Initial commitHEADmain

61 files changed, 23275 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d7b82bc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+*.txt text eol=lf
+*.htm text eol=lf
+*.html text eol=lf
+*.md text eol=lf
diff --git a/75551-0.txt b/75551-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15822ea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11404 @@
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75551 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+   [Illustration: GIRL WEEDING IN FRONT OF OUR HOUSE. VAIALA, SAMOA]
+
+
+
+
+                    REMINISCENCES OF THE SOUTH SEAS
+
+                                  BY
+
+                             JOHN LAFARGE
+
+         Author of “The Higher Life in Art,” “Great Masters,”
+             “One Hundred Masterpieces of Painting,” Etc.
+
+           WITH 48 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PAINTINGS AND DRAWINGS
+                     MADE BY THE AUTHOR IN 1890-91
+
+                       [Illustration: colophon]
+
+                      GARDEN CITY       NEW YORK
+                       DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
+                                 1916
+
+
+              COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
+                  COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY THE CENTURY CO.
+
+                         _Copyright, 1912, by_
+                       DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
+
+                _All rights reserved, including that of
+                  translation into foreign languages
+                      including the Scandinavian_
+
+
+
+
+ACKNOWLEDGMENT
+
+
+and thanks are due the following owners, who were kind enough to lend
+their original drawings or paintings, for reproduction in this volume:
+
+    MISS HARRIET E. ANDERSON
+    DR. WM. STURGIS BIGELOW
+    MISS GERTRUDE BARNES
+    MISS GRACE EDITH BARNES
+    FRANKLIN W. M. CUTCHEON, ESQ.
+    A. A. HEALY, ESQ.
+    JAMES J. HILL, ESQ.
+    JAMES NORMAN HILL, ESQ.
+    MRS. GEO. LEWIS HEINS
+    MRS. CHARLES J. HARDY
+    COL. HENRY L. HIGGINSON
+    MRS. EDWIN CHASE HOYT
+    AUGUST F. JACCACI, ESQ.
+    WILLIAM MACBETH, ESQ.
+    MRS. MONTGOMERY SEARS
+    EDW. P. SLEVIN, ESQ.
+    GEO. W. STEVENS, ESQ.
+    TOLEDO MUSEUM
+    MISS MARY L. WARE
+    MRS. PAYNE WHITNEY
+    DR. W. WALLACE WALKER
+    ESTATE OF JOHN LAFARGE
+
+
+
+
+PREFATORY NOTE
+
+
+This record of travel in the South Seas was designed by Mr. La Farge as
+a continuous narrative, but some of his most valuable impressions were
+embodied in letters written from the Islands to his son, Mr. Bancel La
+Farge, or jotted down at the moment in his journal. Since it was his
+intention to introduce this material into the book, it has with
+scrupulous care been drawn upon for that purpose.
+
+                                                               G. E. B.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+
+EN ROUTE
+
+ON BOARD, 26TH AUGUST, 1890                                            3
+
+HONOLULU                                                              12
+
+HAWAII                                                                33
+
+KILAUEA--THE VOLCANO                                                  46
+
+RIDE FROM HILO AROUND THE EAST OF
+ISLAND OF HAWAII                                                      53
+
+SAMOA                                                                 68
+
+OFF THE ISLAND OF TUTUILA, ON BOARD
+THE CUTTER CARRYING MAIL, OCTOBER 7                                   68
+
+AN ACCOUNT OF RESIDENCE AT VAIALA                                    142
+
+A MALAGA IN SEUMANU’S BOAT, OCTOBER 25                               155
+
+PALOLO                                                               212
+
+ANOTHER SAMOAN MALAGA                                                229
+
+AT SEA FROM SAMOA TO TAHITI                                          288
+
+TAHITI                                                               301
+
+STORY OF THE LIMITS OF THE TEVAS                                     323
+
+LAMENT OF AROMAITERAI                                                331
+
+THE ORIGIN OF THE TEVAS                                              353
+
+THE STORY OF TAURUA, OR THE LOAN OF
+A WIFE                                                               364
+
+TAHITI TO FIJI                                                       387
+
+FIJI                                                                 395
+
+THE STORY OF THE FISH-HOOK WAR                                       411
+
+AN EXPEDITION INTO THE MOUNTAINS OF
+VITI LEVU                                                            422
+
+EPILOGUE                                                             478
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
+
+
+GIRL WEEDING IN FRONT OF OUR HOUSE, VAIALA, SAMOA          _Frontispiece_
+
+FACING PAGE
+
+TREES IN MOONLIGHT. HONOLULU, HAWAII                                  12
+
+BEGINNING OF DESERT, ISLAND OF HAWAII                                 34
+
+CENTRAL CONE OF VOLCANO OF KILAUEA, HAWAII                            48
+
+CRATER OF KILAUEA AND THE LAVA BED. HAWAII                            52
+
+MEN BATHING IN THE RIVER NEAR THE SEA. ONOMEA, ISLAND OF HAWAII       58
+
+FAYAWAY SAILS HER BOAT. SAMOA                                         68
+
+THE FLUTE PLAYER. SAMOA                                               86
+
+BOY IN CANOE PASSING IN FRONT OF OUR HOUSE. VAIALA, SAMOA             98
+
+MATAAFA’S COOK HOUSE. FROM OUR HUT AT VAIALA, SAMOA                  110
+
+SAMOAN COURTSHIP                                                     120
+
+SOLDIERS BRINGING PRESENTS OF FOOD IN MILITARY ORDER. IVA, IN SAVAII,
+SAMOA                                                                182
+
+TAUPO AND ATTENDANTS DANCING IN OPEN AIR. IVA, IN SAVAII, SAMOA      184
+
+PRESENTATION OF GIFTS OF FOOD AT IVA, IN SAVAII, SAMOA               186
+
+SOUTH SEA SEATED DANCE AT NIGHT. SAMOA                               188
+
+BUTTRESSES OF THE FIRST CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND TOMB OF SIGA IN THE
+REEF. SAPAPALI, SAMOA                                                198
+
+THE BOY SOPO. SAMOA                                                  208
+
+THE PAPA-SEEA, OR SLIDING ROCK. FAGALO SLIDING WATERFALL. VAIALA,
+SAMOA                                                                210
+
+GIRL SLIDING DOWN WATERFALL. SAMOA                                   212
+
+SAMOAN GIRL CARRYING PALM BRANCH                                     246
+
+FROM OUR HUT AT VAO-VAI, SAMOA                                       258
+
+MAUA. STUDY OF ONE OF OUR BOAT CREW. APIA, SAMOA                     286
+
+STUDY OF SURF BREAKING ON OUTSIDE REEF. TAUTIRA, TAIARAPU, TAHITI    302
+
+THE DIADEM MOUNTAIN. TAHITI                                          308
+
+PEAK OF MAUA ROA, ISLAND OF MOOREA, SOCIETY ISLANDS, TAHITI          338
+
+EDGE OF THE AORAI MOUNTAIN COVERED WITH CLOUD, MIDDAY. PAPEETE,
+TAHITI                                                               354
+
+CHIEFS IN WAR DRESS AND PAINT. “DEVIL” COUNTRY. VITI LEVU, FIJI      396
+
+TONGA GIRL WITH FAN                                                  418
+
+EDGE OF VILLAGE OF NASOGO IN MOUNTAIN OF THE NORTHEAST OF VITI LEVU,
+FIJI                                                                 434
+
+STUDY OF HUTS AT END OF VILLAGE. MATAKULA, FIJI                      452
+
+BEGINNING OF VILLAGE--DAWN. MATAKULA. FIJI                           456
+
+MOUNTAIN HUT OR HOUSE AT WAIKUMBUKUMBU, FIJI                         460
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS IN BLACK AND WHITE
+
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+
+SIFA DANCING THE SITTING SIVA                                         84
+
+UATEA DANCING THE SITTING SIVA                                        90
+
+SWIMMING DANCE. SAMOA                                                166
+
+AITUTAGATA. THE HEREDITARY ASSASSINS OF KING MALIETOA. SAPAPALI,
+SAVAII, SAMOA                                                        196
+
+PRACTISING THE SEATED DANCE AT NIGHT. SAMOA                          200
+
+TWO TAUPOS DANCING A “GAME OF BALL.” SAMOA                           256
+
+TULAFALES SPEECH-MAKING. VAO-VAI, SAMOA                              262
+
+TAUPO DANCING THE STANDING SIVA. SAMOA                               264
+
+FAGALO AND SUE WRESTLING. VAIALA, SAMOA                              274
+
+YOUNG TAHITIAN GIRL                                                  336
+
+SUN COMING OVER MOUNTAIN. EARLY MORNING, UPONOHU                     348
+
+MEKKE-MEKKE. A STORY DANCE. THE MUSICIANS AT REVA, FIJI              404
+
+THE DANCE OF WAR. FIJI                                               406
+
+JOLI BUTI--TEACHER. FIJI                                             408
+
+FIJIAN BOY                                                           450
+
+RATU MANDRAE--FIJIAN CHIEF                                           454
+
+
+
+
+REMINISCENCES OF THE SOUTH SEAS
+
+
+
+
+REMINISCENCES OF THE SOUTH SEAS
+
+
+
+
+EN ROUTE
+
+
+ON BOARD, 26th August, 1890.
+
+San Francisco was the same place, with the same curious feeling of its
+being cold while one felt the heat; but there was neither place, time
+nor anything for me; there were things to buy and replace--all sorts of
+things had been forgotten, and now more than ever I realize that it is
+well to be overloaded--even if I believe that later I should feel it.
+What I want I want badly, and San Francisco is not a place to get it in.
+
+And then there was a pleasant club, with the usual hideous decoration,
+but very comfortable and with such a good table, and such a _real_
+one--meats that were _meats_, and fish that was _fish_, and fruits in
+quantity, and fruits are not fruits for pleasure unless they be in
+quantity; and good wine and champagne of a kind that is not ours; and a
+Mr. Cutler who took us there and talked of things he had done or would
+do, that were interesting, and the contrast between the smoothness of
+life there, and the apparent difficulties outside. I say apparent
+because many of them are based upon a feeling of indifference or “look
+out for yourself” in any event outside. Yes, the Union Club was a good
+waster of time. And then I am not yet well recovered at all from the
+strain of the beginning of the month; and I felt as if I had sea-legs
+and gait from the motion of the car. So that I shall say nothing of the
+great bay, nor its mountainsides, that look at this time as if they were
+nothing but those we have seen all along, but with the sea rolling in.
+
+We got off on Saturday, not at noon as stated, but waiting for a couple
+of hours in dock, the little steamer filled with people and with very
+pretty girls, who, alas! were not to accompany us. But we have a circus
+troupe “_à la_ Buffalo Bill”; an impresario with the nose and figure
+head of the “boy,” and his wife, or lady, the usual “variety blonde” to
+match, joining, like the telegraph, (through the seas and continent of
+America), furthest Australia and the Singing Hall of London. Long-haired
+cowboys see them off, one of them fair-haired and boyish and
+“sixty-two.” There are Indians, one long-haired, saturnine, and yet
+smiling, with the usual length of jaw and hair (so that his back runs up
+from his waist to his hat), who sits with some female, perhaps a dancer,
+and talks sentiment evidently, in his way, to my great delight--and
+hers, too, whatever she might say. They sit with one blanket around
+them, and he points gracefully, and puts things in her hair--and draws
+presents out of his pockets, wrapped up in paper, and puts them back to
+pull them out again. She sits against him, and smiles at him
+ironically, and laughs, and generally looks like a pretty cat lapping
+cream.
+
+The cowboys meander about and go to the bar-room too frequently,
+especially one, a fair-haired one, who feels the first attack of
+sea-sickness, and sits with his head on his hand--and resents his
+comrades’ begging him to come below, telling them that they have
+mistaken the man he is, that he is a Pawnee medicine man, he is, and
+that he will wipe the floor with them; and then he subsides again--so
+that my expected row does not occur.
+
+Then everybody subsides, even the cheerful young Englishmen and old
+Englishmen, and the middle-aged Englishmen, who pervade a good part of
+the ship and utter all their small stock of remarks with slowness and
+power. There are others--the teacher going back for her vacation, to the
+seminary at Hawaii--the young German I suspect of being an R.C. priest,
+and the Scotchman who has carefully talked for the last hour on the
+advantage of our system of “checking” baggage, which as he says allows
+you to go on without getting off at any station to see if the “guard”
+has the things all right. But as he remarks, for the hand luggage, a
+“mon” can take care of that himself, otherwise he would not be fit to
+take care of MONEY!!
+
+But the weather is disappointing, very cold (so that ulsters are
+convenient), dark and grey, and there is a heavy coast sea, which I
+didn’t like until yesterday, since when it has been warm, and we have
+had blue sky in large patches through rents in the violet silveriness of
+the clouds. It is the exquisite clearness of the blue of the Pacific, a
+butterfly blue, _laid_ on as it were between the clouds, and shading
+down to white faintness in the far distance, where the haze of ocean
+covers up the turquoise. The sea has the blue for a long time, but dark
+and reflecting the grey sky. This morning (Thursday) it has been blue
+like a sapphire, dark to look at except near by, but when you look down
+to it, and see it framed in the openings of the windows or the gangways,
+blue light pours out of it, and I realize that my blue sketches of four
+years ago are no exaggeration. When the clouds open somewhat, the blue
+light pours down and makes the shadows of the clouds violet, except when
+this fog against the warm sky looks red and rosy. Even the shadows of
+the blue sea look at moments reddish, when they reflect the opposite
+grey cloud. But we are not yet quite in the _sun_ seas--this is not the
+season yet nor the place. There is all the time a veil of cloud, a veil
+so heavy as to make great cumulus clouds bunch out in extreme modelling.
+But when it is grey, all in silver--there is a light--a lilac grey, a
+silver, not known to the other side; and it is only when the distant
+smoke of the steamer goes over the grey clouds that I realize that they
+become like those of the north Atlantic.
+
+This is Thursday afternoon. On Saturday at dawn, or before it, we shall
+sight at first the island of Molokai, the leper’s island, where Father
+Damien lived, then Oahu and its capes and Honolulu.
+
+
+Friday, 29th August.
+
+Last night the sun set in those silver tones that I associate with the
+Pacific and with Japan. The horizon was enclosed everywhere, but through
+it every here and there the pink and rose of sunset came out and in the
+east lit up the highest of the clouds in every variety of pink and lilac
+and purple and rose, shut in with grey. But the moon, “O Tsuki San,” had
+her turn--then I realized where we were. All was so dark that the
+horizon was quite veiled, but the light of the moon, in its full, and
+high up, poured down on what seemed a wall-embroidery of molten silver
+slanting to the horizon. Itself was partly wrapped in clouds or veils or
+wraps like those that protect some big jewel, and when unveiled or
+partly covered, it had the roundness--the nearness of some great crystal
+“with white fire laden.” The clearness was so great at places open
+through the clouds, that I thought I could see Jupiter’s satellites, and
+decided it was he by this additional glitter. There is no way of
+telling you all that the moon did, for she seemed to arrange the clouds,
+to place them about her or drive them away, to veil herself with one
+hand of cloud. It was like a great heavenly play--and played in such
+lovely air! If I could write on for pages I could only say that I had no
+idea of what the moon could be, nor of the persistence of colour that
+she could hold in all the silveriness.
+
+When I went to bed, blue light poured in by reflection from the waves
+that had looked dark and colourless from the deck. It was the same
+contrast as by daylight, when the dark sea, isolated from the sky, takes
+a blue like Oriental satin, and is fired with light.
+
+To-night again the moon gave a play--no longer in the great pomp of a
+simple spread of silver forms of cloud, but like an opera of colour and
+shadow, far in front of it, hung at times, a cloud so dense as to seem
+as dark as our bulwarks or “roofing”--but usually a cloud of blue,
+perhaps by contrast with the warmth of the clouds behind, all lit up and
+modelled and graded tier on tier. No Rembrandt could have more
+_indication_ of grading and of dark than these clouds had in _reality_.
+No possible palette could approximate the degrees of dark and of light,
+for the moon, when she uncovered entirely, was the same transparent
+silver vase out of which poured light. It seemed impossible--the
+electric light alongside of us was no brighter apparently than the
+bright markings of the light on the deck, on the edges of the bulwarks,
+and on the brass of the railings. Imagine the electric light, in say our
+Fifth Avenue, really turned on everything around you. It is a stupid
+simile, but I wish you to believe in what I am saying. I took a coloured
+print into the moonlight to try, and could make out the colours--fairly
+of course--moonily, but there they were all, all but the violet. We
+could read, poorly, but we could read. But this is not the point, it is
+that we could see far away to the moon, and that it made a centre of
+light for every dark, for every half-tint, curtain upon curtain hung in
+front of it--all the foregrounds of sky you could wish for in that
+possibility of fog cloud.
+
+Never shall I think again of the moon as a pale imitation. Of course its
+representation began when the sun was gone. Why it was like a sun one
+could look at without wincing, and canopied itself with colours that did
+not imitate, but were merely the iridescent spectrum that belongs to the
+great sun. These colours, by their arrangement in the prismatic sequence
+seemed to make more light, to arrange it and dispose it, as if art was
+recalling nature. All this must seem unintelligible. It would to me if I
+dared reread it. But this is at least what we came for--the moon and the
+Pacific.
+
+To-morrow morning, Honolulu.
+
+There was the profile of Oahu at seven this morning. Earlier, Molokai
+was a long cloud on our port. Now Oahu becomes clearer, and is
+distinctly violet or plum colour. The sea in front of it is blue, and
+dashed with white foam. Above, the clouds are in the more delicate greys
+and violets, and far up is a little rift of blue. To the right a large
+white triangular patch--an extinct volcano cone. Near the base of the
+mountains all is mist.
+
+It is now 7:30. Birds, swallows, and sea-mews meet us; the swallows came
+early this morning. But until yesterday, for two days, there was no life
+except the flying fish.
+
+We are very close, so close that I cannot draw except in panorama. All
+looks like cinders as we go on. Lovely cloud effects on the
+hills--rainbows--and the furthest edge of everything in this promontory
+daring all.
+
+Then, as we round this, _with our first turn perhaps since we left_, we
+can see more mountains and hills--for the first time, right on the blue
+sea, a fringe of green (not yellowish)--the first time I have seen a
+fringe of green to deep blue sea.
+
+Later we see beneath the great hills or mountains, that look like
+cinders, green bushes of trees, and houses looking pretty enough and
+cool--but we are still far off--and then behind this grey mountain with
+fringe of green we begin to feel Honolulu.
+
+Big mountains, green valleys and slopes far back, a fringe of trees,
+some large buildings, a steamer’s smoke from some place, here and there
+masts--all this spread for miles, like an edging. As the space unfolds
+we see an immensely long beach (Waikiki) running at the base of the
+hills around a bay, and far off in the haze many masts. “White water”
+edges the sea everywhere, even before the line of ships. The water has
+calmed on which we now slip. There is no motion to it; no more,
+apparently, than would make a fringe of foam to a lake. A narrow channel
+in the surf, and we see the shipping and the port: steamships and
+sailing vessels, an English and an American warship, and we are in, and
+I am interrupted for the keys of the trunks.
+
+
+
+
+HONOLULU
+
+
+     Sunday morning, Nuuanu,
+
+     Nuuanu Valley, Honolulu.
+
+Last night, after having tried the Hawaiian Hotel, we came up here and
+took possession of Judge Hartwell’s house, which we had seen in the
+afternoon.
+
+We sat in the verandah, looking out toward the sea, I should say about
+two miles from us, with the same brilliant moonlight we had had the
+night before. The two palm trees in front of the house were gradually
+illuminated as if the whole air had been a stage scene, through the
+smoothly shining trunks glistening like silver, where the lower green
+stem of the bole leaf or branch of the tree beneath the branches
+separates from the lower cylinder. Behind them spread sky and ocean, for
+we are just on the summit of a hill, the sea-line spreading distinctly
+and the air being clear enough, (even when a slight drift of rain came
+down across the picture), to see the surf far out, and the lines of a
+great bar (to the right), which made a long hooked bend into the sea.
+Lights shone red on board of two English and American war vessels. Far
+off a few azure clouds on the horizon; and occasionally a white patch of
+cloud floated
+
+[Illustration: TREES IN MOONLIGHT. HONOLULU, HAWAII]
+
+like gauze over the palms, then sank away into the space shining far
+off--a little darker now than the sky, and warm and rather red in
+colour.
+
+Meanwhile, the palm branches tossed up and down in the intermittent gale
+which blew from behind us in the great hills. The landscape was all
+below us, lying at the very foot of the palms which edge the hill upon
+which we are. Across the grass the moonlight came sometimes, as if a
+lamp had suddenly been brought in--and the colour of the half-yellow
+grass, which was not lost in the moonlight, urged on this delusion. Even
+the violet of the two pillars of palm and its silveriness were strong
+enough to make greener the colour of the sky.
+
+When I walked out behind the house the hills were covered with cloud--I
+say covered, but rather the cloud rested upon them, and poured up into
+the sky, in large masses of white; the moon shining through most of the
+time, out of an opening more blue than the blue sky, itself an opaline
+circle of greenish blue light, with variant iridescent redness in the
+cloud edges. Against it the heavy trees looked as dark as green can be,
+and now and again the branches of other palms were like waves of grass
+against this dark, or against the sky all shining and brilliant.
+Occasionally it rained, as it did in the afternoon; the edges of the
+great cloud blew upon us like a little sprinkle of wet dust, and later,
+as it came thicker, the rustle of the palms was increased by the rustle
+of the rain. The grass of the hills shone as with moisture, but the
+grass outside, near us, was so dry that the hand put down to it felt no
+wet.
+
+And I went off to bed under mosquito nettings, in a room that smelt of
+sandalwood, to sleep late and feel the gusts of wind blow through the
+open windows, and to think that it rained because I heard the palms.
+
+Yesterday it rained very often. As we landed, the rain had begun, and
+the air was difficult to breathe with the quantity of moisture. All was
+wet, underfoot, though the wet, by the afternoon, had dried in this
+volcanic soil. We had been taken up to the home of Mr. Smith, Judge
+Hartwell’s brother-in-law, and decided at once upon going to
+housekeeping, for which we had to drive into town quite late; and we
+made out of our business a form of skylarking, I think to the
+astonishment of our guide and friend, who may have thought that persons
+who had been able to discuss seriously in the afternoon with himself and
+a member of the former cabinet, Mr. Thurston, the question of the sugar
+tariff, and its relation to the Force bill and the position of Mr.
+Blaine and of the Pennsylvania senators, should not be people to waste
+their minds on the dress of Hawaiian girls and the fashion of wearing
+flowers about the neck.
+
+But the ride was full of enjoyment and novelty. Honolulu streets are
+amusing. The blocks of houses are tropical, with most reasonable
+lowness, and are of cement in facings; and the great number of Chinese
+shops and of Chinese, with some pretty Chinese girl faces and children’s
+faces, enliven the streets. And there are so many horses, small, with
+much mustang blood and good action and good heads, and ridden
+freely--too freely, for we saw a labourer ridden down by some cowboyish
+fellow. Hawaiian women rode about in their divided skirts; they had, as
+well as many of the men, flowers around their waists and their necks,
+and among their delights, peacock-feather bands around their hats. Many
+of them were pretty, I thought, with animated faces, talking to mild and
+fierce men of similar adornments. And as I said, there was much Chinese,
+and dresses of much colour--for men and women--and trees with flowers,
+like the Bougainvillia purplish rose coloured; grey palm trunks, and
+many plants of big leaves like the banana; yellow limes, and fiercely
+green acacias.
+
+At any rate it was fun; we stopped and bought mangoes and oranges from
+natives who smiled or grinned at us. The air grew delicious with the
+wind that took away the oppression of the dampness, (we have about 80 to
+83 degrees), so that if this be tropical, it is easy to bear, and the
+vast feeling of air and space gives a charm even to the heat.
+
+I walked about this morning toward the hills, of which the near ones are
+covered with grass of a velvet grey in the light, and dun colour in the
+shade; but behind, the higher hills are purple and lost in the base of
+the cloud that has never ceased to turret them. After a while the sense
+of blue air became intense.
+
+
+Tuesday.
+
+We sat up again and waited for the moon to rise, and watched her light
+drown the brilliancy of the stars and of the milky way. Jupiter shone
+like diamonds, and Venus was like a glittering moon herself; and beneath
+her in the ocean a wide tremulousness of light broke the great belt of
+water with a shine that anywhere else might have done for the reflection
+of the moon. The great palms threw up their arms into a coloured sky not
+quite violet nor quite green; the gale blew again from the mountains
+with the same intensity; the great cloud hung again up to the same point
+in the heaven until the moon began to beat its edges down, and break
+them and send them in blots of white and dark into the western sky.
+Then, at length, she came out again to sink behind the advancing cloud,
+which again broke, over and over again, and through the trees behind us
+and over the hills hung in a mass of violet grey. The wind blew more and
+more violently, but never any colder; always as if at the beginning of
+a storm, not as if any more than a long gust. And when the moon was free
+in the upper sky, and the cloud rested in its accustomed place, above
+the hills, we walked out into the open spaces to see the clouds lie in
+white masses of snow piled up, and above them to the north, the sky of
+an indefinite purple, terrible in its depth of uncertainty of colour,
+with no break, no cloud whatever.
+
+Wednesday night we had rain, though only above us. Occasionally the
+clouds gained over in the southwest before us, but not entirely, and for
+a time the horizon of the sea was dusty and a little uncertain, but
+never at any moment did we fail to see the stars before us and the clear
+light of the sky. But we had to say good-bye to the moon. She will rise
+now so late that for us who are getting tired with a little more
+movement, there is impatience at having to watch; and, besides, the
+mosquitoes pour about us in swarms, unless we remain outdoors in the
+continual gusty surge of wind that makes us more and more sleepy.
+
+Now the sky in the night becomes more purple and more violet as we look
+toward the south, instead of holding delicate blue-green, that promised
+the moon; and around Venus, until her setting, there is an area of light
+in this violet; and below her the sea is bright as if with a moon, and
+all the stars toward the south are brilliant and fiery.
+
+
+Friday.
+
+Yesterday we drove up the valley. We ourselves are on a bank or
+projection into it, though the rocks rise to our left as we look
+northeast, which is the trend of the valley. Honolulu is below us,
+spread by the sea, and the valley goes up from it as do others; to the
+north and east there is a wide fringe or space by the sea, which is as a
+big slope, and into it these valleys open, so that, as we look back on
+our drive, that narrows more, we see the scene opening more and more and
+further and further below us, Honolulu and its plain or lower slope
+shining in light, with the sea beyond it, the surf breaking away out
+from its shore, and the sea spreading over the sand in a faint wash of
+greener colour; further out a purple line of reef below the water, and
+then the waveless blue of distance. All is light; even the converging
+hills--hills coming together in the perspective, like stage wings, but
+opening out in reality--even the hills seem transparent with light. The
+valley side rises generally, but our view is occasionally interrupted by
+divisions of higher land, slopes from the mountainsides that run across.
+And so we go for five miles. The hills and mountains, for they are high,
+are steep and pointed and covered with green. Here and there black marks
+indicate the volcanic rock; a cascade comes down the apparently
+perpendicular side of the rock, like a snake twisting; making a
+movement like a throbbing, for there is no leap, it merely glides down
+the wall. Then suddenly the road rises still more, and we come to a bank
+before us where the road turns; and over the bank we see distance, and
+green hills like a plain under us, and red roads through the
+multitudinous green, and far away a promontory out to sea, silver and
+grey, for the vegetation has suddenly stopped there, and there is
+nothing but the nameless aridity of mountains standing out to sea, in a
+fairyland of blue and white surf, and sand between white and yellow, and
+a warm emerald of shallow waves near the shore. We are on the famous
+Pali, thirteen hundred feet above the hills below us. Pack mules grope
+down the path, and a carriage held back by two riders on horseback goes
+down the precipitous winding road. There is shouting and clicking of
+stirrups and spurs and bridles, the plunges of the horses and sudden
+throwing back of the men, all in a gale of heavy wind, make me feel in
+this smallness even in animals the size and space before me. As we go
+down the road a little, we see, looking up, the great cliffs of the Pali
+to which we have driven. It makes a great cliff of walls opposite to the
+sea, (over which we have broken), and to the west it stretches in
+shadow, and in the west we see the marking lost in shade of unnamable
+tones, as the green precipice casts its shade across the foothills and
+slopes for a vast space, (it is two thousand feet high), looking as if
+it had been some great sea-cliff once, and the sea had once formed the
+spaces now green, and undulating with hill and valley. But the great
+Pali has probably been one side of the stupendous wall of a great
+crater, now partly under the sea, and the grey mountain far off to sea
+has been the central cone of this ancient circle.
+
+
+September 6th.
+
+We had to-day a very Hawaiian afternoon; we tasted of the
+delights--perhaps it would be better to say the comforts--of _poi_;
+eaten with relishes, squid and salt fish, and fish baked in _ti_ leaves,
+and also of some introduced things, such as the guava, which is spooned
+out from its rind. But all this is known to you. And this was
+two-fingered _poi_. When fully stiff it is one-fingered, the
+three-fingered being effeminate, and coming to-day more in use with
+general degeneracy. And we see later old _poi_-dishes with an edge
+running in, upon which to wipe the finger or fingers. And as the talk
+went on, turning always more or less to ancient habits and traditions,
+we heard much more than I can remember. As a shuttle through the web of
+the conversation ran the personality of the King; interesting, in many
+ways, because of his race, and of its exact relation to the _pure_ race,
+and of his caring for the old traditions and probably superstitions. He
+collects, or has collected; but is little addicted to the civilized
+habits of curators of museums, and is fond of arranging his remains and
+fragments, placing them and setting them occasionally in gold, and
+remaking old idols which are fragmentary, not without surmises of his
+taking more than an outside scientific or artistic interest in them. And
+no wonder! there must remain every reason of inheritance in mind. The
+christianizing of the native mind can be represented by the supposition
+of an acceptance of a Jehovah who ruled in great matters, and over the
+soul, but whose attention was not directed to little things; so that
+there might be essences that controlled ordinary life, good to invoke in
+time of danger, and for usual help, at any rate of good omen, or to be
+propitiated for fear of harm. And so often the native in great distress,
+as when death threatens, resorts to old forms, as invalids all over the
+world look to remedies out of the regular way--the good woman’s
+doctorings and the help of the quack, who may not perhaps be _all_ out
+in some matters. And so it is possible to hear that this personage has
+rebuilt a _heiau_ or temple--a fishing temple of propitiation near his
+summer residence, upon the old lines of the former one;--and to listen
+to the singular anecdote, which gives him as consulting an old crone
+when age is on her in the full of a hundred, and who remembered the
+erection of the old temple now destroyed. When consulted by us she was
+still able to work, though so very old, and was found seated under some
+hut or shelter, scraping twigs for mats, with a sharp-edged shell, as
+she had done when a child of ten. Much could not be obtained from her,
+as she had no consecutive thread of talk, but she was able to show where
+the cornerstone of the old temple lay, and beneath it the bones of the
+human being sacrificed as a propitiatory and necessary part of the
+foundation--a habit and tradition common to all races, as we know. The
+King could not, of course, sacrifice a human being to-day, so that a pig
+was the propitiation, and the new _heiau_ is built. The first offering
+from fishing is thrown there and success established.
+
+Another pig comes in a more curious and fantastic way, and forms part of
+a possible picture, conjured up in the story. For some old priest or
+_kahuna_ assured the King, anxious to discover the remains of the great
+Kamehameha, that they could be traced by divination. The pig, filled
+with the spirit (_ahu_), was let loose, and an old priest and less old
+but heavy chieftain careered after him, until the animal passed, and
+began to circle about in convulsions. Then they dug and lo! a skull,
+which the King now keeps as the remains of the great head of the
+sovereignty, from whom his predecessors were descended, as was, for
+example, the wife of our Mr. Bishop the banker--for the present King is
+not of that lofty strain. This difficulty of finding what was left of
+the great tyrant and hero was owing to the Hawaiian (and Polynesian),
+habit of hiding the remains of the great; sometimes even they were
+eaten; the people were not cannibals--they did not kill to eat, but it
+was necessary to protect the remains from insult. No one would wish to
+have his chief’s bones serve for fishhooks, nor to make arrowheads to
+shoot mice with, nor I suppose even to make ornamental circles in the
+sticks of the _kahili_, the beautiful plumed stick of honour, originally
+a fly-brush, I suppose (like the old Egyptian fan), which was the
+attribute of power, and which is still carried about royalty, or stands
+at their coffin or place of burial. Consequently every precaution was
+taken to hide the bones, which were tied together and put in some
+inaccessible secret place.
+
+Another _kahuna_ or priest told the King how to have access to the
+terrible hiding-place where were deposited the remains of some chief
+that Kalakaua wished to have, to give them finally some resting-place of
+honour. The only way to get at this cavern was by _diving_ and when he
+did so he came up into a cavern, where he found them, and also large
+statues of idols and other remains. But the place was haunted, and not
+for the whole of the Islands would the King again undertake such a
+journey. Nor should I, even if I swam well enough. Can you imagine
+making a hit-or-miss entrance through the surf into some narrow hole,
+from which one would emerge into hollow and drier darkness; and then to
+have to make light and grope about for things in themselves of a spooky
+and doubtful influence--and things that should _resent_ the _hand of the
+intruder_!
+
+For it is even hinted that many of the present tombs in the royal
+mausoleum are empty or not authentically filled; for instance, King
+Lunalilo is certainly not there. In old days some devoted friend of the
+chief’s would have hunted about and found some man looking like him, and
+then would have incontinently massacred the more vulgar Dromio, would
+have left his body in the place of the chief’s, and hidden the honoured
+remains from all but most sacred knowledge, that around the priest, the
+depository of holy mysteries, all power might cling. Power of priests:
+power to designate who should die--killing the chief’s friend or
+supporters if it were advisable to weaken him.
+
+With their privilege of designating victims the power of the priests
+must have reached into the province of politics, for a king’s or chief’s
+men, precious to him but dangerous to enemies, might be chosen at any
+moment so as to weaken him. The _men_ of the _priest_ could be saved
+from such a terror. The man to die might be put an end to as he entered
+the temple by a blow from behind with a club or stone, or his back might
+be broken, in a dexterous way known of old, or his neck might be
+twisted so as to break the spine. The death at least was made as
+painless as possible.
+
+The real _kahunas_ are extinct, but have many pretended successors. The
+King himself claims to be _kahuna_ more or less. He claims to have a
+cure for leprosy. I hear too that a leper is kept at the palace, and
+another at the _boat house_, for experiments, but of course of that I
+know nothing--_no more than of anything else_. The boat house is the
+place where the King gives _luuaus_, Hawaiian dinner parties, and when
+the _hula_ is danced there are well-known dancers who come or are
+retained or sent for. They are in the photographs much dressed and
+rather ugly, and some have very thick legs, monstrous to the European
+eye, but I suppose that talent is not always found in the pretty shapes.
+Some good people (from Minnesota), lately expressed a wish to see these
+dances, and the King, who is apparently a very courteous person, kindly
+consented to help them, and invited them then and there to dinner. They
+came to an excellent dinner, and saw the _hula_ danced. They were
+informed by the King that the custom was to give some gratuity to the
+artist; so that money was thrown into a dish, the King giving two
+dollars, and the others the same. When the collection at the end was
+taken up after each dance (my informants giving some seven dollars
+apiece) and presented as by etiquette to his majesty, he retained the
+mass, giving one dollar and a half to each dancer as their proper
+proportion. This reminds me of Oriental tradition, and is probably quite
+consistent with a certain liberality, the Hawaiian instinct, especially
+with the chiefs, being toward generous giving; so much so that many have
+become impoverished from this and other forms of improvidence, in the
+days of the change to civilization, when they owned a good deal that
+gradually passed into the hands of those who held the mortgages.
+
+Mrs. Dominis, the heir apparent (now the Queen), keeps also some
+tenderness for superstitions and beliefs of the past, and I am told (but
+not by so sure a person), that she sacrificed some time ago to Pele, the
+goddess of the volcano, some pigs and hens, which were thrown into the
+fire of lava. At present the account is vague and mixed to me, but I
+think of it as connected with some illness of one of the late
+princesses, for whom also came a portent of certain fish appearing in
+quantity, a presage of death to great chiefs. Naturally one listens to
+any gossip referring to the reversion of the race to any former habits,
+and this I give you only for this reason.
+
+One little touch, however, with the common people, is pretty, just what
+happens anywhere, and that is the fondness for lying low, if I may so
+put it; the using of the underneath of their houses (which is one way),
+the cellar, or rather open space under houses, becoming, low as it is,
+the residence, and the house itself being kept with its furniture and
+carpets, only as a sort of show; matting being laid down on the earth
+below, and the whole affair made comfortable in savage fashion. Here all
+live together. Somebody was telling us how, in a trip somewhere, they
+had found a family who were living under their house, and who gave them
+their own unused room with a big four-post bedstead. And in the morning
+a strange rustle aroused them. It was the native couple struggling to
+escape unnoticed from _beneath_ the bed, under which they had passed the
+night.
+
+And also there is a peculiar use of objects which we hide, and which are
+placed usually at the doorstep. I have seen them carried with great care
+through the streets, and at my first purchases in a Chinese shop I
+noticed the discussion of some natives upon the adornment of these
+utensils which they had come to buy.
+
+The old-fashioned house has passed away; hardly any one has now the
+knowledge of how to build it. It was well suited to its use and made
+with great care. It had a thatched roof which was made of bundles tied
+with hibiscus bark and carefully disposed, and this whole house had to
+be built according to rite, or it could not be lived in. The main
+archway, or one made by say the pillars and lintel and crossbeam, had to
+be of one wood, and so forth. The floor was made of stones, laid
+together in different layers, growing smaller and smaller, upon which
+mats were placed, one over the other; which also could be made very
+fine, and which are excellent to sleep on, being very cool.
+
+I was much struck by the shape of some skulls of natives showing a
+peculiar _tent_ or _roof shape_ of head, and extreme squareness of jaw.
+The heads are fine, very often, and the type massive. Man and woman tend
+to fat apparently, if one may judge of the average types one sees, but
+then they are seen in the street or in houses and perhaps well fed. Some
+of the young women or girls have great delicacy of expression, and the
+line of the jaw and chin separating from the throat is graceful and
+refined. There is a pretty tendency, owing to thickness of lip,
+apparently, to a shortness of the curve above, that gives a little
+disdainful look quite imposing in some of the older and uglier women,
+when they are not too fat. The men look like gentle bandits. But there
+is a certain _sullen_ look in a great many that is unsatisfactory, and
+has grown, I suppose. They probably need firm hands to govern them; and
+are certainly not satisfied now; whether stirred on by agitators or by
+any real grievance, I of course can’t know. In old times they sent away
+to faraway islands for chiefs and rulers. From Samoa and Tahiti rulers
+came, some whose names are known, for over this vast space the war
+canoes went, two thousand miles and more, and the places of their
+departure and arrival bore names indicating their distant relationship.
+But some places or islands are missing to-day, which apparently once
+rose above the surface, and now are shoals perhaps. One of their rulers,
+a sort of demigod, who sailed away one day promising to return in coming
+years, they took Cook to be when he appeared, and they called him Lono.
+And years before him some Spaniards were left behind, in the hit-or-miss
+sailing of early days, and have left certain signs, it is said, in
+languages and other things.
+
+For their great voyages the Hawaiians had a knowledge of the winds and
+of many stars, six hundred of which bore names.
+
+
+Wednesday night, September 11th.
+
+To-night it blows again from over the Pali and mountains, the first time
+since Sunday. We have had a south wind, which has slowly come round with
+rain, back to its old station. We have painted at the Pali, during the
+south wind, for it did not then blow against us, and I was able to
+sketch without the extreme difficulty that I had feared. We drove up
+Monday afternoon in the great heat, clouds hanging over the valley
+rather low, so that I feared that we should be covered. Their shadows
+hung along the walls of the hills, and made dark circles around the
+great spots of sunlight. All varieties of green were around us, in the
+foliage and the plants, and the green of the slopes and mountains. We
+came up, as before, to the edge of the Pali, suddenly, all before us a
+blaze of green, and looked over. No more astounding spread of colour
+could be thought of. The blue was intense enough when we saw it against
+the green bank before us, imprisoned between that and the warm low
+cloud, but it was still more astounding, opening to the furthest
+horizon, gradually through every shade to a faint green edge, blotted in
+with white clouds, bluish, with bluish shadows, and far away a long,
+interminable line of cloud in a violet band (because in shadow, broken
+above and below with silvery projections). The sea bluer yet than the
+sky, spotted with green in the shoals, and with white in the surf, the
+headland of Mokapu stretched out in brilliant grey unnamable; the sand
+also of no possible colour; the last range of hills tawny grey, like a
+panther-skin, warmed here and there with yellow and with green; a
+brilliant oasis of green in centre, like the green of a peacock. Then
+near us the intense feathery green of great hills and the billowy
+valley, all of one tone, one unbroken green, as if covered with a
+drapery, and the same green reflecting the blue above. Now and then red
+lines of road, red as vermilion, not only because of red earth, but
+because the green vegetation is so deep by contrast; and all this in
+partial shadow, except the great distance and the silvery promontory.
+And later, far off, half the ocean in absolute calm, repeating the high
+clouds of the distance, and their shadows and lights. It was violent as
+a whole, but delicate and refined almost to coldness.
+
+Here I had the misfortune to find that the usual trick of bad work and
+poor paper in my blocks would prevent my making any adequate record. (I
+say adequate--what I mean is plausible.) But we both sat and worked
+until sunset and after hours, each not daring to look at anything but in
+one direction, there was so much to prevent one’s _doing_ anything. And
+at the last moment I went down part of the road toward the base, to see
+the entire distance lost as in a dream, great long streamers of mist
+apparently blowing away from the face of the Pali. And we returned in
+the afterglow, which now that the moon has left us, keeps the whole sky
+and landscape in tones like those of some old picture clear and
+apparently distinct, but intensely coloured, however colourless it may
+seem, for we have no names for tones--so coloured that the lamp-light,
+inside the room where I am, seems no warmer than the twilight without,
+as if they were painted together, as in one picture the sky is merely a
+beautiful background.
+
+Then comes, alas! the great hum of the mosquito, if we are in the wind,
+and we have to resort to burning powders if we do not sit in the draught
+that blows them away.
+
+Day after to-morrow we shall go to Hawaii in the steamer _Hall_, land on
+the south coast, go to the volcano Kilauea and down from there to Hilo.
+This afternoon we have heard talk of the situation politically, of the
+wrongdoing of demagogues; and also we have seen one of the extraordinary
+yellow and red capes that the chiefs wore, made of small rare feathers,
+and each little tuft sewed on to plaited fibres and also a _lei_ or
+neck-wreath of the same bird feathers, with the addition of some soft
+green ones, in divisions all very rare and valuable; and a beautiful
+wooden polished spittoon with handle of some exquisite wood light and
+dark, which has served to preserve the exuviæ of some chief from the
+great danger of capture for incantation or working harm through
+sorcery.
+
+
+
+
+HAWAII
+
+
+Off Island of Hawaii, 13th September, 8 A.M.
+
+We are lying off a little place, Keauhou, while people are landing in
+boats from the small steamer that carries us. The shore is broken with
+black lava rock, in beds that do not seem high, so flat are they on top.
+It is about eight o’clock, and the impression is of full sunlight on the
+green of everything. Behind the fringe of shore rises the big slope of
+the mountain seen in profile, so gigantic that one only sees a slice of
+it at a time; there are, of course, ravines up the hills, and trees and
+grass, but from my focus of the square, between the pillars of the roof
+of the upper deck, and seated by the guards I see rather shade broken
+with sunlight. The sea, of course, at the shore is glittering blue, but
+everything else that can cast a shade throws its edges upon the next; so
+that I see a black seaside broken up by lava rocks, and near them cocoa
+and palm, and some small wharves, or jetties, built out to protect the
+smaller beaches, that run back between the rocks. Each break of
+projection or recess has its trees, that make the fringe of shade with
+patches of sun, which the eye takes in along the water.
+
+There are a few houses strung along, half in light, half in shadow;
+three of them are tall grass huts, hay-coloured in the half-shade of the
+cocoanuts beside them. Above them are patches of sun on the green slope
+where the upper bank or slope behind first flattens into the strong
+light. In the shadow, faint whites and pinks and blacks on the dresses
+of people waiting for their friends, or watching the steamer. Their
+horses and mules and donkeys stand in rows along the houses--or
+walls--occasionally they pass into the sunshine. One girl in red runs
+(why, heaven only knows--time seems of no possible use), and as she
+rises over a rock in the sand, the sun catches her brown feet and legs
+and the folds of her floating gown.
+
+These people, I am told, have many of them ridden some miles from our
+last landing, at dawn, to meet us again. But there are special
+deliveries of people and freight at each place--so many and so much on
+board that one can hardly realize where they are stowed. Three full
+boatloads at the last place, and one here, of people jammed--dark
+Spanish faces, peacock feathers, and red veils on hats; coloured
+neckerchiefs, and head and shoulders covered with flowers or leaves that
+hang to the waist. There is loud objurgation and chattering, and keeping
+the children together, and holding up odds and ends of things not sent
+ashore by the other boats that carry goods and household furniture.
+
+[Illustration: BEGINNING OF DESERT, ISLAND OF HAWAII]
+
+Last night we were pretty full. Children and women lay in files on our
+deck by the guards, the children ill with the rolling, for we pass
+several channels between islands, each one a pretext for the wind to
+give us a dance. And in the steerage people lay like herrings. It was
+picturesque; a few Chinese, the rest Hawaiian, with much colour and
+abundance of flowers and leaves that they like, and all eating on the
+spot, apparently without moving--guitars playing--we had two guitars
+aboard, and part of the night and morning somebody strummed; sometimes a
+man appearing from a cabin, posing guitarero-way, touching a few chords
+and going away again. Once, some fellow playing, squatted on the deck,
+apparently for the baby, and the other babies, who inspected the guitar
+inquiringly and approvingly--sometimes some of the women. In the late
+afternoon, as the sun struck this mass of colour against a blue sea of
+unnamable blue, at least two dozen of the people all in colours were
+eating watermelon all red down to the rind. The appearance of a palette
+well littered was only a symbol to it. And there was one beauty with
+long nose and the rounded end suggesting the aquiline, the black
+eyebrows _under_ the frontal bone, the pouting lip, and heavy chin and
+long slope of jaw, and what they all have, even the ugly (like the Jap
+girls), a pretty setting of ears and neck and black-hair’s growth. But
+the children were prettier. We had a neighbour who had many and who
+looked so plaintive, and another, though sick, was jolly and smiling.
+And another was like a chieftain (or “chiefess”) with three great
+furrows down her forehead above her nose. But they all smiled with great
+sweetness, and I wish our women could do as much. All sullenness or
+sternness or disdain disappeared from the face. They talked in English,
+partly for convenience, but a little, I thought, for the gallery,
+ the children mixing their languages, and their mothers gliding
+back occasionally to it. But the talk was just what it is
+everywhere--schools, and how dear, and what ideas are put into the
+children’s heads and whether there is a distinction between those who
+pay more or less, or have scholarships and something about prices in
+general. One is reading “Sabina Zembra” and we talk a little while the
+ship rolls, rendered sympathetic by suffering, and I am sure that two of
+my good ladies do not consider themselves _kanaka_, at least if I am to
+judge by their reference to _kanaka_ and such like; but they are brown
+like berries, one light, the other sallow.
+
+[Illustration: “The Chiefess”]
+
+Later in the afternoon I go forward in the dance of our passage to the
+next island of Maui; the island lies before us across the sea, so
+sky-like that it is difficult to realize that the vast slopes are of
+earth; that the greenish hue, now and then, under the violet of the bank
+of heavy clouds, all brilliant and shining like satin, is not thicker
+air--just such tones make the island as with us make winter skies. Far
+off to the southeast stretches under clouds another line, that of the
+further Maui which ends above in Haleakala, the extinct volcano. As we
+draw near, the sun is setting, the jib and mainsail curving before us in
+shadow and light, as we drop a little to the south, repeat near to us
+the colours of the island and of the clouds. These hang far forward
+toward us, while the slope of green and peachy grey runs up behind it;
+and we glide soon into more quiet waters, and stop off the town of
+Lahaina. Then long hours are spent in unloading and loading, so that
+when we sail again, we only faintly see the mass of Haleakala. But in
+the morning, with the dawn which has no colour, but in which, to the
+east, stand up, in some sort of richer violet shade, the outlines of
+Hawaii, we see further the great slopes of Mauna Loa, so gentle that it
+is difficult to tell where the flat top is reached, and where the slopes
+begin again on the other side; and then we stop in the early sunlight. A
+fisherman comes up with fish; other boats (outriggers all) with fruit,
+and we see what I was telling you when I began to write. And later we
+have come to a great bank of black rock running out to sea, and
+precipices of black spotted with a green all of one colour, which is
+where Cook was killed, and where they have put up a little monument to
+him. This is Kaawaloa. We try the land, for the roll of the ship is
+disagreeable, as it waits, and we run in over the transparent water. It
+is too deep just by the landing for anchorage. The sea jumps from light
+aquamarine to the colour of a peacock’s breast in the shadow. We go up
+the black lava that looks as if it had been run out on the road, not
+under it, and sit in the shade a moment, and exchange a few words with
+our fellow passengers now on land--a little flock of tired children and
+mother, and our “chiefess.” And it is hot--the heights have shut off the
+wind, and all is baking. Horses and donkeys, saddled, stand about near
+the shadow of fences, left to themselves, while the cargo is landed.
+Higher up on the heights some planters tell us it is cool. They wear
+enormous hats, and have a planter-like appearance that suggests our
+being different.
+
+As I look around on this green and black, and the few cocoanuts, and the
+dark blue-green olive water, I think that it is not an unlikely place
+for a man to have been killed in. The place has for Hawaiians another
+interest: it was once a great place, and the high cliffs have many holes
+where chiefs are buried, inaccessible and hidden. And a little way
+beyond was a city of refuge--that is to say, a sacred city--where none
+who took refuge could be injured. Even though the enemy came rushing up
+to the last outlying landmark, the moment that it had been passed, the
+pursued was safe, and after having sojourned according to due rite,
+could depart in peace and safety.
+
+After this, and the same story of like places below the edge of the
+green table that slopes up to the sky and further on to the clouds, we
+stop, and the white boat takes our last passengers in the blue water;
+its white keel looking as if washed with blue. The people wait on the
+shore under less and less shadow, and on the other side we have now the
+enormous ocean opposed to this big slope, not as last evening, when
+always we had an island, now before, now behind, now to our side, as if
+we were in some inland sea. That is to say that now the sea occupies
+more than half of the whole circle that we can sweep, though we are only
+a few rods from shore. Do you realize the difference?
+
+At last we are on the outlying edge of the group, and will soon this
+afternoon round the island, and stop at the place where we take the road
+to the volcano of Kilauea.
+
+
+Sunday night.
+
+At the volcano of Kilauea.
+
+As I wrote I had no notion of the importance and eventfulness of a
+landing at night. As we came around the hard black cape marked with lava
+flow it was already dark, so we could not distinctly see the shore,
+though above were great slopes and some buttresses and heavy hills
+standing out from the mass. We could see lights at the place called
+Punaluu, where we were to land. The steamer shrieked and stopped as we
+prepared to leave it and come down the companion ladder to the heavy
+boat dancing below it. Women were first dropped in, and one by one
+gradually we men jumped into the hollow, half packed with trunks and
+boxes and men balancing themselves in the rolling. Perhaps had I been
+more accustomed to these forms of landing I might have seen less of a
+picture; but when I had got down, and watched the next passengers from
+below, and danced high up to them, and heard them told “Now!” or “Not
+yet!” as we came too high or too low or struck the bottom of the ladder,
+(so as to make one wonder whether we should not capsize in a rougher
+sea), when I could look at their foreshortening, and saw the heavy lower
+forms of the _kanaka_ ladies, under their flowing drapery, and then saw
+them tuck their one long outer garment between those legs in a great
+bunch, to be untied at the next step and heard their discussions, I
+enjoyed the play, even if I was part of it.
+
+The talk was in _kanaka_, but its meaning was plain: the two ladies
+objected to jumping just then or before or after, and it was now too
+high, now too low, and in general they expressed all possible doubts
+regarding the process. One of them especially, whom I had seen much of
+during the day, a massive archaic person, with the manners and features
+that might have belonged to an Eve of some other, more cannibalistic
+tradition than ours, poured all this out with a voice heavier than the
+roar of the water or the grinding of the boat’s gunwale against the
+companionway and her declamation was answered by a chorus from the
+boatmen, with the accompaniment of shifting lights, so that my simile of
+a play was but natural.
+
+At length we were all stowed in and departed, one sailor still standing
+as he had from the beginning, balanced with a child in his arms. At the
+little wharf the scene was repeated on a small scale, while above us the
+one lantern lit the legs of an expectant multitude; and at length we
+were singled out by the host who was to take care of us, and who had the
+one single hotel or house, to which we were sent up with a lantern.
+
+Then we rested. Adams had suffered very much from the tossing, so much
+so as to make me anxious, and I too was much the worse for the wear of
+the last two hours of resting in harbour while waiting for boats to go
+out and return. We had some food and rooms given us by the Chinaman
+factotum, major-domo, cook, servant, etc.; and later our host appeared
+in his shirt-sleeves, and asked our intentions and whether we were to go
+right off in the morning to the volcano. Having ascertained these facts,
+he selected one of the party--we were four, we three and some one
+else--and to this some one he poured out some information, mainly about
+the bad sides of the other way to the volcano--the Hilo way; its
+raininess, and in general all the wrongfulness of Hilo people. With that
+he also poured forth his bottom thoughts about the whole business that
+he had charge of, the idiotic way in which people travelled to see the
+volcano without sufficient practice on other volcanoes beforehand, so
+that invalids (he called them inwalids) found it difficult to ride on
+horseback, and some were sometimes thrown from mules, and in general he
+showed the folly of trusting to the advertisements of his own
+enterprise. For he is, I understand, a great man, who has this road and
+runs it. All this I absorbed before going to bed, so as to prepare for
+the next day, which began early with the Chinaman, and making for the
+train.
+
+The train is a little engine with two platforms on wheels, that runs to
+a plantation some few miles off. One platform had a roof for the gentry;
+the other was loaded with the common people, consisting of some Swedish
+women and children, some Hawaiians, and one or two young people who
+belonged to our side, but preferred riding thus, thereby escaping the
+smoke that we got. We had a watchman and a Chinaman on the engine. At
+the start we were requested to trim our weights. The Hawaiian lady who
+had been a tragedy the evening before, was on our side, and whatever
+side she had taken, that would have been the heavy one. But still we
+risked it, and ran along the little road which occasionally passed over
+trestling and did have something of a reason for trimming.
+
+The ride was lovely except for the smoke. We had left the shore at which
+we had landed the night before, for the car ran to the little jetty,
+where the sand was as black as ink--volcano dust, with a fringe of white
+like teeth. Then we slowly gained some heights, and saw behind us the
+great blue sea and white headlands; black lava looking grey in the
+sunshine, and to our left the great hills and slopes. And we ran by the
+sugar-cane and through a country with few or no trees, a great surface
+of up and down of moors, until we came to the plantation, where we
+stopped. Everybody had reached home except ourselves, and our accidental
+companion. We found a covered wagon with two mules and two horses, into
+which we were packed with difficulty, as our luggage was bulkier than is
+customary, owing to my not having been able to persuade our host to
+allow me to reship some that we did not want. He could not “fuss with
+such matters.” In fact he was right. The whole affair is merely for the
+convenience of travellers; on the part of the people who undertake it,
+there is no need of it and one feels indebted to them for the courtesy
+they show in allowing one to pass through their place, even though they
+charge for the same.
+
+So we rolled slowly over the great downs, upon some sort of a trail,
+occasionally perturbed by some stones, or perhaps banked up with no
+incident. The great mountain was being covered with clouds, but the sea
+spread far below us, the capes at the corner, and the east of the shore
+glistening as if silvered, and white upon their local blackness. It was
+as Newport beaches might look upon a gigantic scale. Here and there a
+few trees (the _ohia_), stood up, orange-brown butterflies, Parnassians,
+flew continually across our path, spotting the entire landscape all busy
+with their loves. A few birds, plovers, I believe, rose at a distance,
+or flew across, or with a cry, peewits waved to and fro on the slopes
+below us.
+
+By and by, at noon, we came to more trees; the landscape became more
+shut in, the sea disappeared behind the slopes we were leaving, and we
+took lunch at a convenient shanty where we were well treated, and tasted
+the native _ohia_ berries. Then we entered a rockier soil, much broken
+up, with much black dust, and with many trees, all small and as if lost,
+something like little back country lanes--anywhere.
+
+And this went on and on, and we walked sometimes, in despair of our
+mules and horses, driven by a driver who urged them with word and whip,
+and occasionally with stones, without being able to get them much out of
+a walk, broken by an occasional trot. Then things were colder, and on a
+landscape of no shape, with blocks of lava thrown over the soil as if by
+the spade of journeyman or maker of worlds; with ever so many queerly
+conventional trees,--the _ohia_ before mentioned, which has yellow
+trumpet flowers--and many others; and at last many ferns, and more
+ferns, and the tree ferns. We saw on our right some cloudy forms of
+smoke rising toward the clouds of only a little warmer tint than they,
+and that was the smoke and steam of Kilauea--which was really below us,
+hidden under the edge of the desolate plateau we were driving on.
+
+Then we came to more vegetation and many ferns, and we suddenly saw the
+glance of a sulphur bank, yellow, green, and white, like the surface of
+certain beans; and we drove up toward the house that stands by the
+volcano. It was not yet dark, but dark enough to see confusedly the
+crater just below us, only a few yards away, a mass of black, and high
+walls around it, and three cones apparently in the distance, with steam
+about them, and steam issuing near them in many places, so that the
+further wall was dim. And steam near us came out of crevices at our
+feet, and on our road, and a little everywhere, where ferns grew
+richer--and we had arrived.
+
+We went in to make our host’s acquaintance, and got our simple rooms in
+a sort of rough farmhouse, with doors opening on the verandah, and in
+front of the crater of the volcano. And we sat later at dinner, and
+after dinner by the fire (for a fire was pleasant in the damp, cold
+air), and heard him talk, and spoke to him about Mr. Dana’s book, and
+the changes in the crater, and all the volcano talk that can come out of
+the absorption of much reading and much hearing. Maby (our host) talks
+of danger to his children from the steam fissures just mentioned.
+
+
+Kilauea--The Volcano.
+
+Maby, the keeper of the hotel, is not the old gentleman of Dana’s book,
+but a person whom I should describe if I had the time. He is a New
+Yorker, and has been away since the early war, and has sailed about much
+in this part of the world. The type is a well known one to us, and
+amusing enough. He is married to a Hawaiian woman, also shrewd-looking,
+good-looking, reminding one of many people with us, with a high forehead
+and thick lips; and has many children who play about, and make the place
+seem less showlike.
+
+As we gather around the fireplace, Maby tells us stories of himself,
+and sailor yarns that interest us as regarding places we are looking to.
+One about Nukahiva has a flavour of Melville about it. It shows Maby
+landed there, and being told that he must (unless he wishes to behave
+suspiciously), report to the governor. This official receives the visit
+graciously, but requires a poll-tax of two dollars, not asking directly,
+but by the proper channel. Maby states that two dollars he has not, but
+offers to work it out; whereat he is taken at his word, and helps toward
+the completion, carpentering and painting, of the governor’s house; and
+after some long stay, at fair wages, offers to deduct his two dollars.
+But no, says the governor, he is now in government employ, and not
+liable to taxation.
+
+In connection with this story, in my sleepy memory, is one of some
+expedition, with the governor and his army of _one_ gendarme (“jenny dee
+arms,” Maby calls it), into the interior, or, rather, along the shore,
+for the purpose of levying the tax. Money there is none at the first
+place they come to, so that the gendarme is ordered to take a pig or so
+in payment. But the country has been aroused. Men come flocking down
+with old flint-guns, a retreat along the beach to the boat is ordered,
+and the pigs are abandoned on the way. All this was capital, as was
+Maby’s delight at the absurdity of some savage who knew not of gold, and
+to whom an Englishman gave a piece of gold instead of silver. As he
+complained, Maby relieved him of his anxiety by taking it and giving
+him the desired shilling.
+
+With many stories we sat up and went late to bed, looking out on a
+darkish night, wherein two slight illuminations at a distance meant the
+light of the volcano. But nothing looked propitious. Dana Lake was
+quiet; there was only a little fire on the edges of the lake. Maby spoke
+as if something must happen elsewhere from the quiet of the volcano
+here.
+
+In the morning Adams woke me out of sound sleep; the air was cold, damp,
+and the room decidedly so during the night. As I came out the sun was
+rising. Before us was the volcano, still in shadow, but the walls of the
+crater lit up pink in the sun, and farther out the long line of Mauna
+Loa appearing to come right down to these cliffs, all clear and lit up
+except for the shadow of one enormous cloud that stretched half across
+the sky. The floor of the crater, of black lava, was almost all in
+shadow, so that as it stretched to its sunlit walls it seemed as if all
+below was shadow. In the centre of the space smoked the cones that rise
+from the bed of the crater. Through this vapour we saw the further
+walls, and on the other side of the flow, as it sloped away from us,
+more steam marked the lava openings at Dana Lake, invisible to us.
+
+We sketched that day and lounged in the afternoon, the rain coming down
+and shutting out things; but in the noon I
+
+[Illustration: CENTRAL CONE OF VOLCANO OF KILAUEA, HAWAII]
+
+was able to make a sketch in the faint sunlight; and that was of no
+value, but as I looked and tried to match tints, I realized more and
+more the unearthly look that the black masses take under the light. A
+slight radiance from these surfaces of molten black glass gives a
+curious sheen, that far off in tones of mirage does anything that light
+reflected can do, and fills the eye with imaginary suggestions. Hence
+the delightful silver; hence the rosy coldness, that had made fairylands
+for us of the desert aridity. But nearer, the glitter is like that of
+the moon on a hard cold night, and the volcano crater I shall always
+think of as a piece of dead world, and far away in the prismatic tones
+of the mountain sides, I shall see a revelation of the landscapes of the
+moon.
+
+Late in the afternoon the young Australian, or whatever he was, who had
+been with us, went down with a guide into the crater, and returned
+toward ten o’clock with a story that Dana Lake had broken. He had seen
+the grey surfaces move and tumble over like ice pack into the fire, and
+we were proportionately curious to see and unwilling to go. For I must
+own that it has been rather out of duty than otherwise that we have been
+here. Neither of us cares for climbing, and certainly the pleasure of
+seeing fire near by must be very exciting to amount to pleasure. Yet we
+went next day and toiled down to the surface of the crater, which is
+accessible from our side by a zigzag path. By and by one gets to the
+surface of the crater, which rises to the centre and (when one is on it)
+shows nothing but a desolate labyrinth of rocks. We walk over this
+tiresome surface that destroys the sole of the boot, following more or
+less in single file, because of crevasses that are deep, and at the end
+of a walk of some three miles, we approach the cones that rise high
+above us, perhaps seventy feet. Maby says that they are higher than they
+were, for this whole surface of lava is movable, and parts of it like
+the cones float over a molten surface underneath. Think of it as glass
+and you will just get the simile that it makes mentally. To the eyes it
+is rock; around the cones there are loose disorderly rocks piled up like
+loose stones in a fence--absolutely like it, which loose formation is
+called _a-a_ in Hawaiian, as the flowing, smooth lava, on which we have
+mainly walked, is called _pa-hoe-hoe_. Some of it is in crusts that are
+hollow to the tread, and that give way suddenly, to one’s annoyance, for
+it is hard to realize that it is still solid underneath. Especially as
+here our guide points out a small cone about a mile off, sticking out of
+a confusion or heap of broken rocks, or above the broken rocks that are
+before us and below us, for we are now walking on a colossal loose stone
+fence--far off, I say, in this confusion is a single cone, with a red
+glow in it. And now we cross a little more fence; the smooth and crusty
+surface is hot to the feet; we look down and see grey and red lines in
+the cracks below us that are fire; and then a few feet off, we look into
+and between some rocks, and see the lava flowing along, exactly like
+glass when it is cooling and growing red from former whiteness, a slow,
+viscous, sticky dropping into some hole below. Then we go back quickly
+and paddle along toward the other slope of the floor, where steam is
+rising; and by and by, as the light is waning after our two hours’ walk,
+we get within a short distance of the wall edge, and see a space
+apparently near higher rocks, some seventy feet high, I am told, which
+is Dana Lake. There is now only vapour; sulphurous fumes that float up
+and obscure the distance, and go up into the skies. But as the twilight
+begins, fires come out and the space is edged with fire that sometimes
+colours the clouds of vapour. At one side a small cone stands up, that
+burns with an eye of red fire. From time to time this opening spits out
+to one side a little vicious blotch of fire. The clouds of vapour rise
+so as to blur the distance, but near by the rocks are clear enough, and
+either black, or further off where they are cliffs, are greenish yellow
+with sulphur. Sizes become uncertain. I could swear that this lake was a
+thousand feet long and the cliffs were five hundred feet; but Awoki and
+the guide, walking along, reduce the lake to real proportions. Then it
+is only a small lake of some hundred and fifty to two hundred feet,
+perhaps. But the impression still remains--all is so thrown out of
+reference. The hole is so uncanny; the sky above, purple with the yellow
+of the afterglow, and partly covered by the yellowish tone of the
+hellish vapour, looks high up above us. I sit (and sketch) on the absurd
+rocks, and then we wait for something to happen. It has become night; we
+determine to give up hope of the breaking up of the lake, and we start.
+We have lanterns, but gradually these go out, and we have only one that
+has to be cherished, and we scramble along. By and by we halt, and
+looking back see greater lights, and our guide says that the lake has
+broken out. Still we are disinclined to return on the chance, for the
+vapours exaggerate everything; and after much scrambling we get back to
+the edge of the crater, after a seven hours’ tramp. As we go up the
+ascent the fires seem larger, and our host and the guides say that there
+is some breaking out. Still we are in doubt; we are disappointed and
+tired. And still I should not go back unless the most extraordinary
+conflagration occurred. Besides the undefined terror and spookiness of
+the thing, there is great boredom. There is nothing to take hold of, as
+it were--no centre of fire and terror--only inconvenience and a faint
+fear of one thing--but what?
+
+But even without fire, the remainder of those dread hollows is something
+to affect the mind. Judge Dole was telling us
+
+[Illustration: CRATER OF KILAUEA AND THE LAVA BED. HAWAII]
+
+that he could not get out of his memory his having looked down the
+hollow of the pit of Halemaumau, then just extinct, and having seen an
+inverted hollow cone all in motion, with rock and débris rolling down to
+some indefinite centre far below.
+
+I still have (as I write at Hilo) the scent of sulphur in my memory.
+From time to time, in our ride to Hilo next morning, this smell would
+come up, perhaps in reality. That was a bad ride, all over a sort of
+lava bed like a mountain torrent. Then it ended in the beginning of a
+road of red earth, soft and spongy, and up to the bellies of the horses.
+There we met, after fifteen miles of it, a carriage and horses that took
+us to Hilo, over a pretty road through a pretty tropical forest, to this
+little old place, the abode of quiet and cocoanut trees, where are very
+pleasant people; among them M. Furneaux, the artist, who shows us
+sketches, and talks to me of what I sympathize with--the being driven to
+means unusual to us, when we try to give an impression of the tone of
+colour here.
+
+
+Ride from Hilo around the east of Island of Hawaii, September 19th to
+22d.
+
+It will be difficult to give you an account of our ride. As to the
+places, the names are indifferent, I think, and if I occasionally
+mention them, it is more for my own help than for yours.
+
+Our ride was to be certainly for three days and more, over what is known
+as a very bad road; up and down through the gulches that edge the shore,
+breaking the line of our travel, and making little harbours where the
+surf ran in to meet the little torrents or runs that hurried to them in
+cascades or waterfalls. It was, for the first day or so, beautiful; not
+so very grand, except that the simplicity of the scene, consisting of
+the sea, high rocks, and some little river running down, had always that
+importance that belongs to the typical. Time and time again we had the
+high rocky banks of the little bays covered with trees; then in the
+centre of the shore, a little half island, with tall cocoanuts, and on
+one or both sides of it, the torrent and cascade rushing down, and the
+surf running in in a great lacelike spread over the black sand.
+
+Once when I stopped to sketch for an hour or so, I enjoyed the essence
+of a type of scene that is with difficulty described, though every one
+knows it, and with difficulty painted, though any one might attempt it.
+From the hillside hidden in trees came over some very low rocks a
+cascade of two rills, and at its feet lay a little sheet of water, of
+perhaps some fifty yards in length and very narrow. On either side high
+rocks crowned with great ferns and much moss, and behind the few
+_lauhala_ (pandanus) trees upon them, and great banana leaves in some
+hollow. The rocks were black, spotted with green and white, and at
+their feet ran a little rim of sand. This for the land end of the basin.
+At the open sea end high rocks running far out into headlands, with many
+trees and bushes, so as to make walls, along which the sea rushed
+heavily to some little bar, at one end of which, on a small bluff with
+huts, grew a few cocoanut trees tossing in the wind: one would wish
+there were more. And the sea running far up over this sand melted with a
+cross current into the run of the little stream, so gently that each
+looked like a separate tide. Here the road crossed the ford, coming on
+either side from high-up banks. Near the rocks were the marked edges of
+the road, and up the stream, canoes, with white ends like the cusp of
+the moon, and white outriggers protected with thatch, lay on the grass.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+As I sat on some wet rocks near the sea, to sketch, I could see what
+happened during the day. Some wayfarer came down the slope, pushed
+across the stream his horse that put down its head to taste the brackish
+water; children and older natives crossed barefooted the less deep
+water; high up, some practised native in best dress, crossed at some
+well-known ford by adding a few stones. Later, loud cries, and the
+noise of a sail coming down. I could see them without looking, for I had
+to paint hard with my face turned the other way, and hurried by
+occasional showers. For our sky was all cloudy and wet, though faint
+drops of sunshine fell also here and there. But the horizon, as I sat so
+low, was all clear of that unearthly blue of the islands, against which
+danced the grey sea, and the triple line of grey surf, white perhaps
+otherwise, but dull against such a clearness of green aquamarine air.
+
+Then the fishermen landed on the rocks and showed their fish, and all
+rushed that way, all but the girl who had come to sit behind me, and
+followed my work, perhaps to see what I was trying to make out. But she
+too succumbed when a half naked man held up a silvery fish of some
+mackerel shape right before me and her, and she ran off to the house
+near the cocoanut trees. Then the fishermen took off their ragged
+clothes, and washed them in the stream, within a foot or so of the
+tide-water; great strapping fellows when out of their clothes, with
+heavy muscles, splendid and brown like nuts, and sometimes with red
+_breech-clouts_, that brought out the olive of the wet skin. Then they
+bathed, plunging in the deeper channel, where the waves of their
+movement married the tide of the sea with the current of the stream. And
+later an old man with peaked grey beard sat down and washed his clothes,
+then walked in and lay down, he too as handsome in his nakedness, as he
+had looked broken down in his shabby clothes. Then he rose and slowly
+put on the wet clothes, to reappear later in a cleaner dress.
+
+And a Chinaman charged across the stream on his mule, splashing the
+water about him. Then as the fishermen were gone, and all the boys and
+the women, probably to their meal just caught, all noise ceased, except
+the rush of the surf and the ripple of the tide, and in some interval
+the trickling of the little cascade. Above, the wind rustled at times
+the palms. Noonday and rest had come. And I left my work, and again on
+horseback trudged along the impossible road.
+
+
+Sunday 21st.
+
+As I went up the bank, a small furtive animal like a weasel ran up the
+perpendicular face of the big rock by the waterfall. It was a mongoose,
+an animal of a race imported to destroy the pest of rats, and now a
+plague in itself, and an example of the eternal story.
+
+The lower part of the sky was clear, with small pearly clouds, the upper
+yet covered with heavy mist, so that the ocean was framed as above, and
+occasionally the view confined on the sides by the projecting rocks of
+the gulches, into which ran the sea and surf. Once, at Onomea, the cliff
+was hollowed into a great arch, beyond which the rock, all green with
+foliage, rose further out. Whether framed in by such cliffs, or
+stretched out beyond a single gaze, the ocean accompanied us most of the
+time--the _ocean_, distinctly, not recalling the seas of our shores, but
+the _great sea_, hiding the secret of its blue dyes in depths of full
+three thousand fathoms. And over its blue ran a perpetual story. Rarely
+during our few days was the whole surface under one influence. We saw
+faint mists and rain-clouds brushed over the water, often separated by
+intervals of sunny sapphire; the sky above still lit up and peaceful.
+Sometimes a part of the ocean was wiped out and became sky; sometimes
+great bars of grey broke across it; and again, as these rolled over the
+stilled edge of the waves, rainbows shone either where they joined the
+sea, or through their entire height, up into the upper air. For this
+great deceptive space seemed at our distance so peaceful, even when we
+could see the surf dashing in folds on the rocks and black beaches.
+Sometimes a solitary whitecap dotted it, or when the wind blew more,
+many spots of broken light threw a rosy bloom over the enchanted
+surface. Islands of reflected light, islands of purple shadow repeated
+the clouds above, and often the parent cloud, along with its reflected
+lights and its shadows, touched and melted into the waves, making
+enclosures, within which the eye could see vaguely, a trembling
+repetition of light and dark; and sometimes, perhaps most when
+
+[Illustration: MEN BATHING IN THE RIVER NEAR THE SEA. ONOMEA, ISLAND OF
+HAWAII]
+
+seen as a background to some trees or rocks, or grey native hut, with a
+figure in waving red or white framed in the blue opening through it, the
+distance and the sky melted into mere spaces of slightly different
+colour.
+
+The eye never tired of this surface of blue below a greener sky, that
+repeated in the air that colour of greenness (blue-tint shade) that
+rests the sight. On land, meanwhile, our roads were good or bad, mostly
+bad, but not the terrors that we had heard of. Our poor nags struggled
+through deep mud at times, or slipped up and down in the rocks and loose
+stones of the gulches, or floundered in the river-beds, dropping up and
+down as they found footing on hidden boulders, or cantered in a tired
+way over some little piece of road near plantations. But their attention
+was mostly engaged in stepping along over the half-dried road, looking
+and feeling like our old “corduroy” roads, the logs being represented by
+bars of higher and drier mud. Over these we rose and sank, and I had
+plenty of time to meditate upon the idiocy of that sentimental animal,
+the horse, and his relative want of judgment. Never did our beasts step
+in any reasoned way upon these alternations of ground, though the little
+mule of our guide, as he trotted ahead, never going very fast, never
+very slow, showed his romantic relatives what pure intellect, devoid of
+emotions, can do in the practical line. With such nonsense I perforce
+diverted my mind, when confined within the limits of the road. But our
+horses had plenty of rest; we took four whole days for those ninety
+miles, stopping to sketch, and going to ask for lunch or dinner, and
+bed, at the plantations on our road. The only difficulty seemed to be
+our own hesitation at the impudence of our requests. But this is the
+custom. Our visit had been telephoned ahead by acquaintances; for the
+telephone, that most citylike of our contrivances, goes around the
+island, joining together places that are difficult to reach and out of
+the way.
+
+And so we met pleasant people by chance, and heard about things
+accidentally by way of conversation, and were most kindly treated.
+Indeed, when on one occasion our amiable hostess asked us to remain over
+night, and we had listened to German music, and had talked with the
+doctor in charge of the plantations, and our host himself arrived from
+the fields, it seemed hard to go and break our feeling of content.
+Perhaps I ought to tell you something about the plantations, but that is
+too much like information--and what do you need it for? All that we saw
+was sugar, which occupies the east coast; on the other side of the
+island, as different as the other side of the continent, there are
+cattle ranches, and we were told that most of the sugar land that is
+available has been taken already. Most of the low land, I suppose; for
+the upper land further from the sea is often reclaimed and used, but it
+is less favourable. The yield by the acre below, at the highest, has
+been about eight tons, while the upper is not more than five; all this
+upon land which a few years ago was forest--wide downs now--covered
+either with sugar-cane or grass, and dotted with trees, were all covered
+to the sea edge, which, where I write now is a cliff fully eight hundred
+feet high.
+
+The sugar plantations employ many Chinese and Japanese labourers, of
+whom there are a good many thousand, and we saw on two occasions “camps”
+of Japanese, as they are called. In the shops or stores attached to one
+plantation (as in others), I saw the Japanese costume again, for men and
+women--the _kimono_ and the _obi_ and the _geta_ or wooden clogs; of
+course they are mostly peasants or of low class, as I could easily
+surmise without inquiring, by Awoki’s manner. “They are great children,”
+says our good lady to me, and the doctor at one residence has much to
+say about the anomalous position he stands in with regard to them and
+others. He is employed by the government to inspect them, as well as
+other hands, to see that they are not made to work in illness, and he
+also examines the flock, in the interest of the employers, to see that
+they do not shirk. The result is that he is a physician who cannot trust
+the word of his patient about his ailings, after his patient has made up
+his mind to be ill, who if one ailing is dismissed, will call up as
+many as may seem available--and inscrutable. I am told that the Japanese
+illness, _kakke_, or as they call it here, _biri biri_, persists among
+them. It is a form of slow paralysis, having its premonitory symptoms;
+sometimes to be cured, but not often. The patients, not white, have the
+better chance if they be under competent care, for the government gives
+free medical attention, and I understood that many avail themselves of
+it who could as well pay.
+
+I need not say that the great tariff question is that of the moment;
+free sugar with us will shake the Hawaiian tree, and weaker planters
+will go to the wall. I always feel regret when I see all put into one
+chance, so liable to fluctuation, and it is to be hoped that coffee,
+which here is excellent, may succeed and grow more available. I take it
+that the difficulty is always in the picking, and that there may be
+chance for some improvement in the facility.
+
+
+September 22d.
+
+Our last sugar plantation took us to the edge of the great valley of
+Waipio, from one to two thousand feet deep, at the further and higher
+inland end of which drops a great waterfall; from its outside sea-cliffs
+trickle down others from the lesser height of eight hundred. But all was
+wrapped in mist, for at this point of our ride we had almost the only
+bad weather of the trip. Here we turned toward the other side of the
+island, across great downs and spreads of land like those we had seen on
+first landing on the island. We were out of the rainy influence. The
+whole spread of the landscape was that of dryness; of the “Sierras”; we
+rode at first through vast fields or spreads of green, where the path
+was marked by the rooting of the pigs, who here run loose and grow wild.
+A great mountain slope rose to our left--Mauna Kea--and as we dipped to
+the sea we had Mount Hualalai to continue it. But that was after we had
+stopped on our last day’s ride in a dry country, where distances swam in
+the pale colours that belong to the volcanoes and the desert, while near
+us green marked the foreground.
+
+We rested and dreamed in midday, at some hospitable residence, from
+whose verandah, in the great heat, we saw Hawaiians coursing recklessly
+about in the way you would like to ride; and cattle on many hills; while
+the young ladies in the shade made garlands (_leis_) for us to wear
+around our necks and hats on our last ride to the shore. Adams and I
+rode slowly down, a mile behind the others, in the blazing afternoon, a
+most delicious air breaking the heat; with that same sense of space that
+had accompanied our first day ashore. And as the sun set like a clear
+ball of fire over the blue sea, and sent rosy flickerings to the shore,
+we came down to the edges of the bay.
+
+Above us to the left rose a hill crowned with the remains of some one
+building that trailed down its side, still red in the sunlight. To our
+right were palms and black sand and enclosures, apparently deserted, and
+with an afterglow like that of Egypt, a look of desolate Africa. In the
+dark we passed over the black sand, and behind the trees through which
+the moon moved restlessly in the water, and came up to an absurd little
+hotel kept by a Chinaman, where we dismounted among black pigs charging
+about, and bade good-bye to amiable Mr. Much, our guide, who had
+preceded us.
+
+Then we met, at tea, the manager of the last place (Waimea) we had dined
+at. He told me of what I had missed by not getting in in the
+morning--the shipping of the steers, which are parked out on the shore,
+then singled out and lassoed by the “boys,” whom they rush after into
+the sea, where it is the horse and rider’s business to get them to the
+boats. To these their heads are secured, and they are rowed off
+swimming, willy-nilly, to the steamers, into which some contrivance
+hoists them.
+
+These cattle came, I understand, from the great ranch of Mr. Sam Parker
+up in the mountains, a wealthy Hawaiian of partly white blood, whose
+name is well known besides as giving hospitality in a lordly way in his
+lonely domain.
+
+And in the evening we waited for the steamer, not in the house of refuge
+and food, where water was scarce, and where poor Mr. Much could get
+nothing to eat, as being too late; but near by, under a verandah or wide
+canopy of palm branches lit up by the moonlight. There we listened to
+Hawaiian music--while our older hosts sat on the mats--melancholy chants
+adapted to European airs, and among them one apparently original, a sad,
+romantic sort of cakewalk, to which one could fancy dusky savage
+warriors keeping time, with many foliage-adorned feet, and hands tossed
+up and pointing out. It was called the March of Kamehameha (the old
+conqueror of these islands), and I let myself understand that it was a
+reproduction of the veritable sounds that once celebrated his triumphs
+and mastery over these islands; from which dates the royalty now
+existing, though his royal race itself is extinct.
+
+And we, too, stretched on the mats brought out, and listened to lazy
+talk in the language, until the steamer came, when all walked down in
+time to the wharf, after the sheep and the freight had been put on
+board, and we rowed out on the water smooth as that of a lake, to the
+little steamer, and later went to bed and waited until morning, when we
+steamed for the next port and thence to Honolulu, and our own house in
+the valley.
+
+We met on board many pleasant people, and among others a former
+neighbour, though unknown, who is now one of the few American
+missionaries in the Islands. These, I think he told me, are all that
+remain who are salaried from America. He spoke to us about Mr. Hyde,
+whom Mr. Stevenson had been attacking, as if he belonged to him by his
+name; and explained how exaggerated was the notion of this gentleman’s
+affluence. All, I understand, that he gets, besides what his wealthy
+family allow him (and for that he could not be held responsible), is
+some two thousand five hundred a year and his residence--surely not a
+large amount. I have not myself read all that Mr. Stevenson has written,
+so that I have but a vague idea of the question, but my informant tells
+me that Father Damien, as is well understood, was no saint, and that two
+pastors had told him of things that looked wrong. These are themselves
+rather vague to the outsider, but much weight seemed to attach to them
+with our informant--a gentlemanly person, who looked little like the
+usual clergyman, and had a brave air of the church militant about him.
+But it was more pleasant to talk to him about St. Gaudens, whom he knew,
+and about what he had done of late years; for everywhere we find that
+there are others who know friends; and the desert of Gobi alone would be
+without home associations.
+
+
+At Sea, Oct. 2, 1890.
+
+Yesterday we crossed the equator; it was cool and pleasant, as lovely as
+one could wish. In the evening I found an overcoat comfortable. To-day
+it is more salty and cloudy, wind behind us more from the north;
+indefinable blue sea that looks grey against the delicate blue and
+silver of the sky, but near by, under the guards, it is like a greener
+lapis lazuli.
+
+Yesterday, as I wrote, we crossed the equator, and left it with
+disrespect behind us, almost unnoticed--the Line, as they used to call
+it. And soon we shall have dropped the sun also, which would, were there
+no clouds, no abundant awnings, leave us with diminished shadows,
+insufficient to cover our feet. And at the thought of dropping him, the
+old Taoist wish of getting outside the points of the compass comes over
+me, the feeling that leads me to travel. Can we never get to see things
+as they are, and is there always a geographical perspective? Should I
+reach Typee shall I find it invaded by others? Shall I find everywhere
+the company of our steamers?
+
+On Sunday morning we shall be dropped into a boat off Tutuila, some
+sixty miles away from the Samoa to which we go. How long we stay as I
+told you, I do not know, but we think of Tahiti later, and even other
+places, that I dare not think of, for I must return some day. But before
+that day, I wish to have seen a Fayaway sail her boat in some other
+Typee.
+
+
+
+
+PASSAGES FROM A DIARY IN THE PACIFIC
+
+
+
+
+SAMOA
+
+
+     Off the island of Tutuila, on Board the Cutter Carrying Mail,
+     Tuesday, Oct. 7, 1890 (Samoan Time).
+
+The morning looked rainy with the contrary northwest wind that we had
+carried with us below the equator, when the shape of the little cutter
+that was to take us showed between the outstanding rocks of the coast of
+Tutuila. As the big steamer slowed up, a few native boats came out to
+meet it, manned with men paddling and singing in concert, some of them
+crowned with leaves, and wearing garlands about their necks, their naked
+bodies and arms making an indescribable red colour against the blue of
+the sea, which was as deep under this cloudy sky, but not so brilliant
+as under yesterday’s sun. They came on board, some plunging right into
+the sea on their way to the companion ladder, bringing fruit and
+curiosities for sale. But our time had come; and we could only give a
+glance at the splendid nakedness of the savages adorned by fine
+tattooing that looked like silk, and with waist drapery of brilliant
+patterns. We dropped into the dancing boat that waited for us and
+scrambled into the little cutter or schooner some thirty feet long, not
+very skilfully managed, that was to
+
+[Illustration: FAYAWAY SAILS HER BOAT. SAMOA]
+
+take us sixty miles against the wind to Apia. A few minutes, and the
+steamer was far away; and we saw the boats of the savages make a red
+fringe of men on the waves that outlined the horizon--a new and strange
+sensation, a realizing of the old pictures in books of travel and the
+child traditions of Robinson Crusoe.
+
+Our crew was made up of the captain, a brown man from other and far-away
+islands, and two blacks, former cannibals from Solomon Islands, with
+gentle faces and manners, and rings of ivory in their noses. Our captain
+spoke of hurry, and used strange words not clear to understand in his
+curious lingo; but after an hour or so of heavy rain he announced his
+intention to beat in again and wait for some change of wind. And so we
+ran into a little harbour high with mountains, all wooded as if with
+green plumage, cornered by a high rock standing far out, on which stood
+out, like great feathers, a few cocoa-palms. Palms fringed the shore
+with shade. A blue-green sea ran into a thin line of breakers--like one
+of the places we have always read of in “Robinson Crusoe” and similar
+travellers: “A little cove with the surf running in, and a great swell
+on the shore.” Our cutter was anchored; then, as we declined to remain
+on board, either in the rain or in the impossible little cabin about
+eight feet long, we were taken into the boat, which was skilfully
+piloted through an opening in the inside reef; and, the surf being high,
+we were carried to shore on the backs of two handsome fellows whose
+canoe had come alongside. We walked up to the church, a curious long,
+low building behind the cocoa-palms; all empty, with thatched roofs and
+walls of coral cement; the doorway open, with two stones to block out
+casual straying pigs, I suppose. Inside I saw a long wooden trough,
+blocked out of a tree. I did not know that this was the old war-drum of
+pagan times, now used for the Christian bell.
+
+Behind the church, a few yards off, was our destination--a Samoan
+“grass-house,” the guest-house of the village, as I know now. It was
+thatched with sugar-cane leaves, was elliptical, with a turtle-backed
+roof, supported by pillars all around, and by three central pillars that
+were connected by curved beams, from which hung cocoanut cups and
+water-bottles, or which supported rolls of painted bark cloth. The
+pebble floor showed at places not covered with the mats, as well as near
+the centre pillars, where a fire still smoked. Most of the screens of
+matting, which make the only wall between the pillars, were down, making
+a gentle shade, in which one woman was sleeping; another, on the
+opposite side to us, her back turned and naked to the waist, was working
+at large folds of bark cloth. The women rose from this occupation, and
+offered their hands, saying, “_alofa!_”[1] A younger woman was lying
+sick, her wrapped-up head on the Samoan pillow of a long bamboo,
+supported at either end, so as to free it from the ground.
+
+With the same “_alofa_” came an elegant young creature, perhaps some
+sixteen years old, wearing a gay waist drapery of flowered pattern, red,
+yellow, and purple--with a loose upper garment or chemise of red and
+violet--open at the sides. Then another, short and strong, with heavy
+but handsome arms and legs, and with bleared eyes. And we sat down on
+the mats, the girls cross-legged, and looked at each other while the
+captain talked, I know not what of.
+
+As I changed my seat and sat near the entrance with my back against the
+pillars, which is the Samoan fashion, though I did not know it, another
+tall creature entered, and giving us her hand with the “_alofa_” sat
+down against another pillar--also the proper dignified Samoan way. We
+did not notice her much; she was quieter, less pretty than the pretty
+one, with a longer face, a nose more curved at the end, a longer upper
+lip, and more quietly dressed in the same way. Then entered another with
+a disk-shaped face, her hair all plastered white with the coral lime
+they use to redden the hair, and dressed as the others, with the same
+bare arms and legs. She was heavy and strong below, and less developed
+above, with the same splendid walk and swing, the same beauty of the
+setting of the head on the neck.
+
+And we drank cocoanut milk, while _kava_ was being prepared for us in an
+enchantment of movement and gesture, that I had just begun to feel, as
+if these people had cultivated art in movement and personal gesture,
+because they had no other plastic expression.
+
+The movements of the two girls preparing the stuff would have made
+Carmencita’s swaying appear conventional; so, perhaps, angels and
+divinities, when they helped mortals in the kitchen and household. As
+the uglier girl scraped the root into the four-legged wooden bowl set
+between the two, in front of us, and before the central pillars, she
+moved her hand and body to a rhythm distinctly timed; and when her
+exquisite companion took it up, and, wetting the scraped root from
+double cocoanut shells, that hung behind her, moved her arms around in
+the bowl and wiped its rim, and frothed the mass with a long wisp of
+leafy filaments, she tossed the wet bunch to her companion, as if
+finishing some long cadence of a music that we could not hear, too slow
+to be played or sung, too long for anything but the muscles of the body
+to render. And she who received it, squeezed it out with a gesture fine
+enough for Mrs. Siddons or Mademoiselle Georges. I use these names of
+the stage, of which I have no fixed idea; those that I have seen could
+never have given, even in inspired moments of passion, such a sinuous
+long line to arm and hand. Then in a similar repetition of conventional
+attitudes the cups were presented to us, one after the other, with a
+great under-sweep of the full-stretched arm, and we drank the curious
+drink, which leaves the taste filled with an aroma not unlike the
+general aromatic odour of all around us, of flowers and of shrubs. For
+all was clean and dry about us, house and surroundings and crowded
+people, at least to the senses that smell.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the slow hypnotism produced by mutual curiosity, by gazing with
+attention all centred on movement, while pretending to notice all the
+social matters as they went on about us, I could not disentangle myself
+from the girl who had bewitched us; and as she sat clasping her elbows,
+with her legs crossed in her lap, like the images of Japanese Kwannon
+and of Indian goddesses, I tried to copy a few lines. But the original
+ones flowed out again like water, before I could fix them. My model was
+conscious of the attention she called up, and from that moment her eyes
+always met ours, with a flirting smile, half of encouragement, half of
+shyness.
+
+And now the tall girl that sat beside me, with the quiet face and
+unquiet eyebrows, put out her hand languidly to reach for my
+sketch-book. She was the “virgin of the village”--doubly important by
+being the old chief’s daughter, and elected to this representative
+position, which entails, at least, the inconvenience of her being always
+watched, guided, and intimately investigated by the matrons appointed
+thereto. The lines of my sketch, that would have puzzled the ordinary
+amateur, were clear to her: “See,” she said, “here is Sifá, clasping her
+elbows, but her face is not made. Draw me,” and she moved away the
+hanging mats that obscured the light. The sketch I made was bad,
+representing to my mind a European with strange features. I don’t know
+what she thought of it, but she recognized the chemise with ruffles on
+edges, that covered her shoulders, and made the motion of lifting it
+away, which I was slow to understand. Her eyebrows moved with some
+question for which I had no English in my mind. At last the word
+_misonari?_ as she looked toward Adams, explained what was meant; I said
+“no,” and looked approval. She rose, passed into the shade, and sat
+again before me, her upper garment replaced by a long, heavy garland of
+leaves and the aromatic square-sided fruit of the pandanus, that partly
+covered her firm young breast, and lay in her lap against the folds of
+the bent waist. But my drawing was scarcely better for all this, and I
+gave it to her, with the feeling that what made it bad for me, its
+resemblance to a European, might give it value for her. All the time
+the temptation was strong to treat this child of another civilization as
+a little princess. She had the slow manner, the slightly disdainful
+look, the appearance of knowing the value of her sayings and doings that
+make our necessary ideal of responsibility. What though the Princess
+puffed at my pipe, meanwhile having secured a cigar, less cared for,
+behind her pretty ear; what though she pressed two long, slender fingers
+against her lips, and spat through them, according to some native
+elegance, she knew that she was a personage and never was familiar, even
+when she pressed my arm and shoulder, and said, “_alofa oi_,” “I like
+you.” Her forehead was high and gently sloping, her eyebrows thin and
+movable, the eye looked gently and firmly and directly; the nose was a
+little curved at the heavy end, the upper lip a little long (and pulling
+on the pipe, if she used it, would lengthen it later yet more), the neck
+and back of the head had the same beauty of line and setting that I had
+seen in Hawaii, and her shoulders, and breast, and strong, lithe arms
+would have delighted a sculptor. She wore her hair gathered up by a
+European comb, and in front a forelock reddened to the tone of her face,
+with the coral lime they used. Her legs were strong and fine and her
+feet only as large as one could expect, with the soles hardened by use
+over stones and coral.
+
+But she was not the pretty one; her sister, Sifá, was that. The charm of
+the older one, “the virgin of the village,” was in this incomparable
+savage dignity, that gave a formality to our visit. What to us was an
+amusement was to her evidently one of the necessities of hospitality,
+while Sifá could not move about or look without a ripple of laughter
+that undulated through her entire person. Occasionally, however, our
+“chiefess” looked at me with a gentle smile, and said “_alofa!_” and by
+and by, after showing me that she could write, and doing so in my album,
+(where she dated her inscription _Oketopa_, our October), she gave me a
+ring with her name Uatea--or Watea as she wrote it. She partook of
+lunch, eating after us (along with the captain who appeared again on
+time), and she refused to taste of some apples we had until we had some
+of her own fruit, all I suppose according to some proprieties well
+defined. Then Sifá, her sister, met with a little adventure in unpacking
+our food for us. The captain of the steamer had given us a block of ice
+on our leaving, telling us that it was the last we should see in this
+part of the world, and that it might comfort us during our long, hot
+sail under the tropical sun. In unrolling it, and taking it up, Sifá
+dropped it with a cry of “_afi!_”--“fire!” and for a few moments we
+struggled in an unknown tongue to explain what it might be. But I took
+it for granted that she must have had some Bible explanation of the
+places where the Bible comes from--that is to say, England and Scotland;
+hence about winter and bad weather, and perhaps snow and ice.
+
+While the family arranged for their meal we took a walk, “now and
+again,” as our captain expressed it--almost all the words he knew. We
+walked across what appeared to be the village green--a space of grass
+neatly cared for--edged by huts and trees, the palms thickening in the
+distance and hiding the sudden and close slope of the mountain right
+above us. Bread-fruit trees were planted here and there near the houses,
+the large leaves making a heavy green pattern against the innumerable
+shades of green, the spotted trunks were dark; even the cocoanut trees
+were only white by the sea. We passed a tomb, of a moundlike shape, one
+lengthened cube placed upon another, and the upper surfaces sloping to
+an edge like some of the early sarcophagi or Italian tombs--a shape as
+simple and elegant as one could wish in such an ideal landscape. I shall
+have to find out if this most typical shape has originated with them, or
+has come from some foreign influence. However that may be, it made
+another classical note. Had Ulysses in his wanderings left some
+companion here, some such monument might have well marked the tomb of a
+Greek. There it was, all covered with lichen; and another newer one,
+made also of coral mortar, still white, near trees, and by former
+homes, in this little shady “_agora_.” As we passed into the path that
+seemed to run up the hill, young men went by with wreaths on their
+heads, draped to the waist, like the statues of the gods of the family
+of Jove; their wide shoulders and strong, smooth arms, and long
+back-muscles or great pectorals shining like red bronze. All this
+strength was smooth; the muscles of the younger men softened and passed
+into one another as in the modelling of a Greek statue. As with the
+girls we had just left, no rudeness of hair marred the ruddy surfaces,
+recalling all the more the ideal statues. Occasionally the hair reddened
+or whitened, and the drapery of the native bark cloth, of a brown ochre
+colour, not unlike the flesh, recalled still more the look of a Greek
+clay image with its colour and gilding broken by time. Never in any case
+was there a bit of colour that might rightly be called barbaric; the
+patterns might be European, but no one could have chosen them better,
+for use with great surfaces of flesh. If all this does not tell you that
+there was no nakedness--that we only had the _nude_ before us--I shall
+not have given you these details properly. Evidently all was according
+to order and custom; the proportion of covering, the manner of catching
+the drapery, and the arrangement of folds according to some meaning well
+defined by ancient usage.
+
+Children played about in the open space; they were then at a game of
+marbles; when we returned, this had turned to some kind of
+blind-man’s-buff; there was no roughness, only a good deal of soft
+laughter; one youngster, draped to the chest like a Greek orator, too
+big for the children, too young for the men, leaned upon a long staff
+and looked on gravely, exactly like the figures on the Greek vases, or
+the frieze of the Parthenon.
+
+We walked along into the forest, in the silence of noonday, but the
+abruptness and slipperiness of the path as it rose rapidly to walls of
+wet rock, stopped our feet. From the intricate tangle of green, we saw
+the amethyst sea, and the white line of sounding surf cutting through
+the sloping pillars of the cocoanuts, that made a mall along the shore;
+and over on the other side of the narrow harbour, the great high green
+wall of the mountain, warm in the sun, and its fringe of cocoanut grove,
+and the few huts hidden within it, all softened below by the haze blown
+up from the breakers. All made a picture, not too large to be taken in
+at a glance; the reality of the pictures of savage lands, in our school
+books, filled in with infinite details. From dark interiors of huts, as
+we returned, came gentle greetings of “_alofa_.” Awoki, our Japanese
+servant, had remained with our hosts, had been fed with bread-fruit and
+cocoanut milk, and was busy writing out, under the direction of the
+black mate, certain names and words of the language; for the mate could
+be understood, while the captain
+
+[Illustration]
+
+had only one certain phrase, “now and again” with which he punctuated
+everything loudly, so that I could barely understand him. The mate had
+his own punctuation of frightful oaths and damnatory epithets, evidently
+mere adornments of speech, for he was most gentle, a kindly and
+good-natured cannibal, contrariwise to the surly captain; so that I was
+glad that he had ventured up from the cutter. The girls had taken kindly
+to the other brown skin, my servant, and were busy helping him make up
+his list of words, whose sounds he wrote in Japanese, to my later
+confusion, when he passed his dictionary to me. (Yet curiously enough,
+in this first half day, we learned full a hundred words--almost all that
+I have retained.) So we sat down and rested; the flies, attracted by the
+bread-fruit, and occasional mosquitoes hovered about the openings; ants
+crawled about on us--my princess had occasionally on her feet a black
+bunch of flies, which she brushed away slowly--evidently she did not
+feel them much--their skins are hard--“now and again,” as the captain
+might say, a woman passed the openings of the hut, bare to the waist,
+holding a child against her hip. Soon one of the girls, tired of
+cross-leggedness, stretched her feet politely under a mat, pulled up for
+the purpose (for it is not polite to sit otherwise than cross-legged).
+
+The older women slept on the Samoan pillows at the further side, closed
+in by palm curtains. All but one--who had worked all the time, her great
+brown back turned toward us--engaged in smoothing and finishing a piece
+of what we white men call _tappa_. “_Siapu_” I think they call it--the
+inner bark of the paper mulberry, hammered out with a mallet, which in
+so many of the islands has been long their cloth. She never stirred from
+her work; as long as the light held, I saw before me this upright form,
+strong as a man’s, smooth and round, and the quiet motion of the arms in
+the shadow, made deeper by the sunlight on our side. Later, another
+shower made us shut down more curtains, but we were safe and
+comfortable, protected from sun and rain alike, in this most comfortable
+and airy housing. Then Sifá began beating her thighs and moving her
+shoulders coquettishly to her humming of a tune, and I thought that I
+recognized the _siva_, the seated dance of the Samoans, about which I
+had been told in Hawaii. Such a graceful creature could do nothing that
+was not a picture, but there was a promise of something more, so that we
+applauded and said _lelei_, “beautiful,” with the hope of a full
+performance.
+
+But the Princess said nothing; she smoked more and more, as every one
+joined her, so that I foresaw that our small supply of cigars and
+tobacco was doomed, especially as other damsels entered, and made more
+ravages; girls more or less good looking, mostly heavier, one of them
+called “Tuvale,” who knew bits and parcels of English such as _pilisi du
+na iti mi_, _pilisi esikusi mi_, “Please do not eat me,” “Please excuse
+me.” And one of the largest, leaning affectionately against my shoulder,
+absorbed my silk handkerchief, and tied it around her neck--saying to
+me, in her language, “Look how pretty it is!” Our matches and
+match-boxes had long ago disappeared--most little things had left my
+pockets, but had been replaced. In every way my fair and strong
+companions seemed inclined to dispute an apparent preference for Uatea
+and Sifá. Good-natured girls all (but one--the thief of
+handerchiefs--who seemed to me jealous)--and we were certainly beamed
+upon, as I never expect to be again. More rain outside brought on the
+evening, as we took our last meal; the “chiefess” and the captain, who
+again appeared sullenly out of the dark, eating after us; the captain
+now, with an apology to us, appeared naked to the waist, a big heavy
+mass of bronze, covered below with a gorgeous drapery of purple, and
+yellow, and red. We lay more and more at ease, stretched out, the girls
+prone, and occasionally giving one of us an affectionate pat; all but
+Uatea who still preserved her usual reserve, and even tried hard to
+substitute another ring for the one she had given me--as if her name on
+it was too much for a first acquaintance. And occasionally in following
+her face, the only one that seemed capable of complicated ideas, I asked
+myself whether she was asking herself what equivalents her hospitality
+would receive: for instinct told me that through her our gifts or our
+payments should be made; even if it were all to go to others according
+to barbaric custom. So seeing her rather laden with things, and having
+had one experience of the excellence of a white silk handkerchief, I
+offered her another, and wrote her name in the corner, to see her thank
+me in her usual condescending way, and then toss it over to the old
+woman who appeared occasionally--to my mind, her adviser and guardian,
+for from time to time, “now and again,” she crept up, between us, like a
+chaperon or duenna, to see that all was proper.
+
+Then many of our girls disappeared with Sifá, whom we missed at the
+moment and asked for over and over again. A light was brought and set
+down upon the matting. Uatea slipped out between the hanging screens and
+the pillar behind me, and slipped back again, rid of her upper garment
+with a sort of _poncho_ or strip of cloth with opening for head,
+patterned in lozenges of black, white, and red, that hung down her back
+and chest, leaving arms and shoulders bare, and the sides of her body,
+so that as she bent, the soft line that joins the breast to the
+underarm, showed under the heavy folds. Then, in came our missing pet,
+Sifá, with Tuvále and two others, into the penumbra of the lamp. They
+were naked to the waist; over their tucked-up drapery hung brilliant
+leaf-strips of light green, streaked with red; a few leaves girdled the
+ankle; around Sifá’s neck, over her beautiful bosom, hung a long, narrow
+garland of leaves, and on the others garlands of red fruit or long rows
+of beads interlaced: every head was wreathed with green and red leaves,
+and all and everything, leaves, brown flesh, glistened with perfumed
+oil. From the small focus of the lamp, the light struck on the surface
+of the leaves as upon some delicate fairy tinsel, and upon the forms of
+the girls as if upon red bronze waxed. But no bronze has ever been
+movable, and the perpetual ripple of light over every fold, muscle, and
+dimple was the most complete theatrical lighting I have ever seen. Even
+in the dark, streaks of light lit up the forms and revealed every
+delicacy of motion.
+
+So those lovers of form, the Greeks, must have looked, anointed and
+crowned with garlands, and the so-called dance that we saw might not
+have been misplaced far back in some classical antiquity. The girls sat
+in a row before us, grave and collected, their beautiful legs curled
+upon the lap as in East
+
+[Illustration: SIFÁ DANCING THE SITTING SIVA]
+
+Indian sculptures; and Sifá began a curious chant. As all sang with her
+together, they moved their arms in various ways to the cadence and in
+explanation of the song; and with the arms, now the waist and shoulders,
+now the entire body, even to the feet, rising apparently upon the thighs
+to the time of the music. Indeed, Sifá spoke with her whole tremulous
+body undulating to the fingers--all in a rhythm, as the sea runs up and
+down on the beach, and is never at rest, but seems to obey one general
+line of curve. So she, and the others, turned to one side and stretched
+out their arms, or crossed them, and passed them under the armpit and
+pressed each other’s shoulders, and lifted fingers in some sort of tale,
+and made gestures evident of meaning, or obscure, and swayed and turned;
+and, most beautiful of all, stretched out long arms upon the mats, as if
+swimming upon their sides, while all the time the slender waist swayed,
+and the legs and thighs followed the rhythm through their muscles,
+without being displaced.
+
+I cannot describe it any better; of what use is it to say that it was
+beautiful, and extraordinary, and that no motion of a western dancer but
+would seem stiff beside such an ownership of the body? Merely as motion,
+it must have been beautiful, for the fourth woman was old and not
+beautiful, but she melted into the others, so that one only saw, as it
+were, the lovely form of Sifá repeated by poorer reflections of her
+motion in lesser light.
+
+Meanwhile Uatea sat to one side of them, near me, and in front, one leg
+stretched out, the other tucked under, beating time with a stick,
+disdainful of it all, as poorly done, perhaps incorrectly, “_lelei_,”
+“beautiful,” I said--“_leanga_,” she replied, with a curl of her lip,
+hardly looking at the girls. Perhaps she should have led in person, as
+the official maiden--and I still felt that something was not right. The
+girls rose and came to sit beside us, while Uatea disappeared in the
+darkness, behind the three masts crossed with curved beams, that
+supported the centre of the roof. These, with the shining, polished
+cocoanut bottles, filled with water, that hung from the beams, and the
+rolls of mats and bark cloth which were placed upon them as upon
+shelves, had served as a background or scenery to our theatre. Along all
+the edges of the big house, in the darkness, were other visitors, and
+guests, small children, boys and girls, neighbours, and even the two
+gentle blackies, from Cannibal and Head Hunting isles, with white rings
+in their noses, that made our crew. But I saw none of the splendid young
+men, who, crowned with garlands, girdled with leaves like the Fauns and
+Sylvans of the Greek play, had startled me over and over again, during
+the day, with a great wonder that no one had told me of a rustic Greece
+still alive somewhere, and still to be looked at. So that the old
+statues and frescoes were no conventionality--and the
+
+[Illustration: THE FLUTE PLAYER. SAMOA]
+
+sailor, the missionary, and the beachcomber, were witnesses of things
+that they did not see, because they had not read. And if one reads, does
+he care to-day? Had I only known, years ago. Even now, when it is too
+late, the memory of all that beauty which we call Greece, the one beauty
+which is to outlast all that is alive, comes over me like a wave of
+mist, softening and putting far away into fairyland all that I have been
+looking at. From out of the darkness, as if from out of the shade of
+antiquity, Uatea stepped out before us, naked to the waist, crowned with
+leafage, garlands around her hips, a long staff like a sceptre in her
+hand, and danced some heroic dance, against another girl, smaller than
+she, as her adversary; it looked a mimicry of combat; the tall form, the
+commanding gestures, the disdainful virginity of the village Diana,
+challenging her companion to battle; something as beautiful and more
+heroic than the Bacchanals that are enrolled on the Greek vases. The
+girl was in her true element and meaning, more than she could have been
+in the previous _sivá_ dance; only an occasional touching of the knees
+together detracted from the beauty of the movements. I could scarcely
+notice the other dancer, nor the third one, an old woman (who
+represented, apparently, a suppliant), for fear of losing a parcel of a
+picture that I shall never see again, certainly never with such
+freshness of impression.
+
+And when Uatea reappeared, clad again, and puffed at my pipe before
+passing it to me, she much less disdainfully assured me that all her
+dancing was _leanga_ (bad). And she softened a little, and seemed
+distressed about our quarrel about her ring, taking off all her rings
+and throwing them away to her guardian matron, perhaps for fear of being
+reproved for giving too much for too little, for we had given as yet but
+little--only cigars, tobacco, and trifles; and I asked myself whether
+the dramatic artist was counting up her possible gains, as others do.
+Meanwhile, the other girls lay close to us, in the confidence of
+good-nature; all anxious to make the best impression, a curious example
+of the wilful charming of woman--and Sifá talked and smiled, and moved,
+or rather floated, in her place like a maiden siren flirting. Many
+confidences were exchanged without either side understanding one word
+said. Each girl wrote something in Awoki’s note-book, or helped our
+making a dictionary. Sifá even summing up figures to prove her
+possession of the three R’s, a confusing addition of accomplishments to
+the dancing and conventionalities we had seen. But I am told that all
+read and write, with no book but the Bible. Then between the curtains of
+mats Uatea disappeared contrary to what I supposed etiquette, but, of
+course, I knew nothing. The others bade us good-night, not without
+begging one of us to share their hut, and we slipped out into the dark,
+while the mats were arranged for our rest. The storm clouds still
+covered the sky--only a few stems of the cocoanut glistened, and the
+white bar of the surf made a hard line in the shadow. Some vague, light
+forms were those of sitters beneath the trees whispering, or talking
+low, for all through our day there had been no voices raised except our
+own, or the surly growl of the captain--or the chant that had
+accompanied the dances; all other talk had been soft and flowing, with
+low voices, almost inaudible to us when distant, adding again to the
+peace and softening charm.
+
+We lay down on the mats with our heads toward the centrepost; a large
+mosquito bar of thin bark cloth, big enough for a small room, was let
+down upon us, the light of the lamp shining through it, and draped in my
+Japanese kimono, I fell asleep, in spite of the few mosquitoes
+imprisoned with us. No noise from the rest of the house had arisen, all
+was still; we were as much isolated as if we had been in a built-up
+room. Late or early, I think I heard the snore of the captain, but all
+is empty in my mind until I recollect feeling the morning light and saw
+some shadows pass. As I stepped out, I saw Sifá move out, stretching her
+arms, as she moved toward a little path. Then issued the captain, with a
+formidable yawn, and looked at the sky for presages of weather, and took
+the same little path, I suppose toward the bathing pool, or spring, or
+rivulet of fresh water, that might be in the hollow.
+
+And there came up to the house Uatea, the “Chiefess,” looking just the
+same, and appeared to understand that we were for a bath, as she made
+the motions of washing her chest. We went to the sea, finding no good
+place for a bath--it was evidently far off--and I take it that they
+bathe in fresh water--the luxury of hot climates. For they all seemed to
+be extremely clean and neat, from the men whom I had first seen at sea,
+to the girls with limbs rubbed with cocoanut-oil and smelling of the
+aromatic fruit (the pandanus) that their garlands were made of. Our bath
+was not a full success--we dared not go out into the surf that rolled
+turbid waves upon the deep, black volcanic sand of the beach; but the
+water was warm and soothing, and as I began putting on my clothes, a
+tall girl of the preceding night came up and sat down beside me on the
+rock, with an evident seeking for an interview. Notwithstanding my
+unaccustomed embarrassment, I managed to make out that she was uncertain
+and perplexed as to the legality of her capture of my handkerchief the
+night before, and though I told her to keep it, she was still doubtful.
+Uatea had had one; was she to have the same as Uatea? At last she left
+me, reassured--I had no more interest--and I saw her go along the shore
+passing far off the better bathing
+
+[Illustration: UATEA DANCING THE SITTING SIVA]
+
+spot of fresh water, and then disappearing behind distant palms.
+Breakfast was ready when we reappeared; after us Uatea ate and drank our
+tea, and wondered at our use of “tea-balls.” The captain explained that
+there might be wind enough “now and again,” and that any moment ought to
+see us off. Sifá and Tuvále gathered about Adams; I smoked my last
+cigar, for all with our other tobacco were gone--while Uatea asked
+coldly what I had done with the ring she gave me, as it was no longer on
+my finger. More and more she withdrew into herself, more and more the
+“Chiefess” looked as if expecting or anxious or troubled, as to whether
+an equivalent would be serious enough. But we gave the largest sum that
+the captain dared to hint at--anything would have seemed cheap. The
+night before I could understand the _throwing of jewels_; of money, of
+any reward to express thankful admiration. The “Chiefess” extended a
+languid hand--her eyebrows rose, a short “_f’tai_” dropped, as if
+obligatory from her lips--(the proper form I knew already was
+“_faafe’tai_”)--she gave us her hand with a frigid “_alofa_,” and with
+Sifá and Tuvále lingering, we walked to our boat. Long after we had set
+sail we could see them wave their drapery as good-bye. Far off, along
+the beach, from the hut of the tall girl-thief, my own handkerchief was
+waved--but even with the glass I saw no more of Uatea.
+
+Peace to thee, O soul of the “virgin of the village,” if I have made
+thee but a thrifty prima donna, or like the King Solomon of Djami, the
+Persian poet, caring only for realities that pay--it is the part of
+those born to be rulers.
+
+
+And now we had pulled out of the breakers, through the narrowest of
+openings, and were on board the little schooner; the great blue sapphire
+waves lifted us and sank us, and came up against the blue horizon, or
+against the tall green cliffs; and once more we saw, in the hollow of
+the sea, or lifted against the sky, the native boat pushed on by
+rhythmic paddles, making a red line of naked men against the blue of the
+sea or the blue of the sky. We have been four hours and a half beating
+out of this little cove, and have just rounded the isolated rock of the
+cape, of which I send you a sketch. If I could only send you the
+colour!--blue and green--a little red and black in the rocks--the white
+and violet haze of the surf; all as if elementary, but in a tone that no
+painter has yet attempted, and that no painter that I know of would be
+sure of; the blue and green that belongs to the classics; that is
+painted in lines of Homer; that Titian guessed at, once, under a darker
+sky; and far off the long sway and cadence of the surf like the movement
+of ancient verse--the music of the Odyssey. We are off some little
+village on the shore; the boat has gone to get other passengers, while
+I try to finish this account of our first day on land in the South Seas,
+and to make it live for you by long accumulation of detail. If, through
+it all, you can gather my impression, can see something of an old
+beauty, always known, in these new pictures, you will understand why the
+Greek Homer is in my mind; all Greece, the poetry of form and colour
+that comes from her, as well as her habits; just as the Samoan youngster
+who rose shining from the sea to meet us, all brown and red, with a red
+hibiscus fastened in his hair by a grass knot as beautiful as any carved
+ornament, was the Bacchus of Tintoretto’s picture, making offering to
+Ariadne. The good people of the steamer may not have seen it, nor the
+big white English girl who bought some trifle from him--but it is all
+here for me--and there will soon come a day when even for those who
+care, it will be no more; when nowhere on earth or at sea will there be
+any living proof that Greek art is not all the invention of the
+poet--the mere refuge of the artist in his disdain of the ugly in life.
+What I have just seen is already to me almost a dream. So I turn to my
+Japanese, Awoki, and ask him--“It was like the studio, Awoki, was it
+not? but all fine; no need of posing?” And Awoki says “Yes,” whether he
+understands me or not, and I think of you and of the enclosed studio
+life that tries to make a little momentary visitation of this reality.
+
+The fitness and close relation of all I have seen makes a something like
+what we strive to get through art, and my mind turns toward the old
+question, “How does what we call art begin?” These people _make_ little;
+the house, the elementary patches upon their bark cloth, the choice of a
+fine form for tombs, is all the art that is exterior of themselves and
+of their movements, into which last they have put the feeling for
+completeness and relation, that makes the love of art.
+
+Is it necessary for going further that some one should be born, to whom,
+gradually, an unwillingness to assume the responsibility of action,
+which the ruler and the priest take willingly, should grow into a
+dislike of the injustice of power, and a distrust of the truthfulness of
+creeds, so that he must make a world for himself, unstained and free
+from guilt or guile? I have begun to imagine for myself some such soul,
+born in early communities, who might have lived long ago anywhere and
+have been the hero of some such primitive obscure conflict; but I can
+see tossing on blue waves, the boat that brings from the shore our new
+companions, Lieutenant Parker and Consul-General Sewall, who have been
+on a visit to the harbour of Pango Pango--and in a few minutes they and
+their white coats will be aboard.
+
+
+You will by this time wish to know how we are living. We are settled
+definitely, for headquarters, at Vaiala, a little way from Apia, from
+which a little river separates our part of the land. Further on, another
+small river closes out the territory, and separates us from Apia.
+
+The small river that separates us from the beginnings of the village
+capital, Apia, is spanned by a little bridge--little because consisting
+of a few planks, and a handrail to one side, but otherwise a very long
+gangway. This I believe is kept in repair by the municipality of Apia,
+and is probably the cause of much discussion in the way of spending
+money. Occasionally it is washed away, and then we swim our horses
+across, to the discomfort of my best yellow boots, which I feel are a
+distinctive mark in my visits to people in Apia. At times the
+municipality provides a ferry-boat. This so far has been manned by one
+of those convicts who are puzzles in South Sea economics. He had been
+taken away from some other chores of supposed hard work. After the first
+day of ferrying, which was productive of various small trips, this
+criminal had fallen back on the customs of his country, and on that
+essential communism which is the basis of their actions and of much of
+their thinking. He had a hut erected for him, so as to rest in the
+shade, and there he spent most of his time consuming bananas or
+accidental gifts of food, and courted and caressed by village maidens,
+who adorned him with flowers and anointed him with cocoanut oil.
+Meanwhile the smaller and less important members of his family did the
+work of ferrying in the sun. It was all the same, he was vicariously
+being punished. This is the keynote of all I shall ever tell you here.
+There is the tendency to let not only property remain undivided, but
+also injury or gain. A little anecdote told me by a clergyman, who had
+it from a friend in Fiji, where things are still more so, gives this
+intellectual position. The Fiji clergyman had been shocked at a horror
+perpetrated by some of his parishioners. The dog of some person in a
+neighbouring village had been killed; some of the aggrieved had sallied
+forth, and meeting some person who belonged to the village guilty of
+holding the dog murderer, had thereupon incontinently killed him. An
+“old hand,” that is to say, a white man conversant with South Sea
+habits, explained to the clergyman the naturalness of the deed. He
+said--forgive the vernacular--“See here; if Jim and me gets into a
+fight, and Jim plunks me in the head, I don’t wait till I can get in a
+blow at Jim’s head: I hit him where I can.” One community had lost a dog
+and the other had lost a man. This is a dreadful example of the idea,
+and I almost regret introducing it into my description of this idyllic
+passage of my life. But we are on the road to Apia, which, like all
+white men’s places in such countries, has a taint of brutality remaining
+from the day of the beachcomber.
+
+It is an orderly little place strung along what might be called a street
+or two, the main one of which is on the beach, and goes by that name.
+There are stores, a few hotels and drinking places, warehouses and
+residences of the consuls, and further on native residences, etc. There
+are churches too, and a Catholic cathedral of somewhat imposing
+dimensions; but the churches are those of an ugly village, and no longer
+have that natural look of the church by our own village of Vaiala, for
+instance, which has really a character not contradictory to its
+surroundings.
+
+Further back and right and left all is Samoan and native. We are just by
+the shore, here fringed with trees and palms, and only some six feet
+above the inland sea of the reef that spreads right and left before us.
+In the few great storms that have come upon us in the night, it was not
+difficult to imagine the beating of the rain against the door of our
+sleeping house to be the first splashing of some great waves passing
+over with the roar of the surf outside.
+
+From under the shadows of trees, I see canoes pass close to the shore,
+visible at intervals between the trees that border it; they seem, like
+all that happens about us, part of a theatre scene: red bodies glisten
+in white or coloured drapery, adorned by flowers and leafage; and songs
+are carried along with the stroke of the paddles, as in an ideal opera.
+Blue sea outside; green inside.
+
+The little village stretches along a very short distance, apparently not
+made of more than a couple of dozen of huts or Samoan houses, with a
+double village green, here and there planted with trees and broken into
+and backed on the shore side by plantations of bananas.
+
+Further back the mysterious “bush,” into which I have not yet wandered.
+Just outside, near the shore, and with a little garden, the Consul has
+built a new and commodious southern house, with enormous verandas,
+dropped like a piece of Europe among the native forms; there we
+breakfast and dine; while in the village a few yards off we have
+borrowed a large, comfortable hut,[2] in which we spend the day,
+receiving visitors, writing, or painting,[3] and at night we occupy a
+little building of our own European kind, with just place for our two
+rooms and beds. It is next to Tofae, the chief’s hut; so that we are
+both physically and morally under Tofae’s protection. This we insist
+upon; we are no strangers gadding about, we are chiefs on a visit, and
+we appeal to the care of our fellows responsible for us. So that doors
+and trunks and boxes are all open; every one is free to inspect and
+responsible to the
+
+[Illustration: BOY IN CANOE PASSING IN FRONT OF OUR HOUSE. VAIALA,
+SAMOA]
+
+chief. Even very lately, when the criminal--the prisoner condemned for
+stealing the consular flag halyards--who is imprisoned by being detained
+within the half mile of the village, and who is under Tofae’s
+wardship--even when this confirmed bad man is found looking through all
+my property, from sketch-books to night pajamas, I feel quite safe that
+nothing will be missed through him. Only two silk handerchiefs have
+disappeared since I have been on the island, and I can’t be sure whether
+they were lost here or in some of our long trips by sea and land. But
+Tofae takes the fact to heart, and will, I know, make me some present
+many times more valuable, to wipe out this possible blot upon the
+escutcheon.
+
+At the earliest dawn there is motion in the village that I do not hear.
+The soft grass, cleanly trimmed, which covers all the village space,
+brings no echo from bare feet. But from the very first morning on the
+small verandah, no bigger than a large table, I hear a patter of feet
+that wakens me. If I look out, one or more of the girls of the village,
+our nearest neighbours, is seated there in a corner, ready to bid good
+morning, and looking occasionally into the open window, to see if I am
+still abed! Sometimes their shadows, as they pass, break the half light
+which keeps me in a doze.
+
+When I rise I have to get accustomed to the mild curiosity that inquires
+after my mode of dressing. Still, as days go on, I become less the
+fashion, and can go out to my bath, in my Japanese gown, without
+stepping over a côterie of gentle maidens. If I get up with the dawn,
+that slowly lights up the great spaces above the trees, I can see first
+some figures pushing back the mats that form the only walls of the
+surrounding huts, stretching their arms, then perhaps, in their simplest
+wraps, fading away in the uncertain light! They are going to the
+obligatory bath; not to the salt water in front of us, which they do not
+look upon as cleansing, but to pools back in the bush, or the little
+river further off.
+
+With the first half-sleepy motion begins the weeding around the huts, a
+perpetual task carried on at all odd times. For among these savages, so
+far as they are not spoiled by the European, the lawn and greenery about
+the village are tended with extreme care. Many a time, in places that
+are far away and more strictly barbarous, I have been reminded of the
+neatest Newport lawns. This is one of the unexpected charms, one of the
+many things that give everything a look difficult to explain, a look of
+elegance in the wildness. But we must remember that these good people
+have always been here, that from immemorial time they have tended what
+seems to us accidental nature; culture and care and the tropical wild
+growths are constantly interchanged. That is the South Sea note.
+
+Later on I see some of the men return from their short hour’s work at
+their wet patches of the taro plant, which, with the bread-fruit,
+represents the staples of bread and cereals both. In this kindly nature,
+such culture is no more than a gentle exercise. I see even the great
+Mataafa, the rival of the King Malietoa, and the greatest personage of
+all islands, returning from his daily task like any commoner, often
+stripped to the waist, wearing nothing but the wrap along the loins and
+legs, which they call the _lava-lava_.
+
+After our morning coffee, made of the island bean whenever we are
+fortunate enough to get it, for we find it better than any brought from
+Java, we adjourn with the first heat of the early morning to our big
+Samoan hut. This is next to Mataafa’s, in the centre of the village. By
+this time most of our neighbours have begun to rest, and will keep
+steadily quiet for a large part of the day; unless they visit, or unless
+some special duty calls.
+
+If we are very early, we may still find in our Samoan hut our pretty
+friend Fangalo, who lives with our neighbours nearer Apia, and whose
+simple task it is to place flowers about the tables upon which we write
+or paint, or upon the shelf that connects the great centre posts of the
+hut, where hang the cocoanut water bottles, and are placed the rolls of
+native cloth, or extra mats for softer resting.
+
+Taēlē, which means bath, the gentle sister of our landlord, if I can so
+call him, has already seen that everything is in order, and all the mats
+that cover the pebble floor are properly disposed. Taēlē wishes good
+morning, and leaves fruit as presents and hangs the great branches of
+yellow or green bananas. She stays but little, even when pressed, though
+she is curious as to why we write so much and what we mean in general.
+She does not quite approve of us; we ask strange questions: we are not
+preachers--we are seen writing on Sundays: we are not looking for wives.
+We may be _aitu_--spirits in disguise.
+
+
+Taēlē’s sweet face is always sad--exceptionally so here where good
+nature marks most young faces. In that she is not Samoan nor properly
+Polynesian. But she has gone through much. She was the Samoan wife of
+the former British consul, Churchward, who left her with her little boy
+when he was promoted to other appointments. Not that she would have gone
+with him, I think: the Polynesian rarely understands living anywhere
+else than in his islands--his own island makes the world. Here Taēlē
+sits on some rock-edge by the water, and looks out to the far-off sea. I
+see her so almost every evening.
+
+According to true Polynesian habits, the little child has been adopted
+by our chief, Tofae, who is devoted to him and allows him great
+liberties. So that Taēlē has no practical trouble about little George,
+who lives Samoan way, and, a son of chiefs by birth and adoption,
+bullies the less important babies.
+
+The other girls, who come in often to see us, and who are occasionally
+encouraged by little amenities and presents, are not at all sad. Otaota,
+the daughter of the preacher, who is himself of sacred descent, if I may
+so explain it, is not even over-bashful, to the great scandal of Taēlē,
+who is nothing if not Sunday school. She is willing to pose for her
+portrait without her upper wraps, though she is no longer the exquisite
+brown statue that she must have been two years ago. But Otaota is a
+young woman of the world, and who knows?--perhaps these strangers may be
+serious in their attentions.
+
+Important people, of course, come in to see us, but more frequently in
+the afternoon. Of chiefs there are many about us, and Patu, Tofae’s
+brother, is a great chief and has been a great warrior; so that I am not
+surprised at his curious resemblance to General Sherman.
+
+From all these good people my companion, and I also in a small way,
+obtain slowly, by driblets, the explanation of what they really are.
+Slowly they unfold the extraordinary differences which make their ways
+always misfit ours! Their social words have really no equivalent in
+ours; their ideas remain a puzzle to whomsoever insists upon our having
+a common basis to start from.
+
+I have forgotten to describe what the Samoan hut, called the Samoan
+house, is like. Ours is a handsome one, not exactly the finest, but
+still very well built. Its plan is a long oval. Its length is not far
+from fifty feet; its greatest height something like twenty. It is set
+upon a foundation of stones, and its flooring of fine pebbles is only
+raised a few inches above the ground, which slopes in all directions
+from it. It is made of a series of high posts placed at considerable
+distances from each other, in the shape of an ellipse. They are
+connected at the top by a series of double beams, which receive great
+rafters running from every set of posts to the peaked centre. These
+rafters are connected by other great rafters and tie beams. At the
+centre they are supported by two or more great pillars, which at
+intervals are braced together. Beside these pillars, in the direction of
+each end of the house, are two holes in the ground; made to receive the
+cocoanut fire used for lighting, or for the slight warmth that is
+occasionally needed. Walls there are none in the true Samoan house. Mats
+of the cocoanut leaf hang from the cross-beams, between the posts, to
+the floor, or rather to the edge of large stones that make a sort of rim
+to the building, and serve to steady the posts and keep off the wash of
+the rain. In certain very elegant buildings some of these openings,
+instead of being filled with these movable mats that are pulled up or
+down for protection from light or rain, are enclosed by a fine wattling.
+It is a manner of limiting the numbers of entrances, which otherwise,
+you see, would be a little everywhere.
+
+In such a residence as that of Mataafa, a great man, a sovereign prince
+and sacred personage, no one would think of entering otherwise than at
+some defined place.
+
+For the furniture of our residence and that of other people, mats of
+different degrees of fineness are spread upon the small fine pebbles
+that make the floor. If we want great elegance and great comfort, we put
+on more and finer mats. Some of the furniture lies about; some of it
+consists in the Samoan pillow, a long bamboo, supported at the ends by
+four little sticks. There are also boxes in which clothes are put away.
+There are large rolls of native cloth called _tappa_. Some of it is made
+up into curtains to be used as screens and partitions. Sometimes, but
+not in our hut, these curtains are made into indoor tents for keeping
+off the mosquitoes, and, otherwise, increasing privacy. All these things
+are stowed away among the rafters, or upon the sticks curved like tusks,
+which project beyond the centre posts and serve to brace them.
+
+For our European habits we have two tables and three chairs. Most of
+the day when we are idle we sit on the mats with our guests. But working
+is better done at the accustomed table.
+
+Toward noontime we hear violent and savage shouts, and see through the
+square opening of the lifted mats three or four brown savages, with big
+girdles of green leaves and crowns of verdure, come running and dancing
+to us from Mataafa’s house, which is only a few yards away. They carry a
+big wooden bowl, partly filled with crushed cocoanut and arrowroot, and
+some big bread-fruits. They sit down on the edge of our outside stones,
+and proceed to break the bread-fruit, steaming hot, with great force and
+violence, holding it by the stem, pounding it and mashing it into the
+cocoanut milk. This quivering pudding, _palusami_, is then neatly
+dropped upon banana leaves, made into little packages, and tendered to
+us with the respects of Mataafa. Sometimes we eat, sometimes we
+distribute to more Samoan-minded people; but for the first few times it
+is very nice. I like it better than the raw fish and salt water, which
+is pleasant also occasionally, though apparently more suited to the
+habits of that ancestral totem, the shark. But tastes and habits differ,
+and the Samoan language, extraordinarily rich in words that describe
+physical sensations, has a special word for that state of weakness and
+languor wherein such a dish as raw fish is all that the invalid can
+tolerate.
+
+Mataafa sometimes calls at this hour, sometimes a little earlier, on his
+return from church, if it be a holy day: for Mataafa is very strict in
+religious duty. But usually he has chosen the afternoon. He speaks no
+English, and we have varying interpreters; but still, owing in part to
+his kindness and courtesy, we have learned a great deal from him. He is
+not so easily questioned as an inferior might be. When Tofae’s tall
+daughter is called in hurriedly to help out, because we have not had
+sufficient warning (Tofae’s daughter, who fears no man, whose neck
+carries her head as a column does a capital), she interprets with
+extreme respect and reticence, as it were, “by your leave,” bending her
+head, looking only sidewise at the great chief, holding her breath when
+she speaks to him, and almost whispering. Every phrase is prefaced with
+“The King says,” all of which gives us the measure of proper respect,
+but does not hasten the conversation.
+
+Mataafa is not interested in facts as mere curiosities. I doubt if he
+would approve of my interest in most things, if he could guess it.
+Information with regard to the world abroad he cares for only as it
+affects Samoa--that is to say, in conversation with us. He would like to
+know that we have some messages of advantage to his country. It has
+taken a long time to make him sympathize with our questionings about
+Samoan ways and manners and their origins, which involve, of course,
+history and social law. And yet if he could appreciate it, in that way
+we get at an understanding of what he is, and of the difficulties that
+beset him!
+
+With such talk, much desultoriness, sketching, writing, smoking, and
+eating of bananas, a length of which hangs from a beam above, the heat
+of the afternoon passes away. The shadows begin to fall across the
+_malae_ or village green. The villagers come out and wander about
+socially, attend to little matters, or sit here and there in favourite
+corners. Weeding goes on with the more orderly housewives, who keep an
+eye meanwhile upon the children wandering about. A good many domestic
+interests receive attention. Sometimes, under the bananas and orange
+trees behind my house, I see hair-dressing, a serious and difficult
+operation. The pleasure of the Samoans in turning their beautiful black
+hair to brown or yellow or auburn, necessitates a peculiar process which
+is also extremely curious to the eye. For this they use coral lime,
+plastered upon the hair and remaining there a couple of days or more; so
+that they go about with white hair, like people of the last century.
+
+Tofae’s daughter is charming, with her hair all of this silver-grey and
+big crimson flowers in it. It sets out a certain nobility of feature,
+and is, like powder, aristocratic in its very nature. The rather heavy
+faces become either stronger or more refined. Each young man has some
+female who especially understands just how to fashion his hair into
+certain curls and twists, which are retained during a week or so; for
+the operation answers all the purposes of curling besides, and of
+cleaning absolutely. When this application is brushed away the curls
+will remain; but meanwhile, as he sits with his head bent way down and
+the lady lathering it, he has that woebegone, submissive look that we
+see in the barber shop.
+
+Our good people are passionately fond of adorning their persons with
+flowers and leafage: flowers about the waist, flowers about the neck,
+flowers and leaves in the hair. Every little while I see rearrangements
+which make, as it were, a form of conversation. The steps of my house
+offer a convenient seat for just the proper number of persons. So that
+as soon as the shade comes down, some girl is seated there with some
+youngster, and they rearrange each other’s flowers. A flower behind the
+ear means a “going of courting” or readiness that way.
+
+In little separate houses the cooking for the evening meal begins. This
+separation of the household work from the residence or living apartments
+is a little elegance and refinement which does a great deal to keep up
+the charm and holiday look of life about us. When, however, great meals
+are to be prepared, I hear considerable noise on the outskirts of the
+village, the chasing of hens, whose eggs, by the by, are, as you may
+imagine, difficult to obtain, as the hens have the surrounding tropical
+scenery of the bush to lay in. Owing to the scurry after the hens, the
+only place that seemed safe to them was my apartment; and my open trunks
+were very good places to look into for possible eggs.
+
+The cooking of any importance, as you probably know, is a method of
+baking in the earth: stones heated by fire, in a trench upon which
+leaves are placed, and then the food, wrapped in more leaves, is placed
+upon them and covered up with twigs, branches and earth. After a
+skilfully prolonged residence in the earth, the mound is opened, and the
+food is found cooked. With fish the results are certainly excellent; but
+vegetables and meats are often a little raw.
+
+It seems marvellous that the brown Polynesian, apparently a member of
+the great “Aryan” race, intelligent, often adventurous, has never been
+willing, when his race was pure, to invent such a thing as a pot to hold
+hot water, even when clay was all about him. He knew that in far-off
+islands, from which occasionally came invaders or returning adventurers,
+there was such a thing as pottery; yet he preferred, as he does to-day,
+to import a few specimens, rather than spend a few moments in starting
+this, to us, necessary beginning of what
+
+[Illustration: MATAAFA’S COOK HOUSE. FROM OUR HUT AT VAIALA, SAMOA]
+
+scientific men call the passage from savagery to barbaric life. You will
+remember that with us one of the present definitions of the savage is
+that he does not make pottery, nor know the bow and arrow. Well: the
+higher Polynesian never used pottery, and used the bow and arrow, one of
+the most deadly of weapons, only to shoot for amusement at the forest
+rat. This violation of certain rules of the game of science is one of
+the most amusing fragments of contradiction that one meets. When we came
+to other islands, where there is a mixture of what we deem a lower
+race--the Papuan, negro or black, we find pottery, the use of the bow,
+intelligent fortification in war. And the beginnings of decorative art
+are shown by a keener sense of colour and contrast of form. The high
+Polynesian, who invariably invaded and defeated the mixed race superior
+to him in these important details, and brought back the “stuff” has
+lived with a sort of classic severity. Precedent is everything; new
+patterns of ornament come in most slowly, and there is an apparent
+indifference to the picturesque. But owing to this conservation such a
+Bœotian set of islands as Samoa gives to the artist--the man who
+remembers the beauty of classical representations, the only fit recall
+of what he has seen in the Greek sculpture, the Pompeiian fresco and the
+vases of antiquity.
+
+The rather countrified good taste of these people leads them to simple
+methods of dress and adornment, and to keeping the same unchangeable
+except by small variations. There is nothing nearer to the drapery of
+the Greek statue than the Samoan wrap of cloth or of _tappa_, which is
+merely a long rectangle wrapped about the body, either as high as the
+chest, like the cloak of the Greek orator, or merely around the waist
+and thighs, always carefully arranged in special sets of folds which
+designate both the sex and the social position of the wearer; with this
+the wreaths and flower and leaf girdles and the anointed body, which
+belong to our vague conception of the Greek and Roman past. There is
+little more for war time; a great barbarous head-dress of hair, and
+occasionally some neck ornament of wild beasts’ teeth.
+
+In draperies such as I have described, in the shady afternoon, the
+chiefs sit about the lawn of the village the malae or green in places
+which I suppose are reserved to them by habit. They sit far apart; one
+of the Samoan characteristics being the habit and the skill of
+conversing distinctly without raising the voice, and of so speaking as
+to be heard far off. The hereditary orators, the _tulafales_, who made
+speeches to us in our wanderings, at the receptions given to us by the
+villagers, invariably chose to speak at great distances. A couple of
+hundred feet in the open air seemed to them a fair average. Their voices
+were never raised above a certain modulation. In fact one imagined that
+the next word would not be heard. But a peculiar inflection for each
+sentence wherein the most important points are placed at the end, seemed
+to force the sound upwards as the phrase dragged on. Seumanu our Apia
+chief who acted as our _tulafale_, when we travelled, liked to repeat
+“sotto voce” what the other _tulafale_ was sure to say.
+
+Our chiefs often drank their _kava_ in these afternoon conversations.
+Sometimes, but very rarely, it was made by the girls. Usually any young
+men of the village, of refined dress and manners, were called upon to
+serve. I have a vague recollection--though I may have heard it of some
+other island, and may be confusing facts--that the ancient custom
+allowed any man who wished his _kava_ made to call upon the first young
+woman who passed, no matter how high her rank might be; this of course
+to be at his peril, like all society privileges. But however it may be,
+almost invariably our own _kava_, that is to say the _kava_ to which we
+were treated, was made by the women.
+
+You will remember that this was one of the very first of South Sea
+habits that we came across on our very first day, in that other island
+of Tutuila.
+
+_Kava_, more properly _ava_, is the universal drink of all Polynesia.
+Abolished by the missionary in many places, it still persists here.
+_Kava_ is a drink made by adding water to the crushed and pressed root
+of a plant of the pepper family, the Piper Methysticum, which has a
+narcotic power. Here in this nest of civilization the root is grated
+upon an ordinary tin grater, before being put in the large, four-legged
+wooden bowl, from which it is to be ladled in cocoanut cups, after water
+has been properly added, and with a strainer of bark fibres, the
+filaments and splinters have been removed.
+
+But in certain far-away places, we have had the pleasure of drinking it
+in the ancient and orthodox way preferred by all epicures. According to
+this more aboriginal method, the _kava_ root was chewed to a mass of
+woody pulp, instead of being grated. Young ladies of great personal
+delicacy were chosen for this purpose; but, there must have been many
+occasions when one had not time to be fastidious. I cannot say that I
+have noticed any advantage in the older form, and I am glad that all
+about us it seems to be forgotten.
+
+The entire preparation and serving of the drink makes a ceremonial form;
+most absolute in detail and of hereditary and ancestral accuracy.[4] It
+belongs to all receptions, and is the manner of showing the distinctions
+of rank and precedence.
+
+The gestures of the girls when they move their hands around in the water
+of the bowl, so as to extract the essence of the root, are regulated by
+long established custom, and are beautiful as the movements of a dance.
+The handing of the strainer to another attendant, and her swinging it
+out to cleanse it, make another series of most ravishing pictures.
+Finally the third attendant sweeps an arm down with an empty bowl, and,
+curving the wrist inward, brings it full to the most honoured guest, and
+to the others in turn. With each handing the name of the guest is
+announced.
+
+Mataafa sometimes gives us _kava_, and occasionally has done us the
+honour to come and drink it in our own hut. In that case he has his own
+bowl, a most intimate and personal property, from which no one else must
+drink; and with all courtesy he apologizes to us for this necessity of
+position. For as he explains guardedly he is in some sense
+sacred--having been a form of the divine. And he is the most religious
+of men in our meanings.
+
+In one princely place that we visited, in Savii, we found a lady who
+occupied by ancestry the position of “_kava divider_”; that is to say
+that it was her duty and privilege to determine the sequence in
+presenting the cup according to dignity. And she appeared without
+warning and claimed the right.
+
+From this circle of the chiefs drinking _kava_ on the green, even the
+children know enough to keep away. Even the young man who hands the cups
+is careful in his walk not to appear to turn his back to any one of the
+chiefs. Respect for the chief is the basis of everything. It is probably
+the foundation of their extreme courtesy, only broken by natural
+exuberance, impatience, or simplicity. The chief was sacred, even in
+war. It was a terrible thing for a commoner of the enemy to kill him. In
+legends of Tahiti there are tales of how men deliberated whether they
+were of high enough birth to take the life of a vanquished chieftain.
+The very language indicates this division between class of the chief and
+everything else outside. For the chief and everything relating to him
+there is a special language. The chief’s head, the chief’s body and all
+its parts, the chief’s food, all that he does, his feelings, his
+possessions, his dog, his wife and her actions, even when she breaks the
+Seventh Commandment, have special names. In many instances the common
+name of a thing is changed for another when that thing is spoken of in
+his presence. In some cases the particular grade of his rank is
+indicated by the word used; so that you speak of a _tulafale’s_ eating
+as _tausami_; of a chief’s eating as _taumafa_; of such a chief as
+Mataafa’s eating as _taute_. But it would not be polite of a chief to
+use these words with reference to himself.
+
+When passers-by draw toward the end of our village and reach the
+highway in front of Mataafa’s hut, they keep to the further side of the
+path, leaving as large a space as it is possible to make, out of respect
+for the privileges of the chief of chiefs.
+
+On all the fringes of the village, however, the children play quiet
+games. Our spaces are too restricted for the young men to have their
+games; but further down they collect at times to play, by throwing a
+stick so as to make it touch the ground and skim along to the goal. So
+with us there is very little. Occasionally some of the boys gallop
+wildly up and down the beach; but there are very few horses in this
+immediate neighbourhood at which we are not displeased, however
+beautiful the sight may be, because they ride the horses too young, and
+push them beyond their strength.
+
+As the evening comes on the sun goes down rapidly, and the afterglow,
+the most beautiful moment of the South Sea day, begins its long
+continuance. The girls gather together or sit with the young men, either
+on the grass or on little raised benches under trees, or very late again
+on still smaller benches, holding at the most two people, which they
+ingeniously fit between the divergent stems of the cocoanuts. This half
+siesta, half conversazione, is carried on as long as there is light, and
+if there be moonlight, through any number of hours that may escape the
+darkness disliked by the Polynesian.
+
+Our little friend Taēlē leaves her hut and sits far apart in her
+accustomed place, all alone, immovable, looking toward the sea, thinking
+perhaps; but how do I know?
+
+Some of the little children, the little girls especially, repeat in a
+small way the native songs and the native dance the _siva_. Sometimes a
+bigger girl sketches out some steps for them; but we are extremely
+proper in our village, and the _siva_, of which the Samoan is
+passionately fond, is not looked upon with favour by the missionary or
+the brown members of the church. However, we succeed now and then in
+getting girls and young men from the neighbourhood, or passing villagers
+and travellers, to favour us with this entertainment. The _siva_ dances
+about which I wrote you at length, upon the day of my arrival, are yet
+to us always novel. By and by I suppose that they will be, like
+everything else, accepted by us as an ordinary form of social
+dissipation. But it is certainly worth coming all this way, even to see
+one of them. The beautiful rhythm of song and movement, the accuracy of
+time kept, the evidently absorbing delight of the performers, who become
+more and more insatiate, until one wonders that they are not exhausted
+by such gymnastics, the pictorial disposition of the scene, usually at
+night or in dark places, the dancers dressed in flowers and leaves in
+contrasts and harmonies of colour that are nature’s own, with bodies and
+limbs glistening with oil, the spectators all absorbed, and as Robinson
+Crusoeish as the spectacle itself--all these things are the _siva_. If I
+do not refrain and cut short at once, I shall become entangled in trying
+to give you word pictures that are utterly inadequate. I feel, too, that
+the drawings and paintings I have made are so stupid from their freezing
+into attitudes the beauties that are made of sequence. These beauties do
+not touch the missionary. The invariable objection to amusement, to
+dissipation, to that weakening of purpose which our indulgences bring,
+make this natural of course, and we can understand it. But these kindly
+natives need, I think, every possible excuse for innocent occupation.
+There is so little for them to do to-day, and we feel that by lending
+our countenance to the _siva_ we are rescuing both the native and the
+missionary from a false position. The condemnation of the dance had gone
+from the white missionary to his brown brother, the local Polynesian
+clergyman or deacon; and when we arrived we learned that even our
+excellent Sunday-school, church-keeping friend, Faatulia, the wife of
+the chief Seumanu, himself also a most excellent and worthy member of
+the church, had been excommunicated for having danced a European
+cotillion at the Fourth of July ball given by our American Consul. The
+revulsion is beginning, and we are glad to help in forwarding it.
+
+We could scarcely have _sivas_ of our own--that is to say that our
+village could not give them properly. They should be under the direction
+of the right social leader, and we have no _taupo_. The _taupo_ is a
+young woman elected by the village for the purpose of directing all
+social amenities in which women can take part. It is for her to receive
+the guests, to know who they are and what courtesies should be extended
+to them; to provide for their food and lodging. If they are great people
+like ourselves, for their being attended, for their having all small
+comforts of bath and soft mats and tappa, for their being talked to and
+sung to and danced to. She is invariably chosen of good descent, and she
+is beautiful if fate allows it, but she must be a lady above all. She
+must also be a virgin, and be continually protected, escorted, watched,
+investigated, by one or many duennas, who never for a single instant
+lose sight of her. Her position in that way is a trying one. Contrary to
+all feminine instincts, she is rarely allowed to have her own way in the
+adornment of her person. Her expert attendants insist upon having a
+voice in dressing her on all show occasions; notwithstanding, it seemed
+to me that I recognized in each individual _taupo_ a something that had
+escaped the levelling influence of so much interest taken in her attire.
+Remember that she dances in front of the warriors in battle.
+
+[Illustration: SAMOAN COURTSHIP. FAASE, THE TAUPO OR OFFICIAL VIRGIN AND
+HER DUENNA WAIT MODESTLY FOR THE APPROACH OF A YOUNG CHIEF]
+
+When the time comes, the village that has chosen her, also chooses her
+husband, and makes her gifts, as a dowry. Sometimes, and this is one of
+the terrors of the situation, the village is very hard to please, and
+rejects offers which the _taupo_ might perhaps have accepted if a less
+important and freer agent. She can always escape by bolting, and marry
+as she pleases, thereby forfeiting her position and the respect of
+well-thinking people. A match not well thought of by society is as much
+deplored here as in our very best circles. Marriage, apparently lightly
+entered into, is a very serious matter. Rank, position, is only
+transmitted by blood; and a mésalliance in Samoa entails consequences
+still more disastrous than in the court life of Germany. Perhaps my
+South Sea Islander is not sentimental. He is simple and natural, but he
+looks at everything in a practical way, and his ideas, having always
+been the same, enable him to keep this natural simplicity without any
+protest in favour of that freedom that brings on love tragedies.
+
+As the day draws to its last close in the fairy colouring of the long
+afterglow, people come back to their evening meal--a regular hour and
+moment, here where divisions of time seem so uncared for that no older
+man or woman could accurately know their age; unless they date from some
+well-known event recorded by the foreigner.
+
+(In other places people have told me, it was so many bread-fruit seasons
+ago; it was when such a ship was here.)
+
+Magongi, the owner of our hut, returning from his fishing, drops a fish
+or two at our posts, according to Samoan etiquette and in honour to
+guests and chiefs like ourselves. Faces are turned from gazing at the
+sea, toward the houses where meals are getting ready. The young people
+give up their seats on the little platforms, or “lookouts” by the sea,
+and the lover confides his courtship, in Polynesian way, to others to
+continue for him.
+
+This evening, as every evening, with the last afterglow, in each hut of
+the village, with the lighting of fire or lamp, comes the sound of the
+evening prayer before meal. In pagan days, with the lighting of the
+evening fire (meant for light), in the hollow basin scooped out in the
+centre of the hut, after a libation to the gods _outside_, thrown out
+between the posts, the Samoan prayed a prayer like this:
+
+    “Sail by, O Gods! and let us be:
+     Ye unknown Gods, who haunt the sea.”
+
+When I hear the sound of the evening hymn, fixed and certain like all
+their habits, I recall this prayer, so full of the future that has come
+upon these dwellers in islands, and has brought with our faith and our
+ideas--the latter certainly misunderstood--a slow extinction of their
+past and of their very existence. For in all Polynesia, though arrested
+now for a time, there has been within the hundred years from discovery a
+fading away. As the Tahitian song says:
+
+    “The coral will grow and man must perish.”
+
+I have been telling of the influence of missionaries upon old customs,
+such as dances. Let me say something further.
+
+I want to note that it was easier to get the Samoans to accept any form
+of Christian worship because their religion was simpler than that of the
+other islands. They were free from a great many horrors--the belief in
+the necessity of human sacrifice. They hated cannibalism. Their heavier
+nature had never led them to such immorality as tempted other South Sea
+Islanders, who thereby resemble us more.
+
+Then the missionaries came to them so late--at the end of the
+thirties--that the Samoans had already been able to learn about this
+religion that fixed everything--this desirable law called Lotu, which
+was to settle everything for them, and make everything straight.
+(Lotu[5] also means church, Lotu Tonga, the Tongan Church, etc.) So that
+within the very shortest possible time the missionaries succeeded in
+converting them, in fact, were waited for and expected, one might say,
+by the next chance ship. The terrible reputation of savageness of these
+islanders, owing to their having murdered La Peyrouse’s men in Tutuila,
+on first acquaintance, so guarded them that even so far back as 1836,
+and later, very little was known of them--they were carefully avoided.
+But certain outcasts, escaped convicts, terrors of the sea, had come
+among them, and had even begun to instruct them to expect this law of
+Good. It is one of the most touching, as well as one of the most
+atrocious, of small facts. Old Samasone was telling us the stories of
+these old times: how some stranded ruffian, unable to return to white
+lands, had felt obliged, upon being questioned, to assert his value and
+knowledge by some imitation that might not later conflict with the
+outside facts. Some brutal, drunken, murderous wretch would choose, some
+day, to simulate a Sunday, and sing obscene or brutal forecastle songs,
+all the same to those who did not understand a word, as representing the
+church service of song which he described.
+
+Samasone, whose American name is Hamilton, and who has been here for the
+third of a century, tells us lengthily and in detail such stories, and
+gives us long accounts of Samoan manners, in the same way that might be
+his if he were still in native New England. And when I shut my eyes, I
+can fancy myself sitting on the edge of some Newport wharf, and
+listening to Captain Jim or Captain Sam, discoursing wisely, with
+infinite detail.
+
+Fifty years have passed since those things, paralleled more or less
+elsewhere in the South Seas; and now from the hut of Mataafa, the great
+chief, which is next to mine, with the sunset, comes the Angelus, sung
+by the people yet nearer to nature than Millet’s peasants. I hear also
+the Ave Maria Stella; the cry of the exiled sons of Eve for help in this
+vale of tears, for whether Catholic like Mataafa, or Protestant like my
+good neighbour Tofae, they are all very Christian. Indeed, my other
+neighbour is a preacher, an eloquent one, like a true Samoan, a race
+where eloquence is hereditary in families. I hear him thundering on
+Sundays against the Babylonians, and all the bad people of Scripture.
+
+They are all steeped in a knowledge of the words of the Bible. In any
+serious conversation, in political discussion, we hear the well-known
+types of character referred to, and all the analogies pushed to the
+furthest extreme.[6] The rather light-minded girls whom we have about us
+amuse themselves on Sunday with capping verses from the Bible. The young
+men of our boat crew, whose moral views on many subjects would bring a
+blush to the cheek of the most hardened clubman, are fond of leading in
+prayer, are learned in hymnology, and are apt to be fairly strict
+sabbatarians. Here and elsewhere, in many other islands, it is often
+very difficult on Sunday to obtain the use of a boat, the only vehicle
+possible. Remember that I am, and shall be for a long time, writing from
+islands, where all life is along the shore, where only occasionally are
+there roads, or what we would call roads; where there are few horses,
+somtimes none at all; where the natural road is over the beach, when it
+is uninterrupted by rock and cliffs, and where the boat can take you
+quietly along inside of the reef. But as I shall make it out clearly
+later, the Polynesian likes to have things settled one way or the other,
+as all sensible people do.
+
+And then the Bible--I am not speaking of the New Testament--is so near
+them; they read so often their own story in the life of Israel of many
+centuries back. They are not separated from a civilization of that form
+by such and so many changes as our ancestors’ minds have passed through.
+Their habit of life must even be said to antedate the biblical. They do
+not have to make excuses for the conduct of God’s chosen people. They
+can take all as it is written. They need not suppose some error in the
+account of the witch of Endor. In such a valley, buried under trees, or
+behind that headland where the palms toss in the roar of the trades,
+dwells some woman, wiser and more powerful in the solitude and in the
+night than we judge her by day. She can tell what things are happening
+elsewhere; what things are likely to come. She brings in the dead by the
+hand. She tells of what the dead are now doing, of their wars and their
+struggles in the empty outside world. What she revealed some nights ago,
+to a chosen few who say they were present, is murmured about the
+villages, and makes a feature of conversation not unlike society news. I
+have listened at night, in out-of-the-way places, among preachers and
+people of confirmed Bible piety, to the last reports from the spirit
+world: to the news of war there; to the tale of great fights which had
+occurred on such a day of the moon, when the battleground of the reef
+was strewn with the corpses of the dead already dead to us. And I
+remember once hearing how some spirit ruling over a part of our island
+had declined to enter into war because he had not been attacked, and his
+religious principles, which were Christian, confined him to the
+defensive. Perhaps all these things meant more to my good friends than
+they did to me, curious as I was to find in these reports some traits of
+their character, some manner of theirs of looking at the things of this
+world. I believe that to them these agitations of the outside world were
+presages of coming danger, of trouble to their earthly lives; that they
+saw omens of victory because the spirits of such and such possible
+ancestors had triumphed. But no doubt, in some way not understood by me,
+all these vague stories confirmed them in certain directions, or made
+them hesitate. At any rate, it kept the land peopled with fears. It
+makes the terror of the forest more vivid and more reasonable. The
+_po_--the dark, the night--is impressive to the Polynesian; the brave
+man may have all the fear of the little boy. And I own that I have never
+seen a nature which at night assumed more mystery, a more threatening
+quiet. The vegetation never rests. The plants are always growing. The
+sighing of the palms so deceptively like rain; the glitter of the great
+leaves of the banana, striking one against the other, with a half
+metallic clink; the fall of dead branches; the sudden drop of the
+cocoanut or the bread-fruit; the perpetual draught, carrying indefinite
+sounds from the untrodden interior; the echo of the surf from the reef,
+against the high mountains; the splash of the water on the shore; the
+flight of the “flying fox” in the branches; the ghostlike step of the
+barefooted passerby; the impossibility of the eye carrying far throught
+angles of tropical foliage--all these things make the night--the _po_,
+not a cessation of impressions, but a new mystery.
+
+With such a landscape about me, I was ready to believe that handsome
+young men belated in the passages of the mountains had been met by the
+female spirit, whether her name be Sau Mai Afi or not, whose sudden
+love is death; and that the same being could be a man when the night
+traveller was a woman and beautiful. Had not the brother of one of our
+virgin friends been assailed by devils, in some adventurous night
+voyage, and had he not returned half crazed, and beaten in such a way
+that he had never recovered? All this had happened while we were there;
+we might have found him alive had we come a few weeks earlier.
+
+And in the night-fishing how often do the dead, continuing their habits,
+fish on the reefs alongside of the living. They are silent, and their
+canoes keep apart, but they may silently step from one canoe to another,
+only to be known by the chill and anxiety that goes with them. I have
+seen with my own eyes, far out on the reef, the solitary torch pointed
+out to me as that of the dead. Often, when suspected, the spirit
+occupant of a canoe has made for shore and disappeared, _incessu patuit
+dea_, and has been assuredly recognized by the track of her torch
+through the mountains, where no living man goes. That certainly must
+have been our spirit disastrous to young men.
+
+All these sides of common belief, or what perhaps we might call
+superstition, were shown to us little by little. On the outside our good
+friends believe roughly as we do, and all this that I am talking about
+is what remains attached to Christianity, or more properly, never
+disentangled from it. And I should suppose that it must have been
+difficult for the missionaries to expel these survivals of the past, in
+the same way that the old Church found it impossible, in certain corners
+of Europe, to wipe out the belief in fairies--the “little men,” the
+“good folk,” the “wee folk,” the “good neighbours”; the sacredness and
+influence of places. And here the practical mind of the savage, in its
+first reaction, after having received a set form of worship and faith as
+a great relief, would argue that the written Law, the Book, countenances
+most of the things they _cared_ for in their older worship. A very few
+years after the first christianization which began in the Society
+Islands, sects were formed, based upon the Bible, or using it as an
+excuse, with all the security of any theological difference. I have a
+vague feeling that many of my brown friends think that the Christian,
+even the missionary, does not carry out properly his belief, and that
+they themselves are nearer to the letter as well as to the spirit. If
+the missionaries have let loose among them the famous question of the
+lost tribes, I have no doubt that many of them must be imbued with the
+certainty of that descent. Many of their practices are so much like
+those of the early Jews, that, according to old-fashioned ways of
+historical criticism, an uninterrupted tradition might be argued. In
+fact, I am quite sure that many of the missionaries have so reasoned,
+and implanted among them a great feeling of confidence. And the
+Polynesian, having a perfectly healthy mind, likes to have everything
+settled. Anything more like the typical respectable Englishman I have
+never met. With the brown man one sees the natural healthy desire of
+having the questions of religion, of politics, of society, all settled
+on the same basis; there is such a thing as good form, and that settles
+it. After the first start, the islanders were much troubled at finding
+that there were many ways of looking at things, and that religion might
+be right and manners bad: that the wife of the missionary, who insisted
+on poke bonnets, was not dressing according to the most aristocratic
+forms of her own land. And when they find that their written religion
+does not provide for all their little wants, it must be very natural to
+supply the smaller ones, which are the everyday ones, with some of the
+older forms more fitted for individual and temporal advantages. It must
+be a comfort to many of them to know that the flight of certain birds
+indicates what they had better do to-morrow; that the coming of certain
+fish may mean, nay does mean--some change in family history; and they
+may still prefer to treat respectfully the animals and plants that were
+associated with their origins--what we might roughly call, their totem.
+The shark has been respected or the bread-fruit, or the owl; and in
+certain cases certain mysterious powers and sanctities might follow the
+line of descent, though concealed from the public, more especially the
+white men. Of this, I ought perhaps to say that I am confident; and that
+the powers would be recognized in certain people even when, as I have
+seen it, they belong to opposing Christian sects.
+
+The missionaries were Wesleyans, or, rather, men of the London
+Missionary Society. The form seems to have suited the Samoans. It was a
+service in which every one took part. There was preaching and eloquence
+and oratory, and to a certain extent the community was invited into the
+church--not allowed to enter into the church as a favour. So that
+notwithstanding their fondness for externals, the Catholic service gives
+them less of their old, natural, ancestral habits by centring everything
+in the ministrations of the priest, and by cutting off all chance of any
+members of the congregation becoming themselves orators, deacons or
+preachers, and leading in turn themselves. The chiefs also would
+hesitate in a choice of humiliations; the missionary, white at first and
+now a native obtaining a position of equal and sometimes superior
+influence, and that without any civil preparation for the same--indeed
+with less fitness from the relative isolation of his days of study.
+Later on I may explain to you more fully how absolutely the chief is
+the pivot of all social good. He has been for indefinite ages the cause
+of all action; he has been personally superior both in body and mind.
+The entire aristocracy is a real one, the only one I know of. It is
+impossible to enter into it, though one may be born into it. With our
+ideas of more or less Germanic origin we suppose a ruler gifted with the
+power of bestowing part of his value upon certain men lower than
+himself, and actually making such people essentially different. A
+Polynesian knows no such metaphysical subtlety. The actual blood of
+physical descent is essential to supremacy, except in a most vicarious
+and momentary manner, or as by marriage so that the children may become
+entitled to whatever the sum of the blood of parents represents. With
+them an heir to aristocratic privileges or power or influence or
+prestige represents nothing more than the arithmetical sum of his
+father’s and mother’s blood. I have had lately a Sunday afternoon visit
+all to myself, from a charming little girl who is the daughter and sole
+child of the king; a nice little girl with pretty little royal ways, who
+explains to me that she does not like things here so well as she did
+where she was taught English, where she had been at school, in the
+British colony of Fiji. There she was a king’s daughter, and any English
+ideas around her would be more flattering to her consequence than even
+the kindly feeling of the subjects of her father. For her mother is not
+of equal blood, besides being a foreigner. The great chief Malietoa
+Laupepa, whom we have made a king, cannot make his wife, according to
+Polynesian ideas, any more than what she was before he married her; and
+the little daughter has only in her veins the royal blood on one side,
+and a certain respectability on the other. To the true Polynesian mind,
+such a one of her cousins, of less high descent on the father’s side,
+may be of higher descent on the mother’s, and the sum of those descents
+may be very much greater than the sum of the descents of the daughter of
+Malietoa Laupepa. Hence it requires a great stretch of loyalty to look
+at such a little person with the veneration that the Polynesian feels
+for “chiefy” origin; and you can understand what a disastrous and bloody
+muddle we have made it for them when we have told them that the word
+_king_ represented anything that they had themselves or could have. With
+them _Rex nascitur non fit_.
+
+All this has been explained by the supposition of two different races,
+one of which, that of the chiefs, had subdued the other. There is no
+such tradition, however, and no apparent reasons to explain the enormous
+superiority of the aristocratic lines except the simple physical ones of
+choice in breeding and of better food and less suffering, continued for
+centuries and centuries. Even at a distance a chief can be distinguished
+by his size and his gait, and a successful collection at some political
+entertainment brings back the dream of lines in the Homeric catalogues
+of heroes. Great size of limb, great height, consequent strength and
+weight, a haughty bearing, a manner of standing, a manner of throwing
+his legs out in walking, like the step of a splendid animal, a habit of
+sitting upright--all these points tell the chief.[7]
+
+Upon these superior beings, then, brought up to command, considered as
+sacred by themselves and by all below them, devolved perpetually the
+duty of deciding everything that was to be done. Even in a detail so
+minute to our minds as that of a day for fishing, the chief decided, and
+does yet, what the community should do. The good fortune of all was
+dependent upon his wise choice. As the chief has often explained to us,
+when the women began to talk too much, and fix their minds upon harmful
+gossip, a healthy diversion was that of ordering them to make the native
+cloth--an absorbing process. With all the refinement of political
+leaders, excuses would be found for such an enforcement of industry: the
+occasion of some visit to be made or received, when every one entitled
+to it should appear with many changes of dress; when the visitor or the
+visited should receive presents of beautiful cloth. Let me say how
+elsewhere, in another group of islands, the earlier missionary
+interfered and broke up the industry of women, without evil intention,
+making them idle, and opening thereby the gate to ruin. In Polynesian
+life, as I am trying to explain, things were intimately connected. There
+were religious forms or words--or shall I rather say, forms and words of
+good omen?--accompanying all ordinary human action. Had the missionaries
+realized this perfectly, they might almost have interfered with the
+savages’ breathing; but they fastened on the pagan forms connected with
+the making of cloth, and the women gave it up, and bought cotton from
+the white man, and paid for it the Lord knows how.
+
+The chief, then, sent the young men to fish and the women to work, when
+it was needed both for physical and moral good. War, of course, they
+always had, as a last resource, just like the great politicians of
+Europe. The constant interference, involuntary very often, very often
+most kindly meant, of the missionary or the clergyman, diminished this
+influence of the chief--an unwritten, uncodified power, properly an
+influence, something that when once gone has to be born again.[8] And
+the brown clergyman, continuing the authority of the white one, has
+something further, less pure, a feeling of ambition, a desire to assert
+himself against former superiors; and he is perhaps still more a
+dissolvent of the body politic into which he was born.
+
+I see no picture about me more interesting than the moral one of my next
+neighbour, the great Mataafa. To see the devout Christian, the man who
+has tried to put aside the small things that tie us down, struggle with
+the antique prejudices--necessary ones--of a Polynesian nobleman, is a
+touching spectacle. When a young missionary rides up to his door, while
+all others gently come up to it, and those who pass move far away, out
+of respect; and then when the confident youth, full of his station as a
+religious teacher, speaks to the great chief from his saddle, Mataafa’s
+face is a study. Over the sensitive countenance, which looks partly like
+that of a warrior, partly like that of a bishop or church guardian,
+comes a wave of surprise and disgust, promptly repelled, as the higher
+view of forgiveness and respect for holy office comes to his relief.
+
+But Mataafa is not only a chief of chiefs, he is a gentleman among
+gentlemen. My companion, difficult to please, says, “La Farge, at last
+we have met a gentleman.”
+
+His is a sad fate: to have done all for Samoa; to have beaten the
+Germans and wearied them out; to have been elected king by almost
+unanimous consent, including that of the present King, who wished him to
+reign; then to be abandoned by us; and to feel his great intellectual
+superiority and yet to be idle and useless when things are going wrong.
+And more than all, however supported by the general feeling to-day, if
+he moves to establish his claims, the three foreign nations who decide
+Samoa’s future, not for her good, but for their comfort or advantage,
+will certainly have to combine and crush him.
+
+He is a hero of tragedy--a reminder of the Middle Ages, when a man could
+live a religious life and a political one.
+
+And his adversaries among the natives are among our friends; and we like
+them also, though there is none to admire like Mataafa standing out for
+an idea for the legitimacy of right.
+
+For all the soft Communism of which I spoke, the chiefs were the
+stiffening, and are so still in as far as the new ideas, or rather want
+of ideas, do not affect their real authority.
+
+As I tried to explain, these are chiefs, lesser or greater, hereditary,
+essential; nothing can replace them, no commoner come into their
+position or a similar one. Alongside of them an European monarch is a
+half-caste or a parvenu. When, as you will see, we, that is to say the
+English and Americans, made one of them a king, we made a thing unknown
+before, unthinkable in reality among their social machinery.
+
+For however true it is that the chief is so by birth, by authority of
+nature, you know that in Samoa he is also elective. A council of chiefs
+of his own race determine whether or no he shall “bear the name.” For
+smaller chiefs, their own names; for certain great ones, such a name as
+Aana or Malietoa.
+
+With these names goes the power over certain places large or small, but
+each having a traditional value. Should a chief of sufficient blood have
+all these five names (and he cannot get them without such natural
+inheritance and the name may remain empty), should he have all five
+names, then he is of necessity king, that is to say, chief of chiefs.
+But if he have only three, then imagine the confusion made in the true
+Samoan mind by our making him king.
+
+Mataafa has held more names than any other, and would no doubt be to-day
+elected king by the majority of the Samoans; and absolute agreement
+would probably always be impossible. But though the treaty between
+Germany, England, and the United States, as promulgated in the Island,
+decided that the Samoans should elect their king, and thereby Mataafa
+would be the man; yet a secret arrangement, or what is prettily called a
+_protocol_, not published to the Samoans, decided that Mataafa
+especially and alone should not be allowed. He was the only man who had
+successfully defended Samoan independence as far as it could be, by word
+and by action; he had fought the Germans and defeated them, and that was
+the reason.
+
+According to American ideas Mataafa would be the only proper person, but
+Germany and England have arranged for some time back all matters of
+influence and policy; and whatever we have wished, or might have wished,
+we have always been obliged to vote over against them, and must continue
+to do so.
+
+But the German cause is such a bad one, so foul at the origin, and so
+brutally helped on, that it has been impossible for Great Britain to
+ignore justice absolutely, and we have done something in the cause of
+humanity and so far served God.
+
+Money can have no feeling; political ambition only what may help; and
+the cause of all this trouble which has made this little island known to
+the entire world is the hope of saving some money badly invested.
+
+A great Hamburg firm with a French name, the Godeffroys, had some years
+ago established itself in most islands of the Pacific; it was the great
+firm--the German firm. But as often happens, speculations in other
+matters, or Russian-Westphalian securities broke the great man, the
+former friend of Bismarck, and when a German company, known as “The
+German Company,” succeeded to his assets in the South Seas, they found
+the greater part of them sunk in the Hares-plantations of the firm in
+the Islands of Samoa.
+
+Everywhere else there was no hope, but here if sales could be proved
+valid, if by any means the present labour system of black imported
+savages from other islands could be replaced by a system of “peonage,”
+for the natives, if taxes could be placed upon the community which can
+only be taxed by making the industrious support the idle, if in fact,
+the firm could control the islands, money might again be made and
+perhaps the millions sunk be made to pay or fully recovered. Elsewhere
+in islands where French or English ruled, it was so much the worse for
+the adventurous if things went wrong, and there are cotton plantations
+and sugar plantations, which have gone to pieces as it became impossible
+to keep them up, industries and speculations which first started into
+life with our war.
+
+From early days political or state reasons were carefully kept together
+with business ones; the political representative of Germany would be
+also the manager of the firm, so that if one kind of reasoning did not
+work, then another might. Anything became constructive insult or
+opposition to the Empire of Germany--even a sort of lèse majesté or
+suspicion of treason. Business and the navy supported each other, and
+on a small scale the story of the “John Company of India” was repeated,
+with the same cruelties and atrocities more easily noticed because of
+foreigners being there, because of our modern institutions of the press
+and the telegram.
+
+
+AN ACCOUNT OF RESIDENCE AT VAIALA
+
+Our friends Seumanu and Faatulia tell us, with much emotion, how
+Malietoa, now the king, wept with them when he went off a half voluntary
+prisoner of the Germans, hoping that by his sufferings his country would
+be spared bloodshed; and that in some way or other the Europeans would
+desist from their grasping demands. Then Mataafa headed the resistance
+which two years ago saved his race from the extermination threatened by
+the Germans; made him among his own people the equal of his hereditary
+claims; and entitled him to the name given him by Admiral Kimberly, that
+of the Washington of Samoa. To fight German discipline, and German
+ironclads, with naked followers bound together with the loosest ideas of
+allegiance, seems a story out of a dream, and certainly would have come
+to a disastrous end had we not interfered. The Berlin Conference in
+which we acted restored Malietoa to his home and his power practically,
+but in theory made him dependent on the choice of the Samoans, which
+choice the conference guaranteed. That is to say, those were the words
+of the treaty on which Mataafa stood. But both English and Germans
+agreed that a man who had defeated the Germans should not be elected,
+whether he was chosen by the country or not.
+
+This secret protocol is a disgraceful result of the indifference of our
+representatives to the good name of the United States, and to what is
+more atrocious yet in my mind--a want of comprehension of the value of
+the United States and of its enormous power. One must go abroad and far
+away to realize that whenever we wish we are one of the main powers of
+the world. It is on our sleeping that grasping nations like England and
+Germany depend.
+
+Mataafa has probably been aware of the secret protocol which excluded
+him from competition as king, a protocol, as I have said, made
+exclusively to please the Germans, by the very weak person whom we
+detailed to the Berlin Conference. To repeat, we made a treaty which
+would give the Samoans the right to elect their so-called king or head
+chief, and now we break its lawful meaning by providing that the one man
+who would have most suffrages, and who represented the highest claims of
+legitimacy, should be exempted if elected.
+
+When Malietoa, brought back by the Germans, worn out in body through his
+sufferings in a cruel detention, landed again in Samoa, he was received
+by Mataafa. Remember that they are blood relations, and that when one
+failed, the other had taken up his cause and won. They embraced each
+other, and were left alone by their attendants. It is said that Malietoa
+urged upon Mataafa to retain the power, Mataafa declining. Some
+compromise was effected, the terms of which are not known, but which
+meant that Malietoa should go on reigning without Mataafa’s abandoning
+any claims. Now Mataafa is in a sort of retirement, living in a manner
+extremely difficult for us to understand, were it not that he resumes in
+his person all the ideas that a South Sea man can have regarding the
+proper chief of chiefs. Remember that he is _tui_, which is nearly what
+we call a king, of the great districts of Atua and Aana, which have
+prescriptive rights of election; and he has himself the name of
+Malietoa--what we would call the title given him by the very district of
+Malie from which the Malietoa derives his name: and that this was given
+to him when there was no one to bear this historic burden. Here he is,
+living in the further end of the village, only a few feet from our own
+hut, which as you know is loaned to us, we suppose by Magogi the chief,
+though this is not very distinct. Of course in Samoan way we shall
+present to him, or to somebody, gifts equivalent to the use of the
+house, to the dignity of Magogi, and to our own essential dignity of
+American chiefs.
+
+To my western mind the situation is very curious. Mataafa is already in
+a mild opposition which at any moment may become extremely serious. He
+must know the intentions of the three powers, and cannot, as I
+understand, forego his claims. Here he resides under the apparent
+protection of the chiefs of the village, our friend Tofae, and his
+brother Patu, the great warrior, who are I think necessarily partisans
+of Malietoa; and who would make war upon him in case of a break. But
+outwardly the greatest reverence attends him. One feels it in the air.
+At this end of the village, separated from the other by many trees,
+there is always quiet. The children never make any noise; even the very
+animals seem to understand that they must not come near. The few
+disturbances are those of Mataafa’s own men when they do any chores in
+the outside huts reserved for practical purposes, so as to keep all
+housekeeping away from the residence. The giggling girls are quieter;
+every one’s voice is lowered: on the road that passes at a little
+distance from the great chief people edge away toward the further bushes
+in the quietest and most homely manner. There is the perpetual
+recognition of a king’s presence. Mataafa goes out very little. He
+trudges out to early mass, along the same exact path; has services at
+home, and every evening the hymns are sung within his hut. He goes out
+early in the morning to do work, like everybody else, in his little
+patch of taro planting, and returns after this gentle exercise, naked to
+the waist, like any other common mortal. His goings out are apparently
+few; though I seem to see certain special visitors drop in of an
+evening. Sometimes, as you know, he calls upon us, and this was his
+first--shall I say command or visiting-card?
+
+(Envelope)
+
+
+    Ia Lasusuuga Alii
+        Amelika
+          Nasei maliu
+           mai nei
+
+     Oi le fale o Tofae
+
+(Autograph letter)
+
+Vaiala
+
+Oketopa, 11 1890
+iala susuuga Alii Amelika
+
+     Aliie ale nei lau tusi ia te ou lua ia ou lua faamolemole oute
+     manao e fia fesi la fai ma oulua susuuga fe oute alu atu ilou lua
+     maoto fe lua te maliu mai i lau Fale alou taofi lea efaasilasila
+     atu is ou lua susuuga.
+
+Ona pau lea ia Saifua.
+
+    O au M J Mataafa
+
+
+
+
+[Translation]
+
+Vaiala, Oct. 11, 1890.
+
+To the Distinguished Chiefs of America
+
+O Chiefs
+
+     This my letter to you both. Will you please my wish to meet your
+     Honours? Shall I go to your residence, or will you come to my
+     house? This it is my wish to let your Honours know. This is all.
+     May you live.
+
+                                 I am
+                             M. J. Mataafa
+                       (Malietoa Josefo Mataafa)
+
+
+
+In return for our call the great chief has called many times upon us. He
+apologizes almost for his position of something sacred, for his being
+obliged to drink out of his own cup, for instance, and, as I told you,
+has yielded very slowly to the investigations of Atamo[9] concerning the
+rights of law, of property, of kinship, which must at first have
+appeared to him irrelevant and indiscreet. Even Seumanu, with whom we
+are so familiar that we threaten to take away his name occasionally
+(Samoan legal deposition from office), even Seumanu was obliged to say
+once, “Years ago I would have killed a man who asked me that question!”
+I believe it was some inquiry as to his exact descent and consequent
+claims from his grandmother. But one of these visits of Mataafa brought
+about a meeting with Stevenson which I had thought might not take place
+for some time. It is always difficult for those of us who have the
+cosmopolitan instinct to realize how fundamental are the views of the
+Britisher. Mr. Stevenson had been explaining to us a difficulty I could
+hardly appreciate, and that was the question of whether he should call
+on Mataafa or wait until Mataafa called on him. I know how that would be
+settled in England. No one would expect the Queen or the Prince of Wales
+to call first, even though they cannot have for themselves the sense of
+dignity and sacredness which must envelop Mataafa. The Queen is the
+head of the church and defender of the faith; but she is not so by
+blood, whether there be a church or not. It is this peculiar element of
+something sacred, as it were of the son of a demigod, the natural
+intermediary between this world and the next, which is gently latent in
+the original idea of the aristocracy of these people. Even to Roman
+Paula, the spiritual daughter of St. Jerome, it must have been something
+beyond our ken to be a descendant of, let us say, Agamemnon or Achilles
+or other sons of demigods. In this state of mind Mr. Stevenson came in
+upon us during one of Mataafa’s visits, and succumbed at once to the
+delicate courtesy of the great chief. He managed so prettily to express
+his knowledge of Stevenson’s distinction, of his being a writer of
+stories, and a wish to know him limited by the difficulties of his
+position.
+
+Meanwhile, I say, Mataafa bides his time. He waits patiently, en
+évidence, but doing nothing. This will irritate his enemies, but I seem
+to see that for him there can be no more legal course. As long as he
+does nothing, and makes only a mute appeal to justice, he is entirely in
+the right. He is not supposed to accede to the protocol which excluded
+him. I think I understand somewhat of the absurdly complicated position
+which his friends or his enemies hold--position based on hereditary
+rights; long internecine wars; ancient privileges of small places which
+have rights of election, but which are too weak to enforce them; and,
+above all, on both sides questions of complicated descent. Even if I
+were correct, and made no mistakes, which could hardly be, I would not
+dare to go into a lengthy explanation of the claims on both sides.
+
+One great enmity Mataafa has: more intense than that of the Germans,
+because partly unconscious and founded on the worst passion of
+humanity--theological hatred. That enmity is the dislike of the foreign
+Protestant missionary, who moreover is absolutely English in his ideas,
+his wishes, his intentions, and has a perpetual political bias. Mataafa
+is a Catholic, like many of the chiefs. Naturally he has Catholic
+advisers, and some of them may be--though I don’t know it for
+sure--tainted by the same politico-religious ideas as their opponents.
+They probably supply the great chief with information of what the great
+outside world would do in his favour; opinions based on their wishes,
+and not on the meanness of mankind, which is the only logical basis of
+politics.
+
+As a proof of the atrocities to which the religious mind can consent,
+listen to this charming detail. It belongs to a time when I was no
+longer in Samoa. I have mentioned in my other journals and letters the
+names of the Rev. Mr. Claxton of the London Missionary Society; and I
+can add to what I said that was _pleasant_ that he seemed to be the
+usual gentle clergyman, with side-whiskers, and sufficiently modern,
+and that he spoke very nicely, as I thought, of the religious state of
+the Samoans, and evinced a sense of a certain steadfastness of theirs,
+which distinguishes them from many of the other varieties of South Sea
+people. Mr. Claxton also pleased us by recognizing the Samoan dances as
+not being sinful, by being present at one of them, with Mrs. Claxton.
+You know that poor Faatulia was excommunicated for attending the Fourth
+of July dance, which was of course attended by the wives or daughters or
+aunts of the English or American consuls. The action of our reverend
+friend was all the more graceful because the dance was in honour of
+Faatulia’s niece, if I remember. Mrs. Claxton also we hear all sorts of
+nice things about. She is “Misi Talatoni,” and Meli Hamilton gets a
+great deal of fun out of her, pretending that we admire her dress much
+more than Meli’s. Never would you suspect these gentle associations
+connected with the ideas of mediæval assassination. But in August, our
+Consul, coming down to Australia, and meeting us on the way to Java,
+told me the following story because he wished me to take a hand myself.
+Mataafa’s habits were, as might be expected from his character,
+particularly steady as belonging to a war chief, a king, and a devout
+churchman. He went to mass every day, by the same path, and did not
+flinch or change his track when the Germans fired at him. Somehow or
+other, as happens to generals and to people who make a good mark, he
+was never hit. On this peculiarity of Mataafa’s was based a proposition
+made by the Rev. Mr. Claxton to the Consul. There was now absolute
+peace; and Mataafa and myself, or you would have a perfect right to walk
+along the road to church without being fired at. But German discipline
+has characteristics quite as distinct as Mataafa’s. Might it not be
+possible, if any German marines were landed by chance, to place some
+sentries on Mataafa’s road, presumably if he went to evening service? He
+would suspect no harm, and even if he did, would not move from his path.
+The German sentinel would by duty be obliged to fire, and consequently
+no one would be to blame, and Mataafa would be out of the way. This the
+reverend clergyman thought could be managed. What Consul Sewall wished
+of me was that I should warn a friend of Mataafa’s, Father Gavet, who
+lived somewhere along the coast, but whose long acquaintance with Samoan
+manners would find some way of avoiding the possibility of this little
+incident. I wrote to Father Gavet, who answered me, at some distance of
+time, of course, that the plot was understood; for, as Mataafa said to
+me, “There are no secrets in Samoa,” and the friends of Mataafa had
+taken necessary precautions. I never heard anything more about it, but I
+believe that the Reverend Claxton has been withdrawn.
+
+Of course as long as the waters are so disturbed, each party may hope to
+fish for their advantage; that is to say, the German for
+politico-commercial reasons, and the English for the same; and this all
+the more that the English government recognizes what is called spheres
+of influence, and that it is inclined to concede to Germany such an
+influence here, even if its representatives be not officially ordered to
+do so. We, who do not recognize these spheres of influence, are,
+however, prone to assist all Protestant missionary tendencies, right or
+wrong. Votes are votes. Besides, not only do we not recognize spheres of
+influence, but we are uncertain of any political tradition, and we are
+easily handled by England, to whom we are still intellectually subject.
+We are also more or less out of the game. We have no Heligoland or
+Hinterland in Africa, to trade off against influence in Samoa or New
+Guinea. We are still in the dark as to our fortune; we don’t know the
+importance of the Pacific Ocean to us, nor the immensity of future
+eastern trade. As the Germans here impertinently remark, we would trade
+an empire against the votes of a town in New Jersey, or the honour of
+dining with a countess.
+
+Brandés, the German dictator, that is to say the German official who
+controlled Samoa for a time, representing both Germany and Samoa, said
+of us: “A nation, which in all decisions of foreign policy must take
+into its councils the senate and sixty million of people, can never
+have a foreign policy worthy of the name.” We might easily withdraw,
+even temporarily; then for the protection of German property, German
+forces could be landed in Samoa, the imperial flag be hoisted, and
+whoever would dare to haul it down? Bismarck, acting through his son
+Herbert, has apparently well arranged our agreements so that events
+might turn easily that way. On Mataafa these conditions hinge. As he
+acts, or is kept from acting, the possible possession of this key of the
+Pacific will be determined.
+
+And yet the Pacific is our natural property. Our great coast borders it
+for a quarter of the world. We must either give up Hawaii, which will
+inevitably then go over to England, or take it willingly, if we need to
+keep the passage open to eastern Asia, the future battleground of
+commerce.
+
+You can see how reasonable it is then that Mataafa should take an
+interest in us as Americans, and hold on to a hope that we might,
+however faintly, help the cause of his people, and keep them, as he
+says, from slavery. Moreover, as his men it was who rescued our sailors
+in the great calamity of 1889, even though they also rescued the
+Germans, with whom they were at war, he feels that kindness of
+obligation which comes to those who have tried to benefit others.
+
+All this is politics, and you are probably, like the United States, more
+or less indifferent to anything that has not the name that you are
+accustomed to. To me, on the contrary, my real and absorbing delight is
+the sense of looking at the world in a little nutshell, and of seeing
+everything reduced to such a small scale, and to so few people, that I
+can take, as it were, my first lessons in history. I don’t know that I
+should put it all into the form that Mr. Stevenson uses, in which I do
+not quite agree with him: that here, at length, we were free from the
+pressure of Roman civilization. I own of course, that all comes to us
+through Rome, and that the dago has had the making of us. The words
+which I use of course imply that. I can’t talk of politics, of
+civilization, of culture, of education, of chivalry, of any of the
+aspirations of the western world, without using the words implanted with
+the ideas in our barbarous ancestors; but before the culture and
+development of Rome was a something which had some analogies to what I
+see here. I am continually thinking how it may have been with my most
+remote ancestry, whenever I understand any better the ideas and habits
+of our good people here. As also they have passed from some still
+earlier or more remote stages, their ideas are easier to understand than
+those for instance of the Australian or even of the Fijian. A tendency
+to the commonplace, to a certain evening up of ideas, seems to belong to
+them, and makes them easier to understand because in so far they are not
+unlike us. They dislike excesses in thinking, and too logical
+extensions of what might be called political ideas. About all this
+social difference of organization, I have written to you, I should say
+continually. I must have given you most of the details, even if I have
+not made a summary of the form of early civilization.
+
+I am troubled also at writing about things and ideas, and using words
+which have grown out of things and ideas extremely different and often
+contradictory. As the Christian terminology, the very language of the
+Gospels, was perforce made up of pagan forms and terms, so to-day, I
+shall have to describe what might be called pagan forms and ideas in a
+terminology now influenced by Christianity, and saturated with problems
+connected with it, so that probably Greek or Latin would be more
+natural, though even they, you know, are read by us with a bias that
+their authors never dreamed of.
+
+But as long as I do not write, it is pleasant to see the ideas without
+words, and perhaps descriptions may not have been the worst way to give
+them.
+
+
+A MALAGA IN SEUMANU’S BOAT
+
+25th Oct., 1890.
+
+Malanga, written malaga, is a trip, a voyage where one puts up with
+friends, etc.; one of the fundamental social institutions of Samoa.
+
+
+WHAT SEUMANU’s BOAT WAS
+
+     “Secretary of the Navy to the Secretary of State. Acknowledging
+     assistance by natives of Samoa.
+
+                                                      “Navy Department,
+
+                                    “Washington, D. C., April 27, 1889.
+
+     “SIR: In a report dated Apia, Samoa, March 26, 1889, from
+     Rear-Admiral L. H. Kimberly, U. S. Navy, commanding the United
+     States naval force on the Pacific Station, the Navy Department is
+     informed that invaluable assistance was rendered by certain natives
+     of Apia, during the storm of Saturday, the 16th March.
+
+     “Rear-Admiral Kimberly calls particular attention to Seumanu Tafa,
+     chief of Apia, who was the first to man a boat and go to the
+     _Trenton_ after she struck the reef, and who also rendered material
+     aid in directing the natives engaged in taking our people and
+     public property on shore on the 17th and 18th.
+
+     “Special recommendation also is given to the men composing the
+     boat’s crew, as follows: Muniaga, Anapu, son of Seumanu, Taupau,
+     chief of Manono, Mose, Fuapopo, Tete, Pita, Ionia, Apiti, Auvaa,
+     Alo, Tepa.
+
+     “The Department has the honour to request that you will express to
+     the authorities of Samoa, through the proper channels its high
+     sense of the courage and self devotion of Chief Seumanu and his
+     fellow countrymen, in their risking their lives to rescue the
+     shipwrecked officers and crew of the _Trenton_ from their position
+     of peril and distress; and that you will, at the same time, inform
+     them of its intention to send to the Chief Seumanu in accordance
+     with the recommendation of Rear-Admiral Kimberly, and as a mark of
+     its appreciation, a double-banked whaleboat, with its fittings,
+     and to reward suitably the men composing his crew, for their brave
+     and disinterested service. I have the honour to be, sir, very
+     respectfully, your obedient servant,
+
+                                                          “B. F. Tracy,
+                                                “Secretary of the Navy.
+
+“The Secretary of State.”
+
+The accompanying extract tells you the story of the boat in which we are
+making a malaga to some of the places near us--to the northwest end of
+our island of Upolu, to this little Manono, with an old reputation for
+war; to the ancient sunken volcano crater of Apolima; and to Savaii, the
+big island important in politics, and important in name, and important
+in history.[10]
+
+Seumanu takes us along in his boat, and as it were under his protection,
+a convenience certainly, but also perhaps not an unencumbered blessing,
+for there will certainly be a colour of politics in our trip. All the
+more that our own boat goes along also with our own rowers, and the
+consular flag, for the Consul is with us, and is in (I fear) for many
+speeches which he will have to acknowledge, and we shall suffer all the
+more. For already there has been much speech-making; the _tulafales_,
+the village orators, and occasionally rulers, or balances of power with
+the chiefs, and who as far as I can make out keep this place by
+inheritance--the _tulafales_ have been in force. Seu has repeated their
+speeches ahead of them in a grumbling way, evidently not quite pleased.
+Perhaps the paucity of gifts in this poor little place helps to annoy
+him, and yet we gave them short notices of our coming and we are many to
+provide for, over twenty-five in all; or perhaps, nay certainly, their
+political complexion is not of the right shade and he remembers too well
+that they were but figure-heads in the last war, not withstanding their
+military renown. What annoys him as a chief “qui se respecte,” gives us
+infinite pleasure. All comes down to the small scale that befits the
+place and its rusticity. It is rustic, as I need not assure you, but it
+has also a look of make-believe that gives it a look of landscape
+gardening--the look of a fit place wherein to give a small operetta in
+the open air.
+
+The village is on a small promontory, beyond which juts the outline of
+some rocks crowned by a chief’s tomb that is shadowed by trees. The
+water within the bay reef is of a marvellous green-blue, whether it
+rains or whether it shines, and not far off, perhaps only a mile or so,
+Upolu is blue or violet or black or grey in mist; and the sea outside
+always makes some colour contrast with the sea inside the reef. The
+village is just high enough upon the shore to conceal the actors on the
+beach, except where in two or three places the clean sand sweeps down
+under the trees or next to heavy rocks, so as to allow the tenor and the
+diva of my supposed opera, to go down and throw out a great song. This
+is striking enough in the day but in the evening afterglow or the shine
+of moonlight, themselves apparently made on purpose, it is deceptive;
+people step down little rocks on coming out of small huts, a few real
+canoes are placed under the trees whose outline in the shade has been
+arranged by nature in rivalry of art.
+
+Subsidiary pictures painted by a Greater Rembrandt with centres of light
+and prismatic gradations of gloom fill the cottages placed on the little
+elevations, and only a few people gracefully move about--just enough in
+number: and all with a classic action that comes of not frequenting
+foreigners. Snatches of song, and cadences come alternately from
+different corners or from under trees, and as I said all this is lit
+with a mysterious glow.
+
+Besides, in the day there have been few people; some little girls only
+in our guest-home and the chief who with his whitened hair, strong jaw,
+and sloping forehead has a fair look of the “Father of our Country.”
+
+In the presentation of food, a necessary ceremony, only a dozen men have
+appeared, nobodies in particular: and before them has capered a naked
+being in green leaves, as to his hips and head, who has danced with his
+back toward us, keeping the line in order, and who looks at a distance
+like the Faun of the Greek play in the Pompeian pictures. Then they have
+all rushed forth and cast down their small presents, taro and
+bread-fruit and cocoanuts, in palm baskets and as suddenly disappeared;
+while the _tulafale_, an old gentleman of the old school, making,
+according to old fashion, a great curve of pace that shook out his stiff
+bark cloth drapery, has slipped out and taken his place, leaning on a
+staff, his official fly-flapper balanced on his shoulders. These people
+of importance, and one I think of great dignity, have squatted down on
+the grass, and another has seated himself on the great war drum under
+the bread-fruit trees. Then a long speech has been made, with praise of
+us and of our country that has rescued Samoa, and thanks to God and
+prayers for our good health, etc., etc., all in a clear voice, not loud
+at all, just enough to reach us, no more; and with a Samoan accent upon
+the end of each phrase where some important word is skilfully placed.
+
+All this we listen to and witness from our little house, whose posts are
+garlanded with great bunches of red hibiscus flowers and white gardenia
+and many leaves, and the effect is partly that of some living fresco in
+imitation of the antique, partly that of an opera in the open air. But
+if this is real, then the modern painted pictures of open-air life with
+the nude and with drapery are false. Our French and English and German
+brethren do not know what it is.
+
+Apart from the light and its peculiar clearness, Delacroix alone, and
+sometimes Millet, have understood it; and no one of the regular schools
+of to-day. Back of these, of course, all the classics are recalled from
+Watteau and Rubens and the Spaniards to the furthest Greek.
+
+So that the little episode that worries Seumanu is full of fun and of
+charm and of instruction to us. Its scale is so small that we can grasp
+it. There are but half a dozen actors, and a small set scene. In front
+of us, sitting so close to our house, on its pebble slope, that his
+figure is cut partly off, sits one of the crew, who, when all is over,
+and the speech has been duly acknowledged by Seu as our spokesman, will
+count over the presents, and in a loud voice will announce their number
+and their origin: So many cocoanuts from so and so--so many chickens
+from so and so--etc.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two mornings ago we left Vaiala, and rowed westward within the reefs,
+along the north coast of our island of Upolu, off which, within a couple
+of miles, lies the little Manono from which I write. Twice we stopped
+in this enemy’s country, that is to say, among adherents of the former
+king or head chief set up by the Germans. There was all the charm that
+belongs to the near coasting of land in smooth waters: the rise and fall
+of the great green reflections in the blue satin of the sea inside of
+the reef; the sharp blue outside of the white line of reef all
+iridescent with the breaking of the surf; the patches of coral, white or
+yellow or purple, wavering below the crystal swell, so transparent as to
+recall the texture of uncut topaz or amethyst; the shoals of brilliant
+fish, blue and gold-green, as bright and flickering as tropical
+hummingbirds; the contrast of great shadows upon the mountain, black
+with an inkiness that I have never seen elsewhere; the fringes of golden
+or green palms upon the shores, sometimes inviting, sometimes dreary.
+And our rowers in their brightest waist cloths, with great backs and
+arms and legs, red and glistening in the sun that wet them even as much
+as the cocoanut oil with which they were anointed. And when tired with
+sitting, they lie stretched out and confidently rest against the giant
+Seumanu’s great thigh and hip, while he occasionally patted his sleepy
+weaker brother, La Taēlē.
+
+Still, beauty of nature, and plenty of soft air do not prevent fatigue,
+even if they soothe it, and I was glad when in the afternoon we had
+reached Leulumoenga--our final halt--a village type of Samoa, spread all
+over the sandy flat of the back beach, and half hidden in trees. As we
+came up the shelving beach, children and women came down to meet us, and
+watched us curiously. Among them, in their new dignity of fresh
+tattooing, a few youngsters eyed us from further off, moving little
+owing to the pain of the continued operations--haggard and fevered
+looking, and brushing away nervously, with bunches of leaves or
+fly-flaps, the insects that increased their nervousness. For tattooing
+is no pleasant matter. The entire surface from hip to knee is punctured
+with fine needlework. The patient stands what he can, rests awhile and
+recovers from his fevered condition; then submits again, until slowly he
+has received the full share. Nor does he shirk it--it is his usual entry
+into manhood; without it the girls are doubtful about him, and he is
+somewhat looked down upon. The present king, brought up by missionaries,
+and accepting many of their prejudices, had not been tattooed in his
+youth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+During the few hours of our stopping we returned the call of Father
+Gavet, one of the French missionaries, and saw his new church that is to
+replace an older one destroyed by the great hurricane. It is of coral
+cement, like most South Sea churches, a beautiful material when it
+blackens with time. I hope they will transfer some of the old carvings
+from the earlier church; which, made by early converts, have a faint
+look of good barbaric art--so good--oh, so good--compared to what the
+good missionaries get from those centres of civilization called Paris,
+London and Berlin!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the latest afternoon, with coolness and rays of heat and light, we
+rowed further along the coast to Satapuala, where we were to rest in the
+great guest-house, under the protection of the chief’s sister, the
+_taupo_.[11] It was all like little Nua on a great scale, and with more
+elaborate preparations. We had soft mats to lie upon and later more
+again to be beds. Nor did our hostess abandon us until the last moment,
+when we were apparently satisfied with our lair, and according to
+far-off western habits had officially “retired.”
+
+Her decoration of the guest-house, for which she duly apologized as poor
+and unworthy of our visit, was really beautiful. Palm branches all green
+and fresh and glistening covered the entire roof and its supports, even
+the great curved posts of the centre being wrapped in the great leaves,
+which curved with new lines around the simpler circle of the big tree
+trunks. Here and there great bunches of white gardenia and of the red
+hibiscus were fastened into the folds and interstices of the leaves and
+stems.
+
+At night when her brother, the young chief, a famous dancer, had
+arrived, the dream of Robinson Crusoe which had begun enveloping me in
+the afterglow, as I wandered about in the sandy spaces among the palms
+and bread-fruit, became more and more complete. The dances were all
+pictures of savage life. There were dances of the hammer and of
+gathering the cocoanuts by climbing, and then breaking them; and of the
+war canoes, with the urging of the steersman and the anxious paddling of
+the crew; and a dance of the Bath, in which the woman splashed water
+over her pursuer, as she moved with great stretching of arms as of
+swimming. The beating of time on the mats gave, in its precision of
+cadence and the sharpness of its sound, an illusion that seemed to make
+real the great blows struck by the dancers, whose muscles played in an
+ebb and tide, under the brilliant light of the cocoanut fire made in the
+pit near the centre post.
+
+In these and in others our hostess scarcely took part. Most of the time
+she sat by us--a tall and big chiefess, elegant at a distance, grave and
+disdainful--but we were in an enemy’s country and the slight scorn
+seemed quite refined. Still more becoming to an evening with Robinson
+Crusoe’s friends were the costumes worn in the wild dances: the great
+girdles of purple and green and red leaves, the red fruit of the
+necklaces, the silver shells of red flower in the hair of the women; the
+fierce military headdresses of the men; the bark-cloth drapery moving in
+stiff folds, and more than all the oiled limbs and bodies glancing
+against that wild background of green leaves (spotted with red and
+white), whose reflections glittered like molten silver as they turned
+around posts and central pillars. Outside, the moonlight was of milky
+whiteness increased by the whiteness of the sandy beach mixed with a
+firm white clay. Upon this the sea made a faint wash of _no_ colour, in
+which floated our white boats and the reflections of the silvery clouds
+that deepened all the sky to seaward outside of the white reef.
+
+Late in the evening of our arrival we crossed over the little village
+green, which is studded with houses and groups of trees, each house,
+each mass of foliage set apart, either high on some mound to which steps
+may lead, or upon a slightly swelling rise, as if in some park, some
+pleasure garden where all had been thought of and gradually arranged.
+And so, I suppose, it has been here in all the centuries that have been
+spent in moulding this littlest village into a shape to suit its people,
+their needs, their comforts or their likings. And that must be partly
+the cause of the recall of artistic success and perfection in this
+rustic scene. All has taken as much time
+
+[Illustration: SWIMMING DANCE, SAMOA]
+
+and attention as the most complicated European mass of buildings, be
+they cathedrals or palaces--only the art has little shape but what
+nature gives it. All the more has nature caressed and embellished and
+favoured this elemental, unconscious attempt of man.
+
+In the end of the long twilight, with the rose colour still floating in
+the upper sky, the little place looked more coquettishly refined than
+ever. Here and there the lights within the huts, often rising and
+falling in intensity with the blaze of the cocoanut fire, modelled the
+steps outside or the posts, touched trees and branches far away or near,
+and made pictures of family groups within, garlanded and flower adorned.
+
+The larger house to which we went was adorned with flowers and all lit
+up. More people were crowded in it than the little village contained;
+for the island had sent visitors and performers for the dances which
+were to entertain us. I shall not describe them. But they were of course
+interesting, not only for what one liked but for what one did not like,
+and for our being with others who looked on. The spectators are
+inevitably part of yourself, as of the show, and in so far, the very way
+in which I looked on was a new charm.
+
+There was among the dancers a young chief, serious as an Indian prince,
+who danced gymnastics, and ended with primitive buffoonery that seemed
+to delight his hearers. At the other end of the scale was a hunchback
+dwarf, who played realistic scenes so well as to be repulsive. But all
+this was a lesson. I shall certainly see all about me, in this form of
+civilization necessitating health and strength, or their appearance, a
+great line drawn between those who suffer or are weak, and those who are
+not--a visible line. As yet there is no place for my hunchback’s
+intelligence, except this buffoonery.
+
+Later we left the dancers and wandered in wide moonlit paths among
+banana trees. There we came across our young chief looking now as if
+such a person never could have so demeaned himself, even from political
+reasons.
+
+We exchanged _alofas_ and compliments, and he placed his garlands in
+sympathy around my neck. He is a beauty, and his father is one of the
+tallest and biggest, as was his sister, who was once _taupo_.
+
+This morning I have wandered with Seumanu for a few miles, to show
+ourselves. We pass other villages where we are greeted, and where at one
+time our yesterday’s friend, the old _tulafale_, canters out of his
+house in a circle, according to ancient fashion.
+
+We see a great war canoe under its shed, and the remains of a high wall
+that encircles the island and was an old protection in war.
+
+Much should I like to remain, but we shall have to go at once, for--as
+I feared--we are not here really for pleasure, but we are entangled in
+the quasi-necessary political advantages of being seen where there is
+“influence.” But this, I feel, is the kind of place I want to see--out
+of the way--out of use--where usages linger, and where the landscape is
+influenced by man so as to become a frame; as it was in little Nua on
+the island of Tutuila where we first landed upon our first morning in
+the South Seas.
+
+For a thousand years, probably two thousand, perhaps three--for an
+indefinite period--these people of this smallest island have lived here
+and modified nature, while its agencies have as steadily and gently
+covered again their work. So that everything is natural, and everywhere
+one is vaguely conscious of man. Hence, of any place that I have seen,
+this is the nearest to the idyllic pastoral; it is not so beautiful as
+it is complete.
+
+
+Iva in Savaii, Oct. 26, ’90.
+
+I am writing in early afternoon, a hot afternoon, after a morning at
+sea. Opposite me in the circular Samoan house are a couple of persons of
+importance, a local governor, some four or five chiefs, all ranged
+against the pillars of the building, as I too am leaning against one.
+Seumanu and some of our acquaintances are to one side; opposite me, a
+grave young girl is moving her hands in the great _kava_ bowl from
+which she hands the strainer of bark filaments to a reddened haired
+young man whose head flames in the sun outside, against the background
+of green banana leaves. Next her a big fellow keeps grating more _kava_;
+and another fills the big bowl with water, making big red spaces in the
+reflection of the sunlight, that streams in on that side. Small parcels
+of presents of food have been brought in and lie about on their side.
+Much _kava_ has already been drunk and more is being prepared as more
+and more chiefs come in. Everything except the picture before me is in
+shade. Conversation, probably politics, is going on slowly, in the usual
+low tones, with an occasional high-voiced interjection from some less
+important member. The village orator, with his fly-brush over his
+shoulder, has long ago made his lengthy speech of welcome, and as we are
+told to do as we please I write to you, in the interval of watching the
+faces of the men, or the circular movement of the girl’s hands dipping
+in the big bowl, or running around its wide rim, when she wipes it,
+before passing the strainer to be squeezed out. The orator watches me
+suspiciously occasionally, but there is general confidence and peace,
+that we much need, for the heat is great and our sea trip was rough and
+hot. As I write, I hear my name _La Faelé_ called out, and the _kava_
+bearer comes to me with the usual swing. But I fear the _kava_, and
+merely accept the bowl and return it undrunk according to form. Then
+many of the circle disappear--to church--the bell is ringing and little
+children half-naked, small creatures toddling along are already in the
+doorway; apparently all the neighbourhood are beginning to file toward
+it gravely, most of the women with hats that do not become them. Even a
+little girl-child, with nothing but a band around her little fat waist
+for a drapery, steps along with difficulty, a big hat on her head. This
+is Sunday conventionality: all the congregation are dressed, even the
+half-naked chiefs, who had left us, reappear from their huts, with white
+jackets, and pass on gravely in the procession at a distance. And the
+Sunday hymns add to the drowsiness of the Sunday afternoon.
+
+This morning when we left the little island of Manono, some five or six
+miles away, people were going to church but to a different call from
+that of this absurd little bell. A big war drum, a long cylinder of tree
+cut lengthwise, was beaten in the oldest, most primitive manner, some
+way as ancient as man himself. A man bent down over this big wooden
+trough, that lay like an old log in the grass, and beat it from the
+inside, with one of the big hard stones that lay in it. The sound was
+unearthly, I ought to say _uncanny_, and nothing more savage, more a
+type of the war of the savage could be imagined; and it seemed fitting
+that this war usage, turned now to the call of Divine Peace, should
+still remain in the warlike little island, once the petty tyrant of the
+little group. Right alongside, near the great wall built for war, whose
+remains surround the island, marks of destruction recalled the exploits
+of the German warship _Adler_, that now lies stranded by the great
+hurricane, in Apia harbour, and whose crew were saved in part by the
+people they were killing, and especially by the brave giant, in whose
+boat we have been travelling. Indeed, there was an element of comedy
+quite Polynesian, even if atrocious, in the danger the Samoan rescuers
+ran of being fired at from the beach while they saved their enemies in
+the sea. But we made the first part of our trip to-day, in a native
+boat, for Seumanu’s was rather too fine, and too heavy to be risked in
+the entering of the curious harbour that we first made. This was
+Apolima, “the open hand”--a small, very small island about a mile out
+from Manono; the upper part of a submerged volcano cone, broken down on
+one side, so that there is an entrance. We soon reached the great wall
+of soft brown rock, which crowned with cocoanut palms and half covered
+with vegetation opens suddenly, leaving a small passage through rocks,
+just wide enough for our boat, skilfully paddled in the great blue wave
+that swung us in. Then jumping out, half of our men caught the side of
+the boat, to prevent our being dragged back by the returning swell, and
+we were pushed and dragged around a corner inside of the rocks. The tide
+was low and we were carried ashore on the men’s backs, through coral
+rocks that spotted the floor of the small lagoon inside.
+
+The place was just what you might imagine; a little amphitheatre of
+green, the high reddish rocks standing on each side at the entrance, and
+between them, a great bank of rock, over which the surf broke so as to
+hide the little break through which we had come.
+
+As we looked, three great palms stood up against this distance, planted
+on the higher ground that is all green, and leaning toward the sea as is
+their (loving) habit. Huts stood about with bread-fruit trees, and
+further back we were led to a little pool that supplied the place with
+scant water. Further back yet, the slope was all covered with trees, and
+after walking a little way, slipping along the greasy banks, and walking
+up the sloping timber notched with cuts to make stairs, and returning by
+another that made a level bridge across an empty channel, I sat down to
+wait for Mr. Sewall, who had walked up to the ridge, and I had time to
+make a sketch. All this took us a little more than a couple of hours
+while Seumanu’s boat was beating outside, in a fair N. E. wind. At last
+we were paddled out in the great wave that washed in and out, and with
+the swing that belongs to the balancing of a boat in a narrow tide-way.
+And we kept in the dance until we reached Seumanu’s boat, invisible for
+some minutes behind the blue waves. Then we ran alongside, and we
+scrambled in, exchanging good-byes--_tofa_--with the chief of the lost
+hand, who had taken us thus far. Within the next hour Seumanu’s boat had
+come to the outer reef off Savaii, in front of the landing of Iva. But
+there we had to wait at anchor. The water was too low inside the reef,
+so that we remained in the thin blue-green tide, that seemed to show
+everything in it, until a smaller boat came out to us, with Selu, the
+chief, and we were taken in. We landed among black rocks, within a few
+feet of a little scanty road, and clambering over a stile of rocks, at
+some part of the long black fence of stones in front of us, we found a
+village, which spread higher up and far back behind the trees, with
+spaces between houses; banana, palm and bread-fruit trees, dispersed as
+if for ornament or making little patches of plantation. There was a big
+church of the usual formless kind, not as handsome as the thatched ones
+with circular ends, that are certainly the types one would prefer. And
+so we walked up to the house, where we were to listen to speeches and
+the Consul to make one. Since I have begun to write, all has become more
+quiet, and I shall merely use my afternoon to make a few notes; we
+shall sleep in another house belonging to the Governor and be near, I
+think, to the chief, whose name is or was Selu, for lately he tells me
+that he has had the name of Anai given him, and we try to make out
+together just how near these changes come to the forms of the Western
+world. This is not a title properly, but as it were a name embodying
+rights that go to descent; for these men with titles apparently elective
+are noblemen who form an aristocracy of government and are usually to be
+distinguished externally by their size or manner as well as by little
+symbols or expressions of superiority. Anai tells me that of the many
+chiefs here, whom we have seen or will see, he and another, alone are
+the “political” superiors, as he expresses it; that is to say, he goes
+on, that they alone talk in public about such matters (I suppose in the
+way of decision), and that others would be checked if moving. Thus, that
+to him and to his mate alone the making of war, or as he expresses it,
+the allowing the “shedding of blood” is devolved. This chief is a most
+interesting and sympathetic person, speaking English very well, though
+apparently a little wanting in practice, with a pleasant, handsome face,
+resembling some Japanese types, interested in missionary matters, a
+strict church member, and showing much interest in foreign matters
+throughout the world; we talked of the civil war, and of the prospects
+of the republic in France, and of the universal “striking” now going
+on, as we might anywhere; and I am sure that Anai was “posted” to a
+later date than we, for the Consul had handed to him the files of the
+_Herald_ for the last few months, while we had almost entirely abstained
+from that indigestive form of reading. Anai has explained to us that
+this being Sunday we shall have no reception, but that to-morrow there
+will be a formal reception, called _talolo_, and giving of presents, and
+that there will be dances. So that we shall spend this evening quietly,
+with a bath in the pool of fresh water, that is open to the sea, and try
+to rest.
+
+
+On Savaii, Oct. 30, 1890.
+
+We are settled here for an uncertain time, perhaps three days. This is
+the political capital of Samoa, and we are occupying the house of the
+great orator of the islands, important by his influence, though not so
+great a chief as several others by descent or by control, or even by
+physical superiority, that great proof of eminence in communities like
+these, where the chiefs seem to have reserved for themselves a size and
+weight that recall the idea of heroic days. Certainly the first time
+that I saw a well-chosen dozen together, as I did two days ago at our
+last resting place, all sitting spaced out, as if for a decoration on a
+frieze, silent and indifferent, or speaking occasionally without raising
+their voices, with heavy arms resting on great thighs, and with the
+movement of neck and shoulders of men conscious of importance, the
+recall of Homeric story made me ask myself which one might be Ajax, and
+which the other, and if such a one might do for Agamemnon. Fine too, as
+some of the heads were, they were only relatively important, as with the
+Greek statues that we have, and that we know quite well and intimately,
+even though their heads be missing. The whole body has had an external
+meaning, has been used as ours is no longer, to express a feeling or to
+maintain a reserve which we only look for in a face.
+
+And as I am writing, while the household is enjoying its evening
+relaxation and preparing for the night, everything about me repeats to
+me this theme of all being done with the whole body. About an hour ago
+prayers were said and all sat around while the regular form was
+repeated, and then our young hostess prayed an extempore prayer
+commending us all to the care of God. Some words I can catch, but the
+intonation is sufficient. It is a prayer cadenced as well as the most
+consummate of clergymen could manage, and repeated without the slightest
+hesitation. Then she stretched herself out, with her head on the Samoan
+pillow, and talked with some young male acquaintance outside the hut
+whose head just appears over the barrier that runs between the pillars,
+for our house is placed higher than usual. She talked with Adams who is
+lying by her, and occasionally she criticises the game that is going on
+near her at that end of the house. I have only followed the little
+things happening by fits and starts, as I have made some sketches and
+have been writing letters, but I make out that the household is playing
+some game in which some motion or gesture has to be duplicated or
+matched, and that the beaten side, for there are two rows of players, is
+to dance as a forfeit. I say that this is the household, I mean that I
+take it for granted, though I see that one of our boatmen is among them,
+and that a couple of children have dropped in. The duenna of our young
+lady is also there. Sometimes I see her and sometimes I do not, but I
+know she is there on watch. But a _siva_ has been organized slowly, a
+household unofficial _siva_, begun in little patches--somebody humming
+something and several beating hands. Tunes or songs are taken up and
+discarded, and sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, stands up to sketch
+some motions. At last they appear to have got under way, and I see them
+swing and dance, with little clothing and much clapping of hands, at the
+other end of the house. And everybody joins in: even the children beat
+time and take up the words--and the two elder women are the most
+enthusiastic and full of energy. Occasionally a burst of laughter
+salutes what I take to be a mistake or some wild caper that seems funny
+to them. Faauli, at last, after having pretended to sleep or to talk,
+so as to appear to herself to have done something, sits up and takes
+more interest. By and by she sketches out some steps in an indolent
+manner--soon she begins in earnest, and with one of the performers goes
+through an energetic dance, slipping her upper clothing for greater
+ease. The clapping and beating time comes fast and furious from every
+one, and laughter and small shrieks replace the gentle monotone and
+seriousness of the evening prayer. At last she sits down suddenly, her
+face rather overcast: (her name means “Black Cloud that Comes up
+Suddenly”). She has hurt her foot apparently, for turning round to see
+why all has stopped, I see her bent over and looking at a toe. Note that
+she does this as easily as a baby with us--her face comes down on her
+foot raised halfway to meet it. As I come up, she shows me that she has
+torn off the larger part of a nail, and is paring off the remainder
+evenly against the exposed surface of flesh. I offer her scissors which
+she uses with indifference, as we might cut off superfluous hair; and
+apparently more from politeness and obedience than from necessity, she
+accepts my court-plaster. Then being properly mended, she sits down to
+play cards while I resume my writing. Now here has been something that
+explains some sides of these good people; an absence of nervousness and
+insensibility to pain--for to most of us such a small accident would
+have been very painful and sickening. Before this the dance had been
+merely an outlet for action, as natural and unpremeditated as any other
+motion. The entire body has been called into play: from the ends of the
+fingers to the toes of the feet, all the exterior muscles have been
+playing gently for some two hours, with almost every person present,
+whether they sat or stood. This constant gentle exercise must go far
+toward giving the smooth even fullness that marks them. And meanwhile,
+too, they have decorated themselves; some one has brought out garlands,
+and they have been worn: flowers have been put in the hair, as if to
+mark that this is not work but play.
+
+And now that all is quiet, I shall try to resume my itinerary, and
+recall small matters that are fading away, and becoming so confused from
+repetition that it requires an effort for me to distinguish this _siva_
+from that _siva_, and to remember what _taupo_ it was who danced well,
+and what one it was who danced ill.
+
+I was writing last in Iva, on our first day there, Sunday. It is now
+Thursday night.
+
+Monday morning at Iva we were up early, before the sunrise, waked by the
+red glow of the dawn that calls one up easily from the hard bed of
+double mats laid on the floor of small stones. Every one was up, people
+were moving about, probably most had had their early bath, for they
+were returning with wet clothes, or with their garments spread over them
+like a veil. So that we scrambled over the stone wall that seems so
+anomalous and unreasonable here. But they not only divide village from
+village, but also prevent the straying of that roaming property, the
+pig, that wanders about the village and the forest also, picking up
+everything of course. To see a pig picking out the flesh of the cocoanut
+has been one of the small amusements of this afternoon, and last night,
+besides the invariable dog, pigs came into our house and snuffled at the
+faces of Charlie and Awoki, who lay outside of the mosquito netting. The
+path over the fences brought us to the bathing pool opening to the sea
+on one side only, where among black rocks the fresh water runs up to
+meet the tide, filling in the pool. There we went in and swam about,
+watched by many of the smaller villagers, girls and boys who were
+curious about the manners of the white people. And I was able to admire
+the skill, though unable to rival it, with which the native bathers
+draped themselves as they rose from the water, so that man or woman was
+clothed as he or she stepped on shore.
+
+By the time we returned, our mosquito nettings had been put aside, the
+mats swept out, and Awoki was bringing us the tea and brown bread,
+which, with such native food as we liked, made our meals. Fish there
+was and yam and taro, and some preparations of cocoanut. And there were
+cocoanuts for their milk for which I do not care, but there was no water
+yet, the water in the two pools near the sea, edged with black stones,
+being blackish until the change of tide should leave the spring to fill
+up by itself.
+
+Then our host came in and told us that we might rest that morning: that
+in the afternoon there would be a reception, a sort of review or
+“fantasia,” and presents of food would be given and speeches made, and
+songs and dances, the whole apparently included under the general title
+of the _talolo_ which was to be given us. So we waited peacefully; I
+sketched the girls in the neighbouring house, who were at work making
+the wreaths, the garlands, the complicated flower girdles that should be
+worn later in the day, and perhaps at night, for there were murmurs of a
+night _siva_. But I knew that our host was a church member, and that the
+_siva_ is not encouraged, neither the _siva_, “fa Samoa,” Samoan way,
+the Samoan _siva_, nor the _siva_ of the Europeans, which we call round
+dancing; for had not Faatulia, the wife of our leader, Seumanu, been
+threatened with excommunication for dancing in her innocence in European
+ways at the Consul’s Fourth of July ball. Meanwhile my models across the
+way in the shadow posed badly: they were always moving, or they came
+across the way to see what we
+
+[Illustration: SOLDIERS BRINGING PRESENTS OF FOOD IN MILITARY ORDER.
+IVA, IN SAVAII, SAMOA]
+
+were at. For somebody would stop in and look at us, and go give the
+news--a little pile of small boys and girls, three rows deep, sat
+respectfully under the bread-fruit trees watching us. But somehow or
+other the morning wore away, and by two o’clock we were told that all
+was ready, and that we had better come to the house chosen for us to
+occupy during the ceremony. Meanwhile, behind the trees that closed in
+the sight (for the village was placed, if I may so describe it, in an
+irregular open grove of many kinds of trees), we had seen for the last
+hour or so, dressed-up figures moving about; men with large green
+garlands, and green cinctures around their waists stiffened out and made
+larger by great folds of new bark-cloth, or by the fine wearing mats
+which are the most precious possession of the Samoan: some of them with
+guns carried with pride, for these were men who had been victorious and
+had beaten off the bullying German.
+
+And now we took our places in the circular house which looked like a
+pavilion, and which stood on the east of the large open space near the
+church. Opposite us perhaps some two hundred feet or more was another
+house, and others spread to right and left, leaving a large space ending
+on one side near the church, whose white façade had written on it its
+name, Lupeanoa, Noah’s Dove--enclosed by a little clump of trees to the
+left, where we could see figures moving with great swaying of leaf
+girdles and waist-mats--and the occasional beat of a war-drum came from
+further back.
+
+We were seated, all facing toward the open space, the next house filled
+with women and children: Seumanu and our host and other people of
+importance near us, and the rest of the house packed, but not too
+closely, behind us. Out on the grass and near trees people sat, mostly
+women. Others moved slowly to take their places, showing some vestiges
+of yesterday’s Sunday in their hats and long gowns.
+
+Then rushed across them a man all blacked, with a high white turban
+bound to his head, with green strips of leaves, a few leaves for a
+girdle, and waving a paddle. This was a friend of Seu’s--a funny man and
+joker, with a hand maimed or deformed--the deformed in such communities
+take things gayly and are jokers. He shrieked out things that caused
+shouts of laughter, and repeated “_Alofa_ Atamo!” From behind the church
+came out a mass of warriors, with banana leaves in their hair, and
+wearing girdles of the long green leaves of the _ti_: their backs were
+streaked with white lines following the spine and the ribs, and their
+faces and bodies were blacked. They carried their rifles high and
+discharged them into the air, then cantered past and away. Again the
+buffoon and again the warriors.
+
+Meanwhile in the distance, in the opening of trees, we could
+
+[Illustration: TAUPO AND ATTENDANTS DANCING IN OPEN AIR. IVA, IN SAVAII,
+SAMOA]
+
+see other warriors: behind them the drum and the little fife made a
+curious war music, and a peculiar shout and call with a short cadence
+came from the men. Unconcernedly a girl moved across the opening in
+front, intent on something else, and a hunch-backed dwarf, with enormous
+wide shoulders and long legs edged with green leaves, came to us and
+shouted “_alofa!_” Then six warriors again emerged from the grove,
+swinging their clubs, and marched back leaving the green space before us
+empty and silent.
+
+Slowly now, moving step by step, the mass of people behind the trees
+came out, so that they could be seen. In front of the men and of the
+music a girl, with black, shaggy waist garment, like thin fur, with long
+red necklaces of beads, and flowers in her hair, danced slowly to the
+tune, crossing and uncrossing her feet in a hopping step, and swinging
+with both hands a slight club in front of her, as a drum major might
+move his stick. Slowly she advanced, escorted by two men clad in mats
+and garlands, upon whose heads stood out a mass of yellow hair, like the
+cap of a grenadier, supported by circles of shells around the forehead.
+They also kept time to the music, but did not repeat the girl’s
+monotonous step that made the central point of interest to which the eye
+always returned.
+
+This girl was the _taupo_, the virgin of the village, dancing and
+marching in her official place at the head of the warriors--like
+Taillefer, the Norman minstrel who began the battle of Hastings. When
+she had moved slowly a few yards, one could see that behind in the crowd
+there were two other girls representing other villages, who also
+repeated these movements, while some of the men danced and others
+stepped slowly with crossed arms, holding their clubs and muskets. And
+the virgin danced forward and passed, and then up the slope toward us,
+followed by the other girls, and all saluted us; when the whole assembly
+in the field came up suddenly and threw down before us leaf baskets
+containing taro and yams, and cooked things wrapped up in leaves, and
+fish, and a number of little sucking pigs, with hind legs tied, that
+struggled up and down in the heaps of leaves. As each person threw his
+load down he stalked away gravely and took a seat somewhere in the
+distance. All became silent. I could see the _taupos_ moving off with
+that peculiar walk of the dancer who is resting. A warrior with high
+white turban of bark cloth sat down against a tree near us, without
+looking to the right or left, his gun against his shoulder, and smoked
+gravely, while a girl, his daughter perhaps, leaned affectionately
+against him. Meanwhile the sucking pigs had been escaping with hind-legs
+tied, and every now and then Charlie pulled them back into place.
+
+[Illustration: PRESENTATION OF GIFTS OF FOOD AT IVA, IN SAVAII, SAMOA]
+
+Then rose the orator, the _tulafale_, from the centre of the three rows
+of men now seated opposite to us, across the green space, and from two
+hundred feet away, addressed us slowly as he leaned upon his stick, and
+seemed not to raise his voice beyond what was absolute necessity. But
+the cadence always rose in the last words, so that the effect to the ear
+was of a distinct, emphatic assertion. Then he added, “This is all,” and
+sat down, apparently inattentive and indifferent. Our turn came next.
+Anai, the chief, translated to us the usual speech of great gratitude to
+America for having saved them from slavery and from the Germans, and
+compliments to us all, with prayers to God to have us in his holy
+keeping. Then a few things were suggested between us, and our political
+man said what was necessary, and alas, even more: for how can the United
+States promise anything--that may depend on sugar--or an election, or at
+any rate is merely a matter of barter? Anai stepped out from the house
+and repeated all this in Samoan, speaking also quite gently, with little
+raising of the voice. Nobody seemed to listen, nobody to care, but this
+was only apparent. All heard and had listened.
+
+Then our own men, who had been hidden somewhere, sprang upon the
+presents and sorted them: one of them stood up and called them out: so
+much of this, so much of that, to give full acknowledgment for
+liberality. Then another spring, and all was carried away, even to the
+struggling, sucking pigs that could not be made to understand.
+
+Momentary peace settled over everything, and we had begun to ask
+questions and to sketch, when we were told that now we should have a
+_siva_, that several villages would appear in it by their performers, as
+they had appeared in the military display. Men came up garlanded and
+cinctured in flowers and leaves, and sat down in double rows before us,
+some turning toward us, others away. Out of their number first one, then
+others arose and sat down again in order, fronting us, and the _siva_
+began; six handsome young men, singing and swaying about upon their
+hips, to a chant for which time was beaten behind them.
+
+The sun was setting; tired out and amused we walked back in the crowd,
+stopping to exchange _alofas_ with belated warriors who showed us their
+guns and occasional wounds, which with the Samoan idea of a joke they
+pretended had been caused by running against wire fences.
+
+We had seen for the first time a pageantry of savage war, in a soft
+light, in the most peaceful and idyllic of landscapes, so that it was
+hard to realize again that this was not all a theatre scene, a fête
+champêtre--a play in the open air. There was nothing to contradict this
+unreality but the marks of ugly gashes on the arms and chests of the men
+and the
+
+[Illustration: SOUTH SEA SEATED DANCE AT NIGHT, SAMOA]
+
+recall of the savage melody, which was undeniably a war song, requiring
+no explanation as to its meaning.
+
+In the house we ate our meal spread out on banana leaves, two of the
+_taupos_ coming in to help us by breaking the taro and yams, and tearing
+the fish and fowls. Then while wishing for nothing but bed and rest, and
+closed eyes, we were told that there would be a night _siva_ in our
+honour, and that other _taupos_ would figure in it. There was nothing to
+do but yield, and with each a _taupo_ to accompany us, we went back to
+the house that we had occupied in the afternoon. It was already half
+filled with people, occupying one side of it. I sat down against an
+outside post, alongside of my _taupo_, next to whom Seumanu reclined at
+length with another girl, an old acquaintance, near him, and I tried to
+keep awake while the _siva_ went on enthusiastically. At times I would
+start with some new figure or more picturesque effect, or when fresh
+fuel was added to the cocoanut fire that fit the scene within. Along the
+posts of the exterior sat chiefs watching the dance: behind them
+outside, a crowd of people in the moonlight, and many heads of
+youngsters. Occasionally a chief would say, “Some one a cigarette or a
+light,” and a boy darted into the house through the dancers, plunged for
+the light, and returned with it to the great man who had asked.
+
+When the _taupos_, big and good natured, had danced, we drowsily asked
+them to sit alongside of us, while the _siva_ of the men went on.
+Between two, as I became more and more sleepy, I was fortunate in
+finding comfort and support from my first neighbour, against whose big
+shoulder I reclined, my arm supported upon the weight of her knees--all
+mine might have been thrown upon her massive form without apparent
+inconvenience. A gentle tap now and then, and a gentle _alofa_ told me
+that I was all right, and could go to sleep while making believe to look
+on. But the girls, drowsy as they were, were appreciative of the men’s
+dances, and so was Seu, who called out over and over again, _mālie_
+(bravo) as if he had not seen thousands of _sivas_, which now, having
+become “missionary,” he does not attend. I knew that I was interested in
+the intervals of sleep, but all has faded into a sort of disconnected
+dream. I can only remember getting out into the bright moonlight, and
+that it made a silver haze outside during the dances. We had been
+obliged toward midnight to make a speech, with thanks, protesting the
+fatigue of travel as an excuse for not remaining. The Samoans will sit
+up all night, especially in their favourite moonlight: they can sleep
+during the day, and apparently always do so. Around our house, until we
+had blown out the light, and even for some time after, rows of people
+sat watching us in the light of the moon: the people sauntered about, or
+sat in the shade of the trees, with sharp-edged leaves that made the
+scene look, as usual, like the stage-setting of a fairy opera.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next morning we were to leave for the next important place,
+Sapapali, the home of the Malietoa, the princes who have been for a long
+time the principal chiefs of these islands, and who are now represented
+by the present king. This is a rude definition; as I have told you
+elsewhere, the question of chiefhood and sovereignty here is one not
+easily represented or defined by our words. At Sapapali, the ancestral
+home, we should be received by Aigā, the King’s niece, and consequently
+a young person of the highest rank, indeed, I suppose the greatest lady
+of the land. With us this would be the Queen or the Royal Princess, or
+the heir to the throne. But here blood and descent are all and in the
+direct line. This young person was next to Malietoa as being of
+sufficient blood.
+
+Our arrival was to happen about noon, so that, as in Samoan phrase, it
+was only about half an hour’s walk, we were to leave punctually at ten
+o’clock. Early rising took us again to the black pool surrounded by high
+trees, where two of us bathed, watched and escorted by two little
+damsels with whom the other one of us flirted. I myself was too much
+occupied with the difficult question of keeping on, while swimming, the
+fathom of cloth they call lavalava; and afterward of adjusting it in
+the water, after swimming for it when it had floated away, and then on
+coming out, receiving dry cloth with one hand and putting off the wet
+one. But I found out how one begins in the corner. Later in the morning
+it had grown hot, as we left pretty Iva, and made our way through broad
+or narrow roads, to Sapapali. The old difficulty again amused me; we
+could not walk in proper Samoan order; sometimes one of us, sometimes
+another was in front, while properly, all of us chiefs should have led,
+and the attendants followed at respectful distances. So that again Awoki
+would canter on in front of the chiefs: meanwhile Anai told us things of
+local information, pointing out where the road narrowed, the place where
+had stood in older times, a famous tree, a cocoanut. Among its branches
+the Malietoa, who first became converted later to Christianity, used to
+conceal himself and lasso or noose such pretty _taupos_ or maidens as
+passing might strike his fancy. One of these had been the grandmother of
+the young lady whom we were going to visit. While the party talked the
+scandal over I remained a while by a deep well near the shore, and
+watched a handsome Samoan ride his horse barebacked to the water, to the
+sand and distant trees of a little promontory.
+
+When I hurried forward, the party had gone far ahead, and had arrived
+before me. I crossed the rocky bed of a dry river, upon whose edge stood
+houses, and going up the hill before me, came upon a high open space
+with trees far scattered, and several large black tombs made of stones
+piled together in regular rectangular form; and in the centre of the
+green a house high-placed which instinct told me was the guest-house,
+our destination. Part of the mat curtains were down opposite the central
+posts: I entered by the open side, and saw Adams and the Consul seated
+next to a young woman in half European dress (that is to say with a
+corsage); and on the other side of her Seumanu and Anai. I entered and
+sat down with some hesitation next to the Consul, and after being
+presented to her ladyship looked about me. Opposite, the posts of the
+pretty house all adorned with flowers had each a chief, as a sort of
+sitting caryatid or buttress. And they were big and splendid; that was
+the Greek frieze of which I was telling you. Between each massive
+figure, of Ajax and Nestor and Ulysses and Agamemnon, appeared from time
+to time some little boy, whose small person made them look more ample,
+as the boys or angels of Michael Angelo’s Sistine Chapel make sibyls and
+prophets look more colossal by comparison. Then _kava_ was brought in
+and made solemnly, when in stepped a woman and sat herself beside the
+_kava_ attendant who dried the wisp. A moment later, and her presence
+was explained. She, it appears, had the hereditary right to “divide the
+_kava_,” and had come to claim it. When the heavy clapping of hands
+announced that the drink was ready, she called out the name of Aigā, to
+whom the first bowl was presented as to the greatest personage. Then to
+one of the guests, then to the next relative of the Malietoa, then to a
+guest, then to a chief, and so on, contrariwise to what we had seen
+before, where we as guests were helped first. You see we were at court,
+in the presence of royalty.
+
+When the ceremonies were over, we chatted with Aigā, who spoke English,
+and whose amiability pleased me. She was embarrassed and shy, and
+struggled like some girl, unaccustomed to society, to say some proper
+things. But the grace of her diffidence was all the greater when one
+noticed the security of position indicated by her voice when speaking in
+a low distinct tone to others. At length we rose and adjourned to the
+neighbouring house, where the feast had been set forth. This we were
+allowed to dispense with under plea of a late breakfast, but for form’s
+sake we looked at each separate thing, spread out in a long line of
+Samoan good fare, on green banana leaves that stretched across the
+house. Then we _papalagi_, (foreigners), returned to a Western soup
+kindly prepared by Aigā, and our own bread and tea, and sardines, in
+which fare Aigā joined, and talked to us and we to her, all stretched at
+full length upon the mats.
+
+Then our lady disappeared with some little show of embarrassment, and
+had I known how much it cost her, I should have sympathized with her
+sooner in the annoyance of her having to prepare her toilette for the
+great official reception (_talolo_), which was to be the next function
+of the afternoon--the nearest house was the scene of the dressing of
+herself and her maidens. Through the dropped mats of the openings, girls
+and women kept plunging in and out, carrying in dress mats, and beads
+and garlands of flowers, and entangled, complicated cinctures and belts
+of fruits and flowers, and woven bark--and bringing out the news of how
+the dresses looked to the loungers sitting at a distance outside. And
+once I saw carried in a fierce, cruel headgear that our lady was to
+wear; the great helmet of blond hair, set with sparkling mirrors and
+tall filaments, to be bound tight with silvery shells around an aching
+head.
+
+Then we went out to sit and wait on the other side of our guest-house,
+in the shade toward the sea, while long shadows covered the great space,
+and the sun itself became veiled and lit the scene with a tempered light
+more like that of our northern summer. One might almost have imagined an
+afternoon in some favoured, more poetic point in our coast at home, say
+Newport on some exceptional evening. The great _mālie_ spread out
+further than the reserved ground of any of our residences, and its edge
+dropped suddenly to the sea before us. Once or twice a thatched house
+stood on the verge of this rolling green, all carefully smoothed and
+weeded like a lawn. To the left and right were small groves like the
+wings of a theatre. Far off to one side curved the bay, with palm trees
+stepping gradually into the sunlight. The sea was blue and green before
+us, and faintly shining; far off in the haze of sunlight were Upolu and
+Apolima--spots of blue. Nothing broke this space to the furthest dim
+horizon, except where on the edge of the cliffs stood one hut through
+which shone the colour of the sea and the foliage of the tree
+overshadowing it.
+
+Then our party came up and sat about us on the slope of the grass about
+the house, and from the groves about us came the sounds of the drum-beat
+and the call of war music. From behind the house, in a great circle, ran
+out in a sort of dance, our hostess in full gala costume: naked to the
+waist, kilted with costly mats held on by flower girdles--on her head
+the great military cap. She held a little toy club in her hand; on
+either side, with heavier strides, two of the giants, her attendant
+chiefs, dressed and undressed in the same way, repeated her movements.
+Some thirty paces behind her, two of her maidens followed these leaders,
+turning round in a great circle of dance, spreading out their arms, and
+the wide folds of their waist-cloths, and the lines of their garlands
+were flung out by
+
+[Illustration: AITUTAGATA. THE HEREDITARY ASSASSINS OF KING MALIETOA.
+SAPAPALI, SAVAII, SAMOA]
+
+their motion. In and out of the little grove danced back and forth a
+crowd of armed men, who threw up their clubs and caught them again.
+
+Right in the middle of the green before us, threading their path between
+the princess and her girls, crouching to the ground, crawled or ran,
+bending low, three men, all blackened, with green cinctures of leaves
+wound round their heads, and short tails of white bark hanging down out
+of their girdles. These were the king’s “murderers,” relics of a bygone
+time when savage chiefs, like European sovereigns, used licensed crime
+to rid themselves of enemies--or friends--against whom they could not
+wage open war.
+
+These whom we saw were only on parade. All this served but to recall a
+former power and its historical descent. But the ancestors of these
+official murderers of hereditary ancestry had been actively employed. At
+the whispered word of the chief they tracked the destined victim,
+risking their lives in the attack, and plunged into him their peculiar
+weapon, the _foto_, the barb of the Sting Ray, which breaking in the
+wound and poisonous withal, meant inevitable death.
+
+They were called, as I make out, Aitutagata (Devil people). The display
+lasted but a short time; hardly more than a few circlings by Aigā and
+her people, then on a sudden all seemed to come up about us, and the
+assemblage broke up into groups. Aigā bore with apparent confusion our
+compliments. She was anxious to get away.
+
+There was something inextricably touching in the case of this bashful
+young person--indoctrinated with our ideas to some extent--apparently
+realizing how we looked upon the scene, how different her dress and
+actions from those of her white friends and sisters, and yet carrying it
+all out to suit her position of princess and hostess; what was due to
+us, and to the traditions of her race.
+
+With evening came the need of change, and I wandered down to the
+unfinished church begun by the Malietoa, of whom I told you. The massive
+foundations of coral rock, against which the tide was washing, are
+finished, as well as part of the walls of the church. In front is a
+little island, planted with trees: to the left, at once rocks and high
+trees; on the right, the surf broke again in a little cove with houses
+and palm trees, standing high against the setting sun. Far off the
+point, the outline of Apolima, more than ever like a submerged volcano
+cone, and the long white line of the surf; and near me, almost under me,
+a dark moving space in the water, where the tide washed more uneasily,
+the submerged tomb of a woman called Siga (white), a former wife of
+Seumanu. There was something that made one dream, in this grave, now
+remembered, now forgotten, a reminder that all memory can
+
+[Illustration: BUTTRESSES OF THE FIRST CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND TOMB OF SIGA
+IN THE REEF. SAPAPALI, SAMOA]
+
+be but temporary, and that the real end is where all ends and is
+forgotten, and where, as the Spaniard says, “Dios empiezo.” I sat and
+sketched a little, seated on the great foundation. Children and women
+crowded around, and climbed up the space in front, where the great steps
+should have been, and filed all around the projecting edge that runs
+about the church. When I had done I rose, and turning the corner of the
+narrow ledge, found that I had made a group of frightened prisoners.
+Then I went to the deep pool near by, where the sea runs into the little
+fresh water, and was smiled at by the good-natured face, just being
+washed, of one of the murderers by inheritance, who had figured all
+blackened that afternoon, with green leaves and a white hanging tail.
+His wickedness was being washed off with his blacking: or rather, his
+wickedness was all archæological, kept up as a proof of the former
+dignity and power of the chief, and of the obedience of his men. For
+these people seem never to have been grossly wicked or cruel; as I told
+you, they were not cannibals or whatever they had that way, ages ago,
+was condemned as bad. They have even been unwilling to exterminate their
+enemies in their many wars: and when they could put an end to the
+German, in this last war, they stopped their killing the moment the
+enemy was beaten, as they imagined. An element of strong good nature
+seems to persist at the bottom of their character.
+
+That evening we had a _siva_, like other _sivas_, which I am unable to
+describe, because I was so sleepy that my memory has not held over. I
+lurked in the dark, behind our hostess, who did not dance. Her
+missionary training and her position were against it, I suppose, but
+also, perhaps, she did not dance well, or as well as others. Afterward
+she lingered with us, in the late evening, as did the _taupo_ who had
+danced. With them were her two girls, attendants, and one or two of the
+elder women, along with some of our men who acted as chorus. Then
+“quelque diable le poussant,” nothing would do for one of our own party
+but that he should tease and beg for a dance with more undressing. The
+older women seemed to enjoy the notion, which reminded them, perhaps, of
+old days when they were able to be naughty, and had performed all sorts
+of antics late at night, when the elders and the great people were gone
+to bed. So gradually, from one dance to another, we came to one in which
+the performers disrobe entirely for a moment, using some words that
+represent and lay claim to the same beauty which the Venus of Naples,
+she whom we call Venus Callipyge, attempts to look at, and certainly
+shows. But it was all innocent and childish--the _taupo_ danced it, and
+the young girls accompanied her with one older woman--and Aigā laughed
+and was amused, but hid away behind us, ashamed. Then we made her dance
+for
+
+[Illustration: PRACTISING THE SEATED DANCE AT NIGHT. SAMOA]
+
+a moment the usual dance, I say we, but it was not I--and as she seemed
+to think that even that was dreadful enough--we parted with some
+discomfort. I foresaw trouble, but whether our fair friend was not as
+much annoyed by the relentless compliments paid to the beauty of others,
+is more than I can make out, being a man.
+
+In the morning we trotted off a few miles, to this present place
+Sapotulafai, the headquarters of the great orator, and which is the
+great political centre. We had a great dinner, at which I sat next to
+the _taupo_ of the adjacent village, a giantess, whose name is not
+insignificant, though people here are not apparently named, any more
+than are people anywhere else, by name to suit them. Charlie interpreted
+her name for me saying, “When you are on top of a cocoanut, and the wind
+blows hard, and you are afraid of falling off, that is _Lilia_.” You
+have seen a palm tree in a gale, and you can imagine the picturesqueness
+of this definition of fear, in the wild swinging of the waves of the
+branches.
+
+We had a _siva_ in the afternoon, when a young chief danced with the
+_taupo_ of his village, to whom he is engaged: She gave him some
+occasional affectionate whacks of reproof at some remarks that distance
+did not make clear; and we had a great “_talolo_” with the speech of the
+great _tulafale_ of Samoa, and then a return speech, which was listened
+to with some curiosity. Some devil inspired me to urge our
+representative speech-maker to discuss the severe and mistaken view of
+dancing taken up by the missionaries--I mean the brown clergy. They had
+done all sorts of good, but they were crowding too much out in their
+zeal, and the white missionaries were not so excessive--and so forth.
+And Adams had made a remark that seems to me a deep one. Something more
+is needed for these people of few occupations. If they are to live
+to-day they are destined to a putting aside of the excitement of their
+little wars, and they need some outlet in games that exercise them, and
+keep up their appreciation of physical life and excellence. Anyhow,
+these views were launched out at a risk, and in a few days, without a
+doubt, will have gone all around Samoa.
+
+My own reason was a nearer one. It grieved me to think that Aigā should
+risk her church position, because she was polite according to Samoan
+etiquette, and that the other girls, who did the same, to wit, gave us
+dances, at the request of their fathers and superiors, should be placed
+between divided duties. This had been an oppression to the mind ever
+since we came; and perhaps after all, we may have done well.
+
+In the evening, our own _taupo_, Faauli the daughter of the orator, gave
+us a _siva_; she danced, and danced well, and so did Lilia, the daughter
+of a great chief, a Catholic, and then we had the other _taupo_, who
+danced again with the young chief to whom she was engaged. His dance was
+certainly amusing to the imagination. The chorus was singing about
+himself, in his honour, and he performed the steps, if I may so express
+it. He and another with red girdles and black, furry loin-cloths, and
+red leaves in the hair, and red bead necklaces, danced with the _taupo_
+herself, dressed all in red and purple leaves. The dances were a dance
+of the hammer, and the dance of the cocoanut, and in the glitter of the
+palm-fire, the ballet of our fairy opera. And satiated with dances I
+have tried to be quiet and to sketch until now.
+
+
+Oct. 30th.
+
+We shall leave to-morrow. I feel tired, a little saddened; I suspect
+that sleeping on the floors at night, in draughts from the back-country,
+and wandering occasionally, in the midday, among the hot thickets, may
+have given me some little fever. The German manager of one of the
+plantations was telling me a little while ago that there was danger in
+this, though nothing like what he had seen in other countries. On that
+account, he had lifted the flooring of the houses, built for his men,
+Solomon or Marshall islanders, whose health was of course of importance
+to him, during their contract time. After all this care, they will be
+taken back, perhaps, to the wrong place, and I suppose, eaten by their
+fellows, if they happen to land on the wrong spot, or at some
+neighbouring village.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This afternoon we went to Sapapali, to take leave of Aigā who had been
+so kind to us, and who seemed almost hurt at our not remaining. We found
+her apparently sad and troubled, and I regretted that we had been
+accompanied by the other Taupos of our locality. Not that they were not
+kept in their places by the greater lady, for this rather timid and
+amiable person knows perfectly well how to speak to people who are
+socially below her, and nothing has interested me more than her various
+shades of inflection in addressing others. But something has evidently
+annoyed her, whether the break with the church on account of the _siva_,
+or her girls having been indiscreet, or her having made some mistake
+that I do not exactly understand. She was much teased by one of us about
+some “tendresse de cœur,” and that may have annoyed her. And the praise
+given to her little girls, and an attempt to get them away from her
+control may not have been pleasant. When I had seen the rest of the
+company pass by my sketching place, and I knew that the visit was over,
+I went back alone to her house and found her among her girls prostrate
+and in tears. But she came out to me, so as to be alone, and she spoke
+as if we should misjudge her from Sunday-school views and not understand
+that her parade at the head of her warriors, all undressed, was an
+official duty to us. And then bade me sweetly good-bye--and but a moment
+ago my curtain mats have been pushed aside by a messenger who has come
+all this way at night to bring me flowers from her.
+
+So that I am not in cause: I leave it to you to read. I feel almost as
+if what I were writing to you were indiscreet enough. Remember that
+there is little privacy here, and that the houses are half open, so that
+one may almost rush in. In fact, were it not for the complication of
+human nature, I cannot see how there could be any privacy. There is
+privacy somehow or other, but not in our way. Outside the house there
+may be ways of saying things, inside and out there are dictionaries of
+signs, but they all have the most wonderful way of hearing, and there
+are always eyes everywhere. I have remarked that since I have cultivated
+the habit of sitting on the ground, I see more of everything, and I seem
+to be able to watch more easily. But, as I said, privacy is relative:
+nothing has struck me as more Samoan than an elopement which I almost
+witnessed. The young woman ran away with some young man, along the
+beach, in the presence of hundreds of people who, it is true, were not
+exactly watching her. She was just as publicly caught and brought back,
+cuffed sufficiently and scolded by her older sister, and I see her
+occasionally, in a neighbour’s house, looking not so repentant as on the
+first afternoon of her punishment. As I said, I am tired and sad--and I
+wish you good-night across the ocean and land.
+
+
+At Home in Vaiala,
+Nov. 4th.
+
+The end of our malaga was not so pleasant. When we left Sapotulafai last
+week, I was ill and fevered, and suffered quite a little during our long
+trip of fourteen hours at sea. We had to row it. There was no wind, and
+our men, never over-energetic, had been up all night in the last
+enjoyment of social delights. Once indeed, Seu scornfully took an oar,
+but even with that, twelve good hours’ rowing is not bad work, and we
+got back in the evening at eight, having left Savaii at six o’clock in
+the morning. The light and colour were as usual: even with fever I could
+occasionally see how beautiful all was, but I managed to sleep, and do
+not remember anything in particular, unless it be the long-continued
+song of the men rowing----
+
+    “Lelei. Apoli-ma!
+     O-le-e--O-le-e!”
+
+
+Vaiala in Upolu, Nov. 13th.
+
+Yesterday, on Faatulia’s invitation, we rode over to the Papa-seea, the
+Sliding Rock: only a little distance, some hour and a half from where we
+are, so that by eight o’clock or so we were out in the rain, mounted on
+the horses seared up with difficulty for the early start. Mine was a
+horse owned by the boy Poki, who is an owner of horses--he has now
+three, and his food for them is given by the village common. His still
+more youthful friend, Sopo, hired his horse to Atamo and somebody else
+fitted out Awoki and Charley who went with us. Samau, the _tulafale_,
+and another of our crew were to go ahead and carry some European food
+and our painting and photographing kit. As we passed along the beach,
+which is, as you know, the street of Apia, we met Meli Hamilton and
+Faatulia and Fanua, and little Meli Meredith, all mounted. Gathering
+them together, under rather a gentle rain, we turned toward the woods
+behind the town and cantered over a dyke, through a mangrove swamp,
+where formerly must have been some coral inlet; then past some villages,
+a few huts, and then into the forest. This is no description to you, but
+perhaps I can interest you by letting you understand that the delicate
+form of the great novelist, Mr. Stevenson, passes up or down this road,
+of necessity, on his way to his Spanish Castle in the mountains. So that
+when he begins to write South Sea stories, and is obliged to use local
+colour, you shall probably admire some beautiful description of all or
+part of the road.
+
+In the woods we overtook our men, and dear Fagalo and Sué, whose bare
+legs were paddling in the rain. A little path led through woods all
+overgrown, in a narrow zigzag, over fallen trunks and under branches
+beneath which we bent. The light fell through green high up, upon green
+all around us; innumerable small trees and bushes, and occasionally
+great trees whose trunks ended in high buttresses of rooting sharp and
+thin, as if the trunk had been ravined. These are the trees which in the
+old story-books of travel were supposed to furnish a ready-made
+planking. Over all grew lianas and vines whose great long stems hung in
+the air above us, or low enough to be pushed aside as we rode.
+Notwithstanding the several varieties of growth--the Samoan wild orange
+with double leaf and prickly stem, whose fruit was used in old times as
+a soap to wash with, or the Fuafua, with broad leaves--the effect was
+not unlike the appearance of our own forests, had it not been for the
+lianas, and the occasional sheafs of wild banana that swung against our
+horses’ heads. For an hour we went along in a scattered file, the
+sunlight occasionally dropping in upon the great stillness around us.
+Rarely a bird sung. Once we heard the running of a river. Then we came
+to a stopping place; all got off; the girls
+
+[Illustration: THE BOY SOPO. SAMOA]
+
+skilfully ungirthing and unsaddling their horses, and tying them up to
+the branches with long ropes. Over the trees that sloped down below us,
+we could now see the harbour of Apia, from one end to the other, and we
+kindled a fire of dead wood, to show the anxious friends at our end of
+the bay that we had arrived. There are three waterfalls in this little
+opening to which our narrow path had led us, and it leads no further and
+nowhere else. Of the three falls, each divided from the others by wide
+platforms of rock, the upper one is low and does not count. It is the
+second and the third that are “slipping rocks.” The water rushes over
+them in one or many falls, according to the season, and in some of the
+channels the surface has become so slippery with moss that all one has
+to do is to sit and be whirled into the pool below. We had just begun to
+look down into the little hollow, edged on one side by a high rock upon
+which ferns and vines and green bananas find a scanty foothold, when
+Fagalo, throwing off her upper covering, seated herself on the edge of
+the current, and in an instant had slipped off. And a laugh from below
+echoed above as she rose from the pool and swam to the shore. By the
+time that we had clambered down to meet her, she had come up and rushed
+down again followed by Sué. The sight was charming: the pretty girls,
+with arms thrown out and bodies straight for balance, their wet clothes
+driven tightly to the hips in the rush of the water, had a look of gold
+against the gray that brought up Clarence King’s phrase about Hawaii and
+the “old-gold girls that tumbled down waterfalls.” In the plunge and the
+white foam, the yellow limbs did indeed look like goldfish in a
+blue-green pool. Further down there is a small rush of water into a
+little hollow in the rock; the two girls in their play filled it easily,
+like mermaids in too small a tank. Then we had lunch on banana leaves,
+to which our wet friends contributed the shrimps that they had caught,
+accidently as it were, and without thinking, in these moments of
+“abandon.” We had also a mess of _palolo_ looking like very dark green
+spinach, darker than the green leaves in which it was wrapped. Adams
+insisted that this dish tasted quite like “foie gras,” which he also
+said was quite as nasty a preparation.
+
+To explain what _palolo_ is I should have told you of a little
+expedition we made one morning last week, just on the return from our
+malaga. But I was ill and had suffered too much from native food to
+write any more upon similar subjects. Even all my liking for Meli
+Hamilton and my admiration for the fullness and redness of her lips, and
+for the gleam of her teeth, could scarcely reconcile me to the wriggling
+of the great tree worms through which she crunched so gayly and
+healthily at our last great Samoan dinner.
+
+[Illustration: THE PAPA-SEEA, OR SLIDING ROCK. FAGALO SLIDING WATERFALL.
+VAIALA, SAMOA]
+
+At the waterfall, after our lunch, our men had theirs, and they sat with
+heads all wrapped about with leaves, while the rain came down upon them;
+for if there is anything that a Samoan detests it is getting his hair
+wet. The rest of him does not matter. Meanwhile we smoked under our
+umbrellas, pretty Meli Meredith half under mine, and Meli Hamilton under
+a big banana leaf. For most of the others rain did not matter. They had
+either gone into the water or were preparing to do so by sitting quietly
+in the current. Otaota had prepared for the slide, and was stretched out
+in the run of the waterfall that now swept over, now left uncovered her
+extended limbs; for she leaned out upon one elbow, and dipped a hand in
+the water, scattering it upon the other girls in a lazy way. Otaota was
+“missionary” that day, and would not uncover the lovely torso about
+which I have told you so much. Then the sun came out in a lingering,
+gentle way, as if it dripped down from the sky, and with it all the
+girls went over; Fanua and Meli Meredith and Otaota. And as we looked
+down upon them, they swam over and hid behind the branchings of the
+vines like so many nymphs of streams, their faces and arms glancing like
+gold out of the green. Near them one of our men made a deep red in the
+water by contrast. And now Awoki, with much hesitation, prepared, put on
+the native lavalava, and tried his luck. Yellow he is to us, but he
+looked white and pallid among all those browns and reds.
+
+The whole thing was catching, and had we stayed longer we too should
+have been over, though Adams said that just then our dignity forbade it.
+But our feeling of dignity had been helped by Meli Hamilton’s telling us
+that the last time she had gone over the fall, she had struck badly
+against a rock, and so had her companion, the navy officer; so that with
+the rain beginning again, horses were bridled and saddled, and we all
+started for a wet ride in the wet woods, down the slippery path which we
+had to take in single file. Fagalo rode with Charley, on Sopo’s little
+nag, and the last thing I saw of Otaota was her bare legs over the back
+of Awoki’s horse; he sat behind, his arms around her, gallantly
+protecting all that remained of her with his little waterproof. And we
+came home tired and wet, but having spent a pleasant childlike day with
+grown-up children.
+
+
+PALOLO
+
+Vaiala in Upolu, Nov. 14th.
+
+I broke off yesterday telling you about _palolo_. I think my words ended
+by telling you that even all my liking and admiration for Meli Hamilton
+would scarcely reconcile me to the wriggling of the great tree worms
+which she crunched at our
+
+[Illustration: GIRL SLIDING DOWN WATERFALL. BANANA LEAF AROUND HER BODY.
+SAMOA]
+
+last Samoan dinner. Mrs. Lieutenant Parker became very white as she saw
+her and I handed her rapidly something or other, brandy or whiskey, to
+help the occasion.
+
+_Palolo_ has no such horrors. For it we have not had far to go. Only
+just out into the reefs before us, when, in the early morning before the
+dawn, we rowed out a few yards to find a concourse of people, in boats
+and canoes, scooping up with eager hands thin hairlike worms that
+swarmed in the water within the special hollows of the coral reef.
+
+We were more or less ready for the appearance of these little creatures
+who, on a certain day of the year and the moon, appear suddenly with the
+dawn and disappear with the sunrise until another year. We were
+expecting this arrival, which never fails. As I said, it is looked for
+ahead; it has its own laws; the scientific ones fail because we have
+calculated by our dates, instituted for other reasons than the life of
+the _palolo_. Our Samoan friends are in the secret. We white people
+compute that the _palolo_ is due at dead low water in the night of the
+third quarter of the moon nearest the first of November, but that
+reckoning involves Solar and Lunar months, as I intimated.
+
+Our good friends here have been whispering to us and telling us that
+this was to happen and they know how to be prepared for it. Certain
+plants, certain shrubs blossom; and then you know that the time of the
+_palolo’s_ month is drawing near. There are signs in the heavens, and
+the moon helps. It is, I think, in its third quarter that the event
+takes place. Somebody with us, perhaps several people (because our
+village contains important and learned people) mark time during the year
+by counting pebbles, and green feathers, and leaves, up to such and such
+a day, so that, at a certain moment, our friends can tell us that the
+_palolo_ is due next morning.
+
+The third year one has to count a different number of days, but the
+creatures down below in the coral know exactly to the minute. The night
+is watched through, our people are all ready, are warned at the proper
+moment. People from far away are also ready. Our friends have found each
+one some proper hole which may be more or less lucky later. We watched
+the dawn coming upon us, lighting the breakers on the edge of the reef.
+When the breakers withdraw it is slack tide and we watch, and our
+friends watch, more intently than we can, the absolute calm of the
+water. Then, of a sudden, somebody calls out, “the _palolo_ is there!”
+or something like it, and then this empty water is full of long lines of
+what seems to be worms, which you scoop up, not so anxiously as those
+who care.
+
+A short time, an hour they say but it seemed to me shorter, the sun is
+up over the edge and the worm is gone until next year.
+
+It is nothing but something like the thinnest of little seaweed a few
+inches long, and you have to accept as a fact that this wriggling mass
+is made up of worms.
+
+I wish I could fairly describe the place and scene but you can make it
+up for yourself. The scene is one of busy struggle. It is a matter of
+food, it is true, also a festival of amusement apart from the picnic
+side. Very interesting was the eagerness shown in the catching, by the
+few white girls born here, whom I watched. They paddled about, jumped
+out with bare feet on to the jagged coral like any Polynesian, but with
+that seriousness and ferocity of our race, so different from the easy
+good-natured suppleness of the brown skins who seem to be part of the
+nature around them.
+
+The dark transparent water inside the reefs, the rosy colouring of the
+dawn, the splendour of the sunrise which is at length over land and
+water, would have been beautiful enough even without this animation of
+human element. But I have not dared taste the _palolo_ even as made up
+yesterday with cocoanut milk. I have come to the point of a revolt
+against almost all of the food, from cocoanut milk to live fish and
+slugs.
+
+
+Vaiala in Upolu, Sunday, Nov. 23, 1890.
+
+The end of the last week has been filled with festivity. Seu has been
+giving a great feast, and this has been a very serious matter. We have
+seen other feasts before, but none so successful and so great. The
+presents given to Seu and Faatulia, or rather to Vao, their little
+daughter, in whose name the feast was given, were larger in number than
+we had yet heard of. Among vast quantities of other things were
+hecatombs of pigs--in prose fact, three hundred and twenty-five--over
+two thousand rolls of _tappa_, and several dozen of “fine mats.” All the
+neighbouring houses were in requisition for the guests, who kept coming
+from various quarters during the whole week, and especially from Savaii,
+where is the stronghold of Faatulia’s family. Faatulia wore the anxious
+look of the hostess on her kindly face, and Seu looked worried, a thing
+I should have thought impossible. But as I go on you will see how
+serious it all is, however gratifying it may be to pride of position.
+The house of Seu was charmingly decorated with _tappa_, even to the
+floor, so as to remind me, but I own, more pleasantly, of our most
+æsthetic studios. In others, there were few European visitors, and more
+packing of Samoans. In one other especially, I think loaned by the King,
+a collection of _taupos_ from various localities filled the space by the
+posts, so as to make the hut look like a basket of flowers. Far in the
+central penumbra, two female giants sat all decorated, and around them
+the backs and waists of the others looked like a garden of dahlias and
+brown skin. For some were “faa Samoa”--others were more or less
+“_papalagi_” foreigners. In that case, however, their waist coverings
+were amusing. Some had corselets of leaves lapping over like Etruscan or
+Greek plate armour. Others had coloured netting, others had _tappa_ cut
+out with various openings, like some heathen dream of “insertions” (I
+think women call it so). One girl had a corselet of cut paper of many
+colours, making her look like a flower-bed, her oiling giving to the
+paper a look of leafage. There were dresses of the usual variety and in
+one case a large number of flower petals caught up one by one in the
+locks of the hair. In another the whole hair had been filled with little
+light blue bits of paper cut like petals. Mind you, all this was
+beautiful, funny as it was, and upon the green grass background, made,
+as I said, a basket of flowers. The brown skins that were not covered
+glowed like fruit. In perfect taste, for even garlands are gawky
+compared to the ineffable logic that the human frame carries with it,
+one good girl had no covering to her body, and this savage from the
+farther back country had a face that looked like the Italians’. In the
+shadow, playing with a bambino, she made a madonna. The reason of it
+came to me suddenly--her hair was down upon the forehead in the two
+large folds that we associate with the Italian way, and a great look of
+seriousness was added to the disdainful kindness of the face. Behind
+her head the hair was full, in a mass whose colour was blond with
+liming, and made a great capital for the column of her torso seen with
+arms hidden in front. Of her I have made some studies, and posed her for
+photographs, and later, on the next night, she gave us a _siva_ in our
+own house; Adams and I having duly called upon her, as if we were young
+men, with five loaves of bread, and two tins of salmon, as is the proper
+thing for youthful admirers like ourselves.
+
+Around this beehive of yellow and black were assembled matrons and
+children and boys, waiting for the later food, of which they as
+relatives would have the larger part.
+
+Far off, in another part of the grounds, Lima, known as John Adams,
+presided over the food; and in front of him a vast mass of pigs and
+bananas and taro, etc., etc., littered the ground. John told us about it
+in a high-pitched voice, with an accent that brought back indefinable
+associations. Whom did I know of the old school with such perfect
+intonation in English, and a diction that implied the gentleman by
+accepted tradition? Could it have been some old officer of the
+navy--could it have been some far-back Englishman or antique Southerner?
+But John, even in his exterior manner, brought back all the feeling that
+we do not speak English as well to-day as once was done, and that our
+refinement of manner and accent has disappeared.
+
+The feast had begun; under long stretches of _tappa_ supported by poles,
+guests were assembled around the tables of banana leaf, while we
+wandered about, made prudent by former disasters in diet. It was
+pleasant to see the triumphant carrying of great pigs by the young men,
+garlanded and cinctured: the platforms of sugar-cane and taro disposed
+in a show, as if growing in some impossible yet graceful way--the taro
+like grapes on a vine.
+
+Then we wandered back to our _taupos_ in their home. They were feasting
+in a circle around the banana trays. Two men were hewing the pigs into
+segments, with the _swish_ so well described by my Chinese philosopher,
+Chuang Tseu, in his chapter of the “Rising Clouds”--if that be the one.
+Two older women stalked about amid the food, who caught these chunks of
+meat and tossed them to the _taupos_. Occasionally they varied this by
+assorted lots of taro or cooked food. Do not suppose by this that these
+vigorous maidens were bolting their food. No, all this was Samoan and
+communistic; no one lives for himself here, but for the lot. These good
+girls were hard at work, passing all this to old women with baskets, and
+two young people who sat on the edge of the hut with feet outside,
+impatiently urged them. “Wait,” they said, “wait; our turn in a moment,”
+and amid laughter and chattering and long reproofs of the old women, the
+food came to them in turn. I suppose the _taupos_ managed to get
+something, but if they did, they deserved it for the work they had in
+passing the food away. This is Samoa--where a gift is shared or given
+away. When we called later on one of the _taupos_, as I told you, and
+carried our little gifts, half of them were at once given to the owners
+of the house, and the other half to some chief who happened to be
+present. All this as a matter of course, with fair counting, as in a
+commercial firm. Even the cigar accepted by the fair one, passed in a
+few seconds to her nearest neighbour. Some one was telling me yesterday,
+of having given a cigar a few days ago to a Samoan, who had just bitten
+it, when another passing asked for it. Thereupon it was handed away, as
+a matter of course. “Why did you give that?” the white man said.
+
+“Because he asked,” said the Samoan.
+
+“But is there no further reason?”
+
+“Yes; I might some day want a cigar, and if he had one, I should ask.”
+The community of friends and relatives is a sort of bank where you
+deposit and draw as you may need. So for Seu’s food: almost all is given
+to him. It is given out, sent away if people are not there; a procession
+of people carrying things from the feast, filed along all the afternoon.
+
+After the feast, a _siva_ in the open air, where Fanua danced. The crowd
+was full all about her and her assistants, girls and men. The occasion
+was a notable one. Two white missionaries with their wives were present,
+and the _siva_ was danced before them. Henceforward the excommunication
+will be difficult, unless the native preachers insist upon having their
+own way. But we shall have been present at this great event. I spoke to
+one of the missionaries for a moment, a rather interesting man, who
+talked a little about his hopes for the Samoans, their conservatism, and
+their not being emotional, however excitable they might appear to be, so
+that things once impressed upon them had a fair chance of thriving.
+
+And thereupon we proceeded (those of us who were tired) to get away--not
+without, however, looking once more at another _siva_ getting under way,
+with some of the many _taupos_ and their male assistant dancers, to see
+them oil. Some one ran around offering the liquid, which was poured full
+upon everything, dress and person. And being introduced, I shook the
+oily palms of some of the girls and of one splendid chief--who might
+have been drier. Then, later, Adams and I called on our _taupo_ friend,
+whose home we proposed to drop into next week in our travels, and who is
+visiting near us. We arranged with Meli Hamilton as our _tulafale_ for a
+_siva_ in our own house. There at night the _taupo_ came, in the pouring
+rain, and I sat in my own comfortable chair, with Mrs. Parker next to
+me, and felt at home; for in the shadow I could close my eyes or look
+on while the figures danced in shadow or in light.
+
+The next day we were summoned again to Seu’s feast. A _siva_ would be
+danced for us _papalagi_ who had been too crowded the day before. So
+that we went to see the comedy, which began seriously enough. We sat a
+while in Seumanu’s house, filled with friends and relatives, while a
+woman, an ex-_taupo_, carefully unfolded the presents of “fine mats,”
+saying what they were for, and from whom, and occasionally something of
+their history. For the “fine mat” is the great possession--the heirloom,
+the old silver, the jewels of the Samoan. And one tattered piece that
+was held up for show, sewed together, its trimming of feathers all gone,
+and full of holes, was looked at with respect; it had been _royal_.
+Around these mats cluster romance and story--war and quarrels--and the
+idea of the palladium, the insignia of power. The mat has been given at
+marriage and at birth, and has been worn on great occasions--it has
+witnessed those scenes, and besides carries money value. Its very stains
+tell stories of those events in life. So that Seu’s thirty odd mats were
+quite an affair, exclusive of the pile of two thousand pieces of
+_tappa_. As soon as the mats had been counted over, and admired, and a
+polite discussion arose, our hostess insisting that it must be a bore
+for us to look over all this, the polite guests insisting that nothing
+could be more entertaining.
+
+Then John Adams (Lima), in his fine old-fashioned voice and way, cried
+out that if we wished, a _siva_ was getting ready in the next house, and
+as our adviser whispered to us that we had better be away, for that now
+the real work had begun. It was for Seu and Faatulia and the family
+group to decide as to who should be the people to whom all these gifts
+were to be made over. A few they might keep, but the mass must go. Every
+giver had a right to something, if possible finer than his gift: and
+here was a ploy, as Sir Walter says. Everything must be according to
+dignity and family and precedence, and everything that society means
+everywhere. Think of the heart-burnings, jealousies, affronts, etc.,
+that hung in the balance. Many a time in Samoa, war has begun by some
+error in such adjustments. No wonder that we were better out of the way.
+Even to-day, we are told that several days more, a whole week, will be
+consumed in these weighty questions, and Seu is to wear his look of
+worry for days.
+
+Adams and I sat on branches: I, on the right, Adams, on the left of her
+Majesty the Queen, while a siva of two pretty children, little _taupos_,
+daughters of a chief of Savaii, and of two young men, went on before us
+in the sweet light, half sunlight and half rain. These two little girls,
+Selu’s daughter and her little friend, the daughter of a chief of Iva,
+gave us an infantile imitation, while another chief played buffoon, to
+give them courage and protect them from serious attention. And this time
+Fanua sat behind us, and looked on, alongside of many young girls and
+women whom we have learned to know a little.
+
+Up to this time, the terrible ordeal of decision of presents must have
+gone on, and will not be through until late next week, when we hope to
+get Seumanu on another malaga; but this time at our own pleasure, and
+with the hope of making sketches and studies with more leisure, and with
+a better knowledge, for as you know, he who runs finds it difficult to
+read, and there is nothing that I abhor more than the carrying of the
+studio sight into other visions.
+
+Only the poet is free, whether he be painter or writer, for with him
+subjects are only excuses, and as Fromentin has put it so perfectly,
+Delacroix’s three months of Morocco contain all that has been said and
+will be said of the east and south of the Mediterranean. But we cannot
+all be great people like Delacroix, nor great painters like him, nor
+perhaps was he at all aware in early life of his always having achieved.
+But he tried probably, to be exact and faithful, as any one of us might
+do.
+
+The weather is again beautiful; to-day is all blue and triumphant;
+indeed, the sky is bluer than it was, although the grass is yellower,
+and in the afternoon late, the clouds of the horizon are radiant in
+violet and rose. Fanua has come up to see me, with the Queen’s little
+daughter all clad in pink, who has been living in Fiji, and talks
+English quite well, and says like a child, that she likes Fiji better
+than Samoa. Service at the little church opposite is just over, where
+Fanua has been, and where I have heard the voice of Otaota’s father
+preaching. He has called upon me, apparently interested in questioning
+about the Mormons, who have sent missionaries here, and whose wives
+often canter past, against the blue background of the sea. Otaota’s
+father is not a little proud of his preaching, which indeed sounds well
+out of the church windows, and he asks me why I don’t come in to listen
+more closely. His parishioners sit on mats, and I sometimes lend some of
+mine to stray visitors, especially to members of our crew. The men sit
+on one side, the women on the other: and files of women, especially,
+walk along with mats under their arms or over their heads, or held in
+front of them; and occasionally a child is carried outside on the hip.
+
+There is a small post near by, upon which is a small bell, and a ladder
+to get to it, all under a tree, and some young girl or boy rings the
+clapper with great zeal. I have made a sketch of one of them who
+accidently set about a missionary work, without putting on her _tiputa_,
+to cover her bosom, and who was worried as I sketched her, between the
+propriety of carrying out her “missionary work” and her want of
+missionary propriety.
+
+Fanua has left, after sending for the child of a neighbour and caressing
+it during part of our supposed conversation. They say that she is
+thinking of marrying, and certainly she will make a nice wife and mother
+if one can judge by looking at her. Is there anything sweeter than a
+woman caressing a child? and how fond these Samoans are of children.
+They swarm about as free as birds, rarely checked; the owner of our
+house, the chief Magogi, looks more good-natured and smiling than ever,
+when after his fishing, and leaving a fish with us, he parades about
+with his child in his arms. Like a woman, he even carries him when he is
+attending to something else. And Tofae is as gentle to little George
+(the son of the late English Consul, and of Tāelē) whom he has adopted,
+as if he were a mother. When he and other chiefs, in the afternoon, sit
+about on the grass, far interspersed, some ten or twenty feet from each
+other, in Samoan fashion, little George creeps up and nestles against
+him, making with him the only group in the big circle.
+
+Fanua has gone, and from Mataafa’s house begins a hymn. I recognize the
+ancient sound of the Ave Maria Stella (for Mataafa is a
+Catholic)--another version of the Vallis Lachrymarum that Otaota’s
+father was urging on his people an hour ago: “It is morning and you
+dance--but night is coming and then----” The Samoan smile is proof
+against anything--but Mataafa is grave and somewhat sad, and must take
+things on a scale far different. The mournful dignity of his position--a
+king is always a king, and he has been a real one--of highest birth and
+greatest capacity--must always oppress him. And he has no future, I
+fear, for his holding power might be against the interests of Germany,
+to which England will always accede as a bargain, and to which we will
+yield, for we don’t care, and we are not yet aware of our enormous
+strength, to be used for ill or for good, and we sell it willingly for
+anything.
+
+The former German ruler here knew all about it, for the Germans have
+every power of measuring us, and he said to our representative:
+
+“You are really weak--like all Republicans--always at the mercy of
+little home events, and any one of you will trade for some personal
+advantage. You can have no policy, that any one of you in politics would
+not break through, to play a trick on the political adversary; and then
+you have no fleet nor army, to show to others what you could do. Before
+you can make up your mind to anything we shall have taken Samoa for
+ourselves.”
+
+God willed it otherwise, but the German had measured us, at least as we
+are to-day.
+
+The moon is almost full, and comes up in the night, while the sun is
+still lighting the sky with pink. Around her a single cloud is greenish
+white, while the entire sky is suffused with rose. The breakers are rosy
+white; the sea is of a daylight blue, the furthest distance is lit up,
+and a rose-coloured cloud hangs on the horizon far below the moon, while
+her wake cuts in silver across the sunlit sea and surf.
+
+The western sky is all afire, and against it, when the eye is protected,
+the shadows of the moonlight fall with extreme clearness and precision.
+The beauty is ineffable; a little sarcasm comes up into my mind--a
+reminiscence of the theatre, of a too perfect arrangement, in which the
+machinist has combined too much together, the sun and the moon both
+equally splendid--night together with day. I am sure that no one would
+believe it if painted, and most would _know_ it was incorrect. This
+disturbs my peace--but only a little. The good that comes from seeing
+through our teachers, is that at length we have no more use for them,
+and the remainder of life is more economical. And indeed, the world
+about me here seems to say, “See with how little we can be rich!”
+
+
+Another Samoan Malaga, Nov. 30th.
+
+Fagaloa Bay, on the N. E. side of Upolu.
+
+We are on another malaga. I have not quite recovered from illness, so
+that the trip is not all enjoyment, and I write to you in some dejection
+and with an effort. We are going around the island, some hundred miles,
+in our two boats; our own managed by Samau, the _tulafale_, as coxswain,
+with four men to carry provisions, etc., and plenty of luggage and food
+for all of us; and Seumanu’s boat with ten rowers. We left the day
+before yesterday, in the early dove-coloured morning, all grey with
+partial rain, the mountains covered at top, and low down in the gorges,
+the mist and smoke from villages rising up in straight lines that looked
+like enormous waterfalls. Our first landing was at Falefä, where a river
+falls over wide rocks in its way to the sea, not so differently from
+other pretty waterfalls, except that it makes a broad spread of water
+that joins the sea, so that from some points one might imagine that the
+ocean runs in to meet it.
+
+And then behind the frame of the wide fall and its bordering trees, one
+sees the mountains of the dim interior. There we rested at midday, and I
+lay on the mats, ill and tired, while Charley explained to the young
+woman of the house, wife of the native teacher, the meaning of a large
+sheet of the spring fashions of this year, which she had pinned up, with
+many other pictures from newspapers, upon the screen that divided the
+house. Her husband was away, attending the great meeting or Fono at
+Malua, the missionary school, where the toleration or rejection of the
+_siva_ has been, or is being discussed. I am told now that the native
+clergy have held their own; and that though not reproving their white
+brethren, they have not quite concurred in a full freedom of toleration,
+but have arranged some middle term by which the question will be always
+limited to individual cases.
+
+Later in the afternoon I sketched at the waterfall, in that curious
+silence filled with the sustained sound of rushing water, that belongs
+to such places, within which a faint, sharper thrill was the gliding of
+the surf upon the beach behind it. The place was shaded in its own
+shade, thrown over it by the hills that enclose and make it. Here and
+there, the sun caught the roll of the water, and the distant valley and
+mountains behind it were all floating in hot light and moisture that
+came down in great gusts with wafts of heat.
+
+In the evening we came into this beautiful bay with high mountains on
+either side, and fringes of lower land. The bay, as its name indicates,
+is a very long one, running far inland. The site we are in is charming,
+the great mountains right behind us, and from their lower sides, long
+waterfalls creep down the cliffs and glisten through the top branches of
+the palms. Around us all is covered with trees. I have lounged and
+slept as much as possible. Atamo has begun to paddle a canoe, taking out
+the _taupo_ with him. She has been very nice to us, doing her best with
+food, and seeing us to bed, and being in early to see us get up, and
+doing her duty generally and pleasantly. And she has given us _sivas_.
+We had met her before at Seu’s feast; we felt mutual good will, so that
+she was prepared. Her devotion to Atamo is great, and as I said, she has
+done her best by our food, which we managed this time with Awoki’s help.
+Through her eyes we saw one evening the resemblance of the light carried
+on the reef by the phantom of the lady who appears when night fishing
+goes on. You may remember, how she (as do others of the dead, or certain
+spirits perhaps--they are all confused in the Polynesian mind) fishes
+silently in the crowd of the canoes, or alongside of some single
+occupant--and then suddenly, when detected or suspected, disappears with
+the dawn that clears all our doubts away. Of this apparition some here
+say that she has her own canoe apart, just out of reach--some say that
+she walks on the water--but when she is followed, she makes for the
+shore, then is lost in the trees, and soon her lantern is seen going far
+up into the trackless mountain. There no one likes to follow at night.
+The dark for the Polynesian has terrors uncertain, natural enough, for
+the dark here is uncanny, and when plunged in its terrors the brown man
+does not like to add a definite influence or a name of ill omen. The
+belief in what might be called a lower supernatural is still strong:
+Christianity does well enough for the great needs, but something else is
+wanted for the smaller fears and dangers--the things about us at every
+moment; and it has interested us to draw out the small beliefs of this
+unimaginative and very practical race, who on one side are so much
+christianized. I wish that I could recall for you the scene in which we
+heard this story. The hollow silence between the mountain in the
+night--the water dark before us between darker trees. The dark shadows
+of the mountains, across the bay--the long glistening line of reflected
+starlight rolled up with a splash upon the beach that broke the quiet
+shiver of the palms. And then the one light, far out on the reef which
+caught the look of our maiden and drew the legend from her. I regret so
+much that my constant fatigue prevents my noting some of all this for
+you, and that I give you, too, no better description of what I see. The
+place is well worth some talk--even if it were nothing but a memorandum
+of the pretty _talolo_, or presentation of food, in which two or three
+dozen girls brought up the presents of taro and fruit, and threw them
+before us, filing out of the green trees, and disappearing again within
+them.
+
+
+Ulutogia (part of Aliipata) Dec. 2d.
+
+We are at a charming place in the town of Aliipata, which seems to
+stretch indefinitely for miles along the shore. We have had two
+invitations to stop; one from Mataafa, and one from Tofae, who both have
+their connections here, but we have pushed further on, and are now at
+the house of a chief, whose name is Sagapolu, as I make it out.
+
+Before us, to sea, over a great spread of blue, are two blue cones,
+little spots that belong to Tutuila. Near us are rocky islands--two of
+them outside of our reef. We came in on the blue swell that hid
+everything, and then pulled hard over the boiling of the surf, in the
+charm that covers danger. The morning was lovely on the water, and we
+raced with our other boats. We had said good-bye to our friends in
+Fagaloa, who the night before had given us a _siva_, not a prolonged
+one, well done by the girls, and accompanied curiously by the
+two-year-old daughter of the chief, who followed seriously the
+performance, and beat time or caught up with the gestures of the older
+people. Nothing could be stranger, and a more complete proof of the
+_siva’s_ being a natural expression. No one noticed the child as
+anything extraordinary, except by an occasional smile. Our crew was
+asked to perform, and the villagers and the _taupo_ gave the preference,
+and she was right, to our men. The girls always seem anxious to see the
+men’s dances; a compliment not always returned by the men. The rising of
+the moon saw us to bed, and we tried to sleep late, fearing the hard day
+that has just passed over us.
+
+Here, so far, all has been as usual. The house is far from others, all
+in the open, with palm trees some way off. At one end of the room is a
+reading desk, and the ruined walls of the church near by, explain that
+this house is used as a temporary chapel. At the other end, is a table
+covered with costly mats, upon which are flowers in glass bottles, and
+there are two big settles and two big chairs, covered with shaggy white
+mats made from the fibres of the _fao_ tree; all this furniture upon
+beautiful sleeping mats.
+
+We have had a complimentary speech from the _tulafale_, the old chief,
+who is thin and emaciated and extremely dignified, and has given us
+_kava_; and I have learned that Seumanu has a _kava_ name of Tauamamanu
+Vao (fighting with beasts of the field), when _kava_ is called out for
+him; the _taupo_ has come in to make it, and Samau of our boat, and
+Tamaseu of Seumanu’s, both _tulafales_, have come in to share it. There
+has been a spread of Samoan fare, apparently good, but I feel prudent
+and have taken little _kava_, and have been only a beholder of the
+feast.
+
+The _taupo_, who is very young, is very silent, even when Atamo says
+that he is writing home about her.
+
+They are sitting together, he absolutely immersed in his writing, a feat
+of which he is always capable apparently, and she is wiping her face on
+a new silk scarf of blue and red which he has given her, so that it has
+already caught the shine of the cocoanut oil.
+
+Another little girl has singled me out, and has come to make friends,
+but I can only give her lollipops, that are handed away almost
+immediately, like my biscuit, to the smaller children. I have invited my
+fate, for I smiled at this beginning of _taupodom_, when she came in,
+almost closing her eyes from anxiety, to put a Samoan pillow for me on
+the pile of sleeping mats that had been spread for us to take a nap. Seu
+is having his back punched by an elderly lady, and peace and the flies
+reign over all. Here is a curious fact; one would think that with their
+habits of sitting and lying about, these people would remain in
+position, but it is only when they are sleeping very soundly that one
+can find them steady, unless it be a Tulafale officiating, or a chief
+sitting for dignity. The foot that does not press the ground is simply
+waggled interminably. Try it for part of a minute and see how difficult
+it is; and then you will realize that people who can move the foot for
+ten or twelve hours a day, may be able to dance when sitting, with an
+ease that only a juggler knows about his fingers.
+
+Meanwhile, the sky is blue, with innumerable white clouds;--the sun
+smiles down on the banana grove behind us, and in front of it a little
+veil of light drops shows that it is raining overhead. The smoke from
+the house near us bends down lazily over the roofs, and Seu’s _tulafale_
+and one of our men, are beating a tune on the two great war drums.
+_Lali_ is the name of the beating of a tune. One two, two--two, and so
+on, weird enough and rather tiresome. Such are the intervals of their
+naps, for they have had three hours of solid rowing this morning, and
+they need rest. At this moment the old chief comes in and talks about
+the music--praising the accentuation. These drums are near his house,
+say some twenty feet off, and are very large; gigantic troughs of old
+wood.
+
+Then he calls across space for his daughter to make _kava_ again; this
+is the third time within just three hours, but this time the _kava_ will
+be chewed and not grated, as Atamo has asked for it.
+
+Meanwhile a discussion on the name of the daughter: it is Mo Niu Fataia,
+if I get it right; it does not matter. Her name represents the fact that
+a place called Fataia, which we passed yesterday, has wild cocoanuts
+growing upon it that roll useless into the sea: hence her name. “The
+plenty of cocoanuts, of Fataia, that you don’t get.” It is this little
+word Mo that means “plenty that you don’t get.” Niu is cocoanut. You
+will notice all through, so far, how often names for people are
+arbitrary and accidental. Otaota, the beautiful daughter of the
+missionary person, is called Rubbish. Fagalo, who slipped the waterfall,
+is Forgetful, and so on. We have Smell Smoke Namuasua (or Cook-house, as
+Samasoni translated it) in our boat’s crew. In the early traditions,
+such and such an early divine heroine names her children by things that
+occur at their birth. One, I remember of “Carpenter’s Tools Rattling in
+a Basket.” The Bible is dipped into at random for names, and yesterday I
+talked to young Miss Kisa, which sounds like Kiss Her, but is Kish “who
+killed Saul.” (My _taupo’s_ statement, the usual Bible may run
+otherwise.) I cannot make out whether good luck follows these sortes
+biblical.
+
+At this very moment I see coming to me a young lady who wears a black
+mat and a mop of yellow hair and nothing else, not even a collar. She is
+late, having been at church. She is the official _taupo_, the other one
+only taking a momentary place, and she is the daughter of the chief, and
+has brought presents of rings and of _tappa_; and her name is Faatoe,
+which means all agree, “Leave something in the basket” (when all are
+helping themselves), and I think this is a very fair addition to our
+stock of names.
+
+All this time the others to whom she is added are getting the _kava_
+ready carefully, gravely, chewing the root to extract its juice. There
+is a big row of _kava_ people or attendants--all pensive; one man, two
+_taupos_, another man of _ours_, a little girl, and another of our
+men--no--there are a few others who are around the corner so that I
+can’t see them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then I went for a long walk on the seashore. The sun was setting; only
+toward Apolima was the sky at all clear. Over one of the islands to the
+north, cloud and mist threatening immediate rain, made a large veil that
+hung far up and melted its violet lace over the island. The sea was of
+the fairy green that the inside of the reef takes in rain, spotted with
+violet where the coral lay. With me walked on one side my little girl,
+her upper garment fluttering, her young, long brown arms and legs
+glistening in the sun. She smiled at me for all talk, for English she
+knew not. On the other side, a hunch-backed dwarf, Japhet by name, with
+yellowed crispy hair, naked to the waist, a garland of red fruit hanging
+down on him, to meet the blue drapery about his loins--his bare legs and
+tattooed thighs glistening also in the light. Their company meant
+kindness and the _habit of accompanying a chief_--and they were kindly
+certainly, and meant to please and serve. Neither you nor I could have
+invented a more curious combination, and one of which I should like to
+have either a drawing or a photograph, that it may serve for the ends
+of my life. If instead of me and my linen helmet, and trousers kept up
+by a sash we had had one of the Spaniards, who ages ago, perhaps, landed
+in the unknown neighbouring island of the Gente Hermosa, the “Beautiful
+People”--some bearded man with butgonett, and velvet hose and jerkin,
+the picture might have been that of a knight-errant in fairyland. Such a
+faraway image it made to me, as I looked down either way to the earnest
+face of the dwarf framed in the fruits of his garland, or the politely
+anxious eyes and moving bosom of the young virgin of the village, as we
+stalked on almost abreast, in the silence, making threefold tracks of
+very different shapes in the smooth wet beach; until the rain broke
+down, and then I ran back, supported and clung to by my improbable
+companions.
+
+As the day closes it is still raining. A sort of glow is in the grey of
+the rain, so that it reddens all the shadows among the trees. Far off
+toward Tutuila there is high up a great opening where the sky is as of
+an apple-green that has been washed with the lavender of the rain
+clouds: big cumulous clouds round out, made gold by the sunset.
+
+The light fades away, and all becomes blurred except always the cumulus
+in the distant green sky. The lamps are lit and we turn to dinner.
+
+In the evening afterward we got to talking about the legends and
+superstitions, and we were for a long time merely getting about it.
+There had been a promise to have something written out for us of old
+verses, and then songs were sung, ordered from a number of girls.
+
+These were mostly poems concerning the son of the old chief, who died in
+the last war, and about whom, says Maua, he is always thinking. I
+watched his face and sketched it while he sat and listened. He is as
+striking as an Arab chief, with the orbital bones projecting like a
+camel’s from out of his face, so as to make a great line of light or
+dark around the looking part of the visage. His head recedes far up, and
+his long beard drops on his thin chest. This death of his son has
+affected him more and more, so as to make him slightly insane.
+
+Maua says that he was once “the baddest man in all Samoa,” and that he
+was the greatest dancer, and that he had invented many dances, and that
+he might be tempted to-day to dance, if only we could find some person
+to accompany him with songs to suit. I think that Maua is wrong, for the
+chief has become missionary, and is quite absorbed in that sort of
+thing. As I was saying, he has a splendid, fanatic, Arab head; and so
+the evening has closed with the old chief’s listening to these memories
+of his son. I am frightfully tired with listening to the legends
+struggled for. Perhaps a verse or so of some of the songs might be
+worth saving out of this wreck of dreaminess. It was a pure,
+complimentary, Samoan idea, poetic only perhaps because we cannot help
+translating the feeling as well as the words; it was about a chief the
+singer sang--a young and handsome chief--and she said how natural it was
+for the girls to wish for the hero’s notice, “for the very winds that
+blew belonged to him, coming as they did from his ancestral island that
+lies to windward.” But our friends are not poetic, I feel sure. They are
+intensely practical and full of common sense; they make poetry for _me_.
+And they are restful--and I--am sleepy, as I said before.
+
+
+Wednesday Afternoon.
+
+This morning, while it was raining, the old chief talked of the spirits
+that once ruled. We are told that the chief believes yet in these ideas,
+but I cannot make it out distinctly, neither one way nor the other. He
+is missionary now, and as we take his portrait, wishes to hold the
+prayer-book in his hand. But he tells me there are people who control
+the spirits (devils, our interpreter and we have called them--_aitu_)
+and that they predict things and recover property, bringing evil upon
+him who has erred until he acknowledges. And this power is not given to
+any man by inheritance, it cannot fall upon a plebeian, neither the son
+nor nephew of chief or priest, if indeed there were priests, for this
+he denies. He says that his people prayed, making oblations to the
+deities of the village and of the household, and that when these were
+collected together, they were eaten by _them_, which, he says, means by
+those who collected--not the priests, but the family or those attached
+to the chief, who thought it time for such offerings. And these were
+given to the bush, if it were for the bird divinity; to the sea, if the
+divinity was the cuttlefish. His was the cuttlefish, and his family did
+not eat it. All this, of course, you know more or less of; what I say is
+of no value except insomuch that I heard it myself. To know all here
+would require to be master of the language, not to be confined by
+missionary ideas, nor to be connected with such--and after all that, to
+have a very receptive, a very acute, and a very truthful mind. There are
+such people in the world, but you or I do not find them usually writing
+books, and judging questions for others. These soundings of the savage
+mind are Atamo’s properly; he is patient beyond belief; he asks over and
+over again the same questions in different shapes and ways of different
+and many people, and keeps all wired on some string of previous study in
+similar lines. But everywhere one comes right against some secret
+apparently, something that cannot be well disentangled from annoyance to
+the questioned one. For instance, in the question of genealogy, Seumanu
+told us that had he been interrogated some years ago in such a
+direction he should have struck the questioner down on the spot. Still
+we have hope, and if any one can manage it, Atamo will. Web after web I
+have seen him weave around interpreter and explainer, to get to some
+point looked for, which may connect with something we have already
+acquired. As many time as the spider is brushed away, so many times he
+returns.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This morning talk of the world of bad spirits that do harm to man
+suggested to me an opening toward a side I had never read of or heard
+of. Were there spirits that did good as well as spirits that did harm?
+There I had a door for home history. Yes, there were such, and no
+further than here: his son had had such a spirit, who went about with
+him and looked after him, protected him from harm (apparently from woman
+a good deal; and took, in such cases--as even with us--the shape of some
+other woman). Sometimes this protection would be sudden; when he was in
+the way of harm, a good spirit would appear and drive away those that
+might harm him, and would sometimes lead him personally away--_prevent_
+him--as the old word goes. And all knew that he was so protected; the
+spirit had been seen and would only disappear when suspected. Otherwise,
+any one might take the same for mortal man or woman--as in Homeric
+story, where Nestor speaks and acts, but it is Athens all the same. And
+had this spirit, or such a spirit, invariably an action only for good?
+Certainly--and nothing had ever contradicted such a view. And yet--only
+once, the good spirit had killed a man, but it was for protection
+always, as a guardian. Then, of course, I could ask no further. As you
+see, analogies keep coming up, our ideas easily dropping into theirs,
+and _informing_ them--probably.
+
+And had these spirits and others been apparently existing out of the
+world of humanity?
+
+The dead became spirits and fought anew the old battles, with a
+knowledge of the present; as when a chief _aitu_, known by name, some
+weeks ago refused to participate in a spirit war urged on by a feminine
+spirit. “No,” he said, “I have been missionary, but if I am attacked I
+can defend myself. Go on with your war; if you are successful you do not
+need me; if you are pursued too far, and into my territory, I shall be
+here.”
+
+Nene is the name of this male _aitu_ who has “joined the church.” ...
+And the dead killed at sea turn into fish, into turtles, into sea-life.
+Now how to clear these from the original spirits existing of themselves?
+There was one, Tangaloa, who, our friend said, might be supposed to be a
+distorted vision of the true God. But that you know as well as I.
+
+Here the talk drifted away to a question that, as you see, naturally
+connects. Were offerings made to spirits as being ancestors? Were
+offerings made to ancestors? No; of that they were sure--not even if
+Hawaii was different. And they did not care if the black pig meant
+anything in Oahu--to them (and the white teeth shone) it was only good
+to eat. If it crossed them in war excursions, it was only good to kill,
+but the bird and the cuttlefish, they were not to be hurt; and the bird
+might mean a good deal to them as it gave them omens by its
+flight--according to its favourable direction or the reverse, or by its
+cry. But they had, above all, a great divine omen, the rainbow--which
+presided over all. When for the people here it was bent over Tutuila,
+then things were against them; if it stood against them they were not to
+go into the war, but wait. It, however, it went with them, its end
+turned toward the enemy, then they were protected by it, and had victory
+promised them.
+
+We passed the morning in such talk. Then we sailed out to the little
+island of Nuu Tele opposite, an old crater, and waited a while, while
+Atamo explored it, thinking to find out matters which might affect
+present theories. He found raised beaches, stratified, and shells and
+pebbles in the rock, so that it was mud once, and forced up and not
+submerged, all to the greater confusion and defeat of Mr. Darwin. But as
+these triumphs are out of my line of momentary record, I have only to
+say that I found in the little savage girl-wife of our momentary host
+the type of little Sifa of Tutuila, which had almost been lost to us.
+The usual Samoan face is heavy and not wild, suggests good nature and
+practical views; poetry is not in them but from them. It is we who put
+it there, because their bodies mean to us possibilities of expression
+which we associate with intentions that have not yet been developed in
+them. Nerves they have not; it is only occasionally that one recognizes
+any permanent tendency to emotion, often by some trifle that is not
+always pleasant, as in the sadder face of some dwarf or joker, or as in
+our host’s face, over which great sorrow has passed--or perhaps again in
+such a “chevalier” as Mataafa, whose character is rare the world over.
+
+Our day passed pleasantly, and as I write, the other end of the room is
+filled with all these good people lying in a jumble together; Maua and
+the _taupo_ who is pulling at him and lying on him in part; another
+girl’s head under hers, while all their feet run up on the posts. Others
+yet, lying flat, continue the circle, singing together, and sometimes,
+without rising, beating a _siva_ movement on their own breasts or on
+each other’s. Four of our men, of the biggest, sit far away in the dark,
+with crossed legs, upright, immovable, like Egyptian statues: or, as
+
+[Illustration: SAMOAN GIRL CARRYING PALM BRANCH]
+
+I close my letter, like sphinxes, have bent down to the ground from
+their hips, all lost in the dark, with large heads and shoulders and
+outstretched arms.
+
+
+Lepa, Thursday, Dec. 4th.
+
+We were out to sea, in the sun and rain, between nine and eleven
+o’clock, and passed the two islands, large blocks of green and brown on
+the green and blue water. We came here first, pulling through the reef,
+straight to the enormous beach, where our eyes were at once charmed by
+the theatrical, or should I say geological absurdity which divided it,
+cutting it right down from the steep hills behind, to the water’s edge.
+This was a little waterfall of three cascades tumbling over some small
+rocks projecting far across the beach, so that the water had, as it
+were, a stone conduit upon which it was carried from the mountain to the
+sea. It was an absolute set piece, quite practicable, and if ever I have
+to design for scenery, here is a little natural object all ready to
+hand. The copy could be supplied with real water, just as this one is,
+and the palm trees growing upon it would conceal the machinery as they
+do here, only--if ever I do it, I shall be told that it is
+unnatural--just as it looks here. Why does the water run on knife edges,
+instead of taking the easier lines of depth, and tearing up the sand
+for a bed? I might explain how, for Atamo is full of geology, and it is
+not as mysterious, of course, as it looks. But I give it up, and content
+myself with sketching the little girl between the posts opposite me.
+
+We are in the _faletele_ (guest-house) quite near the water. Some thirty
+feet off from us cocoanuts hang over the beach and the sea. Right behind
+us are rocks upon which is perched a new and handsome Samoan house,
+half-hidden in the green of trees. A promontory, finished by a little
+island with palms, cuts off the further end of that long beach which is
+divided by the cascade with its rocks and palms. Toward us, on one side,
+falls the column of water, which ploughs a little canal into the sea.
+There our men are bathing, standing up under the falling water, and
+later I shall be there too. The other end of our bay, near us, rounds
+away behind trees, and a mound, upon which is a fishing hut under palms.
+In our house the central beams that support the roof, come together like
+a V. All the posts and beams are decorated with flowers and leaves, and
+in the centre, near the great branching post, stands a table covered
+with _siapu_ (bark cloth) and with flowers in pots, as on an altar, say
+a Buddhist table altar. Some of our men are dragging up the boats, but I
+am too lazy to turn to see them place them under the shelter of the
+cocoanuts. The _taupo_, is looking at me while I am writing, or at Atamo
+similarly occupied. She is bored, but I can’t help it. I could not
+entertain her if anything depended upon it. It ought to be cool, but the
+beach sends up hot waves of air, and my _taupo’s_ cocoanut oil melts
+into it languidly. The name of the place is “A Break Between Waves,” and
+the name of the _taupo’s_ brother, that heavy youngster, who is talking
+to Seu at the boats, is Break Love. There is a connection that I feel,
+but you had better make it out yourself. If the chief is heavy, the
+_taupo_ is clever, and makes herself agreeable. Her sister helps her in
+every attempt. They are not as dignified as one can remember, and
+perhaps had we kept to another line of travel, and visited higher types
+of aristocracy, it might have been different. But they are easily amused
+and talk much, and are great beggars--and gently, are willing in the
+same way to marry us, one of them proposing to marry us both herself,
+and even asking at the last moment, “Are you going away? I thought you
+would have married me this morning.” All this is joke, with perhaps a
+look to possibilities: for do I not remember how two little _taupos_
+very missionary, far back in Savaii, changed their little easy manners
+to seriousness, and almost aggressiveness, when some madcap hinted that
+we were on a wife-hunt, and had come all this way for it. Those two
+little pieces would not allow the liberties of five minutes before, nor
+would they let me go without having catechised me seriously as to these
+chances--to which they were willing to submit; but they wished
+beforehand to know whether there was anything in it.
+
+We had a _siva_ at night, in which our young lady figured with the great
+grenadier’s cap that looks so savage and soldierly, and which is really
+becoming, the heavy faces growing gentle and refined under this heavy
+contrast. But it is painful to wear, being bound on tight, and how our
+_taupo_ could stand it for three hours, as she did, I know not. She
+danced and sat down alongside of us alternately for nearly four mortal
+hours. Through all the dances there was a great display of pantomime,
+mostly comic, made none the less by the gravity of some of the
+performers who acted in reality as a dancing chorus; so that right
+through the crowd of delirious young men and women passed in and out a
+fine old Roman senator--I cannot better define him, who never smiled and
+who wore his drapery as do the antique statues, and whose mind evidently
+saw other meanings in the steps than did the other dancers. I could
+almost have wished that there had been some meaning in this accident,
+some deep, deep thought in this tragedy woven into the cloth of the fun,
+but I believe that it was merely the pleasure taken by the old man in
+feeling that his limbs were as vigorous and as supple as long ago. And
+we went to bed, the entire company remaining alive and interested for
+several hours after our succumbing to sleep. I could hear late in the
+night Charley and the _taupo_ crunching sugar-cane and whispering while
+Charley, during the whole evening, had lain sound asleep. But sitting up
+late in the moonlight is Samoan. Before I fell asleep, my mind went over
+some of the historical developments of the theatre. I have certainly
+been instructed that at the beginning complete realistic performance is
+impossible. And yet I had been listening to a play in which every
+possible combination of a _fin de siècle_ manner of looking at things
+had been slowly and elaborately combined. Was it then that this society
+in which I am now living, savage as it seems to us, is really a very
+modified form of an ancient structure of life? Or did these good people,
+when they sailed from the dim Havaiki, bring already, in their habits of
+mind, modified trainings of earlier civilization? Any similar views
+would please me, but I should be better pleased to consider that the
+rules have not been accurately defined and that we don’t yet really know
+enough about it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This story of nothing I conclude to-day at Falealili, as we get further
+on. We were overwhelmed with gifts at parting, so much so as to make us
+feel as if perhaps the only fair thing would be to marry one of the
+girls, as an adequate return. Then with the return gifts we might have
+run away.
+
+A wife brings mats usually, and gives much support, as is well known by
+one young gentleman I hear of, a captain of some schooner, who has wives
+in different places. Each of them in turn supports him when he appears,
+and as long as his visits are regular, and there is no preponderance or
+excess or skimping in his remainings, everything goes well, and there
+seem to be no jealousies. In fact, I think that the having to provide
+would be a great reducer of those sentiments that flourish most where
+there is idleness and pampering. Let us say that the subject is too
+complicated, for I feel already as if I had carried over too much of
+this letter into the next one. I am concluding now twenty-four hours
+later, at Falealili, while waiting for letters, and appearing to listen
+to the complimentary speeches of a _tulafale_ who rejoices in the name
+of “Tuiloma, King of Rome.” He has a good deal of style, but not enough
+for such a name, while the chief of Lepa, who drops in to explain his
+reasons for being absent during our visit, has a fine head and makes a
+pretty good picture. He has fought against Seu, and they talk over old
+times. I am told that he fought well, and he looks martial, as I have
+tried to hint above. Otherwise there is nothing to speak of, at least
+for me, for I am miserable. It is very hot, and I feel the want of air.
+I have tried to sketch two little girls making wreaths near by, and they
+have been driven away to let some _tulafale_ come in and make the
+ordinary speeches, to which Seu listens with his usual impassive manner.
+If he is bored no one would know it. Much laughter goes on after the
+ceremonies. But nothing can restore the little girls. One is a
+half-breed--very light, her already fair hair bleached with Samoan
+liming, and she has grey eyes and a very Samoan face. Her father is dead
+and she lives absolutely like a Samoan. I follow her movements, trying
+to detect some differences in this little creature, whose fate might
+have been just as much the other way. All that I can notice is that
+while I sketch she moves less than the others, and is content with fewer
+gestures. The fluidity of the pure brown blood is not quite there. I
+have told you, I suppose, often enough, how difficult it is to catch
+them in a drawing, unless they are asleep. I have never been able to get
+a whole minute for any position. Seu sometimes remains quiet for a few
+minutes, and some of the greater people or men of character are disposed
+to be steady. But usually it is perpetual movement skilfully disguised
+under an appearance of quiet. The half-breed was, as I said, more quiet
+and steady than her darker companions: our little half-breed
+Charley--sometimes referred to by the old joke of Charley Yow, the Boy
+Fiend--who serves as interpreter and boy-of-all-work, being a boy, is
+still more restless than any of our boys. He will lie asleep absolutely
+as if dead, but if awake he must wriggle. He bends over in true Samoan
+way, but as he has neither Samoan grace nor strength, I half expect to
+see him put his head between his legs, dog-fashion, so as to be able to
+take a convenient look up his back. He plays with his toes and rubs his
+fingers meditatively, with the European side of his mind, on the rims of
+our glasses and saucers. Even the rainwater gets a taste of cocoanut oil
+when he has been about. Yet he is clearly “Faá Samoa,” and lazy as he is
+and pleased at playing with his fingers on a string tied round his nose,
+or trying the edge of a knife, he is serviceable as a Samoan. When we
+put him to the task of interpreting a little Samoan poem a few days ago,
+he showed an unwilling capacity of mind not unlike what I could remember
+of schooldays when we had to put Chaucer into modern English, and when
+we bent all our energy into avoidance. The future of the half-breed is
+an interesting question here, but too much for my present dreaming.
+
+
+December 6th.
+
+Later, last evening, during which I was absolutely idle like Charley,
+and unlike Charley, because I was not well, we had a sort of abbreviated
+domestic _siva_. We were politely asked if we should like one, and as
+politely we explained that we were determined to go to bed early, but
+that we should dislike to interfere, and would look on as long as we
+were not too sleepy. The little daughter of the _tulafale_, herself the
+_tulafale_ (spokeswoman) of the chief’s daughter, who is the _taupo_,
+explained to us that being “Misionali,” she could not figure in it nor
+be present, and if she were Misionali I think she did as well. The
+_siva_ was sung sotto voce, and danced softly by three or four women,
+probably with reference to not disturbing while we looked on--in some
+curious confusion of meaning. The _taupo_, who is very stolid, with the
+expression of a judge of the Supreme Court, danced with nothing on but
+her _tipuka_ or upper garment, put about her waist, so that the hole
+through which the head is put in this variety of “poncho” exposed the
+least polite parts of her back. And as I referred to her gravity of
+expression, or want of expression, by an allusion to the expressionless
+look of a judge on the bench, I might slip in here a pretty anecedote of
+the bright little daughter of one of our celebrities, from whom you will
+see that she inherits. Last winter her father gave her a chance to see
+the cabinet officers together, and on her return she was asked, “Well,
+were they nice?”
+
+“Not nice, but funny!” she said.
+
+Well, so with the dance; and danced by the virgin of the village and her
+chaperon it had a curious side. And it was funny enough, with the fun
+underscored and interlined and underlined, as it were, by verbal
+comment. Apparently the true dances that are not played are innocent as
+well as beautiful, but when the drama comes in, the dance follows the
+usual history of the drama.
+
+This is a great missionary centre, and to-morrow will be Sunday, a day
+on which we shall have to rest because the people here are sabbatarians
+of a very strict kind, and do not approve of travelling on the Sabbath.
+Our men tell us things of the habits of travelling; they are all, Seu’s
+men and ours, except our two _tulafales_, whose behaviour is all that
+one could ask for, young gentlemen whose glory consists in the constant
+and sometimes successful assault of feminine virtue. As they explain it,
+they would be laughed at at home, if they could boast of no conquests
+during the trip; but owing to this being an “European malaga,” because
+we are European, they are on relative good behaviour; so that they lead
+in prayer and sing hymns, and are in other matters quite good boys. I
+have no doubt also that besides the fact that Saturday night and Sunday
+will give them plenty of feminine society, they also do not think that
+it’s quite the proper thing to travel on Sunday.
+
+So you see that one can go far and see the same thing, and that, as I
+told you in Japan, the world is fairly round. Expressions vary, but the
+meaning is the same.
+
+[Illustration: TWO TAUPOS DANCING A “GAME OF BALL.” SAMOA]
+
+I am writing now from the next station called Vao Vai, “Between Waters,”
+a queer little place looking like some African possibility. Little
+houses are bunched together near a little river close by us, and in
+front of us, seen through trees, far out, is a little island full of
+palms, which the _taupo_ tells me, is used as a resort for sick people
+who go out to get fresher air. She herself explains that we shall have
+no _siva_ because they are sad for the loss of a young man, a
+half-brother of hers, brother of the _taupo_ whose dance and dress I
+described above, and who was the _taupo_ of the preceding village. Our
+good girl is missionary besides, which will secure us the greater rest
+from _sivas_. Her brother’s death was explained to us last night. He had
+gone over to Malua, where is the theological school, on a trip, with
+only one attendant, and fell ill and died here on his return, having,
+they assured me, been beaten to death by devils. So he said himself
+before death, and in proof of it, his body was sore. Moreover, just
+before his death, he ran out into the woods, in the dark. But being
+caught by the leg, by some _tulafale_ or person of importance, and asked
+who he was, he gave his father’s name, thus proving beyond a doubt that
+he was possessed by his father’s ghost, I have not yet been able to get
+the connection between his father’s spirit and those who beat the son to
+death. But that may turn up yet, for the subject is in everybody’s
+mouth. I ought, perhaps, to add that the young chief had had a cold
+before, with inflictions of pneumonia, and had been somewhat relieved by
+medicine from the Catholic priest at some adjoining station, but the
+devils were too much for him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To this little hut, looking out toward the enormous space of the sea,
+nothing growing in front of us but two half-cut-down bread-fruit trees,
+on the line of the horizon and the little island just outside of the
+reef, and the long line of breakers extending right and left and as far
+as one can see--have just come your letters carried to me across the
+mountains, in a great rain. I have been in some anxiety for them, for I
+had had only partial news since September 5th, which was three months
+ago. Newspapers have also come from San Francisco and from Auckland,
+giving telegraphic news as far as November 17th, from San Francisco to
+November 6th; so that our evening is full of incident. There has been a
+political change through the elections at home that alters the positions
+of persons, and gives one a sort of feeling that all is not Samoan
+peace. And the financial news affects us with doubt as to long delays,
+for drafts on the Barings, or on any one, indeed, will not be quite as
+easy to use in these little communities. So that this event is a turning
+point to me out of the world, as well as to the great people in it. To
+increase the resemblance to home, where
+
+[Illustration: FROM OUR HUT AT VAO-VAI, SAMOA]
+
+little habitual matters accompany great ones, we find in this little far
+out-of-the-way place fresh butter for the first time in many months, and
+milk. So that with Awoki’s cooking, we interrupt for this evening and
+to-morrow morning, the course of our Samoan food. It is amusing to
+notice what importance this event has assumed, and to realize that
+to-morrow, Sunday, will be so much more pleasant for this little change.
+
+
+Sunday.
+
+This morning I watched from behind my mosquito-bar, where I was
+pretending to sleep, the procession of people going to church for the
+second time. I had been waked at dawn by the little bell, which sounded
+like a steamboat call for all aboard. Against the background of the sea
+filed continuously the parishoners, grown people and children, most of
+the women with the hats that belong to their idea of church. But among
+them were some women with “fine mats” around their waists, that
+contrasted with the queer European headdress apparently made only for
+this and similar markets. These contrasting individuals were, I was
+told, the watchers upon the dead man of whom I spoke, he who was killed
+by devils in the woods. These fine mats were their guerdon--for he was a
+chief’s son. Had he been the chief, my informant said, mourning would
+have been general; the people would have had half their hair cut, and
+this would be done perforce to such as neglected it. With this
+information I woke up officially, just as I saw our men filing away to
+church. Later they came back to ask for canned salmon for their girls.
+Nothing has occurred. I have sketched most of the time. Atamo has been
+over to see the little islands, for the pleasure of paddling in a canoe.
+The _taupo_ did not go, whether from missionary sabbatical feeling, or
+whether she was afraid, or whether the men would not let her, for they
+said that a woman did not know how to take care of a boat over a surf;
+rather an ungallant way of looking at it, for the women we have known,
+pretty generally paddled about well enough inside the reef. Our little
+_taupo_, who was very nice and quiet, spent most of the evening playing
+with the men. I have spent the day in intellectual idleness, as I told
+you, as the place is very small, being half surrounded by a little
+river, and crowded with small houses. I have moralized in a depressed
+way, and in this direction: would we at home, if things were clean
+enough about us to deceive us, find it amusing to sit in an Irish
+shanty, as we do now in this one? We should have pigs about and
+occasional dogs, and kind, ugly old women and some politics. And the
+resemblance grows more and more as I look at it from the dirty point of
+view. Things are thrown out of doors to the pigs, who are so convenient
+to put things into you wish to get rid of, as Mrs. Bell used to say.
+And the ducks wander about everywhere, and I watch the way the pigs eat
+cocoanuts, etc.
+
+The chief and the others, the _tulafales_, have made speeches and drunk
+_kava_ over and over again, all day, in an unofficial manner. And I am
+so sleepy, so sleepy that I almost fell off my chair, for I have a chair
+or camp stool--during evening prayers.
+
+
+December 8th.   Saagapu.
+
+Anagapu is the name of the chief.
+
+We are a little further along the coast, having passed through a
+dangerous reef, and waiting for a better tide, which we shall have
+to-morrow. The village is large, laid out handsomely in length, a little
+tedious in its regularity, well planted with trees, and with swamps
+behind and on the two sides that confine it. We have had the longest
+_tulafale_ talk that I have ever suffered from, and I am prostrated with
+weariness and with sultriness of the air. We had feared heavy rain and
+looked with anxiety at two great water-spouts circling in the hills as
+we sailed along. There is an arrangement of mountains just behind us,
+probably some ancient crater, that looked as if it must be always in a
+boil of rain. There is nothing to do, fatigued as I am, but to go to
+sleep, and try to brighten up for a _siva_ that I foresee. The people
+are many. There are lots of children, and girls who strut about careless
+of their lava-lavas, for this is a place unfrequented by foreigners and
+by the elegant people of Apia. I see two blacks, or Solomon islanders,
+dressed in lava-lavas in the Samoan way, who have taken refuge here,
+having escaped from the German plantation further on, which we hope to
+reach to-morrow evening. The chief tells me that they are quiet and
+well-behaved, and that they go to school like the others about them. All
+these blacks work harder than the Polynesians, and even their anxiety of
+look, as they come with hesitation toward us has a sort of possibility
+of action that I do not find in the browns of a similar class. I need
+not have suffered so much from the conventional speeches. Our host, on
+my waking from an attempt at sleep, stretches himself against the post
+nearest to me, and breaks out in most vernacular English, stating that
+he has been a little everywhere, and has been away from home for some
+twenty years. He has been as far as New York, which he says is not a
+good place for a sailor; in China many times, in Japan, in India, in
+France, in England, etc. He has conversed with the American Indians and
+states that he can understand their “lingo,” as he names it, from its
+similarity to the Pacific tongues spoken by the Polynesian. He has
+theories on these subjects, and believes
+
+[Illustration: TULAFALES SPEECH MAKING. VAO-VAI, SAMOA]
+
+that there is a connection of race between the Hawaiians and the Samoans
+and Tahitians, and he extends it to the Malays in the west, and the
+American Indians in the east. And as I listen to him, I keep thinking
+that the story of the entire Pacific is probably the only explanation of
+the Polynesian. I should like to hear more, but personages of importance
+again come in and more talk of the society kind recurs. Later we are
+asked if we wish a _siva_. We hesitate for every reason. First, we hear
+rumours of a _siva_ being prepared for us further back in some place
+already passed, owing to some letters of Tofae that announced us.
+Secondly, we are not impressed by our _taupo_, who besides want of
+beauty has also a discontented look which in some grotesque way reminds
+me of modern English high-art pictures--something grumpy. Then I have
+made up my mind to have a good sleep if possible; so that we say yes, if
+only the _siva_ can be in another house; then we add that if we are too
+tired we propose to leave. We find, as usual, our boat crew extremely
+interested in the subject and in the performers, and the neat little
+house where we go in the dark is absolutely filled with spectators. A
+place has been set apart for us, filled by our two camp stools, and we
+are in time. The performers are full of anxiety to begin, and suddenly
+enters our _taupo_. In the dim light her sullenness looks like calm, her
+big headdress covers enough of her face to make the lines look
+delicate; and she comes in with a sort of hop of assurance, and throws
+herself down an entirely different person. She has authority and grace,
+and the “I don’t know what” that belongs to any one completely sure of a
+good professional standard. And she smiles with excitement, her smile
+widening with the cocoanut oil upon her face. And so the _siva_ was full
+of fire, and danced in splendid time. Then we were able to leave and
+managed to get a good night’s rest. The floor when it is well covered
+with mats makes an excellent bed, and when one is sure and protected
+from mosquitoes everything else fades easily into sleep. In the morning
+we had a short talk with our host, who complained that he could not get
+away again to his wanderings. Samoa might be a good place enough, but he
+was bored. He had to submit, however, to the head of the family, who
+refused to give him leave. The old man, as he called him, using our
+phrase, kept him confined to his chiefdom. Family authority was thus
+vested in his uncle, our friend Seu, _who had the name_, and though the
+chief’s authority was his own for his chiefdom, outside of that the head
+of the family was master. This was the Roman law in its integrity; our
+chief personally was as a son, and only free when exercising a function.
+Even were he required to leave and come to his uncle in Apia, he should
+have to do so, just as he was bound not to go off as a sailor again.
+
+[Illustration: TAUPO DANCING THE STANDING SIVA. SAMOA]
+
+Our conversation was interrupted by loud shouts, and the sound of much
+trampling--and then by shrill cries of women and of children, apparently
+in derision, for there was much laughter. A girl was running away under
+the fire of sarcasm, and dodging from one house to another, which she
+would again leave, probably from finding more trouble inside. And we
+were connected with it. One of our crew had been too much taken with the
+charms of one of the _siva_ dancers, or she had felt his eloquence too
+deeply. She had run off with him after the dance, and he had made
+promises; among others she believed that he would take her with him in
+our boat, and there she was on time--ready to go--only to find that it
+could not be--and that he must have known it. In fact, the women kept
+repeating to her that she must have lost her senses, that she must be an
+impertinent fool to think of sitting in a boat with such high chiefs.
+Siamau, our man, was slightly downcast, but not too much so--he was
+still a conqueror, but the poor girl was--well--she was to be pitied.
+Her trial and humiliation lasted all the time that we remained, and I
+was glad when we pulled away. The tide served us, and the wind, and we
+made a long pull to the place where I am now writing, Satapuala, only
+some twenty-five miles from home.
+
+Satapuala was as we had seen it before, on our last malaga; but its
+young chief, whose dancing I had hoped to see again, was away--to visit
+Tamasese, the former king set up by the Germans--at the other end of the
+island--at Lufilufi, which we had passed without calling, in our anxiety
+to remain outside of the war of politics.
+
+The guest-house was decorated as before, with palm branches on ceilings
+and posts and central pillars, and flowers everywhere--a most beautiful
+greenhouse. And the big _taupo_, the sister of the chief, was there, as
+amiable and dignified as before. In the evening she danced again, this
+time without the support of her brother. She did not seem as good a
+dancer. I noticed, however, that more than any one else, she used her
+hands and fingers to carry out the motion, and that she finished, as it
+were, the movements begun more rudely and vigorously by the men. She had
+the same enchanting style and manner, and even at the end, when a
+standing dance was given more outrageous than ever, she retained, with
+her smile, a look of not knowing what it was all about, that was as good
+form as I suppose an official virgin could assume in such a plight.
+
+That was the end. I take it, that as Maua said, this being an European
+malaga, things were made more formal and mitigated on our account.
+
+We are waiting for the tide with which we shall row straight to Apia, in
+about five hours--over the well-known sea.
+
+
+Evening.
+
+We rowed back in true Samoan way, our rowers making a show of pulling
+and singing a great deal, with an energy that had been better thrown
+into the oars. In fact, they danced a _siva_ of return. The worst and
+laziest of the lot, an amiable fellow with a persistent smile always on
+his face, actually rose and fell on his seat with excitement. The other
+boat, our own, with Samau and our own four men, kept up well with our
+ten rowers. On boards placed to let them squat Samoan way, under the
+awning, sat a chief we had taken with us, who wore a great white turban
+and kept fingering his beard, and a young woman, a cousin of Seu’s--so
+that they looked Oriental enough. In Seu’s boat, Tamaseu, the
+_tulafale_, the strokeoar, alone rowed vigorously, though the oldest and
+least strong. He gave out the chant and pulled to it, while Seumanu,
+standing in the bow, guided us over the shallow water, and Atamo
+steered. As we turned round the last point, in the light of the sunset,
+we crossed a large boat manned and paddled by girls, all of them dressed
+in red, with green garlands around their heads, and for a figurehead a
+little girl sitting upon the bows, her crossed legs hanging over in
+front. Two black figures in the stern were the nuns of the convent to
+which the girls belonged, and they were all returning from a holiday. It
+was a pretty sight--nothing is more beautiful than the united movement
+of paddles and of heads thrown back in chanting, for of course some hymn
+carried them on, undistinguishable for us from a pagan tune.
+
+
+December 24th.
+
+Nothing new, except social and political news: the excitement at the
+Chief Justice’s coming, and the innumerable Samoan reports thereupon;
+and Fanua’s engagement to an Australian business man, and her marriage
+for the last of the year. There are many “cancans” thereupon the
+question of marriage in due form, or of a Samoan marriage which does not
+bind the white man who leaves, being much discussed. It was even
+proposed that she should marry first some Samoan--why exactly would be
+too complicated to explain.
+
+Meanwhile I am trying to work a little and recover from the dissipation
+of the malaga. The days have drifted along, and here we are upon
+Christmas, the weather very hot, and not recalling what you have at home
+except by contrast.
+
+Yesterday we had a great storm, the wind blowing the tortured branches
+of the palm in great gestures against the sky. Few were out except the
+boys, who played cricket all day in the rain, and conveniently dropped
+their clothes. At night, the rooms were filled near the lamps with small
+flies that crusted them, and covered the tables in thousands, so that
+we could neither work nor read. Through the crevice of doors and
+windows a fine dust was blown, the broken fragments of dead vegetation.
+We are only six feet above the sea, and during the night the dash of
+rain against our wall sounded in my dreams like the lashing of the surf.
+In the morning the flies that had lain in heaps of thousands had
+disappeared. I saw the last carried away by the laggards of an army of
+ants, which had pounced upon them during the night or early dawn.
+
+I have been watching some three girls and a boy who have been sitting or
+playing about near me. Strictly speaking, only one, a grown-up girl, has
+been sitting. The others have placed themselves occasionally on the high
+bench to which the neighbourhood resort at night for a lazy stretch and
+infinite talk. But these children were never quiet, for the two hours I
+watched them. Most of the time has been taken up by wrestling. The boy,
+who is the smallest, was at first thrown by the girls, but as they
+taught him, he managed to keep his own fairly--until the elder girl was
+enlisted in the sport, and kept throwing him and the others, according
+to rule, for she carefully showed them the proper grip and some first
+movements. All this is a type of the manner by which constant exercise
+rounds them out, and I could not but appreciate how the little girl (of
+eight perhaps), when she was not wrestling herself, danced up and down
+continuously, in an involuntary impatience at having nothing to do in
+the way of _siva_.
+
+
+Vaiala, Near Apia.
+
+Upolu, Dec. 25, ’90.
+
+This is Christmas Day. I am seventeen hours, I think, ahead of you in
+that fact; so that at this moment you are only running about for the
+presents and the Christmas tree, but I cannot wait for you. It is such a
+Christmas as they have here; they call it _Kilimasi_, and do not quite
+make the joy and fuss over it that we do, having been christianized by
+the Wesleyans. And I have not told you the whole truth; when the
+missionaries came, they miscalculated the time, so that in many islands
+they run a day ahead, not having dared to acknowledge a mistake that
+might have imperilled their other teachings, for Christianity was
+inextricably entangled with cotton goods, gunpowder, etc.
+
+So you see, these people were like ourselves, and could not separate one
+kind of truth from another, a deficiency which must have troubled you in
+New York, as it does me both in New York and elsewhere.
+
+But it is legally Christmas to-day, as I began to say, and a holiday,
+which I can only distinguish from other days, because there seem to be
+fewer people idling and lying about. The convict also is not at work, he
+who labours near us, weeding and cutting down twigs, when he is not
+sitting and talking to his admirers, who decorate him with flowers and
+make wreaths for him.
+
+But even this would not be an infallible guide, for the day before
+yesterday the wife of the very chief who had brought this man before the
+consuls for punishment (he had stolen the consular flag halyards--why,
+no one knows), and who had pined in court for thirty lashes and six
+months’ imprisonment--which were not given--the wife of the chief, I
+say, came to ask us, as great chiefs ourselves, if we thought that the
+consuls would let the prisoner have a few days off for fishing. And we
+strongly urged her to ask for it, as a reasonable request--at least, in
+the comic opera. The other convict, who is a great fraud, has been
+occupied in ferrying people over the main river (the bridge having gone
+down in the last storm, and we people who wear trousers and petticoats
+not liking to wade over). But he also is variable as an index, for he
+usually employs a small boy of his tribe to do the work, while he lies
+in a little hut that he has built, and sleeps or eats, crowned with
+flowers, like a jubilator. I was telling Mr. Stevenson of these details,
+upon his last call, and he interrupted a description of the tyrannical
+conduct of the French in Tahiti and the Marquesas, by the story of a
+visit he had paid to the prisons there with the inspector. There was no
+one in the prison for men:
+
+“Monsieur,” explained the gendarme, “c’est jour de fête, et j’ai cru
+bien faire de les envoyer à la campagne.” Visit then to the women’s
+prison. “Mais où sont vos bonnes femmes? Monsieur, je ne sais pas au
+juste, mais, je crois, qu’elles sont en visite.”
+
+He tells me that though French rule is of course wrong in principle,
+therein differing from English or German, the gendarmes are a good lot,
+whom it is a privilege to know. I have run on into this because I have
+been thinking while writing of my having told you that I intended to go
+to the Marquesas and see Typee.
+
+I am slowly drifting that way, but my enthusiasm is dashed somewhat by
+what I hear. I am told that there are scarcely any more Typeeans--and
+they are clothed to-day, as indeed, I fear, are most islanders who are
+handsome, except the good people here, who still preserve the real
+decencies to some extent.
+
+And that is why I am lingering here, as I see for the first time, and
+probably for the last, a rustic and Bœotian antiquity, and if I live to
+paint subjects of the “nude,” and “drapery,” I shall know how they look
+in reality. As I write in our Samoan house, which is only raised a few
+inches from the ground, I see passing against the background of sea,
+figures which at a little distance and in shifting light are nearer to
+the little terra cottas that you like than anything one could find
+elsewhere. Young men naked to the waist, with large draperies folded
+like the Greek orator’s mantle, garlanded, with flowers in their hair,
+pass and repass, or lie upon the grass. Young women--and alas! old
+women--more covered, though occasionally draped like the men, or with
+girdles of leaves, walk about, carrying leaf-made baskets or cocoanut
+water-bottles--or they sit and lounge with the young men. An old man,
+with his drapery partly over one shoulder has just stalked past, holding
+a long staff that he puts out to full arm’s length--for they use their
+limbs with a great spread and roundness of action. Four girls of
+different ages (from eighteen to eight) have been wrestling under the
+trees, practising some grip--and have been teaching a boy how it is
+done. A friendly hunch-backed dwarf has called to pay a Christmas visit,
+and to get a friendly nap. Like the girls, he wears nothing but a
+dark-blue drapery around his waist, and a great garland of fruit and
+flowers that hangs about his neck. His hair has been dressed and curled
+in Samoan fashion--that is to say, it has been stiffened into shape with
+coral lime (which, when washed off, has reddened it) so that he has the
+hair of a blonde on his dark head. Japeta, as he is called (Japhet), who
+by the by is rather “missionary,” but believes in witches and devils,
+and has lived in the woods--and is really very intelligent--is certainly
+more handsome in this way of costume than if he were to dress in the
+fashion of Sixth Avenue--or even of Fifth Avenue--for he is of a chief’s
+family. It is true that he has powerful arms and legs that would look
+well anywhere else than here, where their dancing and jumping and their
+mode of sitting seems to have influenced the size of the lower limbs,
+and to have given a roundness to the entire body, that reminds one again
+of the Greek statues and terra cottas. For the girl form passes into the
+young man’s and his to the older without break. Their dances do a great
+deal for this result. They all dance a little from the very earliest
+age. Last night, as I walked home, I found a crowd of little mites
+practising the figures of the _sitting_ dance, in which the entire body
+is moved, from the ends of the fingers to the tips of the toes. And
+beautiful they are, these dances. If only I could paint them--but that
+is almost impossible; some of the gestures could be given, but not the
+_rhythm_. And they “sit” badly to a painter, and, notwithstanding their
+idleness, are rarely quiet. Sketching is formidable. They will jump up
+to see what you have been doing and everybody troops all
+
+[Illustration: FAGALO AND SUE, WRESTLING. VAIALA, SAMOA]
+
+around. Still, I have sent and shall send some sketches home.
+
+One of their dancers has just passed--an official dancer--the official
+“virgin” of the next “village,” but one whose duty it is to entertain
+guests, and see to their comfort, and dance for them, as also in war to
+go out dancing with the combatants, as you will see in some of my
+sketches. She was crowned with flowers, and had a garland around her
+waist, one around her neck, and her waist was stiffened out triumphantly
+by the folds of fine thin _mats_, worn as drapery. Behind her (for she
+is of rank), at a far, respectful distance, has passed, also her
+attendant, an old woman, who is responsible for her, and a tall, big
+fellow, also an attendant, with a great drapery, also of yellow mats,
+fastened by a narrow girdle of white bark cloth. We know her very well,
+and did she not abuse her prerogative of anointment with cocoanut oil, I
+should see more of her.
+
+I have wandered away from my intention of wishing you a Merry Christmas
+and a Happy New Year; _our_ Christmas is a hot one (86 to-day), but
+yesterday was cold and stormy, and the thermometer went down to 78
+degrees for a time. The wind blew the palms into all sorts of distressed
+shapes, and sent amid a deluge of rain so much fine dust of broken
+foliage through the crevices of our doors as to remind me of Tenth
+Street in sultry summer, when they are building.
+
+I wrote to you from the steamer in the first days of October. Since that
+I have learned that my letter was long delayed. The letters are given to
+the small cutter or schooner, manned by natives, that meets the steamer,
+so as to bring letters here. Then she has to beat out for the upgoing
+steamer to San Francisco to give letters to her. It so happened (and,
+alas, I know all about it, for I was there), that the schooner was three
+days at sea, owing to calms, so that she could not return in time, and
+my letter which was aboard with me was delayed a whole month. It was a
+queer, an uncomfortable, but a startling experience, this being dropped
+into the boat--for we landed once and saw things in an, informal way,
+tasted the sensations of all this faraway rustic classicality with minds
+unprepared. We spent our first day and night with native hospitality in
+a little out-of-the-way village, and saw, abbreviated, all the
+innumerable pictures that I have had leisure to watch since then: The
+dances and the _kava_-drinking and the village life, and the boats; all
+preceded by our putting into “the little cove with a queer swell running
+on the beach,” just as in the old story books; and twenty-four hours of
+calm in a small sailboat under the tropical heat was also a new
+experience.
+
+So this is why my last letter was so delayed. I did not know of it until
+long after. Should I get as far as the Marquesas, I shall write to you
+again, and tell you if anything be left of Typee, but I fear that that
+is all over. Still, I hear reports of some private cannibalism to which
+the benighted French object, so that there may still be hopes. But I am
+told also, as I said before, that they wear European clothing and that
+is worse than any immoral diet.
+
+There are no Gérômes here and little French in the figures. Of the
+moderns, Millet and Delacroix _alone_ give the look of the nude alive
+and out of the studio. Also the Venetians and the older men are not out
+of the facts. And, praise be to the Maker of all (art included), I have
+not seen any _black_ except at night--and even then, “si peu, si peu.”
+Rembrandt would be happy here, especially in the evenings, when the
+cocoanut fire--that is so bright as to look bright in the day--makes a
+centre of light strong enough to turn the brown skins to silver and to
+gold, and then passes by every gradation of the prism into nameless
+depths that black paint will never give. My dear old painters, even to
+Van Eyck and Memling, how well they “carry” over the globe!
+
+I should write to you about Stevenson, but I suppose that you can hear
+more directly through his letters to his friend. We have seen something
+of him and have been pleased. He is hard at work, so that visiting him
+is not a favour to him, even though he may like it, as reminding him of
+that real world of civilization which he thinks he has left for good.
+
+Nor have I written to you about politics, that are really impressive
+here, for we have saved these people from a hell of slavery under the
+Germans. A little gentleness on their part, and they would have had the
+islands--for these people are gentle enough, and desire rule, but, as
+they said, “death would be better”--and fortunately we interfered.
+
+I am impressed here, as I have been before, by the force that America
+could have for good, and by the careful calculation on the part of those
+who know us best, the Germans and English, upon our weakness of action
+and irresponsibility, and our not knowing our enormous power.
+
+The Pacific should be ours, and it must be.
+
+
+Vaiala, Jan. 19th.
+
+This afternoon another little incident of everyday life brings up again
+my wish that I could set all this world about me to the music of a comic
+opera--a great _siva_. If only I could understand all that they say, and
+yet see it as people do who do not understand so that for them the ways
+of other races seem perpetually funny to the eye. What a charming
+subject I have now for a third act--or perhaps might I bring it into
+the first one--or should we perhaps make it an interlude, with the
+_siva_ ballet interspersed? Perhaps, after all, it makes a little opera
+bouffé for itself.
+
+This afternoon, as I was telling you, I noticed some agitation on and
+about the malae, and around Tofae’s house, which is next to mine. This
+annoyed me exceedingly. Siva,[12] our first pet from Tutuila, had come
+to Apia on a visit, and the little silly darling had stumbled upon Awoki
+and claimed him with all the enthusiasm these people have for him, for
+his small size, his good nature, and his brown skin.
+
+Our servants and dependents are the only ones who get the truest
+affection and good-will; we are too far up and too white, and cannot
+play. I have no doubt that notwithstanding the kindly offers we have
+had, Atamo especially, from maidens who were looking out for an
+establishment--I have no doubt, I say, that in their gentle minds was
+some confusion, some wish for rank and position, and that their real
+hearts went out to those with us like my little Japanese attendant.
+Indeed did not Faauli, the _taupo_ of Sapotulafai, the daughter of the
+great _tulafale_, intimate that she wished to keep Awoki with her, and
+did she not say that if he tried to run off she would put him in her
+father’s jail until we were out of sight and out of reach? Well, Siva
+recognized and claimed Awoki, and so we obtained her again. I made her
+sit for me, and found, to my great pride and delight, that I had never
+been mistaken, and that her rustic movements in the dance were finer far
+than those of the girls of the great places. We had seen the best first,
+and had known it. Siva was ill at ease here; she knew that she was
+considered provincial, or as Charley explains, “the Apia girls think
+that these Tutuila girls are fools.” The same little ways, the same
+condescension, the same disdainful or inquiring look, that we see used
+elsewhere, were given by the maidens of our place to the little
+stranger. And this afternoon, when I had got her out of the way to our
+house, to try to get a photograph of her with my hawk-eye camera, that
+never works, I was disgusted at seeing the surrounding green covered
+with people. The younger ones singled out Siva at once, and with the
+sincerity of purpose that belongs to youth, said to her what they
+thought; that her dress was this or that, that her hair was quite
+wrongly cut, like a goat’s, they said, literally, with many such
+amenities. All this Siva bore as maidens with us would bear, with a
+distant air and an occasional smile of pity. She was a sort of relative
+of Tofae’s, being herself a chief’s daughter, and could not, I suppose,
+be absolutely extinguished.
+
+But the crowd increased very much between us and Tofae’s house, and
+twice I had been obliged to single out some offender and drive him off
+with a threatened stick, when something dawned upon me; these people
+were really coming to Tofae: no vain curiosity had led them to surround
+us and sit about the grave of Tofae’s father, and fill the greensward
+between it and the posts of his house. Something was about to take place
+there. Tofae was seriously taking counsel with some others, and suddenly
+the crowd poured around his house, the privileged ones entering it, and
+one little bunch of old women slowly, lingeringly stepping in between
+its posts.
+
+So that I asked, relieved from my own trouble, what was it all about.
+This was the story: set it to music yourself and Atamo shall write the
+libretto. Within the fold of the chief has lately been dwelling a maiden
+thought to be frail, or at least of a stuff not so stern as some others.
+Perhaps she may have been there in exile for some slight misdemeanour,
+and her people may have deemed it good for her to live for a time under
+Tofae. For me she had little charm, if I do not mistake the young lady
+and confuse her with another young person who has also had refuge there,
+having bolted from her unpleasant husband and spending some weeks in
+temporary viduity.
+
+One of our young gallants, and I am both proud and ashamed to
+acknowledge, one of our own crew, is a great admirer of female beauty,
+and fixed upon this maiden as one he should like to win, even if he had
+to persuade her to run away with him, for as far as I know he is
+married, and had never intended to set up a rival establishment in legal
+form. Nothing here in Samoa can be hidden for any length of time, so
+that a more moral place in its way it would be hard to find. To pay
+court in the evening supposes a certain surrounding of many young
+people, and often the presence of many older ones, and our young man’s
+wishes were understood by others than this best girl. So that, most
+meanly, some of the old women began to prejudice the girl’s mind against
+this passionate and handsome youth, and instead of opposing her, which
+might have defeated their object, they began to tell little tales about
+his past, probably exaggerated, as they went on accumulating. And as he
+found the girl still resisting he determined upon a straightforward
+course in his manly bosom, and complained to the chief, asking that
+these libellers be punished. And the chief listened, as was right, and
+summoned the old ladies before his tribunal to make good what they said,
+or forever after hold their peace. And here they were, come to be
+judged, while friends and witnesses and neighbours circumfused them,
+anxious about the outcome.
+
+“Well,” I said to Charley, “and what will happen? You have heard it
+all.”
+
+“They have been telling bad things of him, and Tofae will punish them.
+He will fine them and fine them high, perhaps as much as ten dollars,”
+answered righteous Charley, feeling, as we all did, for the virtuous
+cause. And then I withdrew, not only because I wished to go to Sivá, but
+I wished also to meditate upon the principles of eternal justice now
+about to be vindicated by Tofae. When the old women are silenced and put
+to naught, shall our young man be strengthened in his suit? And will the
+young lady triumphantly elope with him? All these contingencies of
+events might appear spoiled if I inquired too far, so that I have left
+it all alone, and I withdraw. The subject is too pretty as it stands,
+and, as I said before, only requires to be set to music.
+
+
+Vaiala, Jan. 27, 1891.
+
+We are nearer to the cannibal here in Samoa than you would believe at
+first; far away as we are from cannibal or “devil” countries, we have in
+the hired labourers of the German plantation a wilder set of savages
+than would seem from their usual behaviour and the steady work urged out
+of them by their German masters. You must not forget that these little
+black men, often so gentle and sweetly smiling, whom we see about at
+work--in that constant exceptions to all around us--are not absolutely
+converted by being taken from their cannibal native lands to work for
+the white man in Samoa. The smile of their white teeth, repeated by the
+ivory bars or rings in their noses, conceals, like the gentleness of
+children, depths of useless cruelty.
+
+The timidity of behaviour of such as I had seen and described to you,
+who had escaped from the plantations and were in hiding among distant
+Samoan villages, protected by the gentler brown race from recapture and
+return to what after all is slavery, is not a permanent index of
+character. When they have escaped, and have lived in the bush a life of
+bare chance, finding scanty food, continually tracked and hunted by
+their masters, often denounced by the Samoans, who do not trust them,
+they turn both to ancient, ferocious habits, and to the superstitions
+and fears which belonged to their life at home.
+
+They are always suspected of cannibalism; and the event which has made
+us all more or less miserable is considered as quite a possible thing,
+and likely to occur again. News came to us suddenly, out at Vaiala, that
+Faatulia, the wife of our friend Seumanu, the chief of Apia, had learned
+a dreadful thing. Her brother, some weeks ago, had sailed from the
+little island of Manono, and had neither returned there nor arrived
+anywhere. His boat was found upturned, and he was missing. The story
+told to Faatulia came from some of the black labourers, or else from
+some of those who had escaped out of slavery. Or else it came in the
+Samoan way, so that, though you know there is a story, it does not
+require to be fathered by any human tongue. “There are no secrets kept
+in Samoa,” says Mataafa; “they are always being told.”
+
+This is what she learned: Her brother, in the last storm, had been
+driven out of his course; his canoe had been overturned, and he had
+barely saved his life by swimming. On reaching land in great distress,
+he had found in the bush a hut, occupied by runaway blacks, and had
+asked for shelter. He had slept, but fever had taken hold of him, and
+for some while he was unconscious. Thereupon came up the dread
+temptation to the black man. Here was that menace of superstitious harm
+coming from the presence of a sick man, who might die and injure them by
+bringing the spirit which kills, into their forlorn abode.
+
+Here was food too, if they killed him. Perhaps--I say it with doubt,
+because I have but confused notions of the exact superstitions belonging
+to any one of the races I have not met--but the man killed and _eaten_
+is not so dangerous in the other world as the man who dies a natural
+death.
+
+At any rate, the story went on to say that the blacks killed Faatulia’s
+brother in his sleep, ate him, buried the bones, and knew nothing when
+inquiries were made. But somehow or other, suspicion excited by
+something done or said made the friends of the missing man dig and find
+remains which, at the time we heard the story, were being brought down
+to Faatulia, for identification.
+
+And now how shall they know? The German firm will send their physician,
+and the American ship will send hers, and the question will assume a
+political meaning.
+
+It was a sad thing to make our last call on Faatulia, and know that
+while she talked to us she was trying to forget the ugly thing lying
+behind the hangings of the hut.
+
+Seumanu was undisturbed as usual, and bade us good-bye with all the
+coolness of a _tulafale_.
+
+That same afternoon, January 27th, we looked for the last time upon the
+royal face of our neighbour Mataafa, while he told us again to tell
+Americans that Samoans owed their lives to the United States.
+
+Then I used up my last daylight in painting a study of Maua, one of the
+boat’s crew, who endured it in a fidgety way that he took for patience.
+He was cold, for every hanging mat had to be opened, to give a little
+light on the dark afternoon, under the big roof of our hut.
+
+And again in the morning I worked upon the sketch until the boatmen came
+up to tell me that the last moment was come. Maua flushed pink with joy,
+over his whole naked
+
+[Illustration: MAUA. STUDY OF ONE OF OUR BOAT CREW. APIA, SAMOA]
+
+body, when I told him that I had done. The children on the village green
+(_malae_) came to say something and to offer little presents of shells
+and sea beans.
+
+The steamer was whistling for me outside the reef--Atamo was on
+board---- But I could not be left behind--too valuable a passenger.
+
+I bequeathed my best cocoanut oil to Siakumo and the other girls, said
+good-bye to Tofae, our chief, and promised, if I returned, to come back
+under his wing. Samau, our boatswain, carried me on his back, into the
+boat, and patted my legs, as a respectful and silent good-bye.
+
+The grey water inside the reef was smooth and quiet. For the last time
+our Samoan crew pulled close to the shore, to exchange _tofas_
+(farewells) with Meli and her girls; and we went on board, where the
+sheep from Australia were still huddled on the quarter-deck due to
+Tahiti later. In the afternoon the island, wreathed in clouds, was
+already melting away behind us.
+
+
+
+
+AT SEA FROM SAMOA TO TAHITI
+
+
+We have had days of hard winds and grey weather, and all the more do I
+make pictures within my mind. For the Otaheite to which we are bound has
+a meaning, a classical record, a story of adventure, and historical
+importance, fuller than the Typee of Melville, which we may never see.
+The name recalls so many associations of ideas, so much romance of
+reading, so much of the history of thought, that I find it difficult to
+disentangle the varying strands of the threads. There are many boyish
+recollections behind the charm of Melville’s “Omoo” and of Stoddard’s
+Idylls, or even the mixed pleasure of Loti’s “Marriage.”
+
+Captain Cook and Bougainville and Wallis first appeared to me with the
+name of Otaheite or Tahiti; and I remember the far away missionary
+stories and the pictures of their books--the shores fringed with palm
+trees, the strange, impossible mountain peaks, the half-classical
+figures of natives, and the eighteenth-century costumes of the gallant
+discoverers. I remember gruesome pictures in which figure human
+sacrifices and deformed idols, and the skirts of the uniform of Captain
+Cook. What would be the fairy reality of the engravings which delighted
+my childhood?
+
+Once again all these pictures had come back to me. _Long ago_ there lay,
+by a Newport wharf, an old hulk, relic of former days. We were told that
+this had been one of the ships of Captain Cook: the once famous
+_Endeavour_. Here was the end of its romance; now slowly rotted the keel
+that had ploughed through new seas and touched the shores of races
+disconnected from time immemorial. Like the _Argo_, like the little
+_Pinta_ and _Santa Maria_, it had carried brave hearts ready to open the
+furthest gates of the world. The wild men of the islands had seen it, a
+floating island manned by gods, carrying its master to great fame and
+sudden death.
+
+For he was not allowed by fate to try for further Japan, and begin, with
+the help of Russia, that career of conquest for England which she now
+dislikes to share with other nations, even with those to whom she first
+proposed the enterprise and half the spoils.
+
+On that little ship, enormous to her eyes, had been Oberea, the
+princess, the Queen of Otaheite, whose name comes up in the stories of
+Wallis or of Cook, and early in the first missionary voyages.
+
+Oberea was the tall woman of commanding presence, who, undismayed, with
+the freedom of a person accustomed to rule, visited Wallis on board his
+ship soon after his first arrival and the attempt at attacking him
+(July, 1767). She, you may also remember, carried him, a sick man, in
+her arms, as easily as if he had been a child. I remember her in the
+engraving, stepping toward Wallis, with a palm branch in her hand; while
+he stands with gun in hand, at the head of the high grenadier-capped
+marines.
+
+And do you remember the parting--how the Queen could not speak for
+tears; how she sank inconsolable in the bow of her canoe, without
+noticing the presents made her? “Once more,” writes the gallant Captain,
+“she bade us farewell, with such tenderness of affection and grief as
+filled both my heart and my eyes.”
+
+Surely this is no ordinary story--this sentimental end of an official
+record of discovery.
+
+My memory makes the picture for me: the ship moving at last out of the
+reef, with the freshened wind, and below her level the canoe and the
+savage queen bent over in grief. Then right on without a break Wallis
+ends the chapter with these words: “At noon the harbour from which we
+sailed bore S. E. 1/2 E. distant about twelve miles. It lies in latitude
+17° 30´s. longitude 150° W. and I gave it the name of _Port Royal
+Harbour_.” This foreign name has since yielded to the ancient native
+one. Besides the charming irrelevancy of these facts with the words
+describing the sentiment of eternal parting, Wallis’s conclusion gives
+us the place of Tahiti on the map, and will help you to follow me there.
+
+The name of Wallis, the first discoverer, is so much overshadowed by the
+personality of Captain Cook, that I think it better to give you again
+the story that belongs to each.
+
+Let us go back in mind to the date, the second half of the last century,
+1767. The recall to _me_ of the ships of Christopher Columbus emphasizes
+the difference between that moment and the end of the fifteenth century.
+There were still vast spaces of sea unknown; still the object of
+commerce, of war and of discovery, was the connection with the
+“easternmost parts of Asia.” What lay between was only guessed at and
+often avoided. As when Anson, whom I have just been reading, passed
+through the southern seas in 1742, anxious for an unbroken passage
+across the great Pacific, in order to strike a blow at the Spaniard in
+Asiatic islands, he followed the Spanish charts; and in his own,
+“showing the track of the Centurion round the World,” there is nothing
+marked in the enormous blank space below the equinoctial line, from
+South America to New Guinea, but the fabulous Treasure Islands--the
+Isles of Solomon, placed very nearly where Tahiti lies.
+
+When Wallis and Bougainville came upon this island they came as Columbus
+did--as discoverers; but the times had changed; and the meeting with a
+new race in this island of Tahiti--a fifth race, as it was named in my
+boyhood’s school-books--affected European minds very differently from
+the manner of three centuries before, when the Spaniards went for the
+first time through a like experience.
+
+It is this new introduction of _modern_ and _changed_ Europe to another
+fresh knowledge of the savage world, that makes the solemnity of the
+discovery.
+
+There is also something in the sudden coming together of the two new
+nations, England and France, so different from ancient Spain, upon this
+littlest of lands most lost in the greatest spaces of the sea, four
+thousand miles from the nearest mainland.
+
+Hence from little Tahiti, whose double island is not more than a hundred
+and twenty-five miles about, begins the filling up of the map of
+discovery in the Pacific.
+
+When Wallis arrived in June, 1767, Tahiti and its neighbouring island
+were under the rule of a chief, Amo or Aamo, as he is called by Wallis
+and by Cook. He was their great chief--what we have managed to translate
+as king. It was a moment of general peace, and the “happy islanders”
+enjoyed in a “terrestrial paradise” pleasures of social life, of free
+intercourse, whose description, even at this day, reads with a charm of
+impossible amenity. The wonderful island, striking in its shape, so
+beautiful, apparently, that each successive traveller has described it
+as the most beautiful of places, was prepared to offer to the discoverer
+expecting harsh and savage sights a race of noble proportion, of great
+elegance of form, accustomed to most courteous demeanour, and speaking
+one of the softest languages of man. Even the greatest defects of the
+Polynesian helped to make the exterior picture of amiability and ease of
+life still more graceful. If, by the time that I return, you have not
+read as much about their ancient habits and customs, their festivals,
+their dances, their human sacrifices, their practice of infanticide,
+their wild generosity, I shall write you fully about it all, or shall
+make you read what is necessary. What was visible of the harsher side
+added to the picture of the interest of mystery and contradiction. The
+residence of this Chief, Amo, and of his wife, Purea or Oberea, as Cook
+called her, was at Papara, on the south shore of Tahiti. Both belonged
+to a family whose ancestors were gods; and they lived a ceremonial life
+recalling, at this extreme of civilization, the courtesies, the
+adulation, the flattery, the superstitious veneration of the East. This
+family and its allies had reigned in these islands and in the others for
+an indefinite period. The names of their ancestors, the poetry
+commemorating them were and are still sung, long after the white man had
+helped to destroy their supremacy. When Wallis arrived at the north of
+the island, Amo and Oberea were not far from Papara in the south. They
+heard of the arrival of the floating island, whose masts were trees,
+whose pumps were rivers, whose inhabitants were gods in strangeness of
+complexion and of dress.
+
+The same tragedy had happened there which begins the recitals of savage
+discovery. The islanders had no notion of the resources of the
+Europeans, nor had the white men a knowledge of Polynesian customs; so
+that soon came up the usual quarrel and the use of fire-arms taken by
+the natives for thunder and lightning. Amo received the news, and
+notwithstanding the exaggerated accounts, determined to see for himself
+the supposed island and test the power of its inhabitants. His was the
+attack described by Wallis, in which a large number of natives
+surrounded the ship, while Amo and Oberea looked on from a little
+eminence above the bay. To shorten the contest and thereby lessen the
+mischief Wallis fired on the canoes and the occupants, and finally on
+the chiefs themselves. Cannon balls fell at their feet, and tore down
+the surrounding trees. The unequal contest was over, and the inhabitants
+came with green branches in their hands, even those whose friends had
+been killed, to make peace with the English, and offer submission.
+Wallis relates how one woman, who had lost her husband and children in
+the fight, brought her presents weeping to him, and left him in tears,
+but without wrath, and gave him her hand at parting.
+
+And you remember how, just as Wallis had left one side of the island,
+Bougainville, the Frenchman, came up to the other, different in its
+make, different in the first attitude of the natives; but with the same
+story of gracious kindness and feminine bounty; so that the Frenchman
+called it the New Cytherea, and carried home stories of pastoral,
+idyllic life in a savage Eden, where all was beautiful and untainted by
+the fierceness and greed imposed upon natural man by artificial
+civilization. So strong was the impression produced by what he had to
+say, that the keen and critical analysis of his own mistakes in
+judgment, which he affixed to his Journal, was, passed over, because, as
+he complained, people wished to have their minds made up.
+
+And immediately upon his leaving, again to another part of the island
+came the representatives of another race, another, more solemn and less
+near to modern civilization--the Spaniards; who in their accustomed way,
+planted the cross next to the sacred grove, which unknown to them was
+that of the greedy god Oro, and sailed away, leaving two missionaries,
+helpless and solitary, to wait for their return.
+
+For this other side of the island was separated from the places of
+landing known to Wallis, by fierce war for which Oberea had given the
+signal, by that haughtiest pride which only a woman can show.
+
+The missionaries accomplished nothing; and when a few months afterward
+the Spaniards called and took them away, their presence had been but a
+dream--another strange side to the romance of the first discovery.
+
+One year later, 1768, came Captain Cook, whose name has absorbed all
+others. Twice he visited Tahiti, and helped to fix in European minds the
+impression of a state _nearer to nature_, which the thought of the day
+insisted upon.
+
+Nor can one here forget Oberea; and how she seemed to him younger than
+she had seemed to Wallis, who judged her age by European notions.
+
+And how shall I refer to that “ceremony of nature” to which she invited
+the captain and his officers, as an exchange for his having let her be
+present at the service of the Church of England?
+
+The state of nature had just then been the staple reference in the
+polemic literature of the century about to close. The very refined, dry
+and philosophic civilization of the few was troubled by the confused
+sentiments, the dreams, and the obscure desires of the ignorant and
+suffering many. Their inarticulate voice was suddenly phrased by
+Rousseau. With that cry came in the literary belief in the natural man,
+in the possibility of--analysis of the foundations of government and
+civilization--in the perfectibility of the human race and its persistent
+goodness, when freed from the weight of society’s blunders and
+oppressions.
+
+My confused memories of eighteenth century declamation and reasoning
+bring back to me this one echo. Our little ship is not a library, and I
+struggle for references. I can only remember fragments of the
+encyclopædists and of Diderot, and the vague impression that this last
+romance and analysis of singular writings of Otahite is based upon a
+direct information outside of that derived from books: that is to say,
+perhaps from the travellers themselves, or the Tahitian, who, like
+Cook’s Omai, came to Europe with Bougainville.
+
+Later Byron:
+
+    “The happy shores without a law,
+     Where all partake the earth without dispute,
+     And bread itself is gathered as a fruit;
+     Where none contest the fields, the woods, the streams:
+     The goldless age, where gold disturbs no dreams.”
+
+These literary images were used as illustrations of the happiness of man
+living in, what people still persist in calling, the state of nature.
+There is no doubt, of course, that at the moment of the discovery our
+islanders had reached a full extreme of their civilization; that
+numerous, splendid, and untainted in their physical development, they
+seemed to live in a facility of existence, in an absence of anxiety
+emphasized by their love of pleasure and fondness for society--by a
+simplicity of conscience which found little fault in what we
+reprobate--in a happiness which is not and could not be our own. The
+“pursuit of happiness” in which these islanders were engaged, and in
+which they seemed successful, is the catchword of the eighteenth
+century.
+
+People were far then from the cruel ideas of Hobbes; and the more
+amiable views of the nature of man and of his rights echo in the
+sentimentality of the last century, like the sound of the island surf
+about Tahiti.
+
+Nor am I allowed to forget the assertion of those “self-evident truths”
+in which the ancestor of my companion, Atamo, most certainly had a hand.
+So that the islands to which we are hastening with each beat of the
+engine, are emblems of our own past in thought, as they have played a
+part also in the history of which we see the development to-day, the end
+of the old society, the beginning of the new, the revolutions of Europe
+and of America, all which lies in my mind obscurely as I recall, every
+few moments, my vague emotions at the name of _Otaheite_.
+
+I believe too that our feelings are intensified because they are
+directed toward a far-off island; a word, a thing of all time marked by
+man as something wherein to place the ideal, the supernatural; the home
+of the blest, the abode of the dead, the fountain of eternal youth,
+Circe and Calypso, the haven of man tired of weary sea, the calm smile
+of the ocean when the winds have ceased. The word sings itself within my
+mind, and the dreams I have been recalling give me interior light during
+these gray days of adverse wind, as in Heine’s song of the “Land of
+Perpetual Youth”:
+
+    “Little birdling Colibri,
+     Lead us thou to Tahiti!”
+
+
+February 12th.
+
+Six days of grey weather and dark nights, and in the last evening, quite
+late, the sun setting, lit up for a moment an island, Moorea, which is
+distant from Tahiti only some dozen miles. It made an enchanted vision
+of peaks and high mountains, as strange as any which you may have seen
+in the backgrounds of old Italian paintings, far enough to be vague in
+the twilight haze and yet distinct in places high up, where the singular
+shapes were modelled in pink and yellow-green. The level rays of the sun
+pierced through the forest coverings, and came back to my sight, focused
+from underlying rocks, in a glistening network of rainbow colours. Then
+all faded in a cloudy twilight, half lit by the struggling moon, and we
+saw a vague space of island, like a dream, edged by a white line of
+reef; this was Tahiti. All night we ran east and west, waiting for the
+day, which would allow us to pass through the reef that lies in front of
+the so-called City of Papeete, which is a large village, the “capital”
+of the island, and the centre of the French possessions in Oceanica.
+
+
+
+
+TAHITI
+
+
+When we rose in the early morning our ship had already passed the reef,
+and we were in the harbour of Papeete. There was the usual enchantment
+of the land, a light blue sky and a light blue sea; an air that felt
+colder than that of Samoa, whatever the thermometer might say; and when
+we had landed, a funny little town, stretched along the beach, under
+many tall and beautiful trees. From under their shade the outside blue
+was still more wonderful, and at the edge where the blue of sky and sea
+came together opposite us, the island of Moorea, all mountain, peaked
+and engrailed like some far distance of Titian’s landscapes, seemed
+swimming in the blue.
+
+Near the quay neatly edged with stone steps, ships lay only a few rods
+off in the deep water, so that their yards ran into the boughs of the
+great trees. Further out, on a French man-of-war, the bugle marked the
+passing duty of the hour. Everything else was lazy, except the little
+horses driven by the _kanakas_. Natives moved easily about, no longer
+with the stride of the Samoans, which throws out the knees and feet, as
+if it were for the stage. People were lighter built, more _efface_; but
+there were pretty faces, many evidently those of half-breeds.
+
+White men were there with the same contrasting look of fierceness and
+inquisitiveness marked in their faces; these now that we see less of
+them, look beaky and eager in contrast with the brown types that fill
+the larger part of our sight and acquaintance.
+
+We were kindly received by the persons for whom we had introductions;
+and set about through various more or less shady streets marked
+French-wise on the corners: _Rue des Beaux-Arts_, _Rue de la
+Cathédrale_, etc.; first to a little restaurant, where I heard in an
+adjacent room, “Buvons, amis, buvons,” and the noise of fencing; then to
+hire furniture and buy household needs for the housekeeping we proposed
+to set up that very day, for there are no hotels. The evening was ended
+at the “Cercle,” where we played dominoes, to remind ourselves that we
+were in some outlying attachment of provincial France. By the next
+morning we were settled in a little cottage on the wonderful beach, that
+is shaded all along by worthy trees; we had engaged a cook, and Awoki
+was putting all to rights. As we walk back into the town there are
+French walls and yellow stuccoed houses for government purposes. A few
+officers in white and soldiers pass along.
+
+A few scattered French ladies pass under the trees; so far as
+
+[Illustration: STUDY OF SURF BREAKING ON OUTSIDE REEF. TAUTIRA,
+TAIARAPU, TAHITI]
+
+we can tell (because we have been long away) dressed in some correct
+French fashion; looking not at all incongruous, because already we feel
+that this is dreamland--that anybody in any guise is natural here,
+except a few Europeans, who meet the place halfway, and belong neither
+to where they came from, nor to the unreality of the place they are in.
+There is no noise, the street is the beach; the trappings of the
+artillery horses, and the scabbards of the sabres rattle in a profound
+silence, so great that I can distinctly count the pulsations of the
+water running from the fountain near us into the sea. The shapes and
+finish of the government buildings, their long spaces of enclosure, the
+moss upon them, remind us of the sleepiest towns of out-of-the-way bits
+of France.
+
+The natives slip over the dust in bare feet, the waving draperies of the
+long gowns of the women seeming to add to the stealthy or undulating
+movement which carries them along. Many draw up under the arm some
+corner of this long, nightgowny dress that it may not trail, or let
+their arms swing loosely to the rhythm of their passing by.
+
+Most of the native men wear loose jackets, sometimes shirts above the
+great loin-cloth which hangs down from the waist, and which is the same
+as the _lava-lava_ of the Samoans, the _sulu_ of the Fijians, and is
+here called the _pareu_.
+
+Many of the women have garlands round their necks and
+
+[Illustration]
+
+flowers behind their ears. Occasionally we hear sounds of singing that
+come back to us from some cross-street; and as I have ventured to look,
+I see in a little enclosure some women seated, and one standing before
+them, making some gestures, perhaps of a dance; and I grieve to say,
+looking as if they had begun their latest evening very early in the day.
+But this I have noticed from sheer inquisitiveness. I feel that in
+another hour or so I shall not care to look for anything, but shall sit
+quietly and let everything pass like the turn of a revolving panorama.
+In this state of mind, which represents the idleness of arrival, we meet
+at our Consul’s an agreeable young gentleman belonging to a family well
+known to us by name--the Branders; a family that represents--though
+mixed with European--the best blood of the islanders. They speak French
+and English with the various accents and manners that belong to those
+divisions of European society; they are well-connected over in Scotland.
+Do you remember the Branders of “Lorna Doone”? At home their ancestry
+goes back full forty generations. They are young and pleasant, and we
+forget how old we are in comparison. We call on their mother later, a
+charming woman, and on an aunt, Mrs. Atwater, who has a similar charm
+of manner, accent and expression; and on another aunt, the ex-Queen
+Marau; but she is away with her younger sister Manihinihi.
+
+In the evening, with some remnant of energy, we walk still further than
+our house upon the beach, passing over the same roads that Stoddard
+wearily trod in his “South Sea Idyls.” We try to find, by the little
+river that ends our walk, on this side of the old French fort, the
+calaboose where Melville was shut up. There is no one to help us in our
+search; no one remembers anything. Buildings occupy the spaces of
+woodland that Melville saw about him. Nothing remains but the same charm
+of light and air which he, like all others, has tried to describe and to
+bring back home in words. But the beach is still as beautiful as if
+composed for Claude Lorraine. Great trees stand up within a few feet of
+the tideless sea. Where the shadows run in at times, canoes with
+outriggers are pulled up. People sit near the water’s edge, on the
+grass. Outside of all this shade, we see the island of Moorea further
+out than the far line of the reef, no longer blue, but glowing like a
+rose in the beginning of the twilight.
+
+At night we hear girls passing before our little garden; we see them
+swinging together, with arms about the flowers of their necks. They
+sing--alas! not always soberly, and the wind brings the odour of the
+gardenias that cover their necks and heads.
+
+In the night the silence becomes still greater around us, though we can
+hear at a distance the music of the band that plays in the square, which
+is the last amusement left to this dreary deserted village called a
+town. In the square, which is surrounded by many trees, through which
+one passes to hidden official buildings, native musicians play European
+music, apparently accommodated to their own ideas, but all in excellent
+time, so that one just realizes that somehow or other these airs must
+have been certain well-known ones. But nothing matters very much.
+
+A few visitors walk about; native women sit in rows on the ground,
+apparently to sell flowers, which they have before them. People of
+distinction make visits to a few carriages drawn up under the trees.
+Occasionally, in the shadows or before the lights, in an uncertain
+manner, natives begin to dance to the accompaniment of the band. But it
+is all listless, apparently, at least to the sight, and just as drowsy
+as the day.
+
+In the very early morning we drive to the end of the bay at Point Venus,
+to see the stones placed by Wilkes and subsequent French navigators, in
+order to test the growth of the coral outside. And we make a call on a
+retired French naval officer, who has been about here more or less since
+1843, the time of Melville. We drive at first through back roads of no
+special character. We pass through a great avenue of trees over-arching,
+the pride of the town; we cross a river torrent, and the end of our road
+brings us along the sea, but far up, so that we look down over spaces of
+palm and indentations of small bays fringed with foam, all in the shade
+below us. On the sea outline, always the island of Moorea, and back on
+Tahiti, the great mountain, the Aorai, the edge apparently of a great
+central crater; a fantastic serrated peak called the “Diadem,” also an
+edge of the great chasm; and on either side along slopes that run to the
+sea, from the central heights, and recall the slopes of Hawaii. But all
+is green; even the eight thousand feet of the Aorai, which look blue and
+violet, melt into the green around us, so as to show that the same
+verdure passes unbroken, wherever there is a foothold, from the sea to
+the highest tops. This haze of green, so delicate as to be namable only
+by other colours, gives a look of sweetness to these high spaces, and
+makes them repeat, in tones of light, against the blue of the sky,
+chords of colour similar to those of the trees and the grass against the
+blue and the violet of the sea.
+
+Nearer us the slopes are all broken up into knife edges of green velvet
+streaked right near us by clay, which in contrast seems almost like
+vermilion. So far the roads were good, though the slippery clay might be
+very different when the great rains came down; and as our driver forced
+his horses at a gallop near the edges of the cliffs hanging over the
+lovely pictures of the secluded trees and water, we felt that a more
+sandy, more prosaic road would better suit the South Sea habits of
+carriage travel.
+
+All the trees were about us that we knew in Samoa; and many more rounded
+mango trees, with red fruit hanging on long stems, or lying green by the
+road. All this was to be seen with cool air full of life, and under a
+sky more like ours than the Samoan, but exquisitely blue and gay.
+
+Little has been done by us, even of going about; Atamo has written many
+letters; I have tried to sketch a little from our verandah, in front of
+which, on the shore, grows a twisted _purau_, called _fau_ in Samoa.
+Through its branches I see the sea and the reef, and the island of
+Moorea, in every tint of blue that keeps the light, even in the evening
+or in the afterglow, when the sunset lights up in yellow and purple the
+sky behind it. And yet there is a reminiscence in my mind of something
+not foreign to us, even at this moment, when the haze of light seems
+new, and the pale blue sea is spangled with little silver stars, as far
+as I can see distinctly.
+
+We have called on the ex-King; and in the evening, at the club, I have
+seen him--a handsome, elderly man, somewhat broken and far from sober.
+He was playing with a certain
+
+[Illustration: THE DIADEM MOUNTAIN. TAHITI]
+
+Keke, a black Senegambian in the French service, a prince of his own
+negro land, who speaks excellent French, and whom I surprised sitting on
+the sill of his house one evening (while we were taking a rainy walk).
+Keke wore in this retirement a pair of marvellous trousers, of a
+brilliant yellow, with red flamboyant pattern--something too fine for
+the ordinary out-of-door world. Many of the officials are coloured men
+from the French colonies, and so is the governor more or less. Of course
+the idea is infinitely respectable and humanitarian, as so many French
+things are, but I fear that the Republic is unwise in sending people
+whom the native here cannot look up to as he does to a white man.
+
+Of course they are all French and have votes, as the natives here can
+have also; but whether it is for the real good of a population
+accustomed to dependence I am not so sure. There are many curious
+anomalies: our American friends of Samoa speak, with our natural way of
+looking at things correctly, of the preposterous way the French have of
+backing the Catholic missions and protecting their missionaries, even as
+we would. But here I find the Catholic mission dependent upon the gifts
+of the faithful, while the Protestant missions are supported by the
+French government, as the Protestant clergy would be in France.
+
+The King, upon whom we called and whom we met at the club in affable
+mood, surrendered his rights to the French, a few years ago, under long
+pressure and with some advice from the missionaries. In exchange he
+received an annual income, and retained his honours and certain
+privileges. This end I suppose to have been inevitable. His mother, the
+famous Queen whose name was known to all sea-going people in that half
+of the globe, whose resistance to French pretensions had come,
+apparently, for a moment, near bringing France and England into a
+quarrel, had lived for many years under French authority, a government
+under the name of protectorate. Such, I suppose, must always be the end,
+as it has been everywhere that the English have been; as it has been in
+Fiji; as it will be to-morrow, probably, when King George of Tonga dies;
+as it will be in Hawaii, whenever the whites there determine to use
+their power. Nor is the line of the Pomaré, any more than that of the
+Hawaiian rulers, so connected with all antiquity as to be typical of
+what a Polynesian great chief might be to the people whom he rules. The
+Pomarés date only from the time of Cook. They were slowly wresting the
+power from the great family of the Tevas, by war and by that still more
+powerful means--marriage, which in the South Seas is the only full and
+legitimate source of authority.
+
+You know from all that I have told you of Samoa that in Polynesia
+descent is the only real absolute aristocracy; there is no ruling except
+through blood. Hence the absurdity of the kingships that we have
+fostered or established, which in our own minds seemed quite legitimate,
+because they embodied the European ideas which belong to our ancestry.
+Hence the general discomfort and trouble that we have helped to foster.
+Hence also--and far worse--the breaking down, in reality, of all the
+bases upon which these old societies rested, the saving of which in part
+was the only hope remaining for the gradual education of the brown man
+for his keeping to ideas of order different from our own, it is true,
+but still involving the same original foundations. Hence the
+demoralization, the arbitrary “white laws,” always misunderstood, always
+bringing on the vices which they were meant to control; hence the end of
+the “brown” man by himself.
+
+The missionaries’ good-will has never gone so far as to try to
+understand him as a being with the same rights to methods of thinking as
+we claim for ourselves. Part of this sad trouble is of course owing to
+the unfortunate moment which gave birth both to greater missionary
+enterprise, to a first acquaintance with these races, and to the
+disruption of authority in the West. Perhaps, indeed, it might then have
+required more comprehension than could be asked of any but the most
+exceptional mind to realize that what we call savagery was a mode of
+civilization. So must have been the European world when the civilization
+of antiquity broke down, and things of price went into the night of
+forgetfulness, along with the mistaken beliefs and superstitions that
+were joined to them. So here, where, as in all civilizations, religious
+views, manners, customs, superstitions were woven about every bit of
+life, the exterminating of anything that might seem pagan involved many
+habits, and some good ones, which necessarily, from their fundamental
+antiquity, had been protected by religious rites. Hence we brought on
+idleness and consequent vice; for idleness is as bad for the savage,
+whom we innocently suppose to be idle, because we do not understand how
+he busies himself, as it is for the worker in modern civilization. It is
+not the actual doing that is important, but such occupation as may
+determine a habit of useful or harmless attention, which prevents the
+suggestion of untried moral experiments.
+
+
+Even tattooing was a matter which like any society duty involved
+attention, considerable self-abnegation and suffering, so as to suit the
+supposed requirement of civilization, and a recognition of some manly
+standard, however childish it might seem to us, even if it seems as
+absurd as some of our society standards might seem to the so-called
+savage.
+
+These reflections came from reading a law of missionary civilization
+which I find in the records of the year 1822, in the neighbouring island
+of Huahine; in which a man or woman who shall mark with tattoo, if not
+clearly proved, shall be tried and punished, and made, for the man, to
+work on the road, for the woman, to make mats; in a proportion of which
+the only exact measure that I find is that for the man it is about the
+same as that for bigamy; for the woman just the same as adultery.
+
+With the coming of the missionaries, with the coming of the white men
+traders, coincided the first attempts of the ambition of these Pomaré
+chieftains. They had already done a good deal for themselves before Cook
+left for the last time. He had seen Oberea, of whom I first spoke, a
+great person. When he left, her line of family was already on the
+decline; war and massacre had weakened it. Pomaré--the Pomaré of that
+day--with the support of the guns of the white men, established his
+final superiority, and becoming the great chief was solemnly crowned and
+oiled by the missionaries, like a new king of Scripture. And this man is
+the last of the line. His first great ancestor, Otu, just appears with
+the first discoverers’ records of the details of the ceremonials and
+etiquette belonging to high chieftainship, which are recorded in the
+first missionary accounts.
+
+You may remember the picture painted by Robert Smirke, Royal
+Academician, where the high-priest of Tahiti cedes the district in which
+we now are to Captain Wilson of the missionary ship the _Duff_, for the
+missionaries. In the centre, with a background of palms and peaks, two
+young people--Pomaré, the son of Otu, and his queen--are represented on
+men’s shoulders. That was the old fashion of Tahiti, the great chief not
+being allowed to touch the land with his feet, lest it become his by
+touch.
+
+[Illustration: POMARE REX]
+
+And therein also is shown the peculiar political arrangement by which
+the young chief took his father’s place when a child, and ruled, in
+appearance at least; for there in the picture alongside of the two young
+sovereigns, called kings by us, stand father and mother uncovered to the
+waist, out of respect to their child’s higher position. Otu and Iddeah,
+the dear lady whose notions about infanticide troubled the good
+missionaries to such an extent, but whose courtesy was willing to go so
+far as to promise that she “never would do it again,” when once she had
+done as she pleased. As I understand it, the Pomarés, then, pass away
+with the present King, but the great line whose place they took--the
+Tevas or their representatives--remain. In that line continues a
+descent from that Queen Oberea, whose figure, in another picture that I
+have referred to and which I beg you will look up in the volume
+containing Wallis’s discovery, is so charmingly made a type for an
+imaginary kingdom, like those of the operas and the tapestries of the
+eighteenth century, in which nothing is untouched by fancy but the
+muskets and grenadier caps and uniforms of Wallis and his men.
+
+I have almost been tempted, as you see, to begin a sort of explanation
+of the history of the island; but I think that I can manage later to
+give you certain stories which will have the advantage of a more
+personal knowledge of acquaintance with what might be called the text,
+than these vague reminiscences of the books that I have read and which
+are nearer to you than they are to me. Meanwhile, let me tell you that
+last evening, at the club, His Majesty, who was in extreme good humour,
+singled us out, told us how he liked us, that he liked Americans, who
+themselves liked Tahitians, and that the French, who stood all about
+him, were all d--d--d----
+
+This he said in English, in a proper reminiscence of nautical terms of
+reproach, and added blandly, “But I don’t understand English.”
+
+He has a fine, aristocratic head, and must have been a very handsome
+man. He has for an adopted son one of the young gentlemen of the
+Branders, who will succeed to an empty honour; though there might
+perhaps yet be a part to fill, for the family that represents all that
+there has been far back and recently.
+
+Next week we shall go into the country, further along the coast, and
+make a visit to the old lady who is the head of the house, grandmother
+of these young men, and who is the chiefess representing that great line
+of the Teva, alongside of which the Pomaré--the kings through the
+foreigner--are new people. Then I may write lengthily, or at least with
+some detail, about matters that I only see confusedly, but which must be
+curiously full of ancient, archaic history, however lost or eclipsed
+to-day.
+
+I notice in my habits, now forming, as I write out my journal for you, a
+tendency to dream away into a manner of philosophizing which evidently
+has for its first beginning the appreciation of the remote forms of
+these savage civilizations; so that as I grow to understand them better,
+it is necessary for my individual happiness of thought to be able to
+consider the earlier ways of man as not unconnected with the present,
+and even to be willing to consider all foundations of society as passing
+methods suitable to the moment, and perhaps in the great future to vary
+as much from the present as the past is strangely different. The good
+missionary, who simply looked upon a good deal of this past as
+strangely resembling the antiquities of the Bible, consoled himself, and
+persuaded many of his brown brethren in the belief that they, at last,
+were the famous lost tribes, who still kept, in many ways and details,
+that very peculiar manner of life which the Bible sets out in many
+details.
+
+One evening in Samoa, the great Baker, the former missionary and ruler
+of Tonga, finding me interested and credulous in regard to many
+superstitions which he described, and many facts quite as extraordinary
+that he vouched for, unfolded to me, as a regard of confidence, his firm
+belief that in these islands of the Pacific, Reuben, Simeon, Levi,
+Judah, Zebulon, Issachar, Dan, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Ephraim, Manasseh
+and Benjamin had found a home. And if a man so worldly wise, such a
+producer of money, such a controller of weaker minds, dwelt in this view
+with satisfaction, as a relief from the sordid necessities of power, I
+think that a mere dreamer like myself can be excused for turning to more
+scientific and accurate arrangements of men’s history.
+
+These words come to me more distinctly suggested by the place in which I
+am, not because I am thinking of the ancient ways that I touch, but
+because I remember how Melville passed from those records of exterior
+life and scenery to a dwelling within his mind--a following out of
+metaphysical ideas, and a scheming of possible evolution in the future
+of man.
+
+
+Papara, April 7th.
+
+This is a land where to live would have made you happy. Outdoors and in
+the water, and in no compulsory dress, would have been your usual way of
+passing a great part of the time. I thought of you while I looked this
+morning at the children playing in the water of the little river, or in
+the surf that rolls into it or along the shore. The girls, little wee
+things, swam in the stream near its mouth, where it is safe, and plunged
+in and out, and swam under water, their feet and backs showing within
+the light and dark of the currents; for the river has been very full,
+and the surf and tide have been heavy, so that the children take their
+turn with the current. The boys were out in the surf, on the border of
+which occasionally the girls played, edging sideways to it, and running
+back with swinging arms. The boys and one of the men plunged out with
+surf boards, ducking under or riding over the waves that did not suit
+them; then turning just before the wave that suited, they were carried
+along the shore leaning on their boards. The currents of the sea carried
+them past us looking on. Of course they knew all about them, and rough
+as the surf was, one of them had got past one of the lines of the
+breakers and tried fishing in some bottom both higher and less vexed. It
+was a pretty sight, the brown limbs and bodies all red in the sun and
+wet, coming out of the blue and white water like red flowers. The girls
+were yellower and more golden than the boys--less tanned I suppose.
+
+They have been running about with less clothing, perhaps because the
+family is away. They left yesterday, and the daily life is the same.
+That is to say that only Tati and his family, including one of the boys
+whose holiday is prolonged, are here with us. The old lady (Hinaarii)
+the Queen (Marau), Miss Piri (pronounced Pri, short for Piritani,
+Britain), Miss Manihinihi, and the two young men all went off together;
+the ladies to spend some time at their house in Faaa, the most rustic, I
+believe, of their residences.
+
+Pleasant as it is to talk with Tati or do nothing, I miss the ladies.
+The old chiefess is admirable, and is willing to talk to us of legends
+and stories with the utmost patience. I wish I had a portrait of her.
+She has a most characteristic and strong face, upon which at times comes
+a very sweet smile; as I saw yesterday, when she was asked which she
+preferred, Moorea, the island she comes from, or Tahiti, where her life
+has been mostly spent. “Tahiti!” she said decidedly, resuming in the
+inflection of her voice all the memories of a long life that has seen
+so much, and so much that is different and contradictory.
+
+Queen Marau has been very affable and entertaining, telling us legends
+and stories; Miss Piri has been ailing, Miss Chiki, smiling. The women
+of the family are all extremely interesting, of various types, but each
+one with a charm of her own; from Marau’s strong face, fit for a queen,
+to Manihinihi’s bright cordial smile. And such beautiful voices as they
+have, and rich intonation! It is a remarkable family and a princely one.
+When you read the next few lines you will say that I am prejudiced about
+my own people, and anxious to have you admire them also; but I don’t
+care, I am glad to have such relations. For, a little before her
+departure, the old lady sent word that she wished to see us; and when we
+had come to sit beside her, she told us that she had decided to confer
+family names upon us, choosing the names which had given the power and
+which belonged to the ruling chief. Consequently Atamo takes the name of
+Tauraatua, Chief of Amo, meaning Bird Perch of God, and I of Teraaitua,
+Captain of that ilk, meaning Prince of the Deep. The old lady said all
+this with great sweetness and majesty, and we were greatly touched by
+the compliment.
+
+This afternoon we went to see the little place which is Amo, and from
+which the Tevas were ruled. It is a small principality only fifteen
+fathoms long, and is at present all overrun with trees, orange and guava
+mostly. But not so long ago, as Tati remembers, it was as it had been
+before the little river changed its course and tore it up--a large
+_paipai_ or stone platform, edged with stones carefully set, long ones
+above, others with oval ends nicely finished below (turtle heads they
+are called). Here lived Tauraatua, sixteen generations back, simply and
+frugally, refusing to change his habits with increased power, and
+contented with cheap fare. Here on the little platform he drank _kava_,
+with the river running by; and once, while lying under its influence
+(dead drunk, as it were), came near being surprised by the enemy. Some
+little while ago the tall cocoanut tree was still standing, which had
+served as a lookout and watch-tower against the enemy; and from which
+the watcher had descried the invader just in time to save the chief, and
+have him carried away like a precious parcel.
+
+For Tati informs me that here _kava_ was not the mild drink of the
+Samoan. It is apparently the same root to the sight, but whereas whole
+bowlfuls did not affect us, and whites are accustomed to it in Samoa, a
+glassful here, according to Tati, was and is a serious drink. Its charm
+lay apparently in the drowsiness and dreaminess it produced; people
+spoke of their having been dead under it, or of having seen things, as
+with opium or haschich (hemp), and to-day opium is killing the last of
+the Marquesans. It could be nothing more than to carry out more
+completely what seems to us fierce whites the meaning of these lands--to
+exist without effort, in indolence, and waiting for nothing to happen.
+The narcotic would condense it all, would bring a year of dreams into a
+something that could be felt like a single act, like an occurence that
+comes to you, instead of your making it, little by little, so that the
+beginning is forgotten at the very middle of the tale.
+
+Such happiness was broken into by noise, and chiefs demanded, for their
+hours of _kava_ influence, absolute silence about them; not even a cock
+might crow. One can understand the objection to it made here by the
+missionaries, which seen from our Samoan experience seemed useless and
+cruel. Another example of a momentary or local matter becoming built
+into a principle.
+
+We went to see the new duchy; Adams took off an orange as a manner of
+investiture. I made an effort to see if I remembered it in a previous
+existence, but I did not. Tati remembered it, of course, and the place
+near by, all overgrown with great mango trees that have crowded over it,
+where his mother lived, and where the stone copings mark the base of the
+native house and a platform outside.
+
+Later on Queen Marau told us of the trick by which the great Chief of
+Amo won influence, having claimed limits which were contested by
+powerful opponents. He left the decision to the great god Oro (whose
+temple, you know, was at Tautira), and where he was when a voice called
+from some unknown place and “gave him right.”
+
+This is the story exactly as Queen Marau told it.
+
+
+STORY OF THE LIMITS OF THE TEVAS
+
+When Oro was Chief of Papara, Hurimaavehi of Vaieri was ruling over all
+this side (Mataeia). A woman brought about the overthrow of Vaieri and
+the headship of Papara.
+
+Oro had a son whose friend, named Panee, was the father of a beautiful
+daughter, beautiful enough to attract the notice of all, as indeed it
+was the glory of the place to do. Hurimaavehi, having heard of her
+beauty, had her carried off at night, by men sent for the purpose. Her
+father, in his distress, not knowing what had befallen her, but guessing
+at it, sought her up to every limit. One day, while he was inquiring at
+the limit near Mataeia, he saw two men coming toward him.
+
+“Where from?” said he.
+
+“From Vaiari.”
+
+“And how is Hurimaavehi, and all around him, and what new beauty have
+you in Vaiari?”
+
+The two travellers answered. “If you talk of beauty, there is a wonder
+has sprung out there, and she belongs to Hurimaavehi.”
+
+“She must be well treated?” inquired the old man suspiciously.
+
+The two said, “No indeed! She has been passed down to the servants
+(_Teutunarii_), then sent to the dogs and the pigs and to the fish of
+the sea.”
+
+So the father, like a madman, called out all manners of insult against
+Hurimaavehi; and he rushed away (like a madman) to the limits of the
+district of Vaiari, and meeting five people--Tite and four others
+(_iatoais_[13]) under Hurimaavehi, he killed them (“which,” says the
+teller of the story, “was a challenge”), and he gave his insults to be
+repeated by the travellers to the Chief Hurimaavehi. So that Hurimaavehi
+was incensed, and came right over to Papara with his people.
+
+Now the girl’s father had told his friend, the son of Oro, that
+Hurimaavehi would be coming to attack, and why. And the son of Oro said,
+“Come with me”; and they went to his father Oro and told him, how
+Hurimaavehi was coming to kill them, and why.
+
+Oro said to his son, “Hide under this _marae_” (the _marae_ whose
+remains or rather whose place we saw at Amo), and to the other, “Do you
+go up this tree” (the famous cocoanut that served as a watch-tower),
+“and when he comes back attack and beat him.” He came with his men, they
+beat him, and Hurimaavehi ran off, with Oro and all his men after him,
+following on and taking possession of every limit, until he came to
+Teriitua. Then Teriitua said, “No further; this belongs to me.”
+(Hitiaa.)
+
+Then the limit was decided, as the famous story tells.
+
+This is the downfall of Vaiari and the rise of Papara.
+
+And the girl, having served her purpose of introducing the war, steps
+out of the story.
+
+The daughter of Panee, whose fame for beauty brought on this trouble to
+herself and subsequent enlargement of her people, was, as the story
+shows, known as a beauty far from home. Our brown ancestors admire
+beauty no less than other people; and looked upon it, as we do in many
+cases, as a good instrument, besides the credit to the family and the
+favour that goes with the possession of any social power. But you must
+always remember that our brown forefathers were eminently socialistic,
+or rather communistic, as their relatives all over the Pacific are
+still. Never forget this for a moment, whenever you think of them or
+read about them or any habits of theirs. We have developed from that
+point to a degree of individualism that can with difficulty understand
+what communism means. So that we are easily deluded and over-pleased, or
+horrified, when like views and systems are proposed in the western world
+for our descendants.
+
+Now then, the family, in the case of a lovely brown maiden, would not
+only be her own family (as we call it directly), but spread further and
+back, in all sorts of relatives, and from that spread out to the village
+and the tribe; so that her beauty would be a credit to the whole place.
+Hence she would become a show-piece; and her immediate parents, with the
+good-will of the community, would guard her beauty, would feed her well
+and daintily, to make her smooth and fat; would keep her out of the sun
+that might darken her skin, fairer than that of others, if still brown
+to our snow-blinded eyes.
+
+She would then occasionally be seen; and it was considered a proper and
+justifiable extravagance for even a lesser person to have a _paipai_, or
+stone exterior foundation to his house, upon which his fair child could
+be seen. And at certain intervals she would take her bath in public with
+others, and her physical charms be fairly judged. Nor must we think that
+all this is brutal--no more than with us to-day.
+
+The girl was also judged by her manners, her courtesy and her modesty;
+for she thought no more of showing her legs than do our young women of
+showing their necks and bosoms and backs; and she had the same notion
+that they have that there are strict limits--even though hers might not
+be ours. You will remember, perhaps, in early accounts, the pretty
+description of women playing on the shore or in the water, at games of
+ball, as did Nausicaa in the days of Ulysses.
+
+Many times have I heard allusions to the habit of keeping in one house a
+number of the girls together, beauties of the place. And if I remember
+right, it was to such a residence that the celebrated Turi contrived to
+pass, notwithstanding the difficulties put in his way--difficulties all
+the more interesting as mere delays; for the young women had heard of
+his exploits and expected as much of him. But then, if I remember also,
+he lived in those days when people, especially the heroes of tales,
+could be gifted with the power of changing their forms at will. And who
+could have guessed in the decrepit or leprous old man, pitied for his
+sorrows by the tender women, the gay Lothario heard of through all
+islands. Still less could he be discovered in the fish that was caught
+by the old women who supplied the women’s house with food. He it was who
+dug the great tunnel through the mountain, in order to approach his love
+without detection--her who was Ahupu Vahine of Taiarapu, of whom
+Stevenson, in the notes of his Ballads, says that he has not yet been
+able to find out who she was. Why! there is a whole “Chronique
+Scandaleuse” of that period of earliest history.
+
+Oro then belonged to the younger Vaiari, and seized the power of the
+older branch.
+
+Let us take up the story as he pursues his enemy into the territory of
+Teriitua, Chief of Hitiaa, who checked his advance, disputing, most
+naturally, the limits that were being conquered. So that they left the
+decision to the Gods, as I understand, upon Oro’s proposal.[14]
+
+Upon a day appointed they met for the invocation; but Oro had determined
+to help himself that he might be helped; as many pious men have done and
+will do again. A friend of his, whom tradition names Aia, was concealed
+carefully in a hole or hollow place, near the disputed boundary.
+Teriitua’s call upon his gods, being met only by the silence of the
+woods, Oro called out, pointing out, I suppose, what he wished, “Is it
+here?” And his friend answered, “It is here.”
+
+The cause of Oro won; a little, perhaps, because according to all
+tradition, he was a doughty warrior who intended to have his way.
+
+We now belong to both the “Inner” and “Outer” Teva: Te Teva Iuta and Te
+Teva Itai, the whole eight, whose clans reached all down this side of
+the island, and into the next; for we have been adopted twice, both at
+Tautira, and here--into the two divisions.
+
+The place has now for us an increased charm; a still more subtle
+influence envelops me when I think that this is the home of Amo and
+Oberea, who first met Wallis and Cook; and as I look from the violet
+beds of one of the princesses to the solemn hills of dark green crowned
+with cloud, I wonder if somewhere there may be the hidden tomb of
+Oberea, now my ancestress, the quiet familiar surroundings became solemn
+with this great reminder of the mountains and the ocean that faces them.
+
+I listen now, with a curiously new interest, to the explanations of the
+meanings of landmarks and to their names full of associations for the
+Teva line. We have it explained to us that each chief had a _marae_, a
+temple associated with the sacredness of his name; and many rules
+concerning its foundation; and the places within it reserved to chiefs
+through heredity and heredity alone.
+
+Each chief had also a _moua_ or mountain; an _Otu_ or cape or point of
+land; a Tahua or gathering-place, from which he ruled. Every point, says
+the island proverb, has a chief.
+
+For the Teva the oldest _marae_ was Farepua in Vaiari, from which, by
+taking a stone from it, Manutunu, the husband of the fair Hototu, mother
+of the first Teva, founded the _marae_ of Punaauia for his son. (He
+called it so because of his uncle, who dead was rolled up like a
+fish--_iia_.)
+
+From these two _maraes_, many _maraes_ along the coast, and in Moorea
+took their origin and proved the family descent. The Moua of Papara was
+Tamaiti; its Outu was Monomano; its Tahua, Poreho; its _marae_, Tooarai.
+Our adopted mother’s name is Teriitere Itooarai, which you will remember
+is the name of the son of Oberea and Amo.
+
+Taputuarai in the small district of Amo was the original _marae_ of
+Papara, and from that Amo took the stones to build the _marae_ of
+Tooarai on the point of Mahaiatea.
+
+A poem traditional in the family gives expression to the value of these
+points--to the attachment to and desire to be near them again, in the
+mind of an exile, one of the Papara family. The family seems to have
+been represented by the Aromaiterai and the Teriterai, one of whom ruled
+in the absence of the other.
+
+How far back this was composed, nor exactly how it happened that one
+brother, Aromaiterai, was banished, I do not know. One or other branch
+seems to have been always jealous of the other; but in this case one
+Aromaiterai was banished and forbidden to make himself known. He was
+sent into the peninsula to Mataoa, from which place he could see across
+the water the land of Papara and its hills and cape. The poem which he
+composed, and which is dear to the Tevas, revealed his identity:
+
+
+LAMENT OF AROMAITERAI
+
+From Mataoa I took to my own land Tianina, my mount Tearatapu, my valley
+Temaite, my “drove of pigs” on the Nioarahi.[15]
+
+The dews have fallen on the mountain and they have spread my
+cloak.[16]Rains, clear away, that I may look at my home! _Aue! Aue!_ the
+wall of my dear land! The two thrones of Mataoa[17] open their arms to
+me Temarii (or Amo).
+
+No one will ever know how my heart yearns for my mount of Tamaiti.[18]
+
+Could anything be finer than the rallying cry of the Tevas:
+
+    “Teva the wind and the rain!”
+
+For a line running back to origins confused with the brute forces of the
+world; originating with divine creatures half animal--with the princes
+of double bodies, half fish, half man, what more poetic reminder of the
+intimacy with parental nature.
+
+I sometimes think of our chiefess as being able to feel with Phaedra,
+that the encompassing world is full of her ancestry.[19]
+
+And here the heroic line brought down through ages to the present day,
+brings back to my mind the tradition that the lines of the fabulous
+Homeric heroes were carried into the new Christian world as far as the
+days of St. Jerome. Nor was the suggestion of the thought of Phaedra,
+claiming kinship with the universe, so far from the echo of the name of
+Queen Marau, whose further name is Taaroa, the great first god whose
+relation to the world is given in the verses:
+
+    “He was; Taaroa was his name.
+     He rested in the void.
+     No land, no sky,
+     No sea, no man,
+     And he alone existing took the shape of the universe.
+
+    “The pivots are Taaroa:
+     The rocks,
+     The smallest sands are Taaroa.
+     Thus he called himself.
+
+    “Taaroa is the light,
+     He is the germ.
+     He is the base,
+     The strong who created the world:
+     The great and holy world
+     The shell of Taaroa.
+     He moves it, he makes harmony.”
+
+The records of the past are all in words handed down; and the absence of
+any outer form to antiquity makes me seek it all the more in the nature
+which surrounds me, in the imaginary presence of the people who lived
+within it.
+
+One great disappointment awaited me: I had hoped to find some form in
+the great _marae_ or temple built by Oberea, in her pride of place,
+which Cook speaks of as the principal building of the island, and
+describes as an imposing monument. We found it only a vast mass of loose
+coral stones, treacherous to the foot and retaining but a vague and
+unimpressive outline. Still it was upon the shore, by the beautiful sea,
+and the funereal _aito_ or ironwood trees sacred to temples still grew
+upon it. Stewart, the planter who for a term of years was able to keep
+up a great estate, at the head of a company behind him, planned on a
+grand scale, and who then failed, was allowed to use the stones of the
+_marae_ as a quarry for his roads and walls. Even before that time
+neglect and the destruction brought about by the enmities to the old
+paganism must have changed its shape and destroyed its outline. To-day
+it is impossible to recognize the form described by Cook. It was made,
+he says, of a series of steps rising in pyramid way, to a top layer
+ridged like a roof; and its long sides, which hollowed in slightly, were
+some two hundred and thirty feet in length. Now it is a sad ruin,
+shapeless and barbarous.
+
+As I left it I remembered that Moerenhout, visiting here some sixty
+years ago, says that few natives except the great Chief Tati saw without
+superstitious fear the cutting down of the majestic trees which had
+witnessed for centuries the ceremonies of the forbidden worship, and had
+survived the decadence of the temples which they adorned. When he adds,
+the great trees had been cut down which shaded the _marae_ further
+inland, specially sacred to the chiefs of Papara, which had been that of
+Tati himself and of his children, a rumour spread about the country that
+the water of the little river, the river that ran through our ancestral
+domain of Amo, had reddened, and blood had trickled from the trunks of
+the prostrate trees.
+
+Last month, at Tautira, the absence of all vestiges of the great _marae_
+of the God Oro, was more impressive than the formless mass of stone
+associated with the name of Oberea. It is always a disappointment to
+notice how little this race has turned to the arts of form. I mean this
+race as I have seen it, in Samoa and in Tahiti. Elsewhere it may have
+done something, but here the form of music only has been reached--the
+earliest mode of expression. And though the Polynesian still shows good
+taste in colour and choice in arrangement, he seems to have taken but
+the very first steps in the adornment of surfaces or the arrangement of
+masses. It is possible that there is something strenuous and needing
+sustained effort in the plastic arts which these sensuous races, urged
+by no contrarieties to find some escape out of the present, were too
+indolent and contented to achieve.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have made many notes that I shall string together as I best can; but I
+am ineffably lazy, and this is the place for me in the house of Tati. I
+sleep in the rooms where his great-uncle Tati, the great Chief, died: he
+who ruled here at the beginning of the new dispensation, who was a child
+in the days of the first discoverers, and who lived well into the
+fifties. He was saved from the massacre of the Papara family when a
+child, through some recognition of the behaviour of Manea the high
+priest when he saved the pride of Tetuanui in her contest with the pride
+of Oberea.
+
+So that the revenge of Tetuanui spared this boy, who became an important
+man representing the great Teva house. But that was only after the son
+of Amo and Oberea had died by accident, leaving to the Pomaré Chief no
+equal rival; and after Tati’s brother Opufara had died in battle bravely
+defending the Pagan side against the Pomaré, helped by the rifles of the
+Christians.
+
+Tati had apparently refused to avail himself of the offer of Pomaré,
+before his death, to appoint him regent, nor did he consent to our
+chiefess being made queen: for he seems in many ways to have asked for
+the best interests of his nation, and always with higher motives. There
+are interesting descriptions of his influence and of his dramatic
+eloquence, which Moerenhout compares to the action of Talma, the
+greatest of French actors. I read about him in Moerenhout’s volumes; I
+make sketches during the day, and talk to the Tati of this moment,
+enjoying the sound of his voice and his laugh, and the freedom of the
+children, and the movement of the servants.
+
+There is one who is always hard at work doing everything, who is really
+Marau’s, a girl of good family, a sort of relation of mine now, and who
+is called Pupuri (if I catch it right), “Blonde”; and she is blond; her
+hair is absolutely gold, and when she has her back turned and her hair
+down you would suppose some foreign visitor from northernmost Europe.
+She is fair, a little red, like an Irish woman, with whitish lashes, and
+eyes that do not stand the light well.
+
+Madame sits at one end of the piazza; the ladies flit in and out of
+their rooms and sometimes talk to us.
+
+Next to our house, where some women have beds and others mats for
+sleeping, there are other houses for cooking, and for
+
+[Illustration: YOUNG TAHITIAN GIRL]
+
+servants who are in reality dependents. Sometimes members of the family
+eat there, in native fashion, of native cooking, instead of coming to
+the table at which we sit on one end of the verandah. Near by is a
+little garden growing on what was once the enclosure of a house; and the
+little river runs rapidly a few yards off, hidden in part by trees; at
+which women go down to wash, and which men and boys cross to bathe, and
+in which splash the horses when they are washed in the morning. It is
+all delightful and rustic.
+
+We are arranging with Tati about going to Moorea, the island opposite
+Tahiti, where we can be in the mountains that come right down to the
+water.
+
+As the island makes a perfect triangle, the clustering together of its
+mountain peaks, seen from Papeete, used to look like some background of
+early Venetian pictures, inspired by the Dolomites that Titian knew when
+a boy. Tati has a plantation and house there to which we shall go; and
+the family are strong in the island, having antique rights and
+inheritances in different districts.
+
+We shall stay only a few days here, and then sail or row across to the
+fantastic island that has made a distance of blue and gold to our days
+in Papeete, and behind which the sunsets used to sink in every variety
+of indescribable splendour or delicacy.
+
+
+Papeete, May 22, 1891.
+
+We did not leave by the steamer; by some curious chance unknown before,
+it was filled with passengers. It is true that it does not take a large
+number to fill it. We feared discomfort, and hurrying back from Moorea,
+we nevertheless lazily let it get away from the point on the coast to
+which it had gone for its cargo of oranges. Whether or no Tauraatua had
+already presented to his mind the alternative that opened to us I do not
+know, but we turned at once to a longer sea trip and a less probable
+one: to taking a little schooner that had just come from Raiatea, and
+getting its captain to carry us to Fiji. Thus we should also now be able
+to call at the leeward islands, Raiatea, Huahine, and Bora Bora, and
+leave, as it were, our cards. For it seems sad enough to give up the
+Marquesas; especially as every day we hear something in detail about
+them. Captain Hart tells us too that there is one _Typee_ perhaps still
+alive; and gives me something of the story of a savage whose photograph
+is on the bookcase of his office--a gentleman whom Stevenson met, and a
+lover of human flesh. Indeed, the story goes, that once upon a time he
+had had thoughts of dining upon the captain--after a previous murder, of
+course. Now, to know a cannibal and perhaps to become his brother--for
+that would be a natural result of his acquaintance, as our relationship
+is just now in
+
+[Illustration: PEAK OF MAUA ROA, ISLAND OF MOOREA, SOCIETY ISLANDS,
+TAHITI]
+
+demand through these latitudes--is an awful temptation. Were there
+anything more to it--were there anything said that might lead one to
+believe that he or any other such might really become known and
+understood--perhaps might one think that the two weeks’ sail against the
+wind would not be too much sea to travel over for a result. But I can
+make out no such probability from any cross-questioning that I have been
+able to conduct; and the portrait of the _indigène_ in question suggests
+a heavy, sullen brutality not at all romantic. I should not care to use
+him as a model for any picture of _Typee_, where the eating of man was
+apparently something like a duty or a necessity, not a mere _gourmet_
+liking for a certain richness of taste. No; we need, after all, more
+inducement than that one.
+
+The portrait of the Queen is more of an invitation: there is something
+in her face and the impression we receive from “Prince” Stanislas
+Moanatini that warrants that we shall be well treated.
+
+Still we are trying to get away in this other direction; that way at
+least the winds are in our favour, and two weeks’ sailing would see us
+in Fiji or near it; and then in a few weeks more we might be on our
+return homeward. For all considered, we must make up our minds either to
+let this thing go on, and drift about the South Seas, taking up the
+island groups one by one, as chance will have it, or we must make a
+stern choice and hold to that. And that choice points more and more to
+our saying good-bye to these eastern islands, and to determining that we
+have really seen Brown Polynesia, even if it be only in these three
+groups, and that the rest is a matter of detail. But it may not be so
+easy to leave by that little schooner or by any other.
+
+There is a demand for small schooners--that is to say, they have to go
+around to the groups to pick up cargoes; and the one German firm whose
+boat runs near enough would like to put the screws on to the uttermost.
+_More Germanico_, even money is not enough--there must be no
+equality--and the last alternative so far has been the offer of a
+passage in a little boat, with other passengers, native women, and a
+full cargo; which means every available space filled (so that we would
+merely have our berths to lie in); and that passage to certain places
+first, and then afterward, when the schooner has discharged its cargo at
+leisure, to take us from the last point to Fiji. For these discomforts
+we should have to pay $2,700, within $300 of the value of the schooner.
+The other passengers would pay $15, which would be the average value. We
+offered $3,000 for the use of another schooner, having ascertained that
+she was unprofitable to the same owner; to which he answered by sending
+her off; and told us that upon conditions of a like nature we might
+have her by and by. The place develops curious sides of what is called
+business; and this may be an example. Fancy anywhere else a person
+offered the full value of a bit of non-productive property for a few
+weeks’ rent, and hesitating so as to couple difficult conditions with
+his leave. But I think our German will come short of his enormous
+profit: the steamer that brings cattle here from Auckland and carries
+back fruit will probably be our choice; it is only waiting three weeks
+more, and economizing several hundred dollars a week--never a cruel
+thing to endure.
+
+And our stay is such an easy thing; it is only because neither of us has
+the future before him, but on the contrary, a considerable past filled
+with the habit of work, that we make the slightest effort to resist our
+contentment. The weather is such as people might travel far to seek: an
+equable warmth, a little coolness at night and in the morning, an
+evenness that makes a couple of degrees count for a great deal, plenty
+of moving air, a beautiful sea, a beautiful sky, and a beautiful
+distance at all hours of the day and even of the moonlit nights.
+
+The Moorea lies in front of us, on half of the horizon; the little
+shipping blocks up part of the space; grass-covered quays are before us,
+shaded with trees under which pass groups of natives or straggling
+French soldiers and sailors, or the few residents that live this way. At
+times all is silent and solitary; at others carts roll noisily; horses,
+ridden wildly by native boys, canter past, or some schooner comes in and
+unloads almost in front of us. Great excitement comes upon us with these
+arrivals, far greater than with the arrival or departure of the war
+steamer that serves to carry about the Governor or officials on tours of
+inspection, and whose presence brings the sunset gun, saluted by the
+customary refrain of the clarion, and the eight o’clock gun with another
+blast, as if reporting that the discharge had struck.
+
+Lately too we have been interested in the arrival of Narii Salmon in his
+boat from the Pomotus, bringing other members of the family. This
+impending arrival has brought several times to our verandah the two
+younger ladies of the family, to scan the distance with our glasses.
+Since the night when Narii ran in, passing the reef in the twilight, our
+beautiful new sisters have been less frequent. It was a pretty event,
+the arrival of the little boat, for which others had daily been
+mistaken; the settling of its identity by its marks; the recognition of
+its owner by its sailing bravely in through the pass in the dark; then
+the calls from the shore to know if it were he for sure, and who was on
+board; and the boats hurrying out and coming back, all in a silence so
+great that the slightest rustle of sail or cordage or steps on deck
+could be distinctly heard.
+
+At times the only sound is the wavering fall of the little column of
+water that drips from the mouth of a fountain into the sea--to which we
+go for our supply of pure water. Its threads, thicker or thinner, with
+the pulsations of the headstream thousands of feet far back, or with the
+draught of the wind, make a corded silver fan against the blue sea
+during the day; in the night a line of tinted light.
+
+These are fine days; but our first stay after our return from Moorea ran
+over a week of wet weather that kept all asoak, filled the house with
+damp and mould, and carried into and about it disagreeable things taking
+refuge in comparative dryness: the centipede that runs away, but bites
+if interfered with; the scorpion that lurks around dark corners, and
+scuttles off harmlessly enough, but looking like a child’s dream of a
+devil. The cockroach seems to rule over them, however, and to drive them
+away; and as the scorpion appears rarely in the house, and only in the
+verandah or outhouses, we have been lucky. Tauraatua has been bitten,
+but after a sharp pain like a cut, the matter has faded away. The memory
+is there, however, and I am glad of the changed weather. Our house, from
+whose verandah we look upon the sea across the road, and the reef near
+the horizon and Moorea swimming in light, is the historic consulate
+empty of the Consul, whose place we take, his duties only being filled
+by Captain Hart, the Vice-Consul.
+
+Behind us, across the yard, is our dear old Chiefess’s home, where the
+Queen, Marau, and her sisters Piri and Manihinihi reside; so that we are
+near our new family, and we call in as often as our fears of intrusion
+may allow, or need of society, or freedom from so-called occupation.
+Tauraatua goes over more than I do; he has given up painting, and has
+returned to congenial and accustomed studies, by working at the
+genealogy of our new family, and helping to get it into written shape.
+
+For the old lady, Hinaarii, has begun to open the registers of memory,
+and to correct and make clear things kept obscure, partly from purpose
+as defences, partly from kindly motives toward others; partly because it
+is written that memories must perish and the past continually fade and
+disappear, in part at least. Genealogy, you know, in the South Seas,
+indicates not only one’s standing but one’s rights to land. Nothing is
+ever sold, nothing alienated by any law; so that in one’s name and in
+the names of one’s relations are the title deeds of what one has. And
+now the French Government, in its anxiety to extend all benefits of
+civilization, and to make all its peoples equals has desired to have
+everything put into proper shape; and as in Samoa, so everybody here
+must put in his claim to the land, which thus will be duly recorded for
+good and all. For never again will be the time when a family might claim
+the fruit of a branch of a given tree. These genealogies, kept by
+hearsay, will be unfolded to the public, so far as needed, and claims
+settled; there will be no need of concealment, no fear that some side
+relation, in a little country, where such relationship must exist, will
+know enough to make out a tree of his own and come in with some claim.
+Everything conspires for getting some definite record just before the
+last veil closes over a past already dim enough. And Marau and Moetia
+are writing out songs and legends, and may be inspired, if their ardour
+can continue, to help to save something.
+
+Some years ago King Kalakaua of Hawaii had wished to obtain the
+traditions and genealogies; but the old lady had never been favourable;
+so that we feel that at least we have done no harm to the family, at
+least in our western notions, since we may help to save its records.
+
+It is a part of the charm of Tahiti that with it there is a history:
+that it has been the type of the oceanic island in story; that the names
+of Cook and Bougainville and Wallis and Bligh belong to it most
+especially; that from it have radiated other stories: the expeditions of
+the mutineers of the _Bounty_, and the missionary enterprises that have
+gone through the Pacific.
+
+With its discovery begins the interest that awoke Europe by the apparent
+realization of man in his earliest life--a life that recalled at least
+the silver if not the golden age. Here men and women made a beautiful
+race, living free from the oppression of nature, and at first sight also
+free from the cruel and terrible superstitions of many savage tribes. I
+have known people who could recall the joyous impressions made upon them
+by these stories of new paradises, only just opened; and both Wallis’s
+and Bougainville’s short and official reports are bathed in a feeling of
+admiration, that takes no definite form, but refers both to the people
+and the place and the gentleness of the welcome.
+
+That early figure of Purea (Oberea) the Queen, for whom Wallis shed
+tears in leaving, remains the type of the South Sea woman. With Cook she
+is also inseparably associated and the anger of the first missionaries
+with her only serves to complete and certify the character. One will
+always remember the imposing person who, after the terrors of the first
+mistaken struggle, approached Wallis with the dignity he describes,
+welcomed him and took care of him, even, as he says, to carrying him,
+since he was ill, in her arms, as if he were a child. One would like to
+go back in mind to the time, if it were possible to realize the thoughts
+that must have come upon Oberea and Amo her husband on this appearance
+of the great ship and the strange men--a floating island as they first
+thought it, which they attacked as a portent of ill. Something like this
+will be felt by our descendants when from some distant planet the first
+discoverers shall drop on earth. And so Amo and Oberea come in and out
+of the stories of the first discoverers, even until forty years after,
+when the missionaries of the _Duff_ speak of the poor lady with harsh
+words and (1799-1800) no pity for her frailties.
+
+Now Oberea (Purea) was our old Chiefess’s great-great-grand-aunt, as Amo
+was her great-great-grand-uncle; and now, with one remove further, she
+is ours by adoption.[20] (You must ever remember that we belong to Amo;
+that is the special name of place attached to ours.)
+
+And everything that concerns the family of the Tevas interests us
+exceedingly. Does it not interest you also? This _living connection_
+with the indefinite archaic past, does it not bring back the freshness
+of early days, in which, reading of the voyages, our minds shaped
+pictures of what these places and their people were? Now for me it is a
+pleasure, half touching, half absurd, to look upon the queer pictures of
+the little place we lived in at the end of Uponohu Bay, as it is
+represented in the prints of Cook’s voyages, or the later one of the
+_Duff_; that place where Melville last lived during his last days on
+Moorea, as he tells in “Omoo”; and then to think of my own sketches, and
+the different eyes with which I must have seen it. In the same way, or a
+similar way, my impressions of to-day become confused and connected with
+these old printed records of the last century, until I seem to be
+treading the very turf that the first discoverers walked on, and to be
+shaded by the very trees.
+
+I have been drawing and painting somewhat lately, so I have been able to
+take fewer notes than Tauraatua. He is working assiduously, partly
+because he is engaged in congenial work, partly to urge Marau to go on
+and write her memoirs, which would then go back to a record of her
+ancestors. I, on my part, could not do it so well; and I am busy at my
+drawings, trifling as they are. But I regret it, as I see less of our
+neighbours, all of whom have their various degrees of charm.
+
+But I like to gather in without strict order these records and memories,
+even at the risk of Marau’s supposing that I am going to put into verse
+the extremely difficult poems she recites to us. This idea of hers is
+evidently a devilish suggestion of Tauraatua, who thereby shares the
+responsibility or throws
+
+[Illustration: SUN COMING OVER MOUNTAIN, EARLY MORNING, UPONOHU]
+
+it off on me at will. Still I shall transcribe into prose some of the
+poems at least, to please you. They are woven into the story of the
+family and form part of its record, if one may say so; some of these
+form parts of methods of address, if one might so call it--that is to
+say, of the poems or words in order recited upon occasions of visiting,
+or that serve as tribe cries and slogans. So with the verses connected
+with the name of Tauraatua that are handed down. The explanations may
+(and do) _embrouiller_ or confuse it; they did for me; but they make it
+all the more authentic, if I may so say, because all songs handed down
+and familiar must receive varying glosses. Where one sees, for instance,
+a love song, another sees a song of war. The Tauraatua of that far back
+day was enamoured of a fair maiden (her name was Maraeura) and lived
+with or near her. This poem, which is an appeal to him to return to duty
+or to home, or to wake him from a dream, is supposed to be the call of
+the bird messenger and his answer:
+
+    (To) Tauraatua that lives on the “Paepae” Roa (says)
+                “euriri” the (bird) that has flown to the Rua roa:
+              Papara is a land of heavy leaves that drag down
+                the branches:
+              Go to Teva, at Teva is thy home:
+                to Papara that is attached to thee,
+                thy golden land.
+              The mount that rises before (thee) that
+                is Mount Tamaiti.
+    (“Outu”) The point that stands on the shore is
+              Outo monomono:
+              It is the (place of) the crowning of a king who
+                makes sacred
+              Teriitere of Tooarai.[21] (Teriitere is the chief’s name
+                as ruling over Papara)
+    (Answer) Then let me push away the golden leaves
+                of the Rua roa
+              That I may see the twin buds of Maraeura
+                on the shore.[22]
+
+Of this translation Tati made mincemeat one evening, describing as
+frivolous the feminine connection, and giving the whole a martial
+character. The few lines he changes I shall not give here in full;
+suffice it that he ends with this, which is fine enough:
+
+     “He is swifter (Tauraatau who is supposed to rush off) than the one
+     who carries the fort.
+
+     “He is gone and he is past before even the morning star was up.
+
+     “The grass covering the Pare (Mapui-cliff) is trampled by
+     Tauraatua.”
+
+I shall not have time to reconcile the versions, but Moetia seems
+impressed with the possibility of getting these things translated; and
+if all will unite, even if two versions are made, the songs will at
+least be _saved_.
+
+I have received from Marau two poems: one about a girl asked to wed an
+old chief, one in honour of Pomaré; but Adams has become more Teva than
+the Tevas, and will not note it.
+
+And as a woman has come again into the story, as she has done often with
+the Tevas, for good and ill, let us go back to Oberea, the Teva princess
+whom Wallis first met, and met almost by chance, for she and her husband
+Amo were on a visit to the place where Wallis anchored and landed, and
+by this accident helped to displace later the centre of power, as has
+always happened where the white man has made his harbour.
+
+Oberea was on a visit to Haapape, where is the anchorage of Matavai; its
+chief Tutaharii. Tutaha (in Wallis’s book) was connected with the Papara
+family to which Amo, Oberea’s husband, belonged (and stripped, as a sign
+of respect, in presence of Amo and his little son Teriitere).
+
+The Tevas, whom Amo and Oberea represented, held the political supremacy
+of Tahiti. Their lands were further down the coast to the south than the
+districts which the first discoverers first knew, and separated from
+them by inimical chiefs, momentarily quiescent from fear and doubt. They
+were especially the Purionu and Teaharo, from whom the first discoverers
+received a great part of their information; then came, on the west
+coast, the little district of Faaa (or Tefanai Ahurai), from which came
+Oberea (Purea; her proper name, Tevahine Avioroha i Ahurai), the
+daughter of its chief, Teriivaetua.
+
+Then came a large district known as the Oropaa, consisting of Paea,
+adjoining Papara, the chief place of the Tevas, and of Punavia, both
+these connected by family alliances with the Tevas.
+
+The Tevas (and family) held after them, further to the south, the whole
+south of the main island, and the whole of that half island called
+Taiarapu, which joins the main island at the narrow Isthmus of Taravao.
+The east was divided into three districts, but had no common head. Hence
+the Tevas, usually well combined, with strong clan feelings that last
+until to-day, controlled all the south and west of the island and
+Taiarapu, or two thirds of the population, and had only themselves to
+blame when deprived of their ascendency.
+
+The Tevas were divided, as they still are on the map to-day, into Inner
+and Outer Tevas; the Outer Tevas on Taiarapu (into which we were adopted
+by Ori), and the Inner Tevas on the main island (into which we were
+adopted by our good chiefess of Papara). These made the eight Tevas.
+Their origin, like that of all clans, is hidden in the night of legend,
+with the old myths of a semi-divine ancestor and an earthly mother.
+
+And as the women were to play a great part in the history of the Tevas,
+it is but fair to begin, then, with that part of the life of Queen
+Hototu that made them.
+
+
+THE ORIGIN OF THE TEVAS
+
+This, the earliest of the traditions of the family, was told me at
+different times by Queen Marau.
+
+At certain hours Tauraatua goes to the low cottage behind our house,
+that is open toward the King’s palace and the government house, but is
+entirely shut in by trees that fill the little garden, and which has a
+strange resemblance to many a little American home and is all the more
+wonderfully unreal. Then the Queen comes from some inner apartment and
+repeats the legends, poems and genealogies, and one or more of the
+sisters are often there and add comments or contradiction. During our
+absence the ladies are supposed to have prepared the material and to
+have arranged what documents they have, so that in many cases what
+little I shall quote will be the very words of our royal historian.
+Sometimes in early evening the Queen has walked down to the shore with
+her sister Manihinihi, and, sitting on the rocks under the lofty trees,
+answered my questions about these early ancestors. I can tell you the
+bald story. I cannot give you with it all that would have made any old
+story charming--the faces and forms of my instructors, their beautiful
+voices, the slight wash of the sea into which Manihinihi sometimes put
+her bare foot, the wonderful stillness, the slight rush of the surf far
+out on the reef, the light of the afterglow, the blue ocean far away,
+the mountains of ancestral Moorea lit up after sundown, the shadows of
+the big trees moving over the water, and on our side right above us the
+great heights of the Aorai appearing and disappearing behind the many
+coloured clouds. At such moments I could forget for the present the
+little meannesses introduced by us Europeans and feel as if I were back
+in the time when my name was Teraaitua.
+
+They were my ancestors in fairyland of whom fairy stories were being
+told, and even the absurdities had the same charm of the stories of our
+nurseries which they so much resembled.
+
+The great ancestress Hototu, from whom come all the Teva, was the first
+queen of Vaieri. She married Temanutunu,[23] the first king of Punaauia.
+All this is in the furthest of historical records, as you will see by
+what happened to this king and queen at the time when gods and men and
+animals were not divided as they are to-day, or when, as in the Greek
+stories, the gods took the shapes of men or beasts to come and go more
+easily in this lower world which they had begun to desert.
+
+In the course of time this king left the island and made an
+
+[Illustration: EDGE OF THE AORAI MOUNTAIN COVERED WITH CLOUD.
+
+MIDDAY, PAPEETE, TAHITI]
+
+expedition to the far-away Paumotu (pr. Pomotu). It is said that he went
+to obtain the precious red feathers that have always had a mysterious
+value to South Sea Islanders, and that he meant them for the _maro ura_
+or royal red girdle of his son, for he had a son by Hototu who was named
+Terii te Moanarao. The investiture with the girdle, red or white,
+according to circumstances, has the same value as our form of crowning,
+and took place as a solemn occasion in the ancestral temple or _marae_
+of these islands of the South Sea, but the red girdle seemed even in
+some Samoan lore to have an ancient meaning of royalty; I remember
+Mataafa, the great chief, asking me why the English Consul wore the red
+silk sash which he probably affected in his dress as being of an
+agreeable colour.
+
+While the king was far away in the pursuit of these red feathers to be
+gathered, perhaps, one by one, the queen Hototu travelled into the
+adjoining country of Papara, where we were the past month, and there she
+met in some way the mysterious personage, Paparuiia.[24] With this
+wonderful creature the queen was well pleased so that from them was born
+a son who later was called Teva, but this is anticipating.
+
+This was the time as we have told you when men and animals and gods
+were mixed, and this great ancestor of the Tevas was evidently some form
+of god. The story came to an end in a sudden way. While the king was
+still away, his dog Pihoro returned, and finding the queen he ran up to
+her and fawned upon her to the jealous disgust of Tino iia, one half of
+whom said to the other, “she cares for that dog more than for me. See
+how he caresses her!”
+
+So then he arose and departed in anger, telling her, however, that she
+would bear a son whom she should call Teva: that for this son he had
+built a temple at Mataua, and that there he should wear the _maro tea_,
+the white or yellow girdle, the chiefs of Punauia or Vaiari, who in this
+case were the king and queen, being the only ones that had the right to
+the _maro ura_, the red _maro_ or girdle, for which you will remember
+that the king was hunting. Then he departed and was met by Temanutunu,
+the husband who had landed at Vairoa, and who entreated him to return.
+He refused just as the two Shark-princes, of whom I told you at Vaima,
+the little river that ran so clear near Taravao, refused another husband
+for a similar reason, saying that his wife was a woman too fond of dogs.
+“Vahine na te uri” (woman to the dogs). When I asked if he never came
+back, the queen, or was it Moetia, told me that since that day the
+man-fish had been seen many times.
+
+The dog is however much connected with the Papara family, and his
+presence is occasionally felt. Tati the brother of the queen told some
+stories of him. One of these stories refers to what happened to Narii
+when a child. His mother had him with her at the occasion of the
+building of a bridge near Papara. There were many hundred people there.
+Tati was there with his two nurses according to custom, and Narii had
+also the two who had charge of him. At evening one of the nurses saw
+something like a dog run up a tree above them, and into the branches,
+and at the same time something waved from him like rags. Just then the
+child was drawn from the arms that held him, his mother’s, but something
+grasped him firmly, while a ball of fire rushed out above him and went
+on to the sea some quarter of a mile distant. So many people saw part of
+this, namely, the ball of fire that there was no doubt of it.
+
+Nor must I forget to say that all about Papara there is a good deal in
+the way of ghosts or queer sights. For instance, just beyond the little
+enclosure of our hereditary Amo, where the little sluggish river runs in
+the woods beyond the ancient stone foundation, evergrown with trees,
+there are spaces where occasionally the figure of a man appears and
+disappears through the trees, and old rags of clothing flitter behind
+him. There last Saturday, while two men were at work, what at I don’t
+know, perhaps looking after vanilla, one of them looked up and saw on
+the face of the little cliff, a small hole, not noticed before, out of
+which at once stepped an old man dressed partly in an ancient manner,
+who dusted his clothing as he got erect and then disappeared. The two
+men went to the spot and found the hole. There was some talk of
+enlarging it and digging into it, but the discoverer objected so
+strongly, and has still kept up his objection so well that nothing more
+has happened.
+
+The shark is connected with our cousin Ariie’s family at Tautira and has
+still power with them. Not so long ago Ariie’s mother came here worn out
+and dusty, having ridden instead of having been carried in her canoe as
+usual. She told the following story--she had intended to come but had
+declined to bring her daughter with her. Now her daughter is a believer
+in the shark, and she thereupon told her mother that she should not get
+off. Nothing would induce her to say more but the mother was rowed up
+inside the reef as we had been on the same course along the coast of
+Pueu. I don’t know exactly where it was, but somewhere in the evening
+the rowers complained that their path was obstructed by a large shark.
+The old lady ordered them to row on; as they did so she looked up from
+the bottom of the boat where she lay with her head wrapped up in the
+usual loin-cloth or _pareu_. She saw before them, an enormous shark,
+lying at right angles to the boat, partly out of the water, and all
+along his back a row of lights like lamps lit up the water. Unwillingly
+the men obeyed her orders to row on and struck the fish full on the side
+without making it move away, the boat running up on his back. Then she
+determined to return and when she got home, rebuked her daughter
+angrily, for she knew that it was her daughter who had done this, and
+rather than yield to her she had come the whole way with horses. Tati
+says the girl is known to have power that way and that she calls upon
+this protector when she is angry. Upon such occasions a special odour
+easily to be recognized as the smell of the shark fills the air. As far
+as I can see the shark is at least a cousinly god to us, somewhat of a
+relation and protector, and henceforth, I think as I suggested above, we
+ought to be safe from him at sea.
+
+As in the story of the ancestress, Queen Hototu, so important and
+aristocratic, freedom could belong to women where descent and
+inheritance placed her above others. Daughters transferred to their
+children rank and title, and consequently property, and in fault of
+other heirs could become chief. The mother, therefore, of an heiress to
+a title was another chief even to her husband, and had privileges that
+he could not have; for instance, a seat in the family temple. All this
+she transmitted to her child.
+
+The mother of our old chiefess was known by at least thirteen different
+names, each of which was a title, each of which conveyed land; so she
+was, for instance, Marama in Moorea and owned almost all the island; so
+she was Aromaiterai in Papara. This investiture would be received for a
+child, as child to a chief, would be carried to the family temple to be
+made sacred, as was done in this case, thirteen different temples having
+received the child, the mother of our chiefess. As in all Polynesia the
+Arii or chiefs were more or less sacred as was the ground upon which
+they rested; but that was only among their own connections. There the
+inferior chiefs, men or women, out of respect stripped themselves down
+to the waist. That is why Captain Wallis relates that Tutaha as well as
+Vairatoa, stripped in the presence of Amo, our ancestor, and his little
+son. Why exactly the wife of Vairatoa uncovered herself _up to the
+waist_ when she presented cloth to Wallis, I have not been exactly able
+to find out, but Tati says it was probably from the same notion of very
+great respect.
+
+So you see the connection of the _marae_ with the chieftain’s power; a
+knowledge of _maraes_ and of the origin and descent of families is
+intimately connected. Each family had its stone in the _maraes_ where it
+claimed family worship.
+
+The Teva’s original _marae_ is said to be that of Opooa in the sacred
+island of Raiatea; but their own tradition makes it, as I have said, at
+Mataua, where the head of the Tevas wore the _maro tea._
+
+When Temanutunu, the husband of Hototu, mother of Teva, brought back the
+red feathers from the Pomotus, to be worn in _marae_ by his son, he
+founded the temple or _marae_ of Punaauia. Thus the story indicates that
+Vaiari and Papeari were the original centres, and Punauia and Papara
+chiefs wore the red or yellow girdle in right of descent from Vaiari. We
+must understand that power did not reside in the mere wearing of this
+girdle; it was only a symbol of the power of descent which represented
+alliances of families in a land where blood was everything, where a
+chiefess killed her child if not of high enough birth.
+
+Do you remember, or have you read, in the “Voyage of the _Duff_,” the
+terrible time the missionaries had with “Iddeah,” the wife of the older
+Pomaré? It is almost a pity not to quote it in full; and if I had the
+“Voyage” by me I should do so. Like Oberea, she was more or less
+separated from her husband, and had, like the great Catherine or the
+great Elizabeth, a young favourite who went about with her everywhere,
+as the missionaries saw. He was of low blood; hence the necessity of
+putting the child to death; and as all this was openly understood, the
+missionaries undertook to persuade “Iddeah” (as the missionaries called
+her) to abandon the hereditary notion. Notwithstanding every
+exhortation, she declined to do so, and killed her child according to
+custom; though like a politic person, she promised not to do so again.
+And I have told you about the late Queen Pomaré and her affairs.
+
+Hence again, everywhere the _marae_ comes into the story of the islands;
+with it, of course, begins the families--no _marae_, no family--and with
+the building of the greatest _marae_ of all, the one that Cook saw and
+described in its new importance, the power of the Tevas culminated and
+was broken forever. You know that we saw its ruins on the beach of
+Atimaono, and walked up the crumbling slopes of coral, with Pri and
+Winfred Brander, whose ancestors built the family temple.
+
+The pride of the Tevas, the pride of Oberea, brought on the revenge of
+the offended. But that part of the story I must put off, and tell you
+some of those that go further back.
+
+The Tevas were proud and domineering, but the family of Papara, of which
+was Amo, and where flourished Oberea his wife, were still more so; for
+Papara was the leader politically. Historically the chieftainesses of
+Vaiari and Punaauia, as we saw by the story of the origin of the Tevas,
+were older and of greater dignity; but it was the Chief of Papara who
+called out the Tevas, who presided over them, and who alone had the
+right to order human sacrifices for the clans.
+
+There were, as you know, eight Tevas, inner and outer, the inner ones
+Papara, Atimaono, Mataiae, and Papeari; the four outer ones, the four
+districts of the peninsula of Taiarapu; Paea and Punaauia were
+tributary. The origin of this limitation, the origin of this power, goes
+back to some great and uncertain distance which I have not been able to
+ascertain, but it may be a thousand years back or not more than five or
+six hundred. That could perhaps be determined more closely by a more
+extended inquiry. At that time Papara was subject or tributary to
+Vaiari, and when Mataiea belonged to the Chief of Vaiari.
+
+For this liberation of Papara, and placing it at the head of the Tevas,
+Oro, not the god, but a chief of that name, is the cause. He was a small
+chief within Papara. His father’s name was Tiaau; you will remember my
+speaking of him in connection with the little chiefery of Amo, to which
+Adams and I have succeeded; and you may remember the story of the chief
+and of his _paepae_[25] there, all grown over now, and of the cocoanut
+that served as a watch-tower. It all comes into the story, if told in
+detail.
+
+There were thus battles and wars within the Tevas, and there is another
+story of Papara and our ancestors into which a woman comes again, and
+not only one woman but another. I leave it as I first wrote it down,
+though it suggests in itself much alteration and explanation. I shall
+call it:
+
+
+THE STORY OF TAURUA OR THE LOAN OF A WIFE
+
+Tavi ruled in Taiarapu, known for his wild generosity, and for the
+beauty of his wife, Taurua Paroto. To him Tuiterai of Papara sent
+messengers, begging the loan of his wife for the space of seven days.
+There may have been hesitation on the chief’s part, but his habits of
+giving prevailed, and Taurua came to Papara, to spend her seven days
+with Tuiterai. At the end of that term she was not returned to her lord,
+who sent messengers for her.
+
+But Tuiterai refused. “I will not give her up,” he said, “I, Tuiterai of
+the six skies, her who has become to me like an _ura_ to my eyes, rich
+_ura_ brought from Raratoa--my dear gem! I have treasured her now, and I
+treasure her yet, as the _uras_ of Faaa; and I shall not give her up
+now. No, I shall not give her--why should I give her up--I, Tuiterai, of
+the six skies; for she has become precious beyond the _uras_ of
+Raratoa?” Thus the song preserves his refusal; so Tavi made war upon
+him, and Tuiterai was defeated and made prisoner, and was upon the point
+of being put to death. But he pleaded with his captors who had bound
+him, claiming that he should be taken to Tavi, and, if killed, then
+killed by him a chief. So that they carried him away in a canoe, all
+tied up, that he could neither move nor see; and his bonds increased the
+faintness caused by his wounds. But he pressed his captors to hurry, for
+fear that he should die by his cords; and he knew how far he had gone,
+for his fingers, touching the waters, recognized the “_feeling of each
+river, as every skilful swimmer knows_.” At length he was brought before
+Tavi, and set before him, along with Taurua.
+
+But Tavi said to his men, “Why did you not kill him when you had caught
+him? It is not meet that I, a chief, should put him, a chief, to death.”
+And addressing Tuiterai he said, “It is you that have bound me with
+cords that bind my heart and make the skies gloomy, as if you had drawn
+them down and bound them over me. You have taken one who lay in my arms,
+and tied a knot between her and me, and you have broken the ropes that
+tied us together--her and me. Take her!”
+
+So Tuiterai won Taurua.
+
+But dark fate seems to have pursued the generous man, and later Tavi was
+defeated in war and fled to the Pomotu Islands, where he disappeared.
+
+The war again came from Taurua the beautiful: she had a son by Tavi, a
+son called Tavi Hauroa, and Teritua also, and names had been given him
+from other places, as Taurua came from Hitiaa. For this child Tavi put
+a taboo (_rahui_) on his land, and tried to extend it further on,
+wherever he might claim. But Taaroa Manahune had married Tetuae-huri,
+the daughter of Vehiatua, and was expecting the birth of Teu.[26] “Your
+wife should eat pigs,” was said to Taaroa; so they eat the pigs,
+resisting the claim of Tavi, who being at Pai crossed at Tehaupo, and
+was beaten by Vehiatua. A part of the defeated returned from the Pomotu,
+and were granted the holding of Afaiti, under the boy Tavi Hauroa. But
+in an evil moment, he flew his kite over the _marae_ of Fareupua, so
+that it was caught in the _aito_ (ironwood--casuarina) trees; and at the
+instigation of Tunau, the high-priest, he was put to death. How and why?
+By whom? Was his companion also killed?
+
+There would seem to be a moral to this tale, which would run this way:
+that generosity is a doubtful quality, and that it is wiser to take
+another man’s wife than to let go your own.
+
+Some explanations I should have woven into this story for you, but I
+write almost directly from Marau’s recitation, and it was only afterward
+that I got from her some more details.
+
+In reality, the right of Tavi to place a general taboo or _rahui_ on
+Taiarapu generally was a very questionable one. It might have been
+merely a question of pride that made him insist upon it when his claim
+was weak. It was also, it would seem, a general desire in the other
+members of the clan to weaken its power or limit its range.
+
+By making a general _rahui_ or taboo, as we call it, the chief had
+everything that grew, everything that was made, everything that was
+caught, set aside for a time, for some particular use: to make further
+feasts or for the food or the property of an heir, for instance. Hence
+its frequency after the birth of a young prince or princess. Or it might
+have been that some great feasts or generosities had depleted, if I may
+so call it, the treasury. Later even, some of the missionaries in
+Catholic Islands have found it useful to preserve the plants, and allow
+them to increase so as to prevent the recurrence of a famine.
+
+Tavi had only undisputed claim over Tautira, Afaahiti, Hiri, and in Tai.
+
+Vehiatua ruled over the southern and western parts of Taiarapu, as far
+as Teahupo and Vairoa.
+
+The little Teu, who was born of Tetuae-huri, the daughter of the
+Vehiatua that defeated poor Tavi, became the big and important Teu
+founder and first of the Pomarés, called kings by the missionaries, who
+did much to establish them in that position, unknown to the mind and the
+customs of the Polynesians of the East Pacific. The son of Tavi, who
+came back from the Pomotus, and was received in royal style and given
+the district now called Afaahiti, was killed at the _marae_ of Farepua
+of Vaiari, as I have just related.
+
+Among the chiefs who helped Teu to his new position was Terii nui o
+Tahiti, who bears a very interesting name: The Great Chief of Tahiti. In
+this case the word Tahiti refers to a _marae_ of Vaieri, not to the
+island. Besides Farepua, Vaieri had this _marae_ of Tahiti, which very
+probably gave its name to the island at some remote period; and it must
+have been a Teva name.
+
+The fortune of the Papara family seems to have come up at various times,
+and to have culminated at the time of Purea (our Oberea). Her pride and
+the pride of the Tevas brought about disaster long after she had passed
+from power. The woman began and the woman ended. She was married to Amo
+(of Cook), as we know (Teviahitua), and was herself the daughter of
+Vaetua, Chief of Faaa, the district between the Tevas and the Purionu;
+whence later were to come the Pomarés, enemies of the Tevas and of the
+house of Papara. Her real name was, as I have said before, Te Vahine
+Aviorohe i Ahurai. Her brother Teihohe i Ahurai had a daughter who
+married Vairatoa, whose daughter Marama was the mother of our old
+chiefess, and consequently the grandmother of _our_ queen and
+princesses. In this way, then, Pomaré II, who became king, was the
+second cousin of this last Marama; and, as in Tahiti cousins are
+brothers and sisters, Pomaré called her sister.
+
+Hence, again, the tendency between the last Pomarés and the old lady to
+make matters right again, and to join the families by marriage, as when
+Marau married the last Pomaré (V), or when Pomaré III wished our old
+chiefess to be queen, instead of the famous lady whom we know as Queen
+Pomaré, with whom our adopted chiefess was always most friendly and
+intimate.
+
+And so at the time of the last century, Purea, or Oberea, had no
+superior, unless the head of the older Vaiari branch. Teriirere, the son
+of Amo and Purea, was a child when Wallis came, hence must have been
+born in the neighbourhood of 1760; and in his honour and for his
+advantage, a _rahui_ or taboo was placed upon all the Tevas for the
+child. The might of the _rahui_ was great; the power to impose it, as it
+confirmed rights and prestige, gave great umbrage, and there was a way
+of breaking it without war that could be resorted to. That was to have a
+chief or person of equal rank, or a relation of the same degree, come as
+a guest to the place where the _rahui_ existed. According to custom the
+guest was entitled to receive as guest all that could be given, and that
+meant all the accumulations of the _rahui_. Terii Vaetua, Purea’s own
+mother, determined to break it, and came from their home in Faaa, in
+her double canoe, with the tent upon it indicative of royalty
+(_fare-oa_).
+
+The canoe bearing her mother entered the sacred pass in the reef
+opposite the _outu_ of Mataiatea. This pass was reserved for princes
+alone. Purea was living at that time opposite the pass, some little way
+(two miles) from Papara, and called out to the canoe as it entered:
+
+“Who dares venture through our sacred pass? Know they not that the Tevas
+are under the sacred _rahui_ for Teriirere i Tooarai? Not even the cocks
+may crow or the ocean storm.”
+
+Her mother answered, “It is (I am) Terri Vaetua, Queen of Ahurai.”
+
+“How many royal heads can there be?” said Purea. “I know no other than
+Teriirere. Down with your tent!”
+
+In vain Vaetua wept and cut her head, according to custom, with a
+shark’s tooth, until the blood flowed. She was obliged to return without
+a reception from Purea. Then a grand-daughter of Terii Vaetua, a girl
+under twenty, a niece of Purea’s, made an attempt in the same direction.
+But the same cry came from Purea: “Down with your tent!”
+
+Tetuanui (Reaiteatua) the girl, came ashore, sat down upon the beach,
+and in the same way cut her head until the blood flowed into the sand,
+according to the old custom, asking, if unredeemed, blood for blood.
+Manea,[27] the high-priest, her brother-in-law, then came upon the
+scene. He feared the danger of making enemies of the Auhrai princesses,
+and he said thus: “Hush, Purea! Whence is the saying, the _pahus_
+(drums) of Matairea call Tutunai for a _maro ura_ for Teriirere i
+Tooarai. Where will they wear the _maro ura_? _Maro ura_--the red girdle
+of royalty and surpreme chiefhood. In Nuura i Ahurai. One end of the
+_maro_ holds the Purionu, the other end the Tevas; the whole holds the
+Oropoa.”
+
+(Words that I do not quite understand, as given by Marau, but which
+implied the danger of breaking up their union.)
+
+“I recognize no head here but Teriirere,” answered Purea.
+
+Then Manea, unable to do more than to clear himself, and make what
+amends were in his power, for the insult he could not prevent or turn
+away, wiped with a cloth the blood shed by Tetuanui, and took her to his
+house. When, forty years after, Tetuanui took her revenge in the
+massacre of the family of Papara, this action of Manea saved part of
+them; and through him we descend, in the male line, from the Tuiterai of
+the preceding generation. From Tetuanui, by her marriage with Varatao,
+the first Pomaré chief of the unfriendly Purionu, was born Pomaré II,
+the first king and he who became the chief enemy of the Tevas.
+
+Marau, in relating all this story, on different occasions, felt, I
+believe, the old pride of Purea beat through her: her voice rose in
+repeating the words: “Down with your tent!” and “I know no other royal
+head than Teriirere.” I could almost believe that it was she who
+asserted herself in the person of her great ancestress.
+
+But for all that, now before the final disaster, the house Papara seems
+to have met a great check again, in a display of the power and pride of
+Purea. She and Amo built for Teriirere a new _marae_ on that same point
+where the ladies of Ahurai shed their blood in protest--Mahaiatea and
+Amo took its foundation stone (if I may so call it) from the original
+_marae_ of Taputuoarai. Cook has described it as he saw it in 1764--the
+most important building of the kind he had seen. And over its remains I
+have scrambled, as you know, unawares of all that it had meant. How much
+better can I understand the resistance made by our old chiefess to
+letting it be used as a quarry for the buildings of the great plantation
+of Atimaono, the great sugar estate of the adventurer Stuart; now
+involved in a ruin like to that of the old temple. The chiefess, for
+this refusal, was removed from her position for a time; how reinstated I
+do not know. You know that I told you before, she is a chiefess,
+recognized by the French Government, as well as by inheritance, Tati
+acting for her. It was one of those outrages that the new generations
+perpetrate on the old; and in this case more disgraceful than usual. But
+few people sympathize with the “_lachrymae rerum_” that touched the
+pagan poet.
+
+You must look up Cook’s description, which I have not by me. Everything
+in the way of books here is fragmentary, the public library usually
+unvisited, and many of its possessions scattered carelessly.
+
+The completion of this monument coincided with the beginning of the war
+that drove Amo and Oberea away, and ruined Papara for a time; a war
+which occurred between Cook’s first and second voyages; so that he found
+his former friends reduced in power and dignity. The Vehiatua of that
+time, with Taiarapu and the Purionu, joined in the attack upon Papara
+thus breaking the Teva power from within.
+
+There is a poem, difficult to render, which is associated with this
+completion of the _marae_, and which seems to bring the war from that.
+There has been much trouble to make a settled translation of it. The one
+which I add is a revised translation by Moetia, conferring with the
+others, whose translation in the rough I have kept separate. I give you
+Marau’s own copy.
+
+    “A standard is raised at Tooarai
+     Like the crash of thunder
+     And flashes of lightning
+     And the rays of the midday sun
+     Surround the standard of the King
+     The King of the thousand skies.
+     Honour the standard
+     Of the King of the thousand skies!
+
+    “A standard is raised at Matahihae
+     In the presence of Vehiatua
+     The rebels Taisi and Tetumanua
+     Who broke the King’s standard
+     And Oropaa is troubled.
+     If your crime had but ended there!
+     The whole land is laid prostrate.
+     Thou art guilty O Purahi (Vehiatua)
+     Of the Reva _ura_ of your King.
+     Broken by the people of Taiarapu
+     By which we are all destroyed
+     Thou bringest the greatest of armies
+     To the laying of stones
+     Of the _marae_ of Mahaitea.
+
+    “Poahutea at Punaavia
+     Tepau at Ahurai
+     Teriimaroura at Tarahoi
+     Maraianuanua the land where the
+     Poor idiot was killed!
+     Eimeo the land that is decked
+     By the _ura_ and the _pii_.
+
+    “The prayers are finished
+     And the call has been given
+     To Puni at Farerua (Borabora)
+     To Raa at Tupai (an island belonging to Borabora)
+     To the high priest Teae,
+     Go to Tahiti
+     There is an _oroa_ at Tahiti
+     Auraareva for Teriirere of Tooarai.
+     Thou hast sinned O Purahi!
+     Thou hast broken the
+     Reva _ura_ of the King.
+     Taiarapu has caused
+     The destruction of us all
+     The approach of the front rank
+     Has unloosed the _ura_.
+     One murderous hand
+     Four in and four out.
+     If you had but listened
+     To the voice of Amo, Oropaa!
+     Let us take our army
+     By canoe and by land,
+     We have only to fear the
+     Mabitaupe and the dry reef of Uaitoata.
+
+    “There we will die the death
+     Of Pairi Temaharu and Pahupua.
+     The coming of the great army of Tairapu
+     Has swept Papara away
+     And drawn its mountains with it (the King)
+     Thou hast sinned Purahi
+     Thou and Taiarapu
+     Hast broken the Reva _ura_ of the King
+     And hast caused the
+     Destruction of us all.”
+
+This is Moetia’s and Marau’s translation, I do not know whose copy it
+is--Moetia’s or Marau’s. I got it from the latter. This song of reproof,
+cherished by the Teva, as a protest against fate, explains how the
+dissensions among the different branches of the eight clans allowed them
+to become a prey to the rising power of the Purionu clans, headed by
+Pomaré, the son of one of those Ahurai princes whose blood ran into the
+sand near where the great _marae_ of Oberea was built, as I have told
+you a little further back. The vicissitudes of wars, the changes brought
+about by the influence of the foreigner, all of which worked in favour
+of the Pomaré, culminated in a final struggle in December, 1815. The
+partisans of the old order, both social and religious, were headed by
+Opufara, the brother of Tati, the Chief of Papara. On the other side
+were the partisans of Pomaré, the Christians, the white men and their
+guns. To accentuate still more the character of the contest, the final
+battle began on a Sunday, the attack being made by the pagans during the
+service which Pomaré attended. As in mediæval times, in our own history,
+the Christians did not begin the fight until the conclusion of the
+prayers in which they were engaged. On the other side the inspired
+prophets who guided the pagans urged them to predicted victory. The
+cannon of the Christians checked the fierce onslaught of the men of
+Opufara; though for a short time their courage had seemed to prevail,
+and Opufara fell first, at the head of his men. He urged them bravely to
+continue the fight, and at least to avenge his death, and the struggle
+continued long enough for him to see their brave resistance to the
+superior advantages of the guns in their enemies’ hands. But the end
+came, as we can well imagine, and Opufara drew his last breath as he saw
+the utter rout of his clan and their supporters.
+
+For the first time in Polynesian warfare Pomaré stopped the massacre
+about to begin, and promised peace and pardon to all who should submit.
+
+His friends, as well as his enemies, realized, in their astonishment,
+the enormous difference brought in by the new faith. This clemency did
+as much as actual power to win over those defeated. Most all men
+submitted to the new great chief, to the new religion; the _maraes_ were
+destroyed, the image of the god Oro, a palladium long fought over, the
+cause of cruel wars, was burned; the people turned to Christianity, and
+the old order was completely broken up, carrying with it the power of
+the chiefs on which, unfortunately, the social system was based; because
+this power was more intimately connected with religious awe and belief
+than with military supremacy.
+
+Had I more time, I should have liked to describe more fully the details
+of what I have only indicated. The whole story of the years between the
+decadence of Oberea’s control and Pomarés triumph is full of meaning to
+the Teva. With our clan, Opufara is still a representative of its
+courage and its pride. With no little feeling does Queen Marau urge me,
+when I return to Paris, to seek out the _omare_ or club of the great
+Chief Opufara, preserved perhaps yet in the Musée des Souverains. In the
+Museum at Sydney in Australia, among the fragments and samples of cloth
+and dresses collected by Captain Cook, I shall perhaps find some bits of
+the garments of Oberea.
+
+
+Saturday, June 6th at Sea.
+
+Wednesday was to be our last day. We had decided to join the steamer
+chartered by us for Fiji not on its arrival but later at Hitiaa on the
+opposite southeastern coast of the island, partly to see the other side
+of the island, partly to say good-bye to Tati who would load our steamer
+with oranges.
+
+We were to leave at noon for our drive around the island and there were
+to be prayers that day in all the churches against the illness now
+afflicting the island. The King was ill; our chiefess wished her family
+to be present at church. Before the breakfast to which we were asked,
+she bade us good-bye as she proposed to return to church: they have a
+way there of spending the day off and on--the natives--as we remembered
+at Tautira.
+
+She drank our healths and made us a little speech, having kissed
+Tauraatua, and holding our hands in her soft palms, she wished us again
+good-bye. She was very dignified and simple. Nothing could have been
+simpler or more touching. As I remember, she wished us the usual safe
+journey home and health and “hoped that we might return, where, if we
+did not find her, we should at least find her children.” After that we
+had a long and cheerful breakfast with the remaining family, and then we
+drove away around the coast to Hitiaa which we reached in the early
+evening.
+
+The drive, though a rough one, was beautiful; of course we could not see
+inland the high mountains and deep valleys, except when on one occasion
+we crossed a wide river and valley and could look back. But we skirted
+the sea everywhere, and our road ran between the cliffs, every few rods
+making new and exquisite pictures of sea and trees and rocks, and of
+waters running to the sea. I do not know if this side of the island be
+finer, all is so lovely in detail, but it is bolder and more rocky. I
+thought, as we drove along and had passed Point Venus, how well chosen
+had been Bougainville’s name of Nouvelle Cythere, for we were on his
+side of the island. The feminine beauty of the landscape and its
+“infinite variety” completed the ideal of a place where woman was most
+kind.
+
+The charm of the day closed in our arrival at Hitiaa where we were to
+pass the night--in a little village of pretty huts set in cleanly order,
+in a grove of high bread-fruit trees. All was green even to the road,
+except a few spaces in front of houses, neatly pebbled. In the shade
+were the figures of Tati and of our hosts, coming to meet us--all in
+light colours, white, blue, red, and yellow, making a picture that might
+have done for a Watteau. We dined out on the green right by the shore,
+where the surf broke a few feet from us. The air was sweet with odours,
+and cool. It was pleasant to be with Tati again and hear his laugh,
+something like Richardson’s, whom he resembles in size as well as in
+many little matters. But I know that I said this before.
+
+We slept in a cleanly native hut, of the usual style, a long thatched
+building, lifted on a stone base with a floor, and sides made of rods
+like a cage, but with European doors. At either semi-circular end,
+muslin was hung along the walls so as to exclude the light and to
+protect a little from draught. Each end had a curtain drawn across it,
+so that one’s bed was enclosed, but our host and hostess watched us to
+the last with unabated kindness. Everything was scrupulously clean. The
+next morning was like the evening. Blue clouds blown over a pink sky,
+all far above us, for all the trees rose high and we moved about from
+shade to shade. Tati had driven away before daylight to put oranges on
+board. The village was very silent, as if deserted. We spent the morning
+in idleness; walked to the great Tamanu trees at the end of the village
+of which Tati had told us when he tried to find words for the impression
+of solemnity which European Cathedrals had made upon him. The trees are
+like great oaks, but rise with a great sweep before branching. Right by
+the road is a cluster of them with great roots, all grown together in a
+lifted mass. We sat idly by the sea and looked at Taiarapu all in blue,
+and at the sea between us and our little Tautira also all blue, which we
+shall never see again. Men, on the inside reef alongside, were fishing,
+standing patiently in the water.
+
+Over us, stretching far and touching the water at places, spread the
+great Tamanu trees. We sat there in their shade. The water came up to my
+feet and washed out my drawings in the sand, as memories of things are
+effaced.
+
+It was pleasant to be absolutely idle, listening to the soft noise of
+the tide rolling minute pebbles on the sand, looking at its edges
+fringed with bubbles, that folded one over the other like drapery, and
+watching the wet fade smoothly off the shore.
+
+The trade wind blew strong. The air was very cool. Mrs. Tati gave us
+breakfast with a smile of welcome and _iorana_, and little Tita flirted
+with us.
+
+Then I slept; and waking determined to have some record of this our last
+day, and sat again on the shore, and made a note of Taiarapu across the
+water on which the rainbow played. Near me the surf ran in rapidly on
+the shallows, all in blue shade; the Tamanu’s branches above me were
+reflected in the motion--and underneath the trees, boys paddled in and
+out, in their little boats without outriggers, using their hands for
+paddles, so that as they swung their arms they looked as if swimming
+hand over hand. It was still very cool, and I felt that I had probably
+exposed myself to what is the danger of this place at this time. It can
+be so cool after heat, and so damp with such draughts that I do not
+wonder at the constant colds and troubles of the lungs that I have
+noticed. I should call it a lovely climate--and an exquisite
+climate--but not one for a pulmonary patient. Now I am astonished that
+Piri’s doctors sent her back here.
+
+In the evening we had Tati again at dinner and talked with him about his
+perhaps coming over in ’93, Exposition time, and about the correctness
+of his sister’s translations of poetry. We tried in vain to get some
+love songs, though he promised to send some to me later, but he told us
+stories of Turi, famous for prowess in love--the Arabian love of the
+South Seas--also of the tradition of an isle inhabited by women only,
+such as is told of on the farther shores of the Pacific, and such as
+Ariosto wrote of; and some anecdotes, not to their credit, of Pomaré the
+great or his father Teu, some of the scandalous scenes of which had been
+enacted not far from there, and had been commemorated in the names of
+the rivers. “But perhaps after all,” Tati said, “they were no worse than
+other chiefs who lived before them, for as they all had unlimited power
+that power led them to many excesses.”
+
+The next morning we arose to find the little steamer some three miles
+off. Perhaps there were fewer rocky ledges upon our path nor did we see
+the olive gray mist of the _aito_ trees (iron wood) against the blue
+sea, or the shining wet rocks. But otherwise it was like a continuation
+of the ride of the day before, a dragging through grassy, wet roads, and
+plunging into small streams, where coral rocks whitened the clear grey
+bottom. A very few people nodded to us as we passed. I suppose that most
+every one was engaged at the packing of the oranges further away; orange
+trees filled the roads, the peel of oranges in long, yellow spirals,
+dotted the grassy edges of the rivers hear the huts. Small black pigs
+scampered and tore away into the “brush” on either side, where in a
+hollow of the road undisturbed by our passing so close, old Eumaeus the
+swine-herd crouched alongside of his black hogs who ate savagely what
+he had provided. And again we came to such a place as we had seen on our
+drive of Wednesday, something never noticed elsewhere by us, where some
+ledge of rock came up toward the sea, leaving only a narrow passage.
+There a little wicker fence had been built across the road resting
+against the rock on one side and the trees on the slope below; and there
+we opened a gate, as if all this lovely land had been but some domain,
+and had been set out in its beauty of arrangement by skilful hands, to
+please owners who lived perhaps inland, behind the vague spaces of
+forest trees, or up the hazy valleys. All that was wanting to the idyl
+was what we had seen before, red bunches of wild bananas brought down
+from the mountains and hung on bamboo poles or left supported by
+branches and roots, on the wayside, along with heaps of cocoanuts half
+hidden in grassy hollows, giving the idea that other owners and
+gatherers had but just placed them there while they went off for a
+moment; for a plunge into cool water perhaps, after the hard toil of the
+carrying.
+
+Tati has explained to us how that really the owners were not far away,
+but that afraid at our coming or at that of others they were concealed.
+It was what is called their consciences, or rather what the French have
+subtly called “le respect humain,” that drove these good people into
+concealment behind pandanus or orange trees. That day that we drove
+away, leaving our dear chiefess go to church, was all through the
+country, apparently, a church holiday, and no one having gone to the
+mountains for such worldly things as banana food wished to be seen at
+work, when all were apparently moving to and from the churches, clad in
+brightest garments, and looking like the lilies of the field.
+
+But this morning, like yesterday, was a day of work; and soon we saw
+along the shore and drove past it, a very long shed, with shining
+thatch, and with hanging curtains of matted palm, where were many
+people, men, women and children, who had been packing oranges and now
+were resting and eating. The place was as joyous and full as the
+previous land had been solitary; work had stopped, the last boxes of
+oranges were being taken to the ship in double canoes, that is to say,
+two canoes joined together by an upper planking or deck of canes. On one
+of these with our luggage, we also embarked--the ropes that were
+fastened to the trees on shore to steady the steamer, were loosened, the
+anchors lifted, and with a good-bye to Tati we were off. That afternoon
+we saw little of the island lost in cloud until we turned the corner of
+Point Venus, and looked up the gorges that led toward the Aorai. Then
+soon we were in Papeete and could go ashore and watch the packet from
+San Francisco just sailing in behind us, and try to say good-bye again.
+Again I felt the curious twinge of parting, again Ori’s wife Haapi
+kissed my hands. The late afternoon flooded the island and the clouds
+half covering it with a dusty haze of yellow light. The sea tossed fresh
+and blue as if lit by another sky. We passed the fantastic peaks and
+crags of Moorea, seen for the first time on its other side and wrapped
+above in the scud of the trade winds blowing in our favour. So in a
+gentle sadness the two islands faded into the dark; the end of the charm
+we have been under--too delicate ever to be repeated.
+
+There I thought, five hundred years ago, I was young, happy and famous,
+along with Tauraatua.
+
+    “Ils sont passés, ces jours de fête,
+     Ils sont passés, ils ne reviendront plus.”
+
+If only when I received my name and its associations I could have been
+given the memories of my long youth; the reminiscence of similar days
+spent in an exquisite climate, in the simplest evolution of society, in
+great nearness to Nature, that I might find comfort in those
+recollections against the weariness of that civilized life which is to
+surround my few remaining years.
+
+                                 D. M.
+                                Oberea
+                                   S
+                                Posuit
+                               Teraitua
+
+
+
+
+TAHITI TO FIJI
+
+
+Sunday, June 14th, at Sea.
+
+    Lat. 20-42 S. 839 miles from Rarotonga.
+    Long. 174-44 W., 431 miles to Fiji.
+
+On Tuesday we were before Rarotonga: on _Tuesday_ according to the ways
+of the place, where, as in Samoa, the missionaries made an error in
+time, and have never dared to rectify it. But to us outsiders it would
+have been nearly a Monday, though later, no doubt, the captain would
+throw off a day for us as we went west, perhaps even drop it here
+politely.
+
+Rarotonga of the Cook Islands is a little island about twenty miles
+around, with outlines reminding one of Moorea; the look of a great
+crater whose sides had been broken out, leaving sharp crags and here and
+there curious peaks.
+
+I had been suffering very much from my ancient enemy, sciatica, which
+declared itself almost as soon as we left Tahiti, and has kept me in
+pain up to this moment. But I managed to get ashore, and to take a long
+walk along the pretty road that goes around the island. We called on the
+Resident, Mr. Moss who took us to see the Queen or Chiefess Makea, for
+whom we had a letter from Queen Marau. She was the usual tall, smiling
+Polynesian chiefess, pleased at the addresses of her letter, which made
+her out a _queen_, as she showed to the Resident. For I gathered in the
+careless accidents of conversation, she had been lately elected chiefess
+by a parliament composed of representatives of the islands who are
+supposed to have federated for a general government. But Makea is a
+chiefess of great descent, being straight from Rarika, one of the two
+chiefs who years ago met here, one of them coming from Tahiti, the other
+from Samoa; one driven away, the other in exploration; and who colonized
+the islands, and in the persons of their descendants fought for
+supremacy down to this date. So that it is something that this
+representative of one descent should have been agreed upon. Many of
+these traditions have been recorded by the Rev. W. W. Gill in his “Myths
+and Songs from the South Pacific”; though his book refers particularly
+to Mangaia which is a neighbouring island about one hundred miles
+distant.
+
+“Yes,” said the Queen, “Moni Gill.” She had seen his book and proposed
+to make some corrections. Money Gill, he was nicknamed because he was so
+fond of money. Let me add that I also understood that the gentleman was
+generous enough and not mean.
+
+The missionaries have had complete control all this time; and yet
+things “laissent à désirer,” as the French have it. There has been a
+system of “government,” as Mr. Moss rather ironically sounded the name.
+There had been one hundred policemen in this little island of Rarotonga.
+Each policeman was a deacon, and the punishment of everything was a
+fine; the fines being pooled together and divided afterward.
+
+Many deeds were fined and punished that were innocent or excusable, but
+all the fining had not in these thirty years increased the chastity of
+the women. Though the reports of the missions do not carry out this
+fact, the individual missionaries admit it, and what weakening of real
+authority has resulted one can only guess.
+
+Some years ago the missionaries objected to smoking. To-day our
+missionary on board has a cigar or pipe in his mouth most of the time.
+In those years Makea was fined and excommunicated for smoking a
+cigarette. Being driven out she became reckless, and I am “credibly
+informed,” drank and “even danced.” And so her example stood in the way,
+and the missionary came back to her and begged her to return and be
+disexcommunicated, even if she should smoke; so that at least others
+should not have her precedent for dancing. But she refused. How it all
+ended I should have liked to remain to inquire, of her or the Resident,
+but the steamer waits not, and I only get these queer little bits of
+information by chance hearing. But you know that I believe that one gets
+a good deal from such trifles. I find the British Resident cheerfully
+hopeful of getting these people under some shape of government other
+than the kind of thing they had which cannot last. He took us to the
+building which is a schoolhouse and Parliament house, and we heard a
+little of what he was doing to get them to regulate matters in some
+shape that can serve as a basis. But you can imagine what little
+difficulties come up when those of the neighbouring island, whose
+chiefess Namuru I saw at the Queen’s, had sent word in their innocence
+that they had fined a Chinaman for complaining to her and writing what
+they called a lying letter. In their Polynesian simplicity (and they are
+shrewd enough) they had forgotten that in an interview they had admitted
+all and given the Resident every detail.
+
+But there is no doubt that everywhere, the native churchmen, put up to
+the use of arbitrary authority, will do many queer things--things that
+everybody knows of through all the South Seas, so that there is no need
+of detailing them. They suffer, too, from having but one book, the
+Bible, which (especially the Old Testament) they know by heart, and
+where they can easily find a precedent for anything they may choose.
+They might get ideas from other books, but then they would have to
+learn English, etc. “What then will happen?” say the missionaries. “Do
+you see these good people reading Zola?” Their conduct is somewhat
+Zolaish at times, but then it is carried out in their own language.
+Hence much objection to teaching them English or anything that might
+lead to danger. It is the old trouble that missionaries have always
+found--more especially if they were obliged by principle to suppose that
+they might have some liberty of choice. The position is a hard one. I
+saw the expression of the missionary’s wife when another hinted under
+his breath that perhaps the Catholic Sisters might be allowed to come
+and teach. Such an extremity, however, would blow things sky-high; and
+if it be necessary that there be education, perhaps the missionaries
+will consent rather than see the enemy bring it. The English
+protectorate has only lately been established, and naturally all these
+questions are fresh.
+
+We took away with us the next day one of the missionaries, his wife and
+four children, who fill up quite a little corner of our little boat. The
+scene at their leaving was very pretty--as far as the apparent devotion
+of the native women who had charge of the children. They kissed their
+arms and legs, and so humbly the hands of the missionaries, with such an
+appealing look for answer. They are pretty young people, our clerical
+friends--the wife Irish, I should say--and are interesting as types.
+The poor little lady has been ill all the time, but I can see that even
+then she has a will of her own. The care of the small baby has devolved
+on the husband missionary, who has some trouble. The children are wild,
+good natured and Polynesian and sing hymns with the Polynesian accent
+and cadence, occasionally bursting out in a cheerful laugh when they
+have apparently hit it successfully.
+
+We have a French captain of artillery who is leaving Tahiti for Noumea
+(New Caledonia) and who tells me things of his expedition in the Chinese
+war and the taking of Formosa; also a Tahitian judge on furlough, who
+confirms what I have seen of the oral claims to land through genealogies
+committed to memory, the authenticity of which he has to leave to his
+native associates on the bench to decide.
+
+This afternoon we pass two little islands, Onga-Onga and Onga Hapai,
+uninhabited; to which people come at certain seasons to make a little
+copra. They seem lost and without relation, for we do not understand the
+ocean bottom that would make all rational. Near them, and some five
+miles from us, a long line thicker in the middle, is the new island
+thrown up some five years ago or so, of which Mr. Baker, premier of
+Tonga, gave us an account. He had visited the place while the eruption
+of mud was still active, had come quite close to it, even nearer than
+was safe, for the wind came near forcing him within range of the
+explosion. He has related it in a little pamphlet.
+
+“This perhaps,” says Adams “was the beginning of an atoll, a mud
+eruption, spreading out like this one under the sea, a surface upon
+which the coral started.” We had seen in the morning of our second day
+out, a “low” island, Mauki--a low mass upon which any elevation
+counted--but it was a mere mass of grey-green upon violet and blue, in
+the twilight of that day, so that we did not make it out at all. The
+island besides has no outside lagoon like a true atoll, but a
+fresh-water lake inside; so that we have not yet seen an atoll.
+
+The little volcanic islands, perhaps both belonging to one crater, are
+edges of its walls still standing, and a long ledge that runs to meet
+some projecting wall or dyke, may either belong to the side of the
+crater, or may it be a raised beach? Adams looks carefully through the
+glass, but there is too much haze. The little islands grow smaller and
+smaller as I write--little patches of sharp shape, of a fleshy violet on
+the clouded blue of sea and sky. It is late evening. The wind, which has
+been unfavourable, seems to veer a little. We have been _unfortunate_:
+the trades that should have blown steadily have almost deserted us, but
+we are fortunate to have a steamer. And all through we have felt cold,
+though not officially, that is to say, at midday the thermometer marks
+from 80 to 83.
+
+
+Monday, June 15th.
+
+Still fine weather, blue sea, blue sky; some little islands--the end of
+a chain of reefs and islands Onga Fiki appears in the horizon and
+promises us arrival for to-morrow.
+
+The passengers are more cheerful, the children less feverish. The little
+missionary lady plays on the piano and sings a hymn, the Judge leaning
+over her.
+
+The Captain “profite de son dernier jour pour perfectionner” his
+English, and bewails with me the unreasonableness of English or British
+pronunciation. “Why,” says he, “does the steward say ‘am,’ for ‘ham,’ I
+suppose, for he can’t mean anything else, and why does he say there is
+much ‘hair’ when the wind blows? French seems more logical.” I comfort
+him as best I can, but he no doubt has a hard time before him.
+
+More islands to the northwest, and later at night we shall make others,
+and to-morrow be at Suva of Fiji; unless we run on some reef, but the
+captain has been here before--some ten years ago, it is true.
+
+
+
+
+FIJI
+
+
+Suva, Wednesday, June 17th.
+
+Yesterday we arrived as expected, and have been since that, reposing in
+the calm that can never so pleasantly come upon one as after an
+uncomfortable sea voyage. The steamer, unknown to the island, unawaited,
+must have appeared to bring some important news: perhaps something in
+the nature of a disturbance or trouble in some of the places connected
+with this one politically; perhaps in Rarotonga that we had left, where
+the new English order is but recent. But if such was the case we knew
+nothing of it, and waited quietly on board in the beautiful little
+harbour; looked at the lines of mountains on one side of the
+amphitheatre, edge upon edge of blue; upon the reef’s haze of white
+light; and on the other side, upon the little town stretched out on low
+land, but prettily connected with the distance, and high land by little
+hills picturesquely balanced and arranged, with trees and houses and
+some native buildings; and then along the beach, the usual shops and
+trade buildings, more British than anything we had yet seen.
+
+Each of the five spots we have disembarked at has had a distinct
+character, more distinct now that we compare them, and nothing could be
+further, in its small way, from the other small way of Tahiti: ancient,
+provincial, French, sad and charming as the setting of some
+opera-comique that I have never seen, but should have liked to invent.
+Here everything was brisk and clear and promising, as if typical of the
+promise of something, while Papeete of Tahiti held the remains of some
+former system of government and business.
+
+Little schooners with sails set were anchored in the harbour; a
+three-masted ship and H. R. M. S. _Cordelia_ gave importance to the
+scene. Steam launches plied about. On the wharf, East Indian coolies,
+turbaned and draped, were grouped with their women in great white
+draperies or in bold colours, all yellow and all green, or in one case
+with a violet _sari_ edged with light blue, and a gown of dark blue
+edged with the same; all these gracious folds thrown out in great masses
+when they moved, so that even far as we were one could see the movement
+of the limbs. There are now, I was told when I asked, some seven
+thousand of the East Indian people in these islands; for the Fijians are
+Polynesians and work little. So that as elsewhere, the growth of sugar
+or cotton, or in fact anything requiring continuous care and some
+exertion, cannot be carried on without the outsider--East Indians,
+Chinese, Japanese, or Melanesian from other islands.
+
+[Illustration: CHIEFS IN WAR DRESS AND PAINT. “DEVIL” COUNTRY. VITI
+LEVU, FIJI]
+
+The first Fijians came up to us almost at once in the boat of the pilot;
+dark chocolate figures with great shocks of hair standing out, yellowed
+with lime as in Samoa. They resembled our Samoan friends more than any
+we have seen yet, notwithstanding great differences. There was a certain
+likeness--something in the expression and in the make of the face; only
+so far as these few hours give me, the look is browner.
+
+They seem more military, more masculine; all this impression intensified
+by our reminiscences of Tahiti just left behind us, where the healthy
+good humour of Samoa seemed to fade into sadness and into a refinement
+that appeared feminine. Fine strapping fellows in red _sulus_ (_sulu_ is
+the same as the _lava-lava_ of Samoa or _pareu_ of Tahiti--the loin
+drapery), and red-edged, white sleeveless shirts, pulled the Governor’s
+gig that came out to fetch us. After landing and being driven up to the
+Governor’s house, we found a sentinel draped with the _sulu_, and naked
+to the waist, with a straight sword and belt and his musket, pacing in
+front of the verandah. I believe it was owing to his great shock of
+yellow hair, like a grenadier’s cap, that he looked completely dressed
+and most decidedly a soldierly figure. He or another is now walking up
+and down in front of me as I write, and at night, at the relief watch, I
+know by the deep voices that he is still there, and that I can sleep
+safely, as safely as if he were not there--and all the more that his gun
+is empty. The servants also about the house, probably the same men, wait
+upon us with this simple splendour; and hand out the dishes with
+outstretched arm, “from the shoulder,” and keep up, for me, a military
+look.
+
+The Governor, Sir John Thurston, has kindly invited us to take up
+quarters with him. Lady Thurston and the family are away, so that we are
+but few people in the long, rambling building. It is beautifully placed
+on a slight height, at the edge of the town, and faces the bay and the
+long line of mountains of the opposite side. There are large grounds
+with grassy roads, and the beginnings of a large garden which the
+Governor is setting out with great success. From it already he has been
+able to supply plants of the finest Trinidad cocoa, which I see growing
+in little tubs of bamboo, which when again set out will simply rot away
+and leave the plant acclimated. However, I do not purpose to make out a
+list. What might interest you is that the garden follows a line of
+moats, once belonging to a fortified town which was here, so that it has
+quite a look of meaning in its picturesqueness. This is the first
+recognizable trace that we have yet seen of the fortified place
+protected by ditches. We have seen walls built up in places for forts,
+or arrangements of timbers and stones of a momentary character, such as
+those in Samoa; but here the laying out of the lines seems to have been
+determined with some engineering intelligence, and the space covered
+implies ground convenient enough for residence. However, we shall see
+later, we hope, something more of such remains, and understand them
+better. Meanwhile we are at peace: no more war has been noticed than the
+cricket match and lawn tennis games that we saw yesterday afternoon. We
+have about us decidedly, protection, and something that I have not had
+for a little while, some young Britishers. There is something very
+soothing to me about them, when I like them at all. In fact, if this
+continues, we shall feel as if we had simply reëntered “civilization”
+and be completely spoiled. The conversation of Sir John is very
+interesting and instructive; for he is not an amateur in his line,
+though by the by, he photographs very prettily.
+
+
+Suva, Sunday, June 21st.
+
+On Thursday afternoon we accompanied Sir John on a little trip up the
+big river Rewa which lies to the east from here. This steam launch
+carried us over the shallow bar, inside the reef into the broad river
+which has a rapid current, owing to the tide that runs up far enough for
+the breakwater to reach some twenty-five miles. The river has also a
+considerable incline, but the statement made us without guarantees,
+seemed excessive--fifty feet in those twenty-five miles. The land was
+low on either side, a great delta, and only occasionally could we see
+the mountains and hills in the distance. The banks were high, cut by the
+river, and knobby at spots where the harder clay remaining from the
+washings made little lumps or eminences. At first we met the mangrove
+swamps, then by and by banana and cocoanut, and visible here and there
+bread-fruit outlines against the sky. Then there was not water enough,
+though the launch draws but one foot, and even with that little had
+touched at the bar; so that we landed and walked a little way to Rewa
+the village or town that we were bound for. A pretty little clayey road,
+like a causeway, better than any in Samoa; plantations and houses from
+place to place; natives under the trees turned out for the great event
+of the Governor’s visit; here and there in shady corners groups of young
+men, putting on the final touches of the decorations in which they were
+to appear later: red and black paint, great bunches of _tappa_ about
+them and girdles of black _fao_, as in Samoa, and _titis_ of white
+streamers and of many plants. Then we came to a sort of stockade, the
+compound of the chief, and stepped over his gate, as usual, some stakes
+planted in the ground, waist high, with a stepping one outside; not in
+our white ideas a dignified mode of entrance. Inside a pretty
+arrangement of trees and buildings, with that usual charm that I have
+wearied you with, of looking as if arranged for effect, while most
+probably placed merely for most convenience; like that picturesqueness
+which accompanies our old farms and which seems opposed to most modern
+things with us. We turned around the main house, and sat down upon mats
+spread out in front of the river; passing first through two little
+groups of natives and led by the chief, to whom we were introduced in
+turn after the captain of the _Cordelia_. Then a chief or personage of
+importance addressed the messenger or herald of the Governor, who sat in
+front of us on the grass, profiled against the river, and with certain
+forms, presented to him some whale’s teeth tied together, upon which,
+apparently, everything was to depend. They were accepted, both these
+gentlemen curled up on the ground and the officer sidled up in what I
+suppose is due form. Then after a very short speech of the briefest
+kind, we were led to the big house for _kava_ and we entered on one
+side, walking up the long plank--and passed through doors of heavy
+timber, ornamented with sennit in patterns and found a big room covered
+with many mats, soft and bed-like to the foot. There we sat at the upper
+end, a little raised and on more mats. At the other end of the one long
+room were the notables. The chief sat on one side near us; as guests we
+had his place. Between the two groups a long rope with ends of clustered
+shells was then laid at right angles to us. This was to mark the
+division, said my informant, and to enable any one who came late to find
+his due place. At one end of the rope the Governor’s herald in jacket
+and _yappa sulu_, at the other, the young men making the _kava_ (here
+called _yangona_), in an enormous bowl. Meanwhile certain persons
+chanted something, with much swaying and pointing of hands and various
+gestures, like a rather solemn _siva_. Among the singers was the next
+important chief, who led the chant. The singing was the usual Polynesian
+cadence, stopping abruptly; and after several chants, between which,
+silence reigned, _kava_ had become ready and was applauded and then
+poured out. For the first time since Mataafa’s visit I saw the use of
+the Great Chief’s Cup. The Governor’s herald handed him his own cup,
+into which the _kava_ bearer poured a part. Then upon the Governor’s
+drinking and throwing down his bowl, a groan of approval came from the
+crowd before us. The same for the English Captain (Grenville); the same
+for Tauraatua and myself--who had the honour of drinking out of the
+“chiefy” bowl. For others the larger, common bowl was filled; an
+advantage or not, as one might like to have more or less of the
+stuff--which on the whole I think I like: that is to say, that one gets
+accustomed to it, and that it has a clean taste and seems to brace one
+a little. But evidently the _kava_ here and in Samoa is not the _kava_
+of Tahiti, described by Tati, so powerful that such a drink as our
+little bowl of yesterday held, would have stupefied us surely. That
+ceremony over, a short speech was made, very different from the long
+orations of the Samoan _tulafale_. It was answered by the herald and the
+meeting was over. Then we walked out of the chief’s compound to the open
+space, where a dance was to be given. We sat under a canopy of mats,
+comfortably out of the sunlight that filled the open space edged on one
+side, between trees, by a long building quite high, with many doorways,
+all high up in the wall windows. This is a guest house, divided by posts
+into partitions that serve for each party of travellers. As they arrive
+they take up such a division for their use. Between it and the next is a
+narrower one occupied by a hearth, serving the parties on both sides
+with the economical fire that all other people than white people make.
+There, when they are settled the village sends them the necessary food.
+
+Outside of this big building sat a crowd of many women, while only one
+woman sat near us, probably some relative of the chiefs who were near
+us. To the right, in a long halfcircle, a mass of children, most of them
+nude to the waist, beneath and in front of a little bunch of trees. Then
+when all was quiet, in trooped the chorus, who sat down in front of us
+in a confused circle, added to on the edges by occasional late comers. A
+few were nude and adorned with leaves. Many of them held in their hands
+bamboo sticks cut to different lengths and of differing sizes. These
+struck upon the ground gave a series of sounds according to their length
+and thickness--a most primitive music and a most impressive one. Had we
+heard this in surroundings untouched by the European, we should no doubt
+have felt more keenly the extreme archaic rudeness of the method. With
+this was mingled the chant of the others, the usual Polynesian chant. At
+length, to our left, having come up behind us, appeared a mass of men,
+armed with clubs, ten abreast and about fifteen in file; an orderly
+phalanx, keeping step to the music with that marvellous accuracy that
+everywhere indicates the Polynesian sensitiveness to time in sound. They
+scarcely advanced, merely moving in place, first upon one foot, then
+upon another, until some change in the music started them off briskly
+toward the other end of the arena. The big yellow masses of their hair
+stood out like grenadiers’ caps, and around their heads. Dragging to the
+ground almost, were long veils or strips of white _tappa_, looking like
+bridal veils. White flowers were fastened in the hair; great armlets of
+leaves about the upper arms; collars of beads and hanging circles of
+breastplate, with great _titis_ (Samoan name for the ornamental
+
+[Illustration: MEKKE-MEKKE. A STORY DANCE. THE MUSICIANS AT REVA,
+FIJI]
+
+girdle) of white and green, stuck out or swung about them. They wore
+usually dark black waist hangings like the black _fao_ mats of Samoa;
+though here and there black _tappa_ served for the drapery, and was
+gathered about their waists in enormous folds: in general a great
+“symphony of black and white,” with strong accents here and there of
+faces, necks and hands painted with velvety black of soot. When they had
+marched to the other end of the open space they began their dances,
+keeping time with extreme care, but making motions of attack and defence
+all together. Then breaking their order, the centre took one line of
+attitudes and movements, and the flanks another, even to crouching low
+down and waiting while the centre advanced and came back. It was a
+splendid, warlike, barbarous spectacle, our first sight of a complete
+military dance; for the Samoan that we had seen was more the
+representation of a real advance of barbarian warriors. To this
+succeeded other dances of like kind, as our first dancers belonging to
+the place, were succeeded by others belonging to adjacent districts.
+
+The leader of the first corps came up to us, threw down his club before
+the Governor, and sat down beside us panting and perspiring. He was a
+big handsome man, redolent with cocoanut oil, the son of one of the
+chiefs, and had once on a time been at school in Sydney, where he had
+learned other weaknesses besides those that come from education. Next
+to him in front of us, as usual, sat the Governor’s “herald” (native
+name Matafamea) representative of an office hereditary in certain
+families; and took charge of the applause, calling aloud “_Vinaka!_”
+which means _good_; to which the Governor sometimes added, “_Vinaka
+sala_,” _very good_. And it was very good. Not only did we have club
+dances, but also dances with spears, extremely long spears, made to
+shake and tremble like the “long shadow casting spear” of the Iliads;
+while sometimes the warriors stood all motionless, crouched or poised,
+or leaning with the other arm upon their clubs. Finally the last cohort
+came down in a mass, the front rank waving great fans and bending to the
+right and left, while the main body of the men brandished their spears
+above them. To add to the confusion of sight of the looker-on many had
+their faces painted not only in black but in vivid red, so that one
+would feel that a certain surprise and astonishment might well attend
+their appearance and attack. Things of the kind taken by themselves seem
+useless, but seen in real use, the motives that have brought them about
+unfold, and one can see for instance how the painting of the face makes
+a mask behind which the intentions or purposes lie concealed and in
+ambush. When all this was over the crowd melted away, and we walked back
+to the chief’s
+
+[Illustration: THE DANCE OF WAR. FIJI]
+
+house, stopping, some of us, for a moment at a less important one to see
+what it was like; slipping up and down on the polished wood of the
+drawbridge, and resting on the raised daïs at one end, filled with grass
+and covered with soft mats, where the owner slept. Behind us on the wall
+was a lithograph in colour, framed--the Madonna of Raphael’s--the good
+man probably a Catholic. Otherwise less fine, the house was as the
+other. Some one of the party wasted some time in asking for a dance of
+the women, which we did not obtain, and so we were late on our arrival;
+and as we sat down on the mats outside, near the Governor and the
+captain, we found that the ceremony of presentation of food had gone on
+for some time, and that we were only in at the end. But we saw the
+herald divide it, somewhat as in Samoa. It would as we understood, go
+back to the village that gave it--the big hog not cooked enough, and the
+great basket of taro.
+
+We lounged until evening in what we might call the garden, right upon
+the river. Here and there a few trees growing up against the leafy
+walls--for their sides were all covered with leaves that melt into the
+grass thatch above--or standing apart; below one of them was a large
+smooth slab of stone, brought from before an old heathen temple, to make
+a pleasant seat. It looked like Japan, just such a little place as would
+have been arranged with infinite art, with just so many trees, and with
+such a stone to appear as if accidental and yet to contradict a little.
+The river before us was very broad; on the other side a perpendicular
+bank not high, perhaps like ours, some four or five feet at the most,
+covered with the appearance of an uninterrupted mass of trees, though
+perhaps at places there were open spots like ours. Canoes moved across
+bringing back visitors; as the night came on big fish rose out of the
+water with a splash. There was a long white sunset, and then we had
+dinner on the mats, and after talk and lounging there we walked outside
+a little and then turned in for sleep on the mats, under blankets and
+mosquito nets; for it was cool, or felt so, and yet the mosquito hummed.
+
+In the morning I wandered out at dawn, and walked up and down the little
+space with the Governor, who told me humorous stories of wild
+adventures, mostly with reporters. The Governor’s conversation is
+charming, full of information, and with a great enjoyment of fun. The
+few stories he had told us were like little comedies, and I regret that
+his position and duties, as they, increase, will probably prevent such a
+man from giving any record of his experiences and his views in the South
+Seas.
+
+As the day came up our party turned out of doors; attempts at
+photography were made. Some chiefs came up to speak to the Governor; one
+he presented to me, a cheery old gentleman
+
+[Illustration: JOLI BUTI--TEACHER. FIJI]
+
+of grey beard, strikingly European at first sight, who laughed at the
+little joke that we were come to take him to America, like so-and-so who
+went and never came back.
+
+Another steam launch drawing less water had come for us to take us to
+the Navuini plantation (sugar) only some six miles in a straight line
+from us, but further with the curving of the rivers. While we were
+breakfasting cheerfully on the mats it had run aground and would not be
+off until a change of tide in the afternoon. So that our boats were
+called, and stepping down a little copper-lined ship’s ladder delicately
+grafted into the bank, we were in the boats and had a long hot row to
+the plantation. There we rested, going up to a high verandah in one of
+the residences from which there was a view of the delta of the river,
+and we could look toward the gradual passage of the land into hills and
+then into mountains.
+
+I felt too tired to follow through the rows of the plantations
+interesting as they undoubtedly are, because I have some previous idea
+of the thing. I should have been more interested if I could have seen
+some of the native sugar plantations which we passed, the existence of
+which at all seems to me a remarkable thing: the first sign so far in
+the South Seas of any work not absolutely easy, undertaken by natives.
+One of them was near our point of departure, and was across the river
+from the owners or holders; for as was explained to me, it was a
+family, not an individual, as you know, in the idea of society and
+property that exists here; in the same way that we have seen elsewhere
+in the South Seas. There is the family, in so far different from our
+communistic ideas; then the families that are sprung from a common
+traceable near root, over them, headed by the heads of families, the
+greater chief representing the ensemble of families of like origin or
+who have control; and so on to the highest. As connected with this, the
+Governor was illustrating the interdependence in some such way; putting
+ourselves back to an indefinite time, an arbitrary moment when things
+were unchanged; let us suppose that the head of a village is moved by
+complaints that some one of his own little association of families has
+misbehaved. There is no trouble in such a case; all authority is given,
+and proper punishment meted out directly, if such be necessary. But let
+us suppose that it is some fellow of a neighbouring village who has
+killed the straying pigs of our village, or who hangs too closely about
+some girl of ours--why our chief, however disposed to break his head,
+must wait to see that such a disposal of the outside offender would not
+displease the chief who had equal authority over both places. So that he
+takes a present, the famous whale’s tooth, such as that we saw offered
+yesterday to the Governor, at the beginning of all conversation; and
+presenting it, he makes a story of the case, and of what he himself
+would like to do about it. If the present is rejected, the matter is
+left as it was. But it may be that it is accepted, and the superior
+chief may approve and not interfere, or he may approve (_annuit_), and
+yet protect the offenders indirectly, so that they should not be
+hurt--nay, so that they might come off victorious and the attacker be
+humbled and diminished. Or he might say: “The case is grave; I
+understand what you want; let me think a little over it;” then he
+himself approach the still higher ruler and consult him. So that the
+responsibility was shifted away as far as convenient.
+
+
+THE STORY OF THE FISH-HOOK WAR
+
+But this fairly is politics, and we were talking of property, and
+perhaps it is better to give you an ancient anecdote that was told at
+breakfast with great vivacity by Sir John. It is the story of the famous
+“Fish-hook War.” Let us suppose three brothers or relatives, each with a
+district, or village perhaps, under him--people well-to-do, with
+property and women. Let us label them--(for their names would only
+trouble us and entangle me)--A., B., C. Now somehow or other a story got
+out that A. had become possessed, in some way or other, of a wonderful
+fish-hook, something quite extraordinary in every way and “_hors
+ligne_.” Exactly how it was I don’t know, but B. felt that if it were
+so good he should like to have it himself, and most naturally, according
+to the communistic ideas of the South Seas, he went over to A. and asked
+him to give him his fish-hook. A. thought awhile, and then answered that
+he would be most happy (South Sea way), but that unfortunately he had
+only a little while ago (South Sea way), given it to D. or E. or F. as
+the case may be. Now B. knew that this was a lie, but I suppose he
+smiled politely, or in a sickly way, and went off wroth at heart. Some
+time after, whether taking a whale’s tooth or not, I don’t know, for I
+am not yet posted in the use of the implement, A. called on C. and said
+to him: “I don’t like the way followed by our brother B. in his
+behaviour to us. He has been persecuting me about a fish-hook, that he
+might have left alone, and he seems to wish to grasp everything. I think
+that we ought to give him a thrashing.”
+
+C. agreed: they notified B. that on such a day, say Thursday next, they
+would proceed to attack him, kill his pigs, ravish his women, burn his
+houses, and generally make an end of him; and that he had better put up
+his war palings at once. Of course, South Sea way, he was to be informed
+of the hour and place of the duel. B. did so, but he was thrashed, his
+houses were burned, his pigs killed and eaten, his women ravished; and
+he himself had to take to the wild bush, where for a couple of years he
+remained. Then the others thought that after all he was a brother, and
+had been punished enough, and they called him back and helped him to
+rebuild his houses and started him in life again. Again, South Sea way,
+all the property they had was in common and disaster to one was disaster
+to all. But B. after a little while went to A. and said to him: “Of
+course you might take offence at my having asked you for your fish-hook.
+It is not for me to decide now, and all that is over; but I don’t see
+that C. should have behaved as he did. He had no complaint against me,
+and I think he behaved meanly. Now he is lording it all along. Why not
+do to him as you did to me?”
+
+“All right,” said A. So again A. and B. notified C. that his pigs should
+be attacked, his houses burned, his women ravished, etc., etc., and to
+get his palisade ready for an attack at an appointed time. Sure enough,
+down they came on him, and chased him out and drove him into the bush.
+But after a few months they repented and remembered his brotherhood, and
+recalling him rebuilt his houses and set him up again in business.
+
+And things went smoothly for a time, but C. one day thought it over, and
+going to B. unbosomed himself thus: “It is all right that you should
+have walked into me, but what had I done to A.? Nothing whatever. He
+might have had a grudge against you who troubled him about the
+possession of the fish-hook, but what could he have against one who had
+helped him always. He is grown over-proud and powerful. Why should we
+not bring him to a reasonable level, and perhaps after all get the
+fish-hook?” So they agreed and sent him the usual summons to prepare for
+devastation; but also let him know that if he would merely get out in
+time after putting up his war fence, and make no resistance, no further
+harm would be done him than to kill his pigs and burn down his houses;
+but that he must take absolutely nothing away; all must remain just as
+it was. So A. consented, and went into the bush, and the other two came
+down and made devastation. And in a few days they called A. back and
+said to him: “Well, now things are fairly square, we may allow you to
+come back; and we will help you to rebuild your houses. We can’t give
+you back your pigs, they are eaten--but, oh, where is your fish-hook?”
+
+Then A. became shamefaced and said to them: “It is too bad, but the fact
+is _there never was any fish-hook_. I was drunk one day, and in a
+boasting fit I invented the owning of a wonderful fish-hook. That is all
+there is to it.” So that, made wiser by fate, they remembered their
+general brotherhood, and put up with the nonexistence of the unfortunate
+fish-hook.
+
+This is a good story of Polynesian war, such as seemed to keep all
+these good people going, gave them excitement, work to do, provided
+against unnecessary increase, and yet seems rather to have kept up their
+numbers, now diminishing apparently everywhere in all islands. It may be
+that when, as in Tahiti, there may come up the possibility of lawsuits
+over land claims, the fierce activity of war shall be transferred to the
+pursuit of rights in courts, as the bloodthirstiness of the Norseman
+still persists in the “process ifs” Norman-French.
+
+But here they have not yet come to that. No arbitrary professional and
+scientific ideas, such as aid the French, have yet taken hold. The poor
+Tahitian, elevated to the dignity of being the equal of a Frenchman,
+pays for it the penalty of having to record his titles to land by
+methods new to him. These titles, if not claimed within some European
+space of time, are to lapse, so that he rushes now into court, with a
+terrible array of verbal testimony, claiming all he possibly can, and
+sure to be contradicted or to find his land counter-claimed by some
+neighbour, jealous of letting any dormant right, however doubtful, pass
+away forever. Poor Pomaré V, the late king who abdicated in favour of
+the French, as Thakombau did here, in favour of the English, was
+claiming (as I may have told you) when we were there, in Tahiti, two
+months ago, all sorts of land presented officially to his first
+ancestors and ancestress, as great chief, or as what we now call king;
+somewhat as Adams and I were placed in possession of our little district
+so many fathoms long. Against him the battle may not be difficult; as he
+has resigned his kingship, the titles go back to the first owners, who
+gave it to a ruler, not to a person. But meanwhile in the court records
+and notices of trials his name is scattered upon every page.
+
+Here things have not yet come to that. Old ideas that are inherent in
+the Polynesian way of thinking are not roughly put aside; and I must say
+that I personally have a sense of coming to a place where my mind does
+not go through the rack of seeing misapplied laws and rules break up
+everything, for the risk of possibly doing some good, with the certainty
+of much harm. For, after all, what are titles of ownership? There is the
+excellent story of the New Zealand chief, who pressed with impatience to
+start his claim and make it short, answered promptly, “I eat the former
+owner”--a brief summary of many ownerships everywhere. Or of the others
+who proved their claim to land by showing that from far back they hunted
+rats there. (You will remember that in Samoa rat-hunting was a dignified
+and “chiefy” sport.)
+
+The _lali_, the heathen war drum that at the Governor’s house calls us
+to our meals, has a story about it in this line of thought: Years back
+Sir John ascended the highest peak in Fiji, some five thousand feet or
+more high. And having toiled up and being enveloped in cloud and mist,
+instead of taking refuge in caves, as did his companions, he sat down
+upon a little hillock, over which was spread his waterproof, and waited
+for the sunlight that was to show the land below through the rifts in
+the clouds. Some time afterward one of the magistrates had come to ask
+about the ownership of one side of the mountain, and was assured by the
+men of--such and such a place, that it was theirs, a claim contradicted
+by those on the other side. But the first party insisted, saying, “Years
+ago our people buried their war drum on top of the mountain. There it is
+yet.” And true enough, though the spokesman had not been there since
+childhood, the little mound or hillock was caused by the burial of the
+drum. So that this piece of evidence was duly recorded by being sent to
+the Governor; and the evidence is daily produced for us with the beating
+of it to call to meals.
+
+I have wandered far away from our course upon the river Rewa. There is
+nothing more to it; we had a pleasant time. There were several officers
+of the _Cordelia_ along with us. They had been in Samoa and knew our
+good friends of Apia; Seumanu and Faatulia and the girls, and old Tofae,
+and they agreed with us in liking them. They were in for photography
+also, at least the captain; and generally I enjoyed the pleasure that I
+have often had in meeting Britishers. The captain was full of things he
+had seen and been amused by. The ship had just returned from Tonga,
+where it had taken Sir John, and I was told about details connected with
+church life there: the most important feature in many islands, that
+makes, for instance, Raiatea and Huahaine and Bora-Bora, our neighbour
+islands of Tahiti, curious survivals of an arbitrary code of behaviour.
+
+There are too many to repeat; and all that I have is disjointed, but you
+know the fancy I have for believing that a few anecdotes help to give an
+explanation--and you would tire less of them than of my own
+disquisitions. Whether it be so now or not I don’t know, but formerly
+the great church in Tonga at Nukalofa (I suppose) was so ordered as to
+promote the cause of European dress and also of European trade. The
+different doors gave access to people according to their costumes.
+Consequently distinct places were given to those who owned hats and who
+wore them over shirts and trousers. By another door, to other seats,
+entered the hatless owners of shirts and trousers. And _lastly_, the
+lowest place of all and separate entrance was for those who even with
+shirts wore only the _lava-lava_. In contravention of all this, the
+Governor, our Sir John, and the English officers accompanying him on
+some hot Sunday, turned up coatless, with only shirts and trousers, and
+I hope restored the native mind to a healthier turn.
+
+[Illustration: TONGA GIRL WITH FAN]
+
+Some way back the natives contributed largely to donations for the
+missionary society, and I have heard that as much as $30,000 has been
+sent repeatedly away from this little island and its small population.
+The Polynesian, in this, like every one else at bottom is on the surface
+also a vain creature, incited to display and show off; which perhaps
+explains a great many of his apparent atrocities, perhaps even a good
+deal of his cannibalism. So that these people have been spurred into
+giving at church as a special mode of distinction. Again I am reminded
+by my conscience that I have heard of such things amongst us. But I must
+go on with them: giving, as a mode of generosity, has been prevalent
+among them, fostered by everything that we can think of--and especially
+by the fact that a chief, as head of a _community_, is nothing but a
+_conduit_ for property. Some may stick if the conduit is very rough, but
+to give and give much and all has seemed to me from my first days a
+Polynesian brand. Was I not telling you last month, or some way back in
+those lovely days of laziness in Tahiti, how Tavi, the over-generous,
+gave his wife to Terriere of Papara, through whom we trace our
+Polynesian descent. Well, with giving in such ways goes _show_; a silent
+giver gets no credit and no power thereby; and most do not like the
+strict Gospel teaching, so what is a man to do who planks out his
+_dollars_ in church? Any man with twenty-five cents in copper gets more
+out of it than he does--crash go the copper coins into the plate, while
+the one silver piece slips in edgeways. To remedy such a state of
+things, the proper person brings his money in the largest bulk, and if
+perchance during the week had not had the occasion to get change, he
+finds in the sacred building itself a corner where his large piece can
+be exchanged for small; so that in all the pride of justification, he
+can roll the coppers into the plate, and even perhaps brim it over, and
+send the pennies whirling along the floor.
+
+With many such comparisons of observations we beguiled the time. The
+steam launch met us on our return, and we sailed again over the bar,
+just in time for the tide, for we were bumped in the crossing, though
+the launch only draws a foot. And now we are resting again, enjoying the
+delightful coolness; for though the thermometer does not quite bear me
+out at times, it has been cool all the time, except of course when one
+is in the sun. But the thermometer has gone down to 66 at night, and
+keeps up pretty steadily to a range between 70 and 76; and though I have
+suffered from sciatica on board ship, I am getting over it.
+
+In this civilized life we are looking forward to a trip, at the end of
+this week, into the mountains, accompanying the Governor, who is going
+to “prospect” for the site of a sanitarium high up. Strange to say, no
+one seems to think of it in the other places we have seen. How easy it
+would be in Tahiti, for instance, to go for a change up to some of the
+great heights; and such openings into inland places makes things
+generally quieter and more orderly.
+
+The thing is vague in my mind, only I fear that we shall be several
+weeks in carrying it out, and certainly it will be a rough undertaking.
+Then too, how shall we manage to be just in time for the steamer to
+Sydney, and then how will the arrival of that steamer dovetail with the
+departure of the steamer that is to take us to Singapore?
+
+But to quote from a letter of King George of Tonga to Sir John, worth
+citing because it is a type of the semi-religious phraseology we have
+seen all through the Pacific, bestowed upon us or upon others:
+
+     “When the first man fell from the former state of good he received
+     from God, there came upon our hearts pain and doubtings and strife
+     and divisions among ourselves, in regard to unforseen things that
+     may happen in the future.
+
+     But it is with God alone to restore happiness.”
+
+George Tubou’s words convey everything necessary, and I shall report to
+you when things have been shaped. Meanwhile “Salaam,” as the little
+Indian boys said to me at the sugar plantation--“Salaam, Sahib,” the
+first sounds that indicate that we are about turning toward home, and
+that India is the next stage.
+
+
+AN EXPEDITION INTO THE MOUNTAINS OF VITI LEVU
+
+Vunidawa, Viti Levu.
+Sunday, June 27, 1891.
+
+We reached Viria on our first evening out, having made the journey in
+boats as far as the sugar mill of Namosi, drawn along smoothly, as if on
+skates, by a little steam launch, upon which was also part of our
+contingent; for even at the beginning we were many: the Governor and his
+secretary, Mr. Spence, and Mr. Berry, for surveying and the A. N. C.
+(armed native constabulary), and the Governor’s servants, and Awoki, and
+the Governor’s herald the Mata Ni Fenua (eyes of the land), and certain
+others, and soon Mr. Carew the magistrate on the Rewa, and so on.
+
+It was the same river scenery, mangrove swamps washed by the river, and
+by the tide which influences the stream for some forty miles or
+more--steep banks cut by the water to an edge, and covered with grass,
+sugar-cane, banana--occasional but rarer--cocoanuts and so on.
+
+Later on as we came nearer to the end of the day’s trip, as the banks
+grew higher and more hillocky, they became more and more cut up by
+ravinings and small cuttings which were sometimes wet, with rivulets or
+bayous, sometimes dry, and often so close and narrow as to make but
+little clefts in the stone and earth. Across them, over them; rounding
+their edges or filling them, grew the trees, sometimes small, sometimes
+of great height. All this repeated everywhere made a continuous set of
+little pictures of broken lights and forms--through all the course of
+the river.
+
+In a small way nothing could be more picturesque. At places where the
+bank had sloped and made some little flats, men and women were
+collected, bathing or washing clothes: many of them East Indians, women
+clothed in the flowing garments, of bright or “entire” colours looking
+in their favourite yellow, like great birds; occasionally running along
+the shore beach, their drapery swelling behind them, impeding and
+showing the motion of the limbs, and recalling the correctness of the
+drawings and paintings of Delacroix, who alone, so far, had made the
+Oriental that he saw, look like anything else than a geographical or
+artistic curiosity. When I think that a few weeks sufficed to store his
+mind with all that he had done or implied in this way, I return to my
+admiration for his work, which sometimes for a man of the eighties of
+this century looks too much like the doings of a man of the thirties.
+
+Once along a high bank near some station (government station), a row of
+constabulary stood up and then sat down in a row, respectfully on a
+platform of the bank, to do honour to the _Kovana_--the Governor.
+
+Late in the afternoon we turned at one of the confluents and reached our
+destination for the night. A high sandy beach all broken over with
+footsteps, looking like a Nile embankment--many natives sitting about on
+it--then disembarkment and a little walk through some sugar-cane and
+banana, on a little raised road, and we came to a native town or
+village, inside of a deep ditch of circumvallation, filled with trees,
+and inside of a big waste space, the house we were to occupy, alongside
+of a few others. The same method of entrance--the trunk of a tree made
+into a plank with the natural curve, with notches and holes occasionally
+in the wood, as the tree has grown. This wooden path led quite high up,
+and some eight feet or so to the base running around the house--the
+_yavu_ or permanent base, which is allowed to remain when the house is
+dismantled by time or by man.
+
+The house, the usual one with the walls covered with leaves. In one
+place a _ti_ branch in full bloom of yellow-red, projecting from its
+side as if it grew there (a decoration for our coming). The doorposts of
+trunk of tree-fern, all dark grey and corrugated, looking like stone;
+and above the doors a false lintel, engaged in the wall and smaller than
+the door, looking like a round bulging stone (as if so cut by a
+pre-Romanseque architect); the cutting of the chisel admirably
+indicated, but in reality nothing but a bunch of grey dried leaves, so
+brushed together that they suggested the grain of stone under the
+chisel.
+
+In front of the door, or rather at its edges, engaged in the platform,
+shells disposed in a pattern, and the same disposed in a half circle in
+front of the stairway plank deeply sunk in the earth, so that only their
+ridges were visible. All this exquisite good taste in spite of the
+repeated assertion, which may be true, that these good people are not at
+all sensitive to æsthetic feelings.
+
+The interior as usual: yellow cane in patterns on the walls, and dark
+columns of tree-fern, and rafters covered with sennit. Soft mats on the
+floor were made softer with leaves thickly strewn under them.
+
+Here there was a presentation of whale’s teeth, of _kava_ and of food;
+and here the Governor listened to reports of the place, and talked to
+the _mbulis_ (prounounced bulis) (local chiefs of a certain degree), and
+later listened to some petitioner of a neighbouring place, who in the
+twilight had come to him while standing out in the open; and had
+squatted down and mumbled and whispered, and offered some written
+petition. Then we ate and slept and in the morning, walked along the
+outside upper base, and looked upon the hazy scene--then bathed in the
+river while the mist still floated above the tallest trees.
+
+When the sun was well up our party divided, three of us going by canoe,
+and the Governor and officials and retinue walking or riding on.
+
+Here then we parted, A. & T. taking the canoe, while the Governor and
+the magistrates went on foot and horse by land, to Vunidawa. There was a
+little thatched awning upon the canoe’s deck, large enough for three to
+manage to stretch under. Six men, three at each end, poled or paddled in
+the canoe as the water was deep or shallow; while one man, in this case
+I think a sergeant of the “armed native constabulary” (A. N. C.), stood
+on the outrigger, or sat about and took charge.
+
+The low roof prevented one’s seeing much of the shores, for to sit up
+was to have one’s view absolutely excluded. But all the more important
+became the little details of vision, the beauties of line and colour
+that one sees everywhere in the movement or the rest of water, its
+breaks upon shore or upon rocks, the reflections that it carries with
+it, and the near banks or little distant escapes of vision, all framed
+within the cane posts of the sun shelter. It was all much the same as
+the day before, but the shores became bolder, the breaks greater. Rapids
+rushed around us, and our men poled hard against the force of the
+water. We passed or were left behind by the other boats carrying the
+enormous luggage and accumulation of provisions for such a party. The
+profiles of the men in the other boats stood up in contradictory curves
+and lines against the shadows and fights of the distance, or the
+darkness and glistening of the water. They shouted and called and got
+all the fun and excitement out of the hard work that could be had. As
+the slopes increased and the river-bed showed more gravel and boulders
+in large patches, the talk and chatter of the men reminded me of former
+days in Japan, up in the high lands and by the rivers that run there on
+great gravel beds.
+
+At every step this impression of reminiscence increases and must
+increase, as it occurred to me on the very first morning of arrival,
+upon seeing the many small hills and mounds fringed with trees, behind
+which came down great slopes of distance; even an occasional waterfall
+was there to remind me. The heat was great, the silence also, even
+though the men shouted; for occasionally we heard nothing but the
+movement of the poles and the ripple of the water. A hawk would flutter
+off from some tree. Dragon-flies lighted on the deck or upon one’s
+outstretched legs. A spider, folding up like a pair of scissors, so as
+to look all long instead of circular, began to build its web, for there
+were flies; and all little things became of interest by the time we had
+reached our first halt. We were helped up some very high banks of red
+clay, partly covered with green bushes and trees, and found ourselves at
+the entrance of a pretty little place, with plants and trees neatly set
+out, for colour spots. We lunched most comfortably in a native house.
+
+With this break we began again our river course, the rapids increasing,
+and the difference between the shoal water and the pools becoming more
+evident. Occasionally a large spot of river greened or darkened into
+what was depth. In such we longed to bathe, when the moment of halting
+would arrive, or before departure, but in none such of these did we
+swim. Indeed, little by little, one felt the influence of the assurance
+that sharks visited these deep holes, and that to some fifty miles or
+more up these rivers there was a possible danger. The shape of the river
+banks, the marks on the shore, the thickness of the dry parts of the
+river, the size of its boulders and pebbles, the manner in which the
+tongues of conglomerate that ran along with the river-bank were cut
+down, the sudden cuttings and hollows and ravines of the bank, all
+showed what a mass of water, in wet seasons and years, must pour down
+these rivers. Then when the tides are high and the waters give access,
+great sharks come up and bide their time in the deep pools. No year
+passes but that some natives are attacked. Here then the smaller ones
+remain when the river runs lower, and change their colour and become
+fresh-water sharks, and sometimes when small are harmless; but the
+impression of danger is there. I am told that they are seen far up, and
+that even as far as we shall get on Monday night, they are occasional.
+
+We landed in the afternoon at Vunidawa, some thirteen miles by land from
+our morning’s stay; again coming up high red clay banks, of a beautiful
+slope most charmingly set out and arranged, upon which stands the
+“station.” I was told that the arrangement of cuts and breaks and
+ditches was all modern or recent, but that at one place there were the
+remains of the old cut or moat on the upper hillside. But the place had
+a fortified look--one looked down from high banks (below and around
+which ran paths) upon a hollow centre in which stood native houses and
+great trees. In the distance, mountains across the river; toward the
+west, one great streaked mass, with an outline vaguely like the Aorai of
+Tahiti, the smaller ridges in front of it showing high precipices that
+looked violet in the dawn, with occasional shiny white spots; all else
+with a faint haze of green, except where far off, further to the west, a
+pointed peak looked blue. Along the bight of the curved river a line of
+cocoanuts stood near the high banks. Further on one could discern
+to-morrow’s road, that disappeared behind a turn of the river, and up
+the edges of the intermediate hills in the distance yellow patches and
+markings modelled the slopes of the first uplands.
+
+
+Sunday.
+
+All next day we rested. The sitting-room of the pretty native house was
+decorated with native _tappa_ (_masi_) of many patterns. Books and
+magazines were upon the tables and shelves of cane. The Governor and the
+resident magistrate, Mr. Joski, whose house this was, received reports
+from the _mbulis_ (chiefs) of the neighbourhood, while sitting out in
+the evening on the green slope of the garden.
+
+We left again Monday morning for the first beginnings of mountain
+country and more inland manners. Our party again divided. Atamo and
+myself and the momentarily ill Awoki took to the water and again went up
+stream. The weather was exquisite, the draught of the river just cooled
+the heat. Constant animation and struggle on the part of the boatmen for
+the rapids became more and more frequent. Half the time, with the
+strength of the current and the shallowness of the water, four of the
+six men plunged in and pulled and tugged at the boat, pulling it through
+the boiling water, lifting their legs high, one after another for
+stepping over the boulders, every muscle strained with effort, the poles
+bending against the rocky bottom. Occasionally the man who stood at bow
+or stern, upon the little vantage nook of the thickness of the canoe,
+would be slung off by a swerving of the current, and his own stretching
+far away to the side, and would retain some place from which he could
+join us. The other boats passed us or were left behind. We saw them far
+off on the slopes of the torrents, lifting shining poles against the
+shadow of the banks. Sometimes the water swept over and our own little
+planking was wet with it. As the rapids increased so did the spread of
+the stones and boulders of the remainder of the river. We rested once
+for midday meal. Then in the afternoon we landed and walked a little way
+along a causeway road to a little village on a bluff, where the wide
+river turned. Then passing through many houses and turning around a deep
+moat, filled with bananas and other greenery, we came upon the edge of
+the little hill. Here stood a house of a different type, more like the
+type of the mountains; a very high, dark, thatched roof, more than twice
+the height of the wall together with the stone base, or mound embedded
+with stones, called _yavu_, out of it grew bunches of the red _ti_. This
+mound embedded with stones is kept and has its name; the house on top
+will be built and rebuilt.
+
+At one corner a great palm tree rose above the high roof. From the
+little plateau, planted with occasional trees and rising steep from the
+river, a sloping and curved path led down between water and village,
+separated from the latter by the deep moat filled with trees, and coming
+at length to sharp earthern steps (if one can so call anything as rude)
+that took us to the river end, to our bath in shallow water, the edge of
+the deep pool under the cliff. Far back behind us spread the river-bed
+with the stream between, and in the distance behind the hills a line or
+shoulder of mountain streaked perpendicularly with great shiny patches
+of rock. In this house we spent the night. It was inside, like all those
+we have yet seen, charmingly finished with patterns of fastening on the
+reeds of the walls, and sennit decorations on beams and lintels and
+posts. A rude representation of a cow or bull had been worked into the
+roof.
+
+The next day we began our walk, leaving the canoes for good; and after a
+few hours over clay ground and some rocky streams, we came to a wide
+space of the river; across which we were carried in rough litters made
+of bamboo tied together, then, walking up a clay bank between trees,
+came upon the little village around which the river curves. This was
+Navuna.
+
+Here the view was confined to our huts and those of our neighbours.
+Behind us a plantation of bananas; visible partly around the corner of a
+neighbouring house, a great tree shading the centre of the _rara_, the
+village place, where in the morning the Governor and the two
+magistrates interviewed the representatives of this place and of others.
+I could make out fairly well that a certain court of reproof was going
+on; for all through these places was something which explained itself a
+little further along.
+
+
+Nasogo, July 3rd.
+
+The midday saw us off from Navuna, and through similar scenery to a
+little village on the edge of a river running far below it. The village
+is Navu (n) (di Waiwaivule) in the district of Boboutho.
+
+Now we began to be helped by being carried in the litters provided us by
+Mr. Joski; for crossing and recrossing streams, it was perhaps as easy a
+way as being carried pick-a-back. But where it was both a triumph and an
+excitement was when we were lifted up the steep sides of the gorges;
+then the looking back or forward, and seeing below one’s feet the
+toiling carriers of the other litters, swaying to and fro with their
+burden; and behind them again the long file of what was getting to be an
+enormous retinue. For a background the distant mountains, or the bottom
+of the gorge, black shingle and rushing water, or shallow pools
+reflecting the green above. But prettier than all was some passage along
+the stream; the men in the water; the mass of the party sometimes in the
+water near us, or disappearing around picturesque frames of corner
+rocks, over shingles and boulders; and reflected all about us the entire
+picture--the distant mountains and rocks in sun and mist, the near rocks
+covered with green, or with purple and grey of conglomerate; and the
+song of the rapids ahead in a black and white streak counting against
+the trembling green.
+
+But when we walked then much did we regret our litters. To the native
+our good path was for the most part on the dry river-bed, and lengthily
+and wearily we picked a precarious footing over innumerable pebbles and
+stones and boulders; sometimes thinking that the walk was easier on the
+big ones, because one went from one to another; sometimes on the smaller
+and more rolling ones, because one got several under one’s slipping
+foot. But my neighbours always helped me: sometimes Lingani, one of the
+Governor’s men, or one of the “Army,” as we called them (the armed
+constabulary), or some _mbuli_ who accompanied the escort, or some newly
+accidental neighbour; so that all went well enough, and we reached our
+night’s destination without the sprained ankle that had discomfited Mr.
+Spence early in the trip.
+
+All is a little hazy to me up to where we are now. I remember the look
+down the ravine and up the other river. I remember that huts began to be
+more peaked or more like
+
+[Illustration: EDGE OF VILLAGE OF NASOGO IN MOUNTAIN OF THE NORTHEAST OF
+VITI LEVU, FIJI]
+
+beehives. I remember one which had been fitted up as a heathen temple or
+devil house, and from whose roof many strings hung down--as conductors,
+one may say of influences. There had been a basket attached to one of
+them, which the Governor cut down. I remember, of course, but one
+running into the other, presentations of whales’ teeth and food, and
+_tappa_, and dances (_mekke mekke_), with or without the dancers being
+wrapped in the enormous folds of cloth, that afterward were unwound with
+more or less difficulty, to be piled up high as a man’s height into
+great masses of presents. (And by the by, though all that is extinct
+to-day, some thirty or forty years ago a return to this old manner of
+making gifts of _tappa_ came near to bringing on a civil war in Tahiti.)
+The Tahitian custom referred to came up again some while after Queen
+Pomaré (Aimata) was on the throne, her brother Pomaré III having died
+quite young, and leaving her, who had not been trained entirely by
+missionaries, exposed to the passing influences that come up with new
+conditions. At some time or other she capriciously desired that upon
+certain occasions she should be received in Tahiti (on her arrival, I
+think, from Eimeo--Moorea--but that is unimportant) in the old way.
+Among other customs would have been that of presenting her with _tappas_
+offered by a number of young women, who, having danced before her all
+swathed in this native cloth, should then gradually be unwound, and
+having nothing upon them, continue the dance to an end. This was part of
+the thing, and I only remember this detail. It was then that Tati of
+Papara, the grandfather of our old chiefess, came to the front, and in a
+most remarkable manner, both by threatening armed opposition, and by the
+use of an eloquence worthy of the greatest examples, broke down the will
+of the Queen and the plotting of her then advisers. It is thus greatly
+to Tati that peace and the final quiet prevailing of Christianity was
+due.
+
+As to Aimata, or Queen Pomaré, that she remained more or less of a pagan
+at least for a long time, the fact or report that she destroyed two of
+her children (probably base born) is in the direction of a testimony. Of
+course the meaning of the word Christian is variable according to time
+and place and especially according to date, so that the geographical and
+historical limit of the meaning should never be insisted upon in too set
+a manner.
+
+The next day’s tramp brought us here, but apart from certain geological
+facts in which Adams was enormously interested--for example, the
+superposition of the conglomerate upon everything else, and the finding
+of shells in the softish rock at this height--all was pretty much the
+same.
+
+Our present place is very charming, reminding me of the last. It is at
+a corner again, with the river turning round one side of it, and the
+stream up which we came on the other. Between them a bluff covered with
+trees, the space of the bed of the river mostly filled with boulders and
+gravel and rocks, though we roll the rapids, or slide the quiet waters;
+a great rock just facing the village, as an advance buttress of the
+mountain behind it, which melts tier upon tier into an entanglement of
+foliage; and the town or village itself, built on a succession of
+terraces, all worked over and planted, and edged with walls that seem
+part of the natural structure; here and there, even right in the
+village, a boulder black or grey, almost of the colour of the thatch of
+neighbouring houses, and protected, shaded, encompassed with trees or
+high decorative plants as they usually are. As always everywhere
+apparently, the projection of any tongue of land makes itself into a
+knife edge; so that the idea of a ditch or moat would be suggested to
+the savage engineer by the very make of the land. Therefore from each
+side the slopes go down, and below you see tops of trees, banana, palm
+or what not, and tops of huts staged down.[28]
+
+Then where the land rises again on the slopes, big boulders stand up,
+reminding you again of the thatched roofs; and far away on heights are
+places where villages stood, and where some years ago these very
+savages were attacked and driven off.
+
+For all these parts of the country were once a stronghold of the more
+savage tribes; if not the more powerful, who sometimes came down and
+attacked the lower places. And all through here some of the gentlemen
+who were with us had gone, when the time had come to make an end of it,
+destroying the towns and reducing the wild people to forced peace.
+Occasionally I overheard these reminiscences, which do not date so many
+years ago--fifteen or sixteen, I think. The Governor had headed or
+accompanied expeditions, and one or more of our companions had been on
+such attacks, after having suffered the loss of a number of relatives
+and friends. But all that is over now; only, as in all mountain
+countries, there is a sort of regrowing of that bad seed, such as we saw
+in this recurrence of the old devil worship.
+
+Here we saw of course again more ceremonies and presentations of food,
+the latter becoming a serious necessity with the great number of men
+accompanying us. The Governor is not only a representative of the Queen,
+he is as such the chief of chiefs, and most wisely his policy, whether
+or not it has been the policy of his predecessors, has insisted upon
+this point. Every ceremonial of observance, everything that would belong
+to the native ruler, is encouraged and kept up. Not only such natural
+observances must exercise an indefinable prestige on the native mind,
+but they also must allow, in what is a personal government, the use of
+an apparatus of control exactly suited to the native mind: thus any
+subordinate chief can be reprimanded, talked to and put in his place in
+such a way, that he feels it from ancestral habit; he can be removed or
+set aside. A man serving out a sentence can be kept a prisoner behind
+the paling of a bamboo house that he could break through as easily as he
+can see through it.
+
+With time, as the natives change, the laws and ordinances that they have
+made themselves, for most things, that have seemed good to them and
+which are not contrary to the absolute essentials of English law, have
+been left, and will change as they change, and may fit themselves to an
+unknown future.
+
+This will explain the naturally sensible reason for which the Governor
+differed with some of the Catholic missionaries, or rather their bishop,
+about which things I have heard, if not complainingly, at least with
+suggestion of arbitrariness from one or two good old Samoan priests. For
+instance, it is a great chief’s privilege and marks him that he should
+be “_tama’d_” to in passing--that is what marks him, and establishes his
+position in the hierarchy of rule.
+
+But there is no reason why a bishop should claim it; even if in old days
+the confusion with regard to power of sacredness, of respect, and
+worship had always existed here as it has been all through the world. So
+also the case of the missionaries objecting to the chief receiving the
+first fruits of the land, often symbolized nowadays by a mere few pieces
+of some growth, because long ago it bore a religious as well as civil
+meaning. I fear me that our old friends, the Jesuits of China, were the
+only very wise men that served as missionaries, so that they alone never
+went by their personal whims or measured matters by their own fast rule.
+
+But this is far off from my natural path of mere record of what happens
+or what I see. For some things at least the sketches will help you. I
+may succeed in making some note of the cheerful clearness of colour and
+tone all about me, though of course I can only make a choice. If I give
+you the day, then the veiled charms of morning or of evening, the
+enveloping of distances in misty colour, must remain unattempted of
+record. Or if I try the haze of the beginning or end of day, then I
+shall not have anything for you of the lightness and gayety of the
+brighter hours. But the sketches will give you the shape of the houses.
+You will sympathize with the inconvenience of getting in or out, in the
+dark or wet weather, excellent as it must have been as a device for
+protection against too sudden intrusion of doubtful friends.
+
+We wait one whole day: then we enter the mountains for good, and pass
+over them to make our way to the coast which will be a matter of four
+days or so. It may be warmer higher up, as there may be more cloud; so
+far it has been cool at night, the thermometer going down as low as 56.
+
+
+In Camp in the Bush.
+
+Saturday night, July 4th.
+
+We left Nasogo (pronounced Nasongo) early this morning in the mist;
+going down into the river-bed, among the boulders, and crossing the
+stream several times: the same river that rushed down around the little
+point or promontory of Nasombo--a streak of black or blue or green or
+white, among the black stones spread out between the rocky bluffs. Then
+we attacked the mountain and the forest--stumbling and slipping over
+rocks and moss, and matted tree roots. The path had been somewhat
+cleared for us here and there, but it was hard travelling through the
+wildwood; all damp above and below with the continuous moisture. In this
+desert of leaves and tree trunks, the passages of former torrents served
+for paths. Over us were quite high tall trees, but between their upper
+branches and the mossy wet earth spread a broken canopy of tall ferns,
+and lianas and the branches of smaller trees and plants. Here and there
+a great fern connected with the tree fern, but unlike it, spread or
+lifted long fronds like canes some twenty feet in length. Upon every
+tree hung innumerable mosses and parasites. Below, all over, a tangle of
+ferns; beautiful as ferns are, though you know that I care little for
+them; I am even so unworthy, that the prospects of rare orchids does not
+stir my blood; I would give them all for roses, violets or for apple
+trees or the cherry. I am essentially and absolutely European in these
+things, and retreat behind my rights as an artist to have preferences
+and keep to my instincts. But for you who love such things, I can say
+that there were many rare plants; a creeping lily, for instance, and
+innumerable ferns.
+
+The fatigue of the ascent became greater: we halted at noon on a little
+open space above a high precipice, from which we could look back at the
+whole course of the river sunk far into the mountains and curving in the
+far distance around the amphitheatre, stands on its little bluff the
+village of Nasogo which we had left in the morning some four hours
+before. Beyond it the river ran, a black thread in the dark grey
+shingle, below the big bluff, and around the little promontory by which
+we had bathed for two days. Then we had lunch and Sir John on this
+Fourth of July proposed the health of the President--and drank to that
+of Mr. Harrison. Then the “Armed Native Constabulary” gave a salute of
+six guns which echoed far away down the valley and into the grass
+country that we hope to reach to-morrow perhaps. No doubt there will be
+stories afloat that we have been attacked. We were then some 2,300 feet
+up--the thermometer indicated 62°.
+
+Later, as I was very tired, I was carried in the rough palanquin of
+boughs down the steep hills--the path so narrow that much ingenuity and
+noise and discussion was expended by my carriers to pass through the
+trees: fortunately the conveyance was elastic and could be sloped any
+way. In fact at times I stood up or sloped back so as to have to catch
+on, but I fell asleep and the men carefully moved along the hanging
+branches and lianas so that they should not strike me. Almost everything
+that came down merely hung in an elastic way. Rarely did a big tree
+stretch over the path. The last thing that I saw before closing my eyes
+was the file of our party beneath me: Their heads just visible between
+my feet; the “Native Constabulary” in their uniform of bushy yellow
+hair, and blue shirts, and red _sulus_ worn like sashes.
+
+The little British flag had been stowed away to prevent it striking, and
+I missed its flutter or dazzle in the green. One of my big black
+attendants was hanging upon a small sapling dragging it down from the
+path and dropping far below afterward. The noise of the axes of the
+scouts sounded in advance and started the parrots cawing in response;
+the sun broke upon us and so I fell asleep in the more grateful warmth.
+
+We reached the place chosen for camping in the early afternoon after
+another couple of hours’ march. Our halt was upon a little bluff right
+on the line of march--where trees had been cut down, and huts and sheds
+built for us, and where already many of our people were resting. Here
+had come the women sent in the morning by the other road, if one can
+call it so--the bed of the stream. They were to carry food for our
+people--for we had by this time some two hundred men along--many really
+of use, carrying boxes and trunks and provisions, all distributed, so
+that every little while I could notice in the long procession, the man
+with the frying pan--the man with the governor’s chair and so forth. But
+there were also amateurs who carried a club, or a little packet of food
+done up in a leaf, or an odd umbrella for one of us--or like the last
+page in the “Chanson de Malbrouck,” “Et l’autre ne portait rien.” Some
+were so called prisoners--viz., men condemned to labour for a time--and
+I was much amused at the story of three of them who were encamped in a
+long shed alongside of the magistrate (Mr. Carew) who had brought them
+as servants. They were all three in it owing to the eternal cause--“la
+femme”--who in Fiji seems to be “_teterrima causa_”. In fact, as there
+are not women enough to go around, it was not astonishing to hear that
+one great influence of the recent heathen revival in this wild region of
+cannibals was the hope of the young men, that if there were rows and
+trouble, some stray women might fall to their share. This evening I
+wandered out along the sheds and saw a good many--not more agreeable to
+look at than those I had seen before and certainly far uglier than the
+average ugly men. One youngster, another “prisoner” was preparing to oil
+himself, surrounded by a little group of female admirers, reversing
+apparently the fact of there being few women for the men.
+
+We warmed ourselves at the fires, for, though the temperature was about
+the same, all was wet and damp, the firewood all covered with green
+moss. Our little hut was a fairly good one, made of wild banana, and the
+interstices filled up, or rather covered up with the great leaves of the
+wild ginger.
+
+
+July 5th.
+
+The night was rainy and all was damp in the morning, when after prayers
+we started again into the wet woods. The cry of the parrots like a wild
+_flapping_ of voices had been the first sound of early dawn. Then the
+camp had begun to move with chattering and laughter; people filed along
+all the morning.
+
+When our time came, I had again the use of the loose palanquin in which
+I was taken for the first two miles down the deep side of the mountain.
+It was interesting to look up at the trees above, and to notice how much
+more of the vegetation grew in the air above than in the earth below.
+
+Every tree was covered with plants, mosses, creepers; the vines and
+lianas that hung about were themselves covered with smaller growths.
+Perpendiculars of gigantic vines hung, though they looked as if they
+held themselves up, but the least pushing of our party would send great
+spaces of green trembling far off. The branches that were in my way were
+loose and swinging, and rarely did we meet so low down the branches of a
+solid tree. High up through the great loops and festoons and upright
+stretches of the creepers, or here and there the great leaves of the
+wild ginger, the light was delicately stencilled with the pattern of the
+leaves of the great ferns. But high as everything seemed above head in
+the trembling wall of green our occasional passing of some mighty trunk
+of the _da kua_ tree, whose branches began far up above everything, made
+still smaller the caravan passing below. Upon the branches and curves of
+the great trees, in every nook of protection they could afford,
+flourished other small forests of air plants, ferns and creepers for
+whose support the great oak-like limbs of this giant of the pines seemed
+to spread. Lifted high in relation to the plunge beneath, I spent half
+the time in looking at the details of this upper picture, unseizable
+otherwise in our rapid marching--but after our rest in mid-journey I
+preferred the tramp, and walked on with the others, slipping and sliding
+up and down, until we reached camp (after five hours’ walk) on a little
+open space. Just before this we had passed through a little park-like
+country all different from the sharp edges, ascents and descents of our
+usual travelling--the grass grew high, trees dotted the swellings here
+and there, the sun kept all dry so that it was hard to believe that only
+a few feet behind lay the eternally wet forest. In the tall grass grew
+orchids like lilies, orchids large and small of the _fagus_ variety.
+Butterflies and moths flitted about. The open country smiled after the
+sadness of the woods. Our resting place was not quite so open, but yet
+it had a similar appearance. It had evidently once been inhabited--there
+had been taro patches at one extremity of the open space. Here again, as
+throughout what we had seen of Fiji, the inhabitants had been chased
+away from their holdings in the perpetual wars. Indeed only twelve or
+fifteen years ago these good people here were cannibals and liable to be
+eaten if they did not eat others. The advantages of their present lot in
+this way were referred to in the sermon of the native preacher who had
+accompanied us, for this was Sunday and we had prayers in the morning
+and service and sermon in the afternoon. Of course I get all this at
+second hand, or even further; but the good man took also occasion to
+lecture his travelling flock, a flock as I understand, not his natural
+audience, upon the folly of returning to devil worship, of which there
+had been cases in this part of the country, as I have mentioned, I
+think, and pointed out to them that it was only an agitation brought up
+by people who wished to kindle trouble for their peculiar ends, as, for
+instance, that in the scarcity of women, some of them might fall to the
+share of fomenters of trouble, in case of any upsetting of things,
+however momentary--for there are fewer women than men, as I think I was
+telling you.
+
+Here the desolateness of this open space (with our pretty and
+comfortable temporary huts it is true), but still indicating a once
+large population, brought up this question of the relation of the women
+in connection with agricultural work. They appear “sat upon” and not
+joyful and free as in other islands that we have seen. But of course
+appearances are only for _us_; they are certainly kept away and take a
+secondary position. But then of course they have to be put away from the
+mass of our men who are beginning to number heavily. Mr. Joski says that
+we are as many as four hundred. These women, who look so saddened, did a
+great deal of the heavy work, if not all--a matter which seems
+unnecessary at first, as the men used to idle and fight, but perhaps it
+might be worth while to look at the matter from inside and see how
+things must have stood in old times.
+
+In the morning, when, as to-day, the mist hung over all the valley, over
+every point that could be cultivated or was so--when the little village
+alone above would be lighted up distinctly, it would have been
+impossible for the warriors to plunge into these shadows to look to
+these plantations, offering themselves as an easy prey to any ambuscade
+or attacking party. No; the right thing, of course, was to wait until
+the sun rose far enough. Meanwhile skirmishers looked about and
+travelled through the neighbourhood, armed against any foe. When they
+were satisfied that there was no immediate danger the women and children
+could go out and work in the fields or attend to anything necessary,
+while the men were about, ready to protect them in case of danger;
+certainly, this was to the woman’s advantage; had she, when travelling
+or going about, shared with the man the carrying of weights, how easily
+would they both have fallen a prey to the enemy. No, she would naturally
+have said, “you go before with your lance and club and see that the path
+is clear; I follow with the food.” All this is a picture of what was
+once, and here no more than elsewhere, except that here things were upon
+such a scale that there was no chance for anything but this perpetual
+war. By such considerations the past of _all_ nations comes back.
+
+
+July 6th.
+
+People of the neighbouring district came here to do homage to the
+governor and present food and they added still more to the number,
+filling the neighbouring hollows and moving about in and out of the
+lovely little brook all shaded by trees, in which we bathed in cold
+water, for the temperature remained pretty steadily the same, in the
+neighbourhood of 63° to 68°.
+
+In the morning we left Ngalawana, and made a short and desperate plunge
+through the woods in the hollow to the N. W. and up the mountainside. It
+was raining and had rained, and anything more slippery than the road
+over which all these hundred of people had been travelling I cannot
+think of. The steepness was bad enough, and one could have rolled down
+if one had a good start; but some of the paths might have been
+“tobogganed” over. The bare feet of the natives managed it well enough,
+though with much slipping. And their ideas of direction of a road are
+peculiar, the straighter the better and across country; so that recently
+about the very roads that are in consideration, they say to the governor
+that of course they will make him _his_ roads to travel on as it suits
+him, following easy paths, but that he must not expect
+
+[Illustration: FIJIAN BOY]
+
+that _they_ will use them. Still easy ways are great persuaders, and
+notwithstanding this conservatism, the new roads in other parts are
+travelled over by the now converted heathen.
+
+We arrived at length at a little village on a spur or ridge in a large
+valley where we are to rest for a few days--the first village, small as
+it is, since Nasogo. Here the governor was waited on by two deputations
+who presented whales’ teeth and food and who were received in the usual
+way by the Mata ni Vanua (the herald) and the other attendants with the
+usual voices of _ah! wui! wui!--wu--u! wooe--wooe!_ and so forth, making
+everything look more and more African as we go along; for all the way
+through in these mountain tribes, the negro colour and look, and woolly
+hair on head and shoulders and legs, and I am sorry to add the smell,
+marks how far we are from our smooth brown Polynesians.
+
+In the evening all was bathed in the afterglow; pigeons called in the
+trees; through the air that seemed thickened with the light-green,
+long-tailed parrots sailed slowly, with an occasional flap of wings.
+
+
+Matakula, July 7th.
+
+We are resting here to-day; while the governor explores the
+neighbourhood for the purposes of his establishment of a sanitarium. We
+are not so high on the present ridge as he would desire: only 2,200
+feet while it might be possible to find a plateau or wide ridge as high
+as 3,000. It is much warmer than before and dry at least. The night was
+cool--as low as 54°. The day is warm. I rose early, with the cries of
+the parrots in the wooded hill behind us; looked at the mist in lakes
+about us, out of which stepped the high trees and the mountains in the
+distance--even the dark conical huts of the little village built along
+the ridge at whose extreme end we are, were still wisped with moisture.
+The sun rose slowly behind the mountains, bathing everything in mildly
+pale varieties of wet colour--and all was lit long before the sun came
+over the hill behind us, and poured heat and dry light upon the scene.
+
+We have been doing nothing: sitting out under umbrellas--then under a
+mock grove which the men suddenly made for us, digging up neighbouring
+trees and tree ferns and planting them around us in the soft soil.
+
+For this they used the digging sticks they had, merely heavy bits of
+wood with pointed ends, in some cases turned up at the sides. We are
+here in primitive country: the boys of the village brought the water in
+bamboo joints this morning: the huts are of a peculiar hay-mow
+character--the features of the people, as I said before, are remarkably
+“African,” though often the colour is of a rich brown--but more usually
+a
+
+[Illustration: STUDY OF HUTS AT END OF VILLAGE. MATAKULA, FIJI]
+
+chocolate, that is negroish, is the type of colour, passing to a
+blackish grey. Most of the old people here have been cannibals; and
+fifteen years ago all this part was then still dangerous: on some
+attacks of theirs, upon the coast people and upon the whites, two of
+whom were eaten, war was made upon the villagers in this direction;
+their villages burned, and their people driven out and divided among
+other places. Some of the gentlemen with us talked at night of those
+days and of the fighting. If I have more time, I shall try to join
+together some memoranda or to jot them down as they come up.
+
+At night, when there is no rush for bed, around a fire in the open the
+talk goes on, always interesting and rich in anecdote, and it is only a
+pity that we are not more acquainted with the places and people and past
+story: it is like looking at an embroidery that has no foundation.
+
+But last night a story reminded me of the dream of Pomaré Vahine, told
+us by the old lady, Hinarii, in Tahiti, which I sent you, I believe.
+This is not a record of the pagan underworld, as that was, but one of a
+new Christianity, and as such makes a curious “pendant.” It is one of
+the late things reported about, and a source of comment and of
+influence. It appears that the wife of one of the principal people of
+some neighbouring place--perhaps a _mbuli_, but I was very sleepy when I
+heard it, and details are misty--appeared to be dead, was duly watched
+and prayed over--and then suddenly she called out aloud; when naturally
+enough, the entire assemblage scampered out of the house: at length the
+husband took courage and came up near the house, and heard his wife call
+out “Mbuli Mandrae” (I don’t remember the right name, let us call him
+so) “is that you?” “Yes”--“Well then I must tell you what I have seen.”
+So to those who returned, the good woman said that after death she found
+herself on the path, and crying, to find the road to Heaven. The road
+forked: at the one fork were a number of men dressed in white--at the
+other a number in black, and when she expressed a wish to go the road to
+Heaven, the white men passed her on, tossing her as it were from one to
+the other, until she reached a great gate which was made of
+looking-glass or mirror. There she knocked, but was told that she must
+go to one side, where a scribe asked who she was and what she wanted.
+She wished to get into Heaven. So her book was consulted, and she was
+asked if she was free from sin. “Yes” she replied--“I have been faithful
+to my husband.” (Sin with these good people is of _one_ kind.) “No
+indeed,” said the judge, “do you not remember one mid-day when so--and
+so----” The poor woman admitted her fault and was immediately handed
+from one white being to another, until she reached the fatal corner,
+when the black-clad people tossed her along as rapidly, until
+
+[Illustration: RATU MANDRAE--FIJIAN CHIEF]
+
+she saw a large lake of fire in which were swimming, people who were
+shrieking out of the seething liquid, and then dropped in again with
+cries of agony--around the pits hung ropes from which many were
+suspended and dipped into the liquid fire. “See,” said some one--“that
+empty one is yours, but you have until _next Thursday_ to return to your
+home and warn your people of what is in wait for the sinner.” So the
+good woman had returned, and, having warned them true to her
+appointment, died for good on the Thursday. The impression has been
+great.
+
+
+July 8th.
+
+In the morning, after the night-rain and fog, the hills and the dry
+country below our little narrow level were grey in mist, slowly
+dispelled by the sun that tossed it irregularly into the air. Before
+sunrise, in the dawn, the distant mountains, the higher hilltops and the
+uppermost trees near us rose from out of a lake of white cloud; with the
+coming of the sun, things became less distinct, until again, just as the
+sun passed over the little rocky mountain behind us, the fog lay again
+level in hollows while the last wisps of water blew around us, dimming
+this or that hut of the village of which we were part. The parrots
+chattered again. The doves cooed in the forest a few yards off, and in
+the line of the hills behind, a curious bark in the distance was the
+voice of another variety of dove. Two or three times that morning, and
+again during the day, we heard the gun of our “hunter.”
+
+This was to be our last bad day of walking and we made a good show at
+it. We were to drop some seven hundred feet perhaps a thousand during
+the day, down the other side to get toward the sea; and this in the wet
+wood, over clay and roots, or over wet clay and wet stones when we
+should be on the open mountainside. The forest was as usual;
+occasionally the trunks of large _da kua_ trees stood up like separate
+columns in the green. In one case this great cylinder was up to some
+fifty feet all reddish and bright with loss of bark. It had been cut off
+to this height by the natives, who use climbing sticks to reach far
+enough, in pursuit of an edible grub in the rotten bark.
+
+The trail left the woods after a time and descended the mountainside
+covered with reeds that flowed away from us as we passed. This was the
+toughest of the path; slippery with black mud and red clay, the slippery
+fallen leaves giving a better hold, and only seen when trodden into;
+this uncertain way down a steep grade upon which occasionally we slide
+as easier than slipping, was the most fatiguing pull I have ever made.
+Once or twice to my amusement, the dog of Mr. Carews, young and
+inexperienced in such travel, seated himself
+
+[Illustration: BEGINNING OF VILLAGE--DAWN. MATAKULA, FIJI]
+
+on his hind quarters and pushed himself down on his forepaws. The bare
+feet of our native companions and their powerful legs carried them along
+with relative ease, and when they helped me, I was carried along for a
+little while at a great rate; slipping of course, but balanced and
+getting on as if on skates.
+
+We were often on the edge of the precipice and at length stopped at a
+little open spot, where on some black rocks that edge it, we stopped for
+a time and looked upon the deep valley, whose opposite side was
+different in character from what we had travelled in. We were now on the
+dry side of the island (a relative term), and the look of the opposite
+mountain was like that of the hills of Hawaii, or of Tahiti; a curious
+golden grey-green, intensified wherever the innumerable hollows gave
+protection and greater damp to trees and bushes.
+
+We were on the slope of a tongue or ridge between two valleys, but it
+was only quite late that the clouds lifted enough from the tops of hills
+to let us catch a view of the valley we were going to, of the course of
+the brilliant little river and further off, of high points of blue that
+enclosed the sea.
+
+Meanwhile we halted for lunch at a little level park-like space, and
+walked to its edge with the hope that the clouds would break, but there
+was nothing but a mass of white vapour in front of us that filled the
+valleys, rose above us, and broke against the crests that we had left,
+or beat around, leaving blue sky above us in deceiving patches. There,
+while we rested, the _shikari_ brought in, with doves, two long-tailed
+parrots, the one green with green and yellow breast, the other blue and
+red and green; the latter feeds on fruits and is not obnoxious to the
+natives; the green is more predaceous of their gardens. This was my
+first sight of the killed parrots and with the soft grey of the doves
+they made a brilliant and gay mat upon the green grass.
+
+I picked out a few feathers to send to you with this, wishing that I
+could also send the impression of the scene, with all these groups of
+browns and blacks about us, and the cloudy landscape above.
+
+Later in the afternoon, after having waited for a sight of the great
+view in vain, we dropped down again through the same terrible woods, and
+reached in the early evening the little village of Waikumbukumbu, the
+last of the mountain villages, whence we should find a made road to the
+coast. The name Waikumbukumbu means seething waters, and describes with
+exaggeration the look of the little gorge in which its site is chosen.
+
+We crossed over rocks the path of the little torrent, now rolling
+between rocks, now filling stone pocket in its bed, or sleeping quietly
+between high wooded banks. The houses of the village were partly those
+of the mountain, the beehive; partly those of the coast with long
+ridge-pole, and built up on high mounds, covered with stones or grass.
+But the openings were the smallest I had seen--a big man in some cases
+might just have fitted in. One little one which I have sketched for you,
+and which was prettily placed by the side of the ditch, and with the
+adornment of a few trees, was exceedingly small and queerly bulged out
+in roof at once over its low reed walls. The thatch had been
+extraordinarily thick, projecting very far, and its edges were cut
+perpendicularly down so as to make a line with the wall, and you had a
+proportion of thickness of thatch greater than the wall or the roof. To
+all those roofings that were old, and which covered almost the entire
+houses, time had given a most delightful texture and tone, making them
+look as if covered with a most exquisite grey fur. The thatch of the new
+buildings was yellow and shaggy, giving the look entire of the reed: as
+the leaves are weathered off, the fine stem alone remains: the thing is
+exquisite as thatching, having an appearance of extreme finish.
+
+The little house or _mbure_ placed thus at the entrance of the village
+just gave place to two persons within--and Mr. Carew (magistrate and
+commissioner, who knows all about things, has been here twenty-three
+years and is a student of words and languages) says that such would have
+been a “devil” house formerly where the priest or prophet or wise man
+could reside alone and be applied to.
+
+Here, he said, with the love they have for shutting things up, he could
+close his door easily, and be happy in the sweating heat of the night.
+The horror of draughts I can sympathize with here in the hills where the
+change from the 80° or 83° of day to the 52° of night makes the motion
+of air between narrow walls easily felt, but this night was not cold and
+with only one door in the house we felt the closeness. Outside the
+temperature was exquisite (somewhere about 68°), and the picture of our
+carriers encamped about the village and fires, that lit up themselves,
+the trees, the houses, and the opposite hills by fits and starts, kept
+me awake notwithstanding the very fatiguing day. We had been six hours
+on the walk with the rests included, and such a walk.
+
+We bathed in the hollows on the rocks that night, and the next lovely
+morning, and then began our last march. The mass of the carriers had
+been dismissed; and I think that we were not more than fifty men or so:
+the road, a very wide one, began by running up hill as straight as might
+be, in Fijian fashion, as if to show that the natives were not afraid of
+mere steepness.
+
+The walk was a hard one, and we had hesitated as to whether the
+river-bed would not be easier, as we had been advised; but
+
+[Illustration: MOUNTAIN HUT OR HOUSE AT WAIKUMBUKUMBU, FIJI]
+
+after all a road is a road, even if it leads up the side of a house, and
+by noon, we had done all the worst of it. A beautiful sight opened
+before us, like a reminiscence of Hawaii: we had the mountains behind us
+and on either side, partly green, partly rose or golden. As usual, we
+were coming down a dividing ridge that ran into the plain; mountain
+edges framed the sides, far off stretched a fairy sea with points that
+framed it, and on one side a mountain with high perpendicular cliffs
+standing up against the distance. Everything swam in light; blue and
+violet filled the distance; a big plain, in which glittered a little
+water, spread from the blues to the green near us in gradations such as
+Turner loved: even the very stippling of the innumerable trees, so many
+of which were the pandamus (the _lauhala_ of Hawaii), reminded me of
+him, as the scene recalled Hawaiian islands. Along the road thin
+_lauhala_--the _fao_ of Samoa, the _fara_ of Tahiti--growing every now
+and then and marking the distance, and again repeated everywhere in the
+blazing spread of green and yellow of the plains, grew not thick and
+full like those of Samoa and Tahiti, but strangely and queerly with
+outstretched arms and straggling foliage.
+
+We loitered along the road at places where there were big trees and
+water. Halfway, Mr. Marriott, the magistrate, had sent a horse for me to
+ride, which convenience allowed me to look further and freely upon the
+landscape from this height; but we were some time on the road, some five
+hours at least, though it was but ten miles I suppose.
+
+
+Vanuakula, July 10th.
+
+We came down in the afternoon to Vanuakula, a neat little place reached
+after a long promenade under the hot sun, upon the road that ran on a
+dike in mangrove swamps. There we found news of the little steamer
+_Clyde_, and saw its Captain, Mr. Callaghan, and were told that at night
+we should get aboard so as to get off early in the morning for Ba, in
+such manner as to hit the tide without which we could not possibly enter
+the river to-morrow morning. So we waited for the rise of tide in a
+little village green square, and a pretty native house and saw a native
+dance of armed men (_mekke_) given as a mark of honour along with the
+food, and as a manner of presenting _tappa_ of which an enormous
+quantity was given to the governor.
+
+Each dancer, as we had seen before, carried upon him in long folds yards
+upon yards of the cloth, looped like a dress, caught around his
+shoulders perhaps, or only at his waist; sometimes folded stiffly far
+over his head, like the floating folds of drapery upon an archaic
+bas-relief; and after the dance he unwinds himself from the enormous
+entanglement, and adds it to the pile that our men gather together and
+fold up. This plunder the governor carries off: in true native fashion,
+he is but a conduit for gifts: when some chief or persons who have need
+to fill up gifts or do the proper thing, think it is time they come and
+beg for things, the whales’ teeth, or the _tappa_ (native cloth) and
+receive them. As I think I said before, it is pleasant to see the
+governor keep up strictly every native custom that secures order and
+belongs properly to their official life. He is very strict about it,
+insisting upon every observance that his position requires and carrying
+all out.
+
+While we waited, looking on at the dance, or afterward when the ladies
+of the village came in bringing gifts of food, having properly asked
+permission to do so; two Samoan women sat beside us. They had come from
+a neighbouring house to call; one was younger than the other, and looked
+with her hair “à la Chinoise,” her slanting eyes, and flattened nose,
+and wide lips, very much like certain musme of the Japanese inns and tea
+houses. This one had been Samoan way, married to some more or less white
+man, who had left, and she was now a grass widow. The other was, “_faa_
+Samoa,” married to some half-breed: and she of the slanting eyes noticed
+Awoki near us, and somehow or other took him in as a variety of Samoan.
+
+Did he come from Africa or whence? and Japan had to be explained. But
+she said she was anxious to get back home, and that things here were
+_leanga_ including the dance which we had been looking at, and the women
+and girls who were coming up in a long file much bedizened with velvet,
+cotton, paper cut into strips (of every shade imaginable), leaves around
+the waist, etc.; from her all dressed all over, to her who only wore
+long leafage about her hips. They were prettier than any we had seen:
+that is to say they were some of them not unpleasant; but only a few:
+and after all it is only the quite young who suggest anything more
+delicate than the men. Raiwalui, one of the governor’s boys is more
+feminine looking notwithstanding his strength and height than any Fijian
+woman I have yet seen. All this is so far as we have seen, and as I told
+you, so far the women and children get out of the way, not only because
+they always do so more or less, but also because of our men who have
+numbered at times several hundred, so that the women and children are
+crowded away in corners to leave houses empty for the visitors. But the
+Samoans looked like beauties alongside of their sisters of Fiji here,
+and sailed off with much superiority and conscious ease while the Fijian
+women had walked off in single file neither looking to right nor left,
+but keeping a downward look and following their leader.
+
+Dinner we had outside on the mats, and just before the new moon sank we
+embarked in the dark upon the little river that was to take us to the
+sea and the steam launch. We were poled along for some few miles near
+mangrove trees whose roots hung above us, the wash from our water
+splashing in among their roots and trunks. Occasionally some more solid
+ground showed a few houses, or some clump of palms against the sky half
+clouded. Then a long row out to the ship, all dark, large masses of dark
+sea and dark sky, with the moon almost set, looking at us like a
+half-closed eye under the forehead of an enormous band of dark cloud.
+
+The next morning at ten we steamed for Ba, ran out quite far, but in
+shallows inside the far reef, where at one place the beginnings of
+things could be seen, as upon the horizon, at sea apparently, a line of
+mangrove trees, widely spaced, dotted the sharp division of blue sea and
+blue sky. Still between them there was a little greenish band like water
+and really partly water, and to one side a little line was the reef on
+which they had begun to grow.
+
+Inland, the long lines of the mountains look faintly tawny and blue; the
+swamp belt of mangroves surrounding the shore looked very low: we could
+discern, at places, the circles or elevations by which we had passed
+over the serrated edge of the mountains.
+
+Then we ran into a river for some little while, the usual green bank,
+the trees, and the sugar-cane, and the mountains in the distance with
+here and there a strange pillar-like mountain or a perpendicular pile,
+to remind one of volcanic forms.
+
+A number of figures clothed in white sat upon the green bank and watched
+the governor’s approach. When he landed they made the usual salutation
+headed by the _roku_ or chief.
+
+
+Nailaga, July 12th.
+
+We walked into the village neatly laid out in squares, our first large
+place since we had left Suva: all quite uncivilized, but in native
+shape. We found a handsome native house, handsomely finished, with a
+fine _tappa_ hanging, cutting off one end, and many mats. This was the
+house of the _roku_ who had saluted the governor, a curious person--not
+a young man--with greyish hair cut short, short grey moustache, and a
+face looking not at all Polynesian--a very refined face--meaning one
+that was not in the least heavy--gentlemanly and wary, and with a
+peculiar indifference as if he went through his formalities without
+anxiety because they were the thing. He reminded me of some one at home,
+a little unpleasantly, for the gentleman was evidently not frank unless
+for his advantage, and he was old enough to have belonged to ancient
+cannibal days. He had a white shirt on with a turn-down collar, and a
+small blue scarf all which finished him; and his skin, not too dark,
+made still more the impression of a person who knew just how to do it.
+So it was also when later he gave the _yangona_ or _kava_--and led the
+chant, so delicately and correctly, a little bored, looking to see if it
+were quite ready, so that he should have no more to wave his arms and
+hands in a fixed way to the song. Here was an Asiatic type--my simple
+Polynesian was no longer there.
+
+Later on, when he came to arrange a bamboo rail for our more convenient
+getting up and down the slippery plank that served for entrance, he
+asked our permission: the house was no longer his since we were in it.
+Contrariwise to him, all his companions were rude looking, some, I
+regret to say, exceedingly hard looking. Most all at the _yangona_
+ceremony were stripped to the waist, and decorated with garlands, that
+emphasized more terribly some frightful countenances.
+
+After that, the presentation of food and the great dance, like others we
+had seen but with many variations added, such as the moving in long
+files two together, or in files moving in two opposite directions, or in
+striking in order each other’s clubs, or in throwing arms and hands
+about in various ways resembling the attitudes of the famous _siva_.
+
+All this was in the big square. On one side a great mass of women,
+girls, and children looked on, seated: along the road passed Indians
+coming and going from work: the women in their _saris_ and dresses of
+light red and yellow.
+
+Since that we have been very idle; have called on Mr. Marriott, and at a
+sugar plantation and lounged all Sunday--the twelfth--at which date I am
+writing to you. It has been cool at night, but only because of the
+draughts of the big house, with its three big doors. The temperature
+inside is just 70°.
+
+
+Nanuku Coa, “Black Sand.”
+
+We left Nailaga (in Ba) on Monday morning in lovely weather. The early
+hour after our breakfast was spent in some conversation between the
+governor and chiefs, while Atamo surveyed the scene from the top of the
+embankment on which the house is built, enjoying the pleasant shade in
+which we all were, thrown across the lawn by the great house. Then again
+we walked off to the river bank after the governor had restored to the
+Roku the great stick of office, which had been received on the
+governor’s arrival. This was about six or more feet long, with ivory top
+and grip place (made, however, in England).
+
+The _Clyde_ took us along for hours out on the Ba river, and along the
+coast back upon our way. We tried to descry the outlines of the heights
+which we had reached and descended. Peak behind peak stretched along,
+with the buttresses of hills sloping down, all on this side looking
+white or yellow or pinkish in the sun. The dry side of the island was
+faintly marked by the dryness of the colour, for which I regretted that
+I had no pastel or chalk colours to imitate the powdering glare of the
+sun on the great surfaces, streaked with descending bands of a shade
+unnamable by our categories of colour. But we knew that all this
+resemblance to a desert was only for the distance; nearer by, the places
+we had been in were green or yellow-green. There was of course dry,
+yellow grass and seeds, and violet of dried bracken--the grey-violet of
+the ferns such as we had seen even in wettest Hawaii, but wherever any
+hollow gave a chance, no matter how small, there things grew green. In
+the nearer hills drier green marked the hollows, and modelled the
+surfaces; and by the shore the heavy green of mangroves lined the edges.
+
+
+Thambone, Monday 13th.
+
+Late that afternoon we had turned several points, and came to a halt
+with want of depth of water opposite the place we were going to stop at.
+Here we landed in a more inconvenient way than usual. We were pulled out
+in the gig a little way, then carried on the shoulders of the men to a
+shifting sandbank on which we walked or sank, as the case might be; then
+again embarked on native backs that were rough with curling hair, and
+again reached a mud flat of considerable length, framed with mangrove
+trees, along which we walked to the shore; this was drier, not washed
+over by the tide daily as the former, upon which I saw growing green, as
+if never covered by salt water, the first shoots of the mangrove. Its
+seeds are heavy and float point downward until they stick in appropriate
+soil. The flat near the shore was all covered with an efflorescence of
+salt, and caked and broken up by exposure to the sun. Ratu Joni
+(Johnnie) Madraiwiwi, who had come to meet us, showed us the little pits
+or hollows for collecting salt water and making salt; for we had come to
+the dividing place of the South Seas. Here people have made salt, unlike
+the Polynesians of the Eastern Seas; here they have baked earth for
+pottery--here they have used the bow and arrow--in these ways more
+civilized than their half fellows, who in other ways seemed so much less
+savage than they. But here, as you know, the races mix: the black is all
+through here: and strangely enough with the black are all sorts of arts,
+and a higher sense of ornament and decoration and construction.
+
+For all this I have my own theories, but this is not the place to
+ventilate them, even if I liked theories, and you know that I detest
+them--if taken seriously.
+
+Africa--“nigger” land--was certainly pictured where we landed. There
+were big causeways leading to the village--ditches all about--ditches
+surrounded many of the houses; and especially the rather inferior one,
+but the best, to which we went. Visions of mosquitoes came up,
+fortunately not realized to the extent which we had feared.
+
+We sat in the house while _kava_ was being prepared and while the chant
+went on. I noticed how the beams of the roof were prettily ornamented
+with sennit, more than I should have expected from outside looks. Mr.
+Carew told me that people were brought from far and near to do this, who
+knew how, and that certain ones had certain patterns, that they could
+best do. (R. Joni did not quite agree to the fact of such a division of
+labour.)
+
+The people here seemed rougher again, more like our mountain “devils,”
+and a queerer lot. They sat on the edge of the little ditch about the
+house, which on the other side was edged with enormous bushes of the
+Brugmantia Stramonium, whose long white flowers have in their manner of
+growing and shape something poisonous (according to my feelings)--as the
+plant has in reality. But the place had a general look of which the
+plants were not contradictory--the black dry mud, the little stream, if
+one can call it so, with patches of water ending in a ditch of caky mud,
+the withered grasses, the very low cocoanut trees all squatted together
+in a grove--the one solitary chunk of a peak cutting the long slope of
+hill to the north--the knowledge of the fact that here silly
+brutal-beastly heathenism was still rampant or rather creeping; that we
+would take prisoner this evening or to-morrow the hypocritical duffer
+who had been reviving it where we had seen the stupid little temple, to
+which he had allured women from hereabouts; all this seemed to hang
+together. This vicinity had been once, as the governor phrased it, the
+Rome of the “devil” worship and the place of revered places. Here
+probably then--for all their worship was an ancestor worship in
+reality--here was, therefore, the first landing of the people who gave
+the islands their character of Fijians, whether they were the first of
+all or whether they found others before them, who succumbed to them in
+some way or other. The good people here take remonstrance not too
+uneasily. Still certainly the next morning the governor gave them all a
+serious talk, and took great pains evidently to see that he was fully
+understood, as he sat talking with Mr. Carew and slowly and distinctly
+and with careful emphasis of voice and gesture spoke to the assembled
+representatives. Near him in a rather crushed attitude sat the gentleman
+who had been practising “devil” priestcraft--and he followed us on
+board, a sort of prisoner--that is to say, to answer to the charge of
+heathen practices at the next court, for which warrants had been made
+out. His punishment will be slight: three months’ imprisonment. The law
+is a native law, like many others, such as laws concerning adultery,
+that seemed to me rather excessively constructed; but there are no rules
+for laws that I know of, except that they should work. As some native
+said to Mr. Carew, “Well, if the man be not punished we shall beat him
+and perhaps kill him”--and it mattered not that he had not been guilty
+according to our view; he had been guilty according to theirs--viz.--his
+intentions had been discerned. But things are not everywhere the same in
+this regard. I recall a story I heard from Mr. Carew of a woman who had
+asked the punishment of some man because he had persuaded her one day to
+misbehave with him. She felt that something was wrong, and ought to be
+redressed anyhow.
+
+Before this next morning’s episode, however, there was a dance in the
+later afternoon with much _tappa_, rolled around the performers, to be
+given afterward, and very long spears, and handsome weapons--and a very
+handsome show of attitudes. The smallness of the village place (_rara_)
+made the scene more of a picture, which I saw across the ditch framed in
+by the overhanging trees. In the evening there was talk before bed,
+though we were frightfully sleepy; I remember only a few things and
+indeed I repent me of having noted nothing of any previous talks I have
+listened to, for there is much to be learned always from desultory
+conversation, in the way of side lights and a sort of querying of one’s
+already formed notions. I learned, for instance, that the black
+gentleman who was restoring ancient superstition was a church member and
+communicant, though every one must have known more or less of his little
+ways, in a country where nothing can be hidden long. Two pretty stories
+were told of the lately prevalent belief (perhaps existing to-day) of
+the value of charms, in both of which young men, charmed by the priest
+against fire-arms, asked at once for a trial. In the first case, on a
+discharge a few feet off, the man hit “tumbled about the place an
+instant and died, being shot through the head.” The verdict was that the
+incantation had been conducted too rapidly, and that something had been
+forgotten, and the priest who had taken to his heels returned in safety.
+In the other, two youngsters, who were going to try the effect of the
+charm, in front of the chief’s (their father’s) house, were reproved by
+him. “I do not wish,” he said, “that one of my sons should die before my
+house; go and try it, if you like, at some armed station of the white
+man.”
+
+The next day (Tuesday) we again proceeded on our way and with similar
+scenery about us, and in the late afternoon, we anchored off the place
+where Ratu Joni’s house is--on a hilly up-and-down place, to which swept
+down the spurs of the mountain, and which, close by, hung over the town
+apparently a high rock (Na Korotiki).
+
+The frame of an old house on the beach made a curious little portico, or
+colonnade, in front of the path that led up to the Ratu’s house. There
+we spent that night and the following day. The house was one upon more
+European models--the eaves projecting so as to make a sort of verandah
+of the base or mound of the house, casements being fitted into the doors
+and filled with glass; there were a couple of tables with the books and
+odds and ends that we know of placed on them--chairs also, a luxury that
+is pleasant always after camping. R. Joni is a magistrate, speaks nice
+English, writes perfectly, and is just such a person as might seem to
+augur well for the future. He belongs not to this part of the country,
+but to Ba, and formerly, and not so far back, his family used to feed on
+this neighbourhood in more ways than one. His uncle was the great
+Thakombau (Cakobau), who became the greatest chief, if he was not always
+that, and who ended by making the country over to England: Thakombau
+himself, who died but recently, was more or less of a cannibal,
+certainly a terror; but he is so well known that I need not dilate upon
+a gentleman sufficiently put down in the books. He had, as I understood,
+hung R. Joni’s father, his own brother, in the public square many years
+ago with the belief that as hanging was a disgraceful mode of death
+with us, it might appear so to the natives. This notion was not a
+success. The natives who saw the scene applauded the behaviour and good
+fortune of a man, who, having to die, died publicly and formally in the
+public square “like a chief.” Ratu Joni had taught himself to read
+English; when a mere boy he was discovered by the governor reading a
+little book on Cook’s voyages, and since that, was helped and put
+forward until he has become this good sort of public officer.
+
+
+Wednesday, July 15th.
+
+There is hardly anything more to say of our last day, for the next was
+that of return: there was much idleness and looking at newspapers, etc.,
+received there by Mr. Joski, who together with Mr. Berry had met us
+there by rendezvous, after their excursion of exploration down to the
+sea on leaving us. They had had a rough time of it. As it was, it was
+pleasant to meet them again, and our last days were gayer. Mr. Joski
+remained to make his way to the station whence we had drawn him three
+weeks before, Vunidawa. Mr. Carew was only to leave us within a few
+hours of Suva (on the Rewa). For after steaming along past cape and
+headland, in this closed sea, the long line of hills and mountains
+receding further back, as the lowlands of the Rewa came near, we came to
+a little headland and there took the boats, so as to make for the Rewa,
+get through it to its mouth, and there catch the steamer again, and thus
+avoid the tossing that she would have to undergo outside the reefs.
+Inside even there was much sway of waves, for the expanse is great
+enough to make a little sea.
+
+The day was lovely. Beyond the blue sea, as if to be looked at, came up
+various islands of the group, clearly or faintly made out, stretching at
+intervals along the sea line, big or small, and sometimes sliding one
+behind the other.
+
+It was a gay day--a cheerful end to our trip, which had just lasted
+three weeks; so that when we landed at Suva in the last twilight, just
+as the new moon lit up our path up the hill, the feeling of getting back
+to civilization was intensified by the ease of our return. For though
+all was not easy there was no real hardship--for no one can make rough
+climbing easy, even were it in Sussex or New York County--yet we had
+seen a part of the islands little visited, very much out of the way, and
+a former foothold of all that made Fiji a terror, the synonym of
+barbaric cruelty--the land of the Cannibal--the “Devil Country.”
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE
+
+
+Sydney N. S. W.
+
+August 1st, 1891.
+
+It seems strange, after a year of summer and of free air, to have come
+almost suddenly into city and winter, however mild. I am writing to you
+by a coal fire, in a room high up, to which I go by an elevator, and I
+hear outside, in the damp cool air, the sound of the cable tramway, and
+the rolling of hansom cabs. Two weeks ago, I was resting on the ground
+in straw huts among mountains, and looking at darkish old gentlemen, who
+had killed and eaten not so long ago friends and acquaintances of
+members of our party. One could not get enough of the air, and the heat
+was still part of our living.
+
+Our South Sea days are over; in a day or two we bid good-bye to the open
+spaces and make for the Straits and Java. As Polynesia has faded away,
+the sadness of all past things comes upon me--that summer is gone--those
+hours and those islands which spotted great blue spaces of time and
+place will be merely memories for autumn.
+
+Here it is winter--a colder one than those last warm mild days of Fiji.
+There a great peace, a great quiet was around us. We were high above
+the little town of Suva, with an enormous landscape of mountains seen
+over the spread of the beautiful harbour. In the day the light was
+tropical, the sky all blue and radiant, the mountains clear and
+distinct. Morning and evening the light became more like a memory of
+home with slight visions of Scotland in between. The clouds filled up
+the distance with dimness, the light of morning or evening hung behind
+and over them as if asleep. In such a repose of nature we passed our
+days as if preparing for the final close.
+
+We were treated with great kindness; we had no hard time on board the
+steamer that took us away reluctant in mind, and slowly in a week’s time
+we dropped down to this colder latitude and into civilization in full
+blast. We saw the sky grow clearer and more washed; the sea lost its
+blue; we could almost believe that we were home again as we ended our
+trip. We had passed some of the New Hebrides, had passed part of a day
+outside of Anaityum, had seen the Isle of Pines like a shadow on the
+horizon, had looked in vain for the smoke or light of Tanna, and at the
+end of the week entered the long, complicated harbour of Sydney.
+
+Steamships, steamboats, street cars, hansom cabs, hotels, theatres,
+Sarah Bernhardt playing, all as before.
+
+Good-bye to brown skins and skies and seas of impossible azure.
+Good-bye to life in presence of the remotest past.
+
+    “On the knees of the Ogre I pillowed my head;
+     My feet followed safely the Path of the Dead;
+     With my brother the Shark God I lived as a guest,
+     And reached through the breakers the Isle of the Blest.
+
+    “I bathed in the sea where the Siren still sleeps;
+     The kiss of the Queen is still red on my lips;
+     My hands touched the Tree with the Branches of Gold;
+     I have lived for a season in the Order of Old.”
+
+
+                                THE END
+
+
+              THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
+
+
+Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
+
+keep steadliy=> keep steadily {pg 101}
+
+an ememy’s=> an enemy’s {pg 165}
+
+that is has been=> that it has been {pg 345}
+
+plantation af Atimaono=> plantation of Atimaono {pg 372}
+
+or an odd unbrella=> or an odd umbrella {pg 444}
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] “Alofa” means everything--hail, welcome, love, respect, etc.
+
+[2] This is properly the “_guest house_” of the village.
+
+[3] Of course we are not allowed to pay--this would not be
+“chiefy”--but we shall make a present some day.
+
+[4] Mariner, whose book all should read, was kept a prisoner in Tonga
+about 1806, being one of the first white men there. His companions were
+killed--he contrariwise, like my father in Saint Domingo, was adopted
+by the great chief, and learned the language and all habits. On his
+escape and return he was carefully examined and investigated by the
+intelligent physician who wrote his book for him. He repeated every
+gesture of the kava just as it is to-day, the scientific man taking it
+down in an accurate way.
+
+[5] Religion is a better word, as in Tongan before Christianity.
+
+[6] The traitor is Judas; the hesitating judge is Pilate. When
+Mataafa’s men defeated the Germans, they cut off the heads of some of
+the Germans killed. When reproached by him for the act as barbarous,
+they indignantly appealed to David’s having cut off the head of
+Goliath, after having slain him.
+
+[7] My adopted sister, the Queen of Tahiti, an island enormously
+changed by European influence and residence, complained to me of some
+young man--that his walk was insolent, out of keeping, like that of a
+person of importance by blood.
+
+[8] Père Gavet complained to me of what he called the unreasonableness
+of Sir John Thurston, the high commissioner and English governor of
+Fiji, when the Catholic bishop, upon his canoe’s touching the shore of
+some Christian village, was carried up, canoe and all, into the public
+place or village green, Sir John interfered, and forbade its ever
+happening again. And I myself could not say that it was not a small
+discourtesy.
+
+But this was the point, as Sir John told me: in the old Fijian habits
+such things were done for a sovereign chief, and for a political ruler;
+and since the Church had preached the division of the two authorities,
+such special homage should have been reserved for the civil and not the
+religious power.
+
+[9] My South Sea companion, Mr. Henry Adams.
+
+[10] Savaii, Hawaiki, Hawaii; apparently all Polynesians come from
+a place of the name. It is also a name for the Unknown World. Many
+islanders of the Pacific believe that this Samoan island is the
+ancestral Savaii. The Samoans themselves assume it to be so. The island
+holds the home of the Malietoa, for centuries a supreme chief, one of
+whose representatives is now king by treaty.
+
+[11] _Taupō_, properly _taupou_, but I have written _taupō_ because
+the sound of the final _u_ is too difficult to render, and hardly
+discernible. It lengthens the sound like our _u_, but with a gentle
+breathing. You get it more or less in our taboo.
+
+[12] Siva, not Sifa, as I said it at first, and yet she certainly
+pronounces it with more of an _f_ sound than our neighbours of this
+island. Still I give in to theory, as facts always must, for they have
+no one to back them, no principles, no money invested.
+
+[13] Secondary chiefs; pronounce “yatowai.”
+
+[14] Note on Limits: There is a good account in the small edition of
+the voyage of the _Duff_.
+
+[15] Tiaapuaa, “drove of pigs,” was the name of certain trees growing
+along the edge of the mountain Moarahi. The profile against the
+sky suggested, and the same trees--or others in the same position
+to-day--as I looked at them, did make a “procession” along the ridge.
+
+[16] The “cloak” of the family is the rain; the Tevas are the “children
+of the Mist.” Not so many years ago, one of the ladies of the family,
+perhaps the old Queen of Raiatea, objected to some protection from rain
+for her son, who was about to land in some ceremony. “Let him wear his
+cloak!” she said. And of course there are traditions of weather that
+belong to the family, that accompany it, and that presage or announce
+coming events.
+
+[17] I understand by this, two of the hills that edge the valley.
+
+[18] The inland mountain peak of the central island, which he could not
+see.
+
+[19] “Le ciel tout l’univers est plein de mes aïeux.”
+
+[20] In the other family at home, into which I was born, the distance
+back seems shorter. Oberea first saw the European ships while my
+grandfather was alive, and he must have read the first accounts carried
+out to Europe by Bougainville and Cook.
+
+[21] The bird messenger repeats the places and names of things most
+sacred to the chief (as you will see further), his mount, his cape, his
+_marae_.
+
+[22] To which the chief answers that he will look at his mistress’s
+place or person on the shore.
+
+[23] Temanutunu means bird that lets loose the army.
+
+[24] Vaeri Matuahoe (mud in my ears), a Tino iia (fish body) the double
+man, half man, half fish, recalls the god of the Raratonga who himself
+recalled to the missionaries the god Dagon.
+
+[25] Stone foundation or base of house and space around it.
+
+[26] The founder of the Pomaré, who later became great chiefs and then
+kings, by European consecration.
+
+[27] Manea appears in Cook and in the accounts of the first
+missionaries. The detail escapes me, as I have no book just at hand, at
+this moment. I have a vague recollection of some slight scandal again
+in family matters, but missionaries were fond of tittle-tattle, like
+most people.
+
+[28] The ditches or slopes, natural or otherwise, can be filled with
+sharp stakes and other cruel devices scattered among the trees so as to
+make a serious defence to any sudden attack.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75551 ***
diff --git a/75551-h/75551-h.htm b/75551-h/75551-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2e0a890
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/75551-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,11854 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html>
+<html lang="en">
+  <head>
+<link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover">
+
+<meta charset="utf-8">
+<title>
+  The Project Gutenberg eBook of Reminiscences of the
+South Seas, by John Lafarge.
+</title>
+<style>
+
+a:link {background-color:#ffffff;color:blue;text-decoration:none;}
+
+  link {background-color:#ffffff;color:blue;text-decoration:none;}
+
+a:visited {background-color:#ffffff;color:purple;text-decoration:none;}
+
+a:hover {background-color:#ffffff;color:#FF0000;text-decoration:underline;}
+
+body{margin-left:4%;margin-right:6%;background:#ffffff;color:black;font-family:"Times New Roman", serif;font-size:medium;}
+
+.blockquot {margin-top:2%;margin-bottom:2%;}
+
+.c {text-align:center;text-indent:0%;}
+
+.caption  {font-weight:normal;}
+.caption p{font-size:75%;text-align:center;text-indent:0%;}
+
+.cb {text-align:center;text-indent:0%;font-weight:bold;}
+
+.fint {text-align:center;text-indent:0%;
+margin-top:2em;}
+
+.figcenter   {margin:3% auto 3% auto;clear:both;
+text-align:center;text-indent:0%;}
+
+.figleft     {float:left;clear:left;margin-left:0;margin-bottom:1em;margin-top:1em;margin-right:1em;padding:0;text-align:center;}
+
+.figright    {float:right;clear:right;margin-left:1em;margin-bottom:1em;margin-top:1em;margin-right:0;padding:0;text-align:center;}
+
+.footnotes  {border:dotted 3px gray;margin-top:5%;clear:both;}
+
+.footnote   {width:95%;margin:auto 3% 1% auto;font-size:0.9em;position:relative;}
+
+.label  {position:relative;left:-.5em;top:0;text-align:left;font-size:.8em;}
+
+.fnanchor   {vertical-align:30%;font-size:.8em;}
+
+.hang {text-indent:-2%;margin-left:2%;}
+
+ h1 {margin-top:5%;text-align:center;clear:both;
+font-weight:normal;}
+
+ h2 {margin-top:4%;margin-bottom:2%;text-align:center;clear:both;
+ font-size:150%;font-weight:normal;}
+
+ hr {width:95%;margin:.5em auto .5em auto;clear:both;color:black;
+border:1px solid black;padding:0%;}
+
+hr.dbl {width:95%;margin:.5em auto .5em auto;clear:both;color:black;
+border-bottom:2px solid black;padding:.1em;
+border-top:2px solid black;
+border-right:none;
+border-left:none;}
+
+ hr.full {width: 60%;margin:2% auto 2% auto;border-top:1px solid black;
+padding:.1em;border-bottom:1px solid black;border-left:none;border-right:none;}
+
+ img {border:none;}
+
+.lftspc {margin-left:.25em;}
+
+.letra {font-size:250%;float:left;margin-top:-1%;}
+
+.nind {text-indent:0%;}
+
+ p {margin-top:.2em;text-align:justify;margin-bottom:.2em;text-indent:4%;}
+
+p.spc{margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:1em;}
+
+p.cspc{margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:1em;text-align:center;
+font-size:90%;}
+
+p.nspc{margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:1em;text-align:left;
+text-indent:0%;}
+
+.pagenum  {font-style:normal;position:absolute;
+left:95%;font-size:55%;text-align:right;color:gray;
+background-color:#ffffff;font-variant:normal;
+font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;
+text-decoration:none;text-indent:0em;}
+
+.pdd {padding-left:2em;}
+.pdd1 {padding-left:1em;text-indent:-1em;
+font-size:80%;}
+
+.r {text-align:right;margin-right: 5%;}
+
+.rt {text-align:right;vertical-align:bottom;}
+
+small {font-size: 70%;}
+
+.smcap  {font-variant:small-caps;font-size:100%;}
+
+table {margin-top:2%;margin-bottom:2%;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;border:none;}
+
+div.poetry {text-align:center;}
+div.poem {font-size:90%;margin:auto auto;text-indent:0%;
+display: inline-block; text-align: left;}
+.poem .stanza     {margin-top: 1em;margin-bottom:1em;}
+.poem span.i0     {display: block; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+.poem span.i1     {display: block; margin-left: .45em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+
+.poem span.i4     {display: block; margin-left: 3em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+
+.poem span.i6     {display: block; margin-left: 4em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+
+.poem span.iq     {display: block; margin-left: -1em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+
+.poem span.i13     {display: block; margin-left: 3em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+
+.poem span.i14     {display: block; margin-left: 4em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+
+div.trans {border:dotted 2px black;
+margin:1em auto;max-width:80%;}
+
+div.trans p{text-align:center;}
+
+.poem span.i7     {display: block; margin-left: 7em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+</style>
+  </head>
+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75551 ***</div>
+<hr class="full">
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="cover">
+<a href="images/cover.jpg">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="385" height="550" alt=""></a>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="ill_001">
+<a href="images/ill_002.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_002.jpg" width="511" height="550" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">GIRL WEEDING IN FRONT OF OUR HOUSE. VAIALA, SAMOA</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="dbl">
+<h1>REMINISCENCES OF THE SOUTH SEAS</h1>
+
+<p class="c">BY<br><br>
+JOHN LAFARGE</p>
+
+<p class="c"><small>Author of “The Higher Life in Art,” “Great Masters,”
+“One Hundred Masterpieces of Painting,” Etc.</small></p>
+<hr>
+<p class="c">WITH 48 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PAINTINGS AND DRAWINGS
+MADE BY THE AUTHOR IN 1890-91</p>
+
+<p class="c"><a href="images/ill_003.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_003.jpg"
+width="71"
+height="150"
+alt=""></a></p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p class="c"><span class="smcap">Garden City</span>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">New York</span></span><br>
+DOUBLEDAY, PAGE &amp; COMPANY<br>
+1916<br><br><br><small>COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS<br>
+COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY THE CENTURY CO.<br><br>
+<i>Copyright, 1912, by</i><br>
+<span class="smcap">Doubleday, Page &amp; Company</span><br><br>
+<i>All rights reserved, including that of<br>
+translation into foreign languages<br>
+including the Scandinavian</i></small>
+</p>
+
+<h2><a id="ACKNOWLEDGMENT"></a>ACKNOWLEDGMENT</h2>
+
+<p class="nind">and thanks are due the following owners, who were kind enough to lend
+their original drawings or paintings, for reproduction in this volume:</p>
+
+<table><tr><td>
+<span class="smcap">Miss Harriet E. Anderson</span><br>
+<span class="smcap">Dr. Wm. Sturgis Bigelow</span><br>
+<span class="smcap">Miss Gertrude Barnes</span><br>
+<span class="smcap">Miss Grace Edith Barnes</span><br>
+<span class="smcap">Franklin W. M. Cutcheon, Esq.</span><br>
+<span class="smcap">A. A. Healy, Esq.</span><br>
+<span class="smcap">James J. Hill, Esq.</span><br>
+<span class="smcap">James Norman Hill, Esq.</span><br>
+<span class="smcap">Mrs. Geo. Lewis Heins</span><br>
+<span class="smcap">Mrs. Charles J. Hardy</span><br>
+<span class="smcap">Col. Henry L. Higginson</span><br></td><td>
+<span class="smcap">Mrs. Edwin Chase Hoyt</span><br>
+<span class="smcap">August F. Jaccaci, Esq.</span><br>
+<span class="smcap">William Macbeth, Esq.</span><br>
+<span class="smcap">Mrs. Montgomery Sears</span><br>
+<span class="smcap">Edw. P. Slevin, Esq.</span><br>
+<span class="smcap">Geo. W. Stevens, Esq.</span><br>
+<span class="smcap">Toledo Museum</span><br>
+<span class="smcap">Miss Mary L. Ware</span><br>
+<span class="smcap">Mrs. Payne Whitney</span><br>
+<span class="smcap">Dr. W. Wallace Walker</span><br>
+<span class="smcap">Estate of John LaFarge</span><br></tr>
+</table>
+
+<h2><a id="PREFATORY_NOTE"></a>PREFATORY NOTE</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="nind">This</span> record of travel in the South Seas was designed by Mr. La Farge as
+a continuous narrative, but some of his most valuable impressions were
+embodied in letters written from the Islands to his son, Mr. Bancel La
+Farge, or jotted down at the moment in his journal. Since it was his
+intention to introduce this material into the book, it has with
+scrupulous care been drawn upon for that purpose.</p>
+
+<p class="r">
+G. E. B.<br>
+</p>
+
+<hr class="dbl">
+
+<h2><a id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+<hr>
+<table>
+<tr><td colspan="2">PAGE EN ROUTE <tr><td class="pdd"><span class="smcap">On Board, 26th August, 1890</span></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_3">3</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>HONOLULU</td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_12">12</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>HAWAII</td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_33">33</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd"><span class="smcap">Kilauea&mdash;The Volcano</span></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_46">46</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd"><span class="smcap">Ride from Hilo Around the East of Island of Hawaii</span></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_53">53</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>SAMOA </td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_68">68</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd"><span class="smcap">Off the Island of Tutuila, on Board the Cutter Carrying Mail, October 7</span></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_68">68</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd"><span class="smcap">An Account of Residence at Vaiala</span></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_142">142</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd"><span class="smcap">A Malaga in Seumanu’s Boat, October 25</span></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_155">155</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd"><span class="smcap">Palolo</span></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_212">212</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd"><span class="smcap">Another Samoan Malaga</span></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_229">229</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>AT SEA FROM SAMOA TO TAHITI</td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_288">288</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>TAHITI</td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_301">301</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd"><span class="smcap">Story of the Limits of the Tevas</span></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_323">323</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd"><span class="smcap">Lament of Aromaiterai</span></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_331">331</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd"><span class="smcap">The Origin of the Tevas</span></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_353">353</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd"><span class="smcap">The Story of Taurua, or the Loan of a Wife</span></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_364">364</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>TAHITI TO FIJI</td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_387">387</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>FIJI</td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_395">395</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd"><span class="smcap">The Story of the Fish-Hook War</span></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_411">411</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd"><span class="smcap">An Expedition into the Mountains of Viti Levu</span></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_422">422</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>EPILOGUE</td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_478">478</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="dbl">
+
+<h2><a id="ILLUSTRATIONS_IN_COLOUR"></a>ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR</h2>
+
+<hr>
+
+<table>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#ill_001">GIRL WEEDING IN FRONT OF OUR HOUSE, VAIALA, SAMOA</a></td><td class="rt">
+<a href="#ill_001"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="rt"><small>FACING PAGE</small></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#ill_002">TREES IN MOONLIGHT. HONOLULU, HAWAII</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_12">12</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#ill_003">BEGINNING OF DESERT, ISLAND OF HAWAII</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_34">34</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#ill_004">CENTRAL CONE OF VOLCANO OF KILAUEA, HAWAII</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_48">48</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#ill_005">CRATER OF KILAUEA AND THE LAVA BED. HAWAII</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_52">52</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#ill_006">MEN BATHING IN THE RIVER NEAR THE SEA. ONOMEA, ISLAND OF HAWAII</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_58">58</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#ill_007">FAYAWAY SAILS HER BOAT. SAMOA</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_68">68</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#ill_008">THE FLUTE PLAYER. SAMOA</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_86">86</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#ill_009">BOY IN CANOE PASSING IN FRONT OF OUR HOUSE. VAIALA, SAMOA</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_98">98</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#ill_010">MATAAFA’S COOK HOUSE. FROM OUR HUT AT VAIALA, SAMOA</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_110">110</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#ill_011">SAMOAN COURTSHIP</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_120">120</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#ill_012">SOLDIERS BRINGING PRESENTS OF FOOD IN MILITARY ORDER. IVA, IN SAVAII, SAMOA</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_182">182</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#ill_013">TAUPO AND ATTENDANTS DANCING IN OPEN AIR. IVA, IN SAVAII, SAMOA</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_184">184</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#ill_014">PRESENTATION OF GIFTS OF FOOD AT IVA, IN SAVAII, SAMOA</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_186">186</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#ill_015">SOUTH SEA SEATED DANCE AT NIGHT. SAMOA</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_188">188</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#ill_016">BUTTRESSES OF THE FIRST CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND TOMB OF SIGA IN THE REEF. SAPAPALI, SAMOA</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_198">198</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#ill_017">THE BOY SOPO. SAMOA</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_208">208</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#ill_018">THE PAPA-SEEA, OR SLIDING ROCK. FAGALO SLIDING WATERFALL. VAIALA, SAMOA</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_210">210</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#ill_019">GIRL SLIDING DOWN WATERFALL. SAMOA</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_212">212</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#ill_020">SAMOAN GIRL CARRYING PALM BRANCH</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_246">246</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#ill_021">FROM OUR HUT AT VAO-VAI, SAMOA</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_258">258</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#ill_022">MAUA. STUDY OF ONE OF OUR BOAT CREW. APIA, SAMOA</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_286">286</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#ill_023">STUDY OF SURF BREAKING ON OUTSIDE REEF. TAUTIRA, TAIARAPU, TAHITI</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_302">302</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#ill_024">THE DIADEM MOUNTAIN. TAHITI</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_308">308</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#ill_025">PEAK OF MAUA ROA, ISLAND OF MOOREA, SOCIETY ISLANDS, TAHITI</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_338">338</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#ill_026">EDGE OF THE AORAI MOUNTAIN COVERED WITH CLOUD, MIDDAY. PAPEETE, TAHITI</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_354">354</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#ill_027">CHIEFS IN WAR DRESS AND PAINT. “DEVIL” COUNTRY. VITI LEVU, FIJI</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_396">396</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#ill_028">TONGA GIRL WITH FAN</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_418">418</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#ill_029">EDGE OF VILLAGE OF NASOGO IN MOUNTAIN OF THE NORTHEAST OF VITI LEVU, FIJI</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_434">434</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#ill_030">STUDY OF HUTS AT END OF VILLAGE. MATAKULA, FIJI</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_452">452</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#ill_031">BEGINNING OF VILLAGE&mdash;DAWN. MATAKULA. FIJI</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_456">456</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#ill_032">MOUNTAIN HUT OR HOUSE AT WAIKUMBUKUMBU, FIJI</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_460">460</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="dbl">
+<h2><a id="ILLUSTRATIONS_IN_BLACK_AND_WHITE"></a>ILLUSTRATIONS IN BLACK AND WHITE</h2>
+
+<hr>
+
+<table>
+<tr><td class="rt" colspan="2"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#illbw_001">SIFA DANCING THE SITTING SIVA</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_84">84</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#illbw_002">UATEA DANCING THE SITTING SIVA</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_90">90</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#illbw_003">SWIMMING DANCE. SAMOA</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_166">166</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#illbw_004">AITUTAGATA. THE HEREDITARY ASSASSINS OF KING MALIETOA. SAPAPALI, SAVAII,<br>
+SAMOA</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_196">196</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#illbw_006">PRACTISING THE SEATED DANCE AT NIGHT. SAMOA</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_200">200</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#illbw_007">TWO TAUPOS DANCING A “GAME OF BALL.” SAMOA</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_256">256</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#illbw_008">TULAFALES SPEECH-MAKING. VAO-VAI, SAMOA</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_262">262</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#illbw_009">TAUPO DANCING THE STANDING SIVA. SAMOA</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_264">264</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#illbw_010">FAGALO AND SUE WRESTLING. VAIALA, SAMOA</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_274">274</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#illbw_011">YOUNG TAHITIAN GIRL</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_336">336</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#illbw_012">SUN COMING OVER MOUNTAIN. EARLY MORNING, UPONOHU</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_348">348</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#illbw_013">MEKKE-MEKKE. A STORY DANCE. THE MUSICIANS AT REVA, FIJI</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_404">404</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#illbw_014">THE DANCE OF WAR. FIJI</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_406">406</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#illbw_015">JOLI BUTI&mdash;TEACHER. FIJI</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_408">408</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#illbw_016">FIJIAN BOY</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_450">450</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="pdd1"><a href="#illbw_017">RATU MANDRAE&mdash;FIJIAN CHIEF</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_454">454</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_1">{1}</a></span>&#160; </p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_2">{2}</a></span>&#160; </p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_3">{3}</a></span>&#160; </p>
+
+<hr class="dbl">
+
+<h1>REMINISCENCES OF THE SOUTH SEAS</h1>
+
+<hr>
+
+<h2><a id="EN_ROUTE"></a>EN ROUTE</h2>
+
+<p class="nind">
+<span class="smcap">On Board</span>, 26th August, 1890.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>San Francisco was the same place, with the same curious feeling of its
+being cold while one felt the heat; but there was neither place, time
+nor anything for me; there were things to buy and replace&mdash;all sorts of
+things had been forgotten, and now more than ever I realize that it is
+well to be overloaded&mdash;even if I believe that later I should feel it.
+What I want I want badly, and San Francisco is not a place to get it in.</p>
+
+<p>And then there was a pleasant club, with the usual hideous decoration,
+but very comfortable and with such a good table, and such a <i>real</i>
+one&mdash;meats that were <i>meats</i>, and fish that was <i>fish</i>, and fruits in
+quantity, and fruits are not fruits for pleasure unless they be in
+quantity; and good wine and champagne of a kind that is not ours; and a
+Mr. Cutler who took us there and talked of things he had done or would
+do, that were interesting, and the contrast between the smoothness of
+life there, and the apparent difficulties outside. I say apparent
+because many of them are based upon a feeling of indifference or “look
+out for yourself” in any event outside. Yes, the Union Club was a good
+waster of time. And then I am not yet well recovered at<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_4">{4}</a></span> all from the
+strain of the beginning of the month; and I felt as if I had sea-legs
+and gait from the motion of the car. So that I shall say nothing of the
+great bay, nor its mountainsides, that look at this time as if they were
+nothing but those we have seen all along, but with the sea rolling in.</p>
+
+<p>We got off on Saturday, not at noon as stated, but waiting for a couple
+of hours in dock, the little steamer filled with people and with very
+pretty girls, who, alas! were not to accompany us. But we have a circus
+troupe “<i>à la</i> Buffalo Bill”; an impresario with the nose and figure
+head of the “boy,” and his wife, or lady, the usual “variety blonde” to
+match, joining, like the telegraph, (through the seas and continent of
+America), furthest Australia and the Singing Hall of London. Long-haired
+cowboys see them off, one of them fair-haired and boyish and
+“sixty-two.” There are Indians, one long-haired, saturnine, and yet
+smiling, with the usual length of jaw and hair (so that his back runs up
+from his waist to his hat), who sits with some female, perhaps a dancer,
+and talks sentiment evidently, in his way, to my great delight&mdash;and
+hers, too, whatever she might say. They sit with one blanket around
+them, and he points gracefully, and puts things in her hair&mdash;and draws
+presents out of his pockets, wrapped up in paper, and puts them back to
+pull them out again. She sits against him, and smiles at him
+ironically,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_5">{5}</a></span> and laughs, and generally looks like a pretty cat lapping
+cream.</p>
+
+<p>The cowboys meander about and go to the bar-room too frequently,
+especially one, a fair-haired one, who feels the first attack of
+sea-sickness, and sits with his head on his hand&mdash;and resents his
+comrades’ begging him to come below, telling them that they have
+mistaken the man he is, that he is a Pawnee medicine man, he is, and
+that he will wipe the floor with them; and then he subsides again&mdash;so
+that my expected row does not occur.</p>
+
+<p>Then everybody subsides, even the cheerful young Englishmen and old
+Englishmen, and the middle-aged Englishmen, who pervade a good part of
+the ship and utter all their small stock of remarks with slowness and
+power. There are others&mdash;the teacher going back for her vacation, to the
+seminary at Hawaii&mdash;the young German I suspect of being an R.C. priest,
+and the Scotchman who has carefully talked for the last hour on the
+advantage of our system of “checking” baggage, which as he says allows
+you to go on without getting off at any station to see if the “guard”
+has the things all right. But as he remarks, for the hand luggage, a
+“mon” can take care of that himself, otherwise he would not be fit to
+take care of MONEY!!</p>
+
+<p>But the weather is disappointing, very cold (so that ulsters<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_6">{6}</a></span> are
+convenient), dark and grey, and there is a heavy coast sea, which I
+didn’t like until yesterday, since when it has been warm, and we have
+had blue sky in large patches through rents in the violet silveriness of
+the clouds. It is the exquisite clearness of the blue of the Pacific, a
+butterfly blue, <i>laid</i> on as it were between the clouds, and shading
+down to white faintness in the far distance, where the haze of ocean
+covers up the turquoise. The sea has the blue for a long time, but dark
+and reflecting the grey sky. This morning (Thursday) it has been blue
+like a sapphire, dark to look at except near by, but when you look down
+to it, and see it framed in the openings of the windows or the gangways,
+blue light pours out of it, and I realize that my blue sketches of four
+years ago are no exaggeration. When the clouds open somewhat, the blue
+light pours down and makes the shadows of the clouds violet, except when
+this fog against the warm sky looks red and rosy. Even the shadows of
+the blue sea look at moments reddish, when they reflect the opposite
+grey cloud. But we are not yet quite in the <i>sun</i> seas&mdash;this is not the
+season yet nor the place. There is all the time a veil of cloud, a veil
+so heavy as to make great cumulus clouds bunch out in extreme modelling.
+But when it is grey, all in silver&mdash;there is a light&mdash;a lilac grey, a
+silver, not known to the other side; and it is only when the distant
+smoke of the steamer goes over the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_7">{7}</a></span> grey clouds that I realize that they
+become like those of the north Atlantic.</p>
+
+<p>This is Thursday afternoon. On Saturday at dawn, or before it, we shall
+sight at first the island of Molokai, the leper’s island, where Father
+Damien lived, then Oahu and its capes and Honolulu.</p>
+
+<p class="spc">Friday, 29th August.</p>
+
+<p>Last night the sun set in those silver tones that I associate with the
+Pacific and with Japan. The horizon was enclosed everywhere, but through
+it every here and there the pink and rose of sunset came out and in the
+east lit up the highest of the clouds in every variety of pink and lilac
+and purple and rose, shut in with grey. But the moon, “O Tsuki San,” had
+her turn&mdash;then I realized where we were. All was so dark that the
+horizon was quite veiled, but the light of the moon, in its full, and
+high up, poured down on what seemed a wall-embroidery of molten silver
+slanting to the horizon. Itself was partly wrapped in clouds or veils or
+wraps like those that protect some big jewel, and when unveiled or
+partly covered, it had the roundness&mdash;the nearness of some great crystal
+“with white fire laden.” The clearness was so great at places open
+through the clouds, that I thought I could see Jupiter’s satellites, and
+decided it was he by this additional glitter. There<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_8">{8}</a></span> is no way of
+telling you all that the moon did, for she seemed to arrange the clouds,
+to place them about her or drive them away, to veil herself with one
+hand of cloud. It was like a great heavenly play&mdash;and played in such
+lovely air! If I could write on for pages I could only say that I had no
+idea of what the moon could be, nor of the persistence of colour that
+she could hold in all the silveriness.</p>
+
+<p>When I went to bed, blue light poured in by reflection from the waves
+that had looked dark and colourless from the deck. It was the same
+contrast as by daylight, when the dark sea, isolated from the sky, takes
+a blue like Oriental satin, and is fired with light.</p>
+
+<p>To-night again the moon gave a play&mdash;no longer in the great pomp of a
+simple spread of silver forms of cloud, but like an opera of colour and
+shadow, far in front of it, hung at times, a cloud so dense as to seem
+as dark as our bulwarks or “roofing”&mdash;but usually a cloud of blue,
+perhaps by contrast with the warmth of the clouds behind, all lit up and
+modelled and graded tier on tier. No Rembrandt could have more
+<i>indication</i> of grading and of dark than these clouds had in <i>reality</i>.
+No possible palette could approximate the degrees of dark and of light,
+for the moon, when she uncovered entirely, was the same transparent
+silver vase out of which poured light. It seemed impossible&mdash;the
+electric light alongside of us was no<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_9">{9}</a></span> brighter apparently than the
+bright markings of the light on the deck, on the edges of the bulwarks,
+and on the brass of the railings. Imagine the electric light, in say our
+Fifth Avenue, really turned on everything around you. It is a stupid
+simile, but I wish you to believe in what I am saying. I took a coloured
+print into the moonlight to try, and could make out the colours&mdash;fairly
+of course&mdash;moonily, but there they were all, all but the violet. We
+could read, poorly, but we could read. But this is not the point, it is
+that we could see far away to the moon, and that it made a centre of
+light for every dark, for every half-tint, curtain upon curtain hung in
+front of it&mdash;all the foregrounds of sky you could wish for in that
+possibility of fog cloud.</p>
+
+<p>Never shall I think again of the moon as a pale imitation. Of course its
+representation began when the sun was gone. Why it was like a sun one
+could look at without wincing, and canopied itself with colours that did
+not imitate, but were merely the iridescent spectrum that belongs to the
+great sun. These colours, by their arrangement in the prismatic sequence
+seemed to make more light, to arrange it and dispose it, as if art was
+recalling nature. All this must seem unintelligible. It would to me if I
+dared reread it. But this is at least what we came for&mdash;the moon and the
+Pacific.</p>
+
+<p>To-morrow morning, Honolulu.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_10">{10}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There was the profile of Oahu at seven this morning. Earlier, Molokai
+was a long cloud on our port. Now Oahu becomes clearer, and is
+distinctly violet or plum colour. The sea in front of it is blue, and
+dashed with white foam. Above, the clouds are in the more delicate greys
+and violets, and far up is a little rift of blue. To the right a large
+white triangular patch&mdash;an extinct volcano cone. Near the base of the
+mountains all is mist.</p>
+
+<p>It is now 7:30. Birds, swallows, and sea-mews meet us; the swallows came
+early this morning. But until yesterday, for two days, there was no life
+except the flying fish.</p>
+
+<p>We are very close, so close that I cannot draw except in panorama. All
+looks like cinders as we go on. Lovely cloud effects on the
+hills&mdash;rainbows&mdash;and the furthest edge of everything in this promontory
+daring all.</p>
+
+<p>Then, as we round this, <i>with our first turn perhaps since we left</i>, we
+can see more mountains and hills&mdash;for the first time, right on the blue
+sea, a fringe of green (not yellowish)&mdash;the first time I have seen a
+fringe of green to deep blue sea.</p>
+
+<p>Later we see beneath the great hills or mountains, that look like
+cinders, green bushes of trees, and houses looking pretty enough and
+cool&mdash;but we are still far off&mdash;and then behind this grey mountain with
+fringe of green we begin to feel Honolulu.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_11">{11}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Big mountains, green valleys and slopes far back, a fringe of trees,
+some large buildings, a steamer’s smoke from some place, here and there
+masts&mdash;all this spread for miles, like an edging. As the space unfolds
+we see an immensely long beach (Waikiki) running at the base of the
+hills around a bay, and far off in the haze many masts. “White water”
+edges the sea everywhere, even before the line of ships. The water has
+calmed on which we now slip. There is no motion to it; no more,
+apparently, than would make a fringe of foam to a lake. A narrow channel
+in the surf, and we see the shipping and the port: steamships and
+sailing vessels, an English and an American warship, and we are in, and
+I am interrupted for the keys of the trunks.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_12">{12}</a></span></p>
+
+<hr class="dbl">
+
+<h2><a id="HONOLULU"></a>HONOLULU</h2>
+<hr>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Sunday morning, Nuuanu,</p>
+
+<p>Nuuanu Valley, Honolulu.</p></div>
+
+<p>Last night, after having tried the Hawaiian Hotel, we came up here and
+took possession of Judge Hartwell’s house, which we had seen in the
+afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>We sat in the verandah, looking out toward the sea, I should say about
+two miles from us, with the same brilliant moonlight we had had the
+night before. The two palm trees in front of the house were gradually
+illuminated as if the whole air had been a stage scene, through the
+smoothly shining trunks glistening like silver, where the lower green
+stem of the bole leaf or branch of the tree beneath the branches
+separates from the lower cylinder. Behind them spread sky and ocean, for
+we are just on the summit of a hill, the sea-line spreading distinctly
+and the air being clear enough, (even when a slight drift of rain came
+down across the picture), to see the surf far out, and the lines of a
+great bar (to the right), which made a long hooked bend into the sea.
+Lights shone red on board of two English and American war vessels. Far
+off a few azure clouds on the horizon; and occasionally a white patch of
+cloud floated</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="ill_002">
+<a href="images/ill_004.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_004.jpg" width="550" height="413" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">TREES IN MOONLIGHT. HONOLULU, HAWAII</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_13">{13}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">like gauze over the palms, then sank away into the space shining far
+off&mdash;a little darker now than the sky, and warm and rather red in
+colour.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the palm branches tossed up and down in the intermittent gale
+which blew from behind us in the great hills. The landscape was all
+below us, lying at the very foot of the palms which edge the hill upon
+which we are. Across the grass the moonlight came sometimes, as if a
+lamp had suddenly been brought in&mdash;and the colour of the half-yellow
+grass, which was not lost in the moonlight, urged on this delusion. Even
+the violet of the two pillars of palm and its silveriness were strong
+enough to make greener the colour of the sky.</p>
+
+<p>When I walked out behind the house the hills were covered with cloud&mdash;I
+say covered, but rather the cloud rested upon them, and poured up into
+the sky, in large masses of white; the moon shining through most of the
+time, out of an opening more blue than the blue sky, itself an opaline
+circle of greenish blue light, with variant iridescent redness in the
+cloud edges. Against it the heavy trees looked as dark as green can be,
+and now and again the branches of other palms were like waves of grass
+against this dark, or against the sky all shining and brilliant.
+Occasionally it rained, as it did in the afternoon; the edges of the
+great cloud blew upon us like a little sprinkle of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_14">{14}</a></span> wet dust, and later,
+as it came thicker, the rustle of the palms was increased by the rustle
+of the rain. The grass of the hills shone as with moisture, but the
+grass outside, near us, was so dry that the hand put down to it felt no
+wet.</p>
+
+<p>And I went off to bed under mosquito nettings, in a room that smelt of
+sandalwood, to sleep late and feel the gusts of wind blow through the
+open windows, and to think that it rained because I heard the palms.</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday it rained very often. As we landed, the rain had begun, and
+the air was difficult to breathe with the quantity of moisture. All was
+wet, underfoot, though the wet, by the afternoon, had dried in this
+volcanic soil. We had been taken up to the home of Mr. Smith, Judge
+Hartwell’s brother-in-law, and decided at once upon going to
+housekeeping, for which we had to drive into town quite late; and we
+made out of our business a form of skylarking, I think to the
+astonishment of our guide and friend, who may have thought that persons
+who had been able to discuss seriously in the afternoon with himself and
+a member of the former cabinet, Mr. Thurston, the question of the sugar
+tariff, and its relation to the Force bill and the position of Mr.
+Blaine and of the Pennsylvania senators, should not be people to waste
+their minds on the dress of Hawaiian girls and the fashion of wearing
+flowers about the neck.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_15">{15}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But the ride was full of enjoyment and novelty. Honolulu streets are
+amusing. The blocks of houses are tropical, with most reasonable
+lowness, and are of cement in facings; and the great number of Chinese
+shops and of Chinese, with some pretty Chinese girl faces and children’s
+faces, enliven the streets. And there are so many horses, small, with
+much mustang blood and good action and good heads, and ridden
+freely&mdash;too freely, for we saw a labourer ridden down by some cowboyish
+fellow. Hawaiian women rode about in their divided skirts; they had, as
+well as many of the men, flowers around their waists and their necks,
+and among their delights, peacock-feather bands around their hats. Many
+of them were pretty, I thought, with animated faces, talking to mild and
+fierce men of similar adornments. And as I said, there was much Chinese,
+and dresses of much colour&mdash;for men and women&mdash;and trees with flowers,
+like the Bougainvillia purplish rose coloured; grey palm trunks, and
+many plants of big leaves like the banana; yellow limes, and fiercely
+green acacias.</p>
+
+<p>At any rate it was fun; we stopped and bought mangoes and oranges from
+natives who smiled or grinned at us. The air grew delicious with the
+wind that took away the oppression of the dampness, (we have about 80 to
+83 degrees), so that if this be tropical, it is easy to bear, and the
+vast feeling of air and space gives a charm even to the heat.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_16">{16}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I walked about this morning toward the hills, of which the near ones are
+covered with grass of a velvet grey in the light, and dun colour in the
+shade; but behind, the higher hills are purple and lost in the base of
+the cloud that has never ceased to turret them. After a while the sense
+of blue air became intense.</p>
+
+<p class="spc">Tuesday.</p>
+
+<p>We sat up again and waited for the moon to rise, and watched her light
+drown the brilliancy of the stars and of the milky way. Jupiter shone
+like diamonds, and Venus was like a glittering moon herself; and beneath
+her in the ocean a wide tremulousness of light broke the great belt of
+water with a shine that anywhere else might have done for the reflection
+of the moon. The great palms threw up their arms into a coloured sky not
+quite violet nor quite green; the gale blew again from the mountains
+with the same intensity; the great cloud hung again up to the same point
+in the heaven until the moon began to beat its edges down, and break
+them and send them in blots of white and dark into the western sky.
+Then, at length, she came out again to sink behind the advancing cloud,
+which again broke, over and over again, and through the trees behind us
+and over the hills hung in a mass of violet grey. The wind blew more and
+more violently, but never any colder;<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_17">{17}</a></span> always as if at the beginning of
+a storm, not as if any more than a long gust. And when the moon was free
+in the upper sky, and the cloud rested in its accustomed place, above
+the hills, we walked out into the open spaces to see the clouds lie in
+white masses of snow piled up, and above them to the north, the sky of
+an indefinite purple, terrible in its depth of uncertainty of colour,
+with no break, no cloud whatever.</p>
+
+<p>Wednesday night we had rain, though only above us. Occasionally the
+clouds gained over in the southwest before us, but not entirely, and for
+a time the horizon of the sea was dusty and a little uncertain, but
+never at any moment did we fail to see the stars before us and the clear
+light of the sky. But we had to say good-bye to the moon. She will rise
+now so late that for us who are getting tired with a little more
+movement, there is impatience at having to watch; and, besides, the
+mosquitoes pour about us in swarms, unless we remain outdoors in the
+continual gusty surge of wind that makes us more and more sleepy.</p>
+
+<p>Now the sky in the night becomes more purple and more violet as we look
+toward the south, instead of holding delicate blue-green, that promised
+the moon; and around Venus, until her setting, there is an area of light
+in this violet; and below her the sea is bright as if with a moon, and
+all the stars toward the south are brilliant and fiery.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_18">{18}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="spc">Friday.</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday we drove up the valley. We ourselves are on a bank or
+projection into it, though the rocks rise to our left as we look
+northeast, which is the trend of the valley. Honolulu is below us,
+spread by the sea, and the valley goes up from it as do others; to the
+north and east there is a wide fringe or space by the sea, which is as a
+big slope, and into it these valleys open, so that, as we look back on
+our drive, that narrows more, we see the scene opening more and more and
+further and further below us, Honolulu and its plain or lower slope
+shining in light, with the sea beyond it, the surf breaking away out
+from its shore, and the sea spreading over the sand in a faint wash of
+greener colour; further out a purple line of reef below the water, and
+then the waveless blue of distance. All is light; even the converging
+hills&mdash;hills coming together in the perspective, like stage wings, but
+opening out in reality&mdash;even the hills seem transparent with light. The
+valley side rises generally, but our view is occasionally interrupted by
+divisions of higher land, slopes from the mountainsides that run across.
+And so we go for five miles. The hills and mountains, for they are high,
+are steep and pointed and covered with green. Here and there black marks
+indicate the volcanic rock; a cascade comes down the apparently
+perpendicular side of the rock, like a snake twisting; making a
+movement<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_19">{19}</a></span> like a throbbing, for there is no leap, it merely glides down
+the wall. Then suddenly the road rises still more, and we come to a bank
+before us where the road turns; and over the bank we see distance, and
+green hills like a plain under us, and red roads through the
+multitudinous green, and far away a promontory out to sea, silver and
+grey, for the vegetation has suddenly stopped there, and there is
+nothing but the nameless aridity of mountains standing out to sea, in a
+fairyland of blue and white surf, and sand between white and yellow, and
+a warm emerald of shallow waves near the shore. We are on the famous
+Pali, thirteen hundred feet above the hills below us. Pack mules grope
+down the path, and a carriage held back by two riders on horseback goes
+down the precipitous winding road. There is shouting and clicking of
+stirrups and spurs and bridles, the plunges of the horses and sudden
+throwing back of the men, all in a gale of heavy wind, make me feel in
+this smallness even in animals the size and space before me. As we go
+down the road a little, we see, looking up, the great cliffs of the Pali
+to which we have driven. It makes a great cliff of walls opposite to the
+sea, (over which we have broken), and to the west it stretches in
+shadow, and in the west we see the marking lost in shade of unnamable
+tones, as the green precipice casts its shade across the foothills and
+slopes for a vast space, (it is two thousand feet high), looking<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_20">{20}</a></span> as if
+it had been some great sea-cliff once, and the sea had once formed the
+spaces now green, and undulating with hill and valley. But the great
+Pali has probably been one side of the stupendous wall of a great
+crater, now partly under the sea, and the grey mountain far off to sea
+has been the central cone of this ancient circle.</p>
+
+<p class="spc">September 6th.</p>
+
+<p>We had to-day a very Hawaiian afternoon; we tasted of the
+delights&mdash;perhaps it would be better to say the comforts&mdash;of <i>poi</i>;
+eaten with relishes, squid and salt fish, and fish baked in <i>ti</i> leaves,
+and also of some introduced things, such as the guava, which is spooned
+out from its rind. But all this is known to you. And this was
+two-fingered <i>poi</i>. When fully stiff it is one-fingered, the
+three-fingered being effeminate, and coming to-day more in use with
+general degeneracy. And we see later old <i>poi</i>-dishes with an edge
+running in, upon which to wipe the finger or fingers. And as the talk
+went on, turning always more or less to ancient habits and traditions,
+we heard much more than I can remember. As a shuttle through the web of
+the conversation ran the personality of the King; interesting, in many
+ways, because of his race, and of its exact relation to the <i>pure</i> race,
+and of his caring for the old traditions and probably superstitions. He
+collects, or has collected;<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_21">{21}</a></span> but is little addicted to the civilized
+habits of curators of museums, and is fond of arranging his remains and
+fragments, placing them and setting them occasionally in gold, and
+remaking old idols which are fragmentary, not without surmises of his
+taking more than an outside scientific or artistic interest in them. And
+no wonder! there must remain every reason of inheritance in mind. The
+christianizing of the native mind can be represented by the supposition
+of an acceptance of a Jehovah who ruled in great matters, and over the
+soul, but whose attention was not directed to little things; so that
+there might be essences that controlled ordinary life, good to invoke in
+time of danger, and for usual help, at any rate of good omen, or to be
+propitiated for fear of harm. And so often the native in great distress,
+as when death threatens, resorts to old forms, as invalids all over the
+world look to remedies out of the regular way&mdash;the good woman’s
+doctorings and the help of the quack, who may not perhaps be <i>all</i> out
+in some matters. And so it is possible to hear that this personage has
+rebuilt a <i>heiau</i> or temple&mdash;a fishing temple of propitiation near his
+summer residence, upon the old lines of the former one;&mdash;and to listen
+to the singular anecdote, which gives him as consulting an old crone
+when age is on her in the full of a hundred, and who remembered the
+erection of the old temple now destroyed. When consulted by us she was
+still able to work, though so<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_22">{22}</a></span> very old, and was found seated under some
+hut or shelter, scraping twigs for mats, with a sharp-edged shell, as
+she had done when a child of ten. Much could not be obtained from her,
+as she had no consecutive thread of talk, but she was able to show where
+the cornerstone of the old temple lay, and beneath it the bones of the
+human being sacrificed as a propitiatory and necessary part of the
+foundation&mdash;a habit and tradition common to all races, as we know. The
+King could not, of course, sacrifice a human being to-day, so that a pig
+was the propitiation, and the new <i>heiau</i> is built. The first offering
+from fishing is thrown there and success established.</p>
+
+<p>Another pig comes in a more curious and fantastic way, and forms part of
+a possible picture, conjured up in the story. For some old priest or
+<i>kahuna</i> assured the King, anxious to discover the remains of the great
+Kamehameha, that they could be traced by divination. The pig, filled
+with the spirit (<i>ahu</i>), was let loose, and an old priest and less old
+but heavy chieftain careered after him, until the animal passed, and
+began to circle about in convulsions. Then they dug and lo! a skull,
+which the King now keeps as the remains of the great head of the
+sovereignty, from whom his predecessors were descended, as was, for
+example, the wife of our Mr. Bishop the banker&mdash;for the present King is
+not of that lofty strain.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_23">{23}</a></span> This difficulty of finding what was left of
+the great tyrant and hero was owing to the Hawaiian (and Polynesian),
+habit of hiding the remains of the great; sometimes even they were
+eaten; the people were not cannibals&mdash;they did not kill to eat, but it
+was necessary to protect the remains from insult. No one would wish to
+have his chief’s bones serve for fishhooks, nor to make arrowheads to
+shoot mice with, nor I suppose even to make ornamental circles in the
+sticks of the <i>kahili</i>, the beautiful plumed stick of honour, originally
+a fly-brush, I suppose (like the old Egyptian fan), which was the
+attribute of power, and which is still carried about royalty, or stands
+at their coffin or place of burial. Consequently every precaution was
+taken to hide the bones, which were tied together and put in some
+inaccessible secret place.</p>
+
+<p>Another <i>kahuna</i> or priest told the King how to have access to the
+terrible hiding-place where were deposited the remains of some chief
+that Kalakaua wished to have, to give them finally some resting-place of
+honour. The only way to get at this cavern was by <i>diving</i> and when he
+did so he came up into a cavern, where he found them, and also large
+statues of idols and other remains. But the place was haunted, and not
+for the whole of the Islands would the King again undertake such a
+journey. Nor should I, even if I swam well enough. Can you imagine
+making a hit-or-miss entrance through the surf<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_24">{24}</a></span> into some narrow hole,
+from which one would emerge into hollow and drier darkness; and then to
+have to make light and grope about for things in themselves of a spooky
+and doubtful influence&mdash;and things that should <i>resent</i> the <i>hand of the
+intruder</i>!</p>
+
+<p>For it is even hinted that many of the present tombs in the royal
+mausoleum are empty or not authentically filled; for instance, King
+Lunalilo is certainly not there. In old days some devoted friend of the
+chief’s would have hunted about and found some man looking like him, and
+then would have incontinently massacred the more vulgar Dromio, would
+have left his body in the place of the chief’s, and hidden the honoured
+remains from all but most sacred knowledge, that around the priest, the
+depository of holy mysteries, all power might cling. Power of priests:
+power to designate who should die&mdash;killing the chief’s friend or
+supporters if it were advisable to weaken him.</p>
+
+<p>With their privilege of designating victims the power of the priests
+must have reached into the province of politics, for a king’s or chief’s
+men, precious to him but dangerous to enemies, might be chosen at any
+moment so as to weaken him. The <i>men</i> of the <i>priest</i> could be saved
+from such a terror. The man to die might be put an end to as he entered
+the temple by a blow from behind with a club or stone, or his back might
+be<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_25">{25}</a></span> broken, in a dexterous way known of old, or his neck might be
+twisted so as to break the spine. The death at least was made as
+painless as possible.</p>
+
+<p>The real <i>kahunas</i> are extinct, but have many pretended successors. The
+King himself claims to be <i>kahuna</i> more or less. He claims to have a
+cure for leprosy. I hear too that a leper is kept at the palace, and
+another at the <i>boat house</i>, for experiments, but of course of that I
+know nothing&mdash;<i>no more than of anything else</i>. The boat house is the
+place where the King gives <i>luuaus</i>, Hawaiian dinner parties, and when
+the <i>hula</i> is danced there are well-known dancers who come or are
+retained or sent for. They are in the photographs much dressed and
+rather ugly, and some have very thick legs, monstrous to the European
+eye, but I suppose that talent is not always found in the pretty shapes.
+Some good people (from Minnesota), lately expressed a wish to see these
+dances, and the King, who is apparently a very courteous person, kindly
+consented to help them, and invited them then and there to dinner. They
+came to an excellent dinner, and saw the <i>hula</i> danced. They were
+informed by the King that the custom was to give some gratuity to the
+artist; so that money was thrown into a dish, the King giving two
+dollars, and the others the same. When the collection at the end was
+taken up after each dance (my informants giving some seven dollars
+apiece)<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_26">{26}</a></span> and presented as by etiquette to his majesty, he retained the
+mass, giving one dollar and a half to each dancer as their proper
+proportion. This reminds me of Oriental tradition, and is probably quite
+consistent with a certain liberality, the Hawaiian instinct, especially
+with the chiefs, being toward generous giving; so much so that many have
+become impoverished from this and other forms of improvidence, in the
+days of the change to civilization, when they owned a good deal that
+gradually passed into the hands of those who held the mortgages.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Dominis, the heir apparent (now the Queen), keeps also some
+tenderness for superstitions and beliefs of the past, and I am told (but
+not by so sure a person), that she sacrificed some time ago to Pele, the
+goddess of the volcano, some pigs and hens, which were thrown into the
+fire of lava. At present the account is vague and mixed to me, but I
+think of it as connected with some illness of one of the late
+princesses, for whom also came a portent of certain fish appearing in
+quantity, a presage of death to great chiefs. Naturally one listens to
+any gossip referring to the reversion of the race to any former habits,
+and this I give you only for this reason.</p>
+
+<p>One little touch, however, with the common people, is pretty, just what
+happens anywhere, and that is the fondness for lying low, if I may so
+put it; the using of the underneath of their houses (which is one way),
+the cellar, or rather open space<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_27">{27}</a></span> under houses, becoming, low as it is,
+the residence, and the house itself being kept with its furniture and
+carpets, only as a sort of show; matting being laid down on the earth
+below, and the whole affair made comfortable in savage fashion. Here all
+live together. Somebody was telling us how, in a trip somewhere, they
+had found a family who were living under their house, and who gave them
+their own unused room with a big four-post bedstead. And in the morning
+a strange rustle aroused them. It was the native couple struggling to
+escape unnoticed from <i>beneath</i> the bed, under which they had passed the
+night.</p>
+
+<p>And also there is a peculiar use of objects which we hide, and which are
+placed usually at the doorstep. I have seen them carried with great care
+through the streets, and at my first purchases in a Chinese shop I
+noticed the discussion of some natives upon the adornment of these
+utensils which they had come to buy.</p>
+
+<p>The old-fashioned house has passed away; hardly any one has now the
+knowledge of how to build it. It was well suited to its use and made
+with great care. It had a thatched roof which was made of bundles tied
+with hibiscus bark and carefully disposed, and this whole house had to
+be built according to rite, or it could not be lived in. The main
+archway, or one made by say the pillars and lintel and crossbeam, had to
+be<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_28">{28}</a></span> of one wood, and so forth. The floor was made of stones, laid
+together in different layers, growing smaller and smaller, upon which
+mats were placed, one over the other; which also could be made very
+fine, and which are excellent to sleep on, being very cool.</p>
+
+<p>I was much struck by the shape of some skulls of natives showing a
+peculiar <i>tent</i> or <i>roof shape</i> of head, and extreme squareness of jaw.
+The heads are fine, very often, and the type massive. Man and woman tend
+to fat apparently, if one may judge of the average types one sees, but
+then they are seen in the street or in houses and perhaps well fed. Some
+of the young women or girls have great delicacy of expression, and the
+line of the jaw and chin separating from the throat is graceful and
+refined. There is a pretty tendency, owing to thickness of lip,
+apparently, to a shortness of the curve above, that gives a little
+disdainful look quite imposing in some of the older and uglier women,
+when they are not too fat. The men look like gentle bandits. But there
+is a certain <i>sullen</i> look in a great many that is unsatisfactory, and
+has grown, I suppose. They probably need firm hands to govern them; and
+are certainly not satisfied now; whether stirred on by agitators or by
+any real grievance, I of course can’t know. In old times they sent away
+to faraway islands for chiefs and rulers. From Samoa and Tahiti rulers
+came, some whose names are known, for<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_29">{29}</a></span> over this vast space the war
+canoes went, two thousand miles and more, and the places of their
+departure and arrival bore names indicating their distant relationship.
+But some places or islands are missing to-day, which apparently once
+rose above the surface, and now are shoals perhaps. One of their rulers,
+a sort of demigod, who sailed away one day promising to return in coming
+years, they took Cook to be when he appeared, and they called him Lono.
+And years before him some Spaniards were left behind, in the hit-or-miss
+sailing of early days, and have left certain signs, it is said, in
+languages and other things.</p>
+
+<p>For their great voyages the Hawaiians had a knowledge of the winds and
+of many stars, six hundred of which bore names.</p>
+
+<p class="spc">Wednesday night, September 11th.</p>
+
+<p>To-night it blows again from over the Pali and mountains, the first time
+since Sunday. We have had a south wind, which has slowly come round with
+rain, back to its old station. We have painted at the Pali, during the
+south wind, for it did not then blow against us, and I was able to
+sketch without the extreme difficulty that I had feared. We drove up
+Monday afternoon in the great heat, clouds hanging over the valley
+rather low, so that I feared that we should be covered.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_30">{30}</a></span> Their shadows
+hung along the walls of the hills, and made dark circles around the
+great spots of sunlight. All varieties of green were around us, in the
+foliage and the plants, and the green of the slopes and mountains. We
+came up, as before, to the edge of the Pali, suddenly, all before us a
+blaze of green, and looked over. No more astounding spread of colour
+could be thought of. The blue was intense enough when we saw it against
+the green bank before us, imprisoned between that and the warm low
+cloud, but it was still more astounding, opening to the furthest
+horizon, gradually through every shade to a faint green edge, blotted in
+with white clouds, bluish, with bluish shadows, and far away a long,
+interminable line of cloud in a violet band (because in shadow, broken
+above and below with silvery projections). The sea bluer yet than the
+sky, spotted with green in the shoals, and with white in the surf, the
+headland of Mokapu stretched out in brilliant grey unnamable; the sand
+also of no possible colour; the last range of hills tawny grey, like a
+panther-skin, warmed here and there with yellow and with green; a
+brilliant oasis of green in centre, like the green of a peacock. Then
+near us the intense feathery green of great hills and the billowy
+valley, all of one tone, one unbroken green, as if covered with a
+drapery, and the same green reflecting the blue above. Now and then red
+lines of road, red as vermilion, not only because of red earth,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_31">{31}</a></span> but
+because the green vegetation is so deep by contrast; and all this in
+partial shadow, except the great distance and the silvery promontory.
+And later, far off, half the ocean in absolute calm, repeating the high
+clouds of the distance, and their shadows and lights. It was violent as
+a whole, but delicate and refined almost to coldness.</p>
+
+<p>Here I had the misfortune to find that the usual trick of bad work and
+poor paper in my blocks would prevent my making any adequate record. (I
+say adequate&mdash;what I mean is plausible.) But we both sat and worked
+until sunset and after hours, each not daring to look at anything but in
+one direction, there was so much to prevent one’s <i>doing</i> anything. And
+at the last moment I went down part of the road toward the base, to see
+the entire distance lost as in a dream, great long streamers of mist
+apparently blowing away from the face of the Pali. And we returned in
+the afterglow, which now that the moon has left us, keeps the whole sky
+and landscape in tones like those of some old picture clear and
+apparently distinct, but intensely coloured, however colourless it may
+seem, for we have no names for tones&mdash;so coloured that the lamp-light,
+inside the room where I am, seems no warmer than the twilight without,
+as if they were painted together, as in one picture the sky is merely a
+beautiful background.</p>
+
+<p>Then comes, alas! the great hum of the mosquito, if we are<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_32">{32}</a></span> in the wind,
+and we have to resort to burning powders if we do not sit in the draught
+that blows them away.</p>
+
+<p>Day after to-morrow we shall go to Hawaii in the steamer <i>Hall</i>, land on
+the south coast, go to the volcano Kilauea and down from there to Hilo.
+This afternoon we have heard talk of the situation politically, of the
+wrongdoing of demagogues; and also we have seen one of the extraordinary
+yellow and red capes that the chiefs wore, made of small rare feathers,
+and each little tuft sewed on to plaited fibres and also a <i>lei</i> or
+neck-wreath of the same bird feathers, with the addition of some soft
+green ones, in divisions all very rare and valuable; and a beautiful
+wooden polished spittoon with handle of some exquisite wood light and
+dark, which has served to preserve the exuviæ of some chief from the
+great danger of capture for incantation or working harm through
+sorcery.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_33">{33}</a></span></p>
+
+<hr class="dbl">
+<h2><a id="HAWAII"></a>HAWAII</h2>
+<hr>
+
+<p>Off Island of Hawaii, 13th September, 8 <small>A.M.</small></p>
+
+<p>We are lying off a little place, Keauhou, while people are landing in
+boats from the small steamer that carries us. The shore is broken with
+black lava rock, in beds that do not seem high, so flat are they on top.
+It is about eight o’clock, and the impression is of full sunlight on the
+green of everything. Behind the fringe of shore rises the big slope of
+the mountain seen in profile, so gigantic that one only sees a slice of
+it at a time; there are, of course, ravines up the hills, and trees and
+grass, but from my focus of the square, between the pillars of the roof
+of the upper deck, and seated by the guards I see rather shade broken
+with sunlight. The sea, of course, at the shore is glittering blue, but
+everything else that can cast a shade throws its edges upon the next; so
+that I see a black seaside broken up by lava rocks, and near them cocoa
+and palm, and some small wharves, or jetties, built out to protect the
+smaller beaches, that run back between the rocks. Each break of
+projection or recess has its trees, that make the fringe of shade with
+patches of sun, which the eye takes in along the water.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_34">{34}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There are a few houses strung along, half in light, half in shadow;
+three of them are tall grass huts, hay-coloured in the half-shade of the
+cocoanuts beside them. Above them are patches of sun on the green slope
+where the upper bank or slope behind first flattens into the strong
+light. In the shadow, faint whites and pinks and blacks on the dresses
+of people waiting for their friends, or watching the steamer. Their
+horses and mules and donkeys stand in rows along the houses&mdash;or
+walls&mdash;occasionally they pass into the sunshine. One girl in red runs
+(why, heaven only knows&mdash;time seems of no possible use), and as she
+rises over a rock in the sand, the sun catches her brown feet and legs
+and the folds of her floating gown.</p>
+
+<p>These people, I am told, have many of them ridden some miles from our
+last landing, at dawn, to meet us again. But there are special
+deliveries of people and freight at each place&mdash;so many and so much on
+board that one can hardly realize where they are stowed. Three full
+boatloads at the last place, and one here, of people jammed&mdash;dark
+Spanish faces, peacock feathers, and red veils on hats; coloured
+neckerchiefs, and head and shoulders covered with flowers or leaves that
+hang to the waist. There is loud objurgation and chattering, and keeping
+the children together, and holding up odds and ends of things not sent
+ashore by the other boats that carry goods and household furniture.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="ill_003">
+<a href="images/ill_005.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_005.jpg" width="550" height="291" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">BEGINNING OF DESERT, ISLAND OF HAWAII</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_35">{35}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Last night we were pretty full. Children and women lay in files on our
+deck by the guards, the children ill with the rolling, for we pass
+several channels between islands, each one a pretext for the wind to
+give us a dance. And in the steerage people lay like herrings. It was
+picturesque; a few Chinese, the rest Hawaiian, with much colour and
+abundance of flowers and leaves that they like, and all eating on the
+spot, apparently without moving&mdash;guitars playing&mdash;we had two guitars
+aboard, and part of the night and morning somebody strummed; sometimes a
+man appearing from a cabin, posing guitarero-way, touching a few chords
+and going away again. Once, some fellow playing, squatted on the deck,
+apparently for the baby, and the other babies, who inspected the guitar
+inquiringly and approvingly&mdash;sometimes some of the women. In the late
+afternoon, as the sun struck this mass of colour against a blue sea of
+unnamable blue, at least two dozen of the people all in colours were
+eating watermelon all red down to the rind. The appearance of a palette
+well littered was only a symbol to it. And there was one beauty with
+long nose and the rounded end suggesting the aquiline, the black
+eyebrows <i>under</i> the frontal bone, the pouting lip, and heavy chin and
+long slope of jaw, and what they all have, even the ugly (like the Jap
+girls), a pretty setting of ears and neck and black-hair’s growth. But
+the children were prettier. We had a<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_36">{36}</a></span> neighbour who had many and who
+looked so plaintive, and another, though sick, was jolly and smiling.
+And another was like a chieftain (or “chiefess”) with three great
+furrows down her forehead above her nose. But they all smiled with great
+sweetness, and I wish our women could do as much. All sullenness or
+sternness or disdain disappeared from the face. They talked in English,
+partly for convenience, but a little, I thought, for the gallery, the
+children mixing their languages, and their mothers gliding back
+occasionally to it. But the talk was just what it is
+everywhere&mdash;schools, and how dear, and what ideas are put into the
+children’s heads and whether there is a distinction between those who
+pay more or less, or have scholarships and something about prices in
+general. One is reading “Sabina Zembra” and we talk a little while the
+ship rolls, rendered sympathetic by suffering, and I am sure that two of
+my good ladies do not consider themselves <i>kanaka</i>, at least if I am to
+judge by their reference to <i>kanaka</i> and such like; but they are brown
+like berries, one light, the other sallow.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 150px">
+<a href="images/ill_006.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_006.jpg" width="150" height="144" alt=""></a>
+<br>“The Chiefess”</div>
+
+<p>Later in the afternoon I go forward in the dance of our pas<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_37">{37}</a></span>sage to the
+next island of Maui; the island lies before us across the sea, so
+sky-like that it is difficult to realize that the vast slopes are of
+earth; that the greenish hue, now and then, under the violet of the bank
+of heavy clouds, all brilliant and shining like satin, is not thicker
+air&mdash;just such tones make the island as with us make winter skies. Far
+off to the southeast stretches under clouds another line, that of the
+further Maui which ends above in Haleakala, the extinct volcano. As we
+draw near, the sun is setting, the jib and mainsail curving before us in
+shadow and light, as we drop a little to the south, repeat near to us
+the colours of the island and of the clouds. These hang far forward
+toward us, while the slope of green and peachy grey runs up behind it;
+and we glide soon into more quiet waters, and stop off the town of
+Lahaina. Then long hours are spent in unloading and loading, so that
+when we sail again, we only faintly see the mass of Haleakala. But in
+the morning, with the dawn which has no colour, but in which, to the
+east, stand up, in some sort of richer violet shade, the outlines of
+Hawaii, we see further the great slopes of Mauna Loa, so gentle that it
+is difficult to tell where the flat top is reached, and where the slopes
+begin again on the other side; and then we stop in the early sunlight. A
+fisherman comes up with fish; other boats (outriggers all) with fruit,
+and we see what I was telling you when I began to write. And later we
+have come to a great<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_38">{38}</a></span> bank of black rock running out to sea, and
+precipices of black spotted with a green all of one colour, which is
+where Cook was killed, and where they have put up a little monument to
+him. This is Kaawaloa. We try the land, for the roll of the ship is
+disagreeable, as it waits, and we run in over the transparent water. It
+is too deep just by the landing for anchorage. The sea jumps from light
+aquamarine to the colour of a peacock’s breast in the shadow. We go up
+the black lava that looks as if it had been run out on the road, not
+under it, and sit in the shade a moment, and exchange a few words with
+our fellow passengers now on land&mdash;a little flock of tired children and
+mother, and our “chiefess.” And it is hot&mdash;the heights have shut off the
+wind, and all is baking. Horses and donkeys, saddled, stand about near
+the shadow of fences, left to themselves, while the cargo is landed.
+Higher up on the heights some planters tell us it is cool. They wear
+enormous hats, and have a planter-like appearance that suggests our
+being different.</p>
+
+<p>As I look around on this green and black, and the few cocoanuts, and the
+dark blue-green olive water, I think that it is not an unlikely place
+for a man to have been killed in. The place has for Hawaiians another
+interest: it was once a great place, and the high cliffs have many holes
+where chiefs are buried, inaccessible and hidden. And a little way
+beyond was<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_39">{39}</a></span> a city of refuge&mdash;that is to say, a sacred city&mdash;where none
+who took refuge could be injured. Even though the enemy came rushing up
+to the last outlying landmark, the moment that it had been passed, the
+pursued was safe, and after having sojourned according to due rite,
+could depart in peace and safety.</p>
+
+<p>After this, and the same story of like places below the edge of the
+green table that slopes up to the sky and further on to the clouds, we
+stop, and the white boat takes our last passengers in the blue water;
+its white keel looking as if washed with blue. The people wait on the
+shore under less and less shadow, and on the other side we have now the
+enormous ocean opposed to this big slope, not as last evening, when
+always we had an island, now before, now behind, now to our side, as if
+we were in some inland sea. That is to say that now the sea occupies
+more than half of the whole circle that we can sweep, though we are only
+a few rods from shore. Do you realize the difference?</p>
+
+<p>At last we are on the outlying edge of the group, and will soon this
+afternoon round the island, and stop at the place where we take the road
+to the volcano of Kilauea.</p>
+
+<p class="spc">Sunday night.</p>
+
+<p>At the volcano of Kilauea.</p>
+
+<p>As I wrote I had no notion of the importance and eventful<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_40">{40}</a></span>ness of a
+landing at night. As we came around the hard black cape marked with lava
+flow it was already dark, so we could not distinctly see the shore,
+though above were great slopes and some buttresses and heavy hills
+standing out from the mass. We could see lights at the place called
+Punaluu, where we were to land. The steamer shrieked and stopped as we
+prepared to leave it and come down the companion ladder to the heavy
+boat dancing below it. Women were first dropped in, and one by one
+gradually we men jumped into the hollow, half packed with trunks and
+boxes and men balancing themselves in the rolling. Perhaps had I been
+more accustomed to these forms of landing I might have seen less of a
+picture; but when I had got down, and watched the next passengers from
+below, and danced high up to them, and heard them told “Now!” or “Not
+yet!” as we came too high or too low or struck the bottom of the ladder,
+(so as to make one wonder whether we should not capsize in a rougher
+sea), when I could look at their foreshortening, and saw the heavy lower
+forms of the <i>kanaka</i> ladies, under their flowing drapery, and then saw
+them tuck their one long outer garment between those legs in a great
+bunch, to be untied at the next step and heard their discussions, I
+enjoyed the play, even if I was part of it.</p>
+
+<p>The talk was in <i>kanaka</i>, but its meaning was plain: the two ladies
+objected to jumping just then or before or after, and it<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_41">{41}</a></span> was now too
+high, now too low, and in general they expressed all possible doubts
+regarding the process. One of them especially, whom I had seen much of
+during the day, a massive archaic person, with the manners and features
+that might have belonged to an Eve of some other, more cannibalistic
+tradition than ours, poured all this out with a voice heavier than the
+roar of the water or the grinding of the boat’s gunwale against the
+companionway and her declamation was answered by a chorus from the
+boatmen, with the accompaniment of shifting lights, so that my simile of
+a play was but natural.</p>
+
+<p>At length we were all stowed in and departed, one sailor still standing
+as he had from the beginning, balanced with a child in his arms. At the
+little wharf the scene was repeated on a small scale, while above us the
+one lantern lit the legs of an expectant multitude; and at length we
+were singled out by the host who was to take care of us, and who had the
+one single hotel or house, to which we were sent up with a lantern.</p>
+
+<p>Then we rested. Adams had suffered very much from the tossing, so much
+so as to make me anxious, and I too was much the worse for the wear of
+the last two hours of resting in harbour while waiting for boats to go
+out and return. We had some food and rooms given us by the Chinaman
+factotum, major-domo, cook, servant, etc.; and later our host appeared<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_42">{42}</a></span>
+in his shirt-sleeves, and asked our intentions and whether we were to go
+right off in the morning to the volcano. Having ascertained these facts,
+he selected one of the party&mdash;we were four, we three and some one
+else&mdash;and to this some one he poured out some information, mainly about
+the bad sides of the other way to the volcano&mdash;the Hilo way; its
+raininess, and in general all the wrongfulness of Hilo people. With that
+he also poured forth his bottom thoughts about the whole business that
+he had charge of, the idiotic way in which people travelled to see the
+volcano without sufficient practice on other volcanoes beforehand, so
+that invalids (he called them inwalids) found it difficult to ride on
+horseback, and some were sometimes thrown from mules, and in general he
+showed the folly of trusting to the advertisements of his own
+enterprise. For he is, I understand, a great man, who has this road and
+runs it. All this I absorbed before going to bed, so as to prepare for
+the next day, which began early with the Chinaman, and making for the
+train.</p>
+
+<p>The train is a little engine with two platforms on wheels, that runs to
+a plantation some few miles off. One platform had a roof for the gentry;
+the other was loaded with the common people, consisting of some Swedish
+women and children, some Hawaiians, and one or two young people who
+belonged to our side, but preferred riding thus, thereby escaping the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_43">{43}</a></span>
+smoke that we got. We had a watchman and a Chinaman on the engine. At
+the start we were requested to trim our weights. The Hawaiian lady who
+had been a tragedy the evening before, was on our side, and whatever
+side she had taken, that would have been the heavy one. But still we
+risked it, and ran along the little road which occasionally passed over
+trestling and did have something of a reason for trimming.</p>
+
+<p>The ride was lovely except for the smoke. We had left the shore at which
+we had landed the night before, for the car ran to the little jetty,
+where the sand was as black as ink&mdash;volcano dust, with a fringe of white
+like teeth. Then we slowly gained some heights, and saw behind us the
+great blue sea and white headlands; black lava looking grey in the
+sunshine, and to our left the great hills and slopes. And we ran by the
+sugar-cane and through a country with few or no trees, a great surface
+of up and down of moors, until we came to the plantation, where we
+stopped. Everybody had reached home except ourselves, and our accidental
+companion. We found a covered wagon with two mules and two horses, into
+which we were packed with difficulty, as our luggage was bulkier than is
+customary, owing to my not having been able to persuade our host to
+allow me to reship some that we did not want. He could not “fuss with
+such matters.” In fact he<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_44">{44}</a></span> was right. The whole affair is merely for the
+convenience of travellers; on the part of the people who undertake it,
+there is no need of it and one feels indebted to them for the courtesy
+they show in allowing one to pass through their place, even though they
+charge for the same.</p>
+
+<p>So we rolled slowly over the great downs, upon some sort of a trail,
+occasionally perturbed by some stones, or perhaps banked up with no
+incident. The great mountain was being covered with clouds, but the sea
+spread far below us, the capes at the corner, and the east of the shore
+glistening as if silvered, and white upon their local blackness. It was
+as Newport beaches might look upon a gigantic scale. Here and there a
+few trees (the <i>ohia</i>), stood up, orange-brown butterflies, Parnassians,
+flew continually across our path, spotting the entire landscape all busy
+with their loves. A few birds, plovers, I believe, rose at a distance,
+or flew across, or with a cry, peewits waved to and fro on the slopes
+below us.</p>
+
+<p>By and by, at noon, we came to more trees; the landscape became more
+shut in, the sea disappeared behind the slopes we were leaving, and we
+took lunch at a convenient shanty where we were well treated, and tasted
+the native <i>ohia</i> berries. Then we entered a rockier soil, much broken
+up, with much black dust, and with many trees, all small and as if lost,
+something like little back country lanes&mdash;anywhere.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_45">{45}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And this went on and on, and we walked sometimes, in despair of our
+mules and horses, driven by a driver who urged them with word and whip,
+and occasionally with stones, without being able to get them much out of
+a walk, broken by an occasional trot. Then things were colder, and on a
+landscape of no shape, with blocks of lava thrown over the soil as if by
+the spade of journeyman or maker of worlds; with ever so many queerly
+conventional trees,&mdash;the <i>ohia</i> before mentioned, which has yellow
+trumpet flowers&mdash;and many others; and at last many ferns, and more
+ferns, and the tree ferns. We saw on our right some cloudy forms of
+smoke rising toward the clouds of only a little warmer tint than they,
+and that was the smoke and steam of Kilauea&mdash;which was really below us,
+hidden under the edge of the desolate plateau we were driving on.</p>
+
+<p>Then we came to more vegetation and many ferns, and we suddenly saw the
+glance of a sulphur bank, yellow, green, and white, like the surface of
+certain beans; and we drove up toward the house that stands by the
+volcano. It was not yet dark, but dark enough to see confusedly the
+crater just below us, only a few yards away, a mass of black, and high
+walls around it, and three cones apparently in the distance, with steam
+about them, and steam issuing near them in many places, so that the
+further wall was dim. And steam near us<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_46">{46}</a></span> came out of crevices at our
+feet, and on our road, and a little everywhere, where ferns grew
+richer&mdash;and we had arrived.</p>
+
+<p>We went in to make our host’s acquaintance, and got our simple rooms in
+a sort of rough farmhouse, with doors opening on the verandah, and in
+front of the crater of the volcano. And we sat later at dinner, and
+after dinner by the fire (for a fire was pleasant in the damp, cold
+air), and heard him talk, and spoke to him about Mr. Dana’s book, and
+the changes in the crater, and all the volcano talk that can come out of
+the absorption of much reading and much hearing. Maby (our host) talks
+of danger to his children from the steam fissures just mentioned.</p>
+
+<p class="spc">Kilauea&mdash;The Volcano.</p>
+
+<p>Maby, the keeper of the hotel, is not the old gentleman of Dana’s book,
+but a person whom I should describe if I had the time. He is a New
+Yorker, and has been away since the early war, and has sailed about much
+in this part of the world. The type is a well known one to us, and
+amusing enough. He is married to a Hawaiian woman, also shrewd-looking,
+good-looking, reminding one of many people with us, with a high forehead
+and thick lips; and has many children who play about, and make the place
+seem less showlike.</p>
+
+<p>As we gather around the fireplace, Maby tells us stories of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_47">{47}</a></span> himself,
+and sailor yarns that interest us as regarding places we are looking to.
+One about Nukahiva has a flavour of Melville about it. It shows Maby
+landed there, and being told that he must (unless he wishes to behave
+suspiciously), report to the governor. This official receives the visit
+graciously, but requires a poll-tax of two dollars, not asking directly,
+but by the proper channel. Maby states that two dollars he has not, but
+offers to work it out; whereat he is taken at his word, and helps toward
+the completion, carpentering and painting, of the governor’s house; and
+after some long stay, at fair wages, offers to deduct his two dollars.
+But no, says the governor, he is now in government employ, and not
+liable to taxation.</p>
+
+<p>In connection with this story, in my sleepy memory, is one of some
+expedition, with the governor and his army of <i>one</i> gendarme (“jenny dee
+arms,” Maby calls it), into the interior, or, rather, along the shore,
+for the purpose of levying the tax. Money there is none at the first
+place they come to, so that the gendarme is ordered to take a pig or so
+in payment. But the country has been aroused. Men come flocking down
+with old flint-guns, a retreat along the beach to the boat is ordered,
+and the pigs are abandoned on the way. All this was capital, as was
+Maby’s delight at the absurdity of some savage who knew not of gold, and
+to whom an Englishman gave a piece of gold instead of silver. As he
+complained, Maby relieved<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_48">{48}</a></span> him of his anxiety by taking it and giving
+him the desired shilling.</p>
+
+<p>With many stories we sat up and went late to bed, looking out on a
+darkish night, wherein two slight illuminations at a distance meant the
+light of the volcano. But nothing looked propitious. Dana Lake was
+quiet; there was only a little fire on the edges of the lake. Maby spoke
+as if something must happen elsewhere from the quiet of the volcano
+here.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning Adams woke me out of sound sleep; the air was cold, damp,
+and the room decidedly so during the night. As I came out the sun was
+rising. Before us was the volcano, still in shadow, but the walls of the
+crater lit up pink in the sun, and farther out the long line of Mauna
+Loa appearing to come right down to these cliffs, all clear and lit up
+except for the shadow of one enormous cloud that stretched half across
+the sky. The floor of the crater, of black lava, was almost all in
+shadow, so that as it stretched to its sunlit walls it seemed as if all
+below was shadow. In the centre of the space smoked the cones that rise
+from the bed of the crater. Through this vapour we saw the further
+walls, and on the other side of the flow, as it sloped away from us,
+more steam marked the lava openings at Dana Lake, invisible to us.</p>
+
+<p>We sketched that day and lounged in the afternoon, the rain coming down
+and shutting out things; but in the noon I</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="ill_004">
+<a href="images/ill_007.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_007.jpg" width="550" height="302" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">CENTRAL CONE OF VOLCANO OF KILAUEA, HAWAII</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_49">{49}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">was able to make a sketch in the faint sunlight; and that was of no
+value, but as I looked and tried to match tints, I realized more and
+more the unearthly look that the black masses take under the light. A
+slight radiance from these surfaces of molten black glass gives a
+curious sheen, that far off in tones of mirage does anything that light
+reflected can do, and fills the eye with imaginary suggestions. Hence
+the delightful silver; hence the rosy coldness, that had made fairylands
+for us of the desert aridity. But nearer, the glitter is like that of
+the moon on a hard cold night, and the volcano crater I shall always
+think of as a piece of dead world, and far away in the prismatic tones
+of the mountain sides, I shall see a revelation of the landscapes of the
+moon.</p>
+
+<p>Late in the afternoon the young Australian, or whatever he was, who had
+been with us, went down with a guide into the crater, and returned
+toward ten o’clock with a story that Dana Lake had broken. He had seen
+the grey surfaces move and tumble over like ice pack into the fire, and
+we were proportionately curious to see and unwilling to go. For I must
+own that it has been rather out of duty than otherwise that we have been
+here. Neither of us cares for climbing, and certainly the pleasure of
+seeing fire near by must be very exciting to amount to pleasure. Yet we
+went next day and toiled down to the surface of the crater, which is
+accessible<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_50">{50}</a></span> from our side by a zigzag path. By and by one gets to the
+surface of the crater, which rises to the centre and (when one is on it)
+shows nothing but a desolate labyrinth of rocks. We walk over this
+tiresome surface that destroys the sole of the boot, following more or
+less in single file, because of crevasses that are deep, and at the end
+of a walk of some three miles, we approach the cones that rise high
+above us, perhaps seventy feet. Maby says that they are higher than they
+were, for this whole surface of lava is movable, and parts of it like
+the cones float over a molten surface underneath. Think of it as glass
+and you will just get the simile that it makes mentally. To the eyes it
+is rock; around the cones there are loose disorderly rocks piled up like
+loose stones in a fence&mdash;absolutely like it, which loose formation is
+called <i>a-a</i> in Hawaiian, as the flowing, smooth lava, on which we have
+mainly walked, is called <i>pa-hoe-hoe</i>. Some of it is in crusts that are
+hollow to the tread, and that give way suddenly, to one’s annoyance, for
+it is hard to realize that it is still solid underneath. Especially as
+here our guide points out a small cone about a mile off, sticking out of
+a confusion or heap of broken rocks, or above the broken rocks that are
+before us and below us, for we are now walking on a colossal loose stone
+fence&mdash;far off, I say, in this confusion is a single cone, with a red
+glow in it. And now we cross a little more fence; the smooth and crusty
+sur<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_51">{51}</a></span>face is hot to the feet; we look down and see grey and red lines in
+the cracks below us that are fire; and then a few feet off, we look into
+and between some rocks, and see the lava flowing along, exactly like
+glass when it is cooling and growing red from former whiteness, a slow,
+viscous, sticky dropping into some hole below. Then we go back quickly
+and paddle along toward the other slope of the floor, where steam is
+rising; and by and by, as the light is waning after our two hours’ walk,
+we get within a short distance of the wall edge, and see a space
+apparently near higher rocks, some seventy feet high, I am told, which
+is Dana Lake. There is now only vapour; sulphurous fumes that float up
+and obscure the distance, and go up into the skies. But as the twilight
+begins, fires come out and the space is edged with fire that sometimes
+colours the clouds of vapour. At one side a small cone stands up, that
+burns with an eye of red fire. From time to time this opening spits out
+to one side a little vicious blotch of fire. The clouds of vapour rise
+so as to blur the distance, but near by the rocks are clear enough, and
+either black, or further off where they are cliffs, are greenish yellow
+with sulphur. Sizes become uncertain. I could swear that this lake was a
+thousand feet long and the cliffs were five hundred feet; but Awoki and
+the guide, walking along, reduce the lake to real proportions. Then it
+is only a small lake of some hundred and fifty to two<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_52">{52}</a></span> hundred feet,
+perhaps. But the impression still remains&mdash;all is so thrown out of
+reference. The hole is so uncanny; the sky above, purple with the yellow
+of the afterglow, and partly covered by the yellowish tone of the
+hellish vapour, looks high up above us. I sit (and sketch) on the absurd
+rocks, and then we wait for something to happen. It has become night; we
+determine to give up hope of the breaking up of the lake, and we start.
+We have lanterns, but gradually these go out, and we have only one that
+has to be cherished, and we scramble along. By and by we halt, and
+looking back see greater lights, and our guide says that the lake has
+broken out. Still we are disinclined to return on the chance, for the
+vapours exaggerate everything; and after much scrambling we get back to
+the edge of the crater, after a seven hours’ tramp. As we go up the
+ascent the fires seem larger, and our host and the guides say that there
+is some breaking out. Still we are in doubt; we are disappointed and
+tired. And still I should not go back unless the most extraordinary
+conflagration occurred. Besides the undefined terror and spookiness of
+the thing, there is great boredom. There is nothing to take hold of, as
+it were&mdash;no centre of fire and terror&mdash;only inconvenience and a faint
+fear of one thing&mdash;but what?</p>
+
+<p>But even without fire, the remainder of those dread hollows is something
+to affect the mind. Judge Dole was telling us</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="ill_005">
+<a href="images/ill_008.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_008.jpg" width="550" height="257" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">CRATER OF KILAUEA AND THE LAVA BED. HAWAII</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_53">{53}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">that he could not get out of his memory his having looked down the
+hollow of the pit of Halemaumau, then just extinct, and having seen an
+inverted hollow cone all in motion, with rock and débris rolling down to
+some indefinite centre far below.</p>
+
+<p>I still have (as I write at Hilo) the scent of sulphur in my memory.
+From time to time, in our ride to Hilo next morning, this smell would
+come up, perhaps in reality. That was a bad ride, all over a sort of
+lava bed like a mountain torrent. Then it ended in the beginning of a
+road of red earth, soft and spongy, and up to the bellies of the horses.
+There we met, after fifteen miles of it, a carriage and horses that took
+us to Hilo, over a pretty road through a pretty tropical forest, to this
+little old place, the abode of quiet and cocoanut trees, where are very
+pleasant people; among them M. Furneaux, the artist, who shows us
+sketches, and talks to me of what I sympathize with&mdash;the being driven to
+means unusual to us, when we try to give an impression of the tone of
+colour here.</p>
+
+<p class="spc">Ride from Hilo around the east of Island of Hawaii, September 19th to
+22d.</p>
+
+<p>It will be difficult to give you an account of our ride. As to the
+places, the names are indifferent, I think, and if I occasionally
+mention them, it is more for my own help than for yours.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_54">{54}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Our ride was to be certainly for three days and more, over what is known
+as a very bad road; up and down through the gulches that edge the shore,
+breaking the line of our travel, and making little harbours where the
+surf ran in to meet the little torrents or runs that hurried to them in
+cascades or waterfalls. It was, for the first day or so, beautiful; not
+so very grand, except that the simplicity of the scene, consisting of
+the sea, high rocks, and some little river running down, had always that
+importance that belongs to the typical. Time and time again we had the
+high rocky banks of the little bays covered with trees; then in the
+centre of the shore, a little half island, with tall cocoanuts, and on
+one or both sides of it, the torrent and cascade rushing down, and the
+surf running in in a great lacelike spread over the black sand.</p>
+
+<p>Once when I stopped to sketch for an hour or so, I enjoyed the essence
+of a type of scene that is with difficulty described, though every one
+knows it, and with difficulty painted, though any one might attempt it.
+From the hillside hidden in trees came over some very low rocks a
+cascade of two rills, and at its feet lay a little sheet of water, of
+perhaps some fifty yards in length and very narrow. On either side high
+rocks crowned with great ferns and much moss, and behind the few
+<i>lauhala</i> (pandanus) trees upon them, and great banana leaves in some
+hollow. The rocks were black, spotted with green and white,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_55">{55}</a></span> and at
+their feet ran a little rim of sand. This for the land end of the basin.
+At the open sea end high rocks running far out into headlands, with many
+trees and bushes, so as to make walls, along which the sea rushed
+heavily to some little bar, at one end of which, on a small bluff with
+huts, grew a few cocoanut trees tossing in the wind: one would wish
+there were more. And the sea running far up over this sand melted with a
+cross current into the run of the little stream, so gently that each
+looked like a separate tide. Here the road crossed the ford, coming on
+either side from high-up banks. Near the rocks were the marked edges of
+the road, and up the stream, canoes, with white ends like the cusp of
+the moon, and white outriggers protected with thatch, lay on the grass.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 67px">
+<a href="images/ill_009.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_009.jpg" width="67" height="150" alt=""></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>As I sat on some wet rocks near the sea, to sketch, I could see what
+happened during the day. Some wayfarer came down the slope, pushed
+across the stream his horse that put down its head to taste the brackish
+water; children and older natives crossed barefooted the less deep
+water; high up, some practised native in best dress, crossed at some
+well-known ford by adding a few stones. Later, loud cries, and the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_56">{56}</a></span>
+noise of a sail coming down. I could see them without looking, for I had
+to paint hard with my face turned the other way, and hurried by
+occasional showers. For our sky was all cloudy and wet, though faint
+drops of sunshine fell also here and there. But the horizon, as I sat so
+low, was all clear of that unearthly blue of the islands, against which
+danced the grey sea, and the triple line of grey surf, white perhaps
+otherwise, but dull against such a clearness of green aquamarine air.</p>
+
+<p>Then the fishermen landed on the rocks and showed their fish, and all
+rushed that way, all but the girl who had come to sit behind me, and
+followed my work, perhaps to see what I was trying to make out. But she
+too succumbed when a half naked man held up a silvery fish of some
+mackerel shape right before me and her, and she ran off to the house
+near the cocoanut trees. Then the fishermen took off their ragged
+clothes, and washed them in the stream, within a foot or so of the
+tide-water; great strapping fellows when out of their clothes, with
+heavy muscles, splendid and brown like nuts, and sometimes with red
+<i>breech-clouts</i>, that brought out the olive of the wet skin. Then they
+bathed, plunging in the deeper channel, where the waves of their
+movement married the tide of the sea with the current of the stream. And
+later an old man with peaked grey beard sat down and washed his clothes,
+then walked in and lay down, he too as handsome in his naked<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_57">{57}</a></span>ness, as he
+had looked broken down in his shabby clothes. Then he rose and slowly
+put on the wet clothes, to reappear later in a cleaner dress.</p>
+
+<p>And a Chinaman charged across the stream on his mule, splashing the
+water about him. Then as the fishermen were gone, and all the boys and
+the women, probably to their meal just caught, all noise ceased, except
+the rush of the surf and the ripple of the tide, and in some interval
+the trickling of the little cascade. Above, the wind rustled at times
+the palms. Noonday and rest had come. And I left my work, and again on
+horseback trudged along the impossible road.</p>
+
+<p class="spc">Sunday 21st.</p>
+
+<p>As I went up the bank, a small furtive animal like a weasel ran up the
+perpendicular face of the big rock by the waterfall. It was a mongoose,
+an animal of a race imported to destroy the pest of rats, and now a
+plague in itself, and an example of the eternal story.</p>
+
+<p>The lower part of the sky was clear, with small pearly clouds, the upper
+yet covered with heavy mist, so that the ocean was framed as above, and
+occasionally the view confined on the sides by the projecting rocks of
+the gulches, into which ran the sea and surf. Once, at Onomea, the cliff
+was hollowed into a great arch, beyond which the rock, all green<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_58">{58}</a></span> with
+foliage, rose further out. Whether framed in by such cliffs, or
+stretched out beyond a single gaze, the ocean accompanied us most of the
+time&mdash;the <i>ocean</i>, distinctly, not recalling the seas of our shores, but
+the <i>great sea</i>, hiding the secret of its blue dyes in depths of full
+three thousand fathoms. And over its blue ran a perpetual story. Rarely
+during our few days was the whole surface under one influence. We saw
+faint mists and rain-clouds brushed over the water, often separated by
+intervals of sunny sapphire; the sky above still lit up and peaceful.
+Sometimes a part of the ocean was wiped out and became sky; sometimes
+great bars of grey broke across it; and again, as these rolled over the
+stilled edge of the waves, rainbows shone either where they joined the
+sea, or through their entire height, up into the upper air. For this
+great deceptive space seemed at our distance so peaceful, even when we
+could see the surf dashing in folds on the rocks and black beaches.
+Sometimes a solitary whitecap dotted it, or when the wind blew more,
+many spots of broken light threw a rosy bloom over the enchanted
+surface. Islands of reflected light, islands of purple shadow repeated
+the clouds above, and often the parent cloud, along with its reflected
+lights and its shadows, touched and melted into the waves, making
+enclosures, within which the eye could see vaguely, a trembling
+repetition of light and dark; and sometimes, perhaps most when</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="ill_006">
+<a href="images/ill_010.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_010.jpg" width="550" height="504" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">MEN BATHING IN THE RIVER NEAR THE SEA. ONOMEA, ISLAND OF
+HAWAII</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_59">{59}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">seen as a background to some trees or rocks, or grey native hut, with a
+figure in waving red or white framed in the blue opening through it, the
+distance and the sky melted into mere spaces of slightly different
+colour.</p>
+
+<p>The eye never tired of this surface of blue below a greener sky, that
+repeated in the air that colour of greenness (blue-tint shade) that
+rests the sight. On land, meanwhile, our roads were good or bad, mostly
+bad, but not the terrors that we had heard of. Our poor nags struggled
+through deep mud at times, or slipped up and down in the rocks and loose
+stones of the gulches, or floundered in the river-beds, dropping up and
+down as they found footing on hidden boulders, or cantered in a tired
+way over some little piece of road near plantations. But their attention
+was mostly engaged in stepping along over the half-dried road, looking
+and feeling like our old “corduroy” roads, the logs being represented by
+bars of higher and drier mud. Over these we rose and sank, and I had
+plenty of time to meditate upon the idiocy of that sentimental animal,
+the horse, and his relative want of judgment. Never did our beasts step
+in any reasoned way upon these alternations of ground, though the little
+mule of our guide, as he trotted ahead, never going very fast, never
+very slow, showed his romantic relatives what pure intellect, devoid of
+emotions, can do in the practical line. With such nonsense I perforce
+diverted my<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_60">{60}</a></span> mind, when confined within the limits of the road. But our
+horses had plenty of rest; we took four whole days for those ninety
+miles, stopping to sketch, and going to ask for lunch or dinner, and
+bed, at the plantations on our road. The only difficulty seemed to be
+our own hesitation at the impudence of our requests. But this is the
+custom. Our visit had been telephoned ahead by acquaintances; for the
+telephone, that most citylike of our contrivances, goes around the
+island, joining together places that are difficult to reach and out of
+the way.</p>
+
+<p>And so we met pleasant people by chance, and heard about things
+accidentally by way of conversation, and were most kindly treated.
+Indeed, when on one occasion our amiable hostess asked us to remain over
+night, and we had listened to German music, and had talked with the
+doctor in charge of the plantations, and our host himself arrived from
+the fields, it seemed hard to go and break our feeling of content.
+Perhaps I ought to tell you something about the plantations, but that is
+too much like information&mdash;and what do you need it for? All that we saw
+was sugar, which occupies the east coast; on the other side of the
+island, as different as the other side of the continent, there are
+cattle ranches, and we were told that most of the sugar land that is
+available has been taken already. Most of the low land, I suppose; for
+the upper<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_61">{61}</a></span> land further from the sea is often reclaimed and used, but it
+is less favourable. The yield by the acre below, at the highest, has
+been about eight tons, while the upper is not more than five; all this
+upon land which a few years ago was forest&mdash;wide downs now&mdash;covered
+either with sugar-cane or grass, and dotted with trees, were all covered
+to the sea edge, which, where I write now is a cliff fully eight hundred
+feet high.</p>
+
+<p>The sugar plantations employ many Chinese and Japanese labourers, of
+whom there are a good many thousand, and we saw on two occasions “camps”
+of Japanese, as they are called. In the shops or stores attached to one
+plantation (as in others), I saw the Japanese costume again, for men and
+women&mdash;the <i>kimono</i> and the <i>obi</i> and the <i>geta</i> or wooden clogs; of
+course they are mostly peasants or of low class, as I could easily
+surmise without inquiring, by Awoki’s manner. “They are great children,”
+says our good lady to me, and the doctor at one residence has much to
+say about the anomalous position he stands in with regard to them and
+others. He is employed by the government to inspect them, as well as
+other hands, to see that they are not made to work in illness, and he
+also examines the flock, in the interest of the employers, to see that
+they do not shirk. The result is that he is a physician who cannot trust
+the word of his patient about his ailings, after his patient has made up
+his mind to be ill, who if one ailing is<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_62">{62}</a></span> dismissed, will call up as
+many as may seem available&mdash;and inscrutable. I am told that the Japanese
+illness, <i>kakke</i>, or as they call it here, <i>biri biri</i>, persists among
+them. It is a form of slow paralysis, having its premonitory symptoms;
+sometimes to be cured, but not often. The patients, not white, have the
+better chance if they be under competent care, for the government gives
+free medical attention, and I understood that many avail themselves of
+it who could as well pay.</p>
+
+<p>I need not say that the great tariff question is that of the moment;
+free sugar with us will shake the Hawaiian tree, and weaker planters
+will go to the wall. I always feel regret when I see all put into one
+chance, so liable to fluctuation, and it is to be hoped that coffee,
+which here is excellent, may succeed and grow more available. I take it
+that the difficulty is always in the picking, and that there may be
+chance for some improvement in the facility.</p>
+
+<p class="spc">September 22d.</p>
+
+<p>Our last sugar plantation took us to the edge of the great valley of
+Waipio, from one to two thousand feet deep, at the further and higher
+inland end of which drops a great waterfall; from its outside sea-cliffs
+trickle down others from the lesser height of eight hundred. But all was
+wrapped in mist,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_63">{63}</a></span> for at this point of our ride we had almost the only
+bad weather of the trip. Here we turned toward the other side of the
+island, across great downs and spreads of land like those we had seen on
+first landing on the island. We were out of the rainy influence. The
+whole spread of the landscape was that of dryness; of the “Sierras”; we
+rode at first through vast fields or spreads of green, where the path
+was marked by the rooting of the pigs, who here run loose and grow wild.
+A great mountain slope rose to our left&mdash;Mauna Kea&mdash;and as we dipped to
+the sea we had Mount Hualalai to continue it. But that was after we had
+stopped on our last day’s ride in a dry country, where distances swam in
+the pale colours that belong to the volcanoes and the desert, while near
+us green marked the foreground.</p>
+
+<p>We rested and dreamed in midday, at some hospitable residence, from
+whose verandah, in the great heat, we saw Hawaiians coursing recklessly
+about in the way you would like to ride; and cattle on many hills; while
+the young ladies in the shade made garlands (<i>leis</i>) for us to wear
+around our necks and hats on our last ride to the shore. Adams and I
+rode slowly down, a mile behind the others, in the blazing afternoon, a
+most delicious air breaking the heat; with that same sense of space that
+had accompanied our first day ashore. And as the sun set like a clear
+ball of fire over the blue sea, and sent rosy<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_64">{64}</a></span> flickerings to the shore,
+we came down to the edges of the bay.</p>
+
+<p>Above us to the left rose a hill crowned with the remains of some one
+building that trailed down its side, still red in the sunlight. To our
+right were palms and black sand and enclosures, apparently deserted, and
+with an afterglow like that of Egypt, a look of desolate Africa. In the
+dark we passed over the black sand, and behind the trees through which
+the moon moved restlessly in the water, and came up to an absurd little
+hotel kept by a Chinaman, where we dismounted among black pigs charging
+about, and bade good-bye to amiable Mr. Much, our guide, who had
+preceded us.</p>
+
+<p>Then we met, at tea, the manager of the last place (Waimea) we had dined
+at. He told me of what I had missed by not getting in in the
+morning&mdash;the shipping of the steers, which are parked out on the shore,
+then singled out and lassoed by the “boys,” whom they rush after into
+the sea, where it is the horse and rider’s business to get them to the
+boats. To these their heads are secured, and they are rowed off
+swimming, willy-nilly, to the steamers, into which some contrivance
+hoists them.</p>
+
+<p>These cattle came, I understand, from the great ranch of Mr. Sam Parker
+up in the mountains, a wealthy Hawaiian of partly white blood, whose
+name is well known besides as giving hospitality in a lordly way in his
+lonely domain.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_65">{65}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And in the evening we waited for the steamer, not in the house of refuge
+and food, where water was scarce, and where poor Mr. Much could get
+nothing to eat, as being too late; but near by, under a verandah or wide
+canopy of palm branches lit up by the moonlight. There we listened to
+Hawaiian music&mdash;while our older hosts sat on the mats&mdash;melancholy chants
+adapted to European airs, and among them one apparently original, a sad,
+romantic sort of cakewalk, to which one could fancy dusky savage
+warriors keeping time, with many foliage-adorned feet, and hands tossed
+up and pointing out. It was called the March of Kamehameha (the old
+conqueror of these islands), and I let myself understand that it was a
+reproduction of the veritable sounds that once celebrated his triumphs
+and mastery over these islands; from which dates the royalty now
+existing, though his royal race itself is extinct.</p>
+
+<p>And we, too, stretched on the mats brought out, and listened to lazy
+talk in the language, until the steamer came, when all walked down in
+time to the wharf, after the sheep and the freight had been put on
+board, and we rowed out on the water smooth as that of a lake, to the
+little steamer, and later went to bed and waited until morning, when we
+steamed for the next port and thence to Honolulu, and our own house in
+the valley.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_66">{66}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We met on board many pleasant people, and among others a former
+neighbour, though unknown, who is now one of the few American
+missionaries in the Islands. These, I think he told me, are all that
+remain who are salaried from America. He spoke to us about Mr. Hyde,
+whom Mr. Stevenson had been attacking, as if he belonged to him by his
+name; and explained how exaggerated was the notion of this gentleman’s
+affluence. All, I understand, that he gets, besides what his wealthy
+family allow him (and for that he could not be held responsible), is
+some two thousand five hundred a year and his residence&mdash;surely not a
+large amount. I have not myself read all that Mr. Stevenson has written,
+so that I have but a vague idea of the question, but my informant tells
+me that Father Damien, as is well understood, was no saint, and that two
+pastors had told him of things that looked wrong. These are themselves
+rather vague to the outsider, but much weight seemed to attach to them
+with our informant&mdash;a gentlemanly person, who looked little like the
+usual clergyman, and had a brave air of the church militant about him.
+But it was more pleasant to talk to him about St. Gaudens, whom he knew,
+and about what he had done of late years; for everywhere we find that
+there are others who know friends; and the desert of Gobi alone would be
+without home associations.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_67">{67}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="spc">At Sea, Oct. 2, 1890.</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday we crossed the equator; it was cool and pleasant, as lovely as
+one could wish. In the evening I found an overcoat comfortable. To-day
+it is more salty and cloudy, wind behind us more from the north;
+indefinable blue sea that looks grey against the delicate blue and
+silver of the sky, but near by, under the guards, it is like a greener
+lapis lazuli.</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday, as I wrote, we crossed the equator, and left it with
+disrespect behind us, almost unnoticed&mdash;the Line, as they used to call
+it. And soon we shall have dropped the sun also, which would, were there
+no clouds, no abundant awnings, leave us with diminished shadows,
+insufficient to cover our feet. And at the thought of dropping him, the
+old Taoist wish of getting outside the points of the compass comes over
+me, the feeling that leads me to travel. Can we never get to see things
+as they are, and is there always a geographical perspective? Should I
+reach Typee shall I find it invaded by others? Shall I find everywhere
+the company of our steamers?</p>
+
+<p>On Sunday morning we shall be dropped into a boat off Tutuila, some
+sixty miles away from the Samoa to which we go. How long we stay as I
+told you, I do not know, but we think of Tahiti later, and even other
+places, that I dare not think of, for I must return some day. But before
+that day, I wish to have seen a Fayaway sail her boat in some other
+Typee.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_68">{68}</a></span></p>
+
+<hr class="dbl">
+<h2><a id="PASSAGES_FROM_A_DIARY_IN_THE_PACIFIC"></a>PASSAGES FROM A DIARY IN THE PACIFIC</h2>
+<hr>
+
+<h2><a id="SAMOA"></a>SAMOA</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">Off the island of Tutuila, on Board the Cutter Carrying Mail,
+Tuesday, Oct. 7, 1890 (Samoan Time).</p></div>
+
+<p>The morning looked rainy with the contrary northwest wind that we had
+carried with us below the equator, when the shape of the little cutter
+that was to take us showed between the outstanding rocks of the coast of
+Tutuila. As the big steamer slowed up, a few native boats came out to
+meet it, manned with men paddling and singing in concert, some of them
+crowned with leaves, and wearing garlands about their necks, their naked
+bodies and arms making an indescribable red colour against the blue of
+the sea, which was as deep under this cloudy sky, but not so brilliant
+as under yesterday’s sun. They came on board, some plunging right into
+the sea on their way to the companion ladder, bringing fruit and
+curiosities for sale. But our time had come; and we could only give a
+glance at the splendid nakedness of the savages adorned by fine
+tattooing that looked like silk, and with waist drapery of brilliant
+patterns. We dropped into the dancing boat that waited for us and
+scrambled into the little cutter or schooner some thirty feet long, not
+very skilfully managed, that was to</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="ill_007">
+<a href="images/ill_011.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_011.jpg" width="550" height="373" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">FAYAWAY SAILS HER BOAT. SAMOA</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_69">{69}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">take us sixty miles against the wind to Apia. A few minutes, and the
+steamer was far away; and we saw the boats of the savages make a red
+fringe of men on the waves that outlined the horizon&mdash;a new and strange
+sensation, a realizing of the old pictures in books of travel and the
+child traditions of Robinson Crusoe.</p>
+
+<p>Our crew was made up of the captain, a brown man from other and far-away
+islands, and two blacks, former cannibals from Solomon Islands, with
+gentle faces and manners, and rings of ivory in their noses. Our captain
+spoke of hurry, and used strange words not clear to understand in his
+curious lingo; but after an hour or so of heavy rain he announced his
+intention to beat in again and wait for some change of wind. And so we
+ran into a little harbour high with mountains, all wooded as if with
+green plumage, cornered by a high rock standing far out, on which stood
+out, like great feathers, a few cocoa-palms. Palms fringed the shore
+with shade. A blue-green sea ran into a thin line of breakers&mdash;like one
+of the places we have always read of in “Robinson Crusoe” and similar
+travellers: “A little cove with the surf running in, and a great swell
+on the shore.” Our cutter was anchored; then, as we declined to remain
+on board, either in the rain or in the impossible little cabin about
+eight feet long, we were taken into the boat, which was skilfully
+piloted through an opening in the inside reef; and, the surf being high,
+we were<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_70">{70}</a></span> carried to shore on the backs of two handsome fellows whose
+canoe had come alongside. We walked up to the church, a curious long,
+low building behind the cocoa-palms; all empty, with thatched roofs and
+walls of coral cement; the doorway open, with two stones to block out
+casual straying pigs, I suppose. Inside I saw a long wooden trough,
+blocked out of a tree. I did not know that this was the old war-drum of
+pagan times, now used for the Christian bell.</p>
+
+<p>Behind the church, a few yards off, was our destination&mdash;a Samoan
+“grass-house,” the guest-house of the village, as I know now. It was
+thatched with sugar-cane leaves, was elliptical, with a turtle-backed
+roof, supported by pillars all around, and by three central pillars that
+were connected by curved beams, from which hung cocoanut cups and
+water-bottles, or which supported rolls of painted bark cloth. The
+pebble floor showed at places not covered with the mats, as well as near
+the centre pillars, where a fire still smoked. Most of the screens of
+matting, which make the only wall between the pillars, were down, making
+a gentle shade, in which one woman was sleeping; another, on the
+opposite side to us, her back turned and naked to the waist, was working
+at large folds of bark cloth. The women rose from this occupation, and
+offered their hands, saying, “<i>alofa!</i>”<a id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> A younger woman <span class="pagenum"><a id="page_71">{71}</a></span>was lying
+sick, her wrapped-up head on the Samoan pillow of a long bamboo,
+supported at either end, so as to free it from the ground.</p>
+
+<p>With the same “<i>alofa</i>” came an elegant young creature, perhaps some
+sixteen years old, wearing a gay waist drapery of flowered pattern, red,
+yellow, and purple&mdash;with a loose upper garment or chemise of red and
+violet&mdash;open at the sides. Then another, short and strong, with heavy
+but handsome arms and legs, and with bleared eyes. And we sat down on
+the mats, the girls cross-legged, and looked at each other while the
+captain talked, I know not what of.</p>
+
+<p>As I changed my seat and sat near the entrance with my back against the
+pillars, which is the Samoan fashion, though I did not know it, another
+tall creature entered, and giving us her hand with the “<i>alofa</i>” sat
+down against another pillar&mdash;also the proper dignified Samoan way. We
+did not notice her much; she was quieter, less pretty than the pretty
+one, with a longer face, a nose more curved at the end, a longer upper
+lip, and more quietly dressed in the same way. Then entered another with
+a disk-shaped face, her hair all plastered white with the coral lime
+they use to redden the hair, and dressed as the others, with the same
+bare arms and legs. She was heavy and strong below, and less developed
+above, with the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_72">{72}</a></span> same splendid walk and swing, the same beauty of the
+setting of the head on the neck.</p>
+
+<p>And we drank cocoanut milk, while <i>kava</i> was being prepared for us in an
+enchantment of movement and gesture, that I had just begun to feel, as
+if these people had cultivated art in movement and personal gesture,
+because they had no other plastic expression.</p>
+
+<p>The movements of the two girls preparing the stuff would have made
+Carmencita’s swaying appear conventional; so, perhaps, angels and
+divinities, when they helped mortals in the kitchen and household. As
+the uglier girl scraped the root into the four-legged wooden bowl set
+between the two, in front of us, and before the central pillars, she
+moved her hand and body to a rhythm distinctly timed; and when her
+exquisite companion took it up, and, wetting the scraped root from
+double cocoanut shells, that hung behind her, moved her arms around in
+the bowl and wiped its rim, and frothed the mass with a long wisp of
+leafy filaments, she tossed the wet bunch to her companion, as if
+finishing some long cadence of a music that we could not hear, too slow
+to be played or sung, too long for anything but the muscles of the body
+to render. And she who received it, squeezed it out with a gesture fine
+enough for Mrs. Siddons or Mademoiselle Georges. I use these names of
+the stage, of which I have no fixed idea; those<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_73">{73}</a></span> that I have seen could
+never have given, even in inspired moments of passion, such a sinuous
+long line to arm and hand. Then in a similar repetition of conventional
+attitudes the cups were presented to us, one after the other, with a
+great under-sweep of the full-stretched arm, and we drank the curious
+drink, which leaves the taste filled with an aroma not unlike the
+general aromatic odour of all around us, of flowers and of shrubs. For
+all was clean and dry about us, house and surroundings and crowded
+people, at least to the senses that smell.</p>
+
+<p>&#160; </p>
+
+<p>In the slow hypnotism produced by mutual curiosity, by gazing with
+attention all centred on movement, while pretending to notice all the
+social matters as they went on about us, I could not disentangle myself
+from the girl who had bewitched us; and as she sat clasping her elbows,
+with her legs crossed in her lap, like the images of Japanese Kwannon
+and of Indian goddesses, I tried to copy a few lines. But the original
+ones flowed out again like water, before I could fix them. My model was
+conscious of the attention she called up, and from that moment her eyes
+always met ours, with a flirting smile, half of encouragement, half of
+shyness.</p>
+
+<p>And now the tall girl that sat beside me, with the quiet face and
+unquiet eyebrows, put out her hand languidly to reach<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_74">{74}</a></span> for my
+sketch-book. She was the “virgin of the village”&mdash;doubly important by
+being the old chief’s daughter, and elected to this representative
+position, which entails, at least, the inconvenience of her being always
+watched, guided, and intimately investigated by the matrons appointed
+thereto. The lines of my sketch, that would have puzzled the ordinary
+amateur, were clear to her: “See,” she said, “here is Sifá, clasping her
+elbows, but her face is not made. Draw me,” and she moved away the
+hanging mats that obscured the light. The sketch I made was bad,
+representing to my mind a European with strange features. I don’t know
+what she thought of it, but she recognized the chemise with ruffles on
+edges, that covered her shoulders, and made the motion of lifting it
+away, which I was slow to understand. Her eyebrows moved with some
+question for which I had no English in my mind. At last the word
+<i>misonari?</i> as she looked toward Adams, explained what was meant; I said
+“no,” and looked approval. She rose, passed into the shade, and sat
+again before me, her upper garment replaced by a long, heavy garland of
+leaves and the aromatic square-sided fruit of the pandanus, that partly
+covered her firm young breast, and lay in her lap against the folds of
+the bent waist. But my drawing was scarcely better for all this, and I
+gave it to her, with the feeling that what made it bad for me, its
+resemblance to a European,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_75">{75}</a></span> might give it value for her. All the time
+the temptation was strong to treat this child of another civilization as
+a little princess. She had the slow manner, the slightly disdainful
+look, the appearance of knowing the value of her sayings and doings that
+make our necessary ideal of responsibility. What though the Princess
+puffed at my pipe, meanwhile having secured a cigar, less cared for,
+behind her pretty ear; what though she pressed two long, slender fingers
+against her lips, and spat through them, according to some native
+elegance, she knew that she was a personage and never was familiar, even
+when she pressed my arm and shoulder, and said, “<i>alofa oi</i>,” “I like
+you.” Her forehead was high and gently sloping, her eyebrows thin and
+movable, the eye looked gently and firmly and directly; the nose was a
+little curved at the heavy end, the upper lip a little long (and pulling
+on the pipe, if she used it, would lengthen it later yet more), the neck
+and back of the head had the same beauty of line and setting that I had
+seen in Hawaii, and her shoulders, and breast, and strong, lithe arms
+would have delighted a sculptor. She wore her hair gathered up by a
+European comb, and in front a forelock reddened to the tone of her face,
+with the coral lime they used. Her legs were strong and fine and her
+feet only as large as one could expect, with the soles hardened by use
+over stones and coral.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_76">{76}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But she was not the pretty one; her sister, Sifá, was that. The charm of
+the older one, “the virgin of the village,” was in this incomparable
+savage dignity, that gave a formality to our visit. What to us was an
+amusement was to her evidently one of the necessities of hospitality,
+while Sifá could not move about or look without a ripple of laughter
+that undulated through her entire person. Occasionally, however, our
+“chiefess” looked at me with a gentle smile, and said “<i>alofa!</i>” and by
+and by, after showing me that she could write, and doing so in my album,
+(where she dated her inscription <i>Oketopa</i>, our October), she gave me a
+ring with her name Uatea&mdash;or Watea as she wrote it. She partook of
+lunch, eating after us (along with the captain who appeared again on
+time), and she refused to taste of some apples we had until we had some
+of her own fruit, all I suppose according to some proprieties well
+defined. Then Sifá, her sister, met with a little adventure in unpacking
+our food for us. The captain of the steamer had given us a block of ice
+on our leaving, telling us that it was the last we should see in this
+part of the world, and that it might comfort us during our long, hot
+sail under the tropical sun. In unrolling it, and taking it up, Sifá
+dropped it with a cry of “<i>afi!</i>”&mdash;“fire!” and for a few moments we
+struggled in an unknown tongue to explain what it might be. But I took
+it for granted that she must have had some Bible expla<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_77">{77}</a></span>nation of the
+places where the Bible comes from&mdash;that is to say, England and Scotland;
+hence about winter and bad weather, and perhaps snow and ice.</p>
+
+<p>While the family arranged for their meal we took a walk, “now and
+again,” as our captain expressed it&mdash;almost all the words he knew. We
+walked across what appeared to be the village green&mdash;a space of grass
+neatly cared for&mdash;edged by huts and trees, the palms thickening in the
+distance and hiding the sudden and close slope of the mountain right
+above us. Bread-fruit trees were planted here and there near the houses,
+the large leaves making a heavy green pattern against the innumerable
+shades of green, the spotted trunks were dark; even the cocoanut trees
+were only white by the sea. We passed a tomb, of a moundlike shape, one
+lengthened cube placed upon another, and the upper surfaces sloping to
+an edge like some of the early sarcophagi or Italian tombs&mdash;a shape as
+simple and elegant as one could wish in such an ideal landscape. I shall
+have to find out if this most typical shape has originated with them, or
+has come from some foreign influence. However that may be, it made
+another classical note. Had Ulysses in his wanderings left some
+companion here, some such monument might have well marked the tomb of a
+Greek. There it was, all covered with lichen; and another newer one,
+made also of coral mortar, still white, near trees,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_78">{78}</a></span> and by former
+homes, in this little shady “<i>agora</i>.” As we passed into the path that
+seemed to run up the hill, young men went by with wreaths on their
+heads, draped to the waist, like the statues of the gods of the family
+of Jove; their wide shoulders and strong, smooth arms, and long
+back-muscles or great pectorals shining like red bronze. All this
+strength was smooth; the muscles of the younger men softened and passed
+into one another as in the modelling of a Greek statue. As with the
+girls we had just left, no rudeness of hair marred the ruddy surfaces,
+recalling all the more the ideal statues. Occasionally the hair reddened
+or whitened, and the drapery of the native bark cloth, of a brown ochre
+colour, not unlike the flesh, recalled still more the look of a Greek
+clay image with its colour and gilding broken by time. Never in any case
+was there a bit of colour that might rightly be called barbaric; the
+patterns might be European, but no one could have chosen them better,
+for use with great surfaces of flesh. If all this does not tell you that
+there was no nakedness&mdash;that we only had the <i>nude</i> before us&mdash;I shall
+not have given you these details properly. Evidently all was according
+to order and custom; the proportion of covering, the manner of catching
+the drapery, and the arrangement of folds according to some meaning well
+defined by ancient usage.</p>
+
+<p>Children played about in the open space; they were then at<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_79">{79}</a></span> a game of
+marbles; when we returned, this had turned to some kind of
+blind-man’s-buff; there was no roughness, only a good deal of soft
+laughter; one youngster, draped to the chest like a Greek orator, too
+big for the children, too young for the men, leaned upon a long staff
+and looked on gravely, exactly like the figures on the Greek vases, or
+the frieze of the Parthenon.</p>
+
+<p>We walked along into the forest, in the silence of noonday, but the
+abruptness and slipperiness of the path as it rose rapidly to walls of
+wet rock, stopped our feet. From the intricate tangle of green, we saw
+the amethyst sea, and the white line of sounding surf cutting through
+the sloping pillars of the cocoanuts, that made a mall along the shore;
+and over on the other side of the narrow harbour, the great high green
+wall of the mountain, warm in the sun, and its fringe of cocoanut grove,
+and the few huts hidden within it, all softened below by the haze blown
+up from the breakers. All made a picture, not too large to be taken in
+at a glance; the reality of the pictures of savage lands, in our school
+books, filled in with infinite details. From dark interiors of huts, as
+we returned, came gentle greetings of “<i>alofa</i>.” Awoki, our Japanese
+servant, had remained with our hosts, had been fed with bread-fruit and
+cocoanut milk, and was busy writing out, under the direction of the
+black mate, certain names and words of the language; for the mate could
+be understood, while the captain<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_80">{80}</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 78px">
+<a href="images/ill_012.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_012.jpg" width="78" height="150" alt=""></a>
+</div>
+
+<p class="nind">had only one certain phrase, “now and again” with which he punctuated
+everything loudly, so that I could barely understand him. The mate had
+his own punctuation of frightful oaths and damnatory epithets, evidently
+mere adornments of speech, for he was most gentle, a kindly and
+good-natured cannibal, contrariwise to the surly captain; so that I was
+glad that he had ventured up from the cutter. The girls had taken kindly
+to the other brown skin, my servant, and were busy helping him make up
+his list of words, whose sounds he wrote in Japanese, to my later
+confusion, when he passed his dictionary to me. (Yet curiously enough,
+in this first half day, we learned full a hundred words&mdash;almost all that
+I have retained.) So we sat down and rested; the flies, attracted by the
+bread-fruit, and occasional mosquitoes hovered about the openings; ants
+crawled about on us&mdash;my princess had occasionally on her feet a black
+bunch of flies, which she brushed away slowly&mdash;evidently she did not
+feel them much&mdash;their skins are hard&mdash;“now and again,” as the captain
+might say, a woman passed the openings of the hut, bare to the waist,
+holding a<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_81">{81}</a></span> child against her hip. Soon one of the girls, tired of
+cross-leggedness, stretched her feet politely under a mat, pulled up for
+the purpose (for it is not polite to sit otherwise than cross-legged).</p>
+
+<p>The older women slept on the Samoan pillows at the further side, closed
+in by palm curtains. All but one&mdash;who had worked all the time, her great
+brown back turned toward us&mdash;engaged in smoothing and finishing a piece
+of what we white men call <i>tappa</i>. “<i>Siapu</i>” I think they call it&mdash;the
+inner bark of the paper mulberry, hammered out with a mallet, which in
+so many of the islands has been long their cloth. She never stirred from
+her work; as long as the light held, I saw before me this upright form,
+strong as a man’s, smooth and round, and the quiet motion of the arms in
+the shadow, made deeper by the sunlight on our side. Later, another
+shower made us shut down more curtains, but we were safe and
+comfortable, protected from sun and rain alike, in this most comfortable
+and airy housing. Then Sifá began beating her thighs and moving her
+shoulders coquettishly to her humming of a tune, and I thought that I
+recognized the <i>siva</i>, the seated dance of the Samoans, about which I
+had been told in Hawaii. Such a graceful creature could do nothing that
+was not a picture, but there was a promise of something more, so that we
+applauded and said <i>lelei</i>, “beautiful,” with the hope of a full
+performance.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_82">{82}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But the Princess said nothing; she smoked more and more, as every one
+joined her, so that I foresaw that our small supply of cigars and
+tobacco was doomed, especially as other damsels entered, and made more
+ravages; girls more or less good looking, mostly heavier, one of them
+called “Tuvale,” who knew bits and parcels of English such as <i>pilisi du
+na iti mi</i>, <i>pilisi esikusi mi</i>, “Please do not eat me,” “Please excuse
+me.” And one of the largest, leaning affectionately against my shoulder,
+absorbed my silk handkerchief, and tied it around her neck&mdash;saying to
+me, in her language, “Look how pretty it is!” Our matches and
+match-boxes had long ago disappeared&mdash;most little things had left my
+pockets, but had been replaced. In every way my fair and strong
+companions seemed inclined to dispute an apparent preference for Uatea
+and Sifá. Good-natured girls all (but one&mdash;the thief of
+handerchiefs&mdash;who seemed to me jealous)&mdash;and we were certainly beamed
+upon, as I never expect to be again. More rain outside brought on the
+evening, as we took our last meal; the “chiefess” and the captain, who
+again appeared sullenly out of the dark, eating after us; the captain
+now, with an apology to us, appeared naked to the waist, a big heavy
+mass of bronze, covered below with a gorgeous drapery of purple, and
+yellow, and red. We lay more and more at ease, stretched out, the girls
+prone, and occasionally giving one of us an af<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_83">{83}</a></span>fectionate pat; all but
+Uatea who still preserved her usual reserve, and even tried hard to
+substitute another ring for the one she had given me&mdash;as if her name on
+it was too much for a first acquaintance. And occasionally in following
+her face, the only one that seemed capable of complicated ideas, I asked
+myself whether she was asking herself what equivalents her hospitality
+would receive: for instinct told me that through her our gifts or our
+payments should be made; even if it were all to go to others according
+to barbaric custom. So seeing her rather laden with things, and having
+had one experience of the excellence of a white silk handkerchief, I
+offered her another, and wrote her name in the corner, to see her thank
+me in her usual condescending way, and then toss it over to the old
+woman who appeared occasionally&mdash;to my mind, her adviser and guardian,
+for from time to time, “now and again,” she crept up, between us, like a
+chaperon or duenna, to see that all was proper.</p>
+
+<p>Then many of our girls disappeared with Sifá, whom we missed at the
+moment and asked for over and over again. A light was brought and set
+down upon the matting. Uatea slipped out between the hanging screens and
+the pillar behind me, and slipped back again, rid of her upper garment
+with a sort of <i>poncho</i> or strip of cloth with opening for head,
+patterned in lozenges of black, white, and red, that hung down<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_84">{84}</a></span> her back
+and chest, leaving arms and shoulders bare, and the sides of her body,
+so that as she bent, the soft line that joins the breast to the
+underarm, showed under the heavy folds. Then, in came our missing pet,
+Sifá, with Tuvále and two others, into the penumbra of the lamp. They
+were naked to the waist; over their tucked-up drapery hung brilliant
+leaf-strips of light green, streaked with red; a few leaves girdled the
+ankle; around Sifá’s neck, over her beautiful bosom, hung a long, narrow
+garland of leaves, and on the others garlands of red fruit or long rows
+of beads interlaced: every head was wreathed with green and red leaves,
+and all and everything, leaves, brown flesh, glistened with perfumed
+oil. From the small focus of the lamp, the light struck on the surface
+of the leaves as upon some delicate fairy tinsel, and upon the forms of
+the girls as if upon red bronze waxed. But no bronze has ever been
+movable, and the perpetual ripple of light over every fold, muscle, and
+dimple was the most complete theatrical lighting I have ever seen. Even
+in the dark, streaks of light lit up the forms and revealed every
+delicacy of motion.</p>
+
+<p>So those lovers of form, the Greeks, must have looked, anointed and
+crowned with garlands, and the so-called dance that we saw might not
+have been misplaced far back in some classical antiquity. The girls sat
+in a row before us, grave and collected, their beautiful legs curled
+upon the lap as in East</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="illbw_001">
+<a href="images/ill_013.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_013.jpg" width="427" height="550" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">SIFÁ DANCING THE SITTING SIVA</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_85">{85}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Indian sculptures; and Sifá began a curious chant. As all sang with her
+together, they moved their arms in various ways to the cadence and in
+explanation of the song; and with the arms, now the waist and shoulders,
+now the entire body, even to the feet, rising apparently upon the thighs
+to the time of the music. Indeed, Sifá spoke with her whole tremulous
+body undulating to the fingers&mdash;all in a rhythm, as the sea runs up and
+down on the beach, and is never at rest, but seems to obey one general
+line of curve. So she, and the others, turned to one side and stretched
+out their arms, or crossed them, and passed them under the armpit and
+pressed each other’s shoulders, and lifted fingers in some sort of tale,
+and made gestures evident of meaning, or obscure, and swayed and turned;
+and, most beautiful of all, stretched out long arms upon the mats, as if
+swimming upon their sides, while all the time the slender waist swayed,
+and the legs and thighs followed the rhythm through their muscles,
+without being displaced.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot describe it any better; of what use is it to say that it was
+beautiful, and extraordinary, and that no motion of a western dancer but
+would seem stiff beside such an ownership of the body? Merely as motion,
+it must have been beautiful, for the fourth woman was old and not
+beautiful, but she melted into the others, so that one only saw, as it
+were, the lovely form of Sifá repeated by poorer reflections of her
+motion in lesser light.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_86">{86}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Uatea sat to one side of them, near me, and in front, one leg
+stretched out, the other tucked under, beating time with a stick,
+disdainful of it all, as poorly done, perhaps incorrectly, “<i>lelei</i>,”
+“beautiful,” I said&mdash;“<i>leanga</i>,” she replied, with a curl of her lip,
+hardly looking at the girls. Perhaps she should have led in person, as
+the official maiden&mdash;and I still felt that something was not right. The
+girls rose and came to sit beside us, while Uatea disappeared in the
+darkness, behind the three masts crossed with curved beams, that
+supported the centre of the roof. These, with the shining, polished
+cocoanut bottles, filled with water, that hung from the beams, and the
+rolls of mats and bark cloth which were placed upon them as upon
+shelves, had served as a background or scenery to our theatre. Along all
+the edges of the big house, in the darkness, were other visitors, and
+guests, small children, boys and girls, neighbours, and even the two
+gentle blackies, from Cannibal and Head Hunting isles, with white rings
+in their noses, that made our crew. But I saw none of the splendid young
+men, who, crowned with garlands, girdled with leaves like the Fauns and
+Sylvans of the Greek play, had startled me over and over again, during
+the day, with a great wonder that no one had told me of a rustic Greece
+still alive somewhere, and still to be looked at. So that the old
+statues and frescoes were no conventionality&mdash;and the</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="ill_008">
+<a href="images/ill_014.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_014.jpg" width="550" height="329" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">THE FLUTE PLAYER. SAMOA</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_87">{87}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">sailor, the missionary, and the beachcomber, were witnesses of things
+that they did not see, because they had not read. And if one reads, does
+he care to-day? Had I only known, years ago. Even now, when it is too
+late, the memory of all that beauty which we call Greece, the one beauty
+which is to outlast all that is alive, comes over me like a wave of
+mist, softening and putting far away into fairyland all that I have been
+looking at. From out of the darkness, as if from out of the shade of
+antiquity, Uatea stepped out before us, naked to the waist, crowned with
+leafage, garlands around her hips, a long staff like a sceptre in her
+hand, and danced some heroic dance, against another girl, smaller than
+she, as her adversary; it looked a mimicry of combat; the tall form, the
+commanding gestures, the disdainful virginity of the village Diana,
+challenging her companion to battle; something as beautiful and more
+heroic than the Bacchanals that are enrolled on the Greek vases. The
+girl was in her true element and meaning, more than she could have been
+in the previous <i>sivá</i> dance; only an occasional touching of the knees
+together detracted from the beauty of the movements. I could scarcely
+notice the other dancer, nor the third one, an old woman (who
+represented, apparently, a suppliant), for fear of losing a parcel of a
+picture that I shall never see again, certainly never with such
+freshness of impression.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_88">{88}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And when Uatea reappeared, clad again, and puffed at my pipe before
+passing it to me, she much less disdainfully assured me that all her
+dancing was <i>leanga</i> (bad). And she softened a little, and seemed
+distressed about our quarrel about her ring, taking off all her rings
+and throwing them away to her guardian matron, perhaps for fear of being
+reproved for giving too much for too little, for we had given as yet but
+little&mdash;only cigars, tobacco, and trifles; and I asked myself whether
+the dramatic artist was counting up her possible gains, as others do.
+Meanwhile, the other girls lay close to us, in the confidence of
+good-nature; all anxious to make the best impression, a curious example
+of the wilful charming of woman&mdash;and Sifá talked and smiled, and moved,
+or rather floated, in her place like a maiden siren flirting. Many
+confidences were exchanged without either side understanding one word
+said. Each girl wrote something in Awoki’s note-book, or helped our
+making a dictionary. Sifá even summing up figures to prove her
+possession of the three R’s, a confusing addition of accomplishments to
+the dancing and conventionalities we had seen. But I am told that all
+read and write, with no book but the Bible. Then between the curtains of
+mats Uatea disappeared contrary to what I supposed etiquette, but, of
+course, I knew nothing. The others bade us good-night, not without
+begging one of us to share their hut,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_89">{89}</a></span> and we slipped out into the dark,
+while the mats were arranged for our rest. The storm clouds still
+covered the sky&mdash;only a few stems of the cocoanut glistened, and the
+white bar of the surf made a hard line in the shadow. Some vague, light
+forms were those of sitters beneath the trees whispering, or talking
+low, for all through our day there had been no voices raised except our
+own, or the surly growl of the captain&mdash;or the chant that had
+accompanied the dances; all other talk had been soft and flowing, with
+low voices, almost inaudible to us when distant, adding again to the
+peace and softening charm.</p>
+
+<p>We lay down on the mats with our heads toward the centrepost; a large
+mosquito bar of thin bark cloth, big enough for a small room, was let
+down upon us, the light of the lamp shining through it, and draped in my
+Japanese kimono, I fell asleep, in spite of the few mosquitoes
+imprisoned with us. No noise from the rest of the house had arisen, all
+was still; we were as much isolated as if we had been in a built-up
+room. Late or early, I think I heard the snore of the captain, but all
+is empty in my mind until I recollect feeling the morning light and saw
+some shadows pass. As I stepped out, I saw Sifá move out, stretching her
+arms, as she moved toward a little path. Then issued the captain, with a
+formidable yawn, and looked at the sky for presages of weather, and took
+the same<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_90">{90}</a></span> little path, I suppose toward the bathing pool, or spring, or
+rivulet of fresh water, that might be in the hollow.</p>
+
+<p>And there came up to the house Uatea, the “Chiefess,” looking just the
+same, and appeared to understand that we were for a bath, as she made
+the motions of washing her chest. We went to the sea, finding no good
+place for a bath&mdash;it was evidently far off&mdash;and I take it that they
+bathe in fresh water&mdash;the luxury of hot climates. For they all seemed to
+be extremely clean and neat, from the men whom I had first seen at sea,
+to the girls with limbs rubbed with cocoanut-oil and smelling of the
+aromatic fruit (the pandanus) that their garlands were made of. Our bath
+was not a full success&mdash;we dared not go out into the surf that rolled
+turbid waves upon the deep, black volcanic sand of the beach; but the
+water was warm and soothing, and as I began putting on my clothes, a
+tall girl of the preceding night came up and sat down beside me on the
+rock, with an evident seeking for an interview. Notwithstanding my
+unaccustomed embarrassment, I managed to make out that she was uncertain
+and perplexed as to the legality of her capture of my handkerchief the
+night before, and though I told her to keep it, she was still doubtful.
+Uatea had had one; was she to have the same as Uatea? At last she left
+me, reassured&mdash;I had no more interest&mdash;and I saw her go along the shore
+passing far off the better bathing</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="illbw_002">
+<a href="images/ill_015.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_015.jpg" width="378" height="550" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">UATEA DANCING THE SITTING SIVA</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_91">{91}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">spot of fresh water, and then disappearing behind distant palms.
+Breakfast was ready when we reappeared; after us Uatea ate and drank our
+tea, and wondered at our use of “tea-balls.” The captain explained that
+there might be wind enough “now and again,” and that any moment ought to
+see us off. Sifá and Tuvále gathered about Adams; I smoked my last
+cigar, for all with our other tobacco were gone&mdash;while Uatea asked
+coldly what I had done with the ring she gave me, as it was no longer on
+my finger. More and more she withdrew into herself, more and more the
+“Chiefess” looked as if expecting or anxious or troubled, as to whether
+an equivalent would be serious enough. But we gave the largest sum that
+the captain dared to hint at&mdash;anything would have seemed cheap. The
+night before I could understand the <i>throwing of jewels</i>; of money, of
+any reward to express thankful admiration. The “Chiefess” extended a
+languid hand&mdash;her eyebrows rose, a short “<i>f’tai</i>” dropped, as if
+obligatory from her lips&mdash;(the proper form I knew already was
+“<i>faafe’tai</i>”)&mdash;she gave us her hand with a frigid “<i>alofa</i>,” and with
+Sifá and Tuvále lingering, we walked to our boat. Long after we had set
+sail we could see them wave their drapery as good-bye. Far off, along
+the beach, from the hut of the tall girl-thief, my own handkerchief was
+waved&mdash;but even with the glass I saw no more of Uatea.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_92">{92}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Peace to thee, O soul of the “virgin of the village,” if I have made
+thee but a thrifty prima donna, or like the King Solomon of Djami, the
+Persian poet, caring only for realities that pay&mdash;it is the part of
+those born to be rulers.</p>
+
+<p class="spc">And now we had pulled out of the breakers, through the narrowest of
+openings, and were on board the little schooner; the great blue sapphire
+waves lifted us and sank us, and came up against the blue horizon, or
+against the tall green cliffs; and once more we saw, in the hollow of
+the sea, or lifted against the sky, the native boat pushed on by
+rhythmic paddles, making a red line of naked men against the blue of the
+sea or the blue of the sky. We have been four hours and a half beating
+out of this little cove, and have just rounded the isolated rock of the
+cape, of which I send you a sketch. If I could only send you the
+colour!&mdash;blue and green&mdash;a little red and black in the rocks&mdash;the white
+and violet haze of the surf; all as if elementary, but in a tone that no
+painter has yet attempted, and that no painter that I know of would be
+sure of; the blue and green that belongs to the classics; that is
+painted in lines of Homer; that Titian guessed at, once, under a darker
+sky; and far off the long sway and cadence of the surf like the movement
+of ancient verse&mdash;the music of the Odyssey. We are off some little
+village on the shore; the boat has gone to get<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_93">{93}</a></span> other passengers, while
+I try to finish this account of our first day on land in the South Seas,
+and to make it live for you by long accumulation of detail. If, through
+it all, you can gather my impression, can see something of an old
+beauty, always known, in these new pictures, you will understand why the
+Greek Homer is in my mind; all Greece, the poetry of form and colour
+that comes from her, as well as her habits; just as the Samoan youngster
+who rose shining from the sea to meet us, all brown and red, with a red
+hibiscus fastened in his hair by a grass knot as beautiful as any carved
+ornament, was the Bacchus of Tintoretto’s picture, making offering to
+Ariadne. The good people of the steamer may not have seen it, nor the
+big white English girl who bought some trifle from him&mdash;but it is all
+here for me&mdash;and there will soon come a day when even for those who
+care, it will be no more; when nowhere on earth or at sea will there be
+any living proof that Greek art is not all the invention of the
+poet&mdash;the mere refuge of the artist in his disdain of the ugly in life.
+What I have just seen is already to me almost a dream. So I turn to my
+Japanese, Awoki, and ask him&mdash;“It was like the studio, Awoki, was it
+not? but all fine; no need of posing?” And Awoki says “Yes,” whether he
+understands me or not, and I think of you and of the enclosed studio
+life that tries to make a little momentary visitation of this reality.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_94">{94}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The fitness and close relation of all I have seen makes a something like
+what we strive to get through art, and my mind turns toward the old
+question, “How does what we call art begin?” These people <i>make</i> little;
+the house, the elementary patches upon their bark cloth, the choice of a
+fine form for tombs, is all the art that is exterior of themselves and
+of their movements, into which last they have put the feeling for
+completeness and relation, that makes the love of art.</p>
+
+<p>Is it necessary for going further that some one should be born, to whom,
+gradually, an unwillingness to assume the responsibility of action,
+which the ruler and the priest take willingly, should grow into a
+dislike of the injustice of power, and a distrust of the truthfulness of
+creeds, so that he must make a world for himself, unstained and free
+from guilt or guile? I have begun to imagine for myself some such soul,
+born in early communities, who might have lived long ago anywhere and
+have been the hero of some such primitive obscure conflict; but I can
+see tossing on blue waves, the boat that brings from the shore our new
+companions, Lieutenant Parker and Consul-General Sewall, who have been
+on a visit to the harbour of Pango Pango&mdash;and in a few minutes they and
+their white coats will be aboard.</p>
+
+<p class="spc">You will by this time wish to know how we are living. We<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_95">{95}</a></span> are settled
+definitely, for headquarters, at Vaiala, a little way from Apia, from
+which a little river separates our part of the land. Further on, another
+small river closes out the territory, and separates us from Apia.</p>
+
+<p>The small river that separates us from the beginnings of the village
+capital, Apia, is spanned by a little bridge&mdash;little because consisting
+of a few planks, and a handrail to one side, but otherwise a very long
+gangway. This I believe is kept in repair by the municipality of Apia,
+and is probably the cause of much discussion in the way of spending
+money. Occasionally it is washed away, and then we swim our horses
+across, to the discomfort of my best yellow boots, which I feel are a
+distinctive mark in my visits to people in Apia. At times the
+municipality provides a ferry-boat. This so far has been manned by one
+of those convicts who are puzzles in South Sea economics. He had been
+taken away from some other chores of supposed hard work. After the first
+day of ferrying, which was productive of various small trips, this
+criminal had fallen back on the customs of his country, and on that
+essential communism which is the basis of their actions and of much of
+their thinking. He had a hut erected for him, so as to rest in the
+shade, and there he spent most of his time consuming bananas or
+accidental gifts of food, and courted and caressed by village maidens,
+who adorned him with flowers and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_96">{96}</a></span> anointed him with cocoanut oil.
+Meanwhile the smaller and less important members of his family did the
+work of ferrying in the sun. It was all the same, he was vicariously
+being punished. This is the keynote of all I shall ever tell you here.
+There is the tendency to let not only property remain undivided, but
+also injury or gain. A little anecdote told me by a clergyman, who had
+it from a friend in Fiji, where things are still more so, gives this
+intellectual position. The Fiji clergyman had been shocked at a horror
+perpetrated by some of his parishioners. The dog of some person in a
+neighbouring village had been killed; some of the aggrieved had sallied
+forth, and meeting some person who belonged to the village guilty of
+holding the dog murderer, had thereupon incontinently killed him. An
+“old hand,” that is to say, a white man conversant with South Sea
+habits, explained to the clergyman the naturalness of the deed. He
+said&mdash;forgive the vernacular&mdash;“See here; if Jim and me gets into a
+fight, and Jim plunks me in the head, I don’t wait till I can get in a
+blow at Jim’s head: I hit him where I can.” One community had lost a dog
+and the other had lost a man. This is a dreadful example of the idea,
+and I almost regret introducing it into my description of this idyllic
+passage of my life. But we are on the road to Apia, which, like all
+white men’s places in such countries, has a taint of brutality remaining
+from the day of the beachcomber.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_97">{97}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is an orderly little place strung along what might be called a street
+or two, the main one of which is on the beach, and goes by that name.
+There are stores, a few hotels and drinking places, warehouses and
+residences of the consuls, and further on native residences, etc. There
+are churches too, and a Catholic cathedral of somewhat imposing
+dimensions; but the churches are those of an ugly village, and no longer
+have that natural look of the church by our own village of Vaiala, for
+instance, which has really a character not contradictory to its
+surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>Further back and right and left all is Samoan and native. We are just by
+the shore, here fringed with trees and palms, and only some six feet
+above the inland sea of the reef that spreads right and left before us.
+In the few great storms that have come upon us in the night, it was not
+difficult to imagine the beating of the rain against the door of our
+sleeping house to be the first splashing of some great waves passing
+over with the roar of the surf outside.</p>
+
+<p>From under the shadows of trees, I see canoes pass close to the shore,
+visible at intervals between the trees that border it; they seem, like
+all that happens about us, part of a theatre scene: red bodies glisten
+in white or coloured drapery, adorned by flowers and leafage; and songs
+are carried along with the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_98">{98}</a></span> stroke of the paddles, as in an ideal opera.
+Blue sea outside; green inside.</p>
+
+<p>The little village stretches along a very short distance, apparently not
+made of more than a couple of dozen of huts or Samoan houses, with a
+double village green, here and there planted with trees and broken into
+and backed on the shore side by plantations of bananas.</p>
+
+<p>Further back the mysterious “bush,” into which I have not yet wandered.
+Just outside, near the shore, and with a little garden, the Consul has
+built a new and commodious southern house, with enormous verandas,
+dropped like a piece of Europe among the native forms; there we
+breakfast and dine; while in the village a few yards off we have
+borrowed a large, comfortable hut,<a id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> in which we spend the day,
+receiving visitors, writing, or painting,<a id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> and at night we occupy a
+little building of our own European kind, with just place for our two
+rooms and beds. It is next to Tofae, the chief’s hut; so that we are
+both physically and morally under Tofae’s protection. This we insist
+upon; we are no strangers gadding about, we are chiefs on a visit, and
+we appeal to the care of our fellows responsible for us. So that doors
+and trunks and boxes are all open; every one is free to inspect and
+responsible to the</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="ill_009">
+<a href="images/ill_016.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_016.jpg" width="550" height="309" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">BOY IN CANOE PASSING IN FRONT OF OUR HOUSE. VAIALA,
+SAMOA<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_99">{99}</a></span></span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="nind">chief. Even very lately, when the criminal&mdash;the prisoner condemned for
+stealing the consular flag halyards&mdash;who is imprisoned by being detained
+within the half mile of the village, and who is under Tofae’s
+wardship&mdash;even when this confirmed bad man is found looking through all
+my property, from sketch-books to night pajamas, I feel quite safe that
+nothing will be missed through him. Only two silk handerchiefs have
+disappeared since I have been on the island, and I can’t be sure whether
+they were lost here or in some of our long trips by sea and land. But
+Tofae takes the fact to heart, and will, I know, make me some present
+many times more valuable, to wipe out this possible blot upon the
+escutcheon.</p>
+
+<p>At the earliest dawn there is motion in the village that I do not hear.
+The soft grass, cleanly trimmed, which covers all the village space,
+brings no echo from bare feet. But from the very first morning on the
+small verandah, no bigger than a large table, I hear a patter of feet
+that wakens me. If I look out, one or more of the girls of the village,
+our nearest neighbours, is seated there in a corner, ready to bid good
+morning, and looking occasionally into the open window, to see if I am
+still abed! Sometimes their shadows, as they pass, break the half light
+which keeps me in a doze.</p>
+
+<p>When I rise I have to get accustomed to the mild curiosity that inquires
+after my mode of dressing. Still, as days go on,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_100">{100}</a></span> I become less the
+fashion, and can go out to my bath, in my Japanese gown, without
+stepping over a côterie of gentle maidens. If I get up with the dawn,
+that slowly lights up the great spaces above the trees, I can see first
+some figures pushing back the mats that form the only walls of the
+surrounding huts, stretching their arms, then perhaps, in their simplest
+wraps, fading away in the uncertain light! They are going to the
+obligatory bath; not to the salt water in front of us, which they do not
+look upon as cleansing, but to pools back in the bush, or the little
+river further off.</p>
+
+<p>With the first half-sleepy motion begins the weeding around the huts, a
+perpetual task carried on at all odd times. For among these savages, so
+far as they are not spoiled by the European, the lawn and greenery about
+the village are tended with extreme care. Many a time, in places that
+are far away and more strictly barbarous, I have been reminded of the
+neatest Newport lawns. This is one of the unexpected charms, one of the
+many things that give everything a look difficult to explain, a look of
+elegance in the wildness. But we must remember that these good people
+have always been here, that from immemorial time they have tended what
+seems to us accidental nature; culture and care and the tropical wild
+growths are constantly interchanged. That is the South Sea note.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_101">{101}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Later on I see some of the men return from their short hour’s work at
+their wet patches of the taro plant, which, with the bread-fruit,
+represents the staples of bread and cereals both. In this kindly nature,
+such culture is no more than a gentle exercise. I see even the great
+Mataafa, the rival of the King Malietoa, and the greatest personage of
+all islands, returning from his daily task like any commoner, often
+stripped to the waist, wearing nothing but the wrap along the loins and
+legs, which they call the <i>lava-lava</i>.</p>
+
+<p>After our morning coffee, made of the island bean whenever we are
+fortunate enough to get it, for we find it better than any brought from
+Java, we adjourn with the first heat of the early morning to our big
+Samoan hut. This is next to Mataafa’s, in the centre of the village. By
+this time most of our neighbours have begun to rest, and will keep
+steadily quiet for a large part of the day; unless they visit, or unless
+some special duty calls.</p>
+
+<p>If we are very early, we may still find in our Samoan hut our pretty
+friend Fangalo, who lives with our neighbours nearer Apia, and whose
+simple task it is to place flowers about the tables upon which we write
+or paint, or upon the shelf that connects the great centre posts of the
+hut, where hang the cocoanut water bottles, and are placed the rolls of
+native cloth, or extra mats for softer resting.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_102">{102}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Taēlē, which means bath, the gentle sister of our landlord, if I can so
+call him, has already seen that everything is in order, and all the mats
+that cover the pebble floor are properly disposed. Taēlē wishes good
+morning, and leaves fruit as presents and hangs the great branches of
+yellow or green bananas. She stays but little, even when pressed, though
+she is curious as to why we write so much and what we mean in general.
+She does not quite approve of us; we ask strange questions: we are not
+preachers&mdash;we are seen writing on Sundays: we are not looking for wives.
+We may be <i>aitu</i>&mdash;spirits in disguise.</p>
+
+<p class="spc">Taēlē’s sweet face is always sad&mdash;exceptionally so here where good
+nature marks most young faces. In that she is not Samoan nor properly
+Polynesian. But she has gone through much. She was the Samoan wife of
+the former British consul, Churchward, who left her with her little boy
+when he was promoted to other appointments. Not that she would have gone
+with him, I think: the Polynesian rarely understands living anywhere
+else than in his islands&mdash;his own island makes the world. Here Taēlē
+sits on some rock-edge by the water, and looks out to the far-off sea. I
+see her so almost every evening.</p>
+
+<p>According to true Polynesian habits, the little child has<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_103">{103}</a></span> been adopted
+by our chief, Tofae, who is devoted to him and allows him great
+liberties. So that Taēlē has no practical trouble about little George,
+who lives Samoan way, and, a son of chiefs by birth and adoption,
+bullies the less important babies.</p>
+
+<p>The other girls, who come in often to see us, and who are occasionally
+encouraged by little amenities and presents, are not at all sad. Otaota,
+the daughter of the preacher, who is himself of sacred descent, if I may
+so explain it, is not even over-bashful, to the great scandal of Taēlē,
+who is nothing if not Sunday school. She is willing to pose for her
+portrait without her upper wraps, though she is no longer the exquisite
+brown statue that she must have been two years ago. But Otaota is a
+young woman of the world, and who knows?&mdash;perhaps these strangers may be
+serious in their attentions.</p>
+
+<p>Important people, of course, come in to see us, but more frequently in
+the afternoon. Of chiefs there are many about us, and Patu, Tofae’s
+brother, is a great chief and has been a great warrior; so that I am not
+surprised at his curious resemblance to General Sherman.</p>
+
+<p>From all these good people my companion, and I also in a small way,
+obtain slowly, by driblets, the explanation of what they really are.
+Slowly they unfold the extraordinary differences which make their ways
+always misfit ours! Their<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_104">{104}</a></span> social words have really no equivalent in
+ours; their ideas remain a puzzle to whomsoever insists upon our having
+a common basis to start from.</p>
+
+<p>I have forgotten to describe what the Samoan hut, called the Samoan
+house, is like. Ours is a handsome one, not exactly the finest, but
+still very well built. Its plan is a long oval. Its length is not far
+from fifty feet; its greatest height something like twenty. It is set
+upon a foundation of stones, and its flooring of fine pebbles is only
+raised a few inches above the ground, which slopes in all directions
+from it. It is made of a series of high posts placed at considerable
+distances from each other, in the shape of an ellipse. They are
+connected at the top by a series of double beams, which receive great
+rafters running from every set of posts to the peaked centre. These
+rafters are connected by other great rafters and tie beams. At the
+centre they are supported by two or more great pillars, which at
+intervals are braced together. Beside these pillars, in the direction of
+each end of the house, are two holes in the ground; made to receive the
+cocoanut fire used for lighting, or for the slight warmth that is
+occasionally needed. Walls there are none in the true Samoan house. Mats
+of the cocoanut leaf hang from the cross-beams, between the posts, to
+the floor, or rather to the edge of large stones that make a sort of rim
+to the building, and serve to steady the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_105">{105}</a></span> posts and keep off the wash of
+the rain. In certain very elegant buildings some of these openings,
+instead of being filled with these movable mats that are pulled up or
+down for protection from light or rain, are enclosed by a fine wattling.
+It is a manner of limiting the numbers of entrances, which otherwise,
+you see, would be a little everywhere.</p>
+
+<p>In such a residence as that of Mataafa, a great man, a sovereign prince
+and sacred personage, no one would think of entering otherwise than at
+some defined place.</p>
+
+<p>For the furniture of our residence and that of other people, mats of
+different degrees of fineness are spread upon the small fine pebbles
+that make the floor. If we want great elegance and great comfort, we put
+on more and finer mats. Some of the furniture lies about; some of it
+consists in the Samoan pillow, a long bamboo, supported at the ends by
+four little sticks. There are also boxes in which clothes are put away.
+There are large rolls of native cloth called <i>tappa</i>. Some of it is made
+up into curtains to be used as screens and partitions. Sometimes, but
+not in our hut, these curtains are made into indoor tents for keeping
+off the mosquitoes, and, otherwise, increasing privacy. All these things
+are stowed away among the rafters, or upon the sticks curved like tusks,
+which project beyond the centre posts and serve to brace them.</p>
+
+<p>For our European habits we have two tables and three<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_106">{106}</a></span> chairs. Most of
+the day when we are idle we sit on the mats with our guests. But working
+is better done at the accustomed table.</p>
+
+<p>Toward noontime we hear violent and savage shouts, and see through the
+square opening of the lifted mats three or four brown savages, with big
+girdles of green leaves and crowns of verdure, come running and dancing
+to us from Mataafa’s house, which is only a few yards away. They carry a
+big wooden bowl, partly filled with crushed cocoanut and arrowroot, and
+some big bread-fruits. They sit down on the edge of our outside stones,
+and proceed to break the bread-fruit, steaming hot, with great force and
+violence, holding it by the stem, pounding it and mashing it into the
+cocoanut milk. This quivering pudding, <i>palusami</i>, is then neatly
+dropped upon banana leaves, made into little packages, and tendered to
+us with the respects of Mataafa. Sometimes we eat, sometimes we
+distribute to more Samoan-minded people; but for the first few times it
+is very nice. I like it better than the raw fish and salt water, which
+is pleasant also occasionally, though apparently more suited to the
+habits of that ancestral totem, the shark. But tastes and habits differ,
+and the Samoan language, extraordinarily rich in words that describe
+physical sensations, has a special word for that state of weakness and
+languor wherein such a dish as raw fish is all that the invalid can
+tolerate.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_107">{107}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mataafa sometimes calls at this hour, sometimes a little earlier, on his
+return from church, if it be a holy day: for Mataafa is very strict in
+religious duty. But usually he has chosen the afternoon. He speaks no
+English, and we have varying interpreters; but still, owing in part to
+his kindness and courtesy, we have learned a great deal from him. He is
+not so easily questioned as an inferior might be. When Tofae’s tall
+daughter is called in hurriedly to help out, because we have not had
+sufficient warning (Tofae’s daughter, who fears no man, whose neck
+carries her head as a column does a capital), she interprets with
+extreme respect and reticence, as it were, “by your leave,” bending her
+head, looking only sidewise at the great chief, holding her breath when
+she speaks to him, and almost whispering. Every phrase is prefaced with
+“The King says,” all of which gives us the measure of proper respect,
+but does not hasten the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>Mataafa is not interested in facts as mere curiosities. I doubt if he
+would approve of my interest in most things, if he could guess it.
+Information with regard to the world abroad he cares for only as it
+affects Samoa&mdash;that is to say, in conversation with us. He would like to
+know that we have some messages of advantage to his country. It has
+taken a long time to make him sympathize with our questionings about<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_108">{108}</a></span>
+Samoan ways and manners and their origins, which involve, of course,
+history and social law. And yet if he could appreciate it, in that way
+we get at an understanding of what he is, and of the difficulties that
+beset him!</p>
+
+<p>With such talk, much desultoriness, sketching, writing, smoking, and
+eating of bananas, a length of which hangs from a beam above, the heat
+of the afternoon passes away. The shadows begin to fall across the
+<i>malae</i> or village green. The villagers come out and wander about
+socially, attend to little matters, or sit here and there in favourite
+corners. Weeding goes on with the more orderly housewives, who keep an
+eye meanwhile upon the children wandering about. A good many domestic
+interests receive attention. Sometimes, under the bananas and orange
+trees behind my house, I see hair-dressing, a serious and difficult
+operation. The pleasure of the Samoans in turning their beautiful black
+hair to brown or yellow or auburn, necessitates a peculiar process which
+is also extremely curious to the eye. For this they use coral lime,
+plastered upon the hair and remaining there a couple of days or more; so
+that they go about with white hair, like people of the last century.</p>
+
+<p>Tofae’s daughter is charming, with her hair all of this silver-grey and
+big crimson flowers in it. It sets out a certain nobility of feature,
+and is, like powder, aristocratic in its<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_109">{109}</a></span> very nature. The rather heavy
+faces become either stronger or more refined. Each young man has some
+female who especially understands just how to fashion his hair into
+certain curls and twists, which are retained during a week or so; for
+the operation answers all the purposes of curling besides, and of
+cleaning absolutely. When this application is brushed away the curls
+will remain; but meanwhile, as he sits with his head bent way down and
+the lady lathering it, he has that woebegone, submissive look that we
+see in the barber shop.</p>
+
+<p>Our good people are passionately fond of adorning their persons with
+flowers and leafage: flowers about the waist, flowers about the neck,
+flowers and leaves in the hair. Every little while I see rearrangements
+which make, as it were, a form of conversation. The steps of my house
+offer a convenient seat for just the proper number of persons. So that
+as soon as the shade comes down, some girl is seated there with some
+youngster, and they rearrange each other’s flowers. A flower behind the
+ear means a “going of courting” or readiness that way.</p>
+
+<p>In little separate houses the cooking for the evening meal begins. This
+separation of the household work from the residence or living apartments
+is a little elegance and refinement which does a great deal to keep up
+the charm and holiday look of life about us. When, however, great meals
+are to be pre<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_110">{110}</a></span>pared, I hear considerable noise on the outskirts of the
+village, the chasing of hens, whose eggs, by the by, are, as you may
+imagine, difficult to obtain, as the hens have the surrounding tropical
+scenery of the bush to lay in. Owing to the scurry after the hens, the
+only place that seemed safe to them was my apartment; and my open trunks
+were very good places to look into for possible eggs.</p>
+
+<p>The cooking of any importance, as you probably know, is a method of
+baking in the earth: stones heated by fire, in a trench upon which
+leaves are placed, and then the food, wrapped in more leaves, is placed
+upon them and covered up with twigs, branches and earth. After a
+skilfully prolonged residence in the earth, the mound is opened, and the
+food is found cooked. With fish the results are certainly excellent; but
+vegetables and meats are often a little raw.</p>
+
+<p>It seems marvellous that the brown Polynesian, apparently a member of
+the great “Aryan” race, intelligent, often adventurous, has never been
+willing, when his race was pure, to invent such a thing as a pot to hold
+hot water, even when clay was all about him. He knew that in far-off
+islands, from which occasionally came invaders or returning adventurers,
+there was such a thing as pottery; yet he preferred, as he does to-day,
+to import a few specimens, rather than spend a few moments in starting
+this, to us, necessary beginning of what</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="ill_010">
+<a href="images/ill_017.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_017.jpg" width="550" height="339" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">MATAAFA’S COOK HOUSE. FROM OUR HUT AT VAIALA, SAMOA</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_111">{111}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">scientific men call the passage from savagery to barbaric life. You will
+remember that with us one of the present definitions of the savage is
+that he does not make pottery, nor know the bow and arrow. Well: the
+higher Polynesian never used pottery, and used the bow and arrow, one of
+the most deadly of weapons, only to shoot for amusement at the forest
+rat. This violation of certain rules of the game of science is one of
+the most amusing fragments of contradiction that one meets. When we came
+to other islands, where there is a mixture of what we deem a lower
+race&mdash;the Papuan, negro or black, we find pottery, the use of the bow,
+intelligent fortification in war. And the beginnings of decorative art
+are shown by a keener sense of colour and contrast of form. The high
+Polynesian, who invariably invaded and defeated the mixed race superior
+to him in these important details, and brought back the “stuff” has
+lived with a sort of classic severity. Precedent is everything; new
+patterns of ornament come in most slowly, and there is an apparent
+indifference to the picturesque. But owing to this conservation such a
+Bœotian set of islands as Samoa gives to the artist&mdash;the man who
+remembers the beauty of classical representations, the only fit recall
+of what he has seen in the Greek sculpture, the Pompeiian fresco and the
+vases of antiquity.</p>
+
+<p>The rather countrified good taste of these people leads them<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_112">{112}</a></span> to simple
+methods of dress and adornment, and to keeping the same unchangeable
+except by small variations. There is nothing nearer to the drapery of
+the Greek statue than the Samoan wrap of cloth or of <i>tappa</i>, which is
+merely a long rectangle wrapped about the body, either as high as the
+chest, like the cloak of the Greek orator, or merely around the waist
+and thighs, always carefully arranged in special sets of folds which
+designate both the sex and the social position of the wearer; with this
+the wreaths and flower and leaf girdles and the anointed body, which
+belong to our vague conception of the Greek and Roman past. There is
+little more for war time; a great barbarous head-dress of hair, and
+occasionally some neck ornament of wild beasts’ teeth.</p>
+
+<p>In draperies such as I have described, in the shady afternoon, the
+chiefs sit about the lawn of the village the malae or green in places
+which I suppose are reserved to them by habit. They sit far apart; one
+of the Samoan characteristics being the habit and the skill of
+conversing distinctly without raising the voice, and of so speaking as
+to be heard far off. The hereditary orators, the <i>tulafales</i>, who made
+speeches to us in our wanderings, at the receptions given to us by the
+villagers, invariably chose to speak at great distances. A couple of
+hundred feet in the open air seemed to them a fair average. Their voices
+were never raised above a certain<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_113">{113}</a></span> modulation. In fact one imagined that
+the next word would not be heard. But a peculiar inflection for each
+sentence wherein the most important points are placed at the end, seemed
+to force the sound upwards as the phrase dragged on. Seumanu our Apia
+chief who acted as our <i>tulafale</i>, when we travelled, liked to repeat
+“sotto voce” what the other <i>tulafale</i> was sure to say.</p>
+
+<p>Our chiefs often drank their <i>kava</i> in these afternoon conversations.
+Sometimes, but very rarely, it was made by the girls. Usually any young
+men of the village, of refined dress and manners, were called upon to
+serve. I have a vague recollection&mdash;though I may have heard it of some
+other island, and may be confusing facts&mdash;that the ancient custom
+allowed any man who wished his <i>kava</i> made to call upon the first young
+woman who passed, no matter how high her rank might be; this of course
+to be at his peril, like all society privileges. But however it may be,
+almost invariably our own <i>kava</i>, that is to say the <i>kava</i> to which we
+were treated, was made by the women.</p>
+
+<p>You will remember that this was one of the very first of South Sea
+habits that we came across on our very first day, in that other island
+of Tutuila.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kava</i>, more properly <i>ava</i>, is the universal drink of all Polynesia.
+Abolished by the missionary in many places, it<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_114">{114}</a></span> still persists here.
+<i>Kava</i> is a drink made by adding water to the crushed and pressed root
+of a plant of the pepper family, the Piper Methysticum, which has a
+narcotic power. Here in this nest of civilization the root is grated
+upon an ordinary tin grater, before being put in the large, four-legged
+wooden bowl, from which it is to be ladled in cocoanut cups, after water
+has been properly added, and with a strainer of bark fibres, the
+filaments and splinters have been removed.</p>
+
+<p>But in certain far-away places, we have had the pleasure of drinking it
+in the ancient and orthodox way preferred by all epicures. According to
+this more aboriginal method, the <i>kava</i> root was chewed to a mass of
+woody pulp, instead of being grated. Young ladies of great personal
+delicacy were chosen for this purpose; but, there must have been many
+occasions when one had not time to be fastidious. I cannot say that I
+have noticed any advantage in the older form, and I am glad that all
+about us it seems to be forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>The entire preparation and serving of the drink makes a ceremonial form;
+most absolute in detail and of hereditary and ancestral accuracy.<a id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> It
+belongs to all receptions, and is the manner of showing the distinctions
+of rank and precedence.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_115">{115}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The gestures of the girls when they move their hands around in the water
+of the bowl, so as to extract the essence of the root, are regulated by
+long established custom, and are beautiful as the movements of a dance.
+The handing of the strainer to another attendant, and her swinging it
+out to cleanse it, make another series of most ravishing pictures.
+Finally the third attendant sweeps an arm down with an empty bowl, and,
+curving the wrist inward, brings it full to the most honoured guest, and
+to the others in turn. With each handing the name of the guest is
+announced.</p>
+
+<p>Mataafa sometimes gives us <i>kava</i>, and occasionally has done us the
+honour to come and drink it in our own hut. In that case he has his own
+bowl, a most intimate and personal property, from which no one else must
+drink; and with all courtesy he apologizes to us for this necessity of
+position. For as he explains guardedly he is in some sense
+sacred&mdash;having been a form of the divine. And he is the most religious
+of men in our meanings.</p>
+
+<p>In one princely place that we visited, in Savii, we found a lady who
+occupied by ancestry the position of “<i>kava divider</i>”; that is to say
+that it was her duty and privilege to determine the sequence in
+presenting the cup according to dignity. And she appeared without
+warning and claimed the right.</p>
+
+<p>From this circle of the chiefs drinking <i>kava</i> on the green,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_116">{116}</a></span> even the
+children know enough to keep away. Even the young man who hands the cups
+is careful in his walk not to appear to turn his back to any one of the
+chiefs. Respect for the chief is the basis of everything. It is probably
+the foundation of their extreme courtesy, only broken by natural
+exuberance, impatience, or simplicity. The chief was sacred, even in
+war. It was a terrible thing for a commoner of the enemy to kill him. In
+legends of Tahiti there are tales of how men deliberated whether they
+were of high enough birth to take the life of a vanquished chieftain.
+The very language indicates this division between class of the chief and
+everything else outside. For the chief and everything relating to him
+there is a special language. The chief’s head, the chief’s body and all
+its parts, the chief’s food, all that he does, his feelings, his
+possessions, his dog, his wife and her actions, even when she breaks the
+Seventh Commandment, have special names. In many instances the common
+name of a thing is changed for another when that thing is spoken of in
+his presence. In some cases the particular grade of his rank is
+indicated by the word used; so that you speak of a <i>tulafale’s</i> eating
+as <i>tausami</i>; of a chief’s eating as <i>taumafa</i>; of such a chief as
+Mataafa’s eating as <i>taute</i>. But it would not be polite of a chief to
+use these words with reference to himself.</p>
+
+<p>When passers-by draw toward the end of our village and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_117">{117}</a></span> reach the
+highway in front of Mataafa’s hut, they keep to the further side of the
+path, leaving as large a space as it is possible to make, out of respect
+for the privileges of the chief of chiefs.</p>
+
+<p>On all the fringes of the village, however, the children play quiet
+games. Our spaces are too restricted for the young men to have their
+games; but further down they collect at times to play, by throwing a
+stick so as to make it touch the ground and skim along to the goal. So
+with us there is very little. Occasionally some of the boys gallop
+wildly up and down the beach; but there are very few horses in this
+immediate neighbourhood at which we are not displeased, however
+beautiful the sight may be, because they ride the horses too young, and
+push them beyond their strength.</p>
+
+<p>As the evening comes on the sun goes down rapidly, and the afterglow,
+the most beautiful moment of the South Sea day, begins its long
+continuance. The girls gather together or sit with the young men, either
+on the grass or on little raised benches under trees, or very late again
+on still smaller benches, holding at the most two people, which they
+ingeniously fit between the divergent stems of the cocoanuts. This half
+siesta, half conversazione, is carried on as long as there is light, and
+if there be moonlight, through any number of hours that may escape the
+darkness disliked by the Polynesian.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_118">{118}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Our little friend Taēlē leaves her hut and sits far apart in her
+accustomed place, all alone, immovable, looking toward the sea, thinking
+perhaps; but how do I know?</p>
+
+<p>Some of the little children, the little girls especially, repeat in a
+small way the native songs and the native dance the <i>siva</i>. Sometimes a
+bigger girl sketches out some steps for them; but we are extremely
+proper in our village, and the <i>siva</i>, of which the Samoan is
+passionately fond, is not looked upon with favour by the missionary or
+the brown members of the church. However, we succeed now and then in
+getting girls and young men from the neighbourhood, or passing villagers
+and travellers, to favour us with this entertainment. The <i>siva</i> dances
+about which I wrote you at length, upon the day of my arrival, are yet
+to us always novel. By and by I suppose that they will be, like
+everything else, accepted by us as an ordinary form of social
+dissipation. But it is certainly worth coming all this way, even to see
+one of them. The beautiful rhythm of song and movement, the accuracy of
+time kept, the evidently absorbing delight of the performers, who become
+more and more insatiate, until one wonders that they are not exhausted
+by such gymnastics, the pictorial disposition of the scene, usually at
+night or in dark places, the dancers dressed in flowers and leaves in
+contrasts and harmonies of colour that are nature’s own, with bodies and
+limbs<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_119">{119}</a></span> glistening with oil, the spectators all absorbed, and as Robinson
+Crusoeish as the spectacle itself&mdash;all these things are the <i>siva</i>. If I
+do not refrain and cut short at once, I shall become entangled in trying
+to give you word pictures that are utterly inadequate. I feel, too, that
+the drawings and paintings I have made are so stupid from their freezing
+into attitudes the beauties that are made of sequence. These beauties do
+not touch the missionary. The invariable objection to amusement, to
+dissipation, to that weakening of purpose which our indulgences bring,
+make this natural of course, and we can understand it. But these kindly
+natives need, I think, every possible excuse for innocent occupation.
+There is so little for them to do to-day, and we feel that by lending
+our countenance to the <i>siva</i> we are rescuing both the native and the
+missionary from a false position. The condemnation of the dance had gone
+from the white missionary to his brown brother, the local Polynesian
+clergyman or deacon; and when we arrived we learned that even our
+excellent Sunday-school, church-keeping friend, Faatulia, the wife of
+the chief Seumanu, himself also a most excellent and worthy member of
+the church, had been excommunicated for having danced a European
+cotillion at the Fourth of July ball given by our American Consul. The
+revulsion is beginning, and we are glad to help in forwarding it.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_120">{120}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We could scarcely have <i>sivas</i> of our own&mdash;that is to say that our
+village could not give them properly. They should be under the direction
+of the right social leader, and we have no <i>taupo</i>. The <i>taupo</i> is a
+young woman elected by the village for the purpose of directing all
+social amenities in which women can take part. It is for her to receive
+the guests, to know who they are and what courtesies should be extended
+to them; to provide for their food and lodging. If they are great people
+like ourselves, for their being attended, for their having all small
+comforts of bath and soft mats and tappa, for their being talked to and
+sung to and danced to. She is invariably chosen of good descent, and she
+is beautiful if fate allows it, but she must be a lady above all. She
+must also be a virgin, and be continually protected, escorted, watched,
+investigated, by one or many duennas, who never for a single instant
+lose sight of her. Her position in that way is a trying one. Contrary to
+all feminine instincts, she is rarely allowed to have her own way in the
+adornment of her person. Her expert attendants insist upon having a
+voice in dressing her on all show occasions; notwithstanding, it seemed
+to me that I recognized in each individual <i>taupo</i> a something that had
+escaped the levelling influence of so much interest taken in her attire.
+Remember that she dances in front of the warriors in battle.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="ill_011">
+<a href="images/ill_018.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_018.jpg" width="436" height="550" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">SAMOAN COURTSHIP. FAASE, THE TAUPO OR OFFICIAL VIRGIN AND
+HER DUENNA WAIT MODESTLY FOR THE APPROACH OF A YOUNG CHIEF</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_121">{121}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When the time comes, the village that has chosen her, also chooses her
+husband, and makes her gifts, as a dowry. Sometimes, and this is one of
+the terrors of the situation, the village is very hard to please, and
+rejects offers which the <i>taupo</i> might perhaps have accepted if a less
+important and freer agent. She can always escape by bolting, and marry
+as she pleases, thereby forfeiting her position and the respect of
+well-thinking people. A match not well thought of by society is as much
+deplored here as in our very best circles. Marriage, apparently lightly
+entered into, is a very serious matter. Rank, position, is only
+transmitted by blood; and a mésalliance in Samoa entails consequences
+still more disastrous than in the court life of Germany. Perhaps my
+South Sea Islander is not sentimental. He is simple and natural, but he
+looks at everything in a practical way, and his ideas, having always
+been the same, enable him to keep this natural simplicity without any
+protest in favour of that freedom that brings on love tragedies.</p>
+
+<p>As the day draws to its last close in the fairy colouring of the long
+afterglow, people come back to their evening meal&mdash;a regular hour and
+moment, here where divisions of time seem so uncared for that no older
+man or woman could accurately know their age; unless they date from some
+well-known event recorded by the foreigner.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_122">{122}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>(In other places people have told me, it was so many bread-fruit seasons
+ago; it was when such a ship was here.)</p>
+
+<p>Magongi, the owner of our hut, returning from his fishing, drops a fish
+or two at our posts, according to Samoan etiquette and in honour to
+guests and chiefs like ourselves. Faces are turned from gazing at the
+sea, toward the houses where meals are getting ready. The young people
+give up their seats on the little platforms, or “lookouts” by the sea,
+and the lover confides his courtship, in Polynesian way, to others to
+continue for him.</p>
+
+<p>This evening, as every evening, with the last afterglow, in each hut of
+the village, with the lighting of fire or lamp, comes the sound of the
+evening prayer before meal. In pagan days, with the lighting of the
+evening fire (meant for light), in the hollow basin scooped out in the
+centre of the hut, after a libation to the gods <i>outside</i>, thrown out
+between the posts, the Samoan prayed a prayer like this:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Sail by, O Gods! and let us be:<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Ye unknown Gods, who haunt the sea.”<br></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>When I hear the sound of the evening hymn, fixed and certain like all
+their habits, I recall this prayer, so full of the future that has come
+upon these dwellers in islands, and has brought with our faith and our
+ideas&mdash;the latter certainly<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_123">{123}</a></span> misunderstood&mdash;a slow extinction of their
+past and of their very existence. For in all Polynesia, though arrested
+now for a time, there has been within the hundred years from discovery a
+fading away. As the Tahitian song says:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“The coral will grow and man must perish.”<br></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>I have been telling of the influence of missionaries upon old customs,
+such as dances. Let me say something further.</p>
+
+<p>I want to note that it was easier to get the Samoans to accept any form
+of Christian worship because their religion was simpler than that of the
+other islands. They were free from a great many horrors&mdash;the belief in
+the necessity of human sacrifice. They hated cannibalism. Their heavier
+nature had never led them to such immorality as tempted other South Sea
+Islanders, who thereby resemble us more.</p>
+
+<p>Then the missionaries came to them so late&mdash;at the end of the
+thirties&mdash;that the Samoans had already been able to learn about this
+religion that fixed everything&mdash;this desirable law called Lotu, which
+was to settle everything for them, and make everything straight.
+(Lotu<a id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> also means church, Lotu Tonga, the Tongan Church, etc.) So that
+within the very shortest possible time the missionaries succeeded in
+converting them, in fact, were waited for and expected, one <span class="pagenum"><a id="page_124">{124}</a></span>might say,
+by the next chance ship. The terrible reputation of savageness of these
+islanders, owing to their having murdered La Peyrouse’s men in Tutuila,
+on first acquaintance, so guarded them that even so far back as 1836,
+and later, very little was known of them&mdash;they were carefully avoided.
+But certain outcasts, escaped convicts, terrors of the sea, had come
+among them, and had even begun to instruct them to expect this law of
+Good. It is one of the most touching, as well as one of the most
+atrocious, of small facts. Old Samasone was telling us the stories of
+these old times: how some stranded ruffian, unable to return to white
+lands, had felt obliged, upon being questioned, to assert his value and
+knowledge by some imitation that might not later conflict with the
+outside facts. Some brutal, drunken, murderous wretch would choose, some
+day, to simulate a Sunday, and sing obscene or brutal forecastle songs,
+all the same to those who did not understand a word, as representing the
+church service of song which he described.</p>
+
+<p>Samasone, whose American name is Hamilton, and who has been here for the
+third of a century, tells us lengthily and in detail such stories, and
+gives us long accounts of Samoan manners, in the same way that might be
+his if he were still in native New England. And when I shut my eyes, I
+can fancy myself sitting on the edge of some Newport wharf, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_125">{125}</a></span>
+listening to Captain Jim or Captain Sam, discoursing wisely, with
+infinite detail.</p>
+
+<p>Fifty years have passed since those things, paralleled more or less
+elsewhere in the South Seas; and now from the hut of Mataafa, the great
+chief, which is next to mine, with the sunset, comes the Angelus, sung
+by the people yet nearer to nature than Millet’s peasants. I hear also
+the Ave Maria Stella; the cry of the exiled sons of Eve for help in this
+vale of tears, for whether Catholic like Mataafa, or Protestant like my
+good neighbour Tofae, they are all very Christian. Indeed, my other
+neighbour is a preacher, an eloquent one, like a true Samoan, a race
+where eloquence is hereditary in families. I hear him thundering on
+Sundays against the Babylonians, and all the bad people of Scripture.</p>
+
+<p>They are all steeped in a knowledge of the words of the Bible. In any
+serious conversation, in political discussion, we hear the well-known
+types of character referred to, and all the analogies pushed to the
+furthest extreme.<a id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> The rather light-minded girls whom we have about us
+amuse themselves on Sunday with capping verses from the Bible. The young
+men of our boat crew, whose moral views on many subjects would bring a
+blush to the cheek of the most hardened club<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_126">{126}</a></span>man, are fond of leading in
+prayer, are learned in hymnology, and are apt to be fairly strict
+sabbatarians. Here and elsewhere, in many other islands, it is often
+very difficult on Sunday to obtain the use of a boat, the only vehicle
+possible. Remember that I am, and shall be for a long time, writing from
+islands, where all life is along the shore, where only occasionally are
+there roads, or what we would call roads; where there are few horses,
+somtimes none at all; where the natural road is over the beach, when it
+is uninterrupted by rock and cliffs, and where the boat can take you
+quietly along inside of the reef. But as I shall make it out clearly
+later, the Polynesian likes to have things settled one way or the other,
+as all sensible people do.</p>
+
+<p>And then the Bible&mdash;I am not speaking of the New Testament&mdash;is so near
+them; they read so often their own story in the life of Israel of many
+centuries back. They are not separated from a civilization of that form
+by such and so many changes as our ancestors’ minds have passed through.
+Their habit of life must even be said to antedate the biblical. They do
+not have to make excuses for the conduct of God’s chosen people. They
+can take all as it is written. They need not suppose some error in the
+account of the witch of Endor. In such a valley, buried under trees, or
+behind that headland where the palms toss in the roar of the trades,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_127">{127}</a></span>
+dwells some woman, wiser and more powerful in the solitude and in the
+night than we judge her by day. She can tell what things are happening
+elsewhere; what things are likely to come. She brings in the dead by the
+hand. She tells of what the dead are now doing, of their wars and their
+struggles in the empty outside world. What she revealed some nights ago,
+to a chosen few who say they were present, is murmured about the
+villages, and makes a feature of conversation not unlike society news. I
+have listened at night, in out-of-the-way places, among preachers and
+people of confirmed Bible piety, to the last reports from the spirit
+world: to the news of war there; to the tale of great fights which had
+occurred on such a day of the moon, when the battleground of the reef
+was strewn with the corpses of the dead already dead to us. And I
+remember once hearing how some spirit ruling over a part of our island
+had declined to enter into war because he had not been attacked, and his
+religious principles, which were Christian, confined him to the
+defensive. Perhaps all these things meant more to my good friends than
+they did to me, curious as I was to find in these reports some traits of
+their character, some manner of theirs of looking at the things of this
+world. I believe that to them these agitations of the outside world were
+presages of coming danger, of trouble to their earthly lives; that they
+saw omens of victory because the spirits of such<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_128">{128}</a></span> and such possible
+ancestors had triumphed. But no doubt, in some way not understood by me,
+all these vague stories confirmed them in certain directions, or made
+them hesitate. At any rate, it kept the land peopled with fears. It
+makes the terror of the forest more vivid and more reasonable. The
+<i>po</i>&mdash;the dark, the night&mdash;is impressive to the Polynesian; the brave
+man may have all the fear of the little boy. And I own that I have never
+seen a nature which at night assumed more mystery, a more threatening
+quiet. The vegetation never rests. The plants are always growing. The
+sighing of the palms so deceptively like rain; the glitter of the great
+leaves of the banana, striking one against the other, with a half
+metallic clink; the fall of dead branches; the sudden drop of the
+cocoanut or the bread-fruit; the perpetual draught, carrying indefinite
+sounds from the untrodden interior; the echo of the surf from the reef,
+against the high mountains; the splash of the water on the shore; the
+flight of the “flying fox” in the branches; the ghostlike step of the
+barefooted passerby; the impossibility of the eye carrying far throught
+angles of tropical foliage&mdash;all these things make the night&mdash;the <i>po</i>,
+not a cessation of impressions, but a new mystery.</p>
+
+<p>With such a landscape about me, I was ready to believe that handsome
+young men belated in the passages of the mountains had been met by the
+female spirit, whether her<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_129">{129}</a></span> name be Sau Mai Afi or not, whose sudden
+love is death; and that the same being could be a man when the night
+traveller was a woman and beautiful. Had not the brother of one of our
+virgin friends been assailed by devils, in some adventurous night
+voyage, and had he not returned half crazed, and beaten in such a way
+that he had never recovered? All this had happened while we were there;
+we might have found him alive had we come a few weeks earlier.</p>
+
+<p>And in the night-fishing how often do the dead, continuing their habits,
+fish on the reefs alongside of the living. They are silent, and their
+canoes keep apart, but they may silently step from one canoe to another,
+only to be known by the chill and anxiety that goes with them. I have
+seen with my own eyes, far out on the reef, the solitary torch pointed
+out to me as that of the dead. Often, when suspected, the spirit
+occupant of a canoe has made for shore and disappeared, <i>incessu patuit
+dea</i>, and has been assuredly recognized by the track of her torch
+through the mountains, where no living man goes. That certainly must
+have been our spirit disastrous to young men.</p>
+
+<p>All these sides of common belief, or what perhaps we might call
+superstition, were shown to us little by little. On the outside our good
+friends believe roughly as we do, and all this that I am talking about
+is what remains attached to Chris<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_130">{130}</a></span>tianity, or more properly, never
+disentangled from it. And I should suppose that it must have been
+difficult for the missionaries to expel these survivals of the past, in
+the same way that the old Church found it impossible, in certain corners
+of Europe, to wipe out the belief in fairies&mdash;the “little men,” the
+“good folk,” the “wee folk,” the “good neighbours”; the sacredness and
+influence of places. And here the practical mind of the savage, in its
+first reaction, after having received a set form of worship and faith as
+a great relief, would argue that the written Law, the Book, countenances
+most of the things they <i>cared</i> for in their older worship. A very few
+years after the first christianization which began in the Society
+Islands, sects were formed, based upon the Bible, or using it as an
+excuse, with all the security of any theological difference. I have a
+vague feeling that many of my brown friends think that the Christian,
+even the missionary, does not carry out properly his belief, and that
+they themselves are nearer to the letter as well as to the spirit. If
+the missionaries have let loose among them the famous question of the
+lost tribes, I have no doubt that many of them must be imbued with the
+certainty of that descent. Many of their practices are so much like
+those of the early Jews, that, according to old-fashioned ways of
+historical criticism, an uninterrupted tradition <span class="pagenum"><a id="page_131">{131}</a></span>might be argued. In
+fact, I am quite sure that many of the missionaries have so reasoned,
+and implanted among them a great feeling of confidence. And the
+Polynesian, having a perfectly healthy mind, likes to have everything
+settled. Anything more like the typical respectable Englishman I have
+never met. With the brown man one sees the natural healthy desire of
+having the questions of religion, of politics, of society, all settled
+on the same basis; there is such a thing as good form, and that settles
+it. After the first start, the islanders were much troubled at finding
+that there were many ways of looking at things, and that religion might
+be right and manners bad: that the wife of the missionary, who insisted
+on poke bonnets, was not dressing according to the most aristocratic
+forms of her own land. And when they find that their written religion
+does not provide for all their little wants, it must be very natural to
+supply the smaller ones, which are the everyday ones, with some of the
+older forms more fitted for individual and temporal advantages. It must
+be a comfort to many of them to know that the flight of certain birds
+indicates what they had better do to-morrow; that the coming of certain
+fish may mean, nay does mean&mdash;some change in family history; and they
+may still prefer to treat respectfully the animals and plants that were
+associated with their origins&mdash;what we might roughly call, their totem.
+The shark has been respected or the bread-fruit, or the owl;<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_132">{132}</a></span> and in
+certain cases certain mysterious powers and sanctities might follow the
+line of descent, though concealed from the public, more especially the
+white men. Of this, I ought perhaps to say that I am confident; and that
+the powers would be recognized in certain people even when, as I have
+seen it, they belong to opposing Christian sects.</p>
+
+<p>The missionaries were Wesleyans, or, rather, men of the London
+Missionary Society. The form seems to have suited the Samoans. It was a
+service in which every one took part. There was preaching and eloquence
+and oratory, and to a certain extent the community was invited into the
+church&mdash;not allowed to enter into the church as a favour. So that
+notwithstanding their fondness for externals, the Catholic service gives
+them less of their old, natural, ancestral habits by centring everything
+in the ministrations of the priest, and by cutting off all chance of any
+members of the congregation becoming themselves orators, deacons or
+preachers, and leading in turn themselves. The chiefs also would
+hesitate in a choice of humiliations; the missionary, white at first and
+now a native obtaining a position of equal and sometimes superior
+influence, and that without any civil preparation for the same&mdash;indeed
+with less fitness from the relative isolation of his days of study.
+Later on I may explain to you more fully how absolutely the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page_133">{133}</a></span>chief is
+the pivot of all social good. He has been for indefinite ages the cause
+of all action; he has been personally superior both in body and mind.
+The entire aristocracy is a real one, the only one I know of. It is
+impossible to enter into it, though one may be born into it. With our
+ideas of more or less Germanic origin we suppose a ruler gifted with the
+power of bestowing part of his value upon certain men lower than
+himself, and actually making such people essentially different. A
+Polynesian knows no such metaphysical subtlety. The actual blood of
+physical descent is essential to supremacy, except in a most vicarious
+and momentary manner, or as by marriage so that the children may become
+entitled to whatever the sum of the blood of parents represents. With
+them an heir to aristocratic privileges or power or influence or
+prestige represents nothing more than the arithmetical sum of his
+father’s and mother’s blood. I have had lately a Sunday afternoon visit
+all to myself, from a charming little girl who is the daughter and sole
+child of the king; a nice little girl with pretty little royal ways, who
+explains to me that she does not like things here so well as she did
+where she was taught English, where she had been at school, in the
+British colony of Fiji. There she was a king’s daughter, and any English
+ideas around her would be more flattering to her consequence than even
+the kindly feeling of the subjects of her father. For her mother is not
+of equal blood, besides being a foreigner.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_134">{134}</a></span> The great chief Malietoa
+Laupepa, whom we have made a king, cannot make his wife, according to
+Polynesian ideas, any more than what she was before he married her; and
+the little daughter has only in her veins the royal blood on one side,
+and a certain respectability on the other. To the true Polynesian mind,
+such a one of her cousins, of less high descent on the father’s side,
+may be of higher descent on the mother’s, and the sum of those descents
+may be very much greater than the sum of the descents of the daughter of
+Malietoa Laupepa. Hence it requires a great stretch of loyalty to look
+at such a little person with the veneration that the Polynesian feels
+for “chiefy” origin; and you can understand what a disastrous and bloody
+muddle we have made it for them when we have told them that the word
+<i>king</i> represented anything that they had themselves or could have. With
+them <i>Rex nascitur non fit</i>.</p>
+
+<p>All this has been explained by the supposition of two different races,
+one of which, that of the chiefs, had subdued the other. There is no
+such tradition, however, and no apparent reasons to explain the enormous
+superiority of the aristocratic lines except the simple physical ones of
+choice in breeding and of better food and less suffering, continued for
+centuries and centuries. Even at a distance a chief can be distinguished
+by his size and his gait, and a successful collec<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_135">{135}</a></span>tion at some political
+entertainment brings back the dream of lines in the Homeric catalogues
+of heroes. Great size of limb, great height, consequent strength and
+weight, a haughty bearing, a manner of standing, a manner of throwing
+his legs out in walking, like the step of a splendid animal, a habit of
+sitting upright&mdash;all these points tell the chief.<a id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p>
+
+<p>Upon these superior beings, then, brought up to command, considered as
+sacred by themselves and by all below them, devolved perpetually the
+duty of deciding everything that was to be done. Even in a detail so
+minute to our minds as that of a day for fishing, the chief decided, and
+does yet, what the community should do. The good fortune of all was
+dependent upon his wise choice. As the chief has often explained to us,
+when the women began to talk too much, and fix their minds upon harmful
+gossip, a healthy diversion was that of ordering them to make the native
+cloth&mdash;an absorbing process. With all the refinement of political
+leaders, excuses would be found for such an enforcement of industry: the
+occasion of some visit to be made or received, when every one entitled
+to it should appear with many changes of dress; when the visitor or the
+visited should receive presents of beautiful <span class="pagenum"><a id="page_136">{136}</a></span>cloth. Let me say how
+elsewhere, in another group of islands, the earlier missionary
+interfered and broke up the industry of women, without evil intention,
+making them idle, and opening thereby the gate to ruin. In Polynesian
+life, as I am trying to explain, things were intimately connected. There
+were religious forms or words&mdash;or shall I rather say, forms and words of
+good omen?&mdash;accompanying all ordinary human action. Had the missionaries
+realized this perfectly, they might almost have interfered with the
+savages’ breathing; but they fastened on the pagan forms connected with
+the making of cloth, and the women gave it up, and bought cotton from
+the white man, and paid for it the Lord knows how.</p>
+
+<p>The chief, then, sent the young men to fish and the women to work, when
+it was needed both for physical and moral good. War, of course, they
+always had, as a last resource, just like the great politicians of
+Europe. The constant interference, involuntary very often, very often
+most kindly meant, of the missionary or the clergyman, diminished this
+influence of the chief&mdash;an unwritten, uncodified power, properly an
+influence, something that when once gone has to be born again.<a id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_137">{137}</a></span> And
+the brown clergyman, continuing the authority of the white one, has
+something further, less pure, a feeling of ambition, a desire to assert
+himself against former superiors; and he is perhaps still more a
+dissolvent of the body politic into which he was born.</p>
+
+<p>I see no picture about me more interesting than the moral one of my next
+neighbour, the great Mataafa. To see the devout Christian, the man who
+has tried to put aside the small things that tie us down, struggle with
+the antique prejudices&mdash;necessary ones&mdash;of a Polynesian nobleman, is a
+touching spectacle. When a young missionary rides up to his door, while
+all others gently come up to it, and those who pass move far away, out
+of respect; and then when the confident youth, full of his station as a
+religious teacher, speaks to the great chief from his saddle, Mataafa’s
+face is a study. Over the sensitive countenance, which looks partly like
+that of a warrior, partly like that of a bishop or church guardian,
+comes a wave of surprise and disgust, promptly repelled, as the higher
+view of forgiveness and respect for holy office comes to his relief.</p>
+
+<p>But Mataafa is not only a chief of chiefs, he is a gentleman among
+gentlemen. My companion, difficult to please, says, “La Farge, at last
+we have met a gentleman.”</p>
+
+<p>His is a sad fate: to have done all for Samoa; to have beaten<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_138">{138}</a></span> the
+Germans and wearied them out; to have been elected king by almost
+unanimous consent, including that of the present King, who wished him to
+reign; then to be abandoned by us; and to feel his great intellectual
+superiority and yet to be idle and useless when things are going wrong.
+And more than all, however supported by the general feeling to-day, if
+he moves to establish his claims, the three foreign nations who decide
+Samoa’s future, not for her good, but for their comfort or advantage,
+will certainly have to combine and crush him.</p>
+
+<p>He is a hero of tragedy&mdash;a reminder of the Middle Ages, when a man could
+live a religious life and a political one.</p>
+
+<p>And his adversaries among the natives are among our friends; and we like
+them also, though there is none to admire like Mataafa standing out for
+an idea for the legitimacy of right.</p>
+
+<p>For all the soft Communism of which I spoke, the chiefs were the
+stiffening, and are so still in as far as the new ideas, or rather want
+of ideas, do not affect their real authority.</p>
+
+<p>As I tried to explain, these are chiefs, lesser or greater, hereditary,
+essential; nothing can replace them, no commoner come into their
+position or a similar one. Alongside of them an European monarch is a
+half-caste or a parvenu. When, as you will see, we, that is to say the
+English and Americans,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_139">{139}</a></span> made one of them a king, we made a thing unknown
+before, unthinkable in reality among their social machinery.</p>
+
+<p>For however true it is that the chief is so by birth, by authority of
+nature, you know that in Samoa he is also elective. A council of chiefs
+of his own race determine whether or no he shall “bear the name.” For
+smaller chiefs, their own names; for certain great ones, such a name as
+Aana or Malietoa.</p>
+
+<p>With these names goes the power over certain places large or small, but
+each having a traditional value. Should a chief of sufficient blood have
+all these five names (and he cannot get them without such natural
+inheritance and the name may remain empty), should he have all five
+names, then he is of necessity king, that is to say, chief of chiefs.
+But if he have only three, then imagine the confusion made in the true
+Samoan mind by our making him king.</p>
+
+<p>Mataafa has held more names than any other, and would no doubt be to-day
+elected king by the majority of the Samoans; and absolute agreement
+would probably always be impossible. But though the treaty between
+Germany, England, and the United States, as promulgated in the Island,
+decided that the Samoans should elect their king, and thereby Mataafa
+would be the man; yet a secret arrangement, or what is prettily called a
+<i>protocol</i>, not published to the Samoans, decided that<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_140">{140}</a></span> Mataafa
+especially and alone should not be allowed. He was the only man who had
+successfully defended Samoan independence as far as it could be, by word
+and by action; he had fought the Germans and defeated them, and that was
+the reason.</p>
+
+<p>According to American ideas Mataafa would be the only proper person, but
+Germany and England have arranged for some time back all matters of
+influence and policy; and whatever we have wished, or might have wished,
+we have always been obliged to vote over against them, and must continue
+to do so.</p>
+
+<p>But the German cause is such a bad one, so foul at the origin, and so
+brutally helped on, that it has been impossible for Great Britain to
+ignore justice absolutely, and we have done something in the cause of
+humanity and so far served God.</p>
+
+<p>Money can have no feeling; political ambition only what may help; and
+the cause of all this trouble which has made this little island known to
+the entire world is the hope of saving some money badly invested.</p>
+
+<p>A great Hamburg firm with a French name, the Godeffroys, had some years
+ago established itself in most islands of the Pacific; it was the great
+firm&mdash;the German firm. But as often happens, speculations in other
+matters, or Russian-Westphalian securities broke the great man, the
+former friend<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_141">{141}</a></span> of Bismarck, and when a German company, known as “The
+German Company,” succeeded to his assets in the South Seas, they found
+the greater part of them sunk in the Hares-plantations of the firm in
+the Islands of Samoa.</p>
+
+<p>Everywhere else there was no hope, but here if sales could be proved
+valid, if by any means the present labour system of black imported
+savages from other islands could be replaced by a system of “peonage,”
+for the natives, if taxes could be placed upon the community which can
+only be taxed by making the industrious support the idle, if in fact,
+the firm could control the islands, money might again be made and
+perhaps the millions sunk be made to pay or fully recovered. Elsewhere
+in islands where French or English ruled, it was so much the worse for
+the adventurous if things went wrong, and there are cotton plantations
+and sugar plantations, which have gone to pieces as it became impossible
+to keep them up, industries and speculations which first started into
+life with our war.</p>
+
+<p>From early days political or state reasons were carefully kept together
+with business ones; the political representative of Germany would be
+also the manager of the firm, so that if one kind of reasoning did not
+work, then another might. Anything became constructive insult or
+opposition to the Empire of Germany&mdash;even a sort of lèse majesté or
+sus<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_142">{142}</a></span>picion of treason. Business and the navy supported each other, and
+on a small scale the story of the “John Company of India” was repeated,
+with the same cruelties and atrocities more easily noticed because of
+foreigners being there, because of our modern institutions of the press
+and the telegram.</p>
+
+<p class="cspc">AN ACCOUNT OF RESIDENCE AT VAIALA</p>
+
+<p>Our friends Seumanu and Faatulia tell us, with much emotion, how
+Malietoa, now the king, wept with them when he went off a half voluntary
+prisoner of the Germans, hoping that by his sufferings his country would
+be spared bloodshed; and that in some way or other the Europeans would
+desist from their grasping demands. Then Mataafa headed the resistance
+which two years ago saved his race from the extermination threatened by
+the Germans; made him among his own people the equal of his hereditary
+claims; and entitled him to the name given him by Admiral Kimberly, that
+of the Washington of Samoa. To fight German discipline, and German
+ironclads, with naked followers bound together with the loosest ideas of
+allegiance, seems a story out of a dream, and certainly would have come
+to a disastrous end had we not interfered. The Berlin Conference in
+which we acted restored Malietoa to his home and his power practically,
+but in theory made him dependent on the choice of the Samoans,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_143">{143}</a></span> which
+choice the conference guaranteed. That is to say, those were the words
+of the treaty on which Mataafa stood. But both English and Germans
+agreed that a man who had defeated the Germans should not be elected,
+whether he was chosen by the country or not.</p>
+
+<p>This secret protocol is a disgraceful result of the indifference of our
+representatives to the good name of the United States, and to what is
+more atrocious yet in my mind&mdash;a want of comprehension of the value of
+the United States and of its enormous power. One must go abroad and far
+away to realize that whenever we wish we are one of the main powers of
+the world. It is on our sleeping that grasping nations like England and
+Germany depend.</p>
+
+<p>Mataafa has probably been aware of the secret protocol which excluded
+him from competition as king, a protocol, as I have said, made
+exclusively to please the Germans, by the very weak person whom we
+detailed to the Berlin Conference. To repeat, we made a treaty which
+would give the Samoans the right to elect their so-called king or head
+chief, and now we break its lawful meaning by providing that the one man
+who would have most suffrages, and who represented the highest claims of
+legitimacy, should be exempted if elected.</p>
+
+<p>When Malietoa, brought back by the Germans, worn out in body through his
+sufferings in a cruel detention, landed again<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_144">{144}</a></span> in Samoa, he was received
+by Mataafa. Remember that they are blood relations, and that when one
+failed, the other had taken up his cause and won. They embraced each
+other, and were left alone by their attendants. It is said that Malietoa
+urged upon Mataafa to retain the power, Mataafa declining. Some
+compromise was effected, the terms of which are not known, but which
+meant that Malietoa should go on reigning without Mataafa’s abandoning
+any claims. Now Mataafa is in a sort of retirement, living in a manner
+extremely difficult for us to understand, were it not that he resumes in
+his person all the ideas that a South Sea man can have regarding the
+proper chief of chiefs. Remember that he is <i>tui</i>, which is nearly what
+we call a king, of the great districts of Atua and Aana, which have
+prescriptive rights of election; and he has himself the name of
+Malietoa&mdash;what we would call the title given him by the very district of
+Malie from which the Malietoa derives his name: and that this was given
+to him when there was no one to bear this historic burden. Here he is,
+living in the further end of the village, only a few feet from our own
+hut, which as you know is loaned to us, we suppose by Magogi the chief,
+though this is not very distinct. Of course in Samoan way we shall
+present to him, or to somebody, gifts equivalent to the use of the
+house, to the dignity of Magogi, and to our own essential dignity of
+American chiefs.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_145">{145}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>To my western mind the situation is very curious. Mataafa is already in
+a mild opposition which at any moment may become extremely serious. He
+must know the intentions of the three powers, and cannot, as I
+understand, forego his claims. Here he resides under the apparent
+protection of the chiefs of the village, our friend Tofae, and his
+brother Patu, the great warrior, who are I think necessarily partisans
+of Malietoa; and who would make war upon him in case of a break. But
+outwardly the greatest reverence attends him. One feels it in the air.
+At this end of the village, separated from the other by many trees,
+there is always quiet. The children never make any noise; even the very
+animals seem to understand that they must not come near. The few
+disturbances are those of Mataafa’s own men when they do any chores in
+the outside huts reserved for practical purposes, so as to keep all
+housekeeping away from the residence. The giggling girls are quieter;
+every one’s voice is lowered: on the road that passes at a little
+distance from the great chief people edge away toward the further bushes
+in the quietest and most homely manner. There is the perpetual
+recognition of a king’s presence. Mataafa goes out very little. He
+trudges out to early mass, along the same exact path; has services at
+home, and every evening the hymns are sung within his hut. He goes out
+early in the morning to do work, like every<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_146">{146}</a></span>body else, in his little
+patch of taro planting, and returns after this gentle exercise, naked to
+the waist, like any other common mortal. His goings out are apparently
+few; though I seem to see certain special visitors drop in of an
+evening. Sometimes, as you know, he calls upon us, and this was his
+first&mdash;shall I say command or visiting-card?</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="nind">
+(Envelope)<br>
+</p>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ia Lasusuuga Alii<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Amelika<br></span>
+<span class="i6">Nasei maliu<br></span>
+<span class="i7">mai nei<br></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Oi le fale o Tofae</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="nind">
+(Autograph letter)<br>
+<br>
+Vaiala<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="hang">
+Oketopa, 11 1890<br>
+iala susuuga Alii Amelika<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>Aliie ale nei lau tusi ia te ou lua ia ou lua faamolemole oute
+manao e fia fesi la fai ma oulua susuuga fe oute alu atu ilou lua
+maoto fe lua te maliu mai i lau Fale alou taofi lea efaasilasila
+atu is ou lua susuuga.</p>
+
+<p class="nind">
+Ona pau lea ia Saifua.<br>
+</p>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O au M J Mataafa<br></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="nind">
+[Translation]<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="r">
+Vaiala, Oct. 11, 1890.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="nind">
+To the Distinguished Chiefs of America<br>
+<br>
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">O Chiefs</span><br>
+</p>
+
+<p>This my letter to you both. Will you please my wish to meet your
+Honours? Shall I go to your residence, or will you come to my
+house? This it is my wish to let your Honours know. This is all.
+May you live.</p>
+
+<p class="c">
+I am<br>
+<span style="margin-left: 15%;">M. J. Mataafa</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 35%;">(Malietoa Josefo Mataafa)</span><br>
+</p></div><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_147">{147}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In return for our call the great chief has called many times upon us. He
+apologizes almost for his position of something sacred, for his being
+obliged to drink out of his own cup, for instance, and, as I told you,
+has yielded very slowly to the investigations of Atamo<a id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> concerning the
+rights of law, of property, of kinship, which must at first have
+appeared to him irrelevant and indiscreet. Even Seumanu, with whom we
+are so familiar that we threaten to take away his name occasionally
+(Samoan legal deposition from office), even Seumanu was obliged to say
+once, “Years ago I would have killed a man who asked me that question!”
+I believe it was some inquiry as to his exact descent and consequent
+claims from his grandmother. But one of these visits of Mataafa brought
+about a meeting with Stevenson which I had thought might not take place
+for some time. It is always difficult for those of us who have the
+cosmopolitan instinct to realize how fundamental are the views of the
+Britisher. Mr. Stevenson had been explaining to us a difficulty I could
+hardly appreciate, and that was the question of whether he should call
+on Mataafa or wait until Mataafa called on him. I know how that would be
+settled in England. No one would expect the Queen or the Prince of Wales
+to call first, even though they cannot have for themselves the sense of
+dignity and sacredness which must envelop Mataafa. The<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_148">{148}</a></span> Queen is the
+head of the church and defender of the faith; but she is not so by
+blood, whether there be a church or not. It is this peculiar element of
+something sacred, as it were of the son of a demigod, the natural
+intermediary between this world and the next, which is gently latent in
+the original idea of the aristocracy of these people. Even to Roman
+Paula, the spiritual daughter of St. Jerome, it must have been something
+beyond our ken to be a descendant of, let us say, Agamemnon or Achilles
+or other sons of demigods. In this state of mind Mr. Stevenson came in
+upon us during one of Mataafa’s visits, and succumbed at once to the
+delicate courtesy of the great chief. He managed so prettily to express
+his knowledge of Stevenson’s distinction, of his being a writer of
+stories, and a wish to know him limited by the difficulties of his
+position.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, I say, Mataafa bides his time. He waits patiently, en
+évidence, but doing nothing. This will irritate his enemies, but I seem
+to see that for him there can be no more legal course. As long as he
+does nothing, and makes only a mute appeal to justice, he is entirely in
+the right. He is not supposed to accede to the protocol which excluded
+him. I think I understand somewhat of the absurdly complicated position
+which his friends or his enemies hold&mdash;position based on hereditary
+rights; long internecine wars; ancient privileges of small places which
+have rights of election, but<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_149">{149}</a></span> which are too weak to enforce them; and,
+above all, on both sides questions of complicated descent. Even if I
+were correct, and made no mistakes, which could hardly be, I would not
+dare to go into a lengthy explanation of the claims on both sides.</p>
+
+<p>One great enmity Mataafa has: more intense than that of the Germans,
+because partly unconscious and founded on the worst passion of
+humanity&mdash;theological hatred. That enmity is the dislike of the foreign
+Protestant missionary, who moreover is absolutely English in his ideas,
+his wishes, his intentions, and has a perpetual political bias. Mataafa
+is a Catholic, like many of the chiefs. Naturally he has Catholic
+advisers, and some of them may be&mdash;though I don’t know it for
+sure&mdash;tainted by the same politico-religious ideas as their opponents.
+They probably supply the great chief with information of what the great
+outside world would do in his favour; opinions based on their wishes,
+and not on the meanness of mankind, which is the only logical basis of
+politics.</p>
+
+<p>As a proof of the atrocities to which the religious mind can consent,
+listen to this charming detail. It belongs to a time when I was no
+longer in Samoa. I have mentioned in my other journals and letters the
+names of the Rev. Mr. Claxton of the London Missionary Society; and I
+can add to what I said that was <i>pleasant</i> that he seemed to be the
+usual gentle clergyman, with side-whiskers, and sufficiently modern,
+and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_150">{150}</a></span> that he spoke very nicely, as I thought, of the religious state of
+the Samoans, and evinced a sense of a certain steadfastness of theirs,
+which distinguishes them from many of the other varieties of South Sea
+people. Mr. Claxton also pleased us by recognizing the Samoan dances as
+not being sinful, by being present at one of them, with Mrs. Claxton.
+You know that poor Faatulia was excommunicated for attending the Fourth
+of July dance, which was of course attended by the wives or daughters or
+aunts of the English or American consuls. The action of our reverend
+friend was all the more graceful because the dance was in honour of
+Faatulia’s niece, if I remember. Mrs. Claxton also we hear all sorts of
+nice things about. She is “Misi Talatoni,” and Meli Hamilton gets a
+great deal of fun out of her, pretending that we admire her dress much
+more than Meli’s. Never would you suspect these gentle associations
+connected with the ideas of mediæval assassination. But in August, our
+Consul, coming down to Australia, and meeting us on the way to Java,
+told me the following story because he wished me to take a hand myself.
+Mataafa’s habits were, as might be expected from his character,
+particularly steady as belonging to a war chief, a king, and a devout
+churchman. He went to mass every day, by the same path, and did not
+flinch or change his track when the Germans fired at him. Somehow or
+other, as happens to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_151">{151}</a></span> generals and to people who make a good mark, he
+was never hit. On this peculiarity of Mataafa’s was based a proposition
+made by the Rev. Mr. Claxton to the Consul. There was now absolute
+peace; and Mataafa and myself, or you would have a perfect right to walk
+along the road to church without being fired at. But German discipline
+has characteristics quite as distinct as Mataafa’s. Might it not be
+possible, if any German marines were landed by chance, to place some
+sentries on Mataafa’s road, presumably if he went to evening service? He
+would suspect no harm, and even if he did, would not move from his path.
+The German sentinel would by duty be obliged to fire, and consequently
+no one would be to blame, and Mataafa would be out of the way. This the
+reverend clergyman thought could be managed. What Consul Sewall wished
+of me was that I should warn a friend of Mataafa’s, Father Gavet, who
+lived somewhere along the coast, but whose long acquaintance with Samoan
+manners would find some way of avoiding the possibility of this little
+incident. I wrote to Father Gavet, who answered me, at some distance of
+time, of course, that the plot was understood; for, as Mataafa said to
+me, “There are no secrets in Samoa,” and the friends of Mataafa had
+taken necessary precautions. I never heard anything more about it, but I
+believe that the Reverend Claxton has been withdrawn.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_152">{152}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Of course as long as the waters are so disturbed, each party may hope to
+fish for their advantage; that is to say, the German for
+politico-commercial reasons, and the English for the same; and this all
+the more that the English government recognizes what is called spheres
+of influence, and that it is inclined to concede to Germany such an
+influence here, even if its representatives be not officially ordered to
+do so. We, who do not recognize these spheres of influence, are,
+however, prone to assist all Protestant missionary tendencies, right or
+wrong. Votes are votes. Besides, not only do we not recognize spheres of
+influence, but we are uncertain of any political tradition, and we are
+easily handled by England, to whom we are still intellectually subject.
+We are also more or less out of the game. We have no Heligoland or
+Hinterland in Africa, to trade off against influence in Samoa or New
+Guinea. We are still in the dark as to our fortune; we don’t know the
+importance of the Pacific Ocean to us, nor the immensity of future
+eastern trade. As the Germans here impertinently remark, we would trade
+an empire against the votes of a town in New Jersey, or the honour of
+dining with a countess.</p>
+
+<p>Brandés, the German dictator, that is to say the German official who
+controlled Samoa for a time, representing both Germany and Samoa, said
+of us: “A nation, which in all decisions of foreign policy must take
+into its councils the sen<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_153">{153}</a></span>ate and sixty million of people, can never
+have a foreign policy worthy of the name.” We might easily withdraw,
+even temporarily; then for the protection of German property, German
+forces could be landed in Samoa, the imperial flag be hoisted, and
+whoever would dare to haul it down? Bismarck, acting through his son
+Herbert, has apparently well arranged our agreements so that events
+might turn easily that way. On Mataafa these conditions hinge. As he
+acts, or is kept from acting, the possible possession of this key of the
+Pacific will be determined.</p>
+
+<p>And yet the Pacific is our natural property. Our great coast borders it
+for a quarter of the world. We must either give up Hawaii, which will
+inevitably then go over to England, or take it willingly, if we need to
+keep the passage open to eastern Asia, the future battleground of
+commerce.</p>
+
+<p>You can see how reasonable it is then that Mataafa should take an
+interest in us as Americans, and hold on to a hope that we might,
+however faintly, help the cause of his people, and keep them, as he
+says, from slavery. Moreover, as his men it was who rescued our sailors
+in the great calamity of 1889, even though they also rescued the
+Germans, with whom they were at war, he feels that kindness of
+obligation which comes to those who have tried to benefit others.</p>
+
+<p>All this is politics, and you are probably, like the United States, more
+or less indifferent to anything that has not the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_154">{154}</a></span> name that you are
+accustomed to. To me, on the contrary, my real and absorbing delight is
+the sense of looking at the world in a little nutshell, and of seeing
+everything reduced to such a small scale, and to so few people, that I
+can take, as it were, my first lessons in history. I don’t know that I
+should put it all into the form that Mr. Stevenson uses, in which I do
+not quite agree with him: that here, at length, we were free from the
+pressure of Roman civilization. I own of course, that all comes to us
+through Rome, and that the dago has had the making of us. The words
+which I use of course imply that. I can’t talk of politics, of
+civilization, of culture, of education, of chivalry, of any of the
+aspirations of the western world, without using the words implanted with
+the ideas in our barbarous ancestors; but before the culture and
+development of Rome was a something which had some analogies to what I
+see here. I am continually thinking how it may have been with my most
+remote ancestry, whenever I understand any better the ideas and habits
+of our good people here. As also they have passed from some still
+earlier or more remote stages, their ideas are easier to understand than
+those for instance of the Australian or even of the Fijian. A tendency
+to the commonplace, to a certain evening up of ideas, seems to belong to
+them, and makes them easier to understand because in so far they are not
+unlike us. They dislike excesses in<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_155">{155}</a></span> thinking, and too logical
+extensions of what might be called political ideas. About all this
+social difference of organization, I have written to you, I should say
+continually. I must have given you most of the details, even if I have
+not made a summary of the form of early civilization.</p>
+
+<p>I am troubled also at writing about things and ideas, and using words
+which have grown out of things and ideas extremely different and often
+contradictory. As the Christian terminology, the very language of the
+Gospels, was perforce made up of pagan forms and terms, so to-day, I
+shall have to describe what might be called pagan forms and ideas in a
+terminology now influenced by Christianity, and saturated with problems
+connected with it, so that probably Greek or Latin would be more
+natural, though even they, you know, are read by us with a bias that
+their authors never dreamed of.</p>
+
+<p>But as long as I do not write, it is pleasant to see the ideas without
+words, and perhaps descriptions may not have been the worst way to give
+them.</p>
+
+<p class="cspc">A MALAGA IN SEUMANU’S BOAT</p>
+
+<p>25th Oct., 1890.</p>
+
+<p>Malanga, written malaga, is a trip, a voyage where one puts up with
+friends, etc.; one of the fundamental social institutions of Samoa.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_156">{156}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="cspc">WHAT SEUMANU’s BOAT WAS</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“Secretary of the Navy to the Secretary of State. Acknowledging
+assistance by natives of Samoa.</p>
+
+<p class="r">
+“Navy Department,<br>
+“Washington, D. C., April 27, 1889.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="smcap">Sir</span>: In a report dated Apia, Samoa, March 26, 1889, from
+Rear-Admiral L. H. Kimberly, U. S. Navy, commanding the United
+States naval force on the Pacific Station, the Navy Department is
+informed that invaluable assistance was rendered by certain natives
+of Apia, during the storm of Saturday, the 16th March.</p>
+
+<p>“Rear-Admiral Kimberly calls particular attention to Seumanu Tafa,
+chief of Apia, who was the first to man a boat and go to the
+<i>Trenton</i> after she struck the reef, and who also rendered material
+aid in directing the natives engaged in taking our people and
+public property on shore on the 17th and 18th.</p>
+
+<p>“Special recommendation also is given to the men composing the
+boat’s crew, as follows: Muniaga, Anapu, son of Seumanu, Taupau,
+chief of Manono, Mose, Fuapopo, Tete, Pita, Ionia, Apiti, Auvaa,
+Alo, Tepa.</p>
+
+<p>“The Department has the honour to request that you will express to
+the authorities of Samoa, through the proper channels its high
+sense of the courage and self devotion of Chief Seumanu and his
+fellow countrymen, in their risking their lives to rescue the
+shipwrecked officers and crew of the <i>Trenton</i> from their position
+of peril and distress; and that you will, at the same time, inform
+them of its intention to send to the Chief Seumanu in accordance
+with the recommendation of Rear-Admiral Kimberly, and as a mark of
+its appreciation,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_157">{157}</a></span> a double-banked whaleboat, with its fittings,
+and to reward suitably the men composing his crew, for their brave
+and disinterested service. I have the honour to be, sir, very
+respectfully, your obedient servant,</p>
+
+<p class="r">
+“B. F. Tracy,<br>
+“Secretary of the Navy.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="nind">
+“The Secretary of State.”<br>
+</p></div>
+
+<p>The accompanying extract tells you the story of the boat in which we are
+making a malaga to some of the places near us&mdash;to the northwest end of
+our island of Upolu, to this little Manono, with an old reputation for
+war; to the ancient sunken volcano crater of Apolima; and to Savaii, the
+big island important in politics, and important in name, and important
+in history.<a id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p>
+
+<p>Seumanu takes us along in his boat, and as it were under his protection,
+a convenience certainly, but also perhaps not an unencumbered blessing,
+for there will certainly be a colour of politics in our trip. All the
+more that our own boat goes along also with our own rowers, and the
+consular flag, for the Consul is with us, and is in (I fear) for many
+speeches which he will have to acknowledge, and we shall suffer all the
+more. For already there has been much speech-making; the <i>tulafales</i>,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_158">{158}</a></span>
+the village orators, and occasionally rulers, or balances of power with
+the chiefs, and who as far as I can make out keep this place by
+inheritance&mdash;the <i>tulafales</i> have been in force. Seu has repeated their
+speeches ahead of them in a grumbling way, evidently not quite pleased.
+Perhaps the paucity of gifts in this poor little place helps to annoy
+him, and yet we gave them short notices of our coming and we are many to
+provide for, over twenty-five in all; or perhaps, nay certainly, their
+political complexion is not of the right shade and he remembers too well
+that they were but figure-heads in the last war, not withstanding their
+military renown. What annoys him as a chief “qui se respecte,” gives us
+infinite pleasure. All comes down to the small scale that befits the
+place and its rusticity. It is rustic, as I need not assure you, but it
+has also a look of make-believe that gives it a look of landscape
+gardening&mdash;the look of a fit place wherein to give a small operetta in
+the open air.</p>
+
+<p>The village is on a small promontory, beyond which juts the outline of
+some rocks crowned by a chief’s tomb that is shadowed by trees. The
+water within the bay reef is of a marvellous green-blue, whether it
+rains or whether it shines, and not far off, perhaps only a mile or so,
+Upolu is blue or violet or black or grey in mist; and the sea outside
+always makes some colour contrast with the sea inside the reef. The<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_159">{159}</a></span>
+village is just high enough upon the shore to conceal the actors on the
+beach, except where in two or three places the clean sand sweeps down
+under the trees or next to heavy rocks, so as to allow the tenor and the
+diva of my supposed opera, to go down and throw out a great song. This
+is striking enough in the day but in the evening afterglow or the shine
+of moonlight, themselves apparently made on purpose, it is deceptive;
+people step down little rocks on coming out of small huts, a few real
+canoes are placed under the trees whose outline in the shade has been
+arranged by nature in rivalry of art.</p>
+
+<p>Subsidiary pictures painted by a Greater Rembrandt with centres of light
+and prismatic gradations of gloom fill the cottages placed on the little
+elevations, and only a few people gracefully move about&mdash;just enough in
+number: and all with a classic action that comes of not frequenting
+foreigners. Snatches of song, and cadences come alternately from
+different corners or from under trees, and as I said all this is lit
+with a mysterious glow.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, in the day there have been few people; some little girls only
+in our guest-home and the chief who with his whitened hair, strong jaw,
+and sloping forehead has a fair look of the “Father of our Country.”</p>
+
+<p>In the presentation of food, a necessary ceremony, only a dozen men have
+appeared, nobodies in particular: and before<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_160">{160}</a></span> them has capered a naked
+being in green leaves, as to his hips and head, who has danced with his
+back toward us, keeping the line in order, and who looks at a distance
+like the Faun of the Greek play in the Pompeian pictures. Then they have
+all rushed forth and cast down their small presents, taro and
+bread-fruit and cocoanuts, in palm baskets and as suddenly disappeared;
+while the <i>tulafale</i>, an old gentleman of the old school, making,
+according to old fashion, a great curve of pace that shook out his stiff
+bark cloth drapery, has slipped out and taken his place, leaning on a
+staff, his official fly-flapper balanced on his shoulders. These people
+of importance, and one I think of great dignity, have squatted down on
+the grass, and another has seated himself on the great war drum under
+the bread-fruit trees. Then a long speech has been made, with praise of
+us and of our country that has rescued Samoa, and thanks to God and
+prayers for our good health, etc., etc., all in a clear voice, not loud
+at all, just enough to reach us, no more; and with a Samoan accent upon
+the end of each phrase where some important word is skilfully placed.</p>
+
+<p>All this we listen to and witness from our little house, whose posts are
+garlanded with great bunches of red hibiscus flowers and white gardenia
+and many leaves, and the effect is partly that of some living fresco in
+imitation of the antique,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_161">{161}</a></span> partly that of an opera in the open air. But
+if this is real, then the modern painted pictures of open-air life with
+the nude and with drapery are false. Our French and English and German
+brethren do not know what it is.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from the light and its peculiar clearness, Delacroix alone, and
+sometimes Millet, have understood it; and no one of the regular schools
+of to-day. Back of these, of course, all the classics are recalled from
+Watteau and Rubens and the Spaniards to the furthest Greek.</p>
+
+<p>So that the little episode that worries Seumanu is full of fun and of
+charm and of instruction to us. Its scale is so small that we can grasp
+it. There are but half a dozen actors, and a small set scene. In front
+of us, sitting so close to our house, on its pebble slope, that his
+figure is cut partly off, sits one of the crew, who, when all is over,
+and the speech has been duly acknowledged by Seu as our spokesman, will
+count over the presents, and in a loud voice will announce their number
+and their origin: So many cocoanuts from so and so&mdash;so many chickens
+from so and so&mdash;etc.</p>
+
+<p>&#160; </p>
+
+<p>Two mornings ago we left Vaiala, and rowed westward within the reefs,
+along the north coast of our island of Upolu, off which, within a couple
+of miles, lies the little Manono from <span class="pagenum"><a id="page_162">{162}</a></span>which I write. Twice we stopped
+in this enemy’s country, that is to say, among adherents of the former
+king or head chief set up by the Germans. There was all the charm that
+belongs to the near coasting of land in smooth waters: the rise and fall
+of the great green reflections in the blue satin of the sea inside of
+the reef; the sharp blue outside of the white line of reef all
+iridescent with the breaking of the surf; the patches of coral, white or
+yellow or purple, wavering below the crystal swell, so transparent as to
+recall the texture of uncut topaz or amethyst; the shoals of brilliant
+fish, blue and gold-green, as bright and flickering as tropical
+hummingbirds; the contrast of great shadows upon the mountain, black
+with an inkiness that I have never seen elsewhere; the fringes of golden
+or green palms upon the shores, sometimes inviting, sometimes dreary.
+And our rowers in their brightest waist cloths, with great backs and
+arms and legs, red and glistening in the sun that wet them even as much
+as the cocoanut oil with which they were anointed. And when tired with
+sitting, they lie stretched out and confidently rest against the giant
+Seumanu’s great thigh and hip, while he occasionally patted his sleepy
+weaker brother, La Taēlē.</p>
+
+<p>Still, beauty of nature, and plenty of soft air do not prevent fatigue,
+even if they soothe it, and I was glad when in the afternoon we had
+reached Leulumoenga&mdash;our final halt&mdash;a village type of Samoa, spread all
+over the sandy flat of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_163">{163}</a></span> back beach, and half hidden in trees. As we
+came up the shelving beach, children and women came down to meet us, and
+watched us curiously. Among them, in their new dignity of fresh
+tattooing, a few youngsters eyed us from further off, moving little
+owing to the pain of the continued operations&mdash;haggard and fevered
+looking, and brushing away nervously, with bunches of leaves or
+fly-flaps, the insects that increased their nervousness. For tattooing
+is no pleasant matter. The entire surface from hip to knee is punctured
+with fine needlework. The patient stands what he can, rests awhile and
+recovers from his fevered condition; then submits again, until slowly he
+has received the full share. Nor does he shirk it&mdash;it is his usual entry
+into manhood; without it the girls are doubtful about him, and he is
+somewhat looked down upon. The present king, brought up by missionaries,
+and accepting many of their prejudices, had not been tattooed in his
+youth.</p>
+
+<p>&#160; </p>
+
+<p>During the few hours of our stopping we returned the call of Father
+Gavet, one of the French missionaries, and saw his new church that is to
+replace an older one destroyed by the great hurricane. It is of coral
+cement, like most South Sea churches, a beautiful material when it
+blackens <span class="pagenum"><a id="page_164">{164}</a></span>with time. I hope they will transfer some of the old carvings
+from the earlier church; which, made by early converts, have a faint
+look of good barbaric art&mdash;so good&mdash;oh, so good&mdash;compared to what the
+good missionaries get from those centres of civilization called Paris,
+London and Berlin!</p>
+
+<p>&#160; </p>
+
+<p>In the latest afternoon, with coolness and rays of heat and light, we
+rowed further along the coast to Satapuala, where we were to rest in the
+great guest-house, under the protection of the chief’s sister, the
+<i>taupo</i>.<a id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> It was all like little Nua on a great scale, and with more
+elaborate preparations. We had soft mats to lie upon and later more
+again to be beds. Nor did our hostess abandon us until the last moment,
+when we were apparently satisfied with our lair, and according to
+far-off western habits had officially “retired.”</p>
+
+<p>Her decoration of the guest-house, for which she duly apologized as poor
+and unworthy of our visit, was really beautiful. Palm branches all green
+and fresh and glistening covered the entire roof and its supports, even
+the great curved posts of the centre being wrapped in the great leaves,
+which curved with new lines around the simpler circle of the big tree
+trunks. Here and there great bunches of white gardenia and of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_165">{165}</a></span> red
+hibiscus were fastened into the folds and interstices of the leaves and
+stems.</p>
+
+<p>At night when her brother, the young chief, a famous dancer, had
+arrived, the dream of Robinson Crusoe which had begun enveloping me in
+the afterglow, as I wandered about in the sandy spaces among the palms
+and bread-fruit, became more and more complete. The dances were all
+pictures of savage life. There were dances of the hammer and of
+gathering the cocoanuts by climbing, and then breaking them; and of the
+war canoes, with the urging of the steersman and the anxious paddling of
+the crew; and a dance of the Bath, in which the woman splashed water
+over her pursuer, as she moved with great stretching of arms as of
+swimming. The beating of time on the mats gave, in its precision of
+cadence and the sharpness of its sound, an illusion that seemed to make
+real the great blows struck by the dancers, whose muscles played in an
+ebb and tide, under the brilliant light of the cocoanut fire made in the
+pit near the centre post.</p>
+
+<p>In these and in others our hostess scarcely took part. Most of the time
+she sat by us&mdash;a tall and big chiefess, elegant at a distance, grave and
+disdainful&mdash;but we were in an enemy’s country and the slight scorn
+seemed quite refined. Still more becoming to an evening with Robinson
+Crusoe’s friends were the costumes worn in the wild dances: the great
+girdles of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_166">{166}</a></span> purple and green and red leaves, the red fruit of the
+necklaces, the silver shells of red flower in the hair of the women; the
+fierce military headdresses of the men; the bark-cloth drapery moving in
+stiff folds, and more than all the oiled limbs and bodies glancing
+against that wild background of green leaves (spotted with red and
+white), whose reflections glittered like molten silver as they turned
+around posts and central pillars. Outside, the moonlight was of milky
+whiteness increased by the whiteness of the sandy beach mixed with a
+firm white clay. Upon this the sea made a faint wash of <i>no</i> colour, in
+which floated our white boats and the reflections of the silvery clouds
+that deepened all the sky to seaward outside of the white reef.</p>
+
+<p>Late in the evening of our arrival we crossed over the little village
+green, which is studded with houses and groups of trees, each house,
+each mass of foliage set apart, either high on some mound to which steps
+may lead, or upon a slightly swelling rise, as if in some park, some
+pleasure garden where all had been thought of and gradually arranged.
+And so, I suppose, it has been here in all the centuries that have been
+spent in moulding this littlest village into a shape to suit its people,
+their needs, their comforts or their likings. And that must be partly
+the cause of the recall of artistic success and perfection in this
+rustic scene. All has taken as much time</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="illbw_003">
+<a href="images/ill_019.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_019.jpg" width="550" height="382" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">SWIMMING DANCE, SAMOA</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_167">{167}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">and attention as the most complicated European mass of buildings, be
+they cathedrals or palaces&mdash;only the art has little shape but what
+nature gives it. All the more has nature caressed and embellished and
+favoured this elemental, unconscious attempt of man.</p>
+
+<p>In the end of the long twilight, with the rose colour still floating in
+the upper sky, the little place looked more coquettishly refined than
+ever. Here and there the lights within the huts, often rising and
+falling in intensity with the blaze of the cocoanut fire, modelled the
+steps outside or the posts, touched trees and branches far away or near,
+and made pictures of family groups within, garlanded and flower adorned.</p>
+
+<p>The larger house to which we went was adorned with flowers and all lit
+up. More people were crowded in it than the little village contained;
+for the island had sent visitors and performers for the dances which
+were to entertain us. I shall not describe them. But they were of course
+interesting, not only for what one liked but for what one did not like,
+and for our being with others who looked on. The spectators are
+inevitably part of yourself, as of the show, and in so far, the very way
+in which I looked on was a new charm.</p>
+
+<p>There was among the dancers a young chief, serious as an Indian prince,
+who danced gymnastics, and ended with primitive buffoonery that seemed
+to delight his hearers. At the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_168">{168}</a></span> other end of the scale was a hunchback
+dwarf, who played realistic scenes so well as to be repulsive. But all
+this was a lesson. I shall certainly see all about me, in this form of
+civilization necessitating health and strength, or their appearance, a
+great line drawn between those who suffer or are weak, and those who are
+not&mdash;a visible line. As yet there is no place for my hunchback’s
+intelligence, except this buffoonery.</p>
+
+<p>Later we left the dancers and wandered in wide moonlit paths among
+banana trees. There we came across our young chief looking now as if
+such a person never could have so demeaned himself, even from political
+reasons.</p>
+
+<p>We exchanged <i>alofas</i> and compliments, and he placed his garlands in
+sympathy around my neck. He is a beauty, and his father is one of the
+tallest and biggest, as was his sister, who was once <i>taupo</i>.</p>
+
+<p>This morning I have wandered with Seumanu for a few miles, to show
+ourselves. We pass other villages where we are greeted, and where at one
+time our yesterday’s friend, the old <i>tulafale</i>, canters out of his
+house in a circle, according to ancient fashion.</p>
+
+<p>We see a great war canoe under its shed, and the remains of a high wall
+that encircles the island and was an old protection in war.</p>
+
+<p>Much should I like to remain, but we shall have to go at<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_169">{169}</a></span> once, for&mdash;as
+I feared&mdash;we are not here really for pleasure, but we are entangled in
+the quasi-necessary political advantages of being seen where there is
+“influence.” But this, I feel, is the kind of place I want to see&mdash;out
+of the way&mdash;out of use&mdash;where usages linger, and where the landscape is
+influenced by man so as to become a frame; as it was in little Nua on
+the island of Tutuila where we first landed upon our first morning in
+the South Seas.</p>
+
+<p>For a thousand years, probably two thousand, perhaps three&mdash;for an
+indefinite period&mdash;these people of this smallest island have lived here
+and modified nature, while its agencies have as steadily and gently
+covered again their work. So that everything is natural, and everywhere
+one is vaguely conscious of man. Hence, of any place that I have seen,
+this is the nearest to the idyllic pastoral; it is not so beautiful as
+it is complete.</p>
+
+<p class="nind">
+Iva in Savaii, Oct. 26, ’90.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>I am writing in early afternoon, a hot afternoon, after a morning at
+sea. Opposite me in the circular Samoan house are a couple of persons of
+importance, a local governor, some four or five chiefs, all ranged
+against the pillars of the building, as I too am leaning against one.
+Seumanu and some of our acquaintances are to one side; opposite me, a
+grave young<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_170">{170}</a></span> girl is moving her hands in the great <i>kava</i> bowl from
+which she hands the strainer of bark filaments to a reddened haired
+young man whose head flames in the sun outside, against the background
+of green banana leaves. Next her a big fellow keeps grating more <i>kava</i>;
+and another fills the big bowl with water, making big red spaces in the
+reflection of the sunlight, that streams in on that side. Small parcels
+of presents of food have been brought in and lie about on their side.
+Much <i>kava</i> has already been drunk and more is being prepared as more
+and more chiefs come in. Everything except the picture before me is in
+shade. Conversation, probably politics, is going on slowly, in the usual
+low tones, with an occasional high-voiced interjection from some less
+important member. The village orator, with his fly-brush over his
+shoulder, has long ago made his lengthy speech of welcome, and as we are
+told to do as we please I write to you, in the interval of watching the
+faces of the men, or the circular movement of the girl’s hands dipping
+in the big bowl, or running around its wide rim, when she wipes it,
+before passing the strainer to be squeezed out. The orator watches me
+suspiciously occasionally, but there is general confidence and peace,
+that we much need, for the heat is great and our sea trip was rough and
+hot. As I write, I hear my name <i>La Faelé</i> called out, and the <i>kava</i>
+bearer comes to me with the usual swing.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_171">{171}</a></span> But I fear the <i>kava</i>, and
+merely accept the bowl and return it undrunk according to form. Then
+many of the circle disappear&mdash;to church&mdash;the bell is ringing and little
+children half-naked, small creatures toddling along are already in the
+doorway; apparently all the neighbourhood are beginning to file toward
+it gravely, most of the women with hats that do not become them. Even a
+little girl-child, with nothing but a band around her little fat waist
+for a drapery, steps along with difficulty, a big hat on her head. This
+is Sunday conventionality: all the congregation are dressed, even the
+half-naked chiefs, who had left us, reappear from their huts, with white
+jackets, and pass on gravely in the procession at a distance. And the
+Sunday hymns add to the drowsiness of the Sunday afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>This morning when we left the little island of Manono, some five or six
+miles away, people were going to church but to a different call from
+that of this absurd little bell. A big war drum, a long cylinder of tree
+cut lengthwise, was beaten in the oldest, most primitive manner, some
+way as ancient as man himself. A man bent down over this big wooden
+trough, that lay like an old log in the grass, and beat it from the
+inside, with one of the big hard stones that lay in it. The sound was
+unearthly, I ought to say <i>uncanny</i>, and nothing more savage, more a
+type of the war of the savage could be im<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_172">{172}</a></span>agined; and it seemed fitting
+that this war usage, turned now to the call of Divine Peace, should
+still remain in the warlike little island, once the petty tyrant of the
+little group. Right alongside, near the great wall built for war, whose
+remains surround the island, marks of destruction recalled the exploits
+of the German warship <i>Adler</i>, that now lies stranded by the great
+hurricane, in Apia harbour, and whose crew were saved in part by the
+people they were killing, and especially by the brave giant, in whose
+boat we have been travelling. Indeed, there was an element of comedy
+quite Polynesian, even if atrocious, in the danger the Samoan rescuers
+ran of being fired at from the beach while they saved their enemies in
+the sea. But we made the first part of our trip to-day, in a native
+boat, for Seumanu’s was rather too fine, and too heavy to be risked in
+the entering of the curious harbour that we first made. This was
+Apolima, “the open hand”&mdash;a small, very small island about a mile out
+from Manono; the upper part of a submerged volcano cone, broken down on
+one side, so that there is an entrance. We soon reached the great wall
+of soft brown rock, which crowned with cocoanut palms and half covered
+with vegetation opens suddenly, leaving a small passage through rocks,
+just wide enough for our boat, skilfully paddled in the great blue wave
+that swung us in. Then jumping out, half of our men caught the side of
+the boat, to prevent<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_173">{173}</a></span> our being dragged back by the returning swell, and
+we were pushed and dragged around a corner inside of the rocks. The tide
+was low and we were carried ashore on the men’s backs, through coral
+rocks that spotted the floor of the small lagoon inside.</p>
+
+<p>The place was just what you might imagine; a little amphitheatre of
+green, the high reddish rocks standing on each side at the entrance, and
+between them, a great bank of rock, over which the surf broke so as to
+hide the little break through which we had come.</p>
+
+<p>As we looked, three great palms stood up against this distance, planted
+on the higher ground that is all green, and leaning toward the sea as is
+their (loving) habit. Huts stood about with bread-fruit trees, and
+further back we were led to a little pool that supplied the place with
+scant water. Further back yet, the slope was all covered with trees, and
+after walking a little way, slipping along the greasy banks, and walking
+up the sloping timber notched with cuts to make stairs, and returning by
+another that made a level bridge across an empty channel, I sat down to
+wait for Mr. Sewall, who had walked up to the ridge, and I had time to
+make a sketch. All this took us a little more than a couple of hours
+while Seumanu’s boat was beating outside, in a fair N. E. wind. At last
+we were paddled out in the great wave that<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_174">{174}</a></span> washed in and out, and with
+the swing that belongs to the balancing of a boat in a narrow tide-way.
+And we kept in the dance until we reached Seumanu’s boat, invisible for
+some minutes behind the blue waves. Then we ran alongside, and we
+scrambled in, exchanging good-byes&mdash;<i>tofa</i>&mdash;with the chief of the lost
+hand, who had taken us thus far. Within the next hour Seumanu’s boat had
+come to the outer reef off Savaii, in front of the landing of Iva. But
+there we had to wait at anchor. The water was too low inside the reef,
+so that we remained in the thin blue-green tide, that seemed to show
+everything in it, until a smaller boat came out to us, with Selu, the
+chief, and we were taken in. We landed among black rocks, within a few
+feet of a little scanty road, and clambering over a stile of rocks, at
+some part of the long black fence of stones in front of us, we found a
+village, which spread higher up and far back behind the trees, with
+spaces between houses; banana, palm and bread-fruit trees, dispersed as
+if for ornament or making little patches of plantation. There was a big
+church of the usual formless kind, not as handsome as the thatched ones
+with circular ends, that are certainly the types one would prefer. And
+so we walked up to the house, where we were to listen to speeches and
+the Consul to make one. Since I have begun to write, all has become more
+quiet, and I shall merely use my afternoon to make a few notes; we
+shall<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_175">{175}</a></span> sleep in another house belonging to the Governor and be near, I
+think, to the chief, whose name is or was Selu, for lately he tells me
+that he has had the name of Anai given him, and we try to make out
+together just how near these changes come to the forms of the Western
+world. This is not a title properly, but as it were a name embodying
+rights that go to descent; for these men with titles apparently elective
+are noblemen who form an aristocracy of government and are usually to be
+distinguished externally by their size or manner as well as by little
+symbols or expressions of superiority. Anai tells me that of the many
+chiefs here, whom we have seen or will see, he and another, alone are
+the “political” superiors, as he expresses it; that is to say, he goes
+on, that they alone talk in public about such matters (I suppose in the
+way of decision), and that others would be checked if moving. Thus, that
+to him and to his mate alone the making of war, or as he expresses it,
+the allowing the “shedding of blood” is devolved. This chief is a most
+interesting and sympathetic person, speaking English very well, though
+apparently a little wanting in practice, with a pleasant, handsome face,
+resembling some Japanese types, interested in missionary matters, a
+strict church member, and showing much interest in foreign matters
+throughout the world; we talked of the civil war, and of the prospects
+of the republic in France, and of the universal<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_176">{176}</a></span> “striking” now going
+on, as we might anywhere; and I am sure that Anai was “posted” to a
+later date than we, for the Consul had handed to him the files of the
+<i>Herald</i> for the last few months, while we had almost entirely abstained
+from that indigestive form of reading. Anai has explained to us that
+this being Sunday we shall have no reception, but that to-morrow there
+will be a formal reception, called <i>talolo</i>, and giving of presents, and
+that there will be dances. So that we shall spend this evening quietly,
+with a bath in the pool of fresh water, that is open to the sea, and try
+to rest.</p>
+
+<p class="nind">
+On Savaii, Oct. 30, 1890.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>We are settled here for an uncertain time, perhaps three days. This is
+the political capital of Samoa, and we are occupying the house of the
+great orator of the islands, important by his influence, though not so
+great a chief as several others by descent or by control, or even by
+physical superiority, that great proof of eminence in communities like
+these, where the chiefs seem to have reserved for themselves a size and
+weight that recall the idea of heroic days. Certainly the first time
+that I saw a well-chosen dozen together, as I did two days ago at our
+last resting place, all sitting spaced out, as if for a decoration on a
+frieze, silent and indifferent, or speaking occasionally without raising
+their voices, with heavy arms<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_177">{177}</a></span> resting on great thighs, and with the
+movement of neck and shoulders of men conscious of importance, the
+recall of Homeric story made me ask myself which one might be Ajax, and
+which the other, and if such a one might do for Agamemnon. Fine too, as
+some of the heads were, they were only relatively important, as with the
+Greek statues that we have, and that we know quite well and intimately,
+even though their heads be missing. The whole body has had an external
+meaning, has been used as ours is no longer, to express a feeling or to
+maintain a reserve which we only look for in a face.</p>
+
+<p>And as I am writing, while the household is enjoying its evening
+relaxation and preparing for the night, everything about me repeats to
+me this theme of all being done with the whole body. About an hour ago
+prayers were said and all sat around while the regular form was
+repeated, and then our young hostess prayed an extempore prayer
+commending us all to the care of God. Some words I can catch, but the
+intonation is sufficient. It is a prayer cadenced as well as the most
+consummate of clergymen could manage, and repeated without the slightest
+hesitation. Then she stretched herself out, with her head on the Samoan
+pillow, and talked with some young male acquaintance outside the hut
+whose head just appears over the barrier that runs between the pillars,
+for our house is placed higher than usual. She talked with Adams<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_178">{178}</a></span> who is
+lying by her, and occasionally she criticises the game that is going on
+near her at that end of the house. I have only followed the little
+things happening by fits and starts, as I have made some sketches and
+have been writing letters, but I make out that the household is playing
+some game in which some motion or gesture has to be duplicated or
+matched, and that the beaten side, for there are two rows of players, is
+to dance as a forfeit. I say that this is the household, I mean that I
+take it for granted, though I see that one of our boatmen is among them,
+and that a couple of children have dropped in. The duenna of our young
+lady is also there. Sometimes I see her and sometimes I do not, but I
+know she is there on watch. But a <i>siva</i> has been organized slowly, a
+household unofficial <i>siva</i>, begun in little patches&mdash;somebody humming
+something and several beating hands. Tunes or songs are taken up and
+discarded, and sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, stands up to sketch
+some motions. At last they appear to have got under way, and I see them
+swing and dance, with little clothing and much clapping of hands, at the
+other end of the house. And everybody joins in: even the children beat
+time and take up the words&mdash;and the two elder women are the most
+enthusiastic and full of energy. Occasionally a burst of laughter
+salutes what I take to be a mistake or some wild caper that seems funny
+to them. Faauli, at last, after<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_179">{179}</a></span> having pretended to sleep or to talk,
+so as to appear to herself to have done something, sits up and takes
+more interest. By and by she sketches out some steps in an indolent
+manner&mdash;soon she begins in earnest, and with one of the performers goes
+through an energetic dance, slipping her upper clothing for greater
+ease. The clapping and beating time comes fast and furious from every
+one, and laughter and small shrieks replace the gentle monotone and
+seriousness of the evening prayer. At last she sits down suddenly, her
+face rather overcast: (her name means “Black Cloud that Comes up
+Suddenly”). She has hurt her foot apparently, for turning round to see
+why all has stopped, I see her bent over and looking at a toe. Note that
+she does this as easily as a baby with us&mdash;her face comes down on her
+foot raised halfway to meet it. As I come up, she shows me that she has
+torn off the larger part of a nail, and is paring off the remainder
+evenly against the exposed surface of flesh. I offer her scissors which
+she uses with indifference, as we might cut off superfluous hair; and
+apparently more from politeness and obedience than from necessity, she
+accepts my court-plaster. Then being properly mended, she sits down to
+play cards while I resume my writing. Now here has been something that
+explains some sides of these good people; an absence of nervousness and
+insensibility to pain&mdash;for to most of us such a<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_180">{180}</a></span> small accident would
+have been very painful and sickening. Before this the dance had been
+merely an outlet for action, as natural and unpremeditated as any other
+motion. The entire body has been called into play: from the ends of the
+fingers to the toes of the feet, all the exterior muscles have been
+playing gently for some two hours, with almost every person present,
+whether they sat or stood. This constant gentle exercise must go far
+toward giving the smooth even fullness that marks them. And meanwhile,
+too, they have decorated themselves; some one has brought out garlands,
+and they have been worn: flowers have been put in the hair, as if to
+mark that this is not work but play.</p>
+
+<p>And now that all is quiet, I shall try to resume my itinerary, and
+recall small matters that are fading away, and becoming so confused from
+repetition that it requires an effort for me to distinguish this <i>siva</i>
+from that <i>siva</i>, and to remember what <i>taupo</i> it was who danced well,
+and what one it was who danced ill.</p>
+
+<p>I was writing last in Iva, on our first day there, Sunday. It is now
+Thursday night.</p>
+
+<p>Monday morning at Iva we were up early, before the sunrise, waked by the
+red glow of the dawn that calls one up easily from the hard bed of
+double mats laid on the floor of small stones. Every one was up, people
+were moving about,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_181">{181}</a></span> probably most had had their early bath, for they
+were returning with wet clothes, or with their garments spread over them
+like a veil. So that we scrambled over the stone wall that seems so
+anomalous and unreasonable here. But they not only divide village from
+village, but also prevent the straying of that roaming property, the
+pig, that wanders about the village and the forest also, picking up
+everything of course. To see a pig picking out the flesh of the cocoanut
+has been one of the small amusements of this afternoon, and last night,
+besides the invariable dog, pigs came into our house and snuffled at the
+faces of Charlie and Awoki, who lay outside of the mosquito netting. The
+path over the fences brought us to the bathing pool opening to the sea
+on one side only, where among black rocks the fresh water runs up to
+meet the tide, filling in the pool. There we went in and swam about,
+watched by many of the smaller villagers, girls and boys who were
+curious about the manners of the white people. And I was able to admire
+the skill, though unable to rival it, with which the native bathers
+draped themselves as they rose from the water, so that man or woman was
+clothed as he or she stepped on shore.</p>
+
+<p>By the time we returned, our mosquito nettings had been put aside, the
+mats swept out, and Awoki was bringing us the tea and brown bread,
+which, with such native food as we liked,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_182">{182}</a></span> made our meals. Fish there
+was and yam and taro, and some preparations of cocoanut. And there were
+cocoanuts for their milk for which I do not care, but there was no water
+yet, the water in the two pools near the sea, edged with black stones,
+being blackish until the change of tide should leave the spring to fill
+up by itself.</p>
+
+<p>Then our host came in and told us that we might rest that morning: that
+in the afternoon there would be a reception, a sort of review or
+“fantasia,” and presents of food would be given and speeches made, and
+songs and dances, the whole apparently included under the general title
+of the <i>talolo</i> which was to be given us. So we waited peacefully; I
+sketched the girls in the neighbouring house, who were at work making
+the wreaths, the garlands, the complicated flower girdles that should be
+worn later in the day, and perhaps at night, for there were murmurs of a
+night <i>siva</i>. But I knew that our host was a church member, and that the
+<i>siva</i> is not encouraged, neither the <i>siva</i>, “fa Samoa,” Samoan way,
+the Samoan <i>siva</i>, nor the <i>siva</i> of the Europeans, which we call round
+dancing; for had not Faatulia, the wife of our leader, Seumanu, been
+threatened with excommunication for dancing in her innocence in European
+ways at the Consul’s Fourth of July ball. Meanwhile my models across the
+way in the shadow posed badly: they were always moving, or they came
+across the way to see what we</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="ill_012">
+<a href="images/ill_020.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_020.jpg" width="550" height="447" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">SOLDIERS BRINGING PRESENTS OF FOOD IN MILITARY ORDER.
+IVA, IN SAVAII, SAMOA</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_183">{183}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">were at. For somebody would stop in and look at us, and go give the
+news&mdash;a little pile of small boys and girls, three rows deep, sat
+respectfully under the bread-fruit trees watching us. But somehow or
+other the morning wore away, and by two o’clock we were told that all
+was ready, and that we had better come to the house chosen for us to
+occupy during the ceremony. Meanwhile, behind the trees that closed in
+the sight (for the village was placed, if I may so describe it, in an
+irregular open grove of many kinds of trees), we had seen for the last
+hour or so, dressed-up figures moving about; men with large green
+garlands, and green cinctures around their waists stiffened out and made
+larger by great folds of new bark-cloth, or by the fine wearing mats
+which are the most precious possession of the Samoan: some of them with
+guns carried with pride, for these were men who had been victorious and
+had beaten off the bullying German.</p>
+
+<p>And now we took our places in the circular house which looked like a
+pavilion, and which stood on the east of the large open space near the
+church. Opposite us perhaps some two hundred feet or more was another
+house, and others spread to right and left, leaving a large space ending
+on one side near the church, whose white façade had written on it its
+name, Lupeanoa, Noah’s Dove&mdash;enclosed by a little clump of trees to the
+left, where we could see figures moving with great<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_184">{184}</a></span> swaying of leaf
+girdles and waist-mats&mdash;and the occasional beat of a war-drum came from
+further back.</p>
+
+<p>We were seated, all facing toward the open space, the next house filled
+with women and children: Seumanu and our host and other people of
+importance near us, and the rest of the house packed, but not too
+closely, behind us. Out on the grass and near trees people sat, mostly
+women. Others moved slowly to take their places, showing some vestiges
+of yesterday’s Sunday in their hats and long gowns.</p>
+
+<p>Then rushed across them a man all blacked, with a high white turban
+bound to his head, with green strips of leaves, a few leaves for a
+girdle, and waving a paddle. This was a friend of Seu’s&mdash;a funny man and
+joker, with a hand maimed or deformed&mdash;the deformed in such communities
+take things gayly and are jokers. He shrieked out things that caused
+shouts of laughter, and repeated “<i>Alofa</i> Atamo!” From behind the church
+came out a mass of warriors, with banana leaves in their hair, and
+wearing girdles of the long green leaves of the <i>ti</i>: their backs were
+streaked with white lines following the spine and the ribs, and their
+faces and bodies were blacked. They carried their rifles high and
+discharged them into the air, then cantered past and away. Again the
+buffoon and again the warriors.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile in the distance, in the opening of trees, we could</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="ill_013">
+<a href="images/ill_021.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_021.jpg" width="550" height="435" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">TAUPO AND ATTENDANTS DANCING IN OPEN AIR. IVA, IN SAVAII,
+SAMOA</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_185">{185}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">see other warriors: behind them the drum and the little fife made a
+curious war music, and a peculiar shout and call with a short cadence
+came from the men. Unconcernedly a girl moved across the opening in
+front, intent on something else, and a hunch-backed dwarf, with enormous
+wide shoulders and long legs edged with green leaves, came to us and
+shouted “<i>alofa!</i>” Then six warriors again emerged from the grove,
+swinging their clubs, and marched back leaving the green space before us
+empty and silent.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly now, moving step by step, the mass of people behind the trees
+came out, so that they could be seen. In front of the men and of the
+music a girl, with black, shaggy waist garment, like thin fur, with long
+red necklaces of beads, and flowers in her hair, danced slowly to the
+tune, crossing and uncrossing her feet in a hopping step, and swinging
+with both hands a slight club in front of her, as a drum major might
+move his stick. Slowly she advanced, escorted by two men clad in mats
+and garlands, upon whose heads stood out a mass of yellow hair, like the
+cap of a grenadier, supported by circles of shells around the forehead.
+They also kept time to the music, but did not repeat the girl’s
+monotonous step that made the central point of interest to which the eye
+always returned.</p>
+
+<p>This girl was the <i>taupo</i>, the virgin of the village, dancing<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_186">{186}</a></span> and
+marching in her official place at the head of the warriors&mdash;like
+Taillefer, the Norman minstrel who began the battle of Hastings. When
+she had moved slowly a few yards, one could see that behind in the crowd
+there were two other girls representing other villages, who also
+repeated these movements, while some of the men danced and others
+stepped slowly with crossed arms, holding their clubs and muskets. And
+the virgin danced forward and passed, and then up the slope toward us,
+followed by the other girls, and all saluted us; when the whole assembly
+in the field came up suddenly and threw down before us leaf baskets
+containing taro and yams, and cooked things wrapped up in leaves, and
+fish, and a number of little sucking pigs, with hind legs tied, that
+struggled up and down in the heaps of leaves. As each person threw his
+load down he stalked away gravely and took a seat somewhere in the
+distance. All became silent. I could see the <i>taupos</i> moving off with
+that peculiar walk of the dancer who is resting. A warrior with high
+white turban of bark cloth sat down against a tree near us, without
+looking to the right or left, his gun against his shoulder, and smoked
+gravely, while a girl, his daughter perhaps, leaned affectionately
+against him. Meanwhile the sucking pigs had been escaping with hind-legs
+tied, and every now and then Charlie pulled them back into place.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="ill_014">
+<a href="images/ill_022.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_022.jpg" width="550" height="433" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">PRESENTATION OF GIFTS OF FOOD AT IVA, IN SAVAII, SAMOA</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_187">{187}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then rose the orator, the <i>tulafale</i>, from the centre of the three rows
+of men now seated opposite to us, across the green space, and from two
+hundred feet away, addressed us slowly as he leaned upon his stick, and
+seemed not to raise his voice beyond what was absolute necessity. But
+the cadence always rose in the last words, so that the effect to the ear
+was of a distinct, emphatic assertion. Then he added, “This is all,” and
+sat down, apparently inattentive and indifferent. Our turn came next.
+Anai, the chief, translated to us the usual speech of great gratitude to
+America for having saved them from slavery and from the Germans, and
+compliments to us all, with prayers to God to have us in his holy
+keeping. Then a few things were suggested between us, and our political
+man said what was necessary, and alas, even more: for how can the United
+States promise anything&mdash;that may depend on sugar&mdash;or an election, or at
+any rate is merely a matter of barter? Anai stepped out from the house
+and repeated all this in Samoan, speaking also quite gently, with little
+raising of the voice. Nobody seemed to listen, nobody to care, but this
+was only apparent. All heard and had listened.</p>
+
+<p>Then our own men, who had been hidden somewhere, sprang upon the
+presents and sorted them: one of them stood up and called them out: so
+much of this, so much of that, to give full acknowledgment for
+liberality. Then another spring, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_188">{188}</a></span> all was carried away, even to the
+struggling, sucking pigs that could not be made to understand.</p>
+
+<p>Momentary peace settled over everything, and we had begun to ask
+questions and to sketch, when we were told that now we should have a
+<i>siva</i>, that several villages would appear in it by their performers, as
+they had appeared in the military display. Men came up garlanded and
+cinctured in flowers and leaves, and sat down in double rows before us,
+some turning toward us, others away. Out of their number first one, then
+others arose and sat down again in order, fronting us, and the <i>siva</i>
+began; six handsome young men, singing and swaying about upon their
+hips, to a chant for which time was beaten behind them.</p>
+
+<p>The sun was setting; tired out and amused we walked back in the crowd,
+stopping to exchange <i>alofas</i> with belated warriors who showed us their
+guns and occasional wounds, which with the Samoan idea of a joke they
+pretended had been caused by running against wire fences.</p>
+
+<p>We had seen for the first time a pageantry of savage war, in a soft
+light, in the most peaceful and idyllic of landscapes, so that it was
+hard to realize again that this was not all a theatre scene, a fête
+champêtre&mdash;a play in the open air. There was nothing to contradict this
+unreality but the marks of ugly gashes on the arms and chests of the men
+and the</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="ill_015">
+<a href="images/ill_023.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_023.jpg" width="550" height="295" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">SOUTH SEA SEATED DANCE AT NIGHT, SAMOA</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_189">{189}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">recall of the savage melody, which was undeniably a war song, requiring
+no explanation as to its meaning.</p>
+
+<p>In the house we ate our meal spread out on banana leaves, two of the
+<i>taupos</i> coming in to help us by breaking the taro and yams, and tearing
+the fish and fowls. Then while wishing for nothing but bed and rest, and
+closed eyes, we were told that there would be a night <i>siva</i> in our
+honour, and that other <i>taupos</i> would figure in it. There was nothing to
+do but yield, and with each a <i>taupo</i> to accompany us, we went back to
+the house that we had occupied in the afternoon. It was already half
+filled with people, occupying one side of it. I sat down against an
+outside post, alongside of my <i>taupo</i>, next to whom Seumanu reclined at
+length with another girl, an old acquaintance, near him, and I tried to
+keep awake while the <i>siva</i> went on enthusiastically. At times I would
+start with some new figure or more picturesque effect, or when fresh
+fuel was added to the cocoanut fire that fit the scene within. Along the
+posts of the exterior sat chiefs watching the dance: behind them
+outside, a crowd of people in the moonlight, and many heads of
+youngsters. Occasionally a chief would say, “Some one a cigarette or a
+light,” and a boy darted into the house through the dancers, plunged for
+the light, and returned with it to the great man who had asked.</p>
+
+<p>When the <i>taupos</i>, big and good natured, had danced, we<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_190">{190}</a></span> drowsily asked
+them to sit alongside of us, while the <i>siva</i> of the men went on.
+Between two, as I became more and more sleepy, I was fortunate in
+finding comfort and support from my first neighbour, against whose big
+shoulder I reclined, my arm supported upon the weight of her knees&mdash;all
+mine might have been thrown upon her massive form without apparent
+inconvenience. A gentle tap now and then, and a gentle <i>alofa</i> told me
+that I was all right, and could go to sleep while making believe to look
+on. But the girls, drowsy as they were, were appreciative of the men’s
+dances, and so was Seu, who called out over and over again, <i>mālie</i>
+(bravo) as if he had not seen thousands of <i>sivas</i>, which now, having
+become “missionary,” he does not attend. I knew that I was interested in
+the intervals of sleep, but all has faded into a sort of disconnected
+dream. I can only remember getting out into the bright moonlight, and
+that it made a silver haze outside during the dances. We had been
+obliged toward midnight to make a speech, with thanks, protesting the
+fatigue of travel as an excuse for not remaining. The Samoans will sit
+up all night, especially in their favourite moonlight: they can sleep
+during the day, and apparently always do so. Around our house, until we
+had blown out the light, and even for some time after, rows of people
+sat watching us in the light of the moon: the people sauntered about, or
+sat in the shade of the trees, with<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_191">{191}</a></span> sharp-edged leaves that made the
+scene look, as usual, like the stage-setting of a fairy opera.</p>
+
+<p>&#160; </p>
+
+<p>The next morning we were to leave for the next important place,
+Sapapali, the home of the Malietoa, the princes who have been for a long
+time the principal chiefs of these islands, and who are now represented
+by the present king. This is a rude definition; as I have told you
+elsewhere, the question of chiefhood and sovereignty here is one not
+easily represented or defined by our words. At Sapapali, the ancestral
+home, we should be received by Aigā, the King’s niece, and consequently
+a young person of the highest rank, indeed, I suppose the greatest lady
+of the land. With us this would be the Queen or the Royal Princess, or
+the heir to the throne. But here blood and descent are all and in the
+direct line. This young person was next to Malietoa as being of
+sufficient blood.</p>
+
+<p>Our arrival was to happen about noon, so that, as in Samoan phrase, it
+was only about half an hour’s walk, we were to leave punctually at ten
+o’clock. Early rising took us again to the black pool surrounded by high
+trees, where two of us bathed, watched and escorted by two little
+damsels with whom the other one of us flirted. I myself was too much
+occupied with the difficult question of keeping on, while swimming, the
+fathom of cloth they call lavalava; and afterward of adjusting<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_192">{192}</a></span> it in
+the water, after swimming for it when it had floated away, and then on
+coming out, receiving dry cloth with one hand and putting off the wet
+one. But I found out how one begins in the corner. Later in the morning
+it had grown hot, as we left pretty Iva, and made our way through broad
+or narrow roads, to Sapapali. The old difficulty again amused me; we
+could not walk in proper Samoan order; sometimes one of us, sometimes
+another was in front, while properly, all of us chiefs should have led,
+and the attendants followed at respectful distances. So that again Awoki
+would canter on in front of the chiefs: meanwhile Anai told us things of
+local information, pointing out where the road narrowed, the place where
+had stood in older times, a famous tree, a cocoanut. Among its branches
+the Malietoa, who first became converted later to Christianity, used to
+conceal himself and lasso or noose such pretty <i>taupos</i> or maidens as
+passing might strike his fancy. One of these had been the grandmother of
+the young lady whom we were going to visit. While the party talked the
+scandal over I remained a while by a deep well near the shore, and
+watched a handsome Samoan ride his horse barebacked to the water, to the
+sand and distant trees of a little promontory.</p>
+
+<p>When I hurried forward, the party had gone far ahead, and <span class="pagenum"><a id="page_193">{193}</a></span>had arrived
+before me. I crossed the rocky bed of a dry river, upon whose edge stood
+houses, and going up the hill before me, came upon a high open space
+with trees far scattered, and several large black tombs made of stones
+piled together in regular rectangular form; and in the centre of the
+green a house high-placed which instinct told me was the guest-house,
+our destination. Part of the mat curtains were down opposite the central
+posts: I entered by the open side, and saw Adams and the Consul seated
+next to a young woman in half European dress (that is to say with a
+corsage); and on the other side of her Seumanu and Anai. I entered and
+sat down with some hesitation next to the Consul, and after being
+presented to her ladyship looked about me. Opposite, the posts of the
+pretty house all adorned with flowers had each a chief, as a sort of
+sitting caryatid or buttress. And they were big and splendid; that was
+the Greek frieze of which I was telling you. Between each massive
+figure, of Ajax and Nestor and Ulysses and Agamemnon, appeared from time
+to time some little boy, whose small person made them look more ample,
+as the boys or angels of Michael Angelo’s Sistine Chapel make sibyls and
+prophets look more colossal by comparison. Then <i>kava</i> was brought in
+and made solemnly, when in stepped a woman and sat herself beside the
+<i>kava</i> attendant who dried the wisp. A moment later, and her presence
+was explained. She, it appears, had the hereditary right to “divide the
+<i>kava</i>,” and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_194">{194}</a></span> had come to claim it. When the heavy clapping of hands
+announced that the drink was ready, she called out the name of Aigā, to
+whom the first bowl was presented as to the greatest personage. Then to
+one of the guests, then to the next relative of the Malietoa, then to a
+guest, then to a chief, and so on, contrariwise to what we had seen
+before, where we as guests were helped first. You see we were at court,
+in the presence of royalty.</p>
+
+<p>When the ceremonies were over, we chatted with Aigā, who spoke English,
+and whose amiability pleased me. She was embarrassed and shy, and
+struggled like some girl, unaccustomed to society, to say some proper
+things. But the grace of her diffidence was all the greater when one
+noticed the security of position indicated by her voice when speaking in
+a low distinct tone to others. At length we rose and adjourned to the
+neighbouring house, where the feast had been set forth. This we were
+allowed to dispense with under plea of a late breakfast, but for form’s
+sake we looked at each separate thing, spread out in a long line of
+Samoan good fare, on green banana leaves that stretched across the
+house. Then we <i>papalagi</i>, (foreigners), returned to a Western soup
+kindly prepared by Aigā, and our own bread and tea, and sardines, in
+which fare Aigā joined, and talked to us and we to her, all stretched at
+full length upon the mats.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_195">{195}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then our lady disappeared with some little show of embarrassment, and
+had I known how much it cost her, I should have sympathized with her
+sooner in the annoyance of her having to prepare her toilette for the
+great official reception (<i>talolo</i>), which was to be the next function
+of the afternoon&mdash;the nearest house was the scene of the dressing of
+herself and her maidens. Through the dropped mats of the openings, girls
+and women kept plunging in and out, carrying in dress mats, and beads
+and garlands of flowers, and entangled, complicated cinctures and belts
+of fruits and flowers, and woven bark&mdash;and bringing out the news of how
+the dresses looked to the loungers sitting at a distance outside. And
+once I saw carried in a fierce, cruel headgear that our lady was to
+wear; the great helmet of blond hair, set with sparkling mirrors and
+tall filaments, to be bound tight with silvery shells around an aching
+head.</p>
+
+<p>Then we went out to sit and wait on the other side of our guest-house,
+in the shade toward the sea, while long shadows covered the great space,
+and the sun itself became veiled and lit the scene with a tempered light
+more like that of our northern summer. One might almost have imagined an
+afternoon in some favoured, more poetic point in our coast at home, say
+Newport on some exceptional evening. The great <i>mālie</i> spread out
+further than the reserved ground of any of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_196">{196}</a></span> our residences, and its edge
+dropped suddenly to the sea before us. Once or twice a thatched house
+stood on the verge of this rolling green, all carefully smoothed and
+weeded like a lawn. To the left and right were small groves like the
+wings of a theatre. Far off to one side curved the bay, with palm trees
+stepping gradually into the sunlight. The sea was blue and green before
+us, and faintly shining; far off in the haze of sunlight were Upolu and
+Apolima&mdash;spots of blue. Nothing broke this space to the furthest dim
+horizon, except where on the edge of the cliffs stood one hut through
+which shone the colour of the sea and the foliage of the tree
+overshadowing it.</p>
+
+<p>Then our party came up and sat about us on the slope of the grass about
+the house, and from the groves about us came the sounds of the drum-beat
+and the call of war music. From behind the house, in a great circle, ran
+out in a sort of dance, our hostess in full gala costume: naked to the
+waist, kilted with costly mats held on by flower girdles&mdash;on her head
+the great military cap. She held a little toy club in her hand; on
+either side, with heavier strides, two of the giants, her attendant
+chiefs, dressed and undressed in the same way, repeated her movements.
+Some thirty paces behind her, two of her maidens followed these leaders,
+turning round in a great circle of dance, spreading out their arms, and
+the wide folds of their waist-cloths, and the lines of their garlands
+were flung out by</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_197">{197}</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="illbw_004">
+<a href="images/ill_024.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_024.jpg" width="550" height="329" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">AITUTAGATA. THE HEREDITARY ASSASSINS OF KING MALIETOA.
+SAPAPALI, SAVAII, SAMOA</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="nind">their motion. In and out of the little grove danced back and forth a
+crowd of armed men, who threw up their clubs and caught them again.</p>
+
+<p>Right in the middle of the green before us, threading their path between
+the princess and her girls, crouching to the ground, crawled or ran,
+bending low, three men, all blackened, with green cinctures of leaves
+wound round their heads, and short tails of white bark hanging down out
+of their girdles. These were the king’s “murderers,” relics of a bygone
+time when savage chiefs, like European sovereigns, used licensed crime
+to rid themselves of enemies&mdash;or friends&mdash;against whom they could not
+wage open war.</p>
+
+<p>These whom we saw were only on parade. All this served but to recall a
+former power and its historical descent. But the ancestors of these
+official murderers of hereditary ancestry had been actively employed. At
+the whispered word of the chief they tracked the destined victim,
+risking their lives in the attack, and plunged into him their peculiar
+weapon, the <i>foto</i>, the barb of the Sting Ray, which breaking in the
+wound and poisonous withal, meant inevitable death.</p>
+
+<p>They were called, as I make out, Aitutagata (Devil people). The display
+lasted but a short time; hardly more than a few circlings by Aigā and
+her people, then on a sudden all seemed to come up about us, and the
+assemblage broke up into groups.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_198">{198}</a></span> Aigā bore with apparent confusion our
+compliments. She was anxious to get away.</p>
+
+<p>There was something inextricably touching in the case of this bashful
+young person&mdash;indoctrinated with our ideas to some extent&mdash;apparently
+realizing how we looked upon the scene, how different her dress and
+actions from those of her white friends and sisters, and yet carrying it
+all out to suit her position of princess and hostess; what was due to
+us, and to the traditions of her race.</p>
+
+<p>With evening came the need of change, and I wandered down to the
+unfinished church begun by the Malietoa, of whom I told you. The massive
+foundations of coral rock, against which the tide was washing, are
+finished, as well as part of the walls of the church. In front is a
+little island, planted with trees: to the left, at once rocks and high
+trees; on the right, the surf broke again in a little cove with houses
+and palm trees, standing high against the setting sun. Far off the
+point, the outline of Apolima, more than ever like a submerged volcano
+cone, and the long white line of the surf; and near me, almost under me,
+a dark moving space in the water, where the tide washed more uneasily,
+the submerged tomb of a woman called Siga (white), a former wife of
+Seumanu. There was something that made one dream, in this grave, now
+remembered, now forgotten, a reminder that all memory can</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="ill_016">
+<a href="images/ill_025.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_025.jpg" width="550" height="381" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">BUTTRESSES OF THE FIRST CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND TOMB OF SIGA
+IN THE REEF. SAPAPALI, SAMOA</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_199">{199}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">be but temporary, and that the real end is where all ends and is
+forgotten, and where, as the Spaniard says, “Dios empiezo.” I sat and
+sketched a little, seated on the great foundation. Children and women
+crowded around, and climbed up the space in front, where the great steps
+should have been, and filed all around the projecting edge that runs
+about the church. When I had done I rose, and turning the corner of the
+narrow ledge, found that I had made a group of frightened prisoners.
+Then I went to the deep pool near by, where the sea runs into the little
+fresh water, and was smiled at by the good-natured face, just being
+washed, of one of the murderers by inheritance, who had figured all
+blackened that afternoon, with green leaves and a white hanging tail.
+His wickedness was being washed off with his blacking: or rather, his
+wickedness was all archæological, kept up as a proof of the former
+dignity and power of the chief, and of the obedience of his men. For
+these people seem never to have been grossly wicked or cruel; as I told
+you, they were not cannibals or whatever they had that way, ages ago,
+was condemned as bad. They have even been unwilling to exterminate their
+enemies in their many wars: and when they could put an end to the
+German, in this last war, they stopped their killing the moment the
+enemy was beaten, as they imagined. An element of strong good nature
+seems to persist at the bottom of their character.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_200">{200}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>That evening we had a <i>siva</i>, like other <i>sivas</i>, which I am unable to
+describe, because I was so sleepy that my memory has not held over. I
+lurked in the dark, behind our hostess, who did not dance. Her
+missionary training and her position were against it, I suppose, but
+also, perhaps, she did not dance well, or as well as others. Afterward
+she lingered with us, in the late evening, as did the <i>taupo</i> who had
+danced. With them were her two girls, attendants, and one or two of the
+elder women, along with some of our men who acted as chorus. Then
+“quelque diable le poussant,” nothing would do for one of our own party
+but that he should tease and beg for a dance with more undressing. The
+older women seemed to enjoy the notion, which reminded them, perhaps, of
+old days when they were able to be naughty, and had performed all sorts
+of antics late at night, when the elders and the great people were gone
+to bed. So gradually, from one dance to another, we came to one in which
+the performers disrobe entirely for a moment, using some words that
+represent and lay claim to the same beauty which the Venus of Naples,
+she whom we call Venus Callipyge, attempts to look at, and certainly
+shows. But it was all innocent and childish&mdash;the <i>taupo</i> danced it, and
+the young girls accompanied her with one older woman&mdash;and Aigā laughed
+and was amused, but hid away behind us, ashamed. Then we made her dance
+for</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="illbw_006">
+<a href="images/ill_026.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_026.jpg" width="550" height="347" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">PRACTISING THE SEATED DANCE AT NIGHT. SAMOA</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_201">{201}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">a moment the usual dance, I say we, but it was not I&mdash;and as she seemed
+to think that even that was dreadful enough&mdash;we parted with some
+discomfort. I foresaw trouble, but whether our fair friend was not as
+much annoyed by the relentless compliments paid to the beauty of others,
+is more than I can make out, being a man.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning we trotted off a few miles, to this present place
+Sapotulafai, the headquarters of the great orator, and which is the
+great political centre. We had a great dinner, at which I sat next to
+the <i>taupo</i> of the adjacent village, a giantess, whose name is not
+insignificant, though people here are not apparently named, any more
+than are people anywhere else, by name to suit them. Charlie interpreted
+her name for me saying, “When you are on top of a cocoanut, and the wind
+blows hard, and you are afraid of falling off, that is <i>Lilia</i>.” You
+have seen a palm tree in a gale, and you can imagine the picturesqueness
+of this definition of fear, in the wild swinging of the waves of the
+branches.</p>
+
+<p>We had a <i>siva</i> in the afternoon, when a young chief danced with the
+<i>taupo</i> of his village, to whom he is engaged: She gave him some
+occasional affectionate whacks of reproof at some remarks that distance
+did not make clear; and we had a great “<i>talolo</i>” with the speech of the
+great <i>tulafale</i> of Samoa, and then a return speech, which was listened
+to with<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_202">{202}</a></span> some curiosity. Some devil inspired me to urge our
+representative speech-maker to discuss the severe and mistaken view of
+dancing taken up by the missionaries&mdash;I mean the brown clergy. They had
+done all sorts of good, but they were crowding too much out in their
+zeal, and the white missionaries were not so excessive&mdash;and so forth.
+And Adams had made a remark that seems to me a deep one. Something more
+is needed for these people of few occupations. If they are to live
+to-day they are destined to a putting aside of the excitement of their
+little wars, and they need some outlet in games that exercise them, and
+keep up their appreciation of physical life and excellence. Anyhow,
+these views were launched out at a risk, and in a few days, without a
+doubt, will have gone all around Samoa.</p>
+
+<p>My own reason was a nearer one. It grieved me to think that Aigā should
+risk her church position, because she was polite according to Samoan
+etiquette, and that the other girls, who did the same, to wit, gave us
+dances, at the request of their fathers and superiors, should be placed
+between divided duties. This had been an oppression to the mind ever
+since we came; and perhaps after all, we may have done well.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening, our own <i>taupo</i>, Faauli the daughter of the orator, gave
+us a <i>siva</i>; she danced, and danced well, and so did Lilia, the daughter
+of a great chief, a Catholic, and then we had<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_203">{203}</a></span> the other <i>taupo</i>, who
+danced again with the young chief to whom she was engaged. His dance was
+certainly amusing to the imagination. The chorus was singing about
+himself, in his honour, and he performed the steps, if I may so express
+it. He and another with red girdles and black, furry loin-cloths, and
+red leaves in the hair, and red bead necklaces, danced with the <i>taupo</i>
+herself, dressed all in red and purple leaves. The dances were a dance
+of the hammer, and the dance of the cocoanut, and in the glitter of the
+palm-fire, the ballet of our fairy opera. And satiated with dances I
+have tried to be quiet and to sketch until now.</p>
+
+<p class="nind">
+Oct. 30th.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>We shall leave to-morrow. I feel tired, a little saddened; I suspect
+that sleeping on the floors at night, in draughts from the back-country,
+and wandering occasionally, in the midday, among the hot thickets, may
+have given me some little fever. The German manager of one of the
+plantations was telling me a little while ago that there was danger in
+this, though nothing like what he had seen in other countries. On that
+account, he had lifted the flooring of the houses, built for his men,
+Solomon or Marshall islanders, whose health was of course of importance
+to him, during their contract time. After all this care, they will be
+taken back, perhaps, to the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_204">{204}</a></span> wrong place, and I suppose, eaten by their
+fellows, if they happen to land on the wrong spot, or at some
+neighbouring village.</p>
+
+<p>&#160; </p>
+
+<p>This afternoon we went to Sapapali, to take leave of Aigā who had been
+so kind to us, and who seemed almost hurt at our not remaining. We found
+her apparently sad and troubled, and I regretted that we had been
+accompanied by the other Taupos of our locality. Not that they were not
+kept in their places by the greater lady, for this rather timid and
+amiable person knows perfectly well how to speak to people who are
+socially below her, and nothing has interested me more than her various
+shades of inflection in addressing others. But something has evidently
+annoyed her, whether the break with the church on account of the <i>siva</i>,
+or her girls having been indiscreet, or her having made some mistake
+that I do not exactly understand. She was much teased by one of us about
+some “tendresse de cœur,” and that may have annoyed her. And the praise
+given to her little girls, and an attempt to get them away from her
+control may not have been pleasant. When I had seen the rest of the
+company pass by my sketching place, and I knew that the visit was over,
+I went back alone to her house and found her among her girls prostrate
+and in tears. But she came out to me, so as<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_205">{205}</a></span> to be alone, and she spoke
+as if we should misjudge her from Sunday-school views and not understand
+that her parade at the head of her warriors, all undressed, was an
+official duty to us. And then bade me sweetly good-bye&mdash;and but a moment
+ago my curtain mats have been pushed aside by a messenger who has come
+all this way at night to bring me flowers from her.</p>
+
+<p>So that I am not in cause: I leave it to you to read. I feel almost as
+if what I were writing to you were indiscreet enough. Remember that
+there is little privacy here, and that the houses are half open, so that
+one may almost rush in. In fact, were it not for the complication of
+human nature, I cannot see how there could be any privacy. There is
+privacy somehow or other, but not in our way. Outside the house there
+may be ways of saying things, inside and out there are dictionaries of
+signs, but they all have the most wonderful way of hearing, and there
+are always eyes everywhere. I have remarked that since I have cultivated
+the habit of sitting on the ground, I see more of everything, and I seem
+to be able to watch more easily. But, as I said, privacy is relative:
+nothing has struck me as more Samoan than an elopement which I almost
+witnessed. The young woman ran away with some young man, along the
+beach, in the presence of hundreds of people who, it is true, were not
+exactly watching her. She was just as<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_206">{206}</a></span> publicly caught and brought back,
+cuffed sufficiently and scolded by her older sister, and I see her
+occasionally, in a neighbour’s house, looking not so repentant as on the
+first afternoon of her punishment. As I said, I am tired and sad&mdash;and I
+wish you good-night across the ocean and land.</p>
+
+<p class="nind">
+At Home in Vaiala,<br>
+Nov. 4th.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>The end of our malaga was not so pleasant. When we left Sapotulafai last
+week, I was ill and fevered, and suffered quite a little during our long
+trip of fourteen hours at sea. We had to row it. There was no wind, and
+our men, never over-energetic, had been up all night in the last
+enjoyment of social delights. Once indeed, Seu scornfully took an oar,
+but even with that, twelve good hours’ rowing is not bad work, and we
+got back in the evening at eight, having left Savaii at six o’clock in
+the morning. The light and colour were as usual: even with fever I could
+occasionally see how beautiful all was, but I managed to sleep, and do
+not remember anything in particular, unless it be the long-continued
+song of the men rowing&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Lelei. Apoli-ma!<br></span>
+<span class="i1">O-le-e&mdash;O-le-e!”<br></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_207">{207}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="nind">
+Vaiala in Upolu, Nov. 13th.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday, on Faatulia’s invitation, we rode over to the Papa-seea, the
+Sliding Rock: only a little distance, some hour and a half from where we
+are, so that by eight o’clock or so we were out in the rain, mounted on
+the horses seared up with difficulty for the early start. Mine was a
+horse owned by the boy Poki, who is an owner of horses&mdash;he has now
+three, and his food for them is given by the village common. His still
+more youthful friend, Sopo, hired his horse to Atamo and somebody else
+fitted out Awoki and Charley who went with us. Samau, the <i>tulafale</i>,
+and another of our crew were to go ahead and carry some European food
+and our painting and photographing kit. As we passed along the beach,
+which is, as you know, the street of Apia, we met Meli Hamilton and
+Faatulia and Fanua, and little Meli Meredith, all mounted. Gathering
+them together, under rather a gentle rain, we turned toward the woods
+behind the town and cantered over a dyke, through a mangrove swamp,
+where formerly must have been some coral inlet; then past some villages,
+a few huts, and then into the forest. This is no description to you, but
+perhaps I can interest you by letting you understand that the delicate
+form of the great novelist, Mr. Stevenson, passes up or down this road,
+of necessity, on his way to his Spanish Castle in the mountains. So that
+when he begins to write South Sea<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_208">{208}</a></span> stories, and is obliged to use local
+colour, you shall probably admire some beautiful description of all or
+part of the road.</p>
+
+<p>In the woods we overtook our men, and dear Fagalo and Sué, whose bare
+legs were paddling in the rain. A little path led through woods all
+overgrown, in a narrow zigzag, over fallen trunks and under branches
+beneath which we bent. The light fell through green high up, upon green
+all around us; innumerable small trees and bushes, and occasionally
+great trees whose trunks ended in high buttresses of rooting sharp and
+thin, as if the trunk had been ravined. These are the trees which in the
+old story-books of travel were supposed to furnish a ready-made
+planking. Over all grew lianas and vines whose great long stems hung in
+the air above us, or low enough to be pushed aside as we rode.
+Notwithstanding the several varieties of growth&mdash;the Samoan wild orange
+with double leaf and prickly stem, whose fruit was used in old times as
+a soap to wash with, or the Fuafua, with broad leaves&mdash;the effect was
+not unlike the appearance of our own forests, had it not been for the
+lianas, and the occasional sheafs of wild banana that swung against our
+horses’ heads. For an hour we went along in a scattered file, the
+sunlight occasionally dropping in upon the great stillness around us.
+Rarely a bird sung. Once we heard the running of a river. Then we came
+to a stopping place; all got off; the girls</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="ill_017">
+<a href="images/ill_027.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_027.jpg" width="384" height="550" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">THE BOY SOPO. SAMOA</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_209">{209}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">skilfully ungirthing and unsaddling their horses, and tying them up to
+the branches with long ropes. Over the trees that sloped down below us,
+we could now see the harbour of Apia, from one end to the other, and we
+kindled a fire of dead wood, to show the anxious friends at our end of
+the bay that we had arrived. There are three waterfalls in this little
+opening to which our narrow path had led us, and it leads no further and
+nowhere else. Of the three falls, each divided from the others by wide
+platforms of rock, the upper one is low and does not count. It is the
+second and the third that are “slipping rocks.” The water rushes over
+them in one or many falls, according to the season, and in some of the
+channels the surface has become so slippery with moss that all one has
+to do is to sit and be whirled into the pool below. We had just begun to
+look down into the little hollow, edged on one side by a high rock upon
+which ferns and vines and green bananas find a scanty foothold, when
+Fagalo, throwing off her upper covering, seated herself on the edge of
+the current, and in an instant had slipped off. And a laugh from below
+echoed above as she rose from the pool and swam to the shore. By the
+time that we had clambered down to meet her, she had come up and rushed
+down again followed by Sué. The sight was charming: the pretty girls,
+with arms thrown out and bodies straight for balance, their wet clothes
+driven tightly to the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_210">{210}</a></span> hips in the rush of the water, had a look of gold
+against the gray that brought up Clarence King’s phrase about Hawaii and
+the “old-gold girls that tumbled down waterfalls.” In the plunge and the
+white foam, the yellow limbs did indeed look like goldfish in a
+blue-green pool. Further down there is a small rush of water into a
+little hollow in the rock; the two girls in their play filled it easily,
+like mermaids in too small a tank. Then we had lunch on banana leaves,
+to which our wet friends contributed the shrimps that they had caught,
+accidently as it were, and without thinking, in these moments of
+“abandon.” We had also a mess of <i>palolo</i> looking like very dark green
+spinach, darker than the green leaves in which it was wrapped. Adams
+insisted that this dish tasted quite like “foie gras,” which he also
+said was quite as nasty a preparation.</p>
+
+<p>To explain what <i>palolo</i> is I should have told you of a little
+expedition we made one morning last week, just on the return from our
+malaga. But I was ill and had suffered too much from native food to
+write any more upon similar subjects. Even all my liking for Meli
+Hamilton and my admiration for the fullness and redness of her lips, and
+for the gleam of her teeth, could scarcely reconcile me to the wriggling
+of the great tree worms through which she crunched so gayly and
+healthily at our last great Samoan dinner.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="ill_018">
+<a href="images/ill_028.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_028.jpg" width="550" height="463" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">THE PAPA-SEEA, OR SLIDING ROCK. FAGALO SLIDING WATERFALL.
+VAIALA, SAMOA</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_211">{211}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At the waterfall, after our lunch, our men had theirs, and they sat with
+heads all wrapped about with leaves, while the rain came down upon them;
+for if there is anything that a Samoan detests it is getting his hair
+wet. The rest of him does not matter. Meanwhile we smoked under our
+umbrellas, pretty Meli Meredith half under mine, and Meli Hamilton under
+a big banana leaf. For most of the others rain did not matter. They had
+either gone into the water or were preparing to do so by sitting quietly
+in the current. Otaota had prepared for the slide, and was stretched out
+in the run of the waterfall that now swept over, now left uncovered her
+extended limbs; for she leaned out upon one elbow, and dipped a hand in
+the water, scattering it upon the other girls in a lazy way. Otaota was
+“missionary” that day, and would not uncover the lovely torso about
+which I have told you so much. Then the sun came out in a lingering,
+gentle way, as if it dripped down from the sky, and with it all the
+girls went over; Fanua and Meli Meredith and Otaota. And as we looked
+down upon them, they swam over and hid behind the branchings of the
+vines like so many nymphs of streams, their faces and arms glancing like
+gold out of the green. Near them one of our men made a deep red in the
+water by contrast. And now Awoki, with much hesitation, prepared, put on
+the native lavalava, and tried his luck. Yellow he is to us,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_212">{212}</a></span> but he
+looked white and pallid among all those browns and reds.</p>
+
+<p>The whole thing was catching, and had we stayed longer we too should
+have been over, though Adams said that just then our dignity forbade it.
+But our feeling of dignity had been helped by Meli Hamilton’s telling us
+that the last time she had gone over the fall, she had struck badly
+against a rock, and so had her companion, the navy officer; so that with
+the rain beginning again, horses were bridled and saddled, and we all
+started for a wet ride in the wet woods, down the slippery path which we
+had to take in single file. Fagalo rode with Charley, on Sopo’s little
+nag, and the last thing I saw of Otaota was her bare legs over the back
+of Awoki’s horse; he sat behind, his arms around her, gallantly
+protecting all that remained of her with his little waterproof. And we
+came home tired and wet, but having spent a pleasant childlike day with
+grown-up children.</p>
+
+<p class="cspc">PALOLO</p>
+
+<p class="nind">
+Vaiala in Upolu, Nov. 14th.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>I broke off yesterday telling you about <i>palolo</i>. I think my words ended
+by telling you that even all my liking and admiration for Meli Hamilton
+would scarcely reconcile me to the wriggling of the great tree worms
+which she crunched at our</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="ill_019">
+<a href="images/ill_029.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_029.jpg" width="392" height="550" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">GIRL SLIDING DOWN WATERFALL. BANANA LEAF AROUND HER BODY.
+SAMOA</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_213">{213}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">last Samoan dinner. Mrs. Lieutenant Parker became very white as she saw
+her and I handed her rapidly something or other, brandy or whiskey, to
+help the occasion.</p>
+
+<p><i>Palolo</i> has no such horrors. For it we have not had far to go. Only
+just out into the reefs before us, when, in the early morning before the
+dawn, we rowed out a few yards to find a concourse of people, in boats
+and canoes, scooping up with eager hands thin hairlike worms that
+swarmed in the water within the special hollows of the coral reef.</p>
+
+<p>We were more or less ready for the appearance of these little creatures
+who, on a certain day of the year and the moon, appear suddenly with the
+dawn and disappear with the sunrise until another year. We were
+expecting this arrival, which never fails. As I said, it is looked for
+ahead; it has its own laws; the scientific ones fail because we have
+calculated by our dates, instituted for other reasons than the life of
+the <i>palolo</i>. Our Samoan friends are in the secret. We white people
+compute that the <i>palolo</i> is due at dead low water in the night of the
+third quarter of the moon nearest the first of November, but that
+reckoning involves Solar and Lunar months, as I intimated.</p>
+
+<p>Our good friends here have been whispering to us and telling us that
+this was to happen and they know how to be prepared for it. Certain
+plants, certain shrubs blossom; and then you<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_214">{214}</a></span> know that the time of the
+<i>palolo’s</i> month is drawing near. There are signs in the heavens, and
+the moon helps. It is, I think, in its third quarter that the event
+takes place. Somebody with us, perhaps several people (because our
+village contains important and learned people) mark time during the year
+by counting pebbles, and green feathers, and leaves, up to such and such
+a day, so that, at a certain moment, our friends can tell us that the
+<i>palolo</i> is due next morning.</p>
+
+<p>The third year one has to count a different number of days, but the
+creatures down below in the coral know exactly to the minute. The night
+is watched through, our people are all ready, are warned at the proper
+moment. People from far away are also ready. Our friends have found each
+one some proper hole which may be more or less lucky later. We watched
+the dawn coming upon us, lighting the breakers on the edge of the reef.
+When the breakers withdraw it is slack tide and we watch, and our
+friends watch, more intently than we can, the absolute calm of the
+water. Then, of a sudden, somebody calls out, “the <i>palolo</i> is there!”
+or something like it, and then this empty water is full of long lines of
+what seems to be worms, which you scoop up, not so anxiously as those
+who care.</p>
+
+<p>A short time, an hour they say but it seemed to me shorter, the sun is
+up over the edge and the worm is gone until next year.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_215">{215}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is nothing but something like the thinnest of little seaweed a few
+inches long, and you have to accept as a fact that this wriggling mass
+is made up of worms.</p>
+
+<p>I wish I could fairly describe the place and scene but you can make it
+up for yourself. The scene is one of busy struggle. It is a matter of
+food, it is true, also a festival of amusement apart from the picnic
+side. Very interesting was the eagerness shown in the catching, by the
+few white girls born here, whom I watched. They paddled about, jumped
+out with bare feet on to the jagged coral like any Polynesian, but with
+that seriousness and ferocity of our race, so different from the easy
+good-natured suppleness of the brown skins who seem to be part of the
+nature around them.</p>
+
+<p>The dark transparent water inside the reefs, the rosy colouring of the
+dawn, the splendour of the sunrise which is at length over land and
+water, would have been beautiful enough even without this animation of
+human element. But I have not dared taste the <i>palolo</i> even as made up
+yesterday with cocoanut milk. I have come to the point of a revolt
+against almost all of the food, from cocoanut milk to live fish and
+slugs.</p>
+
+<p class="nind">
+Vaiala in Upolu, Sunday, Nov. 23, 1890.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>The end of the last week has been filled with festivity. Seu has been
+giving a great feast, and this has been a very<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_216">{216}</a></span> serious matter. We have
+seen other feasts before, but none so successful and so great. The
+presents given to Seu and Faatulia, or rather to Vao, their little
+daughter, in whose name the feast was given, were larger in number than
+we had yet heard of. Among vast quantities of other things were
+hecatombs of pigs&mdash;in prose fact, three hundred and twenty-five&mdash;over
+two thousand rolls of <i>tappa</i>, and several dozen of “fine mats.” All the
+neighbouring houses were in requisition for the guests, who kept coming
+from various quarters during the whole week, and especially from Savaii,
+where is the stronghold of Faatulia’s family. Faatulia wore the anxious
+look of the hostess on her kindly face, and Seu looked worried, a thing
+I should have thought impossible. But as I go on you will see how
+serious it all is, however gratifying it may be to pride of position.
+The house of Seu was charmingly decorated with <i>tappa</i>, even to the
+floor, so as to remind me, but I own, more pleasantly, of our most
+æsthetic studios. In others, there were few European visitors, and more
+packing of Samoans. In one other especially, I think loaned by the King,
+a collection of <i>taupos</i> from various localities filled the space by the
+posts, so as to make the hut look like a basket of flowers. Far in the
+central penumbra, two female giants sat all decorated, and around them
+the backs and waists of the others looked like a garden of dahlias and
+brown skin. For<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_217">{217}</a></span> some were “faa Samoa”&mdash;others were more or less
+“<i>papalagi</i>” foreigners. In that case, however, their waist coverings
+were amusing. Some had corselets of leaves lapping over like Etruscan or
+Greek plate armour. Others had coloured netting, others had <i>tappa</i> cut
+out with various openings, like some heathen dream of “insertions” (I
+think women call it so). One girl had a corselet of cut paper of many
+colours, making her look like a flower-bed, her oiling giving to the
+paper a look of leafage. There were dresses of the usual variety and in
+one case a large number of flower petals caught up one by one in the
+locks of the hair. In another the whole hair had been filled with little
+light blue bits of paper cut like petals. Mind you, all this was
+beautiful, funny as it was, and upon the green grass background, made,
+as I said, a basket of flowers. The brown skins that were not covered
+glowed like fruit. In perfect taste, for even garlands are gawky
+compared to the ineffable logic that the human frame carries with it,
+one good girl had no covering to her body, and this savage from the
+farther back country had a face that looked like the Italians’. In the
+shadow, playing with a bambino, she made a madonna. The reason of it
+came to me suddenly&mdash;her hair was down upon the forehead in the two
+large folds that we associate with the Italian way, and a great look of
+seriousness was added to the disdainful kindness of the face. Behind
+her<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_218">{218}</a></span> head the hair was full, in a mass whose colour was blond with
+liming, and made a great capital for the column of her torso seen with
+arms hidden in front. Of her I have made some studies, and posed her for
+photographs, and later, on the next night, she gave us a <i>siva</i> in our
+own house; Adams and I having duly called upon her, as if we were young
+men, with five loaves of bread, and two tins of salmon, as is the proper
+thing for youthful admirers like ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>Around this beehive of yellow and black were assembled matrons and
+children and boys, waiting for the later food, of which they as
+relatives would have the larger part.</p>
+
+<p>Far off, in another part of the grounds, Lima, known as John Adams,
+presided over the food; and in front of him a vast mass of pigs and
+bananas and taro, etc., etc., littered the ground. John told us about it
+in a high-pitched voice, with an accent that brought back indefinable
+associations. Whom did I know of the old school with such perfect
+intonation in English, and a diction that implied the gentleman by
+accepted tradition? Could it have been some old officer of the
+navy&mdash;could it have been some far-back Englishman or antique Southerner?
+But John, even in his exterior manner, brought back all the feeling that
+we do not speak English as well to-day as once was done, and that our
+refinement of manner and accent has disappeared.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_219">{219}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The feast had begun; under long stretches of <i>tappa</i> supported by poles,
+guests were assembled around the tables of banana leaf, while we
+wandered about, made prudent by former disasters in diet. It was
+pleasant to see the triumphant carrying of great pigs by the young men,
+garlanded and cinctured: the platforms of sugar-cane and taro disposed
+in a show, as if growing in some impossible yet graceful way&mdash;the taro
+like grapes on a vine.</p>
+
+<p>Then we wandered back to our <i>taupos</i> in their home. They were feasting
+in a circle around the banana trays. Two men were hewing the pigs into
+segments, with the <i>swish</i> so well described by my Chinese philosopher,
+Chuang Tseu, in his chapter of the “Rising Clouds”&mdash;if that be the one.
+Two older women stalked about amid the food, who caught these chunks of
+meat and tossed them to the <i>taupos</i>. Occasionally they varied this by
+assorted lots of taro or cooked food. Do not suppose by this that these
+vigorous maidens were bolting their food. No, all this was Samoan and
+communistic; no one lives for himself here, but for the lot. These good
+girls were hard at work, passing all this to old women with baskets, and
+two young people who sat on the edge of the hut with feet outside,
+impatiently urged them. “Wait,” they said, “wait; our turn in a moment,”
+and amid laughter and chattering and long reproofs of the old women, the
+food came to them in<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_220">{220}</a></span> turn. I suppose the <i>taupos</i> managed to get
+something, but if they did, they deserved it for the work they had in
+passing the food away. This is Samoa&mdash;where a gift is shared or given
+away. When we called later on one of the <i>taupos</i>, as I told you, and
+carried our little gifts, half of them were at once given to the owners
+of the house, and the other half to some chief who happened to be
+present. All this as a matter of course, with fair counting, as in a
+commercial firm. Even the cigar accepted by the fair one, passed in a
+few seconds to her nearest neighbour. Some one was telling me yesterday,
+of having given a cigar a few days ago to a Samoan, who had just bitten
+it, when another passing asked for it. Thereupon it was handed away, as
+a matter of course. “Why did you give that?” the white man said.</p>
+
+<p>“Because he asked,” said the Samoan.</p>
+
+<p>“But is there no further reason?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes; I might some day want a cigar, and if he had one, I should ask.”
+The community of friends and relatives is a sort of bank where you
+deposit and draw as you may need. So for Seu’s food: almost all is given
+to him. It is given out, sent away if people are not there; a procession
+of people carrying things from the feast, filed along all the afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>After the feast, a <i>siva</i> in the open air, where Fanua danced. The crowd
+was full all about her and her assistants, girls and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_221">{221}</a></span> men. The occasion
+was a notable one. Two white missionaries with their wives were present,
+and the <i>siva</i> was danced before them. Henceforward the excommunication
+will be difficult, unless the native preachers insist upon having their
+own way. But we shall have been present at this great event. I spoke to
+one of the missionaries for a moment, a rather interesting man, who
+talked a little about his hopes for the Samoans, their conservatism, and
+their not being emotional, however excitable they might appear to be, so
+that things once impressed upon them had a fair chance of thriving.</p>
+
+<p>And thereupon we proceeded (those of us who were tired) to get away&mdash;not
+without, however, looking once more at another <i>siva</i> getting under way,
+with some of the many <i>taupos</i> and their male assistant dancers, to see
+them oil. Some one ran around offering the liquid, which was poured full
+upon everything, dress and person. And being introduced, I shook the
+oily palms of some of the girls and of one splendid chief&mdash;who might
+have been drier. Then, later, Adams and I called on our <i>taupo</i> friend,
+whose home we proposed to drop into next week in our travels, and who is
+visiting near us. We arranged with Meli Hamilton as our <i>tulafale</i> for a
+<i>siva</i> in our own house. There at night the <i>taupo</i> came, in the pouring
+rain, and I sat in my own comfortable chair, with Mrs. Parker next to
+me, and felt at home; for in the shadow I could close<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_222">{222}</a></span> my eyes or look
+on while the figures danced in shadow or in light.</p>
+
+<p>The next day we were summoned again to Seu’s feast. A <i>siva</i> would be
+danced for us <i>papalagi</i> who had been too crowded the day before. So
+that we went to see the comedy, which began seriously enough. We sat a
+while in Seumanu’s house, filled with friends and relatives, while a
+woman, an ex-<i>taupo</i>, carefully unfolded the presents of “fine mats,”
+saying what they were for, and from whom, and occasionally something of
+their history. For the “fine mat” is the great possession&mdash;the heirloom,
+the old silver, the jewels of the Samoan. And one tattered piece that
+was held up for show, sewed together, its trimming of feathers all gone,
+and full of holes, was looked at with respect; it had been <i>royal</i>.
+Around these mats cluster romance and story&mdash;war and quarrels&mdash;and the
+idea of the palladium, the insignia of power. The mat has been given at
+marriage and at birth, and has been worn on great occasions&mdash;it has
+witnessed those scenes, and besides carries money value. Its very stains
+tell stories of those events in life. So that Seu’s thirty odd mats were
+quite an affair, exclusive of the pile of two thousand pieces of
+<i>tappa</i>. As soon as the mats had been counted over, and admired, and a
+polite discussion arose, our hostess insisting that it must be a bore
+for us to look over all<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_223">{223}</a></span> this, the polite guests insisting that nothing
+could be more entertaining.</p>
+
+<p>Then John Adams (Lima), in his fine old-fashioned voice and way, cried
+out that if we wished, a <i>siva</i> was getting ready in the next house, and
+as our adviser whispered to us that we had better be away, for that now
+the real work had begun. It was for Seu and Faatulia and the family
+group to decide as to who should be the people to whom all these gifts
+were to be made over. A few they might keep, but the mass must go. Every
+giver had a right to something, if possible finer than his gift: and
+here was a ploy, as Sir Walter says. Everything must be according to
+dignity and family and precedence, and everything that society means
+everywhere. Think of the heart-burnings, jealousies, affronts, etc.,
+that hung in the balance. Many a time in Samoa, war has begun by some
+error in such adjustments. No wonder that we were better out of the way.
+Even to-day, we are told that several days more, a whole week, will be
+consumed in these weighty questions, and Seu is to wear his look of
+worry for days.</p>
+
+<p>Adams and I sat on branches: I, on the right, Adams, on the left of her
+Majesty the Queen, while a siva of two pretty children, little <i>taupos</i>,
+daughters of a chief of Savaii, and of two young men, went on before us
+in the sweet light, half sunlight and half rain. These two little girls,
+Selu’s daughter<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_224">{224}</a></span> and her little friend, the daughter of a chief of Iva,
+gave us an infantile imitation, while another chief played buffoon, to
+give them courage and protect them from serious attention. And this time
+Fanua sat behind us, and looked on, alongside of many young girls and
+women whom we have learned to know a little.</p>
+
+<p>Up to this time, the terrible ordeal of decision of presents must have
+gone on, and will not be through until late next week, when we hope to
+get Seumanu on another malaga; but this time at our own pleasure, and
+with the hope of making sketches and studies with more leisure, and with
+a better knowledge, for as you know, he who runs finds it difficult to
+read, and there is nothing that I abhor more than the carrying of the
+studio sight into other visions.</p>
+
+<p>Only the poet is free, whether he be painter or writer, for with him
+subjects are only excuses, and as Fromentin has put it so perfectly,
+Delacroix’s three months of Morocco contain all that has been said and
+will be said of the east and south of the Mediterranean. But we cannot
+all be great people like Delacroix, nor great painters like him, nor
+perhaps was he at all aware in early life of his always having achieved.
+But he tried probably, to be exact and faithful, as any one of us might
+do.</p>
+
+<p>The weather is again beautiful; to-day is all blue and tri<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_225">{225}</a></span>umphant;
+indeed, the sky is bluer than it was, although the grass is yellower,
+and in the afternoon late, the clouds of the horizon are radiant in
+violet and rose. Fanua has come up to see me, with the Queen’s little
+daughter all clad in pink, who has been living in Fiji, and talks
+English quite well, and says like a child, that she likes Fiji better
+than Samoa. Service at the little church opposite is just over, where
+Fanua has been, and where I have heard the voice of Otaota’s father
+preaching. He has called upon me, apparently interested in questioning
+about the Mormons, who have sent missionaries here, and whose wives
+often canter past, against the blue background of the sea. Otaota’s
+father is not a little proud of his preaching, which indeed sounds well
+out of the church windows, and he asks me why I don’t come in to listen
+more closely. His parishioners sit on mats, and I sometimes lend some of
+mine to stray visitors, especially to members of our crew. The men sit
+on one side, the women on the other: and files of women, especially,
+walk along with mats under their arms or over their heads, or held in
+front of them; and occasionally a child is carried outside on the hip.</p>
+
+<p>There is a small post near by, upon which is a small bell, and a ladder
+to get to it, all under a tree, and some young girl or boy rings the
+clapper with great zeal. I have made a sketch<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_226">{226}</a></span> of one of them who
+accidently set about a missionary work, without putting on her <i>tiputa</i>,
+to cover her bosom, and who was worried as I sketched her, between the
+propriety of carrying out her “missionary work” and her want of
+missionary propriety.</p>
+
+<p>Fanua has left, after sending for the child of a neighbour and caressing
+it during part of our supposed conversation. They say that she is
+thinking of marrying, and certainly she will make a nice wife and mother
+if one can judge by looking at her. Is there anything sweeter than a
+woman caressing a child? and how fond these Samoans are of children.
+They swarm about as free as birds, rarely checked; the owner of our
+house, the chief Magogi, looks more good-natured and smiling than ever,
+when after his fishing, and leaving a fish with us, he parades about
+with his child in his arms. Like a woman, he even carries him when he is
+attending to something else. And Tofae is as gentle to little George
+(the son of the late English Consul, and of Tāelē) whom he has adopted,
+as if he were a mother. When he and other chiefs, in the afternoon, sit
+about on the grass, far interspersed, some ten or twenty feet from each
+other, in Samoan fashion, little George creeps up and nestles against
+him, making with him the only group in the big circle.</p>
+
+<p>Fanua has gone, and from Mataafa’s house begins a hymn.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_227">{227}</a></span> I recognize the
+ancient sound of the Ave Maria Stella (for Mataafa is a
+Catholic)&mdash;another version of the Vallis Lachrymarum that Otaota’s
+father was urging on his people an hour ago: “It is morning and you
+dance&mdash;but night is coming and then&mdash;&mdash;” The Samoan smile is proof
+against anything&mdash;but Mataafa is grave and somewhat sad, and must take
+things on a scale far different. The mournful dignity of his position&mdash;a
+king is always a king, and he has been a real one&mdash;of highest birth and
+greatest capacity&mdash;must always oppress him. And he has no future, I
+fear, for his holding power might be against the interests of Germany,
+to which England will always accede as a bargain, and to which we will
+yield, for we don’t care, and we are not yet aware of our enormous
+strength, to be used for ill or for good, and we sell it willingly for
+anything.</p>
+
+<p>The former German ruler here knew all about it, for the Germans have
+every power of measuring us, and he said to our representative:</p>
+
+<p>“You are really weak&mdash;like all Republicans&mdash;always at the mercy of
+little home events, and any one of you will trade for some personal
+advantage. You can have no policy, that any one of you in politics would
+not break through, to play a trick on the political adversary; and then
+you have no fleet nor army, to show to others what you could do. Before<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_228">{228}</a></span>
+you can make up your mind to anything we shall have taken Samoa for
+ourselves.”</p>
+
+<p>God willed it otherwise, but the German had measured us, at least as we
+are to-day.</p>
+
+<p>The moon is almost full, and comes up in the night, while the sun is
+still lighting the sky with pink. Around her a single cloud is greenish
+white, while the entire sky is suffused with rose. The breakers are rosy
+white; the sea is of a daylight blue, the furthest distance is lit up,
+and a rose-coloured cloud hangs on the horizon far below the moon, while
+her wake cuts in silver across the sunlit sea and surf.</p>
+
+<p>The western sky is all afire, and against it, when the eye is protected,
+the shadows of the moonlight fall with extreme clearness and precision.
+The beauty is ineffable; a little sarcasm comes up into my mind&mdash;a
+reminiscence of the theatre, of a too perfect arrangement, in which the
+machinist has combined too much together, the sun and the moon both
+equally splendid&mdash;night together with day. I am sure that no one would
+believe it if painted, and most would <i>know</i> it was incorrect. This
+disturbs my peace&mdash;but only a little. The good that comes from seeing
+through our teachers, is that at length we have no more use for them,
+and the remainder of life is more economical. And indeed, the world
+about me here seems to say, “See with how little we can be rich!<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_229">{229}</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p class="nind">
+Another Samoan Malaga, Nov. 30th.<br>
+<br>
+Fagaloa Bay, on the N. E. side of Upolu.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>We are on another malaga. I have not quite recovered from illness, so
+that the trip is not all enjoyment, and I write to you in some dejection
+and with an effort. We are going around the island, some hundred miles,
+in our two boats; our own managed by Samau, the <i>tulafale</i>, as coxswain,
+with four men to carry provisions, etc., and plenty of luggage and food
+for all of us; and Seumanu’s boat with ten rowers. We left the day
+before yesterday, in the early dove-coloured morning, all grey with
+partial rain, the mountains covered at top, and low down in the gorges,
+the mist and smoke from villages rising up in straight lines that looked
+like enormous waterfalls. Our first landing was at Falefä, where a river
+falls over wide rocks in its way to the sea, not so differently from
+other pretty waterfalls, except that it makes a broad spread of water
+that joins the sea, so that from some points one might imagine that the
+ocean runs in to meet it.</p>
+
+<p>And then behind the frame of the wide fall and its bordering trees, one
+sees the mountains of the dim interior. There we rested at midday, and I
+lay on the mats, ill and tired, while Charley explained to the young
+woman of the house, wife of the native teacher, the meaning of a large
+sheet of the spring fashions of this year, which she had pinned up, with
+many<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_230">{230}</a></span> other pictures from newspapers, upon the screen that divided the
+house. Her husband was away, attending the great meeting or Fono at
+Malua, the missionary school, where the toleration or rejection of the
+<i>siva</i> has been, or is being discussed. I am told now that the native
+clergy have held their own; and that though not reproving their white
+brethren, they have not quite concurred in a full freedom of toleration,
+but have arranged some middle term by which the question will be always
+limited to individual cases.</p>
+
+<p>Later in the afternoon I sketched at the waterfall, in that curious
+silence filled with the sustained sound of rushing water, that belongs
+to such places, within which a faint, sharper thrill was the gliding of
+the surf upon the beach behind it. The place was shaded in its own
+shade, thrown over it by the hills that enclose and make it. Here and
+there, the sun caught the roll of the water, and the distant valley and
+mountains behind it were all floating in hot light and moisture that
+came down in great gusts with wafts of heat.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening we came into this beautiful bay with high mountains on
+either side, and fringes of lower land. The bay, as its name indicates,
+is a very long one, running far inland. The site we are in is charming,
+the great mountains right behind us, and from their lower sides, long
+waterfalls creep down the cliffs and glisten through the top branches of
+the palms.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_231">{231}</a></span> Around us all is covered with trees. I have lounged and
+slept as much as possible. Atamo has begun to paddle a canoe, taking out
+the <i>taupo</i> with him. She has been very nice to us, doing her best with
+food, and seeing us to bed, and being in early to see us get up, and
+doing her duty generally and pleasantly. And she has given us <i>sivas</i>.
+We had met her before at Seu’s feast; we felt mutual good will, so that
+she was prepared. Her devotion to Atamo is great, and as I said, she has
+done her best by our food, which we managed this time with Awoki’s help.
+Through her eyes we saw one evening the resemblance of the light carried
+on the reef by the phantom of the lady who appears when night fishing
+goes on. You may remember, how she (as do others of the dead, or certain
+spirits perhaps&mdash;they are all confused in the Polynesian mind) fishes
+silently in the crowd of the canoes, or alongside of some single
+occupant&mdash;and then suddenly, when detected or suspected, disappears with
+the dawn that clears all our doubts away. Of this apparition some here
+say that she has her own canoe apart, just out of reach&mdash;some say that
+she walks on the water&mdash;but when she is followed, she makes for the
+shore, then is lost in the trees, and soon her lantern is seen going far
+up into the trackless mountain. There no one likes to follow at night.
+The dark for the Polynesian has terrors uncertain, natural enough, for
+the dark here is uncanny, and when<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_232">{232}</a></span> plunged in its terrors the brown man
+does not like to add a definite influence or a name of ill omen. The
+belief in what might be called a lower supernatural is still strong:
+Christianity does well enough for the great needs, but something else is
+wanted for the smaller fears and dangers&mdash;the things about us at every
+moment; and it has interested us to draw out the small beliefs of this
+unimaginative and very practical race, who on one side are so much
+christianized. I wish that I could recall for you the scene in which we
+heard this story. The hollow silence between the mountain in the
+night&mdash;the water dark before us between darker trees. The dark shadows
+of the mountains, across the bay&mdash;the long glistening line of reflected
+starlight rolled up with a splash upon the beach that broke the quiet
+shiver of the palms. And then the one light, far out on the reef which
+caught the look of our maiden and drew the legend from her. I regret so
+much that my constant fatigue prevents my noting some of all this for
+you, and that I give you, too, no better description of what I see. The
+place is well worth some talk&mdash;even if it were nothing but a memorandum
+of the pretty <i>talolo</i>, or presentation of food, in which two or three
+dozen girls brought up the presents of taro and fruit, and threw them
+before us, filing out of the green trees, and disappearing again within
+them.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_233">{233}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">
+Ulutogia (part of Aliipata) Dec. 2d.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>We are at a charming place in the town of Aliipata, which seems to
+stretch indefinitely for miles along the shore. We have had two
+invitations to stop; one from Mataafa, and one from Tofae, who both have
+their connections here, but we have pushed further on, and are now at
+the house of a chief, whose name is Sagapolu, as I make it out.</p>
+
+<p>Before us, to sea, over a great spread of blue, are two blue cones,
+little spots that belong to Tutuila. Near us are rocky islands&mdash;two of
+them outside of our reef. We came in on the blue swell that hid
+everything, and then pulled hard over the boiling of the surf, in the
+charm that covers danger. The morning was lovely on the water, and we
+raced with our other boats. We had said good-bye to our friends in
+Fagaloa, who the night before had given us a <i>siva</i>, not a prolonged
+one, well done by the girls, and accompanied curiously by the
+two-year-old daughter of the chief, who followed seriously the
+performance, and beat time or caught up with the gestures of the older
+people. Nothing could be stranger, and a more complete proof of the
+<i>siva’s</i> being a natural expression. No one noticed the child as
+anything extraordinary, except by an occasional smile. Our crew was
+asked to perform, and the villagers and the <i>taupo</i> gave the preference,
+and she was right, to our men. The girls always seem anxious to see the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_234">{234}</a></span>
+men’s dances; a compliment not always returned by the men. The rising of
+the moon saw us to bed, and we tried to sleep late, fearing the hard day
+that has just passed over us.</p>
+
+<p>Here, so far, all has been as usual. The house is far from others, all
+in the open, with palm trees some way off. At one end of the room is a
+reading desk, and the ruined walls of the church near by, explain that
+this house is used as a temporary chapel. At the other end, is a table
+covered with costly mats, upon which are flowers in glass bottles, and
+there are two big settles and two big chairs, covered with shaggy white
+mats made from the fibres of the <i>fao</i> tree; all this furniture upon
+beautiful sleeping mats.</p>
+
+<p>We have had a complimentary speech from the <i>tulafale</i>, the old chief,
+who is thin and emaciated and extremely dignified, and has given us
+<i>kava</i>; and I have learned that Seumanu has a <i>kava</i> name of Tauamamanu
+Vao (fighting with beasts of the field), when <i>kava</i> is called out for
+him; the <i>taupo</i> has come in to make it, and Samau of our boat, and
+Tamaseu of Seumanu’s, both <i>tulafales</i>, have come in to share it. There
+has been a spread of Samoan fare, apparently good, but I feel prudent
+and have taken little <i>kava</i>, and have been only a beholder of the
+feast.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>taupo</i>, who is very young, is very silent, even when Atamo says
+that he is writing home about her.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_235">{235}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>They are sitting together, he absolutely immersed in his writing, a feat
+of which he is always capable apparently, and she is wiping her face on
+a new silk scarf of blue and red which he has given her, so that it has
+already caught the shine of the cocoanut oil.</p>
+
+<p>Another little girl has singled me out, and has come to make friends,
+but I can only give her lollipops, that are handed away almost
+immediately, like my biscuit, to the smaller children. I have invited my
+fate, for I smiled at this beginning of <i>taupodom</i>, when she came in,
+almost closing her eyes from anxiety, to put a Samoan pillow for me on
+the pile of sleeping mats that had been spread for us to take a nap. Seu
+is having his back punched by an elderly lady, and peace and the flies
+reign over all. Here is a curious fact; one would think that with their
+habits of sitting and lying about, these people would remain in
+position, but it is only when they are sleeping very soundly that one
+can find them steady, unless it be a Tulafale officiating, or a chief
+sitting for dignity. The foot that does not press the ground is simply
+waggled interminably. Try it for part of a minute and see how difficult
+it is; and then you will realize that people who can move the foot for
+ten or twelve hours a day, may be able to dance when sitting, with an
+ease that only a juggler knows about his fingers.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_236">{236}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the sky is blue, with innumerable white clouds;&mdash;the sun
+smiles down on the banana grove behind us, and in front of it a little
+veil of light drops shows that it is raining overhead. The smoke from
+the house near us bends down lazily over the roofs, and Seu’s <i>tulafale</i>
+and one of our men, are beating a tune on the two great war drums.
+<i>Lali</i> is the name of the beating of a tune. One two, two&mdash;two, and so
+on, weird enough and rather tiresome. Such are the intervals of their
+naps, for they have had three hours of solid rowing this morning, and
+they need rest. At this moment the old chief comes in and talks about
+the music&mdash;praising the accentuation. These drums are near his house,
+say some twenty feet off, and are very large; gigantic troughs of old
+wood.</p>
+
+<p>Then he calls across space for his daughter to make <i>kava</i> again; this
+is the third time within just three hours, but this time the <i>kava</i> will
+be chewed and not grated, as Atamo has asked for it.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile a discussion on the name of the daughter: it is Mo Niu Fataia,
+if I get it right; it does not matter. Her name represents the fact that
+a place called Fataia, which we passed yesterday, has wild cocoanuts
+growing upon it that roll useless into the sea: hence her name. “The
+plenty of cocoanuts, of Fataia, that you don’t get.” It is this little
+word Mo that means “plenty that you don’t get.” Niu is<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_237">{237}</a></span> cocoanut. You
+will notice all through, so far, how often names for people are
+arbitrary and accidental. Otaota, the beautiful daughter of the
+missionary person, is called Rubbish. Fagalo, who slipped the waterfall,
+is Forgetful, and so on. We have Smell Smoke Namuasua (or Cook-house, as
+Samasoni translated it) in our boat’s crew. In the early traditions,
+such and such an early divine heroine names her children by things that
+occur at their birth. One, I remember of “Carpenter’s Tools Rattling in
+a Basket.” The Bible is dipped into at random for names, and yesterday I
+talked to young Miss Kisa, which sounds like Kiss Her, but is Kish “who
+killed Saul.” (My <i>taupo’s</i> statement, the usual Bible may run
+otherwise.) I cannot make out whether good luck follows these sortes
+biblical.</p>
+
+<p>At this very moment I see coming to me a young lady who wears a black
+mat and a mop of yellow hair and nothing else, not even a collar. She is
+late, having been at church. She is the official <i>taupo</i>, the other one
+only taking a momentary place, and she is the daughter of the chief, and
+has brought presents of rings and of <i>tappa</i>; and her name is Faatoe,
+which means all agree, “Leave something in the basket” (when all are
+helping themselves), and I think this is a very fair addition to our
+stock of names.</p>
+
+<p>All this time the others to whom she is added are getting the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_238">{238}</a></span> <i>kava</i>
+ready carefully, gravely, chewing the root to extract its juice. There
+is a big row of <i>kava</i> people or attendants&mdash;all pensive; one man, two
+<i>taupos</i>, another man of <i>ours</i>, a little girl, and another of our
+men&mdash;no&mdash;there are a few others who are around the corner so that I
+can’t see them.</p>
+
+<p>&#160; </p>
+
+<p>Then I went for a long walk on the seashore. The sun was setting; only
+toward Apolima was the sky at all clear. Over one of the islands to the
+north, cloud and mist threatening immediate rain, made a large veil that
+hung far up and melted its violet lace over the island. The sea was of
+the fairy green that the inside of the reef takes in rain, spotted with
+violet where the coral lay. With me walked on one side my little girl,
+her upper garment fluttering, her young, long brown arms and legs
+glistening in the sun. She smiled at me for all talk, for English she
+knew not. On the other side, a hunch-backed dwarf, Japhet by name, with
+yellowed crispy hair, naked to the waist, a garland of red fruit hanging
+down on him, to meet the blue drapery about his loins&mdash;his bare legs and
+tattooed thighs glistening also in the light. Their company meant
+kindness and the <i>habit of accompanying a chief</i>&mdash;and they were kindly
+certainly, and meant to please and serve. Neither you nor I could have
+invented a more curious combination, and one of which I should like to
+have either a<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_239">{239}</a></span> drawing or a photograph, that it may serve for the ends
+of my life. If instead of me and my linen helmet, and trousers kept up
+by a sash we had had one of the Spaniards, who ages ago, perhaps, landed
+in the unknown neighbouring island of the Gente Hermosa, the “Beautiful
+People”&mdash;some bearded man with butgonett, and velvet hose and jerkin,
+the picture might have been that of a knight-errant in fairyland. Such a
+faraway image it made to me, as I looked down either way to the earnest
+face of the dwarf framed in the fruits of his garland, or the politely
+anxious eyes and moving bosom of the young virgin of the village, as we
+stalked on almost abreast, in the silence, making threefold tracks of
+very different shapes in the smooth wet beach; until the rain broke
+down, and then I ran back, supported and clung to by my improbable
+companions.</p>
+
+<p>As the day closes it is still raining. A sort of glow is in the grey of
+the rain, so that it reddens all the shadows among the trees. Far off
+toward Tutuila there is high up a great opening where the sky is as of
+an apple-green that has been washed with the lavender of the rain
+clouds: big cumulous clouds round out, made gold by the sunset.</p>
+
+<p>The light fades away, and all becomes blurred except always the cumulus
+in the distant green sky. The lamps are lit and we turn to dinner.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_240">{240}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the evening afterward we got to talking about the legends and
+superstitions, and we were for a long time merely getting about it.
+There had been a promise to have something written out for us of old
+verses, and then songs were sung, ordered from a number of girls.</p>
+
+<p>These were mostly poems concerning the son of the old chief, who died in
+the last war, and about whom, says Maua, he is always thinking. I
+watched his face and sketched it while he sat and listened. He is as
+striking as an Arab chief, with the orbital bones projecting like a
+camel’s from out of his face, so as to make a great line of light or
+dark around the looking part of the visage. His head recedes far up, and
+his long beard drops on his thin chest. This death of his son has
+affected him more and more, so as to make him slightly insane.</p>
+
+<p>Maua says that he was once “the baddest man in all Samoa,” and that he
+was the greatest dancer, and that he had invented many dances, and that
+he might be tempted to-day to dance, if only we could find some person
+to accompany him with songs to suit. I think that Maua is wrong, for the
+chief has become missionary, and is quite absorbed in that sort of
+thing. As I was saying, he has a splendid, fanatic, Arab head; and so
+the evening has closed with the old chief’s listening to these memories
+of his son. I am frightfully tired with listening to the legends
+struggled for. Perhaps a verse or so of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_241">{241}</a></span> some of the songs might be
+worth saving out of this wreck of dreaminess. It was a pure,
+complimentary, Samoan idea, poetic only perhaps because we cannot help
+translating the feeling as well as the words; it was about a chief the
+singer sang&mdash;a young and handsome chief&mdash;and she said how natural it was
+for the girls to wish for the hero’s notice, “for the very winds that
+blew belonged to him, coming as they did from his ancestral island that
+lies to windward.” But our friends are not poetic, I feel sure. They are
+intensely practical and full of common sense; they make poetry for <i>me</i>.
+And they are restful&mdash;and I&mdash;am sleepy, as I said before.</p>
+
+<p class="nind">
+Wednesday Afternoon.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>This morning, while it was raining, the old chief talked of the spirits
+that once ruled. We are told that the chief believes yet in these ideas,
+but I cannot make it out distinctly, neither one way nor the other. He
+is missionary now, and as we take his portrait, wishes to hold the
+prayer-book in his hand. But he tells me there are people who control
+the spirits (devils, our interpreter and we have called them&mdash;<i>aitu</i>)
+and that they predict things and recover property, bringing evil upon
+him who has erred until he acknowledges. And this power is not given to
+any man by inheritance, it cannot fall upon a plebeian, neither the son
+nor nephew of chief or priest, if indeed<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_242">{242}</a></span> there were priests, for this
+he denies. He says that his people prayed, making oblations to the
+deities of the village and of the household, and that when these were
+collected together, they were eaten by <i>them</i>, which, he says, means by
+those who collected&mdash;not the priests, but the family or those attached
+to the chief, who thought it time for such offerings. And these were
+given to the bush, if it were for the bird divinity; to the sea, if the
+divinity was the cuttlefish. His was the cuttlefish, and his family did
+not eat it. All this, of course, you know more or less of; what I say is
+of no value except insomuch that I heard it myself. To know all here
+would require to be master of the language, not to be confined by
+missionary ideas, nor to be connected with such&mdash;and after all that, to
+have a very receptive, a very acute, and a very truthful mind. There are
+such people in the world, but you or I do not find them usually writing
+books, and judging questions for others. These soundings of the savage
+mind are Atamo’s properly; he is patient beyond belief; he asks over and
+over again the same questions in different shapes and ways of different
+and many people, and keeps all wired on some string of previous study in
+similar lines. But everywhere one comes right against some secret
+apparently, something that cannot be well disentangled from annoyance to
+the questioned one. For instance, in the question of genealogy, Seumanu
+told us that<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_243">{243}</a></span> had he been interrogated some years ago in such a
+direction he should have struck the questioner down on the spot. Still
+we have hope, and if any one can manage it, Atamo will. Web after web I
+have seen him weave around interpreter and explainer, to get to some
+point looked for, which may connect with something we have already
+acquired. As many time as the spider is brushed away, so many times he
+returns.</p>
+
+<p>&#160; </p>
+
+<p>This morning talk of the world of bad spirits that do harm to man
+suggested to me an opening toward a side I had never read of or heard
+of. Were there spirits that did good as well as spirits that did harm?
+There I had a door for home history. Yes, there were such, and no
+further than here: his son had had such a spirit, who went about with
+him and looked after him, protected him from harm (apparently from woman
+a good deal; and took, in such cases&mdash;as even with us&mdash;the shape of some
+other woman). Sometimes this protection would be sudden; when he was in
+the way of harm, a good spirit would appear and drive away those that
+might harm him, and would sometimes lead him personally away&mdash;<i>prevent</i>
+him&mdash;as the old word goes. And all knew that he was so protected; the
+spirit had been seen and would only disappear when suspected. Otherwise,
+any one might take the same for mortal man or woman&mdash;as in Homeric
+story,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_244">{244}</a></span> where Nestor speaks and acts, but it is Athens all the same. And
+had this spirit, or such a spirit, invariably an action only for good?
+Certainly&mdash;and nothing had ever contradicted such a view. And yet&mdash;only
+once, the good spirit had killed a man, but it was for protection
+always, as a guardian. Then, of course, I could ask no further. As you
+see, analogies keep coming up, our ideas easily dropping into theirs,
+and <i>informing</i> them&mdash;probably.</p>
+
+<p>And had these spirits and others been apparently existing out of the
+world of humanity?</p>
+
+<p>The dead became spirits and fought anew the old battles, with a
+knowledge of the present; as when a chief <i>aitu</i>, known by name, some
+weeks ago refused to participate in a spirit war urged on by a feminine
+spirit. “No,” he said, “I have been missionary, but if I am attacked I
+can defend myself. Go on with your war; if you are successful you do not
+need me; if you are pursued too far, and into my territory, I shall be
+here.”</p>
+
+<p>Nene is the name of this male <i>aitu</i> who has “joined the church.” ...
+And the dead killed at sea turn into fish, into turtles, into sea-life.
+Now how to clear these from the original spirits existing of themselves?
+There was one, Tangaloa, who, our friend said, might be supposed to be a
+distorted vision of the true God. But that you know as well as I.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_245">{245}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Here the talk drifted away to a question that, as you see, naturally
+connects. Were offerings made to spirits as being ancestors? Were
+offerings made to ancestors? No; of that they were sure&mdash;not even if
+Hawaii was different. And they did not care if the black pig meant
+anything in Oahu&mdash;to them (and the white teeth shone) it was only good
+to eat. If it crossed them in war excursions, it was only good to kill,
+but the bird and the cuttlefish, they were not to be hurt; and the bird
+might mean a good deal to them as it gave them omens by its
+flight&mdash;according to its favourable direction or the reverse, or by its
+cry. But they had, above all, a great divine omen, the rainbow&mdash;which
+presided over all. When for the people here it was bent over Tutuila,
+then things were against them; if it stood against them they were not to
+go into the war, but wait. It, however, it went with them, its end
+turned toward the enemy, then they were protected by it, and had victory
+promised them.</p>
+
+<p>We passed the morning in such talk. Then we sailed out to the little
+island of Nuu Tele opposite, an old crater, and waited a while, while
+Atamo explored it, thinking to find out matters which might affect
+present theories. He found raised beaches, stratified, and shells and
+pebbles in the rock, so that it was mud once, and forced up and not
+submerged, all to the greater confusion and defeat of Mr. Darwin. But as
+these<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_246">{246}</a></span> triumphs are out of my line of momentary record, I have only to
+say that I found in the little savage girl-wife of our momentary host
+the type of little Sifa of Tutuila, which had almost been lost to us.
+The usual Samoan face is heavy and not wild, suggests good nature and
+practical views; poetry is not in them but from them. It is we who put
+it there, because their bodies mean to us possibilities of expression
+which we associate with intentions that have not yet been developed in
+them. Nerves they have not; it is only occasionally that one recognizes
+any permanent tendency to emotion, often by some trifle that is not
+always pleasant, as in the sadder face of some dwarf or joker, or as in
+our host’s face, over which great sorrow has passed&mdash;or perhaps again in
+such a “chevalier” as Mataafa, whose character is rare the world over.</p>
+
+<p>Our day passed pleasantly, and as I write, the other end of the room is
+filled with all these good people lying in a jumble together; Maua and
+the <i>taupo</i> who is pulling at him and lying on him in part; another
+girl’s head under hers, while all their feet run up on the posts. Others
+yet, lying flat, continue the circle, singing together, and sometimes,
+without rising, beating a <i>siva</i> movement on their own breasts or on
+each other’s. Four of our men, of the biggest, sit far away in the dark,
+with crossed legs, upright, immovable, like Egyptian statues: or, as</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="ill_020">
+<a href="images/ill_030.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_030.jpg" width="347" height="550" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">SAMOAN GIRL CARRYING PALM BRANCH</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_247">{247}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I close my letter, like sphinxes, have bent down to the ground from
+their hips, all lost in the dark, with large heads and shoulders and
+outstretched arms.</p>
+
+<p class="nind">
+Lepa, Thursday, Dec. 4th.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>We were out to sea, in the sun and rain, between nine and eleven
+o’clock, and passed the two islands, large blocks of green and brown on
+the green and blue water. We came here first, pulling through the reef,
+straight to the enormous beach, where our eyes were at once charmed by
+the theatrical, or should I say geological absurdity which divided it,
+cutting it right down from the steep hills behind, to the water’s edge.
+This was a little waterfall of three cascades tumbling over some small
+rocks projecting far across the beach, so that the water had, as it
+were, a stone conduit upon which it was carried from the mountain to the
+sea. It was an absolute set piece, quite practicable, and if ever I have
+to design for scenery, here is a little natural object all ready to
+hand. The copy could be supplied with real water, just as this one is,
+and the palm trees growing upon it would conceal the machinery as they
+do here, only&mdash;if ever I do it, I shall be told that it is
+unnatural&mdash;just as it looks here. Why does the water run on knife edges,
+instead of taking the easier lines of depth, and tearing <span class="pagenum"><a id="page_248">{248}</a></span>up the sand
+for a bed? I might explain how, for Atamo is full of geology, and it is
+not as mysterious, of course, as it looks. But I give it up, and content
+myself with sketching the little girl between the posts opposite me.</p>
+
+<p>We are in the <i>faletele</i> (guest-house) quite near the water. Some thirty
+feet off from us cocoanuts hang over the beach and the sea. Right behind
+us are rocks upon which is perched a new and handsome Samoan house,
+half-hidden in the green of trees. A promontory, finished by a little
+island with palms, cuts off the further end of that long beach which is
+divided by the cascade with its rocks and palms. Toward us, on one side,
+falls the column of water, which ploughs a little canal into the sea.
+There our men are bathing, standing up under the falling water, and
+later I shall be there too. The other end of our bay, near us, rounds
+away behind trees, and a mound, upon which is a fishing hut under palms.
+In our house the central beams that support the roof, come together like
+a V. All the posts and beams are decorated with flowers and leaves, and
+in the centre, near the great branching post, stands a table covered
+with <i>siapu</i> (bark cloth) and with flowers in pots, as on an altar, say
+a Buddhist table altar. Some of our men are dragging up the boats, but I
+am too lazy to turn to see them place them under the shelter of the
+cocoanuts. The <i>taupo</i>, is looking at me while I am writing, or at Atamo
+similarly occupied. She is bored, but I can’t help it. I could<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_249">{249}</a></span> not
+entertain her if anything depended upon it. It ought to be cool, but the
+beach sends up hot waves of air, and my <i>taupo’s</i> cocoanut oil melts
+into it languidly. The name of the place is “A Break Between Waves,” and
+the name of the <i>taupo’s</i> brother, that heavy youngster, who is talking
+to Seu at the boats, is Break Love. There is a connection that I feel,
+but you had better make it out yourself. If the chief is heavy, the
+<i>taupo</i> is clever, and makes herself agreeable. Her sister helps her in
+every attempt. They are not as dignified as one can remember, and
+perhaps had we kept to another line of travel, and visited higher types
+of aristocracy, it might have been different. But they are easily amused
+and talk much, and are great beggars&mdash;and gently, are willing in the
+same way to marry us, one of them proposing to marry us both herself,
+and even asking at the last moment, “Are you going away? I thought you
+would have married me this morning.” All this is joke, with perhaps a
+look to possibilities: for do I not remember how two little <i>taupos</i>
+very missionary, far back in Savaii, changed their little easy manners
+to seriousness, and almost aggressiveness, when some madcap hinted that
+we were on a wife-hunt, and had come all this way for it. Those two
+little pieces would not allow the liberties of five minutes before, nor
+would they let me go without having catechised me seriously as to these
+chances<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_250">{250}</a></span>&mdash;to which they were willing to submit; but they wished
+beforehand to know whether there was anything in it.</p>
+
+<p>We had a <i>siva</i> at night, in which our young lady figured with the great
+grenadier’s cap that looks so savage and soldierly, and which is really
+becoming, the heavy faces growing gentle and refined under this heavy
+contrast. But it is painful to wear, being bound on tight, and how our
+<i>taupo</i> could stand it for three hours, as she did, I know not. She
+danced and sat down alongside of us alternately for nearly four mortal
+hours. Through all the dances there was a great display of pantomime,
+mostly comic, made none the less by the gravity of some of the
+performers who acted in reality as a dancing chorus; so that right
+through the crowd of delirious young men and women passed in and out a
+fine old Roman senator&mdash;I cannot better define him, who never smiled and
+who wore his drapery as do the antique statues, and whose mind evidently
+saw other meanings in the steps than did the other dancers. I could
+almost have wished that there had been some meaning in this accident,
+some deep, deep thought in this tragedy woven into the cloth of the fun,
+but I believe that it was merely the pleasure taken by the old man in
+feeling that his limbs were as vigorous and as supple as long ago. And
+we went to bed, the entire company remaining alive and interested for
+several hours after our succumbing to sleep. I<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_251">{251}</a></span> could hear late in the
+night Charley and the <i>taupo</i> crunching sugar-cane and whispering while
+Charley, during the whole evening, had lain sound asleep. But sitting up
+late in the moonlight is Samoan. Before I fell asleep, my mind went over
+some of the historical developments of the theatre. I have certainly
+been instructed that at the beginning complete realistic performance is
+impossible. And yet I had been listening to a play in which every
+possible combination of a <i>fin de siècle</i> manner of looking at things
+had been slowly and elaborately combined. Was it then that this society
+in which I am now living, savage as it seems to us, is really a very
+modified form of an ancient structure of life? Or did these good people,
+when they sailed from the dim Havaiki, bring already, in their habits of
+mind, modified trainings of earlier civilization? Any similar views
+would please me, but I should be better pleased to consider that the
+rules have not been accurately defined and that we don’t yet really know
+enough about it.</p>
+
+<p>&#160; </p>
+
+<p>This story of nothing I conclude to-day at Falealili, as we get further
+on. We were overwhelmed with gifts at parting, so much so as to make us
+feel as if perhaps the only fair thing would be to marry one of the
+girls, as an adequate return. Then with the return gifts we might have
+run away.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_252">{252}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A wife brings mats usually, and gives much support, as is well known by
+one young gentleman I hear of, a captain of some schooner, who has wives
+in different places. Each of them in turn supports him when he appears,
+and as long as his visits are regular, and there is no preponderance or
+excess or skimping in his remainings, everything goes well, and there
+seem to be no jealousies. In fact, I think that the having to provide
+would be a great reducer of those sentiments that flourish most where
+there is idleness and pampering. Let us say that the subject is too
+complicated, for I feel already as if I had carried over too much of
+this letter into the next one. I am concluding now twenty-four hours
+later, at Falealili, while waiting for letters, and appearing to listen
+to the complimentary speeches of a <i>tulafale</i> who rejoices in the name
+of “Tuiloma, King of Rome.” He has a good deal of style, but not enough
+for such a name, while the chief of Lepa, who drops in to explain his
+reasons for being absent during our visit, has a fine head and makes a
+pretty good picture. He has fought against Seu, and they talk over old
+times. I am told that he fought well, and he looks martial, as I have
+tried to hint above. Otherwise there is nothing to speak of, at least
+for me, for I am miserable. It is very hot, and I feel the want of air.
+I have tried to sketch two little girls making wreaths near by, and they
+have been driven away to let some <i>tulafale</i><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_253">{253}</a></span> come in and make the
+ordinary speeches, to which Seu listens with his usual impassive manner.
+If he is bored no one would know it. Much laughter goes on after the
+ceremonies. But nothing can restore the little girls. One is a
+half-breed&mdash;very light, her already fair hair bleached with Samoan
+liming, and she has grey eyes and a very Samoan face. Her father is dead
+and she lives absolutely like a Samoan. I follow her movements, trying
+to detect some differences in this little creature, whose fate might
+have been just as much the other way. All that I can notice is that
+while I sketch she moves less than the others, and is content with fewer
+gestures. The fluidity of the pure brown blood is not quite there. I
+have told you, I suppose, often enough, how difficult it is to catch
+them in a drawing, unless they are asleep. I have never been able to get
+a whole minute for any position. Seu sometimes remains quiet for a few
+minutes, and some of the greater people or men of character are disposed
+to be steady. But usually it is perpetual movement skilfully disguised
+under an appearance of quiet. The half-breed was, as I said, more quiet
+and steady than her darker companions: our little half-breed
+Charley&mdash;sometimes referred to by the old joke of Charley Yow, the Boy
+Fiend&mdash;who serves as interpreter and boy-of-all-work, being a boy, is
+still more restless than any of our boys. He will lie asleep absolutely
+as if dead, but if awake he must wriggle. He bends<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_254">{254}</a></span> over in true Samoan
+way, but as he has neither Samoan grace nor strength, I half expect to
+see him put his head between his legs, dog-fashion, so as to be able to
+take a convenient look up his back. He plays with his toes and rubs his
+fingers meditatively, with the European side of his mind, on the rims of
+our glasses and saucers. Even the rainwater gets a taste of cocoanut oil
+when he has been about. Yet he is clearly “Faá Samoa,” and lazy as he is
+and pleased at playing with his fingers on a string tied round his nose,
+or trying the edge of a knife, he is serviceable as a Samoan. When we
+put him to the task of interpreting a little Samoan poem a few days ago,
+he showed an unwilling capacity of mind not unlike what I could remember
+of schooldays when we had to put Chaucer into modern English, and when
+we bent all our energy into avoidance. The future of the half-breed is
+an interesting question here, but too much for my present dreaming.</p>
+
+<p class="nind">
+December 6th.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>Later, last evening, during which I was absolutely idle like Charley,
+and unlike Charley, because I was not well, we had a sort of abbreviated
+domestic <i>siva</i>. We were politely asked if we should like one, and as
+politely we explained that we were determined to go to bed early, but
+that we should dislike to interfere, and would look on as long as we
+were not<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_255">{255}</a></span> too sleepy. The little daughter of the <i>tulafale</i>, herself the
+<i>tulafale</i> (spokeswoman) of the chief’s daughter, who is the <i>taupo</i>,
+explained to us that being “Misionali,” she could not figure in it nor
+be present, and if she were Misionali I think she did as well. The
+<i>siva</i> was sung sotto voce, and danced softly by three or four women,
+probably with reference to not disturbing while we looked on&mdash;in some
+curious confusion of meaning. The <i>taupo</i>, who is very stolid, with the
+expression of a judge of the Supreme Court, danced with nothing on but
+her <i>tipuka</i> or upper garment, put about her waist, so that the hole
+through which the head is put in this variety of “poncho” exposed the
+least polite parts of her back. And as I referred to her gravity of
+expression, or want of expression, by an allusion to the expressionless
+look of a judge on the bench, I might slip in here a pretty anecedote of
+the bright little daughter of one of our celebrities, from whom you will
+see that she inherits. Last winter her father gave her a chance to see
+the cabinet officers together, and on her return she was asked, “Well,
+were they nice?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not nice, but funny!” she said.</p>
+
+<p>Well, so with the dance; and danced by the virgin of the village and her
+chaperon it had a curious side. And it was funny enough, with the fun
+underscored and interlined and <span class="pagenum"><a id="page_256">{256}</a></span>underlined, as it were, by verbal
+comment. Apparently the true dances that are not played are innocent as
+well as beautiful, but when the drama comes in, the dance follows the
+usual history of the drama.</p>
+
+<p>This is a great missionary centre, and to-morrow will be Sunday, a day
+on which we shall have to rest because the people here are sabbatarians
+of a very strict kind, and do not approve of travelling on the Sabbath.
+Our men tell us things of the habits of travelling; they are all, Seu’s
+men and ours, except our two <i>tulafales</i>, whose behaviour is all that
+one could ask for, young gentlemen whose glory consists in the constant
+and sometimes successful assault of feminine virtue. As they explain it,
+they would be laughed at at home, if they could boast of no conquests
+during the trip; but owing to this being an “European malaga,” because
+we are European, they are on relative good behaviour; so that they lead
+in prayer and sing hymns, and are in other matters quite good boys. I
+have no doubt also that besides the fact that Saturday night and Sunday
+will give them plenty of feminine society, they also do not think that
+it’s quite the proper thing to travel on Sunday.</p>
+
+<p>So you see that one can go far and see the same thing, and that, as I
+told you in Japan, the world is fairly round. Expressions vary, but the
+meaning is the same.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="illbw_007">
+<a href="images/ill_031.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_031.jpg" width="550" height="372" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">TWO TAUPOS DANCING A “GAME OF BALL.” SAMOA</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_257">{257}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I am writing now from the next station called Vao Vai, “Between Waters,”
+a queer little place looking like some African possibility. Little
+houses are bunched together near a little river close by us, and in
+front of us, seen through trees, far out, is a little island full of
+palms, which the <i>taupo</i> tells me, is used as a resort for sick people
+who go out to get fresher air. She herself explains that we shall have
+no <i>siva</i> because they are sad for the loss of a young man, a
+half-brother of hers, brother of the <i>taupo</i> whose dance and dress I
+described above, and who was the <i>taupo</i> of the preceding village. Our
+good girl is missionary besides, which will secure us the greater rest
+from <i>sivas</i>. Her brother’s death was explained to us last night. He had
+gone over to Malua, where is the theological school, on a trip, with
+only one attendant, and fell ill and died here on his return, having,
+they assured me, been beaten to death by devils. So he said himself
+before death, and in proof of it, his body was sore. Moreover, just
+before his death, he ran out into the woods, in the dark. But being
+caught by the leg, by some <i>tulafale</i> or person of importance, and asked
+who he was, he gave his father’s name, thus proving beyond a doubt that
+he was possessed by his father’s ghost, I have not yet been able to get
+the connection between his father’s spirit and those who beat the son to
+death. But that may turn up yet, for the subject is in everybody’s
+mouth. I<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_258">{258}</a></span> ought, perhaps, to add that the young chief had had a cold
+before, with inflictions of pneumonia, and had been somewhat relieved by
+medicine from the Catholic priest at some adjoining station, but the
+devils were too much for him.</p>
+
+<p>&#160; </p>
+
+<p>To this little hut, looking out toward the enormous space of the sea,
+nothing growing in front of us but two half-cut-down bread-fruit trees,
+on the line of the horizon and the little island just outside of the
+reef, and the long line of breakers extending right and left and as far
+as one can see&mdash;have just come your letters carried to me across the
+mountains, in a great rain. I have been in some anxiety for them, for I
+had had only partial news since September 5th, which was three months
+ago. Newspapers have also come from San Francisco and from Auckland,
+giving telegraphic news as far as November 17th, from San Francisco to
+November 6th; so that our evening is full of incident. There has been a
+political change through the elections at home that alters the positions
+of persons, and gives one a sort of feeling that all is not Samoan
+peace. And the financial news affects us with doubt as to long delays,
+for drafts on the Barings, or on any one, indeed, will not be quite as
+easy to use in these little communities. So that this event is a turning
+point to me out of the world, as well as to the great people in it. To
+increase the resemblance to home, where</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="ill_021">
+<a href="images/ill_032.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_032.jpg" width="550" height="353" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">FROM OUR HUT AT VAO-VAI, SAMOA</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_259">{259}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">little habitual matters accompany great ones, we find in this little far
+out-of-the-way place fresh butter for the first time in many months, and
+milk. So that with Awoki’s cooking, we interrupt for this evening and
+to-morrow morning, the course of our Samoan food. It is amusing to
+notice what importance this event has assumed, and to realize that
+to-morrow, Sunday, will be so much more pleasant for this little change.</p>
+
+<p class="nind">
+Sunday.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>This morning I watched from behind my mosquito-bar, where I was
+pretending to sleep, the procession of people going to church for the
+second time. I had been waked at dawn by the little bell, which sounded
+like a steamboat call for all aboard. Against the background of the sea
+filed continuously the parishoners, grown people and children, most of
+the women with the hats that belong to their idea of church. But among
+them were some women with “fine mats” around their waists, that
+contrasted with the queer European headdress apparently made only for
+this and similar markets. These contrasting individuals were, I was
+told, the watchers upon the dead man of whom I spoke, he who was killed
+by devils in the woods. These fine mats were their guerdon&mdash;for he was a
+chief’s son. Had he been the chief, my informant said, mourning would
+have been general; the people would<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_260">{260}</a></span> have had half their hair cut, and
+this would be done perforce to such as neglected it. With this
+information I woke up officially, just as I saw our men filing away to
+church. Later they came back to ask for canned salmon for their girls.
+Nothing has occurred. I have sketched most of the time. Atamo has been
+over to see the little islands, for the pleasure of paddling in a canoe.
+The <i>taupo</i> did not go, whether from missionary sabbatical feeling, or
+whether she was afraid, or whether the men would not let her, for they
+said that a woman did not know how to take care of a boat over a surf;
+rather an ungallant way of looking at it, for the women we have known,
+pretty generally paddled about well enough inside the reef. Our little
+<i>taupo</i>, who was very nice and quiet, spent most of the evening playing
+with the men. I have spent the day in intellectual idleness, as I told
+you, as the place is very small, being half surrounded by a little
+river, and crowded with small houses. I have moralized in a depressed
+way, and in this direction: would we at home, if things were clean
+enough about us to deceive us, find it amusing to sit in an Irish
+shanty, as we do now in this one? We should have pigs about and
+occasional dogs, and kind, ugly old women and some politics. And the
+resemblance grows more and more as I look at it from the dirty point of
+view. Things are thrown out of doors to the pigs, who are so convenient
+to put<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_261">{261}</a></span> things into you wish to get rid of, as Mrs. Bell used to say.
+And the ducks wander about everywhere, and I watch the way the pigs eat
+cocoanuts, etc.</p>
+
+<p>The chief and the others, the <i>tulafales</i>, have made speeches and drunk
+<i>kava</i> over and over again, all day, in an unofficial manner. And I am
+so sleepy, so sleepy that I almost fell off my chair, for I have a chair
+or camp stool&mdash;during evening prayers.</p>
+
+<p class="nspc">
+December 8th.   Saagapu.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>Anagapu is the name of the chief.</p>
+
+<p>We are a little further along the coast, having passed through a
+dangerous reef, and waiting for a better tide, which we shall have
+to-morrow. The village is large, laid out handsomely in length, a little
+tedious in its regularity, well planted with trees, and with swamps
+behind and on the two sides that confine it. We have had the longest
+<i>tulafale</i> talk that I have ever suffered from, and I am prostrated with
+weariness and with sultriness of the air. We had feared heavy rain and
+looked with anxiety at two great water-spouts circling in the hills as
+we sailed along. There is an arrangement of mountains just behind us,
+probably some ancient crater, that looked as if it must be always in a
+boil of rain. There is nothing to do, fatigued as I am, but to go to
+sleep, and try to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_262">{262}</a></span> brighten up for a <i>siva</i> that I foresee. The people
+are many. There are lots of children, and girls who strut about careless
+of their lava-lavas, for this is a place unfrequented by foreigners and
+by the elegant people of Apia. I see two blacks, or Solomon islanders,
+dressed in lava-lavas in the Samoan way, who have taken refuge here,
+having escaped from the German plantation further on, which we hope to
+reach to-morrow evening. The chief tells me that they are quiet and
+well-behaved, and that they go to school like the others about them. All
+these blacks work harder than the Polynesians, and even their anxiety of
+look, as they come with hesitation toward us has a sort of possibility
+of action that I do not find in the browns of a similar class. I need
+not have suffered so much from the conventional speeches. Our host, on
+my waking from an attempt at sleep, stretches himself against the post
+nearest to me, and breaks out in most vernacular English, stating that
+he has been a little everywhere, and has been away from home for some
+twenty years. He has been as far as New York, which he says is not a
+good place for a sailor; in China many times, in Japan, in India, in
+France, in England, etc. He has conversed with the American Indians and
+states that he can understand their “lingo,” as he names it, from its
+similarity to the Pacific tongues spoken by the Polynesian. He has
+theories on these subjects, and believes</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="illbw_008">
+<a href="images/ill_033.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_033.jpg" width="420" height="550" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">TULAFALES SPEECH MAKING. VAO-VAI, SAMOA</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_263">{263}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">that there is a connection of race between the Hawaiians and the Samoans
+and Tahitians, and he extends it to the Malays in the west, and the
+American Indians in the east. And as I listen to him, I keep thinking
+that the story of the entire Pacific is probably the only explanation of
+the Polynesian. I should like to hear more, but personages of importance
+again come in and more talk of the society kind recurs. Later we are
+asked if we wish a <i>siva</i>. We hesitate for every reason. First, we hear
+rumours of a <i>siva</i> being prepared for us further back in some place
+already passed, owing to some letters of Tofae that announced us.
+Secondly, we are not impressed by our <i>taupo</i>, who besides want of
+beauty has also a discontented look which in some grotesque way reminds
+me of modern English high-art pictures&mdash;something grumpy. Then I have
+made up my mind to have a good sleep if possible; so that we say yes, if
+only the <i>siva</i> can be in another house; then we add that if we are too
+tired we propose to leave. We find, as usual, our boat crew extremely
+interested in the subject and in the performers, and the neat little
+house where we go in the dark is absolutely filled with spectators. A
+place has been set apart for us, filled by our two camp stools, and we
+are in time. The performers are full of anxiety to begin, and suddenly
+enters our <i>taupo</i>. In the dim light her sullenness looks like calm, her
+big headdress covers enough of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_264">{264}</a></span> her face to make the lines look
+delicate; and she comes in with a sort of hop of assurance, and throws
+herself down an entirely different person. She has authority and grace,
+and the “I don’t know what” that belongs to any one completely sure of a
+good professional standard. And she smiles with excitement, her smile
+widening with the cocoanut oil upon her face. And so the <i>siva</i> was full
+of fire, and danced in splendid time. Then we were able to leave and
+managed to get a good night’s rest. The floor when it is well covered
+with mats makes an excellent bed, and when one is sure and protected
+from mosquitoes everything else fades easily into sleep. In the morning
+we had a short talk with our host, who complained that he could not get
+away again to his wanderings. Samoa might be a good place enough, but he
+was bored. He had to submit, however, to the head of the family, who
+refused to give him leave. The old man, as he called him, using our
+phrase, kept him confined to his chiefdom. Family authority was thus
+vested in his uncle, our friend Seu, <i>who had the name</i>, and though the
+chief’s authority was his own for his chiefdom, outside of that the head
+of the family was master. This was the Roman law in its integrity; our
+chief personally was as a son, and only free when exercising a function.
+Even were he required to leave and come to his uncle in Apia, he should
+have to do so, just as he was bound not to go off as a sailor again.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="illbw_009">
+<a href="images/ill_034.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_034.jpg" width="372" height="550" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">TAUPO DANCING THE STANDING SIVA. SAMOA</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_265">{265}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Our conversation was interrupted by loud shouts, and the sound of much
+trampling&mdash;and then by shrill cries of women and of children, apparently
+in derision, for there was much laughter. A girl was running away under
+the fire of sarcasm, and dodging from one house to another, which she
+would again leave, probably from finding more trouble inside. And we
+were connected with it. One of our crew had been too much taken with the
+charms of one of the <i>siva</i> dancers, or she had felt his eloquence too
+deeply. She had run off with him after the dance, and he had made
+promises; among others she believed that he would take her with him in
+our boat, and there she was on time&mdash;ready to go&mdash;only to find that it
+could not be&mdash;and that he must have known it. In fact, the women kept
+repeating to her that she must have lost her senses, that she must be an
+impertinent fool to think of sitting in a boat with such high chiefs.
+Siamau, our man, was slightly downcast, but not too much so&mdash;he was
+still a conqueror, but the poor girl was&mdash;well&mdash;she was to be pitied.
+Her trial and humiliation lasted all the time that we remained, and I
+was glad when we pulled away. The tide served us, and the wind, and we
+made a long pull to the place where I am now writing, Satapuala, only
+some twenty-five miles from home.</p>
+
+<p>Satapuala was as we had seen it before, on our last malaga; but its
+young chief, whose dancing I had hoped to see again,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_266">{266}</a></span> was away&mdash;to visit
+Tamasese, the former king set up by the Germans&mdash;at the other end of the
+island&mdash;at Lufilufi, which we had passed without calling, in our anxiety
+to remain outside of the war of politics.</p>
+
+<p>The guest-house was decorated as before, with palm branches on ceilings
+and posts and central pillars, and flowers everywhere&mdash;a most beautiful
+greenhouse. And the big <i>taupo</i>, the sister of the chief, was there, as
+amiable and dignified as before. In the evening she danced again, this
+time without the support of her brother. She did not seem as good a
+dancer. I noticed, however, that more than any one else, she used her
+hands and fingers to carry out the motion, and that she finished, as it
+were, the movements begun more rudely and vigorously by the men. She had
+the same enchanting style and manner, and even at the end, when a
+standing dance was given more outrageous than ever, she retained, with
+her smile, a look of not knowing what it was all about, that was as good
+form as I suppose an official virgin could assume in such a plight.</p>
+
+<p>That was the end. I take it, that as Maua said, this being an European
+malaga, things were made more formal and mitigated on our account.</p>
+
+<p>We are waiting for the tide with which we shall row straight to Apia, in
+about five hours&mdash;over the well-known sea.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_267">{267}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">
+Evening.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>We rowed back in true Samoan way, our rowers making a show of pulling
+and singing a great deal, with an energy that had been better thrown
+into the oars. In fact, they danced a <i>siva</i> of return. The worst and
+laziest of the lot, an amiable fellow with a persistent smile always on
+his face, actually rose and fell on his seat with excitement. The other
+boat, our own, with Samau and our own four men, kept up well with our
+ten rowers. On boards placed to let them squat Samoan way, under the
+awning, sat a chief we had taken with us, who wore a great white turban
+and kept fingering his beard, and a young woman, a cousin of Seu’s&mdash;so
+that they looked Oriental enough. In Seu’s boat, Tamaseu, the
+<i>tulafale</i>, the strokeoar, alone rowed vigorously, though the oldest and
+least strong. He gave out the chant and pulled to it, while Seumanu,
+standing in the bow, guided us over the shallow water, and Atamo
+steered. As we turned round the last point, in the light of the sunset,
+we crossed a large boat manned and paddled by girls, all of them dressed
+in red, with green garlands around their heads, and for a figurehead a
+little girl sitting upon the bows, her crossed legs hanging over in
+front. Two black figures in the stern were the nuns of the convent to
+which the girls belonged, and they were all returning from a holiday. It
+was a pretty sight&mdash;nothing is more beautiful<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_268">{268}</a></span> than the united movement
+of paddles and of heads thrown back in chanting, for of course some hymn
+carried them on, undistinguishable for us from a pagan tune.</p>
+
+<p class="nspc">
+December 24th.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>Nothing new, except social and political news: the excitement at the
+Chief Justice’s coming, and the innumerable Samoan reports thereupon;
+and Fanua’s engagement to an Australian business man, and her marriage
+for the last of the year. There are many “cancans” thereupon the
+question of marriage in due form, or of a Samoan marriage which does not
+bind the white man who leaves, being much discussed. It was even
+proposed that she should marry first some Samoan&mdash;why exactly would be
+too complicated to explain.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile I am trying to work a little and recover from the dissipation
+of the malaga. The days have drifted along, and here we are upon
+Christmas, the weather very hot, and not recalling what you have at home
+except by contrast.</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday we had a great storm, the wind blowing the tortured branches
+of the palm in great gestures against the sky. Few were out except the
+boys, who played cricket all day in the rain, and conveniently dropped
+their clothes. At night, the rooms were filled near the lamps with small
+flies that crusted them, and covered the tables in thousands, so that
+we<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_269">{269}</a></span> could neither work nor read. Through the crevice of doors and
+windows a fine dust was blown, the broken fragments of dead vegetation.
+We are only six feet above the sea, and during the night the dash of
+rain against our wall sounded in my dreams like the lashing of the surf.
+In the morning the flies that had lain in heaps of thousands had
+disappeared. I saw the last carried away by the laggards of an army of
+ants, which had pounced upon them during the night or early dawn.</p>
+
+<p>I have been watching some three girls and a boy who have been sitting or
+playing about near me. Strictly speaking, only one, a grown-up girl, has
+been sitting. The others have placed themselves occasionally on the high
+bench to which the neighbourhood resort at night for a lazy stretch and
+infinite talk. But these children were never quiet, for the two hours I
+watched them. Most of the time has been taken up by wrestling. The boy,
+who is the smallest, was at first thrown by the girls, but as they
+taught him, he managed to keep his own fairly&mdash;until the elder girl was
+enlisted in the sport, and kept throwing him and the others, according
+to rule, for she carefully showed them the proper grip and some first
+movements. All this is a type of the manner by which constant exercise
+rounds them out, and I could not but appreciate how the little girl (of
+eight perhaps), when she<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_270">{270}</a></span> was not wrestling herself, danced up and down
+continuously, in an involuntary impatience at having nothing to do in
+the way of <i>siva</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="nspc">
+Vaiala, Near Apia.<br>
+&#160; &#160; Upolu, Dec. 25, ’90.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>This is Christmas Day. I am seventeen hours, I think, ahead of you in
+that fact; so that at this moment you are only running about for the
+presents and the Christmas tree, but I cannot wait for you. It is such a
+Christmas as they have here; they call it <i>Kilimasi</i>, and do not quite
+make the joy and fuss over it that we do, having been christianized by
+the Wesleyans. And I have not told you the whole truth; when the
+missionaries came, they miscalculated the time, so that in many islands
+they run a day ahead, not having dared to acknowledge a mistake that
+might have imperilled their other teachings, for Christianity was
+inextricably entangled with cotton goods, gunpowder, etc.</p>
+
+<p>So you see, these people were like ourselves, and could not separate one
+kind of truth from another, a deficiency which must have troubled you in
+New York, as it does me both in New York and elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>But it is legally Christmas to-day, as I began to say, and a holiday,
+which I can only distinguish from other days,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_271">{271}</a></span> because there seem to be
+fewer people idling and lying about. The convict also is not at work, he
+who labours near us, weeding and cutting down twigs, when he is not
+sitting and talking to his admirers, who decorate him with flowers and
+make wreaths for him.</p>
+
+<p>But even this would not be an infallible guide, for the day before
+yesterday the wife of the very chief who had brought this man before the
+consuls for punishment (he had stolen the consular flag halyards&mdash;why,
+no one knows), and who had pined in court for thirty lashes and six
+months’ imprisonment&mdash;which were not given&mdash;the wife of the chief, I
+say, came to ask us, as great chiefs ourselves, if we thought that the
+consuls would let the prisoner have a few days off for fishing. And we
+strongly urged her to ask for it, as a reasonable request&mdash;at least, in
+the comic opera. The other convict, who is a great fraud, has been
+occupied in ferrying people over the main river (the bridge having gone
+down in the last storm, and we people who wear trousers and petticoats
+not liking to wade over). But he also is variable as an index, for he
+usually employs a small boy of his tribe to do the work, while he lies
+in a little hut that he has built, and sleeps or eats, crowned with
+flowers, like a jubilator. I was telling Mr. Stevenson of these details,
+upon his last call, and he interrupted a description of the tyrannical
+conduct of the French<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_272">{272}</a></span> in Tahiti and the Marquesas, by the story of a
+visit he had paid to the prisons there with the inspector. There was no
+one in the prison for men:</p>
+
+<p>“Monsieur,” explained the gendarme, “c’est jour de fête, et j’ai cru
+bien faire de les envoyer à la campagne.” Visit then to the women’s
+prison. “Mais où sont vos bonnes femmes? Monsieur, je ne sais pas au
+juste, mais, je crois, qu’elles sont en visite.”</p>
+
+<p>He tells me that though French rule is of course wrong in principle,
+therein differing from English or German, the gendarmes are a good lot,
+whom it is a privilege to know. I have run on into this because I have
+been thinking while writing of my having told you that I intended to go
+to the Marquesas and see Typee.</p>
+
+<p>I am slowly drifting that way, but my enthusiasm is dashed somewhat by
+what I hear. I am told that there are scarcely any more Typeeans&mdash;and
+they are clothed to-day, as indeed, I fear, are most islanders who are
+handsome, except the good people here, who still preserve the real
+decencies to some extent.</p>
+
+<p>And that is why I am lingering here, as I see for the first time, and
+probably for the last, a rustic and Bœotian antiquity, and if I live to
+paint subjects of the “nude,” and “drapery,” I shall know how they look
+in reality. As I write<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_273">{273}</a></span> in our Samoan house, which is only raised a few
+inches from the ground, I see passing against the background of sea,
+figures which at a little distance and in shifting light are nearer to
+the little terra cottas that you like than anything one could find
+elsewhere. Young men naked to the waist, with large draperies folded
+like the Greek orator’s mantle, garlanded, with flowers in their hair,
+pass and repass, or lie upon the grass. Young women&mdash;and alas! old
+women&mdash;more covered, though occasionally draped like the men, or with
+girdles of leaves, walk about, carrying leaf-made baskets or cocoanut
+water-bottles&mdash;or they sit and lounge with the young men. An old man,
+with his drapery partly over one shoulder has just stalked past, holding
+a long staff that he puts out to full arm’s length&mdash;for they use their
+limbs with a great spread and roundness of action. Four girls of
+different ages (from eighteen to eight) have been wrestling under the
+trees, practising some grip&mdash;and have been teaching a boy how it is
+done. A friendly hunch-backed dwarf has called to pay a Christmas visit,
+and to get a friendly nap. Like the girls, he wears nothing but a
+dark-blue drapery around his waist, and a great garland of fruit and
+flowers that hangs about his neck. His hair has been dressed and curled
+in Samoan fashion&mdash;that is to say, it has been stiffened into shape with
+coral lime (which, when washed off, has<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_274">{274}</a></span> reddened it) so that he has the
+hair of a blonde on his dark head. Japeta, as he is called (Japhet), who
+by the by is rather “missionary,” but believes in witches and devils,
+and has lived in the woods&mdash;and is really very intelligent&mdash;is certainly
+more handsome in this way of costume than if he were to dress in the
+fashion of Sixth Avenue&mdash;or even of Fifth Avenue&mdash;for he is of a chief’s
+family. It is true that he has powerful arms and legs that would look
+well anywhere else than here, where their dancing and jumping and their
+mode of sitting seems to have influenced the size of the lower limbs,
+and to have given a roundness to the entire body, that reminds one again
+of the Greek statues and terra cottas. For the girl form passes into the
+young man’s and his to the older without break. Their dances do a great
+deal for this result. They all dance a little from the very earliest
+age. Last night, as I walked home, I found a crowd of little mites
+practising the figures of the <i>sitting</i> dance, in which the entire body
+is moved, from the ends of the fingers to the tips of the toes. And
+beautiful they are, these dances. If only I could paint them&mdash;but that
+is almost impossible; some of the gestures could be given, but not the
+<i>rhythm</i>. And they “sit” badly to a painter, and, notwithstanding their
+idleness, are rarely quiet. Sketching is formidable. They will jump up
+to see what you have been doing and everybody troops all</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="illbw_010">
+<a href="images/ill_035.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_035.jpg" width="520" height="550" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">FAGALO AND SUE, WRESTLING. VAIALA, SAMOA</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_275">{275}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">around. Still, I have sent and shall send some sketches home.</p>
+
+<p>One of their dancers has just passed&mdash;an official dancer&mdash;the official
+“virgin” of the next “village,” but one whose duty it is to entertain
+guests, and see to their comfort, and dance for them, as also in war to
+go out dancing with the combatants, as you will see in some of my
+sketches. She was crowned with flowers, and had a garland around her
+waist, one around her neck, and her waist was stiffened out triumphantly
+by the folds of fine thin <i>mats</i>, worn as drapery. Behind her (for she
+is of rank), at a far, respectful distance, has passed, also her
+attendant, an old woman, who is responsible for her, and a tall, big
+fellow, also an attendant, with a great drapery, also of yellow mats,
+fastened by a narrow girdle of white bark cloth. We know her very well,
+and did she not abuse her prerogative of anointment with cocoanut oil, I
+should see more of her.</p>
+
+<p>I have wandered away from my intention of wishing you a Merry Christmas
+and a Happy New Year; <i>our</i> Christmas is a hot one (86 to-day), but
+yesterday was cold and stormy, and the thermometer went down to 78
+degrees for a time. The wind blew the palms into all sorts of distressed
+shapes, and sent amid a deluge of rain so much fine dust of broken
+foliage through the crevices of our doors<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_276">{276}</a></span> as to remind me of Tenth
+Street in sultry summer, when they are building.</p>
+
+<p>I wrote to you from the steamer in the first days of October. Since that
+I have learned that my letter was long delayed. The letters are given to
+the small cutter or schooner, manned by natives, that meets the steamer,
+so as to bring letters here. Then she has to beat out for the upgoing
+steamer to San Francisco to give letters to her. It so happened (and,
+alas, I know all about it, for I was there), that the schooner was three
+days at sea, owing to calms, so that she could not return in time, and
+my letter which was aboard with me was delayed a whole month. It was a
+queer, an uncomfortable, but a startling experience, this being dropped
+into the boat&mdash;for we landed once and saw things in an, informal way,
+tasted the sensations of all this faraway rustic classicality with minds
+unprepared. We spent our first day and night with native hospitality in
+a little out-of-the-way village, and saw, abbreviated, all the
+innumerable pictures that I have had leisure to watch since then: The
+dances and the <i>kava</i>-drinking and the village life, and the boats; all
+preceded by our putting into “the little cove with a queer swell running
+on the beach,” just as in the old story books; and twenty-four hours of
+calm in a small sailboat under the tropical heat was also a new
+experience.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_277">{277}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So this is why my last letter was so delayed. I did not know of it until
+long after. Should I get as far as the Marquesas, I shall write to you
+again, and tell you if anything be left of Typee, but I fear that that
+is all over. Still, I hear reports of some private cannibalism to which
+the benighted French object, so that there may still be hopes. But I am
+told also, as I said before, that they wear European clothing and that
+is worse than any immoral diet.</p>
+
+<p>There are no Gérômes here and little French in the figures. Of the
+moderns, Millet and Delacroix <i>alone</i> give the look of the nude alive
+and out of the studio. Also the Venetians and the older men are not out
+of the facts. And, praise be to the Maker of all (art included), I have
+not seen any <i>black</i> except at night&mdash;and even then, “si peu, si peu.”
+Rembrandt would be happy here, especially in the evenings, when the
+cocoanut fire&mdash;that is so bright as to look bright in the day&mdash;makes a
+centre of light strong enough to turn the brown skins to silver and to
+gold, and then passes by every gradation of the prism into nameless
+depths that black paint will never give. My dear old painters, even to
+Van Eyck and Memling, how well they “carry” over the globe!</p>
+
+<p>I should write to you about Stevenson, but I suppose that you can hear
+more directly through his letters to his friend. We have seen something
+of him and have been pleased. He<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_278">{278}</a></span> is hard at work, so that visiting him
+is not a favour to him, even though he may like it, as reminding him of
+that real world of civilization which he thinks he has left for good.</p>
+
+<p>Nor have I written to you about politics, that are really impressive
+here, for we have saved these people from a hell of slavery under the
+Germans. A little gentleness on their part, and they would have had the
+islands&mdash;for these people are gentle enough, and desire rule, but, as
+they said, “death would be better”&mdash;and fortunately we interfered.</p>
+
+<p>I am impressed here, as I have been before, by the force that America
+could have for good, and by the careful calculation on the part of those
+who know us best, the Germans and English, upon our weakness of action
+and irresponsibility, and our not knowing our enormous power.</p>
+
+<p>The Pacific should be ours, and it must be.</p>
+
+<p class="nspc">
+Vaiala, Jan. 19th.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>This afternoon another little incident of everyday life brings up again
+my wish that I could set all this world about me to the music of a comic
+opera&mdash;a great <i>siva</i>. If only I could understand all that they say, and
+yet see it as people do who do not understand so that for them the ways
+of other races seem perpetually funny to the eye. What a charming
+subject I have now for a third act&mdash;or perhaps might I bring<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_279">{279}</a></span> it into
+the first one&mdash;or should we perhaps make it an interlude, with the
+<i>siva</i> ballet interspersed? Perhaps, after all, it makes a little opera
+bouffé for itself.</p>
+
+<p>This afternoon, as I was telling you, I noticed some agitation on and
+about the malae, and around Tofae’s house, which is next to mine. This
+annoyed me exceedingly. Siva,<a id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> our first pet from Tutuila, had come
+to Apia on a visit, and the little silly darling had stumbled upon Awoki
+and claimed him with all the enthusiasm these people have for him, for
+his small size, his good nature, and his brown skin.</p>
+
+<p>Our servants and dependents are the only ones who get the truest
+affection and good-will; we are too far up and too white, and cannot
+play. I have no doubt that notwithstanding the kindly offers we have
+had, Atamo especially, from maidens who were looking out for an
+establishment&mdash;I have no doubt, I say, that in their gentle minds was
+some confusion, some wish for rank and position, and that their real
+hearts went out to those with us like my little Japanese attendant.
+Indeed did not Faauli, the <i>taupo</i> of Sapotulafai, the daughter of the
+great <i>tulafale</i>, intimate that she wished to keep Awoki with her, and
+did she not say that if he tried to run off she would put him in her
+father’s jail until we were out of sight and out<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_280">{280}</a></span> of reach? Well, Siva
+recognized and claimed Awoki, and so we obtained her again. I made her
+sit for me, and found, to my great pride and delight, that I had never
+been mistaken, and that her rustic movements in the dance were finer far
+than those of the girls of the great places. We had seen the best first,
+and had known it. Siva was ill at ease here; she knew that she was
+considered provincial, or as Charley explains, “the Apia girls think
+that these Tutuila girls are fools.” The same little ways, the same
+condescension, the same disdainful or inquiring look, that we see used
+elsewhere, were given by the maidens of our place to the little
+stranger. And this afternoon, when I had got her out of the way to our
+house, to try to get a photograph of her with my hawk-eye camera, that
+never works, I was disgusted at seeing the surrounding green covered
+with people. The younger ones singled out Siva at once, and with the
+sincerity of purpose that belongs to youth, said to her what they
+thought; that her dress was this or that, that her hair was quite
+wrongly cut, like a goat’s, they said, literally, with many such
+amenities. All this Siva bore as maidens with us would bear, with a
+distant air and an occasional smile of pity. She was a sort of relative
+of Tofae’s, being herself a chief’s daughter, and could not, I suppose,
+be absolutely extinguished.</p>
+
+<p>But the crowd increased very much between us and Tofa<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_281">{281}</a></span>e’s house, and
+twice I had been obliged to single out some offender and drive him off
+with a threatened stick, when something dawned upon me; these people
+were really coming to Tofae: no vain curiosity had led them to surround
+us and sit about the grave of Tofae’s father, and fill the greensward
+between it and the posts of his house. Something was about to take place
+there. Tofae was seriously taking counsel with some others, and suddenly
+the crowd poured around his house, the privileged ones entering it, and
+one little bunch of old women slowly, lingeringly stepping in between
+its posts.</p>
+
+<p>So that I asked, relieved from my own trouble, what was it all about.
+This was the story: set it to music yourself and Atamo shall write the
+libretto. Within the fold of the chief has lately been dwelling a maiden
+thought to be frail, or at least of a stuff not so stern as some others.
+Perhaps she may have been there in exile for some slight misdemeanour,
+and her people may have deemed it good for her to live for a time under
+Tofae. For me she had little charm, if I do not mistake the young lady
+and confuse her with another young person who has also had refuge there,
+having bolted from her unpleasant husband and spending some weeks in
+temporary viduity.</p>
+
+<p>One of our young gallants, and I am both proud and ashamed to
+acknowledge, one of our own crew, is a great<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_282">{282}</a></span> admirer of female beauty,
+and fixed upon this maiden as one he should like to win, even if he had
+to persuade her to run away with him, for as far as I know he is
+married, and had never intended to set up a rival establishment in legal
+form. Nothing here in Samoa can be hidden for any length of time, so
+that a more moral place in its way it would be hard to find. To pay
+court in the evening supposes a certain surrounding of many young
+people, and often the presence of many older ones, and our young man’s
+wishes were understood by others than this best girl. So that, most
+meanly, some of the old women began to prejudice the girl’s mind against
+this passionate and handsome youth, and instead of opposing her, which
+might have defeated their object, they began to tell little tales about
+his past, probably exaggerated, as they went on accumulating. And as he
+found the girl still resisting he determined upon a straightforward
+course in his manly bosom, and complained to the chief, asking that
+these libellers be punished. And the chief listened, as was right, and
+summoned the old ladies before his tribunal to make good what they said,
+or forever after hold their peace. And here they were, come to be
+judged, while friends and witnesses and neighbours circumfused them,
+anxious about the outcome.</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” I said to Charley, “and what will happen? You have heard it
+all.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_283">{283}</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>“They have been telling bad things of him, and Tofae will punish them.
+He will fine them and fine them high, perhaps as much as ten dollars,”
+answered righteous Charley, feeling, as we all did, for the virtuous
+cause. And then I withdrew, not only because I wished to go to Sivá, but
+I wished also to meditate upon the principles of eternal justice now
+about to be vindicated by Tofae. When the old women are silenced and put
+to naught, shall our young man be strengthened in his suit? And will the
+young lady triumphantly elope with him? All these contingencies of
+events might appear spoiled if I inquired too far, so that I have left
+it all alone, and I withdraw. The subject is too pretty as it stands,
+and, as I said before, only requires to be set to music.</p>
+
+<p class="spc">
+Vaiala, Jan. 27, 1891.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>We are nearer to the cannibal here in Samoa than you would believe at
+first; far away as we are from cannibal or “devil” countries, we have in
+the hired labourers of the German plantation a wilder set of savages
+than would seem from their usual behaviour and the steady work urged out
+of them by their German masters. You must not forget that these little
+black men, often so gentle and sweetly smiling, whom we see about at
+work&mdash;in that constant exceptions to all around us&mdash;are not absolutely
+converted by being taken from their<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_284">{284}</a></span> cannibal native lands to work for
+the white man in Samoa. The smile of their white teeth, repeated by the
+ivory bars or rings in their noses, conceals, like the gentleness of
+children, depths of useless cruelty.</p>
+
+<p>The timidity of behaviour of such as I had seen and described to you,
+who had escaped from the plantations and were in hiding among distant
+Samoan villages, protected by the gentler brown race from recapture and
+return to what after all is slavery, is not a permanent index of
+character. When they have escaped, and have lived in the bush a life of
+bare chance, finding scanty food, continually tracked and hunted by
+their masters, often denounced by the Samoans, who do not trust them,
+they turn both to ancient, ferocious habits, and to the superstitions
+and fears which belonged to their life at home.</p>
+
+<p>They are always suspected of cannibalism; and the event which has made
+us all more or less miserable is considered as quite a possible thing,
+and likely to occur again. News came to us suddenly, out at Vaiala, that
+Faatulia, the wife of our friend Seumanu, the chief of Apia, had learned
+a dreadful thing. Her brother, some weeks ago, had sailed from the
+little island of Manono, and had neither returned there nor arrived
+anywhere. His boat was found upturned, and he was missing. The story
+told to Faatulia came from some of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_285">{285}</a></span> black labourers, or else from
+some of those who had escaped out of slavery. Or else it came in the
+Samoan way, so that, though you know there is a story, it does not
+require to be fathered by any human tongue. “There are no secrets kept
+in Samoa,” says Mataafa; “they are always being told.”</p>
+
+<p>This is what she learned: Her brother, in the last storm, had been
+driven out of his course; his canoe had been overturned, and he had
+barely saved his life by swimming. On reaching land in great distress,
+he had found in the bush a hut, occupied by runaway blacks, and had
+asked for shelter. He had slept, but fever had taken hold of him, and
+for some while he was unconscious. Thereupon came up the dread
+temptation to the black man. Here was that menace of superstitious harm
+coming from the presence of a sick man, who might die and injure them by
+bringing the spirit which kills, into their forlorn abode.</p>
+
+<p>Here was food too, if they killed him. Perhaps&mdash;I say it with doubt,
+because I have but confused notions of the exact superstitions belonging
+to any one of the races I have not met&mdash;but the man killed and <i>eaten</i>
+is not so dangerous in the other world as the man who dies a natural
+death.</p>
+
+<p>At any rate, the story went on to say that the blacks killed Faatulia’s
+brother in his sleep, ate him, buried the bones, and knew nothing when
+inquiries were made. But somehow or<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_286">{286}</a></span> other, suspicion excited by
+something done or said made the friends of the missing man dig and find
+remains which, at the time we heard the story, were being brought down
+to Faatulia, for identification.</p>
+
+<p>And now how shall they know? The German firm will send their physician,
+and the American ship will send hers, and the question will assume a
+political meaning.</p>
+
+<p>It was a sad thing to make our last call on Faatulia, and know that
+while she talked to us she was trying to forget the ugly thing lying
+behind the hangings of the hut.</p>
+
+<p>Seumanu was undisturbed as usual, and bade us good-bye with all the
+coolness of a <i>tulafale</i>.</p>
+
+<p>That same afternoon, January 27th, we looked for the last time upon the
+royal face of our neighbour Mataafa, while he told us again to tell
+Americans that Samoans owed their lives to the United States.</p>
+
+<p>Then I used up my last daylight in painting a study of Maua, one of the
+boat’s crew, who endured it in a fidgety way that he took for patience.
+He was cold, for every hanging mat had to be opened, to give a little
+light on the dark afternoon, under the big roof of our hut.</p>
+
+<p>And again in the morning I worked upon the sketch until the boatmen came
+up to tell me that the last moment was come. Maua flushed pink with joy,
+over his whole naked</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="ill_022">
+<a href="images/ill_036.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_036.jpg" width="405" height="550" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">MAUA. STUDY OF ONE OF OUR BOAT CREW. APIA, SAMOA</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_287">{287}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">body, when I told him that I had done. The children on the village green
+(<i>malae</i>) came to say something and to offer little presents of shells
+and sea beans.</p>
+
+<p>The steamer was whistling for me outside the reef&mdash;Atamo was on
+board&mdash;&mdash; But I could not be left behind&mdash;too valuable a passenger.</p>
+
+<p>I bequeathed my best cocoanut oil to Siakumo and the other girls, said
+good-bye to Tofae, our chief, and promised, if I returned, to come back
+under his wing. Samau, our boatswain, carried me on his back, into the
+boat, and patted my legs, as a respectful and silent good-bye.</p>
+
+<p>The grey water inside the reef was smooth and quiet. For the last time
+our Samoan crew pulled close to the shore, to exchange <i>tofas</i>
+(farewells) with Meli and her girls; and we went on board, where the
+sheep from Australia were still huddled on the quarter-deck due to
+Tahiti later. In the afternoon the island, wreathed in clouds, was
+already melting away behind us.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_288">{288}</a></span></p>
+
+<hr class="dbl">
+<h2><a id="AT_SEA_FROM_SAMOA_TO_TAHITI"></a>AT SEA FROM SAMOA TO TAHITI</h2>
+<hr>
+
+<p>We have had days of hard winds and grey weather, and all the more do I
+make pictures within my mind. For the Otaheite to which we are bound has
+a meaning, a classical record, a story of adventure, and historical
+importance, fuller than the Typee of Melville, which we may never see.
+The name recalls so many associations of ideas, so much romance of
+reading, so much of the history of thought, that I find it difficult to
+disentangle the varying strands of the threads. There are many boyish
+recollections behind the charm of Melville’s “Omoo” and of Stoddard’s
+Idylls, or even the mixed pleasure of Loti’s “Marriage.”</p>
+
+<p>Captain Cook and Bougainville and Wallis first appeared to me with the
+name of Otaheite or Tahiti; and I remember the far away missionary
+stories and the pictures of their books&mdash;the shores fringed with palm
+trees, the strange, impossible mountain peaks, the half-classical
+figures of natives, and the eighteenth-century costumes of the gallant
+discoverers. I remember gruesome pictures in which figure human
+sacrifices and deformed idols, and the skirts of the uniform of Captain<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_289">{289}</a></span>
+Cook. What would be the fairy reality of the engravings which delighted
+my childhood?</p>
+
+<p>Once again all these pictures had come back to me. <i>Long ago</i> there lay,
+by a Newport wharf, an old hulk, relic of former days. We were told that
+this had been one of the ships of Captain Cook: the once famous
+<i>Endeavour</i>. Here was the end of its romance; now slowly rotted the keel
+that had ploughed through new seas and touched the shores of races
+disconnected from time immemorial. Like the <i>Argo</i>, like the little
+<i>Pinta</i> and <i>Santa Maria</i>, it had carried brave hearts ready to open the
+furthest gates of the world. The wild men of the islands had seen it, a
+floating island manned by gods, carrying its master to great fame and
+sudden death.</p>
+
+<p>For he was not allowed by fate to try for further Japan, and begin, with
+the help of Russia, that career of conquest for England which she now
+dislikes to share with other nations, even with those to whom she first
+proposed the enterprise and half the spoils.</p>
+
+<p>On that little ship, enormous to her eyes, had been Oberea, the
+princess, the Queen of Otaheite, whose name comes up in the stories of
+Wallis or of Cook, and early in the first missionary voyages.</p>
+
+<p>Oberea was the tall woman of commanding presence, who, undismayed, with
+the freedom of a person accustomed to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_290">{290}</a></span> rule, visited Wallis on board his
+ship soon after his first arrival and the attempt at attacking him
+(July, 1767). She, you may also remember, carried him, a sick man, in
+her arms, as easily as if he had been a child. I remember her in the
+engraving, stepping toward Wallis, with a palm branch in her hand; while
+he stands with gun in hand, at the head of the high grenadier-capped
+marines.</p>
+
+<p>And do you remember the parting&mdash;how the Queen could not speak for
+tears; how she sank inconsolable in the bow of her canoe, without
+noticing the presents made her? “Once more,” writes the gallant Captain,
+“she bade us farewell, with such tenderness of affection and grief as
+filled both my heart and my eyes.”</p>
+
+<p>Surely this is no ordinary story&mdash;this sentimental end of an official
+record of discovery.</p>
+
+<p>My memory makes the picture for me: the ship moving at last out of the
+reef, with the freshened wind, and below her level the canoe and the
+savage queen bent over in grief. Then right on without a break Wallis
+ends the chapter with these words: “At noon the harbour from which we
+sailed bore S. E. 1/2 E. distant about twelve miles. It lies in latitude
+17° 30´s. longitude 150° W. and I gave it the name of <i>Port Royal
+Harbour</i>.” This foreign name has since yielded to the ancient native
+one. Besides the charming irrelevancy of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_291">{291}</a></span> these facts with the words
+describing the sentiment of eternal parting, Wallis’s conclusion gives
+us the place of Tahiti on the map, and will help you to follow me there.</p>
+
+<p>The name of Wallis, the first discoverer, is so much overshadowed by the
+personality of Captain Cook, that I think it better to give you again
+the story that belongs to each.</p>
+
+<p>Let us go back in mind to the date, the second half of the last century,
+1767. The recall to <i>me</i> of the ships of Christopher Columbus emphasizes
+the difference between that moment and the end of the fifteenth century.
+There were still vast spaces of sea unknown; still the object of
+commerce, of war and of discovery, was the connection with the
+“easternmost parts of Asia.” What lay between was only guessed at and
+often avoided. As when Anson, whom I have just been reading, passed
+through the southern seas in 1742, anxious for an unbroken passage
+across the great Pacific, in order to strike a blow at the Spaniard in
+Asiatic islands, he followed the Spanish charts; and in his own,
+“showing the track of the Centurion round the World,” there is nothing
+marked in the enormous blank space below the equinoctial line, from
+South America to New Guinea, but the fabulous Treasure Islands&mdash;the
+Isles of Solomon, placed very nearly where Tahiti lies.</p>
+
+<p>When Wallis and Bougainville came upon this island they came as Columbus
+did&mdash;as discoverers; but the times had<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_292">{292}</a></span> changed; and the meeting with a
+new race in this island of Tahiti&mdash;a fifth race, as it was named in my
+boyhood’s school-books&mdash;affected European minds very differently from
+the manner of three centuries before, when the Spaniards went for the
+first time through a like experience.</p>
+
+<p>It is this new introduction of <i>modern</i> and <i>changed</i> Europe to another
+fresh knowledge of the savage world, that makes the solemnity of the
+discovery.</p>
+
+<p>There is also something in the sudden coming together of the two new
+nations, England and France, so different from ancient Spain, upon this
+littlest of lands most lost in the greatest spaces of the sea, four
+thousand miles from the nearest mainland.</p>
+
+<p>Hence from little Tahiti, whose double island is not more than a hundred
+and twenty-five miles about, begins the filling up of the map of
+discovery in the Pacific.</p>
+
+<p>When Wallis arrived in June, 1767, Tahiti and its neighbouring island
+were under the rule of a chief, Amo or Aamo, as he is called by Wallis
+and by Cook. He was their great chief&mdash;what we have managed to translate
+as king. It was a moment of general peace, and the “happy islanders”
+enjoyed in a “terrestrial paradise” pleasures of social life, of free
+intercourse, whose description, even at this day, reads with a charm of
+impossible amenity. The wonderful island, striking in its<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_293">{293}</a></span> shape, so
+beautiful, apparently, that each successive traveller has described it
+as the most beautiful of places, was prepared to offer to the discoverer
+expecting harsh and savage sights a race of noble proportion, of great
+elegance of form, accustomed to most courteous demeanour, and speaking
+one of the softest languages of man. Even the greatest defects of the
+Polynesian helped to make the exterior picture of amiability and ease of
+life still more graceful. If, by the time that I return, you have not
+read as much about their ancient habits and customs, their festivals,
+their dances, their human sacrifices, their practice of infanticide,
+their wild generosity, I shall write you fully about it all, or shall
+make you read what is necessary. What was visible of the harsher side
+added to the picture of the interest of mystery and contradiction. The
+residence of this Chief, Amo, and of his wife, Purea or Oberea, as Cook
+called her, was at Papara, on the south shore of Tahiti. Both belonged
+to a family whose ancestors were gods; and they lived a ceremonial life
+recalling, at this extreme of civilization, the courtesies, the
+adulation, the flattery, the superstitious veneration of the East. This
+family and its allies had reigned in these islands and in the others for
+an indefinite period. The names of their ancestors, the poetry
+commemorating them were and are still sung, long after the white man had
+helped to destroy their supremacy.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_294">{294}</a></span> When Wallis arrived at the north of
+the island, Amo and Oberea were not far from Papara in the south. They
+heard of the arrival of the floating island, whose masts were trees,
+whose pumps were rivers, whose inhabitants were gods in strangeness of
+complexion and of dress.</p>
+
+<p>The same tragedy had happened there which begins the recitals of savage
+discovery. The islanders had no notion of the resources of the
+Europeans, nor had the white men a knowledge of Polynesian customs; so
+that soon came up the usual quarrel and the use of fire-arms taken by
+the natives for thunder and lightning. Amo received the news, and
+notwithstanding the exaggerated accounts, determined to see for himself
+the supposed island and test the power of its inhabitants. His was the
+attack described by Wallis, in which a large number of natives
+surrounded the ship, while Amo and Oberea looked on from a little
+eminence above the bay. To shorten the contest and thereby lessen the
+mischief Wallis fired on the canoes and the occupants, and finally on
+the chiefs themselves. Cannon balls fell at their feet, and tore down
+the surrounding trees. The unequal contest was over, and the inhabitants
+came with green branches in their hands, even those whose friends had
+been killed, to make peace with the English, and offer submission.
+Wallis relates how one woman, who had lost her husband and children in
+the fight,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_295">{295}</a></span> brought her presents weeping to him, and left him in tears,
+but without wrath, and gave him her hand at parting.</p>
+
+<p>And you remember how, just as Wallis had left one side of the island,
+Bougainville, the Frenchman, came up to the other, different in its
+make, different in the first attitude of the natives; but with the same
+story of gracious kindness and feminine bounty; so that the Frenchman
+called it the New Cytherea, and carried home stories of pastoral,
+idyllic life in a savage Eden, where all was beautiful and untainted by
+the fierceness and greed imposed upon natural man by artificial
+civilization. So strong was the impression produced by what he had to
+say, that the keen and critical analysis of his own mistakes in
+judgment, which he affixed to his Journal, was, passed over, because, as
+he complained, people wished to have their minds made up.</p>
+
+<p>And immediately upon his leaving, again to another part of the island
+came the representatives of another race, another, more solemn and less
+near to modern civilization&mdash;the Spaniards; who in their accustomed way,
+planted the cross next to the sacred grove, which unknown to them was
+that of the greedy god Oro, and sailed away, leaving two missionaries,
+helpless and solitary, to wait for their return.</p>
+
+<p>For this other side of the island was separated from the places of
+landing known to Wallis, by fierce war for which<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_296">{296}</a></span> Oberea had given the
+signal, by that haughtiest pride which only a woman can show.</p>
+
+<p>The missionaries accomplished nothing; and when a few months afterward
+the Spaniards called and took them away, their presence had been but a
+dream&mdash;another strange side to the romance of the first discovery.</p>
+
+<p>One year later, 1768, came Captain Cook, whose name has absorbed all
+others. Twice he visited Tahiti, and helped to fix in European minds the
+impression of a state <i>nearer to nature</i>, which the thought of the day
+insisted upon.</p>
+
+<p>Nor can one here forget Oberea; and how she seemed to him younger than
+she had seemed to Wallis, who judged her age by European notions.</p>
+
+<p>And how shall I refer to that “ceremony of nature” to which she invited
+the captain and his officers, as an exchange for his having let her be
+present at the service of the Church of England?</p>
+
+<p>The state of nature had just then been the staple reference in the
+polemic literature of the century about to close. The very refined, dry
+and philosophic civilization of the few was troubled by the confused
+sentiments, the dreams, and the obscure desires of the ignorant and
+suffering many. Their inarticulate voice was suddenly phrased by
+Rousseau. With that cry came in the literary belief in the natural man,
+in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_297">{297}</a></span> possibility of&mdash;analysis of the foundations of government and
+civilization&mdash;in the perfectibility of the human race and its persistent
+goodness, when freed from the weight of society’s blunders and
+oppressions.</p>
+
+<p>My confused memories of eighteenth century declamation and reasoning
+bring back to me this one echo. Our little ship is not a library, and I
+struggle for references. I can only remember fragments of the
+encyclopædists and of Diderot, and the vague impression that this last
+romance and analysis of singular writings of Otahite is based upon a
+direct information outside of that derived from books: that is to say,
+perhaps from the travellers themselves, or the Tahitian, who, like
+Cook’s Omai, came to Europe with Bougainville.</p>
+
+<p>Later Byron:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“The happy shores without a law,<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Where all partake the earth without dispute,<br></span>
+<span class="i1">And bread itself is gathered as a fruit;<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Where none contest the fields, the woods, the streams:<br></span>
+<span class="i1">The goldless age, where gold disturbs no dreams.”<br></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>These literary images were used as illustrations of the happiness of man
+living in, what people still persist in calling, the state of nature.
+There is no doubt, of course, that at the moment of the discovery our
+islanders had reached a full extreme of their civilization; that
+numerous, splendid, and untainted in their physical development, they
+seemed to live<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_298">{298}</a></span> in a facility of existence, in an absence of anxiety
+emphasized by their love of pleasure and fondness for society&mdash;by a
+simplicity of conscience which found little fault in what we
+reprobate&mdash;in a happiness which is not and could not be our own. The
+“pursuit of happiness” in which these islanders were engaged, and in
+which they seemed successful, is the catchword of the eighteenth
+century.</p>
+
+<p>People were far then from the cruel ideas of Hobbes; and the more
+amiable views of the nature of man and of his rights echo in the
+sentimentality of the last century, like the sound of the island surf
+about Tahiti.</p>
+
+<p>Nor am I allowed to forget the assertion of those “self-evident truths”
+in which the ancestor of my companion, Atamo, most certainly had a hand.
+So that the islands to which we are hastening with each beat of the
+engine, are emblems of our own past in thought, as they have played a
+part also in the history of which we see the development to-day, the end
+of the old society, the beginning of the new, the revolutions of Europe
+and of America, all which lies in my mind obscurely as I recall, every
+few moments, my vague emotions at the name of <i>Otaheite</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I believe too that our feelings are intensified because they are
+directed toward a far-off island; a word, a thing of all time marked by
+man as something wherein to place the ideal, the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_299">{299}</a></span> supernatural; the home
+of the blest, the abode of the dead, the fountain of eternal youth,
+Circe and Calypso, the haven of man tired of weary sea, the calm smile
+of the ocean when the winds have ceased. The word sings itself within my
+mind, and the dreams I have been recalling give me interior light during
+these gray days of adverse wind, as in Heine’s song of the “Land of
+Perpetual Youth”:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Little birdling Colibri,<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Lead us thou to Tahiti!”<br></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>February 12th.</p>
+
+<p>Six days of grey weather and dark nights, and in the last evening, quite
+late, the sun setting, lit up for a moment an island, Moorea, which is
+distant from Tahiti only some dozen miles. It made an enchanted vision
+of peaks and high mountains, as strange as any which you may have seen
+in the backgrounds of old Italian paintings, far enough to be vague in
+the twilight haze and yet distinct in places high up, where the singular
+shapes were modelled in pink and yellow-green. The level rays of the sun
+pierced through the forest coverings, and came back to my sight, focused
+from underlying rocks, in a glistening network of rainbow colours. Then
+all faded in a cloudy twilight, half lit by the struggling moon, and we
+saw a vague space of island, like a<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_300">{300}</a></span> dream, edged by a white line of
+reef; this was Tahiti. All night we ran east and west, waiting for the
+day, which would allow us to pass through the reef that lies in front of
+the so-called City of Papeete, which is a large village, the “capital”
+of the island, and the centre of the French possessions in Oceanica.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_301">{301}</a></span></p>
+
+<hr class="dbl">
+<h2><a id="TAHITI"></a>TAHITI</h2>
+<hr>
+
+<p>When we rose in the early morning our ship had already passed the reef,
+and we were in the harbour of Papeete. There was the usual enchantment
+of the land, a light blue sky and a light blue sea; an air that felt
+colder than that of Samoa, whatever the thermometer might say; and when
+we had landed, a funny little town, stretched along the beach, under
+many tall and beautiful trees. From under their shade the outside blue
+was still more wonderful, and at the edge where the blue of sky and sea
+came together opposite us, the island of Moorea, all mountain, peaked
+and engrailed like some far distance of Titian’s landscapes, seemed
+swimming in the blue.</p>
+
+<p>Near the quay neatly edged with stone steps, ships lay only a few rods
+off in the deep water, so that their yards ran into the boughs of the
+great trees. Further out, on a French man-of-war, the bugle marked the
+passing duty of the hour. Everything else was lazy, except the little
+horses driven by the <i>kanakas</i>. Natives moved easily about, no longer
+with the stride of the Samoans, which throws out the knees and feet, as
+if it were for the stage. People were lighter built,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_302">{302}</a></span> more <i>efface</i>; but
+there were pretty faces, many evidently those of half-breeds.</p>
+
+<p>White men were there with the same contrasting look of fierceness and
+inquisitiveness marked in their faces; these now that we see less of
+them, look beaky and eager in contrast with the brown types that fill
+the larger part of our sight and acquaintance.</p>
+
+<p>We were kindly received by the persons for whom we had introductions;
+and set about through various more or less shady streets marked
+French-wise on the corners: <i>Rue des Beaux-Arts</i>, <i>Rue de la
+Cathédrale</i>, etc.; first to a little restaurant, where I heard in an
+adjacent room, “Buvons, amis, buvons,” and the noise of fencing; then to
+hire furniture and buy household needs for the housekeeping we proposed
+to set up that very day, for there are no hotels. The evening was ended
+at the “Cercle,” where we played dominoes, to remind ourselves that we
+were in some outlying attachment of provincial France. By the next
+morning we were settled in a little cottage on the wonderful beach, that
+is shaded all along by worthy trees; we had engaged a cook, and Awoki
+was putting all to rights. As we walk back into the town there are
+French walls and yellow stuccoed houses for government purposes. A few
+officers in white and soldiers pass along.</p>
+
+<p>A few scattered French ladies pass under the trees; so far as</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="ill_023">
+<a href="images/ill_037.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_037.jpg" width="550" height="435" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">STUDY OF SURF BREAKING ON OUTSIDE REEF. TAUTIRA,
+TAIARAPU, TAHITI</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_303">{303}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">we can tell (because we have been long away) dressed in some correct
+French fashion; looking not at all incongruous, because already we feel
+that this is dreamland&mdash;that anybody in any guise is natural here,
+except a few Europeans, who meet the place halfway, and belong neither
+to where they came from, nor to the unreality of the place they are in.
+There is no noise, the street is the beach; the trappings of the
+artillery horses, and the scabbards of the sabres rattle in a profound
+silence, so great that I can distinctly count the pulsations of the
+water running from the fountain near us into the sea. The shapes and
+finish of the government buildings, their long spaces of enclosure, the
+moss upon them, remind us of the sleepiest towns of out-of-the-way bits
+of France.</p>
+
+<p>The natives slip over the dust in bare feet, the waving draperies of the
+long gowns of the women seeming to add to the stealthy or undulating
+movement which carries them along. Many draw up under the arm some
+corner of this long, nightgowny dress that it may not trail, or let
+their arms swing loosely to the rhythm of their passing by.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the native men wear loose jackets, sometimes shirts above the
+great loin-cloth which hangs down from the waist, and which is the same
+as the <i>lava-lava</i> of the Samoans, the <i>sulu</i> of the Fijians, and is
+here called the <i>pareu</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Many of the women have garlands round their necks and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_304">{304}</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 59px">
+<a href="images/ill_038.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_038.jpg" width="59" height="150" alt=""></a>
+</div>
+
+<p class="nind">flowers behind their ears. Occasionally we hear sounds of singing that
+come back to us from some cross-street; and as I have ventured to look,
+I see in a little enclosure some women seated, and one standing before
+them, making some gestures, perhaps of a dance; and I grieve to say,
+looking as if they had begun their latest evening very early in the day.
+But this I have noticed from sheer inquisitiveness. I feel that in
+another hour or so I shall not care to look for anything, but shall sit
+quietly and let everything pass like the turn of a revolving panorama.
+In this state of mind, which represents the idleness of arrival, we meet
+at our Consul’s an agreeable young gentleman belonging to a family well
+known to us by name&mdash;the Branders; a family that represents&mdash;though
+mixed with European&mdash;the best blood of the islanders. They speak French
+and English with the various accents and manners that belong to those
+divisions of European society; they are well-connected over in Scotland.
+Do you remember the Branders of “Lorna Doone”? At home their ancestry
+goes back full forty generations. They are young and pleasant, and we
+forget how old we are in comparison. We call on their mother later, a
+charming woman, and on an aunt, Mrs.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_305">{305}</a></span> Atwater, who has a similar charm
+of manner, accent and expression; and on another aunt, the ex-Queen
+Marau; but she is away with her younger sister Manihinihi.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening, with some remnant of energy, we walk still further than
+our house upon the beach, passing over the same roads that Stoddard
+wearily trod in his “South Sea Idyls.” We try to find, by the little
+river that ends our walk, on this side of the old French fort, the
+calaboose where Melville was shut up. There is no one to help us in our
+search; no one remembers anything. Buildings occupy the spaces of
+woodland that Melville saw about him. Nothing remains but the same charm
+of light and air which he, like all others, has tried to describe and to
+bring back home in words. But the beach is still as beautiful as if
+composed for Claude Lorraine. Great trees stand up within a few feet of
+the tideless sea. Where the shadows run in at times, canoes with
+outriggers are pulled up. People sit near the water’s edge, on the
+grass. Outside of all this shade, we see the island of Moorea further
+out than the far line of the reef, no longer blue, but glowing like a
+rose in the beginning of the twilight.</p>
+
+<p>At night we hear girls passing before our little garden; we see them
+swinging together, with arms about the flowers of their necks. They
+sing&mdash;alas! not always soberly, and the wind brings the odour of the
+gardenias that cover their necks and heads.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_306">{306}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the night the silence becomes still greater around us, though we can
+hear at a distance the music of the band that plays in the square, which
+is the last amusement left to this dreary deserted village called a
+town. In the square, which is surrounded by many trees, through which
+one passes to hidden official buildings, native musicians play European
+music, apparently accommodated to their own ideas, but all in excellent
+time, so that one just realizes that somehow or other these airs must
+have been certain well-known ones. But nothing matters very much.</p>
+
+<p>A few visitors walk about; native women sit in rows on the ground,
+apparently to sell flowers, which they have before them. People of
+distinction make visits to a few carriages drawn up under the trees.
+Occasionally, in the shadows or before the lights, in an uncertain
+manner, natives begin to dance to the accompaniment of the band. But it
+is all listless, apparently, at least to the sight, and just as drowsy
+as the day.</p>
+
+<p>In the very early morning we drive to the end of the bay at Point Venus,
+to see the stones placed by Wilkes and subsequent French navigators, in
+order to test the growth of the coral outside. And we make a call on a
+retired French naval officer, who has been about here more or less since
+1843, the time of Melville. We drive at first through back roads of no<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_307">{307}</a></span>
+special character. We pass through a great avenue of trees over-arching,
+the pride of the town; we cross a river torrent, and the end of our road
+brings us along the sea, but far up, so that we look down over spaces of
+palm and indentations of small bays fringed with foam, all in the shade
+below us. On the sea outline, always the island of Moorea, and back on
+Tahiti, the great mountain, the Aorai, the edge apparently of a great
+central crater; a fantastic serrated peak called the “Diadem,” also an
+edge of the great chasm; and on either side along slopes that run to the
+sea, from the central heights, and recall the slopes of Hawaii. But all
+is green; even the eight thousand feet of the Aorai, which look blue and
+violet, melt into the green around us, so as to show that the same
+verdure passes unbroken, wherever there is a foothold, from the sea to
+the highest tops. This haze of green, so delicate as to be namable only
+by other colours, gives a look of sweetness to these high spaces, and
+makes them repeat, in tones of light, against the blue of the sky,
+chords of colour similar to those of the trees and the grass against the
+blue and the violet of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>Nearer us the slopes are all broken up into knife edges of green velvet
+streaked right near us by clay, which in contrast seems almost like
+vermilion. So far the roads were good, though the slippery clay might be
+very different when the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_308">{308}</a></span> great rains came down; and as our driver forced
+his horses at a gallop near the edges of the cliffs hanging over the
+lovely pictures of the secluded trees and water, we felt that a more
+sandy, more prosaic road would better suit the South Sea habits of
+carriage travel.</p>
+
+<p>All the trees were about us that we knew in Samoa; and many more rounded
+mango trees, with red fruit hanging on long stems, or lying green by the
+road. All this was to be seen with cool air full of life, and under a
+sky more like ours than the Samoan, but exquisitely blue and gay.</p>
+
+<p>Little has been done by us, even of going about; Atamo has written many
+letters; I have tried to sketch a little from our verandah, in front of
+which, on the shore, grows a twisted <i>purau</i>, called <i>fau</i> in Samoa.
+Through its branches I see the sea and the reef, and the island of
+Moorea, in every tint of blue that keeps the light, even in the evening
+or in the afterglow, when the sunset lights up in yellow and purple the
+sky behind it. And yet there is a reminiscence in my mind of something
+not foreign to us, even at this moment, when the haze of light seems
+new, and the pale blue sea is spangled with little silver stars, as far
+as I can see distinctly.</p>
+
+<p>We have called on the ex-King; and in the evening, at the club, I have
+seen him&mdash;a handsome, elderly man, somewhat broken and far from sober.
+He was playing with a certain</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="ill_024">
+<a href="images/ill_039.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_039.jpg" width="550" height="354" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">THE DIADEM MOUNTAIN. TAHITI</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_309">{309}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Keke, a black Senegambian in the French service, a prince of his own
+negro land, who speaks excellent French, and whom I surprised sitting on
+the sill of his house one evening (while we were taking a rainy walk).
+Keke wore in this retirement a pair of marvellous trousers, of a
+brilliant yellow, with red flamboyant pattern&mdash;something too fine for
+the ordinary out-of-door world. Many of the officials are coloured men
+from the French colonies, and so is the governor more or less. Of course
+the idea is infinitely respectable and humanitarian, as so many French
+things are, but I fear that the Republic is unwise in sending people
+whom the native here cannot look up to as he does to a white man.</p>
+
+<p>Of course they are all French and have votes, as the natives here can
+have also; but whether it is for the real good of a population
+accustomed to dependence I am not so sure. There are many curious
+anomalies: our American friends of Samoa speak, with our natural way of
+looking at things correctly, of the preposterous way the French have of
+backing the Catholic missions and protecting their missionaries, even as
+we would. But here I find the Catholic mission dependent upon the gifts
+of the faithful, while the Protestant missions are supported by the
+French government, as the Protestant clergy would be in France.</p>
+
+<p>The King, upon whom we called and whom we met at the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_310">{310}</a></span> club in affable
+mood, surrendered his rights to the French, a few years ago, under long
+pressure and with some advice from the missionaries. In exchange he
+received an annual income, and retained his honours and certain
+privileges. This end I suppose to have been inevitable. His mother, the
+famous Queen whose name was known to all sea-going people in that half
+of the globe, whose resistance to French pretensions had come,
+apparently, for a moment, near bringing France and England into a
+quarrel, had lived for many years under French authority, a government
+under the name of protectorate. Such, I suppose, must always be the end,
+as it has been everywhere that the English have been; as it has been in
+Fiji; as it will be to-morrow, probably, when King George of Tonga dies;
+as it will be in Hawaii, whenever the whites there determine to use
+their power. Nor is the line of the Pomaré, any more than that of the
+Hawaiian rulers, so connected with all antiquity as to be typical of
+what a Polynesian great chief might be to the people whom he rules. The
+Pomarés date only from the time of Cook. They were slowly wresting the
+power from the great family of the Tevas, by war and by that still more
+powerful means&mdash;marriage, which in the South Seas is the only full and
+legitimate source of authority.</p>
+
+<p>You know from all that I have told you of Samoa that in<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_311">{311}</a></span> Polynesia
+descent is the only real absolute aristocracy; there is no ruling except
+through blood. Hence the absurdity of the kingships that we have
+fostered or established, which in our own minds seemed quite legitimate,
+because they embodied the European ideas which belong to our ancestry.
+Hence the general discomfort and trouble that we have helped to foster.
+Hence also&mdash;and far worse&mdash;the breaking down, in reality, of all the
+bases upon which these old societies rested, the saving of which in part
+was the only hope remaining for the gradual education of the brown man
+for his keeping to ideas of order different from our own, it is true,
+but still involving the same original foundations. Hence the
+demoralization, the arbitrary “white laws,” always misunderstood, always
+bringing on the vices which they were meant to control; hence the end of
+the “brown” man by himself.</p>
+
+<p>The missionaries’ good-will has never gone so far as to try to
+understand him as a being with the same rights to methods of thinking as
+we claim for ourselves. Part of this sad trouble is of course owing to
+the unfortunate moment which gave birth both to greater missionary
+enterprise, to a first acquaintance with these races, and to the
+disruption of authority in the West. Perhaps, indeed, it might then have
+required more comprehension than could be asked of any but the most
+exceptional mind to realize that what we call savagery<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_312">{312}</a></span> was a mode of
+civilization. So must have been the European world when the civilization
+of antiquity broke down, and things of price went into the night of
+forgetfulness, along with the mistaken beliefs and superstitions that
+were joined to them. So here, where, as in all civilizations, religious
+views, manners, customs, superstitions were woven about every bit of
+life, the exterminating of anything that might seem pagan involved many
+habits, and some good ones, which necessarily, from their fundamental
+antiquity, had been protected by religious rites. Hence we brought on
+idleness and consequent vice; for idleness is as bad for the savage,
+whom we innocently suppose to be idle, because we do not understand how
+he busies himself, as it is for the worker in modern civilization. It is
+not the actual doing that is important, but such occupation as may
+determine a habit of useful or harmless attention, which prevents the
+suggestion of untried moral experiments.</p>
+
+<p class="spc">Even tattooing was a matter which like any society duty involved
+attention, considerable self-abnegation and suffering, so as to suit the
+supposed requirement of civilization, and a recognition of some manly
+standard, however childish it might seem to us, even if it seems as
+absurd as some of our society standards might seem to the so-called
+savage.</p>
+
+<p>These reflections came from reading a law of missionary<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_313">{313}</a></span> civilization
+which I find in the records of the year 1822, in the neighbouring island
+of Huahine; in which a man or woman who shall mark with tattoo, if not
+clearly proved, shall be tried and punished, and made, for the man, to
+work on the road, for the woman, to make mats; in a proportion of which
+the only exact measure that I find is that for the man it is about the
+same as that for bigamy; for the woman just the same as adultery.</p>
+
+<p>With the coming of the missionaries, with the coming of the white men
+traders, coincided the first attempts of the ambition of these Pomaré
+chieftains. They had already done a good deal for themselves before Cook
+left for the last time. He had seen Oberea, of whom I first spoke, a
+great person. When he left, her line of family was already on the
+decline; war and massacre had weakened it. Pomaré&mdash;the Pomaré of that
+day&mdash;with the support of the guns of the white men, established his
+final superiority, and becoming the great chief was solemnly crowned and
+oiled by the missionaries, like a new king of Scripture. And this man is
+the last of the line. His first great ancestor, Otu, just appears with
+the first discoverers’ records of the details of the ceremonials and
+etiquette belonging to high chieftainship, which are recorded in the
+first missionary accounts.</p>
+
+<p>You may remember the picture painted by Robert Smirke,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_314">{314}</a></span> Royal
+Academician, where the high-priest of Tahiti cedes the district in which
+we now are to Captain Wilson of the missionary ship the <i>Duff</i>, for the
+missionaries. In the centre, with a background of palms and peaks, two
+young people&mdash;Pomaré, the son of Otu, and his queen&mdash;are represented on
+men’s shoulders. That was the old fashion of Tahiti, the great chief not
+being allowed to touch the land with his feet, lest it become his by
+touch.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 108px">
+<a href="images/ill_040.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_040.jpg" width="108" height="175" alt=""></a><br>
+<span class="smcap">Pomare Rex</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>And therein also is shown the peculiar political arrangement by which
+the young chief took his father’s place when a child, and ruled, in
+appearance at least; for there in the picture alongside of the two young
+sovereigns, called kings by us, stand father and mother uncovered to the
+waist, out of respect to their child’s higher position. Otu and Iddeah,
+the dear lady whose notions about infanticide troubled the good
+missionaries to such an extent, but whose courtesy was willing to go so
+far as to promise that she “never would do it again,” when once she had
+done as she pleased. As I understand it, the Pomarés, then, pass away
+with the present King, but the great line whose place they took&mdash;the
+Tevas or their representatives&mdash;remain. In that line con<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_315">{315}</a></span>tinues a
+descent from that Queen Oberea, whose figure, in another picture that I
+have referred to and which I beg you will look up in the volume
+containing Wallis’s discovery, is so charmingly made a type for an
+imaginary kingdom, like those of the operas and the tapestries of the
+eighteenth century, in which nothing is untouched by fancy but the
+muskets and grenadier caps and uniforms of Wallis and his men.</p>
+
+<p>I have almost been tempted, as you see, to begin a sort of explanation
+of the history of the island; but I think that I can manage later to
+give you certain stories which will have the advantage of a more
+personal knowledge of acquaintance with what might be called the text,
+than these vague reminiscences of the books that I have read and which
+are nearer to you than they are to me. Meanwhile, let me tell you that
+last evening, at the club, His Majesty, who was in extreme good humour,
+singled us out, told us how he liked us, that he liked Americans, who
+themselves liked Tahitians, and that the French, who stood all about
+him, were all d&mdash;d&mdash;d&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>This he said in English, in a proper reminiscence of nautical terms of
+reproach, and added blandly, “But I don’t understand English.”</p>
+
+<p>He has a fine, aristocratic head, and must have been a very handsome
+man. He has for an adopted son one of the young<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_316">{316}</a></span> gentlemen of the
+Branders, who will succeed to an empty honour; though there might
+perhaps yet be a part to fill, for the family that represents all that
+there has been far back and recently.</p>
+
+<p>Next week we shall go into the country, further along the coast, and
+make a visit to the old lady who is the head of the house, grandmother
+of these young men, and who is the chiefess representing that great line
+of the Teva, alongside of which the Pomaré&mdash;the kings through the
+foreigner&mdash;are new people. Then I may write lengthily, or at least with
+some detail, about matters that I only see confusedly, but which must be
+curiously full of ancient, archaic history, however lost or eclipsed
+to-day.</p>
+
+<p>I notice in my habits, now forming, as I write out my journal for you, a
+tendency to dream away into a manner of philosophizing which evidently
+has for its first beginning the appreciation of the remote forms of
+these savage civilizations; so that as I grow to understand them better,
+it is necessary for my individual happiness of thought to be able to
+consider the earlier ways of man as not unconnected with the present,
+and even to be willing to consider all foundations of society as passing
+methods suitable to the moment, and perhaps in the great future to vary
+as much from the present as the past is strangely different. The good
+missionary, who simply looked<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_317">{317}</a></span> upon a good deal of this past as
+strangely resembling the antiquities of the Bible, consoled himself, and
+persuaded many of his brown brethren in the belief that they, at last,
+were the famous lost tribes, who still kept, in many ways and details,
+that very peculiar manner of life which the Bible sets out in many
+details.</p>
+
+<p>One evening in Samoa, the great Baker, the former missionary and ruler
+of Tonga, finding me interested and credulous in regard to many
+superstitions which he described, and many facts quite as extraordinary
+that he vouched for, unfolded to me, as a regard of confidence, his firm
+belief that in these islands of the Pacific, Reuben, Simeon, Levi,
+Judah, Zebulon, Issachar, Dan, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Ephraim, Manasseh
+and Benjamin had found a home. And if a man so worldly wise, such a
+producer of money, such a controller of weaker minds, dwelt in this view
+with satisfaction, as a relief from the sordid necessities of power, I
+think that a mere dreamer like myself can be excused for turning to more
+scientific and accurate arrangements of men’s history.</p>
+
+<p>These words come to me more distinctly suggested by the place in which I
+am, not because I am thinking of the ancient ways that I touch, but
+because I remember how Melville passed from those records of exterior
+life and scenery to a<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_318">{318}</a></span> dwelling within his mind&mdash;a following out of
+metaphysical ideas, and a scheming of possible evolution in the future
+of man.</p>
+
+<p class="spc">Papara, April 7th.</p>
+
+<p>This is a land where to live would have made you happy. Outdoors and in
+the water, and in no compulsory dress, would have been your usual way of
+passing a great part of the time. I thought of you while I looked this
+morning at the children playing in the water of the little river, or in
+the surf that rolls into it or along the shore. The girls, little wee
+things, swam in the stream near its mouth, where it is safe, and plunged
+in and out, and swam under water, their feet and backs showing within
+the light and dark of the currents; for the river has been very full,
+and the surf and tide have been heavy, so that the children take their
+turn with the current. The boys were out in the surf, on the border of
+which occasionally the girls played, edging sideways to it, and running
+back with swinging arms. The boys and one of the men plunged out with
+surf boards, ducking under or riding over the waves that did not suit
+them; then turning just before the wave that suited, they were carried
+along the shore leaning on their boards. The currents of the sea carried
+them past us looking on. Of course they knew all about them, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_319">{319}</a></span> rough
+as the surf was, one of them had got past one of the lines of the
+breakers and tried fishing in some bottom both higher and less vexed. It
+was a pretty sight, the brown limbs and bodies all red in the sun and
+wet, coming out of the blue and white water like red flowers. The girls
+were yellower and more golden than the boys&mdash;less tanned I suppose.</p>
+
+<p>They have been running about with less clothing, perhaps because the
+family is away. They left yesterday, and the daily life is the same.
+That is to say that only Tati and his family, including one of the boys
+whose holiday is prolonged, are here with us. The old lady (Hinaarii)
+the Queen (Marau), Miss Piri (pronounced Pri, short for Piritani,
+Britain), Miss Manihinihi, and the two young men all went off together;
+the ladies to spend some time at their house in Faaa, the most rustic, I
+believe, of their residences.</p>
+
+<p>Pleasant as it is to talk with Tati or do nothing, I miss the ladies.
+The old chiefess is admirable, and is willing to talk to us of legends
+and stories with the utmost patience. I wish I had a portrait of her.
+She has a most characteristic and strong face, upon which at times comes
+a very sweet smile; as I saw yesterday, when she was asked which she
+preferred, Moorea, the island she comes from, or Tahiti, where her life
+has been mostly spent. “Tahiti!” she said decidedly, resuming in the
+inflection of her voice all the memories of a long<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_320">{320}</a></span> life that has seen
+so much, and so much that is different and contradictory.</p>
+
+<p>Queen Marau has been very affable and entertaining, telling us legends
+and stories; Miss Piri has been ailing, Miss Chiki, smiling. The women
+of the family are all extremely interesting, of various types, but each
+one with a charm of her own; from Marau’s strong face, fit for a queen,
+to Manihinihi’s bright cordial smile. And such beautiful voices as they
+have, and rich intonation! It is a remarkable family and a princely one.
+When you read the next few lines you will say that I am prejudiced about
+my own people, and anxious to have you admire them also; but I don’t
+care, I am glad to have such relations. For, a little before her
+departure, the old lady sent word that she wished to see us; and when we
+had come to sit beside her, she told us that she had decided to confer
+family names upon us, choosing the names which had given the power and
+which belonged to the ruling chief. Consequently Atamo takes the name of
+Tauraatua, Chief of Amo, meaning Bird Perch of God, and I of Teraaitua,
+Captain of that ilk, meaning Prince of the Deep. The old lady said all
+this with great sweetness and majesty, and we were greatly touched by
+the compliment.</p>
+
+<p>This afternoon we went to see the little place which is Amo, and from
+which the Tevas were ruled. It is a small princi<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_321">{321}</a></span>pality only fifteen
+fathoms long, and is at present all overrun with trees, orange and guava
+mostly. But not so long ago, as Tati remembers, it was as it had been
+before the little river changed its course and tore it up&mdash;a large
+<i>paipai</i> or stone platform, edged with stones carefully set, long ones
+above, others with oval ends nicely finished below (turtle heads they
+are called). Here lived Tauraatua, sixteen generations back, simply and
+frugally, refusing to change his habits with increased power, and
+contented with cheap fare. Here on the little platform he drank <i>kava</i>,
+with the river running by; and once, while lying under its influence
+(dead drunk, as it were), came near being surprised by the enemy. Some
+little while ago the tall cocoanut tree was still standing, which had
+served as a lookout and watch-tower against the enemy; and from which
+the watcher had descried the invader just in time to save the chief, and
+have him carried away like a precious parcel.</p>
+
+<p>For Tati informs me that here <i>kava</i> was not the mild drink of the
+Samoan. It is apparently the same root to the sight, but whereas whole
+bowlfuls did not affect us, and whites are accustomed to it in Samoa, a
+glassful here, according to Tati, was and is a serious drink. Its charm
+lay apparently in the drowsiness and dreaminess it produced; people
+spoke of their having been dead under it, or of having seen things, as
+with<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_322">{322}</a></span> opium or haschich (hemp), and to-day opium is killing the last of
+the Marquesans. It could be nothing more than to carry out more
+completely what seems to us fierce whites the meaning of these lands&mdash;to
+exist without effort, in indolence, and waiting for nothing to happen.
+The narcotic would condense it all, would bring a year of dreams into a
+something that could be felt like a single act, like an occurence that
+comes to you, instead of your making it, little by little, so that the
+beginning is forgotten at the very middle of the tale.</p>
+
+<p>Such happiness was broken into by noise, and chiefs demanded, for their
+hours of <i>kava</i> influence, absolute silence about them; not even a cock
+might crow. One can understand the objection to it made here by the
+missionaries, which seen from our Samoan experience seemed useless and
+cruel. Another example of a momentary or local matter becoming built
+into a principle.</p>
+
+<p>We went to see the new duchy; Adams took off an orange as a manner of
+investiture. I made an effort to see if I remembered it in a previous
+existence, but I did not. Tati remembered it, of course, and the place
+near by, all overgrown with great mango trees that have crowded over it,
+where his mother lived, and where the stone copings mark the base of the
+native house and a platform outside.</p>
+
+<p>Later on Queen Marau told us of the trick by which the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_323">{323}</a></span> great Chief of
+Amo won influence, having claimed limits which were contested by
+powerful opponents. He left the decision to the great god Oro (whose
+temple, you know, was at Tautira), and where he was when a voice called
+from some unknown place and “gave him right.”</p>
+
+<p>This is the story exactly as Queen Marau told it.</p>
+
+<p class="cspc">STORY OF THE LIMITS OF THE TEVAS</p>
+
+<p>When Oro was Chief of Papara, Hurimaavehi of Vaieri was ruling over all
+this side (Mataeia). A woman brought about the overthrow of Vaieri and
+the headship of Papara.</p>
+
+<p>Oro had a son whose friend, named Panee, was the father of a beautiful
+daughter, beautiful enough to attract the notice of all, as indeed it
+was the glory of the place to do. Hurimaavehi, having heard of her
+beauty, had her carried off at night, by men sent for the purpose. Her
+father, in his distress, not knowing what had befallen her, but guessing
+at it, sought her up to every limit. One day, while he was inquiring at
+the limit near Mataeia, he saw two men coming toward him.</p>
+
+<p>“Where from?” said he.</p>
+
+<p>“From Vaiari.”</p>
+
+<p>“And how is Hurimaavehi, and all around him, and what new beauty have
+you in Vaiari?<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_324">{324}</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>The two travellers answered. “If you talk of beauty, there is a wonder
+has sprung out there, and she belongs to Hurimaavehi.”</p>
+
+<p>“She must be well treated?” inquired the old man suspiciously.</p>
+
+<p>The two said, “No indeed! She has been passed down to the servants
+(<i>Teutunarii</i>), then sent to the dogs and the pigs and to the fish of
+the sea.”</p>
+
+<p>So the father, like a madman, called out all manners of insult against
+Hurimaavehi; and he rushed away (like a madman) to the limits of the
+district of Vaiari, and meeting five people&mdash;Tite and four others
+(<i>iatoais</i><a id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a>) under Hurimaavehi, he killed them (“which,” says the
+teller of the story, “was a challenge”), and he gave his insults to be
+repeated by the travellers to the Chief Hurimaavehi. So that Hurimaavehi
+was incensed, and came right over to Papara with his people.</p>
+
+<p>Now the girl’s father had told his friend, the son of Oro, that
+Hurimaavehi would be coming to attack, and why. And the son of Oro said,
+“Come with me”; and they went to his father Oro and told him, how
+Hurimaavehi was coming to kill them, and why.</p>
+
+<p>Oro said to his son, “Hide under this <i>marae</i>” (the <i>marae</i><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_325">{325}</a></span> whose
+remains or rather whose place we saw at Amo), and to the other, “Do you
+go up this tree” (the famous cocoanut that served as a watch-tower),
+“and when he comes back attack and beat him.” He came with his men, they
+beat him, and Hurimaavehi ran off, with Oro and all his men after him,
+following on and taking possession of every limit, until he came to
+Teriitua. Then Teriitua said, “No further; this belongs to me.”
+(Hitiaa.)</p>
+
+<p>Then the limit was decided, as the famous story tells.</p>
+
+<p>This is the downfall of Vaiari and the rise of Papara.</p>
+
+<p>And the girl, having served her purpose of introducing the war, steps
+out of the story.</p>
+
+<p>The daughter of Panee, whose fame for beauty brought on this trouble to
+herself and subsequent enlargement of her people, was, as the story
+shows, known as a beauty far from home. Our brown ancestors admire
+beauty no less than other people; and looked upon it, as we do in many
+cases, as a good instrument, besides the credit to the family and the
+favour that goes with the possession of any social power. But you must
+always remember that our brown forefathers were eminently socialistic,
+or rather communistic, as their relatives all over the Pacific are
+still. Never forget this for a moment, whenever you think of them or
+read about them or any habits of theirs. We have developed from that
+point to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_326">{326}</a></span> a degree of individualism that can with difficulty understand
+what communism means. So that we are easily deluded and over-pleased, or
+horrified, when like views and systems are proposed in the western world
+for our descendants.</p>
+
+<p>Now then, the family, in the case of a lovely brown maiden, would not
+only be her own family (as we call it directly), but spread further and
+back, in all sorts of relatives, and from that spread out to the village
+and the tribe; so that her beauty would be a credit to the whole place.
+Hence she would become a show-piece; and her immediate parents, with the
+good-will of the community, would guard her beauty, would feed her well
+and daintily, to make her smooth and fat; would keep her out of the sun
+that might darken her skin, fairer than that of others, if still brown
+to our snow-blinded eyes.</p>
+
+<p>She would then occasionally be seen; and it was considered a proper and
+justifiable extravagance for even a lesser person to have a <i>paipai</i>, or
+stone exterior foundation to his house, upon which his fair child could
+be seen. And at certain intervals she would take her bath in public with
+others, and her physical charms be fairly judged. Nor must we think that
+all this is brutal&mdash;no more than with us to-day.</p>
+
+<p>The girl was also judged by her manners, her courtesy and her modesty;
+for she thought no more of showing her legs than do our young women of
+showing their necks and bosoms<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_327">{327}</a></span> and backs; and she had the same notion
+that they have that there are strict limits&mdash;even though hers might not
+be ours. You will remember, perhaps, in early accounts, the pretty
+description of women playing on the shore or in the water, at games of
+ball, as did Nausicaa in the days of Ulysses.</p>
+
+<p>Many times have I heard allusions to the habit of keeping in one house a
+number of the girls together, beauties of the place. And if I remember
+right, it was to such a residence that the celebrated Turi contrived to
+pass, notwithstanding the difficulties put in his way&mdash;difficulties all
+the more interesting as mere delays; for the young women had heard of
+his exploits and expected as much of him. But then, if I remember also,
+he lived in those days when people, especially the heroes of tales,
+could be gifted with the power of changing their forms at will. And who
+could have guessed in the decrepit or leprous old man, pitied for his
+sorrows by the tender women, the gay Lothario heard of through all
+islands. Still less could he be discovered in the fish that was caught
+by the old women who supplied the women’s house with food. He it was who
+dug the great tunnel through the mountain, in order to approach his love
+without detection&mdash;her who was Ahupu Vahine of Taiarapu, of whom
+Stevenson, in the notes of his Ballads, says that he has not yet been
+able to find out<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_328">{328}</a></span> who she was. Why! there is a whole “Chronique
+Scandaleuse” of that period of earliest history.</p>
+
+<p>Oro then belonged to the younger Vaiari, and seized the power of the
+older branch.</p>
+
+<p>Let us take up the story as he pursues his enemy into the territory of
+Teriitua, Chief of Hitiaa, who checked his advance, disputing, most
+naturally, the limits that were being conquered. So that they left the
+decision to the Gods, as I understand, upon Oro’s proposal.<a id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></p>
+
+<p>Upon a day appointed they met for the invocation; but Oro had determined
+to help himself that he might be helped; as many pious men have done and
+will do again. A friend of his, whom tradition names Aia, was concealed
+carefully in a hole or hollow place, near the disputed boundary.
+Teriitua’s call upon his gods, being met only by the silence of the
+woods, Oro called out, pointing out, I suppose, what he wished, “Is it
+here?” And his friend answered, “It is here.”</p>
+
+<p>The cause of Oro won; a little, perhaps, because according to all
+tradition, he was a doughty warrior who intended to have his way.</p>
+
+<p>We now belong to both the “Inner” and “Outer” Teva: Te Teva Iuta and Te
+Teva Itai, the whole eight, whose clans reached all down this side of
+the island, and into the next;<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_329">{329}</a></span> for we have been adopted twice, both at
+Tautira, and here&mdash;into the two divisions.</p>
+
+<p>The place has now for us an increased charm; a still more subtle
+influence envelops me when I think that this is the home of Amo and
+Oberea, who first met Wallis and Cook; and as I look from the violet
+beds of one of the princesses to the solemn hills of dark green crowned
+with cloud, I wonder if somewhere there may be the hidden tomb of
+Oberea, now my ancestress, the quiet familiar surroundings became solemn
+with this great reminder of the mountains and the ocean that faces them.</p>
+
+<p>I listen now, with a curiously new interest, to the explanations of the
+meanings of landmarks and to their names full of associations for the
+Teva line. We have it explained to us that each chief had a <i>marae</i>, a
+temple associated with the sacredness of his name; and many rules
+concerning its foundation; and the places within it reserved to chiefs
+through heredity and heredity alone.</p>
+
+<p>Each chief had also a <i>moua</i> or mountain; an <i>Otu</i> or cape or point of
+land; a Tahua or gathering-place, from which he ruled. Every point, says
+the island proverb, has a chief.</p>
+
+<p>For the Teva the oldest <i>marae</i> was Farepua in Vaiari, from which, by
+taking a stone from it, Manutunu, the husband of the fair Hototu, mother
+of the first Teva, founded the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_330">{330}</a></span> <i>marae</i> of Punaauia for his son. (He
+called it so because of his uncle, who dead was rolled up like a
+fish&mdash;<i>iia</i>.)</p>
+
+<p>From these two <i>maraes</i>, many <i>maraes</i> along the coast, and in Moorea
+took their origin and proved the family descent. The Moua of Papara was
+Tamaiti; its Outu was Monomano; its Tahua, Poreho; its <i>marae</i>, Tooarai.
+Our adopted mother’s name is Teriitere Itooarai, which you will remember
+is the name of the son of Oberea and Amo.</p>
+
+<p>Taputuarai in the small district of Amo was the original <i>marae</i> of
+Papara, and from that Amo took the stones to build the <i>marae</i> of
+Tooarai on the point of Mahaiatea.</p>
+
+<p>A poem traditional in the family gives expression to the value of these
+points&mdash;to the attachment to and desire to be near them again, in the
+mind of an exile, one of the Papara family. The family seems to have
+been represented by the Aromaiterai and the Teriterai, one of whom ruled
+in the absence of the other.</p>
+
+<p>How far back this was composed, nor exactly how it happened that one
+brother, Aromaiterai, was banished, I do not know. One or other branch
+seems to have been always jealous of the other; but in this case one
+Aromaiterai was banished and forbidden to make himself known. He was
+sent into the peninsula to Mataoa, from which place he could see across
+the water the land of Papara and its hills and cape. The<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_331">{331}</a></span> poem which he
+composed, and which is dear to the Tevas, revealed his identity:</p>
+
+<p class="cspc">LAMENT OF AROMAITERAI</p>
+
+<p>From Mataoa I took to my own land Tianina, my mount Tearatapu, my valley
+Temaite, my “drove of pigs” on the Nioarahi.<a id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p>
+
+<p>The dews have fallen on the mountain and they have spread my
+cloak.<a id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a>Rains, clear away, that I may look at my home! <i>Aue! Aue!</i> the
+wall of my dear land! The two thrones of Mataoa<a id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> open their arms to
+me Temarii (or Amo).</p>
+
+<p>No one will ever know how my heart yearns for my mount of Tamaiti.<a id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></p>
+
+<p>Could anything be finer than the rallying cry of the Tevas:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Teva the wind and the rain!”<br></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>For a line running back to origins confused with the brute forces of the
+world; originating with divine creatures half animal&mdash;with the princes
+of double bodies, half fish, half man, what more poetic reminder of the
+intimacy with parental nature.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_332">{332}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I sometimes think of our chiefess as being able to feel with Phaedra,
+that the encompassing world is full of her ancestry.<a id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a></p>
+
+<p>And here the heroic line brought down through ages to the present day,
+brings back to my mind the tradition that the lines of the fabulous
+Homeric heroes were carried into the new Christian world as far as the
+days of St. Jerome. Nor was the suggestion of the thought of Phaedra,
+claiming kinship with the universe, so far from the echo of the name of
+Queen Marau, whose further name is Taaroa, the great first god whose
+relation to the world is given in the verses:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“He was; Taaroa was his name.<br></span>
+<span class="i1">He rested in the void.<br></span>
+<span class="i1">No land, no sky,<br></span>
+<span class="i1">No sea, no man,<br></span>
+<span class="i1">And he alone existing took the shape of the universe.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“The pivots are Taaroa:<br></span>
+<span class="i1">The rocks,<br></span>
+<span class="i1">The smallest sands are Taaroa.<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Thus he called himself.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Taaroa is the light,<br></span>
+<span class="i1">He is the germ.<br></span>
+<span class="i1">He is the base,<br></span>
+<span class="i1">The strong who created the world:<br></span>
+<span class="i1">The great and holy world<br></span>
+<span class="i1">The shell of Taaroa.<br></span>
+<span class="i1">He moves it, he makes harmony.”<br></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_333">{333}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The records of the past are all in words handed down; and the absence of
+any outer form to antiquity makes me seek it all the more in the nature
+which surrounds me, in the imaginary presence of the people who lived
+within it.</p>
+
+<p>One great disappointment awaited me: I had hoped to find some form in
+the great <i>marae</i> or temple built by Oberea, in her pride of place,
+which Cook speaks of as the principal building of the island, and
+describes as an imposing monument. We found it only a vast mass of loose
+coral stones, treacherous to the foot and retaining but a vague and
+unimpressive outline. Still it was upon the shore, by the beautiful sea,
+and the funereal <i>aito</i> or ironwood trees sacred to temples still grew
+upon it. Stewart, the planter who for a term of years was able to keep
+up a great estate, at the head of a company behind him, planned on a
+grand scale, and who then failed, was allowed to use the stones of the
+<i>marae</i> as a quarry for his roads and walls. Even before that time
+neglect and the destruction brought about by the enmities to the old
+paganism must have changed its shape and destroyed its outline. To-day
+it is impossible to recognize the form described by Cook. It was made,
+he says, of a series of steps rising in pyramid way, to a top layer
+ridged like a roof; and its long sides, which hollowed in slightly, were
+some two hundred and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_334">{334}</a></span> thirty feet in length. Now it is a sad ruin,
+shapeless and barbarous.</p>
+
+<p>As I left it I remembered that Moerenhout, visiting here some sixty
+years ago, says that few natives except the great Chief Tati saw without
+superstitious fear the cutting down of the majestic trees which had
+witnessed for centuries the ceremonies of the forbidden worship, and had
+survived the decadence of the temples which they adorned. When he adds,
+the great trees had been cut down which shaded the <i>marae</i> further
+inland, specially sacred to the chiefs of Papara, which had been that of
+Tati himself and of his children, a rumour spread about the country that
+the water of the little river, the river that ran through our ancestral
+domain of Amo, had reddened, and blood had trickled from the trunks of
+the prostrate trees.</p>
+
+<p>Last month, at Tautira, the absence of all vestiges of the great <i>marae</i>
+of the God Oro, was more impressive than the formless mass of stone
+associated with the name of Oberea. It is always a disappointment to
+notice how little this race has turned to the arts of form. I mean this
+race as I have seen it, in Samoa and in Tahiti. Elsewhere it may have
+done something, but here the form of music only has been reached&mdash;the
+earliest mode of expression. And though the Polynesian still shows good
+taste in colour and choice in arrangement, he<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_335">{335}</a></span> seems to have taken but
+the very first steps in the adornment of surfaces or the arrangement of
+masses. It is possible that there is something strenuous and needing
+sustained effort in the plastic arts which these sensuous races, urged
+by no contrarieties to find some escape out of the present, were too
+indolent and contented to achieve.</p>
+
+<p>&#160; </p>
+
+<p>I have made many notes that I shall string together as I best can; but I
+am ineffably lazy, and this is the place for me in the house of Tati. I
+sleep in the rooms where his great-uncle Tati, the great Chief, died: he
+who ruled here at the beginning of the new dispensation, who was a child
+in the days of the first discoverers, and who lived well into the
+fifties. He was saved from the massacre of the Papara family when a
+child, through some recognition of the behaviour of Manea the high
+priest when he saved the pride of Tetuanui in her contest with the pride
+of Oberea.</p>
+
+<p>So that the revenge of Tetuanui spared this boy, who became an important
+man representing the great Teva house. But that was only after the son
+of Amo and Oberea had died by accident, leaving to the Pomaré Chief no
+equal rival; and after Tati’s brother Opufara had died in battle bravely
+defending the Pagan side against the Pomaré, helped by the rifles of the
+Christians.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_336">{336}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Tati had apparently refused to avail himself of the offer of Pomaré,
+before his death, to appoint him regent, nor did he consent to our
+chiefess being made queen: for he seems in many ways to have asked for
+the best interests of his nation, and always with higher motives. There
+are interesting descriptions of his influence and of his dramatic
+eloquence, which Moerenhout compares to the action of Talma, the
+greatest of French actors. I read about him in Moerenhout’s volumes; I
+make sketches during the day, and talk to the Tati of this moment,
+enjoying the sound of his voice and his laugh, and the freedom of the
+children, and the movement of the servants.</p>
+
+<p>There is one who is always hard at work doing everything, who is really
+Marau’s, a girl of good family, a sort of relation of mine now, and who
+is called Pupuri (if I catch it right), “Blonde”; and she is blond; her
+hair is absolutely gold, and when she has her back turned and her hair
+down you would suppose some foreign visitor from northernmost Europe.
+She is fair, a little red, like an Irish woman, with whitish lashes, and
+eyes that do not stand the light well.</p>
+
+<p>Madame sits at one end of the piazza; the ladies flit in and out of
+their rooms and sometimes talk to us.</p>
+
+<p>Next to our house, where some women have beds and others mats for
+sleeping, there are other houses for cooking, and for</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="illbw_011">
+<a href="images/ill_041.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_041.jpg" width="432" height="550" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">YOUNG TAHITIAN GIRL</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_337">{337}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">servants who are in reality dependents. Sometimes members of the family
+eat there, in native fashion, of native cooking, instead of coming to
+the table at which we sit on one end of the verandah. Near by is a
+little garden growing on what was once the enclosure of a house; and the
+little river runs rapidly a few yards off, hidden in part by trees; at
+which women go down to wash, and which men and boys cross to bathe, and
+in which splash the horses when they are washed in the morning. It is
+all delightful and rustic.</p>
+
+<p>We are arranging with Tati about going to Moorea, the island opposite
+Tahiti, where we can be in the mountains that come right down to the
+water.</p>
+
+<p>As the island makes a perfect triangle, the clustering together of its
+mountain peaks, seen from Papeete, used to look like some background of
+early Venetian pictures, inspired by the Dolomites that Titian knew when
+a boy. Tati has a plantation and house there to which we shall go; and
+the family are strong in the island, having antique rights and
+inheritances in different districts.</p>
+
+<p>We shall stay only a few days here, and then sail or row across to the
+fantastic island that has made a distance of blue and gold to our days
+in Papeete, and behind which the sunsets used to sink in every variety
+of indescribable splendour or delicacy.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_338">{338}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="spc">Papeete, May 22, 1891.</p>
+
+<p>We did not leave by the steamer; by some curious chance unknown before,
+it was filled with passengers. It is true that it does not take a large
+number to fill it. We feared discomfort, and hurrying back from Moorea,
+we nevertheless lazily let it get away from the point on the coast to
+which it had gone for its cargo of oranges. Whether or no Tauraatua had
+already presented to his mind the alternative that opened to us I do not
+know, but we turned at once to a longer sea trip and a less probable
+one: to taking a little schooner that had just come from Raiatea, and
+getting its captain to carry us to Fiji. Thus we should also now be able
+to call at the leeward islands, Raiatea, Huahine, and Bora Bora, and
+leave, as it were, our cards. For it seems sad enough to give up the
+Marquesas; especially as every day we hear something in detail about
+them. Captain Hart tells us too that there is one <i>Typee</i> perhaps still
+alive; and gives me something of the story of a savage whose photograph
+is on the bookcase of his office&mdash;a gentleman whom Stevenson met, and a
+lover of human flesh. Indeed, the story goes, that once upon a time he
+had had thoughts of dining upon the captain&mdash;after a previous murder, of
+course. Now, to know a cannibal and perhaps to become his brother&mdash;for
+that would be a natural result of his acquaintance, as our relationship
+is just now in</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="ill_025">
+<a href="images/ill_042.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_042.jpg" width="458" height="550" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">PEAK OF MAUA ROA, ISLAND OF MOOREA, SOCIETY ISLANDS,
+TAHITI</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_339">{339}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">demand through these latitudes&mdash;is an awful temptation. Were there
+anything more to it&mdash;were there anything said that might lead one to
+believe that he or any other such might really become known and
+understood&mdash;perhaps might one think that the two weeks’ sail against the
+wind would not be too much sea to travel over for a result. But I can
+make out no such probability from any cross-questioning that I have been
+able to conduct; and the portrait of the <i>indigène</i> in question suggests
+a heavy, sullen brutality not at all romantic. I should not care to use
+him as a model for any picture of <i>Typee</i>, where the eating of man was
+apparently something like a duty or a necessity, not a mere <i>gourmet</i>
+liking for a certain richness of taste. No; we need, after all, more
+inducement than that one.</p>
+
+<p>The portrait of the Queen is more of an invitation: there is something
+in her face and the impression we receive from “Prince” Stanislas
+Moanatini that warrants that we shall be well treated.</p>
+
+<p>Still we are trying to get away in this other direction; that way at
+least the winds are in our favour, and two weeks’ sailing would see us
+in Fiji or near it; and then in a few weeks more we might be on our
+return homeward. For all considered, we must make up our minds either to
+let this thing go on, and drift about the South Seas, taking up the
+island<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_340">{340}</a></span> groups one by one, as chance will have it, or we must make a
+stern choice and hold to that. And that choice points more and more to
+our saying good-bye to these eastern islands, and to determining that we
+have really seen Brown Polynesia, even if it be only in these three
+groups, and that the rest is a matter of detail. But it may not be so
+easy to leave by that little schooner or by any other.</p>
+
+<p>There is a demand for small schooners&mdash;that is to say, they have to go
+around to the groups to pick up cargoes; and the one German firm whose
+boat runs near enough would like to put the screws on to the uttermost.
+<i>More Germanico</i>, even money is not enough&mdash;there must be no
+equality&mdash;and the last alternative so far has been the offer of a
+passage in a little boat, with other passengers, native women, and a
+full cargo; which means every available space filled (so that we would
+merely have our berths to lie in); and that passage to certain places
+first, and then afterward, when the schooner has discharged its cargo at
+leisure, to take us from the last point to Fiji. For these discomforts
+we should have to pay $2,700, within $300 of the value of the schooner.
+The other passengers would pay $15, which would be the average value. We
+offered $3,000 for the use of another schooner, having ascertained that
+she was unprofitable to the same owner; to which he answered by sending
+her off; and told us that upon<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_341">{341}</a></span> conditions of a like nature we might
+have her by and by. The place develops curious sides of what is called
+business; and this may be an example. Fancy anywhere else a person
+offered the full value of a bit of non-productive property for a few
+weeks’ rent, and hesitating so as to couple difficult conditions with
+his leave. But I think our German will come short of his enormous
+profit: the steamer that brings cattle here from Auckland and carries
+back fruit will probably be our choice; it is only waiting three weeks
+more, and economizing several hundred dollars a week&mdash;never a cruel
+thing to endure.</p>
+
+<p>And our stay is such an easy thing; it is only because neither of us has
+the future before him, but on the contrary, a considerable past filled
+with the habit of work, that we make the slightest effort to resist our
+contentment. The weather is such as people might travel far to seek: an
+equable warmth, a little coolness at night and in the morning, an
+evenness that makes a couple of degrees count for a great deal, plenty
+of moving air, a beautiful sea, a beautiful sky, and a beautiful
+distance at all hours of the day and even of the moonlit nights.</p>
+
+<p>The Moorea lies in front of us, on half of the horizon; the little
+shipping blocks up part of the space; grass-covered quays are before us,
+shaded with trees under which pass<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_342">{342}</a></span> groups of natives or straggling
+French soldiers and sailors, or the few residents that live this way. At
+times all is silent and solitary; at others carts roll noisily; horses,
+ridden wildly by native boys, canter past, or some schooner comes in and
+unloads almost in front of us. Great excitement comes upon us with these
+arrivals, far greater than with the arrival or departure of the war
+steamer that serves to carry about the Governor or officials on tours of
+inspection, and whose presence brings the sunset gun, saluted by the
+customary refrain of the clarion, and the eight o’clock gun with another
+blast, as if reporting that the discharge had struck.</p>
+
+<p>Lately too we have been interested in the arrival of Narii Salmon in his
+boat from the Pomotus, bringing other members of the family. This
+impending arrival has brought several times to our verandah the two
+younger ladies of the family, to scan the distance with our glasses.
+Since the night when Narii ran in, passing the reef in the twilight, our
+beautiful new sisters have been less frequent. It was a pretty event,
+the arrival of the little boat, for which others had daily been
+mistaken; the settling of its identity by its marks; the recognition of
+its owner by its sailing bravely in through the pass in the dark; then
+the calls from the shore to know if it were he for sure, and who was on
+board; and the boats hurrying out and coming back, all in a silence so
+great that the slightest<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_343">{343}</a></span> rustle of sail or cordage or steps on deck
+could be distinctly heard.</p>
+
+<p>At times the only sound is the wavering fall of the little column of
+water that drips from the mouth of a fountain into the sea&mdash;to which we
+go for our supply of pure water. Its threads, thicker or thinner, with
+the pulsations of the headstream thousands of feet far back, or with the
+draught of the wind, make a corded silver fan against the blue sea
+during the day; in the night a line of tinted light.</p>
+
+<p>These are fine days; but our first stay after our return from Moorea ran
+over a week of wet weather that kept all asoak, filled the house with
+damp and mould, and carried into and about it disagreeable things taking
+refuge in comparative dryness: the centipede that runs away, but bites
+if interfered with; the scorpion that lurks around dark corners, and
+scuttles off harmlessly enough, but looking like a child’s dream of a
+devil. The cockroach seems to rule over them, however, and to drive them
+away; and as the scorpion appears rarely in the house, and only in the
+verandah or outhouses, we have been lucky. Tauraatua has been bitten,
+but after a sharp pain like a cut, the matter has faded away. The memory
+is there, however, and I am glad of the changed weather. Our house, from
+whose verandah we look upon the sea across the road, and the reef near
+the horizon and Moorea swimming in light, is<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_344">{344}</a></span> the historic consulate
+empty of the Consul, whose place we take, his duties only being filled
+by Captain Hart, the Vice-Consul.</p>
+
+<p>Behind us, across the yard, is our dear old Chiefess’s home, where the
+Queen, Marau, and her sisters Piri and Manihinihi reside; so that we are
+near our new family, and we call in as often as our fears of intrusion
+may allow, or need of society, or freedom from so-called occupation.
+Tauraatua goes over more than I do; he has given up painting, and has
+returned to congenial and accustomed studies, by working at the
+genealogy of our new family, and helping to get it into written shape.</p>
+
+<p>For the old lady, Hinaarii, has begun to open the registers of memory,
+and to correct and make clear things kept obscure, partly from purpose
+as defences, partly from kindly motives toward others; partly because it
+is written that memories must perish and the past continually fade and
+disappear, in part at least. Genealogy, you know, in the South Seas,
+indicates not only one’s standing but one’s rights to land. Nothing is
+ever sold, nothing alienated by any law; so that in one’s name and in
+the names of one’s relations are the title deeds of what one has. And
+now the French Government, in its anxiety to extend all benefits of
+civilization, and to make all its peoples equals has desired to have
+everything put into proper shape; and as in Samoa, so everybody here
+must put<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_345">{345}</a></span> in his claim to the land, which thus will be duly recorded for
+good and all. For never again will be the time when a family might claim
+the fruit of a branch of a given tree. These genealogies, kept by
+hearsay, will be unfolded to the public, so far as needed, and claims
+settled; there will be no need of concealment, no fear that some side
+relation, in a little country, where such relationship must exist, will
+know enough to make out a tree of his own and come in with some claim.
+Everything conspires for getting some definite record just before the
+last veil closes over a past already dim enough. And Marau and Moetia
+are writing out songs and legends, and may be inspired, if their ardour
+can continue, to help to save something.</p>
+
+<p>Some years ago King Kalakaua of Hawaii had wished to obtain the
+traditions and genealogies; but the old lady had never been favourable;
+so that we feel that at least we have done no harm to the family, at
+least in our western notions, since we may help to save its records.</p>
+
+<p>It is a part of the charm of Tahiti that with it there is a history:
+that it has been the type of the oceanic island in story; that the names
+of Cook and Bougainville and Wallis and Bligh belong to it most
+especially; that from it have radiated other stories: the expeditions of
+the mutineers of the <i>Bounty</i>, and the missionary enterprises that have
+gone through the Pacific.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_346">{346}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>With its discovery begins the interest that awoke Europe by the apparent
+realization of man in his earliest life&mdash;a life that recalled at least
+the silver if not the golden age. Here men and women made a beautiful
+race, living free from the oppression of nature, and at first sight also
+free from the cruel and terrible superstitions of many savage tribes. I
+have known people who could recall the joyous impressions made upon them
+by these stories of new paradises, only just opened; and both Wallis’s
+and Bougainville’s short and official reports are bathed in a feeling of
+admiration, that takes no definite form, but refers both to the people
+and the place and the gentleness of the welcome.</p>
+
+<p>That early figure of Purea (Oberea) the Queen, for whom Wallis shed
+tears in leaving, remains the type of the South Sea woman. With Cook she
+is also inseparably associated and the anger of the first missionaries
+with her only serves to complete and certify the character. One will
+always remember the imposing person who, after the terrors of the first
+mistaken struggle, approached Wallis with the dignity he describes,
+welcomed him and took care of him, even, as he says, to carrying him,
+since he was ill, in her arms, as if he were a child. One would like to
+go back in mind to the time, if it were possible to realize the thoughts
+that must have come upon Oberea and Amo her husband on this appearance
+of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_347">{347}</a></span> great ship and the strange men&mdash;a floating island as they first
+thought it, which they attacked as a portent of ill. Something like this
+will be felt by our descendants when from some distant planet the first
+discoverers shall drop on earth. And so Amo and Oberea come in and out
+of the stories of the first discoverers, even until forty years after,
+when the missionaries of the <i>Duff</i> speak of the poor lady with harsh
+words and (1799-1800) no pity for her frailties.</p>
+
+<p>Now Oberea (Purea) was our old Chiefess’s great-great-grand-aunt, as Amo
+was her great-great-grand-uncle; and now, with one remove further, she
+is ours by adoption.<a id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> (You must ever remember that we belong to Amo;
+that is the special name of place attached to ours.)</p>
+
+<p>And everything that concerns the family of the Tevas interests us
+exceedingly. Does it not interest you also? This <i>living connection</i>
+with the indefinite archaic past, does it not bring back the freshness
+of early days, in which, reading of the voyages, our minds shaped
+pictures of what these places and their people were? Now for me it is a
+pleasure, half touching, half absurd, to look upon the queer pictures of
+the little place we lived in at the end of Uponohu Bay, as it<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_348">{348}</a></span> is
+represented in the prints of Cook’s voyages, or the later one of the
+<i>Duff</i>; that place where Melville last lived during his last days on
+Moorea, as he tells in “Omoo”; and then to think of my own sketches, and
+the different eyes with which I must have seen it. In the same way, or a
+similar way, my impressions of to-day become confused and connected with
+these old printed records of the last century, until I seem to be
+treading the very turf that the first discoverers walked on, and to be
+shaded by the very trees.</p>
+
+<p>I have been drawing and painting somewhat lately, so I have been able to
+take fewer notes than Tauraatua. He is working assiduously, partly
+because he is engaged in congenial work, partly to urge Marau to go on
+and write her memoirs, which would then go back to a record of her
+ancestors. I, on my part, could not do it so well; and I am busy at my
+drawings, trifling as they are. But I regret it, as I see less of our
+neighbours, all of whom have their various degrees of charm.</p>
+
+<p>But I like to gather in without strict order these records and memories,
+even at the risk of Marau’s supposing that I am going to put into verse
+the extremely difficult poems she recites to us. This idea of hers is
+evidently a devilish suggestion of Tauraatua, who thereby shares the
+responsibility or throws</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="illbw_012">
+<a href="images/ill_043.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_043.jpg" width="413" height="550" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">SUN COMING OVER MOUNTAIN, EARLY MORNING, UPONOHU</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_349">{349}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">it off on me at will. Still I shall transcribe into prose some of the
+poems at least, to please you. They are woven into the story of the
+family and form part of its record, if one may say so; some of these
+form parts of methods of address, if one might so call it&mdash;that is to
+say, of the poems or words in order recited upon occasions of visiting,
+or that serve as tribe cries and slogans. So with the verses connected
+with the name of Tauraatua that are handed down. The explanations may
+(and do) <i>embrouiller</i> or confuse it; they did for me; but they make it
+all the more authentic, if I may so say, because all songs handed down
+and familiar must receive varying glosses. Where one sees, for instance,
+a love song, another sees a song of war. The Tauraatua of that far back
+day was enamoured of a fair maiden (her name was Maraeura) and lived
+with or near her. This poem, which is an appeal to him to return to duty
+or to home, or to wake him from a dream, is supposed to be the call of
+the bird messenger and his answer:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">(To)&#160; &#160;  Tauraatua that lives on the “Paepae” Roa (says)<br></span>
+<span class="i14">“euriri” the (bird) that has flown to the Rua roa:<br></span>
+<span class="i13">Papara is a land of heavy leaves that drag down<br></span>
+<span class="i14">the branches:<br></span>
+<span class="i13">Go to Teva, at Teva is thy home:<br></span>
+<span class="i14">to Papara that is attached to thee,<br></span>
+<span class="i14">thy golden land.<br></span>
+<span class="i13">The mount that rises before (thee) that<br></span>
+<span class="i14">is Mount Tamaiti.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_350">{350}</a></span><br></span>
+<span class="iq">(“Outu”) The point that stands on the shore is<br></span>
+<span class="i13">Outo monomono:<br></span>
+<span class="i13">It is the (place of) the crowning of a king who<br></span>
+<span class="i14">makes sacred<br></span>
+<span class="i13">Teriitere of Tooarai.<a id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> (Teriitere is the chief’s name<br></span>
+<span class="i14">as ruling over Papara)<br></span>
+<span class="iq">(Answer) Then let me push away the golden leaves<br></span>
+<span class="i14">of the Rua roa<br></span>
+<span class="i13">That I may see the twin buds of Maraeura<br></span>
+<span class="i14">on the shore.<a id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a><br></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Of this translation Tati made mincemeat one evening, describing as
+frivolous the feminine connection, and giving the whole a martial
+character. The few lines he changes I shall not give here in full;
+suffice it that he ends with this, which is fine enough:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“He is swifter (Tauraatau who is supposed to rush off) than the one
+who carries the fort.</p>
+
+<p>“He is gone and he is past before even the morning star was up.</p>
+
+<p>“The grass covering the Pare (Mapui-cliff) is trampled by
+Tauraatua.”</p></div>
+
+<p>I shall not have time to reconcile the versions, but Moetia seems
+impressed with the possibility of getting these things translated; and
+if all will unite, even if two versions are made, the songs will at
+least be <i>saved</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I have received from Marau two poems: one about a girl<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_351">{351}</a></span> asked to wed an
+old chief, one in honour of Pomaré; but Adams has become more Teva than
+the Tevas, and will not note it.</p>
+
+<p>And as a woman has come again into the story, as she has done often with
+the Tevas, for good and ill, let us go back to Oberea, the Teva princess
+whom Wallis first met, and met almost by chance, for she and her husband
+Amo were on a visit to the place where Wallis anchored and landed, and
+by this accident helped to displace later the centre of power, as has
+always happened where the white man has made his harbour.</p>
+
+<p>Oberea was on a visit to Haapape, where is the anchorage of Matavai; its
+chief Tutaharii. Tutaha (in Wallis’s book) was connected with the Papara
+family to which Amo, Oberea’s husband, belonged (and stripped, as a sign
+of respect, in presence of Amo and his little son Teriitere).</p>
+
+<p>The Tevas, whom Amo and Oberea represented, held the political supremacy
+of Tahiti. Their lands were further down the coast to the south than the
+districts which the first discoverers first knew, and separated from
+them by inimical chiefs, momentarily quiescent from fear and doubt. They
+were especially the Purionu and Teaharo, from whom the first discoverers
+received a great part of their information; then came, on the west
+coast, the little district of Faaa (or Tefanai Ahurai), from which came
+Oberea (Purea; her proper<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_352">{352}</a></span> name, Tevahine Avioroha i Ahurai), the
+daughter of its chief, Teriivaetua.</p>
+
+<p>Then came a large district known as the Oropaa, consisting of Paea,
+adjoining Papara, the chief place of the Tevas, and of Punavia, both
+these connected by family alliances with the Tevas.</p>
+
+<p>The Tevas (and family) held after them, further to the south, the whole
+south of the main island, and the whole of that half island called
+Taiarapu, which joins the main island at the narrow Isthmus of Taravao.
+The east was divided into three districts, but had no common head. Hence
+the Tevas, usually well combined, with strong clan feelings that last
+until to-day, controlled all the south and west of the island and
+Taiarapu, or two thirds of the population, and had only themselves to
+blame when deprived of their ascendency.</p>
+
+<p>The Tevas were divided, as they still are on the map to-day, into Inner
+and Outer Tevas; the Outer Tevas on Taiarapu (into which we were adopted
+by Ori), and the Inner Tevas on the main island (into which we were
+adopted by our good chiefess of Papara). These made the eight Tevas.
+Their origin, like that of all clans, is hidden in the night of legend,
+with the old myths of a semi-divine ancestor and an earthly mother.</p>
+
+<p>And as the women were to play a great part in the history<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_353">{353}</a></span> of the Tevas,
+it is but fair to begin, then, with that part of the life of Queen
+Hototu that made them.</p>
+
+<p class="cspc">THE ORIGIN OF THE TEVAS</p>
+
+<p>This, the earliest of the traditions of the family, was told me at
+different times by Queen Marau.</p>
+
+<p>At certain hours Tauraatua goes to the low cottage behind our house,
+that is open toward the King’s palace and the government house, but is
+entirely shut in by trees that fill the little garden, and which has a
+strange resemblance to many a little American home and is all the more
+wonderfully unreal. Then the Queen comes from some inner apartment and
+repeats the legends, poems and genealogies, and one or more of the
+sisters are often there and add comments or contradiction. During our
+absence the ladies are supposed to have prepared the material and to
+have arranged what documents they have, so that in many cases what
+little I shall quote will be the very words of our royal historian.
+Sometimes in early evening the Queen has walked down to the shore with
+her sister Manihinihi, and, sitting on the rocks under the lofty trees,
+answered my questions about these early ancestors. I can tell you the
+bald story. I cannot give you with it all that would have made any old
+story charming&mdash;the faces and forms of my instructors, their beautiful
+voices, the slight wash<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_354">{354}</a></span> of the sea into which Manihinihi sometimes put
+her bare foot, the wonderful stillness, the slight rush of the surf far
+out on the reef, the light of the afterglow, the blue ocean far away,
+the mountains of ancestral Moorea lit up after sundown, the shadows of
+the big trees moving over the water, and on our side right above us the
+great heights of the Aorai appearing and disappearing behind the many
+coloured clouds. At such moments I could forget for the present the
+little meannesses introduced by us Europeans and feel as if I were back
+in the time when my name was Teraaitua.</p>
+
+<p>They were my ancestors in fairyland of whom fairy stories were being
+told, and even the absurdities had the same charm of the stories of our
+nurseries which they so much resembled.</p>
+
+<p>The great ancestress Hototu, from whom come all the Teva, was the first
+queen of Vaieri. She married Temanutunu,<a id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> the first king of Punaauia.
+All this is in the furthest of historical records, as you will see by
+what happened to this king and queen at the time when gods and men and
+animals were not divided as they are to-day, or when, as in the Greek
+stories, the gods took the shapes of men or beasts to come and go more
+easily in this lower world which they had begun to desert.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of time this king left the island and made an</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="ill_026">
+<a href="images/ill_044.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_044.jpg" width="499" height="550" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">EDGE OF THE AORAI MOUNTAIN COVERED WITH CLOUD.<br>
+MIDDAY, PAPEETE, TAHITI</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_355">{355}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">expedition to the far-away Paumotu (pr. Pomotu). It is said that he went
+to obtain the precious red feathers that have always had a mysterious
+value to South Sea Islanders, and that he meant them for the <i>maro ura</i>
+or royal red girdle of his son, for he had a son by Hototu who was named
+Terii te Moanarao. The investiture with the girdle, red or white,
+according to circumstances, has the same value as our form of crowning,
+and took place as a solemn occasion in the ancestral temple or <i>marae</i>
+of these islands of the South Sea, but the red girdle seemed even in
+some Samoan lore to have an ancient meaning of royalty; I remember
+Mataafa, the great chief, asking me why the English Consul wore the red
+silk sash which he probably affected in his dress as being of an
+agreeable colour.</p>
+
+<p>While the king was far away in the pursuit of these red feathers to be
+gathered, perhaps, one by one, the queen Hototu travelled into the
+adjoining country of Papara, where we were the past month, and there she
+met in some way the mysterious personage, Paparuiia.<a id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> With this
+wonderful creature the queen was well pleased so that from them was born
+a son who later was called Teva, but this is anticipating.</p>
+
+<p>This was the time as we have told you when men and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_356">{356}</a></span> animals and gods
+were mixed, and this great ancestor of the Tevas was evidently some form
+of god. The story came to an end in a sudden way. While the king was
+still away, his dog Pihoro returned, and finding the queen he ran up to
+her and fawned upon her to the jealous disgust of Tino iia, one half of
+whom said to the other, “she cares for that dog more than for me. See
+how he caresses her!”</p>
+
+<p>So then he arose and departed in anger, telling her, however, that she
+would bear a son whom she should call Teva: that for this son he had
+built a temple at Mataua, and that there he should wear the <i>maro tea</i>,
+the white or yellow girdle, the chiefs of Punauia or Vaiari, who in this
+case were the king and queen, being the only ones that had the right to
+the <i>maro ura</i>, the red <i>maro</i> or girdle, for which you will remember
+that the king was hunting. Then he departed and was met by Temanutunu,
+the husband who had landed at Vairoa, and who entreated him to return.
+He refused just as the two Shark-princes, of whom I told you at Vaima,
+the little river that ran so clear near Taravao, refused another husband
+for a similar reason, saying that his wife was a woman too fond of dogs.
+“Vahine na te uri” (woman to the dogs). When I asked if he never came
+back, the queen, or was it Moetia, told me that since that day the
+man-fish had been seen many times.</p>
+
+<p>The dog is however much connected with the Papara family,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_357">{357}</a></span> and his
+presence is occasionally felt. Tati the brother of the queen told some
+stories of him. One of these stories refers to what happened to Narii
+when a child. His mother had him with her at the occasion of the
+building of a bridge near Papara. There were many hundred people there.
+Tati was there with his two nurses according to custom, and Narii had
+also the two who had charge of him. At evening one of the nurses saw
+something like a dog run up a tree above them, and into the branches,
+and at the same time something waved from him like rags. Just then the
+child was drawn from the arms that held him, his mother’s, but something
+grasped him firmly, while a ball of fire rushed out above him and went
+on to the sea some quarter of a mile distant. So many people saw part of
+this, namely, the ball of fire that there was no doubt of it.</p>
+
+<p>Nor must I forget to say that all about Papara there is a good deal in
+the way of ghosts or queer sights. For instance, just beyond the little
+enclosure of our hereditary Amo, where the little sluggish river runs in
+the woods beyond the ancient stone foundation, evergrown with trees,
+there are spaces where occasionally the figure of a man appears and
+disappears through the trees, and old rags of clothing flitter behind
+him. There last Saturday, while two men were at work, what at I don’t
+know, perhaps looking after vanilla, one of them looked<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_358">{358}</a></span> up and saw on
+the face of the little cliff, a small hole, not noticed before, out of
+which at once stepped an old man dressed partly in an ancient manner,
+who dusted his clothing as he got erect and then disappeared. The two
+men went to the spot and found the hole. There was some talk of
+enlarging it and digging into it, but the discoverer objected so
+strongly, and has still kept up his objection so well that nothing more
+has happened.</p>
+
+<p>The shark is connected with our cousin Ariie’s family at Tautira and has
+still power with them. Not so long ago Ariie’s mother came here worn out
+and dusty, having ridden instead of having been carried in her canoe as
+usual. She told the following story&mdash;she had intended to come but had
+declined to bring her daughter with her. Now her daughter is a believer
+in the shark, and she thereupon told her mother that she should not get
+off. Nothing would induce her to say more but the mother was rowed up
+inside the reef as we had been on the same course along the coast of
+Pueu. I don’t know exactly where it was, but somewhere in the evening
+the rowers complained that their path was obstructed by a large shark.
+The old lady ordered them to row on; as they did so she looked up from
+the bottom of the boat where she lay with her head wrapped up in the
+usual loin-cloth or <i>pareu</i>. She saw before them, an enormous shark,
+lying at right angles to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_359">{359}</a></span> the boat, partly out of the water, and all
+along his back a row of lights like lamps lit up the water. Unwillingly
+the men obeyed her orders to row on and struck the fish full on the side
+without making it move away, the boat running up on his back. Then she
+determined to return and when she got home, rebuked her daughter
+angrily, for she knew that it was her daughter who had done this, and
+rather than yield to her she had come the whole way with horses. Tati
+says the girl is known to have power that way and that she calls upon
+this protector when she is angry. Upon such occasions a special odour
+easily to be recognized as the smell of the shark fills the air. As far
+as I can see the shark is at least a cousinly god to us, somewhat of a
+relation and protector, and henceforth, I think as I suggested above, we
+ought to be safe from him at sea.</p>
+
+<p>As in the story of the ancestress, Queen Hototu, so important and
+aristocratic, freedom could belong to women where descent and
+inheritance placed her above others. Daughters transferred to their
+children rank and title, and consequently property, and in fault of
+other heirs could become chief. The mother, therefore, of an heiress to
+a title was another chief even to her husband, and had privileges that
+he could not have; for instance, a seat in the family temple. All this
+she transmitted to her child.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_360">{360}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The mother of our old chiefess was known by at least thirteen different
+names, each of which was a title, each of which conveyed land; so she
+was, for instance, Marama in Moorea and owned almost all the island; so
+she was Aromaiterai in Papara. This investiture would be received for a
+child, as child to a chief, would be carried to the family temple to be
+made sacred, as was done in this case, thirteen different temples having
+received the child, the mother of our chiefess. As in all Polynesia the
+Arii or chiefs were more or less sacred as was the ground upon which
+they rested; but that was only among their own connections. There the
+inferior chiefs, men or women, out of respect stripped themselves down
+to the waist. That is why Captain Wallis relates that Tutaha as well as
+Vairatoa, stripped in the presence of Amo, our ancestor, and his little
+son. Why exactly the wife of Vairatoa uncovered herself <i>up to the
+waist</i> when she presented cloth to Wallis, I have not been exactly able
+to find out, but Tati says it was probably from the same notion of very
+great respect.</p>
+
+<p>So you see the connection of the <i>marae</i> with the chieftain’s power; a
+knowledge of <i>maraes</i> and of the origin and descent of families is
+intimately connected. Each family had its stone in the <i>maraes</i> where it
+claimed family worship.</p>
+
+<p>The Teva’s original <i>marae</i> is said to be that of Opooa in the sacred
+island of Raiatea; but their own tradition makes it,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_361">{361}</a></span> as I have said, at
+Mataua, where the head of the Tevas wore the <i>maro tea.</i></p>
+
+<p>When Temanutunu, the husband of Hototu, mother of Teva, brought back the
+red feathers from the Pomotus, to be worn in <i>marae</i> by his son, he
+founded the temple or <i>marae</i> of Punaauia. Thus the story indicates that
+Vaiari and Papeari were the original centres, and Punauia and Papara
+chiefs wore the red or yellow girdle in right of descent from Vaiari. We
+must understand that power did not reside in the mere wearing of this
+girdle; it was only a symbol of the power of descent which represented
+alliances of families in a land where blood was everything, where a
+chiefess killed her child if not of high enough birth.</p>
+
+<p>Do you remember, or have you read, in the “Voyage of the <i>Duff</i>,” the
+terrible time the missionaries had with “Iddeah,” the wife of the older
+Pomaré? It is almost a pity not to quote it in full; and if I had the
+“Voyage” by me I should do so. Like Oberea, she was more or less
+separated from her husband, and had, like the great Catherine or the
+great Elizabeth, a young favourite who went about with her everywhere,
+as the missionaries saw. He was of low blood; hence the necessity of
+putting the child to death; and as all this was openly understood, the
+missionaries undertook to persuade “Iddeah” (as the missionaries called
+her) to abandon the hereditary<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_362">{362}</a></span> notion. Notwithstanding every
+exhortation, she declined to do so, and killed her child according to
+custom; though like a politic person, she promised not to do so again.
+And I have told you about the late Queen Pomaré and her affairs.</p>
+
+<p>Hence again, everywhere the <i>marae</i> comes into the story of the islands;
+with it, of course, begins the families&mdash;no <i>marae</i>, no family&mdash;and with
+the building of the greatest <i>marae</i> of all, the one that Cook saw and
+described in its new importance, the power of the Tevas culminated and
+was broken forever. You know that we saw its ruins on the beach of
+Atimaono, and walked up the crumbling slopes of coral, with Pri and
+Winfred Brander, whose ancestors built the family temple.</p>
+
+<p>The pride of the Tevas, the pride of Oberea, brought on the revenge of
+the offended. But that part of the story I must put off, and tell you
+some of those that go further back.</p>
+
+<p>The Tevas were proud and domineering, but the family of Papara, of which
+was Amo, and where flourished Oberea his wife, were still more so; for
+Papara was the leader politically. Historically the chieftainesses of
+Vaiari and Punaauia, as we saw by the story of the origin of the Tevas,
+were older and of greater dignity; but it was the Chief of Papara who
+called out the Tevas, who presided over them, and who alone had the
+right to order human sacrifices for the clans.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_363">{363}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There were, as you know, eight Tevas, inner and outer, the inner ones
+Papara, Atimaono, Mataiae, and Papeari; the four outer ones, the four
+districts of the peninsula of Taiarapu; Paea and Punaauia were
+tributary. The origin of this limitation, the origin of this power, goes
+back to some great and uncertain distance which I have not been able to
+ascertain, but it may be a thousand years back or not more than five or
+six hundred. That could perhaps be determined more closely by a more
+extended inquiry. At that time Papara was subject or tributary to
+Vaiari, and when Mataiea belonged to the Chief of Vaiari.</p>
+
+<p>For this liberation of Papara, and placing it at the head of the Tevas,
+Oro, not the god, but a chief of that name, is the cause. He was a small
+chief within Papara. His father’s name was Tiaau; you will remember my
+speaking of him in connection with the little chiefery of Amo, to which
+Adams and I have succeeded; and you may remember the story of the chief
+and of his <i>paepae</i><a id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> there, all grown over now, and of the cocoanut
+that served as a watch-tower. It all comes into the story, if told in
+detail.</p>
+
+<p>There were thus battles and wars within the Tevas, and there is another
+story of Papara and our ancestors into which a woman comes again, and
+not only one woman but another.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_364">{364}</a></span> I leave it as I first wrote it down,
+though it suggests in itself much alteration and explanation. I shall
+call it:</p>
+
+<p class="cspc">THE STORY OF TAURUA OR THE LOAN OF A WIFE</p>
+
+<p>Tavi ruled in Taiarapu, known for his wild generosity, and for the
+beauty of his wife, Taurua Paroto. To him Tuiterai of Papara sent
+messengers, begging the loan of his wife for the space of seven days.
+There may have been hesitation on the chief’s part, but his habits of
+giving prevailed, and Taurua came to Papara, to spend her seven days
+with Tuiterai. At the end of that term she was not returned to her lord,
+who sent messengers for her.</p>
+
+<p>But Tuiterai refused. “I will not give her up,” he said, “I, Tuiterai of
+the six skies, her who has become to me like an <i>ura</i> to my eyes, rich
+<i>ura</i> brought from Raratoa&mdash;my dear gem! I have treasured her now, and I
+treasure her yet, as the <i>uras</i> of Faaa; and I shall not give her up
+now. No, I shall not give her&mdash;why should I give her up&mdash;I, Tuiterai, of
+the six skies; for she has become precious beyond the <i>uras</i> of
+Raratoa?” Thus the song preserves his refusal; so Tavi made war upon
+him, and Tuiterai was defeated and made prisoner, and was upon the point
+of being put to death. But he pleaded with his captors who had bound
+him, claiming that he should be taken to Tavi, and, if killed, then
+killed by him a chief. So<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_365">{365}</a></span> that they carried him away in a canoe, all
+tied up, that he could neither move nor see; and his bonds increased the
+faintness caused by his wounds. But he pressed his captors to hurry, for
+fear that he should die by his cords; and he knew how far he had gone,
+for his fingers, touching the waters, recognized the “<i>feeling of each
+river, as every skilful swimmer knows</i>.” At length he was brought before
+Tavi, and set before him, along with Taurua.</p>
+
+<p>But Tavi said to his men, “Why did you not kill him when you had caught
+him? It is not meet that I, a chief, should put him, a chief, to death.”
+And addressing Tuiterai he said, “It is you that have bound me with
+cords that bind my heart and make the skies gloomy, as if you had drawn
+them down and bound them over me. You have taken one who lay in my arms,
+and tied a knot between her and me, and you have broken the ropes that
+tied us together&mdash;her and me. Take her!”</p>
+
+<p>So Tuiterai won Taurua.</p>
+
+<p>But dark fate seems to have pursued the generous man, and later Tavi was
+defeated in war and fled to the Pomotu Islands, where he disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>The war again came from Taurua the beautiful: she had a son by Tavi, a
+son called Tavi Hauroa, and Teritua also, and names had been given him
+from other places, as Taurua came<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_366">{366}</a></span> from Hitiaa. For this child Tavi put
+a taboo (<i>rahui</i>) on his land, and tried to extend it further on,
+wherever he might claim. But Taaroa Manahune had married Tetuae-huri,
+the daughter of Vehiatua, and was expecting the birth of Teu.<a id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> “Your
+wife should eat pigs,” was said to Taaroa; so they eat the pigs,
+resisting the claim of Tavi, who being at Pai crossed at Tehaupo, and
+was beaten by Vehiatua. A part of the defeated returned from the Pomotu,
+and were granted the holding of Afaiti, under the boy Tavi Hauroa. But
+in an evil moment, he flew his kite over the <i>marae</i> of Fareupua, so
+that it was caught in the <i>aito</i> (ironwood&mdash;casuarina) trees; and at the
+instigation of Tunau, the high-priest, he was put to death. How and why?
+By whom? Was his companion also killed?</p>
+
+<p>There would seem to be a moral to this tale, which would run this way:
+that generosity is a doubtful quality, and that it is wiser to take
+another man’s wife than to let go your own.</p>
+
+<p>Some explanations I should have woven into this story for you, but I
+write almost directly from Marau’s recitation, and it was only afterward
+that I got from her some more details.</p>
+
+<p>In reality, the right of Tavi to place a general taboo or <i>rahui</i> on
+Taiarapu generally was a very questionable one. It might have been
+merely a question of pride that made him<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_367">{367}</a></span> insist upon it when his claim
+was weak. It was also, it would seem, a general desire in the other
+members of the clan to weaken its power or limit its range.</p>
+
+<p>By making a general <i>rahui</i> or taboo, as we call it, the chief had
+everything that grew, everything that was made, everything that was
+caught, set aside for a time, for some particular use: to make further
+feasts or for the food or the property of an heir, for instance. Hence
+its frequency after the birth of a young prince or princess. Or it might
+have been that some great feasts or generosities had depleted, if I may
+so call it, the treasury. Later even, some of the missionaries in
+Catholic Islands have found it useful to preserve the plants, and allow
+them to increase so as to prevent the recurrence of a famine.</p>
+
+<p>Tavi had only undisputed claim over Tautira, Afaahiti, Hiri, and in Tai.</p>
+
+<p>Vehiatua ruled over the southern and western parts of Taiarapu, as far
+as Teahupo and Vairoa.</p>
+
+<p>The little Teu, who was born of Tetuae-huri, the daughter of the
+Vehiatua that defeated poor Tavi, became the big and important Teu
+founder and first of the Pomarés, called kings by the missionaries, who
+did much to establish them in that position, unknown to the mind and the
+customs of the Polynesians of the East Pacific. The son of Tavi, who
+came back from the Pomotus, and was received in royal style and given<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_368">{368}</a></span>
+the district now called Afaahiti, was killed at the <i>marae</i> of Farepua
+of Vaiari, as I have just related.</p>
+
+<p>Among the chiefs who helped Teu to his new position was Terii nui o
+Tahiti, who bears a very interesting name: The Great Chief of Tahiti. In
+this case the word Tahiti refers to a <i>marae</i> of Vaieri, not to the
+island. Besides Farepua, Vaieri had this <i>marae</i> of Tahiti, which very
+probably gave its name to the island at some remote period; and it must
+have been a Teva name.</p>
+
+<p>The fortune of the Papara family seems to have come up at various times,
+and to have culminated at the time of Purea (our Oberea). Her pride and
+the pride of the Tevas brought about disaster long after she had passed
+from power. The woman began and the woman ended. She was married to Amo
+(of Cook), as we know (Teviahitua), and was herself the daughter of
+Vaetua, Chief of Faaa, the district between the Tevas and the Purionu;
+whence later were to come the Pomarés, enemies of the Tevas and of the
+house of Papara. Her real name was, as I have said before, Te Vahine
+Aviorohe i Ahurai. Her brother Teihohe i Ahurai had a daughter who
+married Vairatoa, whose daughter Marama was the mother of our old
+chiefess, and consequently the grandmother of <i>our</i> queen and
+princesses. In this way, then, Pomaré II, who became king, was the
+second cousin of this last Marama;<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_369">{369}</a></span> and, as in Tahiti cousins are
+brothers and sisters, Pomaré called her sister.</p>
+
+<p>Hence, again, the tendency between the last Pomarés and the old lady to
+make matters right again, and to join the families by marriage, as when
+Marau married the last Pomaré (V), or when Pomaré III wished our old
+chiefess to be queen, instead of the famous lady whom we know as Queen
+Pomaré, with whom our adopted chiefess was always most friendly and
+intimate.</p>
+
+<p>And so at the time of the last century, Purea, or Oberea, had no
+superior, unless the head of the older Vaiari branch. Teriirere, the son
+of Amo and Purea, was a child when Wallis came, hence must have been
+born in the neighbourhood of 1760; and in his honour and for his
+advantage, a <i>rahui</i> or taboo was placed upon all the Tevas for the
+child. The might of the <i>rahui</i> was great; the power to impose it, as it
+confirmed rights and prestige, gave great umbrage, and there was a way
+of breaking it without war that could be resorted to. That was to have a
+chief or person of equal rank, or a relation of the same degree, come as
+a guest to the place where the <i>rahui</i> existed. According to custom the
+guest was entitled to receive as guest all that could be given, and that
+meant all the accumulations of the <i>rahui</i>. Terii Vaetua, Purea’s own
+mother, determined to break it, and came from their home in<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_370">{370}</a></span> Faaa, in
+her double canoe, with the tent upon it indicative of royalty
+(<i>fare-oa</i>).</p>
+
+<p>The canoe bearing her mother entered the sacred pass in the reef
+opposite the <i>outu</i> of Mataiatea. This pass was reserved for princes
+alone. Purea was living at that time opposite the pass, some little way
+(two miles) from Papara, and called out to the canoe as it entered:</p>
+
+<p>“Who dares venture through our sacred pass? Know they not that the Tevas
+are under the sacred <i>rahui</i> for Teriirere i Tooarai? Not even the cocks
+may crow or the ocean storm.”</p>
+
+<p>Her mother answered, “It is (I am) Terri Vaetua, Queen of Ahurai.”</p>
+
+<p>“How many royal heads can there be?” said Purea. “I know no other than
+Teriirere. Down with your tent!”</p>
+
+<p>In vain Vaetua wept and cut her head, according to custom, with a
+shark’s tooth, until the blood flowed. She was obliged to return without
+a reception from Purea. Then a grand-daughter of Terii Vaetua, a girl
+under twenty, a niece of Purea’s, made an attempt in the same direction.
+But the same cry came from Purea: “Down with your tent!”</p>
+
+<p>Tetuanui (Reaiteatua) the girl, came ashore, sat down upon the beach,
+and in the same way cut her head until the blood flowed into the sand,
+according to the old custom, asking, if<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_371">{371}</a></span> unredeemed, blood for blood.
+Manea,<a id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> the high-priest, her brother-in-law, then came upon the
+scene. He feared the danger of making enemies of the Auhrai princesses,
+and he said thus: “Hush, Purea! Whence is the saying, the <i>pahus</i>
+(drums) of Matairea call Tutunai for a <i>maro ura</i> for Teriirere i
+Tooarai. Where will they wear the <i>maro ura</i>? <i>Maro ura</i>&mdash;the red girdle
+of royalty and surpreme chiefhood. In Nuura i Ahurai. One end of the
+<i>maro</i> holds the Purionu, the other end the Tevas; the whole holds the
+Oropoa.”</p>
+
+<p>(Words that I do not quite understand, as given by Marau, but which
+implied the danger of breaking up their union.)</p>
+
+<p>“I recognize no head here but Teriirere,” answered Purea.</p>
+
+<p>Then Manea, unable to do more than to clear himself, and make what
+amends were in his power, for the insult he could not prevent or turn
+away, wiped with a cloth the blood shed by Tetuanui, and took her to his
+house. When, forty years after, Tetuanui took her revenge in the
+massacre of the family of Papara, this action of Manea saved part of
+them; and through him we descend, in the male line, from the Tuiterai of
+the preceding generation. From Tetuanui, by her marriage with Varatao,
+the first Pomaré chief of the unfriendly Puri<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_372">{372}</a></span>onu, was born Pomaré II,
+the first king and he who became the chief enemy of the Tevas.</p>
+
+<p>Marau, in relating all this story, on different occasions, felt, I
+believe, the old pride of Purea beat through her: her voice rose in
+repeating the words: “Down with your tent!” and “I know no other royal
+head than Teriirere.” I could almost believe that it was she who
+asserted herself in the person of her great ancestress.</p>
+
+<p>But for all that, now before the final disaster, the house Papara seems
+to have met a great check again, in a display of the power and pride of
+Purea. She and Amo built for Teriirere a new <i>marae</i> on that same point
+where the ladies of Ahurai shed their blood in protest&mdash;Mahaiatea and
+Amo took its foundation stone (if I may so call it) from the original
+<i>marae</i> of Taputuoarai. Cook has described it as he saw it in 1764&mdash;the
+most important building of the kind he had seen. And over its remains I
+have scrambled, as you know, unawares of all that it had meant. How much
+better can I understand the resistance made by our old chiefess to
+letting it be used as a quarry for the buildings of the great plantation
+of Atimaono, the great sugar estate of the adventurer Stuart; now
+involved in a ruin like to that of the old temple. The chiefess, for
+this refusal, was removed from her position for a time; how reinstated I
+do<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_373">{373}</a></span> not know. You know that I told you before, she is a chiefess,
+recognized by the French Government, as well as by inheritance, Tati
+acting for her. It was one of those outrages that the new generations
+perpetrate on the old; and in this case more disgraceful than usual. But
+few people sympathize with the “<i>lachrymae rerum</i>” that touched the
+pagan poet.</p>
+
+<p>You must look up Cook’s description, which I have not by me. Everything
+in the way of books here is fragmentary, the public library usually
+unvisited, and many of its possessions scattered carelessly.</p>
+
+<p>The completion of this monument coincided with the beginning of the war
+that drove Amo and Oberea away, and ruined Papara for a time; a war
+which occurred between Cook’s first and second voyages; so that he found
+his former friends reduced in power and dignity. The Vehiatua of that
+time, with Taiarapu and the Purionu, joined in the attack upon Papara
+thus breaking the Teva power from within.</p>
+
+<p>There is a poem, difficult to render, which is associated with this
+completion of the <i>marae</i>, and which seems to bring the war from that.
+There has been much trouble to make a settled translation of it. The one
+which I add is a revised translation by Moetia, conferring with the
+others, whose translation<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_374">{374}</a></span> in the rough I have kept separate. I give you
+Marau’s own copy.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“A standard is raised at Tooarai<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Like the crash of thunder<br></span>
+<span class="i1">And flashes of lightning<br></span>
+<span class="i1">And the rays of the midday sun<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Surround the standard of the King<br></span>
+<span class="i1">The King of the thousand skies.<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Honour the standard<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Of the King of the thousand skies!<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“A standard is raised at Matahihae<br></span>
+<span class="i1">In the presence of Vehiatua<br></span>
+<span class="i1">The rebels Taisi and Tetumanua<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Who broke the King’s standard<br></span>
+<span class="i1">And Oropaa is troubled.<br></span>
+<span class="i1">If your crime had but ended there!<br></span>
+<span class="i1">The whole land is laid prostrate.<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Thou art guilty O Purahi (Vehiatua)<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Of the Reva <i>ura</i> of your King.<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Broken by the people of Taiarapu<br></span>
+<span class="i1">By which we are all destroyed<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Thou bringest the greatest of armies<br></span>
+<span class="i1">To the laying of stones<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Of the <i>marae</i> of Mahaitea.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Poahutea at Punaavia<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Tepau at Ahurai<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Teriimaroura at Tarahoi<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Maraianuanua the land where the<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Poor idiot was killed!<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Eimeo the land that is decked<br></span>
+<span class="i1">By the <i>ura</i> and the <i>pii</i>.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_375">{375}</a></span><br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“The prayers are finished<br></span>
+<span class="i1">And the call has been given<br></span>
+<span class="i1">To Puni at Farerua (Borabora)<br></span>
+<span class="i1">To Raa at Tupai (an island belonging to Borabora)<br></span>
+<span class="i1">To the high priest Teae,<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Go to Tahiti<br></span>
+<span class="i1">There is an <i>oroa</i> at Tahiti<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Auraareva for Teriirere of Tooarai.<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Thou hast sinned O Purahi!<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Thou hast broken the<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Reva <i>ura</i> of the King.<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Taiarapu has caused<br></span>
+<span class="i1">The destruction of us all<br></span>
+<span class="i1">The approach of the front rank<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Has unloosed the <i>ura</i>.<br></span>
+<span class="i1">One murderous hand<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Four in and four out.<br></span>
+<span class="i1">If you had but listened<br></span>
+<span class="i1">To the voice of Amo, Oropaa!<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Let us take our army<br></span>
+<span class="i1">By canoe and by land,<br></span>
+<span class="i1">We have only to fear the<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Mabitaupe and the dry reef of Uaitoata.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“There we will die the death<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Of Pairi Temaharu and Pahupua.<br></span>
+<span class="i1">The coming of the great army of Tairapu<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Has swept Papara away<br></span>
+<span class="i1">And drawn its mountains with it (the King)<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Thou hast sinned Purahi<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Thou and Taiarapu<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Hast broken the Reva <i>ura</i> of the King<br></span>
+<span class="i1">And hast caused the<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Destruction of us all.”<br></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_376">{376}</a></span></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>This is Moetia’s and Marau’s translation, I do not know whose copy it
+is&mdash;Moetia’s or Marau’s. I got it from the latter. This song of reproof,
+cherished by the Teva, as a protest against fate, explains how the
+dissensions among the different branches of the eight clans allowed them
+to become a prey to the rising power of the Purionu clans, headed by
+Pomaré, the son of one of those Ahurai princes whose blood ran into the
+sand near where the great <i>marae</i> of Oberea was built, as I have told
+you a little further back. The vicissitudes of wars, the changes brought
+about by the influence of the foreigner, all of which worked in favour
+of the Pomaré, culminated in a final struggle in December, 1815. The
+partisans of the old order, both social and religious, were headed by
+Opufara, the brother of Tati, the Chief of Papara. On the other side
+were the partisans of Pomaré, the Christians, the white men and their
+guns. To accentuate still more the character of the contest, the final
+battle began on a Sunday, the attack being made by the pagans during the
+service which Pomaré attended. As in mediæval times, in our own history,
+the Christians did not begin the fight until the conclusion of the
+prayers in which they were engaged. On the other side the inspired
+prophets who guided the pagans urged them to predicted victory. The
+cannon of the Christians checked the fierce onslaught of the men of
+Opufara; though for a short<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_377">{377}</a></span> time their courage had seemed to prevail,
+and Opufara fell first, at the head of his men. He urged them bravely to
+continue the fight, and at least to avenge his death, and the struggle
+continued long enough for him to see their brave resistance to the
+superior advantages of the guns in their enemies’ hands. But the end
+came, as we can well imagine, and Opufara drew his last breath as he saw
+the utter rout of his clan and their supporters.</p>
+
+<p>For the first time in Polynesian warfare Pomaré stopped the massacre
+about to begin, and promised peace and pardon to all who should submit.</p>
+
+<p>His friends, as well as his enemies, realized, in their astonishment,
+the enormous difference brought in by the new faith. This clemency did
+as much as actual power to win over those defeated. Most all men
+submitted to the new great chief, to the new religion; the <i>maraes</i> were
+destroyed, the image of the god Oro, a palladium long fought over, the
+cause of cruel wars, was burned; the people turned to Christianity, and
+the old order was completely broken up, carrying with it the power of
+the chiefs on which, unfortunately, the social system was based; because
+this power was more intimately connected with religious awe and belief
+than with military supremacy.</p>
+
+<p>Had I more time, I should have liked to describe more fully the details
+of what I have only indicated. The whole<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_378">{378}</a></span> story of the years between the
+decadence of Oberea’s control and Pomarés triumph is full of meaning to
+the Teva. With our clan, Opufara is still a representative of its
+courage and its pride. With no little feeling does Queen Marau urge me,
+when I return to Paris, to seek out the <i>omare</i> or club of the great
+Chief Opufara, preserved perhaps yet in the Musée des Souverains. In the
+Museum at Sydney in Australia, among the fragments and samples of cloth
+and dresses collected by Captain Cook, I shall perhaps find some bits of
+the garments of Oberea.</p>
+
+<p class="spc">
+Saturday, June 6th at Sea.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>Wednesday was to be our last day. We had decided to join the steamer
+chartered by us for Fiji not on its arrival but later at Hitiaa on the
+opposite southeastern coast of the island, partly to see the other side
+of the island, partly to say good-bye to Tati who would load our steamer
+with oranges.</p>
+
+<p>We were to leave at noon for our drive around the island and there were
+to be prayers that day in all the churches against the illness now
+afflicting the island. The King was ill; our chiefess wished her family
+to be present at church. Before the breakfast to which we were asked,
+she bade us good-bye as she proposed to return to church: they have a
+way<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_379">{379}</a></span> there of spending the day off and on&mdash;the natives&mdash;as we remembered
+at Tautira.</p>
+
+<p>She drank our healths and made us a little speech, having kissed
+Tauraatua, and holding our hands in her soft palms, she wished us again
+good-bye. She was very dignified and simple. Nothing could have been
+simpler or more touching. As I remember, she wished us the usual safe
+journey home and health and “hoped that we might return, where, if we
+did not find her, we should at least find her children.” After that we
+had a long and cheerful breakfast with the remaining family, and then we
+drove away around the coast to Hitiaa which we reached in the early
+evening.</p>
+
+<p>The drive, though a rough one, was beautiful; of course we could not see
+inland the high mountains and deep valleys, except when on one occasion
+we crossed a wide river and valley and could look back. But we skirted
+the sea everywhere, and our road ran between the cliffs, every few rods
+making new and exquisite pictures of sea and trees and rocks, and of
+waters running to the sea. I do not know if this side of the island be
+finer, all is so lovely in detail, but it is bolder and more rocky. I
+thought, as we drove along and had passed Point Venus, how well chosen
+had been Bougainville’s name of Nouvelle Cythere, for we were on his
+side of the island. The feminine beauty of the landscape and its
+“infinite variety<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_380">{380}</a></span>” completed the ideal of a place where woman was most
+kind.</p>
+
+<p>The charm of the day closed in our arrival at Hitiaa where we were to
+pass the night&mdash;in a little village of pretty huts set in cleanly order,
+in a grove of high bread-fruit trees. All was green even to the road,
+except a few spaces in front of houses, neatly pebbled. In the shade
+were the figures of Tati and of our hosts, coming to meet us&mdash;all in
+light colours, white, blue, red, and yellow, making a picture that might
+have done for a Watteau. We dined out on the green right by the shore,
+where the surf broke a few feet from us. The air was sweet with odours,
+and cool. It was pleasant to be with Tati again and hear his laugh,
+something like Richardson’s, whom he resembles in size as well as in
+many little matters. But I know that I said this before.</p>
+
+<p>We slept in a cleanly native hut, of the usual style, a long thatched
+building, lifted on a stone base with a floor, and sides made of rods
+like a cage, but with European doors. At either semi-circular end,
+muslin was hung along the walls so as to exclude the light and to
+protect a little from draught. Each end had a curtain drawn across it,
+so that one’s bed was enclosed, but our host and hostess watched us to
+the last with unabated kindness. Everything was scrupulously clean. The
+next morning was like the evening. Blue clouds blown<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_381">{381}</a></span> over a pink sky,
+all far above us, for all the trees rose high and we moved about from
+shade to shade. Tati had driven away before daylight to put oranges on
+board. The village was very silent, as if deserted. We spent the morning
+in idleness; walked to the great Tamanu trees at the end of the village
+of which Tati had told us when he tried to find words for the impression
+of solemnity which European Cathedrals had made upon him. The trees are
+like great oaks, but rise with a great sweep before branching. Right by
+the road is a cluster of them with great roots, all grown together in a
+lifted mass. We sat idly by the sea and looked at Taiarapu all in blue,
+and at the sea between us and our little Tautira also all blue, which we
+shall never see again. Men, on the inside reef alongside, were fishing,
+standing patiently in the water.</p>
+
+<p>Over us, stretching far and touching the water at places, spread the
+great Tamanu trees. We sat there in their shade. The water came up to my
+feet and washed out my drawings in the sand, as memories of things are
+effaced.</p>
+
+<p>It was pleasant to be absolutely idle, listening to the soft noise of
+the tide rolling minute pebbles on the sand, looking at its edges
+fringed with bubbles, that folded one over the other like drapery, and
+watching the wet fade smoothly off the shore.</p>
+
+<p>The trade wind blew strong. The air was very cool. Mrs.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_382">{382}</a></span> Tati gave us
+breakfast with a smile of welcome and <i>iorana</i>, and little Tita flirted
+with us.</p>
+
+<p>Then I slept; and waking determined to have some record of this our last
+day, and sat again on the shore, and made a note of Taiarapu across the
+water on which the rainbow played. Near me the surf ran in rapidly on
+the shallows, all in blue shade; the Tamanu’s branches above me were
+reflected in the motion&mdash;and underneath the trees, boys paddled in and
+out, in their little boats without outriggers, using their hands for
+paddles, so that as they swung their arms they looked as if swimming
+hand over hand. It was still very cool, and I felt that I had probably
+exposed myself to what is the danger of this place at this time. It can
+be so cool after heat, and so damp with such draughts that I do not
+wonder at the constant colds and troubles of the lungs that I have
+noticed. I should call it a lovely climate&mdash;and an exquisite
+climate&mdash;but not one for a pulmonary patient. Now I am astonished that
+Piri’s doctors sent her back here.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening we had Tati again at dinner and talked with him about his
+perhaps coming over in ’93, Exposition time, and about the correctness
+of his sister’s translations of poetry. We tried in vain to get some
+love songs, though he promised to send some to me later, but he told us
+stories of Turi, famous for prowess in love&mdash;the Arabian love of the
+South Seas<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_383">{383}</a></span>&mdash;also of the tradition of an isle inhabited by women only,
+such as is told of on the farther shores of the Pacific, and such as
+Ariosto wrote of; and some anecdotes, not to their credit, of Pomaré the
+great or his father Teu, some of the scandalous scenes of which had been
+enacted not far from there, and had been commemorated in the names of
+the rivers. “But perhaps after all,” Tati said, “they were no worse than
+other chiefs who lived before them, for as they all had unlimited power
+that power led them to many excesses.”</p>
+
+<p>The next morning we arose to find the little steamer some three miles
+off. Perhaps there were fewer rocky ledges upon our path nor did we see
+the olive gray mist of the <i>aito</i> trees (iron wood) against the blue
+sea, or the shining wet rocks. But otherwise it was like a continuation
+of the ride of the day before, a dragging through grassy, wet roads, and
+plunging into small streams, where coral rocks whitened the clear grey
+bottom. A very few people nodded to us as we passed. I suppose that most
+every one was engaged at the packing of the oranges further away; orange
+trees filled the roads, the peel of oranges in long, yellow spirals,
+dotted the grassy edges of the rivers hear the huts. Small black pigs
+scampered and tore away into the “brush” on either side, where in a
+hollow of the road undisturbed by our passing so close, old Eumaeus the
+swine-herd crouched alongside of his black hogs<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_384">{384}</a></span> who ate savagely what
+he had provided. And again we came to such a place as we had seen on our
+drive of Wednesday, something never noticed elsewhere by us, where some
+ledge of rock came up toward the sea, leaving only a narrow passage.
+There a little wicker fence had been built across the road resting
+against the rock on one side and the trees on the slope below; and there
+we opened a gate, as if all this lovely land had been but some domain,
+and had been set out in its beauty of arrangement by skilful hands, to
+please owners who lived perhaps inland, behind the vague spaces of
+forest trees, or up the hazy valleys. All that was wanting to the idyl
+was what we had seen before, red bunches of wild bananas brought down
+from the mountains and hung on bamboo poles or left supported by
+branches and roots, on the wayside, along with heaps of cocoanuts half
+hidden in grassy hollows, giving the idea that other owners and
+gatherers had but just placed them there while they went off for a
+moment; for a plunge into cool water perhaps, after the hard toil of the
+carrying.</p>
+
+<p>Tati has explained to us how that really the owners were not far away,
+but that afraid at our coming or at that of others they were concealed.
+It was what is called their consciences, or rather what the French have
+subtly called “le respect humain,” that drove these good people into
+concealment behind pandanus or orange trees. That day that we drove<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_385">{385}</a></span>
+away, leaving our dear chiefess go to church, was all through the
+country, apparently, a church holiday, and no one having gone to the
+mountains for such worldly things as banana food wished to be seen at
+work, when all were apparently moving to and from the churches, clad in
+brightest garments, and looking like the lilies of the field.</p>
+
+<p>But this morning, like yesterday, was a day of work; and soon we saw
+along the shore and drove past it, a very long shed, with shining
+thatch, and with hanging curtains of matted palm, where were many
+people, men, women and children, who had been packing oranges and now
+were resting and eating. The place was as joyous and full as the
+previous land had been solitary; work had stopped, the last boxes of
+oranges were being taken to the ship in double canoes, that is to say,
+two canoes joined together by an upper planking or deck of canes. On one
+of these with our luggage, we also embarked&mdash;the ropes that were
+fastened to the trees on shore to steady the steamer, were loosened, the
+anchors lifted, and with a good-bye to Tati we were off. That afternoon
+we saw little of the island lost in cloud until we turned the corner of
+Point Venus, and looked up the gorges that led toward the Aorai. Then
+soon we were in Papeete and could go ashore and watch the packet from
+San Francisco just sailing in behind us, and try to say good-bye again.
+Again I felt the curious twinge of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_386">{386}</a></span> parting, again Ori’s wife Haapi
+kissed my hands. The late afternoon flooded the island and the clouds
+half covering it with a dusty haze of yellow light. The sea tossed fresh
+and blue as if lit by another sky. We passed the fantastic peaks and
+crags of Moorea, seen for the first time on its other side and wrapped
+above in the scud of the trade winds blowing in our favour. So in a
+gentle sadness the two islands faded into the dark; the end of the charm
+we have been under&mdash;too delicate ever to be repeated.</p>
+
+<p>There I thought, five hundred years ago, I was young, happy and famous,
+along with Tauraatua.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Ils sont passés, ces jours de fête,<br></span>
+<span class="i1">Ils sont passés, ils ne reviendront plus.”<br></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>If only when I received my name and its associations I could have been
+given the memories of my long youth; the reminiscence of similar days
+spent in an exquisite climate, in the simplest evolution of society, in
+great nearness to Nature, that I might find comfort in those
+recollections against the weariness of that civilized life which is to
+surround my few remaining years.</p>
+
+<p class="c">
+D. M.<br>
+Oberea<br>
+S<br>
+Posuit<br>
+Teraitua<br>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_387">{387}</a></span></p>
+
+<hr class="dbl">
+<h2><a id="TAHITI_TO_FIJI"></a>TAHITI TO FIJI</h2>
+<hr>
+
+<p>Sunday, June 14th, at Sea.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lat. 20-42 S. 839 miles from Rarotonga.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Long. 174-44 W., 431 miles to Fiji.<br></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>On Tuesday we were before Rarotonga: on <i>Tuesday</i> according to the ways
+of the place, where, as in Samoa, the missionaries made an error in
+time, and have never dared to rectify it. But to us outsiders it would
+have been nearly a Monday, though later, no doubt, the captain would
+throw off a day for us as we went west, perhaps even drop it here
+politely.</p>
+
+<p>Rarotonga of the Cook Islands is a little island about twenty miles
+around, with outlines reminding one of Moorea; the look of a great
+crater whose sides had been broken out, leaving sharp crags and here and
+there curious peaks.</p>
+
+<p>I had been suffering very much from my ancient enemy, sciatica, which
+declared itself almost as soon as we left Tahiti, and has kept me in
+pain up to this moment. But I managed to get ashore, and to take a long
+walk along the pretty road that goes around the island. We called on the
+Resident, Mr. Moss who took us to see the Queen or Chiefess Makea, for<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_388">{388}</a></span>
+whom we had a letter from Queen Marau. She was the usual tall, smiling
+Polynesian chiefess, pleased at the addresses of her letter, which made
+her out a <i>queen</i>, as she showed to the Resident. For I gathered in the
+careless accidents of conversation, she had been lately elected chiefess
+by a parliament composed of representatives of the islands who are
+supposed to have federated for a general government. But Makea is a
+chiefess of great descent, being straight from Rarika, one of the two
+chiefs who years ago met here, one of them coming from Tahiti, the other
+from Samoa; one driven away, the other in exploration; and who colonized
+the islands, and in the persons of their descendants fought for
+supremacy down to this date. So that it is something that this
+representative of one descent should have been agreed upon. Many of
+these traditions have been recorded by the Rev. W. W. Gill in his “Myths
+and Songs from the South Pacific”; though his book refers particularly
+to Mangaia which is a neighbouring island about one hundred miles
+distant.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” said the Queen, “Moni Gill.” She had seen his book and proposed
+to make some corrections. Money Gill, he was nicknamed because he was so
+fond of money. Let me add that I also understood that the gentleman was
+generous enough and not mean.</p>
+
+<p>The missionaries have had complete control all this time;<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_389">{389}</a></span> and yet
+things “laissent à désirer,” as the French have it. There has been a
+system of “government,” as Mr. Moss rather ironically sounded the name.
+There had been one hundred policemen in this little island of Rarotonga.
+Each policeman was a deacon, and the punishment of everything was a
+fine; the fines being pooled together and divided afterward.</p>
+
+<p>Many deeds were fined and punished that were innocent or excusable, but
+all the fining had not in these thirty years increased the chastity of
+the women. Though the reports of the missions do not carry out this
+fact, the individual missionaries admit it, and what weakening of real
+authority has resulted one can only guess.</p>
+
+<p>Some years ago the missionaries objected to smoking. To-day our
+missionary on board has a cigar or pipe in his mouth most of the time.
+In those years Makea was fined and excommunicated for smoking a
+cigarette. Being driven out she became reckless, and I am “credibly
+informed,” drank and “even danced.” And so her example stood in the way,
+and the missionary came back to her and begged her to return and be
+disexcommunicated, even if she should smoke; so that at least others
+should not have her precedent for dancing. But she refused. How it all
+ended I should have liked to remain to inquire, of her or the Resident,
+but the steamer waits<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_390">{390}</a></span> not, and I only get these queer little bits of
+information by chance hearing. But you know that I believe that one gets
+a good deal from such trifles. I find the British Resident cheerfully
+hopeful of getting these people under some shape of government other
+than the kind of thing they had which cannot last. He took us to the
+building which is a schoolhouse and Parliament house, and we heard a
+little of what he was doing to get them to regulate matters in some
+shape that can serve as a basis. But you can imagine what little
+difficulties come up when those of the neighbouring island, whose
+chiefess Namuru I saw at the Queen’s, had sent word in their innocence
+that they had fined a Chinaman for complaining to her and writing what
+they called a lying letter. In their Polynesian simplicity (and they are
+shrewd enough) they had forgotten that in an interview they had admitted
+all and given the Resident every detail.</p>
+
+<p>But there is no doubt that everywhere, the native churchmen, put up to
+the use of arbitrary authority, will do many queer things&mdash;things that
+everybody knows of through all the South Seas, so that there is no need
+of detailing them. They suffer, too, from having but one book, the
+Bible, which (especially the Old Testament) they know by heart, and
+where they can easily find a precedent for anything they may choose.
+They might get ideas from other books, but then<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_391">{391}</a></span> they would have to
+learn English, etc. “What then will happen?” say the missionaries. “Do
+you see these good people reading Zola?” Their conduct is somewhat
+Zolaish at times, but then it is carried out in their own language.
+Hence much objection to teaching them English or anything that might
+lead to danger. It is the old trouble that missionaries have always
+found&mdash;more especially if they were obliged by principle to suppose that
+they might have some liberty of choice. The position is a hard one. I
+saw the expression of the missionary’s wife when another hinted under
+his breath that perhaps the Catholic Sisters might be allowed to come
+and teach. Such an extremity, however, would blow things sky-high; and
+if it be necessary that there be education, perhaps the missionaries
+will consent rather than see the enemy bring it. The English
+protectorate has only lately been established, and naturally all these
+questions are fresh.</p>
+
+<p>We took away with us the next day one of the missionaries, his wife and
+four children, who fill up quite a little corner of our little boat. The
+scene at their leaving was very pretty&mdash;as far as the apparent devotion
+of the native women who had charge of the children. They kissed their
+arms and legs, and so humbly the hands of the missionaries, with such an
+appealing look for answer. They are pretty young people, our clerical
+friends&mdash;the wife Irish, I should say&mdash;and are<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_392">{392}</a></span> interesting as types.
+The poor little lady has been ill all the time, but I can see that even
+then she has a will of her own. The care of the small baby has devolved
+on the husband missionary, who has some trouble. The children are wild,
+good natured and Polynesian and sing hymns with the Polynesian accent
+and cadence, occasionally bursting out in a cheerful laugh when they
+have apparently hit it successfully.</p>
+
+<p>We have a French captain of artillery who is leaving Tahiti for Noumea
+(New Caledonia) and who tells me things of his expedition in the Chinese
+war and the taking of Formosa; also a Tahitian judge on furlough, who
+confirms what I have seen of the oral claims to land through genealogies
+committed to memory, the authenticity of which he has to leave to his
+native associates on the bench to decide.</p>
+
+<p>This afternoon we pass two little islands, Onga-Onga and Onga Hapai,
+uninhabited; to which people come at certain seasons to make a little
+copra. They seem lost and without relation, for we do not understand the
+ocean bottom that would make all rational. Near them, and some five
+miles from us, a long line thicker in the middle, is the new island
+thrown up some five years ago or so, of which Mr. Baker, premier of
+Tonga, gave us an account. He had visited the place while the eruption
+of mud was still active, had come quite close to it, even nearer than
+was safe, for the wind<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_393">{393}</a></span> came near forcing him within range of the
+explosion. He has related it in a little pamphlet.</p>
+
+<p>“This perhaps,” says Adams “was the beginning of an atoll, a mud
+eruption, spreading out like this one under the sea, a surface upon
+which the coral started.” We had seen in the morning of our second day
+out, a “low” island, Mauki&mdash;a low mass upon which any elevation
+counted&mdash;but it was a mere mass of grey-green upon violet and blue, in
+the twilight of that day, so that we did not make it out at all. The
+island besides has no outside lagoon like a true atoll, but a
+fresh-water lake inside; so that we have not yet seen an atoll.</p>
+
+<p>The little volcanic islands, perhaps both belonging to one crater, are
+edges of its walls still standing, and a long ledge that runs to meet
+some projecting wall or dyke, may either belong to the side of the
+crater, or may it be a raised beach? Adams looks carefully through the
+glass, but there is too much haze. The little islands grow smaller and
+smaller as I write&mdash;little patches of sharp shape, of a fleshy violet on
+the clouded blue of sea and sky. It is late evening. The wind, which has
+been unfavourable, seems to veer a little. We have been <i>unfortunate</i>:
+the trades that should have blown steadily have almost deserted us, but
+we are fortunate to have a steamer. And all through we have felt cold,
+though not officially, that is to say, at midday the thermometer marks
+from 80 to 83.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_394">{394}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="spc">Monday, June 15th.</p>
+
+<p>Still fine weather, blue sea, blue sky; some little islands&mdash;the end of
+a chain of reefs and islands Onga Fiki appears in the horizon and
+promises us arrival for to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>The passengers are more cheerful, the children less feverish. The little
+missionary lady plays on the piano and sings a hymn, the Judge leaning
+over her.</p>
+
+<p>The Captain “profite de son dernier jour pour perfectionner” his
+English, and bewails with me the unreasonableness of English or British
+pronunciation. “Why,” says he, “does the steward say ‘am,’ for ‘ham,’ I
+suppose, for he can’t mean anything else, and why does he say there is
+much ‘hair’ when the wind blows? French seems more logical.” I comfort
+him as best I can, but he no doubt has a hard time before him.</p>
+
+<p>More islands to the northwest, and later at night we shall make others,
+and to-morrow be at Suva of Fiji; unless we run on some reef, but the
+captain has been here before&mdash;some ten years ago, it is true.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_395">{395}</a></span></p>
+
+<hr class="dbl">
+<h2><a id="FIJI"></a>FIJI</h2>
+<hr>
+
+<p class="spc">Suva, Wednesday, June 17th.</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday we arrived as expected, and have been since that, reposing in
+the calm that can never so pleasantly come upon one as after an
+uncomfortable sea voyage. The steamer, unknown to the island, unawaited,
+must have appeared to bring some important news: perhaps something in
+the nature of a disturbance or trouble in some of the places connected
+with this one politically; perhaps in Rarotonga that we had left, where
+the new English order is but recent. But if such was the case we knew
+nothing of it, and waited quietly on board in the beautiful little
+harbour; looked at the lines of mountains on one side of the
+amphitheatre, edge upon edge of blue; upon the reef’s haze of white
+light; and on the other side, upon the little town stretched out on low
+land, but prettily connected with the distance, and high land by little
+hills picturesquely balanced and arranged, with trees and houses and
+some native buildings; and then along the beach, the usual shops and
+trade buildings, more British than anything we had yet seen.</p>
+
+<p>Each of the five spots we have disembarked at has had a<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_396">{396}</a></span> distinct
+character, more distinct now that we compare them, and nothing could be
+further, in its small way, from the other small way of Tahiti: ancient,
+provincial, French, sad and charming as the setting of some
+opera-comique that I have never seen, but should have liked to invent.
+Here everything was brisk and clear and promising, as if typical of the
+promise of something, while Papeete of Tahiti held the remains of some
+former system of government and business.</p>
+
+<p>Little schooners with sails set were anchored in the harbour; a
+three-masted ship and H. R. M. S. <i>Cordelia</i> gave importance to the
+scene. Steam launches plied about. On the wharf, East Indian coolies,
+turbaned and draped, were grouped with their women in great white
+draperies or in bold colours, all yellow and all green, or in one case
+with a violet <i>sari</i> edged with light blue, and a gown of dark blue
+edged with the same; all these gracious folds thrown out in great masses
+when they moved, so that even far as we were one could see the movement
+of the limbs. There are now, I was told when I asked, some seven
+thousand of the East Indian people in these islands; for the Fijians are
+Polynesians and work little. So that as elsewhere, the growth of sugar
+or cotton, or in fact anything requiring continuous care and some
+exertion, cannot be carried on without the outsider&mdash;East Indians,
+Chinese, Japanese, or Melanesian from other islands.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="ill_027">
+<a href="images/ill_045.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_045.jpg" width="550" height="247" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">CHIEFS IN WAR DRESS AND PAINT. “DEVIL” COUNTRY. VITI
+LEVU, FIJI</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_397">{397}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The first Fijians came up to us almost at once in the boat of the pilot;
+dark chocolate figures with great shocks of hair standing out, yellowed
+with lime as in Samoa. They resembled our Samoan friends more than any
+we have seen yet, notwithstanding great differences. There was a certain
+likeness&mdash;something in the expression and in the make of the face; only
+so far as these few hours give me, the look is browner.</p>
+
+<p>They seem more military, more masculine; all this impression intensified
+by our reminiscences of Tahiti just left behind us, where the healthy
+good humour of Samoa seemed to fade into sadness and into a refinement
+that appeared feminine. Fine strapping fellows in red <i>sulus</i> (<i>sulu</i> is
+the same as the <i>lava-lava</i> of Samoa or <i>pareu</i> of Tahiti&mdash;the loin
+drapery), and red-edged, white sleeveless shirts, pulled the Governor’s
+gig that came out to fetch us. After landing and being driven up to the
+Governor’s house, we found a sentinel draped with the <i>sulu</i>, and naked
+to the waist, with a straight sword and belt and his musket, pacing in
+front of the verandah. I believe it was owing to his great shock of
+yellow hair, like a grenadier’s cap, that he looked completely dressed
+and most decidedly a soldierly figure. He or another is now walking up
+and down in front of me as I write, and at night, at the relief watch, I
+know by the deep voices that he is still there,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_398">{398}</a></span> and that I can sleep
+safely, as safely as if he were not there&mdash;and all the more that his gun
+is empty. The servants also about the house, probably the same men, wait
+upon us with this simple splendour; and hand out the dishes with
+outstretched arm, “from the shoulder,” and keep up, for me, a military
+look.</p>
+
+<p>The Governor, Sir John Thurston, has kindly invited us to take up
+quarters with him. Lady Thurston and the family are away, so that we are
+but few people in the long, rambling building. It is beautifully placed
+on a slight height, at the edge of the town, and faces the bay and the
+long line of mountains of the opposite side. There are large grounds
+with grassy roads, and the beginnings of a large garden which the
+Governor is setting out with great success. From it already he has been
+able to supply plants of the finest Trinidad cocoa, which I see growing
+in little tubs of bamboo, which when again set out will simply rot away
+and leave the plant acclimated. However, I do not purpose to make out a
+list. What might interest you is that the garden follows a line of
+moats, once belonging to a fortified town which was here, so that it has
+quite a look of meaning in its picturesqueness. This is the first
+recognizable trace that we have yet seen of the fortified place
+protected by ditches. We have seen walls built up in places for forts,
+or arrangements of timbers and stones<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_399">{399}</a></span> of a momentary character, such as
+those in Samoa; but here the laying out of the lines seems to have been
+determined with some engineering intelligence, and the space covered
+implies ground convenient enough for residence. However, we shall see
+later, we hope, something more of such remains, and understand them
+better. Meanwhile we are at peace: no more war has been noticed than the
+cricket match and lawn tennis games that we saw yesterday afternoon. We
+have about us decidedly, protection, and something that I have not had
+for a little while, some young Britishers. There is something very
+soothing to me about them, when I like them at all. In fact, if this
+continues, we shall feel as if we had simply reëntered “civilization”
+and be completely spoiled. The conversation of Sir John is very
+interesting and instructive; for he is not an amateur in his line,
+though by the by, he photographs very prettily.</p>
+
+<p class="spc">Suva, Sunday, June 21st.</p>
+
+<p>On Thursday afternoon we accompanied Sir John on a little trip up the
+big river Rewa which lies to the east from here. This steam launch
+carried us over the shallow bar, inside the reef into the broad river
+which has a rapid current, owing to the tide that runs up far enough for
+the breakwater to reach some twenty-five miles. The river has also a
+considerable in<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_400">{400}</a></span>cline, but the statement made us without guarantees,
+seemed excessive&mdash;fifty feet in those twenty-five miles. The land was
+low on either side, a great delta, and only occasionally could we see
+the mountains and hills in the distance. The banks were high, cut by the
+river, and knobby at spots where the harder clay remaining from the
+washings made little lumps or eminences. At first we met the mangrove
+swamps, then by and by banana and cocoanut, and visible here and there
+bread-fruit outlines against the sky. Then there was not water enough,
+though the launch draws but one foot, and even with that little had
+touched at the bar; so that we landed and walked a little way to Rewa
+the village or town that we were bound for. A pretty little clayey road,
+like a causeway, better than any in Samoa; plantations and houses from
+place to place; natives under the trees turned out for the great event
+of the Governor’s visit; here and there in shady corners groups of young
+men, putting on the final touches of the decorations in which they were
+to appear later: red and black paint, great bunches of <i>tappa</i> about
+them and girdles of black <i>fao</i>, as in Samoa, and <i>titis</i> of white
+streamers and of many plants. Then we came to a sort of stockade, the
+compound of the chief, and stepped over his gate, as usual, some stakes
+planted in the ground, waist high, with a stepping one outside; not in
+our white ideas a dignified mode of entrance. Inside a pretty<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_401">{401}</a></span>
+arrangement of trees and buildings, with that usual charm that I have
+wearied you with, of looking as if arranged for effect, while most
+probably placed merely for most convenience; like that picturesqueness
+which accompanies our old farms and which seems opposed to most modern
+things with us. We turned around the main house, and sat down upon mats
+spread out in front of the river; passing first through two little
+groups of natives and led by the chief, to whom we were introduced in
+turn after the captain of the <i>Cordelia</i>. Then a chief or personage of
+importance addressed the messenger or herald of the Governor, who sat in
+front of us on the grass, profiled against the river, and with certain
+forms, presented to him some whale’s teeth tied together, upon which,
+apparently, everything was to depend. They were accepted, both these
+gentlemen curled up on the ground and the officer sidled up in what I
+suppose is due form. Then after a very short speech of the briefest
+kind, we were led to the big house for <i>kava</i> and we entered on one
+side, walking up the long plank&mdash;and passed through doors of heavy
+timber, ornamented with sennit in patterns and found a big room covered
+with many mats, soft and bed-like to the foot. There we sat at the upper
+end, a little raised and on more mats. At the other end of the one long
+room were the notables. The chief sat on <span class="pagenum"><a id="page_402">{402}</a></span>one side near us; as guests we
+had his place. Between the two groups a long rope with ends of clustered
+shells was then laid at right angles to us. This was to mark the
+division, said my informant, and to enable any one who came late to find
+his due place. At one end of the rope the Governor’s herald in jacket
+and <i>yappa sulu</i>, at the other, the young men making the <i>kava</i> (here
+called <i>yangona</i>), in an enormous bowl. Meanwhile certain persons
+chanted something, with much swaying and pointing of hands and various
+gestures, like a rather solemn <i>siva</i>. Among the singers was the next
+important chief, who led the chant. The singing was the usual Polynesian
+cadence, stopping abruptly; and after several chants, between which,
+silence reigned, <i>kava</i> had become ready and was applauded and then
+poured out. For the first time since Mataafa’s visit I saw the use of
+the Great Chief’s Cup. The Governor’s herald handed him his own cup,
+into which the <i>kava</i> bearer poured a part. Then upon the Governor’s
+drinking and throwing down his bowl, a groan of approval came from the
+crowd before us. The same for the English Captain (Grenville); the same
+for Tauraatua and myself&mdash;who had the honour of drinking out of the
+“chiefy” bowl. For others the larger, common bowl was filled; an
+advantage or not, as one might like to have more or less of the
+stuff&mdash;which on the whole I think I like: that is to say, that one gets
+accustomed to it, and that it has a clean taste and seems to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_403">{403}</a></span> brace one
+a little. But evidently the <i>kava</i> here and in Samoa is not the <i>kava</i>
+of Tahiti, described by Tati, so powerful that such a drink as our
+little bowl of yesterday held, would have stupefied us surely. That
+ceremony over, a short speech was made, very different from the long
+orations of the Samoan <i>tulafale</i>. It was answered by the herald and the
+meeting was over. Then we walked out of the chief’s compound to the open
+space, where a dance was to be given. We sat under a canopy of mats,
+comfortably out of the sunlight that filled the open space edged on one
+side, between trees, by a long building quite high, with many doorways,
+all high up in the wall windows. This is a guest house, divided by posts
+into partitions that serve for each party of travellers. As they arrive
+they take up such a division for their use. Between it and the next is a
+narrower one occupied by a hearth, serving the parties on both sides
+with the economical fire that all other people than white people make.
+There, when they are settled the village sends them the necessary food.</p>
+
+<p>Outside of this big building sat a crowd of many women, while only one
+woman sat near us, probably some relative of the chiefs who were near
+us. To the right, in a long halfcircle, a mass of children, most of them
+nude to the waist, beneath and in front of a little bunch of trees. Then
+when all was quiet, in trooped the chorus, who sat down in front of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_404">{404}</a></span> us
+in a confused circle, added to on the edges by occasional late comers. A
+few were nude and adorned with leaves. Many of them held in their hands
+bamboo sticks cut to different lengths and of differing sizes. These
+struck upon the ground gave a series of sounds according to their length
+and thickness&mdash;a most primitive music and a most impressive one. Had we
+heard this in surroundings untouched by the European, we should no doubt
+have felt more keenly the extreme archaic rudeness of the method. With
+this was mingled the chant of the others, the usual Polynesian chant. At
+length, to our left, having come up behind us, appeared a mass of men,
+armed with clubs, ten abreast and about fifteen in file; an orderly
+phalanx, keeping step to the music with that marvellous accuracy that
+everywhere indicates the Polynesian sensitiveness to time in sound. They
+scarcely advanced, merely moving in place, first upon one foot, then
+upon another, until some change in the music started them off briskly
+toward the other end of the arena. The big yellow masses of their hair
+stood out like grenadiers’ caps, and around their heads. Dragging to the
+ground almost, were long veils or strips of white <i>tappa</i>, looking like
+bridal veils. White flowers were fastened in the hair; great armlets of
+leaves about the upper arms; collars of beads and hanging circles of
+breastplate, with great <i>titis</i> (Samoan name for the ornamental</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="illbw_013">
+<a href="images/ill_046.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_046.jpg" width="374" height="550" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">MEKKE-MEKKE. A STORY DANCE. THE MUSICIANS AT REVA,
+FIJI</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_405">{405}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">girdle) of white and green, stuck out or swung about them. They wore
+usually dark black waist hangings like the black <i>fao</i> mats of Samoa;
+though here and there black <i>tappa</i> served for the drapery, and was
+gathered about their waists in enormous folds: in general a great
+“symphony of black and white,” with strong accents here and there of
+faces, necks and hands painted with velvety black of soot. When they had
+marched to the other end of the open space they began their dances,
+keeping time with extreme care, but making motions of attack and defence
+all together. Then breaking their order, the centre took one line of
+attitudes and movements, and the flanks another, even to crouching low
+down and waiting while the centre advanced and came back. It was a
+splendid, warlike, barbarous spectacle, our first sight of a complete
+military dance; for the Samoan that we had seen was more the
+representation of a real advance of barbarian warriors. To this
+succeeded other dances of like kind, as our first dancers belonging to
+the place, were succeeded by others belonging to adjacent districts.</p>
+
+<p>The leader of the first corps came up to us, threw down his club before
+the Governor, and sat down beside us panting and perspiring. He was a
+big handsome man, redolent with cocoanut oil, the son of one of the
+chiefs, and had once on a time been at school in Sydney, where he had
+learned other<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_406">{406}</a></span> weaknesses besides those that come from education. Next
+to him in front of us, as usual, sat the Governor’s “herald” (native
+name Matafamea) representative of an office hereditary in certain
+families; and took charge of the applause, calling aloud “<i>Vinaka!</i>”
+which means <i>good</i>; to which the Governor sometimes added, “<i>Vinaka
+sala</i>,” <i>very good</i>. And it was very good. Not only did we have club
+dances, but also dances with spears, extremely long spears, made to
+shake and tremble like the “long shadow casting spear” of the Iliads;
+while sometimes the warriors stood all motionless, crouched or poised,
+or leaning with the other arm upon their clubs. Finally the last cohort
+came down in a mass, the front rank waving great fans and bending to the
+right and left, while the main body of the men brandished their spears
+above them. To add to the confusion of sight of the looker-on many had
+their faces painted not only in black but in vivid red, so that one
+would feel that a certain surprise and astonishment might well attend
+their appearance and attack. Things of the kind taken by themselves seem
+useless, but seen in real use, the motives that have brought them about
+unfold, and one can see for instance how the painting of the face makes
+a mask behind which the intentions or purposes lie concealed and in
+ambush. When all this was over the crowd melted away, and we walked back
+to the chief’s</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="illbw_014">
+<a href="images/ill_047.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_047.jpg" width="550" height="282" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">THE DANCE OF WAR. FIJI</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_407">{407}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">house, stopping, some of us, for a moment at a less important one to see
+what it was like; slipping up and down on the polished wood of the
+drawbridge, and resting on the raised daïs at one end, filled with grass
+and covered with soft mats, where the owner slept. Behind us on the wall
+was a lithograph in colour, framed&mdash;the Madonna of Raphael’s&mdash;the good
+man probably a Catholic. Otherwise less fine, the house was as the
+other. Some one of the party wasted some time in asking for a dance of
+the women, which we did not obtain, and so we were late on our arrival;
+and as we sat down on the mats outside, near the Governor and the
+captain, we found that the ceremony of presentation of food had gone on
+for some time, and that we were only in at the end. But we saw the
+herald divide it, somewhat as in Samoa. It would as we understood, go
+back to the village that gave it&mdash;the big hog not cooked enough, and the
+great basket of taro.</p>
+
+<p>We lounged until evening in what we might call the garden, right upon
+the river. Here and there a few trees growing up against the leafy
+walls&mdash;for their sides were all covered with leaves that melt into the
+grass thatch above&mdash;or standing apart; below one of them was a large
+smooth slab of stone, brought from before an old heathen temple, to make
+a pleasant seat. It looked like Japan, just such a little place as would
+have been arranged with infinite art, with just so many<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_408">{408}</a></span> trees, and with
+such a stone to appear as if accidental and yet to contradict a little.
+The river before us was very broad; on the other side a perpendicular
+bank not high, perhaps like ours, some four or five feet at the most,
+covered with the appearance of an uninterrupted mass of trees, though
+perhaps at places there were open spots like ours. Canoes moved across
+bringing back visitors; as the night came on big fish rose out of the
+water with a splash. There was a long white sunset, and then we had
+dinner on the mats, and after talk and lounging there we walked outside
+a little and then turned in for sleep on the mats, under blankets and
+mosquito nets; for it was cool, or felt so, and yet the mosquito hummed.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning I wandered out at dawn, and walked up and down the little
+space with the Governor, who told me humorous stories of wild
+adventures, mostly with reporters. The Governor’s conversation is
+charming, full of information, and with a great enjoyment of fun. The
+few stories he had told us were like little comedies, and I regret that
+his position and duties, as they, increase, will probably prevent such a
+man from giving any record of his experiences and his views in the South
+Seas.</p>
+
+<p>As the day came up our party turned out of doors; attempts at
+photography were made. Some chiefs came up to speak to the Governor; one
+he presented to me, a cheery old gentleman</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="illbw_015">
+<a href="images/ill_048.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_048.jpg" width="439" height="550" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">JOLI BUTI&mdash;TEACHER. FIJI</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_409">{409}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">of grey beard, strikingly European at first sight, who laughed at the
+little joke that we were come to take him to America, like so-and-so who
+went and never came back.</p>
+
+<p>Another steam launch drawing less water had come for us to take us to
+the Navuini plantation (sugar) only some six miles in a straight line
+from us, but further with the curving of the rivers. While we were
+breakfasting cheerfully on the mats it had run aground and would not be
+off until a change of tide in the afternoon. So that our boats were
+called, and stepping down a little copper-lined ship’s ladder delicately
+grafted into the bank, we were in the boats and had a long hot row to
+the plantation. There we rested, going up to a high verandah in one of
+the residences from which there was a view of the delta of the river,
+and we could look toward the gradual passage of the land into hills and
+then into mountains.</p>
+
+<p>I felt too tired to follow through the rows of the plantations
+interesting as they undoubtedly are, because I have some previous idea
+of the thing. I should have been more interested if I could have seen
+some of the native sugar plantations which we passed, the existence of
+which at all seems to me a remarkable thing: the first sign so far in
+the South Seas of any work not absolutely easy, undertaken by natives.
+One of them was near our point of departure, and was across the river
+from the owners or holders; for as was explained to me, it was a<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_410">{410}</a></span>
+family, not an individual, as you know, in the idea of society and
+property that exists here; in the same way that we have seen elsewhere
+in the South Seas. There is the family, in so far different from our
+communistic ideas; then the families that are sprung from a common
+traceable near root, over them, headed by the heads of families, the
+greater chief representing the ensemble of families of like origin or
+who have control; and so on to the highest. As connected with this, the
+Governor was illustrating the interdependence in some such way; putting
+ourselves back to an indefinite time, an arbitrary moment when things
+were unchanged; let us suppose that the head of a village is moved by
+complaints that some one of his own little association of families has
+misbehaved. There is no trouble in such a case; all authority is given,
+and proper punishment meted out directly, if such be necessary. But let
+us suppose that it is some fellow of a neighbouring village who has
+killed the straying pigs of our village, or who hangs too closely about
+some girl of ours&mdash;why our chief, however disposed to break his head,
+must wait to see that such a disposal of the outside offender would not
+displease the chief who had equal authority over both places. So that he
+takes a present, the famous whale’s tooth, such as that we saw offered
+yesterday to the Governor, at the beginning of all conversation; and
+presenting it, he makes a story of the case, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_411">{411}</a></span> of what he himself
+would like to do about it. If the present is rejected, the matter is
+left as it was. But it may be that it is accepted, and the superior
+chief may approve and not interfere, or he may approve (<i>annuit</i>), and
+yet protect the offenders indirectly, so that they should not be
+hurt&mdash;nay, so that they might come off victorious and the attacker be
+humbled and diminished. Or he might say: “The case is grave; I
+understand what you want; let me think a little over it;” then he
+himself approach the still higher ruler and consult him. So that the
+responsibility was shifted away as far as convenient.</p>
+
+<p class="cspc">THE STORY OF THE FISH-HOOK WAR</p>
+
+<p>But this fairly is politics, and we were talking of property, and
+perhaps it is better to give you an ancient anecdote that was told at
+breakfast with great vivacity by Sir John. It is the story of the famous
+“Fish-hook War.” Let us suppose three brothers or relatives, each with a
+district, or village perhaps, under him&mdash;people well-to-do, with
+property and women. Let us label them&mdash;(for their names would only
+trouble us and entangle me)&mdash;A., B., C. Now somehow or other a story got
+out that A. had become possessed, in some way or other, of a wonderful
+fish-hook, something quite extraordinary in every way and “<i>hors
+ligne</i>.” Exactly how it<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_412">{412}</a></span> was I don’t know, but B. felt that if it were
+so good he should like to have it himself, and most naturally, according
+to the communistic ideas of the South Seas, he went over to A. and asked
+him to give him his fish-hook. A. thought awhile, and then answered that
+he would be most happy (South Sea way), but that unfortunately he had
+only a little while ago (South Sea way), given it to D. or E. or F. as
+the case may be. Now B. knew that this was a lie, but I suppose he
+smiled politely, or in a sickly way, and went off wroth at heart. Some
+time after, whether taking a whale’s tooth or not, I don’t know, for I
+am not yet posted in the use of the implement, A. called on C. and said
+to him: “I don’t like the way followed by our brother B. in his
+behaviour to us. He has been persecuting me about a fish-hook, that he
+might have left alone, and he seems to wish to grasp everything. I think
+that we ought to give him a thrashing.”</p>
+
+<p>C. agreed: they notified B. that on such a day, say Thursday next, they
+would proceed to attack him, kill his pigs, ravish his women, burn his
+houses, and generally make an end of him; and that he had better put up
+his war palings at once. Of course, South Sea way, he was to be informed
+of the hour and place of the duel. B. did so, but he was thrashed, his
+houses were burned, his pigs killed and eaten, his women ravished; and
+he himself had to take to the wild bush, where for a<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_413">{413}</a></span> couple of years he
+remained. Then the others thought that after all he was a brother, and
+had been punished enough, and they called him back and helped him to
+rebuild his houses and started him in life again. Again, South Sea way,
+all the property they had was in common and disaster to one was disaster
+to all. But B. after a little while went to A. and said to him: “Of
+course you might take offence at my having asked you for your fish-hook.
+It is not for me to decide now, and all that is over; but I don’t see
+that C. should have behaved as he did. He had no complaint against me,
+and I think he behaved meanly. Now he is lording it all along. Why not
+do to him as you did to me?”</p>
+
+<p>“All right,” said A. So again A. and B. notified C. that his pigs should
+be attacked, his houses burned, his women ravished, etc., etc., and to
+get his palisade ready for an attack at an appointed time. Sure enough,
+down they came on him, and chased him out and drove him into the bush.
+But after a few months they repented and remembered his brotherhood, and
+recalling him rebuilt his houses and set him up again in business.</p>
+
+<p>And things went smoothly for a time, but C. one day thought it over, and
+going to B. unbosomed himself thus: “It is all right that you should
+have walked into me, but what had I done to A.? Nothing whatever. He
+might have had a<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_414">{414}</a></span> grudge against you who troubled him about the
+possession of the fish-hook, but what could he have against one who had
+helped him always. He is grown over-proud and powerful. Why should we
+not bring him to a reasonable level, and perhaps after all get the
+fish-hook?” So they agreed and sent him the usual summons to prepare for
+devastation; but also let him know that if he would merely get out in
+time after putting up his war fence, and make no resistance, no further
+harm would be done him than to kill his pigs and burn down his houses;
+but that he must take absolutely nothing away; all must remain just as
+it was. So A. consented, and went into the bush, and the other two came
+down and made devastation. And in a few days they called A. back and
+said to him: “Well, now things are fairly square, we may allow you to
+come back; and we will help you to rebuild your houses. We can’t give
+you back your pigs, they are eaten&mdash;but, oh, where is your fish-hook?”</p>
+
+<p>Then A. became shamefaced and said to them: “It is too bad, but the fact
+is <i>there never was any fish-hook</i>. I was drunk one day, and in a
+boasting fit I invented the owning of a wonderful fish-hook. That is all
+there is to it.” So that, made wiser by fate, they remembered their
+general brotherhood, and put up with the nonexistence of the unfortunate
+fish-hook.</p>
+
+<p>This is a good story of Polynesian war, such as seemed to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_415">{415}</a></span> keep all
+these good people going, gave them excitement, work to do, provided
+against unnecessary increase, and yet seems rather to have kept up their
+numbers, now diminishing apparently everywhere in all islands. It may be
+that when, as in Tahiti, there may come up the possibility of lawsuits
+over land claims, the fierce activity of war shall be transferred to the
+pursuit of rights in courts, as the bloodthirstiness of the Norseman
+still persists in the “process ifs” Norman-French.</p>
+
+<p>But here they have not yet come to that. No arbitrary professional and
+scientific ideas, such as aid the French, have yet taken hold. The poor
+Tahitian, elevated to the dignity of being the equal of a Frenchman,
+pays for it the penalty of having to record his titles to land by
+methods new to him. These titles, if not claimed within some European
+space of time, are to lapse, so that he rushes now into court, with a
+terrible array of verbal testimony, claiming all he possibly can, and
+sure to be contradicted or to find his land counter-claimed by some
+neighbour, jealous of letting any dormant right, however doubtful, pass
+away forever. Poor Pomaré V, the late king who abdicated in favour of
+the French, as Thakombau did here, in favour of the English, was
+claiming (as I may have told you) when we were there, in Tahiti, two
+months ago, all sorts of land presented officially to his first
+ancestors and ancestress, as great chief, or as what we now<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_416">{416}</a></span> call king;
+somewhat as Adams and I were placed in possession of our little district
+so many fathoms long. Against him the battle may not be difficult; as he
+has resigned his kingship, the titles go back to the first owners, who
+gave it to a ruler, not to a person. But meanwhile in the court records
+and notices of trials his name is scattered upon every page.</p>
+
+<p>Here things have not yet come to that. Old ideas that are inherent in
+the Polynesian way of thinking are not roughly put aside; and I must say
+that I personally have a sense of coming to a place where my mind does
+not go through the rack of seeing misapplied laws and rules break up
+everything, for the risk of possibly doing some good, with the certainty
+of much harm. For, after all, what are titles of ownership? There is the
+excellent story of the New Zealand chief, who pressed with impatience to
+start his claim and make it short, answered promptly, “I eat the former
+owner”&mdash;a brief summary of many ownerships everywhere. Or of the others
+who proved their claim to land by showing that from far back they hunted
+rats there. (You will remember that in Samoa rat-hunting was a dignified
+and “chiefy” sport.)</p>
+
+<p>The <i>lali</i>, the heathen war drum that at the Governor’s house calls us
+to our meals, has a story about it in this line of thought: Years back
+Sir John ascended the highest peak in Fiji, some five thousand feet or
+more high. And having<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_417">{417}</a></span> toiled up and being enveloped in cloud and mist,
+instead of taking refuge in caves, as did his companions, he sat down
+upon a little hillock, over which was spread his waterproof, and waited
+for the sunlight that was to show the land below through the rifts in
+the clouds. Some time afterward one of the magistrates had come to ask
+about the ownership of one side of the mountain, and was assured by the
+men of&mdash;such and such a place, that it was theirs, a claim contradicted
+by those on the other side. But the first party insisted, saying, “Years
+ago our people buried their war drum on top of the mountain. There it is
+yet.” And true enough, though the spokesman had not been there since
+childhood, the little mound or hillock was caused by the burial of the
+drum. So that this piece of evidence was duly recorded by being sent to
+the Governor; and the evidence is daily produced for us with the beating
+of it to call to meals.</p>
+
+<p>I have wandered far away from our course upon the river Rewa. There is
+nothing more to it; we had a pleasant time. There were several officers
+of the <i>Cordelia</i> along with us. They had been in Samoa and knew our
+good friends of Apia; Seumanu and Faatulia and the girls, and old Tofae,
+and they agreed with us in liking them. They were in for photography
+also, at least the captain; and generally I enjoyed the pleasure that I
+have often had in meeting Britishers. The captain was<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_418">{418}</a></span> full of things he
+had seen and been amused by. The ship had just returned from Tonga,
+where it had taken Sir John, and I was told about details connected with
+church life there: the most important feature in many islands, that
+makes, for instance, Raiatea and Huahaine and Bora-Bora, our neighbour
+islands of Tahiti, curious survivals of an arbitrary code of behaviour.</p>
+
+<p>There are too many to repeat; and all that I have is disjointed, but you
+know the fancy I have for believing that a few anecdotes help to give an
+explanation&mdash;and you would tire less of them than of my own
+disquisitions. Whether it be so now or not I don’t know, but formerly
+the great church in Tonga at Nukalofa (I suppose) was so ordered as to
+promote the cause of European dress and also of European trade. The
+different doors gave access to people according to their costumes.
+Consequently distinct places were given to those who owned hats and who
+wore them over shirts and trousers. By another door, to other seats,
+entered the hatless owners of shirts and trousers. And <i>lastly</i>, the
+lowest place of all and separate entrance was for those who even with
+shirts wore only the <i>lava-lava</i>. In contravention of all this, the
+Governor, our Sir John, and the English officers accompanying him on
+some hot Sunday, turned up coatless, with only shirts and trousers, and
+I hope restored the native mind to a healthier turn.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="ill_028">
+<a href="images/ill_049.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_049.jpg" width="480" height="550" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">TONGA GIRL WITH FAN</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_419">{419}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Some way back the natives contributed largely to donations for the
+missionary society, and I have heard that as much as $30,000 has been
+sent repeatedly away from this little island and its small population.
+The Polynesian, in this, like every one else at bottom is on the surface
+also a vain creature, incited to display and show off; which perhaps
+explains a great many of his apparent atrocities, perhaps even a good
+deal of his cannibalism. So that these people have been spurred into
+giving at church as a special mode of distinction. Again I am reminded
+by my conscience that I have heard of such things amongst us. But I must
+go on with them: giving, as a mode of generosity, has been prevalent
+among them, fostered by everything that we can think of&mdash;and especially
+by the fact that a chief, as head of a <i>community</i>, is nothing but a
+<i>conduit</i> for property. Some may stick if the conduit is very rough, but
+to give and give much and all has seemed to me from my first days a
+Polynesian brand. Was I not telling you last month, or some way back in
+those lovely days of laziness in Tahiti, how Tavi, the over-generous,
+gave his wife to Terriere of Papara, through whom we trace our
+Polynesian descent. Well, with giving in such ways goes <i>show</i>; a silent
+giver gets no credit and no power thereby; and most do not like the
+strict Gospel teaching, so what is a man to do who planks out his
+<i>dollars</i> in church? Any man with twenty-five<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_420">{420}</a></span> cents in copper gets more
+out of it than he does&mdash;crash go the copper coins into the plate, while
+the one silver piece slips in edgeways. To remedy such a state of
+things, the proper person brings his money in the largest bulk, and if
+perchance during the week had not had the occasion to get change, he
+finds in the sacred building itself a corner where his large piece can
+be exchanged for small; so that in all the pride of justification, he
+can roll the coppers into the plate, and even perhaps brim it over, and
+send the pennies whirling along the floor.</p>
+
+<p>With many such comparisons of observations we beguiled the time. The
+steam launch met us on our return, and we sailed again over the bar,
+just in time for the tide, for we were bumped in the crossing, though
+the launch only draws a foot. And now we are resting again, enjoying the
+delightful coolness; for though the thermometer does not quite bear me
+out at times, it has been cool all the time, except of course when one
+is in the sun. But the thermometer has gone down to 66 at night, and
+keeps up pretty steadily to a range between 70 and 76; and though I have
+suffered from sciatica on board ship, I am getting over it.</p>
+
+<p>In this civilized life we are looking forward to a trip, at the end of
+this week, into the mountains, accompanying the Governor, who is going
+to “prospect” for the site of a sani<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_421">{421}</a></span>tarium high up. Strange to say, no
+one seems to think of it in the other places we have seen. How easy it
+would be in Tahiti, for instance, to go for a change up to some of the
+great heights; and such openings into inland places makes things
+generally quieter and more orderly.</p>
+
+<p>The thing is vague in my mind, only I fear that we shall be several
+weeks in carrying it out, and certainly it will be a rough undertaking.
+Then too, how shall we manage to be just in time for the steamer to
+Sydney, and then how will the arrival of that steamer dovetail with the
+departure of the steamer that is to take us to Singapore?</p>
+
+<p>But to quote from a letter of King George of Tonga to Sir John, worth
+citing because it is a type of the semi-religious phraseology we have
+seen all through the Pacific, bestowed upon us or upon others:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“When the first man fell from the former state of good he received
+from God, there came upon our hearts pain and doubtings and strife
+and divisions among ourselves, in regard to unforseen things that
+may happen in the future.</p>
+
+<p>But it is with God alone to restore happiness.”</p></div>
+
+<p>George Tubou’s words convey everything necessary, and I shall report to
+you when things have been shaped. Meanwhile “Salaam,” as the little
+Indian boys said to me at the sugar plantation&mdash;“Salaam, Sahib,” the
+first sounds that in<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_422">{422}</a></span>dicate that we are about turning toward home, and
+that India is the next stage.</p>
+
+<p class="cspc">AN EXPEDITION INTO THE MOUNTAINS OF VITI LEVU</p>
+
+<p class="nspc">
+Vunidawa, Viti Levu.<br>
+&#160; &#160; Sunday, June 27, 1891.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>We reached Viria on our first evening out, having made the journey in
+boats as far as the sugar mill of Namosi, drawn along smoothly, as if on
+skates, by a little steam launch, upon which was also part of our
+contingent; for even at the beginning we were many: the Governor and his
+secretary, Mr. Spence, and Mr. Berry, for surveying and the A. N. C.
+(armed native constabulary), and the Governor’s servants, and Awoki, and
+the Governor’s herald the Mata Ni Fenua (eyes of the land), and certain
+others, and soon Mr. Carew the magistrate on the Rewa, and so on.</p>
+
+<p>It was the same river scenery, mangrove swamps washed by the river, and
+by the tide which influences the stream for some forty miles or
+more&mdash;steep banks cut by the water to an edge, and covered with grass,
+sugar-cane, banana&mdash;occasional but rarer&mdash;cocoanuts and so on.</p>
+
+<p>Later on as we came nearer to the end of the day’s trip, as the banks
+grew higher and more hillocky, they became more and more cut up by
+ravinings and small cuttings which were<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_423">{423}</a></span> sometimes wet, with rivulets or
+bayous, sometimes dry, and often so close and narrow as to make but
+little clefts in the stone and earth. Across them, over them; rounding
+their edges or filling them, grew the trees, sometimes small, sometimes
+of great height. All this repeated everywhere made a continuous set of
+little pictures of broken lights and forms&mdash;through all the course of
+the river.</p>
+
+<p>In a small way nothing could be more picturesque. At places where the
+bank had sloped and made some little flats, men and women were
+collected, bathing or washing clothes: many of them East Indians, women
+clothed in the flowing garments, of bright or “entire” colours looking
+in their favourite yellow, like great birds; occasionally running along
+the shore beach, their drapery swelling behind them, impeding and
+showing the motion of the limbs, and recalling the correctness of the
+drawings and paintings of Delacroix, who alone, so far, had made the
+Oriental that he saw, look like anything else than a geographical or
+artistic curiosity. When I think that a few weeks sufficed to store his
+mind with all that he had done or implied in this way, I return to my
+admiration for his work, which sometimes for a man of the eighties of
+this century looks too much like the doings of a man of the thirties.</p>
+
+<p>Once along a high bank near some station (government station), a row of
+constabulary stood up and then sat down in<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_424">{424}</a></span> a row, respectfully on a
+platform of the bank, to do honour to the <i>Kovana</i>&mdash;the Governor.</p>
+
+<p>Late in the afternoon we turned at one of the confluents and reached our
+destination for the night. A high sandy beach all broken over with
+footsteps, looking like a Nile embankment&mdash;many natives sitting about on
+it&mdash;then disembarkment and a little walk through some sugar-cane and
+banana, on a little raised road, and we came to a native town or
+village, inside of a deep ditch of circumvallation, filled with trees,
+and inside of a big waste space, the house we were to occupy, alongside
+of a few others. The same method of entrance&mdash;the trunk of a tree made
+into a plank with the natural curve, with notches and holes occasionally
+in the wood, as the tree has grown. This wooden path led quite high up,
+and some eight feet or so to the base running around the house&mdash;the
+<i>yavu</i> or permanent base, which is allowed to remain when the house is
+dismantled by time or by man.</p>
+
+<p>The house, the usual one with the walls covered with leaves. In one
+place a <i>ti</i> branch in full bloom of yellow-red, projecting from its
+side as if it grew there (a decoration for our coming). The doorposts of
+trunk of tree-fern, all dark grey and corrugated, looking like stone;
+and above the doors a false lintel, engaged in the wall and smaller than
+the door, looking like a round bulging stone (as if so cut by a
+pre-Romanseque archi<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_425">{425}</a></span>tect); the cutting of the chisel admirably
+indicated, but in reality nothing but a bunch of grey dried leaves, so
+brushed together that they suggested the grain of stone under the
+chisel.</p>
+
+<p>In front of the door, or rather at its edges, engaged in the platform,
+shells disposed in a pattern, and the same disposed in a half circle in
+front of the stairway plank deeply sunk in the earth, so that only their
+ridges were visible. All this exquisite good taste in spite of the
+repeated assertion, which may be true, that these good people are not at
+all sensitive to æsthetic feelings.</p>
+
+<p>The interior as usual: yellow cane in patterns on the walls, and dark
+columns of tree-fern, and rafters covered with sennit. Soft mats on the
+floor were made softer with leaves thickly strewn under them.</p>
+
+<p>Here there was a presentation of whale’s teeth, of <i>kava</i> and of food;
+and here the Governor listened to reports of the place, and talked to
+the <i>mbulis</i> (prounounced bulis) (local chiefs of a certain degree), and
+later listened to some petitioner of a neighbouring place, who in the
+twilight had come to him while standing out in the open; and had
+squatted down and mumbled and whispered, and offered some written
+petition. Then we ate and slept and in the morning, walked along the
+outside upper base, and looked upon the hazy scene&mdash;then<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_426">{426}</a></span> bathed in the
+river while the mist still floated above the tallest trees.</p>
+
+<p>When the sun was well up our party divided, three of us going by canoe,
+and the Governor and officials and retinue walking or riding on.</p>
+
+<p>Here then we parted, A. &amp; T. taking the canoe, while the Governor and
+the magistrates went on foot and horse by land, to Vunidawa. There was a
+little thatched awning upon the canoe’s deck, large enough for three to
+manage to stretch under. Six men, three at each end, poled or paddled in
+the canoe as the water was deep or shallow; while one man, in this case
+I think a sergeant of the “armed native constabulary” (A. N. C.), stood
+on the outrigger, or sat about and took charge.</p>
+
+<p>The low roof prevented one’s seeing much of the shores, for to sit up
+was to have one’s view absolutely excluded. But all the more important
+became the little details of vision, the beauties of line and colour
+that one sees everywhere in the movement or the rest of water, its
+breaks upon shore or upon rocks, the reflections that it carries with
+it, and the near banks or little distant escapes of vision, all framed
+within the cane posts of the sun shelter. It was all much the same as
+the day before, but the shores became bolder, the breaks greater. Rapids
+rushed around us, and our men poled hard against the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_427">{427}</a></span> force of the
+water. We passed or were left behind by the other boats carrying the
+enormous luggage and accumulation of provisions for such a party. The
+profiles of the men in the other boats stood up in contradictory curves
+and lines against the shadows and fights of the distance, or the
+darkness and glistening of the water. They shouted and called and got
+all the fun and excitement out of the hard work that could be had. As
+the slopes increased and the river-bed showed more gravel and boulders
+in large patches, the talk and chatter of the men reminded me of former
+days in Japan, up in the high lands and by the rivers that run there on
+great gravel beds.</p>
+
+<p>At every step this impression of reminiscence increases and must
+increase, as it occurred to me on the very first morning of arrival,
+upon seeing the many small hills and mounds fringed with trees, behind
+which came down great slopes of distance; even an occasional waterfall
+was there to remind me. The heat was great, the silence also, even
+though the men shouted; for occasionally we heard nothing but the
+movement of the poles and the ripple of the water. A hawk would flutter
+off from some tree. Dragon-flies lighted on the deck or upon one’s
+outstretched legs. A spider, folding up like a pair of scissors, so as
+to look all long instead of circular, began to build its web, for there
+were flies; and all little things became<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_428">{428}</a></span> of interest by the time we had
+reached our first halt. We were helped up some very high banks of red
+clay, partly covered with green bushes and trees, and found ourselves at
+the entrance of a pretty little place, with plants and trees neatly set
+out, for colour spots. We lunched most comfortably in a native house.</p>
+
+<p>With this break we began again our river course, the rapids increasing,
+and the difference between the shoal water and the pools becoming more
+evident. Occasionally a large spot of river greened or darkened into
+what was depth. In such we longed to bathe, when the moment of halting
+would arrive, or before departure, but in none such of these did we
+swim. Indeed, little by little, one felt the influence of the assurance
+that sharks visited these deep holes, and that to some fifty miles or
+more up these rivers there was a possible danger. The shape of the river
+banks, the marks on the shore, the thickness of the dry parts of the
+river, the size of its boulders and pebbles, the manner in which the
+tongues of conglomerate that ran along with the river-bank were cut
+down, the sudden cuttings and hollows and ravines of the bank, all
+showed what a mass of water, in wet seasons and years, must pour down
+these rivers. Then when the tides are high and the waters give access,
+great sharks come up and bide their time in the deep pools. No year
+passes but that some natives are at<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_429">{429}</a></span>tacked. Here then the smaller ones
+remain when the river runs lower, and change their colour and become
+fresh-water sharks, and sometimes when small are harmless; but the
+impression of danger is there. I am told that they are seen far up, and
+that even as far as we shall get on Monday night, they are occasional.</p>
+
+<p>We landed in the afternoon at Vunidawa, some thirteen miles by land from
+our morning’s stay; again coming up high red clay banks, of a beautiful
+slope most charmingly set out and arranged, upon which stands the
+“station.” I was told that the arrangement of cuts and breaks and
+ditches was all modern or recent, but that at one place there were the
+remains of the old cut or moat on the upper hillside. But the place had
+a fortified look&mdash;one looked down from high banks (below and around
+which ran paths) upon a hollow centre in which stood native houses and
+great trees. In the distance, mountains across the river; toward the
+west, one great streaked mass, with an outline vaguely like the Aorai of
+Tahiti, the smaller ridges in front of it showing high precipices that
+looked violet in the dawn, with occasional shiny white spots; all else
+with a faint haze of green, except where far off, further to the west, a
+pointed peak looked blue. Along the bight of the curved river a line of
+cocoanuts stood near the high banks. Further on one could discern
+to-morrow’s road, that dis<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_430">{430}</a></span>appeared behind a turn of the river, and up
+the edges of the intermediate hills in the distance yellow patches and
+markings modelled the slopes of the first uplands.</p>
+
+<p class="spc">Sunday.</p>
+
+<p>All next day we rested. The sitting-room of the pretty native house was
+decorated with native <i>tappa</i> (<i>masi</i>) of many patterns. Books and
+magazines were upon the tables and shelves of cane. The Governor and the
+resident magistrate, Mr. Joski, whose house this was, received reports
+from the <i>mbulis</i> (chiefs) of the neighbourhood, while sitting out in
+the evening on the green slope of the garden.</p>
+
+<p>We left again Monday morning for the first beginnings of mountain
+country and more inland manners. Our party again divided. Atamo and
+myself and the momentarily ill Awoki took to the water and again went up
+stream. The weather was exquisite, the draught of the river just cooled
+the heat. Constant animation and struggle on the part of the boatmen for
+the rapids became more and more frequent. Half the time, with the
+strength of the current and the shallowness of the water, four of the
+six men plunged in and pulled and tugged at the boat, pulling it through
+the boiling water, lifting their legs high, one after another for
+stepping over the boulders, every muscle strained with effort, the poles
+bending<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_431">{431}</a></span> against the rocky bottom. Occasionally the man who stood at bow
+or stern, upon the little vantage nook of the thickness of the canoe,
+would be slung off by a swerving of the current, and his own stretching
+far away to the side, and would retain some place from which he could
+join us. The other boats passed us or were left behind. We saw them far
+off on the slopes of the torrents, lifting shining poles against the
+shadow of the banks. Sometimes the water swept over and our own little
+planking was wet with it. As the rapids increased so did the spread of
+the stones and boulders of the remainder of the river. We rested once
+for midday meal. Then in the afternoon we landed and walked a little way
+along a causeway road to a little village on a bluff, where the wide
+river turned. Then passing through many houses and turning around a deep
+moat, filled with bananas and other greenery, we came upon the edge of
+the little hill. Here stood a house of a different type, more like the
+type of the mountains; a very high, dark, thatched roof, more than twice
+the height of the wall together with the stone base, or mound embedded
+with stones, called <i>yavu</i>, out of it grew bunches of the red <i>ti</i>. This
+mound embedded with stones is kept and has its name; the house on top
+will be built and rebuilt.</p>
+
+<p>At one corner a great palm tree rose above the high roof. From the
+little plateau, planted with occasional trees and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_432">{432}</a></span> rising steep from the
+river, a sloping and curved path led down between water and village,
+separated from the latter by the deep moat filled with trees, and coming
+at length to sharp earthern steps (if one can so call anything as rude)
+that took us to the river end, to our bath in shallow water, the edge of
+the deep pool under the cliff. Far back behind us spread the river-bed
+with the stream between, and in the distance behind the hills a line or
+shoulder of mountain streaked perpendicularly with great shiny patches
+of rock. In this house we spent the night. It was inside, like all those
+we have yet seen, charmingly finished with patterns of fastening on the
+reeds of the walls, and sennit decorations on beams and lintels and
+posts. A rude representation of a cow or bull had been worked into the
+roof.</p>
+
+<p>The next day we began our walk, leaving the canoes for good; and after a
+few hours over clay ground and some rocky streams, we came to a wide
+space of the river; across which we were carried in rough litters made
+of bamboo tied together, then, walking up a clay bank between trees,
+came upon the little village around which the river curves. This was
+Navuna.</p>
+
+<p>Here the view was confined to our huts and those of our neighbours.
+Behind us a plantation of bananas; visible partly around the corner of a
+neighbouring house, a great tree shading the centre of the <i>rara</i>, the
+village place, where in the morn<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_433">{433}</a></span>ing the Governor and the two
+magistrates interviewed the representatives of this place and of others.
+I could make out fairly well that a certain court of reproof was going
+on; for all through these places was something which explained itself a
+little further along.</p>
+
+<p class="spc">Nasogo, July 3rd.</p>
+
+<p>The midday saw us off from Navuna, and through similar scenery to a
+little village on the edge of a river running far below it. The village
+is Navu (n) (di Waiwaivule) in the district of Boboutho.</p>
+
+<p>Now we began to be helped by being carried in the litters provided us by
+Mr. Joski; for crossing and recrossing streams, it was perhaps as easy a
+way as being carried pick-a-back. But where it was both a triumph and an
+excitement was when we were lifted up the steep sides of the gorges;
+then the looking back or forward, and seeing below one’s feet the
+toiling carriers of the other litters, swaying to and fro with their
+burden; and behind them again the long file of what was getting to be an
+enormous retinue. For a background the distant mountains, or the bottom
+of the gorge, black shingle and rushing water, or shallow pools
+reflecting the green above. But prettier than all was some passage along
+the stream; the men in the water; the mass of the party sometimes in the
+water<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_434">{434}</a></span> near us, or disappearing around picturesque frames of corner
+rocks, over shingles and boulders; and reflected all about us the entire
+picture&mdash;the distant mountains and rocks in sun and mist, the near rocks
+covered with green, or with purple and grey of conglomerate; and the
+song of the rapids ahead in a black and white streak counting against
+the trembling green.</p>
+
+<p>But when we walked then much did we regret our litters. To the native
+our good path was for the most part on the dry river-bed, and lengthily
+and wearily we picked a precarious footing over innumerable pebbles and
+stones and boulders; sometimes thinking that the walk was easier on the
+big ones, because one went from one to another; sometimes on the smaller
+and more rolling ones, because one got several under one’s slipping
+foot. But my neighbours always helped me: sometimes Lingani, one of the
+Governor’s men, or one of the “Army,” as we called them (the armed
+constabulary), or some <i>mbuli</i> who accompanied the escort, or some newly
+accidental neighbour; so that all went well enough, and we reached our
+night’s destination without the sprained ankle that had discomfited Mr.
+Spence early in the trip.</p>
+
+<p>All is a little hazy to me up to where we are now. I remember the look
+down the ravine and up the other river. I remember that huts began to be
+more peaked or more like</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="ill_029">
+<a href="images/ill_050.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_050.jpg" width="550" height="324" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">EDGE OF VILLAGE OF NASOGO IN MOUNTAIN OF THE NORTHEAST OF
+VITI LEVU, FIJI</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_435">{435}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">beehives. I remember one which had been fitted up as a heathen temple or
+devil house, and from whose roof many strings hung down&mdash;as conductors,
+one may say of influences. There had been a basket attached to one of
+them, which the Governor cut down. I remember, of course, but one
+running into the other, presentations of whales’ teeth and food, and
+<i>tappa</i>, and dances (<i>mekke mekke</i>), with or without the dancers being
+wrapped in the enormous folds of cloth, that afterward were unwound with
+more or less difficulty, to be piled up high as a man’s height into
+great masses of presents. (And by the by, though all that is extinct
+to-day, some thirty or forty years ago a return to this old manner of
+making gifts of <i>tappa</i> came near to bringing on a civil war in Tahiti.)
+The Tahitian custom referred to came up again some while after Queen
+Pomaré (Aimata) was on the throne, her brother Pomaré III having died
+quite young, and leaving her, who had not been trained entirely by
+missionaries, exposed to the passing influences that come up with new
+conditions. At some time or other she capriciously desired that upon
+certain occasions she should be received in Tahiti (on her arrival, I
+think, from Eimeo&mdash;Moorea&mdash;but that is unimportant) in the old way.
+Among other customs would have been that of presenting her with <i>tappas</i>
+offered by a number of young women, who, having danced before her all<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_436">{436}</a></span>
+swathed in this native cloth, should then gradually be unwound, and
+having nothing upon them, continue the dance to an end. This was part of
+the thing, and I only remember this detail. It was then that Tati of
+Papara, the grandfather of our old chiefess, came to the front, and in a
+most remarkable manner, both by threatening armed opposition, and by the
+use of an eloquence worthy of the greatest examples, broke down the will
+of the Queen and the plotting of her then advisers. It is thus greatly
+to Tati that peace and the final quiet prevailing of Christianity was
+due.</p>
+
+<p>As to Aimata, or Queen Pomaré, that she remained more or less of a pagan
+at least for a long time, the fact or report that she destroyed two of
+her children (probably base born) is in the direction of a testimony. Of
+course the meaning of the word Christian is variable according to time
+and place and especially according to date, so that the geographical and
+historical limit of the meaning should never be insisted upon in too set
+a manner.</p>
+
+<p>The next day’s tramp brought us here, but apart from certain geological
+facts in which Adams was enormously interested&mdash;for example, the
+superposition of the conglomerate upon everything else, and the finding
+of shells in the softish rock at this height&mdash;all was pretty much the
+same.</p>
+
+<p>Our present place is very charming, reminding me of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_437">{437}</a></span> last. It is at
+a corner again, with the river turning round one side of it, and the
+stream up which we came on the other. Between them a bluff covered with
+trees, the space of the bed of the river mostly filled with boulders and
+gravel and rocks, though we roll the rapids, or slide the quiet waters;
+a great rock just facing the village, as an advance buttress of the
+mountain behind it, which melts tier upon tier into an entanglement of
+foliage; and the town or village itself, built on a succession of
+terraces, all worked over and planted, and edged with walls that seem
+part of the natural structure; here and there, even right in the
+village, a boulder black or grey, almost of the colour of the thatch of
+neighbouring houses, and protected, shaded, encompassed with trees or
+high decorative plants as they usually are. As always everywhere
+apparently, the projection of any tongue of land makes itself into a
+knife edge; so that the idea of a ditch or moat would be suggested to
+the savage engineer by the very make of the land. Therefore from each
+side the slopes go down, and below you see tops of trees, banana, palm
+or what not, and tops of huts staged down.<a id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a></p>
+
+<p>Then where the land rises again on the slopes, big boulders stand up,
+reminding you again of the thatched roofs; and far away on heights are
+places where villages stood, and where<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_438">{438}</a></span> some years ago these very
+savages were attacked and driven off.</p>
+
+<p>For all these parts of the country were once a stronghold of the more
+savage tribes; if not the more powerful, who sometimes came down and
+attacked the lower places. And all through here some of the gentlemen
+who were with us had gone, when the time had come to make an end of it,
+destroying the towns and reducing the wild people to forced peace.
+Occasionally I overheard these reminiscences, which do not date so many
+years ago&mdash;fifteen or sixteen, I think. The Governor had headed or
+accompanied expeditions, and one or more of our companions had been on
+such attacks, after having suffered the loss of a number of relatives
+and friends. But all that is over now; only, as in all mountain
+countries, there is a sort of regrowing of that bad seed, such as we saw
+in this recurrence of the old devil worship.</p>
+
+<p>Here we saw of course again more ceremonies and presentations of food,
+the latter becoming a serious necessity with the great number of men
+accompanying us. The Governor is not only a representative of the Queen,
+he is as such the chief of chiefs, and most wisely his policy, whether
+or not it has been the policy of his predecessors, has insisted upon
+this point. Every ceremonial of observance, everything that would belong
+to the native ruler, is encouraged and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_439">{439}</a></span> kept up. Not only such natural
+observances must exercise an indefinable prestige on the native mind,
+but they also must allow, in what is a personal government, the use of
+an apparatus of control exactly suited to the native mind: thus any
+subordinate chief can be reprimanded, talked to and put in his place in
+such a way, that he feels it from ancestral habit; he can be removed or
+set aside. A man serving out a sentence can be kept a prisoner behind
+the paling of a bamboo house that he could break through as easily as he
+can see through it.</p>
+
+<p>With time, as the natives change, the laws and ordinances that they have
+made themselves, for most things, that have seemed good to them and
+which are not contrary to the absolute essentials of English law, have
+been left, and will change as they change, and may fit themselves to an
+unknown future.</p>
+
+<p>This will explain the naturally sensible reason for which the Governor
+differed with some of the Catholic missionaries, or rather their bishop,
+about which things I have heard, if not complainingly, at least with
+suggestion of arbitrariness from one or two good old Samoan priests. For
+instance, it is a great chief’s privilege and marks him that he should
+be “<i>tama’d</i>” to in passing&mdash;that is what marks him, and establishes his
+position in the hierarchy of rule.</p>
+
+<p>But there is no reason why a bishop should claim it; even if in old days
+the confusion with regard to power of sacredness,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_440">{440}</a></span> of respect, and
+worship had always existed here as it has been all through the world. So
+also the case of the missionaries objecting to the chief receiving the
+first fruits of the land, often symbolized nowadays by a mere few pieces
+of some growth, because long ago it bore a religious as well as civil
+meaning. I fear me that our old friends, the Jesuits of China, were the
+only very wise men that served as missionaries, so that they alone never
+went by their personal whims or measured matters by their own fast rule.</p>
+
+<p>But this is far off from my natural path of mere record of what happens
+or what I see. For some things at least the sketches will help you. I
+may succeed in making some note of the cheerful clearness of colour and
+tone all about me, though of course I can only make a choice. If I give
+you the day, then the veiled charms of morning or of evening, the
+enveloping of distances in misty colour, must remain unattempted of
+record. Or if I try the haze of the beginning or end of day, then I
+shall not have anything for you of the lightness and gayety of the
+brighter hours. But the sketches will give you the shape of the houses.
+You will sympathize with the inconvenience of getting in or out, in the
+dark or wet weather, excellent as it must have been as a device for
+protection against too sudden intrusion of doubtful friends.</p>
+
+<p>We wait one whole day: then we enter the mountains for<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_441">{441}</a></span> good, and pass
+over them to make our way to the coast which will be a matter of four
+days or so. It may be warmer higher up, as there may be more cloud; so
+far it has been cool at night, the thermometer going down as low as 56.</p>
+
+<p class="nspc">
+In Camp in the Bush.<br>
+&#160; &#160; Saturday night, July 4th.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>We left Nasogo (pronounced Nasongo) early this morning in the mist;
+going down into the river-bed, among the boulders, and crossing the
+stream several times: the same river that rushed down around the little
+point or promontory of Nasombo&mdash;a streak of black or blue or green or
+white, among the black stones spread out between the rocky bluffs. Then
+we attacked the mountain and the forest&mdash;stumbling and slipping over
+rocks and moss, and matted tree roots. The path had been somewhat
+cleared for us here and there, but it was hard travelling through the
+wildwood; all damp above and below with the continuous moisture. In this
+desert of leaves and tree trunks, the passages of former torrents served
+for paths. Over us were quite high tall trees, but between their upper
+branches and the mossy wet earth spread a broken canopy of tall ferns,
+and lianas and the branches of smaller trees and plants. Here and there
+a great fern connected with the tree fern, but unlike it, spread or
+lifted long fronds like canes some<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_442">{442}</a></span> twenty feet in length. Upon every
+tree hung innumerable mosses and parasites. Below, all over, a tangle of
+ferns; beautiful as ferns are, though you know that I care little for
+them; I am even so unworthy, that the prospects of rare orchids does not
+stir my blood; I would give them all for roses, violets or for apple
+trees or the cherry. I am essentially and absolutely European in these
+things, and retreat behind my rights as an artist to have preferences
+and keep to my instincts. But for you who love such things, I can say
+that there were many rare plants; a creeping lily, for instance, and
+innumerable ferns.</p>
+
+<p>The fatigue of the ascent became greater: we halted at noon on a little
+open space above a high precipice, from which we could look back at the
+whole course of the river sunk far into the mountains and curving in the
+far distance around the amphitheatre, stands on its little bluff the
+village of Nasogo which we had left in the morning some four hours
+before. Beyond it the river ran, a black thread in the dark grey
+shingle, below the big bluff, and around the little promontory by which
+we had bathed for two days. Then we had lunch and Sir John on this
+Fourth of July proposed the health of the President&mdash;and drank to that
+of Mr. Harrison. Then the “Armed Native Constabulary” gave a salute of
+six guns which echoed far away down the valley and into the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_443">{443}</a></span> grass
+country that we hope to reach to-morrow perhaps. No doubt there will be
+stories afloat that we have been attacked. We were then some 2,300 feet
+up&mdash;the thermometer indicated 62°.</p>
+
+<p>Later, as I was very tired, I was carried in the rough palanquin of
+boughs down the steep hills&mdash;the path so narrow that much ingenuity and
+noise and discussion was expended by my carriers to pass through the
+trees: fortunately the conveyance was elastic and could be sloped any
+way. In fact at times I stood up or sloped back so as to have to catch
+on, but I fell asleep and the men carefully moved along the hanging
+branches and lianas so that they should not strike me. Almost everything
+that came down merely hung in an elastic way. Rarely did a big tree
+stretch over the path. The last thing that I saw before closing my eyes
+was the file of our party beneath me: Their heads just visible between
+my feet; the “Native Constabulary” in their uniform of bushy yellow
+hair, and blue shirts, and red <i>sulus</i> worn like sashes.</p>
+
+<p>The little British flag had been stowed away to prevent it striking, and
+I missed its flutter or dazzle in the green. One of my big black
+attendants was hanging upon a small sapling dragging it down from the
+path and dropping far below afterward. The noise of the axes of the
+scouts sounded in advance and started the parrots cawing in response;
+the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_444">{444}</a></span> sun broke upon us and so I fell asleep in the more grateful warmth.</p>
+
+<p>We reached the place chosen for camping in the early afternoon after
+another couple of hours’ march. Our halt was upon a little bluff right
+on the line of march&mdash;where trees had been cut down, and huts and sheds
+built for us, and where already many of our people were resting. Here
+had come the women sent in the morning by the other road, if one can
+call it so&mdash;the bed of the stream. They were to carry food for our
+people&mdash;for we had by this time some two hundred men along&mdash;many really
+of use, carrying boxes and trunks and provisions, all distributed, so
+that every little while I could notice in the long procession, the man
+with the frying pan&mdash;the man with the governor’s chair and so forth. But
+there were also amateurs who carried a club, or a little packet of food
+done up in a leaf, or an odd umbrella for one of us&mdash;or like the last
+page in the “Chanson de Malbrouck,” “Et l’autre ne portait rien.” Some
+were so called prisoners&mdash;viz., men condemned to labour for a time&mdash;and
+I was much amused at the story of three of them who were encamped in a
+long shed alongside of the magistrate (Mr. Carew) who had brought them
+as servants. They were all three in it owing to the eternal cause&mdash;“la
+femme”&mdash;who in Fiji seems to be<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_445">{445}</a></span> “<i>teterrima causa</i>”. In fact, as there
+are not women enough to go around, it was not astonishing to hear that
+one great influence of the recent heathen revival in this wild region of
+cannibals was the hope of the young men, that if there were rows and
+trouble, some stray women might fall to their share. This evening I
+wandered out along the sheds and saw a good many&mdash;not more agreeable to
+look at than those I had seen before and certainly far uglier than the
+average ugly men. One youngster, another “prisoner” was preparing to oil
+himself, surrounded by a little group of female admirers, reversing
+apparently the fact of there being few women for the men.</p>
+
+<p>We warmed ourselves at the fires, for, though the temperature was about
+the same, all was wet and damp, the firewood all covered with green
+moss. Our little hut was a fairly good one, made of wild banana, and the
+interstices filled up, or rather covered up with the great leaves of the
+wild ginger.</p>
+
+<p class="spc">July 5th.</p>
+
+<p>The night was rainy and all was damp in the morning, when after prayers
+we started again into the wet woods. The cry of the parrots like a wild
+<i>flapping</i> of voices had been the first sound of early dawn. Then the
+camp had begun to move with chattering and laughter; people filed along
+all the morning.</p>
+
+<p>When our time came, I had again the use of the loose palan<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_446">{446}</a></span>quin in which
+I was taken for the first two miles down the deep side of the mountain.
+It was interesting to look up at the trees above, and to notice how much
+more of the vegetation grew in the air above than in the earth below.</p>
+
+<p>Every tree was covered with plants, mosses, creepers; the vines and
+lianas that hung about were themselves covered with smaller growths.
+Perpendiculars of gigantic vines hung, though they looked as if they
+held themselves up, but the least pushing of our party would send great
+spaces of green trembling far off. The branches that were in my way were
+loose and swinging, and rarely did we meet so low down the branches of a
+solid tree. High up through the great loops and festoons and upright
+stretches of the creepers, or here and there the great leaves of the
+wild ginger, the light was delicately stencilled with the pattern of the
+leaves of the great ferns. But high as everything seemed above head in
+the trembling wall of green our occasional passing of some mighty trunk
+of the <i>da kua</i> tree, whose branches began far up above everything, made
+still smaller the caravan passing below. Upon the branches and curves of
+the great trees, in every nook of protection they could afford,
+flourished other small forests of air plants, ferns and creepers for
+whose support the great oak-like limbs of this giant of the pines seemed
+to spread. Lifted high in relation to the plunge beneath, I spent half
+the time in<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_447">{447}</a></span> looking at the details of this upper picture, unseizable
+otherwise in our rapid marching&mdash;but after our rest in mid-journey I
+preferred the tramp, and walked on with the others, slipping and sliding
+up and down, until we reached camp (after five hours’ walk) on a little
+open space. Just before this we had passed through a little park-like
+country all different from the sharp edges, ascents and descents of our
+usual travelling&mdash;the grass grew high, trees dotted the swellings here
+and there, the sun kept all dry so that it was hard to believe that only
+a few feet behind lay the eternally wet forest. In the tall grass grew
+orchids like lilies, orchids large and small of the <i>fagus</i> variety.
+Butterflies and moths flitted about. The open country smiled after the
+sadness of the woods. Our resting place was not quite so open, but yet
+it had a similar appearance. It had evidently once been inhabited&mdash;there
+had been taro patches at one extremity of the open space. Here again, as
+throughout what we had seen of Fiji, the inhabitants had been chased
+away from their holdings in the perpetual wars. Indeed only twelve or
+fifteen years ago these good people here were cannibals and liable to be
+eaten if they did not eat others. The advantages of their present lot in
+this way were referred to in the sermon of the native preacher who had
+accompanied us, for this was Sunday and we had prayers in the morning
+and service and sermon in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_448">{448}</a></span> afternoon. Of course I get all this at
+second hand, or even further; but the good man took also occasion to
+lecture his travelling flock, a flock as I understand, not his natural
+audience, upon the folly of returning to devil worship, of which there
+had been cases in this part of the country, as I have mentioned, I
+think, and pointed out to them that it was only an agitation brought up
+by people who wished to kindle trouble for their peculiar ends, as, for
+instance, that in the scarcity of women, some of them might fall to the
+share of fomenters of trouble, in case of any upsetting of things,
+however momentary&mdash;for there are fewer women than men, as I think I was
+telling you.</p>
+
+<p>Here the desolateness of this open space (with our pretty and
+comfortable temporary huts it is true), but still indicating a once
+large population, brought up this question of the relation of the women
+in connection with agricultural work. They appear “sat upon” and not
+joyful and free as in other islands that we have seen. But of course
+appearances are only for <i>us</i>; they are certainly kept away and take a
+secondary position. But then of course they have to be put away from the
+mass of our men who are beginning to number heavily. Mr. Joski says that
+we are as many as four hundred. These women, who look so saddened, did a
+great deal of the heavy work, if not all&mdash;a matter which seems
+unnecessary at first, as the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_449">{449}</a></span> men used to idle and fight, but perhaps it
+might be worth while to look at the matter from inside and see how
+things must have stood in old times.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning, when, as to-day, the mist hung over all the valley, over
+every point that could be cultivated or was so&mdash;when the little village
+alone above would be lighted up distinctly, it would have been
+impossible for the warriors to plunge into these shadows to look to
+these plantations, offering themselves as an easy prey to any ambuscade
+or attacking party. No; the right thing, of course, was to wait until
+the sun rose far enough. Meanwhile skirmishers looked about and
+travelled through the neighbourhood, armed against any foe. When they
+were satisfied that there was no immediate danger the women and children
+could go out and work in the fields or attend to anything necessary,
+while the men were about, ready to protect them in case of danger;
+certainly, this was to the woman’s advantage; had she, when travelling
+or going about, shared with the man the carrying of weights, how easily
+would they both have fallen a prey to the enemy. No, she would naturally
+have said, “you go before with your lance and club and see that the path
+is clear; I follow with the food.” All this is a picture of what was
+once, and here no more than elsewhere, except that here things were upon
+such a scale that there was no chance for anything but this perpetual<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_450">{450}</a></span>
+war. By such considerations the past of <i>all</i> nations comes back.</p>
+
+<p class="spc">July 6th.</p>
+
+<p>People of the neighbouring district came here to do homage to the
+governor and present food and they added still more to the number,
+filling the neighbouring hollows and moving about in and out of the
+lovely little brook all shaded by trees, in which we bathed in cold
+water, for the temperature remained pretty steadily the same, in the
+neighbourhood of 63° to 68°.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning we left Ngalawana, and made a short and desperate plunge
+through the woods in the hollow to the N. W. and up the mountainside. It
+was raining and had rained, and anything more slippery than the road
+over which all these hundred of people had been travelling I cannot
+think of. The steepness was bad enough, and one could have rolled down
+if one had a good start; but some of the paths might have been
+“tobogganed” over. The bare feet of the natives managed it well enough,
+though with much slipping. And their ideas of direction of a road are
+peculiar, the straighter the better and across country; so that recently
+about the very roads that are in consideration, they say to the governor
+that of course they will make him <i>his</i> roads to travel on as it suits
+him, following easy paths, but that he must not expect</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="illbw_016">
+<a href="images/ill_051.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_051.jpg" width="479" height="550" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">FIJIAN BOY</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_451">{451}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">that <i>they</i> will use them. Still easy ways are great persuaders, and
+notwithstanding this conservatism, the new roads in other parts are
+travelled over by the now converted heathen.</p>
+
+<p>We arrived at length at a little village on a spur or ridge in a large
+valley where we are to rest for a few days&mdash;the first village, small as
+it is, since Nasogo. Here the governor was waited on by two deputations
+who presented whales’ teeth and food and who were received in the usual
+way by the Mata ni Vanua (the herald) and the other attendants with the
+usual voices of <i>ah! wui! wui!&mdash;wu&mdash;u! wooe&mdash;wooe!</i> and so forth, making
+everything look more and more African as we go along; for all the way
+through in these mountain tribes, the negro colour and look, and woolly
+hair on head and shoulders and legs, and I am sorry to add the smell,
+marks how far we are from our smooth brown Polynesians.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening all was bathed in the afterglow; pigeons called in the
+trees; through the air that seemed thickened with the light-green,
+long-tailed parrots sailed slowly, with an occasional flap of wings.</p>
+
+<p class="spc">Matakula, July 7th.</p>
+
+<p>We are resting here to-day; while the governor explores the
+neighbourhood for the purposes of his establishment of a sanitarium. We
+are not so high on the present ridge as he<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_452">{452}</a></span> would desire: only 2,200
+feet while it might be possible to find a plateau or wide ridge as high
+as 3,000. It is much warmer than before and dry at least. The night was
+cool&mdash;as low as 54°. The day is warm. I rose early, with the cries of
+the parrots in the wooded hill behind us; looked at the mist in lakes
+about us, out of which stepped the high trees and the mountains in the
+distance&mdash;even the dark conical huts of the little village built along
+the ridge at whose extreme end we are, were still wisped with moisture.
+The sun rose slowly behind the mountains, bathing everything in mildly
+pale varieties of wet colour&mdash;and all was lit long before the sun came
+over the hill behind us, and poured heat and dry light upon the scene.</p>
+
+<p>We have been doing nothing: sitting out under umbrellas&mdash;then under a
+mock grove which the men suddenly made for us, digging up neighbouring
+trees and tree ferns and planting them around us in the soft soil.</p>
+
+<p>For this they used the digging sticks they had, merely heavy bits of
+wood with pointed ends, in some cases turned up at the sides. We are
+here in primitive country: the boys of the village brought the water in
+bamboo joints this morning: the huts are of a peculiar hay-mow
+character&mdash;the features of the people, as I said before, are remarkably
+“African,” though often the colour is of a rich brown&mdash;but more usually
+a</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="ill_030">
+<a href="images/ill_052.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_052.jpg" width="550" height="399" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">STUDY OF HUTS AT END OF VILLAGE. MATAKULA, FIJI</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_453">{453}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">chocolate, that is negroish, is the type of colour, passing to a
+blackish grey. Most of the old people here have been cannibals; and
+fifteen years ago all this part was then still dangerous: on some
+attacks of theirs, upon the coast people and upon the whites, two of
+whom were eaten, war was made upon the villagers in this direction;
+their villages burned, and their people driven out and divided among
+other places. Some of the gentlemen with us talked at night of those
+days and of the fighting. If I have more time, I shall try to join
+together some memoranda or to jot them down as they come up.</p>
+
+<p>At night, when there is no rush for bed, around a fire in the open the
+talk goes on, always interesting and rich in anecdote, and it is only a
+pity that we are not more acquainted with the places and people and past
+story: it is like looking at an embroidery that has no foundation.</p>
+
+<p>But last night a story reminded me of the dream of Pomaré Vahine, told
+us by the old lady, Hinarii, in Tahiti, which I sent you, I believe.
+This is not a record of the pagan underworld, as that was, but one of a
+new Christianity, and as such makes a curious “pendant.” It is one of
+the late things reported about, and a source of comment and of
+influence. It appears that the wife of one of the principal people of
+some neighbouring place&mdash;perhaps a <i>mbuli</i>, but I was very sleepy when I
+heard it, and details are misty&mdash;appeared to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_454">{454}</a></span> be dead, was duly watched
+and prayed over&mdash;and then suddenly she called out aloud; when naturally
+enough, the entire assemblage scampered out of the house: at length the
+husband took courage and came up near the house, and heard his wife call
+out “Mbuli Mandrae” (I don’t remember the right name, let us call him
+so) “is that you?” “Yes”&mdash;“Well then I must tell you what I have seen.”
+So to those who returned, the good woman said that after death she found
+herself on the path, and crying, to find the road to Heaven. The road
+forked: at the one fork were a number of men dressed in white&mdash;at the
+other a number in black, and when she expressed a wish to go the road to
+Heaven, the white men passed her on, tossing her as it were from one to
+the other, until she reached a great gate which was made of
+looking-glass or mirror. There she knocked, but was told that she must
+go to one side, where a scribe asked who she was and what she wanted.
+She wished to get into Heaven. So her book was consulted, and she was
+asked if she was free from sin. “Yes” she replied&mdash;“I have been faithful
+to my husband.” (Sin with these good people is of <i>one</i> kind.) “No
+indeed,” said the judge, “do you not remember one mid-day when so&mdash;and
+so&mdash;&mdash;” The poor woman admitted her fault and was immediately handed
+from one white being to another, until she reached the fatal corner,
+when the black-clad people tossed her along as rapidly, until</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="illbw_017">
+<a href="images/ill_053.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_053.jpg" width="436" height="550" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">RATU MANDRAE&mdash;FIJIAN CHIEF</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_455">{455}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">she saw a large lake of fire in which were swimming, people who were
+shrieking out of the seething liquid, and then dropped in again with
+cries of agony&mdash;around the pits hung ropes from which many were
+suspended and dipped into the liquid fire. “See,” said some one&mdash;“that
+empty one is yours, but you have until <i>next Thursday</i> to return to your
+home and warn your people of what is in wait for the sinner.” So the
+good woman had returned, and, having warned them true to her
+appointment, died for good on the Thursday. The impression has been
+great.</p>
+
+<p class="spc">July 8th.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning, after the night-rain and fog, the hills and the dry
+country below our little narrow level were grey in mist, slowly
+dispelled by the sun that tossed it irregularly into the air. Before
+sunrise, in the dawn, the distant mountains, the higher hilltops and the
+uppermost trees near us rose from out of a lake of white cloud; with the
+coming of the sun, things became less distinct, until again, just as the
+sun passed over the little rocky mountain behind us, the fog lay again
+level in hollows while the last wisps of water blew around us, dimming
+this or that hut of the village of which we were part. The parrots
+chattered again. The doves cooed in the forest a few yards off, and in
+the line of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_456">{456}</a></span> hills behind, a curious bark in the distance was the
+voice of another variety of dove. Two or three times that morning, and
+again during the day, we heard the gun of our “hunter.”</p>
+
+<p>This was to be our last bad day of walking and we made a good show at
+it. We were to drop some seven hundred feet perhaps a thousand during
+the day, down the other side to get toward the sea; and this in the wet
+wood, over clay and roots, or over wet clay and wet stones when we
+should be on the open mountainside. The forest was as usual;
+occasionally the trunks of large <i>da kua</i> trees stood up like separate
+columns in the green. In one case this great cylinder was up to some
+fifty feet all reddish and bright with loss of bark. It had been cut off
+to this height by the natives, who use climbing sticks to reach far
+enough, in pursuit of an edible grub in the rotten bark.</p>
+
+<p>The trail left the woods after a time and descended the mountainside
+covered with reeds that flowed away from us as we passed. This was the
+toughest of the path; slippery with black mud and red clay, the slippery
+fallen leaves giving a better hold, and only seen when trodden into;
+this uncertain way down a steep grade upon which occasionally we slide
+as easier than slipping, was the most fatiguing pull I have ever made.
+Once or twice to my amusement, the dog of Mr. Carews, young and
+inexperienced in such travel, seated himself</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="ill_031">
+<a href="images/ill_054.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_054.jpg" width="550" height="302" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">BEGINNING OF VILLAGE&mdash;DAWN. MATAKULA, FIJI</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_457">{457}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">on his hind quarters and pushed himself down on his forepaws. The bare
+feet of our native companions and their powerful legs carried them along
+with relative ease, and when they helped me, I was carried along for a
+little while at a great rate; slipping of course, but balanced and
+getting on as if on skates.</p>
+
+<p>We were often on the edge of the precipice and at length stopped at a
+little open spot, where on some black rocks that edge it, we stopped for
+a time and looked upon the deep valley, whose opposite side was
+different in character from what we had travelled in. We were now on the
+dry side of the island (a relative term), and the look of the opposite
+mountain was like that of the hills of Hawaii, or of Tahiti; a curious
+golden grey-green, intensified wherever the innumerable hollows gave
+protection and greater damp to trees and bushes.</p>
+
+<p>We were on the slope of a tongue or ridge between two valleys, but it
+was only quite late that the clouds lifted enough from the tops of hills
+to let us catch a view of the valley we were going to, of the course of
+the brilliant little river and further off, of high points of blue that
+enclosed the sea.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile we halted for lunch at a little level park-like space, and
+walked to its edge with the hope that the clouds would break, but there
+was nothing but a mass of white vapour in front of us that filled the
+valleys, rose above us, and broke<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_458">{458}</a></span> against the crests that we had left,
+or beat around, leaving blue sky above us in deceiving patches. There,
+while we rested, the <i>shikari</i> brought in, with doves, two long-tailed
+parrots, the one green with green and yellow breast, the other blue and
+red and green; the latter feeds on fruits and is not obnoxious to the
+natives; the green is more predaceous of their gardens. This was my
+first sight of the killed parrots and with the soft grey of the doves
+they made a brilliant and gay mat upon the green grass.</p>
+
+<p>I picked out a few feathers to send to you with this, wishing that I
+could also send the impression of the scene, with all these groups of
+browns and blacks about us, and the cloudy landscape above.</p>
+
+<p>Later in the afternoon, after having waited for a sight of the great
+view in vain, we dropped down again through the same terrible woods, and
+reached in the early evening the little village of Waikumbukumbu, the
+last of the mountain villages, whence we should find a made road to the
+coast. The name Waikumbukumbu means seething waters, and describes with
+exaggeration the look of the little gorge in which its site is chosen.</p>
+
+<p>We crossed over rocks the path of the little torrent, now rolling
+between rocks, now filling stone pocket in its bed, or sleeping quietly
+between high wooded banks. The houses of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_459">{459}</a></span> the village were partly those
+of the mountain, the beehive; partly those of the coast with long
+ridge-pole, and built up on high mounds, covered with stones or grass.
+But the openings were the smallest I had seen&mdash;a big man in some cases
+might just have fitted in. One little one which I have sketched for you,
+and which was prettily placed by the side of the ditch, and with the
+adornment of a few trees, was exceedingly small and queerly bulged out
+in roof at once over its low reed walls. The thatch had been
+extraordinarily thick, projecting very far, and its edges were cut
+perpendicularly down so as to make a line with the wall, and you had a
+proportion of thickness of thatch greater than the wall or the roof. To
+all those roofings that were old, and which covered almost the entire
+houses, time had given a most delightful texture and tone, making them
+look as if covered with a most exquisite grey fur. The thatch of the new
+buildings was yellow and shaggy, giving the look entire of the reed: as
+the leaves are weathered off, the fine stem alone remains: the thing is
+exquisite as thatching, having an appearance of extreme finish.</p>
+
+<p>The little house or <i>mbure</i> placed thus at the entrance of the village
+just gave place to two persons within&mdash;and Mr. Carew (magistrate and
+commissioner, who knows all about things, has been here twenty-three
+years and is a student of words and languages) says that such would have
+been a<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_460">{460}</a></span> “devil” house formerly where the priest or prophet or wise man
+could reside alone and be applied to.</p>
+
+<p>Here, he said, with the love they have for shutting things up, he could
+close his door easily, and be happy in the sweating heat of the night.
+The horror of draughts I can sympathize with here in the hills where the
+change from the 80° or 83° of day to the 52° of night makes the motion
+of air between narrow walls easily felt, but this night was not cold and
+with only one door in the house we felt the closeness. Outside the
+temperature was exquisite (somewhere about 68°), and the picture of our
+carriers encamped about the village and fires, that lit up themselves,
+the trees, the houses, and the opposite hills by fits and starts, kept
+me awake notwithstanding the very fatiguing day. We had been six hours
+on the walk with the rests included, and such a walk.</p>
+
+<p>We bathed in the hollows on the rocks that night, and the next lovely
+morning, and then began our last march. The mass of the carriers had
+been dismissed; and I think that we were not more than fifty men or so:
+the road, a very wide one, began by running up hill as straight as might
+be, in Fijian fashion, as if to show that the natives were not afraid of
+mere steepness.</p>
+
+<p>The walk was a hard one, and we had hesitated as to whether the
+river-bed would not be easier, as we had been advised; but</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="ill_032">
+<a href="images/ill_055.jpg">
+<img src="images/ill_055.jpg" width="550" height="335" alt=""></a>
+<br>
+<span class="caption">MOUNTAIN HUT OR HOUSE AT WAIKUMBUKUMBU, FIJI</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_461">{461}</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="nind">after all a road is a road, even if it leads up the side of a house, and
+by noon, we had done all the worst of it. A beautiful sight opened
+before us, like a reminiscence of Hawaii: we had the mountains behind us
+and on either side, partly green, partly rose or golden. As usual, we
+were coming down a dividing ridge that ran into the plain; mountain
+edges framed the sides, far off stretched a fairy sea with points that
+framed it, and on one side a mountain with high perpendicular cliffs
+standing up against the distance. Everything swam in light; blue and
+violet filled the distance; a big plain, in which glittered a little
+water, spread from the blues to the green near us in gradations such as
+Turner loved: even the very stippling of the innumerable trees, so many
+of which were the pandamus (the <i>lauhala</i> of Hawaii), reminded me of
+him, as the scene recalled Hawaiian islands. Along the road thin
+<i>lauhala</i>&mdash;the <i>fao</i> of Samoa, the <i>fara</i> of Tahiti&mdash;growing every now
+and then and marking the distance, and again repeated everywhere in the
+blazing spread of green and yellow of the plains, grew not thick and
+full like those of Samoa and Tahiti, but strangely and queerly with
+outstretched arms and straggling foliage.</p>
+
+<p>We loitered along the road at places where there were big trees and
+water. Halfway, Mr. Marriott, the magistrate, had sent a horse for me to
+ride, which convenience allowed me<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_462">{462}</a></span> to look further and freely upon the
+landscape from this height; but we were some time on the road, some five
+hours at least, though it was but ten miles I suppose.</p>
+
+<p class="spc">Vanuakula, July 10th.</p>
+
+<p>We came down in the afternoon to Vanuakula, a neat little place reached
+after a long promenade under the hot sun, upon the road that ran on a
+dike in mangrove swamps. There we found news of the little steamer
+<i>Clyde</i>, and saw its Captain, Mr. Callaghan, and were told that at night
+we should get aboard so as to get off early in the morning for Ba, in
+such manner as to hit the tide without which we could not possibly enter
+the river to-morrow morning. So we waited for the rise of tide in a
+little village green square, and a pretty native house and saw a native
+dance of armed men (<i>mekke</i>) given as a mark of honour along with the
+food, and as a manner of presenting <i>tappa</i> of which an enormous
+quantity was given to the governor.</p>
+
+<p>Each dancer, as we had seen before, carried upon him in long folds yards
+upon yards of the cloth, looped like a dress, caught around his
+shoulders perhaps, or only at his waist; sometimes folded stiffly far
+over his head, like the floating folds of drapery upon an archaic
+bas-relief; and after the dance he unwinds himself from the enormous
+entanglement,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_463">{463}</a></span> and adds it to the pile that our men gather together and
+fold up. This plunder the governor carries off: in true native fashion,
+he is but a conduit for gifts: when some chief or persons who have need
+to fill up gifts or do the proper thing, think it is time they come and
+beg for things, the whales’ teeth, or the <i>tappa</i> (native cloth) and
+receive them. As I think I said before, it is pleasant to see the
+governor keep up strictly every native custom that secures order and
+belongs properly to their official life. He is very strict about it,
+insisting upon every observance that his position requires and carrying
+all out.</p>
+
+<p>While we waited, looking on at the dance, or afterward when the ladies
+of the village came in bringing gifts of food, having properly asked
+permission to do so; two Samoan women sat beside us. They had come from
+a neighbouring house to call; one was younger than the other, and looked
+with her hair “à la Chinoise,” her slanting eyes, and flattened nose,
+and wide lips, very much like certain musme of the Japanese inns and tea
+houses. This one had been Samoan way, married to some more or less white
+man, who had left, and she was now a grass widow. The other was, “<i>faa</i>
+Samoa,” married to some half-breed: and she of the slanting eyes noticed
+Awoki near us, and somehow or other took him in as a variety of Samoan.</p>
+
+<p>Did he come from Africa or whence? and Japan had to be<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_464">{464}</a></span> explained. But
+she said she was anxious to get back home, and that things here were
+<i>leanga</i> including the dance which we had been looking at, and the women
+and girls who were coming up in a long file much bedizened with velvet,
+cotton, paper cut into strips (of every shade imaginable), leaves around
+the waist, etc.; from her all dressed all over, to her who only wore
+long leafage about her hips. They were prettier than any we had seen:
+that is to say they were some of them not unpleasant; but only a few:
+and after all it is only the quite young who suggest anything more
+delicate than the men. Raiwalui, one of the governor’s boys is more
+feminine looking notwithstanding his strength and height than any Fijian
+woman I have yet seen. All this is so far as we have seen, and as I told
+you, so far the women and children get out of the way, not only because
+they always do so more or less, but also because of our men who have
+numbered at times several hundred, so that the women and children are
+crowded away in corners to leave houses empty for the visitors. But the
+Samoans looked like beauties alongside of their sisters of Fiji here,
+and sailed off with much superiority and conscious ease while the Fijian
+women had walked off in single file neither looking to right nor left,
+but keeping a downward look and following their leader.</p>
+
+<p>Dinner we had outside on the mats, and just before the new<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_465">{465}</a></span> moon sank we
+embarked in the dark upon the little river that was to take us to the
+sea and the steam launch. We were poled along for some few miles near
+mangrove trees whose roots hung above us, the wash from our water
+splashing in among their roots and trunks. Occasionally some more solid
+ground showed a few houses, or some clump of palms against the sky half
+clouded. Then a long row out to the ship, all dark, large masses of dark
+sea and dark sky, with the moon almost set, looking at us like a
+half-closed eye under the forehead of an enormous band of dark cloud.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning at ten we steamed for Ba, ran out quite far, but in
+shallows inside the far reef, where at one place the beginnings of
+things could be seen, as upon the horizon, at sea apparently, a line of
+mangrove trees, widely spaced, dotted the sharp division of blue sea and
+blue sky. Still between them there was a little greenish band like water
+and really partly water, and to one side a little line was the reef on
+which they had begun to grow.</p>
+
+<p>Inland, the long lines of the mountains look faintly tawny and blue; the
+swamp belt of mangroves surrounding the shore looked very low: we could
+discern, at places, the circles or elevations by which we had passed
+over the serrated edge of the mountains.</p>
+
+<p>Then we ran into a river for some little while, the usual<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_466">{466}</a></span> green bank,
+the trees, and the sugar-cane, and the mountains in the distance with
+here and there a strange pillar-like mountain or a perpendicular pile,
+to remind one of volcanic forms.</p>
+
+<p>A number of figures clothed in white sat upon the green bank and watched
+the governor’s approach. When he landed they made the usual salutation
+headed by the <i>roku</i> or chief.</p>
+
+<p class="spc">Nailaga, July 12th.</p>
+
+<p>We walked into the village neatly laid out in squares, our first large
+place since we had left Suva: all quite uncivilized, but in native
+shape. We found a handsome native house, handsomely finished, with a
+fine <i>tappa</i> hanging, cutting off one end, and many mats. This was the
+house of the <i>roku</i> who had saluted the governor, a curious person&mdash;not
+a young man&mdash;with greyish hair cut short, short grey moustache, and a
+face looking not at all Polynesian&mdash;a very refined face&mdash;meaning one
+that was not in the least heavy&mdash;gentlemanly and wary, and with a
+peculiar indifference as if he went through his formalities without
+anxiety because they were the thing. He reminded me of some one at home,
+a little unpleasantly, for the gentleman was evidently not frank unless
+for his advantage, and he was old enough to have belonged to ancient
+cannibal days. He had a white shirt on with a turn-down collar, and a
+small blue scarf all which finished him;<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_467">{467}</a></span> and his skin, not too dark,
+made still more the impression of a person who knew just how to do it.
+So it was also when later he gave the <i>yangona</i> or <i>kava</i>&mdash;and led the
+chant, so delicately and correctly, a little bored, looking to see if it
+were quite ready, so that he should have no more to wave his arms and
+hands in a fixed way to the song. Here was an Asiatic type&mdash;my simple
+Polynesian was no longer there.</p>
+
+<p>Later on, when he came to arrange a bamboo rail for our more convenient
+getting up and down the slippery plank that served for entrance, he
+asked our permission: the house was no longer his since we were in it.
+Contrariwise to him, all his companions were rude looking, some, I
+regret to say, exceedingly hard looking. Most all at the <i>yangona</i>
+ceremony were stripped to the waist, and decorated with garlands, that
+emphasized more terribly some frightful countenances.</p>
+
+<p>After that, the presentation of food and the great dance, like others we
+had seen but with many variations added, such as the moving in long
+files two together, or in files moving in two opposite directions, or in
+striking in order each other’s clubs, or in throwing arms and hands
+about in various ways resembling the attitudes of the famous <i>siva</i>.</p>
+
+<p>All this was in the big square. On one side a great mass of women,
+girls, and children looked on, seated: along the road<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_468">{468}</a></span> passed Indians
+coming and going from work: the women in their <i>saris</i> and dresses of
+light red and yellow.</p>
+
+<p>Since that we have been very idle; have called on Mr. Marriott, and at a
+sugar plantation and lounged all Sunday&mdash;the twelfth&mdash;at which date I am
+writing to you. It has been cool at night, but only because of the
+draughts of the big house, with its three big doors. The temperature
+inside is just 70°.</p>
+
+<p class="spc">Nanuku Coa, “Black Sand.”</p>
+
+<p>We left Nailaga (in Ba) on Monday morning in lovely weather. The early
+hour after our breakfast was spent in some conversation between the
+governor and chiefs, while Atamo surveyed the scene from the top of the
+embankment on which the house is built, enjoying the pleasant shade in
+which we all were, thrown across the lawn by the great house. Then again
+we walked off to the river bank after the governor had restored to the
+Roku the great stick of office, which had been received on the
+governor’s arrival. This was about six or more feet long, with ivory top
+and grip place (made, however, in England).</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Clyde</i> took us along for hours out on the Ba river, and along the
+coast back upon our way. We tried to descry the outlines of the heights
+which we had reached and descended.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_469">{469}</a></span> Peak behind peak stretched along,
+with the buttresses of hills sloping down, all on this side looking
+white or yellow or pinkish in the sun. The dry side of the island was
+faintly marked by the dryness of the colour, for which I regretted that
+I had no pastel or chalk colours to imitate the powdering glare of the
+sun on the great surfaces, streaked with descending bands of a shade
+unnamable by our categories of colour. But we knew that all this
+resemblance to a desert was only for the distance; nearer by, the places
+we had been in were green or yellow-green. There was of course dry,
+yellow grass and seeds, and violet of dried bracken&mdash;the grey-violet of
+the ferns such as we had seen even in wettest Hawaii, but wherever any
+hollow gave a chance, no matter how small, there things grew green. In
+the nearer hills drier green marked the hollows, and modelled the
+surfaces; and by the shore the heavy green of mangroves lined the edges.</p>
+
+<p class="spc">Thambone, Monday 13th.</p>
+
+<p>Late that afternoon we had turned several points, and came to a halt
+with want of depth of water opposite the place we were going to stop at.
+Here we landed in a more inconvenient way than usual. We were pulled out
+in the gig a little way, then carried on the shoulders of the men to a
+shifting sandbank on which we walked or sank, as the case might be; then
+again<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_470">{470}</a></span> embarked on native backs that were rough with curling hair, and
+again reached a mud flat of considerable length, framed with mangrove
+trees, along which we walked to the shore; this was drier, not washed
+over by the tide daily as the former, upon which I saw growing green, as
+if never covered by salt water, the first shoots of the mangrove. Its
+seeds are heavy and float point downward until they stick in appropriate
+soil. The flat near the shore was all covered with an efflorescence of
+salt, and caked and broken up by exposure to the sun. Ratu Joni
+(Johnnie) Madraiwiwi, who had come to meet us, showed us the little pits
+or hollows for collecting salt water and making salt; for we had come to
+the dividing place of the South Seas. Here people have made salt, unlike
+the Polynesians of the Eastern Seas; here they have baked earth for
+pottery&mdash;here they have used the bow and arrow&mdash;in these ways more
+civilized than their half fellows, who in other ways seemed so much less
+savage than they. But here, as you know, the races mix: the black is all
+through here: and strangely enough with the black are all sorts of arts,
+and a higher sense of ornament and decoration and construction.</p>
+
+<p>For all this I have my own theories, but this is not the place to
+ventilate them, even if I liked theories, and you know that I detest
+them&mdash;if taken seriously.</p>
+
+<p>Africa&mdash;“nigger” land&mdash;was certainly pictured where we<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_471">{471}</a></span> landed. There
+were big causeways leading to the village&mdash;ditches all about&mdash;ditches
+surrounded many of the houses; and especially the rather inferior one,
+but the best, to which we went. Visions of mosquitoes came up,
+fortunately not realized to the extent which we had feared.</p>
+
+<p>We sat in the house while <i>kava</i> was being prepared and while the chant
+went on. I noticed how the beams of the roof were prettily ornamented
+with sennit, more than I should have expected from outside looks. Mr.
+Carew told me that people were brought from far and near to do this, who
+knew how, and that certain ones had certain patterns, that they could
+best do. (R. Joni did not quite agree to the fact of such a division of
+labour.)</p>
+
+<p>The people here seemed rougher again, more like our mountain “devils,”
+and a queerer lot. They sat on the edge of the little ditch about the
+house, which on the other side was edged with enormous bushes of the
+Brugmantia Stramonium, whose long white flowers have in their manner of
+growing and shape something poisonous (according to my feelings)&mdash;as the
+plant has in reality. But the place had a general look of which the
+plants were not contradictory&mdash;the black dry mud, the little stream, if
+one can call it so, with patches of water ending in a ditch of caky mud,
+the withered grasses, the very low cocoanut trees all squatted together
+in a grove&mdash;the one<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_472">{472}</a></span> solitary chunk of a peak cutting the long slope of
+hill to the north&mdash;the knowledge of the fact that here silly
+brutal-beastly heathenism was still rampant or rather creeping; that we
+would take prisoner this evening or to-morrow the hypocritical duffer
+who had been reviving it where we had seen the stupid little temple, to
+which he had allured women from hereabouts; all this seemed to hang
+together. This vicinity had been once, as the governor phrased it, the
+Rome of the “devil” worship and the place of revered places. Here
+probably then&mdash;for all their worship was an ancestor worship in
+reality&mdash;here was, therefore, the first landing of the people who gave
+the islands their character of Fijians, whether they were the first of
+all or whether they found others before them, who succumbed to them in
+some way or other. The good people here take remonstrance not too
+uneasily. Still certainly the next morning the governor gave them all a
+serious talk, and took great pains evidently to see that he was fully
+understood, as he sat talking with Mr. Carew and slowly and distinctly
+and with careful emphasis of voice and gesture spoke to the assembled
+representatives. Near him in a rather crushed attitude sat the gentleman
+who had been practising “devil” priestcraft&mdash;and he followed us on
+board, a sort of prisoner&mdash;that is to say, to answer to the charge of
+heathen practices at the next court, for which warrants had been made<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_473">{473}</a></span>
+out. His punishment will be slight: three months’ imprisonment. The law
+is a native law, like many others, such as laws concerning adultery,
+that seemed to me rather excessively constructed; but there are no rules
+for laws that I know of, except that they should work. As some native
+said to Mr. Carew, “Well, if the man be not punished we shall beat him
+and perhaps kill him”&mdash;and it mattered not that he had not been guilty
+according to our view; he had been guilty according to theirs&mdash;viz.&mdash;his
+intentions had been discerned. But things are not everywhere the same in
+this regard. I recall a story I heard from Mr. Carew of a woman who had
+asked the punishment of some man because he had persuaded her one day to
+misbehave with him. She felt that something was wrong, and ought to be
+redressed anyhow.</p>
+
+<p>Before this next morning’s episode, however, there was a dance in the
+later afternoon with much <i>tappa</i>, rolled around the performers, to be
+given afterward, and very long spears, and handsome weapons&mdash;and a very
+handsome show of attitudes. The smallness of the village place (<i>rara</i>)
+made the scene more of a picture, which I saw across the ditch framed in
+by the overhanging trees. In the evening there was talk before bed,
+though we were frightfully sleepy; I remember only a few things and
+indeed I repent me of having noted nothing of any previous talks I have
+listened to, for there is much to be<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_474">{474}</a></span> learned always from desultory
+conversation, in the way of side lights and a sort of querying of one’s
+already formed notions. I learned, for instance, that the black
+gentleman who was restoring ancient superstition was a church member and
+communicant, though every one must have known more or less of his little
+ways, in a country where nothing can be hidden long. Two pretty stories
+were told of the lately prevalent belief (perhaps existing to-day) of
+the value of charms, in both of which young men, charmed by the priest
+against fire-arms, asked at once for a trial. In the first case, on a
+discharge a few feet off, the man hit “tumbled about the place an
+instant and died, being shot through the head.” The verdict was that the
+incantation had been conducted too rapidly, and that something had been
+forgotten, and the priest who had taken to his heels returned in safety.
+In the other, two youngsters, who were going to try the effect of the
+charm, in front of the chief’s (their father’s) house, were reproved by
+him. “I do not wish,” he said, “that one of my sons should die before my
+house; go and try it, if you like, at some armed station of the white
+man.”</p>
+
+<p>The next day (Tuesday) we again proceeded on our way and with similar
+scenery about us, and in the late afternoon, we anchored off the place
+where Ratu Joni’s house is&mdash;on a hilly up-and-down place, to which swept
+down the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_475">{475}</a></span> spurs of the mountain, and which, close by, hung over the town
+apparently a high rock (Na Korotiki).</p>
+
+<p>The frame of an old house on the beach made a curious little portico, or
+colonnade, in front of the path that led up to the Ratu’s house. There
+we spent that night and the following day. The house was one upon more
+European models&mdash;the eaves projecting so as to make a sort of verandah
+of the base or mound of the house, casements being fitted into the doors
+and filled with glass; there were a couple of tables with the books and
+odds and ends that we know of placed on them&mdash;chairs also, a luxury that
+is pleasant always after camping. R. Joni is a magistrate, speaks nice
+English, writes perfectly, and is just such a person as might seem to
+augur well for the future. He belongs not to this part of the country,
+but to Ba, and formerly, and not so far back, his family used to feed on
+this neighbourhood in more ways than one. His uncle was the great
+Thakombau (Cakobau), who became the greatest chief, if he was not always
+that, and who ended by making the country over to England: Thakombau
+himself, who died but recently, was more or less of a cannibal,
+certainly a terror; but he is so well known that I need not dilate upon
+a gentleman sufficiently put down in the books. He had, as I understood,
+hung R. Joni’s father, his own brother, in the public square many years
+ago with the belief that as hanging was a<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_476">{476}</a></span> disgraceful mode of death
+with us, it might appear so to the natives. This notion was not a
+success. The natives who saw the scene applauded the behaviour and good
+fortune of a man, who, having to die, died publicly and formally in the
+public square “like a chief.” Ratu Joni had taught himself to read
+English; when a mere boy he was discovered by the governor reading a
+little book on Cook’s voyages, and since that, was helped and put
+forward until he has become this good sort of public officer.</p>
+
+<p class="spc">Wednesday, July 15th.</p>
+
+<p>There is hardly anything more to say of our last day, for the next was
+that of return: there was much idleness and looking at newspapers, etc.,
+received there by Mr. Joski, who together with Mr. Berry had met us
+there by rendezvous, after their excursion of exploration down to the
+sea on leaving us. They had had a rough time of it. As it was, it was
+pleasant to meet them again, and our last days were gayer. Mr. Joski
+remained to make his way to the station whence we had drawn him three
+weeks before, Vunidawa. Mr. Carew was only to leave us within a few
+hours of Suva (on the Rewa). For after steaming along past cape and
+headland, in this closed sea, the long line of hills and mountains
+receding further back, as the lowlands of the Rewa came near, we came to
+a<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_477">{477}</a></span> little headland and there took the boats, so as to make for the Rewa,
+get through it to its mouth, and there catch the steamer again, and thus
+avoid the tossing that she would have to undergo outside the reefs.
+Inside even there was much sway of waves, for the expanse is great
+enough to make a little sea.</p>
+
+<p>The day was lovely. Beyond the blue sea, as if to be looked at, came up
+various islands of the group, clearly or faintly made out, stretching at
+intervals along the sea line, big or small, and sometimes sliding one
+behind the other.</p>
+
+<p>It was a gay day&mdash;a cheerful end to our trip, which had just lasted
+three weeks; so that when we landed at Suva in the last twilight, just
+as the new moon lit up our path up the hill, the feeling of getting back
+to civilization was intensified by the ease of our return. For though
+all was not easy there was no real hardship&mdash;for no one can make rough
+climbing easy, even were it in Sussex or New York County&mdash;yet we had
+seen a part of the islands little visited, very much out of the way, and
+a former foothold of all that made Fiji a terror, the synonym of
+barbaric cruelty&mdash;the land of the Cannibal&mdash;the “Devil Country.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_478">{478}</a></span>”</p>
+
+<hr class="dbl">
+<h2><a id="EPILOGUE"></a>EPILOGUE</h2>
+<hr>
+
+<p class="nspc">
+Sydney N. S. W.<br>
+&#160; &#160; August 1st, 1891.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>It seems strange, after a year of summer and of free air, to have come
+almost suddenly into city and winter, however mild. I am writing to you
+by a coal fire, in a room high up, to which I go by an elevator, and I
+hear outside, in the damp cool air, the sound of the cable tramway, and
+the rolling of hansom cabs. Two weeks ago, I was resting on the ground
+in straw huts among mountains, and looking at darkish old gentlemen, who
+had killed and eaten not so long ago friends and acquaintances of
+members of our party. One could not get enough of the air, and the heat
+was still part of our living.</p>
+
+<p>Our South Sea days are over; in a day or two we bid good-bye to the open
+spaces and make for the Straits and Java. As Polynesia has faded away,
+the sadness of all past things comes upon me&mdash;that summer is gone&mdash;those
+hours and those islands which spotted great blue spaces of time and
+place will be merely memories for autumn.</p>
+
+<p>Here it is winter&mdash;a colder one than those last warm mild days of Fiji.
+There a great peace, a great quiet was around<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_479">{479}</a></span> us. We were high above
+the little town of Suva, with an enormous landscape of mountains seen
+over the spread of the beautiful harbour. In the day the light was
+tropical, the sky all blue and radiant, the mountains clear and
+distinct. Morning and evening the light became more like a memory of
+home with slight visions of Scotland in between. The clouds filled up
+the distance with dimness, the light of morning or evening hung behind
+and over them as if asleep. In such a repose of nature we passed our
+days as if preparing for the final close.</p>
+
+<p>We were treated with great kindness; we had no hard time on board the
+steamer that took us away reluctant in mind, and slowly in a week’s time
+we dropped down to this colder latitude and into civilization in full
+blast. We saw the sky grow clearer and more washed; the sea lost its
+blue; we could almost believe that we were home again as we ended our
+trip. We had passed some of the New Hebrides, had passed part of a day
+outside of Anaityum, had seen the Isle of Pines like a shadow on the
+horizon, had looked in vain for the smoke or light of Tanna, and at the
+end of the week entered the long, complicated harbour of Sydney.</p>
+
+<p>Steamships, steamboats, street cars, hansom cabs, hotels, theatres,
+Sarah Bernhardt playing, all as before.</p>
+
+<p>Good-bye to brown skins and skies and seas of im<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_480">{480}</a></span>possible azure.
+Good-bye to life in presence of the remotest past.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“On the knees of the Ogre I pillowed my head;<br></span>
+<span class="i1">My feet followed safely the Path of the Dead;<br></span>
+<span class="i1">With my brother the Shark God I lived as a guest,<br></span>
+<span class="i1">And reached through the breakers the Isle of the Blest.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“I bathed in the sea where the Siren still sleeps;<br></span>
+<span class="i1">The kiss of the Queen is still red on my lips;<br></span>
+<span class="i1">My hands touched the Tree with the Branches of Gold;<br></span>
+<span class="i1">I have lived for a season in the Order of Old.”<br></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="fint">THE END<br><br><br>
+<small>THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.</small></p>
+
+<div class="trans"><p><a id="transcrib"></a></p>
+
+<p>Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:</p>
+<p>keep steadliy=> keep steadily {pg 101}</p>
+
+<p>an ememy’s=> an enemy’s {pg 165}</p>
+
+<p>that is has been=> that it has been {pg 345}</p>
+
+<p>plantation af Atimaono=> plantation of Atimaono {pg 372}</p>
+
+<p>or an odd unbrella=> or an odd umbrella {pg 444}</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><p class="cb">FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> “Alofa” means everything&mdash;hail, welcome, love, respect,
+etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> This is properly the “<i>guest house</i>” of the village.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Of course we are not allowed to pay&mdash;this would not be
+“chiefy”&mdash;but we shall make a present some day.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Mariner, whose book all should read, was kept a prisoner in
+Tonga about 1806, being one of the first white men there. His companions
+were killed&mdash;he contrariwise, like my father in Saint Domingo, was
+adopted by the great chief, and learned the language and all habits. On
+his escape and return he was carefully examined and investigated by the
+intelligent physician who wrote his book for him. He repeated every
+gesture of the kava just as it is to-day, the scientific man taking it
+down in an accurate way.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Religion is a better word, as in Tongan before
+Christianity.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> The traitor is Judas; the hesitating judge is Pilate. When
+Mataafa’s men defeated the Germans, they cut off the heads of some of
+the Germans killed. When reproached by him for the act as barbarous,
+they indignantly appealed to David’s having cut off the head of Goliath,
+after having slain him.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> My adopted sister, the Queen of Tahiti, an island
+enormously changed by European influence and residence, complained to me
+of some young man&mdash;that his walk was insolent, out of keeping, like that
+of a person of importance by blood.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Père Gavet complained to me of what he called the
+unreasonableness of Sir John Thurston, the high commissioner and English
+governor of Fiji, when the Catholic bishop, upon his canoe’s touching
+the shore of some Christian village, was carried up, canoe and all, into
+the public place or village green, Sir John interfered, and forbade its
+ever happening again. And I myself could not say that it was not a small
+discourtesy.
+</p><p>
+But this was the point, as Sir John told me: in the old Fijian habits
+such things were done for a sovereign chief, and for a political ruler;
+and since the Church had preached the division of the two authorities,
+such special homage should have been reserved for the civil and not the
+religious power.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> My South Sea companion, Mr. Henry Adams.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> Savaii, Hawaiki, Hawaii; apparently all Polynesians come
+from a place of the name. It is also a name for the Unknown World. Many
+islanders of the Pacific believe that this Samoan island is the
+ancestral Savaii. The Samoans themselves assume it to be so. The island
+holds the home of the Malietoa, for centuries a supreme chief, one of
+whose representatives is now king by treaty.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> <i>Taupō</i>, properly <i>taupou</i>, but I have written <i>taupō</i>
+because the sound of the final <i>u</i> is too difficult to render, and
+hardly discernible. It lengthens the sound like our <i>u</i>, but with a
+gentle breathing. You get it more or less in our taboo.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Siva, not Sifa, as I said it at first, and yet she
+certainly pronounces it with more of an <i>f</i> sound than our neighbours of
+this island. Still I give in to theory, as facts always must, for they
+have no one to back them, no principles, no money invested.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> Secondary chiefs; pronounce “yatowai.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Note on Limits: There is a good account in the small
+edition of the voyage of the <i>Duff</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> Tiaapuaa, “drove of pigs,” was the name of certain trees
+growing along the edge of the mountain Moarahi. The profile against the
+sky suggested, and the same trees&mdash;or others in the same position
+to-day&mdash;as I looked at them, did make a “procession” along the ridge.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> The “cloak” of the family is the rain; the Tevas are the
+“children of the Mist.” Not so many years ago, one of the ladies of the
+family, perhaps the old Queen of Raiatea, objected to some protection
+from rain for her son, who was about to land in some ceremony. “Let him
+wear his cloak!” she said. And of course there are traditions of weather
+that belong to the family, that accompany it, and that presage or
+announce coming events.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> I understand by this, two of the hills that edge the
+valley.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> The inland mountain peak of the central island, which he
+could not see.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> “Le ciel tout l’univers est plein de mes aïeux.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> In the other family at home, into which I was born, the
+distance back seems shorter. Oberea first saw the European ships while
+my grandfather was alive, and he must have read the first accounts
+carried out to Europe by Bougainville and Cook.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> The bird messenger repeats the places and names of things
+most sacred to the chief (as you will see further), his mount, his cape,
+his <i>marae</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> To which the chief answers that he will look at his
+mistress’s place or person on the shore.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> Temanutunu means bird that lets loose the army.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> Vaeri Matuahoe (mud in my ears), a Tino iia (fish body)
+the double man, half man, half fish, recalls the god of the Raratonga
+who himself recalled to the missionaries the god Dagon.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> Stone foundation or base of house and space around it.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> The founder of the Pomaré, who later became great chiefs
+and then kings, by European consecration.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> Manea appears in Cook and in the accounts of the first
+missionaries. The detail escapes me, as I have no book just at hand, at
+this moment. I have a vague recollection of some slight scandal again in
+family matters, but missionaries were fond of tittle-tattle, like most
+people.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> The ditches or slopes, natural or otherwise, can be filled
+with sharp stakes and other cruel devices scattered among the trees so
+as to make a serious defence to any sudden attack.</p></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="illbw_">
+<img src="images/back.jpg" width="365" height="550" alt="">
+</div>
+<hr class="full">
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75551 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
+
diff --git a/75551-h/images/back.jpg b/75551-h/images/back.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c213b27
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/back.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/cover.jpg b/75551-h/images/cover.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e75f484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/cover.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_002.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_002.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ba5c933
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_002.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_003.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_003.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6431a71
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_003.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_004.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_004.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..69b34c7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_004.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_005.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_005.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fec1612
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_005.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_006.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_006.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8577854
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_006.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_007.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_007.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..20f4484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_007.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_008.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_008.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..25ee9fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_008.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_009.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_009.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0932b58
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_009.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_010.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_010.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4bc93d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_010.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_011.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_011.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d53ffb9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_011.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_012.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_012.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2681e42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_012.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_013.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_013.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abd901d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_013.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_014.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_014.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0230f5c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_014.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_015.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_015.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2234663
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_015.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_016.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_016.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3beee54
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_016.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_017.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_017.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e8aa90c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_017.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_018.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_018.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..166f1f7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_018.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_019.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_019.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a93fa29
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_019.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_020.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_020.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..23b0c04
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_020.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_021.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_021.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..312217a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_021.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_022.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_022.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7b4b93
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_022.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_023.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_023.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad31bf2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_023.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_024.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_024.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8743437
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_024.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_025.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_025.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..102d78d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_025.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_026.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_026.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1490a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_026.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_027.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_027.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46176ef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_027.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_028.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_028.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4b9a993
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_028.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_029.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_029.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3edd70e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_029.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_030.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_030.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5b24be4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_030.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_031.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_031.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0eb2d4f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_031.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_032.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_032.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e3d7b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_032.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_033.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_033.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8a042b4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_033.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_034.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_034.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2d40e49
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_034.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_035.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_035.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..839115a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_035.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_036.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_036.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6529b7d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_036.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_037.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_037.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..989be5e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_037.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_038.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_038.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b9aa94f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_038.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_039.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_039.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..68a414f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_039.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_040.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_040.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b615b35
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_040.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_041.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_041.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9558e76
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_041.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_042.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_042.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3178c2a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_042.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_043.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_043.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9527603
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_043.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_044.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_044.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d3d4e6c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_044.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_045.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_045.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f7ff8be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_045.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_046.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_046.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b35ff5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_046.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_047.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_047.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95a2c1f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_047.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_048.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_048.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b1f5f7c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_048.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_049.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_049.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..72105f1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_049.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_050.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_050.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6a5fe39
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_050.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_051.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_051.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..318b236
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_051.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_052.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_052.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4a83607
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_052.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_053.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_053.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f935d05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_053.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_054.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_054.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..63b98bb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_054.jpg
diff --git a/75551-h/images/ill_055.jpg b/75551-h/images/ill_055.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d7e351
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75551-h/images/ill_055.jpg
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ebf34f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #75551 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75551)