Part 25

“The prayers are finished And the call has been given To Puni at Farerua (Borabora) To Raa at Tupai (an island belonging to Borabora) To the high priest Teae, Go to Tahiti There is an _oroa_ at Tahiti Auraareva for Teriirere of Tooarai. Thou hast sinned O Purahi! Thou hast broken the Reva _ura_ of the King. Taiarapu has caused The destruction of us all The approach of the front rank Has unloosed the _ura_. One murderous hand Four in and four out. If you had but listened To the voice of Amo, Oropaa! Let us take our army By canoe and by land, We have only to fear the Mabitaupe and the dry reef of Uaitoata.

“There we will die the death Of Pairi Temaharu and Pahupua. The coming of the great army of Tairapu Has swept Papara away And drawn its mountains with it (the King) Thou hast sinned Purahi Thou and Taiarapu Hast broken the Reva _ura_ of the King And hast caused the Destruction of us all.”

This is Moetia’s and Marau’s translation, I do not know whose copy it is--Moetia’s or Marau’s. I got it from the latter. This song of reproof, cherished by the Teva, as a protest against fate, explains how the dissensions among the different branches of the eight clans allowed them to become a prey to the rising power of the Purionu clans, headed by Pomaré, the son of one of those Ahurai princes whose blood ran into the sand near where the great _marae_ of Oberea was built, as I have told you a little further back. The vicissitudes of wars, the changes brought about by the influence of the foreigner, all of which worked in favour of the Pomaré, culminated in a final struggle in December, 1815. The

## partisans of the old order, both social and religious, were headed by

Opufara, the brother of Tati, the Chief of Papara. On the other side were the partisans of Pomaré, the Christians, the white men and their guns. To accentuate still more the character of the contest, the final battle began on a Sunday, the attack being made by the pagans during the service which Pomaré attended. As in mediæval times, in our own history, the Christians did not begin the fight until the conclusion of the prayers in which they were engaged. On the other side the inspired prophets who guided the pagans urged them to predicted victory. The cannon of the Christians checked the fierce onslaught of the men of Opufara; though for a short time their courage had seemed to prevail, and Opufara fell first, at the head of his men. He urged them bravely to continue the fight, and at least to avenge his death, and the struggle continued long enough for him to see their brave resistance to the superior advantages of the guns in their enemies’ hands. But the end came, as we can well imagine, and Opufara drew his last breath as he saw the utter rout of his clan and their supporters.

For the first time in Polynesian warfare Pomaré stopped the massacre about to begin, and promised peace and pardon to all who should submit.

His friends, as well as his enemies, realized, in their astonishment, the enormous difference brought in by the new faith. This clemency did as much as actual power to win over those defeated. Most all men submitted to the new great chief, to the new religion; the _maraes_ were destroyed, the image of the god Oro, a palladium long fought over, the cause of cruel wars, was burned; the people turned to Christianity, and the old order was completely broken up, carrying with it the power of the chiefs on which, unfortunately, the social system was based; because this power was more intimately connected with religious awe and belief than with military supremacy.

Had I more time, I should have liked to describe more fully the details of what I have only indicated. The whole story of the years between the decadence of Oberea’s control and Pomarés triumph is full of meaning to the Teva. With our clan, Opufara is still a representative of its courage and its pride. With no little feeling does Queen Marau urge me, when I return to Paris, to seek out the _omare_ or club of the great Chief Opufara, preserved perhaps yet in the Musée des Souverains. In the Museum at Sydney in Australia, among the fragments and samples of cloth and dresses collected by Captain Cook, I shall perhaps find some bits of the garments of Oberea.

Saturday, June 6th at Sea.

Wednesday was to be our last day. We had decided to join the steamer chartered by us for Fiji not on its arrival but later at Hitiaa on the opposite southeastern coast of the island, partly to see the other side of the island, partly to say good-bye to Tati who would load our steamer with oranges.

We were to leave at noon for our drive around the island and there were to be prayers that day in all the churches against the illness now afflicting the island. The King was ill; our chiefess wished her family to be present at church. Before the breakfast to which we were asked, she bade us good-bye as she proposed to return to church: they have a way there of spending the day off and on--the natives--as we remembered at Tautira.

She drank our healths and made us a little speech, having kissed Tauraatua, and holding our hands in her soft palms, she wished us again good-bye. She was very dignified and simple. Nothing could have been simpler or more touching. As I remember, she wished us the usual safe journey home and health and “hoped that we might return, where, if we did not find her, we should at least find her children.” After that we had a long and cheerful breakfast with the remaining family, and then we drove away around the coast to Hitiaa which we reached in the early evening.

The drive, though a rough one, was beautiful; of course we could not see inland the high mountains and deep valleys, except when on one occasion we crossed a wide river and valley and could look back. But we skirted the sea everywhere, and our road ran between the cliffs, every few rods making new and exquisite pictures of sea and trees and rocks, and of waters running to the sea. I do not know if this side of the island be finer, all is so lovely in detail, but it is bolder and more rocky. I thought, as we drove along and had passed Point Venus, how well chosen had been Bougainville’s name of Nouvelle Cythere, for we were on his side of the island. The feminine beauty of the landscape and its “infinite variety” completed the ideal of a place where woman was most kind.

The charm of the day closed in our arrival at Hitiaa where we were to pass the night--in a little village of pretty huts set in cleanly order, in a grove of high bread-fruit trees. All was green even to the road, except a few spaces in front of houses, neatly pebbled. In the shade were the figures of Tati and of our hosts, coming to meet us--all in light colours, white, blue, red, and yellow, making a picture that might have done for a Watteau. We dined out on the green right by the shore, where the surf broke a few feet from us. The air was sweet with odours, and cool. It was pleasant to be with Tati again and hear his laugh, something like Richardson’s, whom he resembles in size as well as in many little matters. But I know that I said this before.

We slept in a cleanly native hut, of the usual style, a long thatched building, lifted on a stone base with a floor, and sides made of rods like a cage, but with European doors. At either semi-circular end, muslin was hung along the walls so as to exclude the light and to protect a little from draught. Each end had a curtain drawn across it, so that one’s bed was enclosed, but our host and hostess watched us to the last with unabated kindness. Everything was scrupulously clean. The next morning was like the evening. Blue clouds blown over a pink sky, all far above us, for all the trees rose high and we moved about from shade to shade. Tati had driven away before daylight to put oranges on board. The village was very silent, as if deserted. We spent the morning in idleness; walked to the great Tamanu trees at the end of the village of which Tati had told us when he tried to find words for the impression of solemnity which European Cathedrals had made upon him. The trees are like great oaks, but rise with a great sweep before branching. Right by the road is a cluster of them with great roots, all grown together in a lifted mass. We sat idly by the sea and looked at Taiarapu all in blue, and at the sea between us and our little Tautira also all blue, which we shall never see again. Men, on the inside reef alongside, were fishing, standing patiently in the water.

Over us, stretching far and touching the water at places, spread the great Tamanu trees. We sat there in their shade. The water came up to my feet and washed out my drawings in the sand, as memories of things are effaced.

It was pleasant to be absolutely idle, listening to the soft noise of the tide rolling minute pebbles on the sand, looking at its edges fringed with bubbles, that folded one over the other like drapery, and watching the wet fade smoothly off the shore.

The trade wind blew strong. The air was very cool. Mrs. Tati gave us breakfast with a smile of welcome and _iorana_, and little Tita flirted with us.

Then I slept; and waking determined to have some record of this our last day, and sat again on the shore, and made a note of Taiarapu across the water on which the rainbow played. Near me the surf ran in rapidly on the shallows, all in blue shade; the Tamanu’s branches above me were reflected in the motion--and underneath the trees, boys paddled in and out, in their little boats without outriggers, using their hands for paddles, so that as they swung their arms they looked as if swimming hand over hand. It was still very cool, and I felt that I had probably exposed myself to what is the danger of this place at this time. It can be so cool after heat, and so damp with such draughts that I do not wonder at the constant colds and troubles of the lungs that I have noticed. I should call it a lovely climate--and an exquisite climate--but not one for a pulmonary patient. Now I am astonished that Piri’s doctors sent her back here.

In the evening we had Tati again at dinner and talked with him about his perhaps coming over in ’93, Exposition time, and about the correctness of his sister’s translations of poetry. We tried in vain to get some love songs, though he promised to send some to me later, but he told us stories of Turi, famous for prowess in love--the Arabian love of the South Seas--also of the tradition of an isle inhabited by women only, such as is told of on the farther shores of the Pacific, and such as Ariosto wrote of; and some anecdotes, not to their credit, of Pomaré the great or his father Teu, some of the scandalous scenes of which had been enacted not far from there, and had been commemorated in the names of the rivers. “But perhaps after all,” Tati said, “they were no worse than other chiefs who lived before them, for as they all had unlimited power that power led them to many excesses.”

The next morning we arose to find the little steamer some three miles off. Perhaps there were fewer rocky ledges upon our path nor did we see the olive gray mist of the _aito_ trees (iron wood) against the blue sea, or the shining wet rocks. But otherwise it was like a continuation of the ride of the day before, a dragging through grassy, wet roads, and plunging into small streams, where coral rocks whitened the clear grey bottom. A very few people nodded to us as we passed. I suppose that most every one was engaged at the packing of the oranges further away; orange trees filled the roads, the peel of oranges in long, yellow spirals, dotted the grassy edges of the rivers hear the huts. Small black pigs scampered and tore away into the “brush” on either side, where in a hollow of the road undisturbed by our passing so close, old Eumaeus the swine-herd crouched alongside of his black hogs who ate savagely what he had provided. And again we came to such a place as we had seen on our drive of Wednesday, something never noticed elsewhere by us, where some ledge of rock came up toward the sea, leaving only a narrow passage. There a little wicker fence had been built across the road resting against the rock on one side and the trees on the slope below; and there we opened a gate, as if all this lovely land had been but some domain, and had been set out in its beauty of arrangement by skilful hands, to please owners who lived perhaps inland, behind the vague spaces of forest trees, or up the hazy valleys. All that was wanting to the idyl was what we had seen before, red bunches of wild bananas brought down from the mountains and hung on bamboo poles or left supported by branches and roots, on the wayside, along with heaps of cocoanuts half hidden in grassy hollows, giving the idea that other owners and gatherers had but just placed them there while they went off for a moment; for a plunge into cool water perhaps, after the hard toil of the carrying.

Tati has explained to us how that really the owners were not far away, but that afraid at our coming or at that of others they were concealed. It was what is called their consciences, or rather what the French have subtly called “le respect humain,” that drove these good people into concealment behind pandanus or orange trees. That day that we drove away, leaving our dear chiefess go to church, was all through the country, apparently, a church holiday, and no one having gone to the mountains for such worldly things as banana food wished to be seen at work, when all were apparently moving to and from the churches, clad in brightest garments, and looking like the lilies of the field.

But this morning, like yesterday, was a day of work; and soon we saw along the shore and drove past it, a very long shed, with shining thatch, and with hanging curtains of matted palm, where were many people, men, women and children, who had been packing oranges and now were resting and eating. The place was as joyous and full as the previous land had been solitary; work had stopped, the last boxes of oranges were being taken to the ship in double canoes, that is to say, two canoes joined together by an upper planking or deck of canes. On one of these with our luggage, we also embarked--the ropes that were fastened to the trees on shore to steady the steamer, were loosened, the anchors lifted, and with a good-bye to Tati we were off. That afternoon we saw little of the island lost in cloud until we turned the corner of Point Venus, and looked up the gorges that led toward the Aorai. Then soon we were in Papeete and could go ashore and watch the packet from San Francisco just sailing in behind us, and try to say good-bye again. Again I felt the curious twinge of parting, again Ori’s wife Haapi kissed my hands. The late afternoon flooded the island and the clouds half covering it with a dusty haze of yellow light. The sea tossed fresh and blue as if lit by another sky. We passed the fantastic peaks and crags of Moorea, seen for the first time on its other side and wrapped above in the scud of the trade winds blowing in our favour. So in a gentle sadness the two islands faded into the dark; the end of the charm we have been under--too delicate ever to be repeated.

There I thought, five hundred years ago, I was young, happy and famous, along with Tauraatua.

“Ils sont passés, ces jours de fête, Ils sont passés, ils ne reviendront plus.”

If only when I received my name and its associations I could have been given the memories of my long youth; the reminiscence of similar days spent in an exquisite climate, in the simplest evolution of society, in great nearness to Nature, that I might find comfort in those recollections against the weariness of that civilized life which is to surround my few remaining years.

D. M. Oberea S Posuit Teraitua

TAHITI TO FIJI

Sunday, June 14th, at Sea.

Lat. 20-42 S. 839 miles from Rarotonga. Long. 174-44 W., 431 miles to Fiji.

On Tuesday we were before Rarotonga: on _Tuesday_ according to the ways of the place, where, as in Samoa, the missionaries made an error in time, and have never dared to rectify it. But to us outsiders it would have been nearly a Monday, though later, no doubt, the captain would throw off a day for us as we went west, perhaps even drop it here politely.

Rarotonga of the Cook Islands is a little island about twenty miles around, with outlines reminding one of Moorea; the look of a great crater whose sides had been broken out, leaving sharp crags and here and there curious peaks.

I had been suffering very much from my ancient enemy, sciatica, which declared itself almost as soon as we left Tahiti, and has kept me in pain up to this moment. But I managed to get ashore, and to take a long walk along the pretty road that goes around the island. We called on the Resident, Mr. Moss who took us to see the Queen or Chiefess Makea, for whom we had a letter from Queen Marau. She was the usual tall, smiling Polynesian chiefess, pleased at the addresses of her letter, which made her out a _queen_, as she showed to the Resident. For I gathered in the careless accidents of conversation, she had been lately elected chiefess by a parliament composed of representatives of the islands who are supposed to have federated for a general government. But Makea is a chiefess of great descent, being straight from Rarika, one of the two chiefs who years ago met here, one of them coming from Tahiti, the other from Samoa; one driven away, the other in exploration; and who colonized the islands, and in the persons of their descendants fought for supremacy down to this date. So that it is something that this representative of one descent should have been agreed upon. Many of these traditions have been recorded by the Rev. W. W. Gill in his “Myths and Songs from the South Pacific”; though his book refers particularly to Mangaia which is a neighbouring island about one hundred miles distant.

“Yes,” said the Queen, “Moni Gill.” She had seen his book and proposed to make some corrections. Money Gill, he was nicknamed because he was so fond of money. Let me add that I also understood that the gentleman was generous enough and not mean.

The missionaries have had complete control all this time; and yet things “laissent à désirer,” as the French have it. There has been a system of “government,” as Mr. Moss rather ironically sounded the name. There had been one hundred policemen in this little island of Rarotonga. Each policeman was a deacon, and the punishment of everything was a fine; the fines being pooled together and divided afterward.

Many deeds were fined and punished that were innocent or excusable, but all the fining had not in these thirty years increased the chastity of the women. Though the reports of the missions do not carry out this fact, the individual missionaries admit it, and what weakening of real authority has resulted one can only guess.

Some years ago the missionaries objected to smoking. To-day our missionary on board has a cigar or pipe in his mouth most of the time. In those years Makea was fined and excommunicated for smoking a cigarette. Being driven out she became reckless, and I am “credibly informed,” drank and “even danced.” And so her example stood in the way, and the missionary came back to her and begged her to return and be disexcommunicated, even if she should smoke; so that at least others should not have her precedent for dancing. But she refused. How it all ended I should have liked to remain to inquire, of her or the Resident, but the steamer waits not, and I only get these queer little bits of information by chance hearing. But you know that I believe that one gets a good deal from such trifles. I find the British Resident cheerfully hopeful of getting these people under some shape of government other than the kind of thing they had which cannot last. He took us to the building which is a schoolhouse and Parliament house, and we heard a little of what he was doing to get them to regulate matters in some shape that can serve as a basis. But you can imagine what little difficulties come up when those of the neighbouring island, whose chiefess Namuru I saw at the Queen’s, had sent word in their innocence that they had fined a Chinaman for complaining to her and writing what they called a lying letter. In their Polynesian simplicity (and they are shrewd enough) they had forgotten that in an interview they had admitted all and given the Resident every detail.

But there is no doubt that everywhere, the native churchmen, put up to the use of arbitrary authority, will do many queer things--things that everybody knows of through all the South Seas, so that there is no need of detailing them. They suffer, too, from having but one book, the Bible, which (especially the Old Testament) they know by heart, and where they can easily find a precedent for anything they may choose. They might get ideas from other books, but then they would have to learn English, etc. “What then will happen?” say the missionaries. “Do you see these good people reading Zola?” Their conduct is somewhat Zolaish at times, but then it is carried out in their own language. Hence much objection to teaching them English or anything that might lead to danger. It is the old trouble that missionaries have always found--more especially if they were obliged by principle to suppose that they might have some liberty of choice. The position is a hard one. I saw the expression of the missionary’s wife when another hinted under his breath that perhaps the Catholic Sisters might be allowed to come and teach. Such an extremity, however, would blow things sky-high; and if it be necessary that there be education, perhaps the missionaries will consent rather than see the enemy bring it. The English protectorate has only lately been established, and naturally all these questions are fresh.