Australia, New Zealand and some islands of the South seas

by Frank G. Carpenter

This man has three thousand trees planted at Pago Pago and expects to set out more. Another planter I have heard of got nine hundred dollars a year from less than eight acres of cacao in American Samoa. It is estimated that two thirds of all the land in the Samoan Islands is suitable for the growing of cacao. As to coconuts, there is money to be made in raising them on almost any of the Pacific islands.

During my stay at Apia I have heard much about things in our part of the Samoan Islands. The Tutuilans now consider themselves American citizens and hurrah for the Stars and Stripes as enthusiastically as we do on the Fourth of July. The government has brought quiet to the island, torn for years by strife among the different tribes. Figuratively speaking, the people are now turning their swords into pruning hooks.

We are ruling the Samoans after the Dutch method; that is, we are working through their chiefs and allowing them to govern themselves. Every village is a little republic, with its own chief, who is in most cases a hereditary ruler. Our naval officers, who administer the islands, sit behind the chiefs and pull the strings, and the people think they are ruling themselves. Unless inconsistent with our laws, native customs are never changed without the consent of the people. Missionary work is encouraged.

The Island of Manua contains about twenty square miles. It is mountainous and surrounded by coral reefs. The mountains are about a half mile in height, but the land rises so gradually that the whole island can be cultivated.

The Manuans are much the same as the Tutuilans, except that, being out of the line of ocean steamship travel, they are less advanced. They have had missionaries for the last century and are Christians. They have churches and schools and live peacefully under their king, producing enough food for themselves and selling enough copra to satisfy their few other wants. Coconut and banana plantations are being put out on all our islands. The American naval officers with whom I have talked have nothing but good to say of the people.

When the Americans first took possession, a party of officers was received in great state by the King of Manua, who insisted on treating them to kava before he discussed business. He had his chiefs with him, and the Queen sat beside him during the audience. The kava was brought in by the belle of the island in a cup fastened to a branch of coconut palm. It was given first to the king, who handed it back to her, whereupon she filled it and again gave it to His Majesty. After pouring some on the ground, he took a drink of it. It was next presented to the officers in the order of their rank and they had to drink it, although they knew of the traditional way of making this native beverage.

Kava comes from a root grown in the Pacific Islands and by the old formula is made in the following manner: The kava is washed and cut up into little cubes. Then a young girl, preferably a pretty girl, after washing her hands and rinsing her mouth, begins to work. She puts one cube of kava into her mouth, and chews it vigorously. When it is well masticated she adds another and another until she has in her cheeks a mass of fibre as big as an egg. This she takes out and lays in a large flat bowl and then begins to form another egg. She keeps on making eggs until all of the root is chewed. Then water is poured into the bowl, and the girl begins to knead the fibrous mass under it. When it is strained it is a milky liquid that tastes for all the world like a mixture of soapsuds and bitters. It is not considered intoxicating, but when taken in excess it goes to one’s knees, so that for a time the imbiber cannot walk straight.

This drink is used in all the islands of the Pacific. In the out-of-the-way Samoas a person making kava has the right to ask any girl who is passing, no matter who she may be, to come in and chew his root for him. In most parts of Samoa this practice of chewing has died out, and the roots are now pounded up with stones instead. In the more remote districts, I am told the old custom prevails.

The London Missionary Society is doing much good throughout all parts of Samoa. It has been working here for three generations and claims thousands of converts to Christianity. Roman Catholics also have missionaries on some of the islands. The Samoans are naturally religious and the level of their morality is far higher than that of the foreigners who bring in whisky and introduce the vices of civilization to these southern seas. There are, it is true, high-class business men scattered through the various archipelagoes, but the average beach-combing trader is as a rule a curse instead of a blessing and most of the evils that have come to the people are due to him.

For many of us the chief interest of the Samoas lies in the fact that it was near Apia that Robert Louis Stevenson passed the last years of his life and did much of his best writing. While I was there I rode up to “Vailima,” the big, rambling house in which he lived. Some time after his death the place was purchased by a wealthy German planter, who did all he could to dispel the Stevenson atmosphere and soon destroyed most of the vestiges of the former owner’s taste. He put up a sign over the gate beginning with Eingang verboten and going on to say in English, French, and Samoan, as well as German, that strangers were forbidden to come inside the enclosure. He allowed Stevenson’s tomb to become overgrown with weeds, and the pilgrimages to it from the incoming ships became fewer every year.