Mystic Isles of the South Seas.

by Frederick O'Brien

Mataiea was the farthest point on Tahiti from Papeete I had reached, and wishing to see more of the island, I set out on foot with Tatini, my handmaid. We bade good-bye to Tetuanui and Haamoura and all the family after the dawn breakfast. Mama Tetuanui cried a few moments from the pangs of separation, and the chief wrung my hand sorrowfully, though I was to be back in a few days.

From the reef at Mataiea I had glimpsed the south-west of Tahiti, the lower edge of the handle of the fan-shaped double isle, mountainous and abrupt in form, and called commonly the presqu’ile de Taiarapu. The chief said that at the isthmus of Taravao, the junction of the fan and handle, there was the Maison des Varos, a famous roadhouse, kept by M. Butscher, where one might have the best food in Tahiti if one notified the host in advance.

“One must wake him up,” said Tetuanui. “He is asleep most of the time.”

I wrote him a letter, and on the day appointed, Tatini and I, barefooted, started. We went through Tetuanui’s breadfruit-grove, and there, as wherever were choice growths, I stopped to examine and admire. No other tree except the cocoa equals the maori in usefulness and beauty. The cocoa will grow almost in the sea and in any soil, but the breadfruit demands humus and a slight attention. The cocoas flourish on hundreds of atolls where man never sees them, but the maoris ask a clearing of the jungle about their feet. The timber of the breadfruit is excellent for canoes and for lumber, and its leaves, thick and glossy, and eighteen inches long by a foot broad, are of account for many purposes, including thatch and plates. There are half a hundred varieties, and each tree furnishes three or four crops a year, hundreds of fruits as big and round as plum-puddings, green or yellow on the tree, pitted regularly like a golf-ball, in lozenge-shaped patterns. The bark of the young branches was used for making a tough tapa, native cloth, and resin furnishes a glue for calking watercraft. The tree bears in the second or third year, is hardy, but yields its life to a fungus, for which there is no remedy except, according to the natives, a lovely lily that grows in the forest. Transplanted, at the roots of the maori, the lily heals its disease and drives away the parasite. The missionaries cited this as a parable of Christianity, which would save from damnation the convert no matter how fungusy he was with sin. In tribal wars the enemy laid a sea-slug at the heart of the maori, and, its foe unseen, the tree perished from the corruption of the hideous trepang.

Papeari, the next district west of Mataiea, was well watered, as its name signified, and we passed cows and sheep and horses grazing under the trees or in pastures of lush grass. Swamps had been ditched and drained, and there was evidence of unusual energy in agriculture. The country gained in tropical aspect as we approached the narrow strip of land which is the nexus of Tahiti-nui and Tahiti-iti, of the blade and the handle of the fan. Tahitian mythology does not agree with geology, any more than does the catechism; for though the scientists aver that these separate isles were not united until ages after their formation, a legend ran that at one time the union was complete, but that a sea-god conceived a hatred for the inhabitants of the Presqu’ile of Taiarapu, the fearless clans of the Teva-i-tai and the Te-Ahupo.

One very dark night when the moon was in the ocean cavern of this evil Atua, he began his horrid labors to sever the tie. He smote the rocks from the foundations, and the people heard in terror throughout the night the thunders of his blows. He had almost achieved his task when the goodly sun-god appeared over the mountains far in advance of his usual time, and blinded the Titan so that he sought safety beneath the ocean. Tatini showed me the fearful signs of the demon’s fury. Monstrous masses of rock were in the sea, and the isthmus was reduced to a mere mile of width, an extensive bay filling the demolished area. The deep inlet of Port Phaëton swept in there like the Gulf of Corinth in Greece. All this peninsula of Taiarapu was ceded to Captain Cook. He called it Tiaraboo in his journal, but he never took possession of his principality, realizing that the cession was in the fashion of the Spaniard who says, “All I have is yours,” but would think you unmannerly to carry away anything of value.

Port Phaëton is famed in the annals of the early French conquerors, for in it they anchored their warships, and the Paris chauvinists dreamed of a navy-yard and a large settlement there. On the plateau of Taravao, a hilltop raised fifty feet, is an old fort of the French, a solid construction against the stubborn Tahitians whom they insisted, with cannon and musket, must receive Christianity through the French clergy of the Order of the Sacred Heart of Jesus instead of through English dissenters. From the plateau we could see the immense extent of the forests, which rose almost from the water to the tops of the mountains.

A dozen magnificent kinds of trees were all about us. The earth wore a verdant coat of grass, ferns, and vines, so profuse and bright that by contrast a remembrance of the barren parts of America crossed my mind, with the fulsome praise of them by the pious thieves of that region who sell them. It would be impossible and cruel, I reflected, to convey to those extravagants in adjectives the richness of herbage and the brilliancy of scene about the isthmus. The vegetation was ampler than anywhere else in Tahiti.

The tamanu-, the hotu-, and the mape-trees were in abundance. The tamanu yields tacamac, a yellow, resinous substance with a strong odor and a bitter, aromatic taste, that is used as incense and in ointments. The Tahitians call the tamanu the healing-tree. It grows just above high water on any kind of shore, embowering, with dark foliage, and peculiarly easeful in midday on the hot sands. I have had a tamanu-leaf soaked in fresh water laid upon my eye inflamed by too long a vigil in the sun on the reef. The small gray ball within its round green fruit affords a greenish oil that is a liniment of wizardry for bruises, stiffness, rheumatism, and fevers. In every house was a gourd stored with it.

The mape, the Tahitian chestnut, grew farther from the water, a powerful, commanding figure, with flowers of sublimated sweetness, and with it the tiairi, or tutui-tree, covered with blossoms, like white lilac, and bearing nuts with oily kernels. It is the candlenut-tree, which has furnished lights for Tahitians since they wandered to these latitudes. The nuts are baked to make brittle their shell, and the kernels of walnut size easily extracted and pierced. Strung on the midrib of a palm-leaf, the combination makes wax and wick, and has lighted many a council and many a dance in Polynesia.