They are a clean race, and, except for the odour of the scented coco-nut oil which they polish their velvet skins with, do not smell of perspiration as the clothed white do in hot weather. A Samoan could not sleep or rest if a flea found him lying on his bed mat; if a flea is discovered in a Samoan house they know that a new-chum missionary has been hovering near. The native girls and women are naturally modest and they will blush at any coarse words or suggestions from white men; but they are very fond of finery, and so often fall before the lure of the whites, who are generally thousands of miles away when the victim becomes a mother. At heart they are extremely religious and innately feel that some great Power watches over them, but this feeling is gradually dying away under the influence of the missionaries, who look so human to their eyes as they live in luxury and wax fat in the best Samoan houses. The Samoan has seen everything as it is and knows that the white missionaries and traders are human beings like himself, looking for all they can get and enjoying life to the uttermost, and so the glamour is fading in the South Seas as it has faded in the West, where many still believe all they hear and read about the converted heathen who would rather die than sell his honour.
The whites consist chiefly of tourists, traders and missionaries of various sects. Many of the missionaries are honest in their profession, really believing all they teach, have weary eyes and remind one of those bedraggled flies that crawl up the windowpane looking for light. The traders are mostly rough, sunburnt, crooked-nosed men and do their best to do well and work hard at their various trades. Some are a strange mixture of the bushman and pirate. The honest ones toil hard to make money and settle down prosperous in a shanty, furnished with a large spittoon, pipes and cases of the best imported whisky, and a shakedown bed, as close as possible to the ground, so that they can crawl by night on their hands and knees from the nearest Apia bar-room straight into bed. Stolid, square-headed Germans abound and speak as though they helped to create the universe, drink a deal on the sly, are very coarse when drunk, and it does not matter how well a thing is done they are sure to say “But you should see the way they do that in Germany.” Most of the Europeans wear white duck pants and broad-brimmed straw hats, and do a deal of leaning against palm-trees, smoking and spitting, also loafing by Apia saloon-bars, where they stand in huddled groups beneath the coco-palms and watch the Samoans toddling by to the mission-rooms with Bibles under their arms.
As the steamers and schooners call into the harbour, tourists and sailors come ashore; some go on the spree, some get drunk and others go curio-hunting. Sometimes the élite of Australian towns arrive on tour and gaze on everyone with patronising eyes. I saw one lot from Sydney arrive, people of high standing too; they had receding chins and staring eyes like bits of glass rubbed over with fat and spoke with very conventional voices. The natives, scantily clothed, go shuffling through the streets, singing and jabbering. Apia smells of ripe bananas and tropical vegetation. It is the modern Garden of Eden; the ghosts of Adam and Eve roam the forest by night and listen to the laughter and wails of their fallen children as they eat of the forbidden fruit and the ships creep into the bays and again go seaward back to the shadows of the cities.
Native Canoes, Fiji
Sailors and rovers settle down in the South Sea capitals, talk all day of Rio, Shanghai, and Japanese girls that did the Eastern can-can, drunken sprees in ’Frisco, phantom ships and wonderful fifty-day voyages from London to Sydney on the Cutty’s Ark; old sea captains, mates with master certificates, disappointed men, wrinkled and sea-beaten Scotch engineers, dreaming of Glasgow, engine-rooms, donkey boilers and sea bilges, and that beautiful young woman at Marseilles who lay in their bunk berth so drunk that they could not wake her when the anchor was going up, so kept her aboard in secret the whole voyage out to Melbourne, where she went ashore and became a lady governess, taught French, eventually married a vicar in the suburbs and became “Visiting lady” and was beloved by all for her purity and winning ways. The ancient old man from the Solomon Isles with sad eyes is to be seen there too, still laughless and grim over the tragedy of that long-ago night when his white wife disappeared, and after exploring the Island forest the cannibalistic natives found him starving, gave him drink and meat, and next day by the strangest coincidence possible he discovered that he had eaten his own wife. The great truth of truth being stranger than fiction is vividly revealed in all you see and hear in the Islands of the far-away Pacific, where the good men brush aside the conventionalities and go the whole hog, and the old sinners of the European cities, seeking a haven of rest from the law, with all their passions withered and asleep, become virtuous and moralise. They are strange old fellows, good company and extremely interesting as they sit by their bungalows and talk at night by South Sea shores. The waves steal over the coral reefs and murmur mysteriously by the lagoons of magic lands, dark with forest branches; midnight stars are reflected in the clear harbour waters as the blue vault of heaven over your head gleams with worlds that are twinkling and flashing and you dream you hear them singing, and see writ on the wonderful canvas of starry space the bright eternal words, expressing the tremendous loneliness of Infinity that swallows up human imagination, leaving us only wonder and hope.
XXII
I leave the South Sea for Australia—Arrive in Sydney—I get hard up and take a Partnership in a Flower Seed Business—The Stockman’s Daughter Ethel—I meet an old-fashioned Australian Bushman—He gives me a Night’s Lodging—I meet with Queensland Blacks—Alone in the Bush—Brisbane
With regret I now leave the South Seas and once more start off on my wanderings accompanied by my modest and faithful friend who always sang happily or sadly in response to my own feelings—my violin.