From Pitcairn we made for Rapa, known as Rapa-iti or Little Rapa, to distinguish it from Rapa-nui or Great Rapa; which, as has been seen, is one of the names for Easter. It is a French possession and only visited by a vessel occasionally. It is seven hundred miles from Pitcairn, and was somewhat out of our route for Tahiti, but the Sailing Directions reported a number of prehistoric buildings, which they termed “forts.” We were anxious to inspect them and see what relation, if any, they bore to buildings on Easter Island; but disappointment, alas! awaited us. The side of the island on which is the settlement was at the time of our visit the windward aspect; there was a strong breeze and quite a heavy sea. We remained abreast the village for some hours awaiting the pilot, who is said to come off to visiting vessels, but no one appeared, nor was any signal made on the shore. Either they were afraid of us, or did not like the look of the weather. It was not one of the islands we had originally intended visiting, and we had no chart.

We had to sail the ship the whole time in order to keep our station, and eventually our forestay gave out; this meant putting her instantly before the wind, or we should have been dismasted. We therefore ran under the lee of the land and made good our damage. It would have taken a long time to thrash back to our original station, so we reluctantly gave up the attempt to make a landing. The coast is extremely fine, bold, and precipitous, but that, and the illustration given, is all that we can tell of Rapa.

FIG. 129.—THE ISLAND OF RAPA.

CHAPTER XXI
TAHITI, HAWAIIAN ISLANDS, SAN FRANCISCO

Tahiti—Voyage to Hawaiian Islands—Oahu, with its capital Honolulu—Visit to Island of Hawaii—San Francisco—The Author returns to England.

TAHITI

Wallis is the first European known certainly to have seen Tahiti. He visited it in 1767, and was followed two years later by Cook. The predominant chiefs on the island at this time were Amo and his wife Purea, of the district of Paparo on the south coast. They are chiefly notorious as the founders of the great marae—or “temple”—of Mahaiatea, which they built in honour of their infant son, Teriiere. This work must have been in progress when Wallis anchored on the other side of the island. The demands which they made on their fellow natives in order to secure its erection were so extortionate that a rising took place against them; and by the time Cook made his first appearance they were shorn of much of their glory. Subsequently various other navigators visited the island. Cook anchored there a second time, and H.M.S. Bounty made a prolonged sojourn. In 1797 thirty missionaries arrived, sent from England by the London Missionary Society.

By this time another native family was in the ascendant, whose territory was on the north coast. They have become known as the Pomare, a name crystallised by the missionaries, but which was in reality only one of the minor appellations which had been adopted, native fashion, by the chief of the day. Pomare II. was baptised in 1819.

About forty years later Roman Catholic missionaries arrived, and a struggle for ascendancy took place between them and the London Society. The Home Government refused to support the Protestants. Queen Pomare IV., therefore, though she much preferred the English, was compelled to apply for a French protectorate, which was established in 1843. On the death of the old Queen in 1877, the French recognised her son, Pomare V., who had married his cousin Marau. The new Queen was the daughter of a chiefess known as Arii Taimai, who had married an English Jew named Salmon.[[85]] Miss Gordon Cumming, who visited the island at the time, gives an interesting account of the procession round the island to proclaim the new sovereigns, in which she herself took part. In 1880 Pomare handed over his claims to the French Government, by whom the island was then formally annexed.