The whole island rose up to entertain us, and the good people gave us ten days of the best time I ever had. Tehei's wife was of royal blood, and her influence caused the natives to make special effort for our entertainment. The night after our arrival, Tehei invited Jack, Mrs. London, Captain Y—— and me ashore, where we had a dinner such as surpasses description. Fruits prepared in every way a true Kanaka likes, sucking pig, chicken fried in cocoanut oil, watermelon, and raw fish! This last is one of the choicest of South Sea dishes. The fish, freshly caught, are cleaned and soaked an hour in lime-juice. It is delicious. Although we could speak very little with the Kanakas, we enjoyed watching them, and they enjoyed watching us.
After the meal, we went to a large oval, bamboo missionary-house, and watched an old Kanaka missionary drill what he called his himines. A score of girls, decorated with flowers, formed a semi-circle in front. Back of these stood the Kanaka men, and behind them the boys. Their music was more like grunts, but the wild, weird noise made my blood tingle. The boys kept swaying their bodies with the song and clapping their hands, at times beating themselves on the chest and chanting. This finished, a surprise was in store for us. Natives came in with chicken, watermelons, vegetables, fruit and fish, and made a pile that two boats the size of the Snark would find difficulty in floating under. Then a big Kanaka got up p224 and presented it to us. Jack thanked them, but had to decline the greater part, for want of carrying capacity. Even as it was, our deck looked like a market.
Bora Bora is a marvellous island. Twenty miles in circumference, it is surrounded by dozens of smaller islands, each in turn surrounded by its own coral reefs. From our deck, I could count eight of these small islands, some only a few acres, others about three or four miles around, all covered, save for the sandy beach, with a thick green jungle of tropical trees. We were twenty-five miles from Raiatea and one thousand miles from Samoa.
Only three persons on the island could speak English. There were half a dozen frame huts; all the rest were of grass, or bamboo. The natives wore nothing but the red pareus, or breech-clouts.
We were anchored a half-mile out, but the launch made the trip to the beach in a few minutes. The whole deck was covered with awnings, and we ate and slept on deck. The three engines were running all right, though it kept me pretty busy attending to them; it took a good deal of electricity just at that time, for the fans were running almost without intermission, and I had connected drop-lights on deck, whereby we might see to read or write at night. The natives were unremitting in their attentions. They came out by canoe-loads, bringing us food of various sorts—that is, all but the women, who found the ship "taboo."
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Bora Bora was the most primitive place we had yet visited. All along the beach, the long outrigger canoes were propped up on logs cut out for the purpose. The beach itself was sown thick with forgotten graves. On the morning of the third day, Tehei came aboard, and informed us that he had planned a mammoth stone-fishing for us. It was to be the biggest in the history of the island. Runners had been sent to the interior of the island and around the coast. These men were telling every inhabitant of Bora Bora about the stone-fishing; and in the afternoon the people began to gather in the village, and that night we were invited ashore to a big entertainment, gotten up on the spur of the moment. We were given seats on the grass in the centre of the village green, and around us squatted brown-skinned and black-haired men and women and girls and boys. They would sing their weird, barbarous tunes and keep time by swaying their bodies and gesturing with the arms. Then a few of them would dance, while the crowd cheered—not such dances as we see in civilised places, but something so strange and indescribable as to arouse the disbelief of some who have never travelled in the South Seas. They would dance so slowly that they would scarcely be moving; then away they would go, like a mad whirlwind. The crowd urged them on. Finally, the dance would cease as abruptly as it had begun, while the dancers would sink down exhausted. On going aboard the Snark late that night, Jack remarked on the p226 contrast between their easy, care-free lives, and the artificial, wearing lives of the so-called civilised people.