Part 7

And now we had pulled out of the breakers, through the narrowest of openings, and were on board the little schooner; the great blue sapphire waves lifted us and sank us, and came up against the blue horizon, or against the tall green cliffs; and once more we saw, in the hollow of the sea, or lifted against the sky, the native boat pushed on by rhythmic paddles, making a red line of naked men against the blue of the sea or the blue of the sky. We have been four hours and a half beating out of this little cove, and have just rounded the isolated rock of the cape, of which I send you a sketch. If I could only send you the colour!--blue and green--a little red and black in the rocks--the white and violet haze of the surf; all as if elementary, but in a tone that no painter has yet attempted, and that no painter that I know of would be sure of; the blue and green that belongs to the classics; that is painted in lines of Homer; that Titian guessed at, once, under a darker sky; and far off the long sway and cadence of the surf like the movement of ancient verse--the music of the Odyssey. We are off some little village on the shore; the boat has gone to get other passengers, while I try to finish this account of our first day on land in the South Seas, and to make it live for you by long accumulation of detail. If, through it all, you can gather my impression, can see something of an old beauty, always known, in these new pictures, you will understand why the Greek Homer is in my mind; all Greece, the poetry of form and colour that comes from her, as well as her habits; just as the Samoan youngster who rose shining from the sea to meet us, all brown and red, with a red hibiscus fastened in his hair by a grass knot as beautiful as any carved ornament, was the Bacchus of Tintoretto’s picture, making offering to Ariadne. The good people of the steamer may not have seen it, nor the big white English girl who bought some trifle from him--but it is all here for me--and there will soon come a day when even for those who care, it will be no more; when nowhere on earth or at sea will there be any living proof that Greek art is not all the invention of the poet--the mere refuge of the artist in his disdain of the ugly in life. What I have just seen is already to me almost a dream. So I turn to my Japanese, Awoki, and ask him--“It was like the studio, Awoki, was it not? but all fine; no need of posing?” And Awoki says “Yes,” whether he understands me or not, and I think of you and of the enclosed studio life that tries to make a little momentary visitation of this reality.

The fitness and close relation of all I have seen makes a something like what we strive to get through art, and my mind turns toward the old question, “How does what we call art begin?” These people _make_ little; the house, the elementary patches upon their bark cloth, the choice of a fine form for tombs, is all the art that is exterior of themselves and of their movements, into which last they have put the feeling for completeness and relation, that makes the love of art.

Is it necessary for going further that some one should be born, to whom, gradually, an unwillingness to assume the responsibility of action, which the ruler and the priest take willingly, should grow into a dislike of the injustice of power, and a distrust of the truthfulness of creeds, so that he must make a world for himself, unstained and free from guilt or guile? I have begun to imagine for myself some such soul, born in early communities, who might have lived long ago anywhere and have been the hero of some such primitive obscure conflict; but I can see tossing on blue waves, the boat that brings from the shore our new companions, Lieutenant Parker and Consul-General Sewall, who have been on a visit to the harbour of Pango Pango--and in a few minutes they and their white coats will be aboard.

You will by this time wish to know how we are living. We are settled definitely, for headquarters, at Vaiala, a little way from Apia, from which a little river separates our part of the land. Further on, another small river closes out the territory, and separates us from Apia.

The small river that separates us from the beginnings of the village capital, Apia, is spanned by a little bridge--little because consisting of a few planks, and a handrail to one side, but otherwise a very long gangway. This I believe is kept in repair by the municipality of Apia, and is probably the cause of much discussion in the way of spending money. Occasionally it is washed away, and then we swim our horses across, to the discomfort of my best yellow boots, which I feel are a distinctive mark in my visits to people in Apia. At times the municipality provides a ferry-boat. This so far has been manned by one of those convicts who are puzzles in South Sea economics. He had been taken away from some other chores of supposed hard work. After the first day of ferrying, which was productive of various small trips, this criminal had fallen back on the customs of his country, and on that essential communism which is the basis of their actions and of much of their thinking. He had a hut erected for him, so as to rest in the shade, and there he spent most of his time consuming bananas or accidental gifts of food, and courted and caressed by village maidens, who adorned him with flowers and anointed him with cocoanut oil. Meanwhile the smaller and less important members of his family did the work of ferrying in the sun. It was all the same, he was vicariously being punished. This is the keynote of all I shall ever tell you here. There is the tendency to let not only property remain undivided, but also injury or gain. A little anecdote told me by a clergyman, who had it from a friend in Fiji, where things are still more so, gives this intellectual position. The Fiji clergyman had been shocked at a horror perpetrated by some of his parishioners. The dog of some person in a neighbouring village had been killed; some of the aggrieved had sallied forth, and meeting some person who belonged to the village guilty of holding the dog murderer, had thereupon incontinently killed him. An “old hand,” that is to say, a white man conversant with South Sea habits, explained to the clergyman the naturalness of the deed. He said--forgive the vernacular--“See here; if Jim and me gets into a fight, and Jim plunks me in the head, I don’t wait till I can get in a blow at Jim’s head: I hit him where I can.” One community had lost a dog and the other had lost a man. This is a dreadful example of the idea, and I almost regret introducing it into my description of this idyllic passage of my life. But we are on the road to Apia, which, like all white men’s places in such countries, has a taint of brutality remaining from the day of the beachcomber.

It is an orderly little place strung along what might be called a street or two, the main one of which is on the beach, and goes by that name. There are stores, a few hotels and drinking places, warehouses and residences of the consuls, and further on native residences, etc. There are churches too, and a Catholic cathedral of somewhat imposing dimensions; but the churches are those of an ugly village, and no longer have that natural look of the church by our own village of Vaiala, for instance, which has really a character not contradictory to its surroundings.

Further back and right and left all is Samoan and native. We are just by the shore, here fringed with trees and palms, and only some six feet above the inland sea of the reef that spreads right and left before us. In the few great storms that have come upon us in the night, it was not difficult to imagine the beating of the rain against the door of our sleeping house to be the first splashing of some great waves passing over with the roar of the surf outside.

From under the shadows of trees, I see canoes pass close to the shore, visible at intervals between the trees that border it; they seem, like all that happens about us, part of a theatre scene: red bodies glisten in white or coloured drapery, adorned by flowers and leafage; and songs are carried along with the stroke of the paddles, as in an ideal opera. Blue sea outside; green inside.

The little village stretches along a very short distance, apparently not made of more than a couple of dozen of huts or Samoan houses, with a double village green, here and there planted with trees and broken into and backed on the shore side by plantations of bananas.

Further back the mysterious “bush,” into which I have not yet wandered. Just outside, near the shore, and with a little garden, the Consul has built a new and commodious southern house, with enormous verandas, dropped like a piece of Europe among the native forms; there we breakfast and dine; while in the village a few yards off we have borrowed a large, comfortable hut,[2] in which we spend the day, receiving visitors, writing, or painting,[3] and at night we occupy a little building of our own European kind, with just place for our two rooms and beds. It is next to Tofae, the chief’s hut; so that we are both physically and morally under Tofae’s protection. This we insist upon; we are no strangers gadding about, we are chiefs on a visit, and we appeal to the care of our fellows responsible for us. So that doors and trunks and boxes are all open; every one is free to inspect and responsible to the

[Illustration: BOY IN CANOE PASSING IN FRONT OF OUR HOUSE. VAIALA, SAMOA]

chief. Even very lately, when the criminal--the prisoner condemned for stealing the consular flag halyards--who is imprisoned by being detained within the half mile of the village, and who is under Tofae’s wardship--even when this confirmed bad man is found looking through all my property, from sketch-books to night pajamas, I feel quite safe that nothing will be missed through him. Only two silk handerchiefs have disappeared since I have been on the island, and I can’t be sure whether they were lost here or in some of our long trips by sea and land. But Tofae takes the fact to heart, and will, I know, make me some present many times more valuable, to wipe out this possible blot upon the escutcheon.

At the earliest dawn there is motion in the village that I do not hear. The soft grass, cleanly trimmed, which covers all the village space, brings no echo from bare feet. But from the very first morning on the small verandah, no bigger than a large table, I hear a patter of feet that wakens me. If I look out, one or more of the girls of the village, our nearest neighbours, is seated there in a corner, ready to bid good morning, and looking occasionally into the open window, to see if I am still abed! Sometimes their shadows, as they pass, break the half light which keeps me in a doze.

When I rise I have to get accustomed to the mild curiosity that inquires after my mode of dressing. Still, as days go on, I become less the fashion, and can go out to my bath, in my Japanese gown, without stepping over a côterie of gentle maidens. If I get up with the dawn, that slowly lights up the great spaces above the trees, I can see first some figures pushing back the mats that form the only walls of the surrounding huts, stretching their arms, then perhaps, in their simplest wraps, fading away in the uncertain light! They are going to the obligatory bath; not to the salt water in front of us, which they do not look upon as cleansing, but to pools back in the bush, or the little river further off.

With the first half-sleepy motion begins the weeding around the huts, a perpetual task carried on at all odd times. For among these savages, so far as they are not spoiled by the European, the lawn and greenery about the village are tended with extreme care. Many a time, in places that are far away and more strictly barbarous, I have been reminded of the neatest Newport lawns. This is one of the unexpected charms, one of the many things that give everything a look difficult to explain, a look of elegance in the wildness. But we must remember that these good people have always been here, that from immemorial time they have tended what seems to us accidental nature; culture and care and the tropical wild growths are constantly interchanged. That is the South Sea note.

Later on I see some of the men return from their short hour’s work at their wet patches of the taro plant, which, with the bread-fruit, represents the staples of bread and cereals both. In this kindly nature, such culture is no more than a gentle exercise. I see even the great Mataafa, the rival of the King Malietoa, and the greatest personage of all islands, returning from his daily task like any commoner, often stripped to the waist, wearing nothing but the wrap along the loins and legs, which they call the _lava-lava_.

After our morning coffee, made of the island bean whenever we are fortunate enough to get it, for we find it better than any brought from Java, we adjourn with the first heat of the early morning to our big Samoan hut. This is next to Mataafa’s, in the centre of the village. By this time most of our neighbours have begun to rest, and will keep steadily quiet for a large part of the day; unless they visit, or unless some special duty calls.

If we are very early, we may still find in our Samoan hut our pretty friend Fangalo, who lives with our neighbours nearer Apia, and whose simple task it is to place flowers about the tables upon which we write or paint, or upon the shelf that connects the great centre posts of the hut, where hang the cocoanut water bottles, and are placed the rolls of native cloth, or extra mats for softer resting.

Taēlē, which means bath, the gentle sister of our landlord, if I can so call him, has already seen that everything is in order, and all the mats that cover the pebble floor are properly disposed. Taēlē wishes good morning, and leaves fruit as presents and hangs the great branches of yellow or green bananas. She stays but little, even when pressed, though she is curious as to why we write so much and what we mean in general. She does not quite approve of us; we ask strange questions: we are not preachers--we are seen writing on Sundays: we are not looking for wives. We may be _aitu_--spirits in disguise.

Taēlē’s sweet face is always sad--exceptionally so here where good nature marks most young faces. In that she is not Samoan nor properly Polynesian. But she has gone through much. She was the Samoan wife of the former British consul, Churchward, who left her with her little boy when he was promoted to other appointments. Not that she would have gone with him, I think: the Polynesian rarely understands living anywhere else than in his islands--his own island makes the world. Here Taēlē sits on some rock-edge by the water, and looks out to the far-off sea. I see her so almost every evening.

According to true Polynesian habits, the little child has been adopted by our chief, Tofae, who is devoted to him and allows him great liberties. So that Taēlē has no practical trouble about little George, who lives Samoan way, and, a son of chiefs by birth and adoption, bullies the less important babies.

The other girls, who come in often to see us, and who are occasionally encouraged by little amenities and presents, are not at all sad. Otaota, the daughter of the preacher, who is himself of sacred descent, if I may so explain it, is not even over-bashful, to the great scandal of Taēlē, who is nothing if not Sunday school. She is willing to pose for her portrait without her upper wraps, though she is no longer the exquisite brown statue that she must have been two years ago. But Otaota is a young woman of the world, and who knows?--perhaps these strangers may be serious in their attentions.

Important people, of course, come in to see us, but more frequently in the afternoon. Of chiefs there are many about us, and Patu, Tofae’s brother, is a great chief and has been a great warrior; so that I am not surprised at his curious resemblance to General Sherman.

From all these good people my companion, and I also in a small way, obtain slowly, by driblets, the explanation of what they really are. Slowly they unfold the extraordinary differences which make their ways always misfit ours! Their social words have really no equivalent in ours; their ideas remain a puzzle to whomsoever insists upon our having a common basis to start from.

I have forgotten to describe what the Samoan hut, called the Samoan house, is like. Ours is a handsome one, not exactly the finest, but still very well built. Its plan is a long oval. Its length is not far from fifty feet; its greatest height something like twenty. It is set upon a foundation of stones, and its flooring of fine pebbles is only raised a few inches above the ground, which slopes in all directions from it. It is made of a series of high posts placed at considerable distances from each other, in the shape of an ellipse. They are connected at the top by a series of double beams, which receive great rafters running from every set of posts to the peaked centre. These rafters are connected by other great rafters and tie beams. At the centre they are supported by two or more great pillars, which at intervals are braced together. Beside these pillars, in the direction of each end of the house, are two holes in the ground; made to receive the cocoanut fire used for lighting, or for the slight warmth that is occasionally needed. Walls there are none in the true Samoan house. Mats of the cocoanut leaf hang from the cross-beams, between the posts, to the floor, or rather to the edge of large stones that make a sort of rim to the building, and serve to steady the posts and keep off the wash of the rain. In certain very elegant buildings some of these openings, instead of being filled with these movable mats that are pulled up or down for protection from light or rain, are enclosed by a fine wattling. It is a manner of limiting the numbers of entrances, which otherwise, you see, would be a little everywhere.

In such a residence as that of Mataafa, a great man, a sovereign prince and sacred personage, no one would think of entering otherwise than at some defined place.

For the furniture of our residence and that of other people, mats of different degrees of fineness are spread upon the small fine pebbles that make the floor. If we want great elegance and great comfort, we put on more and finer mats. Some of the furniture lies about; some of it consists in the Samoan pillow, a long bamboo, supported at the ends by four little sticks. There are also boxes in which clothes are put away. There are large rolls of native cloth called _tappa_. Some of it is made up into curtains to be used as screens and partitions. Sometimes, but not in our hut, these curtains are made into indoor tents for keeping off the mosquitoes, and, otherwise, increasing privacy. All these things are stowed away among the rafters, or upon the sticks curved like tusks, which project beyond the centre posts and serve to brace them.

For our European habits we have two tables and three chairs. Most of the day when we are idle we sit on the mats with our guests. But working is better done at the accustomed table.

Toward noontime we hear violent and savage shouts, and see through the square opening of the lifted mats three or four brown savages, with big girdles of green leaves and crowns of verdure, come running and dancing to us from Mataafa’s house, which is only a few yards away. They carry a big wooden bowl, partly filled with crushed cocoanut and arrowroot, and some big bread-fruits. They sit down on the edge of our outside stones, and proceed to break the bread-fruit, steaming hot, with great force and violence, holding it by the stem, pounding it and mashing it into the cocoanut milk. This quivering pudding, _palusami_, is then neatly dropped upon banana leaves, made into little packages, and tendered to us with the respects of Mataafa. Sometimes we eat, sometimes we distribute to more Samoan-minded people; but for the first few times it is very nice. I like it better than the raw fish and salt water, which is pleasant also occasionally, though apparently more suited to the habits of that ancestral totem, the shark. But tastes and habits differ, and the Samoan language, extraordinarily rich in words that describe physical sensations, has a special word for that state of weakness and languor wherein such a dish as raw fish is all that the invalid can tolerate.

Mataafa sometimes calls at this hour, sometimes a little earlier, on his return from church, if it be a holy day: for Mataafa is very strict in religious duty. But usually he has chosen the afternoon. He speaks no English, and we have varying interpreters; but still, owing in part to his kindness and courtesy, we have learned a great deal from him. He is not so easily questioned as an inferior might be. When Tofae’s tall daughter is called in hurriedly to help out, because we have not had sufficient warning (Tofae’s daughter, who fears no man, whose neck carries her head as a column does a capital), she interprets with extreme respect and reticence, as it were, “by your leave,” bending her head, looking only sidewise at the great chief, holding her breath when she speaks to him, and almost whispering. Every phrase is prefaced with “The King says,” all of which gives us the measure of proper respect, but does not hasten the conversation.