Since Claribel had not seen fit to prepare us for it, the coming of Seuka wearing, besides her tuiga, only a cincture of bright ti leaves on each ankle and an almost negligible bit of ancestral tappa wreathed in a precarious twist about her waist, created something of a stir in a portion of our party. Was it really the same Seuka, she of the downcast eye and the blushing cheek and the long, trailing holakau of the previous afternoon? we asked ourselves. There was the same liquid eye and the same rounded cheek, but now the one was flashing and the other flushing with the surging "dance passion," and as for the holakau, the Commodore avers that his falling out of sympathy with the missionary—the introducer of that atrocious hider-of-charms—dates from that moon-lit evening by the bay of Pago Pago when Seuka danced the siva to the throb of the drum-logs and the music of the ripple of the wavelets on the beach.
On the Samoan siva-siva and its concomitant, the kava ceremony, I will write in another chapter; of this particular siva—our first one—I note here only the high lights of the mental picture which the mention of it always conjures up—the half-lighted interior of the thatch-roofed, mat-floored faletele, with slices of the blue moonlight diverging to mountain and grove and bay through rifts in the woven blinds; the lap of the waves on the coral strand and the lisp of the wind in the bananas running through the boom of the tom-toms and the guttural chants of the spectators, and, in the flickering light of the candlenut torches, those glistening limbs of mahogany, rippling, swaying, flashing, in the infinitely alluring movements of the native dances.
This dance was one of a dozen or more entertainments arranged by the hospitable natives during the time the yacht remained in Pago Pago Bay. One day it was a picnic and swim at a mountain waterfall; again a canoeing party, and another time an evening of Samoan singing. A ten-day-long cricket game between the teams of Pago Pago and Fuaga-sa furnished so much excitement that I am reserving the account of it for a special chapter. The chiefs of nearly every village on the island came and paid us visits of ceremony and brought presents, some of them journeying two days and more by land and water. Our most distinguished visitor was Chief—formerly King—Tufeli, of Manua, a group of small islands which is included with Tutuila in the American protectorate. Tufeli, a man of heroic stature and a most pleasing personality, came over for the express purpose of buying the yacht and sailing her back to Manua. He was not a little disappointed to learn that the Commodore would not find it convenient to turn her over to him in exchange for his season's copra output, but appeared considerably consoled by the barrel of salt beef we gave him as a compromise.
Most pleasant, too, were our relations with the officers of the Naval Station. Shortly after our arrival the Adams came to relieve the Wheeling and the fortnight during which the two American warships were in the harbour was a continual round of festivities. The Residency kept open house, as did also Judge E. W. Gurr, Chief Secretary of Naval Affairs, in his beautiful half-Samoan, half-foreign home on the mountainside.
Judge Gurr, whose wife I have mentioned as having been at one time the taupo of Apia, was for many years Stevenson's attorney and intimate friend in Upolou, and since taking charge of native affairs in Tutuila his thorough knowledge of Samoan character and his sympathetic interest in the welfare of the people have made his services invaluable to the American government. Judge Gurr arranged a voyage around the island for the Lurline, with visits to the principal villages along the coast, a fascinating excursion which was finally given up on account of uncertain harbour facilities. This trip was undertaken, however, by Judge Gurr and myself in the former's whaleboat, and, thanks to my sponsor's prestige, turned out most interestingly.
In no one particular does the lightness with which the Samoan has been touched by outside influence show more clearly than in his architecture. He builds and lives in the same style of house today that was used by his ancestor of a hundred—perhaps a thousand—years ago. Unlike the Hawaiian, Tahitian and Fijian, he has not taken kindly to sawn timber, galvanized iron, nails and glass, and nowhere is his conservatism in this respect more in evidence than in the villages of Tutuila. For this reason a brief description of the construction and furnishing of a typical Pago Pago dwelling may be of interest, and for this I am indebted to Claribel, who spent a whole afternoon, with pencil and notebook, jotting down the details at first hand.
"Although not a nail or dressed board is used in the Samoan house, the finished structure is exceedingly strong and especially attractive to look at. The uprights that support the roofs are the peeled trunks of young breadfruit trees. They are about six inches in diameter, and are set something like a yard apart around a raised oval floor-space that is paved with small smooth stones from the beach. Upon these posts rests the set of beams that support the rafters. The rafters run from the top of the posts to the roof-tree, which is supported by four or five uprights set in the centre of the floor-space. These beams are all laced together with braided coconut fibre, sometimes gaily coloured. The neatest joinery is in the roof, the ceiling being the under side of the thatching, which is laced between small, smoothly dressed branches. These beams are not long, curved tree-trunks as they appear, but comparatively short sections of coconut wood, fitted and dressed and lashed together with fibre so neatly that the joints are not readily discovered.
"Usually the thatch is of sugar cane leaves, though occasionally coco fronds or pandanus blades are used. The walls are made by letting down the 'Venetian blinds' of braided coco palm leaves which hang from the roof beams about four feet above the ground. Although there is no indicated door, the customary entrance is through the opening between the posts to the right of a line drawn through the house between the centre supports of the roof-tree. This is the 'front door'; the 'back door' is any opening between the posts behind a line at right angles to the one just mentioned, and dividing the house between the first two of the central posts. Before these centre posts the host and hostess sit when receiving their guests, and here the taupo sits when she makes the kava. It is the seat of honour for the inmates of the house.
