“My uncle, the Catechist, is Tioakoekoe, Man Whose Entrails Were Roasted on a Stick, and his brother is called Pootuhatuha, meaning Sliced and Distributed. That is because their father, Tufetu, was killed at the Stinking Springs in Taaoa, and was cooked and sent all over that valley. You should see that man who killed him, Kahuiti! He is a great man, and strong still, though old. He likes the 'long pig' still, also. It is not long since he dug up the corpse of one buried, and ate it in the forest.”
When I said that I should indeed like to see that man, Mouth of God said that he would send a word of introduction that should insure for me the friendliness of the chief who had devoured his grandfather. Mouth of God bore the diner no ill-will. The eating was a thing accomplished in the past; the teachings of that stern Calvinist, his mother, forbade that he should eat Kahuiti in retaliation, therefore their relations were amicable.
The following morning, attended by the faithful Exploding Eggs, I set out toward Taaoa Valley. The way was all up and down, five miles, wading through marshy places and streams, parting the jungle, caught by the thorns and dripping with sweat. Miles of it was through cocoanut forests owned by the mission.
The road followed the sea and climbed over a lofty little cape, Otupoto, from which the coast of Hiva-oa, as it curves eastward, was unrolled, the valleys mysterious caverns in the torn, convulsed panorama, gloomy gullies suggestive of the old bloody days. Above them the mountains caught the light and shone green or black under the cloudless blue sky. Seven valleys we counted, the distant ones mere faint shadows in the expanse of varied green, divided by the rocky headlands. To the right, as we faced the sea, was the point of Teaehoa jutting out into the great blue plain of the ocean, and landward we looked down on the Valley of Taaoa.
This was the middle place, the scene of Tufetu's violent end. A great splotch of red gleamed as a blot of blood on the green floor of the hollow.
“Vai piau!” said Exploding Eggs. He made a sign of lifting water in his hands, of tasting and spitting it out. The Stinking Springs where Tufetu was slain!
They were in a fantastic gorge, through which ran a road blasted from solid rock, stained brown and blue by the minerals in the water that bubbled there and had carved the stone in eccentric patterns. Bicarbonate of soda and sulphur thickened the heavy air and encrusted the edges of the spring with yellow scum. A fitting scene for a deadly battle, amid smells of sulphur and brimstone! But it was no place in which to linger on a tropic day.
Taaoa Valley was narrow and deep, buried in perpetual gloom by the shadows of the mountains. Perhaps thirty houses lined the banks of a swift and rocky torrent. As we approached them we were met by a sturdy Taaoan, bare save for the pareu and handsomely tattooed. His name, he said, was Strong in Battle, and I, a stranger, must see first of all a tree of wonder that lay in the forest nearby.
Through brush and swamp we searched for it, past scores of ruined paepaes, homes of the long-dead thousands. We found it at length, a mighty tree felled to the earth and lying half-buried in vine and shrub.
“This tree is older than our people,” said Strong in Battle, mournfully regarding its prostrate length. “No man ever remembered its beginning. It was like a house upon a hill, so high and big. Our forefathers worshipped their gods under it. The white men cut it to make planks. That was fifty years ago, but the wood never dies. There is no wood like it in the Marquesas. The wise men say that it will endure till the last of our race is gone.”