purpose as does the quai de l’Uranie. The rue de l’Ecole and the rue de <span id="d0e972" class="pageno">page 42</span>la Mission, with the rue des Remparts, speak the early building of school and Catholic church and fortifications. + +<p id="d0e975">Rue Cook, rue de Bougainville and many others record the giant figures of history who took Tahiti from the mist of the half-known, +and wrote it on the charts and in the archives. Other streets hark back to that beloved France to which these French exiles +gaze with tearful eyes, but linger all their years ten thousand miles away. They saunter along the rue de Rivoli in Papeete, +and see again the magnificence of the Tuileries, and hear the dear noises of la belle Paris. They are sentimental, these French, +patriots all here, and overcome at times by the flood of memories of la France, their birthplaces, and their ancestral graves. +Some born here have never been away, and some have spent a few short months in visits to the homeland. Some have brown mothers, +half-islanders; yet if they learn the tripping tongue of their French progenitor and European manners, they think of France +as their ultimate goal, of Paris their playground, and the “Marseillaise” their <i>himene</i> par excellence. + +<p id="d0e981">One might conjure up a vision of a tiny Paris with such names in one’s ears, and these French, who have been in possession +here nearly four-score years, have tried to make a French town of Papeete. + +<p id="d0e984">They have only spoiled the scene as far as unfit architecture can, but the riot of tropical nature has mocked their labors. +For all over the flimsy wooden houses, the wretched palings, the galvanized iron roofing, the ugly verandas, hang gorgeous +draperies of the giant acacias, the brilliant flamboyantes, the bountiful, yellow <span id="d0e986" class="pageno">page 43</span>allamanda, the generous breadfruit, and the uplifting glory of the cocoanut-trees, while magnificent vines and creepers cover +the tawdry paint of the façades and embower the homes in green and flower. If one leaves the few principal streets or roads +in Papeete, one walks only on well-worn trails through the thick growth of lantana, guavas, pandanus, wild coffee, and a dozen +other trees and bushes. The paths are lined with hedges of false coffee, where thrifty people live, and again there are open +spaces with vistas of little houses in groves, rows of tiny cabins close together. Everywhere are picturesque disorder, dirt, +rubbish, and the accrued wallow of years of <i>laissez-aller</i>; but the mighty trade-winds and the constant rains sweep away all bad odors, and there is no resultant disease. + +<p id="d0e992">“My word,” said Stevens, a London stockbroker, here to rehabilitate a broken corporation, “if we English had this place, wouldn’t +there be a cleaning up! We’d build it solid and sanitary, and have proper rules to make the bally natives stand around.” + +<p id="d0e995">The practical British would that. They have done so in a dozen of their far-flung colonies I hare been in, from Singapore +to Barbadoes, though they have failed utterly in Jamaica. Yet, I am at first sight, of the mind that only the Spanish would +have kept, after decades of administration, as much of the simple beauty of Papeete as have the Gauls. True, the streets are +a litter, the Government almost unseen as to modern uplift, the natives are indolent and life moves without bustle or goal. +The republic is content to keep the peace, to sell its wares, to teach its tongue, and to let the gentle Tahitian hold to +his island ways, now that his race dies <span id="d0e997" class="pageno">page 44</span>rapidly in the spiritual atmosphere so murderous to natural, non-immunized souls and bodies. + +<p id="d0e1000">Many streets and roads are shaded by spreading mango-trees, a fruit brought in the sixties from Brazil, and perfected in size +and flavor here by the patient efforts of French gardeners and priests. The trees along the town ways are splendid, umbrageous +masses of dark foliage whose golden crops fall upon the roadways, and which have been so chosen that though they are seasonal, +the round mango is succeeded by the golden egg, and that by a small purple sort, while the large, long variety continues most +of the year. Monseigneur Jaussen, the Catholic bishop who wrote the accepted grammar and dictionary of the Tahitian language, +evolved a delicious, large mango, with a long, thin stone very different from the usual seed, which occupies most of the circumference +of this slightly acidulous, most luscious of tropical fruits. Often the pave is a spatter of the fallen mangos, its slippery +condition of no import to the barefooted Tahitian, but to the shod a cause of sudden, strange gyrations and gestures, and +of irreverence toward the Deity. + +<p id="d0e1003">Scores of varieties of fruits and flowers, shade-trees, and ornamental plants were brought to Tahiti by ship commanders, missionaries, +officials, and traders, in the last hundred years, while many of the indigenous growths have been transplanted to other islands +and continents by those whose interests were in them. The Mutiny of the <i>Bounty</i>, perhaps the most romantic incident of these South Seas, was the result of an effort to transport breadfruit-tree shoots +from Tahiti to the West Indies. It is a beautiful trait in humankind, <span id="d0e1008" class="pageno">page 45</span>which, maybe, designing nature has endowed us with to spread her manifold creations, that even the most selfish of men delight +in planting in new environments exotic seeds and plants, and in enriching the fauna of faraway islands with strange animals +and insects. The pepper- and the gum-tree that make southern California’s desert a bower, the oranges and lemons there which +send a million golden trophies to less-favored peoples, are the flora of distant climes. Since the days of the white discoverers, +adventurers and priests, fighting men and puritans, have added to the earth’s treasury in Tahiti and all these islands. + +<p id="d0e1011">Walking one morning along the waterfront, I met two very dark negresses. They had on pink and black dresses, with red cotton +shawls, and they wore flaming yellow handkerchiefs about their woolly heads. They were as African as the Congo, and as strange +in this setting as Eskimos on Broadway. They felt their importance, for they were of the few good cooks of French dishes here. +They spoke a French patois, and guffawed loudly when one dropped her basket of supplies from her head. They were servants +of the <i>procureur de la République</i>, who had brought them from the French colony of Martinique. + +<p id="d0e1017">Many races have mingled here. One saw their pigments and their lines in the castes; here a <i>soupçon</i> of the French and there a touch of the Dane; the Chileño, himself a mestizo, had left his print in delicacy of feature, and +the Irish his freckles and pug, which with tawny skin, pearly teeth, and the superb form of the pure Tahitian, left little +to be desired in fetching and saucy allurement. Thousands of sailors and merchants <span id="d0e1022" class="pageno">page 46</span>and preachers had sowed their seed here, as did Captain Cook’s men a century and a half ago, and the harvest showed in numerous +shadings of colors and variety of mixtures. Tahiti had, since ship of Europe sighted Orofena, been a pasture for the wild +asses of the <i>Wanderlust</i>, a paradise into which they had brought their snakes and left them to plague the natives. + +<p id="d0e1028">There were phonographs shrieking at one from a score of verandas. The automobile had become a menace to life and limb. There +were two-score motor-cars in Tahiti; but as the island is small, and most of them were in the capital, one met them all the +day, and might have thought there were hundreds. Motor-buses, or “rubberneck-wagons,” ran about the city, carrying the natives +for a franc on a brief tour, and, for more, to country districts where good cheer and dances sped the night. A dozen five- +and seven-passenger cars with drivers were for hire. Most nights until eleven or later the rented machines dashed about the +narrow streets, hooting and hissing, while their care-free occupants played accordions or mouth-organs and sang songs of love. +Louis de Bougainville, once a French lawyer, and afterward soldier, sailor, and discoverer and a lord under Bonaparte, had +a monument in a tiny green park hard by the strand and the road that, beginning there, bands the island. He is best known +the world about because his name is given to the “four-o’clock” shrub in warm countries, as in Tahiti, which sends huge masses +of magenta or crimson blossoms climbing on trellises and roofs. I walked to this monument from the Tiare along the mossy bank +of a little rivulet which ran to the beach. It was early morning. The humble natives <span id="d0e1030" class="pageno">page 47</span>and whites were about their daily tasks. Smoke rose from the iron pipes above the houses, coffee scented the air, men and +women were returning from the market-place with bunches of cocoanuts, bananas, and breadfruit, strings of fish and cuts of +meat in papers. Many of them had their heads wreathed in flowers or wore a <i>tiare</i> blossom over an ear. + +<p id="d0e1036">The way in which one wears a flower supposedly signifies many things. If one wore it over the left ear, one sought a sweetheart; +if over the right, it signified contentment, and though it was as common as the wearing of hats, there were always jokes passing +about these flowers, exclamations of surprise or wishes of joy. + +<p id="d0e1039">“What, you have left Terii?” + +<p id="d0e1042">“<i>Aita</i>. No.” + +<p id="d0e1048">“<i>Aue!</i> I must change it at once.” + +<p id="d0e1054">Now, really there was no such idea in the native mind. It was invention for tourists. The Tahitian wears flowers anywhere, +always, if he can have them, and they do express his mood. If he is sad, he will not put them on; but if going to a dance, +to a picnic, or to promenade, if he has money in his pocket, or gaiety in his heart, he must bloom. Over one ear, or both, +in the hair, on the head, around the neck, both sexes were passionately fond of this age-old sign of kinship with nature. +The <i>lei</i> in Hawaii around the hat or the neck spells the same meaning, but the flood of outsiders has lost Hawaii all but the merest +remnant of its ancient ways, while here still persisted customs which a century of European difference and indifference has +not crushed out. Here, as there, more lasting wreaths for the hat were woven of shells or beads in various colors. +<span id="d0e1059" class="pageno">page 48</span> + +<p id="d0e1062">As I strolled past the houses, every one greeted me pleasantly. + +<p id="d0e1065">“<i>Ia ora na</i>,” they said, or “Bonjour!” I replied in kind. I had not been a day in Tahiti before I felt kindled in me an affection for +its dark people which I had never known for any other race. It was an admixture of friendship, admiration, and pity—of affection +for their beautiful natures, of appreciation of the magnificence of their physical equipment, and of sympathy for them in +their decline and inevitable passing under the changed conditions of environment made by the sudden smothering of their instinctive +needs in the sepia of commercial civilization. I saw that those natives remaining, laughing and full of the desire for pleasure +as they were, must perish because unfit to survive in the morass of modernism in which they were sinking, victims of a system +of life in which material profits were the sole goal and standard of the rulers. + +<p id="d0e1071">The Tahitians are tall, vigorous, and superbly rounded. The men, often more than six feet or even six and a half feet in height, +have a mien of natural majesty and bodily grace. They convey an impression of giant strength, reserve power, and unconscious +poise beyond that made by any other race. American Indians I have known had much of this quality when resident far from towns, +but they lacked the curving, padded muscles, the ease of movement, and, most of all, the smiling faces, the ingratiating manner, +of these children of the sun. + +<p id="d0e1074">The Tahitians’ noses are fairly flat and large; the nostrils dilated; their lips full and sensual; their teeth perfectly shaped +and very white and sound; their chins <span id="d0e1076" class="pageno">page 49</span>strong, though round; and their eyes black and large, not brilliant, but liquid. Their feet and hands are mighty—hands that +lift burdens of great weight, that swing paddles of canoes for hours; feet that tread the roads or mountain trails for league +on league. + +<p id="d0e1079">The women are of middle size, with lines of harmony that give them a unique seal of beauty, with an undulating movement of +their bodies, a coordination of every muscle and nerve, a richness of aspect in color and form, that is more sensuous, more +attractive, than any feminine graces I have ever gazed on. They have the forwardness of boys, the boldness of huntresses, +yet the softness and magnetism of the most virginal of their white sisters. One thinks of them as of old in soft draperies +of beautiful cream-colored native cloth wound around their bodies, passed under one arm and knotted on the other shoulder, +revealing the shapely neck and arm, and one breast, with garlands upon their hair, and a fragrant flower passed through one +ear, and in the other two or three large pearls fastened with braided human hair. + +<p id="d0e1082">The men never wore beards, though mustaches, copying the French custom, are common on chiefs, preachers, and those who sacrifice +beauty and natural desires to ambition. The hair on the face is removed as it appears, and it is scanty. They abhor beards, +and their ghosts, the <i>tupapau</i>, have faces fringed with hair. The usual movements of both men and women are slow, dignified, and full of pride. +<span id="d0e1087" class="pageno">page 50</span> + +<h1 id="d0e1091">Chapter IV</h1> +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e1098">The Tiare Hotel—Lovaina the hostess, the best-known woman in the South Seas—Her strange ménage—The Dummy—A one-sided tryst—An +old-fashioned cocktail—The Argentine training ship. + +</div> +<p id="d0e1102">The Tiare Hotel was the center of English-speaking life in Papeete. Almost all tourists stayed there, and most of the white +residents other than the French took meals there. The usual traveler spent most of his time in and about the hotel, and from +it made his trips to the country districts or to other islands. Except for two small restaurants kept by Europeans, the Tiare +was the only eating-place in the capital of Tahiti unless one counted a score of dismal coffee-shops kept by Chinese, and +frequented by natives, sailors, and beach-combers. They were dark, disagreeable recesses, with grimy tables and forbidding +utensils, in which wretchedly made coffee was served with a roll for a few sous; one of them also offered meats of a questionable +kind. + +<p id="d0e1105">The Tiare Hotel was five minutes’ walk from the quay, at the junction of the rue de Rivoli and the rue de Petit Pologne, close +by Pont du Remparts. It was a one-storied cottage, with broad verandas, half hidden in a luxuriant garden at the point where +two streets come together at a little stone bridge crossing a brook—a tiny bungalow built for a home, and stretched and pieced +out to make a guest-house. + +<p id="d0e1108">I was at home there after a few days as if I had known no other dwelling. That is a distinctive and <span id="d0e1110" class="pageno">page 51</span>compelling charm of Tahiti, the quick possession of the new-comer by his environment, and his unconscious yielding to the +demands of his novel surroundings, opposite as they might be to his previous habitat. + +<p id="d0e1113">Very soon I was filled with the languor of these isles. I hardly stirred from my living-place. The bustle of the monthly steamship-day +died with the going of the <i>Noa-Noa</i>, the through passengers departing in angry mood because their anticipated <i>hula</i> dance had been a disappointment—wickedness shining feebly through cotton gowns when they had expected nudity in a <i>pas seul</i> of abandonment. There was a violent condemnation by the duped men of “unwarranted interference by the French Government with +natural and national expression.” + +<p id="d0e1125">Hogg, an American business traveler, said “The Barbary Coast in Frisco had Tahiti skinned a mile for the real thing,” and +Stevens, a London broker, that the dance was “bally tame for four bob.” + +<p id="d0e1128">Papeete, with the passing throng gone, was a quiet little town, contrasting with the hours when the streets swarmed with people +from here and the suburbs, the band playing, the bars crowded, and all efforts for gaiety and coquetry and the selling of +souvenirs and intoxicants. What exotic life there was beyond the clubs, the waterfront, and the Asiatic quarter revolved around +the Tiare, and entirely so because of its proprietress, Lovaina. She was the best-known and best-liked woman in all these +South Seas, remembered from Australia to the Paumotus, from London to China, wherever were people who had visited Tahiti, +as “dear old Lovaina.” +<span id="d0e1130" class="pageno">page 52</span> + +<p id="d0e1133">She was very large. She was huge in every sense, weighing much more than three hundred pounds, and yet there was a singular +grace in her form and her movements. Her limbs were of the girth of breadfruit-trees, and her bosom was as broad and deep +as that of the great Juno of Rome, but her hands were beautiful, like a plump baby’s, with fascinating creases at the wrists, +and long, tapering fingers. Her large eyes were hazel, and they were very brilliant when she was merry or excited. Her expansive +face had no lines in it, and her mouth was a perfection of curves, the teeth white and even. Her hair was red-brown, curling +in rich profusion, scented with the hinano-flower, adorning her charmingly poised head in careless grace. + +<p id="d0e1136">When she said, “I glad see you,” there was a glow of amiability, an alluring light in her countenance, that drew one irresistibly +to her, and her immense, shapely hand enveloped one’s own with a pressure and a warmth that were overpowering in their convincement +of her good heart and illimitable generosity. + +<p id="d0e1139">Lovaina was only one fourth Tahitian, all the remainder of her racial inheritance being American; but she was all Tahitian +in her traits, her simplicity, her devotion to her friends, her catching folly as it flew, and her pride in a new possession. + +<p id="d0e1142">One morning I got up at five o’clock and went to the bath beside the kitchen. It was a shower, and the water from the far +Fautaua valley the softest, most delicious to the body, cool and balmy in the heat of the tropic. Coming and going to baths +here, whites throw off easily the fear of being thought immodest, and women and men alike go to and fro in loin-cloths, pajamas, +or <span id="d0e1144" class="pageno">page 53</span>towels. I wore the <i>pareu</i>, the red strip of calico, bearing designs by William Morris, which the native buys instead of his original one of <i>tapa</i>, the beaten cloth made from tree bark or pith. + +<p id="d0e1153">I met Lovaina coming out of the shower, a sheet about her which could not cover half of her immense and regal body. She hesitated—I +was almost a stranger,—and in a vain effort to do better, trod on the sheet, and pulled it to her feet. I picked it up for +her. + +<p id="d0e1156">“I shamed for you see me like this!” she said. + +<p id="d0e1159">I was blushing all over, though why I don’t know, but I faltered: + +<p id="d0e1162">“Like a great American Beauty rose.” + +<p id="d0e1165">“Faded rose too big,” exclaimed Lovaina, with the faintest air of coquetry as I hastily shut the door. + +<p id="d0e1168">A little while later, when I came to the dining-room for the first breakfast, I met Lovaina in a blue-figured <i>aahu</i> of muslin and lace, a close-fitting, sweeping nightgown, the single garment that Tahitians wear all day and take off at night, +a tunic, or Mother Hubbard, which reveals their figures without disguise, unstayed, unpetticoated. Lovaina was, as always, +barefooted, and she took me into her garden, one of the few cultivated in Tahiti, where nature makes man almost superfluous +in the decoration of the earth. + +<p id="d0e1174">“This house my father give me when marry,” said Lovaina. “My God! you just should seen that <i>arearea!</i> Las’ all day, mos’ night. We jus’ move in. Ban’s playin’ from war-ship, all merry drinkin’, dancin’. Never such good time. +I tell you nobody could walk barefoot one week, so much broken glass in garden an’ street.” +<span id="d0e1179" class="pageno">page 54</span> + +<p id="d0e1182">Her goodly flesh shook with her laughter, her darkening eyes suffused with happy tears at the memory, and she put her broad +hand between my shoulders for a moment as if to draw me into the rejoicing of her wedding feast. She led me about the garden +to show me how she had from year to year planted the many trees, herbs, and bushes it contained. It had set out to be formal, +but, like most efforts at taming the fierce fecundity of nature in these seas, had become a tangle of verdure, for though +now and then combed into some regularity, the breezes, the dogs, the chickens, and the invading people ruffled it, the falling +leaves covered the grass, and the dead branches sighed for burial. Down the narrow path she went ponderously, showing me the +cannas, jasmine and rose, picking a lime or a tamarind, a bouquet of mock-orange flowers, smoothing the tuberoses, the hibiscus +of many colors, the oleanders, <i>maile ilima</i>, Star of Bethlehem, frangipani, and, her greatest love, the <i>tiare</i> Tahiti. There were snakeplants, East-India cherries, coffee-bushes, custard-apples, and the hinano, the sweetness of which +and of the <i>tiare</i> made heavy the air. + +<p id="d0e1194">I said that we had no flower in America as wonderful in perfume as these. + +<p id="d0e1197">Lovaina stopped her slow, heavy steps. She raised her beautiful, big hand, and arresting my attention, she exclaimed: + +<p id="d0e1200">“You know that ol’ <i>hinano</i>! Ol’ time we use that Tahiti cologne. Girl put that on <i>pareu</i> an’ on dress, by an’ by make whole body jus’ like flower. That set man crazee; make all man want kiss an’ hug.” + +<p id="d0e1209">Doubtless, our foremothers when they sought to win <span id="d0e1211" class="pageno">page 55</span>the hunters of their tribes, took the musk, the civet, and the castor from the prey laid at their feet, and made maddening +their smoke- and wind-tanned bodies to the cave-dwellers. When they became more housed and more clothed, they captured the +juices of the flowers in nutshells, and later in stone bottles, until now science disdains animals and flowers, but takes +chemicals and waste products to make a hundred essences and unguents and sachets for toilet and boudoir. These odors of the +<i>hinano</i> and <i>tiare</i> were philters worthy of the beautiful Tahitian girls, with their sinuous, golden bodies so sensualized, so passionate, and +so free. + +<p id="d0e1220">The ordinary life of the Tiare Hotel was all upon the broad verandas which surrounded it, their high lattices covered with +the climbing bougainvillea and stephanotis vines, which formed a maze for the filtering of the sunlight and the dimming of +the activities of the streets. On these verandas were the tables for eating, and in the main bungalow a few bedrooms, with +others in detached cottages within the inclosure. + +<p id="d0e1223">There was a parlor, and it was like the parlors of all ambitious Europeans or Americans in all islands—a piano with an injured +tone, chairs blue and scarlet with plush covers that perspiring sitters of years had made dark brown, a phonograph, and signed +photographs of friends and visitors who had said farewell to Tahiti. There were paintings of flowers by Lovaina, showing not +a little talent and much feeling. All these were the pride of her birthright—“Murricaine” fashion, as the hostess said pensively. + +<p id="d0e1226">I have said that the life of the hotel was upon the veranda, and so it was at meal-time and for the casual <span id="d0e1228" class="pageno">page 56</span>tourist staying a day with a steamship to or from New Zealand or the United States; but to the resident of Tahiti, the American, +Britisher, or non-Latin European, the place of interest in Papeete other than the clubs was a small porch approached from +the street by a few steps. + +<p id="d0e1231">On this tiny porch was a large table, and behind it a couch. The table was the only desk for letter-writing, the serving-stand +for meals, the board for salad and cake-making, and the drink-bar. A few feet removed from this table, and against the wall, +was a camphorwood chest on which two might sit in comfort and three might squeeze at angles. In the chest was kept all the +bed and table linen, so that one might often be disturbed by the quest of sheets or napkins. + +<p id="d0e1234">Upon this little porch the kitchen, bath, and toilets opened, a few feet from the table. It was the sleeping and amusement +quarters of five dogs, the loafing place for the girls, the office of the hotel, the entry for guests to the dining-room or +to the other conveniences. Through it streamed all who came to eat or drink or for any other purpose. The hotel having grown +slowly from a home, hardly any changes of plumbing had been made, and men and women in dressing-gowns, in pajamas, or in other +undress came and went, under the interested gaze of idlers and drinkers, and they had often to endure intimate questions or +badinage. All were on a footing as to the arrangements, and I saw the haughty duchess of the <i>Noa-Noa</i> follow Lovaina’s American negro chauffeur, while a former ambassador waited on the chest. There was no distinction of rank, +since Tahiti, excepting for an occasional <span id="d0e1239" class="pageno">page 57</span>French official, was the purest democracy of manners in the world, a philosophy the whites had learned from the natives, who +think all foreigners equally distinguished. + +<p id="d0e1242">Those not of the South Seas, and unused to the primitive publicity of the natural functions there, suffered intensely at first +from embarrassment, but in time forgot their squeamishness, and perhaps learned to carry on conversations with those who drank +or chatted outside. + +<p id="d0e1245">The Tahitian cook slept all day between meals on a chair, with his head hanging out a window. He was ill often from a rush +of blood to his head. Lovaina had offered him a mat to lie on the floor, but he pleaded his habit. All the refuse of the kitchen +was thrown into the garden under this window, and with the horses, chickens, dogs, and cats it was first come, first served. + +<p id="d0e1248">On the couch back of the table Lovaina sat for many hours every day. Her great weight made her disinclined to walk, and from +her cushions she ruled her domain, chaffing with those who dropped in for drinks, advising and joking, making cakes and salads, +bargaining with the butcher and vegetable-dealer, despatching the food toward the tables, feeding many dogs, posting her accounts, +receiving payments, and regulating the complex affairs of her ménage. She would shake a cocktail, make a gin-fizz or a Doctor +Funk, chop ice or do any menial service, yet withal was your entertainer and your friend. She had the striking, yet almost +inexplicable, dignity of the Maori—the facing of life serenely and without reserve or fear for the morrow. + +<p id="d0e1251">Underneath the table dogs tumbled, or raced about <span id="d0e1253" class="pageno">page 58</span>the porch, barking and leaping on laps, cats scurried past, and a cloud of tobacco smoke filled the close air. Lovaina, in +one of her sixty bright gowns, a white chemise beneath, her feet bare, sat enthroned. On the chest were the captain of a liner +or a schooner, a tourist, a trader, a girl, an old native woman, or a beach-comber with money for the moment. It was the carpet +of state on which all took their places who would have a hearing before the throne or loaf in the audience-chamber. + +<p id="d0e1256">In her low, delightfully broken English, in vivid French, or sibilant Tahitian, Lovaina issued her orders to the girls, shouted +maledictions at the cook, or talked with all who came. Through that porch flowed all the scandal of the South Seas—tales of +hurricanes and waterspouts, of shipwrecks, of accidents, of lucky deals in pearls or shells, of copra, of new fashions and +old inhabitants, of liaisons of white and brown, of the flirtations of tourists, of the Government’s issuing an ultimatum +on the price of fish, of how the consuls quarreled at a club dinner, and of how one threw three ribs of roasted beef at the +other, who retorted with a whole sucking pig just from the native oven, of Thomas’ wife leaving him for Europe after a month’s +honeymoon; and all the flotsam and jetsam of report and rumor, of joke and detraction, which in an island with only one mail +a month are the topics of interest. + +<p id="d0e1259">The porch was the clearing-house and the casual, oral record of the spreading South Seas. It was the strangest salon of any +capital, and Lovaina the most fascinating of hostesses. Stories that would be frowned down in many a man’s club were laughed +at lightly over the <span id="d0e1261" class="pageno">page 59</span>table, but not when tourists, new-comers, were present. Then the dignified Lovaina, repressing the oaths of potvaliant skippers, +putting her finger to her lips when a bald assertion was imminent, said impressively: + +<p id="d0e1264">“That swears don’t go! What you think? To give bad name my good house?” + +<p id="d0e1267">Only when old-timers were gathered, between steamships, when the schooners came in a drove from the Paumotu atolls, and gold +and silver rang on the table at all hours, there was little restraint. + +<p id="d0e1270">With only one mail a month to disturb the monotony, and but trifling interest in anything north of the equator except prices +of their commodities, these unrepressed rebels against the conventions and even the laws of the Occident must have their fling. +On that camphor-wood chest had sat many a church-going woman and dignified man of Europe or America, resident for a month +or longer in Tahiti, and shuddered at what they heard—shuddered and listened, eager to hear those curious incidents and astonishing +opinions about life and affairs, and to mark the difference between this and their own countries. It was without even comment +that people who at home or among the conventions would be shocked at the subjects or their treatment, in these islands listened +thrilled or chucklingly to stories as naked as the children. <i>Double entendre</i> is caviar to the average man and woman of Tahiti, who call the unshrouded spade by its aboriginal name. The Tahitians were +ever thus, and the French have not sought to correct their ways. I heard Atupu, one of the girls of the hotel, in a Rabelaisian +passage of wit the while she opened Seattle beer for thirsty Britishers, old residents, <span id="d0e1275" class="pageno">page 60</span>traders, and planters. One could not publish the phrases if one could translate them. + +<p id="d0e1278">Lovaina, in her bed just off the porch, was laughing at the retorts of Atupu, who by her native knowledge of the tongue was +discomfiting the roisterers, who spoke it haltingly. I heard an apt interjection on the part of the proprietress which set +them all roaring, and so lowered their self-esteem that they left summarily. + +<p id="d0e1281">One day when I was hurrying off to swim in the lagoon, I asked Lovaina to guard a considerable sum of money in bank-notes. +She assented readily, but when several days later I mentioned the money she struck her head in alarm. She thought and thought, +but could not remember in what safe place she had hidden the paper francs. + +<p id="d0e1284">“My God! Brien,” she said in desperation, “all time I jus’ like that crazee way. One time one engineer big steamship come +here, he ask me keep two thousan’ dollar for him. I busy jus’ like always, an’ I throw behin’ that couch I sit on. My God! +he come back I fore-get where I put. One day we look hard. I suffer turribil, but the nex’ day I move couch and find money. +Was n’t that funny?” + +<p id="d0e1287">I suggested we try the couch again, but though we turned up a number of lost odds and ends, it was not the cache of my funds. +By way of cheering her, I ordered a rum punch, and when she went to crack the ice, a gleam of remembrance came to her, and, +lo! my money was found in the reserve butter supply in the refrigerator, where she had artfully placed it out of harm’s way. +It was quite greasy, but intact. + +<p id="d0e1290">The first breakfast at the Tiare began at 6:30, but <span id="d0e1292" class="pageno">page 61</span>lingered for several hours. It was of fruit and coffee and bread; <i>papayas</i>, bananas, oranges, pineapples, and alligator-pears, which latter the French call <i>avocats</i>, the Mexicans <i>ahuacatl</i>, and were brought here from the West Indies. To this breakfast male guests dropped in from the bath in pajamas, but the <i>déjeuner à la fourchette</i>, or second breakfast at eleven, was more formal, and of four courses, fish, bacon and eggs, curry and rice, tongues and sounds, +beefsteak and potatoes, <i>feis</i>, roast beef or mutton, sucking pig, and cabbage or sauer-kraut. For dessert there was sponge- or cocoanut-cake. All business +in Papeete opened at seven o’clock and closed at eleven, to reopen from one until five. Dinner at half-past six o’clock was +a repetition of the late breakfast except that a vegetable or cabbage soup was also served. + +<p id="d0e1310">Two Chinese youths, To Sen and Hon Son, were the regular waiters, but were supplemented by Atupu, Iromea, Pepe, Akura, Tetua, +Maru, and Juillet, all Tahitian girls or young women who had a mixed status of domestics, friends, kinfolk, visitors, and +<i>hetairae</i>, the latter largely in the sense of entertainers. I doubt if they were paid more than a trifle, and they were from the country +districts or near-by islands, moths drawn by the flame of the town to soar in its feverish heat, to singe their wings, and +to grow old before their time, or to grasp the opportunity to satiate their thirst for foreign luxuries by semi-permanent +alliances with whites. + +<p id="d0e1316">Lovaina’s girls! How their memory must survive with the guests of the Tiare Hotel! One read of them in every book of travel +encompassing Tahiti. One heard of them from every man who had dropped upon <span id="d0e1318" class="pageno">page 62</span>this beach. Once in Mukden, Manchuria, I sat up half the night while the American consul and a globe-trotter painted for me +the portraits of Lovaina’s girls. + +<p id="d0e1321">I was atop a disorderly camel named Mark Twain nosing about the Sphinx when my companion remarked that that stony-faced lady +looked a good deal like Temanu of Lovaina’s. Then I had to have the whole story of Lovaina and her household. I have heard +it away from Tahiti a dozen times and always different. + +<p id="d0e1324">Doubtless, in the dozen years the gentle Lovaina ministered to the needs of travelers and residents, many girls came and went +in her house. Some have married, and some have gone away without a ring, but all have been made much of by those they served, +and have lived gayly and by the way. + +<p id="d0e1327">Lovaina, herself, said to me: + +<p id="d0e1330">“You know those girl’, they go ruin. That girl you see here few minutes ago I bring her up just like Christian; be good, be +true, do her prayers, make her soul all right. Then I go San Francisco. What you think? When I come back she ruin. ’Most break +my heart. That man he come to me, he say: ‘Lovaina, I take good care that girl. I love her.’ That girl with him now. She happy, +got plenty dress, plenty best to eat, and nice buggy. I tell you, I give up trying save those girl’. I think they like ruin +best. I turn my back—they ruin.” + +<p id="d0e1333">Iromea was the sturdy veteran of the corps. Tall, handsome, straight, mother of four children, obliging, wise in the way of +the white, herself all native. + +<p id="d0e1336">“And the babies?” I inquired. + +<p id="d0e1339">“They all scatter. Some in country; some different <span id="d0e1341" class="pageno">page 63</span>place,” answered Iromea, who ran from English to French to Tahitian, but of course not with the ease of Lovaina, for that +great heart knew many of the cities of her father’s land, was educated in needlework style, and with a little dab of Yankee +culture, now fast disappearing as she grew older. One marked that tendency to reversion to the native type and ways among +many islanders who had been superficially coated with civilization, but whom environment and heredity claim inexorably. + +<p id="d0e1344">Iromea was thirty years old. She had been loved by many white men, men of distinction here; sea-rovers, merchants, and lotus-eaters, +writers, painters, and wastrels. + +<p id="d0e1347">Juillet, whose native name was Tiurai, helped old Madame Rose to care for the rooms at the Tiare. She was thirteen years old, +willowy, with a beautiful, smiling face, and two long, black plaits. Though innocent, almost artless, in appearance, she was +an arch coquette, and flirted with old and young. One day a turkey that shared the back yard with two automobiles, a horse, +three carriages, several dogs, ten cats, and forty chickens, disappeared. Juillet was sent to find the turkey. She was gone +four days, and came back with a brilliant new gown. She brought with her the turkey, which she said she had been trying to +drive back all the four days. + +<p id="d0e1350">Juillet was named for the month of July. Her mother was the cook of a governor when she was born on the fourteenth of July, +the anniversary of the fall of the Bastile, and the governor named her for the month. She was also named Nohorae, and <i>noho</i> means to be naked and <i>rae</i> forehead. Juillet had a high forehead. +<span id="d0e1358" class="pageno">page 64</span> + +<p id="d0e1361">Lovaina pointed out to me the man who had taken away her favorite helper. He was about forty years old, tall, angular, sharp-nosed, +with gold eyeglasses. I would have expected to meet him in the vestry of a church or to have been asked by him at a mission +if I were saved, but in Tahiti he had gone the way of all flesh. His voice had the timbre of the preacher. He had come to +the hotel in an expensive, new automobile to fetch cooked food for himself and Ruiné. + +<p id="d0e1364">“Seven or eight leper that man support,” said Lovaina to me. “They die for him, he so good to them. He help everybodee. He +give them leper the Bible, and sometime he go read them.” + +<p id="d0e1367">It would be the Song of Solomon he would read to Ruiné. She had red hair, red black or black red, a not unusual color in Tahiti, +and her eyes had a glint of red in their brown. She was exquisite in her silken peignoir, a wreath of scarlet hibiscus-flowers +on her head, and a string of gorgeous baroque pearls about her rounded neck. + +<p id="d0e1370">My room at the Tiare was in the upper story of an old house that sat alone in the back garden, among the domestics, automobiles, +carriages, horses, pigs, and fowls. The house had wide verandas all about it, and the stairway outside. A few nights after +I had arrived in Tahiti I was writing letters on the piazza, the length of the room away from the stairs. I had a lamp on +my table, and the noise of my type-writer hushed the sounds of any one entering the apartment. It was about ten o’clock, and +between sentences I looked at the night. The stars were in coruscating masses, the riches of the heavens disclosed as only +at such a cloudless hour in this <span id="d0e1372" class="pageno">page 65</span>southern hemisphere, the Milky Way showing ten thousand gleaming members of the galaxy that are hidden in our skies. I thought +of those happy mariners who first sailed their small, wooden ships into these mysterious seas, and first of our race, saw +this strangely brilliant macrocosm, and appreciated it for its marvels and its differences from their own bleaker, Western +vault. + +<p id="d0e1375">There were no doors in the openings into my room from the verandas, but hangings of gorgeous scarlet calico, pareus, kept +out the blazing sun, and lent a little privacy at night. All the furniture was a chair, a dressing-table, and two large beds, +canopied with mosquito-nets, evidently provided for a double lodging if needed. + +<p id="d0e1378">As I finished my letters twenty feet away, a Tahitian girl parted the farther curtain nearest the stairway, and slipped into +the room with the silence of the accustomed barefooted. Imagine her in her gayest gown of rose color, a garland of <i>hinano</i>-flowers on her glossy head, her tawny hair in two plaits to her unconfined waist, and her eyes shining with the spirit of +her quest! + +<p id="d0e1384">She looked through the room to where I sat in the semi-obscurity, and then knelt down by the first bed, and waited. I gazed +again at the starry heavens, and, stepping over the threshold, entered the chamber, lamp in hand. I undressed leisurely, and +putting about me the <i>pareu</i> Lovaina had given me, I threw the light upon the two beds to make my nightly choice. I surveyed them both critically, but +the one nearest to me having the netting arranged for entrance, I selected it, and setting the lamp upon the dresser, extinguished +it, groped to the bed in darkness, and lay down upon the coverless sheet. A few minutes I stayed awake going <span id="d0e1389" class="pageno">page 66</span>over the happenings of the day, and fell asleep in joyful mood that I was in the island I had sought so long in desire and +dream. I knew nothing of my visitor, for she had made no audible sound, and the shadows had hidden her. + +<p id="d0e1392">At breakfast the next morning I was waited on by Atupu, the beauty. Her face was tear-stained, and a deep weariness was upon +her. She regarded me with a glance of mixed anger and hurt. + +<p id="d0e1395">“<i>Vous etes faché avec moi</i>?” she inquired accusingly. + +<p id="d0e1401">“I angry with you?” I repeated. “Why what have I done to show it?” + +<p id="d0e1404">And then she told me of her visit and vigil. Seeing me alone in Tahiti, and kind-hearted, she said, she had thought to tell +me of the Tahitian heart and the old ways of the land. She had robed, perfumed, and adorned herself, and entered my sleeping-place, +as she said was the wont of Tahitian girls. I had certainly heard her enter, and seen her kneel to await my greeting, and +if not then, I had seen her plainly when I lifted the lamp, for the light had streamed full upon her. She had remained there +upon the floor half an hour until my audible breathing had compelled her to believe against her will that I was asleep. Then +she had fled and wept the night in humiliation. Never in her young life had such a horror afflicted her. + +<p id="d0e1407">I was stunned, and could only reiterate that I had not known of her presence, and with a trinket from my pocket I dried her +tears. + +<p id="d0e1410">Rupert Brooke in a letter to a friend in England drew a little etching of our lodging: +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e1414">I am in a hovel at the back of my hotel, and contemplate the <span id="d0e1416" class="pageno">page 67</span>yard. The extraordinary life of the place flows round and near my room—for here no one, man or woman, scruples to come through +one’s room at any moment, if it happens to be a shortcut. By day nothing much happens in the yard—except when a horse tried +to eat a hen, the other afternoon. But by night, after ten, it is filled with flitting figures of girls, with wreaths of white +flowers, keeping assignations.... It is all—all Papeete—like a Renaissance Italy with the venom taken out, No, simpler, light-come +and light-go, passionate and forgetful, like children, and all the time South Pacific, that is to say unmalicious and good-tempered. + +</div> + +<p id="d0e1421">When a steamship was in port the Tiare was a hurly-burly. Perhaps forty or even a hundred extra patrons came for meals or +drinks. It was amusing to hear their uncomprehending anger at their failure to obtain quick service or even a smile by their +accustomed manner toward dark peoples. The British, who were the majority of the travelers, have a cold, autocratic attitude +toward all who wait upon them, but especially toward those of the colored races. In Tahiti they suffered utter dismay, because +Tahitians know no servitude and pay no attention to sharp words. + +<p id="d0e1424">I saw a red-faced woman giving an order for apéritifs to To Sen, the Chinese waiter. + +<p id="d0e1427">“Two old-fashioned gin cocktails,” she iterated. “You savee, gin and bitters? Be sure it’s Angostura, and lemon and soda, +and two Manhattans with rye whisky. Hurry along now! Old-fashioned, remember!” + +<p id="d0e1430">In ten minutes Temanu came for the order. To Sen knew no English, and Temanu only, “Yais, ma darleeng,” and “Whatnahell?” + +<p id="d0e1433">“Spik Furanche?” she begged. +<span id="d0e1435" class="pageno">page 68</span> + +<p id="d0e1438">“Oui, oui!” said the red-faced lady. “Dooze cocktail! Vous savez cocktail, à la mode des ancients? Gin, oon dash bittair, +lem’ et soda!” + +<p id="d0e1441"> +<i>“Mais, madame, douze cocktail!”</i> and the half-caste Chinese girl held up all her fingers and added two more. <i>“Vous n’êtes que quatre ici! Quatre cocktails, n’est-ce pas?”</i> + +<p id="d0e1450">“Dooze gin, dooze Manhattan? My heavens! They ought to understand my French in this out-of-the-way place when they do in Paris. +Listen! <i>Dooze</i> is two in French,” and she held up two pudgy fingers. But Temanu was gone and returned with four cocktails made after her +own liking. + +<p id="d0e1456">All the girls, Atupu, Iromea, Pepe, Maru, Tetua, and Mme. Rose and Mama-Maru, helped in the service, some beginning with shoes +and stockings, but soon slipping them off as the crowd grew and their feet became weary. Lovaina herself moved happily about +the <i>salle-à-manger</i> telling her friends that she was a grandmother. A letter had given the information that her daughter had a child. She was +a doting parent, and we all must toast the newborn. Two grave professors of the University of California, ichthyologists or +entomologists, sat entranced at the unconventionality of the scene, drinking <i>vin ordinaire</i> and gazing at the Tahitian girls, or eating breadfruit, raw fish, and <i>taro,</i> as if they were on Mars and did not know how they got there. + +<p id="d0e1468">I saw an entry in Lovaina’s day-book on the table: + +<p id="d0e1471">“Germani to Fany 3 feathers.” + +<p id="d0e1474">This was a charge made by Atupu against a Dane for three cocktails. He took his meals at Mme. Klopfer’s restaurant. Her first +name is Fanny, and Atupu <span id="d0e1476" class="pageno">page 69</span>thinks all men not English, French, or Americans, are Germans; so she identified the Dane as the German who went to Fanny’s +for his meals. + +<p id="d0e1479">Lovaina said to me: + +<p id="d0e1482">“I hear you look one house that maybe you rent. You don’t get wise if you rent from that French woman. I don’t say nothing +about her, but you know her tongue? So sharp jus’ like knife. All time she have trouble. Can’t rent her house so sharp. Some +artist he rent; she take box, peep over see what he do jus’ because he have some girl. Nobody talk her down. No, I take back. +Jus’ one French woman who know to swear turribil. This swear woman she call her turribil name and say, ‘Everybody don’t know +you was convict in Noumea for killing one man for money.’ That turribil talk, and she jus’ fell down. Good for her, I think.” + +<p id="d0e1485">Lovaina seldom rode in her automobile, which she kept primarily for renting to guests for country tours. She had had for years +a carriage, a surrey, drawn by one horse, which had grown old and rickety with the vehicle. The driver was a mute, Vava, his +name meaning dumb in Tahitian, and the English and Americans called him the Dummy. He was attached to Lovaina as a child to +his mother—a wayward, jealous, cloudy-minded child, who almost daily broke into fits of anger over incidents misunderstood +by his groping mentality, and because of his incommunicable feelings. The hotel was in a fearsome uproar when Vava fell into +a tantrum, women patrons afraid of his possible actions and men threatening to club him into a mild frame of mind. I doubt +if any one there could have subdued him physically, <span id="d0e1487" class="pageno">page 70</span>for he was a thick-bodied man in his thirties, with a stamina and a strength incredibly developed. I had seen him once lift +over a fence a barrel of flour, two hundred pounds in weight, and without full effort. His skin was very dark, his facial +expression one of ire and frustration, but of conscious superiority to all about him. He had had no aids to overcome his natal +infirmity of deafness and consequent dumbness, none of the educational assistance modern science lends these unfortunates, +no finger alphabet, or even another inarticulate for sympathy. He was like the mutes of history, of courts and romances, condemned +to suffer in silence the humor and contempt of all about him, though he felt himself better than they in body and in the understanding +of things, which he could not make them know. This repression made him often like a wild beast, though mostly he was half-clown +and half-infant in his conduct. He had a gift of mimicry incomparably finer than any professional’s I knew of. This, with +his gestures, stood him instead of speech. A certain haughty English woman whose elaborate hats in an island where women were +hatless, or wore simple, native weaves, were noted atrocities, and whose chin was almost nil, kept the carriage and me waiting +for breakfast while she primped in her lodging. The Dummy uttered one of his abortive sounds, much like that of an angry puma, +contorted his face, and put his hand above his head, so that I had a very vivid suggestion of the lady, her sloping chin and +her hat, at which all Papeete laughed. Vava’s gesticulations and grimaces were unerring cartoons without paper or ink. If +one could have seen him draw one-self, one’s pride would have tumbled. He saw the most <span id="d0e1489" class="pageno">page 71</span>ridiculous aspect of one. His indication of Lovaina’s figure made one shriek, and the governor would have sentenced him for +lese-majesty had he seen himself taken off. The sounds he made in which he greeted any one he liked, or in anger, were terrible, +dismaying. They; must have been those made by our ancestors, the first primates, when they began the struggle toward intelligent +language. Vava’s sounds were as the muttering of an ape, deep in his throat, or, when he was roused, high and shrill, like +the cry of a rabbit when the hound seizes it. He could make Lovaina know anything he wanted to, and she could direct him to +do anything she wished. In that house of mirth, brightness, and laughter, he was as a cunning and, at times, hateful jester, +feared by the Tahitians, and, indeed, to whites a shadowy skeleton at the feast, a thing of indescribable possibilities. I +knew him, he liked me, and I drew from him by motions and expressions some measure of his feelings and sufferings. But I, +too, occasionally, shuddered at the animal cries and frightful grimaces wrung from him in beating down his soul bent on murder. + +<p id="d0e1492">Lovaina was a spendthrift, giving money liberally to relatives, lending it to improvident borrowers, and dispensing it with +open hands when she had it, though always herself in debt. Yet she liked to make money, and to have her hotel filled with +tourists who patronized her little bar or drank at meals other wines than the excellent Bordeaux, white or red, which was +free with food. Most she loved the appearance of prosperity, the crowding of casual voyagers on steamer-days, the visit of +war-ships, the sound of music in her parlor, the rustling of dancers, and the laughter and excitement <span id="d0e1494" class="pageno">page 72</span>when the maids were busied carrying champagne and cheaper drinks to the verandas. + +<p id="d0e1497">I saw her at her best when <i>El Presidente Sarmiento,</i> an Argentine training-ship, came to port with a hundred cadets. A madness then possessed the girls of Tahiti. + +<p id="d0e1503">Forsaking their old loves or those of the moment, they threw themselves into the arms of the visitors, determined on conquest. +The quays where the launches of the <i>Sarmiento</i> landed their passengers, and the streets about the saloons, restaurants, and theaters, were thronged with the fairest and +gayest girls of the island. They poured in from the country to share in the lovemaking. The cafés were filled with dancing +and singing crowds, the volatile Argentineans matching the Tahitians in abandon and ardor. + +<p id="d0e1509">Accordions, violins, guitars, and mandolins were played everywhere. The scores of public automobiles were engaged by joyous +parties who sallied to the rural resorts, each Juan with his <i>vahine</i>. Mostly unable to exchange a word, they were kissing and embracing in their seats. The ship had been there a year before, +and many of the men were hunting former sweethearts. They found that very difficult, as they had not accurate descriptions. + +<p id="d0e1515">“A beauty named Atupu,” or “A black-eyed girl?” They had no aid among the girls they interrogated. + +<p id="d0e1518">“Why bother with some one who may be dead when we are here?” they asked. And Juan listened to the sirens and rested content. + +<p id="d0e1521">At Lovaina’s there were seventy to dinner. Captain and officers were cheek by jowl with gunners and plain sailors. The veranda +was jammed with tables, corks <span id="d0e1523" class="pageno">page 73</span>hitting the ceiling, glasses clinking, and Spanish, French, English, and Tahitian confused in the chatter and the shouts of +To Sen, Hon Son, the maids, and a dozen friends of the hostess who always came at such times to share the glory of the service. + +<p id="d0e1526">Lovaina was at the serving-table with volunteers cutting cakes and taking the money. The parlor, with its red and blue plush +chairs, was filled with Argentineans playing the piano and singing songs of their country. Suddenly Lovaina discovered that +some one had stolen the album of portraits from the piano-top. These were of her family, and of notable visitors who had written +grateful notes after their return home, and sent their pictures to her. Professor Hart, teacher of English aboard the <i>Sarmiento</i>, was asked to find the thief, and he promised that he would have the ship searched. + +<p id="d0e1532">Lovaina lamented her loss, but counted her sovereigns. The Argentineans had English gold, and Lovaina passed the shining, +new pieces from one hand to the other, enjoying their glitter and sound. She liked to play with coins, and often amused herself +as did the king in the blackbird-pie melody. + +<p id="d0e1535">“My God!” said Lovaina, as she pulled me down to her bench and rubbed my back, “that Argentina is good country! Forty dollars +lime squash by himself.” She opened her purse, and poured out more gold. With it fell a cloth medallion, red letters on white +flannel, “The Apostleship of Prayer in League with the Sacred Heart of Jesus.” + +<p id="d0e1538">“I find that on the floor two day’ ’go,” said Lovaina, “and I put it in purse to see if good luck. What you think? Argentinas +come in nex’ day. I don’ know, <span id="d0e1540" class="pageno">page 74</span>but that thing is good to me. See those bottle’ champagne goin’ in?” + +<p id="d0e1543">Perhaps I shall carry longer than any other memory of Tahiti that of the endearing nature, the honest heart, and the laughing, +starry eyes of Lovaina, with a <i>tiarè</i>-blossom over her ear, or a chaplet of those flowers upon her head, as she sat on her throne behind the serving-table, and +I on the camphor-wood chest. +<span id="d0e1548" class="pageno">page 75</span> + +<h1 id="d0e1552">Chapter V</h1> +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e1559">The Parc de Bougainville—Ivan Stroganoff—He tells me the history of Tahiti—He berates the Tahitians—Wants me to start a newspaper. +</div> +<p id="d0e1563">In the parc de Bougainville I sat down on a bench on which was an old European. He was reading a tattered number of “Simplicissimus,” +and held the paper close to his watery eyes. I said, “Good morning” and he replied in fluent though accented English. + +<p id="d0e1566">His appearance was eccentric. He was stout, and with a rough, white beard all over his face and neck, and even on his chest. +He wore a frock coat and a large cow-boy hat of white felt. His sockless feet were in old base-ball shoes of “eelskin,” which +were of the exact color of his coat, a dull green, like moldy, dried peas. Apparently the coat was his only garment; but it +was capacious, and came almost to his knobby knees. Missing buttons down its front were replaced by bits of cord or rope. +The pockets were stuffed with papers, mangos, and a hunk of bread. A stump of lead-pencil was behind his ear. His hair, a +dusty white, met the frayed collar of the coat, and through the temporary gaps which he made in its length to cool his body, +I saw it like a gnarled and mossy tree. His hands were grimy and his nails black-edged, but there was intellect in his eye, +and a broken force in his huddled, loosed attitude. He was not decrepit, or with a trace of humility, <span id="d0e1568" class="pageno">page 76</span>but had the ease of the philosopher and also his detachment. It was plain he did the best he could with his garb, and was +entirely undisturbed, and perhaps even unmindful, of its ludicrousness. He was as serene as Diogenes must have been when he +crawled naked from his tub into the sun. + +<p id="d0e1571">We talked first of the horses in the lagoon a dozen yards from us, their grooms or their owners submerging them, and squatting +on the ground to chat as the horses wallowed willingly in five feet of salt water. We agreed that the Tahitians were as bad +drivers as the Chinese, and that they were, wittingly or unwittingly, cruel to their beasts of burden. This led to a discussion +of native traits, and he was caustic in his castigation of the Tahitians. He asked me my name and what brought me to Tahiti; +and when, wanting to be as honest-spoken as he, I said, “Romance, adventure,” he burst out that I was crazy. + +<p id="d0e1574">“I have been here seventeen years,” he said bitterly—“me, Ivan Stroganoff, who was once happy as secretary to the governor +of Irkutsk! I was better off when I was on the <i>Merrimac</i> fighting the <i>Monitor</i>, or with Mosby, the guerilla, than I am in this accursed island. I think a man is mad who can leave Tahiti and stays here. +I wish I could go away. I would like to die elsewhere. I am eighty years old, I starve here, and I sleep in a chicken-coop +in the suburbs.” + +<p id="d0e1583">“You are lodged exactly as was Charlie Stoddard, who wrote ‘South Sea Idylls,’ ” I interposed. + +<p id="d0e1586">“They have lied always, those writers about Tahiti,” said Ivan Stroganoff. “Melville, Loti, Moerenhout, Pallander, your Stevenson,—I +don’t know that Stoddard,—all <span id="d0e1588" class="pageno">page 77</span>are meretricious, with their pomp of words and no truth. I have comparisons to make with other nations. I am more than sixty +years a traveler, and I am here seventeen years without cessation, in hell all the time.” + +<p id="d0e1591">“You Russians always like the French. How about their achievements here?” I questioned, hoping to lift his shade of melancholy. + +<p id="d0e1594">“The French?” he repeated. “They are brigands and weak governors. They have been in Tahiti four generations. Do you want to +know how they got hold here? A monarchy, a foolish Louis, sent a marine savant and soldier named Dumont D’Urville to the South +Seas with the casual orders: + +<p id="d0e1597">“ ‘<i>D’apprivoiser les hommes, et de rendre les femmes un peu plus sauvages</i>;’ to tame the men and make the women a little more savage. The French did both, and took all of this part of the world they +could find unseized by Europe, and tamable, at not too great a shedding of French blood. They said that it was their duty +to restore Temoana his kingdom in the Marquesas Islands, eight hundred miles from here, northward, Temoana had been a singer +of psalms at the Protestant mission in his valley of Tai-o-hae, in the island of Nukahiva, a victim of shanghaiers, a cook +on a whaler, a tattooed man in English penny shows, a repatriate, a protege of the Catholic archbishop of the Marquesans, +and finally, through the influence of the Roman church, a king. He worked damned hard for the French flag and the church, +and the generous colonial bureau of France paid his widow a pension of ten dollars a month until she died of melancholy among +the nuns. I knew <span id="d0e1602" class="pageno">page 78</span>her and I knew men who knew him. He was given a gorgeous uniform of gold lace by his promoters, which I think killed him, +though when he sweated, he would strip to his handsomely marked skin and sit naked in the breeze. The queen never wore more +than a diaper or a gown. + +<p id="d0e1605">“With the Marquesas Islands taken, the French warships came to Tahiti. French Catholic priests had been deported from here +because the Protestants were already in possession, and objected to competition, saying that the priests were children of +Beelzebub, and taught false doctrines and morals. The Queen of Tahiti, whose dynasty the Protestant missionaries had created, +advised the pope’s men to seek a heathen people not already worshiping the true God. The zealous priests who had come with +explicit commands to found a mission in Tahiti, launched the curse of Rome upon the king, the Protestant ministers, and especially +upon Mr. Pritchard, the British consul and the queen’s physician and spiritual adviser. + +<p id="d0e1608">“Pritchard had the interests of England and the Lord at heart, and his whispers in the queen’s ear sent the earnest priests +aboard a ship bound for a distant port. They complained, and the French admiral then arrived and pointed his guns at the palace +and the Protestant mission, and demanded thirty thousand dollars for the insult to the French flag; and for the jibe at the +pope, the matching of every Protestant church in the islands, by a Catholic edifice. The queen had a panic and fled to Moorea +in a canoe. The admiral then put Consul Pritchard in jail for ten days, and after chastening his mood, put him on an English +ship at sea homeward <span id="d0e1610" class="pageno">page 79</span>bound. France and England were showing their teeth at each other over more important differences, which ended in a revolution +in Paris and a change of kings, so that the admiral had his way. The queen came back, the priests established their mission +and their churches, and the Tahitians with any blood in them went to war again. The French built forts about the island, and +killed off with their guns all the natives they could get sight of. Then they took all the other islands around here that +England didn’t have, declared Tahiti had to be a protectorate in 1843, and in 1880 gave King Pomaré Fifth twelve thousand +dollars a year to let them annex his kingdom. You see, after all, his crown was made by the British puritans, and taken from +him by the French or Romish Church.” + +<p id="d0e1613">The aged Russian laughed in his huge whiskers. He fished in the rear of his frock and produced the stump of a cigar, for which +I yielded a match. + +<p id="d0e1616">“I found that on the steps of the Roman Catholic bishop’s carriage, which was standing near here an hour ago,” he said. “They’ll +tell you that you will burn in hell; but they smoke here, and good Havana tobacco.” + +<p id="d0e1619">“I think it’s a pity the Tahitians weren’t left alone,” I asserted. + +<p id="d0e1622">He gave me a look such as Diogenes might have given the man who stood in his sunlight. He lit his cigar-end, puffed it diligently +for a minute, and then said arbitrarily: + +<p id="d0e1625">“The Tahitian is, first, a coward, afraid to fight the white; but if he can, in a group or by secret, kill or hurt you, he +will. He is treacherous, and the more he pretends to be your friend, the more he connives to cheat <span id="d0e1627" class="pageno">page 80</span>you. I should have said first of all that he is lazy, but that is not to be disputed. He was corrupt to begin with, and religion +accentuates every evil passion in him. He is a profound hypocrite, and yet a puritan for observance of the ceremonies and +interdictions of his faith. He has more guile than a Japanese guide, and in land deals can skin a Moscow Jew. He will sell +you land and get the money, and later prove that his father or brother is the real owner, and that relation will do the same, +and you will pay several times for the same land. In the Paumotus, where the missionaries are like a swarm of gnats, this +deception is threefold as bad.” + +<p id="d0e1630">“But the Tahitians are at least generous,” I broke in. + +<p id="d0e1633">Stroganoff combed his whiskers with a twig of the flamboyant tree under which we sat. He glared at me. + +<p id="d0e1636">“Generous! If you have money they will overwhelm you with presents, looking for a double return; but if you are poor, they +will treat you as dirt under their feet. I know, for I am poor, and I live among them. They are like those mina birds here, +which will steal the button off your coat if you do not guard it.” + +<p id="d0e1639">“Does not Christianity improve them?” + +<p id="d0e1642">“No. The combats between Protestants, Catholics, and Mormons ended all hope of that. They are never sincere except when they +become fanatics, and even then they never lose their native superstitions. Beliefs in the ghosts of Tahiti, the <i>tupapau</i>, <i>ihoiho</i>, and <i>varua ino</i>, are common to all of them.” + +<p id="d0e1654">“My dear Mr. Stroganoff,” I expostulated, “your czars believed in icons. My grandmother believed in werewolves and banshees, +and we burned blessed candles and sprinkled holy water in our houses on All Souls’ <span id="d0e1656" class="pageno">page 81</span>night to keep away demons. I have seen a clergyman, educated in Paris and Louvain, exorcising devils with bell, book, and +candle in Maryland, in one of the oldest and proudest cities of the United States. I have seen the American Governor-General +of the Philippines carrying a candle in a procession in honor of a mannikin from a shrine at Antipolo, near Manila. Why, I +could tell you—” + +<p id="d0e1659">“Please, please, let me talk,” Ivan Stroganoff interrupted. “What I say is true, nevertheless. The Tahitian has not one good +quality. He is not to be compared with the American negro for any desirable trait.” + +<p id="d0e1662">“Do you know the negro?” I asked. + +<p id="d0e1665">The old man grunted. He relit his cigar, now only an inch long, and said: + +<p id="d0e1668">“I was on the <i>Merrimac</i> when she fought the <i>Monitor</i> in two engagements. I was a sailor on other Confederate men-of-war. I was one of Colonel Mosby’s guerillas, and was wounded +with them. I have lived thirteen years in the United States. I know the coon well. I fought to keep him a slave.” + +<p id="d0e1677">“You are not an American?” + +<p id="d0e1680">“I am a Russian, an anarchist once, and now I am for Root and Lodge, the stand-pats. I lived in Russia in its darkest days, +under several czars, when your life was the forfeit of a wink. I was a lawyer there, a politician, an intrigant. I knew Bebel +and Jaurès and the men before them. I lived in Germany many years, in France, in England, anywhere, everywhere. I first came +to New York from Siberia. I was broke. The Civil War was on. There were agents of Lee and Jeff Davis in New York seeking sailors. +They offered lots <span id="d0e1682" class="pageno">page 82</span>of money,—thousands,—and I went along, smuggled into the South by an underground road.” + +<p id="d0e1685">Stroganoff threw away the shreds of tobacco, now a mere fiery wafer that threatened his mouth’s seine of silver strands. He +put his hand in his Prince Albert and scratched his stomach. + +<p id="d0e1688">“Mr. Stroganoff,” I queried, with a moral tide rising, “how could you join in a life-and-death issue like that of the Civil +War, and kill men without hatred of their cause in your heart?” + +<p id="d0e1691">He patted my shoulder. + +<p id="d0e1694">“My dear young American,” he replied, “you join anything, even a sheriff’s posse, into which you are dragged, and have a bullet +from the other side slit your ear, or a round shot bang against your deck, and you’ll soon convince yourself that you are +in the right, or, anyway, that your adversary is a scoundrel. I handled a gun on the <i>Merrimac</i> in Hampton Roads when that cheese-box of a <i>Monitor</i> rattled her solid shot on our slippery sides. I was two years in that damned un-Civil War, and as I started on the Southern +side, I stayed on it. I left the navy to go with John Mosby and burn houses. When the war was over, and I recovered from my +wound, I went to ’Frisco and crossed to Siberia, and thus back to Moscow. No, I never was an exile in Siberia or in a Russian +prison. I knew and worked for the leaders of the old Nihilists. I was with them till I knew them, and then I saw they were +selfish and fakers. I knew the socialist chiefs in France and Germany, the fathers of the present movement there. I was red-hot +for the cause until I knew them, and I quit.” +<span id="d0e1702" class="pageno">page 83</span> + +<p id="d0e1705">He sat meditatively for a few moments. + +<p id="d0e1708">“I’m all but eighty years old,” the raider of the ’60’s continued sorrowfully. “I work now for Chinese, preparing their mail, +their custom-house papers, and orders. I scrape along like a watch-dog in a sausage factory, getting sufficient to eat, but +fearful all the time that the job will kill me. Most of the time I live a few kilometers from Papeete, toward Fa’a, and come +in to town about steamer-time. I sleep in the chicken-coop or anywhere. I make about forty francs a month.” He stamped upon +the grass. “I take it you are a journalist, and, do you know, what is needed here most is publicity. Graft permeates the whole +scheme. Mind you, there are no secrets. You could not whisper anything to a cocoanut-tree but that the entire island would +know it to-morrow. But there is no open publicity. Start a newspaper!” + +<p id="d0e1711">“In what language?” I demanded, interested. + +<p id="d0e1714">“Huh? That’s it. If in French, only the French would read it; and if in Tahitian, the French won’t touch it; and English is +known only by the Chinese and the few British and Americans here. I hate that Tahitian. I don’t know a word of it after seventeen +years. Say what you will, Roosevelt made them stand around. I liked him for many things; but, after all, the old order must +stand, and Root is the boy for me. This fellow Wilson is a regular pedagogue.” + +<p id="d0e1717">“But they have newspapers here?” I asked. + +<p id="d0e1720">“Newspapers? They call them that.” + +<p id="d0e1723">He stood up and searched in the pockets of his voluminous coat, which he opened. I saw that the lining <span id="d0e1725" class="pageno">page 84</span>was of silk, but now worn and torn. He brought out a roll of papers. + +<p id="d0e1728">“Here is ‘La Tribune de Tahiti,’ ” he said. “It is edited by Jean Delpit, the lawyer whose offices are next to the Bellevue +Restaurant. It’s a monthly, published in San Francisco, and has a brief summary of world events, besides articles on the administrative +affairs of Tahiti. It’s against the Government. Then there’s ‘Le Liberal,’ a socialist journal, with Eugène Brunschwig editor, +which pours hot shot into the Government. Look at his announcement! Do you understand that? He is fierce. He is an anarchist +and wants to be bought up. Of course he is attacking from outside Tahiti. + +<p id="d0e1731">“There is no newspaper printed here except the ‘Journal Officiel’ which, of course, is not a newspaper, but a gazette of governmental notices, etc. The Government has its own printing-office, +but if these other, the ‘Tribune’ and the ‘Liberal,’ had establishments here, they would be raided and closed, for they would +hardly be allowed to criticize the Government as harshly as they do. The ‘Tribune’ is in French and Tahitian, the ‘Liberal’ +and the ‘Journal Officiel’ in French. One time it was recommended that the official paper might be more popular if it had some fiction for the natives, +so they printed a translation of ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,’ but everybody laughed, so it was dropped. + +<p id="d0e1740">“The Mormons have the best paper here. It is a monthly, too. There is plenty need here for a fearless newspaper. The faults, +weaknesses, and venality of the Government call for publicity, but I’m afraid the <span id="d0e1742" class="pageno">page 85</span>journalist might soon find himself in prison. You can do nothing. The fault is in this damned climate—<i>la fièvre du corail</i>. Paul Deschanel, senator of France, who wrote a book on this island without ever leaving his chair in Paris, says: +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e1749">“In presence of the apparent facts one is forced to ask himself if there is not in the climate of this enchanted Tahiti, in +the soft air that one breathes, a force sweet but invincible which at length penetrates the soul, enervates the will and enfeebles +all sense of usefulness or right, or the least energy necessary to make them triumph. + +<p id="d0e1752">“It is this spirit, without any harmony, bereft of all real cordiality between neighbors, of family and family, which one +must find in the ambient air and which is called the coral fever.” + +</div> + +<p id="d0e1757">“It torments these French, former sailors or petty officials gone into trade or speculation, with delusions and ambitions +of grandeur. There is no remedy. The King of Apamama said it all when he divided the whites into three classes, ‘First, him +cheat a litty; second, him cheat plenty; and third, him cheat too much.’ ” + +<p id="d0e1760">Stroganoff got on his feet, rubbed his knees to limber them, and began to move off slowly toward Fa’a, his place of abode. + +<p id="d0e1763">“But, Mr. Stroganoff,” I called to him, “you said all that about the Tahitians, also.” + +<p id="d0e1766">The Russian octogenarian drew an over-ripe mango from his skirt, and bit into it, with dire results to his whiskers and coat,—it +should be eaten only in a bathtub,—and replied wearily: + +<p id="d0e1769">“I except nobody here.” +<span id="d0e1771" class="pageno">page 86</span> + +<h1 id="d0e1775">Chapter VI</h1> +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e1782">The Cercle Bougainville—Officialdom in Tahiti—My first visit to the Bougainville—Skippers and merchants—A song and a drink—The +flavor of the South Seas—Rumors of war. + +</div> +<p id="d0e1786">In Papeete there were two social clubs, the Cercle Bougainville and the Cercle Militaire. Even in Papeete, which has not half +as many people as work in a certain building in New York, there is a bureaucracy, and the Cercle Militaire, in a park near +the executive mansion on the rue de Rivoli, is its arcanum. Only members of the Government may belong, and a few others whose +proposals must be stamped by the political powers. There is a garden, with a small library, but not many read in this climate, +and the atmosphere of the Cercle Militaire was tedious. The governor himself and the black <i>procureur de la Republique</i>, born in Martinique, the secretary-general, naval officers, and the file of the upper office-holders frequent the shade of +the mangos and the palms, but themselves confessed it deadly dull there. Bureaucracy is ever mediocre, ever jealous, and in +Papeete the feuds among the whites were as bitter as in a monastery or convent. Every man crouched to leap over his fellow, +if not by position, at least by acclaim. None dared to discuss political affairs openly, but nothing else was talked of. It +was a round of whispered charges and recriminations and audible compliments. A few jolly chaps, doctors <span id="d0e1791" class="pageno">page 87</span>or naval lieutenants, passed the bottle and laughed at the others. + +<p id="d0e1794">Every now and then a new governor supplanted the incumbent, who returned to France, and a few of the chiefer officials were +changed; but the most of them were Tahitian French by birth or long residence. Republics are wretched managers of colonies, +and monarchies brutal exploiters of subject peoples. Politics controlled in the South Seas, as in the Philippines, India, +and Egypt. Precedence at public gatherings often caused hatreds. The <i>procureur</i> was second in rank here, the governor, of course, first, the secretary-general third, and the attorney-general fourth. When +the secretary-general was not at functions, the wife of the governor must be handed in to dinner and dances by the negro <i>procureur</i>. This angered the British and American consuls and merchants, and the French inferior to him in social status, although the +Martinique statesman was better educated and more cultivated in manners than they. + +<p id="d0e1803">The indolence of mind and body that few escape in this soft, delicious air, the autocracy of the governing at such a distance +from France, and the calls of Paris for the humble taxes of the Tahitians, robbed the island of any but the most pressing +melioration. The business of government in these archipelagoes was bizarre comedy-drama, with <i>Tartarins</i> at the front of the stage, and a cursing or slumbrous audience. + +<p id="d0e1809">Count Polonsky, a Russian-born Frenchman, appeared in court to answer to the charge of letting his automobile engine run when +no one was in the car. He was fined a franc, which he would take from his pocket <span id="d0e1811" class="pageno">page 88</span>then and there, but must wait many days to pay, until circumlocution had its round, six weeks after the engine had been at +fault. I was assessed two sous duty on a tooth-brush. I reached for the coins. + +<p id="d0e1814">“<i>Mais, non</i>” said the <i>préposé de le douane</i>, “<i>pas maintenant</i>. No hurry. We will inform you by post.” + +<p id="d0e1826">These officials had pleasing manners, as do almost all Frenchmen, and though they uttered many <i>sacrés</i> against the home Government and that of these islands, they were fiercely chauvinistic toward foreigners, as are all nationals +abroad where jingoism partakes of self-aggrandizement. The American consul, a new appointee, addressed the customs clerk in +his only tongue, Iowan, and received no response. I spoke to him in French, and the <i>préposé</i> replied in mixed French and English, out of compliment to me. The consul was enraged, considering himself and the American +eagle affronted. I interposed, but the customs-man answered coldly in English: + +<p id="d0e1835">“This is a French possession, and French is the language, or Tahitian. I speak both. Why don’t you? You are supposedly an +educated man.” + +<p id="d0e1838">The Stars and Stripes were unfolded in a breeze of hot words that betrayed the consul’s belief in the <i>préposé</i>’s sinister ancestry and in eternal punishment. No entente cordiale could ever be cemented after that lingual blast. + +<p id="d0e1844">The consuls all had honorary memberships in the Cercle Militaire, and none of them entered the Cercle Bougainville, it not +being <i>de rigueur</i>. I had a <i>carte d’invite personelle</i> to that club, and there I went with roused curiosity to hear the other sides of questions already <span id="d0e1852" class="pageno">page 89</span>settled for me by the amiable officials and officers on the rue de Rivoli. I had been warned against the Cercle Bougainville +by staid pensioners as being the resort of commoners and worse, of British and American ruffians, of French vulgarians, and +of Chinese smugglers. This advice made a seductive advertisement of the club to me, anxious to know everything real and unveiled +about the life here, and to find a contrast to the ennui of the official temple. + +<p id="d0e1855">A consul said to me: “Look out for some of those gamblers in that Bougainville joint! They’ll skin you alive. They drink like +conger-eels.” + +<p id="d0e1858">M. Leboucher, my fellow-passenger on the <i>Noa-Noa</i>, sent me the card to the Jacobin resort, and I got in the habit of going there just before the meat breakfast and before +dinner. I found that the warning of the aristocratic bureaucrats was of a piece with their philosophy and manners, hollow, +hypocritical, and calculated to deny me the only real human companionship I could endure. From about eleven to one o’clock +and from five until seven, and in the evenings, the Cercle Bougainville held more interesting and merry white skins than the +remainder of Tahiti. Merchants and managers of enterprises and shops, skippers of the schooners that comb the Dangerous Archipelago +and the dark Marquesas for pearl and shell and copra, vanilla- and pearl-buyers, planters, and lesser bureaucrats, idlers +or retired adventurers living in Tahiti, and tourists made the club for a few hours a day a polyglot exchange of current topics +between man and man, a place of initiation and of judgment of business deals, a precious refuge against smug bores and a sanctuary +for refreshment of body and <span id="d0e1863" class="pageno">page 90</span>soul with cooling drinks. Naturally, every one played cards, dominoes, or dice for the honor of signing the <i>chits</i>, and it goes without saying that one might roar out an oath against the Government and go unscathed. Even in the Bougainville +lines were drawn; only heads of commercial affairs were admitted. It was bourgeois absolutely, but bosses could not imbibe +and play freely in the presence of their employees whom they might have to reprimand severely for bad habits, nor scold them +for inattention to trade when their employers spent precious hours at écarté or razzle-dazzle. + +<p id="d0e1869">The club was within fifty feet of the lagoon, close to the steamship quay, its broad verandas overlooking the fulgent reef +and the quiet waters within it. In odd hours one might find Joseph, the steward, angling on the coral wall for the black and +gold fish, and a shout from the balcony would bring him to the swift succor of a thirsty member. During the four hours before +the late <i>déjeuner</i> and dinner, he had incessant work to answer the continuous calls. + +<p id="d0e1875">When Joseph became overwhelmed with orders he summoned his family from secret quarters in the rear, and father, mother, and +children squeezed, shook, and poured for the impatient crowd. + +<p id="d0e1878">When the monthly mail between America and Australasia was in, few packs of cards were sold, for every one was busied with +letters and orders for goods. But only three or four days a month were so disturbed, and for nearly four weeks of the month +Papeete lolled at ease, with endless time for games and stimulants. Leisure, the most valuable coin of humanity in the tropics, +was spent by white or brown in pleasure or <span id="d0e1880" class="pageno">page 91</span>idleness with a prodigality that would have made Samuel Smiles weep. + +<p id="d0e1883">The entrance to the Cercle Bougainville was very plain, with no name-plate, as had the Militaire,—a mere hole in the front +wall of Leboucher’s large furniture shop. One could be going along the street in full view of important and respectable people, +and suddenly disappear. A few steep stairs, a quick turn, and one was on the broad balcony, with easy-chairs and firm tables, +and bells to hand for Joseph’s ear. + +<p id="d0e1886">In a room off the balcony there was a billiard-table, the cloth patched or missing in many spots, and with cues whose tips +had long since succumbed to perpetual moisture. A few old French books were on a shelf, and a naughty review or two of Paris +on a dusty table. Undoubtedly, this club had begun as a mariner’s association, and there was yet a decided flavor of the sea +about it. Indeed, all Tahiti was of the sea, and all but the mass of natives who stayed in their little homes were at times +sailors, and all whites passengers on long voyages. Everything paid tribute to the vast ocean, and all these men had an air +of ships and the dangers of the waves. + +<p id="d0e1889">Nautical almanacs, charts, and a barometer were conspicuous, and often were laid beside the social glasses for proof in hot +arguments. Occasionally an old Chinese or two, financiers, pearl-dealers, labor bosses, or merchants, drained a glass of <i>eau de vie</i> and smoked a cigarette there. One sensed an atmosphere of mystery, of secret arrangements between traders, or hard endeavors +for circumvention of competitors in the business of the dispersed islands of French Oceania. + +<p id="d0e1895">A delightful incident enlivened my first visit, and <span id="d0e1897" class="pageno">page 92</span>gave me an acquaintance with a group of habitués, When I reached the balcony I saw a group of Frenchmen at a table who were +singing at the top of their voices. I sat down at the farthest table and ordered a Dr. Funk. + +<p id="d0e1900">I did not look at them, for I felt <i>de trop;</i> but suddenly I heard them humming the air of “John Brown’s Body,” and singing fugitive words. + +<p id="d0e1906">“Grory, grory, harreruah!” came to my ears, and later, “Wayd’ ’un S’ut’ in le land de cottin.” + +<p id="d0e1909">They were making fun of me I thought, and turned my head away. It would not do to get angry with half a dozen jovial Frenchmen. + +<p id="d0e1912">“All Coons Look alike to Me,” I recognized, though they sang but fragments of the text. + +<p id="d0e1915">Through a corner of my eye I saw them all anxiously staring at me; then one of the merrymakers came over to me. I had a fleeting +thought of a row before he bowed low and said in English: + +<p id="d0e1918">“If you please, we make good time, we sing your songs, and must be happy to drink with you.” + +<p id="d0e1921">He announced himself as M. Edmond Brault, chief clerk of the office of the secretary-general, fresh-faced, glowing and with +a soul for music and for joy. He was so smiling, so ingenuous, that to refuse him would have been rank discourtesy. I joined +the group. + +<p id="d0e1924">“I am twenty-eight times married this day,” said M. Brault, “and my friends and I make very happy.” + +<p id="d0e1927">The good husband was rejoicing on his wedding anniversary, and I could but accept the champagne he ordered. <span id="d0e1929" class="pageno">page 93</span>“I am great satisfaction to drink you,” he said. “My friends drink my wife and me.” + +<p id="d0e1932">We toasted his admirable wife, we toasted the two republics; Lafayette, Rochambeau, and Chateaubriand. + +<p id="d0e1935">“<i>Ah, le biftek!</i>” said M. Leboucher. + +<p id="d0e1941">We toasted Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, and then we sang for an hour. M. Brault was the leading composer of Tahiti. +He was the creator of Tahitian melodies, as <i>Kappelmeister</i> Berger was of Hawaiian. For our delectation Brault sang ten of his songs between toasts. I liked best “<i>Le Bon Roi Pomare</i>,” the words of one of the many stanzas being: + +<p class="poetry"> +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e1954">Il était un excellent roi +<br id="d0e1957">Dont on ne dit rien dans l’histoire, +<br id="d0e1960">Qui ne connaissait qu’une Loi: +<br id="d0e1963">Celle de chanter, rire, et boire. +<br id="d0e1966">Fervent disciple de Bacchus +<br id="d0e1969">Il glorifiait sa puissance, +<br id="d0e1972">Puis, sacrifiait à Venus +<br id="d0e1975">Les loisirs de son existence. + +<br id="d0e1979">REFRAIN: +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e1984">Toujours joyeux, d’humeur gauloise, +<br id="d0e1987">Et parfois même un peu grivoise +<br id="d0e1990">Le généreux Roi Pomarè +<br id="d0e1993">Par son peuple est fort regretté. +<br id="d0e1996">S’il avait eu de l’eloquence +<br id="d0e1999">Il aurait gouverné la France! +<br id="d0e2002">Mais nos regrets sont superflus; +<br id="d0e2005">Puisqu’il est mort, n’en parlons plus! + + +<p id="d0e2010">“Ah, he was a chic type, that last King of Tahiti,” said M. Brault, who had written so many praiseful, merry verses about +him. “He would have a <i>hula</i> about <span id="d0e2015" class="pageno">page 94</span>him all the time. He loved the national dance. He would sit or lie and drink all day and night. He loved to see young people +drink and enjoy themselves. Ah, those were gay times! Dancing the nights away. Every one crowned with flowers, and rum and +champagne like the falls of Fautaua. The good king Pomaré would keep up the <i>upaupa</i>, the <i>hula</i> dance, for a a week at a time, until they were nearly all dead from drink and fatigue. <i>Mon dieu</i>! <i>La vie est triste maintenant</i>.” + +<p id="d0e2030">Before we parted we sang the “Marseillaise” and the “Star-Spangled Banner.” Nobody knew the words, I least of any; so we la-la-la’d +through it, and when we parted for luncheon, we went down the crooked stairway arm in arm, still giving forth snatches of +“Le Bon Roi Pomaré” in honor of our host: + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e2035">Mais, s’il aimait tant les plaisirs, +<br id="d0e2038">Les chants joyeux, la vie en rose, +<br id="d0e2041">Le plus ardent de ses désirs, +<br id="d0e2044">Pour lui la plus heureuse chose, +<br id="d0e2047">Fut toujours que l’humanité +<br id="d0e2050">Regnât au sein de son Royaume; +<br id="d0e2053">De même que l’Egalité +<br id="d0e2056">Sous son modeste toit de chaume. + +<p id="d0e2060">Hallman, with whom I journeyed on the <i>Noa-Noa</i>, dropped into the Cercle Bougainville occasionally, but he was ordinarily too much occupied with his schemes of trade. Besides, +he had only one absorbing vice other than business, and with merely wine and song to be found at the club, Hallman went there +but seldom, and only to talk about pearl-shell, copra, and the profits of <span id="d0e2065" class="pageno">page 95</span>schooner voyages. However, through him I met another group who spoke English, and who were not of Latin blood. They were Llewellyn, +an islander—Welsh and Tahitian; Landers, a New Zealander; Pincher, an Englishman; David, McHenry, and Brown, Americans; Count +Polonsky, the Russo-Frenchman who was fined a franc; and several captains of vessels who sailed between Tahiti and the Pacific +coast of the United States or in these latitudes. + +<p id="d0e2068">The <i>Noa-Noa</i> was overdue from New Zealand, by way of Raratonga, and her tardiness was the chief subject of conversation at our first meeting. +A hundred times a day was the semaphore on the hill spied at for the signal of the <i>Noa-Noa’s</i> sighting. High up on the expansive green slope which rises a few hundred feet behind the Tiare Hotel is a white pole, and +on this are hung various objects which tell the people of Papeete that a vessel is within view of the ancient sentinel of +the mount. An elaborate code in the houses of all persons of importance, and in all stores and clubs, interprets these symbols. +The merchants depended to a considerable extent upon this monthly liner between San Francisco and Wellington and way ports, +and all were interested in the mail and food supplies expected by the <i>Noa-Noa</i>. Cablegrams sent from any part of the world to New Zealand or San Francisco were forwarded by mail on these steamships. Tahiti +was entirely cut off from the great continents except by vessel. There was no cable, and no wireless, on this island, nor +even at the British island of Raratonga, two days’ steaming from Papeete. The steamships had wireless systems, and kept in +communication with San Francisco <span id="d0e2079" class="pageno">page 96</span>or with New Zealand ports for a few days after departure. + +<p id="d0e2082">There were many guesses at the cause of the delay. + +<p id="d0e2085">“Nothing but war!” said the French post-office clerk who sat at another table, with his glass of Pernoud. “Germany and England +have come to blows. Now that accursed nation of beer-swillers will get their lesson.” + +<p id="d0e2088">The subject was seriously discussed, the armaments of the two powers quoted, and the certainty of Germany’s defeat predicted, +the Frenchman asserting vehemently that France would aid England if necessary, or to get back Alsace-Lorraine. There were +gatherings all over Papeete, the war rumor having been made an alleged certainty by some inexplicable communication to an +unnamed merchant. + +<p id="d0e2091">The natives hoped fervently that the war was between France and Germany, and that France would be defeated. After generations +of rule by France, the vanquished still felt an aversion to their conquerors here, as in the Holy Land when Herod ruled. + +<p id="d0e2094">“I hope France get his,” said a chief, aside, to me. + +<p id="d0e2097">The mail’s delay upset all business. Letters closed on the day the liner was expected were reopened. For three days the girls +at Lovaina’s had worn their best peignoirs, and several times donned shoes and stockings to go to the quay. Passengers for +San Francisco who had packed their trunks had unpacked them. The air of expectancy which Papeete wore for a day or two before +steamer-day had been so heated by postponement that nerves came to the surface. + +<p id="d0e2100">Tahiti was a place of no exact knowledge. Few residents knew the names of the streets. Some of the <span id="d0e2102" class="pageno">page 97</span>larger business houses had no signs to indicate the firms’ names or what they sold. Hardly any one knew the names of the trees +or the flowers or fishes or shells. + +<p id="d0e2105">A story once told, even facts thoroughly well known, changed with each repetition. A month after an occurrence one might search +in vain for the actuality. It was more difficult to learn truthful details than anywhere I had been. The French are niggardly +of publications concerning Tahiti. An almanac once a year contained a few figures and facts of interest, but with no newspapers +within thousands of miles, every person was his own journal, and prejudices and interest dictated all oral records. + +<p id="d0e2108">McHenry hushed war reports to talk about Brown, an American merchant who had left the club a moment before, after a Bourbon +straight alone at the bar. McHenry was a trader, mariner, adventurer, gambler, and boaster. Rough and ready, witty, profane, +and obscene, he bubbled over with tales of reef and sea, of women and men he had met, of lawless tricks on natives, of storm +and starvation, and of his claimed illicit loves. Loud-mouthed, bullet-headed, beady-eyed, a chunk of rank flesh shaped by +a hundred sordid deeds, he must get the center of attention by any hazard. + +<p id="d0e2111">“Brown’s purty stuck up now,” he said acridly. “I remember the time when he didn’t have a pot to cook in. He had thirty Chile +dollars a month wages. We come on the beach the same day in the same ship. His shoes were busted out, and he was crazy to +get money for a new girl he had. There was a Chink had eighteen tins of vanilla-beans worth about two hundred American dollars +each. He got the Chink to believe he could handle <span id="d0e2113" class="pageno">page 98</span>the vanilla for him, and got hold of it, and then out by the vegetable garden Brown hit the poor devil of a Chink over the +nut with a club.” + +<p id="d0e2116">McHenry got up from the table, and with Llewellyn’s walking-stick showed exactly how the blow was struck. He brought down +the cane so viciously against the edge of the table that he spilled our rum punches. + +<p id="d0e2119">“Mac,” exclaimed Llewellyn, testily, as he shot him a hot glance from the melancholy eyes under his black thatch of brows, +“behave yourself! You know you’re lying.” + +<p id="d0e2122">McHenry laughed sourly, and went on: + +<p id="d0e2125">“I was chums with Brown then, and when I caught up to him,—I was walkin’ behind them,—he asked me to see if the Chink was +dead. I went back to where he had tumbled him. He was layin’ on his back in a kind o’ ditch, and he was white instead o’ yeller. +He was white as Lyin’ Bill’s schooner. How would you ’a’ done? Well, to protect that dirty pup Brown, I covered him over with +leaves from head to foot—big bread-fruit and cocoanut-leaves. He never showed up again, and Brown had the vanilla. That’s +how he got his start, and, so help me God! I never got a franc from the business.” + +<p id="d0e2128">There was venom in McHenry’s tone, and he looked at me, the newcomer, to see what impression he had made. The others said +not a word of comment, and it may have been an often-told tale by him. He had emptied his glass of the potent Martinique rum +four or five times. + +<p id="d0e2131">“Was the Chinaman sure dead when you put the <span id="d0e2133" class="pageno">page 99</span>leaves over him?” I asked, influenced by his staring eyes. + +<p id="d0e2136">McHenry grinned foully. + +<p id="d0e2139">“Aye, man, you want too much,” he replied. “I say his face was white, and he was on his back in the marsh. If he was alive, +the leaves didn’t finish him, and if he was croaked, it didn’t matter. I was obligin’ a friend. You’d have done as much.” +He took up his glass and muttered dramatically, “A few leaves for a friend.” + +<p id="d0e2142">I shuddered, but Landers leaned over the table and said to me, <i>sotto voce</i>: + +<p id="d0e2148">“McHenry’s tellin’ his usual bloody lie. Brown got the vanilla all right, but what he did was to have the bloomin’ Chink consign +it to him proper’, and not give him a receipt. Then he denied all knowledge of it, and it bein’ all the bleedin’ Chinaman +had, he died of a broken heart—with maybe too many pipes of opium to help him on a bit. McHenry and Pincher are terrible liars. +They call Pincher ‘Lyin’ Bill,’ though I ’d take his word in trade or about schooners any day.” + +<p id="d0e2151">I had been introduced to a Doctor Funk by Count Polonsky, who told me it was made of a portion of absinthe, a dash of grenadine,—a +syrup of the pomegranate fruit,—the juice of two limes, and half a pint of siphon water. Dr. Funk of Samoa, who had been a +physician to Robert Louis Stevenson, had left the receipt for the concoction when he was a guest of the club. One paid half +a franc for it, and it would restore self-respect and interest in one’s surroundings when even Tahiti rum failed. + +<p id="d0e2154">“Zat was ze drink I mix for Paul Gauguin, ze <i>peintre sauvage</i>, here before he go to die in <i>les îsles Marquises</i>,” <span id="d0e2162" class="pageno">page 100</span>remarked Levy, the millionaire pearl-buyer, as he stood by the table to be introduced to me. + +<p id="d0e2165">“Absinthe <i>seul</i> he general’ take,” said Joseph, the steward. + +<p id="d0e2171">“I bid fifty thousand francs for one of Gauguin’s paintings in Paris last year,” Count Polonsky said as he claimed his game +of écarté against Tati, the chief of Papara district. “I failed to get it, too. I bought many here for a few thousand francs +each before that.” + +<p id="d0e2174">“Blow me!” cried Pincher, the skipper of the <i>Morning Star</i>. ”’E was a bleedin’ ijit. I fetched ’im absinthe many a time in Atuona. ’E said Dr. Funk was a bloomin’ ass for inventin’ +a drink that spoiled good Pernoud with water. ’E was a rare un. ’E was like Stevenson ’at wrote ‘Treasure Island.’ Comes into +my pub in Taiohae in the Marquesas Islands did Stevenson off’n his little <i>Casco</i>, and says he, ‘’Ave ye any whisky,’ ’e says, ‘’at ’asn’t been watered? These South Seas appear to ’ave flooded every bloomin’ +gallon,’ ’e says. This painter Gauguin wasn’t such good company as Stevenson, because ’e parleyvoud, but ’e was a bloody worker +with ’is brushes at Atuona. ’E was cuttin’ wood or paintin’ all the time.” + +<p id="d0e2183">“He was a damn’ fool,” said Hallman, who had come in to the Cercle to take away Captain Pincher. “I lived close to him at +Atuona all the time he was there till he died. He was bughouse. I don’t know much about painting, but if you call that crazy +stuff of Gauguin’s proper painting, then I’m a furbelowed clam.” + +<p id="d0e2186">“<i>Eh bien</i>,” Count Polonsky said, with a smile of the man of superior knowledge, “he is the greatest painter of this period, and his +pictures are bringing high prices <span id="d0e2191" class="pageno">page 101</span>now, and will bring the highest pretty soon. I have bought every one I could to hold for a raise.” + +<p id="d0e2194">Polonsky was a study in sheeny hues. He was twenty-seven, his black and naturally curled hair was very thin, there were eight +or nine teeth that answered no call from his meat, and he wore in his right eyesocket a round glass, with no rim or string, +held by a puckering of cheek and brow, giving him a quizzical, stage-like stare, and twisting his nose into a ripple of tiny +wrinkles. He weighed, say, one hundred pounds or less, was bent, but with a fresh complexion and active step. I saw him rise +naked from his cot one morning, and the first thing he put on was the rimless monocle. The natives, who name every one, called +him <i>“Matatitiahoe,”</i> “the one-windowed man.” He had journeyed about the world, poked into some queer places, and in Japan had himself tattooed. +On his narrow chest he had a terrible legendary god of Nippon, and on his arms a cock and a skeleton, the latter with a fan +and a lantern. On his belly was limned a nude woman. He had certain other decorations the fame of which had been bruited wide +so that a keen curiosity existed to see them, and they were discussed in whispers by white femininity and with many <i>“Aucs!”</i> of astonishment by the brown. They were Pompeiian friezes in their unconventionality of subject and treatment. + +<p id="d0e2203">Llewellyn, McHenry, David, and I accompanied the count to his residence on the outskirts of Papeete to taste a vintage of +Burgundy he had sent him from Beaune. Like most modern houses in Tahiti, his was solely utilitarian, and was built by a former +American consul. It exactly ministered to the comforts of a demanding <span id="d0e2205" class="pageno">page 102</span>European exquisite. The house was framed in wide verandas, and was in a magnificent grove of cocoanut-trees affording beauty +and shade, with extensive fields of sugar-cane on the other side of the road, and a glimpse of the beach and lagoon a little +distance away. A singing brook ran past the door. The bedrooms were large and open to every breeze, and the tables for dining +and amusement mostly set upon the verandas. + +<p id="d0e2208">Polonsky’s toilet-table was covered with gold boxes and bottles and brushes; scents and powders and pastes. If he moved out, +Gaby de Lys might have moved in and lacked nothing. He was a <i>boulevardier,</i> his clothes from Paris, conforming not at all to the sartorial customs of Tahiti, and his varnished boots and alpine hat, +with his saffron automobile, marked him as a person. In that he resembled Higby, an Englishman in Papeete, who wore the evening +dress of London whenever a steamship came in, though it might be noon, and on the king’s birthday and other British feasts +put it on when he awoke. He was the only man who went to dinner at the Tiare in the funeral garb of society. He said he was +setting up a proper standard in Tahiti. It was suspected really that he was short of clothes, with perhaps only one or two +cotton suits, and that when those were soiled he had to resort to full dress during the laundering. +<div id="d0e2213" class="divFigure"> +<p class="legend"><img src="img/plate-2a.jpg" alt="Little sister guards her flock"> +<p class="figureHead">Little sister guards her flock +</div> +<div id="d0e2219" class="divFigure"> +<p class="legend"><img src="img/plate-2b.jpg" alt="About to plunge in"> +<p class="figureHead">About to plunge in +<p id="d0e2224">Photo by Bopp +</div> + +<p id="d0e2229">While David and I inspected the house and grounds, McHenry and Llewellyn sat at the wine. Polonsky had a curious and wisely +chosen household. His butler was a Javanese, his chef a Quan-tung Chinese, his valet a Japanese, his chambermaid a Martinique +<span id="d0e2231" class="pageno">page 103</span>negress, and his chauffeur an American expert. These had nothing in common and could not ally themselves to cheat him, he +said. +<div id="d0e2233" class="divFigure"> +<p class="legend"><img src="img/plate-3.jpg" alt="The haven of Papetoai, in Moorea"> +<p class="figureHead">The haven of Papetoai, in Moorea +</div> + +<p id="d0e2240">As I came back to the front veranda McHenry and Llewellyn were talking excitedly. + +<p id="d0e2243">“I’ve had my old lady nineteen years,” said McHenry, boastfully, “and she wouldn’t speak to me if she met me on the streets +of Papeete. She wouldn’t dare to in public until I gave her the high sign. You’re a bloody fool makin’ equals of the natives, +and throwin’ away money on those cinema girls the way you do.” + +<p id="d0e2246">This incensed Llewellyn, who was of chiefly Tahitian blood, and who claimed kings of Wales as his ancestors. Although extremely +aristocratic in his attitude toward strangers, his native strain made him resent McHenry’s rascally arrogance as a reflection +upon his mother’s race. + +<p id="d0e2249">“Shut up, Mac!” he half shouted. “You talk too much. If it hadn’t been for that same old lady of yours, you’d have died of +delirium-tremens or fallen into the sea long ago.” + +<p id="d0e2252">“Aye,” said the trader, meditatively, “that <i>vahine</i> has saved my life, but I’m not goin’ to sacrifice my dignity as a white man. If ye let go everything, the damn’ natives’ll +walk over ye, and ye’ll make nothin’ out o’ them.” + +<p id="d0e2258">Lovaina had occasionally called me Dixey, and had explained that I was the “perfec’ im’ge” of a man of that name, and that +he owned a little cutter which traded to Raiaroa, on which atoll he lived. I walked like him, was of the same size, and had +the “same kin’ funny face.” + +<p id="d0e2261">She piqued my curiosity, and so when I found him at <span id="d0e2263" class="pageno">page 104</span>the round table of the Polonsky-Llewellyn group at the Cercle Bougainville, I looked him over narrowly. His name was Dixon,—Lovaina +never got a name right,—an Englishman, a wanderer, with an Eton schooling, short, solidly built, with a bluff jaw and a keen, +blue eye. He was not good-looking. He had learned the nickname given me, and was in such a happy frame of mind that he ordered +drinks for the club. + +<p id="d0e2266">“I’m lucky to be here at all,” he said seriously. “I have a seven-ton cutter, and left the Paumotus four days ago for Papeete. +We had eight tons of copra in the hold, filling it up within a foot of the hatch. Eight miles off Point Venus the night before +last, at eleven o’clock, we hoped for a bit of wind to reach port by morning. It was calm, and we were all asleep but the +man at the wheel, when a waterspout came right out of the clear sky,—so the steersman said,—and struck us hard. We were swamped +in a minute. The water fell on us like your Niagara. Christ! We gave up for gone, all of us, the other five all kanakas. We +heeled over until the deck was under water,—of course we’ve got no freeboard at all,—and suddenly a gale sprung up. We pulled +in the canvas, but to no purpose. Under a bare pole we seemed every minute to be going under completely. We have no cabin, +and all we could do was to lay flat on the deck in the water, and hold on to anything we could grab. The natives prayed, by +God! They ’re Catholics, and they remembered it then. The mate wanted to throw the copra overboard. I was willing, but I said, +‘What for? We’re dead men, and it’ll do no good. She can’t stand up even empty.’ We stayed swamped that way all night, expecting +to be <span id="d0e2268" class="pageno">page 105</span>drowned any minute, and I myself said to the Lord—I was a chorister once—that if I had done anything wrong in my life, I was +sorry—” + +<p id="d0e2271">“But you knew you had?” I interposed. + +<p id="d0e2274">“Of course I did, but I wasn’t going to rub it in on myself in that fix. I knew He knew all about me. My father was a curate +in Devon. Well, we pulled through all right, because here I am, and the copra’s on the dock. What do you think—the wind died +away completely, and we had to sweep in to Papeete.” + +<p id="d0e2277">I touched his glass with mine. He was very ingenuous, a four-square man. + +<p id="d0e2280">“Did the prayers have anything to do with your pulling through and saving the copra?” I questioned, curious. + +<p id="d0e2283">“I don’t know. I didn’t make any fixed promises. I was bloody well scared, and I meant what I said about being sorry. But +that’s all gone. Let’s drink this up and have another. Joseph!” + +<p id="d0e2286"> +<i>Hélas</i>! the waterspout did not harm my twin half so much as the rum-spout, which soon had him three sheets in the wind and his rudder +unmanageable. When I went down the rue de Rivoli that night to the Cercle Militaire, he had drifted into the Cocoanut House, +and was sitting on a fallen tree telling of the storm to a woman in a scarlet gown with a hibiscus-blossom in her hair. I +got him by the arm, and with an expressed desire to know more of the details of the escape, steered him to the Annexe, where +he had a room. + +<p id="d0e2292">A good sort was Dixon. He had in the Paumotus a little store, a dark mother-girl of Raiaroa who waited for him, and a new +baby. He had been only a year in <span id="d0e2294" class="pageno">page 106</span>the group. He referred to “my family” with honest pride. + +<p id="d0e2297">The captains of the <i>Lurline</i> and the <i>O. M. Kellogg</i> were at the club. The <i>Lurline</i> was twenty-seven years old, and the <i>Kellogg</i>, too, high up in her teens, if not twenties. Their skippers were Americans, the <i>Kellogg’s</i> master as dark as a negro, burned by thirty years of tropical sun. + +<p id="d0e2315">“I used to live in Hawaii in the eighties,” he said. “I used to pass the pipe there in those days. There’d be only one pipe +among a dozen kanakas, and each had a draw or so in turn. They have that custom in the Marquesas, too, and so had the American +Indians.” + +<p id="d0e2318">I walked with the <i>Kellogg’s</i> skipper to his vessel, moored close to the quay in front of the club. He gave an order to the mate, who told him to go to +sheol. The mate had been ashore. + +<p id="d0e2324">“Come aboard,” cried the mate, “and I will knock your block off.” + +<p id="d0e2327">The whole waterfront heard the challenge. Stores were deserted to witness the imminent fight. + +<p id="d0e2330">The dark-faced captain ascended the gang-plank, and walked to the forecastle head, where the mate was directing the making +taut a line. + +<p id="d0e2333">“Now,” said the skipper, a foot from the mate, “knock!” + +<p id="d0e2336">The mate hesitated. That would be a crime; he would go to jail and the captain would be delighted. + +<p id="d0e2339">The master taunted him: + +<p id="d0e2342">“Knock my block off! Touch my block, and I’ll whip you so your mother wouldn’t know you, you dirty, drunken, son of a sea-cook!” +<span id="d0e2344" class="pageno">page 107</span> + +<p id="d0e2347">The mate looked at him angrily, but uncertainly. He heard the laughter and the cheers of the bystanders on the quay and in +the embowered street. He looked down at the deck, and he caught sight of a capstan-bar, which he gazed at longingly. Any blow +would send him to prison, but why not for a sheep instead of a lamb? + +<p id="d0e2350">He hesitated, and lifted his eyes to the black brow of the skipper, lowering within touch. + +<p id="d0e2353">“Make fast your line about that cannon!” said the master, sharply. + +<p id="d0e2356">The sailors waited joyfully for the fray, and the Raratonga stevedores on other vessels stopped their work. But nothing happened. + +<p id="d0e2359">“Aye, aye, sir,” said the mate, and shouted the order to the men ashore. The captain regarded him balefully, muttered a few +words, and returned to the club for a Dr. Funk. That medical man ranked here above Colonel Rickey, who invented the gin-rickey +in America. + +<p id="d0e2362">Herr Funk was better known in the Cercle Bougainville than Charcot or Lister or Darwin. The doctor part of the drink’s name +made it seem almost like a prescription, and often, when amateurs sought to evade a second or third, the old-timers laughed +at their fears of ill results, and said: + +<p id="d0e2365">“That old Doctor Funk knew what he was about. Why, he kept people alive on that mixture. It’s like mother’s milk.” +<span id="d0e2367" class="pageno">page 108</span> + +<h1 id="d0e2371">Chapter VII</h1> +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e2378">The <i>Noa-Noa</i> comes to port—Papeete <i>en féte</i>—Rare scene at the Tiare Hotel—The New Year celebrated—Excitement at the wharf—Battle of the Limes and Coal. + +</div> +<p id="d0e2388">The <i>Noa-Noa</i> came in after many days of suspense, during which rumors and reports of war grew into circumstantial statements of engagements +at sea and battles on land. A mysterious vessel was said to have slipped in at night with despatches for the governor. All +was sensation and canard, <i>on dit</i> and <i>oui dire</i>, and all was proved false when the liner came through the passage in the reef. Nothing had happened to disturb the peace +of nations, but a dock strike in Auckland had tied up the ship. The relief of mind of the people of Papeete caused a wave +of joy to pass over them. Business men and officials, tourists who expected to leave for America and the outside world on +the <i>Noa-Noa</i>, overflowed with evidence of their delight. The consuls of the powers met at the Cercle Militaire the governor, and laughed +hectically at the absurd balloon of tittle-tattle which had been pricked by the <i>Noa-Noa’s</i> facts. There had been absolutely nothing to the rumors but the fears or the antipathies of nationals in Tahiti. + +<p id="d0e2406">It was the holiday season, the New Year at hand, and, moreover, there was added cause for rejoicing in the safety of the <i>Saint Michel</i>, a French-owned inter-island <span id="d0e2411" class="pageno">page 109</span>steamship which had been missing six weeks. She had left one of the Paumotu atolls and failed to reach her next port, thirty +miles away. Rumor had sent her to the bottom. She was a crank vessel, with a perpetual list, and a roll of twenty-five degrees +in the quietest sea; the dread of all compelled by affairs to take passage on her. + +<p id="d0e2414">“She’s sunk; rolled over too much, and turned turtle,” was the verdict at the Cercle Bougainville. Her agents had sent the +<i>Cholita</i>, a small power schooner, to go over the <i>Saint Michel’s</i> course, and find trace of her, if possible. Imagine the excitement along the waterfront when, almost coincident with the +sighting of the <i>Noa-Noa</i>, the <i>Saint Michel</i> appeared, pulled by the <i>Cholita</i>. Familiar faces of passengers appeared on her deck as she made fast to the quay, holding cigarettes as if they had waked +up after a night in their own beds. The <i>Cholita</i> had found the <i>Saint Michel</i> at the Marquesas Islands, whither she had drifted after losing her rudder on a rock. After a month lying inert at the Marquesas, +the <i>Cholita</i> had taken hold and dragged the crippled <i>Saint</i> back to Papeete. + +<p id="d0e2444">The joy and surprise of the families and friends of the passengers and the crew must have the vent usual here, and what with +the <i>Noa-Noa’s</i> crew of amateur sailors, firemen, and yachtsman, and six licensed captains, taking the places of the strikers, the town was +filled with pleasure-seekers. A high mass of thanksgiving at the cathedral was followed by a day of explanations, anathemas +upon the owners of the <i>Saint Michel</i>, and the striking labor-unions, and of music, dancing, and toasts. + +<p id="d0e2453">New Year’s eve, two picture shows, hulas, and the festivities <span id="d0e2455" class="pageno">page 110</span>of the wedding of Cowan, the prize-fighter, brought in a throng from the districts to add to the Papeete population and the +voyagers. + +<p id="d0e2458">The streets were a blaze of colored gowns and flower-crowned girls and women. The quays were lined with singing and playing +country folk. Small boats and canoes were arriving every few minutes during the afternoon with natives who preferred the water +route to the Broom Road. Cowan was a favorite boxer, and shortly to face the noted Christchurch Kid, of Christchurch, New +Zealand, whose fist was described on the bill-boards as “a rock thrown by a mighty slinger.” Cowan, a half-Polynesian, was +beloved for his island blood, and was marrying into a Tahitian family of note and means. The nuptials at the church were preceded +by a triumphal procession of the bride and groom in an automobile, with a score of other cars following, the entire party +gorgeously adorned with wreaths,—<i>hei</i> in Tahitian,—and the vehicles lavishly decorated with sugar-cane and bamboo tassels. The band of the cinema led the <i>entourage</i>, and played a free choice of appropriate music, “Lohengrin” before the governor’s palace, and “There’ll be a Hot Time in +the Old Town To-night” as they passed Lovaina’s. The company sang lustily, and toasts to the embracing couple were drunk generously +from spouting champagne-bottles as the cortege circled the principal streets. + +<p id="d0e2467">There was rare life at Lovaina’s, for besides all the diners in ordinary and extraordinary in the <i>salle-à-manger</i>, Stevens, the London stockbroker, had a retired table set for the American, British, and German consuls, and their wives. +The highest two officials of France in <span id="d0e2472" class="pageno">page 111</span>this group, Messieurs, l’Inspecteurs des Colonies, were there, eating solemnly alone, as demanded by their exalted rank, and +their mission of criticism. They glanced down often at their broad bosoms to see that their many orders were on straight, +to note the admiration of lesser officialdom, and to make eyes at the women. Their long and profuse black beards were hidden +by their napkins, which all Frenchmen of parts hereabouts tuck in their collars, and draw up to their mouths, a precaution +which, when omitted, is seen to have been founded on an etiquette utilitarian and esthetic. + +<p id="d0e2475">The company was complex. At a table opposite me sat the <i>juge inferieur</i> and the daughter of the Chinese cook at the Hotel Central, a smart, slender woman with burning eyes, and with them, in full +uniform, were two French civil officials, who wore, as customary, clothes like soldiers. One unfamiliar with their regalia +might mistake, as I did, a pharmacist for an admiral. Mary, the cook’s half-Tahitian daughter, was in elaborate European dress, +with a gilded barret of baroque pearls in her copious, ebon tresses, and with red kid shoes buckled in silver and blister +pearls. + +<p id="d0e2481">The son of Prince Hinoe, who would have been the King of Tahiti had the dynasty continued to reign, had a dozen chums at a +table, oafs from seventeen to twenty, and with the fish course they began to chant. The captain of the <i>Saint Michel</i> was with Woronick, the pearl-buyer, who had made the fearful trip to the Marquesas with him. There was Heezonorweelee, as +the natives call the Honorable Walter Williams, the most famous dentist within five thousand miles, and the most distinguished +white man of Tahiti; Landers; Polonsky; <span id="d0e2486" class="pageno">page 112</span>David; McHenry; Schlyter, the Swedish tailor; Jones and Mrs. Jones, the husband, head of a book company in Los Angeles; a +Barbary Coast singer and her man; a demirep of Chicago and her loved one; three Tahitian youths with wreaths; the post-office +manager, and with him the surgeon of the hospital; a notary’s clerk, the governor’s private secretary; the administrateur +of the Marquesas Islands, Margaret, Lurline and Mathilde, Lena, and Lucy, lovely part-Tahitian girls who clerked in stores; +the Otoman, chauffeur for Polonsky; English tourists; Nance, the California capitalist; and others. + +<p id="d0e2489">Curses upon <i>Saint Michel,</i> threats of damage suits for fright and delay, laughable stories of the mistakes of the volunteer crew of the <i>Noa-Noa;</i> discussions of the price of copra, mingled with the chants of the native feasters and ribald tales. The Tiare girls, all +color and sparkle, exchanged quips with the male diners, patted their shoulders, and gigglingly fought when they tried to +take them into their laps. + +<p id="d0e2498">In the open porch, Lovaina, gaily adorned, her feet bare, but a wreath of ferns on her head, sped the dishes and the wine. +She kept the desserts before her and cut portions to suit the quality of her liking for each patron. + +<p id="d0e2501"> +<i>“Taporo e taata au ahu”</i> said Atupu. + +<p id="d0e2507">“The lime and the tailor,” that means, and identified Landers and Schlyter. Landers was the “lime” because a former partner +of his establishment exported limes, and Landers succeeded to his nickname. Landers and Schlyter were good customers, so they +got larger slices of dried-apple pie. + +<p id="d0e2510">Chappe-Hall, being bidden farewell on his leaving for Auckland, was apostrophizing Tahiti in verse, all the <span id="d0e2512" class="pageno">page 113</span>stanzas ending in “And the glory of her eyes over all.” There were bumpers and more, and “Bottoms up,” until a slat-like American +woman bounced off the veranda with her sixth course uneaten to complain to Lovaina that her hotel was no place for a Christian +or a lady. Lovaina almost wept with astonishment and grief, but kept the champagne moving toward the Chappe-Hall table as +fast as it could be cooled, meanwhile assuring the scandalized guest that nothing undecorous ever happened in the Tiare Hotel, +but that it were better it did than that young men should go to evil resorts for their outbursts. + +<p id="d0e2515">“My place respectable,” Lovaina said dignifiedly. “I don’ ’low no monkey bizeness. Drinkin’ wine custom of Tahiti. Make little +fun, no harm. If they go that Cocoanut House, get in bad.” + +<p id="d0e2518">Lovaina told me all about it. She was quite hurt at the aspersions upon her home, and entered the dining-room in a breathing +spell to sit at my table, a rather unusual honor I deeply felt. I pledged my love for her in Pol Roger, but she would have +nothing but water. + +<p id="d0e2521">“I no drink these times,” she explained. “Maybe some day I do again. Make fat people too much bigger. That flat woman from +’Nited States, ain’t she funny? I think missionary.” + +<p id="d0e2524">From the screened area in which the consuls dined with the broker one heard: + +<p id="d0e2527">“Here’s to the king, God bless him!” <i>“Hoch der Kaiser!”</i> +<i>“Vive la Republique!”</i> “The Stars and Stripes!” as the glasses were emptied by the consuls and their wives and host. + +<p id="d0e2536">Lovaina had taken up the rug in the parlor, and a <span id="d0e2538" class="pageno">page 114</span>graphophone ground out the music for dancing. Ragtime records brought out the Otoman, a San Franciscan, bald and coatless. +He took the floor with Mathilde, a chic, petite, and graceful half-caste, and they danced the <i>maxixe</i>. David glided with Margaret, Landers led out Lucy, and soon the room was filled with whirling couples. A score looked on +and sipped champagne, the serving girls trying to fill the orders and lose no moment from flirtation. On the camphor-wood +chest four were seated in two’s space. + +<p id="d0e2544">When midnight tolled from the cathedral tower, there was an uncalled-for speech from a venerable traveler who apparently was +not sure of the date or the exact nature of the fête: + +<p id="d0e2547">“Fellow-exiles and natives bujus Teetee. We are gathered together this Fourth of July—” + +<p id="d0e2550">Cries of “<i>Altai</i>” “<i>Ce n’est-pas vrai</i>!” “Shove in your high! It’s New Year!” + +<p id="d0e2559">”—to cel’brate the annivers’ry of the death of that great man—” + +<p id="d0e2562">Yells of “Sit down!” “Olalala!” “<i>Aita maitai</i>!” and the venerable orator took his seat. He was once a governor of a territory under President Harrison, and now lived off +his pension, shaky, <i>sans</i> teeth, <i>sans</i> hair, but never <i>sans</i> speech. + +<p id="d0e2577">The Englishmen and Americans clattered glasses and said “Happy New Year!” and the Tahitians: “<i>Rupe-rupe tatou iti</i>! <i>I teienei matahiti api</i>!” “Hurrah for all of us! Good cheer for the New Year!” + +<p id="d0e2588">Monsieur Lontane, second in command of the police, arrived just in time to drink the <i>bonne année</i>. He executed a <i>pas seul</i>. He mimicked a great one of France. <span id="d0e2596" class="pageno">page 114</span>He drank champagne from a bottle, a clear four inches between its neck and his, and not a drop spilled. + +<p id="d0e2599">Lovaina sat on her bench in the porch and marked down the debits: +<p> +<table width="100%"> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top">Fat face............</td> +<td valign="top">3 Roederer..........</td> +</tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top">New Doctor..........</td> +<td valign="top">5 champag...........</td> +</tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top">Hair on nose........</td> +<td valign="top">2 champ.............</td> +</tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top">Willi...............</td> +<td valign="top">4 pol..............</td> +</tr> +</table> + + +<p id="d0e2641">The electric lights went out. There was a dreadful flutter among the girls. Some one went to the piano and began to play, +“Should Auld Acquaintance be Forgot,” and the Americans and English sang, the French humming the air. The wine flattened in +the glasses and open bottles, but no one cared. They gathered in the garden, where the perfume of the tiare scented the night, +and the stars were a million lamps sublime in the sky. Song followed song, English and French, and when the lazy current pulsated +again, the ball was over. + +<p id="d0e2644">We walked to the beach, Nance and I. + +<p id="d0e2647">“It’s hell how this place gets hold of you,” said Nance, who had shot pythons in Paraguay and had a yacht in Los Angeles harbor. +“I dunno, it must be the cocoanuts or the breadfruit.” + +<p id="d0e2650">Walking back alone through a by-path, I saw the old folks sitting on their verandas and the younger at dalliance in the many +groves. Voices of girls called me: + +<p id="d0e2653"> +<i>“Haere me ne!”</i> “Come to us!” <i>“Hoere mai u nei ite po ia u nei!”</i> + +<p id="d0e2662">The <i>Himene tatou Arearea</i> of our Moorea expedition came from many windows, the accordions sweet and <span id="d0e2667" class="pageno">page 116</span>low, and the subdued chant in sympathy with the mellow hour. “The soft lasceevious stars leered from these velvet skies.” + +<p id="d0e2670">Lovaina had gone to bed, but, with the lights on again, patrons of the prize-fight had dropped in. The Christchurch Kid had +beaten Teaea, a native, the match being a preliminary clearing of the ground before the signal encounter with the bridegroom. + +<p id="d0e2673">The glass doors of the <i>salle-à-manger</i> were broken in a playful scuffle between the whiskered doctor of the hospital, and Afa, the majordomo of the Tiare. The medical +man ordered five bottles of champagne, and, putting them in his immense pockets, returned to his table and opened them all +at once. He had them spouting about him while their fizz lasted, and then drank most of their contents. He then threw all +the crockery of his table to the roadway, and Afa wrestled him into a better state, during which process the doors were smashed. +When the bombilation became too fearful, Lovaina called out from her bed: + +<p id="d0e2679">“Make smaller noise! Nobody is asleep!” + +<p id="d0e2682">At two in the morning the gendarmes advised the last revelers to retire, and the Tiare became quiet. But Atupu slept in a +little alcove by the bar, and any one in her favor had but to enter her chamber and pull her shapely leg to be served in case +of dire need. + +<p id="d0e2685">The incidents of the departure of the <i>Noa-Noa</i> that day for San Francisco will live in the annals of Papeete. Its calamitous happenings are “in the archives.” I have the +word of the secretary-general of the Etablissments Français de l’Oceanie for that, and in the saloons and coffee-houses they +talked loudly of the “<i>bataille entre <span id="d0e2692" class="pageno">page 117</span>les cochons Anglais et les héros les Français et les Tahitiens</i>.” + +<p id="d0e2696">It was a battle that would have rejoiced the heart of Don Quixote, and that redoubtable knight had his prototype here in the +van of it, the second in command of the police of Papeete, M. Lontane, the mimic of the Tiare celebration. + +<p id="d0e2699">The <i>Noa-Noa’s</i> amateur crew of wretched beach-combers, farm laborers, and impossible firemen, stokers, and stewards, a pitiable set, were +about the waterfront all day, dirty, dressed in hot woolen clothes, bedraggled and as drunk as their money would allow. The +ship was down to leave at three-thirty o’clock, but it was four when the last bag of copra was aboard. There were few passengers, +and those who booked here were dismayed at the condition of the passageways, the cabins, and the decks. The crowd of “scabs,” +untrained white sailors, and coal passers was supplemented by Raratonga natives, lounging about the gangway and sitting on +the rails. On the wharf hundreds of people had gathered as usual to see the liner off. Lovaina was there in a pink lace dress, +seated in her carriage, with Vava at the horse’s head. Prince Hinoe had gathered about him a group of pretty girls, to whom +he was promising a feast in the country. All the tourists, the loafers, the merchants, and the schooner crews were there, +too, and the iron-roofed shed in which it is forbidden to smoke was filled with them. The <i>Noa-Noa</i> blew and blew her whistle, but still she did not go. The lines to the wharf were loosened, the captain was on the bridge, +the last farewells were being called and waved, but there was delay. Word was spread that some of the crew were <span id="d0e2707" class="pageno">page 118</span>missing, and as at the best the vessel was short-handed, it had to tarry. + +<p id="d0e2710">At last came three of the missing men. They, too, had welcomed the New Year, and their gait was as at sea when the ship rises +and falls on the huge waves. They wheeled in a barrow a mate whose mispoise made self-locomotion impossible. The trio danced +on the wharf, sang a chantey about “whisky being the life of man,” and declared they would stay all their lives in Tahiti; +that the “bloody hooker could bleedin’ well” go without them. They were ordered on board by M. Lontane, with two strapping +Tahitian gendarmes at his back. + +<p id="d0e2713">If there are any foreigners the average British roustabout hates it is French gendarmes, and the ruffians were of a mind to +“beat them up.” They raised their fists in attitudes of combat, and suddenly what had been a joyous row became a troublesome +incident. + +<p id="d0e2716"> +<i>Sacré bleu</i>! those scoundrels of English to menace the uniformed patriots of the French republic! The second in command drew a revolver, +and pointing at the hairy breast of the leader of the Noa-Noans, shouted: “<i>Au le vapeur! Diable</i>! What, you whisky-filled pigs, you will resist the law?” + +<p id="d0e2725">He took off his helmet and handed it to one of the native policemen while he unlimbered the revolver more firmly in the direction +of the seamen. The sailor shrank back in bewilderment. Guns were unknown in shore squabbles. + +<p id="d0e2728">“I’ll ’ave the British Gov’ment after ye,” roared the leader. “I’ll write to the Sydney papers. Ye’ve pulled a gun in me face.” +<span id="d0e2730" class="pageno">page 119</span> + +<p id="d0e2733">Steadily and with some good nature the Tahitian officers pushed the trio toward the gangway and up it. Once aboard, the gangway +was hoisted, the pilot clambered up the side, and it seemed as if the liner was away. But no; the three recalcitrants jumped +on the bulwarks, and joined by a dozen others, yelled defiance at the authorities. As the <i>Noa-Noa</i> gradually drew out these cries became more definite, and the honor of France and of all Frenchmen was assailed in the most +ancient English Billingsgate. Gestures of frightful significance added to the insults, and these not producing retorts in +kind from the second in command and the populace, a shower of limes began to fall upon them. + +<p id="d0e2739">Sacks of potatoes, lettuce-heads, yams, and even pineapples, deck cargo, were broken open by the infuriated crew to hurl at +the police. The crowd on the wharf rushed for shelter behind posts and carriages, the horses pranced and snorted, and M. Lontane +leaped to the fore. He advanced to the edge of the quay, and in desperate French, of which his adversaries understood not +a word, threatened to have them dragged from their perches and sent to New Caledonia. + +<p id="d0e2742">A well-aimed lime squashed on his cheek, and with a <i>“Sapristi!”</i> he fled behind a stack of boxes. The riot became general, the roustabouts heaving iron bars, pieces of wood, and anything +they could find. No officer of the <i>Noa-Noa</i> said a word to stop them, evidently fearing a general strike of the crew, and when the missiles cut open the head of a native +stevedore and fell even among the laughing girls, the courtesies began to be returned. Coal, iron nuts, stones, and other +serious projectiles were thrown with a hearty good-will, and soon the crew <span id="d0e2750" class="pageno">page 120</span>and the passengers of the <i>Noa-Noa</i> were scuttling for safety. + +<p id="d0e2756">The storm of French and Tahitian adjectives was now a cyclone, Tahitian girls, their gowns stained by the fruity and leguminous +shot of the Australasians, seized lumps of coal or coral, and took the van of the shore legions. Atupu struck the leader of +the <i>Noa-Noa</i> snipers in the nose with a rock, and her success brought a paean of praise from all of us. + +<p id="d0e2762">The <i>entente cordiale</i> with Britain was sundered in a minute. The mêlée grew into a fierce battle, and only the increasing distance of the vessel +from shore stopped the firing, the last shots falling into the lagoon. + +<p id="d0e2768">The second in command had been reinforced by the first in command, and now, summoned by courier, appeared the secretary-general +of the Etablissements Françaises de l’Oceanie, bearded and helmeted, white-faced and nervous, throwing his arms into the air +and shrieking, “<i>Qu’ est-que ce que ça</i>? Is this war? Are we human, or are these savages?” + +<p id="d0e2774">Lovaina, in the rear of whose carriage I had taken refuge, exclaimed: + +<p id="d0e2777">“They say Tahiti people is savage! Why this crazy people must be finished. Is this business go on?” + +<p id="d0e2780">“<i>Non, non</i>!” replied the secretary-general, with patriotic anger, “We French are long suffering, but <i>c’est assez maintenant</i>.” + +<p id="d0e2789">He spoke to the first in command, and an order was shouted to M. Wilms, the pilot, to leave the <i>Noa-Noa</i>. That official descended into his boat and returned to the quay, while the liner hovered a hundred yards away, the captain +afraid to come nearer, fearful of leaving port <span id="d0e2794" class="pageno">page 121</span>without expert guidance, and more so that the crew might renew the combat. + +<p id="d0e2797">The secretary-general conferred with the private secretary of the governor, the first and second in command, and several old +residents. They would apply to the British consul for warrants for the arrest of the ruffianly marksmen, they would wrench +them from the rails, and sentence them to long imprisonments. + +<p id="d0e2800">So for an hour more the steamship puffed and exhausted her steam, while the high officials paced the wharf shaking their fists +at the besotted stokers, who shook theirs back. + +<p id="d0e2803">The stores, closing at five o’clock, sent their quota of clerks to swell the mob at the quay, and the “rubberneck wagon,” +alert to earn fares, took the news of the fray into the country, and hauled in scores of excited provincials, who had vague +ideas that <i>la guerre</i> was on. The wedding party, only six motor-cars full on the second day, all in wreaths of tuberoses and wild-cherry rind, +the bride still in her point-lace veil, and the groom and all the guests cheered with the champagne they had drunk, drove +under the shed from the suburbs and honked their horns, to the horror of the secretary-general and the others. + +<p id="d0e2809">The situation was now both disciplinary and diplomatic. + +<p id="d0e2812"> +<i>“C’est tres serieux,”</i> whispered the secretary to the governor’s private secretary, a dapper little man whose flirting had made his wife a Niobe +and alarmed the husbands and fathers of many French <i>dames et filles.</i> + +<p id="d0e2821">“Serious, monsieur?” said the private secretary, twisting his black wisp of a mustache, “it is more than serious <span id="d0e2823" class="pageno">page 122</span>now; it is no longer the French Establishments of Oceania. It is between Great Britain and France.” + +<p id="d0e2826">A peremptory order was given to drive every one off the quay, and though the crowd chaffed the police, the sweep of wharf +was left free for the marchings and counter-marchings of the big men. + +<p id="d0e2829">“What would be the result? Would the entire British population of the ship resist the taking away of any of the crew? Oh, +if the paltry French administration at Paris had not removed the companies of soldiers who until recently had been the pride +of Papeete! And crown of misfortune, the gun-boat, sole guardian of French honor in these seas, was in Australia for repairs. +<i>Eh bien, n’importe</i>! Every Frenchman was a soldier. Did not Napoleon say that? <i>Nom de pipe</i>!” + +<p id="d0e2838">Wilfrid Baillon, a cow-boy from British Columbia, was standing near me with his arms folded on his breast and a look of stern +determination on his sunburned face. + +<p id="d0e2841">“We must look sharp,” he said to me. “We may all have to stand together, we whites, against these French frog-eaters.” + +<p id="d0e2844">The tension was extreme. The warrants had not come from the British consul, and there seemed no disposition on the <i>Noa-Noa</i> to save the face of <i>la belle republique</i>, for the blackened and blackguardly stokers still dangled their legs over the rail and made motions which caused the officials +to shudder and the ladies to shut their eyes. + +<p id="d0e2853">The agent of the vessel in Papeete, an American, appeared. He talked long and earnestly with the secretary-general and the +first and second, and to lend even <span id="d0e2855" class="pageno">page 123</span>a darker color to the scene, the <i>procureur-général</i>, the Martinique black, tall, protuberant, mopping his bald head, took the center of the conclave. Noses were lowered and +brought together, feet were stamped, hands were wiggled behind backs, and right along the American, the agent, talked and +talked. + +<p id="d0e2861">They demurred, they spat on the boards, they lifted their hands aloft—and then they ordered the pilot to return to the <i>Noa-Noa</i>, and that vessel, whistling long and relievedly, pointed her nose toward the opening in the reef. + +<p id="d0e2867"> +<i>Mon Dieu!</i> the suspense was over. The people melted toward their homes and the restaurants, for it was nearly seven o’clock. I drifted +into the knot about the officials. + +<p id="d0e2873">“It is in the archives,” said the secretary-general. “It will go down in history. That is enough.” + +<p id="d0e2876">The delightful M. Lontane, in khaki riding breeches,—he, as all police, ride bicycles—his khaki helmet tipped rakishly over +his cigarette, blew a ringlet. + +<p id="d0e2879">“<i>C’est comme ça.</i> We would not press our victory,” he said gallantly. “We French are generous. We have hearts.” + +<p id="d0e2885">The secretary-general, the <i>procureur-général</i>, the first in command and the private secretary, sighted the carriage of the governor, who had not appeared until the <i>Noa-Noa</i> was out of the lagoon, and they went to tell him of the great affair. + +<p id="d0e2894">The agent of the line, grim and unsmiling, climbed to the wide veranda of the Cercle Bougainville, and ordered a Scotch and +siphon. + +<p id="d0e2897">“There she goes,” he said to me, and pointed to the <span id="d0e2899" class="pageno">page 124</span>steamer streaking through the reef gate. “There she goes, and I’m bloody well satisfied.” + +<p id="d0e2902">At tea the next afternoon the British consul cast a new light on the international incident. He was playing bridge with the +governor and others when the demand for the warrants was brought. + +<p id="d0e2905">“The blighters interrupted our rubber,” said the consul, “and the governor was exceedingly put out. I told them the <i>Noa-Noa</i> couldn’t proceed without the stokers, and as it carries the French mail, they patched it up to arrest them when they return. +We quite lost track of the game for a few minutes.” + +<p id="d0e2911">But the cruel war would not down. There was not a good feeling between the English and French in Tahiti. A slight opposition +cropped out often in criticism expressed to Americans or to Tahitians, or to each other’s own people. New Zealand governs +the Cook group, of which Raratonga is the principal island. Comparisons of sanitation, order, neatness, and businesslike management +of these islands, with the happy-go-lucky administration of the Society, Paumotus, Marquesas, and Austral archipelagoes, owned +by the French, were frequent by the English. The French shrugged their shoulders. + +<p id="d0e2914">“The Tahitians are happy, and we send millions of francs to aid France,” they said. “The English talk always of neatness and +golf links and cricket-grounds. <i>Eh bien</i>! There are other and better things. And as for drink, <i>oh, la, la</i>! Our sour wines could not fight one round of the English <i>boxe</i> with whisky and gin and that awful ale.” + +<p id="d0e2926">The French residents protested at the missiles of the <span id="d0e2928" class="pageno">page 125</span>crew and the <i>laissez-faire</i> of the <i>Noa-Noa</i> officers, and the British consul received a letter from the governor in which the affair of the riot was revived in an absurd +manner. + +<p id="d0e2937">One might understand M. Lontane, second in command of the police forces,—six men and himself,—magnifying the row between the +tipsy stokers and his battalions, but to have the governor, who was a first-rate hand at bridge, and even knew the difference +between a straight and a flush, putting down in black and white, sealed with the seal of the <i>Republique Française</i>, and signed with his own hand, that “France had been insulted by the actions of the savages of the <i>Noa-Noa</i>,” was worthy only of the knight of La Mancha. + +<p id="d0e2946">So thought the consul, but he was a diplomat, his adroitness gained not only in the consular ranks, but also in Persia as +a secretary of legation, and in many a fever-stricken and robber-ridden port of the Near and Far East. He pinned upon his +most obstreperous uniform the medal won by merit, straddled a dangling sword, helmeted his head, and with an interpreter, +that the interview might lack nothing of formality, called upon the governor at his palace. + +<p id="d0e2949">He told him that the letter of complaint had roused his wonderment, for, said his British Majesty’s representative, “There +can be no serious result, diplomatically or locally, of this Donnybrook Fair incident. In a hundred ports of the world where +war-ships and merchant ships go, their crews for scores of years have fought with the police. Besides, I am informed that +Monsieur Lontane put a revolver against the stomach of one of the stokers, and that provoked the nastiness. Until then it +<span id="d0e2951" class="pageno">page 126</span>had been uncouth mirth caused by the vile liquor sold by the saloons licensed by the Government, and against the Papeete regulations +that no more intoxicants shall be sold to a man already drunk. But when this British citizen, scum of Sydney or Glasgow as +he might be, saw the deadly weapon, he felt aggrieved. This revolver practice is all too common on the part of Monsieur Lontane. +Six such complaints I have had in as many months. As to that part of your letter that the crew of the <i>Noa-Noa</i> not be allowed to land here on its return to Papeete, I agree with you, but it will be for you to enforce this prohibition.” + +<p id="d0e2957">It was agreed that on the day the <i>Noa-Noa</i> arrived on her return trip, all gendarmes and available guard be summoned from the country to preserve order, and that, as +asked in the letter, the consul demand that the captain of the steamship punish the rioters. + +<p id="d0e2963">And all this being done through an interpreter, and the consul having unlimbered his falchion and removed his helmet, he and +the governor had an absinthe frappé and made a date for a bridge game. + +<p id="d0e2966"> +<i>“Te tamai i te taporo i te arahu i te umaru,”</i> the natives termed the skirmish. “The conflict of the limes, the coal, and the potatoes.” A new <i>himene</i> was improvised about it, and I heard the girls of the <i>Maison des Cocotiers</i> chanting it as I went to Lovaina’s to dinner. + +<p id="d0e2978">It was something like this in English: + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e2983">“Oh, the British men they drank all day +<br id="d0e2986">And threw the limes and iron. +<br id="d0e2989">The French in fear they ran away. +<br id="d0e2992">The brave Tahitians alone stood firm.” + +<p id="d0e2996">And there were many more verses. +<span id="d0e2998" class="pageno">page 127</span> + +<h1 id="d0e3002">Chapter VIII</h1> +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e3009">Gossip in Papeete—Moorea, a near-by island—A two-days’ excursion there—Magnificent scenery from the sea—Island of fairy folk—Landing +and preparation for the feast—The First Christian mission—A canoe on the lagoon—Beauties of the sea-garden. + +</div> +<p id="d0e3013">My acquaintances of the Cercle Bougainville, Landers, Polonsky, McHenry, Llewellyn, David, and Lying Bill, were at this season +bent on pleasure. Landers, the head of a considerable business in Australasia, with a Papeete branch, had time heavy on his +hands. Lying Bill and McHenry were seamen-traders ashore until their schooner sailed for another swing about the French groups +of islands. Llewellyn and David were associates in planting, curing, and shipping vanilla-beans, but were roisterers at heart, +and ever ready to desert their office and warehouse for feasting or gaming. Polonsky was a speculator in exchange and an investor +in lands, and was reputed to be very rich. He, too, would leave his strong box unlocked in his hurry if cards or wassail called. +These same white men were sib to all their fellows in the South Seas except a few sour men whom avarice, satiety, or a broken +constitution made fearful of the future and thus heedful of the decalogue. + +<p id="d0e3016">These merry men attended to business affairs for a few hours of mornings, unless the night before had been devoted too arduously +to Bacchus, and the remainder of the day they surrendered to clinking glasses, converse, Rabelasian tales, and flirting with +the gay Tahitian women in the cinemas or at dances. There was a tolerance, <span id="d0e3018" class="pageno">page 128</span>almost a standard, of such actions among the men of Tahiti, though of course consuls, high officials, a banker or two of the +Banque de l’Indo-Chine, and a few lawyers or speculators sacrificed their flesh to their ambitions or hid their peccadillos. + +<p id="d0e3021">A chorus of wives and widows—there were no old maids in Tahiti—condemned scathingly the conduct of the voluptuaries, and the +preachers of the gospel lashed them in conversation or sermon now and then. But on the whole there was not in Tahiti any of +the spirit of American towns and villages, which wrote scarlet letters, ostracized offenders against moral codes, and made +Philistinism a creed. Gossip was constant, and while sometimes caustic, more often it partook of curiosity and mere trading +of information or salacious prattle. + +<p id="d0e3024">Tahitian women concealed nothing. If they won the favors of a white man, they announced it proudly, and held nothing sacred +of the details. One’s peculiarities, weaknesses, idiosyncrasies, physical or spiritual blemishes, all became delectable morsels +in the mouths of one’s intimates and their acquaintances. One’s passions, actions, and whisperings were as naked to the world +as the horns on a cow. Every one knew the import of Polonsky’s dorsal tattooings, that Pastor —— had a case of gin in his +house, and that the governor, after a bottle or two of champagne, had squeezed so tightly the waist of an English lady with +whom he waltzed that she had cried out in pain. Though bavardage accounted for much of the general knowledge of every one’s +affairs, there was an uncanny mystery in the speed at which a particular secret spread. One spoke of the bamboo telegraph. +<span id="d0e3026" class="pageno">page 129</span> + +<p id="d0e3029">It was proposed at the Cercle Bougainville that we have a series of jaunts to points some distance away. I was promised that +I would see fully the way my acquaintances enjoyed themselves in the open. Llewellyn was given charge of the first excursion. +It was to Moorea, an island a dozen miles or so to the northwest from Papeete, and which, with Tetiaria and Mehetia and Tahiti, +constitute <i>les îles de Vent</i>, or Windward Islands of the Society archipelago. + +<p id="d0e3035">In clear weather one cannot look out to sea from Papeete, to the north or west, without Moorea’s weird grandeur confronting +one. The island of fairy-folk with golden hair, it was called in ancient days by the people of other islands. A third of the +size of Tahiti, it was, until the white man came, the abode of a romantic and gallant clan. Eimeo, it was called by the first +whites, but the name of Moorea clings to it now. Over it and behind it sets the sun of Papeete, and it is associated with +the tribal conflicts, the religion, and the journeys of the Tahitians. Now it is tributary to this island in every way, and +small boats run to and from with passengers and freight almost daily. + +<p id="d0e3038">We met at seven o’clock of a Saturday morning at the point on the coral embankment where the <i>Potii Moorea</i> was made fast, the gasolene-propelled cargo-boat which we had rented for the voyage. A hundred were gathered about a band +of musicians in full swing when I appeared at the rendezvous on the prick of the hour. The bandsmen, all natives but one, +wore garlands of <i>purau</i>, the scarlet hibiscus, and there was an atmosphere of abandonment to pleasure about them and the party. + +<p id="d0e3047">A schooner swung at her moorings near by, under a <span id="d0e3049" class="pageno">page 130</span>glowing, flamboyant tree, and her crew was aboard in expectation of sailing at any hour. Another small craft, a sloop, was +preparing to sail for Moorea, also. She was crowded with passengers and cargo, and all about the rail hung huge bunches of +<i>feis</i>, the mountain bananas. Most of the people aboard had come from the market-place with fruit and fish and vegetables to cook +when they arrived at home. A strange habit of the Tahitians under their changed condition is to take the line of least resistance +in food, eating in Chinese stores, or buying bits in the market, whereas, when they governed themselves, they had an exact +and elaborate formula of food preparation, and a certain ceremoniousness in despatching it. Only feasts bring a resumption +nowadays of the ancient ways. + +<p id="d0e3055">The crews of the schooner and of the other Moorea boat besides our own had a swarm of friends awaiting the casting off. Even +a journey of a few hours meant a farewell ceremony of many minutes. They embrace one another and are often moved to tears +at a separation of a few days. When one of them goes aboard a steamship for America or Australasia, the family and friends +enact harrowing scenes at the quay. They are sincerely moved at the thought of their loved ones putting a long distance between +them, and I saw a score of young and old sobbing bitterly when the <i>Noa-Noa</i> left for San Francisco though they stormed the stokers lustily when aroused. Their life is so simple in these beloved islands +that the dangers of the mainland are exaggerated in their minds, and to the old the civilization of a big city appears as +a specter of horrible mien. The electric cars, the crowds, the murders they read of and are told of, <span id="d0e3060" class="pageno">page 131</span>the bandits in the picture-shows, the fearful stranglers of Paris, the lynchers, the police, who in the films are always beating +the poor, as in real life, the pickpockets, and the hospitals where willy-nilly they render one unconscious and remove one’s +vermiform appendix—all these are nightmares to the aborigines whose relations are departing. + +<p id="d0e3063">When heads were counted, Landers’s was missing, and jumping into Llewellyn’s carriage, an old-fashioned phaëton, I drove to +Lovaina’s, where he occupied the room next to mine in the detached house in the animal-yard. He was sound asleep, having played +poker and drunk until an hour before; but when I awoke him I could not but admire the serenity of the man. His body was in +the posture in which he had lain down, and his breathing was as a child’s. + +<p id="d0e3066">“Landers, get up!” I shouted from the doorway. He opened his eyes, regarded me intently, and without a word went to the shower-bath +by the camphor-wood chest, returned quickly, and dressed himself. I fancied him a man who would have answered his summons +before a firing-squad as calmly. He had a perfection of ease in his movements; not fast, for he was very big, but with never +an unnecessary gesture nor word. He was one of the finest animals I had ever seen, and fascinating to men and women of all +kinds. + +<p id="d0e3069">The <i>Potii Morea</i> had taken on her passengers when we returned, and we put off from the sea-wall at once, with two barrels of bottled beer, +and half a dozen demi-johns of wine prominent on the small deck. Often the sea between Tahiti and Moorea is rough in the daytime, +and passage is made at night to avoid accident, but we <span id="d0e3074" class="pageno">page 132</span>were given a smooth way, and could enjoy the music. We sat or lay on the after-deck while the bandsmen on the low rail or +hatch maintained a continuous concert. + +<p id="d0e3077">During the several days between our first planning the trip and the going, a song had been written in honor of the junketing, +and this they played scores of times before we set foot again in Papeete. It was entitled: “<i>Himene Tatou Arcarea</i>,” which meant, “Our Festal Song.” + +<p id="d0e3083">One easily guessed the meaning of the word <i>himene</i>. The Polynesians’ first singing was the hymns of the missionaries, and these they termed <i>himenes</i>; so that any song is a <i>himene</i>, and there is no other word for vocal music in common use. The words of the first stanza of the <i>“Himene Tatou Arearea”</i> and the refrain were: + +<p class="poetry"> +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e3102">I teie nei mahana +<br id="d0e3105">Te tere no oe e Hati +<br id="d0e3108"> Na te moana +<br id="d0e3111">Ohipa paahiahia +<br id="d0e3114"> No te au +<br id="d0e3117">Tei tupi i Moorea +<br id="d0e3120"> tamau a +<br id="d0e3123">Tera te au +<br id="d0e3126">Ei no te au +<br id="d0e3129">Tamua a—aue + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e3135">Ei reo no oe tau here +<br id="d0e3138">I te pii raa mai +<br id="d0e3141">Aue oe Tamarii Tahiti te aroha e +<br id="d0e3144">A inu i te pia arote faarari + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e3150">Faararirari ta oe Tamarii Tahiti +<br id="d0e3153">La, Li. + + +<span id="d0e3158" class="pageno">page 133</span> +<p id="d0e3160">Llewellyn put the words into approximate meaning in English, saying it was as difficult to translate these intimate and slang +phrases as it would be to put “Yankee Doodle” into French or German. His translation, as he wrote it on a scrap of paper, +was: + +<p class="poetry"> +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e3167">Let us sing joyful to-day +<br id="d0e3170">The journey over the sea! +<br id="d0e3173">It is a wonderful and agreeable thing to happen in Moorea, +<br id="d0e3176">Hold on to it! That is just it; +<br id="d0e3179">And because it is just it, +<br id="d0e3182">Why hold on to it! + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e3188">Your voice, O, Love, calls to us. +<br id="d0e3191">O Tahitian children, +<br id="d0e3194">Love to you! +<br id="d0e3197">Let us all drink beer, +<br id="d0e3200">And wet our throats! +<br id="d0e3203">And wet them again +<br id="d0e3206">To you, Tahitian Children! + + +<p id="d0e3211">The bandsmen were probably all related to Llewellyn, or at least they were of his mother’s clan. His own son and nephew by +unmarried mothers were among them; so that they were of our party, and yet on a different footing. They were our guests, we +paying them nothing, but they not paying their scot. They did not mingle with us intimately, although probably all the whites +except myself knew them well, and at times were guests at their houses outside Papeete. + +<p id="d0e3214">The air to which the <i>himene</i> was sung eluded me for long. It was, “Oh, You Beautiful Doll!” They had changed the tune, so that I had not recognized it. +The Tahitians have curious variations of European and American airs, of which they adapt many, carrying the <span id="d0e3219" class="pageno">page 134</span>thread of them, but differentiating enough to cause the hearer curiously mixed emotions. It was as if one heard a familiar +voice, and, advancing to grasp a friendly hand, found oneself facing a stranger. + +<p id="d0e3222">None of these island peoples originally had any music save monotones. In fact, in Hawaii, after the missionaries, <i>Kappelmeister</i> Berger, who came fifty years ago from Germany to Honolulu, was largely the maker of the songs we know now as distinctively +Hawaiian. He fitted German airs to Hawaiian words, composed music on native themes, and spontaneously and by adaptation he, +with others, gave a trend to the music of Hawaii nei that, though European in the main, is yet charmingly expressive of the +soft, sweet nature of the Hawaiians and of the contrasts of their delightful gaiety and innate melancholy. These native tongues +of the South Seas, with their many vowels and short words, seem to be made for singing. + +<p id="d0e3228">The voyage from Tahiti to Moorea was a two-hours’ panorama of magnificence and anomalism in the architecture of nature. Facing +my goal was Moorea, and behind me Tahiti, scenes of contrary beauty as the vessel changed the distance from me to them. Tahiti, +as I left it, was under the rays of the already high sun, a shimmering beryl, blue and yellow hues in the overpowering green +mass, and from the loftiest crags floating a long streamer-cloud, the cloud-banner of Tyndal. + +<p id="d0e3231">Moorea was the most astonishing sight upon the ocean that my eyes had ever gazed on. It was as if a mountain of black rock +had been carved by the sons of Uranus, the mighty Titans of old, into gigantic fortresses, which the lightnings, temblors, +and whirlwinds of the eons had <span id="d0e3233" class="pageno">page 135</span>rent into ruins. Its heights were not green like Tahiti’s, but bare and black, true children of the abysmal cataclysm which +in the time of the making of these oases of the sea thrust them up from the fires of the deep. + +<p id="d0e3236">Far up near the peak of Afareaitu, nearly a mile above the wave, in one of the colossal splinters of the basalt rocks, was +an eye, an immense round hole through which the sky shone. One saw it plainly from Tahiti. It was made by the giant Pai of +Tautira when he threw his spear a dozen miles and pierced a window in the solid granite that all might know his prowess. One +felt like a fool to rehearse to a Tahitian, telling one the tale, the statement of scientists that the embrasure had been +worn by water when Afareaitu was under the ocean during its million-year process of rising from the mud. It would be like +asking Flammarion, the wisest of French astronomers, to cease believing in the mystery of transubstantiation. He would smile +as would the autochthon. + +<p id="d0e3239">There was one picture in murky monochrome which never could be forgotten—a long sierra of broken pinnacles and crags which +had all the semblance of a weathered and dismantled castle. It stood out against the tender blue of the morning sky like the +ancient stronghold of some grisly robber-baron of medieval days; towers of dark sublimity, battlements whence invaders might +have been hurled a thousand feet to death, slender minarets, escarpments and rugged casements through which fleecy clouds +peeped from the high horizon. I once saw along the Mediterranean in Italy or France the fastness of a line of nobles, set +away up on a lonely hill, glowering, gloomy, and unpeopled, the refuge, mayhap, of <span id="d0e3241" class="pageno">page 136</span>the mountain goat, the abiding-place of bats and other creatures of the night. Moorea’s fortress conjured up the vision of +it, its wondrous ramparts and unscalable precipices strangely the counterpart of the Latin castle. + +<p id="d0e3244">But if one dropped one’s eyes from the hills, gone was the recollection of aught of Europe. There was a scene which only the +lavish colors of the tropics could furnish. The artist had spilled all his shades of green upon the palette, and so delicately +blended them that they melted into one another in a very enchantment of green. The valleys were but darker variants of the +emerald scheme. + +<p id="d0e3247">The confused mass of lofty ridges resolved into chasms and combes, dark, sunless ravines, moist with the spray of many waterfalls, +which nearer became velvet valleys of pale green, masses of foliage and light and shadow. The mountains of Moorea were only +half the height of Tahiti’s, but so artfully had they been piled in their fantastic arrangement that they seemed as high, +though they were entirely different in their impress upon the beholder. Tahiti from the sea was like a living being, so vivid, +so palpitating was its contour and its color, but Moorea, when far away, was cold and black, a beautiful, ravishing sight, +but like the avatars of a race of giants that had passed, a sepulcher or monument of their achievements and their end. + +<p id="d0e3250">As about Tahiti, a silver belt of reef took the rough caresses of the lazy rollers, and let the glistening surf break gently +on the beach. Along this wall of coral, hidden, but charted by its crown of foam, we ran for miles until we found the gateway—the +blue buckle of the belt, it appeared at a distance. + +<p id="d0e3253">Within the lagoon the guise of the island was more <span id="d0e3255" class="pageno">page 137</span>intimate. Little bays and inlets bounded themselves, and villages and houses sprang up from the tropic groves. The band, which +so far as I knew had not been silent a moment to awaken me from my adoration of the sculpture and painting of nature, now +poured out the “<i>Himene Tatou Arearea</i>” in token of our approaching landing, which was at Faatoai, the center of population. All its hundred or two inhabitants +were at the tiny dock to greet us, except the Chinese, who stayed in their stores. + +<p id="d0e3261">Headed by the pipe and accordion, the brass and wood, now playing “Onward, Christian Soldier,”—which, if one forgot the words, +was an especially carnal melody,—we tramped, singing a parody, through the street of Faatoai, and into a glorious cocoanut +grove, where breakfast was spread. + +<p id="d0e3264">A pavilion had been erected for our feasting. It was of bamboo and pandanus, the interior lined with tree ferns and great +bunches of scarlet oleander, and decorated with a deep fringe woven of hibiscus fiber. The roof was a thatch of pandanus and +breadfruit leaves, the whole structure, light, flimsy, but a gamut of golds and browns in color and cool and beautiful. + +<p id="d0e3267">A table fifty feet or longer was made of bamboo, the top of twenty half sections of the rounded tubes, polished by nature, +but slippery for bottles and glasses. A bench ran on both sides, and underfoot was the deep-green vegetation that covers every +foot of ground in Moorea except where repeated footfalls, wheels, or labor kills it, and which is the rich stamp of tropic +fertility. + +<p id="d0e3270">The barrels of beer were unheaded, the demi-johns from Bordeaux were uncorked, and from the opened <span id="d0e3272" class="pageno">page 138</span>bottles the sugary odor of Tahiti rum permeated the hot air. The captain of the <i>Potii Moorea</i> and the hired steward began to set the table for the <i>déjeuner</i> and to prepare the food, some of which was being cooked a few feet away by the steward’s kin. The guests disposed themselves +at ease to wait for the call to meat, the bandsmen lit cigarettes and tuned their instruments or talked over their program, +while they wetted their throats with the rum, as admonished by the “<i>Himene Tatou Arearea</i>.” + +<p id="d0e3284">I strolled down the road along the shore of the lagoon. Here was erected the first Christian church in this archipelago. British +Protestant missionaries, who had led a precarious life in Tahiti, and fled from it to Australia in fear of their lives, were +induced to come here and establish a mission. The King of Tahiti, Pomaré, had fled to Moorea after a desperate struggle with +opposing clans, and he welcomed the preachers as additions to his strength. The high priest of the district, Patii, collected +all the gods under his care, and they were burned, with a Bible in sight, to the exceeding fear of the native heathen, and +the holy anger of the other native clergy, who felt as Moses did when he saw his disciples worshiping a golden calf. On the +very spot I stood had been the <i>marae</i>, or Tahitian temple, in which the images were housed, now a rude heap of stones. A hundred years ago exactly this exchange +of deities had been made. Alas! it could not have been the true Christ who was brought to them, for they had flourished mightily +under Oro, and they began almost at once to die. Not peace, but a sword, a sword of horrors, of frightful ills, was brought +them. +<span id="d0e3289" class="pageno">page 139</span> + +<p id="d0e3292">There was a little canoe under a noble cocoanut-tree on the shell-strewn and crab-haunted coral beach, the roots of the palm +partly covered by the salt water, and partly by a tangle of lilac marine convolvulus. I pushed the tiny craft into the brine, +and paddled off on the still water of the shining lagoon. + +<p id="d0e3295">No faintest agitation of the surface withheld a clear view of the marvelous growths upon the bottom. I peered into a garden +of white and vari-colored flowers of stone, of fans and vases and grotesque shapes, huge sponges and waving bushes and stunted +trees. Fish of a score of shapes and of all colors of the spectrum wove in and out the branches and caverns of this wondrous +parterre. + +<p id="d0e3298">Past the creamy reef the purple ocean glittered in the nooning sun, while the motionless waters of the lagoon were turquoise +and bice near by and virescent in the distance. Looking toward the shore, the edge of milky coral sand met the green matting +of moss and grass, and then the eye marked the fields of sugar-cane, the forests of false coffee on which grew the vanilla-vines, +the groves of cocoanuts, and then the fast-climbing ridges and the glorious ravines, the misty heights and the grim crags. +<span id="d0e3300" class="pageno">page 140</span> + +<h1 id="d0e3304">Chapter IX</h1> +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e3311">The Arearea in the pavilion—Raw fish and baked feis—Llewellyn, the Master of the Revel; Kelly, the I.V.W., and His Himene—The +Upaupahura—Landers and Mamoe prove experts—The return to Papeete. + +</div> +<p id="d0e3315">The company was assembled in the pavilion when I walked through the streets of Faatoai again, and the food was on the bamboo +table. One might have thought the feast would have been spread on soft mats on the sward, as is the Tahitian custom, but these +whites are perverse and proud, and their legs unbending to such a position. + +<p id="d0e3318">We had raw fish cut up, with bowls of cocoanut sauce. It was delicious in taste, but raw fish is tough and at first hard to +chew until one becomes accustomed to the texture. Whites learn to crave it. + +<p id="d0e3321">This fish was cut in small pieces thicker and bigger than a domino, and steeped in fresh lime-juice for half a day. The sauce +was made by pouring a cup of seawater over grated cocoanuts and after several hours’ straining through the fiber of young +cocoanut shoots. It was thick, like rich cream. + +<p id="d0e3324">We had excellent raw oysters and raw clams on the shell, crabs stewed with a wine sauce that was delicious, fish, boiled chicken, +and baked pig. I had not tasted more appetizing food. It was all cooked in the native fashion on hot stones above or under +ground. We saw the pig’s disinterment. On the brink of the stream which flowed past the bower the oven had been made. <span id="d0e3326" class="pageno">page 141</span>The cooks, Moorea men, removed a layer of earth that had been laid on cocoa-palm leaves. This was the cover of the oven. Immediately +below the leaves were yams and <i>feis</i> and under them a layer of banana leaves. The pig came next. It had been cut into pieces as big as mutton-chops and had cooked +two and a half hours. It was on stones, coral, under which the fire of wood had been thoroughly ignited, the stones heated, +and then the different layers placed above. The pig was tender, succulent, and the yams and <i>feis</i> finely flavored. + +<p id="d0e3335">The two native men, in <i>pareus</i>, and with crowns of scarlet hibiscus, waited on us, while the son of Llewellyn uncorked the bottles. As usual, the beverages +were lavishly dispensed, beginning with Scotch whisky as an appetizer, and following with claret, sauterne, vintage Burgundy, +and a champagne that would have pleased Paris. These more expensive beverages were for us hosts only. + +<p id="d0e3341">We were an odd company: Llewellyn, a Welsh-Tahitian; Landers, a British New-Zealander; McHenry, Scotch-American; Polonsky, +Polish-French; Schlyter, the Swedish tailor; David, an American vanilla-grower; “Lying Bill,” English; and I, American. There +was little talk at breakfast. They were trenchermen beyond compare, and the dishes were emptied as fast as filled. These men +have no gifts of conversation in groups. Though we had only one half-white of the party, Llewellyn, he to a large degree set +the pace of words and drink. In him the European blood, of the best in the British Isles, arrested the abandon of the aborigine, +and created a hesitant blend of dignity and awkwardness. He was a striking-looking man, <span id="d0e3343" class="pageno">page 142</span>very tall, slender, about fifty years old, swarthy, with hair as black as night, and eyebrows like small mustaches, the eyes +themselves in caverns, usually dull and dour, but when he talked, spots of light. I thought of that <i>Master of Ballantrae</i> of Stevenson’s, though for all I remember he was blond. Yet the characters of the two blended in my mind, and I tried to +match them the more I saw of him. He was born here, and after an education abroad and a sowing of wild oats over years of +life in Europe, had lived here the last twenty-five years. He was in trade, like almost every one here, but I saw no business +instincts or habits about him. One found him most of the time at the Cercle Bougainville, drinking sauterne and siphon water, +shaking for the drinks, or playing écarté for five francs a game. + +<p id="d0e3349">Below the salt sat his son and his nephew, men of twenty-five years, but sons of Tahitian mothers, and without the culture +or European education of their fathers. With them two chauffeurs were seated. One of these, an American, the driver for Polonsky, +had tarried here on a trip about the world, and was persuaded to take employment with Polonsky. The other was a half-caste, +a handsome man of fifty, whose employer treated him like a friend. + +<p id="d0e3352">Breakfast lasted two hours for us. For the band it kept on until dinner, for they did not leave the table from noon, when +we sat down, until dark. When they did not eat, they drank. Occasionally one of us slipped down and took his place with them. +I sat with them half an hour, while they honored me with “Johnny Burrown,” “The Good, Old Summertime,” and “Everybody Doin’ +It.” +<span id="d0e3354" class="pageno">page 143</span> + +<p id="d0e3357">The heavy leads of the band were carried by an American with a two-horsepower accordion. He told me his name was Kelly. He +was under thirty, a resolute, but gleesome chap, red-headed, freckled, and unrestrained by anybody or anything. He had no +respect for us, as had the others, and had come, he said, for practice on his instrument. He had a song-book of the Industrial +Workers of the World, a syndicalistic group of American laborers and intellectuals, and in it were scores of popular airs +accompanied by words of dire import to capitalists and employers. One, to the tune of “Marching through Georgia,” threatened +destruction to civilization in the present concept. + +<p id="d0e3360">“I’m an I. W. W.,” said Kelly to me, with a shell of rum in his hand. “I came here because I got tired o’ bein’ pinched. Every +town I went to in the United States I denounced the police and the rotten government, and they throwed me in the calaboose. +I never could get even unlousy. I came here six weeks ago. It’s a little bit of all right.” + +<p id="d0e3363">When Kelly played American or English airs and the Tahitians sang their native words, he gave the I. W. W. version in English. +Some of these songs were transpositions or parodies of Christian hymns, and one in particular was his favorite. Apparently +he had made it very popular with the natives of the band, for it vied with the “<i>Himene Tatou Arearea</i>” in repetition. It was a crude travesty of a hymn much sung in religious camp-meetings and revivals, of which the proper +chorus as often heard by me in Harry Monroe’s mission in the Chicago slums, was: +<span id="d0e3368" class="pageno">page 144</span> + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e3373">Hallelujah! Thine the glory! Hallelujah! Amen! +<br id="d0e3376">Hallelujah! Thine the glory! revive us again! + +<p id="d0e3380">Kelly’s version was: + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e3385">Hallelujah! I’m a bum! Hallelujah! Bum again! +<br id="d0e3388">Hallelujah! Give us a hand-out! To save us from sin. + +<p id="d0e3392">He had the stanzas, burlesquing the sacred lines, one of which the natives especially liked: + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e3397">Oh, why don’t you work, as other men do? +<br id="d0e3400">How the hell can we work when there ’s no work to do? + +<p id="d0e3404">None of us had ever heard Kelly’s songs, nor had any one but I ever heard of his industrial organization, and I only vaguely, +having lived so many years out of America or Europe. But they all cheered enthusiastically except Llewellyn. He was an Anglican +by faith or paternal inheritance, and though he knew nothing of the real hymns, they being for Dissenters, whom he contemned, +he was religious at soul and objected to making light of religion. He called for the <i>“Himene Tatou Arearea.”</i> He took his pencil and scribbled the translation I have given. + +<p id="d0e3410">“This is the rough of it,” he said. “To write poetry here is difficult. When I was at Heidelberg and Paris I often spent nights +writing sonnets. That merely tells the sense of the <i>himene</i>, but cannot convey the joy or sorrow of it. Well, let’s sink dull care fifty fathoms deep! Look at those band-boys! So long +as they have plenty of rum or beer or wine and their instruments, they care little for food. Watch them. Now they are dry +and inactive. Wait till the alcohol wets them, They will touch the sky.” +<span id="d0e3415" class="pageno">page 145</span> + +<p id="d0e3418">Llewellyn’s deep-set eyes under the beetling brows were lighting with new fires. + +<p id="d0e3421">His idea of inactivity and drought was sublimated, for the musicians were never still a moment. They played mostly syncopated +airs of the United States, popular at the time. All primitive people, or those less advanced in civilization or education, +prefer the rag-time variants of the American negro or his imitators, to so-called good or classical music. It is like simple +language, easily understood, and makes a direct appeal to their ears and their passions. It is the slang or argot of music, +hot off the griddle for the average man’s taste, without complexities or stir to musing and melancholy. + +<p id="d0e3424">The musicians had drunk much wine and rum, and now wanted only beer. That was the order of their carouse. Beer was expensive +at two francs a bottle, and so a conscientious native had been delegated to give it out slowly. He had the barrel containing +the quartbottles between his legs while he sat at the table, and each was doled out only after earnest supplications and much +music. + +<p id="d0e3427"> +<i>“Horoa mai te pia!”</i> “More beer!” they implored. + +<p id="d0e3433"> +<i>“Himene”</i> said the inexorable master of the brew. + +<p id="d0e3439">Up came the brass and the accordion, and forth went the inebriated strains. + +<p id="d0e3442">Between their draughts of beer—they drank always from the bottles—the Tahitians often recurred to the song of Kelly. Having +no <i>g, l</i>, or <i>s</i> among the thirteen letters of their missionary-made alphabet, they pronounced the refrain as follows: + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e3453">Hahrayrooyah! I’m a boom! Hahrayrooyah! Boomagay! +<br id="d0e3456">Hahrayrooyah! Hizzandow! To tave ut fruh tin! + +<span id="d0e3460" class="pageno">page 146</span> +<p id="d0e3462">Landers being very big physically, they admired him greatly, and his company having been two generations in Tahiti, they knew +his history. They now and again called him by his name among Tahitians, “Taporo-Tane,” (“The Lime-Man”), and sang: + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e3467">E aue Tau tiare ate e! +<br id="d0e3470">Ua parari te afata e! +<br id="d0e3473">I te Pahi no Taporo-Toue e! + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e3479">Alas! my dear, some one let slip +<br id="d0e3482">A box of limes on the lime-man’s ship, +<br id="d0e3485">And busted it so the juice did drip. + +<p id="d0e3489">The song was a quarter of a century old and recorded an accident of loading a schooner. Landers’s father’s partner was first +named Taporo-Tane because he exported limes in large quantities from Tahiti to New Zealand. The stevedores and roustabouts +of the waterfront made ballads of happenings as their forefathers had chants of the fierce adventures of their constant warfare. +They were like the negroes, who from their first transplantation from Africa to America had put their plaints and mystification +in strange and affecting threnodies and runes. + +<p id="d0e3492">All through the incessant <i>himenes</i> a crowd of natives kept moving about a hundred feet away, dancing or listening with delight. They would not obtrude on the +feast, but must hear the music intimately. + +<p id="d0e3498">The others of our party, having breakfasted until well after two, sought a house where Llewellyn was known. McHenry and I +followed the road which circles the island by the lagoon and sea-beach. In that twelve leagues there are a succession of dales, +ravines, falls <span id="d0e3500" class="pageno">page 147</span>precipices, and brooks, as picturesque as the landscape of a dream. We walked only as far as Urufara, a mile or two, and stopped +there at the camp of a Scotsman who offered accommodation of board and lodging. + +<p id="d0e3503">His sketchy hotel and outhouses were dilapidated, but they were in the most beautiful surrounding conceivable, a sheltered +cove of the lagoon where the swaying palms dipped their boles in the ultramarine, and bulky banana-plants and splendid breadfruit-trees +formed a temple of shadow and coolth whence one might look straight up the lowering mountain-side to the ghostly domes, or +across the radiant water to the white thread of reef. + +<p id="d0e3506">We met McTavish, the host of the hotel, an aging planter, who kept his public house as an adjunct of his farm, and more for +sociability than gain. He was in a depressed and angry mood, for one of his eyes was closed, and the other battered about +the rim and beginning to turn black and blue. + +<p id="d0e3509">He knew McHenry, for both had been in these seas half their lives. + +<p id="d0e3512">“In all my sixty years,” he said, “I have not been assaulted quite so viciously. I asked him for what he owed me, and the +next I knew he was shutting out the light with his fists. I will go to the gendarme for a contravention against that villain. +And right now I will fix him in my book.” + +<p id="d0e3515">“Why, who hit you, and what did you do?” asked McHenry. + +<p id="d0e3518">“That damned Londoner, Hobson,” said McTavish. “He was my guest here several years ago, and ate and drank well for a month +or two when he hadn’t a <i>sou marquis</i>. I needed a little money to-day, and meeting <span id="d0e3523" class="pageno">page 148</span>him up the road, I demanded my account. He is thirty years younger than me, and I would have kept my eyes, but he leaped at +me like a wild dog, and knocked me down and pounded me in the dirt.” + +<p id="d0e3526">I sympathized with McTavish, though McHenry snickered. The Scot went into an inner room and brought back a dirty book, a tattered +register of his guests. He turned a number of pages—there were only a few guests to a twelvemonth—and, finding his assailant’s +name, wrote in capital letters against it, “THIEF.” + +<p id="d0e3529">“There,” he said with a magnificent gesture. “Let the whole world read and know the truth!” + +<p id="d0e3532">He set out a bottle of rum and several glasses, and we toasted him while I looked over the register. Hardly any one had neglected +to write beside his name tributes to the charm of the place and the kind heart of McTavish. + +<p id="d0e3535">Charmian and Jack London’s signatures were there, with a hearty word for the host, and “This is the most beautiful spot in +the universe,” for Moorea and Urufara. + +<p id="d0e3538">There were scores of poems, one in Latin and many in French. Americans seem to have been contented to quote Kipling, the “Lotus +Eaters,” or Omar, but Englishmen had written their own. English university men are generous poetasters. I have read their +verses in inns and outhouses of many countries. Usually they season with a sprig from Horace or Vergil. + +<p id="d0e3541">“I’m goin’ to the west’ard,” said McTavish. “There are too many low whites comin’ here. When Moorea had only sail from Tahiti, +the blackguards did not come, <span id="d0e3543" class="pageno">page 149</span>but now the dirty gasolene boat brings them. I must be off to the west’ard, to Aitutaki or Penrhyn.” + +<p id="d0e3546">Poor Mac! he never made his westward until he went west in soldier parlance. + +<p id="d0e3549">McHenry, on our way back to Faatoai, said: + +<p id="d0e3552">“McTavish is a bloody fool. He gives credit to the bleedin’ beach-combers. If I meet that dirty Hobson, I’ll beat him to a +pulp.” + +<p id="d0e3555">From under the thatched roof of our bower came the sounds of: + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e3560">Faararirari +<br id="d0e3563"> to oe Tamarii Tahiti +<br id="d0e3566"> La Li. + +<p id="d0e3570">The <i>himene</i> was in its hundredth encore. The other barrel of bottled beer had been securely locked against the needs of the morrow, and +the bandsmen’s inspiration was only claret or sauterne, well watered. + +<p id="d0e3576">We sat down for dinner. The <i>déjeuner</i> was repeated, and eggs added for variety. We had risen from breakfast four hours before, yet there was no lack of appetite. +The drink appeared only to make their gastric juices flow freely. I hid my surfeit. The harmonies had by now drawn the girls +and young women from other districts, word having been carried by natives passing in carts that a parcel of <i>papaa</i> (non-Tahitians) were <i>faarearea</i> (making merry). + +<p id="d0e3588">These new-comers had adorned themselves for the <i>taupiti</i>, the public fête, as they considered it, and as they came along the road had plucked ferns and flowers for wreaths. Without +such sweet treasures upon them they <span id="d0e3593" class="pageno">page 150</span>have no festal spirit. There were a dozen of these Moorea girls and visitors from Tahiti, one or two from the Tiare Hotel, +whose homes were perhaps on this island. + +<p id="d0e3596">The dinner being finished, the bandsmen laid down their instruments and the girls were invited to drink. Tahitian females +have no thirst for alcohol. They, as most of their men, prefer fruit juices or cool water except at times of feasting. They +had no intoxicants when the whites came, not in all Polynesia. It was the humor of the explorers, the first adventurers, and +all succeeding ones, to teach them to like alcohol, and to hold their liquor like Englishmen or Americans. Kings and queens, +chiefs and chiefesses, priests and warriors, were sent ashore crapulous in many a jolly-boat, or paddled their own canoes, +after <i>areareas</i> on war-ships and merchantmen. Some learned to like liquor, and French saloons in Papeete and throughout Tahiti and Moorea +encouraged the taste. Profits, as ever under the business rule of the world overweighed morals or health. + +<p id="d0e3602">These girls in our bower drank sparingly of wine, but needed no artificial spirits to spur their own. Music runs like fire +through their veins. +<div id="d0e3604" class="divFigure"> +<p class="legend"><img src="img/plate-4.jpg" alt="The spirit of the upaupa veiled in cotton garments"> +<p class="figureHead">The spirit of the <i>upaupa</i> veiled in cotton garments + +</div> + +<p id="d0e3614">Iromea of the Tiare Hotel—perhaps some of Lovaina’s maidens knew our plans and came over on the packet—took the accordion +from Kelly. She began to play, and two of the Moorea men joined her, one with a pair of tablespoons and the other with an +empty gasolene-can. The holder of the spoons jingled them in perfect harmony with the accordion, and the can-operator tapped +and thumped the tin, so that the three made a singular and tingling music. It had a timbre that got <span id="d0e3616" class="pageno">page 151</span>under one’s skin and pulsated one’s nerves, arousing dormant desires. I felt like leaping into the arena and showing them +my mettle on alternate feet, but a Moorea beauty anticipated me. +<div id="d0e3618" class="divFigure"> +<p class="legend"><img src="img/plate-5.jpg" alt="Matalini seeks a cocoanut for me"> +<p class="figureHead">Matalini seeks a cocoanut for me +</div> + +<p id="d0e3625">She placed herself before the proud Llewellyn, half of her own blood, and began an <i>upaupahura</i>. She postured before him in an attitude of love, and commenced an improvisation in song about him. She praised his descent +from his mother, his strength, his capacity for rum, and especially his power over women. He was own brother to the great +ones of the Bible, Tolomoni and Nebutodontori, who had a thousand wives. He drew all women to him. + +<p id="d0e3631">The dance was a gambol of passion. It was a free expression of uninhibited sex feeling. The Hawaiian <i>hula</i>, the nautch, and minstrelsy combined. So rapid was the movement, so fast the music, so strenuous the singing, and so actual +the vision of the dancer, that she exhausted herself in a few minutes, and another took the turf. + +<p id="d0e3637">A thousand years the Tahitians had had these <i>upaupahuras</i>. Their national ballads, the achievements of the warrior, the fisherman, the woodsman, the canoe-builder, and the artist, +had been orally recorded and impressed in this manner in the conclaves of the Arioi. Dancing is for prose gesture what song +is for the instinctive exclamation of feeling, and among primitive peoples they are usually separated; but those cultured +Tahitians from time immemorial had these highly developed displays of both methods of manifesting acute sensations. The Kamchadales +of the Arctic—curious the similarities of language and custom between these far Northerners <span id="d0e3642" class="pageno">page 152</span>and these far Southerners—danced like these Tahitians, so that every muscle quivered at every moment. + +<p id="d0e3645">The dancing in the bower was at intervals, as the desire moved the performers and bodily force allowed. The <i>himene</i> went on continuously, varying with the inspiration of the dancer or the whim of the accordion-player. They snatched this +instrument from one another’s hands as the mood struck them, and among the natives, men and women alike had facility in its +playing. Pepe of Papara, and Tehau of Papeari, their eyes flashing, their bosoms rising and falling tumultuously, and their +voices and bodies alternating in their expressions of passion, were joined by Temanu of Lovaina’s, the oblique-eyed girl whom +they called a half-Chinese, but whose ancestral tree, she said, showed no celestial branch. Temanu was tall, slender, serpent-like, +her body flexuous and undulatory, responding to every quaver of the music. Her uncorseted figure, with only a thin silken +gown upon it, wreathed harmoniously in tortile oscillations, her long, black hair flying about her flushed face, and her soul +afire with her thoughts and simulations. + +<p id="d0e3651">Now entered the bower Mamoe of Moorea, a big girl of eighteen. She was of the ancient chiefess type, as large as a man, perfectly +modeled, a tawny Juno. Her hair was in two plaits, wound with red peppers, and on her head a crown of tuberoses. She wore +a single garment, which outlined her figure, and her feet were bare. She surveyed the company, and her glance fell on Landers. + +<p id="d0e3654">She began to dance. Her face, distinctly Semitic, as is not seldom the case in Polynesia, was fixed a little sternly at first; +but as she continued, it began to glow. She did not sing. Her dance was the <i>upaupa</i>, the national <span id="d0e3659" class="pageno">page 153</span>dance of Tahiti, the same movement generally as that of Temanu, but without voice and more skilled. One saw at once that she +was the <i>première danseuse</i> of this isle, for all took their seats. Her rhythmical swaying and muscular movements were of a perfection unexcelled, and +soon infected the bandsmen, now with all discipline unleashed. One sprang from the table and took his position before her. +Together they danced, moving in unison, or the man answering the woman’s motions when her agitation lulled. The spectators +were absorbed in the <i>hula</i>. They clapped hands and played, and when the first man wearied, another took his place. + +<p id="d0e3668">Mamoe stopped, and drank a goblet of rum. Her eyes wandered toward our end of the table, and she came to us. She put her hand +on Landers. The big trader, who was dressed in white linen, accepted the challenge. He pushed back the bench and stood up. + +<p id="d0e3671">Landers in looks was out of a novel. If Henry Dixey, the handsome actor, whose legs made his fame before he might attest his +head’s capacity, were expanded to the proportions of Muldoon, the wrestler, he might have been Landers. Apparently about thirtythree, +really past forty, he was as big as the young “David” of the Buonarroti, of the most powerful and graceful physique, with +curling brown hair, and almost perfect features; a giant of a man, as cool as an igloo, with a melodious Australasian voice +pitched low, and a manner with men and women that was irresistible. + +<p id="d0e3674">He faced Mamoe, and Temanu seized the accordion and broke into a mad <i>upaupa</i>. An arm’s-length from Mamoe Landers simulated every pulsation of her quaking body. He was an expert, it was plain, and his +<span id="d0e3679" class="pageno">page 154</span>handsome face, generally calm and unexpressive, was aglow with excitement. Mamoe recognized her gyratory equal in this giant, +and often their bodies met in the ecstasy of their curveting. Landers, towering above her, and bigger in bone and muscle than +she in sheer flesh, was like a figure from a Saturnalia. The call of the isles was ringing in his ears, and one had only to +glance at him to hear Pan among the reeds, to be back in the glades where fauns and nymphs were at play. + +<p id="d0e3682">I saw Landers a care-free animal for the moment, rejoicing in his strength and skill, answering the appeal of sex in the dance. +When he sat down the animal was still in him, but care again had clouded his brow. I think our early ancestors must have been +much like Landers in this dance, strong, and merry for the time, seeking the woman in pleasures, fiery in movement for the +nonce, and relapsing into stolidity. I can see why Landers, who takes what he will of womankind in these islands, still dominates +in the trading, and bends most people his way. The animal way is the way here. The way of the city, of mere subtlety, of avoidance +of issues, of intellectual control, is not the way of Polynesia. Bulk and sinew and no fear of God or man are the rules of +the game south of the line, as “north of 53.” + +<p id="d0e3685">With Landers dancing, so must the others. Hobson had dropped in, and he, David, McHenry, Schlyter, and Lying Bill, trod a +measure, and I, though with only a Celtic urge and a couple of years in Hawaii to teach me, faced Temanu. The bandsmen could +not remain still, and, with Kelly to play the accordion, the rout became general. McHenry did not molest Hobson, who remained. +<span id="d0e3687" class="pageno">page 155</span> + +<p id="d0e3690">When we retired from the scene late at night, the <i>upaupa</i> was still active. We went to the house of Pai, a handsome native woman, whose half-caste husband was Mr. Fuller. There were +only three beds in the house, which Landers, Lying Bill, and McHenry fell on before any one else could claim them. I contented +myself with a mat on the veranda, and noticed that, besides the remainder of our party, Pai and her <i>tane</i> were also on that level. + +<p id="d0e3699">At half past two in the morning we lay down. I could not sleep. From the bower the song and music rang out continuously, mingled +with laughter and the sounds of shuffling feet. + +<p id="d0e3702">I got up at five, and with a <i>pareu</i> about me, followed the stream until I found a delicious pool, where I bathed for an hour, while I read “The Ballad of Reading +Gaol.” The level land between the sea and the mountains was not more than a quarter mile broad, and the near hills rose rounded +and dark green, with mysterious valleys folded in between them. All about were cocoanuts and bananas, their foliage wet with +the rain that had fallen gently all night. The stream was edged with trees and ferns and was clear and rippling. At that early +hour there was no sensation of chill for me, though the men of native blood balked at entering the water until the sun had +warmed it. A Chinese vegetablegrower sat on the bank with his Chinese wife and cleaned heads of lettuce and bunches of carrots. +She watched me apathetically, as if I were a little strange, but not interesting. + +<p id="d0e3708">A dozen natives came by and by to bathe in the next pool. They observed me, and called to me, pleasantly, <span id="d0e3710" class="pageno">page 156</span>“<i>Ia ora na!</i>” which is the common greeting of the Tahitian, and is pronounced “yuranna.” The white is always a matter of curiosity to +the native. These simple people have not lost, though generations of whites have come and bred and died or gone, at least +some of their original awe and enjoyment of their conquerors and rulers. + +<p id="d0e3716">When we had coffee in the morning, our serious and distinguished native hosts stood while we ate and drank. We, guests in +their own comfortable house, did not ask them to join us. Llewellyn, when I put the question, answered: + +<p id="d0e3719">“No. I am both white and of too high native rank. You cannot afford to let the native become your social equal.” + +<p id="d0e3722">McHenry said: + +<p id="d0e3725">“You’re bloody well right. Keep him in his stall, and he’s all right; but out of it, ye’ll get no peace.” + +<p id="d0e3728">So the gentle Pai and her husband—they are religious people, and went to the Faatoai church three times this Sunday—stood +while we lolled at ease. Courtesy here seems a native trait, though even a little native blood improves on the white as far +as politeness is concerned. <i>En passant</i>, the average white here is not of the leisure class, in which manners are an occupation; the native, on the other hand, is +of a leisure class by heredity, and it is only when tainted by a desire to make money quickly or much of it that he loses +his urbanity. + +<p id="d0e3734">We had breakfasted in the bower at ten o’clock, with the band in attendance. Not one of the musicians had slept except Kelly, +who said he had forty winks. When the pastors and their flocks of the various competing <span id="d0e3736" class="pageno">page 155</span>churches passed on their way to services, the band was keyed up in G, and was parading the streets, so that the faith of the +Tahitians was severely tried. Even the ministers tarried a minute, and had to hold tightly their scriptures to control their +legs, which itched to dance. + +<p id="d0e3739">Aboard the <i>Potii Moorea</i> the bandsmen came sober, a revelation in recuperation. Again we passed the idyllic shores of Moorea, glimpsed the grove of +Daphne and McTavish’s bungalow at Urufara, and saw the heights, the desolated castle, the marvels of light and shade upon +the hills and valleys, left the silver circlet of the reef, and made the open sea. + +<p id="d0e3745">The glory of the Diadem, a crown of mountain peaks, stood out above the mists that cover the mountains of Tahiti, and the +green carpet of the hills fell from the clouds to the water’s-edge, as if held above by Antæus and pinned down by the cocoanut-trees. + +<p id="d0e3748">At landing I discovered that the bandsmen had stolen away the sleeping Mamoe, and had carried her aboard the <i>Potii Moorea</i>, and deposited her in the hold. She emerged fresh from her nap, and apparently ready for an <i>upaupa</i> that night. We marched to the Cercle Bougainville to recall the incidents of the excursion over a comforting Dr. Funk. +<span id="d0e3756" class="pageno">page 173</span> + +<h1 id="d0e3760">Chapter X</h1> +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e3767">The storm on the lagoon; Making safe the schooners—A talk on missing ships—A singular coincidence—Arrival of three of crew +of the shipwrecked <i>El Dorado</i>—The Dutchman’s story—Easter Island. + +</div> +<p id="d0e3774">It blew a gale all one day and night from the north, and at break of the second day, when I went down the rue de Rivoli from +the Tiare Hotel to the quay, the lagoon was a wild scene. Squall after squall had dashed the rain upon my verandas during +the night, and I could faintly hear the voices of the men on the schooners as they strove to fend their vessels from the coral +embankment, or hauled at anchor-ropes to get more sea-room. + +<p id="d0e3777">The sun did not rise, but a gray sky showed the flying scud tearing at the trees and riggings, and the boom of the surf on +the reef was like the roaring of a great steelmill at full blast. The roadway was littered with branches and the crimson leaves +of the flamboyants. The people were hurrying to and from market in vehicles and on foot, soaked and anxious-looking as they +struggled against the wind and rain. I walked the length of the built-up waterfront. The little boats were being pulled out +from the shore by the several launches, and were making fast to buoys or putting down two and three anchors a hundred fathoms +away from the quays. + +<p id="d0e3780">The storm increased all the morning, and at noon, when I looked at the barometer in the Cercle Bougainville <span id="d0e3782" class="pageno">page 159</span>it was 29.51, the lowest, the skippers said, in seven years. The <i>William Olsen</i>, a San Francisco barkentine, kedged out into the lagoon as fast as possible, and through the tearing sheets of rain I glimpsed +other vessels reaching for a holding-ground. The <i>Fetia Taiao</i> had made an anchorage a thousand feet toward the reef. The waves were hammering against the quays, and the lagoon was white +with fury. + +<p id="d0e3791">In the club, after all had been made secure, the skippers and managers of trading houses gathered to discuss the weather. +Tahiti is not so subject to disastrous storms as are the Paumotu Islands and the waters toward China and Japan, yet every +decade or two a tidal-wave sweeps the lowlands and does great injury. Though this occurs but seldom, when the barometer falls +low, the hearts of the owners of property and of the people who have experienced a disaster of this kind sink. The tides in +this group of islands are different from anywhere else in the world I know of in that they ebb and flow with unchanging regularity, +never varying in time from one year’s end to another. + +<p id="d0e3794">Full tide comes at noon and midnight, and ebb at six in the morning and six in the evening, and the sun rises and sets between +half past five and half past six o’clock. There is hardly any twilight, because of the earth’s fast rotation in the tropics. +This is a fixity, observed by whites for more than a century, and told the first seamen here by the natives as a condition +existing always. Another oddity of the tides is that they are almost inappreciable, the difference between high and low tide +hardly ever exceeding two feet. But every six months or so a roaring tide rolls in from far at sea, and, sweeping <span id="d0e3796" class="pageno">page 160</span>with violence over the reef, breaks on the beach. Now was due such a wave, and its possibilities of height and destruction +caused lively argument between the traders and the old salts. More than a dozen retired seamen, mostly Frenchmen, found their +Snug Harbor in the Cercle Bougainville, where liberty, equality, and fraternity had their home, and where Joseph bounded when +orders for the figurative splicing of the main-brace came from the tables. + +<p id="d0e3799">George Goeltz, a sea-rover, who had cast his anchor in the club after fifty years of equatorial voyaging, was, on account +of his seniority, knowledge of wind and reef, and, most of all, his never-failing bonhommie, keeper of barometer, thermometer, +telescopes, charts, and records. When I had my jorum of the eminent physician’s Samoan prescription before me, I barkened +to the wisdom of the mariners. + +<p id="d0e3802">Captain. William Pincher, who had at my first meeting informed me he was known as Lying Bill, explained to me that some ignorant +landsmen stated that this tidal regularity was caused by the steady drift of the tradewinds at certain hours of the day. + +<p id="d0e3805">“That don’t go,” said he, “for the tides are the same whether there’s a gale o’ wind or a calm. I’ve seen the tide ’ighest +’ere in Papeete when there wasn’t wind to fill a jib, and right ’ere on the leeward side of the bloody island, sheltered from +the breeze. How about it at night, too, when the trade quits? The bleedin’ tide rises and falls just the same at just the +same time. Those trades don’t even push the tidal waves because they always come from the west’ard, and the trades are from +the east.” +<span id="d0e3807" class="pageno">page 161</span> + +<p id="d0e3810">“I can look out of the veranda of this Cercle Bougainville and tell you what time it is to a quarter of an hour any day in +the year just by looking at the shore or the reef and seein’ where the water is,” said Goeltz. “You can’t do that any place +on the globe except in this group.” + +<p id="d0e3813">A beneficent nature has considered the white visitor in this concern, for he can go upon the reef to look for its treasures +at low tide, at sun-up or sun-fall, when it is cool. + +<p id="d0e3816">We fell to talking about missing ships, and Goeltz insisted on Lying Bill telling of his own masterful exploit in bringing +back a schooner from South America after the captain had run away with it and a woman. Pincher was mate of the schooner, which +traded from Tahiti, and the skipper was a handsome fellow who thought his job well lost for love. He became enamored of the +wife of another captain. One night when by desperate scheming he had gotten her aboard, he suddenly gave orders to up anchor +and away. The schooner was full of cargo, copra and pearl-shell and pearls, and was due to return to Papeete to discharge. +But this amative mariner filled his jibs on another tack, and before his crew knew whither they were bound was well on his +long traverse to Peru. + +<p id="d0e3819">Lying Bill was the only other white man aboard, and he took orders, as he had to by law and by the might of the swashbuckler +captain. The lady lived in the only cabin—a tiny corner of the cuddy walled off—and ate her meals with her lover while Pincher +commanded on deck. At a port in Peru the pirate sold the cargo, and taking his mistress ashore, he disappeared for good and +<span id="d0e3821" class="pageno">page 162</span>all from the ken of the mate and of the South Seas. + +<p id="d0e3824">“Now,” said Captain George Goeltz, “Bill here could ’a’ followed suit and sold the vessel. Of course they had no papers except +for the French group, but in South America twenty-five years ago a piaster was a piaster. Bill was square then, as he is now, +and he borrows enough money to buy grub, and he steers right back to Papeete. <i>Gott im Himmel!</i> Were the owners glad to see that schooner again? They had given her up as gone for good when the husband told them his wife +had run away with the captain. That’s how Bill got his certificate to command vessels in this archipelago, which only Frenchmen +can have.” + +<p id="d0e3830">Goeltz picked up the “Daily Commercial News” of San Francisco, and idly read out the list of missing ships. There was only +one in the Pacific of recent date whose fate was utterly unknown. She was the schooner <i>El Dorado</i>, which had left Oregon months before for Chile, and had not been sighted in all that time. The shipping paper said: +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e3837">What has become of the <i>El Dorado</i>, it is, of course, impossible to say with any degree of accuracy, but one thing is almost certain, and that is that the likelihood +of her ever being heard of again is now practically without the range of possibility. Nevertheless she may still be afloat +though in a waterlogged condition and drifting about in the trackless wastes of the South Pacific. Then again she may have +struck one of the countless reefs that infest that portion of the globe, some entirely invisible and others just about awash. +She is now one hundred and eighty-nine days out, and the voyage has rarely taken one hundred days. She was reported in lat. +35:40 N., long. 126:30 W., 174 days ago. + +</div> + +<p id="d0e3845">“There’ll be no salvage on her,” said Captain <span id="d0e3847" class="pageno">page 163</span>Pincher, “because if she’s still afloat, she ain’t likely to get in the track of any bloody steamer. I’ve heard of those derelic’s +wanderin’ roun’ a bloody lifetime, especially if they’re loaded with lumber. They end up usually on some reef.” + +<p id="d0e3850">This casual conversation was the prelude to the strangest coincidence of my life. When I awoke the next morning, I found that +the big sea had not come and that the sun was shining. My head full of the romance of wrecks and piracy, I climbed the hill +behind the Tiare Hotel to the signal station. There I examined the semaphore, which showed a great white ball when the mail-steamships +appeared, and other symbols for the arrivals of different kinds of craft, men-of-war, barks, and schooners. There was a cozy +house for the lookout and his family, and, as everywhere in Tahiti, a garden of flowers and fruit-trees. I could see Point +Venus to the right, with its lighthouse, and the bare tops of the masts of the ships at the quays. Gray and red roofs of houses +peeped from the foliage below, and a red spire of a church stood up high. + +<p id="d0e3853">The storms had ceased in the few hours since dawn, and the sun was high and brilliant. Moorea, four leagues away, loomed like +a mammoth battle-ship, sable and grim, her turrets in the lowering clouds on the horizon, her anchors a thousand fathoms deep. +The sun was drinking water through luminous pipes. The harbor was a gleaming surface, and the reef from this height was a +rainbow of color. All hues were in the water, emerald and turquoise, palest blue and gold. I sat down and closed my eyes to +recall old Walt’s lines of beauty about the +<span id="d0e3855" class="pageno">page 164</span> + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e3860">—World below the brine. +<br id="d0e3863">Forests at the bottom of the sea, the branches and leaves. +<br id="d0e3866">Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seed. +<br id="d0e3869">The thick tangle,... and pink turf. + +<p id="d0e3873">When I looked again at the reef I espied a small boat, almost a speck outside the coral barrier. She was too small for an +inter-island cutter, and smaller than those do not venture beyond the reef. She was downing her single sail, and the sun glinted +on the wet canvas. I called to the guardian of the semaphore, and when he pointed his telescope at the object, he shouted +out: + +<p id="d0e3876">“<i>Mais, c’est curieux!</i> Et ees a schmall vessel, a sheep’s boat!” + +<p id="d0e3882">I waited for no more, but with all sorts of conjectures racing through my mind, I hurried down the hill. Under the club balcony +I called up to Captain Goeltz, who already had his glass fixed. He answered: + +<p id="d0e3885">“She’s a ship’s boat, with three men, a jury rig, and barrels and boxes. She’s from a wreck, that’s sure.” + +<p id="d0e3888">He came rolling down the narrow stairway, and together we stood at the quai du Commerce as the mysterious boat drew nearer. +We saw that the oarsmen were rowing fairly strongly against the slight breeze, and our fears of the common concomitants of +wrecks,—starvation and corpses—disappeared as we made out their faces through the glasses. They stood out bronzed and hearty. +The boat came up along the embankment, one of the three steering, with as matter of fact an air as if they had returned from +a trip within the lagoon. There was a heap of things in the boat, the sail, a tank, a barrel, cracker-boxes, blankets, and +some clothing. +<span id="d0e3890" class="pageno">page 165</span> + +<p id="d0e3893">The men were bearded like the pard, and in tattered garments, their feet bare. The one at the helm was evidently an officer, +for neither of the others made a move until he gave the order: + +<p id="d0e3896">“Throw that line ashore!” + +<p id="d0e3899">Goeltz seized it and made fast to a ring-bolt, and then only at another command did the two stand up. We seized their hands +and pulled them up on the wall. They were as rugged as lions in the open, burned as brown as Moros, their hair and beards +long and ragged, and their powerful, lean bodies showing through their rags. + +<p id="d0e3902">“What ship are you from?” I inquired eagerly. + +<p id="d0e3905">The steersman regarded me narrowly, his eyes squinting, and then said taciturnly, “Schooner <i>El Dorado</i>.” He said it almost angrily, as if he were forced to confess a crime. Then I saw the name on the boat, “<i>El Dorado</i> S. F.” + +<p id="d0e3914">“Didn’t I tell you so?” asked Lying Bill, who was in the crowd now gathered. “George, didn’t I say the <i>El Dorado</i> would turn up?” + +<p id="d0e3920">He glared at Goeltz for a sign of assent, but the retired salt sought kudos for himself. + +<p id="d0e3923">“I saw her first,” he replied. “I was having a Doctor Funk when I looked toward the pass, and saw at once that it was a queer +one.” + +<p id="d0e3926">The shipwrecked trio shook themselves like dogs out of the water. They were stiff in the legs. The two rowers smiled, and +when I handed each of them a cigar, they grinned, but one said: + +<p id="d0e3929">“After we’ve e’t. Our holds are empty. We’ve come thirty-six hundred miles in that dinghy.” +<span id="d0e3931" class="pageno">page 166</span> + +<p id="d0e3934">“I’m captain N.P. Benson of the schooner <i>El Dorado</i>.” vouchsafed the third. “Where’s the American Counsul?” + +<p id="d0e3940">I led them a few hundred feet to the office of Dentist Williams, who was acting as consul for the United States. He had a +keen love of adventure, and twenty years in the tropics had not dimmed his interest in the marvelous sea. He left his patient +and closeted himself with the trio, while I returned to their boat to inspect it more closely. + +<p id="d0e3943">All the workers and loafers of the waterfront were about it, but Goeltz would let none enter it, he believing it might be +needed untouched as evidence of some sort. There are no wharf thieves and no fences in Tahiti, so there was no danger of loss, +and, really, there was nothing worth stealing but the boat itself. + +<p id="d0e3946">Captain Benson and his companions hastened from the dentist’s to Lovaina’s, where they were given a table on the veranda alone. +They remained an hour secluded after Iromea and Atupu had piled their table with dishes. They drank quarts of coffee, and +ate a beefsteak each, dozens of eggs, and many slices of fried ham, with scores of hot biscuits. They never spoke during the +meal. A customs-officer had accompanied them to the Tiare Hotel, for the French Government wisely made itself certain that +they might not be an unknown kind of smugglers, pirates, or runaways. Their boat had been taken in charge by the customs bureau, +and the men were free to do what they would. + +<p id="d0e3949">When they came from their gorging to the garden, they picked flowers, smelled the many kinds of blossoms, and then the sailors +lighted their cigars. This pair were <span id="d0e3951" class="pageno">page 167</span>Steve Drinkwater, a Dutchman; and Alex Simoneau, a French-Canadian of Attleboro, Massachusetts. + +<p id="d0e3954">“Where’s the <i>El Dorado</i>?” I asked of the captain. + +<p id="d0e3960">Again he looked at me, suspiciously. + +<p id="d0e3963">“She went down in thirty-one degrees: two minutes, south and one hundred twenty-one: thirty-seven west,” he said curtly, and +turned away. There was pride and sorrow in his Scandinavian voice, and a reticence not quite explicable. The three, as they +stood a moment before they walked off, made a striking group. Their sturdy figures, in their worn and torn clothes, their +hairy chests, their faces framed in bushes of hair, their bronzed skins, and their general air of fighters who had won a battle +in which it was pitch and toss if they would survive, made me proud of the race of seamen the world over. They are to-day +almost the only followers of a primeval calling, tainted little by the dirt of profit-seeking. They risk their lives daily +in the hazards of the ocean, the victims of cold-blooded insurance gamblers and of niggardly owners, and rewarded with only +a seat in the poorhouse or a niche in Davy Jones’s Locker. I was once of their trade, and I longed to know the happenings +of their fated voyage. + +<p id="d0e3966">Next morning the three were quite ordinary-looking. They were shorn and shaved and scrubbed, and rigged out in Schlyter’s +white drill trousers and coats. They had rooms under mine in the animal-yard. They were to await the first steamship for the +United States, to which country they would be sent as shipwrecked mariners by the American consulate. This vessel would not +arrive for some weeks. The captain sat outside his door on the balcony, and expanded his log into a story <span id="d0e3968" class="pageno">page 168</span>of his experiences. He had determined to turn author, and to recoup his losses as much as possible by the sale of his manuscript. +With a stumpy pencil in hand, he scratched his head, pursed his mouth, and wrote slowly. He would not confide in me. He said +he had had sufferings enough to make money out of them, and would talk only to magazine editors. + +<p id="d0e3971">“There’s Easter Island,” he told me. “Those curiosities there are worth writing about, too. I’ve put down a hundred sheets +already. I’m sorry, but I can’t talk to any one. I’m going to take the boat with me, and exhibit it in a museum and speak +a piece.” + +<p id="d0e3974">He was serious about his silence, and as my inquisitiveness was now beyond restraint, I tried the sailors. They would have +no log, but their memories might be good. + +<p id="d0e3977">Alex Simoneau, being of French descent, and speaking the Gallic tongue, was not to be found at the Tiare. He was at the Paris, +or other cafe, surrounded by gaping Frenchmen, who pressed upon him Pernoud, rum, and the delicate wines of France. So great +was his absorption in his new friends, and so unbounded their hospitality, that M. Lontane laid him by the heels to rest him. +Simoneau was wiry, talking the slang of the New York waterfront, swearing that he would “hike for Attleboro, and hoe potatoes +until he died.” I was forced to seek Steve Drinkwater. Short, pillow-like, as red-cheeked as a winter apple, and yellow-haired, +he was a Dutchman, unafraid of anything, stolid, powerful, but not resourceful. I called Steve to my room above Captain Benson’s, +and set before him a bottle of schnapps, in a square-faced bottle, and a box of cigars. +<span id="d0e3979" class="pageno">page 169</span> + +<p id="d0e3982">“Steve,” I said, “that squarehead of a skipper of yours won’t tell me anything about the El Dorado’s sinking and your great +trip in the boat. He said he’s going to write it up in the papers, and make speeches about it in a museum. He wants to make +money out of it.” + +<p id="d0e3985">“Vere do ve gat oop on dat?” asked the Hollander, sorely. “Ve vas dere mit ’im, und vas ve in de museum, py damage? Dot shkvarehet +be’n’t de only wrider?” + +<p id="d0e3988">I shuddered at the possible good fortune. I transfixed him with a sharp eye. + +<p id="d0e3991">“Steve,” I asked gentry, “did you keep a log? Pour yourself a considerable modicum of the Hollands and smoke another cigar.” + +<p id="d0e3994">“Vell,” said the seaman, after obeying instructions, “I yoost had vun hell of a time, und he make a long rest in de land, +I do py dammage! I keep a leedle book from off de day ve shtart ouid.” + +<p id="d0e3997">I heard the measured pace of the brave “shkvarehet” below as he racked his brains for words. I would have loved to aid him, +to do all I could to make widely known his and his crew’s achievements and gain him fortune. However, he would sow his ink +and reap his gold harvest, and I must, by master or by man, hear and record for myself the wonderful incidents of the <i>El Dorado’s</i> wreck. The insurance was doubtless long since paid on her, and masses said for the repose of the soul of Alex Simoneau. The +world would not know of their being saved, or her owners of the manner of her sinking, until these three arrived in San Francisco, +or until a few days before, when the steamship wireless might inform them. +<span id="d0e4002" class="pageno">page 170</span> + +<p id="d0e4005">Steve came back with a memorandum book in which he had kept day by day the history of the voyage. But it was in Dutch, and +I could not read it. I made him comfortable in a deep-bottomed rocker, and I jotted down my understanding of the honest sailor’s +Rotterdam English as he himself translated his ample notes in his native tongue. I pieced these out with answers to my questions, +for often Steve’s English was more puzzling than pre-Chaucer poetry. + +<p id="d0e4008">The <i>El Dorado</i> was a five-masted schooner, twelve years old, and left Astoria, Oregon, for Antofagasta, Chile, on a Friday, more than seven +months before, with a crew of eleven all told: the captain, two mates, a Japanese cook, and seven men before the mast. She +was a man-killer, as sailors term sailing ships poorly equipped and undermanned. The crew were of all sorts, the usual waterfront +unemployed, wretchedly paid and badly treated. The niggardliness of owners of ships caused them to pick up their crews at +haphazard by paying crimps to herd them from lodging-houses and saloons an hour or two before sailing to save a day’s wages. +Once aboard, they were virtual slaves, subject to the whims and brutality of the officers, and forfeiting liberty and even +life if they refused to submit to all conditions imposed by these petty bosses. + +<p id="d0e4014">Often the crimps brought aboard as sailors men who had never set foot on a vessel. On the <i>El Dorado</i> few were accustomed mariners, and the first few weeks were passed in adjusting crew and officers to one another, and to the +routine of the overloaded schooner. When they were fifteen days out they spoke a vessel, which reported them, and after that +they saw no other. The <span id="d0e4019" class="pageno">page 171</span>mate was a bucko, a slugger, according to Steve, and was hated by all, for most of them during the throes of seasickness had +had a taste of his fists. + +<p id="d0e4022">On the seventy-second day out the <i>El Dorado</i> was twenty-seven hundred miles off the coast of Chile, having run a swelling semicircle to get the benefit of the southeast +trades, and being far south of Antofagasta. That was the way of the wind, which forced a ship from Oregon to Chile to swing +far out from the coast, and make a deep southward dip before catching the south-west trades, which would likely stay by her +to her port of discharge. + +<p id="d0e4028">They had sailed on a Friday, and on Wednesday, the eleventh of the third month following, their real troubles began. Steve’s +diary, as interpreted by him, after the foregoing, was substantially as follows, the color being all his: + +<p id="d0e4031">“From the day we sailed we were at the pumps for two weeks to bale the old tub out. Then she swelled, and the seams became +tight. There was bad weather from the time we crossed the Astoria bar. The old man would carry on because he was in a hurry +to make a good run. The mate used to beat us, and it’s a wonder we didn’t kill him. We used to lie awake in our watch below +and think of what we’d do to him when we got him ashore. All the men were sore on him. He cursed us all the time, and the +captain said nothing. You can’t hit back, you know. He would strike us and kick us for fun. I felt sure he’d be murdered; +but when we got into difficulty and could have tossed him over, we never made a motion. + +<p id="d0e4034">“On the seventy-third day out, came the terror. The <span id="d0e4036" class="pageno">page 172</span>wind is from the southeast. There is little light. The sea is high, and everything is in a smother. We took down the topsails +and furled the spanker. The wind was getting up, and the call came for all hands on deck. We had watch and watch until then. +That’s four hours off and four hours on. When the watch below left their bunks, that was the last of our sleep on the <i>El Dorado</i>. A gale was blowing by midnight. We were working all the time, taking in sail and making all snug. There was plenty of water +on deck. Schooner was bumping hard on the waves and making water through her seams. We took the pumps for a spell. + +<p id="d0e4042">“We had no sleep next day. In the morning we set all sails in a lull, but took them down again quickly, because the wind shifted +to the northwest, and a big gale came on. Now began trouble with the cargo. We had the hold filled with lumber, planks and +such, and on the deck we had a terrible load of big logs. These were to hold up the walls and roofs in the mines of Chile. +Many of them were thirty-six feet long, and very big around. They were the trunks of very big trees. They were piled very +high, and the whole of them was fastened by chains to keep them from rolling or being broken loose by seas. In moving about +the ship we had to walk on this rough heap of logs, which lifted above the rails. They were hard to walk on in a perfectly +smooth sea, and with the way the <i>El Dorado</i> rolled and pitched, we could hardly keep from being thrown into the ocean. + +<p id="d0e4048">“This second day of the big storm, with the wind from the northeast, the <i>El Dorado</i> began to leak badly again. All hands took spells at the pumps. We were at work <span id="d0e4053" class="pageno">page 173</span>every minute. We left the ropes for the pumps and the pumps for the ropes. We double-reefed the mizzen, and in the wind this +was a terrible job. It nearly killed us. At eight o’clock to-night we could not see five feet ahead of us. It was black as +hell, and the schooner rolled fearfully. The deck-load then shifted eight inches to starboard. This made a list that frightened +us. We were all soaking wet now for days. The after-house separated from the main-deck, and the water became six feet deep +in the cabin. + +<p id="d0e4056">“We had no sun at all during the day, and at midnight a hurricane came out of the dark. All night we were pulling and hauling, +running along the great logs in danger always of being washed away. We had to lash the lumber, tightening the chains, and +trying to stop the logs from smashing the ship to pieces. It did not seem that we could get through the night. + +<p id="d0e4059">“This is Friday. When a little of daylight came, we saw that everything was awash. The sea was white as snow, all foam and +spindrift. It did not seem that we could last much longer. The small boat that had been hanging over the stern was gone. It +had been smashed by the combers. We should have had it inboard, and the mate was to blame. Now we took the other boat, the +only one left, and lashed it upright to the spanker-stays. In this way it was above the logs and had a chance to remain unbroken. + +<p id="d0e4062">“We sounded the well, and the captain ordered us again to the pumps. These were on deck between the logs, which were crashing +about. We couldn’t work the pumps, as there was seven feet of water in there on deck. The second mate spoke to the captain +that it <span id="d0e4064" class="pageno">page 174</span>would be best to start the steam pump. The smokestack and the rest of the steam fittings were under the fo’c’s’le head. It +took a long time to get them out, and then the steam pump would not work. The water gained on us all the time now, and the +captain ordered us to throw the deck-load overboard. We were nearly dead, we were so tired and sleepy and sore. This morning, +the cook served coffee and bread when daylight came at six o’clock. That was the last bit of food or drink we had on the <i>El Dorado</i>. + +<p id="d0e4070">“The taking off of the great chain was a murderous job. When we loosened it, the huge seas would sweep over the logs and us +while we tried to get them overboard. It was touch and go. We had to use capstanbars to pry the big logs over and over. We +tried to push them with the rolling of the ship. One wave would carry a mass of the logs away, and the next wave would bring +them back, crashing into the vessel, catching in the rigging, and nearly pulling it down, and the masts with it. Dodging those +big logs was awful work, and if you were hit by one, you were gone. They would come dancing over the side on the tops of the +waves and be left on the very spot from which we had lifted them overboard. The old man should have thrown the deck-load over +two days before. The water now grew deeper all the time, and the ship wallowed like a waterlogged raft. The fo’c’s’le was +full of water. The <i>El Dorado</i> was drowning with us aboard. + +<p id="d0e4076">“We were all on deck because we had nowhere else to go. There was nothing in the cabin or the fo’c’s’le but water. The sea +was now like mountains, but it stopped <span id="d0e4078" class="pageno">page 175</span>breaking, so that there was a chance to get away. We were hanging on to stays and anything fixed. + +<p id="d0e4081">“The captain now gave up hope, as we had long ago. He ordered all hands to make ready to lower the one boat we had left, and +to desert the ship. We had a hard time to get this boat loose from the spanker-stay, and we lowered it with the spanker-tackle. +Just while we were doing that, a tremendous wave swept the poop, with a battering-ram of logs that had returned. Luckily, +the boat we were lowering escaped being smashed, or we had all been dead men now. + +<p id="d0e4084">“We filled a tank with twenty-five gallons of water from the scuttle-butts and carried it to the boat. The old man ordered +the cook and the boy to get some grub he had in a locker in his cabin, high up, where he had put it away from the flood. The +cook and the boy were scared stiff, and when they went into the cabin, a sea came racing in, and all saved was twenty pounds +of soda crackers, twelve one-pound tins of salt beef, three of tongue, thirty-two cans of milk, thirty-eight of soup, and +four of jam. + +<p id="d0e4087">“We went into the boat with nothing but what we wore, and that was little. Some of us had no coats, and some no hats, and +others were without any shoes. We were in rags from the terrible fight with the logs and the sea. The old man went below to +get his medicine-chest. He threw away the medicine, and put his log and the ship’s papers in it. He took up his chronometer +to bring it, when a wave like that which got the cook and the boy knocked the skipper over and lost the chronometer. All he +got away with was his sextant <span id="d0e4089" class="pageno">page 176</span>and compass and his watch, which was as good as a chronometer. + +<p id="d0e4092">“We got into the boat at four o’clock. The boat had been put into the water under the stern and made fast by a rope to the +taffrail. We climbed out the spankerboom and slid down another rope. The seas were terrific, and it was a mercy that we did +not fall in. We had to take a chance and jump when the boat came under us. Last came the old man, and took the tiller. He +had the oars manned, and gave the order to let go. That was a terrible moment for all of us, to cast loose from the schooner, +bad as she was. There we were all alone in the middle of the ocean, bruised from the struggle on deck, and almost dying from +exhaustion and already hungry as wolves. In twenty-four hours we had had only a cup of coffee and a biscuit. + +<p id="d0e4095">“It was very dark, and we had no light. We were, however, glad to leave the <i>El Dorado</i>, because our suffering on her for weeks had been as much as we could bear. The last I saw of the schooner she was just a +huge, black lump on the black waters. We rose on a swell, and she sank into a valley out of sight. + +<p id="d0e4101">“The captain spoke to us now: ‘We have a good chance for life,’ he said. ‘I have looked over the chart, and it shows that +Easter Island is about nine hundred miles northeast by east. If we are all together in trying, we may reach there.’ + +<p id="d0e4104">“None of us had ever been to Easter Island, and hardly any of us had ever heard of it. It looked like a long pull there. All +night the captain and the mate took turns in steering, while we, in turn, pulled at the oars. We did not dare put a rag of +canvas on her, for <span id="d0e4106" class="pageno">page 177</span>the wind was big still. The old man said that as we had both latitude and longitude to run, we would run out the latitude +first, and then hope for a slant to the land. We were then, he said, in latitude 31° south, and longitude 121° west. That +being so, we had about three hundred miles to go south and about six hundred east. He said that Pitcairn Island was but six +hundred miles away, but that the prevailing winds would not let us sail there. We set the course, then, for Easter Island. +We wondered whether Easter Island had a place to land, and whether there were any people on it. There might be savages and +cannibals. + +<p id="d0e4109">“It rained steady all night, and the sea spilled into the boat now and then. Two of us had to bale all the time to keep the +boat afloat. We were soaked to the skin with fresh and salt water, weak from the days of exposure and hunger, and we were +barely able to keep from being thrown out of the boat by its terrible rocking and pitching, and yet we all felt like singing +a song. All but the Japanese cook. Iwata had almost gone mad, and was praying to his joss whenever anything new happened. +During that night a wave knocked him over and crushed one of his feet against the tank of drinking water. The salt water got +into the wound and swelled it, and he was soon unable to move. + +<p id="d0e4112">“The second day in the small boat was the captain’s forty-eighth birthday. The old man spoke of it in a hearty way, hoping +that when he was forty-nine he would be on the deck of some good ship. There was no sign of the <i>El Dorado</i> that morning. But with wind and sea as they were, we could not have seen the ship very far, and we had made some distance +under oarpower <span id="d0e4117" class="pageno">page 178</span>during the night. We put up our little sail at nine o’clock, though the wind was strong. The skipper said that we could not +expect anything but rough weather, and that we had to make the best of every hour, considering what we had to eat and that +we were eleven in the boat. The wind was now from the southwest, and we steered northeast. We had to steer without compass +because it was dark, and we had no light. + +<p id="d0e4120">“We had our first bite to eat about noon of this second day out. We had then been nearly three months at sea, or, to be exact, +it was seventy-eight days since we had left port. It was thirty hours after the coffee and biscuit on the <i>El Dorado</i>, and God knows how much longer since we had had a whole meal, and now we didn’t have much. The old man bossed it. He took +a half-bucket of fresh water, and into this he put a can of soup. This he served, and gave each man two soda crackers and +his share of a pound of corned beef. We dipped the crackers into the bucket. (I tell you it was better than the ham and eggs +we had at the hotel when we landed.) We had this kind of a meal twice a day, and no more. + +<p id="d0e4126">“The next day the wind was again very strong, with thunder and lightning, and we ran dead before the wind with no more sail +than a handkerchief. The sea began to break over the boat, and our old man said that we could not live through it unless we +could rig up a sea-anchor. We were sure we would drown. We made one by rolling four blankets together tightly and tying around +them a long rope with which our boat was made fast to the ship when we embarked. This we let drag astern about ninety-feet. +It held the boat fairly steady, <span id="d0e4128" class="pageno">page 179</span>and kept the boat’s head to the seas. We fastened it to the ring in the stern. We used this sea-anchor many times throughout +our voyage, and without it we would have gone down sure. Of course we took in a great deal of water, anyhow; but we could +keep her baled out, and the sea-anchor prevented her from swamping. + +<p id="d0e4131">“The nights were frightful, and many times all of us had terrible dreams, and sometimes thought we were on shore. Men would +cry out about things they thought they saw, and other men would have to tell them they were not so. We were always up and +down on top of the swells, and our bodies ached so terribly from the sitting-down position and from the joggling of the motion +that we would cry with pain. The salt water got in all of our bruises and cracked our hands and feet, but there was no help +for us, and we had to grin and bear it. A shark took hold of our sea-anchor and we were afraid that he would tear it to pieces. + +<p id="d0e4134">“Every day the captain took an observation when he could, and told us where we were. We made about a hundred miles a day, +but very often we steered out of our course because we had no matches or lantern. + +<p id="d0e4137">“On the eighteenth we were in latitude 26° 53′ South, and the captain said that Easter Island was in the 27th degree, so after +all we had steered pretty well. + +<p id="d0e4140">“On the night of the nineteenth, we had a fearful storm. It seemed worse than the hurricane we had on the <i>El Dorado</i>. All night long we thought that every minute would end us, and we lay huddled in misery, not caring much whether we went +down or not. But the next morning, we set part of the sail again, and at noon that day the captain took a sight and found +that <span id="d0e4145" class="pageno">page 180</span>we were in latitude 27° 8′ south. Easter Island is 27° 10′ south. And now we began to fear that we might run past Easter Island. +If we did, we knew we could never get back with the wind. We had squall after squall now, but we felt sure that soon we must +see land. Our soup was all gone, and we were living on the soda crackers mixed with water and milk. Each of us got a cupful +of this stuff once a day. + +<p id="d0e4148">“On the twenty-second, when we were nine days out, I saw the land at ten o’clock in the morning, thirty miles away. We felt +pretty good over that, and had two cupfuls of the mixture, because we felt we were nearly safe. My God! what we felt when +we saw the rise of that land! The captain said it was Easter Island for certain, but that it was not a place that any merchant +ships ever went, as there was no trade there. Once we saw the land we could not get any nearer to it. We tried to row toward +it, but the wind was against us. Two days we hung about the back of that island, just outside the line of breakers. We were +afraid to risk a landing, for the coast was rocky. On the eleventh day we saw a spot where the rocks looked white, and we +rowed in toward it with great pains and much fear. A big sea threw us right upon a smooth boulder, and we leaped from the +boat and tried to run ashore. We were weak and fell down many times. Finally we got a hold and we carried everything out of +the boat, and after hours hauled it up out of reach of the breakers. + +<p id="d0e4151">“There was a cliff that went right up straight from the rocks, and we could not climb it, we were so weak from hunger and +the cramped position we had had to keep in the boat. We laid down a while, and then it <span id="d0e4153" class="pageno">page 181</span>was decided that the first and second mates should have a good feed and try to get up the precipice. We were taking risks, +because we had very little grub left. It was about a hundred feet up, and we watched them closely as they went slowly up. +They did not come back, and we were much afraid of what they might find. We did not know but there might be savages there. +During the day the other sailors also got up, leaving the old man and me to watch the boat. + +<p id="d0e4156">“Help arrived for us. The mates had walked all night, and at daybreak they reached the house of the head man, employed by +the owner of Easter Island. It was a sheep and horse island. The mates were fed, and then they went on to the house of the +manager. Horses were gotten out, and bananas and <i>poi</i> sent to us. The water just came in time, because we were all out. They brought horses for all of us then, and after we had +started the people of the island went ahead and came back with water and milk, which did us a world of good. At the house +of the governor we had a mess of brown beans, and then we all fell asleep on the floor. God knows how long we slept, but when +we waked up we were like wolves again. We then had beans with fresh killed mutton, and that made us all deathly sick because +our stomachs were weak.” + +<p id="d0e4162"> * * * * * + +<p id="d0e4165">Underneath us, while the red-cheeked and golden-haired Steve uttered his puzzling sentences in English, I heard from time +to time the heavy tread of Captain Benson. He was, doubtless, living over again the hours of terror and resolution on the +<i>El Dorado</i> and in the boat, and seeking to find words to amplify his log by <span id="d0e4170" class="pageno">page 182</span>his memories. I heard him sit down and get up more than once; while opposite me in an easy-chair, with his glass of Schiedam +schnapps beside him, was the virile Dutchman, hammering in his breast-swelling story of danger and courage, of starvation +and storm. I sighed for a dictaphone in which the original Dutch-English might be recorded for the delight of others. + +<p id="d0e4173">Alex Simoneau came back after a night of the hospitality of M. Lontane, and soon was joyous again, telling his wondrous epic +of the main to the beach-combers in the parc de Bougainville or in the Paris saloon, where the brown and white toilers of +land and sea make merry. + +<p id="d0e4176">“A man that goes to sea is a fool,” he said, with a bang of his fist on the table that made the schnapps dance in its heavy +bottle. “My people in Massachusetts are all right, and like a crazy man I will go to sea when I could work in a mill or on +a farm. They must think I’m dead by now.” + +<p id="d0e4179">Alex was corroborative of all that Steve said, but I could not pin him down to hours or days. He was too exalted by his present +happy fate—penniless, jobless, family in mourning, but healthy, safe, and full-stomached, not to omit an ebullience of spirits +incited by the continuing wonder of each new listener and the praise for his deeds and by the conviviality of his admirers. + +<p id="d0e4182">Alex was sure of one point, and that was that the <i>El Dorado</i> was overloaded. + +<p id="d0e4188">“Dose shkvarehet shkippers vould dake a cheese-box to sea mit a cargo of le’t,” commented Steve. “All dey care for is de havin’ +de yob. De owner he don’t care if de vessel sink mit de insurance.” +<span id="d0e4190" class="pageno">page 183</span> + +<p id="d0e4193">When Alex had shuffled out of the cottage, I gave the Dutchman the course of his narrative again. + +<p id="d0e4196">“You were safe on Easter Island, and ill from stuffing yourself with fresh mutton,” I prompted, “And now what?” + +<p id="d0e4199">Steve spat over the rail. + +<p id="d0e4202">“Ram, lam’, sheep, und muddon for a hundred und fife days. Dere vas noding odder. Dot’s a kveer place, dot Easter Island, +mit shtone gotts lyin’ round und det fulcanoes, und noding good to eat. Ve liffed in a house de English manager gif us. Dere’s +a Chile meat gompany owns de island, und grows sheep. Aboud a gouple of hundred kanakas chase de sheep. Ve vas dreaded vell +mit de vimmen makin’ luff und the kanakas glad mit it. Dere vas noding else to do. De manager he say no ship come for six +months, und he vanted us to blant bodadoes, und ve had no tobacco. He say de bodadoes get ripe in eight months, und I dink +if I shtay dere eight months I go grazy. Ve vas ragged, und efery day ve go und look for a vessel. Ve gould see dem a long +vay ouid, und ve made signals und big fires, but no ship efer shtopped. De shkipper made a kvarrel mit de mates, und de old +man he say he go away in de boat, und he bick Alex und me because ve was de bestest sailormen. Ve vas dere nearly four months +ven ve shtart ouid. De oder men dey vas sore, but dey vanted de old man to bromise to gif dem big money, und ve go for noding. +Ve fix oop de boat und ve kvit.” + +<p id="d0e4205">Steve went on to describe how they fixed up the boat for the voyage by making guards of canvas about the sides, and an awning +which they could raise and lower. <span id="d0e4207" class="pageno">page 184</span>They took a ten-gallon steel oil-drum and made a stove out of it. They cut it in two at the middle and kept the bottom half. +They then made a place for holding a pot, with pieces of scrap-iron fixed to the side of the drum, so that they could make +a fire under the pot without setting fire to the boat. Then the captain set them to learning to make fire by rubbing sticks, +and after many days they learned it. The manager had a steer killed, and they jerked the meat and loaded up their boat beside +with sweet potatoes, taro, white potatoes, five dozen eggs, and twenty gallons of water in their tank, with twenty-five more +in a barrel. + +<p id="d0e4210">Then bidding good-by to everybody who gathered to see them off, they steered for Pitcairn Island. They soon found that the +prevailing wind would not permit them to make that course, and so they laid for Mangareva in 23° south and 134° west, sixteen +hundred miles distant. They had to go from 28° south and 110° west, 5° of latitude and 24° of longitude. Again they were at +the mercy of the sea, but now they had only three men in the boat, and had enough food for many days, rough as it was. In +the latitude of Pitcairn, the island so famous because to it fled the mutineers of the Bounty, they all but perished. For +two days a severe storm nearly overwhelmed them. The boat was more buoyant, and with the sea-anchor trailing, they came through +the trial without injury. Steve said the lightning was “yoost like a leedle bid of hell.” It circled them about, hissed in +the water, and finally struck their mast repeatedly, so that the wise captain took it down. The entire heavens were a mass +of coruscating electricity, and they could feel the air alive with it. They <span id="d0e4212" class="pageno">page 185</span>were shocked by the very atmosphere, said Steve, and feared for their lives every moment. The sea piled up, the wind blew +a gale, and death was close at hand. They wished they had not left Easter Island, and envied those who had remained there. + +<p id="d0e4215">But they rode it out, with their pile of blankets a-trail, and with helm and oars alert to keep the boat afloat. + +<p id="d0e4218">The gale amended after several days, and on the sixteenth day from their departure they reached Mangareva. That island is +in the Gambier group, and a number of Europeans live there. The castaways were received generously, and were informed that +a schooner was expected in a fortnight, which might carry them to some port on their way home. But the old man said they must +push on. He had to report to his owners the loss of the <i>El Dorado</i>; he had to see his family. They had come twenty-six hundred miles since deserting the schooner, and the thousand miles more +to Tahiti was not a serious undertaking. He persuaded Steve and Alex to his manner of thinking, and with the boat stocked +with provisions they took the wave again, after a couple of days at Mangareva. + +<p id="d0e4224">Now the bad weather was over. The sea was comparatively smooth, and the breeze favorable. But fate still had frowns for them, +as if to keep them in terror. Sharks and swordfish, as though resenting the intrusion of their tiny craft in waters where +boats were seldom seen, attacked them furiously. Five times a giant shark launched himself at their boat, head on, and drove +them frantic with his menace of sinking them. They were so filled with this dread that they fastened a marlinespike in the +spar, and despite probability of provoking <span id="d0e4226" class="pageno">page 188</span>the shark to more desperate onslaughts, maneuvered so that they were able to kill him with a blow. + +<p id="d0e4229">The next day a swordfish of alarming size played about them, approaching and retreating, eying them and acting in such a manner +that they felt sure he was challenging the boat as a strange fish whose might he disputed. One thrust of his bony weapon, +and they might be robbed of their chance for life. They shouted and banged on the gunwales, and escaped. + +<p id="d0e4232">Steve hurried through this part of his diary. So near to safety then, he had had not much thought for a record. There was +little more to tell, for after the lightning, the sharks, and the swordfish, they had had no unusual experiences. They had +made the voyage of nearly four thousand miles from the pit of water in which they had left the <i>El Dorado</i>, and were glad that they had not stayed behind on Easter Island. Steve had only good words for the skipper’s skill as a seaman, +but now that they were there, he would like to be assured of his wages. The captain said he did not know what the owners would +do about paying Steve for the time since the <i>El Dorado</i> sank. He was sure she had gone down immediately, for, he said, he would not have left his ship had he not been certain she +could not stay on the surface. He contrasted his arrival in Papeete with his coming years before in the brig <i>Lurline</i>, when he brought the first phonograph to the South Seas. Crowds had flocked to the quay to hear it, and it was taken in a +carriage all about the island. + +<p id="d0e4244">The superb courage of these men, their marvelous seamanship, and their survival of all the perils of their thousands of miles’ +voyage were not lessened in interest <span id="d0e4246" class="pageno">page 187</span>or admiration by their personality. But one realized daily, as one saw them chewing their quids, devouring rudely the courses +served by Lovaina, or talking childishly of their future, that heroes are the creatures of opportunity. It is true Steve and +Alex were picked of all the crew for their sea knowledge and experience, their nerve and willingness, by the sturdy captain, +and that he, too, was a man big in the primitive qualities, a viking, a companion for a Columbus; but—they were peculiarly +of their sept; types molded by the wind-swept spaces of the vasty deep, chiseled by the stress of storm and calm, of burning, +glassy oceans, and the chilling, killing berg; men set apart from all the creeping children of the solid earth, and trained +to seize the winds from heaven for their wings, to meet with grim contempt the embattled powers of sky and wave, and then, +alas! on land to become the puny sport of merchant, crimp, and money-changer, and rum and trull. + +<p id="d0e4249">Goeltz, Lying Bill, Llewellyn, and McHenry sat in the Cercle Bougainville with eager looks as I read them the diary of Steve +Drinkwater. The seamen held opinions of the failure of Captain Benson’s seamanship at certain points, and all knew the waters +through which he had come. + +<p id="d0e4252">“Many of the people of Mangareva came from Easter Island,” said Lying Bill. “There was a French missionary brought a gang +of them there. ’E was Père Roussel, and ’e ran away with ’em because Llewellyn’s bloody crowd ’ere tried to steal ’em and +sell ’em. They lived at Mangareva with ’im till he died a few years ago, and they never went back.” + +<p id="d0e4255">Llewellyn lifted his dour eyes. There was never <span id="d0e4257" class="pageno">page 188</span>such a dule countenance as his, dark naturally with his Welsh and Tahitian blood, and shaded by the gloom of his soul. He +looked regretfully at Captain Pincher. + +<p id="d0e4260">“You are only repeating the untruthful assertion of that clergyman,” he said accusingly. “He put it in a pamphlet in French. +My people have had to do with Easter Island for forty years. I lived there several years and, as you know, I made that island +what it is now, a cattle and sheep ranch. It is the strangest place, with the strangest history in the world. If we knew who +settled it originally and carved those stone gods the Dutch sailor spoke of, we would know more about the human race and its +wanderings. + +<p id="d0e4263">“The Peruvians murdered and stole the Easter Islanders. Just before we took hold there, a gang of blackbirders from Peru went +there and killed and took away many hundreds of them. They sold them to the guano diggings in the Chincha Islands. Only those +escaped death or capture who hid in the dark caverns. Nearly all those taken away died soon. We then made contracts with some +of those left, and took them to Tahiti to work. It is true they died, too, most of them, but some you can find where McHenry +lives half a mile from here at Patutoa. We sold off the stock to Chileans, and that country owns the island now. + +<p id="d0e4266">“I think the island had a superior race once. There are immense platforms of stone, like the <i>paepaes</i> of the Marquesas, only bigger, and the stones are all fitted together without cement. They built them on promontories facing +the sea. Some are three hundred feet long, and the walls thirty feet high. On these platforms there were huge stone gods that +have been thrown <span id="d0e4271" class="pageno">page 189</span>down; some were thirty-seven feet high, and they had redstone crowns, ten feet in diameter. There were stone houses one hundred +feet long, with walls five feet thick. How they moved the stones no one knows, for, of course, these people there now were +not the builders. Some race of whom they knew nothing was there before them. + +<p id="d0e4274">“They are one of the greatest mysteries in the world. Easter is the queerest of all the Maori islands. They had nothing like +the other Maoris had in any of these islands, but they had plenty of stone, their lances were tipped with obsidian, and they +were terrible fighters among themselves. They had no trees, and so no canoes; and they depended on driftwood and the hibiscus +for weapons. They are all done for now.” + +<p id="d0e4277">Captain Benson was still busied with his log when the steamship from New Zealand arrived to take the shipwrecked men away. +The <i>El Dorado’s</i> boat was stowed carefully on the deck of the liner. I saw the skipper watching it as the deck-hands put chocks under it and +made it fast against the rolling of the ship. That boat deserved well of him, for its stanchness had stood between him and +the maws of the sharks many days and nights. + +<p id="d0e4283">I bade him and the two seamen good-by on the wharf. The old man was full of his plan to exhibit the boat in a museum and of +selling his account of his adventures to a magazine. + +<p id="d0e4286">The crew left on Easter Island were rescued sooner than they had expected. A British tramp, the <i>Knight of the Garter</i>, put into Easter Island for emergency repairs, having broken down. The castaways left with <span id="d0e4291" class="pageno">page 190</span>her for Sydney, Australia, and from there reached San Francisco by the steamship <i>Ventura</i>, ten months after they had sailed away on the <i>El Dorado</i>. That schooner was never sighted again. +<span id="d0e4299" class="pageno">page 191</span> + +<h1 id="d0e4303">Chapter XI</h1> +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e4310">I move to the Annexe—Description of building—The baroness and her baby—Evoa and poia—The corals of the lagoon—The Chinese +shrine—The Tahitian sky. + +</div> +<p id="d0e4314">Lovaina suggested, since I liked to be about the lagoon, that I move to the Annexe, a rooming-house she owned and conducted +as an adjunct to the Tiare. I moved there, and regretted that I had stayed so long in the animal-yard. And yet I should have +missed knowing Lovaina intimately, the hour-to-hour incidents of her curious menage, the close contact with the girls and +the guests, the <i>El Dorado</i> heroes, the Dummy, and others. + +<p id="d0e4320">The Annexe fronted the lagoon. It was a two-story building, with broad verandas in front and rear, and stood back a few feet +from the Broom Road. It had a very large garden behind, with tall cocoanut trees, and the finest rose-bushes in Tahiti. Vava, +the Dummy, put all the sweepings from his stable on the flower beds, and Lovaina cut the roses for the tables at the Tiare +Hotel and for presents to friends and prosperous tourists. Vava was often about the garden, and drove Lovaina to and fro in +her old chaise. + +<p id="d0e4323">When he brought me and my belongings from the Tiare, Lovaina came with us. She signed to him to go to the <i>glacerie</i>, the ice- and soda-water factory, to buy ice for the hotel. The Dummy was intensely jealous of <span id="d0e4328" class="pageno">page 192</span>new-comers whom Lovaina liked. He left on foot, but merely took a walk, and, returning, answered her question by opening his +hands and shaking his head, conveying perfectly the statement that the <i>glacerie</i> had refused Lovaina credit because of her debt to it of two hundred francs, and that cash was demanded. He intimated that +the proprietor had ridiculed her. + +<p id="d0e4334">“That dam’ lie,” said Lovaina to him and to me,—she always supplemented her gestures to him with words,—and she made a sign +that she had paid the bill. He uttered a choking sound of anger, accompanied by a dreadful grimace, and after a little while +came back with a large piece of ice, which he placed in the carriage. Lovaina told him to break off a lump for my room. He +became indignant, and in pantomime vividly described the suffering of guests at the Tiare with the ice exhausted, and Lovaina’s +plight if she could sell no more drinks. + +<p id="d0e4337">Lovaina persisted, and when I went to take the ice myself, he struck me with his horsewhip. Temanu, who had come with Lovaina, +rushed out shrieking, and the Dummy, seeing his advantage, began to threaten all who came at the noise. Afa, a half-white, +who lives in a cottage in the garden, and who alone could control him, slapped his face. The wretched mute sat down and wept +bitterly until Lovaina rubbed his back, and informed him that he was again in her good graces. I, too, smiled upon him, and +he became a happy child for a moment. + +<p id="d0e4340">The Annexe was decaying fast. In the great storm of 1906 it was partly blown down, and was poorly restored. It was the prey +of rat and insect, dusty, neglected, <span id="d0e4342" class="pageno">page 193</span>but endearing. It had had a season of glory. It was built for the first modern administration office of the French Government, +over sixty years before, and was painted white with blue trimmings. In its bare and dusty entrance-hall hung two steel engravings +entitled, “The Beginning of the Civil War in the United States” and “The End of the Civil War in the United States.” The former +showed Freedom in the center; Justice with a sword and balance; the Stars and Stripes being torn from a liberty-tree, with +a snake winding about it; an aged man labeled Buchanan asleep on a big book; and a gentleman named Floyd counting a bag of +money; on the other side Abraham Lincoln exhorted a white-haired general who commanded a file of soldiers, and some rich-looking +men were throwing money on the floor. + +<p id="d0e4345">The other picture was indeed florid. It represented three ladies, Freedom, Justice, and Mercy, disputing the center, slaves +being unshackled, the army of victory led by Grant claiming honors, Lee handing over a sword, an ugly fellow toting off a +bag of gold (graft?) and a gang of conspirators egging on the madman Booth to slay Lincoln. In both these engravings there +were scores of supposed likenesses, but I could not identify them. They were published by Kimmel & Forster in New York in +1865, and had probably decorated Papeete walls for half a century. There were large, ramshackle chambers on the first floor, +and an exquisite winding staircase, with a rosewood balustrade, led to the second story, where I lived. + +<p id="d0e4348">In this building all the pomp and circumstance of the Nations in Tahiti had been on parade, kings and queens <span id="d0e4350" class="pageno">page 194</span>of the island had pleaded and submitted, admirals and ensigns had whispered love to dusky <i>vahines</i>, and the petty wars of Oceanic had been planned between waltzes and wines. Here Loti put his arms about his first Tahitian +sweetheart, and practised that vocabulary of love he used so well in “Rarahu,” “Madame Chrysantheme,” and his other studies +of the exotic woman. A hundred noted men, soldiers, and sailors, scientists and dilettanti, governors and writers, had walked +or worked in those tumbling rooms. + +<p id="d0e4356">Lovaina had owned the building many years, buying it from the thrifty French Government. + +<p id="d0e4359">My apartment was of two rooms, and my section of the balcony was cut off by a door, giving privacy unusual in Tahiti. The +coloring of the wall was rich in hue. + +<p id="d0e4362">Any color, so it’s red, said a satirist, who might have been characterizing my rooms. Turkey-red muslin with a large, white +diamond figure was pasted on the plaster walls and hung in the doorways. + +<p id="d0e4365">“It very bes’ the baroness could do in T’ytee,” explained Lovaina. “She must be bright all about, and she buy and fix rooms. +She have whole top floor Annexe, and spen’ money like gentleman, two or three thousand dollar’ every month. I wish you know +her. She talk beautiful’, and never one word smut. Hones’, true. Johnny, my son, read ‘Three Weeks’ that time, and he speak +the baroness, ‘You jus’ like that woman in the book.’ She have baby here and take with her to Paris. She want that baby jus’ +like ‘Three Weeks.’ Oh, but she live high! She have her own servants, get everything in market, bring peacocks and pheasants +and turkeys from America. How you think? Dead? No. <span id="d0e4367" class="pageno">page 195</span>She sen’ man to bring on foot on boat. You go visit her, she give champagne jus’ like Papenoo River. She beautiful? My God! +I tell you she like angel. She speak French, English, Russian, German, Italian, anything the same. She good, but she don’t +care a dam’ what people say. When she go ’way Europe she give frien’s all her thing’. Now she back in her palace with her +baby. She write once say she come back T’ytee some day by’n’by. She love T’ytee somethin’ crazee.” + +<p id="d0e4370">At the Cercle Bougainville Captain William Pincher told me more of the baroness. + +<p id="d0e4373">“Is the bloody meat-safe still on the back porch? The baroness made a voyage with me to the Paumotus just for the air. She +sat on deck all the time, rain or shine. I’d put a’ awnin’ over ’er in fair weather or when it rained and there wasn’t much +wind. She was a bloody good sailor, too, and ate like us, only she never went below except at night. I give her my cabin. +She’d spen’ hours lookin’ over the side in a calm—we had no engine—an’ she’d listen to all the yarns.” + +<p id="d0e4376">Lying Bill burst out with one of his choicest oaths. + +<p id="d0e4379">“She wasn’t like some of those ladees I’ve ’ad aboard. She was a proper salt-water lass. She loved to ’ear my yarns of the +sea. When she was big with child an’ I ashore, I ’ad the ’abit o’ droppin’ in o’ afternoons and ’avin’ a slice of ’am or chicken +out o’ the safe. Afa ran ’er bloody show for ’er, an’ it cost ’er a bloody fortune. I used to lie for ’er to ’ear ’er laugh. +You know I’m called Lyin’ Bill, but McHenry tells more real lies in a day than I do in a bloody year. She was the finest-looking +girl of the delicate kind I ever saw, all pink and white an’ with fringy <span id="d0e4381" class="pageno">page 296</span>clothes an’ little feet. Oh! there was nothing between us but the sea, an’ I know that subject.” + +<p id="d0e4384">Lying Bill sighed like a diver just up from the bottom of the lagoon. + +<p id="d0e4387">“You know that big cocoanut tree in the garden of the Annexe? She would sit under that with me an’ smoke her Cairo cigarettes +an’ talk about her bally kiddie. She wanted him to be strong an’ to love the sea, and she thought by talking with me about +’im an’ ships an’ the ocean she could sort of train him that way, though he’d been got in Paris an’ might be a girl. Is there +anything in that bleedin’ idea? She could quote books all right about it.” + +<p id="d0e4390">Ah, beautiful and brave baroness! I often thought of you during those months in the Annexe. You will come again, you say, +to Tahiti, bathe again in its witching waters, and let the spell of its sweetness bind you again to its soil. Maybe, but baroness, +you will never again be as you were, flinging all body and soul into the fire of passion, and yearning for motherhood! Such +times can never be the same. We burn, even desire, and consume our dreams. Child of aristocracy, you found in this South Sea +eyot the freedom your atavism, or shall I say, naturalness, craved, and you drank your cup to the lees and thought it good. +I shall not be the one to point a finger at you, nor even to think too vivid the scarlet of my toilet set. That flamboyant +outside my window, once yours, is as garish, and yet lacks no consonance with all about it. + +<p id="d0e4393">The scene from my veranda was a changing picture of radiance and shadow. Directly below was the Broom Road. Umbrageous flamboyants—the +royal <span id="d0e4395" class="pageno">page 297</span>poincianas, or flame-trees—sheltered the short stretch of sward to the water, and their blossoms made a red-gold litter upon +the grass. A giant acacia whose flowers were reddish pink and looked like thistle blooms, protected two canoes, one my own +and one Afa’s. The Annexe was bounded by the Broom Road and the rue de Bougainville, and across that street was the restaurant +of Mme. Fanny. It was built over a tiny stream, which emptied fifty feet away into the lagoon. A clump of banana-trees hid +the patrons, but did not obscure their view from Fanny’s balcony. + +<p id="d0e4398">In the lagoon, a thousand yards from me, was Motu Uta, a tiny island ringed with golden sand, a mass of green trees half disclosing +a gray house. Motu Uta was a gem incomparable in its beauty and its setting. It had been the place of revels of old kings +and chiefs, and Pomaré the Fourth had made it his residence. Cut off by half a mile of water from Papeete, it had an isolation, +yet propinquity, which would have persuaded me to make it my home were I a governor; but it was given over to quarantine purposes, +with an old caretaker who came and went in a commonplace rowboat. + +<p id="d0e4401">The Annexe housed many rats. I brought to my rooms a basket of bananas, and put it on a table by my bed, the canopied four-poster +in which the son of the baroness was born. In the night I was awakened by a tremendous thump on the floor and a curious dragging +noise. I listened breathlessly. But the rat must have heard me, for he ceased operations, only returning when he thought I +was asleep. He leaped on the table, scratched a banana from the basket, threw it to the floor, and pulled it to his den near +the wardrobe. The joists <span id="d0e4403" class="pageno">page 198</span>and floor boards were eaten away by the ants, and in one hole six or seven inches long this rat had entrance to his den between +the floor and the ceiling of the room below. He had trading proclivities, and in exchange brought me old and valueless trifles. +I once knew a miner in Arizona who found a rich gold-vein through a rat bringing him a piece of ore in exchange for a bit +of bacon. He traced the rat to his nest and discovered the source of the ore. The rats had their ancient enemies to guard +against, and the cats of Tahiti, not indigenous, slept by day and hunted by night. They cavorted through the Annexe in the +smallest hours, and one often wakened to their shrieks and squeals of combat. The tom-cats had tails longer than their bodies, +the climate, their habits and food developing them extraordinarily. + +<p id="d0e4406">The roosters grew to a size unequaled, and those in the garden of the Annexe roused me almost at dawn. Their voices were horrific, +and one that had fathered a quartet of ducks—an angry tourist had killed the drake because of his quacking—was a <i>vrai Chantecler</i>. When he waked me, the sun was coming over the hills from Hitiaa, brightened Papenoo and leaped the summits to Papeete, but +it was long before the phantom of false morning died and the god of day rode his golden chariot to the sea. The Diadem was +gilded first, and down the beach the long light tremulously disclosed the faint scarlet of the flamboyant-trees, their full, +magnificent color yet to be revealed, and their elegant contours like those graceful, red-tiled pagodas on the journey to +Canton in far Cathay. + +<p id="d0e4412">Motu Uta crept from the obscurity of the night, and <span id="d0e4414" class="pageno">page 199</span>the battlements of Moorea were but dim silhouettes. The lagoon between the reef and the beach was turning from dark blue to +azure pink. The miracle of the advent of the day was never more delicately painted before my eyes. + +<p id="d0e4417">In my crimson <i>pareu</i> I descended the grand staircase, which had often echoed to the booted tread of admiral and sailor, of diplomat and bureaucrat, +and outside the building I passed along the lower rear balcony to the bath. The Annexe, like the Tiare Hotel, made no pretense +to elegance or convenience. The French never demand the latter at home, and the Tahitian is so much an outdoor man that water-pipes +and what they signify are not of interest to him. + +<p id="d0e4423">The bath of the Annexe was a large cement tank, primarily for washing clothes. Its floor was as slippery as ice. One held +to the window-frame at the side, and turned the tap. + +<p id="d0e4426">A shower fell a dozen feet like rose-leaves upon one. Ah, the waters of Tahiti! Never was such gentle, velvety rain, a benediction +from the <i>tauupo o te moua</i>, the slopes of the mountains. + +<p id="d0e4432">I deferred my pleasure a few minutes as the place under the shower was occupied by an entrancing pair, Evoa, the consort of +Afa, and her four-months-old infant, Poia. Evoa was sixteen years old, tall, like most Tahitians, finely figured, slender, +and with the superb carriage that is the despair of the corseted women who visit Tahiti. Her features were regular, but not +soft. Her skin was ivory-white, with a glint of red in cheek and lip, and the unconfined hair that reached her hips was intensely +black and fine, I could see no touch <span id="d0e4434" class="pageno">page 200</span>or tint of the Polynesian except in the slight harshness of the contours of her face, and that her legs were more like yellow +satin than white. Her foot would have given Du Maurier inspiration for a brown <i>Trilby</i>. It was long, high-arched, perfect; the toes, never having known shoes, natural and capable of grasp, and the ankle delicate, +yet strong. Her father she believed to have been a French official who had stayed only a brief period in Bora-Bora, her mother’s +island, and whose very name was forgotten by her. She had not seen her mother since her first year, having, as is the custom +here, been adopted by others. + +<p id="d0e4440">Poia had a head like a cocoanut, her eyes shiny, black buttons, her body roly-poly, and her pinkish-yellow feet and hands +adorable. Evoa was dressing her for the market in a red muslin slip, a knitted shawl of white edged with blue, and, shades +of Fahrenheit! a cap with pink ribbons, and socks of orange. Evoa herself would wear a simple tunic, which was most of the +time pulled down over the shoulder to give Poia ingress to her white breast. Poia was like a flower, and I had never heard +her cry, this good nature being accounted for perhaps by an absence of pins, as she was usually naked. She had two teeth barely +peeping from below. + +<p id="d0e4443">Evoa spoke only Tahitian, which is the same tongue as that spoken in Bora-Bora, and she was totally without education. Afa +had found her, and brought her to his cabin in the garden. He did not claim to be the father of Poia, but was delighted, as +are all Polynesians, to find a mate and, with her, certainty of a little one. They have not our selfishness of paternity, +but find in <span id="d0e4445" class="pageno">page 201</span>the assumed relation of father all the pride and joy we take only with surety of our relationship. + +<p id="d0e4448">Afa was a handsome half-caste, his mustache and light complexion, his insouciance and frivolity, his perfect physique, skill +with canoe and fish-net and spear, his flirtations with many women, and his ability to provide amusement for the guests, making +him a superior type of the white-brown blood. There was a black tragedy in this life which, with all his heedlessness, often +and again imprisoned him in deep melancholy. + +<p id="d0e4451">His father was a wealthy Italian who lived near the home of a Tahitian princess, and who won the girl’s love against her father’s +commands. Afa was born, the princess was sent away, and the child brought up in a good family. When he was fourteen years +old he was taken to the United States. His father became engaged in a quarrel with certain natives whom he forbade to cross +his land to gather <i>feis</i> in the mountains. As they had always had this right, they resented his imposition, and plotted to kill him. He disappeared, +and a long time afterward his body was found loosely covered with earth, the feet above the surface. In court the surgeons +swore that he had been alive when buried. A number of men were tried for the crime and sentenced to life imprisonment in New +Caledonia. + +<p id="d0e4457">Afa returned from America to find that much of his father’s property had been stolen or claimed by others, and he became a +cook and servant. He had been many years with Lovaina, and though he owned valuable land, he preferred the hotel life, half +domestic, half manager and confidant, to the quietude of the country. In Afa’s single room were two brass bedsteads, many +<span id="d0e4459" class="pageno">page 202</span>gaudy tidies, an engraving of the execution of Nathan Hale, and a toilet-table full of fancy notions. Evoa was always barefooted, +but Afa, on steamer days and when going to the cinematograph, appeared in immaculate white and with canvas shoes. Otherwise +he wore only a fold of cloth about the loins, the real garment of the Tahitian, and the right one for that climate. + +<p id="d0e4462">Again on my balcony, I saw the sun had passed the crown of the Diadem and was slanting hotly toward Papeete. Moorea was emerging +from darkness, its valleys a deep brown, and the tops of the serried mountains becoming green. + +<p id="d0e4465">Along the reef, outside, a schooner, two-masted, was making for the harbor. She was very graceful, and as she entered the +lagoon through the passage in the barrier I was struck by her lines, slender, swelling, and feminine. She passed within a +few hundred feet of me, and I saw that she was the <i>Marara</i>, the <i>Flying-Fish</i>. + +<p id="d0e4474">I did not know it then, but I was to go on that little vessel to the blazing atolls of the Dangerous Archipelago, and to see +stranger and more fascinating sights than I had dreamed of on the <i>Noa-Noa</i> during my passage to Tahiti. + +<p id="d0e4480">I dragged my canoe to the edge of the quai des Subsistances, so-called because of the naval depot. The craft was dubbed out +of a breadfruit-tree trunk, and had an outrigger of <i>purau</i> wood, a natural crooked arm, with a small limb laced to it. The canoe was steady enough in such smooth water, and I paddled +off to Motu Uta. That islet is a rock of coral upon which soil had been placed unknown years before, and which produced fruits +and flowers in abundance under the hand of the <span id="d0e4485" class="pageno">page 203</span>caretaker. Motu Uta is about as large as a city building lot, and the coral hummock shelves sharply to a considerable depth. +Under this declining reef were the rarest shapes and colors of fish. They swam up and down, and in and out of their blue and +pink and ivory-colored homes, slowly and majestically, or darting hither and thither, angered at the intrusion of my canoe +in their domain, courting and rubbing fins, repelling invaders. The little ones avoiding dexterously the appetites of their +big friends, and these moving pompously, but warily, seeking what they might devour. + +<p id="d0e4488">A collector of corals would find many sorts there. They are wonderful, these stony plants, graceful, strange, bizarre. The +Tahitian, who has a score of names for the winds, and who classifies fish not only by their names, but changes these names +according to size and age, makes only a few lumps of the coral. It is <i>to’a</i>, and when round is <i>to’a ati</i>, <i>to’a apu</i>; when branching, <i>uruhi, uruana</i>; when in a bank, <i>to’a aau</i>; when above the surface of the water, <i>to’a raa</i>. A submerged mass is <i>to’a faa ruru</i>, and the coral on which the waves break, <i>to’a auau</i>. However, the native knows well that one species of coral, the <i>ahifa</i>, is corrosive, irritating the skin when touched, and another, which is poisoned by the <i>hara</i> plants, is termed <i>to’a harahia</i>. + +<p id="d0e4524">Coral makes good lime for whitening walls, and is cut into blocks for building. Many churches in Tahiti were built of coral +blocks. The puny fortifications erected by the French in the war with the Tahitians decades ago were of coral stones, and +are now black with age and weather. + +<p id="d0e4527">I headed my canoe toward the barrier reef, and tied <span id="d0e4529" class="pageno">page 204</span>it to a knob of coral. Then I stepped out upon the reef itself, my tennis shoes keeping the sharp edges from cutting my feet. +It was the low tide succeeding sunrise, and the water over the reef was a few inches deep, so that I could see the marine +life of the wall, the many kinds of starfish, the sea-urchins, and the curious bivalves which hide with their shell-tips just +even with the floor of the lagoon, and, keeping them barely even, wait for foolish prey. + +<p id="d0e4532">The floor of the lagoon was most interesting; the prodigality of nature in the countless number of low forms of life, their +great variety, their beauty, and their ugliness, and, appealing to me especially, the humor of nature in the tricks she played +with color and shape, her score of clowns of the sea equaling her funny fellows ashore, the macaws, the mandrills, the dachshunds, +and the burros. + +<p id="d0e4535">The sunlight on the water at that hour was like silver spangles on a sapphire robe. I paddled near to the <i>Marara</i>, and watched her let go her anchor and send her boat ashore with a stern line. Fastened to a cannon and passed around a bitt +on the schooner, the crew hauled her close to the embankment, and soon she was broadside to, and her gangway on the quay. +Her captain, M. Moet, Woronick, a pearl merchant, a government physician, and the passengers from the Paumotus were soon ashore +shaking hands with friends. I walked behind them to Lovaina’s for coffee, and was introduced to them all. + +<p id="d0e4541">Woronick took me to his house across the street from the Tiare Hotel, and there opened a massive safe and showed me drawer +after drawer of pearls. They were <span id="d0e4543" class="pageno">page 205</span>of all sizes and shapes and tints, from a pear-shaped, brilliant, Orient pearl of great value, to the golden <i>pipi</i> of inconsiderable worth. Woronick spoke of a pearl he had bought some years ago in Takaroa, the creation of which, he said, +had cost the lives of three men including a great savant. + +<p id="d0e4549">“If you go to Takaroa,” said Woronick, “be sure to see old Tepeva a Tepeva. He used to be one of the best divers in the Low +Islands, but he’s got the bends. He sold me the greatest pearl ever found in these fisheries in the last twenty years, and +I made enough profit on it to buy a house in Paris and live a year. Get him to tell you his yarn. It beats Monte Cristo all +hollow.” + +<p id="d0e4552">Which I made a note to do. + +<p id="d0e4555">In the afternoon, with Charlie Eager, a guest at the Annexe, I went to the worship-place of the Chinese, on the Broom Road. +Outwardly, it had not the flaunting distinction of the joss-houses of the Far East or those of New York or San Francisco. +The Chinese usually builds his temples even in foreign lands in the same Oriental superfluity of color and curve and adornment +that makes them exclusively the Middle Kingdom’s own; but here he had been content to have a simple, whitewashed church which +might be a meeting-house or school. It was set in the center of a great garden in which mango and cocoa and breadfruit abounded. +We were struck by the superb breadth and immense height of a breadfruit-tree the shadows of which fell over a small brick +pagoda. This tree was a hundred feet tall, and the always glorious leaves, as large as aprons, indented and a glossy, dark +green, made it a temple in itself worthier of the ministrations of priests than the <span id="d0e4557" class="pageno">page 206</span>ugly brick or frame structure of our cities. The Druids in their groves were nearer to the real God than the pursy bishop +in the steam-heated cathedral. + +<p id="d0e4560">A native woman, aged and bent, said “Ia ora na!” to us, and we replied. With my few words of Tahitian I gained from her that +the joss-house was open. We entered it, and found no one there. The center was wide to the sky, that the rain might fall and +the stars shine within it. The altars were brilliant with memorial tablets, the green, red, and gold flower vases, and sandalwood +taper-holders, so familiar to me, and all about were the written prayers of devotees, soliciting the favor of Heaven, asking +success in business, or the averting of illness. They were evidently painted by the bonze of the fane, for his slab of India +ink was on a table nearby, as also the brushes for the ideographs. + +<p id="d0e4563">Sons expressed their filial duties in glittering excerpts from Confucius, carved and gilded on expansive boards, and the incense +of the poor arose from the humble punksticks stuck in dishes of sand upon the floor. + +<p id="d0e4566">No Levite sat within the shrine or watched to see if profane hand touched the sacred symbols, and were Charlie Eager sure +of that before we left, he had secured a trophy. Not knowing but that from one of the numerous crannies or mayhap from the +open roof the wrathful eye of a hierophant was upon him, he had to content himself with a prayer from the pagoda, which proved +on close inspection to be a furnace for the burning of the paper slips on which the aspirations of the faithful were written. +Whether the prayers had been granted, were out of date, or the time paid for hanging in the joss-house had expired, the crematory +was four feet <span id="d0e4568" class="pageno">page 207</span>deep with the red and white rice-paper legends, awaiting an auspicious occasion for incineration. Eager of Inglewood, California, +fished secretly, hidden by my body, until he found a particularly long and intricate set of hieroglyphics, and deposited it +in his pocket. Then we fled. + +<p id="d0e4571">More than two thousand Chinese in Tahiti, nearly all kin within a few degrees, found in this humble church a substitute for +their family temples in China, where usually each clan has its own place of worship. The laboring class of this fecund people +seldom extend their real devotion beyond their ancestors and the principle of fatherhood, their reasoning being that of the +wise Jewish charge to honor one’s father (and mother) that one’s life may be long. Loving sons take care of old parents. It +is the old Oriental patriarchy sublimated by the imposition of commerce upon agriculture. + +<p id="d0e4574">The Chinese came to Tahiti during the American Civil War. They were brought by an English planter to grow cotton, then scarce +on account of the blockade and desolation of the South. With the end of the war, and the looms of Manchester again supplied, +the plantation languished, and the Chinese took other employment, became planters themselves, or set up little shops. They +now had most of the retail business of the island, and all of it outside Papeete. + +<p id="d0e4577">The secretary-general gave me figures about them. + +<p id="d0e4580">“There are twenty-two hundred Chinese in Tahiti now,” said he. “We are willing to receive all who come. They are needed to +restore the population. Who would keep the stores or grow vegetables if we did not have the Chinese? We exact no entrance +fee, but we number <span id="d0e4582" class="pageno">page 208</span>every man, and photograph him, to keep a record. There is no government agent in China to further this emigration, but those +here write home, and induce their relatives to come. We hope for enough to make labor plentiful. All cannot keep stores.” + +<p id="d0e4585">“Have you no Japanese?” + +<p id="d0e4588">“Only those who work for the phosphate company at the island of Makatea,” replied the secretary-general. “They are well paid, +their fare to Tahiti and return secured, and otherwise they are favored. The Government has agreed with a company to promote +Chinese emigration to the Marquesas. There are thousands needed. In French Oceanie there are twelve thousand possible workers +for nearly a million acres of land. This land could easily feed two hundred thousand people. The natives are dying fast, and +we must replace them, or the land will become jungle.” + +<p id="d0e4591">“Couldn’t you bring French Chinese from Indo-China?” I asked. + +<p id="d0e4594">“We haven’t any workers to spare there,” he answered. + +<p id="d0e4597">In Papeete the Chinese were, as in America, a mysterious, elusive race, the immigrants remaining homogeneous in habits, closely +united in social and business activities, and with a solid front to the natives and the whites. They lived much as in China, +though in more healthful surroundings. Every vice they had in China they brought to Tahiti; their virtues they left behind, +except those strict ethics in commerce and finance which must be carried out successfully to “save face.” Their community +in this island, with a climate and people as different from their own as the land from the sea, was <span id="d0e4599" class="pageno">page 209</span>in their thoughts a part of Canton and the farms of Quan-tung. All the bareness, dirt, and squalid atmosphere of home they +had sought to bring to the South Seas. They saw the other nationals here as objects of ridicule and spoilage. The amassing +of a competence before old age or against a return to China, and the marrying there, or the resumption of marital relations +with the wife he had left to make his fortune, was the fiercely sought goal of each. + +<p id="d0e4602">Loti wrote nearly fifty years ago, a decade after their influx: +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e4606">“The Chinese merchants of Papeete were objects of disgust and horror to the natives. There was no greater shame than for a +young woman to be convicted of listening to the gallantries of one of them. But the Chinese were wicked and rich, and it was +notorious that several of them, by means of presents and money, had obtained clandestine favors which made amends to them +for public scorn.” + +</div> + +<p id="d0e4611">Had Admiral Julien Viaud returned now to Tahiti, he would have found the Chinese stores thronged by the handsomest girls, +their restaurants thriving on their charms, and the Chinese the possessors of the pick of the lower and middle classes of +young women. Ah Sin is persistent; he has no sense of Christian shame, and as in the Philippines, he dresses his women gaily, +and wins their favors despite his evil reputation, his ugliness, and his being despised. + +<p id="d0e4614">At the Cercle Bougainville I saw more than one Chinese playing cards and drinking. These were Chinese who had made money, +and who in the give and take of business have pushed themselves into the club of the other merchants, who feared and watched +them. +<span id="d0e4616" class="pageno">page 210</span> + +<p id="d0e4619">Women were not allowed in barrooms in Papeete. The result was that they went to the Chinese restaurants and coffee-houses +to drink beer and wine at tables, as legalized. A concomitant of this was that men went to these places to meet women, and +further that women were retained or persuaded by the Chinese to frequent their places so as to stimulate the sale of intoxicants. +The Chinese restaurants naturally became assignation houses. + +<p id="d0e4622">Walking back, late in the afternoon, from the joss-house, we met Lovaina in her automobile, with the American negro chauffeur, +William, and Temanu, Atupu, and Iromea. She invited me to accompany them to swim in the Papenoo River, a few miles towards +Point Venus. Other guests of the Tiare Hotel came in hired cars, and twenty or thirty joined in the bath. The river was a +small flood, rains having swelled it so that a current of five or six knots swept one off one’s feet and down a hundred and +fifty feet before one could seize the limb of an overhanging tree. We undressed in the bushes, and the men wore only <i>pareus</i>, while the girls had an extra gown. They were expert swimmers, climbing into the tops of the trees, and hurling themselves +with screams into the water. They struck it in a sitting posture making great splashes and reverberations. Their muslin slips +outlined their strong bodies, so that they were like veiled goddesses, their brownblack hair floating free, as they leaped +or fought and tumbled with the tide. We stayed an hour at this sport, joined when school was dismissed by all the youth of +Papenoo. Under twelve they bathed naked, but those older wore <i>pareus</i>. +<span id="d0e4630" class="pageno">page 211</span> + +<p id="d0e4633">It was hard to keep on a <i>pareu</i> in a swift-running stream unless one knew how to tie it. I lost mine several times, and had to grope shamefacedly in the +race for it, until finally Lovaina made the proper knots and turned it into a diaper. + +<p id="d0e4639">“I not go swim now,” she said regretfully, ”’cep’ some night-time. Too big. Before I marry, eighteen seven’y-nine, and before +my three children grow up, I swim plenty then.” + +<p id="d0e4642">“Lovaina,” I said, “it was hardly eighteen seventynine you were married. You are only forty-three now. Was it not eighty-nine?” + +<p id="d0e4645">“Mus’ be,” she replied thoughtfully. “I nineteen when marry. My father give me that house, now Tiare Hotel, for weddin’ present. +All furnish. You should see that marry! My God! there was bottle in yard all broken. Admiral French fleet send band; come +hisself with all his officer’. Five o’clock mornin’-time still dance and drink. Bigges’ time T’ytee. You not walk barefoot +long time ’count broken glass everywhere.” + +<p id="d0e4648">I had heard that delicious incident before, but it never lost savor. + +<p id="d0e4651">After dinner and a prolonged session upon the camphor-wood chest to hear Lovaina’s chatter, I came leisurely to the Annexe +along the shore of the lagoon. It was after midnight, and the heavens sang with stars as the ripe moon dipped into the western +sea. + +<p id="d0e4654">The tropics only know the fullness of the firmament, the myriad of suns and planets, the brilliancy of the constellations, +and the overpowering revelation of the infinite above. In less fervent latitudes one can never feel the bigness of the vault +on high, nor sense the intimacy <span id="d0e4656" class="pageno">page 212</span>one had here with the worlds that spin in the measureless ether. + +<p id="d0e4659">Two lofty-sparred ships but newly from the California coast swung at moorings within a dozen feet of the grass that borders +the coral banks, and on their decks, under the light of lamps, American sailors lifted a shanty of the rolling Mississippi. +I remembered when I had first heard it. I was a boy, and had stolen away on a bark, the <i>Julia Rollins</i>, bound for Rio, and as we hauled in the line let go by the tow-boat, a seaman raised the bowline song. To me, with “Two Years +Before the Mast” and Clark Russell’s galley yarns churning in my mind, it was sweeter far than ever siren voiced to lure her +victims to their death, and rough and tarry as was the shanty-man, Caruso had never seemed to me such a glorious figure. + +<p id="d0e4665">This fascination of the sea and of its border had never left me, though I had passed years on ships and nearly all my life +within sound of the surf. It is as strong as ever, holding me thrall in the sight of its waters and its freights, and unhappy +when denied them. Best of all literature I love the stories of old ocean, and glad am I + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e4670">That such as have no pleasure +<br id="d0e4673">For to praise the Lord by measure, +<br id="d0e4676">They may enter into galleons and serve him on the sea. + +<p id="d0e4680">In Tahiti the sea was very near and meant much. One felt toward it as must the mountaineer who lives in the shadow of the +Matterhorn; it was always part of one’s thoughts, for all men and things came and went by it, and the great world lay beyond +it. +<span id="d0e4682" class="pageno">page 213</span> + +<p id="d0e4685">But dear or near as the sea might be to such a man as I, a mere traveler upon it to reach a goal, to the Tahitian it was life +and road and romance, too. Legends of it filled the memories of those old ones who, though in tattered form, preserved yet +awhile the deeds of daring of their fathers and the terrors of storm and sea monster, of long journeys in frail canoes, of +discoveries and conquerings, of brides taken from other peoples, and of the gods and devils who were in turn masters of the +deep. + +<p id="d0e4688">Once a Tahitian stopped the sun as it sank beyond Moorea not to wage war, as Joshua, but to please his old mother. The sea +and the heavens are brothers to the Tahitian. The sky had two great tales for him—guidance for his craft and prophecies for +his soul; but he did not inhabit it with his gods or his dead, as do Christians and other religionists, for the mountains, +the valleys, and the caves were the abiding-places of spirits, and the Tahitian had named only those stars which blazed forth +most vividly or served him as compass on the sea. He did, however, mark the various phases of the sky, and in his musical +tongue named them with particularity. + +<p id="d0e4691">The firmament is <i>te ao</i>, <i>te rai</i>, and the atmosphere <i>te reva</i>, and when peaceful, <i>raiatea</i>. This is the name of one of the most beautiful islands of this Society group, “Raiatea la Sacrée,” it is called, “Raiatea +the Blessed,” and its own serenity is betokened in its name. + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e4708">E hau maru, e maru to oe rai +<br id="d0e4711">E topara, te Mahana +<br id="d0e4714">I Ra’ i-atea nei! + +<p id="d0e4718">So ran the rhyme of Raiatea: +<span id="d0e4720" class="pageno">page 214</span> + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e4725">Full of a sweet peace, serene thy sky; +<br id="d0e4728">Bright are all thy days +<br id="d0e4731">At Raiatea here. + +<p id="d0e4735"> +<i>Rai poia</i> or <i>poiri</i>, they say for the gloomy heavens, and <i>rai maemae</i> when threatening, <i>parutu</i> when cloudy, <i>moere</i> if clear; if the clouds presage wind, <i>tutai vi</i>. The sunset is <i>tooa o te ra</i>, and the twilight <i>marumarupo</i>. + +<p id="d0e4762">The night is <i>te po</i> or <i>te rui</i>, and the moment before the sun rises <i>marumaru ao</i>. A hundred other words and phrases differentiate the conditions of sky and air. I learned them from Afa and Evoa and others. + +<p id="d0e4774">The moon is <i>te marama</i>, and the full moon <i>vaevae</i>. Mars is <i>fetia ura</i>, the red star; the Pleiades are <i>Matarii</i>, the little eyes; and the Southern Cross, <i>Tauha</i>, <i>Fetia ave</i> are the comets, the “stars with a tail,” and the meteors <i>pao, opurei, patau</i>, and <i>pitau</i>. + +<p id="d0e4801">The moon was gone, but the stars needed no help, for they shone as if the trump of doom were due at dawn, and they should +be no more. Blue and gold, a cathedral ceiling with sanctuary lamps hung high, the dome of earth sparkled and glittered, and +on the schooners by the Cercle Bougainville <i>himenes</i> of joy rang out on the soft air. + +<p id="d0e4807">I passed them close, so close that a girl of Huahine who was dancing on the deck of the <i>Mihimana</i> seized me by the arm and embraced me. + +<p id="d0e4813">“Come back, stranger!” she cried in Tahitian. “There is pleasure here, and the night is but just begun.” + +<p id="d0e4816">A dozen island schooners swayed in the gentle breeze, their stays humming softly, their broadsides separated from the quays +by just a dozen or twenty <span id="d0e4818" class="pageno">page 215</span>feet, as if they feared to risk the seduction of the land, and felt themselves safer parted from the shore. On all the street-level +verandas, the entrances to the shops and the restaurants, the hundreds of natives who had not wanted other lodging slept as +children in cradles until they should rise for coffee before the market-bell. + +<p id="d0e4821">From the Chinese shop at the corner the strains of a Canton actor’s falsetto, with the squeak of the Celestial fiddles issued +from a phonograph, but so real I fancied I was again on Shameen, listening over the Canton River to the noises of the night, +the music, and the singsong girls of the silver combs. + +<p id="d0e4824">I went on, and met the peanut-man. He sold me two small bags of roasted goobers for eight sous. He wore the brown, oilskin-like, +two-piece suit of the Chinese of southern China, and he had no teeth and no hair, and his eyes would not stay open. He had +to open them with his fingers, so that most of the time he was blind; but he counted money accurately, and he had a tidy bag +of silver and coppers strapped to his stomach. He looked a hundred years old. + +<p id="d0e4827">When I paid for the two bags, he raised his lids, believed that I was a speaker of English, and said, “Fine businee!” + +<p id="d0e4830">As I went past the queen’s palace, the two <i>mahus</i> were chanting low, as they sat on the curbing, and they glanced coquettishly at me, but asked only for cigarettes. I gave +them a package of Marinas, made in the Faubourg Bab-el-oued, in Algiers, and they said “Maruru” and “Merci” in turn and in +unison. Strange men these, one bearded and handsome, the other slender <span id="d0e4835" class="pageno">page 216</span>and in his twenties, their dual natures contrasting in their broad shoulders and their swaying hips, their men’s <i>pareus</i> and shirts, and bits of lace lingerie. I met them half a dozen times a day, and as I was now known as a resident, not the +idler of a month, they bowed in hope of recognition. + +<p id="d0e4841">In the Annexe all was quiet, but in the great sailing canoe of Afa, on the grass by the water, there were two girls smoking +and humming, and waiting for the cowboy and the prize-fighter who lived beside me, and who were dancing to-night at Fa’a. +Like Indians, these Tahitians, especially the women, would sit and watch and wait for hours on hours, and make no complaint, +if only their dear one—dear mayhap for only a night—came at last. + +<p id="d0e4844">I was awakened from happy sleep by the cries of a frightened woman, confused with outlandish, savage sounds. I lit my lamp +and leaned over the balcony. Under a flamboyant-tree was a girl defending herself from the attack of Vava. She was screaming +in terror, and the Dummy, a giant in strength, was holding her and grunting his bestial laugh. I threw the rays full in his +face, and he looked up, saw me, and ran away up the beach, yelping like a frustrated beast. In voice and action he resembled +an animal more than any human I had ever seen. The guilelessness and cunning of child and fiend were in his dumb soul. +<span id="d0e4846" class="pageno">page 217</span> + +<h1 id="d0e4850">Chapter XII</h1> +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e4857">The princess suggests a walk to the falls of Fautaua, where Loti went with <i>Rarahu</i>—We start in the morning—The suburbs of Papeete—The Pool of Loti—The birds, trees and plants—A swim in a pool—Arrival at the +cascade—Luncheon and a siesta—We climb the height—The princess tells of Tahitian women—The Fashoda fright. + +</div> +<p id="d0e4864">The falls of Fautaua, famed in Tahitian legend, are exquisite in beauty and surrounding, and so near Papeete that I walked +to them and back in a day. Yet hardly any one goes there. For those who have visited them they remain a shrine of loveliness, +wondrous in form and unsurpassed in color. Before the genius of Tahiti was smothered in the black and white of modernism, +the falls and the valley in which they are, were the haunt of lovers who sought seclusion for their pledgings. + +<p id="d0e4867">A princess accompanied me to them. She was not a daughter of a king or queen, but she was near to royalty, and herself as +aristocratic in carriage and manner as was Oberea, who loved Captain Cook. I danced with her at a dinner given by a consul, +and when I spoke to her of Loti’s visit to Fautaua with <i>Rarahu</i>, she said in French: + +<p id="d0e4873">“Why do you not go there yourself with a <i>Rarahu</i>! Loti is old and an admiral, and writes now of Egypt and Turkey and places soiled by crowds of people, but <i>Rarahu</i> is still here and young. Shall I find you her?” + +<p id="d0e4882">I looked at her and boldly said: +<span id="d0e4884" class="pageno">page 218</span> + +<p id="d0e4887">“I am a stranger in your island, as was Loti when he met <i>Rarahu</i>. Will you not yourself show me Fautaua?” + +<p id="d0e4893">She gave a shrill cry of delight, and in the frank, sweet way of the Tahitian girl replied: + +<p id="d0e4896">“We will run away to-morrow morning. Wear little, for it will be warm, and bring no food!” + +<p id="d0e4899">“I will obey you literally,” I said, “and you must find manna or charm ravens to bring us sustenance.” + +<p id="d0e4902">I had coffee opposite the market place in the shop of Wing Luey, and chatted a few moments with Prince Hinoe, the son of the +Princesse de Joinville, who would have been king had the French not ended the Kingdom of Tahiti. No matter what time Hinoe +lay down at night, he was up at dawn for the market, for his early roll and coffee and his converse with the sellers and the +buyers. There once a day for an hour the native in Papeete touched the country folk and renewed the ancient custom of gossip +in the cool of the morning. + +<p id="d0e4905">The princess—in English her familiar Tahitian name, Noanoa Tiare, meant Fragrance of the Jasmine—was in the Parc de Bougainville, +by the bust of the first French circumnavigator. + +<p id="d0e4908">“Ia ora na!” she greeted me. “Are you ready for adventure?” + +<p id="d0e4911">She handed me a small, soft package, with a caution to keep it safe and dry. I put it in my inside pocket. + +<p id="d0e4914">The light of the sun hardly touched the lagoon, and Moorea was still shrouded in the shadows of the expiring night. As we +walked down the beach, the day was opening with the “morning bank,” the masses of white clouds that gather upon the horizon +before the tradewind <span id="d0e4916" class="pageno">page 219</span>begins its diurnal sweep, to shift and mold them all the hours till sunset. + +<p id="d0e4919">Fragrance of the Jasmine was in a long and clinging tunic of pale blue, with low, white shoes disclosing stockings also of +blue, and wore a hat of pandanus weave. She carried nothing, nor had I anything in my hands, and we were to be gone all day. +I regretted that I had not lingered longer with Prince Hinoe over the rolls and coffee. + +<p id="d0e4922">We fared past the merchants’ stores, the Cercle Bougainville, and the steamship wharf, and over the Pont de l’Est, or Eastern +bridge, to Patutoa. The princess pointed out to me many wretched straw houses, crowded in a hopeless way. They were like a +refugee camp after a disaster, impermanent, uncomfortable, barely holding on to the swampy earth. One knew the occupants to +be far from their own Lares and Penates. + +<p id="d0e4925">“Those are the habitations of people of other islands,” she said. “The people of the Paumotus, the Australs, and of Easter +Island settled there. They were brought here by odious labor contractors, and died of homesickness. Those men murdered hundreds +of them to gain <i>un pen d’argent</i>, a handful of gold. <i>Eh b’en</i>, those who did it have suffered. They have faded away, and most of their evil money, too. <i>Aue</i>!” + +<p id="d0e4937">Llewellyn’s dark face as he protested against Lying Bill’s sarcastic statement of guilt came before me. + +<p id="d0e4940">To lighten the thought of the princess I told her the thread of “The Bottle Imp,” and that the magic bottle had disappeared +out of the story right there, by the old calaboose. She was glad that the white sailor who did not care for life had saved +the Hawaiians. +<span id="d0e4942" class="pageno">page 220</span> + +<p id="d0e4945">Framed in the door of a rough cabin I saw McHenry. He was in pajamas, barefooted, and unshaven. I recalled that he had an +“old woman” there. Llewellyn had reproved him for speaking contemptuously of her as beneath him socially. I waved to McHenry, +who nodded charily, and pulled down the curtain which was in lieu of a door. The shack looked bare and cheap, as if little +money or effort had been spent upon it. Perhaps, I thought, McHenry could afford only the drinks and cards at the Cercle Bougainville +and economized at home. He did not reappear, but a comely native woman drew back the curtain, and stood a moment to view us. +She was large, and did not look browbeaten, as one would have supposed from McHenry’s boast that he would not permit her even +to walk with him except at a “respectful distance.” Of course I knew him as a boaster. + +<p id="d0e4948">The church of the curious Josephite religion was near by, and in the mission house attached to it I saw the American preachers +of the sect. + +<p id="d0e4951">“What do they preach?” I asked Noanoa Tiare. + +<p id="d0e4954">“Those missionaries, the Tonito? Oh, they speak evil of the Mormons. I do not know how they speak of God.” She laughed. “I +am not interested in religions,” she explained. “They are so difficult to understand. Our own old gods seem easier to know +about.” + +<p id="d0e4957">We had arrived at the part of the beach into which the broad avenue of Fautaua debouched. + +<p id="d0e4960">The road was beside the stream of Fautaua, and arching it were magnificent dark-green trees, like the locust-trees of Malta. +This avenue was in the middle of the island, and looking through the climbing bow of <span id="d0e4962" class="pageno">page 221</span>branches I saw Maiauo, the lofty needles of rock which rise black-green from the mountain plateau and form a tiara, Le Diademe, +of the French. A quarter of an hour’s stroll brought us to a natural basin into which the stream fell. It was of it Louis +Marie Julien Viaud, shortly after he had been christened Loti, wrote: +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e4966">The pool had numerous visitors every day; beautiful young women of Papeete spent the warm tropical days here, chatting, singing +and sleeping, or even diving and swimming like agile gold fish. They went here clad in their muslin tunics, and wore them +moist upon their bodies while they slept, looking like the naiads of the past. + +</div> + +<p id="d0e4971">We were already warm from walking, and I, in my <i>pareu</i> and light coat of pongee silk, looked longingly at the water sparkling in the sun, but the princess took me by the hand and +led me on. + +<p id="d0e4977">“It were better to go directly up the valley and out of the heat,” she advised. “We shall have many pools to bathe in.” + +<p id="d0e4980">It was at the next that I took from my pocket “Rarahu, ou le mariage de Loti,” a thin, poorly printed book in pink paper covers +that I had possessed since boyhood, and which I had read again on the ship coming to Tahiti. The princess, like all reading +Tahiti, knew it better than I, for it was the first novel in French with its scenes in that island, and for more than forty +years had been talked about there. + +<p id="d0e4983">“Here at this pool,” she said, with her finger on the page, “<i>Loti</i> surprised <i>Rarahu</i> one afternoon when for a red ribbon she let an old and hideous Chinese kiss her naked shoulder. <i>Mon dieu!</i> That French naval <span id="d0e4994" class="pageno">page 222</span>officer made a <i>bruit</i> about a poor little Tahitian girl! We will talk about her when we are at <i>déjeuner</i>.” + +<p id="d0e5003"> +<i>Déjeuner</i>! My heart leaped. Whence would the luncheon come? Had this child of Tahiti arranged beforehand that she should be met by +a jinn with sandwiches and cakes? I dared not ask. + +<p id="d0e5009">We pushed on, and passed many residences of natives. They were almost all of European construction, board cottages, because +the houses of native sort are forbidden within the municipal limits. Beyond them we saw no houses. The Tahitian families were +cooking their breakfasts, brought from the market, on little fires outside their houses. They all smiled, and called to us +to partake with them. + +<p id="d0e5012">“<i>Ia ora na! Haere mai amu!</i>” + +<p id="d0e5018">“Greeting! Come eat with us!” + +<p id="d0e5021">They looked happy in the sunshine, the smoke curling about them in milky wreaths, the men naked except for <i>pareus</i>, and the children quite as born. Fragrance of the Jasmine answered all with pleasant badinage, and each must know whither +we were bound. They thought it not at all odd, apparently, that a princess of their race should be going to the waterfalls +with a foreigner, and they beamed on me to assure me of their interest and understanding. + +<p id="d0e5027">The broad avenue lessened into a broken road, roofed by many kinds of trees. Though the sun ascended from the ocean on the +other side of Tahiti above the fantastic peak of Maiauo, it had not shed a beam upon the ferns and mosses. The guava was a +dense growth. Like the lantana of Hawaii and Ceylon, imported to Tahiti to fill a want, it had abused hospitality, and become +<span id="d0e5029" class="pageno">page 223</span>a nuisance without apparent remedy. How often man works but in circles! Everywhere in the world plants and insects, birds +and animals, had been pointed out to me that had been acquired for a beneficent purpose, and had become a curse. + +<p id="d0e5032">The mina-bird was brought to Tahiti from the Moluccas to eat wasps which came from South America, and were called Jack Spaniards. +The mina, perhaps, ate the insects, but he also ate everything else, including fruit. He stole bread and butter off tables, +and his hoarse croak or defiant rattle was an oft-repeated warning to defend one’s food. The minas were many in Tahiti, and, +like the English sparrow in American cities and towns, had driven almost all other birds to flight or local extinction. The +sparrow’s urban doom might be read in the increasing number of automobiles, but the mina in Tahiti, as in Hawaii, had a sinecure. + +<p id="d0e5035">Noanoa Tiare said that the guava had its merits. Horses and cattle ate its leaves and fruit, and the wood was a common fuel +throughout Tahiti. The fruit was delicious, and in America or England would be all used for jelly, but only Lovaina preserved +it. The passion-flowers of the granadilla vines, white and star-like, with purpling centers, were intermingled with the guavas, +a brilliant and aromatic show, the fruit like miniature golden pumpkins. Their acid, sweetish pulp contained many seeds, each +incased in white jelly. One ate the seeds only, though the pulp, when cooked, was palatable. + +<p id="d0e5038">The road dwindled into a narrower path, and then a mere trail. The road had crossed the brook many times on frail bridges, +some tottering and others only remnants. Habitations ceased, and we were in a dark, <span id="d0e5040" class="pageno">page 224</span>splendid gorge, narrow, and affording one no vision straight ahead except at intervals. + +<p id="d0e5043">The princess named many of the growths we passed, and explained their qualities. The native is very close to the ground. The +lantana, with its yellow and magenta flowerets, umbrella ferns, and <i>aihere</i>, the <i>herbe de vache</i>, and the bohenia, used by the Tahitians for an eye lotion, were all about. Palms, with cocoanuts of a half dozen stages of +growth, and giant banana-plants lined the banks, and bushes with blue flowers like violets, and one with red buttons, intermingled +with limes and oranges to form a thicket through which we could hardly force our way. + +<p id="d0e5052">We were yet on the level of the rivulet, but now, the princess said, must take to the cliff. We had come to a pool which in +symmetry and depth, in coolness and invitingness, outranked all before. I was very hot, the beads of perspiration like those +in a steamroom. + +<p id="d0e5055">“We will rest here a few minutes, and you may bathe,” said my lovely guide. “I have not been to Fautaua <i>vaimato</i> for several years, but I never forget the way. I will make a basket, and here we will gather some fruit for our <i>déjeuner</i> for fear there might not be plenty at the waterfalls.” + +<p id="d0e5064">I took off my tennis-shoes, hung my silk coat on a limb, and plunged into the pool. Never but in the tropics does the human +being fully enjoy the dash into cool water. There it is a tingling pleasure. I dived time and again, and then sat in the small +glitter of sunlight to dry and to watch Noanoa Tiare make the basket. She said she had a wide choice there, as the leaves +of the banana, cocoanut, bamboo, pandanus, or <i>aihere</i> would <span id="d0e5069" class="pageno">page 225</span>serve. She had selected the <i>aihere</i>, the common weed, and out of its leaves she deftly fashioned a basket a foot long and wide and deep. + +<p id="d0e5075">Although she had been in Paris and London and in New York, knew how to play Beethoven and Grieg and Saint-Saëns, had had gowns +made by Paquin, and her portrait in the salon, she was at home in this glade as a Tahitian girl a hundred years ago. The airs +of the avenue de l’Opéra in Paris, and, too, of the rue de Rivoli in Papeete, were rarefied in this simple spot to the impulses +and experiences of her childhood in the groves and on the beaches of her beloved island. + +<p id="d0e5078">When I had on my coat, we gathered limes, bananas, oranges, and a wild pineapple that grew near by in a tangle of coffee and +vanilla, and the graceful acalypha. The yellow <i>tecoma</i>, a choice exotic in America, shed its seeds upon the sow thistle, a salad, and the <i>ape</i> or wild <i>taro</i>. The great leaves of the <i>ape</i> are like our elephant’s ear plant, and the roots, as big as war-clubs, are tubers that take the place of potatoes here. In +Hawaii, crushed and fermented, and called <i>poi</i>, they were ever the main food. The juice of the leaf stings one’s skin. + +<p id="d0e5096">The princess removed her shoes and stockings, and I carried them over my shoulder. We deflected from the rivulet to the cliff +above it, and there forced our way along the mountain-side, feeling almost by instinct the trail hidden by the mass of creepers +and plants. + +<p id="d0e5099">It was a real jungle. Man had once dwelt there when his numbers in this island were many times greater. Then every foot of +ground from the precipices to the sea was cleared for the breadfruit, the <i>taro</i>, the cocoanut, and other life-giving growths, which sowed themselves <span id="d0e5104" class="pageno">page 226</span>and asked no cultivation. Now, except for the faint trail, I was on primeval ground, from all appearances. + +<p id="d0e5107">The cañon grew narrower and darker. The undefined path lay inches deep in water, and the levels were shallow swamp. Nature +was in vast luxuriance, in a revel of aloofness from human beings, casting its wealth of blazing colors and surprising shapes +upon every side. We slid down the edge of the hill to the burn, where the massive boulders and shattered rocks were camouflaged +by the painting of moss and lichen, the ginger, turmeric, caladium, and dracaena, and by the overhanging palms covered with +the rich bird’s-nest ferns. + +<p id="d0e5110">We sat again in this wild garden of the tropic to invite our souls to drink the beauty and quietude, the absence of mankind +and the nearness of nature. We became very still, and soon heard the sounds of bird and insect above the lower notes of the +brawling stream. + +<p id="d0e5113">The princess put her finger on her lips and whispered in my ear: + +<p id="d0e5116">“Do you hear the warbling of the <i>omamao</i> and the <i>olatare?</i> They are our song-birds. They are in these high valleys only, for the mina has frightened them from below—the mina that came +with the ugly Chinese.” + +<p id="d0e5125">“Noanoa Tiare,” said I, “you Tahitians are the birds of paradise of the human family. You have been driven from the rich valleys +of your old life to hills of bare existence by the minas of commerce and politics. I feel like apologizing for my civilization.” + +<p id="d0e5128">She pressed my hand. + +<p id="d0e5131"> +<i>“Taisez-vous!”</i> she replied, smiling. “<i>Aita peapea</i>. I am always happy. Remember I still live in Tahiti, <span id="d0e5139" class="pageno">page 227</span>and this is my time. My foremothers’ day is past. <i>Allons</i>! We will be soon at the <i>vaimato</i>, and there we will have the <i>déjeuner</i>.” + +<p id="d0e5151">As we moved on I saw that the yellow flowers of the <i>purau</i>, dried red by the sun,—poultices for natives’ bruises,—and candlenuts in heaps,—torches ready to hand,—littered the moss. + +<p id="d0e5157">The mountain loomed in the distance, and the immense Pic du Français towered in shadow. Faintly I heard the boom of the waterfall, +and knew we were nearing the goal. + +<p id="d0e5160">The cañon grew yet narrower and darker, and the crash of water louder. We had again attained a considerable height over the +stream, and the trail seemed lost. The princess took my hand, and cautiously feeling the creepers and plants under our feet, +we slipped and crept down the hidden path. Suddenly, the light became brilliant, and I found myself in a huge broken bowl +of lava rock, the walls almost vertical. From the summit of the precipice facing me fell a superb cascade into a deep and +troubled tarn. The stream was spun silver in the sun, which now was warm and splendid. So far it fell that much of it never +reached the pool as water, but, blown by the gentle breeze, a moiety in spume and spray wet the earth for an acre about. Like +the veil of a bride, the spindrift spread in argent clouds, and a hundred yards away dropped like gentle rain upon us. Verdure +covered everything below except where the river ran from the tarn and hurried to the lesser things of the town. The giant +walls, as black as the interior of an old furnace, were festooned with magnificent tree ferns, the exquisite maidenhair, lianas, +and golden-green <span id="d0e5162" class="pageno">page 228</span>mosses, all sparkling in the sun with the million drops of the <i>vaimato</i>. + +<p id="d0e5168">We withdrew a few paces from the vapor, and found a place on the edge of the brook to have our fruit and, perhaps, a siesta. +A carpet of moss and green leaves made a couch of Petronian ease, and we threw ourselves upon it with the weariness of six +miles afoot uphill in the tropics. It was not hot like the summer heat of New York, for Tahiti has the most admirable climate +I have found the world over, but at midday I had felt the warmth penetratingly. Noanoa Tiare made nothing of it, but suggested +that we both leap into the tarn. + +<p id="d0e5171">I knew a moment of squeamishness, echo of the immorality of my catechism and my race conventions. I felt almost aghast at +finding myself alone with that magnificent creature in such a paradisiacal spot. I wondered what thoughts might come to me. +I had danced with her, I had talked with her under the stars, but what might she expect me not to do? And what was an Occidental, +a city man, before her? She retired behind a bird’s-nest fern, on the long, lanceolate leaves of which were the shells of +the mountain snail. At her feet was the bastard canna, the pungent root of which makes Chinese curry. + +<p id="d0e5174">When she emerged, she was an amazing and enchanting personage. She had removed her gown, and wore a <i>pareu</i> of muslin, with huge scarlet leaves upon white. She was tall and voluptuously formed, but she had made the loin-cloth, two +yards long and a yard wide, cover her in a manner that was modest, though revealing. It was the art of her ancestors, for +this was the shape of their common garment of tapa, a native cloth. With a <span id="d0e5179" class="pageno">page 229</span>knot or two she arranged the <i>pareu</i> so that it was like a chemise, coming to a foot above her knees and covering her bosom. + +<p id="d0e5185">Her black, glossy hair was loose and hung below her waist, and upon it she had placed a wreath she had quickly made of small +ferns. That was their general custom, to adorn themselves when happy and at the bath. The eyes of Fragrance of the Jasmine +were very large, deep brown, her skin a coppery-cinnamon, with a touch of red in the cheeks, and her nose and mouth were large +and well formed. Her teeth were as the meat of the cocoanut, brilliant and strong. Her limbs were rounded, soft, the flesh +glowing with health and power. She was of that line of Tahitian women who sent back the first European navigators, the English, +to rave about an island of Junos, the French to call Tahiti La Nouvelle Cythère, the new isle of Venus. + +<p id="d0e5188">I had but to tie up my own <i>pareu</i> of red calico with white leaves in the manner Lovaina had shown me to have an imitation of our usual swimming-trunks. + +<p id="d0e5194">“<i>Allons</i>!” cried the princess, and running toward the waterfall, she climbed up the cliff to a height of a dozen feet, and threw herself, +wreathed as she was, with a loud “<i>Aue</i>!” into the pool. + +<p id="d0e5203">I followed her, and she dived and swam, brought up bottom, treaded water, and led me in a dozen exercises and tricks of the +expert swimmer. The water was very cool, and ten minutes in it, with our sharpening hunger, were enough delight. Fragrance +of the Jasmine, as she came dripping from water and lingered a few moments on the brink, was a rapturous object. With unconscious +grace she flung back her head many times to shake <span id="d0e5205" class="pageno">page 230</span>the moisture from her thick hair, and ran her fingers through it until the strands were fairly separated. The <i>pareu</i> disclosed the rounded contour of her figure as if it were painted upon her. She was one of those ancient Greek statues, those +semi-nudes on which the artists painted in vivid tints the blush of youth, the hue of hair, and a shadow of a garment. She +entranced me, and I called out to her, “<i>Nehenehe!</i>” “Beautiful!” + +<p id="d0e5214">She ran to her boudoir behind the bird’s-nest fern, and soon returned in her tunic, still barefoot, and with her <i>pareu</i> in her hand for drying on a rock. She brought two wreaths now and put one upon me. We resumed our couches upon the green +sward, and the princess laid the basket of fruit between us. + +<p id="d0e5220">“<i>Maintenant pour le déjeuner!</i>” she said. + +<p id="d0e5226">We ate the bananas first, and then the pineapple, which we cut with a sliver of basalt,—we were in the stone age, as her tribe +was when the whites came,—and last the oranges. She made cups of leaves and filled them with water, and into them we squeezed +the limes for a toast. + +<p id="d0e5229">“<i>Inu i te ota no te!</i>” she said and lifted her cup. “A health to you! He who eats the <i>fei</i> passes under a spell; he must return again to the islands. Have you eaten the <i>fei</i>?” + +<p id="d0e5241">“Not yet, Princess,” I replied. + +<p id="d0e5244">“There they are in abundance on the hillside,” she said. “Look! If we had fire, I would roast one for you, but to-morrow will +be another day.” + +<p id="d0e5247">The <i>fei</i>, the mountain banana, the staple of the Tahitian, was there aplenty. The plant or stalk was that of the banana, but very +dark at the base, and the leaves <span id="d0e5252" class="pageno">page 231</span>thicker. The fruit was two or three times as large, and red, and a striking difference was that it was placed on the bunches +erect, while bananas hang down from the stem. + +<p id="d0e5255">I drank to her increasing charm, and I told her how much the beauty and natural grace of the Tahitians appealed to me; how +I intended to leave Papeete and go to the end of the island to be among the natives only; that I had remained thus long in +the city to learn first the ways of the white in the tropics, and then to gain the contrast by seeking the Tahitian as nearly +as possible in his original habitat. + +<p id="d0e5258">Noanoa Tiare took the orange-peel and rubbed it upon her hair. + +<p id="d0e5261">“<i>Noanoa!</i>” she said. “<i>Mon ami américain</i>, I will give you a note to Aruoehau a Moeroa, the <i>tava</i>, or chief of Mataiea district, and you can stay with him. You will know him as Tetuanui. He will gladly receive you, and +he is wise in our history and our old customs. Do not expect too much! We ate in the old day the simple things at hand, fish +and breadfruit, <i>feis</i> and cocoanut milk, mangoes and bananas and oranges. Now we eat the dirty and prepared food of the Tinito, the Chinaman, and +we depend on coffee and rum and beer for strength. The thin wheat bread has no nourishment compared with the breadfruit and +the <i>fei</i>, the yam and the <i>taro</i>. And clothes! The fools taught us that the <i>pareu</i>, which left the body exposed to the air, clean and refreshed by the sun and the winds, was immodest. We exchanged it for +undershirts and trousers and dresses and shoes and stockings and coats, and got disease and death and degeneration. +<span id="d0e5284" class="pageno">page 232</span> + +<p id="d0e5287">“You are late, my friend,” the princess went on, with a note of pity in her soft voice. “My mother remembered the days Loti +depicted in ‘<i>Rarahu</i>.’ My grandmother knew little Tarahu of Bora-Bora of whom he wrote. Viaud was then a midshipman. We did not call him Loti, +but Roti, our coined word for a rose, because he had rosy cheeks. But he could not call himself Roti in his novel, for in +French, his language, that meant roasted, and one might think of <i>boeuf à la rôti</i>. We have no L in Tahitian. We also called him Mata Reva or the Deep-Eyed One. Tarahu was not born on Bora-Bora, but right +here in Mataiea.” + +<p id="d0e5296">She lay at full length, her uptilted face in her hands, and her perfect feet raised now and then in unaware accentuation of +her words. + +<p id="d0e5299">“What Tahitian women there were then! Read the old French writers! None was a pigmy. When they stood under the waterfall the +water ran off their skins as off a marble table. Not a drop stayed on. They were as smooth as glass.” + +<p id="d0e5302">Fragrance of the Jasmine sighed. + +<p id="d0e5305"> +<i>“Aue! Hélas!”</i> + +<p id="d0e5311">I had it in my mouth to say that she was as beautiful and as smooth-skinned as any of her forebears. She was as enticing as +imaginable, her languorous eyes alight as she spoke, and her bare limbs moving in the vigor of her thoughts. But I could not +think of anything in French or English not banal, and my Tahitian was yet too limited to permit me to <i>tutoyer</i> her. She was an islander, but she had seen the Midnight Follies and the Bal Bullier, the carnival in Nice, and once, New +Year’s <span id="d0e5316" class="pageno">page 233</span>Eve in San Francisco. An Italian and a Scandinavian prince had wooed her. + +<p id="d0e5319">I spoke of Loti again, and of other writers’ comments upon the attitude of women in Tahiti toward man. + +<p id="d0e5322">The princess sat up and adjusted her <i>hei</i> of ferns. She studied a minute, and then she said: + +<p id="d0e5328">“I have long wanted to talk with an intelligent American on that subject; with some one who knew Europe and his own country +and these islands. There is a vast hypocrisy in the writing and the talking about it. Now, Maru (I already had been given +my native name), the woman of Tahiti exercises the same sexual freedom as the average white man does in your country and in +England or France. She pursues the man she wants, as he does the woman. Your women pursue, too, but they do it by cunning, +by little lies, by coquetry, by displaying their persons, by flattery, and by feeding you. + +<p id="d0e5331">“The Tahitian woman makes the first advances in friendship openly, if she chooses. She arranges time and place for amours +as your women do. She does not take from the Tahitian man or from the foreigner his right to choose, but she chooses herself, +too. I feel sure that often an American woman would give hours of pain to know well a certain man, but makes no honest effort +to draw him toward her. They have told me so!” + +<p id="d0e5334">I got up, and standing beside her, I quoted: + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e5339">“Ships that pass in the night and speak each other in passing; +<br id="d0e5342">Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness; +<br id="d0e5345">So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another, +<br id="d0e5348">Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and silence.” + +<span id="d0e5352" class="pageno">page 234</span> +<p id="d0e5354"> +<i>“Mais, c’est vrai</i>!” she said, musingly. “The Tahitian woman will not endure that. She is on a par with the man in seeking. Without fear and +without shame, and, <i>attendez</i>, Maru, without any more monogamy than you men. I have told some of those suffrage ladies of London and of Washington that +we are in advance of their most determined feminism. They will come to it. More women than men in Europe will bring it there.” + +<p id="d0e5363">Her long, black lashes touched her cheeks. + +<p id="d0e5366">“We are a little sleepy, <i>n’est-ce pas</i>?” she asked. “<i>B’en</i>, we will have a <i>taoto</i>.” + +<p id="d0e5378">She made herself a pillow of leaves with her <i>pareu</i>, and arranging her hair in two braids, she stretched herself out, with her face toward the sky, and a cool banana-leaf laid +over it. I copied her action, and lulled by the falling water, the rippling of the pool, and the drowsy rustling of the trees, +I fell fast asleep, and dreamed of Eve and the lotus-eaters. + +<p id="d0e5384">When I awoke, the princess was refreshing her face and hands in the water. + +<p id="d0e5387">“<i>A hio</i>! Look!” she said eagerly. “<i>O tane and O vahine</i>!” + +<p id="d0e5396">In the mist above the pool at the foot of the cascade a double rainbow gleamed brilliantly. <i>O tane</i> is <i>the</i> man, which the Tahitians call the real arch, and <i>O vahine</i>, the woman, the reflected bow. They appeared and disappeared with the movement of the tiny, fleecy clouds about the sun. +The air, as dewy as early morn in the braes o’ Maxwelton, was deliciously cool. + +<p id="d0e5408">“If you have courage and strength left,” the princess said excitedly, “we will go to the fort of Fautaua, and I will show +you where the last of my people perished <span id="d0e5410" class="pageno">page 235</span>fighting to drive out the French invader, and where the French officials fled with the treasure-box when they feared war with +England not very long ago.” + +<p id="d0e5413">She pointed up to the brim of the precipice, where the river launched itself into the air, to drop six hundred feet before +it fed the stream below. Sheer and menacing the black walls of the crevasse loomed, as if forbidding approach, but through +a network of vines and bushes, over a path seldom used, we climbed, and after half a mile more of steeps, reached the fort. +Rugged was the way, and we aided each other more than once, but rejoiced at our effort when we surmounted the summit. + +<p id="d0e5416">The view was indescribably grand. One felt upon the roof of the island, though the farther heights of the valley culminated +in a gigantic crag-wall, a saddle only a yard across, and wooded to the apex, and above that even towered Orohena, nearly +a mile and a half high, and never reached by man despite many efforts. Tropic birds, the bo’s’ns of the sailor, their bodies +whitish gray, with their two long tail-feathers, had their haunt there, and piped above the trees. The river was a fierce +torrent, and leaped into a water-hewn lava basin, where it swirled and foamed before it rushed, singing, through a stone funnel +to the border of the chasm, and sprang with a dull roar into the ether. + +<p id="d0e5419">There was a chorus of sounds from the cataract, the river, the wind, the trees, and the birds, a mighty music of elements +of the earth and of life, rising and falling rhythmically, and inspiring, but nerve-racking. Fragrance of the Jasmine seized +my hand and held it. + +<p id="d0e5422">“Let us go to a more peaceful spot, where I can tell <span id="d0e5424" class="pageno">page 236</span>you the story,” she said in my ear. We passed the rough fort, broken-down and mossy, and moving carefully along the trail, +clambering over rocks and tearing away twigs and broad leaves, we reached a dismantled and crumbling chalet. + +<p id="d0e5427">We sat down upon its steps, and I removed my coat and was naked to my <i>pareu</i> in the afternoon zephyr. + +<p id="d0e5433">“That fort,” said the princess, “was built by the French in the forties, when they were stealing my country. From it they +could command the gorge of Fautaua and that and other valleys. This place was the last stronghold of the Tahitian warriors +before the enemy overcame them, and erected the ramparts and the fort. The last man to die fell by the river basin. The band +of heroes would have held out longer, but were betrayed by a Tahitian. He led the French troops by night and by secret paths +to a hill overlooking them, so that they were shot down from above. The traitor lived to wear the red ribbon of the Legion +of Honor and to spend pleasantly the gold the French Government gave him. <i>C’est la vie.</i>” + +<p id="d0e5439">We cast our eyes over the scene. There was a forest of wild ginger, ferns, and dracasna all about. Thousands of roses perfumed +the air, and other flowers and strawberries, and feis, green or ripe-red, wondrous clusters of fruit, awaited man’s culling. +The stream purled about worn rocks, and we came to two gloomy pools, black from the reflection of their bowls, the water bubbling +and surging from springs beneath. It was deliciously cold, and we drank it from leaf cups. + +<p id="d0e5442">“How about the time the French came here with the <span id="d0e5444" class="pageno">page 237</span>treasure?” I inquired. “Have we time for that history?” + +<p id="d0e5447"> +<i>“Mais, oui!”</i> said Noanoa Tiare. “That is too good for you not to know. You know that the French are excitable, <i>n’est-ce pas? B’en</i>, a French officer, Major Marchand, put up the tricolor in some place called Fashoda in Africa, and the English objected. +There was some parleying between the two nations, and the information arrived in Tahiti that England was going to make war +on France. The French papers or the American papers said so, and every one was alarmed. + +<p id="d0e5456">“ ‘The treacherous <i>Anglais</i> might strike at any moment,’ said the French, and they were afraid. Then one night some one rode in from near Point Venus +and reported to the Governor that two British frigates had been sighted. <i>Mon dieu!</i> what to do? There was only a French transport at Papeete, worth nothing for defense. They tore the trimmings from that vessel +and prepared to scuttle her. The guns were rushed to Faere Hill for a last, desperate stand against odds. They could die like +Frenchmen! All lights were ordered extinguished, and even the beacon of Point Venus was dark. The enlisted natives were sent +to watch on every headland, a cabinet meeting was held,—the apothecary, and the governor, and the secretaries, and the doctor,—and +it was determined to save the money of the city and the archives of the Government. The valuables and the papers were put +in strong boxes and the governor and all of them made a mad race for this fort.” + +<p id="d0e5465">The princess covered her mouth with her hand to still her laughter. + +<p id="d0e5468">“Was it not funny? They arrived here at daybreak, <span id="d0e5470" class="pageno">page 238</span>and buried the boxes. They were still at it when an officer of marines came hurrying to notify them that the frigates were +French schooners from the Paumotus. The whole population had hidden itself away in the meantime. Well, they had many jokes +about it and many songs, but the governor built this house on the steps of which we sit as a permanent depository for archives +in case of war, and here he used to come for picnics until a few years ago. There was a post-office, with a guard of sailors, +here. They planted the garden, the flowers, and strawberries that now run wild. You know our chiefs were always being secretly +warned that England, which owns most of the islands in these seas, wanted to seize our island.” + +<p id="d0e5473">Over the Diadem the dark shadows were lengthening. The daring pinnacles of Maiauo were thrust up like the mangled fingers +of a black hand against the blue sky. + +<p id="d0e5476">Noanoa Tiare pointed to them. + +<p id="d0e5479">“The <i>ahiahi</i> comes. Night is not far off,” she said warningly. “If we lingered here much longer, we might have to stay all the night.” + +<p id="d0e5485">“How memorable to me would be a sunrise from here,” I replied. “I would never forget it.” + +<p id="d0e5488">She looked at me archly over her shoulder. + +<p id="d0e5491">“I would like it myself. It would be magnificent, and I have never spent the night just here.” + +<p id="d0e5494">She considered a moment, and my mind took up the matter of arrangements. We could cook <i>feis</i>, and there was plenty of other fruit, with shelter in the house, if we needed that. We could start down early and be at Lovaina’s +for the first <i>déjeuner. Zeus!</i> to pass the night in such a solitude! To hear in the pitch darkness <span id="d0e5502" class="pageno">page 239</span>the mysterious voices of <i>po</i>, the <i>tenebræ</i> of the Tahitian gods; the boom of the cascade in the abyss; the deep bass of the river in the rocky chute; the sigh of the +wind in the trees; the murmur of the stream near by; the fantasia and dirge of the lofty night in the tropics. What a setting +for her telling some old legend or fairy-tale of Tahiti! + +<p id="d0e5511">Fragrance of the Jasmine ended my reverie. She slapped her thigh. + +<p id="d0e5514">“I dine and dance to-night at eight o’clock,” she said. “<i>A rohi!</i> We must go! Besides, Maru, it would be too cold without blankets. The mercury here goes to sixty of your thermometer.” + +<p id="d0e5520">We descended by the route we had come, picking up her shoes and stockings and our hats by our couch, and with the princess +leading, hurrying along the obscuring trail. We passed a Tahitian youth who had been gathering <i>feis</i>, probably near the tarn, and who was bringing them to the market of the next morning. He was burdened with more than a hundred +pounds of fruit, which he carried balanced on a pole over his shoulder, and with this he was to go seven or eight miles from +their place of growth. He was a pillar of strength, handsome, glowing with effort, clad in a gorgeous <i>pareu</i> of red, and as we went by him, he smiled and said, “<i>Ia ora na! I hea! Vaimato?</i>” Greeting! Where have you been? The waterfall?” + +<p id="d0e5532">“<i>E, hitahita.</i> Yes, we are hurrying back,” the princess called vivaciously. + +<p id="d0e5538">“Those are our real men, not the Papeete dolts,” she said. “If we had time, we would catch shrimp in the river. I love to +do that.” +<span id="d0e5540" class="pageno">page 240</span> + +<p id="d0e5543">When we came to where the habitations began and the road became passable for vehicles, Noanoa Tiare sat down on a stone. She +put on her pale-blue silk stockings and her shoes, and asked me for the package she had given me at starting. She unfolded +it, and it was an <i>aahu</i>, a gown, for which she exchanged, behind a banana-plant, her soiled and drenched tunic. The new one was of the finest silk, +diaphanous, and thus to be worn only at night. The sun was down, and the lagoon a purple lake when we were again at the bust +of Bougainville. + +<p id="d0e5549">I thanked her at parting. + +<p id="d0e5552">“Noanoa Tiare,” I said, “this day has a heavenly blue page in my record. It has made Tahiti a different island for me.” + +<p id="d0e5555">“Maru, <i>mon ami</i>, you are sympathetic to my race. We shall be dear friends. I will send you the note to Tetuanui, the chief of Mataiea, to-morrow. +<i>Au revoir</i> and happy dreams.” +<span id="d0e5563" class="pageno">page 241</span> + +<h1 id="d0e5567">Chapter XIII</h1> +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e5574">The beach-combers of Papeete—The consuls tell their troubles—A bogus lord—The American boot-blacks—The cowboy in the hospital—Ormsby, +the supercargo—The death of Tahia—The Christchurch Kid—The Nature men—Ivan Stroganoff’s desire for a new gland. + +</div> +<p id="d0e5578">I played badminton some afternoons at the British consulate. The old wooden bungalow, with broad verandas, stood in a small +garden a dozen yards from the lagoon, where the Broom Road narrowed as it left the business portion of Papeete and began its +round of the island. There was just room enough on the salt grass for the shuttlecock to fall out of bounds, and for the battledores +to swing free of the branches of the trees. The consul, though he wore a monocle, was without the pretense of officialdom +except to other officials and, of course, at receptions, dinners, and formal gatherings. After the games, with tea on the +veranda, I heard many stories of island life, of official amenities, and the compound of nationalities in our little world. + +<p id="d0e5581">Half a dozen intimates of the consul dropped in about four, Willi, the rich dentist and acting American consul; Stevens, the +London broker; Hobson, who closed an eye for the Moorean, McTavish; and others. All were British except me, but our home tongue +and customs drew us closer together than to Frenchmen, and we could speak with some freedom on local affairs. If no woman +was present other than the cosmopolitan wife <span id="d0e5583" class="pageno">page 242</span>of the consul, born in Persia, we were quite at ease. + +<p id="d0e5586">Both consuls were usually worried because of the refusals of crews of vessels flying their flags to leave Tahiti, complaints +of the police of the misconduct of their nationals, or appeals for assistance from impecunious or spendthrift tourists. It +was an every-week happening for sailors of American vessels and of the New Zealand steamships to flee to the distant districts +or to Moorea, to live in a breadfruit grove with dryads who asked no vows, or to escape the grind of work and discipline at +sea. + +<p id="d0e5589">They must be pursued by the French gendarmes, under the warrant of their own flag, caught, and sent in irons aboard their +ships, with fees paid by their furious captains. Many times the chase was futile, so well did the dryads secrete them, and +the natives of the district abet the offense. To a Tahitian an amorous adventure, either as principal or aid, is half of life, +and he would risk his liberty and property to thwart, in his opinion, hard and stupid officials who wanted to separate loving +hearts. + +<p id="d0e5592">We talked about the kinds of men, other than these sailors, who made Tahiti their playground, to the annoyance of their consuls. +Crime among the Tahitians was almost unknown. A petty theft rarely happened. They were never paupers, for their own people +cared for them, and unless absolutely mat-ridden, they could find food on the trees about them. The whites—and not the French +whites either—caused the trouble, and but for them M. Lontane might have left off his revolver and club. + +<p id="d0e5595">“There is a type of Britisher,” said the consul, “who <span id="d0e5597" class="pageno">page 243</span>thinks Tahiti is his oyster, to be opened with false pretenses, and a pearl found. This type has two varieties, impecunious, +but well-educated, youths, younger sons, maybe; and valets and varlets. These scoundrels afflict me dreadfully, because they +all ultimately claim the protection of the British flag or are reported by the police for skullduggery. There is a fellow +now on my hands who is threatenin’ suicide. I wish to Gog and Magog that he would take to the reef or find a stick of dynamite. +Monsieur Lontane, that busy French gendarme, found him tryin’ to borrow a revolver or a stiletto, and thought he was going +to kill a Frenchman. He put him in the calaboose and brought his effects to me. They consisted of a book of poems and a letter, +but not a ha’penny.” + +<p id="d0e5600">“What does the bounder look like?” asked Stevens. + +<p id="d0e5603">“He looks like a beadle in a dissentin’ church, with a long, skinny neck, a pasty face, and a cockney accent. I went to see +him, and he talked like an underdone curate who had had a bad night. When he got off the ship, where he owed everybody, includin’ +the smokin’-room, he came to see me with some crazy papers for me to sign. He said then he had not a shillin’, and I advised +him to go to work. He said there wasn’t any work; so knowin’ Llewellyn was badly in need of people, I sent him to his vanilla +plantation out Mataiea way. You know here they haven’t the bees or whatever it is that transfers the pollen from the stigma +to the anther or what-d ’ye-call-it, and so they do it by hand with a piece of bamboo or a stem of grass. The girls do it +mostly, but I thought this jackpuddin’ could make an honest pound or two. He came tearin’ back to me sayin’ <span id="d0e5605" class="pageno">page 244</span>I’d insulted him with the work, askin’ him, a nobleman, to pander in the vegetable kingdom.” + +<p id="d0e5608">“I know him. He was at Lovaina’s,” I interposed. “He was at the bar all the time, quoting Pope and Dryden and himself. He +said he was going around the globe on a wager of a fortune. He was a poisonous bore, and always popped up for a drink. By +the way, he wears a monocle.” + +<p id="d0e5611">“You’ve named him,” went on the consul. “That’s more of the cockney’s pretense. Here’s the poem he wrote in the calaboose. +He did it on his shirt-front because the economical French gave him no paper. Lontane thought it might be his will or a plot, +and brought the shirt here, and I copied the accursed thing for my record, as I am compelled to by the rules of the august +devils of Downing Street.” + +<p class="poetry"> +<h5 id="d0e5616">THE HOME-LAND CALL</h5> +<br id="d0e5619">Why wilt thou torture me with unripe call, +<br id="d0e5622">Bringing these visions of the dear old land? +<br id="d0e5625">Dost think ’t is sweet to let thy mock’ry fall? +<br id="d0e5628">For me to hear forgotten noises in the Strand? +<br id="d0e5631">Insidious voice that will not grant my plea, +<br id="d0e5634">The mem’ry of thy pleasures dost remain: +<br id="d0e5637">Oxonian-Cantabs club; blue-lit Gaiety!’ + +<p id="d0e5641">“What he needs is a permanent permit to patronize the opium den the Government runs here for the Chinese,” said Hobson. “He’s +off his dope.” + +<p id="d0e5644">“Just a minute,” continued the consul. “He claims to be a lord and a millionaire. Here’s the letter. He needs no opium to +have nightmares: +<span id="d0e5646" class="pageno">page 245</span> +<div class="blockquote"> +<h1 id="d0e5654">Tuesday.</h1> +<p id="d0e5659">Of course, I will be called coward now, but the same people who call me this are those who have caused me to seek death, for +they branded me liar and wastrel, simply on an untrue report appearing in an American newspaper. Chief among these people +are that most despicable cad Hallman, and secondly, the British Consul. Even had I been guilty of all that has been said, +why were they not manly and generous enough to give or find me congenial employment? They are not blind and could see how +anxious and willing I was to obtain this. No, they only gloated over my starving and pitiable condition. Well, they spring +from the proletariat class and not much else could be expected. + +<p id="d0e5662">God only knows how much I want to live and how I dread having to take my own life, but only for the sake of my people. If +I could only see them again it would be easier. How did I ever fall so low! God help me! Is there nothing else for me but +this ignominious death? But I must save my people from knowing. I am not using my correct name here, so it will be useless +for any one to make inquiries. A volume of poems will be found in my pocket. I wonder if the Bishop would kindly post these +to Miss B. Wilmer, Broken Hill, West Australia, but only telling her I died here, without particulars, and saying I have written +these since leaving home. Oh, why did I ever leave there, where love and all that is good and pure was lavished on me? + +<p id="d0e5665">If it is possible, could I be buried in the sea? Just placed in a coffin and dropped into the peaceful ocean, peace that I +have not known for four years. Please have this done for me. + +<p id="d0e5668">I do not think I am committing suicide, rather I am being murdered by men who have none of the nobler feelings, ungenerous, +unsympathetic and cruelly unkind. The fact of my death will not affect one of those who ruined my reputation here, who deprived +me of obtaining food, and a room to sleep in. They have no more conscience so cannot feel remorse. I will not sign my true +name but only part of it. + +Gordon Innes. +</div> +<span id="d0e5678" class="pageno">page 246</span> + +<p id="d0e5681">“He’s off his onion,” Stevens commented. “The bally fool needs hard labor and raw <i>feis</i>.” + +<p id="d0e5687">The consul grinned. + +<p id="d0e5690">“Wait till you hear me read the document with the suicide note. It’s as good as Marie Corelli.” + +<p id="d0e5693">“All right, old thing,” answered Stevens. “Fire the whole broadside!” + +<p id="d0e5696">“No, no; I’m goin’ to spare you the whole official document. It pretends to be a formal instruction to this beef-headed flunky, +from his guardian, of a test to prove his mettle and gain experience to fit him for the highest posts of the diplomatic service +by going round the bally world and doin’ other people in for their tin. It is a yard long, and was undoubtedly written by +the same dish-washer who wrote that doggerel on his shirt. It promises him half a million sterling when he comes back to London +after visiting Australasia, China, India, and other countries, and pickin’ up his tucker free as he goes. Also, the shark +is permitted to send back for coin at this date, and he must get married to a Tahitian. He probably fixes it different in +every country. It’s signed, ‘Your affectionate guardian, James Kitson, Baron Airedale of Gledhow.’ ” + +<p id="d0e5699">“Whew!” spluttered Hobson, “the blighter has no limits. Do you mean to tell me he gets away with that folderol?” + +<p id="d0e5702">“For months he has lived at Lovaina’s, Fanny’s, and even on the Chinese. He has borrowed thousands of francs, and spent it +for drink and often for champagne. He did old Lovaina up for money as well as board. She believes in him yet, and calls him +Lord Innes or Sir Gordon, but says she has no more to risk. <span id="d0e5704" class="pageno">page 247</span>He promised to build her a big hotel where the Annexe is. He’s got many of the Tahitian girls and their mothers mad over his +style and his prospects. Finally, he was warned by me to leave the island, and the result was his tryin’ to borrow the lethal +weapon, the poem and the letter. The Baron Airedale document he showed me when he first landed, to try to get my indorsement. +There’s no Burke in the South Seas, and there probably is no such bloomin’ baron. Sounds more like a dog.” The consul chuckled. + +<p id="d0e5707">“Those lairds are as plentiful as brands of Scotch whisky made in England,” Stevens said derisively. “What will you do to +uphold the honor of the British crown? Is the Scotch bastard to go on with his fairy-tale and do brown the colonials?” + +<p id="d0e5710">“I am going to have the diplomat repair the roads of Tahiti for two months, and then ship him third-class to New Zealand, +where he has to go to carry out his blasted fate,” the consul declared, and ordered all glasses filled. + +<p id="d0e5713">We discussed the sudden and abnormal appearance of boot-blacks. One had set up an ornate stand on the rue de Rivoli. He was +an American, Tom Wilkins, and the first ever known to practise his profession in the South Seas. He had come like a non-periodic +comet, and suddenly flashed his brass-tagged platform and arm-chair upon the gaping natives. Most of them being barefooted, +one would have thought his customers not many; but the novelty of a white man doing anything for them was irresistible to +all who had shoes. He did not lower himself in their estimation. It is noteworthy that the Tahitian does not distinguish between +<span id="d0e5715" class="pageno">page 248</span>what we call menial labor and other work. Nor did we until recently. The kings and nobles of Europe were actually served by +the lords of the bedchamber and the maids in waiting. The American boot-black was really a boot-white, as all wore white canvas +shoes except preachers and sailors. + +<p id="d0e5718">The boot-white called out, “Shine!” and the word, unpronounceable by the native, entered a <i>himene</i> as <i>tina</i>. Within a week he had his Tahitian consort doing the shining most of the time while he loafed in the Paris saloon. He lived +at the Annexe, and told me that he was not really a boot-cleaner, but was going around the world on a wager of twenty thousand +dollars, “without a cent.” He, too, had a credulous circle, who paid him often five francs for a shine to help him win his +bet by arriving at the New York City Hall on a fixed date with a certain sum of money earned by his hands. He raised the American +flag over his stand, and referred to Uncle Sam as if he were a blood relation to whom he could appeal for anything at any +time. + +<p id="d0e5727">All the foregoing was brought out in our conversation at the British consul’s. Willi, temporarily conducting American affairs +in French Oceanie, gave a denouement. + +<p id="d0e5730">“The shine isn’t a bad fellow,” he said, “but he’s serious about the twenty thousand dollars. His statement was doubted to-day +by an English sailor, who called him ’a blarsted Hamerican liar,’ and the shine took off his own rubber leg, and knocked the +sailor down. He could move faster on his one leg than the other on two, and Monsieur Lontane had to summon two assistants +to take him to the calaboose. He wouldn’t resume <span id="d0e5732" class="pageno">page 249</span>his rubber leg. I saw him being led and pulled by my office, calling out, ‘Tell the ’Merican consul a good American is in +the grip of the frogs.’ ” + +<p id="d0e5735">Within a month of the rubber-legged shiner’s début, there were two other boot-blacks on the streets. A madness possessed the +people, Tahitians and French, who all their lives had cleaned their own shoes, to sit on the throne-like chairs, and women +and girls waited their turns. John Conroy and a negro from Mississippi were the additions to the profession, and during the +incarceration of the premier artist, his sweetheart, a former <i>hula danseuse</i>, remained faithful to his brushes. When a shoeless man or woman regarded the new-fangled importations interestedly, the proprietors +offered to beautify their naked feet, and, ridiculous as it may seem, attempted it. + +<p id="d0e5741">Although I heard odd tales at the consulate, it was at the parc de Bougainville that I met the gentleman of the beach intimately. + +<p id="d0e5744">There I often sat and talked with whomever loafed. Natives frequented the <i>parc</i> hardly ever, but beach-combers, tourists, and sailors, or casual residents in from the districts, awaited there the opening +of the stores or the post-office, or idled. The little park, or wooded strip of green, named after the admiral, and containing +his monument, skirted the quay, and was between the establishment of Emile Levy, the pearl-trader, and the artificial pool +of fresh water where the native women and sailors off the ships washed their clothes. From one’s bench one had a view of all +the harbor and of the passers-by on the Broom Road. + +<p id="d0e5750">In the morning the pool was thronged with the laundresses, <span id="d0e5752" class="pageno">page 250</span>and one heard their paddles chunking as they beat the clothes. The French warship, the <i>Zélée</i>, was moored close by, and often the linen of its crew hung upon lines in the <i>parc</i>, and the French sailors came and went upon their duties, or sat on the coral wall and smoked and sang <i>chansons</i>. In the afternoon horses were brought down to bathe, and guests of the Annexe swam in the lagoon. People afoot, driving carts +or carriages, on bicycles and in automobiles, went by on the thoroughfare about the island, the Frenchmen always talking as +if excited over cosmic affairs, and the natives laughing or calling to one another. + +<p id="d0e5764">If there happened to be a shoal of fish near the quays, I was sure to see Joseph, to whom the wise Dr. Funk had confided his +precious concoction. He would desert the Cercle Bougainville, but still within hail of a stentorious skipper whose coppers +were dry, and with a dozen other native men and women, boys and girls, lure the fish with hooks baited with bits of salted +shrimp. Joseph was as skilful with his rod as with a shaker, and he would catch twenty <i>ature</i>, four or five inches long, in half an hour. + +<p id="d0e5770">The water, about fifteen feet deep near the made embankment, was alive with the tiny fish, squirming in a mass as they were +pursued by larger fish. The son of Prince Hinoe, a round-shouldered lout, very tall, awkward, and merry, held a bamboo pole. +His white suit was soiled and ragged, and he whistled “All Coons Look alike to Me!” The peanut-vender had brought a rod, and +was fishing with difficulty and mostly by feel. He could keep one eye open only, as one hand was occupied, but he pulled in +many <i>ature</i>. +<span id="d0e5775" class="pageno">page 251</span> + +<p id="d0e5778">The <i>parc</i> was the occasional assembling-place for the drifting whites made thoughtful by trolling the jolly, brown bowl, and by those +to whom lack of francs denied the trolling. It was there I first met Ivan Stroganoff, the aged Russian philosopher, and it +was from there I took Wilfrid Baillon to the hospital. Baillon was a very handsome cow-boy from British Columbia, and was +housed in Papeete with a giant Scandinavian who owned a cattle ranch in South America. He was generally called the Great Dane, +and was the person meant in the charge for three cocktails at Lovaina’s: “Germani to Fany, 3 feathers.” + +<p id="d0e5784">The cow-boy became ill. I prescribed castor-oil, and Mme. Fanny, half a tumbler of Martinique rum, with the juice of a lime +in it. She was famous for this remedy for all internal troubles, and I took one with the cowboy as a prophylactic, as I might +have been exposed to the same germs. He did not improve, though he followed Fanny’s regimen exactly. He was sitting dejectedly +in the <i>parc</i>, looking pale and thin, when I broached the subject. + +<p id="d0e5790">“As the Fanny physic fails to straighten you out,” I said to him, “why not try the hospital?” + +<p id="d0e5793">He recoiled. + +<p id="d0e5796">“Have you ever lamped it?” he asked. “It looks like a calaboose.” + +<p id="d0e5799">“It ain’t so bad,” said Kelly, the I.W.W., who was proselyting as usual among the flotsam and jetsam of the waterfront. “I +’ve been in worse joints in the United States.” + +<p id="d0e5802">The cow-boy yielding, I escorted him to the institution, carrying his bag, as what with his disease and his <span id="d0e5804" class="pageno">page 252</span>antidote he was weak. The hospital was a block away from the lagoon. It was surrounded by a high stone wall, and as it was +built by the military, it was ugly and had the ridiculous effrontery of the army and all its lack of common sense. The iron +gate was shut, and a sign said, “<i>Sonnez s’il vous plait!</i>” A toothless French <i>portière</i> of thirty years let us in. All the doctors of Tahiti had left the island for a few days on an excursion, and the gay scientist +who opened the champagne in his pockets at the Tiare Hotel New Year’s eve was in command. He sat in an arm-chair in a littered +office and was smoking a pipe. His beard had a diameter of a foot, and obviated any need of collar or shirt-band, for it grew +from his shoulder-blades up, so that his forehead, eyes, nose, and lips were white islands in a black sea, and even his nose +was not bare, for he had been debited by Lovaina for his champagne as “Hair on nose.” + +<p id="d0e5813">He was reading a novel, and asked gruffly what we were there for. I told him, and Baillon was assigned a room at twelve francs +a day, and was required to pay for ten days in advance. + +<p id="d0e5816">The next morning I visited him. He could speak no French, so I questioned Blackbeard in his office, where we had an aperitif. +He was voluble. + +<p id="d0e5819">“He has amoeban dysentery,” said he. “It is contagious and infectious, specifically, and it is fortunate your friend is attended +by me. I have had that disease and know what’s what.” + +<p id="d0e5822">I, too, had had it in the Philippine Islands, and I was amazed that it was infectious. How could he have got it? +<span id="d0e5824" class="pageno">page 253</span> + +<p id="d0e5827">“<i>Alors</i>,” replied the physician, “where has he taken meals?” + +<p id="d0e5833">“Lovaina’s, Fanny’s, and some with the Chinese.” + +<p id="d0e5836">The Frenchman threw his arms around the door in mock horror. He gagged and spat, exciting the cowboy into a fever. + +<p id="d0e5839">“<i>Oh! la! la!</i>” he shouted. “<i>Les Chinois! Certainement</i>, he is ill. He has eaten dog. Amoeban dysentery! <i>Mais</i>, monsieur, it is a dispensation of the <i>bon dieu</i> that he has not hydrophobia or the leprosy. <i>Les Chinois! Sacré nom de chien!</i>” + +<p id="d0e5857">Lovaina had often accused her rivals, the Chinese <i>restaurateurs</i>, of serving dog meat for beef or lamb. Perhaps it was so, for in China more than five millions of dogs are sold for food +in the market every year, and in Tahiti I knew that the Chinese ate the larvae of wasps, and M. Martin had mountain rats caught +for his table. + +<p id="d0e5863">The cow-boy’s room was bare and cheerless, but two Tahitian girls of fourteen or fifteen years of age were in it. One was +sitting on his bed, holding his hand, and the other was in a rocking-chair. They were very pretty and were dressed in their +fête gowns. The girl on the bed was almost white, but her sister fairly brown. Probably they had different fathers. They told +me that they had seen Baillon on the streets, had fallen in love with him, and though they had never spoken to him, wanted +to comfort him now that he was sick. Jealousy did not rankle in their hearts, apparently. That absence often shocked non-Polynesians. +Brothers shared wives, and sisters shared husbands all over old Polynesia. + +<p id="d0e5866">This pair of love-lorn maidens had never exchanged <span id="d0e5868" class="pageno">page 254</span>a word with Baillon, for he spoke only English. The whiter girl wore a delicate satin gown, a red ribbon, and fine pearls +in her hair. The cow-boy lay quietly, while she sat with her bare feet curled under her on the counterpane, looking actually +unutterable passion. + +<p id="d0e5871">“Shucks!” said he to me, safe in their ignorance of his tongue, “this is getting serious. They mean business, and I was foolin’. +I got a little girl in the good ol’ United States that would skin her alive if she saw her sittin’ like that on my sheets. +A man’s takin’ chances here that bats his eye at one o’ these T’itian fairies. Do you know, their mother came here with them +this morning?” + +<p id="d0e5874">“They mean to have you in their family,” I said. “That mother may have had a white husband or lover, and aids in the pursuit +of you for auld lang syne.” + +<p id="d0e5877">Wilfrid Baillon was out of the hospital in just ten days. His release, as cured by the doctor, coincided curiously with his +payment in advance. I saw him off for New Zealand by the steamship leaving the next day. + +<p id="d0e5880">“Those people were awful good to me,” he said in farewell. “It hurts me to treat those girls this way, but I’m scairt o’ them. +They’re too strong in their feelings.” + +<p id="d0e5883">He ran away from a mess of love pottage that many men would have gone across seas to gain. + +<p id="d0e5886">Ormsby, an Englishman in his early twenties, good-looking and courteous, with an air of accustomedness to luxury, but of being +roughened by his environment, was sitting on a bench one morning with a girl. He called me over to meet her. +<span id="d0e5888" class="pageno">page 255</span> + +<p id="d0e5891">“You are an old-timer here now,” he began, “and I’ve got to go away on the schooner to the Paumotus to-morrow. Drop in at +Tahia’s shack once in a while and cheer her up. She lives back of the Catholic mission, and she’s pretty sick.” + +<p id="d0e5894">Tahia was desperately ill, I thought. She was thin, the color of the yellow wax candles of the high altar, and her straight +nose, with expanded nostrils, and hard, almost savage mouth, features carved as with the stone chisel of her ancient tribe, +conjured up the profile of Nenehofra, an Egyptian princess whose mummy I had seen. She was stern, silent, resigned to her +fate, as are these races who know the inexorable will of the gods. + +<p id="d0e5897">“Is she your girl?” I asked Ormsby. + +<p id="d0e5900">He colored slightly. + +<p id="d0e5903">“I suppose so, and the baby will be mine if it’s ever born. At any rate, I’m going to stick to her while she’s in this fix. +I’ll tell you on the square, I’m not gone on her; but she had a lover, an Australian I knew, and he was good to her, but he +got the consumption and couldn’t work. Maybe he came here with it. They hadn’t a shilling, and Tahia built a hut in the hills +up there near where the nature men live, and put him in it, and she fed and cared for him. She went to the mountains for <i>feis</i> she came down here to the reef to fish, and she found eggs and breadfruit in other people’s gardens. She kept him alive, +the Lord knows how, until he could secure money from Sydney to go home and die. Now, she’s got the con from him, I suppose, +and it would be a shabby trick to leave her when she’s dying and will be a mother in two months, according to Doctor Cassiou!” +<span id="d0e5908" class="pageno">page 256</span> + +<p id="d0e5911">He made a wry face and lit his pipe. The girl could not understand a word and sat immovable. + +<p id="d0e5914">“She’s Marquesan,” he went on. “Her mother has written through a trader in Atuona, on Hiva-Oa, to send her to her own valley, +but she’s quit. She sits and broods all day. I ’d like to go back to my own home in Warwickshire. I know I’m changing for +the bad here. I live like a dam’ beach-comber. I only get a screw of three hundred francs a month, and that all goes for us +two, with medicines and doctors. She’d go to Atuona if I’d go; but I can’t make a living there, and I’m rotten enough now +without living off her people in the cannibal group. She’s skin and bones and coughs all night.” + +<p id="d0e5917">Ormsby puffed his pipe as Tahia put her hand in his. Her action was that of a small dog who puts his paw on his master’s sleeve, +hesitating, hopeful, but uncertain. She regarded me with slightly veiled hostility. I was a white who might be taking him +away to foreign things. + +<p id="d0e5920">“She’s heard us talking about Atuona and Hiva-Oa, and she thinks maybe I ’ve concluded to go. I can’t do it, O’Brien. If I +go there, I’ll go native forever. I’ve got a streak of some dam’ savage in me. Listen! I’ve got to go on the <i>Etoile</i> to Kaukura tojmorrow. Now, the natives are always kind to any one, but sickness they are not interested in. You go and see +her, won’t you? She’s about all in, and it won’t hurt you.” + +<p id="d0e5926">Ormsby went to the Dangerous Isles on the <i>Etoile</i>, and did not return for three weeks. He did not find Tahia in her shack on the hill. She was in the cemetery,—in the plot +reserved for the natives of other islands,—and her babe unborn. She had died alone. I think <span id="d0e5931" class="pageno">page 257</span>she made up her mind to relieve the Englishman of her care, and willed to die at once. Dr. Cassiou, with whom I visited her, +said: + +<p id="d0e5934">“She ought to have lasted several months. <i>Mais, c’est curieux</i>. I have treated these Polynesians for many years, and I never found one I could keep alive when he wanted to die. She had +already sent away her spirit, the <i>âme</i>, or <i>essence vitale</i>, or whatever it is, and then the body simply grows cold.” + +<p id="d0e5946">Ormsby and I talked it all over in the <i>parc</i>. He was deeply affected, and he uncovered his own soul, as men seldom do. + +<p id="d0e5952">“I ’m dam’ glad she’s dead,” he said, with intense feeling. “I might have failed, and she died before I did fail. I’m going +back to Warwick now at first chance, and whatever I do or don’t do, I’ve got that exception to my credit. It’s one, too, to +the credit of the whites that have cursed these poor islanders.” + +<p id="d0e5955">He had chalked it down on a record he thought quite black, but which I believe was better than our average. He and I went +to the cemetery and had a wooden slab put up: + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e5960">Tahia a Atuona +<br id="d0e5963">Tamau te maitai. + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e5969">Tahia of Atuona +<br id="d0e5972">She held fast. + +<p id="d0e5976">The Christchurch Kid and I were friendly, and he allowed me once a day during his training periods to put on the gloves with +him for a mild four rounds. He was an open-hearted fellow, with a cauliflower ear and a nose a trifle awry from “a couple +of years with the pork-and-beaners in California,” as he explained, but with <span id="d0e5978" class="pageno">page 258</span>a magnificent body. He also lived at the Annexe, and did his training in the garden under Afa’s clever hands. The Dummy must +have admired him, for he would watch him exercising and boxing for hours, and make farcical sounds and grotesque gestures +to indicate his understanding of the motions and blows. + +<p id="d0e5981">The Kid asked me if I knew Ernest Darling, “the nature man,” and identified the too naked wearer of toga and sandals on the +San Francisco wharf as Darling. + +<p id="d0e5984">“’E looked like Christ,” said the boxer. “’E was a queer un. How’d you like to chyse up there to his roost in the ’ills?” + +<p id="d0e5987">The next morning at five—it was not daybreak until six—we met at Wing Luey’s for coffee and bread, which cost four cents. +Prince Hinoe was there as usual, and asked us whither away. He laughed when we told him, and said the nature men were <i>maamaa</i>, crazy. The Kid was of the same mind. + +<p id="d0e5993">We went up the rue de Sainte Amelie to the end of the road, and continued on up the valley. We could see far above us a small +structure, which was the Eden that Darling had made for the Adamic colony he had established. + +<p id="d0e5996">The climb was a stiff one on a mere wild pig-trail. + +<p id="d0e5999">“The nyture man would ’ike up ’ere several times a day, after the frogs closed his road,” said the New Zealander. “There was +less brush than now, though, because ’e cut it aw’y to carry lum’ber and things up and to bring back the things ’e grew for +market. ’E and ’is gang believed in nykedness, vegetables, socialism, no religion, and no drugs. The nytives think they’re +bug-’ouse, like Prince Hinoe, and I don’t think they ’re all <span id="d0e6001" class="pageno">page 259</span>there, but you couldn’t cheat him. ’E’d myke a Glasgow peddler look sharp in buyin’ or sellin’.” + +<p id="d0e6004">The Christchurch Kid was himself strictly conventional, and had been genuinely shocked by Darling’s practices, and especially +by his striking resemblance to the Master as portrayed by the early painters, and by Munkácsy in Christ Before Pilate. + +<p id="d0e6007">“’E was all right,” he explained to me as we climbed, “but ’e ought to been careful of ’is looks. I was ’ard up ’ere in Papeete +once, and was sleepin’ in an ole ware’ouse along with others. Darling slept on a window-sill, and ’e used to talk about enjoyin’ +the full sweep o’ the tradewind. We doubted that, an’ so one night we crept upstairs and surprised him. ’E was stretched out +on a couple o’ sacks, and a reg’ler gale was blowin’ on him. ’E bathed a couple o’ times a day in the lagoon or in fresh water, +but ’e believed in rubbin’ oil on his skin, and when a bloke is all greasy and nyked, ’e looks dirty. ’Is whiskers were too +flossy in the tropics.” + +<p id="d0e6010">It took all my wind to reach the Eden, a couple of miles from our starting-point, and we were on all fours part of the way. + +<p id="d0e6013">“’E could run up here like an animal,” declared the fighter. “Once when a crowd of us went to visit ’im, ’e ran up this tr’il +a’ead of us, and when we arrived all winded, blow me up a bloomin’ gum-tree if ’e ’ad n’t a mess of <i>feis</i> and breadfruit cooked for us.” + +<p id="d0e6019">We came to a sign on the trail. “Tapu,” it said, which means taboo, or keep away; and farther on a notice in French that the +owner forbade any one to enter upon his land. + +<p id="d0e6022">“’E’s a cryzy Frenchman with long whiskers,” said <span id="d0e6024" class="pageno">page 260</span>the Kid. “’E ’as a grudge against any one who speaks English and also against the world. They s’y that ’is American wife ran +aw’y from ’im, or an American took ’is nytive wife aw’y. ’E packs a revolver.” + +<p id="d0e6027">Everywhere the mountain-side was terraced, and planted in cocoanuts, breadfruits, bananas, flowers, and other plants, more +than two thousand growths. Darling’s toil had been great, and my heart bled at the memory of his standing on the piling as +we steamed away. He had intended to have a colony, with bare nature-worshipers from all over the world. He had written articles +in magazines, and tourists and authors had celebrated him in their stories. A score of needy health-seekers had arrived in +Papeete and joined him, but could not survive his rigid diet and work. He had talked much of Eves, white, in the Eden, but +none had offered. + +<p id="d0e6030">On a platform fifteen hundred feet above the sea Darling had built a frame of beams, boards, and branches, with bunks and +seats, much like a woodcutter’s temporary shelter in the mountains, a mere lean-to. The view was stupendous, with the sea, +the harbor, Moorea, and Papeete hardly seen in the foliage. He had thought his work in life to be peopling these hills with +big families of nature children and the spread of socialism and reformed spelling. + +<p id="d0e6033">His dream was transient. He had been treated with contempt, and had been driven from his garden, as had his first father, +and without an Eve or a serpent. The whiskered Frenchman had bought Eden for a song, and had made it taboo to all. + +<p id="d0e6036">We shouted in vain for the Frenchman, so we <span id="d0e6038" class="pageno">page 261</span>searched the premises. The boxer was afraid that after we left he might roll a rock down our trail because of our breaking +his taboo. We found the spring from which he drank, and a pool dug by Darling for bathing, now only a mass of vegetation. +Evidently the present tenant was not an ablutionist. + +<p id="d0e6041">“There’s a beastly German down on that next level,” remarked the Christchurch Kid. “’E ’ates this Frenchman. Now they don’t +speak, but they sent warnin’ to each other o’ trouble. The frog carries the revolver for the sauer-kraut. Some day they’ll +kill each other right ’ere. They’re both ’ermits, and ’ermits are terrible when they get excited.” + +<p id="d0e6044">It was almost a straight drop to the German’s, a small promontory, with an acre of land, a platform raised eight feet on poles +for a roof, and under it a berth. A chest held his belongings. He lived on the fruit he raised and the fish he caught in the +sea, to which he went every day. He tried to keep chickens, but the mountain rats, of which Darling had trapped more than +five thousand, ate most of them. The German, too, was away from his simple home. Both these men sought in life only peace +and plain living, yet were consumed with hate. One day the upper dweller had accidentally caused a small stone to roll down +upon the other’s roof. The German had shouted something to the Frenchman, hot words had passed, and now they carried revolvers +to intimidate or shoot each other. Their days and nights were spent on plans to insult or injure. And because of their feud +they hated the whole world. + +<p id="d0e6047">Once again in Papeete, we met the Swiss of the Noa-Noa who had intended to eat raw foods in the Marquesas. <span id="d0e6049" class="pageno">page 262</span>He was to return to America on the next steamer. + +<p id="d0e6052">“De wegetables in Tahiti have no wim in dem,” he said. “In California I ead nudds und raisins mit shtrent’ in dem. I go back.” + +<p id="d0e6055">The fighter pointed out the “cryzy” Frenchman of Eden. He was the customs employee who had provoked the American consul by +refusing to understand English. + +<p id="d0e6058">I asked M. Lontane, the second in command of the police, why Darling had gone. + +<p id="d0e6061">The hero of the battle of the limes, coal, and potatoes, looked at me fiercely. + +<p id="d0e6064">“Is the French republic to permit here in its colony the whites who enjoy its hospitality to shame the nation before the Tahitians +by their nakedness? That <i>sacrée bête</i> wore a <i>pareu</i> in town because the law compelled him to, but, monsieur, on the road, in his aerial resort, he and all his disciples were +as naked as—” + +<p id="d0e6073">“I have seen artistes at the music-halls of Paris,” I finished. + +<p id="d0e6076">“<i>Exactement</i>,” he spluttered. “Are we to let Tahiti rival Paris?” + +<p id="d0e6082">Ivan Stroganoff I met two or three times a month. He stayed in his chicken-coop except when the opportunities came for gaining +a few francs, at steamer-time, and when sheer boredom drove him to Papeete for converse. With his dislike for the natives +and his disdainful attitude toward the French, he had to seek other nationals in town, for there were none at Fa’a except +a Chinese storekeeper. Stroganoff at eighty was as keen for interesting things as a young man, but his philosophy <span id="d0e6084" class="pageno">page 263</span>was fatal to his enjoyment. He saw the flaw in the diamond the sunbeam made of the drop of water on the leaf. He had lived +too long and was too wise in disappointments. He was generous in his poverty, for he brought me a tin of guava-jelly he had +made and a box of dried bananas. These had had their skins removed, and were black and not desirable-looking, but they were +delicious and rare. In turn, not wishing to exaggerate the difference between our means, I gave him a box of cigars I had +brought from America. I visited him at Fa’a, and found his coop had been a poultry shelter, and was humble, indeed; but I +had slept a hundred nights in many countries in worse. He had a box for a table for eating and writing, and a rude cot. A +few dishes and implements, and a roost of books and reviews in Russian, English, French, German, and other languages, completed +his equipment. + +<p id="d0e6087">He had several times reiterated his earnest wish to leave Tahiti, and his longing rested heavily on my heart. Upon lying down +at night I had felt my own illiberality in not making it possible for him to realize his desire. A hundred dollars would send +him there, with enough left over for a fortnight’s keep. But my apology for not buying him a ticket was the real fear of his +unhappiness. What could a friendless man of eighty do to exist in the United States other than become the inmate of a poorhouse? +The best he could hope for would be to be taken in by the Little Sisters of the Poor, who house a few old men. They were, +doubtless, kind, but probably insistent on neatness and religiosity. + +<p id="d0e6090">The cold, the brutal policemen and guards, the venial justice, the crystallized charity in the name of a statistical <span id="d0e6092" class="pageno">page 264</span>Christ, arrested my hand. I had known it all at first hand, asking no favor. I believed that he would be worse off than in +his chicken-coop. He could wear anything or nearly nothing in Tahiti, and his old Prince Albert comforted him; but he would +have to conform to dress rules in a stricter civilization. Nature was a loving mother here and a shrewish hag there, at least +toward the poor. And yet I was uneasy at my own argument. + +<p id="d0e6095">For a month or two he had led the talk between us and any others in the <i>parc</i> to new discoveries in medicine. From his Fa’a seclusion he followed these very closely through European publications, for +which his slender funds went. He had a curiously opposed nature, quoting with enthusiasm the idealistic philosophers, and +descending into such abject materialism as haunting the bishop’s palace for the cigar-stubs. + +<p id="d0e6101">He would say that the purest joy in life is that which lifts us out of our daily existence and transforms us into disinterested +spectators of it. + +<p id="d0e6104">“This divine release from the common ways of men can be found only through art,” Stroganoff would apostrophize. “The final +and only true solution of life is to be found in the life of the saint. True morality passes through virtue, which is rooted +in sympathy into asceticism. Renunciation only offers a complete release from the evils and terrors of existence.” + +<p id="d0e6107">Kelly was on the bench one day when the Russian uttered this rule of the cenobite school. They were good friends, but differed. +They agreed that the world was sick and needed a radical medicine. Kelly was for a complete cure by ending private business +through the <span id="d0e6109" class="pageno">page 265</span>workers seizing it when the time was ripe, which he believed would be soon. Stroganoff was for an empery of wise men, of scientists, +philosophers, and artists, who would kick out the statesmen and politicians, and manage things by enlightened pragmatism. +For the individual man who sought happiness his formula was as above—retirement to an aery. + +<p id="d0e6112">When Kelly was gone to practise on his accordion,—he had opened a dancing academy at Fa’a,—the octogenarian asked me if I +had read of the recent achievements of the scientists who were making the old young. He elaborated on the discoveries and +experiments of Professor Leonard Huxley in England with thyroid gland injections, of Voronoff in France with the grafting +of interstitial glands of monkeys, and of Eugen Steinach in Austria and Roux in Germany, with germ glands and X-rays. Steinach, +especially, he discoursed on, and drew a magazine picture of him from his Prince Albert. The Vienna savant had a cordon of +whiskers that made him resemble Stroganoff, and his eyes in the photograph peered through all one’s disguises. + +<p id="d0e6115">“That is what grates me,” said Stroganoff. “I am far from all these worth-while things, these men of brain. I knew Ilya Ilich +Metchnikoff before he became director of the Pasteur Institute. Here I am a rotting hulk. In the Caucasus I had <i>kephir</i>, and I used to carry <i>kephir</i> grains, and in America I, at least, could have kumiss or Ilya Ilich’s <i>lait caille</i>. Look! I came here as Ponce de León to Florida to find youth, or to keep from growing older; in a word to escape <i>anno Domini</i>.” + +<p id="d0e6130">I turned and looked at him. He was a venerable figure, <span id="d0e6132" class="pageno">page 266</span>but there was no sign of eighty years in him. Rid of that white, hirsute mask, so associated with age, Stroganoff might have +been twenty years younger. I said so, but it did not allay his yearning. + +<p id="d0e6135">“I am well enough,” he said, “because I have not dissipated for thirty years. I turned a leaf, as did Leo Nikolaievitch, after +‘War and Peace.’ Now I feel myself slipping into the grave.” + +<p id="d0e6138">He gazed ruminantly away from the lagoon to the pool of Psyche, where the Tahitian women squatted on their shapely haunches +and thumped their clothes. + +<p id="d0e6141">“See,” he said earnestly. “I am old and useless. Why should not Steinach or the others make the grand experiment on me? If +they succeed, very good; if they fail, there is no loss. They say those glands make a man over, no matter what his age. I +offer myself freely. I am not afraid of death. Me, I am a philosopher.” + +<p id="d0e6144">He spoke excitedly. His eyes were fixed on distance, and I followed them. + +<p id="d0e6147">Auro, the Golden One, as her name meant, had been washing her muslin slips in the pool of Psyche, and now stood in the entrance +to it. She was for a fleeting second in her <i>pareu</i> only, her tunic raised above her head to pull on, and her enravishing form disclosed from her waist to her piquant face, +over which tumbled her opulent locks. + +<p id="d0e6153">It flashed on me that, wise and old as he was, the spectrum of the philosopher’s soul had all the colors of the ignorant and +the young. I looked from the nymphs of the pool to his darkening eyes, and I had a revelation of the persistence of common +humanity in the most <span id="d0e6155" class="pageno">page 267</span>learned and the most philosophical. My castigation of myself for not buying his steamship ticket ceased in a moment, though +not the less did I continue to enjoy his fount of learning and experience. +<span id="d0e6157" class="pageno">page 268</span> + +<h1 id="d0e6161">Chapter XIV</h1> +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e6168">The market in Papeete—Coffee at Shin Bung Lung’s with a prince—Fish the chief item—Description of them—The vegetables and +fruits—The fish strike—Rumors of an uprising—Kelly and the I. W. W.—The mysterious session at Fa’a—Halellujah! I’m a Bum!—The +strike is broken. + +</div> +<p id="d0e6172">The market in Papeete, the only one in Tahiti, has an air all its own. It is different in its amateur atmosphere and roseate +color, in its isothermal romance and sheer good humor, from all others I have seen—Port of Spain, Peking, Kandy, or Jolo. +It is more fascinating in its sensuous, tropical setting, its strange foods, and its laughing, lazy crowds of handsome people, +than any other public mart I know. There is no financial exchange in Tahiti. Stocks and bonds take the shape of cocoanuts, +vanilla-beans, fish, and other comforts. The brokers are merry women. The market is spot, and buyers must take delivery immediately, +as usually not a single security is left at the end of the day’s trading. + +<p id="d0e6175">One must be at the market before five o’clock to see it all. Sunday is the choicest day of all the week, because Sunday is +a day of feasting, and the <i>marché</i> then has a more than gala air. The English missionaries had once made even cooking a fish on Sunday a crime, severely punished; +but the French priests changed all that, and the French Sabbath, the New York Sabbath, was <i>en règle</i>. + +<p id="d0e6184">All the east is purple and red, gorgeous, flaring, <span id="d0e6186" class="pageno">page 269</span>when I awake. There are no windows in my connecting rooms in the Annexe. The sun rises through their wallless front, and sets +through their opening to the balcony. What more liberal dispensation of nature? I am under the shower in two minutes, long +enough to go down the curved staircase, with its admirable rosewood balustrade, and through the rear veranda to the room in +which the large cement basin serves for bath and laundry and to lend a minute to the Christchurch Kid, the prize-fighter, +to inform me that he is to open a school of the manly art, with diplomas for finished scholars and rewards for excellence. +The recitals are to be public, a fee charged, and all ambitious pupils are to be guaranteed open examination in pairs and +a just decision. The Kid and Cowan are to be <i>hors de combat</i>. + +<p id="d0e6192">A daughter of a French governor of the Low Archipelago is in the basin, the door ajar, and the spray blinding her to my presence. +She is seventeen, <i>café au lait—beaucoup de lait</i>, kohl-eyed, meter-tressed, and slim-bodied. She sings the <i>himene</i> of the battle of the limes and coal and potatoes, with a new stanza concerning the return of the <i>Noa-Noa</i>, and the vengeance of the Tahitian braves upon the pigs of Peretania, Britain. + +<p id="d0e6204">“<i>Ia or a na! Bonjour</i>, Goo’ night!” she says impartially, and modestly slips her <i>pareu</i> about her. + +<p id="d0e6213">“<i>Ia ora na oe</i>!” I reply. “All goes well?” + +<p id="d0e6219">“By cripe’ yais; dam’ goo’!” she answers, and goes humming on her way to her shanty in the yard. She is the maid of my chamber, +gentle, willing, but never to be found for service. She learns English from the Kid, the rubber-legged boot-black, and other +gentleman adventurers and tars of America and Europe, and she <span id="d0e6221" class="pageno">page 270</span>pours out bad words—I cannot mention them—in innocent faith in their propriety. In French or Tahitian she speaks correctly. + +<p id="d0e6224">Outside the bath I hear the vehicles hurrying to market, and dressing quickly in white drill, and wearing on my Paumotu hat +a brilliant scarlet <i>pugaree</i>, once the badge of subjugation to the Mohammedan conquerors of India, I join the procession. + +<p id="d0e6230"> +<i>Bon dieu!</i> what a morning! The reds and purples are dying in the orient, and the hills are swathed in the half-white light of day. The +lagoon is now a glistening pearly gray. Moorea, the isle of the fairy folk, is jagged and rough, as if a new throe of earth +had torn its heights and made new steeps and obelisks. Moorea is never the same. Every hour of the day and every smile and +frown of the sun creates valleys and spires, and alters the outlines of this most capricious of islets. + +<p id="d0e6236">Past the bust of Bougainville, past the offices of Emile Levy, the pearler whom, to Levy’s intense anger, Jack London slew +in “The House of Mapuhi”; past the naval depot, the American consulate with the red, white, and blue flung in the breeze; +the <i>Commissariat de Police</i>, the pool of Psyche, and all the rows of schooners that line the quays, with their milken sails drying on their masts, and +I am by the stores of the merchants. The dawn is slipping through the curtain of night, but lamps are still burning. The traffic +has roused the sleepers, and they are dressing. They have brought, tied in <i>pareus</i>, their Sunday clothes. Women are changing gowns, and men struggle with shirts and trousers, awkward inflictions upon their +ordinarily free bodies. +<span id="d0e6244" class="pageno">page 271</span> + +<p id="d0e6247">All the night people who have journeyed from Papara, from Papenoo, or nearer districts slumber upon the sidewalks. This sleeping +about anywhere is characteristic of the Tahitian. On the quays, in the doorways of the large and small stores, in carriages, +and on the decks of the vessels, men and women and children lie or crouch, sleeping peacefully, with their possessions near +them. + +<p id="d0e6250">In the <i>fare tamaaraa</i>, the coffee-houses of the <i>Tinitos</i>, the Chinese, the venders of provender and the marketers alike are slipping their <i>taofe tau</i>, their four-sous’ worth of coffee, with a tiny pewter mug of canned milk, sugar, and a half-loaf of French bread with butter. + +<p id="d0e6262">My vis-á-vis at Shin Bung Lung’s is Prince Hinoe, the heir to the broken throne, a very large, smiling brown gentleman, who +sits with the French secretary of the governor, the two, alack! patting the shoulders, pinching the cheeks, and fondling the +long, ebon plaits of the bevy of beauties who are up thus early to flirt and make merry. Tahiti is the most joyous land upon +the globe. Who takes life seriously here is a fool or a liver-ridden penitent. The shop is full of peals of laughter and stolen +kisses. Those sons of Belial who taught the daughter of the governor of the Dangerous Isles her unspeakable vocabulary are +here. They have been to the Paris, the premier saloon of Papeete, for their morning’s morning, an absinthe, or a hair of the +dog that bit them yester eve. + +<p id="d0e6265">What jokes they have! Stories of what happened last night in the tap-room of the cinematograph, how David opened a dozen bottles +of Roederer, and there was no ice, so all alike, barefooted and silk-stockinged, <span id="d0e6267" class="pageno">page 272</span>drank the wine of Champagne warm, and out of beer glasses; of Captain Minne’s statement that he would kill a scion of Tahitian +royalty (not Hinoe) if he did not marry his daughter before the captain returned from the Paumotus; and of Count Polonsky’s +calling down the black <i>procureur</i>, the attorney-general, right in the same tap-room, and telling him he was a “nigger,” although they had been friends before. + +<p id="d0e6273">Tahitian and French and English, but very little of the latter, echoes through the coffee-room. Even I make a feeble struggle +to speak the native tongue, and arouse storms of giggles. + +<p id="d0e6276">The market-place faces the <i>Mairie</i>, the city hall, and its center is a fountain beloved of youth. There sit or loll the maidens of Papeete at night, and titter +as pass the sighing lads. There wait the automobiles to carry the pleasure bent to Kelly’s grove at Fa’a, where the maxixe +and the tango rage, the hula-dancers quiver and quaver, and wassail has no bounds. + +<p id="d0e6282">When the whites are at dinner, the natives meet in the market-place, which is the agora, as the <i>place du gouvernment</i> is the forum of the dance and music of these ocean Greeks. + +<p id="d0e6288">But at this hour it is wreathed with women, scores squat upon their mats on the pave, their goods spread before the eyes of +the purchasers. + +<p id="d0e6291">The sellers of the materials for hats are many. The bamboo fiber, yellowish white, is the choicest, but there are other colors +and stuffs. The women venders smoke cigarettes and are always laughing. Old crones, withered and feeble, shake their thin +sides at their own and others’ jokes. +<span id="d0e6293" class="pageno">page 273</span> + +<p id="d0e6296">Already the buyers are coming fast, householders and cooks and bachelors and beaux, tourists and native beauties. + +<p id="d0e6299">A score of groups are smoking and chatting, flirting and running over their lists. Carriages and carts are tied everywhere, +country folk who have come to sell or to buy, or both, and automobiles, too, are ranged beside the Mairie. + +<p id="d0e6302">Matrons and daughters, many nationals, are assembling. The wife of a new consul, a charming blonde, just from New Jersey, +has her basket on her arm. She is a bride, and must make the consul’s two thousand dollars a year go far. A priest in a black +gown and a young Mormon elder from Utah regard each other coldly. A hundred Chinese cafe-keepers, stewards, and merchants +are endeavoring to pierce the exteriors of the foods and estimate their true value. The market is not open yet. It awaits +the sound of the gong, rung by the police about half past five. Four or five of these officials are about, all natives in +gaudy uniforms, their bicycles at the curb, smoking, and exchanging greetings with friends. + +<p id="d0e6305">The question of deepest interest to the marketers is the fish. The tables for these are railed off, and, peering through the +barriers, the onlookers comment upon the kinds and guess at the prices. + +<p id="d0e6308">The market-house is a shed over concrete floors, clean, sanitary, and occupied but an hour or two a day. There are three main +divisions of the market, meat, fish, and green things. Meat in Tahiti is better uneaten and unsung. It comes on the hoof from +New Zealand. Now, if you are an epicure, you may rent a cold-storage chamber <span id="d0e6310" class="pageno">page 274</span>in the <i>glacerie</i>, and keep your steaks and roasts until tender. + +<p id="d0e6316">Fish is the chief item to the Tahitian. Give him only fish, and he may murmur at his fate; but deny him fish, and he will +hie him to the reef and snare it for himself. All night the torches of the fishermen gleam on the foaming reef, and often +I paddle out near the breakers and hear the chants and cries of the men as they thrust their harpoons or draw their nets. +So it is the women who sell the fish, while the weary husbands and fathers lie wrapped in dreams of a miraculous draught. + +<p id="d0e6319">There are three great aquariums in the world, at Honolulu, Naples, and New York. There is no other such fish-market as this +of Papeete, for Hawaii’s has become Asiaticized, and the kanaka is almost nil in the angling art there. But those same fish +that I gazed at in amazement in the tanks of the museums are spread out here on tables for my buying. + +<p id="d0e6322">Impossible fish they are, pale blue; brilliant yellow; black as charcoal; sloe, with orange stripes; scarlet, spotted, and +barred in rainbow tints. The parrot-fish are especially splendid in spangling radiancy, their tails and a spine in their mouths +giving them their name. + +<p id="d0e6325">The impression made upon one’s first visit to the Papeete market is overwhelming, the plenitude of nature rejoicing one’s +heart, and the care of the Great Consciousness for beauty and color, and even for the ludicrous, the merely funny, causing +curious groping sensations of wonder at the varied plan of creation. + +<p id="d0e6328">Sexual selection and suitability to survive are responsible. Those vivid colors, those symmetrical markings, and laughable +forms are all part of the <i>going on</i> of the <span id="d0e6333" class="pageno">page 275</span>world, the adaptation to environment, and the desire for love and admiration in the male and female. + +<p id="d0e6336">These things from the deep seem hardly fish. They are bits of the sunset, fragments of a mosaic, Futuristic pictures; anything +but our sodden, gray, or wateryhued fish of temperate climes. Some are as green as the hills of Erin, others as blue as the +sky, as crimson as blood, as yellow as the flag of China. They are cut by nature in many patterns, round, or sectional, like +a piece of pie, triangular, almost square; some with a back fin that floats out a foot or two behind. + +<p id="d0e6339">They are grotesque, alarming, apparently the design of a joker. But tread not on the domain of the scientist, for he will +prove to you that each separate queerness is only a trick of nature to fit its owner to the necessities of his habitat. The +parrot-fish are screamingly fantastic. There are not even in the warm California or Florida waters the duplicates of these +rainbow fish. The Garibaldi perch and the electric fish excite interest at Santa Catalina, but here are a hundred marvels, +and if I wish I can see them all as they swim in and out of the coral caverns within the lagoon. + +<p id="d0e6342">Porcupine fish are a delicacy, squid are esteemed, and even the devilfish is on the tables, hideous, repellent, slimy, horned, +and tentacled; not mighty enough to crush out the life of the fisher, as was the horrific creature in Victor Hugo’s “Toilers +of the Sea,” whom his hero fought, yet menacing even when dead. It is a frightful figure in its aspect of hatred and ugliness, +but good to eat. See that fat Tahitian thrust his finger into the sides of the octopus to plumb its cooking qualities. It +is quickly sold. +<span id="d0e6344" class="pageno">page 276</span> + +<p id="d0e6347">There are crabs and crawfish, eels and shrimps, prawns and <i>varos</i>, all hung up on strings. There are oysters and <i>maoao</i>, alive and dripping. The <i>maoao</i> is the turbo, a gastropod, a mysterious inhabitant of a twisted shell, who shuts the door to his home with a brightly-colored +operculum, for all the world like half of a cuff-button. One eats him raw or cooked or dried. But he is not so odd as the +<i>varo</i> one of the most delicious and expensive of Tahitian foods. These sea centipedes, as the English call them in Tahiti, are +a species of <i>ibacus</i>, and are from six to twelve inches long, and two wide. They have legs or feelers all along their sides, like a pocket comb, +a hideous head, and tail, and a generally repulsive appearance. If one did not know they were excellent eating, and most harmless +in their habits, one would be tempted to run or take to a tree at sight of them. Their shell is a translucent yellow, with +black markings. The female has a red stripe down her back, and red eggs beneath her. She is richer in flavor, and more deadly +than the male to one who has a natural diathesis to poisoning by <i>varos</i>. Many whites cannot eat them. Some lose appetite at their looks, their likeness to a gigantic thousand-leg. Others find that +the <i>varo</i> rests uneasy within them, as though each claw or tooth of the comb grasped a vital part of their anatomy. I think <i>varos</i> excellent when wrapped in <i>hotu</i> leaves, and grilled as a lobster. I take the beastie in my fingers and suck out the meat. Amateurs must keep their eyes shut +during this operation. + +<p id="d0e6377">Catching <i>varos</i> is tedious and requires skill. They live in the sand of the beach under two or three feet of water. One has to find their +holes by wading and peering. <span id="d0e6382" class="pageno">page 277</span>They are small at the top, but roomy below. One cannot see these holes through ruffled water. Once located, grapnels, or spools +fitted with a dozen hooks, are lowered into them. A pair inhabits the same den. If the male is at home, he seizes the grapnel, +and is raised and captured, and the female follows. But if the female emerges first, it is a sure sign that the male is absent +in search of food. I have pondered as to this habit of the <i>varo</i>, and have tried to persuade me that the male, being a courteous shrimp,—he is a kind of mantis-shrimp,—combats the intruding +hooks first in order to protect his loved one; but the grapnel is baited with fish, and though masculine pride would insist +that chivalry urges <i>varo homme</i> to defend his domestic shrine, fishers for the tidbit say that he is after the bait, and holds to it so tightly that he sacrifices +his life. Nevertheless, the lady embraces the same opportunity to rise, and their deserted tenement is soon filled by the +sands. + +<p id="d0e6391">Trapping <i>varos</i> calls for patience and much dexterity. The mere finding of the holes is possible only to natives trained from childhood. +Six <i>varos</i> make a good meal, with bread and wine, and they are most enjoyable hot—also most indigestible. + +<p id="d0e6400">“Begin their eating by sucking a cold one,” once said a <i>bon vivant</i> to me. “Only when accustomed to them should you dare them hot and in numbers.” + +<p id="d0e6406">Flying-fish are sold, many of them delicate in taste and shapely. + +<p id="d0e6409">One may buy favorite sauces for fish, and some of the women offered them to me. One is <i>taiaro</i>, made of the hard meat of the cocoanut, with pounded shrimp, and allowed to ferment slightly. It is put up in bamboo <span id="d0e6414" class="pageno">page 278</span>tubes, three inches in diameter, and four or five feet long, tied at the opening with a pandanus-leaf for a seal. It is delicious +on raw fish. I have seen a native take his fish by the tail and devour it as one would a banana; but the Tahitians cut up +the fish, and, after soaking it in lime-juice, eat it with the <i>taiaro</i>. It is as tasty as Blue Points and tabasco. + +<p id="d0e6420">There are two other epicurean sauces, one made of the <i>omotu</i>, the soft cocoanut, which is split, the meat dug out and put in the <i>hue</i>, the calabash, mixed with a little salt water, lime-juice, and the juice of the <i>rea</i>, the saffron, and allowed to ferment. This is the <i>mitihue</i>, a piquant and fetid, <i>puante</i> sauce that seasons all Tahitian meals. The calabash is left in the sun, and when the sauce dries up, water is poured on the +dry ingredients, a perpetual saucebox. + +<p id="d0e6438">In the arrangement of vegetables our own hucksters could learn. Every piece is scraped and cleansed. String beans are tied +together in bundles like cigars or asparagus, and lettuce of several varieties, romaine and endive, parsnips, carrots, beets, +turnips, and even potatoes, sweet and white, are shown in immaculate condition. The tomatoes do not rival ours, but Tahiti +being seventeen degrees below the equator, one cannot expect such tropical regions to produce temperate-zone plants to perfection. +That they are provided at all is due to the Chinese, those patient, acute Cantonese and Amoyans. The Tahitian has no competence +in intensive cultivation or the will to toil. Were it not for the Chinese, white residents in many countries would have to +forego vegetables. It is so in Mexico and Hawaii and the <span id="d0e6440" class="pageno">page 279</span>Philippines, although Japanese in the first two compete with them. + +<p id="d0e6443">The main food of the Tahitians is <i>feis</i>, as is bread to us, or rice to the Asiatic. It is not so in the Marquesas, eight hundred miles north, where breadfruit is +the staff, nor in Hawaii, where fermented <i>taro</i> (<i>poi</i>) is the chief reliance of the kanaka. The <i>feis</i>, gigantic bananas of coarse fiber, which must be cooked, are about a foot in length, and three inches in diameter, and grow +in immense, heavy bunches in the mountains, so that obtaining them is great labor. They are wild creatures of heights, and +love the spots most difficult of access. Only barefooted men can reach them. These <i>feis</i> are a separate species. The market-place is filled with them, and hardly a Tahitian but buys his quota for the day. The <i>fei</i>-gatherers are men of giant strength, naked save for the <i>pareu</i> about the loins, and often their feet from climbing and holding on to rocks and roots are curiously deformed, the toes spread +an inch apart, and sometimes the big toe is opposed to the others, like a thumb. There are besides many kinds of bananas here +for eating raw; some are as small as a man’s finger, and as sweet as honey. + +<p id="d0e6467">The <i>fei</i>-hunters hang six or seven bunches on a bamboo pole and bring them thus to market. One meets these young Atlases moving along +the roads, chaplets of frangipani upon their curling hair, or perhaps a single gardenia or tube-rose behind their ears, singing +softly and treading steadily, smiling, and all with a burden that would stagger a white athlete. + +<p id="d0e6473">The <i>taro</i> looks like a war-club, several feet long, <span id="d0e6478" class="pageno">page 280</span>three inches thick, and with a fierce knob. It and its tops are in demand. The breadfruit are as big as Dutch cheese, weighing +four or five pounds, their green rinds tuberculated like a golf-ball. <i>Sapadillos</i>, tamarinds, limes, mangoes, oranges, <i>acachous</i>, and a dozen other native fruits are to be had. Cocoanuts and <i>papayas</i> are of course, favorites. There are many kinds of cocoanuts. I like best the young nut, which has the meat yet unformed or +barely so, and can be eaten with a spoon, and holds about a quart of delicious wine. No matter how hot the day, this wine +is always cool. One has only to pierce the top of the green rind, and tilt the hole above one’s mouth. If one has alcoholic +leanings, the wine of a cocoanut, an ounce of rum, two lumps of sugar, a dash of grenadine, and the mixture were paradise +enow. + +<p id="d0e6490">The <i>papayas</i>, which the British call mammee-apple or even mummy-apple or papaw, because of the West Indian name, <i>mamey</i>, are much like pumpkins in appearance. They grow on trees, quite like palms, from ten to thirty feet high, the trunk scaly +like an alligator’s hide, and the leaves pointed. The fruit hangs in a cluster at the crown of the tree, green and yellow, +resembling badly shaped melons. The taste is musky sweet and not always agreeable to tyros. The seeds are black and full of +pepsin. Boiled when green, the papaya reminds one of vegetable marrow; and cooked when ripe, it makes a pie stuffing not to +be despised. I have often hung steaks or birds in the tree, protected by a cage from pests, or wrapped them in papaya-leaves +to make them tender. The very atmosphere does this, <span id="d0e6498" class="pageno">page 281</span>and the pepsin extracted from the <i>papaya</i> by science is much used by druggists instead of animal extracts. + +<p id="d0e6504">The market closed, the venders who have come in carts drive home, while those Tahitians who are not too old adorn themselves +with flowers and seek pleasure. Young and old, they are laughing. Why? I need never ask the reason here, but look to the blue +sky, the placid sea within the lagoon, the generous fruitage of nature, the palms and flowers ever present and inviting; the +very sign of the gentle souls and merry hearts of these most lovable people. When I am alone with them I do not walk. I dance +or skip. + +<p id="d0e6507">Life is easy. The <i>fei</i>, the breadfruit, the cocoanut, the mango, and the <i>taro</i> are all about. No plow, no hoe, or rude labor, but for the lifting of one’s hand there is food. The fish leap in the brine, +and the pig fattens for the oven. Clothes are irksome. A straw hut may be built in an hour or two, and in the grove sounds +the soft music of love. + +<p id="d0e6516"> +<i>Aue! nom de poisson!</i> within a day the market became a wailing-place. There were no fish. The tables daily covered with them were empty. The happy +wives and consorts who had been wont to sell the catch of the men remained in their homes, and the fishers themselves were +there or idle on the streets. The districts around the island, which for decades had despatched by the daily diligence, or +by special vehicle or boat, the drafts of the village nets, sent not a fin. Never in Tahiti’s history except when war raged +between clans, or between Tahitians and French, had there been such a fish famine. + +<p id="d0e6522">And, name of a dog! it was due to a <i>grève</i>, a strike. <span id="d0e6527" class="pageno">page 282</span>It came upon the Papeete people like a tidal wave out of the sea, or like a cyclone that devastates a Paumotu atoll, but, +<i>entre nous</i>, it had been brooding for months. Fish had been getting dearer and dearer for a long time, and householders had complained +bitterly. They recalled the time when for a franc one could buy enough delicious fish for a family feast. They called the +<i>taata hara</i>, the native anglers, <i>cochons</i>, hogs, and they discussed when they gathered in the clubs, or when ladies met at market, the weakness of the authorities +in allowing the extortion. But nothing was done. The extortion continued, and the profanity increased. At the Cercle Bouganville +Captain Goeltz and the other retired salts banged the tables and said to me: + +<p id="d0e6539">“<i>Sacré redingote!</i> is it that the <i>indigènes</i> pay the governor or give him fish free? Are we French citizens to die of hunger that savages may ride in les Fords?” + +<p id="d0e6548">They shouted for Doctor Funks, and drank damnation to the régime that let patriots surfer to profit <i>les canaques</i>. But, in reality, the governor months ago had secretly begun a plan to help them. + +<p id="d0e6554">One day the governor, his good lady being gone to visit at Raiatea, had given his cook three francs to buy fish for the <i>déjeuner</i> at the palace. When they came on the table, a bare bite for each of the company, the governor had called in the chef. + +<p id="d0e6560">“<i>Mais</i>, I gave you three francs for the fish, <i>n’est-ce pas?</i>” + +<p id="d0e6569">“<i>Mais, vous don’ lai moi t’ree franc, oui, oui,</i>” answered the Chinese. “<i>Moi don’lai canaque po po’sson.</i>” + +<p id="d0e6578">The governor had led in the chorus of <i>sácres</i> and <i>diables</i>. All at the table were of the redingote family, <span id="d0e6586" class="pageno">page 283</span>all feeding from the national trough at Paris, and they had the courage and power to end the damnable imposition on the slender +purses of Papeete citizens. <i>Sapristi!</i> this robbery must cease. He must go slow, however. Being an honest and unselfish man, he investigated and initiated legislation +so carefully and tardily that the remedy for the evil was applied only four days ago. He had returned to France, so one could +not say that he consulted his own purse; but the present governor, an amiable man and a good bridge-player, also liked fish, +and they pay no bonanza salaries, the French. The fishermen had known, of course, of the approaching end of their piracy, +but, like Tahitians, waited until necessity for action. The official paper in which all laws are published had the ordinance +set out in full. Translated, briefly, from the French, it ran like this: +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e6593">That the Governor of the establishments of France in Oceania, a chevalier of the Legion of Honor [this information is inserted +in every degree, announcement and statement the governor makes, and stares at one from a hundred trees], in view of the “article <i>du decret du</i> 21 decembre, 1885,” etc. [and in view of a dozen other articles of various dates since], considering that fish is the basis of the alimentation +of the Tahitians, that in the Papeete public market, fish has been monopolized with the result that its price has been raised +steadily, and a situation created injurious to the working people, the cost of living necessitating a constant increase in +salaries, orders that after a date fixed, fish be sold by weight and at the following prices per kilo, according to the kind +of fish: +<p> +<table width="100%"> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top">30 cents a kilo </td> +<td valign="top">25 cents a kilo </td> +<td valign="top">20 cents a kilo</td> +</tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top">1st category </td> +<td valign="top">2d category </td> +<td valign="top">3d category</td> +</tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top">Aahi </td> +<td valign="top">Auhopu </td> +<td valign="top">Ature</td> +</tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top">Ahuru </td> +<td valign="top">Au aavere </td> +<td valign="top">Atoti<span id="d0e6649" class="pageno">page 284</span> +</td> +</tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top">Anae </td> +<td valign="top">Ioio </td> +<td valign="top">Aoa-Ropa</td> +</tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top">Apai </td> +<td valign="top">Mahimahi </td> +<td valign="top">Faia</td> +</tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top">Ava </td> +<td valign="top">Moi </td> +<td valign="top">Fee</td> +</tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top">Lihi </td> +<td valign="top">Nato </td> +<td valign="top">Fai</td> +</tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top">Mu </td> +<td valign="top">Nape </td> +<td valign="top">Honu</td> +</tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top">Nanue </td> +<td valign="top">Orare </td> +<td valign="top">Inaa</td> +</tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top">Oeo </td> +<td valign="top">Paere </td> +<td valign="top">Maere</td> +</tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top">Paaihere </td> +<td valign="top">Parai </td> +<td valign="top">Maito</td> +</tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top">Paraha peue </td> +<td valign="top">Puhi pape </td> +<td valign="top">Marara</td> +</tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top">Tehu </td> +<td valign="top">Tohe veri </td> +<td valign="top">Manini</td> +</tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top">Varo </td> +<td valign="top">Taou </td> +<td valign="top">Mao</td> +</tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top">Oura (chevrette) </td> +<td valign="top">Uhi </td> +<td valign="top">Mana</td> +</tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top">Paapaa (crabs) </td> +<td valign="top">Ume </td> +<td valign="top">Ouma</td> +</tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top">Oura-miti (langouste) </td> +<td valign="top">Vau </td> +<td valign="top">Oiri</td> +</tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top"> </td> +<td valign="top">Roi </td> +<td valign="top">Pahoro</td> +</tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top"> </td> +<td valign="top">Tuhura </td> +<td valign="top">Patia</td> +</tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top"> </td> +<td valign="top"> </td> +<td valign="top">Puhu miti</td> +</tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top"> </td> +<td valign="top"> </td> +<td valign="top">Pahua</td> +</tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top"> </td> +<td valign="top"> </td> +<td valign="top">Tapio </td> +</tr> +</table> + + +</div> + +<p id="d0e6885">As a kilo is two and a fifth pounds, the <i>ature</i> that Joseph caught by the Quai de Commerce, being in the third category, would cost, under the ukase, less than ten cents +a pound. Crabs being in the first category—<i>paapaa</i>,—would cost about thirteen cents a pound, and the succulent <i>varo</i> the same, whereas they were then two francs, or forty cents a pound. We lovers of sea centipedes toasted the brave governor +vociferously. + +<p id="d0e6897">The decrees were nailed to the trees on the Broom Road, in the rue de Rivoli, and in the market-place. The populace were joyous, +though some old wholesale buyers like Lovaina questioned the wisdom of the governor’s edict and the effect on themselves. +<span id="d0e6899" class="pageno">page 285</span> + +<p id="d0e6902">“If they do that,” said she, “maybe, by’n’by they fix my meal or lime squash.” + +<p id="d0e6905">Until the date of carrying out the mandate, one picked out a pleasing fish or string of fish, all nicely wrapped in leaves, +and one asked, “<i>A hia?</i> How much?” + +<p id="d0e6911">When Lovaina inquired the price, she smiled her sweetest, rubbed the saleslady’s back, and uttered some joke that made her +sway with laughter, so that price became of no importance. But a sour-faced white or a pompous bureaucrat paid her saving, +and Chinese, who kept the restaurants, invoked the curse of barrenness upon the venders. + +<p id="d0e6914">The day came for the new scheme of fish-selling to go into effect. The mayor, a long-bearded and shrewd druggist, had bought +up all the half-way accurate scales in the city, for there had not been a balance in the market. Everything was by strings, +bunches, feels, and hefts. The fish counters, polished by the guardian of the <i>marché</i>, were now brilliant with the shiny apparatus. + +<p id="d0e6920">The long-awaited morning found a crowd peeping through the railing half an hour earlier than usual. All would have a fill +of delicacies. Lovaina with the Dummy drove down to the Annexe for me. Vava was making queer signs to her which either were +unintelligible or which she thought absurd. She waved her long forefinger before him, which meant: “Don’t talk foolishness. +I am not a fool.” + +<p id="d0e6923">We reached the market-place when only a score or two had gathered. + +<p id="d0e6926">A thousand devils! there was not a fish on the slabs. The merry wives were absent. The condition was plain. +<span id="d0e6928" class="pageno">page 286</span> + +<p id="d0e6931">The Dummy uttered a demoniacal grunt, and shook his head and hands before Lovaina in accusation. She answered him with a movement +of her head up and down, which signified acquiescence. + +<p id="d0e6934">“Dummy know,” she said mysteriously. “That Vava he find everything. He like old-time <i>tahutahu</i>, sorcerer. He tell me Annexe no fish. He say now no fish till finish those masheen.” + +<p id="d0e6940">She laughed and rubbed my shoulders. + +<p id="d0e6943">“The fish slip away,” she said, “and leave only their scales! <i>Aue!</i>” + +<p id="d0e6949">M. Lontane, the second in command of the gendarmes, was sent scouting, and reported to the governor—not the one who originated +the manifesto—that the famine was the result of an organized revolt against the law and order of the land. Fishermen he had +questioned, replied simply, “<i>Aita faito, paru! Aita hoo, paru!</i>” Which, holy blue! meant, “No scales, fish! No price, fish!” + +<p id="d0e6955">What to do? One cannot make a horse drink unless one gives him red peppers to eat. Even the Government could not make a fisherman +fish for market, as there was a law against enforced labor except as punishment for crime or in emergencies, such as during +the existence of martial law, the guarding against a conflagration, or a tidal wave or cyclone. At the Cercle Militaire many +of the bureaucrats, and especially the doctor who had treated the cow-boy, were for martial law, anyway. Napoleon knew, said +the fierce <i>médecin</i>. “A whiff of grapeshot, and the reef would be again gleaming with lights, and the diligences would pour in with loads of +fish.” +<span id="d0e6960" class="pageno">page 287</span> + +<p id="d0e6963">Doctor Cassiou, a very old resident, and not at all fierce, asked his confrere against whom would the grapeshot be directed. +Would he gather the fishermen from all over Tahiti, and decimate them, the way the Little Corporal purged mutiny out of his +regiments? Lontane was sent out again. In the Cerele Bougainville he took a rum punch before starting on his bicycle, and +he swore by his patron saint, Bacchus, that he would solve the problem even if denied the remedy of <i>force majeure</i>. + +<p id="d0e6969">Within three hours of his return from Patutoa, a meeting was called of the council of state, the governor, the doctors, the +druggist, a merchant or two, and a lawyer, and before it M. Lontane disclosed that the natives were possessed by a new devil +that he feared was a recrudescence of the ancient struggle for independence. + +<p id="d0e6972">Each fisherman he had examined refused to answer his interrogations, saying only, “I dobbebelly dobbebelly.” + +<p id="d0e6975">The governor scratched his ear, and the mayor wiggled his hands behind, as he had on the wharf after the battle of the limes, +coal, and potatoes. The lawyer said it must be an incantation, but that it was not Tahitian, for that language had no “d” +in its alphabet. M. Lontane and all his squad were given peremptory orders to unriddle the enigma. + +<p id="d0e6978">Meanwhile the fishless market continued. It was not entirely fishless, for before the bell rang we would see over the railings +a few handfuls of <i>varos</i>, crayfish, and shrimps and perhaps a dozen small baskets of oysters. A policeman prevented a riot, but could not stay the +rush when the bell rang and the gate was opened. The <span id="d0e6983" class="pageno">page 288</span>lovers of shellfish and the servants of the well-to-do snatched madly at the small supply, and paid whatever extravagant price +was demanded. The scales were never touched, and any insistence upon the new legal plan and price was laughed at. With these +delicacies beyond their means, the natives stormed the two pork butchers, the <i>Tinitos</i>. They grabbed the chops and lumps of pig, poking and kneading them, shouting for their weight, and in some instances making +off without paying. There was such a howdy-do that extra policemen were summoned to form all into line. + +<p id="d0e6989">There were no scaly fish, and it came out that the shellfish were caught by women, widows who had no men to obey or please, +who had children, or who wanted francs to buy gewgaws or tobacco; and a few unsocial men fishers who did not abide by the +common interests of their group. + +<p id="d0e6992">At Lovaina’s we were on a tiresome round of canned salmon, eggs, and beef, and eggs rose to six sous each. In about a fortnight +we began to have fish as usual, and Lovaina signed to me that the Dummy procured them in the country. I was very curious, +and asked if I might accompany him. She said that he would call for me at the Annexe the next time he went. + +<p id="d0e6995">I was awakened after midnight in my room—the doors were never locked—by the Dummy leaning over and shaking me. I opened my +eyes, and he put his fingers to his lips. I dressed, and went with him in the old surrey. We drove through the night along +the Broom Road. Once past the cemetery we were in the country. The cocoanut-trees were gray ghosts against the dark foliage +and trunks of the breadfruits and the <span id="d0e6997" class="pageno">page 289</span>sugar cane; the reef was a faint gleam of white over the lagoon and a subdued sound of distant waters. + +<p id="d0e7000">We jogged along, and as we approached Fa’a, I lit a match and looked at my watch. It was nearly two o’clock. The Dummy stopped +the horse at Kelly’s dance-hall in a palm grove. The building was of bamboo and thatch, with a smooth floor of Oregon pine, +and was a former <i>himene</i> house. Kelly had rented it from the church authorities. The dancing was over for the night, but a few carts were in the grove, +and the lights were bright. We went inside, and found forty or fifty Tahitians, men and women, squatting or sitting on the +floor, while on the platform was Kelly himself, with his accordion on the table. He saw me and shouted “<i>Ia ora na!</i>” And after a few minutes, while others came, began to speak. What he said was interpreted by a Frenchman, who, to my astonishment, +proved to be the editor of one of those anti-government papers printed in San Francisco, that Ivan Stroganoff had shown me. + +<p id="d0e7009">Kelly addressed the audience, “Fishermen and fellow stiffs.” He said that the fish strike was a success, and if they all remained +true to one another, they would win, and the scales would be kicked out. The few scabs who sold fish in the market only made +sore those unable to buy. He said that he had found out that the law applied only to the market-place, and that a plan would +be tried of hawking fish from house to house in Papeete. They would circumvent the governor’s proclamation in that way. He +praised their fortitude in the struggle, and after the editor had interpreted stiffs by <i>te tamaiti aroha e</i>, which means poor children, and scabs by <i>iore</i>, which means rats, and had ended with a peroration that <span id="d0e7017" class="pageno">page 290</span>brought many cries of “<i>Maitai</i>! Good!” Kelly took up his accordion, and began to play the sacred air of “Revive us Again!” + +<p id="d0e7023">He led the singing of his version: + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e7028">“Hallelujah! I’m a bum! Hallelujah! Bum again! +<br id="d0e7031">Hallelujah! Give us a hand-out! To save us from sin!” + +<p id="d0e7035">The Tahitians rocked to and fro, threw back their heads, and, their eyes shut as in their religious <i>himenes</i>, chorused joyfully: + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e7043">“Hahrayrooyah! I’m a boom! Hahrayrooyah! Boomagay! +<br id="d0e7046">Hahrayrooyah! Hizzandow! To tave ut fruh tin!” + +<p id="d0e7050">They sang the refrain a dozen times, and then Kelly dismissed the meeting with a request for “three cheers for the I. W. W.” + +<p id="d0e7053">There is no “w” in French or in Tahitian, and the interpreter said, “<i>Ruperupe</i> ah-ee dohblevay dohblevay!” And the Tahitians: “Ai dobbebelly dobbebelly!” + +<p id="d0e7059">Kelly came down from the platform, his freckled face shining and his eyes serious but twinkling. He greeted me as the natives +lit cigarettes and filed out. + +<p id="d0e7062">“I’m runnin’ their strike for them,” he said. “It ’s on the square. The poor fish! They don’t make hardly enough to pay for +their nets, let alone an honest day’s pay, and they’re up half the night and takin’ chances with the sharks and the devil-fish. +They have to pay market dues and all sorts of taxes. They ’re good stiffs all right, and every one has a membership card in +the I. W. W. applied for.” + +<p id="d0e7065">When we went outside, I saw that the Dummy who had been a witness of the scene in the hall, had a <span id="d0e7067" class="pageno">page 291</span>large package of fish in the surrey, and all around there were other packages of them. The men had been selling to those who +came to Fa’a for them, the law extending only to the market in Papeete. + +<p id="d0e7070">The strikers hawked the fish in town the next day, but this was immediately forbidden. Hungry for fish—the Tahitians have +one word meaning all that—though the people were, few could drive out to Fa’a to fetch them. Within Papeete fish were mysteriously +nailed to the trees at night, and over each was a card with the letters, “I. W. W.” + +<p id="d0e7073">Again a meeting of the council of state was called, and at it M. Lontane revealed the meaning of those cabalistic letters +and the leadership of Kelly. He had tracked down the fishermen and found their headquarters at the dance hall. + +<p id="d0e7076">At the Cercle Bougainville there was an uproar. Merchants drank twice their stint of liquor in their indignation. Syndicalism +was invading their shores, and their already limited labor supply would be corrupted. + +<p id="d0e7079">I could not picture too seriously the wrath of the honest traders at the traitorous conduct of Kelly, “a white man,” as told +by M. Lontane. I was upbraided because of Kelly being an American with an Irish name. Lying Bill said it was “A bloody Guy +Fawkes plot.” + +<p id="d0e7082">M. Lontane took full credit for the discovery of what he termed “A complot that would rival the Dreyfus case.” + +<p id="d0e7085">He struck his chest, and asked me sternly if I knew of M. LeCoq, the great detective, of Emile Gaboriau. + +<p id="d0e7088">Kelly was arrested in the midst of his dancing soirée at Fa’a. He was put in the calaboose, and when he <span id="d0e7090" class="pageno">page 292</span>frankly said that he had come to Tahiti to preach the gospel of I. W. W.-ism and that he believed the fishermen had all the +right on their side, he was sentenced as “a foreigner without visible means of support, a vagrant, miscreant, vagabond, and +dangerous alien,” to a month on the roads, and then to be deported to the United States, whence he had come. + +<p id="d0e7093">The strike or walk-out was broken. With the cessation of the direction of Kelly and his heartening song, the fishermen gradually +went back to their routine, and their women folk to the market. The scales were in operation, but the <i>himene</i>, “Hahrayrooyah! I’m a boom! Hahrayrooyah! Boomagay!” was sung from one end of Tahiti to another, and “Ai dobbebelly dobbebelly” +was made at the Cercle Bougainville a password to some very old rum said to have belonged to the bishop who wrote the Tahitian +dictionary. +<span id="d0e7098" class="pageno">page 293</span> + +<h1 id="d0e7102">Chapter XV</h1> +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e7109">A drive to Papenoo—The chief of Papenoo—A dinner and poker on the beach—Incidents of the game—Breakfast the next morning—The +chief tells his story—The journey back—The leper child and her doll—The <i>Alliance Française</i>—Bemis and his daughter—The band concert and the fire—The prize-fight—My bowl of velvet. + +</div> +<p id="d0e7116">We had another picnic; this time at Papenoo. Polonsky owned thirty thousand acres of land in the Great Valley of Papenoo, +the largest of all the valleys of Tahiti. He had bought it from the Catholic mission, which, following the monastic orders +of the church in other countries for a thousand years, had early adopted a policy of acquiring land. But there were too few +laborers in Tahiti now. Christianity had not worked the miracle of preserving them from civilization. The priests were glad +to sell their extensive holdings at Papenoo, and the energetic Russo-French count said that he would bring Slav families from +Europe to populate and develop it. He would plant the vast acreage in cocoanut-trees, vanilla vines, and sugar-cane, and build +up a white community in the South Seas. He had noble plans for a novel experiment. + +<p id="d0e7119">We started from the Cercle Bougainville in the afternoon in carriages pulled by California bronchos. The dour Llewellyn, the +handsome Landers, the boastful McHenry, Lying Bill, David, the young American vanilla-shipper, Bemis, an American cocoanut-buyer, +the half-castes of the orchestra, and servants, filled three <span id="d0e7121" class="pageno">page 294</span>roomy carryalls. The ideal mode of travel in Tahiti in the cool of the day would be a donkey, a slow, patient beast, who might +himself take an interest in the scenery, or at least the shrubbery. But the white must ever go at top speed, and we dashed +through the streets of Papeete, the accordions playing “Revive us again!” the “Himene Tatou Arearea,” and other tunes, and +we singing, “Hallelujah! I’m a bum!” and “Faararirari ta oe Tamarii Tahiti! La, li!” One never makes merry privately in the +South Seas. + +<p id="d0e7124">Through Papeete we went along the eastern Broom Road, our train attracting much attention. We stopped at the <i>glacerie</i> for ice, and Polonsky insisted that we make a detour to his residence to drink a stirrup-cup of champagne. He donned riding-breeches +and took a horse from his well-appointed stable. + +<p id="d0e7130">Against the road on each side were close hedges of <i>acalypha</i>, or false coffee, called in Tahitian <i>tafeie</i>, a small tree which grows quickly, and the leaves of which are red or bronze or green, handsome and admirably suited for +fencing. Through these hedges and the broad entrances I saw the houses and gardens, the residents and family life of the people. +Everywhere was a small prosperity, with gladness; pigs and sheep cropping the grass and herbs, which were a mat of green, +rising so fast with the daily showers that only flocks could keep it shorn. On the verandas and on the turf idle men and women +were gazing at the sky, talking, humming the newest air, plaiting hats, or napping. No one was reading. There was no book-store +in Tahiti. I had not read a line since I came. I had not stepped up to the genial dentist’s to see an American <span id="d0e7138" class="pageno">page 295</span>journal. After years of the newspaper habit, reading and writing them, it had fallen away in Tahiti as the prickly heat after +a week at sea. Of what interest was it that the divorce record was growing longer in New York, that Hinky Dink had been reëlected +in Chicago, and that Los Angeles had doubled in population. A dawn on the beach, a swim in the lagoon, the end of the fish +strike, were vastly more entertaining. + +<p id="d0e7141">We passed the gorge of Fautaua, where Fragrance of the Jasmine and I had had a charmed day. The pinnacles of the Diadem were +black against the eastern sky. Aorai, the tallest peak in sight, more than a mile high, hid its head in a mass of snowy clouds. + +<p id="d0e7144">Not far away was the mausoleum of the last king of the Society Islands, Pomaré the Fifth, with whose wide-awake widow, the +queen, I had smoked a cigarette a day ago. It was a pyramid of coral, a red funeral-urn on top, and a red P on the façade. +Pillars and roof were of the same color, and a chain surrounded it. The tomb was rococo, glaring, typical of the monuments +in the South Seas where the aboriginal structures of beauty or interest were destroyed by the missionaries to please their +Clapham Seminary god. Pomaré, who had been the victim of French political chicane, enjoyed now but one privilege. If his spirit +had senses, it heard the lapping of the waves upon the beach of the lagoon across which his ancestor, the first Pomaré, had +come from Moorea to be a king. + +<p id="d0e7147">We left the Broom Road for Point Venus to see the monument to Captain James Cook, the great mariner of these seas. The only +lighthouse on Tahiti is there. On that spot Cook and his astronomers had observed <span id="d0e7149" class="pageno">page 296</span>the transit of Venus in 1769, and it was there the first English missionaries landed from the ship <i>Duff</i> to convert the pagan Tahitians. Cook has a pillar, with a plate of commemoration, in a grove of <i>purau</i>-trees, cocoanuts, pandanus, and the red oleander; Cook who is an immortal, and was loved by a queen here. + +<p id="d0e7158">We left behind Paintua, Taunoa, Arahim, Arue and Haapape, and came to a shore where no reef checked the waves in a yeasty +line a mile or less from the beach. The breakers roared and beat upon a black shore, strangely different from the Tahitian +strand that I had seen. For miles a hundred feet of sable rocks, pebbles, some small and others as big as a man’s hand, lay +between the receded tide and the road, and all along huge islets of somber stone defended themselves as best they could against +the attack of the surf. Signs of surrender showed in some, caverns and arches cut by the constant hammer of swell and billow. + +<p id="d0e7161">Sugar-cane, vanilla, pineapples, coffee, bananas, plantation after plantation, with the country houses of Papeete’s merchants, +officials, lawyers, and doctors, moved past our vehicle, and, as we increased the distance from the capital, the beautiful +native homes appeared. + +<p id="d0e7164">Simple they were, with no windows or doors, mere shelters, but cool and cheap, with no division of rooms, and no furniture +but the sleeping mats and a utensil or two. Natives were seen cooking their simple meal of fish and breadfruit, or only the +latter. The fire was in the ground or under a grill of iron on stones. They would not go hungry, for mango-trees lined the +road, and bananas, <i>feis</i>, and pineapples were to be had for the taking. +<span id="d0e7169" class="pageno">page 297</span> + +<p id="d0e7172">We drove through Aapahi and Faaripoo and saw a funeral. In the grounds of the dead man sat two large groups of people, the +men and the women separate. They talked of his dying and his property, and his children, while those who liked to do so made +him ready for the grave. A hundred yards away, in a school-yard, twoscore men, women, boys, and girls played football. The +males were in <i>pareus</i>, naked except about the waist, and they kicked the heavy leather sphere with their bare feet. + +<p id="d0e7178">Pare, Arue, and Mahina districts behind us, we were in Papenoo, a straggling village of a few hundred people along the road, +the houses, all but the half-dozen stores of the Chinese, set back a hundred yards, and the domestic animals and carts in +the front. + +<p id="d0e7181">With a flourish we drove into the inclosure of the largest, newest, and most pretentious house, and were greeted by Teriieroo, +the Tahitian chief, all native, but speaking French easily and musically. Count Polonsky shook hands with him, as did we all, +but when a daughter appeared, neither Polonsky nor we paid her any attention. Yet she was Polonsky’s “girl,” as they say here, +and he kept her in good style in a house near her father’s, sending his yellow automobile for her when he wanted her at his +villa near Papeete. + +<p id="d0e7184">The chief’s house had four bedrooms, each with an European bed, three-quarter size, and with a mattress two feet high, stuffed +with <i>kapok</i>, the silky cotton which grows on trees all over Tahiti, These mattresses were beveled, and one must lie in their middle not +to slip off. The coverlets were red and blue in stamped patterns. + +<p id="d0e7190">It was dark when we touched the earth after two <span id="d0e7192" class="pageno">page 298</span>hours’ driving, and leaving the coachman to care for the horses, we went with the chief, each of us carrying a siphon of seltzer +or a bottle of champagne or claret. Our way was through an old and dark cocoanut grove, a bare trail, winding among the trees, +and ending at the beach. + +<p id="d0e7195">Polonsky had had built a pavilion for the revel. Fifty feet away was a kitchen in which the dinner was cooking, its odors +adding appetite to that whetted by the several cocktails which Polonsky had mixed when the ice was brought in a wheelbarrow +from the wagon. + +<p id="d0e7198">We sat down in chairs on the turf a foot from the jetty boulders, and watched the inrush of the breakers. A light breeze outside +had stirred the water, and the combers were white and high. + +<p id="d0e7201">“Every sea is really three seas,” said McHenry, pipe in hand, as he sipped his Martini. “We fellows who have to risk our cargoes +and lives in landing in the Paumotus and Marquesas, study the accursed surf to find out its rules. There are rules, too, and +the ninth wave is the one we come in on. That is the last of the third group, the biggest, and the one that will bring your +boat near enough to shore to let all hands leap out and run her up away from the undertow.” + +<p id="d0e7204">Lights were placed in the new house. It was elegantly made, of small bamboos up and down, with a floor of matched boards, +the roof of cocoanut-leaves, and hung with blossoms of many kinds. The table had been spread, and there was a glitter of silver +and glass, with all the accoutrements of fashion. We sat down, eight, the chief making nine, and ate and drank until ten o’clock. +The <i>pièce de résistance</i> was the sucking <span id="d0e7209" class="pageno">page 299</span>pig, with <i>taro</i> and <i>feis</i>, but roasted in an oven, and not in native style; and there was a delicious young turkey from New Zealand, a ham from Virginia, +truffles, a salad of lettuce and tomatoes, and a plum pudding from London. The claret was 1900 and 1904, a vintage obtained +by Polonsky in Paris. The champagne, also, was of a year, and frappéd. Tahitian coffee, with brown sugar from the chief’s +plantation, ended the banquet. + +<p id="d0e7218">There was no conversation of any interest. The Parisian count was far removed in experience and culture from the others, and +probably only the necessity of companionship in revelry and cards brought them together. Europe, and all the earth, was his +playground, and doubtless he had lavished a fortune in pleasure in the capitals of the Continent. Llewellyn had an education +in the universities of England and Germany, but since young manhood had been in his birthplace, and the others were the rough +and ready stuff of business or seafaring. + +<p id="d0e7221">The table for the gambling was moved to the sward by the shingle, and lamps hung upon bamboos planted at each end. It was +balmy, and we sat in our shirts, the bosoms open for the breeze, the count with his gorgeous Japanese god shining upon his +ivory breast, and the round glass in his eye. The tattooed skeleton upon his forearm was uncanny in the flickering light, +the black shadows of the eyes seeming to open and close as the rays fell upon it. + +<p id="d0e7224">Landers, though he had drunk with all, was appreciative of every nicety of the game, and won fifteen hundred francs. He alone +was cool, watching the <span id="d0e7226" class="pageno">page 300</span>faces of the players at every crisis, quick to detect a weakness, to interpret rightly a gesture or counting of losses and +gains, remorselessly hammering home his victories, and always suave and generous in action. + +<p id="d0e7229">Llewellyn would withdraw his attention to listen to the <i>himene</i> of the musicians thirty feet away, which consisted mostly of familiar American airs, interpolated with bizarre staves and +dissonances. One caught a beloved strain, and then it wandered away queerly as if the musician had forgotten the score and +had done his best otherwise. I never heard in Tahiti one air of Europe or America played through as composed, without variation +or omission, except the national anthem of France. + +<p id="d0e7235">“They are happy, those boys,” mused Llewellyn. “They get more out of life than we do. Why should we fool with these cards +here when we might sing?” + +<p id="d0e7238">Llewellyn was only a quarter Tahitian, but at times the island blood was the only pulse he felt. One noticed it especially +during the <i>himenes</i>, when he seemed to wander far from the business in hand. That business being poker, and Landers all attention to the cards +and the psychology of his antagonists, every time Llewellyn harked to the <i>himene</i> he lost a little, and when he became entangled in a jackpot of size, and drew too many cards on account of his abstraction, +he was mulcted of fifty francs and failed of winning the two hundred he might have won. + +<p id="d0e7247">“Unlucky at cards, lucky in something else,” said he, self-consolingly. + +<p id="d0e7250">“Ye want to drop that other thing when ye’re playing <span id="d0e7252" class="pageno">page 301</span>cards,” McHenry advised as he scooped in the pot. “The cards are all queens to you.” + +<p id="d0e7255">Chief Teriieroo a Teriieroterai sat ten feet removed from the players, but kept his eyes on the money. They played with notes, +five francs being the smallest, and the others twenties and hundreds. The chief smiled whenever Count Polonsky drew in a heap +of these, and when one fell on the floor, he scrambled under the table to prevent it being blown on the rocks. The Javanese +served the drinks, and a crowd of natives watched curiously the shifting vantages from a respectful distance. + +<p id="d0e7258">It was three o’clock when the scores were settled, and, the chief leading with a lantern, we tramped through the great cocoanut-grove +to his residence. + +<p id="d0e7261">Landers and I each took a bed, I being warned to be forehanded by my experience in Moorea, where I slept on the floor. The +chief retired, and Polonsky went off with his arm about his inamorata’s waist, she having apparently awaited his return. When +Llewellyn and McHenry appeared half an hour later, having emptied a bottle reminiscent to McHenry of his father’s liking for +Auld Reekie, they were discomfited by the beds being all occupied, the other two having been early claimed by two men who +ate and drank and immediately slept. + +<p id="d0e7264">When I awoke, the sun was up half an hour, and Landers and I went for a bath in the brook. We found a pool famed in the legends +of the natives. In the olden days the kings and chiefs would have made it tabu to themselves. +<span id="d0e7266" class="pageno">page 302</span> + +<p id="d0e7269">Landers had on a <i>pareu</i> only, his two hundred and fifty pounds of bone and muscle a refreshing sight, and his eyes as bright as if he had had the +prescribed eight hours. They looked at him, sighingly, the young women of the village, even at this hour busied cooking breadfruit +or fish and coffee; and Landers flirted with each one and in Tahitian called out words which made them laugh, and sometimes +hide their heads coquettishly. + +<p id="d0e7275">“I dated them all,” he said to me when we were under the water. We threw off our garments at the edge of the pool and plunged +in. The water was as soft as milk and as clear as crystal, cool and invigorating. I drank my fill of it as I swam. + +<p id="d0e7278">Breakfast we had in the chief’s house, the remains of the <i>amuraa rahi</i> of the night before. The chief drank coffee with us, and when we had gone to sit on the veranda, his eight children and wife +took the board. I talked with Teriieroo a Teriieroterai for half an hour in French. He was thirty-eight years old, very engaging, +and had several grandchildren. + +<p id="d0e7284">“<i>Eh bien</i>,” he said to my question, “I will tell you. I was married first at sixteen years of age and this is my third wife.” He pointed +over his shoulder to a tow-headed German for all I could see, and who certainly showed no sign of the native except in her +dress and manners and avoirdupois. + +<p id="d0e7290">“My first wife died,” continued the <i>arii</i>, contemplatively. “I divorced the second, and the third is just now eating the first <i>déjeuner</i> in that room. I have eight children, and will have twenty, and I am the chief of the Papenoo district, but this is not the +place of my <i>ancienne famille</i>. I was appointed here by the French <span id="d0e7301" class="pageno">page 303</span>Governor three years ago to administer the district, which needed a strong hand. I like it, and have bought land and built +this house. I will stay my days here. There is the <i>farehau</i>, the administration building where I meet the people and we have conferences.” + +<p id="d0e7307">He pointed to a wooden cottage near by, with what looked like a dancing-pavilion attached. There the people come to squat +upon the floor and relate their grievances. Most of the disputes before minor and major courts were over land and water rights. + +<p id="d0e7310">It was half past seven o’clock when we inspanned for the trek to Papeete, a balmy, brilliant morning. The banks and cliffs +were masses of ferns, the living imposed upon the dead, and hibiscus and gardenias and clumps of bamboo in a dissolving pageant +mingled with plots of taro and yams, pineapples and bananas. The majestic bread trees and the spreading mangoes, the latter +with their fruit verging from gold to russet, were surflnounted by the soaring cocoanuts, the monarchs of the tropics, whose +banners fly from every atoll, and fall only before the most terrible might of the King of Storms. + +<p id="d0e7313">A cocoanut-palm bears at eight years and when about twenty-five feet high. It rises seventy or eighty feet, and has a hundred +curves. It is the wily creature of the winds, but outwits them in all but their worst moods. To the tropical man the cocoa-palm +is life and luxury. He drinks the milk and eats the meat, or sells it dried for making soaps and emollients and other things; +the oil he lights his house with and rubs upon his body to assuage pain; he builds his houses and wharves of it, and thatches +his home with the husks, which also serve for <span id="d0e7315" class="pageno">page 304</span>fuel, fiber for lines and dresses and hats, leaves for canoe-sails and the shell of the nut for his goblet. Its roots he fashions +into household utensils. The cocoa grows where other edibles perish. It dips its bole in the salt tide, and will not thrive +removed from its beloved sea. + +<p id="d0e7318">To me there is an inexpressible sentiment in the presence of these cocoa-palms. They are the symbol of the simplicity and +singleness of the eternal summer of the tropics; the staff and gonfalons of the dominion of the sun. My heart leaps at their +sight when long away. They are the dearest result of seed and earth. I drink their wine and esteem dwelling in their sight +a rare communion with the best of nature. + +<p id="d0e7321">They joked Count Polonsky about his girl, and he began to explain. + +<p id="d0e7324">“I was here a year before I found one that suited me,” he said as he rode beside the wagon. “I don’t love her, nor she me, +but I pay her well, and ask only physical fidelity for my physical safety. Her father is practical and influential, and will +help me with my plans for development of the Papenoo valley, which I have bought.” + +<p id="d0e7327">Three tall and robust natives in <i>pareus</i> of red and yellow, and carrying long spears, went by, accompanied by a dozen dogs. We stopped them, and they said they were +from the Papara district on their way to hunt pig in the Papenoo Mountains for Count Polonsky. The latter remembered he had +ordered such a hunt, and explained through Llewellyn that he was their employer. + +<p id="d0e7333">They faced him, and seldom was greater contrast. <span id="d0e7335" class="pageno">page 305</span>Magnificent semi-savages, clothed in only a rag, their powerful muscles responsive to every demand of their minds, and health +glowing in their laughing countenances: Polonsky, slight, bent, baldish, arrayed in Paris fashions, a figure from the Bois +de Boulogne, his glass screwed in his weak eye, the other myopic, teeth missing, and face pale. But at his command they hunted, +for he had that which they craved, the money of civilization, to buy its toys and poisons. Polonsky had a reputation for generous +dealing. + +<p id="d0e7338">A bent native man repairing the road near Faaripoo had his face swathed in bandages. He greeted us with the courteous, “Ia +ora na!” but did not lift his head. + +<p id="d0e7341">“He is a leper,” said Llewellyn. “I have seen him for years on this road. He may not be here many more days, because they +are segregating the lepers. The Government has built a lazaretto for them up that road.” + +<p id="d0e7344">We saw a group of little houses a short distance removed from the road. They were fenced in and had an institutional look. + +<p id="d0e7347">“There’s hundreds of lepers in Tahiti,” remarked McHenry. + +<p id="d0e7350">“Mac, you’re a damned liar,” replied Llewellyn. He was an overlord in manner when with natives, but his quarter aboriginal +blood caused the least aspersion on them by others to touch him on the raw. + +<p id="d0e7353">“Well, there’s a bloody lot o’them,” broke in Lying Bill. + +<p id="d0e7356">“Eighty only,” stated Llewellyn, conclusively. “The Government has taken a census, and they ’re all to be <span id="d0e7358" class="pageno">page 306</span>brought here. Did you hear that Tissot left for Raiatea when he heard of the census? He’s a leper and a white man. They seized +young Briand yesterday.” + +<p id="d0e7361">I was astonished, because the latter had lived opposite the Tiare Hotel, and I had met him often at the barber’s. I had been +“next” to him at Marechal’s shop a week before. + +<p id="d0e7364">“He did not know he was a leper until they examined him,” Llewellyn went on. “He does not know how he contracted the disease. +I don’t mind it. I am not afraid. You get used to it. I tell you, the only leper I ever knew that made me cry was a kid. I +used to see on the porch of a house on the road to Papara from Papeete a big doll. A little leper girl owned it, and she was +ashamed to be seen outside her home, so she put on the veranda the doll she loved best to greet her friends. She made out +that the doll was really herself, and she loved to listen when those who might have been playmates talked to the doll and +fondled it. She lived for and in the doll, and those who cherished the little girl saw that each Christmas the doll was exchanged +secretly for a bigger one, keeping pace with the growth of the child. I have caressed it and sung to it, and guessed that +the child was peeping and listening inside. She herself never touched it, for it would be like picking up one’s own self. +Each Christmas she saw herself born again, for the old dolls were burned without her knowledge. And all the time her own little +body was falling to pieces. Last Christmas she was carried to the door to see the new doll. I bought it for her, and I had +in it a speaking-box, to say <i>’Bonjour!’</i> I sent to Paris <span id="d0e7369" class="pageno">page 307</span>for it. She’s dead now, poor little devil, or they’d have shut her up in the lazaretto.” + +<p id="d0e7372">Bemis bought cocoanuts for shipment for food purposes. His firm sold them all over America to fruitdealers for eating raw +by children, and shredded and prepared them for confectioners and grocers. He was the only buyer in Tahiti of fresh nuts, +as all others purchased them as copra, split and dried, for the oil. Bemis had been here years ago, he said. + +<p id="d0e7375">“I’m married now,” he told me, “but in those days I was a damn fool about the Tahitian girls. I put in six months here before +I was married.” + +<p id="d0e7378">He became thoughtful, and asked me to accompany him to the soiree of the Alliance Française, in the Palais cinema-hall. The +Alliance was for encouraging the study and use of the French language. A few decades ago Admiral Serre, the governor, had +forbidden the teaching of French to girls in the country districts as hurtful to their moral weal. It was feared that they +would seek to air their learning in Papeete, and, as said Admiral Serre, be corrupted. A new regime reckoned a knowledge of +French a requisite of patriotism. + +<p id="d0e7381">At the Palais the scene was brilliant. Two large banana-trees were apparently growing at the sides of the stage, and the pillars +of the roof were wreathed in palm-leaves. Scores of French flags draped the walls. Pupils of the government schools occupied +many seats, and their families, friends, and officials the others. The galleries were filled with native children. Marao, +the former queen, and her daughters, the Princesses Boots and Tekau, with a party of English acquaintances, were <span id="d0e7383" class="pageno">page 308</span>in front, and the general audience consisted of French and every caste of Tahitian, from half to a sixteenth. The men were +in white evening suits, and the women and girls in décolleté gowns, white and colored. + +<p id="d0e7386">It was eight o’clock when the governor entered on the arm of the president of the Alliance, Dr. Cassiou. He was in a white +drill uniform, with deep cuffs of gold bullion, and a blazing row of orders on his breast. The <i>république</i> outdoes many monarchies in decorating with these baubles its heroes of politics. The governor, a wholesome-looking diplomat, +was the image of the famous host of the Old Poodle Dog restaurant in San Francisco, who himself would have had a hundred ribbons +in a just democracy. + +<p id="d0e7392">The band of native musicians played “The Marseillaise,” but nobody stood. With all their embellishments, the French would +not incommode themselves at the whim of a baton-wielder, who in America had only to wave his stick in “The Star-Spangled Banner,” +and any one who did not humor his whim by getting on his feet was beaten by his neighbors, who would not suffer without him. + +<p id="d0e7395">With the governor were the <i>inspecteurs colonials</i>, the bearded napkin-wearers of Lovaina’s. They, too, had a line of gay ribbon from nipple to nipple. These three and the +<i>boulevardier</i>, the gay secretary, sat upon the stage beside a stack of gilded red books. The band played “La Croix d’Honneur,” and the +good Dr. Cassiou read from a manuscript his annual address in a low voice becoming a ministrant at sick-beds. Another piece +by the band, and the books were distributed to the pupils, who went tremulously upon the stage to receive <span id="d0e7403" class="pageno">page 309</span>them from the governor’s hand. This was a lengthy process, but each child had a <i>claque</i>, which communicated enthusiasm to the others of the audience, and there was continuous clapping. + +<p id="d0e7409">“Les Cadets de Russie” by the band preceded the allocution by the governor. He also spoke <i>sotto voce</i>, as if to himself, and as no one heard his words, the fans of native straw and Chinese turkey feathers were plied incessantly. +The heat was oppressive. A sigh of relief came with the entr’acte, when all the grown folk flocked to the attached saloon. +I joined the queen’s group for a few moments, and drank champagne with her and her daughters, and I was called over to have +a glass of Perrier Jouet with the governor’s party. Most of the natives drank bottled lemonade from the <i>glacerie</i> at five sous a bottle. The queen wore a rose in her hair. She was very large, with almost a man’s face, shrewd, heavy, determined, +and yet lively, and without a shade of pretense. Her walk was singularly majestic, and was often commented upon. + +<p id="d0e7418">The Princess Tekau was beautiful, quite like a Spanish senorita in color and feature, her ivory skin gleaming against a pale-blue +bodice, and her blue-black hair piled high. We talked French or English, with many Tahitian words thrown in, according to +the mood or need of the moment. Every one was laughing. After all, Tahiti was very simple, and even officialdom could not +import aristocracy or stiffness into a climate where starch melted before one could impress a spectator. + +<p id="d0e7421">The <i>inspecteurs</i> and others of the suite had smiles and quips for humbler girls than princesses. I saw one of the awesome whiskerandos from +Paris, haughty and <span id="d0e7426" class="pageno">page 310</span>secretive toward the French, lighting the cigarette of a <i>blanchisseuse</i> at the Pool of Psyche, his arm about her, and his black bristles nearer than necessary to her ripe mouth. A merchant dining +away from home slapped caressingly the hips of the girls who waited upon him, nor concealed his gestures. Hypocrisy had lost +her shield in Tahiti, because, except among a few aged persons, and the pastors, she was not a virtue, as in America and England, +but a hateful vice. + +<p id="d0e7432">Back again in the Palais, cooled and made receptive to music by the joyous quarter of an hour in the buffet, we heard Mme. +Gautier sing “Le Cid,” by Massenet, and the Princess Tekau accompany her effectively on the piano. A solo <i>de piston</i>, a violin, a flute, all played by Tahitians, entertained us, and then came the fun. M. X—— was down for a monologue. Who +could it be? He bounced on the stage in a Prince-Albert coat and a Derby hat, rollicking, truculent, plainly exhilarated. +Why, it was M. Lontane in disguise, the second in command of the police, the hero of the battle of the limes, the coal, and +the potatoes. He gave a side-splitting burlesque of the conflict. He acted the drunken stoker, the man who would write to +“The Times” when M. Lontane placed his pistol at his stomach, and he made us see the fruit and coal flying. It was all good +natured, and his dialogue (monologue) amusing. We saw how we Anglo-Saxons appeared to the French, and learned how the hoarse +growl of the British sailor sounded. + +<p id="d0e7438">The governor was delighted, the <i>inspecteurs</i> also. The officials took their cue, the entire audience laughed, and the galleries of children, not understanding at all, +<span id="d0e7443" class="pageno">page 311</span>but convulsed at the antics of the head policeman, yelled <i>encore</i>. The British consul grinned, and the governor turned and winked at him. The <i>entente cordiale</i> was cemented again. The second in command, who provoked the sundering of the tie, had reunited it by his comicality. Ire +dissolved in glee. + +<p id="d0e7452">A play followed, in which several of the players were in the audience, and in which my barber, M. Bontet, shone, and moving-pictures +followed. The babies were long asleep, and we yawning when we were dismissed at half past twelve. + +<p id="d0e7455">Bemis, the cocoanut-buyer, sat through the <i>entr’acte</i>, not accompanying me to the buffet. He received a shock during the handing out of the premiums and was silent afterward. +Bemis was a striking man, because the very regular features of his young face were set off by a mass of white hair. He was +placid, without a disturbing intellect, and interested solely in the price and condition of fresh cocoanuts for shipment. +I had seen him start when a little girl of distinctive expression was called to the stage to receive her book. She sat with +her mother and putative father, and their other children. When I first saw her, I pulled his arm. + +<p id="d0e7461">“Bemis,” I said, “for heaven’s sake, look at that girl!” + +<p id="d0e7464">He looked, and his face tensed, growing ashen white. “She’s the image of you, Bemis,” I pursued. + +<p id="d0e7467">“For God’s sake, talk low!” he cautioned. “People are rubbering at me now. She is mine, I’m sure. I was here six months a +dozen years ago and had an affair with her mother, who sits there. What can I do? I have my own at home in Oakland. I could +not <span id="d0e7469" class="pageno">page 312</span>tell. I never knew about that girl until a week ago. She doesn’t know me. I saw her on the Broom Road, so I came to-night +to have a good look at her. I was afraid to come alone. It would do no good for me to tell her. She’s taken care of. She’s +lovely, isn’t she? I’d like to take her in my arms once.” + +<p id="d0e7472">We walked to the Annexe. + +<p id="d0e7475">“I’ll tell you,” he resumed. “I can’t blame myself. I was like any young fellow who comes down here,—I wasn’t more than twenty-five,—but +I feel like hell. That child’s face is almost identical, except for color, with my baby of eight or nine at home. I’m afraid +I’ll see it at night when I go back.” + +<p id="d0e7478">On the trees, which carry all the public announcements, appeared a notice of a concert by the local band: +<div class="blockquote"> +<br id="d0e7482">Fanfare de Papeete<br id="d0e7484"> +Le public est informé la Fanfare donnera son<br id="d0e7486"> +Concert sur la Place du Gouvernement Mardi Soir a 8 heures. +<br id="d0e7488"> +RETRAITE +<br id="d0e7490"> +aux Flambeaux! +</div> + +<p id="d0e7494">All day it rained, but at seven a myriad of stars were in the sky. The Place du Gouvernement is a large lawn between the group +of buildings devoted to administrative affairs, with seats for several score, but not for the hundreds who attended the band +concert. The notice about the <i>flambeaux</i> drew even the few boys and youths who might not have come for the music. + +<p id="d0e7500">In the center of the lawn was a kiosk, and on the four sides the rue de Rivoli, the garden of the Cercle Militaire, the grounds +of the former palace of the Pomarés, <span id="d0e7502" class="pageno">page 313</span>now the executive offices, and the pavilion of the Revues. + +<p id="d0e7505">I went early when the lights were being turned on. Only the sellers of wreaths had arrived, and they seated themselves along +the square, their ferns and flowers on the ground beside them. Then came the venders of sweets, ice-cream, and peanuts, and +soon the band and the throng. + +<p id="d0e7508">An <i>allegro</i> broke upon the air, and stilled for a moment the chatter. Most of the people stood or strolled in twos or dozens. They bought +wreaths and placed them on their bare heads, while the few who wore hats encircled them with the brilliant greens and blossoms. +Bevies of handsome girls and women in their prettiest tunics, many wearing Chinese silk shawls of blue or pink, their hair +tied with bright ribbons, sat on the benches or grouped about the confectionery-stands. Many carriages and automobiles were +parked in the shadows, holding the more reserved citizens—the governor, the royal family, the bishop, the clergy, and dignified +matrons of girth. + +<p id="d0e7514">The bachelors and male coquets of the Tahitians and French, with a sprinkling of all the foreigners in Papeete, the officers +and crews of the war-ship <i>Zélée</i> and sailing vessels, smoked and endeavored to segregate <i>vahines</i> who appealed to them. The dark <i>procureur général</i> from Martinique had an eye for beauty, and the private secretary of the governor was in his most gallant mood, a rakish cloth +hat with a feather, a silver-headed stick, a suit of tight-fitting black, and a <i>tiare</i> Tahiti over his ear, marking him among the other Lotharios. + +<p id="d0e7529">The band was led by a tall, impressive native who both <span id="d0e7531" class="pageno">page 314</span>beat and hummed the airs to guide the others. A tune ended, the bandsmen hurried to mix with the audience, to smoke and flirt. +The shading acacia-trees lining the avenues permitted privacy for embraces, kisses, for making engagements, and for the singing +of <i>chansons</i> and <i>himenes</i> of scandalous import. Better than the Latin, the Tahitian likes direct words and candor in song. + +<p id="d0e7540">French naval officers and sailors passed and repassed, or sought the obscurity of the mangoes or the acacias. One heard the +sibilance of kisses, the laughter, and the banter, the half-serious blows and scoldings of the <i>vahines</i> who repelled over-bold sailors. In an hour the sedate and the older took leave; the governor and the <i>procureur</i> turned into the Cercle Militaire for whist or écarté and a glass of wine, the carriages withdrew, and the band’s airs and +manner of playing took on a new freedom and abandon. A polka was begun, and couples danced upon the grass, the ladies in their +<i>peignoirs</i>, their black hair floating, and their lips chanting, their wreaths and flowers nodding to their motions. + +<p id="d0e7552">In retired nooks where the lamp-lights did not penetrate ardent ones threw themselves into the postures and agitations of +the <i>upaupa</i>, the <i>hula</i>. + +<p id="d0e7561">Boys now began to light the flambeaux for the <i>retraite</i>. These were large bundles of cocoanut-husks and candlenuts soaked in oil, and they gave a generous flare. Suddenly, we heard +the mairie-bell tolling. The band-leader climbed upon the roof of the kiosk, descended, and gave a vigorous beat upon the +air for “the Marseillaise,” which ends all concerts. + +<p id="d0e7567">It was quickly over, and seizing the flambeaux, all <span id="d0e7569" class="pageno">page 315</span>rushed from the Place du Gouvernement, lighting the way of the <i>retraite</i>, now more furious even than planned. The band struck up, “There’ll be a Hot Time in the Old Town To-night,” the drum and +bugle made warlike notes, and down the rue de Rivoli we went madly toward the conflagration sighted by the leader. After the +band and the flambeaux-bearers danced the jolly commoners, with here and there a more important pair of legs, an English clerk, +a tourist, or an official, all excited by the music, the torches, and the running to the fire. The flambeaux reeled to and +fro with the skipping and leaping of their carriers, the multitude sang loudly, and the music became broken as the leader +lost control of his men. They came to the house of the hose-cart, and transformed themselves into firemen, laying down their +instruments and harnessing themselves to the lines. Away we went again, now at top speed. Other carts with apparatus dashed +into the Broom Road from side streets and caught up with us. + +<p id="d0e7575">The pullers yelled warnings in Tahitian to those who might impede their way or be run over. The stir was tremendous, for fires +were rare and greatly feared. The regulations of the possession and storage of combustibles were severe, even a wagon or handcart +containing as little as one can of kerosene being compelled to fly a red flag. + +<p id="d0e7578">After a mile we came to the fire, a Chinese restaurant beside a little creek and in a cocoanut-grove. The roof had fallen +in and there were reports that a woman and two children had been killed. Two men with quart cans threw water from the stream +on the edge of the blaze. +<span id="d0e7580" class="pageno">page 316</span> + +<p id="d0e7583">The little hose-carts, with a small ladder, arrived with éclat, native gendarmes clearing the road, and Frenchmen and natives +shouting the danger of death by these formidable engines. They were of no purpose, the water-taps which were conspicuous in +the main streets being absent here, and no water under pressure was available. They knew this, of course, but the hose was +unreeled, and a dozen people tripped up by its snakelike movements, the while bandsmen and gendarmes roared out manoeuvers. +By now a thousand were there. I counted roughly several hundred bicycles and two public automobiles, holding thirty persons +each, came from the center of town, the enterprising owners canvassing the coffee-shops and saloons for passengers. These +carryalls drew up by the stream within forty feet of the blaze, forcing the pedestrians and cyclists to retreat. + +<p id="d0e7586">Lovaina appeared, puffing furiously. Vava was roused to a high pitch. He told me by signs how he had seen the fire and given +the alarm to the <i>mairie</i>, or city hall, the bell of which tolled for an hour. + +<p id="d0e7592">There was no wind, and the flames rose straight up, scorching the cocoanut-leaves, but unharming other houses within twenty-five +feet. The crowd lingered until the last timber had fallen. After seeing that there was small danger to the adjoining buildings, +and learning that the loss fell upon Chinese only, that no one had been hurt, and that a can of kerosene had exploded, interest +in the conflagration dropped, and friends and acquaintances who had met chatted amiably on other subjects. The proximity of +the fire and the marshy condition of the ground made it proper for the ladies with well-turned legs to raise their gowns high, +displaying <span id="d0e7594" class="pageno">page 317</span>garterless stockings held up by the “native twist” above the calf. Accordions and mouth-organs enlivened the talk, and not +until only charred boards remained did we leave. + +<p id="d0e7597">Besides the occasional concerts of the band, boxing and moving-pictures made up the public night life of Papeete. Attached +to the theaters were bars, as at the Palais, and these were the foci of those who hunted distraction, and the trysting-places +of the amorous. One found in them or flitting about them all the Tahitian or part Tahitian girls in Papeete who were not kept +from them by higher ambition or by a strict family rule. From Moorea, Raiatea, Bora-Bora, and other islands, and from the +rural districts of Tahiti, drifted the fairest who pursued pleasure, and to these cafés went the male tourists, the gayer +traders, the sailors, and the Tahitian men of city ways, the chauffeurs, clerks, and officials. + +<p id="d0e7600">Boxing and cinemas were novelties in Tahiti, and though the bars were only adjuncts of the shows, they had become the scenes +of a hectic life quite different from former days. The groves, the beach, and the homes were less frequented for merrymaking, +the white having brought his own comparatively new customs of men and women drinking together in public houses. And there +had crept in on a small scale an exploitation of beauty by those who profited by the receipts at the prize-fights, the cinemas, +and the bars. The French or part castes who owned these attractions were copying the cruder methods of the Chinese. + +<p id="d0e7603">Llewellyn, David, and McHenry were habitués of these resorts, and I not an infrequent visitor. We went together to a prize-fight, +which had been well advertised. <span id="d0e7605" class="pageno">page 318</span>A small boy with a gong handed me a bill on the rue du Four, which read: +<p> +<table width="100%"> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top"></td> +<td valign="top">Casino de Tahiti</td> +</tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top"></td> +<td valign="top">Ce Soir Vendredi</td> +</tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top">Pour le championnat des Etablissements français de l’Oceanie</td> +</tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top">Grand Match de Boxe Entre MM.</td> +<td valign="top">Great Boxing Match Between MM.</td> +<td valign="top">Moto Raa rahi i rotopu ia</td> +</tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top">Opeta (Raratonga) </td> +<td valign="top">& </td> +<td valign="top">Teaea (Mataiea)</td> +</tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top"></td> +<td valign="top">10 Rounds</td> +</tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td valign="top">Moni parahiraa 1re 2f. 50 </td> +<td valign="top">2me 2f. </td> +<td valign="top">3me 1f. 50</td> +</tr> +</table> + + +<p id="d0e7677">The bill said further in French and Tahitian that this was to be the climax of all ring battles in the South Seas between +natives, the Christchurch Kid and Cowan, the bridegroom, being <i>hors concours</i>. + +<p id="d0e7683">Every seat was reserved by noon. All day the automobile stages ran into the country districts to bring natives, and from Moorea +came boat-loads of spectators. On the streets native youths emulated the combatants, and at every corner boys were at fisticuffs. +The Casino de Tahiti was on the rue de Rivoli, a large wooden shed painted in polychromatic tints, and with a gallery open +to the air for the band, which played an hour before all events to summon patrons. Groups were in the street by eight o’clock, +many having been unable to buy seats, and others there merely to hear the music and to laugh. Many were Chinese, queueless, +smartly dressed in conventional white suits and American straw hats. The storekeepers had come in from the country. The men +heatedly discussed the merits of the boxers. Opeta of Raratonga was mentioned as the champion of the world—this part of it. +<span id="d0e7685" class="pageno">page 319</span> + +<p id="d0e7688">Smoking was not allowed inside, so not until the last moment did the men file in. Hundreds of women were long in their places, +some white, many part white, and others Tahitians. They were in their best gowns, flirting, eating fruit and nuts, laughing, +and talking. Every girl of the Tiare Hotel was there, and all the guests. I was wedged in between Lovaina and Atupu, and the +latter stroked my leg often, as one does a cat or dog, affectionately, but without much thought about it. Lovaina, too, rubbed +my back from time to time. + +<p id="d0e7691">A picture preceded the fight. It was of cow-boys, robbers, and the Wild West, with much shooting. A half-caste explained it, +and his wit was considerable, tickling the ears as the scenes tickled the eyes. The natives applauded or execrated the films +as the Parisians do at the opera. They encouraged the heroes and cursed the villains. Lovaina was interested, but said: + +<p id="d0e7694">“Those robber in picshur make all boy bad. The governor he say that maybe he stop that Bill ’Art kind of picshur. Some Tahiti +boy steal horse and throw rope on other boy for lassoo.” + +<p id="d0e7697">When the screen was removed, a roped enclosure, a square “ring,” was disclosed. The announcer spoke in Tahitian of the signal +achievements of the two fighters, of their determination to do their best then and there. The women cheered these declarations. +Seated just below me was a red-headed French girl, with perhaps a slight infusion of Polynesian blood, who had a baby in a +perambulator. Her strawberry plaits dangled temptingly as she cooed to the baby. She was for Opeta, the foreign competitor. +<span id="d0e7699" class="pageno">page 320</span> + +<p id="d0e7702">A white-haired Australian woman, with a strong accent, favored Teaea, and when the Raratonga youth was winning, shouted to +Teaea: + +<p id="d0e7705">“’It ’im ’arder, Ol’ Peet! ’E’s outa wind! Knock ’is shell hoff!” + +<p id="d0e7708">The Casino de Tahiti had two galleries, and in the topmost, at a franc, five sous each, sat the little gods, as with us. Others +were perched on doors, on projections of cornices, and in every nook. + +<p id="d0e7711">The fighters were naked except for breech-clouts. They were barefooted. They wore their hair longish, and it appeared like +rough, black caps, which now and again fell over their faces and was flung back by a toss of their heads. They were handsome +men, framed symmetrically, lithe, and healthy-looking. Their bodies soon shone with the sweat. Their eyes, as soft as velvet +to begin, grew fiery as they punished each other. In truth, this punishment was not severe from American prize-ring standards. +The islander was unused to blows, and the gloves were of the biggest size, such as those worn by business men in gymnasiums. + +<p id="d0e7714">Opeta had as seconds American beach-combers; and Teaea, natives. They had all the pugilistic appurtenances of towels, bottles, +etcetera, and fanned and rubbed their men between rounds as if they were matched for a fortune. + +<p id="d0e7717">Teaea had a green ribbon in his loin-cloth. He was taller and heavier than Opeta, but showed his inferiority quickly. They +danced about and fiddled for an opening, sparred for wind, and did all the fancy footwork of the fifth-class fighter, but +they seldom came together except in clinches. The referee, the Christchurch Kid, <span id="d0e7719" class="pageno">page 321</span>was the martyr, for he had to pull them apart every minute. The rounds were of two minutes’ duration, and the rests one minute. +After seven very tame rounds, the spectators became angered, and in the eighth Teaea went down, and took the count of ten +on his hands and feet, warily watching his opponent. In the ninth, Opeta, excited by the demands of the gallery, slugged him +in the head. Teaea sought the boards again, and the counting of ten by the referee began. + +<p id="d0e7722">The Mataiea boxer was on his back, but his glazing eyes stared reproachfully at Opeta. The latter, now clearly the victor, +glanced at the red-headed girl, who was dancing on the floor beside her perambulator and waving her congratulations. The house +was on its feet yelling wildly to Teaea to rise. Those who had bet on him were calling him a knave and a coward, while Opeta’s +backers were imploring him to kill Teaea if he stood up. The Raratonga champion became excited, confused and when Teaea, at +the call of eight, cautiously turned over and lifted his head, he struck him lightly. + +<p id="d0e7725">The inhabitants of the country districts vociferated in one voice: + +<p id="d0e7728"> +<i>“Uahani! Uahani!”</i> + +<p id="d0e7734"> +<i>“Faufau! Faufau!”</i> cried the gods. + +<p id="d0e7740">“Foul! Foul! ’E ’it’ im, ’hand’ e’s hon ’is ’ands hand kneeses,” exclaimed the Australian woman. + +<p id="d0e7743">The audience took up the chorus in French, Tahitian, and English. Though Opeta had won them all by his ability and fairness +and was plainly the better man, the sentiment was for the rules. The Christchurch Kid thought a moment, and conferred with +the announcer, who talked with all the seconds. The spectators were <span id="d0e7745" class="pageno">page 322</span>insistent, and though loath to end the show, the Kid held up the gloved hand of the Mataiean. + +<p id="d0e7748">The announcer declared him the “<i>champignon</i>” of Papeete, but naïvely declared that Opeta was still full of fight, and challenged the universe. The Raratonga man was +dumfounded at the result of his forgetfulness, and gazed coldly and accusingly at the red plaits. The people, too, now regretted +their enthusiasm for the right, which had shortened their program of rounds, and demanded that the battle go on. But the band +had left, the lights were dimmed, and gradually the crowd departed. + +<p id="d0e7754">The Australian waited to shake the hand of her knight, to whom she said: + +<p id="d0e7757">“I bloomin’ well knew you ’d do ’im hup! ’E’s got nothin’ hin ’is right. ’E’s a runaw’y, ’e is.” + +<p id="d0e7760">David and I went into the buffet of the cinema after the fight to hear the arguments over it, and he to collect bets. He had +chosen the winner by the toss of a coin. The French Governor of the Paumotus was there, gaily bantering half a dozen girls +for whom he bought drinks. We joined him with Miri and Caroline and Maraa and others, the best-known sirens of Papeete. They +were handsome, though savage-looking, and they had lost their soft voices. Alcohol and a thousand <i>upaupahuras</i> had made them shrill. They smoked endless cigarettes. Some wore shoes and stockings, and some were barefooted. Their dresses +were red or blue, with insertions of lace and ribbons, and they were crowned with flowers in token of their mood of gaiety. + +<p id="d0e7766">David insisted on a bowl of velvet, three quarts of champagne, and three of English porter mixed in a <span id="d0e7768" class="pageno">page 323</span>great urn. The champagne bubbled in the heavier porter, and the brew was a dark, brilliant color, soft and smooth. It was +delicious, and seemed as safe as cocoanut milk. I drank my share of it in the cinema cafe, and after that was conscious only +vaguely of going to the Cocoanut House garden, where Miri and Caroline and Maraa danced nude under the trees by the light +of the full moon. + +<p id="d0e7771">Then came blankness until I awoke several hours after midnight. I was sitting on the curbing of the Pool of Psyche, and some +one was holding my hand. I thought it must be Atupu or Lovaina, and groped for a moment before I could pull my senses together. +I looked up, and saw a wreathed and bearded native, and then down and saw his attire, mixed man’s and woman’s, and knew he +was one of the <i>mahus</i> who loafed about the queen’s grounds. I drew away my hand as from a serpent’s jaws, and clasped my head, which rocked in +anguish. A horrid chuckle or dismal throaty sound caused me to see the Dummy standing in the gateway, looking contemptuously +at me, and witheringly at my companion. I had a second’s thought of myself as a son of Laocoön. + +<p id="d0e7777">The <i>mahu</i> got up and hastened away, and Vava put his hand on my shoulder and lifted me as a child to the road. He pointed toward the +Annexe, and as I went haltingly with him, he now and again uttered unearthly cackles and bawls as if enjoying a farce I could +not see. He, like the mahu, was one of those mishaps of nature assigned to play an absurd and sorry part in the tragicomedy +of life in which all must act the rôles assigned by the great author-manager until death puts us out of the cast. In that +scene I myself was the buffoon of fate. +<span id="d0e7782" class="pageno">page 339</span> + +<h1 id="d0e7786">Chapter XVI</h1> +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e7793">A journey to Mataiea—I abandon city life—Interesting sights on the route—The Grotto of Maraa—Papara and the Chief Tati—The +plantation of Atimaono—My host, the Chevalier Tetuanui. + +</div> +<p id="d0e7797">Life in the country made me laugh at myself for having so long stayed in the capital. The fever of Papeete had long since +cooled in my veins. A city man myself, I might have known that all capitals are noxious. Great cities are the wens on the +body of civilization. They are aggregations of sick people, who die out in the third generation. Greed builds them. Crowded +populations increase property values and buy more manufactured luxuries. The country sends its best to perish in these huddlements. +In America, where money interests boom cities and proudly boast their corruption in numbers, half the people are already in +these webs in which the spider of commerce eats its victims, but ultimately may perish for lack of food. Brick and steel grow +nothing. + +<p id="d0e7800">I had made excursions from Papeete, but always carrying the poisons of the town with me. At last my playmates deserted me. +Lying Bill and McHenry sailed on their schooner for the Paumotu and the Marquesas islands, Landers left for Auckland, and +Count Polonsky for a flying visit to America. Llewellyn, though an interesting study, learned in native ways, and with comparisons +of Europe and America, was too atrabilious, and, besides, had with his young partner, <span id="d0e7802" class="pageno">page 325</span>David, abandoned himself to the night life, the cinema bars, with their hilarious girls and men, the prize-fights, and the +dancing on the beach in the starlight. Schlyter, the tailor, an occasional companion, was busied cutting and sewing a hundred +uniforms for a war-ship’s crew. + +<p id="d0e7805">I bethought me of the letter Princess Noanoa Tiare had given me to the chief of Mataiea, and with a bag I departed for that +village at daybreak, after <i>taofe tau</i> for four sous at Shin Bung Lung’s <i>Fare Tamaaraa</i>. The diligence was open at the sides and roofed with an awning, and was drawn by two mules, with bells on their collars. + +<p id="d0e7814">On the stage I paid twenty centimes a kilometre, or six and a half cents a mile. It carried the mail, passengers, and freight. +In every district there was a mailbox on the fence of the <i>chefferie</i>, the chief’s office, and on the trees alongside the road at regular intervals, and the driver took mails from people who +hailed him. Arriving at a <i>chefferie</i>, the stage halted, the district <i>mutoi</i>, or native policeman-postman, appeared leisurely, opened the locked box on the diligence, looked at ease over the contents, +took out what he liked, and put back the remainder, with the postings of the <i>chefferie</i>. + +<p id="d0e7829">A glance at the map of Tahiti shows it shaped like a Samoan fan, or, roughly, like a lady’s hand mirror. It is really two +islands, joined by the mile-wide isthmus of Taravao. The larger island is Poroiunu or Tahiti-nui (big Tahiti), and the smaller +Taiarapu, or Tahiti-iti (little Tahiti). Tahiti-nui is almost round; and Tahitiiti, oval. Both are volcanic, distinct in formation. +They are united by a sedimentary piece of land long after they were raised from the ocean’s bed. +<span id="d0e7831" class="pageno">page 326</span> + +<p id="d0e7834">Mataiea is twenty-seven miles from Papeete, and well on toward the isthmus. + +<p id="d0e7837">Most of our passengers were Chinese, and I realized the Asiaticizing of Tahiti. They were store-keepers, small farmers, or +laborers. The Broom Road lay most of the way along the beach, back of the fringe of cocoanut and pandanus-trees, and between +the homes and plantations of Tahitians and foreigners. I saw all the fruits of the islands in matchless profusion, intermingled +with magnificent ferns, the dazzling bougainvillea, the brilliant flamboyant-tree, and a thousand creepers and plants. Every +few minutes the road rushed to the water’s-edge, and the glowing main, with its flashing reef, and the shadowy outlines of +Moorea, a score of miles away, appeared and fled. Past villages, churches, schools, and villas, the shops of the Chinese merchants, +the sheds for drying copra, rows of vanilla-vines, beaches with canoes drawn up and nets drying on sticks, men and women lolling +on mats upon the eternal green carpet of the earth, girls waving hands to us, superb men, naked save for <i>pareus</i>, with torsos, brown, satiny, and muscled like Greek gladiators, women bathing in streams, their forms glistening, their breasts +bare; and constant to the scene, dominating it, the lofty, snakelike cocoanuts and their brothers of less height and greater +girth. + +<p id="d0e7843">At Fa’a a postwoman appeared. Before opening the mail-box she tarried to light a cigarette and to chat with the driver about +the new picture at the cinema in Papeete. She commented laughingly on the writers and addressees of the letters, and flirted +with a passenger. The former <i>himene</i>-house, which had been the <span id="d0e7848" class="pageno">page 327</span>dance-hall of Kelly, the leader of the fish-strike, was vacant, but I heard in imagination the strains of his pagan accordion, +and the <i>himene</i> which will never be forgotten by the Tahitians, “Hallelujah! I’m a bum!” Kelly had gone over the water to the jails of the +United States, where life is hard for minstrels who sing such droll songs. + +<p id="d0e7854">In Punaauia, the next district to Fa’a, was a schoolhouse and on it a sign: 2 × 2 = 4. + +<p id="d0e7857">M. Souvy, a government printer of Tahiti, had given the site out of his humble savings. By the sign, in his blunt way, he +struck at education which does not teach the simple necessity of progress—common sense. + +<p id="d0e7860"> +<i>“Cela saute aux yeux,”</i> he had said. + +<p id="d0e7866">He was long dead, but his symbol provoked a question from every new-comer, and kept alive his name and philosophy. I never +saw it but I thought of an article I had once written that led to the overturning of the educational system of a country. +How all guide-posts point to oneself! Near the school-house, a dozen yards from the salt water, was a native house with a +straw roof, a mere old shell, untenanted. + +<p id="d0e7869">M. Edmond Brault, the government employee and musical composer, a passenger on the diligence, had with him his violin, intending +to spend the day in company with it in a grove. He remarked the tumbledown condition of the house, and said: + +<p id="d0e7872">“I have sat under that <i>toil de chaume</i>, that straw roof, and talked with and played for a painter who was living there quite apart from the world. He was Monsieur +Paul Gauguin, and he had a very <i>distingué</i> establishment. The walls of his <i>atelier</i> were covered with <span id="d0e7883" class="pageno">page 328</span>his canvases, and in front of the house he had a number of sculptures in wood. That was about 1895, I think. I can see the +<i>maitre</i> now. He wore a <i>pareu</i> of red muslin and an undershirt of netting. He said that he adored this corner of the world and would never leave it. He +had returned from Paris more than ever convinced that he was not fitted to live in Europe. Yet, <i>mon ami</i>, he ran away from here, and went to the savage Marquesas Islands, where he died in a few years. He loved the third <i>étude</i> of Chopin, and the <i>andante</i> of Beethoven’s twenty-third sonata. You know music says things we would be almost afraid to put in words, if we could. If +Flaubert might have written ‘Madame Bovary’ or ‘Salambô’ in musical notes, he would not have been prosecuted by the censor. +We musicians have that advantage.” + +<p id="d0e7901">“In America,” I replied, “we have never yet censored musical compositions, and many works are played freely because the censors +and the reform societies’ detectives cannot understand them. But if our inquisitors take up music, they may yet reach them. +For instance, the prelude of ‘Tristan and Isolde,’ and Strauss’ ‘Salome.’ ” + +<p id="d0e7904">“No,” returned the Frenchman, quickly; “music would make them liberals.” + +<p id="d0e7907">A little farther on, in the valley of Punaruu, the amiable violinist and pianist showed me the ruins of defense works thrown +up by the French to withstand the attacks of the great chieftain, Oropaa of Punaauia, who with his warriors had here disputed +foot by foot the advance of the invaders. These Tahitians were without artillery, mostly without guns of any sort, but they +utilized the old strategy of the intertribal wars, and rolled huge <span id="d0e7909" class="pageno">page 329</span>rocks down upon the French troops in narrow defiles. + +<p id="d0e7912">We saw from our seats through the shadows of the gorge of Punaruu two of the horns of Maiao, the Diadem. In the far recesses +of those mountains were almost inaccessible caves in which the natives laid their dead, and where one found still their moldering +skeletons. M. Brault touched my shoulder. + +<p id="d0e7915">“Rumor has it that the body of Pomaré the Fifth is there,” he said; “that it was taken secretly from the tomb you have seen +near Papeete, and carried here at night. There are photographs of those old skeletons taken in that grotto of the <i>tupapaus</i>, as the natives call the dead and their ghosts. The natives will not discuss that place.” + +<p id="d0e7921">It was from Punaauia that Teriieroo a Teriierooterai had gone to Papenoo to be chief. This was the seat of his <i>ancienne famille</i>. Here he had been a deacon of the church, as he was in Papenoo, because it meant social rank, and was possible insurance +against an unknown future. The church edifice was the gathering-place, as once had been the <i>marae</i>, the native temple. This was Sunday, and I passed a church every few miles, the Roman Catholic and the Protestant vying. +They had matched each other in number since the French admiral had exiled the British missionary-consul, and compelled the +queen to erect a papal church for every bethel. + +<p id="d0e7930">Along the road and in the churchyards the preachers and deacons were in black cloth, sweating as they walked, their faces +beatudinized as in America. + +<p id="d0e7933">Many carried large Bibles, and frowned on the merry, singing crew who went by on foot, in carriages and automobiles. <span id="d0e7935" class="pageno">page 330</span>Everywhere, in all countries, the long, black coat and white or black cravat are the uniforms of evangelism. In Tahiti I saw +ministers of the gospel, white and brown, appareled like circuit-riders in Missouri; hot, dusty, and their collars wilted, +but their souls serene and sure in their mission. They associated God and black, as night and darkness. + +<p id="d0e7938">The sound of sermons echoed from chapels as we progressed, the voices raised in the same tone one heard in a Methodist camp-meeting +in Kansas, and the singing, when in French, having much the same effect, a whining, droning fashion; without spirituality +or art. + +<p id="d0e7941">But why look for a moment at these unfortunates or listen to their dull chants when marvels of nature unfolded at every step! +There was never such luxuriant vegetation, never such a riot of color and richness of growth as on every side. The wealth +of the bougainvillea’s masses of lustrous magenta was matched by the dazzling flamboyant, trees forty feet high, and their +foliage a hundred in circumference, a sheen of crimson. Clumps of bamboo as big as a city lot and towering to the sky, with +the yellow <i>allamanda</i> framing the bungalows, and a tangle of bananas, <i>lantana</i>, <i>tafeie</i>, cocoas, and a hundred other fruits, flowers and creepers, made the whole journey through a paradise. + +<p id="d0e7953">Around many cocoanut-palms were bands of tin or zinc ten or twenty feet from the earth. These were to foil the rats or crabs +which climb the trees and steal (can a creature steal from nature?) the nuts. Every available piece of thin metal was used +for this. The sheets were often flattened kerosene- and gasoline-cans and <span id="d0e7955" class="pageno">page 331</span>were drawn taut and smooth. These are impasses for the wily climbers. + +<p id="d0e7958">“<i>Ils ne passeront pas</i>,” said the French; “<i>Aita haere</i>!” the Tahitians. + +<p id="d0e7967">The road was good, but narrow, in few places room for two to pass except by turning out, skirting the beach at the water’s-edge, +crossing causeways over inlets, and in admirable curves clinging to the hillsides, which bathed in the sea. Moving over a +small levee we came to the pointe de Maraa, where was the Grotto of Maraa, a gigantic recess worn in the solid wall of rock, +a dark mysterious interior, which gave me a momentary surge of my childhood dread and love of caves and secret entrances to +pirates’ lairs. The diligence halted at the request of M. Brault, and he and I jumped out and ran to the grotto. In it was +a lake with black waters, and down the face of the cliff, which rose hundreds of feet straight, dripped a million drops of +the waters of the hills, so that the ground about was in puddles. The inside walls and arched ceiling were covered with a +solid texture of verdant foliage, wet and fragrant. We found a little canoe fastened to a stone, and adventured on the quiet +surface of the pond until at about eighty yards of penetration we came to a blind curtain of stone. + +<p id="d0e7970">“This grot,” said M. Brault, “was for centuries the retreat of those conquered in war, sacred to gods, and a sanctuary never +violated, like those cities of refuge among the Hebrews and Greeks. Now it is a picnic rendezvous, very dear to Papeete whites +and to tourists. <i>C’est la vie</i>.” + +<p id="d0e7976">Tahitian women passengers were adorning their heads <span id="d0e7978" class="pageno">page 332</span>with wreaths of maiden-hair and rare ferns from the cavern. Great lianas hung down the walls, and these they climbed to reach +the exquisite draperies of the chamber. The farther we left behind the capital, the more smiling were the faces, the less +conventional the actions and gestures of the people. + +<p id="d0e7981">Papara was at hand, the richest and most famous of all the districts of Tahiti. The village was a few Chinese stores, a Catholic +and a Protestant church, a graveyard, and a scattered collection of homes. I bade <i>au revoir</i> to my delightful companion, Edmond Brault, having determined to walk the remaining kilometers, and to send on my inconsiderable +bag of clothing. + +<p id="d0e7987">Lovaina had given me a note to the chief of Papara, Tati, whose father was Salmon, an English Jew, and whose sister was Marao, +the relict of the late king, and known as the queen. His father was the first white to marry formally a Tahitian noblewoman. +Pomaré IV had generously granted permission for the high chiefess of Papara to ally herself with the shrewd descendant of +the House of David, and their progeny had included the queen, Tati, and others celebrated in Tahitian life. + +<p id="d0e7990">Tati welcomed me with the heartiness of the English gentleman and the courtesy of the Tahitian chief. He was a man of large +parts himself, limited in his hospitality only by his means, he, like all natives, having thrown away most of his patrimony +in his youth. He was the best-known Tahitian next to Prince Hinoe, but much abler than he. He knew the Tahitian history and +legends, the interwoven tribal relations, the descents and alliances of the families, better than any one else. Such knowledge +was highly esteemed by the natives, for <span id="d0e7992" class="pageno">page 333</span>whom chiefly rank still bore significance. The Tatis had been chiefs of Papara for generations, and had entertained Captain +Cook. + +<p id="d0e7995">He lived in a bungalow near the beach, handsome, spreading, and with a mixed European and indigenous arrangement and furnishing +that was very attractive. I met his sons and daughters, and had luncheon with them. Tati, of course, spoke English fluently, +yet with the soft intonation of the Tahitian. Some of the dishes and knives and forks had belonged to Robert Louis Stevenson, +who, said Tati, had given them to him when he was departing from Tahiti. Tati’s sister, a widow, was of the party, and together +we went to the Protestant churchyard to her husband’s tomb. It was imposing and costly, and the inscription read: +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e7999">In Memory of Dorence Atwater, beloved husband of arii inoore Moetia Salmon. Born at Terryville, Conn., Feb. 3, 1845. Died +at San Francisco, Cal., November 28, 1910. As a last tribute to his name there was erected in his native state a monument +with this inscription: + +<p id="d0e8002">This memorial is dedicated to our fellow townsman, Dorence Atwater, for his patriotism in preserving to this nation the names +of 13,000 soldiers who died while prisoners at Andersonville, Ga. + +<p id="d0e8005">He builded better than he knew; some day, perchance, in surprise he may wake to learn: + +<p id="d0e8008">He builded a monument more enduring than brass. + +<p id="d0e8011">Tupuataroa. +</div> + +<p id="d0e8016">The name given Atwater when he married Moetia Salmon was Tupuataroa, which means a wise man. Mrs. Atwater was rich and melancholy. +She mourned her dead. Atwater had come to Tahiti as American consul, and had piled franc on franc in trade and speculation, +<span id="d0e8018" class="pageno">page 334</span>with great dignity and success. He had been the leading American of his generation in the South Seas, and had left no children. + +<p id="d0e8021">Tati said that when the church was dedicated—it was a box-like structure of wood and coral, whitewashed and red-roofed—three +thousand Tahitians had feasted in a thatched house erected for the <i>arearea</i>. The <i>himene</i>-chorus was made up of singers from every district in Tahiti and Moorea. Tati had presided. + +<p id="d0e8030">“We ate for three days,” he related to me. “More than two hundred and fifty swine, fifteen hundred chickens, and enough fish +to equal the miraculous draft on the shores of Galilee. We Polynesians were always that way, Gargantuan eaters at times, but +able to go fifty miles at top speed on a cocoanut in war.” + +<p id="d0e8033">Tati would have me stay indefinitely his guest, but I had written to Mataiea of my intended arrival there, and though there +were insistent cries that I return soon, I said farewell. + +<p id="d0e8036">Tati himself walked with me to the bridge over the Taharuu River, one of the hundred and fifty streams I crossed in a circuit +of Tahiti. + +<p id="d0e8039">“My ancestor, the old chief Tati,” he told me, “cut down the sacred trees of our clan <i>marae</i> near by, the <i>aitos, tamanus</i>, and <i>miros</i>. He had become a Christian, as was fashionable, and at the instigation of the English missionaries destroyed many beautiful +and ancient trees, statues, carvings, and buildings. The Tahitians who mourned his iconoclasm had a chant which said that +the Taharuu River ran blood when their gods were dishonored.” + +<p id="d0e8051">From the stream the vast domain of the plantation of <span id="d0e8053" class="pageno">page 335</span>Atimaono stretched to Mataiea. It had been planted in the sixties, when British demands for cotton, and the blockade and laying +waste of the South in the American Civil War caused a thousand such speculations all over the world. + +<p id="d0e8056">It was for this plantation, the most celebrated in Tahiti, that Chinese were imported, and a thousand had their shanties where +now is brush. Those were the times that the Marquesas had their cotton boom, and lapsed, too. Upon a hill of this plantation +the English manager, a former cavalry officer, had built himself a palatial mansion, and lived like a feudal lord, the most +powerful resident of Tahiti. Travelers from all the world were his guests. Fair ladies danced the night away upon his broad +verandas and drank the choicest wines of France. Scandal wove a dozen strange stories of intrigues, of a high official who +sold his wife to him, of Arioian orgies, and all the associations of semi-regal rule and accountability to none. Cotton prices +declined, the bubble burst in bankruptcy, the miserable death of the aristocrat, and the fury of cheated English investors. + +<p id="d0e8059">The plantation was now owned by a storekeeper of Tahiti, prosy and disliked, who had fattened by ability to outwit the natives; +but the glory had departed, and the place languished, ruins and jungle, the prey of guava and lantana. The neighborhood was +known as Ati-Maono, “The Clan of Maon.” + +<p id="d0e8062">The lines between village and country were not rigid, and often the hamlet straggled along the road for much of the district. +Every kilometer there was a stone marking the distance from Papeete. One knew the villages <span id="d0e8064" class="pageno">page 336</span>more by the Chinese stores than by any other feature. + +<p id="d0e8067">“You will find the Papara country full of oranges,” Fragrance of the Jasmine had said. + +<p id="d0e8070">The fruit was as sweet and delicious as any I had eaten, and the trees larger than their parents of Sydney, Australia. I strolled +along the road eating, speaking all who passed or were in sight within their gardens, and came to Mataiea, where I was to +live months and to learn the Tahitian mind and language. + +<p id="d0e8073">Ariioehau Amerocarao, commonly known as Tetuanui Tavana, or Monsieur le Chef de Mataiea, Tetuanui, and his wife, Haamoura, +were the salt of the earth. The chief was a large man, molded on a great frame, and very corpulent, as are most Polynesians +of more than thirty years. He was about sixty, strong and sweet by nature, brave and simple. His <i>vahine</i> was very stout, half blind from cataracts, but ever busied about her household and her guests. As chief and roadmaster of +his district, Tetuanui received a small compensation, but not enough for the wants of his dependents, so a few paying white +guests were sent to him by Lovaina. The house was set back from the Broom Road in a clearing of a wood of cocoanuts, breadfruits, +<i>badamiers</i>, and <i>vi</i>-apples. The father of Haamoura had given the land to his daughter, and they had built on it a residence of two high stories, +with wide verandas. + +<p id="d0e8085">The chief and his wife had no children, but had adopted twenty-five. They had brought most of these to manhood and womanhood, +and many were married. Perhaps their care, <i>dots</i> for the daughters, and estates for the sons, had made the parents poor. One was the <span id="d0e8090" class="pageno">page 337</span>blood son of Prince Hinoe, and was now a youth, and worked about the plantation of the chief. His christened name was Ariipaea +Temanutuanuu Teariitinorua Tetuanui a Oropaa Pomare. He was a prince and very handsome and gentle, but he gathered the leaves +from the volunteer lawn for the horses. There was an atmosphere of affection and happiness about the home I have not sensed +more keenly anywhere else. + +<p id="d0e8093">The Duke of Abruzzi’s photograph and one of the Italian war-ship <i>Liguria</i>, were on a wall in the drawing-room, with others of notable people whom the chief had entertained. He himself wore the cross +of the Legion of Honor, which had been presented to him in Paris when he visited there many years before. + +<p id="d0e8099">The house was raised ten feet from the earth, and the ground below was neatly covered with black pebbles from the shore. Shaded +by the veranda-floors, which formed the ceilings of their open rooms, the family sat on mats, and made hats, sewed, sang, +and chatted. They laughed all day. A dozen children played on the sward where horses, ducks, geese, chickens, and turkeys +fed and led their life. When rice or corn was thrown to them, the mina-birds flocked to share it. These impudent thieves pounced +on the best grains, and though the chickens fought them, they appeared to be afraid only of the ducks. These hated the <i>minas</i>, and pursued them angrily. But the <i>minas</i> can fly, and, when threatened, lazily lifted themselves a few feet out of reach of the bills, and returned when danger was +over. + +<p id="d0e8108">The chief’s plantation extended from the sea to the mountain, altogether about ten acres, which in Tahiti is a good-sized +single holding. Cocoanuts, breadfruit, <span id="d0e8110" class="pageno">page 338</span>limes, oranges, <i>badamiers</i>, mangoes, and other trees made a dense forest, and a hectare or more was planted with vanilla-vines that grew on the false +coffee of which hedges were usually made. A hundred yards away a stream meandered toward the sea, and there women of the household +sat and washed clothes. + +<p id="d0e8116">They had no <i>taro</i> planted, though there was much about. <i>Taro</i>, the staple food of Hawaiians, either simply boiled or fermented as <i>poi</i>, was not a decided favorite in Tahiti. The natives thought it tasteless compared with the <i>fei</i>, so rich in color and flavor. The <i>taro</i> is a lily (<i>Arum</i>), and its great bulbs are the edible part, though the tops of small <i>taro</i>-plants are delicious, surpassing spinach, and we had them often on our table. + +<p id="d0e8140">Our customary meals at eleven and at six were of raw oysters, shrimp, crabs, craw-fish, or lobsters; fish of many kinds, chicken, +breadfruit, <i>vi</i>-apples stewed, bananas, oranges, <i>feis</i>, cocoanuts, and sucking pigs. The family ate sitting or squatting on the ground, but I had a table and silver, glass and +linen. It is the way of the Tahitian. The big house, well furnished, was not inhabited by the chief’s family. It was their +monument of success. They slept in one of several houses they had near by, and their elegant dishes were unused except for +white guests. + +<p id="d0e8149">On the beach at the river’s mouth the heron sat or stalked solemnly, and the tern flew about the reef. The white <i>iitae</i> lived about the cocoanut-trees. + +<p id="d0e8155">From the broad veranda in front was a view of the sea, and all day and night the breakers beat upon the reef a mile away, +now as soft as the summer wind in the lime-trees of Seville, and again loud as winter in the <span id="d0e8157" class="pageno">page 339</span>giant pine forests of Michigan. The fleecy surf gleamed and shimmered in the sun as it rolled over the coral dam, and when +the sea was strong, there was another sound, the lapping of the waves on the sand a hundred yards from me. A little wharf +had been built there by the Government, and a schooner arrived and departed every few days, with people and produce. + +<p id="d0e8160">I ate alone mostly, at a table on the veranda in front of my chamber, waited on by Tatini, a very lovely and shy maiden of +fourteen years. To her I talked Tahitian, as with all the family, in an effort to perfect myself in that tongue. + +<p id="d0e8163">I was happy that I had pulled up anchor in Papeete, and as contrast is, after all, comparative, I felt like a New-Yorker who +finds himself in Arcadia, though I had thought Papeete, on first sight, the garden of Allah. In Mataiea I realized the wonder +of the Polynesian people, and found my months with the whites of the city a fit background for study of and ardent delight +in the brown islanders I was to know so well. +<span id="d0e8165" class="pageno">page 340</span> + +<h1 id="d0e8169">Chapter XVII</h1> +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e8176">My life in the house of Tetuanui—Whence came the Polynesians—A migration from Malaysia—Their legends of the past—Condition +of Tahiti when the white came—The great navigator, Cook—Tetuanui tells of old Tahiti. + +</div> +<p id="d0e8180">Happiness in civilization consists in seeing life other than it really is. At Mataiea the simple truth of existence was joy. +In the house of the chief, Tetuanui, I knew a peace of mind and body as novel to me as my surroundings. For the first time +since unconcerned childhood I felt my heart leap in my bosom when the dawn awoke me, and was glad merely that I could see +the sun rise or the rain fall. All of us have had that feeling on certain mornings; but was it not interwoven with the affairs +of the day—a picnic, a rendezvous, our wedding, a first morning of the vacation encampment? In Mataiea it was spontaneous, +the harking back to a beneficent mood of nature; the very sense of being stirring the blood in delight, and girding up the +loins instantly to pleasurable movement. + +<p id="d0e8183">I slept without clothing, and in a bound was at the door, with my <i>pareu</i> about me. Already the family had begun the leisurely tasks of the day. The fowls were on the sward under the breadfruit and +papaya-trees, and the mina-birds were swooping down on the grass near them to profit by their uncovering of food. Those discriminating +birds are like the Japanese, seldom pioneering in wild places, but settling on developed <span id="d0e8188" class="pageno">page 341</span>lands to gain by the slower industry of other peoples. “Birds that live on cows,” the Tahitians call the minas, because where +there are enough ruminants each bird selects one, and spends the day upon its back, eating the insects that infest its skin. + +<p id="d0e8191">The sun at six barely lit the beach and revealed the lagoon, into which a stream from the mountains poured within Tetuanui’s +confines. I threw off my garment and plunged into a pool under a clump of pandanus-trees. It was cool enough at that hour +to give the surface nerves the slight shock I craved, but warmed as I lay in the limpid water and watched the light sweeping +past the reef in the swift way of the tropics. + +<p id="d0e8194">I danced upon the beach and pursued the land crabs to their burrows. I hoped to see one wrench off a leg to prove what I had +been told—that if one in its movement to the salt water through the tall grass beyond the sand, touched any filth, it clawed +off the polluted leg, and that a crab had been seen thus to deprive itself of all its eight limbs, and after a bath to hobble +back to its hole with the aid of its claws, to remain until it had grown a complement of supports. I wondered why it did not +content itself with washing instead of mutilation. To the biblical expounder it was an apt illustration of “cutting off an +offending member,” as recommended in the Book. + +<p id="d0e8197">At the house the family were preparing their first meal, and I shared it with them—oranges, bananas, coffee, and rolls. The +last, with the New Zealand tinned butter, came from the Chinese store. We sat on mats, and we drank from small bowls. The +coffee was sweetened with their own brown sugar, and the juice of nearly <span id="d0e8199" class="pageno">page 342</span>ripe cocoanuts, grated and pressed, made a delicious substitute for cream. Over the breakfast we talked, Tetuanui and Haamoura +answering my questions and taking me along the path of my inquiry into far fields of former customs and ancient lore. They +were, as their forefathers, gifted in oral tradition, with retentive memories for their own past and for the facts and legends +of the racial history. We who have for thousands of years put in writing our records cannot grasp the fullness of the system +by which the old Polynesian chiefs and priests, totally without letters, or even ideographs, except in Easter Island, kept +the archives of the tribe and nation by frequent repetition of memorized annals. So we got Homer’s Odyssey, and the Song of +Solomon. + +<p id="d0e8202">What Tahiti was like before the white? That was to me a subject of intense interest, now that I was fully aware of the situation +after a hundred and fifty years of exploitation, seventy-five years of French domination, and thirty years of colonialism. +The nature of the people was little changed. The Tahitian was still naïf, hospitable, gentle, indolent except as to needs, +valuing friendship above all things, accepting the evangelism of many warring Christian sects as a tumult among jealous gods +and priests, and counting sex manifestations free expressions of affection, and of an appetite not more sacred nor more shameful +than hunger or thirst. +<div id="d0e8204" class="divFigure"> +<p class="legend"><img src="img/plate-6a.jpg" alt="A human bronze"> +<p class="figureHead">A human bronze +<p id="d0e8209">Photo from Dr. Theo. P. Cleveland +</div> +<div id="d0e8213" class="divFigure"> +<p class="legend"><img src="img/plate-6b.jpg" alt="Early morning at Papenoo"> +<p class="figureHead">Early morning at Papenoo +</div> + +<p id="d0e8220">These were the qualities and rules of conduct ascribed to the Tahitians by the first discoverers, especially by those who +were not narrowed in judgment by inexperience and religious fanaticism, as were the British and French missionaries of early +days, peasants and apprentices who had forsaken the fields and workshops for the <span id="d0e8222" class="pageno">page 343</span>higher sphere of devoteeism and freedom from manual labor. These clerics, though often self-sacrificing and yearning for martyrdom, +attributed all differences from their standards or preachments to inherent wickedness or diabolism. +<div id="d0e8224" class="divFigure"> +<p class="legend"><img src="img/plate-7.jpg" alt="A friend in my house at Tautira"> +<p class="figureHead">A friend in my house at Tautira +</div> + +<p id="d0e8231">One of the ablest of them had regretted sorrowfully his having to inform the Tahitians that all their ancestors were in hell. +Some clerics had made wearing bonnets the test of decency, and all had taught that God hated any open ardor of attraction +for the opposite sex. Yet it was almost entirely to them that the far-away student had to turn to learn any of the details +of native life undefiled. The mariners had stayed too brief a time to enter into these, and could not speak Tahitian. + +<p id="d0e8234">I knew that Tahitian life, political and economic, social and religious, had been utterly changed, but I longed for an understanding +of what had been; a panorama of it before my eyes. I set out to obtain this by constant interrogations of every one I thought +might have even a scrap of enlightenment for me. + +<p id="d0e8237">On rainy days, when Chief Tetuanui did not oversee the making or repair of roads in his district, and always when we were +both at leisure, I sat with him, and the elders of the neighborhood, and queried them, or repeated for correction and comment +my notes upon their antiquities—notes founded on reading and my observation. + +<p id="d0e8240">Whence had come these Polynesians or Maoris who peopled the ocean islands from Hawaii to New Zealand, and from Easter Island +to the eastern Fijis? A race set apart by its isolation for thousands of years from all the rest of the world, distinguished +in all its habitats— <span id="d0e8242" class="pageno">page 344</span>Hawaii, Samoa, the Marquesas, Tonga, the Paumotus, and the Society archipelago, and New Zealand—by beauty of form, tint and +uniformity of color, height, and soft expression—an expression they vainly sought to make terrible by tattooing? + +<p id="d0e8245">The legends and chants of the race unfolded much of the mystery; its language’s relation to others, more. These Tahitians +and all their kind were ancient Aryans who in the dim past were in India, and afterward in the Indian archipelago. They were +in Sumatra, in Java, in the Philippines long before the Malays. Certainly their blood brothers, changed by millenniums of +a different environment, remain in Malaysia, known there as the aborigines (Orang-Benoa), by the majority races. D’Urville +said the Harfouras of Celebes were identical physically with the Polynesians. At some unfixed date the first of the Polynesians +pushed out in their insecure craft for this sea, driven away by the Malay-Hindu invasion or by interracial feuds. + +<p id="d0e8248">The pioneer, according to the legend, was Hawaii-uli-kai-oo, Hawaii and the Dotted Sea, a great fisherman and navigator. He +sailed toward the Pleiades from his unknown home in the far West, and arrived at eastern islands. So pleased was he with them, +that he returned to his western birthplace for his family, and brought them to Polynesia. + +<p id="d0e8251">Other Polynesians left the Asiatic archipelago about the end of the first century, and went to many islands. Finally they +reached the Samoan, Tongan, Marquesan, Paumotuan, and Society groups, and Easter Island and New Zealand. In pushing eastward +they skirted Papua, but were unable to stay, because the Papuans, <span id="d0e8253" class="pageno">page 345</span>whom the Polynesians had long ago driven out of the Asiatic archipelago, were stronger than the emigrants. They next tried +Fiji, and tarried there longest, leaving those powerful imprints on the Papuans in appearance and language that make Fiji +the anomaly of Melanesia. But the Fiji-Papuans at last drove them out, and they left with blood in their eyes. When the whites +found the Marquesans in the sixteenth century, they were building at Vaitahu great war-canoes to “attack the black people +who used bows and arrows.” No living Marquesan had ever seen them nor could they have attained Fiji in any strength, yet the +historical hate persisted. + +<p id="d0e8256">The Marquesans of the north said their race came from Hawaii, and those of the south from Vavao. Seventeen places they had +stopped at in their great migration eastward, they said. + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e8261">Pu te metani me Vevau +<br id="d0e8264">A anu te tai o Hawa-ii! +<br id="d0e8267">Pu atu te metani me Hawa-ii +<br id="d0e8270">A anu te ao e Vevau! + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e8276">Blow winds from Vavao +<br id="d0e8279">And cool the sea of Hawaii! +<br id="d0e8282">Blow back, winds from Hawaii, +<br id="d0e8285">And cool the air of Vavao! + +<p id="d0e8289">That was the Marquesan legendary chant, the primal command of their God after creation. Vevau and Hawaii were placed in their +former abode toward India (Hawaii being undoubtedly Java; and Vevau being Vavao, in Malagasy); but they had brought the names +with them, and when they reached the present American <span id="d0e8291" class="pageno">page 346</span>territory, of which Honolulu is the capital, they called it Hawaii, as they had an island of the Samoan group, Sawaii. It +was in the fifth century they peopled the now American Hawaii, and they remained unknown there until the eleventh, when Marquesans, +Tahitians, and Samoans began to pour in on them, and continued to do so for a few generations. Then the present Hawaiians +were isolated and forgotten for twenty-one generations until rediscovery by Captain Cook in 1778. + +<p id="d0e8294">They gave the old names to Polynesia that they knew in Asia, as all over the world emigrants carry their home names, not only +Hawaii, or Savaii, for Java, but Moorea, a Javan place, to the island near Tahiti; Bora-Bora from Sumatra to a Society island; +Puna of Borneo to places in Tahiti, Kauai, and Hawaii; Ouahou of Borneo to Oahu, on which Honolulu is; and Molokai, from the +Moluccas, to another island of Hawaii. One might cite hundreds of examples, all going to prove their far-away origin, as Florida, +San Francisco, and Los Angeles, New England, New York, and Albany, indicate theirs. + +<p id="d0e8297">That there were any inhabitants in the South Sea islands occupied by the Polynesians is improbable but a race of mighty stone-carvers +had swept through that ocean, perhaps many thousands of years before, and had left in the Ladrones and in Easter Islands monuments +and statues now existing which are a profound mystery to the ethnologist, the archaeologist, and the engineer. If the Polynesians +came upon any of the stone builders, they had killed or absorbed them. + +<p id="d0e8300">The interpretation of the curious ideographs carved <span id="d0e8302" class="pageno">page 347</span>on wood in Easter Island by some of the Polynesians there half a century ago would denote there had been intercourse with +the people who had made them, and who were not the Polynesians. + +<p id="d0e8305">Once in Samoa, and finally at home there, after their Fiji disaster, they had gone adventuring, or the canoe drift of unfortunates +caught by wind and tide had brought populations to all the other Polynesian islands, and principally to Tahiti. This island +in the center of Polynesia, and especially favored by nature, had been a source of growth and distribution of the race, the +Paumotus, New Zealand, and probably the Marquesas, and Hawaii having been stocked from it, the language developing furthest +in it, and customs, refinements, and leisure reaching their highest pitch in the marvelous culture, savage though it was, +which astounded the Europeans. Yet all these people remained curious as to what might be beyond the distance, and a hundred +years ago were fitting out exploring expeditions to search for Utupu, a Utopia from which the god Tao introduced the cocoanut-tree. +They looked to the westward for the mystic land of their forefathers, as from Ireland to India the happy isles of the west +was a myth. The mariners of Erin had long seen the Tir-n’an-Oge just beyond the horizon. + +<p id="d0e8308">The Tahitians had a legend of the god Maui, that “he brought the earth up from the depths of the ocean, and when mankind suffered +from the prolonged absence of the sun and lived mournfully in obscurity, with no ripening fruits, Maui stopped the sun and +regulated its course, so as to make day and night equal, as they are in Tahiti.” +<span id="d0e8310" class="pageno">page 348</span> + +<p id="d0e8313">Does not this hark back to a clime where the inequality of day and night was greater than in the tropics? + +<p id="d0e8316">Lieutenant Bovis of the French navy, who seventy years ago, after ten years of study in Tahiti, wrote his conclusions, said +that after him it would be useless to hunt in the memories of the living for anything of the past, for the old men were dead +or dying, and those now in middle age did not even speak or understand the old language in which the records were told. He +had, he said, arrived in Tahiti when the real Tahiti, the Tahiti of the true native, the Tahiti unspoiled by European civilization, +was only a memory, but by years of labor he had taken from the lips of the venerable their recollections of conditions in +their childhood and early manhood, and what their fathers had told them, and by comparison he had been able to write intelligently +of former times. + +<p id="d0e8319">If Bovis found the real Tahiti no longer existent seventy years ago, what must I look for when two generations or three had +died since, and swift steamships coursed where only the clipper had sailed? Yet Tahiti was the least spoiled of islands on +liner routes, because France being so far from it, and the French such poor business men, they had not exploited the natives +except in the way of taxes. The bureaucracy lived on the imposts, but they had not reformed the people by laws and punishments, +and made them see the wisdom of acquiescence in a scheme of regular work, as had the British missionary government in Tahiti +and the American missionary government in Hawaii, in the name of an avenging and critical Lord. No people believed in the +dignity <span id="d0e8321" class="pageno">page 349</span>of labor more than the Tahitians, because they refused to do any more than was requisite for health, cleanliness, comfort, +and pleasure, and saw no more dignity or greater indignity in helping me on with my boots or bringing me my dinner or massaging +my body than in listening to a sermon or catching fish. + +<p id="d0e8324">They thought absurd and artificial the ideas foisted by politicians, merchants, and lawyers that it was dignified to sit in +an office, to sell goods, or to draw up agreements, or undignified to disembowel a pig, make a net, or dig an oven. They saw +governors and bankers spend all day chasing a boar or angling for a fish which they did not eat when they possessed it. They +thought them queer, and that their own regimen of work and play was more sensible. + +<p id="d0e8327">“What land is this?” asked Cook, and understanding him, the Tahitians answered, “<i>Otaiti oia</i>” or, “This is Tahiti.” + +<p id="d0e8333">Cook put it down as Otaheite, pronounced by him Otahytee. It was Cook’s carpenter who was building a house for a chief, a +friend of Cook’s, and lost all his tools during the visit of the high priest of the god Hiro and his acolytes. Hiro was the +first king in their myths, and, until Christianity came, the god of business. When Cook sailed away, the tools were taken +to the <i>marae</i>, or temple of Hiro, where the priest said he would cause the prized tools to reproduce their kind, like fruit. He planted +them in a field near by and watched for results. The lack of any result except rust was an able argument for the Christian +missionaries, when they came, to destroy his cult by laughing at the foolishness of his ideas and the weakness of his god. +<span id="d0e8338" class="pageno">page 350</span> + +<p id="d0e8341">The discoverers reported that the Tahitians and all other Polynesians were thieves and liars, for the reason that they often +seized pieces of iron, tools, and firearms that they saw on the ships or ashore in the houses occupied by the first whites, +and then lied about their actions. The whites killed scores for these crimes, one of the initial murders of Cook’s crew being +the shooting of Chief Kapupuu as he departed in his canoe from their ship with some bits of metal he had taken. Malo, the +native historian, who heard the account from eye-witnesses, explained the incident as follows, first mentioning the sighting +of Cook’s vessels and the wonder of the natives: +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e8345">One said to another, “What is that great thing with branches?” Others said, “It is a forest that has slid down into the sea,” +and the gabble and noise was great. Then the chiefs ordered some natives to go in a canoe and observe and examine well that +wonderful thing. They went, and when they came to the ship, they saw the iron that was attached to the outside of the ship, +and they were greatly rejoiced at the quantity of iron. + +<p id="d0e8348">Because the iron was known before that time from wood with iron [in or on it] that had formerly drifted ashore, but it was +in small quantity, and here was plenty. And they entered on board, and they saw the people with white foreheads, bright eyes, +loose garments, corner-shaped heads, and unintelligible speech. + +<p id="d0e8351">Then they thought that the people [on board] were all women, because their heads were so like the women’s heads of that period. +They observed the quantity of iron on board of the ship, and they were filled with wonder and delight. + +<p id="d0e8354">Then they returned and told the chiefs what they had seen, and how great a quantity of iron. On hearing this, one of the warriors +of the chief said, “I will go and take forcible possession <span id="d0e8356" class="pageno">page 351</span>of this booty, for to plunder is my business and means of living.” + +<p id="d0e8359">The chiefs consented. Then this warrior went on board of the ship and took away some of the iron on board, and he was shot +at and was killed. His name was Kapupuu. The canoes [around the ship] fled away and reported that Kapupuu had been killed +by a ball from a squirt-gun. + +<p id="d0e8362">And that same night guns were fired and rockets were thrown up. They [the natives] thought it was a god, and they called his +name Lonomakua, and they thought there would be war. + +<p id="d0e8365">Then the chiefess named Kamakahelei, mother of Kaumualii, said, “Let us not fight against our god; let us please him that +he may be favorable to us.” Then Kamakahelei gave her own daughter as a woman to Lono. Lelemahoalani was her name; she was +older sister of Kaumualii. And Lono [Captain Cook] slept with that woman, and the Kauai women prostituted themselves to the +foreigners for iron. + +</div> + +<p id="d0e8370">Cook was one of the best of the navigators of the South Seas, a devout churchman, and a believer in the decalogue of Moses. +He thought stealing or lying odious before the Lord and men. But the Polynesians did not so think. Most of their possessions +were in common, and telling the truth was unimportant. If one asked them about anything they had no interest in, they might +tell the truth or might not. If they had interests, these were served by their replies. This is as in diplomacy to-day, when +the interests of one’s country allows prevarication, and even in Christian ethics both patriotism and self-preservation, as +well as hospitality, permit flat falsehood. Our own spies are honest heroes, and the man who would not deceive a man who sought +to kill him or burn his house would be considered a fool and not worth saving. +<span id="d0e8372" class="pageno">page 352</span> + +<p id="d0e8375">“There is plenty more in the kitchen,” we say to guests out of hospitality and pride, though the kitchen is as bare as Mother +Hubbard’s cupboard. She could not lie to the dog. + +<p id="d0e8378">Now, to the native who saw all around him on the ship huge masses of the material most precious to him in the world, it was +as if an American in Yucatan saw in a native hut heaps of gold and diamonds not valued by the savage. Suppose the savage left +the American alone with the treasure! + +<p id="d0e8381">But the Tahitians did not murder for blood lust, had no assassination, and virtually no theft. Our own Anglo-Saxon law laid +down the maxim, “Caveat emptor!” “Let the buyer beware!” which meant that the truth notwithstanding, the buyer must not let +the seller of anything cheat him by failure to state the exact facts or faults, and expect the law to remedy his stupidity. + +<p id="d0e8384">Chief Tetuanui’s word was his bond because he had learned that square-dealing brought him peace of mind, but other natives +had found out that to cheat the white man first was the only possible way of keeping even with him. The maxim of the king +of Apamama, quoted by Ivan Stroganoff, was pertinent. Hospitality was as sacred to the Tahitians as to the old Irish. It was +shameful not to give a guest anything he desired. + +<p id="d0e8387">“Es su casa, señor!” said the Spaniard, and did not mean it; but the Tahitians literally did mean that the visitor was welcome +to all his valuables, and did not reserve his family, as did the don. + +<p id="d0e8390">The chevalier of the Legion of Honor upon whose <span id="d0e8392" class="pageno">page 353</span>mat I sat was emphatic as to the respect of the old Tahitians for their chiefs. + +<p id="d0e8395">“It was the whole code,” said he, “and when the French broke it down they destroyed us. There is Teriieroo a Teriierooterai, +whose family were chiefs of Punaauia for generations, shifted to Papenoo. Each governor or admiral made these transfers here, +as in the Marquesas and all the islands, with the primary object of lessening native cohesion, of Frenchifying us. They ruined +our highest aspirations and our manners.” + +<p id="d0e8398">I had seen something of the same sweeping away of a code and the resultant evils and degradation in Japan. When Bushido imposed +itself on all above the herd, they had a sense of honor not surpassed by the people of any nation; but commerce, the destruction +of the castes of <i>samurai, heimin</i>, and <i>eta</i>, the plunging of a military people into business and competition with Western cunning, and the lacquer of Christianity which +had done little more than Occidentalize to a considerable degree a few thousands, without giving them the practice of the +golden rule, or an appreciation of the Sermon on the Mount, had robbed the Japanese of an ancient code of morality and honor, +and replaced it with nothing worth while—an insatiable ambition to equal Occidental peoples and to conquer Oriental ones, +and a thousand factories which killed women and children. + +<p id="d0e8407">“We were divided into three distinct castes,” said Tetuanui. “The Arii, or princes; Raatira, or small chiefs and simple landed +proprietors; and the Manahune, or proletariat. Alliances between Arii and Raatira made an intermediate class—Eietoai. There +was <span id="d0e8409" class="pageno">page 354</span>also a caste of priests subject to the chief, their power all derived from him, but yet tending to become hereditary by the +priests instructing their sons in the ceremonies and by taking care of the temple.” + +<p id="d0e8412">“That’s the way the Aaron family got control of the Jewish priesthood,” I interpolated. “They gave the people what they wanted, +first a golden calf god, and then an ark, and they had charge of both.” + +<p id="d0e8415">The chief frowned. He was a confirmed Bible reader, and the Old Testament was so much like the Tahitian legends that he believed +every word of it. + +<p id="d0e8418">“The Arii,” he said, “were sacred and had miraculous strength and powers. The food they touched was for others poison. There +was a head in each Arii family to whom the others were subject; he was often an infant, and almost always a young man, for +the eldest son of the chief was chief and the father only regent. This custom continued until comparatively recently in most +families besides those of the Arii. The Arii were the descendants of the last conquerors of these islands. But their advent +must have been ancient, for their power was uncontested, and their rights were so many, their duties so few, and the devotion +of the people to them was so great, that only centuries could have established them so firmly. Probably they came after the +Raatira. The Raatira were separated by too great a barrier to have assisted in the conquest. No Raatira could become an Arii; +no Arii a Raatira. The latter were closer to the commoners, and paid the same respect to the Arii as did the Manahune. + +<p id="d0e8421">“If an Arii woman wedded a Raatira man, the marriage was said to be with a <i>taata ino, ino</i> meaning literally <span id="d0e8426" class="pageno">page 355</span>bad, and <i>taata</i> man. This term applied to all not Arii, and indicated the contempt of the Arii for all below them. The Arii had many words +solely for their own use, and <i>tapu</i>, or prohibited, to all others; they had a hundred privileges. The Raatira were probably the power broken by the Arii. The +Raatira had conquered the Manahune, and were themselves bested by the Arii, the newest come.” + +<p id="d0e8435">The chief sighed. He was like an old Irish storyteller recounting the departed glories of Erin. + +<p id="d0e8438">I read to him in French Bovis’ opinions that the Raatira, defeated, retained part of their lands, served the new masters, +and kept in subjection the people they had themselves beaten. They attached themselves to the Arii of their district, fought +for them in their quarrels or wars, and were consulted in assemblies, and allowed to speak to the crowd. I recalled that this +was a privilege dearly prized by all Polynesians, the lack of reading and writing having, as in Greece, developed oratory +and orators to a remarkable excellence. I was in Hawaii when the offices of the first legislature under the American flag +were campaigned for, after years of repression by the sugar planters’ oligarchy, and I had heard the natives speak a score +of times, and always with delight and wonder. They valued free speech. + +<p id="d0e8441">“The Arii were shrewd,” said Chief Tetuanui, “and early invented a plan for keeping the Raatira in subjection. If two Raatira +disputed possession of land, the one who believed himself defrauded could yield to the king or a member of the royal family +the land, to which he usually had no right at all. The Arii thus got possession of more and more land from time to time, <span id="d0e8443" class="pageno">page 356</span>and the Raatira were loath to contend among themselves. + +<p id="d0e8446">“The Manahune owned nothing by law, but they lived on the lands of Arii and Raatira, and were seldom evicted. They had the +fruits of their labor with a tithe or so for their masters; they left to their children their accumulations, tentative, but +actual, and their service was pleasant; more in the nature of gifts than rent. The Manahune could not rise above his caste +except by the rare nomination of the king, but they could become <i>Teuteu Arii</i>, or servants of an Arii, and might thus acquire immense importance. + +<p id="d0e8452">“Like the eunuchs at courts or the mistresses of the noble and rich,” I remarked. + +<p id="d0e8455">The chief shrugged his shoulders. + +<p id="d0e8458">“The Manahune might become a priest or even join the society of the Arioi,” he rejoined. “The government was simple. The will +of the prince was supreme, but by custom things ran smoothly, and the prince, or Arii, had seldom to urge his power. There +were, of course, instances of extortion, of bursts of anger, of feuds, of jealousies; but most of the time the Raatira saw +that the Arii were well served, and were their intermediates with the commoners. The regular obligations of the inferior classes +were to meet at certain times to hand to the chiefs presents, food, clothing or useful instruments, and they sought to exceed +one another in generosity. They met to build houses, to repair them, or to construct the rock foundations of houses, according +to the importance of the chief, or Arii. They built the canoes, made the nets, and did the fishing. The sea <span id="d0e8460" class="pageno">page 357</span>was divided into properties, as was the land. The Arii had the reefs where the fish most abounded. + +<p id="d0e8463">“War was declared with religious ceremonies. Sacrifices were the basis of these ceremonies, and a human victim the most efficacious. +The augurs examined the entrails, the auspices, much as did the pagans of old. Certain priests had certain duties. The <i>Tahua Oripo</i>, night runners, reported the movements of the enemy. They were professional war spies, and they acquired a marvelous ability. +Sometimes they were able to lead their party so as to surprise the enemy and slaughter them, but usually there were preliminaries +to war which warned the other side. A herald was sent in the costume of a great warrior. He was of high birth or famous for +his fighting. He delivered himself of his mission ceremoniously, and was never attacked. Every locality had its war-chants, +its songs of defiance. Today only a few fragments survive. Wars were waged mostly on account of the ambitions of princes, +as to-day in Europe and Asia. But the effort of Christianity to oust paganism in Tahiti brought about many sanguinary conflicts, +and plainly God was with the missionaries, who caused the battles. In 1815 the Battle of <i>Feipi</i> gave Tahiti to Pomaré the Great, and to the Protestant ministers, who were his backers. Over three hundred were killed. A +woman, the queen of the island of Huahine, commanded in the absence of Pomaré. + +<p id="d0e8472">“Sometimes after a battle the vanquished sent heralds to signify their yielding and to know the wish of the victor; they disbanded +their troops, left their arms on the field, and the war was over. Usually the defeated <span id="d0e8474" class="pageno">page 358</span>warriors were allowed to return home without more ado after their confession of failure, but when the rage was great, the +victors, with furious cries, gave the signal of carnage, and slew all they met. If the prince beaten escaped the first consequences +of the rout, he was safe and lost only a portion of his territory, and in some wars only his prestige. He remained respected, +and his privileges were about the same as before. The Arii were all of the same tribe, all related, and though they ruled +different districts and valleys, and fought one another, they would not degrade one of their own family and rank. Thus power +remained in the same families, princes, chiefs, and priests, and only the Raatira and the Manahune, the bourgeoisie and the +commoners, really suffered. + +<p id="d0e8477">“We copied you in Europe,” I interposed. “There the kings, kaisers, and czars took care not to lower the dignity of monarchy, +and are virtually all related. None of them ever deposed another of long enthroning, and none of them has been killed in a +battle in centuries.” + +<p id="d0e8480"> +<i>“Aue!”</i> exclaimed the chief. “Ioba said, ‘Wisdom is no longer with the old.’ ” + +<p id="d0e8486">“Job talked like a revolutionist,” I said. “That would be treason among the diplomats and lawyers of Europe and America. How +did women get along in your father’s day?” + +<p id="d0e8489">Tetuanui got up to stretch his huge body. He had been squatting on his haunches for an hour. + +<p id="d0e8492">“Let Haamoura, my wife, say as to them,” he returned laughingly. “She knows all the old ways. I must see if the nets are to +be stretched to-day.” +<span id="d0e8494" class="pageno">page 359</span> + +<p id="d0e8497">Mme. Tetuanui and I had a lengthy confabulation. No Tahitian was better informed than she upon the former status of her sex +in Tahiti, and from her I gained a lively summary. + +<p id="d0e8500">Woman was inferior among the old Tahitians. Man had here as everywhere so ordained, and religion had fixed her position by +taboos, as among the Hebrews. She was often merely a servant, yet she maintained a unique sex freedom. Her body was her own, +and not her husband’s as in the English common law. She prepared the man’s food and never sat at meals with him. If she ate +at the same time, which was seldom, she sat at a distance, but near enough to hear his commands. It is so to-day when Tahitian +men gather for feasting without foreigners, as in the Philippines, Japan, and China, and in many European countries. The <i>Hausfrau</i> of the small merchant, laborer, or farmer is a drudge. In Japan the woman remains subject to the hourly whims and wants of +her husband, and to his frequent infidelity, though she is true to him. + +<p id="d0e8506">The Tahiti wife had the care of the canoe, the paddles, and all the fishing and hunting things, and she accompanied her husband +often in these pursuits. The husband had to make the fire, prepare the oven, kill the pig or dog or fowl, and do the outside +chores; but she had a lesser position than he at all public observances. She could not become a priest or enter the temple, +but must remain always at a distance from the <i>marae</i>. Yet she could be a queen or a chiefess, and as such was as powerful as a man, making war in person, and often leading her +troops valiantly. The Tahitian women were nearly as strong as the men and mentally their <span id="d0e8511" class="pageno">page 360</span>full equal. They wound their husbands around their fingers or treated them cruelly in many instances, astonishing the whites +by their independence. Only religion, the taboos, held them in any restraint. + +<p id="d0e8514">If a queen bore a child by an unknown father, the child was as royal as if the descendant of a long line of kings; but if +the father was notoriously a commoner, the child remained a prince, though not so high of rank as if his father had been an +Arii. If a king had children by a woman beneath his rank, they had no rights from their father, but held a mixed position +proportioned to the power of the father. He established their rank by his personal prestige, as the kings of Europe forced +their bastards on the courts. Sixty years ago Tamatoa, King of Raiatea of the Society Islands, himself the highest born of +all the chiefs of the archipelago, was forced to adopt a child of King Pomaré of Tahiti to succeed him because his own children +were by a woman of the people. + +<p id="d0e8517">The woman thus had an advantage over the man in being able to transmit her rank to her children, a survival of the matriarchate +custom once ruling the world. Polygamy was rarely indulged, though not forbidden. A chief here and there might have two or +three wives. Women were allowed only one husband, but often avowed lovers were tolerated, if not feared, by the husband. Mr. +Banks, president of the Royal Astronomical Society of England, was horrified after he had made love to Queen Oberea of Papara +in the absence of her husband to find her attendant was a <i>cavalière servente</i>. His Anglican morals were shocked. He had thought himself the only male sinner by her complacence. +<span id="d0e8522" class="pageno">page 361</span> + +<p id="d0e8525">Before Christianity was forced on them, the Tahitians married in the same rank, and with considerable right to choice. The +tie might be dissolved by the same authority binding it, the chief or head of the clan. Inequality of rank, or near consanguinity, +were the only obstacles to marriage. Rank might be overcome, but never the other. It was as in China, where Confucius himself +laid down the law: “A man in taking a wife does not choose one of the same surname as himself.” And in one of the Chinese +commentaries the following reason is given for this law: “When husband and wife are of the same surname, their children do +not do well and multiply.” The prohibited degrees were more distant than among us. It was a horror of incest that had led +to the general custom all over Polynesia of exchanging children for adoption. Only this explanation could reconcile it with +the almost superstitious love the Polynesian father and mother have for children. Their feeling surpasses the parental affection +prevailing in the remainder of the world, yet adoption is a stronger bond than blood. No child was raised by its own genitors. +The Tetuanuis had brought up twenty-five, all freely given them at birth or after weaning. The taboo was strict. + +<p id="d0e8528">Illegitimate children were as welcome as others. The husband might have been so jealous as to meditate killing his wife; but +when her child was born, although he knew it to be a bastard, he gave it the same love and care as his own. There were exceptions, +but one might cite on the opposite side innumerable cases where, despite the most open adultery, the husband has taken his +wife’s offspring for his own. It was well that this was so, for <span id="d0e8530" class="pageno">page 362</span>adultery was so habitual that were bastards not made welcome, there would have been much suffering by children, innocent themselves. +Here, as in civilization, men love their bastards often more than their legitimate sons and daughters. + +<p id="d0e8533">This prohibition against keeping one’s own must have arisen when there were very few inhabitants in Tahiti, for it is the +outcome of a natural guarding against sexual relationship in tribes or communities where all are thrown together intimately, +and stringent opposition to such practices needed to prevent promiscuity. One must look, as in the case of taboos, deeper +than the surface for the beginning of this custom of trading babies, for that is what it often amounted to—friends exchanging +offspring as they might canoes. + +<p id="d0e8536">It is said that the powerful sentiment among historical nations opposing marriage between brother and sister and other close +kindred originated in the desire to make such connections odious, to preserve virtue and decency among those in hourly intimacy. +Monarchs and nations long refused to bend to it. The Ptolemies and Pharaohs married incestuously; Cleopatra, her brother. +The Ptolemies married their daughters, as did Artaxerxes, who wedded Atossa. The Ballinese married twins of different sex. +Abraham married his half-sister by the same father. Moses’s father married his aunt. Jacob took to wife two sisters, his own +cousins. In Great Russia until this century a father married his son to a young woman, and then claimed her as his concubine. +When a son grew up, he followed his father’s example, though his wife was old and with many children. The Tamils of southeast +India, the Malaialais of <span id="d0e8538" class="pageno">page 363</span>the Kollimallais hills, have the same custom. Inbreeding maintains a fineness of breed, but at the cost of its vigor. That +inbreeding is harmful is fairly certain. Examples to the contrary are numerous in human and animal life. More than nine hundred +residents of Norfolk Island are descendants of the mutineers of the British ship Bounty. They were begat by eight of the mutineers, +and intermarried for a century. They show no deterioration from this cause. + +<p id="d0e8541">Hardly any crime is more loathed than incest, but the abomination grew slowly as man progressed. Such ties have been abhorrent +for long in most countries. A belief that incestuous children were weak mentally or physically came much later in the ages. +The Polynesians must have remarked that inbreeding accentuated the faults in a strain, making for an accumulation of them. +This would be a very far advance in human observation; but the Polynesian, by experience, or knowledge brought from his old +Asiatic home, must have held such a theory, and sought in the system of adoption, and in not bringing up consanguineous children +together, to ward off such misfortune. This at least is a plausible reason for such an unnatural practice among a people so +unquestionably child-lovers. + +<p id="d0e8544">The Marquesans had no totemism to save them. There were no exogamous taboos. The tribe or clan was the chief unit, not the +family. The phratry tie was stronger than that of the father and mother. In the totem scheme of other islands and continental +groups all the women of his mother’s totem were taboo to a man, though their relationship might be remote. Yet as husband +and wife had different totems, and children took <span id="d0e8546" class="pageno">page 364</span>their mothers’ totems, a man might in rare instances, even with this barrier, wed his own daughter. This has happened in Buka +and in North Bougainville. + +<p id="d0e8549">The plan of adoption in Polynesia is matched to a degree by the fosterage common in Ireland in early days. There children +were sent to be reared in the families of fellow-clansmen of wealth. At a year they left their own thresholds, and their fosterage +ended only at marriage. Every fostered person was under obligation to provide for the old age of his foster-parents, and the +affection arising from this relationship was usually greater and regarded more sacred than that of blood relationship. This +is true to-day of the Tahitians. + +<p id="d0e8552">“But children nowadays are often brought up by their own parents,” said Mme. Tetuanui, rising to prepare the <i>déjeuner,</i> and I for a swim in the lagoon, “and if adopted, they go from one home to the other as they will. Parents are not as willing +as before to let go their children; for whereas my grandmother had fifteen, I have none, and few of us have many. We are made +sterile by your civilization. Tetuanui and I were happy and able to persuade the mothers of twenty-five to give their infants +to us because we were childless and were chiefs and well-to-do. Our race is passing so fast through the miseries the white +has brought us that little ones are as precious as life itself.” +<span id="d0e8557" class="pageno">page 365</span> + +<h1 id="d0e8561">Chapter XVIII</h1> +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e8568">The reef and the lagoon—Wonders of marine life—Fishing with spears and nets—Sponges and hermit crabs—Fish of many colors—Ancient +canoes of Tahiti—A visit to Vaihiria and legends told there. + +</div> +<p id="d0e8572">About a mile from the beach was the reef, on which the breakers beat clamorously or almost inaudibly, depending on the wind +and the faraway surge of the seas. The Passe of Rautirare afforded entrance for small vessels. It was an opening in the wall +about the island caused by the Vairahaha, the stream which emptied into the lagoon at our door, and the fresh waters of which +had ages ago prevented the coral zoöphytes from building a structure there, as at Papeete and all other passages. Fresh water +did not agree with these miraculous architects whose material was their own skeletons. + +<p id="d0e8575">I went out toward the reef many mornings in a little canoe that Tiura, the eldest son of the chief, loaned me. I carried from +the house a paddle and three harpoons of different sizes. The canoe had an outrigger and was very small, so that it moved +fast through the usually still lagoon, propelled by the broad-bladed paddle. In the bottom of it might be an inch of water, +for occasionally I shipped a tiny wave, but wetness was no bother in this delicious climate; a <i>pareu</i> was easily removed if vexatious and a cocoanut-shell was an ample bale. + +<p id="d0e8581">Low tide was at sunrise, and warmed with my fruit and coffee, and the happy <i>ia ora na,</i> Maru! of the family, <span id="d0e8586" class="pageno">page 366</span>I paddled to the reef with never-failing expectation of new wonders. The marine life of the Tahiti reef is richer than anywhere +in these seas, as the soil of the island is more bountiful. + +<p id="d0e8589">At that state of the tide the surf barely broke upon the reef, and, almost uncovered, its treasures were exposed for a little +while as if especially for me. The reef itself was a marvel of contrivance by the blind animals which had died to raise it. +If I had been brought to it hooded, and known nothing of such phenomena, I would have sworn it was an old concrete levee. +The top was about fifty feet wide, as level as a floor, pitted with innumerable holes, the hiding-places of millions of living +forms which fed on one another, and were continually replenished by the rolling billows. The wall of the reef opposed to the +sea was a rough slope from the summit to the bottom, buttressed against the attacks of storms, and defended by <i>chevaux-de-frise</i> such as the Americans sank in the Hudson River in 1777. I ventured cautiously over the edge. A student of ancient tactics +would have found there all the old defenses in coral—caltrops, and abatis, molded in dark-gray coral, battered and shot-marked. +It was a dream of a sunken city wall of old Syracuse, and conjured up a vision of the hoary Archimedes upon it before the +inundation, directing the destruction, by his burning-glass, of the enemy’s ships. The side of the reef toward the land was +as sheer as an engineer could make it with a plumb-line. The coral animals had as accurate a measure of the vertical as of +defense against the ocean. + +<p id="d0e8595">Over this levee rolled or slid a dozen kinds of shellfish spying out refuges against the breakers and their brother <span id="d0e8597" class="pageno">page 367</span>enemies in the troughs and holes of the coral floor. With my small spears I pried out dozens of them, <i>Mao</i>, starfish, clams, oysters, furbelowed clams, sea-urchins, and sponges. The <i>mao</i> is the turbo, the queer gastropod sold in the market in Papeete. He lives in a beautiful spiral shell, and has attached to +him a round piece of polished shell, blue, green, brown, or yellow, which he puts aside when he wishes to feed on the morsels +passing his door, and pulls shut when he wants privacy. He fits himself tightly into a hollow in the reef and dozes away the +hours behind his shield, but ready to open it instantly at the perception of his favorite food. The <i>mao</i> was wedged in the recess so cleverly that it was difficult to extract him by my hand alone. His portal I kept after eating +him raw or cooked, to have set in silver as an exquisite souvenir of my visit. These jewels studded the drinking cups from +which the Vikings drank “Skoal to the Northland!” + +<p id="d0e8609">The starfish were magnificent, of many colors, and one with fifteen arms covered with sharp, gray spines, and underneath pale +yellow, fleshy feelers with suckers like a sea-anemone. These were as pliant as rubber in the water, but, when long out, as +hard as stone. The sea-urchins were of many kinds, some with large spikes, as firm as rock, and others almost as brittle as +glass, their needles, half a dozen inches long and sharp, dangerous to step on even with my rubber-soled, canvas shoes. All +hues were these urchins, blood-red and heavenly blue, almost black, and as white as snow, the last with a double-star etched +upon his shell. Others were round like blow-fish, with their spickles at every angle, menacing in look. +<span id="d0e8611" class="pageno">page 368</span> + +<p id="d0e8614">The clams and oysters were small, except the furbelowed clam, whose shell is fluted, and who grows to an immense size in the +atolls of the Paumotus. I always ate my fill of these delicacies raw as I walked along the reef, smashing the shells to get +at the inmates. + +<p id="d0e8617">When the tide was approaching high or when it began to ebb I had immortal experiences upon the reef. I went with Tiura or +with the chief and a party, and found the waves dashing and foaming upon the natural mole, sweeping over it with the noise +of thunder, crashing upon the sloping front, and riding their white steeds over the solid flagging to the lower lagoon. In +this smother of water we stood knee-deep, receiving its buffets upon our waists and the spray upon our faces, and watched +for the fish that were carried upon its crests. With spears couched, we waited the flying chance to arrest them upon the points, +a hazardous game, for often they were powerful creatures, and were hurled against us with threatening impact. + +<p id="d0e8620">But inspiring as was this sport at sunset or by moonlight, it was even more exciting when we trod the reef with torches of +dried reeds or leaves or candlenuts threaded upon the spines of cocoanut-leaves, and lanced the fish that were drawn by the +lure of the lights, or which we saw by their glare passing over the reef. The gleam of the torches, the blackness all about, +the masterful figures of the Tahitians, the cries of warning, the laughter, the shouts of triumph, and the melancholy <i>himenes</i>, the softness and warmth of the water, the uncanny feel of living things about one’s feet and body, the imaginative shudder +of fear at shark or octopus or other terrible brute of the sea, the singing journey home <span id="d0e8625" class="pageno">page 369</span>in the canoes, and the joyous landing and counting of the catch—all these were things never to be forgotten, pictures to be +unveiled in drabber scenes or on white nights of sleeplessness. + +<p id="d0e8628">The sponges were oddities hard to recognize as the tender toilet article. Some were soft and some were full of grit. The grit +was their skeletons, for every sponge has a skeleton except three or four very low specimens, and some without personal skeletons +import them by attraction and make up a frame from foreign bodies. I examined and admired them, reasoning that I myself, in +the debut of living creatures, was close in appearance to one; but my basic interest in them was to sit on them. + +<p id="d0e8631">Many times I went only to where the coral began, half-way to the reef. This was away from the path of the Vairahaha River, +and where the coral souls had manifestly indulged a thousand fancies in contour and color. After the million years of their +labor in throwing up the bastion of the reef, with all its architectural niceties, they had found in the repose behind it +opportunities for the indulgence of their artistry. They were the sculptors, painters, and gardeners of the lagoon. + +<p id="d0e8634">I brought with me a lunette, the diver’s aid, a four-sided wooden frame fifteen inches each way, with a bottom of glass and +no top. I stuck my head in the box and looked through the glass, which I thrust below the surface, thus evading the opaqueness +or distortion caused by the ripples. One did not need this invention ordinarily, for the water was as clear as air when undisturbed, +and the garden of the sea gods was a brilliant and moving spectacle below my drifting canoe. <span id="d0e8636" class="pageno">page 370</span>One must be a child again to see all of it; the magic shapes, the haunting tints, the fairy forms. The gardener who had directed +the growth of the aquarium believed in kelpies, undines, and mermaids, and had made for them the superbest playground conceivable +even by sprites. + +<p id="d0e8639">There were trees, bushes, and plants of yellow and white coral, of scarlet corallins, dahlias and roses, cabbages and cauliflowers +simulated perfectly, lilies and heaps of precious stones. On flat tables were starfish lazying at full width, strewn shells, +and hermit-crabs entering and leaving their captured homes. Mauve and primrose, pink and blue, green and brown, the coral +plants nodded in the glittering light that filtered through the translucent brine. They were alive, all these things, as were +the sponges, with stomachs and reactions, and impulses to perpetuate their species and to be beautiful. They had no relation +to me except as I had to nature, but they were my beginnings, my simple ancestors who had stayed simple and unminded, and +I was to count those hours happy when I communed with them. + +<p id="d0e8642">Taken from their element they died, but left their mold, to harden in the air they could not breathe, and to amaze the less +fortunate people who could not see them in their own estate. The seaweeds grew among them, green or brown, more primordial +than the corals, with less of organic life, vegetables and not animals, but eager, too, for expression in their motions, their +increase in size, and their continuance through posterity. All these were the display of the kindness of the same spirit who +rode the thunder, who permitted a million babes to starve, who stirred in men the madness to slay <span id="d0e8644" class="pageno">page 371</span>a myriad of their brothers, and who fixed the countless stars in the firmament to guide them in the darkness. + +<p id="d0e8647">The hermit-crabs drew my minute attention, and I anchored my canoe and with the lunette watched them by the hour. They were +as provident and as handy—with claws—as the bee that stores honey. The hermit inhabits the vacant shells of other mollusks, +entering one soon after birth, sometimes finding them untenanted, and sometimes killing the rightful occupant, and changing +his house as he grows. I had been surprised to see small and large shells moving fast over the reef, and on the beach at the +water’s-edge; shells as big as my thumbnail and nearly as big as my head. I seized one, and behold! the inmate was walking +on ten legs with the shell on his back, like a man carrying a dog-house. I attempted to pull him out of his lodging, and he +was so firmly fastened to the interior by hooks on his belly that he held on until he was torn asunder. His abdomen is soft +and pulpy and without protecting plates, as have other crabs, and he survived only by his childhood custom of stealing a univalve +abode, though he murdered the honest tenant. In one I saw the large pincher of the crab so drawn back as to form a door to +the shell as perfect as the original. When he felt growing pains the hermit-crab unhooked himself from his ceiling and migrated +in search of a more commodious dwelling. + +<p id="d0e8650">Interesting as were these habits of the cenobite crustacean, his keeping a policeman or two on guard on his roof, and moving +them to his successive domiciles, was more so. These policemen are anemones, and I saw hermit crab-shells with three or four +on them, and one even in the mouth of the shell. When the anchorite <span id="d0e8652" class="pageno">page 372</span>was ready for a new shell, he left his old one and examined the new ones acutely. Finding one to suit his expected growth, +he entered it belly first, and transferred the anemone, by clawing and pulling loose its hold, to the outside of his chosen +shell. How skilfully this was done may be judged by the fact that I could not get one free without tearing the cup-like base +which fastened it. The anemone assisted in the operation by keeping its tentacles expanded, whereas it withdrew them if any +foreign object came near. The stinging cells of the anemone prevent fishes from attacking the hermit, and that is the reason +of his care for the parasite. It is the commensalism of the struggle for existence, learned not by the individual crab, but +by his race. Some crabs wield an anemone firmly grasped in each claw, the stinging nematocysts of the parasite warding off +the devilish octopus, and the anemone having a share of the crab’s meals and the pleasure of vicarious transportation. The +anemone at the mouth of the shell keeps guard at the weakest spot of the hermit’s armor. + +<p id="d0e8655">These sea-anemones themselves are mysterious evidences of the gradual advance of organisms from the slime to the poem. They +are animals, and attach themselves by a muscular base to the rocks or shells, or are as free-swimming as perch. I saw them +two feet in diameter, seeming all vegetable, some like chrysanthemums and some resembling embroidered pin-cushions. They were +of many colors, and are of the coral family. + +<p id="d0e8658">In this wonderful sea garden, where lobsters, crabs, sea-urchins, turbos, starfish, and hundreds of other sentient beings +lived, I saw a thousand true scaled fish, most of them highly colored, and many so curiously marked, <span id="d0e8660" class="pageno">page 373</span>fashioned, and equipped with eccentric members that I was startled into biblical phrases. In the market they were strange +enough, dead and on the marble slabs, or in green leaves, but in the lagoon they were a kaleidoscope of complexions and shapes. +They were the lovely elves to complement the fantastic shellfish, yellow, striped with violet; bright turquoise, with a gold +collar; gold, with broad bands of black terminating in winglike fins; scarlet, with cobalt polka-dots; silver, with a rosy +flush; glossy green, dazzling crimson, black velvet, solid red. + +<p id="d0e8663">They darted and flashed in and out of the caves in the coral, caressed the sea-anemones, idled about the shells, avoided by +dexterous twistings and turnings a thousand collisions, and continued ever the primary endeavor, the search for those particular +bits of food their appetites craved. + +<p id="d0e8666">The effect upon me of all this splendor and grace of water life, as I bent over the surface of the lagoon or walked with lunette +among the beds of coral, was, after the oft-repeated periods of bewilderment at the gorgeousness and whimsicality of the universe, +a deep rejoicing for its prodigality of design and purpose, and a merry sorrow for those who would inflict dogma and orthodoxy +on a practical and heterodox world. I leaned on the side of the canoe or on my spears and laughed at the fools of cities, +and at myself, who had been a fool among them for most of my life. Just how this train of reasoning ran I cannot say, but +it moved inexorably at the contemplation of the sublime radiancy of the vivarium of the Mataiea lagoon. It always appeared +a symbol of the cosmic energy which poured the <span id="d0e8668" class="pageno">page 374</span>bounty of rain upon the sea as upon the thirsty earth, and which is beyond good and evil as we reckon them. + +<p id="d0e8671">When I became myself the hunter for fish, and stood upon the hummocks of coral in water up to my waist or neck, lunette in +one hand and spears in another, I saw a different aspect of the garden. I, naked among the coral and the plants, must have +looked to them like a frightful demon, white and without scales, a horrible devil-fish, my arms and legs glabrous tentacles, +and the lunette and spears adding to my hideousness and foul menace. I know that was the impression I made on the rainbow-fish, +for they fled within the caves, and only by peeping in through the glass could I see them to drive the spear into them. These +slender spears were a dozen feet of light, tough wood, two of them with single iron points two feet long, and a third fitted +with ten fine-pointed darning-needles. For small fish I used the latter, and in thrusting into a school was pretty sure to +impale one or two. + +<p id="d0e8674">I tied the rope of pandanus-leaves about my shoulder, and pulled the canoe along with me as a creel, tossing the fish into +it as I took them. The first seven were often of different kinds, and I did not despise the yellow and black eels, the lobsters, +the <i>mao</i>, or the oysters and clams. + +<p id="d0e8680">I would rest my spears in the canoe, and meander slowly and meditatively over the coral terraces, repeating verses: + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e8685">We wandered where the dreamy palm +<br id="d0e8688">Murmured above the sleepy wave; +<br id="d0e8691">And through the waters clear and calm +<br id="d0e8694">Looked down into the coral cave<span id="d0e8696" class="pageno">page 375</span> +<br id="d0e8699">Whose echoes never had been stirred +<br id="d0e8702">By breath of man or song of bird. + +<p id="d0e8706">When sky and wind were propitious, and other signs familiar to the Maori indicated that fish were plentiful in the lagoon, +the whole village dragged the net. This belonged to the chief, who for his ownership received a percentage of the catch. The +net was a hundred and fifty feet long, and was carried out by a dozen canoes or by half a hundred or more men and women, who +let it sink to the bottom when up to their necks in water. They then approached the shore with the net in a half-circle, carrying +it over the coral heaps, and artfully driving into it all the fish they encountered. In shallow water others waited with little +baskets, and, scooping up the fish from the net, emptied them into larger baskets slung from their waists. These fish were +not very big, but when larger ones were netted, marksmen with spears waited in the shallows to kill any that leaped from the +seine. If the haul was bigger than the needs of the village, the overplus was sent to the market in Papeete, or kept in huge +anchored, floating baskets of wicker. These fishermen had been heart and soul in the <i>tahatai oneone</i>, the fish strike, and when we had poor luck, often the best spearsman led the clan in the air taught them by the leader whom +they remembered with pride and affection: + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e8714">Hayrahrooyah! I’m a boom! Hayrahrooyah! Boomagay! + +<p id="d0e8718">They associated the air and words with the fish, and deep down in their primitive hearts thought it an incantation, such as +their tahutahu, the sorcerers of the island, spoke of old. +<span id="d0e8720" class="pageno">page 376</span> + +<p id="d0e8723">“Tellee <i>haapao maitai!</i> Kelly was a wise man!” they would lament. + +<p id="d0e8729">Every one used a fine casting-net when fishing alone along the shores. The net was weighted, and was thrown over schools of +small fish so dexterously that hundreds were snared in one fling. The tiniest fish were the size of matches. When cooked with +a paste, they were as dainty as whitebait served at Greenwich to a London gourmet, and sung by Shakespere. The nets were plaited +of the fibers of the hibiscus, banyan, or pandanus-bark, and when a mighty catch was expected, one of small mesh was laid +inside a net of stronger and coarser make, to intercept any large fish that might break through the first line of offense. +The weights were stones wrapped in cocoanut-fiber, and the floats were of the buoyant hibiscus-wood. In front of the grounds +of the <i>chefferie</i> there hung on the trees a long line of nets drying in the breeze. + +<p id="d0e8735">Before a feast, if there were not conditions auspicious for a <i>tuu i te upea toro</i>, a dragging of the seine, the village was occupied during the day or the wind was unfavorable, we went out at night after +the trades had died down, and in a dozen or twenty canoes we speared them by torchlight. One was at the paddle, and the other +at the prow, with uplifted flambeau, searching the waters for the fleeing shadows beneath, and launching the dart at the exact +instant of proximity. The congregation of lights, the lapping of the waves, and perhaps the very gathering of humans excited +the fish. They leaped and splashed, and unaware of their betrayal of their presence to slayers, informed our eyes and ears +of their whereabouts. I could not compete <span id="d0e8740" class="pageno">page 377</span>with the Tahitians with the spears, and held a paddle, and that slight occupation gave me time and thought for the scene. +The torches threw a lurid glare upon the exaggerated, semi-nude figures of the giant bronzes on the beaks of the pirogues, +their arms raised in the poise of the weapon, each outlined against the darkness of the night, glorious avatars yet of their +race that had been so mighty and was so soon to pass from the wave. + +<p id="d0e8743">“Maru,” said the chief, when we sat on the mats at late supper after a return from the lagoon, “it is a pity you were not +here when the Tahitians had their <i>’ar’ia</i> and <i>pahi</i>, our large canoes for navigating on the <i>moana faa aro</i>, the landless sea. The <i>’ar’ia</i> was a double canoe, each seventy feet long, high in the stern, and lashed together, outrigger to outrigger. A stout, broad +platform was held firm between the canoes with many lashings of sennit, a strong, but yielding, framework on which was a small +house of straw where the crew lived. We had no nails, but we used wooden pegs and thousands of cocoanut-fiber ropes, so that +everything, aloft and alow, was taut, but giving in the toss of the sea. + +<p id="d0e8758">“The <i>pahi</i> was eighty feet long, broad in the middle, very carefully and neatly planked over inside, forming a rude bulkhead or inner +casing, and had a lofty carved stem rising into one or two posts, terminating in a human form. It was in these vessels that +we made the long journeys from island to island, the migrations and the descents upon other Polynesian peoples in war. Both +the <i>’ar’ia</i> and the <i>pahi</i> were propelled by a huge <i>’i’e</i>, or mat sail of pandanus-leaves shaped like a leg of a fat hog. In modern times these great canoes were built in Bora-Bora, +the island the Hawaiians say they <span id="d0e8772" class="pageno">page 378</span>came from, and the name of which means ‘Land of the Big House Canoes.’ With a good wind we could sail a hundred and twenty +miles a day in those vessels. We would attend the <i>fa’a-Rua</i>, which we now call the <i>ha’a-Piti</i>, the wind that blows both ways, for we waited for the northeast or southwest trade-winds according to the direction we made +for.” + +<p id="d0e8781">The chief lifted his glass of wine, and chanted: + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e8786">“Aue mouna, mouna o Havaii! +<br id="d0e8789">Havaii tupu ai te ahi veavea!” + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e8795">“Hail! mighty mountains, mountains of Havaii! +<br id="d0e8798">Havaii where the red, flaming fire shoots up high!” + +<p id="d0e8802">Brooke had been to Lake Vaihiria, and suggested that I go. The excursion had been long in my mind, for every time an eel was +caught or served some one exclaimed, “<i>Aue!</i> You should see the eels in Vaihiria. But, be careful!” + +<p id="d0e8808">The warning referred to the dangers of the climb, but also to a mysterious menace of <i>tupapaus,</i> or ghosts. I had seen a canoe with the head of an eel carved in wood, and had heard often a hesitant reference to a legend +of metempsychosis, of a human and eel transmigration. The chief, after much persuasion, said that the clans of Mataiea had +always believed they were descended directly from eels; that an eel of Lake Vaihiria had been the progenitor of all the people +of the valley. A <i>vahine</i> of another clan had been overcome by the eel’s sorcery, as Mother Eve by the serpent, which doubtless was an eel. + +<p id="d0e8817">As the eel and the water-snakes are the only serpentine animals in Tahiti, his reasoning was sound. The <span id="d0e8819" class="pageno">page 379</span>lake lies high in the mountains, at the very summit of the valley of Mataiea, and overlooks the Great Valley of Papenoo, owned +by Count Polonsky, the cultivated Slav-Frenchman. + +<p id="d0e8822">Tiura, the chief’s oldest adopted son, arranged for the journey, and led the four of us who made it. One was an Australian, +a doctor of the bush country of Queensland, in his thirties, very tall, and strong, though thin. He was a guest of the chief, +and had walked entirely around Tahiti, barefooted, as had Mr. and Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson, to the consternation of the +conservative English residents of Tahiti, who wanted them to live in Papeete and hold teas. Two pleasant native youths went +with us to carry our necessities. + +<p id="d0e8825">One cannot make the trip in the wet season, usually, but we had had a period of quite dry weather, and were nearing the end +of the rainy period. The beginning of the Valley of Vaihiria, the next to that of Mataiea, was reached within an hour by the +crooked road that leaves the beach. The valley was very fertile, and its picturesqueness a foretaste of the heights. The brook +that ran through it murmured that it, too, climbed to the mountains, and would be our music on the way. The ascent was difficult +and wearisome. We walked through long grass, over great rocks, and pulled ourselves around huge trees. The birds, so rare +near the sea-shore, sang to us, and we saw many nests of fine moss. The scenery was different from that of the Valley of Fautaua, +which I had climbed with Fragrance of the Jasmine, more rugged, and less captivating, yet beautiful and inspiring. The enormous +blocks of basalt often poised upon a point alarmed us, and Tiura said <span id="d0e8827" class="pageno">page 380</span>that many times they had crashed down into the abyss. We saw a score of white cascades. It seemed: + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e8832">A land of streams. Some like a downward smoke, +<br id="d0e8835">Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go; +<br id="d0e8838">And some through wavering lights and shadows broke, +<br id="d0e8841">Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below. + +<p id="d0e8845">We arrived at a plateau after seven hours of hard toil, almost all the time pursuing a rocky path: it was the crown of the +mountain and the borders of the lake. Though we had surmounted only thirteen hundred feet of vertically, we had come by such +steeps that we could not wait an instant before throwing off our light garments and plunging into the water. The lake occupied +an extinct crater, surrounded by four mountains unequally raised up—Tetufera, Urufaa, Purahu, and Terouotupo. It is half a +mile long and a third wide, of curious shape, the banks making it appear in the dusk like a babe in swaddling-clothes with +its arms outside the band. A great natural reservoir, fed by many subterranean springs, it gives birth to many others at the +feet of the mountains, in Mataiea and Papeari. + +<p id="d0e8848">After a repast, it being already late, we built a house to sleep in away from the dews of the heights, and Tiura recalled +that the first Pomaré took his name from a time when he had spent the night here and coughed from the exposure. His followers +had spoken of the <i>po mare</i>, meaning literally, night cough, and the euphony pleased the king so that he adopted the name and bequeathed it to four successors. +All these Polynesians took their names at birth or later from incidents in their own or others’ lives, as my own chief’s—“Deal +Coffin,” from a <span id="d0e8853" class="pageno">page 381</span>relative being buried in a sailor’s chest; “Press Me” because the chief so named had heard these as the last word uttered +by a dying grandchild, and Dim Sight because his grandfather had weak eyes. + +<p id="d0e8856">Taata Mata, the name of a charming Tahitian woman I knew, signifies “Man’s Eye,” her own large eyes, perhaps, explaining the +name, and Mauu, the name borne by a Tahitian man of good family in Papeete, “Moist.” In all Polynesia one found picture names +for people, as among the American Indians, and as among all nations, though with Europeans the meanings are forgotten. Moses +means “Pulled out of the Water,” or “Water Baby.” Some of our names of people and places have ridiculous import in Tahiti. +I remember Lovaina laughed immoderately, and called all the maids to view a line in the Tiare Hotel register in which a man +had put himself down from “Omaha.” + +<p id="d0e8859">After we had eaten, we sat smoking in the darkness, I feeling very close to the blue field of stars. In the tropics the mountains, +even so low as these, are impressive of a vast harmony of nature and of kinship with the force that rumpled them with its +mighty hand. They have always inspired great thoughts. Moses framed in the mountains the ten taboos of Israel, which we hold +as sacred as did the chosen people. Jesus made the mountains the seat of his most important acts, and was there transfigured +in glory. + +<p id="d0e8862">We had been pointed out by Tiura a great crack in the precipice, called <i>Apoo Taria</i>, the “Hole of the Ears.” In the bloody struggles of the ancient tribes here the conquerors cut off the ears of their victims—some +say their captives—and threw them in this hole. +<span id="d0e8867" class="pageno">page 382</span> + +<p id="d0e8870">“Because of those ears,” said Tiura, “all the eels in this lake have very large ears, and it is so because the father of all +the Mataiea folk was an eel. We shall see the eels to-morrow, but I must tell you of the chief of the district of Arue, near +Papeete, about which M. Tourjee, the American, wrote the <i>himene</i>. The chief was married to a strong woman of this district, and in those days there were so many Tahitians that the mountains +as well as the valleys were filled with them. He had a pet <i>puhi</i>, an eel named Faaraianuu. The eel had his home in a spring in the Arue district. The spring is there to this day.” + +<p id="d0e8879">“<i>Oia ia!</i> It is true!” I interjected. “I have seen it.” + +<p id="d0e8885">“One day,” went on Tiura, “the chief remarked to his vahine that he was starting up the mountain to see her grandparents. +She wanted to go, too, but he said that he would just hurry along, and be back in a day or two. Against her will he went alone. +He did come back in a day or two, and to her questions replied that he had had a delightful visit to her <i>tupuna</i>. After that he got the <i>peu</i>, the habit, of departing for the mountains and remaining for hours daily. The chief’s <i>vahine</i> became <i>anoenoe</i> (curious) to see what was his real reason for making these journeys every day. So she followed him secretly. She came to +the mountain, where she saw him stop by an <i>umu</i>, a native oven he had evidently built before. He took out a bamboo, the kind in which we cooked small pieces of meat, and +she saw him draw out a piece of meat and heard him say ‘<i>Maitai!</i> Good!’ as he ate it. She watched him closely, and was anxious to know what meat he had cooked, for he had said nothing about +it. +<span id="d0e8905" class="pageno">page 383</span> + +<p id="d0e8908">“When he had left, she rushed to the oven, opened the bamboo, and saw on pieces of meat the special tattoomarks of the thighs +of her grandmother and grandfather. <i>Aue!</i> She was <i>riri</i>. She fell to the earth and wept, and then she was angry. She made up her mind to get even with her false <i>tane</i>, and to hurt him the worst way possible. She hurried to his spring by their home in Arue, and caught his pet eel, Faaraianuu, +who was sunning himself on the surface. She slashed him with her knife of pearl shell, and baked him in an <i>umu</i>. She ate his tail at once and put the remainder of the eel in a calabash. Then she left, with the <i>ipu</i> in her hand, for Lake Vaihiria.” + +<p id="d0e8926">Tiura halted his tale a minute to point out the constellation of the Scorpion, and to say, “Those stars are Pipiri Ma, the +children, who lived at Mataiea long ago. That is a strange story of their leaving their parents’ house for the sky!” + +<p id="d0e8929">“<i>Aue!</i> Tiura,” said I, “the stars are fixed, but there was the <i>vahine</i> with all but the tail of Faaraianuu in her <i>ipu</i>, walking toward this very spot. What became of her?” + +<p id="d0e8941">The son of Tetuanui smiled, and continued: + +<p id="d0e8944">“On her way she stopped to see the sorcerer, Tahu-Tahu and his <i>vahine</i>. They were friends. After a <i>paraparau</i>, the usual gossip of women, they asked her what she had in her calabash, and she replied, ‘Playthings.’ Then they told her +her journey would be unsuccessful, but she kept on to this lake and put the remains of the eel in the water, right here where +we are. But the eel would not stay in the lake, and though time and again she threw him in, he always came out. Finally <span id="d0e8952" class="pageno">page 384</span>she put him back in her <i>ipu</i> and returned to the house of Tahu-Tahu. She told her misfortune, and Tahu-Tahu made passes and thrashed about with the sacred +<i>ti</i>-leaves, and commanded her to put Faaraianuu in the lake again. This she did, and he stayed, but even now, if you put a cocoanut +in this lake at this spot, it will come out at the spring in Arue. The eel still has power over that spring.” + +<p id="d0e8961">Tiura spoke in Tahitian and French, and I handed on his narrative. + +<p id="d0e8964">“The eel in Tahiti, from what I hear, has seen better days,” commented the Queensland doctor. “All over the world the primitive +people endowed this humble form of animal—the serpentine—with a cunning and supernatural power surpassing that of the four-footed +creatures. I think it was because in the cradle of the human family there were so many hurts from the bites of snakes and +sea-eels—they couldn’t guard against them—that man salved his wounds by crediting his enemy with devilish qualities. That’s +the probable origin of the garden of Eden myth.” + +<p id="d0e8967">Again Tiura spoke of the Scorpion in the sky, and I knew he desired to talk of Pipiri Ma. The other Tahitians were already +under the roof on their backs, upon the soft bed of dried leaves gathered by them for all of us, but the long, lean physician +listened with unabated interest. He had run away for a change from the desert-like interior of his vast island, where he treated +the ills of a large territory of sheep-herders, and to be on this mountain under such a benignant canopy, and to hear the +folk-lore of the most fascinating race on earth, was to him worth foregoing sleep all night. +<span id="d0e8969" class="pageno">page 385</span> + +<p id="d0e8972">Tiura assumed a serious pose for the divulgement of secret lore. His language became grandiose, as if he repeated verbatim +a rune of his ancestors: + +<p id="d0e8975">“We Maoris lived at that time in the great peace of our long, quiet years. No outside influence, no evil wind, troubled our +dreams. The men and women were <i>hinuhinu</i>, of high souls. At the head of the valley, in a grove of breadfruit, lived Taua a Tiaroroa, his <i>vahine</i> Rehua, and their two children, whose bodies were as round as the breadfuit, and whose eyes were like the black borders of +the pearl-shells of the Conquered atolls. They were named Pipiri and Rehua iti, but were known as Pipiri Ma, the inseparables. +One night when the moon, Avae, was at the height of its brilliancy, Taua and Rehua trod the green path to the sea. They lifted +their canoe from its couch upon the grass, and with lighted torch of cocoanut-leaves glided toward the center of the lagoon. + +<p id="d0e8984">“The woman stood motionless at the prow, and from her right hand issued the flames of their torch with a hissing sound—the +flames which fell later in smoky clouds along the shore. A multitude of fish of strange form, fascinated by the blinding light, +swam curiously about the canoe like butterflies. Taua stopped padpling, and directed his twelve-pronged harpoon toward the +biggest fish. With a quick and powerful stroke the heavy harpoon shot like an arow from his hand and pierced the flashing +scales. Soon the baskets of <i>purau</i>-fiber were filled, and they took back the canoe to its resting-place, and returned to their house, again treading the emerald +trail which shone bright under the flooding moon. On the red-hot stones of the <i>umu</i> the fish grew <span id="d0e8992" class="pageno">page 386</span>golden, and sent forth a sweet odor which exceeded in deliciousness even the smell of <i>monoi</i>, the ointment of the oil of the cocoanut and crushed blossoms. Pipiri Ma rolled upon their soft mats, and their eyes opened +with thoughts of a bountiful meal. They awaited with hearts of joy the moment when their mother would come to take them to +the cook-house, the <i>fare umu</i>. + +<p id="d0e9001">“The parents did not come to them. The minutes passed slowly in the silence, counted by beats of their hearts. Yet their mother +was not far away. They heard the noise of the dried <i>purau</i>-leaves as they were placed on the grass. They distinguished the sound of the breadfruit as they rolled dully upon the large +leaves, and then the silvery sound of cups filled with <i>pape miti</i> and the <i>miti noanoa</i> from which a pleasant aroma arose. They heard also the freeing of the cocoanuts from their hairy covering to release their +limpid nectar. On their mats the children became restless and began to cry. Their eyes filled with bitter tears, and their +throats choked with painful sobs. + +<p id="d0e9013">“ ‘All is ready,’ said Rehua, gladly, to her husband, ‘but before we eat, go and wake our little ones so dear to us.’ + +<p id="d0e9016">“Taua was afraid to break the sweet sleep of the babies. He hesitated and said: + +<p id="d0e9019">” ‘No, do not let us wake them. They sleep so soundly now.’ + +<p id="d0e9022">“Pipiri Ma heard these touching words of their father. Why was he afraid to wake them to-night when always they ate the fish +with their parents—the fish just from the sea and golden from the <i>umu</i>? Had the love of their father been so soon lost to them, as under the foul <span id="d0e9027" class="pageno">page 387</span>breath of a demon that may have wandered about their home? + +<p id="d0e9030">“Taua eats and enjoys his meal, but Rehua is distracted. A cloud gathers on her brow, and her eyes, full of sadness, are always +toward the house where the children are sleeping. The meal finished, she, with her husband, hurry to the mats on which the +children slept, but the little ones had heard the noise of their feet upon the dewy leaves. + +<p id="d0e9033">” ‘<i>Haere atu!</i> Let us go!’ said the brother to the sister. The door is closed, and with his slender arms he parts the light bamboo palings +which surround the house, and both flee through the opening. + +<p id="d0e9039">“A long time they wandered. They followed the reaches of the valley. They dipped their bruised feet in the amorous river that +sang as it crept toward the ocean. They broke through the twisted brush which was shadowed by the giant leaves, and while +they so hurried they heard often the words of their parents, which the echoes of the valley brought to their ears: + +<p id="d0e9042">“ ‘Come back! Come back to us, Pipiri Ma! Ma! <i>Haere mai, haere mai,</i> Pipiri Ma!’ + +<p id="d0e9048">“And they called back from the depths of their bosoms, ‘No, no; we will never come back. The torchlight fishing will again +yield the children nothing.’ + +<p id="d0e9051">“They hid themselves on the highest mountains which caress the sky with their misty locks. They climbed with great difficulty +the lower hills from which they looked down on the houses as small as a sailing canoe on the horizon. They came upon a dark +cave where the <i>tupapaus</i> made their terrible noises, and in this cavern dwelt a <i>tahu</i>, a sorcerer. They were afraid, but the <span id="d0e9059" class="pageno">page 388</span>sorcerer was kind, and when he awoke, spoke so softly to them they thought they heard the sough of the <i>hupe</i>, the wind of the night, out of the valley below them. + +<p id="d0e9065">“When he spoke, the spirit with whom the <i>tahu</i> was familiar let down a cloud and from it fell a fringe of varied hues. Pipiri Ma seized the threads that looked the most +seducing, threads of gold and rose, and upon these they climbed to the skies. Their parents who saw them as they ascended, +begged them, ‘Pipiri Ma, come back! Oh, come back to us!’ but the babes were already high in the heavens, higher than Orohena, +the loftiest mountain, and their voices came almost from under the sun: ‘No, we will never return. The fishing with the torches +might be bad again. It might not be good for the children.’ + +<p id="d0e9071">“Taua and Rehua went back to their hut in tears. Whenever the torchlight fishing was bountiful, and the fish were glowing +on the hot stones of the <i>umu</i>, Rehua lifted sorrowful eyes toward the skies, and vainly supplicated, ‘Pipiri Ma, return to us!’ and Taua answered, shaking +his head with a doleful and unbelieving nod, ‘Alas! it is over. Pipiri Ma will not come back, for one day the torchlight fishing +was bad for the children.’ ” + +<p id="d0e9077">Tiura finished with a finger pointing to Antares, of the Scorpion constellation. + +<p id="d0e9080">“That,” he concluded, “is the cloud which was itself transformed.” + +<p id="d0e9083">The doctor shook out his pipe as we entered the flimsy hut. + +<p id="d0e9086">“Sounds like it was written by a child who wanted a continuous supply of sweets, but these people are so crazy on children +that their legends point a moral to parents <span id="d0e9088" class="pageno">page 389</span>and never to the kiddies. They reverse ‘Honor thy father and mother.’ ” + +<p id="d0e9091">In the morning the Valley of Vaihiria unrolled under the rays of the sun like a spreading green carpet, and the sea in the +distance, a mirror, sent back the darts of the beams. After breakfast we built a raft of banana-trunks, which we tied with +lianas, and on it we floated about to observe the big-eared eels. Except by the shore the natives warned us against swimming +for fear of these monsters, but we were not disturbed. We looked into the dismal pit, Apo Taria, and tumbled rocks down it. + +<p id="d0e9094">“It has no bottom,” said Tiura. “We have sounded it with our longest ropes.” + +<p id="d0e9097">The sun was now climbing high, and we began the descent, moving at a fast pace, leaping, slipping and sliding, with the use +of the rope, and arriving at the <i>Chefferie</i> a little after noon. + +<p id="d0e9103">The long draft of a cocoanut, a full quart of delicious, cooling refreshment, and we were ready for the oysters and the fish +and <i>taro</i>. +<span id="d0e9108" class="pageno">page 390</span> + +<h1 id="d0e9112">Chapter XIX</h1> +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e9119">The Arioi, minstrels of the tropics—Lovaina tells of the infanticide—Theories of depopulation—Methods of the Arioi—Destroyed +by missionaries. + +</div> +<p id="d0e9123">Lovaina came out to Mataiea with the news and gossip of the capital. A wretched tragedy had shocked the community. Pepe, the +woman of Tuatini, had buried her new-born infant alive in the garden of the house opposite the Tiare Hotel. Lovaina was full +of the horror of it, but with a just appreciation of the crime as a happening worth telling. The <i>chefferie</i> was filled with <i>aues</i>. + +<p id="d0e9132">“<i>Aue!</i>” cried Haamoura, the chief’s wife. + +<p id="d0e9138">“<i>Aue!</i>” said the chief, and Rupert Brooke, with whom I had been swimming. + +<p id="d0e9144">“<i>Aue!</i>” exclaimed O’Laughlin Considine, the Irish poet of New Zealand, stout, bearded, crowned with a chaplet of sweet gardenias, +and quoting verses in Maori, Gaelic, and English. + +<p id="d0e9150">There were laments in Tahitian by all about, sorrow that the mother had so little loved her babe, that she had not brought +it to Mataiea, where Tetuanui and Haamoura or any of us would have adopted it. And Lovaina said, in English for Considine, +whom she had brought to Mataiea, and for Brooke: + +<p id="d0e9153">“She had five children by that Tuatini. He is custom-officer at Makatea, phosphate island, near T’ytee. He been gone one year, +an’ she get very fat, but she don’ say one thing. Then she get letter speakin’ he come <span id="d0e9155" class="pageno">page 391</span>back nex’ week. One ol’ T’ytee woman she work for her to keep all chil’ren clean, an’ eat, an’ she notice two day ago one +mornin’ she more thin. She ask her, ‘Where that babee?’ She say the <i>varua</i>, a bad devil, take it. The ol’ woman remember she hear little cry in night, an’ when a girl live my hotel tell her she saw +Pepe diggin’ in garden, she talk and talk, an’ by ’n’ by police come, an’ fin’ babee under rose-bush. It dead, but Cassiou, +he say, been breathe when bury, because have air in lung. Then gendarme take hol’ Pepe, and she tell right out she ’fraid +for her husban’, an’ when babee born she go in night an’ dig hole an’ plant her babee under rosebush. Now, maybe white people +say that Pepe jus’ like all T’ytee woman.” + +<p id="d0e9161">Lovaina wore a wine-colored <i>peignoir</i>, and in her red-brown hair many strands of the diaphanous <i>reva-reva</i>, delicate and beautiful, a beloved ornament taken from the young palm-leaf. O’Laughlin Considine and Brooke were much concerned +for the unhappy mother, and asked how she was. + +<p id="d0e9170">“She cut off her hair,” answered Lovaina, “like I do when my l’i’l boy was killed in cyclone nineteen huner’ six. It never +grow good after like before.” Her hair was quite two feet long and very luxuriant, and like all Tahitian hair, simply in two +plaits. + +<p id="d0e9173">Brooke expressed his curiosity over what Lovaina had said, “jus’ like all T’ytee woman.” + +<p id="d0e9176">“Was that a custom of Tahiti mothers, to bury their babes alive at birth?” he asked. + +<p id="d0e9179">Lovaina blushed. + +<p id="d0e9182">“Better you ask Tetuanui ’bout them Arioi,” she replied confusedly. +<span id="d0e9184" class="pageno">page 392</span> + +<p id="d0e9187">The chief pleaded that he could not explain such a complicated matter in French, and if he did, M. Considine would not understand +that language. But with the question raised, the conversation continued about infanticide and depopulation. The chief quoted +the death-sentence upon his race pronounced by the Tahitian prophets centuries ago: + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e9192">“E tupu te fau, et toro te farero, e mou te taata!” + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e9198">“The hibiscus shall grow, the coral spread, and man shall cease!” + +<p id="d0e9202">“There were, according to Captain Cook, sixty or seventy thousand Tahitians on this island when the whites came,” continued +the chief, sadly. “That number may have been too great, for perhaps Tooti calculated the population of the whole island by +the crowd that always followed him, but there were several score thousand. Now I can count the thousands on the fingers of +one hand.” + +<p id="d0e9205">We talked of the sweeping away of the people of the Marquesas Islands and of all the Polynesians. The Hawaiians are only twenty-two +thousand. When the <i>haole</i> set foot on shore there, he counted four hundred thousand. + +<p id="d0e9211">Time was when so great was the congestion in these islands, as in the Marquesas and Hawaii, that the priests and chiefs instituted +devices for checking it. Infanticide seemed the easiest way to prevent hurtful increase. Stringent rules were made against +large families. On some islands couples were limited to two children or only one, and all others born were killed immediately. +Race suicide had here its simplest form. The Polynesian <span id="d0e9213" class="pageno">page 393</span>race must have grown to very great numbers on every island they settled from Samoa to Hawaii, and perhaps these numbers induced +migrations. They doubtless grew to threatening swarms before they began checking the increase. Thomas Carver, professor of +political economy at Harvard, says: +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e9217">Even if the wants of the individual never expanded at all, it is quite obvious that an indefinite increase in the number of +individuals in any locality would, sooner or later, result in scarcity and bring them into conflict with nature, and, therefore, +into conflict with one another. That human populations are physiologically capable of indefinite increase, if time be allotted, +is admitted, and must be admitted by any one who has given the slightest attention to the subject. Among the non-economizing +animals and plants, it is not the limits of their procreative power but the limits of subsistence which determine their numbers. +Neither is it lack of procreative power which limits numbers in the case of man, the economic animal. With him also it is +a question of subsistence, but of subsistence according to some standard. Being gifted with economic foresight he will not +multiply beyond the point where he can maintain that standard which he considers decent. But—and this is especially to be +noted—so powerful are his procreative and domestic instincts that he will multiply up to the point where it is difficult to +maintain whatever standard he has. + +</div> + +<p id="d0e9222">Instinct early taught society everywhere protection against the irksome condition of too many people and too little food. +The old were killed or deserted in wanderings or migrations, and infanticide and abortion practised, as they are commonly +in Africa to-day. Six-sevenths of India have for ages practised female infanticide, yet India increases two millions annually, +and <span id="d0e9224" class="pageno">page 394</span>famine stalks year in and year out. Fifteen million Chinese are doomed to die of starvation in 1921, according to official +statements. + +<p id="d0e9227">Able-bodied adults in their prime bear the burdens of society everywhere. The elders and their children are a burden on them, +especially in primitive society, where capital is not amassed, and food must be procured by some labor, either of the chase, +fishing, or gathering fruits and herbs. Only advance in economic power has arrested infanticide. The Greeks thought it proper; +the Romans, too. The early Teutons exposed babes. The Chinese have always done so. + +<p id="d0e9230">Procreation, if not a dominant passion, would probably have ceased long ago, and the race perished. Individual and even national +“race suicide” in France and New England indicated the possibilities of this tendency. The teachings of asceticism which had +such power among Christians until the sixteenth century are again heard under a different guise in at least one of the modern +cults most successful in the United States. Neo-Malthusianism is found exemplified in the two-child families of the nobles +of France and Germany and the rich of New England. Parents want to do more for children, and so have fewer, and think proper +contraception and even killing the foetus in its early stages. Modern medicine has aided this. Many women in many countries +for ages have practised abortion in order not to spoil their bodies by child-bearing. To-day the demands of fashion and of +social pleasures have caused large families to be considered even vulgar among the extremists in the mode. Organizations incited +by the <span id="d0e9232" class="pageno">page 395</span>new feminism send heralds of contraception schemes on lecture tours to instruct the proletariat, and brave women to go to +prison for giving the prescription. The well-to-do have always been cognizant of it. + +<p id="d0e9235">The Tahitians have ever been adoring of little ones, and if their annals are stained by the blood of innumerable innocents +murdered at birth, let it be remembered that it was a law, and not a choice of parents—a law induced by the sternest demands +of social economy. Religion or the domination of priests commanded it. They obeyed, as Abraham did when he began to whet his +knife for his son Isaac. To-day in Europe conditions prescribe conduct. Morality fades before race demands. Polygamy or promiscuity +looms a possibility, and may yet have state and church sanction, as in Turkey. + +<p id="d0e9238">In Tahiti, from time immemorial, as native annals went, there was a wondrous set of men and women called Arioi who killed +all their children, and whose ways and pleasures recall the phallic worshipers of ancient Asian days. Forgotten now, with +accounts radically differing as to its composition, its aims, and even its morals, a hundred romances and fables woven about +its personnel, and many curious hazards upon its beginnings and secret purposes, the Arioi society constitutes a singular +mystery, still of intense interest to the student of the cabalistic, though buried with these South Sea Greeks a century ago. + +<p id="d0e9241">The Arioi, in its time of divertisement, was a lodge of strolling players, musicians, poets, dancers, wrestlers, pantomimists, +and clowns, the merry men and women of the Pacific tropics. They were the leaders in the worship <span id="d0e9243" class="pageno">page 396</span>of the gods, the makers and masters of the taboo, and when war or other necessity called them from pleasure or religion, the +leaders in action and battle. + +<p id="d0e9246">The ending of the celebrated order came about through the work of English Christian missionaries and the commercialized conditions +accompanying the introduction among the Tahitians of European standards, inventions, customs, and prohibitions. The institution +was of great age, without written chronicles, and, like all Polynesian history, obscured by the superstitions bred of oral +descent. + +<p id="d0e9249">“The Arioi have been in Tahiti as long as the Tahitians,” said the old men to the first whites. + +<p id="d0e9252">Of all the marvels of the South Seas unfolded by their discovery to Europeans, and their scrutiny by adventurers and scientists, +none seems so striking and so provocative of curiosity as the finding in Tahiti of a sect thoroughly communistic in character, +with many elements of refinement and genius, which obliterated the taboos against women, and though nominally for the worship +of the generative powers of nature, mixed murder and minstrelsy in its rites and observance. For what wrote red the records +of this society in the journals of the discoverers, missionaries, and early European dwellers in Tahiti, was the Arioi primary +plank of membership—that no member should permit his or her child to live after birth. As at one time the Arioi society embraced +a fifth of the population, and had unbounded influence and power, this stern rule of infanticide had to do with the depopulation +of the island, or, rather, the prevention of overpopulation. Yet while the <span id="d0e9254" class="pageno">page 397</span>Arioi had existed as far back as their legends ran, Captain Cook, as said Tetuanui, estimated the Tahitians to number seventy +thousand in 1769. The chronicles say that the bizarre order was rooted out a hundred years ago. There are barely five thousand +living of this exquisite race, which the white had found without disease, happy, and radiantly healthy. Evidently the Arioi +had merely preserved a supportable maximum of numbers, and it remained for civilization to doom the entire people. + +<p id="d0e9257">The Arioi fathers and mothers strangled their children or buried them immediately after birth, for it was infamous to have +them, and their existence in an Arioi family would have created as much consternation as in a Tibetan nunnery. + +<p id="d0e9260">Infanticide in Tahiti and the surrounding islands was not confined to the Arioi. The first three children of all couples were +usually destroyed, and twins were both killed. In the largest families more than two or three children were seldom spared, +and as they were a prolific race, their not nursing the sacrificed innocents made for more frequent births. Four, six, or +even ten children would be killed by one couple during their married life. Ellis, an English missionary, says that not fewer +than two-thirds of all born were destroyed. This was the ordinary habit of the Tahitians. The Arioi spared not one. + +<p id="d0e9263">Ellis wrote ninety years ago. He helped to disrupt the society. The confessions of scores of its former members were poured +into his burning ears. In his unique book of his life in Tahiti, he described their <span id="d0e9265" class="pageno">page 398</span>dramas, pantomimes, and dances, their religious rituals and the extraordinary flights to which their merriment and ecstasy +went. Says Ellis: +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e9269">These, though the general amusements of the Ariois, were not the only purposes for which they were assembled. They included: + +<p id="d0e9272">“All monstrous, all prodigious things.” + +<p id="d0e9275">And these were abominable, unutterable; in some of their meetings, they appear to have placed invention on the rack to discover +the worst pollutions of which it was possible for man to be guilty, and to have striven to outdo each other in the most revolting +practices. The mysteries of iniquity, and acts of more than bestial degradation, to which they were at times addicted, must +remain in the darkness in which even they felt it sometimes expedient to conceal them. I will not do violence to my sensibilities +or offend those of my readers, by details of conduct, which the mind cannot contemplate without pollution and pain. + +<p id="d0e9278">In these pastimes, in their accompanying abominations, and the often-repeated practices of the most unrelenting, murderous +cruelty, these wandering Ariois passed their lives, esteemed by the people as a superior order of beings, closely allied to +the gods, and deriving from them direct sanction, not only for their abominations, but even for their heartless murders. Free +from care or labor, they roved from island to island, supported by the chiefs and priests; and were often feasted with provisions +plundered from the industrious husbandman, whose gardens were spoiled by the hands of lawless violence, to provide their entertainments, +while his own family were not infrequently deprived thereby for a time, of the means of subsistence. Such was their life of +luxurious and licentious indolence and crime. + +</div> + +<p id="d0e9283">Yet each Arioi had his own wife, also a member of the society. Improper conduct toward an Arioi’s wife by an Arioi was punished +often by death. To a woman <span id="d0e9285" class="pageno">page 399</span>such membership meant a singular freedom from the <i>tabus</i>, prohibitions, that had forbidden her eating with men, tasting pig, and other delicacies. She became the equal and companion +of these most interesting of her race, and talent in herself received due honor. She sacrificed her children for a career, +as is done to-day less bloodily. + +<p id="d0e9291">Believers in the immortality of the soul, the Arioi imagined a heaven suited to their own wishes. They called it <i>Rohutu noa-noa</i>, or Fragrant Paradise. In it all were in the first flush of virility, and enjoyed the good things promised the faithful by +Mohammed. The road to this abode of houris and roasted pig was not to be trod in sackcloth or in ashes, but in wreaths and +with gaily colored bodies. To the sound of drums and of flutes they were to dance and sing for the honor of their merry god, +Oro, and after a lifetime of joy and license, of denial of nothing, unless it hurt their order, they were to die to an eternity +of celestial riot. + +<p id="d0e9297">As old as the gods was the society of the Arioi, said the Tahitians. Oro, the chief god, took a human wife, and descended +on a rainbow to her home. He spent his nights with her, and every morning returned to the heavens. Two of his younger brothers +searched for him, and lacking wedding presents, one transformed himself into a pig and a bunch of red feathers. The other +presented these, and though they remained with the wedded pair, the brother took back his own form. Oro, to reward them, made +them gods and Arioi. Ever after a pig and red feathers were offerings to the idol of Oro by the Arioi. The brothers formed +the society and named the charter members of it in different islands, <span id="d0e9299" class="pageno">page 400</span>and by these names those holding their offices were known until they were abolished. + +<p id="d0e9302">When called together by their chief, the members of the order made a round of visits throughout the archipelago, in as many +as seventy great canoes, carrying with them their costumes and musical instruments and their servants. They were usually welcomed +enthusiastically at their landing, and pigs, fruits, and <i>kava</i> prepared for their delectation. They were gorgeous-looking performers in their pantomimes, for besides tattooing, which marked +their rank, they were decorated with charcoal and the scarlet dye <i>mati</i>, and wore girdles of yellow <i>ti</i>-leaves, or vests of ripe, golden plantain-leaves. Their heads were wreathed in the yellow and red leaves of the <i>hutu</i>, and perhaps behind an ear they wore a flower of brilliant hue. + +<p id="d0e9317">They had seven ranks, like the chairs of a secret order in Europe or in the United States nowadays. The first, the highest, +was the <i>Avae parai</i>, painted leg. The Arioi of this class was tattooed solidly from the knees down. The second, Otiore, had both arms tattooed; +the third, Harotea, both sides of the body; the fourth, Hua, marked shoulders; the fifth, Atoro, a small stripe on the left +side; the sixth, Ohemara, a small circle around each ankle, and the seventh, Poo, were uninked. They were the neophytes, and +had to do the heavy work of the order, though servants, not members, termed <i>fauaunau</i>, were part of the corps. These were sworn not to have any offspring. + +<p id="d0e9326">The Arioi kept the records of the Tahitian nation. In their plays they reënacted all the chief events in the history of the +race, and as there was no written account, <span id="d0e9328" class="pageno">page 401</span>these dramas were, with the legends and stories they recited, the perpetuation of their archives and chronicles. They were +apt in travesty and satire. They ridiculed the priests and current events, and by their wit made half the people love them +and half fear them. A manager directed all their performances. They aimed at perfect rhythm in their chants and dances, and +grace and often sheer fun in their pantomimes. Some were wrestlers, but boxing they left for others. As with the Marquesans +to-day, they had a fugleman, or leader, in all songs, who introduced the subject in a prologue, and occasionally gave the +cue to a change. + +<p id="d0e9331">No man could reach high rank with them except by histrionic ability and a strict compliance with their rules. Exceptions to +the first requirement might be found in the great chiefs. A candidate came before the lodge in gala fashion, painted, wreathed, +and laughing. Leaping into their circle, he joined madly in the rout, and thus made known his desire for admittance. If worthy, +he became a servant, and only after proving by a long novitiate his qualities was he given the lowest rank. Then he received +the name by which he would be known in the society. He swore to kill his children, if he had any, and crooking his left arm, +he struck it with his right hand, and repeated the oath: + +<p id="d0e9334">“The mountain above, the sacred mountain; the floor beneath Tamapua, projecting point of the sea; Manunu, of majestic forehead; +Teariitarai, the splendor in the sky; I am of the mountain <i>huruhuru</i>.” He spoke his Arioi name, and snatched the covering of the chief woman present. + +<p id="d0e9340">Occasionally there might be persons or districts that <span id="d0e9342" class="pageno">page 402</span>felt themselves unwilling or too poor to entertain the Arioi. These had many devices to overcome such obstacles. They would +surround a child and pretend to raise him to kingly rank, and then demand from his parents suitable presents for such a distinction. + +<p id="d0e9345">At death there were rites for the Arioi apart from those for others. They paid the priest of Romotane, who kept the key of +their paradise, to admit the decedent to Rohutu noa-noa in the <i>reva</i> or clouds above the mountain of Temehani <i>unauna</i>, in the island of Raiatea. The ordinary people could seldom afford the fees demanded by the priest, and had to be satisfied +with a denial of this Mussulman Eden reserved for the festive and devil-may-care Arioi, as ordinary people perforce abstain +from intoxicants in America while the rich drink their fill. The historian Lecky says: +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e9355">It was a favorite doctrine of the Christian Fathers that concupiscence, or the sensual passion, was the “original sin” of +human nature; and it must be owned that the progress of knowledge, which is usually extremely opposed to the ascetic theory +of life, concurs with the theological view, in showing the natural force of this appetite to be far greater than the well-being +of man requires. The writings of Malthus have proved, what the Greek moralists appear in a considerable degree to have seen, +that its normal and temperate exercise would produce, if universal, the utmost calamities to the world, and that, while nature +seems, in the most unequivocal manner, to urge the human race to early marriages, the first condition of an advancing civilization +is to restrain or diminish them. + +</div> + +<p id="d0e9360">Conceive the state of Tahiti, where, as through all Polynesia, the girls have their fling at promiscuity from puberty to the +late teens or early twenties, when an immense <span id="d0e9362" class="pageno">page 403</span>and increasing population compelled the thinking men to devise a remedy for the starvation which in times of drought or comparative +failure of the <i>feis</i> or breadfruit or a scarcity of fish menaced the nation! That the cruel remedy of infanticide was chosen may be laid to ignorance +of foeticidal methods, and the indisposition of the languorous women to suffer pain or to risk their own lives or health. + +<p id="d0e9368">Lecky says that however much moralists may enforce the obligation of extra-matrimonial purity, this obligation has never been +even approximately regarded. One could hardly expect from the heathen Tahitians moral restraint. Malthus, a Christian clergyman, +did not until the second edition of his book add that to vice and misery as checks of nature to an increase of humans faster +than the means of subsistence. Nor have most Christian or civilized nations made such a check effectual. + +<p id="d0e9371">The ever-dominant and only inherent impulse in all living beings, including man, is the will to remain alive—the will, that +is, to attain power over those forces which make life difficult or impossible. + +<p id="d0e9374">All schemes of morality are nothing more than efforts to put into permanent codes the expedients found useful by some given +race in the course of its successful endeavors to remain alive. + +<p id="d0e9377">Did not Zarathustra so philosophize, and is not the national trend in Europe exalting his theory? With the difference that +nationalism takes the place of individualism in the scheme of survival and a better place in the sun is the legend on the +banners. + +<p id="d0e9380">Unable to find enemies to keep their numbers down, <span id="d0e9382" class="pageno">page 404</span>exempt from the epidemics and endemics of Europe and Asia, unacquainted with the contraceptives known until recently only +by our rich, but now preached by organized societies to the humblest, the Tahitian, Marquesan, and Hawaiian came to consider +the blotting out of lives just begun worthy deeds. + +<p id="d0e9385">“The only good Indian is a dead Indian,” was our own cynical Western maxim when life and opportunity to lay by for the future +meant ceaseless struggle with the dispossessed. + +<p id="d0e9388">We, in situations of dire necessity, eat our own fellows. We have done it at sea and on land. We eat their flesh when shipwreck +or isolation urges survival. We let children die by the myriad for lack of proper care and sustenance, and kill them in factories +and tenements to gain luxuries for ourselves. One justification for slavery was that it gave leisure for culture to the slave-owners, +and that Southern chivalry and the charm of Southern womanhood outweighed the fettered black bodies and souls in the scale +of achievement. + +<p id="d0e9391">The Tahitian did the best he could, and the Arioi set the example in a total observance not to be demanded or expected of +the mass. It is related that if the child cried before destruction, it was spared, for they had not the heart to kill it. +If Arioi, the parents must have given it away or otherwise avoided the opprobrium. + +<p id="d0e9394">Another explanation of the bloody oath of the Arioi might be found in an effort of the princes of Tahiti to prevent in this +manner the excessive growth of the Arii, or noble caste. The Arioi society was founded by princes and led by them, but that +they sought to break down the power of the nobles is evidenced by their admitting <span id="d0e9396" class="pageno">page 405</span>virtually all castes to it, thus making it a privileged democracy, in which birthrights had not the sway they had outside +it, but in which the chap who could fight and dance, sing, and tell good stories might climb from lowly position to honor +and popularity, and in which a clever woman could make her mark. + +<p id="d0e9399">The early missionaries who had to combat the influence of the Arioi may have exaggerated its baseness. In their unsophisticated +minds, unprepared by reading or experience for comparisons, most of them sailing directly from English divinity schools or +small bucolic pastorates, the devout preachers thought Sabbatarianism of as much consequence as morals, and vastly more important +than health or earthly happiness. They believed in diabolical possession, and were prone to magnify the wickedness of the +heathen, as one does hard tasks. When Christianity had power in Tahiti, the bored natives were sometimes scourged into church, +and fines and imprisonment for lack of devotion were imposed by the native courts. Often self-sacrificing, the missionaries +felt it was for the natives’ eternal walfare, and that souls might be saved even by compulsion. The Arioi society melted under +a changed control and Christian precepts. + +<p id="d0e9402">Livingstone in the wilds of primeval Africa, making few converts, but giving his life to noble effort, meditated often upon +the success of the missionaries in the South Seas—a success perhaps magnified by the society which financed and cheered the +restless men whom it sent to Tahiti. Livingstone in his darker moments, consoling himself with the accounts of these achievements +in the missionary annals, doubted his own efficacy <span id="d0e9404" class="pageno">page 406</span>against the deep depravity and heathenism of his black flock. The fact unknown to him was that the missionaries in Polynesia +preached and prayed, doctored and taught, ten years before they made a single convert. It was not until they bagged the king +that a pawn was taken by the whites from the adversaries’ stubborn game. The genius of these strugglers against an apparent +impregnable seat of wickedness was patience, “the passion of great hearts.” + +<p id="d0e9407">But conquering once politically, the missionaries found their task all but too easy to suit militant Christians. As the converted +drunkard and burglar at a slum pentecost pour out their stories of weakness and crime, so these Arioi, glorying in their being +washed white as snow, recited to hymning congregations confessions that made the offenses of the Marquis de Sade or Jack the +Ripper fade into peccadilloes. + +<p id="d0e9410">Christian says: +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e9414">Their Hevas or dramatic entertainments, pageants and tableaus, of varying degrees of grossness, similar to the more elaborate +and polished products of the early Javanese and Peruvian drama ... one cannot help fancying must be all pieces out of the +same puzzle ... I have with some pains discovered the origin of the name “Arioi.” It throws a lurid light on the character +of some of the Asiatic explorers who must have visited this part of the Eastern Pacific prior to the Europeans. In Maori the +word Karioi means debauched, profligate, good-for-nothing. In Raratonga [an island near Tahiti] the adjective appears as Kariei. +These are probably slightly worn down forms of the Persian Khara-bati, which has precisely the same significance as the foregoing. +One is forced to the conclusion that the Arabian Nights stories of the voyages <span id="d0e9416" class="pageno">page 407</span>of Sindbad the Sailor were founded on a bed-rock of solid fact, and that Persian and Arab merchants, pirates and slave-traders, +must have penetrated into these far-off waters, and brought their vile, effeminate luxury and shameful customs with them from +Asia, of which transplanted iniquity, the parent soil half-forgotten, this word, like several others connected with revelry +and vice, like a text in scarlet lettering, survives to this day. + +</div> + +<p id="d0e9421">The first Jesuit missionaries to the Caroline Islands found there an organization with privileges and somewhat the same objects +as the Arioi, which was called Uritoi. As “t” is a letter often omitted or altered in these island tongues, it is not hard +by leaving it out to find a likeness in the names Arioi and Urioi. The Carolines and Tahiti are thousands of miles apart, +and not inhabited by the same race. + +<p id="d0e9424">Ellis was a missionary incapable by education, experience, and temperament of appreciation of the artistic life of the Arioi. +He would have chased the faun into seclusion until he could clothe him in English trousers, and would have rendered the Venus +of Milo into bits. Despite an honest love for mankind and considerable discernment, he saw nothing in the Arioi but a logical +and diabolical condition of paganism. Artistry he did not rank high, nor, to find a reason for the Arioi, did he go back of +Satan’s ceaseless seeking whom he may devour. + +<p id="d0e9427">Bovis, a Frenchman, world traveled, having seen perhaps the frescos of Pompeii, and familiar with the histories of old Egypt, +India, Greece, Persia, and Rome, knew that Sodom and Gomorrah had their replicas in all <span id="d0e9429" class="pageno">page 408</span>times, and that often such conduct as that of the Arioi was associated among ancient or primitive peoples with artistic and +interesting manifestations. + +<p id="d0e9432">He searched the memories of the old men and women for other things than abominations, and gave the Arioi a good name for possession +of many excellent qualities and for a rare development of histrionic ability. But more than being mere mimes and dancers, +the Arioi were the warriors, the knights of that day and place, the men-at-arms, the chosen companions of the king and chiefs, +and in general the bravest and most cultivated of the Tahitians. They were an extended round-table for pleasure in peace and +for counsel and deeds of derring-do in war. The society was a nursery of chivalry, a company which recruited, but did not +reproduce themselves. They had a solid basis, and lasted long because the society kept out of politics. + +<p id="d0e9435">The members never forgot the duty due their chiefs. They accompanied them in their enterprises, and they killed their fellow-members +in the enemy’s camp, as Masons fought Masons in the American Civil War and in the wars of Europe. In peace they were epicures. +They consorted together only for pleasure and comfort in their reunions. The Arioi made their order no stepping-stone to power +or office, but in it swam in sensuous luxury, each giving his talents to please his fellows and to add luster to his society. + +<p id="d0e9438">To the English missionaries who converted the Tahitians to the Christian faith the Arioi adherent was the chief barrier, the +fiercest opponent, and, when won over, the most enthusiastic neophyte. In that is found the secret of the society’s strength. +It embraced all the <span id="d0e9440" class="pageno">page 409</span>imaginative, active, ambitious Tahitians, to whom it gave opportunities to display varied talents, to form close friendships, +to rise in rank, to meet on evener terms those more aristocratic in degree, and, above all, to change the monotony of their +existence by eating, drinking, and being merry in company, and all at the expense of the other fellow. But—and the more you +study the Polynesian, the subtler are his strange laws and taboos—the main provision in the Arioi constitution was undoubtedly +conceived in the desire to prevent over-population. + +<p id="d0e9443">Pepe, the woman of Tuatini, had returned to the ways of the Arioi because her husband had adopted the white convention of +jealousy and monogamy. Only Tahitians like Tetuanui now knew anything about the order, and so many generations had they been +taught shame of it that the very name was unspoken, as that of the mistletoe god was among the Druids after St. Patrick had +accomplished his mission in Ireland. +<span id="d0e9445" class="pageno">page 410</span> + +<h1 id="d0e9449">Chapter XX</h1> +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e9456">Rupert Brooke and I discuss Tahiti—We go to a wedding feast—How the cloth was spread—What we ate and drank—A Gargantuan feeder—Songs +and dances of passion—The royal feast at Tetuanui’s—I leave for Vairao—Butscher and the Lermontoffs. + +</div> +<p id="d0e9460">At Mataiea weeks passed without incident other than those of the peaceful, pleasant round of walking, swimming, fishing, thinking, +and refreshing slumber. My mind dismissed the cares of the mainland, and the interests thrust upon me there—business, convention, +the happenings throughout the world. I achieved to a degree the state in which body and spirit were pliant instruments for +the simple needs and indulgences of my being, and my mind, relieved of the cark of custom in advanced communities, considered, +and clarified as never before, the values of life. It was as if one who had been confined indoors for years at a task supervised +by critical guardians was moved to a beautiful garden with only laughing children for playmates and a kindly nature alone +for contemplation and guide. + +<p id="d0e9463">Brooke, who was busied an hour or two a day at poems and letters, and was physically active most of the time, spoke of this +with me. There were few whites in Tahiti outside Papeete except in the suburbs. The French in the time of Louis le Debonnaire +and of all that period thought nature unbeautiful. The nation has ever been afraid of it, but let natural thoughts be <span id="d0e9465" class="pageno">page 411</span>freely spoken and written, and natural acts be less censured than elsewhere. Even in late years their conception of nature +has been that of the painter Corot, delicate, tender, and sad; not free and primitive. They had possessed Tahiti scores of +years, and yet one hardly saw a Frenchman, and never a Frenchwoman, in the districts. The French seldom ever ventured in the +sea or the stream or to the reef. Other Europeans and Americans found those interesting, at least, a little. Brooke and I +swam every day off the wharf of the <i>çhefferie</i>. The water was four or five fathoms deep, dazzling in the vibrance of the Southern sun, and Brooke, a brilliant blond, gleamed +in the violet radiancy like a dream figure of ivory. We dived into schools of the vari-colored fish, which we could see a +dozen feet below, and tried to seize them in our hands, and we spent hours floating and playing in the lagoon, or lying on +our backs in the sun. We laughed at his native name, Pupure, which means fair, and at the titles given Tahiti by visitors: +the New Cytherea by Bougainville, a russet Ireland by McBirney, my fellow voyager on the <i>Noa-Noa</i> and Aph-Rhodesia by a South-African who had fought the Boers and loved the Tahitian girls and who now idled with us. Brooke, +as we paddled over the dimpled lagoon, quoted the Greek for an apt description, the innumerable laughter of the waves. Brooke +had been in Samoa, and was about to leave for England after several months in Tahiti. He wrote home that he had found the +most ideal place in the world to work and live in. On the wide veranda he composed three poems of merit, “The Great Lover,” +“Tiare Tahiti,” and “Retrospect.” He could understand the Polynesian, and he loved the race, <span id="d0e9473" class="pageno">page 412</span>and hated the necessity of a near departure. Their communism in work he praised daily, their singing at their tasks, and their +wearing of flowers. We had in common admiration of those qualities and a fervor for the sun. For his Greek I gave him St. +Francis’s canticle, which begins: +<div class="blockquote"> +<a id="d0e9481"></a><h1>Chapter </h1> +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e9485">Laudate sie, mi signore, cum tuote le tue creature, +<br id="d0e9488">Spetialmente messer lo frate sole. + +<p id="d0e9492">Praised be my Lord, with all his creatures, and especially our brother the Sun, our sister the Moon, our brother the Wind, +our sister Water, who is very serviceable unto us and humble and chaste and clean; our brother Fire, our mother Earth, and +last of all for our sister Death. + +</div> + +<p id="d0e9500">We remarked that while we plunged into the sea bare, Tahitians never went completely nude, and they were more modest in hiding +their nakedness than any white people we had ever met. They could not accede to the custom of Americans and Englishmen of +public school education when bathing among males of stripping to the buff and standing about without self-consciousness. The +chief had said that in former times men retained their <i>pareus</i> except when they went fishing, at which time they wore a little red cap. He did not know whether this was a ceremonial to +propitiate the god of fishes or to ward off evil spirits in scales. Man originated on the seashore, and many of the most primitive +habits of humans, as well as their bodily differences from the apes, came from their early life there. Man pushed back from +the salt water slowly. + +<p id="d0e9506">The official affairs of the <i>çhefferie</i>, beyond the repair of roads and bridges, were few. Crime among Tahitians being almost unknown, the chief’s duties as magistrate +<span id="d0e9511" class="pageno">page 413</span>were negligible, and the family uttered many <i>aues</i> when I related to them the conditions of our countries, with murders, assaults, burglaries and rapine as daily news. The +French law required a civil ritual for marriage, and Tetuanui tied the legal knots in his district. I was at the <i>çhefferie</i> when a union was performed. The bride and groom were of the middle class of prosperous landholders. They arrived in an automobile +wonderfully adorned with flowers, with great bouquets of roses and ferns on the lamps. They were accompanied by cars and carriages +filled with their families and friends. The bride was in a white-lace dress from Paris, with veil and orange-blossoms, and +the groom in a heavy black frock-coat over white drill trousers with lemon-colored, tight shoes; both looking very ill at +ease and hot. The father of the groom must have us to the church and to the wedding feast, so Brooke and I rode in a cart, +I on the mother’s lap, and the poet on the knees of the father. The jollity of the <i>arearea</i> was already apparent, and the father vainly whipped his horse to outspeed the automobile. All the vehicles raced along the +road and into the yard of the Protestant church of Mataiea at top gait. + +<p id="d0e9523">It was the season of assemblage of the <i>manu patia</i>, the wasps brought from abroad, and quite ten thousand were clustered on the church ceiling, while thousands more patrolled +the air just over our heads, courting and quarreling, buzzing and alighting on our heads and necks. The preacher in a knee-length +Prince Albert of black wool, opened so that I saw he had nothing but an undershirt beneath, recited the ceremony and addressed +the couple. He took a ring from his trousers-pocket, unwrapping <span id="d0e9528" class="pageno">page 414</span>and opening its box. A bridesmaid in a rose-colored satin gown had taken off the bride’s glove, and the pastor put the ring +upon her finger. A number of young men acted as aids and witnesses, and all who stood were pounced upon by the wasps. They +betrayed no evidence of nervousness, but at the installation of the ring, the groom, with a desperate motion, tore off his +stiff collar and bared his robust neck. He did not replace it that day. The bride’s mother wept upon my shoulder throughout +the quarter of an hour. Not a trace was indicated of the old wedding customs of the Tahitians, as Christianity had effaced +them rigorously, and though the Tahitians had had plenty of ceremonies for all public acts, as had the Greeks and Romans, +many had been forgotten under the scourge of orthodoxy before any white wrote freely of the island. They are lost to record +with the old language. + +<p id="d0e9531">After the rite, all made a dash for their equipages, and raced for the bride’s home, where, as customary, the <i>fête champêtre</i> was given. Again on mama’s lap, and Brooke on papa’s, both ample, we hurried, the <i>bon père</i> not averse to taking a wheel off the bridal party’s motor-car. With cries of delight we drove into a great cocoanut-grove, +and a thousand feet back from the Broom Road emerged into a sunlit, but shady, clearing. <i>Huro!</i> the banquet was already being spread. From different parts of the plantation men came bearing huge platters of roasted pig, +chicken, <i>taro</i>, breadfruit, and <i>feis</i>, with bamboo tubes of the <i>taiaro</i> sauce like the reeds of a great pipe-organ. Caldrons of shrimp, crabs, prawns, and lobsters bubbled, and monstrous heaps +of tiny oysters were being opened. Fresh <span id="d0e9551" class="pageno">page 415</span>fruit was in rich hoards: bananas, oranges, custard-apples, <i>papayas</i>, pomegranates, mangoes, and guavas. + +<p id="d0e9557">A magnificent bower a hundred feet long, broad and high, had been erected of bamboo and gigantic leaves. It was similar to +a temple builded by the ardent worshipers of Dionysus to celebrate the vine-god’s feast. The roof of green thatch was supported +on a score of the slender pillars of the <i>ohe</i>, the golden bamboo, and there were neither sides nor doors. The pillars were wreathed with ferns and orchids from the forest +near by, and on the sward between them were spread a series of yellow mats woven in the Paumotu atolls. They carpeted the +green floor of the temple, and upon them, in the center, the graceful leaves of the cocoanut stretched to mark the division +of the vis-à-vis. + +<p id="d0e9563">From these long leaves rose graduated alabaster columns, the inner stalks of the banana-plants, and on them were fastened +flowers and ornaments, fanciful creations of the hands of Tahitian women, fashioned of brilliant leaves and of bamboo-fiber +and the glossy white arrowroot-fiber. From the top of each column floated the silken film of the snowy <i>reva-reva</i>, the exquisite component of the interior of young cocoa-palm-leaves, a gossamer substance the extraction of which is as difficult +as the blowing of glass goblets. <i>Varos</i>, marvelously spiced, prawns, and crayfish, garlanded the bases of these sylvan shafts, all highly decorative, and within +reach of their admirers. + +<p id="d0e9572">The stiff hand of the white which had garbed the wedding party in the ungraceful clothing of the European mode had failed +to pose the natural attitude of the Tahitian toward good cheer. +<span id="d0e9574" class="pageno">page 416</span> + +<p id="d0e9577">A pile of breadfruit-leaves were laid before each feaster’s space in lieu of plates, and four half-cocoanut-shells, containing +drinking water, cocoanut-milk, grated ripe cocoanut, and sea-water. The last two were to be mixed to sauce the dishes, and +the empty one filled with fresh water for a finger-bowl. + +<p id="d0e9580">The bride and groom sat at the head of the leafy board, their intimates about them, and the pastor, who had joined them, stood +a few moments with bowed head and closed eyes to invoke the blessing of God upon the revel, as did the <i>orero</i>, the pagan priest of Tahiti a few generations ago. The pastor and I, with the owner of the Atimaona plantation and a Mr. +Davey, had had an appetizer a moment before. + +<p id="d0e9586">We all sat on the mats according to bodily habit, the lithe natives on their heels, the grosser ones and we whites with legs +crossed, and with the minister’s raising of his head we fell to, with ease of position, and no artificial instruments to embarrass +our hands. We transferred each to his own breadfruit-leaves what he desired from the stores in the center, meat and vegetables +and fruit, and seasoned it as we pleased. New leaves brought by boys and girls constantly replaced used ones, and the shells +of salt and fresh water were refilled. + +<p id="d0e9589">Barrels of white and red wine had been decanted into bottles, and with American and German beer stood in phalanges beside +the milky banana columns, and from these all replenished their polished beakers of the dark nuts. + +<p id="d0e9592">The oysters, of a flavor equaling any of America or Europe, were minute and of a greenish-copper hue, and <span id="d0e9594" class="pageno">page 417</span>we removed them with our tongues, draining the ambrosial juice with each morsel, and ate twenty or thirty each. The fish was +steeped in lime-juice, not cooked, and flavored with the cocoanut sauce and wild chillies. The crayfish were curried with +the curry plant of the mountains, the shrimp were eaten raw or boiled, and the goldfish were baked. + +<p id="d0e9597">The sucking pig and fowl had been baked in a native <i>umu</i>, or oven, on hot stones, and the <i>taro</i> and yams steamed with them. <i>Taro</i> tops were served with cocoanut cream. One was not compelled by any absurd etiquette to choose these dishes in any sequence. +My left-hand neighbor was indifferent in choice, and ate everything nearest to him first, and without order, taking <i>feis</i> or bananas or a goldfish, dozens of shrimps, a few prawns, a crayfish, and several <i>varos</i>, but informing me, with a caress of his rounded stomach, that he was saving most of his hunger for the chicken, pig, and +<i>poi</i>. He was a Tahitian of middle age, with a beaming face, and happy that I spoke his tongue. When the pig and <i>poi</i> were set before us, he devoured large quantities of them. The <i>poi</i> was in calabashes, and was made of ripe breadfruit pounded until dough with a stone pestle in a wooden trough, then baked +in leaves in the ground, and, when cooked, mixed with water and beaten and stirred until a mass of the consistency of a glutinous +custard. He and I shared a calabash, and his adroitness contrasted with my inexperience in taking the <i>poi</i> to our mouths. He dipped his forefinger into the <i>poi</i>, and withdrew it covered with the paste, twirled it three times and gave it a fillip, which left no remnant to dangle <span id="d0e9629" class="pageno">page 418</span>when the index was neatly cleaned between his lips. Custom was to lave the finger in the fresh-water shell before resuming +relations with the <i>poi</i>. + +<p id="d0e9635">My handsome neighbor ate four times as much as I, and I was hungry. His appetite was not unusual among these South Sea giants. +I noticed that he ate more than three pounds of pig and a quart of <i>poi</i> after all his previous devastation of shellfish, <i>feis</i>, chicken, and <i>taro</i>, besides two fish as big as both my hands. My right-hand neighbor was Mr. Davey, an urbane and unreserved American, who informed +me in a breath that he was a dentist, a graduate of Harvard University, seventy-two years old, and had been in Tahiti forty-two +years. He called his granddaughter of eighteen to meet me, and she brought her infant. Only he of his tribe could speak English, +but she talked gaily in French. + +<p id="d0e9647">He practised his profession, he said, but with some difficulty, as the eminent Acting-Consul Williams had by law a monopoly +of dentistry in the French possessions in the South Seas. The monopoly had been certified to by the courts after a controversy +between them, but his Honor Willi did not enforce the prohibition except as to Papeete, and besides was very rich, and had +more patients than he could possibly attend. + +<p id="d0e9650">At the lower end of the mats the bachelors sat,—there were only three whites at the feast,—and merriment had its home there. +After the first onslaught, the vintages of Bordeaux and of the Rhineland, and the brews of Munich and Milwaukee shared attention +with the viands. The head of the mats had a sedate atmosphere, because of the several preachers there, and those Tahitians +ambitious to shine in a diaconal way <span id="d0e9652" class="pageno">page 419</span>talked seriously of the problems of the church, of future <i>himenes</i>, and the waywardness of those who “knew not the fear of Ietu-Kirito.” Their indications of grief at the hardness of the heathens’ +hearts grew more lively as they sipped the wine, thinking perhaps of that day when the Master and the disciples did the same +at another wedding feast. + +<p id="d0e9658">Soon their voices were drowned by the low notes of an accordion and the chanting by the bachelors of an ancient love-song +of Tahiti. Miri and Caroline and Maraa, being of Mataiea, had returned for this <i>arearea</i>, and were seated with the young men. The Tahitians are charitable in their regard of very open peccadilloes, especially those +animated by passion or a desire for amusement, thinking probably that were stones to be thrown only by the guiltless, there +would be none to lift one; certainly no white in Tahiti. The dithyramb of a bacchanal sounded, and the outlaw dentist was +reminded of his former intimate friend, King Pomaré the Fifth. + +<p id="d0e9664">“I was a bosom chum of the king,” he said confidentially as he poured me a shell of Burgundy. “He was much maligned. He drank +too much for his health, but so do almost all kings, from what I’ve read and seen. Lord! what a man he was! He’d sit around +all night while the <i>hula</i> boomed, applauding this or that dancer, and seeing that the booze circulated. He was a fish, that’s a fact. He never had +enough, and he could stow away a cask. Good-hearted! When he would go to the districts he always sent word when he had laid +out his course, and after a few days in each place he would go on with his crowd. He paid for <span id="d0e9669" class="pageno">page 420</span>everything except, of course, gifts of fruit and fish. Every night there would be a big time, dancing and drinking. Jiminy! +But times were different then. Look at me! I’ve lived freely all my life, and I am over forty years here, but you wouldn’t +know I was past seventy. It’s the climate and not worrying or being worried about clothes or sin.” + +<p id="d0e9672">The bride had long since left the table, removed her shoes, and put on a Mother Hubbard gown. She and her mother I saw having +a bite together in private comfort. + +<p id="d0e9675">There were many speeches by Tahitians, most of them long, and some referring to the happy couple and their progeny in the +quaint way of the medieval French in the chamber scenes after marriage, as related in story and drama. The pastors depressed +their mouths, the deacons filled theirs with food to stifle their laughter, and the groom was the subject of flattering raillery. +The women did not sit down, because mostly occupied in the service; but the hetairæ, Miri, Caroline, and Maraa, entertained +the bachelors without criticism or competition. The Tahitian women had no jealousy of these wantons, or, at least, no condemnation +of them. They have always had the place in Polynesia that certain ancient nations gave them, half admired and half tolerated. +They had official note once a year when the most skilful of them received the government <i>cachet</i> for excellence in dances before the governor and his cabinet celebrating the fall of the Bastile. They became quite as well +known in their country by their performance on those festal days as our greatest dancers or actresses. + +<p id="d0e9681">When the mats became deserted, and the pastors had <span id="d0e9683" class="pageno">page 421</span>taken their carts for their homes, a little elated but still quoting holy writ, the nymphs and a dozen other girls of seething +mirth took possession of the temple with a score of young men, and sang their love-songs and set the words to gesture and +somatic harmony. Brooke and I lay and mused as we listened and gazed. When a youth crowned with ferns began to play a series +of flageolets with his nose, the poet put his foot on mine. + +<p id="d0e9686">“We are on Mount Parnassus,” he whispered. “The women in faun skins will enter in a moment, swinging the thyrsus and beating +the cymbals. Pan peeps from behind that palm. Those are his pipes, as sure as Linus went to the dogs.” + +<p id="d0e9689">I met others of the royal family than the former queen, Marao, and her daughters, the Princesses Tekau and Boots, at an <i>amuraa maa</i> given at the mansion of Tetuanui. The preparations occupied several days, and we all assisted in the hunt for the oysters, +shrimp, crabs, <i>mao</i>, and fish, going by twos and threes to the lagoon, the reef, the stream, and the hills for their rarest titbits. The pigs +and fowl were out of the earth by the day of the feast, and Haamoura and Tatini set the table, a real one on legs. The veranda +was elegantly decorated with palms, but the table was below stairs in the cooler, darker, unwalled rooms, on the black pebbles +brought from a far-away beach. The pillars of the house were hung with banana-leaves and ferns, but the atmosphere was not +vividly gay because of the high estate and age of Tetuanui and his visitors. + +<p id="d0e9698">The company arrived in automobiles, conspicuous among them Hinoe Pomaré, the big hobbledehoy son of Prince Hinoe, and, next +to his father, heir to the throne. <span id="d0e9700" class="pageno">page 422</span>With him was his sister, Tetuanui, who was departing for Raratonga, and her husband. He was a brother of Cowan, the prize-fighter, +and in their honor was the luncheon. Introduced to all by the chief of Mataiea, I was asked to sit with them. The group was +extraordinarily interesting, for besides the prince’s heir and his sister, Chief Tetuanui, and his brother-in-law Charlie +Ling, was Paraita, son of a German schooner captain, who was adopted by Pomaré V, and Tinau, another adopted son of the late +king, who owned, and ran for hire, a motor-car. There were other men, but among the women, all of whom sat below the humblest +man, myself, was the Princesse de Joinville of Moorea, mother of Prince Hinoe, and grandmother of the youth at the head of +the table, and of the boy, Ariipae, who attended to the chief’s garden. + +<p id="d0e9703">This grandmother, known as Vahinetua Roriarii, was one of the very last survivors among the notable figures of the kingdom. +She had a cigarette in the corner of her sunken mouth, but she tossed it away when she and Haamoura, the chief’s wife, kissed +each other on both cheeks in the French way. The Princesse de Joinville was tottering, but with something in her face, a disdain, +a trace of power, that attracted me before I knew her rank or history. Her once raven hair was streaked with gray, she trembled, +and her step was feeble; but all her weaknesses and blemishes impressed me as the disfigurement by age and abrasion of a beautiful +and noble statue. She was more savage-looking than any modern Tahitian woman, more aboriginal, and yet more subtle. I once +contemplated in the jungle of Johore an old tigress just trapped, but marked and wounded <span id="d0e9705" class="pageno">page 423</span>by the pit and the blows of her captors. She looked at me coolly, but with a glint in her eye that meant, I thought, contempt +for all that had occurred since her last hour of freedom. + +<p id="d0e9708">In the curious network of lines all over the worn face of the princess there were suggestions of the sensual lure that had +made her the mistress of the court; a gentle but pitiful droop to the mouth that I had noticed persisting in the roués and +sirens of Asia after senility had struck away all charm. The princess refused a third glass of wine at the table, but smoked +incessantly, and listened absent-mindedly to the music and the songs. Her thoughts may have been of those mad nights of orgy +which Davey, the dentist, and Brault, the composer, had described. Her cigarettes were of native tobacco wrapped in pandanus +leaf, as the South American wraps his in corn husk. They were short; merely a few puffs. + +<p id="d0e9711">Afa, the <i>tane</i> of the lovely Evoa of the Annexe, brought to the luncheon Annabelle Lee, the buxom wife of Lovaina’s negro chauffeur. She +was a quadroon, a belle of dark Kentucky, with more than a touch of the tar-brush in her skin and hair, and her gaudy clothes +and friendly manner had won the Tahitians completely. She was receiving much attention wherever she went in Tahiti, for she +had the fashion and language and manners of the whites, as they knew them, and yet was plainly of the colored races. The chauffeur +himself, a self-respecting negro, had sat at table with Lovaina many times. There was in Tahiti no color-line. In America +a man with a drop of colored blood in his veins is classed as a colored man; in Cuba a drop of white <span id="d0e9716" class="pageno">page 424</span>blood makes him a white man. The whites honor their own pigment in all South America, but in the United States count the negro +blood as more important. In Tahiti all were color-blind. + +<p id="d0e9719">The <i>amuraa maa</i> was over in a few hours. There were no speeches, but much laughter, and much singing of the <i>himene</i> written by the king, “<i>E maururu a vau!</i>” + +<p id="d0e9731">The tune was an old English hymn, but those were all the words of the song, and they meant, “I am so happy!” They were verses +worthy of monarchy anywhere, and equaled the favorite of great political gatherings in America, “We’re here because we’re +here!” + +<p id="d0e9734">“When I was made chief of Mataiea,” said Tetuanui, reminiscently to me as we sang, “I went, as was the custom, to Papeete +to drink with the king. He had just fallen down a stairway while drunk, and injured himself severely, so that our official +drinking was limited. He hated stairs, anyhow, but his trouble was that he mixed his drinks. That is suicidal. He would empty +into a very large punch-bowl champagne, beer, absinthe, claret, whisky and any other <i>boissons</i>, and drink the compound from a goblet. He could hold gallons. He was dead in two weeks after I had my chiefly toasts with +him. His body was like an old calabash in which you have kept liquor for a quarter of a century. We had no alcohol until the +whites brought it.” Tetuanui ended with a line of Brault’s song about Pomaré: “<i>Puisqu’il est mort ... N’en parlons plus!</i>” + +<p id="d0e9743">Mataiea was the farthest point on Tahiti from Papeete I had reached, and wishing to see more of the island, I set out on foot +with Tatini, my handmaid. We bade good-bye to Tetuanui and Haamoura and all the family <span id="d0e9745" class="pageno">page 425</span>after the dawn breakfast. Mama Tetuanui cried a few moments from the pangs of separation, and the chief wrung my hand sorrowfully, +though I was to be back in a few days. + +<p id="d0e9748">From the reef at Mataiea I had glimpsed the south-west of Tahiti, the lower edge of the handle of the fan-shaped double isle, +mountainous and abrupt in form, and called commonly the <i>presqu’ile de Taiarapu</i>. The chief said that at the isthmus of Taravao, the junction of the fan and handle, there was the Maison des Varos, a famous +roadhouse, kept by M. Butscher, where one might have the best food in Tahiti if one notified the host in advance. + +<p id="d0e9754">“One must wake him up,” said Tetuanui. “He is asleep most of the time.” + +<p id="d0e9757">I wrote him a letter, and on the day appointed, Tatini and I, barefooted, started. We went through Tetuanui’s breadfruit-grove, +and there, as wherever were choice growths, I stopped to examine and admire. No other tree except the cocoa equals the <i>maori</i> in usefulness and beauty. The cocoa will grow almost in the sea and in any soil, but the breadfruit demands humus and a slight +attention. The cocoas flourish on hundreds of atolls where man never sees them, but the <i>maoris</i> ask a clearing of the jungle about their feet. The timber of the breadfruit is excellent for canoes and for lumber, and its +leaves, thick and glossy, and eighteen inches long by a foot broad, are of account for many purposes, including thatch and +plates. There are half a hundred varieties, and each tree furnishes three or four crops a year, hundreds of fruits as big +and round as plum-puddings, green or yellow on the tree, pitted regularly like a <span id="d0e9765" class="pageno">page 426</span>golf-ball, in lozenge-shaped patterns. The bark of the young branches was used for making a tough <i>tapa</i>, native cloth, and resin furnishes a glue for calking watercraft. The tree bears in the second or third year, is hardy, but +yields its life to a fungus, for which there is no remedy except, according to the natives, a lovely lily that grows in the +forest. Transplanted, at the roots of the maori, the lily heals its disease and drives away the parasite. The missionaries +cited this as a parable of Christianity, which would save from damnation the convert no matter how fungusy he was with sin. +In tribal wars the enemy laid a sea-slug at the heart of the maori, and, its foe unseen, the tree perished from the corruption +of the hideous trepang. + +<p id="d0e9771">Papeari, the next district west of Mataiea, was well watered, as its name signified, and we passed cows and sheep and horses +grazing under the trees or in pastures of lush grass. Swamps had been ditched and drained, and there was evidence of unusual +energy in agriculture. The country gained in tropical aspect as we approached the narrow strip of land which is the nexus +of Tahiti-nui and Tahiti-iti, of the blade and the handle of the fan. Tahitian mythology does not agree with geology, any +more than does the catechism; for though the scientists aver that these separate isles were not united until ages after their +formation, a legend ran that at one time the union was complete, but that a sea-god conceived a hatred for the inhabitants +of the Presqu’ile of Taiarapu, the fearless clans of the Teva-i-tai and the Te-Ahupo. + +<p id="d0e9774">One very dark night when the moon was in the ocean cavern of this evil <i>Atua</i>, he began his horrid labors to sever the tie. He smote the rocks from the foundations, <span id="d0e9779" class="pageno">page 427</span>and the people heard in terror throughout the night the thunders of his blows. He had almost achieved his task when the goodly +sun-god appeared over the mountains far in advance of his usual time, and blinded the Titan so that he sought safety beneath +the ocean. Tatini showed me the fearful signs of the demon’s fury. Monstrous masses of rock were in the sea, and the isthmus +was reduced to a mere mile of width, an extensive bay filling the demolished area. The deep inlet of Port Phaëton swept in +there like the Gulf of Corinth in Greece. All this peninsula of Taiarapu was ceded to Captain Cook. He called it Tiaraboo +in his journal, but he never took possession of his principality, realizing that the cession was in the fashion of the Spaniard +who says, “All I have is yours,” but would think you unmannerly to carry away anything of value. + +<p id="d0e9782">Port Phaëton is famed in the annals of the early French conquerors, for in it they anchored their warships, and the Paris +chauvinists dreamed of a navy-yard and a large settlement there. On the plateau of Taravao, a hilltop raised fifty feet, is +an old fort of the French, a solid construction against the stubborn Tahitians whom they insisted, with cannon and musket, +must receive Christianity through the French clergy of the Order of the Sacred Heart of Jesus instead of through English dissenters. +From the plateau we could see the immense extent of the forests, which rose almost from the water to the tops of the mountains. + +<p id="d0e9785">A dozen magnificent kinds of trees were all about us. The earth wore a verdant coat of grass, ferns, and vines, so profuse +and bright that by contrast a remembrance of the barren parts of America crossed my mind, with <span id="d0e9787" class="pageno">page 428</span>the fulsome praise of them by the pious thieves of that region who sell them. It would be impossible and cruel, I reflected, +to convey to those extravagants in adjectives the richness of herbage and the brilliancy of scene about the isthmus. The vegetation +was ampler than anywhere else in Tahiti. + +<p id="d0e9790">The <i>tamanu</i>-, the <i>hotu</i>-, and the <i>mape</i>-trees were in abundance. The <i>tamanu</i> yields <i>tacamac</i>, a yellow, resinous substance with a strong odor and a bitter, aromatic taste, that is used as incense and in ointments. +The Tahitians call the <i>tamanu</i> the healing-tree. It grows just above high water on any kind of shore, embowering, with dark foliage, and peculiarly easeful +in midday on the hot sands. I have had a <i>tamanu</i>-leaf soaked in fresh water laid upon my eye inflamed by too long a vigil in the sun on the reef. The small gray ball within +its round green fruit affords a greenish oil that is a liniment of wizardry for bruises, stiffness, rheumatism, and fevers. +In every house was a gourd stored with it. + +<p id="d0e9814">The <i>mape</i>, the Tahitian chestnut, grew farther from the water, a powerful, commanding figure, with flowers of sublimated sweetness, +and with it the <i>tiairi</i>, or <i>tutui</i>-tree, covered with blossoms, like white lilac, and bearing nuts with oily kernels. It is the candlenut-tree, which has furnished +lights for Tahitians since they wandered to these latitudes. The nuts are baked to make brittle their shell, and the kernels +of walnut size easily extracted and pierced. Strung on the midrib of a palm-leaf, the combination makes wax and wick, and +has lighted many a council and many a dance in Polynesia. + +<p id="d0e9826">The <i>pandanus</i> likes the coral sand, and is in appearance a tree out of a dream. It grows twenty feet high <span id="d0e9831" class="pageno">page 429</span>and stands on aërial roots resembling inclined stilts. The leaves are in tufts at the tips of the branches, set like a screw, +twisting around the stem in graceful curves, and marking the stem with a spiral pattern from the root upward. The leaves are +edged with spines. The wood is close, hard, and hollow, and full of oil. From the pandanus are made posts five or six inches +through. The leaves, four or five feet long, are torn into strips for making hats, thatch, mats, and canoe sails. They are +steeped in sea-water, and beaten with a mallet to remove the green outer skin, the residue being white, silken fiber. This +is dyed to weave hats and belts. The aërial roots are crushed to make a tougher fiber for ropes, baskets, and mats. The fruit +is something like a coarse pineapple, and the blossoms are very fragrant. The ripe fruit is crimson, and strings like beads +into favorite necklaces. The fruit separates into cones, and one chews the inner end like licorice, while, when dried, the +kernels can be ground into a brown, sweet flour for cakes, a wholesome, nourishing food, but esteemed only in more barren +islands, where fish and cocoanuts are the principal diet. From the fruit is distilled a fiery liquor that the early whalers +taught the line islanders to drink. + +<p id="d0e9834">At the isthmus was the only crossing of the belt or, Broom Road, about Tahiti. One had to choose the left or the right, and +we wound to the right to reach the <i>Maison des Varos</i>. To the left we could have gone to Tautira, famous as the last stand of the god Oro against the cross, and still under the +chieftaincy of Ori-a-Ori, with whom R.L.S. and his family lived several months. +<span id="d0e9839" class="pageno">page 430</span> + +<p id="d0e9842">The road was a fairy-tale brightly illuminated by plantation, jungle, and garden, by reef and eyot. The sea lapped gently +on sand as white as the fleecy clouds. Carts of Chinese and Tahitians passed, carrying their owners and produce. The Chinese +said, “<i>Yulanna</i>!” for “<i>Ia ora na</i>!” and the natives called to us to eat with them in their near-by homes. But we walked on, saying, “<i>Ua maururu</i>!” “Much obliged!” + +<p id="d0e9854">M. Butscher had a good-sized, rambling house, with verandas for dining, and bedrooms for sleep. We found him on his largest +table, lying flat on his back, and contemplating, in the eternal and perplexing way of the Polynesians. The Daibutsu, the +great Buddha of Kamakura, had no more peaceful, meditative aspect than had the Taravao taverner. He was long and meager, as +dry as a cocoanut from the copra oven, as if all the juices of his body and soul had been expressed in his years of cooking +the sea-centipedes for which he was celebrated. Tatini addressed him slowly: “<i>Bocshair, ia ora na</i>!” + +<p id="d0e9860">He sat up stiffly, and regarded us with indifference. He was cast for an old and withered Mephistopheles, his lines all downward, +his few teeth fangs, and his smile a threatening leer, as if he thought of a joke he could not tell to decent visitors, but +which almost choked him to withhold. His clothes were rags, and his naked feet like the flippers of seals. He opened his mouth, +yawned, and said, “<i>Iiii</i>,” a word which means, “I slept with my eyes open.” + +<p id="d0e9866">He settled back upon the table, and became immersed again in reverie. On the floor by the kitchen was a Tahitian woman with +a baby and a pandanus-basket of <span id="d0e9868" class="pageno">page 431</span> +<i>varos</i>. They squirmed and wriggled, contorted and crackled like giant thousand-legs, and almost excited in me a repulsion. + +<p id="d0e9874">The <i>vahiné</i> laughed at me. + +<p id="d0e9880">“I fished for them with a dozen grapnels,” she said. “It was good fishing to-day. I put a piece of fish on each group of hooks. +You know those holes are very small at the top and under two or three feet of water. Not many know how to find them. I set +a grapnel in each hole, and then returned to the first to pull out the <i>varo</i>. I have more than twenty here.” + +<p id="d0e9886">Butscher rose, and sluggishly began to prepare the breakfast. He wrapped the <i>varos</i> in <i>hotu</i>-leaves, and put them in the <i>umu</i> to steam on the red-hot stones, and began to open oysters and fry fish in brown butter, as Tatini and I hastened to the beach +for a bath. The sea was studded with coral growth, and sponges by the thousand, and we sat on these soft cushions under the +surface, and watched the little fishes’ antics, and chatted. Tatini had gathered half a dozen <i>nono</i>, a fruit that has a smooth skin and no stone, and she threw them at me. + +<p id="d0e9901">“Do you know about the <i>nono</i>?” she asked merrily. “It was in our courtship. When a crowd of young men were gathered to bathe in the pools or to lie on +the banks under the shade of the trees, suddenly a missile struck one of them on the shoulder. The others began to shout at +him and to sing, for it was a sign that a <i>vahiné</i> had chosen him. He jumped to his feet and ran in the direction of the hidden thrower, and she ran, too, but no farther than +away from the eyes of the others.” + +<p id="d0e9910">“Tatini,” I said, “the <i>nono</i> was the Tahitian arrow of a little fat god we have called Cupid.” +<span id="d0e9915" class="pageno">page 432</span> + +<p id="d0e9918">“<i>Aue!</i>” she replied. “It was not always <i>oaoa</i> for him, because it might be an old woman, or some one he did not like, but who loved him. The Arii, the aristocratic ladies, +no matter how old, threw <i>nono</i> at the youngest and handsomest youth, and they had to pursue them, because of good manners. You know, Maru, that an illegitimate +child is called to-day <i>taoranono</i>, and <i>taora</i> means to throw.” + +<p id="d0e9936">“When I was in Hawaii,” I told her, “the old natives used to talk of a game there which, under King Kalakaua, their next to +last sovereign, was played at night in Iolani palace or in the garden, but a ball of twine took the place of the <i>nono</i>, and all stood about, men and women, in a circle, to speed and receive the token of passion. The missionaries severely condemned +the game.” + +<p id="d0e9942">At the <i>Maison des varos</i> I breakfasted alone, for Tatini was too shy to break the taboo that separated the sexes at meals. Butscher waited on me, +bringing one plate of ambrosia after another—oysters, shrimp, <i>varos</i>, and fish. I warmed his frigid blood with a cup or two of Pol Roger, 1905, a bottle of which he dragged from a cave. + +<p id="d0e9951">“I am born in Papenoo,” he volunteered, “fifty-three years ago. My father came from Alsace seventy-five years ago, when Tahiti +had not many white people. I am a tinsmith, but I gave up that business many years ago to keep this <i>maison</i>. I was a catechist in the Catholic church here nine years, teaching the ignorant. I gave it up; it didn’t pay. I got nothing +out of it. I worked about the church, read the prayers, and led the service when the priest was not there, and I never made +<span id="d0e9956" class="pageno">page 433</span>a penny. Everything for me was the future life. <i>Vous savez, monsieur, toute à l’avenir! Sacré!</i> what a fool I was! <i>Mais</i>, one day when I was lying on that table as you found me, I was <i>iiii</i>, and I dreamed that there was no hell and that I was a fool. I turned over a new leaf that moment. Now I never go near the +church, and the future can take care of itself. That’s my son-in-law going by in the cart. He’s the richest young man in Taravao. +Ah, <i>oui</i>! he’ll spend a hundred francs here with me in a week for drinks. That’s their baby.” + +<p id="d0e9971">Butscher’s leathern, yellow visage contracted in an appalling grin. + +<p id="d0e9974">“They have been married long?” I remarked politely. + +<p id="d0e9977">“<i>Mais</i>, they are not married yet,” replied the father-in-law. “There is no hurry.” + +<p id="d0e9983">Leaving Tatini to her own pleasures, I rented a horse and cart of Mephistopheles and drove into the district of Vairao. From +the outset I realized the iniquitous character of the Atua who had tried to destroy or set adrift the people of the <i>presqu’ile</i> of Taiarapu, for they were handsomer and, if possible, more hospitable than those of Tahiti-nui. The road was closer to the +water of the lagoon, and the reef and coral banks were nearer. I allowed the horse to go his own gait, and we jogged slowly, +stopping to browse and to consider the landscape. The beach was covered with seeds and pods, the square-shaped seeds of the +<i>Barringtonia</i> in their outer case of fiber, <i>tutui-nuts</i>, cocoanuts, flowers and bits of wood, and objects that would cause a naturalist to weep for lack of time. Our beaches of +the temperate zones are wastes compared with these, for not only were the sands strewn with a vast débris of forest and jungle, +<span id="d0e9994" class="pageno">page 434</span>but animal life abounded. The hermits toddled about, carrying their stolen shells, some as small as watch charms, and the +land-crabs fed on the <i>purau</i>and hibiscus-leaves. They are the scavengers of the shore, eating everything, and thus acting as conservators of health, as +do the lank pigs of the Philippines. They were in myriads, rushing about seemingly without purpose, and diving into their +holes beneath the palm-roots. Their legs, unshelled, are as excellent food as the crabs of the Atlantic. In the water a foot +or two away moved exquisite creatures, darting fish, and sailing craft—Portuguese men-of-war, and other almost intangible +shapes of pearly hue. + +<p id="d0e10000">The village of Vaieri is opposite the pass of Tapuaeraha. Far from the capital, and from the distractions of tourists and +bureaucracy, this tiny group of homes along the beach was less touched by the altering hand of the white than Mataica, its +setting and atmosphere affectingly unspoiled. There was a mildness, a reticence, a privacy surrounding the commune that bespoke +a gentle people, living to themselves. It was almost at the end of the belt road, which virtually terminated at Puforatiai. +Gigantic precipices, high cliffs, and rugged mountains forbade travel, and from a boat only could one see the extreme southern +end of Tahiti-nui Marearea, Great Tahiti the Golden, as it was called by its once proud race. + +<p id="d0e10003">Vaieri was environed by all the plants of this clime. They ran along the road and embosomed the houses. Guavas and oranges +were tangled with bananas, roses, reeds, <i>papayas</i>, and wild coffee. The blue <i>duranta</i> and <span id="d0e10011" class="pageno">page 435</span>the white oleander, the cool gray-green hibiscus with lemon-colored blossoms, the yellow <i>allamanda</i>, the trumpet lily, acacias, lilac <i>ipomaea</i>, tree ferns, and huge bird’s-nest ferns mingled with white convolvulus, and over all lifted groves of cocoas and the symmetrical +breadfruit. + +<p id="d0e10020">In this surrounding was a wooden house, built partly over the water, so that a seaward veranda extended into the lagoon, high +on posts, and commanded a view of the sea and the mountain. I saw on this veranda a more arresting figure of a white man than +I had before come upon in Tahiti. His body, clothed only in a <i>pareu</i>, was very brown, but his light beard and blue eyes proved his Nordic strain. He was of medium size, powerful, with muscles +rounded, but evident, under his satin skin, and with large hands and feet. He was reading a book, and as I ambled by, he raised +his head and looked at me with a serious smile. + +<p id="d0e10026">I checked the horse, and tied him to a candlenut-tree. I felt that I had arrived at the end of my journey. + +<p id="d0e10029">I spent the remainder of the day and the night there. The man and his wife were as stars on a black night, as music to a blind +bard. His name was Nicolai Lermontoff, born in Moscow, and his wife was an American, Alaska her place of birth, and of residence +most of her life. They were each about forty years old, and of extraordinary ease of manner and felicity of expression. + +<p id="d0e10032">“<i>Muy simpatica</i>,” had said the old Gipsy at the Generalife in Granada when I had spoken <i>bolee</i> with him. Lermontoff shook hands with me. His was as hard as leather, calloused as a sailor’s or a miner’s, and so contradicted +<span id="d0e10040" class="pageno">page 436</span>his balanced head, intellectual face, and general air of knowledge and world experience that I said: + +<p id="d0e10043">“You have the horniest palm in Tahiti.” + +<p id="d0e10046">“I am a planter,” he replied. “We have been here a few years, and after buying the ground I had to clear it, because it had +been permitted to go to bush. There were a few hundred cocoanut-trees, but nothing else worth while. I began at the highest +point and worked to the sea.” + +<p id="d0e10049">I drew from him that he had bought eighteen acres of land for twelve hundred dollars, and had spent most of a year in preparing +it for vanilla, cocoanuts, a few breadfruit, a small area of coffee and <i>taro</i>, and a vegetable patch. + +<p id="d0e10055">“We have very little money,” he explained, “and live largely on catches in the sea and stream, and fruit and vegetables, with +a dozen chickens for eggs. I pull at the net with the village. Actually, we figure that fifteen dollars a month covers our +expenditures. This house cost five hundred and eight dollars, but, of course, I did a lot of work on it. The chief items for +us are books, reviews, and postage.” + +<p id="d0e10058">Three walls of the house were covered with books, and the fourth stopped at the floor to make the wide veranda over the lagoon. + +<p id="d0e10061">Mrs. Lermontoff had on the <i>peignoir</i> of the natives, and was barefooted within the house, but wore sandals outside. She sat before a sewing-machine. + +<p id="d0e10067">“I am making a gown or two for a neighbor who is sick,” she said. “I do not give many hours to sewing. I like better the piano.” + +<p id="d0e10070">She knew all the Russian composers well, had studied <span id="d0e10072" class="pageno">page 437</span>at a conservatory in the German capital, and she also played Grieg for me with much feeling and a strong, yet delicate, touch. +For dinner we had a broiled fish, which I myself cooked on stones outside the house, and <i>tuparo</i>, mountain <i>feis</i> steamed and mashed into a golden pulp, with cocoanut cream. With these we ate boiled green <i>papaya</i>, which tasted like vegetable marrow; and for dessert sweet oranges with grated fresh cocoanut, and for drink, the wine of +the nut. + +<p id="d0e10084">After the food we sat and looked at the reef, the purple sea, and the stars, and talked. These two were weary of life in the +big countries of the world, and would rest in Tahiti. If they made enough money, they would like to go to America and work +for the revolution they hoped for. They did not believe in bringing it about by violence, but by acting on the Christ principle, +as they interpreted it. Yet they were not religionists. + +<p id="d0e10087">“Of course one is not sure of the aims and end of life,” said Lermontoff. “I have no greater certainty than the kaisers and +czars or your great men, Morgan and Rockefeller; but, at least, theirs are not worth while for the race of man. I hold that +man is the greatest product of life so far, and not government or trade. That the whirling spheres are made for man I disbelieve, +but on this planet, and in our ken, he is the object we most prize, and rightfully. Therefore to build him in health and character, +in talent and happiness, is all of existence. The life after death we are not sure of, but beauty is on earth, and to know +it and worship it in nature, and in man and his thoughts and deeds are our ends. The individual man gains only by sacrifice +for his fellows. He must give freely all he has. This is his only way out <span id="d0e10089" class="pageno">page 438</span>of the shadow that may be inherent in our growth, but in any event has been made certain by machinery and business control +of world ethics.” + +<p id="d0e10092">They were believers in the doctrines of Leo Tolstoi, and especially in non-resistance, and the possessing little or no property +to encumber their free souls. In the village they had become the guides of the Tahitians in the devious path of enforced civilization. + +<p id="d0e10095">Mrs. Lermontoff, in lamenting the Tahitian’s degradation, physical and spiritual, said that she was reminded always of the +Innuit, the Eskimo, among whom she and her husband had passed several years. + +<p id="d0e10098">“They are the most ethical, the most moral, the most communal people I know of,” she commented. “They have a quality of soul +higher than that of any other race, a quality reached by their slow development and constant struggle. I imagine they went +through a terrible ordeal in the more temperate zones farther south before they consented to be pushed into the frozen lands +of Canada, and then, following the caribou in the summer, to mush to the Arctic sea. There, while they had to change their +habits, clothing and food, to learn to live on the seal and the bear and the caribou in the midst of ice and snow, they were +spared for thousands of years the diseases and complexes of civilization, and reached a culture which is more worth while +than ours.” + +<p id="d0e10101">I was skeptical, but she quoted several eminent anthropologists to support her statement that the Eskimo were better developed +mentally than other people, and that in simplicity of life, honesty, generosity, provision for the young and the old, in absence +of brutality, murder and wars, they had a higher system of philosophy <span id="d0e10103" class="pageno">page 439</span>than ours, which admits hells, prisons, asylums, poor houses, bagnios, famines and wars, and fails even in the recurrent periods +of hard times to provide for those stricken by their lash. + +<p id="d0e10106">“But,” said Lermontoff, “the Innuit, too, is corrupting under the influence of trade, of alcohol, and the savage lust of the +white adventurer. He attained through many centuries, perhaps thousands of years, of separation from other peoples, and without +any of the softening teachings of Christianity, a Jesus-like code and practice, which the custodians of Christianity have +utterly failed to impress on the millions of their normal adherents.” + +<p id="d0e10109">I looked out upon the reef where the waves gleamed faintly, upon the scintillating nearer waters of the lagoon, and upon us, +barefooted, and clothed but for decency, and I had to jolt my brain to do justice to the furred and booted Eskimo in his igloo +of ice. The difference in surroundings was so opposite that I could barely picture his atmosphere climatological and moral. +I led the conversation back to their situation in Vaieri. + +<p id="d0e10112">He had planted his vanilla-vines on coffee-bushes, the vanilla being an orchid, a parasite, that creeps over the upstanding +plants, coffee, or the vermillion-tree. Lermontoff said that it was a precarious crop, a world luxury, the price of which +fluctuated alarmingly. Yet it was the most profitable in Tahiti, which produced half of all the vanilla-beans in the world. + +<p id="d0e10115">This man and woman made a deep impression upon me. They had seen cities everywhere, had had position and fashion, and were, +for their advanced kind, at peace. + +<p id="d0e10118">“We have no nerves here,” said Mrs. Lermontoff. <span id="d0e10120" class="pageno">page 440</span>“Our neighbors are all fishermen, and we are friends. We drink no wine, we want no tobacco. We have health and nature; books +and music supply our interests. Life is placid, even sweet.” + +<p id="d0e10123">When I bade them good-by it was with regret. They had found a refuge, and they had love, and yet they wanted to aid in the +revolution they believed in. I restrained myself from pointing out that Tolstoi, at the last, forsook even his family to seek +solitude and die. +<span id="d0e10125" class="pageno">page 441</span> + +<h1 id="d0e10129">Chapter XXI</h1> +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e10136">A heathen temple—The great Marae of Oberea—I visit it with Rupert Brooke and Chief Tetuanui—The Tahitian religion of old—The +wisdom of folly. + +</div> +<p id="d0e10140">Reading one day from Captain Cook’s Voyages about a heathen temple not far from Mataiea which Cook had visited, I suggested +to Brooke that we go to it. None of the Tetuanui younger folk had seen it, but Haamoura directed us to return toward Papara +as far as the thirty-ninth kilometer-stone, and to strike from that point towards the beach. Cook had had a sincere friendship, +if not a sweeter sentiment, for Oberea, the high chiefess of the clan of Tevas at Papara, and whom at first he thought queen +of Tahiti. He described her as “forty years of age, her figure large and tall, her skin white, and her eyes with great expression.” +That handsome lady had led him a merry chase, her complacent husband, Oamo, abetting her in the manner of Polynesia, where +women must have their fling. The temple Cook and his officers inspected was the tribal church of the noble pair. The Voyages +say: +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e10144">The morai consisted of an enormous pile of stone work, raised in the form of a pyramid with a flight of steps on each side, +and was nearly two hundred and seventy feet long, about one-third as wide, and between forty and fifty feet high. As the Indians +were totally destitute of iron utensils to shape their stones, as well as mortar to cement them when they had made <span id="d0e10146" class="pageno">page 442</span>them fit for use, a structure of such height and magnitude must have been a work of infinite labor and fatigue. In the center +of the summit was the representation of a bird, carved in wood; close to this was the figure of a fish which was in stone. +This pyramid made part of one side of a wide court or square, the sides of which were nearly equal; the whole was walled in, +and paved with flat stones. + +</div> + +<p id="d0e10151">When we reached the thirty-ninth kilometer-stone we met my host, Tetuanui, in his one-horse vehicle, inspecting the road. +He agreed, though a little reluctantly, to take us to the <i>marae</i> (pronounced mah-rye). We turned down a road across a private, neglected property, and for almost a mile urged the horse through +brambles and brush that had overgrown the way. We were going toward the sea along a promontory, “the point” upon which Cook’s +mariners saw the <i>etoa</i>-trees a century and a half ago, about the time that Americans were seeking separation from England, before Napoleon had risen +to power, and when gentlemen drank three bottles of port after dinner and took their places under the table. + +<p id="d0e10160">“Tooti was in love with Oberea,” said the chief. “She was <i>hinaaro puai</i>.” + +<p id="d0e10166">The expression is difficult to translate, but Sappho and Cleopatra expressed it in their lives; perhaps ardent in love would +be a mild synonym. + +<p id="d0e10169">At last, after hard struggles, we reached Point Mahaiatea, the “point” of Cook, on the bay of Popoti, which swept from it +to the beginning of the valley of Taharuu. The reef was very close to the shore, and the sea had encroached upon the land, +covering a considerable area of the site of the <i>marae</i>. The waves had torn away the coral blocks, and they lay in confusion in the water. <span id="d0e10174" class="pageno">page 443</span>The beach, too, was paved with coral fragments, the débris of the temple. Though devastated thus by time, by the waves, and +by the hands of house-, bridge-, and road-builders, by lime-makers, and iconoclastic vandals, the <i>marae</i> yet had majesty and an air of mystery. It was not nearly of the original height, hardly a third of it, and was covered with +twisted and gnarled <i>toa</i>, or ironwood, trees like banians, the <i>etoa</i> of Cook, and by very tall and broad pandanus, by masses of <i>lantana</i> and other flowering growths. Tetuanui, Brooke, and I stumbled through these, and walked about the uneven top, once the floor +of the temple. + +<p id="d0e10189">“Every man in Tahiti brought one stone, and the <i>marae</i> was builded,” said Tetuanui. “We were many then.” + +<p id="d0e10195">He had not been there in fifty years. + +<p id="d0e10198">We crawled down the other side, a broken incline, and to the beach. Land-crabs scrambled for their holes, the sole inhabitants +of the spot once given to chants and prayers, burials, and the sacrifice of humans to the never-satisfied gods. There was +an acrid humor in the name of the bay on which we looked, Popoti meaning cockroach. That malodorous insect would be on this +shore when the last Tahitian was dead. It existed hundreds of millions of years before man, and had not changed. It was one +of the oldest forms of present life, better fitted to survive than the breed of Plato, Shakespere, or Washington. Its insect +kind was the most dangerous enemy man had: the only form of life he had not conquered, and would be crooning cradle-songs +when humanity, perhaps through its agency, or perhaps through the sun growing cold, had passed from <span id="d0e10200" class="pageno">page 444</span>the earth. Not impossibly, insects would render extinct all other beings, and then the cockroach could proclaim that creation +had its apotheosis in it. + +<p id="d0e10203">The <i>marae</i> was the cathedral of the Tahitians. About it focused all the ceremonies of the worship of divinity, of consecration of priests +and warriors to their gods and their chiefs. The oldest <i>marae</i> was that of Opoa, on the island of Raiatea, the source of the religion of these groups. It was built by Hiro, the first king +of Raiatea, who, deified after death, became the god of thieves. The Papara <i>marae</i> was made of coral, but the quarried mountain rock was laid at the foundation, and these ponderous, uneven stones being patched +with coral, in time the blocks had become tightly cemented together. A lime-kiln was along the land side of this <i>marae</i> of Oberea, and for years had furnished the cement, plaster, and whitewash of the district. + +<p id="d0e10218">In the rear of the <i>marae</i> was the ossary where the bones of the victims were thrown. In Manila I had viewed immense heaps of these discarded skeletons +of humans dragged from niches in a wall and flung indiscriminately on the ground by the monks, who owned the Paco cemetery, +because the rent for the niches was past due. Tetuanui said that in his grandfather’s day there was a bad odor about the ossary, +as there was in Paco until the American Government abolished the iniquity. + +<p id="d0e10224">The altar itself was called <i>Fatarau</i>. Here were laid the offerings of fruit and meat, but human victims were not exposed on it. Their bodies were thrown into +the ossary after the ceremony was completed. The altar was always bare except at these times, and none <span id="d0e10229" class="pageno">page 445</span>ascended it but priests, ecstatics, and the man who carried the god. Only he and the high priest might touch this idol. The +demoniacs were usually in collusion with the priests, willy-nilly. + +<p id="d0e10232">The idol was the king’s or prince’s god. Each had his own. A royal idol was wrapped in precious cloths and adorned with feathers, +made usually of ironwood, and was about six feet long. They diminished in size with the importance of the owner, and among +the commoners might be put in a pocket or a piece of bamboo, like the pocket saints one buys in Rome. Besides, every chief +and little chief had his own <i>marae</i>, which might be very small indeed, as family shrines. Of great religious events the royal <i>maraes</i> were the scenes, and the high priests were attached to these. The personnel of the <i>marae</i> was: + +<p id="d0e10244">The king, chief, or master of the temple; all ceremonies were for his benefit. The high priest and his assistants, the latter +ordinary priests. The high priests served only the <i>maraes</i> of the first rank. The <i>orero</i>, who were preachers or poets; the <i>oripou</i>, or night runners; the guardian porters of the idol. The sorcerers or demoniacs. + +<p id="d0e10256">Thus there were six ranks in the service of the temple. The high priest was supreme under the king, and decided when a human +sacrifice was demanded by the gods. He was a kind of cardinal or bishop, and his jurisdiction extended over the <i>maraes</i> in the territory of his master. The priests’ functions were like those of the high priest except that they were subordinate, +and they could not replace him in certain ceremonies. The <i>orero</i> was the living book of the religion, the holy chants of tradition, <span id="d0e10264" class="pageno">page 4446</span>of ancestry, and of state. He must recite without hesitation these various records before the <i>marae</i> in the middle of an immense crowd. The <i>orero</i> cultivated their memories marvelously. They were usually sons of <i>oreros</i> or priests, and trained by years of study to retain volumes, as actors do parts. The <i>oripou</i> or <i>haerepo</i> were youths, neophytes, intended for the priesthood, and assisted the ordinary priests; but their special duties were singular +and interesting. They were the couriers of the night, the spies of their districts upon neighboring clans. In war-time their +work was arduous and most important, and their calling very honorable. Kings’ sons sometimes were <i>oripou</i>. The idol-carriers were tabu. Their persons might not be touched nor their food. + +<p id="d0e10285">The sorcerers, ecstatics, and demoniacs were not regularly organized into a caste. When a man fancied himself possessed by +a god, he became a recognized saint. He was tabu. He ascended to the altar and danced or gyrated as he pleased. The old missionaries, +who believed these sorcerers inhabited by devils, record incredible deeds by them. Often the spirit forsook them, and they +became common clay, but when primed with the deity’s power, they would ascend vertical rocks of great height by touching the +smooth surface with tiny idols which they held in their hands, and without any contact by their feet. These demoniacs recall +the oracles of ancient nations, and especially Simon Magus, the precursor of innumerable fathers of new religions, who by +the power of the “Christian God” fell to a horrible death when he tried to fly before the Roman emperor on the wings of the +devil. +<span id="d0e10287" class="pageno">page 447</span> + +<p id="d0e10290">Before a day of sacrifice a victim was selected by the high priest. The victim had no knowledge of his approaching end. He +must not be informed, and though his father and mother and family were told in advance, they never warned their unfortunate +loved one. No hand was lifted to avert his fate, for he was tabu to the gods. Though no excuse could be offered for the slaying +of their own clansman except the direful hold of religion, which in Tahiti, as in Europe not so long ago, put Protestant and +Catholic on the pyre in the name of Christ, yet so soft-hearted were these people that they could not disturb the peace of +mind of the offering, and until the moment when he was struck down from behind he was as unconcerned as any one. They never +tortured as the English and French tortured Joan of Arc, and as the police of America torture thousands of Americans every +day. + +<p id="d0e10293">I looked long at this ruined pagan tabernacle, this arc of the covenant for Oberea and Oamo, and for Tetuanui’s fathers. The +chief said that his grandfather had seen it in its palmy period. Oberea was an ancestress of my host of Papara, Tati Salmon, +who had the table-ware of Stevenson, and who was of the clan of Teva, as she. + +<p id="d0e10296">Wrecked, battered by the surf, torn to pieces by pickaxes, undermined by the sea, and overgrown by the rank foliage of the +tropics, the <i>marae</i> preserved for me and for Brooke, too, a solemnity and reminiscent grandeur that brought a vision of the beauty and might +of the passionate Oberea, who had commanded it to be built. Though different in environment as the sea from the desert, and +in size and aspect, materials and history, I was <span id="d0e10301" class="pageno">page 448</span>transported from this Tahitian temple to the pyramids on the sands of Egypt. Forty centuries later I could trace the same +aspiration for community with deity and for immortality of monument which had sweated a hundred thousand men for twenty years +to rear the lofty pile of Gizeh. In Borobodo, in the jungle of Java, I had seen, as near Cairo, the proudest trophy, temple, +and tomb of king and priest humbled in the dust by the changing soul of man in his fight to throw off the shackles of the +past. + +<p id="d0e10304">This <i>marae</i> had not been a place of cannibalism, as the Paepae Tapu of the Marquesas Islands. The Tahitians had no record of ever having +eaten humans. They replied to the first whites who asked them if they ate people: + +<p id="d0e10310">“Do you?” + +<p id="d0e10313">Yet when a human sacrifice was made, the presiding chief was offered the left eye of the victim, and at least feigned to eat +it. Was this a remnant of a forgotten cannibalistic habit, or a protest of the Tahitians and Hawaiians against the custom +as not being Polynesian, but a concession to a fashion adopted in fighting the Fijian anthropopogi? + +<p id="d0e10316">The people of Huahine, an island near Tahiti, had a supreme god named Tané, who might be touched only by one human being, +a man selected for that purpose. He was the sole bachelor on the island, being forbidden to marry. Whenever the priests wanted +Tané moved to a shrine, this chap, <i>te amo atua</i> (the god-bearer) had to pack him on his back. The idol was a heavy block of wood, and when his bearer wearied, it had to +appear that the god wanted to rest, for a god-bearer could not <span id="d0e10321" class="pageno">page 449</span>be tired. The missionaries burned Tané with glee, after a battle between the Christian converts and the heathen reactionaries. +The progressives won, and convinced the enemy that Tané was a wretched puppet of the priests, so that they dragged the god +from his lofty house, and kicked him on to his funeral pyre. “There was great rejoicing in heaven that day,” says a pious +English commentator. + +<p id="d0e10324">The Polynesians had very fixed ideas upon the origin of the universe and of man. In Hawaii, Taaroa made man out of red earth, +<i>araea</i>, and breathed into his nostrils. He made woman from man’s bones, and called her <i>ivi</i> (pronounced eve-y). At the hill of Kauwiki, on the eastern point of the island of Maui, Hawaii, the heaven was so near the +earth that it could be reached by the thrust of a strong spear, and is to-day called <i>lani haahaa</i>. + +<p id="d0e10336">The Marquesans said that in the beginning there was no light, life, or sound in the world; that a boundless night, <i>Po</i>, enveloped everything, over which <i>Tanaoa</i>, (Darkness), and <i>Mutu-hei</i>, (Silence), ruled supreme. Then the god of light separated from <i>Tanaoa</i>, fought him, drove him away, and confined him to night. Then the god <i>Ono</i>, (Sound), was evolved from <i>Atea</i>, (Light), and banished Silence. From all this struggle was born the Dawn, (Atanua). <i>Atea</i> married the Dawn, and they created earth, animals, man. + +<p id="d0e10360">In most of Polynesia there are legends of a universal flood from which few escaped. In Fiji it was said that two races were +entirely wiped out, one of women, and the other of men and women with tails. A little bird sat on the top of the uncovered +land and wailed the destruction. <span id="d0e10362" class="pageno">page 450</span>The Marquesans built a great canoe like a house, with openings for air and light, but tight against the rain. The ark was +stored with provisions, and the animals of the earth were driven in two by two, fastened in couples. Then the family of four +men and four women entered the ark, sacrificed a turtle to God, and retired to rest amidst the terrific din of the confined +animals. The storm burst, and the waters covered the entire land. The storm ceased and a black bird was sent over the sea +of Hawaii. It returned to the ark, and a wind set in from the north. Another bird was loosed, and alighted on the sea-shore. +It was recalled, and a third bird brought back twigs. The ark soon grounded, and the four men and four women released the +beasts, and went ashore. These repopulated the earth. + +<p id="d0e10365">The Samoans believed that the earth was once covered with water and the sky alone was inhabited, until God sent his only begotten +daughter in the form of a <i>kuri</i>, or snipe, to look for dry land. She found a spot, and brought down to it earth, and a creeping plant, which grew and decomposed +into worms, and, lo! the worms turned into men and women. + +<p id="d0e10371">In Hawaii Nuu was saved from a similar flood, and with him his three sons and their families. Ten generations later Kanehoalani +was commanded by God to introduce circumcision. He went to a far-off country, had a son by a slave woman and one by his wife. +He was then commanded, this descendant of Nuu in the tenth generation, to go up on a mountain and perform a sacrifice. He +sought a mountain, but none appeared suitable; so he communed with God, who told him to travel to the east, and he would find +a precipice. He <span id="d0e10373" class="pageno">page 451</span>departed with his son and a servant. The Hawaiians still call the mountains back of Koolau, near Honolulu, after the name +of the three, and when the missionaries gave them the Jewish sacred books, were delighted to point out that long before Christ +came to earth they had believed as above, and that Abraham was the tenth from Noah, that Abraham practised circumcision, and +was father of Isaac and the illegitimate Ishmael, and that their descendant of Nuu, as Abraham, became the father of twelve +children, and the founder of the Polynesian race, as Abraham had of the Jews. + +<p id="d0e10376">One might detect some relation to the Hebraic scriptures in the legends of the Maoris of New Zealand and Tonga that the older +son of the first man killed his brother, and that in Fiji one still is shown the site where a vast tower was built because +the Fijians wanted to peer into the moon to discover if it was inhabited. A lofty mound was erected, and the building of timber +upon it. It was already in the sky when the fastenings broke, and the workmen were precipitated over every part of Fiji. + +<p id="d0e10379">The sun stood still for Hiaka when she attempted to recover the body of Lohiau, her sister Pele’s lover. There was not daylight +enough to climb the mountain Kalalau and bring down the body from a cave, so she prayed, and the sun set much later than usual. +Aukelenui-a Iku, the next to the youngest of twelve children, was hated by his brothers because he was his father’s favorite, +and they threw him into a pit to die. His next eldest brother rescued him, and he became a traveler, and found the water of +life, with which he restored his brother who had been drowned years before. The <span id="d0e10381" class="pageno">page 452</span>Chaldeans had a similar legend. Ninkigal, goddess of the regions of the dead, ordered Simtar, her attendant, to restore life +to Ishtar with the “waters of life.” + +<p id="d0e10384">Naula-a-Maihea of Oahu, not far from Honolulu, was upset from his canoe while paddling to Kauai, and was swallowed by a whale, +which kindly threw him up on the beach of Wailua. + +<p id="d0e10387">Kana-loa and Kane-Apua, prophets, walked about the world, causing water to flow from rocks, as did Moses, and in the ancient +litany, recited by priest and congregation, the responses of “<i>Hooia, e oia!</i>” meant “It is true!” as does Amen, the response of Christian litanies to-day. The custom of using holy water prevailed all +over Polynesia. + +<p id="d0e10393">“The ocean which surrounds the earth was made salt by God so it should not stink,” said the legend, “and to keep it salt is +the special work of God.” + +<p id="d0e10396">To celebrate God’s act, the priests of Polynesia blessed waters for purification, for prayer, and for public and private ceremonies, +and to exorcise demons and drive away diseases, as the priests of America and Europe do. Holy water was called <i>ka wai kapu a Kane</i>, and from the baptizing of the new-born child to the sprinkling of the dying its sacred uses were many. To-day the older +people use these pagan ablutions to alleviate pain and cure maladies. The old Greeks used salt water for the same purposes, +and had holy-water fonts at the temple gates, as do the Catholic churches to-day. + +<p id="d0e10402">Levy and Woronick believed, or pridefully affected to believe, that at a remote period a band of Israelites, perhaps one of +the lost tribes carried away by the <span id="d0e10404" class="pageno">page 453</span>Assyrians, peopled these islands; or settled in Malaysia before the Polynesian exodus from there, and gave them their lore. +Père Rambaud of the Catholic mission at Papeete considered it more probable that Spaniards, reaching Hawaii from wrecked Spanish +galleons voyaging between Mexico and Manila, brought the holy doctrines. His explanation, however, often advanced, fell utterly +before the fact that the Polynesians had no knowledge of Jesus or any man or god like him, and knew nothing of original sin; +but, more convincing, all Polynesia had these legends, and there had been no communication with the Maoris of New Zealand +and with Fiji after the Spanish entered the Philippines. It is to me quite certain that the Polynesians brought with them +from Malaysia or India or from farther toward Europe those traditions of the beginnings of mankind which grew up hundreds +of thousands of years ago, and were dispersed with each group setting out for adventure or driven from the birthplace of thinking +humans. + +<p id="d0e10407">Taaroa, whose name was spelt differently in separated archipelagos, was the father of the Tahitian cosmogony. His wife was +Hina, the earth, and his son, Oro, was ruler of the world. Tané, the Huahine god, was a brother of Oro, and his equal, but +there were islands which disputed this equality, and shed blood to disprove it, as the sects of Christianity have since the +peaceful Jesus died by the demands of the priests of his nation. + +<p id="d0e10410">Haui was the Tahitian Hercules. Of course he, too, bade the sun to stay a while unmoving, and it did. Joshua, the son of Nun, +whose astronomical exploit at Gibeon brought him immortal fame, was a glorious warrior; but Haui’s unwritten achievements, +as chanted by <span id="d0e10412" class="pageno">page 454</span>the <i>orero</i> at the <i>marae</i> where Tetuanui, Brooke, and I stood, would have forced the successor of Moses to have withdrawn his book from circulation, +as too dull. + +<p id="d0e10421">The Polynesian creator put on earth hogs, dogs, and reptiles. There were many kinds of dogs in their mythology, including +the “large dog with sharp teeth,” and the “royal dog of God.” Among reptiles was Moo, a terrible dragon living in caverns +above and beneath the sea, who was dreaded above all dangers. He was to them the monster that guarded the Hesperides garden, +and the beast that St. George slew; but as the common lizard was the largest reptile in Polynesia, this, too, was an heirloom +from another land. In the old Havaii—probably Java—they must have known those fierce crocodiles that I have seen drag down +a horse drinking in the river at Palawan, and noted swimming in the open sea between Siassi and Borneo. + +<p id="d0e10424">The chief and Brooke and I sat in the shade of the <i>etoa</i>-trees, and conversed about these ancient stories. Fixed in the mind of the race by the repetition of ages, they are the most +difficult of all errors to erase, and the professors of this wisdom stamp it upon the heart and brain of the child in almost +indelible colors, and make it tabu, sacrilege, or treason to deny its verity. Half a century ago repairs became necessary +to Mohammed’s tomb at Medina, and masons were asked to volunteer to make them, and submit to beheading immediately after. +There was no lack of desirous martyrs. One descended into the mausoleum, finished the task, and, reaching the air again, knelt, +turned his face toward Mecca, and bent his head for the ax. The Mussulman keepers of the tomb justified their act, as, the +forbidding telling the <span id="d0e10429" class="pageno">page 455</span>truth about religion and government, about war and business, is justified. Their words were: + +<p id="d0e10432">“We picture those places to ourselves in a certain manner, and for the preservation of our holy religion, and the safety of +society, there must not be any one who can say they are otherwise.” + +<p id="d0e10435">It was noon when Brooke and I—Tetuanui having gone to instruct his gang—plunged into the sea in front of the <i>chefferie</i>, and laughed in the joy of the sweet hour. He had written lines of beauty that interpreted our humor: + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e10443"> +<i>Tau here</i>, Mamua, +<br id="d0e10449">Crown the hair, and come away! +<br id="d0e10452">Hear the calling of the moon, +<br id="d0e10455">And the whispering scents that stray +<br id="d0e10458">About the idle warm lagoon. +<br id="d0e10461">Hasten, hand in human hand, +<br id="d0e10464">Down the dark, the flowered way, +<br id="d0e10467">Along the whiteness of the sand, +<br id="d0e10470">And in the water’s soft caress +<br id="d0e10473">Wash the mind of foolishness, +<br id="d0e10476">Mamua, until the day. +<br id="d0e10479">Spend the glittering moonlight there, +<br id="d0e10482">Pursuing down the soundless deep +<br id="d0e10485">Limbs that gleam and shadowy hair; +<br id="d0e10488">Or floating lazy, half-asleep. +<br id="d0e10491">Dive and double and follow after, +<br id="d0e10494">Snare in flowers, and kiss, and call, +<br id="d0e10497">With lips that fade, and human laughter +<br id="d0e10500">And faces individual! +<br id="d0e10503">Well this side of Paradise! ... +<br id="d0e10506">There ’s little comfort in the wise. + +<span id="d0e10510" class="pageno">page 456</span> +<h1 id="d0e10513">Chapter XXII</h1> +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e10520">I start for Tautira—A dangerous adventure in a canoe—I go by land to Tautira—I meet Choti and the Greek God—I take up my home +where Stevenson lived. + +</div> +<p id="d0e10524">Seeing the way the Lermontoffs lived, caused me to resolve that during the remainder of my stay in Tahiti I would go even +farther from Papeete than Mataiea. They suggested Tautira, a village they had never visited, but which was at the very end +of the habitable part of the Presqu’île of Taiarapu. My easiest route to Tautira was by crossing the isthmus of Taravao, to +the other side of the peninsula, as nowhere in Tahiti except at Lake Vaihiria were there even passable trails across the lofty +spine of the island. I was for sending back the cart and horse to Taravao and taking a canoe to Tautira. A council of the +elders of Vaieri opposed me, but yielded to my persistence by advising me at least to ride as far as possible in the cart +along the western road, and to find, nearer to Tautira, in Maora, or farther on, in Puforatoai, a canoe and canoeists for +the risky attempt. + +<p id="d0e10527">Tatini, who had lagged behind at Butscher’s, appeared as I harnessed the horse. She had accompanied the Tinito storekeeper +of Taravao to Vaieri, and would not permit me to go on alone. She climbed into the vehicle, and we wended a winding road, +and forded several streams until we came to Puforatoai, having gone through Hatiti and Maora. There was a pass in the <span id="d0e10529" class="pageno">page 457</span>reef admitting to a questionable shelter, Port Beaumanoir, used by the French when little gunboats threatened to bombard villages +to force the rule of Paris. + +<p id="d0e10532">Puforatoai was a handful of houses, hardly a village. My advent was of importance, and its few people gathered about us. They +voiced their amazement when Tatini announced our wish to find a navigator and vessel to Tautira. They all said it was impossible, +that the coast to Pari, with the submerged reef of Faratara, was too rough now for any but a large power boat, and the wind +would be baffling and threatening. But as fear of the sea was unknown to them, they expressed a will to make the attempt. +We launched a large canoe, and two sturdy natives, relations of Tatini, took the paddles. They had made the journey more than +once, but not at this season. + +<p id="d0e10535">We got into difficulties from the start. The shores were very different from those of Mataiea, Papeari, and Vairao, the three +districts I had come through from the house of Tetuanui. The alluvial strip of land which in them stretched from a quarter +of a mile to a mile from the lagoon to the slopes of the hills, here was cramped to the barest strip. The huts of the indigenes, +few and far apart outside of Puforatoai, seemed to be set in terraces cut at the foot of the mountains which rose almost straight +from the streak of golden sand to the skies. In every shade of green, as run by the overhead sun upon the altering facets +of precipice and shelf, of <i>fei</i> and cocoa, candlenut and <i>purau</i>, giant ferns and convolvulus, tier upon tier, was a riot of richest vegetation. But everywhere in the lagoon were bristling +and hiding <span id="d0e10543" class="pageno">page 458</span>dangers from hummocks of coral and sunken banks. + +<p id="d0e10546">Our canoe was twenty feet long, and with a very strong outrigger, but though all four of us paddled, Teta, the chief man of +Puforatoai, in the stern, steering, the <i>vaa</i> labored heavily. Tatini was adept in canoeing, and with a quartet of <i>hoë</i> we would have ordinarily sent the <i>vaa</i> spinning through the water; but we were nearing the southernmost extremity of the Presqu’île, and the wind and current from +the northeast swept about the broken coast in a confusion of puffs and blasts, choppy waves and roaring breakers, and made +our progress slow and hazardous. The breeze caught up the foam and formed sheets of vapor which whipped our faces and blinded +us, while an occasional roller broke on our prow, and soon gave Tatini continuous work in bailing with a handled scoop. + +<p id="d0e10558">Opposite the pass of Tutataroa our greatest peril came. The ocean swept through this narrow channel like a mill-race. The +first swell tossed us up ten feet, and we rode on it fifty before Teta could disengage us from its clasp, and, without capsizing, +divert our course westward instead of toward the parlous shore. One such jeopardy succeeded another. We were in a quarter +of an hour directly under black and frowning heights from which a score of cascades and rills leaped into the air, their masses +of water, carried by the gusts, falling upon us in showers and clouds, aiding the flying scud in shielding the distance ahead +from our view. + +<p id="d0e10561">“<i>Aita e ravea</i>,” shouted Teta to me. “It is impossible to go on.” + +<p id="d0e10567">We were all as wet as if in the sea, our faces and bodies stung by the spindrift, and we were barely able <span id="d0e10569" class="pageno">page 459</span>to glimpse a dark and heaving panorama of surf, rock, and bluff in the mists that now and again were penetrated by the hot +sun. + +<p id="d0e10572">“Maitai! Hohoi!” I replied above the clangor, and raised my paddle. + +<p id="d0e10575">Carefully and in a wide circle the <i>vaa</i> crept around to head back toward our port, and it was after sunset before we were in Teta’s house in Puforatoai. The villagers +met us with torches and incredulous <i>aues</i> and we walked up the road singing the song of the “Ai Dobbebelly Dobbebelly,” which was known wherever a fisher for market +dwelt in all Tahiti. The farther from Papeete and more and more as time passed, the words lost resemblance to English, and +became mere native sounds without any exact meaning, but with a never-forgotten sentiment of rebellion against government +and of gild alliance. + +<p id="d0e10584">“Give us a hand-out!” had changed from “<i>hizzandow</i>” in Papeete, to “<i>Hitia o te ra!</i>” which meant that the sun was rising. Within a year or two the entire text would doubtless merge into Tahitian with only +the martial air of “Revive us again!” and the dimming memory of the fish-strike to recall its origin. I had known a native +who, whenever he approached me, sang in a faltering tone, “Feery feery!” + +<p id="d0e10593">I asked him after many weeks what he meant, and he said that that was a <i>himene</i>, which a young American had sung at his potations in his village in the Marquesas Islands. I had him repeat “Feery feery!” +dozens of times, and finally snatched at an old glee which ran through my mind: “Shoo Fly, don’t bother me!” and when I sang +it, +<span id="d0e10598" class="pageno">page 460</span> + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e10603">“I feel, I feel, I feel, +<br id="d0e10606">I feel like a morning star!” + +<p id="d0e10610">he struck his thigh, and said, “<i>Ea</i>! That is the very thing!” And to be fair to all races, one has only to listen to an American assemblage singing “The Starspangled +Banner” to learn that after the first few lines most patriots decline into “ah-ah-la-la-ha-la-ah-la-la.” + +<p id="d0e10616">Before our supper of fish and <i>fei</i>, Teta, who was a deacon in the Protestant church, but of superior knowledge of his own tongue and legends, asked a blessing +of God, and afterward recited for me the Tahitian chant of creation, the source of which was in the very beginnings of his +race, perhaps even previous to the migration from Malaysia. He intoned it, solemnly, as might have an ancient prophet in Israel, +as we sat in the starlit night, with the profound notes of the reef in unison with his deep cadence: + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e10624">He abides—Taaroa by name— +<br id="d0e10627">In the immensity of space. +<br id="d0e10630">There was no earth, there was no heaven, +<br id="d0e10633">There was no sea, there was no mankind. +<br id="d0e10636">Taaroa calls on high; +<br id="d0e10639">He changes himself fully. +<br id="d0e10642">Taaroa is the root; +<br id="d0e10645">The rocks (or foundation); +<br id="d0e10648">Taaroa is the sands; +<br id="d0e10651">Taaroa stretches out the branches (is wide-spreading). +<br id="d0e10654">Taaroa is the light; +<br id="d0e10657">Taaroa is within; +<br id="d0e10660">Taaroa is, —— +<br id="d0e10663">Taaroa is below; +<br id="d0e10666">Taaroa is enduring; +<br id="d0e10669">Taaroa is wise;<span id="d0e10671" class="pageno">page 461</span> +<br id="d0e10674">He created the land of Hawaii; +<br id="d0e10677">Hawaii great and sacred, +<br id="d0e10680">As a crust (or shell) for Taaroa. +<br id="d0e10683">The earth is dancing (moving). +<br id="d0e10686">O foundations, O rocks, +<br id="d0e10689">Oh sands! here, here. +<br id="d0e10692">Brought hither, pressed together the earth; +<br id="d0e10695">Press, press again! +<br id="d0e10698">They do not ——— +<br id="d0e10701">Stretch out the seven heavens; let ignorance cease. +<br id="d0e10704">Create the heavens, let darkness cease. +<br id="d0e10707">Let anxiety cease within; +<br id="d0e10710">Let immobility cease; +<br id="d0e10713">Let the period of messengers cease; +<br id="d0e10716">It is the time of the speaker. +<br id="d0e10719">Fill up the foundation, +<br id="d0e10722">Fill up the rocks, +<br id="d0e10725">Fill up the sands. +<br id="d0e10728">The heavens are inclosing. +<br id="d0e10731">And hung up are the heavens +<br id="d0e10734">In the depths. +<br id="d0e10737">Finished he the world of Hawaii. +<br id="d0e10740">E pau fenua no Hawaii. + +<p id="d0e10744">The cart at my request had been driven back to Taravao; so in the morning Tatini and I walked back to the isthmus. We drank +coffee at five, and at three we had covered the twelve miles in the sauntering gait of the Tahitian girl, stopping to make +wreaths, and to bathe in several streams. Butscher was on his table in his after-breakfast lethargy, and I regretted disturbing +his <i>iiii</i> to ask him to serve us. Again Tatini refused to sit at table with me. Evidently, she feared the scowls of Butscher, who had +none of the white’s ideas of the equality of females with males at the board. Butscher <span id="d0e10749" class="pageno">page 462</span>added many francs to my bill by pouring me another bottle of Pol Roger, 1905, which after several days of cocoanut juice took +on added delight. I made up my mind to tarry with Butscher a day, while Tatini returned to the Tetuanui mansion by diligence, +and despatched my bags to me by the same carrier. I sent with her my love to the Tetuanui clan, and some delicacies from the +Maison des Varos for the half-blind Haamoura. The diligence did not run farther than Taravao, and the next day, with my impedimenta +in the cart, and with a boy to drive it, I turned my back on the road to Papeete, and began the jog trot to the famous, but +hardly ever visited, district of Tautira. + +<p id="d0e10752">I counted it the third stage in my pilgrimage in Tahiti. The first had been in and about the capital, mingling mostly with +white men, and living in a public inn; the second at Mataiea had taken me far from those rookeries, and had introduced me +to the real Tahitians, to their language, their customs, and their hearts; but still I had been a guest, and a cared-for and +guarded white among aborigines. Now I wanted to cut off entirely from the main road, to sequester myself in a faraway spot, +and to live as close to the native as was possible for me. My time was drawing near for departure. I must see all of the Etablissements +Français de l’Oceanie, the blazing Paumotu atolls, and the savage Marquesas, and I must make the most of the several months +yet remaining for me in Tahiti. + +<p id="d0e10755">The highway along the eastern portion of the Presqu’île was much like that between Taravao and Puforatoai, tortuous, constricted, +and often forced to <span id="d0e10757" class="pageno">page 463</span>hang upon a shelf carved out of the precipice which hemmed it. The route hugged the sea, but at every turn I saw inland the +laughing, green valleys, deserted of inhabitants, climbing slowly between massive walls of rock to which clung great tree +ferns, with magnificent vert parasols, enormous clumps of <i>feis</i>, with huge, emerald or yellow upstanding bunches of fruit; candlenut- and ironwood-trees. Uncounted, delicious odors filled +the air, distilled from the wild flowers, the vanilla, orchids, and the forests of oranges, which, though not of Tahiti, were +already venerable in their many decades of residence. Not a single path struck off from the belt road, except that as we came +toward the centers of Afaahiti and Pueu districts the inevitable store or two of the Chinese appeared, the <i>cheferie</i>, a church or two, and the roofs of the Tahitians. These were always near the beach, set back a few hundred feet from the +road in rare instances, but mostly only a few steps from it. The Tahitian never lived in hamlets, as the Marquesan and the +Samoan, but each family dwelt in its wood of cocoanuts and breadfruit, or a few families clustered their inhabitants for intimacy +and mutual aid. The whites, missionaries, conquerors, and traders found this system not conducive to their ends. Churches +demand for prosperity a flock about the ministrant, business wants customers close to the store, and government is more powerful +where it can harangue and proclaim, parade before and spy upon its subjects. Individualistic and segregated domestic circles +give rise to tax evasions, feuds, and moonshining, plots and the growth of strong men. The city is the corral where humans +<span id="d0e10765" class="pageno">page 464</span>mill like cattle in a panic, are more easily ridden down <i>en masse</i>, and become habitual buyers of unnecessary things. + +<p id="d0e10771">The French, after their bold seizure of the island in the name of liberty for the earnest friars, and sealing their brave +conquest in the blood of the obstinate Polynesian who had hated to learn a new liturgy and to unlearn his old Protestant songs, +feared that the dispersion of the people upon their little plantations, to which they were greatly attached, would make their +Frenchifying a long task. So, about sixty years ago, a governor, who, ten thousand miles from his superiors, with an exchange +of letters taking many months, was an autocrat, decided that all the people of the same region must be huddled in a village. +His name was Gaultier de la Richerie. His office was snatched from him by another politician before he could carry out his +plan, and only one village exemplified it. In all the districts I had passed through from Papeete, while in each was the knot +of <i>chefferie</i>, churches, stores, and perhaps a house or two, the other residences stretched along the entire length of the political divisions, +from six to eight miles. + +<p id="d0e10777">I was approaching the exception, Tautira, which, though farthest of all from the palace of the governor, had been chosen for +the first experiment, and which had adapted its life to the paternal will of M. de la Richerie, now long since laid in the +bosom of Père Lachaise. + +<p id="d0e10780">The estimable troubadour, Brault, had advised me of the history of Tautira. It was seldom visited by white tourists, as even +the post brought by the diligence ended at Taravao, and letters for farther on were carried afoot by the <i>mutoi</i>, or postman-policeman of the adjoining <span id="d0e10785" class="pageno">page 465</span>district, who handed on to his contiguous confrère those for more distant confines. But for centuries Tautira was known as +a focus of the wise, of priests, sorcerers, and doctors, and, said the knowing Brault, especially of the dancers, and those +who, he explained, under the banner of Venus. + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e10790">Ont vu maintes batailles +<br id="d0e10793">Et reçu nombre d’entailles +<br id="d0e10796">Depuis les pieds jusqu’au front. + +<p id="d0e10800">The little boy and I chatted as the horse ambled at will, occasionally urged to a trot by a shaking of the reins. The country +as we progressed became far more beautiful than that behind. A new wildness, not fierce and rugged as between Vaiere and Puforatoai, +but gentler and more inviting, preluded the exquisite setting of the village. We had to ford a stream three or four feet deep, +the Vaitapiha, and the struggle through it was a rare pleasure, the child on the back of the animal, and I with the reins +and a <i>purau</i> twig directing and commanding in vain. We had to leap into the water and remove a boulder or two that stymied the wheels. +When we had pulled through to the opposite shore, I was reduced to a dry <i>pareu</i>, and in it alone, barefooted, I reached the rustic paradise, the loveliness of which was to content me more than any spot +except the strangely fascinating valley of Atuona in the sad isle of Hiva-Oa. + +<p id="d0e10809">In a delta formed by the Vaitapiha the settlement lay among tents of verdure. For a mile it sprawled around a small point +of land which thrust out into the sea, and which was guarded by the most wonderful of <span id="d0e10811" class="pageno">page 466</span>walls, a reef of madrepore, as solid as granite and sixty feet wide. The road was arched by splendid trees of many kinds, +and facing it, every several hundred feet, was a home. Many of these were cottages in modern style, but a dozen or so were +the true Tahitian <i>faré</i>, of bamboo and thatch. All were covered with flowering vines, and surrounded by many fruiting trees. + +<p id="d0e10817">“<i>Tautira nei!</i>” announced my coachman. “Tautira is here!” + +<p id="d0e10823">He pulled up the horse. I had not given any thought to my lodging, and I jumped out and looked around. The brook curved about +a mango grove, and under its high trees was a new native house, a replica of the commodious dwellings of old days. I walked +into the grove, and was admiring the careful, but charming, arrangements of ferns and orchids, which, though brought from +the forests, had been fitted into the scene to simulate a natural environment. All of a sudden a something I could not see +hurled itself from a limb upon my head, and two affrighting paws seized my right ear and my hair, grown long at Mataiea, and +tried to tear them out by the roots, while at the same time many fierce teeth closed, though without much effect, on my tough +and weathered shoulder. In horror at the attack, I covered yards in two bounds, and my assailant was torn from its hold upon +me. + +<p id="d0e10826">I then turned and saw that it was a monkey tied to a rope fastened to the limb of the tree. He stood upright on the ground, +his jaws agape, and a look of devilish glee upon his uncannily manlike face. At the same moment a white man ran from the house +and called in English: +<span id="d0e10828" class="pageno">page 467</span> + +<p id="d0e10831">“You damned little scoundrel! How often have I whipped you for that same trick! I would better have left you in the slums +in San Francisco.” + +<p id="d0e10834">And then apologetically to me: + +<p id="d0e10837">“I ought to kill him for that. He’s a devil, that monkey. He has bitten all the children around here, has killed all my chickens, +and raised more hell in this village than the whole population put together. I swear, I believe he just enjoys being mean. +Come in and have a snifter after that greeting! Did he hurt you?” + +<p id="d0e10840">My would-be host was himself a very striking somebody. He wore only a <i>pareu</i>, as I, of scarlet muslin, with the William Morris design, but he had wound his about so that it was a mere ornamental triangle +upon his tall, powerful, statuesque body. His chest and back had a growth of red-gold hair, which, with his bronzed skin, +his red-gold beard, dark curls over a high forehead, handsome nose, and blue eyes, made him all of the same color scheme. +He was without doubt as near to a Greek deity in life, a Dionysus, as one could imagine. He had two flaming hibiscus blossoms +over his ears, and he looked in his late twenties. Accustomed as I was to semi-nudity and to white men’s return to nature, +I had never seen a man who so well fitted into the landscape as the owner of the ape. He was the faun to the curling locks +and the pointed ears, with not a trace of the satyr; all youth and grace and radiance. + +<p id="d0e10846">He walked on before me to the <i>faré</i>, and, opening the door, bade me welcome. The house differed from the aboriginal in a wooden floor and three walls of wire +<span id="d0e10851" class="pageno">page 468</span>screen above four feet of wainscot. The roof was lofty, of plaited pandanus-leaves, with large spaces under the eaves for +the circulation of air; but the immediate suggestion was of an aviary, a cage thirty feet square. Attached to this room was +a lean-to kitchen, and near by, hidden behind the cage, was another native house for sleeping. The aviary was the living- +and dining-quarters, protected from all insect pests, and an arbor covered with vines led to the water. + +<p id="d0e10854">Many canvases were about, on an easel an unfinished group of three Tahitian boys, and a case of books against the one solid +wall. + +<p id="d0e10857">Half a dozen Tahitian youths were lolling outside in the shade, and one, at the request of the host, led up the horse and +the boy who guarded it. The child skirted the circumference of the monkey’s swing, and then, a few feet away, squatted to +regard the animal with intense surprise and interest. + +<p id="d0e10860">“Uritaata,” he said; “I never saw one before, but I have read in my school-book that they have those dogmen in French colonies.” + +<p id="d0e10863"> +<i>Uri</i> means dog and <i>taata</i> man, and the compound name was that which sprang to the lips of the Tahitians on seeing a monkey, just as they called the +horse <i>puaa horo fenua</i>, the pig that runs on the earth, and the goat, <i>horo niho</i>, the pig with horns. The pig and the dog were the only land mammals they knew before the white arrived. The race-track near +Papeete was <i>puaa horo fenua faa titi auraa</i>. If a pig could talk, he would say that man was a wickeder and stronger pig. Jehovah has whiskers like a Rabbi. The Rabbis +made him like themselves. Man has no other ideal. +<span id="d0e10880" class="pageno">page 469</span> + +<p id="d0e10883">The Tahitian youth addressed the Greek god as T’yonni, which was an effort to say John, and I adopted it instanter, as he +did my own Maru. T’yonni said that Uritaata was the bane of his existence at Tautira. After building his <i>faré</i> he had been called to America, and had danced in Chinatown the night before his steamship departed for his return to Papeete. +He remembered obscurely drinking grappo with a deep-sea sailor, and had awakened in his berth, the vessel already at sea, +and Uritaata asleep at his feet. Many Tahitians, he said, had never seen such a fabulous brute, and T’yonni had stirred in +them a mood of dissatisfaction by telling that their forefathers had descended from similar beings. + +<p id="d0e10889">“How about Atamu and Eva?” they had asked the pastors. + +<p id="d0e10892">Those conservatists had replied emphatically that Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, were created by God, which agreed +thoroughly with the Tahitian legends, and after that T’yonni’s generosity was ranked higher than his knowledge. He laughed +over the stories as we sat at breakfast with my coachman in the kitchen. T’yonni said that the deacon of the Protestant church +expressed a belief that the Paumotuans or even the French might have followed the Darwinian course of descent, but that Tahitians +could not swallow a doctrine that linked them in relationship with Uritaata. The Tongans, Polynesians like themselves, had +a tradition that God made the Tongan first, then the pig, and lastly the white man. + +<p id="d0e10895">“He quoted the Tongan with compassion for me,” said T’yonni. “And now about a place where you can <span id="d0e10897" class="pageno">page 470</span>live. Choti, a painter, whose pictures you see around here, lives with the school-teacher up the road, and he might find you +a place. He’s an American, as I am, and I suppose you, too.” + +<p id="d0e10900">I raised my glass to our native land, and finding that the boy of Taravao had eaten his fill of <i>fei</i> and fish, I said <i>ariana</i> to T’yonni, and drove to Choti’s. The painter was on the veranda of a cottage, finishing the late breakfast. He received +me with enthusiasm. Tall, very spare, and his skin pale despite his wearing only a <i>pareu</i> and never a hat, Choti’s black eyes shone under long, black hair, and over a Montmartre whisker that covered his boyish face +from his chiseled nose. + +<p id="d0e10912">“Hello!” he said. “Come and have <i>déjeuner</i>?” + +<p id="d0e10918">The manner of both T’yonni and Choti, while hospitable, and their glances at my bags, showed a probable wonderment of my intentions. + +<p id="d0e10921">Was I an average tourist or loafer come to put an unknown quantity in their smoothly working problem of a pleasant life in +this Eden? The artist must have looked me over for indications of familiarity with brush and palette. + +<p id="d0e10924">I replied to Choti that I had breakfasted with T’yonni, and he smiled at my knowledge of his friend’s Tautira name. + +<p id="d0e10927">“How about getting an apartment or a suite of rooms?” I inquired. + +<p id="d0e10930">Choti sucked the last particle of <i>poi</i> from his forefinger, dipped it into a shell of water, shook hands, and against my pleadings, accompanied me to the house +of Ori-a-Ori, the chief of the district. The chief, an excessively tall man, quite six and a half feet and big all <span id="d0e10935" class="pageno">page 471</span>over, but not fat, like many natives, was very dark and slightly grizzled. He had a singular solemnity of address, a benignity +and detachment which were the externals of a thoughtful, simple, generous nature, no longer interested deeply in trifles. +His house was toward the farther end of the main street, and set upon a spacious lawn a hundred feet from the street, which, +by the same token, was also a lawn, for there was no sign of the unadorned earth. So little wheeled traffic was there that +bare feet walked on a matting of grass and plants as soft as seaweed on the beach. The street was bordered with cocoanuts +and pandanus, and the chief’s dwelling had about it breadfruit, <i>papayas</i>, and cocoanuts. The grounds were divided from neighbors’ parks by hedges of tiare Tahiti, gardenias, roses, and red and white +oleanders. I drew in their perfume as Ori-a-Ori said, “<i>Ia ora na!</i>” and took and held my hand a moment, while his grave eyes studied my face in all kindliness. + +<p id="d0e10944">Choti put him the question of my habitation, and he instantly offered me either a room in his own house or a small, native +building on the opposite side of the road and nearer the beach. We walked over, and found it unoccupied. It was a bird-cage, +all one room, with a thatch of pandanus and a floor of dried grass covered with mats. The walls were of split bamboo, like +reeds, and the sun and air penetrated it through and through; but hanging mats were arranged, one as a door, and others to +keep out the rain. It was exactly suited for sleeping and lounging purposes, and the chief said that I could cook in a convenient +hut. I brought in my belongings, which included bedding, and in half an hour <span id="d0e10946" class="pageno">page 472</span>was enough at home to dismiss the coachman and his equipage, and to lie down, as was my wont during the heat of the day. I +put my bed in the doorway, and before I fell into my first sleep at Tautira, filled my eyes with the blue of the shimmering +lagoon and the hoary line of the reef. I sank into dreams, with the slumbrous roar upon the coral barrier like the thunder +of a sea god’s rolling drum. +<span id="d0e10948" class="pageno">page 473</span> + +<h1 id="d0e10952">Chapter XXIII</h1> +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e10959">My life at Tautira—The way I cook my food—Ancient Tahitian sports—Swimming and fishing—A night hunt for shrimp and eels. +</div> +<p id="d0e10963">T’yonni and Choti were the only aliens except myself in all Tautira, nor did others come during my stay. The steamships, spending +only twenty-four hours in Papeete port every four or five weeks, sent no trippers, and the bureaucrats, traders, and sojourners +in Papeete apparently were not aware of the enchantment at our end of the island. T’yonni had found Tautira only after four +or five voyages to Tahiti, and Choti had first come as his guest. T’yonni had no art but that of living, while Choti had studied +in Paris, and was bent on finding in these scenes something strong and uncommon in painting, as Gauguin, now dead, had found. +They lived separately, T’yonni studying the language and the people,—he had been a master at a boys’ school in the East,—and +the artist painting many hours a day. But we three joined with the villagers in pleasure, and in pulling at the nets in the +lagoon. + +<p id="d0e10966">The routine of my day was to awake about six o’clock and see the sun swinging slowly up out of the sea and hesitating a moment +on the level of the horizon, the foliage brightened with his beams. I sprang from my bed, washed my hands and face, and hastened +to the <i>faré umu</i>, the kitchen in a grove of pandanus trees, a few steps away. There from a pile of cocoanut husks <span id="d0e10971" class="pageno">page 474</span>and bits of jetsam I selected fuel, which I placed between a group of coral rocks on which were several iron bars. I lit the +fire, and put into a pot three tablespoonfuls of finely ground coffee and two cups of fresh water. The pot was a percolator, +and beside it I placed a frying-pan, and in it sliced bananas and a lump of tinned butter from New Zealand. Leaving these +inanimate things to react under the dissolving effect of the blaze, I ran to the beach, where I watched the sunrise. There +recurred to me the mornings and evenings in the Orient when I had seen the Parsees, the fire-worshippers of India, offer their +devotions, standing or kneeling on their rugs on the seashore. I, too, raised my hands in silent admiration of the mother +of all life. Then I observed about me the hurry and scurry of the dwellers on the sands and in the water. Small hermit-crabs +in shells many sizes too big for them toddled about, land-crabs rushed frantically and awkwardly for their holes, and Portuguese +men-of-war sailed by the coast, luffing to avoid casting up on the beach. A brief period of observation, and I dashed back +to the <i>faré umu</i>, and trimmed the fire. When cooked, I brought my food to my house, where I had a low table like a Japanese zen, and with +rolls from the Chinese store I made my first meal, adding oranges, papayas and pineapple. + +<p id="d0e10977">From the doorway, for all I encompassed in my view, I might have been the sole human on this island. I could look to the reef +and far across the lagoon to Hitiaa or down the beach, but from that spot no other house was in sight. If I went around the +house, I was almost on the Broadway of Tautira, the home of Ori-a-Ori before me, and a coral church close to it, with other +<span id="d0e10979" class="pageno">page 475</span>buildings and groves toward the mango copse of T’yonni. On the bushes huge nets were drying, and canoes were drawn up into +the <i>purau</i> and pandanus clumps. As the day advanced, the artless incidents of the settlement aroused my interest. I saw about me scenes +and affairs which had caused a famous poet after a week or two in this very lieu to write: + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e10987">Here found I all I had forecast: +<br id="d0e10990">The long roll of the sapphire sea +<br id="d0e10993">That keeps the land’s virginity; +<br id="d0e10996">The stalwart giants of the wood +<br id="d0e10999">Laden with toys and flowers and food; +<br id="d0e11002">The precious forest pouring out +<br id="d0e11005">To compass the whole town about; +<br id="d0e11008">The town itself with streets of lawn, +<br id="d0e11011">Loved of the moon, blessed by the dawn, +<br id="d0e11014">Where the brown children all the day +<br id="d0e11017">Keep up a ceaseless noise of play, +<br id="d0e11020">Play in the sun, play in the rain, +<br id="d0e11023">Nor ever quarrel or complain; +<br id="d0e11026">And late at night in the woods of fruit, +<br id="d0e11029">Hark! do you hear the passing flute? + +<p id="d0e11033">The school-house was near to the master’s home where Choti lived, and often I heard the children learning by singsong, the +way I myself had been taught the arithmetical tables. The teacher was Alfred, a Tahitian, who, being a scholar, must have +a French name, and wear clothes and shoes when in his classes, but who very sensibly sat with Choti upon his veranda in only +his <i>pareu</i>. Much of the time the pupils played in the grounds, hopscotch and wrestling on stilts being favorite games. Alfred regretted +that the ancient Tahitian <span id="d0e11038" class="pageno">page 476</span>games which his grandfather played were out of style. Among these was a variation of golf, with curved sticks, and a ball +made of strips of native cloth; and foot-ball with a ball of banana-leaves tightly rolled. Grown-ups in those Tahitian times +were experts in all these sports, women excelling at foot-ball, with thirty on each side, and captains, backs, and guards, +or similar participants, and with hard struggles for the ball, which, as the games were played on the beach, often had to +be fought for in the sea. The spectators, thousands, did not view the contest from seats, but literally followed it as it +surged up and down within the space of a mile. + +<p id="d0e11041">Wrestling was the most notable amusement, and boxing was fashionable for women, some of whom were skilled in fistic combats. +The wrestlers, as their Greek prototypes, first invoked the favor of the gods, and offered sacrifices when victorious. The +palestra was on a lawn by the sea, and in formal contests district champions met those of other districts, and islands competed +for supremacy with other islands. The <i>maona</i> wore a breech-clout and a coat of cocoanut oil freshly laid on, but not sand, as in the Olympiads. When one was thrown, the +victor’s friends shouted in triumph and sang and danced about him to the music of tom-toms, while the backers of the loser +met the demonstrations with ridicule. This was much like the organized yelling on our gridirons; and when the wrestling began +again there was instant silence. It was all good-humored, as was the boxing. + +<p id="d0e11047">Spear-throwing and stone-slinging at targets were both fun and preparation for war, for in the battles the slingers took the +van. The stones were here, as in <span id="d0e11049" class="pageno">page 477</span>the Marquesas, as big as hens’ eggs, and rounded by the action of the streams in which they were found. Braided cocoanut-fiber +formed the sling, or flax was used, and looped about the wrist the sling was flung down the back, whirled about the head, +and the missile shot with deadly force and accuracy. + +<p id="d0e11052">Archery was associated with religion in Tahiti, as in Japan, between which countries there are many strange similarities of +custom. The costumes of the bowmen and their weapons were housed in the temple, and kept by devotees, and were removed and +returned with ceremonies. The bows, less than six feet, the arrows, half that long, were never used in war or for striking +a mark, but merely for distance shooting, and the experts were credited with reaching a thousand feet. + +<p id="d0e11055">Tatini had pointed out to me, when we walked the peninsula of Taravao, a projecting rock, marked with deep-worn grooves, from +which the Tahitians once flew very large kites. These were tied to the rocks, and the ropes of cocoanut sennit in the course +of hundreds of years had worn the stones away. Often when the wind was favorable, they intrusted themselves to their kites, +and slipping the ropes, flew to the opposite side of the bay, forerunners in the air of a certain Lyonnais of 1783, and contemporaneous +with the Siamese who centuries ago indulged their levitative dreams by leaping with parachutes. + +<p id="d0e11058">Alfred had registered all these obsolete things in his memory, while most Tahitians had no detailed knowledge of them, being +crammed with the lore of theology, of saints, of automobiles, and moving pictures, and prize-fights for money. Matatini Afaraauia, +son of Faaruia, <span id="d0e11060" class="pageno">page 478</span>of chiefly descent, a boy of seven, and of a guileless, bewitching disposition, made me his intimate friend, and through his +sharp eyes I discovered phenomena that might have escaped my untutored mind. He lifted a stone, and beneath it was a spider +larger than a tarantula. It was tabu to Tahitians, harmless, and a voracious eater of insects. Spiders are larger in these +tropics than elsewhere, and here, too, the male was smaller than the female. Being seized and slain and devoured by his lady +love even in the very transports of husbandly affection, it had been bitten in on his subconscious sensibilities that diminutiveness +was life-saving, and natural selection had made him inferior in size to his cannibal mate. He had a very shrinking attitude +in her presence, as Socrates must have affected about Xantippe. + +<p id="d0e11063">At eleven o’clock of the forenoon I, with Matatini and Raiere, a youth of twenty, strolled down the grassy street to the garden +of Alfred, where Choti might be painting under the trees, and if a halloo did not bring him bounding to us, we went on to +T’yonni’s, where he would surely be, either under the mango trees or in the salon. Choti had many canvases completed, some +six feet long, and he also did excellent silver-point heads of the villagers. Tahitians were indifferent models, as they were +not much interested in pictures, not seeing objects, as we do, and found posing irksome. Only Choti’s friendship for them, +his bonhomie, and many merry jokes in their tongue could keep them still for his purposes. + +<p id="d0e11066">T’yonni’s house was half a mile from my own. A quarter of a mile farther, and the same distance from the junction of lagoon +and river, we had our swimming-place. <span id="d0e11068" class="pageno">page 479</span>On an acre or two of grass and moss, removed from any habitation, grew a score of lofty cocoas, and under these we threw off +our <i>pareus</i> or trousers and shirts. The bank of the stream was a fathom from the water which was brackish at high tide and sweet at low. +With a short run and a curving leap we plunged into the flowing water. It was refreshing at the hottest hour. The Tahitians +seldom dived head first, as we did, but jumped feet foremost, and the women in a sitting posture, which made a great splash, +but prevented their gowns from rising. As I remarked before, we three Americans bathed stark when with men, but the modest +Tahitian men never for a moment uncovered themselves, but wore their <i>pareus</i>. Captain Cook said that in their houses he had not seen a single instance of immodesty, though families slept in one room. +Choti avowed that he had to make love to his girl models to induce them to pose in the altogether, for money would not make +them adopt the garb of Venus. + +<p id="d0e11077">The Tahitians did not enter the sea for pleasure. The rivers and brooks were their bathing- and resting-places. They attributed +sicknesses to the too frequent touch of salt water. They had not the habitude of swimming within the lagoons, as at Hawaii; +it was not with them an exercise or luxury, but a part of their every-day activities in fishing and canoeing. A farmer after +his day’s work does not run foot-races. Yet in gatherings these people often vied for supremacy in every sort of sea sport, +and beforetime, in bays free of coral, developed an astonishing skill in surf-riding on boards, in canoes, and without artificial +support. Such skill was ranked on a par with or perhaps the same as <span id="d0e11079" class="pageno">page 480</span>proficiency in the pastimes of war, as did the Greeks, who addressed Diagoras, after he and his two sons had been crowned +in the arena: “Die, for thou hast nothing short of divinity to desire.” These ambitions had been ended in Tahiti by the frowns +of the missionaries, to whom athletics were a species of diabolical possession, unworthy souls destined for hell or heaven, +with but a brief span to avert their birthright of damnation in sackcloth and ashes. + +<p id="d0e11082">We entered the river regularly at eleven and four, but Choti, T’yonni, and I also swam in the lagoon at the mouth of the river, +and never suffered bad consequences unless we cut or scraped ourselves on coral. About noon I prepared my <i>déjeuner à la fourchette</i>, and had a wide choice of shrimp, eels, fish, taro, chicken, breadfruit, yams, and all the other fruits. The solicitude of +the homesick missionaries had added to those indigenous, oranges, limes, shaddocks, citrons, tamarinds, guavas, custard apples, +peaches, figs, grapes, pineapples, watermelons, pumpkins, cucumbers and cabbages. They had grown these foreign flora many +years before they made sprout a single shoot of Christianity. + +<p id="d0e11088">I invented a stove from a five-gallon oil tin. With a can-opener I cut a strip out on opposite sides ten inches from the bottom, +and laid two iron bars across, and under them, inside the receptacle, built a fire. Upon this I cooked my coffee in the percolator, +while upon the earth and hot stones other delicious dishes boiled, stewed, and fried. If I baked, I used the native oven in +the ground, with earth and leaves inclosing. + +<p id="d0e11091">I passed hours on the reef with Raiere and Matatini or in canoes, drawing the nets and catching shrimp and <span id="d0e11093" class="pageno">page 481</span>eels. In the lagoon we usually secured a plentiful draft of fish, brilliant creatures of silver and crimson, as they leaped +from the sea into the nets, and were later tumbled into canoes or on the beach. The <i>orare</i>, <i>aturi</i>, and <i>paaihere</i> were like the gleaming mesh purses worn by the women of our cities, but the <i>ihi</i> was as red as the beard of the Greek god T’yonni. These fish we kept in tubs of sea water, alive and even moderately happy +until cooked. + +<p id="d0e11108">Saturday’s parties went far into the woods to gather a choice kind of <i>fei</i>, and the oranges and limes of the foot-hills. Raiere, Matatini, and another boy, Tahitua, hunted the shrimp and eel. After +our suppers, about seven or eight o’clock, when it was quite dark, we equipped ourselves for the chase, each with a torch +and two or three lances, all but Tahitua, who carried a bag. + +<p id="d0e11114">We followed the <i>grand chemin</i>, as Alfred called it, along the lagoon and past the clump of trees in which lived Uritaata, whom we saw sleeping peacefully +a dozen feet from the earth in the branches of a mango. He lay on his back, with his arms above his little head, and one foot +grasping a leaf, and did not arouse to notice our passing. The Tahitians gave him wide avoidance, with a mutter of exorcism. +We descended the bank, and entered the stream at a point just below the last hut of the village. + +<p id="d0e11120">Raiere cast a glow upon the water with his torch, and we saw the shrimp resting upon the bottom or leaping into the air in +foot-wide bounds. He poised his smallest lance and thrust it with a very quick, but exact, motion, so that almost every time +he impaled a shrimp upon its prongs. The <i>oura</i> was instantly withdrawn, <span id="d0e11125" class="pageno">page 482</span>and Tahitua received it in his bag. All but he then began in earnest the quest of the <i>bonnes bouches</i>. We separated a hundred feet or so, and treading slowly the pebbled or bouldered and often slippery floor of the river, keeping +to the shallow places, we lighted the rippling waters with our torches, and sought to spear the agile and fearful prey. The +<i>oura</i> lances were five feet long, not thicker than a fat finger, and fitted with three slender prongs of iron—nails filed upon +the basalt rock. One saw the faintest glimpse of a shrimp on the bottom, or a red shadow as the animal darted past, and only +the swiftest coordination of mind and body won the prize. Whereas Raiere and even Matatini secured most of those they struck +at, I made many laughable failures. I missed the still body through the deceptive shadows of the water, or failed to strike +home because of the lightning-like movements of the alarmed shrimp. + +<p id="d0e11134">The sport was fascinating. The water was as warm as fresh milk, transparent, and with here a gentle and there a rapid current. +A million stars glittered in a sky that was very near, and the trees and vegetation were in mysterious shadows. Only when +our torches lit the darkness did we perceive the actual forms of the cocoanuts, mango- and <i>purau</i>-trees which bordered the banks and climbed the hills into the distance. The <i>puraus</i> often seemed like banians, stretching far over the water in strange and ghostlike shapes, with twisting branches and gnarled +trunks that in the obscurity gave a startling suggestion of the fetish growths of the ancients. I felt a faint touch of fear +as I groped through the stream, now and again falling into a deep hole or stumbling over a stone or buried branch, and I looked +<span id="d0e11142" class="pageno">page 483</span>often to reassure myself that Raiere’s gigantic figure loomed in the farther gloom. There was no danger save in me; the scene +was peaceful, but for our own disturbance of the night and the river, and not even a breeze fluttered the dark leaves of the +trees. The mountain rose steeply at our backs, and constellations appeared to rest upon its shadowy crest. + +<p id="d0e11145">At last we came to a place where a tiny natural dam caused the stream to break in glints of white on a crooked line of rocks, +and pausing there, Raiere suddenly bent over. He called peremptorily to Tahitua to bring him the big lance, which the little +boy carried along with the bag. + +<p id="d0e11148">“Puhi! Haere mai!” he said in a low, but urgent, voice. + +<p id="d0e11151">Tahitua flew through the ripples, and we all hurried to see the new adventure. + +<p id="d0e11154">“Puhi! Puhi!” again said Raiere, and pointed to the rocks. We cautiously stepped that way, and saw, apparently asleep at the +foot of the stones, a tangle of huge eels. Their black and gray slate-colored bodies lay inert in folds, as if they had gathered +for a night’s good slumber, and not until Raiere, with unerring aim thrust the great spear, with its half-dozen points of +iron, into one of them, did the others scatter in a mad swim for safety. The mere transfixing of the eel did not always mean +his securing, but another of us must put a lance in the contorting curves and with quick and dexterous motion lift him to +the bank where his struggles might be ended with knife or rock. The release of him for a second might permit him to wriggle +to the river and escape. +<span id="d0e11156" class="pageno">page 485</span> + +<p id="d0e11159">With the finding of the first eel, began an hour’s search for his fellows. We had struck their haunt, but they did not yield +us half a dozen of their kind without diligent, though pleasant, work. We splashed to places when one sang out that an eel +was in sight, and pursued them in their divagations through the river, trusting to drive them into eddies or under the fringe +of plants hanging from the banks where we hunted them out. + +<p id="d0e11162">In a couple of hours we found ourselves with a full creel of eels and <i>oura</i>, and I a trifle dismayed at facing the march home. Raiere relieved Tahitua of the burden, and a song shortened the way. I +gave them the ditty of the New-Zealand Maori, who metaphorically toasted his enemy: + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e11170">O, the saltiness of my mouth +<br id="d0e11173">In drinking the liquid brains of Nuku +<br id="d0e11176">Whence welled up his wrath! +<br id="d0e11179">His ears which heard the deliberations! +<br id="d0e11182">Mine enemy shall go headlong +<br id="d0e11185">Into the stomach of Hinewai! +<br id="d0e11188">My teeth shall devour Kaukau! +<br id="d0e11191">The three hundred and forty of my enemy +<br id="d0e11194">Shall be huddled in a heap in my trough; +<br id="d0e11197">Te Hika and his multitudes +<br id="d0e11200">Shall boil in my pot! +<br id="d0e11203">The whole tribe shall be +<br id="d0e11206">My sweet morsel to finish with! E! + +<span id="d0e11210" class="pageno">page 485</span> +<h1 id="d0e11213">Chapter XXIV</h1> +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e11220">In the days of Captain Cook—The first Spanish missionaries—Difficulties of converting the heathens—Wars over Christianity—Ori-a-Ori, +the chief, friend of Stevenson—We read the Bible together—The church and the himene. + +</div> +<p id="d0e11224">Captain Cook barely escaped shipwreck here. The Bay of Tautira is marked on the French map, “Mouillage de Cook,” the anchorage +of Cook. That indomitable mariner risked his vessels in many dangerous roadsteads to explore and to procure fresh supplies +for his crews. When he had exhausted the surplus of pigs, cocoanuts, fowls, and green stuff at one port, he sailed for another. +Scurvy, the relentless familiar of the sailor on the deep sea, made no peril or labor too severe. At night Cook’s ships approached +Oati-piha, or Ohetepeha, Bay, as his log-writers termed this lagoon, from the Vaitapiha River, flowing into it, and the dawn +found them in a calm a mile and a half from the reef. + +<p id="d0e11227">They put down boats and tried to tow off their ships, but the tide set them in more and more toward the rocks. For many hours +they despaired of saving the vessels, though they used “warping-machines,” anchors, and kedges. From my cook-house I saw where +they had struggled for their lives with breaker, current, and chartless bottom. A light breeze off the land saved them, and +in another day they returned to “obtain cocoanuts, plantains, bananas, apples, yams and other <span id="d0e11229" class="pageno">page 486</span>roots, which were exchanged for nails and beads.” From the very pool into which I dived Cook’s hearties filled their casks +with fresh water, after shooting “two muskets and a great gun along the shore to intimidate the Indians who were obstinate.” + +<p id="d0e11232">Cook, on his third voyage to Tahiti, found here a large wooden cross on which was inscribed in Latin: +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e11236">Christ conquered<br id="d0e11238"> +Charles the Third Emperor<br id="d0e11240"> +1774 + +</div> + +<p id="d0e11245">It was plain that Spaniards had erected the cross, for Charles III was King of Spain. These English tars hated the dons, with +whom they had but recently been embattled. When they were convinced that a Spanish ship had been at Tautira twice since they +had departed, and that the builders of the cross had earned the respect and affection of the natives, the Britons, in their +old way of fair and assertive dealing, left the cross standing after carving on the reverse in good Latin as a claim of prediscovery: +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e11249">George III King<br id="d0e11251"> +1767, 1769, 1773, 1774, 1777. + +</div> + +<p id="d0e11256">Two Spanish priests, they learned, had lived in the village between the arrival and return of the Spanish ships from Peru. +They left no imprint of their Catholic religion except the cross and a memory of kindness; and why they resigned their mission +to Tahiti is not known. The British missionaries did not come until 1797, on the <i>Duff</i>. They planted gardens and worked diligently and prayed. They had vast patience, and <span id="d0e11261" class="pageno">page 487</span>confidence in their all-powerful and avenging God, and a rapt devotion to his son, who forgave the sins of those who adopted +His faith. Their ideals were as fixed as the stars, and their courage superior to the daily discouragements of their lives +and continuous hardships of separation from home. But they could not break the strength of the superstitions of the pagans. +A dozen years these English ecclesiastics delved in their gardens, built their houses, and begged Jehovah and Jesus to give +them victory. Five years they mourned without message or aid from England. Their clothes were in tatters, and as covering +their whole bodies with European garments from feet to scalp, except face and hands, was a rigid prescription of their own +morals’ and an example to the almost nude Tahitians, they suffered keenly from shame. When, after half a decade, a brig arrived, +its supplies were found ruined by salt water and mold. The poor clerics, in an earthly paradise, but hostile atmosphere, with +little to report to an unheeding England save the depths of the untilled field of heathenry and depravity, might not have +been blamed if they, too, had given up their mission. The fruits of twelve years of gardening and horticulture were destroyed +in a day by ravaging parties. The fact that their lives were spared and their persons not attacked, except in a rare instance +of an individual piece of villainy, is proof of the mild dispositions of the infidels. The Tahitians worshiped their gods +with a superstitious awe not exceeded anywhere, and the outlandish white men proclaimed openly that these gods were dirty +lumps of wood and stone and fiber, and to be despised in comparison with the Christian Gods, Father and Son, which <span id="d0e11263" class="pageno">page 488</span>they implored them under pain of eternal punishment to adopt. Imagine the fate of strangers who settled in New England or +Spain a hundred and twenty years ago and who announced daily year in and year out that all the ancestors of the people there +were in hell, that their God and their angels, saints, priests, and images were demons, or doing the work of demons, and that +only by acknowledging their belief in a deity unheard-of before, by having water sprinkled on their heads, and ceasing the +customs and thoughts taught as most moral and divine by their own revered priests, could they escape eternal misery as a consequence +of a mistake made by a man and a woman named Atamu and Ivi six thousand years earlier! In Spain at that date the king whose +name had been coupled with Christ’s on the cross near my house at Tautira was expelling the Jesuits from his kingdom, and +the Holy Office recorded its thirtieth thousand human being burned at the stake in that country in the name of Jesus Christ. + +<p id="d0e11266">The incredulous Tahitians tolerated the queer white men who wore long, black coats and who had learned their language, and +who, except as to religion, spoke gently to them, healed their wounds, patted their children on the head, and taught them +how to use iron and wood in unknown fashions. They saw that these men drank intoxicants in great moderation, lived in amity, +and did not advantage themselves in trade or with the native women, as did all the other white men. And they wondered. + +<p id="d0e11269">But they were convinced of the truth of their own religion. Their chiefs and priests replied: + +<p id="d0e11272">“If your first man and woman took the lizard’s word <span id="d0e11274" class="pageno">page 489</span>and ate fruit from the tabu tree, they should have been punished, and if their children killed the son of your God, they should +have been punished; but why worry us about it? We have not killed you, and our first man and woman respected all tabu trees.” + +<p id="d0e11277">They disdained the cruel message that their forefathers were in the perpetually burning <i>umu</i>, the oven, as did that Frisian king, Radbod, who with one leg in the baptismal font, bethought him to ask where were his +dead progenitors, and was answered by the militant bishop, Wolfran, “In hell, with all unbelievers.” + +<p id="d0e11283">“Then will I rather feast with them in the halls of Woden than dwell with your little, starveling Christians in heaven” said +the pagan, and withdrew his sanctified limb to walk to an unblessed grave in proud pantheism. + +<p id="d0e11286">Otu, the son of King Pomaré, had a revelation that the god Oro wished to be removed to Tautira from Atehuru. The chiefs of +that district protested, and Otu’s followers seized the idol, and went to sea with him. They landed as soon as it was safe, +and mollified the god by a sacrifice; and having no victim, they killed one of Pomaré’s servants. The island then divided +into hateful camps, and Moorea joined the fray. The mission sided with the king, and the crews of two English vessels fortified +the mission, and with their modern weapons helped the royal party to whip the other faction. Wars followed, the mission was +again invaded, the houses burned, and the missionaries, not desiring martyrdom, fled to Australia, thousands of miles away. +But two remained, and kept at their preaching, and finally the genius of the Clapham clerics triumphed. Pomaré ate the tabu +turtle of the temple, and a Christian nucleus <span id="d0e11288" class="pageno">page 490</span>was formed, headed by the sovereign. For years a bloody warfare over Christianity distracted the islands, comparable in intensity +of feeling to that between Catholics and Huguenots in France. The Christian converts were slaughtered by the hundreds, and +the pagans drove all the survivors to Moorea. After a season the conquerors grew lonesome, and invited them to return and +abjure their false god, Ietu Kirito, whom they had defeated, and who by the Christians’ own statement had been hanged on a +tree by the Ati-Iuda, the tribe of Jews. Pomaré and eight hundred men landed from Moorea, and with the missionaries began +a song service on the beach, and “Come, let us join our friends above,” and “Blow ye the trumpets, blow!” echoed from the +hills. + +<p id="d0e11291">Couriers carried all over Tahiti word of the outrage to the gods, and the incensed heathens rose in immense numbers and attacked +the hymners. Fortunately, says the missionary chronicle, the Christians had their arms with them, and after prayers and exhortations +by the clergy, Pomaré led his cohorts, men and women; and by the grace of God and the whites, with a few muskets, they smote +the devil-worshipers hip and thigh, and chased them to the distant valleys. + +<p id="d0e11294">Pomaré, directed by the now militant missionaries, sent a body of gunmen to Tautira to capture the god Oro, whose principal +temple was very near where stood my kitchen. The iconoclasts, with the zeal of neophytes, destroyed every vestige of the magnificent +<i>marae</i>, and, unwinding the many coverings of Oro, carried to the king the huge log which had been the national god for ages. The +king first used it in his cook-house as a shelf, and finally for firewood. +<span id="d0e11299" class="pageno">page 491</span> + +<p id="d0e11302">From then on the cross hecame the symhol of the new religion, and those who had been most faithful to the old were the strongest +disciples. Until the French expelled the missionary-consul of England, Pritchard, the missionaries virtually governed Tahiti; +but with the conflict of sects and the growing claims of trade, piety languished, until now church-going was become a social +pastime, and of small influence upon the conduct of the Tahitians. The pastors were no longer of the type of the pioneers, +and with the fast decrease of the race, the Tahitians were left largely to their own devices. Half a dozen religions supported +ministers from America and Europe in Papeete; but there was no longer a fire of proselytizing, as all were nominally Christians. +In Tautira everybody went to the Protestant or the Catholic church, the latter having a fifth as many attendants as the former. +A reason for this may have been that there was no French priest resident at Tautira, and no Tahitian priests, whereas Tahitian +preachers abound. Also the chiefs were Protestants, and their influence notable. + +<p id="d0e11305">Ori-a-Ori, though busied in his official duties, and by nature a silent man, assumed of me a care, and in time gave me a friendship +beyond my possible return to him. I sent to Papeete for a variety of edibles from the stores of the New-Zealand and German +merchants, and spread a gay table, to which I often invited Choti and T’yonni, who were my hosts as frequently. Ori-a-Ori +every evening sat with me, and numbers of times we read the Bible, I, first, reciting the verse in French, and he following +in Tahitian. His greatest liking was for the chapters in which the Saviour’s life on the seaside with <span id="d0e11307" class="pageno">page 492</span>the fishermen was described, but the beatitudes brought out to the fullest his deep, melancholy voice, as by the light of +the lamp upon the low table the chief intoned the thrilling gospel of humility and unselfishness. + +<p id="d0e11310">Never before had I appreciated so well the divine character of Jesus or conjectured so clearly the scenes of his teaching +upon the shores of the Lake of Galilee. Excepting the tropical plants and the eternal accent of the reef, the old Tahitian +and I might have been in Palestine with Peter and the sons of Zebedee and the disciples. They were people of slender worldly +knowledge, the carpenter’s son knew nothing of history, and ate with his fingers, as did Ori-a-Ori; but their open eyes, unclouded +by sophistication and complex interests, looked at the universe and saw God. They lived mostly under the open sky in touch +with nature, dependent on its manifestations immediately about them for their sustenance, and with its gifts and curses for +their concerns and symbols. + +<p id="d0e11313">Occidentals, who seldom muse, to whom contemplation is waste of time, do not enjoy the oneness with nature shared by these +Polynesians with the sacred Commoner whose beatitudes were to bring anarchy upon the Roman world, and destroy the effects +of the philosophies of the ablest minds of Greece. The fishermen of Samaria were gay and somber by turn, as were the Tahitians, +doing little work, but much thinking, and innocent and ignorant of the perplexing problems and offensive indecencies of striving +and luxury. The air and light nurtured them, and they confidently leaned upon the hand of God to guide and preserve. + +<p id="d0e11316">Thoreau’s “Cry of the Human” echoed in the dark <span id="d0e11318" class="pageno">page 493</span>as the chief and I chanted the idealistic desires of the friend of man: +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e11322">We talk of civilizing the Indian, but that is not the name for his improvement. By the wary independence and aloofness of +his dim forest life he preserves his intercourse with his native gods and is admitted from time to time to a rare and peculiar +society with nature. He has glances of starry recognition to which our salons are strangers. The steady illumination of his +genius, dim only because distant, is like the faint but satisfying light of the stars compared with the dazzling and shortlived +blaze of candles. + +</div> + +<p id="d0e11327">One evening when we had walked down to the beach to gaze at the heavens and to speculate on the inhabitants of the planets, +we sat on our haunches, our feet lapped by the warm tide, and for the first time I drew our conversation to a man who in a +brief friendship had won the deep affection of this noble islander. + +<p id="d0e11330">“Ori-a-Ori,” I began, “in America, in the city where I lived, my house was near a small <i>aua</i>, a park in which was a <i>tii</i>, a monument, to a great writer, a teller of tales on paper. On a tall block of stone is a ship of gold, with the sails spread; +so she seems to be sailing over the ocean. The friends of the teller of tales built this in in his honor after he died. Now +that writer was once here in Tautira—” + +<p id="d0e11339">Ori-a-Ori leaned toward me, and in a voice laden with memories, a voice that harked back over a quarter of a century, said +slowly and meditatively, but with surety: + +<p id="d0e11342">“Rui? Is the ship the <i>Tatto</i>?” + +<p id="d0e11348">I had awakened in his mind recollections, doubtless often stirred, but very vague, perhaps, almost mythical to him, after +so long a time in which nothing like the <span id="d0e11350" class="pageno">page 494</span>same experience had come to him. Yet that they were dear to him was evident. They were concerned with his vigorous manhood, +though he was a youthful grandfather when the <i>Casco</i> brought Robert Louis Stevenson to Tahiti to live in the house of Ori. I reminded him of their exchanging names in blood brothership, +so that Stevenson was Teriitera, and Ori was Rui. Rui was his pronunciation of Louis, as all his family in Tautira called +the Scotch author. Ori-a-Ori had known them all, his mother, his wife, and his loved stepson, Lloyd Osborne. Nine weeks they +had stayed in his house, which the Princess Moë, Pomaré’s sister-in-law, had asked Ori to vacate for the visitors before he +knew them, but which he was glad he had done when they became friends. Ori and his family had retained only one room for their +intimate effects, and had slept in a native house on the site of my own. On the wild lawn across the road, before his home, +Rui had given his generous feast, costing him eighty dollars at a time when he was most uncertain of funds, and gaining him +the reputation of the richest man known to the Tautirans, the owner of the Silver Ship, as the <i>Casco</i> was called by the Paumotuans, and by Stevenson afterward. There were four or five Tahitians I knew here who remembered the +<i>amuraa maa</i> of the sick man, who had his own schooner, his <i>pahi tira piti</i>; but only Ori retained the deep, though misty, impression made by a meeting of hearts in warmest kinship. + +<p id="d0e11365">“Rui gave me knives and forks and dishes from the schooner to remember him by,” said the chief, abstractedly. “Tati, my relation, +has them. I have not those <span id="d0e11367" class="pageno">page 495</span>presents Rui handed me. Tati said that I ate with my fingers, and that he was the head of the Teva clan; so I gave them to +him. Many <i>papaa</i> visit Tati at Papara. He is rich. <i>Aue!</i> I have not the presents Rui put down on my table.” + +<p id="d0e11376">I said over for him what Rui had written: +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e11380">I love the Polynesian; this civilization of ours is a dingy, ungentlemanly business; it drops out too much of man, and too +much of that the very beauty of the poor beast ... if you could live, the only white folk, in a Polynesian village, and drink +that warm, light <i>vin du pays</i> of human affection, and enjoy that simple dignity of all about you.... + +</div> + +<p id="d0e11388">Paiere, the adopted son of Ori, who was a boy when the <i>Casco</i> was at Tautira, claimed a vivid remembrance of many incidents. He especially had been impressed by the numbers of corks that +flew in the house and on the green; and when I invited him to a bottle of champagne, he made hissing sounds and a plop to +indicate that Rui had a penchant for that kind of wine. + +<p id="d0e11394">“I used to fetch him oranges and mangoes, and climb for drinking nuts, of which Rui was fond,” said Paiere. + +<p id="d0e11397">Paiere was a deacon or functionary of the Protestant church, as was Ori-a-Ori, and I went with the entire family to the Sunday +evening service. For weeks preparations and rehearsals for a <i>himene nui</i>, a mammoth song service, had been agitating the village. Under my trees the children gathered of late afternoons and imitated +the grown-up folk in their melodies. From the verandas and from the church at night issued the peculiar strain of the <i>himene</i>, somehow bringing to me, <span id="d0e11405" class="pageno">page 496</span>lying on my mat under the stars, a sense of fitness to the prospect—the clear heavens, the purple lagoon, the wind in the +groves, and the low rumble of the surf. + +<p id="d0e11408">On the Sunday of the <i>himene nui</i>, I met the French priest as he tied his horse by the door of the Catholic church. He was in a dark cassock or gown, his long, +black beard and a flat, half-melon shaped hat giving him a distinctive appearance in the simple settlement. He was old, and +weary from his hot ride, but courteous as world-wide travelers are, and at his request I dropped in on his service before +the other. He sat by the middle door, and the twenty or thirty of the congregation on the floor at one end. They sang a <i>himene</i>, and he followed and corrected them from a book, so that their method was formal. Congregational singing not being customary +in Catholic churches, it was probable that in Tahiti they had had to meet the competition of the Protestants, who from their +beginnings in Polynesia had made a master stroke by developing this form of worship in extraordinary consonance with the native +mind. + +<p id="d0e11417">The Protestant temple held a hundred and fifty people. It was a plain hall, with doors opposite each other in the middle, +and at one end a slightly raised platform on which sat the pastor and half a dozen deacons. The pastor was delivering his +sermon as I entered, he and all his entourage in black Prince-Albert coats. He had a white shirt and collar and tie, but others +masked a <i>pareu</i> under the wool, and were barelegged. All wore solemn faces of a jury bringing in a death-verdict. Paiere nodded to a volunteer +janitor, who insisted upon my occupying a chair he brought. + +<p id="d0e11423">Every one else was on the floor on mats, in two <span id="d0e11425" class="pageno">page 497</span>squares or separate divisions. Babies lay at their mothers’ extended feet, and others ran about the room in silence. The pastor’s +sermon was about Ioba and his <i>tefa pua</i>, which he scraped with <i>poa</i>, the shells of the beach. He pictured the man of patience as if in Tautira, with his three faithless friends, Elifazi, Bilidadi, +and Tofari, urging him to deny God and to sin; and the speaker struck the railing with his fist when he enumerated the possessions +taken from Ioba by God, but returned a hundredfold. After he had finished, wiping the sweat from his brow with a colored kerchief, +the <i>himene</i> began. + +<p id="d0e11437">The only advance we have made since the Greeks is, in music. Possibly in painting we have better mediums; but in philosophy, +poetry, sculpture, decency, beauty, we have not risen. We cure diseases more skilfully, but we have more; in health we are +crippled by our cities and our customs. Our violins and pianos, our orchestras, and symphonies, are our great achievements; +but in these South Seas, where they do not count, the people had evolved a mass utterance of canticles more thrilling and, +more enjoyable than the oratorios of Europe. In these <i>himenes</i> one may see transfigured for moments the soul of the Polynesian ascending above the dust of the west, which smothers his +articulation. + +<p id="d0e11443">A woman in the center of a row suddenly struck a high note, beginning a few words from a hymn, or an improvisation. She sang +through a phrase, and then others joined in, singly or in pairs or in tens, without any apparent rule except close harmony. +These voices burst in from any point, a perfect glee chorus, some high, some low, some singing words, and others merely <span id="d0e11445" class="pageno">page 498</span>humming resonantly, a deep, booming bass. The surf beating on the reef, the wind in the cocoanut-trees, entered into the volume +of sound, and were mingled in the <i>emmeleia</i>, a resulting magnificence of accord that reminded me curiously of a great pipe-organ. + +<p id="d0e11451">The <i>himene</i> was the offspring of the original efforts of the Polynesians to adapt the songs of the sailormen, the national airs of the +adventurers of many countries, the rollicking obscenities and drinking doggerel of the navies, and the religious hymns drilled +into their ears by the missionaries, English and French. Now the words and the meanings were inextricably confused. A leader +might begin with, “I am washed in the blood of the Lamb,” or, “The Son of Man goes forth to war, a golden crown to gain; His +blood-red banner streams afar—who follows in his train?” But those striking in might prefer such a phrase as, “The old white +pig ran into the sea,” or, “Johnny Brown, I love your daughter,” or something not possible to write down. It was mostly in +the old Tahitian language, almost forgotten, and thus unknown to the foreign preachers. Sex and religion were as mingled here +as in America. + +<p id="d0e11457">The airs were as wild as they were melodious; here a rippling torrent of <i>ra, ra, ra-ra-ra</i>, and <i>la, la, la-la-la</i> breaking in on the sustained verses of the leaders; falsetto notes, high and strident, savage and shrilling, piercing the +thrumming diapason of the men; long, droning tones like bagpipes, bubbling sounds like water flowing; and all in perfect time. +The clear, fascinating false soprano of the woman leader had a cadence of ecstasy, and I marked her under a lamp. Her head +was thrown back, her eyes were closed, and her features <span id="d0e11465" class="pageno">page 499</span>set as in a trance. Her throat and mouth moved, and her nostrils quivered, her countenance glorified by her visions which +had transported her to the bosom of Abraham. + +<p id="d0e11468">The atmosphere rang as with the chimes of a cathedral, the echoes—there were none in reality—returning from roof and tree, +and I had the feeling of the air being made up of voices, and of whirling in this magic ether. The woman I observed would +seem about to stop, her voice falling away almost to no sound, and the prolonged drone of the chorus dying out, when, as if +she had come to life again, she sang out at the top of her lungs, and the ranks again took up their tones. I could almost +trace the imposition of the religious strain upon the savage, the Christian upon the heathen, like the negro spirituals of +Georgia, and I sat back in my chair, and forgot the scene in the thoughts induced by the <i>himene</i>. + +<p id="d0e11474">The souls of the Tahitians were not much changed by all their outward transformation. Superficial, indeed, are the accomplishments +of missionaries, merchants, and masters among these Maoris. The old guard dies, but never surrenders; the boast of Napoleon’s +soldiers might be paraphrased by the voice of the Maori spirit. Our philosophy, our catechisms, and our rules have not uprooted +the convictions and thought methods of centuries. Bewildered by our ambitions, fashions, and inventions, they emulate us feebly, +but in their heart of hearts think us mad. Old chiefs and chiefesses I have had confess to me that they were stunned by the +novelties, commands, and demands of the <i>papaa</i> (foreigner), but that their confusion was not liking or belief. In his youth, in the midst of these bustling whites, the +Tahitian imitates <span id="d0e11479" class="pageno">page 500</span>them and feels sometimes humiliated that he is not one of them. But in sober middle age all these new desires begin to leave +him, and he becomes a Maori again. The older he grows, the less attractive seem the white man’s ways and ambitions, though +pride, habit, and perhaps an acquired fear of the hell painted by priests and preachers from the distant lands keep him church-going. +Gods may differ, but devils never. + +<p id="d0e11482">Choti and T’yonni and I spent an hour at my house before they walked home to bed, and Choti read as a soporific, with a few +bottles of Munich beer, the “Sermon to the Fishes” of St. Antonius. As he read, we heard the joyous stridence of an accordion +in a <i>hula</i> harmony. The <i>upaupahura</i> was beginning in the grove where Uritaata lived. The austere St. Antonius had lectured long to the eels on the folly of wiggling, +to the pikes on the immorality of stealing, and to the crabs and turtles on the danger of sloth. But: + +<p class="poetry"> +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e11495">“The sermon now ended, +<br id="d0e11498">Each turned and descended; +<br id="d0e11501">The pikes went on stealing, +<br id="d0e11504">The eels went on eeling; +<br id="d0e11507"> Much edified were they, +<br id="d0e11510"> But preferred the old way. + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e11516">“The crabs are back-sliders, +<br id="d0e11519">The stock-fish thick-siders, +<br id="d0e11522">The carps are sharp-set, +<br id="d0e11525">All the sermon forget; +<br id="d0e11528"> Much delighted were they, +<br id="d0e11531"> But preferred the old way.” + + +<span id="d0e11536" class="pageno">page 501</span> +<h1 id="d0e11539">Chapter XXV</h1> +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e11546">I meet a sorcerer—Power over fire—The mystery of the fiery furnace—The scene in the forest—Walking over the white hot stones—Origin +of the rite. + +</div> +<p id="d0e11550">Walking to the neighboring district of Pueu with Raiere to see the beauties of the shore, we met a cart coming toward Tautira, +and one of the two natives in it attracted my interest. He was very tall and broad and proud of carriage, old, but still unbroken +in form or feature, and with a look of unconformity that marked him for a rebel. Against what? I wondered. Walt Whitman had +that look, and so had Lincoln; and Thomas Paine, who more than any Englishman aided the American Revolution. Mysticism was +in this man’s eyes, which did not gaze at the things about him, but were blinds to a secret soul. + +<p id="d0e11553">Raiere exchanged a few words with the driver of the cart, and as they continued on toward Tautira, he said to me in a very +serious voice: + +<p id="d0e11556">“He is a <i>tahua</i>, a sorcerer, who will enact the <i>Umuti</i>, the walking over the fiery oven. He is from Raiatea and very noted. Ten years ago, Papa Ita of Raiatea was here, but there +has been no Umuti since.” + +<p id="d0e11565">“What brings him here now?” I asked. “Who pays him?” + +<p id="d0e11568">Raiere answered quickly: + +<p id="d0e11571">“<i>Aue</i>! he does not ask for money, but he must live, and we all will give a little. It is good to see the <i>Umuti</i> again.” +<span id="d0e11579" class="pageno">page 502</span> + +<p id="d0e11582">“But, Raiere, my friend,” I protested, “you are a Christian, and only a day ago ate the breadfruit at the communion service. +Fire-walking is <i>etené</i>; it is a heathen rite.” + +<p id="d0e11588">“<i>Aita!</i>” replied the youth. “No, it is in the Bible, and was taught by Te Atua, the great God. The three boys in Babulonia were saved +from death by Atua teaching them the way of the Umuti.” + +<p id="d0e11594">“Where will the Umuti be?” I inquired. “I must see it.” + +<p id="d0e11597">“By the old <i>tii</i> up the Aataroa valley, on Saturday night.” + +<p id="d0e11603">That was five days off, and it could not come soon enough for me. I was eager for this strangest, most inexplicable survival +of ancient magic, the apparent only failure of the natural law that fire will burn human flesh. I had seen it in Hawaii and +in other countries, and had not reached any satisfying explanation of its seeming reversal of all other experience. I knew +that fire-walking as a part of the racial or national worship of a god of fire, had existed and persisted in many far separated +parts of the world. + +<p id="d0e11606">Babylon, Egypt, India, Malaysia, North America, Japan, and scattered Maoris from Hawaii to New Zealand all had religious ceremonies +in which the gaining and showing of power over fire was a miracle seen and believed in by priests and laity. Modern saints +and quasi-scientists had claims to similar achievements. Dr. Dozous said he saw Bernadette, the seeress of Lourdes, hold her +hands in a flame for fifteen minutes without pain or mark, he timing the incident exactly by his watch. Daniel Dunglas Home, +the famous Scottish <span id="d0e11608" class="pageno">page 503</span>spiritist, was certified by Sir William Crookes and Andrew Lang to handle red-hot coals in his hands, and could convey to +others the same immunity. Lang tells of a friend of his, a clergyman, whose hand was badly blistered by a coal Home put in +his palm, Home attributing the accident to the churchman’s unbelieving state of mind. Crookes, the distinguished physicist, +took into his laboratory handkerchiefs in which Home had wrapped live coals, and found them “unburned, unscorched, and not +prepared to resist fire.” + +<p id="d0e11611">The scene of the Umuti was an hour’s walk up the glen of Aataroa, which began at our swimming-place. On Thursday Choti, T’yonni, +and I accompanied Raiere to the place of the <i>tii</i>, where the preparations for the sorcery were beginning. We went through a continuous forest of many kinds of trees, a vast, +climbing coppice, in which all the riches of the Tahitian earth were mingled with growths from abroad. Oranges and lemons, +which had sprung decades before from seeds strewn carelessly, had become giant trees of their kinds; and the lianas and parasites, +guava, <i>lantana</i>, and a hundred species of ferns and orchids, with myriad mosses, covered every foot of soil, or stretched upon the trunks +and limbs, so that exquisite tapestries garlanded the trees and hung like green and gold draperies between them. <i>Mapé</i>-trees prevailed, immense, weirdly shaped, often appalling in their curious buttresses, their limbs writhing as if in torture, +suggestive of the old fetishism that had endowed them with spirits which suffered and spoke. Utterly uninhabited or forsaken, +there was a bare trail through this wood, which, led by Raiere, we followed, wading the Aataroa River twice, and I arriving +<span id="d0e11622" class="pageno">page 504</span>with my mind deeply impressed by the esoteric suggestiveness of the scene. + +<p id="d0e11625">On a level spot, under five ponderous <i>mapé</i>-trees, eight or ten men of Tautira and of Pueu and Afaahiti were completing the oven. They had dug a pit twenty-five feet +long, eighteen wide, and five deep, with straight sides. It had been done with exactitude at the direction of the <i>tahua</i>, who was staying alone in a hut near by. The earth from the pit formed a rampart about it, but was leveled to not more than +a foot’s height. At the bottom of the <i>umu</i> had been laid fagots of <i>purau</i>- and guava-wood, and on them huge trunks of the tropical chestnut, the mapé. On the trunks were laid basaltic rocks, or lumps +of lava, boulders, and the stones about, as big as a man’s head. The oven was completed for the lighting. + +<p id="d0e11640">To the north stood a giant phallus of stone, buried in the earth, but protruding six feet, and inclined toward the north. +It was a foot in diameter, and was carved <i>au naturel</i> as the Maori <i>lingam</i> and <i>yoni</i> throughout Polynesia, and in India, where doubtless the cult originated. Before the break-down of their culture, this stone +had been sprinkled with water, or anointed with cocoanut-oil, and covered with a black cloth, as in Hawaii. The Greeks called +their similar god, Priapus, the Black-Cloaked. + +<p id="d0e11652">A trench had been made on the west side of the pit from which to ignite the fuel, a torch lit by fire struck from wood by +friction. I did not see the lighting, which occurred Friday morning, thirty-six hours before the ceremony. The ordinance was +set for eight o’clock. I swam in the river at five on Saturday, and lay down <span id="d0e11654" class="pageno">page 505</span>in my bird cage to be thoroughly rested for the night. It was not easy to fall asleep. There was a thicket of pandanus near +my house, the many legs of the curious trees set in the sand of the upper beach, and these trees were favorite resort of the +<i>mina</i> birds, which were as familiar with me as children of a family, and in many cases impudent beyond belief. They were the size +of crows, and had bronzed wings, lined with white; but their most conspicuous color was a flaring yellow, which dyed their +feet and their beaks and encircled their bold eyes like canary-colored rims of spectacles. Their usual voice was a hoarse +croak that a raven might disavow, but they also emitted a disturbing rattle and a whistle, according to their moods. They +were thieves, as I have said, but one was more audacious than the others. He would come into my open house at daybreak, and +perch on my body, and awaken me pecking at imaginary ticks. He picked up a small compass by its chain and flew away with it. + +<p id="d0e11660">This particular wretch had learned to speak a little, and would say, “Ia ora na oe!” sharply, but with a decided grackle accent. +Despite the irritating cacophony of the <i>mina</i>, I must have slept more than an hour; for when I was suddenly awakened, the sun was almost lost behind the hills. The talking +<i>mina</i> was dancing on my bare stomach and calling out his human vocabulary. + +<p id="d0e11669">I sprang up, my tormentor uttering a raucous screech as I tossed him away. While I hastily cooked my supper, the colors of +the hiding sun spread over the sky in entrancing variety. I could not see the west, but to the northeast were rifts of blood-red +clouds edged with gold over a lake of pearly hue, and to the right of it a bank <span id="d0e11671" class="pageno">page 506</span>of smoke. Against this was a single cocoa on the edge of the promontory, a banner my eye always sought as the day ended. Rising +a hundred feet or more, the curving staff upheld a dozen dark fronds, which nodded in the evening breeze. + +<p id="d0e11674">There was the slightest chill in the air, unusual there, so that I put on shirt and trousers of thin silk and tennis shoes +for my walk, and with a lantern set out for the <i>tii</i>. Along the road were my neighbors, the whole village streaming toward the goblin wood. Mahine and Maraa, two girls of my +acquaintance, unmarried and the merriest in Tautira, joined me. They adorned me with a wreath of ferns and luminous, flower-shaped +fungus from the trees, living plants, the <i>taria iore</i>, or rat’s-ear, which shone like haloes above our faces. The girls wore pink gowns, which they pulled to their waists as we +forded the streams. Mahine had a mouth-organ on which she played. We sang and danced, and the tossing torches stirred the +shadows of the black wold, and brought out in shifting glimpses the ominous shapes of the monstrous trees. With all our gaiety, +I had only to utter a loud “<i>Aue!</i>” and the natives rushed together for protection against the unseen; not of the physical, but of the dark abode of Po. In +this lonely wilderness they thought that <i>tupapaus</i>, the ghosts of the departed, must have their assembly, and deep in their hearts was a deadly fear of these revenants. + +<p id="d0e11689">When we approached the <i>umu</i>, I felt the heat fifty feet away. The pit was a mass of glowing stones, and half a dozen men whom I knew were spreading them +as evenly as possible, turning them with long poles. Each, as it was moved, disclosed its lower surface crimson <span id="d0e11694" class="pageno">page 507</span>red and turning white. The flames leaped up from the wood between the stones. + +<p id="d0e11697">About the oven, forty feet away, the people of the villages who had gathered, stood or squatted, and solemnly awaited the +ritual. The <i>tahua</i>, Tufetufetu, was still in a tiny hut that had been erected for him, and at prayer. A deacon of the church went to him, and +informed him that the <i>umu</i> was ready, and he came slowly toward us. He wore a white <i>pareu</i> of the ancient tapa, and a white <i>tiputa</i>, a poncho of the same beaten-bark fabrics. His head was crowned with <i>ti</i>-leaves, and in his hand he had a wand of the same. He was in the dim light a vision of the necromancer of medieval books. + +<p id="d0e11715">He halted three steps from the fiery furnace, and chanted in Tahitian: + +<p class="poetry"> +<br id="d0e11720">O spirits who put fire in the oven, slack the fire! +<br id="d0e11723">O worm of black earth, +<br id="d0e11726">O worm of bright earth, fresh water, sea water, heat of the oven, red of the oven, support the feet of the walkers, and fan +away the fire! +<br id="d0e11729">O Cold Beings, let us pass over the middle of the oven! +<br id="d0e11732">O Great Woman, who puts the fire in the heavens, hold still the leaf that fans the fire! +<br id="d0e11735">Let thy children go on the oven for a little while! +<br id="d0e11738">Mother of the first footstep! +<br id="d0e11741">Mother of the second footstep! +<br id="d0e11744">Mother of the third footstep! +<br id="d0e11747">Mother of the fourth footstep! +<br id="d0e11750">Mother of the fifth footstep! +<br id="d0e11753">Mother of the sixth footstep! +<br id="d0e11756">Mother of the seventh footstep! +<br id="d0e11759">Mother of the eighth footstep!<span id="d0e11761" class="pageno">page 508</span> +<br id="d0e11764">Mother of the ninth footstep! +<br id="d0e11767">Mother of the tenth footstep! +<br id="d0e11770">O Great Woman, who puts the fire in the heavens, all is hidden! + +<p id="d0e11774">Then, his body erect, his eyes toward the stars, augustly, and without hesitation or choice of footprints, the <i>tahu</i> walked upon the <i>umu</i>. His body was naked except for the <i>tapa</i>, which extended from his shoulders to his knees. The heat radiated from the stones, and sitting on the ground I saw the quivering +of the beams just above the oven. + +<p id="d0e11786">Tufetufetu traversed the entire length of the <i>umu</i> with no single flinching of his muscles or flutter of his eyelids to betray pain or fear. He raised his wand when he reached +the end, and, turning slowly, retraced his steps. + +<p id="d0e11792">The spectators, who had held their breaths, heaved deep sighs, but no word was spoken as the <i>tahua</i> signed all to follow him in another journey over the white-hot rocks. All but a few, their number obscured in the darkness, +ranged themselves in a line behind him, and with masses of <i>ti</i>-leaves in their hands, and some with girdles hastily made, barefooted they marched over the path he took again. When the +cortège had passed once, the priest said, “<i>Fariu!</i> Return!” and, their eyes fixed on vacancy, six times the throng were led by him forward and back over the <i>umu</i>. A woman who looked down and stumbled, left the ranks, and cried out that her leg was burned. She had an injury that was +weeks in curing. + +<p id="d0e11807">At a sign from Tufetufetu, the people left the proximity of the pit, and while he retired to his hut, several <span id="d0e11809" class="pageno">page 509</span>men threw split trunks of banana-trees on the stones. A dense column of white smoke arose, and its acrid odor closed my eyes +for a moment. When I opened them, my friends of our village were placing the prepared carcasses of pigs on the banana-trunks, +with yams, <i>ti</i>-roots and <i>taro</i>. All these were covered with hibiscus and breadfruit leaves and the earth of the rampart, which was heaped on to retain the +heat, and steam the meat and vegetables. + +<p id="d0e11818">I examined the feet and legs of Raiere and the two girls I had come with, and even the delicate hairs of their calves had +not been singed by their fiery promenade. + +<p id="d0e11821">Meanwhile all disposed themselves at ease. The solemnity of the <i>Umuti</i> fell from them. Accordions, mouth-organs, and jews’-harps began to play, and fragments of chants and <i>himenes</i> to sound. Laughter and banter filled the forest as they squatted or lay down to wait for the feast. I did not stay. The <i>Umuti</i> had put me out of humor for fun and food. I lit my flambeau and plodded through the <i>mapé</i>-wood in a brown study, in my ears the fading strains of the <i>arearea</i>, and in my brain a feeling of oneness with the eerie presences of the silent wilderness. I was with Meshack, Shadrach, and +Abednego in their glorious trial in Nebuchadnezzar’s barbaric court. I was among the tepees of the Red Indians of North America +when they leaped unscathed through the roaring blaze of the sacred fire, and trod the burning stones and embers in their dances +before the Great Spirit. + +<p id="d0e11839">The <i>Umuti</i> was not all new to me. Long ago, when I lived in Hawaii, Papa Ita had come there from Tahiti. <span id="d0e11844" class="pageno">page 510</span>His <i>umu</i> was in the devastated area of Chinatown, a district of Honolulu destroyed by a conflagration purposely begun to erase two +blocks of houses in which bubonic plague recurred, and which, unchecked, caused a loss of millions of dollars. + +<p id="d0e11850">The pit was elliptical, nine feet deep, and about twenty-four feet long. Wood was piled in it, and rocks from the dismantled +Kaumakapili church. The fire burned until the stones became red and then white, and they, too, were turned with long poles +to make the heat even. I inspected the heating process several times. At the hour advertised in the American and native papers, +in an enclosure built for the occasion, with seats about the pit, the mystery was enacted. The setting was superb, the flaming +furnace of heathenism in the shadow of the lonely ruin of the Christian edifice. Papa Ita appeared garbed in white <i>tapa</i>, with a wonderful head-dress of the sacred <i>ti</i>-leaves and a belt of the same. The spectators were of all nations, including many Hawaiians. The deposed queen, Liliuokalani, +was a most interested witness. + +<p id="d0e11859">Papa Ita looked neither to the right nor left, but striking the ground thrice with a wand of <i>ti</i>, he raised his voice in invocation and walked upon the stones. He reached the other end, paused and returned. Several times +he did this and when photographers rushed to make a picture, he posed calmly in the center of the pit, and then, with all +the air of a priest who has celebrated a rite of approved merit, he retired with dignity. As he departed from the inclosure, +the natives crowded about him, fearfully, as viewed the Israelites the safety of Daniel emerging from the lions’ den. Did +I not see <span id="d0e11864" class="pageno">page 511</span>the former queen lift the hem of his <i>tapa</i> and bow over it? It was night, the lights sputtered, and I was awed by the success of the incantation. A minute after Papa +Ita had gone, I threw a newspaper upon the path he had trod, and it withered into ashes. The heat seared my face. The doctors, +five or six of them, Americans and English, resident in Honolulu, shrugged their shoulders. They had examined Papa Ita’s feet +before the ceremony and afterward. The flesh was not burned, but, well—What? I confess I do not know. A thermometer held over +the <i>umu</i> of Papa Ita at a height of six feet registered 282 degrees Fahrenheit. + +<p id="d0e11873">There could be no negation of the extreme heat of the oven of Tufetufetu. I had tested it for myself. No precaution was taken +by the walkers. I knew most of them intimately. There was no fraud, no ointment or oil or other application to the feet, and +all had not the same thickness of sole. At Raratonga, near Tahiti, the British resident, Colonel Gudgeon, and three other +Englishmen had followed the <i>tahua</i> as my neighbors had here. The official said that though his feet were tender, his own sensations were of light electric shocks +at the moment and afterward. Dr. William Craig, who disobeyed the <i>tahua</i> and looked behind, was badly burned, and was an invalid for a long time, though Dr. George Craig and Mr. Goodwin met with +no harm. The resident half an hour after his passage tossed a branch on the stones, and it caught fire. In Fiji, Lady Thurston +with a long stick laid her handkerchief on the shoulder of one of the walkers, and when withdrawn in a few seconds it was +scorched through. A cloth thrown on the stones was burned before the last man had gone by. +<span id="d0e11881" class="pageno">page 512</span> + +<p id="d0e11884">What was the secret of the miracle I had witnessed? How was it that in all the Orient, and formerly in America, this power +over fire was known and practised, and that it was interwoven with the strongest and oldest emotions of the races? That from +the Chaldea of millenniums ago to the Tautira of to-day, the ceremonial was virtually the same? Our own boys and girls who +in the fall leaped over the bonfire of burning leaves were unpremeditatedly imitating in a playful manner and with risk what +their forefathers had done religiously. + +<p id="d0e11887">In Raiatea, the chief Tetuanui informed me, the membership of the Protestant church of Uturoa walked on the <i>umu</i>, and embarrassed the missionaries, who had taught them, as the Tautirans were taught, that the <i>Umuti</i> was a pagan sacrament. + +<p id="d0e11896">In some islands it was called <i>vilavilairevo</i>, and in Fiji the oven was <i>lovu</i>. According to legend, the people of Sawau, Fiji, were drawn together to hear their history chanted by the <i>orero</i>, when he demanded presents from all. Each, in the brave way of Viti, tried to outdo the other in generosity, and Tui N’Kualita +promised an eel that he had seen at Na Moliwai. Dredre, the <i>orero</i>, said he was satisfied, and began his tale. It was midnight when he finished. He looked for his present at an early hour +next morning. + +<p id="d0e11911">Tui N’Kualita had gone to Na Moliwai to hunt for the eel, and there, as he sank his arms in the eel’s hole, he found it a +piece of <i>tapa</i> that he knew to be the dress of a child. Tui N’Kualita shouted: + +<p id="d0e11917">“Ah! Ah! this must be the cave of children. But that doesn’t matter to me. Child, god, or new kind of man, I’ll make you my +gift.” +<span id="d0e11919" class="pageno">page 513</span> + +<p id="d0e11922">He kept on angling with his hand in the hole, and caught hold of a man’s hand. The man leaped back and broke his grasp, and +cried: + +<p id="d0e11925">“Tui N’Kualita, spare my life and I will be your wargod. My name is Tui Namoliwai.” + +<p id="d0e11928">Tui N’Kualita answered him: + +<p id="d0e11931">“I am of a valiant people, and I vanquish all my enemies. I have no need of you.” + +<p id="d0e11934">The man in the eel’s hole called out to him again: + +<p id="d0e11937">“Let me be your god of property.” + +<p id="d0e11940">“No,” said Tui N’Kualita; “the tapa I got from the god Kadavu is good enough.” + +<p id="d0e11943">“Well, then, let me be your god of navigation.” + +<p id="d0e11946">“I’m a farmer. Breadfruit is enough for me.” + +<p id="d0e11949">“Let me be your god of love, and you will enjoy all the women of Bega.” + +<p id="d0e11952">“No, I’ve got enough women. I’m not a big chief. I’ll tell you: you be my gift to the <i>orero</i>.” + +<p id="d0e11958">“Very well; and let me have another word. When you have a lot of <i>ti</i> at Sawau, we will go to cook it, and will appear safe and sound.” + +<p id="d0e11964">Next morning Tui N’Kualita built a big oven. Tui Namoliwai appeared and signed to him to follow. + +<p id="d0e11967">“Maybe you are fooling me, and will kill me,” said Tui N’Kualita. + +<p id="d0e11970">“What? Am I going to give you death in exchange for my life? Come!” + +<p id="d0e11973">Tui N’Kualita obeyed, and walked on the <i>lovu</i>. The stones were cool under his feet. He told Tui Namoliwai then that he was free to go, and the latter promised him that +he and his descendants should always march upon the <i>lovu</i> with impunity. +<span id="d0e11981" class="pageno">page 514</span> + +<p id="d0e11984">When I returned to my bird cage at Tautira, I sat down and considered at length all these facts and fancies. I believed in +an all inclusive nature; that the Will or Rule of God which made a star hundreds of millions of times larger than the planet +I had my body on, that took care of billions of suns, worlds, planets, comets, and the beings upon them, was not concerned +in tricks of spiritism or materializations at the whim of mediums or <i>tahuas</i>. But I had in my travels in many countries seen inscrutable facts, and to me this was one. Nobody knew what was the cause +of the inaction of the fire in the <i>lovu</i> or <i>umu</i>. It was not a secret held by anybody, or a deception. + +<p id="d0e11996">One might believe that the stones arrive at a condition of heat which the experienced sorcerers know to be harmless. One might +conceive that the emotion of the walkers produces a perspiration sufficient to prevent injury during the brief time of exposure; +or that the sweat and oily secretions of the skin aided by dust picked up during the journey on the oven was a shield; or +that the walkers were hypnotized by the <i>tahua</i>, or exalted by their daring experiment, so that they did not feel the heat. Even this theory might not account for the failure +to find the faintest burn or scorch upon those who fulfilled the injunction of the sorcerers. + +<p id="d0e12002">The people of Tautira, from Ori-a-Ori to Matatini, had the fullest confidence that Tufetufetu had shown them a miracle, and +that it was not evil; but to the American and European missionaries the <i>Umuti</i> was deviltry, the magic of Simon Magus and his successors, This was shown clearly in the statement of Deacon <span id="d0e12007" class="pageno">page 515</span>Taumihau of Raiatea, which I give in Tahitian and English: +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e12011">E parau teie te umu a Tupua. + +<p id="d0e12014">Teie te huru a taua ohipa ra. + +<p id="d0e12017">Tapuhia te vahie e toru etaeta i te aano. E fatahia taua umu ra i te mahana matamua e faautahia i te ofai inia iho i taua +umu ra, eiaha ra te ofai no pia iho i te marae, no te mea te marae ra te faaea raa no te varua ino oia te arii no te po. + +<p id="d0e12020">E i te po matamua no taua umu ra e haere te mau tahua ora no te ao nei oia Tupua e te mau pipi i Pihaiho i taua umu r ae hio +te mau varua taata no te po e haere ratou inia iho taavari ai; ia ore i puai te auahi. + +<p id="d0e12023">E ei taua po ra, e haere ai hoe taata e hio i te rau Ti, ia i te oia i te rau Ti i te hauti raa mai te hauti ie te matai rahi +ra, te o reira te raoere Ti e ofati mai, e tau mau rauti ra te afai hia i te mahana e haere ai te taata na roto i taua umu +ra e i te hora maha i te popoi na e tutui hia’i taua umu ra. + +<p id="d0e12026">Ia ama taua umu ra, e ia puai <span id="d0e12028" class="pageno">page 516</span>roa te ama raa ei reira te tahua parau. + +<p id="d0e12031">Atu ai i te taata pihei te umu, ia oti taua umu ra i te pihei, haere aturaa tupua i te hiti o te umu a parau tana a haere +ai i reira. + +<p id="d0e12034">Teie tana parau: E na taata e tia i te hiti ote umu nei, pirae uri e pirae tea. E tu’u atu i te nu’u Atua ia haere i te umu. + +<p id="d0e12037">Ei reira Tupua parau ai: E te pape e a haere! E te miti e a haere! + +<p id="d0e12040">Tairi hia’tura te rauti i te hiti o te umu raparau faahou, atura te tahua. Te Vahine tahura’i e po’ia te tu’u raa ia o te +avae iroto i te umu, ei reira toa te mau taata i hinaaro i te haere na roto i te umu ra e haere. Ai na muri iho eiaha ra te +hoe taata e fariu imuri; te taata hopea ra te tuo i te tahua e fariu; na fariu ia, mai te mea e tuo te taata i ropu e fariu, +tau roa te taata i ropu e fariu, pau roa te taata i te auahi; na reira toa ia haere no te aano o te umu. + +<p id="d0e12043">Te i te huru o taua ohipa ra, e ohipa tiaporo te tumu ia i taua ohipa a Tupua ra. + +<p id="d0e12046">E vahine varua ino teie tona <span id="d0e12048" class="pageno">page 517</span>ioa o te Vahine tahura’i. O pirae uri, o pirae tea, i ore ratou ia parau hia. + +<p id="d0e12051">Aita e faufaa i taua ohipa ra. Eiaha Roa’tu orua a rave i taua ohipa ra i te fenua Papa’a na e ama te taata i te anahi, no +te mea e ere i te ohipa mau, e ohipa varua ino no te po te reira te huru o taua ohipa a Tupua ra. + +<p id="d0e12054">Tereira te mau havi rii i roa’a mai ia’u no tau a ohipa ra. Tirara. + +<p id="d0e12057">Taumihau tane. +</div> +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e12063">This is the word of the oven of Tupua. + +<p id="d0e12066">This is the way he did that thing. He cut three fathoms of wood. The oven was three fathoms long and three wide. Heap up the +wood the first day, and carry by sea the stones for the oven. + +<p id="d0e12069">Do not take the stones of the marae, for the marae receives the evil spirits, the spirit of the god of the night. + +<p id="d0e12072">The first night of the ceremony, the sorcerers of Raiatea, Tupua and his kind, march around the oven. They seek the spirits +of the men of the night, and they go about the oven, but they do not light the fire. + +<p id="d0e12075">That same night one goes to find the sacred leaves of the ti. He takes the leaves that float in the wind; those called raoere +ti, and which are used as medicine. He gathers the leaves and carries them to the oven. + +<p id="d0e12078">The fire is lighted at four of the morning. When the <span id="d0e12080" class="pageno">page 516</span>fire is burning brightly, and the oven is very hot, the sorcerer gives his assistants charge of the fire, and instructs them +as to their duties. + +<p id="d0e12083">When the flames are down, Tupua approached the oven, and before walking upon it, he pronounced the following prayer. + +<p id="d0e12086">“O men about the oven! Piraeuri and Piraetea! Let us join the army of the gods in the furnace!” + +<p id="d0e12089">Then, said Tupua: + +<p id="d0e12092">“O water, go in the fire! O sea water, go in the fire!” + +<p id="d0e12095">Waving the ti leaves on the border of the oven, Tupua said: + +<p id="d0e12098">“O Woman who puts the fire in the heaven and in the clouds, permit us to go on foot over the oven!” + +<p id="d0e12101">Then those who wish to, pass onto the oven, one after another. If but one falls all will be burned. The last must watch the +sorcerer, to return when he makes the sign. + +<p id="d0e12104">That is the way this deed, the deed of the devil, is done by Tupua. + +<p id="d0e12107">The woman called Vahine tahura’i is an evil spirit. +<span id="d0e12109" class="pageno">page 517</span> + +<p id="d0e12112">Concerning Piraeuri and Piritea, Tupua would better not have spoken, as it was a useless prayer. + +<p id="d0e12115">Do not introduce the sorcery in the land of the whites! + +<p id="d0e12118">Do not carry there this custom of lighting the oven! + +<p id="d0e12121">It is the work of an evil spirit of the night; this act of Tupua. + +<p id="d0e12124">For that reason I have said little of him in my story. I have spoken. + +<p id="d0e12127">—Taumihau, The Man. +</div> +<span id="d0e12131" class="pageno">page 518</span> + +<h1 id="d0e12135">Chapter XXVI</h1> +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e12142">Farewell to Tautira—My good-bye feast—Back at the Tiare—A talk with +Lovaina—The Cercle Bougainville—Death of David—My visit to the +cemetery—Off for the Marquesas. + +</div> +<p id="d0e12146">The smell of the burning wood of the <i>Umuti</i> was hardly out of my nostrils before my day of leaving Tautira came. I had long wanted to visit the Marquesas Islands, and +the first communication I had from Papeete in nearly three months was from the owners of the schooner <i>Fetia Taiao</i>, notifying me that that vessel, commanded by Captain William Pincher, would sail for the archipelago in a few days, “crew +and weather willing.” I was eager for the adventure, to voyage to the valley of <i>Typee</i>, where Herman Melville had lived with <i>Fayaway</i> and <i>Kori-Kori</i>, where Captain Porter had erected the American flag a century before, and where cannibalism and tattooing had reached their +most artistic development. But to sever the tie with Tautira was saddening. Mataiea and the tribe of Tetuanui had won my affections, +but at Tautira I had become a Tahitian. I had lived in every way as if bred in the island, and had fallen so in love with +the people and the mode of life, the peace and simplicity of the place, that only the already formed resolution to visit all +the seas about stirred me to depart. + +<p id="d0e12164">The village united to say good-by to me at a feast which was spread in the greenwood of the Greek god along the shore of the +lagoon. T’yonni and Choti, the <span id="d0e12166" class="pageno">page 519</span>student and the painter, were foremost in the preparations of the <i>amuraa ma</i>, and many houses supplied the extensive, soft mats which were put on the sward for the table, while the ladies laid the cloth +of banana leaves down their center, and adorned it with flowers. + +<p id="d0e12172">Ori-a-Ori sat at the head and I beside him. His venerable countenance bore a smile of delight in being in such jovial company, +and he answered the quips and drank the toasts as if a youth. I was leaving early in the afternoon, and the banquet was begun +before midday. We had hardly reached the dessert when the accordions burst into the allegro airs of the adapted songs of America +and Europe. Between them speeches of friendship were addressed to me by the chief and others, and I sorrowfully replied. Choti +gave the key-note to our mutual regrets at my leaving by quoting the letter in Tahitian written by Ori-a-Ori to Rui at Honolulu +long ago: +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e12176">I make you to know my great affection. At the hour when you left us, I was filled with tears; my wife, Rui Telime, also, and +all of my household. When you embarked I felt a great sorrow. It is for this that I went up on the road, and you looked from +that ship, and I looked at you on the ship with great grief until you had raised the anchor and hoisted the sails. When the +ship started I ran along the beach to see you still; and when you were on the open sea I cried out to you, “Farewell, Louis”; +and when I was coming back to my house I seemed to hear your voice crying, “Rui, farewell.” Afterwards I watched the ship +as long as I could until the night fell; and when it was dark I said to myself, “If I had wings I should fly to the ship to +meet you, and to sleep amongst you, so that I might be able to come back to shore and to tell to Rui Telime, ‘I have slept upon the ship of Teriitera.’ ” After that we passed that night in the impatience of grief. Towards eight o’clock I seemed to <span id="d0e12184" class="pageno">page 520</span>hear your voice, “Teriitera—Rui—here is the hour for <i>putter</i> and <i>tiro</i> (cheese and syrup).” I did not sleep that night, thinking continually of you, my very dear friend, until the morning; being then still awake, +I went to see Tapina Tutu on her bed, and alas, she was not there. Afterwards I looked into your rooms; they did not please +me as they used to do. I did not hear your voice saying, “Hail, Rui”; I thought then that you had gone, and that you had left +me. Rising up, I went to the beach to see your ship, and I could not see it. I wept, then, until the night, telling myself +continually, “Teriitera returns into his own country and leaves his dear Rui in grief, so that I suffer for him, and weep +for him.” I will not forget you in my memory. Here is the thought: I desire to meet you again. It is my dear Teriitera makes +the only riches I desire in this world. It is your eyes that I desire to see again. It must be that your body and my body +shall eat together at one table: there is what would make my heart content. But now we are separated. May God be with you +all. May His word and His mercy go with you, so that you may be well and we also, according to the words of Paul. + +</div> + +<p id="d0e12198">The chief listened throughout the message with his eyes empty of us, conjuring a vision of the Rui who so far back had won +his heart; and when Choti had concluded, Ori-a-Ori lifted his glass, and said, “Rui e Maru!” coupling me in his affection +with the dim figure of his sweet guest of the late eighties. + +<p id="d0e12201">The last toast was to my return. + +<p id="d0e12204">“You have eaten the <i>fei</i> in Tahiti <i>nei</i>, and you will come back,” they chanted. + +<p id="d0e12213">Raiere drove me in his cart to Taravao, where I had arranged for an automobile to meet me. At Mataiea I was clasped to the +bosom of Haamoura, and spent a few minutes with the Chevalier Tetuanui. They could not understand us cold-blooded whites, +who go long distances <span id="d0e12215" class="pageno">page 521</span>from loved ones. My contemplated journey to the Marquesas Islands was to them a foolish and dangerous labor for no good reason. + +<p id="d0e12218">The trip to Papeete from Mataiea by motor-car took only an hour and a half, and I was in another world, on the camphorwood +chest at the Tiare hotel, by five o’clock. + +<p id="d0e12221">“<i>Mais</i>, Brien, you long time go district!” exclaimed Lovaina. “What you do so long no see you? I think may be you love one country +<i>vahine!</i>” + +<p id="d0e12230">She rubbed my back, and said that Lying Bill, who had been at the Tiare for luncheon, hoped to sail in two days. McHenry was +to go with us as a passenger on the schooner. Everybody knew everybody’s business. Lovaina suddenly bethought herself of a +richer morsel of gossip. She struck her forehead. + +<p id="d0e12233">“My God! how long you been? You not meet that rich uncle of David from America? You not hear about that turribil thing?” + +<p id="d0e12236">She was on the point of beginning her narrative when the telephone rang, and she was called away. I knew I would catch the +before-dinner groups at the Cercle Bougainville, and walked there, waving my hand or speaking to a dozen acquaintances on +the route. I climbed the steep stairs, and at the first table saw Fung Wah, a Chinese immigrant importer and pearl merchant, +with Lying Bill, McHenry, Hallman, and Landers, the latter only recently back from Auckland. I was immediately aware of the +sad contrast with Tautira. The club-room looked mean and tawdry after so many weeks among the cocoas and breadfruits; the +floor, tables, and chairs ugly compared with the grass, the <i>puraus</i>, the roses, and the gardenias, the endearing environment <span id="d0e12241" class="pageno">page 522</span>of that lovely village. The white men before me had as hard, unsympathetic faces as the Asiatic, who was reputed to deal in +opium as well as men and women and jewels. + +<p id="d0e12244">Yet their welcoming shout of fellowship was pleasant, despite a note of derision for my staying so long away from the fleshpots +of Papeete. Pincher and McHenry were themselves lately arrived, but evidently had learned of my absence from Lovaina. + +<p id="d0e12247">“What did you do? Buy a vanilla plantation?” asked McHenry. + +<p id="d0e12250">“Vanilla, hell!” said Hallman, whose harp had one string, “he’s been having his pick of country produce.” + +<p id="d0e12253">Lying Bill said: + +<p id="d0e12256">“Well, you’d better pack your chest for the northern islands to-morrow if you’re goin’ with the <i>Fetia Taiao</i>. We’11 be off for Atuona and Hallman’s tribe of cannibals nex’ mornin’.” + +<p id="d0e12262">I sat down and quaffed a Doctor Funk, and then inquired idly: + +<p id="d0e12265">“Where’s David?” + +<p id="d0e12268">“David!” said Hallman. “For God’s sake! don’t dig into any graves!” + +<p id="d0e12271">”’E’s a proper ghoul, ’e is,” Lying Bill said sarcastically. ”’E thinks you’re a mejum!” + +<p id="d0e12274">They all stared at me as if I were crazy, and I felt myself in an atmosphere of mystery, in which I had broached a distasteful +subject. I wondered what it could be, but determined to know at all hazards, reckoning on no fine feelings to hurt. + +<p id="d0e12277">“What is the secret?” I asked. “I’ve been away a <span id="d0e12279" class="pageno">page 523</span>few months, and haven’t heard the news. Has David run off with Miri or Caroline?” + +<p id="d0e12282">Was this what Lovaina was bursting with? + +<p id="d0e12285">They all remained quiet, until McHenry, with an oath, blurted out: + +<p id="d0e12288">“What the hell’s the good of all this bloody silence? He’s been away and don’t know.” Then turning to me, he slapped me on +the shoulder and bawled: + +<p id="d0e12291">“We’ll have a drink on you, O’Brien! David blew his brains out on Llewellyn’s doorstep just after we left for the Marquesas. +Joseph, bring one all around!” + +<p id="d0e12294">As if at his word Llewellyn came up the stairs. His countenance was blacker than usual, his eyes more than half closed under +their clouds of brows. His shoulders drooped, and he thumped his stick on the floor of the club as he came toward us. I felt +certain that he detected something in the air—a sudden cessation of talk or a strained attitude on our part. He drooped heavily +into a chair, and banged his stick on his chair-leg. + +<p id="d0e12297">“Joseph,” he called, “give me a Doctor Funk. Quick! No, make it straight absinthe.” + +<p id="d0e12300">Our own drinks were coming by now, and as the steward stirred about, Llewellyn for the first time saw me. + +<p id="d0e12303">“Hello! Where did you come from? I thought you had gone back to the States.” + +<p id="d0e12306">“I’ve been past the isthmus,” I replied, “and I haven’t seen a soul or heard a word in that time. What’s this terrible thing +about young David?” + +<p id="d0e12309">Llewellyn’s arm jerked convulsively toward his body and knocked his glass from the table. +<span id="d0e12311" class="pageno">page 524</span> + +<p id="d0e12314">“Joseph, for God’s sake, bring me a drink! Bring me a double absinthe!” + +<p id="d0e12317">Joseph fetched the drink hurriedly, and stopped to pick up the broken glass. + +<p id="d0e12320">“<i>Mon dieu!</i>” snapped Llewellyn, “you can do that afterward. Clear out!” + +<p id="d0e12326">Then he turned to me, and his eyes contracted into mere black gleams as he asked: + +<p id="d0e12329">“Are you like all these others? By God! I was passing the opium den here a few minutes ago, and I heard Hip Sing say something +like that: What have I to do with David? Was I responsible for his death? Any man can come to your front door and kill himself. +He was a friend of mine. I didn’t see much of him before he died; I was busy with the vanilla.” + +<p id="d0e12332">Llewellyn swept us with an inclusive glance. + +<p id="d0e12335">“Now you fellows have got to stop bringing up this David matter when I come in here, or I’ll quit this club.” + +<p id="d0e12338">Hallman answered him, spitefully: + +<p id="d0e12341">“For Heaven’s sake, Llewellyn, I never heard a living soul mention David before, except at first, when there was so much curiosity. +You’re bughouse.” + +<p id="d0e12344">Fung Wah sat there, his small, astute eyes, in a saffron face, fixed alternately upon the speakers, with an appraising grimace +but half-veiled. And as he sipped his grenadine syrup and soda water, he admired his three-inch thumbnail, the token of his +rise from the estate of a half-naked coolie in Quan-tung to equality with these Taipans, the whites of Tahiti. He may or may +not have known what rumors there were, but wanting the good-will of all influential residents in his widening <span id="d0e12346" class="pageno">page 525</span>scheme for money-making, he tried to soften the asperities of the interchange: + +<p id="d0e12349">“Wa’ss mallah, Mis’ Le’llyn?” he asked. “Ev’ybody fliend fo’ you. Nobody makee tlouble fo’ you ’bout Davie. My think ’m dlinkee +too muchee, too muchee <i>vahine</i>, maybe play cart, losee too muchee flanc. He thlinkee mo’ bettah finish.” + +<p id="d0e12355">The words of Fung Wah were poison in the ears of Llewellyn. He leaned forward and, raising his forefinger, pointed it at the +Chinese. + +<p id="d0e12358">“<i>Aue!</i> You hold your damned yellow mouth!” he said huskily. “I’ll get out of the islands if you people keep up this any longer. +I’m sick of it all. That old liar Morton has made my good name black in Tahiti. Everybody knows the Llewellyns. God damn him! +I ought to have killed him when he threatened me in the Tiare!” + +<p id="d0e12364">He took my untouched glass of Dr. Funk, and gulped the mixture, nervously. Then he stood up unsteadily. + +<p id="d0e12367">“I don’t get any sleep,” he said, as if to himself, wearily. “I’m going to my shop and lie down.” + +<p id="d0e12370">He moved heavily down the stairs, and we breathed relief. + +<p id="d0e12373">“Too muchee Pernoud!” Fung Wah commented. + +<p id="d0e12376">“No, Fung Wah, you’ve sized ’im wrong,” answered Lying Bill. ”’E’s seein’ things. ’E’s put enough absint’ down his throat, +but ’he’s proper used to that. Let’s take the matter up, an’ consider it like ol’ Raoul, the lawyer, did when Murray killed +the gendarme at Areu. David’s a young kid, an’ wild, an’ without any good home like you an ’me ’ve got, an’ runnin’ round +the Barbary Coast in Frisco, with those bloody vampires <span id="d0e12378" class="pageno">page 526</span>there. ’Is uncle, Morton, is afraid ’e’ll get the ’abit, and wants to sen’ ’im pretty far. Well, ’e remembers ’e was in Tahiti +forty years before, an’ ’e been dealin’ in a way in vanilla with ol’ Llewellyn’s ’ouse ’ere. So ’e makes arrangements to put +ten thousan’ dollars in with our friend that ’s jus’ gone out, and buy the kid a interest in the business. Down comes David, +and Llewellyn takes a shine to ’im, an’ soon they’re thick as thieves. I see it all between voyages. It’s the cinema, the +prize-fight, the <i>upaupa</i>, the women, an’ the bloody booze, day an’ night. The vanilla business goes to hell or to Fung Wah or some other Chink. David +blows in all ’is bleedin’ capital, ’e busts in ’is ’ealth, an’ may be, ’e’s afraid o’ somepin’ worse. ’E gets a bloody funk, +an’ goes to Llewellyn’s desk an’ gets the gun. Then ’e writes a letter to ’is uncle in Frisco, an’ goin’ out on the step, +’e blows out ’is brains. I’m on the schooner, so I can’t get any blame.” + +<p id="d0e12384">Captain Pincher lit his pipe, and the glasses were refilled. + +<p id="d0e12387">McHenry attempted to pick up the thread of the tragedy, and began: + +<p id="d0e12390">“Me, too, I’m with Bill drivin’ the <i>Fetia</i> for Nuka-Hiva when David croaks himself. I drank as much as he did ashore, and I ’m no slouch with the <i>vahines</i>; but I can hold my booze, I can.” + +<p id="d0e12399">Lying Bill, with his drink down, and his pipe smoking, resumed, with no attention to McHenry, and a withering glance at Fung +Wah, who was bored and walked over to the wall to glance at the barometer. + +<p id="d0e12402">“Well, there’s David dead on the doorstep,—’e probably shot ’imself about midnight,—and Llewellyn comes <span id="d0e12404" class="pageno">page 527</span>rollin’ in a couple o’ hours later, an’ stumbles over ’is bloody corpse. ’E’s tired, but ’e gets a lantern, an’ sees the kid +there, like a bleedin’ wreck on the reef. It fair knocks ’im out, an’ ’e sits down on the same step, an’ when the kanaka comes +in the mornin’ to sweep up, ’e fin’s the two o’ them.” + +<p id="d0e12407">Landers broke in: + +<p id="d0e12410">“Blow me! I’d ’a’ hated to been that poor kanaka! But Doctor Cassiou, the coroner, said it was suicide all right. Llewellyn’s +in the clear.” + +<p id="d0e12413">“Of course, ’e ’s in the clear, an’ proper right,” said Pincher, irritatedly. “But when the letter’s mailed to ol’ Morton +in Frisco, ’e comes down on the nex’ steamer, an’ carries a gun to kill Llewellyn, an’ tells everybody ’at Llewellyn dragged +his nephew to ’ell, an’ M’seer Lontane takes ’is gun away when Llewellyn meets ’im in Lovaina’s porch, an’ ’e pulls the gun, +an’ the Dummy stops ’im, and Llewellyn grabs a knife off the table. Why, there’s some reason for ’im comin’ in ’ere like a +bloody queer un an’ abusin’ us.” + +<p id="d0e12416">“Hell! that’s all over!” said Hallman. “I’ll tell you, Llewellyn’s always been sour. That’s what that dam’ German university +highfalutin’ education does for you. It takes the guts out of you. I know. I never had any of it. I’m a business man, by God! +and I’m not crammed full of Dago and other rot. All the Davids in the world could croak on my doorstep, and if the police +couldn’t get me for it, I’d worry. I—” + +<p id="d0e12419">“Belay there!” Lying Bill shouted at Hallman. “You don’t know Llewellyn like I do. How about the <i>tupapau</i>, the bloody ghosts? You forget that Llewellyn’s a quarter Kanaka, an’ born ’ere. All that German <span id="d0e12424" class="pageno">page 528</span>university stuff ain’t no good against the <i>tupapau</i>. Suppose you were part Kanaka, an’ the kid ’ad done what ’e did? I’ve seen some things myself in these waters. That’s what’s +eatin’ Llewellyn, an’, believe me, it’s goin’ to kill ’im if he don’t bloody well drink ’imself dead, first. I’ve seen too +many Kanakas go that way when the <i>tahua</i> got the <i>tupapau</i> after them. Llewellyn remembers what Lovaina said ol’ man Morton hollered when M’seer Lontane took the gun away from him +at the Tiare. ‘All right!’ hollered the uncle. ‘All right! I’ll leave it to God!’ The ol’ boy loved that kid. ’E told Lovaina +’at ’is whole bloody family was drowned when the <i>Rio Janeiro</i> went down off Mile Rock in Frisco bay. The kid was ’is sister’s only child, an’ ’is uncle left a thousand francs with the +American consul for a proper tombstone on ’is grave in the cemetery. The ol’ gent worshipped that kid.” + +<p id="d0e12439">Our session was over, the dinner hour having come; but Hallman had his final say: + +<p id="d0e12442">“If Llewellyn ’s got the <i>tupapau</i> horrors, for God’s sake! let him stay away from the club. It’s got so I hate to see him come in here, looking like a death’s +head. He spoils my drink. I’d rather be in the Marquesas with old Hemeury François, who is dyin’ by inches of the spell Mohuto +’s put on him. They’re alike, these Kanakas; they’re afraid of God and the devil, their own and the dam’ missionary outfit, +too. They’ve got them coming and going. No wonder they’re getting so scarce you can’t get any work done.” + +<p id="d0e12448">The next day was all preparation. I would be gone several months, the usual time for the voyage of a trading schooner to the +Marquesas and return to Papeete. <span id="d0e12450" class="pageno">page 529</span>I had no bother about clothes, as I was to be in the same climate, and in less formal circles even than in Tahiti. But I desired +to carry with me a type-writer, and mine was out of order. There was no tinker of skill in Papeete, and I had about given +up hope of repairs, when Lovaina said: + +<p id="d0e12453">“May be that eye doctor do you. He married one of those girl whose father before ran away with that English ship and Tahiti +girls to Pitcairn Island, and get los’ there till all chil’ren grow up big. He has little house on rue de Petit Pologne.” + +<p id="d0e12456">I found on that street in a cottage an American vendor of spectacles, who by some chance of propinquity had married a descendant +of a mutineer of the <i>Bounty</i>. I surrendered my machine to him while I talked with his wife, whose ancestors, one English, the other Tahitian, had sailed +away from here generations ago, after the crew had possessed themselves of the British warship <i>Bounty</i>, and cast their officers adrift at sea. She was a resident of Norfolk Island, and I wished I had time to hear the full story +of her life. But before we had come to more than platitudes, the eye doctor had repaired the type-writer, and called his wife +to other duties. + +<p id="d0e12465">We had a going-away dinner at the Tiare hotel, Landers, Polonsky, McHenry, Hallman, Schlyter, the tailor, and Lieutenant L’Hermier +des Plantes, a French army surgeon who was sailing on the <i>Fetia Taiao</i> to the Marquesas to be acting governor there. Lovaina would not join us, but after we had eaten an excellent dinner, she +came in while we drank her health. Llewellyn had been asked, but did not appear, and <span id="d0e12470" class="pageno">page 530</span>McHenry said he was “very low” at five o’clock when he passed him on the rue de Rivoli. Lying Bill preferred to spend his +last evening ashore with his native wife, or else wished to avoid the chance of a headache on the morrow. + +<p id="d0e12473">We drank our last toasts at midnight, and I was averse to arising when called at six by Atupu for the early breakfast and +the last disposition of my affairs. By nine o’clock I had put my baggage on board the schooner, Lovaina taking me in her carriage, +driven by the Dummy. Vava was excited and puzzled by my return from the country, and my sudden departure for the sea. While +Lovaina stayed in the garden of the Annexe, gathering a garland of roses for my hat, the Dummy endeavored to narrate to me +the tragedy of David. His own part in preventing Morton from shooting, Vava showed in vivid pantomime with a fervor that would +have made a moving-picture actor’s fame; and when he indicated Morton’s abandonment of revenge, though the Dummy could have +no knowledge of his words, he gestured with a dignity that conveyed all the meaning of Lying Bill’s relation of the incident. +In the expression and motion of the dramatic mute the aged uncle had the sublimity of <i>Lear</i>. For Vava, in a mask and an attitude, by some cryptic understanding encompassed the resignation and appeal to Deity. + +<p id="d0e12479">Lovaina had left me on the deck of the <i>Fetia Taiao</i>, as Captain Pincher said that it would be an hour or two before he sailed. His crew was having a few extra <i>upaupas</i> in the Cocoanut House. I sat on the rail with Vava’s dumb-show uppermost in my mind, and a strong desire came to me to see +the grave of David, and the <span id="d0e12487" class="pageno">page 531</span>tombstone erected by his frenzied kinsman. I strolled up the Broom road to the Annexe, and past Madame Fanny’s restaurant +to the garden of the Banque de l’Indo-Chine, and continued westward to the cemetery. + +<p id="d0e12490">It was a lonely spot, that acre of God in these South Seas, for the resting-place of one who had been so alive as that young +American. The hours of our last wassail, the bowl of velvet, and my waking by the Pool of Psyche with the <i>mahu</i> and the Dummy beside me, were painted on my brain. + +<p id="d0e12496">“There, but for the grace of God, goes John Wesley,” said the exhorter when he saw a murderer on the way to the gallows. + +<p id="d0e12499">Some such dismal thought assailed me as the lofty exotic cypress in the center of the Golgotha met my eye; the tree of the +dead over all the world. I halted to view the expanse of mausoleums and foliage. The rich had built small houses or pagodas +to roof their loved from the torrential rains, and, from my distance, only these buildings and the trees could be seen; but +as I was about to cross the road to enter the gate, a figure approached. I drew back, for, of all men, it was Llewellyn. He +seemed to walk an accustomed course, observing none of the surroundings, and with his head down, and his stick touching the +ground like the staff of a blind man. He turned in the entrance and moved up the winding path until he came to a grave. There +he stood a few seconds irresolutely, and then stooped beside the white stone. He leaned over, and appeared to read the inscription. +Instantly he turned, and started almost to run, but halted after a few paces, and returned to the stone. I saw him put his +hand to his <span id="d0e12501" class="pageno">page 532</span>forehead, cover his eyes, and then he took off his hat and dropped upon his knees, and bent nearly to the rounded earth. When +he stood up again, he kept the hat in his left hand, and, his cane tapping hard upon the soil, came through the gate, and +passed me, unseeing. There was a look of terror on his face that affected me deeply. + +<p id="d0e12504">I crossed the road behind him, and walked swiftly to the grave. My time was short. There I perceived that the tombstone had +just been raised, for the tools of the cemetery keeper were near by. On a plain, white slab of marble was the name, Morton +David, and the date; and below these, an inscription: +<div class="blockquote"> +<p id="d0e12508">Vengeance Is Mine<br id="d0e12510"> +I Will Repay. + +</div> + +<p id="d0e12515">This was what had frozen that look upon the face of Llewellyn. The <i>tupaupa</i> that should haunt him was this inscription. The old uncle who had loved the dead man had well left it to God. + +<p id="d0e12521">I hurried away and back to the schooner. Lovaina was sitting in her shabby surrey under the flamboyants, the Dummy at the +horse’s head. Lying Bill was giving orders for raising his bow anchor, and the loosening of the shore lines. McHenry and Lieutenant +L’Hermier des Plantes shouted to me to come aboard. Lovaina hugged me to her capacious bosom, the Dummy stroked my back a +moment, and I was off for the cannibal isles. +<span id="d0e12523" class="pageno">page 533</span> + +<h1 id="d0e12527">IONEI OE!</h1> +<p id="d0e12532">A letter from Fragrance of the Jasmine, to Frederick O’Brien, at Sausalito, California: + +<p id="d0e12535">“Ia ora na oe! Maru: + +<p id="d0e12538">“Great sorrow has come to Tahiti. The people die by thousands from a devil sickness, the <i>grippe</i>, or influenza. It came from your country as we were rejoicing for the peace in France. The <i>Navua</i> brought it, and for weeks we have died. Tati is dead. Tetuanui is dead. They cannot lay the corpses in the graves, they fall +so fast. There are no people to help. The dogs and pigs have eaten them as they slept their last sleep in their gardens. Now +the corpses are burning in great trenches, and drunken white sailors with scared faces burn them, and drive the dead wagons +crosswise in the streets. The burning of our loved ones is affrighting, and the old people who are not dead are in terrible +fear of the flames. It is like the savages of the Marquesas in olden times. + +<p id="d0e12547">“Your dear friend Lovaina was the first to die of the <i>hotahota</i>, as some call this sickness. Lovaina had a bad cough. The man who looks after the engines of the <i>Navua</i> went to see her, and she kissed him on the cheek. Then the good doctor of Papeete who visits the ships was called to see +her. Maru, could that doctor have brought the <i>hotahota</i> to Lovaina? She was dead in a little while. +<span id="d0e12558" class="pageno">page 534</span> + +<p id="d0e12561">“Lovaina had good fortune all her life, for, being the first one to die, she was buried as we have always buried our people. +All of Tahiti that was not ill walked with her coffin. Oh, Maru, I wept for Lovaina. Vava, whom you whites call the Dummy, +is dead, too. When Lovaina was taken to the cemetery, Vava drove her old chaise with her children in it; and then, Maru, he +was seen again only by a Tahitian who had gone to bathe in the lagoon because the fever was burning him. You know how Vava +always took the old horse of Lovaina at sunset to swim in front of the Annexe. This man who was ill said that he saw Vava +ride the horse into the sea, and straight out toward the reef. Vava signed farewell to the man with the fever. The man stayed +in the lagoon to cool his body until the sun was below Moorea, and your friend, the Dummy, did not return. Maru, we loved +dear Lovaina, but to Vava she was mother and God. + +<p id="d0e12564">“It is strange, Maru, the way of things in the world. The lepers who are confined towards Arue were forgotten, and as nobody +went near them, the <i>hotahota</i> passed them by. + +<p id="d0e12570">“I cannot write more. O Maru, come back to aid us. It is a long time since those happy days when we walked in the Valley of +Fautaua. + +<p id="d0e12573">“Ia ora na i te Atua! + +<p id="d0e12576">“NOANOA TIARE.” + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11400 ***</div> +</body> +</html> + diff --git a/11400-h/img/plate-1.jpg b/11400-h/img/plate-1.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..1683343 --- /dev/null +++ b/11400-h/img/plate-1.jpg diff --git a/11400-h/img/plate-2a.jpg b/11400-h/img/plate-2a.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..3a59337 --- /dev/null +++ b/11400-h/img/plate-2a.jpg diff --git a/11400-h/img/plate-2b.jpg b/11400-h/img/plate-2b.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..86aea83 --- /dev/null +++ b/11400-h/img/plate-2b.jpg diff --git a/11400-h/img/plate-3.jpg b/11400-h/img/plate-3.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..ff34e29 --- /dev/null +++ b/11400-h/img/plate-3.jpg diff --git a/11400-h/img/plate-4.jpg b/11400-h/img/plate-4.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..5bd24a3 --- /dev/null +++ b/11400-h/img/plate-4.jpg diff --git a/11400-h/img/plate-5.jpg b/11400-h/img/plate-5.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..78d6552 --- /dev/null +++ b/11400-h/img/plate-5.jpg diff --git a/11400-h/img/plate-6a.jpg b/11400-h/img/plate-6a.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..7914b14 --- /dev/null +++ b/11400-h/img/plate-6a.jpg diff --git a/11400-h/img/plate-6b.jpg b/11400-h/img/plate-6b.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..814f963 --- /dev/null +++ b/11400-h/img/plate-6b.jpg diff --git a/11400-h/img/plate-7.jpg b/11400-h/img/plate-7.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..a626535 --- /dev/null +++ b/11400-h/img/plate-7.jpg |
