CHAPTER XXXVII
THE SAMOAS
IN COMING from the Fijis to Apia, the capital of Western Samoa, our ship crossed the date line, and when we sailed over the 180th meridian, east longitude, we went from one day into the day before. I felt some satisfaction in getting back one of the many days I have lost in going across the Pacific in the opposite direction.
It was delightful sailing along the Equator. We had nothing but sunshine, and such glorious sunshine! As we coasted the island of Savaii, the largest of the Samoan group, the air was fresh and the wind strong enough to make it cool and pleasant. The sea was steel blue, with silvery whitecaps dancing upon it, between us and the shore, and the sky was full of white, smoky clouds.
The volcanic island of Savaii in its thick cloak of verdure makes one think of the Hawaiian Islands. As we passed along its shores it seemed a great hill shaped like a horseshoe, with the ends of the shoe sloping down to the water.
Going on we soon reached Upolu, on the north coast of which Apia is situated. Both Upolu and Savaii now belong to the Territory of Western Samoa, which has been created from what was formerly German Samoa and is now administered by New Zealand under a mandate from the League of Nations. The United States owns Tutuila, Manua, and some of the smaller islands of the group.
When Germany and the United States came to their agreement about the division of the Samoas in 1899, the Germans, in their greed for land, were glad to take the two biggest islands. But out here it is thought that we got the best of the bargain. Both Savaii and Upolu together are not so large as Rhode Island, and much of Savaii has been so recently subject to volcanic action as to be unfit for cultivation. Savaii is forty-eight miles long and twenty-five miles wide, and Upolu is a good deal smaller. Both islands are mountainous and well watered. Like Tutuila, they have been built up by volcanoes and are for the most part surrounded by coral reefs.
As I came into the harbour of Apia the tide was low, and I could see a great garden of coral rising out of the water. Here and there along the shore were groves of coconut trees, and, farther up the mountains, plantations of cacao. Amid the green jungle on the hills I noticed patches of chocolate brown, where the ground had been cleared for cacao plantations. Just back of Apia gleamed the white villa where Robert Louis Stevenson lived, and above it rose mountain after mountain of different shades of green or blue, covered with vegetation and canopied by masses of fleecy clouds. Here the shadows turned the sea to green, and there to navy blue, while upon the land they made a mass of light and dark patches of velvet on the green crops and the still deeper green forest. Close to the water’s edge were what from our steamer looked like vast cornfields. These the captain said were coconut orchards, containing tens of thousands of trees loaded with millions of nuts.
As they grow older the Samoan girls lose their beautiful figures but never part with their sweet dispositions and their love for ornaments and flowers. The women marry in their ’teens, and large families are the rule.
The chief product and export of Samoa is copra, the meat of the coconut. Dried and packed in sacks, it is shipped abroad for use in making soaps, toilet preparations, and “nut” butters.
I am disappointed in Apia. From Robert Louis Stevenson’s letters and the place it once held in international affairs I had expected to find it a large city. It is really a small town with a foreign population of less than five hundred British, Germans, New Zealanders, and Swedes, with a few Americans and French for good measure. Its buildings are bungalows, with roofs of galvanized iron, strung around the harbour.
Our steamer was greeted by a great crowd of Samoans and the whole population of foreigners, through which I went up to the Tivoli Hotel, my headquarters during my stay. It did not take me long to exhaust the sights of Apia. The town has a half-dozen business houses engaged in shipping cacao and copra and in furnishing the natives with different kinds of fancy goods, cottons, and tinned stuffs. There are also two photographers, a number of consuls, and a baker’s dozen or so of government officials.
My guide over the island of Upolu was one of the Samoan chiefs. He was half naked when I came into his house, a kind of thatched shack not far from Apia, but he dressed himself in my presence and went about with me. I found that he spoke good English, knew the islands well, and was very intelligent, as are all the natives I have so far met.
With him I visited many of the native houses. Owing to the hot climate, the Samoan dwelling is scarcely more than a roof made of plaited branches supported on a number of slender posts through which all the airs of heaven may circulate. The walls are mats of fibre which are rolled up inside and against the roof when not in use, and which may be let down to keep out the wind and rain. Not a nail is used in the construction of such a house, but instead the parts are tied together with yards of plaited coconut fibre called cinnet. The men spend much of their leisure time plaiting cinnet, some of which is as fine as twine.
The floor of the typical hut is a circular terrace raised about two feet above the ground and surrounded by a shallow ditch. The terrace is made of stones closely fitted together, and over it is spread a layer of white coral pebbles gathered from the beach to form the carpet for the hut. The pebbles, which serve for mattresses as well as floor covering, are sometimes known as “Samoan feathers.” When the native is ready for bed he simply lays a fibre or grass mat upon them, takes down his pillow from the rafters, crawls under his mosquito net, and goes off to the Land of Nod. His pillow is no more than a little log set on four short legs so as to raise his head well off the floor.
The Samoans have always been noted for their hospitality. They give all strangers a cordial welcome, and food, lodging, and even clothing may be had in any native house without thought of compensation. Nevertheless, when a white visitor stays in a Samoan home he gives presents on leaving to the full value of his entertainment. No native guest ever does this, but the foreigners have been so liberal in the past that they have led the people to expect gifts. No Samoan host would, however, lower himself so greatly as to take money. In almost every settlement there is a “Taupo,” or “Maid of the Village,” elected by the people to receive guests and take a leading part in all public ceremonies and festivals. When she goes any distance from home the maiden is surrounded by a train of elderly women as chaperons. She holds office for a few years, or until she is married.
The Samoans are a clean people. Everywhere I see them in bathing. The women and the men wade about waist-deep in the streams and swim together in the surf, splashing one another, and acting more like children than grown-ups.
The young women have beautiful forms. They are as straight as the statue of Venus in the Capitoline Museum at Rome, and as plump and as well formed as the Venus de’ Medici. Their complexions are of a rich chestnut brown and their large soulful eyes are full of smiles. Unfortunately they often bleach their black hair to a bright red by the use of lime. Both women and men are good-natured, gentle, kind, and easily governed.
I have been asked to investigate the chances for Americans to get rich in the Samoan Islands. Robert Louis Stevenson made about twenty thousand dollars a year out of his books, but as far as I can learn, for all his sweating on his cacao plantation, he did not get a cent out of it. The islands have an excellent climate. It is good for consumptives, and if the consumptive were anything else than an impractical newspaper or literary man he might prosper at coconut raising or in growing cacao. There are cacao planters on Upolu who are making money.
Cacao plants produce the seeds from which chocolate is made. The trees are planted in rows about fourteen feet apart and it is four years before they come into bearing. After that time, if properly cared for, they are profitable. One Samoan planter has recently netted more than twelve hundred dollars a year from sixty acres, and there are others who are doing equally well.
This man has three thousand trees planted at Pago Pago and expects to set out more. Another planter I have heard of got nine hundred dollars a year from less than eight acres of cacao in American Samoa. It is estimated that two thirds of all the land in the Samoan Islands is suitable for the growing of cacao. As to coconuts, there is money to be made in raising them on almost any of the Pacific islands.
During my stay at Apia I have heard much about things in our part of the Samoan Islands. The Tutuilans now consider themselves American citizens and hurrah for the Stars and Stripes as enthusiastically as we do on the Fourth of July. The government has brought quiet to the island, torn for years by strife among the different tribes. Figuratively speaking, the people are now turning their swords into pruning hooks.
We are ruling the Samoans after the Dutch method; that is, we are working through their chiefs and allowing them to govern themselves. Every village is a little republic, with its own chief, who is in most cases a hereditary ruler. Our naval officers, who administer the islands, sit behind the chiefs and pull the strings, and the people think they are ruling themselves. Unless inconsistent with our laws, native customs are never changed without the consent of the people. Missionary work is encouraged.
The Island of Manua contains about twenty square miles. It is mountainous and surrounded by coral reefs. The mountains are about a half mile in height, but the land rises so gradually that the whole island can be cultivated.
The Manuans are much the same as the Tutuilans, except that, being out of the line of ocean steamship travel, they are less advanced. They have had missionaries for the last century and are Christians. They have churches and schools and live peacefully under their king, producing enough food for themselves and selling enough copra to satisfy their few other wants. Coconut and banana plantations are being put out on all our islands. The American naval officers with whom I have talked have nothing but good to say of the people.
When the Americans first took possession, a party of officers was received in great state by the King of Manua, who insisted on treating them to kava before he discussed business. He had his chiefs with him, and the Queen sat beside him during the audience. The kava was brought in by the belle of the island in a cup fastened to a branch of coconut palm. It was given first to the king, who handed it back to her, whereupon she filled it and again gave it to His Majesty. After pouring some on the ground, he took a drink of it. It was next presented to the officers in the order of their rank and they had to drink it, although they knew of the traditional way of making this native beverage.
Kava comes from a root grown in the Pacific Islands and by the old formula is made in the following manner: The kava is washed and cut up into little cubes. Then a young girl, preferably a pretty girl, after washing her hands and rinsing her mouth, begins to work. She puts one cube of kava into her mouth, and chews it vigorously. When it is well masticated she adds another and another until she has in her cheeks a mass of fibre as big as an egg. This she takes out and lays in a large flat bowl and then begins to form another egg. She keeps on making eggs until all of the root is chewed. Then water is poured into the bowl, and the girl begins to knead the fibrous mass under it. When it is strained it is a milky liquid that tastes for all the world like a mixture of soapsuds and bitters. It is not considered intoxicating, but when taken in excess it goes to one’s knees, so that for a time the imbiber cannot walk straight.
This drink is used in all the islands of the Pacific. In the out-of-the-way Samoas a person making kava has the right to ask any girl who is passing, no matter who she may be, to come in and chew his root for him. In most parts of Samoa this practice of chewing has died out, and the roots are now pounded up with stones instead. In the more remote districts, I am told the old custom prevails.
The London Missionary Society is doing much good throughout all parts of Samoa. It has been working here for three generations and claims thousands of converts to Christianity. Roman Catholics also have missionaries on some of the islands. The Samoans are naturally religious and the level of their morality is far higher than that of the foreigners who bring in whisky and introduce the vices of civilization to these southern seas. There are, it is true, high-class business men scattered through the various archipelagoes, but the average beach-combing trader is as a rule a curse instead of a blessing and most of the evils that have come to the people are due to him.
For many of us the chief interest of the Samoas lies in the fact that it was near Apia that Robert Louis Stevenson passed the last years of his life and did much of his best writing. While I was there I rode up to “Vailima,” the big, rambling house in which he lived. Some time after his death the place was purchased by a wealthy German planter, who did all he could to dispel the Stevenson atmosphere and soon destroyed most of the vestiges of the former owner’s taste. He put up a sign over the gate beginning with Eingang verboten and going on to say in English, French, and Samoan, as well as German, that strangers were forbidden to come inside the enclosure. He allowed Stevenson’s tomb to become overgrown with weeds, and the pilgrimages to it from the incoming ships became fewer every year.
Now “Vailima” is the official residence of the administrator of Western Samoa and Stevenson’s memory is kept much greener than it was in the days of German control. Once more travellers go up the steep mountain path to the peak of Vaea where he was buried as he had requested. You recall how much the Samoans loved their “Tusitala,” or “Teller of Tales” as they called Stevenson. Part of the road from Apia to “Vailima” was laid by them and christened “The Road of the Loving Hearts.” At his funeral it was the natives who had worked with him who bore Stevenson’s body up the steep path to the mountain top, where he now lies with the Pacific at his feet. On his tombstone are the lines of the “Requiem” he had written to be inscribed there:
Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
“Here he lies where he longed to be.
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.”