Before gaining the level of the valley, we passed by the site of a village, near a watercourse, long since deserted. There was nothing but stone walls, and rude dismantled foundations of houses, constructed of the same material. Large trees and brushwood were growing rankly among them.
I asked Tonoi how long it was since anyone had lived here. “Me, tammaree (boy)—plenty kannaker (men) Martair,” he replied. “Now, only poor pehe kannaka (fishermen) left—me born here.”
Going down the valley, vegetation of every kind presented a different aspect from that of the high land.
Chief among the trees of the plain on this island is the “Ati,” large and lofty, with a massive trunk, and broad, laurel-shaped leaves. The wood is splendid. In Tahiti, I was shown a narrow, polished plank fit to make a cabinet for a king. Taken from the heart of the tree, it was of a deep, rich scarlet, traced with yellow veins, and in some places clouded with hazel.
In the same grove with the regal “AH” you may see the beautiful flowering “Hotoo”; its pyramid of shining leaves diversified with numberless small, white blossoms.
Planted with trees as the valley is almost throughout its entire length, I was astonished to observe so very few which were useful to the natives: not one in a hundred was a cocoa-nut or bread-fruit tree.
But here Tonoi again enlightened me. In the sanguinary religious hostilities which ensued upon the conversion of Christianity of the first Pomaree, a war-party from Tahiti destroyed (by “girdling” the bark) entire groves of these invaluable trees. For some time afterwards they stood stark and leafless in the sun; sad monuments of the fate which befell the inhabitants of the valley.
CHAPTER LVI.
MOSQUITOES
The night following the hunting trip, Long Ghost and myself, after a valiant defence, had to fly the house on account of the mosquitoes.
And here I cannot avoid relating a story, rife among the natives, concerning the manner in which these insects were introduced upon the island.