Domestic details, the preparation of food, the care of children, the nursing of the sick, were the tasks of all the household. Husband and wife, or the mates unmarried, labored together in delightful unity. Often the woman accompanied her man into the forests, assisting in the gathering of nuts and breadfruit, in the fishing and the building. When these duties did not occupy them, or when they were not together bathing in the river or at the via puna, they sat side by side on their paepaes in meditation. They might discuss the events of the day, they might receive the visits of others, or go abroad for conversation; but for hours they often were wrapped in their thoughts, in a silence broken only by the rolling of their pandanus cigarettes or the lighting of the mutual pipe.
“Of what are you thinking?” I said often to my neighbors when breaking in upon their meditation.
“Of the world. Of those stars,” they replied.
They would sympathize with that Chinese traveler who, visiting America and being hurried from carriage to train, smiled at our idea of catching the fleeting moment.
“We save ten minutes by catching this train,” said his guide, enthusiastically.
“And what will you do with that ten minutes?” demanded the Chinese.
To be busy about anything not necessary to living is, in Marquesan wisdom, to be idle.
Swimming in the surf, lolling at the via puna, angling from rock or canoe or fishing with line and spear outside the bay, searching for shell-fish, and riding or walking over the hills to other valleys, filled their peaceful, pleasant days. A dream-like, care-free life, lived by a people sweet to know, handsome and generous and loving.
That he never saw or heard of the slightest quarrel between individuals was the statement a century ago of Captain Porter, the American. Then as now the most perfect harmony prevailed among them. They lived like affectionate brothers of one family, he said, the authority of the chiefs being only that of fathers among children. They had no mode of punishment for there were no offenders. Theft was unknown, and all property was left unguarded. So Porter, who, with his ship's company, killed so many Marquesans, was fully aware of their civic virtues, their kindness, gentleness and generosity.
It is so to-day, in Vait-hua where the whites are not. I have had my trousers lifted from my second-story room in a Manila hotel by the eyed and fingered bamboo of the Tagalog ladron, while I washed my face, and stood aghast at the mystery of their disappearance with door locked, until looking from my lofty window I beheld them moving rapidly down an estero in a banca. I have given over my watch to a gendarme in Cairo to forfend arrest for having beaten an Arab who tripped me to pick my pocket, and I have surrendered to the rapacity of a major-general-uniformed official in Italy, who would incarcerate me for not having a tail-light lit. In San Francisco, when robbed upon the public street, I have listened while the police suggested that I offer a fee to the “king of the dips” and a reward to certain saloonkeepers to intercede with the unknown-to-me highwaymen for the return of an heirloom.