Faery Lands of the South Seas

by James Norman Hall; Charles Nordhoff

"I have had some fun in my time," he went on, "arguing this out with the missionaries. I say tinned beef and they say the four gospels. Can't be proved either way, of course. But suppose, right now, every trading schooner in the archipelago was to lay a course for Papeete. Suppose not one of them was to go back to the atolls for the next twenty-five years. Leave the people to themselves, as you say, and let them have their missionaries, with the Golden Rule in one hand and the Ten Commandments in the other. What chance would they have of dying a natural death? The missionaries, I mean. About as much chance as I have of getting old Maroaki at Taka Raro to pay me the eight hundred francs he owes me.

"What makes me laugh inside is that the missionaries are so serious about the influence they have had on the natives. I could tell them some things—but what would be the use? They wouldn't believe me. Just before we left Papeete this time I was talking to one of the Protestants. He told me that his Church had two thousand converts in French Oceania, while the Catholics had only around six hundred, I believe it was. I said that I knew how he could get that extra six hundred into his own fold, and probably a good many more if he wanted to. All he had to do was to charter my schooner, load her with Tahiti produce—bananas, mangoes, oranges, breadfruit; he needn't take a single gallon of rum unless he wanted to. Then we would make a tour of the islands, holding church festivals, with refreshments, at every one; and at the end of the cruise I would guarantee that there wouldn't be a Catholic left in all the Paumotus. He didn't take to the plan at all, and of course it did have one weak point—if the Brothers tried the same game they would have just the same success, and nobody could tell from one week to the next which were Protestants and which were Catholics.

"That's about what happened at Taka Raro the last time I was down there. The population is supposed to be divided about half and half between the Latter Day Saints and the Catholics. There are no missionaries living on the island. The head churches in Papeete send their men around when they can to see how things are going with their flocks. That is usually about once a year for each of them. Boats don't often put in at Taka Raro. I've been there only four times in ten years, myself, and the last time I brought down a young fellow from the Protestant crowd. He had been with me the whole cruise, holding services at the islands where I had put in for copra. I hadn't gone to any of them, but at Taka Raro I felt the need of some religion. I had spent the whole day chasing that Maroaki I spoke about. The old rascal has owed me that eight hundred francs since nineteen ten. He is an elder in his church too. The minute he makes out my schooner standing in toward the pass off he goes on important business to the far end of the lagoon. I went after him that day, with my usual luck. He wasn't to be found, and I came back to the village feeling a bit ruffled up.

"It was just time for the meeting, and I decided that I might as well go as to loaf around finding that old hypocrite while my copra was being loaded. The church was packed when I went in. There wasn't a Catholic in the village that evening. All of those who had been Catholics were taking part in the himine and singing the Protestant songs as well as the Latter Day Saints'. No one seemed to pay much attention to the sermon, though. The young missionary didn't understand the language very well, and the preaching was hard for him. But he seemed to feel pretty good about the meeting, and when we left, the next day, he went down to the cabin to write a report of the progress his church had made at Taka Raro. He must have had a lot to say, for he was at it all the morning. He didn't know that we passed the Ata just after we got out of the pass. That made me feel good, for Louis Germaine, her skipper, has been a rival of mine for years, and I had every kilo of dry copra there was on the island. I got the megaphone and was about to yell, 'Good luck to you, Louis!' when I saw that he had a missionary aboard, too—a priest with a knee-length beard and a black cloak; so I only waved my hand and Louis shook his fist and shouted something I couldn't make out. I was going to the westward, stood close inshore, and passed the village from the outside an hour later. The priest hadn't lost any time getting his congregation together. Since there was no copra to be bought, I suppose Louis told him he had to get a move on. There had been another religious landslide. I was sure of that from the singing, which I heard clear enough, the wind being offshore. Great singers these Paumotuans, and it doesn't make very much difference to them whether the song is 'Happy Day' or 'Jerusalem, the Golden.' Of course I didn't say anything to my missionary. As the old saying is, 'What you don't know won't hurt you.'"

This conversation with Tino was running through my mind as I strolled down the village island after the service. Tino, I decided, was prejudiced. His was the typical trader's point of view. I had heard many other incidents which bore him out in his findings, but they came usually from men interested in exploiting the islands commercially. Huirai's exposition of the old biblical story—was that merely the result of a prolonged tinned-beef crusade? Remembering the kind of sacrifice which was discussed, very likely on this very island, in the days of pure heathendom, such a conclusion seemed fantastical. No, one must be fair to the missionaries. Perhaps they were over-zealous at times, oversanguine about the results of their efforts—so were all human beings in whatever line of endeavor; but their accomplishment had been undeniably great. Here were people living orderly, quiet lives. They didn't drink, although in the early days of their contact with civilization—until quite recently, in fact—there had been terrible orgies of intoxication. To overcome that was, in itself, a worthwhile accomplishment on the part of the Church. Only a few weeks before I had met Monsieur Ferlys, the administrator of the Paumotus, at Taenga. "The reign of alcohol is over," he had said to the islanders there—strange words, coming from the lips of a Frenchman. There was to be no more rum nor gin nor wine for any of the Paumotuans. Henceforth, any trader found selling it or any native drinking it was to be severely punished.

I continued my walk to the far end of the island and, selecting a shady spot, sat down to rest. The pressure of a notebook in my hip pocket interrupted my examination of the problem, "The missionary versus the trader as a civilizing influence." I was reminded that I had made no recent observations on the life and character of the Paumotuans, and the recollection was annoying. Was I never to be able to pursue, in indolence, my unprofitable musings? Why this persistent feeling that I must set them down in black and white? Why sully the fair pages of my notebook? Words, words! The world was buried beneath their visible manifestations, and still the interminable clacking of innumerable typewriters, the roar of glutted presses. In the mind's eye I saw magnificent forests being destroyed to feed this depraved appetite for words, which were piled mountain high in libraries; which encumbered all the attics in Christendom. Words, blowing about the streets and littering the parks on Sundays; filling the ash carts on Mondays. "No," I thought, "I will no longer be guilty of adding to the sum of words. I'll not write my learned monograph." But that inner voice, which itself is a creature born of many words—an artificial thing, however insistent its utterance—spoke out loud and clear: "You idler! You waster of your inheritance of energy! You throwback to barbarism—write!"

"But why?" I replied. "Tell me that! Why?"

"Sir, because it is your vocation. And have you no convictions? Your grandfather had them, and your great-grandfather, and those missionaries of the Duff you have been thinking about. Ah! the decay of convictions in this age! The lack of that old sublime belief in something—anything! Now then, I have come down to you through a long line of ancestors, and I don't mean to die through lack of exercise. You may not believe in me, but you've got to obey me. Write!"

I know that I should have no peace until I did, so I drew forth my notebook and, in line with my thoughts of a moment before, wrote, underneath the last observation on perfume: "The sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages among these islands is now prohibited by law. It is strange to find such legislation in territory under French administration. Is the prohibition movement to become world-wide, then? Is the reign of alcohol doomed in all lands?"

Exhausted by the mental effort, but somewhat easier in conscience, I replaced the notebook in my pocket. It was pleasant then to let the mind lie fallow or to occupy it with the reception of mere visual impressions. At length, although I didn't sleep, I was scarcely more animate then the fluted shell lying close by on the beach or the kopapa bushes which formed a green inclosure around my resting place.