White Shadows in the South Seas

by Frederick O'Brien

A hundred varieties of flowers poured forth their perfume upon the lonely scene. The frangipani, the red jasmine of delicious odor, and tropical gardenias, weighted the warm air with their heavy scents.

Beside the trail grew the hutu-tree with crimson-tasseled flowers among broad leaves, and fruit prickly and pear-shaped. It is a fruit not to be eaten by man, but immemorally used by lazy fishermen to insure miraculous draughts. Streams are dammed up and the pears thrown in. Soon the fish become stupified and float upon the surface to the gaping nets of the poisoners. They are not hurt in flavor or edibility.

The keoho, a thorny shrub, caught at my clothes as I left the trail. Its weapons of defence serve often as pins for the native, who in the forest improvises for himself a hat or umbrella of leaves. Beside me, too, was the putara, a broad-leaved bush and the lemon hibiscus, with its big, yellow flower, black-centered, was twisted through these shrubs and wound about the trunk of the giant aea, in whose branches the kuku murmured to its mate. Often the flowering vine stopped my progress. I struggled to free myself from its clutch as I fought through the mass of vegetation, and pausing perforce to let my panting lungs gulp the air, I saw around me ever new and stranger growths—orchids, giant creepers, the noni enata, a small bush with crimson pears upon it, the toa, or ironwood, which gave deadly clubs in war-time, but now spread its boughs peacefully amidst the prodigal foliage of its neighbors.

The umbrella fern, mana-mana-hine, was all about. The ama, the candlenut-tree, shed its oily nuts on the earth. The puu-epu, the paper mulberry, with yellow blossoms and cottony, round leaves, jostled pandanus and hibiscus; the ena-vao, a wild ginger with edible, but spicy, cones, and the lacebark-tree, the faufee, which furnishes cordage from its bark, contested for footing in the rich earth and fought for the sun that even on the brightest day never reached their roots.

I staggered through the bush, falling over rotten trees and struggling in the mass of shrubs and tangled vines.

Away up here, hidden in the depths of the forest, there were three or four houses; not the blue-painted or whitewashed cabins of the settlement, but half-open native cots, with smoke rising from the fire made in a circle of stones on the paepaes. The hour of sleep had passed, and squatted before the troughs men and women mashed the ma for the popoi, or idled on the platform in red and yellow pareus, watching the roasting breadfruit. There must be poverty-stricken folk indeed, for I saw that the houses showed no sign whatever of the ugliness that the Marquesan has aped from the whites. Yet neither were they the wretched huts of straw and thatch which I had seen in the valley and supposed to be the only remnants of the native architecture.

As I drew nearer, I saw that I had stumbled upon such a house as the Marquesan had known in the days of his strength, when pride of artistry had created wonderful and beautiful structures of native wood adorned in elegant and curious patterns.

It was erected upon a paepae about ten feet high, reached by a broad and smooth stairway of similar massive black rocks. The house, long and narrow, covered all of the paepae but a veranda in front, the edge of which was fenced with bamboo ingeniously formed into patterns of squares. A friendly call of “Kaoha!” in response to mine, summoned me to the family meeting-place, and I mounted the steps with eagerness.

I was met by a stalwart and handsome savage, in earrings and necklace and scarlet pareu, who rubbed my nose with his and smelled me ceremoniously, welcoming me as an honored guest. Several women followed his example, while naked children ran forward curiously to look at the stranger.

Learning the interest and admiration I felt for his house, my host displayed it with ill-concealed pride. Its frame was of the largest-sized bamboos standing upright, and faced with hibiscus strips, all lashed handsomely and strongly with faufee cordage. Upon this framework were set the walls, constructed of canes arranged in a delicate pattern, the fastenings being of purau or other rattan-like creepers, all tied neatly and regularly. As the residence was only about a dozen feet deep, through three times that length, these walls were not only attractive but eminently serviceable, the canes shading the interior, and the interstices between them admitting ample light and air.