From Pole to Pole: A Book for Young People

by Sven Anders Hedin

What does the albatross care if the French have hoisted their tricoloured flag over the atolls of the "Island Cloud" and their nearest neighbours to the west? He is absolute ruler over them all, and seizes his prey where he will.

Now he makes for the Society Islands, and takes a circuit round the largest of them, Tahiti, the finest and best known of all the islands in the southern sea. There again he sees volcanoes long since extinct, grand wild cliffs thickly covered with wood, impenetrable clumps of ferns, and luxuriant grass, while down the slopes dance lively brooks to the lagoon separated from the sea by the breakwaters of the coral master-builders. On the strand grow the ever-present cocoa palms, as distinctive of the islands of the southern sea as the date palms are of the desert regions of the Old World. Here the weather is beautiful, a warm, equable, tropical sea climate with only three or four degrees difference between winter and summer. The south-east trade-wind blows all the year round, and storms are rare visitors. The rain is moderate, and fever is unknown.

The natives take a bright and happy view of life. They deck their hair with wreaths of flowers, their gait is light and easy, and they knew no sorrow until the white man came and spoiled their life and liberty.

Now the original inhabitants of Tahiti are dying out, and are being replaced by Chinamen, Europeans, and natives from other islands to the north-west. They still, however, till their fields, put out their fishing-canoes in the lagoon, and pull down cocoa-nuts in their season. They still wear wreaths of flowers in their hair, a last relic of a happier existence. Pigeons coo in the trees, and green and blue and white parrots utter their ear-piercing screams. Horses, cattle, sheep, goats, and swine are newcomers; lizards, scorpions, flies, and mosquitoes are indigenous. The luxuriant gardens with their natural charms Europeans have not been able to destroy, and the frigate bird, the eagle of the sea, with the tail feathers of which the chiefs of Tahiti used to decorate their heads, still roosts in the trees on the strand, and seeks its food far out in the sea. The albatross cannot but notice the frigate bird. He sees in him a rival. The latter does not make such long journeys, and does not venture so far out to sea; but he is a master in the art of flying, and he is an unconscionable thief. He follows dolphins and other fishes of prey to appropriate their catch, and forces other birds to relinquish their food when they are in the act of swallowing it. When fishermen are out drawing up their nets, he skims so low over the boat that he may be stunned with an oar, and he is so attracted by bright and gaudy colours that he will shoot down recklessly on to the pennants of ships as they flutter in the wind, swinging to and fro with the roll of the vessel. He soars to an immense height, like the eagle, and no telescope can match the sharpness of his eyesight. Up aloft he can see the smallest fish disporting itself on the surface of the water. Especially he looks out for flying-fish, and catches them in the air just as they are hovering on expanded fins above the waves, or else dives after them and seizes them down below. When he has caught a fish he soars aloft, and if the fish does not lie comfortably in his bill he drops it, and catches it again before it reaches the water; and he will do this repeatedly until the fish is in a convenient position for swallowing.

Our far-travelled storm-bird continues his long journey westwards, and his next resting-place is the Samoa Islands, which he recognises by their lofty volcanic cliffs, their tuff and lava, their beautiful woods and waterfalls, as much as 650 feet high, and surrounded by the most luxuriant vegetation. Over the copses of ferns, and climbing plants, and shrubs, reminding one of India, flutter beautiful butterflies.

Around their oval huts, with roof of sugar-cane leaves and the floor inside covered with cocoa mats, are seen the yellowish-brown Polynesians, of powerful build and proud bearing. The upper parts of their bodies are bare, and they wear necklaces of shells and teeth, deck themselves with flowers and feathers, smear their bodies with cocoa oil, and tattoo themselves. Of a peaceful and happy disposition, they, too, have been disturbed by white men, and have been forced to cede their islands to Germany and the United States.

It rains abundantly on the Samoa Islands. Black clouds sink down towards the sea, violent waterspouts suck up the water in spiral columns which spread out above like the crowns of pine-trees, and deluges of rain come down, lasting sometimes for weeks. Everything becomes wet and sodden, and it is useless to try to light a fire with matches. Almost every year these islands are visited by sudden whirlwinds, which do great damage both on sea and land. Wreckage is thrown up on the shore, fields and plantations are destroyed, leaves fly like feathers from the cocoa palms, and if the storm is one of the worst kind, the trees themselves fall in long rows as if they had been mown down by a gigantic scythe.

The albatross knows of old the course of the great steamboat liners. He sees several steamers at the Samoa Islands, and afterwards on his flight to the Fiji Islands, and if the weather is overcast and stormy he leaves his fishing-grounds in the great ocean deserts and makes for some well-known steamer route. For in stormy weather he can find no soft cephalopods, but from a vessel refuse is thrown out in all weathers. He knows that the Samoa Islands are in regular communication with the Sandwich Islands, and that from these navigation routes radiate out like a star to Asia, America, and Australia.

He sails proudly past the Fiji Islands. He does not trouble himself to make an excursion to the Solomon Islands and the world of islands lying like piers of fallen bridges on the way to the coast of Asia. Though New Caledonia is so near on the west, he is not attracted to it, as the French use it as a penal settlement.

Rather will he trim his wings for the south, and soon he sees the mountains on the northern island of New Zealand rise above the horizon. Among them stands Tongariro's active volcano with its seven craters, and north-east of it lies the crater lake Taupo among cliffs of pumice-stone. North of this lake are many smaller ones, round which steam rises from hot springs, and where many fine geysers shoot up, playing like fountains.