Pioneers in Australasia

by Harry Johnston

On the whole the natives of Easter Island (Rapanui, Hwaihu, and Teapai, as it was sometimes called) were living in a somewhat miserable condition when revisited by Cook, as though they had very much degenerated. Their food supply was poor, not even fish being abundant on the coasts. They had a few fowls and rats, and lived chiefly on sweet potatoes, yams, pumpkins or gourds, bananas, and sugar cane. The speciality of the island was the sweet potato, which Cook thought the best he had ever tasted. It seemed to Cook as though there were not more than 700 natives left on this island (probably there were then from 2000 to 3000). Their houses were low, miserable huts, or a kind of vault built of stone partly underground. Their fuel (as there were scarcely any trees left in the island) consisted of grass, and, above all, the stalks of the sugar cane. They had a few canoes made of boards, and it was a mystery where they could have got the wood from which to build them, unless it was driftwood.

But of course the greatest mystery of the island, then as now, were the stone terraces and platforms and the gigantic stone statues. The workmanship of the mortarless masonry appeared to the officers of the Resolution to be not inferior to the best stonebuilding work then known in England. The stones were morticed and fitted into one another in a very artful manner. The side walls were not perpendicular, but inclined inwards. The statues were, as a rule, erected on these stone platforms. It is noteworthy that the ears of these stone figures had their lobes prolonged downwards out of all proportion, but resembling closely the artificially elongated ears of the living Easter Islanders. Another puzzle was how the red stone cylinders could have been placed on the tops of the heads of these statues when they stood sometimes 25 feet or more above the ground. It must have required also considerable art to raise these immense carved stones to a perpendicular position. The statues did not seem to be regarded as idols by the people, but as the memorials of dead chiefs, and to have been in some way connected with the burial places of notabilities. The stonework on this island, nearly 1400 miles from the nearest land—Pitcairn—which has also remains of a similar nature, remains one of the world's great unsolved mysteries in the history of the human species, and it is remarkable that such small effort has been made by excavation to find some clue as to the origin and affinities of this vanished race of stonebuilders, whose works stretch across the Pacific from the Ladrone Islands to Easter Island.

From Easter Island, Cook proceeded to the Marquezas archipelago, already known through the explorations of the Spaniards. Here the natives were of the usual type of friendly, boisterous thieves, not provoked to much dismay or anger if any of their companions were killed or wounded by the muskets which Cook was obliged to order to be fired at them, to stop their carrying off things of great importance to the ship. All the islands and most of the ports bore Spanish names. The people were Polynesians, but far better supplied with food products than the miserable Easter Islanders. They had pigs, fowls, bananas, yams, numerous edible roots, bread-fruit, and coconuts.

From the Marquezas the Resolution sailed back to Tahiti, and, after another visit round most of the Society Islands [where Cook's relations with the natives were so peculiarly cordial and intimate that he left them with some shedding of tears on both sides and many appeals and promises to return], once more sailed for New Zealand. On the way thither, Howe Island and Savage Island (so called because of the ferocious attack made on a landing party by the natives) were discovered and named. The Resolution visited the northern islands of the Tonga group, but curiously missed seeing the large islands of Fiji, though Cook discovered and named Turtle Island, the southernmost of the group, on his voyage from the Friendly Islands to the New Hebrides. In like manner Cook never visited the Samoan archipelago, though, with these two exceptions, he was the discoverer or rediscoverer of almost all the Pacific islands.

The Resolution reached the New Hebrides archipelago in July, 1774. The first island at which any stay was made was the second largest of the group, Mallikolo. The people of this island and of the rest of the group Cook at once saw were markedly different from the tall, handsome, European-like Polynesians. They seemed to their discoverers the most ugly and ill-proportioned people they had ever seen; very dark-coloured and rather diminutive, with long heads, flat faces, and monkey countenances. Their hair, black or brown, was short and curly, though not so tightly curled as that of a negro. They had strong, crisp, and bushy beards. What added to their deformity was a belt or cord which they wore round the waist, tied so tightly that they were wasp-waisted. The men practically went quite naked, but the women, who were not less ugly than the men, and had their heads, faces, and shoulders painted red, wore a kind of petticoat and a bag over their shoulders in which they carried their infants. They had ear-rings and bracelets of tortoiseshell, and armlets made of thread and studded with shells; the bridge of the nose was pierced, and through it was thrust a circular piece of white stone. They were armed with wooden clubs and spears, bows and arrows, and the bow, which was about 4 feet long, was remarkable for not being circular, but had a great bend in its lower half, so that the bow and bowstring together in outline were like the half of a pear cut lengthwise. The arrows were reeds pointed with hard wood or bone, and the tips were covered with a poisonous substance. Their language was utterly different from that of the Polynesians, and it was noticed that they expressed their admiration by hissing like a goose. They had no dogs or domestic animals of any kind apparently (probably, however, they had fowls, like the New Caledonians).

At another of the islands, Efate, an attempt was made to lure them on shore, no doubt believing that their weapons were ineffective, and that they might be easily robbed, killed, and eaten. But at Tanna Island, the southernmost of the group, pleasant relations were entered into with the people, who were of a somewhat different race and spoke a different language to those of Mallikolo. They were taller, better shaped, and with more agreeable features, and were no doubt mixed with Polynesian blood. Their skin colour was very dark, their hair curly and crisp. They had pigs, but no knowledge of dogs, goats, or cats, calling them all pigs. They were frankly cannibals, and asked Cook and his people if they did not also eat human flesh.

There was an active volcano on this island which during the stay of the Resolution vomited up vast quantities of fire and smoke, making at every eruption a long rumbling noise, like that of thunder or the explosion of mines. The air was sometimes loaded with ashes or a kind of fine sand, and it was exceedingly troublesome to the eyes. The volcano also hurled huge masses of rock into the air, and when it rained it rained mud, on account of the degree to which the atmosphere was charged with sand and dust. Whichever way the wind was the ship's crew were plagued with the fall of ashes. Nevertheless the natives seemed quite indifferent to these volcanic manifestations. Unfortunately, at the close of their stay at Tanna, their relations with the natives ceased to be friendly, owing to the inexcusable shooting of one of them by a sentry. Cook throughout his books has to complain on several occasions of the frequency with which the marines, or even the midshipmen, fired at the natives without sufficient cause.

From Tanna the Resolution sailed north to the large island of Espiritu Santo, and stayed in St. Philip's Bay, the harbour discovered by de Quiros. The natives of this island were very dark-skinned, and their hair short and woolly, yet there were others of more Polynesian appearance, with long hair tied up on the crown of the head and ornamented with feathers like the headdresses of the New Zealanders. These taller people spoke a language apparently of a Polynesian type. Their canoes had outriggers.

Sailing away from the New Hebrides in the direction of New Zealand, land was discovered to the south on 4 September (1774). This was the large island named by Cook New Caledonia. The people were found to be obliging and civil, and with little reluctance came off to the ship to receive presents and to bring supplies of fresh food for sale. They had not the least knowledge of pigs, goats, dogs, or cats, and not even a name for one of them, but had apparently (so it is stated in Cook's journal) domestic fowls of a large breed. The men went naked, but were nevertheless much attracted by presents of cloth, especially if it was red in colour. When Cook landed he was received by a vast concourse of people almost entirely unarmed and very attentive to the orders of their chief. But the country was not so attractive in appearance as the beautiful Pacific archipelagos farther north and east. Cook at once noted in his journal that "it bore in general a great resemblance to parts of New Holland (Australia) under the same latitude", the forest being without any underwood and the trees being of much the same species [there are, however, no Eucalypti in New Caledonia]. The mountains and other high places seemed for the most part incapable of cultivation, consisting chiefly of rocks, the little on them being scorched and burnt up by the sun, though it bore tufts of coarse grass and a few trees and shrubs.

Whilst anchored off New Caledonia Cook very nearly lost his life from eating a fish of a poisonous nature. "It was of a new species something like a sunfish, with a large, long, ugly head. Having no suspicion of its being of a poisonous nature, we ordered it to be dressed for supper; but very luckily the operation of drawing and describing it (undertaken by Mr. Forster) took up so much time that only the liver and the row were dressed", of which the two Forsters and Cook merely tasted a little. But about three in the morning they were seized with an extraordinary weakness and numbness, and almost lost the sense of feeling. They could not distinguish between light and heavy bodies, so far as they had the strength to move, a quart pot and a feather seeming to be the same in weight. They immediately took emetics, and afterwards recovered the full use of their senses; but one of the pigs on board, who had eaten a portion of the inside of the fish, died soon afterwards, and they learnt from the natives that it was a deadly food.