Their ingenuity appears still more to advantage in the means they employ to render these vessels proper to transport them to the neighbouring isles, with which they have a communication, having no other guides than the stars on such navigations. They fasten two great periaguas together alongside of each other, (leaving about four feet distance between them) by means, of some cross pieces of wood tied very fast to the starboard of one and larboard of the other boat. Over the stern of these two vessels thus joined, they place a hut, of a very light construction, covered by a roof of reeds. This apartment shelters them from the sun and rain, and at the same time affords them a proper place for keeping their provisions dry. These double periaguas can contain a great number of persons, and are never in danger of oversetting. We have always seen the chiefs make use of them; they are navigated both by a sail and by oars, as the single periaguas: the sails are composed of mats, extended on a square frame, formed by canes, of which one of the angles is rounded.
The Taiti people have no other tool for all these works than a chissel, the blade of which is made of a very hard black stone[[103]]. It is exactly of the same form as that of our carpenters, and they use it with great expertness: they use very sharp pieces of shells to bore holes into the wood.
Their cloths.
The manufacturing of that singular cloth, of which their dress is made up, is likewise one of their greatest arts. It is prepared from the rind of a shrub, which all the inhabitants cultivate around their houses. A square piece of hard wood, fluted on its four sides by furrows of different sizes, is made use of in beating the bark on a smooth board: they sprinkle some water on it during this operation, and thus they at last form a very equal fine cloth, of the nature of paper, but much more pliable, and less apt to be torn, to which they give a great breadth. They have several sorts of it, of a greater or less thickness, but all manufactured from the same substance: I am not acquainted with their methods of dying them.
Account of the Taiti-man,
whom I brought to France.
I shall conclude this chapter in exculpating myself, for people oblige me to use this word, for having profited of the good will of Aotourou, and taken him on a voyage, which he certainly did not expect to be of such a length; and likewise, in giving an account of the information he has given me concerning his country, during the time that he has been with me.
Reasons for which I took him.
The zeal of this islander to follow us was unfeigned. The very first day of our arrival at Taiti, he manifested it to us in the most expressive manner, and the nation seemed to applaud his project. As we were forced to sail through an unknown ocean, and sure to owe all the assistance and refreshments on which our life depended, to the humanity of the people we should meet with, it was of great consequence to us to take a man on board from one of the most considerable islands in this ocean. It was to be supposed that he spoke the same language as his neighbours, that his manners were the same, and that his credit with them would be decisive in our favour, when he should inform them of our proceedings towards his countrymen, and our behaviour to him. Besides, supposing our country would profit of an union with a powerful people, living in the middle of the finest countries in the world, we could have no better pledge to cement such an alliance, than the eternal obligation which we were going to confer on this nation, by sending back their fellow-countryman well treated by us, and enriched by the useful knowledge which he would bring them. Would to God that the necessity and the zeal which inspired us, may not prove fatal to the bold Aotourou!
His stay at Paris.
I have spared neither money nor trouble to make his stay at Paris agreeable and useful to him. He has been there eleven months, during which he has not given any mark at all of being tired of his stay. The desire of seeing him has been very violent; idle curiosity, which has served only to give false ideas to men whose constant practice it is to traduce others, who never went beyond the capital, never examine any thing; and who being influenced by errors of all sorts, never cast an impartial eye upon any object; and yet pretend to decide with magisterial severity, and without appeal! How, said some of them to me, in this man’s country the people speak neither French, nor English, nor Spanish? What could I answer them? I was struck dumb; however, it was not on account of the surprize at hearing such a question asked. I was used to them, because I knew that at my arrival, many of those who even pass for people of abilities, maintained that I had not made the voyage round the world, because I had not been in China. Some other sharp critics conceived and propagated a very mean idea of the poor islander, because, after a stay of two years amongst Frenchmen, he could hardly speak a few words of the language. Do not we see every day, said they, that the Italians, English, and Germans learn the French in so short a time as one year at Paris? I could have answered them perhaps with some reason, that, besides the physical obstacle in the organs of speech of this islander, (which shall be mentioned in the sequel) which prevented his becoming conversant in our language, he was at least thirty years old; that his memory had never been exercised by any kind of study, nor had his mind ever been at work; that indeed an Italian, an Englishman, a German could in a year’s time speak a French jargon tolerably well, but that was not strange at all, as these strangers had a grammar like ours, as their moral, physical, political, and social ideas were the same with ours, and all expressed by certain words in their language as they are in French; that they had accordingly no more than a translation to fix in their memory, which had been exerted from their very infancy. The Taiti-man, on the contrary, only having a small number of ideas, relative on the one hand to a most simple and most limited society, and on the other, to wants which are reduced to the smallest number possible; he would have been obliged, first of all, as I may say, to create a world of previous ideas, in a mind which is as indolent as his body, before he could come so far as to adapt to them the words in our language, by which they are expressed. All this I might perhaps have answered: but this detail required some minutes of time, and I have always observed, that, loaded with questions as I was, whenever I was going to answer, the persons that had honoured me with them were already far from me. But it is common in a capital to meet with people who ask questions, not from an impulse of curiosity, or from a desire of acquiring knowledge, but as judges who are preparing to pronounce their judgment; and whether they hear the answer or no, it does not prevent them from giving their decision[[104]].