Atolls of the Sun

by Frederick O'Brien

CHAPTER IX

The fish in the lagoon and sea—Giant clams and fish that poison—Hunting the devilfish—Catching bonito—Snarling turtles—Trepang and sea cucumbers—The mammoth manta.

THE schooner Marara unloaded her cargo of supplies after several days of riding on and off the lee of the island, and went on her voyage to other atolls. McHenry and Kopcke joined interests for the nonce, and tried to draw me into the net they said they were spreading for the natives. I was convinced that I was as edible fish for them as the Paumotuans, and, besides, I was determined to avail myself of the leisure of the wise Nohea before the rahui, to learn all about the fish in the lagoon and sea. An ignorant amateur of the life of the ocean, I was devoured with curiosity to peer into it under his guidance, and I was resolute to spend my days in such sport instead of in sleep after roistering of nights with the traders.

“Nohea,” I said, “will you show me what the Creator has put in the water? In my country I know the fish, but not here. Soon you will go to the rahui, but we have a few weeks yet, and you are skilled in these matters.”

The diver replied, “E, I will show you”; and he kept his word, with a prideful exactitude. Days and nights I returned dog-weary, from the sea and the lagoon, but never once threw myself on my mat and counted my pains for naught, as scores of times I had on the brooks, bays, and oceans of America. With our variety of edibles in islands and continents where there are real soil and domestic animals of many kinds, we can hardly appreciate the desperate necessity of the Paumotuans to comb the waters of their bare atolls for food.

The pig, the only domestic mammifer before the whites came a century ago, ate only cocoanuts, and, like fowls, was generally small and thin, as well as too expensive for other meals than feasts. Few were the birds in these white islands. In many only the sandpiper, the frigate, the curlew, and the tern were found, but in uninhabited atolls others abounded. I saw many pigeons, black with rusty spots which lived in the tohonu tree and ate its seeds and also those of the nono. Green pigeons or doves, called oo, were sometimes seen. None of these constituted any part of the diet.

Except for cocoanuts, the atoll yielded few growths of value. The most characteristic was a small tree or bush with white flowers, the mikimiki, the wood of which was very dense. It grew even in the most solid coral blocks, and was formerly much used for the great shark-hooks, for harpoons, and handles for their shovels of shells. The huhu, another little tree, with yellow blossoms and the general appearance of the mikimiki, was useless for timber, but the kahia, with deliciously-perfumed flowers, made an excellent fuel. The geogeo furnished boat-knees, the tou was fit for canoes, and the pandanus, the screw-pine, filled almost as many needs as the cocoanut-palm. Its fruit was eaten by poor islanders, its wood and leaves formed their houses, its leaves also made mats and hats and the sails of the pahi, the sailing canoes, and, as throughout Polynesia, the wrappers of cigarettes. All the clothing was formerly made of this prince of trees for native wants. The tamanu was scarce, and purau; but there were some herbaceous plants, the cassytha filiformis, which climbed on the huhu and the mikimiki; a little lepturus repens; a heliotrope; a cruciferous plant, and a purslane that afforded a poor salad, and was also boiled. I also saw the nono, not here the arrow of Cupid as in Tahiti, but a sour fruit, eaten only when hunger compelled.

In Takaroa, particularly favored by absence of cyclones, by safety of harbor, breadth and depth of pass into the lagoon, and plentitude of cocoa-palms and pearl-shell, herculean efforts had been made by bringing whole schooner cargoes of soil to grow some of the food plants and trees of Tahiti, but all such growths were a trivial item in the daily demand for sustenance.

When Polynesians in their legends spoke of a rich island, they described it as abounding in fish, as the Jews, pastoral tribes, sang of milk and honey, the red Indian of happy hunting-grounds, and Christians of streets of gold, and harps and hymns.

Shell-fish, mollusks and crustaceans, played as important a part in their aliment as ordinary fish, and ia or ika meant both. In some islands the people were forced to subsist largely on taclobo, the furbelowed clam or giant tridacna called pahua here and benitier in Europe, where the shells were used for holy water fonts. The flesh of the pahua was sold in the Papeete market but was not a delicacy. The clam itself weighed up to fifty pounds or more, and the pair of shells from a dozen to eight hundred pounds according to the age of the living clams. The shells were so hard that they furnished the blades of the shovels with which the native had anciently dug wells to hold the brackish water.