Friday, December 6, 1907.
By five o'clock we could make out the two sentinel rocks, between which we must go to get into the bay. It was nearly midnight as we sailed up the coast of Nuka-hiva. A fine bright moon had been shining earlier in the evening; but just as we had sighted the opening of the bay (called Taiohae Bay on the chart), a squall struck us and we were in the most dangerous position we had ever been caught in: rocks and reefs on every side, so we could not turn back. We did the only thing possible—drove right for the place of which we had sighted the opening, and left to luck that we would find it. Luck was with us. We sailed in the opening, just missing a large, rocky island at its mouth. We passed so close that thousands of sea-birds were sent crying and frightened off their rocky perch. After getting inside the bay, the mountains on every side shut off the storm, and the wind dropped so low that we were an hour getting from the mouth of the bay to the upper end, where the water was shallow enough for anchoring.
At last we are at anchor. It seems that we must be in paradise. The air is perfume. We can hear the wild goats blatting in the mountains, and an occasional long-drawn howl from a dog ashore. It is so p157 near morning now that the cocks are crowing; and we are so proud of ourselves for doing what the Sailing Directions said was impossible, and so happy at seeing land again! Well, now we shall get a much-needed rest. p158
CHAPTER VII
IN THE MARQUESAS
At last we were in the real Marquesas Islands, the islands we had heard so much about, the islands that very few white people ever see—for here there is only one way of communicating with the outside world, and that is by two trading schooners that make four trips a year from Papeete, Tahiti, one thousand miles away, and an occasional bark or brig that drops in here for copra.
When the sun peeped over the mountains, we awoke to the prettiest sight imaginable. All about, sloping steeply upward, were green mountains; at the end of the bay ahead, palm trees of all kinds were clustered. We saw a number of white houses, with low white roofs; and, further back on the mountains, one considerably larger house, where the French Resident lived. Our deck was covered with a sweet-smelling pollen, which had settled aboard during the small hours of the morning. Near us was a small, old-fashioned bark—Norwegian, we found out afterward—with painted imitation square port holes, such as are seen on old galleons. Her hull was down in the water, showing her to be loaded, or nearly so. We were surprised to see this vessel, for we had expected to have the bay to ourselves. From a distance, several big, p159 brown, grinning men inspected the Snark; and when we invited them aboard, they climbed over the rail, bringing bunches of bananas, oranges, papaias, and various other fruits, all of which they gave us. I lowered the launch and soon had it running, but it was nearly noon before we had a chance to go ashore. The natives were constantly swarming around us, all talking at once and trying to talk to us. The big, good-natured fellows were doing their best to make us feel at home. With each presentation of fruit, a speech was delivered, which always ended in a grin and a handshake. We had learned enough of the Hawaiian tongue to understand a little of what they said, for the languages are very similar; and we could gather that each one was wanting the pleasure of being our guide.
These people were the most hospitable and kindly of any in the South Seas; they entertained us lavishly; expense was no object to them; and our money was of no value to us, as here no such medium of exchange was in use. These people gladly prepared the most gorgeous entertainments when they found that we were bent on a mission of friendly inquiry and honest research into their customs and manners.
At last Jack made them understand that we were not needing assistance, but would gladly avail ourselves of their hospitality when we got ashore. Finally, we did go ashore, but only to stagger and roll so that walking was almost impossible. In those sixty-one days at sea, we had practically forgotten what p160 walking was. The whole village of nearly naked islanders was awaiting us on the beach. How those kind people did bustle good-naturedly around us! With the whole crowd following, we made our way to the only trading station on the island, "The Societé Commercial de la Oceanie," a branch of the biggest trading concern in the South Sea islands.
We were quickly relieved of our escort when the two white men of the place came out and said a few words in the native tongue. All the people stopped out in front while we went inside. Mr. Kriech and Mr. Rawling, two Germans, were the agents for the company here, and during our stay they did all in their power to show us the interesting spots on the island. Everywhere we were stared at by the natives. Mrs. London attracted more attention than did we men. Few white women had ever been seen here before. A Mrs. Fisher had lived here thirty years, and had boarded Robert Louis Stevenson while he was at Nuka-hiva.
The storekeeper accompanied us to the French Resident's, where he acted as interpreter. The French Resident spoke no English. He was a queer, fat little man, with a good-natured face. When we first saw him, he was wearing overalls, and had no coat; on his feet were wooden shoes, and on his head a military hat. Upon observing us, he quickly donned a faded old uniform coat, and was all dignity at once. He did not even look at our papers, for he declared that p161 the word of so important a man as Monsieur London was better than any credentials we could display. He made us highly welcome, and did not even charge us the usual twenty-franc hunting license.
Shortly after, Captain Luvins of the bark Lucine came in, and to him Jack broached the subject that had brought us to the island. We wanted to see Typee Valley. Arrangements were immediately made for us to go over to this famous valley, which for years and years, in fact, since he was a little boy and had read Herman Melville's "Typee," Jack had longed to visit. Mr. Kriech secured horses and guides for us, and we started next morning before sun-up.
When I think of those early mornings in the Marquesas, I seem to smell anew the sweet flowers and the copra. The soft still morning air leaves something in one's nostrils that makes one want to go back again. I believe that all four of the white people on the Snark will drop anchor in this bay again. I know I will . . . sometime.
We started early next morning, Captain Y——, Mr. and Mrs. London, myself, a native guide, Captain Luvins, and two girls we did not know were going, and to whom Jack did not take very kindly at first, until it was explained that they were the daughters of the chief of the Typee tribe, and that their going assured us a welcome in their valley. We were each mounted on a small Marquesan pony, with provisions for four days in our saddle-bags. We started off a p162 narrow path and headed straight for the mountains. We climbed for hours, often going around the corner of a mountain on a little path, where we could look hundreds and hundreds of feet down a sheer precipice. The little ponies were as sure-footed as goats, and finally, at nearly noon, we reached the summit of the mountain, the mountain that divided off the different tribes. Looking down one side, we could see Hapaa Valley. Back of us lay Taiohae Bay, with the Norwegian bark and the Snark lying at anchor. Straight ahead spread Typee, the wonderful valley Herman Melville so vividly described as a paradise. We had fought the elements and suffered for sixty-one days in order to win to this place, and see whether it was really the perfect spot that Melville described it, or whether, like certain who write about our Pacific coast states, he was but a delightful romancer. But we found that Melville had told the truth—that if he had not told the whole truth, it was because he had not described all the beauties of this bewitching valley of leisure and abundance, so far from the United States, where white men toil and grind incessantly.
We rode until late in the afternoon through the groves of bananas, thousands of big yellow bunches that would never be picked. Our horses stumbled over cocoanuts in the path. At one place, one of the native girls pointed out to us what she called a shortcut. We followed her directions, and rode right through a cluster of hornets' nests. The girl, who remained p163 at a safe distance, stood and watched us fighting the hornets and being royally stung, and laughed heartily at what she considered the cleverness of her practical joke. Just how much intrinsic humour there may have been in the situation I am unable to say—being so closely involved in it—but I am sure that the girl was the only one who did much laughing. The rest of us were busy swatting hornets, as were also our horses busy in dodging.
Finally, we came to a clearing where the old village of Typee had once stood. But now only the foundations of the buildings of this once strong tribe remained to show where they had been. The cocoanut trees we found growing in the fantastic arrangement that Melville had spoken of, but the natives were gone. Everything was quiet except the chirping of the birds, and the rustling of palm-leaves. We rode on until we came to a frame house that had been built by a trader, but he had left, and now a family of natives lived in this old house on the edge of Faiaways Lake. How delightful this little lake looked, with the background of mountains, but how sad this one family! When we came to them and asked for a drink of water, the woman brought a large gourd full to the brim, and as she extended it, we saw upon her flesh the curse of the islands, leprosy. The man came out, dragging a big heavy foot behind him. He had elephantiasis, and the children that played in the yard showed signs of leprosy. p164
Perhaps we should have gone back without seeing any more of the Typee tribe, had not the girls urged us on. We shortly came to another clearing—the new village of the valley. Here we found about twenty grass houses and perhaps fifty or seventy-five people, all that remained of the once strongest tribe in the Marquesas Islands.
About thirty years ago, there were six thousand natives in this valley, with nearly as many in the opposite valley of Hapaa. But the two tribes were continually at war, until the Hapaa tribe was totally exterminated. Then came ships in search of sandalwood and copra, and came also missionaries. With them they managed to bring leprosy and elephantiasis, and a venereal disease that, in the tropics, is worse than either of the others. As a result, the native hosts are gone, and only the few remain. Still, these people we saw looked healthy enough, though here and there we could see a leper lurking in the background.
Better had it been had the natives never seen the missionaries. What happened in the Marquesas has happened in many other South Sea islands, and no doubt is happening to-day. My conscience smote me. To think, the very pennies I had given in Sunday School for foreign missions had contributed to the calamitous end of the inhabitants of this beautiful garden-spot!
After the girls had told who we were and what we wanted, a large house was put at our disposal, and the women brought mats for us to sit on, while the men p165 started a big fire and roasted several pigs. Others brought fish and poi and eggs and chicken. The feast was spread out on the ruins of an old stone house, and we sat down to eat. Only we white people and the two chief's daughters and the chiefs were together. The other natives would come up respectfully and gather their portion, then withdraw to a little distance and eat. Of all the various kinds of edibles I have tried in different places of this world, I think none could compare with this. The fish was served raw, but it was good. The poi had been buried in the ground until it was slightly fermented. The natives climbed the big cocoanut trees and picked the young nuts for us to drink; and when we had finished eating, they got out their queer musical instruments made of logs, part of the natives danced and others sang, and I lay on my mat when I had finished eating and watched these happy people until it got too dark to see. I could not help thinking of my friends at home, who were bundled in heavy clothes, trying to keep warm, and going to moving-picture shows and dances, and persuading themselves that they were really having a pleasant time. What a contrast between their lot and mine!
That night Jack and Mrs. London slept inside on sleeping-mats thrown on the floor, while the rest of us slept outside on mats thrown on the ground. No mosquitoes or insects bothered us. There were no reptiles for us to be afraid of. The soft-treading p166 natives came and went all night long. Bright and early next morning, we were awakened by the natives' getting breakfast. When the meal was over, we went swimming in Faiaways Lake, and that day we explored the valley, and tried to buy curios. But they would not sell to us. They forced us to take presents of tapa cloth and ornaments of sharks' and porpoises' teeth, and corals, while we made presents to them out of our stores of tinned provisions.
One thing that I tried hard to bring out in photographs was the gorgeous tattooing of the natives, but their skins and the tattooing colour being so near the same shade and hue, the camera cannot catch so subtle a distinction. I tried many exposures, without success.
After the boys are old enough to stand the pain of tattooing, they are started on, and it sometimes takes years to complete them. When they are completed, their eyelids, nose, every part of the body, are covered with fantastic designs. Tattooing seems to be the only really serious thought of these people, except worshipping their big stone idols, several of which we saw in the valley.
One of the girls who had come with us was named Antoinette. She was the last left of royal blood on Nuka-hiva, and she owned nearly all of Typee Valley and most of Hapaa Valley, but she received little revenue. There is much copra, but no one to gather it. Copra, I may explain, is the dried kernel of the cocoanut, valued at about twenty-five cents a hundred.
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While we were here, one woman brought in a large piece of tapa cloth, which she sold for five dollars Chile. Chile money is the common currency here. It is about half the value of American money, and comes in very handy. Of course, this tapa cloth could never have been bought elsewhere for such a sum, but in the Marquesas quality is not considered in setting prices—only quantity. Natives gave us calabashes, hula dresses of human hair, then more tapa, until Jack was loaded down. I bought a fine big piece of this cloth, which is made from the bark of cocoanut trees, pounded into a pulp, then flattened out and dried. Once it was used for making pareus, but now they wrap their dead in it.
At one place, the girls told us that near the mouth of a river nearby was a large cave, in which were petrified bodies. It had once been an old burying ground, they said, but now a big stone had blocked the way. I had heard of this cave, and knew that Stevenson had once tried to force his way in after petrified eyes, of which the natives had told him. But my own opinion is that cave, bodies, and petrified eyes are all myths, although they are myths in which the natives place belief.
In telling of Typee, the Garden of Eden, I want to lay special stress on this one thing: if ever there was a Garden of Eden, it was right here in this valley. Nowhere else in the world is the climate so perfect, nowhere else in the world can be found the myriads p168 of delicious fruits, nowhere else is there such a profusion of wild cattle, goat, turkey, and chicken, to say nothing of the different species of ducks, cranes, storks and pigeons. One thing that struck me as strange was that the thousands and thousands of pure white doves which soared and floated over our heads showed absolutely no fear of us. It was evident they had never been molested.
Big ragged mountains rose on every side, over which were scattered waterfalls that started high up in the mountains and fell so far that before the water had reached the bottom it had scattered away in mists that floated down the valley in rainbows. Turning one's eyes at any time up the mountains, one could see the wild goats feeding or watching one in wonder, and see the occasional wild cattle that swung up precarious paths and out of sight, and the wild chickens that stalked about in search of food. One could reach up on either hand and pick the delicious fruit, ripe from the trees. A climate so perfect that no words can describe it, other than to call like unto the Garden of Eden, is here. The natives are like big happy children. They do not steal, gossip about one another, nor carry grudges. Instead, they sing, dance, hunt, fish, and live together as brothers in a life of perfect peace.
On my return to my own country, one provincial (and so narrow-minded) man went so far as to tell me that he thought the United States had the most perfect climate in the world; that it was the most perfect p169 country in the world; that he couldn't see why people should poke about looking for something better—for his part, he would see what he could of the States, and settle down and be satisfied. Then he started telling me of the Road of a Thousand Wonders, the place where there are oranges and flowers the year round.
Now you who read, of you let me ask: Have you ever seen this Road of a Thousand Wonders, this place where the oranges and flowers blossom the year round? What was your impression of it, if so? Did it come up to your expectations? Were you disappointed? And are you satisfied that in seeing it you have seen all that is worth seeing on this whirling sphere of ours?
Now, I have seen the Road of a Thousand Wonders. And I have been in Typee, the Garden of Eden. The very thought of comparing the two places makes me sad for the frailty of human judgment.
Our stay in Typee Valley was one of the most delightful experiences of a voyage that contained much of the delightful. It was with a profound regret that we left it, and with the determination that some day our eyes should again feast upon its many beauties, and that again we should partake of the hospitality of those who had made us so royally welcome. Back we came to the Snark, filled with pleasing memories.
The Marquesas Islands lie in Latitude 10°, so close to the Equator that ordinarily the sun's rays would p170 have been almost unbearable, but among all the South Sea Islands the trade winds that blow every month in the year, coming from over the sea, keep the temperature about the same as a fine spring day in America.
The Snark lay at anchor close in to the shore. Jack and Mrs. London secured a small frame house, the one that Robert Louis Stevenson had lived in while he was in the Marquesas. And they secured board with Mrs. Fisher, the same old woman who had cooked for Stevenson. Many of the older natives would tell stories of the time Tusitala (which was Stevenson's native name, signifying "story-teller") had lived here. He was a great hand to entertain, and as anyone can see from his writings, he loved and was loved by all the natives with whom he came in contact. The Polynesians never had a better friend than Robert Louis Stevenson. He has done more to give the Americans and English a good name in the islands than has any other man.
After the first day in Taiohae Bay, the Snark was deserted most of the time. There was never any danger of quitting the vessel with no one on board, for we had left the only persons who needed watching, back in America. Hermann was a great hunter. He usually started off early in the morning, and returned in the evening with birds of every variety, and he would sometimes return with wild goat. Once he shot a wild cow. It seemed a shame to kill the cattle, for such a little of the meat could be used, and the rest would p171 spoil in a day. Jack and Mrs. London went hunting one morning, and returned about noon with the native boys who had accompanied them bearing fourteen goats.
But the great attraction for the natives was our graphophone. When evening fell, they came about us in swarms to hear the playing, and they could never get over the belief that we had a little dwarf caged in the "talk-box." At times, there would be as many as two hundred brown people squatting on the grass, and they would never leave until we stopped the graphaphone. In the Hawaiian Islands, we had secured records of hula-hula music, which so delighted the Marquesans that sometimes we would have half a hundred dancing in front of the machine.
The natives who lived nearby in a small grass hut came to the house one day with the request that we play the graphaphone for them to dance by. Jack left his writing, and all that afternoon while he played these men practised different steps, and I believe a new hula-hula was originated that day.
The men, understanding nearly half of the Hawaiian language, sang with the graphaphone, keeping time by clapping their hands and swaying their bodies. They would anoint themselves from head to foot with cocoanut oil, until their skin was shiny. The cocoanut oil emitted a faint, pleasant odour, which, once smelled, is never forgotten. They would dance as fast as their limbs could carry them, the womenfolk keeping time p172 with their hands. Even the children imitated them. A native Polynesian can no more keep from dancing when he hears music than a duck can keep away from water.
The house where Jack lived was tended by an old man and a woman, who were covered with tattooing. The man's face looked like a convict's uniform—brown and blue instead of white and blue, with long stripes clear across the face. The woman had a trick of pulling up her dress and showing the tattooing on her legs whenever she saw anyone admiring it on her feet. Very immodest she was, but then, there is no such thing as modesty among such people as these. I think some staid persons I have seen in America would be vastly shocked by the things that take place in the Marquesas.
These natives are considerably larger than the average white person. Their skin is a light brown colour; their hair is thick, straight and black. Dark eyes and eyelashes make them appear a fine, handsome race. The only unfortunate thing is their tendency to age so soon. At fifteen the girls are fully developed women, and at twenty-eight or-nine they are old women. They seem to have no vitality; though they look strong and healthy, if one were told that he was going to die, and had the idea impressed on his mind, he would be sure to lie down and die.
They have no morals at all. Their marriage contracts are so flimsy that if one wants a divorce, he needs p173 only to apply to the chief; and a couple can be married and divorced in the same day. There were few white men here, but all had native women, and were continually changing. The girls, from fourteen years up, make their homes with first one native and then with another. If they want to marry a man they say so, and if he refuses them they call him "missionary." I was sitting on a barrel in front of the trading store one day, when several young vahines (women) came up, and tried to talk to me. One grabbed me by the arm, and pointing to the others: "She wife—she wife—she wife—me no wife!" One girl had a white baby of which she was very proud. To my mind, the girls here were better looking than the Hawaiian girls, but they were much more lax in their notions of becoming conduct.
All of Jack's photographic supplies were spoiled, so I was kept busy printing pictures from mine. Once, while I was engaged in this work, a girl came in the house, without knocking, and was tickled nearly to death watching me develop velox. After that, she came and went whenever she wished, but always dispensed with the formality of knocking.
We had aboard the Snark a full set of dentist's tools, which Jack had had no chance to use up to this time. His entire experience of dentistry had been gained by practise on a skull he had purchased in Honolulu. He was always wanting someone of the crew to act as patient. Wada had once pulled a tooth with a string p174 before Jack could get to him, and Jack never forgave Wada for that.
One day I found an old Chinaman—the only Chinaman on the island—groaning on the beach with the toothache. Here was Jack's chance; I rushed off and told him. He urged me to hold the Chinaman until Nakata went aboard for his tools. Then the Chinaman was led to the back of the house. The poor old fellow was shaking with fright. After Jack found, by reading in his little dental book, the proper forceps to use, and was ready to start on the operation, I cried for him to wait until I got my kodak. Mrs. London ran for hers, too. When I yelled "pull," Jack pulled mightily, and he nearly fell over on his back, the tooth came out so easily. But we got the photographs!
The most amusing thing I saw while here was the jail. It was a little old wooden shack, so small that it would hold only two or three persons—and not then, if they wanted to get out. The French government used Nuka-hiva as a penal settlement. Some twenty or thirty prisoners were kept here, and they were the happiest prisoners I ever saw. Why, they didn't need to stay in jail unless they wanted to, so they had built grass houses. One of the long-term men had married, and not only did the government feed him, but it fed his wife as well—better food than the natives ever got, and it was cooked, too. They were supposed to work, but the old jailor was as lazy as they, so I don't p175 think any of them ever did a stroke. Tom the Jailor had once lived in Papeete, Tahiti, and was the proud possessor of an old suit of clothes. These clothes were only worn on state occasions; the rest of the time he dressed like any other native. Tom could speak a little of the English language, and he used to bring all his family around to the house so he could show off his knowledge of the white man's talk. One day I was enquiring about a string of porpoise teeth made in the form of a necklace that his daughter was wearing, and Tom took it from her and gave it to me. These porpoise teeth are very valuable and are used by the Marquesans in lieu of money.
The Norwegian bark of which I spoke had been anchored in this bay for six months. The captain owned the vessel, so he could stay as long as he wanted to without anyone's complaining; and I don't think his ten sailors wanted to leave any more than he did. They all had native girls to whom they seemed to give more time than to the loading of copra. And I think it probable they would have been there yet had it not been for a queer little comedy that I saw enacted.
A large stone idol stood back in the mountains, that the natives were very superstitious about. They believed that anyone touching this image or even going into its shrine cast a spell on them. Now the captain of the bark did not know this, and as it was a very fine piece of work, he decided to take it back to his country with him. His ten sailors cut a large cocoanut p176 tree, and the image, which weighed two tons, was made fast to the middle. It took two days to get it down to the ship. During this time not a native was to be seen, and it was not till the work was done and the sailors tried to go back to their girls that they knew of the superstition attached to the idol. The girls would have nothing further to do with them; so a few days later they set sail and started on their long journey, first to stop at St. Helena, and then on to Norway.
As our launch drew too much water, we used to borrow small native canoes with which to go out in the bay, and were able to come and go without difficulty. One night Hermann arrived astraddle an overturned canoe. He had been to some kind of feast ashore, and had mounted the wrong side of the canoe. Hermann often did these little things.
Our favourite loafing-place was the German traders' headquarters. Here the natives would bring curios for us to buy. It was our custom to buy knives and sticks of tobacco of the Company at white man's prices and trade them to the natives at brown man's prices. For instance, a knife we would buy of the trader for twenty-five cents, we would trade to the Marquesans at $1.00 value. Four hundred per cent. is the regular scale of South Sea profit.
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The copra that I have mentioned is the principal article of South Sea commerce. The natives collect the cocoanuts after they have fallen from the tree, and after hulling them, cut the nut in two in the centre, and p177 the pieces are laid in the sun until the meat is dried and broken away from the shell. It is then ready for shipping. Soap-oils and perfumes are made from copra. One company that has stations in the Marquesas, the Society, and the Taumotu Islands, collects fifty thousand tons of copra every year.
The cocoanut trees grow anywhere they can find sand to hold their roots; even places where no other vegetation will grow the cocoanuts thrive. They must have plenty of water—the soil makes no difference.
Near Mr. London's frame bungalow were numerous mountain streams where the natives bathed. Some of these people seemed to spend most of their time in the water. Captain Y——, who liked bathing but was a little bashful, used to have a hard time finding a place where he could swim unobserved. One day, he and I were bathing close to the house in a spot where we thought we were safe. When we started out, we heard a snicker ashore, and there stood two native girls, watching us. We sank down in the water, which just struck us to the chin. Captain Y—— told the girls to go away, but they didn't understand, and when he threw a shell at them, they thought it a new game, and threw it back. Finally, we made a wild dash for our clothes, and finished dressing back in the jungle.
The girls here make ornaments of land-snail shells, several of which ornaments I now treasure among the p178 curios I brought back with me from the South Seas.
The healthy appearance of these people is due to their method of living: sleeping in their grass houses is nearly the same as sleeping in the open air. They eat fruits and fish and very little meat—in fact, very little of what they eat is cooked. They grind the different kinds of fruit together and make poi. The leaves of certain trees and grasses are made into salads. One salad that they prepare only on state occasions is made by taking the heart from a young cocoanut tree; but a handful can be secured from each tree; and as it kills the tree, there is an unwritten law that this salad can be made only with the chief's consent.
Tom the Jailor was a polite old fellow, especially polite to Mrs. London. He would bring fruit to us nearly every morning, and would help at any work we were doing, although, like Rip Van Winkle, he was too lazy to do any work for himself. Once, when Mrs. London asked him his age, he said he did not know, although he knew he was still young, to prove which he climbed one of the tallest cocoanut trees nearby, and brought us the nut. The young nut, rich with milk, could also be eaten with a spoon, and was much better than when dried.
I wish it were possible for me to describe Taiohae Bay. Photographs give no idea of its beauty. And I know no description can do it justice. Viewed from our ship as she lay at anchor in the harbour, it presented p179 the appearance of a vast natural amphitheatre overgrown with vines. The deep glens that furrowed its sides seemed like enormous fissures graven by the disruptive influences of time. Very often, when lost in admiration of its beauty, I have experienced a pang of regret that a scene so enchanting should be hidden from the world in these remote seas, and seldom meet the eyes of devoted lovers of nature.
Besides this bay, the shores of the island are indented by several other extensive inlets, into which descend broad and fertile valleys. These are inhabited by several distinct tribes of islanders, who, although speaking kindred dialects of the same tongue, have from time immemorial waged hereditary warfare against each other. The intervening mountains, generally two or three thousand feet above the sea-level, define the territories of each of the three tribes.
The bay of Nuka-hiva, in which we were lying, is an expanse of water not unlike in figure the space included within the limits of a horse-shoe, being perhaps nine miles in circumference. From the verge of the water, the land rises uniformly on all sides, with green and sloping elevations and swells that rise into lofty heights. Down each of these valleys flows a clear stream, here and there assuming the form of slender cascades, then stealing along invisibly until it bursts upon the sight again in large and more noisy waterfalls, and at last demurely wanders along to the sea. p180
CHAPTER VIII
THE SOCIETY ISLANDS
One thousand miles to the west of the Marquesas Islands lie the Society Islands. Both groups are of volcanic origin. Stretching between them are the low coral reefs of the Paumota Archipelago. In order to get to the Society group, it was necessary for us to go through the thick of these low reefs.
Robert Louis Stevenson was lost for nearly two weeks among these lagoons; whaling and trading ships avoid them; and navigators have given them the name Dangerous Archipelago.
We had been in the Marquesas Islands a little over two weeks when Jack decided that we had better be getting on. So word was sent out to the natives that on a certain day we would want fruit and fowl; and on that day, canoes were coming and going from daybreak to twilight, and by evening our decks were littered with good things of every shape and colour; the life-boat had been filled with oranges; sacks containing pineapples, yams, and taro were piled on the deck; the cockpit was so full of green cocoanuts that there was barely room left for us to steer; and there were bananas of every stage of ripeness, from very green to very ripe, hung upside down to the davits.
We had expected to start away on December 17, p181 but we did not do so, for late in the afternoon a white spot showed on the horizon at the mouth of the bay and gradually got brighter until the schooner Tameraihoe Tahiti dropped anchor close to us. Here was news, and we could not leave until we knew what was going on in the world. The schooner had met the steamer in Papeete, Tahiti, two months before, and had some three-months-old San Francisco papers aboard.
There were three white men on this ship. One was such an interesting subject that I must tell of him. He had come years before, when only a young man. He was in the employ of some trading concern that he still worked for, and on his rounds among the islands he had met and fallen in love with a native girl, but she only laughed at him, saying that he was not nearly so good-looking as the natives, because not tattooed. Now, the girl's brother was just learning this art, and as he thought the white man's skin would be fine for practise, he persuaded the trader to be tattooed. The man quit the company, and for six months lived in a native house in the mountains while the boy practised tattooing on him every day, until the work was done and the skin healed up. Then he made his way to the girl's home. At first the girl was frightened; then she nearly went into hysterics, and ridiculed him; and finally, she insulted him in the worst possible manner—she spat upon him, and ran away into the jungle. And the tattooed white man never saw her p182 again. Now he is one of the wealthiest men in Polynesia; pearl shell, copra, and sandalwood have reaped him a fortune that is of no use to him, for he can never return to civilised people again.
On December 18 we left Taiohae Bay, at seven-thirty in the evening. We started thus late because we had to wait for a land-breeze to spring up before we could set sail. The trading vessel gave us three salutes with their cannon as we started. Owing to the lightness of the breeze, we were an hour getting out. All the time the vessel was giving us three salutes, while Hermann kept the shotgun hot answering. As long as I live, I shall never forget that clearing. The full moon was just rising over the mountains, making it almost as light as day. We caught the trades just out of the mouth, and soon were flying southeast at six knots. No one was seasick; it seemed almost as if we had not been ashore at all, but were still on the long traverse from Hilo.
The days were very hot. We accordingly changed our working hours, getting up early and laying off during the extreme heat. I say "working hours," but the truth is that extremely little work was done at all. Jack wrote as usual, Mrs. London did her typing, and all took their tricks at the wheel, but most of the time we just lay around on deck and read or chatted.
For the first two days or so we skirted the shores of numerous small islands of the Marquesan group, p183 but we soon left them behind. On the fourth day out, squalls began to blow up every few minutes, looking like storms as they came up over the horizon, but always fizzling away in a little rain. That evening the wind suddenly shifted from east to west, sending the sails across deck with a boom, almost enough to tear the masts out. As it was, it carried away a stanchion on the rail, and the boom tackle.
Everybody's nerves were on end, what of the nasty and uncertain weather. According to the chart, we had a coral reef about fifteen miles on either side of us, making this a bad place in which to encounter a storm. Early on the morning of the 24th, we sighted cocoanut palms on our port side, but no land at all, only the tall palms above the horizon. We left them behind, and soon picked up another island, but could see only the palms as before, though more of them. The barometer had been falling for thirty-six hours, and numerous quick squalls swept over us. All hands were kept on deck all of Christmas Eve and all of Christmas Day. No one seemed to realise that it was Christmas, for the heat and squalls and barometer together had greatly worried us. This was the middle of the typhoon season, and we were in the most dangerous part of the world for storms.
The day after Christmas we sighted the tall cocoanut palms growing on the first of the Taumotu Islands; then for two days longer we could see the tops of the palm trees on every side, but during this time we p184 could catch no glimpse of land, as the islands rise only between two and six feet above the water, and cannot be seen over five or six miles away.
Jack had decided that our first stop in the Taumotus would be on one of the largest of the atolls, known as Rangiroa. Early on the fifth morning we sighted what we supposed to be this atoll. We had not been able to make observations since leaving the Marquesas, for the sky had been overcast with low, black, threatening clouds, so we were navigating by dead reckoning only; and as the currents and tides are known to be very treacherous, it was merely blind guess-work instead of real navigating.
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All morning and most of the afternoon we coasted along about a mile from a low coral reef, on which the surf thundered and pounded. The strip of land was only about a quarter of a mile wide, but one hundred miles in circumference, forming an atoll with a large lagoon in the centre. We sailed within a mile of the low sandy beach before we could make out an opening, and Captain Y—— finally decided that this was not the lagoon we were looking for, but that the one ahead was, so we sailed up the coast of this island, so close that we could plainly make out the remains of a schooner that had been wrecked upon the reef. Perhaps this old hull was the monument of human lives, the last relict of those who had sailed her. This did not prove to be the atoll we were looking for, nor did the next, or the next; we were getting among p185 islands so thick that it was necessary to carry double watches at night on deck. Captain Y—— acted like a man driven crazy, for the ship was in his care, and the currents and squalls were so deceptive during this time that he was almost entirely deprived of sleep. One day we had sighted several small sails to the leeward of us; on trying to get to them we found our way blocked by a reef just on a level with the water, so low that had it been night nothing could have saved us from being wrecked. While we were trying to get round the reef, the sails disappeared beneath the sky-line, and we were still in a dangerous position. Little islands scarcely large enough to bear one cocoanut tree would spring up ahead, and then we must spend valuable time beating around them. It was not the island itself that we were most afraid of, it was the reef that we knew always surrounded the island, sometimes over a mile from the land.
Large merchant ships have spent weeks and weeks trying to get out of this group. Little pearling luggers pile up on the white coral by the hundreds, every year. Something like two thousand of these small pearling vessels are scattered through these islands. Pearl shell is the only article of value to be found. Every season, scores of lives are lost in the hurricanes that sweep over the islands; the sand, being so close to the water, will often be levelled off to the water-line. The only safe place during such storms is on some sort of boat in the centre of the lagoon. p186
The atolls are all about the same shape—that is, circular. The land, about a quarter of a mile in width, will sometimes form in such a large circle that it will be impossible to see across the lagoon. However, we could see the whole of the atoll of the ones we sailed past.
We had been tangled up among these islands for seven days. There was no sun, no stars, from which to work our observations. We had now given up all thought of anchoring anywhere in the Archipelago—if we could only get away, far away, we would be more than satisfied. Even had we wanted to anchor, it seemed impossible, for the openings made by the run of the tide as it ebbed and flowed were too small for us to enter, and the reefs around the outside of the atolls were too rough for us to give a thought to. We knew that if we worked to the south, we would eventually get out. Had the islands been properly charted we could easily have located our position, but as it was, all was confusion and guess-work. In this duty, as in most others, the French had been very remiss. It was too late in the season for many pearling boats, and very few traders ever attempted these passages, although I afterward saw in Papeete several old Kanaka captains who had worked through these lagoons as the Indians used to locate themselves in America—more by instinct than through any practical knowledge.
It was on the seventh day out that we saw clear p187 water ahead. That night we sailed out of the reach of any cross-currents, and we now had clear water ahead to Papeete. All sail was crowded on, for the barometer was still acting queerly, and we did not relish the idea of being caught in a hurricane in so small a vessel. During this trip, we had not tasted one bit of meat. The fruit of every variety, and the yams and taro, made food that, for health, in the tropics has no equal.
Nakata was the biggest banana-eater I ever saw. He would keep his Japanese stomach filled with bananas all the time. Once he made a bet with Jack that he could eat twenty bananas in half an hour. He managed to eat a dozen with no difficulty, but after that he had to force them down, and he got stalled on his eighteenth banana. He just could not force down another one. One night, while it was his watch on deck, he got hold of a tin of salmon which gave him ptomaine poisoning. He was doubled up on deck for several hours while I poured mustard down him, but next day he was all right again.
On the morning of the ninth day we sighted the island of Tahiti, and raised a signal for a pilot. A Frenchman came out in a large whale-boat, manned by twelve big Tahitians. The wind was light, so that we did not get inside Papeete Bay until nearly noon. Papeete Bay is more like a lagoon with a narrow passage, than it is like a bay. About one mile across, the water is so deep close to the shore p188 that a ship can make fast to a cocoanut tree on the beach.
We had been expected in Papeete for a couple of months. Sailing authorities had given us up as lost.
I shall never forget that scene as we tacked back and forth against a light headwind; hundreds of little pearling luggers tied to the shore all around the bay, a French man-of-war tied up to a small wharf; an American warship anchored in the centre of the bay; and back on the gradual slopes of the mountains the city of Papeete, the capital of the South Seas, a city so gay that I can only compare it by calling it the Paris of the South Sea islands.
The American warship saluted us as we passed under her stern, and a couple of hundred American sailors set up a cheer that was worth all the hardships we had been through to hear. And to see the old Stars and Stripes again! Surrounded by flags of other nationalities, our old flag looked better than ever before; and no words can describe our feelings as those white-clad jackies cheered the crew of the Snark. We wanted to show our appreciation of their welcome, but the best we could do was to bare our heads as the big flag on the stern of the warship was raised and lowered three times.
Then as we passed the warship, a little canoe with two passengers bore down on us. One of the passengers was a big, sunburned white man, with long hair and beard, dressed only in a native loin-cloth. He p189 urged along the native who was paddling the canoe, while he stood upright waving a big red flag. When he got close enough to be understood, he yelled: "Hello, Jack," and Jack, recognising him, answered: "Hello, Darling." Then the Nature Man, as Darling is called, came alongside. We could not let him aboard, for the doctor had not passed us yet, but that did not hinder his piling baskets of fruit on our deck, and jars of honey, and jams, and jells, of his own make. He was so glad to see us that he cried; and as I leaned over to shake hands with him, it seemed that I had clasped the hand of a friend, and so it proved. Ernest Darling, the Nature Man, was one of the best friends I ever made in the South Sea islands. I came to know him well during our stay at Papeete, Tahiti.
The Society group comprises about twenty-five small islands, the greatest of which is called Tahiti. On the windward side of Tahiti is located the city of Papeete, the largest settlement in Polynesia.
Papeete has a population of five thousand. About one thousand of the population are French; five hundred are Chinamen, and the remainder are natives, with a sprinkling of New Zealanders, Australians, Germans and Americans. The city lies at the foot of a large mountain, and is fed by the finest supply of fresh, cool water of any city in the tropics. This water, coming from the high mountains, rushes down past Papeete as cool and clear and pure as spring p190 water. At the outside of Papeete are large cocoanut groves and sugar-cane plantations. In the city are several first-class business buildings, and the French have built splendid bungalows; but inside the town the natives live in their grass houses, and always will, I suppose, for a frame building is too close and confining for them—they will invariably select a grass house in preference to a frame. These islands belong to the French, than whom there are no people in the world with better ideas on making clean, pretty cities. As a consequence, they have in Papeete well-kept, parked streets, and cultivated lawns.
The tropical ferns and trees are excellent for decorating, as the trees are easily trained to any shape, and they use the rare figures to advantage. The traveller's palm is one of the rarest of the palm species, and is used quite extensively in decorating the government grounds.
The French government in the South Seas is as funny as a comic opera. In their love of pomp and display, the officials parade the streets in blue and gold uniforms, with medals pinned to their coats. The man-o'-war Zelle is stationed here to keep down rebellions, but even to think of these quiet people's rebelling is amusing.
The Zelle makes regular trips among the other islands, and the first class battleship Catinet makes one trip a year to Papeete from France. Each ship carries something like two hundred men, who just p191 about turn Papeete upside down when they get ashore. It seemed to me that the officers had very little control over the men, for they came and went from the ship whenever they felt like it, and the ships, as compared with the American warship Annapolis, were about the dirtiest, most ill-kept fighting vessels I ever saw. I have heard the French sailors talk back to the officers when they had been ordered aboard the ship; and one sailor told an officer to go to h—, that he intended to stay ashore all night. Should an American sailor ever return so much as one word to an officer, he would most likely be court-martialled.
About one hundred sailors were busy one day beaching a large coal-barge near the Snark, with six or eight officers overseeing the work. I stood on the rail of the Annapolis with several American jackies, watching the operation. The sailors were all talking at once, so loud that the officers could not be heard, and finally the officers gave up in disgust and let the men do the work to suit themselves.
But to me most interesting were the tiny trading schooners that ply between here and the hundreds of small islands within a radius of a thousand miles—dozens of them, some of such meagre proportions that a man can hardly stand between the rail and the tiny poop deck over the little hold. Yet, I have seen fifteen almost naked islanders squatted on the deck and poop, with no room to lie down, in which position they would probably remain until they got to their p192 destination, some minor coral island in the low Archipelago. It was always amusing to watch one of these vessels unload, for the cargo was sure to be queer.
One schooner I noticed had several bags of copra, several of pearl shell, four live turtles weighing about three hundred and fifty pounds—the largest I ever saw—and the rigging was hanging full of bananas. In addition, there were ten native men and women aboard. I wondered how they could make expenses, for the whole thing would not bring over twenty-five dollars. The turtles they sold for two dollars each, and the bananas at ten cents a bunch.
I think Papeete might easily be called the city of girls, for they outnumber the male population two to one. From the Taumotu and Marquesas Islands and the rest of the Society Islands, the girls come to Papeete when about fifteen years old to complete their education, which consists of playing the accordion and dancing the hula-hula. Playing an accordion is as much of an accomplishment with these girls as playing the piano is with an American girl. Every evening, from every direction, will be heard music and singing, and one will see crowds of girls, hand in hand, singing and dancing through all the streets. From eight o'clock in the evening until nearly midnight this merry-making goes on, like a continual carnival, every night. On account of the extreme minority of the men, the streets seem to be flooded with p193 nothing but girls. They wear a loose white wrapper in the evenings, called an au-au. In the daytime they wear gaudy coloured au-aus. The French government compels the girls to wear these dresses inside the city limits, but outside they wear only the comfortable pareus.
After the first day we had anchored the Snark in Papeete Harbor, we secured Darling, the Nature Man, to stay aboard; and while Mr. and Mrs. London rented a small house, Captain Y—— and I rented a small two-roomed bungalow, while Wada and Nakata found accommodation elsewhere in the town. Hermann went on a protracted drunk, which lasted so long that Jack gave him his walking papers. He afterward secured the job of second mate on a small trading vessel.
We had been in Papeete but a few days when the steamer Mariposa made port from San Francisco, and we learned the first of the panic in the United States. Jack's business affairs were badly tangled, so it became necessary for him to go back to attend to them, leaving the rest of the crew in Papeete. No one was sorry that we were delayed, for we had just about decided that we should like to live here.
An interesting place was the market. Life in Papeete starts at five o'clock, when the market opens. Fish, fruit and vegetables are brought before sunrise, and at five o'clock sharp the people may begin buying. Two known lepers have their booths in this market, p194 where they sell fruit that the Kanakas buy just as readily as from any other fruit vendors. For several hours the market square is crowded with buyers and with girls anxious to show their finery. It seems queer, but this is the time to show their clothes, for half the town is there to see them. The market is the most important place in Papeete. Even during the hottest part of the day, sleepy Kanakas will be on guard over the fruit until later in the afternoon, when the people come out again; and for the rest of the day until midnight the crowds loaf around here making small purchases of fruit, which is eaten on the spot.
Just imagine buying one of these big yellow bunches of bananas for what would equal ten cents of our money, and as many oranges as one could carry for five cents! But the best fruit, alone worth a trip to Tahiti, is the big red juicy mangoes, and another banana, the fei, which, when cooked, makes a substitute for the best pudding ever tasted.
I had secured the services of three French blacksmiths, who called themselves machinists, to help me on the engines. We took all the machinery from the engine-room, and completely overhauled it. Also, we installed new rigging on deck, swung our boats on their davits, and repainted the Snark, inside and out.
Our bungalow was just a block up the beach from the Snark, on a quiet, shady street where the élite of the city lived. As no one worked during the middle of the day, Captain Y—— and I stayed at home in p195 our cool bungalow, eating fruit and reading, until late in the afternoon. We had always a bottle of cognac or absinthe, and plenty of tobacco, of which the natives who visited us partook freely. At our house, we saw the real hula-hulas, and heard native music and singing that tourists who happen to come to Papeete never encounter. Everyone smokes in the South Seas—girls, children, men and women—and all drink. The Kanakas would have drunk our cognac and absinthe like beer, had we allowed it. In the daytime, the girls came and squatted on our floor, making shell wreaths or weaving hats. Their toilet is very simple. On arising, they take a bath, slip on a pareu, over that an au-au, put on a wreath of flowers, wash their hair in cocoanut oil, tuck a flower under the right ear, and—the toilet is complete. They have a saying that only white people and fools wear shoes, so of course they go barefoot.
The girls gave a big hula-hula one day just back of our bungalow, in a big grass house built for the occasion. In the morning they got a large demijohn of orange beer from the mountains, and by evening were pretty drunk, but that did not prevent eighteen girls from giving the prettiest dance I ever saw, while four others played their weird music on tom-tom drums. One old woman kept shouting and jumping throughout the dance. At times they would shout in chorus, and all squat on the floor together, holding their hands over their heads and keeping time by p196 rhythmical waving. Again, they would give short hops and yells, holding on to each other and keeping time by a peculiar scraping of their bare feet.
In the cool of the afternoon, I would start again on the engines, and work until dark, while Captain Y——, in his new white clothes, would promenade around Papeete, telling everyone that he was captain of the Snark. Captain Y—— was really a pretty good fellow, but he took himself too seriously. He was well liked by everyone who knew him. He was known throughout the Society Islands in a short time. In fact, it was impossible to see him without getting acquainted, for he would have everybody know that Captain Y—— of the Snark was in town; and as he was a pretty good spender and a sociable club fellow, the people were always glad to have him about. The two clubs extended to him and Jack and me honorary membership cards to their club houses. One, the "Circle Bouganville," gave dances and held social sessions, which we usually attended. We were always sure of a good time, though it got very tiresome saluting the many captains we found there. These "captains" strutted about the streets like peacocks, and gathered in the evening at the "Circle Bouganville" to drink until morning. There was always plenty of them! It was safe to call any man captain, for even if he did not hold the title, he would be so flattered that he would take special pains to speak to you at every meeting.
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On the government grounds is a large bandstand. Here the band, pride of Papeete, plays several times a week. The band is small, very small, only a little larger than a tiny orchestra, and the music is horrible, but it supplies an excuse for the population to gather for a good time. Usually, a few hula-hula dancers have more attention than the band.
These people are great hands to bedeck themselves with flowers. The older people carry on a very profitable business during the evenings, selling wreaths. The Tahitians would no more think of going out in the evening without wearing flowers than the average man in the States would think of going without his shirt.
The Kanakas (the name holds even outside Hawaii) are very religious during church hours; the rest of the time they forget about it. The big Catholic church is the finest building in the town, being made entirely of coral cement. The other buildings are of wood.
Along the water-front the principal street, known as Broom Road, runs clear around the bay in the shape of a horse-shoe. One side of the street is lined with buildings. On the other side is the beach. At one end of the beach is a shipbuilding yard, where small pearling luggers are built and repaired. The rise and fall of the tide in this bay is so great that no dry dock is necessary. Some of the vessels have names almost as large as the ship. For instance, there is p198 the Teheipouroura Tapuai, a mission schooner belonging to the Catholics.
The streets running into the market square are lined with Chinese stores, and the headquarters of the several trading concerns that send schooners among the other islands. The Chinese are the only ones that can carry on a retail business. The Kanakas are too lazy, and the white people could not live on so small a scale. About all the natives need is coloured calico, fruits, cheap overalls, and singlets. They make their own hats when they wear any, and a white coat is the only thing the French ever buy in the way of luxuries.
Now that I am back in America, I can appreciate their quiet lazy life better than I could then. To be able to sit or sleep under those big shady trees or to take a book out there to read, all the time with plenty of fruit handy, and with nothing to worry over, is a genuine luxury.
Now and then a sailing vessel will drop in from America or Europe or Australia, loaded with lumber, and ships of wine come from France. Every six weeks arrive the Mariposa from San Francisco and the Manapaoura from New Zealand, while warships of every nation coal here on their long journeys across the Pacific. It is only when the South American warships put into port that any real trouble begins, for the South American jackies always have fights with the French jackies. The Americans licked a few of the p199 Frenchmen while I was at Papeete, and after that there was peace for a while.
Papeete is the centre of the pearling industry of the South Seas. Hundreds of little sloops lie here during the hurricane season, while the captains strut about the streets. None of the captains can navigate. They sail entirely from dead reckoning, often taking weeks to go a few hundred miles, when a captain who could navigate would take only as many days. But they put no value on time. They simply look for an island until they find it. Every year, when it is time for the pearling vessels to come in from the Taumotus, there are always many missing which are never heard from again.
The pearl shell is loaded in large sailing vessels. Most of it is sent to Europe. The pearl divers are only after the shell, and not after the real pearl, as most persons think. If they are lucky enough to find a pearl, they are that much ahead, but fishing for the pearl alone would be a very unprofitable business. p200
CHAPTER IX
SOME SOUTH SEA ROYALTY
The islands that we are familiar with as the South Sea Islands are properly called Oceania. Oceania is divided off in four distinct parts, known as Polynesia, or the eastern islands; Australasia, or the southern islands, including Australia; Melanesia, the islands lying to the north and west of Australia; and Micronesia, which lies to the north and west of Melanesia. The characteristics, the languages, and the customs of the people of each distinct division have no similarity.
The Polynesian people are supposed to be descended in mixed line from the Spanish and original Tahitians. It is certain that they have a strain of white blood in their makeup, for they have none of the negroid characteristics found farther west. They are a quiet, easy-going people, whom it would be hard to disturb. Their colour is a light reddish-brown, and they have black eyes and hair and well-rounded, intelligent faces. Very seldom is one of these people angry. It must be something out of the ordinary to arouse their anger, but when once aroused, they lose their heads entirely, they make no discrimination between friends and foes, and they are best given a wide berth until their fit of temper has passed. p201
Among the inhabitants of any community, will always be found some characters of sufficient strength and uniqueness to distinguish them from the herd. In the South Seas, they are usually chiefs, or old retired sea-captains and beach-combers, who hold this position in the Australasian, Melanesian and Micronesian sections, but in the Polynesian section the place of honour unquestionably belongs to Helene of Raiatea. Hers was the greatest power, though it was not a vested one. She seemed a true South Sea queen.
Raiatea is another island of the Society group, and Helene's home. She was the most prominent personage in these islands, and a typical Polynesian. I had ample opportunity to study her—her every mood and whim. Helene of Raiatea was known to all successful traders, and we were advised to be pleasant to her, as the success or failure of many a trader has depended on the smiles or frowns of Helene of Raiatea. It is needless to say that we took the advice, and invited Helene to be guest on board the Snark. Helene had no royal blood, nor was she of chieftain stock, but many a chief or king had less power than she.
She had been born with more energy than the average Kanaka, and a constant mingling with the white people had given her ideas above her class. A little over the average height, her figure was admirable. Her skin was a light olive colour; she had two perfect rows of teeth and a brain that seemed never to be still. p202
We had heard of her in the Marquesas Islands, and I was anxious to make her acquaintance. During the hard fight getting through the Paumota Archipelago, we had forgotten about her. On the first night ashore, as I was walking about the town in company with the captain of one of the German schooners, my mind was on other things. Life was gay in Papeete. There were singing and dancing in the streets, accordions everywhere, girls and boys strolling hand in hand or eating fruit on the sidewalks. We had paused in the centre of the market square, where life was the merriest. Young people would stop their games to see who that strange person was and what he was doing in Papeete. I felt self-conscious as I moved along, the cynosure of hundreds of pairs of eyes. Of a sudden, a white-clad girl from the throng laughingly grabbed my hand, and as if to ask a question, she said: "Iaorana, Missionary," which means: "Hello, Missionary." With these people, everyone is a missionary until they find out otherwise, and they always greet a stranger as a missionary when he first lands. The captain with me explained in their native tongue who I was, and then I seemed to be taken in as one of them. Helene drew us to the side of the street and made known that I could buy her some flowers and fruit, and the captain and I squatted on the sidewalk and ate watermelon, while she chattered away, asking questions of the captain as fast as he could answer them. Several other girls halted enquiringly, and Helene with a gesture p203 told them to be seated with us. Then I bought more flowers and fruit, and I commenced to wonder if I was not "getting my leg pulled," until I paid the whole bill and it amounted to something like ten cents. As I had never had such a good time on so small an amount of money, I got generous, and nodded to another group of girls to join us, but I saw Helene frown at them, and they turned away. This was the first I saw of Helene's power, but later on I observed that the white people as well as the natives treated her with vastly more respect than the ordinary Kanaka ever got.
On the day after I first met Helene, I had occasion to go to Lavina's Hotel, where the Londons were staying. I found Helene seated on the lanai, trying to make Jack understand what she was saying. When I came up the walk, she jumped to her feet, and said, "Iaorana oae" and I noticed that she no longer called me missionary, nor was I ever called missionary again. I'm sure I never gave any of them cause to mistake me for a missionary; in fact, after the crew of the Snark had become acquainted in Papeete, I'm afraid the real missionaries did not approve of our keeping open house to the natives. But the good-natured, hospitable people did us so many favours and were constantly making us such generous presents of fish that we made them welcome whenever they wished to visit us. They would bring Jack bunches of their cooking bananas from the mountains; and then Jack p204 would lay down his writing, pass around cigarettes, and talk to them. We easily picked up their language, for it is so simple that little effort is required in its use. Through the kindly services of Ernest Darling, the Nature Man, and Helene, we soon were talking without any difficulty. The Tahitian language has only about fourteen letters in its alphabet. There are no singulars nor plurals, no modes, no tenses. Every letter is pronounced. We were able to speak intelligibly after a little practice.
Helene was an every-day visitor at the bungalow belonging to Captain Y—— and myself, where she would wear only the native pareu. This was allowable, as we lived outside the centre of town. Had we been resident closer in, the French government would have forced all the native girls who came to see us to wear au-aus. At times, Helene would bring certain of her friends to the house, for they were always sure of finding tobacco there. As I have said, all through the South Seas the girls smoke as much as the men, and think nothing of it, for the habit has been with them since the very introduction of the weed. And now it has such a hold on them that no worse punishment could be inflicted on these people than to deprive them of their tobacco.
One day while Jack was in California, Helene came to the house wanting to borrow a dollar to buy medicine to take to her mother. The French physician stationed here charges one dollar to take a case, and p205 for that will supply the medicine and attend to the case until the patient has no further use for him. A small lugger had just come in from Raiatea, Helene's home. The captain had been instructed to return at once with Helene and the medicine, and I was at the beach that afternoon when the boat sailed. I must say that I was glad that I had sailed on a nice big boat like the Snark, instead of on one of those little luggers. Raiatea lies over a hundred miles away from Papeete. And the boat was so small that none of the fifteen passengers could go below. But Helene did not seem to be afraid, and in ten days when she returned, she brought a couple of dozen big watermelons, for she knew that watermelons were the best present she could give us.
One Sunday, Helene and I decided to go out buggy-riding, thinking that we could make some good pictures. Early in the morning, I went to the stable, and was assured by a big, lazy Kanaka that in one hour he would send me the best he had, and I wondered what it would be, for all I could see was an old cart, a broken-down hearse with the glass sides smashed in, and a buggy made of parts of a wagon and another buggy. At present it had one wheel off. But in two hours I found out. When I went to the gate, I saw the Kanaka beating a poor, starved horse which would not move out of a walk, and which stopped by our bungalow. Well, we drove, I think, about five miles that day, when the horse refused p206 to go further. The top fell off the buggy, and the harness broke several times. But anyway, we got some fine pictures.
On one of the regular trips of the steamer Mariposa, while getting my hair cut by the ship's barber, as I sat in the chair I noticed several pairs of ladies' shoes in boxes on the shelf. I don't know what use the barber had for them, but it gave me an idea, and as soon as I could find Captain Y—— I told him of it, and then we hunted Helene and took her aboard and fitted her out with shoes and stockings. It was laughable to see her strut around Papeete that day. The shoes hurt her feet, for she had never worn shoes before. None of the native girls in Papeete had ever worn shoes. That night she walked around the market square so long that soon she was limping. Next day she was again barefooted, and I never saw the shoes again. In that she was like all the natives, childish; they are anxious for something new, but soon tire of it when they get it.
I would sit for hours telling her of the rest of the world; of circuses, of trains, of tall skyscrapers. She would listen as quiet as could be until I had finished, and then ask questions. But it was not until a man with a moving-picture machine came to Papeete that I had the delight of seeing the height of her enjoyment. At one end of the square, an enterprising Frenchman built a frame building which he called "Folies Bergere." Here every Saturday night he p207 gave moving pictures. I took Helene, and Captain Y—— took Taaroa, another native girl. I never enjoyed a show so much in my life. I secured seats near the front, in such a position that Helene would miss none of it. From the first picture to the last, her face changed from expressions of astonishment and delight to horror and fear. The whole audience was in the same state of excitement. There were reels of film showing large cities and railway trains, and magic pictures that none of these people had ever seen the like of. It was many a day before the natives could understand that it was not supernatural. And with my meagre knowledge of their language, I was hard put to explain to them how it was done.
They were like frightened rabbits when the fire department came charging down the street. When the swift-rushing teams got close, looking as if they would plunge out of the screen and into the audience, screams went up and there was nearly a panic in the house. How they laughed at the comic films! But the last thing was supposed to be the devil in hell, pitching people into the fire. Since seeing that, they were afraid of the least sound. Afraid of the deipelo, they said; and we could not convince them that the picture was not real, for, they argued, if it was not real, how could anyone take a picture of it?
When Jack came back from California, we learned that we had been lost at sea, and that the Snark was a very unseaworthy craft, anyway. Throughout the p208 States, newspapers and magazines had persisted in reporting us dead, every last one of us. I was told that an Oakland bank had even begun an agitation to wind up the affairs of Jack London, deceased. And of course the prophets of disaster had welcomed this evidence of their own amazing foresight, this news of prophecy fulfilled.
The engines of the Snark were still giving us trouble. The big one was just like a watch that seems all right, but won't run. It looked in fine condition, but often refused to start, and developed a hot-box on some one of the four cylinders when run for any length of time.
One night, along in the early part of March, Captain Y—— came to me and asked me to stay on the Snark for him for a little while. Away outside the reef was a ship, just barely to be seen, that was shooting skyrockets and cannon, as an evidence of distress. It was thought to be one of the Maxwell trading schooners, one month overdue from the southern Taumotu islands. A little gasolene schooner was chartered, and Captain Y—— and some others went out to it. It was not the trading vessel after all, but (to my great surprise) the Chinese war-junk Whang-Ho which I had been aboard of in California. They were sixty-eight days out of Frisco for New York; but the Whang-Ho was never intended to be handled by modern sailors; she had been blown to Papeete, leaking badly—the men, we afterward found out, had been obliged to pump her night and day. There were eight p209 in the crew, all Americans. Captain Y—— went aboard, and made them pay one hundred and twenty-five dollars to be towed in. Once safe on land, the men swore they would go no farther in the ancient junk.
The natives watched the Whang-Ho with considerable awe. Never had they seen anything like it. Certainly, the ship was the strangest thing afloat—great eyes were painted on her square bow, the Chinese thinking that a boat needs something to see with. The big galley aft was painted yellow, and the tall, tree-like masts were brilliant red. I believe the Whang-Ho had once been in royal service in China.
Speaking of royalty, I think Ernest Darling might well be called the King of the Open Air. He never lives indoors—if he can help it. While at Papeete, we learned his story, and an interesting story it is.
Twelve years before, he had been lying on a deathbed in Portland, Oregon. It seemed that nothing could be done to save him. He was a wreck. The doctor told him what had caused his breakdown. Overstudy, was the medico's verdict; overstudy had put the final destructive touch on a constitution already broken and enervated by two attacks of pneumonia. His body was irreparably wasted, and his mind was fast going.
Ernest Darling lay on that bed of sickness, awaiting inevitable death. He could not bear the slightest noise. Medicine drove him desperate. The day came when he could stand it no longer. He tottered p210 from his bed, escaped from the house, and crawled for miles through the brush. Here, in the silent spaces, close to nature's heart, he found rest and quiet. He bathed in the soothing rays of the sun, stripping off all clothing, clinging close to the moist earth as he bathed. Life, full and free, seemed to flow into his veins as he lay there. The sun was the real life-giver, he thought, noting his relief; that, with the balmy air, was all that he needed.
For three months he lived thus. He built him a primitive house of leaves and grasses, roofed over with bark. No meat passed his lips—only fruits and nuts, with occasional bits of bread. Every day he put on more weight, and the intolerable agony of his nerves subsided.
But at the end of the three months, the heavy rains forced him to return to Portland and take up once more his abode in his father's house. Then came the relapse. He lost all he had gained. A third time he grappled with pneumonia, and came out of the struggle nearer death than ever. His mind collapsed utterly. Ernest Darling was tried by alienists, found insane, and told that he had less than a month to live.
They took him to an asylum, where he was allowed to live once more on fruits and nuts. Again strength came to him. Leaving the sanatorium, he got a bicycle and went south to California, where he attended Stanford University for a year, going to his classes as simply garbed as possible. When winter came, he p211 was obliged to head further south. Several times he was arrested and tested for his sanity.
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Finding that no one would let him alone, and not desiring to end his days in either an asylum or a jail, he made his way to Hawaii. But there was no relief for him. Here he was given his choice between leaving Hawaii or going to prison for a year.
Darling went to Tahiti. And there, at last, after all his wanderings and harassments, he found a haven. The Tahitians and French neither jailed him nor questioned his sanity. He spent his days in the open, on a tract of land he bought, near Papeete; and his food he picked from his own trees. When in town, he was busy in such simple shopping as he found necessary, or in expounding the principles of Socialism, in which he was a devoted believer.
We had lived in Papeete three months and a half before everything was ready for us to start again through the islands. We had decided to visit the island of Moorea first, then, on a special invitation from Helene, we were going to Raiatea.
Before leaving Papeete, we got a new sailor, a French boy named Ernest. Ernest was signed on the French bark Elizabeth as ordinary seaman. When our captain offered him a job on the Snark, he ran away from the French ship, and lived on fruit in the mountains until she had sailed, when he came down and joined us. He was eighteen years old, spoke little English, and was an all-around sailor. He had been p212 round the world twice. He was very tall—one inch taller than I was—so that he was likewise obliged to stoop when he went below.
We were three hours and forty minutes getting out of Papeete Harbor and dropping anchor in Moorea Bay. On this trip, the engine ran perfectly; and it is hard to say which was the most pleased—Jack, Mrs. London, or I. I took Mr. and Mrs. London ashore in the launch, then came back and went to bed with a terrible headache, and did not have time to get a good idea of the bay until next morning. It is about three quarters of a mile wide, by one and a half long, and reminded me very much of Taiohae Bay in the Marquesas. All around range the mountains, ragged peaks with the sides one mass of green, with cocoanut palms half way to the top. The beach was a jungle of palms and bananas. With the glass, we could count as many as seventy cocoanuts on one tree. All day I painted the engine room, and that night walked with Ernest two miles along the beach to the village, which consisted of three Chinese stores and a bunch of grass houses.
Along the way we met Kanakas, looking very cool, dressed only in their pareu cloth.
"Iaorana!" they all greeted us, and with some joke passed laughingly on. When we got aboard, I started the searchlight, and turned it on the huts along the beach. The Kanakas would come out and watch us, and some of the vahines hula-hula'd for us. In the p213 glare of the light, I could see Jack and Mrs. London eating in the open-air dining place of MacTavish, a white man, who boards any person who ever drifts to Moorea.
Next morning, I took the Londons out in the launch to make photographs; but in an hour the launch-engine stopped, and I had to land them, while I repaired it. I had it in good running order again in an hour.
During our stay, Kanaka men and women and girls paddled out, and we let them aboard. Great was their curiosity at the electric lights. One Kanaka wanted to turn them on and off so much that I had to switch the current off at the engine room, so that the lights went dead; but they could hardly keep away from the five-horse-power engine, which I ran most of the time in order to fill the storage batteries. I took some of the girls out in the launch, to their almost frantic pleasure. I towed an outrigger canoe with two girls across the bay, and as quick as they could paddle back they wanted me to do it again.
Darling, the Nature Man, and Young, a Socialist, had accompanied us. It was amusing to see Darling splash along shore in the shallow water, catching fish. At times he lay in the shade of a tree, resting. When a crowd of natives gathered around him, he would jump up and yell like an Indian war dancer, which performance always doubled the natives with laughter. They all like Darling, and he likes them. He told us that he knew he would be making a fool of himself p214 among white people, but that he liked to amuse the Kanakas. Darling was full of energy—much different from the wraith of a man who had lain on his bed in Portland, Oregon, looking forward to nothing but death. He chopped wood for Wada and made trips up the mountains after fruit. He had the deck lined with half a dozen different varieties of bananas.
The next day I spent in reading and sleeping, except when I took the launch to go watch the Kanaka boys fish. They first catch a small fish among the coral banks, then bite out a chunk for bait; then another chunk, which they eat. I have seen them eat fish raw, just as they were pulled wriggling from the water. But usually they soak them in vinegar before eating. Raw fish is the favourite dish among the Kanakas. I tried to develop an appetite, but I fear I made no startling success.
We were a week at Moorea; then a casting on the engine broke, making it necessary for us to return to Papeete. It was just before we started back that a long canoe, filled with men and women, paddled past us and bombarded us with oranges until the decks were covered, then paddled away, its occupants laughing and shouting. Darling said the oranges were to pay us for being so good to them. The Moorea orange is nearly green in colour, and tastes the same as the California variety.
We had difficulty in getting away. I had a short circuit on the wires that I was puzzled to find; but p215 when we were finally able to start, I beat my record coming over by forty-five minutes.
Arrived at Papeete, it took two days to put the machinery in order again. We then set sail for Raiatea. It was on April 4 that we cleared Papeete Harbor. The usual large crowd had assembled to see us off. After getting about five miles off the reef, I stopped the engine, which was running splendidly. We sailed all night with a fair breeze, and in the morning sighted Huahina, which we steered for, but kept one mile off the lee shore until we had left it far behind. Soon Raiatea was sighted. Its ragged peaks looked at a distance the same as Tahiti or Moorea. When about twenty miles off, I started the engine. We got through the reefs and anchored in the bay by seven o'clock.
On account of engine repairs having delayed us, Helene had given up our coming, and had gone to the mountains to visit relatives. But she heard that we were in the bay, and next day we were honoured by a visit from her. She came out to the Snark in a small canoe, and invited us ashore to her home. Jack had promised us every night off while at this island, so Ernest and I took the launch for shore. We took a five-mile walk along the beach and up the mountain to her mother's house. Along the shore, grass huts were built on stilts over the water. Kanakas sat, or rather squatted, all along the road, and each greeted us in the native tongue. We found the house p216 away back among the mountains, a long, low grass house, with a huge waterfall made by a mountain stream in the rear. Oranges, limes, cocoanuts, papaias, guavas, bananas, and several kinds of fruit I cannot spell the name of, were thick for miles up and down the valley. We found Helene, her mother and her father, and several other members of the family, and were given a hearty welcome. Ernest talked French, Helene and her mother, Kanaka, while I used English, French and Kanaka—and we all used gestures. Her father could speak only the native tongue, and was an ordinary Kanaka. Her mother was a typical Tahitian. So I have never been able to understand why Helene should be so far above her class. Her environment had been no better; it must have been some strength of character, some intrinsic worth, that elevated her in station and in mind. Anyway, she proved that she was a person of authority on her own island when she ordered a big feast prepared in our honour, and the natives gathered with roasted wild boar and gave an imitation of their old-time "long-pig" feast.
We stayed at Helene's home until one o'clock in the morning. We remained four days on the island. Helene came to the village, to stay while we were in port. Later, we took a daylight trip to her mountain home, in order to enjoy the natural beauties. The scene from the waterfall was great. We had viewed some wonderful scenery in the Hawaiian and Marquesas p217 Islands, but nothing to compare with this. There was not a sign of cultivation anywhere—everything in its wild natural state; and as for fruit, it was everywhere in abundance, buds, blossoms, half-ripe and ripe fruit on the trees at the same time.
Before going further with the voyage of the Snark, and while the Snark is still anchored at Raiatea Island, I want to tell of the comic opera war that once occurred here.
The natives of Raiatea, tired of the French system of government, pulled down the French flag, and raised the flag of England. They put the French officials then living in Raiatea adrift in open boats. These people made their way to Papeete and informed the governor, who had never seen any more active service than strutting around the streets of Papeete, and did not know what to do in such an emergency. The governor went to the British consul stationed here, and demanded that he cause the natives of Raiatea to lower the British flag. Now the British consul was only a figure-head, and had never attended to any duties other than signing pratique papers for the British ships that came here. Sometimes as many as two or three a year dropped anchor in Papeete. The rest of the time there was nothing to do. So now he was nonplussed. Long debates took place. At last it was agreed that both governor and consul should go to Raiatea and put down the rebellion.
The French man-of-war Zelle transported them to p218 Raiatea, and the two officials landed under the white flag of truce. The chiefs received them, and the two emissaries demanded that they raise the French flag. The chiefs refused, and gave the officers half an hour to get back to the ship. Then the warship shelled the village; but by that time all the natives had made for the brush; and finally, after five or six days' shelling, the sailors landed again and lowered the flag without opposition, for the Kanakas had realised that their fight was useless. But the funny thing about the whole business was that for at least four days the warship had been shelling an empty village.
The islands of Raiatea and Tahaa are in reality one island that has been cut through the middle by some volcanic disturbance. The distance from Raiatea Island to Tahaa is less than seven miles. The tides often sweep through here with such force that small canoes have spent days getting across the channel. Just as we were preparing to sail from Raiatea Island, a tiny outrigger canoe with a big sail hove in sight. In it was a big, almost naked Kanaka named Tehei. He invited Jack and Mrs. London to take a ride in his queer craft, an invitation they cheerfully accepted. They went over to Tahaa, the island seven miles away, and stayed two days, fishing and hunting. On their return, we set out with the Snark through coral reefs where a hundred feet either way would wreck us. At Tahaa we picked up the Kanaka Tehei and his wife, with two canoe-loads of fruit, a pig, chickens p219 and poi. Jack informed us that Tehei had begged very hard to be allowed to go with us to the island of Bora Bora, our last stop in the Society Islands, and that he had yielded to his solicitations. Indeed, Tehei had wanted to go clear to Samoa, but to this Jack shook his head. Tehei had brought his wife, Bihaura, along. To her, also, was given permission to go with us to Bora Bora. Tehei and his wife returned to their house, and early next morning, with a light wind, we crossed the lagoon under power to the point where Tehei and Bihaura were to meet us. As we made into the land between banks of coral, we could see Tehei among the trees, running down toward the beach. He was afraid we would not see him, so he pulled off his shirt and waved it as he ran. Once aboard, Tehei informed us that we must proceed along the land until we got opposite his house. He took the wheel and guided the Snark through the coral, and we reached the beach. Here was another offering of fruit and fowl, two more canoe-loads awaiting us.
All the time that the fruit was being loaded in the cockpit and aft the cockpit, piled up to the railing, I had been letting the engine run free without the propellers in gear; the old engine had never worked better, and Jack was just commenting on how smoothly it was running, when it gave a mighty backfire and stopped, and in a very dangerous place, for the currents were running very swift through here and there was no wind that we might sail by. The crew on p220 deck, with the help of several Kanakas, braced the long oars that we kept for the life-boat, and eight oars worked an hour while I toiled at the engine and finally got it running just as they were nearly exhausted. I threw the clutch into gear again, and with Tehei at the bow to look out for coral reefs, we slowly threaded our way out of countless reefs projecting only a few inches above the surface of the water. Canoes skimmed over the water ahead, showing us the way through the reefs.
Tehei was invaluable. Had it not been for him, I do not believe we would ever have gotten out of that maze of reefs. Now that I have a chance to think over that day's work, I don't believe that I ever had so much experience crowded into a single day before.
With the engines running smoothly, I would go on deck and look over the rail, down on remote bottoms where fish of every hue and colour played among the dense forests of coral. Islands were on every side of us, high rugged peaks, some of them a hundred miles away, and near us small low atolls covered with a riotous growth of cocoanuts. The day was perfect—very little wind, and with the awning stretched over the decks and all sails furled, we slid over the smooth surface of the water straight for Bora Bora. After we left the coral reefs behind, Tehei and Bihaura lay down on deck and went to sleep. Jack and Mrs. London were at work grinding out reading matter for the American public, the rest of the crew were p221 asleep in their bunks, and I sat on the edge of the open skylight and divided the time between watching the engine and gazing over the dozens of small islands.
This was the real South Seas that I had read about, dreamed about, and had never expected to see. Numerous small canoes would put out from the islands and try to board us, but we moved too fast for them, and after paddling till they were out of breath, they would drift back.
At noon dinner was served on deck, entirely of fruit and raw fish. Then everyone went to sleep again, except Captain Y—— at the wheel and myself at the engine. About three in the afternoon the engine started backfiring and knocking so that I was kept in the engine room the rest of the day. With every backfire, the cylinders would lose gas until the engine room was almost unbearable to work in. But if we were to get to Bora Bora that night, I must keep busy with them. Our engine was a seventy-horse-power Twentieth Century, with four cylinders. I would run on two cylinders until they got hot, then turn them off and turn on the other two, and so kept up the hardest afternoon's work I ever did.
It was close to nine o'clock when we reached Bora Bora, and by that time I was nearly dead; but I kept working on the engines. I was doing the only thing possible, though the last few hours seemed a blank to me. The people on deck knew nothing about engines, so they could not help me. They were unaware that p222 I was nearly dead below. I think that during the last hour some power diabolical must have got hold of the engine. I lost consciousness and fell on the floor, and knew nothing till the big gong working in the cockpit gave me the signal to stop the engine. I aroused myself long enough to throw the switch and crawl through the hatchway; then I knew nothing more until several hours later, when I found Mrs. London bathing my face in cold water and the Japanese chafing my limbs with coarse towels. I was certainly near death's door, nearer than I can ever get without actually dying. They told me afterward that my heart was barely beating.
And I think I realise what it must be to be dead, for the only memory I have of that awful period is that I thought I was dead. The gas gave me a queer roaring sensation that seemed like some unearthly music; and had not the gong sounded when it did, I fear it would have been all the music I should ever have heard. How I roused myself enough to shut off the power and get on deck, is a mystery to me now. Many times, even after the lapse of several years, I awaken with that queer feeling of dying, and always I seem to be aboard the Snark. It was barely midnight when I gained consciousness, to hear the sound of music and of singing floating across the quiet lagoon.
Next morning I was still weak, so I did not clean my engines as I usually did after a long run, but went ashore to see the life of Bora Bora. p223
The whole island rose up to entertain us, and the good people gave us ten days of the best time I ever had. Tehei's wife was of royal blood, and her influence caused the natives to make special effort for our entertainment. The night after our arrival, Tehei invited Jack, Mrs. London, Captain Y—— and me ashore, where we had a dinner such as surpasses description. Fruits prepared in every way a true Kanaka likes, sucking pig, chicken fried in cocoanut oil, watermelon, and raw fish! This last is one of the choicest of South Sea dishes. The fish, freshly caught, are cleaned and soaked an hour in lime-juice. It is delicious. Although we could speak very little with the Kanakas, we enjoyed watching them, and they enjoyed watching us.
After the meal, we went to a large oval, bamboo missionary-house, and watched an old Kanaka missionary drill what he called his himines. A score of girls, decorated with flowers, formed a semi-circle in front. Back of these stood the Kanaka men, and behind them the boys. Their music was more like grunts, but the wild, weird noise made my blood tingle. The boys kept swaying their bodies with the song and clapping their hands, at times beating themselves on the chest and chanting. This finished, a surprise was in store for us. Natives came in with chicken, watermelons, vegetables, fruit and fish, and made a pile that two boats the size of the Snark would find difficulty in floating under. Then a big Kanaka got up p224 and presented it to us. Jack thanked them, but had to decline the greater part, for want of carrying capacity. Even as it was, our deck looked like a market.
Bora Bora is a marvellous island. Twenty miles in circumference, it is surrounded by dozens of smaller islands, each in turn surrounded by its own coral reefs. From our deck, I could count eight of these small islands, some only a few acres, others about three or four miles around, all covered, save for the sandy beach, with a thick green jungle of tropical trees. We were twenty-five miles from Raiatea and one thousand miles from Samoa.
Only three persons on the island could speak English. There were half a dozen frame huts; all the rest were of grass, or bamboo. The natives wore nothing but the red pareus, or breech-clouts.
We were anchored a half-mile out, but the launch made the trip to the beach in a few minutes. The whole deck was covered with awnings, and we ate and slept on deck. The three engines were running all right, though it kept me pretty busy attending to them; it took a good deal of electricity just at that time, for the fans were running almost without intermission, and I had connected drop-lights on deck, whereby we might see to read or write at night. The natives were unremitting in their attentions. They came out by canoe-loads, bringing us food of various sorts—that is, all but the women, who found the ship "taboo."
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Bora Bora was the most primitive place we had yet visited. All along the beach, the long outrigger canoes were propped up on logs cut out for the purpose. The beach itself was sown thick with forgotten graves. On the morning of the third day, Tehei came aboard, and informed us that he had planned a mammoth stone-fishing for us. It was to be the biggest in the history of the island. Runners had been sent to the interior of the island and around the coast. These men were telling every inhabitant of Bora Bora about the stone-fishing; and in the afternoon the people began to gather in the village, and that night we were invited ashore to a big entertainment, gotten up on the spur of the moment. We were given seats on the grass in the centre of the village green, and around us squatted brown-skinned and black-haired men and women and girls and boys. They would sing their weird, barbarous tunes and keep time by swaying their bodies and gesturing with the arms. Then a few of them would dance, while the crowd cheered—not such dances as we see in civilised places, but something so strange and indescribable as to arouse the disbelief of some who have never travelled in the South Seas. They would dance so slowly that they would scarcely be moving; then away they would go, like a mad whirlwind. The crowd urged them on. Finally, the dance would cease as abruptly as it had begun, while the dancers would sink down exhausted. On going aboard the Snark late that night, Jack remarked on the p226 contrast between their easy, care-free lives, and the artificial, wearing lives of the so-called civilised people.
Early next morning we were awakened by the conch shells, signalling for the people to gather at the beach. This conch shell is used by heralds all through the South Seas. Once heard, the sound is never forgotten. I brought back a number of these shells, when I returned to America.
Going on deck, I saw canoe-load after canoe-load of natives putting off from the beach, and among them a big double canoe paddled by fourteen girls. Two men sat in the stern to steer, and on a little platform at the bow, dancing and singing, were Tehei and Bihaura. They had borrowed our large American flag, and had it waving at the bow. This canoe-load of the belles of Bora Bora came alongside the Snark and received Jack and Mrs. London, while Captain Y—— and I followed in the gasolene launch. I had nine kodaks and cameras arranged in the launch, so that I could use any one I wanted and use it quickly. From the Snark to the place of the fishing was about three miles. Riding in the launch, I often caught up with the other canoes, then stopped the engine and drifted back again, and sometimes I circled round the big double canoe. Jack once asked me if I did not wish I were among that bunch of girls, and he thought he was getting the better of me, until I ran alongside and three of the girls jumped in the launch, after which I sped on, with the p227 laugh on Jack. The girls had never been in a motor-boat before, and they held on for dear life. The launch outdistanced all the other boats, arriving at the place of fishing half an hour before the rest.
After all the canoes had beached, the ceremony began. Tehei assigned to each of the fishers his or her duty; then nearly one hundred canoes, each with a couple of men, paddled out from the shore about three miles. And then, at a signal, the boats, which were spread out in a long line, moved slowly toward the shore, one man paddling and another rattling strings of shells in the water, and all yelling at the top of their voices. The men who paddled the canoes splashed as much water as possible, while their companions rattled the shells, the object being to frighten the fish toward the shore, where the water was shallow. They gradually closed in as they moved shoreward, while girls with nets of leaves waded out in readiness to close in on the canoes. The boats were an hour getting near the beach. As they approached closer and closer, the girls formed a palisade of their legs, and made a net of leaves. And Tehei, armed with a spear, stood in the corral formed by the girls. He was to kill the first fish, and it was to be presented to Jack London, along with the spear and an invitation to kill as many as he might want. Such is Polynesian hospitality. Tehei proudly made ready for the initial slaughter. But the canoes drew closer and closer, and Tehei rubbed his eyes in wonder. Then he dropped the p228 spear. There were no fish to kill. Tehei hunted for fifteen minutes, and then, satisfied that there were no fish within that human palisade, he turned to Jack, the most forlorn looking person in Bora Bora. He was ashamed of himself, he was ashamed of the rest of the natives, and he was ashamed of the fish, and of Bora Bora. The poor fellow felt so humiliated that Jack hastened to invite as many as could crowd aboard the Snark to join us in a feast that night. This they were not slow in doing. That evening we fed them hardtack and tinned salmon, which they washed down with good old Holland gin. When they left, they declared that they had never had such a good time before.
And so the days passed in this land of abundance. Every day we were surrounded by canoes, anxious to see the Snark and her white crew. The natives were too polite to come aboard the Snark without being invited. One day, when I was drowsing lazily on deck, close to the engine room hatchway, so that I could keep one eye on the dynamo engine, which was chugging away filling the storage batteries for that night's run of lights and fans, and the other eye on the water, a big Kanaka paddled up close in his canoe, and asked politely if he could come aboard and peep—just peep—below into the engine room. Mrs. London, sitting on the rail, pointed to a big watermelon in the canoe, and made known to the Kanaka that I was inordinately fond of watermelon. Immediately, the native passed over the melon to me, and I took him below. p229 His astonishment was supreme at the maze of machinery, lights that turned on and off at will, and the most wonderful thing of all, fans! Then I started the big engine for him, and he left the engine room with his head in a whirl.
That afternoon, canoe-load after canoe-load of watermelons came off to the Snark, and each time I would exhibit the engine room; and once, while a crowd of natives were on deck, I gave one two live ends of electric wire. With a yell he jumped overboard, and after that they were careful not to touch anything that I had aught to do with.
Bihaura, being of royal blood, had houses in several of the adjoining islands. The one in Bora Bora was her headquarters. One day while at her home, I noticed a large eight-day clock hanging on the wall. It looked as if it had not run for years. Examining it, I found that all it needed was cleaning, so I took it aboard and put it in good shape. Then I hung it again on her wall, and started it running. It was the only timepiece on the island. The natives would peek in at the door and watch and wonder. Next day, a Kanaka stopped me, with about half a dozen old clock wheels that he wanted me to make into a clock. I fell several points in Bora Bora estimation when I was forced to acknowledge that I could not tinker the old wheels into an effective clock: but next night I regained what I had lost when I made the graphophone talk. p230
Jack had taken the machine ashore, and was playing to several hundred people in the himine house, when the rachet spring slipped out of position, making it impossible to wind the machine. Jack send aboard for me, and I came ashore and straightened the spring in position, a thing Jack could have done had he thought of it. But he didn't think of it—and immediately I was restored to high favour among the Bora Bora natives.
After ten days of this delightful life, it was time for us to go. On the day of sailing, the natives tried to outdo all their previous generosity, piling the Snark knee-deep with abundance of fruit, chickens, vegetables, fish, and other good things. There were yams, taro, cocoanuts, limes, bananas, papaias, pineapples and pomegranates. The life-boat, the launch, and the deck were piled full. And when, at one o'clock on the afternoon of April 15, 1908, we set sail from Bora Bora, hundreds of natives came to the beach to shake our hands, and to wish us a safe voyage and a quick return.
We were genuinely sorry to leave. Our hearts' roots seemed to have found grateful soil in Bora Bora. The place is a happy paradise; and the life is one to envy. Everything seems to work for good to the natives. If a man's house gets old, and he wants to move, he need only spend a few days gathering palm-leaves and bamboo; then his new habitation can be built in a day. The man of Bora Bora need not cultivate p231 his land—Nature does it for him. The earth bears prosperously, a hundred times more than can be eaten. What has civilisation to offer that can sway the balance of one's judgment in its favour?
When we sailed from this happy island, we carried with us a new member of the crew. Jack had yielded at last to Tehei's pleas, and had consented to allow him to go with us. Bihaura was taken back to Tahaa by six lusty Kanakas in a cutter.
We made our way straight out of the reef. It was a great relief to me to be able to be on deck, viewing the scenery, instead of down in the engine room. Tehei proved a valuable helper. He was a full-blooded Kanaka, thirty years of age, and could speak no English, but none the less, he was able to understand Captain Y—— 's orders. For the first day and night, however, he spent most of his time weeping and praying, for he was unused to leaving home, and moreover was seasick.
I stayed on deck all afternoon, taking my last look at the Society Islands. We were now bound for the Samoan group, a ten-day run as we figured it. The Snark was so thickly packed with presents of all sorts that there was hardly room to walk, even though every toss of the boat sent bushels of oranges, bananas, and other fruits sliding into the sea. When I went to bed, the island we had so lately quitted was still visible.
On April 19, we were calmed. The sails flapped, the Snark rose and fell with the swell of the ocean, p232 but we made little progress. That night Jack read to us an article he had written, entitled: "The Other Animals"—a reply to President Roosevelt and John Burroughs, who had charged Jack with being a "nature faker." Jack had intended to make no reply to the charge, but a big American magazine kept after him so persistently that he could not refuse. On the 20th, I spent some hours painting the engine room and the engines. These latter I coloured dark brown, with the pipes red; the walls I made a yellowish-brown, and the dynamo black. I then polished all the working parts like a mirror. And when I had finished, I called in the crew, for I knew that seeing the ship trim and shipshape always encouraged them. The next day I put in in developing and printing pictures for Jack. Nakata, Jack, Tehei and myself wore nothing during this time but pareu loin-cloths, and the rest garbed themselves as simply as possible, for the heat was overpowering. It did not prevent our boxing, however—Jack and I had five rounds in the evening, and I got a cut lip and he a scraped nose. Jack is an expert boxer, but I had the advantage on reach. While I was busy below, the men on deck painted everything above white, and looked to the condition of every shroud, halyard and timber. As Captain Y—— said, the little ketch had "put on her glad rags."
Everyone slept on deck, Jack and Mrs. London on the starboard side, Ernest, Nakata, Wada and Tehei on port, mid deck, captain aft the cockpit, and p233 I slept away up in the bow. The southeast trades made life bearable on these hot nights; while we could not feel them on the sails, we could feel them on our faces, blowing gently and fitfully. Before going to bed on the night of the 25th, Jack read to us his latest Story, "the Chinago," the scene of which was laid at Papeete. The night before we had heard "The Seed of McCoy."
The small crew of the Snark was now getting to feel more at home on water than on land. We were getting into the thickest of the South Sea islands; every mile we moved toward the west was bringing us among more primitive people.
The wind was so light that we moved along very slowly. The sea was almost as smooth as a mill-pond, and we progressed with all sail set wing-and-wing. There was very little work to do on board except to keep watch. We would lounge around on deck and eat fruit or play cards. Mrs. London had brought with her a small instrument from the Hawaiian Islands, a ukelele. This instrument is seldom seen outside the Hawaiian Islands, for despite its sweet tones, no other nation has taken up its use.
Mrs. London would play and sing in the evenings, while Tehei and Wada and Nakata would do their native dances. Sometimes Jack would read aloud his day's work. And all the time we were sliding west thicker into the heart of the South Pacific. We enjoyed this part of the cruise very much indeed. Jack p234 had tops and skipping ropes aboard the Snark. The ropes gave us much needed exercise; and we all took boyish pleasure in spinning the tops. I have seen Jack London squat down and spin his tops by the hour, thoroughly absorbed in the fun. He said that this, like his cigarettes, soothed his nerves.
We were thirteen days from Bora Bora when we sighted the Manua Islands, with the largest island in the group straight ahead. The Manua Islands really belong to the Samoan Group, and are usually charted as such; but the three small islands, about one mile apart, are nearly one hundred miles from the Samoan group proper. The natives are the same class of people, and they speak the same language.
When Germany and England and America decided to stop quarrelling over their property in the South Seas, representatives of the three countries met at Apia, Samoa, and England agreed to take over some western islands, and quit the Samoan group entirely. So the group was divided between Germany and the United States. Germany kept the two large islands of Upolu and Savaii, while America took the large island of Tutuila and the small Manua Islands.
The natives objected to these powers coming here and taking possession of them; and for many years there was continual warfare in the German section. The United States had no trouble in the island of Tutuila, but in the Manua group, the old king at first refused to acknowledge their sovereignty. Old King p235 Tui-Manua made a trip to the United States, and after that he gave up the fight, for he saw the hopelessness of his position; his one thousand subjects in the Manua Islands could be wiped off the face of the earth in a single day. Old Tui-Manua was wise enough to submit; and he now governs the islands with nearly as much authority as he had before. The United States did not want the islands for the sake of ruling them, but they wanted a coaling-station at Tutuila.
We sighted the largest island, known as "Au," early on the morning of the thirteenth day from Bora Bora. As the wind was still very light, I set the engines to work, and by noon we were under the lee of the island, gliding along about one mile from the shore. A person who has never been in the South Seas cannot appreciate the pleasure of gliding along a tropical bay, just close enough to see the small grass villages and the dense jungles behind; the seas breaking over the coral reefs ahead, and the pure blue waters underneath; the tropical birds flying overhead, and canoes paddling along the shores. And with the exception of the rumbling of the sea over the reefs and the chattering of the birds, everything is still and peaceful.
Such were the conditions as the Snark moved along looking for an anchorage, but the coast seemed straight, and unindented by a bay suitable for anchoring; and the reef running outside and all along the coast kept us from getting very close to land. Finally, we slowed down until we were scarcely moving. We were undecided p236 what to do; but suddenly a shout went up from the shore, and a big whale-boat was pushed down the beach, and as it touched the water, a score of natives jumped in. After fifteen minutes spent in getting across the reef, they headed for the Snark.
I have often thought what a fine cinematograph-picture that boat would have made, as it was tossed right and left; first its bow would seem to be pointing toward the sky, then down it would come while the stern went up. When the boat came alongside the Snark the natives were nearly exhausted from their hard work. They would not come aboard for a long time, but sat holding on to a stern-rope, trying to make out who we were. Tehei could not speak their language, and they could speak no English. We tried to tell them that we were looking for an anchorage, but it was not until Jack took several of them forward and pointed to the anchor that they understood. Then with a whoop they made fast a line from our bow to the stern of their boat, and with every one of the natives yelling at the top of his voice, we were towed into anchor close to the reef. The men, not knowing of the engine, felt that the only way for us to get in to shore was for them to tow us. We stowed everything, and after we had come to anchor we were surrounded by canoes of the oddest shapes. Jack and Mrs. London climbed into the big boat with the natives, and soon were ashore, but the rest of the crew remained on board to get things shipshape after the two weeks p237 at sea. I got my engines in trim; then I bribed a native with a sack of Bull Durham tobacco to take me ashore in his one-man canoe. I say "one-man canoe," for their canoes are made to carry from one to a dozen men, and they are not safe with a single man more than they are built to carry. We got safely across the reef, when a wave broke over the boat, and we sank—and it was up to me to swim ashore while a hundred natives, standing on the beach, cheered; and it was their willing hands that drew me from the water. It was a rather embarrassing introduction to the natives of the Manua Islands; but I was such a funny figure when I surveyed myself that I had to laugh, too.
The natives crowded around me and laughed heartily at my condition, and one took me by the arm and led me to a large house in the centre of the grass village. The natives followed until they were a dozen feet from the house, when they stopped. Jack and Mrs. London, hearing the noise, came out of the house, followed by a tall, stately looking man, dressed in a white coat and sulu. There could be no mistaking this man: he was the king. The natives all bowed and salaamed, while I stood between the natives and the king, uncertain what to do. My clothes were a sight, drenched with salt-water. After a glance at me, the king and the Londons broke out laughing; then I had to laugh again; and then all the natives started laughing, and one, separating himself from the throng, stepped up and told the king about my adventure. I could not understand him, but I knew by his gestures that he was talking about me. Then the king motioned for me to step up on the porch, and we shook hands. Turning, he called for the queen to come out. She was an intelligent, fine looking woman, with excellent manners. After shaking hands, she called for the servant, and ordered that their native drink be brought. A pretty little girl came with kava in cocoanut shells; and after a toast by the king, we drank it down. It had a queer, bitter taste, but I managed to swallow it. I afterward found that I could not have offended the king worse than by not drinking the kava at one gulp. I was lucky in doing it just right. Jack and Mrs. London sat down on the porch, and left me with the king and queen. Now, I was not used to being entertained by royalty, so I did not know how to act. But I was relieved of a painful situation by all the natives rushing off to the beach, whither the king and queen followed them. The Londons and I went likewise; and we saw a small schooner drop anchor close to the Snark. She carried an English flag, which dipped in response to a salute from the Snark. Then they lowered a boat, and a white man was rowed ashore by a dozen native sailors. When the man landed, he shook hands with the king and queen, and spoke to them in their native language; after which he turned to us and spoke in English. He was the captain of the schooner and also the owner. Though he did not tell us his story, we afterward found it out.
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Captain Young had come to the Manua Islands when a young man, had opened a trading station, and married a sister of the king. They had one daughter, who grew up to be the belle of the islands. Young had all the people in her favour; not that they were dissatisfied with Tui-Manua, but they were one and all fascinated by the beautiful girl. Tui-Manua got hold of a rumour that he was to be dethroned, and Captain Young's daughter was to be instated in his place; so he forced Young and his wife to leave the island. They lived on one of the other islands for nearly a year, when the girl took sick; and when she found she was going to die, she asked leave to die on her native soil. Tui-Manua, hearing of the case, allowed Captain Young and his family to return. The girl died, and Young erected a big monument over her grave. Now, while the king and the captain seem to be friends, they are constantly in secret fear of each other.
Tui-Manua invited us three from the Snark and Captain Young to stay for supper. We had new dishes that I was unfamiliar with, and we drank kava, while we were waited on by the king's servants; and afterward, when it got dark, the king ordered a big fire built in the centre of the village, and native men and women danced and sang for our entertainment, the while we sat with the king on mats thrown on the ground.
Next day, I went around the village making photographs, p240 and going in and out of the natives' grass huts. In one place I found a tattooer working on a boy; and he asked to tattoo me, but to his great disappointment, I refused.
With the trader as interpreter, Jack made the king understand that we wanted to buy curios. The king sent runners to collect the entire village, whom he told to be on hand next day with things they wanted to sell. And next day Jack and Mrs. London and I stood in the centre of several hundred natives, buying mats and war clubs and tapa cloth; and I was lucky enough to secure a big, bushy grass fan, with which a native had been busy keeping the flies off the king. It has the king's name on it, and it is now reposing in the midst of the other things I brought home with me from the South Seas.
We lay anchored off the island of Au several days, while, in company with the king and queen, we were shown over the island by Captain Young. The day we prepared to leave, the king and queen gave us presents—one of the most valuable of these an extra fine piece of tapa cloth, which I still retain.
The day we left Au, the king and queen came off to the Snark and had dinner with us. Wada did gloriously, cooking for royalty, and Nakata was more polite than ever; and as we heaved anchor that afternoon, the boat bearing the king and queen circled the Snark three times, its occupants singing "Tofa-Mai-Feleni," the native song of farewell. p241
Tui-Manua is the descendant of a long line of the most powerful South Sea Island kings. His father's authority stretched for thousands of miles around, and whatever he said took precedence over anything said by any of the lesser kings within this boundary. So it is rather humiliating to the present king to have to bow down to another power stronger than he. He is afflicted by a peculiar disease that is wasting his life away; and ere long we will hear of his death. The last of the true royalty of the South Seas will have passed from earth. I have met members of many of the South Sea royal families since then, but none deserved the name of king so well as did Tui-Manua. p242
CHAPTER X
THE SAMOAN GROUP
The Manua Islands are only ninety miles from the island of Tutuila. This latter island is sometimes called Pago-Pago, after the village of Pago-Pago, which is on the southeast coast, and where the United States coaling station is situated. Either name is correct.
We were all of one night in sailing from the Manuas to Tutuila, and were calmed off the opening of Pago-Pago Bay for several hours in the morning. Then I set the engines in motion, and for a couple of hours we threaded up the narrow bay until it opened out into the prettiest land-locked harbour I have ever seen. Mountains were on every side. The village of Pago-Pago is set on the shores and up the mountainsides, with Governor Moore's residence on the highest point in the bay.
We sailed past the battleship Annapolis, the same ship that had given us such a pleasant reception in Papeete, Tahiti, one month before. We were expected, and the jackies and officers and the men stationed ashore were on the decks and lined up on the beach. The band, composed of Samoan (native) musicians, stood around the big flag-pole on the beach and played national airs while the flag was dipped in salute. It was a great day for us, and a p243 great day for the Annapolis, when the Snark came in the bay. Just imagine three hundred Americans away down here on a little island in the centre of the South Seas, seeing no one from home for months and months! Sometimes even a year goes by with no American visitors. The Snark had been expected for weeks, and the minute we were sighted a boat-load of officers came aboard with invitations for everyone on the yacht.
We had not dropped anchor when the officers came aboard, and so busy were we, shaking hands with fellow-countrymen, that Captain Y—— forgot to give orders to drop the anchor until we were so close to shore that it would have been dangerous to do so on account of the coral reef. I had stopped the engines, and we were drifting in, when the officers saw our danger, and then some half-dozen of the highest officers on the battleship Annapolis got out in their boat with a line to our bow, and worked like coolies to keep us off the shore. When I had gotten the engines to running, they guided us to a place of safety.
These officers, who never got their hands dirty on their own ship, finally, after the anchor had been dropped, went ashore to doctor hands that were blistered; but they never lost one grain of respect from their men, who were watching from ashore, unable to help because of not having a boat handy.
The battleship Annapolis is stationed here the year round. The two hundred men who compose her crew p244 live ashore in their own homes, while about one hundred men in command of the shore station have wives and families and nice little bungalows. Many of the sailors have Samoan wives, and many of them live what is known as Fas-Samoan, which means residing in grass houses and sleeping on grass mats thrown on the ground, and eating native foods. So far as I could see, they are the happiest lot of men in the world. Of course, life must have been very monotonous at first, but after they once got settled they formed a more contented colony than any persons of the same number in America. They have their clubs and baseball diamond; all the literature they care for they get every six weeks; they give balls and parties, and, as they are sure of their jobs, have nothing to worry over.
And it is certainly a pretty sight they make in their pure white uniforms. The Samoans that form the national guard are all dressed alike, in blue lava-lavas and white singlets. About one dozen of the chief officers have fine mansions. Governor Moore's is the finest of them all, and sits high above the rest. One officer owns an automobile, and many have motor-boats.
We lay in Pago-Pago Harbor one week. During this time we were living ashore with friends, that is, all but Tehei, who, not speaking English nor Samoan, preferred to remain aboard. We had been in the bay a couple of days when a big six-foot-one native came on board, and in excellent English said he was a Tahitian and that he had heard we had a Tahitian with p245 us. We called Tehei. The big man went up and spoke to Tehei in his own tongue; and Tehei was overjoyed to find someone he could talk to. The big Tahitian's name was Henry—a native of Rapa Island. He was then captain of a small trading schooner that plied in the Samoan group. He and Tehei became close friends, and on the day that we prepared to leave, Henry struck Jack for a job. As Henry was acquainted with the islands that we intended to visit next, Jack decided to hire him. Ernest, the French sailor, was discharged. Ernest had proved a disappointment, so we did not regret the change. Jack bought him a ticket for Auckland, New Zealand (for no one can remain in Samoa without one hundred and fifty dollars in his pocket), and he left on the steamer Nuvina. Henry, however, was a very good sailor, having spent twelve years in the South Seas and in Europe in the French navy. He spoke French, English, German, and all the principal South Sea languages. Weighing nearly two hundred pounds, and six feet one inch in height, he was a mountain of muscle; and he knew more about every part of the ship than any person I have ever seen.
Henry's ship was turned over to a Samoan captain, and amid the cheers of three hundred Americans and a salute from the big guns on the Annapolis, we shoved out of the harbour under Henry's steerage. He kept the wheel all night, and early next morning we dropped anchor in the harbour of the largest city in Polynesia: p246 Apia, Samoa. Several small schooners and a steamer were anchored close to us; and ahead, the white coral city that has been wrecked by revolutions and hurricanes a dozen times, until it now resembles an old European city with decayed castles. Between us, on the beach, lay the old hull of a German warship that had been wrecked here during a hurricane in 1889. The Germans had tried to dynamite it to pieces, but when they had broken nearly all the windows in the town and the old hull refused to budge, they decided to let it lie until it rusted away. But for twenty years it had defied rust and shown no sign of leaving its resting-place, and I don't believe the residents would allow it to be removed now, for it would not seem like Apia Harbor without that old hulk.
Apia has a population of about five thousand. About four hundred are Germans and Australians, and the rest are alien South Sea Islanders and native Samoans. Here the Germans have pursued the same policy as in all their larger possessions. They maintain a warship and a company of German soldiers on duty all the time. Their police system is entirely of natives, and they have a large standing army of native soldiers.
The city is built for about three miles around the bay. Most of the buildings are of white coral cement, showing up like white marble from the sea. Back from the sea are the native grass houses; in fact, a p247 native of any of the South Sea islands will never live in any other than a grass house, from choice. He may live in a white man's house if he is a chief of royal blood, but he will usually have a grass house in connection, to go to when he can no longer stand the coral one.
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Apia is a half-way station for steamers bound to and from Australia and America. Several steamers from New Zealand pay monthly visits to obtain copra. These steamers usually stay in the harbour for several days; and as the ships cannot draw up to the wharves, they must lie out nearly a mile while the copra is loaded from barges. The natives with boats do a profitable business carrying people to and from ships; and they hire out as guides and take the tourists to Robert Louis Stevenson's old home, and through the largest cocoanut plantation in the world. And when a steamer is seen to drop anchor, the professional entertainers give a big dance. The hat is passed around, and the natives always make a good sum of money.
Apia, Papeete, and Suva, Fiji, are practically the only places in Polynesia where money has a value among the natives. At Apia, the natives know its value so well that they devise every scheme to obtain it, and have developed their money-getting qualities as perfectly as Americans. The best scheme is their semi-annual boat races. Twice a year natives come from all over the islands and enter their boats; betting stands spring up on the beach, and every native who p248 can dig up money will stake all he has on his favourite boat. At such regattas, there are usually excursion steamers from Australia and New Zealand.
Apia is a port of the most famous missionary steamer in the world, the Southern Cross. The steamer fits out every three months at Auckland and goes among the dark and little-known New Hebrides and Solomon Islands. Then she returns and puts such converts as she has found in a missionary school—later to be turned out as full-fledged missionaries and taken back to their homes, there either to backslide into a worse state of cannibalism than that of their fellows, or else to preach the word of God. When a savage from the Solomons does backslide, he is usually the most cannibalistic of his tribe.
Apia, Samoa, was the only real home that Robert Louis Stevenson ever knew. While a young man in Scotland, he was very seldom at home. He made walking trips over England and France, and came to America in the hold of an emigrant ship. After trying to settle down in California, he finally gave it up, and with his wife and her son, Lloyd Osbourne, he chartered the sailing-yacht Casco and spent several years cruising in the South Seas, at last settling down in Apia. About four miles back of the city he built his home on the side of a mountain, where he could command a view of the city and the surrounding bay. This home he named Vailima. Here, with his wife, and Lloyd Osbourne, his secretary, he lived the p249 last years of his life. It was here that he wrote several volumes of South Sea stories.
Stevenson lost no time in making friends with the natives: it was the delight of his life to entertain them at his home. He would take part in their sports; and one chief, who had taken a fancy to him, lived at Vailima, and at certain hours every day he taught Stevenson the Samoan language, while Stevenson taught the chief English. At the top of the mountain, Stevenson built a little pagoda, where he went nearly every day to write. A narrow path had been cut up to the summit through jungles of bananas and guavas, and he would toil for hours in reaching the top. The natives had so much confidence in him that all their troubles and differences were brought to him for settlement. Except in the mornings, which he spent in writing, his time was entirely taken up with the Samoans.
Those who have read many of his works will notice that his characters are almost all big, strong, healthy people—just the opposite of Stevenson, who was always a thin, sickly man. In fact, people who knew him say that he had no use at all for a puny person.
The last year of his life was practically spent in bed, where he wrote his best stories. Along toward the end, the natives would gather in a body and stand around the house in silence, awaiting news of his illness. The last few days there were hundreds and hundreds of natives outside the house, awaiting the end, p250 and when it came, early one morning in 1894, the natives set up the death chant, which spread along their lines until the whole island was wailing at once. Work suspended throughout the island until after the funeral.
Stevenson had requested that he be buried at the summit of the mountain. His coffin was carried by chiefs, while other natives with big knives blazed a road ahead for the procession, through the jungles and to the top.
Of course, the Snark's crew made a visit to Vailima, and then on up to the top, to the grave—nearly ten miles of toil.
At Apia, the German government boasts of the best outfitted observatory in Oceania. Here are all the latest astronomical instruments in charge of ten expert astronomers. It is a splendid set of instruments they have, but—as a native remarked—what is the use of them in Samoa, where there are no cable connections, and should the astronomers see a comet coming toward the earth, they would be so long in letting the greater portion of the people know that there would be no time to dodge!
Apia was the scene of slavery for many years. The schooners would leave here and go among the Solomons and Fiji Islands and steal the natives—blackbird them, as they call it. The natives were then brought to Apia and sold to planters and slave traders, until the German government put a stop to this illegal p251 traffic; but even now, about five hundred blacks a year are brought into these islands, and while the dealers can always give a satisfactory recruiting paper for each native, it is doubtful if the natives ever knew what kind of papers they were signing.
It was in Apia that we learned an interesting piece of Tehei's history. One day while I was walking down the beach road in company with him, a white woman stepped up, and throwing her arms around him, nearly smothered him with her embraces. I thought she was insane, until she started talking with him in his native tongue; and then, turning to me, she told me that Tehei was once sailing in a pearl-lugger among the Taumotu Islands, in a boat captained and owned by her brother. A hurricane had surprised the small crew, and the boat was blown to pieces. The crew was drowned—all but Tehei, who, clinging to a hatch-cover, was washed ashore on one of the reefs where pearlers were at work, and a few months later returned to his home in an open boat that he had worked for while on the reef. He made his way nearly four hundred miles in this open boat, with only a luggersail for power. Tehei had never told of this adventure, but we afterward heard several remarkable exploits of his among the pearling islands.
Apia is full of interesting characters—old beach-combers and retired black-birders, captains and runaway sailors, and ticket-of-leave men from Australia. I know of one man, one of the greatest business men p252 in the town, who is an escaped convict from the French penal settlement in New Caledonia.
The climate here is perfect. With a big wide sandy beach running for miles round the bay, Apia would be an ideal pleasure resort if the steamship connections were better, and if it were nearer to civilisation.
The entire crew of the Snark lived ashore while in Apia, although each one took turn-about staying on board at night. Everything possible was done to make our stay pleasant. Charley Roberts, a race-horse owner, who was ruled off the turf, first in England, then in America, then in Australia, and finally in New Zealand, had come to Apia that he might race horses undisturbed. He had two thoroughbreds shipped from New Zealand; and two aged horses were matched against Charley's thoroughbreds every few weeks; bills were gotten out telling of the big meet, and then the four horses would pull off race after race, always with the same result. Roberts' mind was wholly centred on this sport while we were there. Horses were his one passion. And as he had means, his relatives in Australia were content to have him race horses in Samoa. He got up a special race for us; in fact, he is always glad to have a meet. Anyone going to Apia should have Charley call a meeting of the Apia Turf Association—it would be heartily enjoyed all around.
After two weeks in Apia, we slowly sailed out of the p253 harbour late in the afternoon. Charley Roberts and some friends went out with us as far as they dared, and loaded us down with wines, and, most important of all, eggs.
It was just sundown on one of the most perfect of South Sea evenings that we cleared the island of Upolu and headed for the island of Savaii, only twenty-five miles away. As it became darker, the sky ahead grew red, and as we approached the island we could clearly see tongues of fire issuing from the mouth of the big crater, and gradually small threads of fire running down the mountainside—threads that grew into glowing torrents as we came closer, until by midnight we were sailing up the coast of an island that seemed to be literally aflame. The crater of the volcano is twenty-five miles inland, and about ten thousand feet high, the land sloping gradually down to the sea, where it ends in an abrupt precipice, one hundred feet high. For miles and miles, red-hot sputtering lava rolled into the sea, sending up clouds of vapour. Two miles from the seashore, we could read print plainly. As we were getting into the lee of the land, where the wind was likely to drop any minute, Jack told me to start the engines; then we slid along the shore, edging in as far as possible. The air got hot and sultry, and steam was rising from the water all about us. Jack stationed the cook in the bow with a thermometer, and every few minutes he would cry the temperature, until p254 the water was nearly at boiling-point; then we were afraid to go in farther on account of the thousand gallons of gasolene aboard.
Henry, our new Kanaka sailor, knew this coast well, and was to take us to a certain village where he was known, but at nearly two o'clock in the morning we were still skirting the rivers of lava, and the village was not in sight. By the light of the boiling lava we could see ruined villages and hundreds of thousands of naked cocoanut trees, stripped of their foliage and standing straight and threadbare in the fiery glow, like trimmed poles. Henry finally managed to distinguish the village he was taking us to, but it was dead and deserted. The lava was all-destructive. We could get no closer than a mile to the shore, and then steamed on up the coast, hoping to find some place that had not been seared by the fires. We would get nearly to the shore, only to see a reeking stream of lava, further back and creeping down to the sea. Then on we would go again. Everyone else in the boat was awestruck by such wholesale destruction; they were leaning over the rail in wonder, without any idea of the possibility of the engine's stopping, but my heart was in my mouth all the time, for the wind had dropped, and had the engines ever stopped, it would have been all up with us—nothing could have kept us away from those cascades of lava. But luck was certainly with us. The engine ran smoothly, and as the first streaks of day lighted the east, we sighted a village p255 that was unharmed and showing signs of human occupation. Henry pronounced this place to be Matautu, and we decided to anchor. After things were safely stowed, everyone went to sleep on deck, after a hard night's work.
It was late in the afternoon before anyone awoke. As we felt like going ashore after our rest, Jack and Mrs. London and myself set out in the launch. We came to a deserted beach. There were no natives in sight, although we could hear the hum of voices back in the village. As the beach ran out so far in a gradual slope, we were forced to anchor the launch out several hundred yards, and wade ashore. We walked up the beach to the village, whence we had heard the voices, and found several hundred natives before a small church, all praying that the lava would not come down and destroy their village. Two young girls in the centre of the group were dressed in gala array of feathers and tapa cloths of gay colours, and each was carrying an ornamental club. They simply stood in the centre, taking no part in the ceremonies. They were the first to see us, and quietly motioning to the assembly, spoke a few words. The crowd dispersed, all going away talking in quiet tones, but even if we could not understand, it was easy to guess that they were still supplicating for the eruption to cease; and their quiet manner left no doubt that they had supreme confidence in the potency of prayer.
The two girls who had first sighted us were called, p256 in the Samoan language, taupou girls. Each village in Samoa has its taupou girl, only one to the village, who upholds the honour of that village, entertains the guests, and otherwise makes herself agreeable. She controls the feasts and functions, and in fact has more power than anyone, excepting the chief. As she is really the most virtuous woman in the village, she is made the highest dignitary at all religious gatherings, although taking no part in them.
All the villages for twenty miles up the coast had been destroyed and the people had fled to Matautu. There were about twenty taupou girls gathered here. As Jack said, they looked like girls out of a job, for when they leave their own village, they lose power. Certainly they had not shown much power in letting the lava destroy their homes. Only the Matautu taupou girls seemed to be still in favour. These girls attached themselves to Mrs. London and showed us over the village. But such a woe-begone village! On all sides the red-hot lava was creeping down, though they had managed to divert the flow by building stone walls; but they knew that unless the volcano twenty-five miles away quieted down, their homes were doomed. It was dark when we prepared to go back to the Snark. We were stopped just as we got to the launch by a white man, calling to us on the beach. We went back and found a big, jolly Irishman, waiting for us in company with a tall German.
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The Irishman was Dick Williams, the governor of p257 the island, and the German was the agent of an Apia trading concern. We went back with the governor to his house, and learned that he had been away all day helping the volcano sufferers. He invited us to stay ashore all night, promising to show us a better view of the eruption the next day. So, after a crowd of Kanakas had carried the launch up on the beach, we went to nicely furnished grass houses that the governor owned, and next morning, after a bath on the beach, we started for the lava flows with the two white men as guides. We walked miles between two flows of lava—hot lava that scorched our hair. At one place, we passed the frame of a grass house set between the walls of an old church. The owner had thought that on account of its being near a church of God it would not be ruined, and his goods would be safe. We walked over beds of lava that had cooled for several days and that, encrusted, would bear our weight; but we knew what lay beneath, for here and there, where there were fissures in the cooled crust, spits of steam and bubbling jets of lava flowed outward into the air. At one place, we found a remarkable thing—a small churchyard that had been unmolested by the flow. It looked as if the stream had parted and gone around the graveyard and joined into one stream after the place had been passed. We went on farther to a fresh lava stream that had just broken out. Close by was a large frame house, the home of the former governor of Savaii, now deserted. Here a p258 mass of lava, about three feet in thickness and several hundred yards wide, was slowly coming toward the house; red and glowing, it was advancing about an inch a minute. With long sticks we gathered the lava and pressed coins into it, to keep for souvenirs. As we returned by way of the church graveyard, we stood in the plot marvelling at such a miracle—that the molten destruction had parted at this burial place!—and we ceased to look upon the Kanaka who had built his house inside the churchyard as a joke: he had sufficient reason, after seeing the graveyard saved, to believe that his own home would be preserved.
As we came to the edge of the village, we skirted a fresh flow of lava, creeping up on a church. Inside the place were crowds of natives, all praying at once that the church be saved. They were coughing and wiping their eyes from the effects of the sulphur fumes that were enveloping them. We stood and watched this sad sight. Soon the people filed out, slowly, forlornly, and we stood by to see the end. In half an hour the first of the lava struck the building, and soon was running in the doors, setting fire to everything inflammable. Next morning when I looked for the church I found only a mass of ruins.
We lived ashore five days, and on the last day I rode nearly twenty-five miles, trying to reach the leeward side of the crater, but the barefoot native guide turned back after it grew too hot for his unprotected flesh, and I got only to within half a mile of the crater, p259 but near enough to see the awful yawning hole, nearly a mile across, emitting thousands and thousands of tons of liquid death every minute. I sat on the charred log of a cocoanut tree and wondered where it all came from. Certainly, wherever it was formed, there was no dearth of material. I afterward saw many volcanoes, but none of them had the impressive magnificence of this.
We left the harbour in the afternoon of the fifth day; our two taupou-girl friends came aboard to say good-bye, and as we looked over to their village and asked them to tell good-bye to our friends ashore whom we had not been able to see, they turned their eyes shoreward and burst into tears, for already a narrow stream of lava had broken through their village, and it would be only a matter of a few days when they would be living in another village, shorn of power, and their own pretty homes would be in ashes under the lava.
So it was that we up-anchored and set out for the Fijis, where we were to lose our last and final captain. p260
CHAPTER XI
LOST IN THE FIJI ISLANDS
From the Samoan Islands to the Fijis, the distance is nine hundred miles. After we had cleared the Samoan Islands, we ran along under power for several hours; then the sails were set, and by sun-down we were speeding along under an eight-knot wind, which grew stronger and stronger, until by midnight all hands were on deck taking in the headsails and reefing the mainsails. By morning we were in the grip of a summer gale, but luckily for us it was in the right direction, and with only a double-reefed staysail and a triple-reefed mizzen, we plunged along at about twelve knots an hour. Big waves, looking as large as a courthouse, would come roaring up to us, and the little Snark would rise on the side and hover over the dizzy depths of watery valleys—then down we would go with that queer sensation that one experiences in riding on a swift elevator, feeling as if we were falling out from under ourselves; and sometimes two waves would come so close together that the second one would break against the side of the Snark with such force as to throw everyone off his feet, and whoever was steering could only save himself by hugging the wheel. At such times as this, it was difficult to steer. For it is not just a matter of pointing a ship the way you want p261 to go and then keeping the wheel geared that way, but it is a matter of watching a big wave and then easing up into it to keep from being broken into splinters; and the sails must be watched every second, for should the wind ever get behind them, they would swing across deck with such force as to drag the masts out of the ship, and everything on deck would be carried away. It looks easy enough to steer a ship, but it takes a person six months to get experience enough in it to be trusted alone at the wheel.
For three days we ran along in the teeth of the gale. Everything on deck that had not been made fast was carried away. The small boats had been taken in from the davits and lashed upside down on the deck. No fire could be made in the galley, so we lived mostly on hardtack. Everything above and below was saturated with salt water. In the afternoon of the third day, the squall broke as quickly as it had formed, leaving us rolling on a glassy-smooth sea. The wind dropped nearly calm and the mists cleared away, so that we could see the horizon. It is well known how clear the air gets after a storm. Well, we were so tired that we were for turning into our bunks, until Henry cried, "Reef ahead!" and on going into the rigging, I saw reef on all sides of us. Immediately, the sails were backed, and we hove-to. I started the engines; then, for the rest of the day, we went round and round the inside of the lagoon, trying to find the place we had gotten in at. It looked as if we were p262 lost. Each effort puzzled us only the more. All night we kept up the attempt to find the passage, but it was not until morning that we found it, a gap in the reef about two hundred feet wide. And there were twenty-five miles of reef we might easily have struck on! How we ever got into the place is a mystery, and remains a mystery to this day.
There was not an island in sight. It was nearly sun-down when we did sight several small islands, and after threading in and out of countless reefs, we managed to get penned up in another lagoon, where we lay-to for the night. Next day was a repetition of the one before. So also was the next. For several days we dodged in and out of reefs and around small islands, charted as the Ringgold Islands. At times we were in despair. To find the concealed openings in the reef was like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack. On the eighth day we sighted clear water ahead, and slipping out between two of the largest islands, Vanua Levu and Taviuni, we slid into the Koro Sea, which is the name of the two hundred miles of water that is made into a lagoon by hundreds of small islands circling around it. Only one small island is inside this sea, and Jack had decided to go up along the shores of this island and have a look at the villages. We were perhaps five miles off the land when a small cutter put out, and heading toward us, would have passed our bow, but the helmsman swerved around and passed close enough to speak. He was a woolly-headed p263 Fiji-Islander. His shouting awoke a white man who was asleep below. On coming on deck, the white man rubbed his eyes and sleepily asked: "What ship is that?" We replied: "Snark, San Francisco." Then he yelled: "Is that Jack London's boat?" We told him it was. "Heave-to, I'm coming aboard," he cried; and as we were in no hurry to get anywhere, we hove-to, and he came about and also hove-to. Then, in a little dingy, he was rowed to the Snark, and he just fell all over himself with joy. "And to think that I should ever see Jack London, and on his own boat, too! Why, I have every one of your books aboard my ship, and all your magazine articles. But, pshaw! the boys won't believe I ever saw Jack London." And he nearly cried, he was so happy.
Frank Whitcomb had been trading nearly all his life in the Fiji Islands, and Jack London's books had been about all he had read. I believe that in his eyes Jack was the greatest man that ever lived.
He loaded us down with fresh fruits and onions and potatoes. In return, we gave him several bottles of wine. And the last thing that long, lanky Frank Whitcomb said as he was rowed away from the Snark was: "And to think that I should live to shake hands with Jack London, and on his own boat, too!" Whitcomb was the only man who ever boarded the Snark at sea.
As we sailed past the solitary island in the Koro Sea, several boats tried to put off to us, but we were in a hurry, and so did not wait for them to get over the p264 reef, but sailed on until by night we were again among small islands and were forced to heave-to until morning.
From the time we had left Samoan waters, it was Jack who always located our true position on the chart. Jack told me that if he must do the navigating, he could and would do it and would not be bothered with anyone else. So everyone on board suspected that Captain Y—— was to be discharged at Suva, Fiji. The captain had gotten angry at Wada and had broken his nose, and had it not been for Mrs. London, I think he would have laid Nakata out, so no one was sorry that we were to be rid of him.
The next morning after our meeting with Frank Whitcomb, we set sail, after being hove-to all night, and passed all sorts of queer crafts, most of them of bamboo, and soon were threading in and out of countless little green islands, going so close sometimes that we could plainly make out villages. Now and then canoes would put off to us. At one place, we went close enough to shore to see people plainly; they ran down to the beach, shouting at us. We passed many strange raft-like crafts, made of split bamboo. On some of the crafts we could see whole families, who stared at us in wonder as we slid past. These vessels were in some cases loaded with fruits and sandalwood and copra. I saw several of the same crafts come into Suva Harbor again after a week's journey at sea. The p265 natives have no fear, and will sometimes live for months on their queer floats without stepping ashore.
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Henry was not slow in taking advantage of the smooth water, and supplied our table with different kinds of fish every day; in fact, we always fished in preference to everything else. While calmed or anchored, he caught many a shark without hook or line, by the old Kanaka method of spearing them while they lie asleep on the bottom in shallow water.
It was nearly ten days after we had been tangled up in the Fiji Islands when we sighted the large island of Viti Levu, and turned the Snark's bow into another of the South Seas' famous ports. Suva, Fiji, looms up from the sea, quite like a modern city, and is really the most modern in this part of the world. Nearly half of its eight thousand persons are of white blood; and Suva is also chief station of the Pacific commercial cables. Several modern hotels and large headquarters for the trading concerns are to be found here.
Fiji is also the headquarters for the British commissioners of the whole of the South Sea possessions, and here is located the British penal settlement. Prisoners are sent here from all the English possessions in the South Seas.
We dropped anchor under supervision of Captain Wooley, the harbour inspector, and by nightfall Jack and Mrs. London were installed at Mrs. McDonald's hotel, the most famous hotel in Oceania. p266
Directly we had dropped anchor, Captain Y—— went ashore, and walking up and down the streets of Suva, he would have everyone know that Captain Y—— of the Snark was in town. His boasting led him from saloon to saloon; and soon he was so drunk that he could hardly walk. I left him telling of his sea-experiences to a bunch of bar-flies, and went to the hotel and had late dinner with the Londons. Captain Y—— did not come aboard that night. Next morning, when Jack arrived, he asked me to pack all of Y—— 's possessions and take them ashore; also, he instructed us not to allow the captain to come aboard again. I had taken Captain Y—— 's clothing ashore and was making the rounds of stores, buying clothes that I had had no chance to get since leaving Honolulu. In my absence, Captain Y—— had gone aboard the Snark, and was showing the yacht to the captain of a big six-masted schooner. He ordered Nakata to bring drinks on deck, but Nakata refused, telling him that Mr. London had said he was discharged. Poor Captain Y—— must have felt very cheap in company with his old captain-friend, but he left the Snark without making a fuss, and a few days later sailed away on the six-master as an ordinary seaman—quite a come-down, from skipper of a smart yacht to the lowest position on a windjammer.
While Suva was very modern for a South Sea city, one had only to go a few miles into the interior of the island to find primitive life. I was lucky enough to p267 get in with a party on an excursion trip across the bay and up several small streams, and spent several days among the mango swamps, seeing strange people. We had a party of Fiji prisoners to row our boat, and we went miles and miles through a dense forest of tropical trees. Every now and then, some native in his little canoe would stop to look at us in wonder.
Once a native reporter on the Fiji Times—his English name was George Dyer—took me over to his island to attend church. The natives all gathered in a little wooden building and squatted on a bare floor in front of the preacher, a big, bushy-haired man, who preached after the style of some of our old-fashioned exhorters. The parishioners wore nothing but loin-cloths and their wonderful mops of hair.
There was an intermission, which I misconstrued into dismissal of services and went outside to sit on a big hollow log that came handy. Pretty soon the pastor came out and tapped me on the shoulder. I could not make out what he wanted, so asked George. "He wants you," replied the boy, "to get off the log so that he can ring the bell." It developed that the preacher hammered on the log to call the congregation together, and I was unwittingly muffling the call of the Gospel.
Arriving back in Suva, I was kept busy getting the Snark in shape for another long voyage, doing the work that Captain Y—— had done as well as my own. p268
CHAPTER XII
SOUTH SEA CANNIBALS
Everyone has heard of the wild and savage cannibals of the South Sea islands, and to the average mind, either the whole of the South Pacific is inhabited by man-eaters, or the idea that such bloodthirsty creatures exist is simply scoffed at.
Hitherto I have told of the gentle, big, brown inhabitants of the eastern islands, known as Polynesia. But now we have come into Melanesia. Let me try to describe, as modestly yet graphically as possible, the first of the Melanesians that the Snark crew came in contact with.
It is hard to tell of these savages. Yet, in writing of them, I simply state facts. These people exist. There are at this time some seventy thousand of them in the New Hebrides Islands. Very few white people have ever seen them. They can scarcely be written about in language sufficiently plain to give a definite idea of them. The hundred or more pictures I made of these cannibals cannot be printed in a volume intended for popular circulation.
Probably it is best to describe these people as one would describe animals. For they are only one degree removed from the animals. I wish I might speak plainly. But a great deal of the modesty in our ultra-civilised p269 state is a false modesty, inasmuch as it is not based upon necessity. It is this fact that constitutes the difficulty when one attempts to describe a race living in absolute savagery, unwitting of those rules of conduct we have laid down for our guidance, a race whose social relations are vastly different from ours. This much, however, I must say. Our so-called "proper" clothing is in many cases designed solely for purposes of suggestion. Men and women who go stark naked every day of their lives are oftentimes more moral and have stronger natural modesty than certain of those who bedizen themselves with fashionable silks and satins.
In my studies of various peoples as I have journeyed round this earth, I have found many queer customs and fashions. In some countries, they squeeze the foot to make it small, and a woman with a large foot is a social outcast. In other countries they cover parts of the face. An Arabian woman would expose her entire body in order to keep the lower part of her face hidden. The Chinese men, as a sign of rank and distinction, develop long finger-nails, and we can well remember when our own women wore ridiculously large bustles that looked very funny on the street. By the way, speaking of bustles, I wish to say that the habit of wearing them did not originate in any of the fashion-centres. Bustles have always been and now are the only article of apparel worn by the women of the New Hebrides. And funny as these women look with p270 only large plaited grass bustles on them, we must not consider them foolish, for they have just as much right to their fashions as the women of America, England, France, Germany, or any other civilised country, have to theirs.
Having seen all these fashions, I am willing to grant to men or women the perfect liberty to dress or adorn themselves, or go undressed, as they see fit. Having, as I believe, seen the origin of the bustle among these primitive folk, I fully expect to see some day the prettiest ladies of our land wearing enormous nose-rings, as there are places in the world where such nose-rings constitute the entire wardrobe.
Ignorance is not virtue. Virtue is knowledge coupled with self-restraint. And so let me call attention to a people who are as directly opposed to us in their views of morality as could be imagined. These people are sex worshippers, and their ideas of right and wrong lead them to call attention to the very subjects we seek to hide and dismiss from our minds.
To go back to Suva, Fiji. Captain Warren was no longer a member of the Snark's crew. As we lay alongside the wharf at Suva, the crew painted and scraped masts, decks and booms, and after loading with water and provisions, we were again ready for sea. Tehei was dressed in his first suit of clothes, of which he was as proud as a peacock. Our compasses were swung and adjusted by an expert. Our chronometer was taken aboard an Australian steamer p271 and corrected, and we were ready to try our luck with Captain Jack London. And when I think of the crew of the Snark, I always think of the crew that sailed out of Fiji, and the same crew that stuck to the trip to the end. Up to this time, I had seen come and go three captains, two engineers, several sailors and a cabin-boy. The crew that sailed from Suva included Mr. and Mrs. London, myself, and four dark-skinned persons: Nakata, the Jap cabin-boy, Wada San, the Jap cook, and the two Tahitians, Tehei and Henry.
We cleared Suva Harbor at 12:30 on the afternoon of Saturday, June 6, 1908. The harbour master, with his crew of Fiji convicts, was the last to leave; then we just slid out of the bay with a strong beam wind, and in an hour had left Suva out of sight. We passed a small cutter, and her crew of bushy-haired Fijians cried good-bye in their own language, and dipped their flag. About four o'clock we got to the entrance of a very narrow channel and between two small islands. I took the wheel, and Jack sang out the course from the bow. By six o'clock we were through and headed for the open sea, at which everyone was glad, for reefs and small islands cause much worry.
The next day I cleaned up the engine room and did small carpentering jobs about the ship. The sea was quite rough, and we had the skylights battened down; but because of the clearness of the sky we did not expect very nasty weather. We were speeding at about seven knots. All day, Jack studied navigation. For p272 the first several days out of Fiji he had no time to write. He navigated by every method known to captains, and then proved his navigating as we used to prove our arithmetic problems at school. On Wednesday morning, I took the time while he got the sight; then we corrected the two compasses, he watching one compass and I the other. Jack figured that day that we had done ten thousand miles in the Snark since leaving San Francisco.
That evening, Jack announced that at a certain point on the compass, at sunrise next morning, would be the first island in the New Hebrides, called Futuna, and next morning at five o'clock there was a call for all hands on deck. I hurried up, expecting to see a storm closing in on us, but instead the sky was clear and Jack was excitedly pointing to a rocky island at the exact place he had told us of the night before. Jack said: "I told you so," and for the rest of that day he went around with his head up in the air, with the bearing of a person who knew much more than any others on board, and we all looked at him in awe and told him he was a great navigator.
Futuna was a high, flat rock, as seen from the sea. We did not go close enough to examine it. We had a good breeze, and all that day we passed small uninhabited islands, and that night slowed down, for the island of Tanna was directly ahead, and we were afraid to go into the bay at night; but early next morning we p273 dropped anchor opposite a mission station in a long, narrow bay.
The third cylinder igniters blew out when I tried to use the engine to help us into this bay, and we had trouble in finding an entrance, for the place seemed reef-locked, but we took a chance, and finally got in. We anchored one hundred yards off a high bluff, on the top of which was a little white church, almost hidden by the dense jungle. We saw clumsy canoes coming toward us, and soon two hundred of the puniest, dirtiest, most unhealthy little thieving natives came aboard. All afternoon they kept arriving in canoe-loads. All wore remnants of white men's clothing, filthy beyond description. Some had only an undershirt; some, old trousers; and there were old hats of all kinds. One carried an umbrella. Others, again, wore red singlets, so full of holes they would scarcely hang on their backs. Their ears were pierced with holes I could have stuck my thumb through. They were all missionaries from the mission school on the top of the hill—and great missionaries they were! In the afternoon, when we three whites started ashore, we cleared the deck of the natives, and they cleared the deck of any spare ropes or marlin they could find loose. We missed nearly everything that was small enough for the natives to get away with. We went ashore and had dinner with the only missionary on the island, Rev. Watt. He p274 had been for twenty-eight years at this station, and had managed to convert the coast natives only, but in the interior the natives were as savage and primitive as the day God had made them—he sighed when he told us of the interior natives. We asked him to take us on an excursion to see these natives, but he flung up his hands in horror. "No! It was no place for a woman," and we could not persuade him to alter his decision. He told us of a lawless trader living on the island, and for us to be careful of him, he was a very bad man; he was friendly with the bush natives. And right then Jack whispered to me that we must find that bad, wicked trader and get him to take us to visit the savages that we had sailed thousands and thousands of miles to see. On going aboard that night, we found the wicked trader sitting on our deck, smoking Jack's cigarettes. He was a big, jolly-looking Scotchman. He was overjoyed to see us, for it is mighty few white people that Trader Wiley ever sees in Tanna. He had been trading here for over seven years. In order to trade among the different tribes, he had learned their languages, and to gain their friendship had doctored the sick and set broken bones. He had been the means of bringing peace between several of the tribes that before his advent had been continually at war. But the missionary considered him a bad man because he had gained such a hold on the natives, and, doctoring their ills and injuries, refused to doctor their souls. p275
Mr. Wiley stayed for supper, and told us some interesting yarns of the island. Up to one year ago, the different tribes were at war with each other. No tribe dared go outside its own boundaries, unless it wished to precipitate a rumpus. But the English warship Cambrian came and threw bombs in some of the villages, and now the natives were quiet through fear of having their homes destroyed. It had been three years, Mr. Wiley said, since a cannibalistic feast took place, and he had been there to see it. Having the confidence of the natives because he smuggled old-fashioned "Springfield" rifles in to them, he was allowed to go and come as he pleased. He had gone up into the bush after copra one day, after one tribe had been defeated by the tribe he was visiting, and was asked to stay and watch the feast that night, which he did—he found four bodies cooked and ready to eat, with the heads off and the bowels removed.
Of course he would show us the bush people; but he warned us that they were not the kind of people that we had been used to. It was agreed that on Sunday, June 22, he was to take us up to the village where he had seen the cannibal feast. On Saturday, Jack and Mrs. London went to see one of the most noted volcanoes in the New Hebrides, which is located on this island. I wandered up and down the bay, looking in the village huts and trying to find curios, but the natives seemed to have none. One little four-foot grass hut p276 and a few dirty mats is all the average man here possesses.
I gossiped with Mr. Wiley and his partner, Mr. Stanton, in their little 10-x-15 store, where they ate, slept and traded. Very little money was in circulation; they traded out of their stock for copra. One stick of cheap tobacco bought ten cocoanuts; and three sticks would hire a man for one day to take the meat from the nut and dry it into copra; so it will be seen that the remuneration of labour in the New Hebrides is nothing magnificent. One stick of tobacco is worth a cent.
Saturday night, Jack, Mrs. London and I took supper with Rev. Watt. The missionary was a fairly decent sort of man, but I don't approve of his methods. In the evening, I developed film in his dark-room.
Early Sunday morning, Tehei landed us on the beach, where we found Frank Stanton waiting for us. He explained that Mr. Wiley was sick and could not go. We four started off, and for several hours tramped over hills and through valleys, penetrating a jungle of trees and vines and ferns so dense that in places we walked through pitch-dark recesses, into which the sun had never shone. Sometimes we rested under a big banyan tree, with its hundreds of roots and its branches turning and growing back into the ground until the single tree might cover as much as a half acre. We passed several of Mr. Stanton's copra houses, where he came on certain days each week to p277 buy cocoanuts; then we struck off through a deep ravine, the walls forty and fifty feet high, with just enough room for us to walk single-file. All the time, we were gradually rising higher and higher above the sea-level. Often we had to pull Mrs. London up after us, but she was game and never lagged a bit. About one o'clock we emerged without warning into a clearing set on the side of a mountain, a clearing about a half-mile across. Many grass houses were set in a circle around this clearing. In the centre of the circle squatted about fifty men, as many children, and a few women. They were the most savage, heathenish looking folk I have ever looked upon. I had heard of and seen pictures of such savages, but I had hardly been able to convince myself that such animals existed: but here was ocular demonstration. They were smeared over their bodies with coloured juices from berries, and several of the younger men had queer white designs painted on their faces. The men wore belts around their waists—that was all; around their ankles were anklets of porpoise shell or cocoanut shell, and there were some that were carved of stone. Many wore strings of white shells around their necks. Through their enormously distended ear-lobes were thrust pieces of wood as big as one's wrist, or ear-rings of porpoise shell. But the crowning beauty was their heads. The hair, dyed red, was about a foot long. Locks of about one hundred hairs were wrapped from the roots to within one inch of the end with cocoanut p278 fibre; and the whole head was one cluster of these bunches. And every man carried a large knife. As for the women, they wore a dried palm-leaf hung on in front by a string around the waist; except for a miscellaneous collection of anklets, bracelets, and necklets, this was all they wore.
Most of these savages broke for the bush when they sighted us; all but fifteen or twenty who knew Mr. Stanton well. Stanton spoke to them; they advanced with hands outstretched; and we shook hands all around.
"How can I describe these people in my diary?" Mrs. London asked.
"'Worse than naked,' and let it go at that," Jack replied.
And so, in turn, I can describe these people at no greater length and no better than to say, as Jack said, that they were worse than naked. For several hours we sat with them in the clearing, and showed how Mrs. London's Winchester could shoot eleven times in the twinkling of an eye. I made dozens of photographs, and tried to photograph the women; but they were very shy. I got only one, as she was diving into her house.
The men who had run for the bush we could see on all sides of us, peeping around trees and through the dense brush at the edges of the jungle. They were armed with spears, so we kept our hands on our guns all the time, but Stanton assured us they were not dangerous. p279 Nevertheless, we were not going to take any risks.
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Late that afternoon, we started back for the bush. For some time we could see painted faces peeking at us through the jungle. When we arrived on board the Snark late that night, I gave a big sigh of relief. I had been far from comfortable among these ferocious-looking bush people.
I desired very much to develop my film that night, but Rev. Watt refused to let me use his dark-room. "Christians should do nothing at all on the Sabbath!" he told me; and I gathered from his tones that he knew of our expedition inland, and that he was far from approving of it.
The New Hebrides are entirely of volcanic origin. There are about thirty active volcanoes in the group, of which the greatest is on the island of Tanna. At night the sky is fiery red from the reflection of the red-hot lava in its crater, and about every half hour the air is rent with a terrific explosion, and from the direction of the volcano the sky seems afire.
On the morning after we had visited the bush people, Henry, Tehei, Nakata and myself secured guides and went to the volcano, walking for miles through barren desert land, hundreds of hot springs and geysers on all sides of us. As we drew closer, the ground under our feet would tremble with each explosion. At noon we reached the edge of the crater. Just as we got there, there came a tremendous explosion, and away p280 we ran, guides and all. When we recovered our courage, we crept up to the edge, and looked down nearly half a mile into what looked like hell. Out of the bowels of the earth were thrown huge boulders, which spent their force and fell back with hideous reverberations into the pits whence they came; and away at the bottom, the farthest down I have ever seen—and I believe it is the bottom-most point to which one can see—were two boiling lakes of lava, and when an explosion came, the lava would be thrown spattering against the encrusted crater sides, nearly to the top, and then run in thousands of rivers of liquid fire back to the bottom. The rumblings and explosions were deafening. I had to leave the edge of the crater, for there was stealing over me the overwhelming desire to jump off and to the bottom of the twin lakes of molten death—a desire that everyone has experienced when looking down from a vast elevation.
We got back to the bay about two o'clock that afternoon, where we found that a whole village of bush-boys had come down to buy tobacco. There were about fifty of them, all naked, and they had brought bows and arrows and spears. I gave a shilling, a brass ring, and a red handkerchief for a bow and two arrows, then invited the crowd aboard, for I knew Jack would want some of their bows and spears, and I myself wanted to get some good photographs of these natives. I took a few of them over in the launch, and the rest came in canoes, until we could scarcely move p281 around on deck. Jack snapped twenty good exposures of them, and I, too, got busy with my cameras. Then began the trading, which lasted for over an hour. Many a bow, spear, and pack of arrows shifted hands that afternoon, in exchange for tobacco, cheap jewellery, candy and red cloth. Jack boxed up his things and sent them back to California, while I boxed mine and sent them to Independence.
We lay at Tanna a week. Then, at four o'clock on a fine Tuesday afternoon, we motored out of the harbour and slid twenty miles up the coast, until we got out from under the lee of the land and caught a light breeze. All the next day we sailed to windward of Erromango, heaving-to at night for fear of running into land in the dark, and early the next morning putting on sail and heading for land twenty miles away.
As we were cruising in a general westerly direction through the New Hebrides, a little incident occurred which throws a side-light on the man, Jack London. One day, when weather conditions were perfect and everyone was on deck enjoying himself, an animated ball of variegated colours dropped slowly down into the cockpit at the feet of Mrs. London, who was at the wheel. She eagerly picked it up, calling out, "Lookie, lookie, what I've got!" It proved to be the prettiest little bird we had ever seen. Jack got out his book on ornithology, and proceeded to study book and bird, but nowhere was such a bird described.
It was evidently a land-bird that had gotten too far p282 from shore and had fallen exhausted on the deck of the Snark. We all stood around looking at it as it lay in Mrs. London's hand, while she chirped and tried to talk bird-talk to it. At last Jack said: "If it's a land-bird you are, to the land you go," and changing the course, we sailed for the island Mallicollo, just barely visible ten miles out of our way. We sailed as close to the shore as possible, and the little multi-coloured, pigeon-like bird, having regained its strength, flew in among the cocoanut trees. Then we headed out and continued our cruise up through the score of small islands composing the Western New Hebrides.
Critics of the man, Jack London, may call him an infidel. Colonel Roosevelt may call him a "nature faker." Others have not agreed with his ideas of life, but I have little doubt that this is the only time a captain ever went twenty miles out of his way when his fuel was low (our gasolene tanks were fast emptying), just to put a poor little bird ashore to go back to its mate and its young.
On our way through these islands we lived entirely on deck, so as to miss none of the beautiful scenery. The weather continued equable. We rode the water as silently as a canoe. The islands around us sheltered the sea from any disturbances, leaving the surface of these island straits perfectly calm. We sailed a day and a night past a score of active volcanoes. One towering cone of land protruded from the water like an enormous ant-hill, smoke wreathing the top in p283 the day, and the fiery red craters acting as lighthouses by night. Once we put into Vila, anchoring between two small schooners in the bay. Vila has only a few white people, traders and some governmental officials. And here is a queer government. These islands are owned jointly by France and England; one governor will make a law, then the other governor will make a law directly opposed. It is all a joke among the traders. The schooners we saw were blackbirders, which made a practice of going to other islands and capturing natives, to be sold in the labour markets of Fiji and Samoa. When I think of this practice, I do not really wonder that the natives are so savage against the whites. As we came into this port, the French flags were at half-mast for a captain that had been killed in another island while trying to get labour.
It was now decided that the Snark must be getting on faster, in order that we might pass through the Indian Ocean before the typhoon season. We went by the last of the New Hebrides and next day cruised past the Banks Islands, but did not linger. For another day we sailed past the Santa Cruz Islands. Then for three days we slid through an open sea.
In my diary, kept during this part of the trip, I find some interesting entries.