After bidding Raeltoa good-bye I found myself once more on my “beam-ends” and was extremely pleased to fall in with a young trader who hired me for canvassing purposes. He had purchased a quantity of trinkets and gaudy underclothing with the intention of travelling inland to the native villages, and so for some time I was employed in bartering with the Samoan men and youths. I often watched their delight as they attired themselves, as soon as they had purchased our goods, in old shirts of various shades. The dusky maidens danced and whirled with hysterical pleasure as they pulled on the yellow stockings or stood smiling in white shoes, on their arms tin bracelets sparkling with jewels made of coloured glass, while my friend the Cockney trader perspired with delight over his bargains, and the sights that we saw. “Gaud lummy ducks!” and “Ain’t this all right?” he would say as we watched the different youths and maidens doing double shuffles and turning head over heels as we dressed them up. Then we passed on under the tropic palms and mangroves to the forest track that led to the next village.
After I gave up peddling in the South Seas I became acquainted with a young apprentice who had left a ship at Apia, and he and I went off miles away to Tutuela and camped by Pangopango harbour and on the shore side we built a little hut and lived Robinson Crusoe lives. My comrade was a most cheerful companion and came from ’Frisco. We had fine times in that hut under the coco-nut trees, and lived mostly by fishing; the ports and lagoons below were crammed with small and big fish. We had an old catamaran and sailed around dressed in shirt and pants only, and we got so sunburnt that we were very nearly as brown as the natives. I could almost write a book about those times, so varied and delightful they were. Arthur Pink, for that was my comrade’s name, got a berth on the American steamer and went back to ’Frisco. He was a manly fellow, a staunch friend, and I was grieved to lose him. Before he went he got in with a Samoan tatau (tattooer) and had the history of Samoa tattooed on his back and legs, chiefs, women, birds and flowers, etc.; he tried to persuade me to get tattooed but I declined. Tattooing is a great art in the South Seas and the natives go through a deal of pain during the operations. Some of the flesh engravings are exceedingly well done; they perform the operation with an instrument something like a small tooth comb made of bone. The women try to outrival each other in the beauty of the tattooing which is mostly done on the lower part of the back and the thighs and hips, wonderful schemes of tattoo art.
Native Homestead
Before closing this chapter I will give a few details about the Samoan and South Sea groups and the people thereon. The chief Isles of Samoa are Upolu, Savaii, Tutuela and Manua. They are all of volcanic origin, are surrounded by coral reefs and palm-shaded lagoons; from the shore side to the mountain slopes inland grow the dark coco-palms, the beautiful bread-fruit trees, mangroves, plantains and other wild tropical bush and fern-trees, wherein sparkle and flit gorgeous-coloured butterflies, green parrots and cooing droves of Samoan doves. In the shades of the forest and thick scrubby vegetation grow scented flowers and over the forest paths as you pass along in the cool evenings the winds from seaward, hovering in the thickets steal out in whiffs to your nostrils, whiffs that smell like honey mixed with the ripe breath of decaying bush flowers; on the slopes grows the beautiful hibiscus.
The mountain peaks, just inland, rise to the height of four thousand and five thousand feet. Dotted with forest they stand in rugged grandeur against the sky, and when the trade winds are blowing thick clouds come sweeping in from seaward, smash against the peaks on their swift flight, twisting and curling into a thousand magical shapes that fade away like monstrous herds of phantom elephants and distorted mammoth things as moonlight steals over the flying mist. Some of the mountains have enormous craters wherein grow baby forests, haunted by singing birds. In the gullies far below and miles beyond are native villages, homesteads that look like sheds, open all round so that the wind blows through and keeps them cool. From the forest up there you can see the heaving Pacific Ocean twinkling in the moonlight.
Apia is the capital of Upolu and has a very mixed population. The white buildings are mostly stores kept by Germans; nearly all the large buildings are missionary halls and churches, German, American and English chapels, wherein they teach the natives hypocrisy and the misery of hell, and they are such adept pupils that they soon outrival their teachers in the great art of artfulness. A good many of the Samoans can read and write English much better than the poorer class of England can. No Samoan would eat or even smell the food that the middle classes of England live on.
The main trade of Samoa is in copra. Copra is dried coco-nut and is exported to Australia and elsewhere. It is picked and cured and packed by the natives under the supervision of the whites, Germans and Americans, who get good profits and often make a fortune. It has never been known or recorded in any book that a Samoan ever made a fortune, which seems remarkable when we consider that it is his own country. There was a Samoan chief in the old days who endeavoured to make money out of his copra plantation, and bought up a lot of territory for coco-nut growing, but the missionaries, acting for the traders, frightened him out of his life, told him he would go to hell for putting his heathen mind into mundane things, and for his sins they fined him heavily and pinched all his copra plantation. He turned out to be a good chief and went into the building line and built many fine houses for the missionaries wherein were many rooms and great comforts. For this work he was given one tin of condensed milk a week and at the completion of the contract a paper-covered hymnbook.
The Samoans, Tongans and Tahitians are a handsome race, the men standing nearly six feet; they are well built and of a sunburnt colour, have dark bright eyes, thick curly hair which they dye to a golden hue, their temperament is cheerful, and they are always singing. The women are very good-looking, with roundish faces and full lips; their noses are inclined to get flat as they get old; they have earnest kind-looking eyes, well-shaped bodies and good limbs whereon the tattoo of ancient pictorial Samoa is beautifully engraved so as to show off the curves of the back and thighs and give them an antique appearance. In fact when they stand quite still under the coco-palms you could almost imagine they were beautifully finished statues if it were not for the flies buzzing round their eyes making them blink.
The native children are wistful, plump little mites; much prettier than European infants and very intelligent. They can swim at three months old; talk, run and sing at a year old, and if a Samoan had a child that sucked a dummy at six years old and wailed drivelling along in its pram at an advanced age, as the children of the wealthy class of England do, they would look upon it as a great curio and smother it for shame on the first starless night.