Atolls of the Sun

by Frederick O'Brien

How often, when I lived at the spacious home of my friend, Ariioehau Ameroearao, the chief at Mataiea in Tahiti, I have seen him, chevalier of the Legion of Honor, come in from the highway in stiff white linen or in religious black, and in a twinkling reduce his garb to a loin-cloth!

His walls were hung with portraits of princes and distinguished travelers, guests of his in the past score of years, and none was more distinguished, though in brilliant uniform and gorgeously decorated, than the old chief in his strip of cotton print.

“Three kings naked have I seen, and never a sign of royalty,” said the cynical Bismarck.

Plato understood very well the spirit in which the Polynesians were clothed by the whites, the crass prurience that pointed out to them the wickedness of nudity, that hid their beautiful bodies under tunics and pantaloons, that laughed at their simplicity.

In the “Republic” he says:

Not long since it was thought discreditable and ridiculous among the Greeks, as it is now among most barbarian nations, for men to be seen naked. And when the Cretans first, and after them the Lacedæmonians, began the practice of gymnastic exercises, the wits of the time had it in their power to make sport of those novelties. But when experience has shown that it was better to strip than to cover up the body and when the ridiculous effect that this plan had to the eye had given way before the arguments establishing its superiority, it was at the same time, as I imagine, demonstrated that he is a fool who thinks anything ridiculous but that which is evil, and who attempts to raise a laugh by assuming any object to be ridiculous but that which is unwise and evil.

The Marquesans, perfect animals, had their senses extraordinarily attuned to the faintest vibrations of value to their survival or delight. They heard sounds plainly that I, with rather better than ordinary civilized hearing, did not catch. I was with Vanquished Often when she spoke to Exploding Eggs two hundred feet away in a conversational tone. I tested them, and found they could talk with each other intelligibly when I heard but an indistinct whisper from the farthest. So with smell. Ghost Girl and Mouth of God, my neighbor at Atuona, could detect any intimates by their odor in pitch darkness at twenty feet, though Marquesans, because they have little bodily hair and are the cleanest people I know, have less personal odor than we. They enjoyed life through scent infinitely more than do we. They had no kisses but rubbed noses and smelled each other with indrawings of their breath. Odoriferous herbs, flowers, and seeds were continually about their necks, both men and women, tucked behind their ears, or in their hair, and their bodies after bathings were anointed with the hinano-scented cocoanut-oil. Their noses were sources of sensuous enjoyment to them beyond my capability. They inhaled emanations from flowers too subtle to touch my olfactory nerves.

The Marquesan woman has ever been an arch-coquette, paying infinite attention to her appearance, and enduring pain and ennui to improve her beauty. Her complexion was as much a pride as with a fashionable American woman to-day. The beauty parlors of our cities were matched by the steam baths, the use of saffron, of oils, and of massage, and by weeks or even months of preparation before some great festival. To burst upon the assembled clan, white as the sea-foam, with skin as smooth as a polished calabash, hair oiled and wreathed, and body rounded from dancing practice and much sleep, and to set beating wildly the pulses of the young men, so that, strive as they might to remain mute, they would be forced to yield mad plaudits, was a result worth months of effort. To be the belle of the ball was a distinction a woman remembered a lifetime. It was an honor comparable to the warrior’s wounds, or possession of the heads of the enemies. Parents felt keenly the success of their daughters. Titihuti and others have told me of their triumphs, as Bernhardt or Patti might recite of packed houses and a score of encores.

A curious secrecy or modesty was attached to the making of the toilet and the enhancement of the natural charms. No Marquesan or Tahitian or Hawaiian would ever have looked at herself in a portable mirror—if she had one—as do many of our females, and the whitening and reddening of cheeks and lips in public places would have caused a blush of shame for her sex to suffuse the face of a Marquesan, to whom such intimate gestures were for the privacy of her home or the bank of the limpid stream in a grove dedicated to the Marquesan Venus.

Near Tahiti was the atoll of Tetuaroa where for hundreds of years the belles of Tahiti resorted to lose their sunburn in the bowered groves and to spend a season in beautification by banting, special foods, dancing, swimming, massage, baths, oils, and lotions.