Low as they are in the scale of humanity, from the standpoint of Western civilization, the Fuegians, or Canoe Indians, as they are generally called, because they live so much on the water, and have no fixed abodes on shore, sink much lower. They are cannibals, and, according to an old writer, "magpies in chatter, baboons in countenance, and imps in treachery." Whenever it is seen that a ship is in distress, or that a shipwrecked crew have been cast ashore, signal fires blaze on every prominent point, to convey the good news to the whole island population, and immediately the natives assemble, like the clans at Roderick Dhu's bidding, in Scott's "Lady of the Lake." But if all goes well, a vessel may pass through Magellan's Straits without discerning any sign of human life, the savages and their canoes lying hidden beneath the leafy screen of overhanging boughs. Those who frequent the Eastern part of "Fireland" (Tierra del Fuego) are clothed, in so far as they cover their nakedness at all, in a deerskin mantle descending to the waist; those at the Western end wear cloaks made from the skin of the sea otter. But most of them are quite naked. Their food is of the scantiest description, consisting almost wholly of shell-fish, sea-eggs, and fish generally, which they train their dogs to assist them in catching. These dogs are sent into the water at the mouth of a narrow creek or a small bay, where they bark and flounder about until the fish are frightened into the shallows.
Lady Brassey had an opportunity of seeing some Fuegians closely. When the Sunbeam was in English Reach, a canoe suddenly appeared on her port bow, and as she seemed making direct for the yacht, Sir Thomas ordered the engines to be slowed. Thereupon her occupants plied their paddles more furiously than before, shouting and gesticulating violently, one man waving a skin round his head with an energy of action that threatened to capsize his frail craft—frail, in truth, for it was made only of rough planks rudely fastened together with the sinews of animals. A rope was thrown to them, and they came alongside, shouting "Tabáco, galléta" (biscuit), a supply of which they received, in exchange for the skin they had been waving; "whereupon the two men stripped themselves of the skin mantles they were wearing, made of eight or ten sea-otter skins, sewed together with finer sinews than those used for the boat, and handed them up, clamouring for more tobacco, which we gave them, together with some beads and knives." Finally, the woman, influenced by so fair an example, parted with her sole garment, in return for a little more tobacco, some beads, and some looking-glasses, which were thrown into the canoe.
"The party consisted of a man, a woman, and a lad; and, I think," says Lady Brassey, "I never saw delight more strongly depicted than it was on the faces of the two latter, when they handled, for the first time in their lives probably, some strings of blue, red, and green glass beads. They had two rough pots, made of bark, in the boat, which they also sold, after which they reluctantly departed, quite naked but very happy, shouting and jabbering away in the most inarticulate language imaginable. It was with great difficulty we could make them let go the rope, when we went ahead, and I was quite afraid they would be upset. They were all fat and healthy-looking, and, though not handsome, their appearance was by no means repulsive; the countenance of the woman, especially, wore quite a pleasing expression, when lighted up with smiles at the sight of the beads and looking-glasses. The bottom of their canoe was covered with branches, amongst which the ashes of a recent fire were distinguishable. Their paddles were of the very roughest description, consisting simply of split branches of trees, with wider pieces tied on at one end with the sinews of birds or beasts."[31]
A fine contrast to these gloomy scenes is presented by Lady Brassey's description of a coral island, one of those almost innumerable gems which stud the broad bosom of the Pacific, like emeralds embossed on a shield of azure and silver. It was the first land she touched in the great South Sea. A reef of glowing coral enclosed a tranquil lagoon, to which the green shores of the island gently sloped. The beauty of this lagoon would need a Ruskin's pen to reproduce it in all its exquisite and manifold colouring. Submarine coral forests, of every hue, enriched with sea-flowers, anemones, and echinidæ, of unimaginable brilliancy; shoals of the brightest fish flashing in and out like rainbow gleams; shells of gorgeous lustre, moving slowly along with their living inmates; fairy foliage of fantastic sea-weeds stirred into tremulous motion by the gliding wave; upon these the enchanted gaze dwelt in the depths of the lagoon, while the surface glowed with every possible and exquisite tint, from the palest aqua marina to the brightest emerald; from the pure light blue of the turquoise to the "deeply, darkly, beautifully blue" of the sapphire; while here and there the glassy wave was broken up by patches of red, brown, and green coral rising from the mass below. A rich growth of tropical vegetation encumbered the shore, stretching down to the very border of the ribbed sands; palms and cocoa-nuts lifted high their slender, shapely trunks; while in and out flitted the picturesque figures of native women in red, blue, and green garments, and of men in motley costumes, loaded with fish, fowls, and bunches of cocoa-nuts.
On the 2nd of December the Sunbeam arrived at the "Queen of the Pacific," the lovely island of Tahiti, or, as it was first called, Otaheite. Here Lady Brassey found herself in the midst of a fairy-like drama, to describe which is almost impossible, so bewildering was it in the brightness and variety of its colouring. "The magnolias and yellow and scarlet hibiscus, overshadowing the water, the velvety turf, on to which one steps from the boat, the white road running between rows of wooden houses, whose little gardens are a mass of flowers, the men and women clad in the gayest robes and decked with flowers, the piles of unfamiliar fruit lying on the grass, waiting to be transported to the coasting vessels in the harbour, the wide-spreading background of hills clad in verdure to their summits—these are but a few of the objects which greet the new comer on his first contact with the shore."
The impression produced by the first view was deepened by all that Lady Brassey saw afterwards. On sea and shore, or in the heart of the island groves, all was new, beautiful, striking. There was a strange light in the firmament above, a glow in the wave beneath, such as she had not seen elsewhere; for it was with open hands that Nature poured out her dower upon Tahiti.
She went for a ride; the path carried her through a thick growth of palm, orange, guava, and other tropical trees, some of which were thickly draped with luxuriant creepers. Conspicuous among the latter shone a gorgeous passion flower, with orange-coloured fruit as big as pumpkins, that overspread everything with its vigour. The path was everywhere narrow and sometimes steep; and frequently the horseman had almost to creep under the close thick crop of interlacing boughs. Crossing several bright little streams, it climbed to the summit of an eminence which commanded on the one side a prospect of a picturesque waterfall, on the other side of a deep ravine. A river issuing from a narrow cleft in the rock takes but one mad leap from the edge of the precipice into the valley below, a leap of 600 feet. "First one sees the rush of blue water, gradually changing in its descent to a cloud of white spray, which in its turn is lost in a rainbow of mist. Imagine that from beneath the shade of feathery palms and broad-leaved bananas through a network of ferns and creepers you are looking upon the Staubbach, in Switzerland, magnified in height, and with a background of verdure-clad mountains, and you will have some idea of the fall of Fuatawah."[32]
With no spot that she touched at in her long ocean wanderings does Lady Brassey seem to have been so delighted as with Tahiti. "Sometimes," she says, "I think that all I have seen must be only a long vision, and that too soon I shall awaken to the cold reality; the flowers, the fruit, the colours worn by every one, the whole scene and its surroundings, seem almost too fairy-like to have an actual existence." Human nature is, of course, the same everywhere: vice and sorrow prevail at Tahiti as in the reeking slums and lanes of great cities. It is only of the outward aspect of things that Lady Brassey speaks, for she saw none other, and assuredly at Tahiti that is fair exceedingly, and well calculated to charm a cultivated taste, to fill a refined mind with memories of beauty.