Part 19

So this is why my last letter was so delayed. I did not know of it until long after. Should I get as far as the Marquesas, I shall write to you again, and tell you if anything be left of Typee, but I fear that that is all over. Still, I hear reports of some private cannibalism to which the benighted French object, so that there may still be hopes. But I am told also, as I said before, that they wear European clothing and that is worse than any immoral diet.

There are no Gérômes here and little French in the figures. Of the moderns, Millet and Delacroix _alone_ give the look of the nude alive and out of the studio. Also the Venetians and the older men are not out of the facts. And, praise be to the Maker of all (art included), I have not seen any _black_ except at night--and even then, “si peu, si peu.” Rembrandt would be happy here, especially in the evenings, when the cocoanut fire--that is so bright as to look bright in the day--makes a centre of light strong enough to turn the brown skins to silver and to gold, and then passes by every gradation of the prism into nameless depths that black paint will never give. My dear old painters, even to Van Eyck and Memling, how well they “carry” over the globe!

I should write to you about Stevenson, but I suppose that you can hear more directly through his letters to his friend. We have seen something of him and have been pleased. He is hard at work, so that visiting him is not a favour to him, even though he may like it, as reminding him of that real world of civilization which he thinks he has left for good.

Nor have I written to you about politics, that are really impressive here, for we have saved these people from a hell of slavery under the Germans. A little gentleness on their part, and they would have had the islands--for these people are gentle enough, and desire rule, but, as they said, “death would be better”--and fortunately we interfered.

I am impressed here, as I have been before, by the force that America could have for good, and by the careful calculation on the part of those who know us best, the Germans and English, upon our weakness of action and irresponsibility, and our not knowing our enormous power.

The Pacific should be ours, and it must be.

Vaiala, Jan. 19th.

This afternoon another little incident of everyday life brings up again my wish that I could set all this world about me to the music of a comic opera--a great _siva_. If only I could understand all that they say, and yet see it as people do who do not understand so that for them the ways of other races seem perpetually funny to the eye. What a charming subject I have now for a third act--or perhaps might I bring it into the first one--or should we perhaps make it an interlude, with the _siva_ ballet interspersed? Perhaps, after all, it makes a little opera bouffé for itself.

This afternoon, as I was telling you, I noticed some agitation on and about the malae, and around Tofae’s house, which is next to mine. This annoyed me exceedingly. Siva,[12] our first pet from Tutuila, had come to Apia on a visit, and the little silly darling had stumbled upon Awoki and claimed him with all the enthusiasm these people have for him, for his small size, his good nature, and his brown skin.

Our servants and dependents are the only ones who get the truest affection and good-will; we are too far up and too white, and cannot play. I have no doubt that notwithstanding the kindly offers we have had, Atamo especially, from maidens who were looking out for an establishment--I have no doubt, I say, that in their gentle minds was some confusion, some wish for rank and position, and that their real hearts went out to those with us like my little Japanese attendant. Indeed did not Faauli, the _taupo_ of Sapotulafai, the daughter of the great _tulafale_, intimate that she wished to keep Awoki with her, and did she not say that if he tried to run off she would put him in her father’s jail until we were out of sight and out of reach? Well, Siva recognized and claimed Awoki, and so we obtained her again. I made her sit for me, and found, to my great pride and delight, that I had never been mistaken, and that her rustic movements in the dance were finer far than those of the girls of the great places. We had seen the best first, and had known it. Siva was ill at ease here; she knew that she was considered provincial, or as Charley explains, “the Apia girls think that these Tutuila girls are fools.” The same little ways, the same condescension, the same disdainful or inquiring look, that we see used elsewhere, were given by the maidens of our place to the little stranger. And this afternoon, when I had got her out of the way to our house, to try to get a photograph of her with my hawk-eye camera, that never works, I was disgusted at seeing the surrounding green covered with people. The younger ones singled out Siva at once, and with the sincerity of purpose that belongs to youth, said to her what they thought; that her dress was this or that, that her hair was quite wrongly cut, like a goat’s, they said, literally, with many such amenities. All this Siva bore as maidens with us would bear, with a distant air and an occasional smile of pity. She was a sort of relative of Tofae’s, being herself a chief’s daughter, and could not, I suppose, be absolutely extinguished.

But the crowd increased very much between us and Tofae’s house, and twice I had been obliged to single out some offender and drive him off with a threatened stick, when something dawned upon me; these people were really coming to Tofae: no vain curiosity had led them to surround us and sit about the grave of Tofae’s father, and fill the greensward between it and the posts of his house. Something was about to take place there. Tofae was seriously taking counsel with some others, and suddenly the crowd poured around his house, the privileged ones entering it, and one little bunch of old women slowly, lingeringly stepping in between its posts.

So that I asked, relieved from my own trouble, what was it all about. This was the story: set it to music yourself and Atamo shall write the libretto. Within the fold of the chief has lately been dwelling a maiden thought to be frail, or at least of a stuff not so stern as some others. Perhaps she may have been there in exile for some slight misdemeanour, and her people may have deemed it good for her to live for a time under Tofae. For me she had little charm, if I do not mistake the young lady and confuse her with another young person who has also had refuge there, having bolted from her unpleasant husband and spending some weeks in temporary viduity.

One of our young gallants, and I am both proud and ashamed to acknowledge, one of our own crew, is a great admirer of female beauty, and fixed upon this maiden as one he should like to win, even if he had to persuade her to run away with him, for as far as I know he is married, and had never intended to set up a rival establishment in legal form. Nothing here in Samoa can be hidden for any length of time, so that a more moral place in its way it would be hard to find. To pay court in the evening supposes a certain surrounding of many young people, and often the presence of many older ones, and our young man’s wishes were understood by others than this best girl. So that, most meanly, some of the old women began to prejudice the girl’s mind against this passionate and handsome youth, and instead of opposing her, which might have defeated their object, they began to tell little tales about his past, probably exaggerated, as they went on accumulating. And as he found the girl still resisting he determined upon a straightforward course in his manly bosom, and complained to the chief, asking that these libellers be punished. And the chief listened, as was right, and summoned the old ladies before his tribunal to make good what they said, or forever after hold their peace. And here they were, come to be judged, while friends and witnesses and neighbours circumfused them, anxious about the outcome.

“Well,” I said to Charley, “and what will happen? You have heard it all.”

“They have been telling bad things of him, and Tofae will punish them. He will fine them and fine them high, perhaps as much as ten dollars,” answered righteous Charley, feeling, as we all did, for the virtuous cause. And then I withdrew, not only because I wished to go to Sivá, but I wished also to meditate upon the principles of eternal justice now about to be vindicated by Tofae. When the old women are silenced and put to naught, shall our young man be strengthened in his suit? And will the young lady triumphantly elope with him? All these contingencies of events might appear spoiled if I inquired too far, so that I have left it all alone, and I withdraw. The subject is too pretty as it stands, and, as I said before, only requires to be set to music.

Vaiala, Jan. 27, 1891.

We are nearer to the cannibal here in Samoa than you would believe at first; far away as we are from cannibal or “devil” countries, we have in the hired labourers of the German plantation a wilder set of savages than would seem from their usual behaviour and the steady work urged out of them by their German masters. You must not forget that these little black men, often so gentle and sweetly smiling, whom we see about at work--in that constant exceptions to all around us--are not absolutely converted by being taken from their cannibal native lands to work for the white man in Samoa. The smile of their white teeth, repeated by the ivory bars or rings in their noses, conceals, like the gentleness of children, depths of useless cruelty.

The timidity of behaviour of such as I had seen and described to you, who had escaped from the plantations and were in hiding among distant Samoan villages, protected by the gentler brown race from recapture and return to what after all is slavery, is not a permanent index of character. When they have escaped, and have lived in the bush a life of bare chance, finding scanty food, continually tracked and hunted by their masters, often denounced by the Samoans, who do not trust them, they turn both to ancient, ferocious habits, and to the superstitions and fears which belonged to their life at home.

They are always suspected of cannibalism; and the event which has made us all more or less miserable is considered as quite a possible thing, and likely to occur again. News came to us suddenly, out at Vaiala, that Faatulia, the wife of our friend Seumanu, the chief of Apia, had learned a dreadful thing. Her brother, some weeks ago, had sailed from the little island of Manono, and had neither returned there nor arrived anywhere. His boat was found upturned, and he was missing. The story told to Faatulia came from some of the black labourers, or else from some of those who had escaped out of slavery. Or else it came in the Samoan way, so that, though you know there is a story, it does not require to be fathered by any human tongue. “There are no secrets kept in Samoa,” says Mataafa; “they are always being told.”

This is what she learned: Her brother, in the last storm, had been driven out of his course; his canoe had been overturned, and he had barely saved his life by swimming. On reaching land in great distress, he had found in the bush a hut, occupied by runaway blacks, and had asked for shelter. He had slept, but fever had taken hold of him, and for some while he was unconscious. Thereupon came up the dread temptation to the black man. Here was that menace of superstitious harm coming from the presence of a sick man, who might die and injure them by bringing the spirit which kills, into their forlorn abode.

Here was food too, if they killed him. Perhaps--I say it with doubt, because I have but confused notions of the exact superstitions belonging to any one of the races I have not met--but the man killed and _eaten_ is not so dangerous in the other world as the man who dies a natural death.

At any rate, the story went on to say that the blacks killed Faatulia’s brother in his sleep, ate him, buried the bones, and knew nothing when inquiries were made. But somehow or other, suspicion excited by something done or said made the friends of the missing man dig and find remains which, at the time we heard the story, were being brought down to Faatulia, for identification.

And now how shall they know? The German firm will send their physician, and the American ship will send hers, and the question will assume a political meaning.

It was a sad thing to make our last call on Faatulia, and know that while she talked to us she was trying to forget the ugly thing lying behind the hangings of the hut.

Seumanu was undisturbed as usual, and bade us good-bye with all the coolness of a _tulafale_.

That same afternoon, January 27th, we looked for the last time upon the royal face of our neighbour Mataafa, while he told us again to tell Americans that Samoans owed their lives to the United States.

Then I used up my last daylight in painting a study of Maua, one of the boat’s crew, who endured it in a fidgety way that he took for patience. He was cold, for every hanging mat had to be opened, to give a little light on the dark afternoon, under the big roof of our hut.

And again in the morning I worked upon the sketch until the boatmen came up to tell me that the last moment was come. Maua flushed pink with joy, over his whole naked

[Illustration: MAUA. STUDY OF ONE OF OUR BOAT CREW. APIA, SAMOA]

body, when I told him that I had done. The children on the village green (_malae_) came to say something and to offer little presents of shells and sea beans.

The steamer was whistling for me outside the reef--Atamo was on board---- But I could not be left behind--too valuable a passenger.

I bequeathed my best cocoanut oil to Siakumo and the other girls, said good-bye to Tofae, our chief, and promised, if I returned, to come back under his wing. Samau, our boatswain, carried me on his back, into the boat, and patted my legs, as a respectful and silent good-bye.

The grey water inside the reef was smooth and quiet. For the last time our Samoan crew pulled close to the shore, to exchange _tofas_ (farewells) with Meli and her girls; and we went on board, where the sheep from Australia were still huddled on the quarter-deck due to Tahiti later. In the afternoon the island, wreathed in clouds, was already melting away behind us.

AT SEA FROM SAMOA TO TAHITI

We have had days of hard winds and grey weather, and all the more do I make pictures within my mind. For the Otaheite to which we are bound has a meaning, a classical record, a story of adventure, and historical importance, fuller than the Typee of Melville, which we may never see. The name recalls so many associations of ideas, so much romance of reading, so much of the history of thought, that I find it difficult to disentangle the varying strands of the threads. There are many boyish recollections behind the charm of Melville’s “Omoo” and of Stoddard’s Idylls, or even the mixed pleasure of Loti’s “Marriage.”

Captain Cook and Bougainville and Wallis first appeared to me with the name of Otaheite or Tahiti; and I remember the far away missionary stories and the pictures of their books--the shores fringed with palm trees, the strange, impossible mountain peaks, the half-classical figures of natives, and the eighteenth-century costumes of the gallant discoverers. I remember gruesome pictures in which figure human sacrifices and deformed idols, and the skirts of the uniform of Captain Cook. What would be the fairy reality of the engravings which delighted my childhood?

Once again all these pictures had come back to me. _Long ago_ there lay, by a Newport wharf, an old hulk, relic of former days. We were told that this had been one of the ships of Captain Cook: the once famous _Endeavour_. Here was the end of its romance; now slowly rotted the keel that had ploughed through new seas and touched the shores of races disconnected from time immemorial. Like the _Argo_, like the little _Pinta_ and _Santa Maria_, it had carried brave hearts ready to open the furthest gates of the world. The wild men of the islands had seen it, a floating island manned by gods, carrying its master to great fame and sudden death.

For he was not allowed by fate to try for further Japan, and begin, with the help of Russia, that career of conquest for England which she now dislikes to share with other nations, even with those to whom she first proposed the enterprise and half the spoils.

On that little ship, enormous to her eyes, had been Oberea, the princess, the Queen of Otaheite, whose name comes up in the stories of Wallis or of Cook, and early in the first missionary voyages.

Oberea was the tall woman of commanding presence, who, undismayed, with the freedom of a person accustomed to rule, visited Wallis on board his ship soon after his first arrival and the attempt at attacking him (July, 1767). She, you may also remember, carried him, a sick man, in her arms, as easily as if he had been a child. I remember her in the engraving, stepping toward Wallis, with a palm branch in her hand; while he stands with gun in hand, at the head of the high grenadier-capped marines.

And do you remember the parting--how the Queen could not speak for tears; how she sank inconsolable in the bow of her canoe, without noticing the presents made her? “Once more,” writes the gallant Captain, “she bade us farewell, with such tenderness of affection and grief as filled both my heart and my eyes.”

Surely this is no ordinary story--this sentimental end of an official record of discovery.

My memory makes the picture for me: the ship moving at last out of the reef, with the freshened wind, and below her level the canoe and the savage queen bent over in grief. Then right on without a break Wallis ends the chapter with these words: “At noon the harbour from which we sailed bore S. E. 1/2 E. distant about twelve miles. It lies in latitude 17° 30´s. longitude 150° W. and I gave it the name of _Port Royal Harbour_.” This foreign name has since yielded to the ancient native one. Besides the charming irrelevancy of these facts with the words describing the sentiment of eternal parting, Wallis’s conclusion gives us the place of Tahiti on the map, and will help you to follow me there.

The name of Wallis, the first discoverer, is so much overshadowed by the personality of Captain Cook, that I think it better to give you again the story that belongs to each.

Let us go back in mind to the date, the second half of the last century, 1767. The recall to _me_ of the ships of Christopher Columbus emphasizes the difference between that moment and the end of the fifteenth century. There were still vast spaces of sea unknown; still the object of commerce, of war and of discovery, was the connection with the “easternmost parts of Asia.” What lay between was only guessed at and often avoided. As when Anson, whom I have just been reading, passed through the southern seas in 1742, anxious for an unbroken passage across the great Pacific, in order to strike a blow at the Spaniard in Asiatic islands, he followed the Spanish charts; and in his own, “showing the track of the Centurion round the World,” there is nothing marked in the enormous blank space below the equinoctial line, from South America to New Guinea, but the fabulous Treasure Islands--the Isles of Solomon, placed very nearly where Tahiti lies.

When Wallis and Bougainville came upon this island they came as Columbus did--as discoverers; but the times had changed; and the meeting with a new race in this island of Tahiti--a fifth race, as it was named in my boyhood’s school-books--affected European minds very differently from the manner of three centuries before, when the Spaniards went for the first time through a like experience.

It is this new introduction of _modern_ and _changed_ Europe to another fresh knowledge of the savage world, that makes the solemnity of the discovery.

There is also something in the sudden coming together of the two new nations, England and France, so different from ancient Spain, upon this littlest of lands most lost in the greatest spaces of the sea, four thousand miles from the nearest mainland.

Hence from little Tahiti, whose double island is not more than a hundred and twenty-five miles about, begins the filling up of the map of discovery in the Pacific.